Trump brings military action to U.S. cities, fires watchdogs, deports immigrants, assaults key democratic institutions, destroys East Wing of White House, etc.
(part 6 of a Writers and Editors series, updated 2-1-25)
Pardon the overlong post. Skim it to find items highlighted for importance, such as crushing dissent, renaming the Kennedy Center as the Trump Kennedy Center, T's actions in Ukraine and Venezuela, the gilding of the White House, T's obsession with and deportation of immigrants, his conflicts of interest, high-pressure sales techniques at now-defunct Trump University, his connection with the Epstein scandal, the reduction in food safety inspections, cuts in nutrition assistance and environmental protection, cuts in the taxes of wealthy Americans and big corporations, the wholesale gutting of federal agencies, among other things.
• US science after a year of Trump (Nature, 1-20-2026) A series of graphics reveals how the Trump administration has sought historic cuts to science and the research workforce. The Trump administration disproportionally cancelled or froze projects on topics it disfavours, such as misinformation, vaccine hesitancy, infectious diseases and research on people from under-represented ethnic and gender groups, which it has called discriminatory and unscientific.
• CBS News Under Fire for Scrapping Reporting Critical of Trump's Deportation Agenda (ProPublica, 24-minute video, Democracy Now!, 12-23-25)
The new head of CBS News, Bari Weiss, is facing accusations of censorship after she abruptly canceled a segment from Sunday's episode of "60 Minutes" just three hours before broadcast. How did the story get out into the world? A contractor in Canada played the segment because they were sent it before Weiss cancelled the story. CBS News came under fire for scrapping deep reporting critical of Trump's deportation campaign and it has reportedly become one of the most widely viewed segments in 60 Minutes history.The segment was shared from a Texas Tribune/ProPublica report that centered on the stories of three Venezuelan immigrants sent to El Salvador's brutal CECOT prison by the Trump administration.
"When so much of our ability to communicate out facts to the world is concentrated in a small number of people, and there's a squeezing of independent media and the ability to get independent perspectives and voices out more broadly, I think we're working with an information ecosystem that is highly dangerous," says Alexa Koenig of the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley, on the video. The center's research on torture and other human rights violations at CECOT was to be featured in the segment.
• The Epstein Files Formally Epstein Library. US Department of Justice, hosting.
• Trump, in an Escalation, Calls for Republicans to ‘Nationalize’ Elections (Reid J. Epstein and Nick Corasaniti, NY Times, 2-2-26)
The comments, made on a conservative podcast, follow a string of moves from his administration to try to exert more control over American elections.
• Epstein, Elections, and ICE (video, 2-4-26)
Aaron Parnas talks with Katie Couric about Aaron Parnas's search of the Jeffrey Epstein files and with Judd Legum about Trump's efforts to undermine confidence in the 2026 election (to set up his later saying "the election was rigged," as he has done in the past. They also talk about Trump.
• Donald Trump Has Built a Clicktatorship (Donald Moynihan, The Atlantic, 2-26)
"Gregory Bovino, the man who became the face of Donald Trump’s Minneapolis crackdown, lost his job as the Border Patrol’s “commander at large” after agents he oversaw shot and killed Alex Pretti. Bovino also reportedly lost his X account...
"In the two days after Pretti died, Bovino relentlessly trolled Democrats who condemned the shooting—and defended Border Patrol agents as the real victims....
"Getting silenced on X is, and I realize how absurd it sounds, the worst professional fate a Trump official can face. It signals that Bovino is no longer a player in an administration that has, from top to bottom, merged a social-media-first worldview with authoritarian tendencies. I like to call it the clicktatorship." Even the administration’s budget proposals read like Truth Social posts.
• Trump’s Dangerous Attack on the Fed (The Free Press, 1-12-26) The probe into Jerome Powell is a pretext to control the central bank. The Justice Department served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas, indicating that federal prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation of Fed chief Jerome Powell. The investigation puts Powell at the mercy of prosecutors who are accountable to Trump, and it could curb his ability to steer monetary policy independently.
• The Invention of the Conspiracy Theory on Biden and Ukraine (Jane Mayer, New Yorker, 10-4-19) How a conservative dark-money group that targeted Hillary Clinton in 2016 spread the discredited story that may lead to Donald Trump’s impeachment.
See also the book Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency by Joshua Green, as well as the article “Stupid Watergate” Is Worse Than the Original (David Remnick, New Yorker, 10-4-19) "...his corruption is totally as we see it, out front. He doesn’t try to hide it. He doesn’t try to hide the conflicts of interest or the lying. He is not a secretive conspirator. Donald Trump’s behavior echoes Nixon’s in one sense: he and his confederates appear to have been engaged in an effort to undermine the integrity of a Presidential election."
And this was before he began serving his second term, when the lies proliferated.
• Susie Wiles, JD Vance, and the “Junkyard Dogs”: The White House Chief of Staff on Trump’s Second Term (Chris Whipple, Vanity Fair, 12-16-25, part 1 of 2) A long article, worth reading.
January 20, 2025 On Trump’s first day in office, the president signed a flurry of executive orders, 26 in all, withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization and the Paris climate agreement, rescinding birthright citizenship, sending troops to the southern border, freezing foreign aid, and stopping federal hiring. Then Trump issued pardons to almost everyone convicted in the bloody January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, in which nine people ultimately died and 150 were injured.
Even rioters who’d beaten cops within an inch of their lives were set free. (Fourteen people convicted of seditious conspiracy had their sentences commuted.)
• The Purged (Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, 2-26)
Donald Trump’s destruction of the civil service is a tragedy not just for the roughly 300,000 workers who have been discarded, but for an entire nation. Workers the administration couldn’t fire were coerced into leaving on their own. Toxicity became HR policy.
Employees received an email with the subject line “Fork in the Road.” It offered eight months’ pay to anyone who resigned, and no assurances of job security to those who stayed. At the end of Trump’s first year back in office, roughly 300,000 fewer Americans worked for the government.
• Trump’s return chills embattled LGBTQ book industry: ‘They’re stepping back’ (Surina Venkat, The Hill, 1-11-26) President Trump’s return to office has fueled the grassroots forces that have driven a spike in LGBTQ book bans in recent years, creating a notable chill in the market for queer stories, according to authors and others in the publishing industry. The effect has been most keenly felt within children’s book publishing, where editors and authors describe lower sales numbers amid book bans, as well as the administration’s targeting of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and pre-occupation with “radical indoctrination” in K-12 schools.
In 2025, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that allows parents to opt their children out of reading books with queer characters for religious reasons. Trump also issued an executive order within his first few weeks in office calling for the end of “radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling,” threatening to end federal funding to schools that teach about concepts related to LGBTQ+ identities or white supremacy.
• The Theory That Gives Trump a Blank Check for Aggression (Linda Kinstler, NY Times Magazine, 1-9-26)
The true meaning of “flexible realism” — abroad and at home.
'In an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN on Monday, President Trump’s aide Stephen Miller blithely articulated the outlook that has taken hold of the White House. “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” Miller said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
..."For Walt and other realist thinkers, Trump’s aggressive and chaotic actions on the world stage — his antagonism of U.S. allies, threats of territorial conquest and assertions that the U.S. is not afraid of putting “boots on the ground” — undermine any claim he could make to practicing a realist foreign policy. Realists largely opposed the U.S. wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, preferring policies of restraint. The failures of those episodes vindicated the realist worldview."
---ICE is the MAGA militia of Trump’s dreams (Lucian Truscott Newletter, 1-11-26)
"Here is something else that’s hard to do: putting a name on what’s happening in this country right now with ICE arrests and demonstrations against them. It’s tempting to say that the Trump administration, in the name of enforcing immigration laws, is waging a war on citizens. But it’s not all citizens of America. It’s only those in blue states like Minnesota and Oregon and Illinois and California.
"Trump is the first person in the 250-year history of this country who doesn’t believe he was elected to be president of all the people. He says, and he acts, as if he is the president of those who voted for him."
• What is the White House East Wing and why has it been torn down in Trump’s renovation plans? (The Guardian, 10-25-25)
The East Wing of the White House has now been completely destroyed (see photo). Trump’s demolition of the historic wing – at a projected cost of $300m and a good deal of glitter – has disgusted White House alumni and presidential historians. (Any such work on the White House must have congressional approval, and this didn't.)
---Before and after: Trump’s extreme goldening of the Oval Office (Jonathan Yerushalmy, The Guardian, 9-1-25) An extravagant makeover of the Oval Office's decor has taken place during the president’s second term. Some call the revamped office a symbol of America’s new golden age, while others have compared it to a professional wrestler’s dressing room.
• Check out WTOP's photos showing ongoing destruction of the East Wing of the White House.
A section on Trump and immigrants has moved to an expanded blog post on Trump and immigrants. Scroll down to see it.
• Here's what to know about Trump's executive actions on climate and environment (Melina Walling, Associated Press, PBS NewHour, 1-27-25) President Donald Trump's first week in office included a flurry of executive orders with implications for Earth's climate and environment. While former President Joe Biden made climate change a hallmark of his administration and some of his policies remain, at least for now, Trump is quickly unraveling that, even as many of his moves are likely to be challenged in court.
---On Trump’s first day in office, the president signed a flurry of executive orders, 26 in all, withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization and the Paris climate agreement, rescinding birthright citizenship, sending troops to the southern border, freezing foreign aid, and stopping federal hiring.
---Then Trump issued pardons to almost everyone convicted in the bloody January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, in which nine people ultimately died and 150 were injured. Even rioters who’d beaten cops within an inch of their lives were set free. (Fourteen people convicted of seditious conspiracy had their sentences commuted.)
• Trump Now Shares One More Thing in Common With History’s Worst Dictators (Paul Finkelman, Slate, 12-25) Apropos Trump renaming the Kennedy Center the Trump and Kennedy Center
"For nearly 250 years the United States has not “honored” sitting political leaders by naming buildings or cultural institutions for them. Presidents have never appointed a board to an institution and then pressured that board to rename the institution for the president. Presidents have not signed bills, or issued executive orders, to name things after themselves. Dictators, emperors, führers, czars, kings, and “dear leaders” do such things, because it makes them feel good, powerful, and strokes their fragile egos. Presidents of a republic do not act in this way."
---The President Who Can’t Stop Naming Things After Himself (Adam Kinzinger, 12-26-25) The Narcissist-in-Chief is Worried We'll Forget Him. I hope we do.
•Trump’s Plan to Use the State to Crush Dissent (Marc Elias, Democracy Docket, 9-25-24)
The idea of an explicit government crackdown on thought and speech would have been unthinkable in the past.
The many responses are interesting, often alarming. Here's one, from Phil Bailey: 'Every day I am grateful that I don’t live in the United States of America. My view from the outside is that the USA is irreparably damaged. Trump hasn’t created the damage single-handed, but he represents the final nail into the coffin of the USA as the world has known it.'
• Trump’s Address Was Exactly What You Expected—and Worse (Adam Kinzinger, 12-18-25)
A rally speech masquerading as leadership.
Why—oh why—would anyone voluntarily tune in to what amounted to a blowhard’s boring recitation of blame, bragging, and BS? The biggest problem? Consider Trump's lies about immigration, inflation, foreign investment in the United States, taxes on Social Security, the price of gas, and wages rising “much faster than inflation".
Trump's jab at “woke radicals” was "typical of a speech in which Trump divided the world into good guys—his administration and its supporters—and bad guys, a group that includes immigrants, Democrats, and anyone else who opposes his agenda. It was as if he had forgotten that his approval rating has dropped an average of eight points in less than a year. Today (12-18-25), roughly half the country disapproves of his performance as president.
• Trump Blames Rob Reiner for His Own Murder (David A. Graham, The Atlantic newsletter, 12-25)
"This morning’s Truth Social post was nauseating even by the president’s standards."
Trump wrote, on Truth Social: “A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS....He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump.”
He then closed, incongruously, “May Rob and Michele rest in peace!”
"Looking for a considered meaning in Trump’s words might be a wild-goose chase, though. The simplest reason Trump posted this is the same reason he posts anything: The man cannot resist making everything about himself, even if it’s the heartbreaking murder of a beloved artist in an alleged domestic dispute. If “TDS” is the tendency to become irrationally obsessed with Donald Trump and project that obsession onto everyone else, then somebody is indeed deranged, and it wasn’t Rob Reiner."
Why Trump's rant? In an interview with Variety in 2017, Reiner said Trump was "mentally unfit" to be president. "Donald Trump is the single-most unqualified human being to ever assume the presidency of the United States."
• What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal. (David Brooks, Opinion, NY Times, 4-17-25)
Trumpism "is primarily about the acquisition of power — power for its own sake. It is a multifront assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men, so of course any institutions that might restrain power must be weakened or destroyed. Trumpism is about ego, appetite and acquisitiveness and is driven by a primal aversion to the higher elements of the human spirit — learning, compassion, scientific wonder, the pursuit of justice....
"What is happening now is not normal politics. We’re seeing an assault on the fundamental institutions of our civic life, things we should all swear loyalty to — Democrat, independent or Republican. It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power."
• The Truth Behind Trump’s Mystery Millions (YouTube video, Warren Buffet, Britain Nexus, 11-17-25)
What’s really fueling Donald Trump’s financial machine? In this explosive analysis, Warren Buffett (the Oracle of Omaha) finally speaks out on the mysterious money backing Trump’s empire — and what he reveals might change how you see American politics forever. From hidden donors to untouchable funds, this video unpacks the untold story behind the headlines. A must-watch if you're curious about political finance or billionaires' influence, or want the raw truth straight from the Oracle of Omaha himself.
• At Trump’s Veterans Day campaign event at Stevens High School in Claremont, New Hampshire, on November 11, 2023, Trump declared: “…[W]e pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country..... “They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream... THE THREAT FROM OUTSIDE FORCES IS FAR LESS SINISTER, DANGEROUS AND GRAVE THAN THE THREAT FROM WITHIN” (emphasis added). Trump makes no bones about who is behind the threat from within. They are our migrants. Trump is obsessed with migrants and has repeatedly said that they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” and called them “animals,” “not people,” while repeatedly dehumanizing them. This is exactly how Hitler denounced the Jews. [Scroll down for more on immigration.]
-- from Mark Kelly is doing it right (Adam Kinzinger, 12-2-25)
• They Were the Watchdogs (Opinion, NY Times, 3-6-25) President Trump has sworn to root out corruption within the government, yet one of his first acts as president was to fire over 16 inspectors general, independent watchdogs who did exactly that. We spoke to seven of them about the abuses they uncovered, what they really think about DOGE and what all this means for the future of American democracy.
• Senator Elissa Slotkin Delivers Speech on Trump's Authoritarian Playbook (YouTube video, 10-29-25) "I believe that Trump is ready to bring the full weight of the government against Americans he perceives as enemies. Why? Because he has one goal: making sure he and his ilk never have to give up power....His orientation: The enemy within."
• Trump’s Monument to Corruption (Robert Reich, 12-5-25)
Trump isn’t just destroying the White House to make room for a giant vanity ballroom — he’s selling it off to the highest bidders, who conveniently need favors from his regime.
• Trump Falls Short of His Populist Rhetoric
(New York Times Editorial Board, 11-25-25)
"The Trump administration is decimating the federal agencies that police corporations and protect workers and consumers."
Congress enacted the nation’s antitrust laws to ensure that private power did not become so concentrated as to threaten the public interest. Government took the side of the people against the powerful. In the words of Senator John Sherman, the author and namesake of the nation’s first major antitrust law, “If we will not endure a king as a political power, we should not endure a king over the production, transportation and sale of the necessaries of life.”
Under the cover of populist rhetoric, Mr. Trump is subverting the nation’s longstanding commitment to those principles. In his hands, laws created to limit the concentration of economic and political power are being used to further its concentration. This administration is not governing in the interest of the people. It is acting in the interests of Mr. Trump.
• The White House Gold Rush Is On (Jamelle Bouie, Opinion, N Times, 11-19-25) The Constitution is obviously not working.
“In any other administration, at any other time in American history, this level of corruption would be a political disaster — a scandal that could bring down the administration. For the Trump administration, it is a Tuesday.
Earlier this month, top Swiss business leaders arrived at the White House bearing lavish gifts fit for a king. A week later, the president rewarded Switzerland with a favorable break on tariffs, reducing them from 39 percent to 15 percent. This summer, The New Yorker reported that the Trump family had earned $3.4 billion through deals it had arranged since Trump entered the White House in 2017. The Trump Organization is also expanding its operations around the world, developing more than 22 properties in at least 10 countries, whose leaders have every incentive to flatter the president with gifts and handouts.
• Trump Shows His Power, and Greene Reveals His Weakness (Lisa Lerer and Reid J. Epstein, NY Times, 11-22-25)
Beginning in Mr. Trump’s first term, a parade of traditional Republican lawmakers have been cast into exile for refusing to accept Mr. Trump’s conquest of their party. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia is the first true believer to leave while arguing that the president has betrayed the founding principles of his supporters. Other than Ms. Greene, almost no Republicans are offering an overt challenge to Mr. Trump, who still drives the agenda of not only their party but the entire political world. But the battle cry in her announcement, arguing that the Republican Party under Mr. Trump has lost its way, is a signal of how some conservatives are slowly imagining a future where his priorities, whims and vendettas no longer steer their movement.
"In Congress, Republicans overcame Mr. Trump’s initial refusal to release the Epstein files and rejected his demand to gut the filibuster. In statehouses, Republicans in Indiana and Kansas have resisted White House pressure to redraw congressional lines.
On "podcasts and conservative cable news, factions are pushing back against various Trump policies. Conservatives oppose providing H-1B visas for highly skilled immigrant workers, moderates in battleground districts are arguing against ending health insurance subsidies, and Republicans from farming states protested a plan to expand beef imports from Argentina.
"After Mr. Trump is gone, Mr. Madrid said, the coalition built by the president will not revert to the principles of fiscal conservatism, traditional social policy and a hawkish foreign policy that were the backbone of Republican ideology for generations. “We’re not going to wake up and there’s a hangover like we were on some eight-year bender and we’re all going to vote for George W. Bush again,” he said. “There’s no longer any policy, any philosophy that holds this all together.” As the president forced a onetime loyalist from Congress, her defiant departure signaled a coming debate over Republican identity in a post-Trump era. Again and again, President Trump has wielded the power that comes with the loyalty of his party’s base and an enormous war chest that he can leverage against opponents.
• Epstein Library Department of Justice files. Open to the public.
• Trump’s Art of the Steal (Michael Kruse, Politico, 1-10-2020) How Donald Trump rode to power by parroting other people’s fringe ideas, got himself impeached for it—and might prevail anyway.
• I Survived Trump University (Seth Gitell, Politico, 3-2016) And I even kind of liked it. Although the seminar had been billed as a kind of on-ramp to Trump-style success, it was little more than a Trump-branded infomercial for real-estate-investment advice.
---Federal court approves $25 million Trump University settlement (Tom Winter and Dartunorro Clark, NBC News, 2-6-18)
'A federal court approved a $25 million settlement with students who said they were duped by Donald Trump and his now-defunct Trump University, which promised to teach them the "secrets of success" in the real estate industry.
'Students had alleged that Trump University, which was open from 2005 to 2010, used false advertising and high-pressure sales techniques to lure them to free investor workshops at which they were sold expensive seminars and told they would be mentored by real estate gurus, leading to the loss of thousands of dollars in tuition.
'A "one-year apprenticeship" at the educational institute cost $1,495; a "membership" over $10,000; and "Gold Elite" classes ran $35,000.'
The Jeffrey Epstein Scandal
• House Overwhelmingly Passes Bill Seeking Release of Epstein Files (Annie Karni, NY Times, 11-18-25) The 427 to 1 vote puts intense pressure on the Senate to quickly take up the legislation demanding that the Justice Department release all files related to its investigation into the late Jeffrey Epstein. President Trump, who was once friends with the convicted sex offender, pushed hard to head off the vote before reversing himself. Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican of Kentucky, speaks during a news conference with Epstein abuse survivors and other lawmakers on the Epstein Files Transparency Act outside the Capitol on Tuesday.Credit...
• The Epstein Scandal Is Now a Chronic Disease of the Trump Presidency (Susan B. Glasser, New Yorker, 11-13-25) Read the e-mails—this isn’t going away anytime soon.
• The President Who Cried Hoax (Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, 11-14-25) Republicans went after Epstein only when it was politically useful.
"Remember when we learned that our wealthiest and most powerful people were connected to a guy who ran a literal child sex trafficking ring?" future Vice President J. D. Vance posted on Twitter in 2021. "And then that guy died mysteriously in a jail? And now we just don't talk about it."
Well. Now I guess we know why.
• Trump Told a Woman, ‘Quiet, Piggy,’ When She Asked Him About Epstein (Isabel Fattal, The Atlantic, 11-18-25) The comment continues the president’s long-standing pattern of denigrating female journalists.
• The Epstein survivor who 'changed' speaks out (The Best People with Nicolle Wallace, MS Now, MSNBC, 9-15-25, 49 minute video interview) At 22 years old, in 1991, Jess Michaels was thriving, succeeding as a dancer and model in New York City. Then she met and was sexually assaulted by Epstein and it destroyed her stability, her career and her health. The day after excerpts from Epstein’s 50th birthday book were made public, Jess and her lawyer, Jennifer Freeman, joined Nicolle Wallace to call out the decades of institutional cowardice, with a warning for elected leaders: Jess and her fellow survivors are not going away, and they are not going to stop until they get accountability, truth and justice.
• Trump’s Epstein-Files Punt (David A. Graham, The Atlantic Daily, 11-17-2025) Trump seems "to be in a quandary. If he tries to prevent some information from being released, he will lend more credence to claims of a cover-up and extend a story he wishes to cut short. Yet Trump has presumably been so eager to block the release up until now for some reason, even if we can only speculate about what it is; what’s become public so far is already damaging for him, among others. Trump is a bad ally to members of Congress, but he may be hurting himself too." The president’s about-face shows how he’s a terrible ally—but he may be hurting himself too.
• Listen To The Jeffrey Epstein Tapes: ‘I Was Donald Trump’s Closest Friend’ (Hugh Dougherty, The Daily Beast, 9-2-24, updated 2-27-25, PDF from docs.house.gov) Quite a bit here about Trump's sex life. 'Startlingly for a man who became one of the world’s most notorious sex offenders, Epstein on the tapes offers a damning judgment of Trump, telling [author Michael] Wolff, “The moral compass just does not exist.” '
---The Trump–Epstein Relationship: What We Know & Why Republicans Won’t Address It (YouTube video, 11-12-25) Adam Kinzinger calls out Republicans for their silence on Donald Trump’s connection to Jeffrey Epstein. He challenges the GOP to choose truth over loyalty, exposing the hypocrisy behind Trump’s broken promises to release the Epstein files. This is not about left versus right. It’s about courage, accountability, and protecting the vulnerable. Silence is complicity.
--- Read Jeffrey Epstein’s newly released emails about Trump (Liz Landers, PBS Newshour, updated 11-12-25)
Do click on link to exchange of emails.
The many aspects of Trump's misbehavior
• Anatomy of Two Giant Deals: The U.A.E. Got Chips. The Trump Team Got Crypto Riches. (Eric Lipton, David Yaffe-Bellany, Bradley Hope, Tripp Mickle and Paul Mozur, NY Times, 9-15-25) A lucrative transaction involving the Trump family’s cryptocurrency firm and an agreement giving the Emiratis access to A.I. chips were connected in ways that have not been previously reported.
• Donald Trump: 'I Could ... Shoot Somebody, And I Wouldn't Lose Any Voters' (Colin Dwyer, National Public Radio/NPR, 1-23-2016)
"With less than two weeks to go until the Iowa caucus, Donald Trump remains characteristically confident about his chances. In fact, the Republican front-runner is so confident, he says his supporters would stay loyal even if he happened to commit a capital offense.
"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" Trump remarked at a campaign stop at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa. "It's, like, incredible."
• Foreign Food Safety Inspections Hit Historic Low After Trump Cuts (Annie Waldman and Brandon Roberts, ProPublica, 11-6-25)
"American inspections of foreign food facilities — which produce everything from crawfish to cookies for the U.S. market — have plummeted to historic lows this year, a ProPublica analysis of federal data shows, even as inspections reveal alarming conditions at some manufacturers.
"About two dozen current and former Food and Drug Administration officials blame the pullback on deep staffing cuts under the Trump administration. The stark reduction marks a dramatic shift in oversight at a time when the United States has never been more dependent on foreign food, which accounts for the vast majority of the nation’s seafood and more than half its fresh fruit."
• ‘Bow to the Emperor’: We Asked 50 Legal Experts About the Trump Presidency (Emily Bazelon, NY Times, 10-6-25) Before the election, we surveyed the legal establishment about what a second Trump term could mean for the rule of law. A year later, they’re very, very worried.
In Trump’s Justice Department, "retribution has been institutionalized. In February, Bondi created a “weaponization working group” to investigate “abuses of the criminal justice process.” She instructed the group to look into people who prosecuted Trump.To the dismay of some of our respondents, the head of the working group, Ed Martin, promised to smear the reputations of any targets he couldn’t indict. “In a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are ashamed,” Martin said in May.
Before Trump’s re-election, many of our respondents expressed faith in the government’s system of checks and balances to do what it historically had done: provide a necessary corrective to the potential overreach of any other branch. Now all 50 believe that Congress... is doing very little — or nothing at all — to fulfill its role of restraining the president.
“The greatest threat,” said Stuart Gerson, an assistant attorney general for President George H.W. Bush, “comes with the probability that the president is on the road to assuming autocratic powers and that the Congress has allowed its countervailing constitutional powers to wither.”
• As James Mattis, Trump's first defense secretary, said in June 2020, "Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us."
• Trump’s Eye-Popping Postelection Windfall (Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker, The Atlantic, One Story to Read, 11-25)
Even though his final campaign ended a year ago, the president hasn’t stopped fundraising. On the morning after he won a second term as president, he told his chief fundraiser to "Keep going." By August, Trump estimated that he had collected at least $1.5 billion since the election, more than all the money raised to support his 2024 campaign over two years, including funds raised by supportive independent super PACs. As of November 2025, the tally was approaching $2 billion. Nothing on this scale was ever attempted by a sitting president prior to Trump. Much of the money has come from people or entities that have business before the government. Trevor Potter, a former Republican chair of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, told the Atlantic: “The president’s seemingly insatiable drive for money from corporations and billionaires seeking government favors (or merely hoping to procure protection from Trump attacks on their business interests) sends a clear signal to everyday Americans that their needs come far behind those of the ultrawealthy who are buying access and favor.”
• How the Capitalism of the 1980s Created Donald Trump’s Theory of the State ( Kim Phillips-Fein via The Nation, Bunk History, 10-4-25) The proliferation of privately held companies during the Reagan years laid the foundations for Trump’s approach to government. Trump's politics and his appeal are not only inspired by far-right ideologies, culture-war passions, age-old xenophobic prejudices, and a long-standing Republican animus toward the welfare state; they emerge out of a capitalist order that has ceased to be constrained by any of the institutional, intellectual, or professional limits that defined corporate capitalism in an earlier era.
The financiers, tech bros, and megalomaniacal entrepreneurs of today's Republican Party are no longer accountable to the bureaucratic corps of middle managers that populated the mid-20th-century corporations or to large numbers of external shareholders. The authority of the private executive over the firm that he owns is echoed in Trump's habit of governing by executive order, his penchant for making "deals," and his ability to win the allegiance of tech billionaires like Elon Musk, who also believe in the need to free corporate founders from the hassle of answering to regulators or shareholders.
• The Presidential Fitness Test Won’t Make America ‘Tough’ Again (Shelly McKenzie via Zócalo Public Square, Bunk History, 10-23-25)
The Trump administration Is borrowing from a failed cold-war era playbook.
• The Historical Precedents for Trump’s Gaza Plan (Heather Penatzer via Compact, Bunk History, 10-10-25)
• Donald Trump’s Deep-State Wrecking Ball (Andy Kroll, New Yorker, 10-17-25) Co-published as The Shadow President with ProPublica.
"Russell Vought is using the White House budget office to lay waste to the federal bureaucracy—firing workers, decimating agencies, and testing the rule of law.
'From the wholesale gutting of federal agencies to the ongoing government shutdown, Russell Vought has drawn the road map for Trump’s second term. Vought has consolidated power to an extent that insiders say they feel like “he is the commander in chief.”
"What Vought has done in the nine months since Trump took office goes much further than slashing foreign aid. Relying on an expansive theory of presidential power and a willingness to test the rule of law, he has frozen vast sums of federal spending, terminated tens of thousands of federal workers and, in a few cases, brought entire agencies to a standstill. In early October, after Senate Democrats refused to vote for a budget resolution without additional health care protections, effectively shutting down the government, Vought became the face of the White House’s response. On the second day of the closure, Trump shared an AI-generated video that depicted his budget director — who, by then, had threatened mass firings across the federal workforce and paused or canceled $26 billion in funding for infrastructure and clean-energy projects in blue states — as the Grim Reaper of Washington, D.C.
“We work for the president of the United States,” a senior agency official who regularly deals with the OMB told me. But right now “it feels like we work for Russ Vought. He has centralized decision-making power to an extent that he is the commander in chief.”
“DOGE is underneath the OMB,” Michelle Martin, an official with Citizens for Renewing America, a grassroots group founded by Vought, said in May, according to a video of her remarks. “Honestly, a lot of what Elon began pinpointing ... was at the direction of Russ.”
• Corruption: Trump and the GOP (Quora, 362 contributors)
Documenting all instances of corruption in the Trump administration and GOP (illustrations often in poor taste, but hard to argue with the list).
• Trump’s DEI Executive Order: Only the Beginning of Attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (Mel Wilson, National Association of Social Workers, 10-22-24)
'President Trump’s DEI Executive Order has an official title of “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.” That title leaves nothing to the imagination about how deeply Trump and his administration loathes DEI as a concept and its objectives. Furthermore, the use of venomous terms such as “demonstrated immense public waste and shameful discrimination”—in the preamble of the document—to describe former President Biden’s DEI program reflects a purposeful distortion of the historic nature of DEI as envisioned in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. :To that point, is the manipulative distortion of the meaning of “discrimination” by suggesting—in the context of the DEI Executive Order—that DEI gives special preferences to people of color, women, LGBTQ+ and others in hiring processes. In the thinking of anti-DEI advocates, excluding whites from such “preferences” is tantamount to discriminating against whites. In that racial discrimination is a violation of civil rights laws, the far-right have reasoned that DEI is discriminatory."
• The Power Map of the Trump Regime (Robert Reich, 10-17-25) Who really works for whom?
• Trump’s illegal executions (Robert Reich,10-24-25) You or I could be next. The United States is now executing people on the high seas whom Trump calls “enemy combatants.” He’s doing so without a declaration of war, without input from Congress, and without any findings that they pose a threat to the United States. At this moment, Secretary of Defense (or Secretary of War, as Trump prefers) Pete Hegseth is positioning warships, including an aircraft carrier, and planes in waters off Latin America.
Hegseth has already bombed 10 boats, eight of them in the Caribbean and two others this week in the eastern Pacific. So far, the death toll is 43.
It is illegal, under domestic and international law, to deliberately target civilians who are not directly participating in hostilities — even if they are suspected criminals. Now, Trump is summarily executing people suspected of being drug dealers, without any proof. Trump claims that the attacks are not murder because he has “determined” that the boats are smuggling drugs, that they are being run by drug cartels, that drug trafficking by cartels constitutes an armed attack on the United States, and that the United States is now engaged in a formal armed conflict with the cartels. As a result, he reasons, the boat crews are “enemy combatants” and can be executed.
What if Trump “determines” that anyone he dislikes — immigrants, Democrats, student protesters — is an “enemy combatant?” He has already referred to the “enemy within” the United States — in characterizing domestic political opponents, including government officials, critics, activists, and protesters.
---Assessing the Facts and Legal Questions About the U.S. Strikes on Alleged Drug Boats (Alan Jaffe, FactCheck.org, 10-30-25)
“The goal of these drug cartels is to make money, not to terrorize Americans. The appropriate way to deal with suspected drug traffickers is not to blow them up but rather to arrest and prosecute them, either in the United States or in their own countries,” he said. Michael Becker, an assistant professor at Trinity College Dublin School of Law, told BBC Verify.
“The fact that U.S. officials describe the individuals killed by the U.S. strike as narco-terrorists does not transform them into lawful military targets. … The U.S. is not engaged in an armed conflict with Venezuela or the Tren de Aragua criminal organization.”
--- Pete Hegseth’s Secret History (Jane Mayer, News Desk, New Yorker, 12-1-24) A whistle-blower report and other documents suggest that Trump’s nominee to run the Pentagon was forced out of previous leadership positions for financial mismanagement, sexist behavior, and being repeatedly intoxicated on the job.
• President Trump Announces Plans for New ‘Trump Class’ Warships (NY Times roundup, 12-22-25) New warships: President Trump said on Monday that the Navy would build two new “Trump Class” warships, with the eventual goal of acquiring 25. The announcement was the latest example of the president rebranding an aspect of the federal government in his image. The Navy secretary, John Phelan, called the vessels “just one piece of the president’s golden fleet that we’re going to build.” [Note added: aka "golden fleece"]
---20 U.S. Boat Strikes in Three Months (David A. Graham, Atlantic Daily, 11-13-25) The Trump administration is trying to treat its extrajudicial killings at sea as routine, even as more concerns emerge from the people who know the most about them. First, the Pentagon has not generally provided evidence for its claims, other than to cite “intelligence,” and the administration’s pattern of misleading and outright lying makes it hard to give it the benefit of the doubt. Second, even if the intelligence is correct, these people have not been convicted in any court, which makes their deaths extrajudicial killings. Third, even if they had been found guilty, no federal law establishes the death penalty for drug trafficking. One useful way to understand the boat strikes might be to compare them to threatened or executed National Guard deployments in several U.S. cities. What has become clear since is that the real goal is aggressive enforcement of immigration laws. Similarly, drug interdiction may just be an excuse for broader actions in Latin America.
• Inside the Deportation Machine (Raj Saha, Zach Levitt and Albert Sun, NY Times, 12-22-25--Removals, illustrated and interactive) How ICE has moved thousands of people through detention and out of the country. As border crossings dried up, Mr. Trump lifted restrictions on whom immigration officers could target elsewhere in the country.
"Officials have closed the border to asylum-seekers. They have unleashed immigration officers, often wearing masks, to make arrests on city streets. They have revoked legal status from recent arrivals. They have built new tent camps and re-opened prisons to hold immigrant detainees. They have pushed foreign leaders to accept deportees and local officials to allow ICE agents into their facilities and databases.
"As the crackdown progresses and the border remains essentially closed, both the people targeted for deportation and their journeys through the system now look very different, a New York Times analysis of government data shows. The data, which includes every arrest, detention stay and deportation conducted by ICE, was obtained through a lawsuit and made available by the Deportation Data Project, an academic group."
• Trump and the Presidency That Wouldn’t Shut Up (Jill Lepore, New Yorker, 10-27-25) His posts and rants are omnipresent, ugly, and unhinged. Don’t look to history to make it make sense.
• The Race to Save America’s Democracy (Garry Kasparov, The Atlantic, 9-28-25) Trump’s administration may seem chaotic, but Americans should not take the integrity of next year’s elections for granted. Donald Trump likes to say he doesn’t actually lose elections–only the “rigged” ones. Such comments are not mere bluster, like the president’s boasts about golf. They are threats to democracy, which is more fragile than many Americans may realize.
"Although Trump himself may operate on instinct, his more disciplined advisers are masterminding a steady accumulation of power. The very bedrock of American democracy—free and fair elections—is under threat. Already there is talk of redrawing district maps, banning mail-in ballots and electronic-voting machines, and rewriting voting rules. If the administration is allowed to continue on this path, Americans should not take the integrity of next year’s midterms for granted."
• With no takers yet, White House meets with colleges still weighing an agreement with Trump (Associated Press, 10-17-25)
The University of Virginia turned down a proposal from President Donald Trump's administration that invited selected universities to make commitments aligned with Trump's political priorities in exchange for favorable access to research funding. It was the latest effort by Trump’s administration to bring to heel prestigious universities that conservatives describe as hotbeds of liberalism.
• When Authoritarianism Looms, Old Friends Reunite (NY Times, Opinion, 9-11-25)
David Brooks, E.J. Dionne Jr. and Robert Siegel take a temperature check on Trump’s second term. "To me, what we're looking at is not a momentary shift to authoritarianism, but a generational shift toward savagery. What I worry about is the complete deterioration of the global order.
• Trump's power to deploy National Guard, explained (Jaclyn Diaz, Juliana Kim, Morning Edition, NPR, 10-7-25)
President Trump is bucking tradition and legal precedent in pushing to deploy the National Guard to Democratic-led cities such as Portland, Ore., and Chicago due to what he says is rampant crime and to support his crackdown on illegal immigration.
'Legal experts say Trump is testing the limits of presidential authority by using the rarely used statute to deploy federal troops to American cities without state approval. And the legal tactic is getting mixed results in federal court.
"It's not about whether the federal government should have this authority at all. It's about whether the federal government should be able to use these authorities based on what really appear to be completely contrived claims about the situation on the ground," said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center for Justice. "This law hasn't been used in this way before, by any previous president."
• Supreme Court rules against Trump in National Guard case (Nina Totenberg, Kat Lonsdorf, All Things Considered, NPR, 12-23-25)
"The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against President Trump on Tuesday, refusing to reinstate, for now, Trump's ability to send National Guard troops into Illinois over the objections of its governor. The administration argued in its appeal in October that it needed to federalize the National Guard to stop what Trump has said is unremitting violence against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at detention facilities in the Chicago area. But two lower courts ruled against Trump's claim that the protests in the Chicago area constituted a "rebellion or danger of rebellion" against the United States government that the president has the right to put down.
The court's action is one of only a handful of such "emergency docket" cases in which the conservative court has ruled against Trump since he began his second term as president almost a year ago. Many legal experts thought this emergency decision would take days or weeks, not months, as ended up being the case. It's unclear why it took so long.
"The court wrote that the president failed to explain why the situation in Illinois warranted an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act that limits the military's ability to execute laws on U.S. soil. It's the first time the highest court has weighed in on the controversial deployments. While the decision does not set precedent, it brings some clarity about the president's power to deploy federal military resources."
• The Trump Administration’s Favorite Tool for Criminalizing Dissent (Quinta Jurecic, The Atlantic, 11-18-25)
Federal prosecutors have charged more than 100 people with Section 111 violations. Was their crime anything more than opposing Trump’s immigration policies? As the government continues to attempt mass deportations, that law, Section 111 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, has become a favored tool of the Justice Department for painting opposition to immigration enforcement as a corrosive, lawless force. The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security often describe these cases in exaggerated language, even referring to defendants as “domestic terrorists,” though the law has nothing to do with terrorism.
• My travels through Chicago: teargas, resistance and Trump’s big immigration crackdown (Oliver Laughland, The Guardian, 10-3-25)
The Broadview immigration processing centre, a two-storey brick structure in the Chicago suburbs, is "a focal point in the resistance to Donald Trump’s recent immigration crackdown in the city, portentously dubbed Operation Midway Blitz. It is here, following arrest, that hundreds of people targeted for deportation are brought to languish in squalid conditions before being sent to detention centres around the country."
"Chicago is among the handful of Democratic strongholds where Donald Trump has pledged to deploy the military amid false claims of rising crime."
And other features of Trump's second term:
• I’ve been through government shutdowns. This one is radically different. (Robert Reich, 10-2-25) "There have been eight shutdowns since 1990. Trump has now presided over four. But this shutdown — the one that began yesterday morning — is radically different.
"The big ugly fundamentally altered the priorities of the United States government. It cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act — with the result that health insurance premiums for tens of millions of Americans will soar starting in January.
"The big ugly also cut nutrition assistance and environmental protection, while bulking up immigration enforcement and cutting the taxes of wealthy Americans and big corporations."
As a practical matter, the U.S. government has been “shut down” for over eight months, since Trump took office a second time.
Trump and the sycophants surrounding him — such as Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and, before him, Elon Musk and his DOGE — have had no compunctions about shutting down parts of the government they don’t like — such as USAID.
In fact, the eagerness of Trump and his lapdogs over the last eight months to disregard the will of Congress and close whatever they want of the government offers another reason why Democrats shouldn’t cave in.
• Trumpian Corruption Is Worse Than Ukrainian Corruption (Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic, 12-7-25) Ukraine is fighting for its survival. Drones and missiles hit Ukrainian cities most nights. Many Ukrainians nevertheless want, even now, to have a government that’s accountable to the public. Meanwhile, American and Russian kleptocrats are circling the country, looking for ways to make deals that benefit themselves. '
• A Great Unraveling Is Underway (Thomas L. Friedman, NY Times, 3-11-25) And to repeat:
"If you are confused by President Trump’s zigzagging strategies on Ukraine, tariffs, microchips or a host of other issues, it is not your fault. It’s his. What you are seeing is a president who ran for re-election to avoid criminal prosecution and to get revenge on people he falsely accused of stealing the 2020 election. He never had a coherent theory of the biggest trends in the world today and how to best align America with them to thrive in the 21st century. That is not why he ran.
"And once he won, Trump brought back his old obsessions and grievances — with tariffs and Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky and Canada — and staffed his administration with an extraordinary number of fringe ideologues who met one overriding criterion: loyalty first and always to Trump and his whims over and above the Constitution, traditional values of American foreign policy or basic laws of economics.
"The result is what you are seeing today: a crazy cocktail of on-again-off-again tariffs, on-again-off-again assistance for Ukraine, on-again-off-again cuts in government departments and programs both domestic and foreign — conflicting edicts all carried out by cabinet secretaries and staff members who are united by a fear of being tweeted about by Elon Musk or Trump should they deviate from whatever policy line emerged unfiltered in the last five minutes from our Dear Leader’s social media feed."
• (February 2025)
For example: Blaming the victim Trump tells Zelensky: "You have allowed yourself to be in a very bad position." This is classic abuser rhetoric—blaming the victim for their suffering. The implication is that Ukraine itself is responsible for being occupied by Russia and for the deaths of its people.
• Musk and Trump and their AI master race (Lucian K. Truscott IV, 12-18-25)
"Elon Musk was part of OpenAI when it was dedicated to research and the development of ways AI could be used to benefit humanity. He parted ways with OpenAI when it dropped its “open” nature and became a “closed” machine with the goal of growth and making profits. Musk told a story that the reason for his break with OpenAI was about ideological bias, but it was really all about money.
"Musk’s greed, and the greed of Trump and men like him has no limit. It is inhuman. We need human beings. We don’t need Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Their dreams of a master race comprised of high IQ individuals with perfect genes will die of its own airless idiocy or fail because it is inhuman. Perfection is a series of mistakes that collects incremental bits of wisdom in a process that never ends. Progress is never quite getting where you want to go. You end up where life takes you. That’s how you know you’re human."
• How Trump avoided punishment for his felony convictions
(William Brangham and Ali Schmitz, PBS News Hour, 1-10-25)
Judge Juan Merchan granted the president-elect what's called an unconditional discharge, a sentence that affirms he is a convicted felon, but faces no further penalties, fines or any time in jail.
Merchan said that, if Donald Trump had been a regular citizen, a regular defendant, that he would have likely have faced much harsher punishment for those crimes. But because Donald Trump is about to become president of the United States again, that comes with the enormous protections, the judge said. Those are granted by the Constitution, many other courts, and most recently interpreted again by the Supreme Court last year. They do not reduce the seriousness of the crime or justify its commission in any way. The protections are, however, a legal mandate, which, pursuant to the rule of law, this court must respect and follow.They do not reduce the seriousness of the crime or justify its commission in any way. The protections are, however, a legal mandate, which, pursuant to the rule of law, this court must respect and follow.
Was this his reason to run for office again?
• Timeline: Manhattan DA's Stormy Daniels hush money case against Donald Trump (Aaron Katersky and Peter Charalambous, video by Jessie DiMartino, ABC News, 10-28-25)
"Donald Trump was found guilty in May 2024 on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records after being indicted the previous year by a Manhattan grand jury, making him the first former president in American history to have been convicted of a crime.
"Prosecutors alleged that Trump engaged in a "scheme" to boost his chances during the 2016 presidential election through a series of hush money payments made by others and the falsification of New York business records to cover up that alleged criminal conduct. In 1923, a grand jury heard testimony about Trump's hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, sources tell ABC News, including testimony from Pecker, the longtime Trump confidant. The DA's office also has the cooperation of Cohen.
---Trump defends 130K reimbursement for Stormy Daniels payment as 'very common among celebrities' (Lucien Bruggeman and John Santucci, ABC News, 5-3-18) But he denies having an affair with the porn star.
'• Anatomy of Two Giant Deals: The U.A.E. Got Chips. The Trump Team Got Crypto Riches. (Eric Lipton, David Yaffe-Bellany Bradley, Hope Tripp Mickle, and Paul Mozur, Reporting from Washington, New York, London, Dubai, San Francisco and Taiwan, NY Times, 9-15-25)
"A lucrative transaction involving the Trump family’s cryptocurrency firm and an agreement giving the Emiratis access to A.I. chips were connected in ways that have not been previously reported. At the heart of their relationship are two multibillion-dollar deals. One involved a crypto company founded by the Witkoff and the Trump families that benefited both financially. The other involved a sale of valuable computer chips that benefited the Emirates economically.
"While there is no evidence that one deal was explicitly offered in return for the other, the confluence of the two agreements is itself extraordinary. Taken together, they blurred the lines between personal and government business and raised questions about whether U.S. interests were served.
• Trump Administration Litigation Tracker (Lawfare Media) This project includes two tables that follow legal challenges to the actions from the Trump administration.
Email tips@lawfaremedia.org to submit a case or correction.
• Really? Qatar gets its own air force facility inside the United States? Why? (Robert Reich, 10-11-25)
At a time when Trump has all but declared war on the “enemy within” America, and is busy kicking immigrants out of the nation and isolating America from the rest of the world — what does the Trump family get out of its deal to give Qatar its own facility inside the nation?
"Trump has claimed that Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group, is “very smart.” That whales are being killed by windmills. That he won all 50 states in 2020. That he defeated Barack Obama in 2016. That the outgoing chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be executed. The most telling evidence of Trump’s growing dementia is found in his paranoid thirst for revenge, on which he is centering his entire presidential campaign."
• Crime in the Cabinet (Doug Muder, Weekly Sift, 12-1-25)
“Kill everybody”. Since September 2, the Trump regime has launched at least 21 attacks against boats on the high seas that it claimed were smuggling drugs, killing at least 83 people. Friday, that story got even worse, when the Washington Post published a report that Defense Secretary Hegseth had given a “kill everybody” order for the first attack. Two people survived the initial attack and were clinging to the wreckage when a second attack was ordered. It blew the survivors to bits.
"If true, that incident is a clear war crime attributed to a specific person, Hegseth. [A]ttacking the boats achieved nothing that couldn’t have been achieved without killing people. Instead, the Trump regime chose to kill 83 people. Remember: Smuggling drugs is not a capital crime. Even if the alleged smugglers had been captured and given due process, they could not have legally been sentenced to death.... Again, those boats could be stopped without blowing them up or killing anybody.
“Second, the regime stretches the definition of “war” to cover this operation. The drug cartels, say Hegseth and Trump, are like ISIS or Al Qaeda. This is typical of the way the regime perverts language, so that reminding soldiers of their legal responsibility not to follow unlawful orders is “sedition”, or individuals deciding to cross our border is an “invasion”.
“Smuggling has been part of the American economy since before the Revolution, from British tea to Prohibition whiskey to Colombian cocaine. It has never been considered an act of war. Those 83 people on those fishing boats were not soldiers and were not at war with the United States. They’re murder victims.”
• My Lai, William Calley, and Donald Trump (Eugene L Meyer, Substack, 9-25-25)
"[T]he U.S. military under Trump administration orders summarily executed 17 alleged drug traffickers on three boats in the high seas off the coast of Venezuela, with whom we are not at war, despite Trump’s assertions to the contrary....
"The U.S. military members who carried out the attacks did so at the direction of Trump and [Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth, who has previously stated that, regardless of the lawful rules of engagement, shoot to kill....
"Hegseth has eviscerated the corps of lawyers – JAG (for Judge Advocate Generals) – whose job it is to advise the military on the rule of law, including whether presidential orders are legal. Under U.S. law and a long line of precedents, our military must adhere to a strict code of conduct on engagements with civilians as well as enemy combatants.
"In his confirmation hearing, Hegseth complained about “burdensome rules of engagement.”
As a young lieutenant in the National Guard in Iraq in 2005, David Ignatius has written in The Washington Post, “his platoon was advised not to shoot someone carrying a rocket-propelled grenade unless it was ‘pointed at you with the intent to fire.’” Hegseth told his platoon, “That’s a bullshit rule that’s going to get people killed,” and ordered them to “destroy the threat.”
..."More than half a century ago, the military prosecuted and convicted Lt. William Calley for the murder of “not less than 22” unarmed Vietnamese in the hamlet of My Lai on March 16, 1968. In December 1973 the conviction was upheld in a 2-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Military Appeals, a mostly obscure tribunal that I covered then for The Washington Post.
"Calley had many defenders, but his crimes once exposed were also widely condemned. Even though his sentence was reduced, he was never pardoned. The current Supreme Court has granted Trump (and possibly those following his directives) virtual absolute immunity. Unlike in Calley’s case, today no such legal reckoning is likely to occur."
• Scientists Say Trump Distorts Facts on Autism, Tylenol, and Vaccines (Amy Maxmen, Clinical Advisor, 9-25-25) Scientists involved in autism research respond to Pres. Trump's claim that Tylenol causes autism. Helen Tager-Flusberg, director of the Center for Autism Research Excellence at Boston University, called Trump’s comments dangerous. Fevers can harm the mother and the developing fetus, she said, adding that fevers are more strongly associated with autism than Tylenol.
Soon after Robert F. Kennedy Jr was confirmed as health secretary, he called autism “preventable,” pointed to “environmental toxins,” and contradicted the results of a CDC study finding that the main driver of rising autism diagnoses was that doctors increasingly recognize the disorder. The Trump administration is eroding scientists’ ability to probe the safety of pharmaceuticals, said Robert Steinbrook, head of health research at Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer protection group.
• Trump, RFK Jr. distort facts on autism, Tylenol and vaccines, scientists say: "Sick to my stomach" (Amy Maxmen, CBS News, 9-23-25) Mr. Trump and Kennedy promised this year that under their leadership the federal government would swiftly figure out what causes autism. Scientists who work in the field have been skeptical, noting that decades of research has shown that no single drug, chemical, or other environmental factor is strongly linked to the developmental disorder. In addition, both Mr. Trump and Kennedy have repeated the scientifically debunked notion that childhood vaccines may cause autism.
---As the administration focuses on autism, many in the community say they need support, not a ‘cure’ (Amanda Musa, Lily Hautau, Nayeli Jaramillo-Plata, Gordon Ebanks, CNN, 9-24-25) The president’s claims are raising concerns among some people with autism and their loved ones, who say his remarks cast blame on mothers, re-stigmatize those with autism and ignore the support needed for families and individuals dealing with autism.
• DOE to drop accessibility requirement for buildings receiving federal funds (Facebook post, 7-17-25)
On top of everything else that's going on in America, the DOE (Department of Energy) said that they would no longer be requiring *federally funded* buildings to meet accessibility standards. They rescinded a long standing rule under section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that required any buildings receiving federal funding to be accessible and said that it was *"UNNECESSARY AND UNDULY BURDENSOM"*.
Disability-rights advocates say the agency is misusing the fast-track process. Direct final rules are intended for uncontroversial regulatory actions, like changing the name of a program, they say, not for rescinding a rule that's required under federal statute, as this one is.
"The Department of Energy's decision … is a direct attack on disability rights and part of a broader pattern of civil rights rollbacks aligned with Trump-era policies," Robyn Powell, an assistant professor at Stetson University College of Law, told Mother Jones.
Remember, at any point in time you can become disabled.
• Liar! (Facebook post, Occupy Democrats, 9-15-24) Donald Trump lands in UK for second visit, gets BRUTAL surprise!
Our would-be despot has travelled to the United Kingdom for a second state visit, and the British are none too pleased at the news. Britain’s Channel 4 news network is planning to dedicate the entirety of its Wednesday night programming to exposing and debunking Trump’s incessant lies with what they’re calling “the longest uninterrupted reel of untruths, falsehoods and distortions ever broadcast on television”.
• Roundtable: How to Cover Science During Sociopolitical Disruption (The Open Notebook, 9-16-25)
Since the beginning of 2025, many journalists have found themselves in one of the toughest phases of their careers. The second Trump administration has systematically dismantled the practice of science in the U.S. Entire government agencies are under attack, as mass layoffs, budget cuts, or reorganizations have crippled the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Weather Service, the Department of Agriculture, and more.
Here's a roundtable discussion with five journalists whose coverage of science has been upended by the current U.S. administration. Between assignments, they shared the challenges they’ve faced while reporting in recent months, and some of the workarounds they’ve found to disentangle fact from fiction, work with hesitant sources, and strike the right balance between science and politics.
Many science journalists who once spent much of their time writing about incremental scientific developments and the obscure minutiae of academia have become, sometimes reluctantly, full-time policy reporters. In fact, reporters of all stripes are being tasked with chronicling the fallout of the most rapid and comprehensive change in the American scientific enterprise in recent history.
• RFK Jr. Has Declared Full-Blown War on CDC (Lawrence Gostin, MedPage Today, 9-9-25)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr's "long record of fomenting distrust of vaccines and purveying false and misleading health information -- and now even stoking animus against career scientists -- is shaping national policy. The consequences are reverberating across America's most venerable scientific institutions like the FDA and NIH. But there is no agency where the damage is so palpable and enduring than the CDC, America's frontline agency against health threats."
• Trump’s central role in Comey case may become key to defense strategy (Salvador Rizzo and Jeremy Roebuck, Washington Post, 9-27-25)
"The president overruled prosecutors who declined to bring charges in the case and has heavily criticized the former FBI director in public comments. Comey, who was indicted Thursday, is the first former senior government official to be charged in Trump’s campaign of retribution against his political opponents, but he may not be the last. Legal experts said they could not recall another instance in which a president appeared to overrule a Justice Department charging decision.
"Whatever the outcome of Comey’s case, it won’t be the only test of Trump’s power to direct federal prosecutors. The president has also urged the Justice Department to pursue criminal charges against other perceived political foes, including New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California), former CIA director John Brennan, and John Bolton, Trump’s first-term national security adviser." Trump’s insistence that the former FBI director be prosecuted is proof that his co-opting of the Department of Justice is now complete.
• CDC's No-Bid Contract on Vaccine-Autism Study Raises Alarm (Judy George, MedPage Today, 9-15-25)
The HHS intention to award a sole source contract to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) to study an association between vaccinations and autism raised concerns from autism researchers.
• Jerrold M. Post CIA psychological profiler who labeled Trump ‘dangerous’ dies of covid-19 at 86 (Sydney Trent, Washington Post, 12-5-2020) “The dangerous, destructive charismatic leader polarizes and identifies an outside enemy and pulls his followers together by manipulating their common feelings of victimization,” Post said in a December 2019 interview.
• New CA Bill Could Punish Educators for Discussing Israel’s Genocide in Gaza (@DropSiteNews)
"Teacher unions (CTA, CFT, CFA), civil rights groups, and 100+ grassroots orgs are sounding the alarm over AB 715 — a bill passed overnight that gives a governor-appointed 'Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator' sweeping power to police classrooms."
"AB 715 will chill classroom discussion of Israel/Palestine by tying California policy to Trump and Biden's antisemitism strategy, which endorses the IHRA definition — a framework that conflates constitutionally protected criticism of Israel, including calling it a settler-colonial or apartheid state, with antisemitism."
• President Trump sues Penguin Random House (Jane Friedman,The Bottom Line, 9-17-25)
"Released in November 2024 by Penguin Press, How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success by Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig, "draws on 20 years of Trump’s confidential tax information and returns. The book was written by New York Times journalists, and the NYT and the journalists themselves are being sued alongside Penguin Random House. Trump says the book and New York Times articles are defamatory and written with actual malice, and he’s seeking $15 billion in damages. Both the NYT and PRH have released statements saying the suit is without merit and meant to intimidate. Learn more. This is not the first time Trump has sued a publisher; so far none of his lawsuits against publishers have been successful."
• 'Times' Journalists Puncture Myth Of Trump As Self-Made Billionaire (Terry Gross interviews investigative reporters Susanne Craig and David Barstow, who say the president received today's equivalent of $413 million from his father's real estate empire, through what appears to be tax fraud. See also Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father (Susanne Craig and David Barstowand Russ Buettner, NY Times, 10-2-18) The president has long sold himself as a self-made billionaire, but a Times investigation found that he received at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire, much of it through schemes to avoid paying taxes on multimillion dollar gifts in the family.
• David R. Yale’s Real & Unbiased News Sources (David R. Yale, on Bluesky: Starter pack by @davidryale.bsky.social)
101 news sources that are not bought, controlled, or influenced by fat-cat billionaires. Includes a few unusual sources like @indivisible.org and @peoplepowerunited that give news on a specific issue and suggest actions you can take. Links to more stories.
• How Trump buried his school transcript, days after challenging Obama’s academic record (Michael Miller, The Independent, 3-6-19)
'Days after Donald Trump challenged president Barack Obama to “show his records” to prove that he hadn’t been a “terrible student” in 2011, the headmaster at New York Military Academy got an order from his boss: find Mr Trump’s academic records and help bury them.
• Why Seeing Epstein and My Uncle Donald Haunts Me (The Daily Beast podcast, Episode: 611, 11-16-25, 44-minute video)
(The title has been changed to "Epstein at the Wedding."ww
Mary Trump joins Joanna Coles to pull back the curtain on the Trump family and the man at its center. "He was, and remains, the world's most dangerous man because of power given to him by other people." Her lifelong experience with the man, as described here, will not calm your fears about his role in America's future.
"Donald from the beginning has been of use to smarter, more powerful, people, beginning with my grandfather, and for people not paying attention that sort of created an aura. He (Donald, that is) acted as if my grandfather's wealth was actually his wealth, that he was a self-made man, and my grandfather actually helped him construct that story that was fabricated out of whole cloth, and then the New York media ran with it, and the banks threw money at him, and then Mark Barnett rehabilitated him, and then of course the Republican party did. So he went from being somebody who was essentially a tool for other people, whether it was my grandfather, to get the kind of recognition for his business and the kind of wealth he wanted ...to becoming somebody who actually does have real power in the world and is showing himself willing to use it in ways both illegitimate and terrifying."
"She recounts a childhood spent seeing her uncle everywhere, the opulent parties that doubled as power plays, and the lessons learned about a man who thrived on attention and control. Mary dissects Donald’s core pathologies—from his craving for wealth and status to the public slips and impulsive behaviors that now define him. She warns that the real danger isn’t just Trump himself, but the enablers who prop him up and profit from his rise. From her perspective as a clinical psychologist and family insider, Mary asks: when the myth collapses, what happens to those left in its wake?"
---He was always a bully, now he's dangerous' Mary Trump tells all on uncle Donald Trump (YouTube video, The Daily T, Telegraph UK, undated
Labelling her uncle a “narcissist” and “the world’s most dangerous man,” Mary Trump delves into the lasting impact of generational trauma, emotional neglect, and the ruthless ambition that defines the Trump family legacy.
'The superintendent of the private school “came to me in a panic because he had been accosted by prominent, wealthy alumni of the school who were Mr. Trump’s friends” and who wanted to keep his records secret, recalled Evan Jones, the headmaster at the time.'
• Trump said in 2011: “Obama was a terrible student and he shouldn’t have been able to get into the schools he did”. (Quora)
Read the responses. Obama graduated from Harvard Law Magna Cum Laude, which is usually the top 4% of the class. He was also on Law Review and president of Law Review at Harvard. He graduated "with honors" as an undergraduate from Columbia.
Roundups of links to stories about Donald Trump (on Pat McNees's Writers and Editors blog):
Links to all roundups of facts, opinions, and counter-opinions about Trump's presidencies in several blog posts:
---Trump's first term (blog post highlighting points in NY Times opinion piece, 7-19-24)
---Trump stinks: Let me count the ways (blog post, 11-20-20, updated 4-5-22)
---Trump, January 6, opinions vs. facts, indictment, trials, election tactics, political agenda (blog post, 10-12-24)
---'Trump's rampage through democracy' a/k/a Trump's Damaging Initiatives and Priorities (blog post, 4-5-25)
---The problem with Trump's tariffs (blog post, 4-10-25)
---Trump upends tradition of nonpartisan military, alters priorities of U.S. government (blog post, updated 10-6-25)
Includes links to news about the Stormy Daniels case.
---Trump Destroyed USAID. What Happens Now? (blog post, 12-23-25)
See also
---How Project 2025 recommends changing American life (blog post, 10-27-24)