On Donald Trump's Corruption

“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” That famous line was at the center of the classic 1970s film Network – but it is also an apt motto for how my democracy litigation colleagues, and I are responding to Donald Trump’s corruption in all its forms.  According to the New York Times, there are over 600 cases defending the guardrails of democracy against his assault. We have 252 cases and matters at Democracy Defenders Fund and Democracy Defenders Action alone, with hundreds more by other organizations. Building on those successes, the time has come to go on offense against corruption by Trump and his cronies. That’s why this week we at DDF, along with wonderful partners, filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s so-called “Gold Card” visa program.  It is a blatantly illegal attempt to strip qualified immigrants of a path to citizenship while selling legal status to wealthy foreigners. Forget “give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.” Trump’s maxim is “give us your money, your oligarchs, your privileged few.” 1. The Epstein Files Cover-Up The signature corruption scandal of the Trump administration remains Trump’s association with one of the most notorious child sex traffickers in history – and his administration’s refusal to turn over all of the files about the case so we can be certain we have all Trump-Epstein documents. The administration admitted it’s refusing to disclose about 3 million files, despite a law requiring their disclosure. The Department of Justice wants us to trust that it has good reasons for all that, but the place is run by two of his former defense lawyers, the FBI is helmed by an even bigger Trump loyalist, and they have acted like it too often for us to give them any credence. This scandal is not going away. Current Status: Democracy Defenders Fund filed a complaint this week with the Office of the Inspector General about the missing documents, and we are litigating and investigating on multiple fronts. We will continue to pursue all legal avenues to ensure the complete release of all eligible files relating to the Epstein investigation, as required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act. 2. Selling American Residency to the Super-Rich In September, Trump debuted the so-called “Gold Card,” a program that lets wealthy foreigners effectively buy permanent U.S. residency for a $1 million payment to the federal government. That’s bad enough, but consider this: Rather than asking Congress to create a new visa category, Trump simply ordered federal agencies to treat these massive cash “gifts” to the Department of Commerce as proof of eligibility for elite EB-1 and EB-2 visas.  Those are categories Congress reserved for Nobel laureates, pioneering scientists, and individuals whose work serves the national interest. But these employment-based visas are strictly capped – so every Gold Card handed to a millionaire donor necessarily displaces a qualified scientist, engineer, physician, or researcher already waiting in line. (It is worth noting that all available EB-1 visas were granted September 8, 2025, with the cap resetting every year on October 1.) That means that Trump has effectively transformed lawful permanent residency into a luxury commodity, letting oligarchs buy into our country like they buy Ferraris and Picassos. We’re not letting Trump auction off our immigration system without a fight. This week, we brought suit on behalf of a group of highly accomplished professionals – people who followed the rules, only to find themselves subject to being pushed aside by wealthy applicants who could jump the line with a seven-figure check. And remember: Congress — not the president — has the exclusive authority to set immigration eligibility and raise federal funds. The Gold Card program overrides Congress’s choices — both as to who qualifies for employment-based immigration and how and under what conditions agencies may collect revenue. Current Status: We will see Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in court (and in the Epstein files). 3. World Liberty Financial Trump’s crypto company, World Liberty Financial (WLFI), was near the top of our list when we debuted it in December – and things have only gotten worse. New reporting last week revealed that the “Spy Sheikh,” Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al Nahyan — the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser and one of the most powerful men in the Gulf – had quietly amassed a secret stake in Trump’s crypto venture through a web of investment vehicles designed to obscure his involvement.  His hidden investment in Trump’s crypto business created an extraordinary conflict of interest: a foreign national security advisor with direct financial ties to the sitting U.S. president’s private enterprise. And it may already be paying off, as, months later, the UAE secured a deal for millions of the most advanced computer chips from American company NVidia, a “coup” for the tiny nation. The White House has denied any impropriety here. Current Status: WLFI is flush with Gulf cash – but these revelations may make Trump’s crypto conflicts so unpalatable that there are consequences. Perhaps even the crypto industry PAC’s $193 million midterms war chest won’t be enough to get uneasy Democrats to vote for legislation creating a market structure for cryptocurrency without any checks on Trump’s ability to influence the market to his benefit. 4. The Meme Coin Grift Trump’s meme coin represents perhaps his most brash self-enrichment scheme, one unlike anything we have ever seen from an American president. According to the website, the token is “intended to function as an expression of support for, and engagement with, the ideals and beliefs embodied by the symbol “$TRUMP“ — and not as an investment or security. But of course this slice of code was listed on various crypto exchanges and immediately surged in price.  Since its launch, the coin’s value closely followed Trump’s announcements, with wild fluctuations. The president even hosted an exclusive dinner for meme coin “investors” who spent tens of thousands to buy the digital token. This access auction was a scheme so brazen — even for Trump — that it left ethics experts like us stunned. The White House denies any conflicts of interest. Current Status: The Trump-dominated Securities and Exchange Commission has shown zero interest in examining Trump’s meme coin activities. This makes defeating the new crypto market bill even more important. We have been sounding the alarm, and our fight continues. 5. Tom Homan’s $50,000 With Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan back in the news as he took center stage in Minnesota’s ICE invasion, Democracy Defenders Fund this week expanded our investigation of his conduct. We launched additional FOIA requests about his alleged acceptance of a $50,000 payment from undercover federal agents posing as business executives. Homan has denied wrongdoing. But if Trump is going to thrust him into the country’s civil rights flashpoint, then we have to have transparency.  A tape of the alleged payoff reportedly exists. Let’s see it. The secrecy surrounding these meetings raises the same fundamental question that follows so many Trump officials: Is government power being secretly shaped by those with money and access? The American people deserve to know what kind of person has taken control of immigration actions in Minnesota and whether he can be trusted to wield that power. Current Status: If we don’t promptly get the materials we are asking for, we are prepared to pursue all legal remedies. If Trump and Co. don’t believe us, they should take a look at our 252 cases and matters. 6. The USD1 Binance-UAE Deal Less than two months after Trump’s WLFI launched USD1, its stablecoin, a UAE state-backed investment firm announced that it would use USD1 to finance a $2 billion investment in crypto exchange Binance, which was then under SEC investigation. In May, Binance decided to list USD1 – and, days after the announcement, Trump’s SEC dropped its securities case against the exchange. And then there’s Trump’s treatment of Binance’s head Changpeng “CZ” Zhao. He pleaded guilty to money laundering in 2023 and got a Trump pardon this past October. The White House defended Zhao, criticized his prosecution, and blamed the Biden administration for creating a “war on cryptocurrency.“ Current Status: With last week’s latest revelations of the UAE’s crypto influence campaign with the “Spy Sheikh’s” role in WLFI (#3 above), it’s worth keeping an eye on this while we wait for the next shoe to fall. 7. Trump’s Qatari Boeing In May, Qatar presented Trump and his administration with a $400 million Boeing 747, ostensibly to use as Air Force One — a present reportedly worth more than all foreign gifts bestowed on all former American presidents combined. As my colleagues and I noted in a legal complaint, the Trump administration is apparently illegally transferring nearly $1 billion from a nuclear weapons program at the Defense Department to retrofit the jet, a gross mismanagement of key federal funds. And it will barely have time in the air before Trump’s term ends and it gets “donated” to Trump’s presidential library for his continued use.  Meanwhile, after the transfer, Qatar got a guarantee that the United States will defend Qatar through “diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military” measures and a new “military facility” for Qatar’s Air Force at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. Trump has defended the transfer of the plane as a legitimate “gift,” and the White House said that “any gift given by a foreign government is always accepted in full compliance with all applicable laws. President Trump’s administration is committed to full transparency.” Current Status: We’re waiting for the Government Accountability Office to act on our complaint — but it’s hard to imagine a clearer conflict of interest. 8. Melania’s Amazin’ Flop Amazon’s Melania film had its lavish Washington, D.C., premiere last week, and it went about as expected: a high-profile commercial event designed to elevate — and monetize — the Trump brand. Black carpets, media spectacle, and exclusive distribution through Amazon’s Prime Video platform were deployed to attempt to transform Melania Trump’s story into something in line with the $40 million Amazon paid for the rights.  That was about $26 million above the nearest bidder, which raises questions about what Amazon was really paying for here. Unfortunately for Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Melania Trump, and director Brett Ratner (who was already having a bad day after surfacing in the Epstein files), the movie scored a putrid 6% on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviewers describing it as, “primarily a film about a woman walking into and out of rooms,” and an “unbelievable abomination of filmmaking.” Current Status: Melania’s 6% rating leaves it in the rarified air of films like 1997’s Mortal Kombat Annihilation (4%), and 2010’s The Last Airbender (5%). 9. Trump’s Foreign Real Estate Boom Trump is set to more than triple his foreign properties during this term, as real estate developers are working on at least 23 Trump-branded projects. These projects are a global feeding frenzy for foreign governments looking to curry favor with the president. To take only a few examples, Trump is building a hotel, golf course, and residences in Oman on property owned by the government. A Saudi real estate firm (with close ties to the Saudi government) is the Trump Organization’s partner in various real estate deals, including a new Trump Hotel in Dubai and a residential tower in Jeddah.  In November, the Trump Organization announced a project in the Maldives with the same Saudi firm. The very next day, Trump met with Saudi Crown Prince and Jared Kushner buddy Mohammed bin Salman and announced an “Economic and Defense Partnership” with the kingdom. Hard to come up with better reasons why the Constitution prohibits the president from accepting foreign emoluments. When asked about possible conflicts of interest in the context of Trump’s then-upcoming trip to the Middle East, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that it was “ridiculous that anyone in this room would even suggest that President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit.” Current Status: Each individual property may constitute an emoluments clause violation. We at Democracy Defenders Fund include leaders of the team that won multiple emoluments cases against Trump in his first term, and we ain’t playing. Watch this space! 10. Trump’s D.C. Renovation Racket In the middle of the longest government shutdown ever, as federal workers were going without pay and standing in bread lines, Trump ordered the destruction of the historic East Wing to build a massive, $300 million-plus ballroom. And that’s only one of his Washington, D.C., personal vanity projects, which also include renaming the Kennedy Center after himself.  When that caused artists and audiences to hemorrhage, Trump suddenly announced he planned to close the center for supposed renovations. We can’t help but wonder if it’s to avoid the additional embarrassment of no one showing up. Trump says he’s raised private money for both these renovations, but the ballroom donors include corporations that have received billions in federal contracts – and about a dozen facing federal enforcement actions. Current Status: We and partners are litigating the Kennedy Center renaming on behalf of Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), with the government’s filing due on March 1. nd we are considering all legal steps to address the closing if it moves forward. Others are litigating the ballroom case, and initial signs point to a tough ruling for the White House. -Norman Eisen and Gabriel Lezra, The Contrarian

Guess who made that lawsuit possible? You did, Contrarians! All profits from your paid subscriptions go to help support that and our other 251 cases and matters–like our huge win at the Supreme Court this week defending California’s Prop. 50 and counteracting Trump’s attempt to steal congressional seats. If you’re not a paid subscriber, please consider becoming one and joining the fight. I cover the Gold Card case and nine other outrages in my updated top 10 list of Trump and his cronies’ worst corruption scandals – and of the pushback in the courts of law and of public opinion. There is nothing the American people hate more than corruption, and it has contributed to Trump’s historic unpopularity. Since we published our first list in December, new schemes have emerged, and old ones have metastasized or featured shocking additional revelations of abusing power for personal or financial gain, corrupting the rule of law, and more. What follows is an updated list, reflecting both brand-new scandals and new developments in cases we flagged before. After you give the list a look, please keep on reading for our usual roundup of all our great Contrarian coverage this week. Upgrade to paid

"Trump’s Racist Attack on the Obamas Shows the Moral Collapse of His Presidency. This wasn’t a joke or a mistake but a warning about how racism, silence, and abuse of power are eating away at democracy…"

Normally I wouldn’t post such a disgusting, racist image that originated on Elon’s social media sewer, but it’s important for the historical record for Americans to see what the President of the United States reposted last night on his own site — as your and my representative — for the entire world to see. (Screengrab / Truth Social, per Raw Story)

I’ve been talking into microphones since I did the morning news on WITL in Lansing Michigan in the late 1960s, and I’ve seen a lot of ugly moments in American politics. But every so often something happens that still takes your breath away, not because it’s surprising, but because it’s so painfully revealing.

This latest racist stunt by Donald Trump — reposting a meme on his Nazi-infested social media site in which the Obamas’ faces are superimposed onto the bodies of primates in the jungle set to the 1961 song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by The Tokens — is one of those moments.

That a popular pro-Trump account on X created this video and it has lived on that platform without consequence is disgusting in and of itself. But Trump — as our president, speaking in our voice — made it infinitely worse last night by promoting it to millions around the world.

Promoting a video that depicts Barack and Michelle Obama as non-human primates isn’t a joke. It isn’t satire or an accident. It’s the oldest racist smear in the book, dressed up in a cheap meme and now blasted out by a man who once swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

When the president of the United States does something like this, it doesn’t just insult two people. It tells a story about who, according to the most powerful man in the world, belongs in America and who doesn’t.

For centuries, racism in this country has relied on the lie that some people are less than human. That lie has been used to justify slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, and mass incarceration.

It’s the lie that made it easier for people to look away while their neighbors were brutalized. It’s the lie that justifies ICE’s brutal, racist behavior. When Trump shares imagery that taps directly into that history, he’s not being edgy: he’s reopening wounds that never fully healed.

When the President of the United States signals that this kind of racism is acceptable, it gives permission to others. It tells the kid being harassed at school, the family being targeted by a hate group, and the voter being pushed out of the polling line that the cruelty they’re experiencing is justified. That it’s their own fault.

It tells the bullies and thugs of ICE as they do their “Kavanaugh Stops” — targeting people based on their race — that they’re on the right side of power. This isn’t just about harm to minorities, although that harm is real and immediate.

It’s about what happens to democracy itself when the presidency becomes a megaphone for dehumanization. Democracy depends on the idea that we’re all political equals. Once you start suggesting that some Americans are animals, that idea collapses. It becomes easier to justify taking away voting rights, ignore court rulings, or shrug when violence follows hateful rhetoric.

I remember a time, during the era of Eisenhower and Kennedy, when the presidency stood as a kind of moral North Star. Even when presidents like Nixon and Clinton failed to live up to it, there was at least a shared understanding that the office itself mattered. That it should pull us together, not rip us apart.

Trump has spent years doing the opposite, from the 1970s when he was busted along with his father for refusing to rent to Black people to his recent use of words like “vermin” and “shitholes” to describe Hispanic and Black people and majority-Black countries. Last night’s post is another brutally clear example of Trump’s deep, lifelong racism.

What’s even more chilling is the silence from Republican leaders and elected officials. If you can’t bring yourself to condemn something this overtly racist, where exactly is your line? Silence in moments like this isn’t neutrality: it’s complicity. It tells people of color in America, already dealing with the burden of centuries of institutional racism, that their pain is irrelevant and their dignity a plaything in the hands of white people.

I know some people will say we should ignore it, that reacting “just feeds the outrage machine.” Trump’s propaganda princess, Karoline Leavitt, tried to downplay it by telling reporters this morning: “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

But pretending this doesn’t matter is how we normalize it and weaken our shared sense of humanity. And the end point of that is always disaster.

As California Governor Gavin Newsome just posted: “Disgusting behavior by the President. Every single Republican must denounce this. Now.” “Denounce” is a bare minimum. This country can do better. We’ve done better before, often after terrible struggle and sacrifice.

But we won’t get there by minimizing moments like this or waving them off as “just another Trump post.” We get there by calling it what it is, by standing up for one another as equals in our humanity, and by insisting that the presidency must reflect our highest ideals, not our ugliest instincts.

If this doesn’t provoke the 13 white billionaires in Trump’s cabinet — who would all instantly fire anybody in any of their companies who posted such an image on their company’s servers — to start 25th Amendment proceedings or endorse impeachment, it’ll tell us everything about who they are, too. America is stronger when we recognize each other as fully human. The moment we let that slip; we all lose something precious.

-Thom Hartmann

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Dear Trump Administration Official

I’m writing to you not as a political opponent, but as a historian who’s spent a lifetime studying what happens when democracies flirt with strongmen and otherwise decent people convince themselves that loyalty to Dear Leader today will be rewarded by safety and protection tomorrow. It almost never is.

You’re out there defending Donald Trump’s lawbreaking, cheering his attacks on judges, prosecutors, immigrants, journalists, and even the Constitution itself. You defend his bribe-taking, the jet from Qatar, the violence of ICE, and his hotel and crypto grifts. You say it’s necessary for him to abuse power to “get things done,” that the other side is worse, that he’s strong and that’s what the American people need.

History is littered with people who believed the same things. Let’s start close to home. Richard Nixon didn’t go to prison: his loyalists did. His attorney general John Mitchell did hard time in a federal prison. His chief of staff H.R. Haldeman did hard time, as did John Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, and his White House attorney John Dean. The burglars did time, as did the fixers. The forty Nixon officials who went to prison even included two members of Nixon’s cabinet: AG Mitchell and Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans.

The people who “just followed orders” or egged Nixon on — like you’re doing now with Trump — were the ones who went to jail, while Nixon walked away to a quiet retirement. That’s the pattern history shows us over and over, all the way back to the Roman Republic: the boss either dies or escapes while his helpers become the long-term fall guys.

Every authoritarian system runs on the same fuel you’re today giving Trump: people who believe that by protecting the leader they’re protecting themselves and their families. Tragically, at least for them, it never works out that way.

When Hitler’s regime collapsed, he was dead, but his inner circle faced tribunals, prison cells, and even the gallows. The men who signed orders, ran ministries, moved trains, seized property, and “made it all legal” discovered that when corrupt administrations fall, their paperwork trail lasts longer than their leader’s loyalty. Their defense of “I was serving my country” or “just taking orders” didn’t save them: it convicted them.

Mussolini’s story is even darker. As his own crimes caught up with him, his own allies turned and ran. He was executed by people horrified by his excesses. His son-in-law, once his foreign minister and a loyal insider, was put up against a wall and shot after a show trial. Dictators never go down alone: they take their flunkies with them and it’s typically the flunkies who bear the harshest punishments.

Chile’s Pinochet managed to dodge some justice himself, but the men who ran his torture chambers and death squads didn’t. Years later they were dragged into court, convicted, and sent to prison. Time didn’t save them, and neither did politics or the loyalty they expected from the good general. And it won’t save you.

The same happened after Saddam Hussein fell; his henchmen were tried and executed or died in prison. In Romania, the Ceausescu were hunted down and shot but their senior officials faced courts, disgrace, and decades in prison. Across history, when the music stops, the people closest to the guy at the top inevitably find there aren’t enough chairs.

Here’s the uncomfortable (for you) truth: authoritarian leaders like Trump and Putin treat loyalty like a disposable resource. Just look at all the Republicans who served in Trump’s first term and he’s now trying to throw into prison. Loyalty, for narcissists and authoritarians like Trump, is always a one-way street.

So long as you’re useful, you’re protected, but the moment Dear Leader no longer commands power you’ll become a liability, an offering to be thrown out to appease the angry mob. And when the prosecutors come calling for you after Trump’s gone, they won’t start with your elegant speeches or proclamations that Renee Good and Alex Pretti were “domestic terrorists.” They start with your memos, phone calls, pressure campaigns, documents, and quiet threats; they’ll go after your “find the votes” activities, the cooked reports, the arrests without cause, the orders that violated others’ civil rights.

They’ll start, in other words, with the people who made Trump’s crimes happen to people like you. That’s how conspiracies are proven in a court of law: not by vibes, but by nailing the insiders.

Right now, you may feel powerful. You’re on TV, retweeted, and praised by Trump. The base cheers, the fundraising money pours in, the billionaires are chummy, and it feels like history is being written by your side. But history has a funny way of circling back:

— Nixon’s aides told themselves they were protecting the presidency, but they destroyed their own lives instead.

— The seniormost Nazis told themselves they were saving Germany, but they were prosecuted as war criminals.

— Mussolini’s ministers told themselves they were stabilizing Italy, but they ended up dead or disgraced.

— Pinochet’s enforcers told themselves they were fighting communism, but they ended up in prison.

There’s a simple and perennial reason why prosecutors always say, “Follow the money” and “follow the paper trail”: abusive power always leaves fingerprints. And there’s no statute of limitations on some of the crimes you’re now waving away.

Obstruction of justice. Conspiracy. Civil rights violations. Election interference. Murder under color of authority. Bribery. Abuse of power. False statements. Unlawful detention. Retaliation against whistleblowers. Collusion with foreign enemies. These aren’t political talking points that I’m trying to wave around to score with public opinion or scare you, they’re criminal statutes.

You may tell yourself — like all those people before you told themselves — that Trump will protect you. But Nixon didn’t protect his people; he left the White House and never looked back to watch his underlings fall. History’s strongmen never look back. When the heat gets intense enough, they point at others, not themselves.

Already we’re seeing this pattern with dozens of people who’ve left Trump’s first term employ, from his Attorney General, CIA director, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Defense Secretary, and FBI Director all the way down to functionaries in the Oval Office: “I didn’t know he was that crazy.” “They acted on their own.” “I was advised incorrectly.” “They went too far.”

Every authoritarian uses the same script, and Trump has already proven that he’s no different. Do you think he’s suddenly going to decide to protect you rather than run off with the goodies? If so, I have a bridge to sell you.

Seriously, here’s the part nobody in the cheering crowd has bothered to tell you: when regimes fall — or even just lose power, like Nixon did — the leader’s efforts become solely about his own personal survival. Your life, as a disposable underling, becomes a tool he can use to redirect blame and avoid accountability.

The courts won’t ask whether you believed in the cause: they’ll ask what you did. Did you pressure an official? Did you sign that order? Did you participate in killing those fishermen with a missile? Did you move the funds? Did you authorize those deportations to foreign torture centers? Did you look the other way? Did you help cover up the child rapes? That’s when you’ll discover the very real difference between a political appointee and the defendant you’ll become.

I’m not asking you to become a Democrat, to abandon your “conservative” principles, or even to leave your party. Instead, I want you to realize that the Constitution is older than Donald Trump and far more durable than any cult of personality.

There’s a reason the Founders feared concentrated power and split it among three branches of government: like their advisor Montesquieu, they’d also studied history. Strongmen always promise protection to the people they con into doing their dirty work. What they deliver to those folks, though, is always collateral damage.

Right now, you’re standing close to a light that feels bright and powerful. History suggests, however, that it’ll end by burning the people nearest to it. Including you. Presidents can walk away, but staffers, lawyers, deputies, agency heads, cabinet officials, and enablers can’t.

You still have time to choose which side of history you’re on, and which side of a courtroom you never want to sit in. Because the lesson of every fallen strongman is the same: abusive power-by-association today becomes criminal liability tomorrow.

 -Thom Hartmann

Ian McKellen on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Click for video: Facebook

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise

Hath chide down all the majesty of England.

Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,

Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,

Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,

And that you sit as kings in your desires,

Authority quite silent by your brawl,

And you in ruff of your opinions clothed.

What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught

How insolence and strong hand should prevail,

How order should be quelled, and by this pattern

Not one of you should live an agèd man,

For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,

With self-same hand, self-reasons, and self-right,

Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes

Would feed on one another.

You’ll put down strangers. Kill them.

Cut their throats; possess their houses.

Oh, desperate as you are,

wash your foul minds with tears,

and those same hands, that like rebels

lift up for peace, and your unreverent knees,

make them your feet to kneel to be forgiven.

Say now the king,

As he is clement if th’ offender mourn,

Should so much come too short of your great trespass

As but to banish you, whither would you go?

What country, by the nature of your error,

Should give you harbor? Go you to France or Flanders,

To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,

Nay, anywhere that does not adhere to England,

Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased

To find a nation of such barbarous temper,

That, breaking out in hideous violence,

Would not afford you an abode on earth,

Whet their detested knives against your throats,

Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God

Owed not nor made not you, nor that the elements

We're not all appropriate to your comforts,

But chartered unto them, what would you think

To be thus used? This is the strangers’ case.

And this your mountainous inhumanity.

Speech credited to Thomas More/Shakespeare

"...When a nation kneels before money, power, and spite..."

      

“Behold. The festering carcass of American rot shoved into an ill-fitting suit: the sleaze of a conman, the cowardice of a draft dodger, the gluttony of a parasite, the racism of a Klansman, the sexism of a back-alley creep, the ignorance of a bar-stool drunk, and the greed of a hedge-fund ghoul—all spray-painted orange and paraded like a prize hog at a county fair. Not a president. Not even a man. Just the diseased distillation of everything this country swears it isn’t but has always been—arrogance dressed up as exceptionalism, stupidity passed off as common sense, cruelty sold as toughness, greed exalted as ambition, and corruption worshiped like gospel. It is America’s shadow made flesh, a rotting pumpkin idol proving that when a nation kneels before money, power, and spite, it doesn’t just lose its soul—it shits out this bloated obscenity and calls it a leader” - Oliver Kornetzke is an American writer whose commentary of U.S. and global politics is known for its raw honesty. 

   

Don Colossus at the G20 Summit on the grounds of his golf complex in Doral, Florida

 

A massive golden statue of [Pathological Narcissistic] Donald Trump will soon loom over the grounds of his golf complex in Doral, Florida, the site of this year’s annual G20 Summit.

The gaudy effigy stands 15 feet tall — 22 feet when affixed upon a 7,000-pound concrete pedestal — and is coated in gold leaf. It depicts Trump with a raised fist in the moments after he survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024.

It’s part sculpture, part publicity stunt, commissioned by a group of cryptocurrency investors to promote a meme coin: the Patriot Token.

“THE $PATRIOT TEAM, LIKE MANY AROUND THE GLOBE, WERE INSPIRED BY HIS COURAGE UNDER FIRE AND WERE COMPELLED TO BUILD HIM A GLORIOUS STATUE,” the token’s website reads.

The New York Times on Tuesday reported that the project, which began in mid-2024, now “appears close to fruition.” An unveiling date has not yet been announced, but Trump is expected to attend the event, according to the Times.

The statue has been referred to as “Don Colossus.” Its creator, Ohio artist Alan Cottrill, calls it “The Patriot Statue ” “Don Colossus” is the name of the project’s artificial intelligence component.

“The cost of the statue with pedestals is around $400,000, although the spend to manage the logistics and events definitely will be in excess of a million dollars [of taxpayers' money],” Patriot Token wrote in an X post in January 2025.

Trump has previously touted the statue, posting a social media link to a Breitbart story about its construction in December 2024. The president texted one of the project’s organizers that it “looks fantastic” in December of last year, according to the Times.

While appreciative of the project, Eric Trump, the president’s third child, said that the Trump Organization is not associated with Patriot Token.

“We appreciate the support and enthusiasm, but we want to be crystal clear — we are not involved in this coin," he said Monday in a post on X.

The statue will eventually tower over world leaders when Trump hosts the G20 Leaders’ Summit from December 14-15, 2026, at Trump National Doral Miami. It will mark the first time the U.S. has hosted the event since 2009.

The Group of Twenty (G20) is an international forum that brings together the world’s largest economies for regular meetings to address the most urgent challenges facing the global economy.

 Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

"Our children and grandchildren — won’t ask us whether ICE followed civil detention statutes: they’ll want to know why we allowed concentration camps to exist in America at all"

 

As people testified before Congress yesterday about the brutality and violence they’d suffered at the hands of ICE, that massive paramilitary organization was shopping for giant warehouse-style facilities they can retrofit into what they euphemistically call “detention centers.”

Cable news people call them “prison camps” or “Trump prison camps,” but look in any dictionary: prisons are where people convicted of crimes are held. As Merriam-Webster notes, a prison is: “[A]n institution for confinement of persons convicted of serious crimes.”

Jails are where people accused of crimes but still waiting for their day in court are held, as Merriam-Webster notes: “[S]uch a place under the jurisdiction of a local government for the confinement of persons awaiting trial or those convicted of minor crimes.”

But what do you call a place where people who’ve committed no criminal offense (immigration violations are civil, not criminal, infractions)? The fine dictionary people at Merriam-Webster note the proper term is “concentration camp”: “[A] place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard.”

The British originated the term “concentration camp” to describe facilities where “rebel” or “undesirable” civilians were held in South Africa during the Second Anglo‑Boer War (1899–1902) to control and punish a rebellious population.

They were facilities where the “bad elements of society” were “concentrated” into one location so they could be easily controlled and would lose access to society and thus could not spread their messages of resistance against the British Empire.

The Germans adopted the term in 1933 when Hitler took power and created his first camp for communists, socialists, union leaders, and, by the end of the year, Hitler’s political opponents. They Germanized the phrase into “Konzentrationslager” and referred to the process of their incarceration as “protective custody.”

The first camp was built at Dachau just weeks after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, and by the end of the year there were around 70 of them operating across the country.

When Louise and I lived in Germany in 1986/87, we visited Dachau with our three children. The crematoriums shocked our kids, but even more so because this was simply a “detention facility” and not one of Hitler’s death camps (which were all located outside Germany to ensure deniability).

The ovens at Dachau were for those who had been worked to death or killed by cholera or other disease, much like the 35+ people who’ve recently died in ICE’s concentration camps.

When American friends would visit us and we’d take them to Dachau (we lived just an hour up the road) they’d invariably be surprised when I told them that by the time of the war there were over 500 substantial camps and an additional few hundred very small ones all over the country.

“How could the people not know what was going on?” they’d ask. The answer was simple: the people did know. These were where the “undesirables,” the “criminal troublemakers,” and the “aliens” were held, and were broadly supported by the German people. (It wasn’t until 1938, following Kristallnacht, that the Nazis began systematically arresting and imprisoning non-political Jews, first at Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen.)

By the end of his first year, Hitler had around 50,000 people held in his roughly 70 concentration camps, facilities that were often improvised in factories, prisons, castles, and other buildings.

By comparison, today ICE is holding over 70,000 people in 225 concentration camps across America, and Trump, Homan, Miller, and Noem hope to more than double both numbers in the coming months.

In Tennessee, The Guardian reports that Miller has been coordinating with Republican leaders to create legislation that would turn every local cop, teacher, social worker, and helper in the state into an official agent of ICE and criminalize efforts by cities to refuse cooperation. It also makes it a felony crime to identify any of ICE’s masked agents or disclose conditions within the concentration camps to the public.

Germans didn’t have the benefit of warnings from a fascist history they could look back on; much of what Hitler did took them by surprise, as I’ve noted in previous articles.

In 2026 America, however, operating with the benefit of historical hindsight, entire communities are rebelling at Trump’s effort to beat Germany’s 1933-1934 prisoner numbers.

In city after city, Americans are organizing to deprive ICE of their coveted spaces, putting pressure on companies not to sell and on cities and counties not to permit any more concentration camps.

Because immigration violations are labeled “civil,” people in ICE concentration camps are stripped of many of the normal constitutional protections that apply to people in criminal incarceration. This has created a legal black hole that ICE and the Trump regime exploit, where indefinite imprisonment, abuse, and medical neglect flourish with little to no oversight or accountability.

Human rights organizations like the ACLU describe pervasive patterns of abuse in ICE detention: hazardous living conditions, chronic medical neglect, sexual assault, retaliation for grievances, and extensive use of solitary confinement.

Detainees who have committed no crime other than being in the United States without documentation report being shackled for long periods, packed into freezing, overcrowded cells under constant fluorescent light, and denied hygiene and timely care. Meanwhile, GOP-aligned private prison companies are making billions off the program.

Inspections and oversight are inconsistent: one recent investigation found that as detentions and deaths surged in 2025, formal inspections of facilities actually dropped by over a third. ICE regularly refuses to allow attorneys, family members, and even members of Congress to access their concentration camps; the issue is now being litigated through federal courts.

History shows us that once a nation builds a mass detention apparatus, it never remains limited to its original targets. Future generations of Americans — our children and grandchildren — won’t ask us whether ICE followed civil detention statutes: they’ll want to know why we allowed concentration camps to exist in America at all.

Germany’s concentration camps didn’t start as instruments of mass murder, and neither have ours; both started as facilities for people the government’s leader said were a problem. And that’s exactly what ICE is building now. History isn’t whispering its warning: it’s shouting.

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Trump Is a Threat to Democracy.

Consider his autocratic abuse of presidential power, his constitutional ignorance, his lawless demagoguery, his sociopathic bullying, his pathological narcissism, his grandiose delusions, his anti-social personality disorder, his malignant arrogance, his felonious behavior, his moral relativism, his white nationalism, his perfidious nationalism, his hateful racism, his infectious nihilism, his outrageous iconoclasm, his ruthless competition, his puerile dereliction, his embarrassing stupidity, his provocative transgressions, his mocking disrespect, his impetuous vulgarity, his sexual predation; his belligerent intimidation, his incessant lying, his conspiratorial gaslighting, his obsessive vindictiveness, his hypocritical cowardice, his compulsive xenophobia, his callous misogyny, his insufferable bigotry, his disgusting buffoonery, his histrionic rallying, his seditious actions, his obstruction of justice and concealment, his army of thugs, his detention of children, and his dangerous authoritarianism... .

-Glen Brown