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The Dictatorship

Trump offers a problematic defense of his latest controversial pardon

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Trump offers a problematic defense of his latest controversial pardon

As Donald Trump prepared to leave the White House after his 2020 election defeat, the Republican issued some of the most controversial pardons in American history. As the 10th week of his second term nears its end, it’s clear that the president is picking up where he left off.

On the first day of his second term, Trump issued roughly 1,500 pardons and commuted the sentences of 14 Jan. 6 criminals, including violent felons who were in prison for assaulting police officers. A few days later, he kept going, pardoning 23 anti-abortion-rights activistsseemingly unconcerned with their guilt. That was soon followed by a pardon for former Gov. Rob Blagojevicha man synonymous with corruption in Illinois politics, whom Trump saw as any ally.

Earlier this month, he pardoned a Tennessee Republican who was just two weeks into a 21-month sentence for his role in a campaign finance fraud scheme. This week, as CNBC reportedthe list grew a little longer.

President Donald Trump pardoned Nikola Corp. founder Trevor Milton for his October 2022 conviction of federal crimes related to defrauding investors with false claims about the success of the electric and hydrogen-powered truck maker. Milton, 42, was sentenced in December 2023 to four years in prison, but he has been free since then pending an appeal of the former CEO’s criminal conviction on securities and wire fraud charges in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

The report added that the pardon came just two weeks after federal prosecutors urged U.S. District Court Judge Edgardo Ramos to order Milton to pay restitution of $680 million to Nikola shareholders as well as $15.2 million to Peter Hicks, a victim of his wire fraud.

Milton apparently received a personal phone call from Trump the day before the White House formally confirmed that the president had signed the pardon.

As for why Trump took this step, a reporter asked the president to explain his reasoning, and it didn’t go especially well.

The Republican seemed to know very little about the circumstances surrounding Milton’s crimes, saying that “they” told him that Milton and his family were treated unfairly for political reasons. (Trump also repeatedly referred to himself in third person for reasons that weren’t altogether clear.)

What the president neglected to mention were some relevant details about Milton and his case. For example, as CNBC’s report noted, following his criminal sentencing, the former Nikola CEO “made significant political donations to Trump and his allies. This included $920,000 to the Trump 47 Committee in October of 2024, and $750,000 in September to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA Alliance political action committee.”

Before his conviction, Milton had never before made a campaign contributionbut for some reason, he became quite generous in late 2024.

It also seems worth emphasizing that Milton’s defense attorney was a man named Brad Bondi — and if his last name sounds familiar, it’s because Brad Bondi is Attorney General Pam Bondi’s brother.

Of course, the larger story isn’t just about Milton. On the contrary, it has become apparent to others that the president has created an entirely new legal/political dynamic, without precedent in the American tradition, in which pardons are available to perceived political allies with whom Trump sympathizes.

Sam Bankman-Fried is reportedly angling for a pardon. So is former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy. The New York Times reported a few weeks ago that there’s a White House team in place focusing on “clemency grants that underscore the president’s own grievances,” and well-connected lawyers and lobbyists “have scrambled to take advantage.”

They have collected large fees from clemency seekers who would not be eligible for second chances under apolitical criteria that are intended to guide a Justice Department system for recommending mercy for those who have served their time or demonstrated remorse and a lower likelihood of recidivism. Instead, clemency petitioners are mostly circumventing that system, tailoring their pitches to the president by emphasizing their loyalty to him and echoing his claims of political persecution.

The Times’ report, which has not been independently verified by BLN or NBC News, added that among the many eager to take advantage of the new pardon landscape are “a rapper convicted in connection with a Malaysian embezzlement schemea reality-television-star couple found guilty of defrauding banks and evading taxesand two Washington, D.C., police officers convicted after a chase that killed a young man.”

The Times quoted Rachel Barkow, a professor at the New York University School of Law who has studied the use of presidential clemency. She said that while Trump’s first-term pardons were all about “cronyism and partisanship,” the potential for corruption is higher now “because they’re starting early, they have figured out how they want to set it up so that people have a pipeline to get to them.”

Barkow added, “Like any sequel, it’s going to be worse.”

Did I mention that Team Trump recently ousted the Justice Department’s pardon attorneyas part of a broader political purge of federal law enforcement? Because that happened, too.

The next time you hear presidential chest-thumping about “law and order” and “tough on crime,” keep this in mind.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

Steve legs

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

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The Dictatorship

Federal court rules against new global tariffs Trump imposed

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Federal court rules against new global tariffs Trump imposed

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal court ruled Thursday against the new global tariffs that President Donald Trump imposed after a stinging loss at the Supreme Court.

A split three-judge panel of the Court of International Trade in New York found the 10% global tariffs were illegal after small businesses sued.

The court ruled 2-1 that Trump overstepped the tariff power that Congress had allowed the president under the law. The tariffs are “invalid″ and “unauthorized by law,” the majority wrote.

The third judge on the panel found the law allows the president more leeway on tariffs.

If the administration appeals Thursday’s decision, as expected, it would first turn to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, based in Washington, and then, potentially, the Supreme Court.

At issue are temporary 10% worldwide tariffs the Trump administration imposed after the Supreme Court in February struck down even broader double-digit tariffs the president had imposed last year on almost every country on Earth. The new tariffs, invoked under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, were set to expire July 24.

The court’s decision directly blocked the collection of tariffs from three plaintiffs — the state of Washington and two businesses, spice company Burlap & Barrel and toy company Basic Fun! “It’s not clear’’ whether other businesses would have to continue to pay the tariffs, said Jeffrey Schwab, director of litigation at the libertarian Liberty Justice Center, which represented the two companies.

“We fought back today and we won, and we’re extremely excited,” Jay Foreman, CEO of Basic Fun!, told reporters Thursday.

The ruling marked another legal setback for the Trump administration, which has attempted to shield the U.S. economy behind a wall of import taxes. Last year, Trump invoked the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to declare the nation’s longstanding trade deficit a national emergency, justifying sweeping global tariffs.

The Supreme Court ruled Feb. 28 that IEEPA did not authorize the tariffs. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to establish taxes, including tariffs, though lawmakers can delegate tariff power to the president.

Dave Townsend, a trade lawyer at Dorsey & Whitney, said the ruling will open the door for more companies to request that the tariffs be thrown out and that any payments they’ve made be refunded.

“Other importers likely will now ask for a broader remedy that applies to more companies,” Townsend said, though he cautioned the case could also reach the Supreme Court.

Trump is already taking steps to replace the tariffs that were struck down by the Supreme Court in January. The administration is conducting two investigations that could end in more tariffs.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is looking into whether 16 U.S. trading partners — including China, the European Union and Japan — are overproducing goods, driving down prices and putting U.S. manufacturers at a disadvantage. It is also investigating whether 60 economies — from Nigeria to Norway and accounting for 99% of U.S. imports — do enough to prohibit the trade in products created by forced labor.

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The Dictatorship

Trump says EU has until July 4 to approve trade deal

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Trump says EU has until July 4 to approve trade deal

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said in a Thursday social media post that goods from the European Union would face higher tariff rates if the 27-member bloc fails to approve last year’s trade framework by July 4.

The announcement appeared to be a deadline extension after the president said last Friday that EU autos would face a higher 25% tariff starting this week. Trump made the updated announcement after what he described as a “great call” with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Still, the U.S. president was displeased that the European Parliament had yet to finalize the trade arrangement reached last year, which was further complicated in February by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that Trump lacked the legal authority to declare an economic emergency to impose the initial tariffs used to pressure the EU into talks.

“A promise was made that the EU would deliver their side of the Deal and, as per Agreement, cut their Tariffs to ZERO!” Trump posted. “I agreed to give her until our Country’s 250th Birthday or, unfortunately, their Tariffs would immediately jump to much higher levels.”

It was unclear from the post whether Trump was implying that the tariff rates would jump on all EU goods or the increase would only apply to autos.

His latest statement indicates he might be backing away from his earlier threat on EU autos by giving the European Parliament several more weeks to approve the agreement.

Under the original terms of the framework, the U.S. would charge a 15% tax on most goods imported from the EU.

But since the Supreme Court ruling, the administration has levied a 10% tariff while investigating trade imbalances and national security issues, aiming to put in new tariffs to make up for lost revenues.

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The Dictatorship

In the wake of the Virginia ruling, where does the national redistricting arms race stand?

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In the wake of the Virginia ruling, where does the national redistricting arms race stand?

In Virginia, a majority of the House of Delegates voted to approve a new congressional district map that was designed to help Democrats add as many as four seats in the U.S. House. A majority of the state Senate agreed, as did the commonwealth’s popularly elected governor. The issue then went to the people of Virginia, and a majority of voters backed the redistricting initiative, too.

A majority of the Virginia Supreme Court, however, rejected the plan anyway. MS NOW reported:

The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a voter-approved congressional redistricting plan, ruling that Democrats violated constitutional procedures when placing the referendum on the ballot for last month’s special election. […]

In its 4-3 decision, the court on Friday found that the process used to place the amendment on the ballot did not comply with Virginia’s constitutional rules governing how such proposals must be approved by the legislature before being presented to voters. As a result, the justices upheld a lower court ruling that blocks the amendment from being certified and implemented.

For Democratic efforts on the national level, the ruling is an unexpected gut punch, especially given the fact that after Virginia voters approved the overhauled map last month, it appeared that Democrats would be able to keep pace with the GOP as part of the broader redistricting fight.

What’s more, the state Supreme Court ruling comes on the heels of a similarly brutal blow after Republican-appointed U.S. Supreme Court justices gutted the Voting Rights Act, which opened the door even further to an intensified Republican effort to erase majority-Black congressional districts in the South.

Given all of this, it’s easy to imagine many Americans responding to the head-spinning developments with a simple question: “So where do things stand now?”

Before we dig in on that, it’s worth pausing to acknowledge the absurdity of the circumstances. For generations, states redrew congressional district lines after the decennial census. There were limited exceptions, but in nearly all of those instances, mid-decade redistricting only happened when courts told states that their maps were unlawful and needed to be redone.

The idea that politicians would simply choose to start redrawing maps, in the middle of a decade, in pursuit of partisan advantages, was practically unheard of.

Last year, however, Donald Trump, fearing the results of the 2026 midterm elections and the possible accountability that would result from Democratic victories, decided that the American model needed to be discarded. It was time, the president said, to pursue what one White House official described as a campaign of “maximum warfare” in which Republican officials in key states would embrace gerrymandering without regard for fairness, norms, traditions or propriety.

The goal was simple: Deliver Republican victories in congressional races long before Americans had a chance to cast their ballots.

The result was an arms race that’s still going on — and here’s where things stand.

A map of the United States highlighting states that have redrawn their congressional maps
As of May 8, 2026. *Virginia’s voter-approved congressional redistricting plan was struck down by the Virginia Supreme Court Ben King / MS NOW; Source: MaddowBlog election analysis

Texas: Republicans in the Lone Star State got the ball rolling last summer, acting at Trump’s behest and approving a map designed to give Republicans five additional U.S. House seats. It touched off the national arms race.

California: Responding to Texas, Democratic officials in the Golden State, as well as the state’s voters, approved a map of their own designed to give Democrats five additional U.S. House seats.

Missouri: In September, state Republicans approved a map designed to give the GOP one additional seat.

North Carolina: In October, state Republicans approved a map designed to give Republicans one additional seat.

Ohio: While the redistricting effort in the Buckeye State wasn’t as brazen as it was elsewhere, Ohio’s new map diluted two Democratic-held districts, creating GOP pickup opportunities.

Utah: A state court approved a new map that will likely give Democrats one additional seat.

Florida: Just this week, Republicans completed the process on a new map designed to give Republicans as many as four additional seats.

Tennessee: Also this week, Republicans approved a new map designed to give Republicans one additional seat, taking advantage of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling.

Louisiana: While the newly redrawn map in the Pelican State hasn’t been formally unveiled, it will reportedly add one additional Republican seat.

Alabama: Republicans are currently moving forward with plans for a map that would give Republicans two more seats.

It’s important to emphasize that some of these maps are currently facing legal challenges, while others are still taking shape. Most of these maps would take effect during this year’s election cycle, but there’s still some uncertainty surrounding the implementation date in some states.

Nevertheless, the Virginia map that enjoyed popular public support was prepared to help mitigate an unprecedented Republican abuse. The state Supreme Court in the commonwealth appears to have removed that option.

After Virginia voters had their say, many GOP officials questioned whether the entire gerrymandering gambit had been a waste of time and effort. In the aftermath of two highly controversial court rulings, Republicans are suddenly feeling a lot better about the whole scheme.

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