Featured

Trump: Iran asked me to be Supreme Leader, but I said no thanks

Trump’s “Iran asked me to be Supreme Leader” joke at an NRCC fundraiser uses a real, deadly leadership crisis in Iran to normalize assassination-as-policy and blur what’s confirmed about the war and succession.

Mar 26, 2026

Featured

‘Men need to be perp-walked’ after Epstein files release, Massie tells BBC

A GOP lawmaker says the Epstein document releases are still falling short—because redactions and withheld material may be blocking accountability and survivor-centered justice.

Mar 25, 2026

Buried.News

The stories buried under the noise

Primary focus

Trump fires Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary

A Cabinet secretary was forced out amid contracting and oversight scrutiny, signaling that executive control—not transparent accountability—can dictate leadership of the agency driving mass detention and deportation.

Mar 5, 2026

Featured

The Trump gold coin is not normal : Consider This from NPR

A federal design panel OK’d a Trump portrait for a commemorative gold coin, but the key question is whether Treasury can legally bypass long-standing limits meant to keep living politicians off U.S. money.

Mar 23, 2026

Featured

White House Confronted Over Huge Bets Made Minutes Before Trump’s Big War Move

A $580 million burst of oil-futures selling minutes before Trump’s Iran “talks” post raises a basic public-interest question: did anyone trade on advance knowledge of a market-moving national security decision?

Mar 24, 2026

Norms Impact

Democrats in four states seek to bar ICE employees from future civil service jobs

States are moving to blacklist federal immigration officers from public-service careers, turning civil-service eligibility into a partisan weapon against federal enforcement.

State Politics

Feb 26, 2026

Sources

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/26/democrats-bar-ice-employees-civil-service-jobs

Summary

Democratic lawmakers in at least four Democratic-led states have introduced bills to make people who joined ICE during Trump’s second term ineligible for certain state and local government jobs. State legislatures and governors are moving to use hiring eligibility and access to public employment as a lever against federal immigration enforcement. The practical consequence is a proposed long-term employment penalty that could deter ICE recruitment while triggering federalism and constitutional litigation.

Reality Check

This kind of categorical employment ban threatens democratic stability by normalizing political retaliation through public hiring, narrowing your access to impartial government services and professional public administration. On this record, it is not clearly criminal under federal law, but it squarely tests constitutional limits—especially federal supremacy and potential First Amendment and due process constraints—by penalizing lawful federal employment rather than proven misconduct. Even when framed as deterrence, using state power to impose lifetime-style civil penalties on a defined class of federal workers corrodes the nonpartisan norms our civil service depends on.

Detail

In at least four Democratic-led states, lawmakers have introduced bills that would bar people who took jobs with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during specified periods from future employment in state and local government roles, including law enforcement, public education, and in some versions the broader state civil service.

In New Jersey, assemblyman Ravi Bhalla introduced legislation that would bar anyone who joined ICE between September 2025 and 2029 from state and local government employment. In Maryland, delegate Adrian Boafo introduced the ICE Breaker Act to prevent state police agencies from hiring people who took jobs with ICE after 20 January 2025. In California, assembly member Anamarie Ávila Farías proposed the Melt Ice act to block people who took jobs with ICE during Trump’s second term from becoming school teachers or police officers. A similar proposal was described in Washington state.

None of the proposals has been signed into law; sponsors expect amendments and potential legal challenges, including questions about federal supremacy.

Norms Impact

DOJ Sues Dem Governor—and Misspells Her Name Over and Over Again

DOJ moved to override a governor’s warrant requirement for ICE access to nonpublic state property, and did so with a basic failure of accuracy that corrodes prosecutorial legitimacy.

Judiciary

Feb 24, 2026

Sources

https://newrepublic.com/post/206985/justice-department-sues-democratic-governor-misspells-name-sherrill

Summary

The Department of Justice filed a 21-page lawsuit against New Jersey Governor Mikie “Sherill,” repeatedly misspelling Governor Mikie Sherrill’s name. The filing attacks a state executive order requiring a judicial warrant before ICE may enter nonpublic areas of state-owned property. The suit seeks to weaken a state-level barrier to federal immigration operations and signals procedural breakdowns inside federal prosecution.

Reality Check

When the federal government weaponizes litigation to force warrantless access into nonpublic state spaces, we all inherit a precedent that weakens our Fourth Amendment security and normalizes executive workarounds to judicial oversight. Nothing in these facts clearly signals a prosecutable crime, but the conduct presses an anti-accountability template: use supremacy-clause litigation to attack a state’s judicial-warrant gatekeeping rather than comply with it. The repeated misidentification of the elected official in a federal filing is not a technicality—it is a credibility breach that undercuts due process norms and public trust in neutral law enforcement power.

Media

Detail

On Monday, the Department of Justice filed a 21-page lawsuit against New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill, misspelling her name as “Mikie Sherill” five times while spelling it correctly three times, two of which appeared in quotations from other sources.

Earlier in the month, Sherrill signed an executive order that bars Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from entering, accessing, or using nonpublic areas of state-owned property without first obtaining a judicial warrant. The order’s examples of nonpublic state property include government offices, childcare centers, residential medical facilities, and state university residence halls.

In the lawsuit, DOJ argues the executive order is an “intolerable obstacle” to federal immigration enforcement and “facially discriminates” against federal agents in violation of the Constitution’s supremacy clause.