Terry H. Schwadron

A Vietnamese company exposes the total failure of Trump’s tariffs

Apparently, all is not fair in economic love or the tariff wars.

With the White House as judge, it’s perfectly appropriate – and maybe legal – for Donald Trump to set variable tariffs wholesale on nations or even on the entire globe, but it’s not okay for other countries to try to evade tariffs.

That’s the gist of a 25-page report, titled “The Great Transshipment Scam” released last week by the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, which is led by trade adviser Peter Navarro.

The name is a dead giveaway to what is presented as an anti-American plot to defraud this country of collecting tens of billions of dollars in import fees by sending products through third countries with lower tariffs than originating nations. Of course, it just as easily could be told as a story of using the existing rules to duck stupidly arbitrarily trade limits set by Donald Trump based on his personal assessment about what a “trade deficit” should look like on a nation-by-nation basis, regardless of whether we don’t grow bananas that we must import.

In short, if China sends an item for U.S. import through Mexico, it is doing so to avoid tariffs set for Chinese goods. Mexico, part of a special, if expiring trade agreement with the U.S. pays nothing. Add up cars and parts, dishwashers and appliances, and now even trombones and tubas, and Navarro argues that the U.S. is being cheated out of billions.

Of course, Navarro never acknowledges that it is U.S. importers who pay the tariffs, not the Chinese or Mexicans, and that cost is being passed on to American consumers.

Meanwhile, Trump is threatening global trade altogether if he cannot have his way with the Fed to lower U.S. interest rates, a policy that runs afoul even of what his own new Fed chair appointee, Kevin Warsh, says is needed to battle inflation that Trump is worsening by unending war and a throttled Strait of Hormuz.

How Transshipment Works

The story is better told by Navarro himself in a New York Times op-ed than in the entire report, which is written in governmental language and filled with generalities. Navarro, you will recall, is a Trump policy advisor for trade and manufacturing who went to jail for contempt of Congress.

Navarro uses a Vietnamese-made recliner as an example. Its motor is made in China, which ships it finished to Vietnam for insertion in the chair before being shipped to Norfolk, Va. It is declared a product of Vietnam, erasing 25 percentage points of U.S. tariff that would be levied– paid by the American importer, of course.

The Transshipment Scam report says a “shadow network of more than 40 countries (is) enabling sleight of hand to deceive American consumers and customs officials about where those countries’ exports really originate.” The cost is north of $40 billion a year from China alone and decreased U.S. manufacturing jobs, says Navarro.

Of course, in business terms, transshipment reflects multi-country manufacture and international supply lines, and the ever-present desire to make money – this time by exploiting the difference in a tax. “The difference becomes a profit opportunity, and even a business model in its own right,” says Navarro. “Ship $1 billion of Chinese goods straight to an American port, and the duty can run to several hundred million dollars. Send the identical goods through Vietnam, Malaysia or Thailand, and most of that bill disappears.”

Navarro notes that foreign-built motors or industrial parts and shipping to the U.S. rightly should be built in America, the underpinning logic of tariffs altogether. But for a variety of reasons, including higher U.S. wages, it is American companies that have been shipping manufacturing overseas for decades. Tariffs – again, paid by Americans, not Chinese or Vietnamese or Europeans – are only increasing the cost of supplies not grown or produced in quantity in the U.S.

Trump’s recent executive order targets the weaknesses that transshippers exploit — shell companies with no U.S. assets, opaque ownership structures, and repeat violators that dissolve and reopen under a new name, Navarro notes. And Customs and Border Protection is contracting for a new artificial intelligence-enabled inspection system, called Detective Border, to assess transshipment risk in every ship leaving every port carrying cargo bound for the United States. Hmm. I wonder how that works.

Right or Might?

Meanwhile, Trump’s declaration of global tariffs with various arbitrary rates for national trade imbalances were declared illegal by the Supreme Court. Trump has since found new justifications for some substitute tariffs that the White House will withstand legal challenge.

Of course, Trump continues to blast Supreme Court judges for resisting his desires about what the law or the Constitution should say.

Unchanged is that tariffs are contributing to higher prices in the U.S. and not producing a flood of new manufacturing. In those cases of promised return of manufacture, the workflows are based on heavy use of robotics and AI, keeping job creation to a minimum. The mass deportation campaign is eliminating labor for the most routine of manufacturing jobs.

No matter how high-minded the Navarro argument for reduced international trade barriers – an argument that runs counter to U.S. tariffs as their own barrier – he omits the most tangible effects that are driving U.S. voters to want to throw out incumbents from both parties at the earliest opportunity.

From the Trump White House, the message to both American and international audiences is the same. The rules need to say that this White House wins, or else everyone else needs to lose.

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

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Inside Trump’s brazen ‘catch-me-if-you-can’ midterms plot

A week later after the decision, the Supreme Court’s ruling allowing ballroom construction that is “likely illegal,” according to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., to proceed anyway is resounding in ways that are far more consequential.

At the time, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson labeled the court okay to lift a temporary injunction as reflecting the Trump administration’s “catch-me-if-you-can” attitude.

This week, we see the same thinking driving the start of unauthorized and seemingly unconstitutional work on Donald Trump’s 250-foot memorial arch in Washington. More importantly, we see a Trump demand to skip all the usual legal hurdles to have a favorable Supreme Court weigh in on approving his attempt to halt delivery of mail ballot applications and mail ballots — unless states allow the Postal Service to decide that voters are citizens in an untested system that the government still cannot explain or defend.

Cleverly, perhaps, the Justice Department is writing its plea about new Postal Service voter limitations narrowly – to cover a decision only about whether to lift a federal court injunction to halt the process. That is to avoid any decision on whether the Postal Service reviews are “likely illegal” as well.

But we are seeing a repeat of this now familiar Trump technique to act first and ask permission later.

North Carolina’s deadline to mail out its mail application ballots was Friday – before any resolution of these legal niceties, though the Postal Service said it hurriedly approved the envelopes that state is using with individual barcodes. State officials met to confirm that they were sending out ballots without knowing what the legal disputes may mean.

Questions Over Stopping Mail Ballots

For those who have passed on the daily back-and-forth about mail ballot delivery, here is the summary.

Trump wants to bigfoot the November elections (and beyond) that pollsters and pundits see increasingly running against Republicans; he has pushed for early redrawing of congressional districts to force districts that appear more Republican, he has backed unsuccessful legislation to require documents to vote that will disenfranchise voters, he is sending monitors – and perhaps Homeland Security or even military troops to the polls to intimidate voters.

With looking at evidence to the contrary, Trump claims “fraud” among voters using mail ballots and he wants them erased. His vehicle is the use of the Postal Service to refuse delivery unless states comply with an untested, unexplained process in which that agency will somehow vet the citizenship of every person on voter registration rolls.

Many states, especially Democratic-voting states, have told him that the Constitution says states run elections, not the feds, and certainly not a president’s executive order. Thus, the court fights, which have resulted in a Boston federal court telling the Postal Service it cannot proceed temporarily, and this week considering making that decision permanent.

The Supreme Court earlier had ruled that opponents mistakenly filed for an injunction before the rule was written. That same day, the Postal Service issued its rules, which are impenetrable even to Justice’s own litigators.

Under its new rule, for example, it turns out that finding even one errant voter registration in a batch of 10,000 will allow the Postal Service to drop delivery of all in the batch. And no one understands how and why a voter registration – not a vote, just registration – would constitute fraud by a noncitizen who may be eligible to vote, for example, in a local election.

The government is assigning scores of agents to review publicly available voter registration databases.

Now federal court Judge Indira Talwani has made permanent her order to block the Postal Service non-delivery of mail ballot materials — indefinitely. The judge reported was exasperated in court at government lawyers who could not explain the Postal Service rules. She wrote that the Trump administration argument that it was only a rule change for the Postal Service “rings hollow. The final rule explicitly and exclusively regulates election mail.”

Government appeals were immediate, including the emergency turn to the Supreme Court.

Where’s the ‘Emergency’?

Naturally, there is an “emergency” aspect to the mail balloting issue. We are looking at election chaos.

It is just that sort of chaos that Trump seeks to create for these elections. It takes little imagination to see that Trump will try to declare null any results that he sees as adverse to his personal and party fortunes. We – and pundits – are wildly spinning tales of emergency declarations allowing military deployment on U.S. streets, a recreation of Jan. 6 , 2021, madness, endless court battles over “election fraud” without evidence.

By contrast, of course, the start of ground preparation for a Trump-desired huge arch in Washington in the same week, or threats to dissemble the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts or completing the gilded White House ballroom project with our money unauthorized by Congress, have no “emergency “ or time pressure.

Yet, the Trump do-it-now before questions can be settled has become the order of the day.

The pace of the law, the role of balance of power in government, even our voting rights are all now secondary to whatever Trump’s gut is telling him in the middle of the night.

“Catch me if you can” is not the way to run government – regardless of policy leanings. The Constitution to which Trump pledged an oath calls for congressional review and in this case, says the power is with the states.

As with children, what the attitude calls for is a huge turnout in November with an unmistaken Time Out message at its heart.

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The Supreme Court’s 'cry wolf' defense explodes after new Trump ruling

Supreme Court justices have gone on the road in recent months to defend their decision-making as strict obedience to law rather than to politics.

But their actions continue to show a heavy political tilt when Donald Trump is involved.

The decision on Monday to allow construction of Trump’s gilded ballroom complex on the wreckage of the destroyed White House East Wing is a good example. A bare majority of the court hung their approval on a finding that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit chartered by Congress to guard public buildings, lacked “standing” to claim injury.

Simply put, the majority made a technical ruling and refused to look at the legality of the project, the balance-of-powers concerns underscoring the case, or the diffidence of Trump’s stop-me-if-you-can approach. In fact, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined with liberal justices in a dissent that specifically said the building activity is “likely unlawful,” a finding unpersuasive to the right-leaning justices who made up the majority.

Neither a federal district court nor an appeals court had trouble with “standing.” Who has standing is Congress, which, of course, cannot decide on such matters as whether daylight savings time ought to be permanent, never mind a constitutional question about their own powers.

This technical ruling rejecting an injunction on continuing construction rather than on the broader issues was just an available out to avoid crossing Trump, whose powers this court continues to expand. Since the majority did not even bother to explain its ruling, we don’t know if a unilateral presidential decision to tear down the entire White House to massage the Trump ego is a problem.

What happened to judges as “officers of the law” to act on illegality when they see it? What happened to a court that sees Constitutional issues in all direction unless they involve Trump? What happened to bringing a supposedly narrow issue before the court only to find that justices wanted to widen it to question the historical justifications or the original meaning of Founding Fathers who granted authority over such questions to Congress?

What happened to the idea that construction promised to be based on private donations alone is now socking taxpayers with a billion-dollar bill with no congressional authorization?

Apparently, Trump is right. With few exceptions, he can do whatever he wants by this court majority. No wonder we’re in for a mighty debate if there is a new majority after November about the makeup of the court’s justices.

The first ruling of this court last week on Trump interference with delivery of mail ballot applications also hung on a technical point – that the lawsuit challenging the executive order was too early. Now the Trump Justice Department is arguing that the next one is too late. The court decided to ignore the actual underlying issue. Now a whistleblower within the administrator is saying the administration is flaunting judicial orders to stand down. Where is the Supreme Court to tell Trump to follow the rules?

The cry-wolf plaints of Supreme Court justices stung by public criticism that they are acting in blatantly political ways won’t disappear until this court decides to enforce the laws as they touch Trump.

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

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The classified document that left the Trump admin scrambling

Rather than talk about war, we argue over leaks of reports that show dissent. Instead of straight talk about divisions about the direction and values this country should take, we linger over the labels.

This Trump government would rather unearth leakers, mock or hector journalists and silence critics than deal with the substance of what amounts to questions about our national clarity and strategies.

Prime among examples this week were disclosures that top generals and admirals stationed around the world in our defense are calling out the ill effects of continued, extended commitments to a war with Iran that lacks focus or, apparently, achievable goals.

Reporting by The Washington Post disclosed that military leaders have advised War/Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that prolonging large-scale operations against Iran is unsustainable and risks weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the U.S. itself.

Contents of an internal Pentagon document known as the Secretary of Defense Orders Book (SDOB) – a classified compilation – were made available anonymously. It outlines worldwide availability of U.S. weapons and personnel amid presidential priorities and includes frank insights from military leaders.

While it is not uncommon for military leaders on the line to offer statements called “non-concur” – criticism in any other language – the timing and breadth of these assessments seems unusually important as Donald Trump and Secretary Pete Hegseth talk of more extended deployments in the Middle East. “Non-concur” may mean disagreement, but that the brass is carrying out the orders anyway.

Of course, the disclosures drew immediate Hegseth statements of denial and inaccuracy, along with right-wing suggestions of “treason.”

What’s Embarrassing Here?

It’s no secret that the open-ended commitments to keep the Strait of Hormuz open are drawing warships and resources from other parts of the world. And it seems likely that military leaders tasked with protective operations in those parts of the world would raise their hand to remind their superiors that there are issues on the ground.

Among civilians and voters, one might think that these reflect reasoned and gamed strategic debates that are meant to consider all the negative possibilities before we commit our troops to an international fight.

But what comes through most clearly is that this administration will not brook dissent of any sort. It turns out that the tough talk at the White House and the testosterone-fueled lethality from Hegseth is so thin-skinned as to make them brittle under criticism – even if it comes in the form of fact-gathering.

That’s why we see Homeland Security refusing to acknowledge fissures over tactics of border patrol agents who refuse even to wear identifying clothing as they engage sometimes violently with migrants and civilians alike. It’s why Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can’t answer a straight question about vaccine hesitancy before Senate committees. We can’t even talk about who’s supposed to authorize a name change at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts without a public demolishment threat.

This week, Trump himself called on the Federal Communications Commission to “rebuke” or punish NBC “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker for touching off some kind of Trump internal madness over saying that the president’s political endorsements have not proved universally successful in various primaries around the country. Who cares what Welker said, and what was wrong about it, anyway? We’ll see in November how the vaunted Trump popularity carries in an election based on voter anger.

Since the start of Trump 2.0, the Pentagon has thrown out reporters, sought to block or prosecute them, and supported inquiries into networks that broadcast material they find unsupportive of the war effort, of dismissal of generals or candidates disproportionately minority, of decisions that have allowed deterioration of weapons supplies. At the White House, Trump rails against those reporters, often women, who ask questions that he feels put him on the defensive.

The facts are that after a month of no military engagement, the U.S. and Iran are exchanging fire again, this time seemingly sparked by Iranian moves to lay more sea mines and a U.S. commitment to bottle up Iranian shipping. The facts are that despite announcement of a U.S. vow to sanction anyone doing business with Iran, it’s hard to see the literal results of that promise – even if that were to prove effective as a strategy with a resistant Iran. The president and the Pentagon already are extending deployments into the new year, stretching supply lines and prompting pushback from military families who want to know when the end will be.

Is the issue really whether logical, reasoned advice from some generals and admirals reflects what the rest of us are thinking?

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

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Fire hose of 'bad news': Something major is breaking behind closed doors

Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether it is the pace of poor public behaviors that seem so galling or the various justifications that come to light in defense of those actions. In either case, the constant fire hose of Bad News is proving exhausting.

This week we heard a wide variety of government statements towards “enforcing” the rules or citing invented law to break them that land somewhere between weird and awful. Together, such brazenness just heightens the desire to do away with Team Trump’s leadership.

–The 19-year-old sailor who went overboard from the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln this month survived and was rescued. His story capped the growing discontent over conditions for sailors on extended deployment off Iran for a war that no one can explain or end – public blowback that prompted the return of the carrier to homeport in San Diego. But last week, rather than buttress mental health support, the Navy brought military charges against the sailor for malingering and being AWOL in the Strait of Hormuz.

If this is War/Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s management thinking about how to handle mental health crises, it’s time for new management.

–The Solicitor General, the Justice Department’s lead before the Supreme Court, apparently baldly lied to the justices in arguing in documents that Donald Trump’s gilded ballroom rebuild of the White House East Wing was “65%” complete. But The Washington Post found pay records that said the contractor, who is to be paid for the percentage of completed work, was far less than that. The difference is not inconsequential; Justice is arguing that the work is too far advanced to be stopped by injunctions or a legal finding that Trump had failed to seek or obtain required congressional approval. We might want to pull the Solicitor General’s ticket.

–A lawsuit in Pennsylvania finally coughed up the answer to how a chain of Trump-praised, “Freedom Fuel Network” gas stations in the northeast has been able to offer low-cost fuel. According to the lawsuit, New Jersey businessman Syed Kazmi, and his company, KRSM, took more than a million gallons of fuel from a Mansfield Oil terminal but never paid for it, selling it at the discounted price. The judge ordered that KRSM must maintain sufficient bank balance to pay its bills.

–A federal judge overruled the Trump administration’s policy that suspended immigrant visa issuances for nationals from 75 countries, finding that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had exceeded his statutory authority.

–A military judge tossed the confession of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) in the attacks on the World Trade Center as forced, undercutting the case that will come to trial next June. Prosecutors specifically had gone to a military court because they knew that a trial in a civilian federal court would run into rights issues and force disclosures that the government, which has held KSM in Guantanamo for all these years, would rather avoid. The families of 9/11, wonder if there will be any finding of guilt, while the spotlight over this year’s memorial has once again settled on Trump, who plans to skip it because local authorities won’t allow him to use the site as a campaign prop. This is so convoluted, it is hard to know where to turn.

Depends on Who You Are

–Somewhere around the time the sun was setting over Lake America, there was the crazy-making path of Trump trying to use the Postal Service to decide who can vote, based on some mystery name-matches that are off by the vast majority of cases so far. The Supreme Court temporarily allowed the Postal Service to continue to write a rule to halt delivery of mail ballot applications or mail ballots if the Post Office decides that the prospective voter might be an undocumented migrant.

That lasted a day, until the Postal Service published its incomplete rules and multiple lawsuits were restarted on an accelerated schedule. It will take more time for the courts to go through the procedural steps than for the deadlines to send out ballots to go out – in at least a couple of states this week. Trump has no legal authority in state-run elections, but that is not stopping him.

–Then again, the courts seem to have their hands full trying to decide when Trump can act unilaterally or not, whatever the law says. Trump is now threatening to destroy the Kennedy Performing Arts Center if he does not get his way to putting his own name on a building he has emptied for two years.

–Beyond all of this, innumerable immigrants on their way to legal check-ins were nabbed for deportation again this week, with new reports of soaring deportation detainments reflecting no criminal records – all without adequate justification from Homeland Security. This week the roundup happened to include conservative darling Milo Yiannopolous, a deportation booster who had overstayed his own tourist welcome by eight years. I would bet that arrest was a hit in the White House campaign to drive away populations unduly black, brown and poor.

–Vice President JD Vance was continuing his anti-fraud campaign around the country, happily disgorging findings of dubious origin about estimated possibilities of abuse in Medicare and Medicaid services by states led by Democratic governors. But he was silent about a Florida state grand jury report that concluded that Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration “misappropriated” $10 million in taxpayer money it diverted to a charity connected to his wife, Casey DeSantis.

–Law enforcement by the FBI reflected a curious turn. CBS News reported that director Kash Patel, under pressure to recruit as much as 10 percent of the investigators to replace those whom he has fired or seen walk out, has changed FBI recruitment standards to ignore various crimes to remain eligible recruits. An internal memo said paying for sex, stealing from employers, or animal cruelty in the past should not disqualify those who arrest others for such crimes. Just make sure they are loyal to Trump.

It was just an average, slow August week of Equal Justice Under the Law in Trump’s ‘Golden Age.’

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

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The 'Swiss cheese' legal trick Trump is using to hide his secrets

Who says Donald Trump is expecting election magic (or interference) to forestall trouble from the mid-term voting that looks likely to flip at least one house of Congress?

Last week, he had the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) put out a new opinion arguing that Trump can assert executive privilege over communications with “personal advisors” even if they do not work at the White House or within the government at all.

Of course, that is a preemptive interpretation that would broaden the number of people President Trump could try to shield from the inevitable flood of congressional investigations that a Democratic majority in either the House or Senate would launch if successful in November.

As a matter of public policy, it conforms to the Trump standard for delay and resist to any inquiries about what Team Trump is doing about war and peace, economics and tariffs, immigration, environment, health and government and budgets. As a matter of law, “The legal opinion has more holes in it than a slice of Swiss cheese,” Charles Tiefer, a professor emeritus at the University of Baltimore School of Law, told Talking Points Memo. “It’s clearly a devious tactic to try to cover up the investigations into Trump’s corruption before they even get started.”

Trump makes no secret that he prefers to talk with corporate leaders about economic policy than he does, say, U.S. intelligence sources or domestic policy staffers, particularly if those corporate officers throw million-buck donations his way.

It is also clear from congressional hearings that Cabinet members feel absolutely no public responsibility to discuss controversial topics from vaccine policy to war decision-making and regularly turn questions into opportunities to attack the patriotism of the congress member or senator who sounds at all critical.

The Trump mantra is to love Trump and what he orders without question about substance or process, about legalities or Constitutionality, because the Trump ends always, er, trump the means.

Clear Message to Back Off

The Hill.com noted that the Justice Department opinion is not “binding,” but that it nonetheless signals the Trump administration is thinking about how to respond to pending investigations.

In a political season in which voters are turning out in droves to tell sitting officials that they are wrong, that Trump policies are worsening their lives, this is a signal that Trump, armed with an immunity from criminal investigations decision from the Supreme Court, simply does not think he should be questioned ever.

Any number of congress members have told administration officials to hold on to notes and documents in issues ranging from handling of the Jeffrey Epstein Files to decision-making about launching strikes against small boats in the Caribbean.

Trump’s strategies for eluding Congress to act unilaterally, strategies that are failing systematically before the courts over tariffs and various aspects of mass deportation policies, seem ripe targets two months before the elections.

Traditionally, the president may assert executive privilege over communications only with executive branch staff. But the Justice’s Legal Counsel office argues that Trump could seek and get from those outside the government, adding that they merit protection. “Without a promise of confidentiality, the President’s ability to ‘decide and act quickly’ on matters of unrivaled importance would be seriously hindered.”

Even this opinion suggested that Trump could only assert executive privilege for discussions with outside advisers who are “limited to communications ‘in performance of (official) responsibilities,’ and made ‘in the process of shaping policies and making decisions.’”

This is the same OLC that in April decided the White House should not have to comply with the Presidential Records Act, which mandates the broad preservation of White House records, including communications between staff – or retain his myriad posts on his own Truth Social outlet. The next month, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to comply with existing records law.

Attorney General Launch

Todd Blanche’s first week as a confirmed attorney general got off to a bad start amid the obvious criticisms that even his first speech to Justice Department prosecutors was rife with embarrassing contradiction between what was said and what he has done.

Blanche promised a Justice Department marked by integrity, impartiality and respect for the rule of law, only to unleash an avalanche of public response to underscore that his record as acting attorney general has been the opposite. He has not only allowed but invited White House interference in an “independent” Justice, saying aloud that Trump should refer criminal prosecutions of those in his political way.

On Sunday, Blanche declined to say that he would always act independently of White House control but claimed during an interview that President Trump has “never” demanded he prosecute specific people – clearly a excusing statement for Trump’s demanded prosecutions of former FBI director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and even the former Olympic canoeist who picked up a piece of floating paint in the reflecting pools.

Blanche has shown that he is willing to sign off on prosecutions without first seeking evidence of wrongdoing, that he sees judges who rule against Justice as radical leftists, that the department is better off having lost 16,000 prosecutors and turning Civil Rights and antitrust enforcement upside-down.

Trump is talking openly about renewing the so-called anti-weaponization fund under different auspices to reward those convicted over Jan. 6, 2021, crimes, including those who attacked police officers – even as Blanche was talking about Justice “backing the blue” entirely.

Of course, as a member of Trump’s inner circle, Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, no longer needs an special opinion about being a “private advisor” to claim executive privilege. Blanche is a pending co-conspirator to undercutting the Constitution.

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

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The stealth secret weapon powering NYC’s Socialist mayor

Whatever the current focus on the “progressive” agenda of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other “Democratic Socialists” gaining ground in this year’s lengthy primary season, New York mayors are judged by their efficiency at getting garbage cleared, snow removed and rats held at bay.

The media attention often falls on anti-Israeli government positions or demanded attention to childcare and taxing the super-rich. But over time, it is the rat index and city services that count.

Mamdani appears to recognize that fact and has a full city agenda of municipal improvements aimed at everyday life, from faster, more reliable bus service to the now controversial plan to collect extra tax from those owning more than one home worth five million dollars. By comparison, the several allied Democratic Socialists making headlines in Michigan, Colorado, and beyond seem to be struggling to win converts among those who chose other candidates.

The political messaging around affordability and access to health care, to reliance on consulting U.S. intelligence before going to war with Iran rather than afterwards, to stop Donald Trump’s hyper-attention to grandiose personal pet projects rather than to prices all suggest a wider populist message than what the reports on Democratic schisms in the primary have reflected to date.

Those seeking hints about successful coalitions – like Mamdani’s, I would suggest — might do well to look past the public smiles, the ever-present “I am a fighter” logos and the most confrontational positions to see what these candidates want to deliver as results.

Yes, Mamdani went public with his controversial, if futile desire for the NYPD to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on war crimes charges over Gaza actions voted by the International Criminal Court. (Interestingly, Netanyahu said on Sunday that he would buck disarmament proposals from Trump and his “Board of Peace” in Gaza rather than fall in line).

Meanwhile, Mamdani is also delivering on chasing out the rats and pursuing a range of city service improvements under difficult financial restraints.

That is the point, of course. Theoretical labeling of “socialists,” “Communists,” “Trump derangement syndrome” victims and the other partisan ridiculing attempts about supposed ideology skip the central question: What would these candidates do about high prices or health care or reported excessive, unaccountable brutality by ICE agents?

Do we really have as much unresolvable division as depicted or is this just political noise?

That’s why the rat control question matters.

The Rats

There are about three times as many rats in New York City as there are people. The city manages rat control by giving food and waste cleanup duties to property owners, creating local mitigation zones, and encouraging public reporting.

There are pilot fertility control programs as well as poisonous baiting. Residents are encouraged to notice signs of infestation like gnawed wood and plastic and evidence of rat trails, and inspectors look for burrows around pipes in the boroughs. In the last year, there are new trash containers in areas of higher rat populations. Mamdani is about to expand those streetside trash container zones, which have eliminated thousands of street parking places.

Mamdani threw out many projects pursued by his predecessor, Eric Adams, but kept rat control, recreating Adams’ city Rat Czar position into a permanent Mayor’s Office of Rodent Mitigation.

The results: There has been a 22% decline in rat sightings reported to the city 311 hotline over 2025, which had showed a substantial decline over 2024. It is the first time since 2020 that rat sightings dropped below 10,000. More than 70% of New York City’s trash is now mandated to be stored in sealed, rat-proof containers rather than piled in black plastic bags on sidewalks, with plans for full compliance by 2031. Groups have formed to track rat-control progress.

The Guardian noted the progress this week, reporting that “New York’s long-running rat war is in a period of uneasy detente.” Mayor Adams may have been fixated on rats, advertising for a czar who would have “swashbuckling attitude, crafty humor and general aura of badassery,” but give Mamdani credit for building out the campaign.

The rat population spiked during Covid because trash went uncollected and there were increases in take-out and delivery food, as well as outdoor dining sheds that provided snacks and refuge. Adams ordered teams to tackle the estimated 600,000 rats that live in the city’s street tree beds.

Mamdani has expanded the “containerization” program to six districts, bringing oversize bins with lids to 25,000 new residences. West Harlem sightings are down, but parts of the East Village and Chinatown are up.

Expect that if any of Mamdani’s plans for new housing proceed, each new construction site will, as always, unearth the ever-present rats. In the subway, scurrying rats on the tracks are still likely to prompt human shifting on the platform areas above.

The rats are clever and intent on survival, relying on less and less sustenance to do so, say the rat experts.

Let’s elect candidates who want to do more than wave a banner at them.

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

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What Todd Blanche’s new Senate deal isn't telling you

So, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Donald Trump blinked first, or appeared to do so, and agreed to issue a formal order ending the $1.776 “anti-weaponization fund” to pay off Trump political cronies, including those convicted after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and insurrection attempt.

It was a stunt, of course, to get the confirmation votes of Republican Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tilles today to move Blanche’s confirmation out of the Judiciary Committee. This written validation that a legal settlement of Trump’s lawsuit against his own government supposedly will be enough to satisfy Cornyn and Tilles about Blanche’s “independence” from Trump.

Even this very narrow deal does not eliminate the possibility – or probability – that Trump’s Justice Department will seek alternative routes to compensate his political allies. As Cornyn himself laid out in hearings, the settlement is a “contract” that must be invalidated by the parties in court to be legally valid.

Blanche’s announcement did little to allay concerns that the emergent deal only narrows but does not invalidate the part of the lawsuit settlement that absolves Trump and his family from any past IRS tax violations – a finding worth upwards of $100 million to Trump personally. It is that very settlement that courts have found legally troubling as a sham lawsuit that essentially allows Trump to collect a very large reward for questionable business practices over years.

Nor does it explain Blanche’s continuing agreeableness to bring charges against Trump’s perceived political enemies, to forcing out dozens of seasoned federal prosecutors in Trump’s snit against his own federal criminal cases, to file embarrassingly thin prosecutions for outwardly political cases, for turning whole sections of Justice upside-down to ignore white-collar crimes and Civil Rights cases. It is Blanche who has directed the government’s disastrous response to the Epstein Files.

In short, whatever this announcement achieved for Blanche’s positive vote count on a Republican-majority Senate committee, it doesn’t come close to offering a reason to confirm Blanche as the nation’s top law enforcer.

The bigger question is what Blanche has done at all to earn public trust in a Justice Department that not only bows to Trump in his political revenge campaign but invites it.

What We Know

Blanche’s new documents, which followed two weeks of negotiation with Cornyn, put in writing that “the (anti-weaponization) Fund is not moving forward” and that “today’s Order officially rescinds the May 18, 2026, Order.” Blanche noted that he had made such promises verbally before the senators previously.

A second, unsigned document also limits the scope of another provision of the settlement that provided broad immunity for Trump and members of his family from tax audits. It clarifies that the tax audit immunity agreement “applies only retroactively” to claims open at the time of the settlement and does not protect the president from examination of future tax filings.

Since the confirmation hearing, Trump has been pushing publicly for the restoration of the fund, and vowed to keep Blanche in an acting role if there is no confirmation. As recently as Sunday, Trump said that people who had faced charges had “their lives destroyed” and “this would be a reimbursement for the pain that they suffered.”

In a social media post, Senator Tillis wrote that Mr. Trump “clearly intends to resurrect the payout pot for punks either by inappropriately establishing another bogus fund or pushing Congress to vote for a bill that the majority of Republicans in the Senate would be against.”

Even in its new form, the Blanche’s agreement that the IRS abandon any audit of Trump’s previous tax returns is an unprecedented and potentially illegal benefit to a sitting president.

And none of this resolves the federal court case in which a judge has said the Justice Department must prove that the entire Trump lawsuit against the IRS was a “sham.”

What is Unsaid

This is the same Blanche who has allowed two separate financial settlement payouts totaling over $1.28 million to Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. That happened in the settlement of individual lawsuits that preceded the settlement fund. Flynn had sought $50 million in damages, alleging that he was a victim of malicious prosecution and political targeting during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 election.

The Trump Justice Department has approved individual multimillion-dollar payouts using taxpayer money to settle civil lawsuits filed by the family of Ashli Babbitt, a Jan. 6 rioter killed as she breached the Capitol and Mark Houck, an anti-abortion activist for $1.1 million following his previous high-profile federal prosecution and acquittal.

As part of his pardons and commutations, Trump wiped out court-ordered debts worth nearly $2 billion in financial penalties to a variety of white-collar felons and corporate fraudsters.

As Assistant Attorney General and the Acting head of Justice, Blanche has racked up dozens of changes that have hollowed out antitrust, Civil Rights, counterintelligence and fraud investigations. He has made Justice a partner in mass deportations, coming up with increasingly creative ways to skip hearings for migrants and to bring charges against protesters. He has gone after Trump opponents with such poor cases that he faces court-referred charges before the New York bar, and he has antagonized federal judges for bringing evidence-free charges. \

He has made Justice an arm of the White House.

The idea that this pressured document signing signals a Justice Department independent of Trump is a joke. The suggestion that this document, porous as it may be, is a reason to confirm him as Attorney General is nonsense.

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

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Inside the trillion-dollar cost of Trump's lies

It may be that society is often described as being built on “lies,” which can refer to the collective myths, social constructs, and commercial narratives that keep civilization functioning rather than literal malicious deceptions, as a Quora.com online discussion has batted around.

But that is about cultural lies we tell ourselves about the shared American Dream, for example, not about intentional lying of the sort we see daily from the Trump administration. We even expect self-promoting “spin” from our politicians, whether we accept it or not.

For the Justice Department to have dropped its inane criminal charges of vandalism against Olympian David Hearn for noticing the big paint chips floating in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pools is not just admission that the “damage” was from a botched painting job rather than criminal act. It was another in the long series of public policy lies that we endure from Donald Trump, who had insisted without evidence on his version of Truth. (Trump later criticized U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, his appointee, and insisted anew that there had been extensive vandalism at the pool.)

So too announcing a roadmap to peace in Gaza without the sign-on of the warring parties, or the ever-repeated election rigging schemes never proved or posts about prices going down when they are going up.

Truth – or denial of verifiable fact — is the ultimate prime product of the Trump Era.

While lying and moral outrage against lying are human universals, a society built on public policy lies pays an ever-expanding price across economic, social, and political dimensions. When foundational data, risk assessments and policy promises are falsified, and the eventual consequences can manifest as severe systemic failures. Policy based on lies can lead to trillions of dollars in misspending or cuts to basic services, to unconstitutional abridgment of rights and invented new powers for a president whom his party majority in Congress refuses to check.

Trump wants us to believe only what he says – before he changes it to a new theme for an attention-depressed voter population. The Washington Post and other news organizations have tracked tens of thousands of Trump’s public lies.

We’re seeing wars started and widened over purposeful misstatement of fact or considered omission of whatever has passed as rigorous intelligence. We see ruination of Head Start over propaganda over diversity and equity concerns among three-year-olds. We see lies about criminal records of undocumented immigrants, a conspiracy to ruin women’s sports with trans athletes, the unpatriotic criticism of late-night comedians amplified to tidal-wave proportions to justify the building of an authoritarian state.

That Donald Trump lies is not a question. News outlets, lawsuits and court orders, research and the result of everyday reality show oodles of his policy statements – never mind his more personal opinions – to be based on nothing but gut and venomous targets of revenge. Call it misstatements or propaganda or political spin, it’s based on acceptance of public lies.

We should call them that – lies, intentional misstatement of facts for some gain.

All Lies Are Not Equal

Naturally, some lies are plain silly, including crowd sizes when we can see video of the event. Some lies are just about braggadocio and self-promotion, as with declaring polls of adoration rather than rejection. Some lies are whoppers, including statements about supposed fraud or hoped-for criminality in finding seashells captured by an opponent’s phone camera.

Here’s my guide to sorting out the misstatement from the mis-fact .

–Lies that substitute meaning for fact. Whether the 2020 election results, the Capitol riot/attempted insurrection, the cause of reflecting pool woes or whether polls are consistently showing American rejection of the war of choice in Iran, for years, Donald Trump has insisted on reflecting only his own “alternative” facts. As a nation, we have always agreed to disagree, though the usual place to begin is with whatever just happened. Over a decade of Trump in our public life, we have managed to shuck any need for facts.

–Lies that omit the context, background. The basic statement may reflect a specific truth but may miss the point. War/Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is not lying or even incorrect when he says that U.S. military strikes (mostly) struck intended targets in Iran, but he offers that as if it is a proper assessment of where we stand strategically. Obviously, doing so is a “lie,” or we would not still have conflict. Similarly, the entire Epstein Files discussion is more than whether Trump himself spent partying time with Jeffrey Epstein. So too is committing random spending cuts for foreign aid certainly have resulted in deaths linked to disease and hunger, Elon Musk’s dismissals notwithstanding.

–Lies that misstate the significance or create unbalanced comparisons. In the entire country, there likely are under 100 high school or college trans athletes who want to compete in gender-separated sports. Yet to listen to Trump, we are expected to believe that Democrats – or “Communists” – want “trans for all,” and that we have an epidemic of gender fluidity among teens that somehow is a problem only if it there is use of a school bathroom or locker room that likely should be supervised in any case. Similarly, the number of undocumented migrants who have been convicted or even charged with violent crime, the number of election fraud cases altogether, never mind those that might affect a vote total, the number of countries “ripping off” the U.S. by selling us goods that we choose to buy all are examples.

–Lies that twist language – whether legal, diplomatic or political. Trump’s cutesy, ridiculing names for his opponents are hidden tells about his fears of criticism. The gap between what he tells the American public about immigration, education or tariffs vary regularly and mightily from what his lawyers tell federal courts after someone challenges the truth of affected outcomes. What would you call telling a judge that the deportees’ plane did not leave the country when it had if not a lie? How can Trump ballyhoo a directed Justice Department indictment when it cannot even persuade a grand jury that hears only the government side of a case because the presentation only persuaded jurors the allegations were lies?

Add to this the constancy of Trump changing his mind about things small and large, including apparently calling off renewed strikes against Iran this weekend to cite “progress” in negotiations that no one else can confirm.

Most pundits, critics, and news reporters, behind recent books about Trump, those who follow the Pentagon’s doings, and those who follow the ups and downs of Business say the going-in assumption has shifted to believe first that what Trump says about the country is wrong, uninformed, propaganda – a lie. Even those television voices that support Trump unquestionably simply omit mention of where he steps over the Truth line.

We have been warned by plenty of Big Brother critiques and experiences of real people hurt by Trump lies. The question is why Congress, courts and the public put up with it.

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

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The ultimate smoking gun: Trump officials just copped to a $7.5B shakedown

Whether by intention, error or force of law, the Trump administration has owned up that Donald Trump sees himself president of MAGA, not of the nation.

A New York Times report this week disclosed a month-old court filing in which federal officials acknowledged that they cut $7.5 billion in clean energy programs selectively among states “based solely” on whether those stated had voted for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

In court answers about a lawsuit challenging the stated reasons of cuts based on “waste and fraud,” the government copped to the real reason – partisan politics. Indeed, the administration funded grants for states that had backed Trump in 2024, even though the Energy Department had recommended they be cancelled.

It may not be a specifically impeachable offence, but it certainly shows that Donald Trump is abusing his office, his oath – and weirdly even punishing the Trump voters in the states taking the cuts.

Trump certainly has been acting in a variety of ways as if he wants to target states that voted against him, but this court filing seemed a public acknowledgement that should get some serious attention.

As The Times concluded, “The admission showed how Trump has weaponized the provision of federal education, energy, health, housing and infrastructure aid in his second term. Far from rooting out the sort of misspending that Trump sees as rife in Washington, the White House has instead sought to leverage the budget as a tool to assist its allies — or as a cudgel to hurt the president’s foes.”

Trump certainly has no hesitation about collecting taxes from blue states or demanding voting rolls or demanding special treatment, just in spending the money disproportionately raised from those states.

President for Some, Not All

The White House and Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget , have remained silent about the government’s court arguments in a suit brought by the affected states. At the time of the cuts, Vought posted that “Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled.”

Now, a government lawyer told the court that none of the cancellations were “based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction or performance-based factor.”

Apart from all else, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright repeated the waste argument in sworn congressional testimony, telling House members in June, “No decisions (about the cuts) were made on politics.”

Someone might tell Jim Jordan, chair of the Judiciary Committee, who referred former special prosecutor Jack Smith to the Justice Department for investigation of perjury for not answering a question that Jordan had never asked.

Vought is seeking to finalize rules that would make political appointees the final arbiters of how the government would award more than $1 trillion in annual grants. He wants the power to block or revoke money if states do not conform to administration priorities. The White House has also sought to layer additional restrictions on grant recipients, limiting their political activities, memberships along with vague requirements that they cannot use the money for certain purposes, including those deemed “anti-American,” reported The Times.

Rather than combatting waste, it appears Trump and his cronies are trying to take control of the United States government, using the power of the American people for their own ends, argues historian Heather Cox Richardson in Substack.

Sen. Patty Murray. D-WA., and Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, said that politically minded grant cuts amounted to an “outright un-American” weaponization of government.

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker pointed out that the cancelled grants included $583 million intended for Illinois “that would have gone toward lowering energy costs, strengthening grid reliability, and creating energy jobs.” He demanded the funds be restored. “Despite what he might think, Donald Trump is not the president of MAGA,” Pritzker said in a statement, but “the president of all America.”

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

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What kind of ‘dealmaker’ does this?

Simply put, does Donald Trump know what Donald Trump is doing?

There was no good explanation offered for Trump to decide only after the signing of a major agreement to allow Saudi Arabia to use American nuclear technology and be in the position of enriching its own uranium fuel for Trump to decide 24 hours later to add Saudi recognition of Israel as a precondition.

Recognition and entering the Abraham Accords are preconditions that the Saudis have long rejected without Israelis agreeing to a pathway for Palestinian statehood. In any case, not a word of these preconditions is in the agreement signed and announced on Wednesday, and Trump announced the new prerequisites on a social media post.

Either Trump screwed up what he had intended to have signed as a formal agreement, or he and his administration were inept at understanding what was in their own agreement. What kind of master dealmaker changes the rules after they have a written agreement in place? As we are seeing with the war in Iran, changing the rules every other day about what a “memo of understanding” supposedly had laid out is just creating chaos and combat.

This late change in Saudi conditions forces us to revisit whether Trump had been ignorant of the idea that Iran would retaliate with closing the Strait of Hormuz and sending missiles into U.S. bases and Gulf neighbors’ territory, or did he just choose to ignore that long-predicted outcome? How does constant after-the-fact sidestepping lead to any resolution?

As things stood yesterday, Trump may have ameliorated Israeli panic about the Saudi agreement, but there was no word from the Saudis that the deal would continue. The many critics domestically and internationally argued that Saudi ability to enrich fuel, allowed under a side “safeguard” document that waived scrutiny applied in other nations, would lead to a Saudi nuclear weapon and to a Middle East nuclear arms race.

How is anyone – the Saudis, Israelis, and Iranians, the Congress, the NATO allies, even rivals and foes – supposed to honor a deal that was never made?

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York. As an editor, Terry created new approaches in newsrooms, built technological tools and digital media. He pursued efforts to recruit and train minority journalists and in scholarship programs. A resident of Harlem, he volunteers in community storytelling, arts in education programs, tutoring and is an active freelance trombone player.

Trump found the perfect crime

How much more blatant could Donald Trump’s abuse of office for self-interest be?

Trump Media & Technology Group, parent company of the microblogging platform, announced this week it will sell a data feed to Wall Street companies who want just milliseconds of notice on Trump’s Truth Social posts that may affect the economy. For a fee, Trump Media will offer the “fastest” access to posts “from the highest-ranking Truth Social accounts.”

Corporate traders should recognize this as sanitized “insider trading,” whatever euphemism is used. Voters should recognize this as an abuse of the Oval Office, a violation of the Constitution’s “emoluments” clause, and, more broadly, part of the Trump self-enrichment use of the White House.

Trump Media may be a private enterprise, but Trump is a public employee, subject to ethics rules even if not specifically barred by law from this action. It is Trump who chooses to make policy announcements for the government on his personally owned online chat service. Trump owns 41% of Trump Media through his revocable trust, so he would benefit personally.

It is Trump grift. Period.

Posts from Truth Social’s 10 most influential accounts would reach customers paying the extra bill — reportedly up to $100,000 a month — significantly faster than the usual push notification. Trump’s posts to 12.9 million followers already frequently touch off market reactions, and Trump or his family already have been found to make market investments just before policy announcements. Federal filings show hundreds of investments by Trump a day before tariffs were made public, for example, or before defense contracts or for semiconductors.

Companies and organizations generally offer application programming interfaces (APIs) for swift information transfer. Federal agencies, including Treasury and Labor large financial and economic data through APIs. But with this arrangement, Wall Street traders would have time to complete computerized trades before you or I could do so. That’s the heart of insider trading.

Moving Markets

Many presidential posts have upended markets. Last year, hours before Trump announced that he would pause most tariffs he imposed for 90 days, Trump posted that it was a “great time to buy.” Every announcement about Iran and the Strait of Hormuz moves oil markets.

Naturally, the “transparent” White House has had no explanation about ethics.

By contrast, Democratic critics have erupted, suggesting that it could be illegal. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-CA, said, “Hard to keep pace with the President’s corrupt profiteering off the presidency, but here’s yet another scheme, this time to save his failing social media business.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., called it “another example of flagrant corruption, trading access to the White House for Trump’s self-enrichment.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom added, “Where is the investigation? And how are spineless Republicans okay with this? Disgusting.”

Recent White House filings show that Trump made more than $1.4 billion in 2025 from, cryptocurrency businesses alone, and they raised questions about other profiteering from his own policies. Federal law prohibits executive branch employees from participating “personally and substantially” in government matters that will directly or predictably affect personal or family financial interests, though Presidents and Vice Presidents are exempted.

“He’s selling expedited, privileged access to information about what he is doing as president,” Kathleen Clark of Washington University School of Law and an expert in government conflicts of interest rules told Fortune. “It’s yet more brazen corruption, an improper exploitation of government power to enrich himself.”

Trump Media has had financial troubles. Stock in Trump Media & Technology has plunged more than 70% since the president took office last year, erasing $6 billion in shareholder wealth. The Truth API is expected to become a meaningful recurring revenue source as the company expands beyond social media into cryptocurrency, streaming and a proposed nuclear fusion merger.

Mark it as another move that helps Trump and billionaire traders but does nothing for you and me.

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

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Blanche hearing a surreal Twilight Zone of dysfunction

Listening to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Wednesday on whether to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General was akin to stepping into another dimension, Twilight Zone-like, in which what we are told is not what we see.

Unlike other Donald Trump Cabinet appointees, Blanche faced no substantive questions about his background – though court opinions, judges and now bar associations have plenty of issues with the legality of various actions he has ordered as acting Attorney General.

Instead, questions from Democrats on the split committee went right after whether Blanche can show any independence from Trump on using the Justice Department as a vehicle for Trump's constant and continuing retribution campaign against political enemies and for clearing legal hurdles for his favored friends. Sharply worded questions from Democrats were a nonstop set of challenges to the record already built by Blanche, while much of Republican questioning was in support of his least offensive actions – would he support antitrust work in agriculture, for example.

Questions from some Republicans, including John Cornyn of Texas, spurned for reelection by Trump, focused on poor decisions based on legal tenets even more than political ones. Thom Tillis, outgoing senator from North Carolina, jumped on pardons for those convicted of violence against Capitol police on Jan. 6, 2021, and pardons for others.

Blanche's nomination may not make it out of the Judiciary Committee, chaired by Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley. With Lindsay Graham's death, there are 11 Republicans, including Cornyn and Tillis. There are 10 Democrats.

Listening to Blanche
To listen to Blanche was to accept that the Justice Department has been wiping out violent crime, removing political focus from within the Justice Department, pursuing antitrust monopolies, and pushing to prosecute "anyone" who did harm to Jeffrey Epstein victims – all inside-out readings on what we see unfolding every day.

At times, it sounded as if Blanche, who, like Trump himself, seemed to live in another dimension marked by the opposite experience of reality.

On Epstein alone, Blanche was insisting that he, other Justice Department officials and the FBI all have been and are open to meeting with Epstein victims who say they have not gotten a meeting for years. Blanche told senators that he and Justice have fully complied with the law passed by Congress requiring disclosure of millions of documents never released. Blanche defended meeting with Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell after her conviction, but said he did not discuss clemency or her move to a minimum-security prison camp.

On his leadership role in signing off on Trump's $1.776-billion slush fund, Blanche insisted that it is not moving ahead but not explaining why he would not put that statement in writing. Blanche defended his agreement on exempting Trump, his family and businesses from outstanding tax obligations worth upwards of $100 million even though the judge in the case has ruled that the lawsuit and its settlements were illegal and unethical manipulations of the court.

There were like sort-of denials about decisions to pass on prosecutions of border agents in deportation-related shootings or refusing to share evidence with local prosecutors in Minnesota and other communities.

Blanche ducked questions from Sheldon Whitehouse, D-RI, about numerous reports of abuse of office by FBI Director Kash Patel.

What tied them together was Blanche's consistent self-belief and confidence that the Justice Department has been an effective and fair law enforcement agency amid now-daily concerns about acting solely on behalf of Trump loyalists and against perceived enemies.

Blanche was protected by committee rulings that held all questioning to 10 minutes per senator – less time than afforded for other Cabinet members – and by using "still under investigation" language to dance around anything remotely controversial.

The Independence Question
Anyone listening would have to say that Blanche sees no conflict with running Justice as acting essentially as Trump's personal law firm. In any sane political world, that should be enough to sink his confirmation. As reminded by Sen. Cory Booker, D-NJ, his job is to represent the American people, not Trump.

But this is a highly partisan Senate divide, and, in the end, it will be the slight majority rule that will prevail.

As Joyce Vance, former U.S. Attorney and legal commentator notes: "Blanche has refused Trump virtually nothing," including support to the insurrection, pardon Rudy Giuliani and the fake slates of electors, and all those convicted. "It has only gone downhill from there" to the Epstein files mess, a pardon process that has eliminated review, Blanche's prosecution of Trump-demanded cases against perceived enemies, and the abandonment of Civil Rights, antitrust, white collar crime, counterintelligence cases and more from a Justice Department that is either firing or losing prosecutors by the dozens.

Christopher Swartz of Democracy Defenders Action simply argues that during Blanche's tenure the Department has gone from a beacon of competent, independent, and impartial law enforcement to a political attack dog of the president with investigations of James Comey, Letitia James, Lisa Cooke and others. Under Blanche, Justice has brought several cases that lacked probable cause or that failed to adhere to basic prosecutorial requirements, earning rebuke from judges who have found that Justice is no longer entitled to a presumption of trustworthiness.

Statements from senators who say they are withholding judgment to hear how Blanche explains his relationship to Trump are ignoring how Blanche has been doing the job in his acting role – which Vance sees as "unprecedented and deeply disturbing."

Even if the nomination fails to advance, Senate Majority Leader John Thune could file a discharge motion to put Blanche's nomination before the full Senate – minus Mitch McConnell, who remains in a rehab center.

As a single image of the state of law in the U.S. as providing equal protection, this hearing offered a shattered mirror of disfunction.

The Intelligence Hearing
Meanwhile, a similar confirmation hearing was underway before the Intelligence Committee to confirm Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney in New York, as a permanent director of national intelligence, coordinating the work of 18 intelligence agencies. He would replace acting DNI Bill Pulte, who is using the office at Trump's direction, to re-investigate 2020 election allegations about "rigging."

In his short time as acting DNI, Pulte has fired intelligence officials and sent others back to their home agencies.

Much like the Blanche hearing, the questioning was partisan and pointed. It ranged from general questions about the appropriate size of the DNI staff to more focused concerns about Clayton's issuance of subpoenas among New York Times reporters towards learning the sources of government leaks. At one point Clayton said he was "not an election denier," but would not concede that Trump had lost in 2020 to Joe Biden.

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Inside the Supreme Court's willful blindness to Trump's agenda

We understand that politics can bring on self-delusion about reality when it flies in the face of ideological goals, but the Supreme Court's purposeful turn away from the racism behind Donald Trump's immigration policies is both absurd and angering.

In twin decisions this week, the right-leaning majority on the Court allowed Trump to end "temporary protective status" for Haitians, Syrians and eventually others, including Afghans who helped our war efforts, and to eliminate access to asylum procedures at the border for whomever he chooses. They were bad decisions for a variety of reasons, but what really stung were the arguments offered that simply struck away any racial bias in our immigration policies.

Justice Samuel Alito's ruling for the 6-3 majority had to determine legally that race had played no role before removing the humanitarian protections to shield Haitians. His ruling said that Trump's many statements about Haitians were not "overtly racial," and that it was unlikely that race had been a motivating factor in the administration's decision to end the protections.

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan suggested Alito was wearing blinders, adding "The statements fairly shout in their racial undertones and overtones alike" and to prove her point, she listed many, including discredited Trump statements that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio had been eating neighbors' pets, that Haiti was a "s-------" country and that he wanted immigrants from Norway instead. Haitian immigration is "like a death wish for our country." Haitians are "poisoning the blood" of the nation. Trump's remarks were "so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print," she wrote. Actually, Trump has invited White African immigrants from South Africa, but the point is all about race.

That Trump has an unwarranted obsession with immigrants and a strong liking for all efforts to remake this into a White Christian Nation are well established. What has become problematic is that in its zeal to support Trump, those six justices on the right apparently cannot see real racial impact in cases that range from immigration to unequal treatment by social services to policing and imprisonment cases to election redistricting issues.

Deportation to Violence
Even mindful that the Court decides how to so narrow the legal cases that it decides to consider, this court is building a distrust with the public for its failure to recognize the practical and very real impact of its rulings.

Haiti is in freefall; this week even a national police figure was kidnapped by rebel gangs. What does Trump or those justices think is going to happen to the hundreds of thousands of Haitians that the White House is panting to put on planes to Port-au-Prince? The whole reason for temporary protective status is to shield refugees from prosecution and social harm.

How does sending Haitians who have lived here for years "home" to chaos comport with the State Department warnings to Americans to stay away from Haiti as a dangerous place?

Alito did acknowledge that "political discourse by prominent public figures is increasingly couched in terms that would have scandalized the public just a short time ago." But he concluded that the administration opposed immigration generally and had not used racial criteria in its decisions.

The same court majority said the same thing in allowing redistricting to eliminate Black-majority voting districts and in settling various recent policing cases. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has been outspoken about a "post-racial" era that ignores the reality of college admissions, hiring and promotion practices, Justice department prosecution and punishment practices, mortgage redlining and other cases.

As The Huffington Post noted, Alito doesn't notice bias of any kind unless it is perceived to be anti-Catholic, his own religion, or anti-Christian in its effect. In this week's opinion, Alito said there were neutral reasons for lifting the Temporary Protected Status protections for Haitians, noting that temporary protections had been lifted in more than a dozen countries, including Nepal, Burma, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Cameroon, Nicaragua, Honduras and Venezuela. "Most would regard this as a racially diverse group of countries," he wrote. The plaintiffs contended that they were all "nonwhite."

When the case was argued in April, Alito suggested that "nonwhite" was not a meaningful category. Alito had told the plaintiffs' lawyer, "I don't like dividing the people of the world into these groups." Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who adopted two children born in Haiti, joined Alito's majority opinion along with Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Not What Was Promised
Roll back the clock and remember that what Trump said he wanted to tackle were the presence of undocumented migrants with backgrounds of violent crime. We are way beyond that now, evidenced by the botched campaigns to rebuild huge holding facilities for immigrants rounded up in courtrooms, from workplaces and schools for visa overstays and traffic violations.

The current crop of immigrant law cases concerns legal immigration methods, as ICE and border patrols pursue de-naturalizations, end legal asylum procedures, rush deportation cases through overloaded courts or skip legalisms altogether. The current cases involve humanitarian treatment of migrants and separation of families.

This case will prompt disarray in health care industries, where Haitians have found work, and in urban areas. In New York city, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is already declaring a campaign against rules that "are putting so many people's lives in jeopardy."

It's not limited to courts. Behind the deportation program are ideologies that are specifically racial and nationalistic in the most peculiar way. Support requires actively looking the other way. At the same time, Texas education officials requiring St. James version Bible readings clearly have chosen not to look at the feelings or considerations of non-Christians.

One wonders why Trump is rushing aid to Venezuela after two devastating earthquakes to help the very people he had consistently demeaned as mentally ill criminals until the U.S. military grabbed former leader Nicholas Maduro. Oh yeah, Trump took control of that nation's oil industry, and suddenly we care about the Venezuelans we deported there six months ago.

On this 250th birthday as a nation that proudly displays a Statue of Liberty, we ought to be finding ways to celebrate our diversity, not to trample it.

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Trump's main obsession doesn't make America any safer

The trouble with reprisals is that they never end. The resentment over loss always creates a new target, and retaliation itself spawns another cycle of violence.

News that the West Bloomfield, Michigan synagogue was targeted by a naturalized immigrant from Lebanon whose relatives were killed in a recent Israeli air strike felt as inevitable as it does irrational. His truck smashed into a temple where young children were in classes, burst into flames, and the driver apparently killed himself.

At Old Dominion University in Virginia, it was a former Army National Guard member imprisoned for attempting to aid the Islamic State who opened fire on a classroom before ROTC students subdued and killed him, authorities said. He had yelled "Allahu Akbar" before the shooting, which left one person dead and two wounded, according to the FBI.

The only surprise is that both cases seemed personal rather than a specific expression of "asymmetric" warfare involving organized acts even by "lone wolf" reprisals.

Only a few months ago, the FBI intercepted an Islamic State terror plots seemed to show ISIS regaining its powerful appeal among young men in the West who have been radicalized online, in part, by the war in Gaza and now Iran, terrorism experts are saying. The number of federal court cases involving attacks and disrupted plots by ISIS-inspired suspects has risen since the conflict in Gaza started, according to the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center at the University of Nebraska.

The incidents in Michigan and Virginia come amid heightened concern about Iranian and Hezbollah cells globally being triggered into action by the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran.

In Gaza, in the West Bank, in Israel, in the eastern Ukraine provinces, military attacks are leaving new generations to rise amid promises to avenge the deaths of parents and relatives in an endless cycle.

Iranian Ripples
By whatever justification that Donald Trump uses each day – they keep changing – at base is an undisturbed grudge that Iran has been killing Americans and allies for 47 years, either directly or through proxy groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis or Islamic State fighters. That exactly mirrors the reprisal thinking that apparently is motivating this week's acts.

For Trump, reprisal and retaliation are features of his presidency, not errors. It is reprisal thinking that is pushing for investigation and prosecution of political foes or endless attempts to rewrite the histories of Jan. 6 rioting or the 2020 elections or even the Epstein Files mess. The choice of weapons varies, of course, but the intent is the same.

To have entered this war with Iran now, without specific immediate cause, is to raise retribution and reprisal to official state-backed policy. We should not be shocked that a militarily weakened Iran wants to fight back with mines in the Gulf to halt global shipping or by awakening faraway cells that can launch individual terror incidents. Even if Michigan and Virginia were not specific Iranian plots, they show that such attacks are anticipatable or predictable.

We should be sobered by the idea that Team Trump's reprisal thinking has resulted in dismissal of a third of FBI counter-intelligence agents, many of whom had specific understanding of Iranian militancy, and an equal effort to rid the Justice Department of its associated prosecutorial experience or redirected many FBI agents to Homeland Security deportation campaigns.

U.S. counterintelligence readiness focuses on detecting, deterring, and neutralizing foreign intelligence threats through the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. Trump's policies under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have been to "restructure" national counterintelligence to focus on investigating "politicization," rooting out internal leaks and releasing classified documents. What in that description is linked with preparing for anticipatable asymmetric Iranian violence or blowback from bombings in eight countries over the last year?

Simply put, how do these dismissals ordered for Trump's retribution over perceived slights to himself make the rest of us any safer?

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We're still missing the main point about not investigating Epstein's crimes

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.

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Inside Trump's camouflage for the growing backlash against his policies

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.

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The real story isn't that the grand jury rejected Trump's case

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.

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The only consistent message from Donald Trump

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.

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Trump's shutting of the Kennedy Center has nothing to do with the Kennedy Center

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.

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Trump owns this — despite who he throws under the bus

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.

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When the US government loses all credibility

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?

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The growing gap between right-wing media narratives and street reality

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.

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Even Trump's backers don't believe him

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.

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It's Trump's syndrome

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?

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Donald Trump’s unique view of how the world should spin finally exposed this week

Events, reports and analysis have converged this week to underscore Donald Trump’s unique view of how the world should spin.

Beyond the fallout of defending U.S. strikes on suspected drug boats, increasing threats of an undeclared war on Venezuela, the excesses of a mass deportation campaign spiraling out of control , unending tariffs, and flailing attempts to force Ukraine into a bad deal with Russia, we got a new National Security Strategy document that lays out Trump’s values as if they are ours.

Together, they reflect the clear vision of an autocratic, power-minded Trump who wants to dictate to Americans and the rest of the world that they should forego human rights and democracy, recognize a U.S. hemispheric dominance, and kowtow to us because of our national wealth, not our ideals.

As The New York Times concluded in an analysis of the strategic document, “The world as seen from the White House is a place where America can use its vast powers to make money” at the expense of support for dictators and caring about those without wealth.

“Gone is the long-familiar picture of the United States as a global force for freedom, replaced by a country that is focused on reducing migration while avoiding passing judgment on authoritarians, instead seeing them as sources of cash,” The Times analysis said.

When combined with fresh debate about killings of shipwreck crewmen on those drug boats and calling immigrants from a growing list of nations “garbage,” we have a remarkable emergent picture of an arrogant, self-interested despot who sees the world as serving him with no questions allowed.

A Game Only the Wealthy Play

Of course, Trump the Disrupter has little world-view patience for programs that feed the hungry or address global AIDS, which is why he has canceled those positive U.S. contributions. He has declined to stand by longtime friends, instead seeking to kindle close ties even with longtime foes whose power he respects.

You can’t even get into the power-as-money version of international affairs if you’re not wealthy already, either personally or as a nation. And so, the world’s poorest nations are automatically now being shunted into a travel ban to the U.S. and their publicly debased citizens barred from U.S. visas or immigration. Just this week, Trump ordered Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Mario Rubio to move from 19 barred countries to more than 30.

The Saudi Crown Prince is feted at the White House without mention of his role in ordering the murder of an American journalist or the historic role Saudis played in 9/11 attacks; there is a tantalizing trillion dollars’ worth of investment in the U.S. at hand. Pressure on Ukraine to fold before Russian aggression continues to assure a U.S. hand in mining operations to “pay back” the U.S. for military and humanitarian aid to defend democracy and international sovereignty,

Even last week’s show-off re-signing of a truce between the Democratic Republic of Congo (among the 19 banned countries) and Rwanda at the newly renamed Donald J. Trump Institute for Peace building was a joke: The fighting renewed the next day, though the signed deal made sure to guarantee U.S. access to rare earth minerals.

How surprised will any of us be if there is a U.S. attack on Venezuela in which oil reserves turn out to be the prize?

The entire arbitrariness of the Trump tariffs is based on a Trump-decided scale of which country needs the worst lashing over U.S. advantages. The would-be campaign to level various economic imbalances is based on expressions of personalized fealty to Trump, and, of course, is paid by U.S. taxpayers as a super sales tax, not by the “penalized” countries.

Hitting Europe

The harshest criticisms in the annual strategic statement are for a Europe that is becoming more non-White through immigration policies that Trump rejects wholesale. Europe is facing “civilization erasure” and becoming “unrecognizable” because of immigration.

The report identifies the specific American strategic recommendation to help Europe “to correct its current trajectory” over the next decades. “We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence” and pledged U.S. outward support for political parties opposed to immigration.

It’s a direct call to White nationalism of the sort that Trump denies but clearly pursues in this country.

How else to explain a U.S. campaign that arrests and deports the undocumented with such armed force and fervor that shuns adherence to legal rulings, court-ordered procedures and plain humanity involved in splitting families? How else to justify racial profiling and the labeling of whole immigrant groups as “garbage.” How else to explain why it is necessary to demand emergency review by the U.S. Supreme Court of Constitutional “birthright” status for millions of children born in the United States or its territories?

The Trump strategy never addresses what is supposed to happen to the world’s impoverished or to those without a million bucks or five million bucks to buy U.S. entry through a Trump “gold card.” Trump’s acceptance of a made-up FIFA World Peace Prize from a soccer league with a history of corruption as if it is the Nobel Peace Prize is as ludicrous as it is symbolic that all international transactions have to include personal aggrandizement.

This is a document that offers as international justification the kind of Trump chest-beating and abasement of The Other that Trump shares with his most loyal base of voters, a view of “America First” as America Only.

When paired with the policy-as-profit views and its unquestioning support for absolute power in the hemisphere and in the world, it is a document that serves as outline for personal grift for the Trump family and its inner circle. It presents U.S. foreign policy as a loaded deck that must reward the wealthiest and the personal supporters of an autocratic Trump.

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When it comes to making peace, Trump is making everything worse

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.

NOW READ: Even Trump's lapdog is terrified now

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Trump's new scheme is 'the Beltway Swamp's dream'

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.

NOW READ: Only one thing is going to stand in Trump's way — and he knows it

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