Trump Shamelessly Pardons Republican Lawmaker Convicted of Corruption

President Trump seems to love corrupt politicians.

On Thursday evening, the president pardoned Glen Casada, the former Tennessee state House speaker, as well as one of his aides, of corruption charges, claiming that the Biden administration “over-prosecuted” the two of them.

Casada and his former chief of staff Cade Cothren were sentenced in September for running a scheme to get lawmakers to use their taxpayer-funded mail business. Prosecutors said that Cothren launched Phoenix Solutions with the support of his boss and another Tennessee state representative, Robin Smith, to set up a mailer program for legislators.

The company had a fictional “Matthew Phoenix” listed as its head, and Casada and Smith received $52,000 in taxpayer money from the company’s activities. The company wasn’t Casada’s only misdeed, either: He resigned in 2019 due to many scandals, including sending sexually explicit text messages about women to Cothren, sending racist text messages, and using cocaine inside a legislative office building.

It’s yet another controversial presidential pardon on Trump’s already long list. In this case, it’s a fellow Republican. Since being sworn in, Trump has pardoned the January 6 rioters who sought to overturn the 2020 election on his behalf, a crypto billionaire who cut a deal with the Trumps, a corrupt electric car magnate, and numerous others.

Trump even commuted the sentence given to notorious liar and former Representative George Santos, convicted on multiple counts of fraud and corruption. It seems that to the president, crimes don’t matter if you’re an ally or are useful to him. It’s not surprising, considering Trump’s own numerous corrupt activities.

MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is still one of the few GOP members to rebuke President Trump and his lies in any meaningful way.

Taylor Greene spoke freely in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Thursday night.

“The president says there’s virtually no inflation, and that grocery prices are going down,” Collins asked the Georgia representative. “Do you agree with him on that?”

“No, I go to the grocery store myself. Grocery prices remain high. Energy prices are high. My electricity bills are higher here in Washington, D.C., at my apartment, and they’re also higher at my house in Rome, Georgia, higher than they were a year ago,” MTG said. “Affordability is a problem, and I’m a mom. My kids are 22, 26, and 28. That’s the generation I worry about the most, and they’re having a very hard time.”

One of the most unhinged people in all of Congress comes across as genuine, while the president—on the same evening—told Americans that he wanted to stop hearing about their affordability issue. While Trump tells bold-faced lies about the state of the economy, MTG is raising concerns about a future that her kids and their kids can afford.

“You’re not gonna convince [Americans] to go to the polls and vote by bailing out Argentina. And you’re not gonna convince them to go to the polls and vote by continuing to fund foreign wars and foreign countries and foreign causes,” Taylor Greene continued. “You’e gonna get them to go to the polls and vote when you show up to work and actually fix the problems that they face every single day.”

Donald Trump badly botched the pronunciation of Kazakhstan, a decades-long U.S. ally, while seated right next to the country’s president during a White House dinner with Central Asian leaders Thursday evening.

Like some unaired scene out of Sacha Baron Cohen’s 2006 flick Borat, Trump slipped that “Ka-ZACK-a-stan” had joined the Abraham Accords, adding a syllable and stressing the wrong one in the country’s name while announcing supposedly new diplomatic ties between Kazakhstan (which is actually pronounced Kahz-uck-stan) and Israel.

“This evening, I’m also delighted to report that Ka-ZACK-a-stan has officially agreed, and that’s official now, as of about 15 minutes ago. A tremendous country with a tremendous leader, has officially joined the Abraham Accords,” Trump said, mere feet away from President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. “And I just want to thank you, Mr. President. It’s a great honor. It’s a tremendous honor to have you. Really great.”

The pronunciation was, in part, a win for the White House. In September, Trump managed to mispronounce the “Abraham” in Abraham Accords, insisting during a White House meeting with  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Jews—or “the real people”—pronounce it as “Abraaaham.” The misstep was so awkward that Netanyahu jumped to correct him, clarifying that the name is actually pronounced in Hebrew as “Avraham.”

Just how much Kazakhstan’s new status will materially change its relationship with Israel is unclear, however, since the countries have had “full ties” since 1992, including shared embassies in their respective capitals, according to The Times of Israel. 

It does, however, give Trump some new material to prattle about. Trump created the series of agreements at the end of his first term as a method to thwart Iran’s nuclear program. The Abraham Accords have since been signed by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. 

The Atlantic Council, an American think tank focused on international affairs, said in a statement that Kazakhstan’s inclusion on the Abraham Accords was “no great breakthrough” but rather a “failed attempt” to revive the Abraham Accords “brand.”

“It is clear that the Trump administration is trying to kill two birds with one stone with this statement—to prove that the Abraham Accords ‘brand’ is still alive (especially in preparation for the visit of the Saudi crown prince to Washington) and to poke a finger in the eye of Chinese ambitions in the Eurasian space,” argued Danny Citrinowicz, a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council with 25 years of experience with Israel Defense Intelligence.

“But the truth is that without significant progress on the political track between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, Saudi Arabia will not join the Abraham Accords, regardless of the accession of other countries,” Citrinowicz continued. “And without Saudi Arabia, it is very unlikely that additional Muslim countries will join these agreements.”

Tokayev appeared unbothered by the massive flub. Making direct eye contact with Trump, the Kazakhstani leader lathered praise on the U.S. president, claiming he was a “statesman sent by heaven,” while reiterating the administration’s propaganda that Trump had solved eight wars (some of which never even happened).

If President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance really want to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, why are they both kicking and screaming at a federal judge’s latest order to do just that?

The Department of Justice rushed Thursday evening to appeal a ruling that would require the Trump administration to fully fund SNAP benefits for November amid the government shutdown. Meanwhile, Trump and Vance complained about the order to reporters in the East Room at the White House.

The vice president seemed particularly disturbed by the notion that a federal judge could force the Trump administration’s hand.

“It’s an absurd ruling because you have a federal judge effectively telling us what we have to do in the midst of a Democrat government shutdown,” Vance said. “Which, what we’d like to do is for the Democrats to open up the government, and, of course, then we can fund SNAP and we could also do a lot of other good things for the American people. But in the midst of a shutdown, we can’t have the federal court telling the president how he has to triage the situation.

“We’re trying to keep as much turned on, we’re trying to keep as much going as possible,” Vance said. “The president and the entire administration are working on that, but we’re not going to do it under the orders of a federal judge.”

Trump also weighed in with a confusing answer about the country needing to remain “very liquid.”

“We can’t give everything away based on a number,” Trump said, ostensibly talking about the number of SNAP recipients (42 million), though what number he was referring to was unclear.

“Biden went totally crazy, gave it to anybody that would ask. Gave it to people that were able-bodied, had no problem. Anybody who would ask would get the number,” Trump said.

It sounds like Trump no longer thinks it would be an “honor” to fund SNAP should a court order him to do so, as he claimed on Truth Social less than a week ago.

It was Trump’s own blatant unwillingness to fund SNAP that got him into this situation in the first place. In issuing his new, stricter ruling Thursday evening, U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. cited Trump’s rageful Truth Social Post claiming that benefits “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government” as evidence of the president’s “intent to defy” a previous order that required him to pay for only some benefits.

Donald Trump bizarrely claimed that the United States has to remain “very liquid” because the country could be hit by unforeseen problems at any time. 

Speaking from the White House’s East Room Thursday night, Trump told reporters that “our country has to remain very liquid because problems, catastrophes, wars—could be anything. We have to remain liquid. We can’t give everything away,” claiming that President Biden gave money away to “anybody who would ask,” including the “able-bodied.” 

Trump gave the answer after being asked about a court ruling requiring his administration to fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program, which 42 million low-income Americans depend on.

Trump seems to have no idea how the U.S. economy works, given that the country could just print more money if being “liquid” is really the main concern (it shouldn’t be). His jab at Biden seems to be based on right-wing complaints about “tax and spend” Democrats, and an attempt to evade criticism over his administration defying court rulings on SNAP.  

Under the current administration, the national debt is experiencing its highest rate of growth since the Covid-19 pandemic. This has only been compounded by the government shutdown, which is costing the country billions of dollars each week. Trump has no room to criticize his predecessor about spending, as his presidency is costing the country dearly. 

As inflation rises, layoffs surge, and SNAP benefits stop, President Trump told Americans point-blank that he does not want to hear about their affordability issues. 

“Talk about the cost of Thanksgiving, and the cost of living through Thanksgiving.… Our energy costs are way down, our groceries are way down, everything is way down. And the press doesn’t report it,” the president said last evening while taking questions from reporters. “You know, I call the Democrats conmen and women, they make up numbers. But when you look at the 25 percent reduction in costs for Thanksgiving between Biden and me … it’s the biggest reduction in cost in the history of that chart or whatever it is they do.”

The Thanksgiving cost numbers Trump is touting come directly from Walmart, which is selling a $40 Thanksgiving basket compared to a $55 one last year. But this year’s meal has less food in it too.  

“So I don’t wanna hear about the affordability,” Trump continued. “We’re getting close to $2 a gallon gasoline. With Biden it was $4.50, $5. Another thing, inflation. We had the worst inflation in the history of our country. Now we have virtually no inflation at all … so the affordability is much better with the Republicans.”

This short rant was ridden with lies. Everything is not “way down.” 

Inflation is still going up. This summer, Americans saw the biggest grocery price jump in over three years. Average grocery prices in September were around 2.7 percent higher than they were the year before and around 1.4 percent higher than they were when Trump got back into office in January. 

It’s truly a travesty that this man who campaigned on affordability, and on remembering the forgotten working class, is now telling those very same people to shut up and be happy while outright lying about the state of affordability in this country. It was already bad, and Trump has unquestionably made it worse. But he’d rather lie and finger-point than admit that and work to fix it.   

It appears that President Donald Trump’s angry social media posts have once again landed him in hot water in the courts: A judge ordered him Thursday to pay for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in full.

U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island delivered a scathing rebuke of Trump’s Truth Social post from Tuesday, when the president claimed that money for SNAP benefits “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government.” The White House later clarified that the administration still intended to pay half of the benefits for November.

McConnell said that the president’s post was essentially an admission of his “intent to defy” his prior court order, according to Politico’s Kyle Cheney on X. The judge’s order last week had required officials to obey the law and use the USDA’s contingency funds to pay for at least some SNAP benefits.

The judge said that Trump and his allies had openly admitted they were withholding funding for SNAP benefits for “political reasons.” Last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson admitted that feeding the hungry would mess up his political game because it would “deviate from the goal of reopening the entire government.”

McConnell ordered the Department of Agriculture to pay for November’s SNAP benefits in full by Friday, warning that if the government wavered, “people will go hungry, food pantries will be burdened and … suffering will occur.” He added: “It’s likely that SNAP recipients are hungry as we sit here.”

At a White House press conference Thursday announcing lower costs for weight-loss drugs, Donald Trump decided to ask for part of a company. 

Trump was sitting at his desk in the Oval Office surrounded by health officials from his administration, as well as executives from pharmaceutical companies Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly. When a reporter asked the president about Novo Nordisk’s acquisition of an obesity biotech company, Trump quipped to CEO Maziar Mike Doustdar, “Maybe you should give us a piece of the company like I’ve been asking for, give the United States a nice big chunk of the company.”  

Doustdar chuckled but ignored the president’s suggestion and went on to explain the acquisition. It’s unclear how serious Trump is about asking for a piece of the pharmaceutical giant, but his government has already taken stakes in several American companies, including U.S. Steel, Intel, Trilogy Metals, Lithium Americas, and MP Materials. 

If not for a patient on Eli Lilly’s GLP-1 medication physically collapsing during the press conference, Trump’s open desire for a piece of Novo Nordisk might have been the headline from the meeting, and not the supposed goal of lowering drug prices. The president has repeatedly claimed that he would lower drug prices (often by mathematically impossible amounts) and announced that the government would launch a website to sell prescription drugs directly to the American people.

If Trump decides to go ahead and pursue a piece of Novo Nordisk, he would be under more public pressure to successfully lower the cost of prescriptions. However, his ill-advised tariff policies feeding into his poor handling of the economy might undermine that goal. 

A federal judge called out Border Protection Commander Gregory Bovino on Thursday for lying on the stand, before issuing a preliminary injunction against federal law enforcement using force against protesters and journalists.

During a hearing, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis said that Bovino had plainly lied about deploying tear gas on protesters while leading an immigration operation in Chicago’s Little Village earlier this month.

The CBP chief had originally claimed that Bovino deployed tear gas canisters after he was hit in the head by a rock, but in his hourslong deposition, Bovino “admitted that he lied about whether a rock hit him before he deployed tear gas in Little Village,” Ellis said, according to Jon Seidal of the Chicago Sun Times.

Ellis said she’d reviewed video evidence that “disproved” his prior claim, as well as seen a mountain of evidence that federal agents in Chicago had used force against protesters, in violation of protesters’ First Amendment rights and contrary to the government’s claims. “I find the defendant’s evidence simply not credible,” Ellis said.

“Agents pushed, shoved, tackled protesters, pointed guns at them, threw tear gas and deployed smoke canisters. Everyone that agents detained [was] released by the FBI, and none of them are currently charged with assault,” she said, according to Seidal.

Ellis refuted the government’s claim that protesters weren’t practicing free speech because they’d intermingled with some individuals acting unlawfully. “But as I’ve previously stated,” Ellis said, “I don’t find defendants’ version of events credible.”

Ultimately, the judge moved forward with a preliminary injunction in line with her previous temporary restraining order, barring the use of force against protesters “unless such force is objectively necessary to stop an immediate threat.”

The injunction will require officers to issue two clear warnings before administering crowd-control measures, to place identifiers conspicuously on their person, and to wear a body camera. In line with her request from a previous hearing, the government’s lawyer confirmed that Bovino would now wear a body camera.

A Senate subcommittee hearing on the Affordable Care Act devolved into a shouting match Thursday, with one lawmaker focused on providing affordable health care solutions to millions of Americans while another was fixated on small pleasantries.

Republican Chairman Ron Johnson excoriated ranking member Richard Blumenthal in a sprawling rant that transformed the hearing—formed to “assess the damage done by Obamacare”—into a contentious back-and-forth more fixated on decorum than tangible solutions.

The Wisconsin lawmaker was obviously irate that Blumenthal had dared to make the case for salvaging the ACA by delivering an “eight-minute” opening statement, calling multiple witnesses, and accusing Johnson of “trying to muzzle” him from “calling attention to the facts” of the federally subsidized health care marketplace.

“The ranking member has been incredibly disrespectful of these hearings,” Johnson said. “He was going to filibuster for about 30 minutes.”

“May I just say, I wish I had a half an hour more, but there’s no way that I did,” Blumenthal interjected.

“Again you are just being rude,” Johnson cut back in. “You have been rude as ranking member since I took over the chair. It’s unfortunate, but I’d appreciate it if you’d stop being rude, follow the norms of this committee, and if you want an extra witness, request it beforehand. And please, keep your opening statements to a reasonable length of time.”

The government shut down more than 36 days ago—the longest federal suspension in U.S. history—in large part over a debate on the merits of the ACA’s enhanced premium tax credits, which assist individuals making upward of 400 percent of the federal poverty level. Still, neither national political party appears willing to shatter Congress’s stalemate on how to fund Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget, which included details to slice billions from Obamacare subsidies and Medicaid.

A record 24 million Americans signed up for coverage through the ACA marketplace at the beginning of this year, roughly double the number of people who enrolled just four years earlier amid the Covid-19 pandemic.