Trump Ramps Up War on Democratic Governor

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Tuesday that the Department of Justice was suing the state of Maine for failing to comply with the president’s executive order banning transgender athletes from women’s sports.

The lawsuit follows the Trump administration’s announcement that it would suspend all federal education funding from Maine, over the Maine Principals Association’s decision to allow transgender women to compete with other women. The all-out war started after a fiery exchange at the White House in February, where Maine Governor Janet Mills was singled out by Donald Trump but refused to legitimize gender discrimination, saying she would continue to comply with state and federal law.

“See you in court,” Mills told the president at the time. Mills has stated that the inclusion of transgender athletes in women’s sports is protected under Maine’s Human Rights Act, which protects against discrimination on the basis of gender identity.

During Bondi’s announcement, the attorney general tried to downplay that Trump’s inane executive order supposedly protecting women and children actually applied to only a few people in the state.

“I don’t care if it’s one, I don’t care if it’s two, I don’t care if it’s 100!” Bondi said, referring to how many transgender girls are high school athletes in Maine. It’s two, actually, according to the Maine Principals Association.

Ultimately, the supposedly widespread threat that Trump and Bondi seek to address doesn’t actually exist. NCAA President Charlie Baker told a Senate panel there were fewer than 10 transgender athletes in the entire athletic association. Further, Republicans’ repeated attempts to smear transgender women as threatening lacks a basis in reality, and simply serves as a means to win culture-war points with a transphobic voter base.

But Bondi wasn’t so concerned about the specifics of her argument on executing Trump’s agenda. In an appearance on Fox News Tuesday, Bondi falsely claimed that Riley Gaines, a swimmer for the University of Kentucky and anti-trans activist who appeared onstage with the attorney general for her announcement, had made it to the Olympics.

In fact, Gaines received fifth place in the 200-yard NCAA freestyle championship, and tied with University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, who became the first out transwoman champion in the NCAA women’s division.

Bondi warned that Minnesota and California were the “top two” states that would be targeted for their protections for transgender individuals.

Since Trump’s row with Mills, his administration has unleashed a barrage of actions targeting the state. Earlier this month, lawmakers called for the head of the Social Security Administration to resign after it was revealed that he’d attempted to shut Maine out of the insurance program altogether.

Last month, Trump froze millions of dollars in federal funding from the Department of Agriculture to the University of Maine system, which supports several universities. The Department of Education launched an investigation into the state’s Department of Education for alleged Title IX violations, the Department of Health and Human Services targeted the state’s Education Department, and the USDA launched an investigation into the University of Maine.

Donald Trump was apparently mad at Elon Musk for planning to attend a secret briefing on China at the Pentagon last month.

After news of that briefing was reported in The New York Times, Trump angrily canceled it, saying, “What the f**k is Elon doing there? Make sure he doesn’t go,” an unnamed top official told Axios.

The official said that “POTUS still very much loves Elon, but there are some red lines.”

“Elon has a lot of business in China and he has good relations there, and this briefing just wasn’t the right thing,” said the official.

In March, Trump vehemently denied the Times report, calling the publication “Fake News” and saying the story was “completely untrue” in a ranting Truth Social post. At the same time, Musk was also upset, calling the story “pure propaganda” on his X account, and said, “I look forward to the prosecutions of those at the Pentagon who are leaking maliciously false information to NYT. They will be found.”

On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth suspended two DOD officials, Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick, as part of an investigation into who leaked the news of Musk’s briefing, as well as other leaks regarding Panama Canal military plans, Red Sea operations, and intelligence collection in Ukraine.

But the fact that Trump blew up over Musk’s access suggests that there are limits to the tech oligarch and fascism enthusiast’s influence in the White House. There have been reports that Musk will be bowing out of the Trump administration, but Musk has called them “fake news” and his Department of Government Efficiency continues to gut the federal government. Is this the beginning of Trump souring on his wealthy benefactor?

Far-right Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene stumbled Tuesday night when faced with tough questions about her allegiance to Donald Trump at a chaotic town hall that led to three arrests. 

Several individuals were removed for disrupting Greene’s town hall at a community center in Acworth, Georgia. 

While Greene railed against undocumented immigrants, one protester started shouting about the Ku Klux Klan, which historically targeted Black Georgians in Greene’s district. 

The protester, as she was escorted out by security, shouted, “You butch body bigot! You butch body bigot!” 

“The protest is outside! Bye, have fun out there,” Greene sneered. 

The protester’s chide echoed that of Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett, who went so far as to trademark her burn against Greene, “bleach blonde bad-built butch body.”

Another protester with a “Jail 4 Insider Traders” banner was also removed by security. Greene disclosed Monday that she had bought between $21,000 and $315,000 in stocks last week in 17 companies including Apple, Tesla, Nvidia, and Palantir, buying into the stock market dip just hours before Trump announced he was partially pausing some of his tariffs. The stock market shot back up as a result.

In total, three people were arrested, including two who engaged in a physical altercation and were tasered by Acworth police, according to NBC News. 

At a closed-door meeting last month, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, Representative Richard Hudson, advised his colleagues not to hold town hall meetings at all, after several Republicans came face-to-face with their angry constituents. 

Greene had her own solution: to mock the concerns of constituents. 

She made no attempt to conceal her disdain as she read a question about how she planned to “protect” her constituents in Georgia’s 14th district from the effects of Trump’s tariff polices, the gutting of Social Security and Medicaid, the Department of Government Efficiency’s massive government spending cuts, and a president who ignores the rule of law. 

“He is not well physically or mentally, and he’s making nonsensical orders based on his whim of the day. How are you going to rein him in to protect us?” Greene read.

“Oh, poor Christina. Poor, poor Christina. Well, I’m sure, Christina, you think you’re pretty smart, but the reality is you are being completely brainwashed by whatever source of news you listen to,” she sneered.  

Greene insisted that no one (besides criminals, fraudsters, and undocumented immigrants) had lost their Social Security or benefits and proudly declared that she intended to “stand by” her president. 

In fact, the Trump administration and DOGE are making fast plans to shrink the Social Security Administration, phasing out essential phone services and cutting staff, placing an incredible strain on field offices around the country. Around 2,800 SSA employees have already taken buyouts, according to agency data. And House Republicans all readily approved a budget that would see massive cuts to Medicaid in order to fund an extension on Trump’s 2017 tax plan, lightening the load for the very rich at the expense of the poor. 

Greene continued to openly laugh as she fielded questions submitted by her concerned constituents. 

“Why are you such a coward in the face of an obvious fascist takeover?” Greene read aloud. 

“Ooooh, scary! That’s scary. You know, I’ve yet to see a fascist gathering. That doesn’t exist in the Republican Party. As a matter of fact, President Trump is the most transparent president in history. The man literally talks to the press every single day,” Greene said. 

It’s true that Trump often speaks to the press, but when he does he tends to discuss his fascist plans to exile U.S. citizens to foreign prisons. 

If Kilmar Abrego Garcia successfully returns to the United States, the Department of Justice plans to detain him again and send him to a different country than El Salvador, or get rid of his withholding of removal and send him back to El Salvador.

That’s what the DOJ filed in federal court Tuesday, ahead of a hearing with Judge Paula Xinis where the Trump administration was supposed to provide information on steps it had taken to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. from El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, a megaprison known for human rights abuses where he is currently detained.

The DOJ didn’t provide any new information on Abrego Garcia, although the filing did once again repeat the administration’s false assertion, echoed by El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, that the building trades worker is actually a member of the violent MS-13 gang and shows how insistent it is that Abrego Garcia can’t stay in the U.S. 

This is despite the fact that the government previously admitted in court that Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported, violating a judge’s 2019 order preventing him from being sent back to El Salvador. In response to a Supreme Court order that Abrego Garcia must be returned, the government has attempted to argue semantics over the high court’s use of the word “facilitate,” claiming that it can’t go any further than taking action domestically. 

In reality, the Trump administration is doing everything it can to ignore the Supreme Court because the president wants to set a precedent that deportations are final. If Abrego Garcia is successfully returned, it’ll give immigrants hope that they can find recourse in the law and lessen their fear, and that isn’t the climate the administration wants. 

Any concession or acknowledgment of the court’s ruling is a win for Trump’s opponents, and the president has a history of blindly refusing to acknowledge that he’s lost. Trump wants to wield absolute power with no checks on his authority, the Constitution be damned.

A top adviser for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was abruptly placed on administrative leave after he was connected to an information leak at the Department of Defense, Reuters reported Tuesday. 

Dan Caldwell was escorted from the Pentagon Tuesday and is being investigated for an “unauthorized disclosure” of classified DOD information, an anonymous U.S. official told Reuters. 

It’s unclear what leaked intelligence Caldwell is being investigated for, but he was wrapped up in last month’s Signalgate scandal, in which members of Donald Trump’s Cabinet discussed U.S. military plans to bomb the Houthis in Yemen in a Signal group chat that also happened to include The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. Along with Caldwell, 18 Trump officials were presumed to be part of the chat, including Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and national security adviser Mike Walz. 

The following week, the DOD released a memo requesting an investigation into the “recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information.”  

“This investigation will commence immediately and culminate in a report to the Secretary of Defense,” the memo, written by Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, reads. “I expect to be informed immediately if this effort results in information identifying a party responsible for an unauthorized disclosure, and that such information will be referred to the appropriate criminal law enforcement entity for criminal prosecution.”

Caldwell’s investigation “remains ongoing,” the U.S. official told Reuters.