Tag Washington Post

You damn right nobody’s ever seen anything like this before

Pat Ryan 2 Comments

Do I have this straight: the president as a private citizen sued a department of his own government for billions of dollars, then dropped the suit as the Justice Department announced a fund that gives (essentially) him control of $1.8 billion to disburse at his whim, with no oversight, and the government agreed never to audit any of his prior income tax returns?  That doesn’t seem right…how did we get here?

As a candidate for president, who later was convicted of multiple dozens of felonies, he was asked to release his income tax returns as is customary in these elections, but said he was being audited and would release them once the audit(s) were complete.  (There is no law that prohibits the release of returns that are under audit, although some lawyers would urge their client not to while the matter is ongoing; the public release of tax returns is a nod to openness and to prove that the candidate will have no secret conflict of interest once in office.)

But then this candidate never did release his tax returns, and never gave any further reason why he chose not to do so.  (Some returns were released later by a House committee, though.)

The candidate (and we all know who I’m talking about) won the 2016 election, and later some of his federal tax returns were published after an investigation by the New York Times.  Those returns show the man who claims enormous wealth twice paid only $750 in federal income tax.  This same man had proudly boasted during the campaign that not paying taxes was an indication of his intelligence, rather than his greed or his unwillingness to pay his fair share of the operation of our nation’s government.

After the twice-impeached former president won re-election in 2024, which itself forced the termination of several other criminal cases against him due to a custom not to prosecute sitting presidents, he filed a $10 billion lawsuit – yes, TEN BILLION DOLLARS – against the Internal Revenue Service – yes, an arm of the same Executive Branch that he himself was now (again) the leader of – to recover for the alleged damages done to him by the Service’s alleged laxity in allowing his tax returns to have been published against his wishes.  That’s right: the president admits – he swears in the suit– that letting the public see his tax returns “caused Plaintiffs reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing.”  Curious claim for such an outstanding and successful businessman, right, but there it is.

As the judge assigned to this case started to ask questions that indicated the suit may not have smooth sailing – that, for example, there didn’t seem to be any real conflict here if the president is suing his own government and he controls the lawyers on both sides – the president announced he has withdrawn the lawsuit.  As is his right.

But THEN, the president’s Justice Department – which has in this second TFG Administration brought shame upon itself and the nation for openly seeking revenge (under the cloak of “justice”) against the boss’ political enemies and those of the boss’ supporters – announced the creation of a giant (insert your own descriptive adjective here) fund controlled by the president’s supplicants that can be distributed by them/him, with no oversight from Congress or the courts, to those who claim damages from being victimized by a previous government of another party which had attempted (ineptly and too slowly, it turned out) to investigate allegations of lawbreaking by TFG himself.  And by his minions.

Mr. Trump’s decision to drop his suit against the I.R.S. appeared to be intended to strip Judge Kathleen M. Williams, who had been overseeing the I.R.S. case in the Southern District of Florida, of her appointed role in approving a formal settlement agreement. By dismissing the case in its entirety, Mr. Trump was able to reach an agreement with his own appointees [emphasis added] without risking the rebuke of an impartial and independent arbiter. Judge Williams, tacitly acknowledging her hands were tied, accepted the president’s dismissal of the suit and formally closed the case by the end of the day.

(snip)

Money for the fund will come from a special, unlimited account available to the Justice Department for settling lawsuits. That pool of money gives the department the authority to make monetary settlements without needing approval from Congress. A group of five people, selected by Mr. [acting attorney general Todd] Blanche, will oversee the operations of the fund, though Mr. Trump can fire its members at will. It will stop processing claims on Dec. 15, 2028, weeks before Mr. Trump leaves office.

Creation of the fund, which could be used to compensate Trump supporters who ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is sure to please a president who has demanded not only retribution but recompense. But it could create major political problems for congressional Republicans already dealing with the political ballast of his unpopularity — and who will now be forced to say if they support or oppose allocating taxpayer cash to his allies at a time when many Americans are struggling economically.

AND, the agreement attempts to protect itself by claiming up front that no arm of Congress or the courts, or anyone else on this planet or any other, in perpetuity, has any legal right to try to do anything at all about it.  (We’ll see about that: two police officers who were in the Capitol on January 6 have already filed suit to block creation of the fund.  I bet there will be others.)

AND MORE THAN THAT, this agreement also bars the IRS from auditing TFG’s previous tax returns, or those of his sons, or their companies.  For ever.  (A get out of jail free card?  An after-the-fact non-disclosure agreement, shielding any evidence of any prior tax evasion?)

Is that about it?  What should we think about all this?

“This is one of the single most corrupt acts in American history,” said Donald K. Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit legal watchdog group that has been critical of the administration.

But others disagree, including some of the nearly 1600 people indicted for their role in the January 6 attack who have already been pardoned or had their convictions dismissed.  By TFG.  They could be getting a payout from the government they attacked.

Some felt that the fund validated their self-image as victims of the government. Others felt elated — albeit somewhat stunned — at the prospect of a payout. And not a few felt a bit confused at how the process of filing claims and receiving checks could play out.

“So many questions,” said Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right Proud Boys who was sentenced to 22 years on a seditious conspiracy conviction arising from the riot. “But it’s a good direction.”

From the “most corrupt ever” reactions, to the folks annoyed by the nuisance of filling out the application, a more pertinent question (or impertinent, if you are TFG) would be, is this legal?  The answer is, I think: we will see.

The whole enterprise was a jarring shock to the conventional understanding of the constitutional system, raising what legal experts said were profound questions about presidential power. If the arrangement is allowed to stand, they said, Mr. Trump will have managed simultaneously to thwart Congress’s power of the purse and the ability of the courts to police the separation of powers.

(snip)

Professor [Samuel] Bagenstos, who served as the general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget and of the Department of Health and Human Services in the Biden administration, wrote in January about the danger posed by the Judgment Fund.

“An administration that wished to spend money on projects or beneficiaries not authorized by Congress,” he wrote, “could simply encourage its desired recipient to bring a lawsuit against the United States and then settle that lawsuit (no matter how frivolous) by making a payment from the Judgment Fund.”

While Congress has ceded power to the executive branch, it could also reclaim it. Indeed, Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, said on Tuesday that he expected lawmakers to scrutinize how the president’s lawsuit had been ended.

(snip)

A Justice Department news release on Monday said that the “plaintiffs” — that is, Mr. Trump and his family — “will receive a formal apology but no monetary payment or damages of any kind,” a provision the White House used to defend the fund. Still, the opportunity to help direct payments approaching $2 billion to allies has value.

So does the elimination of the threat of an audit. In 2024, The New York Times reported that Mr. Trump could face a tax liability of more than $100 million.

The deal was open to question for other reasons.

The I.R.S. had plenty of defenses to Mr. Trump’s suit. For instance, it might well have been barred by the statute of limitations.

Nor was it clear that the agency was liable for the acts of Charles Littlejohn, a former I.R.S. contractor who pleaded guilty to leaking Mr. Trump’s tax information and whose actions Mr. Trump had cited as a reason he had been wronged by the government.

The sum Mr. Trump sought was also roughly equal to the agency’s annual budget.

And the suit was palpably collusive, ordinarily a reason for a judge to toss a case.

Tuesday’s addendum to the settlement, the codicil purporting to immunize Mr. Trump and his family, raised its own legal questions.

(snip)

Even under the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision conferring broad immunity on Mr. Trump for his official acts, purely private conduct, as the filing of a tax return would seem to be, is fair game for prosecution after a president becomes a private citizen. It is not clear whether the addendum could block a future administration from pursuing such a claim.

How a bad thing can lead to your being grateful

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

Over the past month there have been enough examples of my state’s leaders behaving disgracefully to make me think I could write a nice satire about how I am thankful we have leaders who are willing to protect us from things we didn’t know we needed protection from.  You know, things like, Muslims in America exercising their First Amendment rights to the freedom of religion, or Texas state employees using personal social media accounts to promote a non-MAGA political rally, or university professors who are serious about exposing students to ideas their parents may not agree with, or actually anything done by anyone intent on telling truths that don’t align with the preferences of how those in power prefer their “truths” nowadays.  But before I could get there I found something that I really am grateful for: the first serious signs of a potential loosening of TFG’s grip on the Republican Party.

During the 2016 primary campaigns there were plenty of Republicans willing to be quoted disagreeing with the outrageous things Donald Trump had to say, right up until he won the nomination.  After that, as is usual, members of the party supported the party’s candidate.  But as time went on we saw an eerie, almost mystical transformation that left virtually every Republican unable to speak any criticism at all: they learned that (1) Trump was so thin-skinned that he could stand no disagreement of any kind at all on any issue, no matter how petty, (2) he had demonstrated how he would gleefully make good on his threat to support a challenger to any critic when he or she ran for re-election, and (3) MAGA nation was eager to do whatever TFG asked.  Republican senators and members of Congress – never shy and retiring types, always eager to defend their institutional prerogatives as well as their high and mighty personages – forgot how to disagree, however politely, with the Chief Executive.  They might as well have stopped meeting at all.  For a period recently, they pretty much did stop meeting.

When the president began issuing executive orders to take actions that have always been the right and/or responsibility of Congress, the Republicans who control both the House and Senate never raised a public peep about it.  When his administration took it upon itself to begin unprovoked attacks on private boats in international waters – destroying the ships and killing the crewmembers – while claiming the boats and their crews were hauling illegal drugs and therefore constituted an attack on the safety of the United States but never sharing with the world any evidence to prove the claim, there was one constant in the response from GOP members: the sound of crickets.  Until this weekend.

Last Friday the Washington Post reported (free link) on the questionable orders that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave to the Navy SEALs executing the first of these attacks.

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

Hegseth’s order, which has not been previously reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers. Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign — which has killed more than 80 people to date — is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.

The important thing to be emphasized here, beyond the claim that Whiskey Pete ordered the killing of “combatants” who might have been considered “non-combatants” after their boat was blown out from under them and were clinging to wreckage to keep from drowning, is that the talk of investigating potential “war crimes” is coming from Democrats AND Republicans!

The lawmakers said they did not know whether last week’s Washington Post report was true, and some Republicans were skeptical, but they said attacking survivors of an initial missile strike poses serious legal concerns.

“This rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.

Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, when asked about a follow-up strike aimed at people no longer able to fight, said Congress does not have information that happened. He noted that leaders of the Armed Services Committee in both the House and Senate have opened investigations.

“Obviously, if that occurred, that would be very serious and I agree that that would be an illegal act,” Turner said.

(snip)

Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and its top Democrat, Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, said in a joint statement late Friday that the committee “will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”

That was followed Saturday with the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, and the ranking Democratic member, Washington Rep. Adam Smith, issuing a joint statement saying the panel was committed to “providing rigorous oversight of the Department of Defense’s military operations in the Caribbean.”

“We take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question,” Rogers and Smith said, referring to U.S. Southern Command.

This does not mean that ALL Republicans are challenging the White House, but today some of them are willing to say the quiet part out loud: that lawmakers have the responsibility to check this out for themselves…it might be that the president’s puppet, the demonstrably unsuitable nominee to lead the nation’s military that the Senate obediently approved even if holding their collective noses, might have given orders that violate the Geneva Convention.  And, they are saying, we won’t ignore this.

For that, I am grateful.

Just a few helpful suggestions

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

The lack of enthusiastic support – or any support at all, really – for the current American president found within and among this blog’s posts might lead one to believe I am a withered, cranky, “no fun” sort with all the redeeming social characteristics of a cadaver.  The poster coot for the “get off my lawn” model of Americans.  But it’s not true: I’m actually quite friendly and eager to help out anyone any time I can.  For example, while watching TV “news” stories about recent actions being taken by the Administration, it dawned on me that perhaps no one bothered to clearly explain to TFG just what it is that a president of the United States is supposed to do and, more importantly, what such a president is not supposed to do.  I’d like to help!

For example, presidents don’t seek to “punish” other sovereign countries (especially ones that are our friends and biggest trading partners) because the leader of some political subdivision of that country (like a provincial premier or a state governor) runs a television ad critical of the American president’s economic policy.  Whether the ad was truthful or not.  An autocrat would do something like that.

Presidents don’t – unilaterally, without warning, and without prior consultation with allies – launch unprovoked, lethal military strikes against private vessels in international waters without presenting to the world the incontrovertible evidence of that vessel and its crew’s threat to American interests.  A lawless tyrant would do that.

Presidents don’t presume to dictate to the leaders of other sovereign nations how to wage war or how to end war.  Only a…well, only a would-be dictator would try that.

Presidents don’t believe they have leeway to significantly alter, or destroy, historic artifacts in order to erect gaudy monuments to their almighty selves (even when they say the costs will be paid by private donations; a scheme ripe for corruption) without even a show of a cursory consultation with appropriate government officials.  That sounds like something a megalomaniac would do.

Presidents don’t tell transparently false stories about the conditions in their country as an excuse to send their nation’s armies into their own cities against their own citizens to put down peaceful protests and intimidate political opponents.  Totalitarians do stuff like that.

Presidents don’t misuse the routine processes of self-governance to re-set the conditions of an upcoming election they fear they will lose.  Cowardly losers try to rewrite the rules of the game.

Presidents may indeed be the driving force behind the construction of patriotic symbols recognizing the greatness of their country, but they don’t reflexively presume to name those edifices after themselves or fire public officials who have the authority to alter what could easily be interpreted as self-aggrandizing plans.  But, boy oh boy, narcissists sure do.

“On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as a member of the Commission on Fine Arts is terminated, effective immediately,” reads an email reviewed by The Post that was sent to one of the commissioners by a staffer in the White House presidential personnel office.

(And if you want to fire people who work for you, a president has the guts to do the dirty work themselves.  Especially if they are a president who invaded the public consciousness in a brainless television offering in which their very very macho catchphrase was “you’re fired.”)

When the do-nothing (without TFG’s approval) Congress lets appropriations authority lapse and forces the government to shut down, presidents don’t use that as an excuse to take “unprecedented, and even illegal, steps during the shutdown to inflict unnecessary damage to public services and investments, the federal workers who deliver them, and the public who depends on them.”  But a con man would…and they would really hate it when the courts step in to stop them.

See, it was easy to be friendly and offer good-natured, non-accusatory assistance.  I feel good!  If any similar instances of possible misunderstanding turn up in the future, I’ll be happy to try to help out.  It’s what I do.

This is EXACTLY what the First Amendment protects us from

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

In the dark reality of the second Trump Administration and its near-daily attacks on the legal and Constitutional protections of the American way of life, I’ve resolved not to be that guy with the kneejerk rapid response to every “outrageous” action dreamed up by the Christian nationalist lawyers who plan and execute TFG’s official agenda.  Because if I did, there wouldn’t be enough time left in the day for sleeping late or watching TV, for playing golf or doing any of the things I like to do; sounding the warning about you know who is a thing I am increasingly uninspired about.  I figure, those who know the threat already know; those who know and don’t care aren’t listening anyway; the rest can’t read, I guess.

But our government blatantly violated the First Amendment to the Constitution yesterday, and I felt the need to say something even though others have and will say this, but I want to say it too.

Since the Bill of Rights was ratified December 15, 1791, my favorite Constitutional amendment has protected our basic freedoms: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”  When it comes to free speech, what it means is that we can say we want (within some limits) without censorship by the government.  It doesn’t mean that your boss or your church or your spouse can’t punish you for what you say, or that your friends can’t ostracize you from the group chat or not invite you to the neighborhood barbecue; it means you have “the right to articulate opinions and ideas without interference, retaliation or punishment from the government.”  As explained in an article by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, freedom of speech

…has long since been interpreted by the Supreme Court to mean that all American speech can not be infringed upon by any branch or section of the federal, state, or local governments. Private organizations however, such as businesses, colleges, and religious groups, are not bound by the same Constitutional obligation. The First Amendment experienced a surge in support and expansion in the 20th century, as Gitlow v. New York (1925) determined that the freedoms promised in it are applicable to local, state, and the federal governments. Further, subsequent Supreme Court decisions from the 20th century to the early-21st century have determined that the First Amendment protects more recent and advanced forms of art and communication, including radio, film, television, video games, and the Internet. Presently, the few forms of expression that have little to no First Amendment protection include commercial advertising, defamation, obscenity, and interpersonal threats to life and limb.

Yesterday we all learned that the ABC television network, a division of the Walt Disney Company, announced an indefinite suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”  That decision was announced after Nexstar Media Group announced it would preempt Kimmel on the 23 ABC-affiliated stations it owns due to comments Kimmel made “concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk”.  Nexstar owns and/or operates more than 200 local TV stations across the country, and it has every right to decide which programs it will air and which it will not.  As the possessor of a government license to operate a broadcast outlet, it actually has a responsibility to do that.  Whether or not you or I agree with Nexstar’s stated reason for deciding to pull Kimmel, that decision is entirely within the law and does not violate anyone’s First Amendment rights.  And if ABC pulled the show from the network as a means to try to placate a large business partner, that’s perfectly legal, too.  A little cowardly, maybe, but not illegal.

Now, just as background, be aware that both Nexstar and Disney are in line to get government approval for separate planned deals: Disney’s ESPN is trying to acquire the NFL Network, and Nexstar still needs final approval to buy Tegna, which owns 64 stations in 51 markets across the country.  Hmm, seems familiar: Paramount, which owns CBS, was awaiting government approval on a merger…then it settled a meritless $20 BILLION suit filed against it by Trump (for $16 million) and that led to the “big fat bribe” comment on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” and then CBS cancelled Colbert (ten months in the future).  Paramount received the merger approval three weeks later.  But back to our current story.

You see, before Nexstar made its announcement yesterday and before ABC then followed up with its announcement, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission appeared on a podcast and criticized Kimmel’s comments.  That’s cool.   Brendan Carr said the FCC “has a strong case for holding Kimmel, ABC and network parent Walt Disney Co. accountable for spreading misinformation.”  Uh, I guess that’s OK if he means the agency responsible for regulating the use of public airwaves won’t permit the misuse of that shared resource.  But then Carr said “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

That doesn’t sound very much like the government threatening a business over its exercise of free speech, does it?  Take care of it…or else. ( Hey, nice network ya got there; be a shame if anything happened to it.)

The point of free speech is that you can say what you want and not face “intimidation, retaliation or punishment” from the government.  Like, say, the FCC chairman (a Trump sycophant) threatening the licenses of ABC affiliates who air Kimmel because he (and Trump) don’t like what Kimmel says.

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez criticized the administration for “using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression” in a post on X.

“Another media outlet withered under government pressure, ensuring that the administration will continue to extort and exact retribution on broadcasters and publishers who criticize it,” said Ari Cohn, lead counsel for tech policy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. “We cannot be a country where late-night talk show hosts serve at the pleasure of the president.”

Like, the president who said “as he flew home on Air Force One on Thursday…networks that give him bad publicity should “maybe” have their licenses taken away. (The FCC regulates local TV station licenses, not networks.)”  Proving beyond all question that he really does not understand the role of the press in America.

Bill Carter, an editor-at-large at LateNighter who has spent 40-plus years covering late-night comedy and the television industry, said “nothing even remotely like it has ever happened before.” Calling the Trump administration’s recent actions an “affront to the Constitution,” Carter stressed the role previous late-night stars like Johnny Carson played in public discourse.

Carson “spoke comedy to power,” Carter said. “And that’s what late-night shows have done ever since.”

Other expressions of shock and anger rolled through the Hollywood Hills and Capitol Hill on Thursday, as concerns mounted about a new era of government censorship.

“This is beyond McCarthyism,” Christopher Anders, director of the Democracy and Technology Division for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. “Trump officials are repeatedly abusing their power to stop ideas they don’t like, deciding who can speak, write, and even joke. The Trump administration’s actions, paired with ABC’s capitulation, represent a grave threat to our First Amendment freedoms.”

“Jimmy Kimmel has been muzzled and taken off the air,” comedian Marc Maron said in an Instagram video posted early Thursday morning. “This is what authoritarianism looks like right now in this country … This is government censorship.”

“This isn’t right,” actor and director Ben Stiller wrote on X.

Damon Lindelof, the writer-producer of the hit TV show “Lost,” vowed to take action against ABC’s owner, Disney. “I can’t in good conscience work for the company that imposed [Kimmel’s suspension],” he said.

There are many more reactions in this story, including from that fun couple Barack Obama and Roseanne Barr.  Click the (gift) link above to read them all.

My point is, this action – a government official threatening government action against a company over speech he (claims he) finds offensive – is as stark an example as I can imagine of what the First Amendment does not allow.  And, it’s just the latest example of what seems to be a top goal of the thinnest-skinned man ever to be our president: to punish any and all who would dare criticize his any or every action. (Gift article, too)

Billionaires are accelerating their efforts to consolidate control over media platforms and the president is eager to help them do so, provided they shut down his critics. If they don’t, he threatens to use the levers of government — particularly those designed to remain independent — to financially punish them. None of this is secret; the brazenness is, at least partly, the point.

(snip)

The systematic effort to censor American media isn’t exactly subtle. The president has not disguised his intentions or his reasons. He has gone to some trouble to emphasize that he wants to control who’s on television and what they say. (And in newspapers too — in the past two months, he has filed lawsuits against the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.) When Colbert’s “Late Night (sic) with Stephen Colbert” was canceled in July, Trump posted “It’s really good to see them go,” “and I hope I played a major part in it!”

For some valuable perspective on this big Constitutional issue, and the tiny-fisted tyrant at the center of the storm, I close with this:

David Letterman, the king of a previous generation of late-night TV hosts, spoke about Kimmel’s suspension at the Atlantic Festival in New York on Thursday. He said that as host of “Late Night With David Letterman,” he had mocked presidents across six administrations without fear of retribution.

We “attacked these men mercilessly,” Letterman told Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg. “Beating up on these people, rightly or wrongly, accurately or perhaps inaccurately in the name of comedy, not once were we squeezed by anyone from any governmental agency, let alone the dreaded FCC.”

“The institution of the President of the United States ought to be bigger than a guy doing a talk show. You know, it just really ought to be bigger,” Letterman added. “By the way, I have heard from Jimmy. He was nice enough to text me this morning, and he’s sitting up in bed taking nourishment. He’s going to be fine.”

Recommended viewing

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Among the things that happened today related to the Trump Administration:

  • The Senate voted a do-over, choosing to reclaim more than $9 billion dollars in funding that Congress had already approved for foreign aid and domestic public broadcasting; another House vote before the end of the day Friday will make it official.
  • The Administration widened its scope in fights with the nation’s universities, announcing an employment discrimination investigation against George Mason University for, apparently, daring to admit it had considered race and gender in hiring decisions to meet diversity goals that the government, until very recently, supported.
  • The House passed new legislation aimed at “boost[ing] the legitimacy of the cryptocurrency industry” but prohibiting members of Congress and their families from profiting off of the variety known as stablecoins…but pointedly NOT prohibiting the president and his family from participating as they grow their crypto scam empire.
  • The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman decided no one needed to hear the objections from Democrats to the nomination of Trump legal bully Emil Bove to a seat on a federal appeals court (one step shy of the Supremes!) and called for the vote, prompting the Democrats to walk out of the hearing…and hope the Senate parliamentarian will find the GOP leaders broke several Senate rules and today’s action is null and void. Bove is the guy who has denied the very believable whistleblower accusation that he told his subordinates at the Justice Department that the proper response to a court ruling against the Administration would be to tell the judge to “fuck off.”

There’s more, much more, but I hate a long list.

This is what the Trump Administration calls flooding the zone: doing so much stuff so fast — and not being afraid to be called on some of it by the courts — that people feel confused and the news media can’t keep up. MAGA America thinks that’s great, of course (except when they are fomenting revolt against the Supreme Leader and he tells them not to be duped by Democrats and that no one cares about Jeffrey Epstein anyway. So there.). I think the “flood the zone” tactic achieves its goal pretty effectively and the rest of America is struggling to keep its head above water. So I have a little life preserver for anyone who needs confirmation that, no, it’s not just you who feels overwhelmed.

This week’s new episode of “Frontline” on PBS is “Trump’s Power & The Rule of Law,” and you can watch it online at the Frontline website right here. Like most of the work on this series, which debuted in 1983, this extensive report carefully lays out the facts on the W I D E range of individual issues that are part of TFG’s current effort to take personal control of every aspect of the national government, for his personal benefit. As the producers put it, “FRONTLINE goes inside the high-stakes showdown between President Donald Trump and the courts over presidential power. Trump allies, opponents and experts talk about how he is testing the extent of his power; the legal pushback; and the impact on the rule of law.” Note that reference to the inclusion of Trump allies: there is extensive use of interview bites from multiple Trump Pumpers who get plenty of opportunity to have their say, uninterrupted by any nettlesome interviewer. I found that part to be perhaps the most frightening, hearing them describe what they want to have happen.

This report won’t make all the bad men go away, but it will help you get a better handle on what unconstitutional efforts by this White House and its henchmen are underway so you can direct your resistance as you feel most appropriate. Very much worth your time.