Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said he would have allowed Missouri to sue New York for interfering in the 2024 election, even as the top court turned away the challenge.
Missouri attorney general Andrew Bailey had asked the Supreme Court to lift Donald Trump's gag order and block his sentencing in Alvin Bragg's "hush money" case until after the 2024 election.
The gag order limits what Trump can say about a case that his electoral opponent, former prosecutor Kamala Harris, has made central to her campaign.
A frequent target of the left, Clarence Thomas is known as one of the boldest conservatives on the Supreme Court. Earlier this summer, he cast doubt on the legal authority of Special Counsel Jack Smith to prosecute Trump.
While Democrat-led prosecutions of Trump have mostly stalled, Kamala Harris has pushed a "prosecutor versus felon" narrative, citing Trump's sole conviction on "falsifying business records" in New York. Missouri argues that New York is interfering with Missourians' right to a free and fair election.
"There is no urgent need to press forth with an immediate sentence and gag order," the Republican attorney general wrote. "There is an urgent need for the American people to hear from the major candidates without one state hampering one candidate's campaign."
In a brief order, the Supreme Court dismissed Bailey's complaint, but Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito indicated they would have permitted the case to be heard.
"Justice Thomas and Justice Alito would grant the motion for leave to file the bill of complaint but would not grant other relief," the order says.
Trump's lawyers have argued the gag order should be tossed now that the trial is over, and that its continued enforcement burdens Trump's First Amendment rights and his ability to campaign.
The trial judge who imposed the gag order, Juan Merchan, has refused to lift it until Trump is sentenced in September.
During the trial, Merchan fined Trump $10,000 for violating the order and threatened to have him jailed.
The order bars Trump from commenting on court staff, prosecutors and their families, which is notable because Merchan's daughter has worked for Democrats including Kamala Harris.
Trump has asked Merchan to toss the conviction, arguing it was based on evidence that shouldn't have been allowed in light of the Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity.
A Pakistani man was arrested and charged with plotting to kill President Trump on behalf of Iran.
Asif Merchant, also known as Asif Raza Merchant, 46, was charged in New York with a murder-for-hire scheme targeting a U.S. politician. Trump was not directly mentioned in the indictment, but sources told the media that he was a target.
The complaint was unsealed Tuesday, but Merchant was arrested in July - just a day before Trump was nearly assassinated at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. There does not appear to be any connection between the two plots.
Merchant was apparently on the radar of law enforcement for some time. He came to the U.S. in April from Pakistan, after spending time in Iran.
On arrival in the U.S., he contacted someone to carry out his murder plot, and the person became a confidential source for law enforcement.
At a June meeting in New York, Merchant told the informant that he had multiple jobs for him, and the victims would be "targeted here,” in the U.S. He told the source to gather people who could execute the plans.
Later, Merchant met with the so-called assassins, who were actually undercover FBI agents. He explained his plot, which involved stealing documents, arranging protests at political rallies, and killing a “political person.”
He said the hitmen would receive instructions on who to kill either the last week of August or the first week of September, after Merchant had left the country. Merchant would communicate from overseas using code words.
Merchant paid a $5,000 advance to the undercover agents.
Police arrested Merchant as he planned to leave the country on July 12. The next day, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks tried to kill Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The FBI is investigating the July assassination attempt in Butler. They have yet to release a motive for the shooter, who was killed at the scene.
Iran has long wanted revenge for the assassination of its top general, Qassem Soleimani. Trump ordered the hit on Soleimani in 2020.
Regional tensions in the Middle East have escalated after the leader of Hamas was killed on Iranian soil, allegedly by Israel, raising fears of a wider war. Five U.S. soldiers were injured at a base in Iraq this week in an Iran-backed rocket attack.
Anti-Trump radical Jamie Raskin (Md.), who sat on the January 6th committee, discussed overturning the election results in 2024 if Donald Trump wins.
In resurfaced comments from February, Raskin raised an alarming scenario, in which Congress would disqualify Trump after the election is already over.
The Democrat described the action as a necessary response to the Supreme Court failing to disqualify Trump from the ballot.
In March, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that individual states cannot enforce the so-called "insurrection ban" that Democrats had dusted off in a desperate push to keep Trump out of power.
Anticipating the court's pro-Trump ruling, Raskin told a crowd at a Washington D.C. bookstore that Congress would have to take drastic action.
"They want to kick it to Congress, so it’s going to be up to us on January 6, 2025, to tell the rampaging Trump mobs that he’s disqualified. And then we need bodyguards for everybody, and civil war conditions," he said.
Raskin's comment about "Trump mobs" is clearly an allusion to the riots on January 6th, 2021. Democrats have long accused Trump of trying to overturn the 2020 election, but in the scenario Raskin dreams of, the Trump "mobs" would be the ones protesting an election being overturned.
Raskin preemptively blamed the Supreme Court for creating "civil war conditions" by refusing to rule the way he and other Democrats wanted.
"Not all of them, but these justices who have not many cases to look at every year, not that much work to do, a huge staff, great protection — simply do not want to do their job," he complained.
The chaos that Raskin welcomes was rejected by the Supreme Court in its 9-0 ruling.
The justices explicitly warned that attempting to enforce Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment after an election "could nullify the votes of millions and change the election result."
"Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos—arriving at any time or different times, up to and perhaps beyond the Inauguration," the court ruled.
Democrats have already gone to incredible extremes to stop Trump. They have weaponized the law in an attempt to crush him. He was almost assassinated a few weeks ago, and they're back to calling him a threat to democracy.
This January, we may find out just how far Democrats are willing to go. Is throwing out an election in the name of "democracy" too unhinged even for them?
An armed Texas woman was arrested for traveling to Washington D.C. to harm Donald Trump.
The suspect was caught just three miles from the White House and a mile from the Capitol, according to reports.
The arrest comes less than a month after Trump was almost killed by a sniper at a rally in Pennsylvania.
Trump was at a fundraiser in the Hamptons on Friday when a 41-year-old San Antonio woman, Christina Montoya, was arrested for threatening him.
The Metropolitan Police in D.C. shared few details about the troubling incident, but she started making threats on July 20, according to a police report, just days after Trump cheated death in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13.
Gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks lived nearby in Bethel Park, about an hour's drive south of Butler. As this latest threat demonstrates, lunatics will go any distance to carry out their twisted plans.
Secret Service alerted police that Montoya, of San Antonio, was headed to Washington D.C. and she was intercepted Friday afternoon. Police found a Smith and Wesson M&P Shield pistol, a magazine and a gun lock.
"On Friday, August 2, 2024, at approximately 12:12 p.m., MPD received information regarding a woman who traveled to Washington, DC.
The woman’s vehicle was located in the First District and subsequent investigation lead to the woman’s location," MPD said in a news release.
Montoya was charged with Carrying a Pistol without a License, Possession of an Unregistered Firearm, and Threats Against a Former President.
The attempted assassination of Trump on July 13 has led to plummeting trust in Secret Service, which has been accused of covering up the circumstances that allowed Crooks to shoot at Trump and kill another man from a nearby rooftop.
Trump escaped death by turning his head just in time to look at a chart. The bullet grazed his ear, leaving him bloodied.
Trump has speculated that Democratic rhetoric painting him as a threat to democracy may have played a role in the shooting. He has credited his survival to divine intervention.
“The first one was not a good situation, not a good situation. That was really something incredible. That was from God. That was from God. Because the chances … that was from God. For all of you non-believers, that one was from God, right?” he asked at a rally last weekend.
With President Joe Biden out of the 2024 presidential race and Vice President Kamala Harris the Democratic Party's nominee, the Supreme Court will play a major role in the November election.
As The Hill noted, former President Donald Trump had the unprecedented chance to appoint three justices, all conservative, which has drastically altered the decisions coming out of the high court.
Biden's last move, reportedly, will be to push for radical, unconstitutional Supreme Court "reform," and Harris has embraced the idea.
The president's promise to reform the high court came in the wake of the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, and the most recent immunity ruling that heavily favored Trump in his legal battles.
Given that Trump's influence on the high court led to the striking down of the landmark abortion ruling, and given that Harris is incorporating the abortion issue heavily into her campaign, many believe the Supreme Court will play a role in the upcoming election.
Biden recently proposed several "reforms" that would drastically change the Supreme Court forever.
The Hill noted the proposed changes:
Biden’s three-prong proposal would impose 18-year term limits on the nine justices, allowing for the sitting president to appoint a new justice every two years, and establish a binding code of conduct. It also calls for a constitutional amendment to partially overturn the high court’s recent decision on presidential immunity.
The Harris campaign will likely pounce on the perceived ethics controversies surrounding the high court, which are mostly made up from mainstream media sources.
Still, the topic will be a hot one, and Harris and her campaign will likely use it as a cornerstone issue to get Democrat voters fired up and to the polls on Election Day.
"The vast majority of Americans see that something is deeply out of kilter at the Court," said Alex Aronson, executive director of the liberal advocacy group Court Accountability, The Hill noted.
Given the extreme amount of bipartisan support needed to enact even one of Biden's silly high court reform proposals, the chance of it actually happening is razor thin, to be generous.
Political insiders know that's the case, but Harris's campaign also knows how shockingly low IQ her voters are, generally speaking, and will use the issue to hype them up, and ultimately never deliver.
"Harris recognizes that it’s a winning issue," said Dan Urman, a law and politics professor at Northeastern University. That's a polite way of saying that voters won't know the difference.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has already confirmed that the proposed reforms are DOA (dead on arrival) and will not even come close to receiving enough House support to pass them.
The Biden administration punched a massive hornet's nest earlier this week with regard to a plea deal with some of the worst individual enemies of the United States in history.
Earlier this week, the country was stunned to learn that Biden's Department of Justice had the audacity to strike up a plea deal with some of the terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks.
According to The Daily Wire, not surprisingly, the announcement brought unbelievably extreme backlash, causing the administration to go back on the deal rather quickly.
Not only was the deal canceled, the person behind making the deal was "relieved" from duty.
The cases at Guantanamo Bay, where the infamous 9/11 terrorists have been held, were overseen by retired Brig. Gen. Susan K. Escallier.
According to the outlet, "her team entered into pretrial agreements with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsaw."
The deal allows the terrorists, who killed nearly 3,000 people on that history-changing day in America, to avoid the death penalty for pleading guilty to killing 2,976 Americans.
Instead of the death penalty, the terrorists would only have to serve life in prison, and not answer for their crimes against this nation.
My statement with @LeaderMcConnell on the revoked plea deal for 9/11 terrorists. The Biden-Harris administration’s consideration of a plea deal with terrorist mass murderers was disgraceful. pic.twitter.com/T5VNLZFGnX
— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) August 3, 2024
The Daily Wire noted:
By removing Escallier, Austin assumed authority over the case and immediately canceled the agreement, meaning the death penalty is back on the table, following days of public backlash against the Biden-Harris Administraiton.
Many top members of Congress, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) slammed the Biden administration for allowing the deal to even become a thought, let alone reality.
"The Biden-Harris Administration’s weakness in the face of sworn enemies of the American people apparently knows no bounds," the Senate GOP leader said.
He added, "The only thing worse than negotiating with terrorists is negotiating with them after they are in custody. The families of their victims and the American people deserve real justice."
Several other members of Congress torched the Biden administration over the deal, as well they should have. What a disgrace it was to even be mentioned.
The Supreme Court of New York has ruled that Texas can continue its practice of bussing migrants to New York City, rejecting an effort by Democratic mayor Eric Adams to block the stream of arrivals.
The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott (R), hailed the ruling as a major victory.
“Another WIN! The New York Supreme Court REJECTED Mayor Adams’ attempt to block Texas from busing migrants to this sanctuary city. Until the Biden-Harris Administration secures the border, Texas will continue to send migrants to sanctuary cities," he wrote on X.
According to Abbott, 46,000 migrants have been transported to New York City so far. In January, Mayor Adams sued 17 bus charter companies, arguing they had violated a state Social Services Law by dropping migrants "without a means of support."
Abbot began bussing migrants to cities north of Texas to illustrate the hypocrisy of Democrats who have ignored the burdens of mass immigration in border states.
Since Abbott started bussing migrants to New York, the city has seen a huge strain on public resources and an uptick in crime. Adams' lawsuit demanded $700 million in compensation for shelter, food and health care.
The Supreme Court rejected Adams' attempt, saying he has no power to control the movement of people between states. Adams said he respects the ruling.
“The mass migration of people within the country, which the commissioner seeks to chill or prevent, is an issue reserved by the Constitution for Congress, lest the United States fall to a regime of Balkanization with each state setting fort a patchwork of inconsistent criteria for crossing state lines,” New York Supreme Court Justice Mary V. Rosado wrote.
The ruling just emphasizes the fact that the federal government is in control of this issue, and under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, they've totally dropped the ball.
Texas has also been involved in a multi-front legal war with the federal government over the border. The Biden administration has opposed unilateral action by Abbott to secure the border, which Abbott says is justified by the feds' inaction.
An appeals court this week sided with Texas in a dispute over buoys in the Rio Grande.
"Biden tried to remove them. I fought to keep them in the water,” Abbott boasted. “That is exactly where they will stay.”
A Texas rancher is suing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for mishandling the southern border and allowing a "flood" of illegal immigrants to harm his property and livestock.
Rancher Michael Vicker has incurred thousands of dollars in damages from migrants crossing his property since 2021.
The aliens "routinely cause thousands of dollars in damage to fences or gates as they pass through the ranch," the lawsuit states.
The migrants also leave litter, causing significant environmental damage on his 1,000 acre-property and putting his cattle in harms' way.
"Aliens also deposit tons of trash and litter as they traverse Plaintiffs’ ranch, which compromises food and water sources for livestock."
"For instance, Plaintiff Vickers has autopsied cows with their rumen (large stomach) impacted with plastic bags and trash. Cattle also escape through cut fences and gates torn down by illegal aliens."
"Since early 2021, Plaintiff Vickers has incurred more than $50,000 in fence and gate damages alone. Plaintiff Vickers has also spent thousands of dollars to mitigate environmental damage."
Beyond the damage done, Vickers and his wife must be constantly armed because of an influx of criminal gang members from groups like MS-13.
The chaos is deliberate, Vickers claims, echoing Republicans who have long accused the Biden administration of pursuing an open border agenda.
The Biden-Harris administration "knowingly adopted numerous immigration policies … that, working in concert, encourage and facilitate the entrance and release of record numbers of illegal aliens into the United States while simultaneously preventing the removal of the vast majority of aliens who are unlawfully present in the United States," the lawsuit states.
In July, illegal immigration declined to its lowest point under Biden, but the impact of three and a half years of record border crossings is still being felt.
Democrats have been eager to downplay the chaos as Republicans ramp up attacks on presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris' role as "border czar."
The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) is bringing the lawsuit on behalf of Vickers and Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe, as well as Kinney County and Atascosa County. They are asking the judge for a sweeping injunction blocking Biden's immigration policies.
"We hope the court sees Biden’s war on the laws he is supposed to be enforcing as the constitutional offense it is, ends these policies, and grants an injunction,” IRLI executive director Dale Wilcox said.
Kamala Harris' relationship with a radical, anti-American pastor is facing scrutiny as Democrats rally behind her presidential bid.
In one of America's darkest hours, San Francisco preacher Amos Brown blamed America for the 9/11 attacks that killed almost 3,000 Americans.
Harris has known Brown for around 25 years, the Washington Free Beacon reported, and she shows no sign of severing the connection.
Six days after 9/11, Brown blamed America for the deadliest terror attack in the nation's history at a memorial service for the victims.
"America, is there anything you did to set up this climate?" Brown raved. "Ohhhh—America, what did you do?"
"America, what did you do two weeks ago when I stood at the world conference on racism, when you wouldn't show up?"
His comments shocked those in attendance, including Nancy Pelosi - who is now supporting Harris' bid for president.
“The act of terrorism on Sept. 11 put those people outside the order of civilized behavior, and we will not take responsibility for that," Pelosi said at the time.
Over the years, Brown has continued to share views that America is a deeply evil country.
He sits on the California Reparations Task Force and as recently as 2021, declared, “I know America. America is a racist country."
Brown is cut from the same cloth as Jeremiah Wright, the radical anti-American pastor whose unhinged sermons caused trouble for Barack Obama in 2008.
At the time, Brown defended Wright, who similarly blamed America for 9/11 in one of his rants.
"As regards to Wright's and my style of preaching; we are not angry; we are not inflammatory; we just tell the truth with passion and enthusiasm," Brown said. "And we will not be silent when persons mischaracterize our witness as anger."
Some Democrats have compared Harris' initial burst of 2024 momentum to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, but Republicans say the Harris hype will soon fade.
Over the years, Harris has described Brown as a mentor and "inspiration."
"For two decades now, at least, I have turned to you," Harris told Brown in remarks to the National Baptist Convention 2022.
"I have turned to him. And I will say that your wisdom has really guided me and grounded me during some of the most difficult times."
Kamala Harris' VP shortlist just got a little shorter.
North Carolina governor Roy Cooper (D) is bowing out of the race. In a statement on X, he said now is not the "right time" to enter national politics.
Cooper reached out to Harris' team last Monday, the day after Biden dropped out, to say he wasn't interested, the New York Times reported.
The governor expressed concern about Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, a Republican, becoming active governor if he stepped down. Robinson is the Republican candidate in the race to replace Cooper, who is term limited.
Cooper may have his eyes on the Senate, with Republican Thom Tillis' seat up for grabs in 2026. In any case, he's clearly not gunning for VP.
"I strongly support Vice President Harris' campaign for President. I know she's going to win and I was honored to be considered for this role. This just wasn't the right time for North Carolina and for me to potentially be on a national ticket," he wrote on X.
"As l've said from the beginning, she has an outstanding list of people from which to choose, and we'll all work to make sure she wins," he added.
The top candidates for Harris' running mate are all white men from swing states, as Harris, a racially mixed woman, tries to broaden her appeal.
Cooper was elected governor in 2016 and won re-election in 2020, even as Donald Trump won the state in both years' presidential elections.
Some of the other names are Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Cooper, Buttigieg, and Walz all joined a "White Dudes for Harris" Zoom call Monday, where they lavished praise on the vice president. Cooper rejected the notion that Harris is a "DEI candidate."
“Here’s what they’re saying, that women and people of color don’t deserve to lead," Cooper said. "We know better than that, guys.”
Harris has quickly rallied Democrats behind her after Joe Biden's shocking decision to forgo re-election.
She is expected to name a running mate before August 7, which is the deadline for Democrats to nominate her in a virtual roll call ahead of the party's convention in Chicago.