Archives for category: Accountability

Jeff Tiedrich’s blog on Substack is called “Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion.” He uses language that I ban from this site. But he’s so exceptional in his insights, his humor, and his ability to weave incidents into a narrative that I have to post him despite his flagrant use of the F word.

He writes:

finalfuckingly. Donny Convict has been sentenced

The judge who presided over Trump’s criminal trial, Juan Merchan, issued a sentence of “unconditional discharge”, meaning the president-elect will be released without fine, imprisonment or probation supervision for his conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. While the sentence makes Trump a convicted felon, he will face no penalty other than this legal designation.

in the end, A Very Special Boy received the slightest possible punishment, being told in effect to go think about what a bad boy you’ve beenbut at least Donny will go down in history as America’s only convicted felon president. you know the big grievance-baby is never going to stop letting it gnaw away at his insides — and for that, ha fucking ha. sucks to you be you, Donny.

Donny had tried like hell to put off his sentencing until how about never, running first to the New York Court of Appeals and then to the New York State Supreme Court, insisting that the imaginary doctrine of “pre-presidential immunity” meant that he couldn’t be sentenced for any crimes at all. 

both courts told Donny to get stuffed — and so he went scampering off to his besties on the Supreme Court. late last night, the Supremes surprisingly did the right thing, and ruled 5-4 that Donny could eat an entire bag of dicks. 

three of the four dissenters were Luxury Vacation Clarence, Fishin’ Trip Sammy, and Blackout Brett — the bought-and-paid-for Federalist Society hacks who vote the way their oligarch overlords tell them. the fourth was Nihilist Neil, whose own motivation is that he hates government and just wants to see everything burn. 

wrap your mind around that. there are four Supreme Court Justices willing to go beyond the already-corrupt concept of ‘presidential immunity’ and insist that Donny is A Super-Duper Extra-Special Boy who can do all the crimes he wants, any time, for any reason, with no accountability at all, ever

one vote is how close Donny came to escaping even the limited form of justice that was meted out this morning.

the MAGA cinematic universe is howling with outrage right now, and demanding to speak to Amy “Commie” Barrett’s manager.

boo fucking hoo.


Mr. Convicted And Sentenced Felon spent yesterday doubling down on his outright lies about the wildfires in Los Angeles.

“if you noticed yesterday, the hydrants were empty. they didn’t have any water, any of them. they said twenty percent but now I just heard fifty percent and now none of them have water and that fire’s still raging. when he turned that down, I was going to give him unlimited water, it would come down, it really comes down from the north, way up north, including parts of Canada, it’s so much water that they wouldn’t know what to do with. just the opposite would have happened. but and uh, that’s the reason that this happened. he wouldn’t do what we wanna— and we’re gonna force that upon him now, but it’s very late.”

where do you even begin with this nonsense?

Donny somehow believes that Gavin Newsom rejected an imaginary offer of water that apparently comes from some mysterious source “way up north.” (Donny stopped short of repeating his ‘big Canadian faucet’ fairy tale.)

here’s something you should know about about the “water restoration declaration” that Donny keeps insisting Governor Newsome refuses to sign:

there’s no such thing. you can’t find a single water management expert who has a fucking clue what Donny is gibbering about

“There was no ‘water restoration declaration’ for him to sign,” Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow in the Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California think tank, said in a Wednesday interview.

“There was never a ‘water restoration declaration’ in California that the Governor refused to sign,” Brent Haddad, an environmental studies professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a Wednesday email.

let’s go back to the clip. 

“we’re gonna force that upon him now.”

he’s going to force water on Gavin Newsom? how does that work?

“Governor Newsom, there’s a delivery man here with a hundred million tons of water, he wants to know where to put it.”

Donny’s never been all that big on the concept of consent. remember when he promised to quote-unquote “protect women,” whether they like it or not?

“I said, ‘Well, I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not,’” Trump said. “I’m going to protect them.”

how fucking creepy is that? “I’m doing this to protect you” is the kind of thing the serial killer says as he handcuffs you to the radiator.

Donny famously bragged about grabbing women by the pussy — because when you’re a star, they let you. now Donny’s going to hydrate California — because when you’re a president, they let you.

oh look, Donny’s also going to force himself on the people of Greenland, whether they like it or not.

reporter: “what’s the price tag?”
Donny: “well, maybe no price tag. y’know, look, we’re going to have to see what happens. because Denmark — we need this for national security. we need Greenland very badly. you look— the Russian ships, the China ships, they’re all over the place, they’re surrounding. now they have for a long time, that’s a lane. but uh, we need that for national security. so, I don’t know that Denmark has any right title and interest, so we’re going to find it— but I can tell you, you saw the clips that were released. the people of Greenland would love to become a state of the United States of America. I— we were greeted with tremendous love and affection and respect. the people would like to be a part of the United States. now Denmark maybe doesn’t like it, but then we can’t be too happy with Denmark, and maybe things have to happen with respect to Denmark having to do with tariffs. because they have to do this, I think, for the free world. we need that to protect the free world.

listening to Donny try to form coherent thoughts on the fly is like watching a chimpanzee play with a hand grenade. you know it’s going to end badly, but you can’t look away.

what is this nonsense? “I don’t know that Denmark has any right title and interest.” that Greenland is a territory of Denmark is not open to conjecture. there’s no maybe they and maybe they aren’t. it’s a fact, and facts are not malleable. Donny lives in a fantasy world of his own construction.

now, as to these people in Greenland who are so fucking psyched to become Americans — are they in the room with us right now? because when Cokey McSniffles Jr. and that weird little garden gnome Charlie Kirk did their failed Greenland photo op earlier this week, they had to bribe unhoused locals to wear MAGA hats and pretend to be supporters.

Danish public media organization DR News reports that many of the Trump supporters pictured dining with the president-elect’s son were unhoused and “socially disadvantaged” people asked to wear MAGA merch and offered a free dinner at Hotel Hans Egede in the town of Nuuk.

so yeah, that sounds like a groundswell of enthusiasm right there.


Scott Jennings can fuck all the way off.

try to keep your jaw from hitting the floor as you listen to Jennings twist the racism dial so far past eleven that it’s a wonder the whole thing didn’t snap off in his hand.

“also in California, you might have recalled a news story from last year. there was some interest in the fire departments and the firefighters in California. and the interest was that there were too many white men who were firefighters. and we need to have a program in California to make sure we don’t have enough white men as firefighters. we have DEI, we have budget cuts, and yet I’m wondering now if your house was burning down, how much do you care what color the firefighters are?”

Scott Jennings seems to care a lot what color the firefighters are. sounds to me that if Scott Jennings’ house were on fire and black firefighters showed up, he’d demand to know where the white firefighters are.

fuck this implication that black people aren’t up to the job of fighting fires, and that they’re being allowed to ride on the firetruck as some kind of unearned favor.

Tex. Rep Jasmine Crockett was having none of it. 

“we are looking at qualifications. what diversity, equity, and inclusion has always been about is saying, you know what, open this up. don’t just look at the white men. open it up and recognize that other people can be qualified. if we have been good enough to build this country, we are good enough to serve and die overseas, we are good enough to serve in other ways.”


the Most Unwelcome Man in the World inflicted himself on Jimmy Carter’s memorial service yesterday, and there are two things you need to know.

first, the narcoleptic old dotard immediately drifted off into slumberland — and second, Melania apparently now does her shopping at the Pilgrim Warehouse. 

but the real hero of the day was the photographer from the Carter Center, who positioned his camera so that Donny and Melly, who were sitting to the right of Obama, were blocked by a granite column.


As of now, Attorney General Merrick Garland says he will release the part of Jack Smith’s report about Trump’s actions on January 6, but will not release the report about Trump’s retention of documents.

The Trump team is in court trying to block even that partial, redacted part of Smith’s findings.

But doesn’t the public have the right to know the results of Smith’s investigations. Once Trump is in office, his Justice Department will suppress the report. It will never be released. It may be destroyed.

Jonathan V. Last, editor of The Bulwark, offered a brilliant solution.

Biden should release the entire report, in the service of the public’s right to know. Biden would be criticized by Trump and his acolytes, but that’s nothing new.

As President, Biden has absolute immunity for any actions he takes in his official capacity.

Will Biden play by the new rules or continue to be a nice guy?

Last writes:

want to talk about all of the Trump insanity. I want to talk about his insistence on “taking” Greenland. And the Panama Canal. And making Canada a U.S. state. And renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”

But guess what: Trump wants us to talk about this bs. He’s trying to dominate the news cycle, get attention, and keep the public talking about nonsense instead of the important story.1 So let’s not do that here?2

Instead, let’s talk about Jack Smith’s report. Because Democrats are poised to let Trump win again because they’re still playing by 2015 rules.


This week Trump’s legal team petitioned the attorney general not to release Smith’s report.

The chutzpah of these guys is off the charts. Because they aren’t saying, “The report should not be released.” At least that would be an argument.

No, Trump’s legal rationale is that the decision of whether or not to release the report should rest with . . . the next attorney general.

The icing on the cake is that they’re making this petition to Merrick Garland, who has some personal experience with Republicans denying a sitting Democratic administration the ability to execute governing decisions.

Fork. That. Noise.


Perhaps understanding how silly this petition is, Judge Aileen Cannon came off the bench (so to speak) to try to force Garland not to release the report. She issued an order forbidding the attorney general of the United States from publishing a report that federal regulations authorize him to publish when it’s “in the public interest.”

What authority does Judge Cannon have over the attorney general in this instance? Why is the publication of a government report in Washington under her purview in Florida, especially since, as Kim Wehle points out this morning, the case is no longer in her hands? And, most importantly, Smith’s report covers his two prosecutions and Cannon was formerly overseeing only one of those cases—so on what basis is she enjoining a report that covers another judge’s case in another jurisdiction?

These are questions we don’t need to answer because Cannon has proven herself to be nothing more than a naked political actor. Her conduct has been so egregious that Ty Cobb referred to her yesterday as Trump’s “tool” and said, “He [Trump] gets the results he needs from her.”

Reminder: Ty Cobb is not a resistance lib; he does not have TDS. He’s a conservative Republican who served as Trump’s own White House counsel. When one of the most important Republican lawyers in the country thinks a judge is cartoonishly crooked, that’s saying something.

Now you understand why Trump dispatched his kid and Charlie Kirk to Greenland yesterday for photo ops? Better to focus on a stunt than on Trump’s total corruption of the justice system. 


2. Fear

Why are Trump and Cannon so desperate to prevent the special counsel’s report from coming out? Trump won. He’s going to be president. They’ve gotten everything they wanted.

Perhaps because Trump’s lawyers recently reviewed the final draft of Smith’s report. They’ve seen what’s in it. If it were a nothingburger—or if it was TOTAL EXONERATION—they’d want it public.

Surely that means something?


Smith’s report should be public. As a matter of tradition (all previous special counsel reports were published) and also as a matter of morality. The country should have a permanent record of Trump’s once-allegedly-criminal actions.

But also as a matter of politics. Remember: 2025 is the year of maximum peril. Every day that can be chewed up forcing the administration to fight on a topic they fear is a day they lose in pursuit of their authoritarian agenda. You would not know it from their current posture, but the Democrats are actually the opposition party. They have a duty to oppose Trump, on all fronts, and inflict political pain wherever they can.

It is not clear that the Democratic party, as an organism, understands this reality. And so the final reason for making Smith’s report public by any means necessary is to force Democrats to come to terms with the new rules of American government.

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Government officials are now bound by the law—and only the law. The Republican party has worked hard to create this new order and has spent the last eight years exploiting this dynamic while Democrats have operated under the political arrangements that existed from, roughly speaking, 1974 to 2015.

The law says that Aileen Cannon’s injunction can, at least temporarily, halt the transmission of Jack Smith’s report.

But the law also says that any action a president takes as part of his official duties is, prima facie, legal. This was not formerly the case, but it is now. So if President Biden were to publish the report this afternoon in violation of Judge Cannon’s order, he would do so with total immunity.

Or, if the attorney general were to publish the report, putting himself at risk of being held in contempt of court, he could be pardoned by President Biden. That would all be perfectly above-board.

Yet, amazingly, Biden and Garland seem to still be in 2015 mode. 

This morning Garland made clear, in a Justice Department court filing, that he intends to publish the volume of Jack Smith’s report concerning the insurrection case, but will hold back on the volume relating to the classified documents.3

Which means that, unless President Biden acts, it is unlikely that the public will ever see the section of Smith’s report that pertains to the stolen documents case.4 Garland will not publish the volume related to that case. Which probably means that this second volume will never see the light of day.

Can you believe this? Can you believe that, in 2025, Biden and Garland are still operating under Queensberry rules, where nonbinding precedents are controlling and everyone stays hands-off the process? That they are willing to let Trump off the hook again?

Let’s be totally and completely clear: President Biden should publish both volumes of Smith’s report before leaving office. Doing so would serve the public interest and—most importantly—would be legal. Because, as an official action of a sitting president, it falls under the Supreme Court’s blanket of immunity.

Joe Biden didn’t make these rules; but like it or not, the country is now governed by them.

Unilateral disarmament is for suckers and hippies.

Sherrilyn Ifill is a veteran civil rights litigator and one of the most thoughtful leaders of the democratic resistance to authoritarianism. She is a former President of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

In this post, she offers sound advice about how to survive until the next election (in 2026) and then in 2028). Never give up!

She writes:

Sherrilyn Ifill

Anything and Everything Beautiful

In one of the most important and climatic scenes in the 2006 film Titanic, Rose and her beau Jack are holding on as they stand on tiptoe outside the rails of the upside down ship. As the ship begins its final, rapid descent into the dark, cold waters of the Atlantic, Jack tells Rose, “This is it.” They have received instructions from the ship’s architect on how they might survive once they are in the water. They are both clear about the goals: survive and stay together.

This feels like the moment this country faces as we approach Trump 2.0. In just a few short weeks Donald Trump will return to the White House, bringing with him a coterie of some of the most incompetent and vile miscreants to serve in some of the highest and most consequential civil positions in our government. Their intentions are clear. Their penchant for lies and targeting has already been on display. Their ham-fisted approach to governance is clumsy, cruel, and unethical, but that won’t stop it from being effective. They are prepared to fight battles small and large. With the wind of a conservative Supreme Court and Republican-controlled Congress at their backs, Trump and his team are feeling bold and unstoppable. The outcome seems clear.

But like Rose and Jack, we have goals as well. To survive personally and nationally, with the remnants of democracy still in place so that we have a platform on which to build a new, stronger, healthier democracy. Our other goal is to stay together. We can and must do both.

The greatest obstacle to our fight to survive as a democracy (even a deeply flawed one) and to hold together a semblance of unity among those who believe in the fight for equality and justice in this country, is the inclination to give up – to believe that Trump’s plans cannot be stopped. I agree that they cannot be stopped in total. But I do believe that they can be upended in part, and we must use what powers we have to thwart as many of his harmful policies and plans as we can. It’s also critical for us to play for the future and not just for the present moment. That means it matters that we make a record – a record of Trump’s excesses and lies, but also of police, prosecutor, and judicial misconduct, of corruption – documents and money exchanged, of quid pro quos, and of collaboration with foreign enemies.

Many of us are fighting powerful exhaustion and an ongoing measure of shock that this giant, seemingly unsinkable state-of-the-art democracy (however flawed) can really be about to sink. That exhaustion and disbelief can lead to paralysis, something we can ill afford. I’m reminded that the first thing Jack and Rose did was take deep breaths before holding one long breath as the ship descended. And we must do the same. First pulling in as oxygen those things that nourish us and keep us going. I have encouraged people to lean-in to art, and nature and family and spiritual practice. Establishing a regimen of these things that you will engage and absorb regularly over the next four years is critical. An exercise schedule, morning meditation or prayer, monthly museum visits or concerts, a book club, monthly family dinners, Netflix nights, leaning into your favorite sports team. All of this can help ensure that you are regularly oxygenated throughout what I can guarantee will be moments that will take our breath away in their cruelty and audacity.

Lastly, like Jack and Rose, hold hands. Stay connected to our cohort of democratic survivors. Those determined to make it to shore. There’s room on the floating door for more than one if we don’t panic and if we understand that our fate is inextricably linked to those who share our vision for democracy, justice and equality.

Generosity and encouragement will be key. Our hands may come apart from time to time, but we can still stay close. Fight those who are opposed to democracy, equality and justice. Not those who are your allies. You can disagree with your allies. Correct them, edify them, firmly push back against them when necessary. But try to reserve your fight for your opponents. 

Once we’ve established our oxygen routine, we will have to focus. There will be many things competing for our attention. But we must decide what are the things or areas to which we’ve committed ourselves. We cannot exhaust ourselves. There are civil rights and civil liberties organizations ready to file suit. Support them. There are representatives in Congress who know the rules and are ready to resist the excesses of the Republicans. We don’t have to do their work – but we must support them.

But there is work for every citizen to do. When your friends or family members get tired, and start thinking we can’t survive this, give them the number to call their Senator or House member. Remind them that it matters. And remind yourself. Never make it easy for those in power to trample our rights. Make them hear your voices, no matter what. Speak, write, call, march. If we stop doing those things, it won’t be long before we no longer remember where the line is for decency, truth, justice and democracy.

There’s another reason it matters. Remember that the fear of losing their jobs is the prime motivator of most elected representatives, and they are in constant fear that they have lost sight of which way the wind is blowing. The 2022 midterms loom large, and Republicans remain in disarray. They too, are exhausted just from trying to keep up with what Trump, or Musk have ordered in their most recent tweets.

So when you call, leave messages, send texts and emails, send postcards and letters. Trust me – they worry, and they waver. And if you are blessed to have terrific representatives, then they need the encouragement and the reminder of who they are fighting for. We must call our our elected representatives when they do wrong, but we must also pat them on the back when they do right.

Get engaged locally. Go with a friend or family member to the next school board meeting. Showing up at city council meetings. Visit your library as a way of showing your community who you are, and that you care. Do not cede the space to your opponents. They win whenever we fail to show up. Our presence is powerful and destabilizes the sense that we are intimidated. This is especially important if you live in a blue state or district. We need to hold the spaces, cities and states we have.

When you reel your resolve flagging, look at your children, your young cousin, your niece, or nephew and ask yourself if you are too intimidated to protect their future. If the answer is no, then act like it. Enter the space that is yours. Decide that in 2025 you will be come an active citizen, not an observer.

For my friends in media, many of you are already failing this preliminary moment. Tighten up your language. Stop conceding the rationality of things that are fundamentally irrational and the legality of things that are illegal. Musk and Ramaswamy are leading at best a “project on government accountability.” Maybe and “ad hoc committee” or study group. It is not a “Department” which is a legal term for federal agencies. The creation of federal departments requires an Act of Congress, not the mere whim of a president-elect and his benefactor. Think “Department of Homeland Security.” There is no “Department of Government Efficiency.” And if giving legal imprimatur to this ad hoc initiative is not reason enough to refrain from referring to it as DOGE, engaging in cost-free advertising for Elon Musk’s cryptocurrency (called DOGE) should be reason enough.

Restore your obligation to help your readers understand what is out-of-the-ordinary and antidemocratic. Trump’s stated plans to seize the Panama Canal, to make Canada the 51st state, and to “buy” Greenland is not “Trump being Trump.” It is not a “policy plan.” And it is certainly not an “approach to diplomacy.” If you had 11th grade social studies you know that it reflects imperialist ambitions, that it is an act of hostility towards those nations, and that is destabilizing to those nations, their people, and their markets. Report on it as such. Trump is the President-elect. When he makes these kinds of threats they should be treated seriously and presented as the threat they constitute. This is not normal behavior. It could and may yet lead to trade wars or armed conflict.

It is also critical that the media compel elected representatives to stand with or against Trump’s most excessive plans. I would have expected a responsible press to be camped outside of Senator Marco Rubio’s house who, as Trump’s Secretary of State nominee, would be charged with handling the fallout from Trump’s intemperate and menacing threats against sovereign nations. What are his views about Trump’s stated plan to seize the Panama Canal? There is a pretty healthy Panamanian American population in Florida. What is Rubio saying to that community?

The Matt Gaetz ethics report was an explosive revelation. Seems long ago. He has moved on to prime-time show on OANN. That does not mean the press should move on. This is the man Trump wanted as Attorney General – to represent the United States and lead the largest law enforcement force in the world. His selection of Gaetz is, in and of itself, disqualifying. But he has yet to be pressed on the Gaetz report and what he knew about it. If he didn’t know then he didn’t do basic due diligence before selecting a nominee. If he did, well then, the Senate has no reason to give any Trump nominee the benefit of the doubt -something one might remind those Democratic senators who have announced their willingness to consider voting for RFK, Jr. as HHS Secretary.

The public doesn’t sustain its outrage because the news moves on to something else. Stop letting Trump set the news cycle. Your job is to keep the citizenry educated so that we can make good decisions. Trump’s election is evidence that this has failed. But it’s never too late to do better.

And don’t forget the anti-democratic excesses that are happening around the country, and not just on Capitol Hill. What about ongoing attacks against Black women elected prosecutors in Florida? https://www.wftv.com/news/local/polk-county-grand-jury-investigating-monique-worrells-administration-days-before-swearing-in/276H52VRO5GWNDR53GBPA7LOTQ/ The theft of power from democratic governors by Republican legislatures. https://www.npr.org/2024/12/12/g-s1-37837/north-carolina-gop-lawmakers-governor Ongoing police racism and brutality? The catastrophic humanitarian crisis in our nation’s prisons. These are all threats to the integrity of democracy in this country as much as Trump. Cover these stories more prominently, so that the public can understand that the threats are not limited to those on Capitol Hill and can engage at the local level.

For all of us, even when the media fails, we are still obligated to stay informed. Start following the terrific lawyers, journalists, activists, and writers who have shown that they have the ability to meet the moment and who can share with you information you are unlikely to get other places.

Faith leaders who believe in democracy and justice? There’s work for you to do, and it is urgent. Now is the time to reach out to your local police precinct captains. Make sure they know who you are. Ask for a cell number where you can reach them. Invite them to your places of worship and let them know what you expect. When and if we see our neighbors being targeted, taken away by ICE or other law enforcement, faith leaders should be on-call for their communities, with a direct high level point of contact to find out where individuals have been taken and how they can be reached. Let your local police know that you expect humane treatment of arrestees and detainees.

Finally, we all end the year with a little less money than we would like but make a decision once your finances stabilize about which two or three public, non-profit sources of information or advocacy you will support. PBS? Democracy Now? Pro Publica? Wikipedia (now under threat from Elon)? Your library? Black press? Your town’s alternative weekly? Then do it. Do it now.

Begin printing out articles that contain important information and social media posts that shed important light on controversial issues. There’s a great deal of “scrubbing” happening on the internet right now and many of the most nefarious figures of this time that have stayed under the radar will reappear in the days of our future rebuilding, espousing brand-new positions and ideas.

I intend to use this space to shed light and do some deep dives on the meaning and context behind the anti-democratic plans and proposals that are unfolding, especially those that strike at the heart of our constitution’s guarantee of equality, so please tune in. As I always say, I don’t have all the answers. I’m only absolutely clear about the need to fight.

There’s all kinds of graft, both legal and illegal. The Trump family seems to have mastered the art of legal graft. Tech billionaires and others have fallen to their knees to kiss Trump’s ring and to humbly offer him $1 million to help pay for his inauguration ceremonies. So far, the inauguration fund has swelled to $170 million, probably the most in history.

The ABC network paid Trump $1 million for his inauguration and, for good measure, gave $15 million to Trump rather than fight a lawsuit defending George Stephanopoulos for saying on air that Trump had “raped” E. Jean Carroll. ABC might have won in court on First Amendment grounds, but it capitulated.

Amazon, owned by Jeff Bezos, was even more ingenious. It agreed to pay the Trumps $40 million to license a documentary about Melania. She will be the executive producer. Of course, Bezos had already paid his $1 million into the inauguration fund. He is the publisher of The Washington Post, the guy who prevented the publication of an editorial endorsing Kamala.

The documentary will surely be a glowing reprise of the life of Mrs. Trump, since she is in charge. But will it include her career as a nude model? The photos are all over the internet, and no kidding, she has a stunning body. But will they be in the documentary? Doubtful.

Remember that part of the Constitution called the “Emoluments Clause”? It has been generally understood to mean that the President should not take any gifts or compensation from anyone, presumably to avoid the appearance of a bribe.

However, Trump flouted that clause with the permission of the Supreme Court, which never found a conflict in Trump’s ownership of a hotel in close proximity to the White House, where foreign leaders rented elaborate suites.

Trump can accept major gifts now because he is not President yet. However, he sought to block his sentencing in a New York court in the grounds that the President-elect enjoyed the same immunity from criminal proceedings as a sitting President. Trump is ingenious.

The editorial boards of the Miami Herald and the Orlando Sentinel warned about the economic consequences of Trump’s plan to deport immigrants with Temporary Protected Status. They are “our neighbors, our friends, and our relatives.” Why didn’t Floridians think of that before they voted?

The editorial says:

It’s like 2017 all over again when it comes to Donald Trump and his threats about ending Temporary Protected Status.

TPS, a federal program familiar to  Floridians, protects some immigrants from deportation for a limited time because of emergency conditions in their home countries, such as Venezuela and Haiti. To qualify, they must be living in the U.S. when their country is designated for TPS and must meet a certain cutoff date. It allows them to live and work legally in the U.S. but does not offer a pathway to permanent legalization.

In his previous term, Trump tried and failed to end TPS for immigrants from Haiti and Nicaragua. This time, the president-elect should think twice. His home state of Florida would be affected more than any other. Almost a third of about 863,880 TPS recipients now live in this state, many from Venezuela and Haiti, places with well-documented turmoil and failures.

TPS recipients have legal status in the country, even if they initially came without documents. And TPS recipients pay into the system, through taxes. An estimate from 2019 put the number at $4.6 billion in federal, state and local taxes each year.

Their ranks are growing

As the Miami Herald has reported, the number of TPS recipients in Florida has more than quadrupled in the past three years, up from about 65,000 in April 2021 to about 295,720 now.

The Biden administration expanded TPS, including for about 472,000 Venezuelans, a move that translates into many more who could potentially be affected if Trump targets TPS — a program created in 1990 under President George H. W. Bush.

TPS emerged as an issue in the 2024 Trump campaign during that shameful episode in September, when Trump’s running mate, Vice President-elect JD Vance, spread debunked conspiracy theories about Haitians eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, and Trump continued to spread that misinformation at a presidential debate.

“They are eating the dogs … they are eating the cats,” Trump said repeatedly.

Ominous threats in Ohio

In early October, when Trump was asked whether, if reelected, he would revoke TPS for Haitians — at least those in Springfield — and deport them, he responded: “Absolutely. I’d revoke it, and I’d bring them back to their country.”

Vance also mentioned TPS at an Arizona campaign event in October: “What Donald Trump has proposed doing is we’re going to stop doing mass parole. We’re going to stop doing mass grants of Temporary Protected Status.”

All of that was well before the election.

Now, with a second Trump administration in the offing, theory could become reality. Look at his appointments: immigration hardliner Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff for policy — he has criticized the Biden administration’s humanitarian parole program aimed at slowing the number of migrants at the southern border — and Tom Homan as the “border czar.” Homan led Immigration and Customs Enforcement when families were separated during Trump’s first term.

Immigration was one of the main drivers of Trump’s 2024 campaign. Much attention was focused on his vows to conduct mass deportations, especially of undocumented people. About 11 million immigrants without legal status were in the U.S. in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Trump has also talked about a host of other immigration actions, including ending birthright citizenship and restarting construction of the border wall. After the fearmongering in Ohio, TPS is on the table, too. Lawsuits derailed Trump’s efforts the last time. Will it happen again?

We understand that TPS is, by definition, supposed to be temporary. That’s fair. But in many of these countries — Haiti, certainly, and Venezuela — conditions are just as bad as they were or worse. Returning TPS recipients to their countries could put them in danger. In Florida, where TPS recipients are our neighbors and friends and relatives, we should already know that.

This editorial was originally published in the Miami Herald. The Sentinel sometimes republishes editorials that reflect our point of view. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

Yesterday was a day jam-packed with news, which Heather Cox Richardson puts into perspective. We can look forward to–or dread– four years of non-stop lying and bragging and insulting and threatening by Convicted Felon Trump. Among other crazy things he said yesterday, he claimed that Hezbollah terrorists were part of the Jan 6 mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol. Were they carrying Trump banners? Will he pardon them?

She writes:

Today, President Joe Biden signed proclamations that create the Chuckwalla National Monument and the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument, protecting 848,000 acres (about 3,430 square kilometers) of land in southern California’s Eastern Coachella Valley. Under the 1906 Antiquities Act, the president can designate national monuments to protect areas of “scientific, cultural, ecological, and historic importance.”

Yesterday, Biden protected the East Coast, the West Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea—an area that makes up about 625 million acres or 2.5 million square kilometers—from oil and natural gas drilling. While there is currently little interest among oil companies in drilling in those areas, the new designation will protect them into the future. Noting that nearly 40% of Americans live in coastal communities, Biden said the minimal fossil fuel potential was not worth the risks that drilling would bring to the fishing and tourist industries and to environmental and public health.

The White House noted that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have “conserved more lands and waters”—more than 670 million acres of them—and have “deployed more clean energy, and made more progress in cutting climate pollution and advancing environmental justice than any previous administration.” At the same time, oil and gas production is at an all-time high, demonstrating that land protection and energy production can coexist.

While oil executives blasted Biden’s proclamation protecting the coastal waters, Democratic lawmakers on the newly protected coasts cheered his action, recognizing that oil spills devastate the tourism and fishing on which their constituents depend: the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, for example, killed 11 people, closed 32,000 square miles (82,880 square kilometers) of the Gulf of Mexico to fishing, and has cost more than $65 billion in compensation alone.

Biden protected the oceans under the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which enables presidents to withdraw federal waters from future oil and gas leasing and development but does not say that future presidents can revoke that protection to put those waters back into development, meaning that Trump—who similarly protected coastal waters when he was president—will have a hard time overturning Biden’s action.

Nonetheless, Trump’s spokesperson Karoline Leavitt called Biden’s decision “disgraceful” and claimed it was “designed to exact political revenge on the American people who gave President Trump a mandate to increase drilling and lower gas prices. Rest assured, Joe Biden will fail, and we will drill, baby, drill.”

Journalist Wes Siler, who writes about the outdoors, environment, and the law, notes that there is a major effort underway among Republicans to privatize public lands to benefit oil and gas industries, as well as other extractive industries, just as Project 2025 outlined. Melinda Taylor, senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin Law School, told Bloomberg Law in November: “Project 2025 is a ‘wish list’ for the oil and gas and mining industries and private developers. It promotes opening up more of our federal land to energy development, rolling back protections on federal lands, and selling off more land to private developers.”

In September, Siler wrote in Outside that politicians in Utah have designed a lawsuit to put in front of the Supreme Court. It argues that all the land in Utah currently in the hands of the Bureau of Land Management—18.5 million acres—should be transferred to the control of the state of Utah.

Those eager to get their hands on the land use the word “unappropriated lands” from the 1862 Homestead Act to claim that the federal government is holding the land “without any designated purpose.”

But, as Siler notes, in 2023, BLM-managed land supported 783,000 jobs and produced $201 billion in economic output, and in Utah alone the use of BLM land created more than 36,000 jobs and $6.7 billion in economic output as more than 15 million people visited the state’s public lands. Utah realized hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes on that activity, and while it’s true that states cannot tax federal government lands—as lawmakers say—the government pays the state in lieu of taxes: $128.7 million in 2021.

Transferring that land to the state would sacrifice these funds, and because the state constitution requires the state both to balance its budget and to realize profits from state land, that transfer would facilitate the land’s sale to private interests.

Twelve states have now joined Utah’s lawsuit, arguing that federal control of “unappropriated” land within states impinges on state sovereignty, and they are asking the Supreme Court to take up the case as part of its original jurisdiction. As Siler noted in a May article in Outside, Chief Justice John Roberts has expressed an eagerness to revisit the legality of the Antiquities Act the presidents use to protect land—as Biden did today—suggesting he would be willing to side with the states against the federal government. Project 2025 also calls for Congress to repeal the Antiquities Act.

In Wes Siler’s Newsletter yesterday, Siler noted that the new rules package adopted for the 119th Congress makes it easier to transfer public lands to state control. The rules strip away the need to justify the cost of such a transfer and to offset it with budget cuts or increased revenue elsewhere.

In a press conference today, Trump said he would rescind Biden’s policies and “put it back on day one,” and complained that the 625 million acres Biden protected feels “like the whole ocean,” although the Pacific Ocean alone is almost 38 billion acres more than Biden protected.

Also today, Trump announced that a developer from Dubai, DAMAC Properties, will invest at least $20 billion in the U.S. to create new data centers that support artificial intelligence and cloud services. Trump claimed that the company’s chief executive officer, Hussain Sajwani, is investing in the U.S. “because of the fact that he was very inspired by the election,” but DAMAC has been connected to Trump for a while.

Sajwani attended Trump’s first inauguration, and a company tied to chair and current board member of DAMAC Farooq Arjomand paid $600,000 to the key witness for the House Republicans seeking to dig up dirt on President Biden. That man was Alexander Smirnov, who in December 2024 pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI when he claimed Biden had taken bribes from the Ukrainian company Burisma.

Data centers are notoriously high users of energy. They consume 10 to 50 times as much energy per floor space as does a typical commercial office building, which might have something to do with why Trump’s team is so eager to increase American energy production even as it is already at an all-time high. Trump has promised companies that invest a billion or more dollars in the U.S. that they will get expedited approvals and permits, including those covering environmental concerns.

But if the larger story of this moment is the plunder of our public resources for private interests, Trump’s press conference in general seemed to have a different theme. It was what CNN perhaps euphemistically called “wide ranging,” as he abandoned his “America First” isolationism to suggest using force against China as well as U.S. allies Denmark, Panama, Mexico, and Canada, which would destabilize the globe by rejecting the central principle of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that countries must respect each other’s sovereignty. He wildly suggested that the Iran-backed Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah was part of the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and that his people were part of the negotiations for the return of the Israeli hostages.

Trump’s performance was reminiscent of his off-the-wall press conferences during the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, which tanked his popularity enough to get his team to stop him from doing them. Trump might have chosen to speak today to keep attention away from the arrival of the casket carrying former president Jimmy Carter to Washington, D.C., where it was transported by horse-drawn caisson to the Capitol, where Carter will lie in state in the Rotunda until his Thursday funeral at Washington National Cathedral. The snow and frigid weather were not enough to keep mourners away, and Trump has already expressed frustration that Carter’s death will mean that flags will be at half-staff for his own inauguration.

But he also might have been trying to demonstrate that the transition from Biden’s administration to his own is taking his time and energy in order to add heft to the argument his lawyers made yesterday. They demanded that Attorney General Merrick Garland prevent the public release of special counsel Jack Smith’s report about his investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election because making Trump respond to the media frenzy the report will stir up would take his attention away from the presidential transition.

Trump managed to defang most of the legal cases against him by being elected president, but he apparently still fears the release of Smith’s report. Today, Judge Aileen Cannon, whom he appointed to the bench and who dismissed the charges against Trump in his retention of classified documents, issued an order preventing the Department of Justice from releasing the report. Constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe noted that the order “has no legal basis and ought to be reversed quickly—but these days nobody can be confident that law will matter.”

The presidential immunity on which Trump apparently is relying has also failed to protect him from being sentenced in the election interference case in which a Manhattan jury found him guilty of 34 felonies. In Civil Discourse, legal analyst Joyce White Vance explained that Trump wants to stop the sentencing process because it triggers a thirty-day period for Trump to appeal. “Once the appeal is concluded,” she explains, “the conviction is final.” Trump was apparently hoping to hold off that process and buy four years to come up with a way out of a permanent designation as a felon.It didn’t work. Today, appeals court judge Ellen Gesmer rejected his attempt to stop the sentencing. It will go forward on Friday as planned.

Judge Aileen Cannon of Florida was appointed by Trump. When the Justice Department and FBI investigated the highly classified documents that Trump moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago when he left in 2017, Judge Cannon slowed down the prosecution at every opportunity, then threw it out because she decided that Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.

Now she has blocked the release of his report about his investigation, at least temporarily.

Will Trump appoint her to the Supreme Court when Thomas or Alito resigns? He owes her.

The New York Times reported:

The federal judge who handled President-elect Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case temporarily barred the special counsel, Jack Smith, on Tuesday from releasing his final report on the investigation to the public.

On Monday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers and lawyers for his two co-defendants began a multipronged effort to stop the release of Mr. Smith’s report, which they claimed was “one-sided” and part of a “politically motivated attack” against the president-elect.

In a brief ruling, Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a Trump appointee who dismissed the documents case in its entirety this summer, enjoined Mr. Smith from sharing his report outside the Justice Department until a federal appeals court in Atlanta, which is now considering a challenge to her dismissal of the case, makes a decision about how to handle the report.

Mr. Trump’s legal team wrote a letter to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland asking him to stop the release of the report, which was set to be made public as soon as Friday. In a separate move, lawyers for Mr. Trump’s co-defendants in the documents case, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, went directly to Judge Cannon, of the Southern District of Florida, asking for an emergency order blocking the release.

The legal scrambling continued on Tuesday, as Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira asked the appeals court hearing the case to weigh in on blocking the report and Mr. Trump sought to join their motion in front of Judge Cannon.

With the case already dismissed, the report would essentially be Mr. Smith’s final chance to lay out damaging new details and evidence, if he has any, about how Mr. Trump mishandled a trove of classified documents after he left office in 2021.

Judge Cannon threw out the case in July, ruling, in the face of decades of precedent, that Mr. Smith had been unlawfully appointed special counsel. Mr. Smith quickly challenged that decision in front of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

But after Mr. Trump won the election in November, Mr. Smith dropped the appeal where Mr. Trump was concerned, effectively ending his part in the matter. Mr. Smith did not drop the appeal against Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira, and federal prosecutors in Florida intend to pursue it once Mr. Smith steps down and disbands his team.

When Trump is inaugurated, his top defense lawyers will have key roles in the Justice Department. This case will be shelved, along with Jack Smith’s report.

The preceding post was reported by ProPublica, an absolutely essential journalistic enterprise that serves the public interest.

Please read Peter Greene’s take on the same story. He adds additional research and his professional experience as a veteran teacher.

Greene writes:

Call it a zombie school, one more piece of predictable detritus washed up on the wave of voucher laws. Here’s an instructive tale.

ARCHES Academy was a charter school operating in Apache Junction, Arizona. But in March of 2024, the state board that oversees Arizona charters voted unanimously to shut the place down. Mind you, the board in Arizona is pretty charter friendly, but ARCHES had so many problems. Under 50 students were left at a K-8 school dinged for soooo many problems.

Chartered in 2020, promising a “holistic” approach that grouped students by ability rather than age, then put on an Assessment Consent Agreement in 2023. Financial mismanagement. Poor record-keeping. IRS violations. Violations of state and federal law. Academic results in the basement. State rating of D. Founder and principal Michelle Edwards told the board “Mistakes were made and compounded over time.” So, general incompetence rather than active fraudster work.

So ARCHES the charter school was shut down, because charters still have to answer to the state for their performance and competence.

But you know who doesn’t have any oversight at all in Arizona?

Private schools that accept taxpayer-funded vouchers.

So Edwards simply re-launched her school as the Title of Liberty (a name taken from a verse in the Book of Mormon). Some of her pitch was visible in a piece in The Arizona Beehive, a Mormon-flavored newsmagazine, in the summer of 2024.

As changes happen in the public education system, many families who belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have become more concerned about the potential influence of conflicting ideologies expressed in their children’s classrooms.

In the article, Edwards addresses her own concerns.

Principal Michelle Edwards, an early childhood specialist, has been in the education system for many years. The academy is a culmination of a dream of hers. “I recently had one student who was really struggling,” says Michelle, “and I couldn’t tell her about her divine abilities, that she’s a child of God, or who her father in heaven is.”

The article promises a Personal Learning Plan and notes that if tuition is an issue, the school will help parents apply for the Arizona ESA voucher to cover costs.

What the article doesn’t mention is that Edwards just had the school, under another name and as a charter, shut down by the state. But then, nobody, not even the state itself, told anyone.

Edwards’s new school went heavily with the religious pitch, with the website announcing “Christ-centered, constitutionally-based, education for all….”

Why doesn’t Arizona have anything in place to help apparently well-meaning folks like Edwards get into the education biz? Why doesn’t it exert even the slightest bit of oversight of the vendors cashing in on taxpayer-funded vouchers? I suspect it hints at what programs like Arizona’s voucher extravaganza are really about– and it’s not about a robust, choice-filled education environment. It’s about defunding and dismantling public education (and the tax burdens that go with it). But you can’t just tell folks, “We’re going to end public education.” So instead, hand them a pittance of a voucher and announce that you’re giving them freedom! And after that, you’ve washed your hands of them. The wealthy can still afford a top-notch education for their kids, and if Those People end up wasting their kids time in sub-prime, fraudulent, or incompetent pop up schools, well, that’s their problem.

If folks like the Arizona voucher crowd were serious about choice, they would provide transparency and oversight, rather than letting any shmoe rent a storefront and call it a school. But Arizona isn’t serious about choice. It’s serious about dismantling public education. It’s serious about getting public tax dollars into private hands and funding religious groups. And people like the families at Title of Liberty and even Edwards herself will just keep paying the price.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 holds up Arizona as a shining exemplar of what education should be in every state. Vouchers for all, rich and poor alike. Everyone choosing the kind of school or home school they like. Happiness reigns. Or so they claim.

In several articles, ProPublica has taken a close look at what’s happening in Arizona. It’s not a pretty picture. Open the link to read this article in full. It was written by Eli Hager of ProPublica, published there and on the Raw Story website.

The reality is ugly. Arizona does have universal vouchers, but most are used by well-to-do families whose children were already enrolled in private schools. About 60,000 of Arizona’s 1.3 million students use vouchers. Clearly, the vast majority of the state’s students attend public schools. Meanwhile, Arizona’s state budget has exploded because of the added cost of paying everyone’s tuition at private schools. And the public schools are underfunded, ranked 48th in the nation for per-pupil spending.

One afternoon in September, parents started arriving for pickup at Title of Liberty Academy, a private Mormon K-8 school in Mesa, Arizona, on the eastern outskirts of Phoenix.

Individually, the moms and dads were called in to speak to the principal. That’s when they were told that the school, still just a few months old, was closing due to financial problems.

There would be no more school at Title of Liberty.

Over the course of that week, more parents were given the news, as well as their options for the remainder of the school year: They could transfer their children to another private or charter school, or they could put them in a microschool that the principal said she’d soon be setting up in her living room. Or there was always homeschooling. Or even public school.

These families had, until this moment, embodied Arizona’s “school choice” ideal. Many of them had been disappointed by their local public schools, which some felt were indoctrinating kids in subjects like race and sex and, of course, were lacking in religious instruction. So they’d shopped for other educational options on the free market, eventually leading them to Title of Liberty.

One mom had even discovered the school by window shopping: It was in the same strip mall as her orthodontist’s office, next to a ChinaPalace, and she’d noticed the flags outside with Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints imagery. (The school was not formally affiliated with the church.)

An LDS member herself, she was soon ready to start paying tuition to the school from her son’s Empowerment Scholarship Account — a type of school voucher pioneered in Arizona and now spreading in various forms to more than a dozen other states. ESAs give parents an average of over $7,000 a year in taxpayer funds, per child, to spend on any private school, tutoring service or other educational expense of their choice.

Yet Arizona’s ESA program provides zero transparency as to private schools’ financial sustainability or academic performance to help parents make informed school choices.

For instance, the state never informed parents who were new to Title of Liberty and were planning to spend their voucher money there that it had previously been a charter school called ARCHES Academy — which had had its charter revoked last school year due to severe financial issues. Nor that, as a charter, it had a record of dismal academic performance, with just 13% of its students proficient in English and 0% in math in 2023.

When it was a charter (which is a type of public school), these things could be known. There was some oversight. The Arizona State Board for Charter Schools had monitored the school’s finances and academics, unanimously coming to the conclusion that it should be shut down.

Yet just a month after the board’s decision, ARCHES was re-creating itself as a renamed, newly religious private school, simply by pivoting to accept voucher dollars.

In other words, it was closed down by a public governing body but found a way to keep existing and being funded by the public anyway, just without the standards and accountability that would normally come with taxpayer money.

Arizona does no vetting of new voucher schools. Not even if the school or the online school “provider” has already failed, or was founded yesterday, or is operating out of a strip mall or a living room or a garage, or offers just a half hour of instruction per morning. (If you’re an individual tutor in Arizona, all you need in order to register to start accepting voucher cash is a high school diploma.)

There is “nothing” required, said Michelle Edwards, the founder and principal of ARCHES and then of Title of Liberty, in an interview with ProPublica. It was “shocking how little oversight” the state was going to provide of her ESA-funded private school, Edwards said.

According to charter board members as well as parents and family members of her former students, Edwards is a well-intentioned career educator who cares deeply about children. But she has repeatedly struggled to effectively or sustainably run a school.

She said that when she first transformed her charter school into a private school, she and her team called up “every agency under the sun” asking what standards the new school would have to meet, including in order to accept voucher funds. For example, what about special education students and other vulnerable children — would there be any oversight of how her school taught those kids? Or instructional time — any required number of minutes to spend on reading, writing, math, science?

State agencies, she said, each responded with versions of a question: “Why are you asking us? We don’t do that for private schools.”

“If you’re gonna call yourself a school,” Edwards told ProPublica, “there should be at least some reporting that has to be done about your numbers, about how you’re achieving. … You love the freedom of it, but it was scary.”

This school year, ProPublica has been examining Arizona’s first-of-its-kind “universal” education savings account program. We are doing so both because other states have been modeling their own new ESA initiatives after this one, and also because President-elect Donald Trump has prioritized the issue, most recently by nominating for secretary of education someone whose top priority appears to be expanding school choice efforts nationwide. (And Betsy DeVos, his first education secretary, was and remains a leading school voucher proponent.)

These programs are where the U.S. education system is headed.

In our stories, we’ve reported that Arizona making vouchers available even to the wealthiest parents — many of whom were already paying tuition for their kids to go to private school and didn’t need the government assistance — helped contribute to a state budget meltdown. We’ve also reported that low-income families in the Phoenix area, by contrast, are largely not being helped by vouchers, in part because high-quality private schools don’t exist in their neighborhoods.

But the lack of any transparency or accountability measures in Arizona’s ESA model is perhaps the most important issue for other states to consider as they follow this one’s path, even some school choice supporters say.

Four years ago, I used to follow Trump on Twitter, just to know what has doing and saying. I recall the famous tweet when he said “Come to DC on January 6. Will be wild!”

And MAGA did not let him down. They came ready for action. Some were armed, some had bear spray.

David Pepper wants everyone to read what Trump said to his mob of fanatics that morning. Open the link and never forget.

The stability of our government, the durability of our Constitution was on the line. Trump did his best to tear down the government and the Constitution that day. All because the man-baby is a sore loser.