Jeff Danziger lives in New York City and Vermont. He is a long time cartoonist for The Rutland Herald and is represented by Counterpoint Syndicate. He is a recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons, a novel and a memoir. Visit him at jeffdanziger.com.
I recently wrote a long piece explaining the greater importance of what looked like a routine briefing order in Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS.
The order signaled that Judge Kathleen Williams of the Southern District of Florida was on to the administration’s scam of letting friends and allies—and maybe Trump himself—scoop up large sums of money from the treasury under the pretense of settling lawsuits that weren’t really lawsuits at all, as the court and constitution use the term.Instead, they are collusive schemes in which the United States has “jumped the v.” By that I mean that the administration has cozied up to nasty characters that the previous DOJ had charged. And they may be poised to do it on a much larger scale, including the worst January 6 offenders whose convictions they recently wiped away.
A paradigm case is the recent “settlement” with Michael Flynn. Flynn pleaded guilty twice, Merrick Garland’s DOJ won the motion to dismiss his civil suit, and Blanche’s DOJ then turned around and paid him $1.25 million anyway—unabashedly calling it a remedy for “historic injustice.” The government had already won. It paid anyway. That’s the scheme in miniature: jump the v, shake hands across the caption, and invite your pal to help himself to federal tax dollars.
The New York Times report suggests the DOJ is scrambling to settle Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS before its brief is due in Judge Williams’s court. The report raises the prospect of a relatively lowball settlement, for example, a promise to Trump that the IRS won’t audit him or his businesses going forward, and perhaps a little cash. (Note, however, that in Trump’s case, that would be worth quite a lot; a 2024 Times report found that a pending audit loss could cost Trump more than $100 million.)
Don’t let the supposed modesty of the settlement distract you. The real point of the deal is to get Todd Blanche and the DOJ out of the tight corner Williams has put them in. The low amount is to make it look palatable. It isn’t, but for different reasons.
Yes, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS in January—a grandiose number premised on a real underlying wrong: Charles Littlejohn, a former IRS contractor, stole Trump’s tax returns and delivered them to The New York Times and ProPublica. Littlejohn pleaded guilty and went to prison for five years.
So unlike, for example, the Flynn lawsuit, the problem here wasn’t that the whole suit was bogus. The privacy violation was genuine. The problem, though, is that Trump was suing the government he presides over and controls with an iron fist.
For that reason, the case—filed by Trump against an agency he controls, defended by a DOJ that exists to do his bidding—is not a bona fide lawsuit in the constitutional sense. The Constitution requires a genuine case or controversy with parties on opposite sides. Here, the two parties are rowing in precisely the same direction and under Trump’s command.That’s the point that gave Judge Williams pause, and led her to order briefing on, among other questions, “whether a case and controversy exists in this matter.” Moreover, she appointed a gold-plated set of legal talent to present the other side that neither Trump nor the DOJ could be counted on to do.
That put Blanche and the DOJ firmly between a rock and a hard place. Blanche cannot credibly claim the DOJ stands in genuine opposition to Trump: his entire tenure as Acting AG has been a demonstration of the opposite. But he also cannot concede the court lacks jurisdiction, because that unravels not just this case but the Flynn settlement and every other collusive arrangement the administration has quietly stitched together (including, according to a letter Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland sent Blanche on Tuesday, many awards to Trump-friendly FBI agents without even going through the farce of a lawsuit.) Either answer is ruinous.
Blanche has apparently hit on a third option: turn tail and run.
The Times piece reports that the DOJ is holding internal discussions about settling the case “in the coming days,” citing three people familiar with the deliberations.
This is for a case in which the government has yet to enter an appearance or answer Trump’s complaint, and in which it previously asked for 90 days to do so. The “coming days” is the obvious reveal that it’s Judge Williams’s May 20 deadline that is driving the department’s deliberations. The deliberations have nothing to do with the merits or strategy of the case, and everything to do with avoiding the patent embarrassment of having to respond to the court.
The real prize here is escape. Escape from Judge Williams’s courtroom, from the amici she appointed, and from the likely determination that the lawsuit never presented a genuine case or controversy under Article III at all. Rather, from the jump, the case was a sham, as was the Flynn settlement and other contrived rewards to Trump’s friends.
There’s a certain irony here. The point of the lawsuit was to treat the federal court as a spot to launder a collusive deal and gain a judicial imprimatur. Now that a judge is actually doing her job, actually probing whether the whole enterprise is constitutionally void, they want to withdraw.
Williams’s hands are largely tied if the parties simply settle or withdraw before she rules. There would be nothing left on her docket to oversee. Even so, she can call it out for what it is, and receive the briefs the amici are preparing. That spotlight matters greatly in itself. And now that she’s called attention to the government’s corrupt and unconstitutional maneuvers, other judges will have occasion to pick it up in other cases.
So keep your eyes on the calendar. If a settlement materializes before May 21st—before the amici file, before Williams gets her answer—you’ll know exactly what it means. It means the DOJ assessed its options and opted to run for cover, hoping nobody notices. It means they are scared of their own shadow, and the shadow of the Constitution.
Harry Litman is a former United States Attorney and the executive producer and host of the Talking Feds podcast. He has taught law at UCLA, Berkeley, and Georgetown and served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton Administration. Please consider subscribing to Talking Feds on Substack.
Reprinted with permission from Talking Feds.
During his meeting with President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping suggested that the United States is a nation in decline. Trump and his allies, after the meeting, claimed that Jinping was talking about former President Joe Biden—a claim that is drawing some scathing reactions.
Trump, on his Truth Social platform, wrote, "In fact, President Xi congratulated me on so many tremendous successes in such a short period of time. Two years ago, we were, in fact, a Nation in decline."
Similarly, the Trump White House, on X, posted, "When President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation, he was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden. ... But now, the United States is the hottest Nation anywhere in the world."
On X, Trump critics were quick to push back against those claims.
Phillips P. O'Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, tweeted, "This is both funny and horrifying. Xi spoke openly of the US being in decline, right to Trump’s face. But Trump did not understand it and spent his time praising Xi who had just demeaned US power. Now Trump is contorting himself to cover his ignorance."
Former ambassador and Stanford University political science professor Michael McFaul posted, "Xi was not talking about the United States from two years ago. I don’t understand who is the target audience for this kind of absurd spin."
Futurist and OneShared.World founder Jamie Metzl, argued, "All Americans should be rooting for President Trump to succeed with China and Iran. There is no logical world, however, in which Xi's comments were referring to the past and not the present situation. Unfortunately, President Trump has significantly weakened America's hand vis-a-vis China. Every detail from this trip is telling that story."
Activist Paul Hardy lamented, "Gullible, low-information MAGA supporters may believe Trump’s preposterous and laughable explanation."
Retired marketing specialist Jack Nargundkar commented, "At 70% disapproval rating, it’s all about the base, the base."
Margundkar also posted, "Trump’s face is a window to his mind - and it wasn’t reflecting positive vibes after the meeting with Xi - even though he was mouthing the usual Roy Cohn lines."
Reprinted with permission from Alternet
When ominous reports of a highly lethal and potentially communicable illness reach our airwaves, Americans now must rely on foreign authorities to reassure us — or to warn us.
The hantavirus is at our doorstep, but the Trump administration, and specifically its top health official Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have dismantled the federal scientific infrastructure that traditionally protected the nation from such threats and substituted literally nothing in its place. While we may escape the direst consequences of their vandalism for the moment, there is no guarantee that far worse is not coming, and soon.
The ruinous public health impact of Donald Trump's return to the White House was just as predictable as his rush to enrich himself and his family by every corrupt means. We knew what he is because we saw what he was. His historic failure to competently manage the COVID-19 pandemic mostly occurred in plain sight, as he tried to ignore and then downplay a deadly onslaught of which he had been duly warned.
With his presidential messaging warped by egomania, Trump promised that the spreading pandemic would swiftly and "miraculously" fade away. He knew that was a lie but resisted a sound public testing program because he didn't want "bad numbers" as the election season began. He failed to provide critically needed hospital supplies as doctors and nurses died. And he undercut the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's guidance on safety protocols while promoting quack cures, comic-book science, and loony ideas like "injecting" bleach.
Trump's mindless, chaotic response led to many thousands of unnecessary deaths, for which he somehow mostly escaped blame, while right-wing media demonized veteran public health officials. And all that insanity occurred while responsible federal officials were still in office — meaning before Kennedy got the chance to pursue his impulse to destroy the public health edifice that required decades to build.
That course of destruction accelerated as soon as Trump and Kennedy took over last year, although the dismantling had begun during the first Trump administration. Within weeks after his second inauguration, the president signed an executive order terminating United States membership in the World Health Organization, a token of his pig-ignorant attitude about the global vectors of diseases that know no borders. At the same time, he ended U.S. observance of International Health Regulations that govern cross-border investigations of disease outbreaks like COVID-19, Ebola and now hantavirus.
Trump's malign commands are not only leading to the deaths of millions of innocent people in other countries, suddenly deprived of essential medicines and care, but now are jeopardizing American access to vital, timely, lifesaving information. Whatever capable officials are still left in our government can no longer see the WHO surveillance databases or communicate with its working groups of doctors and scientists — who played a major part in our defense against Ebola during the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, Trump's sycophant Kennedy has directed an even more damaging reign of ruin on the systems that protect us within our own borders. Apparently motivated by an urge for vengeance on the CDC, which thwarted his anti-vaccine propaganda, Kennedy ousted nearly a third of the agency's employees. Among the functions most harmed by his stupid waves of firing and rehiring was the renowned Epidemic Intelligence Service, whose medical detectives are trained to investigate and assess infectious outbreaks like hantavirus (or, to take another topical example, the measles epidemic conjured by Kennedy's anti-vax imbecility).
According to Dr. Celine Gounder, everyone who worked for the CDC's Vessel Sanitation Program, which monitors cruise ship health conditions, cashiered all its full-time civilian workers in early 2025. (Most of them were later rehired.) Only an idiot would imagine that the government should save money by ruining such precious public services.
The demoralizing impact of Trump and Kennedy on American public health will take a toll that has scarcely been felt yet.
"I hope it's fine," said the president when asked about the hantavirus on Sunday. This time it probably will be. But his halting answer was an eerie echo of what he said in January 2020 — before he and his stooges demolished the best public health system in the world.
Reprinted with permission from Creators.
Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martin's Press, 2024). The paperback version, with a new Afterword, is now available wherever books are sold.
The National Memo is a political newsletter and website that combines the spirit of investigative journalism with new technology and ideas. We cover campaigns, elections, the White House, Congress, and the world with a fresh outlook. Our own journalism — as well as our selections of the smartest stories available every day — reflects a clear and strong perspective, without the kind of propaganda, ultra-partisanship and overwrought ideology that burden so much of our political discourse.
