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Trump Wants to Sue Trevor Noah for Defamation. Here's His Problem
The law is clear, says law professor and Zeteo contributor Kim Wehle. The president would need to prove “actual malice” on the part of the comedian... plus comedy is protected by the First Amendment.
Trumpâs U.S. Attorney Sparks MAGA Backlash After Threat to Gun Owners
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirroâs antiâSecond Amendment declaration has left the Trump administrationâs own base outraged.âYou bring a gun into the District [of Columbia], you mark my words: Youâre going to jail. I donât care if you have a license in another district, and I donât care if youâre a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else,â Pirro said on Monday, flying in the face of years of gun rights activism from Republicans and organizations like the NRA. âYou bring a gun into this district, count on going to jail and hope you get your gun back. And that makes all the difference.âPirro: "You bring a gun into the District, you mark my words, you're going to jail. I don't care if you have a license in another district and I don't care if you're a law abiding law owner somewhere else. You bring a gun into this District, count on going to jail and hope you⌠pic.twitter.com/tiZ6PwtA1iâ Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 2, 2026Pirroâs statement caused a flurry of backlash from the right, as registered gun owners in America are over two times as likely to vote for Republicans.âI bring a gun into the district every week, @USAttyPirro. I have a license in Florida and DC to carry. And I will continue to carry to protect myself and others,â GOP Representative Greg Steube wrote on X. âCome and Take it!ââJeanine Pirro threatening to arrest people for carrying in DC, even if they are law-abiding and licensed, shows how broken and out of touch these gun laws are. Unacceptable and intolerable comments by a sitting US attorney,â the National Association for Gun Rights wrote on X. âThis is why we need Real Constitutional Carry nationwide. Bureaucrats act like the 2A does not exist and brag about jailing people for exercising their rights.âThe blowback continued. âConcealed Carry Permit holders are statistically some of the most law abiding citizens in societyâeven more law abiding than police,â Gun Owners of America commented. âWe ARE NOT the problem.â Pirroâs comments are particularly confusing due to her recent support for less restrictive gun laws in the district. Just last summer, the Trump administration attempted to loosen concealed carry laws. And in December, the DOJ sued the D.C. government on the grounds that its gun restrictions violated the very Second Amendment Pirro is now attacking. âThe GOP Leadership is doing everything it can to keep second amendment voters from showing up in November,â said conservative commentator Erick Erickson.
Trump Suddenly Brings Back His Feud With Harvard in Crazed Rant
Donald Trump is now demanding $1 billion from Harvard after The New York Times reported heâd backed down from a request for the university to pay his administration off.For a moment, it appeared that Trumpâs extortion scheme had failed at Harvard. Six other elite schools agreed last year to settle civil rights investigations and regain federal funding by adopting Trumpâs authoritarian âcompactâ on school policy and by signing checks that amounted to millions of dollars to the U.S. Treasury. Harvard, however, refused to settle, though it has faced a whopping 13 investigations by 10 federal agencies in the past year alone. Just hours after the Times reported that anonymous Trump officials and Harvard officials had both quietly accepted that the Ivy League institution wouldnât pay the presidentâs ransom, Trump attacked Harvard and the Timesâand issued a furious new demand. âStrongly Antisemitic Harvard University has been feeding a lot of ânonsenseâ to The Failing New York Times,â Trump wrote in a lengthy post late Monday night. âHarvard has been, for a long time, behaving very badly!âThis should be a Criminal, not Civil, event, and Harvard will have to live with the consequences of their wrongdoings,â Trump wrote, adding: âWe are now seeking One Billion Dollars in damages, and want nothing further to do, into the future, with Harvard University.âIn a second post, Trump tried to dictate corrections to the original Times story.âThe Failing New York Times story was completely wrong concerning Harvard University. I hereby demand that the morons that run (into the ground!) the Timesâ change their story, immediately,â he wrote. He posted yet again Tuesday morning, clearly frustrated that his changes had not been immediately adopted. âWhy hasnât the Fake News New York Times adjusted its phony article on the corruption and antisemitism which has taken place at Harvard,â he wrote. âThey never call for facts, or factchecks, because the Timesâ is a corrupt, unprincipled, and pathetic vehicle of the Left.â
Trump's Kennedy Center Experiment Fails Spectacularly
Top Trump Official Insists Itâs âNot a Crime to Partyâ With Epstein
The Trump administration is running out of excuses to explain away the presidentâs relationship with deceased child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News Monday evening that pretty much everyone who partied with the âpedophile islandâ operator was off the hook. But in a pitiful attempt to brush off public backlash to the thousands of times that Donald Trumpâs name was mentioned in the Justice Departmentâs latest release of the Epstein files, Blanche practically resorted to gaslighting.âIs there any chance that any of these individuals who partied with Epstein and engaged with relations with minors will be prosecuted?â asked host Laura Ingraham.âIâll never say no,â Blanche said. âAnd we will always investigate evidence of misconduct.âBut as you know, it is not a crime to party with Mr. Epstein. Itâs not a crime to email with Mr. Epstein. Some of these men may have done horrible things, and if we have evidence that allows us to prosecute them, you better believe we will. But itâs also the kind of thing that the American people need to understand, that it isnât a crime to party with Mr. Epstein.â âIt didnât look like that was all that was going on in some of those photos,â pressed Ingraham. âI mean, if the photos could speak, some of them look pretty bad.ââThatâs right, and unfortunately photos canât speak, and so we need witnesses,â Blanche responded.Trump was mentioned more than 38,000 times in the latest batch of Epstein files, according to a New York Times review of the DOJâs Friday document dump, which consisted of some three million previously unseen pages.All in all, Trump was flagged in more than 5,300 files in the document cache, according to the Times.On Sunday, Blanche told CNNâs State of the Union that the DOJ reviewed the files last summer but did not find credible evidence against the president warranting further investigation.
Epstein BOMBSHELL Reveals DISASTER For Trump
Graham Platner Isnât Just Surviving. Heâs Leading.
After nearly two months of post-Thanksgiving semi-hibernation, Maineâs Senate race is waking up. Although Democratic primary voters wonât head to the polls until June to decide who will take on longtime GOP incumbent Susan Collins, Graham Platner, the progressive populist oyster farmer, resumed the town hall meetings that made him a sensation last summer and fall, while the stateâs governor, the establishment-backed Janet Mills, has begun more actively campaigning than she had at any point last year. In October, the primary seemed like it was over just as it was beginning. Platner was buried then in a wave of opposition research, namely involving revelations of his racist and sexist Reddit posts and a tattoo he had unknowingly gotten of a Nazi symbol. How could he possibly take down a popular sitting governor now? But the outsider candidate has remained remarkably resilient: He has continued to lead in many polls.Mills, meanwhile, has to run a different campaign than she and her alliesâincluding the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which is backing herâprobably thought necessary when the oppo started raining down in the fall. While Platner has survived his scandals without seemingly losing much, if any, support, Mills is now running from behind and has to answer deep, lingering concerns about her ageâ78âand ties to a Democratic establishment many voters view with suspicion. Not only that, but Mills has to deal with Collins, who is back to her old tricks. Last week, the senator announced that she had struck a deal with the Trump administration for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officialsâthen busily raiding immigrant communities throughout Maineâto leave the state and halt âOperation Catch of the Day.â It was a classic maneuver from Collins, who has spent most of the last decade in an elaborate dance with Trump, sometimes pulling close and sometimes pushing away. And the implied message was hardly subtle: Collins was telling voters that sheânot Platner or Millsâcould dictate just how badly the Trump administration would affect their lives. Mills in particular is vulnerable to that message. As governor, her strongest argument against both Platner and Collins is that she has the experience to handle whatever the administration will throw at the state for the final two years of Trumpâs term. (Mills, given her age, isnât expected to serve a second term, though who knowsâshe would hardly be the first Democratic senator to remain in office into their eighties.) But the race has not gone according to script. Indeed, there are signs that her experience is a negative for many voters: It makes her the representative of a political establishment that many in the state distrust. Itâs easy to see why Mills was pushed into the race. Sheâs reasonably popular, has high name recognition, and has polled fairly well in head-to-head races against Collins in the past. But her campaign has not gotten off to the start that many intended. Mills announced her candidacy on October 14. Three days later, stories started emerging about Platnerâs Reddit history, which included posts in which he said Black people were bad tippers, called âallâ cops âbastards,â and said victims of sexual assault and rape should âtake some responsibility for themselves.â On October 21, Platner revealedâperhaps getting ahead of more opposition researchâthat he had unknowingly gotten a âTotenkopf,â a Nazi symbol, tattooed on his chest decades earlier. (A few days later, Platner had the tattoo covered with a new tattoo.) There was clearly a hope among establishment Democrats that Platner would drop out of the race, leaving Mills as the only viable contender. But Platner didnât duck the accusations; he apologized and addressed them head-on both in the media and in several well-attended town halls throughout the state. It seems to have worked: Platner, in most polls, shows a slight advantage over Mills and in some surveys is much higher. One of those surveys, conducted by Z to A Research between November 14 and 18, found that both candidates had a one-point advantage in a head-to-head race against Collins: 46 to 45 percent, with 7 percent unsure and 2 percent saying they had no plan to vote. The only difference is in the undecideds: For Platner, 7 percent are unsure and 2 percent say they had no plan to vote; for Mills, those figures are 5 percent and 3 percent, respectively. That figure is good news for Platner: One of Millsâs most important arguments to voters is that she is the more âelectable candidate.â Thereâs little reason, either from this poll or several others, to suggest she has a huge advantage there. Of course, it may not matter. The same pollâfunded by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has endorsed Platnerâfound that he had a shocking 20-point lead over Mills, with 55 percent of voters saying they âstrongly supportedâ his candidacy. Only 32 percent said the same about Mills. The same poll found that, though Platner is less well known than Mills, heâs better likedâand that voters seem to like him more the more they get to know him. His favorable numbers are roughly comparable to Millsâsâhe is +48 with Democratic primary voters, and Mills is +49âbut far fewer voters know him: 22 percent have âno opinionâ about him compared to just 12 percent with Mills. Perhaps more surprisingly, 22 percent of Maine voters surveyed have an unfavorable opinion of the current governor and only 15 percent feel the same about the embattled oyster farmer.No surveys of Maineâs Senate race have taken place in 2026, which is understandable given that very little has happened in that election this year. Polling in the wake of the wave of scandals that engulfed Platnerâs campaign in the fall tells a muddled story. Surveys from November onward suggest anything from a Platner landslide to a slight Mills lead (SoCal Strategies had Mills up five points in late October), to a commanding one (PanAtlantic Strategies has Mills with a 10-point lead shortly after Thanksgiving). But a memo put together by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and obtained by The New Republic argues that other recent Platner polls have methodological flaws, such as failing to weight for a likely primary electorate, the pollâs sample size, and the use of paid respondents. A widely circulated Emilyâs List poll, which showed that Platner would lose to Collins, only tested a set of attacks against Platner, not Mills, whom Emilyâs List had endorsed. (The Z to A/PCCC poll found that Platnerâs support went up when negatives were tested on both.)âAll credible polls show that Graham Platner is crushing in the primary and on equal ground in the generalâwith more room to grow against Collins than Mills,â said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. âFor those concerned about negative attacks against Democrats, itâs clear that Millsâ veto of a wealth tax, pro-worker legislation, and mandatory rape kit testing is a political anchor in both the primary and general because it hurts the lives of voters in a kitchen-table way.â Maine might be the most important Senate race in 2026, given that a Republican presidential candidate hasnât carried the state since 1988âand yet Collins has represented it since 1997. Many pundits outside the state, including me, wrote off Platner after his scandal-plagued October, but itâs increasingly clear that heâs the front-runner.
Two CBP Agents Identified in Alex Pretti Shooting
The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez.