June 18, 2026

02 U.S. Politics

Two immigration judge that refused to deport illegal aliens have themselves been fired by the Department of Justice. They were fired along with four other immigration justices, all of whom were probationary justices whose terms were near completion.

Judges fired after blocking deportation of pro-Palestinian students | US immigration www.theguardian.com
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Two immigration judges who ruled against the Trump administration in the deportation cases of pro-Palestinian university students have been fired by the Department of Justice.

The New York Times reported over the weekend that the justice department had terminated six judges, including Roopal Patel and Nina Froes, who oversaw deportation proceedings against Rümeysa Öztürk and Mohsen Mahdawi, two students who were arrested last year as part of Trump’s campaign against the Gaza protest movement.

In an interview with the Guardian, Patel said she did not view her dismissal as “directly retaliatory” for any one case. She said it fit within a broader pattern of the administration dismissing judges near the end of their probationary term, particularly those who have experience representing immigrants in court.

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has essentially struck down a 158-year-old law that made moon shiners run, the law making home liquor distilling illegal.

US Court Rules Against 158-Year Ban on Home Liquor Distilling – Newsweek
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A U.S. appeals court has ruled that a 158-year-old ban on distilling liquor at home is unconstitutional.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said the law exceeds Congress’ constitutional taxing power in a ruling on Friday.

Why It Matters

The ruling blocks enforcement of a long-standing federal prohibition that effectively made home distilling spirits a criminal offense. The case raises broader constitutional questions about the limits of Congress’ power to regulate behavior under its taxation authority.

What To Know

The case was brought by the Hobby Distillers Association and four of its members, who challenged an 1868 law which prohibited the operation of distilling spirits in or near homes.

The statute, enforced by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, carries criminal penalties, including fines of up to $10,000 and up to five years imprisonment.

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The strong warning reitrates that China has an energy agreement with Iran and therefore its ships will not be intercepted.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Defense Ministry said: “Chinese ships continue to move in and out of the waters of the Strait of Hormuz.

“We have trade and energy agreements with Iran, which we will respect and abide by.

“We expect others not to interfere in our affairs.

“Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, and has opened it to us.”

Blurb:

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, takes his seat before a meeting of the White House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence Education in the East Room of the White House, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025, in Washington.Alex Brandon/AP

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.

Sam Altman suggested that an investigative story describing him as someone “unconstrained by truth” with a “sociopathic lack of concern” for consequences caused an early Friday attack on his San Francisco home.

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California Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell, who until Sunday was running for governor of his state, will now be one of those cautionary tales his party likes to use in claiming that — unlike Republicans — Democrats are too concerned with principles and decency. It’s a pathetic coping front for what really happened with that sick party, which once again is living by the destructive, anti-American standards they’ve tried imposing on everyone else.

A few women in recent days — all anonymous except one — went to some media outlets to accuse Swalwell of sexual misconduct, including rape. The lizardly congressman has denied any criminal wrongdoing while also apologizing for “mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past.” Nevertheless, he suspended his gubernatorial campaign and now faces some pressure to resign from Congress, as well as a criminal investigation in New York.

Purely based on the so-far reported details of this unseemly saga, there’s no reason to deny Swalwell’s American entitlement to innocence before proven guilty. As is routine in these #MeToo episodes, the accusations are mostly just that — accusations — and the supporting evidence is limited to friends and family of the alleged victims who attest to their validity.

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Law-abiding citizens of Virginia have been on pins and needles these past few days waiting to see how Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) would handle a bill that had been sitting on her desk for a month that would ban the purchase of certain “assault firearms.”

There was a hard deadline of 11:59 p.m. Monday for her to take action. She had several options: sign it, veto it, send it back to the General Assembly with suggested amendments, or simply do nothing, which would allow it to become law without her signature.

Considering “Grabby Abby” Spanberger had happily voted in favor of assault weapons bans during her time in Congress, it seemed likely that she wound ink this bill into law without a second thought. However, there was one big mitigating factor hanging over her: the April 21 referendum on whether or not to allow Virginia Democrats to gerrymander Republicans out of four of the five congressional seats they currently hold – and some signs are pointing to the vote not going the Democrats’ way.

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“California Democrats are trying to intimidate citizen watchdog journalists and protect waste and fraud happening in far-Left-wing NGOs.”

California Democrats have advanced a bill that aims to protect “designated immigration support services” from “threats or acts of violence.” Republican lawmakers have warned that the bill would silence citizen journalists such as Nick Shirley, who has recently released reports uncovering millions in fraud in the state.

California’s AB 2624 passed the Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee in an 11-2 vote on April 7 and was referred to the Judiciary Committee. Republican Assemblymembers Alexandra Macedo and Carl DeMaio were the only ones to vote against it. The bill, which has been dubbed the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” by DeMaio, was authored by Democrat Assemblymember Mia Bonta, the wife of California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

The bill would prohibit the posting of personal information or the image “of any designated immigration support services provider, employee, or volunteer, or other individuals residing at the same home address” online with the “intent” to “Incite a third person to cause imminent great bodily harm to the designated immigration support services provider,” or to “Threaten the designated immigration support services provider.”

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The Department of Homeland Security knows of at least 660,000 illegal immigrants in the U.S. with criminal records, including 13,000 convicted killers, nearly 16,000 sex assault convicts and 56,000 involved with dangerous drugs.

Illegal immigrants killed 13,000 Americans in 2024.

The total number of murder cases in the US in 2024 was 20,162.

That’s 64% of all murder cases.

And the Democrats want to abolish ICE.

And all in the name of the Democrats’ desire to win the election

15,000 killers, 20,000 sexual assault convicts, 60,000 robbers among illegal immigrants at large

Thousands of other migrants have been charged but not yet convicted of those and other crimes.

They are part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “non-detained docket,” a list of more than 7 million illegal immigrants that ICE is supposed to be monitoring as they are awaiting final deportation decisions or, in some cases, are fugitives who are refusing to go. (Washington Times)

Blurb:

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office confirmed on Saturday it is launching an investigation into Californian Rep. Eric Swalwell, over an alleged sexual assault involving a former staffer in 2024, according to a new report.

Swalwell’s former staffer — who has not been identified — told CNN that after a night of drinking with her former boss in April 2024, she was heavily intoxicated and woke up to him having sex with her in his hotel bed.

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A mob assault on a female journalist during an anti-ICE demonstration in Minneapolis over the weekend is being investigated by the FBI and Department of Justice.

Savanah Hernandez, a reporter for Turning Point USA (TPUSA), was mobbed by violent and unhinged anti-ICE agitators outside the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis on Saturday as she was filming the protest.

The Whipple Building, the center of federal immigration enforcement activity in the region, has been the site of many demonstrations and riots in the past several months. During the Operation Metro Surge campaign, anti-ICE agitators gathered around the building on a daily basis. Anti-ICE militants have continued to gather outside to protest even after the campaign’s end.

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The truth about what top earners pay in terms of all income taxes collected by the US government:

–the top 1% pays 40% of all income taxes
–the top 25% pays 87% of all income taxes
–the bottom 50% pays 2.3% of all income taxes

While Americans scramble to get their tax filings submitted—or at least their extension requests filed by the April 15 deadline—Democrat leaders are pushing to tax the rich even more so than they already do. Wall Street Journal: Tax Day has arrived again, and our April 15 condolences to those who pay the bulk of the nation’s bills. It’s a smaller group than many Americans realize, and those figures bear repeating, as Democrats renew their line that the rich won’t pay their “fair share.” Sen. Cory Booker has a bill to raise the top individual income-tax rate to 43%, from today’s 37%. Sen. Chris Van Hollen wants 49%. Both proposals would also eliminate income taxation for many lower earners…. Yet

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The House of Representatives passed articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump in December 2019 over a phone call he had months earlier with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, alleging abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

While the U.S. Senate ultimately acquitted Trump by a vote of 57-43 in early 2020, the stitch-up had by that stage sufficiently muddied the waters and buoyed Democrats’ false narrative in an especially heated election year.

‘It is always worse than we thought.’

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released documents on Monday revealing that hearsay and erroneous claims from a few politicized bad actors who lacked any firsthand knowledge of the phone call were used as the basis to impeach Trump and that elements of the intelligence community were not only aware but happy to advance the false narrative.

The documents — investigative materials used by former Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, who got the ball rolling on impeachment, and transcripts of his testimony released as the result of a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence vote last month — show that Atkinson skirted standard IG procedures and, embracing a kind of strategic myopia, leaned entirely on what the ODNI described as “politicized, manufactured narratives” without ever once bothering to access the transcript of Trump’s call.

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Women’s sports advocate and conservative Christian Riley Gaines took the high road late Monday in responding to President Donald Trump.

Earlier on Monday, Gaines had criticized Trump for a controversial post on his social media platform Truth Social that appeared to depict him as Jesus Christ, prompting Trump to lash out and declare himself “not a big fan” of Gaines.

“At the end of the day, I do nothing for the approval of man,” Gaines responded on the social media platform X.

On balance, the former collegiate swimmer stood her ground while adopting a largely magnanimous tone.

“I love the President and I’m so grateful he’s in the Oval Office. Of course, I’ll continue to support him and the America First agenda,” she began.

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Now that Rep. Eric Swalwell has ended his bid for governor of California and plans to resign from Congress amid a scandal that seems to get worse by the day, people are starting to wonder who knew what and when.

Yesterday on C-SPAN, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked about this and naturally denied it.

From C-SPAN:

Host: Some Republicans and others say Democrats turned a blind eye and they knew what he was up to?

Pelosi: It is true, they may say that, but it is absolutely not true.

Watch the clip below:

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Footage from the scene showed Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst convicted under the Espionage Act, among the crowd.

New York City police arrested dozens of anti-Israel agitators on Monday after they attempted to storm the Manhattan office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) before spilling into the streets and stopping traffic.

The New York Police Department (NYPD) told the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) that “multiple” arrests were made following the disruption, but did not give an exact number.

Oliya Scootercaster captured video showing the radicals, many affiliated with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and other anti-Israel groups, attempting to enter a building they claimed houses offices for Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). After being denied access, several protesters removed outer clothing to reveal their t-shirts branded with the slogan “fund people, not bombs.”

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For decades, Washington Post art critic Philip Kennicott has served up cartoonish anti-American hot takes, so it wasn’t a surprise when he admitted in Friday’s print edition he and others supposedly weren’t able to enjoy the Artemis II mission because of Donald Trump being in office and his “language of genocide and apocalypse” towards Iran.

This, Kennicott argued, has “eclipsed” any “allure” of space, “the striking images” sent back, and the “bravery and telegenic decency of the astronauts.”

The print headline denoted a serious case of Trump Derangement Syndrome: “Artemis II’s view of a dark horizon; President Trump’s menacing rhetoric toward Iran eclipses the new wonders of the Space Age.” Over online, the headlines warned of “dark rhetoric eclipsing” NASA’s “new wonders.”

Kennicott started with the 1969 moon landing and even that wasn’t something he was keen on acknowledging as a monumentally positive and thrilling human achievement. The reason? He didn’t use the words jingoism or nationalism, but he called it “propaganda” as part of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

Additionally, he claimed “[t]he euphoria of the first moon landing was directly connected to our ambivalence about the science that made it possible” because such early days of rocket technology also brought about the power to destroy humanity via “hurl[ing] hydrogen bombs across the planet.”

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Back in January, President Trump dropped a one-liner worthy of the usually inimitable Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco, who said of his long-ago romance with then-District Attorney Kamala Harris: “She loved me, I loved me. It was the perfect relationship.” Trump’s version, offered in an interview with NBC News, was about the…

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Today we’re bringing people together in Washington D.C. to discuss how AI will impact the economy and jobs. At our inaugural AI for the Economy Forum, co-hosted with MIT FutureTech, we’re starting with a simple premise: neither the benefits nor the risks are automatic or guaranteed. How AI impacts our lives, jobs and economy is something we as a society can shape – and fully realizing AI’s economic potential will require a new era of partnership between companies, workers, governments, researchers and more. At the forum, economists, industry leaders, policymakers and experts will gather to share information, identify gaps in current understanding, and lay the foundation for ongoing collaboration.

Google has a long-standing commitment to helping positively shape this transition. Today, we’re building on that commitment in two critical ways. First, we are making new investments in research to ensure governments, companies, researchers, and civil society have the information required to make smart decisions. Second, we are providing training opportunities to equip people with the skills needed to navigate a changing economy.

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Former Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) Michael Atkinson admitted under oath that he personally ordered a secret rewrite of the whistleblower complaint form in August 2019 that was used as the basis for a phony impeachment operation against President Donald Trump, going so far as to admit changing the form looked  “suspicious.”

Newly unveiled testimony from October of 2019 shows that Atkinson conceded the change he ordered to the whistleblower complaint form “looks suspicious” but said the timing was merely “unfortunate.”

“So the timing is unfortunate. It looks suspicious, I get that,” Atkinson testified. Atkinson said that after several media inquiries highlighted that the then-current form required first-hand knowledge of wrongdoing in order for a complaint to meet the urgency threshold to be sent to Congress, he ordered his staff to secretly change the rules so that second-hand hearsay complaints could be a legitimate basis for expedited processing.

“What I should have done was I should have explained when we changed the form why we were changing it,” he said. “I should have been more transparent about the reasons and the motivations for the change in the forms.”

Eric Swalwell Shows His Lack Of Character In Resignation Statement www.politicususa.com
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Eric Swalwell is 45 years old, and at some point in the near future, the odds are that he will try to stage a political comeback. That is the only explanation I can think of for Swalwell’s resignation statement, which contained enough ambiguity and blame of others to suggest that he is going to try to reemerge after he thinks the scandal has blown over.

Here was Swalwell’s resignation statement:

Swalwell talks about taking responsibility, but he doesn’t give any indication that he thinks he did anything wrong. Sexual misconduct and sexual assault are not mistakes. Those are choices that hurt and harm women. A mistake is something that wasn’t intended to happen. What Swalwell did was make a choice.