The Hound | Oct. 19

Hi there,

It’s Monday. Pour one out for Katie Zacharia — Trump’s newly minted press secretary lasted…not even a full business week. She left her position on Friday evening. A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to halt tree removal at the East Potomac Golf Course. Trump announced on Truth Social that construction will begin November 15 — while the court order is still in effect, the case is still pending, and the judge has explicitly demanded to know whether the government’s legal position has changed.

🖊️ Sign the petition to call on the media to cover the East Potomac Golf Course case not as a quirky real estate story, but as what legal experts recognize it to be: another data point in a systematic assault on judicial authority.

The stakes here are low. It’s a golf course. That is precisely the point. If this administration will openly defy court orders over a golf course renovation — lying to a judge’s face, cutting down trees over a holiday weekend, announcing construction timelines on social media in contempt of active litigation — it will defy court orders over anything. The public deserves reporting that names the constitutional crisis hiding in plain sight.

In addition, judges have dismissed lawsuit after lawsuit demanding voter data from Trump’s Justice Department. And, with the DHS fishing for charges to bring against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) a look into how the agency was designed to be a weapon by years of building up its surveillance capabilities.

Read about these, and more, in today’s stories:

Trump says DC golf course ‘restoration’ to start despite judge’s order to pause plans (The Guardian)

Katie Zacharia Was Sitting Down With The Wall Street Journal When She Was Fired (Mediaite)

“Devoid of Any Factual Basis”: Again and Again, Judges Have Dismissed Trump’s Voter Data Lawsuits (ProPublica)

DHS Was Designed as a Weapon (The Intercept)

Criminal networks threaten the Amazon. Indigenous leaders want the UN to act (PBS)

Democrats: Embrace Incivility! (The New Republic)

‘Willie Horton’ Is Back. Criminal Justice Reform Never Left. (The Marshall Project)

Until next time,

Harry from The Hound

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