The week in review - May 23, 2025
Only 1,338 days to go...
Thought for the day in honor of her birthday…
“If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.”
~ Margaret Fuller
Must Read Article:
Trump Is Tired of Courts Telling Him He’s Breaking the Law
The Trump administration’s relentless assault on the rule of law is a kind of arson: It is setting so many blazes that the fire department is having trouble putting them all out at once. Last week, Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court to cut off the water.
Trump’s executive order revoking birthright citizenship for undocumented immigrants—which flagrantly overrides law, Supreme Court precedent, and the text of the Fourteenth Amendment—has, at least for now, reached the justices primarily as a procedural question. At issue during oral argument before the Court was the constitutionality of nationwide injunctions put in place by district-court judges, rather than the merits of the order itself.
Highlights
Nasty MAGA Infighting Means Trouble for Trump
Trump’s behemoth of a spending package — which he and other Republicans are actually, sophomorically calling The One, Big, Beautiful Bill — could easily degenerate into one big, beautiful melee, not only because that’s the way of Washington but also because discord is what recruits like Laura Loomer live for. Discipline isn’t their strong suit. And there are oh so many of them, jostling and jeering.
In Upset, Centrist Wins Romania’s Presidential Election
In a setback for Europe’s surging nationalist forces, Nicusor Dan, a centrist mayor and former mathematics professor, on Sunday won the presidential election in Romania, defeating a hard-right candidate who is aligned with President Trump and has opposed military aid to Ukraine.
With more than 98 percent of ballots counted, preliminary official results gave 54 percent of the vote in the presidential runoff to Mr. Dan, 55, the mayor of Romania’s capital, Bucharest. His opponent, George Simion, a nationalist and fervent admirer of Mr. Trump who had been widely seen as the front-runner, drew only 46 percent.
Although final statistics are not yet available, some experts think that 2024 likely set the record for the steepest fall in the murder rate. And 2025 is off to an even better start. The year is not yet half over, and a lot can still change—just consider 2020, when murder really took off in the second half—but the Real-Time Crime Index, which draws on a national sample, finds that through March, murder is down 21.6 percent, violent crime is down 11 percent, and property crime is down 13.8 percent. In April, Chicago had 20 murders. That’s not just lower than in any April of the past few years—that’s the best April since 1962, early in Richard J. Daley’s mayorship.
Judge bars Trump administration from shutting peace institute that sought to end violent conflicts
A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from moving forward with its dismantling of the U.S. Institute of Peace, an organization taken over in March by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell ruled that the think tank, which was created and funded by Congress to focus on resolving violent conflicts around the globe, was taken over illegally by DOGE through “blunt force, backed up by law enforcement officers from three separate local and federal agencies.”
Tesla, SpaceX reputations crater
Elon Musk's polarizing political activism appears to have come at the expense of his largest companies, as Republicans expressed more favorable opinions than did Democrats. By the numbers: Tesla was in 8th place in the 2021 reputation ranking of America's 100 most visible companies, but last year tumbled to 63rd and now is near the very bottom at 95th. SpaceX experienced a similar reputation quotient score decline between 2024 and 2025…On the one hand, SpaceX may care less than Tesla does, because it's not consumer-facing….Last, but not least: The company formerly known as Twitter also scored poorly, although that's been true since even before Musk's ownership.
Quote of the day:
“So when a new president orders that because there’s so much gun violence going on in the country, and he comes in and he says, ‘I have the right to take away the guns from everyone,’ then he sends out the military to seize everyone’s guns, we and the courts have to sit back and wait until every named plaintiff gets—or every plaintiff whose gun is taken comes into court?”
~Justice Sonia Sotomayor
Lowlights
Trump's $4 trillion deficit bomb
Trump's "big, beautiful bill" is projected to add trillions to the deficit over the next decade — rattling conservatives who have long warned that the U.S. is barreling toward fiscal catastrophe.
Some Republicans now find themselves trapped between two of the party's most animating principles: Deficit reduction vs. absolute loyalty to Trump.
That tension is threatening to derail Trump's vision for a new "Golden Age," which the White House hopes will begin in earnest with a vote on the House floor this week…
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt went as far as to claim that the bill "does not add to the deficit," and that it would actually save $1.6 trillion through spending cuts and Medicaid work requirements. Independent budget experts see that as laughable.
Trump administration agrees to pay nearly $5M to settle suit over Ashli Babbitt shooting in Capitol
The Trump administration has agreed to pay just under $5 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit that Ashli Babbitt’s family filed over her shooting by an officer during the U.S. Capitol riot, according to a person with knowledge of the settlement…The officer who shot her was cleared of wrongdoing by the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia, which concluded that he acted in self-defense and in the defense of members of Congress. The Capitol Police also cleared the officer.
Trump Posts Deranged Obama Meme in QAnon-Inspired Truth Social Spree
QAnon conspiracies accuse Obama and other political enemies of treason and advocate for military tribunals. Trump’s renewed call for an Obama military trial appeared to excite the conspiracy theorists in his fanbase, with Infowars’ Alex Jones boosting the post on X.
Trump’s Newest Crackdown on Dissent
One might grant the charges more benefit of the doubt if not for Donald Trump’s open desire to turn the Justice Department into a tool of political retribution, or his previous record of downplaying attacks against law enforcement. The president has fired career prosecutors, revoked the security clearances of his critics, and installed as FBI director a guy who once threatened to “come after” Trump critics. DOJ has opened an investigation into the leading Democratic fundraising platform on shaky premises. Trump picked a U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia who so overstepped his bounds while serving on an interim basis that even Republican senators couldn’t stomach confirming him; instead Trump appointed him head of a DOJ “Weaponization Working Group,” an unintentionally revealing name. The Justice Department obtained an indictment against a Wisconsin state judge for obstructing an immigration arrest (she pleaded not guilty), and Attorney General Pam Bondi specifically described the charges as a warning to other judges who might flout the administration.
Oklahoma high schools to teach 2020 election conspiracy theories as fact
As part of the latest Republican push in red states to promote ideologies sympathetic to Donald Trump, Oklahoma’s new social studies curriculum will ask high school students to identify “discrepancies” in the 2020 election results.
The White House Is Quietly Memory-Holing Transcripts of Trump’s Words
President Donald Trump’s administration has scrubbed the White House website of almost every single transcript of the president’s official remarks.
As of this week, the only transcript still available on the site’s “Remarks” section is the transcript of Trump’s inaugural address on Jan. 20. Some transcripts have been replaced by videos of Trump’s speeches and appearances, though dozens of events are completely unaccounted for, NBC News reported.
An unnamed official told NBC the move was part of an internal policy change to give people a fuller and more accurate sense of the president, and that switching to video created “consistency” across the website.
But presidential transcripts have long served as the definitive record of what a president says in public, leading historians and former White House officials to condemn the move.
The Trump Administration’s Favorite Answer
Given this pattern, it’s little surprise that when NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Trump, “Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?” he had a less-than-reassuring answer: “I don’t know.”
Some of this disengagement stems from Trump’s tendency to approach the presidency not as an executive but rather as a pundit. He’d prefer to watch from the sidelines and comment than actually get into the messy work of governance. Like a witness conspicuously unable to recall things, Trump and his aides may also sometimes find it easier to claim they don’t know what’s happening than to accept responsibility.
Now is not the time to limit the ability of federal courts to enforce their judicial orders. But in light of dozens of federal courts finding actions by President Donald Trump to be unconstitutional, some House Republicans are trying to do exactly that. A provision in the proposed spending bill would restrict the authority of federal courts to hold government officials in contempt when they violate court orders. Without the contempt power, judicial orders are meaningless and can be ignored.
There is no way to understand this except as a way to keep the Trump administration from being restrained when it violates the Constitution or otherwise breaks the law.
Trump Policy Moves Worry Afghan Refugees in US Military Town and Christian Groups that Assist Them
That faith-based work is now in peril. As part of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, his administration banned most incoming refugees in January and froze federal funds for the programs. Across the country, local resettlement agencies like hers have been forced to lay off staff or close their doors. Refugees and other legal migrants have been left in limbo, including Afghans who supported the U.S. in their native country.
The Rushed, Blundering Effort to Send Deportees to Third Countries
Sending people to third countries is allowed under U.S. immigration law, and the effort to enlist countries around the world is one of several unconventional strategies the administration is using as it rushes to increase deportations….Top administration officials have been pressuring world leaders to accept deportees who aren’t their own citizens, floating it as a way to ingratiate themselves to Trump. El Salvador, Panama, Costa Rica, and Mexico have obliged; attempts to enlist nations such as Libya and Ukraine have not yet succeeded.
President Donald Trump endorsed the idea that the United States Supreme Court had placed an “illegal injunction” on him by temporarily blocking his administration’s ability to deport Venezuelans, accused of being gang members, without due process, while litigation on the matter plays out in lower courts.
Trump DOJ Lawyer Floats ‘Criminal Charges’ for Jill Biden
A former Fox News contributor turned Trump administration Department of Justice lawyer has suggested Joe Biden’s wife could be criminally charged for “elder abuse.” The former president announced a diagnosis of a particularly “aggressive” prostate cancer on Sunday. Within hours, the MAGA world was peddling the notion that the 82-year-old had been sick for some time, and that his true condition had been covered up by his close circle, including his wife, Jill.
The MAHA Crowd Is Already Questioning Biden’s Cancer Diagnosis
Although Biden’s condition is conventional, a certain segment of the public has been beguiled into blaming mainstream medicine for every unexpected death or health-related tragedy it comes across. The anti-vaccine community, including the group formerly led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has spent years promoting the idea that mRNA vaccines for COVID regularly push tumors into overdrive. (Rare anecdotes aside, there is no evidence to support this fear.)
What I’m listening to…
What I’m watching…
What I read every day…
