Feds Go After the Antifa International

Hello, today is the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️

On Thursday, the federal government showed the latest example of how it is putting Trump's emphasis on Antifa into practice by designating four European anti-fascist groups as foreign terrorist organizations.

The groups – the German Antifa Ost, the Italian Informal Anarchist Federation and the Greek Armed Proletarian Justice and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense – will lose access to the US financial system. More importantly, it is now a crime for “Americans” (a broader category than citizens) to provide any form of support to these groups.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the appointments, directly citing NSPM-7, executive order that directed law enforcement going after Antifa while focusing on vague ideological markers.

“Groups associated with this movement ascribe to revolutionary anarchist or Marxist ideologies, including anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity, using them to incite and justify violent attacks at home and abroad,” Rubio said in a statement.

As I reported this weeka wide range of progressive-minded nonprofits are already deeply intimidated by the administration's threats to the left.

But the recognition of foreign terrorists shows how far this goes. This required coordination among government agencies and federal law enforcement agencies that oversee counterterrorism policies to have some idea of ​​who they were targeting. In other words: as amorphous and vague as Antifa may be, these designations are tangible evidence that the administration is doing everything it can to make investigations of the left very, very real.

— Josh Kovensky

Thune payment provision irritates House Republicans

House Republicans are furious over the 11th-hour pay provision that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.C.) included in the continuing resolution (CR) that ended the shutdown earlier this week.

So much so that Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) voted against it government opening on Wednesday, speaking he “could not in good conscience support a resolution that creates a self-indulgent legal provision allowing some senators to enrich themselves by suing the Department of Justice using taxpayer money.”

House GOP leadership is now working to introduce a separate bill that would repeal a provision that allows senators to sue the government for $500,000 or more if they discover their electronic records were seized without notice.

Thune's position comes as congressional Republicans have tried in recent weeks to spin a conspiracy theory around the fact that former special counsel Jack Smith duly subpoenaed phone records of eight Senate Republicans as part of his Jan. 6 investigation into President Donald Trump's role. As Politico noted earlier this weekThe D.C. judge who approved the subpoenas did so by enacting specific measures that barred phone companies from notifying senators that their data had been requested as part of the investigation.

On the other side of the Capitol, Senate Republicans have largely distanced themselves from Thune's position.

Only one—Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)—of the eight prominent GOP senators whose phone records were seized has publicly said he plans to take advantage of the measure Thune included in the bill.

“I'm worried as hell about this, and I'm going to sue, and I'm going to create opportunities for others to sue that didn't exist in the Senate,” Graham told reporters recently. for mail and courier.

Meanwhile, the others are Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), Bill Hagerty (R-Tennessee)Dan Sullivan (R-AK) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) have either said they will not sue or have distanced themselves from the issue. A A spokesman for Sullivan said. the senator would support an attempt to repeal this provision.

“I think the Senate provision is a bad idea,” Hawley said in a statement. “The Biden Justice Department's outrageous abuse of the separation of powers must be held accountable, but the right way to do so is through public hearings, robust oversight, including of complicit telecom companies, and prosecution where warranted.”

— Emine Yucel

DOJ Sues California Over Proposition 50

In the latest news in the ongoing redistricting battle, the Department of Justice filed sued in federal court Thursday to try to block new congressional districts in California that voters approved earlier this month, arguing the new map uses race as a “proxy to advance political interests.”

California voters approved Proposition 50 64% to 36% on Nov. 4, giving California officials the power to temporarily bypass the state's independent redistricting rules to create new congressional maps that would give Democrats an advantage in some of the state's Republican-led and swing districts.

The measure was proposed by California's Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom as a way to offset the damage to Texas. GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has approved five new congressional maps in Texas that are expected to flip Democratic seats in the midterm elections.

The DOJ's lawsuit joins trial from the California Republican Party, which argues that these new congressional district boundaries are “based on race, specifically to favor Hispanic voters, without reason or evidence to justify it.”

“Race cannot be used as a proxy to advance political interests, but that is exactly what the California General Assembly did with Proposition 50, a recent ballot initiative that abandoned California's pre-existing electoral map in favor of urgent redrawing of California's congressional district boundaries,” the lawsuit states. “In the press, California lawmakers and the governor have sold a plan to advance Democratic interests in the upcoming midterm elections.”

Currently, GOP-led states including Texas, North Carolina and Missouri have succumbed to Trump's pressure campaign to redraw their congressional maps mid-cycle to ensure Republicans retain control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the midterm elections. But the approval of Proposition 50 in California, coupled with series of failures in red states across the country could derail Trump's machinations.

— Chaya Himmelman

Even MAGA Thinks Trump's New Mortgage Scheme Is a Bad Idea

Bill Pulte, director of Trump's Federal Housing Finance Agency and heir to the Pulte homebuilding empire, is 37 years old. median of first-time homebuyers aged 40. That hasn't stopped him from pushing Trump's new proposal for a 50-year mortgage, which by definition the average first-time home buyer won't pay off until he's 90 years old.

The media this week picked up the idea expressed by Trump in pointless social media post suggested over the weekend that he would like to introduce a 50-year mortgage repayment plan. Pulte quickly supported the president. publication on X that the administration is “really working on the 50-year mortgage, which is a complete game changer.” The idea would be that government-backed home loans could be repaid over a longer period of time, thereby lowering monthly mortgage payments. But legallythe government cannot provide a loan for more than 30 years.

And a lot of people, apparently even Trump's MAGA allies, think the idea sucks.

First of all, 50-year mortgages typically have higher interest rates than traditional 30-year mortgages. The buyer would spend decades paying only interest without being able to gain any equity in the property. Axios is broken the true cost of a 50-year mortgage of $500,000 and showed that after 30 years the buyer would still owe almost $400,000. What's more, your monthly payments will be just $83 less than a 30-year loan.

Laura Ingraham of Fox News To put it more bluntly, telling Trump during an interview this week that the proposal had received “a significant MAGA backlash, calling it a giveaway to the banks.”

Luckily for borrowers, this offer appears to be a DOA. The plan would likely require changes to the Dodd-Frank Act, passed in the wake of the global financial crisis. Even so, “borrowers won't do it,” Bruce Marks, CEO of the American Neighborhood Assistance Corporation. told NPR. “They'll see right through it. They'll know they won't create any wealth.”

— Leila A. Jones