@Daily Kos
When it comes to the power of the courts, President Donald Trump has learned his lesson. Unfortunately, thanks to the United States Supreme Court inventing a new form of immunity to protect him from any consequences, the lesson Trump seems to have learned is that all courts, everywhere, should do the same. So Trump is taking his show on the road to demand that the International Criminal Court agree never to prosecute him or any of his top officials who have been party to the straight-up murder of boaters in the Caribbean. If they won’t agree, he’s going to slap sanctions on the whole court. Trump is right to worry, as should Attorney General Pam Bondi and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Whether you characterize their actions as war crimes or murder, they are crimes nonetheless. Related | Years of Republican minority rule broke the Supreme Court—and our democracy To get a special gift of immunity from the ICC, however, is a wee bit harder than getting it from the Supreme Court, which only required convincing six amoral conservative justices. The ICC would literally have to amend its founding documents, known as the Rome Statute, just to protect Trump. Well, how hard can that be, really? Just yell at the ICC and threaten sanctions until they do it, right? Not quite. The ICC was established by a treaty, the aforementioned Rome Statute. It lays out the international crimes that the ICC can investigate: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression. The ICC only has authority to act if a state will not. In other words, the ICC couldn’t do a thing to Trump if the United States were investigating or prosecuting him, but we know that’s never going to happen. Amending the Rome Statute to somehow give Trump special protection would require two-thirds of the signatories to agree to the amendment. There are 125 countries that have signed, and we’ve alienated a bunch of them, so the idea that 80 or more countries would agree to wrap Trump in a blanket of immunity is absurd. Nonetheless, that’s the idea being floated by an unnamed administration official. “The solution is that they need to change the Rome Statute to make very clear that they don't have jurisdiction,” the anonymous lackey said. Oh, wait, it might be even harder than that. The move would also need approval from the ICC’s governing body, and because the change in the court’s jurisdiction would be so major and so fundamental, it might require approval from more than two-thirds of the members. The United States had already slapped sanctions on individual ICC judges and prosecutors for daring to investigate Israel’s war crimes back in August, and to force the ICC to stop investigating possible U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan, we sanctioned nine ICC officials. We have never, however, sanctioned the whole court, which is what Trump is threatening to do. These sorts of sanctions are designed to grind the court's work to a halt. Sanctioned prosecutors and judges can’t travel to the United States because they can’t get visas, their bank accounts get frozen, and they face the possibility of up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine if they continue their work. If Trump sanctions the whole court, it would drastically affect its ability to function. Related | Trump suddenly declares military operation as Epstein scandal reignites As is so common these days, Trump is just following the lead of his favorite strongman buddy. After the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, the dictator responded by issuing warrants for ICC staff. Trump’s belief that he somehow has authority over the ICC springs from the same dumb, poisoned well as his belief that he should be allowed to dictate court outcomes in other countries. Witness his sanctions on Brazilian judicial officials because they dared to prosecute their corrupt former president, Jair Bolsonaro. Don’t these fools know that their job is to protect strongmen and ensure they get elected again? Trump has been so coddled by the Supreme Court that he seems genuinely confused that other courts won’t simply bend to his will. But those courts aren’t in thrall to him and they’re not controlled by his pals and cronies, so it’s not going to work.
When it comes to the power of the courts, President Donald Trump has learned his lesson. Unfortunately, thanks to the United States Supreme Court inventing a new form of immunity to protect him from any consequences, the lesson Trump seems to have learned is that all courts, everywhere, should do the same. So Trump is taking his show on the road to demand that the International Criminal Court agree never to prosecute him or any of his top officials who have been party to the straight-up murder of boaters in the Caribbean. If they won’t agree, he’s going to slap sanctions on the whole court. Trump is right to worry, as should Attorney General Pam Bondi and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Whether you characterize their actions as war crimes or murder, they are crimes nonetheless. Related | Years of Republican minority rule broke the Supreme Court—and our democracy To get a special gift of immunity from the ICC, however, is a wee bit harder than getting it from the Supreme Court, which only required convincing six amoral conservative justices. The ICC would literally have to amend its founding documents, known as the Rome Statute, just to protect Trump. Well, how hard can that be, really? Just yell at the ICC and threaten sanctions until they do it, right? Not quite. The ICC was established by a treaty, the aforementioned Rome Statute. It lays out the international crimes that the ICC can investigate: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression. The ICC only has authority to act if a state will not. In other words, the ICC couldn’t do a thing to Trump if the United States were investigating or prosecuting him, but we know that’s never going to happen. Amending the Rome Statute to somehow give Trump special protection would require two-thirds of the signatories to agree to the amendment. There are 125 countries that have signed, and we’ve alienated a bunch of them, so the idea that 80 or more countries would agree to wrap Trump in a blanket of immunity is absurd. Nonetheless, that’s the idea being floated by an unnamed administration official. “The solution is that they need to change the Rome Statute to make very clear that they don't have jurisdiction,” the anonymous lackey said. Oh, wait, it might be even harder than that. The move would also need approval from the ICC’s governing body, and because the change in the court’s jurisdiction would be so major and so fundamental, it might require approval from more than two-thirds of the members. The United States had already slapped sanctions on individual ICC judges and prosecutors for daring to investigate Israel’s war crimes back in August, and to force the ICC to stop investigating possible U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan, we sanctioned nine ICC officials. We have never, however, sanctioned the whole court, which is what Trump is threatening to do. These sorts of sanctions are designed to grind the court's work to a halt. Sanctioned prosecutors and judges can’t travel to the United States because they can’t get visas, their bank accounts get frozen, and they face the possibility of up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine if they continue their work. If Trump sanctions the whole court, it would drastically affect its ability to function. Related | Trump suddenly declares military operation as Epstein scandal reignites As is so common these days, Trump is just following the lead of his favorite strongman buddy. After the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, the dictator responded by issuing warrants for ICC staff. Trump’s belief that he somehow has authority over the ICC springs from the same dumb, poisoned well as his belief that he should be allowed to dictate court outcomes in other countries. Witness his sanctions on Brazilian judicial officials because they dared to prosecute their corrupt former president, Jair Bolsonaro. Don’t these fools know that their job is to protect strongmen and ensure they get elected again? Trump has been so coddled by the Supreme Court that he seems genuinely confused that other courts won’t simply bend to his will. But those courts aren’t in thrall to him and they’re not controlled by his pals and cronies, so it’s not going to work.
Daily Kos
Trump's immunity demands go global
When it comes to the power of the courts, President Donald Trump has learned his lesson. Unfortunately, thanks to the United States Supreme Court i...
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that President Donald Trump's tariffs are leading to inflation, confirming what economists have been warning since he first announced his idiotic trade policies earlier this year. "Inflation for goods has picked up, reflecting the effects of tariffs," Powell said after the Federal Reserve Board voted to cut interest rates to address what Powell described as a “challenging” problem as both inflation and unemployment increase in tandem. President Donald Trump listens as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a visit to the Federal Reserve on July 24. "Labor demand has clearly softened," Powell added, reflecting recent reports showing that the United States actually lost jobs in recent months. "The median projection of the unemployment rate is 4.5% at the end of this year.” Powell’s comments are likely to enrage Trump, who has been falsely insisting that costs are going down and that the economy is doing well. He even said that people who are worried about costs should simply do with less. “You can give up certain products. You can give up pencils. That’s under the China policy, you know every child can get 37 pencils—they only need one or two, you know they don’t need that many,” Trump said at a rally in Pennsylvania Tuesday night. “You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter, two or three is nice, but you don’t need 37 dolls.” YouTube Video House Speaker Mike Johnson is also trying to gaslight Americans into believing that Trump and the GOP are addressing the cost of living, telling Americans to simply “relax” and to wait for prices to magically go down. Trump already loathes Powell, who he has threatened to fire multiple times, even though the Federal Reserve is meant to be an independent entity free from political pressure. So investors are likely watching Trump’s Truth Social account with bated breath to see how he responds to Powell’s latest criticism of Trump’s tariffs. But ultimately, Powell's assertion that Trump's tariffs are spiking inflation is just confirmation of what voters already know to be true. Polls show that voters believe that costs are still too high, that tariffs are to blame, and that they disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy. Datawrapper Content An Economist/YouGov poll released Tuesday found that just 37% of Americans approve of Trump's handling of the economy, while just 33% approve of how he's handling inflation. It also found that 34% of Americans view the economy as "fair,” 39% view it as “poor,” and 52% believe that it is getting worse. Frustration with Trump's mishandling of the economy has led to Democrats overperforming in recent elections, even flipping seats in districts that Trump once carried by wide margins. And now Republicans are sounding the alarm, saying that the midterms could be an absolute bloodbath if the GOP doesn’t address affordability soon. “For Republicans to mitigate a disastrous midterm election, it all starts with tariffs,” right-wing radio host Erick Erickson wrote on X. Now we wait to see if that transpires into action or another of Trump’s pathetic hissy fits.
House Speaker Mike Johnson delivered a massive gift to Democrats on Tuesday, declaring that the House will spend the first half of 2026 focused on passing a health care bill. "We're gonna have a vote before the end of the year for sure, and then we're going to continue to do improvements along the way. In the first quarter, second quarter, there's a lot to fix in health care, we've all acknowledged that," Johnson told Punchbowl News. Those who have been following politics for a while remember how disastrous Republicans' Affordable Care Act repeal effort was during President Donald Trump's first go-round in the White House, in 2017. Congressional Republicans wanted to repeal the ACA and replace it with a plan that would have, for all intents and purposes, gutted protections for people with preexisting conditions and forced sicker people into high-risk pools that would have made health insurance prohibitively expensive. Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, shown in 2017. The repeal effort was so politically toxic that then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared the GOP would move on from trying to repeal the ACA. But the damage had been done. A year later, in 2018, Republicans lost control of the House in a blue wave. Now, Johnson is reviving that effort nearly a decade later, turning the focus in an election year to an issue that voters generally trust Democrats to handle. Rather than simply extend the enhanced tax credits that millions of Americans use to afford ACA plans—which polls show Americans want Congress to do—Johnson said the GOP-controlled House will not extend those tax credits and instead work on an overhaul. In the meantime, those enhanced tax credits will expire, causing insurance premiums costs to more than double for millions of people, while Republicans try to hash out a supposed fix on health care in the United States. “Americans’ healthcare premiums will skyrocket in 22 days, but Republicans are just now getting out their whiteboard to brainstorm ideas,” Democratic Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico wrote in a post on X. “The quickest [way] to give real relief today is to extend the tax credits—it’s that easy.” The strange thing is, despite the GOP’s fury over the ACA, it’s basically a conservative idea. The plan was based on the one that Mitt Romney implemented in Massachusetts in 2006, when he was serving as governor. But after then-President Barack Obama announced the ACA, Republicans demonized the plan. They relied on lies and misinformation to turn their base against the legislation and Obama. And now the Republican Party has no real plan to achieve their promise of making insurance better and more affordable. Hundreds of activists in 2017 protest against Republicans’ plans to overhaul U.S. health care system, at Trump International Hotel and Tower in New York City. One plan they are kicking around would let the ACA tax credits expire and instead give a smaller group of low-income Americans $1,000 in health savings accounts, which they could use to purchase a plan. "This plan wouldn't prevent out-of-pocket premiums from spiking 114% on average for people in ACA plans," Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, wrote in a post on X, regarding the proposal. "It would cushion the impact by providing health savings account contributions for people willing to enroll in a lower premium plan with a deductible of over $7,000." That doesn't sound like something voters would like. And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declared the GOP’s plan “dead on arrival.” “Their bill is junk insurance; it’s been repudiated in the past. The American people will repudiate it once again,” Schumer said on Tuesday. Ultimately, former House Speaker John Boehner didn't get much right. But he was absolutely correct when he made this assessment in 2017, during the GOP's first ACA-repeal effort: “In the 25 years that I served in the United States Congress, Republicans never, ever, one time agreed on what a health care proposal should look like. Not once.” Nearly a decade later, that assessment still rings true. And now Republicans will spend an election year fighting over health care proposals that Americans are sure to hate.
Showing that he’s always laser-focused on what really matters, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered all high schools to have a Turning Point USA chapter called “Club America.” Sure, Texas has basically frozen per-student funding for years, which means that—thanks to inflation—funding is actually decreasing. And, yes, Texas is hiring uncertified teachers and closing schools. It’s also true that 73% of Texas schools are underfunded. But surely turning every school into a shrine to Charlie Kirk will fix it. “This is about values. This is about constitutional principles. This is about a restoration of who we are as a country,” Abbott said of the new order. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott But that rings a little hollow when you realize that the Texas Education Agency is already investigating complaints against teachers who rabid conservatives decided were insufficiently laudatory of Kirk. So what if your school doesn’t want a Turning Point chapter? Too bad. “Any school that stands in the way of a Club America program in their school should be reported immediately to the Texas Education Agency,” Abbott said, adding that there would be “meaningful disciplinary action.” It isn’t clear what mechanism the state would have to enforce this demand, but that doesn’t really matter. Even if schools or teachers can’t somehow be officially sanctioned, they can be dragged through an investigation. Abbott knows that he’s untouchable: He’s got a pliant legislature, a hyper-conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and a Supreme Court stocked with conservatives who believe that free speech only applies to right-wingers and Christians. That’s likely why he was completely open about saying that he won’t do this for a left-leaning student group, but magnanimously declaring that “it would not be illegal” for a left-leaning group to exist in public schools. Except Abbott is straight-up lying. Texas has already passed a law banning any student clubs based on gender identity or expression. No LGBTQ+ clubs, no gay-straight alliances—nothing. But clubs founded by the guy who spent years attacking LGBTQ+ people and encouraged students and parents to report any professors suspected of not hating trans people enough? Well, that’s mandatory. Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk speaks during a rally in 2024. Abbott is actually a bit late to the game on this one. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis already did this in October, turning loose Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas to enforce Turning Point chapters in schools. “If you try to serve as an obstacle, if you are a hurdle, if you get in the way of any student or teacher (who wants to) start a Turning Point USA chapter, you will be met with the full force of the law,” Kamoutsas said. And former Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters mandated Turning Point chapters in schools way back in September. But since he quit for a job where he said he will “destroy the teachers unions,” it isn’t clear if that requirement is going to stick. If all of these schools are lucky, maybe—along with their forced Turning Point clubs—they’ll get to have an incredibly ugly statue of Kirk, just like the big kids at Florida’s New College. And why not? We’re well into idolatry territory, so why not have a shrine to venerate a martyr?
Jasmine Crockett has never been one to ease into a fight, and she isn’t starting now. Hours before Texas’ filing deadline on Monday, the Dallas-area congresswoman—progressive firebrand, Trump antagonist, and one of the House’s most visible new Democrats—jumped into the state’s 2026 Senate race, shaking up what had been a relatively quiet Democratic contest. Texas, let’s win this thing. #JasmineForUS #TexasTough— Jasmine Crockett (@jasmineforus.bsky.social) 2025-12-08T23:03:37.976Z For most of the year, the Democratic field looked somewhat settled, with former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred and current state Rep. James Talarico vying for the nomination. But by Monday evening, Allred had bowed out, Talarico had issued Crockett a polite welcome, and the shape of the contest shifted almost instantly. “What we need is for me to have a bigger voice,” Crockett told supporters in a fiery 40-minute speech. “We need to make sure that we are going to stop all the hell that is raining down on all of our people.” Crockett is right about one thing: Few races this cycle carry as much potential upside—or peril—for Democrats. Texas remains the party’s great white whale, a state that looks just competitive enough to tempt national strategists every cycle, only to break their hearts by November. That’s the political superstition, at least. But states don’t stay unwinnable forever, and Texas will be safely red … until, suddenly, it isn’t. Democratic insiders have been trying to game out which candidate is best positioned for that moment. Many of them gravitated toward Allred, whose moderate appeal they believed might better reach white suburban voters. Texas state Rep. James Talarico, who is running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, shown in July. Crockett’s critics were blunter: They argued she’s too “conceited” and too unapologetically herself to win a statewide race—arguments that tend to collapse into coded assumptions about race and who counts as being “electable.” As Vox’s Astead Herndon noted, there’s “no ‘moderate’ lane” in the Democratic Party, particularly in a national primary, “without Black southerners.” After all, in 2020, former President Joe Biden won the Democratic nomination largely because Black South Carolinians turned out for him and changed that contest’s narrative. In practice, the idea of being a “moderate” has less to do with measuring appeal and more to do with keeping candidates who don’t fit a certain mold on a short leash. Allred leaned into that logic as he exited the race. With three Democrats in the race, he warned, the party risked a bruising primary that would drain resources and leave the nominee limping into the general election. “I’ve come to believe that a bruising Senate Democratic primary and runoff would prevent the Democratic Party from going into this critical election unified,” he said in a statement, arguing that the stakes of a Trump-aligned Senate were too high to risk internal chaos. And on the Republican side, chaos is exactly what’s on offer. The GOP is barreling toward a brutally expensive three-way brawl between incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, MAGA-pilled state Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Houston-area Rep. Wesley Hunt. Cornyn is fighting for political survival, Paxton is fighting off years of legal trouble, and Hunt is hoping to outflank them both. Polling suggests a runoff is inevitable, extending the bloodletting into late May. Democrats, by contrast, have managed to whittle their field down to two leading candidates with starkly different styles but overlapping constituencies. Talarico is a seminarian and former schoolteacher who’s carved out a niche as a religiously grounded critic of Christian nationalism, with a following that somehow spans MSNBC progressives and Joe Rogan listeners. Meanwhile, Crockett is the opposite in almost every aesthetic category: Black, sharp-tongued, and unfiltered, with a gift for generating viral moments and a temperament built for political combat. In a sense, their contest isn’t ideological at all. It’s a choice between modes of persuasion. Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, shown in June. Crockett’s national profile, already high thanks to her relentless sparring with House Republicans, is likely to rocket even further in a Senate campaign. For instance, Trump regularly singles her out, which, in today’s politics, is essentially free advertising. Her supporters see her as the kind of fighter Democrats have chronically lacked: someone who can generate enthusiasm and drive turnout in bluer parts of the state. Republicans, though, already have their attack lines ready. Cornyn labeled her “radical, theatrical, and ineffective.” Paxton’s allies are practically salivating at the chance to define her early. A Crockett nomination may drive up GOP turnout—but so would a Paxton nomination, and Democrats believe facing him would give them one of their best pickup opportunities nationally. Polls of the Democratic primary have been limited and inconsistent. Crockett is well known and liked among Democrats, but she also reliably triggers Republicans. A December survey from Change Research found that 49% of Texas voters said they would definitely not vote for Crockett, a higher share than for any other candidate in the contest. And while the poll found Talarico to be less polarizing, Democrats still don’t know whether either candidate could flip the seat, even if they’re no longer treating the question as laughable. Behind the scenes, Texas Democrats have been trying to avoid the circular firing squad that doomed previous statewide attempts. Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke and other party leaders spent months coaxing candidates toward a coordinated slate that could maximize talent across next year’s races, which include the open attorney general’s seat and Gov. Greg Abbott’s reelection contest. And when Crockett started weighing a Senate bid, those conversations accelerated. She privately told both Allred and Talarico that her internal polls showed her strongest in the general election. Her campaign has not made those numbers public. Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, shown in March. “The data says that I can win,” she said on MS NOW. “I am very formidable.” Whether that’s true will become clearer soon enough. Texas requires a majority to avoid a primary runoff, and the most plausible scenario is still a Crockett-Talarico matchup heading into March. That gives Democrats something Republicans won’t have: time. While the GOP slogs through months of intraparty warfare, Democrats could emerge unified. Crockett acknowledges the skepticism; she said she’s heard variations of it her entire political life. “Turning Texas blue is what I want to talk to y’all about today,” she said in her announcement speech. “Y’all ain’t never tried it the J.C. way.” Texas Democrats haven’t won statewide office since 1994. Maybe 2026 will finally break the curse, or maybe Texas will remain Texas for another cycle. But with Crockett in the race, and regardless of whether she or Talarico wins, the party will have a nominee who doesn’t shrink from a fight. At minimum, Democrats won’t be accused of playing it safe. At maximum, they might catch the GOP on the rare night it stumbles.
An internal investigation by the Charleston Airport Police Department found that Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina is at fault for her tirade against law enforcement officers and Transportation Security Administration staff, according to a copy of the report obtained by The Washington Post. The report found that while “minor miscommunication” between Mace's staff and police officers led to a delay in an escort for Mace through the airport in October, Mace's behavior became an unnecessary "spectacle" as she hurled insults at law enforcement and TSA staff—who at the time were not being paid during the government shutdown. Mace shouted at law enforcement officers, saying she was “sick of your shit” and that they were "fucking idiots" and "fucking incompetent," according to the report. Mace reportedly shouted that she should be treated better because she is a "fucking representative." And a TSA officer reportedly overheard Mace talking on the phone and asking why she "isn't being treated like a senator." Airport employees reportedly described her conduct in the encounter as “very nasty, very rude” and “very unbecoming” of an elected lawmaker. Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, shown in 2024. The report also found that the miscommunication was the result of information being "relayed through multiple staffers, as the Congresswoman appears to have high personnel turnover”—a well-documented phenomenon as Mace is reportedly a monster to work for. Mace has spent weeks raging about the airport incident, which has turned into an embarrassing distraction for her fledgling gubernatorial campaign. After her inappropriate outburst became public, Mace spun up a conspiracy theory about how she was “targeted” by airport staff. She also threatened to file a lawsuit against the airport and others for defamation. Her fixation on getting revenge on the airport has led members of her own party to criticize her and worry about her mental health. “There’s something wrong with Nancy Mace. And I’m not a fan of hers, and it’s increasingly because she’s not mentally well, and it’s really clear she’s not mentally well, and I don’t know if she has friends who can do an intervention with her, but Nancy Mace needs a real intervention," right-wing radio host Erick Erickson said on his program as Mace spiralled over the airport debacle. Mace’s airport tirade is also hurting her gubernatorial bid. Before her airport meltdown, polls showed Mace leading the crowded GOP primary field. But a poll from earlier in December found Mace falling into fourth place, with nearly half of Republican voters viewing her unfavorably. Ultimately, law enforcement officers aren’t the only people Mace has targeted. Mace’s invective against a transgender member of Congress led Democratic lawmakers to label her a bigot and a bully. Mace also hurled insults, including “Fuck you,” at a constituent who asked her a simple question at a makeup store. And former staffers called her “toxic” and “delusional” for how they were treated. The silver lining from all of this is that Mace’s out-of-control conduct could cause her to lose the gubernatorial election, meaning we should have to deal with her less in the future.
The Trump administration has argued that Fed board member Lisa Cook may have committed mortgage fraud by declaring more than one primary residence on her loans. We found Trump once did the very thing he called “deceitful and potentially criminal.” By Justin Elliott, Robert Faturechi and Alex Mierjeski for ProPublica For months, the Trump administration has been accusing its political enemies of mortgage fraud for claiming more than one primary residence. President Donald Trump branded one foe who did so “deceitful and potentially criminal.” He called another “CROOKED” on Truth Social and pushed the attorney general to take action. But years earlier, Trump did the very thing he’s accusing his enemies of, records show. In 1993, Trump signed a mortgage for a “Bermuda style” home in Palm Beach, Florida, pledging that it would be his principal residence. Just seven weeks later, he got another mortgage for a seven-bedroom, marble-floored neighboring property, attesting that it too would be his principal residence. In reality, Trump, then a New Yorker, does not appear to have ever lived in either home, let alone used them as a principal residence. Instead, the two houses, which are next to his historic Mar-a-Lago estate, were used as investment properties and rented out, according to contemporaneous news accounts and an interview with his longtime real estate agent — exactly the sort of scenario his administration has pointed to as evidence of fraud. At the time of the purchases, Trump’s local real estate agent told the Miami Herald that the businessman had “hired an expensive New York design firm” to “dress them up to the nines and lease them out annually.” In an interview, Shirley Wyner, the late real estate agent’s wife and business partner who was herself later the rental agent for the two properties, told ProPublica: “They were rentals from the beginning.” Wyner, who has worked with the Trump family for years, added: “President Trump never lived there.” President Donald Trump departs after speaking at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, in February. Mortgage law experts who reviewed the records for ProPublica were struck by the irony of Trump’s dual mortgages. They said claiming primary residences on different mortgages at the same time, as Trump did, is often legal and rarely prosecuted. But Trump’s two loans, they said, exceed the low bar the Trump administration itself has set for mortgage fraud. “Given Trump’s position on situations like this, he’s going to either need to fire himself or refer himself to the Department of Justice,” said Kathleen Engel, a Suffolk University law professor and leading expert on mortgage finance. “Trump has deemed that this type of misrepresentation is sufficient to preclude someone from serving the country.” Mortgages for a person’s main home tend to receive more favorable terms, like lower interest rates, than mortgages for a second home or an investment rental property. Legal experts said that having more than one primary-residence mortgage can sometimes be legitimate, like when someone has to move for a new job, and other times can be caused by clerical error. Determining ill intent on the part of the borrower is key to proving fraud, and the experts said lenders have significant discretion in what loans they offer clients. (In this case, Trump used the same lender to buy the two Florida homes.) But in recent months, the Trump administration has asserted that merely having two primary-residence mortgages is evidence of criminality. Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director who has led the charge, said earlier this year: “If somebody is claiming two primary residences, that is not appropriate, and we will refer it for criminal investigation.” Trump hung up on a ProPublica reporter after being asked whether his Florida mortgages were similar to those of others he had accused of fraud. In response to questions, a White House spokesperson told ProPublica: “President Trump’s two mortgages you are referencing are from the same lender. There was no defraudation. It is illogical to believe that the same lender would agree to defraud itself.” The spokesperson added, “this is yet another desperate attempt by the Left wing media to disparage President Trump with false allegations,” and said, “President Trump has never, or will ever, break the law.” The White House did not respond to questions about any other documents related to the transactions, such as loan applications, that could shed light on what Trump told the lender or if the lender made any exceptions for him. At the time Trump bought the two Florida properties, he was dealing with the wreckage of high-profile failures at his casinos and hotels in the early 1990s. (He famously recounted seeing a panhandler on Fifth Avenue around this time and telling his companion: “You know, right now that man is worth $900 million more than I am.”) In December 1993, he married the model Marla Maples in an opulent ceremony at The Plaza Hotel. And in Florida, he was pushing local authorities to let him turn Mar-a-Lago, then a residence, into a private club. Trump bought the two homes, which both sit on Woodbridge Road directly north of Mar-a-Lago, and got mortgages in quick succession in December 1993 and January 1994. The lender on both mortgages, one for $525,000 and one for $1,200,000, was Merrill Lynch. Each of the mortgage documents signed by Trump contain the standard occupancy requirement — that he must make the property his principal residence within 60 days and live there for at least a year, unless the lender agreed otherwise or there were extenuating circumstances. But ProPublica could not find evidence Trump ever lived in either of the properties. Legal documents and federal election records from the period give his address as Trump Tower in Manhattan. (Trump would officially change his permanent residence to Florida only decades later, in 2019.) A Vanity Fair profile published in March 1994 describes Trump spending time in Manhattan and at Mar-a-Lago itself. Trump’s real estate agent, who told the local press that the plan from the beginning was to rent out the two satellite homes, was quoted as saying, “Mr. Trump, in effect, is in a position to approve who his neighbors are.” In the ensuing years, listings popped up in local newspapers advertising each of the homes for rent. At one point in 1997, the larger of the two homes, a 7-bedroom, 7-bathroom Mediterranean Revival mansion, was listed for $3,000 per day. Even if Trump did violate the law with his two primary-residence mortgages in Florida, the loans have since been paid off and the mid-1990s is well outside the statute of limitations for mortgage fraud. A spokesperson for Bank of America, which now owns Merrill Lynch, did not answer questions about the Trump mortgages. “It’s highly unlikely we would have original documents for a 32-year-old transaction, but generally in private client mortgages the terms of the transactions are based on the overall relationship,” the spokesperson said in a statement, “and the mortgages are not backed by or sold to any government sponsored entity.” Trump’s two mortgages in Palm Beach bear similarities to the loans taken out by political rivals whom his administration has accused of fraud. FILE - New York Attorney General Letitia James, shown in February. In October, federal prosecutors charged New York Attorney General Letitia James over her mortgage. James has been one of Trump’s top targets since she brought a fraud lawsuit against the president and his company in 2022. A central claim in the case the Trump Justice Department brought against her is that she purchased a house in Virginia, pledging to her lender that it would serve as her second home, then proceeded to use it as an investment property and rent it out. “This misrepresentation allowed James to obtain favorable loan terms not available for investment properties,” according to the indictment. Trump’s Florida mortgage agreements appear to have made a more significant misrepresentation, as he claimed those homes would be his primary residence, not his secondary home as James did, before proceeding to rent them out. James has denied the allegations against her, and the case was dismissed last month over procedural issues, though the Justice Department has been trying to reindict her. The circumstances around Trump’s mortgages are also similar to the case his administration has made against Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Trump declared he was firing Cook earlier this year over her mortgages, as he has sought to bend the traditionally independent agency to his will and force it to lower interest rates. Cook, who denied wrongdoing, has sued to block the termination and continues to serve on the Fed board as that legal fight continues. In a letter to Cook, Trump specifically noted that she signed two primary residence mortgages within weeks of each other — just as records show he did in Florida. “You signed one document attesting that a property in Michigan would be your primary residence for the next year. Two weeks later, you signed another document for a property in Georgia stating that it would be your primary residence for the next year,” Trump wrote. “It is inconceivable that you were not aware of your first commitment when making the second.” He called the loans potentially criminal and wrote, “at a minimum, the conduct at issue exhibits the sort of gross negligence in financial transactions that calls into question your competence and trustworthiness.” The Trump administration has made similar fraud allegations against other political enemies, including Democrats Sen. Adam Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell, both of whom have denied wrongdoing. In September, ProPublica reported that three of Trump’s Cabinet members have called multiple homes their primary residences in mortgage agreements. Bloomberg also reported that Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent did something similar. (The Cabinet members have all denied wrongdoing.) Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency head, has denied his investigations are politically motivated. “If it’s a Republican who’s committing mortgage fraud, we’re going to look at it,” he has said. “If it’s a Democrat, we’re going to look at it.” Thus far, Pulte has not made any publicly known criminal referrals against Republicans. He did not respond to questions from ProPublica about Trump’s Florida mortgages.
Explaining the Right is a weekly series that looks at what the right wing is currently obsessing over, how it influences politics—and why you need to know. Conservatives have spent the last week grousing about the academic merits of an obscure college essay, a topic that right-wingers historically show little interest in. But in this case, the story isn’t really about college or academia or essays but is instead about yet another front in the right’s never-ending culture wars and an attempt to bully another minority group. University of Oklahoma junior Samantha Fulnecky has alleged that her First Amendment right to religious freedom is being infringed after her psychology professor gave her an “F” for a paper on the gender norms of middle school students. “The college admissions office in action” by Jeff Danziger Fulnecky, a conservative Christian, used her essay to attack transgender existence. She cited the Bible and said that “eliminating gender in our society would be detrimental, as it pulls us farther from God's original plan for humans.” Fulnecky argued that “society pushing the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should be whatever they want to be is demonic.” Mel Curth, the graduate teaching assistant who graded Fulnecky’s paper, gave the student a failing grade. Curth, who is a trans woman, wrote that the problem was not with the student’s personal views but because her essay “does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive.” A second instructor agreed with Curth’s findings. After Fulnecky filed a complaint with the school, the right-wing grievance industry went to work. Turning Point USA is a college-based pressure group created by deceased racist and conservative activist Charlie Kirk to push right-wing ideology on college campuses. The group, which itself has a long history of hiring bigots, attacked Curth in a social media post. “We should not be letting mentally ill professors around students,” the group wrote, supporting Fulnecky’s bigoted worldview. The school launched a review of Curth and removed her from her position in response to the controversy. One of the major promoters of the campaign against Curth was Fox News, who featured the story in multiple segments and hosted Fulnecky for an interview. On the network the interview was advertised as “Trans Instructor Fails Student Over Gender Essay.” The framing of the interview gives up the tactic at play. Fulnecky is the sort of telegenic conservative figure that the right-wing outrage machine loves to amplify. Conservatism is at a period of extreme strength at the moment—with Republican control of the White House, Congress, and Supreme Court, along with state governorships and legislatures. But the right loves to play victim. The college student purportedly standing up for “Christian values” against academia, even in very conservative Oklahoma, is too good to resist. The story dovetails almost perfectly with the Trump administration’s assault on institutes of higher learning, defunding important research and shaking down colleges for money in exchange for suppressing speech and admissions. Related | Trump administration steps up its heinous war on trans people The academic merits of Fulnecky’s essay are immaterial to the battle at hand. Instead she has been portrayed as an innocent under attack for holding conservative beliefs, which the right has asserted are fundamental American values—even if that means relegating transgender people to second-class citizenship. The conservative machine is constantly searching for stories like that that tick all of the right’s preferred boxes. They are a way of keeping conservative activists and voters at a fever pitch, ready to turn out to vote—even when leaders they elect like Trump are failing on an array of issues. The right would much rather have these voters intensely obsessing over a purported victim of “liberal” academia than investigating why food prices are up or why their neighbors are being abducted and harmed. Focusing on the instructor’s gender identity adds to the right’s strategy of villainizing practically everyone who isn’t a straight white man. This allows the focus to be shifted from individuals and institutions negatively affecting their day-to-day living, be that Republicans in Congress or business leaders, and toward the “other” that they have demonized. This type of campaign is a major contributing factor to the far-too-pervasive callousness that conservatives have for minorities, which can lead to death and neglect. Conservatives and their allies in right-wing media like Fox don’t actually care about academic freedom or free expression at colleges and universities. They don’t care about academic merit, and they certainly don’t care about psychology essays. What they intensely care about is creating another firestorm that can get them votes and allow them to retain and grow their power. It is a strategy that has worked for decades and continues to operate like a well-oiled machine.
Florida, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio agreed to aid the Trump administration as part of a legal settlement. By Jonathan Shorman for Stateline Four Republican states have agreed to help the Trump administration gain access to state driver’s license data through a nationwide law enforcement computer network as part of the administration’s hunt for alleged noncitizen voters. The Trump administration said as recently as October that federal officials wanted to obtain driver’s license records through the network. The commitment from officials in Florida, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio comes as part of a settlement agreement filed on Friday in a federal lawsuit. The lawsuit was originally brought by the states last year alleging the Biden administration wasn’t doing enough to help states verify voter eligibility. The settlement, between the states and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, requires the federal department to continue its development of a powerful citizenship verification program known as SAVE. Earlier this year, federal officials repurposed SAVE into a program capable of scanning millions of state voter records for instances of noncitizen registered voters. Related | Homeland Security wants state driver’s license data for sweeping citizenship program In return, the states have agreed to support Homeland Security’s efforts to access the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, an obscure computer network that typically allows law enforcement agencies to search driver’s license records across state lines. Nlets — as the system is known — lets police officers easily look up the driving records of out-of-state motorists. The Trump administration and some Republican election officials have promoted the changes to SAVE as a useful tool to identify potential noncitizen voters, and Indiana had already agreed to provide voter records. Critics, including some Democrats, say the Trump administration is building a massive database of U.S. residents that President Donald Trump or a future president could use for spying or targeting political enemies. Stateline reported last week, before the settlement agreement was filed in court, that Homeland Security publicly confirmed it wants to connect Nlets to SAVE. A notice published Oct. 31 in the Federal Register said driver’s licenses are the most widely used form of identification, and that by working with states and national agencies, including Nlets, “SAVE will use driver’s license and state identification card numbers to check and confirm identity information.” A federal official also previously told a virtual meeting of state election officials in May that Homeland Security was seeking “to avoid having to connect to 50 state databases” and wanted a “simpler solution,” such as Nlets, according to government records published by the transparency group American Oversight. The new settlement lays out the timeline for how the Trump administration could acquire the four states’ records. Within 90 days of the execution of the agreement, the four states may provide Homeland Security with 1,000 randomly selected driver’s license records from their state for verification as part of a quality improvement process for SAVE. According to the agreement, the states that provide the records will “make best efforts to support and encourage DHS’s efforts to receive and have full use of state driver’s license records from the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System” and state driver’s license agencies. The language in the agreement is open-ended and doesn’t make clear whether the pledge to help Homeland Security obtain access to Nlets is limited to drivers from those four states or is intended to require the states to help the agency acquire the records of drivers nationwide. An agreement to help The agreement could pave the way for Republican officials in other states to provide access to license data. Nlets is a nonprofit organization that facilitates data sharing among law enforcement agencies across state lines. States decide what information to make available through Nlets, and which agencies can access it. That means the four states could try to influence peers to share Nlets data with the Trump administration. “They’re not just talking about driver’s license numbers, they’re talking about the driver’s records. What possible reason would DHS have in an election or voting context — or any context whatsoever — for obtaining the ‘full use of state driver’s license records,’” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research. Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican, said in a statement to Stateline that the settlement agreement provides another layer of election integrity and protection as officials seek to ensure only eligible voters are registered. He didn’t directly address questions about Nlets access. “The SAVE program provides us with critical information, but we must also continue to utilize information from other state and federal partners to maintain clean and accurate lists,” Pate said in the statement. Two weeks before the Nov. 5, 2024, election, Pate issued guidance to Iowa county auditors to challenge the ballots of 2,176 registered voters who were identified by the secretary of state’s office as potential noncitizens. The voters had reported to the state Department of Transportation or another government entity that they were not U.S. citizens in the past 12 years and went on to register to vote, according to the guidance. In March, Pate said his office gained access to the SAVE database and found 277 of those people were confirmed to not have U.S. citizenship — just under 12% of the individuals identified as potential noncitizens. Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Justice didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Monday. Matthew Tragesser, a spokesperson for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — the agency under Homeland Security that oversees SAVE — told Stateline last week that USCIS was committed to “eliminating barriers to securing the nation’s electoral process.” “By allowing states to efficiently verify voter eligibility, we are reinforcing the principle that America’s elections are reserved exclusively for American citizens,” Tragesser said in a statement. The SAVE program — Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements — was originally intended to help state and local officials verify the immigration status of individual noncitizens seeking government benefits. In the past, SAVE could search only one name at a time. Now it can conduct bulk searches; federal officials in May also connected the program to Social Security data. “It’s a potentially dangerous mix to put driver’s license and Social Security number and date of birth information out there … where we really don’t know yet how and when and where it’s going to be used,” Minnesota Democratic Secretary of State Steve Simon said in an interview on Monday. Democratic states object As the Trump administration has encouraged states to use SAVE, the Justice Department has also demanded states provide the department with unredacted copies of their voter rolls. The Trump administration has previously confirmed the Justice Department is sharing voter information with Homeland Security. The Justice Department has sued six, mostly Democratic, states for refusing to turn over the data. Those lawsuits remain pending. On Monday, 12 state secretaries of state submitted a 29-page public comment, in response to SAVE’s Federal Register notice, criticizing the overhaul. The secretaries wrote that while Homeland Security claims the changes make the program an effective tool for verifying voters, the modifications are “likely to degrade, not enhance” states’ efforts to ensure free, fair and secure elections. “What the modified system will do … is allow the federal government to capture sensitive data on hundreds of millions of voters nationwide and distribute that information as it sees fit,” the secretaries wrote. The secretaries of state of California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington signed on to the comment. The settlement agreement purports to make this year’s changes to SAVE legally binding. The agreement asks that a federal court retain jurisdiction over the case for 20 years for the purposes of enforcing it — a move that in theory could make it harder for a future Democratic president to reverse the changes to SAVE. But Becker, of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, said he doesn’t expect the settlement agreement would make it more difficult for a future administration to undo the overhaul. “Should a different administration come in that disagrees with this approach,” Becker said, “I would expect that they would almost certainly completely change how the system operates and how the states can access it and what data the federal government procures.”
President Donald Trump’s plans for revenge against his political enemies were disrupted yet again on Thursday after a grand jury declined to pursue charges against New York Attorney General Leticia James. The setback was the latest in a line of legal failures for Trump. New York Attorney General Letitia James The grand jury made a determination of “no true bill” in the case, where the Department of Justice had accused James of misleading a bank on a mortgage application. In a statement James said the allegations were “baseless” and part of a system of “unchecked weaponization of our justice system” under Trump. The charges were pursued under orders from Trump, who pressured the previous U.S. attorney in Virginia to resign in September after he reportedly said there was no real case against James. Trump fumed at the time on his social media account that James is a “horror show” and claimed she is “corrupt” without offering any evidence to support his smear. Trump has nursed a grudge against James for years after she took him to court and proved in a 2024 ruling that he committed fraud with his businesses in New York. In that case a judge ruled that Trump had falsely inflated his wealth on financial statements so he could do business with banks and other financial instititions. The Virginia grand jury was just the Trump regime’s latest legal embarrassment. In November, DOJ cases against James and former FBI Director James Comey were also thrown out by U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie after he determined that prosecutor Lindsey Halligan was illegally installed in her position. Halligan, a Trump loyalist who served as a White House aide, was put in her position as acting U.S. attorney after the existing Virginia-based prosecutor was forced out. Related | Trump's retribution tour hits another snag Trump has long disliked Comey for exposing his attempts to manipulate the FBI investigation into Russian election interference on Trump’s behalf. Trump has argued that Comey was a “deep state” operative targeting him. The Trump regime’s prosecutorial failures even extended into street-level sandwich crime. Last month a Washington, D.C., jury dismissed charges against Sean C. Dunn, an Air Force veteran who threw a Subway sub at a Border Patrol officer. Dunn threw the sandwich in protest of the Trump-ordered deployment of federal officers to the capital. Dunn was nicknamed “Sandwich Guy” and portrayed as a dangerous criminal by Fox News host-turned-U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro. During his presidential campaign in 2024, Trump vowed to go on a revenge tour against those who have opposed him once he regained power. To be sure, Trump has used the power of the federal government to hurt many people and has shown no signs of letting up—but he has also faced failure as well. Related | ‘Sandwich Guy’ triumphs over ham-fisted charges A big reason is his choice to put super fans of his like Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI director Kash Patel, and Pirro in positions of power and influence. While these figures are second to none in their fealty to Trump, they are clearly not skilled at working the legal system and are pushing vendetta-based cases that crumble under scrutiny. Trump did not send his “best people” into the courts—and his revenge plans have suffered for it.
