If the Jeffrey Epstein files alone felt like a set of embarrassing political crises up until now, it's grown into an unrelenting cankerous sore without solution or any apparent desire to cap a campaign looking for any associations with the child rapist.

We've suffered through reports of botched investigation of child rape, official disdain for victims, government cover-up efforts and absurd testimony to Congress about all of it. Now we're trying to make sense of university presidents who reached out to a guy with a bad history with donations.

Somehow, we're still missing the main point about not investigating the serious crimes that occurred. This week there are more congressional hearings with Bill and Hillary Clinton, whose mentions in the files seem far from the central crimes involved and more about gaining political advantage. We are even missing whether any purported crime is even still prosecutable.

The Epstein Files mess was a stinking pile of sexual attacks that successive governments had managed to push aside or constrained by outstanding prosecutions until it re-emerged a full-fledged presidential campaign issue for Donald Trump.

Over months, as Trump sought to distance himself from Epstein, his repeated lies about closeness with Epstein undercut any public declarations of un-involvement. After having picked up on MAGA insistence to re-opening the can of political worms, Team Trump was seen as shielding its worst sexual predators, who may include friends or donors. We still don't know, and the Justice Department is formally uninterested in finding out. We only know that Epstein's partner, the convicted Ghislaine Maxwell, now wants a pardon from Trump, who is non-committal about it.

Even with only partial and heavily redacted release of its contents, The Files now have exploded into global anger and frustration touching rich businessmen (and women) and government figures galore — for a bewildering range of email exchanges, acquaintances, social and business associations that may have nothing to do with attacks on 1,000 children.

We are suddenly awash in articles and social commentary about a permanent "Epstein class" of wealthy, influential "elites" who skip through their lives without concern for law or morality, sure of protection from exposure, prosecution or even discomfort. And while European countries are drubbing even unmasked princes and government ministers, we in the U.S. listen as Trump and his Justice Department shrug off any need to confront those people unless they are political opponents identified by Trump.

The strategy to protect Trump from Epstein has turned upside-down.

Starting Bad and Getting Worse
Almost everything about this case that goes back two decades is weird.

Presumably, previous administrations were told that Justice was pursuing allegations of many women who had gone to the FBI, and the Ghislaine Maxwell case only convicted at the end of 2021. Why there was insufficient follow-through with those victimized remains unclear, among the zillion questions about how Justice responded across administrations.

By now, we all know this, up to the recent shameful congressional testimony by current Attorney General Pam Bondi who was unable to even look at women in the room who say they have never been contacted by prosecutors. The stench of cover-up for friends of Trump and Epstein, now seemingly forever linked despite Trump's attempts at separation, crosses party lines and political leanings.

Instead, we debate to what degree the Trump administration is violating the law enacted this year to force release of the documents, the value of releasing documents that have been wholly blacked out to block identities of wealthy friends of Epstein, but still showing information about the victims of attacks on a private Caribbean island, New York and a New Mexico ranch, on planes, at parties, under pressure to recruit ever-younger teens. We debate words about law and order, while re-abusing the now-grown women involved.

Trump could have controlled this story, could have made himself and his Justice Department political heroes. Instead, he has chosen shrug even as his own Cabinet and donors are caught in public lies, and Trump is watching a constant erosion of public support.

The Backlash
Meanwhile, ripples from simple mention in the files – the Justice Department has been overly generous in mentioning as many names as possible while blocking release of any FBI investigative notes – are ensnaring people who seemingly had plenty of non-sexual contacts with Epstein over philanthropy and donations, financial advice, and Epstein's ever-eager desire to mingle with the rich and famous.

Robert Draper's New York Times piece sums it up brilliantly. Even as members of Congress, victims, lawyers and journalists pour through The Files in search of names of those involved, "the documents lay bare the once-furtive activities of an unaccountable elite, largely made up of rich and powerful men from business, politics, academia and show business. The pages tell a story of a heinous criminal given a free ride by the ruling class in which he dwelled."

Those caught in the Epstein web are not facing sex ring charges or assault but a whole variety of non-sexual allegations. The British police arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the dethroned prince, on suspicion of misconduct in public office involving handing confidential government information to Epstein. In 2022, he paid Virginia Giuffre an undisclosed sum to settle a lawsuit in a New York court in which she said he had raped and sexually abused her when she was 17. Maybe deposition discoveries in his defense eventually will prove useful, but those prospects again are months or more away.

Others similarly are being fired or dropped from boards and businesses and universities for longtime friendships with Epstein or shared trips or financial arrangements. Though inclusion in the files does not necessarily imply wrongdoing, the mere association with Epstein is being seen as reason enough to cut ties.

Not so with Trump and Republican friends. Even as the House Oversight Committee calls the Clintons to testify this week, few Republicans – and fewer people actually pinpointed in sexual crimes — are being called. Les Wexner, billionaire owner of Victoria's Secret and a close Epstein friend, told Democratic members of the committee that he was "duped" by Epstein. Republican members refused to attend. Maxwell was allowed to avoid questions as she sought a pardon for testimony. Any pressure on Alex Acosta, the original federal prosecutor with a deal to offer, was remarkably light.

There is no end in sight to a rebellion over scandal. We are stuck with an America that attacking "elites" who somehow escape the claws of the law only to keep shielding them amid a healthy dose of political partisanship.

It's become accepted religion on MS-NOW political talk broadcasts – and in Democratic circles in and out of Congress — that one way or another, Donald Trump is actively aiming to disrupt the November elections.

The tools for disruption vary from Trump attempts to tilt the balloting rules or push for gerrymandered districts to full-blown deployment of armed Homeland Security armies around voting precincts in at least 15 jurisdictions, picking up from Trump's own projections about where he intuits widespread voter fraud without a shred of evidence to persuade, say, a judge.

To a certain extent, then, Trump already has proved successful in at once annoying and frightening Americans with his ever-present, evidence-free, authoritarian push.

It is Trump, of course, who is pushing this argument by word and deed. Rather than accept that the slice of voters who decide between wins and losses is a relatively small, fickle group that drifts back and forth between parties, Trump cannot stomach a loss or even the suggestion that his every act is not adored by friend and foe alike. And so, we have White House trumpeting about "nationalizing" elections that are Constitutionally assigned to states, a public seizure of 2020 ballots in Atlanta, involvement of officials who have nothing to do with elections in precincts where Trump has suffered losses, redrawing of districts, and a so-far failing campaign to grab every state's voting rolls for Trump's own review.

It is Trump who is making clear that he wants to interfere and control elections before voting, in the actual submission of ballots, and, naturally, with the counting of votes. The goal in November is to retain majorities in both houses of Congress and the incessant questioning, oversight activities and possibilities of impeachment that could follow a return of a Democratic majority in even one house.

What Evidence?

Much as Fox, Newsmax and other outlets on the right regularly promote deportation efforts and the need to preserve voting from undue, "fraudulent" voting by immigrants, the MS-NOW crowd of regulars sees a different reality in Trump's dedicated march to undercut voting by making the process more difficult and results always questionable.

Both sides repeat their vents over election tactics endlessly, to the exclusion of other public issues also in contention.

The difference, of course, is that the MS-NOW pundits base their thinking on plethora of actions as well as statements that offer warning signs, on scores of court decisions that have found the "fraud" and "rigging" of elections arguments to be without merit, and on current laws in states that already bar voting by non-citizens and voter registration processes in most states that require showing various documents to be eligible to vote even in local elections.

The "pro-democracy" pundits are reacting to welcomed pressure on the White House coming from Steve Bannon, among others within MAGA, to do anything, including deploying military troops or paramilitary border police to surround polls, discourage voting even in person, and, naturally to eliminate such efforts as mail ballots that encourage more voting, not less.

This weekend, Trump promised on social media that he would issue an executive order to require voters to show identification in the midterm elections even if Congress does not do so. Trump posted, "There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!"

Trump has already attempted to use an executive order to alter voting laws last March, but in January, a federal judge threw it out, finding that the president does not have the authority to unilaterally alter election procedures.

Trump is stumping for something called The SAVE Act in Congress, which would require voters to show passport or other documents each time they vote – and would require all states to turnover state voter rolls loaded with personal information to Trump's government, presumably for unspecified checks against citizenship records. For anyone who has worked with data, name checks are the worst possible way to match records because of name or initial changes, spellings, relocations among jurisdictions. Voter rolls do not list who actually voted, just who once registered.

Like most legislation, there is some kernel that makes sense, but partisan disagreement about its effects, about how it would be used, and the broader un-Constitutionality of putting the feds in charge of activity directly assigned to states.

A Campaign Against Voting

Taken together, Trump's activities towards elections past and present show a consistent line: He wants to sow distrust for the results. On some level, it makes no sense. He supported the outcome of the same voting techniques and procedures when he won in 2016 and 2024, but not 2020 – or apparently in the looming November results.

For those who followed the investigations of activities ending in the Jan. 6, 2021, efforts to remain in office despite election results, it feels all too familiar. These are the same drumbeats that Special Counsel Jack Smith was prepared to prosecute as illegal conspiracy to overturn election law.

Trump does not help himself in these matters when, as over the weekend, he takes his tales of election woe to a military base in North Carolina, in a partisan address to Fort Bragg soldiers in blatant violation of military tradition, if not law. Trump does not help his credibility by sending Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence to participate in a search warrant seizure of ballots in Atlanta, or dispatching Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem to Arizona over securing voter rolls. Rather, those come across to the public as sending willing co-conspirators in what seem warning signals that this federal government will intervene in state elections.

Here was Noem in an Arizona interview: "When it gets to Election Day, we've been proactive to make sure that we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country." Regardless of party, how are we not supposed to take this as between inappropriate and dangerous?

What most ails our voting in this country is that its residents don't vote. A 60 percent turnout is considered high. Only Trump sees widespread fraud – especially when the same exact ballot elects those Republicans in Congress or state legislatures who must carry out Trump's assault on voting focused on minority precincts in states whose outcomes he did not like.

What most ails our Trump administration about voting is that it seeks to depress the vote, and uses the hammer of immigration as a supposed explanation for what seems genuinely widespread unhappiness with most of Trump's policies about tariffs and prices, access to health care and childcare, a vastly growing gap between rich and poor, the abuse of the Justice Department and FBI towards partisan political ends, its opposition to climate concerns and the promotion of self-aggrandizing schemes for Trump's own family, friends and backers, and the attack on democracy itself.

Watch for the actions as well as bluster of Truth Social posts.

After citizen rejection of a threatened federal prosecution, what all sides seem to accept is that the very attempt to bring criminal charges against six members of Congress for reminding the military and intelligence officers to question orders they believe illegal has been extraordinary.

The prosecution effort led by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro after spurring from Donald Trump directly abridges free speech, ignores the responsibility of members of Congress to speak out, and the most obvious – that the actions by the six repeatedly what already is in the law and in military training codes. It is, as most informed critics say, more a reflection of a dictatorial regime than any understandable legal case.

What they do not agree on is whether the decision by a grand jury last week to reject any charges – as well as a separate judicial order halting Pentagon hounding of Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz. – should end the matter. From all reports, Justice, which is silent on the matter, is seeking a new venue to try filing charges before a new grand jury.

Obviously, those inside the insular Donald Trump circle disagree basically with the rest of the world about whether there even is a problem here, never mind criminal charges. Trump himself had called for charges of sedition that could involve hanging for members of Congress to speak their mind in a video.

The basic tenet – that active-duty military and intelligence agents not only can, but are obliged by the law, their behavioral code and their oaths – to refuse orders they think are illegal is not at legal issue. What is at issue is that Trump does not like what these six say or the implication that Trump is issuing orders that could be considered "illegal."

But there is a lot still to sort about the why and how of the case and the dangers it represents for a Trump presidency now fully devoted to selectively prosecuting anyone who speaks or acts in opposition, in or out of office. We have the array of cases against former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, an investigation of Fed Board Chair Jerome Powell, and more in cases that refuse to end.

The Grand Jury Said 'No'

Of course, the grand jurors did not appear publicly to explain the decision. What we know, from sources to news organizations, is that not one voted for indictment on a proposed felony crime that makes it illegal to "interfere with, impair, or influence the loyalty, morale, or discipline of the military or naval forces of the United States," not the more serious sedition.

Not only is vocal Trump loyalist Pirro a political appointee, but the two prosecutors presenting the charges also were political appointees — Steven Vandervelden, a former colleague of Pirro in the district attorney's office in New York, and Carlton Davis, a former staffer for House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky. When it came time to vote, none of the grand jurors agreed there was sufficient probable cause to charge any of the lawmakers with a crime. The point is that professional prosecution staff had distanced themselves from the case.

Unusual as it is for the Justice Department to be blanked – again – by a citizen grand jury that only hears the prosecution side of a case, that rejection should end it. Apparently not so in this case, since we are told that Justice is shopping for another shot at indictment of the six.

The six include Senators Kelly, former Navy captain, aviator and astronaut, and Elise Slotkin, D-Mich., intelligence officer, Representatives Jason Crow, former Army ranger from Colorado, Maggie Goodlander, Navy veteran from New Hampshire, Chrissy Houlahan, former Air Force officer, and Chris Deluzio, former Navy officer, both from Pennsylvania.

In Congress, many public and more private comments to journalists and one another, reflect anger and astonishment at Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi for greenlighting criminal charges against fellow legislators who are paid to speak critically of any administration. This is the same Congress that just had aired outraged criticism about former Special Counsel Jack Smith collecting data to confirm that members of Congress had been taking phone calls from Trump during the Jan. 6 insurrection attempt.

Our politics specimen jar is in full undress that Trump thinks he can point to critics and have criminal charges appear evidence-free and immediately – with very real consequences for jail time for having an opinion.

The Mark Kelly Court Case

In the related Washington case, federal Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, blocked the Pentagon from moving to punish Mark Kelly over the video.

"This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly's First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees," Leon wrote in his opinion. "After all, as Bob Dylan famously said, 'You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.'"

War/Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had ordered a retiree pay cut for Kelly but had threatened to reactivate him to face a court martial. It is unclear whether Hegseth will walk away. What is not addressed outside of remarks from Slotkin to television audiences is that these offices had been getting inquiries about legality of orders from active-duty troops, National Guardsmen, and intelligence officers about various tactical situations in which they increasingly are finding themselves.

Though none of the six specified any Trump orders as illegal, the follow-through "double tap" killings of surviving crewmen from drug raids in the Caribbean seem an obvious source of concern, just as the constant miscommunication and lack of operational rules of engagement for deployment to city streets in which American citizen protesters may be the enemy of the day.

Clearly, Trump, Homeland Security and the Pentagon want total, unconditional, unquestioned control of the military and paramilitary forces they are sending into these situations. The secrecy around what is told to Homeland Security's border police about tactics that include masking and anonymized deployment with protesters and migrants alike have made clear that there are open legal issues.

Kelly, Slotkin, Crow and legal authorities all have made the same point this week: The news was not that this grand jury rejected an absurd presentation for indictment. The news is that the Trump administration insists on bringing the cases, based on political whim.

We've now entered another partial government shutdown – this one affecting Homeland Security services only because stubbornness over Donald Trump's insistence of shielding ICE and border police tactics.

But, we are told, it won't affect the deportations because DHS already got so much money for its enforcement activity. Instead, the Coast Guard, TSA and FEMA employees will be asked to work for no pay, even as Secretary Kristi Noem struggles to avoid blame by the public and even Trump for creating what feels a political problem.

Even if it did not seem as if every action in this Trump administration is motivated by partisan politics or adjudged for "support for the Trump agenda," we're hearing an extraordinary series of actions caused by plain old incompetence.

The ordered 10-day shutdown – and reopening — of the El Paso airport this week, which spawned multiple explanations from the same government turned out to be an erroneous use of anti-drone technology by the Customs and Border Protection against a party balloon.

The abrupt closure of El Paso's airspace followed the border agency's use poor use of an anti-drone laser on loan from the Department of Defense without giving aviation officials enough time to assess the risks to commercial aircraft.

That seems bad in several aspects but certainly was worsened by an inability for different agencies to hear the same story. At various points, we supposedly were reacting to Mexican drug cartel drone attacks, prompting international frictions. In any case, the shutdown scrambled civilian travel in and out of a major city and interfered with the city's emergency services, including medical emergencies. If it was an emergency, wouldn't it also have affected adjoining Juarez across the Rio Grande?

Are we supposed to believe that this "emergency" was too quick or too complex for different agencies to call each other and to rely on the same information? If so, why is the military giving out anti-drone technology to people who don't know how to use it without knowing if civilian aircraft will be affected? It is too much to ask for competence in the use of weapons?

Over and over, we hear bits of errant communications, of botched plans, of contradictory policies in which one part of this administration knows nothing about actions of the other. Where is government competence?

Mistaken Disclosures
Often, we are hearing courtroom admissions by Justice Department lawyers that the "facts" they were given about various immigration cases are incorrect or missing, or necessary communications to meet court orders that simply never happened.

One theme running through Attorney General Pam Bondi's disastrous session with House Judiciary Committee members looking at Jeffrey Epstein file documents being released was the failure to protect personal information of many victimized by Epstein while great pains were taken to mask the identity of wealthy men associating with Epstein.

The Justice Department's explanation, of course, was that it was a lot of paper to go through, and mistakes could happen, despite having assigned more than 500 prosecutors and researchers to comb through the files.

Critics were quick to point out that mistakes don't run one way, that something more nefarious was afoot in warning away more of the reported thousand abused as young women not to step forward.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the Internal Revenue Service improperly shared confidential tax information of thousands of individuals with immigration enforcement officials, The Washington Post reported. In sworn testimony, an IRS official provided confidential taxpayer information even when Homeland Security could not provide sufficient data to positively identify a specific individual.

An IRS lawyer said, "Once taxpayer data is opened to immigration enforcement, mistakes are inevitable and the consequences fall on innocent people."

Are we to accept a government that makes "mistakes" that run afoul of personal privacy – once again in the name of a deportation campaign without limits or rules? This is the same government that now demands that all states turn over detailed personal information from voter rolls and accept that it is a benign request to ensure well-run elections.

Consistent Inconsistency
Much as with the early "DOGE" actions, even objectionable policy changes by an incoming administration have overrun any understanding about competence. Agencies shut one day were re-opened the next, fired federal workers were asked to return. Tariffs were set and changed, for no apparent reason other than to fit Trump's whim. International agreements and treaties suddenly became optional for this government.

The only consistent message from Trump is that loyalty matters more than substance.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration fired Donald T. Kinsella, 79, a new U.S. attorney in New York State, five hours after he was named by a federal appeals court. The court had acted weeks after having found that Trump's designated appointment never went before the Senate for confirmation and was in the job illegally. The irony, of course, was that the Justice Department cited the Constitution as insisting that the appointment needed to come from the president, skipping over the requirement that it must get approval of the Senate as well.

The New York appointment followed other U.S. attorney removals in New Jersey and Virginia over the same issue. With a majority Republican Senate, why does Trump even need to follow this legally unstable route to name someone meant to enforce the law? The answer seems to lie in the choices of candidates who lack legal experience but ooze in political loyalty.

That's why we're seeing grand juries of ordinary citizens rejecting U.S. Attorney-presented prosecutions on criminal charges against former FBI Director James B. Comey Jr., New York State Attorney General Letitia James, Fed Board member Lisa Cook, and, this week, six sitting Democratic members of Congress who issued a video repeating what the military's own conduct code says about rejecting illegal military orders.

This week also saw the disclosure of reasoning behind seizure of 2020 ballots in Atlanta. According to search warrant applications, the Justice Department, acting on Trump's behalf, were replaying the same allegations about election outcomes in Fulton County that have been repeatedly debunked. There is no new evidence, though the search warrant allowed seizure of ballots seemingly meant to find it.

The documents relied on claims from election conspiracists, including Kurt Olsen, considered in the first Trump administration as a fringe character, who now is the White House director of "election security and integrity," with the power to refer criminal investigations.

This was the seizure at which Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, with no authority to operate inside the country, was physically present – again with a host of contradictory explanations.

The Wall Street Journal brought us a host of weird goings-on at the Homeland Security Department, from serious failures to the inane, but all stemming from an incompetence in Secretary Kristi Noem.

At some point, it should become obvious that even if we can get by the obvious political actions, this administration is missing a basic governmental competence.

If the game's not going your way, kick over the table.

That's seems the message from Donald Trump's untimely announcement shutting the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for two years of construction suddenly needed to turn a "tired, broken, and dilapidated Center," into "the finest Performing Arts Facility of its kind."

Once again, tone-deaf Trump doesn't understand that the arts are what happens inside the building, not the building itself. Obviously strung by the succession of performers, artists and groups that are abandoning the center because of Trump's egotistical nonsense of renaming everything for himself and for policies that the artists detest, Trump would rather shut the place than hear the criticism.

He's upsetting the apple cart. Maybe some renovations were needed, but not shutdown. Apart from all else, it is interfering with long-laid plans by performing companies now forced into hurried new arrangements.

If he could have done so, he would likely have shut down the Grammys telecast, which provided a platform for some of popular music's biggest names to lambaste Trump's deportation policies. As it was, he threatened to sue emcee Trevor Noah over a single joke. Punitive lawsuits are his familiar alternative to shutdowns.

Trump has disdain for artists and performers who don't put admiration of him at the forefront of their work. To avoid public criticism by Superbowl halftime performer Bad Bunny, Trump is skipping a trip to the game, another example of kicking over the table.

Putting his name on the building no more has made him a champion of the arts than beheading Venezuela's leadership makes him a promoter of would-be democracy in South America. Closing the hall and building new marble statuary will not promote the arts in America any more than pimping the propagandistic ego-film honoring First Lady Melania will leave the documentary film world richer for anything but putting billionaire bribery on display.

Some Cultural Trend-Setter

Trump fashions himself a cultural trend-setter as well as master strategic thinker and, strangely, a brilliant military leader who can simply point at a map and cause bombs to fall without sending in a soldier to follow up.

His overly egoistic plans for an ever-growing gilded ballroom and now a massively oversized Arch of Triumph ripoff that will dwarf the Lincoln Memorial belie a tastelessness that smacks as much of inappropriateness as it does of artistic merit. Trump's gaudy makeover of the Oval Office is a match with the creation of a presidential walkway that mocks his political opponents in the name of rewriting history as Trump-centric.

It would be one thing, of course, if the inappropriateness is only about seeing Sylvester Stallone as a fine actor and Kid Rock and Nicki Minaj as the nation's top musical talents. Only Trump thinks his jerkiness on stage passes as dance.

But for Trump, the arts are only a tool for political and business promotion, a potential shield against criticism. Ridding the center of any audience interested in hearing themes reflecting diversity has gone right along with cutting federal supports for public broadcasting or for limiting the national endowments for arts and humanities to themes that Make Trump's America Great.

Trump can't hear criticism, whether from artists and performers or from huge gatherings in sub-zero Minneapolis demanding that he rethink random deportations and deployment of anonymized, camo-clad personal armies as a national, daily obsession.

On our city streets, in our courtrooms and in the hapless Congress, Trump is kicking over the tables of law, precedent, and history. If the 2020 election did not turn out his way, there must have been no 2020 election. If Jan. 6, 2021, ended poorly, Trump was simply going to remake it, eradicating it as he did with the East Wing of the White House or the Rose Garden.

Shutting the Kennedy Center – the Trump Kennedy Center – is merely the latest table overturned. Tariffs, deportations, international affairs are all the same in this Trump White House: If you have the power and the money, do want you makes you feel good, not what creates good.

If there was any confusion before, Donald Trump now owns deportation and its tactics.

Having seemingly flip-flopped on his own key decision to flood cities with federal border agents, Donald Trump faces the problem of defining what exactly he does support about deporting millions.

The decision to remove Greg Bovino, Homeland Security's operational commander on the ground in Minneapolis, and to withdraw at least some of the 3,000 armed federal agents there, is being framed as a retreat on his policies forced by protests in the streets.

But at best, what we have heard so far is what he doesn't want, not what the expectation is going ahead.

Trump clearly didn't like association with the bad image of Homeland Security insisting on unsupported explanations contradicted by videos of the killing of Alex Pretti, but his government has yet to change the claims of total immunity and sole federal role for investigation in any of the legal arguments his Justice Department has offered the courts, as well as any noticeable change in tactics. The government told the court it was limiting inquiries to a "use of force" review about possible violation of training standards, not a homicide probe that could lead to murder charges.

Minnesota's chief federal judge has ordered Todd Lyons, acting head of ICE, to appear in his court Friday and threatened to hold him in contempt for what he says has been repeated defiance of judges' orders in the state.

Trump has not walked away from Attorney General Pam Bondi's letter to Gov. Tim Walz essentially offering a reduction of border agents for turnover of voter registration information and details of state fraud investigations involving Somali immigrants.

By handing leadership to White House border czar Tom Homan, answerable only to him, Trump has lost whatever fig leaf of distance from the brutal tactics that have led to two shooting deaths of bystander citizens, forced family separations and rough, random grabs of migrants from job sites and outside schools and immigration offices.

Despite Trump descriptions of "good talks" with Minnesota officials, Trump's decision to keep Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after an emergency, two-hour White House meeting Monday night does not suggest wholesale change is coming. In a speech and interviews into last night, Trump doubled down on attacking protesters as paid agitators and insisted he was removing "murderers" from Minneapolis streets.

Questions Abound
The questions before Trump are numerous. Even as Trump distances himself from his own White House advisers and Homeland Security, his troops and Minneapolis leaders and residents are waiting to hear what replaces a campaign of fear and dread, of aggressiveness on residential streets.

Did Trump just react to news images and citizen upset based on self-serving and offensive lies by his administration, or is he rethinking the deployments that have played out almost inexorably the violence that his aggressive deportations put into motion? Will he proceed with deployments to other cities? Will he force Homeland Security to focus on the migrants with serious criminal records whom he had said he was focused on before turning to roundup of children and separating parents?

Is Trump taking responsibility for his own decisions, never mind the split-second choices facing an under-trained ICE officer being shouted at by protesters? Was this a rueful reassessment of the excesses of random grabbing of residents, migrant or citizen, criminal or not, or merely a chance to deflect blame in the eye of an angry public? Is this retreat only a reflection of obvious unhappiness with pushback from gun groups reacting to federal justification of the death because Pretti was lawfully carrying a holstered handgun?

Is Trump ready to accept state prosecution of a federal agent for what certainly looks to be an unjustified killing, because to date, the only approved investigations are internal to the affected federal law enforcement agencies themselves?

As with Trump's retreats after aggressive moves in tariffs and economics, international conflicts, and even the physical changes at the White House, even his supporters are never quite sure what the current policy says.

On the Streets
Trump is facing significant political problems from his current deportation deployments, even as his advisers, led by Stephen Miller, are plotting expansion from Minneapolis and now Maine.

Trump has a problem maintaining a common message for his administration spokesmen, including Vice President JD Vance, that has worsened now that he has seemed to retreat himself from the most forceful arguments about opposition to deportation in Minnesota.

Whatever he and Gov. Tim Walz discussed seems to change, depending on who is summarizing their conversations.

Confusion and fear on the streets have led to anger and pushback, not submission, with protests in Minneapolis drawing thousands even in sub-zero temperatures. It is doubtful that simply changing ICE leadership from Bovino to Homan will dampen protest about the aggressiveness of the deportation campaign.

In turn, protests have put even many Republican congress members into wanting to question Noem and border officials about training, procedures and the whole policy of deploying thousands of agents to cities that do not want them. Congress now has a problem with passing a budget with money for border agents without also including significant restrictions on tactics and accountability procedures.

Noem faces serious efforts to impeach her.

Chris Madel, a defense lawyer who had been running for governor of Minnesota as a Republican, said he had decided to end his campaign because he had become outraged by the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.

Taken together, Trump appears incapable of outlining clearly exactly what he wants.

The top line of the messes radiating from Minneapolis is that another bystander, a citizen, is dead at the hands of federal agents being given virtual immunity from responsibility for increasingly random and brutal tactics.

The chaos of a seemingly uncontrolled deportation campaign being waged from the White House already is seriously affecting migrant families, cities and states, the expectations of policing and protest and the very credibility of the government, whose accounts do not stand up to any level of scrutiny of bystander videos.

We're only beginning to see the ripples reach questions of fairness of law and the disappearance of due process, the need for basic rules of engagement in urban areas, policies about guns and free assembly – basic building blocks of expectations for living in an American democracy. We're now looking at a certain political cliff for shutdown of the government over tactics of ICE and border control enforcers seemingly under-trained for urban deployment.

Apart from all else, we cannot even see federal officials focused on the same questions that the rest of us have. Homeland Security sees only disruption of its undisciplined grabbing of random people, not their tactics that have resulted in three shootings in a month, including two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens.

Violating Policing Standards

By all accounts except those from Homeland Security, these federal agents are routinely violating accepted policing procedures over weapons, raids, crowd control and use of chemical irritants – all with the active encouragement, incentive and demand of Republican leadership in Washington.

We're seeing Minnesota calling out the same National Guard to protect against masked Homeland Security agents while we see efforts by Donald Trump to nationalize National Guard troops – and perhaps armed active military troops – to protect federal agents against protests by U.S. citizens.

The weekend's shooting of Alex Pretti, 37, a nurse who tried to help a pepper-sprayed protestor is brushed aside as the work of a handgun-toting "domestic terrorist" without even a nod to the political insistence over decades by the very advocates of this deportation campaign for the right to carry guns openly on city streets. Is this not a time to acknowledge that having civilians openly carry guns while masked federal agents in camo or not are brandishing tear gas guns and live-fire rifles just might result in violence?

We know for certain that it will happen again.

There is little official acknowledgement of what we see now in slowed-down videos – that the holstered, legal 9 mm gun Pretti carried had been removed before at least one or more of the half dozen agents shot the prostrate, restrained Pretti, emptying 10 bullets point blank into him when he clearly was no threat to them. Indeed, even the assertion that Pretti had approached them in a threatening manner was contradicted.

Under questioning, ICE operations chief Greg Bovino could only evade explanation of the details to insist that his agents felt under threat.

No Effective Accountability

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is so focused on carrying out White House-set quotas for speeded migrant arrests that she is quick and sure not only about defending her army against all criticism, but to resist investigation by anyone not part of her controlled groups. Have we forgotten that when local police in Tennessee or Georgia or even Minneapolis were involved in questionable citizen deaths, we turned immediately for investigation by a more independent agency – like the FBI. Now the FBI is part of closing down questions about ballistics and witness testimony.

Trump only seems to weigh in to throw his considerable weight against state and local officials who do not agree with him, whether on ICE tactics, immigration policies, the goals of "sanctuary" cities. Trump even insists on linking his perception that social service fund frauds among 89 Minnesotans who include Somali Americans should be grounds for deporting all Somalis, migrant, asylum applicant or naturalized citizen. Noem demanded that Minnesota turn over voter records, as if that has anything to do with excessively brutal policing tactics.

Trump sees Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz of "inciting" protester mobs – something he could not see himself for doing at the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots of Trump mobs.

Trump has ordered ICE to Maine next, and the same lines of conflict already are reported forming in Portland and Lewiston. Polling is showing significant unhappiness with the tactical choices by ICE even among those who identify as Republican or who say they align with the larger goals of the deportation campaign.

We have forgotten our values as Americans. Our government has blinded itself to economic, historic or even moral principles about immigration. There is only one hammer to use against this nail, and it is force, whether against migrant families, children coming home from day care and school, or against U.S. citizens willing to stand for hours in sub-zero weather to tell ICE to knock it off.

We are long past ICE targeting of serious criminals among migrants. We are turning democracy on its head in pursuit of a racialized, politicized goal that will serve not serve positive results for law and order, crime, immigration, law, or even the political success of Republicans. It comes in a month in which Trump has squandered international trust among its allies, in which threats of trade wars and prosecutions are thrown around as so many arbitrary weapons based on Trump's whim, in which the law itself has been made optional.

What are they possibly thinking happens when the U.S. government loses all credibility?

Obvious as it seems that the string of videos and stories spreading distrust for ICE and Homeland Security agents is spurring widening street protest of deportation policy, apparently it all seems like foreign, made-up stuff to much of MAGA.

It all worsened yesterday with another fatal shooting by federal agents that triggered more dispute, more street confrontations, and more dueling narratives about blame. What all should have been able to agree on immediately is the sole finding that Minneapolis has become a powder keg that requires de-escalation.

If people stick solely to the storylines being promoted in right-leaning media, the stories have not been fully told about citizens being pulled through car windows by masked ICE officers, or the fatal shooting of a protestor at point blank range or about agents using a five-year-old as a pawn in a deportation arrest.

Instead, the story consistently being told on Fox and many other sites is one of left-wing "agitators" who are interfering with totally legal Homeland Security efforts to enforce the law in blue cities that seek to hide lawbreakers. They see chaos and insurrection, not the possibility of misconduct by agents. Played up are accounts of a resolute Homeland Security effort and allied Justice Department prosecutions of those who would dare to stand in the way, even threatening brave agents flooding Minneapolis and other cities to save us from serious criminals.

In an essay in Salon, Sophia Tesfaye notes that MAGA is "flailing" in learning that there is a significant protest going on because they have not been hearing about its causes, including the use of five-year-old Liam Conejo-Arias, now held somewhere with his father.

"To many Americans, the viral image of a child swept up in an enforcement dragnet is horrifying. Yet in the right-wing media silo, the reaction — if there has been any at all — is not concern but suspicion."

Another Fatal Shooting

Yesterday's shooting involved a U.S. citizen, identified as Alex J. Pretti, 37, who was lawfully carrying a 9 mm, semi-automatic handgun in an open carry permit in Minnesota, with Homeland Security again labeling the victim as a "domestic terrorist." Pretti, a nurse, had no criminal record other than parking tickets. As in the previous shooting incidents, federal officials were not cooperating with local officials or making themselves available for investigation.

Multiple videos did not back up the Homeland Security explanation from ICE operations chief Greg Bovino who said the agents reacted under fear. Local officials said the circumstances needed investigation by an outside agency.

Federal agents looking to arrest another person saw Pretti approaching to help someone they had pushed to the ground and pepper-sprayed. They then sprayed him and subdued him. They reacted to seeing his holstered gun by taking the gun and shooting him with their own weapons. Videos showed Pretti held a phone not a gun, and that he showed no confrontational action before at least six agents had Pretti on the ground, striking him with fists. Multiple shots were fired likely from more than one agent.

No one questions that the incident drew a crowd within a half-hour, though there were conflicting reports and lots of live video on whether protesters were "interfering" or "attacking" federal agents.

What you want to believe may depend a lot on who is telling the story. Local officials said it showed federal armies should leave the state. Donald Trump said it showed local officials were "inciting" interference with federal agencies.

Patterns of Propaganda

It's a pattern of this Trump administration to lean on the media for storytelling that matches more with its ideology than that supporting First Amendment examination of what government is doing.

Through FCC pressure, unwarranted lawsuits, ridicule of reporters and expulsion of journalists at the Pentagon and White House who do not agree to promote Trump ideologies, the White House promotes propaganda to seek acceptance only of self-serving explanations. This Trump administration is out to control the message like a fictional Ministry of Truth.

The whole basis of a democracy requires listening to the voters, not the enforced training of voters to hear only what one partisan view of government says it must accept. The democratization of media voices through internet and social posts, podcasts, alternative media outlets is providing its own check on whatever arrogance is perceived as coming from mainstream news outlets, which continue in most instances to insist on seeking verification and evidence over opinion alone.

Whether immigration, economics, the endless 2020 election loss rewrites, the Trump White House response is the same: Believe only what we are telling you. Documents, sworn testimony, even videos of thuggery in Minneapolis or from January 6, 2021, couldn't be true if it does not promote Trump. The message in this case is the medium, and it is no wonder that media that do not promote the message are considered enemies.

The problem, of course, is that eventually even the loyalists come to see that there is something seriously wrong with what they are being told. As Trump's credibility disappears for claiming that some foreign country is paying for tariffs that we pay as a new national sales tax or that jobs are plentiful when they are not, or that supermarket prices are falling when they are rising, it all starts to play out as increased political vulnerability.

Political Consequences

Trump's net approval among Gen Z voters, especially young men, has plummeted from positive 10 points in February 2025 to negative 32 points now, a catastrophic 42-point drop in less than a year, according to a New York Times/Siena poll. While Trump's approval on immigration was 50-50 among voters in March 2025, now 61% disapprove, including seven in 10 independents who say ICE has gone too far.

Yet, much of the concern about deportation tactics by an army of masked, camouflaged Homeland Security troops is passing by without serious questioning in right-leaning media outlets. There has been little coverage of ICE agents stopping people at random or failure to get warrants before entering homes or the use of tear gas and other chemical irritants against non-violent protesters, who are regularly described as agitators. Homeland Security offers arguments about the nature of the protests, which become headlines; often the explanations are at odds with available video of the incident in question.

At some point, it must become apparent that whatever the perceived bias of "mainstream" news sites, the experience of what is being promoted on Fox, Breitbart, Newsmax and lots of right-wing podcasting is at odds with what millions of neighbors are experiencing. In that context, the breakaway of podcaster Joe Rogan to focus on excessive ICE tactics daily now is significant.

Maybe enough confusion will prompt viewers to look at more than one source for news.

It turns out that few believe Donald Trump’s insistence that the economy is doing well for most people – any more than those same voters turned on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris a year ago.

Trump’s shouted, rat-a-tat presentation of defense economy storytelling in a presidential address this week fell flat, despite his exhortation of favored, cherry-picked economic numbers that he insisted tell a better record than what you and I experience in the supermarket, looking for jobs or housing, or clearly face in rising utility and health costs.

But then so are his claims about why Venezuela deserves to be punished, or whether millions will lost Obamacare coverage, or that everyone being picked up randomly by border agents is a criminal in hiding.

The biggest potential growth industry right now may be fact-checking.

Our legacy-come-to-fruition is that too many people don’t want to believe anything beyond their personal experience – whether in economics, vaccine safety, perceived dangers from transgender care and distaste for undocumented immigration or “weaponization” of justice against preferred candidates. Even more want news coverage that matches their pre-conceived notions about their ideological side, particularly on prices, jobs and consumer confidence.

At end of year, Trump seems to be flailing to persuade voters that he even understands the complaints, never mind coming up with useful solutions. So he turns ugly about culture issues that are easier to digest and one-off schemes to send out checks to troops from the taxes we already paid.

It’s useful to note that even when there are “facts,” – inflation and jobless numbers emerged this week – the government’s manipulation of how to count, when to count, and delayed or hidden information makes any assertion these days hard to accept at face value.

The long-promised release of the Jeffrey Epstein files seems to have backfired on the Trump administration, which sought to hold them until a congressional revolt forced their hand, and now are responding with a broad blackout pen that makes even the illegally delayed releases less than useful. Though we know Trump is mentioned repeatedly, we almost nothing of his presence in the released documents.

On prices, polling and public reaction are showing that Trump has lost trust and credibility.

Trump’s decision to offer rapid-fire presentation of his favored facts have trouble lining with lived experience. Gas prices dropped precipitously over a year ago though no one can find under $2 a gallon gas at any gas station and heating oil is up 9 percent, egg prices declined after passage of a bird flu and government infusion of a billion dollars in eggs imports, and “housing” costs will decline shortly because borrowing costs may be forced downward without reference to availability or the cost of rent and home ownership while jobs are falling.

Politics, Sure, But Worse

The result is being described mostly in partisan political terms. Trump’s chosen blindness to “affordability” is seen as a fatal political blow that will result in a change in congressional majority next November, for example, or eating away now at his influence to dictate strategies foreign and domestic.

Fox News presented the Trump speech as if it were indisputable, though there were televised critics; Breitbart praised checks to military troops as a wonderful idea despite its predictable inflationary result and misuse of funds meant for military housing. Most mainstream outlets pointed out the gaps between what Trump says and what the various official and unofficial market surveys and voter polls say about the economy.

What we need, of course, is not more political cheerleading and more political spin. What we need are consistent measures of various economic trends that arrive on time and are useful for comparisons of the same measures over time. The Trump administration’s consistent strategy in economics and tariffs, immigration and crime, justice prosecutions and Homeland Security operations is to undercut, cancel and hide facts to make it more difficult to make useful comparisons – whether month to month or against previous presidential terms.

So, Trump simply asserts as true whatever he wants, whether it is about miracle cures for asthma and communicable disease, airline traffic, guns or environment. The same government that cannot count how many deportees actually had criminal records is now telling us what to believe about inflation and high prices that is not observable.

If he is only handed briefings pre-screened for spin, perhaps it’s no wonder he airs what comports with his autocratic choices.

That Trump lacks the wherewithal to question what he is handed and only has voice to insist is a bad quality for a leader.

The awful feelings from this week’s mass shootings and the twin murders of Rob and Michele Reiner come in waves.

The feelings mix despair and frustration for a society that accepts that violence — even loss of life— as an acceptable trade-off for ideological alignment and personal anger. It happens that our family is from Providence and we both and a daughter attended Brown, so the television images were unusually familiar. Bondi Beach may be a half world away, but attacks on Jews are not new for us. And like many, we’ve held Reiner in a certain shared respect for his work in film and politics.

Unfortunately, these shootings not so different from violence a year ago on the campus of Florida State University, where our daughter teaches in the dance faculty. The Australian antisemitism matches attacks on a Pittsburgh synagogue and calls of hate in the streets and on the internet.

The frustration is that unending mass killings don’t prompt successful gun limitations, that despite thoughts and prayers, we refuse to shun hate and its carriers. Indeed, I had not planned to write about these incidents which we are following closely because the shared revulsion is widespread.

What changed were remarks by Donald Trump, who posted that the Reiners’ deaths were “reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

No Empathy for Non-Loyalists

Somehow this egocentric autocrat whom we have chosen to be the most powerful man in the country is showing us that for him, only those who agree with his politics, who accept his leadership as flawless, are worthy of his otherwise empty powers of empathy.

Even as Republicans have started speaking out to say Trump’s remarks were both inhumane and cruel, Trump doubled down to add that he did not like Reiner’s politics. For that matter, Trump isn’t exactly in love with universities, including Brown. Nor, despite his protestations about antisemitism, Trump’s support for White, Christian nationalism has been a source of serious discomfort for Jews.

There is plenty of derangement syndrome to go around. It turns out that it is Trump who is deranged.

Who besides Trump can’t find empathy for a couple apparently stabbed to death by their own son, as Los Angeles officials have alleged? How devoid of recognizably human feelings is Trump?

How have we so walked away from “character” and “morality” in leadership to normalize Trump’s public behaviors?

If this is how Trump acts in a situation that just requires a moment of basic human solemnity, why should anyone be surprised about ordering the killing of shipwrecked smuggling survivors, or wrenching children from deportable migrant parents, or insisting that it’s perfectly fine to double and triple health insurance costs?

Students ought to be able to expect to attend classes without fear of mass killers. People should expect to celebrate religious and ethnic rites without worry about snipers. Parents ought not expect to be stabbed to death by their children.

How is this Trump, scion of cruelty, a “leader” worth our respect, even apart from any of his policies?

Maybe the world's major conflicts remain too fluid to draw hope towards ending anytime soon, but it's not too soon to conclude that all of Donald Trump's bluster about being the king of peace are overblown.

Indeed, his insistence that only he can settle years-long conflicts in Europe and the Middle East may just be making them worse.

The Nobel Peace Prize judges may want to hold off on any invitation to Oslo. Donald Trump the Peacemaker cannot settle the Russia-Ukraine war in a single day, as he had boasted many times, or in a single month or single year. Nor the Israel-Hamas war. Nor the nuclear threat from Iran or the various economic and intelligence threats from China or North Korea.

Trump's phone calls with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday did not move those parties towards ceasefire. If anything, over the weekend, Russia hit Kiev and other cities with the largest drone attacks to date.

Trump's apparent petulance that his word alone does not prompt immediate cessation of combat and the bombing of Ukraine's civilian population only presage his own disengagement, suggesting that new Pope Leo XIV take the lead mediation role.

Trump is not even making clear whether by threatening to step back, he will seek to withhold U.S. weapons and intelligence again from the Ukrainians; signals were that he would refuse to join European leaders in a new round of economic sanctions against Russia to focus attention on peace efforts, instead expressing hope for big trade with Russia at some point. Zelenskyy continues to offer intermediate ceasefires but to reject land losses to the invading Russians; the Russians are insisting that they are open to ceasefires only if it gives them exactly what they would take by military means.

How is this stand-back Trump helping anyone in the conflict or America's strategic interests?

The Middle East

Nor is Peacemaker Trump proving successful as intervenor and would-be solver of the Israel-Hamas war.

Instead, we see story after story about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu feeling ignored by a frustrated Trump in decisions affecting the region and the renewed air and ground war destruction of Gaza recast as permanent occupation by Israel with evident starvation of its Palestinian population.

Even in the face of continuing pleas from Israelis to focus on retrieval of Oct. 7. 2023 hostages, Israel's right-leaning government insists on crushing an uninhabitable Gaza to kill remaining Hamas fighters. European allies are openly breaking with Israel over its announced re-occupation plans for Gaza. This week, there were reports of the death of Muhammad Sinwar, brother and successor to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

Trump has come up with another version of his plan to ship out a million Palestinians, this time to Libya, the same place our own State Department warns is too dangerous for Americans to travel. This week, Trump broke his own general silence about the Israeli ban on humanitarian aid trucks, which Israel lifted a bit for the first time in three months.

Meanwhile, Trump made direct contact with Hamas for release of an American hostage and summarily called off seven weeks of intense, if questionably effective bombing of Houthi rebels in Yemen without consulting with Netanyahu or fully stopping Houthi threats. Trump is offering simultaneous threats and settlement talks with Iran about nuclear weapons development, again without apparent partnership with Netanyahu.

Trump's trip to the Gulf nations where his own family is doing business deals did not include a stop in Israel to meet with the ally Trump has identified over and over as his closest. Indeed, the biggest story from the region was about the "gift" of a $400 million, luxurious, Qatari royal 747 jet for Trump's use now as Air Force One and later as a personal toy -- and even that, The New York Times tells us, came about because Trump inquired about its availability.

In the crazy everything-is-politics mode, it turns out that Trump's runaway campaign conflating anti-Zionist land expansion with anti-Semitism, is playing out a Heritage Foundation plan to use the Israel issue as a weapon against domestic liberals. Even peace in the Middle East is dependent on Trump politics.

And in the world of politics, Trump showed again yesterday, his word alone was insufficient to bring together even arguing factions within the House Republicans who were still working over how much to cut from federal spending after an overnight Rules Committee session. Trump, who may a strong urge to bully, lacks a persuasion gene to overcome new Congressional Budget Office reports that his proposals would boost U.S. debt substantially.

The takeaway: Trump is so concerned about Trump's centrality to any ceasefire efforts and his insistence on immediacy that he seems to be ignoring the idea that the conflict is continuing -- and worsening.

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First came the across-the-board tariffs, then the increases for specific targets, including China. Then we started hearing about White House-ordered exemptions, including for semiconductors for the tech industry, though there were hints they might be revisited over time. It took no time for people to notice that the same Big Tech folks who were paying into Donald Trump’s inauguration and standing with him were benefiting.

It turns out that a thousand products have been exempted from the extra taxes. The exemptions cross different industries, affect different countries, and defy easy categorization.

What they share is that they well may be represented by loyal political friends of Donald Trump and that they were decided singularly by him — in secret, according to reporting by ProPublica. Many businesses are reaching out to a particular lobbying group that has White House ties even to get in the door to make a pitch for exemptions.

ProPublica, an independent journalist group, says that the lack of transparency about the process has created concerns among trade experts that politically connected firms might be winning carve-outs behind closed doors.

Apart from the wide concerns about the chaotic effect that tariffs have had over global financial markets, trade arrangements and business planning about jobs, prices and sales, routing all tariff traffic directing through a single many in the White House sets up a situation rife with opportunity for undue influence and abuse.

What’s Exempted?

ProPublica offered some examples from a list of exemptions from the White House that illustrate the concern because there are no official explanations.

One exemption is for PET resin, polyethylene terephthalate, used in making plastic bottles. An immediate beneficiary is Reyes Holdings, a Coca-Cola bottler, owned by brothers Chris and Jude Reyes, who have donated millions of dollars to Republicans, and who, records show, recently hired a lobbying firm with close ties to the Trump White House to make its case.

In the executive order formalizing Trump’s new tariffs exemptions were broadly defined as products in the pharmaceutical, semiconductor, lumber, copper, critical minerals and energy sectors. PET resin does not seem to fit and other petroleum-dependent products were not included. The resin could prove important to bottling companies seeking an alternative to aluminum, which does face tariffs.

Last year, records showed that Reyes Holdings hired Ballard Partners as a lobbyist on tariffs. ProPublica said Ballard, which once lobbied for The Trump Organization, has become a destination for companies seeking exemptions; its founder, Brian Ballard, is a noted fund-raiser for Trump.

The exclusions also include most types of asbestos, hardly a critical mineral, but it had been a target of Biden administration policies and perhaps won exemption just to thumb a nose at Biden. Other exemptions with no explanation include coral, shells and cuttlebone, used as a dietary supplement for pets, and sucralose, the artificial sweetener perhaps used in diet sodas that Trump favors. There also are exemptions for pesticide and fertilizer ingredients, including potash, an exemption sought by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

Is This Corruption?

Politico notes that with no formal process in place to submit exemption requests — as there was in Trump 1.0 — or to explain why they were granted or not after the fact, the issues involving exemptions are problematic.

Trade experts say openly that politically connected firms might be winning carve-outs behind closed doors, but that no one knows. It could be corruption, incompetence, random Trump generosity or reflective of some reasonable business logic.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board called “the opacity of the process” for getting an exemption “the Beltway Swamp’s dream.”

Trump has set himself up as the sole arbiter of tariff policy, muscling the power away from Congress, which has the legal responsibility to set such import taxes. He is resistant to the many lawsuits being filed about tariffs, including one this week from 12 state attorneys general from Democratic states, which argue that he lacks the Constitutional authority to wrest sole control of tariff-setting.

This same Trump, of course, insists on total control of much of his powers inside and outside of government, an attitude that draws consistent criticism from ethicists, inspectors general (until most were fired), oversight committees in Congress and the public. Just this week, Trump was offering what amounted to private meetings with buyers of his $TRUMP meme coins for the 220 highest bidders in what can only generously can be called an ethical problem. It comes awfully close to selling access to the president and his family.

It would not be difficult to conclude that secret avenues for loyalist business owners to seek special dispensation under a constantly changing tariffs program that no one seems to fully understand might just be creating opportunity for corruption.

But that concern has yet to fully blossom since there is no access to why the exemptions are being granted at all.

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