Tag Archives: politics

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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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Is God Now on the Side of Republicans?

Good God!

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is now appealing for money in the name of God to support his political action committee, Champion American Values. He just sent me this email plea:

ALL GLORY TO GOD!

If you agree that nothing but faith in God carried the Conservative movement to victory, then join me in praising Him!

SIGN YOUR NAME

PRAISE GOD

“We’re in the fight of our generation — to save America, as we know it — for future generations, and WE need YOU to stay in the fight,” Pompeo begged me.

Clicking on ”Sign Your Name” takes you to a donation page that offers the opportunity to contribute $35 to $500 or more, and if you don’t uncheck a box, it makes your donation a monthly recurring contribution. 

What a racket!

According to OpenSecrets,  a nonprofit  that tracks and publishes data on campaign finance and lobbying, during 2023-2024 Champion American Values raised $8,088,409 and spent $7,535,674. 

It spent just $90,000 in donations to federal candidates:

  • $5000 to Donald Trump
  • $42,500 to Republican candidates for the US House of Representatives
  • $37,500 to Republican candidates for the US Senate

So where did the rest of its spending go?

$4,505,713, or 70.05%, of its total spending, went to fundraising expenses. 

$1,004,735, or 15.62%, went to PAC staff salaries.

$312,260 went to media expenses, including $304,549 to media consulting

$206,509 went to administrative expenses, including travel, lodging, technology and legal services

If you get a fundraising appeal from this outfit, pray to God that you have the fortitude to refuse the plea. 

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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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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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Dear Trumpers: Is This What You Voted For?

Presidential candidates say a lot of things during the heat of a campaign. Voters have to separate the wheat from the chaff to figure out what among all the proposals are likely to actually be pursued. President-elect Donald Trump has taken things further by revealing his most controversial proposals AFTER the election, saving voters from having to consider whether they make any sense or should influence their vote.

As Tina Brown said today in Fresh Hell, “In Trump Season Two, deranged masculinity is all the rage.” Consider the following items Trump has put forward since the election:

  • Greenland: Trump has refused to rule out the use of force or economic coercion as a means for America to take control of Greenland,  an autonomous territory of Denmark in the polar zone with self-government and its own parliament, a population of approximately 56,600 inhabitants and an official language, Greenlandic, that is spoken by the majority, although a small proportion of the population considers itself bilingual and uses Danish as a parallel language. “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale,,” said Greenland’s Prime Minister Múte Egede.  “… he (Trump) seems to sincerely believe that strong countries have the right to bully weaker ones. Trump has long insisted that the United States should seize smaller countries’ natural resources, and that American allies should be paying us protection money, as if they were shopkeepers and America were a mob boss,” Jonathan Chait wrote in The Atlantic.
  • The Panama Canal: Trump has refused to rule out the use of military or economic coercion to force Panama to give up control of the Panama Canal that America built more than a century ago. Construction of the canal, an artificial 82-kilometer waterway in Panama that connects the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean, was officially completed on April 1, 1914 and officially opened to commercial traffic on  August 15, 1914.  On Sept. 7, 1977, President Carter submitted two treaties to the U.S. Senate. The first, called the Neutrality Treaty, stated that the United States could use its military to defend the Panama Canal against any threat to its neutrality, thus allowing perpetual U.S. usage of the Canal. The second, called The Panama Canal Treaty, stated that the Panama Canal Zone would cease to exist on October 1, 1979, and the Canal itself would be turned over to the Panamanians on December 31, 1999. These two treaties were signed on September 7, 1977.  Carter signed the implementation legislation into law on September 27, 1979. When pressed on whether he might order the military to force Panama to give up the canal, or to do the same with Greenland, Trump recently said: “No, I can’t assure you on either of those two.”
  • The Gulf of Mexico: “We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” Trump said at a recent news conference. “ … What a beautiful name, and it’s appropriate.” That The body of water has been depicted with that name for more than four centuries.Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has already proposed a bill that would federally fund the required changes to maps.
  • Making Canada Part of the United States: Trump has threatened to use “economic force” to join Canada and the United States together, implying that the United States would pare back its purchases of Canadian products to force such a move. He has posted maps on social media showing Canada as part of the United States and posted “many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State.” He has also said, “If Canada merged with the U.S., there would be no Tariffs, taxes would go way down, and they would be TOTALLY SECURE from the threat of the Russian and Chinese Ships that are constantly surrounding them,” he added. “Together, what a great Nation it would be!!!” Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded on X, “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.”
  • Wind energy: Trump has said he wants the US to move away from wind energy. “We’re going to try and have a policy where no windmills are being built,” he said. In 2023, wind power generated 10% of the United States’ electricity. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that by 2050, wind power could meet 35% of the country’s electricity demand, unless its growth is stymied by political action. Maybe all this is nonsense, theater of the absurd. Maybe it’s designed to dominate the news cycle, control the narrative, a practice Trump employs with abandon and one which drives out competing coverage of important issues.
  • Lawsuit: And if the above aren’t enough of a contribution to chaos, Trump is pursuing a lawsuit against Ann Selzer, a veteran pollster who predicted Kamala Harris would win Iowa, for fraud, and The Des Moines Register. It’s not enough that he won, I guess.

As Heather Cox Richardson observed in her Jan. 8 Letters from an American, “things that matter deeply to the American people are going largely unnoticed”.[1] Maybe all this is nonsense, theater of the absurd. Maybe it’s designed to dominate the news cycle, control the narrative, a practice Trump employs with abandon and one which drives out competing coverage of important issues. If that’s the case, Trump is succeeding, pushing aside other important issues as his inauguration draws nearer.

In the meantime, it’s discouraging to see some commentators suggest ignoring Trumps bluster. On Jan. 8, Joe Klein, a former Time magazine columnist, wrote a message on his Substack blog saying essentially, “Don’t worry. Be happy”:

“I’ll not fall for the bait. I watched Trump’s press conference. I will take him seriously, but not literally. He’s negotiating. He’s sending messages. And I don’t think the messages are all that terrible. He is haggling for better rates for American ships in the Canal (and perhaps a MAGA project of widening that too-skinny thing). He’s sending a larger message to the Chinese: we’re watching every move you make, especially in the western hemisphere. He is haggling with Denmark: Greenland wants independence, at least a majority of its minuscule (57,000) population does and we’re a more plausible big brother than you. He is poking Canada, provocatively, for better trade deals and more defense spending. He is sending us a message, too: I’m Back and More Vehement Than Ever. All of which conveys three things: confidence, the appearance of strength and a certain crafty craziness.”

Reed Galen, president of JoinTheUnion.us, a pro-democracy coalition, took a different tack in The Guardian, saying we need to be more wary of Trump’s outbursts and threats:

“The guy’s been a troll for nearly 80 years,” Galen said. “The problem is now he happens to be a troll who is about to run, again, the most powerful nation that humanity has ever known. He wants to do this because he wants outrage. He wants, to the extent that he thinks he can induce it, fear or panic. Chaos is the coin of his realm and it always will be because things being out of control is the only way he’s in control.”


[1] According to Richardson, MAGA representatives have been introducing a slew of measures to the new Congress, many of which incorporate the plans of Project 2025 into legislation. They call for turning over immigration to the states, privatizing veterans’ healthcare, and repealing the 1993 National Voting Rights Act, the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
Bills call for withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization; increasing oil and gas production on federal lands; abolishing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); allowing states to spend federal education money on private school vouchers; and removing the protection of transgender rights from schools.
Other measures would revoke security clearances for “certain former members of the intelligence community,” introduce a constitutional amendment to cap the Supreme Court at nine justices, and cut off federal funding to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office (the office that successfully charged Trump with election interference) and the Fulton County (GA) District Attorney’s Office (the office that has charged Trump with criminal conspiracy).
And MAGA Republicans have proposed a bill to impose a national abortion ban, along with a bill urging Congress to support a consortium of antiabortion doctors for women because, the bill says, “health care should emphasize the whole woman, including her physical, mental, and spiritual wellness,” and “health care for women should also address the needs of men, families, and communities.”
 
 




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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.

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Donald J. Trump’s Dec.16, 2024 Press Conference: Falsehoods, Distortion, Fakery and Deceit

“Nuttiness may be subjective, but truthfulness is not”

Bill Scher, Politics Editor, Washington Monthly

On Dec. 16, Donald J. Trump held his first press conference since his Nov. 5, 2024 election. Wishing to be of service to those of you who were too busy or not inclined to tune in, I reviewed the entire deluge of Trump’s rambling thoughts:

  • “We had no wars when I left office and now the whole world is blowing up.“

Truth: When Trump left office in early 2021, US troops were still deployed in combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. About  200,000  US troops were deployed overseas, including 6,000 – 7,000 American troops spread across Africa, with the largest numbers concentrated in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa,  about 50,000 troops at roughly two dozen bases across Japan and about 2,000 Marines in  northern Australia 

  • “Lot of people don’t realize, but we did 571 miles of wall (on the Mexican border).  I built much more than I said I was going to build.”

Truth: Early in his 2016 election campaign, Trump pledged to build a wall along the entire 2000-mile length of the border with Mexico. He later clarified he’d build a wall covering half of that distance. In his State of the Union address in February 2020, he pledged to build “substantially more than 500 miles” by January 2021.

Various types of fencing totaling 654 miles, running through California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, were already in place before Trump became president in 2017.  At the end of Trump’s first term, the Trump administration said it completed more than 400 miles of border wall, but only 80 miles of new wall barriers were actually built where there were none before. The vast majority of the construction replaced existing structures at the border that had been built by previous US administrations.

  • “We’re also going to create clean coal. Clean coal is something that has really taken over. …we’re going to be doing a lot of clean coal for the people of West Virginia and others, Wyoming.”

Truth: The idea of “clean coal” is generally considered not viable, as current technology cannot fully mitigate the environmental impacts of burning coal, making it essentially a marketing term with little practical application; while some technologies can reduce emissions, the process remains too expensive and energy-intensive to be considered truly “clean” on a large scale, with many experts stating that “clean coal” is a myth

  • “So we’re looking to save maybe $2 trillion and it’ll have no impact. Actually. It’ll make life better, but it’ll have no impact on people.  We will never cut social security or things like that. It’s just waste, fraud and abuse.” 

Fact: This would certainly run counter to Trump’s actions in his first term, during which he added $8 trillion to the national debt,  despite having promised to run budget surpluses.  The federal government is now burning through $6.8 trillion annually and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says Trump’s proposed policies would add an estimated $7.7 trillion to debt over the next decade. Cutting $2 trillion in one year would be impossible, as well, given that Trump has already said he’s not going to touch Social Security or Medicare., the two largest government programs, and interest payments, which account for 13% of federal spending, can’t be cut either (Unless the government plans to default on the national debt). Discretionary spending accounts for only about 25% of total expenditures, but that includes defense, which Congress has no inclination to cut.

  • “We’ll immediately restore the sovereign borders of the United States and stop illegal immigration.”

Truth: Over the past 30 years, the Border Patrol’s budget has grown more than sevenfold, the number of agents stationed along the southwest border has quadrupled, the border wall has been strengthened and lengthened, and increasing amounts of technology have been used to deter illegal migrants, but they have kept coming, more and more of them from countries other than Mexico. Also complicating the situation, a substantial number of the illegal immigrant population in the United States came legally on work visas and stayed after they expired.  The government has been terrible at finding and deporting these people. 

  • “We had no problems, we had no inflation. We had no inflation. We had at less than 1%. A perfect number.”

Truth: The Consumer Price Index rose 7.8% during Trump’s first term. The CPI rose an average of 1.9% each year of the Trump presidency according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was about the same as the average under Obama (1.8%) and below the average of 2.4% during George W. Bush’s years.

  • Trump responding to a question, “Do you believe there’s a connection between vaccines and autism? Do you believe there’s a link?” Trump: We’re looking to find out. …There’s something wrong. And we’re going to find out about it.”

Truth: Many studies have looked at whether there is a relationship between vaccines and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD.), but to date, the studies continue to show that vaccines are not associated with ASD, according to the federal Centers for Disease control and Prevention. 

Two studies, referred to as the Wakefield Studies, have frequently been cited by those claiming that the MMR vaccine causes autism. Both studies are considered critically flawed. In the first study, published in 1998, Wakefield’s hypothesis was that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine  caused a series of events that include the development of autism. The study was subsequently retracted; in scientific terms, this means that the paper is not part of the scientific record because it was found to be based on scientific misconduct. In this case, the studies were deemed fraudulent and data misrepresented. The second study, published in 2002, which examined the relationship between measles virus and autism, was also critically flawed. Meanwhile, several studies have been performed that disprove the notion that MMR causes autism.

  •  Trump responding to a question – “Do you think schools should mandate vaccines?” Trump – “I don’t like mandates. I’m not a big mandate person.”

Truth: Mandating vaccinations of schoolchildren saves lives. Schools and broader communities rely on high immunization rates to keep vaccine-preventable diseases from spreading. When more children are immunized, the risk for everybody declines, particularly for people with weakened immune systems and chronic medical conditions like lung, heart, liver, kidney disease or diabetes. The more parents who decline to vaccinate their children, the greater the risk that infection will spread in the community.

  • “Europe doesn’t use pesticides, and yet they have a better mortality rate than we do.”

Truth: Pesticides are still widely used in Europe, with the agricultural sector relying on significant volumes of chemical pesticides to maintain crop yields, although the EU has regulations in place to limit their use and is actively working to reduce pesticide reliance because widespread pesticide use is major source of pollution, according to the European Environment Agency.

  • ” They’re still counting the vote in California.“

Truth: California did take longer to count votes in the recent federal elections than other states, but the California Secretary of State had certified the 2024 election results prior to Trump’s news conference.  

  • “We got the biggest tax cuts in history.”

Truth: Trump’s tax cut s in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was not the largest in history, either in percentage of gross domestic product or in inflation-adjusted dollars.  When the Congressional Budget Office reviewed tax cuts enacted between 1981 and 2023, it found that two other tax cut bills were bigger – former President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 package and legislation signed by former President Barack Obama that extended earlier tax cuts enacted during former President George W. Bush’s administration. Reagan’s 1981 tax cut was the largest in U.S. history, reducing revenues by $19 trillion over a decade. 

  • The US took in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs “from China” during Trump’s first term and “no other president took in 10 cents, not 10 cents.”  before he was president.

Truth: First, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics the revenue from tariffs on Chinese imports come from the importers, not China. Importing businesses pay the tariffs and then have to decide whether to bear some of the costs or pass any portion of the cost on to consumers through higher prices.

Second, according to the Institute, Americans have been paying tariffs on imports from China for decades., going as far back as the late 19th and early 20th centuries and more recently during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. 

And we’re going to have four more years of this.

Admoniti estis.

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Will Trump Abandon Ukrainian Refugees? Count on it, he says.

Remember when America welcomed Ukrainians with open arms and warm hearts when Russia initiated a brutal invasion of Ukraine in 2022?

So much for “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” when Donald Trump takes office again on January 20, 2025.

The United States under President Trump is expected to join Pakistan and Iran in forcefully returning foreigners who have arrived from war-torn countries. And with the fall of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, pressure is likely to grow to repatriate Syrians in the United States under TPS protection

The Costs of War Project is a nonpartisan research project based at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. It seeks to document the direct and indirect human and financial costs of U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and related counterterrorism efforts. According to Costs of War, over one million Afghans were forcibly returned from Pakistan and Iran in 2023. Under the current Taliban regime, forced returns to Afghanistan are continuing, despite a non-return advisory from the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

 “States have a legal and moral responsibility to allow those fleeing Afghanistan to seek safety, and to not forcibly return refugees,” the Refugee Agency says.

Various governments justify this trend of increasing returns to Afghanistan by arguing that active war has subsided since August 2021, when the U.S. initiated a chaotic withdrawal from the country, Costs of War asserts.

Trump has made it crystal clear he plans to repatriate Ukrainians who are in the United States under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program. Set up in 1990, the program gave the federal government the ability to grant work permits and deferrals from deportation to nationals of any designated nation going through or recovering from natural or man-made disasters.

An ongoing Ukrainian refugee crisis began in February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, with over 6 million refugees fleeing Ukraine across Europe. The United States announced on March 4, 2022, that Ukrainians would be provided Temporary Protected Status (TPS).  There are now approximately 50,205 Ukrainian refugees  in the United States protected by the TPS program. During the designated TPS period, TPS holders are not removable from the United States and not detainable by DHS based on their immigration status. TPS for Ukrainians was recently extended until April 19, 2025, only three months after Trump’s inauguration. 

The Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025”, which Trump disavowed during the campaign when criticism of it erupted, has resurfaced as a policy driver since Trump’s election. It outlines a plan to end TPS, calling it a program that encourages illegal immigration. If confirmed, Trump’s pick for Secretary of the Department of Homeland  Security, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, would likely will lead the charge to terminate TPS designations and send Ukrainian refugees home to the continuing war and devastation.

Is this what the 76,744,608 people who voted for Trump this time around wanted?

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Contempt of Congress: Donald Trump’s Cabal of Co-Conspirators

Nancy Rommelmann, an American writer, recently attributed Hunter Biden’s failures to “entitlement and soul rot” and said his situation was a classic case of a boy who has never reached adulthood. “I can think of few things worse than never growing up,” Rommelmann wrote. 

Donald Trump, who holds everlasting grudges, enjoys humiliating people and acts like a schoolyard bully, has never grown up either. He’s a man-child. His childish, and mean-spirited attitudes are reflected in many of his selections of key people to exercise influence in his administration. 

How else to explain his apparent determination to ensure loyalty among his key advisors by creating a kakistocracy, a state governed by its least suitable or competent citizens.

if Trump gets all his key nominees for leadership positions, including what journalist Tina Brown calls his “cast of crazies” who need to be confirmed by the Senate, our democracy will be severely diminished. 

Kash Patel, Trump’s choice for FBI Director, wants to go after 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 — we’re going to come after you,” Patel said last year. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.” Writing in Bulwark of Trump’s choice off Patel to lead the FBI, Jonathan Last said   “… the actual incoming president of the United States has signaled that he’s going to fire the director of the FBI for [reasons] and replace him with a psychopath.” And Patel was hardly admired in Tump’s first term. During Trump’s first term, Attorney General William Barr and CIA Director Gina Haspel thought so little of him that they threatened to resign if Patel was imposed on them as deputy FBI or CIA Director, respectively.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nominated to be Health and Human Services Secretary, is a much-ridiculed conspiracy theorist, vaccine skeptic and dumper of a bear carcass in New York’s Central Park. “There’s no telling how far an anti-vaxxer & fringe conspiracy theorist like RFK Jr. could set America back in terms of public health, reproductive rights, research, & more,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA).

 “Kennedy has few good things to say about almost any technological invention,” Derek Thompson wrote in The Atlantic. “”He has voiced histrionic fears about nuclear reactors, said that Wi-Fi can cause “leaky brain,” suggested that chemicals in the water supply might make kids transgender, wondered aloud if Prozac might contribute to school shootings, and posted support for the so-called chemtrails conspiracy, which holds that the government uses the contrails, or condensation trails, of jetliners to spread toxic chemicals.”

Secretary of Education nominee Linda McMahon, is another problematic case. “McMahon’s only mission is to eliminate the Department of Education and take away taxpayer dollars from public schools, where 90% of students – and 95% of students with disabilities – learn, and give them to unaccountable and discriminatory private schools,” says National Education Association (NEA) President Becky Pringle.

At one point, professional wrestling mogul McMahon said she didn’t know her claim she had earned a degree in education from East Carolina University was false. When Connecticut’s Hartford Courant newspaper reported that her degree was actually in French. McMahon said she thought her degree was in education because she did a semester of student-teaching and had a certificate to teach. 

Director of National Intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard, who has never worked in the intelligence community, has been criticized for making laudatory comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said Gabbard was “parroting fake Russian propaganda.” She has also spoken favorably of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has carried out a brutal war against his country’s people. In 2015, Gabbard was widely criticized by members of her own party when she urged the Obama administration to halt its support for  Syria’s opposition movement against Assad and in 2017 she made an unannounced trip to Syria in 2017 to meet Assad, despite the fact the U.S. had severed diplomatic relations with Syria.

Russ Vought, Trump’s nominee for Office of Management and Budget Director, was a co-author of Project 2025, the controversial Heritage Foundation blueprint for Trump’s hoped-for second term. Which Trump vigorously disavowed during his campaign.  Vought supports a a broad expansion of presidential power, including giving Trump the ability to fire thousands of federal workers.

Mehmet Oz, a snake oil salesman with a history of and outright quackery and championing pseudo-scientific treatments, has been proposed as leader of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which provide health care to America’s most vulnerable.

Pete Hegseth, a co-host of Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends Weekend”, whom Trump has nominated to serve as Secretary of Defense, has questioned the role of women in combat and advocated pardoning service members charged with war crimes. And The New Yorker ‘s Jane Mayer just reported, “A whistle-blower report and other documents suggest that Trump’s nominee to run the Pentagon was forced out of previous leadership positions for financial mismanagement, sexist behavior, and being repeatedly intoxicated on the job.”

In Hegseth’s case, there’s speculation that Trump continues to support him in the face of opposition because it takes some of the heat and media attention off other unqualified candidates, particularly Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert Kennedy Jr.

Nominee for U.S. ambassador to France, Charles Kushner, the father of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has a lot of baggage, too. In a Truth Social post, Trump praised Charles Kushner as a “tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker, who will be a strong advocate representing our Country & its interests.” Trump pardoned Charles Kushner during his first term for a 2005 federal conviction on 18 counts of assisting in the filing of false tax returns, retaliating against a cooperating witness (his own sister) and making false statements to the Federal -Election Commission (FEC).

The retaliation charge was related to a beyond -the-pale admission by Charles Kushner that he had paid a private investigator $25,000 to have a prostitute seduce his sister’s husband, covertly film them having sex and have the videotape mailed to the cooperating witness.

Even with all these severely challenged nominees, it’s no sure thing that Trump’s -proposed appointees, what television host and comedian Jimmy Kimmel has described as a “clown car”, will be held in check by the Senate’s reluctance to challenge him or by an aghast public. 

All of it is enough to drive a concerned citizen to existential despair. 

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Reshaping Oregon’s Kicker: If You Can’t Win the Game, Change the Rules

Like a casino that changes the Blackjack odds by shifting from one hand-held deck to multiple decks,  critics of Oregon’s kicker law are preparing for a stealth raid on your wallet.

State economist, Carl Riccadonna, hired in August by Gov. Tina Kotek, “has taken it upon himself to get the forecast more in line with reality” KGW reported in November. In other words, to try to minimize (or eliminate) it.

 “I think that the truing up of the calculation under the new chief economist is really going to be helpful to provide stability when we are trying to do budgeting every two years, ” Kotek said in November. 

The Oregon Legislature passed the “Two percent kicker” law in 1979.  It requires the state to refund surplus revenues to taxpayers when actual General Fund revenues exceed the forecast amount by more than two percent. The personal income tax kicker money comes from all state General Fund revenue sources, except for corporate tax revenues. Personal income tax is the largest contributor. In 2000, voters acting on a legislative referral put a large portion of the 2% surplus kicker statute into the state constitution (Article IX, Section 14).

In October 2023, the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis (OEA) confirmed a $5.61 billion revenue surplus in the 2021-2023 biennium, triggering a tax surplus credit, or kicker, for the 2023 tax year. The surplus—the largest in state history[1]—was returned to taxpayers through a credit on their 2023 state personal income tax returns filed in 2024. 

Democrats, never at a loss for ideas on how to spend more government money, in league with unions and liberal special interest groups, are eager to see the kicker refunds throttled.

Because the kicker is in the Oregon Constitution, a ballot measure would need to be referred to the people to get them to surrender their Kicker refund, but don’t put it past the Democrat-dominated legislature to get creative to facilitate higher government spending.

“Oregon’s inaccurate revenue forecasting costs billions needed for critical public services,” said a memo Service Employees International Union Local 503, Oregon’s largest public-sector union, sent recently to Gov. Kotek.

SEIU research director, Daniel Morris, has complained that poor economic forecasting has resulted in too much money going out the door as kicker refunds.  “Over the last five forecasts it’s been embarrassingly bad,” he told OPB. “There are real consequences for the families of Oregon.”

Joe Baessler, interim executive director of  American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 75, has lambasted the kicker as well. “They’re deciding to under-inflate our revenue,” said Baessler. “It forces budgeting that is not in line with how much revenue is coming into the state and rolls back the amount of money we have for services that Oregonians want.”

The Oregon Center for Public Policy regularly rails against the kicker too. “Oregon’s kicker is a policy that worsens income inequality, racial inequality and geographic inequality,” says the Center. 

With a new state economist committed to forecast reform, Democrats holding a supermajority in the Oregon House and Senate, Tina Kotek serving as governor, and special interest groups salivating over a bigger state budget, the generous kickers of the past are in jeopardy. Count on it. 

[1] Personal Income Kicker History

Two Percent Kicker, Biennia 1979-81 to 2021-23
BienniumTax YearSurplus/Shortfall ($ millions)PercentMean ($)
1979-811981-$141None–
1981-831983-$115None–
1983-851985$897.70%$80
1985-871987$22116.60%$190
1987-891989$1759.80%$130
1989-911991$186Suspended–
1991-931993$60None–
1993-951994/5$1636.27%$110
1995-971996/7$43214.37%$290
1997-991998/9$1674.57%$100
1999-012000/1$2546.02%$160
2001-032002/3-$1,249None–
2003-052004/5-$401None–
2005-072006/7$1,07118.60%$610
2007-092008-$1,113None–
2009-112010-$1,050None–
2011-132012$124None–
2013-152014$4025.60%$210
2015-172016$4645.60%$250
2017-192018$1,68817.17%$910
2019-212020$1,89817.34%$990
2021-232022$5,61944.28%