STEP TWO IN CRAZY WEEK FOUR

Just because…

Here’s how justice works: Buckingham Palace said Monday that King Charles III would support British police as they assess reports that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew, shared confidential information with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The statement followed confirmation from police that they are reviewing allegations that Mountbatten-Windsor sent trade-related reports to Epstein in 2010. Thames Valley Police said it began examining the matter after media reports cited emails suggesting Mountbatten-Windsor provided Epstein with details from a Southeast Asia trade trip he took that year while serving as Britain’s special representative for international trade.A Palace spokesperson said, “The King has made clear, in words and through unprecedented actions, his profound concern at allegations which continue to come to light in respect of Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor’s conduct. While the specific claims in question are for Mr Mountbatten-Windsor to address, if we are approached by Thames Valley Police we stand ready to support them as you would expect. As was previously stated, Their Majesties’ thoughts and sympathies have been, and remain with, the victims of any and all forms of abuse.”

The cruelty is still the point: A kidney transplant recipient in Minnesota who was arrested by ICE has been denied access to life-saving medication for more than four days, according to his wife. Husband, Javier Abreu-Vasquez said he has not been given his medication since he was brought into custody on Thursday. He needs to take his anti-rejection pills every day in order to survive his kidney transplant. Abreu-Vasquez, 38, was picked up by ICE agents in Rochester, Minnesota, while he was delivering groceries for a local mutual aid network through his church. Witnesses said his car “was rammed and a window was broken” when he was detained. State Rep. Kim Hicks delivered Abreu-Vasquez’s anti-rejection pills to the Whipple federal building, where he was being held. However, a lawyer for Abreu-Vasquez was told that to receive his medication, he would need a doctor’s note. After his family sent a note from his doctor at the Mayo Clinic, his family was told by federal officials he was already receiving his needed medication. Abreu-Vasquez was transferred to a federal concentration camp in Texas the next day. Abreu-Vasquez was in the U.S. legally, saying he has an alien registration number, which serves as a permanent immigration ID for non-citizens.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan was blindsided Monday, learning ICE has been storing detainees on floors of a Manhattan facility that it hadn’t disclosed to the court, He slammed ICE for ‘stalling’ the production of discovery related to how immigrants are treated at 26 Federal Plaza, a short-term ICE jail in downtown Manhattan that has been subjected to claims of overcrowding, unsanitary living conditions and violations of detainees’ civil rights.” ICE has already been under an order to limit the number of detainees stored on the infamous 10th floor of the facility, so they started storing people on the ninth floor as well. “Despite claims from DHS that the facility is merely a short-term processing center, many noncitizens claimed in court filings that they were held for days at a time and lacked access to clean clothes, edible food and calls with their attorneys.” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Oestericher explained that, since Kaplan ordered that no more than 22 inmates may be detained in the building’s 10th-floor jail at a time, ICE has started using holding cells on the ninth floor as they wait for space to open up on the 10th.”Kaplan then invited plaintiffs in the case to apply for an injunction that applies to the entire building, rather than just the 10th floor.

Judge Jeannette A. Vargas of the Southern District of New York ordered the federal government to release billions in federal grants to the $16 billion Gateway project on Friday, ruling plaintiffs “have adequately demonstrated that they would imminently suffer” irreparable harm if the project was “forced to shut down its operations.” Construction had come to a halt earlier in the day. Gov. Kathy Hochul said the ruling affirmed that “Donald Trump’s attempt to rip away funding and derail the Gateway Tunnel project is likely to be found unlawful.”

Moderate House Republicans worried about this year’s midterm elections appear ready to finally break with Trump over his signature economic policy. In a bid to protect Trump, House Squeaker MAGA Mike has repeatedly introduced procedural rules banning members from bringing up resolutions challenging the president’s crushing tariffs on products from dozens of U.S. trading partners. He planned to ask the House today to extend the ban through August. But this time, key Republicans have signaled they will likely vote against the measure, Punchbowl reports.Representatives Don Baker of nebraska and Kevin Kiley of California have stated they will vote not to extend the ban. It only takes two Republicans not going along to sink anything MAGA Mike presents now. If Johnson’s procedural vote fails, Democrats are likely to force votes as early as this week on resolutions to overturn Trump’s tariffs on products from Mexico and Canada, followed by resolutions aimed at tariffs on Brazilian products and products from other global trade partners. While Trump could ultimately veto any resolution reining in his trade wars, a rebuke from Congress would nevertheless be politically damaging.

The Ninth Circuit sure ain’t what it used to be. Yesterday. A panel of Trump-appointed “judges” in the Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals struck down an August ruling from a California judge that ruled against Maladministration II’s plans to end protections, allowing Maladministration II to revoke TPS deportation protections for migrants from Nicaragua, Nepal and Honduras. ent racial animus. The three-judge panel said Maladministration II could provide “legitimate” reasoning to support its decision to end protections for 60,000 migrants. “We conclude that the government is likely to succeed on the merits of its appeal either by showing that the district court lacked jurisdiction or by prevailing on plaintiffs’ arbitrary-and-capricious APA challenge,” the “judges” wrote, referring to Administrative Procedure Act challenges, which are legal actions filed in federal district court to contest federal agency actions as arbitrary, capricious, unlawful or to address unreasonable delays. The decision will impact 50,000 Hondurans, 7,000 Nepalis and 3,000 Nicaraguans who migrated to flee war, weather disasters or other conditions under TPS, according to the National Immigration Forum. ICE Barbie described the appeals court decision as a “win for the rule of law and vindication for the US Constitution. Under the previous administration, Temporary Protected Status was abused to allow violent terrorists, criminals, and national security threats into our nation,” she wrote on Xittter. So, we’re doing concentration camps and denying protected status to people who need it. What’s #3?

Another one sees the light: Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) said Monday she now understands “what the big deal is” after reviewing unredacted files tied to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.“I’ve not been one of the members who has glommed on to this as an issue,” Lummis said in an interview. “I’ve sort of intentionally deferred to others to find out about it. But 9-year-old victims … wow. Well, initially, my reaction to all this was, ‘I don’t care. I don’t know what the big deal is.’ But now I see what the big deal is, and it was worth investigating. And the members of Congress that have been pushing this were not wrong.”

The Swenator’s not the only one: After she read the “unredacted” redacted Epstein Files yesterday, Lauren Boebert was asked if she supported Tr4ump granting clemency for Gislaine Maxwell. Boebert replied: “I do not. I think Ghislaine Maxwell should get more time — and she should definitely be in a harsher prison than what she’s in. it’s absolutely disgusting.”

Add Anna Paulina Lunatic - Reporter: “Congresswoman, real quick: you said that you do not support at all Ghislaine Maxwell getting any clemency for her testimony. Yhy is it important for her to be held accountable?” Anna Paulina Luna: “According to the files that we all saw, she was engaged in the trafficking and also rape of young women - and potentially children. I don’t think she deserves any special treatment. She’s a monster.”

Yesterday, Maladministration II proposed stripping the power of an independent board to review challenges from fired federal workers while barring employees from taking the matter to court. The new proposed rule would impact federal workers fired through a Reduction in Force (RIF), the process used at 22 different agencies last year. If finalized, any federal worker fired in a future RIF would not be able to plead their case before the quasi-judicial Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which last year found that some agencies had “engaged in a prohibited personnel practice” in firing the workers. Instead, any challenges would be reviewed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which last year alongside the Office of Management and Budget instructed agencies to begin RIFs.“Eliminating independent review of federal RIF actions would not only make it harder for employees to challenge their proposed terminations, but would essentially give the administration free rein to terminate huge swaths of the federal workforce without meaningful independent oversight,” Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal worker union, said in a statement.

Yesterday, the DO”J” began abandoning the prosecution of Steve Bannon, who was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to testify to the House Jan. 6 committee. Trump defebnse attorney cosplaying as “Deputy Attorney General” Todd Blanche called the House’s subpoena of Bannon “improper.” U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the Supreme Court, where Bannon’s appeal of his conviction was pending, that Maladministration II had determined “in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice.” Jeanine Piro moved to dismiss the case in federal district court. All of these moves are, as NBC News notes, “largely symbolic” since Bannon already served four months in prison for his conviction.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick acknowledged in congressional testimony this morning that he met with Jeffrey Epstein twice after the disgraced financier’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, contradicting his previous public claims that he cut off contact with Epstein years earlier. Lutnick sought to minimize the extent of his relationship with Epstein, a former neighbor in New York City, describing their interactions as “limited and infrequent.” In other countries with democratic governments, members of those governments who even know people who are in the Epstein files are resigning their positions. Lutnick being forced to tell the truth means nothing if he remains in Maladministration II, which he will. So, go fuck yourself in your face, Nutlicker, you worthless piece of shit. Too bad you weren’t in the Cantor-Fitzgerald offices the morning of 9/11. We wouldn’t have your bullshit to deal with now.

Dozens of asylum cases filed by Somali migrants in immigration courts were suddenly rescheduled and recategorized over the weekend, according to four lawyers interviewed by NPR.

Lawyers across at least three states, Minnesota, Illinois and Nebraska, received notices starting Friday night that moved up hearings for their clients to later this month and next month. Some of these hearings were previously scheduled to take place by 2028; others hadn’t been scheduled.

More than 100 cases have been affected, based on interviews conducted by NPR, but attorneys NPR spoke with said the count is likely higher. The four attorneys argue that this appears to be a coordinated effort between the Executive Office for Immigration Review and DHS to reject Somali asylum applications without court hearings. Such a move would fast-track their deportation and limit due process.

ICE has raced detainees across state lines in ways judges say are designed to thwart legal proceedings. Other times, they’re detaining people for days or weeks after judges have ordered them released. ICE officials have at times ignored other arms of the federal government trying to ensure compliance with court orders. And sometimes the administration has given judges bad or incomplete information. A review of hundreds of cases brought by ICE detainees across the country shows judges increasingly furious and exhausted by Maladministration II’s tactics. “There has been an undeniable move by the Government in the past month to defy court orders or at least to stretch the legal process to the breaking point in an attempt to deny noncitizens their due process rights,” U.S. District Judge Michael Davis said in a recent order.As a result, judges have issued more detailed and prescriptive orders to head off potential loopholes or hair-splitting results. And when all else fails, they threaten to hold administration officials in contempt. Asked about the deepening conflict with courts, “Baghdad Tricia” McLaughlin reissued previous statements criticizing “activist judges” for trying to “thwart President Trump from fulfilling the American people’s mandate for mass deportations.” Trump. Has. No. Mandate. And definitely not for this, as every poll now shows.

Maladministration II has been suing states to try to get their voter rolls. This morning in Michigan, they were handed a big loss. They claim they have the right to demand states turn over their voter rolls under the 1960 Civil Rights Act, but federal judge Hala Jarbou, a Trump appointee, ruled against them today, writing: “It may seem needlessly pedantic... However, the voter registration list is not assembled purely from information in voter registration applications, as it includes information that election officials obtain about individual voters from other state agencies. Michigan also makes changes to the voter registration list based on data from the United States Social Security Administration and information shared by other states. And the voter registration list includes individuals’ voting histories, which is not information that would appear on a voter registration applicatio... (Much citation of other cases) ... In sum, the records requested by the United States do not fall under the CRA’s disclosure provision, and the Court will grant Defendants’ motion to dismiss the CRA claim. HAVA, the NVRA, and the CRA do not allow the United States to obtain the records at issue in this case. Therefore, the Court will grant the motions to dismiss. An order and judgment will enter in accordance with this Opinion.”

Federal records obtained by WIRED show that over the past several months, ICE and DHS have carried out a secret campaign to expand ICE’s physical presence across the US. Documents show that more than 150 leases and office expansions have or would place new facilities in nearly every state, many of them in or just outside of the country’s largest metropolitan areas. In many cases, these facilities, which are to be used by street-level agents and ICE attorneys, are located near elementary schools, medical offices, places of worship, and other sensitive locations. The GSA, which manages federal buildings and functions as the government’s internal IT department, is playing a critical role in this aggressive expansion. In numerous emails and memorandums viewed by WIRED, DHS asked GSA explicitly to disregard usual government lease procurement procedures and even hide lease listings due to “national security concerns” in an effort to support ICE’s immigration enforcement activities across the US.

Photo: KarenRN

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