Trump-Appointed Judge Rejects DOJ’s Attempt to Save Steve Bannon

Steve Bannon’s attempt to erase his criminal indictment for refusing to testify before the House’s January 6 committee was shot down by a federal judge appointed by Donald Trump himself. 

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols on Wednesday ruled that Justice Department prosecutors didn’t have a sufficient explanation for why Bannon’s indictment should be dismissed, though he gave the government the ability to submit its request again. In February,  U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said in the court filing requesting the dismissal that it would be in “in the interests of justice,” without elaborating further. 

In April, the Supreme Court threw out a lower court ruling upholding Bannon’s conviction, which opened the door for a trial court to dismiss the case against him. Bannon served a four-month prison sentence in 2024 for defying the House committee’s subpoena, so getting his conviction dismissed would be largely symbolic. 

Bannon fought his 2022 conviction for two years, trying to cite executive privilege as the reason for defying the congressional subpoena, even though he hadn’t been a Trump administration employee for two years prior to the 2021 Capitol insurrection. He was released just in time for the 2024 election but hasn’t been a part of the White House this time around, continuing to be a conservative commentator on his radio show. For now, he still has a criminal record. 

Donald Trump’s so-called renovations to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts have done more harm than good—even his lawyers think so.

In a court filing Wednesday, Ohio Representative Joyce Beatty, the Democratic lawmaker mounting the legal challenge against Trump’s changes to the prestigious theater, said that the president’s lawyers had declined to defend him from accusations that he’d already marred the building.

“Tellingly, Defendants do not dispute that their prior efforts to emblazon the building with President Trump’s name may have irrevocably damaged the center’s historic marble facade,” Beatty’s lawyers wrote.

Trump’s lawyers suggested in a court filing Monday that if the administration was not allowed to proceed with the $250 million renovation project—including tacking the president’s name to the facade—the building would have to be demolished. Beatty’s lawyers called out the thinly-veiled threat.

“In plain English, Defendants have not-so-subtly said: ‘What a nice Kennedy Center you have here. What a shame should something happen to it,’” Beatty’s lawyers wrote. “This is a breathtaking assault on the rule of law. It is delusional. And it must stop.”

In her filing, Beatty’s lawyers also pointed out that Trump’s overhaul of the prestigious national theater has only hastened its demise. The Kennedy Center is on track to fall $100 million short of its profit goal this year, and the shortfall can be directly tied to Trump changing the institution’s name. The center expects to miss its budget target by 70 percent and its contributed revenue by 25 percent, a projected $23 million deficit.

Earlier this month, the board voted again to close the center for two years so that they can renovate the building in Trump’s image. Now, Beatty has asked a federal judge to once again keep Trump’s name off of another man’s memorial.

On Wednesday night, the Department of Education posted a video to X comparing President Trump to Adolf Hitler, and then deleted it following massive backlash. 

The video was a clip from the 2017 film Darkest Hour about Winston Churchill during World War II, and has Gary Oldman playing Churchill shouting, “You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth!” Oldman’s character was talking about Hitler in the scene, but the department’s clip followed the line with techno music over a montage of President Trump, implying that he’s the tiger. The post carried the tagline, “No one does it like us,” followed by a tiger emoji. 

The post quickly attracted attention and a community note explaining the movie reference, with X users mocking and attacking the Department of Education account for comparing Trump to Hitler. One X account, @rokhannacycle, pointed out that the video appeared to be a ripoff of a Tiger Woods video from TikTok. 

The Trump administration regularly posts flippant, offensive memes on its social media accounts, sometimes incorporating white supremacist and white nationalist tropes. The Department of Homeland Security in particular regularly evokes neo-Nazi allusions to push the administration’s mass deportation policy. 

White House staffer Kaelan Dorr has pushed the edgy meme strategy, or “banger memes” as the White House X account describes it. It’s not clear in this case whether the communications staffer behind the post wanted Trump to look cool like a tiger and missed the context, or actually wanted to positively compare the president to Hitler. With this administration, unfortunately either is possible.  

The Trump administration has futilely projected a victory in its trade war with Canada, despite the obvious losses for the American public.

The White House’s official X account shared an image of a bald eagle attacking a Canada goose Wednesday, responding to a statement released the day before claiming that “President Trump is finally ending Canada’s free ride.”

“Canada has been ripping off the United States for decades—and President Donald J. Trump is done letting them get away with it,” the statement continued. The White House derided Canada’s previous trade commitments as “abuse” and insisted that, rather than negotiate, Canada “chose unreasonable demands, walk-backs, and flat-out rejection.”

But that’s not true.

According to Canadian officials, the trade talks collapsed after the Trump administration issued last-minute demands that Canada curtail its culture, asserting that two Quebec laws protecting the region’s use of the French language unfairly infringed upon American industry.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney suspended the talks on Friday, triggering Trump’s 50 percent tariff rate on roughly $28 billion in Canadian exports. Carney, in turn, promised to match the tariffs “dollar for dollar,” with the reciprocal levies expected to begin September 8.

In a powerful speech delivered the following day, Carney referred to the U.S. as untrustworthy and unreliable, informing the Canadian public that the country would need to forge a new path without its longstanding economic alliance with the U.S.

The “new U.S. tariffs are designed to hurt us and divide us,” Carney said. “They’re a miscalculation.”

The two nations had spent months drafting a suitable trade agreement—talks that, according to Trump, were fruitful. Last week, Trump told reporters that the countries had reached a deal and were fine-tuning some details. On Friday, hours before Trump’s midnight tariff deadline, the president insisted again that he believed a deal could be reached.

Canadian officials did not paint the same picture. Quebec Premier Christine Fréchette told reporters Saturday that the U.S. had approached a “red line” with its demands.

“Our culture, our language, is central to our identity, and it is important to exclude that from the negotiating table,” Fréchette said, according to The Montreal Gazette.“Even though we are threatened with different tariffs, it won’t change. We will stay the way we are.”

Carney, similarly, said that the U.S. had “asked too much.”

Trump, for his part, appeared not to have even realized he ruined the talks. When asked Tuesday about the late-stage demands blowing up the deal, the president appeared to have no memory of the events.

“That sounds like me,” he said, adding, “They have to pay a fair amount. And if they don’t pay a fair amount, we won’t make a deal. That’s fine.”

A Chinese hacking operation breached multiple sensitive U.S. government agencies, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

The DOJ, Federal Reserve, Senate, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, NASA, and National Institutes ⁠of Health were among the targets of the operation. The cyber-espionage campaign also targeted defense contractors, hospitals, power companies, and telecommunications providers.

The China-based Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Company was responsible for the hacks, according to the DOJ, which said its clients include China’s military, civilian intelligence agency, and its Ministry of State Security. According to an affidavit, the hacks have been taking place since at least 2018. Domains used by two hacking platforms, QScan and QTRouter, were seized by U.S. authorities this time around.

President Trump has not commented on the DOJ’s announcement, even though he has been posting on his Truth Social account all day. Chinese hackers have long targeted U.S. federal agencies and even went after now–Attorney General Todd Blanche in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.

Trump attacked China in a speech to the American people last month, claiming that it interfered in the 2020 election, but later backtracked and downplayed his own accusations. This latest news appears to be a more serious attack on the U.S. government and American interests. Will Trump give it the appropriate level of concern?