A bill clawing back $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which provides funding for NPR and PBS, including OPB, has passed the Senate. It is expected to pass the House next and then to be sent to President Trump for his signature.
Are you and thousands of other Oregonians prepared to start or increase donations to OPB to replace the federal money it now relies on?
Public radio across the country is already begging for money. On July 18, Alyson Brokenshire, Senior Director, Principal and Major Gifts at PBS News Hour sent out a message: “For the first time in history, Congress voted to zero out funding for public media, including PBS News Hour. This decision creates a critical funding challenge for us, but one we can meet with your sustaining support.” WBUR in Boston also sent out a plea on July 18: “Give. Longtime listener or reader? Become a first-time donor at this pivotal moment. Give again. Thank you, a million times over, for being in our corner. Give more. Help us close this $1.6-million funding gap, right now. Give every month. When you become a Sustainer, we know we can rely on you. Month after month. Year after year.”
In fiscal year 2023, government grants to OPB totaled $4,679,653 or 9.5% of the station’s $49,370,988 in revenue from contributions, including sponsorships.[1]
I’m already a sustaining contributor to OPB. I provide ongoing, monthly financial support through automatic deductions from a credit card. I recently increased my monthly donations because of the threats of funding cuts by the Trump administration. Am I prepared to donate even more when those cuts are real?
My sense is that OPB has a tough road ahead if it tries to replace all of the $4,679,653 in annual federal support it now receives.
Current economic uncertainty is one thing likely to impact fundraising. There is already evidence that such uncertainty is leading people to scale back on discretionary spending, including charitable donations.Nonprofit giving in the US has taken a$65 billion hit since 2021, according to Philanthropy.org.
Another reality is that a substantial percentage of America’s private wealth is held by conservative and center-right donors, many of whom are wary of institutions they perceive as liberal, and many of whom see public media as liberal. That perception was recently reinforced by Uri Berliner, a former senior business editor at NPR. In 2024, he wrote a blistering critique of NPR in The Free Press, accusing it of lacking viewpoint diversity and ofa drift towards a progressive ideology
Trump administration officials and members of Congress have piled on, claiming that NPR and PBS push “left-wing propaganda” and accusing them of violating the CPB’s nonpartisan mandate.
Never one to be subtle, Trump has mercilessly blasted public radio and television. “NPR and PBS, two horrible and completely biased platforms (Networks!), should be DEFUNDED by Congress, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote late Wednesday on Truth Social. “Republicans, don’t miss this opportunity to rid our Country of this giant SCAM, both being arms of the Radical Left Democrat Party. JUST SAY NO AND, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
“NPR and PBS have increasingly become radical, left-wing echo chambers for a narrow audience of mostly wealthy, white, urban liberals and progressives,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia)said at a subcommittee hearing earlier this spring,
Could OPB survive without the federal grants or any increase in donations? Probably, but the hit would be hard, though not as hard as the likely hit on KCUW in Pendleton, OR, which relied on federal money for 98% of its revenue in 2023. KCUW is is managed by members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said he secured a deal from the White House that some funding administered by the Interior Department would be repurposed to subsidize Native American public radio stations in about a dozen states, but there’s no firm provision in the bill for that.
The impact of any cut in OPB’s programming would be felt particularly by Oregon and Southern Washington’s more educated and higher income populace (71% of OPB’s TV audience, 82% of OPB’s digital audience and 85% of OPB’s radio audience has attended college). The public broadcast audience also typically falls into higher household income categories and have for years, primarily because households that listen to public media tend to have more formal education.
One potential threat to any OPB fundraising outreach is the changing media landscape and its burgeoning cost.
Not only are media outlets multiplying, but alternative media are increasingly soliciting subscriptions. I have long subscribed to the Wall Street Journal (that subscription alone costs me $779.88 a year) and the New York Times, but added a subscription to Bari Weiss’ Common Sense newsletter, later renamed The Free Press, in 2021. I have since added subscriptions to a raft of other Substack publications with various points of view.
I also make contributions to a number of Oregon and national non-profits, the Ukrainian Freedom Fund, and a Ukrainian news site, The Kyiv Independent. And once in a while I’m a sucker for a GoFundMe plea.
My point is, like many Oregonians, I’m already heavily invested in trying to do good. But there’s a limit. Periodically, I have to cull my subscriptions and donations because the cost gets out of hand. This means reprioritizing. And in the case of public broadcasting, fundraising pleas are going to come from various entities competing against each other for support, including individual programs, such as PBS News Hour, and individual stations, such as OPB and KCUW.
If OPB wants to replace the $4,679,653 in government financing it is set to lose, it is going to have to convince a lot of people to up their giving or chip in for the first time.
This at a time when Oregon’s economy is facing a period of sluggish growth and some signs of weakness, with potential big givers from companies like Intel and Nike under stress and smaller givers uncertain about their economic prospects. President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act is also likely to put pressure on many Oregonians and the state budget and there’s potential harm from Trump’s aggressive tariffs.
All food for thought.
[1] In most instances, sponsorships are considered charitable contributions by the underwriters. On OPB’s IRS Form 990, these sponsorships are included in the $49,370,988 reported as contributions and grants. There is also a small amount of sponsorships that meet the definition of advertising, which primarily occur on OPB’s digital platforms. For FY 23, advertising is included in the program service revenue of $1,381,015 and in unrelated business revenue reported on OPB’s IRS Form 990-T.
For FY 23, advertising is included in the program service revenue of $1,381,015 and in unrelated business revenue reported on our IRS Form 990-T. Sponsorships are not otherwise disclosed on the tax filings. Total revenue was $56,821,607.
Notable Sources of Revenue
$
Percent of Total Revenue
Contributions
$49,370,988
86.9%
Program Services
$1,381,015
2.4%
Investment Income
$3,446,034
6.1%
Bond Proceeds
$0
Royalties
$0
Rental Property Income
$415,851
0.7%
Net Fundraising
$0
Sales of Assets
$2,207,719
3.9%
Net Inventory Sales
$0
Figures are from Form 990 which non-profits are required to file annually with the IRS. These CPB grants are included in the Contributions and Grants revenue of $49,370,988 on OPB’s FY 2023 IRS Form 990. CPB grants are not included in government grants on the Form 990 as CPB is a private, nonprofit corporation, not a government agency.
If President Trump really wants to undermine American influence in Asia, he should insult Asian countries by nominating incompetent and offensive ambassadors to serve there. Oh wait. He’s already doing that.
On July 9, Trump nominated Nick Adams to be the next U.S. Ambassador to Malaysia. Adams was born in Australia, emigrated to the United States in 2012 and became an American citizen in 2021.
Once asked by The Sydney Morning Herald why he had left Australia for the United States, Adams replied: “Because I love guns, hot dogs, chicken fried steak, barbecue, cheerleaders, American football, small town parades, beauty pageants, pickup trucks, muscle cars and 16-lane freeways lined with supersized American flags.”
The New York Times has described him as “an early, fawning supporter of Mr. Trump” and cited his “incendiary rhetoric and vulgar humor that elevated him to political prominence”. Questions have also been raised about his role at the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness, a non-profit he founded in 2016.[1]
A prolific poster on social media (Adams has 625,000 followers on the social media platform X), he is unstinting in his ceaseless praise of Trump. “Just like King David from the Bible, President Trump is a good shepherd, and we are his flock!,” he posted on July 6. “President Trump should be added to Mount Rushmore, he should have a monument built on the National Mall, and he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,” Adams posted on June 24.
He has “amassed a conservative following with his over-the-top ‘alpha male’ persona”, making him “part of an unruly world of online content that primarily appeals to young men, known as the manosphere,” the New York Times reported.
In 2023, Adams posted on X, “I go to Hooters. I eat rare steaks. I lift extremely heavy weights. I read the Bible every night. I am pursued by copious amounts of women. I am wildly successful. I have the physique of a Greek God. I have an IQ over 180. I am extremely charismatic. They hate this,” Adams posted on X in 2023.
Typical of his alpha male shtick, the Washington Post reported he had written about “how if your wife is ‘high-maintenance’ then you’re a ‘loser’ no matter how hot she is,” and at at a Capitol Hill Club Young Republicans gathering in Washington, D.C. , he said “ ‘nasty women’ are coming for two things: your mind and your testicles!”
Adams’ reputation precedes him in Asia. “Having risen to prominence on a wave of machismo, misogyny and crass humour, Mr Adams’ controversial online history includes Islamophobic comments, denigrating Mr Trump’s political rivals as supporters of Islam and railing against purported efforts to “teach Islam in schools,” reported The Straits Times, a Singaporean daily English-language newspaper.
“US President Donald Trump’s nomination of controversial internet personality Nick Adams as the next US ambassador to Malaysia has raised not only eyebrows but also questions about the fiery right-wing influencer’s suitability for the role and the state of relations between Washington and the Muslim-majority nation going forward,” The Straits Times said. Mainly Muslim ethnic Malays form the majority or nearly 60 per cent of the country’s 35 million population.
The South China Morning Post reported that Adams would be “a wrong fit” for Muslim-majority Malaysia which favors quiet diplomacy over headline-grabbing rhetoric.
I’ve lived in Malaysia and I know it is a key United States partner in promoting regional stability and economic growth. That’s particularly the case in its position as the current chair of The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional grouping of states in Southeast Asia “that aims to promote economic and security cooperation among its ten members.”
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has criticized Trump’s long-threatened tariffs as “sharpened instruments of geopolitical rivalry” and has opposed American support for Israel’s actions in Gaza.
“He (Adams) will have to tread a delicate and sophisticated line as the US and Malaysia negotiate trade tariffs, joust over their respective relationships with China and deal with an increasingly unstable geopolitical climate,” reported The Guardian.
The Policy Circle has also pointed out, “The U.S. has a variety of interests at stake in the Asia Pacific region, with pressing diplomatic, national security, and economic considerations, all against the backdrop of increased geopolitical volatility.”
Will any of this matter to the Senate when, or if, it holds a vote on Adams’ nomination?
Probably not, given the slavish behavior of Senate Republicans in pursuing Trump’s agenda.
After all, Charles Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s father-in-law, was confirmed by the Senate as the United States Ambassador to France and Monaco in May by a vote of 51 to 45. This despite his previous conviction and prison sentence for tax evasion, witness tampering, and illegal campaign contributions, for which he was pardoned by President Trump in 2020.
And Trump’s nomination of Kimberly Guilfoyle, a brash former model, former wife of now California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Fox News personality and former fiancée of Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., to serve as Ambassador to Greece appears to be moving along.
Kimberly Guilfoyle speaking at Republican National Convention, July 17, 2024
With these precedents, why block an unqualified, crude, vulgar, Islamophobic alpha male from his confirmation?
[1]The Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness, (FLAG) is a non-profit “dedicated to promoting and providing high-quality civics education that informs students and families about the greatness of America and the power of the American Dream”. Nick Adams is Executive Director. According to a Form 990 filed with the Internal Revenue Service, Adams worked an average of 50 hours per week on Foundation business and was the only paid employee, in 2023 earning $411,209. That was a hefty increase from his 2022 compensation of $248,251. Why do so many of these political funds end up being just vehicles for personal grift?
The Senate has passed its version of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 reconciliation bill – the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the deficit impact , with interest, over the next 10 years will be $4.1 trillion. It would add $5.5 trillion to the nation’s debt if made permanent.
The Committee says the bill is littered with special interest giveaways and new tax and spending entitlements, relies on numerous budget gimmicks, makes the tax code more complicated and less fair and explodes interest costs to nearly $2 trillion per year – including by adding to the debt and pushing up interest rates throughout the economy.
“The Senate took a bill that already borrowed way too much, and took it from bad to worse,” the Committee said. “The Senate expanded the House’s tax breaks, watered down its offsets, introduced new special interest giveaways, and added another trillion dollars onto the price tag.”
DonaldTrump and the Republican Party say the Committee and the Democrats who agree with it are wrong. The White House says the measure will actually cut the deficit by $1.4 trillion.
According to Factcheck.org, the Senate bill includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, extending lower rates passed in 2017 and adding new tax cuts. But Senate Republicans have taken steps to remove consideration of the 2017 tax cuts in determining the bill’s impact on the deficit. Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty, who was presiding over the Senate in April, ruled that Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Senate Budget Committee chair, had the sole authority to decide whether extending the 2017 tax cuts officially adds to the deficit.
Graham and like-minded Senate Republicans have said that because the tax cuts have been in effect and are “current policy,” they are not new and do not add to future deficits.
The U.S. government announces its annual deficit and national debt each year, and often more frequently, such as monthly. The U.S. Treasury Department provides detailed information on the figures.
The national debt is the total amount of money the U.S. government owes from past and present borrowing, while the deficit is the difference between the government’s spending and revenue in a single year.
The TreasuryDirect website publishes data on the national debt, and the U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data website provides information on both the deficit and the debt. Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) releases monthly budget reviews that include the deficit or surplus for that month.
My question – If the Republicans are right, how are they going to explain the increase in the deficit and national debt that likely will be announced down the road if The One Big Beautiful Bill Act eventually gets Trump’s signature? Hmmm. Tis a conundrum.
Maybe they will just mimic Gilda Radner’s character, Emily Litella, on Saturday Night Live. When her misguided rants were challenged she just said, “Never mind”?
It was 1943. By all appearances, Rudolph Höss, his wife, Hedwig, and their five children – Klaus, Heidetraud, Brigitte, Hans-Jürgen and Annegret – had an idyllic life in the Polish countryside. They lived in an exquisite villa with a tranquil garden, a greenhouse and a small swimming pool.
The children played in the yard, Rudolph and Hedwig went about their daily lives and Hedwig adorned herself with lipstick and jewelry.
The Höss family’s backyard (Scene from The Zone of Interest)
But something was amiss.
Hedwig’s clothing and jewels were taken from a Jewish woman on her way to the gas chambers. Beyond the concrete wall at the property’s edge, topped with barbed wire, was a sprawling complex of gas chambers and crematoria known as the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, the largest extermination camp run by the Nazis in Poland during WWII. Rudolph Höss, a German SS officer, was the camp commandant. An estimated 960,000 Jews were killed there.
Women and children deemed “unfit for work” being unknowingly led to gas chamber #3 at Auschwitz, where two thousand people at a time could be murdered. Source: The World Holocaust Remembrance Center
“Human beings did this to other human beings and it’s very convenient for us to try and distance ourselves from them because we think we can never behave this way, but I think we should be less certain than that,” said Jonathan Glazer, the director of a 2024 movie, “The Zone of Interest” that depicted the mundane daily activities of the family at their home during the war.
In the movie, when her husband is transferred to a new post in Germany, Hedwig is enraged. She demands that the family stay at Auschwitz, claiming, “This is the life we’ve always dreamed of.”
It all brings to mind Hannah Arendt’s talk about “the banality of evil”, which she cited when writing about one of Höss’ compatriots, Adolf Eichmann, in her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.
“Never again,” proclaimed the weary idealists, the peace-seekers, the hopeful.
So much for that.
Moises Sotelo, 54, of Newberg, OR was on his way to work at about 5:30 a.m. on June 12 when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers swooped in and took him into custody. According to an ICE detention database, Sotelo was transferred to ICE’s Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington.
Moises Sotelo
“ICE Seattle arrested Moises Sotelo-Casas, 54, who is a citizen of Mexico, as a part of routine federal law enforcement activity that identifies, detains and removes criminal aliens to their country of origin,” ICE Public Affairs Officer David Yost said in a statement. “Sotelo has a criminal conviction for DUI in Newberg, OR, and he will remain in custody pending removal.”
Sotelo’s family sought community support through a GoFundMe account with a $175,000 goal to “Help the Sotelo Family with Expenses After ICE Detainment”. The account had raised $142,751 from 2,100 donations as of June 30.
There was a time when Moises Sotel0’s plight would have generated little public concern and certainly fewer helping hands. .
In 2022, the public perception of an invasion of migrants across the southern border of the United States bore some relation to reality.
U.S. immigration authorities carried out 2.38 million migrant encounters (a term encompassing apprehensions and expulsions) at the southwest border during Joseph Biden’s presidency in FY 2022, according to the Migration Policy Institute. For the first time, not only were there more Venezuelans, Cubans, and Nicaraguans encountered than migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, but there were significant attempted crossings by Brazilians, Ecuadorians, Haitians, Ukrainians, Indians and Turks. Monthly encounters peaked at over 370,000 people in December 2023, nearly 12,000 a day. This isn’t count migrants who crossed the border and escaped detection. (For a better understanding of the brutal migration process, see Footnote 2)
The crescendo of arrivals overwhelmed processing capacities, federal infrastructure, and border communities. As the chaos at the border increased, the public became more hostile to the migrants. Donald Trump exploited that hostility in winning re-election to the presidency in November 2024.
His administration has since initiated vigorous, combative mass deportation efforts that resemble military-style attacks at homes, businesses and public spaces. Masked and heavily armed ICE agents wearing tactical gear and carrying high-powered rifles have been descending on areas in unmarked black SUVs and armored vehicles. Immigrants showing up at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices for routine check-ins are being arrested. “What should be routine appointments are becoming detention traps,” Katrina Kilgren, an immigration attorney and pro tem instructor at the Knight Law Center in Eugene, OR told the Register-Guard newspaper.
Increasingly, ICE has been targeting work sites, such as farms, meat production plants and restaurants, and migrant worker gathering places, such as Home Depot, in immigration sweeps.
In April, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told attendees of the 2025 Border Security Expo in Arizona he wanted the agency to become as efficient at deporting immigrants as e-commerce giant Amazon is at delivering packages. “We need to get better at treating this like a business,” Lyons said, describing his ideal deportation process as “like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.”
In one deportation case reported by the Portland Mercury, Jorge (a pseudonym being used to protect his identity) received a text message on his cell phone in Spanish from ICE in early June.Jorge had immigrated to the US from Nicaragua in late 2021 as an asylum seeker. He has an active asylum case, a work permit, a job, and a young family. The message told him to report to the nearest ICE facility within 12 hours to check in and sign paperwork, or face deportation. After consulting a lawyer, he followed the instructions, only to be detained by ICE agents and sent to a federal detention center in Tacoma, Washington.
ICE was holding about 56,397 people in detention facilities across the country as of June 15, 2025 likely setting a record high, according to TRAC Immigration. Despite the government’s stated goal of pursuing criminals, 40,433 out of 56,397—or 71.7%—held in ICE detention had no criminal record, TRAC Immigration claims. Adams County Detention Center in Natchez, Mississippi held the largest number of ICE detainees so far in FY 2025, averaging 2,166 per day as of June 2025.
The vast majority of ICE detention centers are privately operated and for profit, with companies such as GEO Group and CoreCivic dominant in the space. Tom Homan, Trump’s border adviser, has called for boosting ICE’s detention capacity to at least 100,000 people. In furtherance of that goal, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security posted a request in April asking contractors to submit bids for new detention facilities, transportation, security personnel, medical services and administrative support.
Florida is now turning a remote abandoned mosquito-infested 39-square-mile airport next to Everglades National Park in Florida into the newest migrant prison featuring mostly tents and trailers in sweltering heat and nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz”. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has said the facility will be temporary and have “zero environmental impacts.”
“It’s like a theatricalization of cruelty,” Maria Asuncion Bilbao, Florida campaign coordinator at the immigration advocacy group American Friends Service Committee, told The Associated Press.
President Trump visited the Everglades detention center on July 1, 2025.
The Trump administration has also sent immigrants to detention facilities outside the United States, including to Cuba’s Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo ( CECOT) in El Salvador, where brutal conditions predominate.
The Trump administration is also trying to deport a group of migrants convicted of violent crimes from countries including Cuba, Mexico and Vietnam to South Sudan, a country embroiled in fighting between various political and ethnic groups. In a Travel Advisory, the U.S. Department of State advises: “Violent crime, such as carjackings, shootings, ambushes, assaults, robberies, and kidnappings are common throughout South Sudan, including Juba. Foreign nationals have been the victims of rape, sexual assault, armed robberies, and other violent crimes.”
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s request to allow it to deport migrants to places other than their country of origin, often to countries plagued by violence. The Trump administration wanted the power to do so as part of its effort to discourage illegal migration by threatening to deport migrants a third country with no recourse.
Legal analyst Steve Vladeck told CNN, “…today’s ruling allows the government to remove those individuals and others to any country that will take them—without providing any additional process beyond an initial removal hearing, and without regard to the treatment they may face in those countries.”
To add insult to injury, Semafor reported on July 1 that the Trump administration is thinking about trying to void naturalized immigrants citizenship— potentially starting with New York City mayoral primary winner Zohran Mamdani. Asked about Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles’ proposal to strip Mamdani, who was born in Uganda but became a citizen in 2018, of his legal status, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it’s “something to be investigated.” Semafor reported that GOP leaders are increasingly comfortable with revoking foreign nationals’ visas over their political beliefs or actions, and that may soon extend to citizens.
An American naturalization ceremony
NPR reported on June 30 that the Justice Department is aggressively prioritizing efforts to strip some Americans of their U.S. citizenship, a practice heavily used during there McCarthy era of the late 1940s and early 1950s. “Department leadership is directing its attorneys to prioritize denaturalization in cases involving naturalized citizens who commit certain crimes — and giving U.S. attorneys wider discretion on when to pursue this tactic, according to a June 11 memo published online,” NPR said. Approximately 25 million immigrants are naturalized citizens.
Hans von Spakovsky, with the conservative Heritage Foundation, told NPR he supports the DOJ’s denaturalization efforts. “I do not understand how anyone could possibly be opposed to the Justice Department taking such action to protect the nation from obvious predators, criminals, and terrorists,” he said.
But Trump’s draconian efforts to halt border crossings and deport already settled migrants are now driving a new sympathy for migrants and resistance to ICE’s aggressive deportation efforts.
Even popular podcaster Joe Rogan is raising doubts about Trump’s deportation chaos. “Bro, these ICE raids are fucking nuts, man,” Rogan said in June. ” I don’t think if they, the Trump administration, if they’re running and they said, we’re gonna go to Home Depot and we’re gonna arrest all the people at Home Depot, we’re gonna go to construction sites, and we’re gonna just, like, tackle people at construction sites. I don’t think anybody would have signed up for that. They said, we’re gonna get rid of the criminals and the gang members first, right? And now we’re, we’re seeing, like, Home Depots get raided. Like, that’s crazy.”
Local government officials are raising concerns, too. A group of elected officials in one of Oregon’s most racially diverse counties pushed back Monday against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. (See footnote 3)
“ICE has no place in our neighborhoods,” Cornelius City Councilor Angeles Godinez told OPB in June. “When fear enters our community, trust leaves,” she said. “Without trust, our schools, our cities and even our local economies suffer.”
“To the immigrant community across Oregon, I am one of you, I see you. I know what you’re going through and I stand with you in unwavering solidarity,” said Tigard City Councilor Yi-Kang Hu.
And then there’s the massive cost of Trump’s immigration program, a veritable cornucopia of cash.[1] “If the bill passes, it could make ICE the nation’s largest jailer, Wirth more funding for detention than the entire federal Bureau of Prisons,” according to immigration expert Aaron Reichlin-Melnick.
With the federal deficit already high, and projected to increase to destructive levels under the Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill”, America is going to pay a heavy price for Trump’s deportation fiasco. With the immigration blowout, the Senate-passed a reconciliation bill that would add over $4 trillion to the national debt through Fiscal Year (FY) 2034, $1 trillion more than the House-passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA).
Protests against immigration arrests are multiplying as people rail against government overreach and a majority of Americans now say actions by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have “gone too far,” according to a new PBS News/NPR/Marist poll..
But it’s not enough.
As The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said earlier this year, the Trump administration’s widespread and persistent cruelty, indiscriminate immigration enforcement tactics, wrongful questioning and detention of American citizens, unjust profiling, and abuse of common decency “signals a troubling shift toward a more punitive and dehumanizing approach to immigration enforcement.”
” History has shown us time and time again,” the Leadership Conference said, ” that when communities come together, our collective resistance has the power to rewrite the narrative and create change. While it may feel like we are in the midst of a dark chapter, together, we can write the next one — a chapter where compassion and justice prevail over cruelty and inhumanity. In the end, that’s what defines us — not just as a nation, but as human beings.”
We cannot be the Höss family. We cannot be innocent bystanders. Evil must not triumph. We must resist.
Immigration detention capacity: Expand capacity to detain immigrants taken into custody
$45 bil.
Border wall: Fund border barrier system construction and related activities
$45 bil.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Funding for hiring, training, transportation, facilities and legal resources to carry out immigration enforcement and removals
$31 bil.
State and local grants: Funding for border security, immigration enforcement and major event security. The Senate parliamentarian determined that this provision does not comply with the chamber’s rules, and it may be removed or modified.
$13 bil.
Homeland Security Department funding: For border security and immigration enforcement
$12 bil.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection: Funding to expand workforce and purchase new vehicles and technology
$12 bil.
Border surveillance technology
$6.2 bil.
Department of Justice grants: For state and local immigration and law enforcement
$3.5 bil.
Department of Justice funding: For immigration and other law enforcement
$3.3 bil.
Fund vetting for sponsors of unaccompanied alien children: Through the Office of Refugee Resettlement
$0.3 bil.
2. For a better understanding of what is driving migrants to the United States and who is guiding them through Mexico to the US border, read Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling by Jason De León. In 2015, he began a long-term ethnographic project focused on understanding the daily lives of Honduran smugglers who profit from transporting migrants across the length of Mexico. This 2024 National Book Award-winning story examines the complicated relationship among transnational gangs, the human smuggling industry, and migrant desires for safety and well-being.
3 .An immigration scholar, Austin Kocher, has written a Journalist Resource guide analyzing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrest data, based on datasets published by the Data Deportation Project. His observations are revealing as to the Trump administration’s motives:
“The Trump administration is now demanding that ICE make 3,000 arrests per day. That is to say, ICE did not come close to meeting the quota set in January until June—and even then; only for a few days at a time. To be clear: this is a lot of arrests. I’m not downplaying that. But it’s also clear that the Trump administration’s daily arrest quotas are detached from the reality of what ICE can do—and even more so now that the new quota is 3,000 per day.
This prompts a further question: if these quotas are demonstrably unattainable, why have them? In my view, the answer is simple: the unattainability of the quotas is the point.
An essential component of Donald Trump’s longstanding approach to politics is to invent crises, or exploit existing crises, in ways that ensure they are unsolvable. No amount of funding for immigration enforcement will ever be enough to achieve his mass deportation goals. No amount of power concentrated in the office of the President will ever be sufficient to exercise totalizing control over immigration. The goal is not to solve a real problem, but to manufacture an ever-expanding crisis that justifies ever-expanding unregulated power.”
Donald Trump is no Winston Churchill. He does not, as Oliver Wendell Holmes urged, ” carve every word before you let it fall”. More often than not, when Trump speaks, as Rod Serling said, “You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead – your next stop, the Twilight Zone!”
A collection of Trump’s curious remarks:
o Dec. 15, 2025: A Truth Social post by Trump on the Dec. 14 murder of actor and director Rob Reiner and his wife – “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, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. “
o Dec. 1, 2025: A female reporter to Trump – Can you tell us what they were looking at with the MRI test? What part of the body? Trump: I have no idea. It was just an MRI. It wasn’t the brain because I took a cognitive test and aced it. I got a perfect mark, which you would be incapable of doing.”
o Nov. 28, 2025: “Q: Do you plan to attend Sarah’s funeral? (National Guard soldier killed in DC) TRUMP: I haven’t thought about it yet, but it’s certainly something I can conceive of. I love West Virginia. You know, I won West Virginia by one of the biggest margins of any president anywhere.”
o Nov. 26, 2025: Trump on Truth Social: NOV. 26: The Creeps at the Failing New York Times are at it again. This cheap “RAG” is truly an “ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.” The writer of the story, Katie Rogers, who is assigned to write only bad things about me, is a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out. Despite all of this, I have my highest Poll Numbers, ever.” In late November 2025, Trump’s overall job approval was hovering around 36-38%, hitting new lows for his second term.
o Nov. 17, 2025: Trump speaking at McDonald’s Impact Summit: “As an example, if you take me at 20 for one year, sleepy Joe Biden, you know what he was? Less than one for four years. And if they got elected, they would’ve been at minus 10 because people were moving out of the country in record numbers and welfare and other charges were increasing at levels that nobody has ever seen before. So, you would’ve had double and maybe 50%, maybe literally more than they’ve ever seen.”
“Why is the Gulf of Mexico called the Gulf of Mexico?” I said, “We’re changing the name.” And now it’s the Gulf of America. It has nothing to do with McDonald’s, but maybe it does because it’s very nice… We have 92% of the shoreline, they have 8%. I wouldn’t say I made a lot of friends in Mexico, but they still like me. Wasn’t that a good change? No, seriously, wasn’t that beautiful? “(Fact: The United States controls approximately 45% of the Gulf of Mexico; Mexico claims about 48%; Cuba claims 5%)
“And we got rid of the drip-drip water. We call it the drip-drip where drip-drips out of the sink. States with tremendous water, so much water, they have nothing but problems getting rid. They had restrictions on water. It comes down from heaven, right? They had restrictions on water. So you want to wash your hands or like me, I want to wash my hair. I lather up. Then I turn that and there’s no water. The water’s drip, they call it. “
o Nov. 13, 2025: “Christians and more, think of this, more than twice as likely foster care they’ll adopt the general population. They adopt to it so easily. When they get out, they adopt to it like it’s become second nature. It’s amazing.”
o Nov. 12, 2025: An interview with Fox host Laura Ingraham discussing Trump’s proposal to initiate 50 year mortgages: Q – Is a 50 year mortgage really a good idea? Trump: It’s not even a big deal. You go from 40 years to 50. Ingraham: It’s 30 years. Trump: It’s not even a big deal! You go from 40 to 50 years. And what it means is you pay something less. From 30, some people had a 40, and now they have a 50. You pay it over a long period of time. It’s not like a big factor!”
o Oct. 28, 2025: (1) Trump in a speech to US service members on the USS George Washington, an aircraft carrier stationed in Japan: “I’d like to be an Admiral. I always wanted to be an admiral, to be honest.” (2) “You know, we won the second election (2020) by a lot, so we had to just prove it by winning the third — by too big to rig, I called it. It was too big to rig.” (3) “I ended eight wars in eight months,” including “Kosovo and Serbia, Egypt and Ethiopia.” The facts: The war between Kosovo and Serbia didn’t occur during his presidency, and there was no war between Egypt and Ethiopia for Trump to end. (4) “we have 92% of the shoreline” of the Gulf of Mexico. Fact: There is a roughly even divide in Gulf coastline between Mexico and the US .
o October 27, 2025: Asked by a reporter about an CE raid on a Hyundai battery factory: Q – “Did I hear you right that you said you were opposed to the way that raid in Georgia was handled? Trump: I was opposed to getting them out and before they got out they were pretty well set but before they got out, I said they could stay. They’re going to be coming back.”
o October 19, 2025: “Trees fall down after a short period of time, about 18 months. They become really dry. They become really like a matchstick and they get up. You know, there’s no water pouring through and they become very, very, uh . They just explode. ” So much for the redwoods, I guess.
o Sept. 30, 2025: Sorry, this is a long one. Remarks by President Trump to 800 of the nation’s top military generals and admirals, along with their top enlisted advisors, flown from around the world to Marine Corps Base Quantico – “We were not respected with Biden. They looked at him falling downstairs every day. Every day, the guy is falling downstairs. He said, It’s not our President. We can’t have it. I’m very careful. You know, when I walk downstairs for, like, a month, stairs, like these stairs, I’m very—I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record. Just try not to fall, because it doesn’t work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen and it became a part of their legacy. We don’t want that. You walk nice and easy. You’re not having—you don’t have to set any record. Be cool. Be cool when you walk down, but don’t—don’t pop down the stairs. So one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a President, but he would bop down those stairs. I’ve never seen it. Da-da, da-da, da-da, bop, bop, bop. He’d go down the stairs. Wouldn’t hold on. I said, It’s great. I don’t want to do it. I guess I could do it. But eventually, bad things are going to happen, and it only takes once. But he did a lousy job as president. A year ago, we were a dead country. We were dead. This country was going to hell.”
o Sept. 22, 2025: “Bobby wants to be very careful with what he says. I’m not so careful with what I say. Certain groups, the Amish, as an example – they have essentially no autism.” According to a study cited by the International Society of Autism Research, Preliminary data have identified the presence of ASD in the Amish community at a rate of approximately 1 in 271 children using standard ASD screening and diagnostic tools.
o Sept. 22, 2025: “They’re pumping, it looks like they’re pumping into a horse. You have a little child, a little fragile child, and you get a vat of 80 different vaccines, I guess. 80 different blends. And they pump it in.” In fact, a typical American child receives approximately 25-30 vaccine doses, with the exact number of shots depending on the specific combination vaccines used and whether annual Covid-19 or flu shots are included. The recommended immunization schedule protects against around 16 serious and potentially deadly diseases from birth to adulthood.
o “Tariffs are making us rich again. Richer than anybody ever thought was possible.” Economists overwhelmingly conclude that tariffs are not making the United States richer. While tariffs do generate revenue for the government, this is not a net gain for the country because the costs are primarily borne by domestic consumers and businesses through higher prices and reduced economic growth.
o Sept. 5, 2025: Asked if he would trust new jobs numbers issued that day – “Well, we’re going to have to see what the numbers, I don’t know, they come out tomorrow. But the real numbers that I’m talking about are going to be whatever it is. But, uh, will be in a year from now when these monstrous huge beautiful places they’re palaces of genius and when they start opening up. You’re seeing, I think you’ll see job numbers that are absolutely incredible. Right now it’s a lot of construction numbers, but you’re going to see job numbers like our country has never seen before.”
o August 26, 2025: “Foreign nations are paying hundreds of billions of dollars (in tariffs) straight into our treasury. Numbers nobody has seen before. Many of those countries, just to sit at the table, are paying us hundreds of billions of dollars. Trillions of dollars is coming into our country. Trillions.” Foreign nations don’t pay tariffs directly to the U.S. government. American companies that import goods from foreign countries pay the tariffs to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. and then try to recoup the money by absorbing the cost or raising prices.
Trump on deploying the National Guard to Chicago: “I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States.” Umm. Not exactly.
“There’s no inflation.” The inflation rate as of August. 25, 2025 was 2.7%, above the Fed’s 2% target.
o August 25, 2025: “”We are going to be doing numbers on the cost of drugs…I’m not talking 20% decrease. I’m talking 1,000%.”
o Aug. 25, 2025: “I gave Wes Moore (Governor of Maryland) a lot of money to fix his demolished bridge. I will now have to rethink that decision??” Trump had nothing to do with the appropriation of funds to rebuild the Baltimore bridge after a ship struck it. The appropriation was passed in 2024 as part of a continuing resolution President Biden signed into law.
o Aug. 20, 2025: “Crimea is massive — I would say, like, the size of Texas or something — in the middle of the ocean. And it’s gorgeous.” Crimea is roughly 1/25th the size of Texas and is a peninsula in the Black Sea that borders the Sea of Azov.
o Aug. 19, 2025: Although some want Netanyahu prosecuted on war crime charges, “he’s a war hero” Trump said. “He’s a war hero because we worked together. He’s a war hero. I guess I am too.” Trump has never been deployed or fought in a war.
o Aug. 19, 2025: “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.” Posted on Truth Social. Uh, well, maybe slavery wasn’t so bad.
o Aug. 18, 2025: “We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting. All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED.” Data compiled by a Sweden-based organization that advocates for democracy globally, The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, found in an October 2024 report found that 34 countries or territories allow mail-in voting.
o August 10, 2025: Truth Social post – “The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital.” It’s spelled Capitol, Mr. President.
o August 1, 2025. “I think we’re gonna be very successful fairly soon (in lowering drug prices). We’ll have drug prices coming down by 500%, 600%, 800%, even 1,200%.”
o July 27, 2025: “You have a certain place in the Massachusetts area that over the last 20 years had 1 or 2 whales wash ashore. And over the last short period of time they had 18. Ok? Because it’s driving them loco. No, windmills will not happen in the United States.” According g to NOAA, , there is no scientific evidence that noise resulting from offshore wind site characterization surveys could potentially cause whale deaths. There are no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities. There are, according to the U.S. Wind Turbine Database (USWTDB), 76,051 wind turbines operating across 45 states, plus Guam and Puerto Rico.
o July 23, 2025: “This is somebody nobody else can do. I can get the drug prices down… 1000% 600% 500% 1500%. Numbers that are not even thought to be achievable.” Huh?
o On July 16, 2025, during a rant against Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Trump said, “I’m surprised he was appointed. I was surprised that Biden put him in.” Trump nominated Powell for the position in 2017.
o At a July 14, 2025 Oval Office press conference:
Q – If Putin escalates further, how far are you willing to go in response if Putin were to escalate and send more bombs in coming days? TRUMP: “Don’t ask me a question like that. They’re not Americans that are dying in it. I have a problem – andJD has a problem with it. It’s a stance that he’s had for a long time – they’re not Americans dying. We want to defend our country.”
… Q – Why are you giving Putin 50 more days? TRUMP: “I’ve just really been involved in this for not very long. It wasn’t an initial focus. This is aBiden war. This is a Democrat war.”
o July 10, 2025:
Asked about the Epstein files, Trump posted: Could you all just FOCUS on the very many other more important things to discuss than whether or not I may or MAY NOT be all over the Epstein Files? There was a BIG FLOOD in Texas. Huge flood as it relates to water. Many people DIED. Many beautiful young girls. Perhaps some not so beautiful illegal Mexican peoples as well. Perhaps drug dealers disguised as day laborers. You can never tell. They don’t speak American. That is very suspicious. Again, forget about me and the Epstein Files. Focus on MEXICANS and FLOODING.
Talking about the deadly Texas floods: You know, it’s called rain. It rains a lot in certain places. But, now their idea, you know, did you see the other day? They just, I opened it up and they closed it again. I opened it, they close it, washing machines to wash your dishes.
o REPORTER: How do you want Republican voters in NYC to vote in the upcoming mayoral election? TRUMP: We have tremendous power at the White House to run places when we have to. We could run DC … we’re thinking about doing it, to be honest with you.
o On July 1, 2025, a reporter from the Fox News Channel asked Trump about Alligator Alcatraz, the new detention facility in the Everglades: “Mr. President, is there an expected time frame that detainees will spend here? Days, weeks, months?”
Trump’s reply: “In Florida? I’m going to spend a lot. Look, this is my home state. I love it, I love your government, I love all the people around. These are all friends of mine. They know very well. I mean, I’m not surprised that they do so well. They’re great people. Ron has been a friend of mine for a long time. I feel very comfortable in the state. I’ll spend a lot of time here. I want to, you know, for four years, I’ve got to be in Washington, and I’m okay with it because I love the White House. I even fixed up the little Oval Office, I make it—it’s like a diamond, it’s beautiful. It’s so beautiful. It wasn’t maintained properly, I will tell you that. But even when it wasn’t, it was still the Oval Office, so it meant a lot. But I’ll spend as much time as I can here. You know, my vacation is generally here, because it’s convenient. I live in Palm Beach. It’s my home. And I have a very nice little place, nice little cottage to stay at, right? But we have a lot of fun, and I’m a big contributor to Florida, you know, pay a lot of tax, and a lot of people moved from New York, and I don’t know what New York is going to do. A lot of people moved to Florida from New York, and it was for a lot of reasons, but one of them was taxes. The taxes are so high in New York, they’re leaving. I don’t know what New York’s going to do about that, because some of the biggest, wealthiest people, and some of the people that pay the most taxes of any people anywhere in the world, for that matter, they’re moving to Florida and other places. So we’re going to have to help some of these states out, I think. But thank you very much. I’ll be here as much as I can. Very nice question.”
o “Gettysburg, what an unbelievable battle that was, The Battle of Gettysburg. What an unbelievable – I mean, it was so much and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible, and so beautiful in so many different ways. It, it represented such a big portion of the success of this country. Gettysburg, wow. I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to look and to watch.”
o On why Trump wouldn’t call Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz after the targeted shootings of state lawmakers: “I don’t really call him. He’s slick — he appointed this guy to a position. I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out. I’m not calling him. why would I call him? I could call him and say, ‘Hi, how you doing? The guy doesn’t have a clue. He’s a, he’s a mess. So, you know, I could be nice and call him but why waste time?”
o “[Harris’s] vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth – it’s execution, no longer abortion because the baby is born – is okay.”
o Reporter – “Is there ‘a threshold’ of pain in the stock market you are unwilling to tolerate?” “I think your question is so stupid.”
o On why he decided to reopen Alcatraz: “Well, I guess I was supposed to be a moviemaker. We’re talking about, we started with the movie making it will end. I mean, it represents something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order. Our country needs law and order. Alcatraz is, I would say, the ultimate, right? Alcatraz, Sing Sing and Alcatraz, the movies, but, uh, it’s now a museum, believe it or not. A lot of people go there. It housed the most violent criminals in the world. …It sort of represents something that’s both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable. It’s got a lot of qualities that are interesting.”
Alcatraz
o On sea level rise with climate change: “It’s going to create more oceanfront property.”
o “Silence of the Lamb! Has anyone ever seen The Silence of the Lambs? The late, great Hannibal Lecter is a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner. Remember the last scene? Excuse me, I’m about to have a friend for dinner as this poor doctor walked by. I’m about to have a friend for dinner. But Hannibal Lecter. Congratulations. The late, great Hannibal Lecter. We have people that are being released into our country that we don’t want in our country.”
Hannibal Lecter
o On airplanes during the revolutionary war: “Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory.”
Image AI-generated on ChatGTP
o “But the transgender thing is incredible, think of it! Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation, the school decides what’s going to happen with your child. And you know many of these childs (sic) 15 years later say, what the hell happened, who did this to me? They say, who did this to me? It’s incredible.”
o “Whoever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election where you have every right to do it, you get indicted, and your poll numbers go up?” When people get indicted, your poll numbers go down. But it was such, such nonsense.”
o On Senator John McCain: “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
o “The great pandemic certainly was a terrible thing where they lost anywhere from 50 to 100 million people. Probably ended the Second World War, all the soldiers were sick.”
o “I think Viagra is wonderful if you need it, if you have medical issues, if you’ve had surgery. I’ve just never needed it. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind if there were an anti-Viagra, something with the opposite effect. I’m not bragging. I’m just lucky. I don’t need it. I’ve always said, “If you need Viagra, you’re probably with the wrong girl.”
o “My fingers are long and beautiful, as it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.”
o On consulting with others on foreign policy: “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.”
o On him stealing a gossip columnist’s girlfriend: “Any girl you have, I can take from you.”
o On why Napolean failed to invade Russia in the 18th century: “His one problem is he didn’t go to Russia that night because he had extracurricular activities, and they froze to death,”
o Criticizing a nuclear deal the Obama administration negotiated with Iran: “…but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible.”
o Responding to a complaint about illegal immigrants taking away opportunities from Americans. “It’s going to start with the Black population. African Americans are losing their jobs. And I don’t know if you heard the latest statistic, that of the jobs that these people created, which is very little, every single job was taken – about 107 percent – was taken by illegal immigrants.”
o Speaking about hurricane Florence: “This is one of the wettest we’ve seen, from the standpoint of water.”
o “Right now, in a number of states, the laws allow a baby to be born from his or her mother’s womb in. the ninth month. It is wrong. It has to change.”
o On the affect of wind turbines: “If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75 percent in value. And they say the noise causes cancer. You tell me that one, okay?”
o Reporter: “George W. Bush said the reason the Oval Office is round as there are no corners you can hide in.” Trump: “Well, there’s truth to that. There is truth to that. There are certainly no corners. And you look, there’s a certain openness. But there’s nobody out there. You know, there is an openness, but I’ve never seen anybody out there actually, as you could imagine.”
o On the impact of his tariffs. “You know, somebody said, ‘Oh, the shelves are going to be open. Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”
o On the Dodgers winning the 2024 World Series: “When you ran out the healthy arms, you ran out of really healthy— they had great arms but they ran out. It’s called sports. It’s called baseball in particular and pitchers I guess you could say.”
o On Project 25, which has been guiding his 2nd term: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
o On wind power and bacon: “You take a look at bacon and some of these products. Some people don’t eat bacon anymore. And we are going to get the energy prices down. When we get energy down — you know, this was caused by their horrible energy — wind, they want wind all over the place. But when it doesn’t blow, we have a little problem.”
o On his supporters storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021: “The primary scene in Washington was hundreds of thousands, the largest group of people I’ve ever spoken before, and I’ve spoken – and it was love and peace. And some people went to the Capitol. And a lot of strange things happened there. A lot of strange things with people being waved into the Capitol by police, with people screaming, go in with – that never got into trouble, you know? I don’t want to mention names, but you know who they are. A lot of strange things happened.”
Credit: BBC
o On whether Chinese ownership of TikTok is a security threat: “I think it is a threat. I – I – frankly, I think everything’s a threat. There’s nothing that’s not a threat.They do treat me very badly. Oh, and he told me no way. You’re the No. 1 person on all of Google for stories. I mean – which probably makes sense, to be honest with you. I hate (inaudible). Most of them are bad stories but these are minor details, right? Be – and it’s only bad because of the fake news, cause the news is really fake. We – that’s the one we really have to – straighten it – and we have to straighten out our press because we have a corrupt press.”
o Aug. 10, 2020: “In 1917 … the great pandemic certainly was a terrible thing where they lost anywhere from 50 to 100 million people. Probably ended the Second World War, all the soldiers were sick. That was a terrible situation.” The pandemic, due to the Spanish Flu, occurred in 1918-1919 toward the end of WWI.
o On how he would react if Playboy magazine were to feature a picture of his daughter Ivanka on its cover: “I don’t think Ivanka would do that inside the magazine. Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I would be dating her.”
Credit:New York Magazine
o On attractive girlfriends serving as an antidote to bad press: “You know, it doesn’t really matter what they write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”
o On his sexual prowess: “Oftentimes when I was sleeping with one of the top women in the world I would say to myself, thinking about me as a boy from Queens, ‘Can you believe what I am getting?”
o On politics in the year 2000: . “One of the key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace. Good people don’t go into government. I’d want to change that.”
o A Trump tweet at 12:06 a.m. on May 31, 2017: “Despite the constant negative press covfefe.”
o “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women — I just start kissing them, it’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the pussy.”
o On his superiority to “the haters”: “Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest -and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault.”
o Said during a Rose Garden speech on tariffs: “It’s such an old-fashioned term, but a beautiful term: groceries. It says ‘a bag with different things in it.”
o On violent sadists being employed by the federal government: “The other thing we did is, we had civil service, 9,000 people that were crooks and thugs and sadists, a lot of sadists. They enjoyed beating up our wounded warriors in less than primetime. You know, in primetime, they would’ve gotten the hell beat out of them, but our people were in bad shape and they would beat them up. We had sadists. Can you believe this is a country? But it’s the way it is.”
o “They should give me the Nobel prize for Rwanda and have you looked at the Congo? You could say Serbia. You could say a lot of them. The big one is India and Pakistan. I should have gotten it 4-5 times. They won’t give it because they only give it to liberals.”
o On media reporting that the US aerial attacks on Iranian nuclear sites may not have” obliterated ” them as Trump asserted: “They’re really hurting great pilots that put their lives on the line. CNN is scum. And so is MSDNC, their all. I think CNN ought to apologize to the pilots of the B2s. I think MSDNC ought to apologize. I think these guys really; these networks and these cable networks are real losers. You really are. You’re real losers. You’re gutless losers. I say that to CNN, ’cause I watch it. I got no choice. I got to watch that garbage. It’s all garbage. It’s all fake news. But, I think CNN is a gutless group of people.”
o In a 1997 interview with radio personality Howard Stern , Trump claimed he was a “brave soldier” for avoiding STDs during his single years in the late ’90s. “It’s amazing, I can’t even believe it. I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world, it is a dangerous world out there. It’s like Vietnam, sort of. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave solider,” Trump said when Stern asked how he handled making sure he wasn’t contracting STDs from the women he was sleeping with. Trump went on, calling women’s vaginas “potential landmines” and saying “there’s some real danger there.”
OK, one more.
Trump speaking at a Nevada rally on the danger of electric boats: “So I said, “Let me ask you a question.” And he said, “Nobody ever asks this question,” and it must because of MIT, my relationship to MIT. Very smart. I say, “What would happen if the boat sank from its weight, and you’re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery’s now under water, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there”—by the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, do you notice that? Lotta shark—I watched some guys justifying it today, “Well, they weren’t really that angry, they bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were, they were . . . not hungry but they misunderstood what—who she was.” These people are crazy. He said, “There’s no problem with sharks, they just didn’t really understand a young woman swimming,” no, really got decimated and other people, too, a lot of shark attacks. So I said, “There’s a shark ten yards away from the boat, ten yards, or here. Do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking? Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted, or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?” Because I will tell you, he didn’t know the answer. He said, “You know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.” I said, “I think it’s a good question. I think there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water.” But you know what I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted? I’ll take electrocution every single time.”
And none of this, of course, includes the the vitriol Trump spews on Truth Social, such as this post after CNN’s Natasha Bertrand reported that the U.S. strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities did not destroy the country’s nuclear program, but, in an initial finding that could change with additional intelligence, only set it back by months:
“Natasha Bertrand should be FIRED from CNN! I watched her for three days doing Fake News. She should be IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out “like a dog.” She lied on the Laptop from Hell Story, and now she lied on the Nuclear Sites Story, attempting to destroy our Patriot Pilots by making them look bad when, in fact, they did a GREAT job and hit “pay dirt” — TOTAL OBLITERATION! She should not be allowed to work at Fake News CNN. It’s people like her who destroyed the reputation of a once great Network. Her slant was so obviously negative, besides, she doesn’t have what it takes to be an on camera correspondent, not even close. FIRE NATASHA!”
A multi-million-dollar payoff to President Trump from 220 investors in his cryptocurrency is taking place tonight at the Trump National Golf Club in northern Virginia.
The dinner is being held after an auction of the president’s cryptocurrency, a $TRUMP memecoin, that brought in $147,586,796.41. The event is being promoted as the “most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the world,” according to an email about the event.
The top 25 crypto buyers will get an “ultra-exclusive private VIP reception” and “Special VIP Tour” with the president. Bloomberg looked at the buyers and concluded that 19 of the top 25 were individuals from outside the United States, many likely making the purchases to gain access to the Trump administration. Early on the promotion promised “a Special V.I.P. White House tour” for the top 25 coin holders. That reference to the White House visit was subsequently deleted, but the visit by 25 donors still went ahead on Friday, May 23.
Heather Cox Richardson has reported that many of the top purchasers “dumped their $TRUMP coins as soon as they made the cut for the dinner.” The coin was launched around January 17, 2025. Its value skyrocketed to an all-time high of $74.27 on January 19, 2025. However, within two days, the price dropped by more than 50% to $31.61. The latest $TRUMP price on May 23 was $13.19.
Incredibly, President Trump has refused to identify the attendees.
“On the president’s dinner tonight, will the White House commit to making the list of the attendees public so people can see who’s paying for that kind of access to the president?” a reporter asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at a White House press briefing on Thursday.
“…the president is attending it in his personal time, it is not a White House dinner, it is not taking place here at the White House,” Leavitt responded.
“In his personal time”? Give me a break.
The President of the United State is president 24/7/365. He cannot go “off the clock” when he wants to avoid scrutiny. He cannot raise money from secretive donors “on his own time”.
Leavitt also rejected any suggestion that Trump was acting inappropriately by hosting the dinner or subsequent events. “It’s absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency,” she said.
But the fact is a business entity tied to the Trumps sits on a pile of the $TRUMP cryptocurrency and collects fees every time the coins change hands. So far, the coin has generated at least $320 million in fees, which the Trumps share with their business partners.
In one of the most brazen excuses for Trump’s behavior, Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, explained his lack of concern about mounting allegations of corruption inside the White House with, “President Trump does everything out in the open. He’s not trying to hide anything. He’s putting it out there so everybody can evaluate for themselves.”
Multiple media have challenged characterizations of Trump’s purity.
“…no modern American president has positioned his family to make so much money while in the White House,” Bloomberg reported yesterday, May 21. “Already, since the early days of his reelection campaign, he’s more than doubled his net worth to about $5.4 billion. In that time, the Trump name has powered more than $10 billion of real estate projects, a multibillion-dollar valuation for his money-losing social-media company, more than $500 million in sales from just one of his crypto ventures and millions of dollars more from stakes in companies that offer financial services, guns and drone parts.”
“ ’Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ / Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, / The lone and level sands stretch far away.“
Percy Bysshe Shelley
UPDATE: 10/14/2025: A Florida court has put on hold the transfer of land held by a Miami college for President Trump’s presidential library, ruling that the college failed to provide reasonable public notice for its board vote to donate the land. The injunction Tuesday temporarily froze the transfer of 2.63 acres to commemorate Trump’s time in the White House. The Miami Dade College land is now a parking lot estimated to be worth more than $67 million, according to county appraisers.
UPDATE: 9/24/2025:NBC News reported today that Trump’s presidential library will be housed in Florida on land currently owned by Miami-Dade College, adjacent to the Freedom Tower and located on the city’s downtown waterfront.
Donald Trump, a man with the reading habits of an illiterate and the attention span of a hummingbird, wants to build a presidential library when he leaves office.
He also wants to fly away in a Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet gifted to the United States by Qatar. When he leaves office he plans to take it with him to his yet-to-be-built presidential library. A submissive Republican-led Congress may let him get away with this normalization of corruption.
The future Trump Presidential Library? An AI vision.
Trump is already trying to fill an account to build his library.
In December 2024, ABC News agreed to pay $15 million toward the library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. Under the settlement agreement, the payment is described as a “charitable contribution.”
In January 2025, Meta Platforms agreed to settle a lawsuit for $25 million after suspending Trump’s Facebook accounts following the January 6 attack other U.S. Capitol, with $22 million of that going toward the presidential library.
After his last term in office, a top fundraiser on Trump’s campaign said the president had told supporters he wanted to raise $2 billion for his library. Back then, however, there was considerable skepticism about Trump’s political future or the likelihood of him being able to raise enough money for a library. “I thought to myself, what is this alternative fantasy life you’re living?” one prominent fundraiser said. “I have no clue where they think they’ll get this money raised. Anyone who gives to him will be radioactive.”
How times have changed.
The location of a potential Trump Presidential Library is yet to be determined. The Washington Post reported at the end of Trump’s first term that sources close to Trump said he planned to build a library and museum in Florida. In March 2025, it was reported that members of Trump’s team were looking at possible sites at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) in Palm Beach County, where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago is located and Florida International University (FIU) near the Trump National Doral Miami golf resort.
Trump’s inaugural committee has also said any money left over from its $250 million haul will go the presidential library, as will millions being paid by individuals to dine and meet with Trump at special events at Mar-a-Lago.
The Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund Inc. was incorporated in Florida on December 20, 2024, shortly after the ABC News settlement, and a library website already exists.
As with the The Barack Obama Presidential Center, the website makes clear that The National Archives will administer the records of the Trump administration (textual, electronic, audiovisual, and artifacts) which will remain at National Archives facilities in the National Capital Region. In other words, there will be no actual presidential library at the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library .
Still to be determined is what Trump’s library will look like, what will be in it or how much it will cost. Obama is still struggling to raise money to compete construction of his presidential center, 3050 days after the end of his presidency. The project has also been beset by controversy, including questions over high “executive compensation” paid to people running the project. The center’s projected cost has also nearly doubled from its original estimate and is now projected at close to $1 billion.
President Trump, never one to miss an opportunity for an insulting comment, has called the Obama Center “a disaster” and blamed “woke” construction workers” for problems at the site. “I mean look, President Obama — and if he wanted help, I’d give him help because I build on time and on budget,” Trump exclaimed at a White House meeting with new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney meeting in early May. 2025. Trump has apparently forgotten the six bankruptcies from his over-leveraged hotel and casino businesses in Atlantic City and New York and the destruction of his shuttered 39-story hotel and casino in Atlantic City, N.J. in 30 seconds with controlled explosions in Feb. 2021 .
Given Trump’s ability to generate controversy out of thin air, expect the path toward a Trump Presidential Library to be similarly erratic, filled with drama and leaving disillusioned supporters in its wake.
Of course all this controversy over a jet-themed presidential library would be moot if the practice of building such ego-satisfying monuments that aren’t even real research libraries any more ended once and for all.
As a matter of fact, presidential libraries filled with reading material are a thing of the past anyway.
The Barack Obama Presidential Center under construction, Oct. 2024
The Barack Obama Presidential Center on a 20-acres site in Chicago, if it’s ever finished, isn’t going to have a presidential library. Artifacts and records from Obama’s two terms in the White House are being digitalized and organized by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and will be stored in existing NARA facilities. The only library planned for the site is a new branch of the Chicago Public Library in a massive a 235-foot-tall fortresslike museum tower.
Obama has appealed to a roster of contributors to build his monument, with some heavy hitters donating $25 million or more. If Trump goes ahead with his library plans, he will likely have to copy Obama and initiate a massive fundraising effort to supplement the funds he has already squeezed out of lawsuits.
Is that really what the country needs, more Trump lawsuits to generate cash, an onslaught of solicitations to potential donors large and small, under-the-table deals with donors while Trump is still in office, more inevitable controversy and, in the end, just another monument to the ephemeral nature of political power?
It’s time to end this scattering of presidential shrines across the American landscape, to put a stop to more money-sucking temples to former presidents. With the digitization of records, there will be no need for a vast collection of paper records reminiscent of the warehouse in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
In another example of Donald Trump’s pay-to-play presidency, the Trump administration plans to accept a luxurious $400 million Boeing 747-8 plane as a donation from the Qatari royal family that will be upgraded to serve as Air Force One. Hopefully it won’t be loaded with ultra-sophisticated eavesdropping equipment. The plane will ultimately go to the Trump presidential library, ensuring Trump could continue to use it.. “This isn’t a good idea even if the plane was being donated to the US govt.”, said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT). “But Trump GETS TO KEEP THE PLANE???”
“…the issue with Donald Trump is he does not believe in rules and laws and norms,” David Axelrod, a former senior advisor to President Barack Obama, said on CNN. “The issue with Donald Trump is he does not believe in rules and laws and norms. He thinks they’re for suckers. And he thinks if you can get a free plane, as he said today, why wouldn’t you do it? You wouldn’t do it because it’s a bribe.” The Free Press observed, “Just consider the plain matter of our national security. A plane handed to the president by a foreign government? Let alone a government that hosts the leaders of Hamas; cooperates with Iran; fuels popular antisemitism throughout the Arab world through its government mouthpiece, Al Jazeera; and has poured nearly more than $2 billion into American universities since 2021, as these campuses express solidarity with Palestinian terrorism?”
The opulent gold interior of the Qatari plane echoes the aesthetic of Trump Tower and Trump’s gold-centered redecoration of the Oval Office.
President Trump was asked on “Meet the Press” whether every person on U.S. soil was entitled to due process. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I’m not a lawyer.”
On May 27, 2025, Trump pardoned Virginia Sheriff Scott Jenkins. Jenkins had been found guilty of 1 count of conspiracy, 4 counts of honest services fraud and 7 counts of bribery concerning programs receiving fed funds. Prosecutors said he accepted bribes from 8 people, including 2 undercover FBI agents. The men who bribed Jenkins paid for auxiliary deputy sheriff positions so they could avoid traffic tickets and carry concealed firearms without a permit. U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, appointed by Trump, posted the comment “No MAGA left behind” about his decision to recommend a pardon for Jenkins.
Sheriff Scott Jenkins
Trump also announced on May 27 that he would be pardoning TV celebrities, Todd and Julie Chrisley, famous for the reality show, “Chrisley Knows Best”. The Chrisleys were convicted in 2022 of tax evasion and conspiring to defraud banks in the Atlanta area out of more than $30 million in loans by submitting false documents. Prosecutors said the couple walked away from their responsibility for repayment when Todd Chrisley declared bankruptcy and left $20-plus million in unpaid loans. Julie Chrisley was sentenced to seven years in federal prison, and Todd Chrisley got 12 years behind bars. The couple was also ordered to pay $17.8 million in restitution, which will now be forgiven.
Todd and Julie Chrisley
The United States used to be a reliable trade partner with established policies, procedures and tariff rates so businesses could plan ahead. The Washington Post reported on May 15 that since Trump took office, he changed his tariff policies at least 50 times. Some didn’t last a day. “It’s been completely insane,” economist Michael Strain, with the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) think tank, told the Post.
In with the gold, out with the old. President Trump has loaded down the historic Oval Office with gaudy gold decorations everywhere. “Gold has always been the color of absolute power and those who aspire to it,” says Kimberly Chrisman -Campbell. “But in more recent history, its meaning has become more complex: Its association with dictators, celebrities, and artists has also transformed it into a sign of excess, corruption, and cultural domination.”
Trump’s Oval Office/Biden’s Oval Office
On January 10, 2025, Trump released an “ethics agreement” that prohibited the Trump Organization from making deals with foreign governments. The Trump Organization subsequently cut a deal with Qatari Diar, a company established by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund in 2005 to “coordinate the country’s real estate development priorities.” Together with Saudi Arabian company Dar Global, which has close ties to the Saudi government, the Qatari company plans to build a $5.5 billion Trump International Golf Club in Qatar.
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student on a valid F-1 student visa ,was arrested on March 25, 2025, by six masked plainclothes agents from the US Department of Homeland Security and transported to a detention facility in Louisiana.
The arrest of Rumeysa Ozturk
The only evidence cited against her was an op-ed she co-authored in the university newspaper a year earlier critical of Tufts response to the war in Gaza. She spent six weeks in detention before being freed after US District Judge William K. Sessions III ordered her immediate release.
On April 8, 2026, Trump said countries were “kissing my ass” to secure trade deals before increased tariffs were levied.
While ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Afghans who came to the United States after our chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, exposing them to possible deportation, the Trump administration is using taxpayer dollars to fly white Afrikaner South Africans to the U.S. on chanter flights. Earlier this month, Trump said on Truth Social that “any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to Citizenship.” Christopher Landau, Deputy Secretary of State, and Troy Edgar, Deputy Homeland Security Secretary, greeted dozens of Afrikaners at Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia on Monday, May 12.
The first group of Afrikaner refugees from South Africa arrived on May 12, 2025, at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Va. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson).
On May 4, 2025, Trump said he decided to announce he was reopening the Alcatraz prison. His reasoning? “It represents something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order,“ he said. “Our country needs law and order. Alcatraz is uh, I would say the ultimate, right? Alcatraz. Sing Sing and Alcatraz, the movies…. Nobody’s ever escaped from Alcatraz and just represented something, uh, strong having to do with law and order… but it sort of represents something that’s both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable, weak.
Alcatraz Island today.
Trump launched a $TRUMP meme coin on January 17, 2025, just before he took office. In promoting the meme coin, there coin’s website says “Celebrate Our Win & Have Fun!” The website selling the tokens says the coins “are not intended to be, or to be the subject of, an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type”. By late April 2025, it had fallen 88% from its high. Just 58 wallets cashed in over $10 million each on the coin, while a staggering 764,000 wallets were sitting on losses as of May 7, 2025, according to a report from Chainalysis. Trump offered an “intimate private dinner” with him for the 220 top holders of the meme coin, along with a private reception and White House tour for the top 25 investors. The promotion bumped up sales and generated an estimated $900,000 in trading fees. “With this meme coin dinner, Trump is giving the highest bidders access to the president while lining his own pockets,” MSNBC reported. Buying the meme coin allows investors to make an end-run around U.S. ethics laws: While noncitizens can’t donate to political campaigns, they can invest in those assets. “It looks very corrupt,” Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) told the New York Times.
Where’s the public outrage? As Kyle Chayka wrote in The New Yorker, “The American public has been inundated with news of the Trump family’s self-enrichment for so long that many of their dealings now barely create a stir.”
The U.S. is stepping up its intelligence-gathering efforts regarding Greenland, drawing America’s spying apparatus into President Trump’s campaign to take over the island, the Wall Street Journal reported on May 6, 2025. Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, a NATO ally, “The Wall Street Journal should be ashamed of aiding deep state actors who seek to undermine the President by politicizing and leaking classified information, said Director of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. “They are breaking the law and undermining our nation’s security and democracy.”
“As the stock markets crashed on Friday April 4, Donald Trump left Washington,” Anne Applebaum wrote in The Atlantic. “He did not go to New York to consult with Wall Street. He did not go to Dover, Delaware, to receive the bodies of four American servicemen, killed in an accident while serving in Lithuania. Instead, he went to Florida, where he visited his Doral golf resort, which was hosting the Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament, and stayed at his Mar-a-Lago club, where many tournament fans and sponsors were staying, too. His private businesses took precedence over the business of the nation.”
On May 8, 2025, the Trump administration fired the head of the Library of Congress, Carla Hayden, the first Black woman and the first woman to hold the job, with a blunt two- sentence email, “”Carla, On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as the Librarian of Congress is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service.” Confirmed by the Senate to the job in 2016, her 10-year term was set to expire next year. On May 12, Trump named Todd Blanche, the lead defense lawyer in hTrump’s criminal trial in Manhattan last year, to replace Hayden, but encountered resistance when staff members at the Library refused to give two Justice Department officials access to the Library’s headquarters on Capitol Hill, insisting that Congress must have input on Hayden’s replacement.
Carla Hayden
On May 6, 2025, Kari Lake, asenior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the government body that oversees Voice of America, said the far-right news coverage of the One America News (OAN) Network will fuel the Voice of America. Since World War II, the Voice of America has provided news coverage and cultural programming to people around the world who don’t have access to a free press. Its weekly audience is about 360 million. OAN is “a conspiracy-boosting outlet with a far fringier voice than right-leaning outlets like Newsmax and Fox News.,” reported CNN.
White House deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, said on May 9, 2025, the White House was considering suspending habeas corpus for illegal immigrants in the United States. “The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in time of invasion.” he said. “So, I would say that’s an option we’re actively looking at.”
Stephen Miller
President Trump has nominated Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro, who has a reputation as a strong Trump defender on “The Five” talk show, the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, DC. Pirro is the 23rd Fox employee Trump has appointed so far to his administration this term. Pirro was named in a lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems for questioning the validity of ballot tabulations on Fox’s broadcasts. Fox settled the case and was forced to acknowledge that statements by Ms. Pirro and others were false. In 2021, Trump pardoned Ms. Pirro’s former husband, Albert J. Pirro Jr., who was convicted of conspiracy and tax evasion charges in 2000.
Jeanine Pirro
House and Senate Republicans under Trump have come up with plans to pass tax cuts and defense and border security spending increases without requiring equal amounts of offsets. They would allow $3 to $7 trillion in new debt—making it one of the largest deficit increases in history. “At this moment—when the national debt is skyrocketing, we spend more on interest than national defense, and trust funds are on the brink of insolvency—if there is one thing that should be clear from a fiscal perspective, it is that we should not be passing new policies that add more to the national debt.,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. By 2027, under a reconciliation bill, debt would exceed the previous record of 106 percent of GDP set just after World War II.
Unfortunately, there is a risk that the bill could get even worse, according to the Committee.. Already, some members are trying to add to the bill’s costs – and the Senate reconciliation instructions allow for twice as much borrowing as the House’s.
In his second term, Donald Trump has been generous in issuing pardons. Early in his term, he issued about 1,500 pardons and commuted the sentences of 14 Jan. 6 criminals, including people convicted of violently assaulting police, then pardoned 23 anti-abortion activists and former Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevich. In late March, he pardoned Nikola Corp. founder Trevor Milton for his October 2022 conviction of federal crimes related to defrauding investors with false claims about the success of the electric and hydrogen-powered truck maker. CNBC reported that after his criminal sentencing, Milton had “made significant political donations to Trump and his allies” including $920,000 to the Trump 47 Committee in October of 2024. The Trump administration also terminated the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, Elizabeth G. Oyer, after she opposed restoring actor Mel Gibson’s rights to carry a gun, her spokesperson and two Justice Department officials familiar with the matter told NBC News.
Shortly after being sworn in, Trump signed an executive order that pardoned roughly 1,500 people who were involved in the January 6 Capitol riot. Anna Moneymaker via Getty Images
By Peter L. Steiner, “Hopeless but not Serious”, Jan. 25, 2025
NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Trump, “Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States, as president?” His reply: “I don’t know.”
For Donald Trump, it’s always about the filthy lucre.
Rewarding allies and punishing perceived adversaries financially has long been Trump’s raison d’être in business and politics. His life is a story of questionable real estate and tax payment shenanigans, a sham Trump University, hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and misuse of charitable funds at the Trump Foundation. His greed and shameless behavior seem to have no limits. Nor does his assault on higher education.
Now he and his party are after higher education endowments and Oregon’s private institutions, including those with large and small endowments, should be worried.
Reed College has the largest endowment among Oregon’s private higher education institutions.
In 2017, during Trump’s first term, a Republican Congress passed the first excise tax on college endowments. Private colleges and universities now pay an annual 1.4% excise tax on endowment net investment income. The excise tax is levied on schools that have at least 500 tuition-paying students and net assets of at least $500,000 per student.
Because the $500,000 is not adjusted for inflation, the threshold is being effectively lowered over time. The tax has affected about 50-55 institutions to date.
In 2023, 56 universities paid about $380 million under the endowment tax, up from about $68 million in 2021 and slightly more than the $200 million annual forecast made by the Joint Committee on Taxation in 2017.
In 2023, when he was still a U.S. Senator, J. D. Vance introduced the College Endowment Accountability Act which proposed increasing the excise tax from 1.4% to 35% for secular, private, nonprofit colleges and universities with at least $10 billion in assets under management.
“University endowments…have grown incredibly large on the backs of subsidies from the taxpayers, and they have made these universities completely independent of any political, financial, or other pressure, and that is why the university system in this country has gone so insane,” Vance asserted.
Vance’s bill went nowhere, but the issue resurfaced in January 2025 whenRep. Troy E. Nehls (R-TX)introduced the Endowment Tax Fairness Act, a bill that would raise the excise tax levied on certain private university endowment profits from 1.4% to 21%.
The tax would apply to private colleges and universities with 500 or more students with an aggregate fair market value of assets of at least $500,000 per student of the institution, and more than 50% of the student body is located within the United States.
The Tax Foundation, assuming a 7.5 percent average annual return, estimates Nehis’ bill would raise about $69.8 billion in additional revenue over 10 years.
The House Ways & Means Committee also appears interested in raising the endowment tax rate. Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-MO) pitched the idea during an all-member meeting among House Republicans in January as well.
In February, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) introduced the Endowment Accountability Act, proposing raising the excise tax rate from 1.4% to 10% of endowment income and lowering the per-student endowment threshold from $500,000 to $200,000, likely pulling in many more colleges.
“If passed, such a tax would fundamentally alter the relationship between the government and many nonprofit colleges, as well as between those institutions and their donors,” reported Higher Ed Dive. “Moreover — and perhaps more importantly as a practical reality — such a tax could land hard on students, research programs and college operations.
Many institutions with much lower profiles than the Harvards of the world could get taxed if lawmakers broadened the threshold for paying, Jason Delisle, with the Urban Institute, said at an American Council on Education panel. And that’s exactly what higher ed institutions are preparing for.
“University leaders and endowment chiefs also expect Congress to consider raising the tax on the richest endowments and expanding the number of schools affected,” the Wall Street Journal reported. And there’s talk of spreading the pain around more, hitting up smaller schools with smaller endowments, too.
Although it may not be maintained in a final bill, under a tax plan unveiled by House Republicans on May 12, 2025, some universities would pay an annual tax of up to 21%. on their annual net investment income in endowments.
According to data from the National Association of College and University Business Officers and the asset management firm Commonfund, colleges spend the largest share of endowment funds on student financial aid (48.1% in FY2024), followed by academic programs and research (17.7% in FY2024).
Mauling endowments with egregious excise taxes would seriously threaten the ability of many schools to maintain these efforts, though that may not be of much concern to Trump and his allies, who have so far displayed little more than contempt for higher education.
FY2024 endowments at selected private higher education institutions in Oregon[1]
Remember when the eight-time WNBA All-Star, Britney Griner, was arrested in 2022 at a Moscow airport on drug-related charges? She was detained for nearly 10 months, spending much of that time in prison. American public and political outrage was severe and her supporters pressed the White House hard to bring her home.
“I’m terrified I might be here forever,” Griner said in a handwritten letter to President Biden appealing for her freedom.
Apparently, America learned a lesson from Griner’s imprisonment. But it was the wrong one.
Kseniia Petrova, a 30-year-old Russian-born scientist at Harvard Medical School, has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since February. Her detention occurred when she was returning to Boston from a trip to France. Her story was reported by Geoff Bennett, who serves as co-anchor and co-managing editor of PBS News Hour.
Returning to Boston’s Logan International Airport from a trip to France, she brought back frog embryo samples for her lab. The PBS News Hour reported on April 24 that ICE said she knowingly broke the law in failing to properly declare the embryos. According to the News Hour, A typical customs violation results in a fine, but Petrova had her visa revoked, was detained and flagged for deportation.
In moves more common in a police state, where people are swiftly moved from place to place to avoid detection, ICE first sent Petrova to a cell at the airport. The next day they transferred her to a jail in Vermont. She spent the next week there. Then ICE flew Petrova to detention in Louisiana. She has now been imprisoned at the Richwood Detention Facility in Louisiana for two months in a one-room facility with 89 other women, wall-to-wall beds and almost no personal privacy. Yes, for two months now.
She has an immigration court hearing scheduled for May 7 in Jena, Louisiana, related to her asylum case.
The News Hour reported that Petrova has been a vocal critic of the Russian government and its actions in Ukraine and fears persecution if deported there. “I am afraid that, if I come to Russia, I will be arrested, because we have in Russia special law,” she said. “If you say something against current war, you will be imprisoned, and you can be imprisoned for 15 years.”
“ICE is required to detain individuals … only if they are a flight risk or a danger to the community. Ms. Petrova is neither,” said her attorney, Gregory Romanovsky. “Her continued detention serves no purpose and wastes limited government resources.”
He has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Vermont, arguing that a declaration issue doesn’t justify detention and the government failed to follow standard protocol.
NPR reported that earlier this week, during a preliminary hearing, a Louisiana immigration judge found the government’s case to be legally insufficient and ruled that the Notice to Appear, the document that initiates deportation proceedings, did not meet legal standards. The judge gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement one week to submit stronger evidence.
The Trump administration, banking on the support of its most dedicated backers, is running roughshod over human rights right here in America.
ThinkingOregon 