Thanks so much for joining me. I hope you’re having a wonderful weekend. I have a great edition for you today, showing people fighting back against Trump and MAGA—and winning.
Before you read on, could you tap the ❤️ like button and also the restack button beside it? Trump was trying to hide some names in court. He lost, and I want to make sure everyone hears about it.
I’ve been investigating Trump for more than a decade. He and his allies have been threatening reporters for years, so his threats aren’t new to me. Whether it was helping to uncover his Russia scandal, my investigations into his family and allies, or running the first impeachment campaign against him—we’ve always pushed for the truth from every angle, no matter what he says.
We will keep up the pressure on Congress through January 3 with our Lame Duck Watch coalition, where we are organizing calls, letters, and social media campaigns against Trump and his party. If you’ve yet to, join us as a paid subscriber today to help fuel our fight for the next 49 days—and beyond:
The Waitress Who Took On Trump’s Lawyer
On November 10, New Jersey’s Office of Attorney Ethics filed charges against Alina Habba Mildon, who used to be Trump’s personal lawyer. The punishment can go as high as losing her law license.
In 2021, Alice Bianco was a 21-year-old waitress at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster. She had hired a lawyer over a sexual harassment claim against a manager. The complaint says a top official at Trump’s company contacted Habba Mildon, a member of the club, about the dispute. Habba Mildon then texted Bianco: “Hi love! Its Alina I wanted to check on u.”
The complaint also says Habba Mildon instructed Bianco to ignore her own lawyer—which led to her being dropped as a client. Bianco then settled for $15,000 and signed a secrecy agreement—something New Jersey banned in 2019. Three weeks later, Trump hired Habba Mildon. The ethics office says it doesn’t have clear evidence Habba Mildon was acting on Trump’s behalf when she did it.
Bianco sued in 2023. The secrecy deal was voided, and the club and Habba Mildon paid her $400,000. Her lawyer, Nancy Erika Smith, told The New York Times: “She’s unethical and she should be disbarred.”
In June, the complaint says, Habba Mildon acknowledged her actions violated two ethics rules. Trump picks lawyers like this on purpose. Last year he tried to put this one in charge of federal prosecutions in New Jersey. Now she could lose her law license, because Alice Bianco fought back.
The Judge Who Stopped Trump From Closing A Park
Trump ordered a public park in Washington closed today so work could start on his new golf course. On Saturday, Judge Ana Reyes blocked it. East Potomac Park and its golf course have to stay open to the public for now. She wrote: “The Department of the Interior has progressed from removing the trees to removing the people from East Potomac Park.”
The regime’s excuse was safety. Three days before it decided the park was too dangerous, it let more than 30,000 people run a marathon around it. Reyes called the excuse “transparently pretextual.” In other words, they made it up.
Two local golfers and a preservation group had sued to stop Trump from tearing up the course. Then his crews cut down about 430 trees, before a top Justice Department official told Reyes there was “no plan to close the course.” Nine days later, the regime admitted there was.
Reyes ordered the regime to tell her who worked on the golf course plan. Trump’s lawyers asked her to “preserve the anonymity” of those officials. She said no. On Thursday at noon, she gave the regime five hours to make the names public.
One of the names is Gregory Wischer, a deputy chief of staff at Interior. In June, he was photographed carrying rolled-up plans while touring the course with Trump. On Tuesday, Reyes ordered the regime to preserve its records on the course, including Wischer’s messages with golf course architect Tom Fazio on his “personal cell phone.”
Trump thinks a public park is his for the taking, and his cult members working for him wanted to remain nameless in the process. Now the names are public, the park is still open, and in January Democrats can call every one of them in to testify.
Lame Duck Watch: Huffman Freezes Trump’s Paper Trail
Rep. Jared Huffman is the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, which watches over the Interior Department. In January, Democrats will take over every committee in Congress, and the subpoena power that comes with it. “Those days of obstruction are over,” Huffman said.
Huffman sent 36 letters, dated November 9, demanding that the recipients save their records. Nine went to federal agencies. The other 27 went to companies and nonprofits his committee has been investigating. They have until November 23 to answer. His message to anyone who got a letter from him was two words: “save everything.”
Whistleblowers have reportedly gone to Huffman’s committee saying Interior is destroying records regarding Trump’s building projects in Washington. Interior, of course, calls that “100% false.” But in August, three Interior staffers told Politico that officials there were routinely shredding documents and using Signal messages that erase themselves. A former official said: “They’re terrified of written records.”
The Trump regime has 49 days before Democrats can make them hand it all over. If the records are destroyed, that’s a crime that carries up to three years in prison. Either way, Huffman just put them on notice. “It’s just going to be an entirely new day,” Huffman said. It sure is.
An ER Nurse Fired A Four-Term Republican
On November 3, Mitchell Berman won the seat in Congress that Paul Ryan held for 20 years. He’s an emergency room nurse who spent a decade at the VA, and this was his first campaign.
Republicans have held Wisconsin’s 1st District since the 1994 election, and Rep. Bryan Steil was running for a fifth term there. He raised about $6.4 million to Berman’s roughly $2 million. The unofficial vote count is Berman 158,839, Steil 146,885.
Berman calls himself “the son of a roofer and a foundry worker.” In October he told the Wisconsin Examiner: “I’m proud to have a campaign powered by the people of Southeast Wisconsin—not a dime of corporate PAC money—and in Congress, they’re the only ones I’ll answer to.”
I went through the county numbers. Steil is from Janesville, in Rock County. He lost the Rock County part of the district by almost 19 points.
During the campaign, Berman said Steil chose “to vote 100 percent of the time with Donald Trump.” Steil had more than three times the money, but voters in Paul Ryan’s old district fired him anyway. On election night, Berman told his supporters: “Trust me, this wasn’t on my bingo card.” In 49 days, he gets sworn in.
Berman has said he will only answer to the people in his district, not to corporations. That goes for us here as well. We are completely independent, which not only allows us to report and investigate freely, but also to organize the resistance against Trump.
Trump spent two years acting like nobody could touch him. He was wrong, and we delivered an enormous blue tsunami. And now, our Lame Duck Watch is pushing back on any Republican power grabs before the new Congress is sworn in.
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Onward!
Scott
What’s the first record you want Democrats to subpoena?
Is there a job you wish members of Congress had worked before becoming an elected official?
Trump’s White House lawyer warned Congress that investigating Trump “may cross the line into blatant criminality.” Nearly 300 of you answered in the first day of our new letter. Let’s keep it going. Each letter takes 30 seconds and goes straight to your members of Congress.
Don’t back down, issue the subpoenas (going for 500): https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-dont-back-down-issue-the-subpoenas/
Impeach Clarence Thomas (closing in on 3,000): https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-impeach-clarence-thomas-3/
Subpoena the unredacted Epstein files on day one (closing in on 2,000): https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-the-new-congress-subpoena-the-unredacted-epstein-files-on-day-one
Impeach John Roberts (going for 48,000): https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-impeach-supreme-court-chief-justice-john-roberts/
Tell me below which ones you sent.
Berman winning Rock County by almost 19 points is a perfect example of what happened on November 3. Steil had three times the money and still lost his hometown.