Tuesday, April 14, 2026. Chump struggles on in his war of choice while his lawsuits lose steam, ICE caught with overstuffed prisons by members of Congress, a police officer -- off duty -- decides to try to force violence into a student protest, Senator Elizabeth Warren questions Jeff Bezos deal for the Melania documentary, and much more.
A
federal judge dismissed President Donald Trump's defamation claims
against the Wall Street Journal over a report by the newspaper about a
birthday letter purportedly written by Trump to Jeffrey Epstein.
Judge
Darrin Phillip Gayles of the U.S. District Court for the Southern
District of Florida on Monday said in a ruling that Trump's lawsuit
"fails to adequately allege actual malice," a legal standard in the U.S.
for proving defamation.
Trump
had been seeking at least $20 billion in damages in the suit against
the WSJ, parent companies Dow Jones & Co. and News Corp, the
reporters on the story and Rupert Murdoch. But the judge wrote in the
decision that Trump's complaint "is devoid of any allegations regarding
special damages."
However, the judge also declined to rule on the veracity of the WSJ's report.
"Because
the Court finds that the Complaint fails to adequately allege actual
malice, it declines to address these issues at this juncture. Moreover,
whether President Trump was the author of the Letter or Epstein's friend
are questions of fact that cannot be determined at this stage of the
litigation," the judge wrote.
Trump
filed the lawsuit in July, following up on a promise to sue the paper
almost immediately after it put a new spotlight on his well-documented
relationship with Epstein by publishing an article that described a
sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper said bore Trump’s
signature and was included in a 2003 album compiled for Epstein’s 50th
birthday.
The letter was
subsequently released publicly by Congress, which subpoenaed the records
from Epstein’s estate. Trump denied writing it, calling the story
“false, malicious, and defamatory.”
A
spokesperson for the president’s legal team revealed that it intends to
appeal the matter in a statement that read: “President Trump will
follow Judge Gayles’s ruling and guidance to refile this powerhouse
lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and all of the other Defendants.
The President will continue to hold accountable those who traffic in
Fake News to mislead the American People.”
The
president himself followed up by declaring “Our powerful case against
The Wall Street Journal, and other defendants, was asked to be re-filed
by the Judge. It is not a termination, it is a suggested re-filing, and
we will be, as per the Order, re-filing an updated lawsuit on or before
April 27th,” in a post on Truth Social.
Donald
Trump’s media corporation has dropped a defamation claim against the
Guardian and two other defendants over a report that federal prosecutors
were investigating $8m in payments the company received from entities
with ties to Vladimir Putin as possible money laundering.
A
filing in the 12th judicial circuit in Sarasota county, Florida, on
Friday confirmed that Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), the
parent company of the president’s Truth Social platform, was withdrawing
its claims without prejudice, meaning it could refile the lawsuit at a
later date.
The Guardian reported in March 2023
that New York prosecutors had launched a criminal inquiry into money
wired to TMTG through the Caribbean by two entities that appeared to be
controlled in part by the relation of an ally of Putin, Russia’s
president.
The Trump media group, which at the
time was preparing to merge with the shell company Digital World (DWAC)
to launch a $1.3bn market capitalization, was sensitive to the
allegation it received loans from a potentially unsavory source – and it
filed a lawsuit claiming the Guardian had acted with bias or ill-will
against it.
In November, the
judge hearing the case, Hunter W Carroll, threw out most of the case
against Guardian News and Media Ltd; Penske Media Corporation, owner of
Variety, which also reported the story; and Will Wilkerson, a former
TMTG founder turned whistleblower.
Carroll is
an appointee of Rick Scott, the Republican former governor of Florida
and a Trump ally. His ruling stated the plaintiffs had failed to prove
that the defendants showed actual malice in their reporting, but he
allowed Trump’s group to file an amended complaint, which they did in
January.
A hearing in the case had been set for
Tuesday, according to the court docket, before TMTG’s decision to
withdraw entirely from the legal action.
Turning to the topic of ICE and Homeland security, an investigation is taking place into whether or not ICE kidnapped an American citizen. Mark Vancleave and Steve Karnowski (AP) report:
A Minnesota county is investigating the arrest of a Hmong American man
by federal officers that was captured on video as a potential case of
kidnapping, burglary and false imprisonment, officials announced Monday.
Ramsey
County Attorney John Choi and Sheriff Bob Fletcher said at a news
conference they are pursuing information from the Department of Homeland
Security that they need for their investigation into the arrest of
ChongLy “Scott” Thao, 56, on Jan. 18. Ramsey County includes the state
capital of St. Paul.
Immigration and Customs
Enforcement officers bashed open the front door of Thao’s St. Paul home
at gunpoint — without a warrant as far as Choi and Fletcher have been
able to determine — then led him outside in just his underwear and a
blanket in freezing conditions.
“There are many
facts we don’t know yet, but there’s one that we do know. And that is
that Mr. Thao is and has been an American citizen. There’s not a dispute
over that," Fletcher said. “There’s no dispute that he was taken out of
his house, forcibly taken out of his home and driven around.”
It's
good to see Minnesota leading the way yet again. There is no reason
that an American citizen should have been targeted by ICE, let alone
pulled from his home in winter wearing nothing but his underwear. This
was inhumane and there's no excuse for it. And if no one challenges it,
it can happen again. American citizens either have rights or they
don't. In this instance, ICE acted as though American citizens did not
have rights.
Choi
said he sent a letter to the federal government – known as a Touhy
request – demanding any evidence used to justify Thao’s arrest during
the operation.
Thao was detained as protesters
clashed with federal agents during Operation Metro Surge, the monthslong
immigration enforcement crackdown that roiled Minnesota.
Choi
said multiple people have made reports with his office regarding
federal agents’ actions, and said they need federal cooperation to fully
investigate.
Last night, on MS NOW, Rachel Maddow reported on ICE detention centers which are being revealed to be overflowing.
In Ariona, when two members of Congress visited Congress in February, in a scheduled visit, the prison cleared a large number of people out. But they went on an unscheduled visit last week and found prisoners "packed in like sardines," overflowing with prisoners.
Voters in Social Circle, Ga., overwhelmingly backed
President Trump in 2024. But when the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) purchased a 1 million-square-foot warehouse in the tiny city to
convert it into a mega detention center for immigrants, residents and
local officials pushed back hard.
In
February, the city notified Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
that it had shut off water and sewage services to the property until the
agency explained how it could operate “without exceeding our limited
infrastructure capacity.”
“We’re
against it,” Eric Taylor, the Social Circle city manager, told The
Hill. “Having something come in like this is just really a different
dynamic than what this particular community is about.”
Social
Circle, with a population of about 5,500, is by no means an exception;
it is one of two communities in Georgia that illustrate a national
trend. As the DHS has embarked on a $38.3 billion plan to boost
detention capacity by 92,600 beds, communities that back the president’s
agenda have said no to housing immigrants in their backyard.
New Jersey, alongside the GOP-leaning township of Roxbury, sued the DHS and ICE
in March over a purchased warehouse. Residents of Surprise, Ariz.,
protested against a 1,500+ bed facility, which the DHS and ICE reduced to 500+ beds last month amid the uproar.
In February, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) spoke out
against a warehouse conversion plan in Byhalia, Miss. Separately, the
Republican executive of Orange County, N.Y., told a January board
meeting that “an ICE facility will create chaos and will tax our
emergency management and first responders.”
“Just
not in their backyard. They’re fine with it somewhere else, they just
don’t want it back here,” Social Circle Council member Tyson Jackson
said of the opposition in his community — a sentiment apparently shared
in many other reliable red districts.
According to a document
released by ICE in February, the agency is seeking to stand up eight
large-scale detention facilities that each could hold 7,000 to 10,000
detainees for periods averaging less than 60 days, along with 16 smaller
regional processing centers to hold up to 1,500 detainees for three to
seven days.
Of course, ICE has its defenders. People like the crazed police Sgt. Dusten Mullen. Who? Rob Beschizza (BOING BOING) reports on a masked adult with a gun at a Phoeniz school walk-out to protest against ICE:
Officers
said they spotted him near a shopping center wearing a mask and openly
carrying a handgun with extra magazines. … Mullen's attorney said he is
cooperating with the internal investigation. A Phoenix police
spokesperson confirmed Mullen remains employed while their Professional
Standards Bureau looks into what happened. … According to the report,
Mullen told officers his plan was to let students assault him so they
could be arrested.
He showed up with
a gun with the intent of disrupting the peace. He showed up with a gun to disrupt a student ction. There's no excuse for what he did. Shortly after
it became known last week, he was placed on administrative leave. Kylie Werner (KTAR) reports:
A
sergeant with the Phoenix Police Department was put on administrative
leave Friday as his off-duty actions at a January student protest
against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Chandler are
being investigated.
ABC15 reported that Sgt.
Dusten Mullen showed up fully armed and masked to an ICE protest that
was conducted by Hamilton High School students, according to a Chandler
police report.
The report also stated that Mullen
confronted students despite police intervention and said he was going to
call other armed individuals to the area.
“As
law enforcement professionals, we are held to higher standards of
conduct — both in and out of uniform,” Phoenix Police Chief Matt
Giordano said in a statement Friday. “Our community expects integrity,
accountability and sound judgment from every member of this department,
and I expect the same. When we fall short, we must be accountable, and
we will not tolerate actions which undermine the trust the community has
placed in the department.”
I'm reading over a number of reports -- here, here and here,
for example -- and we're dealing with a grown adult imposing himself on
a student protest, wearing a mask, carrying a gun. That's outrageous
even before you get to the fact that he was an off duty police officer.
This is not how we foster civic activism among young people. He was
attempting to upset the protest and turn it violent. The fact that he
failed at what he was attempting does not change the fact that it was
wrong. Everything he did was wrong. He should not have a job on any
police force.
When Chumps goons aren't attacking people in the US, they're ignoring Americans stranded around the world. For example, Sarah K. Burris reports:
Two
American pilots have been stranded in West Africa for months, and the
government has done little to help them get home, one of them told
Semafor.
In an interview, Brad Schlenker, a
supporter of President Donald Trump, said he's been in detention in
Guinea since late last year.
The U.S. government, he said, has been “useless” in helping them.
“I voted for this administration because they were supposed to protect Americans,” he explained.
He
complained that there's no public attention to his plight and that the
State Department has taken a more "low-key" approach the report
described.
Schlenker said that he's heard from
some close to the situation that “if someone from the State Department
had simply called, if [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio or [Defense
Secretary] Pete Hegseth or someone else just picked up the phone, we’d
be out of here.”
He thinks that the issue might be related to one of Trump's mineral deals “weighing in on this situation."
"Guinea
contains some of the world’s largest deposits of bauxite and iron ore,
and the Trump administration has actively cultivated Conakry as a
partner during a wider push to secure African mineral resources," said
the report.
Fabio Nunez is the name of the other American pilot being held.
Chump has time for every vanity project in the world but doesn't have time to assist two Americans stranged in a foreign country. Harry Fletcher (INDY 100) notes:
Just
weeks after unveiling plans for a Miami skyscraper dedicated to
himself, Donald Trump has decided to imprint his legacy in another major
US location for "Americans to enjoy for many decades to come".
The
president unveiled plans for the 'Triumphal Arch' - where bears an
uncanny resemblance to France's Arc de Triomphe - which is set to stand
250-feet high over Washington DC.
[. . .]
The monument, if approved, would be taller than the US Capitol building and the Lincoln Memorial.
In
a relentless, unprecedented branding exercise, the sheer volume of
entities now bearing the name of President Donald Trump strains
credulity. We now live in a world of Trump RX and Trump accounts, of
Trump coins and Trump fighter jets. We have seen the John F. Kennedy
Center for the Performing Arts slapped with his name, the Institute of
Peace renamed after him, the christening of the President Donald J.
Trump International Airport in Palm Beach, a new fleet of guided-missile
warships designated as Trump-class destroyers, the Trump Gold Card visa
for wealthy immigrants, and even the unprecedented stamp of his
signature on U.S. paper currency, something reserved beforehand only for
the Treasury Secretary.
Of
course, that doesn’t even factor in the graveyard of branded detritus
across Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump Ice bottled water, Trump
Airlines, Trump Mortgage, Trump Fragrances, Trump Board Games, Trump
Bibles, the infamous Trump University, and many more.
As we write about in our best-selling new book, Trump’s Ten Commandments
— the first assessment of the arc of Trump’s career by leadership
scholars — his grandiose image building is a key leadership lever of the
supposed master of the deal. Published by Worth/Simon & Schuster,
our book makes clear how the outer-borough arriviste from Queens was
never truly accepted by the Manhattan aristocracy, so he reacted by
plastering his name all over New York City in giant letters, putting
gold leaf where others would put wood or stone, creating a visual
vocabulary of success that regular people could easily and immediately
understand. He is obsessed with gold, because gold screams money to the
masses. This has always been his entire shtick: class for the masses. He
democratizes the performance of luxury in a comically over-the-top,
exaggeratedly accessible way. He offers middle-class tourists the chance
to walk through Trump Tower’s golden atrium, to bask in a glow that
feels like royalty.
This splashy indulgence was labeled a century ago as “conspicuous consumption”
by the economist Thorstein Veblen, who believed the average American
had a desire to emulate such garish symbols of success. Such an
ostentatious show of wealth may prompt some to imagine admiringly,
“That’s how I would live if I made $1 billion overnight.”
And
more than 20 years ago, when NBC invited one of us to review the first
season of The Apprentice, the result was a Wall Street Journal column
titled “The Last Emperor Trump.”
It infuriated Trump, drawing a parallel between the Roman crowds who
once packed into the Colosseum to cheer on gladiators and see the
emperor vote on the fate of the loser, and the latter-day TV viewers
huddled by their screens to see how Trump, with his imperial aura,
decreed the fate of contestants. This brutal method of leadership
selection rewarded the most gladiatorial aspirants who survived by
destroying their own teammates — odd in the context of leadership since
it left no team in place for the winner to lead.
No
successful emperor in history has engaged in Trumpian levels of
relentless personal branding. Julius Caesar did not stamp his name on
every aqueduct. Even Alexander the Great, who named Alexandria after
himself, showed relative restraint compared to what we are seeing now.
Historically, the leaders who obsess over ornamental personal monuments
tend to be those with more divisive legacies.
This
grasping for grandeur is far more than mere commercial branding or
entrepreneurial greed as Trump exploits the trappings of office. Such
desperate attempts at grandiosity evoke empty vanity, clutching at
physical monuments to prove a greatness that history has not yet
conferred.
For patrician statesmen, grandeur is
usually understated, radiating restraint rather than gawk-inspiring
shows of brazen wealth. It is ironic that Trump regularly compares
himself to Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln — both
renowned for their legendary humility. Biographers Ron Chernow, Joseph
Ellis, and Garry Wills have documented Washington’s reluctance to assume
command of the Continental Army in 1775, feeling he was not up to the
job, and his determination to limit his term of office, not wanting to
resemble a king despite his popularity. Similarly, Carl Sandburg, David
Herbert Donald, and Doris Kearns Goodwin have depicted a Lincoln marked
by humble, self-deprecating self-awareness.
By
contrast, Trump is a grotesque extension of what Arthur Schlesinger
described as “The Imperial Presidency” — a concept Schlesinger applied
critically to the Nixon era, though FDR and Ronald Reagan were masters
of majestic ceremony, mythmaking, and monumental landmarks.
Meanwhile, there's a war going on, one Donald started, and it's not going well as Ben (MEIDASTOUCH NEWS) notes this morning.
In announcing a complete U.S. blockade of
Iranian ports, President Trump took a drastically new approach to
trying to achieve what he has wanted for weeks — opening the Strait of
Hormuz to global traffic.
The
president seems to be hoping that the blockade will heap new pressure on
Iran after direct talks between U.S. and Iranian officials in Pakistan
over the weekend failed to end the war, and he suggested that other
countries would join the effort.
But on Monday, there were few volunteers, with only Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel publicly supporting the idea.
Mr.
Trump’s proposed blockade “makes no sense,” Spain’s defense minister,
Margarita Robles, said in a television interview. “Since this war
started, nothing makes sense,” she added. “This is another episode in
the downward spiral the world has been dragged into.”
Experts said they doubted that the
blockade would get Mr. Trump any closer to an endgame that he could sell
as an American victory.
“I’ll save
you the waiting period: Iran is not going to capitulate,” said Danny
Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security
Studies in Israel who studies Iran and its proxies. “This regime
believes that the damage that will be sustained by this act will be
bigger for the U.S. and the international economy than for Iran.”
Imposing
a blockade entailed risks for the U.S., he said. It could further
increase oil prices, deepening the drag on the global economy. The U.S.
interdiction of ships belonging to, say, India or China could cause
diplomatic clashes. It will also bring U.S. ships into striking distance
of Iran’s missiles and drones, putting American military personnel in
harm’s way.
All these weeks later and Chump still doesn't know what he's doing next.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:
Warren: “Amazon's response reeks of desperation to please Donald Trump…This looks like bribery in plain sight.”
Washington, D.C. — In a new response to Senator
Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Representative Hank Johnson (D-Ga.),
Amazon claimed that there was “no improper” activity in its bid for the
new Melania documentary despite what appears to be a corrupt pay-to-play
arrangement with the Trump administration. Last month, the lawmakers opened an investigation
into Amazon’s investment in the Melania film and questioned whether it
was used to secure favorable treatment from the Trump administration on
antitrust suits, potential tariff exemptions, foreign trade deals,
federal contracts, and tax cuts.
The company refused to explain its massive overpayment for the film’s
rights, insisting that it followed a “thorough and competitive bidding
process” despite reportedly paying more than three times as the next
closest bidder.
Amazon also said that its decision to license the film was “based on
the film and series itself — the access, the story, and its cultural and
historical relevance,” again providing no business justification for
the investment.
In reaction to Amazon’s insufficient response, Senator Warren released the following statement:
“Amazon's response reeks of desperation to please Donald Trump. If
there’s nothing corrupt about this deal and the bidding process was
truly “competitive”, why won’t Amazon explain why it reportedly paid
three times as much as the next highest bidder? The logical explanation
is that Amazon is trying to buy the President’s favor by dumping
millions into the Trump family’s pockets. This looks like bribery in
plain sight, and Amazon must give Congress — and the American people —
answers now.”
Representative Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) also released the following statement:
“When we saw the oligarchs and tech bros gather in front-row seats at
Trump’s second inauguration – some of whom gave him millions for his
re-election campaign – it raised the specter that the rich and powerful
were going to wield dangerous levels of power and influence on the
nation through their largess to this transactional and corrupt
president. Amazon’s ‘nothing-to-see-here’ response makes this fear even
more of a reality. If there were truly nothing to see, then Amazon would
have answered these basic questions.”
Amazon reportedly invested at least $75 million in the documentary —
with reports indicating that about $28 million of that will go directly
to Melania Trump. To date, the film has only grossed around $16 million, raising questions about whether Amazon ever planned to break even on the film.
