Senate Confirms Judge Who Thinks Trump Should Say “F*** You” to Courts

The man who ordered Justice Department staff to ignore judges to speed up deportations is now a federal judge himself.

On Tuesday, the Senate voted 50–49 to confirm senior Justice Department official Emil Bove, formerly Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, for a lifetime seat on the the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski joined Democrats in voting against Bove.

Last month, it was revealed that Bove, while orchestrating the extrajudicial deportations of hundreds of men to El Salvador, “stressed to all in attendance that planes needed to take off no matter what,” although he was well aware of “the possibility that a court order would enjoin those removals before they could be effectuated.”

“Bove stated that DOJ would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such court order,” according to whistleblower Erez Reuveni’s report. But instead of having his nomination rescinded for obvious corruption and insubordination, Bove will now hold a powerful judicial position until the day he dies. This is also the same man who fired prosecutors for investigating January 6 and accused the FBI of “insubordination” for not snitching on staffers who worked on the investigation. As a New York state prosecutor, he was described by colleagues as someone who could not “be bothered to treat lesser mortals with respect or empathy.”

“He is a Trumpian henchman—the extreme of the extreme of the extreme. He is openly hostile to the rule of law. He is fundamentally opposed to democratic norms. He lacks the temperament to serve as a jurist,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said. “And above all, Mr. Bove is religiously obedient to Donald Trump.”

“Shame on you,” Schumer continued after the vote. “This is a dark, dark day.”

Ahead of the deadly shooting in Midtown Manhattan Monday, Donald Trump’s administration cut more than half of federal funding for gun violence prevention from the Justice Department, Reuters reported Tuesday.  

In April, the Trump administration terminated 69 of the 145 community violence intervention grants awarded through the DOJ, cutting a whopping $158 million in grants that previously totaled more than $300 million. 

The grants provided federal funding to community-based organizations, local governments, and universities working on evidence-based strategies to prevent violence. A DOJ official said that the grants had been among thousands currently under review, and had been terminated because they “no longer effectuate the program’s goals or agency’s priorities.”

The Biden-era White House Office for Gun Violence Prevention was also “dismantled on day one” of the Trump administration, according to its former director, Greg Jackson. 

The Trump administration’s efforts to shift funding and focus away from gun violence prevention is especially concerning given that shootings, and mass shootings, are known to surge in the warm summer months. 

In classic Trump style, the president responded to the deadly Monday night shooting in Manhattan with name calling. “I trust our Law Enforcement Agencies to get to the bottom of why this crazed lunatic committed such a senseless act of violence,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social. “My heart is with the families of the four people who were killed, including the NYPD Officer, who made the ultimate sacrifice. God Bless the New York Police Department, and God Bless New York!”

Other Republicans have issued their own weak responses, with Louisiana Senator John Kennedy winning the award for most idiotic comment of the day. 

The status of the U.S.-Vietnam trade deal allegedly reached four weeks ago remains uncertain, after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent admitted Tuesday that he hasn’t even seen it.

Trump announced a supposed agreement between the two countries in a July 2 post on Truth Social, claiming that Vietnam’s exports would be subject to a 20 percent tariff and its “transshipped” goods to a 40 percent tariff. In return, Trump said, the United States was getting “TOTAL ACCESS to [Vietnamese] Markets for Trade.”

The announcement, Politico would report days later, shocked Vietnamese negotiators, who thought they’d agreed to a rate of about 11 percent—which Trump reportedly scrapped and nearly doubled during a later phone call with Vietnam’s general secretary, who’d not been involved with initial negotiations.

Complicating the matter was the absence of “any paperwork indicating a final agreement that includes those tariff rates” and the fact that neither country “formally signed off on a deal.”

Accordingly, the day after the alleged agreement, CNBC asked Bessent about its status. He replied: “I haven’t spoken to [Trump trade representative] Jamieson Greer, who’s heading the team. My understanding is that it’s finalized in principle.”

To date, it remains unclear if it’s been finalized in any more meaningful way. Vietnam has yet to confirm the rates about which Trump boasted, leading CNBC to, once again, ask Bessent whether there is an agreement on paper.

Bessent’s answer on Tuesday was similar to the one he gave 26 days ago. “I didn’t work on that deal,” he said. “But I assume that we do.”

“You haven’t seen that paperwork?” CNBC’s Eamon Javers pressed.

“Ambassador Greer, who is a seasoned veteran with an encyclopedic memory and knowledge of all this, keeps all that,” Bessent replied, stumbling slightly over his words.

Bessent based his assumption that there’s a written and signed agreement on the trade deals reached with Indonesia and the Philippines. Notably, Indonesia contests some of Trump’s claims about its deal, and details about the Philippines deal remain scant beyond Trump’s Truth Social posts.

The trade-deal gray area is not just confined to Southeast Asia, as Trump’s approach to his negotiations and announcements has sown widespread confusion.

For instance, the Financial Times reported last week that officials in the U.S. and Japan have significant disagreements over the terms of their deal—which, despite being the “largest deal in history,” according to Trump, is not recorded on paper. In fact, no legally binding one is to be drawn up, the FT reports.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee was forced to clarify that it had not actually un-endorsed Florida Representative Randy Fine for his grotesque statements wishing starvation on Palestinians.

AIPAC responded Tuesday to a Times of Israel report claiming that the group appeared to have “dropped” its endorsement of Fine, after he went missing from the group’s database of pro-Israel candidates.

“This reporting is based on an unsourced speculative piece,” AIPAC wrote in a statement on X. “We will be endorsing candidates for the 2026 election throughout the cycle. Current endorsees for 2026 so far are listed on the AIPAC-PAC website.

“As Rep. Fine was elected only in April, consideration of his endorsement will take place later in the cycle, as is the case with many other freshmen members of Congress,” the statement continued.

It turns out that it was simply wishful thinking to believe that the pro-Israel action group would ever draw the line at cheerleading famine—or advocating for violence against protesters.

But AIPAC’s response doesn’t quite add up. It’s not clear why the group would choose only to list endorsees for 2026, and why Fine wouldn’t be grandfathered in after earning the group’s endorsement just four months ago. After all, the group did pour more than $126,000 into Fine’s campaign, according to FEC filings. Now they say they need more time to decide?

Fine’s absence on AIPAC’s list was first observed by Usamah Andrabi, the communications director for Justice Democrats, a political action group working to see progressive Democrats elected to office.

Donald Trump claims that his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein ended after the pedophilic sex trafficker “stole” several of the president’s underage employees.

Speaking with reporters on Air Force One Tuesday, Trump said that he had confronted Epstein about hiring away underage girls on his payroll at Mar-a-Lago.

“Epstein has a certain reputation obviously. I’m just curious, were some of the workers that were taken from you, were some of them young women?” asked one reporter.

“Well, I don’t want to say, but everyone knows the people that were taken, and the concept of taking people that work for me is bad. But that story has been pretty well out there, and the answer is yes, they were,” Trump said. “People were taken out of the spa.

“Hired, by him, in other words—gone,” Trump continued, referring to Epstein. “Other people would come and complain, ‘This guy is taking people from the spa.’ I didn’t know that. And then when I heard about it, I told him, I said, ‘Listen, we don’t want you taking our people.’ Whether it was spa or not spa, I don’t want him taking people.

“And he was fine, and then not too long after that he did it again and I said, ‘Out of here,’” he added.

“Did one of the stolen persons—did that include Virginia Giuffre?” asked another reporter, referring to one of Epstein’s earliest and most prominent accusers.

“Um, I don’t know. I think she worked at the spa,” Trump said. “I think so. I think that was one of the people. He stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know. None whatsoever.”

The anecdote partially corroborates Giuffre’s account of being abducted in 2000 by Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago, where she worked at the time as a pool attendant. But Trump continued to maintain ties to Epstein for years after the alleged confrontation.

In a 2002 New York magazine profile of Epstein, Trump said he had known Epstein for 15 years and referred to him as a “terrific guy.”

“It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump said at the time.

It wasn’t until 2004 that the longtime friends would fall out over a Palm Beach real estate deal.

Giuffre committed suicide in April.

Trump has previously claimed he cut off contact with Epstein after the financier was convicted in 2009 for soliciting underage prostitutes, referring to Epstein as a “creep.” But the pair of Manhattan socialites shared a long and apparently cozy history together.

Prior to his death, Epstein described himself as one of Trump’s “closest friends.” The duo were named and photographed together on several occassions—including at Trump’s second wedding. Trump reportedly flew on Epstein’s jets between Palm Beach and New York at least seven times, and the first time that Trump slept with his now-wife Melania was reportedly aboard Epstein’s plane, nicknamed the “Lolita Express.”

Earlier this month, the former president and chief operating officer of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, Jack O’Donnell, revealed that he had caught Trump and Epstein in the late 1980s shepherding underage girls into the establishment.

“They were pretty good buddies,” O’Donnell told CNN, recalling that he warned Trump against spending more time with Epstein.

This story has been updated.