#joyce-vance — Public Fediverse posts

#joyceVance Taylor Farms (the parent company of Taylor Fresh Foods) donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, on March 26, 2025, just days after the Traceability Rule extension. It’s not hard to follow the money.

A Taylor Farms facility in Mexico (Reuters).
Now, we’ve learned Taylor Farms' produce is behind a major outbreak of Cyclospora. Even though the company is a serial offender, it took the FDA a month after it developed the link to travel to inspect the farm in Mexico believed to be responsible.

In other words, corruption isn’t just a one-sided offense, where people in power make money through the grift. There’s another side to the equation: the people who are harmed by its consequences. We’re seeing that plainly now when it comes to foodborne illness. There is no telling where else it will crop up as this administration and its key players continue to benefit wherever they can from their time in office.

#joyceVance Taylor Farms (the parent company of Taylor Fresh Foods) donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, on March 26, 2025, just days after the Traceability Rule extension. It’s not hard to follow the money.

A Taylor Farms facility in Mexico (Reuters).
Now, we’ve learned Taylor Farms' produce is behind a major outbreak of Cyclospora. Even though the company is a serial offender, it took the FDA a month after it developed the link to travel to inspect the farm in Mexico believed to be responsible.

In other words, corruption isn’t just a one-sided offense, where people in power make money through the grift. There’s another side to the equation: the people who are harmed by its consequences. We’re seeing that plainly now when it comes to foodborne illness. There is no telling where else it will crop up as this administration and its key players continue to benefit wherever they can from their time in office.

#joyceVance Taylor Farms (the parent company of Taylor Fresh Foods) donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, on March 26, 2025, just days after the Traceability Rule extension. It’s not hard to follow the money.

A Taylor Farms facility in Mexico (Reuters).
Now, we’ve learned Taylor Farms' produce is behind a major outbreak of Cyclospora. Even though the company is a serial offender, it took the FDA a month after it developed the link to travel to inspect the farm in Mexico believed to be responsible.

In other words, corruption isn’t just a one-sided offense, where people in power make money through the grift. There’s another side to the equation: the people who are harmed by its consequences. We’re seeing that plainly now when it comes to foodborne illness. There is no telling where else it will crop up as this administration and its key players continue to benefit wherever they can from their time in office.

#joyceVance Taylor Farms (the parent company of Taylor Fresh Foods) donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, on March 26, 2025, just days after the Traceability Rule extension. It’s not hard to follow the money.

A Taylor Farms facility in Mexico (Reuters).
Now, we’ve learned Taylor Farms' produce is behind a major outbreak of Cyclospora. Even though the company is a serial offender, it took the FDA a month after it developed the link to travel to inspect the farm in Mexico believed to be responsible.

In other words, corruption isn’t just a one-sided offense, where people in power make money through the grift. There’s another side to the equation: the people who are harmed by its consequences. We’re seeing that plainly now when it comes to foodborne illness. There is no telling where else it will crop up as this administration and its key players continue to benefit wherever they can from their time in office.

#joyceVance Taylor Farms (the parent company of Taylor Fresh Foods) donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, on March 26, 2025, just days after the Traceability Rule extension. It’s not hard to follow the money.

A Taylor Farms facility in Mexico (Reuters).
Now, we’ve learned Taylor Farms' produce is behind a major outbreak of Cyclospora. Even though the company is a serial offender, it took the FDA a month after it developed the link to travel to inspect the farm in Mexico believed to be responsible.

In other words, corruption isn’t just a one-sided offense, where people in power make money through the grift. There’s another side to the equation: the people who are harmed by its consequences. We’re seeing that plainly now when it comes to foodborne illness. There is no telling where else it will crop up as this administration and its key players continue to benefit wherever they can from their time in office.

Funny how the lost cause keeps rising from the grave

#joycevance
They explain what that would look like:
“It would allow the federal government to rush out an unprecedented, legally indefensible voter-verification and ballot-interception program that would, among other things, give the U.S. Postal Service farreaching new powers and responsibilities.”
“Under this new program, USPS—a budget-strapped agency that has struggled to administer a variety of programs in recent years—would require state governments to assemble (and then upload to an untested online USPS ‘portal’) lists of voters registered to cast mail ballots.”
“States would also be forced to redesign their ballot mail to adopt barcodes that USPS would scan to make voter-eligibility determinations.”
“USPS would refuse to deliver ballots for voters not identified in its database.”
“The federal government wants to roll out this program ‘as soon as early to midAugust,’”

Funny how the lost cause keeps rising from the grave

#joycevance
They explain what that would look like:
“It would allow the federal government to rush out an unprecedented, legally indefensible voter-verification and ballot-interception program that would, among other things, give the U.S. Postal Service farreaching new powers and responsibilities.”
“Under this new program, USPS—a budget-strapped agency that has struggled to administer a variety of programs in recent years—would require state governments to assemble (and then upload to an untested online USPS ‘portal’) lists of voters registered to cast mail ballots.”
“States would also be forced to redesign their ballot mail to adopt barcodes that USPS would scan to make voter-eligibility determinations.”
“USPS would refuse to deliver ballots for voters not identified in its database.”
“The federal government wants to roll out this program ‘as soon as early to midAugust,’”

Funny how the lost cause keeps rising from the grave

#joycevance
They explain what that would look like:
“It would allow the federal government to rush out an unprecedented, legally indefensible voter-verification and ballot-interception program that would, among other things, give the U.S. Postal Service farreaching new powers and responsibilities.”
“Under this new program, USPS—a budget-strapped agency that has struggled to administer a variety of programs in recent years—would require state governments to assemble (and then upload to an untested online USPS ‘portal’) lists of voters registered to cast mail ballots.”
“States would also be forced to redesign their ballot mail to adopt barcodes that USPS would scan to make voter-eligibility determinations.”
“USPS would refuse to deliver ballots for voters not identified in its database.”
“The federal government wants to roll out this program ‘as soon as early to midAugust,’”

Funny how the lost cause keeps rising from the grave

#joycevance
They explain what that would look like:
“It would allow the federal government to rush out an unprecedented, legally indefensible voter-verification and ballot-interception program that would, among other things, give the U.S. Postal Service farreaching new powers and responsibilities.”
“Under this new program, USPS—a budget-strapped agency that has struggled to administer a variety of programs in recent years—would require state governments to assemble (and then upload to an untested online USPS ‘portal’) lists of voters registered to cast mail ballots.”
“States would also be forced to redesign their ballot mail to adopt barcodes that USPS would scan to make voter-eligibility determinations.”
“USPS would refuse to deliver ballots for voters not identified in its database.”
“The federal government wants to roll out this program ‘as soon as early to midAugust,’”

USA - US-Juristin: Trump versucht, uns leere Versprechen anzudrehen

Die USA mache einen schrecklichen Job bei der Bildung der Zivilgesellschaft, sagt Juristin Vance – und zieht Zusammenhänge zur zweiten Amtszeit Trumps.#DonaldTrump #JoyceVance #USA #Amerika #Demokratie
„Die Republikaner im Kongress haben enttäuscht“: US-Juristin über Trump und seine Partei

USA - US-Juristin: Trump versucht, uns leere Versprechen anzudrehen

Die USA mache einen schrecklichen Job bei der Bildung der Zivilgesellschaft, sagt Juristin Vance – und zieht Zusammenhänge zur zweiten Amtszeit Trumps.#DonaldTrump #JoyceVance #USA #Amerika #Demokratie
„Die Republikaner im Kongress haben enttäuscht“: US-Juristin über Trump und seine Partei

USA - US-Juristin: Trump versucht, uns leere Versprechen anzudrehen

Die USA mache einen schrecklichen Job bei der Bildung der Zivilgesellschaft, sagt Juristin Vance – und zieht Zusammenhänge zur zweiten Amtszeit Trumps.#DonaldTrump #JoyceVance #USA #Amerika #Demokratie
„Die Republikaner im Kongress haben enttäuscht“: US-Juristin über Trump und seine Partei

USA - US-Juristin: Trump versucht, uns leere Versprechen anzudrehen

Die USA mache einen schrecklichen Job bei der Bildung der Zivilgesellschaft, sagt Juristin Vance – und zieht Zusammenhänge zur zweiten Amtszeit Trumps.#DonaldTrump #JoyceVance #USA #Amerika #Demokratie
„Die Republikaner im Kongress haben enttäuscht“: US-Juristin über Trump und seine Partei

USA - US-Juristin: Trump versucht, uns leere Versprechen anzudrehen

Die USA mache einen schrecklichen Job bei der Bildung der Zivilgesellschaft, sagt Juristin Vance – und zieht Zusammenhänge zur zweiten Amtszeit Trumps.#DonaldTrump #JoyceVance #USA #Amerika #Demokratie
„Die Republikaner im Kongress haben enttäuscht“: US-Juristin über Trump und seine Partei

#joyceVance #brennanSuesTrump Lawsuits like this one rarely make it into the daily headlines with the context they deserve. It’s easier to reduce it to “Brennan sues Trump” and move on. But studying the complaint, as we do tonight, tells a more precise story than a headline can. That precision is the whole point. It’s the difference between knowing something happened and understanding why it matters.

Civil Discourse exists to give you that second thing. Not commentary for its own sake, but the legal literacy that comes with decades of experience to look at a complaint like Brennan’s and understand exactly what he’s asking for, why, and what it reveals about how this Justice Department is operating. That kind of understanding is important, regardless of what you can afford, which is why this newsletter stays free. Clarity shouldn’t be a privilege reserved for those who can pay for it.

#joyceVance #brennanSuesTrump Lawsuits like this one rarely make it into the daily headlines with the context they deserve. It’s easier to reduce it to “Brennan sues Trump” and move on. But studying the complaint, as we do tonight, tells a more precise story than a headline can. That precision is the whole point. It’s the difference between knowing something happened and understanding why it matters.

Civil Discourse exists to give you that second thing. Not commentary for its own sake, but the legal literacy that comes with decades of experience to look at a complaint like Brennan’s and understand exactly what he’s asking for, why, and what it reveals about how this Justice Department is operating. That kind of understanding is important, regardless of what you can afford, which is why this newsletter stays free. Clarity shouldn’t be a privilege reserved for those who can pay for it.

#joyceVance #brennanSuesTrump Lawsuits like this one rarely make it into the daily headlines with the context they deserve. It’s easier to reduce it to “Brennan sues Trump” and move on. But studying the complaint, as we do tonight, tells a more precise story than a headline can. That precision is the whole point. It’s the difference between knowing something happened and understanding why it matters.

Civil Discourse exists to give you that second thing. Not commentary for its own sake, but the legal literacy that comes with decades of experience to look at a complaint like Brennan’s and understand exactly what he’s asking for, why, and what it reveals about how this Justice Department is operating. That kind of understanding is important, regardless of what you can afford, which is why this newsletter stays free. Clarity shouldn’t be a privilege reserved for those who can pay for it.

#joyceVance #brennanSuesTrump Lawsuits like this one rarely make it into the daily headlines with the context they deserve. It’s easier to reduce it to “Brennan sues Trump” and move on. But studying the complaint, as we do tonight, tells a more precise story than a headline can. That precision is the whole point. It’s the difference between knowing something happened and understanding why it matters.

Civil Discourse exists to give you that second thing. Not commentary for its own sake, but the legal literacy that comes with decades of experience to look at a complaint like Brennan’s and understand exactly what he’s asking for, why, and what it reveals about how this Justice Department is operating. That kind of understanding is important, regardless of what you can afford, which is why this newsletter stays free. Clarity shouldn’t be a privilege reserved for those who can pay for it.

#joyceVance #brennanSuesTrump Lawsuits like this one rarely make it into the daily headlines with the context they deserve. It’s easier to reduce it to “Brennan sues Trump” and move on. But studying the complaint, as we do tonight, tells a more precise story than a headline can. That precision is the whole point. It’s the difference between knowing something happened and understanding why it matters.

Civil Discourse exists to give you that second thing. Not commentary for its own sake, but the legal literacy that comes with decades of experience to look at a complaint like Brennan’s and understand exactly what he’s asking for, why, and what it reveals about how this Justice Department is operating. That kind of understanding is important, regardless of what you can afford, which is why this newsletter stays free. Clarity shouldn’t be a privilege reserved for those who can pay for it.

Nice Supreme Court opinion (not our current one, of course) from #joyceVance The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.

Nice Supreme Court opinion (not our current one, of course) from #joyceVance The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.

Nice Supreme Court opinion (not our current one, of course) from #joyceVance The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.

Nice Supreme Court opinion (not our current one, of course) from #joyceVance The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.

@AkaSci note also as #joycevance points out that many of the pleaded guilty and those that didn’t were CONVICTED BY A JURY OF THEIR PEERS!

@AkaSci note also as #joycevance points out that many of the pleaded guilty and those that didn’t were CONVICTED BY A JURY OF THEIR PEERS!

@AkaSci note also as #joycevance points out that many of the pleaded guilty and those that didn’t were CONVICTED BY A JURY OF THEIR PEERS!

@AkaSci note also as #joycevance points out that many of the pleaded guilty and those that didn’t were CONVICTED BY A JURY OF THEIR PEERS!

@AkaSci note also as #joycevance points out that many of the pleaded guilty and those that didn’t were CONVICTED BY A JURY OF THEIR PEERS!

Wednesday Reads: Loss of a Good Guy and Trump’s Staggering Corruption

Good Day!!

I’ll get to the depressing news from Trump world, but first, we’ve lost one of the good guys.

Former Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank has died at 86. It was expected; he’s been in hospice care, but still it’s a sad day.

He was the opposite of Trump: he was good humored, funny, honest as the day is long, and he truly cared about our country and its people.

I’m devoting the remainder of this post to the incredibly corrupt bargain Trump has struck with his own “justice” department and IRS.

Kathryn O. Seelye at The New York Times: Barney Frank, Gay Pioneer and Liberal Stalwart in Congress, Dies at 86.

Barney Frank, the brassy, lightning-quick former Massachusetts representative who for decades was the most prominent gay politician in the country and who was an author of the most significant overhaul of the nation’s financial regulations since the Great Depression, died on Tuesday at his home in Ogunquit, Maine. He was 86.

His friend James Segel confirmed the death. Mr. Frank said last month that he had entered hospice care with congestive heart failure.

Mr. Frank, a liberal Democrat who represented a diverse suburban Boston district for 32 years, starting in 1981, was the first gay member of the House to come out voluntarily; others had been outed in scandals. His public declaration of his sexual orientation in 1987 — spurred by a fear of being outed, by the death of a closeted colleague and by his own determination to show that homosexuality was nothing to be ashamed of — helped normalize being openly gay in public life.

“Prejudice is based on ignorance,” Mr. Frank told The Boston Globe in 2011, as he prepared to retire. “And the best way to counterbalance it is with a living example, with reality.”

A Harvard-trained lawyer, Mr. Frank bristled with intellectual firepower, acidic turns of phrase and a zest for verbal combat.

Barney Frank

His shivs were often cloaked in wit. Referring to the Moral Majority, the conservative Christian organization that opposed abortion but also opposed child nutrition programs and day care, Mr. Frank said in 1981: “From their perspective, life begins at conception and ends at birth.” Of the flawed intelligence behind the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that led to nearly a decade of combat, he said the problem “is not so much the intelligence as the stupidity.”

In Washingtonian magazine’s annual poll of Capitol Hill staffers, he was frequently voted the “brainiest,” “funniest” and “most eloquent” member of the House.

His most significant legislative achievement was in the realm of financial regulation. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which he sponsored with Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, tightened rules on the financial industry as part of the government’s response to the housing crisis of 2007 and the global financial meltdown the next year.

Signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010, the measure sought to prevent the nation’s biggest banks from engaging in excessively risky behavior and to protect consumers from unfair practices by banks and lenders. Congress watered it down in 2018, chiefly by exempting smaller and midsize banks from stricter oversight, but it remained largely intact.

Mr. Frank was also known for championing gay rights, civil rights and women’s rights. He did so by force of personality and by example. He insisted that his male partner be invited to all events to which the spouses of other representatives were invited. In 2012, at age 72, he married Jim Ready and became the first sitting member of Congress to wed someone of the same sex.

He also worked quietly behind the scenes to advance his causes. In one of many examples, according to his memoir, “Frank: A Life in Politics From the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage” (2015), he helped persuade President Bill Clinton not to appoint Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia as secretary of state because of his track record of homophobia.

One more on Barney Frank by Daniel Arkin at NBC News: Former Rep. Barney Frank, champion of Wall Street reform and LGBTQ trailblazer, dies at 86.

Barney Frank, the quick-witted Massachusetts congressman and liberal lion who helped overhaul Wall Street regulations after the 2008 financial crisis and made history as one of the first openly gay members of Congress, died Wednesday, his sister confirmed to NBC Boston.

He was 86. He had entered hospice care at his home in Maine last month.

“He was, above all else, a wonderful brother. I was lucky to be his sister,” Frank’s sister Doris Breay told NBC Boston.

Frank represented southern Massachusetts in the House for 32 years and established himself as a leading voice in debates over banking, affordable housing and LGBTQ rights. He chaired the Financial Services Committee amid the 2008 meltdown and co-authored the milestone Dodd-Frank Act, a sweeping law that sought to put Wall Street firms under tougher scrutiny.

He blazed a trail for other openly gay American elected officials, and in 2012, he became the first member of Congress to enter into a same-sex marriage, tying the knot with his longtime partner, Jim Ready.

“It was life-changing, lifesaving for me,” Frank told NBC News in a phone interview in last month.

“I think the key to our having made the enormous progress we made in defeating anti-gay prejudice had to do with us all coming out and people discovering the gap between our reality and the way we were painted,” he added.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the former House speaker, who served with Frank for more than 25 years, described him as progressive and an idealist in an interview with NBC News last month.

“He has been about idealism and pragmatism to get the job done,” said Pelosi, who was speaker when Frank shepherded Dodd-Frank through Congress. Frank called Pelosi last month to inform her that he was receiving hospice care, she said.

“He was a real mentor to so many of us here,” Pelosi said. “I was with him” on the Banking Committee “in the beginning. I learned so much.”

What a contrast he was to the bunch of crooks we’re dealing with today.

A couple of days ago, the White House announced a “settlement” of Trump’s $10 million lawsuit against his own IRS. He created an “anti-weaponization fund” to pay out reparations to the thugs who attacked the Capital on January 6, as well as anyone who thinks they were wrongly prosecuted during Joe Biden’s presidency. Then yesterday we learned that, as part of the “settlement,” Trump and his entire family are forever exempt from past IRS investigations. This is obviously illegal, unconstitutional and most likely an impeachable offense, but so what? Trump does whatever he wants.

Ray Brescia at MSNOW on the “settlement”: Trump’s nearly $1.8 billion ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ is simply indefensible.

After filing a highly unusual lawsuit in which President Donald Trump sued his own administration’s Internal Revenue Service, he settled it through his acting attorney general — also his former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche — setting up a team of “volunteers” to dole out nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer money out of what the Department of Justice calls “The Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

The president did so in a way to avoid any judicial oversight of his or the Justice Department’s actions. It is hard to imagine a situation more susceptible to fraud, grift, corruption and abuse. And the lawsuit itself was probably unconstitutional to begin with.

The lawsuit came after a report from The New York Times revealed that Trump had only paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017. The complaint against the IRS, filed by Trump, two of his adult sons and the Trump Organization, said the leak caused the plaintiffs “reputational and financial harm” and “public embarrassment.”

Judge Kathleen Williams

The judge assigned in the case, Kathleen Williams of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, issued an order last month pointing out the strange nature of the lawsuit and expressing fear that it did not exhibit the type of “adversity” that is typically an essential ingredient of any federal lawsuit, a requirement of the U.S. Constitution.

Citing relevant and consistent precedent on this point, she wrote that a “key characteristic of the case or controversy requirement” in the Constitution “is the existence of adverseness, or ‘a dispute between parties who face each other in an adversary proceeding.’” She noted that there must be an “‘an honest and actual antagonistic assertion of rights by one individual against another, which is neither feigned nor collusive.’” She added: “It is unclear to this Court whether the Parties are sufficiently adverse to each other so as to satisfy Article III’s case or controversy requirement.” [….]

…Judge Williams asked the parties to submit their written arguments to the court by May 20, 2026, and indicated she would hold a hearing on this question on May 27, 2026.

Whether this means the settlement will not face legal challenge remains to be seen. For now, the administration appears poised to create a nearly $1.8 billion slush fund set up by the administration and capitalized with taxpayer dollars. It will be administered by individuals chosen only by the administration, outside any sort of review.

Politico’s Josh Gerstein and Danny Nguyen on the latest outrage: Justice Department expands Trump settlement to cover his tax audits.

The Justice Department on Tuesday expanded the just-announced settlement of President Donald Trump’s lawsuit over the leaking of his tax returns to include a pledge that the IRS will no longer pursue any claims it may have against Trump, his family members and his companies over unpaid taxes.

The nine-page settlement agreement DOJ released Monday, setting up a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate victims of alleged weaponization of law enforcement, did not mention any resolution of disputes over Trump’s tax returns, which he has repeatedly claimed were under protracted audits by the IRS.

However, a one-page document posted on the DOJ website early Tuesday includes a sweeping release under which the IRS is “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing “examinations” of Trump, “related or affiliated individuals,” and related trusts and businesses.

The waiver specifically encompasses “tax returns filed before the effective date” of the settlement, which was Monday.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed the addendum, dated Tuesday. It does not bear the signature of any representative of the IRS or any current Trump lawyers. Metadata attached to the document indicates it was prepared or scanned at 7:50 a.m. Tuesday.

Blanche did not sign the original settlement agreement, which was signed by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, IRS CEO Frank Bisignano and Trump attorney Daniel Epstein….

“This is only with respect to existing audits, not future,” the DOJ statement added.

John Koskinen, the former IRS commissioner from 2013 to 2017, said the expanded settlement set a “terrible precedent” that could effectively generate a windfall for Trump.“It makes you wonder what the President has to hide in those tax returns. He’s apparently been actively trading in the stock market and, since he knows a lot more about situations than the average investor, he’s probably generated significant taxable earnings,” he said in an emailed statement. “Not auditing his returns is the same as giving him an easy way to, in effect, receive money from the government.”

Danny Werfel, the former IRS commissioner from 2023 to 2025, said he was “unaware of a single precedent where the IRS has agreed in advance to permanently forgo examination of previously filed tax returns for a specific person or business.”

There is corruption. And then there is the second Trump administration.

Monday night I wrote to you about kleptocracy. This evening, we pick up the same thread. It has to do with the $1.776 billion slush fund we discussed last night (get it? so cute that number, 1776; such an homage to the Founding Fathers). That fund, the money that Trump is trying to “give” to his most vociferous, even violent, supporters, was created to settle the lawsuit he brought against the IRS. Today, there is more news about the terms of that settlement. Kleptocracy. Corruption.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche

Todd Blanche, the acting Attorney General, testified before the Senate today. In one remarkable exchange, Delaware Senator Chris Coons asked Blanche:

“Has it ever happened that a sitting president sued his own government for $10 billion dollars and then directed the settlement of the case and the establishment of a payout fund?”

Blanche responded: “No, but there’s a lot of things that President Trump is the first of.”

Another one of those firsts happened today. Not a good one. Without fanfare, DOJ posted a settlement document on its website in the case. It was unexpected, because we’d already seen a settlement agreement in this case, the one we looked at last night. There was no reason to expect anything additional would be forthcoming. When it showed up, the addendum came without any title, just a date at the top….

It’s a pardon on steroids for Trump, Trump’s family, and Trump businesses. The government agrees in this document, signed by Blanche, that it will never prosecute or pursue any civil claims against any of the Trumps, “whether presently known or unknown” that could have been brought as of the date of the settlement agreement. That date is yesterday. The IRS is “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing “examinations” of Trump, “related or affiliated individuals,” and related trusts and businesses. Any proceeding over “tax returns filed before the effective date” of the settlement is now off limits. Any crimes committed before Monday, whether prosecutors were aware of them or not, are off the table. It’s a virtual get-out-of-jail-free card, and also a get-out-of-debt one.

I’ve seen a lot of settlement agreements, but never one like this where the government is giving the store away and getting nothing in return. As we discussed last night, the underlying lawsuit was on life support, most likely about to be dismissed because of legal flaws. Now, it’s become a vehicle for protecting Trump from all problems, criminal and civil, and not just tax matters—the subject of the lawsuit—but all matters. Any sins he may have committed or debts he owed but didn’t pay before now are forgiven.

You can read the rest along with the previous post at Civil Discourse.

Alan Feuer at The New York Times: Prison to Pardons to Payouts: Jan. 6 Rioters Are Elated at Trump’s $1.8 Billion Fund.

Antony Vo was at a friend’s house on Monday morning when a fellow pardoned Jan. 6 rioter sent a message: The Trump administration had just created a fund to benefit people who believed they had been wronged by the federal government — including those, like him, who had stormed the Capitol five years ago.

Mr. Vo, who briefly fled the country to avoid his prison sentence stemming from the riot, said he did not know at first that the fund had come about as part of a larger deal by President Trump to withdraw an extraordinary lawsuit filed against the Internal Revenue Service. But the origins of the fund, he said, were less important than how it made him feel: surprised, relieved and grateful all at once.

“I’m glad it turned into something,” he explained, “that could help people who have been hurting for quite a while now.”

That reaction, it turns out, appeared typical among the so-called Jan. 6ers who have long joined Mr. Trump in claiming that the efforts to hold them accountable for disrupting the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election amounted to mistreatment by the criminal justice system.

Some felt that the fund validated their self-image as victims of the government. Others felt elated — albeit somewhat stunned — at the prospect of a payout. And not a few felt a bit confused at how the process of filing claims and receiving checks could play out.

“So many questions,” said Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right Proud Boys who was sentenced to 22 years on a seditious conspiracy conviction arising from the riot. “But it’s a good direction.” [….]

The possibility that people who ransacked the Capitol, smashing windows and fighting with the police, could get money from the same federal government they attacked was the latest head-spinning twist in the effort to rewrite the history of Jan. 6. At a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, did not rule out violent rioters receiving payouts from the fund.

It has not been lost on many Jan. 6ers that by deeming them worthy of reparations, the most powerful officials in the country have effectively validated their claims of having been wronged by the federal government — claims that, in many instances, were roundly rejected by the judges of both parties who oversaw their cases.

“This is the UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE acknowledging the possibility that Americans were targeted through political abuse of government power,” Tommy Tatum, a Mississippi man who was charged with civil disorder for interfering with the police on Jan. 6, wrote on Monday in a post on social media. “That is historic.”

It’s obvious at this point. Trump is going to pay these people to do it again. He has no intention of leaving in 2029. If the second insurrection doesn’t work, then he’ll barricade himself in the basement of his precious ballroom.

Are Congressional Republicans just going accept this monumental level of corruption from Trump? Hailey Fuchs, Jordain Carney and Josh Gerstein at Politico: Trump’s $1.8 billion ‘lawfare’ fund is making Republicans nervous.

Senate Republicans are greeting the Justice Department’s announcement of a new “Anti-Weaponization Fund” with concern, confusion and questions — and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is offering up little clarity on how it will work.

At a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing Tuesday morning, Blanche fielded queries from members of both parties about the logistics of the $1.8 billion account, who would have oversight and whether it could function as a “slush fund” for individuals who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Democrats are, predictably, enraged by the terms of the settlement for President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the government for the leak of his tax information, which resulted in the creation of this account to benefit targets of “weaponization and lawfare.”

“There is no level below which these folks will not go,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I) said in an interview. “It is just disgusting, having come off Law Enforcement Week, to have set up a slush fund to pay off people who attack police officers.”

But Republicans are also signaling deep discomfort with the arrangement, as well as frustration that they weren’t given the answers they were looking for.

“I’ve got more questions than I’ve heard answers for, and … I didn’t hear anything that gave me certainty in terms of how this all comes together,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), after attending the hearing with Blanche. “Can the president just say $1.87 billion? … I don’t know enough about it to feel comfortable.”

Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Jerry Moran of Kansas — the top Republicans on the full Appropriations committee and the panel that oversees DOJ funding, respectively — both pressed Blanche at the hearing to explain how payouts from the fund would be managed and who might receive them.

If Democrats can manage to win he House and Senate, the first order of business must be to impeach and remove Trump. We can’t allow him to remain in office for the rest of his term, or we’ll never get rid of him.

There has already been some pushback. Ryan J. Reilly at NBC News: John Adams quote projected on DOJ building in protest of $1.8B fund.

Opponents of a $1.776 billion taxpayer-backed “anti-weaponization” fund projected a quotation from one of the Founding Fathers onto the Justice Department building in protest.

“A government of laws, not of men,” read the quotation from John Adams, the second president.

The quotation was shown over one of the large banners of President Donald Trump that were set up in February at the Justice Department headquarters, known as “Main Justice.”

Stacey Young, a former Justice Department employee who founded the group Justice Connection, which projected the phrase onto the building, told NBC News that the “$1.8 billion slush fund” was “appalling.”

“We are standing up for department’s integrity and the rule of law,” Young said outside the building. The Justice Department is operating “as an arm of the White House” and doing Trump’s bidding by protecting his allies and going after his enemies, she said.

“That is an extraordinary abuse of power, and it’s a sign that the rule of law is crumbling before our eyes,” Young said.

Justice Connection said the Trump administration “shifted the country away from a system of laws and toward an era of lawlessness,” citing the firing of prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases and “cash payments” to Capitol riot defendants it expects the Trump administration to pay out.

One more from Josh Gerstein at Politico: Jan. 6 police officers sue to block Trump’s ‘anti-weaponization fund.’ 

Police officers who came under attack by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to halt President Donald Trump’s plan to set up a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate victims of “weaponization” and “lawfare.”

In the new lawsuit, former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police Department Officer Daniel Hodges contend that Trump intends to use the massive bankroll to pay people who organized and participated in the riot.

“Dunn and Hodges did not back down on January 6. Instead, they held the line to defend democracy and the rule of law. They bring this case to do so once again,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Washington, argues that the fund violates the 14th Amendment’s prohibition on use of federal money to “pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.”

The officers’ complaint also alleges that the Justice Department has no legal authority to create the fund, announced Monday as part of a settlement of a lawsuit Trump filed over the leak of his tax returns during his first term..

The Justice Department will likely argue that the officers don’t have standing to bring the suit. The complaint contends that Dunn and Hodges have faced ongoing harassment, including death threats, from participants in the riot. The officers allege that they have a personal stake in the dispute over the fund because it will be used to provide financial support that is likely to fuel that sort of harassment in the future.

That’s all I have for today. What’s on your mind?

Wednesday Reads: Loss of a Good Guy and Trump’s Staggering Corruption

Good Day!!

I’ll get to the depressing news from Trump world, but first, we’ve lost one of the good guys.

Former Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank has died at 86. It was expected; he’s been in hospice care, but still it’s a sad day.

He was the opposite of Trump: he was good humored, funny, honest as the day is long, and he truly cared about our country and its people.

I’m devoting the remainder of this post to the incredibly corrupt bargain Trump has struck with his own “justice” department and IRS.

Kathryn O. Seelye at The New York Times: Barney Frank, Gay Pioneer and Liberal Stalwart in Congress, Dies at 86.

Barney Frank, the brassy, lightning-quick former Massachusetts representative who for decades was the most prominent gay politician in the country and who was an author of the most significant overhaul of the nation’s financial regulations since the Great Depression, died on Tuesday at his home in Ogunquit, Maine. He was 86.

His friend James Segel confirmed the death. Mr. Frank said last month that he had entered hospice care with congestive heart failure.

Mr. Frank, a liberal Democrat who represented a diverse suburban Boston district for 32 years, starting in 1981, was the first gay member of the House to come out voluntarily; others had been outed in scandals. His public declaration of his sexual orientation in 1987 — spurred by a fear of being outed, by the death of a closeted colleague and by his own determination to show that homosexuality was nothing to be ashamed of — helped normalize being openly gay in public life.

“Prejudice is based on ignorance,” Mr. Frank told The Boston Globe in 2011, as he prepared to retire. “And the best way to counterbalance it is with a living example, with reality.”

A Harvard-trained lawyer, Mr. Frank bristled with intellectual firepower, acidic turns of phrase and a zest for verbal combat.

Barney Frank

His shivs were often cloaked in wit. Referring to the Moral Majority, the conservative Christian organization that opposed abortion but also opposed child nutrition programs and day care, Mr. Frank said in 1981: “From their perspective, life begins at conception and ends at birth.” Of the flawed intelligence behind the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that led to nearly a decade of combat, he said the problem “is not so much the intelligence as the stupidity.”

In Washingtonian magazine’s annual poll of Capitol Hill staffers, he was frequently voted the “brainiest,” “funniest” and “most eloquent” member of the House.

His most significant legislative achievement was in the realm of financial regulation. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which he sponsored with Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, tightened rules on the financial industry as part of the government’s response to the housing crisis of 2007 and the global financial meltdown the next year.

Signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010, the measure sought to prevent the nation’s biggest banks from engaging in excessively risky behavior and to protect consumers from unfair practices by banks and lenders. Congress watered it down in 2018, chiefly by exempting smaller and midsize banks from stricter oversight, but it remained largely intact.

Mr. Frank was also known for championing gay rights, civil rights and women’s rights. He did so by force of personality and by example. He insisted that his male partner be invited to all events to which the spouses of other representatives were invited. In 2012, at age 72, he married Jim Ready and became the first sitting member of Congress to wed someone of the same sex.

He also worked quietly behind the scenes to advance his causes. In one of many examples, according to his memoir, “Frank: A Life in Politics From the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage” (2015), he helped persuade President Bill Clinton not to appoint Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia as secretary of state because of his track record of homophobia.

One more on Barney Frank by Daniel Arkin at NBC News: Former Rep. Barney Frank, champion of Wall Street reform and LGBTQ trailblazer, dies at 86.

Barney Frank, the quick-witted Massachusetts congressman and liberal lion who helped overhaul Wall Street regulations after the 2008 financial crisis and made history as one of the first openly gay members of Congress, died Wednesday, his sister confirmed to NBC Boston.

He was 86. He had entered hospice care at his home in Maine last month.

“He was, above all else, a wonderful brother. I was lucky to be his sister,” Frank’s sister Doris Breay told NBC Boston.

Frank represented southern Massachusetts in the House for 32 years and established himself as a leading voice in debates over banking, affordable housing and LGBTQ rights. He chaired the Financial Services Committee amid the 2008 meltdown and co-authored the milestone Dodd-Frank Act, a sweeping law that sought to put Wall Street firms under tougher scrutiny.

He blazed a trail for other openly gay American elected officials, and in 2012, he became the first member of Congress to enter into a same-sex marriage, tying the knot with his longtime partner, Jim Ready.

“It was life-changing, lifesaving for me,” Frank told NBC News in a phone interview in last month.

“I think the key to our having made the enormous progress we made in defeating anti-gay prejudice had to do with us all coming out and people discovering the gap between our reality and the way we were painted,” he added.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the former House speaker, who served with Frank for more than 25 years, described him as progressive and an idealist in an interview with NBC News last month.

“He has been about idealism and pragmatism to get the job done,” said Pelosi, who was speaker when Frank shepherded Dodd-Frank through Congress. Frank called Pelosi last month to inform her that he was receiving hospice care, she said.

“He was a real mentor to so many of us here,” Pelosi said. “I was with him” on the Banking Committee “in the beginning. I learned so much.”

What a contrast he was to the bunch of crooks we’re dealing with today.

A couple of days ago, the White House announced a “settlement” of Trump’s $10 million lawsuit against his own IRS. He created an “anti-weaponization fund” to pay out reparations to the thugs who attacked the Capital on January 6, as well as anyone who thinks they were wrongly prosecuted during Joe Biden’s presidency. Then yesterday we learned that, as part of the “settlement,” Trump and his entire family are forever exempt from past IRS investigations. This is obviously illegal, unconstitutional and most likely an impeachable offense, but so what? Trump does whatever he wants.

Ray Brescia at MSNOW on the “settlement”: Trump’s nearly $1.8 billion ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ is simply indefensible.

After filing a highly unusual lawsuit in which President Donald Trump sued his own administration’s Internal Revenue Service, he settled it through his acting attorney general — also his former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche — setting up a team of “volunteers” to dole out nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer money out of what the Department of Justice calls “The Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

The president did so in a way to avoid any judicial oversight of his or the Justice Department’s actions. It is hard to imagine a situation more susceptible to fraud, grift, corruption and abuse. And the lawsuit itself was probably unconstitutional to begin with.

The lawsuit came after a report from The New York Times revealed that Trump had only paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017. The complaint against the IRS, filed by Trump, two of his adult sons and the Trump Organization, said the leak caused the plaintiffs “reputational and financial harm” and “public embarrassment.”

Judge Kathleen Williams

The judge assigned in the case, Kathleen Williams of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, issued an order last month pointing out the strange nature of the lawsuit and expressing fear that it did not exhibit the type of “adversity” that is typically an essential ingredient of any federal lawsuit, a requirement of the U.S. Constitution.

Citing relevant and consistent precedent on this point, she wrote that a “key characteristic of the case or controversy requirement” in the Constitution “is the existence of adverseness, or ‘a dispute between parties who face each other in an adversary proceeding.’” She noted that there must be an “‘an honest and actual antagonistic assertion of rights by one individual against another, which is neither feigned nor collusive.’” She added: “It is unclear to this Court whether the Parties are sufficiently adverse to each other so as to satisfy Article III’s case or controversy requirement.” [….]

…Judge Williams asked the parties to submit their written arguments to the court by May 20, 2026, and indicated she would hold a hearing on this question on May 27, 2026.

Whether this means the settlement will not face legal challenge remains to be seen. For now, the administration appears poised to create a nearly $1.8 billion slush fund set up by the administration and capitalized with taxpayer dollars. It will be administered by individuals chosen only by the administration, outside any sort of review.

Politico’s Josh Gerstein and Danny Nguyen on the latest outrage: Justice Department expands Trump settlement to cover his tax audits.

The Justice Department on Tuesday expanded the just-announced settlement of President Donald Trump’s lawsuit over the leaking of his tax returns to include a pledge that the IRS will no longer pursue any claims it may have against Trump, his family members and his companies over unpaid taxes.

The nine-page settlement agreement DOJ released Monday, setting up a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate victims of alleged weaponization of law enforcement, did not mention any resolution of disputes over Trump’s tax returns, which he has repeatedly claimed were under protracted audits by the IRS.

However, a one-page document posted on the DOJ website early Tuesday includes a sweeping release under which the IRS is “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing “examinations” of Trump, “related or affiliated individuals,” and related trusts and businesses.

The waiver specifically encompasses “tax returns filed before the effective date” of the settlement, which was Monday.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed the addendum, dated Tuesday. It does not bear the signature of any representative of the IRS or any current Trump lawyers. Metadata attached to the document indicates it was prepared or scanned at 7:50 a.m. Tuesday.

Blanche did not sign the original settlement agreement, which was signed by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, IRS CEO Frank Bisignano and Trump attorney Daniel Epstein….

“This is only with respect to existing audits, not future,” the DOJ statement added.

John Koskinen, the former IRS commissioner from 2013 to 2017, said the expanded settlement set a “terrible precedent” that could effectively generate a windfall for Trump.“It makes you wonder what the President has to hide in those tax returns. He’s apparently been actively trading in the stock market and, since he knows a lot more about situations than the average investor, he’s probably generated significant taxable earnings,” he said in an emailed statement. “Not auditing his returns is the same as giving him an easy way to, in effect, receive money from the government.”

Danny Werfel, the former IRS commissioner from 2023 to 2025, said he was “unaware of a single precedent where the IRS has agreed in advance to permanently forgo examination of previously filed tax returns for a specific person or business.”

There is corruption. And then there is the second Trump administration.

Monday night I wrote to you about kleptocracy. This evening, we pick up the same thread. It has to do with the $1.776 billion slush fund we discussed last night (get it? so cute that number, 1776; such an homage to the Founding Fathers). That fund, the money that Trump is trying to “give” to his most vociferous, even violent, supporters, was created to settle the lawsuit he brought against the IRS. Today, there is more news about the terms of that settlement. Kleptocracy. Corruption.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche

Todd Blanche, the acting Attorney General, testified before the Senate today. In one remarkable exchange, Delaware Senator Chris Coons asked Blanche:

“Has it ever happened that a sitting president sued his own government for $10 billion dollars and then directed the settlement of the case and the establishment of a payout fund?”

Blanche responded: “No, but there’s a lot of things that President Trump is the first of.”

Another one of those firsts happened today. Not a good one. Without fanfare, DOJ posted a settlement document on its website in the case. It was unexpected, because we’d already seen a settlement agreement in this case, the one we looked at last night. There was no reason to expect anything additional would be forthcoming. When it showed up, the addendum came without any title, just a date at the top….

It’s a pardon on steroids for Trump, Trump’s family, and Trump businesses. The government agrees in this document, signed by Blanche, that it will never prosecute or pursue any civil claims against any of the Trumps, “whether presently known or unknown” that could have been brought as of the date of the settlement agreement. That date is yesterday. The IRS is “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing “examinations” of Trump, “related or affiliated individuals,” and related trusts and businesses. Any proceeding over “tax returns filed before the effective date” of the settlement is now off limits. Any crimes committed before Monday, whether prosecutors were aware of them or not, are off the table. It’s a virtual get-out-of-jail-free card, and also a get-out-of-debt one.

I’ve seen a lot of settlement agreements, but never one like this where the government is giving the store away and getting nothing in return. As we discussed last night, the underlying lawsuit was on life support, most likely about to be dismissed because of legal flaws. Now, it’s become a vehicle for protecting Trump from all problems, criminal and civil, and not just tax matters—the subject of the lawsuit—but all matters. Any sins he may have committed or debts he owed but didn’t pay before now are forgiven.

You can read the rest along with the previous post at Civil Discourse.

Alan Feuer at The New York Times: Prison to Pardons to Payouts: Jan. 6 Rioters Are Elated at Trump’s $1.8 Billion Fund.

Antony Vo was at a friend’s house on Monday morning when a fellow pardoned Jan. 6 rioter sent a message: The Trump administration had just created a fund to benefit people who believed they had been wronged by the federal government — including those, like him, who had stormed the Capitol five years ago.

Mr. Vo, who briefly fled the country to avoid his prison sentence stemming from the riot, said he did not know at first that the fund had come about as part of a larger deal by President Trump to withdraw an extraordinary lawsuit filed against the Internal Revenue Service. But the origins of the fund, he said, were less important than how it made him feel: surprised, relieved and grateful all at once.

“I’m glad it turned into something,” he explained, “that could help people who have been hurting for quite a while now.”

That reaction, it turns out, appeared typical among the so-called Jan. 6ers who have long joined Mr. Trump in claiming that the efforts to hold them accountable for disrupting the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election amounted to mistreatment by the criminal justice system.

Some felt that the fund validated their self-image as victims of the government. Others felt elated — albeit somewhat stunned — at the prospect of a payout. And not a few felt a bit confused at how the process of filing claims and receiving checks could play out.

“So many questions,” said Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right Proud Boys who was sentenced to 22 years on a seditious conspiracy conviction arising from the riot. “But it’s a good direction.” [….]

The possibility that people who ransacked the Capitol, smashing windows and fighting with the police, could get money from the same federal government they attacked was the latest head-spinning twist in the effort to rewrite the history of Jan. 6. At a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, did not rule out violent rioters receiving payouts from the fund.

It has not been lost on many Jan. 6ers that by deeming them worthy of reparations, the most powerful officials in the country have effectively validated their claims of having been wronged by the federal government — claims that, in many instances, were roundly rejected by the judges of both parties who oversaw their cases.

“This is the UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE acknowledging the possibility that Americans were targeted through political abuse of government power,” Tommy Tatum, a Mississippi man who was charged with civil disorder for interfering with the police on Jan. 6, wrote on Monday in a post on social media. “That is historic.”

It’s obvious at this point. Trump is going to pay these people to do it again. He has no intention of leaving in 2029. If the second insurrection doesn’t work, then he’ll barricade himself in the basement of his precious ballroom.

Are Congressional Republicans just going accept this monumental level of corruption from Trump? Hailey Fuchs, Jordain Carney and Josh Gerstein at Politico: Trump’s $1.8 billion ‘lawfare’ fund is making Republicans nervous.

Senate Republicans are greeting the Justice Department’s announcement of a new “Anti-Weaponization Fund” with concern, confusion and questions — and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is offering up little clarity on how it will work.

At a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing Tuesday morning, Blanche fielded queries from members of both parties about the logistics of the $1.8 billion account, who would have oversight and whether it could function as a “slush fund” for individuals who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Democrats are, predictably, enraged by the terms of the settlement for President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the government for the leak of his tax information, which resulted in the creation of this account to benefit targets of “weaponization and lawfare.”

“There is no level below which these folks will not go,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I) said in an interview. “It is just disgusting, having come off Law Enforcement Week, to have set up a slush fund to pay off people who attack police officers.”

But Republicans are also signaling deep discomfort with the arrangement, as well as frustration that they weren’t given the answers they were looking for.

“I’ve got more questions than I’ve heard answers for, and … I didn’t hear anything that gave me certainty in terms of how this all comes together,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), after attending the hearing with Blanche. “Can the president just say $1.87 billion? … I don’t know enough about it to feel comfortable.”

Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Jerry Moran of Kansas — the top Republicans on the full Appropriations committee and the panel that oversees DOJ funding, respectively — both pressed Blanche at the hearing to explain how payouts from the fund would be managed and who might receive them.

If Democrats can manage to win he House and Senate, the first order of business must be to impeach and remove Trump. We can’t allow him to remain in office for the rest of his term, or we’ll never get rid of him.

There has already been some pushback. Ryan J. Reilly at NBC News: John Adams quote projected on DOJ building in protest of $1.8B fund.

Opponents of a $1.776 billion taxpayer-backed “anti-weaponization” fund projected a quotation from one of the Founding Fathers onto the Justice Department building in protest.

“A government of laws, not of men,” read the quotation from John Adams, the second president.

The quotation was shown over one of the large banners of President Donald Trump that were set up in February at the Justice Department headquarters, known as “Main Justice.”

Stacey Young, a former Justice Department employee who founded the group Justice Connection, which projected the phrase onto the building, told NBC News that the “$1.8 billion slush fund” was “appalling.”

“We are standing up for department’s integrity and the rule of law,” Young said outside the building. The Justice Department is operating “as an arm of the White House” and doing Trump’s bidding by protecting his allies and going after his enemies, she said.

“That is an extraordinary abuse of power, and it’s a sign that the rule of law is crumbling before our eyes,” Young said.

Justice Connection said the Trump administration “shifted the country away from a system of laws and toward an era of lawlessness,” citing the firing of prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases and “cash payments” to Capitol riot defendants it expects the Trump administration to pay out.

One more from Josh Gerstein at Politico: Jan. 6 police officers sue to block Trump’s ‘anti-weaponization fund.’ 

Police officers who came under attack by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to halt President Donald Trump’s plan to set up a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate victims of “weaponization” and “lawfare.”

In the new lawsuit, former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police Department Officer Daniel Hodges contend that Trump intends to use the massive bankroll to pay people who organized and participated in the riot.

“Dunn and Hodges did not back down on January 6. Instead, they held the line to defend democracy and the rule of law. They bring this case to do so once again,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Washington, argues that the fund violates the 14th Amendment’s prohibition on use of federal money to “pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.”

The officers’ complaint also alleges that the Justice Department has no legal authority to create the fund, announced Monday as part of a settlement of a lawsuit Trump filed over the leak of his tax returns during his first term..

The Justice Department will likely argue that the officers don’t have standing to bring the suit. The complaint contends that Dunn and Hodges have faced ongoing harassment, including death threats, from participants in the riot. The officers allege that they have a personal stake in the dispute over the fund because it will be used to provide financial support that is likely to fuel that sort of harassment in the future.

That’s all I have for today. What’s on your mind?

#joycevance great explainer of trumps biggest grift yet. The handwriting was on the wall. The amici wrote, “With respect to these Defendants specifically, the President’s capacity for control is extraordinary.” Because a lawsuit must involve two parties on opposing sides, and this one increasingly gave every appearance of being a pretext to pay Trump damages, it became clear to everyone, including Trump’s lawyers, that it was very likely that his pitch for $10 billion in taxpayer money was going to get dismissed.

#joycevance great explainer of trumps biggest grift yet. The handwriting was on the wall. The amici wrote, “With respect to these Defendants specifically, the President’s capacity for control is extraordinary.” Because a lawsuit must involve two parties on opposing sides, and this one increasingly gave every appearance of being a pretext to pay Trump damages, it became clear to everyone, including Trump’s lawyers, that it was very likely that his pitch for $10 billion in taxpayer money was going to get dismissed.

#joycevance great explainer of trumps biggest grift yet. The handwriting was on the wall. The amici wrote, “With respect to these Defendants specifically, the President’s capacity for control is extraordinary.” Because a lawsuit must involve two parties on opposing sides, and this one increasingly gave every appearance of being a pretext to pay Trump damages, it became clear to everyone, including Trump’s lawyers, that it was very likely that his pitch for $10 billion in taxpayer money was going to get dismissed.

#joycevance great explainer of trumps biggest grift yet. The handwriting was on the wall. The amici wrote, “With respect to these Defendants specifically, the President’s capacity for control is extraordinary.” Because a lawsuit must involve two parties on opposing sides, and this one increasingly gave every appearance of being a pretext to pay Trump damages, it became clear to everyone, including Trump’s lawyers, that it was very likely that his pitch for $10 billion in taxpayer money was going to get dismissed.

#joycevance When Alabama elected Doug Jones to the Senate, it was a marker for who the state thought it could be. It was Jones who brought the men responsible for killing four girls preparing for worship services at the 16th Street Church to justice as a prosecutor. It meant something for the state to elect him. It also means something when Alabama’s House Speaker stands for using racially discriminatory maps to intentionally do away with Black electoral representation.

#joycevance When Alabama elected Doug Jones to the Senate, it was a marker for who the state thought it could be. It was Jones who brought the men responsible for killing four girls preparing for worship services at the 16th Street Church to justice as a prosecutor. It meant something for the state to elect him. It also means something when Alabama’s House Speaker stands for using racially discriminatory maps to intentionally do away with Black electoral representation.

#joycevance When Alabama elected Doug Jones to the Senate, it was a marker for who the state thought it could be. It was Jones who brought the men responsible for killing four girls preparing for worship services at the 16th Street Church to justice as a prosecutor. It meant something for the state to elect him. It also means something when Alabama’s House Speaker stands for using racially discriminatory maps to intentionally do away with Black electoral representation.

#joycevance When Alabama elected Doug Jones to the Senate, it was a marker for who the state thought it could be. It was Jones who brought the men responsible for killing four girls preparing for worship services at the 16th Street Church to justice as a prosecutor. It meant something for the state to elect him. It also means something when Alabama’s House Speaker stands for using racially discriminatory maps to intentionally do away with Black electoral representation.

#joycevance When Alabama elected Doug Jones to the Senate, it was a marker for who the state thought it could be. It was Jones who brought the men responsible for killing four girls preparing for worship services at the 16th Street Church to justice as a prosecutor. It meant something for the state to elect him. It also means something when Alabama’s House Speaker stands for using racially discriminatory maps to intentionally do away with Black electoral representation.

#joycevance There is an enormous amount of misinformation circulating about former Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s investigation into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. election and the effort to obstruct that investigation following his death. Tweets honoring Mueller’s life of service to his country are now knee-deep in trolls and MAGA comments that have no relationship to the well-documented facts.

So, let’s go back to contemporary sources and make sure we have a clear picture of what investigators found and what the Report said about Donald Trump. We’ll also look at why Mueller, nonetheless, didn’t indict Trump or even weigh in on whether he should be indicted. That decision drew a lot of criticism.🧵

#joycevance There is an enormous amount of misinformation circulating about former Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s investigation into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. election and the effort to obstruct that investigation following his death. Tweets honoring Mueller’s life of service to his country are now knee-deep in trolls and MAGA comments that have no relationship to the well-documented facts.

So, let’s go back to contemporary sources and make sure we have a clear picture of what investigators found and what the Report said about Donald Trump. We’ll also look at why Mueller, nonetheless, didn’t indict Trump or even weigh in on whether he should be indicted. That decision drew a lot of criticism.🧵

#joycevance There is an enormous amount of misinformation circulating about former Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s investigation into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. election and the effort to obstruct that investigation following his death. Tweets honoring Mueller’s life of service to his country are now knee-deep in trolls and MAGA comments that have no relationship to the well-documented facts.

So, let’s go back to contemporary sources and make sure we have a clear picture of what investigators found and what the Report said about Donald Trump. We’ll also look at why Mueller, nonetheless, didn’t indict Trump or even weigh in on whether he should be indicted. That decision drew a lot of criticism.🧵

#joycevance There is an enormous amount of misinformation circulating about former Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s investigation into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. election and the effort to obstruct that investigation following his death. Tweets honoring Mueller’s life of service to his country are now knee-deep in trolls and MAGA comments that have no relationship to the well-documented facts.

So, let’s go back to contemporary sources and make sure we have a clear picture of what investigators found and what the Report said about Donald Trump. We’ll also look at why Mueller, nonetheless, didn’t indict Trump or even weigh in on whether he should be indicted. That decision drew a lot of criticism.🧵

#joycevance There is an enormous amount of misinformation circulating about former Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s investigation into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. election and the effort to obstruct that investigation following his death. Tweets honoring Mueller’s life of service to his country are now knee-deep in trolls and MAGA comments that have no relationship to the well-documented facts.

So, let’s go back to contemporary sources and make sure we have a clear picture of what investigators found and what the Report said about Donald Trump. We’ll also look at why Mueller, nonetheless, didn’t indict Trump or even weigh in on whether he should be indicted. That decision drew a lot of criticism.🧵

From #joycevance #fultoncounty #votingisaright Fulton County did not mince words in its amended response to the government’s motion to quash.

A motion to quash is an attempt to prevent a witness from testifying. Here, the federal government wants to keep the FBI agent who signed the affidavit that persuaded a federal magistrate judge that the government had probable cause to seize Fulton County’s ballots and other election records off the witness stand. Fulton County has requested the agent’s testimony at the hearing on its motion to return those records, a motion we discussed most recently earlier this week.🧵

From #joycevance #fultoncounty #votingisaright Fulton County did not mince words in its amended response to the government’s motion to quash.

A motion to quash is an attempt to prevent a witness from testifying. Here, the federal government wants to keep the FBI agent who signed the affidavit that persuaded a federal magistrate judge that the government had probable cause to seize Fulton County’s ballots and other election records off the witness stand. Fulton County has requested the agent’s testimony at the hearing on its motion to return those records, a motion we discussed most recently earlier this week.🧵

From #joycevance #fultoncounty #votingisaright Fulton County did not mince words in its amended response to the government’s motion to quash.

A motion to quash is an attempt to prevent a witness from testifying. Here, the federal government wants to keep the FBI agent who signed the affidavit that persuaded a federal magistrate judge that the government had probable cause to seize Fulton County’s ballots and other election records off the witness stand. Fulton County has requested the agent’s testimony at the hearing on its motion to return those records, a motion we discussed most recently earlier this week.🧵

From #joycevance #fultoncounty #votingisaright Fulton County did not mince words in its amended response to the government’s motion to quash.

A motion to quash is an attempt to prevent a witness from testifying. Here, the federal government wants to keep the FBI agent who signed the affidavit that persuaded a federal magistrate judge that the government had probable cause to seize Fulton County’s ballots and other election records off the witness stand. Fulton County has requested the agent’s testimony at the hearing on its motion to return those records, a motion we discussed most recently earlier this week.🧵

From #joycevance #fultoncounty #votingisaright Fulton County did not mince words in its amended response to the government’s motion to quash.

A motion to quash is an attempt to prevent a witness from testifying. Here, the federal government wants to keep the FBI agent who signed the affidavit that persuaded a federal magistrate judge that the government had probable cause to seize Fulton County’s ballots and other election records off the witness stand. Fulton County has requested the agent’s testimony at the hearing on its motion to return those records, a motion we discussed most recently earlier this week.🧵

From the invaluable #joycevance For example, the complaint against Bank of America alleges: “Rather than merely providing routine banking services to Epstein, Bank of America went far beyond what a non-complicit bank would have done and instead assisted Epstein in setting up the necessary financial structure to operate his sex-trafficking venture.”

From the invaluable #joycevance For example, the complaint against Bank of America alleges: “Rather than merely providing routine banking services to Epstein, Bank of America went far beyond what a non-complicit bank would have done and instead assisted Epstein in setting up the necessary financial structure to operate his sex-trafficking venture.”

From the invaluable #joycevance For example, the complaint against Bank of America alleges: “Rather than merely providing routine banking services to Epstein, Bank of America went far beyond what a non-complicit bank would have done and instead assisted Epstein in setting up the necessary financial structure to operate his sex-trafficking venture.”

From the invaluable #joycevance For example, the complaint against Bank of America alleges: “Rather than merely providing routine banking services to Epstein, Bank of America went far beyond what a non-complicit bank would have done and instead assisted Epstein in setting up the necessary financial structure to operate his sex-trafficking venture.”

From the invaluable #joycevance For example, the complaint against Bank of America alleges: “Rather than merely providing routine banking services to Epstein, Bank of America went far beyond what a non-complicit bank would have done and instead assisted Epstein in setting up the necessary financial structure to operate his sex-trafficking venture.”

Civil Discourse – Two Days On The Hill: ICE & Pam Bondi – Joyce Vance

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

Two Days On The Hill: ICE & Pam Bondi

By Joyce Vance, Feb 11, 2026

Writing this newsletter isn’t always easy. But it feels important to me, every day. If my work resonates with you and you want to support it, subscribing to Civil Discourse makes it possible for me to devote the time and resources it takes. Either way, I’m grateful that you’re here. Democracy is a participatory sport, and none of us can sit on the sidelines right now. Being well educated about what’s transpiring and sharing that knowledge with others is one of the most important things we can do.

Democrats in Congress are trying to get their branch of government to do its constitutional duty. As Congress continues to try and lumber to its feet, with just a few Republicans crossing over to work with Democrats on key issues—that’s how we got the Epstein Files Transparency Act in the first place—there is some good news to report.

Tuesday:

Asked if his agency had hired any pardoned January 6 defendants, ICE’s acting Director Todd Lyons was shockingly unprepared. He said he didn’t have “that information” in front of him but would get it.

Given how obvious it was that the question was coming, the lack of preparation seems deliberate. But Lyons’ follow-on comment was intriguing: He said that ICE takes assaults on law enforcement seriously, and he doubted anyone who did that on Jan 6 could pass a background check. Apparently, ICE takes assaults on law enforcement more seriously than the President, who pardoned the January 6 defendants.

New York Congressman Dan Goldman, a former federal prosecutor and good friend, wasn’t having any of the justifications and efforts to ignore, or at least walk past, what’s been happening on the ground in Minneapolis and elsewhere.

“If you don’t want to be called a fascist regime or secret police, then stop acting like one.”

“It’s long past time that you rein in your out-of-control agency and start following the law and the Constitution.”

Goldman asked Lyons about the guidance agents are given about asking people walking on American streets to show proof of citizenship. Lyons claimed that his agents conduct “targeted intelligence driven operations,” and that they “don’t walk around in the streets asking people about their American citizenship.”

Goldman was skeptical. “Really?” he responded. “So all of those individual American citizens who have been randomly asked are lying? Is that what you’re saying?”

That exchange prompted the Congressman to ask Lyons if he knew what other 20th Century regimes required people to show proof of citizenship in similar circumstances. Lyons responded that he did. “Sir, there has been various nefarious regimes that did that,” He told Goldman.

Goldman: Is Nazi Germany one?

Lyons: Yes. But I—

Goldman: Is the Soviet Union one?

Lyons: I-

Goldman: I’m asking the questions. Is the Soviet Union one?

Lyons: Yes sir, but I’m, I’m totally…this is the wrong type of questioning.

Goldman: I’ll tell you what the wrong type of questioning. Reclaiming my time.

Lyons: It’s not the men and women of ICE that are out there doing it every day. So to say that the men and women of ICE are Gestapos. Wrong.

After more back and forth, Goldman schooled the acting Director of ICE:

“The problem is, you have it backwards sir. People are simply making valid observations about your tactics, which are un-American and outright fascist. So I have a simple suggestion. If you don’t want to be called a fascist regime or secret police, then stop acting like one. People are simply just observing what they are seeing. And that’s why people are making those comments.

…I was a prosecutor for ten years, prosecuted mob bosses, organized crime, violent criminals, the actual “worst of the worst.” Not a single criminal law enforcement agent that I worked with wore a mask to conceal their identity. But your department, which is a civil law enforcement agency, is defending the use of masks by your agents because of a so-called rise in threats and assaults against your officers.”

…Now, why is that a problem Mr. Lyons? It’s a problem because the explanation that your agents are wearing masks because of fear of assaults or doxxing is outright bogus. You and your untrained, unqualified, unvetted, unidentified agents are intentionally terrorizing our cities and communities all over this country to avoid accountability for their excessive force and their lawless actions. That is why you’re wearing masks, so no one can hold you accountable and you know that the FBI is not going to because notwithstanding all the investigations all of you say are going on, the Department of Justice and the FBI has stated they are not investigating those two murders.

This is not the America I know and love. This is not the America my immigrant [family] came to and it’s long past time that you rein in your out-of-control agency and start following the law and the Constitution.”

There are some members of Congress who seem to have the knack for representing all of us, regardless of where we live. Dan Goldman is one of them.

Wednesday:

Today it was Pam Bondi’s turn. This was her first appearance before the House Judiciary Committee for an oversight hearing, which in and of itself tells you a lot about her respect for the Article I branch of government, 13 months into this administration. Bondi adopted a Trumpian persona, polite, sometimes veering into smarmy with Republicans; dismissive, rude, and downright insulting with Democrats.

But politicians signed up for this. Victims and survivors of horrific crimes didn’t. Washington state Representative Pramila Jayapal was first up for Democrats, and she brought the Epstein survivors with her. She joined me for a Substack Live earlier this evening—I’ll post our full conversation where she explains what she did and how she views Bondi’s approach to the hearing later tonight when the video is ready.

One of Bondi’s lowest moments, besides her use of a “burn book” of insults that she hurled at Democratic members of Congress, was the response to questions about why she hasn’t indicted anyone else who was involved in sex trafficking with Jeffrey Epstein. Her response? “The Dow is over 50,000 dollars.”

A judge would strike a response like that during witness testimony in court as non-responsive. And certainly the AG isn’t taking responsibility for the economy? It’s just so classically Trumpian that it would be laughable except that, because of the context, it isn’t. If you listen to her this bit, there’s a moment where she takes a swipe at Maryland’s Jamie Raskin, saying, “I don’t know why you’re laughing, I hear you’re a great stock trader, Raskin,” and then half swallowing a little chortle at her own cleverness, which came off to the room as intentional disrespect.

Early on, Bondi referred to herself as a career prosecutor. She said that she cares about victims and called Epstein “that monster.” Then she urged victims to come forward. But the irony, and as a prosecutor who handled these kinds of cases, she has to know it, is that victims won’t come forward to talk with the FBI, having seen how Epstein victims are being treated. Asked to acknowledge them repeatedly in today’s hearing, Bondi refused to apologize and arrange interviews with DOJ, something the survivors all signaled they’ve requested but have never been granted. She wouldn’t even turn around to look them in the eyes, to acknowledge and respect their presence.

Bondi compounded it by saying, later, that victims whose names weren’t redacted should contact DOJ to fix it. But their names & information shouldn’t have been exposed in the first place. It’s outrageous that Bondi thinks the burden should be on the survivors to let DOJ know it made a mistake and to get it fixed. DOJ is a massive, well-resourced law firm and it had a legal obligation to protect the victims. It was even provided with a list of names that needed to be redacted, and in some cases, they redacted one or a few, but not all of the victims’ names. It’s so careless that it’s hard to attribute it to mere negligence. Repeated errors of this magnitude, over time, take on the appearance of intentionality. And these are the kind of errors that make it clear to victims that if they come forward with information about the wrong people, their personal safety could be compromised.

Bondi’s Justice Department works for one client above all others, Donald Trump.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Two Days On The Hill: ICE & Pam Bondi