Free Republic

MONTGOMERY, Ala. —President Trump in his first term proved a windfall for the Southern Poverty Law Center, the antiracism nonprofit famed for its courtroom wins against the Ku Klux Klan decades ago. In 2017, the same year Trump took office and a white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., turned violent, annual contributions and grants to SPLC surged from $50 million to more than $130 million and have remained above $100 million nearly every year since.

President Trump has complained to aides repeatedly in recent weeks about Attorney General Pam Bondi, describing her as weak and an ineffective enforcer of his agenda, administration officials and other people familiar with his complaints said. The criticisms appear to be part of an intense campaign by Trump to pressure the Justice Department to more aggressively pursue his priorities, some of the officials said. Trump has previously criticized Bondi at times but his vocal concerns about his attorney general have grown more frequent in recent months, officials said. This month, Trump has talked with allies about how he could appoint...

(Sub-headline: Bondi also told president at the meeting that Justice decided to not release more Jeffrey Epstein documents because of the presence of child pornography and the need to protect victims) When Justice Department officials reviewed what Attorney General Pam Bondi called a “truckload” of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein earlier this year, they discovered that Donald Trump’s name appeared multiple times, according to senior administration officials. SNIP

President Trump on Sunday night backed off a threat he had made earlier in the day to impose 25% tariffs and economic sanctions on Colombia, which the White House said had met its demands to repatriate migrants into the South American country....The U.S. had been deporting migrants to Colombia and other Latin American countries under the Biden administration, usually using commercial flights, the senior State Department official said. So far in January, there have been 90 deportation flights, with 48 to Guatemala and Honduras, 14 to Mexico and eight to Colombia, said Witness at the Border, a U.S. immigration advocacy...

Eleven people including Stewart Rhodes, the leader and founder of the right-wing militia group the Oath Keepers, have been indicted on charges of seditious conspiracy, marking an escalation of the Justice Department’s investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 last year. An indictment unsealed Thursday accused Mr. Rhodes, 56 years old, of organizing an armed plot to storm the Capitol and stop the certification of President Biden’s election victory. The case marks the first time the Justice Department has filed charges of sedition in connection with the attack and comes days after Attorney General Merrick Garland...