Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) has filed multiple articles of impeachment against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and is forcing a vote on the measure as soon as this week. Massie has leveled eight separate impeachment charges against Hegseth, accusing him of unlawful war or military actions in Iran, Yemen, and Venezuela; “ignoring laws that minimize civilian casualties”…
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Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia, who is expected to soon lead the House Oversight Committee, has made no effort to hide his ambitious investigative agenda in the upcoming Congress. On the contrary, the Californian spent much of last week encouraging leading Trump administration officials, including new White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, to “lawyer up.”
Attorney General Todd Blanche apparently heard about Garcia’s comments, and he was not pleased.
“Well, I’ll tell you what, Stephen Miller has a lawyer,” he said on Fox News during a Friday night appearance. “It’s me.” Blanche, who ostensibly leads the Justice Department, echoed the point two days later in another Fox News appearance, questioning whether the United States “can survive” the congressional oversight efforts that haven’t happened yet.
The attorney general added, “If you work in this administration, you have a lawyer. It’s me, and we will defend you. We will work hard.”
The same morning, CNN’s Dana Bash also interviewed Blanche and asked whether he believes it’s his job to represent officials facing congressional investigations. “Wait, do I see it as my job?” he replied. “The Constitution sees it as my job.”
The attorney general quickly added that he would also intend to defend Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in the event of his impeachment.
None of this made any sense. The Constitution, which Blanche has sworn to protect and defend, does not reference the office of the attorney general, so the idea that it requires him to defend administration officials facing congressional investigations is foolish. What’s more, every executive branch official who has ever been impeached has relied on defense attorneys, not federal prosecutors.
Blanche, in other words, sounded very
Following major wins by Democrats in last week’s midterm elections, four higher-level Department of Justice (DOJ) officials have resigned from office, including Harmeet Dhillon, who had served as assistant attorney general overseeing the department’s Civil Rights Division. Dhillon, who was once a personal lawyer for President Donald Trump, is the first significant post-midterm resignation…
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On Sunday, October 25, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defeated far-right Senator Flavio Bolsonaro by a margin of three and a half points, and almost 4.5 million votes. It was roughly twice the margin of the 2022 election, when Lula defeated Flavio’s father, Jair Bolsonaro.
It was the first time in Brazilian history that a candidate lost the first round of voting and won the second. And it was also one of the first defeats of a far-right Trump ally in several years.
As we’ve examined throughout this season of the podcast, Trump’s Donroe Doctrine has overshadowed the region since he came back into power early last year. He’s invaded Venezuela, tightened the screws on Cuba, and twisted arms to get his friends elected in countries up and down the Americas. But in Brazil, he couldn’t. And it’s not because Trump and his Silicon Valley buddies didn’t try.
It’s because Lula supporters organized en masse. Students, workers, teachers, retirees, and everyone in between. And they hit the streets to flip the vote, despite the odds.
They rallied with weeks of around-the-clock campaigning, marches, and protests. They pamphleted and fliered. They talked to their neighbors and their relatives. Online, Lula supporters responded with creative campaigns to confuse the algorithms that aggressively pushed content promoting Bolsonaro.
As many in the crowds told me again and again in recent weeks, this election was a decision that would define the fate of Brazil’s democracy. This wasn’t a vote between two candidates in a democratic system, where one wins and the other accepts their loss. It was a decision between democracy and dictatorship. Or democracy and something else.
And democracy won.
We began this
Congressional Democrats plan to use their subpoena power to target private companies and individuals as a way of circumventing what they anticipate will be massive resistance by the Trump administration to their demands for documents and testimony from government officials, four people familiar with the planning told MS NOW.
As they map out their plans to investigate what they say has been rampant corruption and lawbreaking during the second Trump administration, Democrats are counting on a widespread refusal to answer subpoenas by President Donald Trump and his appointees, said sources, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy. It’s seen as unlikely that the Trump Justice Department will prosecute anyone for defying a Congressional subpoena, and the federal government could pay any fines Congress or a court can impose after a contempt finding.
But a lot of pertinent evidence exists outside of government, in the correspondence files and email accounts of law firms, corporations and former officials, who are far more likely to comply, they said.
And the private sector knows what’s coming.
“We can expect subpoenas to go after internal corporate communications, as well as communications between corporate executives and administration officials,” said Daniel Suleiman, a former DOJ official at the Covington and Burling law firm who represents companies in congressional investigations.
In a bulletin to clients, Suleiman advised companies to reach out proactively to congressional committee staff if they believe they might be targeted for scrutiny. Many are already heeding that and similar advice. A senior congressional aide told MS NOW, “I just have done 15 meetings in the last 72 hours with corporate counsel.”
In interviews, Democratic congressional staffers said the challenge is