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Trump’s Message to Millions: So Die, Scum

A president who once referred to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries” is continuing his cruel attacks on people around the world suffering from disease and starvation. 

The Trump administration has moved to shut down USAID, the federal government’s lead agency for humanitarian aid and development assistance as an independent agency and integrate what remains into the Department of State under Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

 Elon Musk, head of the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency, a billionaire with zero expertise in global development, has said of USAID that it is a “criminal organization. Time for it to die.”

“We’re shutting it down,” Musk said during a live chat on X,  later adding, “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.”

The Devious Duo (Photo credit: AP)

Consider:

  • USAID’s partner program PEPFAR, an anti-HIV/AIDS initiative launched by U.S. President George W. Bush in 2003, pays for antiretroviral medicines and leads efforts to halt the spread of the virus. It is estimated to have saved 25 million lives since its inception. USAID’s collapse could serve a death sentence for PEPFAR, Persuasion,  a nonprofit digital magazine, reported. In a survey of 275 H.I.V. treatment organizations in Sub-Saharan Africa, every single one reported needing to shut down programs or turn away patients.
  • The United States contributes approximately $300 million dollars annually to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which targets diseases such as malaria and rabies in low- and middle-income countries Gavi supports the accelerated introduction of new and underutilized vaccines in 73 countries. Across the world, immunization yields up to a 48-fold return on investments, averting an estimated 2-3 million child deaths per year.
  • About 500,000 metric tons of food worth $340 million is in limbo, in transit or storage,Reuters reports, as humanitarian organizations wait for U.S. State Department approval to distribute it.
  • U.S.-provided cash assistance intended to help people buy food and other necessities in Sudan and Gaza has been halted, aid workers told Reuters. So has funding for volunteer-run community kitchens, an American-supported effort in Sudan to help feed people in areas inaccessible to traditional aid.
  • The US system for monitoring famine globally, designed by US government agencies, including USAID and NASA, has been taken offline.
  • The Famine Early Warning System Network (Fewsnet) was established after the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, as part of a worldwide effort to prevent a repeat of its devastating impact. Trump’s action has left  policymakers in the dark about impending hunger crises “It is regarded as a gold standard in combining weather data and political analysis to predict drought and food insecurity globally,” the BBC reported.
  • About 500,000 metric tons of food worth $340 million is in limbo, in transit or storage, as humanitarian organizations wait for U.S. State Department approval to distribute it, according to Reuters. Among the food aid in limbo is almost 30,000 metric tons meant to feed acutely malnourished children and adults in famine-stricken Sudan., The food includes lentils, rice and wheat, one worker said – enough to feed at least 2 million people for a month. 
  • The USAID shutdown stalls progress toward economic prosperity and stability, Brookings reports. It stops support for cash transfers that reach the poorest households, halts financing for women farmers who produce food and other staples, stops lifesaving health services, and disrupts public-private partnerships to help women compete in the digital economy. 
  • Some officials fear that the closure of USAID could slow the response to ongoing outbreaks of Ebola in Uganda and Marburg virus in Tanzania, according to Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. USAID and the CDC collaborated in 2022 on a successful effort to limit the spread of an Ebola outbreak in Uganda.
  • The President’s Malaria Initiative, a US government program that funds malaria prevention and research, is led by USAID and implemented together with the CDC. (It’s website is currently “undergoing maintenance in order to be consistent with the President’s Executive Orders”)  One company has more than one million insecticide-treated bed nets in a warehouse in Ethiopia that, along with antimalarial drugs and diagnostics, it now can’t deploy, and at time when malaria transmission spikes in many countries. “Without those services — especially now that it’s the rainy season in a lot of the world — people will die,” an employee told the journal Nature. “We’re putting kids’ lives at risk by stopping this.”

Just a bunch of people in shithole countries affected. Who cares?

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I Beg Your Pardon! Oregon Democrats Want Employers to Pay Strikers 

Talk about absurd legislation. 

In an insult to common sense, Oregon Democrats, at the request of the AFL-CIO union of all things, have introduced a bill, SB 916, that would allow striking workers in Oregon to collect unemployment benefits. Because the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund is funded through a payroll tax that is paid by employers, Oregon employers would be paying workers not to work, actually encouraging more strikes. 

The bill is sponsored by Senators Kathleen Taylor, Wlnsvey Campos, James I. Manning, Jr., Chris Gorsek, Mark Meek, and Deb Paterson, as well as Representatives Dacia Graber and Ben Bowman. 

The unemployment insurance program, as the state explains, ”provides partial wage replacement benefits to eligible workers who are unemployed through no fault of their own.” It is not, and was never intended to be, a source of money to compensate workers for refusing to work. 

Oregon employers contribute between 0.9% and 5.4% of an employee’s wages to the unemployment compensation fund. The exact amount depends on the employer’s tax rate and the employee’s wages. In 2025, Oregon employers are projected to contribute $1.3 billion to the unemployment compensation fund, an increase from the $1.2 billion projected for 2024. 

A similar proposal is being considered by Washington’s Legislature after a bill to make strikers eligible for unemployment benefits after two weeks on strike passed the state house last year, but didn’t have enough support to move forward in the senate. 

Sen. Marcus Riccelli, D-Spokane, is sponsoring this year’s proposal in Washington,  Senate Bill 5041. “Unions should finance their own strike funds and they are trying to make employers be on the hook to pay for strikers.” Says Elizabeth New (Hovde), Director, Center for Health Care and Center for Worker Rights at the Washington Policy Center. 

A public hearing on SB 916 before the Senate Committee On Labor and Business was held on Feb. 6, 2025. Witnesses opposing the bill included representatives of the Northwest Grocery Retail Association, the National Association of Independent Business (NFIB), the Oregon School Boards Association (OSBA) and the League of Oregon Cities. Witnesses supporting the bill included representatives of the Oregon AFL-CIO, the Oregon Education Association, the Oregon Nurses Association, SEIU Local 503 and the Oregon arm of the the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME) 

The high cost of doing business in Oregon already hinders the state’s economy. “Passing SB 916 would make Oregon less appealing for business investment, which is needed to create jobs and generate revenue needed by state and local governments,” says Oregon Business & Industry, a statewide business advocacy group. They’re right.

The Senate hearing will continue on Feb. 11. Sensible Oregonians need to tell Oregon’s Democratic legislators to stop the bill in its tracks.

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FBI Nominee Kash Patel and His Friends: A Cabal of Co-Conspirators

Kash Patel

There’s a common saying that reflects how a person’s friends reveal a lot about them: “Tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are.”

“Kash is a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People,” Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform in announcing that Kashyap “Kash” Patel would serve as the next Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

As Paul Harvey used to say in his widely popular radio broadcasts, “And now, the rest of the story”. 

After working for the first Trump administration,Patel launched Kash’s Corner, a podcast in which he offered his MAGA-tinged take on the news alongside a co-host, none other than The Epoch Times senior editor, Jan Jekielek.

The Epoch Times is a far-right conspiracy-peddling newspaper and website affiliated with Falun Gong, a fringe Chinese religious movement. If you are not already familiar with the Epoch Times, Falun Gong also founded the controversial entertainment organization, Shen Yung, the the ubiquitous dance troupe that appears regularly in Portland.

The Epoch Times and its affiliates “have grown, in part, by relying on sketchy social media tactics, pushing dangerous conspiracy theories and downplaying their connection to Falun Gong” according to a New York Times investigation.

NBC News has reported in depth about the “conspiracy-fueled” Epoch Times, citing it as “an early and aggressive promoter of election information” in the United States. The Election Integrity Partnership coalition has cited the Epoch Times as a “repeat spreader” of false and misleading voter fraud stories as well as a major promoter of debunked conspiracy theories around Dominion voting machines and the “Stop the Steal” movement, aimed at overturning the election results.” 

After the 2020 election, The Epoch Times refused to acknowledge the results, “falsely suggesting instead that legal and procedural challenges that will flip the results in favor of Trump are still ongoing,” Forbes reported. 

NBC News has also reviewed 79 episodes of Patel’s podcast, featuring Patel and Jekielek. “Together, they spun detailed but unfounded claims of conspiracies involving government officials, law enforcement agencies, the media and tech companies, among others, all aiming to rig elections, silence conservative voices and undermine Trump’s presidency and re-election,” NBC reported. 

NBC noted that in a 2022 episode of Kash’s Corner, Patel claimed the FBI used confidential sources during the Jan. 6 riots at the Capital for political purposes, asking whether rioters had been goaded by agents to commit crimes and questioning the related convictions. Did “those confidential human sources engage people who are not going to conduct criminal activity and convince them to do so? That is the definition of entrapment, which is illegal, and you can’t charge someone who’s been entrapped,” he said. 

At his January 30, 2025 Senate confirmation hearing, Patel said with a straight face, “I have no interest, no desire, and will not, If confirmed, go backwards. There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken by any FBI.”

But In an interview with Trump ally Steve Bannon, Patel insisted he would go after judges, lawyers and journalists who, in Patel’s view, had improperly investigated Trump and stolen the 2020 election.  “We’re going to come after the people in the MEDIA who helped Biden rig presidential elections,” he vowed.

“We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media — yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’re going to figure that out — but yeah, we’re putting you all on notice,” he added. “We’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.”

Bill Bramhall, The Virginian-Pilot

Should this guy be running the FBI, the premier law enforcement agency in the United States? I don’t think so.

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“Abortion Rights Are Safe In Oregon” Says Oregon’s Attorney General. Don’t Believe It.

Survey shows Americans' conflicted ...

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump was all over the map on abortion. But you’d be a fool to think this means abortion rights are safe in Oregon or the rest of the country. They are not.

In June 2023, addressing a Faith & Freedom Coalition Gala, Trump said he was the “most pro-life president ever.” As with so many of his other c campaign promises, he’ll likely follow through with that promise.

Oregon’s attorney general says all is well. The Oregon Department of Justice website is adamant that the overturning of Roe v. Wade has not affected abortion rights in the state: “Abortion is still SAFE, ACCESSIBLE and LEGAL in OREGON” its says. “The United States Supreme Court decision in June 2022 overturning Roe v. Wade(called Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health) did not change Oregon laws protecting a pregnant person’s right to have an abortion in Oregon.”

The fact is, however, that no state is immune from federal actions limiting abortion rights.

With Pam Bondi’s Senate confirmation as attorney general still ahead, for example, her chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, who is temporarily leading the Justice Department, issued a memo sharply limiting prosecutions of people accused of blocking access to abortion clinics, calling such cases the “prototypical example” of federal weaponization.

On January 23, 2024 Trump followed up by pardoning 23 people who were convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act), including many who were serving prison sentences for physically blocking patients from accessing their doctors. Some of the offenses committed included breaking into clinics, stealing fetal tissue, and accosting pregnant patients.

Jessica Valenti, a prominent writer on gender and politics, has reported that:

  • Dozens of Republican lawmakers held a private meeting with anti-abortion activists where they pledged to repeal the FACE Act
  • The Department of Justice announced that they won’t enforce the FACE Act unless there are “extraordinary circumstances…such as death.”
  • Conservative legal groups are working to overturn Hill v. Colorado—the Supreme Court decision that established abortion clinic buffer zones.

Efforts are also underway to limit Planned Parenthood’s operations in Oregon access to federal Medicaid money, potentially cutting off its ability to provide abortions. 

On January 27,  the White House Office of Management and Budget  (OMB) issued an order setting off  a temporary pause of  federal grants to give agencies time to review spending priorities. On Jan. 28, OMB sent another sent a directive telling federal agencies to fill out an attached spreadsheet answering questions about programs that might require funding and whether they aligned with Trump’s agenda. One of the questions asked if the program supports abortion “in any way.”

At his Senate confirmation hearing for  Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. assured Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) he would appoint only pro-life deputies.

Abortion access in Oregon may be constrained by restrictions on access to pills used in medication abortions.  Access to the abortion pill mifepristone, for example, still largely depends on a patchwork of state laws, with only about half of states allowing full access under the terms approved by the federal government. According to PBS, A dozen or so states have laws specifically limiting how mifepristone can be prescribed, such as requiring an in-person visit with a physician or separate counseling about the potential risks and downsides of the drug.

In a sign of the times, a New York doctor, Margaret Carpenter, was indicted by a Louisiana grand jury on January 29 for allegedly prescribing an abortion pill online in the southern state, which has one of the strictest near-total abortion bans in the country. Under the law, physicians convicted of performing an illegal abortion, including one with pills, face up to 15 years in prison, $200,000 in fines and the loss of their medical license. Carpenter was charged charged with criminal abortion by means of abortion-inducing drugs, a felony. Carpenter was operating under New York’s telemedicine “shield law,” which protects providers who ship abortion pills across state lines, but it may not matter.

Project 25, The Heritage Foundations blueprint for Trump’s actions, calls for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to encourage states to remove Planned Parenthood facilities from the Medicaid program. Project 25 also proposes mobilizing an array of federal agencies to limit access to abortion, including a national ban on abortion pills even in states like Oregon with liberal abortion laws. 

“The Dobbs decision (overturning Roe v. Wade) is just the beginning,” Project 2025 says. “Conservatives in the states and in Washington, including in the next conservative administration, should push as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction in America.”

Oregon Right to Life, which says “We work to reestablish protection for all innocent human life from conception to natural death” is also continuing its efforts to restrict abortion in the state.

“Being a pro-life legislator in Oregon comes with unique challenges,” says the group’s website. “That being said, our mission remains the same: provide tangible, encouraging support to women and families, and protect as many unborn lives as possible from abortion. Understanding the unique terrain of this issue in Oregon, we want to continue to put forward limits that are widely supported with key exceptions, and considered “reasonable” even by self-proclaimed pro-choice voters.” 

 Undeterred by a generally hostile Legislature, the group is pursuing enactment of several bills during the 2025 session, including:

  • HB 2372 – would require a physician to provide a baby born alive during an attempted abortion procedure the same degree of care as any other baby at the same gestational stage.
  • HB 3248 – would place a limit on abortion when the baby can feel pain with exceptions for medical emergencies, rape, and incest.
  • HB 2381, 2382 – would establish the Pregnancy Launch Program to encourage healthy childbirth; support childbirth as an alternative to abortion; promote family formation; aid successful parenting; Increase families’ economic self-sufficiency; and improve maternal health, mortality, and postpartum outcomes. It would also create a hotline and set a requirement that this information be provided to an abortion-minded woman 48 hours prior to her abortion procedure. Finally, it would establishe an OHA grant program to help fund entities offering services related to encouraging and assisting mothers in carrying their pregnancies to term.
  • TBD – would require parental consent for minors (under 18) traveling into Oregon for an abortion.

The battle is on.

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Trump Pursuing a New Tactic to Build His Presidential Library: Lawsuits.

Meta Platforms has agreed to pay about $25 million to settle a lawsuit Trump brought against the company after the social-media platform suspended his accounts following the attacks on the U.S. Capitol that year.

$22 million of the payment will go toward a fund for Trump’s presidential library,. Meta won’t admit wrongdoing under an agreement Trump signed in the Oval Office on Jan. 29.

This follows a Dec. 14 announcement that ABC News would pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Trump is discouraging. Even more discouraging, however, is word that under the terms of the settlement ABC News will donate the $15 million to Trump’s future presidential foundation and museum.

And now The New York Times reports many executives at CBS’s parent company, Paramount, believe that settling an absurd $10 billion lawsuit against CBS filed before the Nov. 2024 election would increase the odds that the Trump administration does not block or delay their planned multibillion-dollar merger with Skydance. Trump accused CBS of deceptively editing a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. 

“A settlement would be an extraordinary concession by a major U.S. media company to a sitting president, especially in a case in which there is no evidence that the network got facts wrong or damaged the plaintiff’s reputation,” the Times reported on Jan. 30. 

“We once held the office of president, as well as its occupant, in high regard,” Anthony Clark wrote in The Last Campaign: How Presidents Rewrite History, Run for Posterity, and Enshrine Their Legacies. “As we have lowered our opinions of both, presidential libraries, consequently, have grown larger and more powerful—and, not incidentally, less truthful.” As Clark wrote in Salon, presidential centers tend to be “proud, defensive, and a little self-absorbed” and eventually become theme parks with declining numbers of visitors.

The Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund Inc. was incorporated in Florida on Dec. 20, six days after it was revealed that ABC News had agreed to donate the $15 million to Trump’s future presidential foundation and museum.

The Wall Street Journal’s Annie Linskey and Rebecca Ballhaus reported “Serious talks about the suit, which had seen little activity since the fall of 2023, began after Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg flew to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida to dine with him in November, according to the people familiar with the discussions. The dinner was one of several efforts by Zuckerberg and Meta to soften the relationship with Trump and the incoming administration. Meta also donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. Last year, Trump warned that Zuckerberg could go to prison if he tried to rig the election against him. Toward the end of the November dinner, Trump raised the matter of the lawsuit, the people said. The president signaled that the litigation had to be resolved before Zuckerberg could be ‘brought into the tent,’ one of the people said.”

Knowing Donald Trump’s tendency toward grandiosity, he will likely want a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious billion dollar Presidential Monument. The Washington Post reported back in January 2021 that a top Trump fundraiser said the president had told supporters he wanted to raise $2 billion for his presidential library and museum and thought he could collect it in small-dollar donations from his grass-roots supporters. A satirical website was subsequently created showing the contents of a potential Donald J. Trump Presidential Library, with images of “The Wall of Criminality” and the “Alt Right Auditorium”. 

The way we’re headed, presidential centers will surpass Egypt’s pyramids as monuments to the egos of leaders. But as I’ve observed in previous posts, if Donald Trump goes forward with his museum plans, his  former, current and future advisors may have reason to be concerned. Many of the Egyptian pyramids entombed not only the deceased, but also the deceased’s servants.

Source: Putnam Museum

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Think Eco-Extremism Is Dead? Not In Oregon.

Oregon Democratic State Senator Jeff Golden of Ashland is confused.

Golden is the chief sponsor of a bill, SB 681, that would prohibit the State Treasurer from renewing investments in or making new investments in a private market fund if the managers of the fund have stated an intention to invest in fossil fuels. Joining him as regular sponsors of the bill are seven other Democrats: Senators Lew Frederick, Khanh Pham, Kathleen Taylor; House members Zach Hudson, Lisa Fragala, Mark Gamba, Travis Nelson.

The bill simply makes no sense. 

In relying on environmental criteria, investing is driven by a political agenda, not the best interests of investors.

In addition, the State Treasurer invests in securities that trade in secondary markets. As the Hewlett Foundation’s Kelly Born and Stanford Law professor emeritus Paul Brest have argued, it is virtually impossible for a socially motivated investor to increase the beneficial outputs of a publicly traded corporation by purchasing, or not purchasing, its stock.

Golden’s bill also undermines logic right off the bat when it justifies itself by citing everything but the kitchen sink as justification for the restrictive policy: 

“Whereas in Oregon, more intense forest fires threaten rural communities and disrupt outdoor recreational opportunities and the tourism industry; smoke from these fires threatens our workforce, our elders and our children; severe droughts constrain our important agricultural and nursery industries and imperil our salmon runs; and businesses are forced to spend millions to mitigate the most pressing climate effects rather than investing in future innovation and opportunities.”

Good grief. 

Then, while it prohibits fossil fuel investments on the one hand; on the other hand it cites the requirement that the State Treasurer is required to manage investment portfolios “so as to maximize investment returns and minimize the risk of loss.” You can’t do both at the same time. 

It also ignores the responsibility of the State Treasurer not to do anything that abrogates the treasurer’s fiduciary responsibilities to make available funds “as productive as possible” and “to diversify the investments of the investment funds”.

The Democrats’ bill is just leftist activism parading as socially responsible investing.

Stop it in its tracks.

 

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U.S. vs. China: Cutting Our Own Throats

Under Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), China’smilitary might , including its nuclear capabilities, have been expanding rapidly while it “has demonstrated an increasing willingness to use military coercion and inducements to achieve its aims”, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

China’s dominance in global manufacturing is greater than it’s ever been. Its government subsidies are giving industries leverage to out-compete with American products. It had a nearly $1 trillion trade surplus with the rest of the world in 2024. 

China has an aggressive, global spy network and influence operation aimed at expanding and solidifying its power.

China is supporting the Russian war machine and is openly preparing for a war to take over Taiwan. 

China is aggressively bullying the Philippines and other countries with its claims on the South China Sea. 

The U.S is falling further and further behind China in shipbuilding, threatening maritime security around the world. A new report by the U.S. Trade Representative found, that U.S. international trade is “carried out on vessels made in China, financed by state-owned Chinese institutions, owned by Chinese shipping companies, and reliant on a global maritime and logistics infrastructure increasingly dominated by China.”

All together, China presents a clear and present danger to the United States,

But American consumers continue to subsidize the Community regime by procuring the countries products as though there’s a fire sale, American companies continue strengthening their ties to China and the strongest signal President-elect Donald Trump is sending to China isn’t, “I’m determined to protect American security”, but “Let’s make a deal”. 

Nothing illustrates that better than Trump’s words and actions with respect to TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.

In April 2024, with bipartisan concern about the national security threat TikTok posed to the United States and its use as a tool to spread misinformation and propaganda, the House of Representatives voted 360 to 58 in the House and the Senate voted 78 to 18 for a bill requiring the sale of the social media platform to a U.S. company or face a shutdown.

Trump actually tried to ban the app himself in his first term by signing an executive order in August 2020 asserting that the app was capturing mass amounts of information about Americans and raising risks for the country.

“These risks are real,” the order said. “This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information − potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”

In March 2024, however, Trump flipped his position, saying he was opposed to banning the app or forcing a sale. “Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it,” Trump said on CNBC . “There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it.”

On January 18, TikTok  did shut down, but after Trump promised to issue an executive order on Monday to “extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect,” it came back up. It announced, “In agreement with our service providers” the company “is in the process of restoring service. We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive.”

The law allows Trump to grant a 90-day reprieve to TikTok, but only if he can certify at that point “evidence of significant progress” toward a sale. During that 90 days, of course, China’s alleged efforts to undermine United States security would continue, an issue of apparently little concern to Trump.

Trump’s inclination to pacify China and TikTok, reminds me of the protests of young Americans against the TikTok shutdown, favoring their personal TikTok addiction over American security.  These same self-absorbed young people are likely many of the same people who  are sustaining China’s economy by buying massive amounts of cheap fast fashion from Chinese companies like Temu and Shein, despite extensive reports  that the apparel hides the dirty laundry of environmental damage and labor exploitation.

Trump’s moves are not, however, going unchallenged.

Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Nebraska), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has urged US companies to halt operations with TikTok. “For TikTok to come back online in the future, ByteDance must agree to a sale that satisfies the law’s qualified-divestiture requirements by severing all ties between TikTok and Communist China,” Ricketts said.

Also breaking with Trump, U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also issued a stern warning for companies deciding to work with TikTok after its resumption of service. “Any company that hosts, distributes, services, or otherwise facilitates communist-controlled TikTok could face hundreds of billions of dollars of ruinous liability under the law, not just from DOJ, but also under securities law, shareholder lawsuits, and state AGs, Cotton posted on X. “Think about it.”

Meanwhile, TikTok’s CEO is planning to attend a Trump victory rally at the Capitol One Arena in Washington, D.C. tonight (Sunday) and is expected to sit on the dais for Trump’s inauguration on Monday.

It’s a good time to remember Franz Stangl, the commandant of the Nazi concentration camp Treblinka in occupied Poland from Sept. 1942 to August 1943. Gitta Sereny, an Austrian born journalist, biographer and historian. wrote “Into That Darkness” based on interviews with Stangl after the war. Trying to understand how he acclimated to running the camp, she asked him how he managed to do it.  “It was the small steps. Small compromises,” he said. ” You see, if you can get people to stop believing in absolute right and wrong, you can get them to do anything.”

Americans succumbing to the allure of Chinese goods, American companies allowing their drive for profits to justify strengthening China’s economy and American politicians setting aside their legitimate concerns about the challenges from China are guilty of small steps, too.

Stay tuned.

Addendum

In still engaging wholeheartedly with China, American companies are repeating how so many have responded (or not) to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.  According to Foreign Policy, as of 2023, around 800 multinational companies from Western and like-minded countries were still operating in Russia—either because they decided to stay or because they were still generating revenues there despite having pledged to leave. Around 60 percent of those global firms that operated in Russia before the full-scale invasion began in February 2022 still continue to do so. Second, Germany, the United States, and France are—by far—the top three countries of origin for Western firms that retain a presence in Russia, accounting for around half of them.

What is undeniably true , according to Foreign Policy, is that the hundreds of Western firms staying in Russia are helping Moscow finance the war in Ukraine. The data is eye-popping. In 2022 and 2023, firms from the G-7, European Union, and like-minded economies generated around $370 billion in revenues on Russian soil, which was more than Moscow’s military budget over the same period. In the first two years of the war, Western firms transferred more than $11 billion in corporate taxes to Russian state coffers, with Austrian bank Raiffeisen alone accounting for one-tenth of this amount. The data is not available yet for 2024, but a ballpark estimate suggests that Western firms probably paid another $4-6 billion in corporate taxes, bringing the total to roughly $16 billion funneled to the Kremlin since the invasion began.


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At Risk: Oregon’s Minority Scholarships are in Jeopardy

Congratulations to Olivia, Rodney, Kayla, Allie, and Sumeyah, the Black United Fund of Oregon (BUF-OR) announced with pride. All earned Amina Anderson scholarships awarded to students to pursue higher education at an accredited college or university within the State of Oregon. To qualify for the scholarship, students must identify as Black, African-American, or of African descent.

Other minority students in Oregon celebrated, too. There was the Oregon Latino Scholarship from the Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber, where applicants must be of Hispanic ancestry and permanently residing in Oregon or Clark County, A total of $117,700 was awarded to 40 students on May 3rd, 2024, during the Chamber’s annual Scholarship Award Luncheon at the Oregon Convention Center, in Portland, Oregon.

There was also the Oregon Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association Scholarship for Chinese high school seniors, and the Full Circle Scholarship from the American Indian College Fund for American Indian and Alaska Native students in Oregon.

I hope they treasured their awards. They may be among the last winners. All college scholarships restricted to minority students in Oregon and other states could soon be on the chopping block.

A lawsuit just filed against McDonald’s in federal court Nashville, TN alleges that the company is discriminating against non-Latinos with its HACER National Scholarship Program. The program offers scholarships between $5,000 and $100,000 to up to 30 outstanding students from across the US with at least one parent of Latino or Hispanic heritage.

“So non-Hispanics—including non-Hispanics with severe financial need and racial minorities like blacks, Arabs, and Native Americans—are flatly barred based on their ethnic heritage,” the lawsuit says. “This kind of discrimination was never lawful.”

The lawsuit was filed by the American Alliance for Equal Rights, led by Edward Blum. His lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina led to a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling to stop affirmative action admissions at colleges. Blum has consistently argued against laws and policies that make distinctions based on race or ethnicity in areas such as voting and education.

“Like the vast majority of Americans, I believe that an individual’s race and ethnicity should not be used to help them or harm them in their life’s endeavors,” Blum told The New York Times after the Supreme Court ruling. ” This opinion is the end of the beginning. This issue of race and ethnicity in our public lives is not going to go away.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling has already spurred other nonprofits outside of Blum’s to target what they perceive to be discriminatory scholarships and fellowships. The Equal Protection Project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, for example, has filed multiple complaints with the U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights office over universities’ minority scholarships and fellowships,

As The Washington Post has observed, the Supreme Court’s decision “is being closely watched because of its possible implications for race-conscious programs in the private sector.”

Get ready for change.

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Thomas Who? Another Billionaire Trump Backer Emerges

For all his talk about representing the common man, Donald Trump”s bid to return to the White House was bankrolled by a phalanx of American billionaires. The A List included Elon Musk, Woody Johnson, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, Miriam Adelson, the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson,  and Timothy Mellon.

Now another less widely known billionaire Trump backer has emerged, Thomas Klingenstein.

Thomas Klingenstein

On January 4, 2024, President-elect Donald Trump held a “World Premier Screening” at Mar-a-Lago of a 104-minute film, The Eastman Dilemma: Lawfare or Justice, about attorney John Eastman. Eastman had worked with Trump to devise a plan for then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election, despite Pence’s lawyer and other lawyers on the White House staff dismissing Eastman’s proposals as illegal and unconstitutional.

The New York Times reported on the showing, but noted, “It is unclear who produced the movie”. A few other media outlets also cited the showing, but none of the stories said who was behind the movie.

Some digging revealed that a lot of people in the constellation of conservative influencers played a role. The website for the film highlights the Madison Media Fund[1]  which “supports freedom focused filmmakers.”

“The Eastman Dilemma: Lawfare or Justice” addresses a critical pain point: the growing reality that attorneys who represent conservative clients are being unfairly targeted and “canceled” by a legal system as it grows increasingly politically biased,” the Media Fund website asserts. 

In addition to highlighting The Eastman Dilemma, The Media Fund website includes a “Producer Circle Film Library: Film collections curated by free speech advocate thought leaders.”

Many of the featured films have conservative or patriotic themes, including films by Dinesh D’Souza, a right-wing conspiracy theorist. D’souza released 2000 Mules, a widely debunked film that falsely claimed paid “mules” illegally collected and deposited ballots into drop boxes that favored Joe Biden in swing states in the 2020 presidential election. 

The Madison Media Fund is registered as a non-profit. In its most recent filing with the Internal Revenue Service, the Irvine, CA-based fund reported no revenue or expenses in 2023. The Executive Director was listed as Garry Depew, but the money behind The Eastman Dilemma likely came from its Executive Producer, Thomas Klingenstein.

Klingenstein is chair of the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank based in Upland, CA. “Scholars at Claremont have long subscribed to the belief that the American republic has been dismantled, the Constitution corrupted by left-wing ideas,”  The New York Times said in a lengthy 2023 piece on the Institute.

The Institute was awarded the National Humanities Medal from President Trump in 2019.  Noteworthily, John Eastman is a long-time senior fellow at the Institute and is the founder and director of Claremont’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence.

Klingenstein is a principal in the investment firm Cohen Klingenstein, LLC which, according to Influence Watch, administers a portfolio worth more than $2.3 billion.

He is also founder of the Thomas D. Klingenstein Fund. The Klingenstein Fund donated $100,000 to Public Media Lab for production of Created Equal: Clarence Thomas In His Own Words, a documentary on the life of Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, released theatrically in January 2020 and broadcast on PBS in May 2020.

“We find ourselves in a cold civil war.,” Klingenstein said in a video released by a Super Pac, American Firebrand. “This is a war not over the size of government or taxes but over the American way of life.” “This war is between those who want to preserve the American way of life, and those who want to destroy it.”

“War is not a time for too much civility, compromise, or for imputing good motives to the enemy,” Klingenstein said in another video. In an apocalyptic tone, he added, “You must understand your enemy: education, corporate media, entertainment, big business, big tech. These institutions, together with the government, function as a totalitarian regime.” 

According to the Federal Election Commission, Klingenstein has contributed millions to conservative candidates, organizations and Republican-aligned political committees. A search of Federal Election Commission records reveals a list of 164 individual contributions by Klingenstein to conservative election campaigns during 2023-2024. Major recipients of Klingenstein’s largesse included:

  • Club For Growth Action, a Super PAC focused on defeating big-government Democrats and replacing them with pro-growth conservatives
  • Win It Back PAC,  a conservative Republican Super PAC
  • Make America Great Again Inc., a  Super PAC in support of Donald Trump
  • The Sentinel Action Fund, a conservative Super PAC with a year-round ground game committed to turning out absentee, early vote, and “day of” voters.
  • Turning Point PAC Inc., a Republican conservative Super PAC

According to a Jan. 13, 2024 story in The New Yorker Daily, Klingenstein has also contributed to the American Leadership PAC that planned to spend one million dollars to pressure Republican senators to support Pete Hegseth as Donald Trump’s Defense Secretary. Breitbart News has reported that the targets are senators in Alaska, North Carolina, Louisiana, South Dakota, and Utah.  In the 2022 and 2024 political cycles, most of the PAC’s funding came from Klingenstein and three other wealthy men.

“Pete Hegseth is a warrior against wokeness in our military and will make an excellent Defense Secretary,” a spokesman for the group told Breitbart News. “It’s vital that Senate Republicans stand with President Trump and vote to confirm Pete. We will do everything in our power to help him get across the finish line.”

There are many more substantial Trump donors from the moneyed class that have largely escaped media attention, but you can be sure they are actively playing the influence game. In mid-2024, Forbes identified 26 billionaires who had each given more than $1 million to Trump. You can be sure they all want something.

“These are smart, accomplished people,” New Yorker writer Susan Glasser said on NPR’s Fresh Air program on October 22, 2024. “I think they have a pretty clear read of who Trump is, which is why for many of them, it strikes me as a fairly cynical transaction that they’re making. And that’s what I was told explicitly from some sources that I have among very senior Republicans who have observed up close this donor class. They believe that it was very transactional. And they think that, in fact, they’re purchasing a level of access and seats at the table in a second Trump administration that they simply wouldn’t have had in a continued Biden or Harris administration.”

Watch closely.

[1] The Madison Media Fund is not the same as NY-based Madison Media Group (MMG) 

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Peak Cringe: A Melania Trump Documentary Is Coming

In today’s political culture, supplicants don’t bother with subtle appeals for favors; they just pay up.

Talk about obsequiousness. 

On Sunday, Amazon announced that its Prime Video streaming service would release a “behind the scenes” documentary about Melania Trump’s life that will be shown in theaters and stream on Amazon Prime later this year. To top it off, Melania Trump will be the film’s executive producer, ensuring it will be a hagiography. 

Adding insult to injury, Amazon has agreed to pay $40 million to Trump for the documentary, according to Puck News, and it will be directed by Hollywood director and producer Brett Ratner,   accused in 2017  by six women, including actress Olivia Munn, of sexual misconduct, according the Los Angeles Times. 

Amazon, founded by Jeff Bezos, who is also the owner of the Washington Post, said it was “excited to share this truly unique story.” 

In May 2025, the New Yorker ran a story noting that just before Christmas, Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, his fiancé, dined with Donald Trump and Melania at Mar-a-Lago. During the meal, according to the Wall Street Journal, Melania told Bezos and Sánchez about a documentary project she was developing based on her own life. Two weeks later, Amazon licensed the film for forty million dollars, nearly three times more than the company had ever spent on a documentary. As much as twenty-eight million dollars of the licensing fee will go directly to the First Lady.

Talk about trying to curry favor with Donald Trump, a famously self-absorbed impulsive, vindictive politician. As Semafor Business said, “An open-air bazaar has replaced a black market of influence-peddling. It’s unsettling to reporters who are used to having to dig around for evidence of pay-to-play.”

If a First Lady documentary is worth doing, others have a considerably stronger claim.

Betty Ford, President Gerald Ford’s wife,  Ford was noted for raising breast cancer awareness following her 1974 mastectomy and was a passionate supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). She also was involved in HIV/AIDS causes and served as the first chair of the board of directors of the Betty Ford Center, which provides treatment services for people with substance use disorders.  

Nancy Reagan, wife of President Ronald Reagan, was an accomplished former actress and a passionate advocate for decreasing drug and alcohol abuse, initiating a campaign to “just say no” to drugs.

Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin Roosevelt, was, in her time,  one of the world’s most widely admired and powerful women. During her husband’s presidency she was aggressive advocate of liberal causes, defending the rights of defense of the rights of Blacks and the poor and wrote a widely read daily syndicated newspaper column. After his presidency, she was appointed a delegate to the United Nations,  where she served as chairman of the Commission on Human Rights (1946–51) and played a key role in the drafting and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

There’s even an interesting story to tell about President Woodrow Wilson’s second wife, Edith Wilson. For all intents and purposes she conspired to serve as the “acting president”  for an astonishing 17 months after her  husband suffered a paralyzing stroke in the fall of 1919

First Lady Dolley Madison, the wife of President James Madison, is often credited with saving the portrait of George Washington and other White House treasures when the British attacked the Capitol in 1814. Hillary Clinton, wife of President Bill Clinton, went on to serve as U.S. Secretary of State, a New York Senator and a Democratic candidate for the presidency. Rosalynn Carter, wife of President Jimmy Carter,  was committed to the improvement of mental health care and after her husbands term in office became a strong participant in efforts that, as she said, would result in “good for others” including Habitat for Humanity.

Can you think of one thing that distinguishes Melania Trump, the “I really Don’t Care. Do You?” First Lady, and her life enough to justify a boot-licking Amazon documentary?

I didn’t think so.