Donald Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt took to X on Tuesday night, saying she was enraged that a Washington Post reporter would ask her to comment on an alleged hate crime two days after the election.

In the incident in question, Dawn Hines, who is Black, found "I hate n-----s sorry not sorry" spray-painted on her fence — which prompted an outpouring of support and solidarity from the mostly-Black community in Lawnside, located in southern New Jersey near Philadelphia. The reporter, Emmanuel Felton, reached out to Leavitt for comment about his article on the incident.

"What happened in Lawnside was part of a wave of racial incidents that occurred in the days following Trump's reelection," wrote Felton. "Around the same time that Hines's fence was sprayed, Black people across the country were receiving text messages that said they'd been 'selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation.' And at the same time that Lawnside residents came together to discuss the graffiti on Hines's fence, a group of self-identified neo-Nazis marched and shouted the same slur in Columbus, Ohio. While none of these events can be traced directly back to Trump, experts say that his rhetoric has been tied to an increase in hate crimes across the nation."

Hate crime rates have doubled since Trump first ran for president a decade ago.

But Leavitt, who has previously defended the racist joke about Puerto Rico at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally and claimed Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's legislation on tampon access was a "threat to society," took umbrage over the assertion.

"I just received one of the most absurd emails EVER from the Washington Post," she wrote. "This 'reporter' is doing gymnastics to try and sow division and blame President Trump for something that he admits in his email has no trace to him whatsoever; This is exactly why NOBODY trusts the Fake News Media; Jeff Bezos warned his staff before the election, and they’re still not listening to him!"

The Bezos remark alludes to the Amazon billionaire thwarting the Washington Post editorial board's intention to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris. Bezos argued it would taint public trust in the paper's straight news reporting, though political endorsements are standard practice for the editorial divisions of many newsrooms.

Donald Trump is the first Republican to secure a popular vote victory in the presidential contest since 2004. As such, he feels more confident than he did last time, and has stated that “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate” to issue a wave of new policies through executive power once he takes office.

But he could be heading for a rude awakening, wrote Hayes Brown for MSNBC.

The fact is, he wrote, Trump's popular vote win is one of the smallest in the history of modern elections — and while he enjoys a modicum of goodwill from voters now, that will quickly dissipate if he overreaches.

And as more votes have been counted, he wrote, Trump's victory — now at 1.6 percent, versus President Joe Biden's 4.5 percent win four years ago — looks less and less impressive: he "has not won a majority of the country’s votes, according to the most recent tally from NBC News. And much of the data available shows that Trump’s win likely had more to do with people opting to stay home this year than a massive swing in his favor."

This should worry Trump, wrote Brown, because even presidents who entered office with far greater mandates have lost popularity rapidly when voters turned on their agenda: the U.S. electorate "will support the presidential candidate deemed most likely to represent change, only to move quickly to punish them for any sign of hubris," he wrote.

ALSO READ: It's time for Democrats to declare class warfare

"Every new administration since Clinton has seen its party hold a trifecta in Washington during its first year in office and claim a mandate to shake things up. It has not fared well in most instances."

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, for example, suffered wipeouts after controversial healthcare reform agendas, while George W. Bush's second term was crippled early on by a groundswell of outrage over his effort to privatize Social Security.

And there are signs Trump is setting himself up for something similar. Pew Research "hasn’t found a massive surge in support for his policies," wrote Brown, with only a bare 53 percent of voters open to his agenda, and even many of them turning against it when asked specific questions like on his immigration ideas.

Ultimately, wrote Brown, "The will of Donald Trump should never be confused for the will of all Americans."

Hours after his pick for attorney general removed himself from consideration, Donald Trump announced his replacement pick on Truth Social: former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.

"I am proud to announce former Attorney General of the Great State of Florida, Pam Bondi, as our next Attorney General of the United States," wrote Trump. "Pam was a prosecutor for nearly 20 years, where she was very tough on Violent Criminals, and made the streets safe for Florida Families. Then, as Florida’s first female Attorney General, she worked to stop the trafficking of deadly drugs, and reduce the tragedy of Fentanyl Overdose Deaths, which have destroyed many families across our Country. She did such an incredible job, that I asked her to serve on our Opioid and Drug Abuse Commission during my first Term — We saved many lives!"

"For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans - Not anymore," Trump continued. "Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and Making America Safe Again. I have known Pam for many years — She is smart and tough, and is an AMERICA FIRST Fighter, who will do a terrific job as Attorney General!"

Trump did not mention in his announcement that Bondi also served as one of his defense attorneys during his first impeachment trial, where he was accused of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in his effort to try to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into announcing an "investigation" of Joe Biden's family.

Bondi also faced controversy for shutting down a state probe of Trump University, which authorities said falsely claimed to offer education, but actually sought to upsell students to more expensive programs. Bondi's decision came around the same time a political group linked to her accepted a $25,000 campaign donation from the Trump Foundation.

She also worked for a lobbyist for Qatar at the same time she was representing Trump's defense, according to the book, "The Big Cheat"by David Cay Johnston

Trump's original pick for attorney general was former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, but this nomination quickly went off the rails amid a House Ethics Committee report, still as of now unreleased, into allegations he engaged in child sex trafficking and illicit drug use.

Former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) on Friday night sharply criticized Donald Trump's selection of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) to serve as attorney general — and gave his fellow commentators on Fox News a piece of his mind.

Gowdy, who ran the House's controversial investigation into the 2012 Benghazi consulate attack, has a history of enmity with Gaetz, who has himself lashed out at Gowdy on Fox News.

"Trey Gowdy would know something about clown shows," he said in January 2023. "That's probably how a lot of us would categorize the Benghazi hearings that resulted in people screaming at each other in a big report but no real accountability."

Gowdy was no less cutting as he explained to Fox News anchor Bret Baier what he thought of Gaetz, who abruptly resigned from Congress this week ahead of a vote on whether to release a House Ethics Committee report into allegations of child sex trafficking, acceptance of illegal gifts, and drug use.

"I think, as I said at the beginning, a lot of these senators want to get these [nominees] through, if not all that they can," said Baier, noting to Gowdy that the FBI investigation of Gaetz for sex trafficking never ended up with charges against him.

"Well, with all due respect ... I was there for, if you want to give credit to somebody [for GOP investigations], give it to Kash Patel, Jim Jordan, John Ratcliffe, James Comer. Don't give it to the guy who was out there putting on makeup while other people were doing the investigation."

When it comes to who could run the Justice Department in a way that would satisfy the MAGA movement, Gowdy added: Trump "just picked Jay Clayton, he just picked Todd Blanche, both of whom would be fantastic. They would do exactly what you wanted done."

"You don't have to pick between character and competency," he said. "You can actually have both in a nominee. But Gaetz doesn't have both."

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After years of baselessly claiming the Justice Department was out to get him for political reasons, incoming President Donald Trump appears set to take a firm hand with the department and make it do precisely that to his political foes, former federal prosecutor Harry Litman warned Monday on MSNBC's "The Beat."

The remarks came as Trump prepares to replace huge chunks of the civil service with his loyalists.

There are things that people can do to fight back, Litman added — even if those remedies are somewhat limited now.

"So Harry, what is the legal recourse for people or companies, if they end up within the crosshairs of Trump and the DOJ, and, as you call them, the flunkies that are going to do his bidding?" asked anchor Katie Phang, herself an attorney.

"Yeah, there are a lot of legal remedies," said Litman. "You can bring something against the government for a politically trumped-up prosecution, but there is not going to be any personal remedy, as you were saying, to couple everything he is doing with the immunity decision. He did it himself when he said he would fire [special counsel] Jack Smith within two seconds."

Despite all of this, he said, the problem is that "as a general matter, we rely on the professionalism and fairness of the DOJ and there are not a lot of remedies out there, not to mention [Steve] Bannon is crowing about having the judiciary populated with Trump judges."

The upshot, he said, is "this is really serious stuff, and it is a fundamental erosion if it takes place, and I think, Katie, it's going to take place at least in some part, [of the] absolute bedrock assumption about the criminal justice system since at least Watergate. We are really going back to a government of man, not of laws."

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Former President Donald Trump's legal ally Rudy Giuliani was roundly mocked on social media after a devastating court order against him Tuesday.

Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor and New York City mayor who has been one of Trump's most dedicated surrogates, helped push baseless lawsuits to try to throw out the 2020 presidential election, and ended up facing a $148 million default judgment in a defamation suit brought by a pair of Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, whom he had accused of stuffing the ballot box in Atlanta.

Already in a dire financial situation, and with his bid to shield his assets through bankruptcy being thrown out in court, a judge has ordered the seizure of Giuliani's New York penthouse and several other assets to start paying off the money.

Commenters had a field day over the new development.

"Well that is called sweet justice and should serve as a deterrent to others in this MAGA orbit," wrote former DOJ attorney and political consultant Julie Zebrak.

"When you repeatedly lie about people committing election fraud in 2020, it can lead to $146 million judgments against you," wrotecongressional reporter Jamie Dupree. "On the bright side, Rudy Giuliani won't have to sell his 3 World Series rings - at least not yet."

"A federal judge has ordered the property of election denying TRAITOR Rudy Giuliani to be put into receivership," wrotesinger/songwriter Bill Madden. "Repeating the lies of the loathsome piece of sh-t, Giuliani put the lives of election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss in danger — and he is now paying the price."

"The Martin Scorsese saga of the rise and fall of Rudy Giuliani is going to be excellent," wrote statehouse reporter Jake Zuckerman, noting that among the other possessions Giuliani has to surrender are a luxury watch collection, movie star Lauren Bacall's former Mercedes, and a jersey signed by baseball legend Joe DiMaggio.

Politico published a story on Monday that critics say sanitized Donald Trump's speech in storm-ravaged Asheville, North Carolina — even as the article acknowledged several other chaotic developments and actions the former president has taken in the previous few days.

"After a weekend of headlines about Donald Trump’s entertainment-focused message on the campaign trail — he jokingly touted the size of Arnold Palmer’s genitalia, learned how to cook McDonald’s french fries and appeared at a Steelers game — the former president delivered a more somber address about the resilience of survivors of the deadly storm, while also bashing the Biden-Harris administration’s response," said the report, written by Natalie Allison.

Commenters on social media took umbrage, accusing Politico of whitewashing Trump's extreme behavior.

"In 2024 Trump being 'somber' just means he didn’t explicitly mention anyone’s genitalia or call for using the military against Americans," wrote Dave Willett of the League of Conservation Voters.

Some commenters pointed out that Trump's "somber" tone wasn't all that somber; Kamala Harris campaign spokesman Ian Sams posted a video of Trump praising gunmen who threatened FEMA aid workers trying to help the city, saying, “I think you have to let people know how they’re doing. If they’re not doing, if they’re doing a poor job, we’re supposed to not say it? By doing that, they’ll do a better job next time.”

".@politico wrote this up with a headline about Trump striking a somber tone," wrote national security attorney Bradley Moss.

"What fresh hell is this @politico ?!" wrote former Chicago and Seattle local news reporter Jennifer Schulze. "Take a look at the actual clips of Trump in NC and see if you think this is anyone's idea of somber. Good grief."

"Dear @politico reporters. It really is OK to fact-check candidates' claims -- rather than just repeat them verbatim as if you're human tape-recorders," wrote former Wall Street Journal editor and Columbia University professor Bill Grueskin, emphasizing the article omitted that many of Trump's claims about absent disaster response in North Carolina were false.

"Literally WHAT is happening in the Politico newsroom?? Trump angrily lied & politicked throughout his NC damage tour-- including justifying threats against FEMA workers stemming from his own disinformation," wrote T.J. Adams-Falconer, a former adviser to former President Barack Obama.

"I’ve resisted the conclusion that the mainstream press wants Trump to win," wrote progressive reporter Aaron Rupar. "But stuff like this really makes me wonder what the hell is going on in some of these editorial meetings."

A federal court issued an order blocking Florida state officials and in particular Gov. Ron DeSantis' health secretary Joseph Ladapo, from threatening TV stations over ads in support of Amendment 4, the constitutional ballot referendum that seeks to repeal Florida's near-total abortion ban, reported constitutional attorney Adam Steinbaugh.

DeSantis' administration sent letters to TV stations threatening to prosecute their employees for airing the ad, citing an obscure "sanitary nuisance" law intended to apply to physical health hazards like improperly sealed septic tanks. Specifically, they argued that the law might falsely persuade women who are eligible for abortion under health exceptions from seeking care.

The court didn't buy the argument and called out the state for violating the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

"While Defendant Ladapo refuses to even agree with this simple fact, Plaintiff's political advertisement is political speech — speech at the core of the First Amendment," said the ruling. "The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring the disfavored speech 'false.'"

The ruling cited the conclusion of the Supreme Court in the 1945 case Thomas v. Collins: "The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the press, speech, and religion."

"To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it's the First Amendment, stupid," the ruling continued.

This comes after a tough day of oral argument, in which U.S. District Judge Mark Walker appeared visibly exasperated with Florida attorneys' arguments that the prosecution threats against TV stations were legitimate.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) tried to justify former President Donald Trump's increasingly authoritarian threats against political opponents and the "enemy from within" on CNN — and a stunned Jake Tapper had to keep reminding him that Trump "literally" said the things Youngkin denied he said.

Youngkin repeatedly insisted that Trump was just talking about drastic measures to get border security under control.

"I'm a governor of a state that is not near the southern border and yet I see the impacts of 10 million people illegally coming across the border," he said. "Every single day, five Virginians die on average from fentanyl overdose."

"Obviously there is a border crisis," said Tapper. "Obviously there are too many criminals who should not be in this country and they should be jailed and deported completely. But that's not what I'm talking about, because he was talking about 'sick people,' 'radical left lunatics' who should be handled by the National Guard or the military. And then later on in that same speech, he said that one of the 'lunatics' he addressed was Congressman Adam Schiff. That's who he is talking about using the National Guard and military against: 'radical left lunatics,' 'enemy from within,' people like Adam Schiff."

"Again, Jake, I don't think that, and again, I can't speak for him, but I do — I do think that you are misinterpreting and misrepresenting his thoughts," said Youngkin. "I do believe, again, it's all around the fact that we have had an unprecedented number of illegal immigrants come over the border in an unconstrained, unrestrained fashion. The Biden-Harris administration has allowed it to happen ... I don't think that he's referring to elected people in America."

"But I'm literally reading his quotes," protested Tapper. "I'm literally reading his quotes to you. And I played them earlier, so you could hear that they were not made up by me. He's literally talking about quote, 'radical left lunatics' and then one of those lunatics he addressed, he mentioned, was Congressman Adam Schiff. Criminals should be locked up, migrants who are in this country illegally, who are violent, should be locked up and deported. I grant you all of that, and I am not denying that it's happening at all. I'm talking about Donald Trump saying that he wants to use the National Guard and the military to go after the left. That's what he's saying."

"I don't — I don't believe that's what he's saying," insisted Youngkin.

"I played the quote and I read it to you," said Tapper, practically shouting as he visibly lost patience. "You can wish that he weren't saying that, but that's what he's saying."

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House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) fired off a warning shot at Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, according to the New York Post: stop investigating civil rights matters.

Jordan, along with Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), chairwoman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, sent Khan a letter Thursday taking particular issue with the FTC's lawsuit against Coulter Motor Company, which operates Buick and Cadillac dealerships in Tempe, Arizona.

The suit accuses Coulter of "deceptive" online pricing schemes and illegal junk fees. Of particular interest to the Republican lawmakers, it also accuses them of charging Latino customers an average of $1,200 more in interest and fees than everyone else.

This effectively amounts to the FTC deputizing itself as a civil rights agency, Jordan and Rodgers warned — something they argue the FTC has no authority to do.

“Both Commissioners [Andrew] Ferguson and [Melissa] Holyoak raised concerns not only because the FTC Act does not contemplate such claims, but the FTC making up such a claim and including it as part of a settlement agreement can set a dangerous precedent,” said the letter.

The lawmakers added that while the FTC is in charge of enforcing the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act, “that authority to challenge conduct under the ECOA does not accordingly permit the FTC to separately challenge conduct as 'unfair discrimination' pursuant to the FTC Act.”

Jordan and Rodgers cited the Supreme Court's ruling earlier this year overturning Chevron deference, or the requirement that courts presume the expertise of executive agencies in interpreting their own rulemaking powers. They warned that the question of whether the FTC can police discrimination is likely to be challenged in court, where judges can now more easily deny this authority.

Khan, widely considered to be a hero of progressive activists within the Biden administration, has led the charge on stronger antitrust enforcement, particularly pursuing the breakup of big tech monopolies — which has led some wealthy Democratic donors and surrogates to pressure Vice President Kamala Harris to replace her if she is elected.

Conservative-leaning CNN reporter Chris Wallace opened up to MSNBC's Ari Melber about his time at Fox News, and what he viewed as the network's deteriorating editorial standards in the waning days of former President Donald Trump's tenure as it tried to keep MAGA viewers who didn't want to hear Trump lost the election.

"I have someone who worked in Fox not praising you, and we only learned about this from private text messages," said anchor Ari Melber. "Laura Ingraham says, 'My anger at the news channel is pronounced,' her making a distinction between what some news anchors do and what she does. Tucker Carlson texted, 'It should be. We devote our lives to building an audience and they let Chris Wallace wreck it.' Your response?"

"Well, I'm employed, and Tucker really isn't anymore," said Wallace. "So, that's part of my response."

"Look, I had a very good 18-year run at Fox, and they never messed with me the whole time," said Wallace. "As you can see from some of those reports, I asked tough questions, I booked the toughest guests, and I never got second-guessed by the executive floor at Fox."

Wallace then shared when he felt the winds shifted at the network.

"I sensed a change in Fox, as time went on, particularly after the 2020 election, particularly after we, correctly, but were the first to call Arizona on Election Night in 2020. And the Trump campaign was very upset with us, and a lot of Trump supporters were very upset with us, and they began going to other news avenues, like Newsmax that were even further to the right. And I sensed a change, that there was less interest, even in the news side, in sticking to the facts, sticking to the truth, and more in telling that audience, to try to win them back, what they wanted to hear."

Moreover, Wallace added, "they paid a big price for it" when Dominion Voting Systems sued them for promoting conspiracy theories about their election equipment.

"I have to say I'm not unhappy that Fox had to pay $787 millionbecause there ought to be a price to pay when you don't tell the truth and you deliberately misinform people about things that the evidence in that case showed that higher-ups at Fox knew wasn't true," said Wallace.

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A far-right homeschooling activist running on the Republican ticket for North Carolina's superintendent of public instruction has apologized to Muslim voters for her past comments disparaging their religion, according to a report.

Speaking at a candidate forum over the weekend hosted by the Muslim American Public Affairs Council in Raleigh, Michele Morrow said she was only speaking out of "frustration" that no one acknowledged 2020 protests were turning violent, particularly in “primarily Islamic areas,” reported NC Newsline. She did not specify what areas she was referring to.

“There were several people that were in Congress that were basically giving heed to and saying, ‘this is just a peaceful protest, that there’s nothing wrong with this,'” Morrow said. “My concern was that’s not true. Like it’s one thing to peacefully protest, it’s another thing to demand that people think like you or that you have your way, and if you don’t get that way, you’re going to be violent, you’re going to be destroying property, you’re going to be threatening people.”

She added that surely she and Muslims could find common ground, because, “I know you agree with me that we do not want the LGBTQIA agenda pushed on our children.”

Morrow has spewed Islamophobic invective on social media in prior years, including suggesting that Muslims should be banned from public office and that “The DEEP STATE globalists and Muslim extremists, intent on destroying America, placed [Congresswoman Ilhan] Omar and MANY others into our govt."

She also proclaimed Omar should "head back to Somalia." At least some of these posts occurred months before the protests over the police murder of George Floyd that started in May 2020, which she claimed was the source of her frustration.

In addition, Morrow has also called for President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama to be executed for treason on pay-per-view TV, and suggested that the Chinese Communist Party stationed thousands of troops in Canada to rig the 2020 election against former President Donald Trump.

All of this is occurring as Republicans in North Carolina run away from their gubernatorial candidate, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, following new revelations that he expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and called himself a "Black Nazi" on a pornographic internet forum years before entering politics.

Former President Donald Trump reacted to special counsel Jack Smith's massive new filing in the federal election conspiracy case with a long-winded rant on Truth Social, accusing him of a plot to interfere in the presidential election.

"The release of this falsehood-ridden, Unconstitutional, J6 brief immediately following Tim Walz’s disastrous Debate performance, and 33 days before the Most Important Election in the History of our Country, is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine and Weaponize American Democracy, and INTERFERE IN THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION," wrote Trump. "Deranged Jack Smith, the hand picked Prosecutor of the Harris-Biden DOJ, and Washington, D.C. based Radical Left Democrats, are HELL BENT on continuing to Weaponize the Justice Department in an attempt to cling to power."

"'TRUMP' is dominating the Election cycle, leading in the Polls, and the Radical Democrats throughout the Deep State are totally 'freaking out,'" Trump continued. "This entire case is a Partisan, Unconstitutional, Witch Hunt, that should be dismissed, entirely, just like the Florida case was dismissed!"

The filing by Smith, which follows the Supreme Court's ruling that presidents have a presumption of immunity for official acts, seeks to outline how there is enough evidence from Trump's private, non-official acts to reveal extensive criminal wrongdoing in the plot to overturn the 2020 results.

Whether Smith's argument is successful, the case cannot go to trial before the election takes place.

It also comes as Smith appeals a decision by Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon that threw out the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, based on a legal theory that Smith was ineligible to bring charges on behalf of the federal government because he was not confirmed by the Senate.

As Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) took the stage for the CBS-moderated vice-presidential debate, former President Donald Trump watched and raged at how things went.

One of Trump's first reactions was to attack Margaret Brennan and Norah O'Donnell, the moderators of the debate, who at various points — despite CBS' policy of avoiding direct fact-checks of candidates — were forced to correct and silence the candidates at various points.

"Both young ladies have been extremely biased Anchors!" an irate Trump said.

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At other points, Trump went after Walz.

"He’s been indoctrinated with LIES, thinking he can override his own INCOMPETENCE. He’s as nervous as you can get!" Trump wrote in one post.

In another, he wrote: "Walz is taking so many notes - Never seen a Candidate take more! He needs the notes to keep his brain intact."

He also insisted, "JD is doing GREAT - A different level of Intelligence from Tampon Tim!" — a reference to a debunked claim that Walz mandated the provision of menstrual products in boys' bathrooms in Minnesota schools.

Trump also reacted with fury when Walz noted the Biden administration's accomplishments in a landmark bill that expanded health care access and clean energy production.

"The Administration admitted that the Inflation Reduction Act that Walz just brought up was a HOAX with a phony name that had nothing to do with Inflation Reduction," he wrote. "It’s been totally debunked by the Administration itself. It actually helped increase Inflation to the Highest in the History of our Country, devastating our Citizens!"

A key campaign pledge from Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) would have disastrous consequences on the southwest Ohio community where Vance grew up and the state he represents, according to an analysis by The New York Times.

Vance and former President Donald Trump have repeatedly set their sights on repealing the Inflation Reduction Act, a landmark piece of legislation signed by President Joe Biden that reforms energy production and fixes some holes in health care coverage, investing in climate response while simultaneously bringing down the federal deficit.

But Ohio gets a lot of benefits out of that law, reported Madeleine Ngo and Alan Rappeport.

Since the IRA was signed into law, "companies have announced more than $7 billion in clean energy investments in Ohio, according to an analysis from E2, an environmental nonprofit organization" — a greater investment than all but six other states.

"Among the companies benefiting is the steel manufacturer Cleveland-Cliffs, whose facility in Middletown was awarded a grant of up to $500 million from the Energy Department," the report stated.

This project, intended to upgrade the plant to use cleaner fuels, "is expected to create about 170 permanent jobs and up to 1,200 temporary union construction jobs" — directly in the town Vance spent his childhood.

The town was also the focus of his famous memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy."

Middletown's acting city manager has lauded the investments as "outstanding," and said it would also free up resources for the local government to improve roads and water infrastructure, according to the report.

In other words, concluded Democratic strategist Jesse Lee in a post on X, "Vance wants to devastate his hometown."

Trump and Vance's vows to roll back the IRA have faced other political challenges as well — chiefly the fact that their plan would mean repealing a wildly popular program that allows Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, saving money for both elderly beneficiaries and the government as a whole.

One legal scholar is fearful that the deep constitutional flaw that is the Electoral College risks tearing apart America and causing another secession crisis, writes Michelle Goldberg for The New York Times.

The ever-controversial system for electing presidents, which sometimes overrides the popular vote, was thrown into further controversy this month as Nebraska Republicans moved to try to change their elector rules at the last minute in a way that would favor former President Donald Trump, by no longer allowing Omaha's congressional district to choose its elector independently.

However, Republicans appear to lack the votes to do so as Mike McDonnell, a key Republican state senator who recently defected from the Democratic Party — is rumored to want to run for mayor of Omaha — put his foot down against the plan.

"Whether or not McDonnell remains steadfast, this is a preposterous way to run a purportedly democratic superpower. The Electoral College — created in part, as the scholar Akhil Reed Amar has shown, to protect slavery — has already given us two presidents in the 21st century who lost the popular vote, and it continues to warp our politics," wrote Goldberg.

And this is why U.C. Berkeley School of Law dean Erwin Chemerinsky is so pessimistic, she wrote: "'I believe that if the problems with the Constitution are not fixed — and if the country stays on its current path — we are heading to serious efforts at secession,' he writes in his bracing new book, 'No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.'"

Chemerinsky advocates in his book for calling an Article V "convention of states" to overhaul the Constitution, in the hopes of getting rid of the imbalance that has let a small far-right minority have an advantage in the electoral process and the Supreme Court.

This is an unusual position for someone on the left, as most of the Article V push in recent years came from Republican state legislatures who want to do exactly the opposite — but he fears if nothing is done, the country is on a dark path.

"But right now, we’re staring down yet another election in which Trump could win after losing the popular vote. Chances are he’ll have a Republican-controlled Senate, even if most people who go to the polls vote for Democrats. He’ll operate under the protection of a widely distrusted Supreme Court — the only one in any major democracy where justices have lifetime tenure — that has granted presidents broad impunity for crimes they commit in office," wrote Goldberg.

Chemerinsky, she concluded, blames "the mistakes of 1787" for this situation — and, she added, "The question is whether America is capable of fixing them before they destroy us."

Former President Donald Trump made a glaring mistake in a new digital ad campaign targeted at Republican voters in Georgia, using imagery from the wrong Georgia, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

"ATTENTION GEORGIA: I'm humbling asking you to stop what you're doing and check your voter registration status," said the ad, which is as of press time is still reportedly running for certain Facebook users in Georgia. "Only a handful of votes will decide this election. We can stop inflation, secure our borders, lower taxes, and make America Great Again!" The message is accompanied by an image of a vast, meadowed mountain range, overlaid with the words "REGISTER TO VOTE FOR TRUMP. CHECK YOUR REGISTRATION" which links to a registration portal.

The problem, pointed out AJC, is that this mountain range is not in Georgia — at least, not Georgia the U.S. state. According to Shutterstock image data, it's from Georgia, the former Soviet republic located in the Caucasus, at the intersection of Eastern Europe and Western Asia.

ALSO READ: Inside Trump and Johnson's shocking new bid to suppress women's votes

This is not the first time the Trump campaign has made a blunder in their efforts to target Georgia. Right after the presidential election in 2020, as the Stop the Steal efforts were ramping up to try to block certification of the electoral count, a key Trump ally trying to rally supporters to protest in Atlanta managed to misspell the state's name.

Georgia has emerged as one of the most critical battlegrounds in the 2024 election. Voters there narrowly backed President Joe Biden and have voted Democratic in three consecutive Senate elections, but Republicans retain strength in down-ballot races, and polling throughout the year has shown the state as a tossup.

Vice President Kamala Harris held a rally in Georgia last week, where she laid into Trump and condemned GOP leaders, after the first widely-covered reports of a woman dying as a result of a post-Roe state abortion ban delaying her access to care.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) suffered a blow on Wednesday night, as his short-term government funding bill failed.

The House rejected the measure by a vote of 202-220, according to C-SPAN. Fourteen Republicans voted against the measure and just three Democrats crossed the aisle to support it.

The core sticking point was the inclusion of the SAVE Act, a GOP legislative priority that would effectively gut the National Voter Registration Act by adding cumbersome new requirements for people to prove citizenship to register to vote — something that is already required by law.

Former President Donald Trump had demanded passage of the bill with the voter restrictions attached, telling the GOP to let the government shut down if they canot pass the bill as is.

This came as several GOP leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), expressed open frustration at the fact that the GOP was entertaining a potentially politically destructive shutdown fight with just weeks to go before the election.

Specifically, Trump proclaimed in an interview with right-wing talk radio host Mark Levin on Fox News that he had "every right" to interfere in the presidential election, which legal experts have noted is essentially a confession that he interfered and that he wasn't acting within the scope of official duties and, therefore, is not protected by the immunity rights the Supreme Court established for presidents earlier this year.

Trump, wrote Kirschner, "is forever trying his cases in the court of public opinion, where there are no rules of evidence, no rules of procedure and no rules of law. What he apparently doesn’t realize is that every word out of his mouth is admissible in a criminal trial. This is where the rules of evidence come into play — and where they will work to Trump’s extreme disadvantage at trial."

Those rules of evidence, wrote Kirschner, allow prosecutors to enter a “statement of a party opponent” into evidence — in other words, Trump's own words can be used against him. It's the reason why the Fifth Amendment exists, so that the government cannot compel defendants to incriminate themselves. But they can do so themselves if they so choose.

"On the other hand, Trump's statement that he has an "absolute right" to do something cannot be entered as evidence in his own defense, for the purpose of proving that right does in fact exist.

Trump's only option to combat this is to take the witness stand himself and testify that his words didn't mean what the prosecutors claim they mean — and, Kirschner noted, while Trump has previously considered doing this in his various cases, his lawyers have always stopped him for fear he would just incriminate himself further.

"A defendant facing multiple criminal indictments would be well advised to keep his mouth shut. Once again, the former president has proven unable to do so," wrote Kirschner.

"This is why I have said all along that as each of Trump’s criminal cases move from the court of public opinion into courts of law, he will be convicted in a New York minute — just as he was in, well, New York."

A campaign aide for former President Donald Trump deflected Wednesday over whether the campaign supports conspiracy theories put forth by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Corey Lewandowski refused to give a straight answer when confronted by MSNBC's Ari Melber over whether the campaign stands behind Kennedy's many fringe theories now that the Trump campaign is using him as a surrogate.

"I'll remind everyone, RFK Jr. has said that COVID itself was made to target 'both Caucasians and Black people,' that he 'won't take sides on 9/11,' that the CIA controls the American press," said Melber. "How much of this should we understand to be the Trump campaign's position, and can you tell us what role RFK Jr. would play in health policy? We're hearing reports he could be involved in the transition team."

"Well, RFK Jr. has been someone who's been very steadfast in making sure that when it comes to the decisions that affect your body, you get to choose, and what we saw was government mandates, whether you're a government employee at the local level, the state level or the federal level, being forced to take an injection in order to save your job, and RFK was against that," said Lewandowski."

At that point, Melber interjected.

"You're talking about policy, and you are referring to something that is true, there was a wide national debate about government requirements. I would just mention, I asked you, though, about RFK's actual conspiracy theories. Are you going to tell me that you and Donald Trump think COVID was hatched to target people by race, or are you going to reject that part of his agenda?"

Lewandowski declined to answer directly, saying Kennedy is "a big man" who has "been on television a number of times to answer his own questions."

"What I am here to tell you is that he has a microphone to an audience who's very concerned that the government-mandated vaccines into their children and themselves in order to keep their jobs, and there's real Americans who lost their jobs and their livelihoods because of what the government did to them, and I think when it comes to RFK, specifically those moms who have young children, they're very concerned about what is being injected into their children, whether it's through the food supply or through these vaccines, and RFK has an opportunity to go out and talk about the fact that he was right," said Lewandowski. "The government should not have had to mandate those. We don't know the full impact of what was mandated by the government on the long-term repercussions that it could potentially cause, so we're very much in line with RFK on that position."

Watch the video below or at the link here.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Special counsel Jack Smith has formally filed an appeal of District Judge Aileen Cannon's decision to dismiss the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case against former President Donald Trump to the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

Cannon, a Trump-appointed judge whose rulings have drawn criticism for consistently benefiting the former president, cited a concurrence by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to rule that Smith was not properly appointed as special counsel because he was not confirmed by a vote of the Senate.

But in the appeal, Smith points out that this interpretation of the law has never been used in prior cases, and cites decades of law and fact to argue Cannon's interpretation is wrong.

"Precedent and history confirm those authorities, as do the long tradition of special-counsel appointments by Attorneys General and Congress’s endorsement of that practice through appropriations and other legislation," said the filing. "The district court’s contrary view conflicts with an otherwise unbroken course of decisions, including by the Supreme Court, that the Attorney General has such authority, and it is at odds with widespread and longstanding appointment practices in the Department of Justice and across the government. This Court should reverse."

Smith's filing appears to stop just short of asking for the appellate court to throw Cannon off of the case altogether, simply stating that, "The Court should reverse the dismissal order and remand for further proceedings."

Even a win for Smith at this stage would potentially trigger a further appeal to the Supreme Court, and regardless, the litigation of ongoing issues in the case would push out any possible trial date to far past the November election.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered an address on the first night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, giving a full-throated endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris.

"There is always a choice," said Clinton. "Do we push forward or pull back? Come together as “We The People” or split into us versus them? That’s the choice we face in this election."

Clinton, who was the first woman to be nominated by the Democratic Party for president, ran a bruising campaign in 2016 that ended with a narrow Electoral College loss to former President Donald Trump.

"Kamala has the character, experience, and vision to lead us forward," said Clinton. "I know her heart and her integrity. We both got our start as young lawyers helping children who were abused or neglected. That kind of work changes you. Those kids stay with you. Kamala carries with her the hopes of every child she protected, every family she helped, every community she served."

Clinton proceeded to contrast Harris' record with that of Trump.

"The Constitution says the president’s job is to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed.’ Those are the words of our founders. ‘Take care,’" Clinton continued. "Just look at the candidates. Kamala cares about kids, families, and America. Donald only cares about himself.

"On her first day in court, Kamala said five words that still guide her: ‘Kamala Harris, for the people." That is something Donald Trump will never understand."

Retired Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) was one of a small handful of Republican senators who voted to convict former President Donald Trump over his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Despite this, he plans to vote for Trump again anyway, reported Spectrum News on Tuesday.

“My vote on the president wasn’t on anything the House presented… it was on the fact that I thought that the president leaving the vice president, without surging to Capitol Hill a protective detail, to take a vice president with a nuclear football, and to make him secure was a breach of office,” said Burr. “I think some were shocked. I think some might have voted a different way if I had told them. Very possibly. Very possibly.”

As for why he was going to vote for Trump this year despite all of this, he said: “Maybe someone will have a hard time squaring with it. I don’t have a hard time squaring with it because I firmly understood why I voted for impeachment. And l like I said, that’s not a disqualifier as to whether you can serve. It’s a bad choice I thought a president made one time.”

He added that his vote to convict Trump was not a vote to disqualify him from office.

At the time Burr cast the vote, it caused uproar in the North Carolina Republican Party, which censured him.

He retired from office in 2022, and Trump ally former Rep. Ted Budd, was elected in a surprisingly close race with former Democratic state Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley.

Burr is not the first Republican involved in the effort to impeach Trump who has gone on to give an endorsement to the former president in 2024. Former Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI), who voted for the House's articles of impeachment, has also said he would back Trump for another term.

A longtime anti-Trump Republican strategist outlined two key things former President Donald Trump must accomplish to keep on track to win — and in his view, he's failing to do both of them.

The former president, who had been building a small but durable lead in battleground states earlier in the summer, has suddenly found himself slipping after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and Vice President Kamala Harris took over as the Democratic nominee.

" Trump has two essential objectives to get back into a stronger position," wrote Mike Madrid in a post Monday on X. "1. He has to define Kamala and they’re losing that battle. The window is closing. 2. He has to redefine himself. Good luck."

The real danger for Trump, continued Madrid, is that "If Harris goes into her convention with continuing positives and momentum this is gonna be really tough for Trump to turn around. Public opinion will start to cement in place."

The former president, according to media outlets, is unnerved by the turnaround of the election, and in particular Harris' ability to draw massive crowds, something Trump has always prided himself on doing and embellished whenever he could.

Over the weekend, Trump even started pushing a conspiracy theory that the images of Harris' large rally in Detroit last week were A.I.-generated — which has been debunked by a number of journalists independently taking photographs and video of the event, and even has some Trump supporters fearful he's losing the plot.

Even prior to Harris' entrance in the race, Madrid had flagged that Trump has a key vulnerability in that his support in the primaries among hardcore Republican voters appeared to be softer than anticipated.

There is already a growing bloc on the right flank of the Supreme Court that wants to cripple key elements of the First Amendment, warned Ian Millhiser for Vox — and if former President Donald Trumpis given another term, he could possibly add enough justices to let that actually happen.

It comes down to a pair of key rulings from the 1960s: Brandenburg v. Ohio, which protected political agitators' right to speech, and New York Times v. Sullivan, which limited the government's right to sue the news media — a practice long used by segregationists to suppress the Civil Rights Movement.

Before that point, Millhiser wrote, free speech existed as an idea, but not a court-enforced reality: "Dissidents were commonly thrown in prison, often for many years, when the government disagreed with their views. Near the end of World War I, the great union leader Eugene Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison for giving a speech opposing the draft, and his conviction was upheld by a unanimous Supreme Court. In 1951, as Sen. Joseph McCarthy was ramping up his witch hunts against suspected communists, the Supreme Court blessed his and similar efforts by upholding the convictions of several individuals who did nothing more than try to organize a (wildly unsuccessful) Communist Party in the United States."

Today, the First Amendment truly protects protesters and journalists — and for now, the Supreme Court has a majority upholding this. But some far-right Supreme Court justices want to turn back the clock.

"Justice Samuel Alito, in a pair of opinions joined by Thomas and Gorsuch, spent the last two years unsuccessfully fighting in favor of laws that seem designed to challenge the modern understanding of free speech," wrote Millhiser. "These two cases, known as Netchoice v. Paxton (2022) and Moody v. Netchoice (2024), concerned Texas and Florida laws that would essentially allow the Republican governments of those states to seize control of content moderation at major social media outlets like Facebook or YouTube." Ultimately, the court reined in these laws — but these three justices wanted them to stand.

And it's not hard to envision Trump would appoint more justices who agree with them. On the campaign trail, he has vowed to "open up our libel laws" to let reporters be sued over their stories, and he also suggested deporting the students who protested the Israel-Hamas War on college campuses earlier this year.

"If Trump wins, and if he gets to fill just two more seats on the Supreme Court, Americans could swiftly lose First Amendment rights that have been secure for nearly six decades," Millhiser wrote.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz used his first speech as Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate at Monday's rally in Philadelphia to tear into former President Donald Trump, and everything he stands for.

"Minnesota's strength comes from our values, our commitment to working together to seeing past our differences, to always being willing to lend a helping hand," said Walz. "Those are the same values I learned on the family farm and tried to instill in my students. I took it to Congress and to the state Capitol. And now Vice President Harris and I are running to take those very values to the White House."

"Now, Donald Trump sees the world a little differently than us," said Walz, as the crowd began to boo his name. "First of all, he doesn't know the first thing about service. He doesn't have time for it because he's too busy serving himself, again and again ... Trump weakens our economy to strengthen his own hand. He mocks our laws. He sows chaos and division."

"And that's to say nothing of his record as president," said Walz. "He froze in the face of the COVID crisis, drove our economy into the ground, and make no mistake: violent crime was up under Donald Trump."

As the crowd roared, Walz added, "That's not even counting the crimes he committed!"

Watch the video below or at the link here.

Kamala Harris has announced that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will be her running mate in the race to be the next president.

The name was released by CNN Tuesday.

The pair will now embark on a whirlwind tour of battleground states, scheduled to kick off with a rally in Pennsylvania on Tuesday and continuing through Michigan and Arizona.

Harris became her party's presumptive presidential nominee Friday after it was announced she had secured enough votes. It is expected she will become the official candidate at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago at the end of August.

Harris' announcement comes after former President Donald Trump, who ditched his previous Vice President Mike Pence after the two fell out in the wake of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, selected Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) as his running mate.

Vance, a venture capitalist who previously opposed Trump before being elected to the Senate on a MAGA platform, has seen a rocky rollout, with intense media scrutiny on his support for a total abortion ban and his attacks on childless women, which included him suggesting that parents should get extra votes for every child they have.

Harris' VP selection sets the stage for an intense battle between the two tickets leading up to the November election.

One of the "fake electors" indicted in Arizona for the plot to overturn the election results in that state has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, state Attorney General Kris Mayes said Friday.

"We are going to have a very significant announcement to make early next week," Mayes told 12 News' "Sunday Square Off." When she was asked if this means one of the electors plans to flip, she said, "I think that's accurate," and added, "We're making progress in the case, and we feel good about the case."

Mayes did not specify which elector is expected to strike a deal.

Eleven people in Arizona falsely signed paperwork claiming to be electors on behalf of former President Donald Trump following President Joe Biden's narrow win in 2020. It was a scheme that was repeated across several other key battleground states, and has been criminally charged in Michigan and Georgia as well.

The Georgia case, which also charged Trump himself with racketeering for his own alleged role in the scheme including his infamous phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, is currently on hold as state judges try to work through an ethics complaint against the prosecutor, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

In addition to those electors being indicted, the Arizona case charges seven other individuals, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, pro-Trump attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Trump strategist Boris Epshteyn.

According to some reports from earlier this year, some of the fake electors in the case have been provided with public defenders because of their inability to pay for their own defense. Among those electors are Greg Safsten, the former executive director of the Arizona Republican Party, and Robert Montgomery, the former chair of the Cochise County Republican Committee.