Last summer, for example, Kenneth Chesebro, the attorney who was widely credited as the “architect” of the infamous “fake elector” scheme, was disbarred in New York. A year earlier, Rudy Giuliani was disbarred in New York and Washington, D.C. In 2023, Jenna Ellis admitted that she made post-election misrepresentations and had her Colorado license suspended for three years.

Jeffrey Clark, a key figure in Trump’s crusade to remain in the White House after losing, is also facing possible disbarment in the nation’s capital.

And then, of course, there’s John Eastman, who’s a prominent member of the same ignominious club. The Associated Press reported:

A California attorney who aided President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results has lost his license to practice in the state.

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered John Eastman disbarred and his name stricken from the state roll of attorneys. … A judge for the State Bar Court of California in 2024 recommended that he lose his California law license. Eastman argued he was being punished for simply giving legal advice.

.....Eastman was not, however, merely a behind-the-scenes author of a ridiculous memo. The Republican lawyer also effectively played the role of a lobbyist, advocating on behalf of a plot, pleading with officials to go along with the plot, and even appearing at a pre-riot Jan. 6 rally to espouse his outlandish ideas to Trump’s radicalized followers.

As part of these efforts, Eastman also delivered remote testimony to a Georgia state Senate panel on Dec. 3, 2020, and peddled a variety of demonstrably false claims about the election results. The lawyer even told state lawmakers at the time that “the election can’t be validly certified.” (His advice was ignored.)

Years later, after Trump returned to power, the president pardoned dozens of people who participated in his post-2020 plot, including Eastman, but the clemency only applied to federal crimes, and had no bearing on the disbarment process.

The president who avoided accountability, in other words, couldn’t prevent one of his allied lawyers from facing consequences.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Escalating his attacks on Pope Leo XIV, Donald J. Trump claimed on Thursday that the pontiff’s election last year was “totally rigged.”

“There were a lot of ballots cast against him that were just burned,” he said. “You could see the smoke coming from the Vatican.”

Trump blasted Leo as “a terrible person and very ungrateful, quite frankly,” arguing that “he never would have become Pope without my help.”

“It was my idea to send JD to Rome in 2025,” Trump explained. “If he hadn’t gone, Pope Francis would still be alive and Leo would still be a crummy cardinal.”

So it doesn’t come a great surprise to learn the president also apparently believes diet soda possesses implausible health benefits. The New Republic noted:

During the latest episode of Donald Trump Jr.’s ‘Triggered’ podcast, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the daytime television host the president picked to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, revealed some of the president’s unorthodox beliefs about health.

‘Your dad argues that diet soda is good for him because it kills grass, if poured on grass, so therefore it must kill cancer cells inside the body,’ Oz said.

The former television personality went on to share an anecdote about seeing the president drinking an orange-flavored soft drink. Oz said the president “starts to, like, sheepishly grin. He goes, ‘You know this stuff’s good for me. It kills cancer cells.’ And then he tells me, ‘It’s fresh squeezed, so how bad can it be for you?’”....

Far less funny, however, is the person who harbors these bizarre ideas nevertheless claims broad authority on matters of public health, to the point that he’s urged Americans to follow his terrible advice. This is the same president, after all, who has offered public guidance on, among other things, how much Tylenol to take and what child vaccination schedules should look like.

Throughout his decadelong political career, Trump has repeatedly expressed his disdain for science and medical evidence on everything from the climate crisis to vaccines to Covid treatments, so it stands to reason that the president has a idiosyncratic hypothesis on the benefits of diet soda.

John Eastman, a lawyer who spearheaded efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in President Trump’s favor, has been formally disbarred in California

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to review his appeal of a lower court’s recommendation to strip him of his law license, instead ordering his disbarment.

“The court orders that John Charles Eastman…is disbarred from the practice of law in California and that Respondent’s name is stricken from the roll of attorneys,” reads a terse order on the docket of Eastman’s case.

The state’s highest court also ordered Eastman to pay a $5,000 sanction to the State Bar of California Client Security Fund.

They should probably avoid following the example set by Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas. The New Republic noted:

Republican Senator Roger Marshall wants Americans to stop complaining about gas prices because they’re necessary for ‘national security.’

Speaking on Newsmax’s ‘Wake Up America’ Tuesday morning, Marshall was asked about the Iran war, and the Kansas politician was dismissive of its negative economic effects on the American people.

“I’m sorry the gas prices are going up, but help is on its way, and your national security, yes, is even more important than your pocketbook,” Marshall said.

Sen. Roger Marshall: "I'm sorry that gas prices are going up, but help is on the way, and your national security is even more important than your pocketbook."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-04-14T12:15:12.895Z

.....Joseph Cirincione, the vice chair of the Center for International Policy and a longtime expert on nuclear policy, recently told MS NOW that even if Iran could have developed material to use in a nuclear weapon, that would be the first of multiple, time-consuming steps — steps that officials in Tehran had not yet taken before the American president launched this war of choice.

The day the war began, The New York Times reported:

He was not driven by an immediate threat. There was no race for a bomb. Iran is further from the capability to build a nuclear weapon today than it has been in several years, thanks largely to the success of the president’s previous strike on Iranian nuclear enrichment sites, in June.

While Mr. Trump claimed Tehran was ultimately aiming to reach to the United States with its array of missiles, even his own Defense Intelligence Agency concluded last year that it would be a decade before Iran could get past the technological and production hurdles to produce a significant arsenal.

With this in mind, the question is why the hapless junior senator from the great state of Kansas is so confused. It’s plausible to make a case that national security is more important than temporary hits to American wallets, but is Marshall prepared to make the case that illusory national security challenges are more important than consumers’ pocketbooks? Is this the message he’ll be emphasizing in the run-up to Election Day 2026?

Not to be outdone, his vice president — the first Catholic Republican to ever hold the office — has joined the rhetorical offensive.

On Monday night, JD Vance appeared on Fox News and insisted that “it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality … and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.” Putting aside the fact that the president isn’t supposed to be “dictating” anything, the Ohio Republican’s advice didn’t make a lot of sense: The pope drew Trump’s ire by speaking out on matters such as a deadly and destabilizing war in the Middle East and the plight of immigrants seeking a better life, both of which are, by any reasonable measure, “matters of morality.”

A day later, he upped the ante in an unexpected way. NBC News reported:

Vice President JD Vance said Tuesday that Pope Leo XIV should ‘be careful’ when he talks about theology, rebuking the pontiff over his criticisms of U.S. foreign policy.

Vance argued that the pope, who has said Jesus ‘is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs,’ was failing to take into account conflicts such as World War II.

....Do Trump and Vance believe Leo will be intimidated into silence? Are they trying to send a signal to other religious leaders opposed to the war? Do they believe they can discredit the pontiff, who enjoys stronger public support than they do? Do the Republicans think they’ll appear “tough” by picking a fight with the Vatican? Is this all some sort of elaborate distraction campaign?

I won’t pretend to know their motivation, but if Trump and Vance see a political upside to their increasingly outlandish papal scoldings, they’re mistaken.

Gabbard appears to recognize, however, what she has to do to stay in the White House’s good graces. The conservative Washington Times reported:

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard fired a broadside at congressional Democrats on Monday by saying their 2019 impeachment of President Trump over his dealings with Ukraine was based on biased evidence and slipshod work from within the intelligence community.

The CIA whistleblower whose complaint became the basis of the impeachment was an anti-Trump registered Democrat who misled investigators about collaborating with Democrats, Ms. Gabbard said.

In a statement, the DNI argued that “deep-state actors within the Intelligence Community” secretly conspired to “usurp the will of the American people and impeach the duly-elected president of the United States,” whom she characterized as a poor and unsuspecting victim.....

In November 2019, as congressional Democrats finalized their case in Trump’s impeachment, The Associated Press published a rather brutal analysis that highlighted the “mountain of evidence” that was uncontested and “beyond dispute.” From the AP’s article:

Trump explicitly ordered U.S. government officials to work with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani on matters related to Ukraine, a country deeply dependent on Washington’s help to fend off Russian aggression. The Republican president pushed Ukraine to launch investigations into political rivals, leaning on a discredited conspiracy theory his own advisers disputed. And both American and Ukrainian officials feared that Trump froze a much-needed package of military aid until Kyiv announced it was launching those probes.

Those facts were confirmed by a dozen witnesses, mostly staid career government officials who served both Democratic and Republican administrations. They relied on emails, text messages and contemporaneous notes to back up their recollections from the past year.

Around the same time, Eugene Robinson added in a Washington Post column, “After this week’s impeachment testimony, if Republicans continue to insist that Dear Leader President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong — and they might do just that — then the GOP has surrendered any claim to being a political party. It would be a full-fledged cult of personality.”.....

Gabbard is apparently eager to play her part, helping Trump rewrite the story and concoct a satisfying counternarrative. The president will no doubt make a fresh push to get GOP lawmakers to wipe the slate clean.

But for those who care about accountability and the truth, the DNI’s efforts should be recognized as misguided nonsense.

Now the White House is taking subtle steps to prepare the public for gas prices that will be high for a prolonged period. The New York Times reported:

President Trump suggested on Sunday that elevated gasoline prices in the United States might not fall before the November midterm elections, a prediction that continued his mixed messaging and underscored potential political headwinds facing Republicans in the fall.

Mr. Trump had long downplayed a sharp spike in gas prices driven by the war in Iran by casting it as a ‘short-term increase’ that would subside within weeks. But on Sunday, Mr. Trump told Fox News that while he hoped gas and oil costs would drop before the midterms, prices ‘should be around the same’ in November — and might be ‘a little bit higher.’

In context, Fox’s Maria Bartiromo specifically asked the president whether he believes his policies will lower prices. After a long and meandering response that made little effort to answer the question, the host tried again: “Do you believe the price of oil and gas will be lower before the midterm elections?”

BARTIROMO: Do you believe the price of oil and gas will be lower before the midterm elections?

TRUMP: I hope so. I mean, I think so. It could be the same or maybe a little big higher

(Check out Maria's face as he says this!)

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-04-12T14:35:55.025Z

A day later, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who had previously told the public to expect a price drop by the summer, switched gears and said at the Semafor World Economy summit that consumers shouldn’t expect a break anytime soon.

“The president knew going into this that if you disrupt the flow of energy through [the Strait of Hormuz], in the short term, you’re going to push up energy prices,” Wright said.

Of course, if Trump did know that, he neglected to share those expectations with the public.

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said in a written statement that if White House’s midterm pitch to Americans is “higher gas prices by Election Day, Republicans are in big, big trouble.”

Democratic efforts to constrain Donald Trump's Iran war are gaining unexpected momentum. More Republican lawmakers are privately signaling they're ready to join Democrats on a war powers resolution — and the defections may accelerate dramatically by month's end.

According to MS NOW, Democrats believe "there's a pathway to success" on forcing votes this week that would dampen hostilities in Iran.

The political math is shifting in Democrats' favor. While they would need a two-thirds majority in both chambers to override Trump's almost-certain veto, a privileged war powers measure only requires a simple majority to pass — a threshold that appears increasingly achievable as GOP support erodes, MS NOW reported.

The breaking point could happen on April 29. One House GOP lawmaker, granted anonymity, told MS NOW that "a lot of Republicans" would be ready to support a war powers resolution by then.

"This issue is already coming ripe at the end of this month, and if they don't come to us by then, they're in violation of the law. And that's when you'll see many of us saying no más," they told MS NOW.....

Senate Republicans are already showing cracks. So far, only Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has voted with Democrats on three separate Iran war powers resolutions over the past month. But Trump's apocalyptic rhetoric is pushing other Republicans toward the exit, MS NOW reported.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) directly rebuked Trump's threat to wipe out a "whole civilization." "It cannot be excused away as an attempt to gain leverage in negotiations with Iran. It undermines our long-standing role as a global beacon of freedom and directly endangers Americans both abroad and at home," Murkowski wrote.