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Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who served under President Donald Trump’s first administration, was the subject of FBI raids at his home and office Friday morning as federal authorities searched for classified documents. 

The raids follow a storied history between Trump and Bolton that has devolved into the pair trading repeated political blows on the public stage. 

News broke early Friday morning that FBI agents flocked around Bolton’s Maryland home and were seen carrying out boxes, which was followed hours later by the FBI raiding Bolton’s Washington, D.C., office.

‘I’m not a fan of John Bolton,’ Trump told reporters on Friday morning after the raids began, adding he saw the reports but was not aware of details on the raid ahead of time. ‘He’s a real sort of a lowlife.’

‘He’s a very quiet person, except on television, if he can say something bad about Trump,’ Trump added. ‘He’s not a smart guy, but he could be a very unpatriotic guy. We’re going to find out.’

The remarks echo years of past comments the pair have shared in public forums airing their dissatisfactions with one another, most notably after Trump tapped Bolton to serve as his national security advisor in 2018. 

Fox News Digital took a look back at the pair’s relationship since Trump’s mad dash to fill his first administration in 2017, through his ouster of Bolton as the national security advisor and the ongoing clashes the pair have shared since. 

‘I like (Bolton),’ Trump said in 2015 while appearing on ‘Meet the Press’ just weeks after announcing his candidacy for the White House. ‘I think he’s, you know, a tough cookie, knows what he’s talking about.’

Bolton was first speculated as a likely pick to serve as Trump’s secretary of state in December 2016, when Trump was preparing for his first inauguration after his upset victory over Hillary Clinton in the election that year. Pundits touted Bolton as an experienced foreign policy hawk who could bolster Trump’s diplomatic agenda, and conservative outlets such as the National Review’s editorial board implored the Trump transition team to choose Bolton, identifying him as a ‘hard-headed realist whose focus is always the national interest.’

Trump, however, ultimately tapped Rex Tillerson to serve as secretary of state. 

Bolton showered Trump with praise of his own ahead of his confirmation as national security advisor in 2018, calling the president ‘a terrific guy’ who ‘knows a lot’ when the administration kicked off in 2017. 

The warm relationship got cozier when Trump announced in 2018 on X that he called on Bolton to serve as his national security advisor 

‘I am pleased to announce that, effective 4/9/18, @AmbJohnBolton will be my new National Security Advisor. I am very thankful for the service of General H.R. McMaster who has done an outstanding job & will always remain my friend. There will be an official contact handover on 4/9.’

‘I didn’t really expect that announcement this afternoon,’ Bolton said on Fox News shortly after the announcement. ‘But it’s obviously a great honor and always an honor to serve our country.’

The pair found common ground on issues such as withdrawing the U.S. from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, otherwise known as the Iran nuclear deal, which was an Obama-era agreement with other world powers to limit Iran’s nuclear capabilities. 

Trump ultimately pulled the U.S. out of the agreement in 2018, slamming it as a ‘horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,’ and was backed by his hawkish group of foreign policy advisors, such as Bolton and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. 

Bolton’s relationship with Trump began to sour as he advanced hard-line strategies toward U.S. adversaries, including Iran and North Korea. He had long advocated regime change in Tehran, though he later clarified in his role as national security advisor that American policy was ‘not regime change,’ but rather a push for ‘massive change in the regime’s behavior.’ Trump, by contrast, initially favored a more diplomatic path, urging that flaws he saw in the Iran nuclear deal be renegotiated before ultimately deciding to withdraw from the agreement altogether. 

‘John Bolton is absolutely a hawk. If it was up to him, he’d take on the whole world at one time, okay?’ Trump said of Bolton in June 2019, underscoring the bubbling tensions between the two on foreign policy. 

In April 2018, Bolton suggested North Korea follow Libya’s example of denuclearization, which he called the ‘Libya model,’ and included the country giving up its nuclear weapons in 2003 in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. Bolton’s comments about such a model for North Korea set off condemnation in Pyongyang as they raised concerns this would lead to potential regime change. 

Trump cited the comment following Bolton’s abrupt exit from the White House in September 2019. 

‘We were set back very badly when John Bolton talked about the Libyan model … what a disaster,’ Trump told reporters at the time. 

Days ahead of Bolton’s ouster, Trump was slated to meet with Taliban leaders in an effort to negotiate peace in Afghanistan, but the meeting never took place and Bolton reportedly slammed such an effort in conversations with Trump, media outlets reported at the time. 

Bolton was ousted from his role as national security advisor Sept. 10, 2019, with Trump characterizing the departure as a firing, and Bolton saying he tendered his resignation and was not fired. 

‘I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House,’ Trump tweeted in 2019. ‘I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week.’

Bolton shot back on X that he ‘offered to resign last night and President Trump said, ‘Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

The former national security advisor was replaced by Robert C. O’Brien, with Trump and Bolton continuing their contentious relationship years later. 

The raid on Bolton’s home is part of the ‘early stages of an ongoing investigation into John Bolton,’ Vice President JD Vance said Friday during an appearance on ‘Meet the Press.’ Bolton was not arrested or in custody amid the early morning raids. 

The searches are focused on potential classified documents agents believe Bolton may still possess, Fox News reported. 

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FBI agents raided the Bethesda, Md., home of former national security adviser John Bolton on Friday morning, marking a new tension point in his difficult relationship with President Donald Trump. Agents also raided Bolton’s D.C. office.

The reason behind the raids was reportedly linked to a probe of allegations that Bolton sent classified documents to his family from a private email server while working at the White House, according to the New York Post. The Post cited a Trump administration official who said FBI Director Kash Patel ordered the raid.

The outlet also reported that yet-to-be-unsealed search warrants reference a controversy over his memoir to establish a pattern of behavior. However, a senior U.S. official told the Post the probe was a ‘clean break’ from the investigation regarding Bolton’s book.

Shortly after the raid began, Patel wrote on X that ‘no one is above the law… [FBI] agents on a mission.’

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino shared the post and wrote, ‘Public corruption will not be tolerated.’

Bolton, who served in Trump’s first administration, has not been arrested or taken into custody. Trump revoked his security clearance and Secret Service detail in January 2025.

Trump was asked about the raid on Friday and said he did not know about it ahead of time, claiming he saw it on television. The president then made clear his disdain for his former national security adviser.

‘I’m not a fan of John Bolton. He’s a real lowlife,’ Trump told reporters. He went on to call Bolton ‘not a smart guy’ and said ‘he could be very unpatriotic.’

The president also said Bolton was ‘a very quiet person except on television if he can say something bad about Trump.’

Vice President JD Vance told ‘Meet the Press’ on Friday that ‘we’re in the very early stages of an ongoing investigation into John Bolton.’ Vance denied Bolton was being targeted for criticizing Trump.

A source familiar with the Bolton raid and the evidence used to justify it told Fox News Digital that ‘Bolton really had some nerve to attack Trump over his handling of classified information,’ but would not give more details.

Bolton criticized Trump’s handling of classified documents after the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago in 2022. Trump was later indicted on 37 felony counts, which expanded to 40 before the case was dropped in July 2024.

During Trump’s first administration, a probe into classified documents was launched but later shut down by the Biden administration. The Justice Department argued that Bolton’s 2020 memoir, ‘The Room Where it Happened,’ contained classified material and attempted to block it from being published. 

The FBI and Bolton’s office declined to comment on the matter.

Reporting contributed by Axios and Fox News’ Michael Dorgan, David Spunt, Breanne Deppisch, Emma Woodhead and Brooke Singman.

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As the 11th member of former President Joe Biden’s administration appeared before the House Oversight Committee this week, Fox News Digital asked senators on Capitol Hill if former Vice President Kamala Harris should testify next. 

‘I think they should take her behind closed doors and figure out what she knows and what she’s willing to talk about,’ Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., said. 

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., is leading the investigation into the alleged cover-up of Biden’s cognitive decline and use of the autopen during his tenure as president. 

Comer said on Fox News’ ‘The Ingraham Angle’ last month that the ‘odds’ of Harris getting a subpoena to appear before the House Oversight Committee are ‘very high.’ 

While Marshall told Fox News Digital that Harris should testify, he admitted, ‘I don’t think you need her testimony to show Americans what I knew as a physician a long time ago, that Joe Biden had a neurodegenerative disease of some sort.’

Marshall has a medical degree from the University of Kansas and practiced medicine for more than 25 years before running for public office. 

‘All you had to do is look at his very fixed, flat face,’ Marshall explained. ‘Look at his gait, the way he walked. He had a shuffled walk. He didn’t move his arms, hardly at all. When he talked, it was very monotone, a very soft voice. He had malingering thought processes. I don’t think it took much to figure that out.’

After listing the former president’s symptoms, the Kansas senator lamented that Biden ‘turned weakness into war,’ creating a national security threat. 

During Biden’s presidency, the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan resulted in the death of 13 U.S. soldiers, Russia invaded Ukraine and Hamas attacked Israel, triggering the ongoing war in Gaza.

But as Republicans demand transparency, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told Fox News Digital he is far more worried about the ‘challenges we face right now,’ particularly on the economy, inflation and the effect of Trump’s tariff policies. 

Meanwhile, Sen. John Hoeven R-N.D., defended the accountability argument, telling Fox News Digital that Americans ‘always want more information and more transparency.’

‘If you’re involved in an administration, you [should] always be willing to come in and say what you did and why you did it, and you know what it’s all about. I mean, that’s how it works, and that’s what the American people want,’ he said. 

Fox News Digital reached out to Biden and Harris for comment but did not immediately receive a response. 

Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report. 

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On Saturday, Israeli tanks and troops began maneuvering ever closer to Gaza City’s outskirts in preparation for a full-scale offensive. Eyewitness accounts reported intensified shelling as Israel is moving toward what could be the defining battle of its war against Hamas terrorists: the capture of Gaza City.

Israel’s security cabinet approved the operation, known as Gideon’s Chariots B, and has deployed up to five IDF divisions toward the city’s outskirts—a highly significant mobilization. Thousands of reservists—some 60,000—have been called up.

John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Madison Policy Forum and executive director of the Urban Warfare Institute, told Fox News Digital the scale of this operation is unprecedented. ‘This will be a bigger challenge than anything the IDF has faced, arguably ever. It is the densest location in Gaza, the heart of Hamas’s stronghold. And you don’t really know what the tunnels are until you get into them.’

Spencer said that ‘Hamas built semi-circles of defenses oriented at Israel. But the IDF has shown creativity in maneuvering around obstacles.’ Israel plans to send more combat power into Gaza City than it has deployed across the entire Strip thus far. ‘If your goal is to clear Gaza City of Hamas’s military capabilities and search for hostages, you need that scale,’ he said.

Gadi Shamni, former commander of the Gaza Division and ex-head of IDF Central Command, told Fox News Digital, ‘It is a crowded city with refugee camps, dense neighborhoods, high-rises and a highly developed underground. People say the IDF controls above and below ground, but in the last campaign we saw that wasn’t always true. Even when you destroy tunnels, Hamas can rebuild them quickly. The longer you stay with more forces, the more opportunities you create for the other side to attack.’

A former senior Israeli security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Fox News Digital, ‘The IDF can militarily conquer Gaza, but the costs will be immense on both sides. The IDF will fight with a method of ‘destroy everything first’—air force bombs, massive charges, detonating streets from afar, wiping out entire areas and advancing slowly.

‘The IDF has gained enormous experience over the past two years and will use those tactics in this battle. … You are strong, the enemy is weak, and you have patience. Even the weather is on Israel’s side, with winter not arriving until January.’

The tunnels remain the most formidable element of Hamas’s defense. Unlike ISIS terrorists in Mosul, Spencer said, Hamas has built an underground tunnel network that allows commanders and fighters to move between positions avoid strikes, and conceal hostages. ‘The IDF that will go into Gaza City is not the IDF of 2023,’ Spencer said, pointing to rapid adaptations in the use of drones, robots, and specialized units for tunnel warfare. ‘They’ve learned so much. But this will still be slow, very careful, and costly.’

To illustrate the scale, Spencer pointed to the 2004 battle for Fallujah in Iraq. ‘It took the Marine Corps about two weeks to clear Fallujah—every single home, building, shop. About 68,000 structures were cleared, as if somebody physically looked in them,’ he said. ‘If all five of these [IDF] divisions were doing that, absolutely, you could get it done in a few months. But the enemy always gets a vote. You can’t rush to failure.’

The former Israeli senior security official described the operation as ‘telescopic—very slow, with pistons working one by one. This pace also gives Hamas the chance at every stage to try to cut a deal.’

On the fate of hostages possibly held in Gaza City, the official was blunt: ‘Some of the hostages will die. I wouldn’t be surprised if more brigades are brought in—the IDF is using immense ground power to seize urban terrain.’

Shamni also warned Hamas may relocate hostages, 50 hostages, of whom 20 are still believed to be alive, into combat zones to deter strikes—a tactic he said the IDF would be reluctant to engage for fear of harming captives, a conflict between military necessity and core values.

Shamni highlighted a particularly fraught dilemma: evacuating civilians. ‘You don’t know who will leave, how many will leave, how they’ll react—or whether Hamas will even allow them to leave,’ he said. ‘I assume many will not evacuate, and then you face the hard dilemma of fighting in a place full of noncombatants.’

Spencer added that history shows around 10% of civilians stay behind. ‘Even 10% of a million is 100,000 people,’ he said.

Shamni forecast a protracted operation: ‘It could take months. Two months might seize the surface, but then you still have to clear tunnels. It will cost many lives—including civilians. The worst-case scenario is that no hostages are found alive or dead because of the destruction.’

Shamni, who also served as Israel’s military attaché in Washington, warned that the dual goals of defeating Hamas and returning hostages are contradictory, risking years of drawn-out fighting. 

Spencer, however, called the decision to press forward a ‘calculated risk,’ explaining that while military action carries dangers, ‘you weigh the risk of Hamas killing the hostages against the certainty that they’re being starved and tortured. Military pressure is the last resort. Without conquering Gaza City, Hamas will continue to hold a sanctuary.’

 

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EXCLUSIVE – New Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Joe Gruters outlined his mission as he took over steering the GOP’s national party committee.

‘The midterms are ahead, where we must expand our major majority in the House, in the Senate, and continue electing Republicans nationwide,’ Gruters said as he addressed committee members moments after being unanimously elected chair at the RNC’s summer meeting, held this year in Atlanta, Georgia.

Gruters, a state senator and RNC committee member from Florida, who, until his election as chair on Friday, briefly served as the national party committee’s treasurer, is a longtime ally of President Donald Trump. His move to the RNC chairmanship cements Trump’s dominance over the GOP as it prepares for midterm battles next year.

And a month ago, Trump endorsed Gruters to succeed now-former RNC chair Michael Whatley, who stepped down as he runs for the Senate in battleground North Carolina in the blockbuster race to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Thom Tillis.

The ascension of Gruters to RNC chair is the latest sign of Trump’s complete control over the national party committee.

‘This is the president’s party. This is the president’s vision, overall. The party fully embraces the president,’ Gruters said as he and Whatley stood for an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital.

Whatley, who Trump picked to steer the RNC a year and a half ago, noted that ‘we have transformed the RNC, basically the way that President Trump has transformed the Republican Party.’

Gruters has been a major Trump supporter dating back to the president’s first campaign for the White House. Gruters served as Florida co-chair Trump’s 2016 campaign.

The Democratic National Committee, taking aim at Gruters following his election as chair, claimed that ‘Gruters and Trump will have a lot to bond over while they turn the Republican Party into even more of a personal propaganda machine for Trump.’

Republicans swept back to power last November, with Trump winning the White House, the GOP retaking control of the Senate and holding onto their fragile majority in the House.

But looking ahead to next year’s midterms, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses House and Senate seats, the GOP will be defending their congressional majorities.

A key part of the RNC’s strategy going forward is Trump.

‘We’re gonna ride the president all the way to victory in the midterms, and we are going to win big,’ Gruters emphasized.

Asked about the top three items on his to-do list as he takes over as RNC chair, Gruters said, ‘number one, it’s still election integrity. That’s the most important thing, protecting the vote. And it’s about winning the midterms.’

‘It’s about going back to the fundamentals of registering voters and turning our voters out,’ the new chair added.

Gruters also highlighted Trump’s sweeping GOP-crafted domestic policy bill, which the Republican majorities in Congress passed this summer along near-party lines.

‘It’s our agenda,’ Whatley said in a Fox News Digital interview last month, as he pointed to the massive tax cuts and spending bill that Trump signed into law on July 4.

The measure is stuffed full of Trump’s 2024 campaign trail promises and second-term priorities on tax cuts, immigration, defense, energy and the debt limit. 

It includes extending the president’s signature 2017 tax cuts and eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay. 

By making his first-term tax rates permanent – they were set to expire later this year – the bill will cut taxes by nearly $4.4 trillion over the next decade, according to analysis by the Congressional Budget Office and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. 

The measure also provides billions for border security and codifies the president’s controversial immigration crackdown.

And the new law also restructures Medicaid – the almost 60-year-old federal program that provides health coverage to roughly 71 million low-income Americans. 

The changes to Medicaid, as well as cuts to food stamps, another one of the nation’s major safety net programs, were drafted in part as an offset to pay for extending Trump’s tax cuts. The measure includes a slew of new rules and regulations, including work requirements for many of those seeking Medicaid coverage.

Democrats, for months, have repeatedly blasted Republicans over the social safety net changes. And they’ve spotlighted a slew of national polls conducted both  before and after the measure was passed into law, that indicate the bill’s popularity in negative territory.

But Gruters sees the new law as campaign ammunition.

‘Every single Democrat in Congress voted for a tax increase on average everyday Americans,’ Gruters argued. ‘And that big, beautiful bill has something for every single American, whether you’re working class, whether you’re a small business owner, everybody benefits, and we’re going to be able to ride that bill all the way to victory.’

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Russia’s top nuclear official this week said Moscow is facing ‘colossal threats’ and needs to update its nuclear capabilities.

Without directly naming where Russia’s chief nuclear threat is coming from, Director General of the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom Alexei Likhachev said, ‘the current geopolitical situation, is a time of colossal threats to the existence of our country.’

‘Therefore, the nuclear shield, which is also a sword, is a guarantee of our sovereignty,’ he added, according to Russian state news agency RIA. ‘We understand today that the nuclear shield must only be improved in the coming years.’

The comments came less than a week after Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump convened for a face-to-face meeting that marked the first time a U.S. leader has met with the Kremlin chief since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. 

While Trump and Putin appeared positive following the talks, little seemed to have been concretely accomplished in the meeting and hope surrounding a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire appeared to decline as the week progressed. 

It is unclear why Likhachev issued comments regarding Russia’s nuclear program at this time, and he did not detail what sort of updates he would be looking to make to Moscow’s ‘shield’ program. 

Trump issued similar comments earlier this year when in May he announced his plans to develop the ‘Golden Dome’ missile defense system — inspired by Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ defense system — and which is expected to cost at least $175 billion.

Though security experts have been sounding the alarm when it comes to China’s escalating nuclear development, together Russia and the U.S. continue to possess 90% of the world’s nuclear arsenal.

Moscow continues to hold nearly 4,400 nuclear warheads, over 1,500 of which are ‘strategically deployed’ while the U.S. possesses more than 3,700 warheads in its stockpiles with 1,400 deployed, according to the Arms Control Association. 

While nuclear disarmament was the standing international goal following the end of the Cold War, the trajectory of this policy remains dubious as relations between Washington and Moscow have once again turned precarious amid Putin’s war in Ukraine, and his burgeoning relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping. 

The New Start Treaty remains the only bilateral nuclear arms control agreement between the U.S. and Russia, and though it was extended in 2021, it is set to expire in February 2026. The future of the treaty – first signed in 2010 – also remains unclear as Moscow paused its participation in the agreement in 2023.

Putin said that this suspension meant he would continue to abide by stockpile limits under the treaty, but he would not allow for continued U.S. inspections. 

Fox News Digital could not immediately reach the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for comment as nations increasingly look to expand their nuclear capabilities just six months ahead of when the New Start Treaty is set to expire. 

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ROCHESTER, Minnesota, Aug 22 (Reuters) – U.S. farmers will harvest a record corn crop in 2025 after ideal weather across much of the Midwest this summer, but the bounty will fall short of the U.S. government’s lofty outlook as pockets of plant disease and heat stress dented yields in spots across the farm belt, crop consultancy Pro Farmer said on Friday.

Growers are also expected to reap a bumper soybean crop, although dry conditions in parts of the eastern Midwest and pockets of disease pressure in Iowa may limit yield potential, Pro Farmer said after its annual four-day tour across seven top-producing states this week.

The United States is the world’s top corn exporter and No. 2 soybean exporter, and favorable weather in most of the main growing states supported crops but pushed futures prices to recent multi-year lows.

The warm and wet conditions that fueled crop growth also fostered fungal diseases such as tar spot, southern rust and northern blight in corn, and sudden death syndrome in soybeans.

“Each day we’ve noted the disease pressure in corn. Tar spot, southern rust more widespread than we’ve ever seen before. Those are going to be some real yield robbers,” said Lane Akre, Pro Farmer economist and one of the leaders of the tour’s eastern leg.

Pro Farmer projected 2025 U.S. corn production at a record 16.204 billion bushels, with an average yield of 182.7 bushels per acre, and soybean production at 4.246 billion bushels, with an average yield of 53.0 bpa.

The outlook is below the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest forecast for corn production at a record 16.742 billion bushels with yields averaging 188.8 bpa, and soybean production at 4.292 billion bushels with record average yields of 53.6 bpa.

Crop scouts on the Pro Farmer tour saw more disease-hit fields than normal across the Midwest farm belt this week, although it is not yet clear whether these diseases will blow up into significant yield loss.

At one stop in northwest Illinois, the corn field appeared healthy and green from the roadside, but 30 to 40 steps in, leaves were streaked with rust, leaving crop scouts covered in color. Overhead, bright yellow crop dusters banked low as they sprayed wide white plumes of fungicide.

Jake Guse, a Minnesota row crop farmer and crop scout on the eastern leg of the tour, said disease levels were the worst and most widespread that many crop scouts had ever seen on the tour.

“As we traveled across Indiana, we started seeing more (disease). In Illinois, started getting bad — and it was all over Iowa,” Guse said of three of the largest producing states.

However, crop scouts also found exceptional yield prospects that could help cushion any disease-related yield decline.

The strong production prospects may not be welcome news to farmers, who are facing a third straight year of declining corn prices due to excess supplies and only a modest improvement in soybean prices, according to USDA data.

Production costs remain high while trade tensions with key markets like China, the top soybean importer, have left demand uncertain.

While the USDA is forecasting that the nation’s farm economy will improve in 2025, that boost will largely come from a massive influx of federal funding the Trump administration plans to send to rural America, according to USDA data.

Corn and soybean futures on the Chicago Board of Trade firmed this week as reports from the crop tour suggested that recent USDA harvest forecasts may be too high.

The benchmark CBOT December corn contract CZ25 ended the week up 1.5%, its first weekly gain in a week in five weeks, while November soybeans SX25 also rose 1.5% and hit a one-month high.

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Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson criticized on Thursday what she said were the ‘recent tendencies’ of the Supreme Court to side with the Trump administration, providing her remarks in a bitter dissent in a case related to National Institutes of Health grants.

Jackson, a Biden appointee, rebuked her colleagues for ‘lawmaking’ on the shadow docket, where an unusual volume of fast, preliminary decisionmaking has taken place related to the hundreds of lawsuits President Donald Trump’s administration has faced.

‘This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins,’ Jackson wrote.

The liberal justice pointed to the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of Calvinball, which describes it as the practice of applying rules inconsistently for self-serving purposes.

Jackson, the high court’s most junior justice, said the majority ‘[bent] over backwards to accommodate’ the Trump administration by allowing the NIH to cancel about $783 million in grants that did not align with the administration’s priorities.

Some of the grants were geared toward research on diversity, equity and inclusion; COVID-19; and gender identity. Jackson argued the grants went far beyond that and that ‘life-saving biomedical research’ was at stake.

‘So, unfortunately, this newest entry in the Court’s quest to make way for the Executive Branch has real consequences, for the law and for the public,’ Jackson wrote.

The Supreme Court’s decision was fractured and only a partial victory for the Trump administration.

In a 5-4 decision greenlighting, for now, the NIH’s existing grant cancellations, Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the three liberal justices. In a second 5-4 decision that keeps a lower court’s block on the NIH’s directives about the grants intact, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, sided with Roberts and the three liberals. The latter portion of the ruling could hinder the NIH’s ability to cancel future grants.

The varying opinions by the justices came out to 36 pages total, which is lengthy relative to other emergency rulings. Jackson’s dissent made up more than half of that.

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley observed in an op-ed last month a rise in ‘rhetoric’ from Jackson, who garnered a reputation as the most vocal justice during oral arguments upon her ascension to the high court.

‘The histrionic and hyperbolic rhetoric has increased in Jackson’s opinions, which at times portray her colleagues as abandoning not just the Constitution but democracy itself,’ Turley said.

Barrett had sharp words for Jackson in a recent highly anticipated decision in which the Supreme Court blocked lower courts from imposing universal injunctions on the government. Barrett accused Jackson of subscribing to an ‘imperial judiciary’ and instructed people not to ‘dwell’ on her colleague’s dissent.

Barrett, the lone justice to issue the split decision in the NIH case, said challenges to the grants should be brought by the grant recipients in the Court of Federal Claims.

But Barrett said ‘both law and logic’ support that the federal court in Massachusetts does have the authority to review challenges to the guidance the NIH issued about grant money. Barrett joined Jackson and the other three in denying that portion of the Trump administration’s request, though she said she would not weigh in at this early stage on the merits of the case as it proceeds through the lower courts.

Jackson was dissatisfied with this partial denial of the Trump administration’s request, saying it was the high court’s way of preserving the ‘mirage of judicial review while eliminating its purpose: to remedy harms.’

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Longtime Republican consultant Roger Stone lambasted Trump adviser-turned-staunch-critic John Bolton following the FBI raid on his Bethesda, Maryland residence on Friday.

‘Good morning. John Bolton. How does it feel to have your home raided at 6 o’clock in the morning?’ Stone riffed on X, six years after the Biden FBI raided his own Fort Lauderdale home in an operation to which CNN was reportedly tipped off to.

‘Wait! Where was CNN?’ added Stone, who has often criticized Republicans who become disloyal to President Donald Trump.

‘What goes around comes around- and Roger Stone still ‘did nothing wrong,’’ he said, quoting the catchphrase and shirts that were circulated after his 2019 raid.

Stone, who began his political career volunteering for 1964 presidential nominee Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., before moving on to advising President Richard Nixon, also posted a photo of himself from his arrest wearing a ‘Roger Stone Did Nothing Wrong’ shirt.

Stone continued his critique of Bolton later Friday morning with another X post that included a split photo of the two men:

‘The man on the left had his home rated at 6 am because he did something wrong. The man on the right had his home raided at 6 am because he didn’t. Karma is b—-.’

He later released a mock statement claiming Bolton admitted his signature mustache was ‘appropriated from a member of the Village People.’

Bolton, who held diplomatic posts under Presidents George H. W. and George W. Bush before joining President Donald Trump’s first administration, later broke with Trump over his handling of COVID-19, his approach to diplomacy, and the impeachment saga.

Trump often returned fire at Bolton after their messy breakup, and Stone occasionally chimed in to defend his longtime friend from New York.

After Bolton attacked Trump’s choice of Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, calling her a ‘serious threat to national security’ – Stone returned fire.

‘Watching war pig John Bolton attack the appointment of Tulsi Gabbard as DNI makes me all the more certain that she is precisely the right person for the job,’ Stone said in November.

After the raid on Bolton’s home, FBI agents were also seen in DuPont Circle, D.C., removing boxes from the Baltimore native’s personal office.

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The FBI launched a raid Friday morning into the home and office of John Bolton — President Donald Trump’s national security advisor from 2018 and 2019 — months after Trump yanked Bolton’s security clearance in January upon taking office. 

The two men have a long history of trading barbs following Bolton’s exit from Trump’s first administration — all of which escalated after Bolton sought to publish a memoir in 2020 that included some unflattering details about his time in the White House. 

While Trump has labeled Bolton a ‘wacko’ and a ‘dope,’ Bolton has had his fair share of harsh words for the president. 

‘I don’t think he’s fit for office,’ Bolton said in an interview with ABC News in June 2020, ahead of his memoir’s release. ‘I don’t think he has the competence to carry out the job.’ 

‘There really isn’t any guiding principle that I was able to discern other than what’s good for Donald Trump’s reelection,’ Bolton said at the time. ‘I think he was so focused on the reelection that longer-term considerations fell by the wayside.’ 

Bolton also characterized Trump as lacking focus on policy while being very fixated on himself — to the detriment of national security matters. 

‘His policymaking is so incoherent, so unfocused, so unstructured, so wrapped around his own personal political fortunes, that mistakes are being made that will have grave consequences for the national security of the United States,’ Bolton also said in an ABC interview in June 2020. 

The first Trump administration sought to block the release of Bolton’s memoir, ‘The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,’ and asserted it contained classified material. 

The book alleged that Trump ‘pleaded’ Chinese President Xi Jinping to support Trump’s reelection campaign, and called the president ‘stunningly uninformed.’ 

While the Justice Department attempted to prevent its publication on the grounds that the book disclosed classified matters pertaining to U.S. intelligence sources and methods, a federal judge signed off on the publication of the book, which ultimately was published June 23, 2020. 

Meanwhile, Trump discredited Bolton’s assertions included in the book, and hurled his own insults back at Bolton. 

‘Many of the ridiculous statements he attributes to me were never made, pure fiction,’ Trump said in a social media post June 18, 2020. ‘Just trying to get even for firing him like the sick puppy he is!’ 

‘Wacko John Bolton’s ‘exceedingly tedious’(New York Times) book is made up of lies & fake stories. Said all good about me, in print, until the day I fired him,’ Trump said in a separate social media post on June 18, 2020. ‘A disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war. Never had a clue, was ostracized & happily dumped. What a dope!’

Bolton departed his post at the White House in September 2019. While Bolton said that he left due to his own volition, Trump claimed that he fired Bolton. 

Bolton was not arrested or taken into custody following the raid on his home and office Friday.

Trump told reporters Friday that he had no knowledge of the raid and learned about it watching TV. 

‘He’s a, not a smart guy,’ Trump said Friday. ‘But he could be a very unpatriotic. I mean, we’re going to find out. I know nothing about it. I just saw it this morning. They did a raid.’ 

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