Trump Says He Can Free Wrongly Imprisoned Reporter—but Won’t

Donald Trump believes that his close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin would lead to the freedom of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been imprisoned in the country for over a year—but he’s apparently not willing to use that power unless he wins another term.

“Evan Gershkovich, the Reporter from The Wall Street Journal, who is being held by Russia, will be released almost immediately after the Election, but definitely before I assume Office,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday. “He will be HOME, SAFE, AND WITH HIS FAMILY. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, will do that for me, but not for anyone else, and WE WILL BE PAYING NOTHING!”

To an extent, Trump’s approach is nothing new: Republicans have been interfering in diplomatic efforts undertaken by Democratic presidents for decades to bolster their electoral chances. What is novel, however, is that Trump is openly sabotaging President Joe Biden’s efforts to bring a wrongly detained American journalist home.  

In 1968, then–presidential candidate Richard Nixon employed Anna Chennault to undermine Vietnam peace talks that were taking place in Paris, delaying the end of the war and bolstering the former vice president’s chances of taking the White House. Twelve years later, in a successful bid to dampen President Jimmy Carter’s chances for reelection, former Texas Governor John Connally met with Middle Eastern leaders in 1980 to strategically delay the release of American hostages being held in Iran until after the presidential election. Doing so practically helped contribute to Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory and ushered in a new era of conservatism under President Ronald Reagan.

Regardless of the precedent, Trump is employing Gershkovich in a cynical, disturbing, and dehumanizing manner. In the former president’s version of events, Gershkovich is not a man being wrongly held in prison by one of America’s adversaries, but a political prop being used to advertise Trump’s close relationship to Vladimir Putin. If Trump really can help free Gershkovich, he should do it now—not in six months. Or never. 

The Justice Department on Thursday filed a massive antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation, accusing them of holding an illegal monopoly on live event tickets and driving up prices.

The suit comes after Ticketmaster crashed and prevented people from purchasing tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour—inadvertently exposing the ticketing giant’s monopoly on the shows—and argues that Ticketmaster acted like a Mafia don for venues and artists alike by requiring lengthy exclusive contracts, threatening lost revenue if they use other ticket sellers, and preventing artists who don’t use Live Nation services from performing at venues with Live Nation contracts.

Attorneys general from 30 states filed the lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday, overseen by U.S. attorney general Merrick Garland, who released a statement announcing the lawsuit:

We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators. The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services. It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster.

Dan Wall, Live Nation’s executive vice president for corporate and regulatory affairs, refuted the suit’s premise, arguing Live Nation’s revenue has declined due to competition and that the suit will have no impact on ticket prices. He included a graph to belay his point, showing the ticket retailer’s revenue significantly lower than that of tech giants Apple, Meta, and Google.

“It was evident in our discussions with the DOJ Front Office that they just did not want to believe the numbers. The data conflicted too much with their preconception that Live Nation belongs in the ranks of the other “tech monopolists” they have targeted,” Wall wrote. “It is also clear that we are another casualty of this Administration’s decision to turn over antitrust enforcement to a populist urge that simply rejects how antitrust law works.”

The Justice Department allowed Live Nation and Ticketmaster to merge in 2010 despite bipartisan opposition to it—so long as they didn’t retaliate against venues for using other vendors for 10 years. A 2019 department investigation found Live Nation repeatedly violated that agreement.

Trump stooge and Republican Representative Andy Ogles has been caught in a major ethics scandal of his own making.

According to 11 amendments that he filed to his campaign finance reports on Wednesday, Ogles didn’t actually loan his campaign $320,000, as he previously claimed. That begs the question: Where did the money come from?

In November, the Tennessee congressman was found to have some irregularities in his campaign reports, thanks to an investigation by a Nashville TV station, NewsChannel 5. Among them was a $320,000 loan to his campaign from himself, even though his personal finance reports didn’t show a place where such a loan could have originated—not even a personal bank account.

In his amendments, Ogles says that his campaign loan was actually $20,000 instead of $320,000, a sizable oversight, and raises the question of what explains the inconsistencies. Former Representative George Santos is currently facing criminal charges for inflating campaign fundraising numbers—after also reporting he loaned himself a sizable amount of money. Santos was later found to have spent campaign dollars on casino trips, Botox treatments, and OnlyFans payments. Is Ogles hiding something like Santos?

It’s not an outlandish question, as the two have one glaring similarity: making up parts of their past. Ogles claimed to have studied policy and economics at Middle Tennessee State University and calls himself an economist, but only has one community college economics course under his belt, which he barely passed. He later claimed on a 2009 résumé to have a degree in international relations, but NewsChannel 5 found that his major was actually liberal studies—a hilarious degree for a Republican politician.

Although Ogles’s lies aren’t nearly as outrageous as Santos’s whoppers, he also has another possible financial crime on his résumé: $25,000 raised supposedly to build a garden in memory of his stillborn child. Except that the garden was never built, and Ogles refuses to say what happened with the money. With a history of lies piling up in his short congressional career, perhaps a criminal investigation of Ogles is necessary.

House Democrats are coming out against a plan to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a joint session of Congress, with some of the party’s top brass joining the choir.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is pushing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to sign on to a formal invitation to the Israeli leader, with the two leaders currently negotiating over an invitation. That has been complicated by a half-dozen Democratic lawmakers openly condemning the oddly timed speech, calling it a “political gesture.”

Minnesota Representative Dean Phillips told Axios that Netanyahu is “dividing this country … in a similar way he’s divided Israel, and I think that’s awfully dangerous.”

“I can only imagine the personal and political conflict facing Leader Schumer,” Phillips added.

Those who have spoken out against the invitation include Phillips, as well as Representatives Dan Kildee and Scott Peters. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had previously called on Netanyahu to resign, simply said “no” to the prospect of Schumer extending a personal invitation to the Israeli leader.

House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Jim Himes felt that Netanyahu’s attention would be better used elsewhere, telling Axios that Bibi “should be focused on freeing hostages, not on charming legislators.”

The open call to bring Netanyahu to the U.S. Capitol comes mere days after the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him, charging the Israeli prime minister and three Hamas leaders with “crimes against humanity” committed in Gaza. Those charges have stood out for several lawmakers, even though the United States is not a member of the ICC.

“I think it’s a strange time to invite Netanyahu; it’s a really divisive kind of move,” Peters told Axios.

Kildee also alluded to the charges, telling the publication that he didn’t believe it was a “good time” to bring Netanyahu.

“Let’s not complicate an already complicated situation,” Kildee said.

Insurrectionist flag addict Samuel Alito and five other conservative justices delivered a long-awaited Supreme Court opinion about racial gerrymandering on Thursday, determining that a racially gerrymandered redistricting map in South Carolina is actually not about race at all.

The Supreme Court has typically rejected districts drawn with race as a predominant factor—but according to the majority’s decision, written by Alito, that’s not the case with the South Carolina district the ACLU previously depicted as a two-headed dragon that cut across multiple neighborhoods using 2020 census data to minimize the impact of the Black vote.

A federal court agreed with the ACLU in January 2023, ordering South Carolina to redraw its 2021 enacted congressional map. South Carolina appealed the decision, kicking it up to the conservative-controlled Supreme Court.

The 2023 federal decision unanimously agreed that state legislators “may not use partisanship as a proxy for race.” The decision handed down by the Supreme Court Wednesday nuked that opinion by essentially deciding everything is partisan, thereby negating the issue of race entirely: “Where race and politics are highly correlated, a map that has been gerrymandered to achieve a partisan end can look very similar to a racially gerrymandered map,” the absurd decision reads.

The decision further claims that because the ACLU didn’t provide a hypothetical “rational” map to show what non–racially gerrymandered redistricting would look like, it failed to prove that the racist gerrymandering was not done in “good faith”—a new precedent for racial gerrymandering cases that the Supreme Court has never required before.

All liberal justices dissented, with Kagan apparently sneaking a reference to an inverted flag flown outside Alito’s home in January 2021 into her dissent.

Nikki Haley once warned that Trump becoming the Republican presidential nominee would be “suicide for our country” and that “everything Trump touches turns to chaos.” But on Wednesday, she forgot all of her own dire warnings and stated she plans to vote for him in November. Unfortunately for her, the internet never forgets.

Speaking at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think-tank she chairs, Haley said, “Trump has not been perfect on these policies, but Biden has been a catastrophe. So I will be voting for Trump.”

“As a voter, I put my priorities on a president who’s going to have the backs of our allies and hold our enemies to account, who would secure the border, who would support capitalism and freedom, who understands we need less debt not more debt,” Haley said, while stopping short of a full-throated endorsement.

“That’s not Donald Trump. That’s not his record in office,” former Trump national security adviser John Bolton shot back at Haley’s explanation during an appearance on CNN.

The internet did what the internet does and resurfaced clips of criticisms Haley previously made against Trump in response to her announcement.

Many decried her heel turn as an act of cowardice, adding hers to the ranks of similar pivots from Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. While some speculated Haley’s vote was an effort to nab a vice presidential spot, Trump reportedly released an email Wednesday night announcing, “Nikki Haley not under VP consideration! But, I wish her well …”

“There goes her reputation, permanently,” one user posted in response to news of Haley’s vote.

“Nikki Haley’s transformation is almost complete. The only thing left to do is shoot a puppy,” another mused.

Haley’s choice to kiss the ring angered her supporters, many of whom rallied behind her in protest against Trump’s extreme agenda.

“Stop with the bullsh!t,” wrote former RNC chairman Michael Steele. “You could have said this on the day you suspended your campaign. Continue to support you?! The people who voted for you will not be voting for Trump. That was the point. I wish I could say I am disappointed. I am not even surprised.”

The Biden campaign renewed its invitation to Haley voters to join their campaign, which Biden first issued in March after Haley announced the end of her presidential campaign.

“Nikki Haley voters, Donald Trump doesn’t want your vote. I want to be clear: There is a place for you in my campaign,” Biden wrote at the time.

Senator Ted Cruz won’t admit whether he’ll accept election results that show Joe Biden winning in November.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Cruz the question point-blank Wednesday night.

“You were the first senator to object to the votes. In 2024 will you certify the election results? Do you plan to object or will you accept the results regardless of who wins the election?” Collins asked.

Cruz immediately tried to dodge.

“So, Kaitlan, I gotta say, I think that’s actually a ridiculous question,” the Texas senator replied. The exchange then became a long back-and-forth, in which Cruz denied that the question was yes-or-no, and asked whether Collins had ever asked a Democrat that question. Collins mentioned how Trump refused to allow a peaceful transfer of power, and Cruz even glossed over the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, claiming, “We did have a peaceful transfer of power. I was there on January 20. I was there on the swearing-in.”

“Barely,” replied Collins.

Cruz still refused to commit to accepting the results, claiming that there could be voter fraud.

“Look, if the Democrats win, I will accept the result, but I’m not gonna ignore fraud,” Cruz said, again adding a giant caveat to his answer.

The segment ended with a pointed remark from Collins. “Senator Ted Cruz—no answer to that question. Thank you very much.”

Watch the entire exchange here:

Cruz faces a tough reelection campaign against Democratic Representative Colin Allred, a former football player, but is probably worried about drawing the ire of Trump and the Republican base. Republicans are repeatedly dodging the question of accepting a Biden win in November, especially those who are in the running for vice president. Some Republican candidates have even alluded to supporting violence.

It turns out that the upside-down flag flown at Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s Virginia home after the January 6 insurrection wasn’t the only time one of his properties nodded to the election denialism of Donald Trump’s supporters.

The “Appeal to Heaven” flag flew last summer at Alito’s vacation home in New Jersey, according to The New York Times. Also known as the Pine Tree flag, it originated as a symbol of the American Revolution but became a symbol of Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement—including one carried by rioters at the Capitol building.

Several photos acquired by the Times showed the flag hanging outside of Alito’s residence on Long Beach Island on four separate dates between July and September 2023.

The revelations cast further doubt on Alito’s excuse for flying an upside-down American flag at his home in Alexandria, Virginia, on January 17, 2021: He blamed his wife, telling Fox News that she had hung it upside down “for a short time” after an anti-Trump neighbor hurled insults at her.

Democrats have since called for Alito to recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 election, and introduced a resolution Tuesday to censure the “shameless” justice for what they call “beyond poor judgment,” arguing that Alito had violated the court’s ethics and invited questions about the court’s impartiality.

A white supremacist candidate will remain on the Missouri GOP’s ballot for governor, according to a state judge who rejected a lawsuit brought by the Missouri Republican Party.

The state GOP had attempted to boot Darrell Leon McClanahan III from the August election after photos resurfaced in February of McClanahan giving a Nazi salute while posing with a hooded Ku Klux Klan member. But the action was too little too late to keep his name from appearing on the ballot beside the likes of Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, Lieutenant Governor Mike Kehoe, and state Senator Bill Eigel. Instead, it will be up to Republican voters in Missouri to decide if they want a “pro-White” candidate leading the “Show-Me” state.

“The Plaintiff did not present to the Court any evidence that having McClanahan on a primary election ballot would cause it any injury,” wrote circuit court Judge Cotton Walker in his ruling Friday. “McClanahan’s presence on the primary election ballot is not necessarily an endorsement of the candidate by the party.”

Still, McClanahan’s blatantly racist views weren’t exactly a secret before he filed to run—nor was it the Missouri GOP’s first time accepting filing fees and candidacy paperwork from him in a local election. The known white supremacist had a failed run for U.S. Senate in 2022, when he placed fifteenth in a group of 21 candidates, pulling more than 1,100 votes.

McClanahan has not rejected his ties to white supremacist groups but has instead tried to downplay them, saying he is just an “honorary” member rather than a formal member of the Knight’s Party Ku Klux Klan. He identifies with the racist religious sect Christian Identity and has attended several events hosted by the Arkansas-based Christian Identity Klan, including a cross burning, which he attempted to brush off by describing the event as “religious Christian Identity Cross lighting ceremony.”

McClanahan also attended the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” protest—an experience that he wrote positively about for the Knights Party’s newsletter, The Torch, cataloging his descent into far-right, race-based radicalization.

McClanahan’s attorney, Dave Roland, celebrated the outcome, telling the Columbia Missourian that the ruling will keep party leaders from having “almost unlimited discretion to choose who’s going to be allowed on a primary ballot.”

“I’m not sure they ever actually intended to win this case,” Roland told the publication. “I think the case got filed because the Republican Party wanted to make a very big public show that they don’t want to be associated with racism or antisemitism. And the best way that they could do that was filing a case that they knew was almost certain to lose.”

Judge Aileen Cannon held an unusual hearing on Wednesday to consider arguments to throw charges against one of Donald Trump’s co-defendants, his former valet Walt Nauta, in the classified documents case. But it didn’t take much for proceedings to quickly devolve into a shouting match.

Nauta’s concerns were overshadowed in the Ft. Pierce, Florida, courtroom by a disagreement between his lawyer, Stanley Woodward, and prosecutor Jay Bratt. Woodward claimed that Bratt pressured Nauta to cooperate with the prosecution by threatening to hold up Woodward’s nomination to a judgeship. Nauta argued that his lack of cooperation with the Justice Department’s probe into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents was the reason he was charged.

“I had been recommended for a judgeship, that’s beyond dispute,” said Woodward. “There was a folder about defense counsel on the table” during Nauta’s meeting with Bratt, he said, adding that Bratt directly referenced the judicial nomination.

“I think the implication was that I was to travel and convince Mr. Nauta to cooperate with the investigation, and if I didn’t [do] that, there would be consequences,” Woodward added.

Prosecutor David Harbach didn’t take kindly to this account and accusation.

“Mr Woodward’s story of what happened at that meeting is a fantasy,” Harbach said, banging the lectern. “It did not happen.”

“This is a lawyer whose allegations amount basically to him being extorted,” Harbach added, waving his arms before Cannon told him to calm down.

Cannon asked the prosecutor why there wasn’t any evidence gathered of the 2022 conversation, saying, “Why do those comments [about Woodward] have to be made?”

“That is not true, and I didn’t say that,” Harbach shouted, saying that there wasn’t a recording of the conversation between Bratt and Woodward, but that special counsel Jack Smith’s team preserved records of the meeting.

In response, Woodward ran back up to the lectern, saying  “I’m here” and offering to testify under oath about his recollection of the meeting.

This hearing was the first in-person proceeding in the Republican presidential nominee’s classified documents case in over a month. On May 7, Cannon announced that the case would be indefinitely delayed to unresolved pretrial motions, fueling ongoing accusations that the judge, a Trump appointee, is deliberately slowing down the case so that it won’t hurt Trump’s election prospects. 

But, new evidence has come to light in recently unsealed documents showing that Trump hoarded classified documents even after the 2022 search at Mar-a-Lago. Moreover, after the federal government subpoenaed security footage from his Mar-a-Lago estate, the former president ordered his staffers to avoid security cameras when moving boxes around. Trump faces 42 felony charges in the case related to illegally retaining national security documents and conspiracy to obstruct justice, to which he has pleaded not guilty.