How Trump Lied to People Trying to Donate to America250

Trump officials misled people who wanted to donate to a bipartisan initiative to mark the U.S.’s 250th anniversary, redirecting them to donate to the administration’s own group instead, according to a congressional investigation released Thursday.

A report released by House Democrats, based on newly obtained documents and whistleblower accounts, said that the White House repeatedly steered donors towards Trump’s Freedom 250 setup instead of the America250 effort set up by Congress ten years ago.

Some donors and sponsors who sought to send funds to America250 were told by the Trump administration that they didn’t have a “green light,” and pressured them to redirect their money to Freedom 250. Freedom 250 also reached out to America250 donors with donation requests, confusing some corporate executives who didn’t know the difference between the two groups, the Democrats’ report states.

“I’m a lawyer, and I know better than to pronounce that a crime has been committed,” Representative Jared Huffman, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, told The Washington Post. “But I do know the elements of fraud, and there is evidence of all those elements here.”

The report goes on to detail how Freedom 250 officials explicitly steered money away from America250 towards projects favored by Trump, who undermined a bipartisan plan to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary to the benefit of himself and his allies.

For example, America250 had received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to fund Freedom Trucks, mobile museums that would travel around the country with lessons on American history. That grant was transferred to Freedom 250, which produced its own version of the trucks with history lessons that present a distorted image of U.S. history.

Democrats accuse Trump allies of steering away $75 million worth of taxpayer funds originally allocated by Congress to America250. The leftover money is expected to be kept by the White House. And Freedom 250’s staff is made up of many former employees of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, which harvested user data.

Officials of the bipartisan America250 say now that they have shifted their efforts towards events outside of Washington, D.C., while Freedom 250 handles events in the nation’s capital. But the split has confused legislators and corporate leaders, and caused tensions between the two efforts, according to the Post.

Thanks to Trump, America250’s grants, educational initiatives, and volunteer programs have been overshadowed by Freedom 250 efforts. Officials expect to make up for their lost funds through more private donations, but the president has effectively ruined what could have been a unifying, nonpolitical celebration of the U.S. at a time when the American people could really use it.

President Donald Trump shocked Americans Wednesday when he claimed to have spoken to former President Theodore Roosevelt.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota, Trump announced to the crowd that he’d just spoken with the twenty-sixth president, who died more than 100 years ago.

“I even had a conversation with Theodore Roosevelt,” Trump said. “I said, ‘What did you think about the Panama Canal? Do you consider that your greatest achievement? How do you feel about the fact that the Democrats gave the Panama Canal away to Panama for $1?’”

Despite what many people on the internet seemed to think, the 80-year-old president was not publicly sundowning. He was referring to an interaction he’d just had with an eerie, lifelike AI simulation of Roosevelt.

A video posted by Margo Martin, a special assistant to the president, showed Trump listening intently as the fake Roosevelt reminded Trump that “the nation comes first.”

“Well, I appreciate those words, those words are fantastic,” Trump said. “I just want to say it was an honor to be with you today, we are taking a little bit of a tour of some of the fantastic things you’ve done.”

There’s something deeply sad about watching the forty-seventh president speak to a computer-generated version of the twenty-sixth. It has a similar effect to watching your elderly grandfather chat with a young, hot single on an online forum: It’s not real, grandpa. Now, go back to bed.

Trump’s fascination with AI presidents is nothing new. The president’s lackluster Great American State Fair features its own AI George Washington to chat with attendees—what few of them there are.

Trump has previously used his praise for Roosevelt to push his agenda to “take back” the Panama Canal—which, along with the threatened annexations of Greenland and Canada, are at the heart of his disastrous “Donroe Doctrine.”

President Trump gloated Wednesday about lifting restrictions on 90 acres of protected land so that he could help along the recently finished construction of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota.

“During my first term it was a privilege to sign the bill that helped get this incredible project underway, and transferring 90 acres,” Trump said at the ceremony for the library’s opening Wednesday. “We took it right out of the federal government. We ripped it away from the federal government, they don’t know it’s missing. They still haven’t figured out what the hell happened.”

The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation bought 90.3 acres of protected land from the U.S. Forest Service in 2021, after a bill supported by President Trump triggered the sale in December 2020.

Aside from the sale, Trump has significantly rolled back environmental protections that Roosevelt championed during his tenure, weakening the Endangered Species Act and exposing 86 million previously protected acres to drilling and development.

President Trump has lost three legal cases in 24 hours.

First the Supreme Court struck down his executive order banning birthright citizenship on Tuesday morning because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Then, hours later, a federal judge dismissed the White House’s effort to acquire New Hampshire’s voter information. After that, two federal judges shut down the president’s restrictions on a student loan forgiveness program.

On New Hampshire, U.S. District Judge Joseph LaPlante found the administration’s request to get the state’s voter registration list infringed the Civil Rights Act’s provisions on federal election records. LaPlante also ruled that the Justice Department couldn’t find any real violations of the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which created standards for states’ voter registration lists and voting systems, to merit access to the voter rolls.

It’s the tenth time the DOJ has lost a case in which it sought voter information from a state government. Judges have ruled against the Trump administration in Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin, and dismissed a Georgia effort because it was filed in the wrong city.

On student loans, federal judges appointed by President Biden in Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts blocked Trump’s attempt to reshape the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which helps those who work for the government or nonprofit organizations. Trump attempted to prevent public service workers from getting student debt relief if their work had a “substantial illegal purpose” in the eyes of the administration. A coalition of nonprofit organizations joined 20 states to file a lawsuit against the rule, claiming that Trump’s Department of Education could target organizations that go against the president’s personal views, such as those dedicated to immigrant rights and transgender health care.

“The Department cannot create new criminal prohibitions through rulemaking,” U.S. District Judge Myoung Joun ruled in Massachusetts, stating that the department didn’t have legal authority and could be violating the Constitution’s First Amendment. “Indeed, the record further demonstrates ‌that the ⁠Final Rule has already chilled protected speech.”

In Washington, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali struck down the rule in a case brought by four nonprofits that work for immigrant rights. The Trump administration’s response to the student loan rulings seemed to prove the judges’ point.

“The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program is intended to support Americans who serve the public good, not to subsidize organizations that engage in terrorism, facilitate illegal immigration, or support the mutilation of children,” Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent complained in a statement.

In all, these rulings show Trump’s contempt for the Constitution and that federal courts seem to be the only branch of government willing to prevent the administration from flouting it, as Republicans in Congress are unwilling to stand up to the president. Trump will have to come to terms that some of his favorite policies aren’t backed up by U.S. law.

Donald Trump is still trying to stiff E. Jean Carroll, according to the columnist’s attorney.

Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s lawyer, wrote in a court filing Tuesday that Trump’s legal representative had called her the day prior asking for another delay to the $5 million sum Trump owes the writer. Later Monday, Kaplan said she informed Trump’s team that “Carroll does not consent,” and asked whether Trump would comply with the immediate disbursement of funds.

Carroll has a long and unfortunate history with the president. Trump was found liable by a jury in May 2023 for having sexually assaulted Carroll in the mid-1990s, for which she was awarded $5 million in damages.

He subsequently lost his defamation case against her the following January, when a judge ruled that Trump had continued to defame the advice columnist by denying the assault on the basis that she wasn’t his “type,” and by accusing her of making up the allegations against him for the benefit of her book. A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in that case.

But Carroll hasn’t yet seen a dime from either case. In May, a federal appeals court allowed Trump to continue staving off his payments until the Supreme Court decided whether or not to pick up the case. The court made their decision Monday, rejecting Trump’s challenge and allowing the verdict to stand.

In a separate filing Tuesday, Kaplan asked a judge to implement an expedited payment schedule for the sum that Trump owes Carroll. She referred to a June 2023 filing in which both parties agreed that Carroll could collect if the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

Kaplan added that, by this point, the $5 million sum had accrued an additional $779,783 in interest, raising Trump’s initial debt to nearly $5.8 million.

Nonetheless, Trump has continued to make a target out of Carroll. In May, the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into the writer, probing whether Carroll committed perjury in her previous cases against Trump.