by Steve Benen | Jan 30, 2026 | Maddowblog, Politics
JD Vance made a rare appearance in the White House briefing room a few weeks ago to announce some news: The administration would soon have a new assistant attorney general with a narrow focus.
According to the Ohio Republican, this prosecutor would have “all the authority of a special counsel” and would focus exclusively on fraud investigations. Vance also said this person’s work would be “run out of the White House” instead of the Justice Department, and the prosecutor would report to him and Donald Trump, instead of to the attorney general.
This week, the president chose someone to fill the position. Time magazine reported:
President Donald Trump has nominated a federal prosecutor to a newly created role of fraud investigator after the Trump Administration urged the Justice Department to investigate fraud in Democrat-led states.
If confirmed by the Senate, Colin McDonald would lead a new DOJ unit as ‘first ever Assistant Attorney General for National FRAUD Enforcement,’ Trump announced.
Some conservative outlets started referring to McDonald as the nation’s first “fraud czar,” and it wasn’t long before Team Trump embraced the label.
It’s probably worth clarifying the point of the position. When the White House refers to “fraud” in this context, it’s not talking about con artists fleecing unwitting or unwary consumers, such as the president’s scandal-plagued “Trump University” scam. It’s also not talking about entities such as Trump’s fraudulent charitable foundation, or the Trump Organization itself, which was found to have engaged in systemic fraud.
Rather, when Trump announced plans to nominate McDonald, the president was talking about other people who might’ve committed fraud through federal social insurance programs.
McDonald appears a rather conventional choice. He’s
by Steve Benen | Jan 30, 2026 | Maddowblog, Politics
Even if we were to remove Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard from the equation altogether, the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at the Fulton County elections office near Atlanta as part of Donald Trump’s ongoing crusade related to his 2020 election defeat would still be awfully tough to defend.
There’s no credible reason for federal law enforcement to seize these election materials, which have already been thoroughly scrutinized, just as there’s no reason for the FBI to act as a vehicle for the president’s discredited conspiracy theories. What’s more, as The New York Times noted, there are also related concerns about whether this “might also be a harbinger of things to come, signaling Mr. Trump’s growing willingness to use the vast powers of federal law enforcement to intervene in election matters in the lead-up to the critical 2026 midterms, which will determine the extent of his authority for the remainder of his second term.”
But that Gabbard, eager to work her way back into the White House’s good graces, personally participated in the raid in Georgia, adds a scandalous element to a burgeoning controversy. As a Politico report summarized:
Democrats, election experts and even some members of the Trump administration expressed alarm and bewilderment about why Tulsi Gabbard was on the scene as the FBI raided a Georgia election office that has been at the center of Donald Trump’s debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
The administration’s official line is that the DNI “has a pivotal role in election security and protecting the integrity of our elections against interference, including operations targeting voting systems, databases, and election infrastructure.”
That might sound
by Cedric Alexander | Jan 30, 2026 | Opinion, Politics
After a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer killed teenaged resident Michael Brown in August 2014 and the 21st Century Task Force on Policing was formed, across the United States, a foundational principle of policing emerged: Any agency involved in a shooting incident must consent to a thorough, unbiased and transparent investigation conducted by an independent outside entity. This principle exists to maintain what the task force identified as the three pillars of policing in a democracy: trust, integrity and legitimacy.
Federal agents have effectively been granted immunity from this standard.
Yet as we saw after immigration agents shot dead 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday, Trump administration officials have largely been acting as if federal immigration agents have immunity from this standard, creating a dangerous two-tiered system of accountability where federal officers operate above the scrutiny applied to their state and local counterparts.
The only information we have regarding the two agents involved in Pretti’s death comes from a Department of Homeland Security official who spoke to MS NOW on the condition of anonymity and said, per Border Patrol’s policy, they were placed on paid administrative leave for three days and met with a mental health professional. That source also said they’ll be placed on desk duty pending an internal investigation. But we have reasons to worry about the integrity of that investigation.
I have devoted my entire professional life, more than four decades, to public safety and law enforcement, and I view the killing of Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse at a VA hospital, as a critical inflection point for democracy, decency and law enforcement in the U.S. It is a
by Steve Benen | Jan 27, 2026 | Maddowblog, Politics
When a lengthy government shutdown came to end in the fall, members created a new deadline of Jan. 30 to keep federal operations going through the end of the fiscal year. By and large, with little appetite among either party for another shutdown, the appropriations process ran relatively smoothly.
Then federal immigration agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, and everything changed quickly. Late Saturday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement that the Democratic conference would oppose a pending spending package if it includes funding for the Department of Homeland Security. The New York Democrat added that he and his members expect an overhauled bill to include “common sense reforms.”
It wasn’t long before observers raised the obvious follow-up question: What kind of reforms, specifically, are Democratic senators looking for?
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut appeared on Greg Sargent’s podcast at The New Republic, where the two talked about five proposals circulating among offices on Capitol Hill:
requiring federal immigration officers to get warrants for arrests
requiring federal agents to identify themselves
requiring Department of Homeland Security personnel to cooperate with state and local investigations
requiring Customs and Border Protection officers to focus exclusively on the border and ports, as opposed to working in communities
restricting immigration officers from operating in sensitive places, such as schools and houses of worship
Murphy didn’t explicitly say that Democrats would demand all of these reforms, but the Connecticut Democrat did conclude, “That is certainly a package that unites a lot of Democrats.”
Time will tell whether the party coalesces around these ideas and how the congressional Republican majority responds, but with Friday’s deadline quickly approaching, there are a limited number
by Steve Benen | Jan 26, 2026 | Maddowblog, Politics
After federal agents shot and killed an intensive care nurse named Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis street in broad daylight, Vermont’s Republican governor, Phil Scott, had the kind of reaction one might ordinarily expect from a Democrat:
Enough. … It’s not acceptable for American citizens to be killed by federal agents for exercising their God-given and constitutional rights to protest their government. At best, these federal immigration operations are a complete failure of coordination of acceptable public safety and law enforcement practices, training, and leadership. At worst, it’s a deliberate federal intimidation and incitement of American citizens that’s resulting in the murder of Americans.
Scott added, “The president should pause these operations, de-escalate the situation, and reset the federal government’s focus on truly criminal illegal immigrants. In the absence of presidential action, Congress and the courts must step up to restore constitutionality.”
Some might see this and think Scott might not have much of a choice, since he’s a Republican governor in one of the nation’s bluest states. But the Vermonter wasn’t alone: Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican in one of the nation’s reddest states, spoke to CNN’s Dana Bash and took a similar line.
“What we’re seeing on TV, it’s causing deep concerns over federal tactics and accountability. Americans don’t like what they’re seeing right now,” Stitt said on “State of the Union.” He added, “Americans are asking themselves, ‘What is the endgame? What is the solution?’ And we believe in federalism and state rights. And nobody likes feds coming into their state. And so what’s the goal right now? Is it to deport every single non-U.S. citizen? I don’t think that’s
by Steve Benen | Jan 26, 2026 | Maddowblog, Politics
Almost immediately after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good, the Trump administration wasted little time settling on a narrative that it expected Americans to believe: The victim was the villain of the story.
As far as the White House and its allies were concerned, Good had committed “an act of domestic terrorism,” as part of a “coordinated” conspiratorial effort, hatched by people “being trained” to use vehicles as weapons. Donald Trump went so far as to tell the public, in writing, that the young mom “viciously ran over” an ICE officer with her vehicle.
The unbelievable claims were discredited by video evidence and by local officials. The president and his team peddled the lines anyway, hoping not only to smear the victim but also to convince Americans not to believe their lying eyes.
By and large, this didn’t work. We are, however, watching a Republican team with a playbook that only has one page.
And so, 17 days after Good’s slaying, when federal agents shot and killed an intensive-care nurse named Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis street in broad daylight — violence that was well documented by several cameras — members of Team Trump ran the only play they know. As a New York Times analysis summarized:
Twice since the start of the year, federal officers have gunned down protesters in Minneapolis with cellphone cameras rolling, and twice President Trump and his lieutenants have rushed forward with a message to the American people: Don’t believe what you see with your own eyes.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” host Kristen Welker asked an important question to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who
