Dems in Uproar Over Clear Loopholes in New Trump IRS Settlement

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s supposed deal to end President Trump’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” in his settlement with the IRS has a lot of loopholes.

As Blanche seems to have stifled a Republican revolt and secured his Senate confirmation, Democrats on Capitol Hill sounded off against the settlement revision, which was announced late Sunday night.

As Democrats pointed out, there are some major problems with the rewritten IRS settlement. First, there is no guarantee that Trump won’t later create a separate fund to reward his allies. Second, the IRS agreement granting Trump, his family, and Trump Organization immunity from IRS audits is still in place. Blanche’s only revision is that the immunity deal can’t apply to the future. And third, Blanche’s deal wasn’t signed by all parties, namely Trump, as the original IRS settlement was.

“Nothing here stops DOJ from using taxpayer money to pay off January 6th insurrectionists. And it leaves the IRS shield protecting Trump and his family from past audits fully intact,” Democratic Senator Alex Padilla posted on X Monday. “Todd Blanche has always been Trump’s personal lawyer—and this ‘deal’ proves he’s unfit to serve as Attorney General. Congress must pass my legislation to permanently ban any payouts to J6ers.”

California’s other Democratic senator, Adam Schiff, also criticized the deal, pointing out that it “doesn’t prevent payouts to violent insurrectionists in the future.”

“It doesn’t prevent the admin from bringing the slush fund back from the dead next week or using DOJ’s Judgment Fund for the same illicit purpose,” Schiff posted on X. “It leaves in place a tax-immunity deal that could help Trump skip taxes on the $2.3 billion he made last year, and still leaves it vague who and what is covered.”

Representative Daniel Goldman echoed concerns about the IRS audit immunity provision, pointing out that “the ridiculous tax immunity deal still applies to all tax years up to and including this year.

“Remember, the lawsuit was a total sham that was withdrawn and this was an addendum that had no relevance or connection to the lawsuit ‘settlement,’” Goldman posted.

Trump does not want the weaponization fund to die, complaining that people who were “horribly treated” deserve compensation. Sunday’s deal seems aimed at placating superficial opposition from Republicans who are on their way out of the Senate at the end of this year, without actually addressing the many corrupt issues with Trump’s IRS settlement.

President Trump’s giant “triumphal arch” project is not only going to be big and ugly, it’ll also be in your way.

According to a recent assessment by the National Park Service, the proposed arch design will irrevocably detract from Washington, D.C.’s carefully planned views and historic properties. The assessment lists, in detail, 37 significant historic sites in the capital city at risk for adverse effects.

“Adverse effects” means “you’re building something that will irreversibly harm the experience in these other locations,” National Parks Conservation Association vice president for government affairs Ed Stierli told The New York Times.

“These adverse effects are intentional and inherent in the design of the arch; it is intended to dominate the surrounding landscape,” Virginia State Historic Preservation Officer Roger W. Kitchen wrote in a letter to the Park Service in June.

The Memorial Avenue Corridor—the stretch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, which includes Robert E. Lee’s historic Arlington House and the Kennedy Gravesite—is most at risk, as the 250-foot triumphal arch will alter and obstruct views from each site, the assessment explains.

“The entirety of the corridor forms a major component of the monumental core of Washington, D.C. and was conceived as both a ceremonial gateway to the nation’s Capital and a symbolic landscape commemorating national unity and reconciliation following the Civil War,” the document reads. “The bridge alignment and associated ceremonial landscape were intended to physically and symbolically unite North and South through a coordinated monumental composition extending across the Potomac River.”

And now there will be a big Trump shrine smack in the middle of it.

This latest Park Service assessment on the proposed project’s impact on the surrounding landscape is an essential step in the administration’s mission to receive final approval for construction from the National Capital Planning Commission.

As a federal undertaking, the arch project is subject to Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, which mandates an adverse effects assessment, but does not require any particular outcome or changes to the project. Instead, the assessment is “meant to get agencies to pause, consult experts and the public, and consider alternatives or design changes,” The New York Times’ Emily Badger explains.

There have been alternative designs proposed—smaller arches, which were not considered sufficiently “representative” of the 250-year American independence milestone, and alternative locations beyond the historic heart of the city—but the project is expected to move forward as originally planned.

Incidentally, the Park Service assessment comes as the Trump administration pushes to dramatically overhaul the process under which construction projects in historical areas are reviewed—a thinly veiled attempt to make it easier for Trump to redesign the nation’s capital in his own image. Under the proposed rules, “visual, atmospheric, or audible” adverse effects of building projects would be of no consequence, and federal agencies would be empowered to approve projects without the input of historical experts or the public.

Darline Graham is planning to take her late brother Lindsey Graham’s public office in a very different direction.

The temporary lawmaker received Donald Trump’s coveted endorsement last month to represent South Carolinians in the upper chamber after her 71-year-old brother suddenly passed away from heart issues. In the weeks since, Graham has decided that her short-term placement could be permanent, tossing her hat in the ring to formally run for South Carolina’s vacant Senate seat.

In an interview with Fox News Sunday evening, the younger Graham revealed that her campaign and legislative priorities would not line up with her brother’s legacy—or even with the White House’s interests.

“Lindsey was focused on national security, and I know that’s important, but I will probably be focused more on affordability and what matters to families in South Carolina, the struggling families,” Graham explained.

“I know what it is to struggle from week to week, paycheck to paycheck,” she said, referring to her and her brother’s tumultuous childhood. “So definitely affordability.”

She noted that her “first priority” would be to “fight for South Carolina and … help President Trump achieve his agenda.”

Graham also mentioned that she would like to get the Russian sanctions bill “across the finish line” because it was “extremely important” to her departed brother.

A focus on affordability would surely win over Graham’s recently acquired constituents, but it would also highlight the Trump administration’s myriad failures in that department.

Affordability is the chief concern for Americans heading into the midterm elections, according to an April Gallup poll. In January, a New York Times/Siena poll found that 65 percent of American voters felt that a middle-class lifestyle was out of reach, while 77 percent said that a middle-class life was more difficult to attain than it was a generation before. All in all, a majority of Americans feel that they’ve been priced out of a broad range of necessities, including education, health care, and having a family.

Those sentiments have surely only been exacerbated in the months since. The cost of oil and gas has skyrocketed since the onset of the Iran war; utility bills have continued to climb; health insurance premiums have drastically outpaced the growth of employee paychecks; and homeownership seems like an increasingly unattainable dream due to low market availability and astronomical prices.

Meanwhile, the White House has repeatedly detached itself from efforts that would aid America’s middle and lower classes. Case in point: Trump’s decision last month to divorce his office from a bipartisan housing bill. Trump did so in yet another futile attempt to force through his unpopular voter ID bill, the SAVE America Act.

After FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s plan to sell off a stake in the World Cup fell through due to heavy backlash, he tried to get in touch with President Trump.

The New York Post reports that Infantino attempted to call Trump over the weekend several times because he was worried about losing his job following an avalanche of negative press over his idea, which led to the European and North American soccer associations, UEFA and CONCACAF respectively, threatening to boycott all FIFA events. Unable to reach Trump, Infantino instead reportedly held a private call with Secretary of State Marco Rubio Monday morning, hoping to enlist help in staving off pressure to resign.

“He wanted to get online with the secretary and talk about how soccer can be a form of soft power for America,” an unnamed source told the Post. “But we all know that it is about job protection. It is not about anything else at this point.”

Infantino’s plan was to create a commercial entity for broadcasting, sponsorship, licensing, and ticketing rights, and he enlisted financial backing from Thrive Capital, an investment firm led by Josh Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The plan was immediately attacked as yet another example of decades-long FIFA corruption, which has only gotten worse under Trump.

Now, if Infantino keeps his job, it will be seen as Trump further intervening in international soccer and cementing the corrupt relationship between the two. The threat of a World Cup boycott from major countries apparently didn’t scare Infantino enough, because getting Trump’s help will only increase soccer fans’ anger.

President Donald Trump has his eye on the ball—a golf ball, that is.

The president took to Truth Social Sunday to trash-talk his opponents at a championship tournament at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

“I won with a score of 70, and am so honored in that, unlike the rest of the field, I’m given very little time to practice, because I’m focused on many other things,” Trump wrote. “It’s called TALENT, and I have it, and they don’t!”

Putting aside the fact that Trump just insulted all of the people who pay him thousands of dollars a year for membership at his clubs, the president’s talent for golf has long been disputed. In his 2019 book Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump, veteran sportswriter Rick Reilly claimed that when it came to golf, Trump “cheats like a mafia accountant.”

In any case, Trump’s victory was seemingly undercut by the small crowd of attendees who turned up to watch him play. No wonder he had to take to social media to share a video of his final stroke.

Trump’s latest golf triumph brings to mind a quote by Emmet Hughes, a political speechwriter and aide to former Presider Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Hughes asserted that as an intellectual, Eisenhower “bestowed upon the games of golf and bridge all the enthusiasm and perseverance that he withheld from his books and ideas.”

Nothing could be truer about Trump, who just put out an open call for “unconventional” new ideas to end his war in Iran. Maybe that will give him more time to work on his golf game.