Recent news disclosures are only adding to our understanding that for the Trump administration, grinding away at basic democratic values is a feature, not a bug.

Any thinking that Donald Trump's mass deportation strategy, for example, was such a high priority that he would suborn Constitutional rights—including the right to a hearing before a judge before a deportation sentence—is giving way to deeper recognition that erasure of individual rights is the point, not a byproduct.

The disclosure by New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan this week that the White House actively discussed squashing Constitutional rights to a court hearing should be a frightening reminder of the fragility of our democracy under Trump, who wants complete say about treatment under the law for immigrants, citizens, protesters, and critics.

Lest anyone think that the Situation Room debate over suspension of habeas corpus rights—as required court hearings are known—was a sole attack on our republic, there was reporting that Vice President JD Vance led proposals to impose martial law with armed military on our streets through the Insurrection Act after the killing of two civilians in Minnesota by border agents.

Despite denials by Homeland Security, a letter filed in a court case shows that ICE border agents are creating a database of protesters who rally against immigration policies and operations. It seems a clear attack on First Amendment protections and follows numerous reports about repelling citizen oversight of border agents' actions in the field. In a previously unpublicized letter to Congress in April, recently departed acting ICE director Todd Lyons acknowledged the agency is collecting information on individuals suspected of potential violations of law, including interference with ICE operations or officer safety matters, and maintains records on people who were never arrested.

In the various reports, much of the pressure for the most extreme challenges to Constitutional rights seems to be coming from Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff at the White House and deportation advocate.

Outrunning the Law

The disclosures about possibly erasing habeas corpus protections for migrants are in a forthcoming book and include a confidential memo by White House staff secretary Will Scharf, a lawyer, who warned Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles that the plan to suspend hearings amounted to a warning against end-running the rule of law.

The habeas protections go back to English law and the Magna Carta and have been abridged rarely—during and after the Civil War, to justify internment of Japanese Americans in World War II, and regarding Sept. 11 detainees held in Guantanamo. Suspension is something that only Congress can order.

The Times said that "Trump and some members of his team wanted to test how far the emboldened president's authority could be pushed, setting off previously unreported internal struggles over where the limits should be."

In Substack, columnist Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Attorney, says that the habeas debate was not about right or wrong, but about how much the administration could get away with before it set off one of the other two branches of government that could counter it. She noted that Miller frequently views the law as an obstacle to be overcome rather than an essential element of American democracy.

We are seeing abundant examples of the manipulation of justice procedures by the Trump Justice Department to prosecute Trump's political enemies, to whitewash the history of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots on Trump's behalf, to grant Trump extraordinary powers to set tariffs, and toward taking over elections and voting. We have witnessed Trump's strong hand in seeking to silence late-night comedians, dominate the news, and publicly support billionaire friends to buy news outlets that have aired criticism of him.

The question all along has been whether the stomping on individual rights has been a byproduct of achieving Trump's overall goals or whether they are a goal unto themselves. The recent disclosures suggest that they are.

The issue is whether November elections can alter that course.

Countering the Slide

We got double reminders yesterday of what joy in our public lives can look like.

In New York City, thousands took to the streets in sheer joy for a Knicks basketball championship, buoyed by words from Mayor Zohran Mamdani and local officials about the unifying effects of sport to overcome all the deep divisions we otherwise suffer.

And in Chicago, the opening of the Obama presidential center devoted to public engagement regardless of party and ideology was a welcome moment for simple fealty to the ideas that we are larger than our partisan selves. Soaring words from Barack and Michelle Obama that never mentioned the current occupant of the White House by name were testimony to an appeal to our higher selves.

Hallelujah.

Donald Trump is wasting no time on legal niceties in pushing for quashing of mail ballots for the November election.

Last Friday, one day after a federal judge declined temporarily to block the provision in Trump's election-related executive order, the U.S. Postal Service essentially announced that it would only deliver mail ballot applications to voters that the federal government recognizes, stopping the delivery of applications to tens of millions or more.

What the Postal Service rules made public last Friday was that it would strictly follow new mail-in ballot rules that require states to submit voter names, addresses and unique ballot barcodes for federal elections. The order also sets forth mandatory "best practices" for federal elections including Election Mail logos, tracking barcodes and design reviews.

No Democratic-run state as well as some Republican-run states has agreed to provide these names and private information to the government, arguing instead that this order is unconstitutional.

Whatever the wording, two things are true: Trump is seeking to stomp out mail-in voting with a federal order telling the states how to run their elections, and despite that single judge's decision not to put a stop to the order right now, the legal issues here are still very much in question.

Nevertheless, we should view this as a shot at blocking mail ballots that Trump has decided will run against his leanings about how the election should turn out. Along with redistricted Congressional lines now being upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, attacks on voting machinery and vote-counting methods, the reduction of polling places particularly in rural, minority districts, Trump and Republicans are going full bore at derailing our November elections. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on two elections-related cases, one on a Republican effort to strike state laws that allow late-arriving ballots postmarked by Election Day, and the other about erasing more legal limits on campaign spending.

A Broad Campaign for Control
However broad the Trump campaign to control elections is, the challenges must be specific about each aspect. What we are seeing already in the redistricting cases is that confusion is building about which contradictory court orders in different states are changing or upholding procedures for early voting in primaries going on even now.

The official explanation from the Postal Service is that the rule would help determine how many ballot applications were mailed and allow officials to compare that figure with the number of returned to detect potential issues for further investigation. The rule would apply to general, special and runoff federal elections, but not primaries or ballots sent to military and overseas voters.

The postal service apparently would create state-specific "Mail-In and Absentee Participation Lists" through a new Federal Ballot Mail Portal. The proposal would also let the USPS return outbound federal ballot mailings that do not meet the new standards or are not tied to state-submitted voter lists.

Where Trump sees "rigged" elections through encouraging voting from home, democracy defenders see aggressive steps to block the vote.

In its statements, Democracy Docket headed by election lawyer Mark Elias calls these Postal Service rules "a radical crackdown on mail voting" and "an alarming step" towards trying to control who can vote this November. It also represents a massive expansion of federal control over voting, without congressional authorization.

Trump's March 31 executive order on elections directed the Postal Service to begin rule-making on mail-in and absentee ballot services. It triggered immediate lawsuits that have yet to be heard. The judicial ruling against blocking the new procedures said the challenge was premature because agencies had not yet carried it out. Publishing the new rule – expected today — could be the start of implementation as well as a period of public comment.

Democrats and voting rights groups argue that Trump's order intrudes on states' authority over elections and have defended mail-in ballots. The use of mail-in balloting expanded during COVID for health reasons, and ballot by mail strategies are used by both major parties, but Trump has decided the practice favors Democrats.

Under the Constitution, states run elections and only Congress can set national standards.

The lawsuits challenging limits says the new rules will lead to eligible voters being unable to cast ballots. In part, that's because the lists would rely on Department of Homeland Security databases that have been shown to have serious flaws.

The resolutions of all these cases would be easier with a huge turnout of voters.

The federal government keeps claiming there is massive fraud in its medical aid programs, but has been less than forthcoming about where it is and what's being done about it. Moreover, officials argue that if fraud were stopped, the federal deficit would disappear.

Instead, an outwardly partisan anti-fraud campaign has featured Vice President JD Vance in the starring role of tagging Democratic states as uncaring or incompetent about finding fraud. It all seems especially galling when the examples that Vance promotes generally are the result of already-run state investigations or the prospect of fraud possibility, inevitably involving programs by or for immigrants already barred by law from receiving benefits.

What's missing is an actual, evidenced accounting of what is supposed to be wrong rather than jumbled, unevidenced assertions that billions of public dollars are being wasted. Much like the fabled but discredited findings by Elon Musk's DOGE efforts a year ago, there is a lot of talk about fraud without the evidence to back up Vance's oft-repeated claims.

Indeed, news accounts of Vance presentations feature him or Dr. Mehmet Oz, head of the agency overseeing Medicare and Medicaid, discussing the possibilities of finding fraud without showing new cases.

As TalkingPointsMemo.com notes, Donald Trump used his State of the Union address to offer "an absurd, fantastical and quickly debunked claim: Once Vice President JD Vance had a chance to root out fraud from (blue states') social services programs, the federal budget would be balanced and the deficit would disappear."

Nope. Despite the hype, there is still a huge, quickly increasing federal debt and no list of fraudsters.

The White House has decided that Minnesota, California, and now Maine are either purposely (for political reasons) or incompetently ignoring Medicaid eligibility or fraudulent reporting of child-care reimbursement programs. Apparently, fraud that continued under the first Trump administration should not count.

The campaign started in earnest after Trump decided to attack Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and other state officials there who oppose Trump's deportation efforts over reports—some true, some not—that there had been fraudulent child-care schemes in that state. Trump made it all political by connecting those schemes—which had been prosecuted after state investigations—to efforts by Walz to shield Somali immigrants involved to gain their electoral support.

Quickly after naming Vance to head a White House effort to investigate fraud, the government has singled out blue states as bad actors in the filings of government reimbursements.

Last week, Vance hosted Republican attorneys general—Vance did not invite Democrats until the last minute, so they boycotted the session—and made clear that he will use this anti-fraud commission as another weapon in the retribution campaign Trump is waging against blue states by withholding federal funds as a form of punishment for various, nebulous offenses.

Vance said states should target Medicaid's social services spending and said the Health and Human Services Department would be reviewing how states use their Medicaid Fraud Control Units—ironically the very people who most often prosecute cases of Medicaid provider fraud. Indeed, states note that widespread cuts to Health and Human Services have made fraud investigation much more difficult.

While there is agreement that some fraud exists in federal spending, there is no evidence that it is as rampant as Team Trump claims nor only in blue states. To even keep deficit spending unchanging, for example, the amount of fraud would have to be triple what the Government Accounting Office estimates.

These public fraud charges are largely about suppliers who charge the government for a childcare facility that is not staffed, as an example from Minnesota. Medicare/Medicaid itself says the largest source of "fraud" is in overhyped medical prescriptions that result from the labyrinth for doctors to have to check the right boxes for reimbursement.

Just this week, ProPublica published an analysis showing upwards of $100 million a year spent for medically questionable vascular procedures for mildly affected patients.

But this campaign from Vance wants to pin blame on lack of Democratic state oversight for spending illegally on or for undocumented migrants or on allowing classes of ineligible aid recipients.

The GAO released a study in 2024, during the Joe Biden years, that estimated government-wide fraud was between $233 billion to $521 billion between 2018 and 2022 (including COVID years). The GAO collected data from prosecuted cases, from inspector general reports and confirmed fraud reported to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) by agencies. It used 46 fraud studies to build its model and to conclude that annual fraud losses amounted to between 3 percent and 7 percent of government spending. That is what the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid report as well.

Vance keeps telling reporters that in "just two months" the anti-fraud task force he has led for the Trump administration has "exposed billions of dollars in benefits that have been stolen from the American people." Vance claims the task force has deferred funds from fraudsters seeking small business loans and Medicaid reimbursements and recovered funds "stolen" from COVID relief programs.

Much of what Vance reports either already has been prosecuted or stopped or is believed to be the possible source of fraud. It is not new investigative gold. Vance placed a six-month hold on new hospice and home healthcare enrollments and shutdown of 780 hospice centers and asserted that he stopped $1.3 billion in fraud. How is that evidence? The task force referred $22 billion in small business loans for review, another $6 billion in government contracts, and $60 million in student aid payments. Calling them fraud doesn't make them fraud, a crime. Vance asserts that California and Minnesota are ignoring increases in fraud that he estimated in the billions without listing the who, what and how.

For the moment, assume all of it is true. For comparison, the federal cumulative deficit is estimated to be around $24 trillion, with growing costs of social services programs, interest, and, of course, tax cuts. GAO's estimates of fraud are nowhere near enough to balance that deficit.

Hours before Donald Trump was to sign the first executive order governing artificial intelligence development, Trump talked with tech leaders, all big contributors to Trump campaigns, who opposed it. Trump demurred and canceled the public signing.

An hour before Trump was about to order renewed military strikes last week against Iran in the stalled war and strangled shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz, Gulf nation leaders – the same Gulf leaders who have been exceptionally generous business partners with the Trump family and businesses — asked Trump to back off for fear of retaliation in their own countries. Trump did as he was asked.

Just days before Trump allowed tobacco companies to sell flavored vapes, including to minors, a Reynolds American subsidiary donated $5 million to a super PAC backed by Trump bringing to $8 million the total donated by the subsidiary to MAGA, Inc. Two days after the donation, officials from Reynolds American and Altria, another tobacco company, lunched with Trump at his golf club in Jupiter, Fla., to express dissatisfaction with the way the Food and Drug Administration was regulating the industry, The New York Times reported.

There’s a building case about “pay-to-play” allegations about Donald Trump running a government by and for those who contribute to his family or causes in which Trump trades benefits, pardons, and policy decisions for cash – and loyalty to the point of law-breaking.

Congressional Democrats have launched investigations into whether presidential pardons and commutations were granted in exchange for large campaign donations or the hiring of Trump-aligned lobbyists, an inquiry that will boom if Democrats take the majority of at least one house of Congress in November. Trump’s special, personal, self-aggrandizing projects like the White House ballroom, the remake of the Kennedy-Trump Performing Center for the Arts, a Triumphal Arch and others spurred by donated millions by the wealthiest corporations and corporate leaders are drawing an increasing volume of ethics complaints.

Following the Trump model, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick made a $5 million donation last month to a group supporting House Republicans just before he was interviewed by a Republican-majority House Oversight Committee about Jeffrey Epstein ties.

Financial gain aside, why aren’t more in Congress or in positions of power questioning just how Trump makes decisions and issues orders that reset our daily regulations? Does Trump lack the advisers or expertise to run the government? Just who is making the decisions, whether for war, health or AI?

Killing an AI Executive Order

The AI decision seems a good place to dig down, since it is seen as central to the next chapter in our economy and that of the world.

As we all understand, a totally unregulated industry is growing by leaps into an information abyss in which even the industry leaders readily acknowledge that they do not know exactly how machines learn, or what restraint or lack of restraint machines can understand in taking over human tasks.

What business understands is that there is a race on for development and that there are huge profits to be made for technology companies and huge displacements of workers on the horizon to make work less human-dependent – another perceived source of profit. On the government level, the race is seen as beating China and other nations towards control of the most popular and effective AI tools.

Strategically, then, business and government, or at least this government, are aligned on seeking regulation-free development for “innovation,” regardless of its effect on jobs, daily living, health benefits, income and lots more.

While states, including California, are moving to consider or adopt limits on AI development and worker replacements, the Trump government is chary about any national regulation except that which would quash Democratic state rules. The order that Trump was considering – not a law – was a voluntary system under which companies would provide the government with an early look at frontier AI systems — up to 90 days before public release — so agencies could test the models for dangerous capabilities, identify vulnerabilities, and prepare defenses before hackers or foreign adversaries could exploit them, according to a draft viewed by The Washington Post.

But even that was too much for industry leaders including SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, crypto leader David Sacks, and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, among other huge Trump donors, who warned Trump that the proposed vetting system could inhibit AI development. So, hours before a public signing ceremony last week, Trump called it off, saying he “didn’t like” the draft of the order.

As The Post noted, the incident underscored the immense influence that Silicon Valley leaders maintain in the Trump administration.

An OK for Flavored Vapes

As for the vapes, which even this government’s strange health policies have previously identified as a continuing health risk, the corporate lean was in the opposite direction – not only for unregulated vaping but for okaying flavored vapes that would appeal to the young.

The New York Times traced the donations and meetings with tobacco industry leaders that preceded the Trump decision, showing that the action followed direct, personal lobbying between high-paying donors and Trump. Those donations came to light in recent, required federal elections filings.

At a lunch with tobacco industry officials, Trump interrupted the conversation to call Dr. Marty Makary, the FDA commissioner, finally reaching Makary’s boss, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Times sources said Trump criticized FDA regulation e-cigarettes, and within the week, the FDA issued new guidance that could pave the way for major tobacco companies to begin selling flavored vapes.

Flavored vapes are seen as a road to profit in the billions and to rebut sales of illegal Chinese e-cigarettes. The new policy, which bypassed normal FDA review, also could allow higher nicotine levels in nicotine pouches. It includes a pledge to prioritize efforts to stop the import of illegal foreign vapes.

Four days later, Dr. Makary resigned, telling associates he could not in good conscience remain the head of an agency that backed such a policy.

It could be coincidence of the timing of donation, personal lobbying and policy rather than any required proof, but it serves as another milestone in the emerging pay-to-play legend that Trump is building. A spokesman for the White House said that the donation had nothing to do with the administration’s shift in vape policy.

MAGA Inc. , which raises money to support Trump-aligned candidates, collected $9.6 million last month. The super PAC received contributions of $1 million each from a division of the private prison firm Geo Group, the Republican megadonor Marlene Ricketts and two other donors.

A year ago, the Trump administration withdrew a proposed ban on menthol cigarettes, an initiative the Biden administration had already mostly abandoned. Trump’s team also set aside a Biden-era proposal to sharply restrict nicotine in cigarettes, an effort meant to speed the transition away from a product known to be deadly. The new guidance on flavored vapes could help companies like Reynolds gain market share considered central to the survival of the industry as cigarette sales wane.

The question is whose interests are Team Trump serving?

It has become a complete diplomatic circle now: Donald Trump's team is putting basically the same deal with Iran on the table that he tore up in disgust seven years ago – with him failing to endorse it.

After all the bombing, threats of civilization destruction, blockades against Iranians shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the Trump administration has offered Iranians a 20-year ban on nuclear weapons development. Iran already publicly said that a five-year ban is okay by them.

Only Donald Trump now is saying he does not back the offer made by his own vice president and government. How do we deal with a president and vice president who don't know what they are putting on the negotiating table? Just this week, it became clear that the U.S. will not extend relief on sanctions on Iran's oil sales that they lifted the previous week. What are we doing?

Is it a mystery why Iran, a contentious renegade country, "mistrusts" the U.S.?

So, we're either starting another round of talks or not, either looking for a deal or not, insisting on total capitulation that does not seem in the cards or not.

But of among all the back-and-forth movements, the development that Vice President JD Vance translated Donald Trump's "never" into a 20-year bar on nuclear weapons development had to stand out as among the strangest.

For that matter, a blockade of Iranian exports by the U.S. Navy after Trump insisted that Iran was in serious wrongdoing for stopping free movement through the Strait is also peculiar, with military, diplomatic and business experts alike wondering how this will be sustained. Still main issue was — and remains – a permanent standdown from acquisition of nuclear weapons.

A Messy Reality

War never goes according to plan. We now know that Trump started this one by ignoring intelligence about some of the most obvious effects, including missiles and drone damage to neighboring Gulf nations and the rocketing price of oil from Iran's squeeze on the Strait. His idea that a quick bombardment, campaign would bring about the fall of Iran's regime, and an uprising in the streets has disappeared into a messy reality with the U.S. isolated in seeking an exit ramp.

Iran has shown that the U.S. achievements in military objectives do not equal a strategic victory.

The U.S. entered negotiations skewed by the stranglehold on the Strait, rising prices, lack of political support at home – and now seriously mixed messaging. Even the boasts that the war is "almost over" that Trump told Fox News is at odds with the announcement that a third aircraft carrier group and thousands more troops are on the way to the Middle East send too many simultaneous messages.

And if Vance advanced the 20-year deal, we were left confused about how different it would have been form the deal negotiated a lot more deliberately by Barack Obama's administration – with full participation and endorsement of the international community, including Russia and China. It called for 15 years' ban, with close observation and other monitoring, removal of any potential fissionable material and a pathway to extend it upon expiration – a deal that Trump has attacked repeatedly as weak.

Trump and team should be removed from office for incompetence, never mind graft, undercutting NATO, mismanaging trade and economic concerns, and cheapening the brand of the U.S. military for egoistic purposes.

Unresolved 'Victory'

We've watched Trump set aside diplomatic and military advice to follow his 'gut,' suborn U.S. strategic goals to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's constant need to bomb, claim 'victory' for a strategic outcome that is a complete mess at best.

The entire logic of the Iran war was to permanently end Iran's ability to process uranium and to accept nothing less than the entire dismantling of its missile and drone programs, its proxy armies in Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen, to have a new government subservient to U.S. control – and, likely, a piece of Iran's oil reserves. We have exactly none of that, despite brilliant military targeting of Iran's naval, air, and radar.

Instead, Trump finds himself between a belligerent Iran and an unsupportive home front, with a looming congressional vote about cutting off funds for war, and rapidly declining voter support. He has lost respect in the world, is threatening to end our strongest alliance, helping Russia and China, and he seems lost in irrelevant, self-promoting social media posts that make him look mentally unstable.

If the difference truly is between a nuclear ban between 20 years and five, JD Vance, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, none of whom have substantive diplomatic or technical knowledge, should be able to bring off a compromise. That the result of this could be a negotiated settlement with Iran that looks very much like what was negotiated in 2014 and torn up in 2019 by Trump 1.0 is almost beyond comprehension.

That is, unless Trump decides to bigfoot all of it and insist that the settlement is not what he had in mind at all.

How Trump, who found the Obama administration deal appeasing and weak would now declare his own version of the same deal to be an unprecedented victory will be magic trick of the highest order.

Maybe Donald Trump can publish another bestseller, an updated rewrite of Dale Carnegie's 1936 "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

After all, since his years as the "You're Fired" guy on "The Apprentice" television show, Trump has managed to bamboozle, cheat, directly insult and generally offend even his own Art of the Deal ways into a remarkable series of off-putting strategies that are consistent only in the result of throwing pretty much everyone with whom he has dealt under the nearest bus.

It's bad enough that he hates his enemies, yesterday rudely cheering the death of former FBI Director and Special Counsel Robert Mueller for deigning to investigate him, but Trump regularly now turns on his allies.

Just as Trump rewrote dealmaking as an artform based on cleverness in finding mutually agreeable trades for belligerence and threats, perhaps his new rewrite of friendships could exploit economic blackmail and military dominance as courtships to lasting relationships.

In this year back in the White House alone, Trump has managed single-handedly and without pressure ruined decades of personal and official ties to European allies and set off a hemispheric panic. He has breathed new life into failing enemies like Russia's Vladimir Putin and set off chasms within his own domestic political alliances.

This week, Trump managed to offend G-7 and NATO partners whose help he simultaneously was demanding to re-open the Strait of Hormuz — despite being unable himself to have avoided the predicted Iranian response to preemptive war. He called them "cowards," even while demanding they commit warships to a fight he decided to start alone, shunning their advice. He said clearing the Strait was "easy," wanting them to do it, but threatened to withdraw from attacking Iran without the U.S. doing the clearing work itself.

Whether the target is Ukraine's leader or the Japanese Prime Minister sitting in that Oval Office chair while Trump preens, the visitor waits expectantly now for a Trump remark that makes clear that "diplomacy" with an ally involved insult.

Apart from all else, Trump has confused friends of the U.S. with constantly changing policies and justifications for the war. By week's end, he even was showing discord with his one seemingly true international friend, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, over whether there is a way out of this war. Netanyahu clearly sees a continuing war as helping him domestically.

Trump Cracked Base Remains

Yet, despite disagreements even within his base of supporters, Trump still owns Republican legislators who fear his reelection wrath for themselves. And Trump was still holding approvals from a third or more of the polled public who seem willing to swallow anything in the name of breaking government and making anti-trans and anti-immigrant sloganeering the nation's highest priorities.

For whatever reasons, his supporters continue to find his words, however contradictory, more comforting than his deeds, willing to overlook attitudes that touch racism, divisiveness, dictatorial power and now even war as justifiable towards some larger goal of breaking the status quo.

Millions of words have been spilled over the Trump magic of holding supporters close during one of his "transactional deals," only to stab them in the back soon thereafter.

The skeletons of former Vice President Mike Pence, former attorney generals, chiefs of staff, defense figures, generals and such rigid Republican senators as Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy line the entry way into the Oval Office.

Apparently, the only thing worse than having Trump as a sworn enemy is to have him as a vocal friend – only to find the enemy is a scratch comment away.

The idea that Trump stands for nothing other than an image of strength, for ideals that last only long enough to complete an impatient transaction, are now cemented into the Trump legacy. In his name, Americans who do not kneel to him get hurt, and even political or international "friends" are always on trial with him.

Trump has insisted for decades now that only he alone can recognize and solve problems, that he needs no advice and counsel, and that, in fact, he hates systems of rules and traditions – including from the Constitution — that might block acting on his often-uninformed gut. In recent weeks, this isolationist decision-making has been on display with a series of nasty congressional hearings that feature his Cabinet members unable to explain even the most basic contradictions in Trump's utterances and departmental policies affecting national security, immigration, justice, health or environment.

Trump has embraced personal, national, even moral uncertainty as a weapon in winning friends and seeking global influence. It's not what we have taught our kids.

Perhaps not unexpectedly, the awaited public appearance and grilling of Special Counsel Jack Smith on the alleged federal crimes of Donald Trump was more spectacle than illumination.

On some level, it was the most recent replay of the most familiar confrontations by defenders of Trump over political justice against those who believe that Trump was subject to the same law as everyone else.

It was the first public chance to hear what Smith had to bring to a judge and jury to demonstrate that Trump broke criminal law, though it became more a defense of how Smith conducted his investigation.

The public theater that unfolded before the House Judiciary Committee followed months of partisan negotiation, private questioning of Smith, and seemingly endless attempts to undercut and threaten the special counsel for holding Trump's behavior against criminal law in two cases arising from the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection attempt and the taking and obstruction of classified documents.

Both cases were halted when Trump was elected a second time to the White House.

Congressional Republicans took their task to be protection of Trump's legacy and, indeed, backed Trump's insistence that Smith is a criminal who should be jailed. The hope was to catch Smith in a legal snag that might result in a perjury charge. Along the way, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, threw in the House Select Committee on January 6 proceedings, campaign statements, and previous investigations of Trump as if they were part of what Smith would have presented in court.

Democrats saw their job as encouraging Smith to lay out the evidence that fueled his prosecution case. If one could separate the politics — an impossibility — there was something quite normal going on: examination of a special counsel's final report. Their openly political point clearly was to highlight deeds that without immunity, without status, and without pardon would be found criminal.

From a substantive point of view, the outcome was already known. The Judiciary Committee's private grilling did nothing to derail or undercut Smith's presentation and evidence, and the fiercest questions were not about evidence, but about politics around the case. This was not about judicial guilt, just political blame.

Aggressive Questioning

From the first, it was clear that this was not a Trump trial on evidence. Rather, it was a debate about image and an aggressive attempt to find fault with Smith and a politically "weaponized" Justice Department in pursuit of politician Trump.

For his part, Smith said that letting January 6 pass without legal accountability would invite more problems with elections and endanger democracy as we have known it.

Smith insisted on being seen as non-political by people who only see partisanship in every issue that comes to Congress. As always in these hearings, congressmen are doing more talking than necessary in hopes of self-promotion over learning the strength of the evidence against Trump in two criminal proceedings.

To the degree that January 6-related matters arose, Republicans cherry-picked the possible inclusion of witnesses including Cassidy Hutchinson, whom Smith was not claiming as primary witnesses, or the phone records that included logs of congressional phones. Indeed, it was only the order of U.S. Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida that kept a cap on the details of the classified documents case, although she has long since declared the case dead.

For Smith himself, the point was to defend his prosecution effort as within Justice Department standards and rules. He stood by his decisions to bring charges, to subpoena records — including the telephone logs of Republican senators — and to defend those who worked on these cases from vowed retribution from Trump and the Justice Department.

Throughout, Smith maintained a cool, calm, lawyerly demeanor — perhaps more understated than necessary. He had plenty of evidence to share and the composure not to fall into word traps. In tone, some Republican questioners were far testier. After hearing an answer he did not like, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said, "I yield back in disgust of this witness."

Though he was spending the day in international diplomacy, Trump himself found time to tune into the hearings and offer commentary, posting: "Jack Smith is a deranged animal, who shouldn't be allowed to practice law. If he were a Republican, his license would be taken away from him, and far worse!"

Missing: The Trial

What we saw was unfocused partisan feints and defenses about process, not a systematic review of the evidence.

It's what we see in so many other unrelated public debates in Washington, from the practical fallout over what we are or are not learning from the Jeffrey Epstein files to substantive argument about whether sinking alleged drug-smuggling boats is considered legally valid.

We're missing the actual trial, where evidence and not political froth, no matter how intense, governs the day. We're missing the review of whatever was learned in Smith's 165-page indictment document that laid out the January 6 case or the equivalent documentation from the classified documents case.

Arguing about whether Trump was unduly targeted doesn't resolve whether the underlying materials leading to the now-dismissed indictments ever would pass review by citizen juries.

What Republican majority members chose to ignore was extensive testimony, much from Republican associates of Trump, about events leading to January 6, about Trump's incitement before the rioting and his silence as a Trump mob rioted, and about whether the whole matter was part of a scheme to keep Trump in office despite an election loss.

Likewise, the questions did not want to address testimony about extended refusal to turn over classified documents and the efforts to move them to keep them hidden while asserting that the "raid" on Mar-a-Lago was actually the serving of a judicially approved search warrant.

Our reality is that we have a president who is a convicted felon who escaped prosecution for more crimes only because of his reelection.

It was almost as disturbingly painful to watch Donald Trump publicly insulting our allies yesterday and demanding ownership of Greenland as it was to experience his rambling, ego-centric, error-filled and self-serving address.

"It's a small ask," Trump dismissingly insisted for decades of carrying an ungrateful Europe, Canada and western powers. The Davos gathering of leaders usually focuses on economics, but U.S. bullyism pushed other topics aside.

And then, suddenly, Trump posted that after a single conversation with Mark Rutte, head of NATO, he was calling off his tariff war with Europe – and maybe backing off ownership altogether because they had discussed an undescribed "framework" about the Arctic Circle.

It ended a baffling day with high confusion and emotion with dealing with an unpredictable Trump armed with the world's biggest military and trade arsenal.

Greenland seems a pawn, but Trump's demand for the spotlight was a diplomatic disaster.

A Weird Speech

Trump's unfocused remarks several times confused Iceland with Greenland, attacked immigration in Europe as well as the United States, and broadly swiped treaty friends over decades for "taking advantage" or "screwing" this country in trade, defense and culture.

It mixed future threats with past retributions, equated treaty concerns with his obsession with losing to Joe Biden more than five years ago, dismissed the value of the NATO alliance, insisting that only he can see the world as it should be seen.

It was, as one television head noted, a serial takedown of every U.S. ally personally and diplomatically. Though the speech itself did not go beyond what he has said publicly, its belligerent tone and grating insults may light a global split that may not be reparable, well beyond any political change in the next election or beyond. Its inability to provide clear focus simply left listeners baffled about his seriousness or agenda beyond power and control.

The only bright note was a Trump acknowledgement that the United States would not use military force to grab Greenland – but would relaunch a global trade law based on tariffs policy that are before the U.S. Supreme Court to consider as being unconstitutional.

If Trump musings were not seen as so critical, the appearance in Davos with global leaders could have been the Superbowl for fact-checkers. His remarks cherry-picked economic numbers, glossed over legalities, and rewrote domestic and international history.

Rambling Insults

For more than an hour, global leaders listened with chagrin and building anger as Trump rambled through a speech that sounded much more ad lib than written. The personal nature of the insults guarantee that Trump will have difficulty getting cooperation when it is needed.

As Trump talked punishing Europe with new tariffs over Greenland, the European Parliament suspended the approval of the trade deal that the EU and U.S. agreed in July, though voted narrowly to delay a new major trade deal between the European Union and four South American countries to build on an economic path that works around the U.S. Canada is talking with China about broadened markets. It's now all suddenly unclear anew.

Trump said Greenland is "a piece of ice, cold and poorly located" that Denmark cannot afford. When he did not confuse Greenland and Iceland, Trump talked about its strategic value for national and international security – though never explained why "ownership" is required from an ally. Despite Trump's belief that climate change and global warming is a hoax, the start of melting of the permafrost in the Arctic Circle makes emerging access to minerals and natural resources a much more understandable Trump target.

Meanwhile, of course, if Trump is really worried about Russia and China aggressions, as he says, the Russian invasion of Ukraine presents a much more prescient conflict. But Trump has basically withdrawn much of U.S. support for Ukraine and has unduly pressured Ukraine to cede territory to Russia. Russia is attacking the civilian population across Ukraine with attacks on utilities to keep the country without electricity, heat and water.

Rewritten World History

Trump overlooks both international agreements and domestic treaty agreements signed by the Senate that grant Greenland sovereign status. He also overlooks that the U.S. has a big military base there, and an open invitation to add more troops or mining investments.

Trump has rewritten the circumstances in which the U.S. "gave back" Greenland to Denmark.

Trump preferred a message that other countries are dependent on the United States, adding, essentially, that they need to reward and pay for that privilege.

Trump has rewritten history to say the United States saved Europe in World War II. Trump insisted that NATO has never repaid the U.S. for its support over years – ignoring that the only time NATO responded to its Article V cooperative military protections was after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington. Canada, for example, "lives because of the United States," Trump said. His attacks on Somalis and European immigration were openly racist.

Overall, his contemptuous messaging seemed to affirm international fears that the U.S. is willing to forgo treaty allies and partnerships for territorial expansion and power grabs.

Rather than reflect any caution from outcries over cutbacks in service, long applicant waits and fear already affecting Social Security recipients, the Trump administration apparently is pressing for more speed in making changes.

Under temporary head Leland Dudek, formerly a mid-level fraud analyst, the agency has shut four of 10 field offices, and, according to a sourced Axios.com report, “is rushing cuts to phone services at the White House’s request, Dudek told a Social Security advocacy group. Weirdly, Dudek also says he is trying to streamline service, even as complaints soar.

Meanwhile, the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday held a confirmation hearing for Wall Street financial services executive Frank Bisignano, Trump’s nominee to head the suddenly struggling agency.

The story at Social Security is one that seems to typify this Trump administration. An agency that seemed to be working well to deliver services to 73 million Americans was targeted by Elon Musk’s cost-cutting operation. Despite disparaging remarks about Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme,” Musk has failed to identify substantial amounts of waste, fraud and abuse, and so has turned to eliminate customer service and field offices.

The Washington Post catalogued some of the most immediate practical effects, but overall, the changes are happening so quickly that the biggest side effect is confusion and fear among the senior and disabled clientele the agency is supposed to serve. Basically, the Post suggests that Social Security is breaking down — with more to come.

Bisignano, the nominee, told senators that he was a DOGE fan, and wanted to pursue turning customer service into artificial intelligence-driven machinery — likely not a good fit for the targeted population of seniors and people with disabilities, or those away from city centers or stuck in nursing or residential homes. Bisignano offered a “guarantee” he would not seek to privatize the program.

More to the point, Trump himself keeps insisting that Social Security and medical benefits will not be touched — they generally are set by Congress, not the White House — even as the obvious chaos they are causing suggest that the agency is imploding over job and service losses.

Longer Waits, Fearful Calls

The Post has sought to list practical effects, including the immediate increase in waiting in lines, waiting for calls, and the crashing of Social Security Administration websites four time in 10 days this month. The promise to end phone services requires web access for issues, status changes and questions that often are difficult to fit into the available categories or physical visits to field offices that are being consolidated.

Among their findings:

–Office managers are now answering the phones at field offices because 12% of the 57,000 workers have been dismissed, and more are fleeing voluntarily. Depending on the time of day, a recorded message tells callers that their wait on hold will last more than 120 minutes or 180 minutes. Some report being on hold for four or five hours. Previous call waits were up to 50 minutes.

–A callback function was only available three out of 12 times when a reporter called the toll-free line.

— Complicated benefits cases are falling by the wayside, workers are reporting. Online claims, which are completed by field staff, are backed up.

–The return-to-office orders for employees do not provide workspace or parking for all employees.

–AARP, the nonprofit senior group, is receiving double its usual inquiries.

–The jam of phone calls before service is shut is encouraging a flood of Social Security scammers, according to internal agency emails shared. Scammers are asking recipients to verify their identity to keep receiving benefits.

–The office to measure effectiveness of consumer response has been eliminated.

Taken together, the cuts may not be intended to affect benefits, but they are affecting the ability of people to apply effectively or to make necessary adjustments for bank account confirmations or personal circumstances.

The people — or machines — creating government forms and web pages always think they are clear; let’s face it, they’re not able to anticipate even the normal set of confusions or complications that arise in families, work separations, relationships and even addresses and names that change over time, to say nothing of differing language abilities., To get Medicare or Medicaid coverage, for example, you need Social Service clearance first. Getting through such a process rarely involved a single contact with the agency.

Building a hand-off benefits system that assumes everything works the first time without human intervention is, um, unrealistic.

Is This What Trump Wants?

What happens to Social Security in the next couple of weeks will also befall the U.S. Postal Service and other service-heavy departments like Veterans’ Affairs. Just yesterday, Trump moved the handling of student loans from the Education Department to the Small Business Administration, whose 6,500-member staff is being cut by 2,700 and has no familiarity with the issues that have arisen over student loans.

A sizeable chunk of the phone calls currently flooding Social Security concern fears about continuing benefits.

What exactly does Trump envision for Social Security besides this errant search for fraud? If Trump and congressional Republicans really want to eliminate the Social Security system for a privatized version, they ought to bring on that discussion rather than cut customer service and phone access to the agency. It is just angering their potential voters and spreading fear.

If there is a better system — like Trump’s always alternative to Obamacare that never appears — they should be debating it in the open.

Despite the big overall numbers, Social Security has been underfunded for years and faces potential insolvency in a decade. It has had four commissioners in five months — just one of them Senate-confirmed. Last week, Dudek threatened to shut down operations in response to a federal judge’s ruling that Dudek claimed would leave no one with access to beneficiaries’ personal information to serve them. Musk’s DOGE team has access to private data of millions of Americans on projects never discussed in public.

As always, the question: Where’s the plan?

NOW READ: Dear GOP: America is not going to forget — and many Americans will never forgive