Judge Tears Into DOJ Lawyers for 10 Minutes Over Idiotic Charges

A federal judge slammed the Department of Justice Wednesday for its “hasty arrest” of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, and agreed to dismiss the ridiculous trespassing charge against the Democratic mayor.

U.S. Judge Andre Espionosa questioned why federal prosecutors would arrest Baraka only to retract the charges days later.

“An arrest, particularly of a public figure, is not a preliminary investigative tool. It is a severe action, carrying significant reputational and personal consequences, and it should only be undertaken after a thorough, dispassionate evaluation of credible evidence,” Espionosa said, in a nearly 10-minute tirade against the DOJ’s attorneys.

Earlier this month, Baraka was arrested by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and charged with trespassing after visiting Delaney Hall, a newly reopened detention facility where he had previously been denied entry. It marked the first immigration-related arrest of a sitting U.S. mayor by the Trump administration and yet another indication that the White House will try to take down just about anybody who gets in the way of its unlawful attack on immigrants. Last month, the FBI arrested a federal judge in Milwaukee for “obstructing” an attempted deportation.

Alina Habba, the acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey and Donald Trump’s former lawyer, announced the Democratic mayor’s arrest on X. “NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW,” she wrote, an absurd proclamation given her former client Donald Trump’s criminal history.

Just 13 days later, however, Habba announced her office would drop the misdemeanor charge against Baraka—though in the same announcement she revealed new charges against Representative LaMonica McIver, who accompanied Baraka on his visit to Delaney Hall.

Espinosa scolded Habba’s “worrisome misstep” in Baraka’s “hasty arrest,” calling the retraction of charges “embarrassing.” He dismissed the charge with prejudice.

“Federal prosecutors serve a single paramount client: justice itself. Your role is not to secure convictions at all costs, nor to satisfy public clamor, nor to advance political agendas,” Espinosa said. “Your allegiance is to the impartial application of the law, to the pursuit of truth, and to the upholding of due process for all.”

Despite Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s attestations against the use of fluoride, his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda is apparently going easy on one of the root causes of fluorosis (the only known side effect of over-fluoridated water): pesticides.

Under Donald Trump’s helm, the Health Department secretary has sworn to remove fluoride from all public water systems. Last month, Kennedy said he was assembling a task force on the issue, with plans to tell the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to end its fluoridation program for good.

But a forthcoming report from Kennedy, expected to be released Thursday, will apparently not label two popular pesticides used by U.S. farmers as “unsafe,” reported The Wall Street Journal. They include atrazine, a herbicide used on grasses and corn, and glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup.

Bayer and Monsanto (which transferred ownership of Roundup to Bayer in 2018) have jointly paid nearly $11 billion to settle multiple lawsuits and class actions related to accusations that Roundup’s use is behind a host of cancer cases, including lymphoma and leukemia. Approximately 165,000 Roundup lawsuits had been filed against the companies as of January 2024, according to the law firm Simmons Hanly Conroy, which represented some of the victims.

Well water, fed by groundwater, is one of the most common sources of over-fluoridated water. But why that water is exposed to high concentrations of the naturally occurring mineral is largely related to local industries and agrobusiness operations “that increase the risk of heavy metals, pesticides, nitrates, radon and fluoride in the water,” according to a 2023 study that extracted data from 15 fluoride-related studies conducted around the world.

Fluoride was first introduced to U.S. water in 1945 as part of a public health decision to reduce cavities and tooth decay in adults and children. It was remarkably successful, lowering the cavity and decay rate in both groups by as much as 25 percent, according to the American Dental Association. In 1999, the CDC listed water fluoridation as one of the 10 greatest public health achievements in the twentieth century, for that reason.

Furthermore, fluoride levels in public water are lower than they’ve been in decades. In 2015, the Obama administration dropped the maximum level of fluoride per liter of water to 0.7 milligrams from the previous guidance issued in 1962, which allowed levels to range between 0.7 and 1.2 milligrams per liter, in an effort to further waylay instances of dental fluorosis (discoloration and poor mineralization of the tooth).

“The benefits of fluoride for oral health considerably outweigh the risks,” Rodrigo Lacruz, a professor at New York University’s College of Dentistry, said in 2020, after he published a study on the effects of high fluoride ingestion.

Kennedy’s report will reportedly promise to question pesticide use. But falling short of actually enacting policy around it, all while duplicating and repeating research already conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency, is making ag industry experts further question whether the Trump administration is actually focused on efficiency, as they claim.

“If the administration’s goal is to bring more efficiency to government, then why is the MAHA Commission duplicating efforts by raising questions about pesticides that have been answered repeatedly through research and reviews by the Environmental Protection Agency?” Illinois farmer and National Corn Growers Association President Kenneth Hartman Jr. told the Journal.

Kennedy’s report will reportedly take actual aim at childhood vaccines (a popular topic for Kennedy) and ultraprocessed foods.

There was “mayhem” outside an immigration court in Phoenix Tuesday, as federal agents arrested several people, including one person whose case had just been dismissed.

Immigration attorney Issac Ortega told the Arizona Mirror that several masked agents, who refused to identify themselves as officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, arrested his client after his first immigration hearing.

Ortega’s client, a Venezuelan man in his mid-twenties who had entered the United States last fall using the CBP One app, had been told during his hearing that ICE had agreed to close his immigration case. Shortly after, federal agents moved to detain him and others outside the courthouse. Similar to other immigration arrests, the agents provided no identification or warrant.

Ortega told the Mirror that he believes ICE agreed to close his client’s case so that the Trump administration could more easily expedite his deportation. The sick part is, the Trump administration appears to be using compliance with the law to trap immigrants it wishes to deport.

“They always want people to enter the right way, to follow the process, but how are people supposed to do that when the rules are getting changed?” Ortega said.

Several people were swept up in the arrests Tuesday in a scene one attorney described to Ortega as “mayhem.” But that wasn’t the only city that saw mass arrests at courthouses.

Lindsay Toczylowski, the president and co-founder of Immigration Defenders, posted on X that there had been similar reports of people being detained after having their cases dismissed at immigration courtrooms across Los Angeles. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, posted that he’d heard similar stories from San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Seattle, suggesting the arrests in Phoenix were part of a larger sweep.

ICE has not posted a press release about the arrests on its website. These latest arrests represent a growing trend of immigration enforcement at courthouses, considered to be protected areas where ICE has not previously pursued arrests. New Trump administration policy has empowered immigration officers to detain individuals at these locations, as well as schools and places of worship.

ICE declined to comment on the arrests to the Mirror. The New Republic reached out to ICE for information about these arrests, but the agency had not responded by time of publication.

Amid one of Donald Trump’s most obvious corruption scandals, foreign leaders are now apologizing to the American president for not providing him with a multimillion-dollar bribe.

“I’m sorry I don’t have a plane to give you,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told Trump with a chuckle in a press conference Wednesday.

“I wish you did, I’d take it,” Trump responded without cracking a smile. “If your country offered the United States Air Force a plane, I would take it.”

“OK,” Ramaphosa said, likely surprised by the president’s seemingly serious response.

The two leaders met in the Oval Office Wednesday afternoon to discuss Trump’s recent unbacked claims that South Africa is experiencing a “white genocide.” Throughout the contentious meeting, Trump relentlessly argued that white South Africans are being killed at record rates, and even made him sit through an uncomfortably long video explaining the supposed mass murder of white Afrikaner farmers.

The press conference fell on the same day the Department of Defense announced it has officially accepted the $400 million jumbo jet as a gift from Qatar, which will be outfitted for Trump’s use to replace Air Force One.

“The secretary of defense has accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar in accordance with all federal rules and regulations,” Sean Parnel, the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, said Wednesday. “The Department of Defense will work to ensure proper security measures and functional-mission requirements are considered for an aircraft used to transport the president of the United States.”

The “gift” has been heavily scrutinized by lawmakers on both sides for its blatant corruption.

Trump said last week the Boeing 747 would go directly to his personal library once he leaves office, a clear violation of a 1966 law preventing presidents from keeping personal gifts worth more than $480.

Ramaphosa’s apology— joke or not—is a terrifying indication that accepting bribes from foreign leaders could soon become the norm, or even the expectation, for the Trump administration going forward.

A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration violated a court order by sending immigrants to South Sudan who aren’t from that country.

“It was impossible for these people to have a meaningful opportunity to object to their transfer to South Sudan,” U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy said in his ruling Wednesday, adding that the administration provided “plainly insufficient” notice to the immigrants.

“The Department’s actions in this case are unquestionably violative of this court’s order,” Murphy continued. On Tuesday, Murphy warned the government that those who took part in the flights could be subject to criminal penalties, and those could come in further court proceedings.

Murphy called for an emergency hearing only one day after learning in court from immigration attorneys that the Trump administration had sent two immigrants, one Vietnamese and the other Burmese, to South Sudan without any justification, and without giving them the chance to contest their deportation out of concern for their own safety. South Sudan is in the midst of violence and political unrest, with the State Department warning Americans not to visit.

Despite the Department of Homeland Security releasing the names and photographs of many of the people on the deportation flights before the hearing, the government still told Murphy that information about them was too sensitive to disclose in open court.

The Trump administration has routinely flouted court orders over its immigration policies, even when the Supreme Court ordered the government to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom even administration lawyers admitted was mistakenly deported to El Salvador.

The White House continues to send immigrants to countries they don’t come from, such as Rwanda, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Panama and openly refuses to respond to any judicial oversight. Administration officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio even scoff at court orders that rebuke the administration. Will contempt charges cause the administration to follow the law?

This story has been updated.