What did Donald Trump do today?

He issued some pardons, in accordance with his usual standards.

Trump issued 11 pardons today. With few if any exceptions over the course of his time in office, Trump has issued acts of clemency for a short list of specific reasons: either he has been paid, or because the recipient was accused of a crime he himself is known to have committed, or because he is trying to send a message about what kinds of laws he wants to encourage people to disobey.

The first category includes, for example, a Chinese billionaire who laundered money for Hamas. Changpeng Zhao's company paid Trump millions of dollars in cryptocurrency processing fees, and Zhao received a pardon from Trump—or someone using Trump's authority without his knowledge, as sometimes happens. (A few weeks later, Trump was unable to say who Zhao was or why he was granted a pardon.)

The second group includes people convicted of fraud, running a fake charity, violating campaign finance laws, obstruction of justice, tax evasion, offering or accepting bribes, stealing classified government documents, and influence peddling. (Those examples are all just from one day last May.)

The most obvious example of the third is Trump's blanket pardon of everyone who committed sedition or other violent acts in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying President Biden's win in the 2020 presidential election. Trump has never really even pretended to believe that laws mean anything if they get in his way.

But it applies to his finer-grained policy choices, too, like his disdain for environmental protection laws. For the second time in less than a month, he tried to paint people convicted of serious charges related to the Clean Air Act of having been guilty of nothing more than "fixing their cars." 

As with the previous pardon, these people were not convicted of "fixing their cars." They were white-collar criminals who owned repair shops and were convicted of disabling required pollution control devices for owners of heavy trucks. In other words, they were selling a way for truck operators to illegally gain an advantage over those who followed the law. Trump has suspended enforcement of that law. 

Trump, a convicted felon himself, also issued at least one pardon today that fell into both the first and second group. Adam Kinan, a major Trump donor, received a pardon for wire fraud.

Why does this matter?

• "It's not illegal if it helps the Leader" is how dictatorships work.  

• If Trump had pardoned someone people would actually have sympathized with, he wouldn't have needed to lie about what the criminals had done.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He made his daily $5.5 million, give or take, on something even he calls a "scam."

Trump's financial disclosure forms for 2025 were released today. These documents are not even close to a comprehensive or specific accounting of Trump's wealth, and given that Trump is a convicted felon because of his willingness to lie about his finances, there's reason to doubt he's told the whole truth here. Nevertheless, they do confirm some of the broad brush strokes of how sharply Trump's wealth has increased since he returned to office, and where some of it is coming.

The topline result is that Trump's net worth increased by about $2,200,000,000 in 2025, with the majority of it, $1.4 billion, coming from cryptocurrency sales and marketing. Trump called cryptocurrency a "scam" before he was able to use his resurgent political career to get into selling it.  

Trump's crypto revenue comes from two sources. One is a novelty coin, $TRUMP, which is a kind of thing usually referred to as a "shitcoin" by crypto enthusiasts: something built from the ground up not for security or ease of use or a peg to real-world value, but purely to buy low and sell high. Virtually all of the investors in $TRUMP have lost money, as the token has lost 95% of its initial value as of today.

 

Even by the Wild West standards of the crypto industry, Trump's tokens come with strings attached that make them a terrible prospect for buyers. The terms mean that every transaction, no matter who is involved, generates a fee for Trump—giving him an incentive to churn the market every so often, which he's done from the White House.

The other source is the profits from World Liberty Financial, a Trump-owned company that sells other digital tokens. It appears to exist mostly as a vehicle for bribes and influence-buying. The United Arab Emirates bought a 49% stake in the company immediately on Trump's return to office, essentially gifting him about $500 million dollars. Last year, Trump pardoned a Chinese billionaire for money laundering—but only after the recipient's company agreed to take financing on an unrelated project in Trump's crypto tokens, which made Trump millions of dollars in processing fees. A different crypto mogul saw his fraud case set aside by Trump's DOJ after he bought $90 million in Trump coins.

The figures released today do not count quasi-official pass-through "gifts" by foreign countries to entities Trump controls. One example is the $400 million luxury plane Qatar gave him to use as Air Force One came with a stipulation that Trump could retain use of it through his presidential library after leaving office. Likewise, it doesn't include the multi-billion-dollar budget of the so-called "Board of Peace" he created, funded exclusively by foreign countries with authoritarian governments. The charter of that organization gives Trump himself, not the sitting President of the United States, control of it in perpetuity.

Trump's daily take from his crypto business works out to about $5.5 million, or roughly 3.5 times what the median American earns in an entire lifetime.
 

Why does this matter?

• It's really bad that the sitting President of the United States is treating the country like a pig-butchering scam.   

• Just because the corruption happens every day doesn't make it better.

• It's wrong to sell pardons, for crypto tokens or real money.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He nominated still yet another of his personal criminal defense attorneys to a top DOJ post.

Today, Trump announced that he was nominating James M. McDonald as the next US Attorney for the powerful Southern District of New York. McDonald is currently a member of Trump's legal defense team trying to appeal his conviction in the New York state fraud case. He was found guilty of 34 felonies relating to his attempt to launder an illegal in-kind hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress he had a brief sexual encounter with shortly after the birth of his youngest son.

Trump may be the only president in history to have personal criminal defense lawyers on retainer at the time he took office. Prior to Trump, no incoming president had ever been indicted on state or federal felony charges, much less convicted. 

McDonald joins a long list of Trump defense attorneys who are being put in sensitive positions in the DOJ and the federal bench. Trump's first attorney general, Pam Bondi, was part of his impeachment defense team. His current nominee for that position, Todd Blanche, defended Trump and other people in Trump's circle after they were indicted for their roles in the conspiracy to keep Trump in office after 2020. (Blanche is also the person Trump trusted to "interview" Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted child sex trafficker and associate of Jeffrey Epstein, after which Maxwell received an upgrade to a minimum-security federal "resort" prison.) Trump appointed yet another of his criminal lawyers, Emil Bove, to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Matthew Schwartz, another lawyer on his criminal appeals team, was nominated by Trump as a judge on the Second Circuit. Trump named D. John Sauer, who secured for him a Supreme Court ruling making him all but invulnerable to criminal prosecution for crimes committed while in office, his first Solicitor General.

Trump hasn't really made any secret as to why he only seems to trust lawyers who have a track record of shielding him from prosecution. He was infuriated when both of his Attorneys General from his first term eventually reached a point where they refused to act as his personal lawyer: Jefferson Sessions, when evidence of Trump's collusion with Russia to influence the 2016 election became undeniable, and William Barr, when Trump was in the throes of trying to attempt a coup to toss out 2020 election.

When Sessions appointed a special prosecutor, Trump reportedly wailed, "Where's my Roy Cohn?!" That was a reference to Trump's disgraced former lawyer and notorious political dirty trickster Roy Cohn, who died in 1986. Trump publicly distanced himself from Cohn when it was revealed that Cohn, a closeted gay man, was dying of AIDS—but publicly praised him for his "loyalty" above all else. 

Trump replaced sessions with Barr, a political brawler who showed none of Sessions' respect for the traditional separation of legal and political matters. But when Barr told reporters that there was no evidence of voter fraud (or at least none against Trump), which by then had become undeniable, Trump was so enraged he threw his lunch plate at the wall.

McDonald, if confirmed, would have prosecutorial jurisdiction over the city in which the Trump Organization is based. He would also be responsible for prosecuting, or choosing not to prosecut, white-collar crimes like corporate fraud and insider trading committed there.

Why does this matter?

• The Justice Department is supposed to serve the interests of the people of the United States, not Donald Trump personally. 

• A president who wasn't afraid his crimes, past or present, would catch up to him probably wouldn't be so worried about "loyalty" from prosecutors.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He put his political hatchet man in charge of the country's intelligence agencies.

Today, Trump named Bill Pulte as his acting Director of National Intelligence. Pulte, who will also continue in his role as head of the Federal Housing Authority, is best known in national circles for his role in ginning up spurious criminal investigations against at Trump's political enemies. (Specifically in Michigan real estate circles, he's known for being the defendant in a class action lawsuit for shoddy construction in the homes built by the company he inherited.)

In simplest terms, Pulte made a list of Trump's enemies, then used his position to go looking through the details of private financial transactions for pretexts to have criminal charges brought against them.

Among Pulte's targets for Trump's revenge were Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), NY state Attorney General Letitia James, and Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook. Schiff and Swalwell are outspoken critics, and James successfully prosecuted Trump's company for hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud. Cook simply refused to resign from the Federal Reserve Board so that Trump could appoint someone who would give him the massive interest rate cut he wants and would personally make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars from.

None of Pulte's criminal investigations or referrals went anywhere, and at least one was a spectacular failure by legal standards: DOJ prosecutors failed three times in a row to obtain a valid grand jury indictment of James. (Indictments at the federal level are practically a formality; failing three times in a single case may be a record.) 

In large part, Pulte's scheme failed because the supposed "wrongdoing" he accused them of—mostly, claiming different houses as primary residences on different mortgage applications—isn't illegal in the first place, unless it's part of a larger fraud scheme (like the one Trump himself was convicted of in New York state court). In the aftermath, at least three Trump cabinet officials, were revealed to have made similar mortgage claims, and Pulte's multi-millionaire father and stepmother were found to have both claimed homestead tax credits on two properties, which is likely illegal. (Pulte did not bring charges against any of them.)

When federal agents at the FNMA, which Pulte chairs, began investigating whether Pulte had improperly used his influence to target Trump's political enemies, Trump fired them.  

In his new role as DNI, Pulte would have access to all of the most sensitive information known to the United States government. That makes the fact that Pulte does not even have a security clearance now an enormous problem. There is also a legal problem with Pulte's appointment: federal law requires that a DNI have "extensive" experience in national security. Pulte, who at 38 has spent his entire career before 2025 as the heir to a real estate fortune, has none at all.

There was bipartisan disgust at the announcement today. Republican Sen. John Thune said the pick would "weaponize" the national intelligence system against Trump's enemies. The conservative editorial board of the Washington Post marveled that Trump had "managed to find someone less qualified than Tulsi Gabbard to replace her as interim director of national intelligence," and said that Pulte was a "sycophant" whose real function would be to damage the nation's intelligence agencies from within. (Trump has had a vendetta against the American intelligence community from the start, in part because they exposed his campaign's collusion with the Russian government to subvert elections on his behalf.) GOP Senator Bill Cassidy simply called Pulte incompetent.

Trump has been claiming since he took office that he, personally, is the real victim of the "weaponization" of government. 

Why does this matter?

• Using the law to punish enemies for political crimes is basically the core of authoritarianism. 

• The person in charge of national intelligence should know the first thing about intelligence, or at least have held a job they didn't inherit from their grandfather.

• Playing the victim is a classic abuser strategy.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to make public servants sign the same nondisclosure agreements his ex-wives had to.

The Trump administration released a draft proposal today that would force federal employees to sign nondisclosure agreements, or NDAs, in an apparent attempt to stop embarrassing and politically damaging leaks. 

Of course, there are already legal means to bar the release of classified information, but most of what happens in government offices isn't classified. Stories about Trump being manipulated by junior staffers, or paying inappropriate sexual attention to them, or throwing temper tantrums when he doesn't get his way aren't matters of national security—but they are things that government employees witness, and tell Congress or the press about. They're also firsthand witnesses to incompetence, immorality, and corruption on the part of Trump's senior officials.

It's this kind of sunlight that Trump's rule would try to shut out, by giving him new ways to punish and financially ruin government employees who witnessed wrongdoing. He's tried it before in both public and private life. For example, in 2019, he threatened to sue a former White House employee who had written a tell-all book for violation of an NDA. Trump ultimately backed down, in part because without any legal authority behind it, the agreement was almost certainly unenforceable. 

Trump's also made extensive use of NDAs in his private life. He's forced each of his ex-wives to sign one as part of their divorce settlements, and they're a routine part of working for his businesses. But even then, they don't always have the desired effect. Trump tried unsuccessfully to use NDAs to keep the adult film actress Stormy Daniels from revealing their sexual encounter, which took place shortly after the birth of Trump's youngest son. That arrangement, signed under a pseudonym ("David Dennison"), became a key element in Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts in New York.

Whistleblower protections are baked right into federal law, and for good reason. Government officials engaging in corrupt or illegal behavior usually try to keep it secret. Bringing public scrutiny to bear on the details is sometimes the only way of rooting out that kind of corruption. Likewise, journalists who publish internal government information that sources bring them usually can't be forced to reveal those sources, or be prosecuted themselves, although it hasn't stopped Trump from trying to do just that in the past.

It was exactly this kind of protected whistleblower action that led to Trump's first impeachment. Alexander Vindman, an Army lieutenant colonel working for the National Security Council, was the first to raise alarms about the phone call in which Trump tried to strongarm Ukraine's president into ginning up a fake investigation against Joe Biden's son. Trump had correctly believed that Biden would be the Democratic nominee in 2020, and that he would need to manufacture some disqualifying scandal in order to beat Biden in the general election. But the resulting blowback, which saw many Republicans openly disgusted by Trump's abuse of an allied power in pursuit of domestic political dirty tricks, helped cost Trump the election instead.

Why does this matter?

• The purpose of government isn't to help Donald Trump cover up his scandals.  

• One way to stop people from sharing evidence of corruption and incompetence is to run a less corrupt and incompetent administration.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He wrote himself a get-out-of-jail-for-tax-fraud-and-evasion-free card.

Contrary to popular belief, most extremely wealthy Americans do pay their taxes. The reason that many of the very richest Americans often end up paying a much lower rate than poor and middle-class citizens is that the tax code is written with loopholes only they can take advantage of. (Many of them were put there by Trump himself, and meant to benefit him primarily.)

Donald Trump, however, is the exception: he is, without question, one of the most flagrant tax cheats in American history, surpassing even his rival dabbler on the New York real estate scene, Leona Helmsley. Investigative reporting, criminal prosecutions of his businesses and his fraudulent charity, and a few tax returns that the public managed to see all tell the same story. The leaked data that formed the basis of Trump's recently settled lawsuit against the IRS for its "negligence" in letting a third party contractor see his returns during his first term didn't change that picture—it only confirmed what reporters had already learned. 

Most of this was already known in general terms during the 2016 campaign, which is why Trump—unlike every other major party candidate since Nixon—refused to release his tax returns for public inspection. But the scope was much worse than most voters had any reason to expect: if Trump had been honest about his tax returns and released them, they would have shown that he'd paid nothing at all in taxes for 10 of the previous 15 years, and only $750 in 2016. Even a part-time, minimum-wage employee would pay more than that.

Yesterday, the DOJ announced that Trump's executive branch had "agreed" to settle Trump's private lawsuit against the IRS, in exchange for a slush fund to pay off the convicted criminals who tried to help him throw out the results of the 2020 election. Today, it released another detail: it was permanently exempting Trump, his businesses, or his family members from any investigation or prosecution for tax crimes—forever.

As the memo signed by Acting Attorney General and former Trump defense attorney makes clear, that is not an exaggeration.

The United States RELEASES, WAIVES, ACQUITS, and FOREVER DISCHARGES each of the Plaintiffs from, and is hereby FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing, any and all claims, counterclaims, causes of action, appeals, or requests for any relief, including injunctive relief, monetary relief, damages, examinations or similar or related reviews, appeals, debt relief, costs, attorney’s fees, expenses, and/or interest, whether presently known or unknown, that—as of the Effective Date of the Settlement Agreement—have been or could have been asserted by Defendants against any of the Plaintiffs or related or affiliated individuals (including, without limitation, family or others filing jointly), or parties including trusts, parent, sister, or related companies, affiliates, and subsidiaries, by reason of, with respect to, in connection with, or which arise out of (1) any matters that were raised or could have been raised in the Case or the Pending Agency Claims; (2) Lawfare and/or Weaponization; or (3) any matters currently pending or that could be pending (including tax returns filed before the Effective Date) before Defendants or other agencies or departments. 

Even ignoring the fact that Trump is writing himself a get-out-of-jail-free-card by agreeing on behalf of the government not to even begin an investigation into him as a private citizen, this document would save Trump enormous amounts of money in the future. Not only would it effectively incentivize him to commit ongoing tax fraud (which the IRS would be forbidden to take any notice of), it would save him from having to repay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes he's already evaded.

Trump's promise not to investigate himself is not likely to be legally binding on future administrations.
 

Why does this matter?

• There is only one reason that a government official would try to exempt themselves from criminal investigation. 

• Even if he writes himself a note on Presidential letterhead saying that he is above the law, Donald Trump is not above the law.  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He let a foreign billionaire white-collar criminal off the hook for the dumbest and most corrupt of reasons.

Gautam Adani is an Indian national who was indicted by the Department of Justice in 2024 for his part in a staggeringly large international bribery scheme. Adani didn't just pay billions of dollars in bribes; he also took part in an elaborate scheme to hide the bribes from the United States government. This is the kind of white-collar crime that the DOJ takes extremely seriously because foreign corruption defrauds and disadvantages American markets and investors. That is, it takes it seriously except when Trump, a convicted white-collar criminal himself, is in charge of it.

Today, Adani reached a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the civil portion of the complaint against him. But that appears to be in concert with a planned settlement in the criminal case too, in which the Trump DOJ would drop all charges against him in exchange for a promise to invest $10 billion in American companies and create 15,000 jobs. 

This proposed deal is shocking for three reasons. First, it is a bedrock concept in ethical prosecution that wealthy criminal defendants shouldn't be able to buy their way out of punishment. The belief that billionaires can always buy their way out of legal trouble is corrosive enough when there's some truth to it, but the Department of Justice has essentially never endorsed the idea that it's a desirable thing, until now.

Second, this kind of vague promise of future investment is one that Trump has sought before, from individuals and foreign countries. But they are virtually never kept, because they're inherently unenforceable. Over and over and over and over and over and over again, Trump has bragged about collecting IOUs in exchange for policy or trade concessions of real value, but it's hard to point to a single dollar of foreign investment that resulted that wouldn't have happened because of normal market opportunities. 

Which leads to the third problem: Adani had already made exactly this "pledge" before he'd offered it up as part of a plea bargain. In fact, he made that promise just a few weeks after the 2024 election—loudly and publicly—and explicitly tied his sudden goodwill towards the United States to Trump's victory.

In other words, Trump's DOJ is about to drop a multi-billion corruption charge because the defendant is wealthy enough to offer Trump a campaign talking point, in the form of a meaningless pledge to make investments he was going to make anyway, that he had already made anyway in an attempt to curry favor with Trump. 

Why does this matter?

• It's wrong to hold the wealthiest people in the world to a lower standard of justice, or no standard at all. 

• Presidents who aren't so eager to take bribes themselves usually have a problem with criminals who offer them.   

• A competent dealmaker wouldn't get taken in by people offering meaningless promises so often.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got sued for his domestic corruption while he brought his family's private business to China.

Trump has been revealing increasingly gaudy plans for his future presidential "library" in Miami, although by his own insistence, it won't actually have a library. Instead, Trump envisions it as a 50-story for-profit hotel atop a "presidential center" featuring giant golden statues of him. (These are not to be confused with the giant golden statue he's recently had installed at one of his golf courses.) 

Screenshot from AI-generated Trump video announcing the "library"

Presidential centers—that is, the bottom floors of Trump's proposed hotel—are privately-funded nonprofits. Trump, whose fraudulent New York charity was shut down and dissolved after he was caught using it for any number of illegal activities, has been using these kinds of entities as pay-for-access bribes, from his inauguration fund to the one for his pet "ballroom" project. 

But that isn't the corruption that got him sued today in Florida. Instead, it's the massive $300 million giveaway of valuable public land belonging to Miami Dade College that Trump-friendly governor Ron DeSantis and his handpicked college trustees has engineered in an apparent attempt to curry favor with him. Trump himself called it "the best block in Miami," and that's probably not far from the truth in economic terms. 

The parcel is almost certainly worth more than MDC's entire endowment. DeSantis's appointees sold it to Trump's presidential center for $10. Trump has always struggled to turn a profit with hotels, even with the help of decades of fraud to prop them up, to say nothing of his habit of forcing the US government to pay top-dollar rents to them. In spite of those illegal and gray-area advantages, he's famously bankrupted many of his hospitality properties while others strugglefra. But a hotel built on free land in a major tourist destination would have an enormous advantage over all other competition.

Trump didn't comment on the corruption lawsuit today: he was busy flying to China for a visit with its president, Xi Jinping. Traveling with him was his son Eric, a private citizen whose company is actively pursuing a deal with the Chinese government to build data centers in the United States.

Why does this matter?

• Corruption is always bad, even when Americans have gotten used to it from Trump. 

• When you have to buy the president's attention, only the corrupt and powerful will benefit.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He asked if he could get the Supreme Court's first ever do-over.

Still fuming over the Supreme Court's decision to strike down the taxes Trump illegally imposed based on a "national emergency" only he could see, Trump posted a legal question to his private microblogging site today: 
 

The recent Decision of the United States Supreme Court concerning TARIFFS could allow for Hundreds of Billions of Dollars to be returned to Countries and Companies that have been “ripping off” the United States of America for many years to come, and now, according to this Decision, could actually continue to do so, at an even increased level. I am sure that the Supreme Court did not have this in mind! It doesn’t make sense that Countries and Companies that took advantage of us for decades, receiving Billions and Billions of Dollars that they should not have been allowed to receive, would now be entitled to an undeserved “windfall,” the likes of which the World has never seen before, as a result of this highly disappointing, to say the least, ruling. Is a Rehearing or Readjudication of this case possible???

No.

Losing parties in court can appeal verdicts to the Supreme Court, but after that they don't get to keep appealing until they get the verdict they want, because there is no higher authority than the Supreme Court on legal questions, including the president. The law and its interpretation change over time, but nobody—ever—gets to demand an immediate do-over just because.

Most Americans learn that much in elementary school, but there is a reason Trump might be confused. As a private citizen, Trump used the literally thousands of civil lawsuits he was a party to (as plaintiff or defendant) as a sort of bludgeoning tool, betting that he could drag out proceedings long enough that less wealthy opponents would be forced to settle on his terms. One judge even called him "the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process."

Trump was notorious for this during his failed real estate career, suing contractors on a pretext to avoid having to pay workers for jobs they'd already completed. That tactic worked almost as well in criminal court: he was only convicted in one of his trials before his return to the presidency saved him from prosecution on other pending matters—at least for the moment. And even the 34 criminal counts that he was found guilty of by a jury yielded no actual sentence, for the same reason.

And, whether or not Trump really didn't know what a third-grader knows about how the Supreme Court works, he's using the same strategy with the tariffs case. Late today, his administration filed a motion with a lower court asking for a delay of at least four months before it had to begin answering requests for refunds of Trump's illegally collected taxes.

Why does this matter?

• Presidents should have at least a middle-school understanding of how the legal system works. 

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?

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 stopped making legally required federal aid payments for needy children to states run by Democrats.

Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF) is a federal cash assistance program that gives block grants to states to provide for basic welfare for poor families. The Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) underwrites child care programs so that parents in low-income families can work. Social Services Block Grants (SSBG) fund foster care programs, adoption services, and other child welfare services. All three are funded by Congressional appropriation through the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), a division of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Today, and without offering any legal justification, Trump froze all of those funds to five states: Minnesota, California, New York, Illinois, and Colorado, or about 22% of the country by population. This means that about half a million people from TANF alone will be without the food assistance American taxpayers have already funded, and federally subsidized daycares are likely to shut down abruptly.

Trump's administration claims it was because of suspected fraud, although there is no direct evidence of unusual fraud in any of those states, and an active investigation in only one of them. What they do have in common is that they are states with Democratic governors and heavily Democratic-leaning electorates.

To be clear, there is almost certainly fraud in each of these programs in every state. As a rule, it is not difficult to defraud any government. The trick, as Trump knows from extensive and bitter personal experience, is getting away with it. 

Trump has recently made Minnesotan children in particular a political target recently precisely because its government, led by 2024 vice-presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz, had found fraud and taken action about it. Some of the fraud that Walz's government found was committed by Somali immigrants. Trump has targeted the Somali-American community, many of whom live in Minnesota, with racist attacks on their patriotism. 

Today's freeze seems to have been done in great haste in an attempt to keep Trump's version of that story in the news: identical letters requesting audit documents from Minnesota specifically went out to all five states 

It's been just over seven weeks since Trump last unlawfully stopped payments to help American children in low-income families who rely on federal subsidies for food and care. That came during the record-long shutdown at the end of last year over Trump's refusal to fund health care for 24 million Americans whose insurance comes through the Affordable Care Act.

Why does this matter?

• Punishing poor children to hurt your political enemies is evil. 

• No matter how many times he pretends otherwise, Donald Trump is not above the law. 

• Fraudsters who live in glass White Houses shouldn't throw stones.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He used hungry Minnesota children as an excuse for a racist attack on Somali-Americans.

Trump has made the United States' Somali population a particular target in his second term, calling them "garbage" and launching into nativist, racist rants that wouldn't have been out of place at a Ku Klux Klan or Nazi Party rally. Many Americans of Somali descent live in Minnesota, including Rep. Ilhan Omar, who usually inspires particularly vicious reactions in Trump. 

Today, in response to a supporter's YouTube video that purports (without evidence) to show "fraud" at daycare centers run by Somali immigrants, Trump froze the entire state's federal funding through the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services.

In other words, Trump is holding up funding meant to provide food, shelter, care, adoption assistance, child support enforcement, foster care subsidies, and child abuse prevention for all Minnesota children who need it, in order to score a political point against specific Americans he regards as enemies.

This and other government programs have been the target of fraud. Minnesota's state government, led by 2024 Vice-Presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz, has been cracking down on federal welfare fraud for years, although it's hardly unique to Minnesota. 

As a rule, federal and state governments are easy to defraud in the short term: the trick is getting away with it. Trump knows something about this first-hand: he was caught defrauding New York State to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in a 2023 civil trial. Other fraudulent Trump enterprises that state governments eventually brought to heel include his scam "Trump University," and the Trump Foundation, his illegally operated "charity."

Trump has pardoned a number of convicted fraudsters during his second term. These include:

• Joseph Schwartz, the CEO of a nursing home chain who defrauded Medicaid and then paid Trump loyalists $960,000 to secure a pardon 

• Ross Ulbricht, a cryptocurrency market drug kingpin who used fraudulent identity documents to maintain his criminal empire, and whose pardon also wiped out a nearly $200 million fine in restitution to the United States 

• Devon Archer, whose $44 million restitution for securities fraud against the Oglala Sioux Nation was wiped out by Trump's pardon 

• Trevor Milton, convicted of securities fraud, pardoned by Trump explicitly because of his political support for Trump, costing $660 million in restitution. 

• at least two dozen others

 

Why does this matter?

• Hungry and homeless children shouldn't be used as political pawns. 

• Presidents who cared about fraud wouldn't commit so much of it or excuse it when it was committed by wealthy donors.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tweeted out an order to prosecute specific political enemies, whether or not they'd done anything wrong.

In a post to his private microblogging site that may have been intended as a direct message, Trump directly addressed his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and ordered her to take action to prosecute his political enemies. 

  

This comes the day after Trump forced the resignation of the US Attorney for Eastern Virginia for being unable to come up with a pretext to charge New York Attorney General Letitia James with a crime.

Whether or not Trump intended for this message to be seen, it is an open admission that Trump is trying to use the Department of Justice as a weapon against Americans who oppose him politically. (Trump is correct that he has been impeached twice: once for his attempt to blackmail Ukraine into creating a fake investigation against his political rival Joe Biden, and once for his attempt to incite an insurrection in order to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election. But he was indicted on 86 state and federal charges, not five.) 

Unlike any of the people he named, Trump is a convicted felon. He was found guilty by a New York state jury on 34 state charges related to illegal business practices, though he escaped punishment due to his election. He is still liable for prosecution on the federal charges related to his theft of classified documents, his role in the insurrection trying to overturn the 2020 election, and in Georgia for his attempts to coerce the state government to change election results on his behalf.

In what appears to have been a hastily-arranged press gaggle Saturday night, Trump tried to explain away the post, but ended up just reaffirming its central message—that his political enemies must be put in legal jeopardy, regardless of the facts.

It is unconstitutional and illegal for prosecutors to "act" against anyone if there is no evidence to suggest they have committed a crime. 

Until Trump, it was considered a major breach of ethics for the Justice Department to take any political cues from the White House, or even to have contact with it except on a need-to-know basis. President Nixon was forced to resign in no small part because he violated that basic principle.

Trump did not comment on the news of actual criminal behavior that came out of his administration today—the revelation that Tom Homan, his so-called "border czar," was caught on tape taking cash from undercover FBI agents last year in exchange for promises that he would influence policy if Trump were re-elected. In spite of this smoking-gun evidence of bribery and fraud, Trump's Department of Justice quietly closed the investigation earlier this year.

Why does this matter?

• In terms of the things that define a dictatorship, sending the law against people you know are innocent while protecting the ones you know are guilty is as bad as it gets. 

• Presidents who can't tell the difference between the "post" and "DM" buttons can't be trusted with phones or national security.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried again to fire a Fed governor after his case against her fell apart.

Trump has been adamant since returning to office that the Federal Reserve Bank should drastically cut interest rates, something he would personally profit from to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. To accomplish that, he's threatened the Fed Chair Jay Powell with an "investigation" into cost overruns Trump himself approved. When that didn't work, he declared that he was firing a Biden appointee to the Fed because one of his own political appointees claimed she had lied on a mortgage application.

That appointee, Bill Pulte, has also "found" evidence for the same claim against another of Trump's political enemies, California Sen. Adam Schiff. The "crime" they're accused of is declaring multiple properties as their primary home, which would qualify them for lower rates. But both Schiff and Cook have presented evidence that they did not mislead banks. In Cook's case, the property she supposedly claimed as a second "primary residence" was in fact clearly labeled on mortgage documents as a vacation home. 

Trump had already been told by one court that his firing of Cook was likely unlawful, since presidents can only remove Fed governors for cause, and the mere rumor of a minor offense from before Cook's appointment would not qualify. That court issued a stay preventing Trump's purported firing from taking effect. That was before Cook released evidence that, on its face, conclusively exonerates her.  

But in spite of his case only getting weaker in the meantime, Trump was back in federal court today, with a last-minute appeal asking to have the stay overturned. His argument was, in essence, that "for cause" means whatever he wants it to mean.

The Fed has a tricky task in front of it. The massive consumer taxes Trump has imposed in the form of tariffs are hurting demand, even for domestic goods, which often rely on imported raw materials. The slowdown in growth and anemic jobs market would normally be a signal for the Fed to cut interest rates, though not by anywhere near the massive 3% Trump wants. But Trump's trade war is also sending prices up, exactly as predicted, and lower interest rates would only make that worse.

It's very rare to have both a shrinking economy and rising inflation at the same time: there hasn't been real "stagflation" in the United States since the 1970s. But then it's also very rare for a president to impose a de facto 22.5% sales tax on imported goods. That rate hasn't been seen since the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariffs during the Great Depression.

 

Incidentally, lying on mortgage applications does happen. Trump himself got caught doing it on a grand scale with the business he inherited, providing one set of numbers for taxation and another for lenders. An example of the kind of small-scale fraud that Trump appointee Bill Pulte accused Cook of would be his own father's apparently illegal declaration of multiple homesteads.

Why does this matter?

• "The law means whatever I say it means" is a dictator's argument. 

• The health of the American economy is VASTLY more important than Donald Trump making money personally. 

• Trump wouldn't be the first corrupt official to bring fake charges against a political opponent, but he might be the first to do it this incompetently.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to extort a Federal Reserve governor out of her seat.

Lisa Cook is a governor of the Federal Reserve with a term that runs through 2038. Today, Trump called on her to resign after the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency accused her of filing an inaccurate mortgage application in 2021, and made a criminal referral to Pam Bondi (the Attorney General of the United States and previously Trump's personal defense lawyer).  

The criminal referral was posted to the social media page of Bill Pulte, Trump's appointed head of the FHFA. Pulte is not a household name for most Americans—unless they've lived in the houses his company built, in which case they may know him as the defendant in a class action suit for shoddy construction practices or his building company's 1.4-star Yelp reviews. Like Trump, he inherited his real estate fortune. Until Trump appointed him, was better known as a Twitter personality who dangled "charitable" gifts for randomly selected followers in exchange for retweeting ads for his business. 

Pulte is refusing to answer direct questions from reporters about whether he was directed by Trump to target his political enemies. 

What Cook is accused of—listing two consecutive properties as a primary home on mortgage documents—is not a crime or even a breach of policy, unless it was part of a larger fraudulent scheme. Trump himself presents a contrast: he lied to banks and the government about the value of his properties in order to obtain cheaper mortgages while also paying too little in taxes. Trump and his company had to pay a $364 million fine after New York Attorney General Letitia James proved that fraud in civil court.

James is one of another of Trump's political enemies, along with California Sen. Adam Schiff, whose mortgages have suddenly come in for scrutiny. He's also tried to force the resignation of the Chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, by threatening him with fraud charges over money spent on renovations to the Fed complex that Trump himself approved.

One of the few topics Trump has been personally engaged with since returning to office has been the subject of interest rates. Trump wants the baseline Federal Reserve rate cut by 3%, a massive shock to the economic system that is normally nudged along by quarter- and half-point increments. Not only would such a drastic cut create short-term chaos in financial markets, it would leave the United States without any tools to respond to the next recession. Cutting rates while the economy is strong is like taking a toxic medicine before you're sick: it makes you more susceptible to the disease you were trying to avoid in the first place, while taking away the only tool that will fight it.

But an extremely wealthy investor who knows that this will happen can get rich off of it. Coincidentally, an NBC News report released today makes clear just how much Trump will personally benefit if he can stack the "independent" central bank with loyalists. Since taking office, Trump has bought more than $103,000,000 in corporate bonds, mostly in banks he is in charge of regulating. When interest rates fall, the price of bonds goes up. If interest rates plummeted suddenly, Trump would stand to make tens of millions of dollars instantly, at the cost of any economic protection against the next recession. 

Why does this matter?

• This is what weaponization of government looks like. 

• Abuse of power is a criminal act.

• Using your political powers to force public servants to do things that will enrich you is what every tinpot dictator does.  

• The health of the American economy is VASTLY more important than Donald Trump making money personally.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He issued more pardons of the particular type he favors.

Trump has issued a spree of pardons and clemencies over the last few days. As is virtually always the case with Trump, they share a few common themes: either they are for crimes that Trump is known to have committed, or they are for people who have given Trump money, or they are for people who are or are willing to become his political allies, or they have some connection to the world of reality TV.

Todd and Julie Chrisley were convicted of fraud and tax evasion. The couple had starred for years on a reality TV show on the USA Network. Their daughter, Savannah Chrisley, is a professional conservative "influencer." Thanks to a pardon Trump signed yesterday, both were released from prison today.

• Trump was convicted of felony fraud by a New York state jury in 2024. His businesses and his fake charity have both been found liable for tax law violations, and Trump himself engaged in a decades-long campaign of tax evasion with his siblings that netted him more than $400 million. Like the Chrisleys, Trump was a real estate broker who found his greatest professional success on a reality TV show.

John Rowland is the former Republican governor of Connecticut. He was convicted in 2004 of public corruption and tax fraud, and in a separate 2014 trial for violating campaign laws, lying to the FEC, and fraud. Trump pardoned him today.

• In addition to the tax and fraud crimes mentioned above, Trump has been accused of any number of campaign violations, though while he was in office his own hand-picked commissioners were able to block further action against him. His 2024 conviction turned in part on the fact that his attempt to cover up his affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels by paying her $130,000 for her silence was itself a campaign finance crime: by failing to disclose it as required by law, he was in effect paying for publicity off the books.

Michael Grimm is a former Republican member of Congress from New York. He, too, was convicted of tax fraud and was investigated by the FBI for campaign finance violations. After being forced to resign from Congress, he worked in conservative media as part of the pro-Trump media ecosystem.

• Grimm is the ninth Republican member of Congress to receive a pardon from Trump.

Jeremy Hutchinson, son of Arkansas' Republican former governor Asa Hutchinson, also committed tax fraud and accepted bribes and was convicted in 2023. The younger Hutchinson was a member of the Arkansas legislature took money in exchange for his votes to benefit a healthcare organization.  

• Trump hasn't been formally convicted of bribery, but he has created an astonishing number of ways for people or countries to overtly or covertly funnel money to his interests, as the following example demonstrates:

Paul Walczak is another tax cheat Trump pardoned this week, although not one with the public profile of the Chrisleys or national politicians. He stole money he collected for his employees' Social Security contributions to buy a yacht—meaning that he wasn't simply stealing from the taxpayers, but hurting his workers' retirement benefits. Trump's pardon means that Walczak will profit from his crime, because he will no longer be obliged to pay the taxpayers back the $4.4 million he stole.

• Walczak's profits will be slightly reduced by the fact that his pardon came only after his mother paid $1 million to a Trump political fundraiser several weeks ago, which bought her access to Trump to plead her case.

Earl Lamont Smith is a former Army reservist who was convicted of stealing government property. Trump pardoned him today.

• The computers Smith used his Army position to steal were new and did not contain sensitive information, unlike the dozens of boxes of sensitive and classified documents Trump stole upon leaving the White House and refused to return until they were seized by the FBI.

Scott Jenkins is a "wonderful person" who was "dragged through hell" and "left for dead" by "radical Left monsters"—according to Trump's pardon statement for the former Culpeper County, VA sheriff, who was one of Trump's vocal supporters in the swing state.

• Another way of looking at it is that Jenkins took money in exchange for sharing the powers of his elected office with completely unqualified people to help them escape the consequences of their own lawbreaking—much like Trump has with his biggest patron Elon Musk.
  
  

Why does this matter?

• "It's not illegal if it helps the Leader" is how dictatorships work.
  

• Cheating on taxes is a real crime that hurts real Americans, even if the president thinks "smart" people don't pay them.
  

• Selling off the powers of an elected office to the highest bidder is a serious crime and it hurts Americans and their faith in government, even if nobody who bought access president's time will say so to his face. 
  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He fired at least four Justice Department officials for having worked on the federal criminal cases against him.

The Department of Justice today confirmed via a spokesperson that James McHenry, the Acting Attorney General, had fired "a number of DOJ officials who played a significant role in prosecuting President Trump." The statement also made clear that this had been done at Trump's behest.

NBC News is reporting that four career prosecutors—Molly Gaston, J.P. Cooney, Anne McNamara and Mary Dohrmann—were among those Trump fired.

None of the prosecutors or investigators on Special Counsel Jack Smith's team were political appointees. All of them were assigned to the case as part of their normal duties.

Trump was indicted by two separate federal grand juries for felonies related to his attempts to stay in office in defiance of the 2020 election results, and his theft of and refusal to return boxes of highly classified government documents that he took from the White House and stashed at his private residence in Florida. His order firing people who investigated those crimes does not extend to state officials in Georgia prosecuting him for election fraud there. It also does not affect the New York City prosecutors who saw him convicted of 34 felonies related to his payment of "hush money" to a porn actress to conceal an affair.

Firing government employees without cause has been illegal for almost as long as the United States has had a civil service, but one of Trump's first-day acts was to sign an executive order redefining these and other non-political jobs as policy positions. This was a cornerstone of the ultra-conservative Project 2025, which became a political liability for Trump during the 2024 campaign. He denounced it on the campaign trail and denied it had anything to do with him, even though 144 of his former White House staff and campaign officials worked on it. He has since reappointed many of those same people to new roles and instructed them to implement Project 2025 orders.

The DOJ statement claimed that it was necessary to fire nonpolitical career public servants in order to end the "weaponization of politics."

Why does this matter?

• The government of the United States does not exist to satisfy Donald Trump's need for revenge.

• Purges of supposed enemies and loyalty tests are what authoritarian regimes do.

• It's wrong to lie to your own supporters about what you believe and what you plan to do if elected.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He was sentenced to no penalty whatsoever for his conviction on 34 felony counts, then immediately begged his followers for money.

As expected after the Supreme Court refused his last minute-appeal last night, Trump was sentenced by New York state judge Juan Merchan this morning for the 34 felony counts he was convicted of last May. Trump was found by a jury of his peers to have falsified business records in furtherance of a criminal scheme to evade taxes, violate campaign finance laws, and conceal that he had paid hush money to cover up a sexual affair with a porn actress. 

The sentence makes his conviction final and official, though Trump says he will appeal.

Merchan's sentence was "unconditional discharge," a rare option meaning Trump will receive no punishment at all—not even a fine. 

Trump responded by immediately trying to fundraise off the event, demanding that his supporters "RESPOND TO TRUMP" by donating up to $3,300 to his political action committee.

Trump's net worth is currently estimated at about $6 billion.

Why does this matter?

• In a democracy, nobody is supposed to be above the law—even the people who escape with literally no punishment whatsoever for breaking it.

• Even by Trump standards, this takes playing the victim too far.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He lost two major court battles to keep his criminal actions and convictions unofficial.

In the space of a few hours tonight, Trump was handed two legal defeats. The first came in the form of a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that there was no legal basis to prevent a New York state court from sentencing him for the 34 felonies he was convicted of last May. This will make Trump's convictions official, meaning that he will be the first president to be a convicted felon. 

Under normal circumstances, Trump would be the envy of the country's criminal class. The judge in the case, Juan Marchan, has indicated he will not impose any punishment. Not only that, but having the conviction official means that Trump can pursue appeals, something that cannot be done until sentencing. Trump has essentially admitted to every element of the crimes—except the extramarital sexual affair with a porn actress at the center of them—and has instead insisted that he had a special right to do as he did, even though he was not even president at the time the criminal acts were committed.

One of the justices who took Trump's side, Samuel Alito, had spoken with him earlier in the week and asked him to hire a former clerk as a White House staffer.

Later in the evening, a second decision went against Trump. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Justice Department could release special prosecutor Jack Smith's two-volume report into Trump's activities related to his illegal retention and mishandling of extremely sensitive classified documents, and his involvement in the conspiracy to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 election. Smith was required by law to make such reports, but the federal judge in the documents case, Aileen Cannon, issued an order barring the release of the reports. Tonight's order overrules Cannon and paves the way for at least the volume related to the coup attempt to be made public.

Cannon was a Trump appointee and is widely regarded within Trump's orbit as a likely candidate for promotion to the same appeals court that overruled her, if not the Supreme Court. She was also discussed as an attorney general nominee. Trump's attorneys in this case, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, are two of the three Trump criminal defense attorneys who he has nominated to occupy the top positions in federal law enforcement. Pam Bondi, his replacement nominee for attorney general, is the third.

Why does this matter?

• It is more important that the truth come out than that a president not be embarrassed by the crimes he has been convicted of.

• A president who puts his personal criminal defense lawyers in charge of law enforcement, while there are still pending criminal charges against him, is showing what his priorities are.

• Just because the extremely rich and powerful often get treatment that the rest of us could never dream of in criminal courts doesn't mean it's okay.