Trump’s outrageous corruption makes rule of law a hot topic
Will it become a rallying cry for the resistance?
Donald Trump’s former defense lawyer, now serving as acting attorney general, gave his boss two astonishingly corrupt payoffs this week: A taxpayer-funded $1.8 billion slush fund to dole out to insurrectionists and other allies, and immunity from tax audits that could have cost him more than $100 million.
Such obvious self-dealing is morally indefensible. And Trump’s assertion that he is above the law is a violation of one of the core tenets of American democracy.
Good-government and pro-democracy groups have been quick to express outrage and call for Trump to be stopped. Corruption is now inescapably a major resistance issue. And here are some questions going forward: Are Trump’s latest moves so universally offensive that they change the political calculus? Will Democrats be able to peel away any of his Republican support? And will new people join in protests and other resistance efforts?
CREW president Donald K. Sherman issued a strong statement on Monday: “Trump and the Justice Department just engaged in the most brazen act of self-dealing in the history of the presidency,” he asserted. “This is one of the single most corrupt acts in American history.”
Public Citizen co-presidents Lisa Gilbert and Robert Weissman declared that “Every member of Congress should be forced to go on record as to whether they will permit this monstrous theft of taxpayer resources.”
Two former U.S. Capitol Police officers, working with the Public Integrity Project, quickly filed a federal lawsuit seeking to dissolve the new fund. The lawsuit is blunt:
In the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century, President Donald J. Trump has created a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name.
The fund, styled the “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” is illegal. No statute authorizes its creation, the settlement on which it is premised is a corrupt sham, and its design violates the Constitution and federal law.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is leading the charge for political accountability. “The whole administration now is just corruption, highway robbery every day,” he told MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow on Monday. “At this point everything must be tried in order to try to restore the rule of law in the country. We can’t leave any potential tool just sitting on the table. We’ve got we’ve got to try to attempt everything.”
Raskin said “we must start by trying to get our at least four or five Republican colleagues to come over to our side to say this is utterly lawless and authoritarian and it cannot stand.” Raskin cosigned a letter demanding documents and written answers from key administration officials and is calling for a Judiciary Committee vote to subpoena them.
And civil rights attorney Sherilyn Ifill continues to provide moral and intellectual heft to the pro-democracy movement. Last week, I recommended her essay about the fight for voting rights: “If You Want Democracy in this Country You Have to Fight White Supremacy.”
Today, in another incredibly powerful, must-read essay, she writes about how Trump’s attacks on racial equality and birthright citizenship, and his “grotesque scheme to reward January 6th insurrectionists with payouts from the federal treasury,” all have something in common: They are violations of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. She writes:
The 14th Amendment is the constitutional tool designed to constrain the very abuses of power that we are confronting at this moment. It was forged in a time of national fracture, widespread white supremacist ideology, and insurrectionist fervor. In other words, its provisions were uniquely created for such a time as this.
It is, if properly enforced, the most powerful tool we have to stave off the total collapse of democracy in this country.
Read it!
So far, the only specific protest against Trump’s new slush fund that I know of came on Tuesday night, when Stacey Young, a former Justice Department employee who founded the group Justice Connection, projected a John Adams quote on top of the huge Trump banner that hangs on the main Justice Department building.
“A government of laws, not of men,” read the quotation.
From Selma to Montgomery
Tens of thousands of people rallied for voting rights in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, on Saturday, taking part in events under the banner of “All Roads Lead to the South.:
Signs included “No Jim Crow Maps”; “The Ballot Is The New Underground Railroad”; and “Honor King, End Racism,” Solomon Crenshaw Jr. reported for The Handbasket
Joyce Vance shared pictures in her newsletter.
Protect Democracy staffers Corey Dukes and Alison Hirsh wrote on their group’s blog:
The march from Selma to Montgomery — first trod in 1965, retraced again this weekend — was organized in a little more than a week by Black Voters Matter and a coalition of civil rights and voting rights organizations under the banner “All Roads Lead to the South.” The message was clear. The fight that produced the Voting Rights Act, and with it America’s second, imperfect attempt at a real multiracial democracy, must be refought. And the people who know that best are the ones who showed up to say so….
What is happening in the South right now is not a policy dispute or a legal technicality. It is the opening of a new front in the administration’s Deceive, Disrupt, Deny strategy to override the will of the voters and ensure the outcome they want in the 2026 mid-term elections. This is a racist power grab, locking in discriminatory congressional majorities for the foreseeable future — and it is moving fast.
They offered a list of possible next steps that is worth your time.
The aforementioned Sherilyn Ifill was there. She wrote:
What sane-thinking Americans must now understand is that to eliminate Black political power is to not only consign Black people to second-class citizenship across the South where most Black people live, it will also usher in the end of democracy in this country. It will catapult us back to the 1950s, with all of the ignominy of functioning as a half-apartheid state as part of our national identity once again. And they won’t stop at the South.
That is why it was gratifying to be part of the thousands who gathered in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama on Saturday in an act of solidarity and the shared purpose. I understand from the organizers that this gathering was only the first, and that they will plan similar mobilization efforts in other southern state capitols where legislatures are engaged in eliminating Black political representation in their states.
Other Protests
Police tackled and arrested protesters after their regular Saturday rally outside a massive warehouse in Salt Lake City that ICE wants to turn into a detention facility. The Salt Lake Tribune reported that four people were arrested “on suspicion of interfering with police.” Police apparently followed and arrested one protester after they drove away. Other protesters followed. Police told the protesters to back up. The protesters questioned the order. Then the police started tackling, pushing, and arresting people. A video was posted on Instagram by one of the protesters.
“About 100 rallygoers gathered on Capitol Hill Wednesday to hear from activists and members of Congress protesting the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to strike down federal protections for the voting power of minorities,” reported News of the States.
Bishop William J. Barber II, who leads Repairers of the Breach, held a “Moral Monday Peace and Nonviolence Rally” outside the White House. Here is some video. “Every piece of policy violence has a death measurement,” he said.
“About 50 protesters gathered outside Detroit’s federal courthouse Monday to oppose the proposed Romulus ICE detention center, urging state and local leaders to take action to block the project after a scheduled court hearing was postponed,” Michigan Live reported.
Elder Aguilar-Macario, a Georgia high school student, was detained by ICE following a motor vehicle crash earlier this month. On Sunday, Chattooga County Democratic Party hosted a protest outside the county courthouse in support of the teen’s release, WDEF TV reported.
“Protests took place at 28 locations across Indiana on Saturday as part of the Indiana Statewide Day of Action, a coordinated effort opposing immigration enforcement policies tied to the Trump administration and Indiana Gov. Mike Braun,” Network Indiana reported.
Members of the Visibility Brigade hung a sign over a freeway in Boston that said “WE ARE UNDERREACTING”.
Is Civil Disobedience a Federal Criminal Conspiracy?
The answer should be obvious, but the New York Times reports:
Federal prosecutors will try to make the case this week that three activists who protested immigration enforcement last summer crossed the line from political dissent into criminal conspiracy — a legal theory that prompted the top federal prosecutor in Eastern Washington to resign rather than sign off on the charges.
Bajun Mavalwalla II, Justice Forral and Jac Archer will stand trial starting Monday on charges of conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers stemming from a June 11, 2025, protest in Spokane, Wash.
Richard Barker, the former prosecutor, told the Times: “We’re used to seeing people arrested because they refused to leave an area or they are engaging in civil disobedience. But when have we used the federal government to police that? That to me is a distinction with a difference.”
Meanwhile, in Chicago, “Prosecutors are set to try the remaining ‘Broadview Six’ immigration protesters in a rare federal misdemeanor trial next week,” Capitol News Illinois reports. “But defense attorneys are still hopeful it might be avoided after U.S. District Judge April Perry agreed to read unredacted transcripts from inside the grand jury room.”
Last Week in the Courts
A federal judge in Washington granted a preliminary injunction requiring Trump administration officials to follow the Presidential Records Act and preserve work-related documents including text messages. A DOJ legal opinion had argued that the act unconstitutional. Judge John D. Bates disagreed, and granted the order because “plaintiffs have established a substantial risk that the government is no longer fully complying with the Records Act, at least with respect to three categories of records: electronic records created on personal rather than official devices, records created by the President or Vice President themselves, and records the President discards.”
A federal judge in New York barred ICE from making immigration arrests at courts in New York, reversing his previous order after DOJ lawyers admitted they had misled him about an internal guidance. Judge P. Kevin Castel wrote that he acted “both to correct a clear error and prevent a manifest injustice.” As the New York Times noted: “The policy had led to remarkable scenes within the immigration courts at 26 Federal Plaza in downtown Manhattan, as immigrants attending court for routine hearings were suddenly detained and, sometimes, dragged away from their families. Protesters began to attend in droves and some — including [former comptroller Brad] Lander — were arrested alongside the immigrants.”
A federal judge in Washington has blocked the Trump administration from imposing sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for Palestinian human rights, after she spoke in favor of war crime charges against U.S. and Israeli officials over their actions in Gaza. Judge Richard Leon wrote that “Albanese has done nothing more than speak!”
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, in Minneapolis, has filed charges against ICE officer Christian Castro. Castro faces four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime. He fired a shot through the front door of a home that he knew was occupied, hitting a man in the leg. ICE, in a statement that is still available online, falsely claimed agents were attacked by people wielding a shovel and a broom.
The New York Times has once again sued the Department of Defense over its press restrictions. A new requirement -- that reporters have an official escort – was adopted after the Times won a court order vacating the previous policy for press credentialing.
End Notes
From the Houston Chronicle: “Houston woman refuses to stop protesting ICE even after being tear-gassed near Dilley detention center.”
Also from the Houston Chronicle: “We were accidentally sent contract details for Texas’ Dilley detention center. Here’s what we found.”
From the Washington Post: “Instead of proms and parties, she spent senior year fighting an ICE warehouse.”
From the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights: “Over 440 Civil Rights, Faith, and Labor Organizations Call Department of Justice Indictment of Southern Poverty Law Center a ‘Naked Attempt to Weaponize the the Criminal Justice System to Silence Speech’.”