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The Trump administration’s chief priority for 2026: persecuting the president’s political nemeses.Despite efforts by the judiciary to limit Donald Trump’s revenge quest, Justice Department officials are expected to meet as early as Monday to reignite efforts to investigate and punish government officials who played a role in investigating him prior to his return to the White House.The DOJ staffers will meet under the banner of the “Weaponization Working Group,” an entity that Attorney General Pam Bondi invented mere days after she entered office, reported CNN. The group was designed to challenge former special counsel Jack Smith and his staff, as well as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James. The initiative would also target any officials who attempted to hold Trump accountable in the wake of the January 6, 2021, attack.Some of those efforts may already be a dud, however, thanks to the loud mouths of some of Trump’s own staff: In December, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles fessed to Vanity Fair that the president’s flimsy charges against James were his “one retribution,” an admission that would give James’s legal defense plenty of reason to toss his cases against her for eternity.One official familiar with the administration’s new plan told CNN that the Weaponization Working Group is expected to start meeting “daily,” with the intent of producing results within the next two months.Back in October, Bondi told lawmakers that ending the “weaponization of justice” would be a chief priority for the agency under her stewardship.Justice Department officials declined to provide specifics on the daily meetings but told CNN that the “efforts of the Weaponization Working Group continue.”“The Justice Department is actively looking into the areas outlined in Attorney General Bondi’s Day One memo,” the spokesperson said. “The Weaponization Working Group is diligently working to restore integrity to the Department of Justice and is utilizing resources across the entire agency to fulfill this effort.”

Editor’s Note: Jon Weinstein, a vice president of communications at the National Hockey League, said Gélinas’s reporting was inaccurate and no such restrictions were in place for the Montreal Canadiens.Donald Trump has said his immigration crackdown is targeting the “worst of the worst.” It’s finally clear who he means by that: Canadian professional hockey players.Hockey journalist Luc Gélinas reported that the Montreal Canadiens, who play the Minnesota Wild on Monday night, have been told by management to stay inside their Minneapolis hotel at all times, take the team bus rather than walk to the stadium, and carry passports with them.The cautiousness of the team comes as a result of the Trump administration’s violent immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. Operation Metro Surge has killed two residents and sparked nationwide protests.The Canadiens traveled across the border on Sunday rather than Saturday in order to spend one less night in the United States. They will also wait until Tuesday morning to leave Minneapolis so they can avoid any nighttime disturbances in the city.“Perhaps we shouldn’t be hosting the World Cup and the Olympics,” one Bluesky commenter wryly noted.Hopefully, the Canadiens can forget about ICE when they get on the ice tonight.

Days after the FBI seized 700 boxes of ballots and voting records from the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia, President Trump called on Republicans “to take over the voting in at least 15 places” in advance of the next election, raising new fears that his administration plans to interfere in the midterms and beyond. […]

If you believe the president’s word, then fear not: The White House is not planning to demolish the Kennedy Center during its summer renovation. But if you tend to trust the evidence of history, you might have cause to be suspicious of whether the famed cultural institution will still be in one piece by the time Donald Trump is done with it.A White House official told ABC News’s Hannah Demissie Monday that the administration has no intention of tearing down the Kennedy Center during its two-year remodeling project. Starting July 4, the performing arts space will close for two years in order to undergo “construction, revitalization, and complete rebuilding,” Trump announced Sunday evening.The sudden decision to reinvent the world-class arts institution comes just a month after Trump potentially broke the law in renaming the center to include his name, and after more than a year of canceled performances by a litany of artists who opposed the Trump administration’s agenda.Meanwhile, Trump’s other government renovation projects have been constructed out of a web of lies. Back when his White House ballroom was first announced in July, Trump pledged that the development would “be near but not touching” the White House East Wing. Months later, his construction teams completely razed the FDR-era extension, plowing forward without prerequisite approval from the National Capital Planning Commission or the express permission of Congress, both of which were conveniently unavailable at the time, due to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.Trump also renovated Jackie Kennedy’s famous Rose Garden, mowing down flowers in order to literally pave paradise; gutted the Lincoln bathroom, transforming it from Lyndon B. Johnson’s favorite office into a marble-slathered eyesore; and swapped the historic Palm Room’s lush green tones and tall ferns for white paint and framed photos of plants.Meanwhile, his administration is doing some demolition of its own, reportedly planning to destroy some 13 historic buildings on the grounds of former psychiatric hospital St. Elizabeths in order to expand facilities for the Department of Homeland Security.

Former staffers also say she made them bring her bottles of tequila at 2 a.m., according to <em>New York Magazine.</em>

The day after the FBI raided an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, last week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard arranged a call between the agents on the scene and President Trump.The New York Times reports that Gabbard called the president on her cell phone after the search, which was based on Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia were rigged against him. Trump initially didn’t pick up, but called back minutes later to speak to the agents on speakerphone. He both thanked the agents and had questions for them.The supervisor of the FBI squad conducting the search, which mainly handles public corruption and civil rights abuses, mostly handled the call, the Times reports. One official told the publication that the call was only a minute long and was like a pep talk.Trump reportedly personally ordered Gabbard to travel to Atlanta for the search, coordinating her efforts with Deputy FBI Director Andrew Bailey. Gabbard’s presence has drawn questions about why she was there, considering her job is supposed to be focused on foreign intelligence. For the past few months, Gabbard has been leading an investigation into Trump’s 2020 election grievances.Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called out Gabbard’s presence at the raid, saying that if she believed that the raid in Georgia was connected to foreign intelligence, she was negligent in failing to notify Congress. If that wasn’t the case, Warner said, “she is once again demonstrating her utter lack of fitness for office that she holds by injecting the nonpartisan intelligence community she is supposed to be leading into a domestic political stunt designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy.”The fact that Gabbard made a direct phone call to Trump seems to vindicate Warner’s concerns and indicate that Trump is attempting to preemptively interfere in future elections. It is highly unprecedented for a sitting president to be this directly connected to any active case by the FBI or Justice Department, and Trump is already threatening to directly take over elections.