Trump gets front row seat to his own humiliation at Pope's funeral Mass

U.S President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron and first lady Brigitte Macron attend the funeral Mass of Pope Francis in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, April 26, 2025. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez 

"Anybody who builds walls instead of bridges is not Christian"

Story by Adam Nichols / Raw Story / April 26, 2025

Donald Trump got a front row seat to his own humiliation Saturday as he was verbally attacked in a homily at Pope Francis’ funeral.

Trump, who traveled to Rome Friday, sat with world leaders at the service as his signature policy was rebuked to an audience of millions watching live around the world.

“Pope Francis incessantly raised his voice, imploring peace and calling for reason and honest negotiation to find possible solutions,” Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, who gave the homily, said.

Want more breaking political news? Click for the latest headlines at Raw Story.

“‘Build bridges, not walls,’ was an exhortation he repeated many times.”

The statement was clearly aimed at Trump’s promise to build a wall between Mexico and the USA to halt illegal immigration.

It — along with many other Trump policies — was frequently criticized by the pope, who said anybody who thought of building walls rather than bridges was “not Christian” — which prompted Trump to call that statement “disgraceful.”

It’s unknown how Trump reacted to the homily.

Pope Francis had Trump's number from the get-go.

The Supreme Court Has No Army So It's Up to Us

   The judiciary has some tools to enforce presidential compliance, but their effectiveness depends ultimately on the vigilance of the American people. (photo: Getty)

“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women.” We all have a role to play in seeing that it does not die. 

Thomas P. Schmidt / The Atlantic 25 April 25 

 

A more direct affront to the rule of law is hard to imagine: About a month ago, federal agents secretly loaded three planes with passengers and spirited them away to a notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador. The operation was carried out quickly enough to prevent the passengers—now prisoners—from invoking their right, under the Constitution’s due-process clause, to challenge the legal basis for their removal from the country. 

The Supreme Court has since confirmed that this was unlawful, and the Trump administration itself has conceded that at least one of the passengers, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was sent to the prison by mistake, in direct violation of an order by an immigration judge. But both the administration and the government of El Salvador now profess to have no power to return anyone who was wrongfully removed.

Nothing in the Trump administration’s legal logic would prevent it from snatching citizens off the street, sending them to a foreign prison for life, and then disclaiming the power to do anything about it. Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a distinguished appellate judge appointed by Ronald Reagan, wrote of the government’s position: “This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.” So far, however, the Trump administration continues along a path of stubborn resistance rather than accommodation, part of a broader pattern that is not confined to the deportation cases.

The situation raises a very basic question about our constitutional order: Can courts force a president to comply with their rulings? After all, the president commands the executive branch and the military. As one Harvard law professor has pointedly asked, “Why would people with money and guns ever submit to people armed only with gavels?”

Although the federal courts have some tools to enforce compliance, their effectiveness depends on democratic cultural norms—and those norms in turn depend ultimately on the vigilance of the American people.

The judiciary does have a few “guns”—its own powers of coercion—to force recalcitrant executive officials to obey. A federal court can mandate officials to answer questions under oath and to sit for depositions. 

It can discipline government attorneys, including referring them for disbarment. It can impose escalating fines upon an official personally for each day an order goes disobeyed. It can order that officials be imprisoned. 

It can even set in motion criminal contempt cases against especially culpable officials. All of these measures, beyond their direct coercive effect, can do lasting reputational damage to the attorneys and officials involved.

Many of these tools are currently on display. Judge Paula Xinis, who is overseeing the Abrego Garcia case in Maryland, excoriated the Trump administration for doing “nothing” to bring the wrongly deported man home, and ordered several officials to answer questions under oath both in writing and in oral depositions. “There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding,” she said. Meanwhile, Judge James E. Boasberg in Washington, D.C., found that the administration had willfully violated his orders and that “probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt.”

But what if the executive branch continues its defiance despite these or other sanctions? At that point, the courts could direct the U.S. Marshals Service to carry out their orders. The marshals have a statutory duty to do so. But the U.S. Marshals Service is part of the Department of Justice, which is under the supervision of Attorney General Pam Bondi. And Bondi, who is a named defendant in many cases against the administration, could instruct the marshals not to enforce an order against her or others in the administration. 

It is not clear how individual marshals would resolve a conflict between their statutory obligation and an order from the attorney general. Donald Trump could also try to thwart any contempt prosecutions, or simply pardon officials accused of criminal contempt. These uncertainties reflect something Alexander Hamilton observed long ago: The judiciary “must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.” That becomes an issue when the executive arm is the target of its judgments.

So the judiciary’s coercive power alone can’t guarantee that the executive branch will obey court judgments. And yet presidents have historically done so. Why? Because there is an unbroken norm, stretching back at least to the Civil War and followed by both parties, that presidents comply with court orders. The glue of constitutional democracy is not the U.S. Marshals Service but a political culture that demands respect for the rule of law. Because of this culture, the very threat of contempt has the power to shame officials into compliance with the courts.

History is full of examples of this culture in action. When the Supreme Court ordered President Richard Nixon to hand over tapes recorded in the Oval Office, Nixon voluntarily complied; the Court did not need to coerce compliance through contempt sanctions. Nixon resigned soon after. 

Similarly, when the Supreme Court in the famous Youngstown case ruled that President Harry Truman had unlawfully seized the steel mills during the Korean War, Truman voluntarily—and immediately—complied with the ruling, despite strenuously disagreeing with it. Again, what caused Truman to submit to the Court’s judgment was not the U.S. marshal knocking on his door but a shared commitment to self-government under a constitution.

William Rehnquist, the future Supreme Court chief justice, was a law clerk to Justice Robert H. Jackson the year that Youngstown was decided. He later wrote that the “tide of public opinion,” which had turned against the government, “had a considerable influence on the Court.” 

One lesson from past cases is that, in a constitutional democracy, public opinion is the bedrock on which rests the norm of official compliance with federal court judgments. Recent polling suggests that this norm is still robust and bipartisan, though with some alarming cracks. Public opinion is not a one-way street: The courts can influence and inform public opinion not only through their orders but also through hearings and discovery that make plain the government’s misconduct.

A second lesson is that the courts need to be clearer in their directives. The Trump administration has shown that it is willing to twist any arguable ambiguity in a court order to its advantage—such as, in the Abrego Garcia case, the government’s implausibly narrow interpretation of facilitate. The courts should respond by making their directives unmistakably clear. The Supreme Court seems to be moving in that direction; in an unequivocal order issued in the middle of the night over the weekend, it flatly prohibited further deportations from a district in Texas under the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act.

Finally, the political branches matter too. Open defiance of an order from the Supreme Court would be grounds for impeachment. Any indication from Republicans in Congress that such defiance will not be tolerated—communicated publicly or through back channels to the administration—would help ensure that it does not happen.

In the end, courts can do a lot to protect our constitutional values and liberties, but they can’t do everything. As Judge Learned Hand once famously said, “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.” We all have a role to play in seeing that it does not die.

"We all have a role to play in seeing that our values and liberties do not die."

Trump’s Plan to Sell Out Ukraine to Russia

(photo: Yehor Kryvoruchko)

His proposal to end the war isn’t a peace plan—it’s a reward for aggression.

 

Tom Nichols / The Atlantic / 24 April 25 

Donald Trump said on the campaign trail that he would make peace between Ukraine and Russia in a day. 

Three months later, he’s behind schedule, and his plan now is to end the fighting quickly by selling out Ukraine and its people to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The proposal that Trump, Vice President J. D. Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are pushing is not a framework for peace, but a rich and bloody reward to Moscow for three years of aggression and war crimes.

The Russians might do some performative caviling, but the Americans are offering Putin a dream of a deal. If Trump has his way, Washington will lift sanctions against Russia; both sides will accept a cease-fire in place (leaving Russian troops on newly conquered Ukrainian territory), and the United States will agree to recognize Crimea as part of Russia (leaving the Kremlin with full ownership of previously conquered territory).

For this, Ukraine gets basically nothing, except a vaporous security guarantee from an American president who has made clear his hostility to Ukraine and its leaders, an animus that became especially clear when Trump and Vance ambushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a White House meeting last month. The Trump “peace” plan is no such thing; it is an instrument of surrender, and the Ukrainians are unlikely to accept it.

Trump’s proposal would functionally destroy Ukraine, which would limp away from the deal as a vulnerable rump state, shorn of some 20 percent of its territory and millions of its citizens. It would cede control over its foreign policy by promising never to join NATO—an ironic Russian demand, given how starkly Putin’s invasion has reminded the world why alliances such as NATO must continue to exist. 

But NATO membership is a distant issue compared with the immediate problem: If Kyiv agrees to Trump’s proposal, whatever is left of the Ukrainian state will soon be an easy target for the Kremlin. 

Once the Russian economy recovers and Russia’s forces catch their breath, Putin will finish the job of conquering Ukraine with even greater vengeance and violence. Time and space are on Moscow’s side, and Trump intends to give Putin plenty of both.

The Americans have threatened to walk away from the process if either side refuses Trump’s deal, but no one can believe that this is even a token attempt to pressure Moscow. 

The White House is aiming its rhetorical fire squarely at Zelensky. Earlier today, Trump ranted at Zelensky on his Truth Social media platform, telling the Ukrainian president that he “can have Peace or, he can fight for another three years before losing the whole Country. We are very close to a Deal, but the man with ‘no cards to play’ should now, finally, GET IT DONE.” Zelensky, for his part, continues to insist on an “immediate, full, and unconditional cease-fire” before he agrees to further negotiations, a position Trump will likely use as a pretext for abandoning further talks.

Vance, meanwhile, has adopted a classic position of moral equivalence, as if the people shooting at each other—and their reasons for fighting—are indistinguishable. “The only way to really stop the killing,” he said in India today, “is for the armies to both put down their weapons, to freeze this thing, and to get on with the business of actually building a better Russia and a better Ukraine.”

(The vice president might just be toeing Trump’s line, but if his previous statements on international affairs are a guide, he really does seem to have a dismally simplistic understanding of geopolitics. He showcased this strategic shallowness during his embarrassing speech in Munich in February, when he scolded America’s allies about their domestic politics, as if the Europeans were merely a collection of unimportant U.S. congressional delegations.)

We need not invoke World War II comparisons to recognize the moral and political vacuity of the Trump-Vance position. Instead, imagine intervening in other wars of aggression, such as the Korean War in 1950, and telling the embattled southern forces after Pyongyang’s massive invasion that both sides “need to put down their weapons and build a better North and South Korea.” 

Or perhaps after Iraq attempted to erase Kuwait from the map in 1990, America and the United Nations should have told the states of the Persian Gulf that sometimes countries just disappear, and that both Saddam Hussein’s army and what was left of Kuwait’s forces needed to put their guns down.

Trump is not a fair broker: He is acting as a de facto Russian ally and making demands as Moscow’s proxy. Perhaps Europe and other nations will be able to fill the void left by American cowardice, but no one should blame the Ukrainians if they refuse to bow to Washington’s demand that they accept a grim destiny as Moscow’s newest serfs.

AMBUSH: The Oval Office Dressing Down

'Confused, forgetful, incoherent': Move over, Joe

Trump's age-related decline documented in startling new report

Tom Boggioni

RAW STORY

October 6, 2024 1:22PM ET

Donald Trump's age-related issues, which have seemingly accelerated during his third run for the White House, received a thorough analysis by the New York Times on Sunday which came to the conclusion that the former president appears to have debilitating memory issues along with bouts of confusion.

Long criticized for blanket coverage of President Joe Biden's decline following his alarming debate performance with Trump in June that led to the president stepping aside for Vice President Kamala Harris to run in July, on Sunday the Times' Peter Baker and Dylan Freedman scrutinized Trump's downward spiral over time.

As they noted Trump recently rambled on about the audience at his debate with Harris applauding his every move –– despite the fact there was no audience.

ALSO READ: Why Trump is barely campaigning

As the report notes, "Anyone can misremember, of course. But the debate had been just a week earlier and a fairly memorable moment. And it was hardly the only time Mr. Trump has seemed confused, forgetful, incoherent or disconnected from reality lately. In fact, it happens so often these days that it no longer even generates much attention."

Adding Trump "rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought — some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished," the Times reporters reported that an analysis of Trump's speeches before adoring crowds revealed some alarming signs of cognitive decline.

"Proportionately, he uses 13 percent more all-or-nothing terms like 'always' and 'never' than he did eight years ago, which some experts consider a sign of advancing age," the Times is reporting. "Similarly, he uses 32 percent more negative words than positive words now, compared with 21 percent in 2016, which can be another indicator of cognitive change."

According to one former ally who has known Trump for years, there are definitely signs of cognitive problems.

ALSO READ: Protesters outside New York Times demand newspaper 'stop normalizing Trump'

"He’s not competing at the level he was competing at eight years ago, no question about it,” explained Anthony Scaramucci. “He’s lost a step. He’s lost an ability to put powerful sentences together.”

Former Trump White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews agreed, telling the Times, "I don’t think anyone would ever say that Trump is the most polished speaker, but his more recent speeches do seem to be more incoherent, and he’s rambling even more so and he’s had some pretty noticeable moments of confusion. When he was running against Biden, maybe it didn’t stand out as much.”

With the Times report adding, "Experts said it was hard to judge whether the changes in Mr. Trump’s speaking style could indicate typical effects of age or some more significant condition," Dr. Bradford Dickerson, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School explained, "That can change with normal aging. But if you see a change relative to a person’s base line in that type of speaking ability over the course of just a few years, I think it raises some real red flags.”

"His speeches in 2015 and 2016 were more aggressive, but still clearer and more comprehensible than now, and balanced with flashes of humor," the report notes before cautioning, "Now his rallies are powered as much by anger as anything else. His distortions and false claims have reached new levels. His adversaries are 'lunatics' and 'deranged' and 'communists' and'“fascists.' Never particularly restrained, he now lobs four-letter words and other profanities far more freely. The other day, he suggested unleashing the police to inflict 'one really violent day' on criminals to deter crime."

Too long has lived the King.

Clash Between Trump and the Courts Sparks Questions of a Constitutional Crisis

With Liberty and Justice: A cartoon by Clay Bennett.  Daily Kos

Supreme court order "reeks of mistrust for [Trump's] government"

Nina Totenberg / NPR 21 April 25

 

 

In the early hours of Saturday, the U.S. Supreme Court seemed to signal it is losing its patience with the Trump administration.

On April 7, the high court clearly said that if the government intends to deport a foreign-born resident, it must notify the individual "within a reasonable period of time" so that the individual has the ability to challenge the removal in court prior to deportation.

In the nearly two weeks that followed, however, the Trump administration dragged its feet, avoiding meaningful compliance with the court's order.

Then late Friday afternoon, on Good Friday, the court had a new deportation case on its docket, one that suggested the Trump administration was violating the terms of the earlier order.

Racing to the Supreme Court, lawyers for the ACLU told the court that dozens of Venezuelan detainees were about to be deported. They said that the men were notified, in papers written in English, which they didn't understand, that they were eligible to be deported under the Alien Enemies Act. And, the ACLU said, the men were being loaded on to buses that presumably were going to take them to the airport for deportation.

This time the high court acted swiftly, releasing a one-paragraph order so quickly that the court did not even wait for the two dissenters to file their opinion explaining their disagreement. That was not the only extraordinary feature of the court's order.

Although couched in legal terms, the order reeked of mistrust for the government.

"The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class [of detainees] from the United States until further order of this court," the justices said.

The court went on to note that the detainees' case is pending before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and that pending the outcome in that most conservative court, the solicitor general "is invited to file a response" to the still pending application for review by this court "as soon as possible." In other words, the court was saying to the administration, whether you win in the Fifth Circuit or not, this isn't over yet.

Is this a constitutional crisis?

So now, let's take a deep breath and figure out where we are.

If you have been a reporter in Washington for a long time, you have seen lots of alleged constitutional crises. Some, in hindsight, were not. Others, like President Nixon's attempts to hide a criminal conspiracy in the White House, were. But in Watergate, Congress operated within a series of norms, and Republicans, when faced with stark, on-tape evidence of Nixon's lies, corruption, and perfidy, abandoned him. When the Republican congressional leadership told the president he had lost virtually all support, Nixon resigned rather than be impeached, convicted, and removed from office.

Today, with many Republicans terrified of crossing Trump, it is not clear that Donald Trump could do anything to lose his GOP support in Congress. But in a clash with the Supreme Court, he could lose a lot. So too could the court, because it has few tools to actually make a president do something. And if a president succeeds in defying the court, the whole system of government, and of checks and balances, would be in peril.

So, are we in a constitutional crisis? Think of the country right now as the pot on a stove. A week ago, one might have said that the flame controlling the temperature was on medium. But in the days since then, the pot has been inching closer to high, and a full-on clash between the Supreme Court and the president.

Two weeks ago, the court told the Trump administration it had to "facilitate" the return of a Maryland man named Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the U.S., where he had been under a protective court order barring his deportation. An immigration judge had ruled that Abrego Garcia had demonstrated a reasonable fear that were he to be returned to El Salvador, he would risk death or torture from gangs that he had refused to join. The judge thus granted Abrego Garcia, who entered the country illegally, protection from deportation.

Nonetheless, the husband and father, who in the course of his 14 years in the U.S. has never been charged with a crime, was grabbed by ICE officials, and, the administration admits, "mistakenly" deported to El Salvador. The administration says he's an MS-13 member, an allegation his lawyers reject.

Since then, however, the president has continued to insist he has no obligation to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. from the detention center in El Salvador where he is being held at the behest of the Trump administration. The U.S. is paying El Salvador $6 million to imprison more than 200 alleged gang members deported from the U.S., presumably with more to come. And last week saw the spectacle of the president of El Salvador meeting with Trump at the White House, and the two men pronouncing that they had no obligation to do what the Supreme Court had just told Trump to do.

Trump, for his part, has continued to openly flirt with the idea of deporting American citizens to a Salvadoran prison, too. And the president of El Salvador didn't seem averse to the idea.

An extraordinary opinion

Meanwhile, the federal district judge in charge of Abrego Garcia's case in Maryland, Paula Xinis, has sought to carry out the Supreme Court's instructions on facilitating Abrego Garcia's release. She set a schedule for daily updates and sought to gather more information, but she was essentially stiffed by the administration.

So, Judge Xinis, for the first time, raised the prospect of holding contempt proceedings against the government, and the administration asked the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to block her efforts.

That produced a truly remarkable opinion, written by Judge J. Harvey Wilkinson, a very conservative judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan, who forcefully rejected the administration's plea. 

Writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, he said that the Supreme Court's order to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release means that Abrego Garcia should be returned to the United States and afforded the due process of law here to which he is entitled. A continued failure to comply, said Wilkinson, would "reduce the rule of law to lawlessness and tarnish the very values for which Americans of diverse views and persuasions have always stood."

"If the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard for court orders," he said, "what assurances will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home. And what assurance shall there be that the executive will not train its broad discretionary authority power upon its political enemies?"

Wilkinson concluded with a warning about how Trump's tactics have produced a constitutional crisis, though he did not use that phrase: "Now the branches come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both. This is a losing proposition all around," he said, with Trump claiming the "illegitimacy" of the courts, and the judiciary, by dint of "custom and detachment" only able "to sparingly reply." At the same time, the Executive has much to lose, too, he said, because the public will come to perceive "administration's "lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions."

Trump "may succeed for a time in weakening the courts," Wilkinson said, but over time, "history will script" a "tragic" ending and the law "will sign its [own] epitaph."

Straining for an optimistic note, Wilkinson concluded, "We cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time."

A day after the Fourth Circuit opinion was released, Trump was railing at the courts again, claiming that Abrego Garcia is a "very violent person and they want this man to be brought back into our country."

None of this is lost on the Supreme Court, which has sought not to precipitate a direct constitutional clash with Trump. But at some point in the not too distant future, the high court may have to confront the president head on, even though the court's tools to force compliance are limited.

Chief Justice John Roberts, at his confirmation hearing 20 years ago, opined that "judges have to have the courage to make the unpopular decisions when they have to," including striking down as unconstitutional acts of the executive. "That is the judicial oath," he said. But he likely never imagined a president as insistently recalcitrant as Trump.

Could this be the next group deported to El Salvador?

You won’t believe how much Homeland Security pays for Kristi Noem’s cosplay

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem participates in a ship assault demonstration with the U.S. Coast Guard on March 16.

She's blowing through $200 million playing dress-up

 

By Alix Breeden 

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday, April 22, 2025 

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s cosplay habit is getting in the way of actually doing her job, and some days, it’s unclear whether she’s trying to lead her department or if she’s simply vying for a brand deal. 

“Live this AM from NYC. I’m on it,” Noem wrote on X on January 28, as she joined an early morning ICE raid.

People familiar with the mission told the Wall Street Journal that Noem’s publicity stunt actually hindered agents from being able to arrest as many people as they intended.

Tricia McLaughlin, the top spokesperson of DHS, disputed this claim, saying that Noem didn’t make the post until the end of the raid.

But of course, that wasn’t her last time posting live updates during a government operation. 

Last week, Noem teamed up with Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik, who posted step-by-step updates of ICE’s movements during three arrests in Arizona. Noem shared a video of herself during which she noticeably aimed her weapon at the head of a fellow DHS employee, who quickly took a step back. 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem pretends she's a firefighter.  Hope she gets some good candy.

Since joining President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, Noem has been working overtime to get in as many media appearances as possible. From riding on an ATV along the border wall to joining the coast guard in a rescue boat, Noem loves playing dress-up. 

“I will tell you that I oversee 26 different components of the Department of Homeland Security, and they are so proud of the fact that I’m willing to wear an ICE hat, that I’m willing to wear an HSI vest, that I’m willing to go into there and wear something and be proud of them and the work that they do. They didn’t have that with the last leadership team,” she told Fox News.

But Noem’s team of photographers and videographers costs money, which is interesting considering the Trump administration’s supposed efforts to cut “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration allotted $200 million to Noem’s PR efforts, and she’s used about $9 million on an ad where she tells undocumented immigrants to “leave now.”

This funding came from the now shuttered DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, but—unsurprisingly—has been excluded from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s magnifying glass as it takes an axe to vital federal programs.

According to the DHS website, the purpose of the office was to investigate “complaints from the public alleging violations of civil rights and civil liberties in DHS activities.” This included race-based discrimination in the workplace, suggesting that it might have been cut as part of Trump’s crusade against diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

But if there was ever a time to gather complaints of civil rights violations, this would be it.

Happy Easter diatribe from your Prez...

Trump Slams Courts and Everything Else He Despises in Hate-Filled Easter Message

Story by Corbin Bolies

The Daily Beast

Easter Sunday

April 20, 2025 

President Donald Trump attacked former President Joe Biden, the U.S. court system, and the Maryland man his administration wrongfully deported, in another hateful holiday message blasted out on Easter Sunday.

In a Truth Social post, Trump wished the “Radical Left Lunatics” a happy Easter and ripped “WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials” for calling for Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s return from an El Salvadorian prison after the Trump administration deported him there in an “administrative error.”

Trump called the legal pushback against Garcia’s deportation—after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Trump must “facilitate” Garcia’s return—“an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten!”

Trump baselessly claimed that Biden was to blame for “purposefully” allowing “Millions of CRIMINALS to enter our Country, totally unvetted and unchecked” in what he alleged was “the single most calamitous act ever perpetrated upon America.”

Trump also again drudged up his false claim that he was the actual winner of the 2020 election over Biden—despite all evidence to the contrary.

“[Biden] was, by far, our WORST and most Incompetent President, a man who had absolutely no idea what he was doing,” Trump wrote. “But to him, and to the person that ran and manipulated the Auto Pen (perhaps our REAL President!), and to all of the people who CHEATED in the 2020 Presidential Election in order to get this highly destructive Moron Elected, I wish you, with great love, sincerity, and affection, a very Happy Easter!!!”

It is unclear if the president attended an Easter service on Sunday, as he has typically spent the holiday near his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. On Saturday, Trump suggested that he would be in Washington, D.c., writing that he “looks forward to having Easter service early tomorrow morning at the White House!”

Unhappy Holiday Tradition

Trump has seemingly made it a decades-long ritual to attack his various “haters,” “losers,” and political rivals during the holidays. He recently fired off such messages on Thanksgiving and Christmas, again blasting Biden and liberal “lunatics.”

The tradition, which can sometimes also include sarcastic doses of “love” and “affection,” has also included holidays and commemorations. In celebration of Memorial Day, he wrote, “I would like to wish everyone, including all haters and losers (of which, sadly, there are many) a truly happy and enjoyable Memorial Day!”

On New Year’s Day 2019, he wrote, “2019 WILL BE A FANTASTIC YEAR FOR THOSE NOT SUFFERING FROM TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”

In a holiday mood, Trump delivers one of his cheery Christmas messages.

Trump is turning the White House into Mar-a-Lago—at taxpayers' expense

King Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago on Dec. 16, 2024, in Palm Beach, Florida.

It's golf, it's gold, it's a ballroom, it's a military parade, and it's all costing taxpayers millions and millions...

 

By Emily Singer 

Daily Kos Staff  

Wednesday, April 19, 2025

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

President Donald Trump is gilding the White House, using his so-called "gold guy" to add gold touches to the Oval Office on the taxpayer dime to make the historic building look like his tacky Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Trump has gilded the furniture, affixed gold ornaments to the Oval Office fireplace, added gold sculptures and picture frames, and reportedly installed a gold Trump crest over the doorway into the White House. He even ordered his and Vice President JD Vance’s portraits to be reprinted with a gold border because he wanted the pictures to “catch the light,” the WSJ reported.

“It’s the Golden Office for the Golden Age,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the WSJ.

White House? More like Gold House now.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump also wants to add a ballroom to the White House complex where he can hold events, like he does at his Florida club, where guests pay stupid amounts of money for the chance to heap praise on the egomaniacal leader.

Trump loves his gilded Mar-a-Lago ballroom, telling guests at an event in February, “The ballroom is in top shape. We just spent a lot of money on gold. I’ve got more gold in the ballroom than anybody’s ever had in a ballroom before.” 

Trump apparently wants to recreate that at the White House.

The ballroom addition is a project Trump has wanted to do since 2016, when he reportedly spoke to the Obama White House and offered to build the $100 million project—even though Trump is notorious for not paying his bills and stiffing workers. During his campaigns he even stiffed localities, refusing to pay hundreds of thousands in fees for the public safety provided for his ego-stroking rallies.

The Obama administration laughed off Trump’s offer. 

“I'm not sure that it would be appropriate to have a shiny gold Trump sign … on any part of the White House,” then-White House press secretary Josh Earnest said at the time.

But in Trump’s second term in office, where he’s acting like the dictator he’s always dreamed of being, he is now serious about remaking the White House—a worrying sign from someone who has mused about staying for a third term, despite the Constitution banning such a thing.

The Rose Garden at the White House, shown in 2020.  When Trump's done paving paradise, it'll resemble the proverbial parking lot.

Trump’s tacky ballroom would be in addition to his plan to pave over the Rose Garden, the beautiful green space outside the White House where presidents hold events and press conferences. Trump’s reason for that? He said women are uncomfortable when their high heels sink into the grass. The horror!

Trump is gilding the White House and turning it into a gaudy mess comes at the same time that his administration is slashing federal spending for critical social safety net programs like Social Security, Medicaid, food stamps, preschool education for low-income Americans, and more. He is also cutting medical research, disease mitigation, and foreign aid, which is already having disastrous consequences and will undoubtedly lead to even more.

Worse, as Trump demands austerity from the country, he’s reportedly planning to spend tens of millions on a grotesque military parade in Washington, D.C., to celebrate his own birthday.

Trump is taking a page out of Marie Antoinette's playbook. "Let them eat cake!" "And if you don't like it, too bad."

'It’s time': Conservative calls for 'comprehensive national civic uprising' against Trump

Only way to stop his "multifront assault to make earth a playground for ruthless men"

 

Opinion by Adam Lynch

Alternet 

April18, 2025

Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks is in the unique position of declaring war against a Republican president.

“His is a multifront assault to make earth a playground for ruthless men,” Brooks writes, “so of course any institutions that might restrain power must be weakened or destroyed. Trumpism is about ego, appetite and acquisitiveness driven by a primal aversion to the higher elements of the human spirit — learning, compassion, scientific wonder, the pursuit of justice.”

A “single effort to undo the parts of the civilizational order” requires a concerted response to beat it back, says Brooks, and one that is yet to be fully underway. So far, each sector Trump has assaulted, be it law firms, universities or whole groups of people, has responded independently, and therefore ineffectively.

READ MORE: 'Odd man out': Top Trump official 'planning to cut and run' as 'civil war' engulfs Cabinet

“Harvard eventually drew a line in the sand, but Columbia cut a deal. This is a disastrous strategy that ensures that Trump will trample on one victim after another. He divides and conquers,” Brooks said, pointing out that only a few law firms are fighting against his executive orders targeting them while many more have crawled to the president’s doorstep to work out a deal. Even the "Big Ten" colleges uniting to defend academic freedom from Trump’s attack amount to only a handful out of “roughly 4,000 degree-granting American colleges and universities.”

“It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising,” says Brooks “It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.”

Brooks, who does not describe himself as “a movement guy,” says groups need a short-term vision of burying Trump in lawsuits and derailing him and a long-term vision of asking themselves what societal plagues turned voters to Trump, be it economic problems or perceived imbalances.

Brooks is not the sole traditional conservative turning on Trump within 100 days of his administration. Other conservatives are adopting similarly unfamiliar positions on things such as immigration and courts. Weekly Standard founder Bill Kristol went from raising money against Trump in 2023, but has since compared Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to jackboots and recently asked: “where does the ‘Abolish ICE’ movement go to get its apology?”