Trump’s Legal Win Comes Back to Bite Him With Arrested Wisconsin Judge

A Wisconsin judge who was indicted for allegedly helping an immigrant evade authorities is using the Supreme Court ruling granting Donald Trump presidential immunity to argue that she also shouldn’t be subject to prosecution.

“The problems with this prosecution are legion, but most immediately, the government cannot prosecute Judge Dugan because she is entitled to judicial immunity for her official acts,” lawyers for Judge Hannah Dugan wrote, in a seven-page motion to dismiss filed Wednesday. “Immunity is not a defense to the prosecution to be determined later by a jury or court; it is an absolute bar to the prosecution at the outset,” they wrote, directly citing Trump v. United States.

Dugan was indicted Tuesday for two federal counts of obstruction, one for concealing a person from discovery and arrest and another for obstruction of federal government proceedings. The government alleges that she directed Eduardo Flores-Ruiz through a side door out of the courtroom, away from federal agents who had arrived at her courthouse to arrest him. Flores-Luiz and his lawyer then traveled through a public hallway (past a couple of DEA agents) to the elevator, and he was eventually apprehended after a short foot chase.

But Dugan’s lawyers argued that it didn’t actually matter what she did, or why she did it. If Dugan had judicial immunity, then she had broad authority over her courtroom, and her motives couldn’t be scrutinized—similarly to Trump’s.

“Even if (contrary to what the trial evidence would show) Judge Dugan took the actions the complaint alleges, these plainly were judicial acts for which she has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution. Judges are empowered to maintain control over their courtrooms specifically and the courthouse generally,” the motion said.

“Judge Dugan’s subjective motivations are irrelevant to immunity. ‘Judges are entitled to absolute immunity for their judicial acts, without regard to the motive with which those acts are allegedly performed,’” the lawyers wrote, again directly citing Trump v. United States, which states: “In dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives.”

“Judge Dugan therefore has both immunity from conviction and immunity from prosecution,” her lawyers argued. The question of whether Dugan has judicial immunity for official acts is one that will have to be answered promptly, because if she does, she cannot be prosecuted full stop.

Dugan’s prosecution is a plainly political one, as the Trump administration would like to punish any judge who gets in the way of the president’s agenda. Attorney General Pam Bondi warned that Dugan’s arrest was only the beginning of a law enforcement crackdown on the judiciary.

The U.S. president is still caught in an awkward political dance with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The world leaders engaged in a strange “will they, won’t they” on Wednesday, apparently goading one another to show up to a face-to-face meeting in Istanbul to discuss peace in Ukraine. The meeting was supposed to be the first between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to end the war that began in 2022.

But the encounter was further complicated by comments from Zelenskiy that he would only appear if Putin guaranteed his presence.

Trump’s explanation for Putin’s behavior, however, was nothing short of bizarre. At a press conference in Doha, Qatar, Trump said that he was not “disappointed” that the meeting fell apart.

“I actually said, why would he go if I’m not going?” Trump told a reporter about Putin. “Because I wasn’t going to go. I wasn’t planning to go. I would go, but I wasn’t planning to go.

“And I said, I don’t think he’s going to go if I don’t go. And that’s turned out to be right. But we have people there. Marco, as you know, is doing a fantastic job,” Trump said, referring to Marco Rubio, who is currently serving as both secretary of state and acting national security adviser.

“But I didn’t think it was possible for Putin to go if I’m not there,” Trump added.

Efforts to coordinate peace talks between the two warring nations have stalled in recent weeks.

Rising frustration over the ongoing conflict—and Putin and Zelenskiy’s deep hatred for one another—has flustered Trump.

By late April, the president had resorted to begging Putin to stop the violence. At a White House press conference that same day, Trump claimed that Russia had offered major concessions in a possible peace deal. Those “concessions,” however, practically rewarded Russia for sparking the conflict and amounted to “stopping taking” the entirety of Ukraine.

Senior officials in the Trump administration—including the president himself—have verbally recognized Crimea as a part of Russia, a remarkable reversal of long-standing U.S. policy that made Kremlin propagandists on state-sponsored television laugh at the downfall of American power.

Trump has since tried to backtrack his initial promises over the war. In a 100-day retrospective with Time magazine, Trump claimed that his pledge to end the war “on day one” was little more than a joke.

It turns out that Elon Musk failed to keep his promise to pay voters in swing states who signed his petition supporting Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 election, according to a new lawsuit.

Plaintiffs in the national class action suit, filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania last week, say that Musk’s America PAC never paid them for signing the petition. The lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit are three people who lived in Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Georgia at the time, one of whom worked as a canvasser for the PAC in Michigan and Georgia.

Musk spent roughly $300 million on the 2024 election in support of Trump, and offered initial payments of $47 to signatories of a petition supporting his PAC, later boosting those payments to $100. If a signatory referred the petition to others, they were offered additional payments for each successful referral. 

At the time, the tech oligarch said that signing the petition demonstrated support for the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution. The goal of the cash payments was to increase voter registration and turnout in battleground states. But according to the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, the whole thing was a bait-and-switch.

The lawsuit states that the plaintiffs are in contact “with numerous others who referred voters to sign the America PAC petition, who are likewise frustrated that they did not receive full payments for their referrals.” They expect “more than 100 Class Members” in the lawsuit who are owed more than $5 million. 

“This case is about a broken promise: Elon Musk promised supporters that they would be paid for signing a petition and referring others to do the same,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, a co-founder of the law firm Lichten & Liss-Riordan representing the plaintiffs, told CNBC. “Our clients relied on that promise because they believed in Elon, but unfortunately, that promise was not kept. It appears the promise was broken for many others as well.”

Musk’s election investment and promised payments gave him what he wanted in the end. Not only did Trump win the election, but Musk was handsomely rewarded with a powerful role in the administration “cutting costs” and gaining access to sensitive data within the government under his Department of Government Efficiency initiative. Meanwhile, he continues to rake in billions in government contracts. But just like his beneficiary Trump, Musk is allegedly stiffing the people he promised to pay and getting sued over it. 

RFK Jr. finally admitted that firing thousands of workers and cutting billions from the National Institutes of Health could impact the well-being of Americans.

The Department of Health and Human Services secretary testified in two separate meetings before Congress Wednesday and was grilled relentlessly by Democrats on his disastrous restructuring of the Department of Health and Human Services.

When asked about cuts to the NIH, which includes the nation’s largest hospital dedicated solely to clinical research, RFK Jr.’s front faltered.

“I think the cuts that are now proposed by NIH are gonna hurt,” he responded. It was a feeble (and obvious) admission given that minutes earlier he said he actually has no idea how many people were fired.

“Secretary Kennedy, how many staff have been cut from the NIH’s clinical center? I want a specific number.” Democratic Senator Patty Murray asked.

“I can’t tell you that now, Senator Murray,” he responded.

In March, RFK Jr. announced the firing of 1,200 NIH workers—6 percent of the institute’s workforce—as part of a larger effort to cut 10,000 jobs from HHS. In the first three months of 2025, the Trump administration also cut $2.7 billion in NIH funding for research, according to a new report from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Despite this, RFK Jr. refused to take blame for the state of public health in America, even as clinical research faces existential threats and the country experiences one of its deadliest measles outbreaks in history.

“You’re making medical decisions every day. You’re the secretary of HHS. You have tremendous power over health policy. Really horrified that you will not encourage families to vaccinate their children,” Democratic Representative Rosa DeLauro said to RFK Jr. earlier Wednesday, referring to his relentless spread of vaccine misinformation.

Kennedy gave a stunning response to another Democrat who questioned his unbacked vaccination claims.

“I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me,” the man in charge of America’s entire public health system said.

The Trump administration’s new policy of denying immigration benefits to people expressing antisemitic views apparently doesn’t apply to white South Africans.

One of the Afrikaner “refugees” who has taken up President Trump’s offer for white South Africans to immigrate to the United States to flee a nonexistent genocide has a history of posting antisemitic content on social media. Charl Kleinhaus, who claims to be a former farmer, has called Jewish people “untrustworthy” and “dangerous.”

Kleinhaus also responded to a post on X about clashes in Jerusalem between Palestinians and Israelis with a link to a video and the caption “Jews spitting on Christians!” But if one were to think that Kleinhaus opposes Israel, that would be a mistake. After Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, he made several posts praising the country and offering it his total support.

Kleinhaus’s claims to be a farmer are also suspect, as his X account mentions his ownership of a granite mine, which he put up for sale last month. The Bulwark points out that Kleinhaus’s X profile is otherwise full of pro-Christian, pro-Trump, and pro-MAGA content.

But the antisemitic posts seem to show a contradiction in the White House’s new policy, as outlined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, of denying immigrants with antisemitic views into the U.S. because their presence would undermine “U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States.”

That policy was used to detain Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil and strip him of his permanent residency status in March. Why is Kleinhaus seemingly being held to a different standard? Is it because Khalil is of Palestinian origin, while Kleinhaus is a white South African? Or is it because despite openly expressing prejudice against Jewish people, Kleinhaus also professes love for Israel? Either way, there’s clearly racism at the root of it.