<....“We did carefully at that, and we saw we could have some short-term victories, but we worried we would have long term damage. For example, we could have faced the loss of any future relationship in the coming years with the federal government, and that would have effectively meant an end to the research mission we conduct as we know it,” she said.

The acting president cast the agreement as a “reset” for Columbia’s relationship with the federal government, describing “deep deliberation and almost word-by-word negotiation” with the White House over months – a process that, she said, “took longer than anticipated.”

Last month, Shipman described the financial pressures that university was facing because of the administration’s campaign as “increasingly acute.”

“Columbia’s top scientists are facing the decimation of decades of research. Graduate students, postdocs, mid-career researchers, and established, celebrated scientists, have all had their breakthroughs lauded by the world one minute and defunded the next. We’re in danger of reaching a tipping point in terms of preserving our research excellence and the work we do for humanity,” Shipman said.

‘Roadmap for elite universities’

The Trump administration believes that the deal could serve as a blueprint for other schools.

McMahon heralded the outcome as a “seismic shift in our nation’s fight to hold institutions that accept American taxpayer dollars accountable for antisemitic discrimination and harassment” and said the school’s reforms mark “a roadmap for elite universities that wish to regain the confidence of the American public by renewing their commitment to truth-seeking, merit, and civil debate.”

“I believe they will ripple across the higher education sector and change the course of campus culture for years to come,” McMahon said.

Elite schools like Columbia and Harvard University, among others, have faced intense pressure from the Trump administration to crack down on antisemitism on their campuses  – or face the possible loss of significant federal funding. The effort is part of a broad administration push for policy changes at universities – including over Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and other initiatives – that Trump sees as a winning political issue. But it is one that raises major questions about academic freedom and the role of the federal government on college campuses.

The White House official touted the $21 million settlement of US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigations as “the largest employment-discrimination public settlement in almost 20 years.” That money, according to the official, will “resolve alleged civil rights violations against Jewish Columbia employees that occurred on its campus following the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks.”

The $200 million will go to the US Treasury, a senior administration official told CNN on Thursday.

Pressed for specifics, the official said, “This is money that is going to be sort of residing in the US Treasury, but there would need to be a specific appropriation in order to, like, spend it on something,” later adding that the policy focus for the money would be on trade schools and apprenticeships....>

<....CNN reported last month that the administration was nearing an agreement with Columbia, and the school’s board met in early July to review the terms of the deal, according to a source familiar with the process.

The university, which was facing an investigation into its handling of antisemitism on campus, had taken a less confrontational approach than Harvard while it sought to reach a deal, and a source familiar with the matter told CNN that the administration was more amenable to Columbia’s proposed terms in behind-the-scenes negotiations. In June, the Trump administration threatened to pull the university’s accreditation over policies it said violated discrimination laws, the source said.

Asked about the state of talks, Trump told CNN earlier this month, “I think we’re going to probably settle with Harvard. We’re going to probably settle with Columbia. They want to settle very badly. There’s no rush.”

Asked how much money the settlement would entail, Trump said, “A lot of money.”

A source involved in universities’ response to the administration told CNN last month that the White House has been looking to strike a deal with a high-profile school.

“They want a name-brand university to make a deal like the law firms made a deal that covers not just antisemitism and protests, but DEI and intellectual diversity,” this person said at the time.

Asked if any of the schools are inclined to make such a deal, the source said, “Nobody wants to be the first, but the financial pressures are getting real.”

The settlement was met with support from the school’s Hillel.

“This announcement is an important recognition of what Jewish students and their families have expressed with increasing urgency: antisemitism at Columbia is real, and it has had a tangible impact on Jewish students’ sense of safety and belonging and, in turn, their civil rights. Acknowledging this fact is essential, and along with the new path laid out by the President and Trustees, I am hopeful that today’s agreement marks the beginning of real, sustained change,” Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia/Barnard Hillel, said.>

And yes, <mawdicker>: my page, so <I alone> choose the content. That a problem? Bugger off, <fredremf>!

<Most of us are quite bored of hearing you yap about yourself stalker who spends his waking hours obsessing over what others post and then makes an utterly useless post himself. You are intelligent enough to make far better use of your time and written contributions, but narcissism controls your bad/mad habit.

FYI: IM Banzea is a prolific streamer of chess instruction and has been for some years. Editors might want to actually have some contemporary chess world awareness other than cheating scandals and world championships.

Or, continue to ignore the guy and let future editors a hundred years from now dig up IM Banzea's background and teachings. But by then they might only care about true unknowns and super GMs, and GothamChess.>

<President Donald Trump’s demand that Republicans draw more House districts to their advantage is threatening to set off a multistate brawl of naked political opportunism that could go a long way toward determining who controls the House next year, no matter how the voters themselves feel.

Texas Republicans are meeting in a special session where they plan to redraw the state’s congressional map, a move that could give them as many as five more House seats – more than the margin of their current House majority. Republicans are also redrawing Ohio’s congressional map, where they could squeeze out as many as three more seats, and are eyeing other states too as they try to maximize their structural advantage ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

The bare-knuckled political fight was started by the White House. Last week, President Trump told Texas’ GOP congressional delegation that he wanted a new map in their state. Mr. Trump told reporters afterward that “I think we get five” seats in Texas with a new map, and “we’re going to get another three, or four or five in addition” from other states.

Republicans in Texas are heeding President Trump’s request to change congressional districts as a way of protecting the GOP’s House majority in next year’s midterm elections. Democrats warn they’ll do the same in states they control as they sense a chance to flip the chamber.

Democrats are promising to fight back, warning that they may attempt new gerrymanders of their own in states they control – and predicting that Republicans could get greedy and overstretch their maps by moving too many Republican voters out of their current districts to create new ones and putting their own incumbents at risk.

“Every blue state should be looking at doing this mid-decade redistricting if Republicans are going to do it,” says Rep. Ted Lieu, a member of House Democratic leadership.

That includes in Representative Lieu’s home state of California, where Democrats are openly talking about overturning their state’s nonpartisan redistricting process.

‘It’s everyone’s business.’ In Finland, national security is a shared responsibility. The state-by-state fight could play a huge role in determining which party wins the House in 2026 – Democrats’ best chance of breaking Republicans’ unified control of the federal government and gaining a check on the president’s aggressive agenda in Washington.

“This is a nuclear arms race for House control,” says Dave Wasserman, an elections analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

In fact, gerrymandering played a key role in giving Republicans their current House majority. They redrew a map in North Carolina before the last election that handed them three new House seats – and then won House control by that exact margin. Without that map, every major GOP agenda item Congress has passed for Mr. Trump this year would not have become law.

Redistricting occurs at the beginning of each decade, after new census data requires states to redraw their lines, and since the dawn of the republic has often been a sharp-elbowed affair. The term gerrymandering, or partisan redistricting, is named after founding father Elbridge Gerry.

Mid-decade redistricting was once vanishingly rare, considered by both parties a partisan bridge too far. But ever since Texas Republicans did an aggressive remapping in 2003 that gave the GOP six more House seats, they’ve become more and more common.

This has coincided with technological advances in map-drawing and voter behavior research that has made gerrymandering significantly more effective in the past two decades. Politicians now know exactly which voters they’re drawing into which districts, and can be much more precise and exacting than ever before.

But as Democrats gear up to fight the GOP with new maps, they face much longer odds at success because of state-level limits on gerrymandering. A bipartisan push to end the practice and limit political parties’ ability to dominate states with little input from voters has proved popular with voters from across the political spectrum. Many states have adopted limits on gerrymandering over the past two decades, precisely to avoid the kind of brazen rigging of state maps that both sides are threatening today.

“Democrats in several states are being faced with the challenge of going to a gunfight with a rubber knife,” says Jeff Wice, a former redistricting counsel for the Democratic National Committee who is now a professor at New York Law School.

In California, Democrats’ best opportunity to gerrymander a number of additional seats, the party would first need to convince voters to repeal their state’s independent redistricting commission in a statewide referendum....>

<....Representative Lieu said he backed the creation of that commission when it passed in 2008 – and that he now regrets it, given Republicans’ recent actions.

“I was wrong,” he says. “We have to respond.”

Trump’s Texas push

A number of Texas GOP congressmen have been frustrated with the push from the White House. The map they currently have was designed to protect them for the decade as the state’s fast-changing demographic shifts threatened to make a number of their seats competitive. But they, and Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, have been willing to go along at Mr. Trump’s insistence.

“We’re team players in the delegation. We did our own maps. We drew them. Everybody agreed, we got them passed,” says Rep. Michael McCaul. “But we’re willing to work with the White House.”

Republicans already hold 25 of the state’s 38 House seats, even though Democrats regularly win more than 40% of the vote in statewide races. Mr. Trump is pushing them to draw five more GOP districts.

Democrats Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez already represent districts Mr. Trump won in the state’s rightward-trending, heavily Hispanic Rio Grande Valley, and Republicans are likely to make those districts even more conservative in a redraw without disrupting their own incumbents much. They could also potentially target one or two Democratic seats in Houston as well as the one held by Rep. Marc Veasey in Dallas-Fort Worth.

But House Republicans don’t want to take on vast numbers of new voters or face tough races just so the GOP can pick up a few more seats, and are lobbying their state legislative allies back in Texas not to mess with their district lines, which could limit how aggressive a gerrymander the new map is.

The Texas legislature would need to pass new maps by the end of a 30-day special session that began on Monday for them to be used next year.

Last week, Mr. Trump told the Monitor during a gaggle with reporters that there were “about four” other states where Republicans should redraw the maps besides Texas. Though he declined to say which were on the list. He said three states could yield one more House seat for the GOP and a fourth could yield two to three more. Add that to Texas, and that could add up to as many as 10 more safe Republican seats heading into the midterms.

That bigger prize he referred to is likely Ohio, where Republicans were already set to redraw their congressional map before Mr. Trump’s push. A quirk in state law related to the state’s fairly toothless anti-gerrymandering law has forced them to draw a new map, and they have unchecked control of the levers of power to do so. Republicans are privately eyeing changes to tilt the swing districts of Democratic Reps. Marcy Kaptur and Emilia Sykes in northern Ohio to make them more Republican. They may also target Rep. Greg Landsman’s Cincinnati-based district as well, though one obstacle is state anti-gerrymandering laws limiting how much counties can be split in redistricting.

Missouri Republicans are reportedly looking at drawing a new map that would erase Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s district, splitting it into two Republican districts. Florida Republicans have already drawn an aggressive gerrymander that was upheld by the conservative-dominated state supreme court in spite of a “fair districts” constitutional amendment voters approved a few years ago. Given the state’s recent rightward drift, Republicans there could target even more Democrats. They could also seek to shore up an Omaha-based seat in Nebraska that Democrats think they are likely to flip next election – and may try to go after Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids in Kansas as well.

Eyes on California

Democrats are promising to respond in kind if Texas Republicans move ahead.

“We’re not going to fight with one arm tied behind our back,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Suzan DelBene, a Washington state Democrat, said at a Monitor Breakfast Wednesday. “Republicans should be careful what they ask for because Republicans are going to lose seats if this is the path that they go down.”

But Democrats’ options are much more limited.

Over the past few decades, a number of red and blue states including New Jersey, New York, Arizona, Ohio and Florida have passed laws and constitutional amendments limiting or barring gerrymandering. But while judges in more liberal-leaning states have largely enforced those restrictions assiduously, in red-leaning states that have adopted similar measures, conservative state judges have often allowed Republican lawmakers to skirt the new rules.

In 2008, California voters ended partisan gerrymandering by the legislature and approved an independent redistricting commission. Democrats have 43 of the state’s 52 House seats, but an aggressive gerrymander could potentially give them two or three more....>

<....California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom declared that if Texas moves ahead with a new gerrymander, he’d push California to overturn its independent citizens redistricting commission and let Democrats draw a partisan map of their own.

“If these guys are literally going to rig, de facto, the outcome of November next year, I can’t just sit back passively,” the California governor said in a recent episode of his podcast.

For California Democrats to be successful, they’d need to get voters to pass a statewide ballot proposition repealing their independent commission. That could be a tough sell: Voters approved the commission by 61%-38% in 2008.

California Democratic Rep. Mark Takano said that it’ll be an “expensive” and uncertain process to pass a statewide proposition – but that he thought a majority of Californians would come around to understanding that Mr. Trump was the bigger threat.

“The voters of California… they don’t like the idea of politicians drawing their own districts. And I agree with that,” he said. “But this isn’t about political deals. This is about the future of our democracy and the future of our country. … I think Californians are very interested in seeing a check being put on Donald Trump’s power.”

California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa said that the independent redistricting commission was a farce dominated by Democrats. “Gerrymandering is already there,” he says, arguing that if Governor Newsom “is doing it in an open and ruthless fashion” it wouldn’t make a huge difference.

New York and New Jersey, where Democrats could theoretically draw more Democratic-leaning districts, both have constitutional bans on mid-decade redistricting, as well as limits on partisan gerrymandering.

Justice

The Supreme Court may have entered a new phase. Call it the emergency era. Even where Democrats have unified control and a relatively free hand to re-gerrymander, they’re pretty maxed out. Illinois Democrats already hold 14 of the state’s 17 House seats, even though Mr. Trump won 43% of the statewide vote.

Maryland Democrats have made noises about drawing a new congressional map that would carve up the state’s only Republican district, held by Rep. Andy Harris. But Rep. Steny Hoyer, the dean of Maryland’s House delegation, says there was no way to draw a “rational map” that would give Democrats all eight congressional seats in the state. If it were possible, “it would have been done,” he said with a laugh. “Eight-oh would be a map that would be tough to sell to the courts,” he said.

In Washington state, Democrats already hold eight of 10 House districts, and a bipartisan redistricting commission draws the state’s maps. Local Democratic leaders said this week that it would be all but impossible to draw a more partisan map.

“Some places it’s going to be more challenging than others,” Ms. DelBene said after Wednesday’s Monitor Breakfast.>

<The Trump administration is dramatically escalating its surveillance of immigrants through a shocking expansion of GPS monitors that were specifically designed to track cattle, according to internal White House documents obtained by The Washington Post.

In a June 9 memo, Immigration and Customs Enforcement ordered staff to slap ankle monitors on all participants in its Alternatives to Detention program "whenever possible" — potentially forcing an additional 159,000 migrants into electronic shackles.

The directive represents a massive expansion from the current 24,000 immigrants already wearing the devices, turning their homes and communities into what advocates call "digital cages.”

"This will be a tool used to extend the reach of the government from just the folks it can manage to put in physical detention to an additional hundreds of thousands more that it can surveil," warned Laura Rivera, a senior attorney at Just Futures, to the Post.

"It's designed to turn their own communities and homes into digital cages."

The monitors will be fastened to the ankles of people in the program, who have agreed to surveillance as their cases are processed — but the memo says pregnant women can have them fastened to their wrists.

The policy has blindsided immigrants like Paola, a 29-year-old Honduran mother who fled an abusive husband four years ago. Despite attending every court hearing and complying with check-ins while awaiting her asylum case, she was suddenly ordered to wear an ankle monitor due to "new laws."

"Maybe they've taken these drastic steps because many people don't show up to court," Paola told The Post. "But some of us do everything right and still get treated the same."

The expansion represents a windfall for the Geo Group, the private prison giant that employs Trump's border czar Tom Homan as a consultant and donated more than $1.5 million to Trump's campaign. The company's subsidiary BI Inc. — a business that was set up to monitor cattle — runs the entire tracking program.

"We have taken several important steps to be prepared to meet that opportunity, and we are very well positioned," Geo CEO David Donahue said to investors in May, revealing the company is prepared to track "millions of immigrants."

The bulky devices weigh as much as an iPhone and prone to causing rashes and bruises, the Post reported.

"It makes you feel like you are really a bad person," said Michael Langa, who wore one for eight months. "It really gets into your psyche and really damages your soul.">

<It took six months into President Trump’s second term to get here, but something shifted in Trump World this month. The administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case — including its assertion that a “client list” doesn’t exist — sent tremors through the MAGA ecosystem, creating a permission structure for key players on the right to start treating Trump like a lame duck.

This was a significant development, even though there are obvious reasons to view Trump this way. Constitutional limits prevent him from running again after 2024. That alone creates an expiration date on his relevance that even the most obsequious loyalists can’t ignore forever.

Then there’s the Epstein connection, which didn’t just put a fresh stink on an already scandal-soaked politician. It found him on the wrong side of a definitive MAGA narrative. It’s one thing to be indicted multiple times; it’s quite another to be entangled in the biggest conspiracy theory of our era.

But there’s something else in the air: Trump looks old. We may have grown accustomed to his ALL CAPS rants, but the physical symptoms are harder to normalize — the swollen ankles. The makeup caked awkwardly on his hands.

Taken together — the reality of Trump’s lame-duck status, being out of touch with much of his base and now the physical deterioration — we are left with a picture of a man whose once iron-clad grip on his party is finally beginning to loosen.

The base might not say it outright. MAGA influencers certainly won’t admit it — but they absolutely see it. And more importantly, they’re starting to act on it. The jostling has begun.

For this reason, it’s no longer absurdly premature to start talking about succession. And, for my money, there are three leading contenders.

Vice President JD Vance — seemingly the obvious successor — is clearly positioning himself as heir apparent to Trumpism 2.0: similar themes, better vocabulary, a little more polish and (crucially) a future.

Tucker Carlson now also seems to be testing out what it would look like to actually run for office. And Donald Trump Jr. is lurking around the perimeter; the assumption is that his name will carry him somewhere, though it’s not clear where (or even if) anyone would follow him.

For those hoping the MAGA spell would break post-Trump, the prospects are strikingly bleak. These three men all occupy somewhat similar turf — a figure like Nikki Haley will not be not on this list.

Trumpism will survive, albeit without Trump. But winning the internecine battle to lead this movement might be a Pyrrhic victory.

Trump’s coalition cannot be inherited any more than his celebrity status or charisma can. The coalition wasn’t built to outlive 2024. It is an unruly jumble of people with wildly incompatible worldviews, glued together by little more than shared grievance and a cult of personality.

It includes paleoconservative nationalists and neoconservative interventionists, Christian fundamentalists and manosphere libertines, fans of McDonald’s and crunchy health nuts. And it worked, somehow, in 2024 — but only for Trump.

This has always been the dirty secret of Trumpism: It’s not transferrable. You could see it in the 2018 midterms, when Republicans took a beating without Trump on the ballot. You saw it again in 2022, when a rogues’ gallery of Trump-endorsed candidates flopped spectacularly....>

<....The Trump base doesn’t show up for the brand — it shows up for the man.

So what happens when the man is gone? We’re about to find out. For the first time in nearly a decade, the right is confronting a future without a clear standard-bearer. And every would-be successor faces the same paradox: To win Trump’s base, you have to sound like Trump. But the more you sound like Trump, the more you remind people you’re not him.

It’s difficult to imagine that any of the frontrunners could maintain the same patchwork coalition. Vance might be able to pick off the nationalist-intellectual set, but he lacks Trump’s charisma, and gives off oily politician vibes.

Tucker might dominate the culture-war lane. Don Jr. might do okay with the too-online meme crowd. But no one can put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Because the thing they’re all trying to inherit — Trumpism— isn’t an ideology. It’s a person.

This is the tragedy and farce of the post-Trump GOP: It bet everything on a single man, and now it has no idea how to function without him.

Trump hollowed out the party, scorched the institutions and rewired the voter base. And he will likely leave behind a political husk that still bears his name but contains little of his animating style.

Of course, Trump isn’t gone yet. Republicans — thanks, perhaps, to their plans to gerrymander Texas — could still hold on to Congress in November. Maybe Trump can ultimately find a way to outrun the Epstein controversy and set the terms for the next four years. And, regardless, he could also play a vital role in picking (or sabotaging) whoever inherits his mantle.

But that doesn’t change the fact that his era is already ending. The spell is finally starting to wear off. And somewhere, just beneath the surface, it feels like the scramble for 2028 has already begun.

The question isn’t whether someone can pick up the torch. It’s whether that person can prevent the flame from being extinguished entirely.>

<The second Trump term was always going to get a little bumpy. You’d certainly need nerves of steel to be in the administration this week.

Once the president seemed immune to the pressures of the “Panicans”. He humiliated those wailing about an Iranian nuclear strike on Boston by ending the Iran-Israel war in 12 days with zero American casualties. When Elon Musk started up another bout of late night posting against the One Big Beautiful Bill, Trump told him to take a hike. This is a guy who built his reputation in business and politics on bouncing back from apparent disaster. He’s made of sterner stuff than you or I.

But there appear to be limits, even for him. An explosive Wall Street Journal article published last night, revealing a “bawdy” letter purportedly from Trump to Jeffrey Epstein (the president denies the letter in question is from him), has sent shock waves through Maga-world.

Tensions have been building since the department of justice and the FBI announced that they would not release any more files related to Epstein, the disgraced financier and sex trafficker. But the president’s initial instinct – to rage against supporters who had fallen “hook, line, and sinker” for conspiracy theories – could not hold. He has now asked Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval”.

Clearly, the administration thinks it cannot treat the Epstein conspiracy theorists as just another group of soon-to-be-embarrassed Panicans. The base doesn’t care if America drops a couple of bombs on the Ayatollah or calls Musk a weirdo. But Trump and senior figures in his administration helped spread the idea that there was more to the Epstein scandal than we were being told.

The dynamics of the online media ecosystem now turning against the president are also worth examining, as they portend poorly to the future of the American Right.

For all the progressive teasing about the Fox-News-on-crack aesthetics of Maga, Trump’s movement has always been one that is supremely comfortable with the online sphere. His first campaign was defined by “meme magic”, arcane internet imageboards and Pepe the Frog.

The same people ironically (and then sincerely) amplifying Trump didn’t fit easily into the mental image of the left-behind white Americans that supposedly made up the Republican candidate’s base: they were young, media-savvy, and deeply paranoid. Perhaps it was inevitable that the man who popularised Birtherism would attract the guys who shouted about Pizzagate – the lurid conspiracy theory that falsely claimed a paedophile ring was being run out of a Washington DC pizza restaurant.

A new generation of influencers rose from the imageboards and chatrooms and came out into the open. They were edgier than Joe Rogan, but like him had interests outside of the purely political. You can see the evolution of their thinking clearly: Maga wasn’t just the project of a single extraordinary man, but a brand, a broad church where you could shill supplements and drone into your podcast mic – as long as you stuck by your president.

Then again, the 47th president wasn’t paying you. That was your audience, and they craved intrigue even after the election campaign was over. A belief that these influencers brought the president to power in the first place (just don’t ask them what they said about Ron DeSantis back in 2022) made them think they could make demands. Trump needed them, they thought, not the other way around.

If you want a glimpse at what Maga without the president looks like, take a look at Laura Loomer. She’s been at the centre of internet bloodsports for more than a decade now, and created a space for herself within Maga by acting as a regime pitbull. She’s spent the last few days making veiled threats about the damage this Epstein crisis could cause Trump. Loomer is not representative of the base, but she is representative of an online influencer class that is one of the administration’s main vectors for getting out news. If they turn Panican, ignoring them isn’t an option: they need to be smacked down, and fast.

The president and his allies played with fire in letting the conspiracy-obsessives grow their power for so long. The stakes are high: without Trump, the political project of Maga dies. In its place will be a dangerous fantasy woven by those who make a living frightening people into impotence.>

<M&A deals face new hurdles in the form of a ‘Trump transaction tax’ and a ‘Trump transaction trap.’

Stephen Colbert, the CBS late-night talk show host, was unequivocal in his assessment of Paramount Global’s $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump. “I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles,” he said. “It’s a big fat bribe.”

Jon Stewart of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” followed suit, calling the settlement “shameful.” Both hosts, who work for Paramount Global the parent company of both CBS and Comedy Central, were nominated for Primetime Emmy Awards this week.

Colbert noted on Tuesday that the trade press was speculating that “the new owner’s desire to please Trump could put pressure on late-night host and frequent Trump critic Stephen Colbert.”

Two days later, CBS announced that “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” would air its last show in May 2026. According to news reports on Thursday, Paramount and CBS said the cancellation “is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”

How the Trump transaction tax is a trap

Excitement after the 2024 election for an M&A boom has given way to a new reality, unexpected by investors and chief executives. Deals face new hurdles in the form of a “Trump transaction tax” and a “Trump transaction trap.”

The tax is the cost of a corporate transaction approval outside of the normal parameters of competition or public-interest analysis.

The trap is the negative consequences that come from paying the tax.

The Paramount-Skydance Media merger Colbert referenced is a perfect example. Paramount paid Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit about a “60 Minutes” segment — something observers believe was necessary for Paramount and Skydance to obtain FCC approval for the deal.

While $16 million may not be material in the context of the $8 billion deal, the trap is. By paying it, Paramount’s board is open to potential bribery charges, and/or the possibility of derivative shareholder suits.

Shareholders could claim that settling the lawsuit, widely perceived to be frivolous, was a waste of corporate assets. But a possible defense — that it was necessary to obtain deal approval — may be worse: providing something of value to a public official with the intent to influence their regulatory oversight is the very definition of a bribe.

The payment will make it harder and more expensive for Paramount to win projects. There’s another, less understood, tax as well. Media properties compete for two things: customers and talent. It is bad enough that the merger review eroded the value of both “60 Minutes” and CBS News, as well as causing the departure of top talent — now including Colbert.

But the bigger difficulty will be with the Paramount streaming service, perhaps the most valuable service going forward. The payment will make it harder and more expensive for Paramount to win projects they might want if the producers, directors, writers and actors have concerns about the willingness of management to withstand controversy about a program.

Further, it demonstrates to investors that streaming companies with federally regulated components are at a disadvantage relative to unregulated streaming companies such as YouTube Apple+ and Netflix

Pay to play

The Trump transaction tax has been imposed on other media deals too. The Federal Trade Commission just approved advertising giant Omnicom Group’s acquisition of Interpublic Group — but only after Omnicom agreed that it won’t direct advertising away from media outlets based on political or ideological viewpoints. This condition appears designed to specifically benefit Trump’s Truth Social and Elon Musk’s X.

Omnicom is trapped. It cannot advise its clients to direct ads to the most beneficial platforms, but rather to use platforms that may be contrary to the clients’ interests. Will this devalue the effectiveness of a $250 million global advertising budget that Omnicom has in its portfolio? Might an advertiser want to work with another agency that was not constrained in this manner? Yes, and yes.

The trap isn’t limited to the federal government. States also have a role in approving corporate transactions and might look at issues differently from Washington. Verizon Communications for example, had to agree to disown its DEI program to gain FCC approval to purchase Frontier Communications Verizon now faces increased scrutiny from the California Public Utilities Commission about whether its concessions to the FCC violate California law that requires supplier diversity. The tension between state and federal regulators represents an unresolved risk to the transaction....>

<....Tough road for Disney and Comcast

The Trump transaction tax distorts company valuations and market forces that should be driving the deals.

The next iteration of the tax/trap will play out when the FCC loosens its broadcast-ownership rules, setting off a frenzy of broadcast transactions. Companies viewed as “Trump-friendly,” such as Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair seem positioned for a relatively smooth path for transactions — though past loyalty to Trump is no guarantee of an easy path.

A big problem awaits Walt Disney and Comcast whose pursuit of shareholder value may include buying or selling broadcast outlets. Trump regards these two media giants as enemies, arguing that their news coverage should cause them to lose their licenses.

Expect the FCC, as it did with Paramount, to raise questions and delay approval, making Disney and Comcast less attractive as buyers, even if strategically they are the best fit. Licenses they want to sell will be less attractive due to the kind of uncertainty and delays seen in the Paramount-Skydance transaction. Either way, the Trump transaction tax distorts company valuations and market forces that should be driving the deals.

This is the pain point for investors and management: fealty to free markets or fealty to Trump. The cost is likely higher than investors currently understand.>

<Sources say two prominent Democrats are stepping away from a national bipartisan organization that brings together the chief executives of all 50 states, citing a lack of pushback to Trump administration policies and to some recent threats to state funding and operations.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, the chair of the Democratic Governors Association (DGA), will be leaving the National Governors Association (NGA) at the end of the month, a source familiar with her thinking told ABC News.

She will actively step back from the organization, not only by not paying dues but also by withdrawing from promoting or taking part in any NGA-associated work, the source said.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the former DGA chair, is also cutting ties with the NGA and will stop paying dues to the organization next year as he is "reassessing" his membership, another source told ABC News.

The two governors are stepping away at a time when the association appears to engage in fewer bipartisan initiatives and advocate less for states as they face uncertainty around some of the Trump administration's policies and Congress' recent cuts to federal funding, according to the second source, who called that a departure from the group's past work to champion local issues.

The NGA is "not living up to the most fundamental aspect of its mission statement" while Congress and the Trump administration are "dismantling solutions-based governance," said the source familiar with Kelly's thinking.

What the NGA says

The National Governors Association is a bipartisan organization that brings together the nation's governors to work on state and local issues and to liaise with the federal government. Every year, the leadership of the organization alternates between Democrats and Republicans. The current chair is Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, of Colorado.

Asked about the departure of Walz and Kelly, NGA spokesperson Eric Wohlschlegel said the organization "continues to see strong engagement from governors across the country, with record attendance at recent convenings and bipartisan participation across all major initiatives."

The second source said some governors and their staff feel frustrated because they feel the group hasn't pushed back enough on Trump administration policies that directly impact their states.

That source said that there is a "a shocking lack of willingness to speak out on states' rights and federal overreach. Silence on the one set of issues that all governors should agree on."

The source added: "There are a lot of ways governors coordinate on a bipartisan basis and this is simply too great an expense to taxpayers for the value we get in return right now."

Kelly would be "open" to staying in the organization should it return to work on bipartisan, local-focused issues, according to the source familiar with her thinking.

Kelly, the leader of the Democratic governors' group, is not advocating for her peers to follow her direction in leaving the NGA.

What other governors say

Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, of Maryland, the incoming vice-chair of the NGA, told ABC News Friday that he counts Kelly and Walz among his friends. He said he's heard similar frustrations about the group, and finds them totally understandable.

"I've definitely heard it. And I think a lot of the frustration… is justified, because I don't think this organization has really moved with a sense of urgency on some of these topics that they needed to," said Moore, who added that the group's silence on Trump's public spat with Maine Gov. Janet Mills "can never and should never be tolerated again."....>

<....The source familiar with Kelly's thinking also cited silence from the group when Congress passed a recissions package earlier this month, which cut a chunk of critical federal funding that Kansas relies on, as well as silence from the group when Trump deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles in response to the protests over immigration enforcement. The Guard is typically authorized by governors.

Still, Moore said he believes the NGA provides value in having a direct line to bipartisan collaboration, and that the "virtue of this organization is one that's worth fighting for.

"I respect the frustration that some of my colleagues have, I also know that I feel like we have a responsibility to actually work to fix it and address it," said Moore.

Moore said he believes that Walz and Kelly could come back into the fold after he takes the helm and pushes the leadership on improving.

"I think they also know that I hear their frustrations, and I plan on addressing their frustrations," said Moore.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, is the incoming NGA chair.

He said while he's friends with Walz and Kelly, he thinks their decision to walk away isn't the right one.

"I don't think you should take your ball and go home," Stitt told reporters Saturday. "Working together for all 50 states in the benefits of our country, and our states, it's hard and it's messy and we should be able to debate what is the right policy. But let's not take our ball and go home. Let's sit here and let's talk about what is the best thing that we can do for America."

New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, who chaired the NGA from 2022-2023, told ABC Saturday morning that he hadn't heard of the concerns from Democrats until recently. While he is a "huge fan" of both Kelly and Walz, Murphy said he doesn't agree with the decision to pull back from the organization.

"I respect their decisions. I just don't agree with that," he said. "I think the NGA is a very valuable entity. Does that mean everybody we're going to hear from today be inviting over to my house for dinner? No, for sure. But the fact of the matter is, we come together in common cause to try to find common ground. I think it does a very good job of that, is it perfect? No, and it's also a very personal reason for me, in the sense of you get to walk in the other guy's shoes, hear different perspectives."

Murphy continued: "I don't care if I'm sitting next to a Republican governor or a Democratic governor, we're there, as they say, to find common ground, to get to know each other. I think that has great value.">

<The president is trying to change the subject after the attorney general closed the case on disgraced financier and Jeffrey Epstein. That’s why Donald Trump has lately been harping on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Someone is to blame for some makebelieve problem and Trump wants to be seen as the solution.

But even if Trump were able to redirect the press corps’ attention, he is unlikely to change the dynamics under way among the MAGA faithful. Trump says Powell must go so that interest rates fall, but to the extent that MAGA base was ever motivated by inflation or the cost of living, it was a secondary concern. MAGA’s principal motivation is drawn from a cosmic story about the battle between good and evil, and with the Epstein scandal, Trump has raised doubts about which side he’s on.

Which story? QAnon. It’s the belief that Donald Trump is the epic hero in a secret war against powerful and malevolent (and Jewish) conspirators who have plotted with agents in the government (the deep state), corporations (wokeness) and the media (lies) to sabotage America. The end of the story was supposed to come when Trump released the Epstein files in advance of executing God’s enemies.

But when US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that there was no list and no conspiracy, she said, in effect, that “the prophecy” was phony. As Lindsay Beyerstein memorably put it: “To the QAnon base, it’s akin to the pope tweeting, ‘We’ve reviewed the files and Jesus didn’t rise from the dead. Thank you for your attention in this matter.’”

Something about QAnon that’s important to bear in mind is that lots of people have served it to become rich and influential, which is to say, lots of people have cynically exploited antisemitic fear and paranoia to create a gigantic rightwing media apparatus that has been able to shield the president from feeling the consequences of virtually all of his choices, not matter how destructive they might be, even to MAGA.

Another thing to bear in mind is that Trump decided to bring into his administration some of these self-same people who have gotten rich and influential telling and retelling the story about Trump being the hero who is going to save the world and make America great again.

Two of them are Kash Patel, the FBI director, and Dan Bongino, the FBI’s deputy director. They were reportedly in agreement with Bondi’s decision to close the Epstein case, but once they understood fully the incendiary backlash against it, they apparently chickened out. Bondi forced them to choose between loyalty to Trump and loyalty to the true believers of “the prophecy,” which is to say, she forced them to choose between a “false prophet” and their lucrative media careers. (I don’t know about Patel, but Bongino is reportedly looking for an exit.)

This is the source of the division among the MAGA faithful, between a political leader who, over a decade, rode a rising tide of conspiracy theory – from birtherism to Pizzagate to the stop the steal – and a tightly-knit group of rightwing operatives, some of them are funded by the governments of Russia and Iran, who rode that tide along with him.

United, they could bend the will of the Washington press corps and prevent any scandal from truly taking root, up to and including an attempted paramilitary takeover of the United States government.

Divided, however, the president is badly exposed.

One way Trump diverts attention away from his incompetence, indecency and criminality is to accuse the media of being “the enemy of the people,” knowing his conspiracy-minded followers will interpret that to mean reporters are an extension of a Satan-worshiping pedophiliac cabal that’s plotting to destroy America and God’s chosen.

But now, he risks feeling the consequences of every choice. If he does indeed sack Jerome Powell, it will trigger a global reaction, the result of which will almost certainly drive up the cost of everything, including the cost of money, making borrowing and credit that much harder to get. His followers won’t complain about that explicitly, but they may do so implicitly – channeling their hardship through a proper MAGA lens.

As Lindsay Beyerstein insightfully told me, there is now a “permission structure” in place so the president’s followers can criticize him in “MAGA-coded way.” “Lashing out against the tariffs or the massive cuts to Medicaid makes you a RINO or ‘woke’ in their eyes,” she said. “But lashing out at Donald Trump in the name of Jeffrey Epstein’s child victims and the war on the deep state makes you a better, purer MAGA.”....>

<....Those victims, by the way, represent an entry point into the MAGA movement for Republicans who are squeamish about being associated with the kooks and cranks of QAnon. As one reader put it this morning: “There’s a more ‘centrist’ element to MAGA that entered into the movement with legitimate concerns about child trafficking. All those ‘report trafficking’ signs you find in bathrooms are a product of their work. So Trump’s dismissal of Epstein is a slap in their faces, too.”

New polling underscores this and suggests the backlash against Trump is far from isolated to the 20 percent of MAGA that’s diehard for QAnon. “Sixty-nine of respondents thought the federal government was hiding details about Epstein's clients,” Reuters said, “compared to 6 percent who disagreed and about one in four who said they weren't sure.”

The number of Republicans?

Nearly two-thirds, or 62 percent, agreed.

The MAGA movement has never held Donald Trump responsible for this choices, no matter how outrageous or illegal or treasonous they have been, because he convinced them that he and they are the real victims of a real conspiracy perpetrated by the greatest of evildoers, namely, a covert confederacy of scum and perversion that sells children for sex to seemingly untouchable men, like George Soros and Barack Obama.

So even though Trump was actually convicted of committing actual crimes against actual victims, in the eyes of MAGA, he remained the real victim of a much larger crime committed by much larger criminal forces that he, and only he, could bring to justice once elected.

That was the subtext beneath Donald Trump Jr’s question posed before the election. “How is it that my father can be convicted of 34 crimes, but no one on Epstein’s list has even been brought to light?” And that has been the subtext behind virtually every effort by Trump to draw attention away from the consequences of his choices.

The difference, now that he has tried to dismiss the Epstein case of nothing to see, is that the MAGA base can no longer be relied on to fill in the blanks. He wants them to believe that the evil doers are trying to persecute him over Epstein the way they persecuted him over Russia, but he can’t equate “the Russia hoax” with “the Epstein hoax” without also inadvertently admitting to the base that MAGA has been a scam.

That seems to be what Nick Fuentes has concluded. “When we look back on the history of populism in America, we are going to look back on the MAGA movement as the biggest scam in history, and the liberals were right,” the former Trump supporter and white supremacist said on his latest podcast. “The MAGA supporters were had. They were."

He added: “The Republicans must be hanged in the midterms. … It just needs to be a Democrat avalanche at this point. That’s not because I’m a Democrat. I don’t like the Democrats. I hate the Republicans more. Because the Republicans are traitors. Because I have voted for Republicans. I have supported Republicans. And they @#$% on our face.”

The essence of MAGA is faith. No matter what it looks like – no matter how scary or chaotic or costly or wrong things may seem – you must doubt the evidence of your eyes. Donald Trump was sent by God to fulfill a prophecy, or at least punish those whom MAGA believes deserve pain. But now the evidence of your eyes is looking more dependable.

Trump has never been held accountable.

But every con meets its end.>

<CNN’s Jake Tapper repeatedly fact-checked a Republican senator on air Sunday as the lawmaker insisted that Democrats and Barack Obama’s administration were at fault for a “sweetheart” deal that allowed Jeffrey Epstein to escape his 2008 conviction on child sex charges virtually unscathed.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin appeared on CNN’s State of the Union and repeatedly claimed that a plea agreement to keep Epstein from being charged federally for child sex crimes was signed in 2009, under the Obama administration. But Epstein’s plea agreement was drafted in 2007 and signed in 2008, when he pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for sex, before Obama was even president.

“It was 2008,” Tapper corrected him, chuckling.

Tapper noted that the U.S. attorney who oversaw the non-prosecution agreement was Alex Acosta, who went on become Donald Trump’s secretary of labor during his first administration.

“It all took place in 2008,” Tapper said.

Mullin then shot back, asking “who was in office at the time?” — seemingly making the error of assuming that Obama was the president. Obama won the presidential election that year but was inaugurated in January 2009.

“In 2008, George W. Bush was the president,” Tapper said, as he was cut off by Mullin repeating his question. “George W. Bush.”

Mullin went on to insist that because the case was “sealed in 2009” that Democrats were somehow involved.

A clearly exasperated Tapper responded that “the point is, the ‘sweetheart deal’, which was completed in 2008, was under the Bush administration.”

The plea agreement inked between Acosta and Epstein’s attorney, Alan Dershowitz, was staggering in its leniency.

Epstein was allowed to leave the prison facility for hours at a time for “work release” to the headquarters of a nebulous enterprise called the “Florida Science Foundation” he founded shortly before beginning his sentence and shut down when it concluded.

Inside the prison, Epstein was allowed to maintain his own office, just as he’d done at Harvard University for years, while watching television and was watched by guards who wore suits and were partially on his payroll.

Mullin and other Republicans closely aligned with the president are treading a careful line on the issue of the Epstein investigation.

The Trump administration ignited a firestorm early in July when the Department of Justice and FBI announced that the agencies would not release any more documents related to the Epstein investigation despite having promised to do so. The agencies cited a refusal to release identifying information about victims and graphic sexual imagery involving children.

Most glaringly, the agencies also declared in that early July announcement that a so-called “client list” of Epstein’s alleged co-conspirators had not been found.

Having latched on to the issue long before Trump was elected to a second term, his MAGA base descended into chaos.

Many of the president’s 2024 supporters called the reversal a betrayal by the administration, while some questioned whether Trump himself was involved in a cover-up to protect himself or other powerful men named as Epstein’s accomplices in the files. Some Democrats latched on to the issue at the same time, joining calls for transparency.

Then, a pair of articles in The Wall Street Journal purported to outline Trump’s own connections to the investigation.

The newspaper reported the contents of a message allegedly penned by Trump to Epstein as part of a 50th birthday celebration in 2003, including allusions to a “secret.” Trump firmly denied authoring the note, and sued the newspaper and its reporters in response.

A second article from the WSJ days later reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi informed Trump in May that he was mentioned in the Epstein investigation multiple times, thought it was not clear in what context

The White House called that story “fake” and has repeatedly insinuated that Democrats including Joe Biden tampered with the Epstein files in response.

Being mentioned in the files does not mean wrongdoing, and hundreds of names are reportedly included.

Republicans on Capitol Hill are caught in the middle. Some are joining on to a bipartisan effort led by Thomas Massie — a Republican who clashed with the president over the GOP budget reconciliation package earlier this year — and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna to force the Justice Department to release the entirety of its document trove, with redactions for child sexual assault material and the names or identifying information of victims.

Others more aligned with leadership, including House Speaker Mike Johnson.

But Johnson and others have been careful not to label the Epstein story a distraction, to the White House’s annoyance.

<Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dick Durbin (Ill.) is demanding that the Justice Department turn over all recordings, transcripts and notes from its interviews with Ghislaine Maxwell, the partner of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein who is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.

Durbin is raising the alarm over Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s interview with Maxwell, calling it “highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for the deputy attorney general” to conduct such an interview instead of line prosecutors who are familiar with the details of the case and who “can more readily determine if the witness is lying.”

“In light of troves of corroborating evidence collected through multiple investigations, a federal jury conviction, and Ms. Maxwell’s history and willingness to lie under oath, as it relates to her dealings with Jeffrey Epstein, why would DOJ depart from long-standing precedent and now seek her cooperation?” Durbin asked in the letter, which was also signed by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), the top Democrat on Judiciary’s Federal Courts Subcommittee.

Durbin and Whitehouse warned that Maxwell “may provide false information or selectively withhold information in return for a pardon or sentence commutation,” noting that Maxwell is pursuing an appeal to overturn her 2021 conviction for crimes she committed with Epstein.

They flagged what they called “the potential for a corrupt bargain” between the Trump administration and Maxwell that would have an “impact” on the victims and survivors of Epstein’s and Maxwell’s “horrific abuses.”

Trump last week said he hadn’t thought about pardoning Maxwell.

The Democrats asked the Justice Department to provide full transparency to the victims and survivors “with respect to any decisions the department makes regarding Ms. Maxwell’s appeal” and to pledge not to offer a pardon or commutation of sentence to Maxwell in exchange for information.

They asked Blanche to provide a detailed explanation of why the Justice Department believes Maxwell will be truthful after federal prosecutors argued in court that she demonstrated a “willingness to brazenly lie under oath about her conduct.”

The Democrats pointed out that Maxwell was charged in 2020 with two counts of perjury stemming from false statements she made in a civil deposition while under oath.

They asked the deputy attorney general to provide a detailed explanation of what information the DOJ believes Maxwell could answer that it did not obtain prior to her 2020 arrest and indictment.

And they demanded the Justice Department “provide all recordings, transcripts, reports of investigations” and other notes pertaining to interviews with Maxwell that took place on July 24 and 25.

They also asked for recordings and transcripts from any prior interviews with Maxwell and a complete description of any oral or written agreement the Justice Department entered into with Maxwell regarding past or future interviews.

Durbin and Whitehouse hypothesized the meetings with Maxwell are “another tactic to distract from DOJ’s failure to fulfill Attorney General Bondi’s commitment that the American people would see ‘the full Epstein files.’”

An official at the Justice Department confirmed that it received the letter from the Democratic senators and declined to comment further.>

<In a move that surprised many on both sides of the political aisle, progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) recently voted — with an overwhelming majority of House Democrats and Republicans — to support funding for Israel’s Iron Dome defense system.

To be sure, Ocasio-Cortez’s vote made little difference to the final tally. The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), which could have cut U.S. support, was shot down 422-6.

Nevertheless, voting to support continued funding was extremely revealing for what it says about Ocasio-Cortez’s grander ambitions.

Indeed, not only did her vote mark a clear break with other members of the progressive “Squad,” who made up five of the six objections.

More importantly, it positioned Ocasio-Cortez closer to the Democratic mainstream at a time when her name has been brought up as a candidate for the Senate, and potentially even President.

Further, this vote positions the congresswoman well vis-à-vis Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who trails Ocasio-Cortez by 19-points (55 percent to 36 percent) in a poll reported by Politico.

This is not the first time Ocasio-Cortez has broken from the progressive wing in order to strengthen her candidacy for higher office, although it is the most serious.

In 2021, in the wake of another war between Israel and Gaza, Ocasio-Cortez publicly lobbied against Iron Dome funding only to reverse course and vote “present.” At the time, MSNBC called her actions a bid to “preserve the possibility of challenging Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.”

Much like that vote, Ocasio-Cortez has maintained her image as a critic of Israel, but one who recognizes its right to exist and to self-defense, albeit her recent statements make it clear that she has an extremely narrow definition of “self-defense.”

This position, much closer to the wider Democratic Party and national electorate, is also in stark contrast with other progressive rising stars, such as Zohran Mamdani.

Mamdani, the front-runner to be New York City’s next Mayor has said Israel should not exist as a Jewish State, expressed support for the anti-Israel Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement, and who has taken a decisively one-sided view to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks as well as the ensuring war.

And yet, given the vastly different circumstances between the 2021 vote and present day, Ocasio-Cortez’s July 18 vote carries considerably more weight.

For months, even as many have doubted Ocasio-Cortez’s viability for statewide or national office, she has travelled the country, drawing thousands to her rallies. Even in red states and districts, voters are coming out to see her.

At one rally in Plattsburgh, N.Y., a district represented by Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, Ocasio-Cortez reportedly drew a full 10 percent of the entire town.

In that same vein, she has shown herself to be unmatched at fundraising ability.

According to a Wall Street Journal analysis, Ocasio-Cortez has raised $15.4 million this year, nearly twice as much as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and 23 times more than Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), the longest serving woman in the House.

Moreover, virtually all (99 percent) of Ocasio-Cortez’s contributions have come from individuals — her average donation in the second quarter was just $17 — rather than big-spending political action committees.

Tellingly, almost three-quarters (72 percent) of her contributions have come from out of state, with a significant share also being spent on advertising in states other than New York.

In fact, at this point — three years out from the 2028 elections — Ocasio-Cortez is seemingly more popular, marketable and noteworthy than former President Barack Obama was three years before the 2008 election....>

<....Obama, it will be remembered, was not even included in polls during the summer of 2005. His first appearance in a national poll came that December but was still considered such a longshot that his next appearance did not come until October of 2006.

Conversely, the Race to the White House polling aggregator shows Ocasio-Cortez (12 percent) in fourth place, and she’s consistently a top five finisher in individual polls.

Polymarket even shows her having the second-best odds, 17 percent, behind only Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) at 21 percent.

Additionally, in Democratic primaries, the left-wing of the party tends to dominate, giving her a considerable boost, particularly given the enthusiasm she tends to generate among this group.

Taken together, it increasingly appears that Ocasio-Cortez’s growing national appeal supports her growing political ambitions.

However, as I’ve stated elsewhere, there are legitimate reasons to doubt whether her viability for higher office corresponds with her aspirations.

Aside from her age, she will turn 39 three weeks before the 2028 election, and inexperience, Ocasio-Cortez’s political leanings could alienate a sufficient number of swing voters.

The 2024 election indicated that Americans, including a significant number of Democrats, do not want a far-left Democratic Party, and Ocasio-Cortez has historically been squarely on that side.

Likewise, even if she is taking steps to quietly move to the center on some issues, she may be underestimating the potential damage it may do among her own base of support.

Just days after the vote on the amendment, a far-left group defaced Ocasio-Cortez’s Bronx office, painting “Ocasio-Cortez funds genocide” in red paint. Her campaign advisor has also said that they’ve received death threats due to her vote.

Without downplaying the seriousness and inexcusability of political violence, it is doubtful that the far-left would stay away if Ocasio-Cortez began to be considered a legitimate frontrunner in the next three years.

Furthermore, were she to become the party’s nominee for either the Senate or the presidency, there is likely a “built in” vote among Democratic voters who would support the party, regardless of the candidate.

That’s especially true given that she addresses critical needs for Democrats — their lack of fresh ideas, new faces and overall lack of energy.

Of course, this is certainly not to suggest that she will be the nominee. She may very well decide that making a run at the Senate first makes more sense. Her appeal may also begin to fade between now and 2028.

Ultimately, the prospect of Ocasio-Cortez becoming Democrats’ 2028 presidential nominee is not out of the realm of reason, and even looks considerably more plausible than it did just one year ago.>

<Most script writers would have avoided a plot twist like this. It’s too absurd.

But the show runners of the Game of Trump knew that it was inevitable: At some point a MAGA soaked in cultishness and conspiracism would end up with Ghislaine Maxwell. As Victim. Truth-teller. Savior. Key Master to unlock the Secrets of the Cabal.

MAGA influencers have already begun the long embrace, as Trump teases out a pardon, and his personal lawyer DOJ grants her immunity.

“Maybe she wants immunity, maybe she wants some sort of protection, I don’t know,” MAGA spittlelick Charlie Kirk said on his show last week. “But it definitely is something that is worthy of praise, and worthy of our encouragement.”

Backward reels reality, because the reality is known: Ghislaine Maxwell is the manipulative monster behind Jeffrey Epstein’s victimization of hundreds of young women. She is a chronic liar, who was convicted on five charges, including sex trafficking of a minor, transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, and conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts. The judge who sentenced her to 20 years in prison described her crimes as “heinous and predatory.”

And yet, notes Colby Hall: “If you’re keeping score at home: a convicted sex trafficker may soon receive DOJ immunity brokered by a Trump ally, in exchange for testimony that conveniently exonerates Trump and implicates Democrats — all while Trumpworld tries to paint her as the real victim.”

For MAGA, this winter was always coming. It has been groomed for this moment.

Ms. Maxwell has made it clear she wants her 20-year sentence thrown out or reduced or a pardon. President Trump, asked whether he would consider pardoning her, said, “I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I haven’t thought about.” He made the remarks before he headed off to Scotland, wishing her well….

The department offered Ms. Maxwell conditional immunity to discuss the case….

Many MAGA luminaries who say Maxwell is vital to cracking the case would consider leniency, so long as she identifies the child rapists they say have gone unpunished, arming authorities with the evidence needed to convict them.

NOT EVEN A MONTH AGO, the idea of Trump supporters openly embracing a convicted child sex trafficker would have been unimaginable. Yet the idea that Maxwell is innocent, or at least was railroaded by the same overzealous prosecutors Trump claims pursued him, is unquestionably starting to circulate in right-wing media. And it’s owed, in part, to Trump’s abrupt pivot into arguing that the entire case is fundamentally flawed.

Of course, we ought to be shocked at this Orwellian and Dada-esque plot twist. The rational world continues to struggle with our Escher-like political reality.

But we’ve been heading in this direction for a very long time haven’t we? In the distant mists of time, conservatives claimed to care about things like character, personal morality, and the rule of law. Until five minutes ago recently, they cared about sex-trafficking, pedophilia, and the sexual corruption of elites. And they would settle for nothing less than the full release of the Epstein Files.

But a decade spent bending reality has consequences for the human mind. Marinating in conspiracy theories twists perceptions. When everything is a false flag nothing is; or maybe everything is. Sedition becomes patriotism; lies become deep truths. Truth is expendable, along with decency. The world’s most egregious lecher becomes an avatar of Christian morality.

And then there is the cult. If you invest deeply enough in the Great Man, inevitably one comes to the conclusion that He Can Do No Wrong. And Must Be Defended. No Matter What.

Pussy grabbing? Sex abuse? Insurrection? Perjury? Corruption? At each step — with every compromise of principles; every concession to cruelty and indecency — MAGA got closer to this moment. The qualms and moral defenses fell long ago.

If embracing a toxic international sex trafficker is now necessary to protect the cult, MAGA is ready. (The voters may be another matter.)>

Yes, <coprophagicfred>: this is going to be a double-up, but this is <my page> and <my decision>, <fredthedouche>, so learn to live with it.

Capisce?

<Abstract

Conservative political ideology is associated with social dominance orientation (SDO), right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), psychopathic propensities (PPs), and other malevolent dispositions, and reduced empathy. We examined the links between SDO, RWA, PPs and political ideology, and whether those who view Trump favorably reported higher PPs (or malevolent traits) and reduced empathy or benevolent dispositions. Two U.S. community samples were used; Sample 1 was white vs. minority status men (N = 1000, 32 % minority) and Sample 2 contained men and women (N = 8,047; 45 % male). Structural equation modeling was utilized to represent ideology in terms of right- vs. left-leaning orientation on social and economic issues, including participants’ views of Trump. Malevolent (+) and benevolent (−) dispositions and empathy disturbances were significantly linked with conservative ideology.

Introduction

Donald Trump has radically reshaped the nature of U.S. conservativism (Barber & Pope, 2019), moving the GOP toward authoritarianism (Knuckey & Hassan, 2022) and political unrest such as the January 6th (J6) assault at the United States Capitol (Dugan & Fisher, 2023). The J6 event was planned and targeted violence for political gain (Dugan & Fisher, 2023) with most Americans viewing Trump as responsibile (Gramlich, 2022). His role in J6, a litany of business failures (Hiltzik, 2022) and legally adjudicated cases against him (Graham, 2025) would destroy most politicians, yet some people view Trump favorably. His popularity can be understood in part via the links between conservative political ideology with right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation (de Oliveira Santos and Jost, 2024, Womick et al., 2019). However, the shifting sands of conservativism in the U.S. suggests that other factors may also be at play. Using a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach, we examined whether dispositions reflecting malevolent (aversive) features and the relative absence of benevolent (affiliative) features and empathy were associated with conservative ideology and views of Trump.

Research on authoritarian attitudes has focused on individual differences in right-wing authoritarianism (RWA; Osborne et al., 2023; Vargas-Salfate et al., 2020; Fischer et al., 2012) and social dominance orientation (SDO; Fischer et al., 2012). The former involves a dangerous world view which leads to preferences for social control and conformity and the latter a competitive world view that elicits preference for social hierarchies (Perry et al., 2013). RWA and SDO are positively correlated contemporaneously and longitudinally (Osborne et al., 2021; Perry et al., 2013) and both RWA and SDO are used to explain political and prejudicial ideology (Duckitt & Sibley, 2010). Given Trump’s dystopian views (PBS, 2025), it is understandable that RWA and SDO are associated with ideology favorable toward Trump (Womick et al., 2019).

Even before Trump, robust evidence documents the affinity between conservative ideology and authoritarianism, though of course, not all conservatives are authoritarians (Nilsson & Jost, 2020). Conservative ideology is similarly associated with higher levels of SDO, as well as RWA (Kivikangas et al., 2021, Kugler et al., 2014; Nilsson & Jost, 2020; Wilson & Sibley, 2013), including social and economic conservatism (Azevedo et al., 2019), which are correlated (Kivikangas et al., 2021). Relatedly, RWA and SDO are associated with the “binding” moral intuitions of authority and loyalty but inversely associated with the “individualizing” moral intuitions of care and fairness (Kugler et al., 2014, Kivikangas et al., 2021).

Individual differences in personality play a critical role in the expression of RWA and SDO (Osborne et al., 2023). Meta-analytic and behavior genetic research reveals that low openness (e.g., low intellectual engagement, closed-mindedness) and low agreeableness (e.g., interpersonal antagonism, low trust), respectively, are associated with higher RWA and SDO (de Vries et al., 2022, Sibley and Duckitt, 2008). Also, RWA and SDO are associated with lower honesty-humility traits (de Vries et al., 2022), and higher psychopathic traits (Roy et al., 2021)....>

<....One factor that accounts for these associations is that RWA and SDO share a common genetic basis with personality, especially low honesty-humility and low openness traits (de Vries et al., 2022), and political ideology (Cichocka & Dhont, 2018; Kandler et al., 2012; Kleppesto et al., 2024a). Personality and political ideology also have a common genetic basis (Kandler et al., 2012; Verhulst et al., 2012). These findings suggest that RWA, SDO, political ideology, and specific personality dispositions have a common genetic basis. This pattern of relations of ideology with aversive social attitudes and personality highlight that ideology reflects more than political affiliations or policies. Ideology involves motivated social cognitive processes that orient individuals world views and how they interact with others in society (Jost, 2021). The literature also shows neurobiological and neurocognitive differences among those with conservative vs. liberal ideology (Cichocka and Dhont, 2018, Nam et al., 2021). Overall, there is a vast array of individual differences associated with ideology, including race and gender (Jost, 2021, Zmigrod, 2022, Zmigrod et al., 2021).

Longitudinal research suggests that race/ethnicity may moderate the associations of RWA and SDO with conservative political behavior (Duckitt & Sibley, 2016) and gender might moderate the association between personality and conservatism with a stronger association for males than females (Kivikangas et al., 2021). These moderation effects may be due in part to the fact that RWA and SDO are linked with racism and sexism (Osborne et al., 2021, Sibley and Duckitt, 2008, Sibley et al., 2006, Roy et al., 2021, Whitley, 1999). Also worth noting, women have moved ideologically to the left since the 1970′s (Dassonneville, 2021) and minority individuals predominately adopt a left-leaning ideology (Doherty & Kiley, 2020). In the era of Trump, his supporters share Trump’s authoritarian targeting of women and minorities (Smith & Hanley, 2018), use of aggression to dominate out-groups (Womick et al., 2019), and as the U.S. becomes more of a majority-minority population, white individuals show a shift toward a conservative ideology (Craig & Richeson, 2014). Thus, the current study also examined whether the associations between RWA, SDO, malevolent disposition, and ideology were moderated by minority status, and similarly, whether gender moderated the associations between malevolent (or benevolent) dispositions and conservative ideology.

Besides RWA and SDO, the psychology of ideology is useful for understanding why some persons may have a favorable view of Trump, and why such a view would covary with aspects of conservative ideology (Pew Research Center, 2024a). Jost’s (2021) influential Motivated Social Cognitive theory discusses the role of dogmatic thinking and need for shared reality among those with conservative ideology. Similarly, Zmigrod (2022) proposes two components for ideologies, doctrinal and relational. The doctrinal component entails embrace of rigid dogma—i.e., existence of one true explanation and solution for societal and personal conditions, including what is “good” or “evil” (p. 1075). The relational component involves identity demarcation for parochial altruism toward adherents vs. antagonism toward dissimilar others and thus includes identity markers (e.g., hats, flags, etc.). A conservative ideology that includes a positive view of Trump can be understood from these frameworks with respect to Trump’s boast (USA Today, 2016), and his adherents’ belief, that “he alone can fix it” (rigid dogma), their unflagging support of him no matter what he does, such as claiming he can shoot someone (NPR, 2016), without losing voters (parochial altruism), and the ever present MAGA paraphernalia (identity markers). In addition, Trump’s rage about dangerous immigrants (Welker & Ainsley, 2025) can lead Trump’s supporters to also embrace conservative policies such as a strong miliary and minimal gun regulations (Pew Research Center, 2023, Pew Research Center, 2024a, Pew Research Center, 2024b).

A political candidate who boasts about being able to shoot someone can be understood in terms of a malevolent disposition (Nai et al., 2019). We seek to understand the voters who embrace such a politician and propose that insight may be gained by examining the links between malevolent dispositions and political ideology (Blais et al., 2021, Blais et al., 2024)....>

<....Consistent with behavior genetic research on ideology and personality, research across 33 countries found that low honesty-humility (H-H) traits were associated with conservative political ideology (Lee et al., 2018), though for the U.S. sample in this study the association was near zero (r = -0.07). Still, the association between H-H and ideology has been found when accounting for sample effects (Vitriol et al., 2019). At the same time, it is important to note that low H-H can be accounted for by a latent aversive (malevolent) disposition (Schreiber & Marcus, 2020). Additionally, a study of over 66,000 persons from 38 countries found that a malevolent propensity to “assign a higher weight to one’s own utility above others’ (i.e., socially aversive personality)” accounted for both sociocultural and economic conservatism (Moshagen et al., 2024, p. 1), and that a malevolent disposition accounted for more variance than H-H in predicting ideology. In related research, malevolent (aversive) and benevolent (affiliative) dispositions, compared to general personality traits (i.e., honesty-humility), more accurately classified persons in terms of aversive versus affiliative profiles and the former was associated with intransigent political behavior among U.S. Senators (Neumann et al., 2020). Also, meta-analytic (Muris et al., 2017) and behavior genetic (Vernon et al., 2008, Veselka et al., 2011) research suggests malevolent dispositions can provide additional insight into aversive behavior beyond general personality (e.g., H-H). Taken together, we propose that more extreme (malevolent) dispositions are necessary for understanding today’s modern incarnation of conservatism that includes a positive view of Trump.

Autocrats manifest socially aversive personality, including malevolent traits in the Dark Triad: narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism (Nai & Toros, 2020), and the same has been found for Trump (Hyatt et al., 2018, Nai et al., 2019). Similar results have been found for authoritarians’ loyal foot soldiers (Hare et al., 2022). Critically, individuals in the general population also vary in terms of authoritarian (Adorno, 2019, Ludeke & Krueger, 2013, Napier & Jost, 2008, Vargas-Salfate et al., 2020, 2019) and malevolent (aversive) propensities (Neumann et al., 2012, Neumann et al., 2020, 2025). Thus, it is not surprising perhaps that voters with aversive traits tend to prefer aversive political figures (Hart et al., 2018, Nai et al., 2021). As such, we expected those in favor of Trump to display a malevolent (aversive) disposition.

A malevolent disposition reflects wishing ill will or doing harm to others, while a benevolent disposition involves intending or showing goodwill or kindness to others. This is not to suggest that persons are either good or bad. The empirical evidence documents that malevolent and benevolent dispositions are dimensional in nature (De Brito et al., 2021; Neumann et al., 2020; Vernon et al., 2008). Thus, these dispositions reflect continuums, with some persons inclined to be more caring and others more calloused (Marsh, 2019), some more selfless and others more selfish (Sonne and Gash, 2018) with many gradations in between. A malevolent disposition is measured via aversive features of Machiavellian manipulativeness, psychopathic callousness, and narcissistic self-absorption, all negatively associated with empathy and positively associated with antisocial behavior (Muris et al., 2017, Neumann et al., 2020, Neumann et al., 2021). A benevolent disposition is assessed in terms of whether one sees the goodness of others, values the dignity and worth of humans and treats people as they are rather than as means to an end, all positively associated with empathy and prosocial behavior (Kaufman et al., 2019, Neumann et al., 2020).

Psychopathy is a prominent and virulent component of an aversive disposition (Muris et al., 2017, Neumann and Hare, 2008, Neumann et al., 2021), given its significant link to violence and aggression (Anderson and Kiehl, 2014, De Brito et al., 2021, Olver et al., 2020). Neumann and colleagues have provided extensive support for a latent variable model of psychopathy (Neumann et al., 2015), reflecting affective (e.g., lack of remorse, callousness), interpersonal (e.g., manipulation, pathological lying), behavioral lifestyle (e.g., impulsivity, stimulus-seeking), and overt antisocial (e.g., aggression, poor behavioral control) traits and behaviors (Hare & Neumann, 2008). These four domains underpin a superordinate factor that represents the broad multifarious syndrome of psychopathy (Garofalo et al., 2020, Neumann and Hare, 2008, Neumann et al., 2007), which is dimensional in nature and thus even relatively lower levels of this pathological personality disposition are associated with a range of negative correlates, including corporate misbehavior (Babiak et al., 2010), violence (Neumann and Hare, 2008, Vitacco et al., 2014) and prejudicial attitudes towards minorities (Roy et al., 2021)....>

<....Empathy disturbances are core correlates of psychopathy, and research suggests that this involves reduced affective empathy (feeling with), but not necessarily disturbances in cognitive empathy (knowing about) (Burghart & Mier, 2022; Seara-Cardoso et al., 2020; Vachon & Lynam, 2016). Research on expanding the assessment of empathy suggests that psychopathic propensities are also linked to dissonant empathy—i.e., enjoying the suffering of others (Vachon & Lynam, 2016). We hypothesize that those supportive of Trump will report lower affective and higher dissonant empathy, as well as increased psychopathic and other malevolent traits.

In contrast to increased study of malevolent personality, only recently has research focused on benevolent or affiliative dispositions (e.g., everyday saints; Kaufman et al., 2019). In this research, three broad interrelated domains have been uncovered and are referred to as Humanism (i.e., valuing the dignity and worth of individuals), Faith in Humanity (i.e., believing in the fundamental goodness of humans), and Kantianism (i.e., treating people as ends in themselves). Benevolent and malevolent dispositions are not simply the converse of one another, given the two domains are inversely correlated at a low-moderate level (Kaufman et al., 2019, Ng et al., 2024). Personality traits are correlated with these dispositions, but the two domains account for additional outcomes beyond general personality (Moshagen et al., 2024; Neumann et al., 2020).

Although SDO, RWA, and malevolent propensities are conceptually distinct constructs, they are positively correlated and can account for conservatism, extremism, and prejudice (Duspara & Greitemeyer, 2017; Hodson et al., 2009, Jonason, 2014, Osborne et al., 2023, Roy et al., 2021). Though the literature is somewhat conflicting (Bartolo & Powell, 2024), research has documented a positive association between conservatism ideology with psychopathic and other malevolent dispositions (Bartolo and Powell, 2024, Blais et al., 2024; Duspara & Greitemeyer, 2017; Gay et al., 2019; Lilienfeld et al., 2014; Moshagen et al., 2024; Preston & Anestis, 2018).

Conversely, little research has explored the link between benevolent dispositions and political ideology. Some recent work suggests they may play a role in political attitudes and behaviors (Neumann et al., 2020, Peterson and Palmer, 2021), though the direct association between benevolent propensities and political ideology remains unexplored.

A primary goal was to test multiple group structural equation models (MG-SEMs) designed to examine the associations between aversive/affiliative dispositions (psychopathic, malevolent, benevolent propensities) and conservative political ideology, including views of Trump, and whether minority status or gender moderated such associations. We also examined how psychopathic propensity accounted for ideology in conjunction with SDO and RWA....>