The Biggest Loser

The Trump administration yesterday asked the Supreme Court to stay a lower court ruling that temporarily blocks the government from revoking humanitarian parole protections for migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela. Abbie VanSickle reports for the New York Times.

"Expect to hear a whole lot about this: ABC’s Jonathan Karl and Katherine Faulders have the buzziest article of the morning: President Trump is poised to accept a Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar as a kind of Air Force One in what looks to be the most valuable foreign gift to the U.S. ever. It will be available for use by President Trump “until shortly before he leaves office, at which time ownership of the plane will be transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation,” ABC reports.

Is that legal? The “White House counsel's office and the Department of Justice drafted an analysis for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth concluding that is legal for the Department of Defense to accept the aircraft as a gift and later turn it over to the Trump library,” per ABC. The gift is expected to be announced in the coming week, as Trump visits the Middle East. Speaking of …

Trip preview: Tomorrow, the president embarks on a four-day trip, with stops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. But don’t expect it to be heavy on geopolitics, write WaPo’s Michael Birnbaum and Matt Viser: Trump’s focus is on business deals."

Personal edit:  The library will be very short on anything written and long on hard goods with the plane the star. Where is the library gonna be located and what place would want it?

David A. Graham STAFF WRITER

Donald Trump is in talks to accept a $400 million gift from a foreign government. The president has become impatient as he awaits replacements for Air Force One—initially due from Boeing in 2024, they’re now expected in 2027—and ABC News reported yesterday that the small Persian Gulf country of Qatar, an American ally, intends to give him a plane.

The most astonishing thing is that Trump is doing this out in the open. One secret to his impunity thus far has been that rather than try to hide his misdeeds—that’s what amateurs such as Nixon and Harding did—he calculates that if he makes no pretense, he can get away with them. This worked when he called on foreign countries to interfere in U.S. elections, when he declined to divest from his companies in his first term, and when he tried to subvert the 2020 presidential election. Now he is daring the courts, Congress, and Americans to either stop him or else declare graft legal—at least for him.

Underscoring the crookedness, the plane would ultimately belong not to the U.S. government but to Trump: Once he leaves office, it would reportedly “be transferred to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation no later than Jan. 1, 2029, and any costs relating to its transfer will be paid for by the U.S. Air Force,” per ABC. In short, a foreign government might give the president of the United States a $400 million personal gift. Not a bad haul at a time when Trump is asking American children to do with fewer dolls and pencils. (Federal law allows officials to accept personal gifts below a certain amount, currently set at $480. That’s 0.0001 percent the estimated value of the plane.)

Just how final this deal is remains unclear—a Qatari government spokesperson said it is under consideration—but Trump confirmed the arrangement on Truth Social. “So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane,” he wrote.

Accepting an aircraft from a foreign country, even an ally, raises many questions about national security. Who can vouch for the safety of the plane? Who will inspect every inch of the plane to be sure it’s not bugged? (A standard 747 has 171 miles of wiring, according to Boeing.) That assumes the plane could be made operable at all—not a sure thing, as The Wall Street Journal reported in an earlier iteration of this story. All of this would be worrisome to the White House except that, as I’ve written, Trump does not care about national security. “Trump is the only thing he’s interested in,” former National Security Adviser John Bolton told me earlier this year.

If there’s no such thing as a free lunch, there’s certainly no such thing as a free plane. The Qataris would presumably not give Trump such a plane out of the goodness and generosity of their hearts. There’s a simple term for this: bribery. The fact that we don’t know what Qatar might want from Trump doesn’t change that. In fact, it’s arguably scarier, because rather than consider the exchange a quid pro quo for something specific, Trump could slant any number of policy choices to benefit Doha. The Supreme Court has, in a series of recent decisions, made prosecuting politicians for corruption harder and harder, but that doesn’t preclude the rest of us from using plain language.

In this case, there’s a specific term too: foreign emoluments. The Constitution is not a very long document, but it specifically forbids officeholders from taking gifts from foreign powers. Trump realized during his first term that the ban is all but unenforceable. He accepted many foreign emoluments—including in the form of business at his Washington, D.C., hotel—but a court rejected a lawsuit lodged by Democratic members of Congress, concluding they had no standing to sue. (The first Trump administration also failed to keep a proper log of gifts, and some were missing at the end of his time in office.)

The first Trump term was a festival of petty grift, but that was just a warm-up for the second term. In 2021, Trump described bitcoin as a “scam”; now, he’s decided to get in on the scam and has made, at least on paper, almost $1 billion from crypto projects, according to Bloomberg. The president is openly using his office to profit. In an auction that ended today, buyers of his personal cryptocoin can win a chance to tour the White House. As if that weren’t bad enough, the arrangement has also drawn bidders who believe that the winner’s access to Trump will provide a good chance to influence U.S. policy.

Ahead of Trump’s own Middle East jaunt this week, his family business has also struck billions in deals in the region recently; his sons have traveled to or announced agreements with Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and—whaddya know—Qatar. Perhaps it would have been too brazen even for Trump to have his son Eric’s Middle East trip come right after his. Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and a former top official in the first administration, is also reportedly serving as an informal adviser on Middle East diplomacy—despite his business interests in the region.

During his first presidential campaign, Trump presented his wealth as a guard against corruption. He couldn’t be bought off, he claimed, because he was independently wealthy; indeed, he boasted that he’d been the one doing the buying. Instead, his high personal net worth has only elevated his ambitions for corruption. Where a previous Republican president saw government of, for, and by the people, Trump sees the government as nothing more than the greatest opportunity for self-enrichment.

The courts may have effectively prevented prosecutors from policing official corruption, but if the U.S. Congress is willing to allow a foreign government to give the president a $400 million personal gift, what checks on his power remain? What’s the point of having a Constitution, or a Congress? The airplane may be free for Trump, but the cost to Americans could prove exceedingly steep."

“Trump’s gonna take a four hundred million dollar jet from people that he would expel from Columbia University” - Jon Stewart 

"A federal judge yesterday for the first time upheld Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act 1798 to deport Venezuelans deferring to the president’s declaring that the Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang is mounting an “incursion” into the United States at the direction of the Maduro government. However, the judge also found that the Trump administration failed to afford those deported under the Act’s authority due process, ruling that the government must allow individuals subject to the act 21 days to file lawsuits challenging their removal. Kyle Cheney reports for POLITICO.

A federal grand jury yesterday indicted a Wisconsin judge accused of helping an undocumented immigrant evade federal agents. The charges are concealing a person from arrest and obstruction of proceedings. Judge Hannah C. Dugan’s lawyers said that she asserts her innocence and intends to fight the charges. Mitch Smith and Dan Simmons report for the New York Times.

A coalition of 20 Democratic Attorneys General yesterday filed two lawsuitschallenging the Trump administration’s threats to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding from states that do not follow the government’s immigration enforcement policies. Rebecca Falconer reports for Axios."

"A federal judge yesterday temporarily blocked the Energy Department from introducing a proposed cap of 15% for any research grant on funds that universities receive to cover overhead expenses. The court wrote that it is “beyond dispute that the advancements these universities make can and often do benefit the public in critically important ways.” Zach Montague reports for the New York Times.

A federal judge this week dismissed charges against nearly 100 individuals federal authorities detained under a Trump administration effort to arrest undocumented migrants for trespassing on a newly declared “defense area” along the southern U.S. border. The court stated that the government provided “no facts from which one could reasonably conclude that the Defendant knew he was entering” the military installation. Jack Healy, Leo Dominguez, and Seamus Hughes report for the New York Times."

"The U.S. Army will need to line DC with metal plates to protect the streets from tanks for Trump’s military parade, AP reported Friday. The parade will march through DC on June 14, which is the Army’s 250th birthday and, coincidentally, Trump’s birthday. 

 According to the latest known plans, the parade will feature 25 Abrams tankswhich can weigh 60 tons or more. “Concerns over the tanks’ weight, and what that would do to D.C.’s streets, ultimately kept them from being used for a parade during Trump’s first term,” Tara Copp and Michelle Price of AP explain. “The metal plates are seen as the best way to protect the streets. Each plate weighs hundreds of pounds and will be placed at points along the parade route where the tanks will turn—and where their metal and rubber-shoed tracking that helps them move can do the most damage.” 

In all, the parade will feature about 150 vehicles, (including Abrams, Strykers, and Humvees), 50 aircraft, and 6,600 soldiers who will sleep in government buildings around DC. 

The total cost could reach up to $45 million, the Washington Post reported last week."

Okay- October 13, 2025 is the 250th US Navy Birthday-

Any chance CHEETO wants a Naval Review on the Potomac?