Week 27 — The Return
Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember.
This week, the growing number of Trump’s conflicts of interest and grifts, which we have been documenting each week, at long last took center stage! What did it take to finally get Republicans in Congress to react? It wasn’t the billions that the Trump family is pocketing in plain sight in the crypto market, which I explain in my story here. What it took was Trump accepting a $400 million Boeing 747 from the Qatari royal family as a gift ahead of his first Middle East trip. A gift that would cost taxpayers hundreds of millions to retrofit for Trump’s use as Air Force One, and that he would likely maintain use of even after his time in office.
This week the Trump presidency continues to be in retreat in many facets. There was turnover and turmoil in regime personnel, which has exposed how thin the bench is, as loyalists found themselves taking on multiple roles (read more here). Trump’s trade war has backfired, causing him to strike a deal with the U.K. in what the conservative WSJ Editorial Board called a “Trade-War Retreat,” and capitulate to China in what they dubbed “The Great Trump Tariff Rollback,” noting, “Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly, and as quickly, as President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs.” Perhaps my favorite development of this week was the staffers at the Library of Congress standing up to Trump on his firing and replacing their leader with loyalist Todd Blanche, and winning (read more here)!
There were other setbacks for Trump this week, including his admission at a private donor event that his promises to end the Ukraine-Russia and Gaza wars early on had failed. He also lost a major court case on his planned mass layoffs and program closures, and Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk was released. Overall, this week’s list reflects a slowing in the pace of breaking norms, as the wheels are starting to come off, increasingly revealing the regime’s ineptitude and incompetence.
On Wednesday, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, speaking at an event and without mentioning Trump by name, defended the judiciary, saying, “In our Constitution … the judiciary is a co-equal branch of government, separate from the others.”
Roberts added the courts have “the authority to interpret the Constitution as law and strike down, obviously, acts of Congress or acts of the president,” adding, its the court’s job to “check the excesses of Congress or the executive, and that does require a degree of independence.”
Days prior, Trump top adviser Stephen Miller’s America First Legal Foundation sued Roberts and the head of the Administrative Office, claiming both the courts and the office performed regulatory actions that go beyond the scope of resolving cases or controversies.
Legal experts describe the meritless lawsuit as a Trojan horse, that once denied would allow Miller’s group to ask a federal judge to allow the lawsuit to proceed as a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, possibly granting it access to judiciary records.
WAPO reported federal judges have received unsolicited pizza orders delivered to their homes, and the homes of their relatives, since February. Many have gone to judges presiding over lawsuits challenging Trump’s policies, prompting calls for increased protections and a DOJ investigation.
