miles taylor dhs
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an 1020 on trump pension plan cites an only success?
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an 4 25
Attorney General Pam Bondi just made a significant escalation in the feud between President Donald Trump's administration and the federal judiciary — and she's hoping to enlist the Supreme Court to the White House's side.
On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that Bondi made it clear she didn't appreciate having to abide by a lower court order in a memorandum sent to various heads of federal agencies. The memo was written as part of an order from U.S. District Judge John D. Bates (an appointee of former President George W. Bush) instructing Bondi and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to tell agencies they were prohibited from implementing parts of an executive order Trump handed down targeting the law firm Jenner & Block.
In Trump's initial executive order, he prohibited the firm's attorneys from entering government buildings (a virtual impossibility for lawyers who practice in Washington D.C.), stripped attorneys of security clearances and imposed various other sanctions. The Janner & Block executive order is part of a pattern of other related orders explicitly targeting law firms that worked for Trump's political opponents.
READ MORE:'The gun was at his head': Here's why Trump really 'capitulated' to market pressure
The attorney general didn't mince words for the "unelected" judge who authored the decision, which she said "invaded the policy-making and free speech prerogatives of the executive branch." She also notably expressed hope that the Supreme Court would step in and explicitly allow the administration to sidestep lower courts.
"Local district judges lack this authority, and the Supreme Court should swiftly constrain these judges’ blatant overstepping of the judicial power," Bondi wrote.
While some law firms cut deals with the administration in order to roll back his orders, other firms — like Janner & Block — sued to prevent the orders from going into effect. Janner & Block was one of three firms that found success in their litigation against the White House. WilmerHale and Perkins Coie were also targeted and successfully fought back in the courts.
Bondi's memo comes as the Trump administration has repeatedly attempted to ignore orders from federal judges striking down Trump's policies and enlist the High Court in its fight. When U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the return of an immigrant the administration admitted was wrongfully deported to El Salvador, the administration appealed to the Supreme Court. The 6-3 conservative supermajority halted the deadline imposed by Boasberg to bring the man back to the United States, and allowed the administration to continue deporting immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
NOW READ:Donald Trump's new policies are 'stupid' — according to stupidity researchers
Click here to read the Post's report in full (subscription required).
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4 25 politico
by Adam Cancryn, Maggie Miller, James Romoser and Kyle Cheney
04/09/2025
President Donald Trump is targeting two former first-term appointees over their criticism of his actions, stripping their security clearances and opening federal probes of their tenures.
The directives that Trump signed on Wednesday order the Justice Department to scrutinize Chris Krebs, who ran Trump’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and former senior Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor.
The two critics are the latest to be swept up in Trump’s expansive retribution campaign, where he’s sought to use federal powers in unprecedented ways to punish political opponents, law firms, universities and others that he believes have wronged him.
A president ordering investigations of specific individuals whom he considers to be his political enemies is a remarkable breach of the traditional wall of separation between the White House and the Justice Department. Under that norm of separation, criminal investigations are supposed to be insulated from political pressure, but Trump has repeatedly scorned the notion of DOJ independence. Making Wednesday’s action even more remarkable, and perhaps unprecedented, is that Trump used the formal power of executive orders to effectively brand two individuals as subjects of criminal investigations.
Krebs, who was the administration’s top cybersecurity official responsible for election security, wasfired by Trump via tweet after he had asserted shortly after President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 that “in every case of which we are aware, these claims [of fraud] either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.” He had also authorized a joint statementby CISA and other stakeholder groups that said the election was secure and that there was no indication of votes being changed or stolen, which angered Trump.
He was also akey witness for the Jan. 6 select committee, describing his efforts to secure the 2020 election and rebut conspiracy theories about the election and shore up voters’ confidence in the results. In his interview, he lamented that Republican leaders had catered to the false notion that the election was stolen, creating a “self-reinforcing cycle” of doubt. “Republican officials, senior officials, including the former President, lied to the American people about the security of the 2020 election,” he told the panel.
The order signed by Trump labeled Krebs “a significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his Government authority.” As he signed the order on Wednesday stripping Krebs’ security clearance and opening an investigation into his activities, Trump repeated his false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged.”
“It was proven by so many different ways in so many different forms,” Trump said. “We’re going to find out about this guy too, because this guy is a wise guy.”
Krebs is currently the chief intelligence and public policy officer at cybersecurity company SentinelOne. The order signed by Trump also takes aim at his current colleagues, suspending any security clearances held by individuals at SentinelOne who work with Krebs.
A spokesperson for the company did not immediately respond to request for comment.
In another move stemming from Trump’s failed bid to overturn the 2020 election, the president on Wednesday signed a separate order imposing new limits on the law firm Susman Godfrey. The firm represented voting machine maker Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation lawsuits against Rudy Giuliani and other Trump associates who falsely claimed the election was rigged.
Taylor authored a high-profile anonymous op-ed in 2018 that criticized Trump and offered a scathing firsthand account of his decision-making. He later authored a book portraying the chaos inside the Trump White House, before revealing his identity and endorsing then-candidate Biden in the days before the 2020 election.
Trump on Wednesday called Taylor a “traitor,” even as he insisted that the former DHS chief of staff played a minimal role in his first administration.
“I barely remember him. Somebody that went out and wrote a book and said all sorts of terrible things that were all lies,” Trump said in the Oval Office Wednesday. “I think he’s guilty of treason.”
Taylor left the Trump administration in 2019. On Wednesday, Taylor said Trump’s decision to target him was a sign the country was headed down “a dark path.”
“I said this would happen,”he posted on X. “Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path. Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point.”
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1020 an
lackeys from the Trump administration aren't one teensy bit concerned about the mess they'll leave behind should their impeached president lose reelection in just under 20 days. Oh no, the fact that they're all on a superspreader tour of the country is proof of that. Like their boss, what they're concerned about instead are their own sorry asses.
Trump staffers, The Washington Post reports, "are hoping the Trump presidency isn't a disqualifying blemish on their resumes or Google footprint as the door revolves the other way and they seek to land, once again, in the private sector." Considering the kinds of horrific crimes this administration has carried out, they should be grateful that not being able to find a six-figure job at a fancy D.C. firm is the worst thing they have to worry about.
Some of former officials have already gotten a taste of a post-Trump life. For former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, "[t]here's been no cushy landing on K Street or high-profile consultancy at a major lobbying or public relations firm," The Postsaid. While he published a book about being a taxpayer-funded liar, it flopped. Another one of his post-Trump jobs wasn't too pretty either—no really, he wore some hideous dollar store piñata for the 28th season of Dancing with the Stars, where he was the sixth contestant eliminated.
But just because Sean "This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period!" Spicer had trouble doesn't mean other former Trump officials have had the same experience. "Ex-White House chief of staff Reince Priebus is president of the Michael Best & Friedrich law firm," The Post continued. Former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Sec. John Kelly continued cashing in on cruelty and joined the board of a company that operated the now-closed prison camp for migrant children in Homestead, Florida. His successor, Kirstjen Nielsen, didn't really stray far and joined a government council.
Kelly and Nielsen in particular tried rehabilitation tours that really just continued exposing them as liars. They probably wished for the luck of Nielsen's former chief of staff Miles Taylor, who got a CNN contributor's gig after managing to convince enough people that he was shocked, shocked!about shenanigans he saw at DHS even though he was there for two years, from 2017 and 2019. Taylor didn't speak out then as a moral whistleblower to expose hateful policies, but instead until this past summer when it was convenient for him. Nor has Taylor fully apologized for many of the policies he helped carry out.
"The longtime GOP strategist who runs a public affairs firm recalled coming close to hiring a former Trump White House staffer until a Google search revealed the prospective hire's track record defending Trump on race and immigration," The Post continued. "It ground the interview process to a halt, the strategist said." But, at the same time, "Americans have short memories," a former Bush and Clinton staffer continued to The Post.
The fact is that from White House aide Stephen Miller to unlawfully appointed acting DHS Sec. Chad Wolf, these officials deserve to become pariahs when the administration is at last finished. They brought it on themselves because they knew what they were signing up for from the start: a vulgarian who bragged about committing sexual assault and a racist who vowed to deport millions of undocumented immigrants even as he exploited many at his own businesses. Don't feel sorry for these officials. Feel sorry for the many people they hurt.
president Donald Trump's Democratic critics have often accused of him being indifferent to the needs of blue states. In yet more evidence for this view, the president's administration has rejected California's request for a disaster declaration in response to a series of destructive wildfires, CNN reported this week.
Miles Taylor, a conservative and former Department of Homeland Security official who is supporting former Vice President Joe Biden, is expressing shock that Trump made good on his threat to reject California's request for disaster assistance. But as he explained, he already warned that Trump sought to do this.
On Friday, Taylor tweeted, "Wow — just like the last time @realDonaldTrump told us to cut off disaster aid $ to California for political purposes. Only then, we told him NO."
Taylor served in DHS from 2017-2019 and was chief of staff for former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and later, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf. Although Taylor is a right-wing Republican, he has come out strongly against Trump and in favor of Biden. In August, Taylor was featured in a scathing anti-Trump ad from the group Republican Voters Against Trump. Elizabeth Neumann, a conservative who formerly served as assistant secretary for threat prevention in DHS, has also appeared in an anti-Trump ad for RVAT and is endorsing Biden. He had explained in one ad that Trump had suggested cutting off aid to California because the state didn't support him, an idea that DHS reportedly rejected at the time.
Although California, with its warm and arid climate, has long been vulnerable to wildfires, this year has been especially bad. And Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom requested financial aid for his state in a letter sent to Trump's administration on September 28. Newsom, in his letter, estimated that infrastructure damage in California would exceed $229 million and warned, "The longer it takes for California and its communities to recover, the more severe, devastating and irreversible the economic impacts will be."
Brian Ferguson, a spokesman for the Governor's Office of Emergency Services in California, confirmed to CNN that Newsom's request had been rejected, saying, "The request for a major presidential disaster declaration for early September fires has been denied by the federal administration."