What did Donald Trump do today?

He promised that this time, unlike all the other times he's lied about it, he'll give money to charity.

Trump traveled at taxpayer expense to Florida today so that he could spend a single night at Mar-a-Lago before returning to Washington tomorrow. En route, he was asked about the $10 billion lawsuit he filed against the IRS for its supposed "negligence" while he himself was in charge of it, and which resulted in further evidence of his history of tax cheating being made public.

Q: You're suing the IRS. Can you talk a little bit about what it's like to be on both sides of a lawsuit 

TRUMP: It's very interesting. Another one where I — you know I've virtually won the Mar-a-Lago break-in suit and, uh, you know, I have to work out some kind of a settlement supposed to work out a settlement with myself, because you know when the FBI broke in we sued, when I was — before I was president, I said — obviously it was a very good suit, and I have that one, and I have to work out a settlement. I think what we'll do is do something for charity. I'll — you know, we're thinking about doing something for charity, where I'll give money to charity. We could make it a substantial amount, nobody would care, because it's gonna go to numerous, very good charities.

In reality, Trump is not suing the FBI for executing a search warrant that found boxes of stolen classified documents stacked halfway to the ceiling of a Mar-a-Lago bathroom after he repeatedly refused to give them back to the government that owned them. A lawsuit would happen in the courts, with rulings made by judges he can't fire, and be decided by a jury. Instead, he's pursuing an administrative claims process, in which his own appointees will "decide" if he deserves $230 million in reparations.

As for Trump's claim that he will give the $10 billion he says the IRS owes him to charity, it's possible no human being alive has been more frequently caught defrauding charities or lying about having given money to them. Reporter David Farenthold won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for a ten-part exposé on how little of the money Trump had collected for or pledged to charities benefiting veterans had actually reached them—at least, until after Trump had been caught and his lies about those donations made public.

Farenthold's reporting uncovered Trump's habit of using his own fraudulent charity to engage in self-dealing, essentially using the "charity" as a checking account. He used other people's donations to buy portraits of himself to hang in his businesses, or to settle lawsuits against himself, or even—in a spectacular move for a billionaire—to pay his son's $7 Boy Scout membership fee. Farenthold also showed that Trump himself had not given anything to the foundation in the last ten years, relying on other people's money instead. 

For good measure, Trump also diverted money meant for children's cancer charities into his businesses, made illegal political donations from his fraudulent charity to the woman who is now his Attorney General in exchange for dropping a lawsuit against his fake university, and crashed an AIDS fundraiser to pretend that he'd given it money he hadn't, among many other broken charity promises. 

The result of this lifetime of a very specific form of grift is that Trump's fraudulent charity was dissolved by New York state, and Trump was effectively banned from holding any position of trust in a nonprofit organization in the state.

Why does this matter?

• It's wrong to steal money that was meant for charity. 

• It's also wrong to lie about your plans to give money to charity. 

• Filling his pockets with money that's supposed to help other people is exactly what Trump's IRS lawsuit is intended to do.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He imagined a new, even more absurd thing he won't be building in Washington.

This July 4th will be the 250th anniversary of American independence. Trump doesn't have any power over how Americans will choose to celebrate it, or even how the federal government will for the most part, but it is one of the few remotely job-related things he's had any energy for in his second term. 

In particular, he'd promised an UFC mixed-martial arts cage match on the White House lawn. This would benefit its CEO Dana White, a close friend and political ally of Trump's, and Trump in turn would benefit from a tame audience and athletes chosen for their willingness to praise Trump—something he rarely gets when he attends sporting events in public. (Relatedly, Trump will not be attending the Super Bowl in San Francisco next week, supposedly because it's "just too far away.")

Today, he claimed that he was "building literally a stadium" for the UFC match that would hold 100,000 people. He did not say where, how, or with whose money he would be doing this, but given that he won't be doing it at all, it wouldn't really matter if he had.

This is what a stadium that holds 100,000 people looks like. It is almost as big as the entire White House grounds.

 

This is the newest NFL stadium, SoFi Stadium, about halfway through its construction, which took six years and cost $6 billion. It only holds 70,000 spectators.

   

It's tempting to think that this absurd claim might have been an attempt to draw attention away from certain other developments in the news today. But Trump also thinks that he is building a bigger version of Paris' Arc de Triomphe in time for the Fourth of July, which is a little over five months away. Then again, he also had grand plans for the Soviet-style military parade he ordered up for his birthday last year, and was furious with the results as millions of Americans attended protests against him that day instead.

Why does this matter?

• If Trump is deliberately lying about this, it can only be because he thinks Americans are incredibly stupid. 

• If he's not deliberately lying, he's having vivid delusions and shouldn't be making any decisions for himself, let alone the country.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to help himself to $10 billion of taxpayer money.

Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion today, claiming that the agency was negligent because a contractor in leaked his tax returns over a period of time in 2019 and 2020. Those leaks became the basis for a number of New York Times and ProPublica stories that, while damning, didn't add much to what was already known about Trump's long history of tax cheating.

These are the specific articles that the lawsuit cites:

• Long-Concealed Records Show Trump’s Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance (NYT, Sept. 27, 2020) 
• 18 Revelations From a Trove of Trump Tax Records (NYT, Sept. 27, 2020) 
• Here Are the Key Numbers From Trump’s Tax Returns (NYT, Dec. 21, 2022) 
• Trump Tax Returns Undermine His Image as a Successful Entrepreneur (NYT, Dec. 30, 2022)
• Key Takeaways From Trump’s Tax Returns (NYT, Dec. 30, 2022)
• Trump’s Taxes: Red Flags, Big Losses and a Windfall From His Father (NYT, Dec. 21, 2022)
• Live Updates: I.R.S. Didn’t Audit Trump for 2 Years in Office, House Committee Says (NYT, Dec. 21, 2022) 
• Trump Paid $750 in Federal Income Taxes in 2017. Here’s the Math. (NYT, Sept. 29, 2020) 
• Never-Before-Seen Trump Tax Documents Show Major Inconsistencies (ProPublica, Oct. 26, 2019)
• Meet the Shadowy Accountants Who Do Trump's Taxes and Help Him Seem Richer Than He Is (ProPublica, May 6, 2020)

Bizarrely, Trump's filing also claims that all of the above stories are false, even though they are based on leaks of his actual tax returns. 

In other words, Trump says he should be paid $10 billion dollars as a private citizen for "negligence" that happened on his watch as President, and he wants political cronies he appointed to lead the IRS and Justice Department—and whom he can fire or overrule—to decide whether he should get it.

Trump is making a lot of money during his second for himself and his political allies this way. In addition to today's lawsuit, Trump is "asking" his own Department of Justice—which his former personal defense lawyers now run—for $230 million in an administrative process because, in short, the FBI investigated his ties to Russia and his outright theft of classified documents. His DOJ also "settled" a spurious claim for $5 million by the family of Ashli Babbitt, a woman who was shot during the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. 

That Trump is a tax cheat is beyond question: not only had it been exhaustively documented before the leaks described in this lawsuit, it was an element of his felony convictions in New York State. The Trump Organization was also found guilty of criminal tax fraud in 2022, and Trump's financial fixer and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg went to prison for it. That sort of thing is why Trump, who has been promising to release his tax returns since becoming a candidate in 2015, never has.
 

Why does this matter?

• Corruption doesn't get much more obvious than a president demanding $10 billion directly from the government branch he leads. 

• That $10 billion will come from the pockets of Americans who don't cheat on their taxes.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He threatened the mayor of Minneapolis for knowing how federalism works.

Trump posted this to his private microblogging service this morning:

Surprisingly, Mayor Jacob Frey just stated that, "Minneapolis does not, and will not, enforce Federal Immigration Laws." This is after having had a very good conversation with him. Could somebody in his inner sanctum please explain that this statement is a very serious violation of the Law, and that he is PLAYING WITH FIRE!

This is not, in any way, a violation of the law. 

Cities and states are not required to enforce federal law, full stop. This is the essence of federalism, a bedrock principle of American government. It was most recently reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in the 1997 case Printz v. United States, with the majority opinion written by the arch-conservative Antonin Scalia holding that states could not be required even to do incidental clerical work in support of federal law enforcement.

As for whether Mayor Frey is "PLAYING WITH FIRE," federal agents are conducting an orchestrated shock-and-awe terror campaign in Frey's city under the guise of immigration enforcement, specifically because Trump has political grudges against the state's governor and the city's Congressional representative. Among other things, they've killed two Minneapolis residents, shot and wounded a third, kidnapped a five-year-old with valid immigration status and used him as bait, hospitalized an infant child after they threw a tear-gas grenade into a car, dragged an elderly U.S. citizen out into single-digit temperatures in his underwear believing he was a person they already had in custody, and made a point of asking residents to point out "where the Asian people live."

Why does this matter?

• A president who can't or won't understand where his authority ends is either too stupid or too authoritarian to hold office. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got a Congresswoman he hates attacked.

 

Trump hates Rep. Ilhan Omar, the Democratic member of Congress for Minneapolis, and has never made any secret of it. The recent terror campaign carried out by ICE and CPB on the city is happening there, as opposed to places like Texas or Florida with vastly greater numbers of undocumented immigrants, in large part because of his fury towards her. 

Rep. Omar is a Black Muslim woman who was born in Somalia and came to the United States as a refugee when she was 12. Any of those things might be enough to get under Trump's notoriously (and now literally) thin skin: he's stopped pretending to conceal his deep-seated racism and misogyny, and attacks on Muslims and immigrants are core to his political brand.

But more than anything, Trump seems infuriated by the fact that Omar is unwilling to let him bully her, and routinely claps back at him when he taunts her or her constituents. Trump doesn't handle criticism well from anyone, and finds it absolutely intolerable coming from women, and seems unable to control himself where she is concerned. He's lied about her citizenship, threatened to have her deported, spread disgusting rumors about her family, said she and Somalis in general were "garbage," and —in a moment of particular irony—said she was a "total scam artist." Unlike many other politicians in both parties, Omar has never let Trump go unanswered.

Most recently, Trump has said she's being "investigated" over her finances. (It's not clear whether this is a "real" thing that he is forcing the government to do at his behest, or just an empty threat.) Trump, anxious to tie her to an unrelated benefit fraud scheme that the state of Minnesota has been investigating for months, has been insinuating that she has been selling her office (another irony) to account for what he says is her net worth in the tens of millions of dollars. That's simply not true; they reflect the total value of the businesses her husband is a partner in—not the value of his share or hers. (By Trump's math, almost every farmer who went bankrupt due to his tariffs this year was a multi-millionaire.)

Tonight, less than a day after Trump once again claimed Omar herself was somehow involved in penny-ante benefits fraud, she was attacked by a man who ran up to her during a speech and sprayed her with an unknown substance from a syringe. The attacker was quickly subdued and arrested, and the chemical he sprayed on her hasn't been identified yet. The attack comes less than a week after another Democratic member of Congress, Maxwell Frost (D-FL), was punched by a man who screamed racist slurs at him and said that Trump would deport him. That attacker was also arrested.

The term for trying to turn a huge crowd against a target, in the knowledge that at least a few individuals in that crowd will probably make threats or commit violent acts, is stochastic terrorism. Trump knows from experience how effective it can be: he's egged on QAnon conspiracy theorists and antisemitic white supremacists, or simply identified someone he imagines is his enemy in public and mused about "bad things" that might happen to them. He's ostentatiously yanked security details away from political enemies he knows are in harm's way and gloated about the extra expense and danger it will bring them. And he's succeeded in ginning up violence against media figures he dislikes, and even his own Vice-President on January 6, 2021.

Omar, for her part, says she was unhurt and undeterred. Her office released a statement tonight: “During her town hall, an agitator tried to attack the Congresswoman by spraying an unknown substance with a syringe. Security and the Minneapolis Police Department quickly apprehended the individual. He is now in custody. The Congresswoman is okay. She continued with her town hall because she doesn’t let bullies win.” 

UPDATE: Trump is now claiming Rep. Omar "probably had herself sprayed."

Why does this matter?

• Trying to incite mobs to violence against political enemies is what dictators do.
  
  
• A president who can't stand being criticized is much too fragile to actually hold the office. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

What TV told him to do.

With incandescent public anger over his terror campaign in Minnesota spilling over even into his Republican base, Trump found himself this morning in a political fix, although whether or not he knew it is another matter. The publicity-focused shock-and-awe paramilitary campaigns by ICE and Border Patrol forces against the Americans that Trump believes are his enemies—essentially, anyone who lives in cities or states that oppose him politically—have been led by his political aide Stephen Miller and his Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, and Trump has shown little inclination or ability to rein them in.

But with Republican support crumbling out from underneath him, conservatives were beginning to worry that Trump needed an exit strategy that Noem and Miller wouldn't give him. This morning, they found a way to get one to him. This is CNN reporter Brian Stelter's summary:

Around 6:15 a.m. on Monday, “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade pitched a solution to President Trump’s growing political problem in Minnesota. “What I would do is just bring Tom Homan in,” he said.

Kilmeade, a Trump booster who knows the president often watches the morning show, volunteered the idea again at 7:15 and once more at 8:10. Homan, the border czar and a former Fox commentator, would “settle things down” and help Trump, Kilmeade said.

Maybe Trump was watching, maybe he wasn’t — but either way, he said, “I am sending Tom Homan to Minnesota tonight,” 20 minutes after Kilmeade suggested it a third time.  

By the end of the day, the mocking and combative public face of the occupation, Border Patrol "commander at large" Greg Bovino, had been forcibly demoted and put out to pasture, and tonight Noem and Miller are on shaky ground. Homan, who was caught on tape accepting a $50,000 cash bribe from undercover FBI agents last year, is not exactly a paragon of virtue, but neither is he politically invested in the current ICE terror campaign, and it's likely he'll be able to provide political cover for Trump.

This is not the first time that Trump has simply done whatever Fox News just told him to. Trump, whose only real success outside of the political realm has been as a reality show performer, is famously obsessed with television and extremely susceptible to its influence. He's so easily manipulated by it, and his TV habits are so voracious and so predictable, that he's been targeted personally by lobbyists and critics who have taken out advertisements on shows they know he'll be watching.

Why does this matter?

• It shouldn't be this easy to manipulate the President of the United States. 

• Presidents who don't know or care which of their staff is pulling their strings aren't fit to serve.
   
• The time to moderate your policy is before you are having federal agents shoot Americans dead in the street.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He doubled down on what his staffers are telling him to say about the latest killing in his Minnesota terror campaign.

After mostly ignoring the crisis yesterday in favor of a movie screening, Trump was forced to address the killing of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents. He toed the line set down by CPB and his own cabinet officials, telling the Wall Street Journal that—in effect—it was everyone's fault but his. In that interview and subsequent posts to his microblogging service, he blamed "Democrat run Sanctuary Cities," "Leftwing Agitators," state and local officials, immigrants in general. He also attacked Pretti himself, who was legally carrying a firearm when the Border Patrol raid began attracting the attention of observers, for being armed. (Needless to say, Trump takes a different view of what he calls "Second Amendment people" when he thinks they support him.) 

He also tried to float the idea that the specific model of gun Pretti was carrying was prone to accidental discharges—which would offer some theoretical justification for why Border Patrol officers opened fire on Pretti after he had already been disarmed, restrained, and rendered completely helpless. There's no evidence whatsoever that Pretti's gun discharged for any reason.

Trump also said the White House is "reviewing everything" about the shooting, which likely means it is trying to find a way to frame Pretti as the "domestic terrorist" and "would-be assassin" his staff has already tried to label him. That is precisely what it has tried to do with the murder of Renee Good by an ICE agent, Jonathan Ross, going so far as to file a meaningless criminal complaint against her that was immediately tossed out by a magistrate judge. But the administration has circled the wagons around Ross, insisting against all law and reason that federal agents have "absolute immunity" to kill Americans in the line of duty.

Pretti's killers have still not been named, and—according to the Border Patrol official that has become the face of the terror operation in Minnesota, Greg Bovino—the agents who shot him are supposedly still on active duty today. That is unheard of even in line-of-duty shootings where there is no question that a law enforcement officer acted correctly. 

As countless analyses have already shown, Trump is lying about what the video of Pretti's murder shows—assuming anyone has shown it to him. In the hours immediately following the killing of Renee Good, Trump followed the lead of administration officials in spreading lies about what had happened, only to abruptly change his tone later after he'd actually seen the video. 

It's no longer clear to what extent Trump is in control of his administration's terror campaign in Minnesota. By most accounts, the buck stops with Trump's aide and political operative Stephen Miller, his deputy chief of staff. Miller is a fixture in the permanent power struggles within the ranks of the Trump administration and a reliable source of palace intrigue and drama. His white supremacist and anti-immigrant leanings are a matter of record going back to his high school days (despite being the descendant of penniless Jewish refugees) and he has a proven track record of pushing Trump even further into scorched-earth territory on immigration matters.

Why does this matter?  

• Americans' right to safety from their own government is more important than Donald Trump's ego. 

• Nobody who sees the American people as the enemy is fit to serve in government. 

• A president who can't control his own staff is too weak to serve.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He watched a movie while Americans rose up in horror against his terror campaign in Minnesota.

This morning, Alex Pretti was filming Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis with approximately 15 other observers. A witness said she saw him motioning street traffic away from the scene. A number of observers were pepper-sprayed by Border Patrol agents, and Pretti moved to help them away from the scene. The witness describes what happened next this way:

Pretti was legally carrying a handgun, which remained holstered until a Border Patrol agent removed it and carried it away from the scene. Agents then opened fire on Pretti after he had been disarmed. Video of the killing recorded by several different observers can be seen here. Agents can be seen beating Pretti over the head or face with an object, possibly one of their guns, before ten shots can be heard.

Analysis of video taken of his killing clearly confirms that Pretti was fully disarmed, restrained, and lying supine on the ground when still-unnamed Border Patrol officers began shooting him.

A physician who lived near the scene and tried to treat Pretti describes what happened next. Immigration agents were refusing to give Pretti medical attention, but instead counting the bullet holes they had made in him.

The delay in allowing medical attention to the victim is one of a number of parallels with the murder of Renee Good earlier this month. As with Good's killing, local and state law enforcement officials were denied access to the crime scene while federal officials disposed of evidence. And like Good, Pretti was immediately smeared by top-level Trump administration officials as a "domestic terrorist" and "would-be assassin" who had put agents in fear for their lives—apparently by doing this:

 

In reality, Alex Pretti was an ICU nurse who had worked for the Veterans Administration. A literal Boy Scout who was praised by his patients' families for his patriotism, his last known words were to a woman who had been pepper-sprayed: "Are you okay?" 

 

Pretti's parents were forced to put out a statement today condemning the "sickening lies" spread about him by the Trump administration:

We are heartbroken but also very angry. 

Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital.

Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately he will not be with us to see his impact. I do not throw around the hero term lightly. However his last thought and act was to protect a woman. 

The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed. 

Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man. Thank you.

Demonstrators are once again out in force in American cities tonight, and not just Minneapolis, which yesterday saw a general strke and tens of thousands of people protesting Trump's deliberate terror campaign against the city and its citizen and immigrant residents alike. Dozens of vigils were held in the Twin Cities alone tonight.

Washington, DC

 

New York, NY

 

Minneapolis (MLK Park vigil)

 

Minneapolis (Loring Park vigil)

 

Minneapolis (Whittier Park vigil)

 

Minneapolis (North Loop vigil)

 

Minneapolis (at the scene of Pretti's death)

  

Trump spent the evening in the White House watching a private screening of Melania, a vanity film project about his wife underwritten to the tune of $75 million by billionaire Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. It is expected to gross perhaps $5 million at the box office, which would make it a catastrophic flop by normal Hollywood standards, but giving money to Trump's pet projects is an effective way of buying access and favorable treatment.

Melania Trump worked illegally in the United States before gaining citizenship and would be subject to denaturalization and deportation to Slovenia—or possibly a third country like Sierra Leone or South Sudan or Nicaragua—under Trump's policy if she weren't his wife. 

Why does this matter?

• Highly visible murders of anyone who shows any resistance to the ruling regime is how authoritarianism works. 

• Defaming a dead man and his grieving family for propaganda purposes is evil.  
  
  
• Deliberately telling obvious lies and demanding that people ignore what they can see with their own eyes is so basic to fascism that it's a plot point in 1984. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He "brought God back" by arresting clergy.

Anti-abortion protestors held a march today in Washington, attended by a number of Trump administration officials. But as was the case at his inauguration last year, the cold weather seems to have been too much for the increasingly frail Trump, who stayed indoors and delivered a brief message by recorded video.

Trump has been anxious to shore up his support with anti-choice voters. They have good reason to think he's not really serious about their pet issue: he was pro-choice most of his life before running for office, and he's gotten confused about exactly what it is he's supposed to believe now that he claims he's anti-abortion. His brief message didn't talk much about abortion, but he did make one interesting claim: that he's "bringing back God."

This isn't the first time Trump, who is famously unclear on the basics of Christianity, has made vaguely blasphemous statements like that. He's compared himself directly—and favorably—to Jesus Christ several times, and he's claimed to be specially ordained by God in ways that mere mortals aren't.

In other religious news, more than a hundred members of the clergy were arrested today in Minneapolis for protesting the campaign of terror Trump is waging by deploying ICE against immigrants, citizens, people of color, protestors, observers, schoolchildren, and children too young to be in school. 

Faith leaders line up to be arrested at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport.

The arrested clergy were part of demonstrations all across Minnesota today. In the Twin Cities alone, tens of thousands of people took part in a march on a day when the temperature was -10°F.

 

Why does this matter?

• Jesus commanded his followers to obey God's law by showing mercy and hospitality to foreigners. 

• He also had some pretty harsh words for people who pretend to be pious and then do evil.

• Arresting clergy whose moral stances pose a danger to the establishment is what dictators do, but it has a long history in the United States too.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He rescinded an offer for Canada to pay $1 billion to be on a "board" with dictatorships.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had sharp words for Trump in his speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this week. It got under Trump's skin, who blustered back at "Mark" and demanded that he be "grateful." (Ironically, Carney does owe Trump a debt of gratitude. His Liberal party was widely expected to be swept out of power in last year's elections, but when Trump returned to office and started making insulting "51st state" remarks about Canada, it swung voters sharply away from the Conservative party Trump backed.)

Carney returned to the fray with another speech in Quebec City today, challenging Trump by name and praising Canada for its embrace of the values Trump has abandoned—a commitment to democracy, free and fair public debate, and the strength it draws from its embrace of immigrants. "Canada doesn't live because of the United States," Carney said, throwing Trump's words back at him. "Canada thrives because we are Canadians."

That appears to have been what triggered Trump to go on social media and declare that Canada was no longer welcome to join his "Board of Peace," a sort of Potemkin village version of the United Nations with Trump's cronies and relatives in place of actual world leaders. Membership costs $1 billion, and Canada—along with virtually all of the United States' allies in developed countries—had already passed on the invitation. It was widely understood as a meaningless vanity project for Trump even before he decided to charge admission.

The billion-dollar price tag is meant to signify that a "Board of Peace" member country has demonstrated "deep commitment to peace, security, and prosperity." But the countries willing to publicly commit to joining it are among the least free countries on the planet. The charter members are:

Country	Freedom House index score	Comments
Belarus	7/100 — Not Free	"Belarus is an authoritarian state in which elections are openly rigged and civil liberties are severely restricted. Security forces have violently assaulted and arbitrarily detained journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens who challenge the regime. The judiciary and other institutions lack independence and provide no check on President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s power."
Morocco	37/100 — Partly Free	Monarchy. "King Mohammed VI and his palace maintain full dominance through a combination of substantial formal powers, informal lines of influence in state and society, and ownership of crucial economic resources. Many civil liberties are constrained in practice."
Vietnam	20/100 — Not Free	"Vietnam is a one-party state, dominated for decades by the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV). Although some independent candidates are technically allowed to run in legislative elections, most opposition is banned in practice. Freedom of expression, religious freedom, and civil society activism are tightly restricted. Even by Vietnam’s authoritarian standards, in recent years, and particularly in 2024, the authorities have engaged in one of the widest-ranging crackdowns on dissent in decades."
Kazakhstan	23/100 — Not Free	"President Nursultan Nazarbayev ruled Kazakhstan from 1990 until his resignation in 2019. His hand-picked successor, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, began a program of ostensible reform after peaceful nationwide protests turned violent in January 2022. Parliamentary and presidential elections are neither free nor fair, however, and authorities have consistently marginalized or imprisoned genuine opposition figures. The dominant media outlets are either in state hands or owned by government-friendly businessmen. Freedoms of speech and assembly remain restricted and subject to punishment, and corruption is endemic."
Hungary	65/100 — Partly Free	"Since taking power in the 2010 elections, [Trump ally] Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Alliance of Young Democrats–Hungarian Civic Union (Fidesz) party has pushed through constitutional and legal changes that have allowed it to consolidate control over the country’s independent institutions. The Fidesz government has passed antimigrant and anti-LGBT+ policies, as well as laws that hamper the operations of opposition groups, journalists, universities, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that are critical of the ruling party or whose perspectives Fidesz otherwise finds unfavorable."
Armenia	54/100 — Partly Free	Rebounding from a period of "systemic corruption, opaque policymaking, a flawed electoral system, and weak rule of law" but its membership is part of an ongoing charm offensive directed at manipulating Trump directly. "The country has been seriously affected by military pressure from Azerbaijan in recent years. In September 2023, nearly the entire ethnic Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh, which had enjoyed de facto  independence from Azerbaijan since 1994, fled to Armenia after the Azerbaijani military defeated local defense forces and took full control of the territory."
Egypt	13/10 — Not Free	"President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who first took power in a 2013 coup, has governed Egypt in an authoritarian manner. Meaningful political opposition is virtually nonexistent, as expressions of dissent can draw criminal prosecution and imprisonment. Civil liberties, including press freedom and freedom of assembly, are tightly restricted. Security forces engage in human rights abuses with impunity. Discrimination against women, LGBT+ people, and other groups remains a serious problem, as do high rates of gender-based violence."
Kosovo	60/100 — Partly Free	Plausibly fair elections but "many public institutions are undermined by corruption, though there are signs that a new generation of politicians are moving to confront corrupt practices through judicial and administrative reforms. Journalists continue to face intimidation, particularly on social media. The rule of law is inhibited by interference and dysfunction in the judiciary."
Pakistan	32/100 — Partly Free	Contested elections. "However, the military exerts enormous influence over the conduct of elections, government formation, and policies; intimidates the media; and enjoys impunity for indiscriminate or extralegal use of force. The authorities often impose selective restrictions on civil liberties. Islamist militants conduct terrorist campaigns against the state and also regularly carry out attacks on members of religious minority groups and other perceived opponents.
Paraguay	63/100 — Partly Free	Decades of entrenched one-party rule. "Corruption and organized crime remain widespread. Journalists face legal and other pressure and sometimes violence in response to their work, and many practice self-censorship. Constitutional guarantees of due process are poorly upheld. Gender-based violence is persistent. The rights of rural and Indigenous people are threatened by commercial development and associated environmental damage."
Albania	68/100 — Partly Free	"Corruption and bribery remain major problems, though the government has worked to address corruption in the judiciary."
Uzbekistan	12/100 — Not Free	"Uzbekistan remains an authoritarian state with few signs of democratization. No opposition parties operate legally. The legislature and judiciary effectively serve as instruments of the executive branch, which initiates reforms by decree, and the media are still tightly controlled by the authorities. Reports of torture and other ill-treatment persist, although highly publicized cases of abuse have resulted in dismissals and prosecutions for some officials."
Bahrain	12/100 — Not Free	"Bahrain’s Sunni-led monarchy dominates state institutions, and elections for the lower house of parliament are neither competitive nor inclusive. Since violently crushing a popular prodemocracy protest movement in 2011, the authorities have systematically eliminated a broad range of political rights and civil liberties, dismantled the political opposition, and cracked down on persistent dissent concentrated among the Shiite population."
Qatar	25/100 — Not Free	"Qatar’s hereditary emir holds all executive and legislative authority and ultimately controls the judiciary. Political parties are not permitted, and public participation in the political arena is extremely limited. While Qatari citizens are among the wealthiest in the world, most of the population consists of noncitizens with no political rights, few civil liberties, and limited access to economic opportunity." Trump is using a Qatari account to illegally hold proceeds from seized Venezuelan oil out of the reach of Congress and U.S. courts.

The country rated highest in this group on the Freedom House index, Albania, is 86th in the world overall. Canada is 4th.

Why does this matter?

• Throwing a tantrum isn't the best way to promote your diplomatic initiative. 

• It's bad if dictatorships can buy the personal favor of the President of the United States. 

• This is humiliating for the United States and Donald Trump may be the only person who doesn't know it.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got called out on a lie or hallucination about Greenland in real time.

In an abrupt but not particularly surprising twist, Trump appeared to back down on his threats to invade NATO ally Greenland today. More accurately, he kept up his threat that Greenland would, necessarily, become part of the United States. But he ruled out using military force, the only means by which that could happen, since both Greenland and its parent country Denmark have flatly rejected Trump's "offers" with respect to the territory.

In what may have been an attempt to square that circle, Trump posted to his private microblogging service that he'd agreed on a "framework of a future deal" with Mark Rutte, the Secretary-General of NATO. Immediately pressed for details, Trump evaded the question by saying "it's a little bit complex" but that he'd explain at some unspecified point in the future.

There are two problems with Trump's story. First, NATO has no authority to make deals on behalf of one of its member states. Rutte could no more agree to give Greenland to the United States than he could give Florida to Denmark.

That leads to the second problem: Rutte denies that any such discussion about Greenland ever took place. 

Being caught in an easily disproved lie is nothing new for Trump, but it raises the question of why Trump has finally backed down, at least momentarily, from the absurd prospect of boosting the United States' "national security" by starting a war with the rest of NATO. One possibility is that he began to fear—probably correctly—that the U.S. military would simply refuse to follow any such order. While the subordination of American military forces to the President is normally absolute, there's precedent: during the lame duck period of Trump's first term, Congressional leaders sought and received assurances from the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the military would not assist him in a coup attempt or suicidal nuclear attack.

Alternatively, in the face of virtually unanimous public opinion against any such invasion and a united European front, Trump may have been trying to save face by claiming a "deal" that will never exist. If so, it doesn't seem to be working.

Finally, Trump may have said that he had a nonexistent conversation with a Dutch military bureaucrat about ceding an independent Danish territory because he genuinely believed he had. It wasn't the only time Trump got confused about which country was which: during his shambling address to the World Economic Forum today at Davos, he repeatedly confused Greenland with Iceland.

Why does this matter?

• There's no practical difference between a president who won't tell the truth and who doesn't have any idea what the truth is. 

• Just because someone can be distracted, scared or shamed off of an incredibly stupid course of action doesn't mean it wasn't an incredibly stupid course of action to pursue in the first place.  

What did Donald Trump do today?

Open, gutter racism.

Trump, who is 79 years old and the son of a man who attended Ku Klux Klan rallies in the 1920s, has never been particularly shy about his racial prejudices. His public debut came in 1973 as the co-defendant in a housing discrimination case after he was caught screening out qualified Black renters. He publicly campaigned for the death penalty for five Black and Hispanic men falsely accused of rape—and continued to do so even after their innocence was proven. He stoked the "birther" allegations that falsely claimed President Barack Obama was ineligible to be president—and repeated the slur against the next Black person he ran against, Vice-President Kamala Harris, for good measure. He graduated from quietly accepting the support of Klansmen and white nationalists like David Duke to openly courting explicitly racist gangs. He's openly encouraged his administration to post racist and inflammatory memes that directly quote Nazis and white supremacists. He's said that Black people come from "shithole countries," slurred a judge in two lawsuits against him as incompetent for being "a Mexican," spread obvious lies about personally witnessing Arab-Americans celebrating in the streets after 9/11 (among other 9/11 lies he's told), and said Puerto Ricans desperate for lifesaving aid after Hurricane Maria "lazy" and that they "wanted everything done for them." More recently, he's cheered on a terror campaign against citizens, legal immigrants, and undocumented immigrants alike that has had a federal paramilitary force arresting dark-skinned people on sight on the grounds that their skin color alone is sufficient grounds to suspect them of being in the United States illegally. 

Among other things. 

Today, in a press appearance that was erratic and incoherent even by Trump's standards, Trump went back to the well of racism one more time. He said that Somalis, including the Somali-Americans he just targeted for deportation in spite of their legal status, were "backwards" and that piracy and theft were "the only thing they're good at" and that he "didn't want them in our country" because they were "very low IQ people."

Not only is this racism by any definition of the word, it's an open and venomous form of it that some Americans might have hoped had gone out with their great-grandparents. It didn't—but for a time, it was at least generally understood that a politician who got caught saying openly racist things, even in private conversations, was unfit for office in a country that had rejected the racial theories of slave owners.

But Trump has always been a sucker for the idea that there is something genetically perfect about himself, and by extension people he sees as being like him, and he's never much minded if that puts him in the company of other people with strong views about how immigrants and Jews and people with dark skin are "poisoning the blood" of the nation—which is a phrase that both Trump and Adolf Hitler have used on many occasions.

Trump's racism predates concerns that he is slipping further into dementia, although it's not uncommon for people to lose the ability to put a polite face on racist beliefs as they suffer cognitive decline. But on that subject, not everything Trump said to the media today was cartoonish racism. He also answered a softball question about what he hoped Congress would take up in the new year with a ramble about executive orders on drinking straws.

Why does this matter?

• Racism is evil, stupid, and cowardly, and so is everyone who practices it. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He called for jailing journalists covering protests, spreading misinformation in the process.

This morning, demonstrators entered a church in St. Paul, Minnesota to protest the ongoing campaign of terror by ICE agents in the Twin Cities. For the most part, clergy have been leading anti-ICE protests—and getting shot, arrested, and gassed for their troubles—but this one was aimed at the pastor of Cities Church, David Easterwood, who is also an ICE agent.

The demonstrators had alerted media, and a number of reporters followed them in to cover the protest, including CNN's Don Lemon. Neither Lemon nor any other member of the press took part. The Trump administration responded today by calling for Lemon's prosecution as part of a "conspiracy" and said he was "on notice" for federal charges, including a violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act.

Lemon, who is Black, responded in a statement: 

It’s notable that I’ve been cast as the face of a protest I was covering as a journalist — especially since I wasn’t the only reporter there. That framing is telling. What’s even more telling is the barrage of violent threats, along with homophobic and racist slurs, directed at me online by MAGA supporters and amplified by parts of the right-wing press.

If this much time and energy is going to be spent manufacturing outrage, it would be far better used investigating the tragic death of Renee Nicole Good— the very issue that brought people into the streets in the first place. I stand by my reporting.

Conspiracy, which is one of the crimes Trump is still liable to be prosecuted for when he leaves office, involves making a plan to commit a crime and then taking an action in furtherance of that plan. It is not a crime to know that a nonviolent demonstration will take place, or to see it happening.

For his part, Trump reposted a tweet by a small-time "influencer" who goes by MoniFunGirl, in which she claimed that anti-abortion protestors had gotten "40 years" for violating the same law Trump's DOJ was threatening Lemon with. 

 

 

After Trump's repost, the original poster corrected herself to "40 months."  

 

Trump's post remains up and uncorrected. 

Why does this matter?

• It's not a crime to protest or report on protesting. 

• Threatening and prosecuting reporters is what dictators do.  

• Presidents shouldn't spread disinformation and should care if they get caught doing it.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He wrote a note whining about Denmark to the wrong person in the wrong country.

Trump repeated a few of the same lies about Denmark and Greenland on social media today that he has been telling for years. Specifically, he suggested that NATO (an organization he loathes and frequently becomes emotional about) had been "telling Denmark for 20 years" about the looming Russian threat.

In reality, NATO members—most especially the United States—have been closing military installations on the island precisely because they weren't needed. (The United States has a treaty right to build them back up again, but Trump doesn't seem interested in doing this, for reasons he hasn't explained.)

But today also saw reporting that Trump is mixing up his Greenland obsession with his Nobel Peace Prize obsession, in the form of a letter to Jonas Gahr Støre, the Prime Minister of Norway. Nick Schifrin, a reporter with PBS, posted the text he'd confirmed with multiple government sources today:

 

There's no neutral way to put this: either Trump is suffering from an acute mental health episode, or a chronic cognitive one. Norway and Denmark are two different countries. The Norwegian government does not award the Nobel Peace Prize. And even if it did, threatening to wage war specifically out of spite for not getting a peace prize is absurd.

And most importantly, even if Trump believed Russia had designs on Greenland—and even if Trump thought that the Putin regime having its way was a bad thing—Denmark already has a robust system of defense. It is a member of NATO, whose members, including the United States, would be obliged to come to its aid if it were attacked.

Incidentally, in the 77-year history of NATO, only one country has ever invoked the portion of the charter that requires allies to come to its aid: the United States, after the September 11th attacks. As a deterrent to Soviet and later Russian aggression, it has never failed—which makes Trump attacking it from within worth far more to hostile countries like Russia than Greenland ever could be.

Why does this matter?

• It doesn't really matter whether a president is doing the bidding of hostile foreign nations out of incompetence, corruption, or any other reason.  

• This is not how someone who is mentally stable and alert enough to be president behaves.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to use the power of the presidency to schedule a football game he goes to sometimes.

Today, Trump used his private microblogging site to issue what may be his vaguest and most toothless promise of an "order" yet: he said he would, at some point in the future, issue an executive order decreeing that no other football game could conflict with the broadcast of the annual Army-Navy game.

The game is already televised every year on CBS. It's not clear why Trump thought that other games happening at the same time would keep anyone from watching it who wanted to. 

The U.S. Military Academy's Black Knights and the Naval Academy's Midshipmen traditionally play at the end of each team's season, a Saturday in early December. Since college football games are almost all played on Saturdays, dozens of other games might normally conflict with it, most of which are televised either nationally or regionally. Trump's "order" would clear out a four-hour window in the middle of all that. 

To be clear: Trump has no authority as president to demand that the NCAA, the NFL, individual universities, public or private high schools, or Pop Warner leagues schedule their games according to his whim. Nor can he legally force the dozens of networks that carry sports over broadcast or cable not to air any such game. But he can signal that he will use the power of his office to corruptly punish them if they don't go along with his demands—something he's done quite a few times in his second term already.

Trump, who helped drive the short-lived USFL into the ground in the 1980s, isn't known as a football fan. But there's one reason the Army-Navy game might hold a special place in his heart: because virtually everyone in the stands is connected to the military, they can be ordered not to drown him in boos or otherwise show open signs of disrespect—which isn't the case when he appears in front of other football crowds.

Why does this matter?

• Just because an illegal "order" is stupid and mostly harmless doesn't mean it's not authoritarian.  

• "More than one thing can be on television at the same time" is not something you need to explain to someone who is fully mentally there.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He let slip he'd pardoned a wealthy donor for fraud a second time.

Trump has made little secret of the fact that criminals can buy their way out of jail. He's accepted cryptocurrency fees, political endorsements, contributions to his super PAC, and carefully worded testimony in potential criminal investigations in exchange for various acts of clemency.

Late this Friday afternoon, though, the Trump administration quietly acknowledged a pardon so overtly corrupt that even Trump didn't want to have to defend it. Earlier this week, in secret, he signed pardons for several wealthy individuals who had donated to his political causes. They included a pardon for a woman  convicted in 2024 of fraud whom he had previously pardoned in 2021 for a different fraud conviction.

"Fraud," for which Trump himself has been criminally convicted, is the excuse he is currently using to justify a terror campaign against Somali-Americans.

No White House official was willing to speak on the record today about the nearly unprecedented second pardon for Adriana Camberos, who made millions of dollars selling fake bottles of energy drinks. (Camberos will now likely escape having to pay her victims back, which was part of her criminal sentence.) The only justification given was that she and her co-conspirators were unfairly targeted after Trump's first pardon, even though she committed the second crime after receiving the first pardon.

In other words, Trump is saying that anyone he pardons is effectively immune from ever being subject to the law, even if they break the law again. Trump has already tried to get courts to stretch his pardons of the January 6th insurrectionists to cover unrelated crimes, and issued a second pardon to one insurrectionist who committed unrelated gun crimes that were discovered during his first prosecution. His DOJ has dropped federal criminal charges against dozens of other insurrectionists.

In fairness to Trump, he's also given away some acts of clemency, mostly to friends and family members, to say nothing of co-conspirators. 

Why does this matter? 

• Open corruption is worse than doing it in secret.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He threatened to "institute the INSURRECTION ACT," which doesn't mean what he thinks it does.

In a post to his private microblogging service today, Trump said he would "institute the INSURRECTION ACT" if the "corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E."

The Insurrection Act allows a president to use soldiers to conduct domestic law enforcement under certain narrow circumstances. Trump has publicly flirted with the idea of invoking the act many, many times, which he seems to view as a license to launch a direct military assault on his domestic political enemies and force his critics into silence. 

But in reality, the Insurrection Act does little more than give military forces police powers. It does not allow them to act against Americans with impunity, it does not allow for martial law to take the place of civilian government, and it does not suspend Americans' constitutional rights. 

It also does not permit or excuse murder, firing flashbang grenades at infants, kidnapping American citizens to try to force local governments to assist ICE. It does not require Americans to carry their papers on them at all times or be arrested, nor does it generally allow any form of "RECKONING AND RETRIBUTION" against Americans the president thinks are his enemies.

Trump also claimed that the act had been invoked "many" times before, although not since 1992 and only ten times in Trump's lifetime—and most of those were in support of American civil rights protestors who were being targeted by racist state governments. Notably, Trump decided not to invoke it during the one legitimate and serious attack on American government since reconstruction.

 

Why does this matter?

• This is tinpot dictator shit whether or not he pretends to give it legal cover. 

• Americans are not the enemy America's military is meant to fight.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He forced NATO to take up defensive positions against an American invasion of Greenland.

In response to Trump's bizarre and increasingly serious threats to invade Greenland, European countries that are officially allies of the United States have been sending military and diplomatic delegations to the island. France recently announced it was opening a consulate in Greenland's capital city of Nuuk, and today it confirmed it would be sending military forces to participate in joint force exercises with Denmark. The UK is also sending a single officer, and Germany, Norway, and Sweden are also taking part.For their part, Denmark's armed forces have been given strict orders to actively repel any attack on Greenland. 

In military theory, token detachments like this in the path of a potential invasion are called "tripwire forces." They're intended to deter aggression (because of the promise of a full-scale counterattack) without provoking unstable regimes with an escalating force. For example, the United States military presence in South Korea is not large enough to repel an invasion from North Korea, but even the notoriously chaotic North Korean government is unwilling to risk harming American troops for fear of retaliation.

In other words, the rest of NATO is beginning to treat Donald Trump the same way they do Kim Jong-un, and for the same reasons. Support for a military invasion of Greenland is nonexistent among Americans, with a recent poll showing only 4% of Americans in favor. 

The foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland were in Washington today, meeting with JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Predictably, nothing was accomplished, if only because Trump preemptively declared today that "anything less than" surrender of Greenland was "unacceptable." He also flatly refused to rule out a direct military invasion of a founding member of NATO.

Trump himself did not attend the meeting. Instead, he held a signing ceremony for a bill promoting 2% milk, during which he nodded off. 

Why does this matter?

• Even by Trump standards, this is delusional and dishonorable. 

• Destroying NATO like this would be a godsend to nations hostile to the United States