Supreme Court Hands Steve Bannon a Major Win on January 6

Steve Bannon just got one step closer to overturning his contempt of Congress conviction.

The Supreme Court threw out an appellate court opinion that upheld a conviction against the former Trump adviser Monday, opening a pathway for a trial court to act in the White House’s interest to toss Bannon’s conviction entirely “in the interests of justice.”

Bannon was previously convicted on charges relating to his evasion of a congressional subpoena, after he refused to appear before the House committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

The political tactician originally argued that his testimony was protected, as an extension of Donald Trump’s executive privilege, reported the Associated Press. The House panel contended at the time that was doubtful, considering that Bannon had been out of the federal government for years and was a private citizen by January 6.

Nonetheless, the nine-justice Supreme Court vacated the charges Monday with no explanation and no noted dissents. The only clarification offered was via a brief order, which noted that the Justice Department has moved to drop the indictment against Bannon.

Bannon was at one point at the epicenter of Trump’s universe. He served as the forty-fifth president’s chief White House strategist before the former Apprentice host fired him in 2017 following a series of controversies in which Bannon openly contradicted Trump and began to encroach on the MAGA limelight.

Despite his fall from grace, Bannon has continued to exert his influence in the far-right sphere. In 2023, the political provocateur assumed he’d continue to wield power under a future Trump administration, promising to slam American broadcasters with “prosecutions and accountability” for reporting that Trump lost the 2020 election.

He went to trial in July 2022 for defying the subpoena, and ultimately served a four-month prison term as a result.

This is story has been updated.

“Very little” is off the table with the war in Iran, according to Donald Trump.

In separate phone calls Sunday, the president suggested that he was open to introducing practically every form of violence in the ongoing conflict unless the Middle Eastern nation agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

That includes the possibility of ground troops, which Trump explicitly said he would not rule out unless Iran makes a deal.

“Normal people would make a deal. Smart people would make a deal,” the president told The Hill. “If they were smart they would make a deal.”

Earlier on that day, Trump threatened that Iranians would be “living in hell” by Tuesday unless the country’s leadership agreed to reopen the vital trade route.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP,” Trump posted to Truth Social.

In another post to his social media platform, Trump wrote: “Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time.”

Trump carried that tone over to a conversation with ABC News, in which he promised that he would task America’s military with “blowing up the whole country.”

The president also drastically ramped up the conflict’s projected timeline, claiming that the war should be over in “days, not weeks.”

“It should be wrapped up in days because no sane group of people could stand the punishment that’s going to rain down on them if it’s not,” he told ABC.

Situated between Iran and the United Arab Emirates, the strait funnels approximately one-fifth of all crude oil shipments. Most of that oil would head toward China or India. In 2024, the U.S. imported roughly 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day through the strait, accounting for about 7 percent of total U.S. crude imports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The price per barrel has nonetheless exploded due to the strait’s closure, pushing gas over $4 per gallon in most states (in California, gas in some counties has leaped past $7 a gallon). Diesel shot up by 20 cents over the last week alone.

The economic fallout has struck fear in the Republican Party, whose lawmakers have taken to grumbling about the domestic ramifications of the war, and the impact it will have at the ballot box come November. Trump, meanwhile, has waffled dramatically, claiming in quick succession that he doesn’t care if the strait remains closed and that he wants it reopened.

But beyond the nickels and dimes, the war has cost the lives of more than 2,000 people in Iran, including dozens of political leaders, according to Al Jazeera. At least 13 U.S. soldiers have also been killed in the war, and more than 300 have been wounded.

Donald Trump, rather than attend Easter mass, let loose a vulgar Truth Social post Sunday morning warning Iran that bombings targeting the country’s infrastructure were coming on Tuesday if the Strait of Hormuz was not reopened.

In response, Iran on Monday firmly rejected Trump’s 15-point peace plan.

Meanwhile, Iranian embassies around the world have been mocking the president on their own X accounts. The Iranian embassy in Thailand referenced Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s warning last week that Iran would be sent back to the Stone Age, posting, “Judging by how POTUS swears like a teenager, it seems the US has reached the Stone Age sooner than expected.”

“#POTUS has stooped to an unprecedented level of begging, laced with bitter, hollow rudeness and threats.The desperation is almost palpable, dripping from every syllable—especially the haphazardly hurled expletives,” the Iranian embassy in Austria posted. “⚠️We solemnly remind everyone, once again, that attacking civilian infrastructure such as bridges and power plants constitutes a #WarCrime. 📛A further warning: shield all minors under 18 from exposure to #Trump’s rhetoric.

Iran’s embassy in South Africa referenced the Constitution’s provision on how the Cabinet and vice president can remove a president from office, posting, “Seriously think about the 25th amendment, Section 4,” while Iran’s embassy in Bulgaria posted a cartoon of Trump wedged in between the strait in the Persian Gulf.

Trump’s rhetoric in the post, as well as the insult towards Muslims, suggest that something is seriously wrong with him. Instead of the Easter services he was scheduled to attend, his limousine took a short drive around Washington, D.C., and stopped by his golf course in Sterling, Virginia. As Tuesday approaches, will cooler heads prevail in the White House, or is the president’s inner circle content to let him “blow up the entire country” of Iran?

President Trump thinks that watching The Mark Levin Show on Fox News will somehow make the Supreme Court finally understand his nonsensical arguments against birthright citizenship.

“It’s too bad that the Supreme Court can’t watch and study the Mark Levin Show tonight on the Birthright Citizenship Scam. If they saw it they would never allow that money making HOAX to continue. THEY SHOULD USE THEIR POWERS OF COMMON SENSE FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY,” Trump wrote on Truth Social at nearly 1 a.m. on Monday morning. “They failed miserably on Tariffs, needlessly costing the USA Hundreds of Billions of Dollars in potential rebates for the benefit haters and scammers. Why??? Don’t do it again! The Country can only withstand so many bad decisions from a Court that just doesn’t seem to care.”

An episode of Levin’s ramblings seems unlikely to save Trump, or convince the court to rip citizenship from millions of people born on American soil. In oral arguments last week, nearly all of the justices—even the ones Trump appointed— expressed dismay, confusion, and frustration at the very notion of Trump’s challenge to birthright citizenship, one of the most basic tenets of American life.

Officials from 23 different states (and the District of Columbia) are taking Donald Trump to court over a brazenly unconstitutional executive order that looks to limit Americans’ voting rights.

The executive order, signed on Tuesday, banned the U.S. Postal Service from delivering mail-in ballots to anyone not on a preapproved list compiled by the USPS itself. Trump and his cronies like to claim mail-in voting is rife with fraud—despite a lack of evidence and the fact that the president likes to vote by mail himself. But the executive order’s solution to this is sketchy at best. Why, and how, does the USPS get to choose who can vote by mail?

Perhaps even more insidious is another section of the executive order, which calls on the federal government to compile its own list of voters in each state, which will then be sent to states 60 days before each federal election—presumably along with a bunch of threats that they better not find anyone who doesn’t match their list voting.

States, of course, have been responsible for keeping their own voter rolls for centuries, but this executive order threatens to change that. And which federal department has the president tasked with creating nationwide voter rolls? Why, the Department of Homeland Security, of course! You know, the same department that has repeatedly been caught lying in court, and which executed two Americans in the street just a few months ago! What could go wrong?

The good news is that lawsuits have already curbed some of Trump’s voting-related executive orders. This suit, filed in Massachusetts District Court, will hopefully be no different.

“The President’s latest attempt to interfere with the States’ administration of their elections is as unprecedented as it is unconstitutional,” the states’ complaint reads. “Under our Constitution, the President has no authority to restrict voter eligibility or mail voting to lists of voters pre-authorized by the federal government.”

The conservative leader of Catholics in the U.S. military had some damning words for Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump’s holy war on Iran.

Speaking in an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation set to air Sunday, Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the head of the Archdiocese for the Military Services and one of the most conservative Catholic prelates in the United States, said it was “hard to cast this war as something that would be sponsored by the Lord.”

Broglio criticized Hegseth’s bloodthirsty prayers for violence against “those who deserve no mercy” at a recent Pentagon Christian service.

“It’s a little bit problematic in the sense that the Lord Jesus certainly brought a message of peace, and I think war is always a last resort,” Broglio said.

When asked directly whether he believed the war was justified, he replied, “I would think under the just war theory, it is not.”

He explained that the war was “compensating for a threat before the threat is actually realized” and said he would “align” himself with Pope Leo XIV, who has urged a diplomatic resolution to the conflict.

President Trump has made only one comment as reports of yet another U.S. combat plane going down directly contradict his constant comments that Iranian air defense is completely devastated.

On Friday afternoon, The New York Times reported that an A-10 Warthog crashed in the Persian Gulf region over the Strait of Hormuz around the same time an F-15 was shot down in Iran. The report came from two U.S. officials speaking anonymously about the matter, but they did not offer additional details.

While the lone pilot of the A-10 is safe, only one of the two pilots from the downed F-15 has been rescued. Trump has remained shockingly silent as these two significant military losses occurred back to back. He’s had no public events Friday and has not acknowledged the jets in any posts. His most recent post after news of the second crashed warplane, around 3:20 p.m. on Friday, read “KEEP THE OIL, ANYONE?” He did not acknowledge the fallen aircraft or missing servicemember.

It makes no sense to rant about how the war is already won when Iran clearly still has some level of defense capability available.

This story has been updated.

Iran is no longer entertaining a potential peace deal with U.S. negotiators.

Tehran declared Friday that it would not meet with U.S. officials in Islamabad, adding that the White House’s demands are “unacceptable,” reported The Wall Street Journal’s senior Middle East correspondent, Summer Said.

The country’s regional neighbors are still attempting to mediate the situation, offering Iranian officials other opportunities to settle the conflict with the U.S. Turkey and Egypt have offered new venues for the talks, including Istanbul and the Qatari capital, Doha, as well as new proposals, noted Said.

However, Qatar has so far resisted efforts by its neighbors and the U.S. to play a major role in the peace talks, “complicating efforts to find a way forward for the talks,” mediators told the Journal.

Earlier Friday, Mohammad Javad Zarif—a former Iranian foreign minister who served as Iran’s top diplomat from 2013 to 2021—became the first figure in the country to offer a detailed, “comprehensive peace” plan that he believed Tehran would find attractive. It outlined a nonaggression pact between the U.S. and Iran, as well as “economic interactions” that include the involvement of American companies in Iran’s oil sector.

But Zarif is only on the periphery of power in Iran. The country’s current leadership is fronted by Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of previous Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was assassinated in February by a U.S.-Israeli joint operation. The junior Khamenei is considered even more extreme, and has been described as his father “on steroids.”

Iran’s newly installed leadership refuted claims made by Donald Trump earlier this week that the country was open to a ceasefire, informing state media Wednesday morning that the idea was “false and baseless.” Iranian state media has repeated the idea that Iran is “winning” the war, despite the devastation wrecked by American forces.

The campaign has so far cost the lives of more than 2,000 people in Iran, including dozens of political leaders, according to Al Jazeera. At least 13 U.S. soldiers have also been killed in the war, not including the two crew members of an F-15 fighter jet that was downed by Iranian fire earlier Friday. So far, one crew member has been rescued, while the other is still missing. American, Israeli, and Iranian forces are rushing to locate the ejected soldier, reported Axios.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted Monday that the conflict would be resolved in the coming weeks, and that the war itself would not take longer than four to six weeks (the conflict is currently in its fifth week). Military officials have not agreed with that estimate, predicting that the war could instead rage for months or even years.

Donald Trump’s so-called fraud crackdown will soon be coming to a (Democrat-led) state near you.

On Friday, the president celebrated the beginning of the crackdown, claiming that fraud is being committed “primarily in those Blue States where CROOKED DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS, like those in California, Illinois, Minnesota (Somalia beware!), Maine, New York, and many others, have had a ‘free for all.’”

Trump added that Vice President JD Vance would become America’s “FRAUD CZAR,” a title that sounds amusingly like Vance is being tapped to commit fraud.

A day earlier, the Justice Department arrested eight people in California allegedly involved in health care fraud schemes netting more than $50 million.

Most of the California fraud consists of hospice centers allegedly filing false Medicare claims to receive federal funds for patients who did not need them. Hospice centers located in Artesia, Glendale, Tarzana, and Simi Valley—all cities and suburbs surrounding Los Angeles—were caught up in the DOJ raid.

The most egregious alleged fraudster is the owner of an Artesia hospice center who paid middlemen to refer fake hospice patients to her. The DOJ claims she submitted more than $9 million in fake Medicare claims and was paid over $8.5 million, and that one couple at the center said they were told they could receive $300 a month each if they signed up for hospice care, though neither needed it.

Two additional detainees are charged with defrauding a California labor union out of health care money, and a final person is accused of forging immigration-related medical documents.

The Trump administration enjoys singling out California when discussing nationwide fraud, frequently equating the alleged fraud with its Democrat leadership, personified by Governor Gavin Newsom (notably not a fan of the president).

Newsom, for his part, signed a law in 2021 that paused new hospice licenses over fraud concerns. He said his state has been cracking down on hospice fraud ever since, rescinding over 280 hospice licenses in two years and investigating 300 further medical centers.

“Glad the federal government is finally stepping up to do their part,” Newsom wrote on X.

Trump has made tackling Social Security and Medicare fraud a focus of his administration, which is great in theory. But the government has not produced many notable results yet, and we are yet to see whether the allegations into these eight Californians will hold up in a legal sense. Trump’s Department of Justice has had an incredible capacity to lie and face-plant in court, perhaps more so than any former iteration of the department.

And of course, the great irony is that there are many instances of massive, provable fraud taking place in Trump’s own Cabinet. The president also likes to pardon and drop investigations into convicted fraudsters who have pledged fealty to him.

James Fishback—the right-wing Groyper currently sitting near the bottom of Florida’s list of GOP gubernatorial candidates—told a Black man he should be “lynched” when asked about allegations he dated an underage girl.

“So Mr. Fishback, what’s with you smashing a 16- or 17-year-old, can you answer about what’s going on with that?” influencer Tajy TV asked Fishback at an event, surrounded by a crowd of supporters, camera in hand.

“What are you talking about?” Fishback responded.

Tajy TV then goes on to reference allegations that Fishback had a romantic relationship with Keinah Fort in 2022, when she was 17 and he was 27. Fishback called the allegations “completely false.”

Tajy TV then moved on to graphically describing Fishback and Fort having sex, setting Fishback and the crowd off. “Why haven’t I been arrested?” Fishback said, not exactly denying the accusations. “You should be lynched. You should be lynched for talking about me like that.”

“I should be lynched?” said Tajy TV.

“Yes, you should be lynched.”

Then Tajy yelled to “lynch all pedophiles,” which Fishback awkwardly agreed with. This brain-dead interaction is just one of Fishback’s many instances of using this shock-and-awe bigotry to try to build momentum among the Nick Fuentes–adjacent crowd. He has frequently used George Floyd as a meme, called GOP front-runner Byron Donalds (who is also Black) “Byrone,” and made tongue-in-cheek references to Italian fascist Benito Mussolini. Disgusting comments like this are all Fishback really has going for him.