““The average person doesn’t appreciate how stunning” it is for a grand jury to outright reject an indictment, as a former prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s office in D.C. put it to me. “The rules are skewed so heavily in favor of the prosecutor that it’s almost comical. But the public is essentially saying, ‘We do not trust you. We are skeptical of you.’”
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Pirro, like Attorney General Pam Bondi, is willing to use her power to try to intimidate and punish Trump’s political opponents — even if that means degrading herself, the office and DOJ, and wasting taxpayers’ money all at the same time. On top of that, Pirro has managed to antagonize federal judges in the district and racked up a long list of rebukes, which will only make it harder for her and her prosecutors to win in court in the future.
Through it all, Pirro is failing to win the indictments, let alone convictions, that Trump craves. She is stumbling not just by the traditional standards of a U.S. Attorney, but also by the Trumpian version.
The Trump administration’s abuse of the Justice Department to pursue Trump’s antagonists would probably be an even bigger story if they were succeeding instead of flailing. The department’s cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James were borderline frivolous on the merits, but they got dismissed after a judge concluded that Lindsay Halligan, who was separately taken to task for serious prosecutorial errors before the Comey grand jury, had been illegally installed as the U.S. Attorney overseeing the cases in the Eastern District of Virginia. The DOJ tried to charge James on two more occasions, but grand jurors rejected those efforts.
Of course, Pirro had joined the pile-on against Trump’s adversaries even before last week’s case. In January, she opened a criminal investigation into whether Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell lied to Congress about renovations at the Fed’s D.C. headquarters. The investigation was roundly criticized as a pretextual effort to force Powell to lower interest rates, as Trump has been insisting. It is also blowing up in Trump’s face, with GOP Sen. Thom Tillis vowing to block Kevin Warsh’s nomination as Fed chair until the Powell investigation is resolved.
Pirro’s effort to indict the six Democratic members of Congress marks her highest profile flop to date, but it is far from the first. Remember Sandwich Guy? Pirro made a video mocking the man who threw a sandwich at a federal agent, then failed to secure felony charges from a grand jury before losing the fallback misdemeanor case altogether.”
Ben Shapiro says that Trump is obviously corrupt, but supports him anyways. He admits that Conservatives are willfully blind and hypocritical on the issue because if Biden did this they would be screaming bloody murder. He defends Trump by stating false things about what Trump has done and by stating false things about the Democrats. Shapiro has been critical of Trump compared to other Trump voters, but he’s still amazingly blind about the truth of what Trump has done and what Democrats have done.
Shapiro acknowledges that Trump was immoral and undemocratic in claiming Biden stole the election and for Trump’s role in the Capitol riot, but because the guard rails held, he’s willing to give Trump another chance. Jessiah makes the analogy that if Shapiro’s kids were in a car with a drunk driver, and that driver crashed but no one was hurt because guard rails stopped the car from going over the side, Shapiro would give the keys of a new car to that driver and allow his kids to ride with him. Of course, Shapiro wouldn’t do that, but he’s willing to do it with US democracy.
“The bipartisan deal to end the funding lapse includes a long-term agreement on just three of the dozen bills lawmakers need to finish each year to keep cash flowing to federal programs. And those three measures are some of the easiest to rally around — including money for veterans programs, food aid, assistance for farmers and the operations of Congress itself.
Together, they represent only about 10 percent of the roughly $1.8 trillion Congress doles out each year to federal agencies. Under the deal, everything else is funded on a temporary basis through Jan. 30 at levels first set by Congress in March 2024, when Joe Biden was president.
That leaves behind major open decisions about the vast majority of discretionary dollars — including for the military and public health programs — along with the stickiest policy issues. It doesn’t help that House and Senate leaders still haven’t agreed on an overall total for fiscal 2026 spending, amid GOP divisions over how deeply to cut.”
“”Mamdani won about 62% of the vote among New Yorkers under 30, and more than half among those aged 30 to 44,” Spain’s El Pais noted in an analysis of the election, which was followed around the world. “By contrast, among voters over 65, he drew just 29%.”
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In March, Gallup found that “since 2010, young adults’ overall opinion of capitalism has deteriorated to the point that capitalism and socialism are tied in popularity among this age group.” Among millennials and Gen Z, support for both stood at about 50 percent. But among the youngest in that cohort, socialism is winning out over its freedom-friendly rival.”
“DOJ and FBI leaders rejected at least three different proposals by career prosecutors over the course of 2021 to expand the department’s investigation of the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol to include Trump and his advisers’ efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The reason? Fear that investigating Trump would seem too political and would upset Republicans.”
“Senate Republicans will block a Democratic bill that would keep federal food aid flowing to 42 million Americans as they try to build pressure to reopen the government, Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday.
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Thune separately told reporters that if the Senate starts “going down the road of … take care of this group or that group … it just begs the larger question, how long is this going to drag on?”
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Democrats and even privately some Republican lawmakers argue the Trump administration has the legal authority to tap a $5 billion contingency fund, or other USDA funds, to ensure SNAP benefits keep flowing during the shutdown. Dozens of Democratic governors and attorneys general have sued the administration over its decision not to tap those funds.”
“The ongoing federal shutdown could cost the U.S. economy between $7 billion and $14 billion, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.”
“The plaintiffs are disputing the Trump administration’s statements that it doesn’t have the legal authority to use the $5 billion it has in emergency funds to pay for at least part of SNAP, which requires more than $8 billion to pay for November benefits. They also argue that USDA could tap Section 32 funds, which it did to tide over the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, to fully fund SNAP next month.”