What did Donald Trump do today?

He got slapped down by a judge in his attempts to disenfranchise voters during an ongoing election.

A federal judge today denied the Trump administration's request to force California to suspend the ballots of some 20,000 people that it contends are not eligible to vote. 

In a blisteringly contemptuous ruling, federal district judge David O. Connor rejected Trump's claim to be the "sole sovereign" over elections that, per the Constitution, are solely under the authority of the states. He flatly called the Trump administration's claims "not credible." He also drew the somewhat obvious conclusion that Trump was simply trying to disrupt the election for the sake of disrupting it, rather than because of any real belief that the targeted voters (or anyone else) were casting illegal ballots.

Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch. In bringing this lawsuit, the Executive would have this Court believe that it reigns as a sole sovereign. But California and its people are sovereign, too.

The right to vote has long been understood as integral to both citizenship and participation in our democracy. Ronald Reagan described this right as “the crown jewel of American liberties, and we will not see its luster diminished.” Remarks on Signing the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1982 (June 19, 1982) (extending the Voting Rights Act of 1965). But access to voting has always been contested. At the inception of our country, African Americans and women of all ethnicities were denied access to the ballot. Their push to be recognized as equal citizens of this nation led to the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 and the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, which declared that the right to vote could not be denied due to someone’s race or gender. But these amendments did not guarantee all citizens’ enfranchisement in practice. Minority communities continued to fight for suffrage. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and other obstacles were further used to prevent individuals from casting their vote.

Every generation in our history has witnessed repeated clashes between those who seek to limit access to the ballot and those who fight to ensure it. In this case, the federal government seeks to segregate and exclude over 20,000 ballots. This request violates longstanding constitutional principles mandating that states have control over their elections. If Plaintiff’s last-minute request for relief were granted, either party could create chaos for their own political purposes to disrupt the election process. Over 20,000 registered Californians would potentially lose the right that generations of Americans have fought to preserve.

…The Executive’s requested relief …would wreak havoc and disrupt the election that is already underway, create a chilling effect on election workers and voters alike, and discount the votes of United States citizens. The Executive Branch cannot replace the remedy Congress carefully enacted with its own unlawful and unconstitutional solution instead. Eroded trust in our democracy is irreparable. Once a vote is segregated, lasting harm has occurred. If the Executive can discount votes and threaten an ongoing election due to unproven allegations, then our democracy is in danger.

This Court declines to be a party to such process. 

It's worth noting that Trump has made similar claims in other states: earlier this year, his administration insisted that some 16,000 Nevada voters were noncitizens and therefore ineligible. The state investigated and found that every single person on that list was fully entitled to vote. In that case and the California one ruled on today, the Trump administration has refused to say by what method it came up with such inaccurate lists.

Trump's actions in the California case appear to be designed not to win on the legal merits, but to cast doubt on the integrity of American elections. This is also true of his fruitless attempts to have the Alaska Senate election set aside if and only if his preferred candidate doesn't win, or his rejected demands to force states to turn over their voting rolls to the federal government.

Trump has never once agreed to abide by the outcome of elections unless he approves of the result, and who is still criminally liable for his role in attempting to overthrow the results of the 2020 election once he leaves office. His party has slim odds of keeping control of the House of Representatives and may very well lose the Senate as well, in spite of—or because of—his "help" in campaigning for them.

Voter fraud in general is extremely rare, and intentionally casting an illegal ballot is even more so, and illegal voting by people who know they are not citizens is so rare as to possibly be without precedent in modern politics. 

Ironically, today saw the announcement of just such a prosecution for deliberate voter fraud: conservative "activist" James O'Keefe was charged with impersonating a dead person on Minnesota's voter rolls, dressing up in what he called "Muslim" clothes that obscured his face. (This is not the first time O'Keefe has committed crimes in pursuit of material for his video brand, which involves doctored footage that tries to embarrass politicians and public figures he doesn't like.) But O'Keefe—unlike the imagined undocumented immigrants casting ballots in Trump's claims—actually stood to make real monetary gain from the criminal scheme he's accused of, or would have if he'd gotten away with it.

Two days ago, Trump "offered" a $1 million reward for evidence leading to a conviction for voter fraud—though without giving any details or means of collecting the bounty. He has not commented on whether the state of Minnesota will be receiving $1 million if O'Keefe, an ardent supporter of Trump's, is convicted.

Why does this matter?

• Fucking with elections is not just what dictators do, it's what weak and incompetent dictators losing their grip on power always do. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He took his theory that elections don't count unless he likes the results and made it a literal federal case.

The DOJ has filed a lawsuit in federal court asking a judge to preemptively block the results of Alaska's Senate elections if one specific candidate, incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, doesn't win. Asked about it today, Trump insisted that it was his idea, and that he ordered the DOJ to go ahead with it.

Again, what that means is that Trump is ordering a federal agency to intervene for purely political reasons in an election, and he is openly admitting it.

It would be generous to call this lawsuit frivolous. Trump's theory of the case is that because there are two candidates with similar names—the incumbent senator, and an independent candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr.—any result that doesn't have the "correct" Sullivan winning was the result of voter "confusion," and the results should be thrown out.

But Alaska's Supreme Court has already ruled that the independent candidate Daniel J. Sullivan has a right to run for office under his own name. It's very unlikely that Alaska voters will actually be confused: the ballot clearly lists different party affiliations for the two men, and indentifies Dan S. Sullivan as the incumbent. Even if they were confused, it's a ranked-choice ballot. A hypothetical voter who only knew that they wanted to vote for "Sullivan" and not the Democratic candidate, Mary Peltola, could simply rank either Sullivan above her.

Peltola is a slight favorite to win regardless, for the same reason that Democrats and independent are competitive in states that haven't elected Democrats in decades or even a century: many voters who are normally staunch Republicans, or independents who voted for Trump as recently as 2024, are horrified at how his second term has unfolded. 

Whether or not Trump actually knew what he was admitting to, it's likely the real intention of the lawsuit is to undermine faith in the legitimacy of American elections, something he has done in essentially every election cycle since 2016—with a healthy dose of assistance from the Putin regime in Russia. Trump has never once committed to accepting the validity of "elections" whose result he doesn't like, and even tried to foment an insurrection when he lost the 2020 election.

Why does this matter?

• If you're not willing to accept the results of an election, you're a dictator, or a wannabe dictator.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He decided golf was too important for him to worry about obeying court orders.

In a social media post today, Trump went on at great length about his plans to bulldoze the existing East Potomac Park's golf courses and put a new course in its place, one that he believes will allow the facility to host major golf tournaments. (Trump, who owns dozens of courses and has repeatedly tried to strong-arm professional golf organizations into paying him to host tournaments, did not say why it was in the interests of the American people to have the government get into the same business.)

There are two problems with the announcement. First, while Trump said that the new course would eventually be "open to the Public," as opponents quickly noted, what Trump is actually doing is reducing the number of golf courses from two to one, and taking that remaining course well out of reach of the everyday crowd that currently plays there. The plan also effectively ruins the park as a park, taking away family-friendly attractions like a popular mini-golf course and miles of hiking and biking trails.

Second, Trump said that work would begin on November 15. That would not only violate a court order already in place blocking further demolition of the existing facilities, but it would mean that Trump was now going back on a court document filed less than two days before, in which the DOJ promised that "at most" he was only engaging in "preliminary thought" about destroying the course.

Trump has already violated court orders about the course. Last week, in a coordinated and pre-planned effort, Trump's DOJ made a last-minute Friday night filing as an excuse to cut down more than 400 historic cherry trees on the course before the judge in the case could respond with a denial. 

Trump's social media post went on at length about the supposedly atrocious and dangerous conditions of the course—something he's also falsely claimed about places that virtually any other American would call beautiful and luxurious, like the Kennedy Center or Camp David or the White House itself.

But there is a grain of truth to his claims that the park in its current state needs some long-term care: it's where he dumped the rubble from the destruction of the East Wing of the White House. That debris is now leaching toxic heavy metals into the soil and water.

Why does this matter?

• Either a president submits to the rule of law like every other American, or he's a wannabe dictator.

• Public golf courses exist precisely because there are Americans who want to play golf who'd never be allowed to set foot on the kinds of courses Trump owns.
  
  
• There are much, much more important problems for the United States of America at the moment than not having a championship golf course in East Potomac Park.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He sued California as a pretext to declaring election results he doesn't like invalid.

Two days ago, the Trump DOJ sent California election officials a list of 20,000 voters it claimed, without evidence, were noncitizens, It demanded that any mail-in ballots cast by those voters be segregated and not counted.

The list was sent on a flash drive with a password on a sticky note attached to it. (For reasons that should be obvious to anyone who has worked in an office in the last 20 years, or paid attention to the US government's own warnings about cybersecurity, nobody in California's government was dumb enough to plug the flash drive into a computer.)

Today, moments after the DOJ's self-imposed 48-hour deadline for compliance expired, the Trump administration sued California, asking a judge to force the state to block the counting of ballots cast by the voters it was targeting. One election law expert said that the "frivolous" legal filing made it seem as though "the sole purpose of this is to set the stage for false claims about elections."

As California officials pointed out, Trump has forced the DOJ to make these kinds of claims before, to (literally) zero effect. The Trump administration recently presented Nevada with a list of 16,000 supposed noncitizens on its voting rolls. The state investigated and found that every single voter on the list was a citizen and eligible to vote legally. 

Under the United States Constitution, states—not the federal government—administer elections. There is no master list of American citizens eligible to vote, and courts have struck down Trump's efforts to create what would be, at best, a shoddy and error-ridden imitation of such a list. As plaintiffs in those suits have noted, sowing chaos and doubt about the legitimacy of elections while threatening legitimate voters in states that elect Trump opponents is in his interests. 

For obvious reasons, voter fraud is unbelievably rare, quite literally one of the least commonly committed crimes on the books. 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 going back twenty years, according to exhaustive studies done by the Brookings Institute and the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation.

Facts aside, Trump has a long history of making preposterous claims about noncitizens voting. After winning the 2016 election but losing in the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by three million votes, Trump insisted that the whole margin was due to 3-5 million "illegal" votes, all cast for Clinton. 

Needless to say, this is a lie, presumably one he told as a way of emotional self-soothing over losing in any kind of popularity contest to Clinton. Trump has never explained how he knew about the supposed plot to rig an election he won anyway, or how he knew all those "illegal" votes were for Clinton, or why a conspiracy involving five million participants couldn't have been organized well enough to distribute itself better among swing states, or the name of a single noncitizen voter in that election.

In fact, Trump has never committed to honoring the will of the American people free and fair elections where he doesn't like the results, and he's repeatedly said so in advance of the elections. The difference is that this time, he is starting the frivolous legal challenges to them ahead of the election itself.
 

Why does this matter?

• Nobody—not even Donald Trump—believes this is about keeping noncitizens from voting. 

• There's only one reason why an unpopular politician who claims he's allowed to be a dictator would try to undermine faith in elections. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He unveiled a chatbot that would already have been fired for disloyalty if it were one of his human employees.

Trump signed an executive order today establishing a chatbot service, America.gov. It's a simple Large Language Model (or LLM) intended to answer questions about laws, government services, and other information of interest to constituents.

Within minutes of its launch, social media commenters were impressed with its accuracy in at least a few regards. For example, it correctly identified Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. 

 It refuted Trump's belief that he has an "Article II power to do whatever I want."

It identified several of the many reasons that Trump's destruction of the East Wing of the White House was not legal.

It correctly identified Congress, not the executive branch, as the body with the authority to levy tariffs.

 

For good measure, it admitted what Trump does not: that tariffs are taxes, and that it is not foreign governments that pay them.

It agreed with the elected Democrats Trump tried to have prosecuted for saying that American military personnel had an obligation to disobey illegal orders.

 

It even flatly rejected one of Trump's more infamous medical theories.

It correctly refused to exonerate Trump for rerunning a 2024 campaign ad using taxpayer dollars just because Trump insisted it was a "public service announcement."

And, in perhaps the unkindest cut of all, it refused to talk about Trump the way he talks about himself.

 

It's worth saying that, like any LLM, America.gov is not really "thinking" or "saying" anything. It's simply a software program processing information in its databases according to a series of internal rules.

The good news, from Trump's perspective, is that the "problem" of the America.gov software accurately summarizing facts that virtually everyone but Trump acknowledges, is that it can be "fixed." LLMs are only as accurate as the information they're allowed to use, and they can easily be tweaked to give desired results along an ideological spectrum. Trump can also order it to draw from sources that give the answers he wants, rather than the vast database of government records, most of which he's been unable to purge.

That's exactly what Trump's political patron Elon Musk did with the LLM developed for Twitter. After Musk was embarrassed by "Grok" giving unflattering (but accurate) answers to questions about Musk himself and seemingly contradicting Musk's fringe-right ideology, he ordered it to be tweaked. Within days, Grok was calling itself "Mechahitler" and making unprompted racist and antisemitic remarks. 

Trump is heavily financially invested in the AI industry, which may account for his unwillingness to even consider regulating it, and his politically toxic embrace of unpopular data centers. 

Why does this matter?

• It's bad if the President of the United States lives inside a bubble of lies or fantasy—and that's true whether or not a computer says so.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He doubled down on forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for his own campaign ads.

On Thursday, the federal government paid for a "public service announcement" featuring images of Trump over music that chanted "love me, love me, I'll make them love me" and lavish praise from one of his political benefactors. It is a violation of several federal laws, including the Hatch Act, to use public money for partisan propaganda.

Today, Trump took things a step further, this time using federal funds to re-run one of his actual 2024 campaign ads. Asked for comment, the White House responded by claiming that the ad was "reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad."

Democrats were incensed, and many Republicans joined in the criticism. It's not the first time the Trump administration has done this: taxpayers also footed the bill for $220 million worth of ads for former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. (Trump fired Noem shortly afterwards—not because of the ads themselves, but reportedly because of his concerns that she was upstaging him.)

By government standards, the amounts Trump has used to run vanity ads for himself isn't much yet: roughly $1,000,000 so far. But there's no reason to think Trump will stop there. In recent months, he's become increasingly manic over his supposed importance to the 2026 midterm elections, even as Republican candidates are scrubbing his face from their websites and sending him to "campaign" in ultra-safe districts where the Republican incumbents won by more than 50 points in the last cycle.

Why does this matter?

• State-funded propaganda is what dictatorial regimes do to prop up the leader. 

• It's bad if the governing philosophy of the President of the United States is "what can I get away with and who's going to stop me?"

What did Donald Trump do today?

He pretended he hadn't lost the birthright citizenship fight.

Trump signed two executive orders today, purporting to alter who the Constitution considers a citizen. The Fourteenth Amendment states that every person born in the United States "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is a citizen of the United States. The only people courts have ever recognized as not being subject to the jurisdiction are the children of foreign diplomats or—at the time of its adoption—Native American nations that had not submitted to federal authority.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1898, and then again, at Trump's behest, earlier this year, that the plain text of the amendment meant what it meant, and that Trump could not simply waive it on a whim. That decision infuriated Trump, who called the last 128 years of legal bedrock and the judges who had upheld it "STUPID." In today's orders, Trump is once trying again to impose new definitions that go beyond what the Constitution says, purportedly barring from citizenship the children of what he calls "birth tourists": babies born to mothers on short-term visas. 

This is extremely unlikely to have any legal effect on children born to parents with visas in good standing, since the Court has just upheld that the children of people here unlawfully are citizens. What Trump calls "birth tourism" is rare and swamped by the number of Americans who, for various reasons, themselves have children in other countries. That rarity is for good reason: American citizenship 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.

The order also excludes the children of "enemy aliens," which would likely pass Constitutional muster if there were an invading army camped on American soil, but only a real one—not the rhetorical "invasion" of immigrants Trump sometimes talks about at rally speeches. Nor would it apply to people Trump personally deems "enemies" like Americans of Somali descent.

Why does this matter?

• Americans are Americans whether Donald Trump likes it or not. 

• Pretending you have power you don't doesn't make you look strong.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to hide his finances from the BBC, which he's suing over alleged damages to his finances.

Through his lawyers today, Trump demanded to be exempted from financial disclosures as part of a lawsuit he's filed against the BBC. Discovery is a routine part of any lawsuit that ensures both parties are fully disclosing all relevant information.

Just before the 2024 presidential election, the BBC released a documentary titled Trump: A Second Chance? It contained a clip of Trump speaking on January 6 to a crowd of people that included many of those who, just hours later, would be attacking a session of Congress in a desperate attempt to help Trump cling to power. In that scene, Trump's voice can be heard saying "We're going to walk down to the Capitol... and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell."

That was actually a splice of two quotes: in the first half, Trump is encouraging the crowd to support those members of Congress who supported him. In the second, he really is winding up the crowd for the riot that eventually happened. But edits like that aren't best practices for objective reporting, and after the newly re-elected Trump complained, the BBC apologized.

Trump then sued the BBC for $10,000,000,000. 

It's extremely unlikely that Trump could win the suit because, in simplest terms, nobody is required by law to only say things about him that he approves of. Painting public figures in an unflattering light, or even outright lying about them, isn't enough by itself to generate liability. (If it were, the thousands of people Trump has lied about and insulted would all have a case against him.) What's more, the underlying message of the BBC documentary—that Trump's statements in that rally were part of the criminal conspiracy he was indicted for—is absolutely true.

Trump also claimed that the documentary was meant to "interfere in and influence the election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment." Again, even if that were the intent, speech intended to change people's minds about the outcome of an election isn't a crime or grounds for a lawsuit—at least, not if it's not part of collusion with a hostile foreign government.  

One of Trump's claims is that the documentary cost his businesses money in lost revenue. In a predictable response, the BBC is now seeking legal discovery about his businesses' finances. In this case, to determine whether a TV show that aired in a foreign country six days before an election that has obviously made Trump's businesses suddenly more profitable, to the tune of billions of dollars, could possibly have had any effect on his bottom line. 

Other relevant information would include those businesses' tax returns, corporate structures, subsidiaries, offshore accounts, and other financial data. This is an extremely sensitive area for Trump: setting aside his tax cheating on his personal income and the 34 felony fraud charges he was convicted of in 2024, the Trump Organization has also been convicted of tax fraud and other crimes. Its CFO, Allen Weisselberg—also Trump's personal financial fixer—went to prison for his role in those crimes.

The BBC's requests were granted by the judge overseeing the trial last month. In ruling that discovery could proceed, the court noted that Trump had made broad and vague claims about the damage that the documentary did to his "brand," so discovery could be equally broad.

Of course, just because the BBC got access to Trump's financial information doesn't necessarily mean it would become public. Trump could seek an order from the judge sealing it. But pertinent information could still come out at trial, in the unlikely event Trump—who has spent most of the last 11 years stonewalling attempts to learn where his money is coming from—is willing to go forward now.

Trump also sued several American media companies for their supposed offenses against him, in what was transparently an extortion attempt, as the BBC suit may have been intended to be. Both ABC and CBS settled for token amounts rather than risk Trump openly using the powers of his office to do real harm against them.

Why does this matter?

• Using the powers of office to extort friendly coverage for the leader from the media is what dictators do. 

• Trump damaged his own reputation by trying to overturn the will of the American people who voted him out of office, not the people who were filming him do it. 

• You don't get to demand $10 billion every time someone hurts your feelings.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He filed the latest in an endless series of appeals to avoid paying a woman he raped and defamed what a jury said he owed.

In 2023, a New York jury found that Trump had raped E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s, and that his public statements accusing her of lying about it for money and attention were defamatory. As a result of those defamatory statements, Carroll, 82, endured public humiliation and death threats. The result of the trial was that Trump was ordered to pay her $5.6 million in damages.

Carroll is one of about thirty women who, at various different times dating back to his first marriage, have accused Trump of sexual assault, sexual harassment, or lewd conduct towards minors. (That list does not include conduct Trump may have participated in or known about related to his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.)

While the trial continued in the penalty phase (but after the jury's verdict) Trump repeated his defamatory comments. That resulted in a separate judgment, this time for $83.3 million. The higher damages were intended to deter Trump from continually reoffending. (They've worked: Trump no longer repeats the defamatory claims.)

Trump subsequently lost every single appeal, including one at the Supreme Court—and even an extra bite at the apple he gave himself by demanding that the Court reconsider its judgment. The original $5.6 million verdict, plus interest, was ordered paid to Carroll earlier this month. (Trump is challenging even that routine order, claiming that Carroll should not be able to invest the money in the stock market, where it might lose value, because he may someday, somehow be able to get a verdict affirmed by the highest court in the land overturned.)

Today, Trump filed an appeal of the second, $83.3 million verdict to the Supreme Court, even though it springs from identical conduct and was issued as a continuation of the same trial. 

Trump's actual argument in this appeal is that he should be immune from civil liability for defamatory statements he made while he was in office. In this case, that means that Trump is arguing that he should be allowed to call Carroll a publicity-seeking liar for saying he raped her—which a jury established as fact—because he was President at the time. This is the same argument that the Supreme Court rejected earlier, leaving a lower court's ruling intact.

He also argued, unsuccessfully, that the United States government should be allowed to replace him as the defendant, which would allow him to use taxpayer money to satisfy the verdict rather than his own.

The Department of Justice had historically declined to prosecute sitting presidents for criminal acts while they are in office, although until Trump that meant that presidents who broke the law in office could still be prosecuted after the fact. This was a custom, rather than established law, until Trump's own appointees on the court provided the majority in Trump v. United States (2024). That ruling carefully granted criminal immunity to presidents exercising unspecified "core powers" and, at least temporarily, got then-candidate Trump free from federal indictments relating to his attempts to overthrow the results of the 2020 election and stay in power illegally. (Trump could still be prosecuted for the underlying crimes under a new indictment, assuming he survives his current term and leaves office voluntarily.)

In the current case, Trump is arguing that calling his own rape victim a liar is a "core power" of the presidency.

Notably, while Trump relies on his control of the DOJ to avoid prosecution, he's succeeded in getting a criminal investigation launched against Carroll, on the theory that she committed perjury. That appears to have been a more or less empty threat: the investigation does not appear to have really commenced and even Trump diehards, like his former defense lawyer and current acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, have distanced themselves from it.

Trump has spent much of this year 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? 

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

• The American people are not Donald Trump's piggy bank and the Department of Justice is not his personal goon squad.  

• Flaunting your ability to get away with horrific acts against your political enemies is what tinpot dictators do.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He used illegal Medicaid cuts to punish his political opponents in two blue states.

The Trump administration announced today that it was "pausing" Medicaid disbursements to Minnesota and California, over supposed fraud. The governors of each of those states are both political rivals to Trump: Gavin Newsom of California is a likely Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, and Minnesota's Tim Walz was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 2024.

Trump has made this threat before: in February, he said he'd withhold $259 million from Minnesota. He never carried it out, though. Courts have stopped Trump from politically motivated interference with healthcare programs before. In spite of the attention that Trump's HHS officials—former lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and daytime talk show host Mehmet Oz—tried to bring to the move today, it's not clear that any money has been withheld yet.

There is Medicare fraud in Minnesota and California—and in every other state, and probably almost every individual county. Committing fraud against the government for these kinds of programs is easy, but getting away with it is more difficult—as Trump, whose business was convicted of defrauding the State of New York, is well aware. (That is not to be confused with Trump's criminal conviction on 34 felony charges, which dealt with different matters.) Even if he didn't have personal experience with it, Trump has pardoned many wealthy and politically connected Medicare and Medicaid fraudsters, who collectively stole billions of dollars.

Regardless, Trump has no authority to withhold Medicaid funding for any state, or impose conditions on its release outside of what the law permits. Doing so violates Congress's constitutionally granted control over appropriation, as well as the 1974 Impoundment Control Act.

Trump has made little secret of his intention to punish states that don't support him politically at the federal level—even though, to use California as an example, that means punishing millions of people who voted for him. He's also effectively stopped approving disaster relief for blue states in his second term.

 

Why does this matter?

• Cutting off basic government services to punish areas the leader thinks aren't sufficiently loyal to him is what dictators do. 

• It's beyond evil to punish poor children by withholding medical care to score political points against Americans who politically oppose you. 

• Presidents who care about fraud generally commit less of it.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He fired every federal election watchdog he could.

The Election Assistance Commission is an independent federal agency whose function, as the name suggests, is to assist states in the conduct of elections. Under the Constitution, states, and not the federal government, conduct elections. The EAC tests and certifies voting machines, coordinates the distribution of federal funds in support of elections, and maintains the national mail voter registration form. It was created in 2002 as a bipartisan organization that was supposed to be insulated from White House interference.

Trump, who conspired with a hostile foreign power to influence the 2016 election and then coordinated a violent riot in an attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 election, fired the two Democratic members today, and accepted the resignation of the sole remaining Republican. This leaves the organization with no members, which means it can take no actions in support of the 2026 midterms. 

Trump's abysmal approval ratings are widely expected to cost Republicans the House of Representatives in those elections, and possibly even the Senate.
 

Why does this matter?

• Nobody does this kind of stuff who intends to honor the results of free and fair elections if they can possibly help it. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He threatened state election officials with prosecution, just in case he needed to.

Via the Department of Justice, which is now run in an acting capacity by one of his former criminal defense lawyers, Trump issued a veiled threat to state election officials today about the possibility that he would try to have them prosecuted after this November's elections.

The letter listed dozens of specific federal statutes regarding the conduct of elections, and emphasized that state officials could be prosecuted under those laws if Trump-appointed prosecutors weren't satisfied with their efforts to, for example, keep noncitizens from voting.

The statutes cited have not been used to prosecute state officials in decades, if ever. No official at any level of American government, down to the smallest municipality, has ever been accused of conspiring to allow noncitizens to vote, much less convicted.

The DOJ also demanded that officials "respond to this letter within five days informing us how
the state of Michigan intends to ensure it is complying with these federal laws." There is no such legal requirement. The United States Constitution gives states full authority to conduct elections.

In reality, people intentionally casting fraudulent ballots is almost completely unheard of. For example, the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation conducted a study of reported voter fraud in past elections. In just one of the states they examined, Pennsylvania, they found 39 individual reports of voter fraud out of more than 100 million votes cast, meaning that 0.00004% of ballots cast over the course of three decades might have been illegally cast. 

Thanks in large part to Trump himself, Republicans stand a good chance of losing control of the House of Representatives in November's elections, and possibly even the Senate. 

Many things are against federal law. For example, it's a crime to use the powers of a federal office—like a federal prosecutor role—to mistreat people for unlawful purposes, like political revenge. It's also a crime to submit a false instrument—like a declaration by a slate of fraudulent electors that Trump had won their state in the 2020 election—with the intent to defraud the federal government. And, of course, it's an extremely serious federal crime to commit acts of insurrection or sedition.

Why does this matter?

• This is not what you do if you intend to abide by the results of a free and fair election.

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 bragged about political interference in an election he probably didn't even bother actually doing.

Trump told an audience in Pennsylvania today that he had called the US Attorney in California and asked him to "take a look" at the primary election for governor in that state. "Do me a favor, take a look" Trump said he asked Bill Essayli, adding that "about an hour later" Republican Steve Hilton had "won." “Had I not made that call, Steve Hilton would be watching the election from home,” Trump claimed. 

There's really no way to know if Trump actually did make such a call. If he did, it would be a blatant abuse of his power to try to interfere in a sovereign state election where nobody actually involved—including Hilton—has suggested federal laws were being broken.

If Trump was lying, it was probably to suggest that he has the ability to influence state elections or disregard results he doesn't like. That was, in effect, what got him indicted in Georgia, when he alternately threatened and pleaded with state election officials there in a recorded phone call in early January 2021, asking them to "find" 11,780 votes for him—the number he trailed Joe Biden by. 

It's worth noting that Trump was trying to sell bizarre conspiracy theories about the California elections on the night of the primary too, even after it was quite clear that Hilton would have enough votes to finish in the top two. 

In reality, neither Trump nor the DOJ has any ability to dictate the results of California elections, or to pressure officials there to "find" that the right candidates have been selected. 

Hilton didn't "win" the primary, but he did come in second, which in California's system means he and the top vote-getter, Rep. Xavier Becerra, will advance to the general election in November. 

 

 

Why does this matter?

• Americans don't need Donald Trump's permission to hold elections or vote for the candidates of their choice. 

• Using state power to make sure the leader's candidates win elections is what dictators do.  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said there were "no limits" on his power.

Trump's "peace deal" with Iran is receiving contemptuous reviews from essentially everyone not currently working for Trump. Israeli officials are calling it a "catastrophic capitulation." Republicans in Congress are saying it's Trump surrendering to Iran, not the other way around. Even Iran—which is already getting what it wants—is openly mocking Trump for agreeing to their terms, calling Trump's signature on the memorandum a "glorious defeat."

Asked what he'd learned today about the limits of his power, Trump simply responded that there aren't any. More precisely, he said, "I haven’t learned that lesson yet. I know there are [sic], but there are no limits." 

This is more or less what Trump has been saying all along: that as president, he can do whatever he wants, that he can stretch his promise to be a "dictator for a day" as far as he likes. That's not a popular position in a country that thinks of itself as a democracy, and it sparked some of the largest demonstrations in American history.

In reality—and even in practice—there are limits on Trump's power. Even during his second term, when he made a point of installing people purely for their loyalty to him above all other considerations, Trump has struggled to do nearly as much with that authority as he would have liked. (Many of them turned out to be less loyal than he thought they'd be, which is one reason that leaders who appoint people for competence rather than obedience generally get better results.) 

Iran itself is an example of one kind of limit on Trump's power: the Republican-led Congress put no real pressure on him to comply with laws governing when military force can be used, but that legal loophole didn't change the practical reality on the ground that Trump blundered into, leading to the disastrous outcome that those same Republicans are now furious about.

That sort of thing matters because, for all his bluster, Trump is very constrained by political realities. His plan to build a series of concentration camps is already being unwound as a result of public pushback. He was forced to abandon his plan to create a multi-billion-dollar slush fund to reward pro-Trump insurrectionists not by a court decision, but by the furious public reaction. 

The judiciary, which makes up a co-equal branch of the government that Trump is a part of, retains the ability to act as a check on Trump's power. Trump has been forced to rehire illegally fired government workers. He cannot spend money Congress hasn't appropriated, and he can't refuse to spend money that it has. Probably the most important way that courts have kept Trump from exercising the powers of a dictator has been in the criminal courts. No matter how many of his personal criminal defense attorneys Trump has appointed to key DOJ roles, they cannot create criminal liability where none exists. Judges have thrown out spurious charges selectively targeted at opposition politicians. Grand juries have refused to indict Trump's enemies for imaginary politically-motivated accusations. Trial juries have refused to convict protestors for minor, harmless acts of civil disobedience. Virtually all of Trump's campaign threats to jail Americans simply because he thinks of them as enemies have failed.

Among other things recently discussed on this site that Trump demonstrably doesn't have the ability to do—either the legal authority or the political muscle—include:

• revoke the broadcast licenses of TV networks whose content includes criticism of him 
• build a "military top-secret ballroom" without appropriations and permission from Congress
• pay himself $10 billion of taxpayer money 
• unilaterally dictate who's allowed to be elected to Congress 
• get an effective nuclear peace deal done with Iran for a mere $1.7 billion in unfrozen Iranian funds (as compared with the present $300 billion new-revenue figure currently on the table for a less secure arrangement)
• get Americans to believe that stopping an individual cargo ship near the Persian Gulf is a "GREAT AND BRILLIANT" military victory 
• force Iran to agree to any peace deal other than what it wanted
• literally erase the record of his two impeachments 
• dictate what gasoline costs just by declaring it 
• get Americans to believe that the economy is doing well in the middle of an inflation spike
• prevent Iran from charging fees to ships using the Strait of Hormuz
• enforce a ceasefire for more than one literal minute
• put reporters in jail for telling the public about unclassified information that makes him look bad
• make good on his threats to order the US military to conduct unlawful attacks on civilian targets
• get people to worship him as they would Jesus Christ   

Those examples are all from one month, April 2026. 

Why does this matter?

• Donald Trump believing he is a dictator or even a god doesn't make it true.  

• The president is one part of the government of the United States, and is answerable to the people of the United States, whether he likes it or not. 

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 got slapped down hard by courts, twice.

Kathleen Williams, the federal judge in Trump's now-dismissed lawsuit against the IRS reopened the case today, citing "grievous allegations" that Trump had perpetrated a fraud against the court. While it's highly unusual for a judge to issue this kind of order, courts have the inherent power as a co-equal branch of government to enforce their own rules. In this case, that means investigating (as 35 retired federal judges implored Williams to do in a friend-of-the-court brief) whether the "settlement" that created a $1.8 billion slush fund and excused Trump and his family from ever having tax laws enforced against them was reached in good faith between two genuinely opposed parties.

The settlement, which has enough money in it to provide every convicted insurrectionist who tried to forcibly overturn the result of the 2020 election with more than $1.1 million dollars, is incredibly politically toxic for Trump. Congressional Republicans normally loyal to Trump have called it "stupid on stilts" and "a slush fund to pay people who assault cops" that's "utterly stupid" and "morally wrong."

It's extremely unlikely that it would ever have been allowed to go into effect, even if Judge Williams hadn't reopened the case to investigate the apparently fraudulent nature of the case. But even if Trump starts cutting checks without legal authority to do so, state governments have already started working on legislation to claw back any such payouts through special 100% taxes—the sort of showy move legislators only do when it's a sure political winner.

It's not clear if Trump knows or cares about Williams' order, but another federal judge provoked a torrent of outrage from him today. In a 93-page ruling, Judge Christopher Cooper found that Trump had no legal authority to slap his name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The name of the center, as Cooper noted, was fixed by the law establishing it, and cannot be changed unless Congress passes another law.

Trump's obsession with the Kennedy Center is personal. He stocked its board with loyalists, made himself its Chairman, and gave himself the emcee gig at its annual awards (which saw record low ratings). He also had his name physically put on the façade above President Kennedy's. He responded to Cooper's ruling with a furious 580-word tantrum on his social media. 

Cooper's order also halts Trump's plans to shut the Kennedy Center down for two years for "renovations," which were really an excuse to cover up the fact that artists and patrons were boycotting what had once been one of the most important artistic venues in the world.

Why does this matter?

• The laws of the United States and the rules of its courts apply to Donald Trump. 

• There are more important things in the world than Donald Trump's ego.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He threw a tantrum about not getting a billion dollars for the "free" ballroom he wants to build.

Trump has tried to justify building his "military top-secret ballroom" by claiming that it is being paid for by private donations. Even setting aside the obvious corruption implications of letting companies with business before the White House buy the president's goodwill by paying for his pet project, Trump's claim isn't true: the "gifts" that tech companies, crypto scammers, lobbyists, and tobacco companies are making are tax-deductible. There's no difference between a dollar the Treasury spends and one it never receives—taxpayers are footing the bill either way.

But it's also false because Trump has demanded $1 billion in appropriations for the ballroom project, directly from taxpayers. Specifically, he's demanded that Senate Republicans try to force that funding through the budget reconciliation process, where Democrats could not mount a filibuster. Budget reconciliation is a complex parliamentary procedure and in order to be included in it, an appropriation must meet a number of legal standards. The person who adjudicates that process, under the Senate's rules, is the Senate Parliamentarian.

Over the weekend, the parliamentarian (whose name is Elizabeth MacDonough) ruled that the ballroom budget line did not qualify. Trump responded today by ranting about how she was appointed by President Obama in 2012 and demanding that she be fired.

Trump is confused: the president doesn't appoint the Senate Parliamentarian. But in any event, Senate Republicans, who rely on the consistent process that MacDonough oversees as much as Democrats, don't seem eager to take Trump up on his demand. 

In spite of the fact that the reason he was angry was that MacDonough's ruling means he won't be able to get a billion-dollar appropriation of public funds for his ballroom, Trump then immediately repeated his claim that the building was his personal "gift" that wouldn't cost taxpayers anything. "All this is being paid for by myself," Trump said, although he himself isn't contributing anything at all, unless he decides to pay his taxes this year.

Why does this matter?

• No amount of repetition makes the phrase "military top-secret ballroom" less embarrassing for a president to say. 

• The rest of the United States government doesn't need Donald Trump's permission to do its job.  

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.