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?”
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.
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.
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.”
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 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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
ThinkingOregon 