Tag Archives: George W. Bush

New York Times: As Trumps Monetize Presidency, Profits Outstrip Protests

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The president and his family have monetized the White House more than any other occupant, normalizing activities that once would have provoked heavy blowback and official investigations.

When Hillary Clinton was first lady, a furor erupted over reports that she had once made $100,000 from a $1,000 investment in cattle futures. Even though it had happened a dozen years before her husband became president, it became a scandal that lasted weeks and forced the White House to initiate a review.

Thirty-one years later, after dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Jeff Bezos agreed to finance a promotional film about Melania Trump that will reportedly put $28 million directly in her pocket — 280 times the Clinton lucre and in this case from a person with a vested interest in policies set by her husband’s government. Scandal? Furor? Washington moved on while barely taking notice.

The Trumps are hardly the first presidential family to profit from their time in power, but they have done more to monetize the presidency than anyone who has ever occupied the White House. The scale and the scope of the presidential mercantilism has been breathtaking. The Trump family and its business partners have collected $320 million in fees from a new cryptocurrency, brokered overseas real estate deals worth billions of dollars and are opening an exclusive club in Washington called the Executive Branch charging $500,000 apiece to join, all in the past few months alone.

Just last week, Qatar handed over a luxury jet meant for Mr. Trump’s use not just in his official capacity but also for his presidential library after he leaves office. Experts have valued the plane, formally donated to the Air Force, at $200 million, more than all of the foreign gifts bestowed on all previous American presidents combined.

And Mr. Trump hosted an exclusive dinner at his Virginia club for 220 investors in the $TRUMP cryptocurrency that he started days before taking office in January. Access was openly sold based on how much money they chipped in — not to a campaign account but to a business that benefits Mr. Trump personally.

trump-money-plane-crypto.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/us/politics/trump-money-plane-crypto.html

MSNBC: Judge warns of Trump’s ‘pernicious’ law firm targeting in ruling against it

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It’s the latest ruling striking down one of Trump’s revenge orders against law firms the president doesn’t like.

Fully blocking Trump’s order against the firm Jenner & Block, the George W. Bush appointee noted that the order in this case is one of several targeting firms that “did not bow to the current presidential administration’s political orthodoxy.” The judge said the order went after the firm “because of the causes Jenner champions, the clients Jenner represents, and a lawyer Jenner once employed.”

Sitting in Washington, D.C., Bates called the order “doubly violative of the Constitution.”

“Most obviously,” he wrote, quoting a recent Supreme Court precedent, “retaliating against firms for the views embodied in their legal work — and thereby seeking to muzzle them going forward — violates the First Amendment’s central command that government may not ‘use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.’”

The judge also highlighted the “more subtle but perhaps more pernicious” issue of “the message the order sends to the lawyers whose unalloyed advocacy protects against governmental viewpoint becoming government-imposed orthodoxy.”

He said the order “seeks to chill legal representation the administration doesn’t like, thereby insulating the Executive Branch from the judicial check fundamental to the separation of powers. It thus violates the Constitution and the Court will enjoin its operation in full.”

Judge warns of Trump’s ‘pernicious’ law firm targeting in ruling against it
It’s the latest ruling striking down one of Trump’s revenge orders against law firms the president doesn’t like.

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/judge-jenner-block-trump-law-firms-rcna208847

Raw Story: DOGE team using AI to scour personal data to root out Trump disloyalty: report

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Elon Musk’s team is using a custom version of his artificial intelligence chatbot Grok to scour the sensitive government data scooped up by the Department of Government Efficiency, raising serious concerns about privacy, conflicts of interest and national security.

The DOGE team is expanding use of the AI chatbot, three sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters, but it’s not clear which specific data had been fed into the generative tool or how the custom system was set up, and five experts told the news organization that the arrangement may violate security and privacy laws.

“Given the scale of data that DOGE has amassed and given the numerous concerns of porting that data into software like Grok, this to me is about as serious a privacy threat as you get,” said Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the nonprofit Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.

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“This gives the appearance that DOGE is pressuring agencies to use software to enrich Musk and xAI, and not to the benefit of the American people,” said Richard Painter, who served as ethics counsel to former president George W. Bush and a current University of Minnesota professor.

Two sources said DOGE staffers directed Department of Homeland Security officials to use Grok, although it hadn’t been approved for use in that agency, and the sources said the federal government would have to pay Musk’s organizations to use that AI tool, which Painter said could violate criminal conflict-of-interest statute.

“They were pushing it to be used across the department,” said one of the sources.

DOGE team using AI to scour personal data to root out Trump disloyalty: report

https://www.rawstory.com/doge-team-sensitive-private-data-2672192671

MSNBC: The giant Trump banner at the USDA is another sign the U.S. is sliding into autocracy

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It may be small and petty, but these changes are part of the erosion of democratic norms, softening people up for potentially more authoritarian behavior.

Many strongmen also love to display giant photos of themselves wherever they can. If you ever go to Tiananmen Square in Beijing, you’ll be greeted with a portrait of Mao Zedong. Mao founded the People’s Republic of China, and he served as chairman of the Chinese Communist Party for more than 30 years. His portrait is about 19½ feet tall and 15 feet wide, and it weighs about 3,000 pounds. It’s been hanging over the gate leading into the Forbidden City since 1949.

If you travel farther to the east, you’ll find something similar in North Korea. In the country’s capital of Pyongyang, there’s an area called Kim Il Sung Square, where you’ll find large portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, the great leader and the dear leader, respectively, overlooking the plaza at all times as people go about their daily lives.

When Putin visited the country last year, North Koreans gave him a warm welcome by plastering his photo everywhere. They even temporarily put up a humongous portrait of Putin next to one of Kim Jong Un during a welcome ceremony.

Neither China nor North Korea invented this idea. They’ve taken their cues from Joseph Stalin, the former brutal ruler of the Soviet Union. He liked to have portraits of himself displayed in public and lofted by his supporters during parades.

That practice continues in many other countries where strongmen rule today. You see it in places like Egypt, where the face of its president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, is inescapable. His mug is on billboards and banners, plastered on buildings and hanging along the roadside. That’s especially true ahead of an election, and it’s no wonder he’s been able to easily win three terms in office. (Not to mention the fact that Egypt doesn’t exactly have free and fair elections in the first place.)

In Iran, you’ll find an abundance of murals, posters and portraits of its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He’s often depicted with the country’s late leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Their images are displayed everywhere — at mosques, in malls and even on the sides of some buildings.

And now, something like that is happening in the United States, too. Last week, a giant banner with Donald Trump’s official portrait was displayed on the United States Department of Agriculture building in Washington, D.C., alongside a similar banner featuring Abraham Lincoln.

Hail, Donald! Long live the King!

https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-usda-portrait-road-from-to-authoritarianism-rcna207709

Alternet: More than revenge: Here’s why Trump is really targeting his own former officials | Opinion

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During President Donald Trump’s first three months in office, his administration has targeted dozens of former officials who criticized him or opposed his agenda.

In April 2025, Trump directed the Department of Justice to investigate two men who served in his first administration, Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs, because they spoke out against his policies and corrected his false claims about the 2020 election that he lost.

Further, Trump revoked the security clearances for advisers and retired generals who publicly criticized him during the 2024 election campaign.

On their face, such moves appear to be a coordinated campaign of personal retribution. But as political science scholars who study the origins of elected strongmen, we believe Trump’s use of the Justice Department to attack former officials who stood up to him isn’t just about revenge. It also deters current officials from defying Trump.

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But to carry out a power grab, incumbent leaders also need allies who will stay silent or, better yet, endorse their attempts to consolidate control.

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Recall that Trump only left office in January 2021 because key Republican officials defied his attempts to overturn an election he lost.

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In authoritarian contexts, loyalty is not an intrinsic quality. Authoritarian leaders do not necessarily select those with whom they have long work experience that leads to mutual trust.

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Instead, the challenge for authoritarian leaders is finding people to do their bidding. And the best people for this job are those who never would have earned their position in politics without the leader’s influence.

Unqualified appointees who can’t ascend to political power based on their merits have little choice but to stick with the leader. These people appear loyal, but only because their careers are tied to the leader staying in power.

www.alternet.org
More than revenge: Here’s why Trump is really targeting his own former officials | Opinion

https://www.alternet.org/trump-revenge-2672110754

Intelligencer: Donald Trump Is a Crook, But He’s Their Crook

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What does seem genuinely new, even by the standards of America’s warped history, is the unabashed corruption. No president, really, has favor-traded like Trump. No president has ever tried to blatantly enrich himself like this while in office. No president has ever hung a for-sale sign over the White House — not like this, anyway. Trump is poised to accept a $400 million luxury jet from the Qatari royal family, which feels like something of a capstone to his latest corruption binge. He would be able to use the plane while in the White House and transfer it to his presidential foundation when he’s out of office. Trump’s inaugural committee also gobbled up $239 million from wealthy business interests who are desperate to curry favor with such a nakedly transactional president. The amount far outstrips the $107 million Trump raised for his committee back in 2017, and since there is no way to spend so much cash on dinner and events, it appears Trump might have a slush fund for the rest of his life.

And then there’s his crypto hustle ….

Donald Trump Is a Crook, But He’s Their Crook
What explains the president’s untouchable corruption.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/qatar-plane-trump-corruption.html

Independent: Trump team ordered to move Tufts student from Louisiana ICE jail after it couldn’t ‘take a position’ on her free speech

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A New York-based federal appeals court has ordered Donald Trump’s administration to transfer Tufts University scholar Rumeysa Ozturk from an immigration detention center in Louisiana to Vermont.

The case of Ozturk, a Turkish international student and former Fulbright scholar working towards her doctorate in child development, is among several high-profile cases at the center of the Trump administration’s targeting of international students for their advocacy for Palestine during Israel’s war in Gaza.

In March, Ozturk’s visa was revoked and she was arrested and detained by plain-clothes federal agents outside her apartment in Massachusetts in what her lawyers argue is a retaliatory attempt to deport her over an op-ed she wrote in a student newspaper.

The government has one week to transfer her, according to Wednesday’s order, which arrived less than 24 hours after a hearing in which government attorneys failed to say whether they even agree with the administration’s position that her pro-Palestine speech is not constitutionally protected.

Appellate Judge Barrington Parker, who was appointed by George W. Bush, pressed Department of Justice attorney Drew Ensign on whether Ozturk’s statements — and statements from another international student who was arrested for support for Palestine — amount to protected speech.

“Your honor, we haven’t taken a position on that,” Ensign replied.

“Help my thinking. Take a position,” Parked fired back.

“I don’t have authority to take a position,” Ensign said.

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“She has been held behind bars for six weeks while her health deteriorates for writing an op-ed,” she told a three-judge appeals court panel Wednesday. “Detention is not the norm with respect to visa revocation, as we had here. The executive branch made a specific decision to detain Ms. Ozturk that was motivated by her speech.”

Trump team ordered to move Tufts student from Louisiana ICE jail after it couldn’t ‘take a position’ on her free speech
Trump team ordered to move Tufts student from Louisiana ICE jail after it couldn’t ‘take a position’ on her free speech – Federal appeals court gives government 10 days to transfer Rumeysa Ozturk to Vermont after DOJ lawyers refused to say if pro-Palestine speech is constitutionally protected

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trump-team-ordered-to-move-tufts-student-from-louisiana-ice-jail-after-it-couldn-t-take-a-position-on-her-free-speech/ar-AA1Ellat

Bloomberg: Trump Has Been Stopped By Courts More Than 200 Times

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President Donald Trump’s expansive use of executive power faced at least 328 lawsuits as of May 1 — with judges halting his policies far more often than they allowed them.

Courts entered more than 200 orders stopping the administration’s actions in 128 cases, with judges sometimes ruling at multiple stages of the legal fights. Judges had allowed contested policies to go ahead in 43 cases, and hadn’t ruled yet in more than 140 others. Most cases are in the early stages, and new ones are being filed daily.

https://archive.is/zZ9zU#selection-1251.0-1258.0

Wall Street Journal: Trump Officials Explore Ways of Challenging Tax-Exempt Status of Nonprofits

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Trump administration officials are exploring ways of challenging the tax-exempt status of nonprofits, according to people familiar with the matter, in a move that some IRS staffers fear could damage the agency’s apolitical approach.

In hourslong meetings that continued over a recent weekend, Internal Revenue Service lawyers explored whether they could alter the rules governing how nonprofit groups can be denied tax-exempt status, the people said.

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Another senior IRS official, Gary Shapley, separately said in at least one meeting that he’s giving priority to investigating the tax-exempt status of a select group of nonprofit organizations, according to people familiar with his remarks. Shapley made the comments as deputy head of the criminal investigations unit. Shapley, who is also an adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, didn’t name any specific groups, the people said.

Some current and former IRS officials fear that the deliberations appear to depart from longstanding practice at the IRS. They come as Trump has said his administration will strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status and suggested the administration could target other organizations.

Trump officials outside the IRS have also had ongoing conversations about how to potentially target nonprofits’ tax-exempt status and endowments for months, an administration official said.

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-officials-explore-ways-of-challenging-tax-exempt-status-of-nonprofits/ar-AA1E5RzU

Mediaite: ‘Give Me a Break!’ Judge Shreds DOJ Attorney Defending Trump Executive Order Targeting Law Firm

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A federal judge firmly swatted down a series of arguments from a Department of Justice attorney defending President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting the Jenner & Block LLP law firm at a hearing Monday, at one point uttering an exasperated “Give me a break!”

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Since the beginning of his second term, Trump has issued a series of executive orders targeting by name multiple BigLaw firms that represented prominent Democratic clients like Hillary Clinton, refused to represent him or other pro-MAGA causes, hired former federal prosecutors that investigated him, or worked on the criminal cases he was facing before he won re-election.

The president’s social media posts and executive orders often lambast these firms using language accusing them of being “dishonest” and a “dangerous” risk to national security. The sanctions he has sought to impose include stripping the security clearances of the firms’ attorneys and staff (critically important for certain types of federal legal cases), terminating contracts the firms had with federal agencies, barring the firms’ employees from federal buildings (again, a major obstacle for the lawyers to represent their clients), demanding firms abolish diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and programs, and threatening additional civil and criminal investigations against the firms.

‘Give Me a Break!’ Judge Shreds DOJ Attorney Defending Trump Executive Order Targeting Law Firm
A federal judge firmly swatted down a series of arguments from a Department of Justice attorney defending President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting the Jenner & Block LLP law firm at a hearing Monday, at one point uttering an exasperated “Give me a break!” Judge John Bates with the U.S. District Court for the District […] The post ‘Give Me a Break!’ Judge Shreds DOJ Attorney Defending Trump Executive Order Targeting Law Firm first…

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/give-me-a-break-judge-shreds-doj-attorney-defending-trump-executive-order-targeting-law-firm/ar-AA1DNgFP