JD Vance proves he can’t take a heckle
Vice President JD Vance is continuing his toxic midterm stumping tour in Florida, where once again he lied, was promptly heckled, and then tried to undermine the fact that most people do not like him. “We got a clown over here, ladies and gentlemen,” Vance said as the protester was escorted from the room. “That guy, you know, he pretends like he just broke out into an emotional protest…
The Oval Office could be Trump’s next target for tackiness
It seems like no matter what else is going on—the economy tanking, his war in Iran failing and flailing, his party facing a historic midterm rout—we know that President Donald Trump will always make time for what he really loves: his construction projects in Washington, D.C. And he just revealed, in one of his patented “Sir” stories, that he wants to add to his swath of destruction and tear…
Introducing “Stress Test”: The Midterms Will Test Democracy. We’ll Help You Through It.
It’s only a few weeks away. It feels like an eternity.
The midterm elections have officially entered their looming phase. Worriers of all stripes (doomscrollers, political junkies, fuel tank fillers), we get it. There’s a war, an unpopular president, a MAGA capture of Congress, and a bunch of multibillionaires blithely slop-ifying our jobs. It’s a lot.
That’s where we come in. We know how to tease out what to pay attention to and what to tune out, and we were early to identify the big issues shaping this election. We were on the ground as local groups banded together across party lines to oppose data centers. We profiled the rise of Christian nationalism and its infiltration of the highest ranks of government. And we’ve never taken our eyes off the threat of election interference and the systematic erosion of voting rights across the country.
Enter “Stress Test,” a new video podcast from Mother Jones, hosted by Washington, DC, bureau chief David Corn and video correspondent Garrison Hayes. “We’re facing perhaps one of the biggest stress tests that American democracy has ever been through with these midterm elections,” David explains. “After 2020, I think one of the lessons that some of us learned, but unfortunately not everybody: Our democracy is fragile.”
In twice-weekly pop-up episodes, David and Garrison will talk to our reporters about the midterms and where you should be paying attention. They’ll team up when breaking news changes the course of the election, and they’ll be your companions, channeling your stress (and their own) into a productive discussion about the future of our democracy. As Garrison puts it: “If the fur is going to be flying, there’s no one I’d rather be talking to than David Corn—and, of course, the incredible journalists and reporters in our newsroom.”
Don’t miss an episode: Subscribe now to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/motherjones. The show will also be available in audio form on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Republican suggests more ‘hurtful methods’ in Tennessee execution
Legal analyst John Yoo appeared on Fox News Thursday to try to explain how the botched execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee could have been avoided. Pike is currently being treated at a hospital after surviving two doses of lethal injection. And instead of dealing with the moral implications of state-sanctioned killings, Yoo said that the problem is that lethal injection is the “most humane…
Trump Sneaks Massive Blow to His Allies Into Latest Executive Order
In the past, members of the Republican Party have accused Democrats of waging a war on meat. Now, it appears that the bleeding-heart environmentalists at the Trump administration won’t stop sabotaging the beef industry.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday directing the secretary of Agriculture and secretary of Health and Human Services to begin exploring options for adding warning labels to food that contain “significant amounts” of alpha-galactose, a sugar molecule found in most mammals.
You may have heard of that substance before because of alpha-gal syndrome, an increasingly common and potentially life-threatening food allergy to red meat that can develop from a tick bite.
The Trump administration’s new rule was framed as one way of cracking down on tick-borne illnesses—but it may end up hurting the meat industry in the process. The new rule could potentially result in meat processors being forced to slap an allergy alert on every package of mammal products, including ground beef, steaks, pork loins, lamb chops, and even dairy. Just imagine a warning: this burger could kill you!
To be clear, from a public health standpoint, the policy is potentially a pretty great idea, considering just how severe alpha-gal is. But the rule likely won’t go over well with a certain group of longtime GOP allies who are already not too happy with Trump: farmers, herders, and ranchers.
In August, the American Farm Bureau Federation criticized Trump’s plan to grant farmers and ranchers the right to slaughter and process their own meat instead of requiring that they rely on USDA-inspected facilities. Farmers also condemned Trump’s plan to import tariff-free beef, which has yet to actually bring down prices.
All of this comes as the shrinking American herd struggles to keep up with high demand, and Trump’s tariffs and military campaign in the Middle East have kept prices elevated. Farmers in the Midwest—who were once some of the president’s most steadfast supporters—say they are facing the toughest economic crisis in decades.
The only explanation for a policy that will so obviously irritate his MAGA supporters, is that it isn’t MAGA at all—it’s MAHA. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spent months talking about alpha-gal without really doing anything at all, and has been an outspoken advocate for slapping warning labels on all kinds of foods. As for pleasing the rest of Trump’s base, the social media comments beneath the administration’s announcement indicate that they’re more concerned with discussing conspiracy theories about how alpha-gal started in the first place.
Trump Just Pledged to Let AI Companies Do Whatever They Want
Whatever beef Donald Trump had with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei seems to have been buried. The two had dinner on Sunday, followed by a luncheon with other CEOs who then stood together with top Republicans outside the White House. Together, they announced a “morally binding” agreement about the governance of artificial intelligence, or “super intelligence,” as Trump has rebranded those companies’ products. While Amodei, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk had purportedly butted heads with the president in recent weeks over the idea of slowing down the launch of new and more capable large language models—the executives called to “pace the frontier”; Trump disagreed—they have reached a new understanding. “We all need to work together to make sure that we can win, and we can win safely,” Amodei said, before slinking awkwardly back into the high net-worth clump of suits assembled behind him. “If we can do this right, work with the President and everyone here, we can win safely.” Trump summed up the principles of their 308-word agreement more succinctly: “tremendous self-regulation.”
Since Trump took office, pundits have marveled at the tech industry’s rightward shift. The recent explosion of discourse over “AI Safety” has reenergized that conversation, as observers question how lib-coded ostensible true believers in regulation such as Amodei—who publicly fought with the White House over the terms of its defense contracts—could make peace so easily with the avatar of the reactionary right. Perhaps his wincing at Tuesday’s press conference betrayed some inner torment. But Amodei isn’t the only self-styled do-gooder to make nice with Trump. Just a few years ago, Mark Zuckerberg—who could barely contain his glee while standing next to the president—poured well-publicized millions into liberal causes. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk cultivated their image as climate champions. It wasn’t so long ago that Sam Altman called Trump “unfit” to be president. “i guess the meme is that Dario is awkward, but it is kind of weird how eager the other CEOs are to participate in a public knee-bending ceremony like this,” tech journalist Kevin Roose marveled of Tuesday’s White House summit with Silicon Valley. “you’d hope more of them would be visibly uncomfortable!”
What explains the new coziness? The terms of the White House’s truce with tech leaders aren’t exactly mysterious. The same executives have showered Trump’s SuperPAC and pet projects with $227 million, the watchdog group Public Citizen notes. There are obvious benefits to having the administration’s enthusiastic support. But there’s more than just opportunism at work here. For as much has been made of the cultural and ideological fissures between MAGA and Palo Alto, the two camps share a common quasi-religious faith that economic growth can solve virtually every problem known to man.
And although there are certainly weirder corners of the overlapping ideologies that buzz around Bay Area offices and polycules, even top “true believers” who’ve trafficked in rationalism and effective altruism have been steadfast about their belief in growth as a somewhat mysterious but ultimately positive force that promises untold fortunes to those who choose to feed it. Way back in 2013, Sam Altman wrote an essay making the case that rapid economic growth “is not only critical for startups, but for most systems. Either you’re growing, or you’re slowly dying.”
In the essay, Altman argued that attempts to mitigate the inequalities created by the twenty-first century’s biggest growth industries (“robots”) could easily backfire. “We should understand,” he continued, “that as a consequence of technology and an economy of ideas, the gap between the rich and the poor will likely increase from its already high-seeming levels. There is good and bad to this, but we should be careful not to legislate against it, which will hurt growth.”
This kind of cold supposed truth-telling isn’t exactly novel among founders. Scottish philosopher and effective altruism guru Will MacAskill famously counseled disgraced crypto executive Sam Bankman-Fried that the most effective way he could be altruistic was to make as much money as possible. The idea of “earning to give” is obviously compelling for people who would like to become wealthy, and those who see an opportunity to offer those people lucrative moral guidance. The idea has been something of a mainstay for effective altruists, who like to make up numbers to justify why fortunes that also flow to their pet causes, including “AI Safety,” are sum-positive for the cause of building a more abundant world.
To find the origins of this kind of reasoning you have to go way back. In 1889—at the height of the Gilded Age—industrialist Andrew Carnegie made the same case. “Not evil, but good, has come to the race from the accumulation of wealth by those who have the ability and energy that produce it,” Carnegie wrote in The Gospel of Wealth. That rich men had amassed such incredible fortunes testified to their “superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer” those fortunes to worthy causes. That spirit of far-sighted charity would be a cudgel against “Socialists and Anarchists” looking to upset what Carnegie saw as the natural order of things—the socialists and anarchists who also happened to be organizing at his mills. “The laws of accumulation will be left free; the laws of distribution free,” he wrote. “Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor; entrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself.”
Preachers of today’s newfangled Gospel of Wealth ascribe utopian potential to the stuff that’s making them rich, too. Pressed to articulate the benefits of artificial intelligence—and not just its catastrophic risks—Amodei’s core argument has been that large language models will deliver not only technological breakthroughs but riches fantastical enough to save the world and solve its most intractable problems. In his long blog post last month about pacing the frontier, Amodei argued that his industry’s products “could cure most major diseases in the next 5–10 years, greatly accelerate economic growth rates, create a world of abundance and empowerment, and usher in a renaissance of democracy and freedom.” His “dream scenario—perhaps a goal to aim for—would be 20% annual GDP growth rate in the developing world, with 10% each coming from AI-enabled economic decisions and the natural spread of AI-accelerated technologies.”
On Tuesday, Trump echoed Amodei’s excitement about LLMs’ capacity to deliver “unbelievable growth.” Faced with rising inflation, mortgage rates, and sprawling blowback from an unpopular, illegal, and expensive war on Iran, Trump and Treasury Scott Bessent have both been adamant that the United States can simply grow its way through economic headwinds. That faith rests in large part on the men who gathered outside of the White House on Tuesday. Investments tied to the building binge on chips and data centers have accounted for about 20 percent of the United States’ economic growth this year. Frothy valuations continue to buoy the stock market and, with it, the fortunes of the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans, who are responsible nearly half of all consumer spending. As eager as Silicon Valley executives are to stay on Trump’s good side, Trump wants to keep them happy, too—and to appease voters angry about the risks of data centers and artificial intelligence alike.
Trump and Silicon Valley executives, however, seem to share another core belief that helps inform this week’s “self-policing” spectacle: impunity. Given the steady drumbeat of headlines about OpenAI agents hacking into companies, nonprofits, and government agencies, it isn’t hard to imagine why self-policing is preferable to the alternatives. Altman’s 2013 ode to the powers of growth ends with some suggestions for how to increase growth, including reforming tort laws that can be used to try companies for reckless and negligent behavior. Altman writes that “legal protection is of course important, but it’s gotten so silly that it discourages innovation.” As former Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan wrote this week, an unenforceable pledge is certainly preferable to being held accountable under the many laws that already exist to punish corporate wrongdoing. There’s a chance that could happen; Khan’s successor this week announced that it was investigating Anthropic, OpenAI, and other unnamed companies over the potential dangers posed by their products.
Another, potentially more likely outcome is that Trump loyalists at the FTC clear those companies of any wrongdoing. Trump, for his part, seems to believe that holding companies to existing laws and regulations—much less creating any new laws and regulations—would threaten the AI boom. The people getting rich off it are inclined to agree.
Why dark red Utah may be fertile ground for Democrats
Utah is one of the most Republican states in the country, coming in at No. 13 based on its Partisan Voting Index which measures how partisan a state is compared to the U.S. as a whole. But there is reason to believe that Utah could be fertile ground for Democrats in the years ahead—especially if the GOP maintains its loyalty to Donald Trump and Trumpism. About half of Utahns identify as…
Trump Makes Delusional Claim About Iran War’s Effect on Midterms
President Donald Trump doesn’t seem that concerned over whether the ongoing Iran war will hurt his party in November’s midterm elections.
At the White House Thursday, a reporter noted to Trump that his daughter-in-law Lara Trump said that the war “may threaten the midterms for you,” and asked if he agreed with her.
“Well, it’s possible, I don’t know, it should help, because Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” the president replied, shrugging. “When you say, ‘Is it ok for Iran to have a nuclear weapon,’ I would say a hundred percent of the people say no, including worldwide. So when you say it that way, it would help. If you don’t say that, it could hurt.”
Reporter: Lara Trump said the Iran war could threaten the midterms for you. Do you agree?
Trump: It’s possible. It should help. pic.twitter.com/XipXht0Bql
The way Republican candidates frame the war in their campaigns is not the problem. The problem is the ongoing closures of the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on either side of the Arabian Peninsula, which have led to skyrocketing fuel prices, damaging not just the economy in the U.S., but also worldwide.
That in turn has increased inflation, making various goods and services more expensive. Fertilizer costs have gone up as a result of the war, as well as commodities such as helium and ethanol. These increased costs have been passed to American consumers, leading to Trump and Republicans polling at record lows.
The war also continues to cost American taxpayers billions of dollars. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress aren’t helping their own cause by refusing to end the war with legislation, while Trump flip-flops between saying peace talks are going well and making apocalyptic threats against Iran. If Trump thinks all of this doesn’t matter for voters in November, he is sorely mistaken.
Even crypto bros are bailing on Trump
It’s honestly impressive, in a perverse way, to see just how much President Donald Trump has managed to alienate the voters who carried him to victory in 2024. And now, he even appears to be losing the crypto bros, who were some of his strongest soldiers. On Thursday, The Washington Post spoke with several crypto streamer influencer bros like Carl Runefelt, who bought the stupid $TRUMP…
The Three Billionaires Trying to Buy Wisconsin’s Governor’s Race
Republican Representative Tom Tiffany has raised more than $26 million in his bid to become Wisconsin’s next governor, the vast majority of which appears to have come from three billionaires.
Between August 13 and September 19, the Republican Party of Wisconsin funneled more than $24 million into Tiffany’s coffers.
A good chunk of that money likely came from Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, the billionaires behind the Uline packaging and shipping company, who each gave $11 million to the state Republican Party that month, according to campaign finance reports obtained by The New York Times.
A third billionaire also contributed a sizable sum to the Wisconsin Republican Party that month: Diane Hendricks, the co-founder of ABC Supply Co. Inc and the state’s largest conservative political donor.
The transfers accounted for 92 percent of all the money that Tiffany raised since the end of June, and have given him an enormous cash advantage in the final weeks of the race. By comparison, Tiffany’s Democratic opponent, Milwaukee County executive David Crowley, raised $10 million in the same time period.
Tiffany’s campaign details mark the first time since Wisconsin reworked its campaign finance rules that a candidate has been catapulted by such a small number of donors.
But it remains to be seen if the billionaire-provided funds will make a difference at the ballot box. A Marquette Law poll published Wednesday placed Crowley with a narrow lead among Wisconsin voters, besting Tiffany’s late-September odds by just one percentage point (46 percent versus 45 percent favorability).
Crowley’s chances were a hair better among likely voters, 49 percent of whom said they were planning to vote for the Democratic candidate, while 46 percent said they would vote for Tiffany. Five percent of likely voters told the pollster that they were still undecided.
Trump to Reward People Who Buy His Crypto for Making Him Rich
President Donald Trump will be hosting the “most EXCLUSIVE DINNER IN THE WORLD” to the top purchasers of his cryptocurrency.
The Washington Sun reported Thursday that the website for Trump’s memecoin, GetTrumpMemes.com, is offering invitations to “an evening with 3 Legends and President Donald J. Trump” for the 185 largest holders of the cryptocurrency, with the top 29 buyers scoring an invite to a “VIP Reception with YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT” and the top four getting an 18-karat Trump-branded gold watch.
The event will be held on November 22 at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia. Invitations seem specifically made to encourage sales of the $TRUMP coin and give the president a hefty profit, and the competition to crown the biggest purchasers began Wednesday.
Last year, Trump held a similar dinner for his meme coin at his golf club in northern Virginia, as well as another such dinner in April at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. At the Virginia dinner in May 2025, guests reportedly shelled out $148 million to gain access to the president for a substandard steak or halibut dinner, and the full guest list wasn’t made public because it was off-the-clock.
Some of the known guests included former Los Angeles Laker Lamar Odom, Chinese billionaire and accused fraudster Justin Sun (who is now suing the president), and Vincent Liu, the chief investment officer at Taiwan-based Kronos Research.
The $2.2 billion Trump made last year mostly came from his cryptocurrency ventures, and he doesn’t appear to be letting up. The latest dinner is chock full of potential ethical violations, with the president clearly selling access to himself. But while these ventures have been lucrative for Trump, they haven’t worked out well for the people he dupes into investing.
Trump’s crypto products have lost an estimated $4.7 billion for their investors thus far, according to watchdog group Public Citizen. It’s not clear how much guests will have to shell out to attend this upcoming dinner, but Trump’s largest meme coin account holds about $104 million worth.
Unlike World Liberty Financial, which is owned by Trump’s sons, Trump doesn’t own the firm behind his meme coin, instead only selling the marketing rights to his name. That distance gives him some legal protection. But it doesn’t change the fact that he’s ripping off investors to make bank with no fear of consequences.
Just How Bad Will Trump’s New Labor Secretary Be?
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Inside Washington
On Wednesday, a party line vote of 47–41 confirmed Keith Sonderling as the head of the Department of Labor. To Democrats, it’s one step closer to advancing the Trump-era Labor Department’s anti-worker agenda.
Sonderling has served as acting secretary of labor since April, when President Donald Trump’s then–Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned in disgrace amid allegations of—among other things—travel fraud and creating a toxic workplace environment. (In September, the Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General released a detailed report confirming the misconduct.)
Since Sonderling took over, he’s taken a number of actions that Democrats see as anti-worker. In May, the department rescinded an overtime rule adopted under former President Joe Biden. The department is currently trying to rescind a different Biden-era rule that addresses the classification of independent contractors. When Sonderling sat before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, or HELP, in July, Democratic senators grilled him on these issues and other controversies, such as Trump’s purge of federal workers and the firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer in August 2025 after a weak jobs report came out.
“You are not a bystander to this administration’s anti-worker policies and agenda,” Senator Patty Murray of Washington told Sonderling at the time.
Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, who also sits on HELP, told The New Republic on Wednesday that he wasn’t impressed with Sonderling and didn’t get the sense that he would steer the department away from its overall anti-worker bias under Trump. “I’ve been very disappointed with the first flameout of the first secretary,” said Kaine. “I think the Trump administration’s Department of Labor is not really great for labor or for working people. I think it’s like a second secretary of commerce rather than a secretary of labor.”
Senators are particularly concerned about how the potential secretary of labor would approach AI in the workplace in a moment of skyrocketing anxiety about AI and AI-related job replacement. “Part of what we want to see from them is understanding what the real impact of this is on job loss [and] job transitions,” said Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, who served as her state’s secretary of labor in 1998. Data on how AI is affecting the workforce have been slim, and some lawmakers are trying to push the BLS to collect more. “How we do things at the Department of Labor needs to be modernized” to meet the AI moment, Blunt Rochester said. Meanwhile, Kaine told The New Republic on Wednesday that he wants to see the department focus on apprenticeship programs and workforce training for workers who could be affected by AI.
So far, the Department of Labor has done a handful of things to address AI. In his HELP committee hearing, Sonderling told Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri that the department had asked the BLS to examine data on AI and the workforce, but it appears that little has yet emerged from that effort. The department launched a “Make America AI-Ready” mini course, ostensibly to teach AI literacy to workers. Labor advocates were skeptical: “Does this [training] make workers’ jobs better or safer? Will it help people who want to find a job access high-quality, union jobs?” Lauren McFerran, executive director of AFL-CIO’s Tech Institute and a former chair of the National Labor Relations Board, said to NPR in April.
There are plenty of reasons why Senate Democrats weren’t eager to confirm Sonderling. His lukewarm response to current AI concerns appears to be just another drop in the bucket.
—Emma Janssen
Outside Washington
The rush to enact statewide policies to lower fuel prices continues. A limited rundown of some of the happenings this week: In Indiana, Republican Governor Mike Braun on Wednesday extended a suspension on the state’s gas use and excise taxes through November 4, and suspended restrictions on what dyed diesel could be used for on farms. Only two days earlier, Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom ended summer gas-blend requirements over a month ahead of schedule, while Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp temporarily suspended the state gas tax and Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a 30-day disaster declaration in order to suspend various diesel restrictions on Texas roads. Ohio lawmakers voted Wednesday to suspend the state gas tax for 90 days, which both Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy have said they support.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Wall Street banks’ estimates for gas prices in the coming months have risen, given the dwindling chances of a peace deal with Iran. Republicans are increasingly worried that voter frustration over gas prices could fuel the so-called “blue wave” in November.
Elsewhere:
- Amid a wave of optimistic analysis and polling for Dems nationwide, Chris Pappas’s Senate race against John Sununu in New Hampshire continues to look a bit dicey. Pappas tends to maintain a narrow lead in most polls but is being wildly outspent. AP reporters Steve Peoples, Holly Ramer, and Steven Sloan see it as a sign of broader issues: “For all the Democrats’ confidence, the party’s brand remains deeply unpopular and fundraising is lagging,” they write. “The Republican advantage isn’t as egregious in New Hampshire as some other states, but it is significant. AdImpact finds that Republicans are outspending Democrats in New Hampshire $41.2 million to $35.4 million statewide.” The TNR Blue Book’s Emma Janssen previously reported on the jitters surrounding this race back in early September.
—Heather Souvaine Horn
The Ideas Factory
Reviewing the new personal consumption expenditure, or PCE, report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, released Wednesday, Groundwork Collaborative chief economist Breyon Williams says in a statement on the organization’s website that “the bleak economic picture offers little hope for Americans desperate for relief.” The report showed PCE inflation increasing 3.4 percent from August 2025 to August 2026, with the economy growing at a 2.4 percent rate so far this year.
The Natural Resources Defense Council released a statement on Wednesday coinciding with court day for the water utilities challenging the Biden EPA’s rule requiring the removal of lead pipes. “Water utilities fighting the lead rule are on the wrong side of history,” says NRDC senior strategic director for health Erik D. Olson. Members of Earthjustice, the Newburgh Clean Water Project, and the Sierra Club chimed in, as well, with NCWP’s Gabrielle Burton-Hill calling the case “outrageous and disappointing” and others pointing out the vast number of households and children that the rule will help protect from lead poisoning if allowed to continue.
—Heather Souvaine Horn
In Closing
Here’s Why That’s B.S.
Watch TNR’s Edie Olmsted dive into Senator Eric Schmitt’s bizarre faceplant in the Jack Smith hearing this week—all while Axios was reporting “buzz” that he might be JD Vance’s running mate in 2028.
Political Trivia Question of the Day
An actually smart Missouri senator, a Democrat, was known as a vocal foe of Joseph McCarthy; was the first secretary of the Air Force; and refused to speak to segregated audiences in the Southern U.S. during a brief presidential run in 1960. Who was he? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in Tuesday’s newsletter.)
—Michael Tomasky
Why Trump’s Crypto Business Wants to Become a Bank
In a move that Sen. Elizabeth Warren has decried as a “clear conflict of interest and corruption,” one of the Trump Family’s most lucrative businesses is on its way to becoming a bank. And it’s set to be regulated by a government entity whose leader was appointed by, you guessed it…Donald Trump.
In August, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency—one of three major bank regulators in the United States—declared that Donald Trump’s controversial crypto company, World Liberty Financial, could begin the process of establishing itself as a bank. It’s a complicated regulatory move that not only creates a new level of conflict of interest for the president and his family, but demonstrates just how drastically Trump has reshaped federal government policy in an effort to embrace his fellow crypto entrepreneurs.
The Trumps’ crypto odyssey ostensibly has roots in the family’s grievances surrounding the aftermath of the 2020 election. “I never thought I’d fall into the world of crypto until every bank began cancelling us for absolutely no reason other than the fact that my father was in politics,” Eric Trump told Fox News in 2024. “They came after us viciously. It wasn’t until that time that I realized how important crypto was.”
“We’ve been debanked. We’ve been deplatformed. We’ve had everything thrown at us with the kitchen sink.”
In reality, many big banks had long refused to do business with Donald Trump due to his past bankruptcies. But following the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, some banks did, in fact, close Trump’s accounts with them. Trump and his sons founded World Liberty Financial in 2024, saying that it was needed because banks, and the whole system of banking regulation, had been so bad for their family. World Liberty Financial, they said, would be a “DeFi” company—decentralized finance. Instead of managing money through the stodgy old Wall Street system, it would allow people to do a lot of their financial activities on the blockchain.
“So you know, just very excited, entered the crypto space with this product, really looking to upend a lot of the traditional finance markets that we have viewed as very broken,” Donald Trump Jr. told an interviewer in October 2024, recounting how traditional banks turned away from the family after January 6. “We’ve gone through a lot in America. We’ve been debanked. We’ve been deplatformed. We’ve had everything thrown at us with the kitchen sink. And so we wanted to do something, to take on a system, frankly, that was quite broken.”
The company hasn’t done much of that—there is no way for the public to use World Liberty Financial for many of the activities traditionally performed by banks. But it has created a stablecoin, called USD1, which is a type of crypto asset designed to stay valued at $1. Stablecoins are useful as a way to move money between different crytpo currencies or between partners, without necessarily having to use actual US dollars, which are the common currency for most international transactions.
But, despite not doing much to actually take down the traditional banking world, the founding lore behind World Liberty’s creation makes its potential new status as a “national trust bank” an interesting turn of events. To be clear, the company will be no normal bank—it still won’t offer savings accounts, auto loans, credit cards, or ATMs. But for World Liberty, the development could be a goldmine.
Stablecoin companies make money by accepting US dollars in exchange for their stablecoin—$1 for one stablecoin—and then investing that real US currency in Treasury notes, reaping the interest as their profit. But since its launch, World Liberty has had to partner with an actual bank to hold onto that money for customers—which means it has had to split the profits. If World Liberty receives final approval to become a bank, it will be able to hold the money itself and keep all the profits.
So, why aren’t all crypto companies already established as banks? Because, in the past, it has taken a lot of work to become a bank. Speaking on the floor of the US Senate last week, Warren excoriated the decision by the OCC to grant World Liberty Financial a preliminary charter.
“Even setting aside the clear conflict of interest and corruption, World Liberty’s charter application would have been flatly denied under any previous administration, Republican or Democrat, due to its national security risks, anti-money laundering vulnerabilities, and lack of competent management,” Warren said.
The current Comptroller of the Currency, Jonathan V. Gould, was appointed last July by Trump, and he can be fired by Trump. Four other stable coin issuers have applied for, and received, at least conditional approval from the OCC to become banks—three of them since 2025. One crypto company received a conditional bank charter under the Biden administration, but its final approval was stalled until last December, when Trump’s OCC finally gave it the green light.
Hilary Allen, a banking law professor at American University, said that it’s impossible to say if the World Liberty application got literal special treatment because of its connection to the president, but the OCC’s turn towards allowing stabelcoin companies to become banks is a result of influence from above—influence which clearly has a self-interest.
“Before this OCC, I don’t think we would’ve seen these stablecoin national bank charters,” she says. “This wouldn’t have happened if Trump wasn’t setting things up to accommodate the crypto industry, which he was not just doing out of the goodness of his heart. They supported him, and also he has his own financial interest.”
Indeed, donors linked to the crypto industry gave heavily to back Trump during the 2024 election—and also contributed lavishly to celebrate Trump’s victory.
One of Allen’s concerns is that although neither the World Liberty Financial nor the other crypto banks will be backed by the FDIC—the federal government’s depositor insurer that guarantees you won’t lose your money if a bank fails—just being called a bank will offer the crypto companies an implied stamp of government approval and support. It’s a shot of credibility, but without some of the regulatory hurdles facing traditional banks.
“No regular person is going to say, ‘Hmm, a national trust charter doesn’t carry the same kind of insurance and regulation,'” Allen says.
World Liberty Financial is not yet a bank—it’s only received a preliminary approval, and now must raise a certain amount of money and jump through several more hoops before it can start operating. As part of its application process, World Liberty has already agreed to several changes. For instance, Eric Trump signed a passivity agreement, which prevents the Trump family from taking an active role in the daily management of the bank. Specifically, he agreed, among other things, that the Trumps would not have any management role, would not influence board decisions, and would not involve themselves with regulatory decisions.
According to the terms, the OCC itself will oversee and enforce Eric Trump’s promise that the Trumps wont get involved.
The OCC did not respond to a request for comment. But David Wachsman, a spokesperson for World Liberty Financial, said there were no conflicts of interest or special treatment given to the company as it applied for bank status.
“There are no conflicts of interest. We have made this very clear,” he said in an email. “There was no special treatment whatsoever and multiple direct competitors received approvals earlier and more rapidly than World Liberty. Approval is a comprehensive process led by OCC career staff.”
The passivity agreement, to one former regulator, who spoke on background as he now advises companies that are regulated by the OCC, is just window dressing. Eric Trump’s precise role at World Liberty Financial isn’t the problematic aspect. Even if he and his family aren’t actively running the bank, they still have a major financial interest in its profitability—and obvious access to the policy levers that impact the industry.
“The problem here is not the fact the Trumps are affiliated with a bank,” the former regulator said. “It’s the fact that Donald Trump can fire the bank regulator if the bank regulator doesn’t do what he says.”
Hegseth focuses on T levels and haircuts while he fails in Iran
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered a “State of the Force” address on Wednesday where he ranted at length about faux masculinity, engaged in anti-transgender hate speech, and extolled the virtue of testosterone—all while presiding over a wildly unpopular war against Iran opposed by most Americans. Hegseth described the purportedly positive changes he has made to the military: “No…
Alito’s Recusal From a Key Climate Case May Be Too Little, Too Late
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Justice Samuel Alito decided Monday to sit out one of the most consequential climate change cases to reach the Supreme Court, but legal experts expected continuing ramifications due to his ownership of individual corporate stocks, including in the fossil fuel industry.
After months of resisting calls for his recusal, Alito reversed himself one week before the Supreme Court is set to open its term by hearing the oil industry’s bid to block Boulder, Colorado’s lawsuit to recover costs related to climate change. The clerk of the court sent a brief letter to the lawyers in the case saying, without explanation, that Alito would no longer participate.
Alito does not own stock in the two companies involved in the Boulder case—ExxonMobil and the Canadian oil giant Suncor—and through a court spokesperson earlier this year conveyed that the court’s legal counsel said his recusal was not required. But Alito does own stock in companies that face lawsuits that will hinge directly on the Supreme Court’s decision.
State court judges, in fact, have stayed 11 such cases in recent months pending the outcome of Suncor v. Boulder. Those include cases from which Alito has recused himself in the past.
The cases seek to recover damages from oil companies for the costs state and local governments already are incurring and are expected to face in the future due to extreme weather, drought, wildfire and other impacts of climate change.
The oil industry should bear financial responsibility, they argue, because of evidence that they knew the climate impact of their products for years and misled the public about the risks. The county and city of Boulder sued Exxon and Suncor in 2018, five years after historic flooding destroyed 1,800 homes, tore up more than 100 miles of roadway and caused billions of dollars of damage.
Three years later, the most destructive fire in Colorado history swept across the region, killing two people, burning 6,000 acres and again burdening communities with costs from an event that scientists say was worsened by climate change.
“The public should not have to wonder whether a justice’s personal investments could benefit from a ruling.”
A Supreme Court ruling for the oil companies could provide the kind of blanket immunity from liability over climate change that the industry has sought for years. Exxon and Suncor told the court that energy companies were facing lawsuits seeking “billions of dollars in damages” and urged the Supreme Court to take the case “to prevent dozens of climate change cases from improperly barreling ahead in state court.”
A coalition of 30 environmental, watchdog and advocacy groups, including the League of Conservation Voters, the Revolving Door Project and urged the Senate Judiciary Committee in a May letter to investigate whether Alito was violating the law or the judicial ethics code that the Supreme Court adopted in 2023.
The group Consumer Watchdog earlier this month released research detailing how the two biggest oil companies in Alito’s portfolio, ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66, warned investors about the material risks they face due to the litigation. Consumer Watchdog’s review also found that Alito holds stock in companies involved in every climate case identified as currently stayed pending the outcome of Suncor v. Boulder, including lawsuits by California, New Jersey, Delaware and eight California cities and counties.
“Justice Alito’s recusal from Suncor v. Boulder is the right decision, and one he should have made from the start,” said Alexandra Nagy, organizing director with Consumer Watchdog, in a statement. “The public should not have to wonder whether a justice’s personal investments could benefit from a ruling that shields the fossil-fuel industry from liability.”
The situation brought front and center the kind of ethics controversy at the Supreme Court that Chief Justice John Roberts has sought to quell for at least the past 15 years. In 2011, in a year-end report devoted to ethics issues, Roberts defended the system in which justices decide for themselves—without review of the rest of the Supreme Court—whether to recuse themselves.
“I have complete confidence in the capability of my colleagues to determine when recusal is warranted,” Roberts wrote.
Alito, the only justice who owns an extensive portfolio of stocks in individual large corporations that regularly litigate in the federal courts, has recused himself more often than any other justice in recent years, according to research by the watchdog group Fix the Court.
Because Alito participated in the case conference during which the Supreme Court decided to take the Boulder case in February, there remains a lingering question of whether his vote already was decisive in ensuring that Suncor and Exxon would get a Supreme Court hearing. Although the court decides in secrecy which cases it will hear among the thousands of petitions it receives each year, by longstanding practice it requires that at least four of the court’s members must agree before a so-called writ of certiorari is granted.
Between 2023 and 2025, the Supreme Court denied petitions by oil companies in nine cases to consider essentially the same issue in the Boulder case—whether federal law preempted state and local governments from seeking damages against the oil industry in state court lawsuits. Alito had recused himself from the case conferences for all but one of those cases.
Without naming Alito, ExxonMobil made reference to the recusal problem when it told the Supreme Court back in 2022 that the Boulder case was the “ideal vehicle” for resolving the legal issues the industry had raised.
“We spend too much time talking about what is required of the justices. We should be talking about the right thing to do.”
“It involves a smaller set of defendants…and is thus less likely to present recusal issues,” Exxon said in its brief.
Although the Supreme Court didn’t take the Boulder case back then (Alito had recused himself “inadvertently,” a court spokesperson later told NBC), the oil industry finally will get to make its case to the high court on Monday.
Advocates for the state and local governments suing the oil industry see the Exxon brief as laying out a roadmap for the justices who were inclined to grant cert on the preemption issue.
“In a lot of ways, Exxon and Suncor proposed this maneuver to Justice Alito three years ago,” said Mike Meno, spokesman for the nonprofit Center for Climate Integrity, in an interview before Alito announced he would recuse himself. “People have a very cynical view of this court, and actions like this only reinforce the public’s concerns about the court’s integrity.”
When the Supreme Court unanimously adopted its first-ever code of conduct in 2023, it laid out the circumstances that call for recusal—including holding a financial interest in a party litigating before the court. But legal experts note that it never addressed a more basic question: Should Supreme Court justices hold individual stocks at all?
According to his latest financial disclosure, released in August, Alito holds stocks in more than 25 corporations, seven of them in the fossil fuel industry, as well as a mineral interest worth as much as $250,000 in Oklahoma. His holdings have not changed since the previous year, even though they created controversy last term when he belatedly recused himself from a case over Louisiana wetlands destruction involving ConocoPhillips. (The only other justice who holds individual stocks is Roberts, who has shares in a semiconductor services company and a biotech firm.)
Louis Virelli, a law professor at Stetson University and author of a book on the Supreme Court and recusal, interviewed before Alito made his recusal decision, said that he believed the questions raised go beyond the Suncor case and what is required by the letter of the law. “We spend too much time talking about what is required of the justices,” Virelli said. “We should be talking about the right thing to do, because the justices owe us all an ethical duty and they owe us an institutional duty.
“The real question to me is: Why does any justice hold stock in an individual company that is part of an industry that is going to appear before the court?” Virelli said.
Arthur Hellman, professor emeritus and legal ethics expert at the University of Pittsburgh, said he is “baffled” why Alito continues to own individual corporate stocks. He notes that Alito himself discussed the importance of all nine members of the Supreme Court hearing cases in a 2023 memorandum where he explained why he was resisting calls to recuse himself from a tax case. “If we recused in such cases, we would regularly have less than a full bench, and the Court’s work would be substantially disrupted and distorted,” Alito wrote at the time.
Said Hellman: “Justice Alito will no longer be open to criticism for participating in the Suncor case, but his recusal does nothing to address the concerns about disruption of the Court’s work that he voiced in his…memorandum.”
In a laudatory biography of Alito released this year that relied on interviews with people close to the justice, conservative author Mollie Hemingway wrote that the individual stocks were holdings that his wife, Martha-Ann, had inherited from her parents. “They hold not just financial value for her but sentimental value as well, making her disinclined to sell them,” Hemingway wrote.
Hellman said as long as Alito maintains those financial interests, he will raise recusal issues for himself and put the court’s ethics practices under public scrutiny.
“People will wonder, ‘Isn’t there a downstream effect of whatever the court decides in Suncor on…other fossil fuel companies?’” Hellman said. “It just seems to me no emotional attachment can override all of those concerns.”
Ben Shapiro’s Next Movie Is Unbelievably Offensive
Ben Shapiro is making a pro-ICE movie about the murder of Renee Nicole Good.
The Bulwark obtained a copy of a script from Shapiro’s right-wing Daily Wire media company that details an ICE raid in Minneapolis—and which spoofs the killing of unarmed protester Renee Good, who was shot four times by ICE agent Jonathan Ross earlier this year in Minneapolis. There have still been no charges filed in her killing, and her family moved to sue the Trump administration over her death on Thursday.
The movie, titled Pawn Shop, appears to be similar to the company’s recent Run Fight Hide: Infidels, a lazy, ultraconservative fantasy that casts liberals as hysterical, “useful idiots” stopping the morally just right-wing from saving society and starred a post-cancellation Jonathan Majors.
According to The Bulwark, this film opens with a character meant to be Good slamming her car into an ICE vehicle while other protestors try to stop them from arresting a man who is of course, revealed at the end to be an MS-13 kingpin. The Good character, named “Melanie, is described as being “fat” with “blue-hair,” is promptly shot and killed by agents.
Melanie reacts to the drawn gun with panic...
She MASHES on the gas as she throws the car into reverse, accidentally SLAMMING Juan out of the way. He goes flying into the gutter, bleeding...
And as the car reverses, Mike FIRES TWICE through the
windshield...
The first shot takes the [sic] Melanie in the neck, below her covid
mask. The second in the head, above her covid mask.
Blood SPLATTERS on her PASSENGER’s (40s, female, overweight)
forehead and matching covid mask.
The ICE agents are then chased by a mob, and barricade themselves into a pawn shop; the rest of the movie seems to use that as an arena for whatever tired conservative talking points Shapiro and producing partner Dallas Sonnier have to offer. This is an almost an identical structure to Infidels, which I unfortunately reviewed last month.
While it’s unclear when the movie will release, it has begun filming on location in Livingston, Minnesota—much to the chagrin of local residents.
Red States Just Asked the Supreme Court to Kill Abortion Shield Laws
In what promises to be the most consequential showdown over reproductive rights since the end of Roe v. Wade, three states with near-total abortion bans asked the US Supreme Court on Wednesday to strike down blue-state laws that have enabled tens of thousands of abortions every year across state lines since 2022.
The action by Louisiana, Alabama, and Arkansas was a dramatic escalation in the long-running battle over so-called shield laws, which provide legal immunity to doctors, organizations, and advocates in liberal states who deliver abortion care, mostly in the form of pills, to people in states with draconian abortion laws.
The suit—filed directly with the high court just in time for the start of its new session next week—accuses California, Massachusetts, and New York of violating the US Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause, which requires states to respect “the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings” of other states. The suit describes efforts by the defendants to circumvent Republican-passed abortion bans as a violation of states’ sovereignty and “one of the most serious interstate aggressions in our Nation’s history.”
A second lawsuit, filed in federal court in Louisiana on Wednesday, targets more than two dozen individual providers and pharmacists, accusing them of “a sweeping, coordinated scheme” to send abortion pills through the mail in violation of strict bans. The defendants include Dr. Angel Foster and her colleagues at The Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project, or The MAP, whose operations I wrote about for Mother Jones and Reveal this past summer. (My reporting is cited frequently throughout the two lawsuits, along with that of other news organizations including the New York Times, Ms. and NPR.)
At the time, Foster told me that The MAP was filling more than 6,000 pill orders a month, 95 percent to states where abortion is subject to harsh restrictions and near-total bans—among the details from my stories the lawsuits cite.
“Our constitutional system does not tolerate such blatant disregard for a state’s sovereign authority.”
“Our constitutional system does not tolerate such blatant disregard for a state’s sovereign authority,” says the provider lawsuit, which also targets abortion-pill operations in California, Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey. “That is true regardless of the nature of the products being unlawfully shipped…It does not matter whether the package contains anthrax, mail bombs, or chemical weapons intended to harm individuals within that state, or (as is the case here) abortion drugs.”
As I have written, shield laws are designed to thwart the near-total abortion bans and other restrictions that have proliferated in red states since the 2022 Dobbs decision.
Broadly speaking, these measures prohibit law enforcement and state agencies from engaging in actions that could help abortion opponents bring criminal or civil cases against abortion doctors, helpers, or patients. In most shield-law states, police can’t serve arrest warrants; court clerks can’t issue subpoenas; IT staff can’t comply with records requests, and governors can’t sign extradition orders. . . .
Perhaps the closest analogy [are] the “personal liberty laws” that Northern states enacted to resist the Fugitive Slave Act before the Civil War.
Nearly two dozen states and Washington, DC, have created some version of shield protections; eight of those states, including California, Massachusetts, and New York, have adopted laws that explicitly protect people who provide or facilitate abortion care via telemedicine. The laws have proven to be “one of the strongest tools that reproductive freedom advocates have to protect abortion access in a post-Roe reality,” Ashley Kurzweil, a senior policy analyst at the National Partnership for Women & Families, told me last fall. “It’s painfully obvious that anti-abortion extremists are targeting shield laws because they are working.”
But the legal theories underpinning shield laws have remained largely untested—and abortion supporters and opponents alike have long predicted that the Supreme Court would be forced to settle the vast constitutional issues they raise.
“It’s painfully obvious that anti-abortion extremists are targeting shield laws because they are working.”
Shield laws—combined with telemedicine and abortion pills—have led to one of the biggest surprises of the Dobbs era. Instead of rates plummeting as expected, clinician-supported abortions increased 16 percent last year compared with 2022. Telehealth now accounts for 30 percent of abortions in the US; almost two-thirds of abortions in the country occur using pills.
Despite having some of the toughest abortion laws in the country, Louisiana has not been immune to that trend. By the end of last year, out-of-state providers were sending almost 1,000 abortion packages of pills a month to patients there. Meanwhile, that state’s Attorney General Liz Murrill’s efforts to extradite abortion providers from New York and California have been stymied. One of the people Murrill has sought to prosecute, California-based doctor Rémy Coeytaux, is among those named in the new case.
Last fall, she tried another strategy to stop the flow of pills, suing the FDA over its 2023 rules allowing the abortion medication mifepristone to be prescribed via telemedicine and sent through the mail. When the case went to the Supreme Court briefly this past spring, Justice Samuel Alito singled out shield laws for a blistering attack, calling them a “scheme to undermine” Dobbs.
Blue states “have claimed the right to make abortion policy—their abortion policy—for the entire Nation by overriding democratically enacted laws in pro-life states.”
The complaint by Louisiana, Alabama and Arkansas is the first time anti-abortion states have tried to take action directly against shield-law states. Murrill and her colleagues argue that such laws flout the high court’s decision in Dobbs, which struck down the federal right to abortion and returned regulation to the states. The blue states “have claimed the right to make abortion policy—their abortion policy—for the entire Nation by overriding democratically enacted laws in pro-life states,” the lawsuit argues. “This is not the promise of Dobbs—and it is a direct affront to this Court as an institution and an attack on our constitutional structure.”
Murrill reiterated those arguments at a news conference Wednesday, the Louisiana Illuminator reported. “We will not allow activist states, activist providers or distributors profiting from killing babies to threaten Louisiana’s sovereignty, violate Louisiana’s laws and endanger Louisiana women and Louisiana babies,” she said, adding, “It is no different than if they were sending fentanyl in these boxes.” Joining her were Republican attorneys general Steve Marshall of Alabama—who has threatened advocates who provide information about abortion and help women travel for care—and Tim Griffin of Arkansas.
As the New York Times noted, filing a case directly to the Supreme Court isn’t unusual when states are in conflict.
States can bring disputes between themselves directly to the Supreme Court, which is given “original jurisdiction” by the Constitution and can function in such cases like a trial court. Past disputes that have gone before the court involved challenges over geographic boundaries or water rights. Justices have the discretion to turn down these cases, and often do.
New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, denounced the lawsuit and said her office would defend the state’s shield law, the Times reported. “Louisiana, Alabama and Arkansas are asking the Supreme Court to let them impose their abortion bans on New York and punish our doctors for providing legal health care,” she said.
In a statement, Amanda Allen, executive director of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, described the case as “a desperate bid to weaponize the legal system against providers working to ensure patients can access safe, private abortion care.”
Jared Kushner’s Massive Ties to Company Backing IDF Exposed
President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has made serious bank off of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, while simultaneously leading the U.S.-backed peace negotiations, CNN reported Thursday.
Shortly before Trump’s return to office last year, Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners doubled its investment in Phoenix Financial, a Tel Aviv-based firm that has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, as well as at least eight other companies that have seen massive gains as a result of Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza.
Affinity Partners doesn’t benefit from any of these companies directly but has reaped massive rewards from its investment in Phoenix Financial. In July, Affinity cashed out a quarter of its stake for more than $340 million, which is more than five times the worth of its initial stock purchase.
Kushner himself has described Phoenix as Affinity’s “best investment,” and his firm remains the financial group’s largest shareholder, with a 7.4 percent stake worth more than $1 billion, CNN reported. Last September, Kushner told Forbes that he maintained a “very active dialogue” with Phoenix leadership, and met with them every few weeks.
Kushner has served as a top Middle East adviser during Trump’s second term and has floated his own wretched idea for what Israel ought to do with Gaza’s “waterfront property.”
Kushner’s financial entanglements are a clear cause for concern when it comes to his role as a volunteer envoy leading peace negotiations in Israel, Iran, and Ukraine, Cynthia Brown, chief ethics counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told CNN.
“There are always people who profit from war or government policies. The difference is that the people profiting should not be the people making the decisions to make that policy. And that is what is happening here,” Brown said.
Kushner’s attorney told CNN that he had “never participated in or directed Phoenix’s decisions” and had “no involvement in the decision to purchase, hold or sell any of the nine companies.” They insisted that “any suggestion that Jared’s diplomatic work influenced Phoenix’s investments in the companies you identify, or vice versa, is incorrect.”
His attorney confirmed that Kushner “regularly spoke with Phoenix management about the company, broader market trends and potential strategic opportunities” this time last year, but had wound down the frequency of their meetings as he has become “substantially more engaged in volunteer public-service and diplomatic efforts.”
But that doesn’t mean that Kushner’s involvement through Affinity Partners isn’t a damning conflict of interest. The president’s son-in-law has previously used his gig as special envoy as an opportunity to try to raise funds from foreign governments and individuals in the Middle East.
They Called Her a Domestic Terrorist. Now Renée Good’s Family Is Suing.
Renée Good’s family filed two federal lawsuits on Thursday, nine months after she was fatally shot by ICE agent Jonathan Ross amid the Trump administration’s violent occupation and mass deportations campaign in Minneapolis.
One lawsuit accuses the United States of being liable for the actions of federal agents, alleging wrongful death and excessive force.
The second alleges a conspiracy to interfere with civil rights, naming Ross, as well as Greg Bovino, the former commander-at-large of the Border Patrol who led Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, White House border czar Tom Homan, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, and others.
Ross fatally shot Good on January 7. Video recordings of the shooting show Good in an SUV and her partner, Becca Good, standing outside in the street to observe and record ICE agents stopping their car. Renée Good is seen turning the steering wheel away from Ross and beginning to drive away before Ross fires at her multiple times.
The Trump administration defended the shooting, claiming that Ross was protecting his and other officers’ lives and accused Good of “domestic terrorism.” Days after Good was killed, ICE agent Christian Castro shot and wounded Julio Sosa-Celis, and two weeks later, immigration agents Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez shot and killed Alex Pretti—both in Minneapolis.
Castro pleaded not guilty in September to federal charges that he lied to the FBI about being attacked before he shot and wounded Sosa-Celis. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, the chief elected prosecutor in Minneapolis, is investigating the agents who killed Good and Pretti for possible violations of Minnesota law. In March, Minnesota officials sued the Trump administration for access to evidence to independently investigate the shootings of Good, Sosa-Celis, and Pretti. In July, Moriarty announced the Justice Department had provided previously withheld materials related to the three shootings. The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office filed charges in the shooting of Sosa-Celis but has not filed charges in the fatal shootings of Good and Pretti.