There’s hardly anyone left in the Justice Department that has any deeper desire than just giving Trump what he wants. The few lawyers Trump didn’t purge resigned soon after it became clear the DOJ would be little more than personification of Trump’s vengeful whims.
Lawyers with decades of experience were replaced with Trump loyalists, former Trump lawyers, and prosecutors so devoid of real-world experience they may as well still be interns. Not that this has slowed the administration’s attempts to strip the US of anything that actually makes it great. The efforts continue, but the DOJ’s flag is flying at half-staff (at best), to mix a metaphor.
Meanwhile, even Trump-appointed judges are getting tired of the Trump DOJ’s bullshit. It has sustained thousands of losses in immigration cases, seen most of its high-profile vindictive prosecutions dead-ended by grand juries and judges, and engaged in mostly-futile deck-chair rearranging/goal-post relocations that haven’t delivered it the streak of wins it clearly feels it’s owed.
In this case, the DOJ did a little of everything. Deck chairs were rearranged to sub in rookie lawyers, goal posts shifted between Texas and Rhode Island (despite the central subpoena targeting Rhode Island medical entities), and DOJ lawyers spent most of their time refusing to engage honestly with the targets of the subpoena (Rhode Island Hospital), much less the federal courts handling the cases.
While the Texas court was ultimately more amenable to the DOJ’s demand for sensitive medical information about Rhode Island minors (in furtherance of the administration’s war on trans people), the proper venue — overseen by Trump appointee Judge Mary McElroy — expressed her frustration and anger in a recent order blocking the subpoena and suggesting sanctions might be just over the horizon.
DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case. It has misrepresented and withheld information to both this Court and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas (the “Texas court”). It did so in an obvious effort to shield it’s recent investigative tactics—previously rejected by every other court to review them—from this Court’s review, in favor of a distant forum that DOJ deems friendly to its political positions. Its representatives have, under oath, misrepresented salient facts. It has misled the parties with whom it was negotiating in Rhode Island, who have now been placed in an untenable and unprecedented procedural position. And when its attorneys came to this Court to explain their conduct, the senior attorney—who was present at many of the events that took place in this case—sat silently by as his counterpart, a junior attorney who has been practicing law for approximately six months and had no relevant information, was forced to answer questions about DOJ’s blatant disregard for the proper course of negotiations.
The government has long relied on the “presumption of regularity” in cases handled by federal courts. That presumption assumes the government is acting in good faith, even when it’s on the wrong side of the law. In less than two years, the Trump administration has destroyed this presumption — something the DOJ has had in its back pocket for most of the last two centuries.
TEXT ORDER. Because of the representations made to this Court by the respondents’ attorneys, as well as the findings of the Court in its order of May 14, 2026, this matter is referred for further proceedings under R.I. Dist. Ct. Local Rule 210(b). So Ordered by District Judge Mary S. McElroy on 6/5/2026. (Potter, Carrie)
Sorry, I know that’s all super-dry and doesn’t contain anything pithy enough for bold text, etc., but here’s what that means: some DOJ lawyers — including ones hand-picked by Trump to do his evil bidding — are potentially headed for discipline.
Rule 210(b) gives the court permission to refer government lawyers for discipline. The more interesting part of the rules directly precedes this, where it says the end result could be government lawyers being disbarred.
The evidence against the DOJ lawyers was covered comprehensively by Judge McElroy in her earlier ruling. To sum up: the DOJ lied. More formally, it “misrepresented” and “withheld information.” Those are both forms of lying, with the severity shifting depending on the context. And when the DOJ knew it had been caught doing it, the most senior prosecutor dumped the case into the lap of the most junior prosecutor in the jurisdiction and forced them to personally absorb the righteous anger of the judge, as well as handle all the uncomfortable questions DOJ officials decided they simply weren’t going to answer.
And, of course, having been called out and threatened with meaningful consequences, the Trump DOJ has decided to pretend it has always been forthright and honest.
“The Civil Division has thoroughly reviewed the District Court’s allegations and concluded that they are without merit. Our attorneys did not misrepresent facts, withhold relevant information, or otherwise mislead the Court. The Department stands behind its attorneys without reservation and has appealed the District Court’s erroneous order.”
I assume that any day now the DOJ will move past its (literally unbelievable) defense of efforts to directly (and personally) attacking Trump’s own appointee as an “activist judge” or (as it often does) claim this is somehow the fault of Joe Biden, who not only didn’t appoint this judge but wasn’t in office when the judge pointed out the DOJ (under this administration) no longer has a reliable reputation.
Sure, this isn’t nearly as satisfying as a coup or the immediate jailing of lying DOJ lawyers. But it is a step further than many judges are willing to go, no matter how often the DOJ lies, cheats, and flat out refuses to play by the rules.
History is written by the winners, they say. But it can also be written by losers.
Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. In response, he told everyone the election had been rigged, if not actually stolen. He said some of this to his faithful MAGA followers the morning the election results were to be certified. The rest is, as they say, history. His supporters stormed the Capitol building for the sole purpose of preventing the election from being certified. They broke into the building, assaulted police and federal officers, forced the Senate into hiding, and walked off with whatever souvenirs they could.
Many of these insurrectionists were ultimately arrested, charged, and convicted for their crimes. When Trump was elected president for a second time, one of the first things he did was issue pardons to the people who broke the law on his behalf back in 2021.
As awful and self-serving as that move was, it wasn’t the end of it. Playing both sides of a lawsuit, Trump managed to secure a revenge fund via a “settlement” by the IRS over the leaking of his tax files years earlier. Trump claims it’s an “anti-weaponization” fund meant to soothe the nerves of supposedly politically persecuted members of his MAGA flock with cash rewards for criminal acts.
Of course, he didn’t say exactly that, but everyone knows how this $1.776 billion slush fund is going to be used. The court handling the lawsuit seeking to dismantle the fund knows it as well. Whether or not it can find a way to shut it down remains to be seen. There’s not a whole lot of precedent on transparent self-dealing by a sitting president, mainly because most presidents (and their cabinets) are generally a little more careful to obscure their true motives.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is continuing to erase history it doesn’t like. This project started far from the White House, forcing national parks to take down anything that presented America as anything less than perfect. This effort, however, takes place on the administration’s home field. Rather than simply allow history to exist, the DOJ is proactively deleting evidence of the agency’s past actions.
A review by NBC News found that the vast majority of press releases pertaining to Jan. 6 defendants have been removed from the DOJ website as of Friday evening.
The move to wipe hundreds of press releases from the official government site is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to reframe the Jan. 6 siege and to paint the rioters who participated in it as victims.
It’s not like the DOJ or administration gave anyone a head’s up that this purge would be happening. It took regular people noticing it for the government to respond. And respond it did, as only this administration can: by gleefully admitting it was engaging in the sort of memory-holing we used to condemn foreign autocracies for doing.
Washington Post journalist Meryl Kornfield pointed out the “quiet” disappearance of January 6 indictment press releases from the DOJ’s website. The DOJ’s “Rapid Reponse” X account jumped in immediately to gloat about its destruction of the public record:
Nothing “quiet” about it.
We are proud to reverse the DOJ’s weaponization under the Biden administration. We will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes. This includes stripping DOJ’s website of partisan propaganda.
There it is: yet another middle finger to Americans from an administration that claims no one loves America as much as it does. Sure, press releases may contain statements from government prosecutors that contain as much opinion as facts, the rest of the releases generally just state the facts as dryly as possible so there’s little room for interpretation.
The question is where the DOJ goes from here. Is it willing to start destroying court records and/or placing these under seal where they’re inaccessible to the general public? Will it deliver a fresh set of non-facts to replace all of the history it’s erasing?
While this makes it more difficult to trust the DOJ to maintain its own records, it doesn’t change the fact that most things on the internet are forever, whether you want them to be or not. What’s been deleted has already been archived. Even if this government is willing to block sites like the Internet Archive from preserving history as it happens, it can’t keep dozens of other people from preventing this administration from simply wishing all of its wrongdoings into the internet cornfield.
Lawfare is just one site that’s making sure the permanent record remains permanent since this administration is objectively opposed to letting its history speak for itself. The results of its ongoing efforts to prevent Trump, et al. from simply pretending this never happened can be accessed here.
What’s detailed in the deleted documents isn’t evidence of “partisan propaganda” or “DOJ weaponization.” What happened actually fucking happened. The DOJ is supposed to handle federal crimes and it did exactly that. The truth is that Trump supporters committed several crimes in an effort to undermine — if not actually destroy — the democratic process. This was one of the darkest moments in American history. It should never be minimized, much less discarded just because it makes the people in power (and the people who support them) look as awful as they actually are.
These are the acts of a dictator and his enablers. It’s the antithesis of the independence that’s going to be celebrated by the same people who are busy destroying everything this country is supposed to stand for. It’s not something to be tolerated. And it should never be forgiven.
The DOJ has gone past bleeding talent. Now, it’s just bleeding whatever.
It’s one thing to do a bit of MAGA swagger before a captive audience and walk out with a criminal indictment that contains no evidence of criminal activity. It’s quite another thing to present that case to a court, where you’ll have to answer questions from judges and opposing counsel.
Matthew Petracca wasn’t really the sort of person someone would expect to be elevated to the position of Assistant US Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Sure, he had some past experience with the state’s Department of Justice, but he definitely wasn’t a seasoned prosecutor by any stretch of the imagination. He was, however, a registered Republican and that may have been the only thing that mattered.
But Donald Trump really wanted to see former FBI director James Comey punished for daring to choose loyalty to the public over loyalty to Trump during Trump’s first presidency. The first attempt to lock him up fell apart for several reasons, but most notably because another one of Trump’s handpicked prosecutors — his former insurance lawyer, Lindsey Halligan — managed to set fire to pretty much everything she touched before deciding to exit to the DOJ.
This case is even stupider than the first vindictive prosecution attempt — one that attempts to convert obviously protected speech into a true threat against the sitting president. Ellis Boyle — the US Attorney for the EDNC — definitely wants this to happen. Boyle has made it clear he doesn’t actually work for the Department of Justice. He works for the Department of Whatever The Fuck Trump Wants.
Boyle wears Trump’s hallmark red ties, mimics the double thumbs up in photos, and ends his emails with, “Thank you for your attention to this matter,” echoing the president’s social media sign-offs. He peppers press releases with the same sort of charged language, like catching “thugs” and “bad hombres,” that Trump uses on Truth Social.
Trump pushed Boyle. Boyle pushed his office. And Petracca got stuck with this case. But only temporarily. Unlike his two bosses, Petracca was expected to present this case to a court. Faced with that reality, Petracca chose to exit as gracefully as he could under the circumstances.
Friday’s court filing requests that Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Petracca, who was listed as the government’s lead lawyer on the Comey case, be removed from the docket. Federal prosecutor Timothy Severo was swapped in.
Petracca has also been taken off at least three other cases since last week, according to court filings, which do not specify why he is stepping aside.
This doesn’t look like a move made by the DOJ to replace a prosecutor it felt couldn’t handle these cases. Instead, according to this reporting by NBC News, it looks like Petracca is leaning towards getting out of the DOJ business altogether.
Petracca had contemplated leaving the Justice Department altogether, according to two people familiar with the matter, but instead remained a DOJ 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 on Friday.
Leaving would be the smart thing to do. Any junior prosecutor stuck with this loser of a case should leave as well. If Ellis Boyle wants to be Trump’s mini-me, the least he can do is show up in court and defend his office’s transparently vindictive actions in person. Anything other than dismissing the charges with prejudice is just going to further destroy the DOJ’s reputation. And it really doesn’t have any reputation to spare at this point… and Trump’s still going to be running/ruining it for another couple of years.
Petracca’s best course of action would have been to quit as soon as he was handed this case. He didn’t and now his name will forever be associated with this vindictive, unconstitutional indictment. But if he wants to salvage what’s left of his integrity, he’ll need to leave this iteration of the DOJ entirely and put as much space between him and it as possible.
It’s been less than two weeks since the Justice Department created the obviously illegal and unconstitutional $1.776 billion slush fund to pay off MAGA loyalists and January 6th insurrectionists. There are a variety of lawsuits looking to put a stop to it, and we just wrote about dozens of former federal judges asking the original judge in Trump’s bizarre “have my IRS give me $10 billion” case to reopen the case to stop the corrupt fund.
The case was filed by a semi-random collection of people and organizations, including a former AUSA who headed up the prosecution of January 6th insurrectionists (and who Trump fired) named Andrew Floyd, but also a California professor who was arrested for protesting ICE nonsense, the city of New Haven in Connecticut, the National Abortion Federation, and Common Cause. Each has credible reasons to try to stop this slush fund from coming into existence.
The complaint details the MAGA obsession with the mostly false claims that Democrats weaponized the government against MAGA:
The creation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund follows directly from President Trump and his allies’ longstanding and frequent accusations that Democrats used the government and the legal system as political weapons.
For example, in June 2023, after DOJ charged then-former President Trump with mishandling classified documents, Trump posted a video on social media exclaiming, “This is warfare for the law . . . . Our country is going to hell, and they come after Donald Trump, weaponizing the Justice Department, weaponizing the FBI.”
Republican lawmakers quickly adopted the same language. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis posted that “the weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society,” and then-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy pledged on Twitter that House Republicans would “hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”
Even before his election to a second term, members of President Trump’s campaign spent months developing a scheme to compensate those of Trump’s political allies who were purportedly the victims of “weaponization.”
It further notes that while MAGA keeps whining about weaponization, it appears to be doing far more weaponization of the government than anything Democrats have ever even been accused of doing. And, they point out that the Trump administration (while weaponizing the government) only seems to point to faux claims of weaponization by Democrats, refusing to even suggest their own side has ever done anything wrong and abused the levers of power:
Notably, none of the administration’s efforts to combat “weaponization” include any mention or review of abuses of government authority by Republican officials.
But Trump himself has used “the levers of government power” in unprecedented ways “to target individuals, groups, and entities for improper and unlawful political, personal, and/or ideological reasons.” See Ex. A ¶ II.C.
During his first term, Trump broke historical norms by being the first president to reject the post-Watergate firewall that separated the White House’s political decisions from independent DOJ criminal investigations.
In his second term, Trump has been arrogating and using power in increasingly unprecedented and abusive ways to carry out his personal political agenda.
For example, DOJ has sought indictments against Trump’s political opponents, including former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and six Democratic members of Congress. 23 It has also launched investigations into Trump’s critics like California Senator Adam Schiff, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and former Special Counsel Jack Smith. 24 Trump revoked the security clearances of 50 people he accused of aiding former President Biden’s presidential campaign, including former top intelligence officials. Exec. Order No. 14152, Holding Former Government Officials Accountable for Election Interference and Improper Disclosure of Sensitive Governmental Information, 90 Fed. Reg. 8343 (Jan. 20, 2025).
The complaint shows how this is nothing more than a slush fund for often law-breaking Trump allies:
Enrique Tarrio, the Proud Boys leader sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy over the January 6 insurrection, said he planned to apply to the Fund. He said that he assumed he could get between $2 and $5 million.
Jenny Cudd, another January 6 defendant, told reporters that “all J6ers will apply for restitution,” noting that news of the Anti-Weaponization Fund was widely circulating among January 6 defendants on social media and “group chats.”
Caroline Engelbrecht, a prominent election denier and founder of True the Vote, a group that amplified conspiracies that the 2020 election was stolen, stated: “I would put myself and True the Vote … squarely in that camp who have been targeted, and we have the receipts to show just how deep that targeting ran. And hopefully, we will see some level of compensation.”
Several attorneys aligned with Trump’s allies have confirmed that they, too, have already received many requests about submitting claims to the Fund.
For example, Steve Crampton, senior counsel at the Thomas More Society, which defends and advocates on behalf of abortion opponents prosecuted under the FACE Act, said his group is “actively exploring available avenues to seek compensation for clients who were unfairly targeted by politically motivated government overreach.”
The judge declined to formally grant a temporary restraining order, but functionally accomplished the same thing by ordering that the DOJ cannot do anything regarding the fund until after there’s been more briefing on the details here.
Because full briefing of the issue will enhance the ability of the Court to make a sound decision. plaintiffs’ Expedited Motion, [Dkt. No. 30], is DENIED and defendants’ request for additional time is GRANTED; however, to ensure that no funds are irreversibly disbursed from the AntiWeaponization Fund (hereinafter, “Fund”) while plaintiffs’ Motion is pending, it is hereby ORDERED that defendants be and are ENJOINED from taking any further action pursuant to the creation or operation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund, which includes the transferring of money to the Fund; the consideration of any claims submitted to the Fund; and the disbursing of any funds from the Fund;
The judge set an aggressive briefing schedule: the government must file its opposition by next Friday, plaintiffs reply by the following Wednesday, with a hearing shortly after.
This is a temporary hold, not a permanent win. The government gets to file its opposition, there will be briefing, there will be a hearing. The fund could still come into existence. But for now, at least one federal judge decided that maybe — maybe — the DOJ shouldn’t be disbursing $1.776 billion to Proud Boys leaders and election deniers before anyone’s had a chance to argue why that’s an extraordinarily bad idea.
Homicides across 35 major American cities fell 21% in 2025, amounting to 922 fewer people killed. Robberies dropped 23%. Gun assaults declined 22%. Carjackings plummeted 43%.
As a scholar focused on how policy decisions and structural conditions shape crime in marginalized communities, I see a pattern forming that could put these historic gains at serious risk.
The cuts stretched across the public safety landscape: community violence intervention, victim services, law enforcement training, juvenile justice, offender reentry and criminal justice research.
Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi described the cancellations as eliminating “wasteful grants.” The White House argued that the grant programs had been “funding DEI and cultural Marxism” rather than helping to keep Americans safe.
In rural Oregon, a DOJ grant had allowed the Union County district attorney to hire an investigator who, after a few years of probing a 43-year-old cold case involving the killing of a 21-year-old woman, finally developed some leads. When the money was cut, the investigation stopped.
Funding cliffs
The funding cuts couldn’t have come at a worse time. States and local jurisdictions were already facing looming cuts, as billions of dollars provided by President Joe Biden’s COVID recovery plan run out on Dec. 31, 2026.
Many local governments had used that money to build violence prevention programs from the ground up: employing community-based mediators, launching youth employment initiatives and expanding behavioral health teams.
And now? A double funding cliff with the sudden cancellation of DOJ grants, paired with the expiration of COVID recovery money.
In Chicago, this cliff has already forced a 43% cut to the city’s domestic violence prevention budget for 2026 – even as its share of domestic-related homicides rose 13% over the previous year.
Larger and more targeted
Criminology research helps explain the particular risks of abrupt disinvestment. Emory sociology professor Robert Agnew’s General Strain Theory identifies a direct relationship between increased strain – economic pressure, blocked opportunities, the withdrawal of institutional support – and higher risks of criminal behavior.
Historical precedent reinforces the concern. In 2013, federal across-the-board spending cuts eliminated services for more than 955,000 crime victims in a single year. The capacity of the FBI and related agencies was slashed by the equivalent of more than 1,000 agents.
Between 2014 and 2016, the violent crime rate climbed 7%.
The 2025 cuts are substantially larger and more targeted, and have devastated some groups.
Equal Justice USA, a national organization working to end the death penalty and reduce violence through community-based interventions, shut down in August 2025 after losing more than $3 million in DOJ grants.
“What shocked me the most … was what feels like the utter cruelty of it,” said Adam Rosenberg, who runs the center, referring to the cancellation of the funds.
As of April 2026, the DOJ has not paid out $200 million in approved grants to assist victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking.
This comes after the department last year allowed more than 100 grants for human trafficking survivors to expire, affecting more than 5,000 victims, despite Congress allocating $88 million for these services.
Community members trained in conflict mediation help extinguish tensions before they turn lethal. Youth programs provide alternatives to street economies. Forensic labs process the evidence that solves cases. Reentry programs keep people from cycling back through the system. With each serving a distinct function, together they form the infrastructure of public safety.
As funding for crime prevention from two main sources runs out, whether progress continues depends on what happens next.
There are many (negative) things this Trump administration is known for. It’s a long list and I would encourage everyone to add as many negative things to that list.
His DOJ is specifically known for vengeful prosecutions of those who dare to oppose the guy who thinks he’s a king. The nation’s top law enforcement entity has been stripped of talent and experience by repeated purges. It has since been (partially) stocked with people more known for their loyalty to Trump than their legal acumen.
All of this is on the public record. And perhaps nothing is more damning than the combined efforts of two federal judges who are handling the administration’s bullshit prosecution of a half-dozen protesters.
Everything about this is a work of art — one inadvertently commissioned by Trump’s DOJ and its remaining collection of lying lawyers. Here’s a useful summary, via CBS News:
U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros said during a Thursday afternoon hearing that the decision to dismiss charges was due to improper handling of the grand jury proceedings by the lead prosecutor in the case. A rare federal trial for misdemeanor charges that had been scheduled to begin next week was canceled, after prosecutors agreed to dismiss the charges with prejudice, meaning they cannot be refiled.
Boutros announced the decision to dismiss the remaining charges in court following a closed-door meeting over redacted grand jury transcripts. He told U.S. District Judge April Perry he was unaware until recently of the alleged misconduct, including a prosecutor meeting with a grand juror outside proceedings and other jurors who disagreed with the case being dismissed and prevented from participating. Boutros did not dispute the allegations, saying the conduct was upsetting and the reason the case was being dismissed.
If you’re not intimately familiar with the US legal process (and let’s hope for your sake that you aren’t), this is some wild shit. Some seriously unlawful shit went down as Trump prosecutors tried to convince grand jurors to give them an indictment they hadn’t actually earned.
The transcript [PDF] of the hearing in front of US federal judge April Perry has been released. It’s pretty much just 60 pages of the government being taken behind the proverbial woodshed. It is fucking harsh. And for good reason. It shows the government engaged in a lot of shady, possibly-illegal stuff in hopes of securing at least a federal misdemeanor charge against the four suspects who hadn’t already been excused for a lack of evidence.
It starts here, with this, as the judge weighs whether further sealing of the grand jury deliberations is warranted:
Although I am not going to prejudge the issue without a hearing, I will say that I was incredibly shocked by the redactions that were made. I have read hundreds, if not thousands, of grand jury transcripts involving prosecutors who are the most junior of prosecutors to several U.S. Attorneys who appeared before the grand jury. I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.
Just in case the context doesn’t make it clear, this is not the court congratulating the DOJ for being the best at law-type stuff it has ever seen. It’s the other thing: a court excoriating the DOJ for doing shady shit the likes of which it has never seen.
The list begins:
First, improper prosecutorial vouching to the grand jurors, with the AUSA putting her personal credibility and trustworthiness on the line in support of the charges.
This may not sound like a big deal. It actually is. Here’s a former federal prosecutor (who some of you might be familiar with) explaining why “vouching” is considered off limits by serious prosecutors who actually consider themselves to be in the business of justice.
/4 “Vouching” is when a prosecutor asks a grand jury or jury to just trust them rather than rely on evidence: “I am a federal prosecutor, I have had this job for twenty years, and you can rely on me when I say there is additional strong evidence that shows they are guilty,” that sort of thing.
“Vouching” is when a prosecutor asks a grand jury or jury to just trust them rather than rely on evidence: “I am a federal prosecutor, I have had this job for twenty years, and you can rely on me when I say there is additional strong evidence that shows they are guilty,” that sort of thing.
So, this is the government being this guy, except that federal charges are involved:
Moving on:
Second, improper prosecutorial communications of a substantive nature with the grand jurors outside of the grand jury room.
Do what now? I mean, what the actual fuck? Grand juries are swathed in secrecy, and we kind of are cool with this because… well, SHIT LIKE THIS IS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN.
Moving on… again:
And, third, the prosecutor excusing grand jurors who disagreed with the government’s case from the deliberations process.
So, that’s how this works now? Has it always been this way? Can the government further stack the grand jury deck simply by booting anyone who doesn’t seem inclined to buy what the government is selling? Maybe this is just the way the government always does these things, but this is the first time I’ve seen a court not only mention it, but directly go after a federal prosecutor for trying to cover up the government’s grand jury min/maxing.
Oh, and there’s so much more if you’re that sort of sadist. Ken White’s Bluesky thread hits a lot of the highlights. Multiple news agencies make the most of some cherry-picked lowlights.
But even without those audiovisual aids, you can see for yourself how this administration operates when it’s trying to punish people for disagreeing with it. Since it knows that law doesn’t support the charges, it will lie, cheat, and steal to get the grand jury “votes” it needs to silence dissent. The courts are already aware of this. But it’s on the public to convert this outrage to votes to prevent the further enshitification of what’s left of this Republic.
Puerile, vindictive, and hateful is no way to run a government. That’s how Trump is running his, however. And that means his DOJ cannot possibly hope to stay on the good side of judges, not when it’s actively engaged in appeasing an autocratic megalomaniac and his enablers.
The lawyers currently staffing the DOJ cannot be excused for their actions. They have been called out time and time again for eroding the trust the DOJ has earned over the years by engaging in vindictive prosecutions, arguing in favor of blatant rights violations, and otherwise pursuing the corrupted version of lawfare that is the hallmark of this administration.
There are only two options at this point, considering the thousands of adverse rulings Trump’s DOJ has racked up. Either the remaining prosecutors are no more honorable or ethical than the man in the White House, or they’re so bereft of morals and ethics that it means nothing to sacrifice what’s left of these traits on the altar of MAGA.
Here’s more from the DOJ that’s nothing more than a blunt force object of oppression, completely beholden to this American version of fascism. To understand what has lead to a federal judge ripping into the DOJ (something that’s now as common as the administration pretending it’s fine to be openly racist again), you have to backtrack a little. Chris Geidner, a.k.a. Law Dork, has the background:
The Trump administration is apparently shifting tactics to advance its stated policy to “reduce or eliminate gender-related care to minors“ by using the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Texas to try and get invasive information from medical providers about transgender minor patients obtaining gender-affirming medical care.
The apparent shift came after more than a half-dozen federal judges across the nation have blocked the effort to obtain patient information through administrative subpoenas; following a hearing in multistate litigation against the Trump administration’s anti-trans policies; and in the midst of a sprawling dispute over the Justice Department’s effort to enforce one of the administrative subpoenas — issued last year against Rhode Island Hospital — in the same district in Texas.
Why is the DOJ using a Texas court to enforce a subpoena issued to a Rhode Island hospital? The answer is obvious. This is forum shopping by the administration, hoping to find courts more disposed to harming trans people than those found on the East Coast. If nothing else, the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court tends to be receptive of the DOJ’s advances now that Trump’s in charge, which means the rare adverse ruling might be immediately reversed or stayed once it’s appealed.
That didn’t work here, however. The case got sent to the proper jurisdiction. And, upon arrival, it has found an extremely unreceptive audience in the form of Judge Mary McElroy, who ended up with the case currently being deliberately and deceptively handled by the DOJ.
Judge McElroy wastes no time attacking the DOJ for its behavior and actions in furtherance of Trump’s hateful anti-trans agenda. These are the opening two paragraphs of her ruling [PDF], copy-pasted here verbatim:
The United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) possesses immense prosecutorial authority and discretion. As citizens, we trust that federal prosecutors, when wielding this awesome power against a state, a company, or certainly against vulnerable children, will play fair and be honest with its counterparts and the judiciary.
DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case.It has misrepresented and withheld information to both this Court and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas (the “Texas court”). It did so in an obvious effort to shield it’s recent investigative tactics—previously rejected by every other court to review them—from this Court’s review, in favor of a distant forum that DOJ deems friendly to its political positions. Its representatives have, under oath, misrepresented salient facts. It has misled the parties with whom it was negotiating in Rhode Island, who have now been placed in an untenable and unprecedented procedural position. And when its attorneys came to this Court to explain their conduct, the senior attorney—who was present at many of the events that took place in this case—sat silently by as his counterpart, a junior attorney who has been practicing law for approximately six months and had no relevant information, was forced to answer questions about DOJ’s blatant disregard for the proper course of negotiations.
The bold sentences are stinging. But even the last sentence is damning. It says the DOJ attorney with the most experience refused to defend the government’s positions in what appears to be an act of abject cowardice. Instead, the senior attorney sent a junior attorney with less than six months experience to face the justifiable wrath of the court.
Underneath everything here is the ugly truth of the case: the DOJ is demanding hospitals turn over the names, social security numbers, addresses, clinical histories, and family information of any minors seeking gender-affirming care. The government should not have this information because it’s clear it intends to harm both the minors and their care providers for reasons it can’t actually justify under existing law.
That’s why it went forum shopping in Texas. And that’s why it deliberately withheld information from those challenging the subpoena and, indeed, the court itself.
The DOJ won’t play fair because if it does, it can’t hope to win. That much is clear, and is stated clearly by Judge McElroy. Here’s just one of several footnotes detailing the DOJ’s dishonesty.
It is well established that counsel are responsible for working in a cooperative, rather than an adversarial manner, and to confer in good faith when negotiating the parameters of a subpoena. The parties had done so up until DOJ’s about face on April 30, when it repaired to the Texas court and presented RIH with a fait-accompli motion to enforce (after it had submitted it), followed a few hours later by an order granting that motion. The Child Advocate learned of the subpoena and motion that targeted its children’s private information by a DOJ press release the next day.
Here’s more on that, from the body of the order:
This representation that the communication with RIH had ceased as of February 4, 2026, was clearly misleading, if not utterly false. At the hearing on this Motion, DOJ’s attorney attempted to justify the glaring omission by saying that the February 4, 2026 email was the last “such” communication. This is patently untrue because, just the day before filing the declaration containing this representation the attorneys for RIH had sent an email in response to DOJ’s request for a conference to discuss the terms provided in the February 4th email. This reckless disregard for the duty of candor owed to a federal court is appalling.
Leading the charge in lying to the court was none other than Lisa Hsiao, who currently serves as the head of the DOJ’s “Enforcement and Affirmative Litigation” office.
Ms. Hsiao also represented that requests regarding “patient-level clinical practices and drug safety” (Requests 11–15) were necessary because “without this information, DOJ cannot fully determine the scope of the violations, identify patterns of misbranding or fraudulent billing, or assess whether the conduct was undertaken with intent to defraud or mislead, as required for felony liability under 21 U.S.C. § 333(a)(2).” But Ms. Hsiao neglected to inform the Texas court that DOJ had agreed to anonymized data in several other jurisdictions. Her assertion that DOJ needed this information was therefore, at best, deceptive, if not intentionally and knowingly false.
There’s a footnote attached to this paragraph that shows this a pattern and practice of Ms. Hsiao when it comes to trying to destroy the lives of transgender minors.
This is not the first time Ms. Hsiao and her subordinates have, in their crusade to obtain transgender children’s medical records, acted in ways that appear to deviate from the norms of professional conduct expected of attorneys representing the United States.
The order notes that the DOJ’s forum shopping in Texas (despite seeking records from an entity located in Rhode Island on behalf of an investigation instigated in Washington D.C.) worked…. right up until it didn’t. The district court granted the government’s request to enforce the subpoena following an ex parte submission by the DOJ that cut RIH out of the loop. And the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court refused to stay this enforcement order pending appeal with a one-sentence denial.
In the end, the DOJ loses. The Rhode Island court quashes the administrative subpoena (i.e., self-issued) because it seeks information that is protected by state law and the US Constitution itself. It does not have the jurisdiction to block the Texas court’s enforcement order, but that ultimately doesn’t matter because the subpoena is no longer usable.
In signing off on the decision, the judge again points out this iteration of the DOJ is an embarrassment to every iteration that came before it.
[T]he discrepancy between the honorable conduct expected of federal prosecutors and DOJ’s tactics in this case is unsettling. 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.” United States v. Oregon, No. 6:25-CV-01666-MTK, 2026 WL 318402, at *11 (D. Or. Feb. 5, 2026). It is regrettable that this is now the case.
Without a doubt, Trump’s DOJ will continue to shit all over the presumption of regulatory, overseen by equally evil people who will oversee those too spineless or devoid of morality to refuse to do Donald’s dirty work. But even if the DOJ manages to avoid being laughed out of court every time it engages in a case, it will never be able to erase the blighted legacy it’s leaving behind.
Let’s hope the word “possibly” can be stricken from this headline in the near future. And while contempt charges don’t mean much to an administration that is openly contemptuous of anything that hints at checks or balances, it would, at the very least, encourage other judges to stop treating the Trump DOJ like it’s worthy of anything less than contempt.
A federal judge said Monday that the Trump administration had put her security at risk by posting a “patently false” allegation that she knowingly released an ICE detainee with an international warrant for murder.
Justice Department attorney Kevin Bolan profusely apologized to Rhode Island-based U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose for the press release posted last week by the Department of Homeland Security, which Bolan acknowledged “simply was not true.”
Let’s go live (because — for whatever reason — the press release is still “live”) to the DHS website posting, which leads off with this headline because it’s operated by unserious people who have chosen to serve an autocratic megalomaniac rather than the nation itself:
A judge ordering the release of an arrestee on bail is rarely reason for a public statement by a federal agency. Normally, they’ve got better stuff to do that engage in personal attacks on judges who have done nothing more than interpreted the law and ruled accordingly.
Every alleged crime is noted in bold type in the press release, which also includes this statement from the DHS (emphasis in the original):
“Bryan Rafael Gomez is a criminal illegal alien from the Dominican Republic with an international warrant for homicide,” said Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis. “An activist judge appointed by Joe Biden released this wanted murderer back into American communities. This is yet another example of an activist judge trying to thwart President Trump’s mandate from the American people to remove criminal illegal aliens from our communities. Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, DHS will continue to fight for the removal of criminal illegal aliens who have no right to be in our country.”
Even if you choose to ignore the headline and the politically motivated attacks on the judge, you’re still left with something that isn’t normally the way the federal government does business. After all, judges are part of a co-equal branch, and there’s little to be gained by pretending normal court stuff is “activism.”
There’s even less to be gained when it’s discovered that the government’s lawyers didn’t bother to apprise the judge of this homicide warrant the DHS is now using to attack the judiciary. And what’s left of the DOJ appears to have realized this belatedly. There’s a lot of contrition in this short filing that Assistant US Attorney Charles Calenda (who oversees the affected jurisdiction) hopes will defuse the judge’s righteous anger.
Signed by Assistant US Attorney Kevin Bolan, the response to Judge DuBose’s order to show cause blames ICE for misleading the judge, even though it was Bolan who ultimately did the misleading:
Before the response was filed, I had been informed by ICE about the Petitioner’s pending arrest warrant issued on January 24, 2023, from a court in the Dominican Republic and that I could not disclose that information. I was not aware that ICE had previously disclosed that same information on April 16, 2026. In failing to disclose the information regarding Petitioner’s criminal history, I relied on ICE’s representation that I was not permitted to disclose that information and understood that a legitimate law enforcement reason prevented disclosure. Judge DuBose, therefore, lacked that information about the Petitioner’s criminal background when she granted the petition.
I sincerely apologize to Judge DuBose, personally, and to the entire Court for the consequences of this lack of disclosure.
Sure, contrition is welcomed. But it’s not quite as welcome when (1) ICE had already disclosed this fact, (2) the DHS continues to post an unwarranted attack on this “activist judge,” and (3) nobody in the government appears willing to act honestly until a court forces them to do it.
The DOJ may have some plausible deniability, but that relies on everyone assuming this administration is so disjointed some fingers may not even know what other fingers are doing, which is something that needs to be addressed before we get to larger questions vis-à-vis right hands and left hands knowing what each other are up to.
And while the DOJ may have some legitimate complaints about being both understaffed and overwhelmed by immigration cases, the problem lies with Donald Trump and his cabinet full of bigoted middle managers. The administration is still hoping to eject nearly a half-million more people by the end of the year. Meanwhile, the DOJ continues to bleed talent thanks to loyalty purges and prosecutors walking off the job because they can’t stomach what they’re being commanded to do.
The solution is contempt charges. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a start. Judge DuBose says she’s looking at both the DOJ and DHS. If any entity should bear the brunt of this, it’s the DHS, which continues to post misleading invective targeting this judge, as well as being instrumental in the burial of information the judge should have had access to while making a release determination.
And while I understand that contempt charges just mean taxpayers will continue to bail out an administration unworthy of its tax dollars, it will at least contribute to the steady drip of adverse rulings. When enough of those pile up, it becomes a flood this administration won’t be able to contain.
To the narcotics agents investigating drug smuggling in Puerto Rico prisons, it seemed at first like a typical scheme: associates of an inmate gang sneaking drugs into the prison, gang members distributing them inside and bank records showing the money flowing.
Then the agents discovered something unusual.
Leaders of the prison gang known as Los Tiburones, or the Sharks, were selling drugs to inmates not only for money, but for their votes. Specifically, votes for now-Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón, a longtime Republican and supporter of President Donald Trump, investigators found.
To make sure the inmates — many of whom were addicted — complied, the gang’s leaders threatened violence and to withhold drugs, the investigators learned. Corrections employees in on the plan looked the other way as the gang, formally known as Group 31, ran the enterprise.
What at first seemed like a routine drug case had turned into something bigger. Puerto Rico, along with just a couple of U.S. states, allows inmates to vote. Puerto Ricans living in the territory can vote in all contests except federal general elections. It is a felony to willfully offer money or gifts in exchange for support at the polls. A conviction carries fines of as much as $250,000 and imprisonment of up to two years.
Investigators had gathered solid evidence of election fraud implicating both inmates and staff, and they were working toward determining whether González-Colón or her campaign was involved, four people with knowledge of the case told ProPublica. They requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the case.
But as federal prosecutors prepared an indictment against the inmates and staff in November 2024 — just days after Trump won the election and González-Colón clinched the governorship — they received a surprising directive. Their bosses in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Puerto Rico instructed them to exclude the voting-related counts against the inmates and all charges against the prison staff, an investigation by ProPublica found.
In December, they filed an indictment charging 34 inmates and associates with crimes including drug distribution resulting in at least four overdose deaths, money laundering and possessing a firearm. And while prosecutors described the drugs-for-votes scheme in the court filing, they did not include a single charge related to it.
Soon after Trump took office, the lead prosecutor, Jorge Matos, was told by a supervisor to take the investigation no further, according to four people familiar with the case.
“Before the election, it was definitely full steam ahead,” said one person familiar with the case. “After the election, that all changed.”
Matos, who left the Justice Department in June 2025, did not respond to phone calls or texts from ProPublica or attempts to reach him on social media.
For those working on the case, the decision to scrap the investigation was especially puzzling given the new president’s agenda; Trump issued executive orders in early 2025 aimed at eradicating drug traffickers and declaring election integrity “fundamental” to maintaining American democracy.
“We invested so much effort to make a difference,” said another person. “We’re frustrated, but there’s nothing we can do.”
People close to the case wondered if politics had played a bigger role than law and order. Trump congratulated González-Colón in a letter shared at her January 2025 inauguration saying, “I am so proud of your resounding victory.” That same month, she pushed to erect a statue of him at the Capitol building in San Juan alongside other presidents who’ve visited the island. “He deserves that,” she said, according to an official post from the Federal Affairs Administration of Puerto Rico on X.
W. Stephen Muldrow, the U.S. attorney for the District of Puerto Rico, was appointed by Trump in 2019 and has served continuously since then. His name appears on the indictment along with those of three assistant U.S. attorneys. Muldrow told ProPublica his office does not comment on open investigations other than in press releases or press conferences. While a couple of the inmates have accepted plea deals, most of the drug and money-laundering cases against the inmates and associates are still making their way through the court system.
In a follow-up email, a spokesperson for the office noted the indictment was filed during the Biden administration and under the previous governor of Puerto Rico.
Charging corrupt public officials “has always been and remains a top priority” of the office, wrote spokesperson Lymarie Llovet-Ayala.
“When sufficient admissible evidence exists to charge persons involved in public corruption, as required by the Justice Manual, the Puerto Rico U.S. Attorney’s Office will aggressively pursue such charges,” she wrote.
In court documents tied to a different case, in October 2025, a magistrate judge mentioned “an unrelated white-collar investigation involving the Governor of Puerto Rico.” Muldrow’s office responded in a filing, stating, “There is no white-collar investigation (or any other investigation) of Puerto Rico Governor Jenniffer González-Colón.”
González-Colón has not been charged with a crime. The governor declined ProPublica’s repeated requests for an interview and did not respond to written questions sent to her communications team.
Muldrow had a friendly working relationship with former Attorney General Pam Bondi when she was the state attorney general in Florida and he was an assistant U.S. attorney in the middle district of that state, according to people who know him.
A Department of Justice spokesperson said in an email, “Neither Attorney General Bondi nor Acting Attorney General Blanche was involved in any charging or investigative decision in this Biden administration prosecution.”
The attorney general’s office noted in a statement that the indictment mentioned allegations of voting coercion, and said: “This office did not limit the underlying investigation in any way.”
In May 2025, in a move that federal prosecutors and political observers alike said was highly unusual, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence seized the voting machines from Puerto Rico over concerns about “vulnerabilities,” according to testimony in March by Director Tulsi Gabbard to Congress.
A spokesperson from the office told ProPublica the seizure was at the request of the U.S. attorney’s office in Puerto Rico and was “not about any election in particular.” The goal was to “assess risk to this critical infrastructure, given similar infrastructure is used throughout the United States,” the spokesperson said in an email.
Muldrow didn’t answer questions from ProPublica about the matter.
Lydia Lizarribar, an attorney for Juan Carlos Ortiz-Vazquez, a Group 31 member who prosecutors named as one of the leaders of the drug operation, declined to comment on the case.
A Party “Stronghold”
The Puerto Rican prison system has a long and well-documented history of overcrowding, inadequate medical care and other human rights violations so egregious that in the late 1970s they prompted federal oversight that continued for decades.
The grim conditions spurred inmates to form advocacy groups like Group 31, which was officially created as a nonprofit to lobby corrections officials and lawmakers to improve inmates’ quality of life. Over time, federal prosecutors say, several of these groups operating in the prisons evolved into violent criminal organizations such as Los Tiburones and Ñetas, with memberships in the thousands.
The poor conditions were also the backdrop for a push in 1980 by the New Progressive Party governor at the time, Carlos Romero Barceló, to codify voting rights for prisoners.
Inmates have been aligned with the party ever since, political analysts said. Political parties in Puerto Rico differ dramatically from those on the mainland. They don’t adhere to a straight divide among Democrats and Republicans. Instead, the two main parties center much of their focus on whether Puerto Rico should become a state and so have Republicans and Democrats within each.
It’s not unheard of for politicians of all parties to court the inmate vote, but the New Progressive Party has made it a “stronghold,” said Fernando Tormos-Aponte, a political scientist with expertise on Puerto Rico and an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh.
“It’s been a huge advantage for them particularly as elections in Puerto Rico have been decided by small margins,” Tormos-Aponte said of the New Progressive Party. In the 2024 general election for governor, the party won 83% of the inmate vote, according to a ProPublica tally of voter returns on the State Elections Commission’s website.
Inmate votes were especially key in the 2024 gubernatorial primary as González-Colón, a longtime New Progressive Party member, was challenging the incumbent governor of the same party.
She won the primary by fewer than 30,000 votes, according to the State Elections Commission. Local news reports said that an estimated 5,000 prisoners voted territorywide.
In her first months in office, González-Colón signed a law allowing people with criminal records to obtain professional licenses in Puerto Rico.
In July, she signed off on a law expanding inmates’ ability to hold jobs in the private sector, calling it “part of a vision of social justice,” adding “we believe in the second chance, in the value of work and in the capacity for transformation of the human being.”
In March, González-Colón signed a law requiring the parole review board increase the pace at which parole denials are reconsidered. She said in a press release the law is aimed at a “fairer, more transparent system focused on rehabilitation.”
Political analysts said rumors have swirled over the decades about coercive tactics being used to mobilize the prison vote, raising significant questions about the extent to which that support comes in exchange for favors from the ruling party.
This time was different, sources said. They had evidence. Prosecutors had “locked up” the voting-for-drugs scheme among the gang, inmates and staff, and were deep into investigating a potential political connection when Muldrow’s office pulled the plug.
“These are the type of questions you would think an administration that has publicly declared this war on drug trafficking would investigate further,” Tormos-Aponte said of the Trump administration. “You would think it would be a priority.”
For the people familiar with the prison election fraud investigation, it was clear politics were at play in the decision to abandon charges prosecutors were confident they could win. What wasn’t clear, they said, was who was pulling the strings and how. It was “like you’re watching a puppet show but you can’t see the strings,” one person said.
“You know what you’re seeing isn’t telling the whole story,” the person said. “There was some kind of invisible hand.”
Drugs for Votes
Although they excluded drugs-for-votes charges, prosecutors didn’t scrub the Dec. 12, 2024, indictment of how they believed the operation worked.
Outside associates of Los Tiburones, the indictment alleged, primarily used drones to drop drugs on prison grounds. Then staff participating in the scheme helped in the “introduction and distribution” of the drugs inside the prison or acted as lookouts. The employees also allowed the gang members to enforce their own discipline system against those who didn’t do as they asked, including when voting. Punishments included withholding food from inmates or forcing them to sit with their arms folded while they were beaten and kicked. In four cases, the drugs led to overdose deaths, the indictment says.
The indictment also alleged that Los Tiburones made connections with government officials “for the purpose of reducing prison sentences,” and the gang mandated both the prisoners’ political affiliations and “who to vote for in primary and general elections.”
A relative of one of the prisoners told ProPublica that inmates had to show their ballots to gang leaders when they voted to avoid punishment.
Puerto Rico’s Civil Rights Commission, which for decades has sent observers to polls across the territory, reported “serious difficulties” in gaining access to several prisons during the 2024 general election. After being denied entry at multiple locations, the commission successfully sought a court order, but much of the day had already passed by the time the observers were allowed in.
“We strongly condemn the lack of diligence and indifference shown by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in hindering the functions of this Commission on the day of early voting in correctional institutions,” the agency later wrote in a special report on the 2024 elections.
The report said observers witnessed prisoners voting in cramped quarters that didn’t allow for privacy and having to hand their ballots to others to put in the box.
Ever Padilla-Ruiz, the commission’s executive director, told ProPublica that inmates sent written complaints to the office detailing their experiences of being pressured to vote in the primary — some for González-Colón and others for her opponent, Pedro Pierluisi. They did not mention any gangs by name, Padilla-Ruiz said.
He said inmates reported that inmate group leaders were “always sending messages” up until election day, adding that they were too afraid to say much more.
Several people familiar with the case said investigators had evidence that González-Colón had spoken to a Group 31 member, but they had not determined whether she was involved in vote buying.
One of the imprisoned gang leaders had bragged on Facebook about his connection to González-Colón, posting a picture of him talking with her on WhatsApp while the primary campaign for governor was underway, two sources said.
She clearly benefited from the scheme, they said. “There was no doubt about that,” one said, noting that thousands of votes were likely at stake.
The indictment notes that gang members were provided preferential treatment such as relaxed visitation policies and the use of Sony PlayStations, big screen TVs and cellphones, but investigators had not connected the privileges to González-Colón or her campaign.
“Latinos Are Winning”
González-Colón has been a longtime advocate for Puerto Rico statehood and has been engaged in Republican politics for more than 20 years. She was elected chair of the Republican Party of Puerto Rico in 2015 and two years later became resident commissioner, a role similar to a U.S. representative but with limited voting power in Congress.
She’s been an active participant in Latinos for Trump, praising the president over the years as “wise” and in 2019 saying on social media, “Latinos are winning under his leadership.”
As she continues to lobby for Puerto Rico to become the 51st state, González-Colón has also leaned in to her relationships with other members of Trump’s Cabinet, posting well wishes on social media to Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, and congratulating Markwayne Mullin, the Homeland Security director Trump picked to replace Kristi Noem, calling him “my good friend.”
“I know he will provide strong leadership as he works with President Donald J. Trump to strengthen our nation’s security,” she wrote in a March Facebook post.
Experts on Puerto Rican finance and politics say the relationship between González-Colón and the Trump administration is symbiotic though lopsided.
“I see it more as a situation of unrequited love,” said Alvin Velazquez, an associate law professor at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law and an expert on Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy in 2017.
The territorial island, whose residents were granted U.S. citizenship in 1917, receives less federal funding than most states. Political leaders in Puerto Rico, González-Colón included, have perpetually lobbied for more support.
Republicans in turn have capitalized on González-Colón’s rise as she helped bolster GOP support among the Puerto Rican diaspora and other Latino voters on the mainland. Now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio endorsed González-Colón in her 2024 gubernatorial election.
Polls specifically isolating Puerto Rican voters show that Trump saw at least a 4 percentage point uptick in votes from Puerto Ricans living in states compared to the 2020 election, garnering 45% of the group’s vote in the 2024 election, according to the nonprofit research center Instituto Cervantes at Harvard University.
And perhaps most importantly, experts say, Trump has counted on González-Colón to support his strategic geopolitical initiatives in the region, including the controversial reopening of long-abandoned naval bases in Puerto Rico. González-Colón welcomed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to the island in September and thanked Trump on X for “recognizing the strategic value Puerto Rico has to the national security of the United States and the fight against drug cartels in our hemisphere.”
That’s despite the sentiment among many Puerto Ricans who were angered by Trump’s response to Hurricane Maria in 2017 and a comedian at one of Trump’s 2024 campaign rallies who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” And while Trump has said that González-Colón was “wonderful to deal with and a great representative of the people,” he later called Puerto Rico “one of the most corrupt places on earth.”
It took longer than I thought it would, but the Trump administration’s appeal of the court ruling and injunction that put a pause on RFK Jr.’s remaking of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and vaccine policy has come through.
If you need a reminder on how we got here, here you go. In June of ’25, Kennedy fired every single member of the CDC’s ACIP panel, a group of advisers that recommends vaccine schedules for the country. He then appointed what were eventually 13 new members to ACIP, nearly all of them virulent anti-vaxxers or otherwise aligned with Kennedy’s misinformed views on medicine and science. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) sued earlier this year, arguing that Kennedy had violated the American Procedures Act (APA) by his actions, specifically because he did not follow evidence, proper procedure, or factual science in the appointments. The court agreed, ruling against the administration and issuing a preliminary injunction on HHS for staffing ACIP with the new appointees and nixing any of the recommendations it had made thus far.
And so now the administration has appealed that ruling, though it’s any wonder as to what the administration’s arguments will be for the appeal.
A filing Wednesday evening in the District of Massachusetts indicates the administration is appealing Judge Brian Murphy’s order March 16. Murphy put any decisions made by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee on hold, ruling that Kennedy replaced the committee “unlawfully.”
Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate signed the appeal.
The Justice Department could file a motion for emergency relief to get the court to act on its appeal immediately. That would require the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to act quickly in deciding whether to stay, or pause, the March 16 ruling.
Regardless, the court activity on this will likely eventually take months to work out. The AAP isn’t backing down, with its attorney vowing to respond to the appeal and taking the posture that it believes they will prevail. Reading the APA statute, I very much tend to agree, but this is Trump 101 stuff. Never back down, exhaust every legal avenue to get your way, and hope someone along the way fucks this up so you get your way. That the final leg on this journey might be a Supreme Court that often looks like another part of the Executive Branch, rather than an independent arm of government is certainly part of the calculus.
But in the meantime, two things remain true. The Trump administration, which has at times made noises about wanting to rein in Kennedy and his nonsense, is working hard to allow him to continue to make America sicker. And because of Kennedy’s refusal to follow basic protocol and science, the country is without a competent body to advise on vaccination schedules.
Meanwhile, the status of the advisory panel — a key group meant to be composed of vaccine experts independent of government influence — is in limbo.
A meeting that had been scheduled for March at which members were expected to discuss Covid shots has been postponed indefinitely. The committee is supposed to meet again in late June. There is no agenda yet.
Given the current makeup of the panel, that may indeed be the best possible outcome currently. But it’s not a long term plan, nor a long term positive. ACIP existed for a reason. The country needs intelligent, sincere, and sane people advising the country on how to combat infectious diseases with medicine and technology.
We are without that right now, purely because Trump thought putting Kennedy in charge of HHS was anything other than a form of national self-harm.
