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Jayapal and Wyden Demand Probe of 'Unlimited Surveillance' and Subpoena Abuses by Trump Agencies
Agencies have used their subpoena power "to surveil, intimidate, and suppress the free speech of ordinary citizens and even the free press," said the Democrats.
Sep 02, 2026
Under the Trump administration, said Rep. Pramila Jayapal and Sen. Ron Wyden this week, federal agencies' use of subpoena power to surveil Americans has become "institutionalized" in what the two Democrats called "brazen abuses of authority."
Jayapal (Wash.) and Wyden (Ore.) wrote to US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and the acting comptroller general of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Orice Brown, regarding what they called federal agencies’ decades-long practice of attempting "to coerce indefinite silence from private companies that receive subpoenas for customer information."
While federal agencies have the congressionally vested authority to serve companies and service providers with administrative subpoeanas when they are seeking information about the provider's customer or client, the recipient generally maintains the "First Amendment right to notify their customers of the demand, allowing the actual targets of the subpoenas the opportunity to assert their own legal rights or challenge the demand in court," wrote Jayapal and Wyden.
If secrecy is required in a specific case, the agency can apply to a court for a time-limited nondisclosure order, but in the vast majority of cases, the lawmakers said in a statement, "the agencies may not gag recipients of subpoenas."
That appears to have changed under the Trump administration.
Wyden and Jayapal pointed to one incident from July 8, 2025, when Harvard University received three immigration subpoeanas from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) regarding international students, which contained "boilerplate requests for silence."'
"The absurdity of this secrecy demand was demonstrated the very next day, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a press release celebrating the very enforcement action it had just directed Harvard to keep secret," wrote the lawmakers.
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), which operates under ICE, has summons authority only for records relating to customs issues such as illegal imports or unpaid customs dues.
However, HSI has used its subpoena power "to surveil, intimidate, and suppress the free speech of ordinary citizens and even the free press"—in one case trying to reveal the identity of an anonymous Instagram user who had criticized and publicized ICE operations, according to the lawmakers.
Earlier this week, The Guardian reported that HSI had used the subpoenas to secretly obtain six months' worth of phone records for Georgia Fort, a Minneapolis-based journalist who, along with former CNN anchor Don Lemon, was arrested in January for covering an anti-ICE protest at a church.
While the secrecy demands that come with subpoenas "carry no force of law," said the lawmakers, "their coercive effect is extremely successful. This leaves customers entirely in the dark about government incursions into their personal data."
Jayapal and Wyden noted that federal agencies were demanding secrecy from subpoenaed companies and third parties for decades before President Donald Trump took office.
For over four decades, they said, the Department of Justice (DOJ) "has treated extra-legal gag requests as standard operating procedure,
regularly instructing the recipients of grand jury subpoenas not to disclose the government's demands."
"Given the severe, asymmetric power dynamics between federal law enforcement and civilian businesses—particularly when the subpoena recipient is a business operating within a highly regulated industry—many corporate legal departments will naturally read an official prosecutorial 'request' for silence as an implied command, choosing compliance over risking scrutiny from federal regulators," wrote Wyden and Jayapal. "This coercive silence is particularly insidious because it targets corporate policies intended to protect consumers. For nearly every American industry, including telecommunications, technology, and healthcare, Congress has neither required nor prohibited notice of subpoenas. Absent a court order or statute saying otherwise, notice to customers is a protected exercise of free speech that furthers government transparency and customer privacy."
The lawmakers called on the GAO to conduct a comprehensive audit of the DOJ and DHS as well as the agencies they oversee regarding their use of gag requests in subpoenas.
Such an audit would "help ensure that agencies do not abuse their subpoena authorities at the expense of privacy and free speech rights," said Jayapal and Wyden.
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'Settle It': Trump Personally Intervened to Force DOJ Deal With Reviled Concert Ticket Monopoly
"The president stopped by to check on the negotiations. How is this not settled yet? asked Trump," The Wall Street Journal reported. "By the end of the meeting, it was."
Aug 24, 2026
Reporting published over the weekend revealed that US President Donald Trump personally intervened to force a Justice Department settlement with Ticketmaster owner Live Nation, which faced a high-profile antitrust trial for abusing its market power and illegally crushing competition.
The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the Justice Department, which sued Live Nation in 2024 during former President Joe Biden's administration, was "preparing to wage a legal battle more than a decade in the making against the world’s largest concert promoter. Then President Trump called." A senior DOJ official relayed to associates that the president told them to "settle it."
Trump's intervention reportedly came just days before the March 2 trial began in the antitrust case, the product of a yearslong investigation into the ticketing and concert behemoth. The Justice Department formally announced the settlement on March 9; the DOJ antitrust division's counsel in the case appeared to be unaware of the deal until he appeared in court for trial.
According to the Journal, Trump's instruction to the DOJ to settle the Live Nation case came shortly after the president met with the company's CEO, Michael Rapino, in the Oval Office in late February.
"Trump had called the meeting to discuss how to improve bookings at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, according to people familiar with the conversation," the Journal reported. "He also wanted to know why the company hadn’t reached a deal over its lawsuit."
"On March 5, Rapino was back at the White House, meeting White House Counsel David Warrington and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to put the finishing touches on a deal. He was accompanied by Sullivan & Cromwell’s James McDonald, who had little antitrust experience but had been representing Trump in two New York appeals," the newspaper added. "The president stopped by to check on the negotiations. How is this not settled yet? asked Trump... By the end of the meeting, it was."
Since the start of Trump's second White House term, the Justice Department has repeatedly settled cases against corporations accused of violating the nation's antitrust laws. MS NOW reported last month that "DOJ staff have privately complained that the Trump administration is essentially deciding not to enforce antitrust laws that are critical to keeping companies from becoming single-source providers and being able to charge enormous sums for their product or service."
The Biden Justice Department's 2024 antitrust suit against Live Nation accused the company of depriving music fans in the US of "ticketing innovation" and forcing them to "use outdated technology while paying more for tickets than fans in other countries."
The Journal reported Sunday that most of the states that joined the antitrust action against Live Nation, "including those controlled by Republicans, viewed the settlement as so favorable to the company that they refused to join it and continued to trial."
"In April, a jury found Live Nation illegally monopolized the ticketing market for major concerts in the US," the Journal noted. "The plaintiff states have asked the judge to break up the company."
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Trump DOJ Hires Lawyer Convicted of Election Hacking to Voting Rights Division: Report
"Levin’s involvement in election monitoring could offer a hint of the kind of personnel who will staff the operation this fall, when the DOJ has said it will send 1,000 monitors to the polls."
Aug 21, 2026
An attorney who in 2016 pleaded guilty to illegally hacking state and county election websites in Florida has apparently been hired by the US Department of Justice and took part in a recent DOJ election monitoring operation in Minnesota, according to a report published Friday.
Democracy Docket said it used "publicly available facial recognition reverse image search tools" to analyze "images and video posted online" and concluded that David Michael Levin seems to have joined the DOJ's Civil Rights Division.
Yunior Rivas, a breaking news reporter at the voting rights and elections site, said that hiring Levin "would be among the most troubling examples yet of the department’s Civil Rights Division bringing on lawyers—including the acting chief of the voting section—who have taken extreme steps to undermine fair elections, as it rushes to put together a team to carry out [President Donald] Trump’s anti-voting agenda."
"And Levin’s involvement in election monitoring could offer a hint of the kind of personnel who will staff the operation this fall, when the DOJ has said it will send 1,000 monitors to the polls," Rivas added.
EXCLUSIVE: Ten years ago, David Michael Levin was convicted of hacking into government election websites.Now, he appears to have been hired by the Trump DOJ to...wait for it...monitor elections.
[image or embed]
— Democracy Docket (@democracydocket.com) August 21, 2026 at 10:19 AM
Levin was arrested in May 2016 on three felony counts of "unauthorized access to the Lee County Elections Office website" the previous year "and to the Department of State Division of Elections website" in January 2016. The three felony charges were subsequently downgraded to two misdemeanors, to which Levin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 days in jail served on weekends and two years of probation.
"It was a silly political stunt,” Levin told the presiding judge in his case. “I didn’t think I was going to get in and I did. I’ve never done anything like it before and I’m not going to do anything like it again.”
“That was probably one of the bigger mistakes I’ve made in my life, the way I went about the whole thing,” Levin told the Bradenton Herald during his failed 2021 run for Manatee County School Board on a platform opposing critical race theory and mask mandates during the Covid-19 pandemic. “I made it very political, and it affected my life for a few years.”
According to Democracy Docket, Levin is now apparently working for the DOJ office responsible for enforcing federal voting rights laws. The Civil Rights Division is headed by Harmeet Dhillon, a conspiracy theorist with a troubled history of dabbling in 2020 election denial and working against voting, reproductive, LGBTQ+, and other civil rights.
"The DOJ did not respond to Democracy Docket’s request to confirm Levin’s employment and title," Rivas noted. "And Levin’s name has not appeared in court filings made by the department. The DOJ also did not respond to questions about whether officials were aware of Levin’s conviction for hacking election websites before he apparently joined the department."
As Malcolm Ferguson wrote for The New Republic on Friday:
The Trump administration has made a habit of offering vindication for people who flat out violated election laws in an attempt to stop what they believe was fraud—a lie their president has constantly tried to manifest into existence. Colorado’s Tina Peters, the former Colorado county election clerk found guilty of tampering with voting machines, was hosted at the White House last month. And more broadly... Dhillon has changed the purpose and function of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division entirely.
Democracy Docket's reporting comes amid efforts by Trump—who was impeached for a historic second time for inciting the January 2021 Capitol insurrection and trying to overturn his 2020 loss to former President Joe Biden—to cast doubt on the integrity of the upcoming midterm elections. The Trump administration has also been accused of attempted voter intimidation with a plan to deploy an army of 1,000 law enforcement personnel to polling places to "monitor" midterm voting.
This, amid Republicans' ongoing voter suppression efforts, including attacks on mail-in ballots, and persistent claims of nearly nonexistent voter fraud.
Reporting this week exposed the Trump administration's inability to back up a claim that nearly 16,000 noncitizens were registered to vote in Nevada, with the Department of Homeland Security only able to find 185 such cases—just over 1% of the number claimed.
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'No, I'm Not Going to Pledge That': Blanche Refuses to Vow Independence From Trump
"The only reason Blanche is AG is because he will cross any ethical/legal line to defend Trump," said one Democratic senator.
Aug 16, 2026
US Attorney General Todd Blanche refused on Sunday to pledge that his Justice Department would "act independently of the White House," underscoring critics' warnings that Blanche is running the nation's top law enforcement agency as if it were President Donald Trump's personal legal office.
"No, I’m not going to pledge that. And no attorney general should ever pledge that," Blanche, who previously worked as Trump's personal lawyer, said during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Blanche went on to suggest, absurdly, that prioritizing independence at the DOJ would mean declining to do anything that aligns with the president's stated goals.
"If I were to pledge I will be independent of the White House, what that means is that if President Trump says, 'I want the Department of Justice to go after every violent criminal in this country,' which is what he has said, what you’re saying to me is I should say, 'No, sir, I’m not going to do it,'" said Blanche, who was confirmed as attorney general earlier this month.
WELKER: Can you pledge the DOJ will always act independently of the White House?
BLANCHE: No, I'm not going to pledge that, and no attorney general ever should
WELKER: So if the president asked you do to something that you feel crosses an ethical or legal line, would you do it?… pic.twitter.com/vPrJdnAQ9l
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 16, 2026
Blanche insisted that Trump "never has" and "never will" ask him to do "something unethical" or unlawful, rejecting what he described as "this narrative... that the president’s going to pull me aside and ask me to do something illegal."
"There is this extraordinarily false narrative that the president wakes up in the morning and calls me and says, 'Todd, go prosecute X or Y.' He does not do that. He has never done that," Blanche said.
When Blanche was deputy attorney general under former AG Pam Bondi, Trump publicly pressured Bondi to pursue cases against former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California. (Trump reportedly believed the Truth Social post he made castigating Bondi was a private message.)
Watchdog organizations and former Justice Department employees opposed Blanche's confirmation as attorney general on the grounds that he would put loyalty to Trump over all else.
“Since his confirmation as deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche has shown time and again that his guiding star is fealty to the president, not the Constitution,” said Stacey Young, the founder of Justice Connection who worked at the DOJ for 18 years.
Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) said Sunday that "the only reason Blanche is AG is because he will cross any ethical/legal line to defend Trump."
"He proved it as Trump's personal attorney. He proved it as deputy and acting AG," said Kim. "Now we are going to see even more unprecedented levels of corruption at the American people's expense."
Days after his confirmation—which was delayed as the Justice Department dragged its feet on abandoning a proposed slush fund for Trump allies—Blanche appeared at a political rally with the president and spoke favorably of Bruce Blakeman, the Republican challenging incumbent New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Democracy Docket noted that the rally "marked the second time Blanche has participated in a norm-shattering political event. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference last year, Blanche downplayed fears over deploying federal agents to the polls this November."
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From Xanadu to Mar-a-Lago: Does a 1941 Film Foretell the Fate of Donald J. Trump?
Many commentators have drawn parallels between Trump’s life and that of the fictional billionaire in Orson Welles’ classic film, Citizen Kane, but things have changed and those parallels no longer seem to apply. Or do they?
Aug 16, 2026
In a 2002 video, Donald Trump was interviewed about his favorite movie, Orson Welles’ 1941 classic, Citizen Kane. In the discussion, he likened himself to the film’s principal character, Charles Foster Kane—a man portrayed as rising to become the richest and most powerful man in the world. But, as Trump noted, there was a price to pay. Kane ends his life in solitude, divorced and bereft of friends: “I think you learned in Kane,” he concluded, “that maybe wealth isn’t everything because he had the wealth but he didn’t have the happiness... In real life I do believe that wealth does in fact isolate you from other people.”
Trump isn’t the only one who has seen a resemblance between him and his fictional counterpart. Over the years, many commentators have pointed out the similarities:
- Both men inherit great wealth but grow up in harsh circumstances—Kane under a strict and heartless guardian; Trump under a demanding and punitive father.
- As adults, both are marked by a high level of narcissism and lack of empathy.
- Kane becomes known for a ruthless and amoral approach to the newspaper business; Trump is said to have used similar tactics in real estate.
- In mock newsreel footage, a smiling Kane is shown on a balcony with Adolf Hitler; in news coverage, Trump appears in friendly meetings with Vladimir Putin and other autocrats.
- Kane aspires to political power and runs for governor of New York as a step toward the presidency; Trump aspires to political power and runs directly for the presidency.
- During his campaign, Kane threatens to have his political opponent prosecuted; running against Hilary Clinton in 2016, Trump leads the chants of “lock her up.”
- Kane leaves his socialite wife for an aspiring singer, Susan Alexander; Trump divorces two socialites before marrying a fashion model, Melania Knauss.
- When Kane loses his gubernatorial race, he claims fraud at the polls; when Trump loses in 2020, his claims of voter fraud become a never-ending refrain.
- In Florida, Kane builds an artificial mountain on which to build a palatial estate that he names Xanadu after Kublai Khan’s fabled capitol; Trump’s opulent “Winter Whitehouse,” Mar-a-Lago, spans the entire width of an exclusive Florida barrier island and is estimated to be worth over half a billion dollars.
- Kane turns on even his best friend; Trump dumps even his most loyal followers.
That was then; this is now—and things have changed. A fresh look at the comparison shows that the arc of Trump’s life has departed significantly from that of Charles Foster Kane:
- Kane’s run for governor is abruptly derailed when his affair with Susan Alexander is made public; Trump’s legendary infidelities are easily brushed off. Even reports of paying hush money to a porn star to suppress a story about an alleged affair, boasting about grabbing women by their private parts, and being found liable for sexual abuse in a court of law, barely dent his campaigns—and in both 2016 and 2024, Trump ascends to the highest office in the land.
- After his defeat at the polls, Kane retires from public life; after his defeat in 2020, Trump remains very active in public life, even inciting a mob of supporters to attack the Capitol in an effort to overturn the election.
- Kane’s electoral defeat makes it impossible for him to follow through on his threat to have his political rival prosecuted; in both Trump’s first and second terms, at his urging, his Department of Justice repeatedly targets his political opponents.
- Kane builds a $2 million dollar (equivalent to $45 million today) opera house for Susan Alexander’s operatic performances, which are lambasted by the critics and shunned by audiences; Trump megadonor, Jeff Bezos, funds a $40 million documentary about Melania that receives crushing critical reviews—but is a huge success with MAGA-faithful audiences.
- In the stock market crash of 1929, Kane loses his newspaper and much of his wealth; over his career, Trump’s companies declare bankruptcy six times—but he emerges personally unscathed, with banks and creditors absorbing the losses. And during his presidency, Trump’s personal fortune grows to over $7 billion.
- Humiliated and deeply depressed by her failed singing career and isolated life with Kane, Susan Alexander walks out on him; Melania appears to have little interest in her role as first lady and spends very little time at the White House, but shows no signs of walking out on Trump—so far. She has, however, renegotiated her prenuptial agreement with Trump at least three times, not a sign of enduring commitment.
- Kane spends his last days isolated and friendless in his decaying mansion; although more and more isolated because of fears of assassination attempts, especially since he initiated his war with Iran, Trump remains surrounded by loyal family members, devoted staff, compliant yes-men, sycophants, and, when in Florida, the ultra-rich membership of his elite Mar-a-Lago social club.
The question now is, what happens after Trump leaves office on January 20, 2029—assuming that he does leave office. It seems improbable that he will, like Kane, willingly recede from public view and become isolated, personally and politically. But, in his declining years, will he find himself powerless to keep his friends and loyal entourage from slipping away? Will the GOP seek to distance itself more and more from him? Will his efforts to grab headlines fade as the news media loses interest in him? Will legal fees, criminal penalties, a collapse of his cryptocurrency and a downturn in the real estate market combine to decimate his financial empire? Will Melania seek a multimillion dollar divorce settlement? In other words, will the arc of Trump’s life begin to realign with that of Charles Foster Kane?
On Kane’s deathbed, he utters the single word, “Rosebud,” which we later learn was the name emblazoned on his childhood sled. In his 2002 video, Trump explains that, “I think the significance is bringing a lonely, rather sad figure back into his childhood.” Did he foresee that nostalgia for a simpler, happier time in his life—perhaps before his political career—might be his own destiny? Probably not. But time will tell where the parallels between Charles Foster Kane and Donald J. Trump ultimately end.
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Human Rights Watch Details How Trump Has Gutted Federal Civil Rights Enforcement
"While claiming to protect all Americans, the administration is rolling back systems that communities have long turned to for relief.”
Aug 13, 2026
Eighteen months into President Donald Trump's second term in the White House, the administration has systematically gutted the infrastructure within the federal government that for decades had worked to ensure that civil rights and anti-discrimination laws were being enforced—and has turned agencies "against the communities they were meant to protect," as one researcher at Human Rights Watch said Thursday.
In a new report, the organization detailed how four key agencies have been substantially weakened since Trump took office and almost immediately, with the help of tech billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, set about slashing the federal workforce and demanding that the civil servants who remained be "fully on board" with the president's right-wing agenda.
The report, titled "Remedies Abandoned: US Civil Rights Enforcement Under the Trump Administration," explains how the US Department of Justice's (DOJ) Civil Rights Division lost about 75% of its attorneys after the White House told staff that they were not to operate independently from the president; the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) at the Department of Education closed more than half of its regional offices and laid off nearly half its staff in one day; the Fair Housing Office at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) shrank from 31 staffers to 11; and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reached its lowest staffing level in over four decades.
With the federal civil rights enforcement workforce decimated, the White House has abandoned discrimination complaints at the four agencies and has carried out demands outlined in Project 2025, the right-wing policy blueprint put forward by the Heritage Foundation. In addition to pushing for the administration to reclassify civil servants like those who were pushed out of their civil rights enforcement roles, the document called for presidential control of the Justice Department and an end to "disparate impact enforcement."
In April 2025, three months after taking office, Trump signed an executive order directing all federal agencies to eliminate their analysis of disparate impact—the framework that confronts discriminatory policies based on their impacts rather than their intent—to the "maximum degree possible."
Disparate impact analysis, said HRW, "allows people to challenge hiring criteria, lending practices, school discipline policies, and housing regulations that produce discriminatory outcomes even when no one can identify a smoking gun like a policy that explicitly says 'exclude Black applicants.'"
The executive order and related directives that followed had a sweeping impact, with HUD dropping seven major housing discrimination and environmental justice cases months later, after they had been ongoing for years.
For example, the agency informed Chicago officials it would no longer monitor the civil rights agreement that had required zoning reform to end concentrated industrial pollution in Black and Latino neighborhoods.
"Department leadership said it would no longer treat environmental harms as fair housing violations in situations without explicit indication of intentional discrimination, in line with President Trump’s April 2025 order seeking to end disparate impact enforcement," reads the HRW report.
HUD has closed at least 115 fair housing complaints without issuing findings on the claims of discrimination, and career attorneys at the agency filed a whistleblower complaint last September showing they'd been barred from contacting complainants and working with the DOJ to resolve the matters.
"One of the ways we know that our democracy is functioning and healthy is that your rights don't just disappear because the political winds shift," said Trey Walk, a US program researcher at HRW.
NEW: The Trump administration has gutted federal civil rights enforcement in the United States, leaving the people the laws were built to protect without adequate remedies.
In a new report, HRW documents the administration’s efforts to unravel the work of four key agencies… pic.twitter.com/4VADDpmFDR
— Human Rights Watch (@hrw) August 13, 2026
The Education Department's OCR also appears to have resolved no racial harassment cases in 2025, despite the fact that in 2024, such complaints reached a new record among Black and Latino students.
The case of a 12-year-old boy in Lubbock, Texas, who had been interrogated by school officials without his parents present and falsely accused of a sexual offense, had been close to being resolved when the OCR office for the region abruptly closed in March 2025. When an attorney for families in Lubbock who had had open cases emailed the federal investigator who had been working on the complaints, they received an autoreply, saying the employee no longer had access to any of the case files.
"Numbers illustrate the scale of abandonment," reads the report. "With 11,985 education-related civil rights cases pending when the administration took office, OCR reached just 112 resolution agreements across all of 2025—1% of the caseload, and 78% fewer than the year before on the same budget. OCR reported no resolution agreements for sexual harassment, none for sexual violence, none for racial harassment, none for discriminatory school discipline, and none for seclusion and restraint of students with disabilities. The 2025 case resolution number is low, even compared to previous years when the agency was not adequately staffed or funded."
Walk said that the Trump administration "is targeting efforts to address discrimination without offering any alternatives. While claiming to protect all Americans, the administration is rolling back systems that communities have long turned to for relief.”
More than half of OCR's nationwide staff were among the 1,300 Education staffers whose jobs were cut in a single day in March 2025. Vince L., a career attorney at OCR who was one of 40 people interviewed by HRW for the report, said that in the administration's first weeks, he and his colleagues had received a directive essentially saying: "Stop all work. Decimate staffing. Divert resources to political witch hunts."
"Seven of 12 regional offices shut with no notice," he said. "Some people didn’t even know until their computers didn’t work. You’d come in the next morning and your badge wouldn’t work. That’s how you’d find out you were being terminated.”
Similar scenes played out at the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, where an attorney identified as Gloria A. described how the department's independence from the White House "flew out the window" early in Trump's term when lawyers were directed to carry out the president's political agenda.
“We viewed ourselves as attorneys for the United States,” another civil rights lawyer who was reassigned to complete administrative work, told HRW. “Which is different.”
A significant sign of the gutting of civil rights enforcement at the DOJ came when the agency moved to dismiss multiple consent decrees to reform police departments.
A two-year DOJ probe had found a pattern of racially discriminatory force by the Louisville Metro Police Department, where officers fatally shot Breonna Taylor in 2020, but the DOJ moved to dismiss the consent decree that had demanded reform at the police department just six months after it was signed.
A similar consent decree was dismissed around the same time, in May 2025, in Minneapolis—almost exactly five years after George Floyd was murdered by a police officer there.
"At least four other consent decrees to reform police departments across the US were dismissed in the same period," reads the report. "In each case, the department withdrew before any independent finding that the underlying violations had stopped."
HRW called on Congress to conduct oversight hearings on "the collapse of enforcement capacity at key federal agencies" and urged state legislatures to pass or strengthen disparate impact standards, create or fund state fair housing enforcement agencies with investigative authority, and create private rights of action under state law for discrimination claims previously only covered by federal enforcement.
It called on state agencies to expand intake capacity to take complaints currently not being accepted at the federal level and urged state attorneys general to consider challenging federal agency decisions, including case closure policies that have harmed state residents.
The group emphasized that it was not making formal recommendations to the White House or any federal agencies.
"The leadership of these agencies have not demonstrated good faith interest in improving anti-discrimination enforcement in the US," said HRW. "The immediate remedies lie with Congress, state and local actors, the media and civil society, and international bodies. A future administration will need to rebuild what has been dismantled by this executive branch."
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'Trump Is Scared': DOJ Executive Privilege Memo Decried as Effort to 'Shield' Inner Circle
"This opinion is about protecting Trump and his allies from any real accountability, no matter where the questions come from—Congress, the courts, or investigators of any kind."
Aug 11, 2026
Just days after Senate Republicans confirmed US Attorney General Todd Blanche, the Department of Justice this week issued a legal opinion on executive privilege that was swiftly condemned as an attempt to unfairly protect some of President Donald Trump's top advisers from any accountability.
Historically, the president has been allowed to assert executive privilege over communications with executive branch staff, protecting them from disclosure.
However, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) said in a Monday memo that "presidential communications with private advisers can fall within the scope of executive privilege so long as they relate to official presidential decisionmaking, involve or reflect communications with the president or his direct advisers, and are confidential."
The memo is signed by Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser. HuffPost reported that a DOJ official "argued its veracity by comparing it to a similar one made by President George W. Bush's attorney general in 2007."
"While the issue has not been litigated frequently, the opinion reaffirms the long-standing position of the office going back at least as far as Paul Clement in 2007 and arguably as far back as 1972," the unnamed official said.
Jonathan Shaub, a University of Kentucky School of Law professor who served in the Obama administration’s OLC, told CNN: "I would say it's not inconsistent with past positions... But it's never been stated publicly."
Shaub also told Axios that "it really could be a pretty significant weapon" for the second Trump administration "to deflect a lot of that congressional investigation of private parties."
Republicans are at risk of losing control of both chambers of Congress in the November midterm elections, and if they do, Democratic majorities could move to impeach Trump a historic third time—for everything from the Trump family's profiteering off of the presidency to his illegal war on Iran.
The Not Above the Law coalition's co-chairs—Brett Edkins of Stand Up America, Praveen Fernandes of the Constitutional Accountability Center, Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen, and Kelsey Herbert of MoveOn—said Tuesday that "Todd Blanche's Justice Department is doing what it always does: attempting to shield Donald Trump and the people around him before anyone can hold them accountable."
"This opinion is about protecting Trump and his allies from any real accountability, no matter where the questions come from—Congress, the courts, or investigators of any kind," they argued. "Every senator who voted to confirm Blanche knew exactly what kind of Justice Department they were signing off on. They own it now."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)—who may not have enough support to lead Democrats even if they reclaim the upper chamber in November—was similarly critical, concluding: "Donald Trump is scared. He knows accountability is coming."
"He’s using his newly installed attorney general/personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, to cover up his communications with private advisers and special interest cronies," Schumer said on Facebook. "These are the actions of someone with something to hide. And it shows he is petrified of the questions a Democratic Congress will demand answers to. We will not let Trump escape the accountability he deserves."
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'Bogus Indictment?' Raskin Opens House Probe Into DOJ Reflecting Pool Prosecution
Rep. Jamie Raskin wants to know if the Trump administration withheld "key evidence to blame the disastrous reflecting pool renovation on an innocent man?"
Aug 11, 2026
The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday launched an investigation into the Trump administration's attempt to prosecute former Olympic canoeist David Hearn for felony vandalism amid reports that the White House is pushing the Justice Department to reopen the dropped case.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) announced the new probe in a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia. Pirro, a longtime friend and ally of President Donald Trump, dropped the vandalism case against Hearn earlier this month, saying in a filing that the damage he was accused of inflicting on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool "was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism."
"Did DOJ prosecutors knowingly bring a bogus indictment?" Raskin asked in his letter. "Did [the Department of Interior] withhold key evidence to blame the disastrous reflecting pool renovation on an innocent man? Did President Trump pressure or influence either department to engage in wrongful actions against an American citizen?"
"At a minimum, it appears that members of the Trump administration were ready and willing to imprison an innocent American for a decade in a desperate effort to soothe an ex-landlord’s wounded ego about a terrible paint job and wasteful contract,” Raskin added. "We must get to the bottom of these murky waters to rid our justice system of any and all residual contamination."
"The conclusion seems inescapable that at least one, if not both, of you have misled the American public about the evidence and used it to corrupt and weaponize our justice system."
News of Raskin's investigation came shortly before The Wall Street Journal reported that "White House officials have asked the Justice Department to consider a new prosecution" of Hearn "as President Trump fumes over US Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s decision to drop the case."
"A new prosecution of the defendant... would be highly unusual, especially after Pirro told a judge in surprising detail that the government’s decision to indict him on a felony charge was ill-informed," the Journal noted. "Pirro said a botched renovation, not vandalism, was responsible for the reflecting pool’s problems."
Trump publicly accused Pirro of "folding like a cheap umbrella" after she dropped the effort to prosecute Hearn, whose legal team is seeking documents to show whether Justice Department prosecutors "were candid with the grand jury" when pursuing their indictment against the 67-year-old former Olympian.
Pirro, a former Fox News host who boasted in July that she had "tremendous evidence" of Hearn's guilt, has privately blamed Burgum for the debacle.
In his letter on Tuesday, Raskin demanded that Pirro and Burgum turn over "all documents related to the decision to prosecute" Hearn as well as "all communication between DOJ, DOI, and the White House related to the prosecution." Raskin also demanded "all evidence presented to the grand jury in connection with the indictment" of Hearn, a Maryland resident and one of Raskin's constituents.
"The conclusion seems inescapable that at least one, if not both, of you have misled the American public about the evidence and used it to corrupt and weaponize our justice system against an innocent 67-year-old American citizen," Raskin wrote.
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The Presidency Is a Public Trust, Not a Personal Monument
The Trump administration has devoted extraordinary attention, taxpayer dollars, and even the power of government to projects centered on the president himself instead of the challenges facing the American people and the core responsibilities of government.
Aug 10, 2026
While Americans worried about rising costs at home and another war in the Middle East, President Donald Trump spent much of June talking about construction projects at the White House.
According to a Washington Post analysis of the president's speeches, interviews, social media posts, and other public remarks, he discussed his construction and beautification projects on nearly 4 out of every 5 days in June—more often than healthcare or wages, and about as often as inflation and prices.
That focus has become so pronounced that veteran White House reporter Maggie Haberman recently remarked that roughly "70%" of President Trump's attention appears devoted to his renovation projects.
The issue isn't just President Trump's construction projects. It's what they reveal about this presidency's priorities. Again and again, this administration has devoted extraordinary attention, taxpayer dollars, and even the power of government to projects centered on the president himself instead of the challenges facing the American people and the core responsibilities of government.
Americans should expect the same urgency in pursuing justice for survivors and greater transparency that this administration showed in protecting a presidential monument.
To begin with, consider where President Trump has chosen to focus his attention.
Over the past several months, President Trump has repeatedly returned to his new White House ballroom, the rebuilt Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, triumphal arches, portraits, flagpoles, and other additions that bear his personal imprint. When asked who his proposed triumphal arch was intended to honor, he answered with one word: "Me."
But few presidents have devoted so much attention to themselves while Americans confronted far more pressing challenges. Families continue to struggle with the cost of groceries, housing, childcare, and healthcare. Students and parents are trying to pay for college. Small businesses face rising costs and tariff uncertainty. Conflict in the Middle East threatens American service members, regional stability, and higher energy prices here at home.
Second, consider how those same priorities have shaped the way taxpayer dollars have been spent.
A recent New York Times analysis found that the known costs of the president's construction projects total roughly $1.2 billion. In my home state of Illinois, that same money could restore Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for almost all families expected to lose them this year or preserve Medicaid coverage for nearly 130,000 residents at risk of losing it.
Finally, the most troubling example is how this administration has used the power of government.
The Justice Department aggressively pursued people accused of damaging President Trump's Reflecting Pool. One defendant, former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, faced a felony carrying up to 10 years in prison before prosecutors acknowledged last week that the damage was caused by a botched installation—not vandalism—and dropped the case.
Since Jeffrey Epstein's 2019 federal arrest, no one beyond Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell has been criminally prosecuted in the United States for participating in Epstein's sex-trafficking network, yet acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has defended the administration's refusal to release additional Epstein records while arguing there is no current basis for further prosecutions.
Years of litigation, congressional investigations, investigative reporting, and millions of pages of records have documented the network around Jeffrey Epstein. Leon Black paid Epstein more than $158 million. Lesley Groff spent 18 years as Epstein's longtime assistant, scheduling thousands of massages while Epstein abused underage girls. Yet the Justice Department has shown little urgency in pursuing accountability beyond Epstein and Maxwell.
The administration rushed to bring a felony case over alleged damage to President Trump's Reflecting Pool before acknowledging the damage resulted from a botched government installation—not vandalism—and dismissing the case. Yet when it comes to the people who enabled one of the largest sex-trafficking operations in modern history, that urgency has been nowhere to be found.
Every prosecution must rest on the evidence and the law. But Americans should expect the same urgency in pursuing justice for survivors and greater transparency that this administration showed in protecting a presidential monument.
The presidency is a public trust. It should be measured not by the monuments a president leaves behind, but by whether Americans are stronger, more secure, and more prosperous because of the choices he made.
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David Hearn's Lawyers Seek Documents to Show Misconduct by Trump DOJ in Reflecting Pool Case
"The government is continuing to attack an innocent man."
Aug 10, 2026
A federal judge last week dismissed felony charges against former US Olympic athlete David Hearn, who was arrested in July for allegedly vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. But Hearn's lawyers are signaling that the case is far from over.
In an interview with The New Republic published Monday, attorney Norm Eisen said that he and other members of Hearn's legal team are demanding transcripts to show "whether prosecutors were candid with the grand jury" when seeking the indictment of their client.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) late last month moved to drop charges against the 67-year-old Hearn after it determined that "hasty and botched work," which had been commissioned by President Donald Trump, was responsible for the damage to the pool.
Eisen said he wanted to know what prosecutors knew about the pool's condition before they decided to indict his client, arguing that "the notion that they did not know that there was a botched, rushed renovation... does not hold water."
In addition to seeking grand jury transcripts, Hearn's attorneys are also pressing to have his case dismissed with prejudice, which would bar the DOJ from reviving it at a future date.
Hearn's lawyers aren't the only ones demanding answers in the Reflecting Pool case, as Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member on the US House Judiciary Committee, also plans to demand documents related to the decision to prosecute the former Olympian.
In a statement given to The New Republic, Raskin said he and other Democrats on the committee "will investigate who lied, who buried the evidence, and who decided to threaten an American citizen with prison simply to protect Trump’s wounded feelings and continuing corruption."
Trump, who has repeatedly made baseless claims about vandals destroying the pool, is still demanding that Hearn face prosecution even though the DOJ has determined it lacks evidence to make any charges stick.
In a Sunday Truth Social post, the president insisted that "a highly credible witness" saw Hearn "in broad daylight vandalize the Reflecting Pool by ‘violently’ ripping and tugging at the Pool’s somewhat delicate coating."
This prompted Hearn's attorneys to fire back in a statement posted on social media.
"The government is continuing to attack an innocent man," the attorneys said. "Our first filing in the case on July 10 included photographic evidence from before Mr. Hearn touched the Reflecting Pool proving that he caused no damage. Our other filings provided even more proof."
"We are reviewing all legal remedies, including for this continued harassment," the attorneys added. "It is outrageous."
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