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Tim Kaine, the lead sponsor of the blocked resolution, said the vote was held to “appease [Trump’s] temper tantrum.”

Two filings in separate slush fund cases last week threaten to reignite the political firestorm in Congress over the fund and its prospective use to handsomely reward January 6 offenders.In a case challenging the fund brought in the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge Leonie Brinkema had handed the Justice Department a clean way to close out Floyd v. Department of Justice, the case challenging Trump’s $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund.Without exactly ordering Justice to do anything, Brinkema offered the department an off-ramp: If acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr., and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent file a declaration, under penalty of perjury, stating that they will not take any action to create or operate the fund and that it “will not proceed in any manner, or under any name,” it would, in her words, “avoid any further litigation in this civil action.”The alternative, Brinkema made clear, was that she would issue a scheduling order and require DOJ to answer the complaint by July 17.DOJ filed its response to the offer last Friday. Rather than submit the requested declaration, DOJ argued that the declarations were “unnecessary” in light of Blanche’s unsworn verbal assurances in Congress that the DOJ won’t go forward with the fund. The department argued those words sufficed to moot the case and that Brinkema’s request “implicates serious separation of powers concerns.”That separation of powers argument is the filing’s most blustering move, and its weakest. DOJ leans on so-called “apex doctrine” cases holding that senior officials shouldn’t get dragged into litigation when their testimony is available through other channels. That doctrine is meant to keep litigants from harassing busy executives over matters peripheral to their actual duties. It’s not a real separation of powers principle.But Blanche and Woodward aren’t peripheral here. Woodward signed the settlement agreement himself, an unusual move clearly meant to impress Trump, and Blanche put his own name on the filings defending it. Having made themselves the line attorneys on this deal, they can hardly now claim their testimony is marginal.Moreover, DOJ’s obstreperous response keeps the focus on the question it doesn’t want to answer rather than the question it does. Although Brinkema entered a preliminary injunction not long after receiving the complaint, the five plaintiffs have an uphill road to climb to establish standing. The plaintiffs are two individuals, a city (New Haven), and two public-interest organizations. They’ve been harmed by the administration’s zealous immigration initiative, but their claims of individualized injury based on the slush fund itself are tenuous.On the other hand, the administration has a weak hand to play for the mootness argument. Their adamant, repeated contention is that Blanche’s unsworn verbal assurances that the DOJ won’t go forward with the fund suffice to moot the case. Under any conventional mootness analysis, this isn’t a moot settlement agreement. The test is whether the defendant has shown it is “absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur.” And the burden falls on the party asserting mootness and is especially “heavy” if based on voluntary dismissal, as it was here.Blanche’s unsworn assurances, coupled with the refusal to formalize them, don’t begin to cut it legally. For starters, Blanche already has made clear that Trump’s every wish is his command. And Trump continues to insist that he favors the fund: He recently told Meet the Press that “if it was up to me, I’d pay them the kind of money that they deserve.”Trump here isn’t simply the final authority. He is also the beneficiary of a supposed settlement agreement, which is akin to a contract. That makes it his prerogative to enforce. Until Trump, the actual beneficiary of the settlement, agrees to rescind it, DOJ’s say-so doesn’t make the fund disappear as a legal matter.More fundamentally, the legal question on the table is not what Blanche said to Congress. It’s whether those words, combined with DOJ’s adamant refusal to put anything in writing, are enough to make the settlement agreement moot as a matter of law. Brinkema is well within her rights to conclude they are not. The same day DOJ filed its response to her, a group of 35 retired federal judges filed a brief replying to a brief Trump had filed for the plaintiffs in the case, including his sons and companies.That case sits before Judge Kathleen Williams in the Southern District of Florida, where Trump’s original lawsuit against the IRS was dismissed in May after a “settlement” that conjured the Anti-Weaponization Fund into existence.The 35 judges’ reply brief treats DOJ’s abandonment of the fund not as evidence the dispute is over, but as fresh proof that it was never real to begin with. As they put it, the fact that one “side” of the supposed dispute could unilaterally scrap a $1.776 billion settlement term without so much as a revised written agreement makes it clear the parties colluded, in which case a federal court can’t hear it. In other words: The very retreat DOJ is offering Brinkema as proof of mootness, retired judges in Florida are offering Williams as proof of collusion.Far worse for DOJ and Trump’s lawyers, Williams is weighing whether both sides defrauded her with the contrived filing and settlement, a finding that could brand the agreement bogus and expose the lawyers who signed it to sanctions. She hasn’t ruled yet, and she may stop well short of taking on such a bitter fight, with the Eleventh Circuit in a position to countermand her. But the question is now squarely hers to answer.Two weeks ago, in a separate filing opposing the plaintiffs’ TRO motion, DOJ made essentially this same mootness case on the same Blanche testimony, and I wrote at the time that the argument was headed straight into a buzzsaw. Its strategy since has been to tell Congress and the courts “no worries” because the fund is dead. But that’s far from true as a legal matter, and it’s also no response to the possible fraud on the court that the lawyers perpetrated.The fund collapsed last month under bipartisan political pressure, after Republican senators balked at funding compensation for people who assaulted police officers on January 6. Enough of them seemed willing to take Blanche’s word for it and drop the subject. But if the courts reject DOJ’s mootness claim, that reopens exactly the controversy Blanche’s testimony was supposed to close. The fund would be undead, again the living nightmare that Republicans and the administration thought they had buried.

The House Speaker wants Dems. to take note of the international World Cup fans going to Buc-ee’s, Waffle House, and the Everglades this summer.

The Supreme Court and Donald Trump joined forces to yet again betray a spineless RFK Jr. and the MAHA movement by boosting herbicide.

The former Biden official is joining with a GOP former governor to help transition America’s workforce.

The most lasting legacy of the US-Iran war in the Gulf may be renewed tensions between Sunni and Shiite populations.

Some are calling it the Democratic Tea Party. While establishment Democrats are still downplaying Tuesday night’s primary wins by democratic socialists, progressives say that the New York victories of Claire Valdez, Brad Lander, and Darializa Avila Chevalier represent a new era in Democratic politics.“I think this is a preview for the national Democratic Party,” said Usamah Andrabi, the communications director for Justice Democrats, a progressive group that endorsed Valdez in New York’s 7th district and Avila Chevalier in New York’s 13th. “Democratic leadership needs to wake up to the fact that they are clearly out of step with their most active, vocal, and energized base of voters.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, on the other hand, spent Wednesday trying to downplay the fact that candidates endorsed by democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani beat the ones Jeffries had endorsed.“The mayor and I agree to strongly disagree about some of his endorsements, and he’s got work to do in terms of the conversations that he’s going to have with members of Congress moving forward,” Jeffries told reporters on the Hill on Wednesday.Jeffries backed incumbent Representatives Adriano Espaillat and Dan Goldman, who lost to Avila Chevalier and Lander, respectively.The results are arguably personal for Jeffries: On Tuesday night, a group of DSA members chanted “You’re next,” threatening to run a socialist against him in 2028. In fact, the socialist organization almost challenged Jeffries this cycle, but Mamdani said that trying to unseat Jeffries would be a distraction from DSA’s “affordability agenda.”When asked if he was concerned about being unseated in 2028, Jeffries said: “When you ask me a serious question, I’ll give you a serious answer.”Representative Rashida Tlaib, a democratic socialist herself, told The New Republic that she’s looking forward to having new allies in Congress. “I welcome them, and I’m looking forward to working with them to get Medicare for All passed, to try to get clean water and clean air for our families,” she said. “I’m proud of them,” she added. Other Democrats’ reactions might best be described as circumspect. Representative Ro Khanna, a progressive who didn’t endorse in the New York races, gave an optimistic, if vague, statement to The New Republic when asked about the results. “We need a bold progressive vision for 2026 and 2028 and a new deal for our time,” he wrote in a message.The jury is still out on whether Tuesday’s results are isolated to New York or indicative of a broader shift in the Democratic Party. Progressive strategists are hoping it’s the latter.“I think this meaningfully advances an entire progressive agenda,” said Andrabi, pointing to how the soon-to-be House members could push for Medicare for All and block military funding to Israel.“New York City Democratic primaries are a specific thing in that New York DSA has an incredibly strong ground game, Zohran Mamdani is incredibly popular, and it’s a very blue area,” Ryan O’Donnell, the executive director of Data for Progress, admitted. “But I think there’s also a lot of things that can be extrapolated nationwide.”O’Donnell cited Data for Progress polls that found that voters see candidates who don’t stand up to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, as untrustworthy on other issues and that democratic socialist policies like Mamdani’s have nationwide appeal.He shared Andrabi’s optimism that these victories would push the direction of the party: “When you see victories as large as these, and when you grow your numbers in Congress, it tends to change parts of the party more broadly.”

President Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair was off to a rocky start.Dozens of attendees Wednesday were seen flocking toward the exits in the middle of Trump’s address, which was meant to kick-start the two-week event.Crowds flock towards the exit in the middle of Trump's speech. pic.twitter.com/bM3DPhsM4M— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) June 25, 2026Rather than celebrating America’s 250th anniversary during his speech, Trump chose to focus on the last two years of his disastrous presidency, the BBC reported. Within half an hour of the president beginning to speak, the crowd had thinned out significantly, according to The Bulwark’s Jared Poland. And one person was even spotted sleeping. Trump’s snooze-worthy speech comes after several musical performers pulled out—leaving FBI Director Kash Patel’s country singer girlfriend with a great new gig. Trump’s kick-off event also featured several military flyovers and music provided by the U.S. Army Band Downrange. The president delivered a brief, albeit highly partisan address, which finished after just 30 minutes.