Lafayette Park north of the White House is one of the most prominent hubs for political protests in the country and a beacon for the first amendment.
So, of course, President Trump, not content with destroying the Rose Garden and the West Wing, is continuing his rampage through Washington’s landmarks with a move to permanently surround the park with an 8-9 ft. fence. That would allow the park to be closed at Trump’s discretion.
On Thursday, July 16, the Commission of Fine Arts, a federal design panel stuffed with Trump supplicants, indicated support for the plan.
“This is definitely the president’s park, but also the people’s park, and it’s to be made open, but also closeable, so that it can be made safe,” James C. McCrery II, the vice chair of the Commission, told the New York Times.
Safe for whom? Safe from whom?
The park has long been the site of multiple political protests, including picketing by suffragists demanding voting rights, protests for women’s rights and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), demonstrations by civil rights and anti-war activists, LGBTQ activists, anti-nuclear war encampments, and Black Lives Matter demonstrations.
In 2021, the National Park Service and the White House Historical Association added three wayside markers on the north side of the park that tell the story of protest in the park, the construction of the White House by free and enslaved laborers, and the influence of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in preserving the character of the park.
In this Library of Congress photo from 1917, suffragists march with banners, picketing outside on the sidewalk in front of the White House.
The Secret Service, the Executive Office of the President and the Department of the Interior claim they want to install the permanent fence so the park can be closed during “heightened conditions.”
A demonstrator hold up flags at a rally for D.C. Democracy in Lafayette Park near the White House in Washington, Saturday, June 25, 2011. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)
NPR ran the AP photo above by Luis Alvarez of a rally in Lafayette Park to show how close protesters were able to get to the White House without barriers in 2011. Trump wants to push them back, way back.
“What this fencing represents, to me, is the worst of what the new attitude toward politics represents,” Marty Pearl, 83, who brought a “Hate Won’t Make America Great” sign to the area, told NPR. “And that is imperialism, fascism, dictatorship, because what dictators do is isolate themselves from the people they rule. That is not, for me, the way democracies can possibly work.”
He’s right. Putting our political leaders more and more behind barriers and keeping them more and more distant from the people they serve diminishes our democracy.
And Trump doesn’t want to stop with the fence.
In June, the Washington Post disclosed that Trump is secretly planting a monument to himself in Lafayette Square in the form of 47 maple trees as a nod to being the 47th president.
I felt a profound sense of sorrow as our plane descended into Washington, D.C., last Thursday. I hadn’t been to our nation’s capital since 2008.
As we drove to our hotel, a deep heaviness settled over me. We passed National Guard troops stationed on street corners and around monuments. It was deeply unsettling to see armed American soldiers patrolling the streets of our nation’s capital.
Passing the Labor Department, I saw two enormous, Stalin-esque banners of Trump and Teddy Roosevelt hanging from the building. I couldn’t help but wonder how we had reached a point where the president of the United States was being glorified on government buildings in a way that felt more like a personality cult than a democracy.
The next morning, we walked toward Dupont Circle and saw more armed troops, ICE agents, and Secret Service personnel patrolling the streets. When we headed toward the White House, police and military vehicles blocked the usual road.
We were directed to a small viewing area where we could barely see the White House through a sixteen-foot fence surrounding Lafayette Park.
Americans, Australians, Colombians, and people from around the world were gathered there, straining to catch a glimpse of the people’s house through the massive barrier.
I was horrified.
The White House belongs to the American people. Lafayette Square belongs to the American people. These are symbols of our democracy—not private property to be barricaded and hidden from the public.
UPDATE, June 2026: So now Trump has announced he will nominate Jay Clayton to be the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Clayton is currently the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and previously chaired the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) during Trump’s first administration. Any national intelligence background either?Nope. But now Trump and the Republicans will push him as a sound alternative. What a joke!
50 U.S. Code § 3023 – Director of National Intelligence
(a)Director of National Intelligence
(1)
There is a Director of National Intelligence who shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. Any individual nominated for appointment as Director of Nationalshall have extensive national security expertise.
The first Director of National Intelligence, 2005 – John Negroponte
B.A. from Yale University, 1960.
Served as Ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Nations, and Iraq.
Served twice on the National Security Council staff, first as director for Vietnam in the Nixon Administration and then as deputy national security advisor under President Reagan.
Served as a Deputy Secretary of State, first for Oceans and Fisheries (1977) and then for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs (1980).
As a junior diplomat, had assignments in Hong Kong, Vietnam, France, Ecuador and Greece.
Executive vice president of the McGraw-Hill Companies,1997 – 2001
Senior research fellow in grand strategy and as a lecturer in international relations at Yale University.
Chairman of the Council of the Americas/Americas Society, a New York-based NGO which advocates for commercial and cultural relations in the Western Hemisphere.
Co-chairman of the US-Philippines Society
Chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA).
Trump’s Director of National Intelligence appointee, 2026 – Bill Pulte
President of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity chapter at Northwestern University, 2010; Graduated from Northwestern with a BA in Broadcast Journalism, 2010
Inherited his grandfather’s home construction company
No experience in the intelligence community.
Was a Trump mega-donor.
Named by Trump Director of Federal Housing Finance and Chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac since 2025.
“Go back to where you came from”, he said to the Somali immigrants in Minnesota, employing an insulting slur unacceptable in polite society.
Last week Trump said on his social media channel, Truth Social, he’d send Somalis “back to where they came from.” Yesterday he said Somalis in the U.S. should “go back to where they came from and fix it.”
A person familiar with Trump’s plans told the Associated Press federal authorities are preparing a targeted immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota that would primarily focus on Somali immigrants living unlawfully in the U.S.
At a cabinet meeting yesterday, Trump said Somalis “contribute nothing.”
“I don’t want them in our country,” a snarling Trump told reporters. “Their country is no good for a reason. Your country stinks and we don’t want them in our country.”
I remember hearing that taunt directed at minorities by racist know-nothings in my youth in the 1950s, but I thought people had long ago been shamed from uttering it.
Trump, however, seems to enjoy denigrating “the other”.
Trump’s own Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cites “Go back to where you came from,” as an example of unlawful workplace conduct, along with the use of “insults, taunting, or ethnic epithets”.
I suppose in some respects nobody should really be surprised by Trump’s insults. That’s his modus operandi. Demean and slander his opponents, particularly those he deems not “real” Americans. And his supporters often embrace his scurrilous attacks.
He even goes after members of Congress with abandon. He has described Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, (D-Minn), who came to the United States from Somalia as a refugee and became a citizen 25 years ago, as “garbage.”
“We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” Trump said. “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage.”
And Trump’s recent explicit use of hateful speech is not original or unprecedented. It was a feature, not a bug, of his campaigns for office.
An analysis published by Presidential Studies Quarterly[1] , cited by the National Library of Medicine, concluded that “no other comparable candidate of either major US party has ever approached the level of negativity and vitriol toward racial/ethnic minorities that Trump did.”
A Washington Post column today by George Will is headlined “A sickening moral slum of an administration”.
Indeed.
[1] Çinar I, Stokes S, Uribe A. Presidential rhetoric and populism. Presidential Studies Quarterly. 2020;50(2):240–263. doi: 10.1111/psq.12656. [DOI] [Google Scholar]
The American Political Action Committee (AmeriPAC), a Bellevue, Washington-based organization that says it is focused on electing “conservative, freedom-oriented candidates to public office”, is offering supporters a Liberty Cross Award Medal.[1] The medal , which features a bust of President Trump, bears an uncanny resemblance to a bronze Nazi War Merit Cross featuring a swastika.
Liberty Cross Award Medal Nazi War Merit Cross
AmeriPAC emails tell recipients that those who have earned the Liberty Cross Award Medal have demonstrated:
To receive their medal, all awardees have to do is fill out a short survey and make a donation of $10 or more. The message to me included a pre-checked box to make my contribution a monthly recurring donation.
The survey questions, reminiscent of the “loyalty questionnaire” administered by the US Government to Japanese Nikkei citizens and immigrants being held in WWII concentration camps, include:
Are you a steadfast patriot, who shows VALOR in the defense of truth?
Do you pledge LOYALTY to the America-First mission?
Do you STAND with President Trump against the Radical Left and all their plots and schemes?
Do you LOVE President Trump and all that he is doing to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN?
“At AmeriPAC, we want to personally restore our country for freedom-loving patriots like you,” the medal appeal says.
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) lists two similarly named fundraising committees: (1) AMERIPAC: THE FUND FOR A GREATER AMERICA, formed in 1992 to help elect Democratic leaders to the United States Congress. ID: C00271338; (2) The American Political Action Committee (AmeriPAC) Registered with the Federal Election Commission on August 24, 1980. ID: C99002396.
The second PAC is the one awarding the Liberty Cross Award Medal. According to the FEC, this PAC has raised $2,399,916.53 and spent $1,446,308.76 in the first three-quarters of 2025. Almost all of its spending has gone towards fundraising.
About 41% of the money spent on fundraising, $595,618.82, went to Red Spark Strategy, a Republican-leaning Arlington, VA.-based digital consulting and marketing agency. Another 11.05%, $159,876.80 , went to Frontline Strategies LLC and 10.63%, $153,726.29, went to Better Mousterap Digital LLC.
[1] A War Merit Cross Second Class without Swords. (Kriegsverdienstkreuz II. Klasse ohne Schwertern). Instituted October 18th, 1939 (1939-1945 issue). Constructed of bronze, with a fixed loop and ring for suspension, consisting of a Maltese Cross with pebbled arms, the obverse with a central wreathed mobile swastika.
“We have the best economy maybe in the history of the world,”President Trump insisted during his 60 Minutes interview on Nov. 2. Oregonians and other Americans who depend on food stamp benefits under SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, likely beg to differ.
While President Trump and his entourage were enjoying an over-the-top “Great Gatsby”-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago last week, millions of Americans were worrying about the loss of their SNAP food benefits. The timing could not have been more unseemly.
On. display at Mar-a-Lago. “‘She’s got an indiscreet voice,’ I remarked. ‘It’s full of—’ I hesitated. ‘Her voice is full of money,’ [Gatsby] said suddenly.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
President Trump’s Great Gatsby-Themed Halloween Party at Mar-a-Lago, 2025
One-sixth of Oregon’s population. 0.16, 16%. No matter how you put it, a lot of Oregonians depend on SNAP benefits.
Currently, benefits average just over $6 per person per day. In fiscal year 2024, that translated into about 757,000 of our neighbors, including about 210,000 children and 130,000 adults aged 65 and older.
With the federal government shutdown, Oregon and other states have run out of money to distribute to the more than 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP. The Department of Agriculture has claimed it can’t spend $6 billion sitting in reserves, but two federal judges have ordered the Trump administration to use contingency funds to fund SNAP during the shutdown. The Trump administration responded in court filings that it would use contingency funds to provide partial SNAP benefits in November.
The administration said it would send partial payments this month, but eligible households may receive just half of their usual amounts and the partial payments could take weeks to arrive. (As of mid-day on Nov. 4, however, Trump muddied the waters by posting on Truth Social, “SNAP BENEFITS…will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do.”)
Further complicating matters, on Nov. 5 The New York Times reported that some normal food stamp recipients may receive nothing at all in November because of the way that the White House has chosen to pay partial benefits during the government shutdown.
“The problem stems from the way in which the administration has opted to fund benefits, and the intricate rules it has foisted on states this week to calculate aid amounts for the 42 million people enrolled in SNAP,” the New York Times said. “For nearly 1.2 million households, or almost five million people, the changes may result in benefits of $0 in November, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning group, which analyzed the government’s public filings and shared its findings early with The New York Times.”
On November 6, the situation changed again when a federal judge, John McConnell, ordered the Trump administration to fully fund November’s food-assistance benefits by November 6. Of course, the administration’s lawyers told the court it was appealing the order.
While the legal wrangling persists, it’s appalling that so many Oregonians, the majority children, disabled or seniors, are in such dire straits that the federal government has to step in to help them get enough to eat.
According to an analysis of USDA data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), Oregon ranks third in the percentage of the state’s population that relies on SNAP. Only New Mexico and Louisiana are in front of Oregon.
Meanwhile, in a reflection of the number of Oregonians living on the edge, Oregon food banks report they are being hit with a deluge of SNAP participants desperate for food, even though they got their last benefits as recently as last month. At the same time, food banks are seeing some of the thousands of federal employees who are going without pay during the government shutdown. That’s all consistent with the Federal Reserve’s report on America’s economic well-being in 2024 that found 37% of Americans couldn’t pay for an unexpected $400 expense without turning to a credit card and 60% of adults said that changes in the prices they paid compared with the prior year had made their financial situation worse.
In Oregon, high unemployment is partly to blame.
According to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Oregon’s unemployment rate was 5.0% in August 2025, higher than the national rate of 4.3%, and has been climbing steadily for more than two years. The rate has been influenced by increasing layoffs and an overall cooling off of the state’s labor market. Oregon unemployment rate is higher than every state in the Pacific Northwest., including Alaska, Idaho, Montana, and Washington. .Too many Oregonians are also working less than they’d prefer, leading to a rising so-called “underemployment rate”.
Oregon’s economy also relies heavily on service, retail, and tourism jobs , many of which are seasonal, that pay lower wages, even with Oregon’s mandated hourly wage levels, resulting in many hard working families falling below the income threshold for SNAP eligibility.
And Oregon’s economy is retreating, diminished from job losses at Intel, PacificSource, Wells Fargo, Nike, OHSU and even Powell’s Books, which has had four rounds of layoffs this year. Despite President Trump’s claim he is leading a resurgence of manufacturing in the US, U.S. manufacturing has contracted for seven straight months—the exact opposite of what Trump and other tariff proponents predicted.
Overall, the number of jobs U.S. employers have announced they would cut in 2025 has reached 1,099,500, up 65% from the first 10 months of 2024, according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas, a Chicago-based outplacement firm.
Aggressive outreach is another reason for high SNAP usage. Some see getting more people on SNAP as a good thing, but that’s questionable when food stamp enrollment has surged from 17.3 million individuals in 2001 to 41.7 million in 2024, and that in the same period enrollment as a percentage of the population has doubled from 6.1 % in 2001 to 12.3 % in 2024.
Oregon’s SNAP error rate in fiscal year 2024 was 14.06%, eighth-highest in the nation. That was down from error rates of 16.7$ in fiscal year 2023 and 22.9% for fiscal year 2022, but there’s still really no excuse for such high error rates.
If anything, then, increasing dependence on food stamps by Oregon’s population reflects a failure of the state’s economy in providing opportunities for its people and holding down taxes. That’s not a good thing.
“ ’Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ / Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, / The lone and level sands stretch far away.“
Percy Bysshe Shelley
UPDATE: 05/12/2026: A group of Miami residents sued Trump, his library fund, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, Miami Dade College and its trustees, and Florida officials to stop the construction of Trump’s presidential library, Heather Cox Richardson and other media outlets reported. The group is charging that state officials violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause when they transferred almost three acres of prime waterfront land, worth between $67 million and $300 million, to Trump’s library foundation for $10. Trump has already said he wants to build a hotel on the site rather than a traditional library.
UPDATE: 10/14/2025: A Florida court has put on hold the transfer of land held by a Miami college for President Trump’s presidential library, ruling that the college failed to provide reasonable public notice for its board vote to donate the land. The injunction Tuesday temporarily froze the transfer of 2.63 acres to commemorate Trump’s time in the White House. The Miami Dade College land is now a parking lot estimated to be worth more than $67 million, according to county appraisers.
UPDATE: 9/24/2025:NBC News reported today that Trump’s presidential library will be housed in Florida on land currently owned by Miami-Dade College, adjacent to the Freedom Tower and located on the city’s downtown waterfront.
Donald Trump, a man with the reading habits of an illiterate and the attention span of a hummingbird, wants to build a presidential library when he leaves office.
He also wants to fly away in a Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet gifted to the United States by Qatar. When he leaves office he plans to take it with him to his yet-to-be-built presidential library. A submissive Republican-led Congress may let him get away with this normalization of corruption.
The future Trump Presidential Library? An AI vision.
Trump is already trying to fill an account to build his library.
In December 2024, ABC News agreed to pay $15 million toward the library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. Under the settlement agreement, the payment is described as a “charitable contribution.”
In January 2025, Meta Platforms agreed to settle a lawsuit for $25 million after suspending Trump’s Facebook accounts following the January 6 attack other U.S. Capitol, with $22 million of that going toward the presidential library.
After his last term in office, a top fundraiser on Trump’s campaign said the president had told supporters he wanted to raise $2 billion for his library. Back then, however, there was considerable skepticism about Trump’s political future or the likelihood of him being able to raise enough money for a library. “I thought to myself, what is this alternative fantasy life you’re living?” one prominent fundraiser said. “I have no clue where they think they’ll get this money raised. Anyone who gives to him will be radioactive.”
How times have changed.
The location of a potential Trump Presidential Library is yet to be determined. The Washington Post reported at the end of Trump’s first term that sources close to Trump said he planned to build a library and museum in Florida. In March 2025, it was reported that members of Trump’s team were looking at possible sites at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) in Palm Beach County, where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago is located and Florida International University (FIU) near the Trump National Doral Miami golf resort.
Trump’s inaugural committee has also said any money left over from its $250 million haul will go the presidential library, as will millions being paid by individuals to dine and meet with Trump at special events at Mar-a-Lago.
The Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund Inc. was incorporated in Florida on December 20, 2024, shortly after the ABC News settlement, and a library website already exists.
As with the The Barack Obama Presidential Center, the website makes clear that The National Archives will administer the records of the Trump administration (textual, electronic, audiovisual, and artifacts) which will remain at National Archives facilities in the National Capital Region. In other words, there will be no actual presidential library at the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library .
Still to be determined is what Trump’s library will look like, what will be in it or how much it will cost. Obama is still struggling to raise money to compete construction of his presidential center, 3050 days after the end of his presidency. The project has also been beset by controversy, including questions over high “executive compensation” paid to people running the project. The center’s projected cost has also nearly doubled from its original estimate and is now projected at close to $1 billion.
President Trump, never one to miss an opportunity for an insulting comment, has called the Obama Center “a disaster” and blamed “woke” construction workers” for problems at the site. “I mean look, President Obama — and if he wanted help, I’d give him help because I build on time and on budget,” Trump exclaimed at a White House meeting with new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney meeting in early May. 2025. Trump has apparently forgotten the six bankruptcies from his over-leveraged hotel and casino businesses in Atlantic City and New York and the destruction of his shuttered 39-story hotel and casino in Atlantic City, N.J. in 30 seconds with controlled explosions in Feb. 2021 .
Given Trump’s ability to generate controversy out of thin air, expect the path toward a Trump Presidential Library to be similarly erratic, filled with drama and leaving disillusioned supporters in its wake.
Of course all this controversy over a jet-themed presidential library would be moot if the practice of building such ego-satisfying monuments that aren’t even real research libraries any more ended once and for all.
As a matter of fact, presidential libraries filled with reading material are a thing of the past anyway.
The Barack Obama Presidential Center under construction, Oct. 2024
The Barack Obama Presidential Center on a 20-acres site in Chicago, if it’s ever finished, isn’t going to have a presidential library. Artifacts and records from Obama’s two terms in the White House are being digitalized and organized by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and will be stored in existing NARA facilities. The only library planned for the site is a new branch of the Chicago Public Library in a massive a 235-foot-tall fortresslike museum tower.
Obama has appealed to a roster of contributors to build his monument, with some heavy hitters donating $25 million or more. If Trump goes ahead with his library plans, he will likely have to copy Obama and initiate a massive fundraising effort to supplement the funds he has already squeezed out of lawsuits.
Is that really what the country needs, more Trump lawsuits to generate cash, an onslaught of solicitations to potential donors large and small, under-the-table deals with donors while Trump is still in office, more inevitable controversy and, in the end, just another monument to the ephemeral nature of political power?
It’s time to end this scattering of presidential shrines across the American landscape, to put a stop to more money-sucking temples to former presidents. With the digitization of records, there will be no need for a vast collection of paper records reminiscent of the warehouse in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Kseniia Petrova (Polina Pugacheva, via Associated Press)
UPDATE
On May 28, the New York Times reported that a federal judge said she would grant bail to Ksenia Petrova in an immigration case stemming from Ms. Petrova’s failure to declare scientific samples she was carrying into the country. “There does not seem to be either a factual or legal basis for the immigration officer’s actions” in stripping Ms. Petrova of her visa on Feb. 16, Christina Reiss, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Vermont, said in a court hearing. She added that “Ms. Petrova’s life and well-being are in peril if she is deported to Russia,” as the government has said it intends to do.
_________________
To what levels of uncaring depravity have we sunk?
U.S. Government lawyers told a federal judge today that the Trump administration intends to deport a Harvard scientist back to Russia, a country she fled in 2022, despite her fear that she will be arrested there over her protest of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The New York Times reported the action today.
Christina Reiss, chief judge of the United States District Court in Vermont, asked the government to clarify whether or not it planned to deport Ms. Kseniia Petrova to Russia.
“You are asking for her removal to Russia?” she asked.
“Yes, your honor,” Jeffrey M. Hartman, an attorney representing the Department of Justice, replied, according to the Times.
That this is taking place in Donald Trump’s America is a travesty.
Petrova, a 30-year-old Russian-born scientist at Harvard Medical School, has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since February. Her detention occurred when she was returning to Boston from a trip to France. Her story was reported by Geoff Bennett, who serves as co-anchor and co-managing editor of PBS News Hour.
Kseniia Petrova, a 30-year-old Russian-born scientist at Harvard Medical School, has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since February. Her detention occurred when she was returning to Boston from a trip to France. Her story was reported by Geoff Bennett, who serves as co-anchor and co-managing editor of PBS News Hour.
Returning to Boston’s Logan International Airport from a trip to France, she brought back frog embryo samples for her lab. The PBS News Hour reported on April 24 that ICE said she knowingly broke the law in failing to properly declare the embryos. According to the News Hour, A typical customs violation results in a fine, but Petrova had her visa revoked, was detained and flagged for deportation.
In moves more common in a police state, where people are swiftly moved from place to place to avoid detection, ICE first sent Petrova to a cell at the airport. The next day they transferred her to a jail in Vermont. She spent the next week there. Then ICE flew Petrova to detention in Louisiana. She has now been imprisoned at the Richwood Detention Facility in Louisiana for two months in a one-room facility with 89 other women, wall-to-wall beds and almost no personal privacy. Yes, for two months now.
The News Hour reported that Petrova has been a vocal critic of the Russian government and its actions in Ukraine and fears persecution if deported there. “I am afraid that, if I come to Russia, I will be arrested, because we have in Russia special law,” she said. “If you say something against current war, you will be imprisoned, and you can be imprisoned for 15 years.”
“ICE is required to detain individuals … only if they are a flight risk or a danger to the community. Ms. Petrova is neither,” said her attorney, Gregory Romanovsky. “Her continued detention serves no purpose and wastes limited government resources.”
The Trump administration, banking on the support of its most dedicated backers, is running roughshod over human rights right here in America.
In another example of Donald Trump’s pay-to-play presidency, the Trump administration plans to accept a luxurious $400 million Boeing 747-8 plane as a donation from the Qatari royal family that will be upgraded to serve as Air Force One. Hopefully it won’t be loaded with ultra-sophisticated eavesdropping equipment. The plane will ultimately go to the Trump presidential library, ensuring Trump could continue to use it.. “This isn’t a good idea even if the plane was being donated to the US govt.”, said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT). “But Trump GETS TO KEEP THE PLANE???”
“…the issue with Donald Trump is he does not believe in rules and laws and norms,” David Axelrod, a former senior advisor to President Barack Obama, said on CNN. “The issue with Donald Trump is he does not believe in rules and laws and norms. He thinks they’re for suckers. And he thinks if you can get a free plane, as he said today, why wouldn’t you do it? You wouldn’t do it because it’s a bribe.” The Free Press observed, “Just consider the plain matter of our national security. A plane handed to the president by a foreign government? Let alone a government that hosts the leaders of Hamas; cooperates with Iran; fuels popular antisemitism throughout the Arab world through its government mouthpiece, Al Jazeera; and has poured nearly more than $2 billion into American universities since 2021, as these campuses express solidarity with Palestinian terrorism?”
The opulent gold interior of the Qatari plane echoes the aesthetic of Trump Tower and Trump’s gold-centered redecoration of the Oval Office.
President Trump was asked on “Meet the Press” whether every person on U.S. soil was entitled to due process. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I’m not a lawyer.”
On May 27, 2025, Trump pardoned Virginia Sheriff Scott Jenkins. Jenkins had been found guilty of 1 count of conspiracy, 4 counts of honest services fraud and 7 counts of bribery concerning programs receiving fed funds. Prosecutors said he accepted bribes from 8 people, including 2 undercover FBI agents. The men who bribed Jenkins paid for auxiliary deputy sheriff positions so they could avoid traffic tickets and carry concealed firearms without a permit. U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, appointed by Trump, posted the comment “No MAGA left behind” about his decision to recommend a pardon for Jenkins.
Sheriff Scott Jenkins
Trump also announced on May 27 that he would be pardoning TV celebrities, Todd and Julie Chrisley, famous for the reality show, “Chrisley Knows Best”. The Chrisleys were convicted in 2022 of tax evasion and conspiring to defraud banks in the Atlanta area out of more than $30 million in loans by submitting false documents. Prosecutors said the couple walked away from their responsibility for repayment when Todd Chrisley declared bankruptcy and left $20-plus million in unpaid loans. Julie Chrisley was sentenced to seven years in federal prison, and Todd Chrisley got 12 years behind bars. The couple was also ordered to pay $17.8 million in restitution, which will now be forgiven.
Todd and Julie Chrisley
The United States used to be a reliable trade partner with established policies, procedures and tariff rates so businesses could plan ahead. The Washington Post reported on May 15 that since Trump took office, he changed his tariff policies at least 50 times. Some didn’t last a day. “It’s been completely insane,” economist Michael Strain, with the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) think tank, told the Post.
In with the gold, out with the old. President Trump has loaded down the historic Oval Office with gaudy gold decorations everywhere. “Gold has always been the color of absolute power and those who aspire to it,” says Kimberly Chrisman -Campbell. “But in more recent history, its meaning has become more complex: Its association with dictators, celebrities, and artists has also transformed it into a sign of excess, corruption, and cultural domination.”
Trump’s Oval Office/Biden’s Oval Office
On January 10, 2025, Trump released an “ethics agreement” that prohibited the Trump Organization from making deals with foreign governments. The Trump Organization subsequently cut a deal with Qatari Diar, a company established by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund in 2005 to “coordinate the country’s real estate development priorities.” Together with Saudi Arabian company Dar Global, which has close ties to the Saudi government, the Qatari company plans to build a $5.5 billion Trump International Golf Club in Qatar.
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student on a valid F-1 student visa ,was arrested on March 25, 2025, by six masked plainclothes agents from the US Department of Homeland Security and transported to a detention facility in Louisiana.
The arrest of Rumeysa Ozturk
The only evidence cited against her was an op-ed she co-authored in the university newspaper a year earlier critical of Tufts response to the war in Gaza. She spent six weeks in detention before being freed after US District Judge William K. Sessions III ordered her immediate release.
On April 8, 2026, Trump said countries were “kissing my ass” to secure trade deals before increased tariffs were levied.
While ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Afghans who came to the United States after our chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, exposing them to possible deportation, the Trump administration is using taxpayer dollars to fly white Afrikaner South Africans to the U.S. on chanter flights. Earlier this month, Trump said on Truth Social that “any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to Citizenship.” Christopher Landau, Deputy Secretary of State, and Troy Edgar, Deputy Homeland Security Secretary, greeted dozens of Afrikaners at Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia on Monday, May 12.
The first group of Afrikaner refugees from South Africa arrived on May 12, 2025, at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Va. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson).
On May 4, 2025, Trump said he decided to announce he was reopening the Alcatraz prison. His reasoning? “It represents something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order,“ he said. “Our country needs law and order. Alcatraz is uh, I would say the ultimate, right? Alcatraz. Sing Sing and Alcatraz, the movies…. Nobody’s ever escaped from Alcatraz and just represented something, uh, strong having to do with law and order… but it sort of represents something that’s both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable, weak.
Alcatraz Island today.
Trump launched a $TRUMP meme coin on January 17, 2025, just before he took office. In promoting the meme coin, there coin’s website says “Celebrate Our Win & Have Fun!” The website selling the tokens says the coins “are not intended to be, or to be the subject of, an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type”. By late April 2025, it had fallen 88% from its high. Just 58 wallets cashed in over $10 million each on the coin, while a staggering 764,000 wallets were sitting on losses as of May 7, 2025, according to a report from Chainalysis. Trump offered an “intimate private dinner” with him for the 220 top holders of the meme coin, along with a private reception and White House tour for the top 25 investors. The promotion bumped up sales and generated an estimated $900,000 in trading fees. “With this meme coin dinner, Trump is giving the highest bidders access to the president while lining his own pockets,” MSNBC reported. Buying the meme coin allows investors to make an end-run around U.S. ethics laws: While noncitizens can’t donate to political campaigns, they can invest in those assets. “It looks very corrupt,” Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) told the New York Times.
Where’s the public outrage? As Kyle Chayka wrote in The New Yorker, “The American public has been inundated with news of the Trump family’s self-enrichment for so long that many of their dealings now barely create a stir.”
The U.S. is stepping up its intelligence-gathering efforts regarding Greenland, drawing America’s spying apparatus into President Trump’s campaign to take over the island, the Wall Street Journal reported on May 6, 2025. Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, a NATO ally, “The Wall Street Journal should be ashamed of aiding deep state actors who seek to undermine the President by politicizing and leaking classified information, said Director of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. “They are breaking the law and undermining our nation’s security and democracy.”
“As the stock markets crashed on Friday April 4, Donald Trump left Washington,” Anne Applebaum wrote in The Atlantic. “He did not go to New York to consult with Wall Street. He did not go to Dover, Delaware, to receive the bodies of four American servicemen, killed in an accident while serving in Lithuania. Instead, he went to Florida, where he visited his Doral golf resort, which was hosting the Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament, and stayed at his Mar-a-Lago club, where many tournament fans and sponsors were staying, too. His private businesses took precedence over the business of the nation.”
On May 8, 2025, the Trump administration fired the head of the Library of Congress, Carla Hayden, the first Black woman and the first woman to hold the job, with a blunt two- sentence email, “”Carla, On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as the Librarian of Congress is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service.” Confirmed by the Senate to the job in 2016, her 10-year term was set to expire next year. On May 12, Trump named Todd Blanche, the lead defense lawyer in hTrump’s criminal trial in Manhattan last year, to replace Hayden, but encountered resistance when staff members at the Library refused to give two Justice Department officials access to the Library’s headquarters on Capitol Hill, insisting that Congress must have input on Hayden’s replacement.
Carla Hayden
On May 6, 2025, Kari Lake, asenior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the government body that oversees Voice of America, said the far-right news coverage of the One America News (OAN) Network will fuel the Voice of America. Since World War II, the Voice of America has provided news coverage and cultural programming to people around the world who don’t have access to a free press. Its weekly audience is about 360 million. OAN is “a conspiracy-boosting outlet with a far fringier voice than right-leaning outlets like Newsmax and Fox News.,” reported CNN.
White House deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, said on May 9, 2025, the White House was considering suspending habeas corpus for illegal immigrants in the United States. “The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in time of invasion.” he said. “So, I would say that’s an option we’re actively looking at.”
Stephen Miller
President Trump has nominated Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro, who has a reputation as a strong Trump defender on “The Five” talk show, the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, DC. Pirro is the 23rd Fox employee Trump has appointed so far to his administration this term. Pirro was named in a lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems for questioning the validity of ballot tabulations on Fox’s broadcasts. Fox settled the case and was forced to acknowledge that statements by Ms. Pirro and others were false. In 2021, Trump pardoned Ms. Pirro’s former husband, Albert J. Pirro Jr., who was convicted of conspiracy and tax evasion charges in 2000.
Jeanine Pirro
House and Senate Republicans under Trump have come up with plans to pass tax cuts and defense and border security spending increases without requiring equal amounts of offsets. They would allow $3 to $7 trillion in new debt—making it one of the largest deficit increases in history. “At this moment—when the national debt is skyrocketing, we spend more on interest than national defense, and trust funds are on the brink of insolvency—if there is one thing that should be clear from a fiscal perspective, it is that we should not be passing new policies that add more to the national debt.,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. By 2027, under a reconciliation bill, debt would exceed the previous record of 106 percent of GDP set just after World War II.
Unfortunately, there is a risk that the bill could get even worse, according to the Committee.. Already, some members are trying to add to the bill’s costs – and the Senate reconciliation instructions allow for twice as much borrowing as the House’s.
In his second term, Donald Trump has been generous in issuing pardons. Early in his term, he issued about 1,500 pardons and commuted the sentences of 14 Jan. 6 criminals, including people convicted of violently assaulting police, then pardoned 23 anti-abortion activists and former Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevich. In late March, he pardoned Nikola Corp. founder Trevor Milton for his October 2022 conviction of federal crimes related to defrauding investors with false claims about the success of the electric and hydrogen-powered truck maker. CNBC reported that after his criminal sentencing, Milton had “made significant political donations to Trump and his allies” including $920,000 to the Trump 47 Committee in October of 2024. The Trump administration also terminated the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, Elizabeth G. Oyer, after she opposed restoring actor Mel Gibson’s rights to carry a gun, her spokesperson and two Justice Department officials familiar with the matter told NBC News.
Shortly after being sworn in, Trump signed an executive order that pardoned roughly 1,500 people who were involved in the January 6 Capitol riot. Anna Moneymaker via Getty Images
By Peter L. Steiner, “Hopeless but not Serious”, Jan. 25, 2025
NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Trump, “Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States, as president?” His reply: “I don’t know.”
Coincidentally, and perhaps fatefully, the ticker symbol of the newly listed Truth Social company on NASDAQ is DJT, (Donald Trump’s initials), the same ticker symbol used by Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from creditors in federal bankruptcy court in New Jersey in 2004.
Political and financial media are speculating that investor approval of a plan to take public Truth Social, Donald Trump’s social media company, will rescue him from the potentially catastrophic burdens of his multiple court cases. My view – don’t count on it.
On Friday, March 22, shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC) approved a deal to merge with Trump’s media business, Trump Media & Technology Group. The primary arm of Trump Media & Technology Group is the social networking site Truth Social. The stock, with a ticker symbol of DJT, will begin trading on the trading on Nasdaq next week.
With DJT expected to start trading with a valuation of about $5 billion, Trump’s 60% stake will be worth about $3 billion at the outset. An amazing potential windfall for Trump.
But here’s the rub.
DWAC is a shell company, what’s known as a “special purpose acquisition company” or SPAC, which will be replaced by Trump Media & Technology Group. And SPACs have had a notoriously checkered history in the market.
During 2020-2021, SPAC’s were “an unmitigated mess for investors,” according to Michael Cembalest, chairman of market and investment strategy for J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
SPACs that went public in 2020 had the worst performance, with a median loss to investors of more than 80 percent, according to Institutional Investor. Of the 431 SPACs that were able to complete a merger during 2020-2021, 90 percent had negative net returns.
Companies brought public via SPACs also generated worse business results than their IPO counterparts, likely because they needed fast revenue growth to achieve sound profitability and didn’t get it.
The result? The De-SPAC Index, which measures the performance of companies taken public through a SPAC merger, fell 45% in 2021.
In 2022, most post-merger SPACs continued to perform poorly, with the De-SPAC Index falling almost 75%. The following year, 2023, was no more rewarding for SPAC investors, with at least 21 firms that went public by merging with special purpose acquisition companies going bankrupt.
Likely discouraging the SPAC trend further are regulatory changes approved ty the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in January 2024.
All this means Donald Trump’s DJT will likely be an outlier in the market this year and the hype surrounding it may well burst in failure for investors, including Donald Trump. It’s best to remember, after all, that Trump Media & Technology Group booked just $3.3 million in revenue for the first nine months of 2023, according to a regulatory filing, and lost $49 million during that period. .
Worse, Truth Social had only 494,000 monthly active US users in February 2024, and its user total has actually been shrinking, plunging 51% year over year in February, according to Similarweb stats provided to CNN.
Then there’s the fact that Trump’ has been tied to other businesses that have gone bankrupt . “A number of companies that were associated with President Trump have filed for bankruptcy. There can be no assurances that TMTG will not also become bankrupt,” Trump Media said in its SEC filing.
Truth Social is also inextricably tied to Donald Trump himself, a 77-year-old man with an uncertain future.
The history of another hyped SPAC, EV company Lordstown Motors Corp., may be instructive.
Lordstown reverse merged with a SPAC, DiamondPeak Holdings, in October 2020 with an estimated equity value of $1.6 billion. The stock hit a peak of $31.40 a share on Sept. 21, 2020.
Things went downhill from there.
On June 27, 2023, Lordstown filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In September 2023, Lordstown agreed to sell its assets to Delaware-based LAS Capital, whose majority equity holder was Lordstown founder and ex-CEO Steve Burns, for $10 million.
The SPAC merger agreement prohibits Trump Media’s shareholders from selling their shares for six months after the deal is done. DWAC shares closed at a high of $97.54 in March and closed at $36.94 on Friday, March 22, 2024. DJT will likely be erratic as well. And there are no sure things on Wall Street.
In other words, Donald Trump’s 60% stake in the new company could well be worth less than $3 billion six months from now…a lot less.
Maybe even zero.
An added complication, though, is that DJT’s board could grant Trump a waiver that would allow him to sell shares before the six months are up. The likelihood of a waiver being granted is enhanced by the fact that the board includes one of Trump’s sons, three former members of his administration and former GOP Rep. Devin Nunes.
Don’t count on them being too concerned about the impact of a maj0r sale on other investors.
“Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
King James Version of the Bible. Book of Proverbs, 16:18
President Trump was ecstatic. Standing before a crowd of in the East Room of the White House, he held aloft a copy of the Washington Post. “Trump acquitted” the headline declared in bold letters. For about an hour, Trump celebrated and embraced the applauding crowd of administration officials and supporters.
“Now we have that gorgeous word,” said a triumphant Trump. “I never thought a word would sound so good. It’s called: total acquittal.”
What’s next?
Probably overreach and misfortune.
If history is any guide, the president and his sycophantic hangers-on will want to run a victory lap.
The first sign of that has already emerged, dismissal of some of those Trump believes have undermined him and his cause.
These moves were presaged by Eric Ueland, the White House’s legislative affairs director, who said to a group of Capitol Hill reporters, “I can’t wait for the revenge.”
The first targets were Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who testified in the House impeachment hearings, and his brother, Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, Both were bounced from the National Security Council and Trump appeared to suggest that the Army should discipline Alexander. Then Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, was fired after refusing to resign.
Trump also rescinded his nomination of Jessie Liu, former U.S. Attorney for D.C., who presided over the case against former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone, and criticized D.C. District Judge Amy Berman, whom Liu worked with. Stone was convicted in November 2018 on seven counts of obstructing and lying to Congress and witness tampering.
Another likely Trump move will be taking new and excessive risks, with Trump and his most devoted followers sucked into delusions that they are on a roll and are now invincible.
As the writer P. G. Wodehouse put it. “I’m not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it’s Shakespeare who says that it’s always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping.”
The behavior of previous presidents is instructive.
For Lyndon B. Johnson, the lead piping that confronted his hubris was the Vietnam war.
After President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Johnson used his political cunning to push a historic civil-rights bill and a massive Great Society program through Congress. Then he trounced Republican Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election, carrying 44 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
He was on a roll, confident of public support as he simultaneously poured money into the Great Society and ramped up the America’s military commitment in Vietnam. Then the anti-war protests began, small at first, mostly on college campuses, then massive, furious and country-wide.
Eventually worn down and dispirited, the once ebullient Johnson announced soberly on March 31,1968 that he would not seek a second full term.
For Ted Kennedy, it was hubris that led to Chappaquiddick.
On July 17, 1969, he saw himself as a rising star, primed to carry forward the legacy of his brothers, Robert Kennedy, gunned down a year earlier, and President John F. Kennedy, assassinated in 1963.
Then everything changed. On the night of July 18, 1969, Ted Kennedy left a party and recklessly drove an Oldsmobile Delmont 88 off Dike Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, killing his passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne.
Ten hours later, and only after consulting with his advisors, Kennedy reported the accident to police, To the disgust of many who thought him guilty of much more, he managed to escape with only a two-month suspended sentence for leaving the scene of an accident.
But the fatal accident left a stain that couldn’t be erased.
“(The) accident that killed Mary Jo was the end of the Kennedy moment, when the dreams of Camelot and the deferred hopes of martyrdom went skidding off the road and disappeared into the abyss,” wrote Peter Canellos, editor-at-large ofPolitico.
Richard Nixon experienced a fall from grace after reaching the mountaintop, too.
After narrowly losing the presidential race to John F. Kennedy in 1960, Nixon waged a successful campaign against Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Alabama Governor George Wallace in 1968 in a close election.
On November 7, 1972, Nixon reached the peak of his success when he ran against Sen. George McGovern and won in an electoral landslide. McGovern carried only Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.
Just 21 months later, on August 8, 1974, Nixon went from the heights to the depths, becoming the first U.S. president to resign his office.
Nixon departing from the White House after his resignation.
Behind his downfall was a paranoid White House more than willing to bend the rules. At one point that included burglarizing the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in an effort to uncover evidence to discredit Ellsberg, who had leaked the Pentagon Papers.
Then there was Watergate. In a 1973 Fortune analysis, Associate Managing Editor Max Ways described the Watergate affair as a failure of management.
“These footless ventures would remain forever incomprehensible unless we turned to the beliefs and emotional patterns of the participants.,” Ways wrote. “Their attitudes were shaped in part by the general ambience that enveloped the White House and the Committee to Re-elect the President, and that ambience included a lot of fear, suspicion, and hostility. Although the word “paranoia,” used by many people, is too strong, it is correct to say that a high level of self-pity influenced the style of the Nixon White House.
The seeds of this attitude were sown long before Watergate. Self-pity was evident, though excusable, in many of Nixon’s periods of adversity, and it had not melted away in the warm sun of ambition fulfilled.”
George W. Bush and his close advisors were also overly confident that the country was behind them and would hang tough after Bush responded to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with aggressive military action in Afghanistan and Iraq.
U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. “After 18 years of war, thousands of lives lost, and hundreds of billions of dollars squandered, the United States accomplished precisely nothing.” ForeignPolicy.com
“In considering war on Iraq,” Newsweek said, “the sibling of danger was opportunity…The thinking went that if the United States could change the regime in Baghdad, it might create a new model of democracy in the Middle East. After all, democracy was on the rise globally …”
In concert with that thinking, Newsweek cited a belief in the prowess of the high-tech United States military and its ability to ensure that wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would be “decisive, quick, easy, and low-cost.”
They weren’t.
Why will Trump fall from grace after his impeachment victory? History and his character foretell it.
In his book “Truman,” David McCullough said it was Truman’s character that defined the man.
“He stood for common sense, common decency,” McCullough wrote. “He spoke the common tongue. As much as any president since Lincoln, he brought to the highest office the language and values of the common American people. He held to the old guidelines: work hard, do your best, speak the truth, assume no airs, trust in God, have no fear.”
This is about as far as you can get from a description of President Donald Trump.
ThinkingOregon 