Mark Kelly Hits Defense Secretary Hegseth With Major Lawsuit

Senator Mark Kelly has decided enough is enough with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and filed a lawsuit against him in federal court Monday.

Kelly sued Hegseth, the Defense Department, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, and the U.S. Department of the Navy over Hegseth’s attempts to punish the Arizona senator. Hegseth has censured Kelly and moved to reduce his retirement grade and military pension after he appeared in a video message in November with other former service members in Congress advising military personnel to refuse to follow illegal orders from the Trump administration.

In his lawsuit, Kelly alleges that Hegseth and the others violated his First Amendment and due process rights, claiming that the Trump administration’s actions “trample on protections the Constitution singles out as essential to legislative independence.”

“It appears that never in our nation’s history has the Executive Branch imposed military sanctions on a Member of Congress for engaging in disfavored political speech. Allowing that unprecedented step here would invert the constitutional structure by subordinating the Legislative Branch to executive discipline and chilling congressional oversight of the armed forces,” the lawsuit states.

Kelly noted that after President Trump accused him of committing treason and sedition, Hegseth immediately echoed those accusations and moved to punish Kelly without due process.

“The Constitution does not permit the government to announce the verdict in advance and then subject Senator Kelly or anyone else to a nominal process designed only to fulfill it,” Kelly said in the lawsuit.

Hegseth is attempting to punish a sitting member of the Senate for criticizing the president, which already goes against the Constitution and separation of powers, something Kelly highlighted in his lawsuit.

Will this lawsuit force Hegseth and Trump to see how absurd it is to punish members of Congress for their speech? At the very least, it may well embarrass the White House in federal court.

This story has been updated.

At least two Republican senators plan to fight back after the Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over the weekend, vowing to block all of President Trump’s nominations to the central bank.

Senator Lisa Murkowski said Monday on X, “After speaking with Chair Powell this morning, it’s clear the administration’s investigation is nothing more than an attempt at coercion.

“If the Department of Justice believes an investigation into Chair Powell is warranted based on project cost overruns—which are not unusual—then Congress needs to investigate the Department of Justice. The stakes are too high to look the other way: if the Federal Reserve loses its independence, the stability of our markets and the broader economy will suffer,” Murkowski added. “My colleague, Senator Tillis, is right in blocking any Federal Reserve nominees until this is resolved.”

Thom Tillis, a member of the Senate Banking Committee who will retire at the end of his term this year, has vowed to block all of the Trump administration’s Fed nominees until the Department of Justice backs off from its investigation into Powell and other Fed officials.

“It is now the independence and credibility of the Department of Justice that are in question. I will oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed—including the upcoming Fed Chair vacancy—until this legal matter is fully resolved,” Tillis posted on X Sunday. The Senate Banking Committee has a narrow 13–11 advantage for Republicans, meaning that his opposition would stall any of Trump’s picks.

Powell sounded the alarm over the DOJ’s investigation into himself Sunday, saying that the independence of the financial body was at stake over “the administration’s threats and ongoing pressure.” Now it seems that some Republicans agree. The question is whether Trump will back down or still try to strong-arm Powell and the Fed.

The Trump administration is giving its investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James another shot.

The president shared a New York Post report to his Truth Social page Sunday night, effectively affirming that federal prosecutors are working toward more potential charges against James.

This case seemingly accuses James of alleged campaign misconduct over a total of $36,000 that her campaign paid to Iyesata Marsh, her longtime hairdresser, between 2018 and 2019. Roughly $22,000 of the payments were intended as payment for James’s use of Marsh’s studio as a late-stage campaign office in the last quarter of the year, according to a 2019 Wall Street Journal report.

The New York Times reported that prosecutors sought to speak with Marsh about the payments after she herself was indicted and charged with bank fraud and identity theft regarding the purchase of a Land Rover several years ago.

New York’s top cop has become one of the president’s chief legal adversaries since Donald Trump’s bank fraud case, when James successfully proved Trump was guilty of lying to banks. He was ordered to cough up nearly half a billion dollars in 2024—but has yet to do so.

In April, the Trump administration launched an investigation into James’s personal finances, accusing the attorney general of lying on her bank statements in order to obtain better mortgage rates. At the time, Trump referred to James as a “totally corrupt politician” and a “wacky crook,” and accused New York’s first Black woman in statewide office of being “racist.”

But that case completely fell apart in November, when a judge ruled that the administration had improperly appointed the lead attorney, Lindsey Halligan, who had no prosecutorial experience at all. Halligan’s predecessor, Erik Siebert, was squeezed out of his position overseeing the legal matters of the Eastern District of Virginia after he revealed he couldn’t find incriminating evidence to substantiate Trump’s case against James.

The Justice Department has since tried—and failed—two more times to prosecute James. But Trump’s latest efforts may be a dud thanks to the loud mouths of some of his own staff: In December, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles fessed to Vanity Fair that the president’s flimsy charges against James were his “one retribution,” an admission that would give James’s legal defense plenty of reason to toss his cases against her for eternity.

Federal immigration officers have started using Renee Good’s death to threaten more U.S. citizens.

A video posted to Reddit showed a screaming ICE agent repeatedly threatening to kill a man who was sitting in his car, asking how he didn’t “learn from what just happened.”

In the two-minute clip, a masked agent wearing a Minnesota Timberwolves hat approached the vehicle already furious, while the driver rolled down his window. “Stop fucking following us, you are impeding operations, this is the United States federal government,” the officer shouted.

“I live over here, I got to get to my house,” the driver replied calmly.

“This is your warning, alright? Go home to your kids, go home to your kids. This is your last warning. I won’t arrest you,” the officer threatened, before stomping away.

When the driver tried to engage another agent on the other side of his car, the agent urged him not to “make a bad decision.”

“I’m not making any bad decision, I’m peaceful. I serve the Lord, not a draft-dodging coward,” the driver said.

“You’re not gonna like the outcome of this, sir. I guarantee you that,” the first officer said, circling back. “I guarantee you’re not gonna like the outcome. Go home to your children. It’s Sunday. It is Sunday. You did not learn from what just happened?”

“Learn what?” the driver asked, but the officer did not elaborate, and the group of federal agents appeared to leave without arresting anyone.

It seems clear, however, that the agent was referring to Renee Good, the U.S. citizen who was shot multiple times by an ICE agent last week after federal officers surrounded her vehicle. While the Trump administration initially justified the deadly use of force by claiming Good was a “domestic terrorist,” President Donald Trump most recently claimed her death was the result of being “disrespectful” of law enforcement.

It’s evident that the driver in the latest video hadn’t done anything illegal because none of the agents made the slightest effort to detain him. In fact, the officer seemed to suggest that even if he could, he wouldn’t actually arrest him—he would just kill him.

This isn’t the only time that ICE agents have apparently invoked Good’s killing.

Another protester, who identified themself as a former U.S. Marine, claimed in an interview posted on X that federal officers had mocked Good while violently arresting them. “They said, ‘Have you not learned? This is why we killed that lesbian bitch!’” the protester said.

President Trump thinks the Civil Rights Movement—a series of laws and events that brought the country closer to realizing the full humanity of Black people, LGBTQ people, and women—was “reverse discrimination.”

“Do you believe … that the civil rights protections that Americans had, starting in the 1960s and so forth, resulted ultimately in the discrimination against white men?” The New York Times’ David E. Sanger asked the president in an interview released on Sunday.

“Well, I think that a lot of people were very badly treated. White people were very badly treated, where they did extremely well and they were not invited to go into a university or a college. So I would say in that way, I think it was unfair in certain cases,” Trump replied. “I think it was also, at the same time, it accomplished some very wonderful things, but it also hurt a lot of people—people that deserve to go to a college or deserve to get a job were unable to get a job. So it was, it was a reverse discrimination.”

Arguing that increased equality somehow made white Americans worse off is rhetoric straight from the Elon Musk, Stephen Miller, and Nick Fuentes script. And the clumsiness of Trump’s explanation suggests that he’s just parroting their talking points rather than drawing his own conclusion on how exactly the Civil Rights Movement stopped white people from getting jobs and going to college. Either way, this argument is facetious and rooted in white supremacist ideology.

Trump then went on to brag about receiving the “Israel award” and claimed to not know Fuentes, despite having dinner with him and washed-up edgelord rapper Kanye West in 2016.

Read the full NYT interview here.

Donald Trump was glad to hear the news that one of his former advisers, Dina Powell McCormick, was named as Meta’s president and vice chair on Monday.

“Congratulations to DINA POWELL MCCORMICK, WHO HAS JUST BEEN NAMED THE NEW PRESIDENT OF META. A great choice by Mark Z!!” Trump posted on Truth Social, referring to Meta’s founder Mark Zuckerberg. “She is a fantastic, and very talented, person, who served the Trump Administration with strength and distinction. President DJT.”

McCormick, who served as deputy national security adviser in Trump’s first term, is now joining the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp. Last year, McCormick briefly joined Meta’s board of directors before leaving in December. McCormick is married to Senator David McCormick of Pennsylvania, who was elected as a Republican to the Senate last year.

“She’ll be involved in all of Meta’s work, with a particular focus on partnering with governments and sovereigns to build, deploy, invest in, and finance Meta’s AI and infrastructure,” Zuckerberg said in a post on Threads Monday.

Zuckerberg and other tech CEOs used to have a frosty relationship with Trump, with Trump being banned from Facebook after the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. But in Trump’s second term, Zuckerberg is on much better terms with the president, getting a front-row seat at Trump’s inauguration after donating $1 million to his inaugural fund.

Trump also threatened to raise tariffs against countries that levy taxes on digital services after Zuckerberg raised the issue at a White House meeting. For his part, Zuckerberg has changed the rules on Facebook to discourage fact-checking and ignore derogatory comments about immigrants, even taking down a popular Facebook page tracking ICE agents. Now it seems Trump will have another ally at the helm of Zuckerberg’s company.

CNN’s Jake Tapper torpedoed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s flimsy defense of the ICE agent who killed Renee Good.

During an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, Noem could only proffer a mealy-mouthed response after being bombarded by footage of rioters violently attacking law enforcement officers at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Donald Trump had claimed earlier Sunday that the use of deadly force was justified because Good was “disrespectful” of law enforcement.

“Would any of those officers have been justified in shooting and killing the people causing them physical harm?” Tapper pressed, referring to the January 6 footage.

“Every single situation is going to, um, rely on the situation those officers are on,” Noem replied. “That they know that when people are putting hands on them, when they are using weapons against them, when they are physically harming them, that they have the authority to arrest those individuals.”

Tapper pointed out that Trump had pardoned every single one of those rioters.

“And every single one of these investigations comes in the full context of the situation on the ground,” Noem said. “That’s one thing that President Trump has been so focused on. Is making sure that when we’re out there, we don’t pick and choose which situations are, and which laws are enforced, and which ones aren’t.”

The exasperated host then had to point out that the footage he’d just shown proved the opposite.

“I just showed you video of people attacking law enforcement officers, undisputed proof, undisputed evidence, and I just said President Trump pardoned all of them. And you just said, ‘President Trump is enforcing all the laws equally.’ It’s just not true,” Tapper said. “There’s a different standard for law enforcement officials being attacked if they’re being attacked by Trump supporters. We just saw that.”

Noem could only offer up word salad. “This individual, and these instances, and these investigations all have to be taken, and done, and done correctly in context of every situation that is happening on the ground,” she said.

It’s genuinely difficult to believe she was picked for this job because someone thought she would be good on TV.

Noem claimed that immigration officers were focused on ensuring that they were “targeting the worst of the worst, and that we’re talking factually about each situation, and making sure that we’re bringing those perpetrators of violence back to justice.”

Of course, the killing of Renee Good demonstrates that they’re doing the exact opposite.

Good was not the “worst of the worst,” but a mother of three who Noem leapt to claim was a so-called “domestic terrorist.” The only person who “perpetrated” violence was Jonathan Ross, the trigger-happy Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot a U.S. civilian three times, but there is no evidence he will face any consequences for his actions.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem apparently has found some morsel of humor in Renee Nicole Good’s death.

Noem flashed a small smile while speaking about Good’s killing during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday morning, apparently undisturbed by the fact that one of her agents called the 37-year-old mother a “fucking bitch” immediately after an agent shot her in the face several times.

“Is that Agent [Jonathan] Ross’s voice calling Renee Good a ‘fucking bitch’?” Tapper asked after playing cell phone footage of the incident that clearly captured the phrase.

“I can’t determine which one it is, but it could be, sir,” Noem replied, pulling her lips into a quick smirk as she finished her sentence.

The footage Tapper showed of the shooting last week depicts a masked federal agent’s vantage point of the lethal encounter and offered an additional perspective of the extrajudicial killing.

The exchange, as captured in the video, begins with a 360-degree shot of Good’s red Honda Pilot, and ends after multiple gunshots ring out, when her SUV careens into a utility pole and several parked vehicles.

In a paltry attempt to defend the agents’ deadly actions, Trump officials have claimed that Good was trying to kill an ICE agent by moving her vehicle—an allegation that is readily disputed by other video footage of the incident, which shows that Ross sidesteps the front bumper as it begins to push forward.

Still, that hasn’t stopped the administration from branding Good as a domestic terrorist. In their repeated defense of her needless death, Trump officials have also suggested that defying the barked orders of masked individuals who evade identification is a crime punishable by death.

Hundreds of protests have since taken place in cities across America, protesting Good’s death and the needless violence employed by ICE—an agency that has apparently morphed into Donald Trump’s personal gestapo—as well as the administration’s harrowing response to the killing.

Donald Trump is pushing for the United States to take over Greenland, telling reporters on Air Force One Sunday that “one way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland.”

Trump has been eager to take over the Danish territory, located in the north Atlantic Ocean, since his first term in office. Now, emboldened by U.S. military action to depose Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and a lack of pushback from Republicans in Congress, Trump thinks the time is right for this ill-advised venture.

“If we don’t take Greenland, Russia or China will, and I’m not letting that happen,” Trump said, adding that he would love to make a deal with Denmark to prevent military action because “it’s easier,” but refusing to back down from taking the territory by force.

A military seizure of Greenland would threaten the existence of NATO, as Denmark is a signatory to the defense pact along with the U.S. Last week, the leaders of France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and Denmark, all NATO members, issued a joint statement warning that any changes to the status quo aren’t up to the U.S.

“Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland,” the statement read, with leaders from Canada and the Netherlands also backing it.

But that so far hasn’t deterred the Trump administration, nor has the fact that Greenland’s political parties, including the opposition, remain steadfastly against becoming a territory of the U.S.

“We do not want to be Americans, we do not want to be Danes, we want to be Greenlanders,” the parties said in their own statement Friday. “The future of Greenland must be decided by the Greenlandic people.”

After the senseless killing of Renee Nicole Good at the hands of ICE last week, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has promised to send even more federal agents to Minneapolis—all but ensuring that more separation, detainment, violence, and general suffering will ensue.

This comes as numerous videos of ICE officers breaking down doors, using excessive force, and terrorizing communities with no justification circulate the internet.

“As we uncover more of this criminal activity, we’re going to continue to surge resources to make sure this abuse of government funds and government power no longer continues in Minnesota,” Noem said Sunday.

There are already at least 2,400 federal agents in the state as part of “Operation Metro Surge.”

“We’re gonna have another large footprint coming here to ensure that we get that Title 8 mission under control and that we conduct very effective, unabated Title 8 immigration enforcement,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commander Gregory Bovino said to CBS News.

With Minnesotans dead or detained and thousands of militarized agents in the street—with more on the way—it’s become clear that the Trump administration has no plans of stopping this crackdown and is encouraging its personal gestapo to keep their feet on the community’s neck.