The Dictatorship

The wreckage Pam Bondi leaves behind

Published

6 days ago

April 4, 2026

Apr. 3, 2026, 6:35 PM EDT

In a remarkably short tenure as attorney general, Pam Bondi helped drag one of the country’s most respected institutions deeper into grievance, spectacle and political retaliation.

Even that was not enough for Donald Trump.

Bondi’s ouster on Thursday says something important about what happened to the Justice Department on her watch. Pressure behind her removal was driven not only by her handling of the Epstein filesbut also reportedly by the view that she had not moved aggressively enough against Trump’s political adversaries. Her immediate replacement is Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal defense lawyer who had been deputy attorney general.

For generations, the Department of Justice stood for something larger than politics. Bondi helped replace that culture with something smaller and more cynical.

Bondi’s tenure was brief but revealing. For generations, the Department of Justice stood for something larger than politics: rigor, discipline, restraint and the idea that immense state power should be exercised by people trying — however imperfectly — to get things right. Bondi helped replace that culture with something smaller and more cynical: a department in which grievance became mission, public performance displaced internal rigor and loyalty to the president eclipsed loyalty to the institution.

The corrosion began at the level of tone and expectation. Bondi did not arrive sounding like someone who believed she was inheriting an institution whose independence needed protecting. She talked about rooting out internal opponentsembraced Trump’s rhetoric of “weaponization” and responded to allegations of politicized law enforcement with more politicized law enforcement. What was packaged as a campaign to restore integrity looked, from the start, like an effort to revisit Trump’s resentments about prosecutors, investigators and public officials he regarded as enemies.

Then came the institutional consequences. Career officials were fired reassigned or otherwise pushed out. Internal safeguards were weakened. The Public Integrity Sectionthe post-Watergate unit designed to prevent politicized corruption prosecutions, was stripped of authority and downsized sharply.

In the Civil Rights Division, the exodus was staggering. Lawyers left in extraordinary numbers amid complaints that staff were being pushed to fit facts to predetermined political outcomes. One of the Justice Department’s most respected units was treated as expendable because its traditional mission did not align neatly enough with the Trump administration’s political project.

The Eric Adams episode captured the rot in one grotesque burst. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan were directed to drop the corruption case against New York’s then-mayor. What followed was not quiet compliance, but principled resignations. U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon’s resignation letter made clear this was not a routine disagreement over charging strategy. She described a meeting in which lawyers for Adams advanced what looked very much like a quid pro quo: leniency for federal crimes in exchange for political cooperation with administration priorities. Other prosecutors resigned rather than participate.

The scandal was not just that a case might be dropped. It was that the federal criminal process appeared to be getting bargained around politics. Once it looks as though the Justice Department is on board with trading law enforcement for political usefulness, the concept of neutral justice stops sounding noble and starts sounding delusional.

Meanwhile, the department normalized a menacingly selective posture toward Trump’s enemies. Under Bondi, the Justice Department indicted former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James; it has investigated former CIA Director John Brennan and Sen. Adam SchiffD-Calif.; and pursued Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and Fed Chair Jerome Powell. The home of former Trump national security adviser John Bolton was searched. Maybe any of those events, in isolation, could be defended as legitimate. But the Justice Department has long understood that the public handling of such inquiries matters almost as much as the legal basis for them. A department serious about preserving public trust does not advertise probes of political antagonists or flirt with humiliation as a tactic. That is how prosecutorial power starts to look more like political theater with subpoena power.

And then there is the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Bondi fueled a public frenzy last year by saying the Epstein “client list” was “sitting on my desk right now to review.” When the promised reckoning failed to materialize, the backlash was bipartisan and rightfully intense. This was not just a communications blunder. It was the nation’s highest law enforcement official behaving like a cable-news teaser about one of the country’s most sensitive set of records.

And that was not the worst of it. The more serious scandal was her department’s handling of the Epstein files. The release has drawn fierce criticism of inadequate or overzealous redactions and disclosures that exposed or risked exposing victims’ identities and other sensitive information. While testifying before Congress in February, Bondi refused to apologize directly to Epstein’s victims for the department’s mishandling of their information. In one of the most sensitive document productions imaginable, her DOJ managed to fail in the most shameful direction: not by finally exposing the powerful but by once again endangering the vulnerable.

A Justice Department that cannot protect sex-trafficking victims while promising transparency undermines its own credibility.

The backdrop to all this cannot be forgotten. If Bondi were being removed because she had disgraced the department, the next steps would look like repair: less spectacle, more restraint; less loyalty theater, more institutional humility. But everything about this moment suggests the opposite. Bondi helped corrode the Justice Department’s credibility, strip away its norms, hollow out internal safeguards and degrade some of its most respected divisions. Ultimately, she helped teach the public to see federal prosecution as just another front in the culture wars. And still, she was apparently not radical enough for the president she served.

The problem is not just how long the damage Bondi leaves behind will last. It’s that her removal does not mark a return to principle but suggests that even this level of degradation was merely a starting point.

Duncan Levin is a criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor who serves as a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and is a frequent contributor to MS NOW.

The Dictatorship

Newly created Polymarket accounts bet big on US-Iran ceasefire in hours before Trump’s announcement

Published

38 minutes ago

April 10, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Newly created Polymarket accounts bet big on US-Iran ceasefire in hours before Trump’s announcement

NEW YORK (AP) — A group of new accounts on the prediction market Polymarket made highly specific, well-timed bets on whether the U.S. and Iran would reach a ceasefire on April 7, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits for these new customers.

These bets were made even though, in the hours before a two-week ceasefire was announced on Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s rhetoric had escalated sharply and there were few signals that a ceasefire deal was imminent. Early in the day Trump had issued a warning on social media that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran did not meet his demand to open the Strait of Hormuz by his 8 p.m. ET deadline.

An analysis of publicly available blockchain data from Polymarket, using the crypto analytics platform Dune, shows that at least 50 accounts, or wallets, placed substantial “Yes” bets Tuesday before Trump announced the ceasefire in a Truth Social post at around 6:30 pm ET. These were the first bets made by these particular wallets.

One of these wallets, created Tuesday around 10 am ET, placed roughly $72,000 in bets at an average price of 8.8 cents. The buy-in for each betting event ranges from $0 to $1 each, reflecting a 0% to 100% chance of what users think could happen. This Polymarket user then cashed out for a profit of $200,000.

Another, which joined the platform on April 6 and traded on this exact event, shows a win of $125,500.

Another wallet, created 12 minutes before Trump’s post, made $31,908 of “Yes” bets at 33.7 cents, and is estimated to have earned a profit of $48,500. The higher price for “Yes” at that time may have reflected the efforts late Tuesday by the government of Pakistan to get Trump to extend his deadline by two weeks.

There is also the possibility that these individual Polymarket users placed their bets expecting Trump to back down, given his habit during his second term to make bold threats only to retreat — a phenomenon his critics have derided as “Trump Always Chickens Out,” or TACO.

While some users took handsome profits, others must wait for payouts because Polymarket has labeled the April 7 Iran-U.S. ceasefire contract as “disputed,” given that Iran was still placing restrictions on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz and missile attacks in the region continued. That dispute could take 48 hours to resolve.

Public blockchain data cannot identify who controls the new wallets. Polymarket uses proxy smart contract wallets, meaning a single user can create multiple accounts. Only Polymarket has the internal data needed to determine whether these were new users or existing users opening additional accounts.

Polymarket did not respond to a request for comment.

Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, who has introduced legislation to regulate prediction markets, released a statement Wednesday saying: “It’s highly unlikely that these are good-faith trades; it’s much more likely that these are insiders with access to information ahead of the public. Without some kind of restrictions, there is nothing stopping government or military officials from profiting from their positions.”

The trading pattern of newly created Polymarket accounts placing strategic, well-timed bets mirrors earlier episodes on the platform. Newly created accounts placed large wagers hours before the January capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and made hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit. Similar clusters of accounts have also repeatedly profited from well-timed bets on military actions involving Iran.

Such bets have repeatedly raised questions from the public as well as members of Congress about whether some traders are using inside information to profit in these prediction markets. Bipartisan groups of senators as well as representatives have introduced legislation that would broaden the definition of insider trading to include prediction markets.

Even the two biggest platforms in the industry, Kalshi and Polymarket, have said they see a need to broaden the definition of insider trading on their platforms.

“This is why these markets need regulation,” said Todd Philips, a professor at Georgia State University who has written on prediction markets and the industry’s regulations. “We can’t have people trading with inside information and expect other traders are going to be OK being in these markets.”

_____

Keller reported from Albuquerque, N.M.

The Dictatorship

Trump administration looks to sanitize George Washington’s slavery history

Published

8 hours ago

April 10, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump administration looks to sanitize George Washington’s slavery history

Apr. 9, 2026, 5:39 PM EDT

The Trump administration’s fragile white ego is in focus yet again thanks to newly proposed changes for an exhibit in Philadelphia centered on George Washington and slavery.

The administration is being sued by the city over its efforts to whitewash Washington’s history of slave ownership from the President’s House Site, the nation’s first official presidential residence. The push has been put on hold by a judge who compared it to the censorship depicted in George Orwell’s book “1984.”

The attempted alteration of the exhibit came after a Trump executive order demanded a review of national parks and museums to bar any displays that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” Last year, Trump also lobbed a puerile complaint that Smithsonian musuems focus too much on “how bad” slavery was.

And all that kvetching provides context for the changes that Trump’s administration is seeking to impose at the President’s House Site — alterations that The Philadelphia Inquirer said places the first president’s slave ownership “in a more sympathetic light.”

The Inquirer flagged government renderings showing plans for new historical panels to be installed at the site, and it seems clear that the administration’s goal is to make Washington out to be a loving patriot or conscientious objector to slavery, rather than a racist slave driver.

First, note what the Inquirer said has been removed:

The panels taken down by the Park Service in January included displays titled ‘The Dirty Business of Slavery’ and ‘Life Under Slavery,’ as well as illustrations about the Fugitive Slave Act and Ona Judge, who was enslaved by Washington and later escaped.

So the administration wants to omit detailed references to Washington’s slavery history — which Black activists fought for years to include — while also promoting a whitewashed narrative that he was a fundamentally moral man despite the whole “claiming dominion over other human beings” thing. Per the Inquirer:

For instance, on one panel titled ‘Presidents Washington and Adams on Slavery,’ the Trump administration writes that ‘Caught between his private doubts about slavery and his public responsibilities as president, George Washington navigated a nation deeply divided over slavery.’

‘Privately, George Washington often expressed discomfort with the institution and a desire to see it abolished,’ the panel continued. ‘Yet as a Virginia plantation owner, his wealth and livelihood were deeply tied to it.’

And another example:

And later in the same panel: ‘Slaves living in the President’s House experienced a greater modicum of autonomy than elsewhere in the South such as to explore the city and sometimes even attend the theater, with Washington buying the tickets.’

When a censorship regime like Trump’s sees fit to tout a slave owner’s generosity — and the “greater modicum of autonomy” he purportedly granted to those he subjected to brutal bondage and forced labor — it leaves little doubt that the fundamental goal is to sanitize history, rather than teach it thoroughly.

A White House spokesperson told the Inquirer that the administration wants to acknowledge “the full breadth of our nation’s history” and that “no piece of history should be washed away.”

But “whitewashing” truly is the most apt descriptor for a plan that includes touting George Washington as some kind of selfless, principled gift-giver while brushing past, or deliberately omitting, details about his well-documented — and extremely lucrative — history of enslaving human beings.

Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.

The Dictatorship

Thursday’s Mini-Report, 4.9.26

Published

8 hours ago

April 10, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* Crisis conditions in Lebanon: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel vowed on Thursday to continue striking Hezbollah in Lebanon, hours after he appeared to make a concession by saying his country would start talks with the Lebanese government about trying to disarm the Iran-backed paramilitary group.”

* In related news: “More than 80 countries — which did not include the U.S. — condemned Israel’s lethal strikes on Lebanon. … Several international leaders have condemned Israel’s intensified strikes on Lebanon, which killed more than 300 people yesterday alone, according to The Associated Press, citing the country’s health ministry.”

* This wasn’t a problem before the war: “Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei vowed today to tighten control over the Strait of Hormuz and claimed victory in the ongoing war between his country and Israel and the U.S. ‘We will definitely take the management of the Strait of Hormuz to a new phase,’ Khamenei said in a series of posts on X.”

* Inflation news: “Core inflation held above the Federal Reserve’s target before the recent surge in energy prices, according to a key gauge released Thursday that offers the central bank a snapshot of conditions leading into the Iran war. The core personal consumption expenditures price index, which excludes food and energy, rose a seasonally adjusted 3% in February, the Commerce Department reported. The all-items headline inflation measure increased 2.8%.”

* The good news is, the vaccine saves lives; the bad news is, the Trump administration doesn’t want us to know that: “The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has delayed publication of a CDC report showing the covid-19 vaccine cut the likelihood of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for healthy adults last winter by about half, according to two scientists familiar with the decision.”

* Even for this White House, her remarks were weird: “First lady Melania Trump denied any ties to convicted sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell on Thursday. … ‘The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today,’ the first lady began in remarks delivered from the White House. … It was not clear who or which statements or reporting she was referring to.”

* On a related note, Donald Trump told MS NOW that he didn’t know about his wife’s press statement.

* Trump’s animosity toward the NFL has reached a new stage: “The Justice Department has opened an investigation into whether the National Football League has engaged in anticompetitive tactics that harm consumers, according to people familiar with the situation.”

See you tomorrow.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”