Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Trump’s Appeal of His New York Convictions Highlights the Absurdity of Alvin Bragg’s Convoluted Case
https://reason.com/2025/10/28/trumps-appeal-of-his-new-york-convictions-highlights-the-absurdity-of-alvin-braggs-convoluted-case/
“During his second term in office, several major media organizations have settled lawsuits brought by President Donald Trump. The lawsuits have little or no merit, and the settlements clearly seem like payoffs meant to hold off a vengeful president. Now Senate Democrats are investigating whether the settlements amount to bribery.
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Legal or not, it’s completely inappropriate for the sitting president to sue media companies he doesn’t like and use the levers of government to force them to settle. While it may not meet the statutory definition of bribery, lawmakers are right to probe both the administration and the companies Trump has targeted.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/20/elizabeth-warren-says-companies-that-settled-with-trump-may-have-committed-bribery/
“President Donald Trump’s decision to cancel nearly $5 billion in federal aid without congressional authorization appears to be a straightforward violation of federal law.
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While that spending might be wasteful or foolish, the president does not have the authority to refuse to spend money that has been appropriated by Congress—though the Trump administration seems eager to challenge that limitation on executive power.
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The laws that govern the federal budget process—most importantly, the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA)—allow presidents to make rescission requests to Congress. Trump did that earlier this year, and lawmakers followed through by cutting $9 billion in previously approved spending. The law also allows the executive branch to freeze funding for up to 45 days while Congress considers such a request.
Ross Vought, the director of the White House budget office, has argued that the executive branch can use that 45-day window to do exactly what Trump is now attempting: cancel any spending during the final 45 days of the fiscal year, which ends on September 30. “By withholding the cash for that full timeframe—regardless of action by Congress—the White House would treat the funding as expired when the current fiscal year ends on Sept. 30,” Politico explained earlier this year.
Vought is wrong about that.
“The President has no unilateral authority to impound funds,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded in 2018 when it was asked by the House Budget Committee to examine the question of pocket rescissions. “We conclude that the ICA does not permit the impoundment of funds through their date of expiration. The plain language of the ICA permits only the temporary withholding of budget authority and provides that unless Congress rescinds the amounts at issue, they must be made available for obligation.”
Indeed, if the president were allowed to cancel any federal spending within the final 45 days of the fiscal year, then he could effectively cancel any federal spending at any time—by delaying the release of funds until the end of the year, then canceling them.”
https://reason.com/2025/08/29/trumps-4-9-billion-pocket-rescission-violates-federal-law-and-usurps-congressional-authority/
“”Does ‘for cause’ require something more substantial than a mere allegation of wrongdoing, such as a formal charge, or a conviction, or even something else?” asks Reason’s Damon Root in a great piece on the precedent the Supreme Court might lean on (Namely Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935) and Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2020)). “Here’s another question to ask: Is the mortgage fraud allegation that’s been leveled against Cook merely a pretext designed to cover the fact that Trump is actually firing Cook for illegal political reasons?””
https://reason.com/2025/08/29/trumps-fed-coup/
Trump ran on mass deportation. Mass deportation inherently requires removing a lot of hard working good people against their will because they crossed a geographic line they weren’t supposed to. If you voted for him thinking he would only remove criminals, then you didn’t pay enough objective attention.
But, Trump is doing more than that. He is violating due process–a basic right to all people. He is forcing a mass of people into detention centers where it is difficult for their family and lawyers to reach them, and where conditions are sometimes abysmal. Trump is using troops and law enforcement to do demonstrations to strike fear.
The militarization of criminal justice can lead to the end of democracy and basic rights.
The administration is actively making it more difficult for those accused of immigration violations to get a lawyer. They are sending police to lawyers’ houses apparently to intimidate them. They are making student loan repayment more difficult for lawyers who defend immigrants.
Masked men who don’t identify themselves and force you into custody is not how democracies do law enforcement.
Trump has purged parts of the military and replaced them with unqualified sycophants. Instead of lawyers telling Trump that what he wants to do is illegal so he can’t do it, this term he has people finding excuses for him to do undemocratic things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcTZ_en5FTM
“The second Trump administration has been consumed by two central themes. The first theme is the unprecedented pace at which this administration has attacked the rule of law and the constitutional system on which it is built. The second theme is the unprecedented weakness of the response from major institutions to the Trump administration’s actions. Wall Street’s passivity amid Trump’s unprecedented attack on the Fed is only the latest example.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/08/26/trump-lisa-cook-federal-reserve-markets-opinion-00525449
“Advocacy groups say more than 100 cruise ship crew members have been deported in recent months, and they’re not being shown the evidence against them or given any due process.”
https://reason.com/2025/08/13/cbp-is-deporting-cruise-ship-crew-over-child-pornography-allegations-without-evidence/
“Senate Republicans have already said they plan to move quickly to confirm Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers Chair Stephen Miran to fill one current vacancy. If Cook loses a pending legal challenge and is dismissed — and her replacement is confirmed by the GOP-controlled Senate —Trump-appointed Fed governors would hold four of the seven seats on the central bank’s board.
That majority, in turn, would be enough to control the reappointment of the 12 regional bank presidents throughout the country who also have a say on rates and whose five-year terms are scheduled to expire in February.
And that, in effect, could give Trump control of the Fed’s policy-making Federal Open Market Committee, whose refusal to lower interest rates throughout his second term has put the president on the warpath with Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Any exertion of White House control over the reappointment process for regional bank presidents would represent an extraordinary break in precedent.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/27/how-cooks-dismissal-would-upend-the-fed-00527582
Trump and Republicans for years lied and exaggerated about Democrats using the justice system against them. Now, in full honesty, Trump repeatedly uses the justice system against people who criticize him. U.S. democracy is on shaky grounds.
“President Donald Trump threatened to open an investigation targeting Chris Christie over the former New Jersey governor’s decade-old “Bridgegate” scandal after Christie criticized Trump on television earlier in the day.
The threat came just days after the FBI searched the home and office of another Trump critic, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, as part of an open criminal investigation. Trump lashed out at the former friend-turned-foe Christie in an evening Aug. 24 post on Truth Social, remarking that he just watched “Sloppy Chris Christie” on ABC’s This Week.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/president-trump-threatens-chris-christie-024621347.html
FBI raided John Bolton’s home in search of classified documents. Trump does not like Bolton because Bolton told the truth about Trump’s problems. This is potentially a huge abuse of power to harass someone who criticized the president. But maybe it’s legit, we’ll have to keep an eye on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC-ZyC-lc3Y