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President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is discussing settling his $10 billion lawsuit, potentially costing each taxpayer roughly $100 — and doing so despite a judge’s attempt to protect the public interest.

“The Justice Department is holding internal discussions about settling President Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in the coming days, according to three people familiar with the deliberations, a move that could involve the government directly providing taxpayer funds or another public benefit to the president,” reported The New York Times’ Andrew Duehren and Alan Feuer on Tuesday. “Whether to settle the suit and on what terms remains up in the air. One of the settlement options the Justice Department and White House officials are reviewing is the possibility of the I.R.S. dropping any audits of Mr. Trump, his family members or businesses, according to two of the people.”

Trump, his two sons and his family business are suing the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion by arguing the agency should have done more to prevent the leak of his tax returns. Because Trump oversees the Justice Department, which is assigned to defend the IRS, in April Judge Kathleen M. Williams appointed three law firms to serve as friends of the court to iron out the complex legal and logistical details involved in the unprecedented case.

“For a lawsuit to be valid, the two parties must actually be on opposite sides, otherwise the judge can throw out the case,” the Times reported. “The judge has ordered Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers — along with the Justice Department, which represents the I.R.S. in federal court — to submit briefs by May 20 explaining whether they are in conflict with one another.”

In addition to potentially promising to cease all audits on the Trumps, the settlement could still require the government to pay the Trump family, marking the first time in American history that a sitting president received a large legal settlement from US taxpayers while in office. Even though settling before the deadline would leave all of the potential ethical issues unresolved, experts believe Williams would be powerless to stop it.

“She would not likely be able to prevent Mr. Trump from simply withdrawing the suit and coming to a private agreement with the federal government,” the Times reported. “Even if the judge were to ultimately find that the settlement was collusive or reached in bad faith, she would likely be hamstrung in any effort to stop money or other benefits from changing hands.”

The legal consensus from experts is that the Justice Department would not normally settle a case like the one presented by the Trumps, with a group of former IRS and Justice Department officials filing an amicus brief pointing out that Trump filed the suit too late and his request for $10 billion is far too large. Indeed, a similar case by hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin was settled without any financial compensation; Griffin instead received a public apology.

As the libertarian commentator James Bovard recently pointed out in USA Today, if Trump’s lawsuit prevails and he receives $10 billion, that would require every American to pay him roughly $100 directly.

“Roughly 100 million Americans pay federal income taxes annually (not counting people who receive more in earned income tax credits than they pay in income taxes),” Bovard wrote. “A $10 billion settlement divided by 100 million taxpayers works out to about $100 per taxpayer, or $200 per couple.”

He added, “If congressional Democrats are savvy, they would mandate that the payout to Trump be financed by IRS penalty letters sent directly to 100 million taxpayers. To add salt to the wound, citizens could be compelled to send their payments directly to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.”

Although Trump has defended the potentially unprecedented sum by arguing he would donate the money to charities, conservative commentator Andrew Egger pointed out that “Trump had been using his personal charity, it came to light after a lawsuit from the state of New York, to pay his business debts, make political contributions, and buy things for himself.”

Former FBI acting director Brian Driscoll told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper that he does not regret withholding the names of FBI officials targeted for firing because they were assigned to investigations involving President Donald Trump.

Driscoll was fired in August 2025 by FBI Director Kash Patel, following his resistance to demands to turn over names of agents. Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general at the time, charged Driscoll to produce a list of all FBI employees, some 6,000 names, but Driscoll instead submitted identification numbers that did not contain names.

Driscoll told CNN that when he asked Bove why he needed that list of employees, the response he got was that there was “cultural rot in the FBI.”

At that point Driscoll told Coope that he sent a bureau-wide email to all 38,000 FBI employees informing them of Bove’s request for additional names involved in January 6 investigations. Bove accused Driscoll of “insubordination” and sent out an email claiming without fact that “No FBI employee who simply followed orders and carried out their duties in an ethical manner with respect to January 6 investigations is at risk of termination or other penalties.”

“Well, this is wrong and we're going to speak truth to power and I'm going to speak truth to you,” Driscoll told Cooper. “I'm not the smartest, I'm not the best agent ever in the bureau. I am certainly not the best investigator, the best at anything, and I have been around people better than me in every way, and I learned from all of them, and in those moments, I just need to leverage everything I had and give it back to them and I wouldn't change it. I don't regret it, and I'd do it again.”

But Driscoll, who had only recently been promoted to his new post, called the scenario of political targeting inside the FBI “a nightmare.”

“[You] have the weight of 38,000 people and the world's finest law enforcement organization on your shoulders, and you're watching it be compromised legally,” said Driscoll.

“The FBI was being compromised?” asked Tapper.

“One hundred percent,” Driscoll answered.

- YouTube youtu.be

Conservative Dispatch staff writer Nick Catoggio lined up a legion of lies that will inevitably be the undoing of the Republican Party in November.

In addition to pushing a tariff policy that China leaders themselves praised as damaging to the U.S., Catoggio said Trump “bungled the task of taming the dragon about as thoroughly as it can be bungled, most recently by burning through weapons stockpiles in Iran that were supposed to keep China honest in the Far East. And the Chinese have noticed.”

Oh, but there’s so much more, gripes Catoggio, referring to Trump’s recent claim on Fox News of considering making Venezuela the 51^st state because of its oil reserves. Trump probably wasn’t entirely serious, but the claim contradicts everything about his MAGA promise to prevent: “importing the third world” to the U.S if he turns “a country of almost 30 million Hispanics into a U.S. state, particularly a country that’s famously impoverished,” said Catoggio.

But Catoggio said “practically everywhere you look over the past 16 months, you’ll find Trump breaking one of the promises that got him elected,” with Trump’s Iran war possibly being “the most consequential ideological betrayal by any president in my lifetime, poisonous to everyone except his core base,” said Catoggio.

“If you’re one of the three or four people in America who took Trump at his word when he promised to end the weaponization of government, you’ve been rewarded by getting to watch him turn the Justice Department into a menagerie of vengeful hacks and henchmen whose headquarters now bears his photo over the front entrance,” Catoggio said. “If you believed him when he and his party complained about the so-called Biden crime family, you’ve had to endure the Trump clan turning the presidency into a full-time influence racket worth many billions of dollars in plain sight.”

On the economy, Catoggio said: “If you’re the sort of chump who set aside your qualms about January 6 and the president’s basic fitness for office and voted to reelect him because you hoped he’d stabilize your family’s finances, his negligence toward the cost of living is the ultimate electoral bait-and-switch.

But a president “who knows he can break (almost) every promise he’s made and still retain the support of at least 85 percent of his base, no questions asked, is a president who’s going to do stupid and pernicious things that will inevitably alienate most of the rest of the electorate,” said Catoggio. “So when Democrats take back the House this fall — and they probably will despite the GOP’s best ‘hacking’ efforts, as the generic ballot has begun to widen in their favor and now looks downright gruesome in some polling — don’t blame the president or his cronies in government for the party’s failure.”

Instead, Catoggio said “blame the enablers, the right-wing rank-and-file.”

“They’ve been the problem since June 2015, and they’ll continue to be the problem after Trump is gone.

President Donald Trump has attached a $1 billion provision for his proposed White House ballroom to the Republicans’ immigration enforcement funding package — but Democrats are now challenging him to choose between the ballroom or more police officers.

Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) will propose redirecting the $1 billion Trump proposed in White House security funding (which he publicly presents as going to his ballroom) to law enforcement programs, reported Semafor on Tuesday. One amendment would fund two years of the COPS hiring program which helps local departments hire more cops, and additionally provide two years of funding for the Public Safety Officers’ Death Benefits program. Her other amendment would fund a criminal justice grant program called the Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance for one year.

“The American people are suffering,” Rosen told Semafor. “These are taxpayer dollars, we do not need a billion-dollar ballroom. The president has the largest bully pulpit. He says he wants it to go ahead. [Republicans are] either going to have to be with him on this ridiculous policy, or they’re going to have to finally stand up against a ballroom, find a spine and say no.”

Because many Republicans are noncommittal about the proposed funding, it may not pass at all, as the GOP can only afford to lose three votes in the Senate before they cannot pass the bill.

“Rosen said the caucus is beginning to discuss its tactics, which could include multiple ballroom-related amendments,” Semafor wrote. “Reconciliation bills allow unlimited amendments from either party, and the minority can make passing the bill politically painful by forcing tough votes.”

It quoted Rosen as explaining, “We’ll see what our strategy is. But I think it’s important to put people on the record: Who’s really fighting for you?”

Although Trump is reportedly leaning “heavily” on congressional Republicans to fund his proposed ballroom, the project remains controversial. Trump initially promised that the ballroom would not cost taxpayers any money, but now is asking for $1 billion. Moreover, polls show overwhelming opposition to the ballroom, raising questions about whether the issue will be a political liability for lawmakers who support it.

"To date, the White House has presented no evidence to suggest that the project will be 'largely' financed by the president. Similarly, there’s no available information about why Trump sought so many private donations if he’s 'putting up $400 million' toward construction," Benen argued. "Hours after talking to PBS, the president claimed at a White House event that the ballroom project 'really has become very popular.' The latest Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, released last week, showed 2-to-1 opposition to the project, and the question in that survey emphasized private financing."

Comedian and satirist Munya Chawawa’s documentary “Wrestling With Trump” punches President Donald Trump in ways he should have been punched at the very beginning of his political career, says Guardian writer Lucy Mangan.

“Trump is the ultimate showman. He’s a master of it, a billionaire Barnum, but with a greed so insatiable it moves him ever further from entertainment into malevolence,” Mangun said. “If the Democrats had realized this earlier and recognized the strength the man was playing to and the particular voting public weaknesses he was preying upon, instead of sneering with distaste, then maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Chawawa, however, takes the “underused idea” that Trump and his team’s campaigns and style of government “use the same playbook as that created by the U.S. pro-wrestling industry’s most famous promoters, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE),” said Mangan.

The connection is more than obvious, added Mangan. World Wrestling Entertainment was founded by Vince McMahon and his since-estranged wife, Linda. Vince quit the business 2024 in the wake of allegations of sex trafficking and sexual assault, but his wife Linda is now the U.S. secretary of education.

One of the most-recognized tropes of fake wrestling is its habit of dividing “heroes” (white Americans) and villains (non-American, non-white Americans) with “Babyfaces” (good guys who play by the rules) “Heels” (who aren’t and don’t).

It works in the ring and at political rallies, said Chawawa, who notices Trump’s use of trash talk and his alienation of brown people to “rouse the bloodlust” and “make [voters] commit” to a world leader “who promises to rid the world of all the people perceived to be the cause” of white voters’ frustrations.

And then there’s the wrestling industry’s use of “kayfabe,” and its blurring of the lines between truth and lies. Chawawa, in his documentary, “speaks to MAGA folk who can call Trump a “blue collar billionaire” without batting an eyelid. It’s a sign of the “astonishing power” Trump has “to warp the senses, collapse contradictions and reconstruct a reality that suits him better,” reports Mangun.

“Kayfabe, in wrestling, is the pretense that everything is real – that the invective is unscripted, that the Heels’ and heroes’ backstories are authentic, that the moves are unchoreographed, and that the body slams, hip checks and chokeholds are as dangerous and painful as they look. For as long as the fight lasts, you live the illusion. Nothing is true except what you are told you see.”

COLUMBIA — The Senate on Tuesday rejected a push to redraw the state’s congressional lines just weeks before the primaries, with GOP leaders saying it’s legally unnecessary and wrong for South Carolina.

Senators’ 29-17 vote fell short of the two-thirds majority approval needed to proceed. Officially, senators refused to add redistricting to a resolution setting the rules for what the Legislature can do after the session ends Thursday.

That’s despite pressure from President Donald Trump, who called GOP senators personally over the last week and publicly prodded the majority caucus through his social media platform.

“I’m watching closely, along with all Republicans across the Country who are counting on their Elected Leaders to use every Legal and Constitutional authority they have to stop the Radical Left Democrats from destroying our Country,” the president wrote Monday night on Truth Social.

But Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey said legislators need to stand up for what’s best for South Carolinians. And an overhaul that postpones congressional primaries and discards absentee ballots already cast — especially from military members overseas — to maybe create an all-GOP delegation will ultimately backfire, said the Edgefield Republican.

Overall, the confusion will lower voter turnout for a second set of primaries, he said, while motivating angry Democrats to vote in force in November.

Plus, he said, South Carolina shouldn’t just take orders from Washington, no matter who’s in the White House.

“The states are sovereign independent creatures,” Massey said, giving his colleagues a history lesson of the country’s founding and the rebel nature of South Carolinians.

“I’ve got too much Southern in my blood. I’ve got too much resistance in my heritage” to just rush through a map not created by South Carolinians, he said.

Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto agreed it’s not right to take a “map someone else gave us,” which will only exacerbate political divisions. The Orangeburg Democrat called it unfair to voters and the congressional candidates who may suddenly live in a different district.

Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Isle of Palms, noted that early voting starts in just 14 days. Other states that have changed their voting lines for the midterm elections did so months before people went to the polls.

“It’s almost impossible for us to pull this off, not without a tremendous amount of error added in,” he said. “What if we do pull it off? What do we have? Those who crafted this map had no interest whatsoever — they could care less about our communities.”

The entire effort started a week ago with a House GOP Caucus meeting. On Wednesday, the House voted along party lines to add redistricting to the off-session rules.

Legislation was fast-tracked at the president’s request.

After the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Louisiana’s congressional map as unconstitutional racial gerrymandering, the White House urged Republican leaders in both chambers to look at the ruling and South Carolina’s map.

As Massey spoke, shouting in the Statehouse lobby briefly got security’s attention. About 10 people paraded through yelling, “This is what democracy looks like. Don’t rig our map.” They were escorted down the steps and outside without issue.

Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee took up legislation on the next steps — bills that would delay the congressional primaries until Aug. 18 and advance the White House-endorsed map.

That map, which was first circulated by the House GOP last Thursday, uses “political data” to create seven GOP seats, said the map’s author, Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust.

According to the trust’s writers, the overhauled map gives Republicans the advantage in every district, with the smallest spread at 11 percentage points in the overhauled 6th District.

That’s the one safe seat for a Democrat, held by U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn since 1992. The map would draw him out of the district he’s represented for 34 years.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Luke Rankin said senators are being asked to just trust the map does as advertised, with no record or testimony to back it up.

“What you think you’re getting may not be what you get,” said the Myrtle Beach Republican, who ultimately voted “yes” anyway.

House hearing

Almost everyone who testified about the House bills opposed the effort.

The exceptions were two Republicans running for governor: Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette and Attorney General Alan Wilson.

Evette, who touts her alignment with Trump, told legislators they need to do what the president’s asking.

Trump “has made his expectations unmistakable. There is no more time for hesitation or half measures,” she said. “We must finish this redistricting work now, by any means necessary.”

Wilson, in his comments, decried gerrymandering along racial lines: “But partisan lines are a very different thing.”

“I know there’s a lot of disagreement, probably a lot of frustration and anger, but I do think this is a cause worth taking up,” he added.

While the House proposal would delay primaries for South Carolina’s seven congressional seats, it would leave contests for U.S. Senate, state House and statewide elections on schedule for June 9, with runoffs two weeks later.

Holding a second set of primaries in August could also cost taxpayers more than $3 million, when factoring in almost-certain runoffs. That does not include spending by county elections offices. It also doesn’t include the redistricting process itself.

The House bill originally suggested an Aug. 11 primary. But a House panel voted Tuesday morning to bump that back a week to give the elections agency time to retool its databases and mail out overseas ballots the required 45 days in advance.

Parties would have to re-open filing for candidates between June 1 and June 5. Should a runoff be necessary, it would take place Sept. 1.

Even so, elections Director Conway Belangia warned everything would have to go exactly right, otherwise “staff would have to work probably 24 hours a day to meet the deadlines.”

Meanwhile, nearly 8,247 total absentee ballots have been mailed and 354 of those have already been turned in, according to the election commission. And early voting begins May 26.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Ex-diplomat Brett Bruen clearly hit the White House where it hurts after posting on X that Trump was unprepared for his upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“Not a single China expert. POTUS would normally have at least one NSC/State official to provide briefings,” posted Bruen on Tuesday. “Underlines how utterly unprepared he is for meetings with Xi.”

White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung apparently felt the sting of Bruen’s damage, however, posting on X soon after with an insult-laden rant filled with name-calling.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about you slope-brained, mouth breathing moron,” Cheung said. “Stop calling yourself an expert in anything, aside from sucking. Anyone that hires you (not many!) should get an immediate refund and payment for wasting their time.”

Bruen had cited an earlier post from News Nation White Correspondent Libby Dean, who posted a list of people joining Trump for his Tuesday meeting with the Chinese leader to discuss the mess Trump created with his attack on Iran and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

That list includes President Trump, Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Secretary Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Ambassador Jamieson Greer, Stephen Miller and Cheung, himself, among others. None of these, said Bruen, were experts on China.

“Trump will arrive on Wednesday with many in China wondering how he got bogged down by a far lesser power in a war he started. Iran’s nuclear stockpile is exactly where it was, still under the rubble of an American bombing raid last June,” the Times reports. “The Strait of Hormuz, through which China gets more than 30 percent of its oil and a bit less of its natural gas, remains closed, with no obvious plan to pry it open again.

The Times reports that German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said two weeks ago, that Trump is “humiliated” by a smaller power, having entered the conflict “with no truly convincing strategy.”

Brett Bruen served as the White House Director of Global Engagement during the Obama administration and has worked as a senior diplomat in multiple capacities throughout his career. His expertise in international relations and diplomacy has made him a frequent commentator on foreign policy matters.

Bruen has been critical of the Trump administration's approach to diplomatic engagements, particularly regarding preparation and staffing decisions. His posts on social media have gained significant attention within political circles and among foreign policy observers. The exchange between Bruen and Cheung reflects broader tensions within the administration over its handling of key international negotiations and the adequacy of expert consultation in high-stakes diplomatic meetings.

President Donald Trump and the Republican Party are planning on sending troops to polling places during the 2026 midterm elections, according to a recent report by The New Republic.

“The Republican National Committee announced Tuesday that it has deployed poll watchers and election observers in at least 17 states for the midterm elections,” The New Republic’s Hafiz Rashid reported on Tuesday. “In a post on X, RNC Chairman Joe Gruters posted an audio clip where he said, ‘We’ve already deployed field staff and we’ve hired state directors and election integrity directors.’”

Although Gruters did not specify which states he was targeting, he made it clear that this is part of the GOP’s plan to retain control of Congress during the 2026 midterm elections.

“We focus on the big picture,” Gruters said. “We focus on winning. We have a plan. We’re executing the plan.”

As Rsahid reported, Trump himself has said he is considering sending the National Guard and ICE to voting locations in November.

“It’s a disturbing thing for Trump to say, just two days after he called for an ‘Election Integrity Army,’” Rashid wrote. “In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed that Republicans had one in 2024 ‘in every single State to preserve the sanctity of each legal vote’ and attacked Democrats for forming their own elections task force led by former Attorney General Eric Holder.” In light of Trump’s rhetoric and the RNC’s actions, Rashid argued that “it appears that the RNC has heard Trump loud and clear, and is taking action. It’s on top of everything else the Republican Party is doing to meddle in the midterms and beyond, from mid-decade redistricting that disenfranchises Democrats and Black Americans to spreading election-denial conspiracies from 2020. It has even installed election denialists in local governments and election boards across the country.”

He concluded, “Deploying ICE agents or National Guard troops at the polls seems to be a ploy to frighten people of color from voting, and is unprecedented. It appears that the midterms are shaping up to be a tense battle in more ways than one.”

As conservative columnist George F. Will wrote in The Washington Post earlier this year, Trump has had multiple chances to litigate the 2020 presidential election, and has had all of his core claims thoroughly debunked.

“Someone should read to him ‘Lost, Not Stolen,’ a 2022 report by eight conservatives (two former Republican senators, three former federal appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general, and two Republican election law specialists),” Will explained. “They examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters. Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result.”

Will added, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.” Therefore he wrote of Trump, “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”

I had dinner recently with a group of political operatives — sophisticated people who for years have been advising politicians and candidates. During dinner they shared with me their fantasy, which they gave 30 percent odds of becoming a reality within the next four months.

In my dinner companions’ fantasy, Trump’s failed war will elevate gas and food prices so high and long that much of the Republican base will begin turning against Trump. And Trump’s mental problems will become even more obvious.

Faced with all this, JD Vance promises Marco Rubio that he’ll appoint him vice president if Rubio joins Vance in seeking to oust Trump under the 25th Amendment.* Rubio agrees.

Vance and Rubio then approach House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune for confidential discussions in which they broach the possibility. Johnson and Thune give Vance and Rubio their tacit support.

Vance and Rubio then get Pete Hegseth to sign on, promising Hegseth that he’ll keep his job. They get Todd Blanche to sign on by promising him he’ll be appointed permanent attorney general.

Vance, Rubio, Hegseth, and Blanche are what Thune and Johnson need to make the 25th stick.

This arrangement serves everyone’s interests. For Vance and Rubio, it avoids what could be a messy 2028 primary election in which the two are pitted against each other. As president, Vance gets a head start on being elected president in 2028. As vice president, Rubio is heir apparent in 2032 (when Rubio will be only 60 years old) or in 2036.

As president and vice president, Vance and Rubio end Trump’s tariffs and his war, which have caused prices to soar, upset the Republican base, and turned much of the world against America.

Hegseth gets the job security he’s desperate for. Blanche gets the promotion he covets.

Republicans in the House and Senate get rid of Trump, who’s become an albatross around their necks and who they fear, if he remains in office, will cause them to lose control over the House and Senate in the midterms — and could lead to a congressional rout in 2028.

The plan is finalized when Trump is away at Mar-a-Lago. It’s executed in a conference call to Trump — during which Vance, Rubio, Hegseth, Blanche, Johnson, and Thune notify Trump he’s no longer president.

Trump screams, hollers, pounds his Mar-a-Lago desk, and threatens legal action, but there’s nothing he can do. He’s out of office.

I listened intently as my dinner companions spelled all this out. “So you really think there’s a 30 percent chance of this happening?” I asked them.

“Could be higher if the war continues,” one of them said, and the others agreed. Another of them thought the odds already higher.

“I can’t decide whether to be elated or worried,” I responded.

They laughed, but I was serious.

_____

To remind you: Section 4 of the 25th Amendment states that “whenever the Vice President and a majority of … the principal officers of the executive departments … transmit to the president pro-tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.” Section 2 of the 25th Amendment states that “whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.