Never-Trumper Bill Kristol espies hypocrisy in Trump’s acceptance of a $400 million gift from Qatar. Qatar, he points out, funds Hamas and the leading anti-Israel campus protest group. Now it also funds the President of the United Ststes!
He writes:
Trump can’t abide flying around in crusty, old Air Force One. Qatar—funder of both Hamas and the leading U.S. college Gaza protest group—just happens to have a spare, pimped-out 747 lying around, which they’d like to gift to Trump so he can use that instead. Pay no attention to the complete hypocrisy of an administration that says that students protesting for Gaza are a threat to our foreign policy.
This is a shocking development. The government of Qatar is giving Trump an airplane worth $400 million to replace Airforce 1 and for Trump’s personal use after his Presidency. It will eventually be retired to the Trump “library.”
Forget the fact that the Constitution forbids the President from accepting gifts from any foreign nation (the Emoluments Clause). Trump fired all the federal ethics officers and replaced them with his personal choices. Coincidence?
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, when asked Friday if the president during his upcoming trip might meet with people ties to his family’s business, said it was “ridiculous” to suggest Trump “is doing anything for his own benefit.”
All three answers are correct. Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, recounts the latest financial scandal associated with Trump–the sale of Trump crytocurrency that is pulling billions into family pockets. And he tries to figure out why the story appears to have faded, instead of blowing up as a mind-boggling violation of the emoluments clause. That’s the part of the Constitution that says Presidents are not supposed to be getting rich by being President, especially by any sort of gift from foreign powers. Trump evaded that restriction in his first term, when he owned the hotel closest to the White Hiuse, and visiting potentates rented the most lavish suites. That was small potatoes. An investment firm in Abu Dhabi just put $2 billion into Trump cryptocurrency. Tomasky asks: does anyone care?
He writes:
Nicolle Wallace had Scott Galloway on her MSNBC show Thursday. She began by asking him what he makes of this moment in which we find ourselves. Galloway, a business professor and popular podcaster, could have zigged in any number of directions with that open-ended question, so I was interested to see the direction he settled on: “I think we essentially have become a kleptocracy that would make Putin blush. I mean, keep in mind that in the first three months, the Trump family has become $3 billion wealthier, so that’s a billion dollars a month.”
Stop and think about that. A presidency lasts, of course, 48 months (at most, we hope). Trump has been enriching himself at an unprecedented scale since day one of his second term—actually, since just before, given that he announced the $Trump meme coin a few days before swearing to protect and defend the Constitution.
And now, we know that he’s having a dinner at Mar-a-Lago in two weeks for his top $Trump investors, whose identities we may never know. How might these people influence his decisions? This whole arrangement is blatantly corrupt. And The New York Times had a terrific report this week about Don Jr. and Eric going around the world (Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia) making deals from which their father will profit.
I read these stories, as I’m sure you do, and I think to myself: How on earth is he getting away with this? It’s the right question, but we usually concentrate on the wrong answer.
For most people, they think first of the Democrats, because they’re the opposition, and by the traditions of our system they’re the ones who are supposed to stop this, or at least raise hell about it. Second, we might think about congressional Republicans, who, if they were actually upholding their own oaths to the Constitution, would be expressing alarm about this.
They both shoulder some blame, but neither of those is really the answer. Every time I ask myself how he gets away with this, I remember: Oh, right. It’s the right-wing media. Duh.
After the election, I wrote a column that went viral about how the right-wing media made Trump’s election possible. Fox News, most conspicuously, but also Newsmax, One America News Network, Sinclair, and the rest, along with the swarm of right-wing podcasters and TikTokers, created a media environment in which Trump could do no wrong and Kamala Harris no right.
Think back—I know you’ve repressed it—to that horror-clown-show Madison Square Garden rally Trump held the week before the election. It was, as the Times put it, a “carnival of grievances, misogyny, and racism.” A generation or two ago, that would have finished off his campaign. Last year? It made no difference. No—it helped. And it helped because a vast propaganda network—armed with press passes and First Amendment protections—spent a week gabbing about how cool and manly it was.
Newsflash: They’re still at it.
First of all, Fox News is basically the megaphone of the Trump administration. In Trump’s first 100 days in office, key administration officials, reports Media Matters for America, appeared on Fox 536 times. That, obviously, is 5.36 times per day; in other words, assuming that a cable news “day” runs from 6 a.m. to midnight, that’s one administration official about every three hours. I’ve seen occasional clips where the odd host challenges them on this point or that, but in essence, this is a propaganda parade.
I tried to do some googling to see how Fox is covering the meme coin scandal. Admitting that Google doesn’t catch everything, the answer seems to be that it’s not. On the network’s website, there was a bland January 18 article reporting that he’d launched it; an actually interesting January 22 piece summarizing a critical column by The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell, who charged that it was an invitation to bribery; and finally, an April 24 report that the coin surged in value after Trump announced the upcoming dinner—“critics” were given two paragraphs, deep in the article. (Interesting side note: Predictably, other figures on the far right have aped Trump by launching their own coins, among them former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley.)
But it’s not just Fox, and it’s not just on corruption. It’s all of them, and it’s on everything. You think any of them are mentioning Trump’s campaign promise to bring prices down on day one, or pointing out that all “persons” in the United States have a right to due process? Or criticizing his shambolic tariffs policies? I’m not saying there’s never criticism. There is. But the thrust of the coverage is protective and defensive: “Expert Failure & the Trump Boom” was the theme of one recent Laura Ingraham segment.
So sure, blame Democrats to some extent. A number of them are increasingly trying to bring attention to the corruption story, but there’s always more they could be doing. (By the way, new DNC Chair Ken Martin announced the creation one month ago of a new “People’s Cabinet” to push back hard against Trump. Anybody heard of it since?)
And of course, blame congressional Republicans. Their constitutional, ethical, and moral failures are beyond the pale, and they’re all cowards.
But neither of those groups is the reason Trump can throw a meme coin party and nothing happens; can send legal U.S. residents to brutal El Salvador prisons; can detain students for weeks because they wrote one pro-Palestinian op-ed; can shake down universities and law firms; can roil the markets with his idiotic about-faces on tariffs; can whine that bringing down prices is harder than he thought; can empower his largest donor, the richest man in the world, to take a meat-ax to the bureaucracy in a way that makes no sense to anyone, and so much more.
It’s all because Trump and his team operate within the protective cocoon of a media-disinformation environment that allows just enough criticism to retain “credibility” but essentially functions as a Ministry of Truth for the administration that would have shocked Orwell himself.
And just remember—a billion dollars a month.
Don’t be surprised to see Trump-branded stuff on the White House website any day now. Trump Bibles, Trump sneakers, MAGA hats, Trump watches, Trump trading cards, etc. why not?
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Homeland Security a few days ago. During the hearing, Senator Chris Murphy gave her a stern lecture on all the ways she is breaking the law–by overspending her budget, by picking up and deporting people with legal status, by ignoring the due process rights of those detained, and by repeatedly breaking the law and defying Congress.
BURLINGTON, Vermont — A federal judge Friday ordered the immediate release of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish Tufts University Ph.D. student whose video-recorded detention by masked federal agents drew national scrutiny amid a crackdown by the Trump administration.
U.S. District Judge William Sessions III ruled that Ozturk had been unlawfully detained in March for little more than authoring an op-edcritical of Israel in her school newspaper.
“That literally is the case. There is no evidence here … absent consideration of the op-ed,” the Clinton-appointed judge said, describing it as an apparent violation of her free speech rights. He also said Ozturk had made significant claims of due process violations. “Her continued detention cannot stand.”
Sessions said the Trump administration’s targeting of Ozturk could chill the speech of “millions and millions” of noncitizens.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio had revoked Ozturk’s visa, saying her continued presence in the United States was contrary to American foreign policy interests, part of a wave of similar visa terminations targeting students who had criticized Israel or joined pro-Palestinian protests.
Ooops! State Commissioner Betty Rosa Did NOT write this great statement. It was written by a top deputy in her office named Jim Baldwin. She called to let me know after it was posted.
She sent the letter to me, and I assumed that she wrote it because she did not mention anyone else. I asked for her permission to post it, and she said yes. It never occurred to me that she was not the author. She does endorse the point of view!
Here is the original post:
Dr. Betty Rosa has a long career in education as a teacher, principal, District Supervisor, Chair of the New State Regents and now the New York Commissioner of Education, selected by the Regents. She believes strongly that all schools should meet state standards, including the politically powerful yeshivas run by ultra-Orthodox Jews. They are politically powerful because they vote as a bloc. Presently they are loyal to Trump because of his commitment to giving taxpayer dollars to religious schools. At the state level, the yeshivas want to be free of the state requirement that they teach their students in English.
The Hasidic community was eager to persuade legislators to lower the standards for their schools. The State Education Department demanded that they comply with state law and provide a “substantially equivalent” education to their students. They prefer to teach in Hebrew or Yiddish or both. Yesterday the New York Times reported that Hochul was going along with the Hasidim. Terrible! She wants to run again, and she wants their support in 2026.
Jim Baldwin, who is a deputy to State Commissioner of Education Dr. Betty Rosa, wrote the following letter to Governor Hochul:
Governor Hochul – you and legislative leaders have sold out children attending private schools in a most cynical manner- to curry favor with religious sects for purely political reasons.
The deficiencies in these schools are well documented by the State Education Department and in the media – most notably the New York Times. I know you are well aware of those findings.
As a former superintendent of schools and college president I encountered the deficiencies in yeshiva education first hand as we sought to help orthodox students achieve college degrees following “education” at a variety of yeshivas and seminaries. The yeshiva graduates were often illiterate, and could not demonstrate basic knowledge and skills let alone do college level studies. How could you allow this to continue?
Your failure to protect these children demonstrates lack of leadership and unwillingness to defend the basic rights of children to standards based educational opportunities that prepare them for life.
And then you have the audacity to pretend what you’ve done is just another option when it is a sham that will allow educational neglect to continue.
I have a long history of public service and educational leadership that put the interests of students first.
As a lifelong activist Democrat I am disgusted that you would not demonstrate principled leadership to stop this travesty.
Your attempt to appease the religious leaders who threaten your electoral success will almost certainly fail – and in the process you have alienated a significant number of us who would otherwise have voted for you once again.
Heather Cox Richardson recounts the important exchanges between the new Pope, Leo XIV, and JD Vance, on the subject of immigrants. Vance, a convert to Catholicism, described Catholic doctrine and was quickly rebuffed at the time both by Pope Francis and by the future Pope. So, JD Vance has the dubious distinction of being rebuffed by two Popes!
Today, on the second day of the papal conclave, the cardinal electors—133 members of the College of Cardinals who were under the age of 80 when Pope Francis died on April 21—elected a new pope. They chose 69-year-old Cardinal Robert Prevost, who was born in Chicago, thus making him the first pope chosen from the United States. But he spent much of his ministry in Peru and became a citizen of Peru in 2015, making him the first pope from Peru, as well.
New popes choose a papal name to signify the direction of their papacy, and Prevost has chosen to be known as Pope Leo XIV. This is an important nod to Pope Leo XIII, who led the church from 1878 to 1903 and was the father of modern Catholic social teaching. He called for the church to address social and economic issues, and emphasized the dignity of individuals, the common good, community, and taking care of marginalized individuals.
In the midst of the Gilded Age, Leo XIII defended the rights of workers and said that the church had not just the duty to speak about justice and fairness, but also the responsibility to make sure that such equities were accomplished. In his famous 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, translated as “Of New Things,” Leo XIII rejected both socialism and unregulated capitalism, and called for the state to protect the rights of individuals.
Prevost’s choice of the name Leo invokes the principles of both Leo XIII and his predecessor, Pope Francis. In his own lifetime he has aligned himself with many of Francis’s social reforms, and his election appears to be a rejection of hard-line right-wing Catholics in the U.S. and elsewhere who have used their religion to support far-right politics.
In the U.S., Vice-President J.D. Vance is one of those hard-line right-wing Catholics. Shortly after taking office in January, Vance began to talk of the concept of ordo amoris, or “order of love,” articulated by Catholic St. Augustine, claiming it justified the MAGA emphasis on family and tribalism and suggesting it justified the mass expulsion of migrants.
Vance told Sean Hannity of the Fox News Channel, “[Y]ou love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.” When right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec, who is Catholic, posted Vance’s interview approvingly, Vance added: “Just google ‘ordo amoris.’ Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense.”
On February 10, Pope Francis responded in a letter to American bishops. He corrected Vance’s assertion as a false interpretation of Catholic theology. “Christians know very well that it is only by affirming the infinite dignity of all that our own identity as persons and as communities reaches its maturity,” he wrote. “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups…. The true ordo amoristhat must be promoted is that which we discover by…meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
“[W]orrying about personal, community or national identity, apart from these considerations, easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth,” Pope Francis wrote. He acknowledged “the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe from those who have committed violent or serious crimes while in the country or prior to arrival,” but defended the fundamental dignity of every human being and the fundamental rights of migrants, noting that the “rightly formed conscience” would disagree with any program that “identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.” He continued: “I exhort all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will, not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters.”
The next day, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, who said he was “a lifelong Catholic,” told reporters at the White House, “I’ve got harsh words for the Pope…. He ought to fix the Catholic Church and concentrate on his work and leave border enforcement to us.”
Cardinal Prevost was close to Pope Francis, and during this controversy he posted on X after Vance’s assertion but before Pope Francis’s answer: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.” After the pope published his letter, Prevost reposted it with the comment: “Pope Francis’ letter, JD Vance’s ‘ordo amoris’ and what the Gospel asks of all of us on immigration.”
On April 14, Prevost reposted: “As Trump & [Salvadoran president Nayib] Bukele use Oval to [laugh at] Feds’ illicit deportation of a US resident [Kilmar Abrego Garcia], once an undoc[ument]ed Salvadorean himself, [Bishop Evelio Menjivar] asks, ‘Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed? How can you stay quiet?’”
The new Pope Leo XIV greeted the world today in Italian and Spanish as he thanked Pope Francis and the other cardinals, and called for the church to “be a missionary Church, building bridges, dialogue, always open to receiving with open arms for everyone…, open to all, to all who need our charity, our presence, dialogue, love…, especially to those who are suffering.”
As an American-born pope in the model of Pope Francis, Pope Leo XIV might be able to appeal to American far-right Catholics and bring them back into the fold. But today, MAGAs responded to the new pope with fury. Right-wing influencer Laura Loomer, who is close to Trump, called Pope Leo “another Marxist puppet in the Vatican.” Influencer Charlie Kirk suggested he was an “[o]pen borders globalist installed to counter Trump.”
In the U.S., President Donald Trump, who said he would like to be pope and then posted a picture of himself dressed as a pope on May 2, prompting an angry backlash against those who thought it was disrespectful, posted on social media that the election of the first pope from the United States was “a Great Honor for our Country” and that he looks forward to meeting him. ‘It will be a very meaningful moment!” he added.
Trump pulled the nomination of the noxious Ed Martin, whom he had nominated to be U.S. Attorney for DC, a crucial post.
After Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina announced that he would not vote for Martin, his nomination was dead. The vote in the Senate Juduciary Committee would be 11-11, and Martin’s name would not go to the Senate floor.
In the world of horrible nominations for important posts, this was one of the worst. Ed Martin has been a vocal defender of the January 6 insurrectionists, even those who violently assaulted police officers. Think MAGA, then think extreme MAGA, and that’s Ed Martin. It was recently revealed that Martin appeared on Russian state media more than 150 times since 2016.
Thankful there is at least one Republican in the Senate who is not kissing Trump’s feet.
Less than two weeks after President Donald Trump announced 50 percent tariffs on goods from the tiny African nation of Lesotho, the country’s communications regulator held a meeting with representatives of Starlink.
The satellite business, owned by billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, had been seeking access to customers in Lesotho. But it was not until Trump unveiled the tariffs and called for negotiations over trade deals that leaders of the country of roughly 2 million people awarded Musk’s firm the nation’s first-ever satellite internet service license, slated to last for 10 years.
The decision drew a mention in an internal State Department memo obtained by The Washington Post, which states: “As the government of Lesotho negotiates a trade deal with the United States, it hopes that licensing Starlink demonstrates goodwill and intent to welcome U.S. businesses.
A series of internal government messages obtained by The Post reveal how U.S. embassies and the State Department have pushed nations to clear hurdles for U.S. satellite companies, often mentioning Starlink by name. The documents do not show that the Trump team has explicitly demanded favors for Starlink in exchange for lower tariffs. But they do indicate that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has increasingly instructed officials to push for regulatory approvals for Musk’s satellite firm at a moment when the White House is calling for wide-ranging talks on trade.
In India, government officials have sped through approvals of Starlink with the understanding that doing so could help them cement trade deals with the administration, according to two people familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect private deliberations.
Other nations seeking relief from Trump’s killer tariffs have discovered that adopting Starlink is part of the deal. I think this is called cronyism.
Neri Alvarado Borges was working for Latin Market Venezuelan Treats, which has locations in Far North Dallas and Lewisville, before he was deported to El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento Contra del Terrorismo last month.(Alvarado family / Courtesy)
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The Trump administration has couched its aggressive ramp-up of deportations as an action to root out criminals. But signs are quickly emerging that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency is scooping up hardworking North Texas migrants with little or no criminal past in its “crackdown.”
Last week, editorial columnist Robert Wilonsky chronicled the case of Neri Alvarado Borges, a young Lewisville resident with a jigsaw-ribbon tattoo associated with autism awareness he wore in honor of his autistic little brother. Did Alvarado look like a hardened criminal to you?
In February, the Venezuelan citizen was seized by ICE officers outside his apartment, and eventually taken to an El Salvadoran prison with suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang. If he ever gets out, Alvarado’s trauma will be lifelong.
Paul Hunker is a Dallas immigration attorney and former chief counsel of the Dallas office of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Since the Trump administration took power, Hunker has been shocked by the profile of clients who come to him for help fighting deportation proceedings, he told me. These clients typically do not have criminal histories, Hunker said. They are hardworking members of the community, longtime residents. There’s a brief police encounter, a routine traffic stop, and they land in ICE custody.
“The model is detain-and-deport,” Hunker said. “The focus [in my time] was people who were a threat to their community, national-security threats and recent entrants. … Now they’re just going after everybody, even if they’ve been here for 20 years, with family ties. It doesn’t matter.”
ICE’s remit has changed drastically, and that change threatens to drag us all into something akin to a police state. ICE, and before it the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s enforcement arm, traditionally worked with the border patrol, focused on preventing undocumented migrants crossing the border. Apprehending a migrant in the act of an irregular border crossing is a vital part of rule-keeping, and something that has happened throughout U.S. history. Dragging family men out of their cars, throwing them into detention centers and kicking them out of the country is something ICE has never done. Until now.
That’s what appears to be happening to Jesus Ramos, of Lewisville. He, like me, is a green-card holder. Now, he’s facing deportation, allegedly because of nonviolent offenses in his past which have already been adjudicated. Ramos is on probation for simple assault and intent to possess drugs, according to reporting from NBC5.
He may have some substance-abuse problems, but Ramos is not a hardened criminal. Most families have members who go through similar struggles.
There are other stories. In Cedar Park in January, a young Venezuelan man with no criminal record was apprehended by ICE, according to an NPR story which withheld his name. Immigration officers told his family that the 18-year-old had appeared in an online video with guns and drugs, but they couldn’t produce the video for the family or for NPR.
ICE is still targeting serious offenders as the agency has always done since it launched in 2003, according to Hunker. But, as these cases and many of Hunker’s cases illustrate, ICE has new targets, too. And they are targets that we all know well.
ICE is targeting the people who climb on our roofs after hailstorms to fix the shingles. ICE is targeting the people who clean our houses and mind our children. What happens the next time your house-cleaner or your handyman drives home after a few too many?
That’s when the thorny moral question arises, the one your grandchildren may ask you: What did you do when dear, dear Nanny Gloria was swept up by burly officers and thrown in a cell?
What could you do? You will say. You were just one person.
“Tell your congressmen, ‘We don’t want this police state,’” said Hunker, who worked for ICE and its predecessor for more than 20 years. “‘Let ICE focus on people that are dangerous, and don’t try to deport those people who have their lives here.’”
I was reared in Ireland where memories of 1930s Central Europe were fresh. We are not there, yet or hopefully ever, but 20th-century history is no longer an abstract lesson.
My grandmother met some of the young people brought to London in the Kindertransport operation that evacuated Jewish children from Central Europe before World War II. She inspired my mother with a compassion for displaced families, and an animus for state authorities who displaced those families because of their outsider status.
It is all too easy, my mother taught me, to turn a blind eye to the state’s mistreatment of vulnerable outsiders.
A couple of weeks ago, I was in Houston. I saw an ICE officer cruising around a strip mall in her patrol SUV, and felt a familiar chill. As a reporter with interest in the subject, I wanted to ask the officer why she was there, who she was looking for. But I turned my back, and moved on.
In Ireland, looking on from across the ocean, we contrasted Europe’s 20th-century dystopia with Reagan’s America, a land where hard work and enterprise counted for more than paperwork. Kids a few years ahead of us in school escaped to New York and Chicago from recession-wracked Ireland. A few won green-card lotteries. Most fudged the paperwork for a few years. Nobody shook them down. They were allowed to build skyscrapers, restaurant chains and plumbing empires, and sort the paperwork out later.
Now their children run emergency rooms, law offices and trading floors all over this nation.
That’s the story of immigration in modern America. The authorities have always sought to facilitate the inclusion of hardworking immigrants, rather than seeking to exclude and detain people for paperwork reasons.
The Trump administration continues to insist it is only targeting migrants with a criminal past. ICE’s broad interpretation of those criteria is what troubles me. Who’s to say that today’s deportation for DUI won’t be tomorrow’s deportation for a traffic violation, or for having the wrong surname?
Or writing a newspaper column critical of the regime. My green card is soon up for renewal. I sometimes fear it will be revoked by the thin-skinned Trump government.
But I must be able to look my children in the eye, and so I must speak up for Neri Alvarado and for Jesus Ramos and an unnamed Venezuelan 18-year-old.
Diane Ravitch's blog 