Monday, May 12, 2025

Happy (belated) Mothers' Day, ladies.

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Ceasefire?

Despite some hiccups, a ceasefire between India and Pakistan appears to be holding. Trump has claimed credit, but India disputes that.

Presidential "Daily" Briefings

"Since President Donald Trump was sworn into office in January, he has sat for just 12 presentations from intelligence officials of the President’s Daily Brief," which represents "a significant drop compared with Trump’s first term in office." Compounding the concerns of the intelligence community is the fact that Trump "is known not to read the accompanying briefing document."

The "best" and the "brightest"

I wrote previously about how Trump's first choice for US Attorney for District of Columbia was patently unfit. That nomination has now failed, and Trump has nominated Fox News host Jeanine Pirro for the spot. Pirro defended Trump after the Access Hollywood tape was released, promoted lies about the 2020 election, and was previously suspended from Fox News for Islamophobic remarks. Like the prior nominee, she is not a serious choice.

Trump has nominated Casey Means for the post of US Surgeon General. She is a quack, a wellness influencer who does not have an active license to practice medicine. She is not a serious choice either.

Tufts grad student targeted for speech released from immigration custody

A federal judge ordered the release of Turkish grad student Rumeysa Ozturk:

. . . U.S. District Judge William Sessions in Vermont ordered that Rumeysa Ozturk be released from detention more than six weeks after she was nabbed off the street by federal officials on March 25.

Sessions ordered Ozturk be released “immediately” and with no travel restrictions while her habeas case proceeds . . ., concluding that she has raised "a very substantial First Amendment claim" in her underlying habeas challenge, in addition to a “substantial claim” that the Trump administration violated her due process rights regarding her detention as well.

. . .

Sessions noted that he had repeatedly asked the government to provide the basis for its decision to revoke Ozturk’s visa and arrest her in order to hold proceedings aimed at deporting her. "There has been no evidence introduced by the government, other than the op-ed" that she co-authored last year, he said, in the time since the case has been before him.

Reminder that Ozturk was targeted solely for exercise of her First-Amendment-protected speech, specifically this extremely mild op-ed in a student newspaper from over a year ago.

Alien Enemies Act was invoked in bad faith

The Trump administration says it has authority to deport Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. However, for the act to apply, one of two conditions must be met.

First, there can be "a declared war" between the US and the country of origin of the people to be deported. There is no declared war with Venezuela, so this doesn't apply.

Second, there can be an "invasion or predatory incursion . . . perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States" by the country of origin of the people to be deported. While Venezuela has not invaded the US, the Trump administration contends that Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) has invaded the the US, that TdA is acting "at the direction . . . of the Maduro regime in Venezuela," and that therefore TdA's acts constitute an invasion by the country of Venezuela.

What evidence do they have of this? Not much: "A newly declassified U.S. intelligence assessment confirms that analysts at American spy agencies found no coordination between Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government, contradicting statements the Trump administration used to justify invoking the Alien Enemies Act and deporting Venezuelan immigrants." Consequently, it looks like the Trump administration has been deliberately lying to the nation and to judges about Venezuela and TdA.

The Trump regime is historically corrupt

It is not an exaggeration to say that the Trump presidency is the most corrupt in American history. Some recent examples:

• Trump and his allies made more than $900K in the two days after it was announced that the top holders of Trump's cryptocurrency memecoin would be invited to dinner and a reception with Trump. The increased demand boosted the value of the Trump memecoins in circulation--80% of which are owned by the Trump org and its allies--by $900M. Since it was launched in January, Trump memecoin trading activity has generated more than $300M in trading fees for the Trump org and other insiders.
• The Trump org will build a luxury golf course in Qatar in a deal involving a company that is wholly owned by the Qatari government, breaking Trump's already insufficient promise to pursue no deals with foreign governments.
• "The Trump administration is preparing to accept a superluxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar as a gift to be used by President Donald Trump as the new Air Force One for presidential travel until shortly before Trump leaves office . . . . [O]wnership of the plane will be transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation once the president ends his second term," at which point it will presumably be used for Trump's personal travel.
• Donald Trump, Jr., has plans "to create the highest-end private club that Washington [DC] has ever had," which will "cater to the business and tech moguls who are looking to nurture their relationships with the Trump administration." A membership is expected to cost more than half a million dollars, and, in case the corrupt pay-for-access nature of the venture isn't already abundantly clear, the club is expected to operate under the extremely-on-the-nose name the "Executive Branch."
• Elon Musk's Starlink seems to be assuming duties related to the Federal Aviation Administration, apparently in violation of conflict-of-interest laws and casting doubt on whether a related $2.4B contract with Verizon will be honored or whether Starlink will effectively take over for Verizon.
• Shortly after Trump left office in 2021, the investment company owned entirely by Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, received $2B from the Saudi Arabian government's sovereign wealth fund. A Saudi due diligence investigation recommended against the investment because the investigators concluded "that management [of Kushner's fund] was 'inexperience[d],' that [Saudi Arabia] would be responsible for 'the bulk of the investment and risk,' that its fee seemed 'excessive,' and that the firm’s operations were 'unsatisfactory in all aspects.'" In short, it looked like a terrible investment option, but Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman rejected the conclusions of the investigation and proceeded with the investment. That's all old news, but I just recently learned the following:
  • Besides the $2B from the Saudis, the fund manages an additional $1B, with 99% of all funds coming from foreign sources. The non-Saudi sources include "the sovereign wealth funds of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as well as . . . Terry Gou, the Taiwanese billionaire and founder of Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer." There is also a fifth unidentified "mystery foreign investor."
  • I had expected that, in addition to a share of any profits, Kushner's fund would charge investors annually a percentage of the funds under management. (2% is a common figure in the industry, and it appears that Kushner's fund charges between 1.25% and 2%, depending on the investor.) However, by the end of 2023, Kushner's fund had only invested about 18% of the $3B under management, and it had only invested about 37% of all funds by July 2024. Because the fund takes a percentage of all funds managed regardless of whether they're invested, that means Kushner's fund has been and is being paid tens millions of dollars a year to not invest client funds. Through the end of 2024, the fund has been paid an estimated total of $157M in fees, with $87M of that from Saudi Arabia.
• Americans for Tax Fairness issued a report (pdf) on political donations by billionaires. Here's a bit from the summary:

Billionaires continue to drown our democracy with money, with just the top 100 political-donor families pouring a record-busting $2.6 billion into 2024 federal elections–one of every six dollars spent overall. This more than doubled the amount donated by America’s oligarchs in the 2020 presidential election and is a nearly 160-fold increase in billionaire political spending since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United first allowed unlimited campaign donations.

The vast majority of billionaire money supported Republican candidates. The top 100 billionaire-family donors made 70% ($1.84 billion) of their donations to committees that backed GOP candidates, while 23% ($594 million) went to entities backing Democratic candidates. 

• Public Citizen has released a report on the Trump administration's efforts to halt or hinder federal investigations and prosecutions of corporate misconduct. From the key findings:

[T]he message that the [Trump] administration intends to let corporate lawbreakers off the hook could not be clearer – especially when those corporate lawbreakers are also Trump administration insiders.

The biggest corporate titans and billionaire executives have lined up behind the administration’s zealous and increasingly authoritarian antipathy toward consumer, worker, and environmental protections. . . .

The consequences for the public when corporations face a diminished threat of enforcement are disastrous, and the consolidation of state power with corporate power with a mission to prioritize profits over the public poses dire threats to our democracy.

Meanwhile, honest businesses that are not Trump administration insiders – or that refuse to play along with the ultra-MAGA ideological agenda – may face genuine disadvantages of disfavor from the administration’s politicized approach to enforcement.

Corporate crime and lawbreaking can victimize millions of Americans at an unimaginable scale. . . . This will not end well.

Update on capitulating law firms

I wrote previously about the shameful capitulation of certain large, corporate law firms to Trump's authoritarian demands. There has been recent reporting about capitulating law firms losing both clients and lawyers on account of their capitulation. I'm not sure how widespread the phenomenon is, but this is good: If we're to avoid descent into authoritarianism, negative consequences for collaboration will play an important role.

Miscellanea

$67M fighter jets keep falling off an aircraft carrier into the Red Sea.

Art and the Trump era.

For reasons that aren't clear, the Trump administration wants to end the Energy Star program.

This year marked the end of the longest relationship of my life: A fantasy baseball league that I first joined in 1999 or 2000. A lot of interesting guys participated over the years, including this guy, who now makes movies and television and was recently interviewed by the Seattle Times about his work on the second season of Poker Face.