What’s happening now is even more disturbing. We’re killing people simply because they happen to be in boats spotted exiting certain shores and headed towards international waters.
The War on Drugs has always been evil. It has always relied on the ends justifying the malicious means, especially when the means usually meant the killing or incarceration of non-white people.
Under Trump, it’s gotten even worse. Trump has pretended the mere existence of a drug trade — something that involves the exchange of money for goods by consenting adults — justifies the wholesale slaughter of people in boats in international waters.
The Defense Department and Trump himself have posted clips of boat strikes on social media, almost always accompanied by self-serving statements about protecting Americans from foreign-based drug cartels.
But the government has offered very little in support of its social media postings and public statements. Almost no documentation exists to buttress assertions about the at-sea execution of alleged drug traffickers. Almost nothing connects these random murders to cartel activity.
The government has shown absolutely no interest in identifying the victims of its extrajudicial murder program. And why would it? Identifying drone strike victims might undercut the government’s unproven assertions. Worse, it might expose it for what it is: small-scale genocide meant to kill non-white people whose ultimate destination might be the United States.
It’s up to everyone else to do what this government and its historically large deficit won’t do: address the human cost of its antagonism towards any nation located south of the US border. Those doing this heavy lifting don’t have the benefit of billions of dollars of funding or internal pressure to discover the truth. They’re doing it because our government won’t.
Twenty journalists involved with the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP) have managed to identify 13 victims of Trump administration drone strikes. And even though it’s only a small percentage of the nearly 200 people our nation has murdered in open waters since Trump took office, it still matters.
This administration may prefer these people to remain faceless and nameless, since it makes their killing that much easier to shrug off. But anyone with an operating conscience shouldn’t pretend this effort is too small to matter. It does, and these are the names of a small portion of the people this administration has presumably straight-up murdered — an assumption that should stand until the administration is willing to produce evidence that says otherwise.
Of the 16 victims now identified, eight are Venezuelans: Juan Carlos Fuentes, 43; Luis Ramón Amundarain, 36; Eduard Hidalgo, 46; Dushak Milovcic, 24; and Robert Sánchez, Jesús Carreño, Eduardo Jaime and Luis Alí Martínez, whose ages are unknown. Three are Colombians: Alejandro Andrés Carranza Medina, 42, and Ronald Arregocés and Adrián Lubo (ages unknown). Two are from Ecuador: Pedro Ramón Holguín Holguín, 40, and Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Solórzano, 34; two are Trinidadians: Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo (age unknown); and one is from Saint Lucia: Ricky Joseph (age unknown).
Some of the people murdered by Trump’s Defense Department were simply going from one country to another to secure employment. Some of them may have been transporting drugs, but they were mules, rather than key members of international drug cartels. What’s actually known about the nearly 200 people the administration has killed is minimal. And the one entity that could provide more insight on its drone strike targets isn’t interested in sharing this information with anyone.
In the eight months since the airstrikes began, the US has not provided any evidence that any of the 194 victims were involved in drug trafficking.
Read that again: the US government has not provided evidence about any of its 194 murder victims. Instead, it has produced a steady stream of baseless invective meant to persuade the stupidest of Americans that these killings were justified.
What is being said by government officials doesn’t erase its refusal to provide evidence backing its claim, much less justify killings it’s unwilling to honestly discuss with the US public or its congressional oversight.
A spokesperson for US Southern Command said that all the strikes were “deliberate, lawful and precise, directed specifically at narco-terrorists and their enablers. We have full confidence in the operations and intelligence professionals who inform our missions.”
This is not evidence of anything. This statement is conclusory, which is the exact opposite of evidence, as any court will tell you. It simply says the government is in the right because the government says it’s in the right. That’s not justification. That’s someone representing entities swallowing up billions of federal officers telling the people paying its outsized paycheck “because I said so” and expecting that to be the end of the discussion.
The American public is not the government’s child. It’s actually the other way around. The government is reliant on the public, which makes the general public the adult in this conversation. That far too many MAGA enablers refuse to be the adults in the room makes it that much easier for the government to pretend it owes the public nothing. But that doesn’t change how this actually works. The government works for us, rather than the other way around. And when it doesn’t, it’s up to the public to remind it of its place.
In this case, it took people in other countries to generate the modicum of accountability this nation — under Trump — appears unwilling to do itself. That’s just fucking sad.
Just a few days ago, I wrote a post about how Bill Cassidy had been primaried out of returning as a senator for Louisiana and how all of this bootlicking of the Trump administration obviously didn’t do the job he hoped it would do. As a result, he has been left as a lame duck senator with a legacy that will be primarily about his decision to belay his own moral stances generally and his heavy hand in RFK Jr. leading HHS under Trump 2.0.
The point of that post was two-fold. First, I wanted to highlight just how damning to his legacy the appointment of Kennedy to HHS has become to his legacy. Second, I wanted to highlight that this supposedly serious senator was perfectly willing to give up on his principles the moment he thought, incorrectly as it turns out, that it would be politically expedient to do so.
And if you need a bow to put on that second point, you can get it now that Cassidy has flipped his vote on the Senate bill to end America’s involvement in the war with Iran until the Trump administration gets authorization from Congress.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who just lost his primary for renomination over the weekend after he faced opposition from Trump, voted “yes” to advance the measure, the first time he has done so after having repeatedly voted “no.”
“While I support the administration’s efforts to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, the White House and Pentagon have left Congress in the dark on Operation Epic Fury,” Cassidy said in a statement. “In Louisiana, I’ve heard from people, including President Trump’s supporters, who are concerned about this war. Until the administration provides clarity, no congressional authorization or extension can be justified.”
It’s amazing how post-election-loss clarity can assist someone in rediscovering their own spinal cord. Now, you can read Cassidy’s comments about how Congress has been left in the dark and that he’s hearing from people worried that maybe this whole warlord routine by Trump isn’t so great and believe that Cassidy came to all of these epiphanies in the last couple of days… if you want. But I’m going to point at you and laugh in your face if you do.
Now that Cassidy has nothing to lose, he’s decided to do the right thing. That isn’t some feather in his cap. It’s a self-indictment of all of his actions leading all the way up to his primary loss. If Cassidy thought this vote was the right thing to do today, what made it the wrong thing to do a week ago? The answer is nothing.
Even if a vote is taken and the bill passes, it would still need to get through the Republican House and survive a presidential veto. There is little chance of either happening. But that isn’t the point.
The point is that Bill Cassidy could have been a patriot over the past year and a half since Trump’s reelection, but he chose not to until he didn’t have a Senate seat to defend. And that makes him a coward.
US tax authorities will be barred from pursuing claims against Donald Trump, his eldest sons and the Trump Organization under an agreement to halt the president’s $10bn lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.
Just like Monday’s news, the framing of this is absolute bullshit. There is no “agreement to halt the lawsuit.” The lawsuit was about to be drop kicked out of court by a judge who pointed out that there is no “cause or controversy” here because Donald Trump was suing himself and had full control over both parties in the lawsuit. You can’t “come to an agreement” with yourself to give yourself a tremendous benefit from the United States government.
That’s not a thing. That’s just theft.
And while it may not be the full $10 billion he sought, it’s still a massive theft from the United States treasury. As you’ll recall, Donald Trump has insisted for years that he couldn’t release his tax returns like every single President since Richard Nixon had done, because they were being audited. But that’s also bullshit. When Nixon released his tax returns, they were being audited. And, indeed, the IRS code requires it to audit both the President and Vice President’s taxes every year.
Reporting from a few years ago found that an audit of Trump’s taxes suggested he owed over $100 million to the US Treasury because of earlier tax fraud.
The issues around Mr. Trump’s case were novel enough that, during his presidency, the I.R.S. undertook a high-level legal review before pursuing it. The Times and ProPublica, in consultation with tax experts, calculated that the revision sought by the I.R.S. would create a new tax bill of more than $100 million, plus interest and potential penalties.
So agreeing to drop the audit entirely is, at minimum, a $100 million gift from the American taxpayer directly to Donald Trump. As a reward for tax fraud.
That seems… very bad. It’s extraordinarily, shockingly corrupt. And it’s probably not even the most corrupt thing he’s done this week.
The actual agreement from the DOJ is hilariously stupid. It’s just three paragraphs long and claims it’s part of the “settlement” of the lawsuit (which, again, cannot be “settled” because there’s only one party). The main part is this:
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.
Basically: clean slate for what appears to be many, many years of tax fraud. So he defrauded the American government, then used his role as the President to just wipe out any ability to hold him accountable for it.
And it’s not like everyone inside the government just went along with it. Reporting says that IRS officials were horrified by the lawsuit and pushed the DOJ to fight back against it.
I.R.S. officials prepared a 25-page memorandum outlining what they saw as flaws in Mr. Trump’s suit and advising the Justice Department to move to dismiss it, according to two people familiar with the memo. That memo was provided to Treasury officials in April, and it is unclear if they passed it along to its intended recipients at the Justice Department, according to the people, who spoke anonymously to discuss internal government deliberations.
The Treasury Department’s top lawyer resigned Monday as the government announced a controversial settlement with President Trump, according to people familiar with his departure.
Brian Morrissey joined the Trump administration last year as the president’s pick to be Treasury Department’s general counsel, after previously serving at the agency and at the Justice Department during Trump’s first term. A former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, Morrissey didn’t respond to a request for comment late Monday.
MAGA world has long since baked in the idea that Trump will rob the American taxpayer blind any way he can. Most people just assumed that came with the territory. Probably fewer assumed “the territory” included filing a $10 billion lawsuit against yourself, having the judge almost throw it out because you’re suing yourself, then “settling” with yourself — and somehow walking away with a clean slate on what appears to be over $100 million in fraud-based tax debt. If this were written up as a movie, no one would make it, as the corruption is simply too over the top and out in the open. And yet, it’s real.
Senator Bill Cassidy just lost his campaign for reelection to his Senate seat in Louisiana. With that, his career in federal government is likely over. It’s no secret as to why this happened. In early 2021, Cassidy suffered from a spasm of patriotism and voted to convict Donald Trump during his impeachment trial after the latter spurred on an attempted insurrection in the capitol that left several people dead, scores injured, and became the most famous stain on American democracy since the Bill Clinton era. Trump turned his retribution cannons on Cassidy, pumped the primary cycle full of vitriol for Cassidy, and managed to shove him from office.
But here’s the thing: fuck Bill Cassidy.
In the years since Trump’s second impeachment trial, Cassidy did his absolute best to throw as much unrequited love at Donald Trump as he possibly could. The moment the political realities became evident, Cassidy’s principles melted away. He spoke glowingly of Trump in his second term. He touted how well he and Trump work together, even as he acknowledged that Trump hates him. He was a reliable pro-Trump vote on nearly everything.
And he was the most important vote in confirming RFK Jr. to his current role as Secretary of HHS. And given how his vote to confirm Kennedy gave his colleagues cover to do so means that he may be the man most singularly responsible for Kennedy’s appointment other than Donald Trump.
Bill Cassidy is more at fault, because he actually knows better. RFK Jr. is an idiot with a brainworm, whereas Bill Cassidy is a doctor. A real doctor who worked in a charity hospital for the uninsured in Louisiana and, to his own testimony, has seen what happens when children don’t get vaccinated. He knew better, and yet he still provided the deciding vote to confirm Kennedy, almost definitely because he saw it as a way back into Trump’s good graces. Clearly, that didn’t happen.
And while he swore up and down that he had given Kennedy a real good talking-to and got all of the assurances that he would not screw with vaccines or change the CDC’s page stating that vaccines do not cause autism, that did not happen either.
He fucked us all to save his own skin, and ended up bloody and skinless anyway. He claimed it would be okay because of said “assurances” and because of his promise to monitor everything Kennedy did.
Monitor Kennedy he did, perhaps, but it certainly didn’t go beyond that. Save for a few contentious congressional hearings and Cassidy occasionally complaining to local news media about Kennedy’s actions at HHS, the man simply didn’t do anything to try to fix the mess he had a heavy hand in creating. He didn’t sign up to help the impeachment effort against Kennedy. He didn’t call for any new legislation to curb the chaos that is happening at HHS and its child agencies right now. He even had kind words to say about Kennedy’s approach to processed foods in the past few weeks.
Taking a moral stand is not a one-time project. Cassidy’s vote to convict Trump in 2021 was the right vote. Nearly everything he’s done since negates that moral stance, as he engaged in the most pathetic forms of boot-licking in an attempt to save his political career.
It didn’t work. Trump doesn’t work that way. Neither does Kennedy. Once you’re on the enemies hit list, you’re never coming off. The Senate will probably be worse for losing Cassidy generally. The Senate Health Committee certainly will be. And that’s too bad.
But fuck Bill Cassidy for foisting RFK Jr. as HHS boss on this country.
We discussed the rumor of this on Friday, but it’s now real: Donald Trump has handed himself a $1.776 billion fund of taxpayer money — unappropriated by Congress — to dole out to friends in the MAGA movement who claim they were mistreated by the Biden administration, but with no judicial review over such claims.
The Fund will have the power to issue formal apologies and monetary relief owed to claimants. Submission of a claim is voluntary. There are no partisan requirements to file a claim. Any money left when the Fund ceases operations will revert to the Federal Government.
The Fund will receive $1.776 billion and will come from the judgment fund, which is a perpetual appropriation allowing DOJ to settle and pay cases. On a quarterly basis, the Fund shall send a report to the Attorney General outlining who has received relief and what form of relief was awarded.
What will the fund be used for? To pay anyone on Team MAGA — including, in theory, January 6th insurrectionists — who claim the Biden administration “weaponized” the government to target them. Many of these claims are simply not true. January 6th insurrectionists were arrested and convicted for actually breaking the law. But now they get to ask Trump for money, and the evidentiary standard appears to be “trust me, bro” and a red MAGA hat.
Let’s first dispense with the most obvious bit of the charade: the idea that this is actually related to the “settlement” of Trump’s already corrupt bullshit lawsuit against the IRS. That’s how this is being presented, but this is entirely separate. Trump needed to drop that lawsuit in order to end it before a judge called bullshit on the fact that he was negotiating with himself to take $10 billion from American taxpayers.
As for the actual “fund” everything about it is about as corrupt as you can imagine. This is impeachment-worthy — and not in a partisan way. Republicans should be as offended by this as anyone else, if they actually (I know… I know…) believe in things like rule of law and fiscal responsibility.
The actual details here should raise so many red flags. First, as part of this illegal attempt to route around Congress’ power of the purse, they’re taking the money out of the Treasury Department’s “Judgment Fund.” But that fund is clearly designed to pay out the results of duly litigated court cases against the government — not a board of Trump’s friends deciding who gets a check. But here, it’s just a group of MAGA insiders who get to choose:
The Fund will consist of five members appointed by the Attorney General. One Member will be chosen in consultation with congressional leadership. The President can remove any member, but a replacement must be chosen the same way as the replaced member was selected.
So, the fund is clearly in service of Donald Trump’s whims, not anyone else’s. We already have his personal lawyer (who has shown a long history of obeying Trump’s orders) as the acting Attorney General, and the fact that Congress only gets to “consult” on one member of the committee, and anyone can be removed by Trump at any moment makes it abundantly clear that this fund is solely around to pay off Trump’s loyal fans, who have a long history of claiming imagined grievances against the Biden administration, which they will now seek to cash in on.
The fund also, notably, will be put into a private account that (according to the settlement) the US government has no control over and no liability for.
Once the funds are deposited into the Designated Account, the United States has no liability whatsoever for the protection or safeguarding of those funds, regardless of bank failure, fraudulent transfers, or any other fraud or misuse of the funds.
This appears to be setting things up so that a future government (or a court) cannot claw back the money once it is delivered from the Treasury into this slush fund, let alone after it is then handed out to anyone on Team MAGA who makes a claim from the fund.
Also, the fund is set up to “close” before the next administration comes into office. How convenient.
The Fund shall cease processing claims no later than December 1, 2028.
The DOJ is claiming that this fund is no different than the Keepseagle fund under the Obama administration:
There is legal precedent for such a Fund, most notably the “Keepseagle” case where the Obama Administration created a $760 million fund to redress various claims alleging racism against the federal government over a period of decades.
In Keepseagle, hundreds of millions of dollars remaining in the fund were distributed to non-profits and NGOs that never made claims, whereas any money remaining in The Anti-Weaponization Fund will revert to the federal government. The Obama DOJ settled by putting $680 million from the judgment fund into a bank account for a single claims administrator to dole out. In Keepseagle the remaining money—which ended up being over $300 million—was distributed to the entities that had not even submitted claims.
This is blatantly revisionist history. The Keepseagle settlement was approved by a court in response to a class action lawsuit. Here, this fund, is being created in a manner deliberately to avoid having the court review it. It also paid people out for a specific, and verifiable harm: Native American farmers who were denied a farm loan from the USDA during a specific period of time who were eligible for that loan. The lawsuit was because the USDA had deliberately denied those loans to Native American farmers, while giving them to white farmers.
In that case, there was a clear harm, a clear way to delineate who was harmed, and court oversight of the process. In this case, there is literally none of that. Anyone arguing that Keepseagle is the same thing as this slush fund is either being deliberately dishonest or hasn’t read the basic facts. Even well known conservative lawyers like Ed Whelan (a former Scalia clerk) is calling out that this fund is highly questionable:
The fund itself is an abuse of power and clearly unconstitutional. As constitutional lawyer (and now Representative) Jamie Raskin noted last week in an interview with the New Republic, if the fund is used to pay off January 6 insurrectionists, it also likely violates the Fourteenth Amendment, which has a prohibition on the US government paying for those who engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the US:
There’s still more. Raskin notes that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the government from assuming any “obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.” Raskin said that if this fund hands money to the January 6 rioters, Trump will be “using federal taxpayer dollars to compensate people who participated in insurrection.”
The “imagine if Biden did this” test is almost beside the point here (though, seriously, just imagine how people, including Democrats, would react). We’re past the moment where consistency of principle was the relevant standard. What matters is that $1.776 billion in unappropriated taxpayer money is being routed through a board of Trump loyalists, into an account the government has explicitly disclaimed responsibility for, on a clock that runs out before the next administration takes office.
The “settlement” framing is just the bow on top. The $1.776 billion slush fund for MAGA’s worst is the point.
White House border czar Tom Homan said Thursday he’s “sure” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have detained U.S. citizens, “but we don’t deport them.”
Homan told reporters outside the White House that U.S. citizens have “nothing to fear.”
“We deport people that are going to be deportable,” he continued. “We arrest people that will be deportable based on suspicion. Have U.S. citizens ever been shortly detained based on suspicion? I’m sure. I’m sure.”
This is demonstrably false. For the moment, children born in the United States are considered to be US citizens. The Trump administration wants to end birthright citizenship, but it hasn’t managed to accomplish that yet. But that isn’t stopping it from deporting US citizens just because they’re too young to be capable of invoking their rights, like the two-year-old US born child the administration deported to Honduras in direct violation of a federal court order.
Pretending it’s no big deal for US citizens to have their rights violated intermittently as the government goes after non-white people, that’s even more obnoxious. That the administration hasn’t deported large numbers of US citizens is a miracle, rather than an indicator of ICE competence.
If you keep arresting the same person over and over, sooner or later what’s left of the safety net will fail and that citizen will be expelled from the country. That’s what one US citizen is hoping to prevent with his lawsuit against the government, which is being handled by the Institute for Justice. On multiple occasions, federal officers have decided this US citizen is deserving of deportation, as Isabela Dias reports for Mother Jones:
In a declaration submitted as part of a civil lawsuit, Garcia Venegas said the agents pulled him out of the car and onto the ground, and shackled his arms and legs. Garcia Venegas estimates seven or eight law enforcement personnel, including US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and local police—most of whom wore plain clothes and tactical vests—surrounded him. They asked him no questions.
Garcia Venegas, a 26-year-old Florida-born US citizen, said he tried to show his Alabama STAR ID as proof of status, but the agents ignored him. They put him in the back seat of one of their vehicles, questioned him about his place of birth, and searched his wallet. He offered to provide his American passport, which was inside the house, but the agents refused. Several minutes later, they released him, but not before having dogs sniff the truck for drugs, according to the declaration. Garcia Venegas said the officers told him he had been stopped because the car he was driving was registered in the name of his brother, who is undocumented.
One time might be an aberration. Repeated occurrences are something else entirely.
This wasn’t the first time ICE agents stopped and held Garcia Venegas. In fact, Saturday’s encounter marked the third such incident, according to court filings. Garcia Venegas, whose parents are originally from Mexico, had twice before been detained after ICE raided construction sites where he was working, and twice before he was let go after proving his American citizenship.
On one hand, repetition indicates that anti-migrant efforts under Trump are extremely sloppy, overseen by people who value quantity over quality. That’s almost certainly true, especially now that the DHS has lowered hiring and training standards for ICE. On top of that, there’s the casual racism of the policies, which — thanks to the Supreme Court — are pretty much legal because officers are allowed to infer from darker skin tones that someone might be in the country illegally.
On the other hand, there’s a chance Venegas is being targeted repeatedly for vindictive reasons. That seems less likely, at least in terms of what’s been detailed in his court filings. If it continues now that his lawsuit has been filed, that might suggest his arrests and detentions are no longer accidental.
Whatever the case, there’s going to be more of this happening, no matter what half-assed niceties Tom Homan might state during press conferences. The Trump administration is fighting to end birthright citizenship in this nation. If it does make this happen, it won’t be retroactive. But that’s hardly going to matter to the DHS and its underling agencies, which have repeatedly violated the letter and spirit of existing laws, when not violating direct orders from federal courts.
The Trump administration on Friday announced a major expansion of its denaturalization campaign targeting foreign-born American citizens accused of fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship.
The Justice Department unveiled denaturalization cases in federal courts across the country against roughly a dozen U.S. citizens born overseas. Officials said they had committed serious crimes or immigration fraud, or had ties to terrorism.
At first glance, this might look like the sort of thing the US government should be doing. This takes serious criminals off our books (so to speak) and sends problematic naturalized citizens back to their home countries to be their problem.
But we already know how this is going to work. The “worst of the worst” lie has been uttered repeatedly to defend the administration’s aggressive/transgressive tactics. But the facts have repeatedly shown the administration just wants non-whites gone. It doesn’t really care about any relevant criminal activity.
The same thing is happening here. The administration is making it clear this is just more bigotry, rather than an actual effort to root out the “worst of the worst” for the safety of the nation.
The group of naturalized U.S. citizens whose citizenship the Justice Department is now seeking to revoke includes immigrants from Bolivia, China, Colombia, Gambia, India, Iraq, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Somalia and Uzbekistan.
While this group does include some accused of molesting a child and a supposed terrorist sympathizer, it also includes these people:
The group also includes individuals who allegedly used false identities to apply for immigration benefits and a man who allegedly entered into sham marriages to commit immigration fraud.
These are far less serious crimes, which don’t lend themselves to the “worst of the worst” narrative the administration deploys when its actions are questioned.
The lack of diversity (in other words, no white people or those with ties to Western European countries) in those selected to be first up for denaturalization is a leading indicator of further unlawful detentions of US citizens. As the government goes after more non-white US citizens under this pretense, DHS agencies will respond by rounding up more non-white US citizens, turning Homan’s false assurances into the lie it was always meant to be.
The administration actually wants to deport certain US citizens. That these agencies are far too willing to oblige, even without the necessary facts in hand, will definitely increase the number of citizens being held by ICE and correspondingly increase the number of those deported despite still being citizens of this nation.
One recurring theme during the Trump era is that because he fundamentally doesn’t know how anything actually works, his beliefs and policies are broadly shaped by whatever terrible rich person was in his ear last. Even when it comes to stuff like streaming video. It’s all transactional cronyism, and by and large the public interest is routinely a distant afterthought. The press then normalizes it as serious adult policy.
We saw that recently when Trump decided to protect the supposed “sanctity” of the Army Navy college football game with an illegal executive order. While this was framed by many press outlets as Trump “protecting a longstanding American tradition,” it was really because Paramount (CBS and Larry Ellison) was upset that they were losing viewership to college game streaming alternatives on ESPN.
The same phenomenon popped up recently with Trump’s sudden criticism of the NFL. The NFL has been airing games on a more diverse array of streaming partners (including Amazon, Netflix, and its own NFL+ service), meaning slightly fewer games are shown over traditional broadcast TV. Last month, the Trump DOJ launched an “antitrust investigation” into the NFL’s business practices.
The press framed the inquiry as a good faith antitrust inquiry by the Trump administration. But while having to subscribe to multiple services to watch a full array of NFL games certainly is annoying to people, the NFL counters that 87 percent of all games are televised by broadcast TV. And among America’s broad monopolistic dysfunction (telecom, energy, airlines, banking), the NFL is small potatoes.
A follow up report from the (ironically) Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal (see non-paywalled NBC synopsis) now indicates that the whole thing started because Rupert Murdoch whined to Trump about losing NFL game TV audience share at a dinner last February:
“Via the Wall Street Journal, Fox owner Rupert Murdoch told President Donald Trump during a February dinner that, if the NFL sells more games to streaming companies, “it would kill broadcast networks.”
Since then, the NFL has endured increased scrutiny from multiple prongs of the federal government. From Congress to the FCC to the Department of Justice, the league has found itself on the wrong end of unprecedented heat.”
Amusingly, the two other major Rupert-owned outlets, the New York Post and Fox News, have been selling Trump’s obvious cronyism as a good faith antitrust intervention on behalf of consumers:
Countless other non-Murdoch-owned outlets propped up the claim that Trump was simply doing what was right for consumers, cares about antitrust, and was focused on “affordability.” The New York Times, for example, frames Trump’s complaints as genuine good faith concerns about consumer costs. There’s no indication that the sudden inquiry into the NFL’s business practices could have any other origins.
Republicans (especially Trump Republicans) endlessly coddle monopoly power (again: see telecom, energy, airlines) and work tirelessly to dismantle consumer protection regulations and corporate oversight, but you’ll notice they’re routinely given credit for consumer-focused initiatives and “antitrust reforms” that either have ulterior motives or never come to fruition. From the Times:
“Other politicians are also trying to take action on a scattered and costly sports TV landscape. In March, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, submitted a letter requesting that the DOJ and Federal Trade Commission review antitrust exceptions given to the NFL. In April, Sen. Tammy Baldwin said she plans to introduce legislation aimed at decreasing TV costs and blackouts for sports fans.”
Republicans, MAGA, and “free market Libertarians” love fiercely competitive “free markets” until they very suddenly don’t. At which point their cronyism, favoritism, bailouts, or other weird interventions are dressed up as good faith antitrust reform by a corporate press looking for its own access and favors.
This same normalization of Trump’s cronyism plays out in every sector, across the entirety of U.S. media, constantly. It helps prop up the bogus Trump administration claims of populist antitrust enforcement, when what we’re really talking about is a corrupt and purely transactional man who doesn’t understand how anything works and is easily swayed to action — if he thinks it’s of personal benefit to himself and his biggest donors.
The saga of Trump suing his own IRS for $10 billion just got weirder. What started as a brazenly corrupt attempt to personally pocket $10 billion in taxpayer money has now morphed into something arguably worse: a $1.7 billion patronage slush fund — unappropriated by Congress — that Trump could dole out to loyal MAGA allies who claim they were “victimized” by the Biden administration.
As you’ll recall, Trump sued his own IRS over something that a contractor (who has already been convicted and is currently serving in prison) did: leaking some tax returns Trump had promised to release, but never did. He asked for $10 billion, in a situation where he, himself, would decide if he got paid or not. When his own DOJ told the court that it was negotiating a settlement, the judge pointed out that she was concerned that it looked an awful lot like a single party negotiating with itself over how much of the Treasury it should receive.
The judge — Kathleen Williams — asked for further briefing from “both” parties on this, and the deadline is coming up quickly, which is why various purported “settlements” are leaking to the press. A few days ago it was going to be that Trump and all of his family and all of his related businesses would magically have all IRS audits dropped, which would be an astoundingly brazen level of corruption.
But now ABC is reporting about another potential “settlement” (again, “settlement” is the wrong word — it’s Trump’s legal team negotiating with Trump’s DOJ, which is run by his former legal team. It’s one team negotiating with itself) which is just as egregious and corrupt: Trump would apparently agree to drop his case against the IRS in exchange for… a $1.7 billion slush fund of taxpayer money that he could dole out to his friends who whine to the government that they were “targeted” for retribution by a “weaponized” Biden administration.
President Donald Trump is expected to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The commission overseeing the compensation fund would have the total authority to hand out approximately $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds to settle claims brought by anyone who alleges they were harmed by the Biden administration’s “weaponization” of the legal system, including the nearly 1,600 individuals charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol attack as well as potentially entities associated with President Trump himself.
So, yeah, a $1.7 billion slush fund for Trump supporters who (in some cases) literally engaged in insurrection to overturn the results of a free and fair election, or for various hangers-on who play the victim every chance they get and pretend the Biden administration “weaponized” the government against them.
It’s not worth getting into the possibility of using this slush fund to pay off the ~1,600 Trump supporters who were duly convicted in a court of law for various crimes, all of whom were later pardoned by Trump (even as dozens of them have been re-arrested for other crimes, which should put to rest any remaining notion that Trump is the “law and order” president — but of course it won’t).
But we can talk about the various claims of “weaponization” because we covered many of them. Remember, Jim Jordan got himself appointed as the anti-weaponization czar in Congress, and used that to actually weaponize the government to investigate and attack individuals and organizations who were not the government, but who Jordan felt unfairly pointed out disinformation and lies from those MAGA supported.
The supposed investigations into the “weaponization” of the government to suppress speech served only to suppress the First Amendment protected speech of academic researchers and organizations. And now all those who falsely insisted that the Biden administration “censored” them, even as all the evidence showed that social media companies removed content because they found that the content violated their own rules, will get to line up at the trough to get free money from American taxpayers.
This is Donald Trump handing out American taxpayer money that has never been appropriated by Congress for this purpose — shoveling it to anyone who claims victimhood under his banner, whether convicted insurrectionists, Trump allies who want their legal bills paid, or propagandists who got called out for spreading disinformation. We’re already seeing this play out. This week, Trump’s DOJ “settled” with the pandemic’s wrongest man, Alex Berenson, who got suspended from Twitter not because of any government action, but because Twitter felt that he violated their rules against spreading health misinformation.
Berenson has been suing over this for years (and mostly losing), but this week Trump agreed to pay him $150,000 and “admit” that the Biden administration tried to censor him. While some are trying to present this as some sort of big victory, getting Donald Trump to blame Joe Biden for something that didn’t happen — while shoveling taxpayer money to a man who publicly supports Trump — is not exactly a landmark legal victory. It’s almost expected in the Trump era.
The Berenson payout is a preview. Once the $1.7 billion fund is running, expect a line out the door of Trump’s groveling fans making false claims about Biden “weaponizing” the government — all of it paid for by taxpayers, none of it appropriated by Congress.
In a ruling that will clearly be remembered as one of the worst in the history of the Supreme Court, two years ago, the court gave Donald Trump a get out of jail free card, which he appears to be trying to take full advantage of with all the criming in his second term. But, as always with this guy, it’s never enough.
We’ve already covered in detail the ridiculous situation in which Donald Trump acting in his supposed personal capacity, while still being the president, sued his own IRS for $10 billion, because a contractor leaked his tax returns a while back (that contractor is currently in prison for doing so). Again, there is zero indication of any actual harm. Every president — and nearly all major candidates — for the past 50 years released their tax returns to the public. Except Trump.
A decade ago he claimed that it was because he was being audited, and promised to release them once the audit was over. But he’s never done anything. And, as many people have noted, when President Richard Nixon started this tradition of releasing the president’s tax returns, he was actually being audited by the IRS, and was able to release his returns without a problem.
Either way, a contractor (not an IRS employee) leaked some of Trump’s returns to ProPublica and the NY Times, which resulted in a few stories before the news cycle moved on within days. It certainly didn’t stop Trump from being elected in 2024. And even though the returns were leaked in 2019 and 2020, Trump waited until he was back in the White House (and, in charge of the IRS and the DOJ) to file this $10 billion lawsuit.
We’ve covered the ridiculous claim that the “two sides” (there aren’t two sides) were “negotiating a settlement” and how the judge in the case has tried to call timeout, noticing that since Trump is effectively negotiating with himself there’s no cause or controversy, and thus there may be no jurisdiction for the court to hear the case. There’s still briefing going on over that, but the NY Times reports that the supposed (not really) “negotiations” have continued, with Trump apparently proposing that the settlement include the IRS dropping audits of Trump, his businesses, and his family, which would just be a shocking level of corruption from an administration that has spent its first year and a half in office trying to be as blatantly corrupt as possible.
One of the settlement options the Justice Department and White House officials are reviewing is the possibility of the I.R.S. dropping any audits of Mr. Trump, his family members or businesses, according to two of the people.
Again, even though the news cycle moved on quickly, perhaps it should return to exactly what those leaked tax returns showed: which is that at a time when Trump was publicly claiming to be rolling in cash, he basically paid effectively no income taxes and was racking up massive losses — figures that raise serious questions about his financial entanglements and what he stood to gain from his first term in office.
To have the audits of what happened during those years completely dropped — and not just for him, but for his entire family and related businesses — is another form of a get out of jail free card. Call it a “tax cheat for life” card.
To do this at a time when the public is struggling, due almost entirely to Donald Trump’s ridiculous policies — tariffs driving up inflation massively, an illegal war quagmire in Iran driving up energy prices — is even more insulting to the public that Donald Trump is supposed to be working for. The same day this story came out, Trump was asked about whether he was thinking about the impact of his out-of-control war on Americans’ financial situation, and he responded “not even a little bit” and that “I don’t think about Americans financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”
To the narcotics agents investigating drug smuggling in Puerto Rico prisons, it seemed at first like a typical scheme: associates of an inmate gang sneaking drugs into the prison, gang members distributing them inside and bank records showing the money flowing.
Then the agents discovered something unusual.
Leaders of the prison gang known as Los Tiburones, or the Sharks, were selling drugs to inmates not only for money, but for their votes. Specifically, votes for now-Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón, a longtime Republican and supporter of President Donald Trump, investigators found.
To make sure the inmates — many of whom were addicted — complied, the gang’s leaders threatened violence and to withhold drugs, the investigators learned. Corrections employees in on the plan looked the other way as the gang, formally known as Group 31, ran the enterprise.
What at first seemed like a routine drug case had turned into something bigger. Puerto Rico, along with just a couple of U.S. states, allows inmates to vote. Puerto Ricans living in the territory can vote in all contests except federal general elections. It is a felony to willfully offer money or gifts in exchange for support at the polls. A conviction carries fines of as much as $250,000 and imprisonment of up to two years.
Investigators had gathered solid evidence of election fraud implicating both inmates and staff, and they were working toward determining whether González-Colón or her campaign was involved, four people with knowledge of the case told ProPublica. They requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the case.
But as federal prosecutors prepared an indictment against the inmates and staff in November 2024 — just days after Trump won the election and González-Colón clinched the governorship — they received a surprising directive. Their bosses in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Puerto Rico instructed them to exclude the voting-related counts against the inmates and all charges against the prison staff, an investigation by ProPublica found.
In December, they filed an indictment charging 34 inmates and associates with crimes including drug distribution resulting in at least four overdose deaths, money laundering and possessing a firearm. And while prosecutors described the drugs-for-votes scheme in the court filing, they did not include a single charge related to it.
Soon after Trump took office, the lead prosecutor, Jorge Matos, was told by a supervisor to take the investigation no further, according to four people familiar with the case.
“Before the election, it was definitely full steam ahead,” said one person familiar with the case. “After the election, that all changed.”
Matos, who left the Justice Department in June 2025, did not respond to phone calls or texts from ProPublica or attempts to reach him on social media.
For those working on the case, the decision to scrap the investigation was especially puzzling given the new president’s agenda; Trump issued executive orders in early 2025 aimed at eradicating drug traffickers and declaring election integrity “fundamental” to maintaining American democracy.
“We invested so much effort to make a difference,” said another person. “We’re frustrated, but there’s nothing we can do.”
People close to the case wondered if politics had played a bigger role than law and order. Trump congratulated González-Colón in a letter shared at her January 2025 inauguration saying, “I am so proud of your resounding victory.” That same month, she pushed to erect a statue of him at the Capitol building in San Juan alongside other presidents who’ve visited the island. “He deserves that,” she said, according to an official post from the Federal Affairs Administration of Puerto Rico on X.
W. Stephen Muldrow, the U.S. attorney for the District of Puerto Rico, was appointed by Trump in 2019 and has served continuously since then. His name appears on the indictment along with those of three assistant U.S. attorneys. Muldrow told ProPublica his office does not comment on open investigations other than in press releases or press conferences. While a couple of the inmates have accepted plea deals, most of the drug and money-laundering cases against the inmates and associates are still making their way through the court system.
In a follow-up email, a spokesperson for the office noted the indictment was filed during the Biden administration and under the previous governor of Puerto Rico.
Charging corrupt public officials “has always been and remains a top priority” of the office, wrote spokesperson Lymarie Llovet-Ayala.
“When sufficient admissible evidence exists to charge persons involved in public corruption, as required by the Justice Manual, the Puerto Rico U.S. Attorney’s Office will aggressively pursue such charges,” she wrote.
In court documents tied to a different case, in October 2025, a magistrate judge mentioned “an unrelated white-collar investigation involving the Governor of Puerto Rico.” Muldrow’s office responded in a filing, stating, “There is no white-collar investigation (or any other investigation) of Puerto Rico Governor Jenniffer González-Colón.”
González-Colón has not been charged with a crime. The governor declined ProPublica’s repeated requests for an interview and did not respond to written questions sent to her communications team.
Muldrow had a friendly working relationship with former Attorney General Pam Bondi when she was the state attorney general in Florida and he was an assistant U.S. attorney in the middle district of that state, according to people who know him.
A Department of Justice spokesperson said in an email, “Neither Attorney General Bondi nor Acting Attorney General Blanche was involved in any charging or investigative decision in this Biden administration prosecution.”
The attorney general’s office noted in a statement that the indictment mentioned allegations of voting coercion, and said: “This office did not limit the underlying investigation in any way.”
In May 2025, in a move that federal prosecutors and political observers alike said was highly unusual, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence seized the voting machines from Puerto Rico over concerns about “vulnerabilities,” according to testimony in March by Director Tulsi Gabbard to Congress.
A spokesperson from the office told ProPublica the seizure was at the request of the U.S. attorney’s office in Puerto Rico and was “not about any election in particular.” The goal was to “assess risk to this critical infrastructure, given similar infrastructure is used throughout the United States,” the spokesperson said in an email.
Muldrow didn’t answer questions from ProPublica about the matter.
Lydia Lizarribar, an attorney for Juan Carlos Ortiz-Vazquez, a Group 31 member who prosecutors named as one of the leaders of the drug operation, declined to comment on the case.
A Party “Stronghold”
The Puerto Rican prison system has a long and well-documented history of overcrowding, inadequate medical care and other human rights violations so egregious that in the late 1970s they prompted federal oversight that continued for decades.
The grim conditions spurred inmates to form advocacy groups like Group 31, which was officially created as a nonprofit to lobby corrections officials and lawmakers to improve inmates’ quality of life. Over time, federal prosecutors say, several of these groups operating in the prisons evolved into violent criminal organizations such as Los Tiburones and Ñetas, with memberships in the thousands.
The poor conditions were also the backdrop for a push in 1980 by the New Progressive Party governor at the time, Carlos Romero Barceló, to codify voting rights for prisoners.
Inmates have been aligned with the party ever since, political analysts said. Political parties in Puerto Rico differ dramatically from those on the mainland. They don’t adhere to a straight divide among Democrats and Republicans. Instead, the two main parties center much of their focus on whether Puerto Rico should become a state and so have Republicans and Democrats within each.
It’s not unheard of for politicians of all parties to court the inmate vote, but the New Progressive Party has made it a “stronghold,” said Fernando Tormos-Aponte, a political scientist with expertise on Puerto Rico and an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh.
“It’s been a huge advantage for them particularly as elections in Puerto Rico have been decided by small margins,” Tormos-Aponte said of the New Progressive Party. In the 2024 general election for governor, the party won 83% of the inmate vote, according to a ProPublica tally of voter returns on the State Elections Commission’s website.
Inmate votes were especially key in the 2024 gubernatorial primary as González-Colón, a longtime New Progressive Party member, was challenging the incumbent governor of the same party.
She won the primary by fewer than 30,000 votes, according to the State Elections Commission. Local news reports said that an estimated 5,000 prisoners voted territorywide.
In her first months in office, González-Colón signed a law allowing people with criminal records to obtain professional licenses in Puerto Rico.
In July, she signed off on a law expanding inmates’ ability to hold jobs in the private sector, calling it “part of a vision of social justice,” adding “we believe in the second chance, in the value of work and in the capacity for transformation of the human being.”
In March, González-Colón signed a law requiring the parole review board increase the pace at which parole denials are reconsidered. She said in a press release the law is aimed at a “fairer, more transparent system focused on rehabilitation.”
Political analysts said rumors have swirled over the decades about coercive tactics being used to mobilize the prison vote, raising significant questions about the extent to which that support comes in exchange for favors from the ruling party.
This time was different, sources said. They had evidence. Prosecutors had “locked up” the voting-for-drugs scheme among the gang, inmates and staff, and were deep into investigating a potential political connection when Muldrow’s office pulled the plug.
“These are the type of questions you would think an administration that has publicly declared this war on drug trafficking would investigate further,” Tormos-Aponte said of the Trump administration. “You would think it would be a priority.”
For the people familiar with the prison election fraud investigation, it was clear politics were at play in the decision to abandon charges prosecutors were confident they could win. What wasn’t clear, they said, was who was pulling the strings and how. It was “like you’re watching a puppet show but you can’t see the strings,” one person said.
“You know what you’re seeing isn’t telling the whole story,” the person said. “There was some kind of invisible hand.”
Drugs for Votes
Although they excluded drugs-for-votes charges, prosecutors didn’t scrub the Dec. 12, 2024, indictment of how they believed the operation worked.
Outside associates of Los Tiburones, the indictment alleged, primarily used drones to drop drugs on prison grounds. Then staff participating in the scheme helped in the “introduction and distribution” of the drugs inside the prison or acted as lookouts. The employees also allowed the gang members to enforce their own discipline system against those who didn’t do as they asked, including when voting. Punishments included withholding food from inmates or forcing them to sit with their arms folded while they were beaten and kicked. In four cases, the drugs led to overdose deaths, the indictment says.
The indictment also alleged that Los Tiburones made connections with government officials “for the purpose of reducing prison sentences,” and the gang mandated both the prisoners’ political affiliations and “who to vote for in primary and general elections.”
A relative of one of the prisoners told ProPublica that inmates had to show their ballots to gang leaders when they voted to avoid punishment.
Puerto Rico’s Civil Rights Commission, which for decades has sent observers to polls across the territory, reported “serious difficulties” in gaining access to several prisons during the 2024 general election. After being denied entry at multiple locations, the commission successfully sought a court order, but much of the day had already passed by the time the observers were allowed in.
“We strongly condemn the lack of diligence and indifference shown by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in hindering the functions of this Commission on the day of early voting in correctional institutions,” the agency later wrote in a special report on the 2024 elections.
The report said observers witnessed prisoners voting in cramped quarters that didn’t allow for privacy and having to hand their ballots to others to put in the box.
Ever Padilla-Ruiz, the commission’s executive director, told ProPublica that inmates sent written complaints to the office detailing their experiences of being pressured to vote in the primary — some for González-Colón and others for her opponent, Pedro Pierluisi. They did not mention any gangs by name, Padilla-Ruiz said.
He said inmates reported that inmate group leaders were “always sending messages” up until election day, adding that they were too afraid to say much more.
Several people familiar with the case said investigators had evidence that González-Colón had spoken to a Group 31 member, but they had not determined whether she was involved in vote buying.
One of the imprisoned gang leaders had bragged on Facebook about his connection to González-Colón, posting a picture of him talking with her on WhatsApp while the primary campaign for governor was underway, two sources said.
She clearly benefited from the scheme, they said. “There was no doubt about that,” one said, noting that thousands of votes were likely at stake.
The indictment notes that gang members were provided preferential treatment such as relaxed visitation policies and the use of Sony PlayStations, big screen TVs and cellphones, but investigators had not connected the privileges to González-Colón or her campaign.
“Latinos Are Winning”
González-Colón has been a longtime advocate for Puerto Rico statehood and has been engaged in Republican politics for more than 20 years. She was elected chair of the Republican Party of Puerto Rico in 2015 and two years later became resident commissioner, a role similar to a U.S. representative but with limited voting power in Congress.
She’s been an active participant in Latinos for Trump, praising the president over the years as “wise” and in 2019 saying on social media, “Latinos are winning under his leadership.”
As she continues to lobby for Puerto Rico to become the 51st state, González-Colón has also leaned in to her relationships with other members of Trump’s Cabinet, posting well wishes on social media to Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, and congratulating Markwayne Mullin, the Homeland Security director Trump picked to replace Kristi Noem, calling him “my good friend.”
“I know he will provide strong leadership as he works with President Donald J. Trump to strengthen our nation’s security,” she wrote in a March Facebook post.
Experts on Puerto Rican finance and politics say the relationship between González-Colón and the Trump administration is symbiotic though lopsided.
“I see it more as a situation of unrequited love,” said Alvin Velazquez, an associate law professor at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law and an expert on Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy in 2017.
The territorial island, whose residents were granted U.S. citizenship in 1917, receives less federal funding than most states. Political leaders in Puerto Rico, González-Colón included, have perpetually lobbied for more support.
Republicans in turn have capitalized on González-Colón’s rise as she helped bolster GOP support among the Puerto Rican diaspora and other Latino voters on the mainland. Now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio endorsed González-Colón in her 2024 gubernatorial election.
Polls specifically isolating Puerto Rican voters show that Trump saw at least a 4 percentage point uptick in votes from Puerto Ricans living in states compared to the 2020 election, garnering 45% of the group’s vote in the 2024 election, according to the nonprofit research center Instituto Cervantes at Harvard University.
And perhaps most importantly, experts say, Trump has counted on González-Colón to support his strategic geopolitical initiatives in the region, including the controversial reopening of long-abandoned naval bases in Puerto Rico. González-Colón welcomed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to the island in September and thanked Trump on X for “recognizing the strategic value Puerto Rico has to the national security of the United States and the fight against drug cartels in our hemisphere.”
That’s despite the sentiment among many Puerto Ricans who were angered by Trump’s response to Hurricane Maria in 2017 and a comedian at one of Trump’s 2024 campaign rallies who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” And while Trump has said that González-Colón was “wonderful to deal with and a great representative of the people,” he later called Puerto Rico “one of the most corrupt places on earth.”
