Judge to Dismiss Absurd RICO Charges Against Cop City Protesters

A Georgia judge plans to throw out the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, charges against the 61 defendants who were protesting the construction of “Cop City,” the $90 million, 85-acre police training facility in the lush forest of a majority-Black Atlanta neighborhood in 2023. The facility opened in April. 

Fulton County Judge Kevin Farmer told the court that he did not think Attorney General Chris Carr had the authority to pursue the sweeping RICO indictments under Georgia law, as he had never obtained the necessary permission from Governor Brian Kemp. 

“It would have been real easy to just ask the governor, ‘Let me do this, give me a letter,’” Farmer said. “The steps just weren’t followed.” 

The “Stop Cop City” protests and subsequent arrests that followed were sparked by the police killing of environmental activist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, a.k.a. Tortuguita, at the Stop Cop City Encampment in January 2023. Autopsy reports showed that they were shot over 50 times while sitting cross-legged with their hands up, and no traces of gunpowder were found on them, contradicting the police report stating that Terán shot first.  

“The 61 defendants together have conspired to prevent the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center by conducting, coordinating and organizing acts of violence, intimidation and property destruction,” Carr said when the Cop City protesters were first indicted.

In addition to the RICO charges, three of the defendants were originally hit with charges of money laundering after organizing a bail fund, but those charges also failed to stick. Another three activists were charged with federal intimidation after making flyers calling Jonathan Salcedo, the state trooper who murdered Tortuguita, a “murderer.” Five of the protesters were charged with domestic terrorism and arson. Farmer is considering dismissing all of the separate charges attached to the RICO, allowing Carr to pursue the domestic terrorism ones. 

Even still, this is a massive victory in the face of a state looking to bring the hammer down on people trying to stop an environmentally destructive, military-style police base from being built in their city after all legal options had been exhausted. That shouldn’t get you charges that used to be reserved for the Mafia. 

At 61 defendants, this was one of the largest RICO cases in U.S. history. 

In an 8–4 party-line vote Tuesday, Republicans on the House Rules Committee shot down a bid to put the Epstein Files Transparency Act—which would compel the Justice Department to release all unclassified records related to Jeffrey Epstein—to a floor vote.

The motion was introduced by Democratic Ranking Member Jim McGovern, who prior to the vote stressed the importance of transparency in the case of the notorious late pedophile.

“I can see why the administration might want to hide [the Epstein files] if the creepy birthday note from Trump to Epstein is any indication of what might be in those files,” McGovern said—referencing a 2003 letter, released Monday by the House Oversight Committee, in which Donald Trump appeared to offer Epstein an unsettling 50th birthday message and lewd drawing.

“But if the administration won’t follow through on their promises, Congress should force them to,” McGovern said, adding that the Epstein files legislation “does exactly that, while protecting the victims and the survivors.”

The ranking member’s ultimately unsuccessful effort comes as Democratic Representative Ro Khanna of California and Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky continue a broader campaign to force a vote on their bill. Their petition remains, as of this writing, two signatures short of the 218 required to do so. All 212 House Democrats are on board, but just four Republicans.

McGovern urged his GOP colleagues to “see the light and sign Mr. Massie’s discharge petition.” Last week, survivors of Epstein’s abuse also held a press conference in front of the Capitol demanding Congress pass the bipartisan bill.

Nonetheless, all Republican Rules Committee members present voted against it. The only “yes” votes came from McGovern and his three fellow Democratic committee members.

Here is the name of every Republican who voted to block the Epstein Files Transparency Act on Tuesday.

• Virginia Foxx—North Carolina
• Michelle Fischbach—Minnesota
• Ralph Norman—South Carolina
• Chip Roy—Texas
• Nicholas Langworthy—New York
• Austin Scott—Georgia
• H. Morgan Griffith—Virginia
• Brian Jack—Georgia

Representative James Comer, the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, said Tuesday that he has no intention to follow up on President Donald Trump’s lewd birthday letter to alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaking to CNN’s Manu Raju Tuesday, Comer said that he believed the White House’s desperate claim that the letter and signature were fake.

“The president says he did not sign it. So I take the president [at] his word,” Comer said, according to Raju on X. “You asked if I’m going to be trying to figure out whether that, you know, fake or not, probably not. We’re going to be trying to get justice for the victim.

“Twenty-two years ago was when that was allegedly sent,” Comer added. “So, I don’t think the Oversight Committee is going to invest in looking up something that was 22 years ago.”

But Comer saying that he won’t look into an incident from 22 years ago directly contradicts his claim that he’s seeking justice for survivors of Epstein’s decades-long abuse of women, which allegedly occurred more than 22 years ago.

It seems clear that the timing isn’t an issue. It’s just that the Kentucky Republican is unwilling to point a finger at Trump.

Comer had issued the subpoena of Epstein’s estate, demanding things like Epstein’s infamous 50th “birthday book” that includes a letter from Trump, flight logs, bank information, anything that “could be reasonably construed to be a potential list of clients.” But the actual results of the subpoena don’t seem to interest him, as the head of Congress’s main investigative arm.

During the previous administration, Comer relentlessly pursued debunked claims against former President Joe Biden, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Now Comer is convinced that Trump, a famous and well-documented liar, is telling the truth.

President Donald Trump’s administration wants the last four digits of every voter’s Social Security number—as part of its sweeping efforts to compile a federal voting database, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Michael Gates, deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s recently overhauled civil rights division, told top state elections officials in a private meeting that he planned to request information from all 50 states. Specifically, he wanted the last four digits of voters’ SSNs, so they could be cross-referenced with a database of noncitizens at the Department of Homeland Security.

The administration could use the database to investigate claims of noncitizen voting, an obsession of Trump and other Republicans who claimed the 2020 election had been stolen through massive voter fraud.

In reality, the only ones concocting a scheme to fake votes in that election were in Donald Trump’s camp.

The issue of noncitizen voting remains small to nonexistent. In 2016, noncitizen votes accounted for just 0.0001 percent of the votes cast, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. One might notice that Trump’s complaints about noncitizen voting evaporated after his victory last November. However, Trump seems to have revived his obsession ahead of the midterm elections.

The DOJ has already sent requests to 16 Republican-led states and at least 17 Democrat-led states or swing states, including Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York, and Wisconsin. Some states, like North Carolina, were approached by the DOJ and DHS with an offer to simply use the federal SAVE database to run their voter list.

But such a sweeping request for personal information may not be legal, according to Justin Levitt, a former Justice Department official and election law expert at Loyola Marymount University’s law school. He said that it could potentially violate the 1974 Privacy Act, which requires agencies to be careful in their handling of sensitive information.

Across the country, both Democratic and Republican leaders have refused to hand over information. California’s Secretary of State Shirley Weber said her office was “not obligated to follow along” with Trump’s efforts to “conscript states to carry out nonstatutory policy priorities of the president.” Al Schmidt, the Republican secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania said the requests “represent a concerning attempt to expand the federal government’s role in our country’s electoral process.”

Earlier this month, a South Carolina local judge blocked the DOJ’s request for the “full name, date of birth, residential address, his or her state driver’s license number, or the last four digits of the registrant’s social security number” of every South Carolina voter, after one woman sued, saying it would violate citizens’ constitutional privacy rights.

The project, led by election deniers, has also raised serious concerns that the Trump administration could use the database to fuel claims of voter fraud in future elections.

“The biggest structural concern is using this information in an irresponsible manner to fuel the narrative that something is amiss in any election in which the preferred outcome is not the actual outcome,” Sophia Lin Lakin, the director of the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Times.

GOP lawmakers are tying themselves in knots to defend President Donald Trump after his unsettling, sexually suggestive 2003 birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein was released Monday. The damning document appeared in a scrapbook that the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed from the deceased sex criminal’s estate.

Below are some of the most pitiful reactions and denials from congressional Republicans.

1. “We’ve seen autopens they’ve used in the Biden administration”—Tim Burchett

Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee, shown the letter by CNN’s Manu Raju, denied its veracity and weaved a fanciful narrative.

“I mean, anybody can do a signature. We’ve seen autopens they’ve used in the Biden administration,” he said, adding, “I’ve never known Trump to be much of an artist either”—even though, as Raju noted, there is actually a history of Trump making sketches.

“So you think really someone might have just forged this somehow?” Raju asked.

“Yeah,” Burchett replied. “I mean, ‘somehow’? It’s so easy to do.”

The Tennessee congressman suggested the document was created by the Biden administration, despite it having come from Epstein’s estate. “They’ve had all this stuff for four years, and now they’re bringing it out? I just don’t buy it,” he said.

Asked how the Biden administration could possibly be behind the letter—given that it was contained in a 2003 book subpoenaed from Epstein’s estate—Burchett replied, “I mean, was I there in 2003 when they got it? Were you? No. That’s the problem. You got to look at the chain of command on this stuff.”

2. “It’s not his signature”—Byron Donalds

Representative Byron Donalds of Florida joined the chorus of conservatives claiming that Trump’s first name at the bottom of the letter is different from the president’s current autograph. (Analyses, however, show the 2003 sign-off to be a perfect match with contemporaneous examples of Trump’s signature.)

“From what I see, it’s not his signature,” Donalds told reporters. “I’ve seen Donald Trump sign a million things.”

“This doesn’t look like his signature to you?” a reporter asked.

“Nope!” he replied.

Donalds is, indeed, quite familiar with Trump’s signature—or, at least, its current iteration. In July, when Trump was seeking to rally the GOP around his signature tax and spending plan, Donalds was among a gaggle of Republicans to visit the White House and leave with signed MAGA merchandise. (Burchett was there too, and posted a video online afterward in which Donalds encouraged him to show off his signed goodies.)

3. “Been a little busy today”—Mike Johnson

House Speaker Mike Johnson reacted to the letter by reflexively deferring to the president’s word.

First asked about the message on Monday, Johnson said: “Been a little busy today. I haven’t dialed in on that. I’m told that it’s fake.”

Asked again on Tuesday, Johnson said that he had not seen the drawing: “I’ve heard about it. But no,” he told reporters, per PBS reporter Lisa Desjardins. “And the White House say[s] it’s not true. So.”

Never mind that Trump has been caught in lie after lie about Epstein.

4. “I take the president at his word”—James Comer

House Oversight Chair James Comer on Monday deflected questions about Trump’s letter, accusing Democrats of attempting to score political points.

“The Democrats, they find one thing in there and they promote it and try to get a narrative. This investigation’s about providing justice and accountability for the victims,” Comer told reporters, apparently seeing pursuing accountability and scrutinizing the commander in chief’s close relationship with Epstein as incompatible.

On Tuesday, Comer, like Johnson, approached the claims of the man known as the most dishonest president in U.S. history with utmost credulity.

“The president says he did not sign it,” Comer told CNN. “So I take the president [at] his word.”

5. “I haven’t seen it”—Jim Jordan

Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio appears happy to take the ignorance-is-bliss approach on the matter.

Asked about the letter by CNN’s Raju, he said, “I don’t know if that’s legit, and I haven’t seen it. I’ll take a look at it.”

“Don’t you want to learn more about Trump’s relationship and friendship with Epstein?” the reporter asked him on Monday.

“No,” he said. “I want to have [FBI] Director [Kash] Patel in next week, where we’ll ask him about all kinds of things.… I haven’t seen it. Don’t buy it.”

Throughout the Epstein affair, Jordan hasn’t always been so quick to dismiss new evidence—or, at least, not when it’s favored Trump.

When it was revealed that Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell told the FBI that Trump wasn’t guilty of any misdeeds, Jordan was eager to believe the claims of the convicted sex trafficker currently angling for a pardon from the president.

“This confirms what we all knew,” he told Fox News at the time. “We knew President Trump didn’t do anything wrong here.”

In a massive loss for election denialism accountability, the 15 Michigan electors who signed a document falsely stating that Donald Trump won their state in 2020 have now gotten off scot-free.

On December 14, 2020, 16 Michigan Republicans masquerading as “duly elected and qualified” electors gathered in the basement of the Michigan Republican Party headquarters and signed a certificate stating that Trump had won Michigan’s 16 Electoral College votes. The certificate was sent in to the National Archives. This was of course a lie, as Joe Biden won Michigan by three points. Nonetheless, their move was one of many similar stunts pulled by Trump supporters across the country, as they also submitted false certificates declaring his victory.

“We signed a blank piece of paper,” one of the electors, Michelle Lundgren, said. “And that’s all [I] can tell you.”

Each of the 16 electors except one, who reached an agreement with the state attorney general’s office, faced charges of forgery, conspiracy to commit election law forgery, and uttering and publishing.

“The false electors’ actions undermined the public’s faith in the integrity of our elections and, we believe, also plainly violated the laws by which we administer our elections in Michigan,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in 2023.

Now, five years later, Judge Kristen Simmons, appointed by Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, has thrown out their cases.

“This is a fraud case, and we have to prove intent, and I do not believe there is evidence sufficient to prove intent,” she told the courtroom on Tuesday.

Prosecutors reportedly had issues establishing that the electors actually knew what they were doing was against the law, as many of the defendants stated that they thought they were engaged in a “legitimate process” that night in December.

“Where’s the evidence of any intent that anybody had to commit to crime?” John Freeman, a lawyer for one of the electors, said in a hearing last year. “It’s all wishful thinking.… It’s a politically motivated witch hunt that has no basis in the evidence.”

Republican Women’s Federation of Michigan president Robyn Peake admitted that Simmons’s decision may have been influenced by the fact that Trump is back in office.

“There’s a possibility that they have been testing the political winds and how things have changed since Trump’s current term to see what is the public opinion and what is the tone of the United States at this point,” Peake said, according to The Detroit News. “We’ve seen a lot of changes in the last almost 12 months and I think the political tone right now is different in the United States than what it was.”

Zohran Mamdani is maintaining a major lead in the race for New York City mayor, according to a new poll from The New York Times and Siena University.

Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, is the preferred candidate of 46 percent of likely voters, handily beating competitors Andrew Cuomo, Curtis Sliwa, and Eric Adams. Former Governor Cuomo trails Mamdani in second, with 24 percent of the vote, then Republican Sliwa at 15 percent, and current Mayor Adams at a dismal 9 percent.

Those polled indicated that Mamdani, a democratic socialist, was the best candidate to address their top two concerns: affordability and housing. And around 60 percent of likely voters said that Mamdani was “inspirational”—he’s the only candidate viewed positively by a majority of voters, according to the poll.

Unlike the primary, which employed ranked-choice voting, the general election in November will be a head-to-head race. However, it’s shaping up to be anything but traditional: In deep-blue New York City, the Democratic primary is usually more important than the general in determining the city’s next mayor.

But though Mamdani appears to be headed for victory, he’ll be challenged by two other Democrats, both running as independents: Cuomo, who suffered an unexpectedly brutal loss in the primary, and Adams, whose corruption-plagued tenure seems to be seriously affecting his reelection bid.

And then there’s Sliwa, the Republican candidate, who non-New Yorkers may be surprised to learn does not have the backing of the Trump administration—but is still polling higher than current Mayor Adams.

However, the president has still attempted to pull strings behind the scenes. President Donald Trump and strategists have reportedly been brainstorming ways to get Adams and Sliwa to drop out, creating a one-to-one race between Mamdani and Cuomo, the president’s preferred candidate.

Were that to happen, the new poll shows Mamdani’s lead enduring but shrinking significantly: Mamdani came in with 48 percent of the vote and Cuomo with 44.

Nearly a million fewer jobs were created between April 2024 and March 2025 than previously reported, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The new data, published Tuesday morning, speaks to a weak job market during both former President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump’s terms—and is another harbinger of economic turbulence to come.

Despite what monthly payroll tallies indicated, employers added 911,000 fewer jobs from last April until this March. This implies that only 850,000 jobs were actually added to the economy during that time, just half as many as previously reported, according to The New York Times.

This is the second time in a week that Americans have been hit with troubling economic news.

On Friday, the August jobs report revealed that unemployment has risen to a nearly four-year high, and the United States only added 22,000 jobs that month—an underperformance from the projected 75,000.

Annual revisions are normal, but this one is pretty significant: it’s the largest since the 2008 recession. It also comes at a bad time for Trump, who just fired the head of the BLS last month because her jobs report was weaker than expected.

It seems as if the president’s economy is shrinking: The number of foreign-born workers is declining as Trump deports immigrants en masse, and it’s likely that the number of native-born workers isn’t rising to meet the difference. Tariffs are causing people to buy less, and the number of unemployed Americans has grown larger than the stock of available jobs.

No wonder economists are saying that we may be “on the brink” of a recession.

It’s unclear whether President Trump plans to run again in 2028, despite the Twenty-Second Amendment unambiguously barring a president from being elected for a third term.

In a Monday evening interview, Fox News host Brett Baier broached the subject with Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett—and the wording of the Trump appointee’s response alarmed some observers.

“The Twenty-Second Amendment says you can only run for office for two terms,” Baier said.

“True,” answered Barrett.

“You think that that’s cut and dry?”

“Well, that’s, you know, that’s what the amendment says, right?” Barrett said. “After FDR had four terms, that’s what that amendment says.”

Many online were concerned that Barrett had left room for interpretation, among them California Governor Gavin Newsom, who wrote on X, “The answer is: YES.”

In an appearance on CBS last week, Barrett—currently on a book tour—gave a better answer when interviewer Norah O’Donnell noted that she “explicitly write[s] in the book that the Constitution ‘leaves no room for second guessing when it comes to term limits.’”

“The Twenty-Second Amendment sets a two-term limit,” Barrett said, again citing the history of the amendment’s enactment after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four elections. “So really, I can’t say anything else but just point to the Twenty-Second Amendment. If you ask the question how many terms a president can serve, I would point to the Twenty-Second amendment.”

Trump, for his part, has teetered on the question of whether he sees himself as constrained by the Twenty-Second Amendment—not to mention the Constitution in general.

In March, he told NBC’s Kristen Welker that he was “not joking” about considering a third term. There are “methods” by which he could do so, he claimed, one being if Vice President JD Vance was to win the presidency, then pass the baton to Trump.

In May, however, Trump declared to Welker that he will be “a two-term president”—though he seemingly couldn’t help but add, “There are ways of doing it.” In August, he said he would “like to run” again but “probably won’t.”

Online, the president sells “TRUMP 2028” hats, with the product description stating: “Rewrite the rules with the Trump 2028 high crown hat.”

President Trump greenlit Israel’s Tuesday bombing of Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, according to Israeli sources speaking with the media after the shocking attack.

The Israeli Defense Forces said they were targeting a meeting of Hamas leadership, who were gathered in Qatar to discuss a ceasefire proposal put forward by the Trump administration.

“The members of the leadership who were attacked led the terrorist organization’s activities for years, and are directly responsible for carrying out the October 7 massacre and waging the war against the State of Israel,” the IDF stated.

Israeli sources told multiple outlets—including CNN and Israel’s Channel 12 that the United States had prior knowledge of the planned attack.

The attack comes just months after Trump toured Qatar, hailed the country as a close ally, and accepted that $400 million private jet from Qatari leadership.

Qatar, which has served as a primary mediator in hostage and ceasefire talks and hosts a major U.S. airbase, has condemned the strike as “criminal” and “cowardly.”

“This criminal attack constitutes a flagrant violation of all international laws and norms and a serious threat to the security and safety of Qataris and residents of Qatar,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed Al Ansari. “The State of Qatar affirms that it will not tolerate this reckless Israeli behavior and its continued tampering with regional security, as well as any action targeting its security and sovereignty. Investigations are underway at the highest level, and further details will be announced as soon as they become available.”

Hours after the attack, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt read a statement that expressed both approval of Israel’s actions and regret for the location (Israel bombed a residential neighborhood).

“This morning, the Trump administration was notified by the United States military that Israel was attacking Hamas, which very unfortunately, was located in a section of Doha, the capital of Qatar. Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals,” Leavitt said. “However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.... The president views Qatar as a strong ally, and friend of the United States, and feels very badly about the location of this attack. President Trump wants all of the hostages in Gaza, and the bodies of the dead, released, and this war to end now.”

Leavitt then refused to elaborate when asked about what prior knowledge Trump had regarding Israel’s attack, if any.

Qatar has already confirmed it is suspending its mediation between Israel and Hamas after the bombing. Israel’s attack may very well prolong Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and Hamas’s detainment of the remaining Israeli hostages. Israel seems to care less about the latter with each passing day.

Aside from that, this episode shows that (1) deference to Israel’s violence is still the Trump administration’s policy, and (2) no amount of groveling and gift-giving to Trump can stop you from getting backstabbed.

This story has been updated.