Canadian speaks truth

 

Full video

They're not giving up

 

The king has decreed it.

I'm sure Marc Elias is on this.

UPDATE 02:54 pm:

Did I say 10%?

 I meant 15%.  And fuck those judges who betrayed me.

It's an honor to levy taxes.

Laws are for little people

Democrats are not equipped to deal with this administration.

Illegal

 

And Trump will appeal it all the way to the Supreme Court.

Until somebody stops him

 

Times have changed

Well, maybe not so much.  Maybe it's just that the hypocritical GOP is now in full control.

When Hillary Clinton was first lady, a furor erupted over reports that she had once made $100,000 from a $1,000 investment in cattle futures. Even though it had happened a dozen years before her husband became president, it became a scandal that lasted weeks and forced the White House to initiate a review.

Thirty-one years later, after dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Jeff Bezos agreed to finance a promotional film about Melania Trump that will reportedly put $28 million directly in her pocket — 280 times the Clinton lucre and in this case from a person with a vested interest in policies set by her husband’s government. Scandal? Furor? Washington moved on while barely taking notice.

[...]

The scale and the scope of the presidential mercantilism has been breathtaking. The Trump family and its business partners have collected $320 million in fees from a new cryptocurrency, brokered overseas real estate deals worth billions of dollars and are opening an exclusive club in Washington called the Executive Branch charging $500,000 apiece to join, all in the past few months alone.

Just last week, Qatar handed over a luxury jet meant for Mr. Trump’s use not just in his official capacity but also for his presidential library after he leaves office. Experts have valued the plane, formally donated to the Air Force, at $200 million, more than all of the foreign gifts bestowed on all previous American presidents combined.

And Mr. Trump hosted an exclusive dinner at his Virginia club for 220 investors in the $TRUMP cryptocurrency that he started days before taking office in January. Access was openly sold based on how much money they chipped in — not to a campaign account but to a business that benefits Mr. Trump personally

  NYT

Whatever happened to the emoluments clause? Too bad the Democracts didn't enforce it in Trump 1.0.

Trump's crazed attack on Harvard

After raging at Harvard earlier this month, President Donald Trump is now revoking the university’s right to receive foreign students. The administration sent an unhinged letter to Harvard making the announcement while demanding extensive information about international students, a grotesque abuse of power. [...] Legal experts quickly dismissed the move as lawless.

  New Republic

Yeah. Hello. Welcome to Trump 2.0.

The Trump administration on Thursday said it would halt Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, taking aim at a crucial funding source for the nation’s oldest and wealthiest college in a major escalation of the administration’s efforts to pressure the elite school to fall in line with the president’s agenda.

The administration notified Harvard about the decision — which could affect about a quarter of the school’s student body — after a back-and-forth in recent weeks over the legality of a sprawling records request as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s investigation.

[...]

The latest move intensifies the administration’s attempt to upend the culture of higher education by directly subverting the ability of one of the nation’s premier universities to attract the best and brightest students from all over the world. That capability, across all of academia, has long been one of the greatest sources of academic, economic and scientific strength in America.

[...]

The university sued the Trump administration last month over the government’s attempt to impose changes to its curriculum, admissions policies and hiring practices.

[...]

The Department of Homeland Security said the action applied to current and future students.

  NYT

So, what? Are they supposed to put current students out on the street? Perhaps to be picked up by ICE?

“Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students, and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status,” the department said in a news release after Ms. Noem posted the administration’s letter on social media later on Thursday.

Jesus H Christ. And, if they transfer, are they then not subject to being banned? WTF? Is it only Harvard that can't enroll foreign students? This is simply madness. Par for the administration of a madman.

More than 200 university and college presidents in a joint statement accused U.S. President Donald Trump's administration of political interference in higher education, banding together after Harvard University said the government was threatening its independence.

The statement, signed by presidents from institutions such as Princeton, Brown, Harvard, Columbia, the University of Hawaii and Connecticut State Community College, criticized what it described as "the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education."

[...]

Tuesday's joint statement is the latest show of opposition from U.S. higher-education leaders as the Trump administration seeks to leverage federal funding of medical and other scientific research to overhaul U.S. academia, which Trump says is gripped by antisemitic, anti-American, Marxist and "radical left" ideologies.

  Reuters

UPDATE 05/24/2025:

UPDATE 05/25/2025:

Above the law

 

Above the law

In two major interviews, President Donald Trump openly declared that he has the power to bring the wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States. And on both occasions, Trump said straight out that he is not doing so because administration lawyers have told him he doesn’t have to—or that he shouldn’t.

[...]

“Bringing him back and retrying him wouldn’t bother me,” Trump told Time magazine, admitting that he has this option. “But I leave that decision to the lawyers. At this moment, they just don’t want to do that.”

[...]

Trump was even more direct in a recent interview with ABC News.Trump shrugged when asked if he could pick up the phone and get Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to release Abrego Garcia [...] .

“If he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that,” Trump continued. “But he’s not.” Trump added that “we have lawyers that don’t want to do this.”

[...]

Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, says he will now pursue answers to the many questions these admissions raise. This is doable because the federal district judge overseeing this case, Paula Xinis, has initiated discovery designed to reveal what steps, if any, the government has taken to facilitate his return, opening the way for depositions of administration officials.

[...]

Which lawyers have told Trump that he is not required to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return? What exactly transpired in these communications? Which top official—aside from Trump—is internally directing the lawyers to advise Trump this way? Are that official’s initials S and M?

[...]

Admittedly, it will be tough to get such answers. But as David Kurtz and Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo detail, Judge Xinis, who has also ordered Abrego Garcia’s return, has taken a stern line against the administration’s refusal to be forthcoming on what it’s doing toward that end. She seems determined to establish a blow-by-blow account of government malfeasance.

[...]

Miller’s bigger argument is essentially that the president’s powers to remove people should be above challenge and unreviewable by definition. Miller appears to want Trump to have the power to declare undocumented immigrants to be terrorists and gang members by fiat; to have the power to absurdly decree them members of a hostile nation’s invading army, again by fiat; and then to have quasi-unlimited power to remove them, unconstrained by any court.

“The judicial process is for Americans,” Miller has said. “Immediate deportation is for illegal aliens.” He appears to want to dispense with due process for migrants entirely—the Constitution be damned.

[...]

The more transparency we have gained into the rot of corruption and bad faith at the core of this whole saga, the worse it has come to look. Trump himself is exposing it all for what it truly is: the stuff of Mad Kings.

  New Republic

And the Republican Congress is backing him.

Trump surrounds himself with craven toadies and believes the sole function of his advisers and cabinet officials should be to crawl on their bellies before King Trump.

Competent officials need to be willing to tell the president when he’s wrong, but Trump doesn’t want to hear anything other than praise and flattery. That leaves him surrounding himself with fools, grifters, conspiracy theorists, and whatever you call the spineless sack of gelatin that is Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

[...]

Past presidents have weathered scandals and improved their administration’s performance by removing problematic appointees and finding better personnel.

[...]

Trump, though, doesn’t really care what his subordinates do as long as they kiss his ass. Bondi understands the brief; Trump thrives on ludicrous, obviously false praise. You can’t go wrong telling him he’s the bestest president ever. You can’t go wrong telling him he should be Pope, even if it pointlessly offends Catholics across the globe. The only way you can go wrong is by standing up to him or failing to lick his cheap shoes as assiduously as your rivals.

[...]

If the incompetence of the minions merely contributed to Trump’s ongoing polling freefall, we could all just step back and cheer it on. Unfortunately, the incompetence of the minions, like the incompetence of the boss, can have real and potentially nightmarish effects.

[...]

Trump has set up his administration as a haven for the biggest liars, frauds, marks, and ghouls on the planet.

  Public Notice

SCOTUS hears the disappear-people-off-the-streets authority case

They're not even thinking about trying.

The Fourth Circuit has spoken.  Now Trump will rely on "his judges" at the Supreme Court.

No need to debate whether Trump's authority to snatch people off the streets might one day be used against American citizens.  It already has been.

Seems Cory Booker's speech got Obama off the couch

Barack Obama just made some remarks that are starting to get attention for their stirring indictment of Trump’s lawless abuses of power. That a former president is expressing deep alarm about the precariousness of the rule of law under one of his successors is certainly big news.

Obama’s comments also offer Democrats a way out of the either-prices-or-democracy cul-de-sac that has flummoxed the party. What they underscore is this: Trump’s destruction of the rule of law and his imminent wreckage of the economy are actually the same story.

[...]He declared himself “deeply concerned” that the government is threatening universities, and “troubled” by the White House’s bullying of law firms.

[...]

Imagine if I had pulled Fox News’ credentials from the White House press corps.… Imagine if I had said to law firms that were representing parties that were upset with policies my administration had initiated, that you will not be allowed into government buildings. We will punish you economically for dissenting from the Affordable Care Act or the Iran deal. We will ferret out students who protest against my policies. It’s unimaginable that the same parties that are silent now would have tolerated behavior like that from me, or a whole bunch of my predecessors.

That’s all good stuff. But the key line that’s directly relevant to center-left debates right now was easy to overlook.

“People tend to think, eh, democracy, rule of law, an independent judiciary, freedom of the press—that’s all abstract stuff because it’s not affecting the price of eggs,” Obama said. “Well, you know what? It’s about to affect the price of eggs.”



[...]

Obama is also saying that Democrats should not necessarily let that reading of what “people” think constrain their approach to this precarious moment.

Indeed, a person familiar with Obama’s thinking tells me that he did intend to model an approach for Democrats to follow, that he sees the eggs-versus-democracy debate as a false choice for the party.

[...]

Trump has invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, or IEEPA, which he says gives him the authority to unilaterally impose global tariffs in a national emergency.

But to justify that claim, Trump is citing … the trade deficit. His executive order on tariffs actually says our “large and persistent trade deficit” poses a “national emergency,” claiming it has hollowed out U.S. manufacturing while making us dependent on supply chains controlled by foreign adversaries.

This is a ludicrous assertion of power, and it’s almost certainly illegal. As Ilya Somin details, the IEEPA requires not just a presidential declaration of a national emergency; it also requires an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the nation.

[...]

In short, Trump’s lawlessness and his economic destruction are the same story: The former doesn’t just enable the latter; the two are inextricably entangled with each other.

[...]

[R]ule of law, stable institutions, and constraints on everything from bureaucratic corruption to dictatorial abuses of power facilitate economic prosperity and flourishing. Dramatically erode those things, and the economy very well may follow in short order.

[...]

There’s a way to make the argument that Trump’s legal and constitutional degradations are terrible for the material conditions of working people—this is what Obama was signaling—and to stand up for the rule of law while simultaneously favoring robust institutional reform.

[...]

Obama has opened the door for [Democrats to push back.]

  New Republic

I'm glad Obama is finally making forceful statements, but I think the door was opened by Cory Booker.

What are you prepared to do about it?