Alternet - US President Donald Trump late Sunday floated “treason” charges against media outlets that he accused of reporting false information about the Iran war as the human and economic costs of his illegal military assault continued to mount.
In a tirade posted to his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote that media outlets he accused of circulating “fake news” should “be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information.” The maximum penalty for treason in the US is death.
Trump specifically called out the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal for reporting over the weekend that “five US Air Force refueling planes were struck and damaged on the ground at Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia.” Citing two unnamed US officials, the Journal noted that “the tankers were hit during an Iranian missile strike on the Saudi base,” and that the planes were “damaged but not fully destroyed and are being repaired.”
Time - President Donald Trump lashed out at “the courts,” which he said treat him “so unfairly,” in a two-part social media missive Sunday night full of falsehoods and pointed criticisms. He noted that his posts “will cause me nothing but problems in the future, but I feel it is my obligation to speak the TRUTH.”
“Trump just posted a lot of words about the Supreme Court and other courts — many of which were not true,” Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney posted on X, after the President’s Truth Social posts. “The rest is one of the most incendiary attacks on the court in memory.”
The first post started with Trump blasting the Supreme Court for ruling last month that most of the sweeping tariffs the Administration imposed on imports since the start of Trump’s second presidential term were illegal.
“The decision that mattered most to me was TARIFFS!” Trump wrote. “The Court knew where I stood, how badly I wanted this Victory for our Country, and instead decided to, potentially, give away Trillions of Dollars to Countries and Companies who have been taking advantage of the United States for decades.” But the President falsely claimed the Supreme Court gave him the “absolute right” to charge the tariffs in “another form”—something Trump has repeatedly suggested but the six-justice majority did not entertain—and he said his administration has “already started” to pursue that.
Trump then thanked Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and his own appointee Brett Kavanaugh—all of whom dissented in the tariff ruling—for “their wisdom and courage,” while sharply criticizing the court’s majority. While Trump did not mention particular justices, Trump bristled at how “they openly disrespect the Presidents who nominate them to the highest position in the Land, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and go out of their way, with bad and wrongful rulings and intentions, to prove how ‘honest,’ ‘independent,’ and ‘legitimate’ they are.” Of the justices in the majority, Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, while Chief Justice John Roberts was nominated by former President George W. Bush, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were nominated by former President Barack Obama, and Ketanji Brown Jackson by former President Joe Biden.
“This completely inept and embarrassing Court was not what the Supreme Court of the United States was set up by our wonderful Founders to be,” Trump added. “They are hurting our Country, and will continue to do so. All I can do, as President, is call them out for their bad behavior!”
In a follow-up post, Trump broadened his attacks, targeting “highly politicized” lower courts. “The Courts treat Republicans, and me, so unfairly, always seeming to protect those who should not be protected,” Trump said, before citing the treatment of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell as an example.
Trump and his allies have targeted Powell, whom Trump blames for the U.S.’s economic woes and has nicknamed “Too Late” for not acceding to his demands to lower interest rates faster, over the central bank’s $2.5 billion renovation of its headquarters, alleging that the Fed Chair mismanaged it and lied to Congress about it.
Trump then said that because of his “well justified criticism” of Powell, he has been “viciously and wrongfully blamed by, as usual, a Wacky, Nasty, Crooked, and totally Out of Control Judge,” naming James Boasberg, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who has ruled against Trump before and last week ordered subpoenas linked to the Administration-led investigation into Powell to be nixed on the basis, according to an unsealed opinion, that “a mountain of evidence suggests that the Government served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning.”
Trump called Boasberg “a man who suffers from the highest level of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS),” and he criticized the D.C. Circuit as having “eagerly supported the arrest and persecution of innocent Republicans for no crimes at all, but is now preventing even a basic investigation into the gross financial mismanagement of the Federal Reserve.”
“In case after case, Boasberg has displayed open, flagrant, and extreme partisan bias and contempt against Republicans and the Trump Administration,” Trump added. “To preserve the integrity of the Judiciary, he should be removed from all cases pertaining to us, and suffer serious disciplinary action, as should numerous other Corrupt Judges that, unfortunately, our Country has had to endure! What Boasberg has done on the ‘Too Late’ Powell case, and many others, has little to do with the Law, and everything to do with Politics. He is exactly what Judges should not be! Boasberg would do better to focus on Justice and Fairness, not his own, and the Democrats’, Political Agenda, which has become LEGENDARY!”
Washington Post - For nearly two centuries, the White House’s main entrance — framed by a row of graceful Ionic columns — has been a signature image of the seat of American power.
Now the Trump-appointed head of a federal arts commission is proposing to replace them with a more ornate style favored by President Donald Trump. Those more decorative columns, a style known as Corinthian, are considered the most luxurious in classical architecture and appear on buildings such as the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court. They have long been deployed on Trump’s properties, and the president has handpicked them for his planned White House ballroom, too.
“Corinthian is the highest order [of column], and that’s what our other two branches of government have,” Rodney Mims Cook Jr., the Trump appointee who chairs the Commission of Fine Arts, a federal panel charged with advising the president on design matters, said in an interview last week. “Why the White House didn’t originally use them, at least on the north front, which is considered the front door, is beyond me.”
