As we are only weeks away from the midterms, I’m glad to have some great news that’s terrible for Trump to share with you today.
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The Prosecutor Trump Couldn’t Fire
Western Washington hasn’t had a Senate-confirmed top federal prosecutor since June 2023. In January, the district’s federal judges gave Trump a deadline: get someone nominated and confirmed by February 3, or we’ll fill the job ourselves. He missed it.
So in July, all 17 judges unanimously picked Roger Rogoff, a former federal prosecutor and former King County judge. He took the oath on July 15. Less than an hour later, an email from the White House personnel office told him he’d been removed. The court’s last pick had been pushed out too, reportedly on Trump’s orders.
Rogoff did what nobody before him had. He sued.
On Thursday, Chief Judge Stanley Bastian, who sits across the state in eastern Washington, ruled that “the President cannot unilaterally fire a U.S. Attorney appointed by the Court.” The law says a court’s pick serves until the vacancy is filled, he wrote. “It does not say until that person is fired by the President.” Trump’s lawyers insisted he had the power anyway, but they “have not provided any legal support or citation to prove their premise.”
He put Rogoff back in his office and barred the regime from firing him, getting in his way, or treating anyone else as the US attorney. On Friday, the Justice Department asked an appeals court to put that ruling on hold.
For now, there’s exactly one way for Trump to replace Roger Rogoff: the way the Constitution lays out. Get his nominee through the Senate.
The Olympian Who Beat Trump For Good
In June, former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was arrested at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool—accused of tearing at its brand-new lining. Jeanine Pirro’s office indicted him for a felony 13 days later. Then the regime’s own documents showed the lining was failing on its own due to the contractor’s “rushed and botched” installation.
No crime had occurred, and Pirro dropped the case, but Trump wouldn’t let it go. He said Pirro “choked” and “folded like an umbrella.” He also told her to revisit her decision, “especially since” Hearn was, in his words, “a big player in ActBlue” who’d hired Norm Eisen as his lawyer.
Prosecutors still wanted the option to charge Hearn again someday. In court, the judge asked what new evidence could possibly turn up. The prosecutor’s answer: “I don’t know what the future may bring. None of us do.”
On Thursday, Judge Todd Edelman shut the door on this charge for good. A legitimate new case was “fanciful,” he wrote, while Trump was pushing to revive it partly over Hearn’s politics. Facing “the extraordinary possibility” of “a meritless, politically motivated prosecution,” the court had “an obligation to protect him.”
Trump tried to get Hearn charged again. The judge cited Trump’s own words to make sure this charge never comes back.
Three Judges Refused To Bail Trump Out
In January, Trump sued his own IRS for at least $10 billion over his leaked tax returns. No lawyer for the government ever showed up to fight him. By May, his minions at the Justice Department had agreed to a $1.776 billion fund to pay people who claim past administrations targeted them—including people convicted over Jan 6. They also promised to drop “any and all claims” against Trump, his family, and his businesses. The fund was later abandoned.
In July, Judge Kathleen Williams ruled the whole lawsuit was collusion, with Trump effectively sitting on both sides of the case. She barred everyone involved from calling the deal a “settlement” in official proceedings, referred one Trump lawyer to the Florida Bar, and barred another from practicing in that federal court for a year.
Trump asked the appeals court to rescue him. On Tuesday, Judges Adalberto Jordan, Robin Rosenbaum, and Kevin Newsom—one of Trump’s own appointees—said no to every request. The original order will stay in force, and the fight over the legal fees will continue in Williams’ court.
The appeal continues, but on the central question of the matter, the court’s answer took only one sentence: Trump’s side “did not submit or offer any evidence” showing the lawsuit and the deal weren’t collusive.
Trump had every chance to explain himself and didn’t try. Now he’s stuck in front of the judge who caught him.
Democrats Called The GOP’s Data Center Bluff
Jon Husted spent six years as Ohio’s lieutenant governor cheering on data centers and defending their tax breaks. Last year alone, Ohio’s data center tax break cost the state almost $1.6 billion. Now Husted is in a close race against Sherrod Brown, and power bills are the issue. In August, Senate Republicans’ own campaign committee put it in a memo: data centers are “the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck.”
Their answer was the Ratepayer Protection Act. It wouldn’t have made data centers pay their own power costs—it only asked states to consider it. The Congressional Budget Office says states can adopt it or reject it. And if a state’s regulators hold a hearing and say no, they would’ve met the bill’s requirements.
Majority Leader John Thune brought it to the floor anyway, just five weeks before the election. If Democrats blocked it, Thune told reporters, that “makes it pretty hard for Democrats” to call Husted the face of data centers. Translation: it was campaign propaganda with a congressional seal.
On Wednesday, Democrats blocked it. Two weeks earlier, Sen. Martin Heinrich had tried to pass a bill that requires data centers to pay for their own grid hookups. Ohio GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno blocked it on the spot. In the same exchange, he complained that “the term ‘do-nothing Congress’ exists for a reason.”
Republicans killed the bill that makes data centers pay, then staged a vote on one that only asks nicely. Ohio voters settle it on November 3.
Thirty days left. That’s it. Trump and his accomplices hope we will be exhausted, and will sit these last four weeks out. After ten years of fighting him, there’s no way that’s going to happen.
Every day, people have stood up to this regime and won, and this place exists to make sure you hear about it. I’ve never had to ask an advertiser whether a story was all right to run, because there isn’t one. A billionaire doesn’t cover the bills either. You do. It’s why we could spend this week investigating the regime and organizing the resistance.
If you want to see these last thirty days through with us, and be in the war room with me on election night as the results come in, join as a paid member here:
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Onward!
Scott
Have data centers impacted your life?
Thirty days to go. How are you feeling?
This is the first thing I have read all week that did not make me feel small. I am tired and I am still here. That is enough for today. Onward to the people who need to hear it.
I almost missed it. Glad I did not. Thirty days. I am not sitting them out, and I am not letting the folks around me sit them out either.
Happy Sunday, everyone. Four letters to Congress, about a minute each:
Impeach John Roberts. His new term starts tomorrow.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-impeach-supreme-court-chief-justice-john-roberts/
Keep a Trump donor's private road out of Yosemite.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-stop-trumps-yosemite-giveaway
Ban AI nobody can control.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-pass-the-ban-on-ai-we-cant-control/
Stop Trump from gutting the Forest Service.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-stop-trumps-illegal-plan-to-destroy-the-us-forest-service/
Tell me below which ones you sent.