Voters Rage at “Empty Chair” Town Halls as Republicans Won’t Show Up

Activist groups are holding “empty chair” town halls in Republican districts to show how abandoned some red-state voters are feeling four months into Trump’s second term.

A dozen town halls over the last week have featured angry voters yelling at a picture of their no-show Republican lawmaker. Hundreds railed against Andy Harris in Maryland on Saturday, where Representative Jamie Raskin stepped up in his absence.

“What’s interesting is that the people who are showing up are not paid protesters, but the people who are not showing up are paid politicians,” Raskin said while organizers showed a giant “MISSING” milk carton ad with Harris’s face on it. “If your name is on the ballot, your face should not be on the milk carton.”

Senator Thom Tillis was attacked in South Carolina on Friday.

“We need [Senator Tillis] to know that a lot of bills that are going through that he’s voting for us, the people, a lot of us are against,” said town hall attendee Rebekah Burks. “And we want him to know that we are unhappy with that. He works for us. We’re his constituents. He works for us. We have the right to talk to him, and he should answer our questions.”

“Will you stand up for your people and Congress by taking food out of the mouths of hungry constituents in your district?” a constituent said to the empty chair New York Representative Elise Stefanik should have been in. “She promoted higher education and Pell grants, and today she’s calling for the destruction of the Department of Education, which administers those grants,” said another.

In Ohio, a whopping 1,400 people showed up to rebuke Senators Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted on Saturday.

“As an ex–federal employee and a union member, I’m mad as hell,” attendee Arnold Scott said. “How about these billionaires pay their taxes? When they cut employees at the various agencies, actually what they’re doing is cutting the services that the taxpayers are paying for. When they cut the VA, they’re cutting veterans. You stand there and say you support the veterans, but then you cut the veterans. When you cut them, that translates into it taking longer for them to receive the services that they’re entitled to.”

More of the same happened in San Diego, where voters’ main concern was “what Elon Musk and DOGE is doing as far as having an unelected person just dismantling the government.”

These town halls, organized by progressive group Indivisible, come as Trump and Musk’s current and proposed purges to Social Security, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Food and Drug Administration, and much more have started to hit their own constituents where it hurts—with no resistance from their representatives.

A federal judge refused Monday to lift a pause on Donald Trump’s deportations of alleged gang members under the Alien Enemies Act.

In a 37-page filing, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled that the ACLU was “likely to succeed” in arguing that individuals the government had claimed were members of the Tren de Aragua gang were “entitled to individualized hearings to determine whether the Act applies to them at all.”

“As the government itself concedes, the awesome power granted by the Act may be brought to bear only on those who are, in fact, ‘alien enemies,’” Boasberg wrote.

Boasberg also wrote that deportees under the AEA would suffer irreparable harm due to the horrible conditions of Salvadoran prisons, where prisoners are reportedly abused, humiliated, and left to rot without their families knowing anything about their whereabouts or well-being. Trump has agreed to pay Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele $6 million to hold deportees, including the 261 people whom Trump deported last week.

“There may well also be independent restrictions on the Government’s ability to deport class members—at least to Salvadoran prisons—even if they do fall within the Proclamation’s terms,” Boasberg wrote. The judge cited the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, which states that “it shall be the policy of the United States not to expel … any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”

The plaintiffs, who were loaded onto airplanes and denied their due process, were not given the opportunity to claim legal protection from potential torture afforded to them by U.S. law. When detainees asked where they were being deported, immigration officers simply laughed and said they didn’t know, according to the filing.

Ultimately, Boasberg denied the government’s motion to vacate his temporary restraining order on AEA deportations.

Earlier this month, after Trump invoked the AEA to deport alleged members of Tren de Aragua—now labeled an invading force—without due process, lawyers from the ACLU sought emergency relief for five individuals who claimed they had been wrongly identified as gang members.

In response, Boasberg had ordered the Trump administration to temporarily pause deportations under the AEA, but the government continued with the removal of more than 100 Venezuelan nationals—in defiance of the judge’s order.

The Trump administration has refused to reveal how immigration authorities were able to identify the individuals as gang members. One attorney alleged that her client had been wrongly labeled a member of the gang merely because of a tattoo that looked suspicious to immigration officials.

During a hearing Friday, Boasberg said that Trump’s “expanded” application of the eighteenth-century law was a “long way from the heartland” of the rule.

This story has been updated.

President Donald Trump threw a temper tantrum Sunday, demanding that an unflattering portrait of him be taken out of the Colorado state Capitol.

“Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,” Trump wrote in an outraged post on Truth Social.

“The artist also did President Obama, and he looks wonderful, but the one on me is truly the worst. She must have lost her talent as she got older,” he wrote.

In his post, Trump included a photograph of the portrait, showing a blanched president with furrowed brows, rounded cheeks, and a faded jaw line—not totally dissimilar from the president’s own face. Certainly not “purposefully distorted.”

Ever insistent on his mandate, Trump claimed that he was really engaging in childish whining on behalf of the people. “In any event, I would much prefer not having a picture than having this one, but many people from Colorado have called and written to complain. In fact, they are actually angry about it!

“I am speaking on their behalf to the Radical Left Governor, Jared Polis, who is extremely weak on Crime, in particular with respect to Tren de Aragua, which practically took over Aurora (Don’t worry, we saved it!), to take it down,” Trump wrote. “Jared should be ashamed of himself!”

Trump’s shot at Democratic Governor Jared Polis also included a reference to Aurora, Colorado. During his campaign for the White House, Trump had falsely claimed Aurora had been “taken over” by an armed Venezuelan gang. He now claims to have saved the city, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues to crack down on undocumented immigrants and suspected gang members.

Earlier this month, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law from the eighteenth century, to declare Tren de Aragua an invading force, for the purpose of deporting its members without due process. The president’s use of the law is currently being reviewed in federal court after two legal advocacy groups alleged that the government had wrongly identified their clients as gang members. A federal judge issued a temporary pause on the deportations, but the government proceeded to send more than 100 Venezuelan nationals to a prison in El Salvador.

A spokesperson for Polis commended the president’s commitment to complaining about something so minute, telling The Hill, “Gov. Polis was surprised to learn the President of the United States is an aficionado of our Colorado State Capitol and its artwork. The State Capitol was completed in 1901, and features Rose Onyx and White Yule Marble mined in Colorado, and includes portraits of former Presidents and former governors. We appreciate the President and everyone’s interest in our capitol building and are always looking for any opportunity to improve our visitor experience.”

The Supreme Court will not take on a case aimed at rescinding press protections via libel lawsuits.

The nation’s highest judiciary rejected an effort Monday by Republican megadonor Steve Wynn, declining to hear his argument for overturning New York Times v. Sullivan, a landmark 1964 decision that raised the standards required for a plaintiff to win a defamation lawsuit against a media organization.

In that case, the bench unanimously found that it wasn’t enough for reported information to be found false for a plaintiff to win a suit. Instead, Justice William Brennan Jr. argued that in order to win a defamation case, public figures must prove that journalists published details with “actual malice”—as in, a gross recklessness or disregard for the truth.

In a petition filed in February, Wynn claimed that the 61-year-old precedent was “unfit for the modern era.”

“Instead, everyone in the world has the ability to publish any statement with a few keystrokes. And in this age of clickbait journalism, even those members of the legacy media have resorted to libelous headlines and false reports to generate views. This Court need not further this golden era of lies,” the attorney for the former Republican National Committee finance chair wrote.

The high court has thrown out previous attempts to upend the libel standard. In 2022, the Supreme Court refused to hear a similar challenge to the “actual malice” definition when Coral Ridge Ministries Media sued the Southern Poverty Law Center for listing them as an “anti-LGBTQ hate group.” But not everyone on the court was in agreement—in a controversial dissenting opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas left the door open for possible future attempts to undo the decision, writing that the original ruling was “allowing media organizations and interest groups ‘to cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity.’”

Ultimately, the “actual malice” standard for public figures and officials is intended to deter lawsuits from people who don’t need to rely on the legal system in order to correct or address negative coverage. Instead, people in power can call for news conferences or (in the case of elected officials) draft new laws that counteract the narrative of their unwanted media coverage. Times v. Sullivan also protects press organizations from people with enormous wealth who could potentially leverage their financial resources in order to silence criticism of their behavior.

Defamation standards for private figures are different: Average, everyday people suing media organizations for incorrect coverage do not have to prove “actual malice,” and instead only need to show a court that the information was incorrect and damaged their reputation.

Wynn’s case against press protections comes with its own baggage. In 2018, the casino mogul sued the Associated Press for defamation after the newswire reported that two women had accused him of sexual assault in the 1970s.

Wynn resigned as chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts that year, just two weeks after The Wall Street Journal reported that the billionaire had paid out a $7.5 million settlement to a hired manicurist he allegedly raped.

“After she gave Mr. Wynn a manicure, she said, he pressured her to take her clothes off and told her to lie on the massage table he kept in his office suite, according to people she gave the account to,” the Journal reported at the time. “The manicurist said she told Mr. Wynn she didn’t want to have sex and was married, but he persisted in his demands that she do so, and ultimately she did disrobe and they had sex, the people remember her saying.”

The Nevada state Supreme Court ruled against Wynn in November, with Justice Ron Parraguirre writing that “one of the most recognized figures in Nevada” needed to show “clear and convincing evidence to reasonably infer that the publication was made with actual malice.”

This story has been updated.

Greenland and Denmark are not happy with second lady Usha Vance’s planned visit to the island, with Greenlandic Prime Minister Múte Egede calling the move “highly aggressive.”

Vance is traveling to the island on Thursday with Donald Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz, as well as Energy Secretary Chris Wright, ostensibly to watch the territory’s national dogsled race and “celebrate Greenlandic culture and unity.” Waltz and Wright also plan to visit the Pituffik space base, a U.S. military facility in northern Greenland.

Egede said that his government, which is serving in a caretaker role since his party was defeated in elections earlier this month, would not meet with the U.S. delegation, criticizing Waltz’s presence. Trump has said repeatedly that he wants the U.S. to annex the island for “national security” reasons.

“What is the national security adviser doing in Greenland? The only purpose is to demonstrate power over us,” Egede told the Greenland newspaper Sermitsiaq on Sunday. “His mere presence in Greenland will no doubt fuel American belief in Trump’s mission—and the pressure will increase.”

“Until recently, we could trust the Americans, who were our allies and friends, and with whom we enjoyed working closely,” Egede added in the newspaper. “But that time is over.”

Egede’s party, the Inuit Ataqatigiit, favors rapid independence from Denmark and closer ties with the U.S., but lost the territory’s election nearly two weeks ago to the center-right Demokraatit Party, which seeks a slower path to independence. The latter party also criticized the visit, saying that it “once again shows a lack of respect for the Greenlandic people.”

Trump has floated sending more U.S. troops to the island and even getting NATO involved. He’s also drawn up military plans to retake the Panama Canal and keeps blathering about making Canada the “fifty-first state.” His tough talk has alarmed people in all three places, who are allies of the U.S., and is worsening the country’s image around the world.

The billionaire who is still bribing people to vote Republican is pushing wildly unsubstantiated claims about paid protesters at the Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rallies.

Sanders and AOC started their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour last month, drawing large crowds at multiple rallies. Sanders’s communications director reported a crowd of 30,000 in Denver last Friday. Elon Musk and his reply guys are clearly bothered. 

A post from right-wing media shill Mario Nawfal alleged that “despite claims of 34,000 attendees, GPS data analysis reveals the real number was closer to 20,000—still big, but not record-breaking.

“More revealing? A whopping 84% of those devices had shown up at nine or more other protests, including Antifa/BLM events, pro-Hamas and pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and Kamala Harris campaign stops,” the post continued.

“The Dems just move around the same group of paid ‘protesters,’” Musk said in a repost of Nawfal. 

Nawfal of course shows absolutely no evidence for the private phone location data he claims to have gathered. Even if we take him at his word (which we shouldn’t), this isn’t the huge gotcha he seems to think it is. These rallies are reaching the most politically active and progressive people within the party. It’s not shocking that people at the Bernie-AOC rally may have gone to other events before. Remember the die-hard MAGA folks that follow Trump around from rally to rally? 

Musk has offered millions in cash for votes and signatures. He has no room to speak on paid protesters. Especially with no real evidence. 

A federal judge questioned the Department of Justice Friday over Donald Trump’s “expanded” use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport planefuls of immigrants without due process over the weekend.

During a hearing, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said that Trump’s invocation of the centuries-old wartime law to declare the Tren de Aragua gang an invading force was “unprecedented,” and that the policy ramifications were “troublesome and problematic and concerning,” according to Politico’s senior legal correspondent Kyle Cheney, who documented the hearing in a thread of posts on X.

Boasberg explained that the Trump administration’s application had “expanded” the AEA’s use, whereas in other instances that the law has been invoked, such as during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II, “there was no question there was a declaration of war, and who the enemy was,” according to Cheney.

Notably, the United States is not at war with Venezuela.

The judge said that the Trump administration’s application of the AEA was “a long way from the heartland” of the rule, according to journalist Adam Klasfeld.

Lawyers from the ACLU and Democracy Forward had challenged Trump’s use of the wartime law Saturday, asserting that several individuals the government claimed were gang members had been wrongly identified. Boasberg then ordered the Trump administration to temporarily pause deportations under the AEA, but the government continued with the removal of more than 250 individuals.

The Trump administration has refused to reveal the identities of those who were deported or any information on how immigration and customs authorities were able to determine that they were in fact gang members.

During the hearing Friday, ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt claimed that the deported Venezuelans were not given a “meaningful” chance to contest their designation as terrorists, and urged that future deportees should receive the opportunity to argue for their innocence, according to Cheney.

The Department of Justice said that habeas petitions would be made available to deportees to challenge their designation under the AEA, but it was unclear how they would fulfill those petitions if they were similarly rushed out of the country.

Boasberg implied that the Trump administration had been anxious to speed along the removal of the alleged gang members, signing the order to do so “in the dark.”

“It seems to me the only reason to do that is if you know it’s a problem and you want to get them out of the country before there are suits filed,” Boasberg said, according to Cheney.

Donald Trump bragged about releasing the Social Security numbers of hundreds of people during his anticlimactic release of the John F. Kennedy assassination files.

“Eighty thousand pages of documents is a lot to sift through,” a reporter said to Trump on Friday. “Can you just tell us who killed Kennedy?”

“Well, you know, I was given the task of releasing that. Many presidents have gone through it, and they haven’t released. And I said, ‘Release.’ We even released Social Security numbers, I didn’t want anything deleted,” Trump replied. “They said, ‘So what about Social Security?’ People long gone.… We gave Social Security, we gave everything. And the rest is for you to look at.”

These Social Security numbers are from potentially hundreds of people who are alive, not “long gone,” as the president wrongly claimed.

One of them, Reagan-era Justice Department attorney and Trump’s own former campaign lawyer Joseph diGenova, was furious about the release of his personal data. “I intend to sue the National Archives,” he told USA Today. “They violated the Privacy Act.”

A former Church Committee staffer also slammed Trump.

“Your Administration doxxed former public servants who staffed 1977-79 congressional investigation by revealing their SSNs. Many are still alive. Completely unnecessary & contributed nothing to JFK assassination understanding,” government accountability lawyer Mark Zaid wrote on X. “I trust you will provide them free credit monitoring.”

The federal government and its agencies are barred from sharing personal records without consent under the Privacy Act of 1974.

The Department of Homeland Security shut down its office in charge of investigating civil rights complaints on Friday.

DHS closed its Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which was created along with the department in 2002 to advise leadership on civil rights and liberties and to investigate agency complaints on everything from disaster response to immigration enforcement. Its 90 employees were told they will be paid through May 23.

There’s no word on whether the functions of the office will be transferred elsewhere, or what will happen to its $22 million in funding. But it comes as no surprise, considering the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce or eliminate oversight and civil rights offices in other departments. The civil rights division in the Justice Department, for example, has been directed to serve conservative culture-war aims, and much of its other work has been frozen.

The fact that the DHS’s office handles complaints against Immigration and Customs Enforcement was almost certainly a strike against it under this administration, which seeks to fast-track mass deportations regardless of complaints. To hard-line anti-immigration people on the right, civil rights and liberties are just further obstacles to getting rid of as many legal and undocumented immigrants as they can.

At the start of Trump’s second term, his campaign promise of fast-tracking mass deportations raised concerns that legal protections would be disregarded and civil rights violations would skyrocket as more immigrants were detained. Now that appears to be coming true, and getting rid of an office that would investigate those violations is certainly by design.

A federal judge tore into Justice Department lawyers Friday as they struggled to defend Donald Trump’s order banning transgender people from serving in the military. 

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said that she would not be “gaslit” by the lawyers’ attempts to convince her that the policy did not constitute a transgender ban, according to Politico’s senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney.

“You’re saying one thing in public. You’re saying a different thing in court,” Reyes said, referring to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s post on social media that referred to the policy as a ban. 

Earlier this week, Reyes had ruled that the Pentagon could not enforce the policy and had mischaracterized research and ignored evidence to support its conclusion to disallow transgender service members. Last week, Reyes stopped a hearing cold in its tracks so that the lawyers could actually read the studies mentioned, after she found that “virtually every” study cited in the ban contradicted support for Hegseth’s policy.

The judge noted in her ruling that the defense agreed that transgender people “can have the warrior ethos, physical and mental health, selflessness, honor, integrity, and discipline to ensure military excellence,” and that the government’s claims about their suitability for service were “pure conjecture.”

She delayed the order from going into effect until March 21, to give the Trump administration enough time to pursue an emergency appeal. 

In a new filing Friday, the Department of Justice asked Reyes to dissolve her preliminary injunction. Lawyers argued against her interpretation of Hegseth’s policy disqualifying service members who “have a current diagnosis or history of, or Exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria.” The lawyers claimed this rule did not “discriminate against trans-identifying persons as a class.”

Reyes hit back at the lawyers during Friday’s hearing, pushing them to explain how Hegseth’s policy was addressing an actual problem in the U.S. military and not simply creating a “pretext” for discriminating against transgender people, according to Cheney.  

The judge noted there were already policies in place that required military officials to identify people with debilitating medical conditions—which would include those with gender dysphoria that rendered them unable to serve.

“Everything in the record is that it’s a pretext. There is nothing in the record that this was a deliberative process,” Reyes said.