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The move was in reaction to the publication’s reporting on Trump's Qatari-gifted Air Force One.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is begging a federal judge to let him off the hook for a $1,000-a-day fine. This fine is Blanche’s latest setback in a series of back-and-forths surrounding a lawsuit brought against him by journalist Katie Phang, who has accused the Department of Justice of failing to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Phang sued the DOJ in April for a “brazen, shocking, and ongoing violation” of the law, which President Donald Trump reluctantly signed in November.Despite the Justice Department’s repeated assertions that the investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and subsequent release of files has been conducted with “an unprecedented commitment to transparency,” millions of files are still either missing or redacted. In June, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered Blanche to produce previously redacted materials from the Epstein files, including FBI notes from interviews with a woman alleging that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1980s when she was 13 years old, as well as email exchanges with Epstein regarding a “torture video” and the identities of Epstein’s potential co-conspirators. Sullivan gave Blanche until July 2 to produce the materials. When the acting attorney general failed to do so, Phang suggested a daily $1,000 fine until he complied. Blanche lashed out Monday in a melodramatic brief attacking Phang’s argument as “outlandish,” “absurd,” and “hyperbolic rhetoric seeking to impose punitive sanctions” on the Department of Justice. He called her lawsuit “sensational and unsubstantiated,” despite the reality that her entire argument is based on cold, hard facts.Phang’s ongoing lawsuit is yet another headache for Blanche, whose scheme to secure a permanent promotion to attorney general has not exactly been smooth sailing. After days of tense confirmation hearings in the Senate, an uncomfortable meeting with Epstein survivors, and hundreds of Blanche’s former colleagues opposing his nomination, $1,000 a day just might drive him over the edge.Too bad. Let’s see the money.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned a lower court ruling that freed Columbia student and pro-Palestinian protester Mohsen Mahdawi from ICE custody.A Second Circuit panel, made up of one George W. Bush judge and two Donald Trump first-term appointees, determined that Mahdawi should not have been released from ICE custody in 2025. They argued that the Vermont-based federal judge that made the initial ruling lacked jurisdiction to do so.The panel concluded that only an immigration court could oversee Mahdawi’s detention challenge, as the case was inextricably linked to his deportation suit.“Today’s decision is a grave setback, although I am confident justice will ultimately prevail,” Mahdawi said in a statement provided by the American Civil Liberties Union. “It reflects a dangerous failure under political pressure, one that risks turning the federal courts into instruments of politics rather than guardians of constitutional freedom.”Mahdawi was arrested by masked agents in April 2025 during his scheduled citizenship interview. He later told ABC News that he felt the appointment was a “trap.”His detention was the result of an aggressive pressure campaign fronted by State Secretary Marco Rubio to push the West Bank refugee out of the country. Rubio at one point argued that Mahdawi’s presence in the U.S. could “potentially undermine” U.S. foreign policy on the basis that his pro-Palestinian advocacy could create “adverse foreign policy consequences.”Mahdawi grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, where most of his family remains. He has been outspoken about his experiences growing up in the occupied region, describing the murders of his friends and loved ones by Israeli forces, and the violence he experienced when he was shot in the leg by an Israeli soldier at the age of 15.He co-founded Columbia University’s Palestinian Student Union alongside detained (and freed) peer Mahmoud Khalil, another legal U.S. permanent resident who was shipped to an ICE center in Louisiana last year shortly after being ripped away from his pregnant wife by plainclothes ICE agents. U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford in Vermont, who released Mahdawi after two weeks’ detention last year, ruled at the time that the 35-year-old enjoyed the same First Amendment rights as U.S. citizens. In Trump’s America, that is apparently not the case.“By weakening the First Amendment and creating different tiers of rights for citizens and non-citizens, this ruling hands the government a dangerous power: the power to intimidate, censor, and punish dissent without meaningful restraint,” Mahdawi’s Tuesday statement continued. “But I still have faith that the full court will correct the legal error and restore the constitutional principles that protect all people equally. This struggle continues for Palestine, for dignity and equality everywhere, and for the democratic promise of freedom that must belong to us all; until Palestine is free.”This story has been updated.

Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein may have been acting as a foreign agent for multiple countries, and House Democrats are launching an investigation. Representative Jamie Raskin sent a letter to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Director of National Intelligence nominee Jay Clayton, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday asking for records from the Trump administration on Epstein’s international ties.  “Our examination of available evidence has already revealed damning indications of Mr. Epstein’s activities on behalf of foreign states,” Raskin wrote in the letter, pointing out public evidence of the billionaire’s ties to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Russia, and Israel.  In addition, Epstein “repeatedly capitalized on his long-term friendship with President Donald Trump to sign up business from these and other foreign governments and actors in the aftermath of President Trump’s first election, without ever registering as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA),” Raskin added. “By advocating and facilitating on behalf of foreign countries without filing the mandatory disclosures, Mr. Epstein almost certainly violated FARA. His actions also create serious questions about the extent to which he wielded his ties to President Trump in dealings with foreign governments.”The Department of Justice still has not released 2.5 million files related to Epstein, and Raskin, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, believes that some of them concern his foreign dealings. Raskin also asked in the letter for the DOJ to respond in writing as to whether Epstein was ever investigated for being a foreign agent. “Jeffrey Epstein never registered as a foreign agent. Yet numerous recently released documents now show he acted aggressively on behalf of multiple foreign governments, including several with interests adverse to the United States, in order to influence policies of the first Trump Administration,” the letter states. Trump’s Justice Department has been under fire from Republicans and Democrats alike over its handling of the Epstein files, from its selective redactions to its barely meeting with Epstein’s victims. Investigating Epstein’s foreign ties could reveal more damning decisions from administration officials. 

By Earle J. Fisher This article was originally published by Truthout Tyrin Johnson’s killing is part of a larger militarization unfolding in Memphis, Tennessee, under Trump. I met Tyrin “Ty” Johnson neither through a police report, nor through a press conference, nor through the carefully crafted statements of elected officials or the endless speculation that […]

As the Trump administration carries out its campaign against the International Criminal Court, imposing wide-reaching sanctions on judges, prosecutors and groups who have accused Israel of war crimes in front of the international tribunal, we’re joined by veteran war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody. Brody says that the U.S. government’s rejection of the ICC’s jurisdiction is not about “American sovereignty,” as the Trump administration claims, but about “impunity,” for both U.S. allies, like Israel, and the U.S. itself. “Marco Rubio knows that bombing Iran without Security Council authorization constitutes aggression under the U.N. Charter,” says Brody. “This is an insurance policy against accountability for crimes that the Trump administration is committing in plain sight.” Brody also responds to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s statements that his office may attempt to carry out the ICC arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu when the Israeli prime minister attends the United Nations General Assembly later this year, and to the recent announcement by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega that his country will no longer hold elections, further entrenching the onetime revolutionary’s authoritarian rule.

As the Trump administration carries out its campaign against the International Criminal Court, imposing wide-reaching sanctions on judges, prosecutors and groups who have accused Israel of war crimes in front of the international tribunal, we’re joined by veteran war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody. Brody says that the U.S. government’s rejection of the ICC’s jurisdiction is not about “American sovereignty,” as the Trump administration claims, but about “impunity,” for both U.S. allies, like Israel, and the U.S. itself. “Marco Rubio knows that bombing Iran without Security Council authorization constitutes aggression under the U.N. Charter,” says Brody. “This is an insurance policy against accountability for crimes that the Trump administration is committing in plain sight.” Brody also responds to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s statements that his office may attempt to carry out the ICC arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu when the Israeli prime minister attends the United Nations General Assembly later this year, and to the recent announcement by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega that his country will no longer hold elections, further entrenching the onetime revolutionary’s authoritarian rule.