Five moves, one news cycle, one goal — making this presidency impossible to check.
Today, the regime stopped pretending it cares whether courts, the Constitution, or voters can touch it. Here’s what Zev and I walked through.
5️⃣ Leon Black Faces Congress — The $170M Trump’s DOJ Won’t Touch
Leon Black walks into House Oversight tomorrow to answer for the $170 million he wired Jeffrey Epstein over five years for “tax and estate planning advice” Epstein was not remotely qualified to give. Bank of America moved it in $10–$20 million chunks, asked nothing, and quietly paid Epstein’s survivors $72.5 million in March without admitting a thing.
The kicker: Black already paid $62.5 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2023 to dodge prosecution — and on page one of that settlement, he admitted in writing that the money he paid Epstein was used “partially to fund” the trafficking operation. He bought the immunity. He bought the silence. Pam Bondi’s DOJ has had eighteen months to indict somebody who funded Epstein. They have indicted nobody. Tomorrow is the only room left where he has to sit and take a question.
4️⃣ 164 Dead, 14,000 Missing In Venezuala
Two earthquakes hit Venezuela last night, thirty-nine seconds apart — a 7.2 foreshock and a 7.5 mainshock. Biggest seismic event there since 1900. Acting President Delcy Rodríguez — the woman running things because U.S. forces grabbed Nicolás Maduro out of Miraflores earlier this year — confirmed 164 dead, over 1,500 injured, and more than 14,000 missing. La Guaira is rubble.
Trump is going to send billion in help while he abandons Americans.
Same day, the Supreme Court told the administration it can strip TPS from Haitians and Syrians — Venezuelans next — and no court is allowed to check. TPS exists for exactly this scenario; Haiti’s protection traces to the 2010 quake. We toppled the government, we won’t let the survivors come, and if they’re already here the door behind them just closed too. Cruelty written into the operating manual.
3️⃣ He Says The War Is Over — Then Bills You $87.6 Billion
Wednesday the White House sent Congress an $87.6 billion supplemental. Sixty-seven billion refills the Pentagon after “Operation Epic Fury” — $21B munitions, $17.3B operations, $12.1B classified — on top of the trillion appropriated last year and the $1.5 trillion he wants for next. Fortune puts the real war cost closer to $200 - $500 billion.
The request landed hours after Trump called Senator Bill Cassidy a “lunatic” to his face for voting Tuesday with three other Republicans to invoke the War Powers Act. By Wednesday night Cassidy and Rand Paul folded; the follow-up died 50-47. Bill arrived right on cue. Stuffed inside: $1.1B for Florida farmers (read it twice), $500M for “restoration projects in and around Washington” (his ballroom), and a $1B Penn Station sweetener with Schumer’s name on it in invisible ink.
2️⃣ Two 6-3 Rulings In One Morning — Alito Closes The Courthouse Door
Same morning, same court, same lineup. Alito wrote both. Sotomayor, Kagan, Jackson dissented in both. Mullin v. Doe ends TPS for 350,000 Haitians and 4,000 Syrians. Mullin v. Al Otro Lado lets CBP turn asylum seekers around while their feet are still in Mexico.
Now read the Doe opinion. The Court did not rule that Kristi Noem followed the law when she killed TPS. The Court ruled no court is allowed to ask the question. An openly unlawful TPS termination is now insulated from judicial review forever. A 6-3 that kills the merits is bad. A 6-3 that strips reviewability is worse. One you re-litigate. The other locks the courthouse door behind you.
1️⃣ BREAKING — The Postmaster Just Defied The Courts. Live. On Camera.
This was the lead and it got bigger by the hour.
Postmaster General David Steiner — Trump appointee — sat before the Senate Wednesday. Senator Gary Peters, yes or no: if a state refuses to hand the federal government its absentee voter list, will USPS still deliver that state’s mail-in ballots? Steiner, on the record: “Under our proposed regulation, no.” Peters then revealed live that the USPS Board of Governors never approved this rule. Steiner went ahead anyway.
Then today — while we were on air — Judge Indira Talwani in Massachusetts (Obama appointee) struck the underlying executive order as “legally void” in a 37-page ruling. Her core line: “The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections.” The administration has now lost 9 of 9 court fights on voter rolls. They keep losing. They keep enforcing. This is the part of the authoritarian timeline you read about happening in other countries — the moment institutions stop pretending the rulings apply to them. Five months from a midterm. It is the whole game.
How Trump is Trying To Use The USPS For a Midterm Coup
On Wednesday, in a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing that should be on every front page in America, Postmaster General David Steiner was asked a simple question: under your proposed new rule, will the Postal Service refuse to deliver mail ballots if states won’t hand their voter lists over to the Trump administration?
THE PATTERN
The regime is making this presidency unreviewable. Courts that check him get ignored. Courts he controls strip judicial review on the way out the door. Congress votes to rein him in and two senators fold by sundown. We bury a country we just toppled while closing the door on its refugees. The billionaire who funded the trafficker walks into a hearing because the DOJ won’t touch him.
The counterweight is the courts going 9-for-9, the four senators who held for forty-eight hours, the Oversight Committee that put Black on the calendar, and you. It’s the only thing on the board that won a round this week.
See you Monday.
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Thank you LC - Silence is Complicity, Noble Blend, Lori Modafferi, 🇨🇦 Natalie Woodn’t 🇨🇦, Gretchen Theodorakis, and many others for tuning into my live video with Zev Shalev! Join me for my next live video in the app.
