DOJ Walks Back One of Todd Blanche’s Main Accusations Against SPLC

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice was forced Tuesday to clean up acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s outrageous lie about the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Speaking to Fox News on April 21, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed that the government had “no information” to suggest the SPLC had “shared what they learned” from their undercover informant program in hate groups such as the KKK with law enforcement.

The SPLC hit back at Blanche’s claim with a motion to retract his false statement, and refrain from making any others like it.

In a filing Tuesday, the DOJ cited a statement Blanche made days later on Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream. “It is true that over the years they have selectively shared with law enforcement. That’s well documented and there’s no dispute there. They aren’t charged with any of that conduct,” Blanche said.

“To the extent that any clarification was needed, Acting Attorney Todd Blanche’s remarks on a major Sunday television program certainly suffice,” the filing stated.

This is just the latest bit of graceless leadership from Blanche, who actively undermined the Justice Department’s flimsy case against former FBI Director James Comey on Sunday, and is part of a larger trend of unprecedented prosecutorial missteps in the department, undermining numerous civil and criminal cases.

Even the president’s Cabinet is having a hard time subscribing to what Donald Trump is saying about Pope Leo XIV.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio attempted to cover for his MAGA boss, telling a reporter at the White House Tuesday that she had mischaracterized Trump’s recent barbs against the Catholic leader.

“The president recently said that the pope is endangering a lot of Catholics as a result of his rhetoric around the Iran war. Is that a sentiment—” the reporter began, before Rubio cut her off.

“I don’t think that’s an accurate description of what he said,” Rubio interjected. “I think what the president basically said is that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon because they would use it against places that have a lot of Catholics and Christians and others, for that matter.”

But Rubio was wrong—that is exactly what Trump said.

“I think he’s endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people,” Trump said in a Monday interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “But I guess if it’s up to the pope, he thinks it’s just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

It was just the latest in a long string of attacks that Trump has made against the pope. Last month, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the religious leader was “weak on crime and terrible for foreign policy.”

The Chicago-born pontiff upset the president and a number of Trump’s underlings when he advocated for world peace earlier this year. The Pentagon reportedly threatened a Holy See ambassador in January, days after the pope made antiwar remarks during his State of the World address.

Leo has brushed off Trump’s remarks, claiming that he has “no fear” of the Trump administration or of “speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel,” though the Vatican did reject a White House invitation to host the pope for America’s 250th anniversary on July 4.

“I will continue to speak out loudly against war, looking to promote peace, ⁠promoting dialogue and multilateral ​relationships among the states to look ​for just solutions to problems,” the pope told reporters aboard a flight in April. “Too many people are suffering in the world today. Too many innocent ‌people ⁠are being killed. And I think someone has to stand up and say there’s a better way.”

It’s very possible that Iran wouldn’t have an enriched uranium stockpile capable of developing nuclear weaponry if it weren’t for Trump’s ascent to the White House.

Iran lacked a single bomb’s worth of uranium in 2018, three years after former President Barack Obama brokered the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to limit the country’s enormous uranium stockpile. That changed when Trump withdrew the U.S. from the pact that year and imposed a series of tough economic sanctions against the Middle East country.

By 2025, Iran had curated an 11-ton stockpile of enriched uranium, the whereabouts of which remain largely unknown. The total stockpile could create as many as 10 bombs if fully enriched, according to a 2025 assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

President Trump’s administration is targeting The New York Times, claiming that the newspaper discriminates against white men.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the newspaper in federal court Tuesday on behalf of a white man who alleged his race and sex were factors in being denied a promotion, violating the Civil Rights Act. A spokesperson for the publication, Danielle Rhoades Ha, called the allegations “politically motivated.”

“The New York Times categorically rejects the meritless and politically motivated allegations that the Trump administration’s E.E.O.C. is pursuing against us,” Rhoades Ha said. “Our employment practices are merit-based and focused on recruiting and promoting the best talent in the world.”

According to the Times, the white employee filed his complaint in July 2025 with the EEOC office in New York, but the office later transferred the complaint to an Alabama investigator. Since then, the commission had been investigating the Times, with the two sides sending information back and forth.

The two were briefly engaged in a voluntary mediation process known as conciliation, the paper said, which usually takes place after the EEOC finds “reasonable cause” that discrimination has occurred. If conciliation fails, then the EEOC decides whether to file a lawsuit.

While the complaint began as a general look at the newspaper’s hiring and promotions, the case, personally handled by EEOC Chair Andrea Lucus, soon became a specific question over whether the white employee did not get a deputy editor job. On April 21, the EEOC told the newspaper that the case had been referred to the agency’s legal unit.

It’s the latest attack by the Trump administration against media outlets that criticize the president, and it’s not the first time they have invoked diversity, equity, and inclusion in the process. The FCC is currently investigating NBC’s parent company, Comcast, over alleged DEI practices, and last month, commissioner Brendan Carr announced an investigation into DEI practices at Disney, ABC’s parent company.

Trump has long hated the Times for how it has covered him, filing a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the paper last year, and calling the paper “the failing New York Times” for at least a decade. Now, he’s using the power of his office against them.

President Trump is pushing the Food and Drug Administration to approve flavored vapes as his approval rating with young people continues to tumble.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump expressed frustration with FDA Commissioner Marty Makary on the phone over the weekend and in the White House on Monday. Makary has refused to approve blueberry, mango, and menthol vape flavors from manufacturer Glas out of concern the flavors would be too marketable to young and underage users. This puts a real wrench in Trump’s 2024 campaign pledge to “save vaping,” and in his quest to win back the youth vote. Recent polling suggests that the president has lost virtually all of the gains he made with youth in 2024, sitting at a dismal 24 percent approval rating with Gen Z.

The Journal’s report raises doubts about Makary’s job security, with people familiar with the conversations saying the FDA commissioner is on thin ice. The White House has publicly said otherwise, claiming President Trump is “thrilled with his accomplishments.”

The Miami U.S. attorney’s office is in turmoil.

The legal office has steered resources away from criminal cases in order to aid Donald Trump’s personal revenge tour, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

The decision to explicitly aid Trump’s agenda has triggered a mass exodus of staff, hamstringing the department’s ability to prosecute white-collar crime and narcotics trafficking cases, according to more than a dozen sources that spoke with the outlet.

Several dozen attorneys have already left the Southern District of Florida since Trump returned to office, either by quitting, retiring, or being fired by the current administration. One unit focused on prosecuting economic crimes lost roughly half of its staff, reported Bloomberg.

The Justice Department has issued different figures. So far, the DOJ has recorded just 26 departures since Jason Reding Quiñones took over as U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida in August 2025.

Two months after he was confirmed by Congress, Reding Quiñones filed more than two dozen subpoenas to U.S. officials that took part in the 2016 Russian election interference inquiry, which has been internally redefined among Trump loyalists as the “grand conspiracy.” The unsubstantiated theory turns Trump’s legal challenges on their head, positing that the real-life charges—and Trump’s fleeting comeuppance—were a part of a groundless scheme by Democrats and “deep-state” operatives to destroy Trump and his political movement.

The district has become the epicenter of Trump’s political retribution since Reding Quiñones took over, but it’s far from the only office to massively reorient its resources under pressure by Trump’s White House. The Department of Homeland Security has had to move away from other missions in order to abet Trump’s deportation plans; the Department of Defense shifted billions of dollars to fund Trump’s border mission; and more than 6,000 FBI agents were diverted to handling “immigration-related matters,” effectively redefining the agency’s work.

The Justice Department has also dropped thousands of criminal cases in an attempt to funnel its efforts—almost singularly—toward convicting immigration cases. Altogether, the chief law enforcement agency closed some 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of Trump’s term, including investigations into terrorism, white-collar crimes, and drugs, while prosecuting 32,000 new immigration cases.

The shift in priorities is an indication that “making America safe again” is not necessarily as much of a goal for the current administration as Trump has promised. At the president’s direction, federal authorities have arrested thousands of noncriminal immigrants across the country, despite repeated pledges that the deportation purge is focused on the “worst of the worst”—such as “murderers, pedophiles, rapists, gang members, and terrorists.”