Tag Archives: Truth Social

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Can America Endure Two More Years of This?

Watching Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, a movie premiering at the New York Film Festival on October 5 about the rise of Sam Altman and OpenAI, “is like watching a horror movie you happen to be living through”, says an article in Vulture, an entertainment news website and the pop culture vertical of New York Magazine. The same could be said about watching Trump’s presidency. 

As New Yorker Editor David Remnick wrote on October 12, “Because Trump is simultaneously an autocrat and a performance artist, because Americans tend to cling reflexively to the fraying notion of national exceptionalism, it is difficult to reckon with the idea that a President might be not merely shambolic and incompetent but something far darker, even evil.”

  • While Trump is seeking a $1.5 trillion Pentagon authorization, he is setting up a Pentagon slush fund within the Office of Strategic Capital that is expected to be a destination for money generated by profits from the sale of Venezuelan oil, which will presumably be spent unconstrained by Congressional review. A recipe for chaos.

  • Almost a million people have lost a combined nearly $4 billion on the $TRUMP memecoin; financial disclosures show that Trump personally has made more than $600 million from it. He is de facto stealing from mostly his own supporters.

  • In an astonishing case of political reprisal, Trump’s Justice Department is investigating whether the major television networks — ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News — violated federal antitrust laws when the group briefly suspended their White House pool coverage. This followed a call by Laura Loomer, the far-right influencer who has often had the ear of Trump, or an antitrust investigation into TV networks for colluding “to refuse to cover President Trump”. “The trend we’re observing is profoundly undemocratic,” commented Jem Bartholomew of the Columbia Journalism Review.
Laura Loomer

  • With international national security threats multiplying, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and President Trump have fired, pushed to retire, or blocked the promotions of more than two dozen senior military leaders in the past 21 months, including high profile generals, admirals, and civilian defense leaders. The latest departure was Army Secretary Dan Driscoll. The New York Times reported “…in a meeting with the president, Mr. Driscoll complained that Mr. Hegseth had fired some of the Army’s most combat-tested leaders, imperiling its efforts to modernize the force, military officials said. He also warned Mr. Trump that the firings and blocked promotions have damaged morale, causing some in the military to question the fairness of a promotion system that is supposed to be apolitical and merit-based, senior officials said.” Other departures have included: the Army’s top uniformed officer, Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George; Navy Secretary John Phelan; Army Gen. Christopher Donahue (the last U.S. soldier to leave Afghanistan); Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to serve as chief of naval operations and to become a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin; Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Slife; the head of U.S. Southern Command, Navy Adm. Alvin Holsey; NSA director, CYBERCOM commander Gen. Timothy Haug (fired shortly after far-right activist Laura Loomer pressured Trump to fire him).
  • Donald Trump’s Justice Department, which has prioritized investigating people who have investigated Trump, is reaching back in history to consider whether prosecutors mistreated an earlier Republican president: Richard Nixon, more than half a century after that scandal led to Nixon’s resignation, according to the Wall Street Journal. “The department is reviewing whether the special prosecutor’s office that investigated the famed Watergate break-in committed misconduct, according to people familiar with the matter, more than half a century after that scandal led to Nixon’s resignation.

  • Trump officials are withholding updated COVID vaccines from the Vaccines for Children program, delaying access for children in at least 11 states and one U.S. territory, The Guardian reported. More than half of American children receive vaccines through the program.

  • Trump consulted Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot in deciding whether to capture Nicolás Maduro. In December 2025, about a month before the U.S. invaded Venezuela and captured its president,Trump met with Elon Musk and spent hours talking to Musk’s Grok chatbot, including asking how Venezuelans would respond to the capture of their president. Grok characterized Maduro as a “deeply unpopular dictator” and said Venezuelans would celebrate his downfall, prompting Trump to conclude the chatbot was “ingenious.”

  • The Trump administration is using public dollars not appropriated for that purpose to produce and pay for television adsTimes. Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads , according to The New York Times. The money came from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, an arm of DHS that oversees the Border Patrol and customs and immigration at airports. The Washington Sun reported that on Sept. 19, the White House Office of Management and Budget gave Customs and Border Protection $20 million for “OBBBA commemorative events.” The next day, CBP awarded the advertising company LMD Agency Inc. a contract for $20 million for a “national media campaign.” Lawmakers are pointing to the $20 million apportionment as an unauthorized use of funds, claiming the administration went around Congress to pay for an ad campaign that the law had deemed prohibited.
  • Donald Trump’s Truth Social company is charging investors $100,000 for faster access to his posts announcing government policy, allowing them to trade on information before everyone else gets it, while his company makes money selling this advantage. the practice continues while 53 former federal prosecutors and agents have advised a federal court that the program likely violates federal criminal laws involving securities, conflicts of interest, and public corruption.
  • The U.S. war against Iran has cost the Department of Defense more than $38 billion through Aug. 1, and will continue costing up to $3 billion a month or more depending on the intensity of this now preparing to send a third aircraft carrier strike group, led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt , to the Middle East, adding 9,000–10,000 troops to the more than 50,000 U.S. troops already in the region.

  • According to Forbes, President Trump is an estimated $2.7 billion richer than when he won the 2024 election, having cashed in on crypto ventures and overseas deals. The Washington Post reported growing anger among younger crypto enthusiasts who supported Trump only to watch his family haul in enormous sums from their crypto ventures while several Trump-linked investments plummeted in value.

  • Adding insult to injury, the Washington Sun reports that  GetTrumpMemes.com is promising invitations to ‘an evening at his members-only club, Trump National Washington D.C., with 3 Legends and President Donald J. Trump for the 185 largest holders of the Trump Coin. The top 29 purchasers will be invited to an additional ‘VIP Reception with YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT,’ while the 4 biggest will also receive an 18-karat Trump-branded gold watch. “The winners will be chosen based on a formula that seems designed in part to increase sales of $TRUMP in the next two months,” the Sun said, noting that Trump’s meme coin has already earned him $635 million from the venture since it started in 2025, while purchasers of Trump’s crypto products have lost an estimated $4.7 billion combined thus far.

  • President Trump’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has opened an investigation into Nike over the company’s racial diversity hiring and promotion strategy. Trump has objected to Nike’s marketing campaigns around social justice.

  • In an unprecedented move, Melania Trump has earned over $18 million since 2024, according to federal financial disclosure reports released in mid-2026. with $10.71 million from an Amazon MGM Studios licensing agreement for her self-titled documentary, Melania. and over $6 million ($6,011,259) from digital assets and collectible sales, which surged significantly from prior years.
  • Over 5 million Americans, or 13% of beneficiaries, have lost SNAP benefits following the implementation of strict federal rules from the Republican’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

  • During his second term, Trump’s administration has systematically targeted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) through budget cuts, staff reductions, and the termination of major climate research programs. The agency has lost roughly 20% to 30% of its staff due to firings and early retirements. Only after intense public pressure and bipartisan backlash from lawmakers and scientists did the administration halt a plan to dismantle the $368 million Ocean Observatories Initiative , which would have removed over 900 deep-ocean sensors and high-tech data buoys. Trump has also proposed major cuts to research funding at the National Science Foundation across all its directorates and halting funding for the Arctic Report Card, a longstanding effort to synthesize the latest research about the fastest warming place on Earth. Meanwhile,in another part of NOAA, NOAA Fisheries, the arm of NOAA tasked with overseeing commercial fishing, is facing a budget cut of more than 40% in the fiscal 2027 budget proposal. That would result in cuts to science programs, fisheries management and data collection.
  • In a September 28 interview with Time magazine, Trump was asked, “Would you rule out declaring a state of emergency in the lead up to the midterms unless there’s widespread violence in the streets? Trump: replied, “I don’t rule anything out or in. We’ll see. You mean the Insurrection Act? TIME: Yeah. Trump: No, I’ve never used it. I could use it. A lot of people think I should use it sometimes.”

  • Trump went on to laud his intellectual superiority in the Time interview. “I have the highest of IQs. I have the highest. I’m fine, and I understand that stuff,” he said in a rambling statement. “You know, my uncle was at MIT for 41 years, and you know, I’m a—I believe in genetics, frankly, and I understand. I understand it much more than I think any president would, because I do have an ability on this. I have an ability on those things that were the new frontiers.”

  • In the same Time magazine interview, Trump repeatedly declined to rule out demolition of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Asked if he would commit to not bringing in wrecking balls to demolish the building, he respond, “I’m not committing to anything. We’re going to see how it plays out in court.”
  • Noncitizens residing in the United States who faced removal proceedings have traditionally been eligible for bond hearings. As independent journalist Anthony Davis has pointed out, So long as an individual could demonstrate that they posed neither a public safety threat nor a flight risk, immigration judges regularly permitted them to remain at home with their families while their legal cases progressed. The Trump administration discarded this standard, reinterpreting the Immigration and Nationality Act to dictate that any migrant who entered the U.S. without authorization must be subjected to mandatory, un-bondable detention until their case resolves. In short, asylum, protected under international law, has been criminalized in America.

  • On September 15, 2026, ICE removed thousands of immigrants with final deportation orders from its public detainee locator, eliminating the ability of lawyers and families to find where many are being held. If lawyers can’t find their clients they can be deported before an attorney or court has a chance to intervene. More than 30 human rights groups asked a UN panel to intervene. The change affects more than 16,000 people.
  • The federal Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 ended October 30. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the FY 2026 Deficit will total $2.0 Trillion, with interest, at over $1 trillion, representing the second largest expenditure in 2026. “The country’s future fiscal outlook is even more dismal,” the Committee says. With annual debt payments of more than $1 trillion a year, it is inevitable that the cost of servicing the US national debt will start to cut deeply into other government programs.

  • Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement this summer soared to record highs since the start of this Trump administration — with 43,000 in June, more than 49,000 in July and nearly 51,000 in August — as officials cut or narrowed the pathways to legal residency in the United States and expanded the pool of people eligible for deportation, according to the new York Times. Federal agents appeared in nearly every corner of daily life, carrying out operations at hospitals and airports, outside suburban schools and along rural construction sites and truck stops. They fanned out from coastal cities in Maine to desert towns in Arizona, across the open plains of Wyoming and down through the southern borderlands.
  • On September 29, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to deport immigrants to third countries where they have no ties, with little or no notice and no meaningful chance to object. In a 6-3 decision, the Court put on hold U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy’s ruling that the policy is unlawful until the justices consider the case, with arguments set for December.  The Trump administration has authorized or pledged at least $410 million to facilitate deportation agreements to send immigrants to third countries with 31 countries, mostly in Africa and Latin America, as of the end of June, the Washington Post reported on September 21, and documents from inside the Office of Remigration (A 1984-ish term if there ever was one) reviewed by The Post show financial commitments that include $81 million in direct payments to 13 of the foreign governments. More than 23,000 people have already been sent from the United States to 26 countries other than their own in 2026, including large numbers of children and adolescents. The Supreme Court’s decision means the current deportation policy can remain in place for months because the court won’t hear oral arguments on the case until December, likely leaving a decision until 2027.

  • The Treasury Department and the IRS have proposed a rule that would revoke tax-exempt status from private schools—everything from elementary schools to universities—that offer “targeted support to Black or other minority students,” including assistance offered to minority students, such as minority student clubs and mentoring programs. 

  • The One Big Beautiful Bill Act helped roughly triple the ICE budget, allocating $45 billion for building new immigration centers and hiring 10,000 new ICE agents. “One dispiriting lesson of the imperial boomerang is that, once. bought and paid for, structures of intimidation and oppression tend to endure,“ said David Wallace-Wells.

  • U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has spread its detention center tentacles across the United States. Most of us know the names of a few Nazi concentration camps, like Dachau,  Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, where Anne Frank died. But they were part of a massive complex of more than 850 ghettos, concentration camps, forced-labor camps and extermination camps CNN has identified. They stretched from France and the Netherlands in the west to Estonia, Lithuania and Poland in the east that the Nazis established during the 12 years Adolf Hitler was in power. Their purpose — to  segregate  , oppress and persecute their opponents. Like the ICE detention centers, the Nazi system started small and then metastasized like a cancer, according to the Wiener Holocaust Library. 
  • The Trump administration, defying Congress, has stripped tens of millions of dollars in U.S. military assistance from European and Middle Eastern countries and will give those funds instead to conservative-leaning governments in Latin America, according to The Washington Post. Some of the money was included in a Ukraine supplemental bill specifically for countries affected by the war in Ukraine.

  • The Trump administration has largely halted direct financial and military aid to Ukraine, shifting the main burden of support to Europe, while upending the US approach to the invasion of Ukraine and treating Russia increasingly not as an adversary, but an ally.

Two more years of this?

New York Magazine writer-at-large, Frank Rich, recently shined a light on the people collaborating with Trump. American titans of finance and tech and the law, such as Jeff Bezos, Scott Bessent, and Todd Blanche, have “enabled a kleptocracy that might make Suharto and Marcos look like shoplifters,” Rich wrote. “What’s curious is that they seem so nonchalant about it all, as if no reckoning were coming,” said Ryu Spaeth, features editor at New York Magazine “As Frank shows in this brilliant and forceful essay, history suggests otherwise.”

When, or if, all this is over, will all of its co-conspirators and enablers, who now seem to eagerly embrace the law of the jungle, seek the shield of the rule of law? Don’t be surprised.

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Beyond the Pale: Trump Steps Over the Line in Anti-Immigrant Rant

How dare you, Donald Trump. 

“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. [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]

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Oregon’s Food Stamp Demand Exposes a Troubled Economy

“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.

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Trump’s Bullhorn: Does He Do ANYTHING Besides posting on Truth Social?

Creator: CHRIS DELMAS | Credit: AFP via Getty Images

Donald Trump fired off more than 50 posts on his social media platform, Truth Social, during Kamala Harris’ Democratic Convention speech in August 2024 

On Sunday, July 20, 2025, he posted 40 messages on Truth Social, bringing the total number of posts since his inauguration to 2,800.

He’s a damn machine with his stubby little fingers.

Previous presidents delivered significant, and even insignificant, policy pronouncements with carefully worded press releases that had been massaged by a raft of policy advisors. Trump just blurts things out, often in rambling, confusing word salad that veers off into unrelated topics. 

Instead of delivering carefully thought-out foreign policy statements, Trump spews out declarations at all hours of the day and night.  He probably would have announced “D-Day” , the June 6, 1944 invasion of Normandy, Franceduring WWII not with a stern, inspiring address to the nation but with a Truth Social post , “BOFFO!!!! WE DID IT. WE’RE SAVING THE FROGS. WATCH OUT KRAUTS. OUR TROOPS ARE ON YOUR DOORSTEP.”

On April 9, 2025, when the stock market was tanking, he posted: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” A few hours later, he announced a 90-day suspension of additional tariffs against dozens of countries, triggering a jump in the S&P 500 index. 

In June, he shared a meme of himself walking down a dark city street with all-cap text that read, “HE’S ON A MISSION FROM GOD & NOTHING CAN STOP WHAT IS COMING.” I doubt he knew the connection to the Blues Brothers line, “We’re on a mission from God”. 

On July 21, 2025, in a bizarre effort to deflect public attention from the Epstein controversy, Trump shared an AI-generated fake video from a MAGA TikTok user depicting the arrest and imprisonment of Barack Obama after posting about Tulsi Gabbard’s claims that the Obama administration engaged in a “treasonous conspiracy” to subvert his 2016 election victory. This followed another weird AI-generated video he posted on Truth Social in February depicting his plans for real estate development in Gaza, depicting Elon Musk and a shirtless Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu vacationing at a “Trump Gaza” resort in the Palestinian territory.

On July 22, 2025, he took time out from his busy day to whine about late night TV hosts: “The word is, and it’s a strong word at that, Jimmy Kimmel is NEXT to go in the untalented Late Night Sweepstakes and, shortly thereafter, Fallon will be gone. These are people with absolutely NO TALENT, who were paid Millions of Dollars for, in all cases, destroying what used to be GREAT Television. It’s really good to see them go, and I hope l played a major part in it!”

To some degree, Trump is probably wailing into the void, since only about 5 million people use Truth social each month. But his posts, no matter how garbled, vitriolic or non-sensical, often get picked up by other media and spread far and wide., multiplying his audience .

He often ends his rambling texts with curt sign-offs like “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

We’d all probably be a lot better off if we ignored him.

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OPB is facing a Big Hole. Will Donors step Up?

Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) is in trouble.

A bill clawing back $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which provides funding for NPR and PBS, including OPB, has passed the Senate. It is expected to pass the House next and then to be sent to President Trump for his signature. 

Are you and thousands of other Oregonians prepared to start or increase donations to OPB to replace the federal money it now relies on?

Public radio across the country is already begging for money. On July 18, Alyson Brokenshire, Senior Director, Principal and Major Gifts at PBS News Hour sent out a message: “For the first time in history, Congress voted to zero out funding for public media, including PBS News Hour. This decision creates a critical funding challenge for us, but one we can meet with your sustaining support.”  WBUR in Boston also sent out a plea on July 18: “Give. Longtime listener or reader? Become a first-time donor at this pivotal moment. Give again. Thank you, a million times over, for being in our corner. Give more. Help us close this $1.6-million funding gap, right now. Give every month. When you become a Sustainer, we know we can rely on you. Month after month. Year after year.”

In fiscal year 2023, government grants to OPB totaled $4,679,653 or 9.5% of the station’s $49,370,988 in revenue from contributions, including sponsorships.[1]

I’m already a sustaining contributor to OPB. I provide ongoing, monthly financial support through automatic deductions from a credit card. I recently increased my monthly donations because of the threats of funding cuts by the Trump administration. Am I prepared to donate even more when those cuts are real?

My sense is that OPB has a tough road ahead if it tries to replace all of the $4,679,653 in annual federal support it now receives. 

Current economic uncertainty is one thing likely to impact fundraising. There is already evidence that such uncertainty is leading people to scale back on discretionary spending, including charitable donations.Nonprofit giving in the US has taken a $65 billion hit since 2021, according to Philanthropy.org. 

Another reality is that a substantial percentage of America’s private wealth is held by conservative and center-right donors, many of whom are wary of institutions they perceive as liberal, and many of whom see public media as liberal. That perception was recently reinforced by Uri Berliner, a former senior business editor at NPR. In 2024, he wrote a blistering critique of NPR in The Free Press, accusing it of lacking viewpoint diversity and of a drift towards a progressive ideology

Trump administration officials and members of Congress have piled on, claiming that NPR and PBS push “left-wing propaganda” and accusing them of violating the CPB’s nonpartisan mandate.

Never one to be subtle, Trump has mercilessly blasted public radio and television. “NPR and PBS, two horrible and completely biased platforms (Networks!), should be DEFUNDED by Congress, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote late Wednesday on Truth Social. “Republicans, don’t miss this opportunity to rid our Country of this giant SCAM, both being arms of the Radical Left Democrat Party. JUST SAY NO AND, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

“NPR and PBS have increasingly become radical, left-wing echo chambers for a narrow audience of mostly wealthy, white, urban liberals and progressives,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) said at a subcommittee hearing earlier this spring, 

Could OPB survive without the federal grants or any increase in donations? Probably, but the hit would be hard, though not as hard as the likely hit on KCUW in Pendleton, OR, which relied on federal money for 98% of its revenue in 2023. KCUW is is managed by members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said he secured a deal from the White House that some funding administered by the Interior Department would be repurposed to subsidize Native American public radio stations in about a dozen states, but there’s no firm provision in the bill for that.

The impact of any cut in OPB’s programming would be felt particularly by Oregon and Southern Washington’s more educated and higher income populace (71% of OPB’s TV audience, 82% of OPB’s digital audience and 85% of OPB’s radio audience has attended college). The public broadcast audience also typically falls into higher household income categories and have for years, primarily because households that listen to public media tend to have more formal education.

One potential threat to any OPB fundraising outreach is the changing media landscape and its burgeoning cost. 

Not only are media outlets multiplying, but alternative media are increasingly soliciting subscriptions. I have long subscribed to the Wall Street Journal (that subscription alone costs me $779.88 a year) and the New York Times, but added a subscription to Bari Weiss’ Common Sense newsletter, later renamed The Free Press, in 2021. I have since added subscriptions to a raft of other Substack publications with various points of view.  

I also make contributions to a number of Oregon and national non-profits, the Ukrainian Freedom Fund, and a Ukrainian news site, The Kyiv Independent.  And once in a while I’m a sucker for a GoFundMe plea. 

My point is, like many Oregonians, I’m already heavily invested in trying to do good. But there’s a limit. Periodically, I have to cull my subscriptions and donations because the cost gets out of hand. This means reprioritizing. And in the case of public broadcasting, fundraising pleas are going to come from various entities competing against each other for support, including individual programs, such as PBS News Hour, and individual stations, such as OPB and KCUW.

If OPB wants to replace the $4,679,653 in government financing it is set to lose, it is going to have to convince a lot of people to up their giving or chip in for the first time. 

This at a time when Oregon’s economy is facing a period of sluggish growth and some signs of weakness, with potential big givers from companies like Intel and Nike under stress and smaller givers uncertain about their economic prospects. President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act is also likely to put pressure on many Oregonians and the state budget and there’s potential harm from Trump’s aggressive tariffs.

All food for thought.

[1] In most instances, sponsorships are considered charitable contributions by the underwriters.  On OPB’s IRS Form 990, these sponsorships are included in the $49,370,988 reported as contributions and grants. There is also a small amount of sponsorships that meet the definition of advertising, which primarily occur on OPB’s digital platforms.  For FY 23, advertising is included in the program service revenue of $1,381,015 and in unrelated business revenue reported on OPB’s IRS Form 990-T.  

For FY 23, advertising is included in the program service revenue of $1,381,015 and in unrelated business revenue reported on our IRS Form 990-T.  Sponsorships are not otherwise disclosed on the tax filings.  Total revenue was $56,821,607.

Notable Sources of Revenue$Percent of Total Revenue
Contributions$49,370,988             86.9%
Program Services$1,381,015               2.4%
Investment Income$3,446,034               6.1%
Bond Proceeds$0 
Royalties$0 
Rental Property Income$415,851                0.7%
Net Fundraising$0 
Sales of Assets$2,207,719                 3.9%
Net Inventory Sales$0 
                                                                       

Figures are from Form 990 which non-profits are required to file annually with the IRS. These CPB grants are included in the Contributions and Grants revenue of $49,370,988 on OPB’s FY 2023 IRS Form 990. CPB grants are not included in government grants on the Form 990 as CPB is a private, nonprofit corporation, not a government agency. 

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Trump’s Travesties: Are You Ashamed Yet?

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, a senior 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.” 

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Shameful: Trump’s Law Firm Deals Could Skirt Public Records Laws

President Donald Trump has pressured nine of the nation’s largest and most prestigious law firms to capitulate to demands that they provide nearly $1 billion in free, or pro bono, legal work to causes Trump supports.[1]

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said one of the firms, the Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP law firm (“Paul, Weiss”) agreed that:

  • Paul, Weiss will take on a wide range of pro bono matters that represent the full spectrum of political viewpoints of our society, whether “conservative” or “liberal.”
  • Paul, Weiss will dedicate the equivalent of $40 million in pro bono legal services over the course of President Trump’s term to support the Administration’s initiatives, including: assisting our Nation’s veterans, fairness in the Justice System, the President’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, and other mutually agreed projects.
  • Paul, Weiss affirms its unwavering commitment to these core ideals and principles, and will not deny representation to clients, including in pro bono matters and in support of non-profits, because of the personal political views of individual lawyers.  

Trump said in his Truth Social post that Paul, Weiss also “… acknowledged the wrongdoing of former Paul, Weiss partner, Mark Pomerantz”, who had worked as a prosecutor in Manhattan and had pushed for Mr. Trump to be charged criminally. A copy of the agreement provided to the media by Brad S. Karp, the chairman of Paul, Weiss, did not, however, include any mention of Pomerantz. The New York Times also reported that five people briefed on the matter said Mr. Karp said he did not criticize Mr. Pomerantz with the president, in spite of Mr. Trump’s assertion to the contrary.

In a particularly hypocritical move, Trump added to his Truth Social post, “Our Justice System is betrayed when it is misused to achieve political ends,” despite the fact that Paul, Weiss only agreed to Trump’s terms after he threatened the firm,

Initially, the compliant law firms are said to have agreed to the free legal work assuming it would be for such uncontroversial causes as helping veterans. But Trump, who has a habit of wandering into unexpected territory in his remarks, now appears to have a broader view of what the law firms may be pressured to work on. 

“Over the last week, he has suggested that the firms will be drafted into helping him negotiate trade deals,” the New York Times reported on April 16. “He has mused about having them help with his goal of reviving the coal industry. And he has hinted that he sees the promises of nearly $1 billion in pro bono legal services that he has extracted from the elite law firms…as a legal war chest to be used as he wishes. White House officials believe that some of the pro bono legal work could even be used toward representing Mr. Trump or his allies if they became ensnared in investigations.”

Whatever issues Trump chooses to rope the law firms into working on, what will the public know?

On one side, even though the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) applies to records created by federal agencies within the executive branch, the White House Office itself is exempt from FOIA. This means the public cannot directly request information from the White House Office[2] under FOIA. 

A FOIA memo from the U.S. Department of Justice on White House Records states:

“By its terms, the FOIA applies to “the Executive Office of the President,” 5 U.S.C. § 552(f), but this term does not include either “the President’s immediate personal staff” or any part of the Executive Office of the President “whose sole function is to advise and assist the President.”  Meyer v. Bush, 981 F.2d 1288, 1291 n.1 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (quoting H.R. Rep. No. 1380, 93d Cong., 2d Sess. 14 (1974)); see also, e.g., Soucie v. David, 448 F.2d 1067, 1075 (D.C. Cir. 1971). This means, among other things, that the parts of the Executive Office of the President that are known as the “White House Office” are not subject to the FOIA.”

Records originating with the Office of the Vice President or any of its component offices, are likewise not subject to the FOIA.

Similarly, the records of communications between the law firms and the White House or of work done by the law firms at Trump’s request would not be subject to the FOIA. 

So how will the public know what Trump’s White House and the law firms bending the knee to Trump are doing? It won’t. And how will Congress  know what Trump’s White House and the law firms are doing? It won’t. And how with the media know what Trump’s White House and the law firms are doing? Unless they are particularly aggressive, they won’t either.

The nearly $1 billion of pro bono work the nine law firms, and potentially more, will be doing for Trump could have a major impact on American life. And it looks like it can all be done in secret. 

Shameful. 

[1] The nine firms are Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Willkie Farr & Gallagher; Latham & Watkins; Milbank; Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft; A & O Shearman; Kirkland & Ellis; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.

 

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

Survey shows Americans' conflicted ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The battle is on.

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Trump’s Immigrant Solution: Manzanar Redux?

During World War II, President Roosevelt authorized the military to forcibly relocate people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast to inland camps. 

Manzanar War Relocation Center near Lone Pine, Calif.; it operated from March 1942 to Nov. 1945. Some 10,000 people were confined there during this time. Resistance to the incarceration at Manzanar soon led to a prison uprising that the Army put down by shooting 11 prisoners, killing two.

In April 1942, officials posted Civil Exclusion Orders No. 25 and No. 26 on telephone poles and store windows throughout Multnomah County. A few weeks later, Civilian Exclusion Order No. 49 was posted in Hood River. The orders gave Japanese-Americans only a few days to put their affairs in order before they had to report for evacuation.

On May 5, 1942, Japanese-Americans in Military Area No. 1 reported to the Portland  Assembly Center, leaving their pets, possessions, and lives behind. The center—built on the site of the Pacific International Livestock Exposition—was surrounded by barbed wire, watchtowers, and military guards armed with machine guns. The center had a peak population of 3,676.

Those living in Military Area No 2, including the Japanese Americans in Hood River, were sent by train to the Pinedale Assembly Center in California’s San Joaquin Valley, a temporary location until later transfer to permanent internment camps. 

Now President-elect Trump and his coterie of illegal immigration hardliners want to use the military again and put arrested immigrants in the country illegally in camps run by the Homeland Security Department. 

Will he follow through with his threats?  Count on it.

“Trump 1.0 was a test for the system, but it was also a trial for an inexperienced leader who had the inclination of a wrecking ball but often lacked the capacity or the cadres to follow through,” Susan B. Glasser wrote in the Nov. 21 New Yorker.  “Trump 2.0 is about an all-out attack on that system by a leader who fears neither Congress nor the courts nor the voters whom he will never have to face again.”

During the Republican primary campaign, The New York Times reported that  Trump’s top immigration policy adviser, Stephen Miller, said military funds would be used to build “vast holding facilities that would function as staging )enters” for immigrants as their cases progressed and they waited to be flown to other countries.

 Earlier this month, Tom Fitton, who runs a conservative group, Judicial Watch, wrote that Trump’s administration would “declare a national emergency and will use military assets” to address illegal immigration “through a mass deportation program.”  Trump responded on his social media platform, Truth Social, reposting Mr. Fitton’s post with the comment, “TRUE!!!”

On Monday, Trump confirmed that he planned to declare a national emergency to carry out his promise to use the military in his mass deportations. 

Trump has also threatened to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 – which allows presidents to deport citizens of an “enemy nation” without the typical proceedings – as part of his mass deportation plans. 

Thomas Homan, a contributor to the Heritage Foundation’s controversial Project 25 and Trump’s proposed Border Czar, told Fox Business Network, “They’ll be used to do non-enforcement duties such as transportation, whether it’s on ground or air, infrastructure, building, intelligence.” Horman has also said transportation and supply assets from the Department of Defense, including military planes, could be used.  

Stephen Miller, Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff for policy, has also floated the idea of “deputising” the National Guard  to carry out large-scale raids and detentions. The military could also be dispatched to the southern border with “an impedance and denial mission,” Miller has said. 

“You reassert the fundamental constitutional principle that you don’t have the right to enter into our sovereign territory, to even request an asylum claim,” Miller said  at the Conservative Political Action Conference  (CPAC) earlier this year. “The military has the right to establish a fortress position on the border to say no one can cross here at all.”

No matter how Trump plans to use the military, the move is likely to bring an avalanche of legal challenges.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said on Monday that under US law, presidents may declare a national emergency and exert emergency powers only in specific situations. “And ‘use the military for deportations’ isn’t one of those specific things,” Reichlin-Melnick wrote on social media.

Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, issued the following statement: on Nov. 18:

“We are crystal clear that the next Trump administration will do everything in its power to make mass deportation raids a reality. As we ready litigation and create firewalls for freedom across blue states, we must also sound the alarm that what’s on the horizon will change the very nature of American life for tens of millions of Americans.”

In 1983, the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians reported that the internment program was a “grave injustice” driven by “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.” In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which offered a formal apology to surviving victims.

It’s hard to believe all this current Trump-inspired turmoil is what the 76,744,608 people who voted for Trump this time around wanted.

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Don’t Bet on Truth Social Saving You, Mr. Trump

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.