What did Donald Trump do today?

He carried out a series of purges.

This afternoon, Trump began firing Justice Department and FBI personnel who were involved in the investigation and prosecution of January 6 criminal cases. Those targeted include most if not all of the senior leadership of the FBI, thirty senior federal prosecutors, and potentially thousands of FBI agents and staff. The January 6 investigations were the largest collective action ever taken by the Bureau, in part because of the number of criminal defendants, and in part because of the seriousness of the crimes committed. 

UPDATE, 2/1: The number of agents that were involved and would be subject to this loyalty purge is now estimated to be about 6,000. There are fewer than 14,000 FBI agents all told.

Trump had already fired the prosecutors involved in the criminal trials against him personally, and at least 18 independent inspectors general at federal agencies. It is illegal to fire most such employees except for cause. (Taking part in lawfully authorized investigations which yielded grand jury indictments and convictions at trial is not grounds for dismissal.)

Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll, who has indicated that he will not take part in an FBI purge, sent the following message tonight, in effect warning those under his command:

Colleagues,

We understand there's a lot of media reporting and rumors surrounding potential changes at the FBI. This includes reporting and rumors about actions that very seriously impact our workforce. Consistent with our commitment to share information with you as we receive it, acting Deputy Director Kissane and I wanted to provide you with an update.

Late this afternoon, I received a memo from the acting Deputy Attorney General [Emil Bove] notifying me that eight senior FBI executives are to be terminated by specific dates, unless these employees have retired beforehand. I have been personally in touch with each of these impacted employees. The memo also directs me to provide by noon on Tuesday, Feb. 4, the following:

"[A]ll current and former FBI personnel assigned at any time to investigations and/or prosecutions relating to (1) events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 and (2) United States v Haniyeh, et al., 24 Mag. 438 (S.D.N.Y.). These lists should include relevant supervisory personnel in FBI regional offices and field divisions, as well as at FBI headquarters. For each employee included in the list, provide the current title, office to which the person is assigned, role in the investigation or prosecution, and date of last activity relating to the investigation or prosecution. Upon timely receipt of the requested information, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General will commence a review process to determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary."

We understand that this request encompasses thousands of employees across the country who have supported these investigative efforts. I am one of those employees, as is acting Deputy Director Kissane. As we've said since the moment we agreed to take on these roles, we are going to follow the law, follow FBI policy, and do what's in the best interest of the workforce and the American people—always.

We will be back in touch with more information as soon as we can. In the meantime, stay safe, and take care of each other.

Brian J. Driscoll, Jr.

There are two immediate motives for these actions. One is that Trump, who is a convicted felon after prosecution on state charges unrelated to this purge of federal law enforcement, is characteristically seeking revenge.

The other is that he intends to make clear that anyone in government who acts against his political or personal interests will be forced to weigh the consequences of doing so. In the present climate, Trump is certainly expecting that will be taken as a threat against more than just their jobs. As the Washington Post reported tonight, FBI leadership now expects the names Trump hopes to collect to be released publicly, and was warning everyone from agents to low-level office staff to take precautions. Trump's allies, like recently-pardoned white supremacist militia leader Enrique Tarrio, have recently made public statements calling for retribution against government officials investigating the January 6 attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election and keep Trump in power.

Now that he is out, the Proud Boys leader wants revenge, [Tarrio] told Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist host of Info Wars.

“The people who did this, they need to feel the heat, they need to be put behind bars, and they need to be prosecuted,” Tarrio said.

“Success is going to be retribution,” he added. “We gotta do everything in our power to make sure that the next four years sets us up for the next 100 years.”

 
Kash Patel, Trump's nominee to lead the FBI and the author of a children's book glorifying Trump, has made similar threats against the people who would be under his authority. Trump recently gifted Patel $800,000 in stock, which was listed in SEC filings as "consideration for services provided."

Why does this matter?

• Loyalty purges, ideology tests for police, and governing by threat of mob violence is what happens in failing dictatorships.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He scrambled to find a way to blame women and minorities for a plane crash.

Last night, an American Airlines flight from Wichita was attempting to land at Washington's National Airport when it was struck by an Army helicopter. All 64 people on board the plane, and all three on the helicopter, were killed. It was the worst air disaster in the United States since 2001, when a passenger jet crashed in Queens.

Trump first weighed in shortly after midnight this morning via a post to his private social media network, observing that "this is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented." That post, and subsequent comments he made at a briefing this morning before any real investigation had taken place, seemed to assume that the military pilots had been in error. Then, at a briefing this morning, Trump eagerly jumped on the idea that somehow, unqualified women or minorities hired as air traffic controllers under previous administrations were to blame. 

There is not, and never has been, any system of racial or gender preference in the hiring of air traffic controllers.

That led to this exchange:

Q: You today blamed the diversity elements but then told us you that you weren’t sure that the controllers made any mistakes. You then said that perhaps the helicopter pilots were the ones who made mistakes—

TRUMP: It’s all under investigation.

Q:  I understand that, that’s why I’m trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash.

TRUMP: Because I have common sense, and unfortunately a lot of people don't. 

At several points, Trump tried to shift the blame to former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, whom he referred to in the present tense as though he were still in office. In fact, Trump's appointee to the post is a fellow reality TV star, Sean Duffy. The alumnus of MTV's The Real World and Road Rules spoke to reporters this morning, saying that "Obviously, it is not standard to have aircraft collide." He then added, "I want to be clear on that."

Trump has failed to fill other key offices related to aviation security, like the Administrator of the FAA. Normally, for a nonpartisan position like that, the current administrator would remain in office until their replacement could be confirmed. In this case, however, the previous administrator, Michael Whitaker, was forced out of office on Trump's first day by Elon Musk. Musk wields a substantial amount of power within the Trump administration, and targeted Whitaker because Musk's company SpaceX had been subject to fines and flight restrictions by the FAA for environmental and safety violations. The most recent of these happened on January 17, when the FAA temporarily grounded SpaceX after one of their experimental rockets blew up over a populated area.

Secretary Duffy was asked at this morning's briefing who was the acting head of the FAA, and walked away without answering. Reporting on the lack of FAA leadership eventually identified Chris Rocheleau as the acting administrator, but it was sourced to "people familiar with the matter" and could not be directly confirmed. (This afternoon, apparently stung by criticism over this internal confusion, Trump hastily appointed an acting FAA chief.)

Trump also made a point of firing the head of the Transportation Safety Administration and the Commandant of the Coast Guard for what he identified as ideological reasons—even though it was Trump who appointed the TSA head, David Pekoske, in the first place. Both agencies are involved in the investigation and rescue efforts. Similarly, he gutted the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, and forced a halt to purely routine aircraft safety regulation. 

Trump has frozen hiring of air traffic controllers, in defiance of a law mandating accelerated hiring to address critical shortages. This led to immediate concerns about the impact on safety, even during Trump's first week in office. The DCA tower was operating with half the normal complement of controllers. 

The order freezing staffing levels in place, which Trump signed on the first full day of his second term, was titled "Keeping Americans Safe in Aviation."

Why does this matter?

• Presidents who don't yet know what has happened in a crisis shouldn't pretend that they do.

• Believing that minorities and women are inherently unqualified for any given job is racism and sexism, not "common sense."

• The most important thing here is not whether Donald Trump can avoid having to take responsibility, and it's bad that that's what he seems most preoccupied by.

• In a meritocracy, the person put in charge of the Department of Transportation would know who was in charge of the FAA, and be able to do more than observe that aircraft don't normally collide.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He took his latest bribe from companies that want to be "in the tent."

A notable feature of Trump's second term has been the prominent and sudden support of billionaire CEOs from the tech industry. Some, like Trump's biggest 2024 campaign patron Elon Musk, are clearly pulling strings in the administration and exercising the powers of the presidency without any of the legal responsibilities that a real government official would have. 

But others, like Facebook/Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon CEO/Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, seem content to make sure they are on Trump's good side so that he doesn't use the power of the presidency against them.

Trump sued Zuckerberg's company Meta in 2021 for suspending his accounts on Facebook and Instagram after the January 6 coup attempt. The theory, which legal experts have called absurd, was that Facebook violated Trump's first amendment rights because it was acting in a government role when it suspended Trump—who was the actual President of the United States at the time—from its private network. The First Amendment protects against government censorship, but it does not require private companies to give everyone a platform. Trump had already lost an identical case against Twitter (prior to its purchase by Musk).

Today, Meta announced it was settling the suit for $25 million.

According to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, in a post-election dinner with Zuckerberg at Mar-a-Lago, Trump explicitly demanded that the suit be settled before Zuckerberg could be "brought into the tent" of his second administration. Trump had also threatened to have Zuckerberg imprisoned for unspecified crimes.

This is becoming a pattern with Trump. ABC News recently settled a similarly dubious suit with Trump, who had sued for defamation after George Stephanopoulos used the word "rape" to describe what a jury had found Trump civilly liable for in the E. Jean Carroll case. The judge in Carroll's defamation case had already noted in his ruling that what Trump had been found to have done fit the definition of the word "rape" as commonly used (distinct from its technical legal meaning in New York state law).

Also, just before the election, the parent company of CBS was debating whether to settle its suit with Trump, in this case over his claim that it was somehow unfair to edit pre-taped interviews for broadcast. In that case, it was Brendan Carr, Trump's pick for head of the FCC who warned Paramount Global executives that Trump would get in the way of a planned merger if they didn't settle.

Why does this matter?

• Having to pay bribes the leader to avoid being targeted by the government is what happens in tinpot dictatorships.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He broke the basic functioning of the federal government (or tried to).

Yesterday, news broke of a Trump memo ordering all executive branch departments to freeze virtually all grant and loan programs funded by the federal government indefinitely. Today, that order took effect, to enormous confusion and chaos.

A great deal of the federal government's work is done through third parties, whether that work has to do with science. education, national defense, agriculture, policing, services for veterans, or many other essential government functions. The organizations doing this work include state and local governments, nonprofits, private businesses, farms, schools, research centers, and government contractors. Many of them rely on these grants to make payroll or cover other operating expenses for the work they do on behalf of the government, so a sudden halt can immediately force programs employing American workers to shut down.

It is difficult to overstate the enormous number of programs familiar to ordinary Americans that this sudden stoppage of funding will affect—but also, because of confusion and internal contradictions created by the order, difficult to say exactly what would be affected. According to the Trump administration itself, in a document listing about 2,500 different programs, a very small fraction of them would include:

• Meals on Wheels (food aid to disabled senior citizens)
• home heating assistance
• family farm subsidies
• tools to prevent the spread of child sexual abuse material
• nuclear waste cleanup
• medical research through universities and hospitals
• police training and equipment purchase
• environmental cancer risk assessment
• after-school programs
• bridge inspections
• Department of Defense school programs (K-12 education for the children of U.S. military personnel)
• Fulbright scholarships
• municipal water testing
• Head Start programs (early childhood education)
• rural nursing availability programs
• homelessness prevention
• crop insurance
• child lead poisoning prevention and remediation
• counseling and suicide prevention for veterans
• the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
• local first responder support
• K-12 teacher training
• assistance marketing US goods in foreign countries
• Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food assistance for low-income families)
• rape kit testing
• school renovations
• community health centers
• school breakfast/lunches
• emergency drug treatment and intervention
• HIV prevention
• human trafficking prevention
• natural disaster relief and rebuilding
• instruction in languages critical for military and diplomatic purposes
• youth physical fitness 
• elder abuse investigation and prevention
• cybersecurity research
• renewable energy research
• small business innovation grants
• oil and gas mapping
• flood mitigation and prevention
• compensation for injured miners
• wildfire management
• reclaiming and repurposing abandoned pit mines
• carbon capture and sequestration
• monitoring of toxic spills
• Small Business Administration loans
• pipeline safety and security
• conservation of game lands

Trump administration officials who could be reached for comment were themselves uncertain as to which programs would be affected. Asked whether the freeze would affect Medicaid, press secretary Karoline Leavitt hesitated, then told reporters she would get back to them. 

90 million Americans receive medical care through Medicaid.

Later, the White House said Medicaid was exempt—and yet, state officials found they were locked out of Medicaid portals. Similar confusion played out over Pell grants, Head Start, and various food assistance programs. 

Under the constitution and federal law, Presidents have no authority to refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress for specific purposes, as virtually all federal grants and loans are. In particular, the president is explicitly barred for applying political litmus tests to appropriations passed into law by Congress. Trump's order said that he was withholding funding as a way of identifying and eliminating "wokeness," as well as "Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies."

The memo did not specify what part of suicide prevention programs for combat veterans was "woke," or whether it was infant nutritional programs or nuclear waste cleanup that was Marxist. 

Because red states tend to be the most heavily reliant on federal funds, Trump's freeze would affect his areas of greatest support first.

A federal judge issued an emergency injunction against the freeze that will stay in effect at least through Monday afternoon.

Why does this matter?

• Presidents don't get to pick and choose which parts of the law they follow, or which parts of their jobs they think Americans are entitled to.

• Even without going into effect, this created more chaos and dysfunction in the day-to-day business of the United States government than any hostile foreign power could hope to achieve.

• Even by Trump standards, this is a clusterfuck.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He fired at least four Justice Department officials for having worked on the federal criminal cases against him.

The Department of Justice today confirmed via a spokesperson that James McHenry, the Acting Attorney General, had fired "a number of DOJ officials who played a significant role in prosecuting President Trump." The statement also made clear that this had been done at Trump's behest.

NBC News is reporting that four career prosecutors—Molly Gaston, J.P. Cooney, Anne McNamara and Mary Dohrmann—were among those Trump fired.

None of the prosecutors or investigators on Special Counsel Jack Smith's team were political appointees. All of them were assigned to the case as part of their normal duties.

Trump was indicted by two separate federal grand juries for felonies related to his attempts to stay in office in defiance of the 2020 election results, and his theft of and refusal to return boxes of highly classified government documents that he took from the White House and stashed at his private residence in Florida. His order firing people who investigated those crimes does not extend to state officials in Georgia prosecuting him for election fraud there. It also does not affect the New York City prosecutors who saw him convicted of 34 felonies related to his payment of "hush money" to a porn actress to conceal an affair.

Firing government employees without cause has been illegal for almost as long as the United States has had a civil service, but one of Trump's first-day acts was to sign an executive order redefining these and other non-political jobs as policy positions. This was a cornerstone of the ultra-conservative Project 2025, which became a political liability for Trump during the 2024 campaign. He denounced it on the campaign trail and denied it had anything to do with him, even though 144 of his former White House staff and campaign officials worked on it. He has since reappointed many of those same people to new roles and instructed them to implement Project 2025 orders.

The DOJ statement claimed that it was necessary to fire nonpolitical career public servants in order to end the "weaponization of politics."

Why does this matter?

• The government of the United States does not exist to satisfy Donald Trump's need for revenge.

• Purges of supposed enemies and loyalty tests are what authoritarian regimes do.

• It's wrong to lie to your own supporters about what you believe and what you plan to do if elected.

What did Donald Trump do today?

UPDATE: Shortly after this was posted, the Trump administration announced that the "Government of Colombia has agreed to all of President Trump’s terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on U.S. military aircraft, without limitation or delay." As a result, the statement said, the tariffs and other sanctions would not go into effect. In reality, what appears to have happened is that it was Trump who yielded to the single demand of Colombia's government, which is that deportees be treated humanely and, among other things, not put in leg shackles.

He got mad at an ally and imposed a punitive tariff that will raise grocery prices for Americans.

While Trump is not the president that has deported the most people—that would be President Biden, whom Trump accused of being soft on immigration—he has made appearing to be tough on undocumented immigrants a keystone of his presidency. During his first term, Trump talked endlessly about his new border fence, which was almost comically easy for illegal border-crossers to defeat, but got almost none of it built. 

To take a more recent example, ICE conducted an unusual raid in Chicago today, with TV celebrity therapist "Doctor Phil" McGraw embedded to draw attention to it. Contrary to what McGraw appeared to be hoping for, however, there have been no reports of armed gangs of undocumented workers getting into firefights with ICE agents.

Normally, ICE uses commercial charter flights to return deportees to their countries of origin. This process is uncontroversial. Trump, however, has insisted on using military planes to deliver deportees. Mexico and Colombia have refused these flights, citing concerns about the treatment of deportees in military custody and issues of national sovereignty. Colombia, in particular, objected to their citizens being put in shackles.

Each such military flight costs roughly $800,000, while an equivalent number of charter flights costs about $100,000 or one-eighth as much.

Today, Trump lashed out at Colombia, saying that he would impose an immediate 25% tariff on Colombian products, and raise it to 50% after a week. As always, this tax on consumer goods Americans want to buy would be passed along to them in the form of higher prices.

Colombia is the second-largest exporter of coffee to the United States. 73% of Americans drink coffee every day. Prices are already at record highs due to bad weather in Brazil. The United States grows only a tiny amount of coffee domestically, in Hawai'i.

Coffee isn't the only breakfast item Trump has impacted in his first week back in office. Trump campaigned on bringing down "the price of eggs," which have recently hit record highs due as egg producers deal with the H5N1 "bird flu." The public health agencies that normally help deal with this sort of thing are under a Trump-ordered communications blackout, and the National Institutes for Health has had its grants frozen and its clinical trials halted. 

Colombian President Gustavo Petro immediately promised retaliatory tariffs and noted that there are more than 15,000 Americans living without documents in the United States—but not being treated as criminals or being taken into Colombian military custody.

Why does this matter?

• A foreign policy that only hurts Americans is bad American foreign policy.

• Other countries are not powerless, even if the President of the United States wishes they were.

• There is a difference between looking tough and getting results.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One tonight, Trump said that ethnic Palestinians living in or recently displaced from the Israeli-occupied Gaza territory should be removed to Egypt or Jordan.

The term for the systematic and forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area is "ethnic cleansing." It is a crime against humanity under international law that the United States played a leading role in establishing.

Precisely what constitutes ethnic cleansing can be a matter of debate, especially because it is often only a prelude to the even more horrific crime of genocide. Examples of ethnic cleansing from modern history include, but are not limited to:

• the repeated forced resettlement of Native Americans into reservations
• the expulsion of Greeks and Armenians from Turkey during and after World War One (as part of larger genocidal campaigns)
• a series of twentieth-century campaigns by China against ethnic Tibetans
• German state harassment of Jews and Romani leading to mass immigration prior to the start of the Holocaust
• the expulsion of Muslims from post-partition India
• the campaign by the Khmer Rouge against non-Cambodian ethnic minorities between the 1960s and 1980s
• the exodus under threat of Iraqi Christians in the 21st century
• the forced migration of 900,000-1.6 million Ukrainians into Russia from Russian-occupied provinces in eastern Ukraine
  
  

Full audio of Trump's remarks is available here. His call for ethnic cleansing starts at about the 11-minute mark.

Why does this matter?

• Even by Trump's standards, this is abhorrent.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He called attention to the fact that he was stripping security details from people he thinks of as political enemies.

Today, Trump leaked that he had revoked the security detail for Dr. Anthony Fauci. This follows similar announcements earlier this week about John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. All three men worked in the Trump administration: Fauci as the point person for the COVID-19 response, Bolton as National Security Advisor, and Pompeo as Secretary of State. Trump regards all three as political enemies, and all three have been the target of death threats—Fauci from Trump's own supporters, and Bolton and Pompeo from the Iranian government.

The 84-year-old Fauci became an object of Trump's wrath when he was forced to publicly correct some of Trump's more ridiculous statements during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the moments of highest tension, Trump floated the prospect of phony miracle cures, confused vaccines with medicines, and—famously—wondered out loud if Americans might not be able to protect themselves by taking bleach or other household disinfectants.

Since then, Trump has tried to downplay Fauci's role, and run in the direction of people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose fringe views on health don't require him to correct Trump. But close Trump surrogates have publicly called for Fauci to be jailed for his role in what was, ultimately, Trump's deeply unpopular handling of the deadliest public health debacle in recent American history.

Trump made a point of confirming that Fauci was no longer receiving protection while speaking to reporters today. He also emphasized that if Fauci were attacked, he'd feel no responsibility.

"You can't have a security detail for the rest of your life because you worked for government," Trump added. Trump will receive a security detail for the rest of his life because he worked for government.

Why does this matter?

• This is called stochastic terrorism.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said that Ukraine should not have resisted Russia's attempt to invade the country and destroy its government.

In an interview released today, Trump said the following on the subject of Ukraine:

Zelenskyy, I will say, he wants to settle now. He's had enough. He shouldn't have allowed this to happen either. He's no angel. He shouldn't have allowed this war to happen. First of all, he’s fighting a much bigger entity, okay, much bigger. …Zelensky was fighting a much bigger entity, much bigger, much more powerful. He shouldn’t have done that, because we could have made a deal, and it would have been a deal that would have been, it would have been a nothing deal. I coulda made that deal so easily. And Zelenskyy decided that 'I want to fight.' You know… They have 30,000 army tanks. Russia has 30,000 army tanks. Zelenskyy had none, practically. You don't fight—those. Now then we started pouring equipment, pouring pouring pouring, and they had the bravery to use the equipment, but in the end—that's a war has to be settled.

In other words, taking Trump's words at face value, he believes that a country that suffered a surprise invasion by a superior military force was at fault for "allowing this war to happen."

In reality, Russia invaded eastern Ukraine in February 2022 and nearly seized control of the capital, Kyiv. It currently occupies 20% of the territory of Ukraine. The Putin regime's initial war plan was to occupy the entire country and decapitate its government. In the areas it controls, Russia is committing human rights violations, and has forced mass evacuations which have led to the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. Experts estimate that more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed, and 14,000 taken prisoner. At least 60,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed.

As of this evening, neither Trump nor his staff have elaborated on his claim that a sovereign nation being invaded should not have tried to defend itself. 

Trump has also not explained how he could have negotiated a deal for "nothing" to end the invasion when the Putin regime has been willing to trade hundreds of thousands of its own troops' lives and wreck its own economy just for a fraction of the full-scale occupation it had hoped for.

Trump is not a neutral third party in Russia-Ukraine war. He was impeached for the first time over his attempt to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to create a fake investigation that would smear Trump's likely rival for the presidency, Joe Biden. Trump also demanded that Zelenskyy falsely admit that Ukrainian actors (and not Russia) had interfered in the 2016 election. As part of the pressure campaign to force Zelenskyy to comply, Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine, which was already pushing back Russian incursions into its territory.

As a report released by the Republican-controlled Senate in 2020 made clear, Russian interfered in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf by committing acts of espionage and cybercrimes, promoting disinformation on social media, and collaborating with Trump campaign officials. Trump himself specifically asked the Putin regime for help on live TV, and Russian state actors launched a cyberattack against the Hillary Clinton campaign the next day. 

Before turning to politics, Trump was financially dependent on Russian oligarchs to keep his real estate businesses afloat. More recently, he forced Congressional Republicans to oust the chair of the House Intelligence Committee because he was too critical of the Putin regime. 

Why does this matter?

• If Trump actually believes that an ally of the United States should surrender to a hostile foreign power without firing a shot, he's not fit to command the United States military forces.

• It's a problem for the entire world to have the President of the United States beholden to a regime that is hostile to the United States.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He attacked a bishop for giving a sermon about loving one's neighbor.

On Tuesday, Trump attended a prayer service at Washington's National Cathedral. The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, the Right Reverend Marian Edgar Budde, gave a sermon in which she asked Trump to show mercy and compassion towards refugees and children who feared he would take their parents away. 

Budde spoke softly and haltingly, and did not criticize Trump, but spoke of their shared faith and belief in a providential God. She concluded: "I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here."

Trump has said he is a Christian and has accepted the support of politically conservative religious leaders. He has claimed that God miraculously intervened to save him during the attempt on his life this summer. Christianity, and in particular the teachings of Jesus Christ, has a great deal to say about mercy and compassion towards those who travel to foreign lands and seek refuge there. 

Trump did not respond well to being spoken to about mercy and compassion, and was visibly angry when asked about it by reporters on Tuesday. Early this morning, still fuming, he ranted about it on his private social media site. He called Budde "not smart" and "boring" and that it was "inappropriate" for her to address him. He also called her "nasty," which is his go-to insult for women who have upset him (as well as Ted Cruz).

Trump demanded that Budde apologize. Budde, who has received threats of violence since the sermon, has declined to do so, but acknowledged today that she misjudged how sensitive Trump would be to even a meekly-phrased request to consider what Jesus's teachings required of him. She said that she'd hoped that he would be willing to listen because she spoke gently and was "acknowledging his authority and his power," adding, "I guess I had that wrong."

This is not Trump's first clash with an Episcopal cleric. Church leaders, including Budde, were outraged in 2020 when Trump ordered the military to attack protestors with tear gas so that he could pose for a photo brandishing a Bible in front of St. John's Church, which is across the street from the White House.

Why does this matter?

• No one who cannot abide being asked to do right is fit to be president.

• It is right and appropriate that citizens be allowed to remind their leaders of their moral responsibilities.

• Americans who voted for Trump because they believed in his Christian faith might not like how he reacts to sermons asking him to reflect on the teachings of Jesus.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said he didn't know why he'd pardoned people who physically attacked police officers.

Trump held a press conference today, during which the following exchange with Peter Alexander of NBC News took place:

REPORTER: You would agree it's never acceptable to assault police officers?

TRUMP: Sure.

REPORTER: So then, if I can, among those you pardoned, D.J. Rodriguez, he drove a stun gun into the neck of a DC police officer who was abducted by the mob that day. He later confessed on video to the FBI and pleaded guilty for his crimes. Why does he deserve a pardon?

TRUMP: Well, I don't know. Was it a pardon? Because we're looking at commutes [sic] and we're looking at pardons.

REPORTER: It was a pardon.

TRUMP: Okay, well, we'll take a look at everything, but I can say this. Murderers today aren't charged. You have murderers that aren't charged. All over. You take a look at what's gone on in Philadelphia. You take a look at what's gone off in L.A. Where people murder people and they don't get charged. These people have already served years in prison and they've served them viciously. It's a disgusting prison. It's horrible, it's inhumane. It's been a terrible terrible thing

Trump then went on to say that the real criminals were the police officers pardoned by President Biden in an attempt to prevent them from being the victim of revenge from Trump because they'd testified in front of the House Jan. 6 Committee.

TRUMP: Joe Biden gave a pardon yesterday to a lot of criminals. These are criminals that he gave a pardon to. And you should be asking that question. Why did he give a pardon to all of these people that committed crimes? Why did he give a pardon to the J6 unselect committee?

It's not entirely clear from Trump's response—"we'll take a look at everything"—that he knew he'd already pardoned Rodriguez, or perhaps thought that the decision could be undone. (It cannot.) 

It's also not clear what "disgusting prison" or "inhumane" conditions Trump was referring to. The convicted Jan. 6 criminals who were sentenced to jail were not held in any particular prison, but were scattered throughout the federal prison system along with all other criminals according to their sentence and their places of residence. (Trump is himself a convicted felon, but has never been imprisoned or jailed.)

Notably, in one of yesterday's executive orders, Trump demanded that the Justice Department make sure that those convicts whose death sentence had been commuted by President Biden were "imprisoned in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes."

Trump's decision to pardon all of the people who participated in the Jan. 6 coup attempt, including violent militia leaders like Enrique Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes, came as a surprise to a number of Republicans—including his own vice-president. Barely a week ago, J.D. Vance told reporters that Trump "obviously" would not pardon "violent" rioters who attacked police. It's not clear whether Trump lied to Vance, or whether Vance was never in the loop regarding Trump's actual plans.

Why does this matter?

• Prison isn't supposed to be fun, even if you commit violent crimes on behalf of a grateful politician. 

• Prison isn't supposed to be torture, even if your violent crimes weren't political.

• It's bad if the president isn't sure what he's done or why he's done it by his second day in office.

• Using violence to get political power is the core of fascism and the opposite of democracy.

As a reminder, this site takes note of one thing Donald Trump does each day—even on days like today, when he does many things. It may not be the most consequential thing, or the most outrageous thing, or the thing that ends up being the headline the next day. That's a deliberate choice: one thing is enough. Trump's presidency will last, at most, 1,460 days—assuming he intends to observe the constitutional  term limit. (He's hedged his bets on that.) There will always be something: in the first four years this site ran, there were a few days we took off, but there was never a day that Trump didn't do something that virtually any American—liberal, conservative, moderate, or none of the above—would have a problem with. People can disagree about what Trump represents. What he does, we address here—one thing at a time. Good luck to us all.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He celebrated himself as only he can, and literally only he ever has.

Trump spent much of the day signing orders and proclamations. Some, like his order declaring that his administration would not recognize citizenship as it is defined in the Constitution, were mostly symbolic. Others, like his pardon of virtually everyone convicted of taking part in the violent riot he orchestrated to try to remain in power, will have vast and unpredictable consequences. 

The very first official act of his presidency, however, was solely for his own personal satisfaction: he ordered that the national period of mourning for former president Jimmy Carter be suspended so that American flags could fly at full staff.

By longstanding tradition, American flags must fly at half-staff for a period of 30 days after the death of a president. That period has overlapped with inaugurations before, most recently when Harry Truman died shortly before Richard Nixon's second inauguration. Nixon was also the only president to temporarily suspend that order, during the mourning period for another of his predecessors, Lyndon Johnson. In that case, however, it was specifically to honor returning American prisoners of war, not Nixon himself.

There is no question that Trump takes these sorts of things very, very seriously and personally. He was furious when, after the death of Sen. John McCain, flags were lowered in accordance with law and custom. Trump loathed McCain, famously mocking him for having been a prisoner of war, and issued an order countermanding the gesture of respect. He eventually backed down after veterans' groups responded with outrage.

Trump also made a deliberate show of waiting until the end of a day of golfing to order flags lowered for civil rights pioneer Rep. John Lewis, with whom he had frequently clashed. And when Rep. John Dingell died, Trump tried to convince his widow that Dingell had received military honors at his funeral only as a favor from Trump. As a veteran of World War II, Dingell was entitled to them and would have received them in any case.

Why does this matter?

• Honoring the memory of a former president shouldn't threaten a sitting president.

• Even by Trump standards, making this the very first act of his second term in office is a lot of ego-soothing.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He couldn't tell the difference between his policies and a parody of them.

Recently, Twitter user "TomHoman_" tweeted this:

From New York to Massachusetts to California, a bunch of politicians are about to become felons.

And it's going to be glorious to watch all the anti-American garbage get arrested.

Review Title 8 U.S.C. §1324—It's a Felony to harbor illegal aliens.

Trump, apparently thinking this was an actual post from his border czar-designate Tom Homan, reposted it to his private social media site. 

But the author is just impersonating the actual Homan, and—at least to the extent that Trump intends to follow the law—he won't be able to have "politicians" arrested for not agreeing with his immigration policy.

The law that fake Tom Homan cited does exist and does deal with knowingly trafficking noncitizens for various criminal purposes, but local officials leaving federal law enforcement to federal officers isn't a crime. However, 8 U.S.C. §1324 does provide that

any person who, during any 12-month period, knowingly hires for employment at least 10 individuals with actual knowledge that the individuals are aliens described in subparagraph (B) shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or both.

Trump, a convicted felon, owns businesses that have been caught hiring undocumented workers at his resorts and construction projects many times, including during his first term. He has excused himself on the grounds that "everybody does it."

Why does this matter?

• Presidents should be able to tell the difference between their own policies and fake caricatures of them.

• It's not good if a president can be fooled by a level of username spoofing that wouldn't fool most grade-schoolers.

• Someone who was serious about reducing immigration crimes would probably start by committing  fewer of them.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He made a few paper billions on a cryptocurrency that even crypto diehards are calling a scam.

Trump, at 78, is famously unconcerned with the details of modern computing. Although he has the social media appetite of someone a quarter his age, he tends to envision computers the way they appeared in 1980s movies like War Games. For example, his answer to beefing up cybersecurity during his first term was to suggest that businesses send sensitive information via bike messenger.

Since allying himself with tech billionaires, though, Trump has learned to love at least one newfangled computer concept: cryptocurrency. Last night, he began selling a "token" with no intrinsic value, and not even the scarcity value of proof-of-work-based cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Instead, "$TRUMP" is a tradable digital certificate that confers nothing more than bragging rights. 

Today, Trump's net worth had—at least in theory—increased by billions of dollars as a result of the market price of the tokens, most of which he still owns.

There are two reasons, other than fandom, that people might buy these tokens. One, which drives many such fad currencies, is what is known as the greater fool theory. Something that is intrinsically worthless can still yield profit for an investor as long as there is a "greater fool" to resell it to. Ultimately, of course, the last investor is stuck having paid top dollar for a worthless and unsellable investment, at which point the bubble collapses.

Collapsing price bubbles tend to damage economies even when most people are not buying into the bubble. A bursting bubble in Florida land prices was a major cause of the Great Depression, for example. In modern regulated financial markets, the pump-and-dump mechanisms that enable those who want to stalk the "greater fool" are illegal. 

But crypto is still, for the most part, a sort of Wild West—something Trump used to understand.

This time around, though, Trump made keeping cryptocurrencies unregulated and forcing the government to spend actual dollars to buy them a central part of his campaign platform.

The other reason that investors might want to pump up the value of Trump's "tokens" is as a form of indirect bribery. Buyers are only as secret as they want to be, and Trump—who has made no secret of the fact that his access and goodwill can be bought—would be in a position to know who to reward or punish based on their token purchases without money directly changing hands in a way that would be visible to law enforcement. 

Crypto industry diehards have said that the unusual structure of Trump's "coin" offering gives buyers terrible terms, with Trump in a position to flood the market or cash out without any of the usual restrictions. Anthony Scaramucci, a crypto booster who was briefly Trump's press secretary during his first term, called it "Idi Amin-level corruption."

Why does this matter?

• The security and economic stability of the United States is more important than Donald Trump getting a few more billion dollars.
  
  
• Elected officials who aren't looking to sell their influence don't do everything possible to make sure people can buy it.
  
  
• It's probably a bad sign if people who were in a president's inner circle are comparing him to one of the most corrupt dictators of modern history.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He moved his inauguration indoors, although probably not for the reasons he claimed.

Temperatures for Trump's inauguration on Monday are expected to be below freezing. Today, he announced on his private social media network that the ceremony would be held indoors, in the Capitol Rotunda, where four years ago rioters trying to keep him in power forced Congress to abandon its attempts to certify the vote for President Biden.

Trump claimed in his post that his concern was for the safety of attendees, but that seems unlikely. He has a long history of abandoning people attending his rallies to both extreme heat and extreme cold. Trump famously spent most of his first day as president in 2017 furious at coverage showing the unusually small crowds.

Turnout is once again expected to be poor. Hotel availability is a good barometer for attendance, and—just as was the case for his notoriously underwhelming 2017 inauguration—there are a lot of empty rooms in Washington, D.C. this weekend.

Why does this matter?

• It's bad when presidents lie to the public, even if it's just to soothe their own egos.

• Someone who is being inaugurated as president but is still upset about whether they seem popular enough probably isn't emotionally fit for the office.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He appointed three "ambassadors" to "Hollywood," but forgot to tell them.

Today, Trump announced on his private social media site that he was appointing three former movie stars as "special ambassadors" to Hollywood. He didn't say what they were supposed to do. All three men he "appointed"—Jon Voight, Sylvester Stallone, and Mel Gibson—endorsed him in the past election. Gibson, at 69, is the youngest of the three. 

As is often the case lately, both Trump's staff and the targets of these "appointments" were unaware of his intentions before he put them online. 

While this may seem trivial, it is part of a larger pattern that is emerging with Trump. He's declared a number of fictional "ambassadorships" and "departments" and "agencies" for his allies and supporters, to say nothing of "White House advisor" titles for relatives and donors. None of them have any legal authority unless and until Congress authorizes them and budgets for them, which seems unlikely—but they can exert real influence over Americans' lives with none of the accountability or conflict of interest rules that real government employees are bound by.

Trump's last actual advisory council on the arts resigned en masse in 2017 when he praised the neo-Nazis at the deadly Charlottesville riots as "very fine people."

Why does this matter?

• There's more to governing the country than handing out party favors to friends.

• Lack of fictional ambassadors is not the biggest problem LA is facing right now.

• It's not totally clear Trump understands what he is (or isn't) doing here.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He forced the removal of an anti-Putin Congressman as chair of an intelligence oversight committee.

Rep. Mike Turner (R-LA) has been chair of the House Intelligence Committee since Republicans gained a majority in 2018. He is a conservative Republican who has generally been in Trump's good graces. Turner defended Trump when the stolen classified documents scandal erupted, calling it "more like a bookkeeping issue than it is a national security threat," and helped walk back Trump's ominous declaration that there would be a "bloodbath" if he weren't re-elected.

But Turner is also staunchly pro-NATO, pro-Ukraine, and has spoken out against the propaganda efforts of the Putin regime. Today, he told reporters that he was being forced out of his chairmanship of the intelligence committee by Speaker Mike Johnson, on orders from Trump.

After the news broke, Johnson insisted to reporters that Turner's ouster was "not a President Trump decision," but he had already told Turner privately that the reason was because of "concerns from Mar-a-Lago."

The United States is a military ally of Ukraine and Russia is a hostile foreign power, but Trump's personal loyalties and sentiments have long run in the opposite direction. He was elected in 2016 in part due to Russian interference in the election, has been financially dependent on Russian oligarchs to keep his real estate investment solvent. Trump tried to blackmail the government of Ukraine during his first term by threatening to withhold urgent military aid unless they too tried to influence the 2020 election by opening a fake investigation into his likely opponent Joe Biden, for which he was impeached. He has recently suggested that he would force Ukraine to accept a peace settlement on Russian terms.

Trump's purge of Turner is not the only pro-Russia move he has made recently. His nominee for Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has been an open advocate for the Putin regime in American politics. She has boosted discredited Russian propaganda about Ukrainian bioweapon research, defended the Putin regime's decision to invade on the grounds that Ukraine was too friendly with the United States, and met secretly with Russian allies. Her potential elevation to the nation's top intelligence post has been enthusiastically trumpeted as a win by Russian state media.

Why does this matter?

• America's loyalties don't change just because the president feels obligated to the dictator of hostile country.
  
  
• Congress is supposed to be a co-equal branch of government, not the president's personal Politburo.

• There's no difference between a president who really is the puppet of an enemy nation, and one who simply always does what an enemy nation would want.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said he'd invent a new government agency to collect taxes already collected by an existing government agency.

Today, Trump announced that he would "create" a new agency to collect tariffs. There is already such an agency: Customs and Border Protection. ("Customs" is another word for tariff.)

It's not clear why Trump made this announcement, which his staff was apparently not aware of. There is a growing disconnect between what Trump is determined to do on tariffs and what even his closest supporters are willing to tolerate. 

Tariffs are taxes imposed on imported goods, which are initially paid by American importers, and then those costs are passed along to American consumers in the form of higher prices. His latest proposals would amount to an average tax increase of $2,045 per household. 

Trump apparently genuinely believes that the federal government can be funded mainly by tariffs, as it was in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. At present, tariffs make up about 2% of all federal revenues. 

Presidents cannot simply create agencies or change how existing ones work without a law being passed through Congress, and the Republican-controlled Congress is in no mood to encourage Trump's tariff obsession.

Why does this matter?

• Voters who heard Trump campaign on tax cuts might have thought he'd cut their taxes, not raise them.

• If an idea is so bad that even your strongest supporters won't agree with it, the solution isn't to tweet about it without checking first.

• Presidents should have at least a basic high school-level understanding of the economy.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He made one last desperate attempt to prevent the release of the report on his Jan. 6 activities (and failed).

As required by law, outgoing special counsel Jack Smith has compiled a two-volume report summarizing the results of his investigations into Trump. This was divided into two volumes. The first deals with Trump's actions in furtherance of his conspiracy to remain in office in spite of the results of the 2020 election, including but not limited to his role in the January 6th riot that nearly prevented Congress from acting to certify President Biden's victory. The second deals with the actions undertaken by Trump and several of his employees to, in effect, steal classified government documents and hide them in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom. 

The judge in his classified documents trial, Aileen Cannon—herself a Trump appointee—issued an injunction last week preventing either from being released, even though her case had nothing to do with the election interference case. Following a ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturning that blanket order, she instructed that the election interference material (Volume I) could be released after three days—meaning midnight tonight.

With just a few hours to go, Trump made one last desperate attempt to keep the report secret long enough for him to take office and—presumably—bury it forever, or at least as long as he remains in power. His legal pleading called it an "attempt to interfere with an incoming Presidential administration in this manner, let alone on the very eve of inauguration by means of a false report issued by a discredited prosecutor who has now resigned in disgrace."

(It is true that Smith resigned—because his investigation was complete and the Department of Justice has acknowledged that Trump will never permit any criminal investigation into himself or his allies. Trump remains at risk of federal prosecution in both cases, though not while he is in office.)

At 11:30 PM, Cannon issued an order denying Trump's motion. It was couched in dry legal language, and suggests that she had no ability to rule otherwise, although that is not strictly true. At worst, she would likely have been overruled by the 11th Circuit again, something that has happened quite often since the man who appointed her became a criminal defendant in her court.

As of the time this post was published, it is not clear what—other than Americans being reminded of a coup attempt that played out mostly in full view of the cameras—Trump is so afraid of. He and his lawyers have seen the report, which may contain damning or embarrassing information not previously made public. 

UPDATE: Volume I has been released and is available here.

Why does this matter?

• In a democracy, government officials don't get to disappear evidence of their wrongdoing just because it might embarrass them or hurt them politically.

• In a democracy, nobody is supposed to be above the law—and if they are, that doesn't mean that some small measure of accountability is an "unfair attack."

• The American people might be interested in knowing who they've elected.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He leaked yet another walkback of his campaign promises.

Vice-President-elect JD Vance has been all but invisible since the election, overshadowed by the more flamboyant and—according to Trump's staffers—more influential figure of Elon Musk. Today, however, he was dispatched to Fox News Sunday to temper Trump supporters' expectations about a key campaign promise: pardons for the people who attempted to disrupt the certification of President Biden's victory on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to keep Trump in power somehow.

Trump has taken to calling the more than 1,200 people convicted for their crimes that day "hostages," and repeatedly promised to pardon them on his first day in office. But Vance issued a critically different version of that promise today—that Trump would pardon those not convicted of violent offenses.

Vance did not say precisely what would count as violent. Hundreds of the rioters were present when windows and doors were smashed, law enforcement officers were beaten and attacked with chemical weapons, and rioters stalked the halls of the Capitol looking for specific members of Congress. More than 1,000 separate assaults on law enforcement alone have been documented by the Justice Department. By a common-sense definition of violence, virtually none of the people arrested for Jan. 6 crimes would qualify for a pardon by Vance's criterion.

For their part, those convicted of crimes that day have almost unanimously maintained that they were there on Trump's direct orders as President, and that they believed they were acting on his authority. Trump himself did everything he could to further that impression on the day, resisting increasingly urgent demands from both parties to call them off.

Trump was impeached a second time for his role in the attack, and a full report of the crimes for which he was indicted in connection with the events of January 6 is expected to be issued soon.

Trump may simply be letting himself be carried along by the political winds. Pardons for Jan. 6 criminals are deeply unpopular.

Andy Steven Oliva-Lopez bear-spraying police at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.(Joseph Prezioso / AFP via Getty Images file)

A gallows erected by protestors calling for then-Vice-President Mike Pence to be hanged. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)

Capitol Police officer Daniel Hodges is crushed in a doorway by rioters. (Washington Police Department)

Dozens of rioters attempt to surround and trample law enforcement. (Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images, FILE)

Trump exhorts supporters to "Save America" by marching on the Capitol shortly before violence broke out. (Pete Marovich / NYT)

Why does this matter?

• Using mobs to cling to power and then discarding them when they become inconvenient is what dictators do.

• Presidents who don't want to keep their campaign promises shouldn't make them in the first place—especially if they're unpopular and horrendous.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He told Republicans to figure out a way to make the burden of his 2017 tax bill a little more bearable for people in blue states—if they were rich enough.

During his first term, Trump repeatedly tried and failed to get substantial legislation passed on a number of Republican priorities: repealing the Affordable Care Act, passing an infrastructure bill, or even "building the wall." Some of this was due to self-inflicted wounds, but in a number of cases the Republican majorities in Congress simply refused to go along with what they saw as Trump's most outlandish (and unpopular) ideas. 

Perhaps the only significant legislation passed in Trump's whole first term was his 2017 tax cut package. It was intended to, and succeeded in, reducing the share of tax paid by the wealthiest Americans. It contained a number of special provisions that benefited extremely wealthy people whose businesses were structured precisely the way Trump's own businesses were. Because the government was collecting less money, it also caused a spike in the budget deficit, something Trump had promised to eliminate entirely.

By contrast, low- and middle-income Americans saw little or no change in their tax bills—unless they lived in certain states with relatively high state income taxes like New York, New Jersey, or California. Previously, state and local taxes (SALT) were deductible, but under Trump's plan, that deduction was capped at $10,000. That amounted to a de facto tax increase for people in states politically opposed to Trump.

When elected officials from those states—including Republicans—complained about the effect of that local tax hike, Trump blamed them, saying that they should have "put up a fight" because they "could have won."

Today, with making all of those changes permanent a big part of the upcoming legislative agenda, Congressional Republicans from those more prosperous states tried again. This time, Trump simply told them to come up with a "fair number," effectively abandoning the point. 

Republicans in attendance, already deeply skeptical about Trump's proposed budget legislation, were quick to take the win, but Trump's abrupt apathy on the subject is notable. Assuming Trump understood what he was saying, it would effectively be an admission that the SALT cap was punitive towards blue states. However—since letting middle- and high-income taxpayers in these states lower their federal tax burden, the government will take in less money—it also suggests that Trump is no longer even going to pretend to try to reduce the budget deficit, which rose every year under Trump's first term. 

Walking back campaign promises has been a theme of this weekend: elsewhere, Trump's future immigration czar admitted that actual deportations of undocumented immigrants would be nothing like what Trump had promised, and Trump's patron Elon Musk cut the "cost-cutting" target of his advisory board's recommendations in half. Not long ago, Trump himself tried to backpedal from the central theme of his entire campaign, admitting that it would be "very hard" to reduce inflation beneath its current very low level.

Why does this matter?

• People who voted for Trump based on things he promised to do might have expected him to try to do some of them.

• How much tax you pay isn't supposed to depend on whether or not you're in the President's good graces.