The Dictatorship
Former DOJ lawyer spotlights death threats after Blanche testimony
Last week, former Justice Department lawyer Liz Oyer testified in the Senate against the confirmation of Todd Blanche as attorney general. Then came the death threats.
Oyer oversaw the DOJ’s pardon office before President Donald Trump ousted her last year and promptly turned the office into a tool to help out his donors and political allies. She has said she was fired for refusing to restore actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights after his 2011 misdemeanor conviction for domestic violence, a claim the Trump administration has denied.
And she was a key witness urging senators to vote against confirming Blanche, who has already sought as acting attorney general to quash further inquiry into the Epstein files and drew criticism over his softball interview with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.
And it seems Republicans are now fueling attacks against Oyer as they try to make Blanche the nation’s top law enforcement official.
“Hey everybody, I started getting death threats after I testified against Todd Blanche last week,” she said, showing images of expletive-riddled messages she received.
Oyer attributed the threats to dubious accusations — peddled by Missouri’s Republican senators, Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt, and in conservative media — that she was basically an ally to rapists and murderers.
At the Senate hearing, the two senators homed in on President Joe Biden’s decision to commute most federal death sentences. In an effort to undermine Oyer’s credibility, Schmitt and Hawley cherry-picked examples of macabre crimes committed by some of the death row prisoners to suggest she didn’t take the crimes seriously. The attacks were reminiscent of Hawley’s attacks on current Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing.
In her videoOyer explained that her recommendation to reassess the cases of all 40 inmates on federal death row, 37 of whom Biden spared from execution, was in keeping with the administration’s broad opposition to capital punishment. She also dispelled misinformation that commuted inmates will be ever be released from prison, adding:
Biden campaigned on a promise to end the federal death penalty. In light of that promise, some people believe it would have been more principled for Biden to commute all 40 death sentences, not 37. That would have sent a clear message that the president was categorically rejecting the death penalty — not weighing the relative value of people’s lives.
Intent on scoring political points, Hawley and a spokesperson for Schmitt doubled down on their attacks despite Oyer’s post about receiving death threats. In comments to the Columbia MissourianHawley said the “real victims” are the people hurt by those who were spared from execution. And the Schmitt spokesperson said Oyer’s “disgraceful clemency recommendations ignored the victims’ families’ concerns.”
The unavoidable irony here is that Hawley and Schmitt are hardly advocates for victims. They’re basically launching this line of attack to help Blanche — someone who has been rebuked by Epstein victims and their families.
And, of course, Hawley and Schmitt are both staunch allies of Trump’s — someone whose own clemency actions have included scores of Jan. 6 rioters who have gone on to commit assaults and sex crimes after being freed. Hawley, as you likely remember, raised a fist to the Jan. 6 horde right before the insurrection broke out, only to be later seen running for safety.
So when it comes to the topic of placating criminals, Hawley and the GOP have little credibility.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
ByI dig Shroff
During the make-up White House Correspondents’ Dinner last Friday, the President of the United States tried to take a swipe at an old foe. “Even Rosie O’Donnell reached out from Ireland,” he told the room. “She was desperate to come back to the United States and pay her respects to Donald J. Trump. But that didn’t work out, unfortunately, because nobody wanted her to come back.”
The joke wasn’t merely unfunny, it was also inaccurate. O’Donnell already came back to the country. Two nights before Trump’s speech, she opened her new comedy showwhich centers on her life and feud with Trump, at Manhattan’s Daryl Roth Theatre. On Thursday, she appeared on “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”And next month, she will guest host“Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Two decades and two presidential inaugurations later, Trump still hasn’t let it go – and O’Donnell hasn’t backed down.
After the 2024 presidential election, O’Donnell actually did what many Americans threatened to do – leave the country. But now she is back, and that matters – because the story was never just about O’Donnell herself. It was also about the rest of us, the people watching Trump attack her.
While co-hosting a 2006 episode of “The View,” then one of the biggest daytime platforms in America, O’Donnell said that Trump was not self-madeand was in no position to lecture anyone about morality. At the time, the landlord-turned-game show host was furiousbut the feud was tabloid fodder rather than national news.
Two decades and two presidential inaugurations later, Trump still hasn’t let it go – and O’Donnell hasn’t backed down. There were years of insults, including the 2015 primary debate where moderator Megyn Kelly asked Trump about women he’d called pigs and slobs and he cut her off with three words: “only Rosie O’Donnell.” He brought her up again in his first debate with Hillary Clinton. And on Friday, in a ballroom filled with media elite who have yet to call him out as bluntly and forcefully as O’Donnell has, Trump called her a “a sick young woman. Sick older woman, I guess now I have to say.”
The two-time president of the United States, in other words, has spent twenty years returning to the same woman. She was among the first with a national platform to publicly refuse the premise his whole life is built on, and he has never been able to get over it.
Which is what makes his threat last summer worth remembering: “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.” It wasn’t a serious legal proposal – the president cannot revoke a native-born American’s citizenship – as much as it was a MAGA theory of belonging. In threatening O’Donnell, Trump threatened to make citizenship a privilege he extends and can revoke (based on mere speech, no less). It was a warning to any critic whose passport is the only thing standing between them and a very different life and who doesn’t have O’Donnell’s resources or profile.
In the context of a twenty-year battle with the now-most-powerful man in the world, a regrouping abroad is not surrender.
Of course, there is an obvious objection to holding Rosie up as any kind of resistance example: she left. Staying carries real moral weight. Many people who have absorbed this past decade of Trump’s politics did not have an Irish grandmotheror the means to build a life somewhere else. There is something a little uncomfortable about resistance broadcast from another country, particularly when only some can afford it. But in the context of a twenty-year battle with the now-most-powerful man in the world, a regrouping abroad is not surrender.
And the impetus for her decision is crucial: “I knew, after reading Project 2025, that if Trump got in, it was time for me and my non-binary child to leave the country,” she told CNN last year. After years of being Trump’s favorite target, O’Donnell had better reason than almost anyone alive to know his obsession with settling scores and having things his way. Indeed, she knew better than much of institutional Washington, which was still reassuring itself about guardrails, norms, and adults in the room. Many institutions folded alarmingly quickly this time around: the museums, the law firms, the universities. O’Donnell did not wait for them to capitulate.
Yet she did not disappear. Now she is telling her story on her own terms, projecting Trump’s own words onto a theater wall for audiences that laugh at them instead of with them. While on Friday, the president described a broken woman pleading across the Atlantic, the actual Rosie was onstage a short train ride away, turning his words into part of her act. Twenty years after he decided she would be the punchline, she is still standing.
That is why Trump keeps coming back to O’Donnell. His campaign against her only worked if it ended with her gone or begging him for forgiveness. Personal intimidation is never only about the person being targeted. It is a warning to others: cross me and you will regret it. Too many institutions accepted that bargain. Rosie O’Donnell never did. In trying to make an example of her, Trump only made a point – and not the one he intended.
I dig Shroff
Kaivan Shroff is a senior advisor to the Institute for Education and a political commentator. He previously served on the advisory board for Dream for America, a progressive Gen Z-led non-profit. He is an alumnus of the Hillary for America digital team, holds a joint degree from Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School, an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a BA in Political Science from Brown University.
President Donald Trump said Monday that Israel would have been “terminated” without U.S. military intervention against Iranarguing that his administration’s strikes on Tehran’s nuclear program prevented destruction to America’s closest ally in the Middle East.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One while traveling to Michigan, Trump defended the U.S. campaign against Iran, saying it fundamentally altered the balance of power in the region.
“You know who wouldn’t survive without us? Israel. Bibi’s coming, he’ll tell you,” Trump said. “If I didn’t get involved, and I didn’t blow up those nuclear, essentially, soon to be nuclear weapons to dust, Israel would have been terminated months ago.”
Later Monday, while delivering remarks at the General Motors Proving Ground in Milford, Michigan, Trump touted the United States’ strikes in Iran, saying the U.S. had destroyed Tehran’s navy and air force, while diminishing its drone and missile manufacturing capabilities.
While he touted the U.S. military strikes on Iran as a major success, the audience was notably less enthusiastic about his remarks on the war than they were about immigration and the southern border.
Trump was in Milford to bolster support among auto workers and voters in the key battleground state by highlighting his administration’s efforts to revive domestic manufacturing, expand auto industry jobs and strengthen the economy ahead of the midterm elections.
Trump’s remarks came one day before he is scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House to discuss the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Trump said he and Netanyahu remain “pretty close” on Iran ahead of their scheduled meeting Tuesday, though he acknowledged minor differences without elaborating.
The U.S. and Iran halted attacks over the weekend, but Trump has repeatedly warned that military action could resume if the talks fail. The president told reporters Iran had reached out seeking renewed negotiations.
“Iran took a beating over the last 14 days, and they asked us very nicely, ‘Please stop. Let’s meet,’” Trump said. “If we don’t make a deal, we go back to the same thing.”
The president also brushed aside concerns raised by Netanyahu over the potential sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, signaling that he would not allow foreign leaders to dictate U.S. arms sales.
“Nobody tells me what we should be selling,” Trump said when asked about Netanyahu’s reported objections. He added that “Turkey’s been a tremendous ally.”
Trump first signaled earlier this month that he was open to restoring Turkey’s access to the F-35 program, reversing a policy that removed the country after it purchased Russia’s S-400 air defense system. Israel has traditionally sought to preserve its qualitative military advantage, including access to more advanced U.S. weapons systems than neighboring countries.
At the rally in Milford, Trump argued his economic agenda is fueling a manufacturing resurgence, even as many Americans continue to grapple with higher gasoline prices and other lingering economic pressures amid the war with Iran.
“I’ve done more for you than your parents,” Trump said to a crowd of autoworkers.
The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $4.11 on Monday, compared with $3.15 a year ago, according to AAA. That is an increase of 0.96 cents per gallon, or about 31%, as fuel prices remain elevated following recent volatility in global oil markets tied to the conflict.
In the latter half of the speech, Trump returned to familiar themes he often discusses on the campaign trail, including border security, crime, election integrity and foreign policy.
Jake Traylor contributed to this story.
Ebony Davis is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked at BLN as a campaign reporter covering elections and politics.
At the end of June, President Donald Trump and his MAGA allies lost — for now — the Supreme Court fight over birthright citizenship. Vice President JD Vance said MAGA needed to keep fighting birthright citizenship after the ruling in Trump v. Barbara, but it’s set its sights on a different nativist victory, this time relying on a set of racist laws the high court approved back at the start of the 20th century.
Just two weeks after the ruling on June 30 didn’t go MAGA’s way, Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., introduced H.R. 9724, the End Birthright Citizenship for Territories Act. The bill would deny children born on or after Jan. 1, 2027, in Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands automatic citizenship unless at least one parent is already a U.S. citizen or a legal permanent resident. Griffith calls it a crackdown on “birth tourism,” and the bill doesn’t hide where its legal authority comes from.
“The application under the Barbara case of birthright citizenship in the U.S. territories differs from what is established in the 50 U.S. States according to Supreme Court cases,” Griffith noted in a July 16 e-newsletter about the bill. “The birthright discrepancy between the territories and the States dates to legal cases beginning in the early 20th century known as the Insular Cases.”
Those Insular Cases are generally considered so racist that even Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch called them “shameful” back in 2022.
No matter how many times this country calls me a U.S. citizen, Washington still isn’t sure what to do with the place where I was born.
For those unfamiliar with the Insular Cases, from 1901 to 1922, the Supreme Court issued a series of rulings on how much of the Constitution applies to places like Puerto Rico — which had become booty of war after the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898 — and other U.S. possessions. In the lead case, Downes v. Bidwellthe court ruled that Puerto Rico belonged to — but wasn’t part of — the United States in a constitutional sense, and used language like “alien races” and “savage tribes” to describe people living there. The doctrine’s author, Justice Edward Douglass White (a former Confederate soldier), built the reasoning explicitly on “differences of race,” warning against extending citizenship to “uncivilized race[s]” he deemed “completely unfit to receive it.” This year marks the 125th anniversary of that first ruling, and is a topic I cover in a new podcast about Puerto Rican colonialism, aptly titled “American Colony.”
“This bill is divisive, it is racist in its foundation, and it is corrosive of the principles of American law. It fits a broader pattern in Congressman Griffith’s record of measures that diminish Black and brown people,” Rep. Stacey Plaskett, a nonvoting member representing the U.S. Virgin Islands, said in a statement. “To be clear — this bill has not attracted a single cosponsor. It has no discernible path to consideration, particularly given the calendar of inaction the Majority has laid out, but we do not dismiss it. We do note that the Vice President has said this is an idea the Administration is ‘looking at,’ and we take that seriously.”
I was born in Puerto Rico, where U.S. citizens still have fewer rights, so when I saw Griffith’s bill for the first time, it raised the same feeling I have always had when it comes to my own birth certificate: that no matter how many times this country calls me a U.S. citizen, Washington still isn’t sure what to do with the place where I was born. For 125 years, the Insular Cases have viewed Puerto Rico as a second-class colonial possession, even when thousands of Puerto Ricans have fought and died for a country that has never fully accepted them.
Griffith’s bill is just the latest attempt to insult us by threatening the possibility of Puerto Ricans having no citizenship at all. Of course, the bill doesn’t explicitly say that, but the threat is there for anyone born next year in Puerto Rico — because the Insular Cases appear to provide some legal justification for it.
That’s not paranoia. Efrén Rivera Ramos, a law professor and former dean at the University of Puerto Rico School of Law, told “Democracy Now!” that the bill’s own drafting creates exactly this kind of ambiguity — the first part reads as if it strips citizenship from anyone born in Puerto Rico after 2027, and only in the bill’s very last provision does it narrow that down to children of noncitizens and non-permanent residents. That sloppiness, Rivera Ramos warns, “may cause problems in the future” if this bill ever becomes law.
But fighting Griffith’s bill clause by clause misses the point. The Insular Cases need to go entirely, a position Neil Weare, co-director of Right to Democracy, has been pushing in court for years.
“It’s not surprising. Two hundred fifty years after the U.S. rejected colonial rule, the federal government continues to rely on the racist Insular Cases for the idea it can do whatever it wants in U.S. territories regardless of founding principles like ‘consent of the governed’ and all ‘created equal,’” Weare said.
Such a resolution is highly unlikely in this political climate, as long as MAGA is involved. Just last week, the White House brought back the image of Trump tossing paper towels after Hurricane Mariaan image that continues to enrage Puerto Ricans nine years later. To him, Puerto Rico is reduced to a meme. Any prospects of statehood are laughed off whenever he says he wants other countries like Canada, Greenland and Venezuela to become states. In fact, according to Trump, he might cry if places like Puerto Rico were to become states.
So why would we expect anything different when it comes to birthright citizenship?
Trump already made this bet once and lost. The Insular Cases are the backup plan, a racist relic that gets dusted off when the nativists fear the end of a lost America. Colonies like Puerto Rico have lived with that excuse since 1901, and it shouldn’t have to keep proving, generation after generation, that its people deserve the citizenship they already have.
Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder of “The Latino Newsletter” and co-editor of “Pressing Issues from Free Press.”
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