This New York Times piece is worth your time. Here’s what is happening, as simply as I can put it.
Back in January, Trump sued the IRS, an agency he controls, demanding $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns a number of years ago.
IRS lawyers did their jobs. They wrote a memo laying out the defenses that could beat the suit, including the fact that Trump filed too late. His own lawyer was in court when the leaker pleaded guilty in October 2023, more than two years before Trump sued.
The Justice Department never showed up to court. Never argued back. Never used the defenses sitting on their desk.
The judge got suspicious and ordered both sides to explain whether they were actually opposing each other or just colluding. The day before that brief was due, Trump dropped the suit.
Same day, his Justice Department announced a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded “anti-weaponization fund.”
Trump gets a formal apology. The IRS agrees to drop any audits of him and his family, even though a 2024 Times report found a loss in an ongoing audit could cost him over $100 million.
The acting Attorney General, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, picks the five commissioners who decide who gets paid. Trump can fire any of them. Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are not ruled out.
This is the most corrupt thing I’ve ever seen from an American president.
Where in the hell are my Republican colleagues?
https://t.co/La0nlLuz1r
Trump negotiating the release of eight AI-generated Iranian women with himself on his private social media site has to be a new low in the history of relations between different factions of the Human species.
Truly pathetic.
I do not understand how you can look at Trump and see anything but the smallest, weakest and saddest of men.
So desperate for any validation, because deep down he knows he isn’t worth it.
@SteveNomadic@AmericanAir@SteveNomadic unrelated but curious. Was on an @AmericanAir 737-800 today. Missing part of the trailing edge flaps.
Obviously not outside of acceptable safety bounds or anything. Just never seen anything like it. Common?
Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network.
In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome.
AI safety and wide distribution of benefits are the core of our mission. Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.
We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should, which the DoW also wanted. We will deploy FDEs to help with our models and to ensure their safety, we will deploy on cloud networks only.
We are asking the DoW to offer these same terms to all AI companies, which in our opinion we think everyone should be willing to accept. We have expressed our strong desire to see things de-escalate away from legal and governmental actions and towards reasonable agreements.
We remain committed to serve all of humanity as best we can. The world is a complicated, messy, and sometimes dangerous place.
Trump is smart enough to realize that the House just established a precedent where lawmakers call former presidents in to testify under threat of contempt of Congress.
It's been more than 72 hours since the last precipitation fell in Washington, DC. Nearly every street in the city remains impassable, with many side streets receiving no attention whatsoever. Complete incompetence from @MayorBowser and @DCDPW.