by Steve Benen | Apr 21, 2026 | Congress, Maddowblog, News, Politics
Republican Rep. Cory Mills of Florida was already dealing with multiple, overlapping scandals when a judge issued a restraining order against the congressman last fall after one of his ex-girlfriends accused him of threatening and harassing her. Soon after, Mills found that even some of his allies were keeping him at arm’s length.
In December, Rep. Byron Donalds, a fellow Florida Republican, conceded, “The allegations against Cory, to me, are very troubling. I’m concerned about him. I hope he gets his stuff worked out and cleaned up, but it has to go through ethics [the Ethics Committee]. And he has to, you know, basically do that hard work to clear his name, if it can be cleared.”
Donalds, a leading gubernatorial candidate in Florida, had previously suggested he saw Mills as a possible running mate, making the comments that much more potent.
It didn’t do Mills any favors when The Washington Post published a new report a few days ago highlighting body camera footage that showed police officers in Washington, D.C., who were prepared to arrest the GOP congressman after a woman accused him of assault last year, before a lieutenant ultimately ordered them not to when she changed her account. (Mills refused to comment, except to say that the woman’s initial claim was “patently false.”)
Two days after the Post’s report reached the public, one of Mills’ Republican colleagues announced an effort to kick the congressman out of office. NBC News reported:
Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., introduced a resolution Monday to expel Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., from Congress over accusations that include sexual misconduct.
Mills is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee in connection
by Steve Benen | Apr 21, 2026 | Maddowblog, News, Politics
When Donald Trump and his team were assembling their second-term Cabinet, former Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer appeared to be one of their least controversial choices. The Oregon Republican, tapped to lead the Department of Labor, was ultimately confirmed with 67 votes, including more than a dozen Senate Democrats, which reflected fairly broad support in this Congress.
A year later, she resigned under a cloud of overlapping scandals. MS NOW reported:
Chavez-DeRemer resigned Monday after a tenure marked by sensational allegations that she had an affair with a security staffer and that her husband sexually assaulted her employees. … Deputy Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling will serve as acting labor secretary, according to [the White House’s Steven] Cheung. […]
It is unclear when Chavez-DeRemer’s resignation is effective. NOTUS first reported on her resignation.
The secretary’s resignation came just five days after The New York Times reported on a series of new allegations, including a string of incidents in which Chavez-DeRemer, her relatives and her top aides “routinely” sent personal messages and requests to young staff members. Those came on the heels of a related MS NOW report on Labor Department employees who had lodged formal workplace discrimination complaints against Chavez-DeRemer, “alleging she created a toxic workplace and sought to retaliate against women who reported her husband for sexual misconduct in her office.”
MS NOW’s report noted that two of the complaints were filed by young female staffers who alleged Chavez-DeRemer’s husband, Dr. Shawn DeRemer, “subjected them to unwanted sexual touching late last year when they were working at U.S. Department of Labor offices.”
A series of related allegations, reported by various outlets in recent months, claim that Chavez-DeRemer had “an inappropriate
by Steve Benen | Apr 20, 2026 | Maddowblog, News, Politics
After congressional Republicans and the White House threw an obscene amount of money at Immigration and Customs Enforcement last year, ensuring that ICE is far better funded than other law enforcement agencies, the agency had little choice but to go on an aggressive hiring spree.
That hasn’t gone especially well.
The Atlantic reported last fall, for example, on an ICE training academy where more than a third of the new recruits failed a relatively easy personal fitness test. (The report highlighted an email from ICE headquarters to the agency’s top officials that lamented having many “athletically allergic candidates.”) Around the same time, NBC News ran a related report that noted many ICE recruits had been sent home after failing to pass a written exam — in which they were “allowed to consult their textbooks and notes.”
But The Associated Press moved the ball forward with new reporting on the consequences of the agency lowering its standards. From the AP report:
Two bankruptcies and six law enforcement jobs in three years. An allegation of lying in a police report to justify a felony charge against an innocent woman — an incident that led to a $75,000 settlement and criticism of his integrity. A third job candidate once failed to graduate from a police academy, then lasted only three weeks in his only job as a police officer.
Their common bond: All were hired recently by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during an unprecedented hiring spree — 12,000 new officers and special agents to double its force — after the agency received a $75 billion windfall from Congress to enact President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
The AP
by Steve Benen | Apr 20, 2026 | Justice Department, Maddowblog, News, Politics
Erik Siebert, a former police officer who’d worked his way up through the ranks at the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, appeared well-positioned to serve through the remainder of Donald Trump’s second term. That is, until September.
The White House leaned heavily on the U.S. attorney for brazenly corrupt reasons: Team Trump wanted him to go after New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey, not because they’d done anything wrong, but because the president saw them as political foes.
This was, in and of itself, indefensible. There is no scenario in which a White House should privately lobby federal prosecutors to bring baseless charges at the president’s direction as part of a retaliatory scheme.
But Trump didn’t stop there. When Siebert’s office made clear that there simply wasn’t enough evidence to justify such indictments, Trump forced the prosecutor out of his job, taking the scandal to a new level.
Soon after, other federal prosecutors, including Elizabeth Yusi and Robert McBride, were also ousted because they, too, balked at filing baseless charges against people Trump didn’t like.
The message to U.S. attorneys’ offices was unsubtle: Those who choose not to participate in Trump’s revenge campaign should expect to be punished.
The list continues to grow. MS NOW reported late Friday:
The Justice Department has removed the lead prosecutor overseeing an investigation involving former CIA Director John Brennan, a longtime critic of President Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Maria Medetis Long, a veteran prosecutor for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of Florida, told colleagues in her office that she had recently
by Steve Benen | Apr 20, 2026 | Maddowblog, News, Politics, Russia
Shortly after Donald Trump launched the war in Iran, the president’s administration confronted a crisis in the energy sector that it appeared wholly unprepared to address. In early March, the Republican operation said part of its response would be temporarily lifting sanctions on Russian oil, allowing money to flow into Moscow as part of a larger effort to contain prices.
Pressed for an explanation, U.S. officials insisted that the shift would be brief and that sanctions would quickly return. It was against that backdrop that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced last week that the administration had agreed to end the policy, restoring the sanctions on Russian oil.
Two days later, Team Trump made Bessent look quite foolish. The Associated Press reported:
The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday extended its pause on sanctions on Russian oil shipments to ease shortages from the Iran war, days after Secretary Scott Bessent ruled out such a move.
The so-called general license means U.S. sanctions will not apply for 30 days on deliveries of Russian oil that has been loaded on tankers as of Friday. It extended a similar 30-day license issued in March for Russian oil that had been loaded by March 11. The extension underscores how the fallout from the Iran war has boosted Moscow’s ability to profit from its energy exports, which had been restrained since the invasion of Ukraine.
Almost immediately, three Senate Democratic leaders — Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Senate Banking Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — issued a joint statement condemning the move as “shameful.”
“Make no mistake,
by Jessica Levinson | Apr 18, 2026 | Opinion, Politics
The California Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the disbarment of John Eastman, a former attorney for President Donald Trump and former dean of Chapman University Fowler School of Law, for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost to Joe Biden.
Eastman was the Trump attorney who wrote out a Jan. 6, 2021, plan for then-Vice President Mike Pence to wrongly reject some of the electoral votes Biden won to keep Trump in the White House.
Contrary to what his supporters have said, Eastman wasn’t disbarred for protected political speech but for sanctionable professional misconduct.
Eastman’s attorney, Randall Miller, said the decision “raises pivotal constitutional concerns.” But his argument is unpersuasive.
He’s not being prohibited from practicing law because of the client he represented, for unpopular political advocacy, aggressive lawyering or espousing a particular ideology or legal view. He was tossed for what California’s State Bar Court Hearing Department deemed “egregious and deceitful conduct.” When Eastman tried to overturn valid election results, he engaged in the type of conduct that threatens not only the integrity of the legal profession, but also the rule of law itself. Indeed, the State Bar of California found that Eastman’s false claims about the presidential election misled the “courts, public officials, and the American public.”
Eastman’s attorney, Randall Miller, said the decision “raises pivotal constitutional concerns” and that Eastman plans to seek the U.S. Supreme Court’s help. But his predictable argument that Eastman’s disbarment raises serious First Amendment concerns is unpersuasive. The First Amendment is not absolute. It does not give lawyers a license to violate professional obligations.
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Chief coup plotter John Eastman facing disbarment for effort to lying
