by Charles F. Coleman Jr. | Jul 16, 2026 | culture, Opinion, Politics
Rapper Boosie Badazz had a problem. In 2025 the Louisiana-based artist, who had already been convicted of a felony, was facing up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines for being found in possession of a weapon. As NOTUS reported Monday, Boosie (whose legal name is Torence Hatch) gave $600,000 to right-wing lobbying firm JM Burkman and Associates to help him get a pardon from President Donald Trump and says he was told on New Year’s Day that it had been secured. But it wasn’t. On Jan. 13, 2026, in exchange for his guilty plea, a federal judge sentenced him to three years’ probation, 300 hours of community service and a $50,000 fine, a fraction of the amount he paid in an attempt to get a pardon.
Here it is July, and Boosie hasn’t been pardoned. And not only is he trying to get at least half his money back, he’s making a social media spectacle by calling out the right-wing influencers he says were supposed to help sell his case to Trump, according to the firm’s associates.
He’s calling out the right-wing influencers he says were supposed to help sell his case to Trump, according to the firm’s associates.
Boosie’s case is another illustration of the rottenness of the pardon system in Trump’s presidency. MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian brought to light pay-to-play allegations related to Trump pardons in the series “Justice Interrupted”; in May, Rep. Dave Min, D-Calif., and Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., sent letters to 17 people they say received pardons or commutations from Trump “under circumstances that warrant further congressional scrutiny.”
In those letters, the lawmakers sought information including: “The
by Ja'han Jones | Jul 15, 2026 | Civil Rights, Opinion, White House
The MAGA movement is touting yet another development that stands to enable more racial segregation in the United States.
The president has falsely — and revealingly — complained that the Civil Rights Act was harmful to white people. And true to form, he has overseen a regime that has helped usher in a Jim Crow resurgence.
I’ve written on numerous occasions about Donald Trump’s administration taking steps to roll back desegregation measures. That trend has included a push by the Justice Department to target consent decrees that force school systems to comply with desegregation obligations. Trump officials have provided no evidence showing that the places with consent decrees have ended segregation, and many parents from these areas have said the decrees are still needed.
Several of these killed decrees have occurred with the blessing of Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who has sought to roll back the decrees using “joint stipulated dismissals,” which don’t require proof that segregation has been rooted out.
That brings us to Tuesday, when the ultraconservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided it would uphold the Trump administration’s lifting of a consent decree for schools in Louisiana’s Concordia Parish — an order that originated with a lawsuit in 1965, when segregation and the Ku Klux Klan reigned supreme in the region.
It’s certainly telling that the Louisiana attorney general’s statement in response to the court’s decision effectively mirrored the “states’ rights” arguments that white supremacists have used throughout history.
In 1981, as an adviser to Ronald Reagan, Lee Atwater was infamously quoted explaining the art of racist dog whistling.
By 1968, he said, politicians couldn’t say the N-word, because “that hurts you,
by Ja'han Jones | Jul 15, 2026 | Civil Rights, Opinion, White House
Formerly detained Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil has filed a lawsuit against conservative activist groups and several members of the Trump administration that cites the Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction-era law designed to thwart racist intimidation.
Khalil, a staunch critic of Israel’s government whom Trump officials have tried to deport, has become the face of the administration’s push to weaponize the government against liberals — particularly pro-Palestinian activists — and to censor speech on college campuses.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, accuses several current and former officials of a “conspiracy” to deprive Khalil of his rights. Per the suit:
The federal officials who are a part of the conspiracy include Senior Presidential Advisor Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and John Armstrong, an official at the Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs.
The lawsuit contends that the officials were aided by pro-Israel groups — including The Heritage Foundation, via its dubious “Project Esther” initiative, and Canary Mission, a group known for releasing information on pro-Palestinian students and professors — in their effort to “terrorize and make an example of Mr. Khalil” in order to “intimidate and silence the growing movement for Palestinian rights and political freedom, in a manner the KKK Act was designed to proscribe when enacted during Reconstruction.”
The Associated Press reported that a White House spokesperson defended the executive branch’s “lawful authority to take actions that will protect the public and to ensure the integrity of our immigration system,” while a representative for The Heritage Foundation told Jerusalem News Syndicate that the
by David J. Bier | Jul 15, 2026 | Civil Rights, Opinion
Following two killings of motorists in two weeks in Maine and Texas, Immigration and Customs Enforcement briefly suspended most vehicle stops to retrain its agents. The suspension implicitly conceded the obvious — ICE could have prevented these deaths — but President Donald Trump quickly overruled the agency, ordering it to resume the stops.
The president posted on social media Wednesday that “we cannot give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” But he’s wrong. His own adviser, White House border czar Tom Homan, has admitted that vehicle stops are not an important enforcement tool, and that permanently ending them would better protect ICE agents, their targets and the public.
ICE agents appear to relish the car chases and often fail to stop the suspect before they drive away.
It’s true that ICE officers receive less training on vehicle stops. That’s because, before this administration, most arrestees came straight from federal, state or local custody, and when ICE had to go to the streets, it carefully planned operations — surveilling suspects to learn their routines, sometimes for weeks, and working as a team of agents and creating a pre-enforcement action plan.
To speed up arrests, however, ICE reportedly eliminated the pre-enforcement planning last year as it started targeting areas more than specific people. “It’s hard to fill out a worksheet that just says, ‘Meet in the Home Depot parking lot,’” one former ICE official told NBC News. Enforcement went from targeted and planned to indiscriminate and opportunistic, which led to more chaotic interactions.
Reflecting this lack of planning, both of the immigrants shot and killed in the past two
by Mimi Rocah | Jul 15, 2026 | Justice Department, Opinion
Todd Blanche is an experienced prosecutor and lawyer. Those are necessary qualifications to serve as attorney general, but they are far from sufficient. The office demands more, including a willingness to exercise judgment based solely on the law and the interests of the American people. Since becoming part of the Justice Department leadership in March 2025, Blanche has repeatedly demonstrated that he cannot be trusted to exercise that independence. For that reason, the Senate Judiciary Committee should reject his nomination to be attorney general.
We write as lawyers who worked alongside Blanche for several years in the Southern District of New York and once considered him a close friend. SDNY is known for its independence from politics and outside influence. Our office pursued investigations and cases vigorously, whether the target was rich, politically connected or famous, regardless of which political party was in power. As federal prosecutors, we were taught that our duty was to pursue justice fairly, impartially and independently — not to bring or win cases at all costs, to advance political agendas or to serve powerful individuals.
We write as lawyers who worked alongside Blanche for several years in the Southern District of New York and once considered him a close friend.
In our view, Blanche has turned his back on these principles. It has been painful to watch many of his actions as deputy attorney general and acting attorney general, especially his participation in the firing of career prosecutors and FBI agents based purely on political considerations. We regarded Blanche highly at SDNY, but we feel obligated as former officers of the Justice Department to speak plainly — as
by Ja'han Jones | Jul 15, 2026 | Opinion
Happy Tuesday. Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, the week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.
Scientists warn about Russell Vought plan
Monday marked the final day of the public comment period for the Trump administration’s widely decried proposal, pushed by Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, to vet all public grants to ensure they promote “American values” rather than for projects that are “woke,” a term no one in the administration has shown an ability to define.
Tech Policy reported on a wave of opposition to the proposal from the scientific and academic communities, who warned that placing ideological litmus tests on scientific grants pose an existential threat to scientific and technological development in the United States.
Read more in Tech Policy here.
AGs move to scuttle proposed merger
A coalition of state attorneys general is suing in an effort to stop Paramount-Skydance from acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery. Writer Seth Stern explained why observers should be wary of Trump ally David Ellison’s company acquiring another massive media company as Trump seeks to wield control over the press.
Read his op-ed for MS NOW.
Chips for Trump family business partners
The Trump administration took steps Friday to make it easier to send valuable, American-made computer chips to MGX, a United Arab Emirates-backed firm that has invested in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency trading platform.
Read more on CNBC.
Brad Parscale aids Israel online
Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale has been paid by Israel to steer a social media campaign targeting conservatives with pro-Israel messaging,“but neither the Trump Administration nor the Israelis appear happy about how it’s going,” according to the report in Time magazine.
Read more in Time.
Apple
