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Among the problems with the taxpayer-financed “Rededicate 250” gathering: The American mainstream isn’t buying what its organizers are selling.

The stated purpose of Sunday’s “Rededicate 250” event at the National Mall was to “rededicate our country as One Nation Under God.” That phrasing, however, was just vague enough to tell the public effectively nothing about the significance of the gathering.

The truth was more straightforward — and more alarming. As Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons explained in a compelling piece for MS NOW, the event was actually “the largest and most prominent display of Christian nationalism” in recent memory, “with the full backing of the federal government in the White House and leadership in Congress.” Graves-Fitzsimmons added, “This is what theocracy looks like.”

Over the course of roughly nine hours, attendees and viewers watched a prayer event, paid for with millions of American taxpayer dollars, in which many of the nation’s most powerful federal officials made the case that the United States was founded as a “Christian nation” (it was not) and that Americans should do more to blur the church-state line (it should not).

The gathering was not altogether surprising. The Trump administration has spent the past year and a half abandoning all subtlety when it comes to embracing and endorsing Christian nationalism — though there was a related problem with the speakers’ pitch that went largely overlooked: The American mainstream isn’t buying what they’re selling.

A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos pollreleased two weeks ago, for example, found that most Americans were deeply uncomfortable with recent religion-related statements from Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

A Pew Research Center report released late last week pointed in similar directions:
Support for ideas that are sometimes associated with Christian nationalism is mostly unchanged in recent years. For example, there has been no growth in the shares of Americans who want the government to stop enforcing separation of church and state or who believe that God favors the United States over all countries.
The same data found that a two-thirds majority of Americans want churches and other houses of worship to “stay out of day-to-day politics and not endorse candidates.”

A Vox report said, “These results align with survey findings from the Public Religion Research Institute, which found little public support among most Americans for Christian nationalist beliefs or change over the last four years.”

The president occasionally claims that he’s somehow responsible for some kind of Christian revivalism that’s sweeping the nation. There’s independent evidence suggesting that those boasts have no connection to reality.

As part of the Justice Department’s compensation fund deal, officials vowed not to pursue any matters, including those involving President Trump’s tax returns, that are pending.

The Justice Department on Tuesday expanded the agreement it reached this week with President Trump to resolve his extraordinary lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service to include a provision that would bar the agency from pursuing tax claims against the president, his family or his businesses.

In a one-page document signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and quietly posted on the department’s website, officials vowed not to pursue any matters, including those involving Mr. Trump’s tax returns, that are currently pending.

The new provision was released just one day after Mr. Trump agreed to drop his suit in exchange for the creation of a $1.8 billion compensation fund for people he believes were wronged by federal investigations or prosecutions. The fund drew repeated criticism from Democrats when Mr. Blanche appeared before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee for a hearing on Tuesday morning.

The New York Times reportedlast week that Mr. Trump’s talks with the Justice Department and the I.R.S. had included a measure calling on the I.R.S. to drop any audits of the president, his relatives or businesses. But that provision did not appear in the nine-page agreement laying out the terms to dismiss the lawsuit, which the department released Monday.

In January, Mr. Trump, along with two of his sons and the Trump family business, sued the Internal Revenue Service for at least $10 billion over the leak of their tax returns during the president’s first term. The Trumps argued that the I.R.S. should have done more to prevent a former contractor from disclosing tax information to The New York Times and ProPublica.

Neither the Justice Department nor the I.R.S. immediately responded to requests seeking comment. The top lawyer at the Treasury, Brian Morrissey, resigned on Monday after the Justice Department announced the settlement with Mr. Trump.

Justice Department officials have in part defended the creation of the “anti-weaponization” fund by pointing to the fact that Mr. Trump and his family members will not be paid by it.
But protection from audit could be quite remunerative for Mr. Trump. In 2024, The Times reported that a loss in an I.R.S. audit could cost Mr. Trump more than $100 million.

It is unclear if that examination has concluded or if Mr. Trump, his family members or affiliated entities are under other audits. I.R.S. procedures call for the mandatory audit of the president’s tax returns annually.

Federal law prohibits the president, vice president and other executive officers from instructing the I.R.S. to start or stop specific audits. But that broad prohibition does appear to include a carve out for the attorney general.

Around 10 "new" suspected victims have come forward in a French probe into the network of late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a prosecutor said Sunday.

France opened a human trafficking investigation after the US Justice Department in January released the latest cache of files from the investigation into the disgraced financier, who died in prison in 2019 while facing charges of trafficking underage girls for sex.

French magistrates are seeking to investigate possible offences committed in France or involving French perpetrators who facilitated his crimes.

Top Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said around 20 suspected victims had made themselves known after she in February urged potential victims to speak up.

Some were already known to investigators, she told the RTL broadcaster.

"But we also had new victims come forward, ones we didn't know at all. There are around 10 of them," she added.

"The choice we've made for the time being is to listen to these victims," she said.

"A certain number of them are abroad so the investigators have tried to set up meetings to suit when they are able to come to Paris."

Investigators were also scouring through the so-called Epstein files, and would be searching them for any names mentioned by alleged victims, she said.

"We have also once again pulled out Mr Epstein's computers, his telephone records, his address books," she said, adding her team would be "making requests for international assistance".

French investigators searched Epstein's luxury Paris apartment in September 2019, after he was found hanged in his New York jail cell the previous month.

Suspected victims already known to investigators included women who had spoken during investigations into former European model agency boss Gerald Marie and late model agent Jean-Luc Brunel.

Fifteen women in March urged France to investigate Marie for possible links to Epstein.

Investigators in 2023 closed another probe into accusations Marie committed sexual abuse in the 1980s and 1990s because it was too long ago to be prosecuted.

French authorities arrested Brunel in 2020 after allegations he sexually abused minors and procured victims for the US billionaire. He was found dead in prison in 2022.

Two former models have told AFP that a modelling scout named Daniel Siad groomed them with the aim of delivering them to Epstein in one case in the 2000s, and Marie in the other case in the 1990s.

In the latest human trafficking probe, "none of the people who could potentially be implicated have been questioned" so far, Beccuau said.
Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to procuring for prostitution a girl under the age of 18, and served 13 months in prison before being released on probation.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost recently filed a motion on behalf of Ohio State University asking to drop 77 cases involving the late Dr. Richard Strauss sexually abusing Ohio State student-athletes.

Yost is arguing that any claims of abuse that happened before Oct. 21, 1986 should be thrown out, he said in a May 10 filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.
Congress passed a law on Oct. 21, 1986 allowing states and universities to be sued in federal court for failing to prevent the sexual abuse of students.

Yost’s motion applies to plaintiffs in three cases against Ohio State.
He is arguing 43 plaintiffs should have their claims dismissed entirely because the abuse happened before Oct. 21, 1986, and he is asking that 34 plaintiffs should have their claims dismissed in part for the abuse that occurred before Oct. 21, 1986, according to the motion.

Strauss sexually abused at least 177 male victimsbetween 1979 and 1996 during his time as a physician for Ohio State’s Athletics Department and at the university’s Student Health Center, according to an independent investigation commissioned by Ohio State University.

Strauss retired from Ohio State University in 1998 and died by suicide in 2005 when he was 67.

Earlier this month, 30 former Ohio State football players joined a federal lawsuit against Ohio State for Strauss’ abuse.

At least three of the football players were part of the 1980 Rose Bowl team and played for coach Woody Hayes.
Ohio State has reached settlement agreements with 317 survivors for more than $61 million, according to the university. The most recent settlement was with 13 survivors for $1.8 million in April.

*This motion comes days after Yost announced he would resign, effective June 7, to take a job with Alliance Defending Freedom, a right-wing Christian nonprofit law firm. The Southern Poverty Law Center labels the Alliance Defending Freedom as a hate group.*

Ohio state Sen. Bill DeMora, D-Columbus, criticized Yost’s motion to dismiss the claims.

“He is completely betraying the needs of survivors of sexual abuse as he heads out the door,” DeMora said in a statement. “This decision has nothing to do with the case against Ohio State and Dr. Strauss; it is purely Yost using every opportunity he has left to screw Ohioans and benefit the ultra-rich elite class that he has always worked for.”
Survivors of Strauss have said that Ohio Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan knew about the sexual abuse when he was an Ohio State assistant wrestling coach from 1987 to 1995.

Jordan, who recently ran unopposed in the May primary for his Fourth Congressional District seat, has repeatedly denied knowing about any abuse.

Overtime Policy Overhaul| Pulling Demographic Reports
Parker Purifoy: The 2024 overtime rule officially died last week. But the question remains if the Department of Labor will do anything further with the standard.

The DOL’s technical amendment to its regulation on who qualifies for time-and-a-half wages withdrew the Biden-era policy which, if it had gone into effect, would have made four million more workers eligible for overtime.
It raised the exemption threshold to $58,656 for white-collar workers but was struck down by two Texas federal judges who found the move to be beyond the department’s authority.
Jim Paretti, an employer-side attorney with Littler Mendelson PC, said the decision to formalize the rule’s nullification didn’t change things for employers. But, he said, it did raise questions about whether the DOL, under acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, would work to put their own stamp on the regulation.
Last week’s rescission put back in place the final rule from 2019 setting the salary threshold at $35,568.
The move comes after the Trump administration pushed heavily for no taxes on overtime wages or tips in 2025.

The department may feel more constrained in blazing new territory because of those 2024 court orders and similar legal challenges to the Obama-era attempt to raise the salary threshold.

But the DOL could examine the work-duties portion of the test exempting an employee if they’re a “bona fide executive, administrative, or professional.” That portion of the test hasn’t been substantially updated in many years, Paretti said.

“But changing the duties test would be fundamentally changing the nature of the exemption,” he said. “So whether they have the taste for that, we’ll see.”
Worker advocates decried the rescission. Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said in a statement that the move was “unsustainable for the country.”

“The Trump administration just told 4 million workers they don’t deserve to be fully paid for the hours they work,” she said. “Costs are rising, everything is too expensive, and this administration wants to keep wages as low as possible.

Paul Sonn, state policy program director at the National Employment Law Project, also pointed to rising costs of living.

“This short-sighted action is only going to worsen the affordability crisis. And gimmicks like Trump’s ‘no-tax-on-overtime’ are of little benefit to workers who are stripped of their overtime pay rights,” he said in a statement.

Rebecca Klar: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission submitted a regulatory plan for White House review that would withdraw workforce demographic disclosure requirements for many private companies, as well as for unions, schools, and local governments.

The sweeping rescission proposal hasn’t been published yet in full. So far it doesn’t appear targeted toward a segment of the workforce that’s gotten a lot of attention from the Trump administration: federal employees.
At least one prominent administration official has spoken on this issue.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau acting Director Russell Vought told the EEOC that its annual call for agencies to submit data on their workforce’s demographics conflicts with President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders.

Vought, also director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, urged the agency to review and revise its report in a message shared publicly along with the CFPB’s submission of its annual MD-715 report.

MD-715 is the management directive requiring federal agencies to submit dataon their workforces by race, ethnicity, and sex, as well as EEO programs that, in part, show a proactive prevention of discrimination.
Republican EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas has broadly acted in coordination with the Trump administration’s broader efforts to scrutinize diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the federal government and private sector.
Given Vought’s proximity to the White House as OMB director and the EEOC’s actions in lockstep with the administration, shifts in the EEOC’s demographic data collection for the federal workforce could be down the line when the agency renews its forms for the process, said Fred Satterwhite, a principal consultant with DCI.

“It’s not like the EEOC has been a rogue part of the executive branch and CFPB had to point out to them they were disobeying,” Satterwhite said.
Vought’s message said that certain aspects of MD-715 appear to conflict with Trump’s orders, such as asking agencies to report whether their EEO policy statement addresses “gender identity” as a protected basis, and whether their strategic plans reference “diversity and inclusion principles.”
MD-715 has been in place for more than two decades, with earlier forms of similar collections dating back to the 1980s before it, Satterwhite said.
The commission must renew its data collection process every few years by submitting it to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, part of Vought’s OMB.

The current approved version of management directive is set to expire at the end of September, Satterwhite said.
“This may flow into future activity by the EEOC as part of ongoing synchronization between the commission and the White House,” he said.

The EEOC’s notice Thursday also includes proposed rescissions to reporting requirements under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but it’s not clear if that will directly impact MD-715.

An EEOC spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice thinks it has found a way to deal with the many judges who refuse to tolerate its unethical behavior: forum shopping key cases to MAGA judges across the country who are much more likely to reward underhanded tactics. The administration road tested this method in immigration cases by shuttling noncitizens to Southern detention centers within the jurisdiction of far-right courts. DOJ lawyers then pulled a similar trick to enforce a subpoena against a Rhode Island hospital that provided gender-affirming care to minors—only to see it blow up in their face. On Wednesday, Judge Mary S. McElroy shot down a federal subpoena seeking medical records and personal data of these children. She castigated department attorneys over their “appalling” and “reckless disregard for the duty of candor” and described them as “unworthy of this trust at every point.” Remarkably, McElroy also called out the ultrapartisan federal judge, Reed O’Connor, who tried to enforce the illegal subpoena from his Texas courtroom.

With the midterms nearing, President Trump’s approval rating has hit a second-term low as voters question his handling of the economy, according to the latest New York Times/Siena poll.

Most voters think President Trump made the wrong decision to go to war with Iran, a New York Times/Siena poll found, leaving the Republican Party on rocky political footing heading into the midterm elections as his approval rating sinks and economic concerns rise.

Majorities of voters said that the war was not worth the costs and held deeply pessimistic views about the economy.

Mr. Trump’s approval rating — a key historical predictor of how a president’s party will fare in an election — has sunk to a second-term low in Times/Siena polls of 37 percent amid the deeply unpopular Middle East conflict.

Nearly two-thirds of voters said that going to war had been the wrong decision, including almost three-quarters of politically crucial independents. Less than a quarter of all voters thought the conflict had been worth the costs.

Republicans broadly approved of Mr. Trump’s job performance and the war. But most other voters showed serious skepticism of his leadership on other top issues, including the economy and the cost of living. Sixty-four percent of all voters disapproved of his handling of the economy, long a strength for him, and majorities expressed negative views of how he was managing the cost of living, immigration and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Independent voters in particular have become unhappier with Mr. Trump. Sixty-nine percent disapproved of his job performance, up from 62 percent in a January Times/Siena poll. Forty-seven percent of independents said his policies had hurt them, up from 41 percent in fall 2025.

Overall, 44 percent of voters said Mr. Trump’s policies had hurt them personally, up from 36 percent last fall.

“He’s not doing what he said he was going to do,” said Brent Klein Jr., a Republican who voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 and 2024. “That’s my biggest frustration with him.”

After years on the political fringes, support for making the war-torn Palestinian enclave into a Jewish community is gaining support across Israel.

A river of Israeli flags winds through a desert path as hundreds of people, young and old, march toward the border in a display of their determination to build new Jewish settlements atop the rubble of northern Gaza.

So few buildings are left standing after Israeli bombardment that the Mediterranean is visible in the distance.

Daniella Weiss, founder of the radical right-wing settler group Nachala, sums up the crowd’s intentions.

“We are here on the way to new Jewish communities in Gaza,” she told NBC News in an interview at the border in late April.

“What we did in Judea and Samaria, we are going to do the same thing here,” Weiss added, a reference to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where illegal Jewish outposts and settler violence against Palestinians have grown dramatically in recent years.

While the march toward Gaza was a symbolic one, the statement it made still resonates across the Middle East.

Nachala and other groups like it are advocating the wholesale ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, prominent Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti said.

“They don’t accept a two-state solution, and they don’t accept one democratic state solution,” he told NBC News. That leaves only one option for the far right, he said: “Complete control and elimination of the Palestinian presence.”

Weiss and her hard-line movement have made a journey from the fringes of Israeli society toward the political mainstream, propelled by the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack in which 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage.

Weiss, who has referred to the events of Oct. 7 as a “miracle,” told NBC News that it had changed history by showing “the world, very expressively, what Hamas wants to do with us.”

As early as Oct. 9, 2023, 20 members of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, signed a letter demanding absolute control over the strip as one of the four goals of the war. This gave the movement its first tailwind, and recent polls suggest growing public support for the idea.

The Israeli military campaign that followed Oct. 7 displaced around 90% of Gaza’s population,according to the United Nations. The offensive killed more than 72,500 people, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. And in the nearly seven months since a ceasefire, continued Israeli attacks have killed over 845 people, the ministry says.

Today, the Nachala movement’s vision of turning Gaza into a thriving Jewish community is very much alive. And Palestinians do not exist anywhere in this version of a Jewish Gaza.

“The 2 million or whatever number of Arabs, Gazans, who live here will not live in Gaza,” Weiss said. “It can take a week, it can take maybe a few months. They will not live here.”

Weiss and others with similar beliefs are getting a boost from the highest echelons of the Israeli government. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he does not support Jewish resettlement of Gaza, he helms the most right-wing government in the country’s history, which includes several hard-right settler leaders like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

Speaking to a crowd in a synagogue earlier last month, Smotrich said that Gaza needs to be “all ours, entirely Jewish, through Israeli settlement. The enemy should leave it and find their luck elsewhere.”

But while they are growing in power domestically, Nachala, Weiss and the settlement movement in general have been condemned internationally.

The British government hit them with sanctions in May 2025. According to a statement released by the U.K. Foreign Office, Weiss was “involved in threatening, perpetrating, promoting and supporting acts of aggression and violence” against Palestinians. Nachala was involved with “facilitating, inciting, promoting and providing logistical and financial support” for illegal outposts and the forced displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel, it said.

The Canadian government has also imposed sanctions on Weiss.
The United States has not sanctioned Weiss or Nachala, although in 2024 under President Joe Biden it did sanction four extremist settlers in the West Bank.

Meanwhile, settlements in the West Bank — where an estimated 700,000 Jews live among about 3 million Palestinians — are considered illegal under international law. Israel views West Bank settlements as legal if they are authorized by the government.

In Gaza in 2005, between 8,000 and 9,000 Israeli settlers were removed under the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who argued that the 21 settlements were expensive and hard to defend. The scenes of security personnel forcibly removing weeping and resistant settlers deeply divided Israeli society. But until recently, the idea of returning Israeli settlements to Gaza remained a nostalgic dream reserved for those on the extreme right fringes, viewed by the majority as a messy and expensive experiment best left in the past

Today, the idea of resettling Gaza also appears to be gaining popularity among more mainstream Israelis.

A poll from August 2025 conducted by the Smith Institute and published by Israeli news site Walla showed that 49% of Israeli Jews supported the occupation of Gaza and the displacement of Palestinians. Another survey from mid-2025 commissioned by Pennsylvania State University, conducted by Geocartography, an Israeli polling firm, and published by liberal newspaper Haaretz, showed that 82% of Israeli Jews supported the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.

Weiss, meanwhile, says she’s undeterred and that her ambitions for Jewish settlers like herself extend beyond the West Bank and Gaza.
“It’s a turning point in history which made us, the Jewish nation,” she said, referring to Oct. 7. “Now I’m going to settle Gaza and Lebanon and Syria.”

On the same day Nachala marched to the border with Gaza, a small group of right-wing activists entered Lebanon illegally. They published videos of themselves walking inside the country on Israel’s northern border, some waving the Israeli flag and declaring their intention to settle.
“Jewish settlement in Lebanon is ahead of us,” one of the men said as he gestured north.

The activists were later detained by the Israel Defense Forces and “transferred to the Israel Police for further handling,” the IDF said in a statement.

One week away from Memorial Day weekend and the unofficial start of the summer travel season, with gas prices remaining high, negotiations were set to resume Monday at the largest oil refinery in the Midwest.

Victor on cam intro: Union workers here have been locked out of their jobs at the BP Whiting Refinery in Whiting, Indiana, for nearly two months.
On Monday, negotiations between BP and the union representing these workers are set to restart in an effort to bring the lockout and strike to an end.

Outside the refinery, union workers have gone on demonstrating in hopes of a new contract. About 800 workers with e United Steelworkers union have been locked out of the refinery since March 19.

Monthslong negotiations over a new labor agreement have stalled, but are set to pick up this week.

This is just one of the issues impacting the BP Whiting Refinery. A recent power outage was quickly resolved, but its impact lingered — prompting a recent uptick in oil prices in the Great Lakes region on top of the already high prices with the war with Iran, according to analysts.

"We're paying well over what we were this time last year," said AAA spokesperson Aixa Diaz.

AAA said the average cost of a gallon of regular gas in the city of Chicago is $5.43, up from $4.74 a month ago and $3.75 from a year ago.

Analysts say relief at the pump likely will not come until a resolution becomes clear over the conflict in Iran, which has left trade traffic in the Strait of Hormuz at a standstill.

"Once we see a little more clarity in the timing and scope of any agreement, oil prices will start going down noticeably," said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.

Drivers and passengers face these prices as summer travel season is set to take off. AAA estimates a record 45 million people will travel 50 miles or more from this upcoming Thursday through Memorial Day on Monday, May 25.

Critics denounced the highly unusual plan, which has yet to be finalized or approved, as a vast political slush fund financed by taxpayers.

The Trump administration is considering the establishment of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate the president’s allies and others investigated by the Justice Department under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., creating an ethical and political minefield for Republicans and the department’s leadership.

The unusual plan, which Democrats and former government officials criticized as a vast political slush fund financed by taxpayers, is being fast-tracked, but has yet to be finalized or approved, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The Justice Department is modeling the program, in part, on a landmark $760 million settlement fund the Obama administration created to compensate Native American farmers and ranchers who were deprived access to federal subsidies for decades, one of those people said.

Payments in that settlement came from the Judgment Fund, an uncapped pot of money that does not require congressional approval to make payments and is maintained by the Treasury Department.

The proposal comes in response to various claims President Trump has made against a federal government he himself controls. He has sought compensation for the leak of his tax returns during his first term, as well as the investigations into his handling of classified documents after he left office and into his 2016 campaign’s potential ties to Russia.

The idea of establishing a government fund to pay Mr. Trump’s political allies has gained traction internally as the Justice Department and White House try to resolve a $10 billion lawsuit Mr. Trump filed in January against the Internal Revenue Service. The judge overseeing that case is considering throwing out Mr. Trump’s suit because it is ridden with perceived conflicts of interest and the potential for self-dealing.

It was not immediately clear where the fund would draw money from. But officials with the Treasury Department have been part of internal discussions, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

A compensation fund for Trump allies but not for the president himself would offer a short-term fix, allowing the president to receive a deliverable benefit from the lawsuit before the judge could dismiss it, according to officials briefed on its details.

The fund would also address Mr. Trump’s separate pair of administrative claims against the Justice Department for its previous investigations into him. Mr. Trump has asked for $230 million for those claims.

ABC News reported the fund proposal on Thursday. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

People in Mr. Trump’s orbit have for months discussed a compensation fund for his allies who incurred significant legal fees during the various investigations that ensnared Mr. Trump and his aides. It could extend to the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 but will not be limited to his allies.

The move, which is likely to include compensating those Trump supporters who ransacked the Capitol, would represent the culmination of the government’s comprehensive effort to rewrite history. The proposal would, in many respects, act as a bookend to Mr. Trump’s issuance of clemency to those convicted of crimes during the Capitol riot — felons now valorized by his appointees as heroic and as “survivors” who have been victimized.

The Justice Department under Mr. Trump’s control has prosecuted his enemies on flimsy evidence, dropped cases against defendants he favors and demolished anti-corruption and national security units. Yet those moves have not prompted public outrage comparable to the backlash over its handling of the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

The compensation plan could be political poison for Republicans already weakened by Mr. Trump’s plummeting popularity ahead of the midterm elections.

“An insane level of corruption — even for Trump,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, wrote on X on Thursday night. “A $1.7 BILLION slush fund for Trump’s hand-picked stooges to hand money to January 6 insurrectionists and his political allies.”

Brandon DeBot, a senior attorney adviser at New York University’s Tax Law Center, called the proposed fund an “absurd and extraordinary” exchange for dropping a lawsuit that the government would have fiercely fought against anyone other than Mr. Trump.

The situation also places the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, the former lead lawyer on Mr. Trump’s defense team, in a difficult position. Moderate Republicans in the Senate, including Thom Tillis of North Carolina, have said they would support Mr. Blanche’s potential permanent nomination for the job if he were to recognize that the Jan. 6 attacks were a disgrace.

Mr. Blanche had resisted a push by Ed Martin, who ran the Justice Department’s weaponization working group and represented Jan. 6 defendants, to pay restitution to any of the rioters, according to a person familiar with the discussions. It is not clear what has changed. In recent days, Mr. Blanche, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan, has made it clear that he believes that some of the convicted rioters were treated too harshly.

Mr. Trump’s suit against the I.R.S. turns on the leak of his tax returns to The New York Times in 2019. Mr. Trump, two of his sons and his family business demanded at least $10 billion in the suit, arguing that the I.R.S. should have done more to prevent a former contractor from leaking tax information to The Times and ProPublica.

The case sits on shaky legal ground. Kathleen M. Williams, the judge on the case, in the Southern District of Florida, has questioned whether Mr. Trump’s lawsuit is valid given that as president, he controls both the lawyers bringing the suit and the government attorneys who have to respond to it. It is a basic legal principle that the two sides in a lawsuit must be actually opposed to each other.

Otherwise, there is not a conflict for a judge to even consider when assessing the underlying merits of the case.

Judge Williams ordered Mr. Trump and the Justice Department to write briefs by May 20 outlining whether they were in opposition.

She also asked six prominent outside lawyers to evaluate whether the lawsuit could proceed at all given the self-dealing involved in the president seeking damages from an agency that he directly controls.

On Thursday night, the lawyers outlined a series of questions that the judge should consider asking the Justice Department — and which officials there might find awkward to answer. Those lawyers suggested the court grill the department about measures lawyers involved in the case have taken to ensure that they can act in the “independent” interests of the I.R.S., not those of the president.
They also said the judge could delve into whether the I.R.S. has made certain that any settlement discussions with the president “are conducted at arm’s length and without risk of collusion.”

But Mr. Trump’s insistence on taking vengeance has created chaos and confusion at the highest levels of his own administration. To avoid having to explain themselves, the Justice Department and White House are now racing to iron out a settlement and withdraw the suit before the judge can evaluate its legitimacy, The Times reported this week.

Another potential settlement option discussed within the Justice Department is for the I.R.S. to agree to drop any audits of Mr. Trump, his family and his businesses in exchange for Mr. Trump dropping the lawsuit.
Attorneys both inside and outside the government have identified clear defenses to Mr. Trump’s suit, and former Justice Department officials have said it would be egregious for the department not to even contest Mr. Trump’s claims.

But a ruling from the judge stating that Mr. Trump’s suit is so collusive that it is legally invalid would further highlight the unusual decision to settle the case.
“I don’t understand how the judgment fund could pay someone independent of an actual lawsuit,” said Gilbert Rothenberg, a former Justice Department tax lawyer who signed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case outlining how the government could defend against Mr. Trump’s claims. “That strikes me as rather bizarre.”

When voters go to the polls Tuesday throughout South Alabama, they will encounter a congressional contest unlike anything on a ballot since Saturday’s primaries in Louisiana.

Before that, you likely have to go back to the 19th century to find a similar situation.
The Republican primary in the 1st Congressional District will feature seven candidates. Voters can choose their favorite. But here’s the twist: the outcome doesn’t matter. The election likely won’t count, and the results will be voided immediately.

Every other race on Tuesday’s ballot (Governor, U.S. Senator, Lt. Gov, etc.) will count, and state officials are encouraging people to show up and participate in the primaries. Runoffs for multi-candidate contests in which no one receives more than 50% of the vote will take place June 17. But the congressional primaries for four districts — the 1st and 2nd in South Alabama, and the 6th and 7th in west Alabama and the Birmingham region will instead be decided during a special election set for Aug. 11 - if a federal court challenge doesn’t stop it.

Still, the results from Tuesday’s voided congressional primaries will be posted on the Alabama Secretary of State’s website before the end of the night. Some political observers believe the winner could gain momentum. And if a candidate
underperforms, it could signal trouble as the field regroups ahead of the Aug. 11 special elections, which will be held under newly redrawn districts that give Republicans an advantage in both the 1st and 2nd districts.

“I do think the unofficial vote count will potentially have some consequences,” said Jess Brown, a retired political science professor at Athens State University and longtime observer of state politics.

Focus on frontrunners

The two GOP frontrunners in the former, now ghosted 1st District — former U.S. Rep. Jerry Carl of Mobile and state Rep. Rhett Marques of Enterprise — will appear on the same ballot Tuesday but will soon part ways.Carl plans to run in the newly drawn 1st District, which includes Mobile, Baldwin, Enterprise and Covington counties. Marques will shift to the 2nd District, which includes the rural counties of the southeastern Wiregrass.

“If Carl leads, especially by a hefty amount, he gains a status as a frontrunner for the August special election,” Brown said, noting that candidates only need a plurality to win on Aug. 11. There is no runoff after the special congressional primaries, another rarity in Alabama politics.

“In my view, Carl has the most to lose in terms of status if he trails in this primary,” Brown said. “That will be seen by voters and political operatives as two consecutive losses.”

Carl lost the 2024 Republican primary to current U.S. Rep. Barry Moore, R-Enterprise, in the now-voided but heavily conservative 1st District that combined Baldwin County and parts of Mobile County with the Wiregrass. That district emerged after legal challenges to Alabama’s 2023 congressional map, which resulted in a new map that recreated the 2nd District as a Black opportunity district.

Now, the 2nd District — currently represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures of Mobile — is reverting to a majority-white and likely Republican district.

“AL-2 could be more ‘likely Republican’ in a big (Democratic) wave, but the bottom line is that the Republicans should win both (the 1st and 2nd congressional district) seats even in 2026,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

Brown said that for Marques — who has the endorsement of U.S. Sen. Katie Britt of Enterprise — the goal is simply to “be seen as highly competitive” in the unofficial contest.

“If Marques leads, he acquires frontrunner status,” Brown said.

Carl’s campaign declined to comment.
Marques, in an email to AL.com, said he is focused on running in the new 2nd district, and said he plans to campaign on the same pro-Trump message.

“I still encourage Alabamians to get out and vote on May 19 for our constitutional officers up and down the ballot, and I’d be honored to earn their support at the ballot box on August 11,” he said.

His campaign team, also in a statement, said “we’ll see on Tuesday night what impact the confusion and changes have had on voters.”

“Rhett is going to keep fighting to earn every vote between now and August 11, when he’ll help President Trump grow the Republican majority in Congress,” the campaign’s statement says.

Results matter

At least one candidate on the 1st District ballot believes Tuesday’s results can offer a preview of the August special elections.

“In many ways, (the voters) operate like an early, district-wide temperature check, an unbiased indicator of where candidates appear stronger, where they may need to improve, and how voters are responding to the field as it currently stands,” said James Richardson of Headland, whose name is also on Tuesday’s ballot in the GOP’s defunct 1st District race but who will shift to the 2nd District contest this summer.

“These unofficial results can highlight who performed above or below expectations, and that information inevitably shapes how campaigns, voters, and political observers interpret the landscape heading into August,” Richardson said. “It also provides honest feedback about each candidates’ standing among Republican primary voters, especially for those shifting districts.”

Not every candidate is concerned about how they will do against the others. Austin Sidwell, a Fairhope business owner who is running in the 1st District, said his campaign isn’t focusing on competing against “any specific individual” but is about “standing up to special interest groups which have corrupted our election process.”

“I’m running to give families another chance at the American dream which career politicians are stealing from us,” he said.

James “Jimmy” Dees, a Mobile police detective from Fairhope who is running in the 1st District, said he will be interested in seeing if the results open a door for other candidates.

“It will be interesting to see if results show the messages of candidates, other than Carl and Marques, are making an impact with voters,” Dees said. “To date, most media have been focused on them (Carl and Marques) as the front runners, going forward I’m hopeful the ideas of others get more attention.”

John Mills of Newtown, who is still evaluating how to proceed in the race, said he believes Tuesday’s results will only have consequences if the results are analyzed within the new districts.

“A raw top-line result from the old district is not enough,” Mills said. “It may tell us something about name identification, but it does not tell us who is best positioned under the new district lines. Some votes may have come from areas that are no longer in the same district. Some counties now carry more weight than they did before. Some endorsements and local relationships may matter more in the new district than they did under the prior map. The map reset changes the political math.”

More candidates could join the congressional races soon. The qualifying period for the Aug. 11 special election opens Wednesday and closes Friday, meaning any new entrants will likely emerge quickly after Tuesday’s results.

Already, the possibility of jumping into the special election has become an issue in other races. Alabama State Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Josephine, has been accused by his primary challenger, Mike Vandenheuvel of Foley, of planning to qualify for the 1st District race the day after their Senate primary. Elliott said Thursday he is “100 percent focused” on running for re-election, though he did not confirm or deny interest in running for Congress.

Candidate performance Tuesday could influence whether additional challengers join the field next week.

“I think it’s fair to say that any candidate who underperforms relative to expectations will have to answer questions about momentum and positioning,” Richardson said. “At the same time, the special election is a separate race with a different electorate, and campaigns will adjust accordingly.”

Brown expects the special election electorate to be more conservative and more aligned with President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” base. Overall turnout will likely drop from Tuesday’s primary, he added.

The Alabama Secretary of State’s Office has not provided a turnout estimate for Tuesday. The 2022 primary elections — the last time statewide offices such as governor and U.S. Senate were on the ballot — drew fewer than a quarter of registered voters.

Aside from the 1st District, the only other contested congressional primary whose results will be invalidated is in the 6th District, where incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer of Hoover faces Case Dixon. There were no primary challenges to Figures in the 2nd District or Democratic U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell in the 7th.

From courthouses to chaos

The upheaval in congressional races stems from last month’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, in which the U.S. Supreme Court found that a Louisiana congressional district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The ruling triggered a wave of redistricting activity across the South, where lawmakers issued new or revised congressional maps to eliminate majority-Black districts in favor of majority-white, Republican-leaning districts.

Alabama’s new congressional districts and the Aug. 11 special election were established during a special legislative session last week, when the Republican-controlled Legislature reauthorized a congressional map first approved in 2023. That map had previously been invalidated by federal courts for violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

After the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana, Alabama officials asked the Court to lift the injunction blocking the 2023 map. On Monday, the Court agreed in a 6–3 decision.

Gov. Kay Ivey set the special elections for the congressional races on Monday and announced that Tuesday’s results would be voided. It is the first time since at least the 1800s that an election appearing on a primary ballot was canceled before results were known. Historically, voided elections occurred well after voting, often due to fraud, campaign finance violations, or other irregularities.

In Louisiana, voters went to the polls Saturday with U.S. House seats also on the primary ballot. Those races, like Alabama’s, will be invalidated. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry set Nov. 3 as the election date for the U.S. House races.

But unlike Alabama, Landry is prohibiting election officials from releasing the results of Saturday’s contests, as well as the canceled congressional contests on the June 27 ballots.

Richardson said he believes voters will still pay attention.

“The results will certainly be watched closely as an early indicator of how voters are engaging with the field,” he said.

More than half of Americans support the separation of church and state. Yet Trump is spending your tax dollars on 'Rededicate 250' to push one version of religion as the only government-favored faith.

Officials from President Donald Trump's administration and evangelical Christian leaders plan to gather "with Scripture, testimony, prayer, and rededication of our country as One Nation to God" in Washington, DC, on May 17.

That description is a lie. The real plan here is to push one distinct version of religion – right-wing, MAGA-heavy, politically motivated Protestantism – as the only government-favored faith for our entire country.

"Rededicate 250," as the all-day event on the National Mall is called, will platform almost exclusively those kinds of preachers in a way that brazenly and intentionally violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

This is part of a larger attempt to undo the decrees the men we call our nation's "Founding Fathers" wrote into our first laws, mandating a separation between church and state.

Rededicate 250, pegged to this year's 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, is designed to demolish those decrees.

But that's not what most Americans want.
Americans clearly support the separation of church and state

A Pew Research Center survey, released May 14 to provide context ahead of Rededicate 250, found that just 17% of Americans want Christianity declared as the official religion in this country. Fifty-four percent of Americans support a separation of church and state, while just 13% oppose that. And 52% said “conservative Christians have gone too far" pushing religion in government and public schools. 

The Rev. Paul Rauschenbusch, a Baptist minister and CEO of the Interfaith Alliance, told me Rededicate 250 violates the U.S. Constitution's Establishment Clause, which guarantees both the freedom to practice religion and the freedom to prevent the government from forcing a religion on you.

"Unfortunately, this event is very clearly privileging one tradition with the full-throated support of the government," Rauschenbusch said. "And it's a very kind of thin slice of American Christianity that largely is unified by political goals."

Rededicate 250 is an offshoot of Freedom 250, an effort funded by your tax dollars and corporate sponsors, organized by the U.S. Park Service and promoted by Trump's White House, to celebrate America's 250 years of existence.

How much of your tax dollars are being spent on Rededicate 250? I can't tell you. The White House team assigned to answer that question did not respond to my request for information last week, a continuation in a pattern of obstructing transparency while mislabeling it as "freedom."

The Founding Fathers were clear about church and state

Then there's an unintentional irony of Rededicate 250's website using the 1975 Arnold Friberg painting "The prayer at Valley Forge," which depicts George Washington kneeling in the snow next to his horse. On display at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, it has been labeled there as portraying "an imagined moment of prayer.”

Rededicate 250 leans hard on the "imagined" part because Washington, our first president, was a religious man but never wanted to force his faith on other Americans. He didn't just call for government toleration for different religions. He wanted full freedom for all creeds.

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence before becoming our third president, was also a religious man. And he, too, emphasized a "wall of separation" between the church and government while promoting freedom for all religions.

So now, we're all paying for a religious celebration

Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told me Rededicate 250 represents a larger effort in Trump's second term to force a particular version of religion into our government.

"It's extremely concerning that at a time when America is celebrating our decision not to have a king who rules over both church and state, that we are leaning into a Christian nationalist activity that promotes the lie that America was founded as a Christian nation," Laser said. "It's deeply un-American, and an assault on one of our best foundational values as a country."

Annie Laurie Gaylor, cofounder of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, told me her group and Faithful America, religious progressives who oppose Christian nationalism, will protest at Rededicate 250 with an inflatable "false prophet" that looks like a golden calf with the visage of a certain 47th president.

"An all-day Christian prayer-fest on the National Mall proclaimed by our president and participated in and evidently funded by our federal government is exactly what our Constitution intended to prohibit," Gaylor told me.

Just consider how Trump pitched Rededicate 250 while announcing it in February at the National Prayer Breakfast.

"I've always said you can't have a great country if you don't have religion," Trump said before adding, "I behave because I'm afraid not to, OK, because I don't want to get in trouble."

This, from a president who last month posted a social media meme that made him look like Jesus Christ and then criticized Pope Leo XIV for preaching peace after Trump threatened to destroy “a whole civilization” in Iran.

The First Amendment guarantees Trump's right to act that way, even if it outrages people of faith. But that amendment also guarantees that Americans should not have to pay for any religion to be celebrated, and certainly not one distinct version of faith.

That's Trump's next outrage, happening on the National Mall, in contradiction of our Constitution.

Agents are now barred from warrantless arrests pending mandatory training.

A federal judge has ruled that ICE violated a court order and the law by continuing to make unlawful warrantless arrests in Colorado.

The ACLU of Colorado filed a lawsuit in October 2025 on behalf of four plaintiffs, alleging Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested and detained people without warrants to fulfill quotas set by the Trump administration. Federal law only allows ICE agents to make warrantless arrests if an individual is a flight risk.

In November 2025, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction barring ICE from making warrantless arrests in Colorado.

On May 12, a Colorado District Court judge ruled that ICE had violated its November order and required ICE to have more oversight and training.
Tim Macdonald, Legal Director of the ACLU of Colorado, says the decision will affect how ICE operates nationwide.

“The court made clear that ICE needs to take the court's orders seriously. It's not a recommendation, it's an order. And under our Constitution, ICE is obligated to follow the law. We hope it changes their behavior, not just here in Colorado, it should change their behavior across the country,” Macdonald said.

Macdonald said ICE officers were documented rounding up people in masses at nightclubs and apartments without knowing if they posed a safety risk or without probable cause that they were in the country unlawfully.

One of the four plaintiffs was Caroline Dias Goncalvas, a 20-year-old Utah college student. A Mesa County Sheriff's deputy shared her immigration status with ICE after a traffic stop in Colorado last year. She was detained for 15 days at the Aurora ICE detention facility before being released.

During the hearing, ACLU attorneys cross-examined ICE agents under oath who had engaged in warrantless arrests in Colorado.

"They admitted they didn't really understand what the law was. In fact, many of them made statements that were flatly wrong and flatly contradicted what the law actually is. The court noted that in the opinion that these officers didn't understand the legal requirements that they were supposed to be operating under, and these are people with guns and badges, and it should be terrifying to all Coloradans," Macdonald said.

ICE has been ordered to train agents on how to make arrests that comply with federal law within 45 days and is prohibited from making any warrantless arrests until the training is complete.

Remember back in February, when Trump claimed he was going to donate to “very good charities” any money he got by settling his own lawsuit against the IRS because a contractor stole his tax records from the IRS during his own first term?

Speaking with reporters Saturday aboard Air Force One, Trump said he is considering settling the case and giving the proceeds to “established and respected charities.”

“We’re thinking about doing something for charity where I’ll give money to charity,” he said. “We can make it a substantial amount. Nobody would care because it’s going to go to numerous very good charities.”
Trump added, “If I pay myself, that somehow will never look good.”

“A lot of outside people said, ‘What a great idea,’ because nobody cares how much if it goes to a good charity,” Trump said. “So you settle by giving charities a lot of money and I think we’re going to do something like that. We’re looking to do something like that.”

Yesterday, ABC reported that the settlement now envisions rewarding Trump $1.7 billion to award to Jan6ers.
President Donald Trump is expected to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The commission overseeing the compensation fund would have the total authority to hand out approximately $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds to settle claims brought by anyone who alleges they were harmed by the Biden administration’s “weaponization” of the legal system, including the nearly 1,600 individuals charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol attack as well as potentially entities associated with President Trump himself.
If the $1.7 billion were split evenly among the 1,600 criminals and those charged, it would work out to be over a million dollars a person. And that’s on top of the restitution payments for the damage the mob did to the Capitol, of which many convicted criminals were excused with Trump’s pardon. Taxpayers have been stuck cleaning up after Trump’s criminals.
And consider the kind of people who would benefit from this corrupt payoff.
Some number — around a dozen? — are seditionists and adjudged terrorists from the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers whom juries found to be attacking the country. Todd Blanche is already working to make their convictions go away, which will allow them to rearm Now, Trump wants to pay those guys a million dollars for their criminal ways.
Then there are the cop assailants. During police week, Trump is floating the idea of paying people who beat cops and in a few cases, nearly killed them — people like Danny Rodriguez who went to January 6 expecting there might be casualties and then responded directly to Rudy Giuliani’s call for trial by combat by making throat slicing gestures. Rodriguez went on to tase Michael Fanone, causing a heart attack.
That’s what Trump wants to reward with a million dollar payoff.
Several of these people have seriously threatened top government officials, too. Taylor Taranto (using an address that Trump made public on Truth Social) drove his armed van to Kalorama and started stalking Barack Obama. “Gotta get the shot, stop at nothing to get the shot. This is where other people come to get the shot,” the mentally ill Navy veteran was chanting. And Chris Moynihan sent text messagesthreatening to kill Hakeem Jeffries: “I cannot allow this terrorist to live … I will kill him for the future,” (which crime Trump’s DOJ chose to ignore, meaning Moynihan got off with just a misdemeanor offense).

Finally, there are the child sex predators. Andrew Paul Johnson, for example, started molesting two children, including a boy of the age of 11, after January 6.

Both of Johnson’s young victims — a young boy and a young girl — testified at his trial, where they described how Johnson used his role as a trusted “father figure” to subject them to physical sexual abuse and explicit messages.

Johnson first came into the picture in 2023, after the boy’s mother met Johnson at a political rally. The mother, who was raising two boys alone, let Johnson stay on the couch in her home.

She testified that she believed Johnson, who worked as a handyman, could help fix things around the house.
By that point, Johnson had already been charged for his role in the Capitol attack, but his case was still working its way through the courts. On the political right, riot defendants like Johnson were widely portrayed as victims, “hostages” and “political prisoners.”

One night, the boy was watching “a scary movie” with Johnson, when he fell asleep.

“I woke up in the morning and he was touching me — I felt him touching me in my private area,” the boy testified. He was 11 years old at the time.
“Did you say anything to him?” Assistant State Attorney Kasey Whitson asked.

“No ma’am,” the boy replied. “I was too nervous, like, I was scared.”

Later that year, the boy again woke up to Johnson touching him. This time, Johnson swore him to silence.

“He said not to tell anybody,” the boy said. His mother remained unaware of the abuse.

When the boy told him that fondling his genitalia was wrong, Johnson used his expectation of a payoff to try to silence the child.

Andrew also told [redacted] that since he was pardoned for storming the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, and he was being awarded $10,000,000 as a result of being a “jan 6’er”. Andrew did tell [redacted] that he would be putting him in his “will” to take any money he had left over. This tactic was believed to be used to keep [redacted] from exposing what Andrew had done to him.

It’s not just that these monsters are recidivist criminals. It’s that Trump’s coddling of them has led them to believe they have impunity for other crimes.

And Trump wants to steal $1.7 billion from taxpayers — basically a $5 tax on every American — and give it to these criminals.

That’s his idea of charity.

National leaders including U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, Gov. JB Pritzker, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and TDP Chair Kendall Scudder to headline 2026 State Convention.
DALLAS/FORT WORTH – The Texas Democratic Party announced new details for its 2026 State Convention, taking place June 25–27 in Corpus Christi, where more than 5,000 Democrats from across the state will gather for the largest Democratic convention in the country. 

Lined up to speak is a slate of nationally recognized leaders and keynote speakers, beginning with U.S. Senator Cory Booker, followed by** ** Illinois Governor JB Pritzker at Friday’s  Blue Wave Luncheon,** **and remarks from Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin during Friday’s General Session. Programming will continue Saturday with New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, who will keynote the Lady Bird Breakfast, and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. Texas Democratic candidates, including U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico and Gubernatorial nominee Gina Hinojosa, along with Texas Democratic Party Chair Kendall Scudder, will headline key programming focused on winning up and down the ballot. The convention will kick off Thursday evening with a free concert by Tejano recording star and U.S. Congressional Candidate Bobby Pulido.

The multi-day event will bring together grassroots activists, elected officials, and candidates to organize, energize, and prepare for victory in November as campaigns and priorities for 2026 take shape. Over the course of 2 ½ days, attendees will be able to participate in grassroots trainings, caucus meetings, influencer and podcast engagement, and community-building events designed to connect Democrats from every region of the state. 

A U.S. company is involved in drone strikes that are killing Haitian civilians.

Thirty passengers sat in total silence inside a bus as it slowed down on the road to the Martissant district, near the center of Port-au-Prince. Everyone knows this stretch of road, a strategic route connecting the south of the city to downtown, abandoned to armed groups for years. They demand tolls from all drivers and close the roads at whim. Everyone also knows the proper behavior: phones on silent, and no talking as they approach the toll booth.
Suddenly, an explosion rang out a few meters away.

“A suicide drone exploded near us. It was total panic,” Kesner Jean-Jacques, a student at the State University of Haiti who was aboard the bus earlier this year, tells Truthdig.
No one got off, no one ran. In these areas, fleeing can be more dangerous than staying put.

“Every trip I’m risking my life,” Jean-Jacques adds. He has to travel the route daily to get to university. 

In Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, this type of incident has become common over the past year. It reflects a new reality for most Haitians, where expanding and increasingly powerful armed groups, violent state security operations and international intervention overlap, and the civilians caught in the middle are increasingly unsafe. 

“Every trip I’m risking my life.”
Since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse five years ago, Haiti’s security situation has seriously deteriorated, gangs have flourished and state institutions are paralyzed.

Haiti’s National Assembly has been inactive since 2019, and, while elections have been planned for August, the prime minister is now saying the country is too insecure to hold the vote. The cost of living has increased as vendors raise prices to cover gang tolls and taxes.  

Gang violence is causing mass displacement, with a reported 1.4 millionpeople internally displaced in the first 10 months of 2025. Armed groups now control 90% of the capital, the United Nations says.

In these areas, gangs no longer merely instill fear; they have gradually established a veritable parallel governance system. They regulate movement, forcibly recruit civilians and dictate the rules of daily life. In the commune of Carrefour, in the southwest of Port-au-Prince, they even operate their own prisons.

Armed groups run their territories through a structured informal economy. They use threats and violence to impose and collect payments from merchants, public transportation drivers and residents in the form of road tolls, taxes on goods or regular forced contributions.

Sometimes children are made to collect the payments on behalf of the gangs. Human Rights Watch estimates minors account for up to 30% of the membership of armed groups.

Gangs also control the main roads connecting Port-au-Prince to the rest of the country, as well as certain strategic maritime routes, allowing them to regulate the flow of goods and people. This provides them with substantial revenue. Haiti’s Finance Ministry estimates gangs rake in $60 million to $75 million annually just from extorting shipments arriving from the neighboring Dominican Republic.

Kidnappings for ransom constitute another pillar of this economy of violence. Between January and May 2025, approximately 316 kidnapping cases were documented, with demands sometimes reaching several million dollars.

Civilians say they fear both the gangs and the police operations intended to combat them, and they describe to Truthdig being in a state of constant hypervigilance. Explosions or exchanges of gunfire can occur suddenly in densely populated areas, turning homes into potentially dangerous spaces, they say.

U.S. firm collaborates with Haitian state in drone attacks
In response to the gang situation, Haitian authorities have intensified security operations over the past year, increasing their use of drones. These devices — often commercial drones modified to carry explosives — are being deployed by Haitian government security forces with supportfrom Vectus Global, a U.S.-licensed private military firm. They are using them in densely populated areas — reportedly in deliberate extrajudicial killings — significantly heightening the risks to civilians.

Vectus Global is led by Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, the now-defunct U.S.-based mercenary company. Prince, a supporter of President Donald Trump, said in March 2025 that he had a 10-year deal in Haiti. That same month, the Haitian government also reportedly signed a $52 million contract with Windward Wyoming, which is also linked to Prince, for that company to provide technical support to the Haitian National Police in their operations against gangs, also through the use of drones.

Between March 2025 and January 2026, at least 1,243 people were killed and 738 wounded in 141 drone strikes, according to a Human Rights Watch report. Among them were at least 17 children and 43 civilians with no apparent ties to armed groups.

Port-au-Prince residents tell Truthdig they believe the real figures are higher, as not all incidents are recorded.

“The government has no real control over the number of civilians who may be affected by these attacks,” says Jean-Jacques.

In Cité Soleil, an extremely impoverished and densely populated area in the capital, a resident who requested anonymity describes a daily life marked by this dual threat of gangs and state-employed drones.

Her neighborhood is situated between the territories of two rival armed groups. She describes how a young woman returned briefly to her home there after having fled, to retrieve a bedsheet: “They found her with a bullet in her head.”

“We have no way to protect ourselves. Our houses can’t even withstand bullets,” she says. Many homes in the area are improvised from corrugated metal sheets, cinder blocks, cardboard and found materials.

She also mentions a teenager in her neighborhood who was forced by a gang into a mission to carry a weapon and spy on a rival group. He is still alive, she says. “Usually, they kill them right after the missions.”

“When a drone explodes in the area, the houses nearby can catch fire. Many innocent people have died,” she adds.
“The exact circumstances of these incidents are difficult to establish due to the lack of public investigations and limited access to gang-controlled areas,” says Blondy LeBlanc, a community and culture worker in Carrefour.

“If the state is supposed to protect the population, it is unacceptable that fear now also comes from law enforcement,” he adds.

“Many innocent people have died.”
The U.S. has also pushed for, and financially backed a Multinational Security Support Mission, authorized by the United Nations Security Council, with Kenyan forces meant to be supporting the Haitian police. Since deployment in 2024, the mission has had minimal operational capacity and limited results. 

Now, the U.S. is backing a new and larger U.N. multinational mission, a Gang Suppression Force (GSF), for the next 12 months. In April, Chad sent 50 police officers to participate in the GSF — for a total of 1,500 from the country — and 17 other countries have committed a total of 5,500 troops.

“These operations have not yet produced tangible results,” Rosy Auguste Ducéna of the National Human Rights Defense Network tells Truthdig. “Since their implementation, no gang leader has been neutralized.”
She also points to a lack of effectiveness with the use of drones, and a lack of clarity and information, saying, “The authorities have not communicated clearly about the chains of command or the nature of the equipment used.”

Ducéna emphasizes the need for strict oversight: “There must be precise control over how these operations are conducted, particularly to ensure the protection of civilians.” 

She also warns of the risks of political manipulation, arguing, “The use of drones must not serve political ends, but must be part of a clear strategy by law enforcement agencies.”

U.S. warships can’t bring stability
Beyond security dynamics, the Haitian crisis is unfolding within a fragile political context. In late January, tensions emerged within the governing Transitional Presidential Council, with some members raising the possibility of removing Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé from office. The United States quickly expressed opposition, reaffirming its support for Fils-Aimé.

In early February, three U.S. warships — the USS Stockdale, USCGC Stone and USCGC Diligence — were deployed to the bay of Port-au-Prince. Presented by the U.S. as a commitment to stability, the show of force was timed just days before the role of the temporary council came to an end, to ensure that Fils-Aimé remained prime minister. 

The disconnect between such violent shows of force and the persistent lack of safety in Haitians’ lives is fueling growing criticism of the role of international players in the country.

The U.S. and the international community’s historic and continuous interference in Haitian affairs has contributed significantly to the political and security crisis. The ambiguous relationships between the authorities, members of the economic elite and gangs, as well as the absence of elected representatives, are also all key factors.

The Haitian crisis is unfolding within a fragile political context.
Haitian workers and activists question why leaders have prioritized international mechanisms rather than Haitian perspectives and direct reinforcement of the Haitian National Police. Such moves, they say, reflect a desire to control the Haitian people, not protect them.

Local law enforcement agencies are struggling to respond to the scale of the crisis. The Haitian National Police face a chronic shortage of equipment, resources and personnel. Police often have to engage with gangs without bulletproof vests, or in broken vehicles. Institutional instability and frequent changes within security structures prevent the implementation of coherent long-term strategies. There have been five national police directors general since mid-2019.

And while local institutions struggle, gangs are strengthened by alleged cooperation with some political and business elites. In 2023, the U.S. Congress passed the Haiti Criminal Collusion Transparency Act, acknowledging the existence of significant ties between certain individuals and armed groups — notably through the supply of weapons or money laundering — and paving the way for targeted sanctions. These measures helped confirm the existence of collusion networks, though they did not dismantle them. 

Moreover, the Haitian government is either unable or unwilling to do its part in prosecuting such individuals. The Port-au-Prince Court of Appeals acquitted Youri Latortue and Joseph Lambert, two former presidents of the Senate, of corruption in late March.

Latorture has been accused by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control, responsible for the sanctions, of cocaine trafficking and collaborating with criminal networks. 

Latortue has been sanctioned by OFAC and by Canada for drug trafficking and violence against others. He has allegedly armed and financed the Raboteau and Kokorat San Ras gangs — the latter of which is known as one of the most brutal groups in Haiti, notorious for rapes, kidnappings and killings.

For Gilbert Mirambeau Jr., a filmmaker and member of Nou Pap Dòmi, a civil society organization fighting corruption, the Court of Appeals’ recent decision is a scandal. 

“Clearing these people means telling these gangs in suits that they can keep going, keep getting rich while the people die. It’s telling the armed gangs that their leaders are untouchable, that they can keep killing, stealing and reducing the country to ashes,” he tells Truthdig.

Running for their lives
According to Port-au-Prince-based sociologist and feminist activist Tamas Jean-Pierre, the situation in Haiti has been deteriorating since 2018, following protests demanding accountability for funds missing from a deal to buy oil from Venezuela, and the subsequent suppression of the uprisings. The huge wave of demonstrations accused government officials at the time of embezzling public funds destined for social infrastructure. 

“From that point on, state terrorism took hold. The state orchestrated massacres against its own people,” she tells Truthdig, referring to massacres like the 2018 one in La Saline, where some of the largest protests were held. Government officials collaborated with gang leaders, supplying them with weapons, police uniforms and government vehicles, and gangs killed at least 71 people.

“There can be no grassroots mobilization when people are running for their lives. And I think that was the goal from the start,” Jean-Pierre says. Those who embezzled state funds have turned the country into a gang-ruled state to avoid accountability, she argues.

“There can be no grassroots mobilization when people are running for their lives.”

And even as gangs overrun neighborhoods, for Jean-Pierre, no life should be considered collateral damage. The state must find a solution to combat the gangs while protecting the lives of innocent people.

“Civilians remain the most vulnerable in an environment where no force guarantees lasting security,” she says.
The situation also has profound psychological consequences.

According to Port-au-Prince-based psychologist Clara Marcel, persistent violence and the presence of drones are contributing to the onset of anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress and depression.

“In a climate where law enforcement is no longer perceived as a guarantor of security, this fosters the emergence of post-traumatic stress symptoms, which can develop into chronic stress, as well as feelings of despair and depression,” she tells Truthdig.
“My daughter faints every time she hears gunshots,” confides a resident of Cité Soleil.

There, and in other areas of the capital like Martissant, Bel-Air and Simon-Pelé, where residents are regularly tormented by drones, people continue to live, move about and work. But their days contain the same uncertainty: Where the next threat will come from?

A heated committee [meeting](https://ohiohouse.gov/committees/workforce-and-higher-education/video/ohio-house-workforce-and-higher-education-committee-5-12-2026-programId-207310) at the House of Representatives this week laid bare that the debate over academic freedom has turned into a fight over surveillance, funding and political control.

The issue revolves around a bill that would allow the state to withhold $75 million from public colleges and universities unless they adhere to a controversial [2025 law](https://search-prod.lis.state.oh.us/api/v2/general\_assembly\_136/legislation/sb1/05\_EN/pdf/) that dismantled diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices across Ohio campuses while establishing a strict new set of guidelines for instruction and conduct.

One Democratic legislator compared the enforcement apparatus to the blacklist tactics of the 1950s aimed at punishing ideological dissent, while academic professionals and labor leaders warned that it would deepen what they see as a culture of fear and bureaucratic dysfunction.

Presiding over the hearing at the [House Workforce and Higher Education Committee](https://ohiohouse.gov/committees/workforce-and-higher-education) was bill sponsor Tom Young (R-Washington Twp.), who repeatedly interrupted critics to defend his proposal.

**The funding lever**
Signed into law last year, [Senate Bill 1](https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/136/sb1), also known as the Advance Ohio Higher Education Act, fundamentally altered how public universities operate through the following measures:

Banning DEI initiatives, including diversity statements in hiring and admission forms

Mandating “intellectual diversity” policies to ensure educators touch on a broad range of political and ideological perspectives in academic settings

Prohibiting institutions from officially endorsing or opposing “controversial beliefs” such as climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, immigration policy, marriage and abortion

Requiring course instructors to publicly share their credentials, contact information and syllabus for each class

Eliminating undergraduate programs that confer fewer than five degrees annually, based on a three-year average

Creating provisions for cost-cutting and performance evaluation, such that tenure or seniority alone won’t guarantee job retention

Barring faculty members from striking, imposing significant restrictions on collective bargaining leverage that previously steered labor disputes

[House Bill 698](https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/136/hb698) is a follow-up proposal that centers on a $75 million slice of the [State Share of Instruction](https://highered.ohio.gov/data-reports/hei-system/hei-data-submission/hei-ssi-info), the main pool of taxpayer money used to fund public colleges and universities in Ohio. Per the legislation, institutions will receive their share of the set-aside only if they meet the following requirements:

They submit annual certifications of compliance with SB 1 provisions
It must be signed by institutional leadership and supported by documentation

The chancellor may request records, conduct audits and review personnel reassignments, including employees who previously performed DEI functions

If the chancellor formally concludes that an institution is noncompliant, its share of the $75 million would be withheld until the necessary corrections are made

Young described the measure as “strictly an enforcement bill,” arguing that universities should not be allowed to take a mere “check-the-box approach.” During the bill’s [first hearing](https://www.ohiohouse.gov/committees/workforce-and-higher-education/video/ohio-house-workforce-and-higher-education-committee-2-24-2026-programId-205149) in February, Rep. Joseph Miller III, a Democrat from Amherst, pointed out how often the sponsor mentioned “compliance” during his testimony — he said it a total of 17 times.

**Heated exchanges expose a widening divide**
On multiple occasions, Young interjected when lawmakers and witnesses connected the pending legislation to the broader consequences of its parent bill. He kept insisting that speakers focus on HB 698, formally titled the “SB 1 Compliance Supplemental Appropriation Act,” rather than SB 1 itself.

The bill would require universities to identify employees who performed DEI-related functions as of Jan. 1, 2025, and document how their roles changed after they were reassigned. Those reports would include names, job titles, salary changes, side-by-side comparisons of previous duties with current ones and a “compliance plan for ongoing review.”

“I’ve heard of these lists before. I think it was [McCarthyism](https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/educational-resources/age-of-eisenhower/mcarthyism-red-scare),” Miller said about the proposed inventory, referring to the anti-communist campaign of the 1950s that involved government officials compiling blacklists of suspects.

When Young interrupted and asked him not to depart from the docket, Miller contentiously responded, “Please give me the same grace you give my fellow colleagues.”

Melissa Cropper of the [Ohio Federation of Teachers](https://www.oft-aft.org/) stressed that the bill would give state officials broad leverage over labor negotiations, prompting Young to cut her off twice and contend that her complaint wasn’t relevant to HB 698.

“Administrators are being told that their guidance from the Attorney General prohibits them from collectively bargaining something without fear of losing funding,”

Cropper maintained. “There is a direct correlation between the funding that’s being threatened to be withheld and what’s happening with compliance with SB 1.”

Miller later apologized to Cropper and said, “I’m just disappointed at how the People’s House is no longer the People’s House when it comes to giving interpretations of bills that we bring forth.”

The hearing also featured a sharp disagreement over an [undercover video](https://youtu.be/tnAmfZ\_ff50?si=IwB9TRauGu57yONR) released by Accuracy in Media, in which an administrator at Ohio State University talked about former DEI centers being renamed and opened to all students.

“There’s still stuff going on. It’s just more quiet. Because of the law, we had to change signs and centers. They changed them to ‘common,’” she said, referring to the Multicultural Center being renamed the Common Center. And so, the whites are there, too, you know, not just the underrepresented. They brought the people with the privilege there, too.”

Rep. Josh Williams, a Republican from Sylvania Township, framed those comments as “demonizing white students,” while Munira Abdullahi, a Democrat from Columbus, called it “a video of someone joking out of context.”

Erynn Beaton of Ohio State University also shared her thoughts on the footage: “She talked about how students of color can still find communities on campus, even if they aren’t in formal DEI centers … I think she was doing her best to have a collegial conversation with the parent of a potential student.”

Rep. Tracy M. Richardson (R-Marysville) questioned the professor’s “passion for the bill” and asked, “Are you leading an opposition to HB 698 around your students? … What is your capacity and your authority, and how are you influencing students?”

Beaton clarified that she had not spoken to any of the students who testified.

**‘Anti-labor, anti-educator, anti-student and fundamentally anti-education’**

The committee received 172 pieces of opponent testimony on short notice, about a tenth of the [1,700-plus submissions](https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/136/sb1/committee) against SB 1 last year.

The law requires universities to establish systems through which teaching, research and service inform faculty evaluations, promotions, tenure and other personnel decisions. HB 698 would intensify pressure to comply with that requirement by tying funding to standards that remain unclear.

“If you’re teaching 120 students in a class, that’s very different than a class with 30 students,” Beaton said. “These workload provisions just aren’t articulated very well, and what it’s caused is chaos across the university … it’s created a lot of extra work, which frankly has taken a lot of extra time and money for the university.”

Stephen Mockabee of the [American Association of University Professors](https://ocaaup.org/)challenged the assumption that eliminating small academic programs saves money, noting that faculty who teach those majors also assist with general education classes that will remain in the curriculum. He added that institutions in the state could ultimately lose money by denying students certain majors because they may consequently pursue their studies elsewhere.

Professor Jill Galavan of Ohio State University shared that applications to the College of Arts and Sciences, the university’s largest college, fell by 24% over the past year.

“This significant decline in numbers is a loss not only of students not wanting to come to Ohio, but of Ohio residents seeking out education in other states,” she said. “Our losses are other states’ gains.”

Sydney Ball, who recently graduated from the institution, referred to SB 1 as the Higher Education Destruction Act and explained how it has impacted her alma mater.

“This bill is nothing but a waste of tuition, which would take money away from serving students and improving universities and put it toward bureaucratic nonsense,” she said. “It has stripped professors of their rights, gutted classroom discussions and [eliminated at least 90 programs](https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/04/16/ohios-public-universities-are-eliminating-nearly-90-degree-programs-as-a-result-of-senate-bill-1/) across the state.”

Faculty member Ashley Hope Pérez said the state’s reputation has suffered greatly because of these measures.

“HB 698 would intensify a culture of repression that now shamefully characterizes higher education in Ohio,” she said. “Degrees from Ohio’s public universities are worth less today than they were a year ago.”

Research was among the most substantive concerns, with academics arguing that the legislation does not reflect how some universities actually operate. Beaton explained that research is the primary criterion on which she is evaluated and that much of this work must be completed during unpaid summer months, but that neither bill adequately recognizes those circumstances.

Mockabee said the state’s workload guidelines place too much emphasis on undergraduate teaching, which could make it harder for research-intensive institutions such as Ohio State University and the University of Cincinnati to recruit top faculty and graduate students. Scientist and lecturer Chris Orban noted that a recent federal grant he secured brought three PhD students to Ohio, where they remain today.

Cropper offered one of the hearing’s strongest rebukes, warning that the threat of losing state funding could pressure university leaders to narrow their scope of negotiations over union protections.

“When the state begins stripping bargaining rights from one sector of workers, it creates a blueprint for broader attacks on organized labor across the state,” she said. “These policies will amount to death by a thousand paper cuts against unions and worker protections.”

She also highlighted the irony of lawmakers advancing separate legislation to reinforce teachers’ ability to discuss Christianity while simultaneously imposing restrictions on what ***isn’t*** permissible in the classroom.

“This bill is anti-labor, anti-educator, anti-student, and fundamentally anti-education,” Cropper said.

Republican Sen. Jerry Cirino of Kirtland, who sponsored SB 1, has said that [universities should be given more](https://www.cleveland.com/education/2026/02/ohio-universities-could-lose-state-funding-under-bill-tracking-ex-dei-employees-sb-1-compliance.html)time to implement the law before lawmakers impose additional enforcement measures.