Trump goes to bat for Musk and his white genocide lies
ALSO INSIDE: The congressman who ended up on Team ISIS
Cam here 👋 bringing you your daily dose of what people are doing – good, bad, and otherwise – in the world of politics. We’re diving into the stories you won’t see anywhere else. And remember, you can also keep up with me over on TikTok and Bluesky.
What Happened
While President Donald Trump spent Wednesday distracting the media by trying to red pill the President of South Africa with white supremacist conspiracy theories, his administration was busy demanding an emergency ruling from the US Supreme Court.
The demand is an attempt to prevent transparency in any form about the actions taken by the Department of Government Efficiency, an organization that has taken unknown amounts of taxpayer data for unknown purposes from agencies like the Social Security Administration. Typically, government agencies are required to provide the public with information—like what actions they take, or what money they spend—by making it available online or sending it to anyone who submits a FOIA request.
The government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) submitted FOIA requests to obtain records from DOGE. The agency denied, CREW sued, and a judge ordered DOGE to hand over the requested documents. The Trump administration attempted one of its classic delay tactics and asked to have the order paused while they could appeal—which was rejected. Trump’s team has now asked the Supreme Court to allow the pause while the FOIA request lawsuit makes its way through the courts, ironically claiming that to not allow the pause would be “an untenable affront to separation of powers.”
Should Trump succeed, DOGE will continue to harvest the personal data of over 340 million people with no oversight, something over 250 million of those people are vehemently opposed to.
An attack on privacy that is this brash and unpopular doesn’t make for great Oval Office small talk—and certainly isn’t something Trump wants voters to be aware of—so instead, he put on some old Info Wars tapes and accused the South African leader of genocide.
Attempts to Sanewash
White House asks US Supreme Court to block access to DOGE records
Trump administration asks Supreme Court to halt discovery in DOGE case
Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court To Prevent DOGE Records From Being Released
Far-Right Spin
South African president denies white genocide — then Trump shoves proof in his face
Trump confronts South African president with white genocide claims in Oval Office meeting
Trump’s losses in court keep stacking up
Judicial rejections of the Trump administration’s illegal actions are stacking up so quickly that the administration’s losses in court are already being used as precedent by judges to rule against Trump’s newest actions.
A federal appeals court this week used the US Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in the case of Kilmer Abrego Garcia—that he was denied basic rights and the government must facilitate his immediate return to the US—in its order that Trump bring back another immigrant it illegally sent to prison in El Salvador.
Like Abrego Garcia, Daniel Lozano-Camargo was taken by government agents in March and sent to a foreign prison indefinitely. And, like Abrego Garcia, Lozano-Camargo had a special protected status that guaranteed he could stay in the US. Trump’s legal team has argued that this doesn’t matter, and bringing anyone back after deporting them would undermine the President’s ability to use powers granted in the Alien Enemies Act and cause irreparable harm to his authority.
US Court of Appeals Judge DeAndrea Gist Benjamin disagreed.
“The Government’s argument entirely ignores the Supreme Court’s decision in Noem v. Abrego Garcia,” Benjamin ruled. “The argument that the Government would be ‘irreparably harmed’ by facilitating [Lozano-Camargo’s] return rings hollow. The Government is not irreparably harmed by facilitating and effectuating the return of a person within its control who was wrongfully removed from the United States.”
While neither Abrego Garcia nor Lozano-Camargo is home yet, every court decision that rules against Trump weakens his position and strengthens the judicial branch’s case against the executive, should the judicial branch’s court orders ever need to be executed by force.
US Rep. Scott Perry, Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District
Since taking office in 2013, Rep. Perry has:
Seen his net net worth increase from $987K to $1.4M
Sponsored 291 bills
Authored 60 bills that have been signed into law
Attempted to replace Pennsylvania’s electoral votes in 2020 with Republican fake electors
Had four bills vetoed—all by Joe Biden—that targeted labor unions’ bargaining power, student loan relief, climate action as a fiduciary responsibility, and clean water protections
Fun Facts
Rep. Perry is a huge fan of conspiracy theories—from QAnon-inspired accusations that Italians are manipulating US elections with satellites to the white nationalist fear that white Christians are strategically being replaced by non-Christian people of color as a way to manipulate and control culture and governments. Perry’s apparent obsession with election conspiracy theories led him to both defy a Congressional subpoena and request a preemptive presidential pardon in the event his deep dive landed him in hot water.
His penchant for claims without proof has landed him some unexpected bedfellows: in 2017, Perry wound up on the side of ISIS, for example, when he supported their false claim that the jihadist organization was responsible for the 2017 Las Vegas shooting.
Despite being a third-generation American—Perry’s grandparents were Colombian immigrants—he’s taken a “pull the ladder up” approach to US citizenship. He’s been vocal in his support of the illegal actions against immigrants that Trump has undertaken during his current term and was exclusionary in who he considered a citizen throughout Trump’s first term. After Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, Perry dismissed its significance, as he didn’t think U.S. citizens were dying because he thought Puerto Rico was a different country.
Pennsylvania gears up for (another) fight over abortion rights
Reproductive healthcare access has been a nightmare in the US since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. Some states have enshrined abortion care as a constitutional right, while others force horrific, nightmare scenarios to play out in tragic detail.
Then there are states like Pennsylvania, where lawmakers fight like heavyweight boxers for laws that could make either scenario a reality in the Keystone State. Two laws currently working their way to the governor’s desk symbolize the ideological battle being waged: one would prohibit harassment or intimidation outside of medical clinics, while another would amend the state constitution to explicitly say there is no right to abortion access in the state of Pennsylvania.
Leah Sherrell, video correspondent for COURIER’s Pennsylvania newsroom, The Keystone, breaks it down perfectly. Check it out on TikTok or Instagram.
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