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Trump's “Big Beautiful Bill” aimed to stimulate spending with bigger refunds, but inflation has swallowed the benefits.

The “Broadview Six,” the anti-ICE protesters whom the federal government tried to slap with felony conspiracy charges carrying a maximum sentence of six years in prison, had their case thrown out last week after District Judge April Perry determined top federal prosecutor Andrew Boutros botched the case.Things are now getting even worse for Boutros and his team.Christopher Parente, an attorney for one of the six defendants, suggested on Tuesday that Boutros had improper personal contact with the grand jury. After the allegation came to light, Perry summoned the lawyers present to discuss the matter privately in her chamber.Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur said her fellow prosecutors would likely accept the release of grand jury transcripts, subject to redactions, so the public may be able to see what kind of personal contact Boutros had with the jurors in the future.The “Broadview Six” were arrested after surrounding an ICE agent’s SUV outside a detention center in Broadview, Illinois, in September in an attempt to slow it down. The crowd “pushed and scratched and otherwise damaged,” the vehicle, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.Like many charges made against anti-ICE protesters, the government’s over-the-top prosecution failed to hold up. The government first gave up on charging two of the six. Then they threw out conspiracy charges against the other four—Brian Straw, Michael Rabbitt, Andre Martin, and then–congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh—and instead tried to convict them of a far less serious crime: one misdemeanor count each for impeding a federal agent. In the end, Boutros couldn’t even do that. He dropped the charges with prejudice—meaning they cannot be refiled—after being criticized by Perry for more grand jury misconduct. Boutros’s assistants took transcripts of themselves explaining conspiracy law to the jury pool, then reportedly redacted some of the transcripts when Perry asked for them. According to the Sun-Times, these transcripts included proof of one prosecutor staking her personal credibility in order to support the charges, another communicating with jurors outside the assigned jury room, and a third excusing jurors who didn’t agree with the prosecution’s argument.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is facing fire from his own people.The U.S. health secretary has angered anti-vax activists by extending liability protections to drugmakers working on a hantavirus vaccine.Kennedy signed a Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness, or PREP, Act declaration late last week, giving pharmaceutical companies additional legal coverage as they work on experimental treatments—such as favipiravir—during the public health crisis.“This action helps remove barriers to research and response efforts while we continue monitoring the recent outbreak linked to the South Atlantic cruise ship,” Kennedy wrote on X earlier this month.The expanded legal protections permit the companies to treat passengers possibly exposed to the Andes hantavirus strain, or individuals who were in close contact with people on board the M/V Hondius cruise ship.But acolytes of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda were not swayed. One such skeptical supporter was Kennedy’s former campaign communications director Del Bigtree, who questioned whether Kennedy was sticking to his guns on corporate accountability.“Bobby, I remember so many inspiring strategy discussions during your campaign. Providing liability protection to corporate interests for a virus that killed three people out of seven billion was not one of them,” Bigtree wrote.Kennedy, however, was undeterred. “Don’t believe Internet fearmongers. [The Department of Health and Human Services] defends public health AND supports medical freedom—period,” Kennedy wrote in a separate post over the weekend, underscoring that the latest HHS action doesn’t pave the way for a new mRNA vaccine or offer Big Pharma limitless protections from liability.More than 40 people in the U.S. are currently being monitored in connection to a hantavirus outbreak aboard a Rotterdam-bound cruise ship last month. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that there are currently no cases in the U.S. and that risk to the general public remains “extremely low.” So far, the rare disease has caused 11 confirmed infections and three deaths in connection with the ship.A Dutch couple were identified by the WHO as the first passengers infected with the virus. It is believed that they were exposed to the virus while birdwatching at an Argentinian landfill. Both the husband and wife died as a result.

Many communities are also frustrated with state-level inaction but still see some opportunities for pushback.

Some 300 detainees launched a hunger and labor strike on Friday in protest of the conditions at the ICE jail.

The DNC finally released its long-awaited autopsy of Kamala Harris’s failed presidential campaign, and it doesn’t mention Gaza. The Democratic leadership’s refusal to acknowledge the party’s shift on Israel could spell another defeat in 2028. Michael Arria for Mondoweiss n Thursday, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) finally released its long-awaited autopsy of Kamala Harris’s failed […]

Extended families across the Strip are holding elections to ensure they are accounted for by aid groups — and, for some, to consolidate political ambitions. The post How clans are organizing to fill Gaza’s leadership void appeared first on +972 Magazine.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has been embroiled in a yearlong lawsuit with two former clients who have accused him of malpractice and forgery.Vanity Fair reported that twin brothers Adam and Daniel Kaplan, both New York financial advisers, sought Blanche’s services through the Cadwalader, Wickersham, & Taft law firm in 2021 over concerns they would soon be prosecuted for fraud by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The brothers claimed that Blanche told them they’d receive a massive discount from the firm, and that he “did not want to make money on the representation.”Yet just a year later, the Kaplans owed Blanche and Cadwalader over $1.65 million. Blanche pulled his representation in 2022 over the debt, and the Kaplans sued the following year, accusing him of forging their signatures on an engagement document and misleading them regarding the fees. Blanche and Cadwalader denied all allegations, and countersued the twins for their debt of more than $1 million in 2023—the same year Blanche became Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and just two years before Blanche became the most powerful prosecutor in America.The Kaplans were later convicted on 16 counts of money laundering and wire fraud, in July 2023, one month after they filed their lawsuit. But they still haven’t dropped their suit, which raises serious questions about the attorney general’s ethics. The case is expected to continue through the year.

This story was originally published on Gabriel Zucman’s substack, to which you can subscribe here (for English) or here (for French). Last week, Jeff Bezos made an unexpected contribution to the debate about taxation in the United States, claiming that billionaires like himself pay a lot of tax and that it would be pointless to ask them to […]