Trump Judges Refuse to Rehear Lawsuit That Landed Him $1 Million Fine

A federal appeals court tossed a chance Tuesday to rehear Donald Trump’s mega-lawsuit against his perceived political enemies.

Trump’s 2022 suit targeted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey (amongst others), claiming that they had participated in a broad racketeering conspiracy to create false allegations that his 2016 presidential campaign was tied to Russia. A district court dismissed the case in January 2023.

But the frivolous legal attack wasn’t just struck down in court—it also netted Trump and his personal attorney, Alina Habba, a nearly $1 million sanction. In November, Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge William Pryor Jr. upheld the fine and noted that “many of Trump’s and Habba’s legal arguments were indeed frivolous,” echoing a lower court’s findings that Trump had made a “malicious prosecution claim without a prosecution” and a “trade secret claim without a trade secret.”

It’s been half a year since then, and on Tuesday, the Eleventh Circuit declined another opportunity to rehear Trump’s case.

Six of the 12 judges on the panel were Trump appointees. None of them sought a vote to rehear the case.

The next stop on this component of Trump’s retribution campaign would be the Supreme Court, if Trump intends to push the legal case to its very end. It’s unclear how the nation’s highest judiciary would vote, though in the last handful of weeks the court has made some wildly controversial decisions related to gerrymandering and voting rights that lawmakers, political commentators, and even members of the court have argued placed Trump’s interests above the parameters of the law.

The head of the Food and Drug Administration, Marty Makary, resigned Tuesday, becoming the latest Cabinet member to leave the Trump administration.

Makary is resigning from the agency after clashing with President Trump over vaping and other policy decisions, and his possible firing was reported last week by The Wall Street Journal. Trump was reportedly upset that Makary wouldn’t approve menthol, mango, and blueberry vape flavors from Glas because they would appeal to young, underage users. Trump promised to “save vaping” on the 2024 campaign trail.

Trump refused to say whether he fired Makary Tuesday, telling reporters on the White House lawn, “I don’t want to say, but Marty’s a great guy.

“He’s a friend of mine, he’s a wonderful man, and he’s going to be off, and the assistant, the deputy, is taking over temporarily, until we find—everybody wants that job. It’s a very important job. Marty’s a terrific guy, but he’s going to go on and he’s going to lead a good life,” Trump said. “He was having some difficulty. You know he’s a great doctor, and he was having some difficulty, but he’s gonna go on and he’s gonna do well. Everybody wants that job. Everybody.”

Makary was also criticized privately by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who questioned his management skills and was considering scaling back his role last year.

Under Makary, the FDA has faced heavy criticism for seemingly embracing anti-vaccination policies, and many staffers have left the agency or been laid off. The turmoil at the agency has alarmed pharmaceutical executives, public health experts, and medical professionals.

Trump has shaken up health care positions in his administration lately, naming former deputy surgeon general Erica Schwartz to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and nominating Fox News contributor Dr. Nicole Saphier as surgeon general last month.

Schwartz appears to be a conventional choice, while Saphier appears to fit the conservative MAGA mindset. Which direction will Trump go in for his next FDA commissioner?

This story has been updated.

A U.S. citizen is suing the Department of Homeland Security after ICE arrested him twice last year. ICE just arrested him a third time.

In a court filing last week, Leo Garcia Venegas said that on the morning of May 2, an unmarked SUV blocked him in his driveway at his home in Silverhill, Alabama. Before Venegas could produce his REAL ID proving his citizenship, two ICE agents pulled him out of the truck he was driving and arrested him. In the filing, Venegas said he was driving his brother’s truck because his broke down.

When ICE approached the truck, Venegas, remembering his previous arrests, tried to quickly prove that he’s a citizen, but the agents didn’t give him a chance even though he was holding his ID.

“Still without asking me a single question or issuing any lawful commands, the officers pulled me out of my car, tackled me to the ground, and shackled me around both my arms and legs,” Venegas said in a sworn declaration. “The officers did not listen when I said I was a citizen and they showed no interest in looking at my Alabama Star ID, even though it is a REAL ID issued only to people who can prove their lawful status.”

Venegas’s declaration said that he was shackled for 15 minutes while the agents digitally verified his identity, but he said they didn’t ask him any questions.

“At no point prior to physically detaining me did the officers ask me any questions about my identity, my citizenship, or my immigration status,” his court filing said. “They did not ask me to step out of the car. They did not even look at my ID before using physical force against me even though I had it in my hand.”

Venegas is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against DHS over their immigration enforcement policies, and he was detained twice last year in raids on construction sites he was working at, despite having his REAL ID both times. That may be on purpose, as a DHS official said in a declaration as part of Vargas’s lawsuit that “REAL ID can be unreliable to confirm U.S. citizenship.”

Bizarrely, DHS denies detaining Venegas, saying in a statement that “Leonardo Garcia Venegas was NOT detained last week. On Saturday, May 2, ICE conducted a routine vehicle stop on a car registered to an illegal alien. After Venegas’ identity was established, he was released.”

In October, a ProPublica investigation found that ICE had detained at least 170 U.S. citizens in raids or at protests, in some cases blatantly violating the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution by using excessive force and detaining people without probable cause. The agency has also been caught lying about the U.S. citizens they’ve detained and how they have treated them. Venegas alone has had three bad interactions with ICE. How many others are suffering?

Not even the highest-ranking military officer in the U.S. can confidently support President Trump’s claims that the joint U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is over, let alone that the United States is winning.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were questioned about their half a trillion dollar funding request for the Iran war at a Senate Appropriations hearing on Tuesday, two weeks after Trump told Congress that the conflict was “terminated.”

“General Caine, the president has claimed on several occasions over the past couple of months that the war is over, the conflict has been concluded. What were the goals of the U.S. conflict in Iran, and have we achieved them?” Senator Dick Durbin asked.

The general couldn’t offer a straight answer.

“Well, sir, I’m gonna be mindful of my need to maintain trust with a variety of stakeholders in the job that I’m in, which includes you, the American people, the Joint Force, and the president.… Only our political and civilian leaders set the national military objectives,” Caine replied, refusing to answer the question directly. “I’ll defer to the secretary and the president on other strategic objectives, but that’s what we’ve been focused on, sir.”

“Do you feel that the situation in the Strait of Hormuz indicates a victory on our side?” Durbin continued.

Caine once again deferred to the president, refusing to call upon his years of military expertise to give a simple judgment call on a question the entire world knows the answer to.

“Sir, only political leaders decide victory or defeat, and I’ll leave it to them to opine on that. They are the ones who invoke or stop the use of military force.”

“Well, let me put it in strictly military terms,” Durbin said. “Can you explain to the American people, who are facing these gasoline and diesel oil prices, what is going on in the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran—which was attacked by us—seemingly has the Strait of Hormuz at a standstill, with 1,500 tankers waiting for either permission or peaceful circumstances to navigate?”

“Militarily, it’s a case where Iran is choosing to hold the world’s economy hostage through their use of military power across their southern flank,” Caine replied. “And so I would encourage Iran to reconsider that. And I would encourage those allies and partners who have an opportunity to come assist with that tactical problem to do so.”

That answer certainly does not indicate victory.

The FBI is conducting loyalty tests to determine who belongs in the bureau’s rank and file, according to the last FBI chief.

Brian Driscoll was a decorated FBI agent with 18 years at the agency under his belt before he was offered the bureau’s number two job at the beginning of Donald Trump’s second term. A clerical error would ultimately place Driscoll at the top of the agency, making him the bureau’s acting director—an oversight that wasn’t corrected until the Senate confirmed Kash Patel at the end of February.

Driscoll wasn’t keen to take the reins of the FBI but told CNN Tuesday that he agreed to take the job after he was informed it was between him and a political appointee.

Yet as the weeks bore on, the questions he fielded from incoming Trump officials began to concern him. They inquired about his political affiliations, who he voted for, when he began supporting Trump, and if he supported a Democrat in recent elections.

Patel was more blunt. The onboarding wouldn’t be an issue so long as Driscoll wasn’t active on social media, didn’t donate to the Democratic Party, and didn’t vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, Driscoll recalled Patel saying.

“It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up,” Driscoll told CNN.

Driscoll met with Patel after the latter had been confirmed. Patel flatly said that “the FBI tried to put the president in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it,” Driscoll recalled.

The issue came to a head two weeks after Trump’s inauguration. When the White House demanded the names of some 6,000 bureau staff who were involved in the January 6 probe, Driscoll refused, sparking accusations from then–Justice Department official Emil Bove that there was “insubordination” among the FBI’s leadership.

Driscoll said that when he confronted Bove about the need for a list, Bove blamed it on “cultural rot in the FBI.”

“I was telling them this is wrong,” Driscoll told CNN.

Driscoll was fired months later, in August, but the purge hasn’t quieted down for those left behind at the bureau. The agency, according to Driscoll, is still focused on punishing or removing any FBI agents who could be perceived as threats to the president’s agenda, at the White House’s behest. That includes sacking employees who were involved in investigating the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, as well as employees involved in Trump’s classified documents probe.

Driscoll is one of three former senior FBI agents who have sued the Trump administration for firing them as part of a “campaign of retribution.” That lawsuit is ongoing.

Senator Lindsey Graham blew up Tuesday about Donald Trump’s disastrous negotiations with Iran—and made a move at undermining their mediator.

During a meeting of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee regarding the Pentagon’s outrageous $1.5 trillion dollar budget request, Graham became visibly frustrated when speaking about a CBS News report from the day before that Pakistan had quietly allowed Iranian aircraft to park at its military bases, potentially to shield them from U.S. airstrikes.

Graham pressed the Joint Chiefs of Staff chair, General Dan Caine, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on whether they believed that was consistent with Pakistan’s role as a mediator between the U.S. and Iran. Both military leaders refused to weigh in.

“I don’t want to get in the middle of these negotiations—” Hegseth said, and Graham exploded.

“Well, I do! I want to get in the middle of these negotiations!” he said.

“I don’t trust Pakistan as far as I can throw ’em! If they actually do have Iranian aircraft parked in Pakistan bases to protect Iranian military assets, that tells me we should be looking maybe for somebody else to mediate. No wonder this damn thing is going nowhere!”

Graham indicated Monday that his beef with Pakistan was mostly related to his loyalty to Israel. “If this reporting is accurate, it would require a complete reevaluation of the role Pakistan is playing as mediator between Iran, the United States and other parties,” he wrote on X. “Given some of the prior statements by Pakistani defense officials towards Israel, I would not be shocked if this were true.”

It’s not clear what statements he was specifically referring to, but Pakistani officials have strongly condemned Israel’s continued strikes in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied CBS’s reporting in a statement, calling it “misleading and sensationalized.”

“The Iranian aircraft currently parked in Pakistan arrived during the ceasefire period and bear no linkage whatsoever to any military contingency or preservation arrangement,” the statement said. “Assertions suggesting otherwise are speculative, misleading, and entirely detached from the factual context.”

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Asim Munir, the leader of the Pakistani military, have emerged as key negotiators through the extended and tenuous ceasefire. A resolution to the talks remains out of reach, as Trump declared Sunday that the latest terms Iran offered were “TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!”

The Nebraska Senate Democratic primary Tuesday appears tailor-made to confuse voters.

There wasn’t even supposed to be a contest, thanks to independent populist Dan Osborn running for the Senate. The Nebraska Democratic Party planned to endorse his candidacy this year due to his strong performance in 2024, when he came within seven percentage points of defeating incumbent Republican Senator Deb Fischer and outperformed Kamala Harris’s 21-point loss to Donald Trump in the state.

But then 79-year-old pastor William Forbes entered the race. While Forbes is a registered Democrat, he’s voted for Trump three times and attended a Republican training event earlier this year. Nebraska Democrats were understandably worried, so now retired pharmacy tech Cindy Burbank is running against Forbes.

Burbank said that if she wins the primary, she’ll drop out and endorse Osborn so he has a clear field to take on incumbent Republican Senator Pete Ricketts, whose family is worth billions. Not surprisingly, Republicans are crying foul, calling Burbank’s candidacy a coordinated and unfair means to prop up Osborn.

Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen tried to kick Burbank off the ballot in March, but she successfully sued to stay on. Burbank also paid the filing fee for a third-party candidate, Mike Marvin, of the Legal Marijuana NOW Party.

Osborn is an Omaha union leader who became popular during a 77-day strike at a Kellogg’s cereal plant in 2021, catapulting him to fame and his strong showing in 2024. A former registered Democrat, he ran as an independent that year in part due to the party’s struggles to convince voters in the Great Plains, and pledges not to caucus with either party if he wins this time around. He’s behind Ricketts by only one percentage point in recent polling.

“The national Democratic brand is toxic among voters in states like Nebraska in the sense that it’s very much identified with the coastal liberal elites on a whole host of issues,” Mark P. Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, told USA Today. “Nebraska Democrats are adopting this sort of plan B strategy, which is to not run a Democratic candidate at all.”

Will Nebraska voters be able to figure out what’s going on? If Forbes wins the primary, he could siphon away votes from Osborn in November and help Ricketts to victory. If Burbank wins, Nebraska Democrats have to get the word out that she’s supporting Osborn. All of this could easily go wrong.

A watchdog group is suing the Trump administration for allegedly using the president’s “Freedom 250” organization as a vehicle to divert funds to his vanity projects without congressional approval.

On Tuesday, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, filed a lawsuit against the Department of the Interior in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, following unanswered Freedom of Information Act requests filed back in February for records regarding the public funds being used for Freedom 250—the organization overseeing everything from setting up the Grand Prix around the National Mall to Trump’s independence arch. The Department of the Interior never responded to the requests, and now PEER’s lawsuit claims that our money is being used with “with no transparency, no accountability, and no guardrails.”

“America’s 250th anniversary celebration is supposed to be an occasion for strengthening public trust in our democratic institutions, not eroding it,” PEER’s executive director, Tim Whitehouse, said in a statement on Monday. “In contrast, Freedom 250 is a privately managed slush fund.… It epitomizes what is wrong with politics today.”

PEER alleges that the Trump administration is using Freedom 250 to redirect $100 million in taxpayer funds from America 250 without congressional approval, mix private funding and public taxpayer money without oversight, sell “access to President Trump” for up to $2.5 million, solicit foreign donations, and more. PEER also accuses the DOI of pressuring workers to use Freedom 250 branding in their official email sign-offs, which could violate the Hatch Act.

The Trump administration has yet to comment on the lawsuit.

The Supreme Court has cleared the way for Alabama to use a congressional map that disregards one of two majority-Black voting districts in the state—a decision that one justice predicts will cause “chaos” and “confusion.”

All three of the court’s liberal justices dissented against Monday’s order, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned the counterargument. In five concise pages, Sotomayor flamed her conservative colleagues for the ruling, arguing that it was “inappropriate” for the court to alter the state’s voting lines mere days before the primary. She noted that Alabama had already been found to have violated the Fourteenth Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of its Black voters.

“The Court today unceremoniously discards District Court’s meticulously documented and supported discriminatory-intent finding & careful remedial order without any sound basis for doing so and without regard for the confusion that will surely ensue,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, noting that the decision will “cause only confusion as Alabamians begin to vote in the elections scheduled for next week.”

The high court’s order will allow Alabama’s GOP leaders to redraw electoral boundaries, offering a path for the party to eliminate one or both Democratic seats in the House and potentially imperil Democratic Representative Shomari Figures.

The ruling was made possible by the court’s decision to gut the Voting Rights Act late last month.

Black voters in Alabama had fought for years to have their voices heard, navigating the legal system to carve out another Black-majority voting district in the red Southern stronghold.

“We are witnessing a return to Jim Crow. And anybody who is alarmed by these developments—as everybody should be—better be making a plan to vote in November to put an end to this madness while we still can,” NAACP National President Derrick Johnson said in a statement to the Associated Press.

The Pentagon has presented yet another nonsensical price tag for Donald Trump’s reckless war in Iran: $29 billion.

During a hearing at the House Appropriations Subcommittee Tuesday, Undersecretary of Defense Jules Hurst faced a brutal fact-check on the Pentagon’s supposedly $29 billion war.

Late last month, the Pentagon testified that the estimated cost of the war so far was $25 billion. Now Hurst claimed it would cost $24 billion to replace and repair the U.S. munitions stockpile alone.

Hawaii Representative Ed Case pointed to a CSIS report from April 21 that estimated the aggregate unit cost of replacing and repairing seven precision systems to be $25 billion.

“Does that sound about right? I mean, you’re projecting everything at [$23 billion],” Case said.

“That number sounds a little high for me, for that stage of the war,” Hurst said.

Case asked how much it would cost to replace the 39 aircraft that have been reportedly lost since the beginning of the war. Hurst said that “repair on aircraft is something that it is very hard to calculate” but that an estimate had been included in the total cost. One might imagine it would be wildly expensive to “repair” planes that have been completely destroyed.

Hurst said that the estimates for the cost of fuel were included in the Pentagon’s operations and maintenance cost, but not the cost of repairing U.S. military bases in the Middle East.

“We have a lot of unknowns there, we don’t know what our future posture is gonna be. We don’t know how we construct those bases, and we don’t know what part our allies or partners could pay into our MILCON costs,” Hurst said.

At least 16 American installations across eight countries have been struck as part of Iran’s retaliatory strikes against the U.S. and Israeli military onslaught. It was previously reported that 13 U.S. bases in the Middle East had been rendered all but uninhabitable, forcing U.S. military service members to work remotely from hotels and office spaces.