Is there no shame?

A Democratic effort to cancel sweeping protections from I.R.S. audits for President Trump and his family failed In a voice vote on Friday. Bypassing a roll call, a voice vote doesn’t record how individual members voted, allowing them to avoid public criticism.

“The result is an apparently unprecedented and enormously valuable public benefit for the president that has, so far, flown under the radar in Congress has passed into Mr. Trump’s hands without much protest from members of his own party,” The New York Times reported.

Acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, has attempted to cast the audit protection, which would end “any matters currently pending or that could be pending” for a wide range of people, including Trump’s family members and their businesses or “affiliates”, as a typical part of how the I.R.S. settles litigation. The protections would apply to Those protections apply to all tax returns already filed and could extend to the far reaches of the Trump business empire, which has expanded in recent years, as Mr. Trump and his sons have plunged into new ventures, like cryptocurrency., The New York Times has noted.

For doubting Thomases, the gift to the Trumps purposefully flew under the radar while Congress argued over a proposal to establish a $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund that would have been used to compensate Jan. 6 rioters. The Justice Department has said the fund is “not going forward,” but it is still opposing courts taking any action to block the initiative on a more permanent basis and Trump himself has waffled on its future.

What a mess!