Judge Juan Merchan ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump will face consequences for repeatedly violating the gag order in his New York hush-money trial, though it remains to be seen if the imposed fines will be enough to deter him from future violations.Trump will have to pay $1,000 per violation, amounting to a $9,000 fine for continually violating a court-imposed partial gag order that prevents him from speaking publicly about courtroom staff, prosecutors, jurors, witnesses, or any of their family members. The $1,000 fine is the maximum allowed for gag order violations by state law, though Merchan himself acknowledged the limitations...

On July 24, 2018, Debra Blake was banished from every park in Grants Pass, Oregon. She added the exclusion order to a growing pile of violations—for sleeping, sitting, camping, and trespassing, a mix of civil and criminal charges that accrued late fees, bench warrants, and jail stints, wrecked her credit and job prospects, and made her a known entity to police. At 59, Blake had lived in Grants Pass for almost 15 years, seven without a home. She didn’t qualify for a bed in the town’s only shelter, and there was no place she could legally rest outdoors. “It seemed...

When a new abortion ban goes into effect in Florida this week, it will rob people across the south of one of the last few options they had. Floridians and those in neighboring states will instead have to travel to North Carolina or even farther to get an abortion. Abortion funds were already straining to meet the need of patients. Now they must raise more money for people traveling longer distances, later in pregnancy when abortions can be more complicated and expensive. This is the post-Dobbs reality: For all the optimism surrounding state ballot measures in November, abortions are increasingly...

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission issued a major new rule that would ban noncompete clauses for almost all American workers. The rule would be a major boost for millions of American workers, freeing them from unjust restrictions and weakening businesses’ power to constrain them. As a result, corporate interests have already filed lawsuits against the brand-new rule—and the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority may well side with them.“Noncompete clauses keep wages low, suppress new ideas, and rob the American economy of dynamism, including from the more than 8,500 new startups that would be created a year once noncompetes are banned,”...

Young Americans are overwhelmingly unhappy with the White House’s handling of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. This is indisputable, and has been true for months. A CNN poll released on Sunday found that a staggering 81 percent of voters under the age of 35 disapprove of President Biden’s handling of the war—the lowest issue rating he received in a dismal poll. In this context, the encampments that have popped up at nearly 100 college and universities campuses across the country are hardly surprising. Yes, the student demonstrators are, in most if not all cases, demanding that their schools cut financial...

On April 15, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill with a title so boring it escaped most people’s attention: “To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to terminate the tax-exempt status of terrorist supporting organizations.” House Resolution 6408 was one of a trio of bills rushed through in response to Iran’s retaliatory attack on Israel days before, the premise of which seemed straightforward enough: Organizations that support terrorism should not be exempt from taxes. In reality, the bill could be used to target a huge number of nonprofits. While clearly imagined by its sponsors as a means of targeting...

Recently Elon Musk triggered outrage by promoting a vicious speech by a Dutch activist that pushed virulent white nationalist ideologies. Musk added that Europe is threatened by “low birth rates” that could lead to “dead civilizations.” What gets lost amid such controversies is that Musk regularly pushes ideas that are part of a genuine political movement shaped around long-term demographic anxieties. We chatted with reporter Gaby Del Valle—author of a new Politico piece about the first “Natal Conference,” in Austin, Texas, and the far-right movement to get (some) people to have more babies—who placed Musk’s talk about birth rates in a global political context.

Rudy Giuliani issued some bold advice to leaders of the Republican party on Monday: pull the same stunt that Donald Trump was impeached over.“They should bring over from Ukraine about 20 Ukrainian witnesses—I can get ’em—that are still being held there,” Giuliani said on Newsmax, addressing House Speaker Mike Johnson and Representative Jim Jordan. “Somebody should lean on Zelenskiy. You want another penny, give us your Biden file.”Holy shit! Rudy is now telling Mike Johnson & Jim Jordan to do exactly what Trump was impeached for: “Somebody should lean on Zelensky. You want another penny, give us your Biden file.”And...

One of Trump’s election fraud lawyers, Kenneth Chesebro, just had his Twitter DMs and emails turned over to Michigan prosecutors as part of search warrants in their ongoing investigation into plots to overturn the 2020 presidential election in their state. And it’s not looking good for him. According to CNN, who got ahold of some of the documents, Chesebro’s emails show that he tried to bring some far-right celebrities to Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, so they could witnessTrump winning the election thanks to Chesbro’s fake electors strategy. The MAGA stars he tried to entice with free airfare and...

Former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr revealed that Donald Trump would often remark about executing people during his time in the White House. “I actually don’t remember him saying ‘executing,’ but I wouldn’t dispute it, you know,” Barr told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Friday. “The president would lose his temper and say things like that. I doubt he would’ve actually carried it out.”“He would say things similar to that on occasions to blow off steam. But I wouldn’t take them literally every time he did it,” Barr added. “At the end of the day, it wouldn’t be carried out and...

Fox News is facing another bombshell defamation lawsuit, this time featuring accusations from Hunter Biden.A letter sent to the network and obtained Monday by NBC News revealed that the president’s son will be filing a lawsuit against the conservative media behemoth “imminently,” alleging “conspiracy and subsequent actions to defame Mr. Biden and paint him in a false light.” The letter was dated April 23 with a request that Fox respond by April 26, which they did not. It’s the second such attempt by Biden’s legal team to reach Fox regarding the suit.In a statement, Biden attorney Mark Geragos claimed the...

Columbia University has a message for the pro-Palestine student protesters: cut it out or get suspended.After nearly two weeks of national attention on Columbia University’s student-led protest encampments calling on the university to divest from weapons manufacturers and other companies associated with Israel’s war on Gaza, university officials’ declared Monday they won’t won’t commit to any real policy changes.The university told student protesters they must leave the campus by 2 p.m. Monday or else “be suspended pending further investigation” and prohibited from completing the spring semester.That threat achieved exactly nothing.DISCLOSE! DIVEST! WE WILL NOT STOP, WE WILL NOT REST!! ❤️‍🔥Hundreds...

Disgraced former Representative George Santos is still trying to hold on to his 15 minutes of fame—even if it means blowing up his purported beliefs.The ousted lawmaker announced Monday he was gunning for another Cameo grabbag, this time offering up $350 videos featuring his long-denied drag alter ego Kitara Ravache.“Y’all weren’t ready for this drop?” Santos wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, alongside a Cameo booking link. “I’ve decided to bring Kitara out of the closet after 18 years!”In a video posted on the personalized messaging platform, Santos claimed that the campaign would only last a couple of days,...

Ron DeSantis is apparently considering helping the man who once called him “Ron DeSancitmonius,” “Meatball Ron,” and “Pudding Fingers.” DeSantis privately met with Donald Trump in Miami Sunday morning, according to The Washington Post. Trump’s hope is that DeSantis will help him raise a lot of money for his presidential campaign, as the former president grows increasingly desperate for cash. Trump and DeSantis clashed very early on in the 2024 presidential race, with DeSantis becoming an early favorite of Republican donors eager to shed Trump and his baggage, in spite (or possibly because) of the Florida governor’s disturbing authoritarian streak....

One of Congress’s most powerful Republicans apparently feels powerless in the face of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.Sitting for an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell explained that he didn’t see any other option than to endorse the GOP presidential nominee—despite having made previous declarations against Trump, including blaming him for the violent events that unfolded on January 6.“The issue is, what kind of influence, even if I had chosen to get involved in the presidential election, what kind of influence would I have had?” McConnell said after insinuating he was duty-bound as...

An Arizona state lawmaker indicted for his involvement in Donald Trump’s 2020 fake elector scheme has announced that he’s getting a promotion in the Republican Party.State Senator Jake Hoffman was charged by Arizona on Wednesday alongside 17 other people, including Trump’s White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former attorney Rudy Giuliani, for orchestrating a scheme to use fake electors to flip Arizona’s 2020 election results over to Trump. The former president is named in the documents as an unindicted co-conspirator. But on Saturday, Hoffman revealed that the conservative party had rewarded that behavior by electing him as a...

Last week Dan Poulter, a Conservative Party member of Great Britain’s Parliament, abandoned the Tories to become a member of the Labour Party. In 2022, Christian Wakeford similarly left the Tories to join Labour, the equivalent of an American Republican member of Congress being welcomed into the Democratic Party.The last Republican member of Congress who became a Democrat was New York’s Michael Forbes, who made the switch more than two decades ago in 1999. Democrats in his district overwhelmingly rejected him in the 2000 election: Although he raised and spent $1.4 million to hold his seat, he was defeated by a 71-year-old librarian who’d raised and spent a mere $40,000.Why would it be that in...

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has doubled down on her decision to shoot and kill her pet puppy—and the Trump camp isn’t happy. “The fact is, South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down. Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did,” Noem said in a long post on X (formerly Twitter) Sunday. “Whether running the ranch or in politics, I have never passed on my responsibilities to anyone else to handle. Even if it’s hard and painful. I followed the law and was...

Just because the 2024 election may decide the future of American democracy doesn’t mean that the race is riveting, let alone dramatic, six months before November 5. Each day of this campaign seems endless for Democrats desperately craving reassurance from polls, portents, or messages from the Delphic Oracle.But the shocking truth (come close to the screen so I can whisper this) is about all that we know at this stage is that the election will be very close. This you-can’t-read-it-anywhere-else bombshell assessment is solely based on the fact that four of the previous six presidential races have been summon-the-election-lawyers tight.We...

Keith Haring is to art what “Happy Birthday” is to the American songbook: a standard whose ubiquity hasn’t quite dulled its ritual magic. Since his death in 1990, Haring’s iconography—radiant crawling babies, barking dogs, three-eyed faces, rubbery bodies that are busily alive—has colonized vast swaths of cultural real estate. Has the work of any recent American artist been so relentlessly hawked? Haring is practically a public utility at this point. There are Haring mugs, T-shirts, sneakers, and tote bags; Haring bathrobes, rugs, pillows, and prayer candles; Haring playing cards, chess sets, yo-yos, and ice cream flavors. (The inventory includes curiosities...