update - appeal court strikes down TX 2025 gerrymandered electoral map

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Trump demands sweeping changes after election losses


If you can’t beat ’em, change the rules! That’s what President Donald Trump wants to do following Democratic victories in multiple high-profile races across the country as he called for huge changes to be made to state and federal election systems, Knewz.com can report.
Trump’s demands


“I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS… ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING,” President Donald Trump recently wrote on Truth Social. By: Bonnie Cash – Pool via CNP / MEGA© Knewz (CA)
“Pass Voter Reform, Voter ID, No Mail-In Ballots. Save our Supreme Court from ‘Packing,’ No Two State addition, etc. TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER!!!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform in the wake of sweeping Democratic successes.
Significant Democratic victories


Democrats’ Election Day 2025 victories, including California’s Prop 50 redistricting effort pushed by Governor Gavin Newsom, marked the first big test for the party since President Donald Trump won a second term and could predict how the 2026 midterms will go. By: Annabelle Gordon – CNP / MEGA© Knewz (CA)
Democrats racked up a series of major wins, taking the governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey as well as the New York City mayor’s race. In California, voters approved Proposition 50, a measure backed by Governor Gavin Newsom that hands Democrats control over congressional redistricting and could help them win up to five GOP-held seats, effectively countering Trump-ordered Republican-friendly map changes in Texas. Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger and New Jersey’s Mikie Sherrill both won their governorships by running centrist campaigns centered on affordability, health care and public safety, while in New York City, 34-year-old democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani defeated Trump-backed Democrat-turned-Independent Andrew Cuomo, a former New York governor, in a high-turnout race driven by housing and transit issues. Democrats also swept state Supreme Court elections in Pennsylvania and passed key initiatives in Colorado and Maine, where voters approved new gun-safety measures and rejected stricter voter ID rules.
Why Trump wants the big changes


President Donald Trump, who appointed three of the six justices who make up the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, has accused Democrats of wanting to “pack” the court. “If they can’t catch up through the ballot box by winning an election they want to try doing it in a different way,” he’s claimed. By: Eric Lee – Pool via CNP / MEGA© Knewz (CA)
Trump has been pushing for sweeping changes to how Americans vote, insisting — without evidence — that Democrats benefit from what he’s called “rampant” election fraud, especially when turnout is high. That’s the driving force behind his demands for strict voter ID rules and his push to scrap mail-in voting altogether. He’s also made it clear he wants to block proposals to expand the Supreme Court or turn Washington, D.C., or Puerto Rico into states, arguing that those moves would hand Democrats more power by adding liberal justices and new Democratic seats in Congress. They’re all part of the broader, unsubstantiated argument he’s been making for years — that the system is stacked against him and Republicans, and that tightening voting rules and preventing structural changes to Congress and the Supreme Court are the only ways to, as he’s claimed, “restore fairness” to American elections.
Unhappy Republicans — and Trump’s explanation


“Our side needs to focus on affordability. Make the American dream affordable. Bring down costs,” former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s now running for the Ohio governorship, said in a post-election video on X. By: Ron Sachs – CNP for NY Post / MEGA© Knewz (CA)
Republicans publicly vented after the recent abundance of Democratic wins, with some in the party bluntly blaming their own side. “We got our a**** handed to us,” Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said in a “no sugar coating” video he posted on social media, telling Republicans they need to focus on costs and abandon “identity politics.” Others pointed to weak campaigns, including former Trump advisor Chris LaCivita, who wrote on X, “A bad candidate and bad campaign have consequences — the Virginia governor’s race is example number one.” Some said the strategy itself was the problem. “Trump should absolutely have been out [campaigning] in New Jersey,” argued Andrew Kolvet of Turning Point USA. “The people that love Trump … would have been motivated by that.” Trump chimed in, too, to assign blame. “TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND [the government] SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT,” he claimed on Truth Social.

 

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Epstein thought he'd be offered deal to 'flip' on Trump


Jeffrey Epstein’s time behind bars in his final days was marked by misery, as he went from a life of luxury to staining his jail uniform while awaiting trial on trafficking charges, Knewz.com can report. Journalist and author Michael Wolff offered his Substack readers a look into the predator’s last weeks while everything crumbled around him.

Epstein was a mess behind bars


Jeffrey Epstein was struggling to cope inside New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center in the final weeks of his life, according to author Michael Wolff. By: Metropolitan Correctional Center/CBS© Knewz (CA)
Epstein — who died in his New York jail cell in August 2019, a month after he was arrested — couldn’t handle his new life in lockup inside New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, according to Wolff, whom The Wall Street Journal recently described as an “unofficial consigliere” to the disgraced financier. “Epstein had been brought up through the underground tunnel that connected the MCC to the Federal Courthouse. Rather than touch the soiled bedding, Epstein, the germaphobe, had, without sleep, stood and paced for the past two days in his cell,” Wolff wrote on Substack, citing a 2021 piece he wrote and later published in Too Famous: The Rich, the Powerful, the Wishful, the D ****, the Notorious —Twenty Years of Columns, Essays and Reporting*. “A bit after noon, a marshal in a TV sort of garb — T-shirt, nylon jacket announcing U.S. MARSHAL, baseball cap — came in through a side door and stood legs apart, hands crossed, in front of a side door. Ten or 15 minutes later, Epstein seemed to be pushed out, a child at a first recital, and, for a second, hesitated. Then he slowly shuffled forward, head down. His blue prison shift was wrinkled and soiled, a brown streak down the left side.” Wolff wrote how the predator was “unshaven, his gray hair wild.” Said Wolff, “It seemed surprising he had the strength to pull out his own chair at the defense table. The faces of people within days or weeks of death can often seem aghast and uncomprehending, their eyes already seeing another world. Epstein looked as bad.”

‘Flip’ on Trump?


President Donald Trump was “obsessed with what [Jeffrey] Epstein knew about [Bill] Clinton,” according to author Michael Wolff. By: MEGA© Knewz (CA)
Epstein was allegedly waiting on either the White House or the Justice Department’s Southern District of New York office to reach out to him to play ball and “flip” to save himself from decades in prison. If the White House reached out, Wolff wrote, Epstein expected them to want him to spill details on former President Bill Clinton, who knew and had traveled with the financier for philanthropic initiatives for his Clinton Foundation many years earlier. (Clinton has long denied any wrongdoing.) “The White House, through the Justice Department, was looking to press a longtime Republican obsession, and [President Donald] Trump ace-in-the-hole, and get Epstein to flip and reveal the s** secrets of Bill Clinton,” Wolff explained. “Trump, if he was obsessed with Clinton, which he was, was also obsessed with what Epstein knew about Clinton and, likely, especially in the days after the E. Jean Carroll [lawsuit against Trump], badgering whoever could be badgered to squeeze him.” If the Southern District of New York’s attorneys met with Epstein, he believed they would be looking for him to turn his back on his old pal, Trump, amid questions about his business affairs. “SDNY had slipped Epstein’s arrest past Trump’s attorney general and watchdog Bill Barr — who, indeed, oddly recused himself after the arrest and then hurriedly (at Trump’s urgings, [Steve] Bannon was sure) unrecused himself,” Wolff claimed. Neither of those things came together for Epstein before his death.

Ghislaine Maxwell defends Trump


Ghislaine Maxwell praised President Donald Trump’s behavior when he was with Jeffrey Epstein. Critics speculate she’s angling for a pardon. By: MEGA© Knewz (CA)
While Epstein never faced punishment for his crimes, his co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, did. She is currently serving a 20-year sentence for trafficking. However, she is hoping to receive a pardon from Trump. She was moved to a minimum-security women’s prison in Texas, known as “Club Fed” due to its cushy amenities, following a private meeting with Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche over the summer. In their interviews, Maxwell claimed, “I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting. I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.”

Trump’s about-face


Jeffrey Epstein died in a New York jail cell in 2019 about a month after he was arrested on trafficking charges. By: MEGA© Knewz (CA)
After months of distancing himself from all things Epstein amid claims Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy AG Blanche had privately told him his name appears in the infamous Epstein files, Trump faced a reckoning after 20,000 pages of Epstein’s emails and other documents — in which his name appears more than 1,000 times — were released by the House Oversight Committee, which obtained them from Epstein’s estate — not the DOJ or FBI. Just a week after Trump branded efforts to release any Epstein files a “hoax,” saying Democrats were only bringing them up to “deflect how badly they’ve done on the [government] shutdown,” he did something he’s rarely done: Trump changed course. “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party,” the president wrote on Truth Social.

 

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Judge tosses DOJ lawsuit challenging a New York law barring immigration agents from state courts


ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A judge has dismissed a Trump administration legal challenge to New York policies that block immigration officials from arresting people at state courthouses, saying the federal government can't force states to cooperate with those enforcement efforts.

U.S. District Judge Mae D'Agostino late Monday granted New York's motion to dismiss the government's lawsuit, one of several legal actions from the Republican administration targeting state and local policies over immigration enforcement.

The lawsuit challenged a 2020 state law banning federal immigration officials from arresting people who are coming and going from New York courthouses or in court for proceedings unless they have a warrant signed by a judge. The law, called the Protect Our Courts Act, was approved in response to enforcement actions at courthouses during President Donald Trump's first term. The law doesn't cover federal immigration courts.

In its lawsuit, the Department of Justice claimed that the New York law and two related state executive orders were unconstitutional because they obstructed the execution of federal immigration authorities.

D’Agostino, though, found that New York's decision not to participate in enforcing civil immigration law is protected by the 10th Amendment, which sets boundaries on the federal government's powers.

“Fundamentally, the United States fails to identify any federal law mandating that state and local officials generally assist or cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts. Nor could it," the judge wrote. "No such federal laws exist because the Tenth Amendment prohibits Congress from conscripting state and local officials and resources to assist with federal regulatory schemes, like immigration enforcement.”

A Justice Department spokesperson said in response to an email seeking comment that, “President Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda is a top national security and public safety priority that this Department of Justice will continue to vigorously defend whenever challenged in court.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat whose office argued for the lawsuit to be dismissed, said she was fighting for the “dignity and rights of immigrant communities.”

“Everyone deserves to seek justice without fear," James said in a statement. “This ruling ensures that anyone can use New York’s state courts without being targeted by federal authorities.”

Michael Hill, The Associated Press

 

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Republicans hit with major blow in Texas redistricting gambit


A federal appeals court set up a likely U.S. Supreme Court challenge over a Republican redistricting map in Texas.

A three-judge panel threw out a newly drawn redistricting map for the 2026 election and ordered the state to use the districts passed by the state legislature in 2021, with a Dec. 8 deadline for candidates to file for the March elections, reported the Texas Tribune.





“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics,” wrote U.S. Judge Jeffrey Brown, who was appointed by President Donald Trump. “To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”

The decision marks a major blow for Republicans across the U.S. who pushed through mid-decade redistricting maps on Trump's orders to gain a perceived GOP advantage in next year's midterm elections.

The Republican-led legislature approved the new maps in August, but advocacy groups filed challenges that allege the new districts intentionally dilute the voting power of Black and Hispanic Texans.

"This is just the opening gambit in what promises to be a yearslong legal battle over Texas’ congressional map," the Tribune reported. "A lawsuit over the state’s 2021 redistricting — including its state legislative and education board seats — went to trial earlier this summer and remains pending before the same three-judge panel. The judges have indicated they may want to see how the U.S. Supreme Court rules on a major voting rights case before issuing their full ruling on Texas’ maps."

 

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Court settlement calls for NPR to get $36M in government funds to operate US public radio system


WASHINGTON (AP) — National Public Radio will receive approximately $36 million in grant money to operate the nation’s public radio interconnection system under the terms of a court settlement with the federal government's steward of funding for public broadcasting stations.

The settlement, announced late Monday, partially resolves a legal dispute in which NPR accused the Corporation for Public Broadcasting of bowing to pressure from President Donald Trump to cut off its funding.

On March 25, Trump said at a news conference that he would “love to” defund NPR and PBS because he believes they are biased in favor of Democrats.

NPR accused the CPB of violating its First Amendment free speech rights when it moved to cut off its access to grant money appropriated by Congress. NPR also claims Trump, a Republican, wants to punish it for the content of its journalism.

On April 2, the CPB’s board initially approved a three-year, roughly $36 million extension of a grant for NPR to operate the “interconnection” satellite system for public radio. NPR has been operating and managing the Public Radio Satellite System since 1985.

But the CPB reversed course under mounting pressure from the Trump administration, according to NPR. The agency redirected federal interconnection funds away from NPR to an entity that didn’t exist and wasn’t statutorily authorized to receive it, NPR says.

CPB attorneys denied that the agency retaliated against NPR to appease Trump. They had argued that NPR’s claims are factually and legally meritless.

On May 1, Trump issued an executive order that called for federal agencies to stop funding for NPR and PBS. The settlement doesn’t end a lawsuit in which NPR seeks to block any implementation or enforcement of Trump's executive order. U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss is scheduled to preside over another hearing for the case on Dec. 4.

The settlement says NPR and CPB agree that the executive order is unconstitutional and that CPB won't enforce it unless a court orders it to do so.

Katherine Maher, NPR's president and CEO, said the settlement is “a victory for editorial independence and a step toward upholding the First Amendment rights of NPR and the public media system."

Patricia Harrison, the corporation’s CEO, said in a statement that the settlement marks “an important moment for public media.”

Michael Kunzelman, The Associated Press

 

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House Republicans condemn gerrymandering 'debacle'


When President Donald Trump called on the Republican-controlled Texas legislature to redraw new U.S. House of Representatives district maps earlier this year, he expressly hoped GOP lawmakers could find five additional Republican seats by carving up Democratic districts. But after federal judges in Texas ruled those maps illegal, some House Republicans are railing against the entire effort.

Politico reported Tuesday evening that the recent 2-1 decision by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas has some Republicans bemoaning the apparent failed effort in the Lone Star State to give Republicans an advantage ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) told reporters that House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-La.) refusal to denounce the redistricting push was a "total failure of leadership." Other Republicans are also speaking out against GOP-led gerrymandering efforts.

"I was never in favor of doing all this redistricting stuff anyway," Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) told Politico. "Should not have opened that box."

Kiley's California district is likely to flip Democrat in the wake of https://www.alternet.org/newsom-texas/, which Golden State voters approved by massive margins earlier this month. The Texas decision only applies to the Lone Star State's new maps and will not impact the new temporary maps created by Prop 50, where Democrats are expected to flip five total seats next year. California-based Republican strategist Rob Stutzman called the Texas gerrymandering gambit a "possible debacle" if the Supreme Court decides to uphold the lower court's ruling.

"This will have been a ready, shoot, aim exercise by Trump," Stutzman said.

Should the Texas decision be upheld, the Lone Star State will revert to its 2021 maps, meaning Reps. Greg Casar (D-Texas) and Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) will no longer be pitted against one another to remain in office. Doggett quoted author Mark Twain on Tuesday, saying "the reports of my death, politically, are greatly exaggerated." Other Texas Democrats like Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) — who has been contemplating a U.S. Senate run — will also be able to run for another term in their respective districts.

Trump's effort to gerrymander Democrats out of their seats in red states has already been running into significant obstacles, as Indiana Senate president pro tempore Rodric Bray said recently he did not have the votes to pass gerrymandered maps through his chamber. New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) has also poured cold water on Trump's redistricting campaign despite her state having a Republican trifecta government, saying earlier this year it was "not on the top of [voters'] priority list."

Click here to read Politico's full report.

 

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Federal judges block Texas from using its new US House map in the 2026 midterms


A federal court on Tuesday blocked Texas from using a redrawn U.S. House map that touched off a nationwide redistricting battle and is a major piece of President Donald Trump’s efforts to preserve a slim Republican majority ahead of the 2026 elections.

The ruling is a blow to Trump's rush to create a more favorable political landscape for Republicans in next year's midterms, at least for now. Texas filed an appeal Tuesday evening with the U.S. Supreme Court after Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republicans publicly defended the map, which was engineered to give Republicans five additional House seats.

In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of federal judges in El Paso sided with opponents who argued that Texas' unusual summer redrawing of congressional districts would harm Black and Hispanic residents. The decision was authored by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey V. Brown, a Trump nominee from the president's first term.

“To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map,” the ruling states.

The decision comes amid an widening national battle over redistricting. Missouri and North Carolina followed Texas with new maps adding an additional Republican seat each.

To counter them, California voters approved a ballot initiative to give Democrats an additional five seats there. The Trump administration filed a federal lawsuit challenging that map, with Attorney General Pam Bondi calling it “a brazen power grab.”

In a post on X, California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom celebrated the Texas ruling: “Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned — and democracy won.”

Republicans insist they had only partisan motives

Texas Republicans insisted they drew the new map only for partisan advantage. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that partisan gerrymandering is a political question and not one for the federal courts to decide.

“Texas’s map was drawn the right way for the right reasons,” Bondi posted on X.

Civil rights groups representing Black and Hispanic voters argued the map reduced the influence of minority voters, making it a racial gerrymander that violates the federal Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution. They sought an order blocking Texas from using the map while their case proceeded, which the judges granted.

If the ruling stands, Texas will be forced to use the map drawn by the GOP-controlled Legislature in 2021 for next year’s elections.

"Today’s decision is a critical victory for voting rights and a powerful rebuke of Texas’s brazen attempt to dilute the political power of Latino and Black voters,” said Abha Khanna, a partner in the Elias Law Group, a Democratic firm representing minority voters opposing the new Texas map.

Judges say the Trump administration signaled race-based motives

The judges signaled that they think the map's critics have a substantial chance of winning their case at trial. An appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama joined Brown in the majority, while an appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan dissented.

The majority said that absent their injunction blocking the map's use for now, minorities would be forced to have congressional representation based on “likely unconstitutional racial classifications for at least two years.”

The two appeals judges concluded that a major reason that Abbott and Republican lawmakers moved was a letter from the head of the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division in July, directing Texas to redraw four districts that it said violated the Voting Rights Act.


Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant U.S. attorney general overseeing the division, cited a ruling last year by the conservative federal appeals court for Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared that the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 does not allow separate minority groups to “aggregate their populations” to argue that a map illegally dilutes minority voters’ ability to elect the candidate of their choice. The court said each group’s situation must be analyzed separately.

Dhillon's letter to Texas officials dealt with four so-called “coalition” districts, one in the Dallas area and three in the Houston area, where no group has a majority but minority voters together outnumber non-Hispanic white voters. Dhillon argued that those districts must be dismantled as “vestiges of an unconstitutional racially based gerrymandering past.”


The judges said Dhillon's conclusion was “legally incorrect,” but, added, "The Legislature adopted those racial objectives.”

“The redistricting bill’s sponsors made numerous statements suggesting that they had intentionally manipulated the districts’ lines to create more majority-Hispanic and majority-Black districts," the ruling said.

GOP map eliminated minority coalition districts

Republicans hold 25 of Texas’ 38 congressional seats, with Democrats holding two of their 13 seats in districts Trump carried in 2024. Had the new map been in place last year, Trump would have carried 30 congressional districts by 10 percentage points or more, making it likely that the GOP would have won that many seats as well.

The new map decreased from 16 to 14 the number of congressional districts where minorities comprise a majority of voting-age citizens.


Texas eliminated five of the state's nine coalition districts. Five of the six Democratic lawmakers drawn into districts with other incumbents are Black or Hispanic.

“The state’s intent here is to reduce the members of Congress who represent Black communities, and that, in and of itself, is unconstitutional,” said Derrick Johnson, national president of the NAACP, which was among the parties suing Texas over redistricting.

Republicans argued that the map is better for minority voters. While five “coalition” districts are eliminated, there’s a new, eighth Hispanic-majority district, and two new Black-majority districts.

Critics consider each of those new districts a sham, arguing that the majority is so slim that white voters, who tend to turn out in larger numbers, will control election results.

But in a statement Tuesday, Abbott said it's “absurd” to claim that the map is discriminatory.


"The Legislature redrew our congressional maps to better reflect Texans’ conservative voting preferences – and for no other reason,” he said.

___

Associated Press journalists Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina; Adriana Gomez in Pembroke Park, Florida, and Mark Sherman in Washington, contributed to this story.

John Hanna, The Associated Press

 

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Trump stokes outrage with pardons for corrupt, prison-bound Republicans


President Donald Trump’s pardons of former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada and his former chief of staff, Cade Cothren, two Republicans recently sentenced to federal prison, have intensified criticism of how the president is using his clemency powers.

Knewz.com has learned that the pair had been convicted in a public corruption scheme involving a fictitious consulting firm that secured taxpayer-funded business.

A pattern of pardons for Republican allies

The decision to pardon Casada and Cothren continues a growing list of Republicans who have benefited from President Trump’s clemency in his second term.

Previous recipients include former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, ex-congressman Michael Grimm, and, most recently, George Santos, whose prison sentence was commuted.

As for Casada, he was sentenced in September to three years in federal prison, while Cothren received a two-and-a-half-year sentence.

Prosecutors said Cothren created Phoenix Solutions with Casada’s backing and the involvement of then-Representative Robin Smith. The firm was misrepresented as being operated by “Matthew Phoenix,” a fictitious individual.

In 2020, companies tied to Casada and Smith received roughly $52,000 through a legislative mailer program.

White House defends pardons, blames ‘over-prosecution’

A White House official said in a statement that the Joe Biden Justice Department “significantly over-prosecuted” Casada and Cothren for what it called “a minor issue involving constituent mailers.”

The official said the effort “resulted in a net profit loss of less than $5,000” and produced no complaints from legislators.

The same official claimed the “Biden DOJ responded with an armed raid, perp walk, and suggested sentences exceeding 10 years – penalties normally reserved for multimillion dollar fraudsters.”

However, the case began under Trump’s own Justice Department, which oversaw the FBI raids on Casada’s and Cothren’s homes in January 2021, according to reports.

Legal troubles began with earlier controversies

According to reports, Casada and Cothren’s legal troubles followed earlier controversies.

Casada resigned as speaker in 2019 after Republicans issued a no-confidence vote amid multiple scandals including revelations that he and Cothren had exchanged explicit messages about women years earlier.

Cothren also admitted to sending racist texts and using cocaine inside a legislative office during a previous job.

Prosecutors later said Casada’s then-girlfriend impersonated an associate of the non-existent “Matthew Phoenix” as part of the mailer scheme.

Public outcry over Trump’s pardons

Casada said in a statement to The Tennessee Journal, “It is good news. I’m just grateful to the president and his trust and understanding of my innocence. I can now get on with my life!”

However, others sharply condemned the pardons.

Tennessee Democratic Rep. Gloria Johnson wrote on X, “Democrats can’t speak on the House floor, but Republicans can commit multiple felonies and walk free.”

MeidasTouch editor Ron Filipkowski wrote that Trump ensures “every Republican politician is above the law” and urged “a constitutional amendment to limit presidential pardon power.”

Independent journalist Marcy Wheeler said Trump was again proving “the GOP is the brand of abject corruption,” while The Tennessee Holler, a progressive news site, argued that the case shows “the law no longer applies to Republicans.”