“The Iranian government ordered an operative to assassinate Donald Trump before the 2024 election, Manhattan federal prosecutors said Friday, the latest in a string of assassination plots directed at the former and future president in recent months.
Prosecutors charged Farhad Shakeri with murder-for-hire and providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization. He is believed to be in Iran and remains at large, prosecutors said.”
…
“According to a criminal complaint unsealed in Manhattan federal court, Shakeri said during an FBI interview that in September he was directed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran to surveil and kill Trump, whom the charging papers identify as “Victim-4.”
When Shakeri told an IRGC official that doing so would prove expensive, the official responded that “money’s not an issue,” which Shakeri “understood to mean that the IRGC previously had spent a significant sum of money on efforts to murder Victim-4 and was willing to continue spending a lot of money in its attempt to procure Victim-4’s assassination,” according to the charging papers.
One month later, on Oct. 7, according to prosecutors, the IRGC ordered Shakeri to put forward a plan to assassinate Trump within one week and, if that proved impossible, to pause the plan until after Election Day, because the IRGC assumed Trump would lose, making him easier to kill. According to the complaint, Shakeri claimed in the FBI interview that he didn’t “intend to propose a plan to murder” Trump within the timeframe dictated by the IRGC official.”
“his victory virtually guarantees that he will never face serious legal accountability for an avalanche of alleged wrongdoing.”
…
“Even the civil cases against him will now face new obstacles. Presidents can, in some circumstances, be subject to civil penalties from private lawsuits, but Trump will surely try to use the cloak of the presidency to avoid paying the hundreds of millions of dollars he owes in judgments for sexual abuse, defamation and corporate fraud.”
“She doesn’t seek or attract attention.
She has a hand and a say in just about everything he does and every decision that’s made. I talked to more than 100 people for the profile I wrote earlier this year, and there’s some disagreement about how exactly she does that. But there’s no debate whatsoever about her constitutional allergy to the limelight.
Since Donald Trump became the dominant figure in American politics, nobody has been this important and this close to him in this role for this long. Nobody. That she’s going to be his chief of staff is news in only the most technical sense — because in reality it’s simply a continuation of what she’s been to him for the last four years. And in 2016 and 2020, too, she helmed his Florida operation.”
…
“She’s in the past described herself as “a moderate on the political spectrum” but she talks as much about disposition as ideology. “I come from a very traditional background. In my early career things like manners mattered and there was an expected level of decorum,” she told me earlier this year. “And so I get it that the GOP of today is different. There are changes we must live with in order to get done the things we’re trying to do.” There’s certainly a way to see and study the evolution of the Republican Party over the last half-century through the lens of her long career. So what does she believe? She believes in working and working hard for the person she’s working for. She believes in being valuable to the principal.”
…
“There’s a legitimate mutual respect. He listens to her. She brings to the rooms she’s in with him a certain equanimity. They’re in many ways very, very different, but they also recognize something in each other. She’s smart, she’s competitive, and she can be, in her own out-of-the-way, soft-spoken, “who, me?” manner, pretty cutthroat. There’s a yin-and-yang component to the two of them: Trump reads the stage directions — he’s all text and no subtext — and she’s essentially the utter opposite. I’m tempted to say he needs her and he knows it. Maybe more to the point, though, they need each other.
She’s clear-eyed about the terms of engagement. She doesn’t control him — nobody controls him — and she doesn’t try. But strategically, temperamentally, even psychologically, she can try to help him, advise him, guide him. And it doesn’t work all the time — she very clearly hasn’t made Trump someone or something he’s not — but it can and does work some of the time.
I’m thinking here about something she once told me about her mother: “She woke up an optimist every day, and she started every day like that, and it would fall apart or it wouldn’t …”
There are multiple definitions of the word I’m about to use and I think in her case they all apply.
Susie manages.”
…
“She’s not just a calming presence. She’s an experienced operator. And she’s no stranger to the dark arts. She’s a savvy source-builder in the intersecting worlds of politics and media and has been for years quite effective at shaping perceptions that help clients and hurt opponents.”
His plans increase the deficit, which is inflationary.
Large and broad tariffs are inflationary.
A massive crackdown on illegal immigration will also be inflationary as without cheap labor, making products will be more expensive or won’t happen here at all–particularly agricultural goods and housing.
Trump wants to end the independence of the Federal Reserve. Trump has been in favor of lower interest rates, which will increase inflation.
“A conservative lawyer working on Donald Trump’s transition, Mark Paoletta, offered a stark warning to career Justice Department lawyers Monday that those who refuse to advance Trump’s agenda should resign or face the possibility of being fired.
“Once the decision is made to move forward, career employees are required to implement the President’s plan,” Paoletta wrote in a post on X responding to a POLITICO story detailing widespread fear among DOJ lawyers about being asked to advance or defend policies they consider unethical or illegal.
“If these career DOJ employees won’t implement President Trump’s program in good faith, they should leave,” Paoletta said. “Those employees who engage in so-called ‘resistance’ against the duly-elected President’s lawful agenda would be subverting American democracy. … [t]hose that take such actions would be subject to disciplinary measures, including termination.””
“Donald Trump’s lawyers have asked the judge who oversaw his Manhattan hush money trial, which ended in a conviction on 34 felony counts, to throw out the case now that Trump is president-elect.
Dismissing the case is “necessary to avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in a letter to the court made public Tuesday.
In light of Trump’s request, Justice Juan Merchan agreed to pause all proceedings in the case, including a ruling that had been expected Tuesday on whether the Supreme Court’s July decision on presidential immunity requires that Trump’s conviction be tossed.
“Take his decision to tap Homan — a polarizing immigration hard-liner and former author of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 manifesto — as “border czar” rather than a Cabinet position that would require Senate confirmation.
Trump on Monday praised Homan, whom he appointed as acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director shortly after taking office in 2017, as a “stalwart on Border Control” in a Truth Social post announcing the pick.
It’s a strong signal that despite his campaign-trail disavowals, Trump is willing to welcome those aligned with Project 2025 into his administration. But putting Homan in the White House, and not in charge of an agency, will limit his legal authority over border policy, and force him to work through people who have been confirmed by the Senate, or through those holding relevant posts as acting officials or through recess appointments.”
The Democrats, universities, and media have their faults and have been too woke, but the lies, bullshit, propaganda, and poor error-correction instincts of Trump, RFK Jr, Tucker Carlson, and others is not a better alternative.
“Recess appointments were once controversial, last-ditch efforts for presidents to install their nominees after facing long confirmation odds in the Senate. President George W. Bush appointed John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations via a recess appointment, for example, as it was unlikely he would have made it through the Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Democrat leading the Senate under Bush, then decided to make it so that the chamber simply never recessed long enough for such an appointment to be made. When senators left town, the Senate held a “pro forma” session to prevent any recess appointments.
This was continued under then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and then-President Barack Obama — a clash that made it to the Supreme Court. And after the court ruled in favor of the Senate’s powers, the pro forma sessions continue today.”
…
“Trump’s demand for recess appointments resurfaces a decades-old clash between presidents and Capitol Hill leaders — one in which the Supreme Court has previously weighed in favor of the Senate’s powers.
Both chambers have to pass a resolution to go into recess, which would give Senate Democrats an opportunity to filibuster the resolution and essentially block its passage. During Trump’s first term, for example, he was blocked by the Senate from using recess appointments to replace then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
But the incoming Senate GOP leader backing the idea would be a notable support for expansion of presidential power, even for a leader in the same party as the president-elect. In past decades, senators of both parties have been skeptical of the practice.
Florida Sen. Rick Scott — the long-shot candidate who is winning support of a handful of conservative senators and MAGA influencers — on Sunday quickly posted on X endorsing Trump’s post: “100% agree. I will do whatever it takes to get your nominations through as quickly as possible.” Trump ally Elon Musk then praised the Florida Republican, writing on X: “Rick Scott for Senate Majority Leader!”
Over the weekend, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Vivek Ramaswamy announced they’d back Scott, while Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested he did as well, posting on X that without Scott, the Trump agenda would be “wobbly.” Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee and Marco Rubio of Florida have also come out for Scott.
Most senators have not made their positions known, but Scott is still a significant underdog, with GOP Whip John Thune of South Dakota and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas seen as the favorites. Both Thune and Cornyn also suggested on Sunday they’re open to Trump’s demand for recess appointments.”