Political Glance
A federal judge on Monday dismissed the criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, concluding that the prosecutor who brought the charges at President Donald Trump’s urging was illegally appointed by the Justice Department.
The rulings from U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie halt at least for now a pair of prosecutions that had targeted two of the president’s most high-profile political opponents and amount to a stunning rebuke of the Trump administration’s legal maneuvering to install an inexperienced and loyalist prosecutor willing to file cases.
The orders do not concern the substance of the allegations against Comey or James but instead deal with the unconventional manner in which the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, was named to her position as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Defense lawyers said the Trump administration had no legal authority to make the appointment. In a pair of similar rulings, Currie agreed and said the invalid appointment required the dismissal of the cases.
Judge dismisses Comey, James indictments after finding that prosecutor was illegally appointed
Republicans frustrated with Bondi over Epstein, Comey ‘messes’ at DOJ
GOP lawmakers think Bondi fueled the firestorm — which Democrats have delighted in stoking — by telling Fox News anchor John Roberts in February that Epstein’s client list was “sitting right now on my desk to review.”
Months later, the Justice Department and FBI released an unsigned memo asserting there was “no incriminating ‘client list’” and that federal investigators “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.” That memo provoked widespread skepticism and accusations that the Trump administration wasn’t being fully transparent.
“There’s a https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5617816-senate-republicans-criticize-bondi-justice-department/lot of frustration with the Epstein stuff. People thought the DOJ really mishandled that in general, and unnecessarily elevated that,” one GOP senator, who requested anonymity to discuss frustration with Bondi, told The Hill.
The senator called Bondi’s statement to Fox News in February and the conflicting July memo an “unforced error.”
Bondi has since explained that she wasn’t talking about an actual client list but instead a stack of Epstein-related files and that it was Roberts, the interviewer, who used the words “list of Jeffrey Epstein clients.”
Judge blocks IRS from sharing data with ICE
A federal judge ruled Friday that the IRS appears to have broken the law when it reached an agreement to share secret taxpayer data with ICE, and ordered a pause to the practice.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton appointee to the court in the District of Columbia, called the sharing “unlawful conduct” that broke procedural and tax law.
“Plaintiffs have shown that the IRS’s implementation of the Address-Sharing Policy was arbitrary and capricious because the IRS failed to recognize that it was departing from its prior policy of strict confidentiality, failed to consider the reliance interests that were engendered by its prior policy of strict confidentiality, and failed to provide a reasoned explanation for the new policy,” she wrote.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had sought access to IRS data to help track down illegal immigrant targets.
According to documents revealed in the case, ICE initially sought information on more than 7 million IRS taxpayers, then settled on 1.28 million “immigrant taxpayers,” the judge said.
At least 47,000 records were provided, the judge said.
The key takeaways from Mamdani and Trump's Oval Office love fest
Donald Trump and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's Oval Office meeting turned into a surprising love fest between the two New Yorkers.
On Nov. 21, Trump, the 79-year-old billionaire Republican president warmly and repeatedly patted Mamdani's hand. Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, stood next to the seated president. Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Trump's native borough of Queens, made several references to how well Trump did in the 2024 presidential election in the city.
The warm feelings marked a stark contrast after months of fighting in the press and social media. Trump once called for the arrest of Mamdani if he didn't help with the administration's sweeping immigration crackdown, and also said he wouldn’t give federal money to New York over Mamdani’s leftist politics. Mamdani has called Trump a fascist and, in his victory speech, said he's ready to go toe-to-toe with the president, including over immigration. (Trump has repeatedly restricted entry from from majority-Muslim countries, while Mamdani will be New York City's first Muslim mayor.)
In their first meeting, Trump now said he’d readily live in Mamdani’s New York, while Mamdani said he looks forward to working with Trump on improving affordability in their shared hometown.
Tears and solemnity at Cheney funeral – but no memorial for those killed in Iraq
You suspected that Maga had not conquered the Washington national cathedral when Bill Kristol was spotted at a men’s urinal conversing with Chris Wallace. You knew it for sure when James Carville, Anthony Fauci and Rachel Maddow were seen sitting close to one another in the nave.
The funeral of the 46th US vice-president, Dick Cheney, who died earlier this month aged 84, was a throwback to a less raucous and rancorous time. Ex-presidents and vice-presidents, Democratic and Republican, made small talk, but Donald Trump, who spent Thursday crying treason and calling for Democrats to be put to death, and his deputy JD Vance were not invited.
More than a thousand guests saw eight military body bearers place Cheney’s flag-draped casket on a catafalque as gently as lowering a baby in a crib. Then two hours of plangent music, solemn processions and tearful eulogies beneath stained glass and a soaring vaulted ceiling amounted to a requiem for the Republican party.
Cheney used to be known as its Darth Vader and, fittingly, the neo-Gothic church’s exterior boasts a hand-carved grotesque of the Star Wars character. Vader terrorised the galaxy but saved his son and renounced the dark side of the Force on his deathbed. Cheney had imperial ambitions of his own but gained a measure of redemption by defending his daughter and democracy from Trump.
Poll: Democrats have biggest advantage for control of Congress in 8 years
Heading into the 2026 midterm elections, there are some very big warning signs for Republicans in the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll.
The survey of 1,443 adults, conducted from Nov. 10-13, found:
Democrats holding their largest advantage, 14 points, since 2017 on the question of who respondents would vote for if the midterm elections were held today;
President Trump's approval rating is just 39%, his lowest since right after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol;
A combined 6-in-10 blame congressional Republicans or Trump for the government shutdown; and
Nearly 6-in-10 say Trump's top priority should be lowering prices — and no other issue comes close.
"I don't think rent prices or food prices are at the forefront like they should be," said Nicole Stokes of Dallas, Texas, who participated in NPR's poll and voted for Trump last year. "You know — the American people — it's our pockets that are getting ripped apart to fund things."
Larry Summers to relinquish Harvard teaching role amid Epstein investigation
Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard University, will stop teaching at the school while it investigates his connection to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, a spokesman for Summers said on Wednesday.
Emails recently released by the US House oversight committee reignited questions about Summers’ relationship with Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex-trafficking minors. Many of the messages indicated a friendship that lasted well into 2019. Contact only ceased shortly before Epstein was arrested in July of that same year.
The Harvard Crimson was first to report the news.
Steven Goldberg, the spokesperson for Summers, told the newspaper that Summers, an economist and former US treasury secretary, is not scheduled to teach next semester, and that his co-teachers will take over the remaining classes of the current semester.
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