"...It's a $1.776 Billion Fraud on the Court, and on Every American Taxpayer!"

Executive Summary: A federal judge in Miami found that President Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS was a sham: because Trump controls the very agencies he sued, there were never two opposing sides, just one man on both, using the court to bless a private deal that would have handed his allies $1.776 billion in taxpayer money and shielded him and his family from future tax audits. The judge ruled the case was filed in “bad faith” for an “improper purpose,” and pointed out that the Justice Department, run by Trump’s own former personal lawyers, abandoned defenses it had won with in every similar case rather than fight its boss. She refused to let anyone treat the deal as a real settlement and referred the lawyers involved, including Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, for possible discipline.

I read all fifty-six pages of Judge Kathleen M. Williams’ order so you would not have to. I am going to hand you her words, not mine, and let you decide who is telling you the truth. The full order is linked at the end of this article if you’d like to read it.¹

Suing Yourself For Ten Billion Dollars:

Start with the shape of the thing, because the shape gives it away.

Trump, in the words of the order, “served as the 45th President of the United States, and is the 47th President of the United States.” He sued the IRS and the Treasury Department for “at least $10,000.000,000.00.” He filed it in what his lawyers had the nerve to call his “personal capacity,” and later described the case as “ordinary.”

Judge Williams refused to play along. She “decline[d] to adopt or accept the credulous exercise of divorcing President Trump’s current job title from an understanding of what happened here.” On the word “ordinary,” she called it “perhaps the most startling misstatement” in the whole proceeding, and she wrote, “There is nothing ‘ordinary’ about this case; it is the very definition of sui generis.”

And here’s why. The defendants, the IRS and Treasury, sit inside the Executive Branch. The head of that branch is the same man who filed the suit. The judge walked the chain of command one link at a time. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who also serves as Acting IRS Commissioner, is in the Supreme Court’s words “the President’s alter ego.” IRS CEO Frank Bisignano answers to Bessent. The President removes the IRS Commissioner “at the will of the President,” and the order points out he “has done so as recently as August 2025.”

Here is the moment the whole thing collapses. Trump’s own team already told the Supreme Court these officials “unquestionably exercise[] executive power, and must therefore be controlled by the Chief Executive.” Judge Williams caught it and held them to their own words. They do not get to claim total control in one courtroom and real opposition in another. “No person may sue himself,” she wrote. Trump said the same thing once, about a related matter, and she quoted it right back at him: “I’m suing myself.”

A plaintiff who controls the defendant is staging a play for the court. Courts, the judge reminded everyone, “do not engage in the academic pastime of rendering judgments in favor of persons against themselves.”

Picture it in one line. A president sued himself and tried to hand you the bill.

The Dog That Didn’t Bark:

Here is the detail that should put a knot in your stomach, because it shows this was on purpose.

Every other time someone sued over this same tax leak, the Justice Department came out swinging. In the Griffin case. In the Safe Harbor case. The DOJ “zealously defended the government,” fighting the timing of the claims, fighting the damages, arguing the government was not even the right target. In the judge’s words, “In every case naming the government as a defendant, the DOJ engaged in a vigorous defense.”

Then, one sentence later, she drops the hammer: “That is, every case until the instant litigation.”

In Trump’s case, the government lay down. No answer. No appearance. No pleading of any kind. For 109 days, she found, “no attorney representing the United States filed a notice of appearance or any document indicating the government’s position, interest, or awareness of this matter.”

It gets worse. IRS officials had already written a 25-page memo “that outlined major flaws with Plaintiffs’ claims and listed the various defenses that could be advanced on behalf of Defendants.” The winning arguments were sitting in a drawer. The government had the memo in hand. It folded anyway and put its name to a deal worth $1.776 billion.²

Judge Williams drew the only inference a reasonable person draws. The government “failed to defend this lawsuit or to respond to the Court’s jurisdictional inquiry because its position would not withstand judicial scrutiny and because resolution of the threshold issues identified by the Court would not have favored its preferred outcome to this case.” You hold the winning hand and throw the game. The fix is in.

A Settlement Built to Dodge the Judge:

The way they ended the case is its own scandal.

The judge had already spotted the jurisdiction problem and ordered both sides to brief it. Neither side did. Three days before the deadline, the parties filed a two-page notice of voluntary dismissal, telling the court it “automatically divested the Court of jurisdiction” and “no judicial analysis is appropriate.” Then the DOJ put out a press release with a “settlement agreement” no judge had ever seen, creating an “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to be paid out of the Treasury’s Judgment Fund for $1.776 billion.

The day after the dismissal, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche went before Congress. Someone asked why the settlement never went to the court for review. He answered that “there is no judge” because the case had been dismissed, so there was “no mechanism” for review.

Read how the judge answered that. She was “extremely troubled.” She called his explanation “at best, misleading and, at worst, disingenuous.” Then the clean truth: “The Court was available to review any pleading by any Party at any time during this lawsuit.” If Blanche believed the dismissal was wrong, “he only had to file an appearance and ask for relief.” He never did. Review was the one thing nobody in this deal wanted. The dismissal was the escape hatch.

The Number That Gives It Away:

The payout was set at $1.776 billion. Not 1.7. Not 2. One point seven seven six!

The law for these tax-leak claims allows “$1,000 for each act of unauthorized inspection or disclosure.” The judge noted the plaintiffs “could make no connection between the billions of dollars they sought, and the recovery authorized under the governing statute.” So where did the number come from? She did not have to guess. “Even the Fund amount — $1.776 billion — speaks of a ‘branding’ effort rather than a deliberate and thoughtful calculation of damages.”

A flag-waving number, built for a headline, stapled to grievances the deal never even defined. The judge pointed out the words “Anti-Weaponization” and “Lawfare” were “inchoate,” with no “legal definition… outside their meaning in political discourse.” This was a slogan with a price tag, and you were the one on the hook for it.

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The Lawyers and Their Conflicts:

This is where it turns from improper to ugly, and where the order names names.

Look at the signatures. The “settlement” for the plaintiffs was signed by Daniel Epstein, a former White House Senior Associate Counsel and Special Assistant to President Trump. Epstein was never even counsel of record. His promised pro hac vice application never got filed. The judge “can only surmise that Mr. Epstein was aware that he would never need to appear and litigate the merits.” There were no merits to litigate.

The “settlement” for the defendants, supposedly the other side, was signed by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, Jr. and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. Read who they are. Woodward represented January 6 defendants and Walt Nauta, Trump’s co-defendant in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. Blanche “served as President Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney” in the Mar-a-Lago case, the federal case charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, and the New York “hush money” case.

Now follow the wire, the way the judge did. The settlement funds claims “arising from, inter alia, the Mar-a-Lago Documents Case and the events of January 6, 2021.” Those are the same matters where these same lawyers represented the people who stood to get paid. In her words, instead of “either recusing… because of their previous representations or vigorously defending this lawsuit as required to do so by DOJ policies and procedures, these lawyers agreed to a ‘settlement’ involving a staggering amount of money potentially benefitting former clients.”

She grounded it in the rulebook lawyers answer to. Quoting the commentary to Florida Bar Rule 4-1.11 on government lawyers, she flagged the danger “that power or discretion vested in that agency might be used for the special benefit of the other client,” and “[a] lawyer should not be in a position where benefit to the other client might affect performance of the lawyer’s professional functions on behalf of the government.” Her line: “The specter of that risk seems to be present here.”

She added one more fact. Blanche had reportedly been told to recuse from DOJ matters involving Trump, and a DOJ spokeswoman confirmed he was “recused from many cases.” In this one, “notwithstanding his prior representation of President Trump, Blanche did not recuse.”

Breaking The Laws They Swore To Enforce:

The order goes further and points to the actual statutes and constitutional lines the deal appears to cross.

The Release Order signed by Blanche tried to bar the IRS from ever auditing Trump, his sons, or their companies. Judge Williams pointed to 26 U.S.C. section 7217, a law titled “Prohibition on executive branch influence over taxpayer audits and other investigations,” which makes it “unlawful for any applicable person to request, directly or indirectly,” that the IRS “conduct or terminate an audit.” In her words, the statute “prohibits President Trump and his lawyers, one of whom was former White House Counsel, from asking for or promoting termination of an audit directed toward him. And acquiescing to any such demand is wholly incompatible with the duties of DOJ attorneys… to enforce the law and protect the public interest.”

She flagged the Constitution too. The President’s duty under Article II to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” The Emoluments limit in Article II, Section 1, keeping a president from taking extra payment during his term, a line “surely known by former White House Counsel and the current Acting Attorney General.” As she put it, “No sitting President has ever sued federal agencies completely subject to his control for monetary benefits… that inure to him, his family, and associates.” No lawyer in the case raised any of it on the docket, which she called “a glaring omission that speaks to the control of the Lead Plaintiff.”

The Tell They Could Not Hide:

If you still need proof the two sides were one side, watch what happened after the deal.

Blanche later testified the DOJ was “not moving forward with the fund, period.” A settlement is a contract between two opposing parties, and one side does not get to erase it alone. As the judge noted, “a party may not unilaterally repudiate a settlement agreement once it is reached.” Blanche’s belief that he could speak for both sides, sign for both sides, then cancel part of it for both sides “demonstrates that there was only one party whose interests were being represented throughout this case.” Around the same time, Trump told reporters he did not know if the fund was “fully dead or just on hold” and would “have to ask the lawyers.” Opposing parties do not share lawyers, and they do not share the same confusion.

And the detail that says everything: the order notes a DOJ official “publicly stated that he intended to apply for compensation from the Fund.” One of the people close to this deal was already reaching for the payout.

Final Analysis:

Let me tell you where this ends up, and then I’ll show you exactly why.

That settlement is finished. Not one dollar is getting paid to anyone. And Trump, his sons, and their companies do not get a permanent pass on IRS audits. An appeal may happen but Trump and sons will lose.

Here is why:

As of today’s ruling, the “settlement” survives only as a private piece of paper the parties can no longer call a settlement or cite in any court; the fund it created has been abandoned and separately blocked; and the audit-immunity provision remains on paper but rests entirely on a unilateral DOJ order the judge found directly contravenes a federal statute.

Stripped of the settlement wrapper, that immunity agreement appears to rest on thin-to-nonexistent consideration flowing from Trump to the government, though that weakness is arguably the least of its problems, because the immunity may also fail for the illegality of its subject matter and for the government’s lack of authority to grant it, and any one of those defects could sink it on its own.

Trump can appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, arguing that the voluntary dismissal stripped the court of jurisdiction and that the findings and sanctions were improper, though the timing may depend on when the order becomes final, since the sanctions amount is still open. Even then, an appeal faces an uphill climb: Rule 11 and inherent-authority sanctions are reviewed for “abuse of discretion,” a deferential standard under which reversing a 56-page order this detailed is difficult, and pressing the appeal would force the administration to publicly defend a deal that already drew bipartisan criticism.

Why This Lands on You:

The parties told the judge she had no power left, that the dismissal stripped her jurisdiction, that “there is no judge.” She answered that a court keeps the authority to police abuse of its own process, quoting the Eleventh Circuit: “Without them, abuses of the judicial system would go unchecked.” She found the plaintiffs “acted in bad faith and for an improper purpose by ‘collusively filing a lawsuit with claims subject to multiple dispositive defenses solely to provide cover for a collusive settlement.’” She found the case “was brought for an improper purpose — to gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact.” She wrote it flat: the plaintiffs “acted in bad faith.”

Then she acted. She referred Trump’s Florida lawyer, Alejandro Brito, to The Florida Bar. She barred Daniel Epstein from practicing in the district for a year. She forbade the parties from ever again calling this deal a “settlement” in any proceeding. She sent her order to the New York bar, where Blanche is a member, and the District of Columbia bar, where Woodward is a member, noting “disciplinary proceedings are currently ongoing” against them over ethics complaints already filed.

Here is where things stand today, so you have the full picture. The fund was never actually paid out. After bipartisan blowback in Congress, a separate federal judge in Virginia blocked it, and the administration said it was walking away from it. This order goes further and stops the parties from ever using their private deal as a “settlement” blessed by a court. One piece of the deal, the promise shielding Trump and his family from future audits, is the piece the administration has refused to put in writing that it will drop.

She ended with John Adams: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” The facts here are stubborn. A president sued the agencies he runs. His former personal lawyers, now running the Justice Department, signed the other side of the deal. They walked away from winning defenses their own colleagues had written down. They tried to lock in $1.776 billion of public money and permanent immunity for the president and his family, and then told Congress “there is no judge” who would ever look.

There was a judge. She looked. She found a case “resolved” before any real fight happened, a lawsuit that “was never about a party seeking judicial resolution of a legal issue or a factual dispute,” and she named it for what it was, a private giveaway laundered through a federal court.

The Justice Department works for you. Its job is to see “that the laws of the United States… be faithfully executed.” Its leaders treated your Treasury like a personal account, your courts like a rubber stamp, and you like someone who would never read the fine print. One judge read every page and said so out loud.

So read this again and remember the one line to carry to anyone. A president sued himself and tried to mail you the bill. Say it at dinner tonight. Send this to the person who swears both parties are the same and none of it touches your life. This reached for your Treasury, your courts, and the promise that the law lands the same on all of us.

You pay what you owe. You now have proof, in fifty-six pages, that someone at the top decided he never would. Do not let this become normal. Talk about it. Share it. Blanche faces the Senate this week for the job of Attorney General on a permanent basis. Ask the people who represent you where they stand and make them answer before the next gavel falls!

-Mitch Jackson, Esq.

1 PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP, et al., Plaintiffs, v. INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE, et al., Defendants.

2 Tony Soprano Called — He Wants His $1.776 Billion Shakedown Back

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"History will judge him harshly for his role in the MAGA assault on democracy and America’s disastrous loss of international stature"

 

Lindsey Graham (R-SC) passed away suddenly Saturday night from an apparent tear in his aorta. Unfortunately, Senate colleagues and most legacy media outlets are avoiding the hard reckoning he deserves. 

Few American politicians have been as disastrously wrong in their advocacy for regime change in the Middle East, not just once but twice, or in their indulgence in an Israeli right-wing government that took Israel (and in turn, U.S. policy) down a morally abhorrent road of domestic reprehension of Palestinians. He supported authoritarian rule in derogation of Israel’s professed democratic values and reckless violence aimed at the utterly unattainable goal of obliterating military threats to Israel’s survival at the expense of attainable diplomatic solutions.

Domestically, he played a small but critical role in trying to steal the 2020 election, assisting Donald Trump’s campaign to “find” nonexistent votes to swing Georgia’s election results. His role in demagoguing and running roughshod over now Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assault victims marked a low point in Supreme Court confirmation hearings and helped steer the court toward its downward spiral into rank partisanship. 

More generally, his support for a corrupt, racist, conspiracy-mongering president who threatens the fiber of our democracy leaves a legacy of moral cowardice. As someone who formally supported comprehensive immigration reform, his indulgence of the rank racism and domestic campaign of terror against migrants exemplifies the rot at the core of the Republican Party.

We leave it to others to scrounge for redeeming features or accomplishments that contributed to the well-being of Americans and the advancement of our democratic values. His career should stand as a reminder that, in the end, access to power and electoral success mean little. History will judge him harshly for his role in the MAGA assault on democracy and America’s disastrous loss of international stature... 

-The Contrarian

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The Week Ahead

The Week Ahead: Coming out of a Semi-quincentennial full of blunders and bad karma for Donald Trump, we prepped for developments in the E. Jean Carroll case, Katie Phang’s Epstein files case, and the prosecution of Olympian David Hearn over alleged Reflecting Pool vandalism.

The Graham Platner Story Reveals the Difference Between the Parties: No political candidate or public servant should get a pass for sexual assault. It’s up to Democrats in Maine to decide who will replace Graham Platner as their Senate nominee, but it was rewarding to watch a political process that didn’t try to ignore his behavior or pretend it was excusable. Republicans should take note.

ICE: Still Out of Control: The death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was fatally shot by ICE officers on his way to work in Houston, is now all over the news. We checked in the day it happened as details emerged, including my detailed analysis of how the courts are responding to ICE’s arrests and mass detention policy and the patterns we are seeing—and which we must not look away from.

Joyce and Norm on Coffee with the Contrarians: Norm and I discussed the week’s legal news, what it means for each of us, and offered some practical advice about what you can do right now to support democracy.

E. Jean Carroll is Going to Outlast Trump’s Delay Game: Trump has spent years using delay games to win in court. But he’s out of time in E. Jean Carroll’s case. Best of all, he’s already put the money that will be used to pay the judgment she obtained against him into a court fund, so Trump himself can’t hold up the payment. The clerk of court will release it to Carroll’s lawyers. Read for the full run-down on this case.

DOJ: Not Doing Justice: We look at updates in the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by ICE agents and the prosecution of Olympian David Hearn. The cases are separate, but the issues are linked. Both are products of an administration that has no regard for real Justice. Read the full piece to understand why if neither of these men are safe, none of us are either.

Live with Mimi Rocah: Former federal prosecutor and Westchester County, New York, District Attorney Mimi Rocah joins me to discuss her former colleague, Todd Blanche, who will face a confirmation hearing for his nomination to become the next Attorney General of the United States this week. If you missed us live, click the link to watch this lively discussion.

Five Questions with Professor Kim Scheppele: Civil Discourse readers know Kim Scheppele for her study of the rise and fall of constitutional governments and insightful analysis of what has happened in Hungary and what it means for us here in the United States. I appreciate her willingness and ability to speak the plain truth to power. I wanted to spend some time with Kim, assessing where we are and how we step away from the minutiae to assess the larger moment we’re in. Her answers to my questions were thoughtful and helpful, and we’ll be back with a Substack Live in the next few days... 

These are complicated legal times, and it’s easy for the truth to get lost in the chaos. Civil Discourse doesn’t just track today’s headlines—it connects them to the legal and political history that explains why they matter. We won’t forget what’s at stake or let Trump and his allies rewrite the past. 

You can subscribe to Civil Discourse for free and get clear analysis that helps you see the whole picture, delivered straight to your inbox. If you’re able, your paid subscription helps me devote the time and resources needed to write the newsletter. That means everyone has access to information they can share with friends and family—a constructive act we can all participate in right now, helping more Americans understand how critical this moment is.

We’re in this together,

-Joyce Vance

 

How Far Would I Go to Protect Children? by Jean-Marie Kauth

Figure 1: Katherine undergoing her first bone-marrow transplant – I was sure there was a better picture. This issue is personal. This book is personal. This blog is personal. Recently, I was talking with Robin Coleman, my editor at Johns Hopkins University Press, about promoting the book, and even though I am a private person, I found myself saying that I would tell my story however painful, that I would plaster billboards all over town with pictures of Katherine dead if it meant that one child did not suffer what she – and we – have suffered. Parents of children killed in mass shootings have weighed doing just that. Some parents and journalists believe publishing crime-scene photos could trigger change. Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp tried to represent the magnitude of loss by capturing the bedrooms of young victims. Mom Jada Scruggs insisted on her daughter Haillie’s existence, “She was real. She was here.” The Washington Post wrote about the physical aftermath inflicted on children by rampant shootings, fostered in this country by weak gun laws and a violent culture. The article, titled “The Blast Effect: How Bullets from an AR-15 Blow the Body Apart,” demonstrated this not with bloody pictures of what a high-velocity bullet does to a tiny body, but with schematics, detailed descriptions of post-mortems, and accounts from doctors who have had to try to repair the damage. The authors were trying to make it real for people – in hopes that more will call for commonsense gun laws. Already, most Americans support stricter legislation. But the gun industry does not, and so the politicians to whom they contribute revolting amounts of money fail to protect us. Political science research affirms the hunch that most politicians vote not with their constituents, but with their largest donors. While some parents feel ready to share pictures of their dead children, journalists hesitate to publish them. Public images could scar families further. They could motivate trolls to persecute them, as was the case with the notorious Alex Jones-Sandy Hook debacle. They could normalize or even motivate violence. Then why would any parent, why would I think about doing such a horrendous thing? Maybe it’s simple. That is what gets people’s attention. The journalism trope that “if it bleeds, it leads,” is not for nothing. Gaper delays are reliably built into accident management. People are fascinated with others’ suffering, others’ deaths – in stories, movies, and real life. The bloody mangled display of a dead Emmett Till that his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, bravely chose to show to the world was key in the fight against racist violence. Figure 2: Mamie Till-Mobley at Her Son’s Funeral Is viewing photographs like this just voyeurism? Just cathartic release – the relief that at least this time, it’s not me? Not all such displays are viewed like snuff films. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been Catholic all my life and grew up contemplating Christ on the Cross at the front of the church, the agony of Mary gazing up at Jesus suffering, the bleeding sacred heart, but I don’t think so. I remember enduring the out-of-body agony of Katherine’s funeral and gazing upon the cross just to feel connection with some other suffering human – God or mortal almost didn’t matter. I can’t help but wonder if this natural tendency humans have to witness suffering is actually empathy – at least for some. Strange to say, but grotesque tech billionaires like Elon Musk argue that empathy is “the fundamental weakness of Western society,” our Achilles heel. Marc Andreessen argues that introspection is dumb because “it causes emotional disorders.” I am not the person I once was, but I cannot imagine being so far gone that I believed that compassion – one of the greatest of virtues, a feeling rooted in love – could be seen as a flaw. I guess that is the difference between someone who only weighs strength against weakness, not virtue against sin. Whose emptiness can only be filled up by transitory dollar signs and world-destroying wealth. Who believes only in triumph, not in redemption. I would not be that person or envy those riches for anything. Evolutionary theory once posited that altruism in nature was paradoxical. That if creatures actually put others’ good before their own, they would be eliminated in the struggle for life. Therefore, to this way of thinking, all goodness or consideration of others is either an illusion or a fatal weakness to be eliminated. It worries me to hear this in current culture – particularly among the manosphere. More recent science shows that actually, evolutionarily, our empathy, community, and ability to care for one another is our greatest strength – and is the reason for our success, much more than our big brains. Likewise, dogs succeeded not because they had bigger teeth or fiercer dispositions but precisely because they have a talent for love. Wolves in early stages of domestication cooperated with humans, and both humans and dogs have prospered in the process. So coming back to the question of what is right for me to share about my daughter’s suffering: I think there is a balance. To be clear, Katherine’s last wish was to be remembered. Robin agreed not everything would be right for the book, but that more might make for an engaging interview. He thinks people may listen to our story and that of others. The science on environmental health is all there and has been for decades. What has been missing is people witnessing the impacts of losing a child this way. Yes, there are St. Jude’s Commercials, but they are all focused on cures, not causes. There is no whisper that these children might never have become sick if it weren’t for the petrochemical industry poisoning our children. When there is a gory car accident on the road or a bloody shooting in a school, with pitifully shattered bodies piled up on the highways or in the hallways, there is no doubt what caused it. But the more extended, tenuous, hidden chains of causation from slow poisoning can be difficult to register. Our brains were built over eons more to protect us from immediate, visible harms like saber-tooth tigers, less from long-term threats to health. But the infiltration of our entire world with invisible poisons is causing more death than shootings, shark attacks, and accidents combined. Hundreds of millions die every year from cancer, cardiovascular disease, birth defects, autoimmune and metabolic disease, and many other chronic diseases caused by toxic chemicals. Perhaps it would be wrong to share our suffering if it were only to elicit pity, to call upon sympathy and support for years when others need help more in the present. But when cautionary tales can actually motivate people to make things better for all, that is fundamentally different. I will stop sharing our story and others’ once laws are passed that protect our children, once people are aware of the hazards they face going about their ordinary lives. Empathy is not only a human virtue that makes you a better person. It is also protective and adaptive. When you read a story about a person suffering and dying from something – or even witness it first-hand – you may feel compassion, you may extend a hand or a hug. But you may also strive to protect yourself and your own loved ones from those harms. As a literature professor, I have long entered into others’ suffering. What do we get out of this, Aristotle wondered in his Poetics? The answer is not, I would argue, simply catharsis. Empathy develops the ability to exist outside of oneself, in a sphere larger than between our own two ears, behind our own two eyes. It enlarges our experiences and expands our minds. And that has both tangible and intangible benefits. So, whatever it costs me, however much it hurts, I am prepared to share my sorrow and hers in the coming months, in hopes that doing so might change the world just slightly for the better. Thanks for reading. Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. -Jean-Marie Kauth How Far Would I Go To Protect Children?

“There is something deeply wrong with him..."

 

At 3:43 p.m. local time in Turkey, the President of the United States grabbed the stairs to his plane with his swollen right hand while his bruised left hand hung motionless at his side. This was not the plane he had arrived on; his newly refurbished Qatari Air Force One, but instead the older presidential aircraft he had used before. 

The change was sudden and unexpected, and multiple reports indicated it was related to security concerns with Iran, even as Trump denied that was the reason while simultaneously contradicting himself, telling reporters traveling with him, that they are “on a dangerous flight,” and, “I’m number one on their list, before you,” before adding, “But if I go, you go. Perhaps someday you want to change professions.”

This was just a few minutes in Donald Trump’s Day. By the time the day was over, he had confused world leaders and countries. Sitting beside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier in the day, Trump mistakenly referred to him as “President Putin.” And while discussing the conflict with Iran, he declared, “We had 111 missiles shot by the Islamic Republic of Japan.” 

He had also, once again, signaled his determination to seize territory from a fellow NATO ally, and told more easily verifiable lies than perhaps any sitting president in American history. It was another reminder to the world that the most powerful office on Earth is now occupied by a man whose physical and mental condition appears to be deteriorating at an alarming speed, leaving the entire planet in harm’s way. The NATO summit was supposed to project strength and unity among the Western alliance. Instead, it became a stage for one man’s unraveling. 

Trump opened his morning by sitting beside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and declaring, in front of the international press, that he was “very upset with NATO.” He called Spain “a terrible partner” and “a wasted cause,” then turned to his Treasury Secretary and ordered him, on camera, to “cut off all trade with Spain, please, including visits.” He added, “Don’t even talk to them. They’re hopeless, bad people.”

He then renewed his demand that the United States take control of Greenland, a territory belonging to NATO ally Denmark. “Greenland is very important for the United States, but it’s not important for Denmark,” he said, before invoking the Nazi occupation: “When Denmark was overrun by the Nazis in less than one day, Hitler beat them out in one day, took over, they asked us to take care of Greenland. In fact, we took Greenland, and then stupidly we gave it back.” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen responded by saying her country was “ready to defend every inch of NATO including our own territory” and that Greenland is “not for sale.”

But the most consequential moment of the day had nothing to do with alliances or defense spending. It had to do with war. Just three weeks after celebrating the signing of a memorandum of understanding with Iran at the Palace of Versailles, a deal he had called a triumph of his personal diplomacy, Trump declared that the agreement was “over.” 

He called Iranian leaders “scum” and “sick people.” He said continuing to negotiate was “a waste of time.” And he announced that U.S. forces had struck more than eighty targets inside Iran overnight, with more likely coming. “We hit them very hard last night,” he said. “Probably hit them hard again tonight.” Oil surged more than six percent. The Dow dropped six hundred points.

In the same stretch of remarks, while discussing his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he suddenly blurted out, “You know who’s No. 1 on Tic Tac (sic)? I am. I’m number one on TikTok. And all I talk about is how bad communism is.” He claimed to have “like 4 billion views or something like that.” In reality, Trump has roughly sixteen million TikTok followers, which does not place him in the top fifty accounts on the platform. And when some reporters expressed concern about TikTok’s influence, he waved them off: 

“People have to get their priorities straight.” That is the sentence that captured the entire day. While ordering strikes on a nation that shares a border with the country he was standing in, while threatening to destroy civilian water and electricity systems, while demanding territory from an ally, the President of the United States bragged about his social media following. He then told the rest of us to get our priorities straight, because we are not sufficiently impressed by his follower count on an app he cannot correctly pronounce.

And all of that happened before he boarded the plane. Aboard Air Force One, after the press had to keep their blinds drawn and the plane shut off their transponder, Trump walked to the press cabin and spoke for fourteen minutes. What came out was a flood of fabrications so constant and so detached from reality that it became difficult to track where one lie ended and the next began.

He told reporters that “probably billions of votes” had disappeared in the Los Angeles mayor’s race. California has roughly twenty-three million registered voters. The entire population of Earth is eight billion. And this is the same man who demands voter ID to protect the integrity of our elections.

He claimed that prescription drug prices had come down “four hundred to five hundred to six hundred percent” under his leadership. A price cannot decline more than one hundred percent. One hundred percent means the price is zero.

Maybe the most telling moment was when he was talking about the conflict between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. Trump said, “I settled after fourteen years and about fifteen million people had their heads chopped off.”

Fifteen million people did not have their heads chopped off. Not in Rwanda. Not in Congo. Not anywhere on Earth, in any era of recorded history. Fifteen million is roughly the entire current population of Rwanda. The broader Congo conflicts, spanning three decades, killed an estimated five to six million people, overwhelmingly from disease, displacement, and starvation. And he called it a settled war, even though his own administration acknowledged in March that the conflict is still ongoing.

I can’t stop thinking about what it means for us as a society when the President of the United States invents fifteen million beheadings and says billions of votes vanished. These are lies. And they are coming from the man who controls our nuclear arsenal, commands our military, and is actively waging a war without consideration for his allies or permission from Congress. And what makes all of it worse, what makes it dangerous instead of just absurd, is that it is not only dishonesty; it is showcasing how quickly his decline is accelerating.

Today, at a NATO summit, on the world stage, the President of the United States called Iran “Japan.” He called Zelenskyy “Putin.” He called TikTok “Tic Tac.” He called the JCPOA the “JCPOC.” He called Erdogan the leader of a “great company.” He stumbled over the word ‘denuclearization,’ first calling it ‘d-nuking’ before finding the actual word. 

His feet were so swollen that his ankles spilled over the sides of his shoes. His left hand, bruised and covered in makeup, hung limp at his side as he climbed the stairs until it jerked backward in an unnatural motion that was caught on video and circulated around the world. He is eighty years old. And when the White House was asked about all of it, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a statement calling his performance “marathon” and “high-energy,” claiming the president “commanded every room.”

He did not command any room. He alarmed every room he entered. Retired Naval War College professor Tom Nichols said what so many are thinking: “There is something deeply wrong with him. His friends know it; his critics know it. His staff, I’m sure, knows it. The world knows it. World leaders know it. And most importantly, our enemies know it, which is why they don’t take him seriously.” Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh called for invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. Senator Chuck Schumer called it “an embarrassment to our country on the world stage.”

And still, no one around him acts. No one in his inner circle intervenes. No one invokes the constitutional mechanisms that exist for exactly this moment. Because what we are witnessing is not just a president in decline. It is the most significant cover-up and the deepest corruption our government has ever faced at this level. 

There is nothing in modern American history that compares. Every person propping him up knows exactly what we are all watching. Every enabler who stands behind him in that room. Every cabinet member who clears the press when he begins to lose coherence. Every Republican in Congress who looks the other way. They know. And they do it anyway, because they want to stay in power. That is the entire reason. They are not acting out of patriotism or principle. They are anti-American in the most fundamental sense of the word. They allow and enable all of this to stay close to power and profit.

And while they cover for him, he is destroying the architecture that has kept this country and its allies safe for generations. In a year and a half, he has shattered alliances that took nearly a century to build. Alliances that matter. Alliances that were forged on the graves of people who died to protect them. He called Spain’s people “hopeless” and ordered his Treasury Secretary to cut off all trade. 

He demanded Greenland from Denmark by invoking the Nazi occupation. He posted a mocking image of the Italian Prime Minister days before sitting across from her. He told the world he only attended this summit because his friend, the authoritarian leader of Turkey, was hosting it. He said he does not need NATO’s help. And he keeps saying it, over and over, that we are “far away” from the rest of the world, that “we have an ocean separating” us from danger.

We were not so far away when Pearl Harbor happened. We were not so far away when the towers fell. Things do not stay within imaginary borders. They never have. And what he is doing right now in Iran is not making us safer. He is attacking a country instead of helping its citizens free themselves from a regime that oppresses them. He is threatening to bomb infrastructure that provides water and electricity to ordinary people. 

And in doing so, he is creating the next generation of extremists who will grow up knowing that America destroyed their homes and their families. We will be the ones to pay for that. Not him or his enablers. Us. Our children and grandchildren. Our service members. The people who will be sent to fight the wars that his recklessness and his impairment have set in motion.

Because that is the truth no one around him will say out loud. He cannot govern this country. He simply cannot do the job. And the people who are supposed to protect us from exactly this kind of danger have chosen instead to protect themselves.

We simply must take back both chambers in November. And when we do, here is what becomes possible. Real subpoena power returns. Not just letters or requests. Not strongly worded statements released to the press and forgotten by morning. Subpoenas with the full force of congressional authority behind them, aimed at every decision, every contract, every military order that was issued by or on behalf of a president who was not capable of making them himself.

Impeachment and removal become possible. And the mechanism is specific. We remove Vance first. We leave the vice presidency empty. Then we remove Trump. And when he goes, the cabinet structure that has been propping him up collapses with him.

And then come the investigations. Not just into this president, but into every member of Congress who made this possible. Even the ones who are no longer serving and the ones who get voted out in November. We need to understand why they did what they did. Were they being threatened? Were their families being threatened? 

Were they promised money, positions, or protection? Or are they simply terrible people who wanted access to power and did not care what it cost their country? We need those answers. Because what they did was not a difference of opinion. It was not politics as usual. It was the deliberate abandonment of their oath of office and the willing destruction of the country they swore to serve. There must be accountability. Without it, the next version of this will be worse. And there will be a next version, unless we build the precedent now that what they did can never be done again.

We are watching a man who is physically breaking down, mentally unraveling, and morally bankrupt try to hold together a presidency that is being operated, behind the scenes, by people who were never elected and who answer to no one. The only thing standing between them and the future of this country is the midterm election. We have to remember that every seat and every vote matters.

And if today felt like nothing but darkness, look at what happened while Trump was stumbling through his NATO performance. A federal judge ordered the release of five point eight million dollars to E. Jean Carroll, the woman a jury found Trump sexually abused and defamed. Trump’s lawyers appealed within an hour. And then, hours later, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals denied his request to block the payment. He lost twice on the same case in a single day. Every court that has touched this case, from the trial court to the appeals court to the Supreme Court, has ruled against him. The system held.

And in Florida, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Ron DeSantis’s “Stop WOKE Act,” ruling that restrictions on how race and gender can be taught in public universities violate the First Amendment. The court called it “a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse.” And the judge who wrote that opinion was appointed by Donald Trump himself, during his first term. Even the judges he put on the bench are drawing the line.

On a day when his decline was visible to the entire world, when he embarrassed his country on the global stage, the courts back home still held firm. And that matters, because it sends a message to every loyalist, every enabler, every member of Congress who thinks they can ride this out and escape the consequences. He is not untouchable. And neither are they.

In November, they will be reminded that the power still belongs to the people. And that is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

-It's a Lovely Life

Why we don’t know what food is spreading the parasite sickening thousand

There’s a lag between when people consume the parasite and when symptoms appear, making it tough for those infected to remember what they ate to pinpoint the problem.

More than 2,000 Americans have been sickened this summer by a microscopic parasite that contaminates fresh produce and can cause days of diarrhea, creating an unusually large outbreak that, paradoxically, may give investigators their best chance to identify its source, public health officials said.

Cyclospora is one of the hardest foodborne pathogens to trace to its source. There’s a lag between when people consume the parasite that causes the illness and when symptoms appear, making it tough for those infected to remember what they ate to pinpoint the problem. Health officials are alarmed by the rapidly growing number of cases, which they say are likely undercounted because some people recover without medical care and are not tested.

Authorities have not yet identified a specific produce grower, supplier, or type of produce responsible for the latest outbreak. But this season’s unusually high number of illnesses, now reported in at least 21 states, means more information and more patients to help identify.

 

E. Jean Carroll is Going to Outlast Trump's Delay Game

 

The most annoying thing, from a legal perspective, about Donald Trump is how he plays the delay game, drawing cases out far longer than any other litigant could get away with. He relentlessly files borderline (and sometimes outright) frivolous motions and fights every step of the way, using every motion to reconsider and every other procedural tool available, even when it’s hopeless.

That’s how it felt today in the E. Jean Carroll case. We’ll get to what happened during the day in a minute, but first let’s start with how it ended, just after 10 p.m. ET. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals denied Trump’s request to stay District Judge Lewis Kaplan’s order that it was time for Trump to pay Carroll the $5 million, plus post-judgment interest, that he owes her. The Second Circuit ruled just hours after Trump asked for the stay.

Trump, of course, isn’t done yet. Next, he’ll ask the Supreme Court for a stay. Prediction: It will be similarly unavailing. Stick a fork in this case. It’s done.

You’ll recall it’s not actually Trump who has to pay up here. That’s because, as a condition of being able to appeal the judgment in Carroll’s favor in the first place, he had to deposit $5.5 million into the Court Registry Investment System (“CRIS”). He did that on June 28, 2023, shortly after Carroll won the case at trial. So Judge Kaplan’s order is actually directed to the Clerk of Court, who oversees the CRIS. The Judge wrote: “The Clerk is respectfully directed to disburse” $5 million in judgment plus interest to Carroll’s lawyers on her behalf.

Unlike other times when courts have granted Trump a stay pending appeal at the same time they issued an order, Judge Kaplan did not do that here. That forced Trump’s lawyers to file their notice of appeal and immediately ask the Second Circuit for a stay before the Clerk could disburse the funds. “The need for an administrative stay here is acute,” they wrote. “The district court’s order directs the Clerk to disburse the funds, and once entered that order may be executed at any time.”

Trump argued that once the funds are "distributed to third parties, they likely will not be recoverable—rendering any stay this Court might later grant, and any relief President Trump might later obtain on appeal, ineffective.” But that argument didn’t stick the landing for him.

Underneath it all is Trump’s effort to conflate Carroll’s two victories: this one, based on his defamation of Carroll after he left office, and the other case, involving statements he made while he was president. He has a tenuous argument that some form of immunity may apply in that case—an argument the Second Circuit rejected. But that case is not this case, and there is no reason to delay this one because of the other.

Now it’s up to the Supreme Court, which has already denied certiorari in this case, to enforce its own ruling. It has before it Trump’s motion to reconsider its refusal to hear the case, which it can deny at any moment, along with his motion for a stay of Judge Kaplan’s disbursement order. Unless Trump simply gives up and gives in to the inevitable by letting the money he deposited into the court’s fund go to Carroll, his lawyers will need to get an appeal and a stay application to the Supreme Court immediately. If the Court does not order a stay, the Clerk is free to disburse the funds at any time because a judge has ordered that they be disbursed, and no stay is in place.

In his deposition, Trump, who had said Carroll was “not my type,” identified her as his second wife, Marla Maples.

After her win in the $83.3 million defamation case, which is still on appeal, Carroll responded to a question about how she intended to spend the money like this: “I’d like to give the money to something Donald Trump hates. If it’ll cause him pain for me to give money to certain things, that’s my intent.”

How splendid. Sometimes justice happens. We’re close.

If you want to revisit some of our earlier columns on the two Carroll defamation cases, here are a few to start with:

May 22, 2023, Standing Up To The Bully, Again

January 18, 2024, Day Two

January 26, 2024, $83.3 Million

September 8, 2025, Affirmed: E Jean Carroll Case

May 29, 2026, E. Jean Carroll: Is DOJ investigating her, or not?

Trump has spent years using a delay game to win. Tonight, in E. Jean Carroll’s case, the courts moved fast, signaling that at least in this case, time’s up. Thanks for being here with me at Civil Discourse for all of it! Your paid subscriptions make this newsletter possible.

We’re in this together,

-Joyce Vance