Judge Uses 26 Exclamation Points to Strike Down Trump’s Terrible Order

The president’s attack on Big Law is so outrageous that it’s made at least one judge raise his voice, even on paper.

U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia Richard Leon struck down Donald Trump’s executive order targeting law firm WilmerHale Tuesday, describing the entire directive as “unconstitutional.” In a 73-page opinion, Leon took the time to explain the principles of democracy to the president, illustrating how his political retribution campaign is quintessentially antithetical to the foundational principles of the U.S. government.

“The cornerstone of the American system of justice is an independent judiciary and an independent bar willing to tackle unpopular cases, however daunting. The Founding Fathers knew this!” Leon wrote. “Accordingly, they took pains to enshrine in the Constitution certain rights that would serve as the foundation for that independence. Little wonder that in the nearly 250 years since the Constitution was adopted no Executive Order has been issued challenging these fundamental rights.

“Now, however, several Executive Orders have been issued directly challenging these rights and that independence,” Leon continued. “One of these Orders is the subject of this case. For the reasons set forth below, I have concluded that this Order must be struck down in its entirety as unconstitutional. Indeed, to rule otherwise would be unfaithful to the judgment and vision of the Founding Fathers!”

It’s highly unusual for judges to use even one exclamation point in their rulings. Leon used a total of 26.

The decision blocks Trump’s March 27 order, which instructed federal agencies to throw out WilmerHale’s government contracts and nix the firm’s federal building access along with their security clearances. WilmerHale was just one of many law firms targeted by the Trump administration for representing individuals that Trump has categorized as his political enemies, or for refusing to represent him during his monumental legal struggles last year. WilmerHale’s supposed crime—per the White House—was the fact that it “rewarded” Robert Mueller by keeping him on payroll after he investigated Trump’s ties to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

But not every law firm was willing to ride out the wave of Trump’s encroaching federal directives. Several major law firms had caved to Trump by April, committing to provide the convicted felon with up to $600 million in “pro bono” legal services. But the original deal, as written, may not shake out for the famed deal-maker the way he’d hoped: Earlier this month, several firms argued that the capitulation had only stipulated “specified areas” that they needed to provide legal services for, effectively giving them free range to pick their own clients.

Trump adviser Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are giving ICE new ramped-up immigrant arrest quotas, demanding that the agency detain 3,000 people per day, sources told Axios. That number is three times the arrest rate at the beginning of Trump’s term.

According to people close to the situation, Miller, who is President Trump’s deputy chief of staff, lit into ICE officials in a meeting last week, addressing them so aggressively that some felt they were at risk of being fired if they didn’t meet the new quota. Noem spoke after Miller and apparently did less yelling but also called for more arrests.

Border crossings are down, ICE has nearly 50,000 people in custody, and thanks to Republicans’ budget bill, Trump will likely dedicate $147 billion over the next decade to continuing his wanton, draconian immigration policies—all while giving the finger to any judge who dares to mention basic constitutional principles like due process. And yet it still isn’t enough for Noem and Miller, who seem particularly invested in making this crackdown as horrifying as possible.

“Keeping President Trump’s promise to deport illegal aliens is something the administration takes seriously,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Axios. “We are committed to aggressively and efficiently removing illegal aliens from the United States, and ensuring our law enforcement officers have the resources necessary to do so. The safety of the American people depends upon it.”

Karoline Leavitt is trying to claim Donald Trump’s attacks on Harvard are justified because the U.S. needs more trade workers.

The White House press secretary made the wild defense to Sean Hannity on Fox News Tuesday night, telling the conservative pundit that Trump is more interested in giving Harvard’s government funding “to trade schools, and programs, and state schools where they are promoting American values, but most importantly, educating the next generation based on skills that we need in our economy and our society.

“Apprenticeships, electricians, plumbers—we need more of those in our country, and less LGBTQ graduate majors from Harvard University, and that’s what this administration’s position is,” Leavitt said.

It’s insane that Leavitt thinks that the grants and contracts Trump has yanked away from Harvard are going to “LGBTQ graduate majors.” In reality, Harvard is losing stuff like $1 billion for health research, which could save a lot of lives. The president also tried to stop Harvard from enrolling international students, only to be blocked by a federal judge.

On Tuesday, Trump announced on Truth Social that he was “considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land. What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!”

But what would such a program even look like? The all-encompassing budget bill Trump is pushing to get passed doesn’t contain any new programs in that vein. In fact, the bill will restrict access to financial aid for working-class students going into all fields, including trade schools.

Trump is attacking foreign student enrollment at Harvard (and everywhere else) by claiming that Americans can now get those slots. But how will more Americans be able to attend with less financial aid? Meanwhile, Trump is also trying to eliminate the Department of Education, which will further hurt lower-income students trying to attend any form of higher education. All of the administration’s talk about supporting American students is a smokescreen. In reality, Trump is trying to force universities like Harvard to bow to him and conservative America.

Wall Street is beginning to understand the president’s roller-coaster foreign trade decisions with the help of a trendy acronym: TACO—or “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

The TACO theory was coined earlier this month by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong, adding a catchy name to the practice of loading up on stocks when Donald Trump first announces the tariffs and then selling when he ultimately backtracks on enforcing them.

In a Wednesday note obtained by Market Watch, Sevens Report Research founder Tom Essaye insisted that Trump does, in fact, always chicken out. So far, that’s been true for enacting additional tariffs on Mexico and Canada, postponing his “reciprocal” tariff plan on dozens of countries after his “Liberation Day” announcement went south, delaying a tariff on imports from the European Union, and smashing his plan to fine China, temporarily decreasing tariffs on Chinese products to 30 percent from 145 percent.

“So, the returns are somewhat conclusive: The TACO trade has worked and buying stocks on extreme tariff-related threats has worked,” Essaye wrote, noting that the known gambit’s growing popularity will translate to diminished returns.

But investors aren’t the only power players taking note of Trump’s transparent poker face. On Tuesday, Russian state propagandists mocked the U.S. president for lacking any follow through, predicting in a tweet that Trump’s “playing with fire” threat would be reversed by a social media post the following morning.

Trump’s tariff proposals haven’t won the U.S. too much negotiating ground. Instead, countries around the world began observing earlier this month that—rather than playing the waiting game to meet with the White House over potential trade relief—China’s tough negotiating strategy with the former real estate mogul had actually gotten the eastern powerhouse a significantly better deal.

The Trump administration is running out of time to secure what it had promised would be “90 deals in 90 days” on U.S. trade. In the end, Washington may be left holding the bag for Trump’s outsize tariff ideas as other countries gamble that the U.S. will be the first to feel the sting of Trump’s tariffs.

Nebraska Representative Mike Flood was booed relentlessly at his own town hall Tuesday as he admitted to a roomful of constituents that he had simply not read some parts of Trump’s big, beautiful budget bill.

“Can you please tell us why you voted to approve a budget bill that includes section 703-02, which effectively prohibits federal courts from enforcing contempt orders … which would then allow current and future administrations to ignore those contempt orders by removing the enforcement capabilities?” one attendee asked Flood.

The question is in reference to a deeply biased provision that the GOP slipped in the budget bill to protect President Trump from being held accountable by court orders. Additionally, anyone seeking to file an injunction or restraining order—two things the courts have already levied against the Trump administration numerous times—would be forced to put up a financial bond.

“I do not agree with that section that was added to that bill,” Flood responded, and was booed immediately.

“You voted for all of it!” someone shouted.

“I will tell you this. I believe in the rule of law.… I do believe that the federal district courts, when issuing an injunction, it should have legal effect. In fact I relied upon that when the Biden administration was in place,” Flood responded. Then he confessed: “This provision was unknown to me when I voted for the bill. I am not gonna hide the truth.… We must allow our federal courts to operate and issue injunctions.”

The crowd roared with hostility and disbelief toward their congressman as he admitted that he skipped over reading the entire bill before he voted for it.

Flood was also hit with questions on Medicaid. Trump previously claimed that the party wouldn’t touch it, before it was slashed in the budget bill.

“I was talking to the Nebraska Hospital Association almost every single day … to find out how this would affect Medicaid patients in Nebraska,” Flood continued. “I know that the bill is not perfect, but I believe that in crafting this bill, even a president that maybe most of you disagree with, strictly said … ‘Do not cut Medicaid.’” More jeers erupted. “That doesn’t mean we don’t address waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Trump’s budget bill is expected to leave 13.7 million people without health insurance by 2034, while giving tax cuts to the wealthiest. Flood went on to defend his support of renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, while chants of “You lie!” rained down on him.

This is yet another installment in the GOP’s string of nightmare town halls, as its constituents grow more and more frustrated with the actions of the man—and the party—that they voted for.

Donald Trump is once again begging Canada to become part of the United States—this time, in exchange for military protection.

“I told Canada, which very much wants to be part of our fabulous Golden Dome System, that it will cost $61 Billion Dollars if they remain a separate, but unequal, Nation, but will cost ZERO DOLLARS if they become our cherished 51st State,” Trump wrote in a post Truth Social Tuesday evening. “They are considering the offer!”

Last week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said that the countries were in talks about the U.S. president’s “Golden Dome” space weapons system. When asked how much Carney expected to pay into the massive project, he replied that he wouldn’t “put a price tag on it.”

“We are conscious that we have an ability, if we so choose, to complete the Golden Dome with investments and partnership,” Carney said. Canada had already agreed in 2022 to pour nearly $30 billion over the next 20 years to modernize the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which is a joint air defense system.

Trump has repeatedly expressed an imperialist desire to control Canada, as well as Greenland. Earlier this month, when Carney visited the White House, he pushed back on Trump’s advances to his face.

“As you know from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale,” the recently elected Carney said. “Having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign, it’s not for sale. It won’t be for sale ever.”

Donald Trump’s biggest 2024 donor isn’t too stoked about the administration’s spending habits.

Weeks after exiting his temporary role in the White House, Elon Musk is still speaking his mind on critical Republican affairs. In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, the former government-diminishing task rabbit lamented that the “big, beautiful” bill being deliberated in the Senate would practically undo the Department of Government Efficiency’s work.

“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit—not decrease[s] it—and undermines the work the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said. “I think a bill could be big, or it could be beautiful—I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”

Musk’s DOGE was tasked with sizing down the federal government to cut spending. But in a separate interview Tuesday, the world’s richest man said he increasingly felt that his department was being used as a scapegoat for other administration failures.

“DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” Musk told The Washington Post. “So, like, something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”

But Musk isn’t the only powerful conservative to brush off Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill. Immediately after the House passed the reconciliation package last week, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham shot down some of the cuts included in the bill as “not real,” arguing that the House had done next to nothing to actually bring down federal spending.

Even a $880 billion cut in Medicaid couldn’t offset the gargantuan price tag on extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which are estimated to add somewhere between $3.8 trillion and $5.3 trillion to the national debt. Those numbers have ruffled feathers among congressional budget hawks, who were under the impression that the Trump administration would be sizing down spending rather than beefing it up.

Several conservative senators have indicated they won’t vote for the bill if it includes a debt limit increase, including Senators Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, and Rick Scott. The growing coalition of budget-conscious naysayers is threatening enough to potentially keep the bill from reaching the president’s desk, as Republicans grapple with their narrow majority in the Senate.

On Sunday, Johnson told CNN that he believes there’s enough opposition within the caucus to stall its advancement.

“We have enough to stop the process until the president gets serious about spending reduction and reducing the deficit,” Johnson told the network.

America’s national debt is currently more than $36.9 trillion, as of the time of publishing.

Donald Trump is pleading with the Supreme Court to make it easier to deport immigrants to countries they aren’t from, like South Sudan.

The president on Tuesday filed an emergency application to the Supreme Court, asking them to stay a lower court’s injunction last week that prevented the government from deporting a group of immigrants not from South Sudan to the country. U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy said that the White House provided “plainly insufficient” notice to the immigrants.

“It was impossible for these people to have a meaningful opportunity to object to their transfer to South Sudan,” Murphy ruled last Wednesday.

The Trump administration was not happy with the ruling,

“Many class members are aliens who have never been admitted into the United States,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the Justice Department’s filing to the Supreme Court. “Thus, they do not have due-process rights to any additional removal procedures beyond the ones the political branches have provided.”

“Those judicially created procedures are currently wreaking havoc on the third country removal process,” Sauer added. “In addition to usurping the Executive’s authority over immigration policy, the injunction disrupts sensitive diplomatic, foreign-policy, and national-security efforts.”

Murphy castigated the administration Monday evening for “manufacturing the very chaos they decry” by deporting the immigrants from Vietnam and Myanmar to South Sudan, which Murphy said violated his injunction.

“The court recognizes that the class members at issue here have criminal histories,” Murphy said. “But that does not change due process.… The court treats its obligation to these principles with the seriousness that anyone committed to the rule of law should understand.”

This point seems particularly difficult for Trump and the rest of his administration to understand: Immigrants they wish to deport still have the right of due process, and the judiciary has the ability to rule on the president’s decisions. Trump can claim “foreign policy” all he wants, but the immigrants residing on U.S. soil, who in many cases aren’t the criminals the president claims they are, are still subject to protections under U.S. law. Now he’s trying to convince the Supreme Court to give him what he wants.

Tension is bubbling in Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon.

The defense secretary’s senior advisers are falling further apart, causing rifts and scandals that are attracting the ire of the White House despite attempts to reset Hegseth’s team, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

“There’s a cold war that exists in between flash points,” one anonymous source told the Post while recounting flaring tempers on Hegseth’s team. “It’s unsettling at times.”

One of the more prominent rifts is between Eric Geressy, Hegseth’s former mentor, and Ricky Buria, a junior military assistant whom Hegseth tried and failed to morph into his chief of staff.

Shortly after The Atlantic revealed that its editor in chief had been included in a Signal chat where top Trump officials—Hegseth included—discussed sensitive war plans regarding the imminent bombing of Yemen, Geressy expressed frustration at the administration’s decision to rely on the unsecured and unclassified communication app.

Geressy has also voiced “disgust” at White House reports describing Buria as “self important” and willing to ostracize other officials in order to snag more time with Hegseth or the White House, according to the Post.

“Friction between the two senior advisers remains palpable, those familiar with the situation say, and is emblematic of the instability that reigns at the Pentagon as Hegseth attempts to regain his footing after several scandals that irked the White House, alarmed Congress and left the former Fox News personality on the defensive,” the Post reported, noting that several current and former defense officials weren’t sure how long Hegseth could survive in the role amid the searing divisions.

The story followed more bad news for Hegseth Tuesday, after The Guardian reported that the White House had “lost confidence” in his investigation into leaked details regarding U.S. military options to claim the Panama Canal.

Hegseth had used the press leak to justify expelling three top aides last month, but Trump’s advisers raised flags after claims emerged that information of the leak had been obtained via a blatantly unconstitutional National Security Agency wiretap—a scandal considerably worse than the initial leak.

That claim fueled a “breakdown in trust” between the Pentagon and the White House, The Guardian reported, with Trump advisers suggesting that they “no longer have any idea about who or what to believe,” with at least one adviser interpreting the botched investigation as a way to nix defense aides that had reportedly been involved in infighting with Hegseth’s first chief of staff, Joe Kasper.

Tommy Tuberville, one of the GOP’s most dim-witted senators, is leaving Capitol Hill to run for governor in his alleged residence of Alabama next year.

“Coach Tommy Tuberville is running for governor!” his newly minted campaign website reads. His platform consists of “standing up for Alabama values,” fighting “woke ideology,” keeping Alabama pro-life, among other cookie-cutter MAGA Republican positions. Tuberville is looking to succeed term-limited Governor Kay Ivey, and is the clear favorite in the deep red Heart of Dixie.

Tuberville confirmed on Fox News that he’s ending his Senate career after just one term to run for governor.

Tuberville’s time in the Senate has been defined by shameless, gaffe-ridden loyalty to Trump and the MAGA agenda. He spent nine months of 2023 personally blocking over 450 military promotions to protest the Defense Department’s policy of reimbursing soldiers forced to travel out of state for an abortion. In the end, he caved, and nothing changed at the Defense Department.

He has also made national headlines for refusing to acknowledge that white nationalism is racist, fumbling the question so badly that it led to questions about his general competency. He lied about his dad getting five bronze stars in World War I. He tried to goad President Trump into taking over the Panama Canal, and spread vaccine misinformation in defense of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And that was all in just one term. The upcoming gubernatorial campaign is sure to provide more classic, alarmingly ignorant moments from Coach Tuberville.