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What do you do when you’re a president with a birthday party being abandoned by all the entertainment? If you’re President Donald Trump you offer to fill the hole yourself.

“I understand Artists are getting ‘the yips’ having to do with their performance on Wednesday, so I am thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World,” Trump posted on Truth Social with a long run-on sentence, “the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J. Trump to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists,’ and give a major speech, rallying the Country forward like I have done ever since being President!”

“Third rate” artists — which Trump nevertheless saw fit to hire — have flown his Freedom 250 event, many claiming they were lied to about the nature of the celebration, while others were likely trying to escape the stain of Trump’s historically bad polls.

Sounding like the only kid to show up at his own birthday party, Trump insisted that his popularity was without peer on Truth Social.

“Two years ago, the United States was DEAD. Now we have the ‘HOTTEST’ Country anywhere in the World. I don’t want so-called ‘Artists’ that get paid far too much money, who aren’t happy. I only want to be surrounded by Happy People, Smart People, Successful People, and People that know how to WIN,” insisted Trump, adding that he was ordering “representatives to look at the feasibility of doing an AMERICA IS BACK Rally on Wednesday.”

“Only Great Patriots invited,” Trump added. “It will be a Wild and Beautiful Celebration of America! President DONALD J. Trump.”

Predictably, critics on X mangled this latest, lowly hail mary to save his collapsing event.

“It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to, cry if I want to…” howled one critic on X.” But some of the worst hits came from Trump’s own MAGA element.

“Might be an unpopular opinion on here but replacing a concert with a speech is lame and boring,” said right-wing theocrat influencer and podcaster Matt Walsh on X. “Just go out and get real musicians to play. Don’t cancel the concert just because a bunch of washed up old has-beens canceled. There are hundreds of artists out there who might not be famous but would absolutely leap at the chance to play on a stage like this.”

“You all knew this was coming ... lol,” posted Red State conservative writer “Bonchie.”

Others were even less accommodating.

“Would like an apology from everyone who scolded me the other day for calling the Freedom 250 festival Trump’s ‘Celebrate Me’ festival,” said singer Brad Skistimas, on X. “It’s not about him!!” Yes it is. It’s always about him. And I wouldn’t put it past this admin to have announced a crummy line up just so everyone would cancel so Trump could book himself a speech.”

Another X heckler suggested Trump “get some technochuds to create an ambient track to play while he gives his speech for some Spoken Word.”

Bulwark founder Sarah Longwell and writer Jonathan Last say President Donald Trump’s Freedom 250 debacle is unraveling fast as nearly all big names on the playlist have leapt from windows to avoid the Trump stain. But both agree that this kind of chaos and collapse is par for the course in Trump’s ‘Ideocracy-style’ style America.

“[The artists] all said that the White House lied to them about what it was,” said Longwell. “... [T]hey tried to sell it to them that it was bipartisan, that this is just celebrating America. And then, of course, it was on the White House lawn – with a UFC backdrop and it's coming from Trump's personal thing. So, they all say, ‘well, we were lied to.’”

“Trump is having to lie to these artists to get them to say ‘yes’,” said Longwell, which, she said, is typical of things involving Trump.

“Of course, this is how Trump did it, right? I mean, instead of going to the acts and being like, ‘just so you know, the president is doing this giant thing on the White House lawn’ they sold it as an event called the Great American County Fair,” said Last. “… A con man is going to con, I guess.”

Another frame for the whole thing, added Longwell, is that the event amounts to Trump “just wanting to help out his buddy,” citing the fact that Trump bought between $15k and $50k worth of stock in UFC parent company TKO Holding Group weeks ahead of the event — possibly in expectation of a rise in stock prices once the White House event was announced.

“It's much more like crypto,” said Last. “UFC is the crypto of sports. There are people who are really into it. It's growing in popularity, but it's still niche. Your average American does not watch UFC And your average American does not own crypto.”

Last also described the UFC as “heavily male-coded in ways that even the NFL and football are not.”

“This really does tell … three-quarters of the women in America to ‘f—— off. Like, this is not for you.’ And it's weird to pick something [like that] for the 250th anniversary of America Celebration on the White House Lawn,” said Last, adding that “you only get one shot at” at something like this to pick so polarizing a niche.

Longwell said she had only recently seen the 2006 satirical sci-fi comedy Idiocracy, directed by Mike Judge, and finally noticed the similarity between the wrestling-obsessed imbeciles running future America and the Trump administration and its MAGA supporters.

“'Idiocracy' feels like a documentary,” Longwell lamented.

Social media critics were not quite ready to accept White House claims of President Donald Trump’s “excellent health” this weekend.

Citing the results of a recent examination, a Friday memo from Trump’s physician Dr. Sean Barbabella asserted that Trump “remains in excellent health, demonstrating strong cardiac, pulmonary, neurological and overall physical function.”

To some, the news came as a surprise considering Trump is the oldest person ever elected to the White House, with his 80th birthday arriving in June. To others, the claim was outright comedy.

“I would seriously doubt the rest of any report that still claims he’s 6’3” 238lbs,” said one critic on Bluesky.

“Did the North Korean propaganda team write this for him?” said another Bluesky user, referring to Trump’s history of nodding off in public, his late-night screeds and other obvious signs of pulmonary illness, including apparent tissue swelling of the ankles.

CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner described the severe edema in his ankles as Chronic Venous Insufficiency, despite a White House statement just three months before that he had no edema.

“If you believe those blood pressure numbers, you’re a fool lol,” howled one critic on X.

Other Trump critics are seeing the rashes on his skin and severe bruising on his extremities and declaring that the president is rotting away as the public watches.

“Trump is decaying, both in body and popularity,” said Left Hook podcaster Wajahat Ali. “The nearly 80-year-old vulgarian is a diminished man with historically low favorability ratings. He has dragged the GOP down with him. His actions are more reflective of a paranoid, weak King who knows his end is near and is desperately trying to sandbag against the vengeful wave that is about to topple his kingdom.”

After President Donald Trump completed a medical exam at Walter Reed on Tuesday, he posted on Truth Social that declare that “Everything checked out PERFECTLY.” But NBC News medical analyst Dr. Vin Gupta said there are lingering issues with Trump that just aren’t adding up, particularly regarding his inflamed skin and lingering rashes.

“To use a medical terminology, is there a bleeding diathesis [indicated by hand bruises] … impairing his blood's ability to properly form clots and is there a predisposition to bleeding,” Gupta said. “They claim that it is high-dose aspirin that's causing this, which, again, doesn't pass the sniff test.”

Social media hecklers apparently agree.

“They released this thing at 11pm on a Friday night, and it's a piecemeal mess that leaves out a vast amount of detail from the many specialists he's seeing,” said a critic on X. “He's 80. His cankles are huge, he falls asleep all the time, and he sounds like a maniac.”

New York Times columnists say the “you only live once” (YOLO) caucus of the Republican Party is preparing to upset Trump’s plans just as his beleaguered GOP Congress slides into a Democratic changeover in November.

“John Cornyn (R-Texas) is a member of the Senate Republican leadership team, but having lost his re-election bid, he’s now eligible to join the Louisiana Republican senator Bill Cassidy, who lost his primary in the … YOLO Republicans [caucus],” said retired radio journalist and NYTimes columnist Robert Siegel. “The idea is that you’ve been loyal to Donald Trump in nearly everything, but now that you’ve been defeated by a MAGA-backed opponent, you’re a lame duck. You can actually vote in accordance with your real principles, assuming you can remember what those were.”

Under this scenario YOLO Republicans might “actually influence events now that their spines are out of storage,” Siegel added.

Conservative columnist Mona Charen said already the so-called caucus, containing Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) are “making some pretty forthright statements” regarding Trump’s unpopular slush fund. And NYTimes columnist E.J. Dionne Jr., said if the three of them vote together it could pressure Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to cast “no” votes that up to now had no real effect on Senate proceedings.

But even as this emerging caucus of Trump dissonance gears up to break the president’s iron hold on the U.S. Senate, Republican voters are getting discouraged by the president’s antics enough to stay home.

“In September 2022, only 38 percent of Republicans identified as MAGA Republicans,” said Dionne. “As of May, the proportion had risen to 62 percent, so this party is MAGA-fied. But in the electorate as a whole, the only people becoming MAGA are Republicans, so that Americans who call themselves MAGA rose from only 11 percent to 19 percent. So, MAGA’s a really small percentage, and what I would call the MAGA gap between the Republicans and the rest of the country has gone from 27 percent to 43 percent.”

Look no further than the “sharp turnout declines” in the Republican primary, Dionne said.

“In the first round of the Texas race, there were more people who voted in the Democratic primary than in the Republican primary,” said Dionne.

“Two hundred thousand more,” Siegel added.

“Yeah. And then, in this runoff, the total turnout was 1.4 million. Donald Trump got 6.4 million votes in Texas in 2024. This is a dispirited party, and the part that’s dispirited is the non-MAGA part, and I think this is a real problem going forward for the Republicans,” said Dionne.

Charen said controversial MAGA Texas senatorial candidate Paxton’s identical performance in the initial primary round and then in the follow-up runoff suggested MAGA people will stick with Paxton “no matter what.” But the primary also reveals that Republican candidates will be unable to wash off the stink of President Donald Trump’s unpopularity with less MAGA general election voters.

“In this party, Trump has managed to spray his musk over every single candidate, so that they cannot escape it,” said Charen.

Semafor political reporter Dave Weigel says President Donald Trump is exactly the kind of albatross a struggling Republican candidate does not need when trying to sell a message to voters for the 2026 midterms.

“Donald Trump doesn't seem to care about winning the midterms,” said MS NOW “Weekend” co-host Eugene Daniels. “It seems for him it is about keeping his vise grip on the Republican Party. And there's evidence after evidence after evidence that is mounting that shows that that is probably true, that he doesn't seem to care.”

“If he cared, he'd probably spend a lot more time helping his party legislate and figure out a different bill, other than just the [unpopular] Big, Beautiful bill … for them to run on. He would probably not be endorsing people like [Texas AG Ken] Paxton. He probably wouldn't be telling folks to spend $33 million to take out [Rep. Thomas] Massie [in Kentucky] to just get another Republican in this primary. When you think about a leader of a party who cares only about [his] grip of the party and not the success of the party, where does that leave the party?”

“If Republicans had their way, … then this month would have been about tax refunds. And it wasn't because the president was talking about something else,” said Weigel. “This week would now have been about Trump [slush fund] accounts and [Treasury Secretary] Scott Benson’s presser. You saw the clips from that presser.”

“And if you're just scanning your phone … the news is about the $250 bill. They're about something that Trump wants for him, for himself,” Weigel added. “… [I]f you talk to Republicans, they have things they were planning to run on. They were planning to run ads … in their states and go after Democrats. But then you'll see the snap back where they have to message what Trump is messaging on, and it's much less effective.”

With the United States' 2026 midterms a little over five months away, Trump's low approval ratings in poll after poll are also a major source of angst for GOP strategists, even as Trump appears to ignore or outright deny the bad news. During a Cabinet meeting, Trump even denied that his war with Iran is unpopular, telling reporters that American voters "understand that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon."

Other political pundits grudgingly admit on camera that it ‘did not go very well” when past Republican presidents ignored the opinions of voters in pursuit of policy goals, such as George W. Bush’s war in Iraq.

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The New York Times reports Trump has no intention of making his presidential library a reservoir for review of his administration, as other presidents have done.

“In his determination to own and control every document in his future library, the president is working to shield his administration’s inner workings from public view,” reports Times writers Elizabeth Williamson and Minho Kim.

“Mr. Trump had said that the $1 billion project, the priciest presidential library yet, could include a hotel and retail sales outlets. But more disturbing to historians and government watchdogs is his determination to own and control every document a presidential library would contain,” said the Times. “Not since the Watergate era, when President Richard M. Nixon took his fight to control the incriminating White House tapes to the Supreme Court, has a president worked so hard to shield documentary evidence of his administration’s inner workings from public view.”

For 80 years, the Times said presidential libraries have served as public research centers orchestrated by the National Archives and Records Administration — which until recently served as custodian of presidential records that federal laws designate as belonging to the American people.

“But Mr. Trump, who was indicted on charges of hiding classified government documents in his Mar-a-Lago estate after his first term, views those records as his personal property,” reports the Times.

Justice Department policy bars prosecuting a sitting president, so after voters handed Trump the White House again in 2024 election, Jack Smith, the special counsel in the documents case, dismissed criminal charges against Trump for stealing the classified documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them. Additionally, the Times reports voters handed Trump control of the items the F.B.I. seized from him in 2022 when he was a civilian.

But this April, the Times reports Trump and his Justice Department, operated by his former private defense attorney, “advanced a sweeping legal claim that he, not the public, owns his records. The opinion, written by a Trump loyalist in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, declares unconstitutional the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which was enacted after Watergate to require the safeguarding of all documents chronicling presidents’ official duties.”

Other aspects of Trump’s library are inherently fishy. Unlike past presidents, whose library foundations raised the brunt of money for their libraries after they left office, the Times reports Trump began fund-raising days after his second inauguration—and he made sure that four companies paying separate settlements in Trump’s lawsuits against them — ABC, Paramount, X and Meta — contributed millions to it. Plus, the library would be exempted from about $1 million annually in state and local property taxes s an educational facility, despite Trump saying the building would “most likely” house a hotel and sell Trump-themed merchandise “and other for-profit ventures.”

But as for the information the building will contain, Jason R. Baron, a former director of litigation at the National Archives, said that if Trump prevails in his legal efforts, he may try to block any future investigations involving subpoenas of his records by asserting personal property rights.

“There is no guarantee that those records will ever be made accessible to the public,” Baron told the Times.

On the afternoon of May 7, former Howard County Executive Allan Kittleman walked into his county board of elections. What happened next — aside from going unrecognized — would perhaps strike some who know Kittleman as surprising.

Kittleman, 67 and a lifelong Republican, ended his affiliation with the Republican Party — the party of his father and grandfather.

“I was driving home from work one day, and I just happened to drive by where the Board of Elections is… and I went, hey, today’s a good day,” Kittleman said during an interview this week in a Clarksville restaurant.

“You would think that a former county executive walking in to change affiliation, the person at the desk phone would go, ‘Whoa,'” Kittleman joked. “But the person didn’t know me from Adam.”

Instead, the elections worker only asked Kittleman if he was sure he wanted to register as an unaffiliated voter. Unaffiliated voters — there are more than 1 million in Maryland — cannot vote in most races in a primary election.

The decision might strike some as rash.

It wasn’t, Kittleman said.

It was borne out of growing concerns he said he had since 2016 and the first term of Donald Trump, Jan. 6 and Trump’s second term.

“I’m somebody who believes that character, integrity, honesty and humility are the most important reasons to vote for somebody, not issues. That sounds funny, but that’s huge,” he said. “I always tell people you should vote on the basis of character, integrity, honesty, humility. That’s the person you want in office, because you don’t know what the issue is going to be next year.”

To him, Trump had none of those. And now Kittleman said he is concerned about the party becoming more the party of Trump.

“I think what people don’t understand is you might be able to be a closed tent in Oklahoma, but you can’t be a closed tent in Maryland,” Kittleman said. “You have to be able to invite people in who differ with you, and you know, unfortunately, now the Maryland Republicans are, like, not realizing the fact that we’re not going to win any races.”

Kittleman views his decision to leave the party as a personal one driven by his conscience.

“My decision isn’t a rejection of the people in my life who remain Republicans, it isn’t a conversion to the other side,” Kittleman said. “This is simply me saying I can no longer put my name next to a culture that treats disagreement as warfare and political opponents as enemies.”

And for those who truly know Allan Kittleman, perhaps his detour to the board of elections three weeks ago is not so surprising after all.

Kittleman, the youngest of three, was raised by a single father — former Sen. Bob Kittleman.

In the 1960s, Howard County was more rural. And more segregated.

The elder Kittleman, a lifelong Republican, cut his own path by supporting racial integration in the county. He went on to become the first white member of the county branch of the NAACP. Later, he became the only white president of the county’s branch.

Allan Kittleman learned his politics at the knee, and dinner table, of his father.

“My dad was very big on government not being involved in your life in a business sense or in a personal sense,” Kittleman said. “My dad would say, ‘Get out of the bedroom and get out of the boardroom.’ So, I was kind of raised with that and definitely that whole spirit of equality. My dad was so adamantly supportive of freedom.”

He also learned the importance of being able to defend his opinion when talking about issues around that dinner table.

“”He would always say, ‘Every opinion’s OK, you just got to back it up,'” Kittleman said. “So, I kind of learned at a pretty young age, I need to explain why I believe what I believe.”

After Robert died of leukemia in 2004, Allan was appointed to fill his father’s Senate seat. By 2008, he was the leader of the Republican Caucus — a position he would step down from in 2011.

“My dad was Mr. Republican of Howard County,” Kittleman said.” I think a lot of people saw me as taking that mantle over.”

Allan resigned from caucus leadership weeks before he announced his support of an effort to legalize same-sex marriage, and introduced a civil union bill. He later voted for full legalization in 2012.

“I really struggled with the marriage-equality issue, not because of what I believed, I struggled with how do I get it done and help others to be part of it,” he said.

There was never a doubt, he said, that it was a Republican issue.

“We’re Republicans. We believe in limited government. Why in the world should we care what someone does in their personal life?” he asked.

Kittleman said he’s focused on another teaching from his father: Never rising above your principles.

“That always stuck with me,” Kittleman said. “You know, you should never rise above your principles. Your principles are your principles … my dad would never do that. My dad would tell people straight. He said, you got to be honest with people. You can’t lie to them and then go out and do something different.”

Kittleman left the Senate and went on to serve one term as Howard County executive. He lost his reelection bid in 2018, a year when Larry Hogan became the first two-term Republican governor since Theodore McKeldin’s reelection in 1954.

But that was a year of midterm backlash against Trump. In Maryland, Hogan’s brand of Republican — similar to Kittleman’s in many ways — was treated differently by Democratic voters who still supported him. All but one incumbent Republican county executive — including Kittleman — were turned out.

“I’m waiting to pick up the pieces, and I’m assuming that we’re going to be able to pick up the pieces, and then Trump just seems to stay around, and I’m still thinking that it’s going to be OK,” Kittleman said.

But then came the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and Trump’s reelection in 2024.

Kittleman picks over the remains of a Caesar salad. He’s not sure if there are pieces left to pick up.

And he knows that some of his longtime friends who are Republicans might disagree with his decision. He’s not sure how they’ll take it.

He also said he realizes others like Hogan, and former Sen. David Brinkley, a Frederick Republican, have decided to remain in the party.

It’s a personal decision. Like those opinions at the dinner tables of his youth. One he felt needed to “back up.”

And maybe open a broader conversation.

“I want them to have that conversation,” Kittleman said. “I want them to have that conversation with their friends, with their family. I want people just to look at it honestly. If they decide I’d rather stay in this party, because it means a lot to me, or I believe in a lot of the ideals that Trump does, that’s their decision.”

Judging by interviews President Donald Trump doesn’t sound eager to envision a world without him in charge, and he’s slow to acknowledge up-and-coming lieutenants who are eager to take the reins.

The New York Times reports that when confronted with the prospect of Vice President JD Vance as MAGA’s next crowned leader, Trump is loathe to discuss it openly — even as his own personal brand struggles to reclaim the supremacy it once held with legions of largely racist, antisemitic MAGA men.

Citing information from more than a dozen anonymous White House sources, the Times reports that Trump “has told several allies that Mr. Vance has never won a tough race without his help. (Mr. Trump’s endorsement got Mr. Vance over the finish line in a tight race for an Ohio Senate seat.) He has brought up the number of vacations Mr. Vance has taken as vice president. (Mr. Trump does not generally take them.)”

The president has also has repeatedly mentioned the vice president’s initial opposition to starting Trump’s wildly unpopular war with Iran and has even pointed this out in front of. Vance, saying “I’m more of a peace person than you are — but I had to do it,” according to the Times. And Trump has also questioned his decision to send a delegation led by the vice president to an international negotiation — which ultimately failed to end Trump’s war.

Trump, says the Times, has “zeroed in on moments when Mr. Vance might not look the part,” such as when Vance almost dropped Ohio State’s national football championship trophy on a White House lawn. And Trump has “continued to needle … Vance on matters of substance and style, from criticizing his shoes to ribbing him for his tendency to interject in conversations.” Last November, Trump even openly mulled why Vance “was not more subservient, like the officials who work for President Xi Jinping of China,” says the Times.

“Why don’t you behave like that?”. Trump asked Vance during a breakfast for Republican senators. “JD doesn’t behave like that! JD butts into conversations! I want to have that for at least a couple of days. OK, JD?”

Trump may not appear happy with the idea of a MAGA world with a hole where the aging Trump once stood. But neither, apparently, are critics eager for Vance to sidle into the encroaching Trump-shaped void as Trump hits 80 and routinely nods off at public events.

“Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, who is widely seen as a likely 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, has repeatedly accused Mr. Vance, who was born in Middletown, Ohio, of overstating his blue-collar roots and misrepresenting himself as a product of Appalachia,” reports the Times. In an interview, Beshear accused Vance of “governing in a way that only hurts the places he claims he was from.”

“JD Vance doesn’t have a real bone in his body,” said Beshear. “Last week he’s appointed the fraud czar, and this week he’s defending a new $1.7 billion slush fund for the Trump administration to give to their allies.”

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.

When the history of the sordid and cruel megalomaniac who now occupies the Oval Office is written, it may well be that his deal with himself to set up a $1.8 billion fund for reimbursing anyone he feels was harmed by the federal government is chronicled as the final straw.

Why not Trump’s absurd tariffs, which are really import taxes passed on to consumers? Why not Trump’s needless war against Iran, which caused prices to soar and is unlikely to result in a better deal on its nuclear ambitions than the one struck by Obama? Why not his cruel ICE and Border Patrol dragnets? Why not the Epstein files or dozens of other lawless or outrageous things he’s done?

I think because almost everyone knows that the fund will be used to pay off Trump’s supporters — including the 1,500 who attacked the U.S. Capitol and then were imprisoned for it — and that paying them is a bridge too far.

This morning a federal judge barred the government from taking steps to launch the fund or process payments at least until a hearing is held in June in a pending lawsuit challenging its legality.

The order came in a case brought by a group of individuals and entities who say they have faced partisan attacks by the Trump regime but who say they expect to be excluded from accessing the fund.

It’s unusual, to say the least, that such a group would be recognized by a court as having standing to bring such a suit, because their status is entirely speculative. They merely expect to be excluded. But such is the level of cynicism about the motives and processes of Trump that even a district court judge would automatically recognize the validity of such an expectation.

It is impossible to conceive that those who have been attacked by Trump’s Justice Department — such as former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James — would be compensated by Trump’s fund. Nor would the former federal prosecutor who claims he was fired for his work on the January 6 investigation, or people arrested while protesting immigration raids.

Other lawsuits challenging the fund have been filed in the District of Columbia and in California. But the interesting thing is it’s not just lawsuits, and it’s not just Democrats. A number of prominent Republican lawmakers have publicly objected to the fund.

The fact that public money would be spent, and that the fund would be entirely under Trump’s control, also figures in.

Remarkably, 35 former federal judges on Wednesday urged the judge who closed Trump’s case with the IRS — the origin of the fund — to take another look at the terms of the deal. I can’t recall another instance of former judges petitioning a sitting judge to take another look at the terms of a settlement.

The stench of Trump’s self-dealing, compounded by the absurdity of his suing his own Justice Department for $10 billion — and the department’s responding with a “deal” that would give him $1.8 billion to reward his supporters, and future immunity from IRS audits — seems to have tipped some set of cosmic scales.

The scales of justice and also the political scales. Republican members of Congress are hearing an uproar from their constituents about this, which persuaded many to leave town without acting on Trump’s second big reconciliation bill.

I asked earlier this week if Trump has finally overplayed his hand. I believe the cumulative effects of all his wanton and harmful initiatives over the last several months are now setting in. The $1.8 billion fund will be seen as the straw that broke Trump’s legal and political back — the act of hubris that illuminated all the other acts of hubris, the very emblem of Trump’s contempt for anything and everyone beyond himself and his own self-glorification.

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/.