Congress
A judge sided with Trump. Behind the scenes, he was lobbying for a nomination.
A Florida state judge was lobbying for a seat on the federal bench. After he sided with the president in a defamation case, Donald Trump gave him one.
Ed Artau, now a nominee to be a district court judge in Florida, met with staff in the office of Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott to angle for the nomination less than two weeks after Trump’s election last fall, according to a new Senate disclosure obtained by Blue Light News. In the midst of his interviews, Artau was part of a panel of judges that ruled in Trump’s favor in the president’s case against members of the Pulitzer Prize Board.
About two weeks after the court published his opinion — which called for the overturning of a landmark Supreme Court case that made it harder for public officials to sue journalists — he interviewed with the White House Counsel’s Office. In May, Trump announced his nomination to the federal judiciary.
Critics raised concerns about Artau’s impartiality at the time of the announcement, in light of his ruling in the Pulitzer case. But the overlapping timeline of that decision with his meetings with Senate staff and the White House Counsel’s Office has not previously been reported.
Artau did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, Harrison Fields, a White House spokesperson, said Trump had full confidence in his nominee and anticipated Artau’s confirmation.
“The standards of the President’s judicial nominations are simple: restoring law and order, ending the weaponization of the judicial branch, and interpreting the Constitution as written,” Fields said. “Ed Artau has demonstrated these principles throughout his esteemed career and will continue to do so as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.”
The president has wide latitude to nominate whomever he wishes to the federal bench. But Artau’s vehement defense of Trump — while seeking a nomination from his administration — raises ethical questions about his partiality in the Pulitzer case. The administration’s decision to nominate Artau after that opinion also reflects a pattern of elevating those who have sought to ingratiate themselves with Trump.
“Coming across as an archpartisan is now perceived as something that can help your cause with President Trump,” Charles Geyh, a professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law, said in an interview. “The idea that you would have a judge thinking you know, it’s a good idea to go on the warpath in support of the President, is really a new development.”
According to his official Senate questionnaire, Artau met with Scott’s general counsel on Nov. 14 to discuss his interest in the vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. After Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.) was appointed to the Senate in January to succeed now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Artau contacted her office to indicate interest in the nomination. At some point after that, Artau said he was informed the senators would recommend him.
On Feb. 12, the court published his opinion in Trump’s favor in the defamation case against the Pulitzer Board, and on Feb. 27, he interviewed with attorneys from the White House Counsel’s Office.
Thereafter, he was informed that he was under consideration for the nomination, and on May 27, he met with Trump, according to Artau’s answers provided in the questionnaire. Trump announced he would nominate Artau to be a district judge in South Florida the next day, writing in a post on Truth Social that Artau has “a GREAT track record of restoring LAW AND ORDER and, most importantly, Common Sense.”
In the Senate disclosure, Artau affirmed no one involved in the judicial nomination selection process “discussed with [him] any currently pending or specific case, legal issue or question in a manner that could reasonably be interpreted as seeking any express or implied assurances concerning [his] position on such case, issue, or question.”
Scott’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Moody’s office declined to comment.
Artau’s opinion in the defamation case was unusual, in part because the ruling concerned a largely procedural matter. Trump had sued the Pulitzer Board for defamation after he requested that it rescind the 2018 awards given to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their coverage of Russian election interference and ties to Trump’s orbit. The three-judge panel in Florida, including Artau, allowed the case to proceed.
“’FAKE NEWS.’ ‘The phony Witch Hunt.’ And ‘a big hoax.’ President Donald J. Trump has publicly used these phrases to describe the now-debunked allegations that he colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 presidential election,” Artau wrote in his concurring opinion. “[T]he board members vouched for the truth of reporting that had been debunked by all credible sources charged with investigating the false claim that the President colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 presidential election.” (The Pulitzer Board has stood by its decision to grant them the award.)
Yet Artau’s opinion also suggested going further, arguing the Supreme Court precedent known as New York Times Company v. Sullivan wrongly applied the First Amendment in its ruling that required a public official to prove “actual malice” in a defamation case. While maintaining that the President had satisfied the standard in his case against the Pulitzer Board, Artau called for the Supreme Court to revisit the matter — a controversial position that Trump and his lawyers support.
Trump has repeatedly sought to punish news outlets who have written critical coverage of him. Among those efforts, he sued BLN for $475 million in a defamation case that alleged the network sought to undermine him politically. In the complaint, his lawyers argued the standard established in New York Times v. Sullivan should not apply where the media “seeks to participate in the political arena by offering propaganda.” A judge dismissed the case, but Trump’s appeal remains pending.
More recently, ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos settled with Trump in a defamation lawsuit after Stephanopoulos mischaracterized the outcome of E. Jean Carroll’s civil suit against Trump that found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming her.
Moving the federal judiciary to the right was a marquee accomplishment of Trump’s first term, during which he installed hundreds of judges on the bench and three Supreme Court justices. In recent months, his political operation has become increasingly critical of judges deemed hostile to his agenda and called for impeaching those who have ruled against him.
Artau is currently a judge on the Fourth District Court of Appeal in Florida, where he has served since he was appointed by Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2020. He earned his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1988.
Congress
WHCD shooting fuels new efforts in Congress to get Trump his ballroom
President Donald Trump’s allies in Congress want to quickly authorize completion of the White House ballroom after the Saturday shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. But it’s not going to be simple.
Trump’s ambitious ballroom project was put on hold earlier this year after a federal judge said Congress needed to explicitly approve it. Responses from lawmakers were relatively muted at that time. Then over the weekend, Trump and several members of the presidential line of succession were sitting down to their salads at a Washington hotel when a gunman tried to storm past a security checkpoint.
Now, what was once regarded by many lawmakers as a nice-to-have is being viewed as a necessary venue for future events and celebrations. Multiple Hill Republicans have made public promises to try to approve the ballroom’s construction as soon as this week despite there being no clear path to getting a bill quickly to Trump’s desk.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R.S.C) said he has been hearing from Trump directly about the ballroom and wants Senate Majority Leader John Thune to “expedite” consideration of his new bill with GOP Sens. Katie Britt of Alabama and Eric Schmitt of Missouri that would provide up to $400 million for the project.
Schmitt told reporters that while the ongoing legal battle isn’t over and that he believes Trump has the authority to build the ballroom on his own, Saturday’s shooting “renews the focus” on finding ways to finish the project without delays or complications.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is expected to try Tuesday to pass his bill that would authorize construction of the ballroom. Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) is also expected to go to the Senate floor this week to try and pass his own bill.
Yet Republicans are facing multiple hurdles, the most serious of which is that senators don’t have support to overcome a filibuster. Democrats are furious the ballroom is being built on the rubble of the East Wing that Trump bulldozed without consulting with lawmakers or planning and preservation review boards.
That’s giving way to talk among some Republicans about trying to jam it into the party-line immigration enforcement bill Trump wants on his desk by June 1 — a maneuver that might not work or could, at the very least, complicate the GOP’s ability to meet its deadline as the Department of Homeland Security shutdown drags on.
Trump himself urged the House to approve the budget blueprint as-is that the Senate advanced last week, which would tee up a bill through the filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation process to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol activities — part of a two-step plan to reopen DHS after bipartisan negotiations fell through.
Even House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington, who has called for expanding the pending reconciliation bill, is warning against making changes.
He said Monday the package will be “completely focused” on ICE and Border Patrol funding. And he warned that if Republicans start adding things now, it would open the door to adding items from a much larger conservative wish list.
“Listen, if we were going to add stuff to this, I’ve got a list and it’s going to start with fiscal reforms on preventing more fraud, and then you’ve got a host of other reforms on health care and housing affordability,” Arrington said.
Three Senate aides said Monday that a ballroom-related provision would not comply with the chamber’s rules for inclusion in the measure under the budget reconciliation process, anyway. Further complicating matters is that Republicans aren’t united behind one specific ballroom proposal, with Paul noting he would support putting a nominal amount of funding in but not hundreds of millions of dollars like Graham is envisioning.
Thune kept his options open Monday, telling reporters his conference would see what was “achievable.” But he acknowledged that the budget blueprint his chamber drafted did not task all of the relevant committees with oversight of the ballroom project to draft the reconciliation bill itself.
“I don’t know,” Thune said when pressed if it could be included in the immigration enforcement package.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) also urged his colleagues to tread carefully on the reconciliation plan.
“If we change it, then we put it in jeopardy. So I would prefer not to put it in jeopardy,” he said to reporters Monday evening. “I understand that there’s a desire to move forward with some of the construction over there, but let’s get a win under our belt.”
Graham, who chairs the Budget Committee, didn’t close the door to trying to tackle the ballroom through the party-line process but appeared to be frustrated about the prospect that it could come to that.
“I’d like to do it as a freestanding bill with an offset,” Graham said at a news conference Monday. “Let’s give it a chance, and if we fail, we’ll have to go to Plan B.”
Yet so far, with the exception of Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), no Senate Democrat is biting.
“If Republicans truly want to improve security, they should join Democrats in funding the Secret Service, not Donald Trump’s luxury ballroom,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday on the Senate floor.
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
Congress
Florida Republicans make peace with proposed new House map
Some House Republicans spent weeks warning against a drastic redraw of Florida’s congressional map.
Now that it’s out — with Gov. Ron DeSantis targeting as many as four Democratic seats for a GOP takeover — they’re mostly keeping any criticism to themselves.
“I think they did a pretty good job,” said Rep. Gus Bilirakis, who said he was one of the Florida Republicans whose district changed “quite a bit.”
“But I think they could touch it up a little bit, too,” he added.
Rep. Scott Franklin said he is set to represent his third constituency in four terms. He still lives within the confines of the 18th district, he said, though it is much smaller in area.
“Mine gets significantly less red than it was,” Franklin said. “But it’s still a conservative performing seat.”
DeSantis’ map still has to be approved by the Florida legislature, and it’s almost certain to face challenges in court. But many of the states’ 20 Republicans are already making peace with new districts that will be at least slightly more competitive.
Many warned that redrawing the existing GOP-favored map to pick up more than one or two Democratic seats could dangerously dilute the Republican vote. And at least one, Jacksonville-area Rep. John Rutherford, said targeting four “could be a bit much.”
Down the Atlantic coast, the reviews were more positive. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar’s Miami-area district remains largely untouched under the new maps, while her neighbor Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart could see his safe Republican seat only slightly diluted.
“Not bad, right? I’m used to those lines, so I’m happy,” Salazar said. “And I was one of the people that could have been highly damaged.”
She declined to comment on whether she expects the new map to net the four seats the GOP is craving: “God knows what’s going to happen.”
Several of the Florida Democrats who are now in danger expressed more concern. They now face running in unfriendly districts or switching districts and possibly running against a current colleague.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a South Florida Democrat, said he plans on running again and that he believes DeSantis’ effort will backfire by creating more tossup districts. Rep. Darren Soto called the map a violation of state and federal law but said he plans to run in his current Orlando-area district nonetheless.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a veteran Democrat representing a district south of Fort Lauderdale called the new map “a completely unconstitutional partisan gerrymander” and said she was waiting to review detailed data on her redrawn district.
“But the main thing is that this is illegal, and we’re going to sue,” she said.
Congress
Charles to argue for a strong US-UK partnership in address to Congress
King Charles will use his speech to Congress to help repair the “special relationship” between the U.S. and Britain that has been under strain over the Iran war.
The king plans to focus on reconciliation and renewal in a speech Tuesday before the House and Senate that is expected to run about 20 minutes, according to royal aides.
Charles will celebrate “one of the greatest alliances in history,” which has been tested as President Donald Trump complains about Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s reluctance, along with other NATO allies, to provide assistance to the U.S.-led attacks on Iran, the aides said.
He will reference the shared national security interests of the U.S. and the U.K., including NATO, the Middle East, Ukraine and the trilateral AUKUS pact with Australia.
Starmer’s handling of some of those issues has provoked criticism from Trump, who derisively referred to the prime minister as “not Winston Churchill” after the U.K. initially didn’t allow the U.S. to use its bases to bomb Iran at the beginning of the war.
When asked earlier in this month about his relationship with Starmer and the state of the U.S.-U.K. partnership, Trump told ITV News it was “not good at all.”
Charles is expected to acknowledge that tension by noting that the two nations have not always seen eye to eye, but that “time and again, our two countries have always found ways to come back together,” according to royal aides.
In his address, Charles also plans to tout the need to respect the rule of law and democratic traditions, and argue for the importance of trade and technology deals — a message that may go over less well with the administration.
Royal aides said the king’s remarks will also include a brief message of sympathy for Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Dan Bloom contributed to this report.
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