The propaganda film is eager to present the First Lady as a benevolent political force, and pretend she isn't part of her husband's racist, authoritarian project. It fails at both.
The Department of Justice made a lame attempt to cover up Donald Trump’s face in a photo in the latest trove of Jeffery Epstein files. The photo appears to be of Trump making a speech at an event. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon sent it in a text message to Epstein in 2019. In it, a small portion of Trump’s head, including his ear, are still visible next to a black box covering the rest of his face. Why attempt to cover up this photo? On its own, it doesn’t incriminate Trump in any of Epstein’s crimes, and previous file releases have already established that Bannon and Epstein had a long correspondence. It seems as though it was an attempt to conceal Trump, although he is still identifiable underneath the black box. The rest of the files contain multiple references to Trump, his Mar-a-Lago estate, and his family members. They also contain interviews with Epstein’s victims, some of whom refer to the president. The government has only released half of its total Epstein records, despite being required by law to release all unclassified files by six weeks ago. Trump continues to deny a close relationship with the convicted sex trafficker, despite mountains of evidence that one existed. It seems that the DOJ and Attorney General Pam Bondi are assisting the president in trying to minimize the obvious.
A whistleblower’s lawyer accused Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard of burying their client’s complaint about her, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. In a letter sent to Gabbard’s office in November, attorney Andrew Bakaj accused the director of preventing a complaint detailing her wrongdoing from reaching lawmakers. The complaint, which was originally filed with the intelligence community’s inspector general in May, is so highly classified that Bakaj himself has not been able to review it. Typically, an employee is able to share a complaint alleging wrongdoing directly with lawmakers, as long as the director of national intelligence instructs them on how to securely transmit it. But months after the complaint was originally filed, it reportedly remains locked away in a safe, a person familiar with the matter told the Journal. “From my experience, it is confounding for [Gabbard’s office] to take weeks—let alone eight months—to transmit a disclosure to Congress,” said Bakaj in a statement. In addition to accusing Gabbard of wrongdoing, the complaint reportedly implicates “an office within a different federal agency” and raises potential claims of executive privilege, officials told the Journal. One official warned that disclosure of the complaint could cause “grave damage to national security.”The intelligence community’s inspector general determined that the specific allegations against Gabbard weren’t credible, but it could not make a determination about the other claims, according to a representative for the federal watchdog. Bakaj said he was never informed that any determination was reached. Last week, Gabbard was spotted lurking around a federal raid at the Fulton County, Georgia, election office. Having been completely sidelined from the typical responsibilities of the director of national intelligence, Gabbard has apparently spent months leading an investigation into President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Donald Trump threatened to sue comedian Trevor Noah for daring to mention his long-standing connection with child sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Practically everyone at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards jabbed and sneered at the president and his administration, but the South African celebrity was the man who really got his goat, inspiring Trump to post a legal threat to Truth Social.“The Grammy Awards are the WORST, virtually unwatchable!” Trump wrote at 1:01 a.m. Monday.“CBS is lucky not to have this garbage litter their airwaves any longer,” he said, referring to the music institution’s 2024 contract to move its award ceremony to ABC for the next decade, ending a 53-year run at CBS.“The host, Trevor Noah, whoever he may be, is almost as bad as Jimmy Kimmel at the Low Ratings Academy Awards,” Trump continued. “Noah said, INCORRECTLY about me, that Donald Trump and Bill Clinton spent time on Epstein Island. WRONG!!!“I can’t speak for Bill, but I have never been to Epstein Island, nor anywhere close, and until tonight’s false and defamatory statement, have never been accused of being there, not even by the Fake News Media.“Noah, a total loser, better get his facts straight, and get them straight fast,” he said. “It looks like I’ll be sending my lawyers to sue this poor, pathetic, talentless, dope of an M.C., and suing him for plenty$. Ask Little George Slopadopolus, and others, how that all worked out. Also ask CBS! Get ready Noah, I’m going to have some fun with you!”Hours earlier, while setting up the nominees for the “Song of the Year” category, Noah quipped that the highly coveted prize was nearly as desired by artists as Greenland is by Trump—for a very particular reason.“Song of the Year—that is a Grammy that every artist wants almost as much as Trump wants Greenland, which makes sense because Epstein’s island is gone, he needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton,” Noah told the crowd.Trump has long relied on the legal system and lawsuits in order to settle his problems, using the incredible financial heft of his real estate empire or other investments to smother his opposition.
Our president isn't done trying to steal land, another Dem win gives the GOP and Trump another reason to sweat, and the terrible Epstein files keep coming.
For the first time in 54 years, humans will head toward the moon this week. So why does it feel like most of us are barely aware of it?
The following is a lightly edited transcript of the February 2 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent. Donald Trump seems to be in deep denial about how unpopular his ICE raids have become. He let out a long, strange, rambling tirade to reporters about how the “silent majority” is still behind what ICE is doing. He also lied uncontrollably about the protesters, about crime in Minneapolis, and much more. Interestingly, this comes as a poll from none other than Fox News just delivered Trump some very bad news on this front. It finds that even his base voters are turning against ICE in a big way as well. Are we in the middle of a watershed moment on public opinion when it comes to immigration? We’re talking about this with Lia Parada, an immigration advocate who’s worked on these issues for a long time and now represents groups losing their status under Trump. Lia, nice to have you on. Lia Parada: Thanks for having me on, Greg. Sargent: All right. So let’s first listen to this really strange rant from Trump. Donald Trump (voiceover): We’ll say it very plainly, elections have consequences. The people want law and order. And we have a silent majority. You know, we have a silent majority of people. They don’t go and riot and everything else, but they like what we’re doing. They like having a safe city. I get calls every single day. Every person I see working in the White House, people I don’t know—many people work here—and they say, ‘I’d like to thank you, sir, you’ve made Washington so great. We walk to work.’ They walk to work. Every person in his building. I mean, virtually every time I see somebody, they thank me because a year and a half ago they lived in hell and now they can walk to work and they’re totally safe. Nothing’s going to happen.Sargent: Lia, let’s start with the funny part first. Trump actually says that “the people in the building” compliment what he’s doing for D.C.—meaning the people who work in the White House. And he presents this as if it means something in terms of public opinion. That’s pretty wild, isn’t it?Parada: Yeah, we’re really grasping at straws here for public opinion when you’re citing the support of your court—of the “King’s Court”—to say that he’s on the right side of this.Sargent: Yeah, I mean, these are people who spend all day every day sucking up to him and manipulating him. And so he actually thinks it means something for them to say, Sir, you’ve done a wonderful job cleaning up D.C.; I can now walk to work, sir.Note that Trump there also floated this idea that the “silent majority” is behind the ICE raids. But it’s clear that some inside the White House political operation are telling Trump, Sorry, sir, you’ve lost the public on this, sir. Yet it looks like he and Miller do still believe this. What do you make of that, Lia?Parada: I really think that this is what they have left to justify a strategy that they are completely locked into. He has locked himself into this position; he has locked arms with Stephen Miller. This was a key part of his campaign—we all saw the “Mass Deportation Now” posters—and then his signature legislation awarded this agency more money than most militaries of other countries. And so they are desperate to justify what is happening right now. And they are seeing that the “vocal majority” are 100 percent against what they’re saying. Sargent: I think that’s a critical point that we should dwell on a sec. They are locked into this in the sense that they have gotten Congress to appropriate truly enormous sums of money for this operation. And that is now being spent. They’re scaling up ICE in a major way. They’re buying—who knows what the hell—equipment, weaponry?They’re talking about buying warehouses now to put people in detention, even though right now the detention system is absolutely maxed out at, I think, over 60,000. This is something that is becoming kind of a non-controllable carceral state—a real kind of juggernaut that can’t really be controlled anymore. And I think they’re on the verge of losing control of this. It reminds me a little bit of what happened with the buildup of the War on Terror bureaucracy under George W. Bush. Does that sound right to you?Parada: That sounds exactly right. This is a runaway train. They have lost control. Even when Trump tries to be surgical in enforcement actions, that is not what happens on the ground. And by doing so, they’re organizing the opposition. This police state is actually creating opposition. I wouldn’t even say across party lines; I’d say regardless of party lines.I just met with some organizers in Roxbury, New Jersey, where a town council of all Republicans stood up and said that they were opposing the warehouse being opened up there. And then in Hanover, in Virginia—everything is frozen in Virginia right now; I can barely get out of my driveway—literally hundreds of people turned out to a town council meeting. And the vote out of the town council in a really deep-red part of Virginia was that, no, they do not want the warehouse.And so the videos that—I don’t know what the administration thought they would accomplish by taping all of the abuses—but by doing so, they are turning people against what is happening because it’s no longer viewed as reasonable or “law and order.” It is like a terrifying police state that no one thinks they are safe under.Sargent: Just to be clear for listeners, you’re talking here about these warehouses that ICE is now scaling up. There’s one in Jersey, one in Virginia that you’re saying that local town councils oppose.Parada: Yes. And these are like majority-Republican town councils. Sargent: Yeah, that’s fascinating. And in fact, that brings me to the new Fox News poll, which finds that 59 percent of voters say that ICE is being “too aggressive” in its deportations. And get this: 71 percent of independents say the same.55 percent of overall voters disapprove of Trump on immigration, versus 45 percent who approve. That puts him 10 points underwater. And again, 71 percent of independents disapprove. That’s really something. Lia, you’ve been following public opinion on immigration for a long time. This seems a little like something new, doesn’t it?Parada: Absolutely. And I was working as an advocate during family separation under the first Trump administration, and I really thought that that was the most—the highest, most impactful watershed moment. And I really think that we haven’t reached the heights of what opposition will look like, just because we know that they are not going to stop what they’re doing.And everyday Americans are actually now paying attention because—I mean, whether you’re talking about the Second Amendment or “big government,” which is typically a Republican/independent talking point, that’s been thrown into this conversation. So we’re talking about sick children in abusive detention conditions, American veteran nurses being shot in broad daylight, broadcast all over social media—and they haven’t even spent a fraction of the funds that they have to carry out this, this overall agenda.Sargent: Right. It’s going to get bigger. I was absolutely shocked when I looked at these additional numbers in the Fox poll: 50 percent of rural whites say ICE is too aggressive, and 55 percent of whites without a college degree say the same. That’s reaching very deep into Trump’s base.Lia, we’ve been told for a long time that Democrats need to understand that immigration is a big reason they’re losing working-class voters, particularly white ones. But here they’re turning on Trump over immigration. Now, I get that part of this is a passing reaction to the horrors we’re seeing in the news and all that, but it sure looks like there’s an opening for Democrats to reach out to these voters on this. Do you think there’s an opening like that? And what should Democrats do? Parada: There’s an opening, and there’s always been an opening. I think that really in the past, what Democrats have failed to do is really understand the nuance of the issue. I am not surprised to hear that rural voters are against what’s happening. You know what’s also in rural America? Farmworkers who are people of faith that they go to church with. Immigrants are a part of our nation, a part of our community. And so when they see things happening to their neighbors, they recoil against it.What—I really think that the balanced approach on immigration is really where most of America is at. They want to see secure borders. They want to understand that there is a lawful, reasonable process for folks. So they don’t want to see the process—the system—being taken advantage of, whether it is children and families being disappeared or seemingly quote-unquote “open borders.”And so this is a huge opportunity for Democrats. And I hope that they won’t take this moment and ... think that they are just going to win a short-term messaging battle and move on to other issues. They will fight for solutions that matter. As a Latina who worked really hard in these last few electoral cycles, I had calls where it’s like, Don’t come to me with that immigration reform talk about Democrats; no one believes that that’s something that they care about. They only use it as a talking point when elections come around. And so this is a challenge for Democrats to take this moment seriously—to really understand what the opposition is about. You can’t just retweet something and walk away and not come back to the issue. They truly have to invest in the solutions and, like, organizing around it as well.Sargent: Yeah. And I want to add here that I think that what Democrats need to be doing right now is taking this opportunity to say, “There’s another way to do this,” right? And that sort of entails saying something a lot more than just, “My God, paramilitary ICE officers are killing Americans and that’s horrible.”It also entails saying, “You know what? Mass deportations—Trump’s mass deportations—are a failure.” And I think Democrats can say that and say that what we need to be doing now is giving people who have lived in this country a long time, who don’t have a criminal record, who have jobs and so forth—giving them a way to get right with the law. There’s an opening to make that case now. And I want to hear that from Dems.Sargent: And you know, I was actually surprised to see—we all watched with bated breath what Senator Fetterman was going to say with this DHS funding debate. And he actually had a reasonable response, which is: I want to see ICE do what its job is, but I don’t want to see families harmed. And also, people who have been here for a long time should be on a pathway to citizenship.Which as of maybe two, three years ago, that was what the standard policy position was for Democrats. And they abandoned it to follow “border security” and honestly just fell into the Republicans’ trap.Parada: Well, just so listeners understand where this is coming from, Senator Fetterman has been extremely disappointing to a lot of Democrats because he seems to be lurching to the right in many ways. And so for him to be saying that is a real statement. He’s the Pennsylvania senator; he does pretty well in rural areas. And for him to say that a path to citizenship is the way forward for all these people rather than deportations is promising—and more Democrats need to say that.Parada: And it’s really important that they do that because we can’t just—as you said—we can’t just respond to the moment that we’re in and leave it at that and hope that public opinion will shape itself. They have to lead the narrative and lead with solutions and start talking about: what is the opposite of mass deportation?What is the opposite of taking people who’ve been here a long time—whether they be DACA holders, TPS holders, some sort of semi-legal status. Rip them out of their communities and deport them? Or give them a process to come forward and be permanent members of our society and go through a process to make them U.S. citizens?That doesn’t exist now. And that is why we’re caught in the worst of all worlds. And we’re seeing what actually happens when America buys into what the far-right strategy is on immigration.Sargent: There is absolutely an opening to remake this case. So let’s listen to a little bit more of Trump. Donald Trump (voiceover): But do these people really want to have rapists? Do they really want to have drug dealers and people from prisons and murderers? Do they really want to have them in the community? You know, it’s really insurrectionists and agitators and they’re paid. And you can tell a lot of reasons. Some of them are professionals, you know, with their mouth. But they’re also, you look at the signs, the signs are all professionally made. They have signs that are gorgeous. In fact, I want to get the sign because I’m the big … I need a lot of signs for different things and I want to find out whoever does their signs, they do a beautiful job. You know, everybody has this beautiful sign with brand new wood. It’s like leather handles… they have a leather handle on the bottom.Sargent: What strikes me here is how they’re just running out of arguments. They just keep repeating over and over that everyone in Minneapolis is a criminal and that all the protesters are—it’s like they’re not even trying to win this argument anymore. It’s like they’ve basically given up on winning back the middle of the country on the issue. What do you make of that?Parada: I think it’s hilarious that he’s caught up on the “quality” of poster signs as his response to the very real, organic, grassroots opposition to what’s happening in Minneapolis and across the country. I myself have seen that most of the public opposition is not organized by advocacy groups. It is everyday people who are coming out and speaking out against what’s happening.I am a pop-culture aficionado and I have just been so entertained by folks who are like, Click here to learn why I didn’t date this person. Then you click on it and it’s like, Call your senator, abolish ICE. And that’s gone viral. And that really speaks to the moment we’re in.It is so different from the first Trump administration, partly because many of the organizations are on the ground helping day-to-day people and are being targeted by the administration. And so it’s created a whole new world of champions for immigrants in their communities. And it’s been really amazing to see. And so all he has is to talk about the posters.Sargent: This time there’s more energy around immigration than we’ve seen among the sort of broad center left in a long time. Usually the right is the place where all the energy is on immigration. And this is something new, I think, as well. There’s gotta be, though, a real effort to convert that into votes for Democrats, don’t you think?Parada: I really believe that all the mobilizing that’s happening to call your member of Congress will turn into energy to turn people out to vote. Democrats need to have a message that keeps the support there, that sustains it, that supports where people are at. But what is happening on the ground is just so appalling to people that it doesn’t feel like it’s just about immigration—it feels like it’s more about sustaining our democracy.It’s really like ... “I can’t believe this is our country” is pretty much what I hear across the board. It’s not like, “How do I feel about immigrants?” And so I think that they have used immigration as a means to hack away at the Constitution and our democracy. And people are seeing it and are just completely motivated by it and horrified that this is our country.We are exceeding where we were at family separation. When family separation was happening, it was wall-to-wall coverage. Cindy McCain was on TV saying that it’s outrageous and they needed to stop what they were doing.... I think the volume and the intensity of the opposition is so much larger now than it was under family separation.But also, it’s so much more impactful, like the human harm that is happening. Families are being separated, children are being harmed, detention centers are opening across the country, citizens are being beat up for fighting for their rights or just being a person of color driving to work in Minneapolis. And so it’s so much bigger in many ways—the impact of the policy itself, the gargantuan policies—and that also leads to a broader opposition because it impacts so many more people.Sargent: Lia Parada, it was a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on. I sure hope Democrats can convert this into a big change moment.Parada: I feel the same way. Thanks for having me on, Greg.
Last week Donald Trump filed suit against the IRS, demanding $10 billion in compensation for the unauthorized disclosure of his taxes in September 2020. Oftentimes a news story will seem outrageous at first glance but, on closer inspection, will become less outrageous, or perhaps not outrageous at all. On such occasions, it’s the duty of a sober journal of opinion like The New Republic to set the record straight. This is not one such occasion. Rather, this is a story that, the more you dig into the details, the more outrageous it becomes. News coverage has actually failed to capture fully how very stupid this lawsuit is. I have now reviewed the relevant documents and can attest that, even for Trump, this lawsuit is an outlier. It’s batshit crazy.And now, I’ll be happy to take your questions.Has a president of the United States ever before sued the executive branch over which he presides?He has not.Wait, didn’t Trump previously sue the Justice Department over the FBI’s Russiagate investigation and its Mar-a-Lago search for documents that he refused to turn over to the National Archives?Trump wasn’t a sitting president then, and that wasn’t a lawsuit but rather two administrative claims filed with the Justice Department. An administrative claim bypasses the courts to seek settlement under threat of filing a lawsuit. The Russiagate claim was filed in 2023, and the Mar-a-Lago claim was filed in 2024. You can read a copy of the latter here.The administrative claims were unresolved after Trump began his second term, and as recently as October The New York Times reported that they remained so and that Trump was demanding the Justice Department pay him $230 million. In one respect, the administrative claims are even more kleptocratic than the IRS lawsuit: The decision about whether to settle, and for how much, resides entirely with Trump’s own Justice Department.“It looks bad,” Trump admitted in October. “I’m suing [sic] myself, right? So I don’t know. But that was a lawsuit [sic] that was very strong, very powerful.” It’s possible that Trump is suing the IRS for $10 billion to make his demand for a $230 million settlement seem reasonable.OK, so Trump just became the first sitting president to sue the executive branch. But he’s suing over something that happened not recently, but years ago. Who was president when Trump’s taxes were disclosed?Donald J. Trump! Trump’s taxes were downloaded and then made public during Trump’s first term. This is a president not only suing his own executive branch, but suing it over something that happened while he was running it. Do we know who stole the tax records?Yes. It was an enterprising IRS contract employee named Charles “Chaz” Littlejohn (whose surname, yes, is also how the Merry Men addressed Robin Hood’s second-in-command). Littlejohn downloaded Trump’s tax information in October 2018 and gave it to The New York Times in May 2019. The Times then used the material in a September 27, 2020, story headlined “Long-Concealed Records Show Trump’s Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance.” Littlejohn also downloaded tax filings by thousands of rich people and gave those to ProPublica, which, starting in June 2021 (after Trump was president), published a series of stories documenting how the ultrarich avoid paying taxes.Where is Littlejohn today?Between now and 2029, you’ll find him at the Federal Correctional Institution in Marion, Illinois. Although Littlejohn’s removal of the tax filings went undetected for three years, after the Times piece was published the IRS tracked Littlejohn down and prosecuted him for unauthorized disclosure of tax information. Littlejohn entered a guilty plea and is now serving a five-year sentence.Is five years a lot?Sure is. Federal sentencing guidelines recommend 10 months, and if the judge had followed these, Littlejohn would have gotten out last March. But the prosecution asked for five years to make an example of Littlejohn, and the judge (a Biden appointee, incidentally) assented.Do people who cheat on their taxes get five years?Not even close. More than a third who are prosecuted get no prison time at all, and among those who do, the average sentence is 16 months. Of course, every case is different. But in May 2024, Reuven Avi-Yonah of Tax Notes reviewed recent cases of massive tax fraud and couldn’t find anybody sent up the river even for three years. In effect, the federal judiciary would rather you commit tax fraud than that you make public the tax returns of the only president since Richard Nixon who refused to do so.Trump’s lawsuit says it’s the IRS’s fault that Littlejohn downloaded his files. How did Littlejohn do it?He explained all in a video deposition taken in March 2024. This was in a lawsuit that Citadel hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin brought against the IRS because he was mad that details of his tax returns turned up in ProPublica. Although the IRS’s internal computer safeguards prevented anyone from downloading tax files to Dropbox or other large-file storage sites (something that was well known inside the agency), Littlejohn discovered that the safeguards didn’t prevent him from downloading these to a private web page set up for that purpose. Then he transferred the tax files to a flash drive.OK, Trump was president when Littlejohn downloaded his taxes and gave them to The New York Times. Still, how was Trump supposed to know there were vulnerabilities in the IRS’s internal computers?Because while he was president, the IRS inspector general told him so. In support of its argument that the IRS is culpable, the Trump complaint says:“Every year from 2010 through 2020, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (“TIGTA”) has warned the IRS about security deficiencies related to the protection of taxpayers’ confidential tax return information.” “Many of these deficiencies went uncorrected and … allowed Littlejohn to misappropriate the information, upload it to a private website, and then disclose it[.]”But for four of those years Trump was president. If the IRS was negligent in not responding sufficiently to these inspector general warnings, then Trump’s White House was negligent too. As Harry Truman said, the buck stops here. And for crying out loud, these reports were available not just to the Oval Office but to the general public.It’s weird that Trump’s lawyers think mentioning the IRS inspector reports helps Trump’s case when so clearly it does the opposite. Probably this language is included because Griffin’s lawsuit included near-identical language. The Trump lawyer who cribbed this language doesn’t seem to have considered that Trump’s relationship to the IRS is markedly different from Griffin’s. Would you like to hear Citadel’s take on the matter? Well, per a spokesperson, here you go: “Rather than seeking actual damages, Ken’s complaint sought only the minimum $1,000 required by law to proceed with litigation. This was never about money for Ken; what he wanted, and what he received in the settlement, was a public apology acknowledging wrongdoing and a commitment from the IRS to improve its data security protections for all American taxpayers.” Hope that helps.So Griffin’s lawsuit was the dry run for Trump’s. What happened?Griffin filed his lawsuit in 2022 and reached a settlement with the IRS in 2024. In the settlement, Griffin received no money; the IRS apologized and promised certain reforms. I can’t resist voicing my disappointment that the IRS apology didn’t say the following: “We are sorry there was an unauthorized disclosure that showed Ken Griffin paid an average effective income tax rate of 29.2 percent when Griffin was the fourth-highest paid human in the United States.” The apology just said the IRS “failed to prevent Mr. Littlejohn’s criminal conduct,” that it was working hard to prevent such disclosures in the future, et cetera.In his lawsuit, Griffin demanded $1,000 for every unauthorized disclosure of his tax returns, including subsequent disclosures. The court never settled on how much that amounted to. Trump’s demand for $10 billion may have some surface similarities to Griffin’s suit—but again: Griffin didn’t get a dime. You’d think that would discourage Trump. Maybe nobody told him. (Trump deals harshly with subordinates who deliver bad news.)Why did Griffin settle? Because the judge tossed out Griffin’s claim that the IRS violated the 1974 Privacy Act, on the grounds that Griffin (net worth: $51 billion) couldn’t show he suffered pecuniary harm. Trump’s lawsuit similarly claims that the IRS violated the Privacy Act. But since the Times published his tax data, Trump’s net worth has more than tripled to $6.5 billion. That should make it very difficult for Trump to show pecuniary harm. Griffin’s lawsuit never established that Littlejohn was a joint employee of both his contracting firm, Booz Allen, and of the IRS (though the judge declined a request by the IRS that he dismiss the case on grounds that he wasn’t). Trump’s lawsuit also seeks to establish that Littlejohn was a joint employee.“Joint employee.” That terminology sounds familiar. Don’t Republicans typically move heaven and earth to prevent contract employees from being assigned legal status as joint employees, in order to shield big corporations that routinely contract out work, especially low-paid work?Bingo. Trump’s expansive definition of joint employment in his IRS lawsuit flatly contradicts his own administration’s policy, which is to narrow that definition to maximally benefit big business. In this, as in so many other instances, Trump is a total hypocrite.During his first administration, Trump’s Labor Department issued a regulation dramatically limiting the circumstances under which the law would consider a contract employee to be jointly employed by the company (again, typically a large corporation) that hired out the work. Doing so effectively gave big corporations carte blanche to outsource labor violations to smaller and less visible firms. It also freed those big corporations from having to provide legally required benefits like Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance. The human cost of this practice is documented extensively in David Weil’s 2014 book, The Fissured Workplace.The Biden administration reversed Trump’s rule, but the Trump administration is expected to reverse Biden’s reversal, restoring a narrow definition of joint employment. If Trump actually pried $10 billion from the IRS, would it be the biggest civil judgment in history?Just about. The very biggest was the $206 billion tobacco company settlement in 1998. But the plaintiff in that case was not one person but forty state governments.The second biggest judgment was in a lawsuit against a 13-year-old boy who sexually assaulted and then set fire to an 8-year-old boy, who years later died from related causes. In 2011, the jury gave the child’s estate $150 billion, but of course the perpetrator didn’t have and would never have the money to pay even a fraction of that. The case was brought mainly to pressure prosecutors in Montgomery County, Texas, to bring murder charges against the 13-year-old, who was now an adult. The prosecutors did so, and in 2015 the killer was convicted of murder.Trump’s $10 billion, if he got it, would be the third-biggest civil judgment in U.S. history. It would be the the biggest civil judgment ever awarded to a plaintiff in a case where the defendant didn’t kill at least one person.What’s the IRS’s overall budget?The Trump administration has requested $15 billion to fund the IRS this fiscal year. So yes, Trump wants to help himself to two-thirds of the IRS’s annual budget.So, wow, the whole thing is pretty nuts, huh.You can say that again.This article has been updated.
Last week, Senate Democrats made a deal with Senate Republicans to fund the Department of Homeland Security for only two more weeks while they hash out new accountability measures for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents, in the wake of Alex Pretti’s shooting and other acts of brutality. It was the least they could do to address Americans’ growing concerns about the way the Trump administration is threatening daily life in Minneapolis and elsewhere, killing citizens, and kidnapping people as young as 2 for deportation based only on their skin color and accents.This DHS funding battle, however, is part of a bigger question Democrats must answer as they fight to regain power. Large sections of the Democratic base are now echoing calls to “abolish ICE.” Some Democratic leaders, like New York Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, are pushing back against this with much more tepid, unwieldy, and frankly pretty weak ideas to “restrain, reform, and restrict” the agency. Others are pointing out that ICE is just over 20 years old, formed as part of the security theater fever after 9/11, and that the United States had immigration enforcement before it was created. Dismantling an agency that at least eight people have died interacting with this year doesn’t seem that outrageous.Up to now, the Democratic Party has been reluctant to wade into immigration, believing that President Donald Trump and the Republicans have an advantage on the topic. But that’s only partly true if investigated through a very narrow lens in the last presidential election. Most of the public doesn’t support the mass deportations Trump has carried out. There’s room to shape and reform public opinion on immigration and come out ahead, especially if Democrats make the issue part of their overall messaging on how to rebuild the U.S. post Trump.Following Trump’s second inauguration, Republicans quickly lost whatever advantage they had on immigration. Most voters believe Trump’s policies and the way he’s enacted them have gone too far. Even before the election, most voters didn’t like the most extreme things that Trump said. They believed American institutions like Congress and the courts would put the brakes on his administration. They were disappointed.By June, the Democratic research group Way to Win found that voters responded to messages emphasizing how Trump’s actions, lack of due process for immigrants, and the administration’s refusal to be reined in by the courts were a threat to all of us. These can fit into larger points about Trump’s disregard for the rule of law.Before the most recent events in Minneapolis, Democrats thought affordability would be their winning message in the 2026 midterms. But talking about the affordability crisis can include a pro-immigration message too. Americans generally like immigration and think immigrants make the United States a better place. In the run-up to 2024, Republican rhetoric about the border being “out of control” and a surge in migration under President Joe Biden had increased concern about the amount of immigration to the U.S. That concern has since waned. In June, one Gallup poll found a record high of 79 percent of Americans saying immigration is a good thing.Most people can see in their own communities that immigrants strengthen local economies. They start new businesses at higher rates than those born here, and studies have found they don’t pull down wages, as conservatives often claim. In fact, without immigrants in the workforce, we’re likely to see labor shortages and continued inflation. All of that is before the cost of continuing to fund ICE is taken into account. It’s hard to find a more wasteful way to spend government money than sending hastily hired, poorly trained agents into American cities.Trump’s immigration policies and ICE are extremely unpopular, and voters increasingly want someone in power to stand up to them. There’s room for Democrats to change the story on immigration; in fact, continuing to ignore it and act as though economic issues are separate from what’s happening on the ground—many Minneapolis restaurants and small businesses have closed until ICE operations cease—rings false to those of us watching.Over the next two weeks, there’s room for the minority party to be braver than simply requesting restraint from an agency and federal government apparatus that continues to ignore the rules already in place. It could actually shut the government down to force Trump’s hand; it could demand an end to deportations until the Trump administration agrees to abide by the courts; it could demand less funding for ICE and more for the overwhelmed immigration courts that are the actual path to citizenship for people who come here; and, even more importantly, it could demand negotiations on the immigration reforms it’s been trying to make since Barack Obama was in office. Democratic leaders have the upper hand now and could use it to change the policy conversation about what immigration means to Americans. It’s the smart and strategic path. It’s also the least they could do—to partly match the bravery and effort of regular people organizing and putting their bodies on the line in cities around the country.