Former President Obama sounds the alarm on artificial intelligence

Former President Barack Obama warned during a recent private fund-raising event that artificial intelligence technology could be “dangerous” if not properly managed, as he implored Democrats to aggressively develop political and governing agendas to prioritize the issue in the coming years, reported The New York Times.

In his remarks, which have not been previously reported, Mr. Obama urged Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the House minority leader, to assemble a clear framework for a public conversation about A.I. policy, should Democrats win back the House in the midterm elections, according to a partial transcript provided by Mr. Obama’s office.

He also suggested that candidates running for president in 2028 ought to make A.I. one of their “central agendas” and “have a very clear plan” for responding to safety and economic concerns around the technology.

The recommendations from the former president amount to some of his most detailed comments yet about A.I. as a political issue for his party. At a moment when President Trump continues to downplay concerns about the technology, some Democrats see an opportunity for the party to draw a clear contrast in the midterms and beyond on an issue of growing significance. In a Democratic Party with no clear leader, many look to Mr. Obama for guidance, and his comments carry considerable weight.

The remarks come amid escalating worries about the risks associated with A.I. development, as well as growing calls for lawmakers and politicians to do more to tackle the topic. Some A.I. industry leaders are now calling for a slowdown after a summer in which swarms of misaligned A.I. agents broke free from their containers and proceeded to scheme against their owners, cheat on tests and hack outside companies.

At a closed-door fund raising event in Manhattan organized by the campaign arm of the House Democrats, Mr. Obama and Mr. Jeffries spoke for nearly an hour in front of party donors and lawmakers, according to four people familiar with the event, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private gathering.

“Once you are speaker, I would strongly urge that the Democrats put together a framework for a very public conversation,” Mr. Obama told Mr. Jeffries, according to the transcript. Mr. Jeffries had asked him a question about how Democrats should address A.I. in a Congress that has taken little action on the issue, according to two of the people.

“This is something that is moving very fast in private hands, and if we don’t get on top of it, I think can be dangerous,” Mr. Obama said. “If we do get on top of it, I do think it’s beneficial. I genuinely think it’s going to accelerate, for example, drug development in ways that can help us cure diseases. I do think that this can help us figure out pathways for a clean energy future.”

The former president often spoke in general terms, rather than drilling down on specific policies, according to the transcript. And he planted himself firmly in a middle ground in the heated debate over A.I., saying he considered himself neither an “accelerationist” nor a “doomer.”

One challenge facing Democrats as they chart a path forward on A.I. is speaking in one voice on the issue. The tug of war over how to regulate A.I. has been more divisive among Democrats than Republicans, who are generally more in alignment. Some Democratic politicians have called for more A.I. regulation, while others have received millions of dollars in support from groups tied to the industry’s biggest players.

A.I. is becoming a larger part of the country’s political calculus heading into the midterms. This year’s elections have been flooded with money from A.I. companies and allied groups. And anxiety about the technology, a rare issue that many Republican and Democratic voters can agree on, has peaked in recent days after a researcher at the A.I. company Anthropic loudly and publicly resigned, writing in a viral social media post that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

Mr. Jeffries explicitly mentioned the resignation in his question to Mr. Obama, according to one of the people familiar with the event.

Dario Amodei, the chief executive of the A.I. company Anthropic, called for a global slowdown of A.I. development in a 3,800-word essay published on Saturday. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, and Elon Musk, whose SpaceX rocket company has been ramping up spending on A.I., quickly wrote in social media posts that they agreed with him.

The White House has long maintained an unabashedly accelerationist stance. Mr. Trump recently told reporters he didn’t have “any” concerns about A.I.’s risks — just about falling behind to competitors like China. He has said that those who oppose A.I. data centers must prefer to be “backwards and poor.”

“President Obama is correct that decisive action must be taken on artificial intelligence,” Mr. Jeffries said in a statement, adding that “Republicans have abdicated their responsibility to govern on behalf of the American people.”

“We will not repeat their error,” he continued.

On Capitol Hill, where little has been done to regulate A.I., some Democrats have been circulating a letter urging House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, to stop members from going home on recess until they pass A.I. safeguards.

Many Republicans want action, too. Several have introduced bipartisan A.I. legislation, and Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida has called for a special session on the topic. A growing number of Republicans are campaigning against data centers, in addition to many Democrats.

As House speaker in 2023, Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, set up A.I. learning and brainstorming sessions, stressing a bipartisan approach. After Mr. Johnson became speaker later that year, he and Mr. Jeffries announced a bipartisan task force on A.I. that produced a report in late 2024. House Republican leadership declined to renew the task force in the next Congress. In response, Democrats formed their own A.I. commission, which is now putting the finishing touches on a policy framework. That framework is expected to be released this fall after some final checks by Mr. Jeffries, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Obama has taken a special interest in A.I. in recent years, and he has offered himself as a sounding board to industry leaders, including Mr. Altman and Mr. Amodei, according to two people familiar with his conversations.

Mr. Obama sees Mr. Amodei’s essay urging an A.I. slowdown — and the affirmations by other A.I. executives — as an encouraging development, and the two are engaged in discussions about A.I. safety, according to one of the people. Representatives for OpenAI and Anthropic did not respond to requests for comment.

With many Democrats already jockeying for position ahead of the next presidential race, Mr. Obama, in his remarks at the fund-raiser, outlined what he would do on A.I. if he were one of them.

“I would talk about this, and I would say: ‘Here’s our plan for safety. Here’s our plan for making sure our kids are not corrupted by this,’” he said, according to the transcript.

He contrasted the technology with other innovations that could be dangerous in the wrong hands, saying that compared to “nuclear power, you don’t need a bunch of highly enriched uranium” to build powerful A.I.

“I would be thinking about the economic impacts in very concrete ways and understanding what does it mean if there’s going to be job displacement,” Mr. Obama said, according to the transcript, adding, “if it turns out that you’ve got a lot more people who can’t find full-time work because they’ve been rendered redundant, how are we going to respond?”

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Will Alabama Governor grant commutations to those on death row as the result of judicial override?

Gov. Kay Ivey made sure Alabama abandoned the process — called judicial override — by signing a law on her first day in office in 2017. But the law applied only to new cases. It did not have any effect on those people sentenced to die under the practice prior to 2017, reported AL.com.

Now, nearly ten years later, Ivey could use her last days in office to move the remaining 25 people on death row to the actual sentences their juries wanted and voted for: life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“I hope the governor is using her last few months to think about how she can leave a legacy of criminal justice reform in this state,” said A’Niya Robinson, the director of policy and organizing for the ACLU of Alabama.

Ivey’s stance is unclear.

There is no doubt she leaves a mark on the criminal justice system in this state. Alabama is building a new mega prison in Elmore County, set to be finished this fall and costing well over a billion dollars. It will be named after her.

But her record is more complicated.

Ivey set a record among Alabama governors in the modern era by approving the most executions, 26. And Alabama was an innovator of execution methods under Ivey’s watch, performing the nation’s first execution by nitrogen in January 2024.

Yet, she stopped judicial override upon taking office. She ordered a halt to lethal injection executions for several months in 2022, after the Alabama Department of Corrections couldn’t get it right. While she resumed the practice, some were astonished she had even paused it at all.

And she has also spared the most people from execution among all modern governors, too. She commuted the sentences of two men slated to die, something that does not happen often in Alabama, earning sharp criticism from fellow Republicans in the Attorney General’s office. In one case, Ivey said she had too many questions about guilt to move forward with an execution. In the other, the governor said she couldn’t “proceed in good conscience” to approve the execution of a man who wasn’t the actual shooter in the case, while the shooter was serving a life sentence.

Ivey isn’t running again, and will leave the governor’s mansion in January when the state’s new governor, either Democrat Doug Jones or Republican Tommy Tuberville, is sworn in.

‘They didn’t need a jury’

One of the people whom a jury wished to live, but a judge sentenced to die, was Robin “Rocky” Myers.

Myers was on death row from 1994 until 2025, when Ivey commuted his sentence, sending him to life in prison instead of an execution chamber because she said she wasn’t sure he was guilty. Myers has always maintained his innocence in the killing of his Decatur neighbor.

Years after Myers was sent to death row, a juror began speaking out, too.

Mae Puckett told AL.com in 2023 that she didn’t know a judge could change the sentence that she and the other jurors handed down. To Puckett, a life sentence was a compromise: She and several other jurors had agreed, in a jury room stalemate, to convict the 30-year-old father if he could be sentenced to life.

“Those of us who thought he was innocent had very strong feelings about it... (but) we knew those guys weren’t going to change their mind,” she said. “We decided to vote him guilty… the best thing we thought we could do was spare his life.”

To find someone guilty of capital murder, all 12 jurors have to agree. The decision has to be unanimous. Then, if prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, there is a second hearing following the trial to decide if the person should be sent to death row.

After hearing the testimony, jurors go back to deliberate for the second time. But a death vote doesn’t have to be unanimous in Alabama.

A death sentence can be handed down only if 10 or more jurors vote for death. If the jury can’t reach that vote, they can consider a sentence of life without parole.

But prior to 2017, Alabama had a loophole. The jury’s sentence was, technically, just a recommendation. A judge could, for a litany of different and vague reasons, disregard the jury’s sentencing decision. While a judge could alternatively overturn a death vote and send a person to prison for life, it was almost always applied the other way.

That’s what happened in the Myers case.

Puckett said she had no idea the judge could change the outcome.

“I cried,” Puckett recalled. “It was a mix of anger and sympathy and remorse. I felt like I had just fed him to the wolves when we tried so hard not to do that.”

According to information gathered by the Equal Justice Initiative, Alabama judges changed a jury’s sentencing verdict 107 times from 1976 to 2011. And 98 of those changes increased the penalty from life to death.

Jeffery Lee is set to die by lethal injection later this month, even though that’s not what his jury voted for either. He was convicted of killing two people and injuring a third during a pawn shop robbery in Orrville in 1998. His jury, in a 7-5 vote, opted to send him to live out his days in prison.

One of the people who served on that jury wants Ivey to commute Lee’s sentence and send him to prison for life.

“I didn’t know that a judge could do that,” the juror said during a phone call with AL.com. “The system just did what it wanted to do, and it didn’t matter what the jury had decided.”

The woman, who didn’t want her name used for fear of retaliation, called the issue a systemic one and said she wants her verdict honored. “If the judge was going to make the final decision, why have a trial? That was a waste of time for everybody.”

“If it was a judge’s decision, they didn’t need a jury.”

Only in Alabama

The practice of judicial override had only been legal in a few states: Alabama, Delaware, Florida and Indiana. Indiana got rid of the practice in 2002. Delaware and Florida also abolished override and made it apply to older cases, and they never routinely executed people who were sentenced under the practice.

In 2017, Alabama was all alone. And in 2026, the state still is the only place carrying out executions that resulted from a judge’s single-handed decision, disregarding a jury verdict.

Starting in 2006, Alabama State Sen. Hank Sanders, D-Selma, introduced bills in the state legislature to outlaw the practice. They didn’t go anywhere.

“I had tried so many years because I felt that was extremely unfair,” Sanders told AL.com. “Because in effect, they were taking away the right to trial by jury.”

“There’s a unique unfairness about that.”

Eventually, Republican Sen. Dick Brewbaker took interest in the topic. Sanders said he was surprised, and glad, to have his support. Instead of co-sponsoring the bill with Brewbaker, Sanders dropped his name from the bill so it would have a better chance of passing under a Republican sponsor.

It worked.

The bill passed a vote of 78-19 and in April 2017, on her first day in the office, Ivey signed into law a ban on judicial override.

The law had a caveat: the ban on judicial override did not apply to those sentenced before 2017. Retroactivity wasn’t included in the bill, said Sanders, because it could have hurt the bill’s chances at passing.

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What the Flock: Tough-on-Crime v. Big Brother

The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, directed police departments last week to stop spending state money on Flock Safety cameras, the license-plate readers that have drawn bipartisan backlash around the country, reported The New York Times.

Days later in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration ordered the systems removed from state roads. Mr. DeSantis has described the surveillance technology as “out of control.”

Both governors are tough-on-crime Republicans with deep backing from law enforcement agencies. Yet their moves underscore how the political winds are shifting against Flock and other plate-reading systems that have been embraced by police departments.

The cameras, which began rapidly appearing by the tens of thousands on American roads in recent years, track vehicles and feed surveillance databases. The networks of cameras can be used to assist officers by quickly locating vehicles connected with crimes. But concerns about a sweeping system of government surveillance and about abuses by individual officers have brought mounting opposition.

Flock cameras and others like them have become a campaign issue in several states, in some cases uniting Republicans and Democrats.

The result of the actions in Texas and Florida: Police departments are falling in line behind their governors and dismantling their license-plate readers. They have begun doing so even as they extol the cameras’ crime-fighting capabilities. In Jacksonville, Fla., the sheriff, a Republican, announced on Monday he was pausing his agency’s program of 150 cameras — one week after the office released a documentary-style video lauding their role in solving a kidnapping, among other crimes.

The moves in Texas and Florida are unfolding as Republican elected officials elsewhere are mulling their own restrictions.

In Indiana, Republicans have signaled they will draft legislation to set minimum law enforcement standards for the technology. In Kansas, some Republican lawmakers now say they want to tighten restrictions and oversight after earlier legislation had made it easier for the police to deploy license-plate readers.

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Missouri GOP primary candidate conspired to plant drugs on opponent

A Republican legislative candidate in Joplin plotted to plant cocaine and Adderall on his primary opponent in an effort to derail her campaign, federal prosecutors allege, reported the Missouri Independent.

Thomas Ross, who won the Republican nomination for Missouri’s 161st House District by only 32 votes, was charged Wednesday with conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance.

A criminal complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri alleges Ross spent weeks discussing a plan to plant the drugs on Louise Secker, his opponent in the Aug. 4 Republican primary.

Ross’ former campaign manager reported the alleged plot to the Joplin Police Department on July 30, according to a probable cause statement by FBI Special Agent Brandon Bernhardt.

The former campaign manager provided Joplin police with a nylon glove containing a plastic bag of white powder that tested positive for cocaine and a pink and white pill identified as Adderall, Bernhardt wrote.

Screenshots of text messages reviewed by Bernhardt suggest Ross and the former campaign manager discussed the plot as early as May 31 and show them referring to it in coded language as the “substance of the matter” or the “substance of it all,” according to the probable cause statement.

The former campaign manager said Ross asked him to plant the drugs in Secker’s purse or vehicle while Ross was on vacation in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Bernhardt wrote.

Ross sent the campaign manager a text message on June 15 saying: “Hope you all are having success knocking doors and getting the substance of the matter sorted this week.”

Court documents quote a June 18 message from Ross that read: “Any luck with the substance of the matter? I wont be gone much longer.”

During a July 31 meeting at Ross’ house, the former campaign manager used a covert device provided by the FBI to record Ross. He told Ross he still had “the bag and addies” and asked Ross if he still wanted him to “try,” suggesting they could call in an anonymous tip about drugs in Secker’s car. 

According to court documents, Ross replied, “If you can pull it off…pull it off.”

In a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice Thursday, Matthew Price, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri, said “the American people deserve confidence in an electoral process that has served our nation for generations.”

“Candidates are expected to conduct their campaigns with integrity, honesty and respect for their opponents,” he said, “allowing voters to make informed decisions without fear of misinformation or undue influence.”

Chris Ornerod, special agent in charge in the FBI Kansas City field office, described the allegations as “substantial and serious.”

“As this case moves through the judicial process,” Ornerod said, “it’s important that it proceeds fairly, impartially and in accordance with the rule of law.”

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Armed man attacks Ohio Democrat candidate for governor at Canfield Fair

According to the press office for Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton, an “armed individual” allegedly lunged at Acton, injuring multiple people in the process during a visit to the Canfield Fair on Sunday, September 6, reported WFMJ-TV21.

The following statement was shared by Acton’s office regarding the alleged incident:

“While attending the Canfield Fair, an armed individual lunged at Dr. Acton, injuring multiple people. Dr. Acton and Eric are grateful for the swift and decisive action of law enforcement and are praying for the recovery of those injured. This kind of violence has no place in Ohio. Dr. Acton will always stand up to the chaos, hate and vitriol that pits us against one another,” said Addie Bullock, the Communications Director for the Acton Campaign.

The Mahoning County Democratic Party (MCDP) Chair, Chris Anderson, released a statement on behalf of the Party via social media in connection with the incident, reading:

“Moments ago during a visit from Dr. Amy Acton, an individual was arrested at the MCDP tent with multiple weapons, after knocking volunteers to the ground. Let me be clear - The Mahoning County Democratic Party abhors political violence in all forms. What happened at our tent today during today’s visit from Dr. Acton is reprehensible and should be condemned by leaders on all sides of the aisle. MCDP is grateful for the quick response by our local law enforcement officials as well as the OSHP providing Dr. Acton security. Because this is now an ongoing investigation, we will refer all questions to law enforcement.”

Mahoning County Sheriff Jerry Greene tells 21 News that the suspect is expected to be charged with two counts of assault and one count of disorderly conduct. Sheriff Greene says that two older adults were knocked over during the incident.

The suspect was holding a phone or a type of camera during the incident. However, two firearms were discovered on their person.

Officials on the scene outlined what happened during the alleged attack, stating that the suspect, identified as Patrick Havas, entered the MCDP tent and started pushing people out of the way to get to the front of the crowd, knocking two people over in the process.

Members of Acton’s security team intervened and assisted the Canfield Fair Police. Havas has been taken to the Mahoning County Jail.

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Deployment of National Guard in DC through 2029 will cost taxpayers $1.4 million

The extension of the National Guard deployment in Washington, D.C. until January 2029 will cost roughly $1.4 billion, according to a Defense Department estimate provided to Congress, reported The Associated Press.

The figure offers a glimpse of how much taxpayer money will be spent on a deployment that has been criticized by local officials as an infringement of their city’s autonomy and by Democrats who say it has militarized the streets of nation’s capital at the public’s expense.

The cost estimate is for fiscal years 2027-2029 and came in response to questions from Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and was provided to The Associated Press.

The deployment began last summer, when President Donald Trump issued an emergency order that launched a law enforcement surge in the city which the administration says was meant to fight crime. Hundreds of armed Guard troops have been deployed to city streets, supporting arrest operations but also helping with snow removal and carrying out beautification projects. This summer, as the city marked the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, their numbers surged to about 5,000.

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Former U.S. Attorney sue DOJ and AG Blanche over his firing

Less than three hours after a right-wing influencer revealed a blog post critical of Donald Trump, the DOJ fired U.S. Attorney Will Rosenzweig. He received an emailed letter signed by Pam Bondi, then the attorney general, dismissing him from his position as the U.S. attorney for Miami, effective immediately. No reason was provided, reported The New York Times.

Mr. Rosenzweig has now sued the Justice Department along with Todd Blanche, who now runs the department, and Jason A. Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, asking for financial damages and his job back. In doing so, he joined a growing list of former prosecutors and federal agents who have gone to court in an effort to fight back against the widespread purge of law enforcement officials deemed to be disloyal to the president.

During Mr. Trump’s second term, agents and prosecutors have been fired for any number of reasons. Some were seasoned veterans who lost their jobs while trying to protect subordinates from being dismissed. Others were accused, sometimes incorrectly, of having worked on criminal cases involving the president. Many worked on cases stemming from the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Rosenzweig’s firing was one of several that shared a different twist: right-wing commentators claimed to be behind them. On the morning after he was terminated, Ms. Winters reposted a message from another far-right influencer, Laura Loomer, announcing the news. Ms. Winters’s message, punctuated by a smiley-face emoji, declared: “Got this guy fired.”

Many of Ms. Winters’s posts have since been deleted, but lawyers for Mr. Rosenzweig included screenshots of them in their lawsuit. In the posts, she said that Mr. Rosenzweig had “smeared” Mr. Trump in his writings by calling him “mentally unfit” and a “white supremacist.”

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Tennessee moving forward with death penalty after botched execution

The Tennessee Department of Correction is scheduled to execute Anthony “Darrell” Hines on August 13, 2026, reported WPLN News.

For weeks, more and more people have been calling for a death penalty moratorium. But yet again, Gov. Bill Lee says that’s not going to happen.

“We live in a broken world where people commit horrible and heinous crimes, and victims and their families are devastated,” he said in a media availability this week. “And it’s a very difficult — those are very difficult situations… The people have chosen the death penalty for those most heinous crimes. It’s my responsibility to make sure that law is carried out.”

His statement was noteworthy for two reasons: Several unrelated groups — defense attorneys, faith leaders, doctors and Republican lawmakers — have called for an investigation into a failed execution in May, and say the state shouldn’t put anyone to death until that’s done. Lee’s statements indicate he does not want to heed that call. And Lee has maintained that during that failed attempt, the Tennessee Department of Correction had followed the lethal injection protocol. That’s a widely disputed conclusion.

This all started three months ago, when the agency tried and failed to execute Tony Carruthers. The medical staff tried to place a typical IV and failed. Per the lethal injection protocol, a doctor then tried to place a central line in a deeper vein. He also failed. After an hour, Lee called into the prison and ordered them to stop.

That cast a spotlight on whether Tennessee is finding qualified medical professionals to serve on the IV team and as the on-site physician.

Mounting concerns

First, defense attorneys for death row inmates asked for a moratorium, investigation and protocol rewrite. Then in early July, nearly a dozen Republican state senators made a similar call. Lee made his first “no moratorium” announcement then.

Last week, a group of about 40 doctors and nurses joined the call. They wrote a letter to Lee, arguing that medical ethics, including those laid out by the American Medical Association, bar participation in the death penalty.

“This means that the health care professionals who agree to take part in Tennessee’s executions are those willing to set aside their professional ethics,” the letter reads in part. “The problems that we have seen, such as in Mr. Carruthers’ case, are the predictable result of working with such unscrupulous actors.”

Then Tennessee’s Supreme Court announced it was taking up a different death row case. Next week, it will hold several days of hearings on whether the process will violate the rights of Christa Pike, who is scheduled to undergo the lethal injection on September 30. The court appointed a special master, which is a formal investigator. There’s a long list of constitutional concerns, most of them centering on Pike’s gender and extensive history of sexual trauma.

But the special master will also consider whether Pike is at risk of undergoing a cruel and unusual punishment because of her diagnosis with a blood disorder. The condition, thrombocytosis, means her high blood platelet count increases the risk of blood clotting, which can cause heart attacks and strokes. Pike’s attorneys argue this condition and her compromised veins could make delivering a lethal injection particularly difficult. Which would mean she’d likely need a central line placed, and would need a doctor on site capable of placing one.

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Former special counsel Jack Smith is not a criminal

Whatever one might think of Jack Smith’s performance as a prosecutor — I’ve got criticisms, and reasonable minds can differ — the guy is no criminal, wrote Elie Honig in New York Magazine.

Sure, congressional Republicans have worked themselves into a retributive frenzy — We’ve got him now! — while Donald Trump shakes pom-poms behind them. “Justice at last???” the president mused on Truth Social, expectantly. But last week’s criminal referral of Smith to the Justice Department by House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan is pure sleight of hand. On close inspection, even Jordan doesn’t quite buy into his own carnival barkery on this one.

Jordan alleges that Smith lied when he testified behind closed doors to the Judiciary Committee in December 2025. Smith was asked whether, during his investigation of Trump for 2020 election subversion, he reviewed documents containing the content of text messages sent or received by members of Congress. The key to understanding Jordan’s gambit is that there are two separate batches of documents at issue. We’re going to get a bit technical here, but we need to be precise to see through the bullshit.

It almost goes without saying at this point because it’s become so common, but this is yet another act in Trump’s political payback tour. The list of names is now familiar and seemingly endless: Letitia James, James Comey, Jerome Powell, Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, E. Jean Carroll, and pretty much anyone else who has ever glanced sideways at the president. Unsurprisingly, all of these efforts at prosecution have failed thus far.

If the Justice Department does somehow ram a charge against Smith through a grand jury, that case will fail too. Before a trial jury can even consider the fact that Smith did not actually commit perjury, he will have a powerful motion to dismiss based on vindictive prosecution. It’s plain that Trump and his DoJ targeted Smith because of lingering political animus over his prior investigations of Trump. In October 2025, Trump claimed that Smith and others “should be prosecuted for their illegal and highly unethical behavior!” He reiterated his request in January 2026, citing Smith’s “large-scale perjury.” And Trump openly celebrated just moments after news broke of Jordan’s referral of Smith to the DoJ.

Trump’s Justice Department has made commonplace the (previously) rarely invoked doctrine of vindictive prosecution. One federal judge already dismissed the indictment of Kilmar Ábrego García on that basis. And the cases against James and Comey likely would have gone down the same way, had they not been thrown out first because of other constitutional infirmities.

But it seems neither Trump nor the leaders of his Justice Department care much about their string of losses. As long as they get the sugar high of the investigation and (sometimes) the indictment, they don’t seem at all bothered when these cases inevitably crash and burn.

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Federal Judge John E. Jones: 'I don’t think in the annals of the Department of Justice, in the history of jurisprudence in the United States, we’ve ever seen anything close to this'

Across the country, federal judges are calling out Department of Justice lawyers, questioning in unprecedented ways whether they can be trusted to tell the truth or uphold centuries-old legal norms, reported ProPublica.

From Washington, D.C., to Rhode Island to Oregon, federal judges nominated by presidents from both parties, including Donald Trump, have zeroed in on what’s called “the presumption of regularity.” It essentially means that judges must presume that the government — whether it be federal prosecutors, an IRS auditor or an FBI agent — did their jobs according to the rules and in good faith.

Until Trump’s second term, which has seen an exodus of veteran DOJ lawyers and a transformative shift in priorities from issues like enforcing civil rights to instead defending a mass deportation agenda, this foundational tenet had rarely been discussed in federal courtrooms, former judges, lawyers and scholars say. But as Trump’s DOJ exhibits behavior that judges have called “unlawful,” “unethical,” “unseemly” or otherwise dishonest, adherence to that bedrock standard is now being questioned.

ProPublica reviewed hundreds of cases since Trump retook the White House in which judges criticized the actions of DOJ lawyers and found more than 40 in which they explicitly referenced the presumption of regularity. In many cases, judges have expressed frustration that they can no longer take the government at its word.

“Judges simply don’t believe the representations that are being made by United States attorneys, assistant United States attorneys and the like,” said John E. Jones, a former federal judge for the District of Pennsylvania, appointed by President George W. Bush.

“I don’t think in the annals of the Department of Justice, in the history of jurisprudence in the United States, we’ve ever seen anything close to this.”

In Rhode Island in May, Trump-appointed federal Judge Mary McElroy rebuked federal prosecutors’ conduct — saying they withheld information and misrepresented facts — as she quashed their requests for a subpoena in their investigation into a hospital’s care of transgender children. The judge alleged the DOJ had inappropriately claimed its investigation was operating out of Texas to secure subpoenas targeting sensitive medical records of patients in another state and that it falsely claimed the Rhode Island hospital hadn’t communicated with the department.

“The discrepancy between the honorable conduct expected of federal prosecutors and DOJ’s tactics in this case is unsettling,” McElroy wrote. “The Court cannot help but share the sentiment that ‘[t]he presumption of regularity that has previously been extended to [DOJ] that it could be taken at its word — with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes — no longer holds.’”

Judges have emitted a chorus of condemnations against the legal basis for some of Trump’s political agenda, including the mass firings of federal workers, an immigration dragnet that has imprisoned hundreds of U.S. citizens and retribution campaigns against the president’s political enemies.

In doing so, federal judges are imbuing forceful language into their orders in a way that scholars say signals to the Trump administration that the third branch of government is losing trust in the Justice Department.

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Acting AG Blanche meets with Epstein victims, they were not impressed

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche met  accusers of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein following a request to do so by Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, whose support is crucial to advancing his nomination to lead the Justice Department, reported CBS News.

Epstein accuser Annie Farmer said in a statement following her meeting with Blanche that she feels "even more confident in urging senators to vote against his confirmation as the United States' Attorney General."

Farmer alleged that Blanche was "abrasive, condescending, and intentionally noncommittal to survivors," which she described as "a marked contrast" from his testimony at Wednesday's confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Dani Bensky, whose name and personal information were mistakenly made public in documents related to the federal investigation into Epstein that were released by the Justice Department last year, testified before the committee earlier Thursday before taking part in the meeting with Blanche. 

Bensky said in a statement that Blanche treated the meeting "as a mere 'check-the-box' exercise intended to secure votes for his confirmation."

Bensky said that Blanche "danced around his wording, repeatedly interrupted us and could not commit to anything that would demonstrate good faith or begin to restore trust." She said she believes Blanche "is not qualified to serve as attorney general."

"He did not adequately account for the release of materials that exposed survivors' identifying information and images, and he offered no credible plan to investigate and pursue accountability beyond" Epstein and longtime Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, she said.

The political firestorm over Epstein has been a persistent headache for the Trump administration, which released millions of investigative documents over the last year about the disgraced financier's crimes and connections to high-profile people. 

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Woman who said her 18-month-old twins died from vaccinations is indicted for their murder

An Idaho woman who said her toddler twins died last year after being vaccinated faces murder charges connected to their deaths, reported The Associated Press.

A grand jury indicted Andrea Shaw, who is accused of suffocating her 18-month-old twins in May 2025, on two counts of first-degree murder on June 29, according to court records and a statement from the Payette Police Department.

While appearing last year on an internet show produced by Children’s Health Defense — an anti-vaccine group founded by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — Shaw said her twins died after getting vaccinated. Kennedy has not been affiliated with the group since December 2024, when he formally resigned as chairman to join President Donald Trump’s administration.

Shaw, 23, was arrested by Boise police officers Tuesday and arraigned Thursday. She is being held on a $2 million bond and could face life in prison or the death penalty if convicted or if she pleads guilty to first-degree murder. Her next court appearance is July 14.

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Newsom claims he is latest victim of DOJ political witch hunts

James Comey. Letitia James. Mark Kelly. Jay Powell.

According to Politico, the Justice Department has spent the last 18 months chasing President Donald Trump’s political adversaries in investigations that have more often than not crumbled under scrutiny. Now, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is adamant that he’s the next in a long line of vendetta cases brought at Trump’s direction.

And because of the recent prosecutorial misadventures of the Trump administration — which have dashed the Justice Department’s credibility in courts around the country — it’s become an argument that’s impossible to ignore. Even if it’s too soon to tell whether that’s actually what’s happening with the investigation surrounding Newsom’s wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

“This is a huge problem,” said Randall Eliason, former chief of the Public Corruption Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. “In any political corruption prosecution, the defense almost always claims it is a ‘political witch hunt,’ that prosecutors are targeting him or her for some political reason.”

“The best defense to that has always been DOJ’s tradition of independence from politics and long track record of pursuing corruption cases based only on the facts and law, without regard to political considerations,” Eliason added. “The Trump administration has abandoned that independence without even trying to hide it.”

Newsom preempted federal prosecutors with a four-minute video decrying an encroaching investigation — apparently aimed at his wife’s charity and his former chief of staff — as a politically motivated witch hunt. It mirrored a tactic Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, deployed earlier this year when he decried a nascent criminal probe as a baseless political attack.

A federal judge ultimately agreed and took the highly unusual step of blocking grand jury subpoenas in the probe, which was handled by Trump’s top prosecutor in Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro. Trump’s years of attacks on Powell’s fiscal policies, combined with flimsy allegations of misconduct, were clear evidence of a politically motivated probe, Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg concluded.

Newsom was quick to note that Trump has similarly spent years attacking him, even calling for him to be arrested. The California Democrat wants the world to equate him with Powell rather than another Trump adversary, former national security adviser John Bolton — who similarly claimed he was the target of a Trump-driven political probe only to later agree to plead guilty to mishandling classified information.

“Department of Justice prosecutors follow the facts and the law, not politics,” a DOJ spokesperson said. “This DOJ has returned to its mission of fighting crime, regardless of the name or status of alleged perpetrators. No bad actor is above the law.”

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Ohio's GOP Governor comes out against the death penalty

 The campaign to end the death penalty in the United States got an important new ally, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced his opposition to capital punishment and called on his state’s legislature to abolish it. For a Republican leader of a red state who was a longtime supporter of the death penalty, the change of heart may have outsize influence beyond Ohio’s borders, reported MS Now.

DeWine, who is term-limited, is showing that opposition to capital punishment is no longer just the preserve of liberals and progressive reformers. It has gone mainstream.

DeWine’s decision to call for the abolition of the death penalty marks something of a sea change in his views.

Whether or not the Ohio legislature acts on DeWine’s call and abolishes the death penalty, the governor’s stance may help give political cover to governors in other states who are convinced that it is long past time to move past the practice of state-sanctioned executions.

As I have argued previously, Ohio is one of America’s most important death penalty states. The punishment is authorized by law, but it has been more than eight years since the state carried out an execution. And it has a long history of capital punishment, as well as a large death row population.    

That’s part of why DeWine’s announcement has a chance to resonate widely, though he has more to do. He needs to commute the death sentences of more than 100 people on Ohio’s death row. If and when he exercises that authority, his example may encourage his fellow chief executives in places like California, Kansas and Pennsylvania — each of whom also opposes the death penalty — to grant clemency to everyone awaiting execution in their state.

Commutations in all of those states would deliver a severe blow to capital punishment in this country.

DeWine’s decision to call for the abolition of the death penalty marks something of a sea change in his views. More than four decades ago, when he was a state senator, he led the effort to reinstate.

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Autocracy Watch: USPS ordered not to deliver mail-in ballots in Democrat states

State election officials could soon face a stark choice: Hand over voter lists to the Trump administration or risk losing Postal Service delivery for mail-in ballots, reported CNN.

That dilemma stems from newly proposed USPS rules that seek to comply with an executive order President Donald Trump signed this spring to crack down on mail-in voting. If courts let the order stand, it would give the federal government an unprecedented role in elections — and could put even more voter data in the hands of Trump officials searching for supposed election fraud.

The proposed rules lay out new conditions that states would have to meet to send ballots through the mail, including giving the agency lists of all voters set to receive mail ballots.

So far, 23 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia are suing, as are Democratic Party leaders and non-partisan voter advocacy groups, setting up a potentially active summer of high-stakes judicial rulings.

The Trump administration cleared an initial legal hurdle last month, when a federal judge in Washington, DC, who is overseeing one set of the cases, declined to block Trump’s executive order, allowing the Postal Service to begin implementing it.

The Democratic Party groups are asking an appeals court to speed up its review of that decision, warning that voters around the country could be disenfranchised in this year’s midterm elections if the proposal is not blocked.

In an interview with CNN, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat whose state is part of the coalition that filed a legal challenge in Boston, said that if courts rule for the Trump administration, “Then you will see a virtual elimination of mail-in voting, unless the states supply voter lists to the federal government.”

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Federal prosecutor who brought 'Comey 8647' off the case

A rookie federal prosecutor who brought a case accusing former FBI Director James Comey of threatening President Donald Trump’s life by posting a photo of seashells on Instagram has stepped off the case, reported NBC News.

Matthew Petracca, who had been recently hired as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of North Carolina, is no longer on the Comey case, according to a court filing.

Petracca also dropped off of other criminal cases in the Eastern District of North Carolina in recent days, according to court filings. Petracca is a former Republican county committeeman in New Jersey whom W. Ellis Boyle, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, hired months ago, NBC News has reported. Boyle oversaw the highly criticized case, which will go to trial in October if it manages to survive legal challenges.

Petracca had contemplated leaving the Justice Department altogether, according to two people familiar with the matter, but instead remained a Justice Department employee after taking a week off. Petracca had not responded to a previous request for comment on his status at the Justice Department and did not respond to an additional request for comment Friday. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Severo is now heading the Comey case. Petracca did not handle a recent interaction with Comey’s defense team, which instead communicated with First Assistant U.S. Attorney Phil Aubart.

A two-count indictment was brought late last month and suggested that a reasonable person would interpret the image of the shells, arranged to spell out “86 47,” as “a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States.”

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DOJ sues DC Bar Association over ethics enforcement alleging 'blatantly partisan arm of leftist cause'

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the District of Columbia Bar over its efforts to discipline Trump administration lawyers, escalating the department’s feud with legal ethics authorities, reported The New York Times.

The lawsuit defends Jeffrey Clark, a government lawyer in the first Trump administration who sought to undo the results of the 2020 presidential race, and Ed Martin, a current senior Justice Department official. The suit was filed by Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, and Stanley E. Woodward Jr., the No. 3 official at the Justice Department.

In accompanying statements, Mr. Blanche accused the D.C. Bar of acting as a “blatantly partisan arm of leftist causes.” Mr. Woodward said that the bar would “no longer be permitted to probe sensitive executive branch deliberations,” adding that lawyers in the federal government must “be free to share their candid legal advice with their bosses and colleagues.”

That position — that lawyers at the Justice Department or other federal agencies are above scrutiny by legal ethics officials — is likely to be challenged by a host of legal profession entities.

The lawsuit centers on the long-running battle over the D.C. Bar’s effort to disbar Mr. Clark, an environmental lawyer who had no formal role in investigating elections, over his push to promote Mr. Trump’s baseless assertions of fraud in Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s electoral victory in 2020.

While the lawsuit is focused on Mr. Clark, Justice Department leaders in the suit also argued in defense of Mr. Martin. Two months ago, the D.C. Bar filed disciplinary charges against Mr. Martin over what it cast as his misconduct in seeking to punish Georgetown University’s law school.

Mr. Martin has spearheaded efforts by President Trump to use the Justice Department to pursue the president’s perceived enemies — what the administration claims are corrective measures intended to end “weaponization” of law enforcement by Democrats.

Increasingly, the Trump administration has clashed with state and local bars, as interest groups and some lawyers argue that unethical conduct by government lawyers acting on behalf of the Trump administration should be investigated and potentially punished.

The Justice Department is pushing forward a proposal to try to stall or delay state and city bars from conducting ethics investigations of its lawyers, and the new lawsuit argues that the D.C. Bar is among the entities that has shown partisan bias.

To back up that claim, the lawsuit points to how the D.C. Bar handled the case of Kevin E. Clinesmith, a former F.B.I. lawyer who pleaded guilty to making a false statement when he altered an email to try to justify court-ordered surveillance of a former 2016 Trump campaign adviser. After his plea, Mr. Clinesmith had his bar license suspended for a year.

The suit called Mr. Clinesmith’s punishment a “slap on the wrist” for suborning unlawful surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and compared it to the effort to disbar Mr. Clark for “attempting to tell a lie” about the 2020 election.

The lawsuit also invokes the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision granting partial immunity to presidents, suggesting that if a president has immunity, lawyers working for him in the government are also protected from ethical discipline.

“The president’s constitutionally required immunity would provide little protection if executive branch attorneys could be targeted for internal executive branch deliberations,” the lawsuit argued.

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Autocracy Watch: Undermining the Integrity of the midterm elections

Perhaps nothing better reflects the breakdown of the guardrails that thwarted President Trump’s rashest impulses in 2020 than his creation last fall of a special White House post reinvestigating his loss to Biden, reported ProPublica. 

In December 2020, just days after AG William Barr rebuffed Trump’s Antrim County claims, lawyers in the White House counsel’s office helped prevent the president from heeding activists’ call to essentially declare martial law to seize voting machines. This multihour shouting and cussing match has been called the craziest meeting of the first Trump administration.

But the lawyer whom Trump hired in 2025 as his director of election security and integrity, Kurt Olsen, had worked to overturn Trump’s loss in court in 2020 and was later sanctioned by judges, including for making baseless allegations about Arizona elections.

Olsen’s work in the second Trump administration has breached the firewall between the White House and DOJ officials, established after Watergate to prevent law enforcement officers from making decisions based on political pressure, said Gary Restaino, a former U.S. attorney in Arizona.

“This is not a constitutional or even a statutory requirement,” Restaino said, “but it’s a democracy requirement to make sure that citizens throughout America understand that decisions about life and liberty are being made in an objective and consistent manner.”

In a previously unreported series of events, around the end of 2025, Olsen flew to Georgia to meet with Paul Brown, the head of the FBI’s Atlanta field office, according to people familiar with the matter. 

Olsen wanted the FBI to seize 2020 ballots from Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold, and gave Brown a report he claimed would justify the extraordinary action. Brown and his team emphasized to Olsen that any investigation his team did would be independent and fair. 

When Brown and his team examined the report, they found that Georgia’s election board had already looked into its allegations, dismissing many altogether, and concluding that others came down to human error, not criminal wrongdoing. The report had been assembled by a longtime ally of Olsen’s and participant in the Election Integrity Network who had a history of discredited claims, ProPublica has reported.

Based on their own investigation, Brown’s team submitted an affidavit to their superiors at DOJ that did not make a strong enough case to move forward with what Olsen wanted.

Soon after, Brown was offered a choice: retire or be moved to a new office, people with knowledge of the exchange told ProPublica. 

Olsen did not respond to requests for comment.

An FBI spokesperson said that Brown “elected to retire” and that its “work in the election security space is entirely consistent with the law.”

Brown’s ouster after refusing to carry out the seizure of 2020 election materials has been reported, but Olsen’s involvement and the details of their interactions leading to Brown’s retirement have not been previously disclosed. 

With Brown gone, the case moved ahead under his replacement. 

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