Trump Throws Tantrum as Massive Fraud Judgment Looms

Donald Trump fumed over the state of New York’s fraud judgment against him in a Truth Social post Tuesday morning.

The president used to call New York his home, but in his post, he said it “is the most corrupt State in the Union.”

“We need great Judges and Politicians to help fix New York, and to stop the kind of Lawfare that was launched against me, from falsely valuing Mar-a-Lago at $18 Million Dollars, when it is worth, perhaps, 100 times that amount (The corrupt judge was replaced by another judge, only to be immediately put back on the case when the Democrat political leaders found out that a change of judges was made. It has become a great embarrassment for the New York Judicial System!),” Trump’s post read.

Last year, a New York state court ruled that Trump had to pay $454 million in fines for fraudulently inflating the value of his properties (including Mar-a-Lago). He had to scramble to come up with a reduced $175 million bond for his appeal, benefiting from the help of a shady surety company. But Ol’ Donny Trump might wriggle out of this jam again, as an appeals court seemed skeptical of the massive sentence against him in oral arguments in September. Regardless of that court’s judgment, Trump isn’t likely to stop crowing about it online, as the judgment against him now stands at over $500 million.

Donald Trump has struck a new, incredibly dismissive tone on Ukraine and its war against Russia—right before Vice President JD Vance’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. 

“They may make a deal, they may not make a deal, they may be Russian some day, or they may not be Russian someday, but we’re gonna have all this money in there … I want it back,” President Trump told Fox News’s Bret Baier Monday evening. 

“I told them that I want the equivalent, like $500 billion worth of rare earth,” he continued, tripling down on his demand for his newest fascination. “And they’ve essentially agreed to do that. So at least we don’t feel stupid. Otherwise we’re stupid. I said to [Ukraine], ‘We have to get something, we can’t continue to pay this money.’”  

This is exactly what Vladimir Putin—whose military occupies nearly a fifth of Ukraine at this point—wants to hear. This is a stark contrast from former President Biden’s approach of providing aid to Ukraine (and not expecting rare earths in return) on the grounds that the country was being illegally invaded. 

Trump’s version of “ending the war” might just be giving the Kremlin everything it wants. Are they really “peace talks” if one side is expected to surrender? 

A federal judge has indefinitely extended the deadline for federal workers to accept Donald Trump’s buyout offer.

The president had posed a “fork in the road” ultimatum for federal employees via the Office of Personnel Management late last month: Either opt for a “deferred resignation” that would pay them through September, or face a possible furlough.

The temporary restraining order on the program put in place by U.S. District Judge George O’Toole will remain in place while the court weighs the legality of the buyout, reported CNN Monday.

Eligible federal workers had originally faced a midnight deadline on Thursday to accept or deny Trump’s offer. O’Toole imposed an initial restraining order, just hours before the offer expired, delaying the deadline to late Monday.

“The pressure that comes from that deadline where people have to make their choice about their livelihood,” argued Elena Goldstein, an attorney for the plaintiffs: “Irreparable harm will continue. They will be asking what they actually accepted. OPM is making it up as they go along.”

Unions for federal employees were behind the lawsuit, calling OPM’s “Fork Directive” a “sweeping and stunningly arbitrary action to solicit blanket resignations of federal workers,” according to court filings.

Attorneys for the Justice Department counterclaimed that Trump had “campaigned on reducing the federal workforce” and that the mass dismissal program should come as no surprise to Washington’s civil servants. The administration “knew they’d come to a disappointment to a lot of the workforce … so this would be an off-ramp for those employees,” said Justice Department attorney Eric Hamilton, per NBC News.

Vice President JD Vance is exactly as irrelevant to Donald Trump as he is to everyone else.

In an interview Sunday with Fox News’s Bret Baier, Trump threw Vance under the bus when asked about the future for the former never-Trump Republican who sold out his principles, his dignity, and even his own family, to boost Trump’s shot at unchecked power. His reward? Nothing, it seems.

“Do you view Vice President JD Vance as your successor, the Republican nominee in 2028?” Baier asked.

“No,” Trump replied. “But he’s very capable!

“I mean I don’t think that it—you know, I think we have a lot of very capable people,” Trump continued. “So far, I think he’s doing a fantastic job. It’s too early, we’re just starting.”

“But by the time you get to the midterms, he’s going to be looking for an endorsement,” Baier pressed.

“Yeah, a lot of people have said this has been the greatest opening, almost three weeks, in the history of the presidency,” Trump said, weaving into a rant about how amazing he is at being president.

It’s possible that Trump tried to sidestep answering because he already has a candidate in mind for 2028, and—spoiler alert—it’s not Vance. Although he isn’t allowed to run again, Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of doing so, both on the campaign trail and since winning the presidency. It doesn’t seem as if Trump cares very much about what is legal and what’s not.

In lieu of actually governing, Vance seems to be filling his empty hours posting on X about a range of random topics, including rubber-stamping the rehiring of a racist to DOGE, undermining the checks and balances that underpin our democracy, and complaining about dog cross-breeding.

Refugee resettlement organizations are suing the Trump administration for indefinitely pausing America’s refugee system. 

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Seattle Monday by a group of the country’s largest such organizations hoping to restart the program and the federal funding that allows refugees to be resettled in the United States. President Trump froze the admission of refugees on his first day in office as part of broader restrictions on immigration, ordering the leaders at the Departments of Homeland Security and State to recommend if refugee admissions should resume within 90 days. 

One of the organizations that filed the lawsuit said that Trump’s executive orders have “been sweeping and harmful for our refugee clients, our staff and our local faith community partners.

“These executive actions have abandoned refugee families both abroad and those who are already a part of our American communities,” Rick Santos, head of the Church World Service, said in a statement, citing a case in which two Afghan parents in Massachusetts were waiting for their children, who were supposed to arrive in January. 

“They now do not know if or when their children will be able to come home,” Santos’s statement said.

In the past, the U.S. refugee program enjoyed bipartisan support. That changed in 2017 when Trump was elected to his first term and began taking extreme measures to attack the refugee system and reduce refugee admissions his first week in office. By 2020, Trump proposed a record low of 15,000 refugee admissions, according to The New York Times. President Biden resuscitated the program, and in 2024, the U.S. admitted close to 100,000 refugees, the most in decades.  

Trump’s abrupt pause to resettlement and all related funding has had a ripple effect on organizations, as well as the more than 10,000 refugees on a path to enter the U.S. Refugee assistance organizations around the country may not be able to function without funding, and one refugee in Burma died after his U.S.-funded hospital was ordered to close. 

A telling description of Trump’s actions during his first term was coined by Atlantic writer Adam Serwer in a 2018 column: “The Cruelty Is the Point,” who argued that the president and his supporters took pleasure in the suffering of those they hate and fear. It appears that sentiment is back in full force for today’s Trump administration.