What did Donald Trump do today?

He took two completely opposite positions on tariffs in the space of a single 24-hour period.

Trump has imposed new tariffs at an astronomical 50% rate on a range of Canadian goods. They went into effect at 12:01 AM today, and will raise the price for American consumers on auto parts, alcoholic beverages, medical supplies, and products made of essential raw materials like steel or wood. Canada is the United States' single largest and most economically integrated trading partner.

 

Predictably, Canada responded with dollar-for-dollar tariffs of its own, which will go into effect next month. These are targeted at products manufactured in critical swing states in the upcoming Senate elections. The Canadian economy is smaller than the United States', which would normally put them at a disadvantage in this kind of tit-for-tat response, but the Canadian public has rallied around the aggressive stance taken by Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has been working to decouple the economic links between the two countries in favor of more stable trading relationships overseas. In fact, in a very real sense, Carney owes his current job to Trump: his Liberal Party was widely expected to lose in to the Conservatives in the 2025 elections, until Trump's first round of tariffs and taunts about annexing Canada as the "51st state" rallied voters around Carney.

As with most of the import taxes Trump has imposed on American consumers, it's not immediately clear that he has any legal authority to do so. Most of the tariffs he's tried to impose have been overturned in court, although with the inflationary damage already done to Americans' bank accounts.

But less than 24 hours before raising prices on Americans who buy Canadian goods, Trump took exactly the opposite tack on another trade issue. He said he was temporarily cutting tariffs on beef, and said he was doing so explicitly to lower prices for Americans. The cut was tiny relative to overall consumption—about three week's worth, and then only if those savings actually trickle down the supply chain all the way to grocery stores—but for once, he was correctly framing tariffs as something that raise prices for Americans.

At least, that was what his social media post on the subject said, and Trump is very often not the author of policy pronouncements that go out under his name. In person, when asked about it by reporters, Trump was much hazier, and wouldn't (or couldn't) even say what countries he'd be lowering beef tariffs on.

Why does this matter?

• It never gets any less stupid to start a trade war with your largest and most important economic ally. 

• Nothing that raises costs American consumers while hurting American participation in the world economy going forward is a good idea.  

• A few weeks of slightly cheaper hamburger probably aren't going to make Americans forget about all the other reasons why they hate the Trump economy.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He voted by mail, which he thinks other Americans shouldn't be allowed to do.

Trump's ballot in Florida primary elections was counted today. As he almost always does, he cast it by mail, like roughly one-third of Americans do. Voters in eight states plus the District of Columbia vote primarily by mail, which increases the number of Americans able to participate in elections and makes for more representative governments.

But Trump has lied over and over again about the possibility of fraudulent votes being cast by mail. In reality, it is incredibly rare, on the order of single-digit numbers of ballots per tens of millions of votes. 

One way of looking at it is that Donald Trump has personally been convicted of more felonies than there are hypothetical cases of mail voting fraud in any major election year according to exhaustive studies done by the Brookings Institute and the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation.

Reporters asked about the apparent contradiction, and were told by the White House communications team that it was a "non-story." A spokesperson said that Trump's anti-voting stance had "commonsense exceptions for Americans to use mail-in ballots for illness, disability, military, or travel."

But none of these exceptions apply clearly to Trump. As arguably the most famous draft-dodger of all time, he is certainly not in the military. He claims not to be ill or disabled, all evidence to the contrary. And while it is legal for Trump to spend most of his time in Washington but vote in Palm Springs, he's not really "traveling" when he's at the White House.

Of course, Trump never would have intended for any policy restricting voting to apply to him, even if he can't always remember who it is he supports in any given race. But the ones he wants to put in place through the so-called SAVE Act would instantly disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans nationwide who are legally entitled to vote—including many who had voted for him.

Why does this matter?

• In a democracy, voters choose the politicians, not the other way around.  

• More Americans being able to participate in elections is always a good thing, no matter what Donald Trump thinks.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He flirted with declaring an "emergency" over people being able to vote as they always have.

Today, a federal judge expanded her injunction against two executive orders that are part of Trump's attack on voting by mail. Nearly a third of all Americans vote by mail—notably including Trump himself—but he continues to insist without evidence that it's part of a conspiracy to rig elections against him. 

The injunction, which is now nationwide, bars the United States Post Office from complying with Trump's demand that it not deliver ballots in any state that hasn't agreed to purge voters who don't appear on a list curated by the Trump administration. (States keep their own voting rolls. There is no master database of citizens eligible to vote.)

There's growing concern that Trump won't stop with just unlawful orders to disrupt or defeat the 2026 midterm elections, and not only because he's already tried to overturn the will of voters once. He's been spinning conspiracy theories about American elections being "rigged" since before he was first elected, and in his second term he's turned the full mechanism of the federal government towards punishing "enemy" jurisdictions where a majority of Americans didn't vote for him.

In an interview with far-right podcaster Wayne Root today, Trump hinted that he'd be open to conducting the midterm elections under what amounts to martial law. Root suggested (incorrectly) that Trump had the power to declare a state of emergency and force elections to take place under the rules he wants to put in place, which would instantly disenfranchise millions of legally registered voters.

The Constitution explicitly gives states the power to set the rules for elections and conduct them. No emergency declaration could change that, and any attempt to impose Trump's rules by force would result in chaos—which, this cycle, would almost certainly work to his advantage. Trump winked at Root's suggestion, saying that "stranger things have happened."

Why does this matter?

• The only conspiracy to sabotage American elections was the one Donald Trump was indicted and impeached for.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He worried a lot about being assassinated.

Trump insisted today that he was "number one on the list" of people Iran's government wanted to kill. Israeli intelligence claims they uncovered just such a plot recently—but those claims are very likely an attempt to influence Trump to back the Netanyahu regime's more aggressive approach.

Trump, who ordered the assassination of most of the Iranian regime's previous leaders, called them "scum" for allegedly contemplating his assassination.

It's not just foreign threats that have Trump worried, though. In addition to the bunker-like "military top-secret ballroom" he still insists he must have, Trump proposed today to cordon off virtually all remaining public views of the White House behind high fences. Those fences would encircle Lafayette Square, long a notable site for both tourists and protestors.

Why does this matter?

• It's a little late once you've decided to ignore why the United States stopped targeting world leaders for assassination to worry about the consequences of your actions. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He accused his political opponents of doing what he's on tape trying to do to the 2020 elections.

Today, addressing a conservative political group, Trump said this about the Americans who conduct state elections, whom he believes are engaged in a conspiracy against him:

And you know what they do, they cheat. "How many votes do we need, how many votes?" That's why they take their time. "How many votes do we need? Okay, here they are." Honestly, it's terrible. We're a third-world country with elections.

Trump does know something about dragging out elections to determine a precise number of "votes we need." 

On January 2, 2021, Trump called Georgia's Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensberger and Ryan Germany, a lawyer representing that office. Raffensberger, as head of the state election process, had tabulated votes showing that Joe Biden had won the state by a margin of 2,473,633 votes to Trump's 2,461,854. The margin of 11,779 votes made it a close call, within a quarter of a percent of the total votes cast, but by then every vote had already been hand-recounted in accordance with state law, and all of Trump's legal appeals had been dismissed. 

During the call, which was recorded by a Raffensberger aide (transcript), Trump veered between bluster and desperate pleading. Most of it was a rehashing of absurd claims already rejected by state and federal courts. (Trump lost every election lawsuit filed on his behalf in Georgia, not counting those he voluntarily dropped for lack of evidence.)

For example, he promised Raffensberger that he would soon release alleged evidence of a "tremendous number" of fake votes cast for Biden, emphasizing the exact margin by which he trailed Biden.

Trump: Another tremendous number. We’re going to have an accurate number over the next two days with certified accountants. But an accurate number — and that’s people that went to vote and they were told they can’t vote because they’ve already been voted for. And it’s a very sad thing. They walked out complaining. But the number’s large. We’ll have it for you. But it’s much more than the number of 11,779 that’s — The current margin is only 11,779. Brad, I think you agree with that, right? That’s something I think everyone — at least that’s’ a number that everyone agrees on. 

He insisted that votes from a Biden-leaning precinct had been counted three times.

Trump: I’m telling you, “Where’s [name] ” was one of the hot items …[name] They knew her. “Where’s [name]?” So Brad, there can be no justification for that. And I you know, I give everybody the benefit of the doubt. But that was — And Brad, why did they put the votes in three times? You know, they put ‘em in three times.

Raffensperger: Mr. President, they did not put that. We did an audit of that and we proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times.

At several points, Trump demanded that Raffensberger change the vote totals because, he said, his rallies in the state had been better attended than Biden's.

Trump: We won very substantially in Georgia. You even see it by rally size, frankly. We’d be getting 25-30,000 people a rally and the competition would get less than 100 people. And it never made sense.

…And I could tell you by our rallies. I could tell you by the rally I’m having on Monday night, the place, they already have lines of people standing out front waiting. It’s just not possible to have lost Georgia. It's not possible.

He threatened Raffensberger and his office's attorney with criminal charges if they didn't do what he wanted:

Trump: And you are going to find that they are — which is totally illegal, it is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. And that’s a big risk. 

And, finally, he told Raffensberger exactly what he expected him to do:

Trump: So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state. 

…So what are we going to do here folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.

Trump was impeached for this and other attempts to illegally overturn the results of the election, which Joe Biden won in the electoral college by 303-232, and in the popular vote by just over seven million votes. Trump was also criminally indicted in Georgia, and as the case was not brought to trial before he was elected in 2024, remains liable for prosecution there if and when he leaves office again.

Accusing other people of things he himself has done is a very, very common tactic for Trump. It's one he's used to try to distract attention away from impeachment-level scandals, like colluding with hostile foreign powers to interfere in elections, to trivial things like the embarrassing fiasco of his Reflection Pool renovations.

Why does this matter?

• This one doesn't really need any explanation.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He may actually have gotten Iran to the bargaining table, but at a catastrophic price.

While Trump celebrated his 80th birthday at massive taxpayer expense—and tried to turn a personal profit in the bargain—there was some real news on Iran. Unlike the previous thirty-nine separate times Trump has declared that he has reached a peace deal with Iran, it looks like there might be some substance to the one he made today. But there are three problems with it. First, it still isn't official. Second, it's not a peace treaty or an armistice—it's a "memorandum of understanding" about future talks. 

And third, if early reports of what Trump had to agree to in order to seal the alleged deal are accurate, it is an unprecedented humiliation for the United States.

Iran's government has leaked what it claims are the terms, though, and if accurate they are an absolutely brutal price for the United States to have to pay as a way of extricating Trump from the war. They include:

• the withdrawal of the United States not only from the Persian Gulf, but the entire region
• the end of US sanctions against Iranian oil shipments
• unfreezing of all Iranian assets under US control
• the end of UN sanctions within 60 days
• $12 billion immediately
• $12 billion within the next 60 days
• approval by the UN security council of any terms—meaning that Trump will need to seek approval from China and Iran's ally, the Putin regime in Russia
• Iran will not be required to put its support for Hamas, Hezbollah, or other militant groups on the table
• Iran will be free to develop its missile program
• the Strait of Hormuz will open, but "under Iranian arrangements"

Perhaps most humiliating of all, the terms that Iran's government are reporting would force Trump to put a $300 billion plan for rebuilding Iran on the table before any deal was finalized. Any money changing hands—even to give Iran back its own money—is a personal humiliation for Trump. He raged for years about the Obama administration unfreezing $1.7 billion dollars in Iranian funds as part of the successful multinational nuclear control deal that Trump pulled the United States out of in 2018. That $1.7 billion would be 14% the amount that Trump would have to yield back to Iran just to get the memorandum signed, if these reports are accurate.

In return, the only concession Iran's government is mentioning is the "reiteration" of its commitment not to produce nuclear weapons. That was the status quo when Trump pulled out of the JCPOA, and even after that, Iran's public posture was not that it was seeking to build nuclear weapons—only to give itself the capacity to do so as a deterrent.

Of course, Iran's government is not entirely trustworthy, other than its perfect track record of falsifying Trump's many previous claims about what it had already agreed to. It's entirely possible that Iran's readout is misinformation, or that parts of it are true but presented in a misleading context. It's even possible, as some commenters have noted, that Iran is taking advantage of Trump being distracted by the birthday party he's throwing himself to score a PR victory.

One easy way of confirming those claims would be to refer to the text of the agreement itself, but—as even normally pro-Trump commentators have noticed—Trump's team has refused to provide any information at all about the terms.

You know it’s bad when Trump’s diehards are frustrated:

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— Shipwreck (@shipwreck75.bsky.social) June 14, 2026 at 8:14 PM

Even so, it's very possible that nothing comes of this fortieth promise of a deal, not least because the Netanyahu regime in Israel doesn't seem to be willing to agree to dial back its attacks against Lebanon. (That's a necessary condition, according to Iran.) Israel launched another attack at Lebanon's capital Beirut this morning, infuriating Trump, which may have been the point. Netanyahu has gone to great lengths recently to demonstrate domestically and internationally that he doesn't take orders from Trump.

The more people absorb the possibility that Trump and the US might no longer be in control of the course of events the more realistic a lot of analysis would be

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— Alexander Clarkson (@aphclarkson.bsky.social) June 14, 2026 at 11:22 AM

Why does this matter?

• This was not worth 13 American lives. 

• This was not worth as-yet uncounted hundreds of billions of dollars. 

• This was not worth a massive spike in Americans' cost of living (which will not quickly end). 

• This was not worth depleting the readiness of the US military to deal with actual threats. 

• This was not worth making the United States party to absolute atrocities. 

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 lied about using the power of the state to criminally punish a woman he raped.

In 2023, a jury found that Trump had raped E. Jean Carroll and then defamed her by calling her a liar when she accused him. Trump repeated the defamatory statements after the verdict was returned, earning him a second and much larger defeat in court. Trump continues to drag the case through the appeals process, but he has lost every round in court so far.

Yesterday, news broke that the Department of Justice was investigating Carroll for the crime of perjury. Several news agencies independently confirmed the story with DOJ sources.

The substance of the investigation was a claim that Carroll, 82, made during a deposition in which she said that she was not receiving external funding for her lawsuit. That deposition took place two years after her attorneys accepted some financial support on her behalf from a Chicago nonprofit organization, and which Carroll had evidently forgotten about or was unaware of.

At Trump's attorneys' request, the trial judge held a hearing, and accepted that Carroll's statement was an innocent mistake with no bearing on the case. The jury never heard any false statement regarding the matter. 

Today, facing outrage at still yet another obvious attempt by Trump to use the power of the presidency to get revenge against his enemies, he sent a US Attorney to make a misleading statement of his own. Andrew Boutros "categorically" rejected the reporting and insisted that no such investigation into Carroll existed. His statement read:

In light of wide-spread reporting and intense media and public interest into the E. Jean Carroll matter in New York, the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office can confirm that it has not opened — and has never opened — a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll. Any claim to the contrary is categorically false. 

(Boutros has been in the news for other reasons this week, trying to do damage control after his office was found to have grossly abused the grand jury process to obtain false indictments of people protesting against Trump's immigration terror campaign.) 

But given the certainty that the investigation does exist, it appears that Boutros's statement was carefully worded to conceal that reality. Further reporting today revealed that the organization that helped fund Carroll's suit is itself under investigation—and since that would amount to a criminal conspiracy if Carroll actually had knowingly lied during her deposition, an investigation into the donor is an investigation into Carroll regardless. 

In other words: Trump's DOJ, which is led by Trump's former personal defense attorney, is targeting for criminal prosecution the woman that a jury found he raped and twice defamed for alleged false statements that her lawyers voluntarily corrected, and a judge held harmless—and then lying about it when called out. 

Trump has spent much of the last month trying to pay himself and supporters who committed crimes on his behalf billions of taxpayer dollars for the supposed "weaponization" of government against them.

Why does this matter?

• Accusing your victims of doing what you did to them, in an attempt to create doubt about a clear-cut situation, is a common tactic among men who abuse women.

• This is pretty much what you'd expect an unrepentant sexual abuser to do with the powers of the presidency. 

• The Department of Justice is not supposed to be Donald Trump's private goon squad.

What did Donald Trump do today?

Literal blasphemy.

Paula White is Trump's "White House Faith Advisor," head of an office he created for her at the start of his second term. White, who abruptly left her position as the head of a megachurch with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue shortly before it declared bankruptcy, is a political supporter of Trump, and shares with him a fondness for expensive private jets paid for by other people. 

At a White House event today, notionally celebrating the Christian Holy Week, White compared Trump explicitly to Jesus, telling him that "you were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused" just as Jesus had been. (It's true that Trump was arrested.)

Outside of her affiliation with Trump, White is best known for saying that if Jesus had been a refugee like those who apply for asylum in the United States, he would have been a sinner and therefore not the Messiah. In fact, it doesn't violate the law to ask for shelter in the United States. But more importantly, as the vast majority of Christians understand their faith, the fact that Jesus was born to refugee parents is a central element of the Gospels, as is his repeated emphasis on showing kindness and grace to outsiders.

Normally, presidents discourage comparisons between themselves and Jesus, but this was familiar territory for Trump, who has repeatedly made the connection himself. He's also compared himself to popes, although that appears to have been a deliberate attempt to offend Catholics mourning the late Pope Francis, whom Trump hated. He's even made literal golden idols of himself. He most recently did this Monday, releasing an AI-generated video of his planned presidential library featuring a gallery full of people worshipfully gazing up at giant gold statue of himself.

 

In fact, Trump made the Jesus comparison himself again today too. Reading from a prepared text about Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Trump seemed to have a flash of recognition on the word "king" and began to rif about how he, too, has been mocked as a so-called king, before "joking" about how he'd do "a lot more" with unlimited power if he could. 

Why does this matter?

• It's hard to think of a better way to show your contempt for practicing Christians than to compare yourself to Jesus.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He forgot that selling American citizenship to the highest bidder was his idea in the first place.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution establishes the principle of birthright citizenship: a person born in the United States (or subject to its laws) is a citizen, full stop. That's not just one interpretation: it's been the unchallenged precedent in case law since U.S. vs. Wong Kim Ark, the 1898 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that it applied to any person born in the United States (with a few very technical exceptions for agents of foreign governments). Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco at a time when his Chinese parents could not legally become citizens, but this ruling upheld his claim to citizenship.

The text of the amendment is even clearer than the rulings enforcing it:

All person born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. 

Trump's personal opinion, expressed in a social media post yesterday is that this "long ago legislation" (meaning the Constitution of the United States) only applies to the "BABIES of SLAVES" and that the judges who have been following this 128-year-old Wong Kim Ark precedent are "STUPID."

Trump's theory of the case will be tested by the Supreme Court tomorrow, where it is not likely to prevail, even as he's made noises about sitting in the courtroom itself—the better to stare down the justices he appointed. (Trump generally speaks of those three justices as being his personal functionaries on the court, and has reacted emotionally when they've ruled against him.) 

In another social media post today, Trump tried to make a different argument: that birthright citizenship was a scam for the benefit of "Chinese Billionaires who have 56 kids," which is a direct quote. It's not actually clear if there's even a single such person among the roughly 4 million Americans of all ages and races whose citizenship derives from being born in the United States rather than a parent's citizenship, but  "birth tourism" in the United States is rare for a reason: it doesn't offer much in the way of tangible benefits to foreign parents, other than the opportunity for their child to pay taxes in a country they don't yet live in. So-called "chain migration," where citizen children sponsor their own parents for immigration, is extremely difficult in practice, unless you are a naturalized citizen married to Donald Trump.

Of course, there's a particular irony to Trump railing against foreign "billionaires" buying a ticket into citizenship for their children: he's selling it himself for much cheaper, via the "Trump Gold Card" that is an actual fee-for-visa program he introduced just a few months ago. For $1 million (plus a nonrefundable $15,000 "processing fee") foreigners can purchase the functional equivalent of a permanent residency with an enhanced path to citizenship, and for $5 million they can buy a "platinum" version that brings tax breaks as well. (That provision alone will likely mean that the program costs the federal government more than it can bring in, since extremely wealthy foreigners subject to U.S. taxation would have a financial reason to sign up, but no personal loyalty to a country they wouldn't even necessarily reside in.)

 

This is from an actual U.S. government website, trumpcard.gov.

Four of Trump's five children are from mothers who violated immigration law to stay in the United States long enough to marry Trump and obtain citizenship that way.
 

Why does this matter?

• Donald Trump doesn't get to ignore the Constitution just because it's even older than him. 

• If a president doesn't like the idea of people buying citizenship he should stop selling it.  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He "cheated" in an election, but his candidate lost anyway.

Emily Gregory (D) defeated Jon Maples (R) in a special election for Florida's 87th State House district tonight. The seat had previously been held by a Republican, Mike Caruso, who won by a 19-point margin in 2024. The district also voted for Trump by 11 points in the 2024 election. Gregory's victory is the latest in a series of improbable special and off-year election victories in red districts fueled by Trump's deep unpopularity.

Reuters/Ipsos poll, March 20-23

Gregory's victory is notable for two reasons. The first is that Donald Trump will now be her constituent: the district she won, over Trump's hand-picked candidate Maples, is the one where Trump officially resides (and actually resides, for about three days out of most weeks thanks to his heavy use of a taxpayer-funded private jet). Gregory's win came thanks to huge turnout in her favor from independent voters, making up the significant registration disadvantage her party has in the district: Republicans outnumber Democrats by a 3-to-2 margin.

The second is that she won in spite of Trump casting a ballot in a way that he himself has (falsely) called "cheating" and "VOTER FRAUD!" In other words, like almost a third of all American voters, he cast a ballot by mail—as he frequently does.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with Trump voting in this convenient, legal, secure fashion, especially considering his advanced age and mobility issues that might make in-person voting inconvenient. But getting rid of that option for almost everyone else is such a priority for him that he's made a (functionally meaningless) promise not to sign any legislation until Congress passes a bill that would all but end absentee voting, including vote by mail.

Why does this matter?

• Making it hard for opponents of the leader to vote is what dictators do. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He blurted out private information about a Congressman's medical condition so he could claim to have saved him.

Rep. Neal Dunn (R-FL) has been rumored to be gravely ill, to the point where there was uncertainty that he would serve out his term. But other than announcing his retirement at the end of his current term, and saying that he would finish out that term, he's made no public comment on his health.

At an appearance today with House Speaker Mike Johnson, Trump made those public comments for him. He brought up Dunn's health and prodded Johnson to tell what he knew: "We had one man who was very ill. It looked like he wasn’t going to make it. I don’t know. …Do other people know his name? Huh? Do you want to mention it? He’ll be proud. Go ahead, tell them — tell them the story.”

Johnson, off microphone, was clearly trying to deflect Trump, and when pressed gave a very vague statement about unspecified concerns.

Impatient with that, Trump blurted out that if it hadn't been for surgery Dunn had recently undergone, "he'd be dead by June." The audience groaned as Johnson said, "Okay, that wasn't public."

Trump then took credit for Dunn's improvement, boasting that he'd gotten Dunn the surgery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which is indeed one of the best hospitals in the country. It's where Trump himself was saved from a near-death experience with COVID, and for several other mysterious and unexplained medical events during his time in office. But as a retired Army surgeon himself, Dunn would not have needed Trump's intervention to get care there. 

Trump concluded his exposure of Rep. Dunn's medical situation by explaining why he cared: not just because he likes Dunn, but "because I needed his vote" in the closely divided House of Representatives.

Trump's own visibly declining health has been a constant concern during his time in office, and especially in the past year. But unlike his revelations about Dunn, both Trump and his staff have gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal and deny those issues.

Why does this matter?

• It's hard to think of a shittier thing to do than tell the whole world about someone's private medical information for a laugh, assuming Trump knew what he was saying. 

• Veering suddenly into inappropriate comments and not being able to read obvious social cues is not a sign of good cognitive health in an elderly person. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He promised to cut off his own nose to spite his face.

In a social media post this afternoon, Trump said he'd refuse to sign any legislation until his preferred version of the so-called "SAVE Act" passed. That includes, presumably, the supplemental defense authorization bill that Trump absolutely requires to pay for his billion-dollar-a-day war on Iran.

In reality, this is not much of a threat—even to him. Under the Constitution, bills that are not signed by the president within 10 days while Congress is in session automatically become law. Trump's refusal to sign bills passed by a Republican-controlled Congress would be purely symbolic, and that Congress could stay in session as long as it needed to. For Trump's threat to make any sense, he'd have to promise to veto bills he supports, which would just be a different kind of absurd.

Whether or not Trump realized this when he tweeted it out is another matter. Trump often claims that the Constitution gives him unlimited dictatorial power to do literally anything he wants. It's easy to believe he thinks that includes shutting down Congress's ability to legislate in a fit of temper—never mind reality. 

The "GOLD STANDARD" version of the act that Trump was ranting about would almost certainly disenfranchise tens of millions of legitimate voters, if it were allowed by courts to go into effect—which it almost certainly wouldn't. It would require voters to show not only photo ID, but "documentary proof of citizenship," which in most cases would mean either a passport or a birth certificate matching their current legal name.

That means that, for example, a married woman who took her husband's name and didn't have a passport would not only have to be able to present her original birth certificate, but also court paperwork for her name change. Many people simply don't have those documents handy, or have lost them over the years, and getting replacements can take months. Trump's "GOLD STANDARD" would absolutely bar any such person from voting.  

It would also ban mail-in ballots entirely, a system that nine states use as the main method of voting, and which all fifty states use to some extent. For example, it would completely disenfranchise voters in nursing homes or hospitals, or who were away from home during the early voting period in their local district. 

That provision would also disenfranchise Trump, who usually votes by mail, and who doesn't like being asked why he should get to but not other people. (But then, Trump could always take a $3.4 million dollar Tuesday plane trip at taxpayer expense to vote in his Florida district if he felt that strongly about it.)

Why does this matter?

• Americans will exercise their right to vote in free and fair elections in 2026 under a constitutional set of laws whether Donald Trump likes it or not. 

• Strong leaders don't issue empty threats, and smart leaders know that empty threats make you look weak.

• Fifth-graders have to read and pass tests on the Constitution, so it shouldn't be impossible for a second-term president to take a look.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He pretended he didn't know about a salacious affair two of his closest advisors were having at taxpayer expense.

Kristi Noem is Trump's Secretary of Homeland Security, known for shooting her own dog and using an infamous Salvadoran torture prison as set dressing for a propaganda video. Corey Lewandowski is one of her aides, and also a former Trump campaign operative who was caught selling meetings with Trump. He's also assaulted a reporter from Trump-friendly Breitbart Media and sexually harassed at least two other women in Trump's orbit. 

The two are both married to other people, but have been carrying on an affair as an open secret for years. Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran an exposé on the affair and the luxury plane with separate private cabins that Noem and Lewandowski have been using to travel together. The plane is leased at taxpayer expense, but Noem wants the Treasury to spend $70m to buy it outright. Among other amenities, the 737 Max 8 BBJ is equipped with onboard bidets and a wine chiller in what the seller called the "VVIP cabin configuration."

That article also highlighted bizarre, if faintly chivalrous acts that Noem and Lewandowski have performed for each other. Lewandowski tried to fire the jet's pilot mid-flight after Noem's favorite blanket was left on another aircraft, while Noem has been quietly backing Lewandowski's quest to be issued a badge and gun as a DHS agent. (Lewandowski, a lifelong political operative, has no law enforcement or military experience.)

Today, Trump—who cheated on his first wife with his second, and his second wife with his third, before cheating on his third wife with a porn star, among other infidelities—was asked about whether Noem and Lewandowski's behavior was "a good look." He responded:

I don't know about that. I mean, I haven't heard that. Uhh… I'll find out about it, but, I have not heard that.

But that is a lie, as the WSJ story makes clear. Trump, who at one point in 2024 was considering Noem as his running mate, actively rejected the idea of hiring Lewandowski into an actual staff position at DHS because he knew what was going on between them.

Noem and Lewandowski’s close relationship had already made Trump and his top advisers uncomfortable. Lewandowski had initially wanted to formally serve as Noem’s chief of staff, but Trump rejected the idea due to reports of a romantic relationship between the two—which he has continued to bring up, officials say. 

This isn't even the only time in Trump's second term that cabinet-level officials have been caught using expensive private aircraft to advance their love-lives. FBI Director Kash Patel has been using a similarly luxurious private jet to ferry his girlfriend around the country.

Why does this matter? 

• For people who don't work for the Trump administration, lying about having an affair with a subordinate and spending other people's money to do it would have consequences. 
  
  
• Luxury jets with private bedrooms for the exclusive use of government officials is wrong even if they're not using it as a love-nest for adultery. 

• Presidents are responsible for the choices that people in their administration make.

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 "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 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 changed his position on whether it's a good thing to shoot protestors.

Trump was apparently awake at 2:58 a.m. this morning, and took the opportunity to post on social media that he would "come to the rescue" of Iranian protestors if the government of Iran "shots [sic] and violently kills" them.

There are protests happening now in Iran, over the country's dire economic situation. Unlike some previous uprisings in Iran, these don't appear to be aimed at toppling the government. That was more characteristic of the 2019-2020 protests during Trump's first term, which he largely ignored as some 1,500 Iranian citizens died.

Trump didn't say how the United States would "rescue" protestors—and nobody thinks he could. A ground invasion is inconceivable and airstrikes would only endanger protestors. Even Iran's government, which routinely uses Trump's threats and bluster as a foil against its population, didn't rise to the bait.

Trump himself has threatened violence against protestors many times when his regime was the target. He made a running joke of promising to pay the legal bills of supporters who attacked protestors at his campaign rallies, although he immediately broke that promise when someone took him up on it. His own Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, said that Trump's reaction to the George Floyd protests in 2020 was to ask whether the United States military couldn't be deployed to "just shoot them in the legs or something." 

This isn't the first time this week Trump has rattled the saber against Iran. Earlier, it was to warn the Iranian government of unspecified "consequences" if Iran continued to build up its nuclear program—the same nuclear program that Trump claimed six months ago was "OBLITERATED LIKE NOBODY'S EVER SEEN BEFORE" by telegraphed bombings of certain facilities. (As experts pointed out at the time, Iran was obviously capable of refining uranium almost anywhere, making the attacks on hardened underground targets mostly cosmetic.)

Why does this matter?

• Empty threats like this make the United States look weak. 

• You either believe shooting protestors is wrong all the time, or you don't believe it at all.

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 whipsawed between excitement at a politically exploitable tragedy and fury that people noticed what he was doing. 

At a brief mid-vacation press availability today, Trump had an exchange with a reporter regarding the fatal shooting of two West Virginia National Guard troops in Washington. One of them, Sarah Beckstrom, died today. The suspected shooter is an Afghan national who had worked with American forces during the war and been vetted by Trump's own DHS and FBI and granted asylum during his second term.

Sarah Beckstrom, WV National Guard

 

The reporter asked why, given all that, Trump was trying to shift blame to the Biden administration. Trump started by calling her stupid three times, and then became increasingly agitated, repeating himself and stumbling over words while veering off topic into unrelated tangents related to the war in Afghanistan. One of these was his belief that controlling Bagram Air Force Base—which he himself explicitly surrendered to the extremist Taliban leadership of that country, along with everything else—would somehow give him power over China's nuclear weapons program. 

NANCY CORDES, CBS: A question about this tragic shooting in Washington DC. US officials say that the suspect worked very closely with the CIA in Afghanistan for years, that he was vetted, and the vetting came up clean—

TRUMP: He went — he went cuckoo? He went nuts. And that happens, too, it happens too often with these people, you see them. Look. This is how they come in, this is how the, they're standing on top of each other in a — that's an airplane. There is no vetting or anything, they came in unvetted. And we have a lot of others in this country, we're gonna get them out, but they go cuckoo, something happens to them.

CORDES: Actually,  your DOJ IG just reported this year that there was thorough vetting by DHS and by the FBI of these Afghans who were brought into the US, so why do you blame the Biden administration—

TRUMP: Because they let 'em in. Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? Because they came into — on a plane — along with thousands of other people that shouldn't be here, and you're just asking questions because you're a stupid person.  And — we — there's a law passed that it's almost impossible not to — to get 'em out. You can't get 'em out once they come in. And they came in , and they were unvetted, unchecked, there were many of 'em, and they came in on big planes, and it was disgraceful. And if you look, you'll see there as a law passed, makes it almost impossible not to let 'em in, not to — certify them, so to speak, uh, once they come in. And they came  in, and they shouldn'ta come in, and frankly the whole thing was a mess, the whole — Afghanistan situation was a mess, we should, it shoulda never taken place, if we're going to go out, and we woulda gone out, because I had everyone ready to go we woulda gone out with strength and dignity and precision, and we woulda left from Bagram [AFB], and we woulda kept Bagram by the way because of its very close relationship with China, where they make their missiles. But when you let the people come in by the thousands and thousands and thousands, uh, they made a terrible mistake.

The Trump administration rolled out a series of collective punishments for other Afghans living in the United States within hours after the shooting yesterday, and seems to have been waiting for an event like that to roll them out. 

Late this evening, Trump posted an explicitly racist screed to social media claiming that almost all immigrants—explicitly including the 25 million naturalized American citizens born elsewhere, a number that includes two of this three wives—were criminals or insane, and threatened to take away their citizenship (which he has no legal power to do). Trump appears to genuinely believe that "asylum-seekers" has something to do with mental health, in the sense of "insane asylum."

Immigrants of every kind—permanent residents, naturalized citizens, undocumented workers, refugees, and asylum-seekers—commit crimes at far lower rates than native-born American citizens.

Asked whether he'd attend the funeral of Sarah Beckstrom, the WV National Guard member who was killed in the attack, Trump responded noncommitally and immediately began bragging about the size of his 2024 election victory in that state.
 

Why does this matter?

• Collective punishment is Nazi shit. 

• Exploiting the tragic death of a 20-year-old woman he himself put in harm's way for political gain is low even for Trump.