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As early as 2019, Trump had “joked” about staying in power regardless of the 2020 election results, and on October 31, Trump’s ally Steve Bannon told a private audience that Trump was going to declare that he had won the 2020 election no matter what. Trump knew that Democratic mail-in ballots would show up in the vote totals later than Republican votes cast on Election Day, creating a “red mirage” that would be overtaken later by Democratic votes.
“Trump’s going to take advantage of it,” Bannon said, by calling the election early and saying that the later votes were somehow illegitimate. “That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner.” Bannon continued: “Here’s the thing. After then, Trump never has to go to a voter again…. He’s gonna say ‘F*ck you. How about that?’ Because…he’s done his last election.”
Early returns on Election Night 2020, November 3, showed Trump ahead. But, more quickly than anyone expected, Democratic votes turned the key state of Arizona blue, and the Fox News Channel called the race for Biden. Furious, Trump took to the airwaves at about 2:30 the next morning and declared he had won, although ballots were still being counted and several battleground states had no clear winner. “We won’t stand for this,” he told supporters, assuring them he had won. “We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court, we want all voting to stop.”
But it didn’t, and by the time all the ballots were counted, the election was not close: Biden beat Trump by more than 7 million votes and by 306 to 232 in the Electoral College.
Trump insisted a Democrat could not have won honestly. Over the next few months, his campaign demanded recounts, all of which confirmed that Biden won. Trump or his surrogates filed and lost at least 63 lawsuits over the 2020 election, most dismissed for lack of evidence.
As legal challenges failed, Trump pressured Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have” to win the state of Georgia. Trump’s allies plotted for Trump supporters in seven battleground states to meet secretly and submit false slates of electors for Trump. Two slates would enable Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count the electors from the now-contested states, so that either Trump would be elected outright, or Pence could say there was no clear winner and send the election to the House of Representatives, where each state gets one vote. Since there were more Republican delegations than Democratic ones, Trump would be president.
“This is a fight of good versus evil,” Trump’s evangelical chief of staff Mark Meadows wrote on November 24, 2020, to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni.
Determined to retain control of the government, certain congressional Republicans went along with the charade that the election had been stolen. Trump allies in the House began to echo Trump’s accusations and to say they would question the counts from certain states. Such challenges required a paired vote with a senator, and Josh Hawley of Missouri, who saw himself as a top 2024 presidential contender, and Ted Cruz of Texas, who didn’t want to be undercut, led 11 other senators in a revolt to challenge the ballots.
For weeks, Trump had urged his supporters to descend on Washington, D.C., for a “Stop the Steal” rally arranged for January 6, the day Congress would count the certified electoral ballots. Speaking at the Ellipse near the White House that morning, Trump and his surrogates told the crowd that they had won the election, and Trump warned: “We are going to have to fight much harder.”
Trump claimed that Chinese-driven socialists were taking over the country and told the crowd: “We’re gathered together in the heart of our nation’s capital for one very, very basic and simple reason: To save our democracy.” “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated…. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.
And, knowing they were armed, he told them to march to the Capitol.
As Trump’s supporters attacked, lawmakers from their hiding spots begged the president to call off his supporters, but he did nothing for more than three hours. After 5:40, when the National Guard had been deployed without his orders, thus making it clear the rioters would be overpowered before either taking over the government themselves or giving him an excuse to declare martial law, Trump issued a video statement.
“I know you’re hurt,” he said. “We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side, but you have to go home now…. We love you. You’re very special.” He tweeted: “Remember this day forever!”
When the House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump for a second time on January 13, 2021, for incitement of insurrection, only 10 Republicans voted in favor, while 197 voted no (4 did not vote). In the Senate trial, 7 Republican senators joined the Democrats to convict, while 43 continued to back Trump.
In a speech after his vote to acquit, McConnell said, “There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day,” but said he must answer for his actions in court. “Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office,” McConnell said. “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former Presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”
In November 2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith to investigate Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. On August 1, 2023, a federal grand jury indicted Trump for four felonies associated with his attempt to retain power illegally.
Trump fought back, arguing that he had presidential immunity for his actions. Smith asked the Supreme Court to decide the case immediately, but it waited until the last possible moment, on July 1, 2024, to decide Donald J. Trump v. United States, finding that presidents have “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for crimes committed as part of the official acts at the core of presidential powers. Trump himself had appointed three of the justices in the majority.
A second grand jury returned a new indictment stripped of the actions now immune, but by then it was too late: Trump was reelected president, and the Department of Justice has an understanding that it will not indict or prosecute a sitting president. And so, five years after the events of January 6, 2021, we are learning what it means to have a president who has demonstrated his determination to overthrow our democracy and who does not have to answer to the law.
Although he was elected with less than 50% of the votes cast, Trump claimed an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.” As soon as he took office in January 2025, the president and his henchmen flouted the 1974 Impoundment Control Act again, seizing Congress’s right to control the nation’s finances. Trump used emergency powers to ignore the Constitution and deployed troops in Democratic-led cities. When Congress required the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files, the administration largely ignored the law. Today, more than two weeks after the deadline, it had released less than 1% of the files. Ignoring the rights afforded to individuals by the Constitution, Trump is seizing people off the streets and prosecuting his perceived enemies.
Trump has taken on himself the right to go to war with another country in order to take its oil, and is openly working to destroy the rules-based international order that has stabilized the world since the 1940s. Today, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper: “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
That vision is a profound rejection of the principles of the rules-based international order, which was designed to use power for deterrence rather than domination. It is also a profound rejection of the principles of American democracy, a system of checks and balances to channel power into a government that could deliver stability and prosperity to all the people, not just a select few.
In 1863, when that system was unraveling under pressure from those who wanted to base society on a system of enslavement that enriched an elite, Republican president Abraham Lincoln asked Americans to remember those who had died to protect a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Lincoln asked Americans to “take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion,” and to resolve that “these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
The ruling on Monday upheld a lower court’s judgment in April that the Trump administration could not drastically slash funding from the National Institutes of Health.
A federal appeals court ruled on Monday that the Trump administration could not make drastic cuts to the federal funding supporting much of the country’s medical and scientific research, reaffirming a lower court’s ruling from early last year.
In a unanimous decision, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit found that one of the Trump administration’s earliest attempts to kneecap universities, through proposed reductions to grants from the National Institutes of Health, was unlawful. The proposal brought an outpouring of opposition from hundreds of universities and hospitals, which warned that the cuts could cost them billions and make it impossible to continue studies in areas like cancer, genetics and infectious disease.
The sharp cuts took aim at the pre-negotiated rates in thousands of federal grants that set aside money for overhead costs in medical research, such as facility upkeep, laboratory technology and support staff. Scores of universities and hospitals affected by the cuts said the funding for those indirect costs was often shared, with a single grant helping cover the costs of multiple laboratories and experiments simultaneously. That meant that a loss of funds could threaten not just research directly covered by the grants but a broad range of other work.
In an announcement in February, the Trump administration proposed capping the money that could be allocated for overhead costs to 15 percent of any given grant, while the rates previously agreed upon often surpassed 30 or 40 percent. In an opinion explaining Monday’s decision, Judge Kermit V. Lipez, a Clinton appointee, wrote that lawmakers had laid out a “carefully circumscribed procedure that controls any deviation” from agreed-upon funding rates in federal grants.
“Congress went to great lengths to ensure that N.I.H. could not displace negotiated indirect cost reimbursement rates with a uniform rate,” he wrote. Judge Lipez noted President Trump’s attempt in his first term to similarly cap reimbursement of overhead costs at 10 percent in a budget proposal in 2017. Congress rejected the proposal.
The possibility of such a sudden funding cut raised deep concern in the medical research community that a considerable number of facilities across the country might shutter, causing permanent losses in advanced research.
Three separate coalitions of universities, medical organizations and Democratic-led states filed suit in February, arguing that the possible setbacks to research institutions in their states could be insurmountable, and that many institutions lacked the financial reserves to cover the shortfall. A New York Times analysis of N.I.H. grant data estimated that $9 billion of $32 billion, or more than 25 percent of grant dollars distributed in fiscal year 2024, had been set aside to cover overhead costs.
In April, Judge Angel Kelley of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts permanently barred the Trump administration from capping the funding, and the proposal remained stalled throughout last year.
"The ruling on Monday upheld a lower court’s judgment in April that the Trump administration could not drastically slash funding from the National Institutes of Health."
This is welcome news. Contrary to what the HHS Secretary might say, this will help to Make America Healthy Again! Mr. Kennedy should probably just take a handful of Tylenol with Codeine and chill out.
I agree that none of these things help ordinary Americans. Donald J. Trump promised to improve American lives but has not made any credible efforts to do so. It's just one distraction after another! Trump has the attention span of a fly. His cognitive capabilities are deteriorating on a daily basis.
Democrats and ‘make America healthy again’ movement pushed back on the rider in a funding bill led by Bayer
In a setback for the pesticide industry, Democrats have succeeded in removing a rider from a congressional appropriations bill that would have helped protect pesticide makers from being sued and could have hindered state efforts to warn about pesticide risks.
Chellie Pingree, a Democratic representative from Maine and ranking member of the House appropriations interior, environment, and related agencies subcommittee, said Monday that the controversial measure pushed by the agrochemical giant Bayer and industry allies has been stripped from the 2026 funding bill. The move is final, as Senate Republican leaders have agreed not to revisit the issue, Pingree said.
“I just drew a line in the sand and said this cannot stay in the bill,” Pingree told the Guardian. “There has been intensive lobbying by Bayer. This has been quite a hard fight.” The now-deleted language was part of a larger legislative effort that critics say is aimed at limiting litigation against pesticide industry leader Bayer, which sells the widely used Roundup herbicides.
An industry alliance set up by Bayer has been pushing for both state and federal laws that would make it harder for consumers to sue over pesticide risks to human health and has successfully lobbied for the passing of such laws in Georgia and North Dakota so far. The specific proposed language added to the appropriations bill blocked federal funds from being used to “issue or adopt any guidance or any policy, take any regulatory action, or approve any labeling or change to such labeling” inconsistent with the conclusion of an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) human health assessment.
Critics said the language would have impeded states and local governments from warning about risks of pesticides even in the face of new scientific findings about health harms if such warnings were not consistent with outdated EPA assessments. The EPA itself would not be able to update warnings without finalizing a new assessment. And because of the limits on warnings, critics of the rider said, consumers would have found it difficult, if not impossible, to sue pesticide makers for failing to warn them of health risks if the EPA assessments do not support such warnings.
“This provision would have handed pesticide manufacturers exactly what they’ve been lobbying for: federal preemption that stops state and local governments from restricting the use of harmful, cancer-causing chemicals, adding health warnings, or holding companies accountable in court when people are harmed,” Pingree said in a statement. “It would have meant that only the federal government gets a say – even though we know federal reviews can take years, and are often subject to intense industry pressure.”
Bayer, the key backer of the legislative efforts, has been struggling for years to put an end to thousands of lawsuits filed by people who allege they developed cancer from their use of Roundup and other glyphosate-based weed killers sold by Bayer. The company inherited the litigation when it bought Monsanto in 2018 and has paid out billions of dollars in settlements and jury verdicts but still faces several thousand ongoing lawsuits. Bayer maintains its glyphosate-based herbicides do not cause cancer and are safe when used as directed.
When asked for comment on Monday, Bayer said that no company should have “blanket immunity” and it disputed that the appropriations bill language would have prevented anyone from suing pesticide manufacturers. The company said it supports state and federal legislation “because the future of American farming depends on reliable science-based regulation of important crop protection products – determined safe for use by the EPA”.
The company additionally states on its website that without “legislative certainty”, lawsuits over its glyphosate-based Roundup and other weed killers can impact its research and product development and other “important investments”.
Pingree said her efforts were aided by members of the “make America healthy again” (Maha) movement who have spent the last few months meeting with congressional members and their staffers on this issue. She said her team reached out to Maha leadership in the last few days to pressure Republican lawmakers. “This is the first time that we’ve had a fairly significant advocacy group working on the Republican side,” she said.
Last week, Zen Honeycutt, a Maha leader and founder of the group Moms Across America, posted a “call to action”, urging members to demand elected officials “Stop the Pesticide Immunity Shield”. “A lot of people helped make this happen,” Honeycutt said. “Many health advocates have been fervently expressing their requests to keep chemical companies accountable for safety … We are delighted that our elected officials listened to so many Americans who spoke up and are restoring trust in the American political system.”
Pingree said the issue is not dead. Bayer has “made this a high priority”, and she expects to see continued efforts to get industry friendly language inserted into legislation, including into the new Farm Bill.
“I don’t think this is over,” she said.
This story is co-published with the New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group
Comment: It's all about the money, folks... NEVER forget that.
European leaders are pushing back against US president’s desire to seek takeover of the arctic territory
Donald Trump and his team are looking into “a range of options” in an effort to acquire Greenland, noting in a White House statement on Tuesday that using the US military to do so is “always an option”.
“President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region. The President and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the US Military is always an option at the Commander in Chief’s disposal,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
In a show of solidarity on Tuesday, the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and other nations issued a joint statement with the prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, urging the US to respect its sovereignty. They wrote in the statement that Arctic security was a top priority for Nato, a defense alliance that includes the United States and Greenland: “Greenland belongs to its people,” the statement said. “It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.”
Frederiksen previously warned that an attack by the US on a Nato ally would mean the “end” of the military alliance and “post-second world war security”. It would, she said, be the end of “everything”. Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, also urged Trump to give up his “fantasies about annexation” and accused the US of “completely and utterly unacceptable” rhetoric. “Enough is enough,” he said.
In an earlier interview with CNN, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller suggested Denmark does not have a right to the Arctic territory, which is a former Danish colony and remains part of its kingdom. While the mineral-rich island, home to 56,000 people, has control over most internal affairs, Copenhagen continues to oversee its foreign and security policy. Miller also claimed military intervention would not be needed to take over the island because “nobody is going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland”.
Greenland has repeatedly stated that it does not want to be part of the US. The idea is also unpopular in the US, where one poll found just 7% of Americans agree with a military seizure of Greenland. At a news conference in Paris, the ITV correspondent James Mates asked Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, who touted new commitments from the Trump administration to defend Ukraine: “What value do these commitments have on the very day that at the highest levels of government in Washington they are talking about seizing the sovereign territory of a fellow Nato member?”
Starmer said that he stood by the statement he made on Monday, when he said that “Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark must determine the future of Greenland and nobody else”.
Comment: Actually, I'm beyond comment on this one. Just who the hell does Trump think he is and we are?
The move against the medical aid group enforces policies limiting criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war and requiring personal details about Gazan employees.
Doctors Without Borders, the international medical aid group, said Tuesday that Israel had ordered it to cease operations in the Gaza Strip after it failed to comply with new restrictions that include registration of all Gazan employees and limits on criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war.
“If we can’t work, it will have catastrophic consequences for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians,” said Claire San Filippo, the group’s emergency coordinator for Gaza.
The group was told on Sunday that it could no longer bring supplies into Gaza and told on Tuesday that it could no longer bring doctors, nurses or other international aid workers into the territory. She said it was given until the end of February to cease all activities in Gaza and pull out all its international workers.
Israel said the measure was to prevent militants from infiltrating aid groups. Doctors Without Borders and other NGOs refused to comply, saying the demand flouted international law and violated workers’ privacy rights as well as European data-protection rules the groups were legally obligated to follow.
Doctors Without Borders was among more than three dozen humanitarian groups told on Dec. 30 that they would have their licenses to operate in the Gaza Strip suspended on Jan. 1 and would have to clear out by March under the new rules. Now, Israel is moving to enforce that.
Comment: I have no doubt that a certain MFO poster will fully support this action.
"While Trump and his henchmen are stripping Americans of our constitutional rights and illegally taking over other nations, America’s supposed leadership class is silent. Or worse, they’re helping Trump."
"Too many university presidents are silent or caving to Trump’s demands. Too many senior managers of law firms have surrendered to his tyranny. Too many directors of large nonprofits are remaining silent. Almost all Republican leaders are rubber stamping his authoritarianism. Too many Democratic leaders are barely putting up a fight."
"Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, recently said that he 'fully supports' Trump and would welcome National Guard troops in San Francisco. (He later walked back his comments on the National Guard, but continues to back Trump.)"
"Follow the money: Salesforce’s biggest customer is the federal government. Trump has shown how eager he is to use federal contracts to reward his friends — and Benioff doesn’t want to piss him off."
"Or look at Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, who recently gave Trump a plaque with a 24-karat golden base and then showered him with praise at a convening of Big Tech billionaires at the White House."
"Why would Tim suck up to Trump? Because Trump has given Apple special exemptions from his tariffs. And of course, both Cook and Apple benefit substantially from Trump’s latest round of tax cuts."
"Then there’s Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta. Zuckerberg has ended Facebook and Instagram’s fact-checking policies, parroting Trump’s claims that the practice censored conservative views. And Meta shelled out $25 million to Trump to settle a lawsuit claiming the company censored him when it removed his accounts. Facebook has also removed an ICE tracking page."
"Why? Meta is investing billions in AI and the power-hungry data centers that fuel it, and needs a friendly White House to ramp up development."
"And whatever happened to Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, who relishes his position as 'spokesman' of the American business community? What has he said about Trump’s lawlessness? He’s nowhere. He’s said nothing."
"Dimon also used to talk about the wide-ranging benefits of diversity and inclusion. No longer. His bank basks in Trump’s good graces — and the tax cuts and financial regulatory rollbacks that accompany them."
Pushback from Susan Collins and Thom Tillis is striking amid tepid response from most other Republican senators
Two senior Republican senators on Monday openly opposed Pentagon secretary Pete Hegseth’s attempt to punish their fellow Senator Mark Kelly by demoting him and cutting his pension after he released a video telling active-duty military to follow the law. Susan Collins of Maine, who chairs the Senate appropriations committee with jurisdiction over the Pentagon’s budget, said she believed it was wrong to target Kelly’s military benefits because of a political video.
Thom Tillis of North Carolina also described the Pentagon’s censure as “ridiculous”, said that “Hegseth overreached” and cautioned that pursuing such action “has a chilling effect on speech”. The pushback from the relatively moderate Collins and from Tillis – who announced last June he would be retiring from the Senate – was striking given the tepid response from most other Republican senators.
Hegseth said on Monday that his department had begun administrative action against Kelly, who served as a navy captain before entering the Senate. Last year Kelly and other Democrats released a video encouraging military personnel to refuse illegal orders. Writing on social media, Hegseth described it as a “reckless and seditious video that was clearly intended to undermine good order and military discipline”.
The defense secretary announced a “retirement grade determination proceeding” alongside a formal censure letter, suggesting Kelly could see his rank reduced and pension slashed as punishment. Kelly flew dozens of combat missions and travelled to space four times during his military and Nasa career.
Other Republicans offered measured or non-committal responses. Some senators sidestepped the question altogether. Deb Fischer of Nebraska, another armed services committee member, said she "lacked sufficient information" to respond. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia characterized it as an issue “between the Department of War and Sen Kelly”.
Kelly issued a combative statement on Monday, saying the censure was “outrageous” and “un-American”. He wrote: “If Pete Hegseth, the most unqualified secretary of defense in our country’s history, thinks he can intimidate me with a censure or threats to demote me or prosecute me, he still doesn’t get it.”
He added: “Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump don’t get to decide what Americans in this country get to say about their government.”
Comment: “Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump don’t get to decide what Americans in this country get to say about their government.” Damn straight. Unfortunately only two republican senators seem to agree with that.
And, of course, at least one MFO person believes that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump DO get to decide what Americans in this country get to say about their government.”
Trump is lying through his teeth about the Jan. 6 insurrection. He is extremely incoherent as well. Perhaps it time for yet another cognitive test that he could "ace" and brag about afterward?
My God. Totally pathetic. The man can't complete a sentence. And this man truly believes that he can order our military to do anything that crosses whatever he's using for a mind.
Donald Trump claims J.B. Pritzker, Gavin Newsom, Tim Walz, and Kamala Harris couldn't pass a cognitive test. If Trump is as smart as he claims, he should release the complete, unedited results of his cognitive tests! How many tests has he had and why were multiple tests needed within such a relatively short time period? Things that make you say hmm...
Donald J. Trump claims he was impeached twice despite doing nothing wrong. This is just pure bullshit from a man who is averse to the truth. Prior to today, I had not watched a Trump speech in quite some time — he does not sound very well.
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger discusses the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capital instigated by Donald J. Trump.
Rep. Kamlager Dove (D-CA): “What made you make the decision to put democracy over personal power or party?” Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger: “What made me do it is just simply my oath. What shocks me is that there were more people that didn't. Nothing that I did was heroic, but I was just surrounded by a bunch of cowards that were too scared to do it."
"The U.S. Capitol is still living with the aftermath of January 6. What does this latest effort by Republicans to minimize what happened on that day, what does that mean for lawmakers and for the Capitol Police officers who protect them?"
Comments: We must never forget what actually transpired on January 6, 2021. Many Republican politicians have lied about and downplayed the events of the day. GOP leaders who aided and abbetted Donald J. Trump must be held accountable for their actions. History will not look favorably upon these spineless, feckless so-called leaders!
"On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump took the oath of office, swearing to 'preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.' Almost four years to the day after taking that oath, on January 6, 2021, Trump caused a violent insurrection that nearly overthrew an election and shattered our democracy."
"The attack on the Capitol was not a spontaneous event. It was the culmination of a multi-part scheme by Trump and his allies to use lies, intimidation, coercion and ultimately violence to keep Trump in office. By leading these unprecedented efforts to subvert the Constitution and American democracy, Trump disqualified himself under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment from holding any federal or state office, including the presidency."
"Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted after the Civil War as a mechanism to protect American democracy from those disloyal to the Constitution. It bars from office any person who swore an 'oath … to support the Constitution of the United States' as a federal or state officer and then 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same,' unless Congress removes the disqualification by a two-thirds vote of each house."
•Trump spread knowingly false claims of a “stolen” and “rigged” election — even after he exhausted legal challenges, the states certified his loss, and there was no lawful basis to contest the election results.
•Trump personally led an effort to pressure, coerce, and intimidate government officials — including Pence, state election officials, and Department of Justice officials — to help him unlawfully overturn the election results.
• Through social media and grassroots Stop the Steal mobilizers, Trump summoned a violent mob of tens of thousands of his supporters–including now-convicted seditionists and members of extremist groups such as the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys — to travel to Washington, D.C. for a “wild” protest on January 6th.
•Once his mob was assembled on January 6th, Trump incited them to “fight like hell” to overturn the election results by marching to the Capitol to “stop the steal,” knowing that many were armed, adorned in tactical gear, and prepared for violence.
• After learning the Capitol was under attack, Trump poured fuel on the fire, targeting Pence for lacking the “courage” to overturn the election in a tweet that measurably caused the mob to surge.
• Trump failed to act for nearly three hours as his mob ransacked the United States Capitol, brutally assaulted police officers, and called for the murder of elected officials. He failed to deploy a federal response to protect the United States Capitol or call off his mob despite his constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” and his role as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military, including the D.C. National Guard.
• Instead of intervening to defend the Capitol, Trump tried to enlist members of Congress to deliver on the mob’s goal to delay the election certification.
Comments: The facts surrounding the Jan. 6 insurrection are presented above. We must not allow GOP leadership, the MAGA movement, or extremist groups to change the narrative surrounding events which occurred on that historic day. Because Donald J. Trump fomented an insurrection, he is disqualified from holding any state or federal office. Trump is an illegitimate president! The convicted felon should be incarcerated for his criminal activities associated with the insurrection.
"As Biden prepared to leave office in January 2025, Trump claimed that the U.S. was in freefall, 'a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World!' But Peter Baker reported in the New York Times that the opposite was true: Biden and his administration were leaving behind a country that was in the best shape it had been since at least 2000."
"There were no U.S. troops fighting in foreign wars, murders had plummeted, deaths from drug overdoses had dropped sharply, undocumented immigration was below where it was when Trump left office in 2021, stocks had just had their best two years since the last century.The economy was growing, real wages were rising, inflation had fallen to close to its normal range, unemployment was at near-historic lows, and energy production was at historic highs. The economy had added more than 700,000 manufacturing jobs among the 16 million total created since 2020."
"Baker quoted chief economist of Moody’s Analytics Mark Zandi, who said: 'President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets.'"
Comments: Trump inherited an excellent economy from President Joe Biden. He could have just continued the same policies and taken credit for economic prosperity. Instead, Trump implemented an ill-conceived tariff policy, fired numerous essential workers, intervened inappropriately in free markets, and threatened many institutions unless they paid him off. I guess we should have expected something like this from an incompetent business "mogul" who somehow managed to bankrupt multiple casinos and hotels!
Comments
JAN 6 (Continued)
As early as 2019, Trump had “joked” about staying in power regardless of the 2020 election results, and on October 31, Trump’s ally Steve Bannon told a private audience that Trump was going to declare that he had won the 2020 election no matter what. Trump knew that Democratic mail-in ballots would show up in the vote totals later than Republican votes cast on Election Day, creating a “red mirage” that would be overtaken later by Democratic votes.
“Trump’s going to take advantage of it,” Bannon said, by calling the election early and saying that the later votes were somehow illegitimate. “That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner.” Bannon continued: “Here’s the thing. After then, Trump never has to go to a voter again…. He’s gonna say ‘F*ck you. How about that?’ Because…he’s done his last election.”
Early returns on Election Night 2020, November 3, showed Trump ahead. But, more quickly than anyone expected, Democratic votes turned the key state of Arizona blue, and the Fox News Channel called the race for Biden. Furious, Trump took to the airwaves at about 2:30 the next morning and declared he had won, although ballots were still being counted and several battleground states had no clear winner. “We won’t stand for this,” he told supporters, assuring them he had won. “We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court, we want all voting to stop.”
But it didn’t, and by the time all the ballots were counted, the election was not close: Biden beat Trump by more than 7 million votes and by 306 to 232 in the Electoral College.
Trump insisted a Democrat could not have won honestly. Over the next few months, his campaign demanded recounts, all of which confirmed that Biden won. Trump or his surrogates filed and lost at least 63 lawsuits over the 2020 election, most dismissed for lack of evidence.
As legal challenges failed, Trump pressured Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have” to win the state of Georgia. Trump’s allies plotted for Trump supporters in seven battleground states to meet secretly and submit false slates of electors for Trump. Two slates would enable Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count the electors from the now-contested states, so that either Trump would be elected outright, or Pence could say there was no clear winner and send the election to the House of Representatives, where each state gets one vote. Since there were more Republican delegations than Democratic ones, Trump would be president.
“This is a fight of good versus evil,” Trump’s evangelical chief of staff Mark Meadows wrote on November 24, 2020, to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni.
Determined to retain control of the government, certain congressional Republicans went along with the charade that the election had been stolen. Trump allies in the House began to echo Trump’s accusations and to say they would question the counts from certain states. Such challenges required a paired vote with a senator, and Josh Hawley of Missouri, who saw himself as a top 2024 presidential contender, and Ted Cruz of Texas, who didn’t want to be undercut, led 11 other senators in a revolt to challenge the ballots.
For weeks, Trump had urged his supporters to descend on Washington, D.C., for a “Stop the Steal” rally arranged for January 6, the day Congress would count the certified electoral ballots. Speaking at the Ellipse near the White House that morning, Trump and his surrogates told the crowd that they had won the election, and Trump warned: “We are going to have to fight much harder.”
Trump claimed that Chinese-driven socialists were taking over the country and told the crowd: “We’re gathered together in the heart of our nation’s capital for one very, very basic and simple reason: To save our democracy.” “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated…. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.
And, knowing they were armed, he told them to march to the Capitol.
As Trump’s supporters attacked, lawmakers from their hiding spots begged the president to call off his supporters, but he did nothing for more than three hours. After 5:40, when the National Guard had been deployed without his orders, thus making it clear the rioters would be overpowered before either taking over the government themselves or giving him an excuse to declare martial law, Trump issued a video statement.
“I know you’re hurt,” he said. “We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side, but you have to go home now…. We love you. You’re very special.” He tweeted: “Remember this day forever!”
When the House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump for a second time on January 13, 2021, for incitement of insurrection, only 10 Republicans voted in favor, while 197 voted no (4 did not vote). In the Senate trial, 7 Republican senators joined the Democrats to convict, while 43 continued to back Trump.
In a speech after his vote to acquit, McConnell said, “There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day,” but said he must answer for his actions in court. “Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office,” McConnell said. “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former Presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”
JAN 6 (Continued)
In November 2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith to investigate Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. On August 1, 2023, a federal grand jury indicted Trump for four felonies associated with his attempt to retain power illegally.
Trump fought back, arguing that he had presidential immunity for his actions. Smith asked the Supreme Court to decide the case immediately, but it waited until the last possible moment, on July 1, 2024, to decide Donald J. Trump v. United States, finding that presidents have “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for crimes committed as part of the official acts at the core of presidential powers. Trump himself had appointed three of the justices in the majority.
A second grand jury returned a new indictment stripped of the actions now immune, but by then it was too late: Trump was reelected president, and the Department of Justice has an understanding that it will not indict or prosecute a sitting president. And so, five years after the events of January 6, 2021, we are learning what it means to have a president who has demonstrated his determination to overthrow our democracy and who does not have to answer to the law.
Although he was elected with less than 50% of the votes cast, Trump claimed an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.” As soon as he took office in January 2025, the president and his henchmen flouted the 1974 Impoundment Control Act again, seizing Congress’s right to control the nation’s finances. Trump used emergency powers to ignore the Constitution and deployed troops in Democratic-led cities. When Congress required the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files, the administration largely ignored the law. Today, more than two weeks after the deadline, it had released less than 1% of the files. Ignoring the rights afforded to individuals by the Constitution, Trump is seizing people off the streets and prosecuting his perceived enemies.
Trump has taken on himself the right to go to war with another country in order to take its oil, and is openly working to destroy the rules-based international order that has stabilized the world since the 1940s. Today, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper: “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
That vision is a profound rejection of the principles of the rules-based international order, which was designed to use power for deterrence rather than domination. It is also a profound rejection of the principles of American democracy, a system of checks and balances to channel power into a government that could deliver stability and prosperity to all the people, not just a select few.
In 1863, when that system was unraveling under pressure from those who wanted to base society on a system of enslavement that enriched an elite, Republican president Abraham Lincoln asked Americans to remember those who had died to protect a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Lincoln asked Americans to “take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion,” and to resolve that “these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Following are excerpts from a current report in The New York Times:
The ruling on Monday upheld a lower court’s judgment in April that the Trump administration could not drastically slash funding from the National Institutes of Health.
could not drastically slash funding from the National Institutes of Health."
This is welcome news.
Contrary to what the HHS Secretary might say, this will help to Make America Healthy Again!
Mr. Kennedy should probably just take a handful of Tylenol with Codeine and chill out.
I agree that none of these things help ordinary Americans.
Donald J. Trump promised to improve American lives
but has not made any credible efforts to do so.
It's just one distraction after another!
Trump has the attention span of a fly.
His cognitive capabilities are deteriorating on a daily basis.
Following are excerpts from a current report in The Guardian:
Democrats and ‘make America healthy again’ movement pushed back on the rider in a funding bill led by Bayer
Comment: It's all about the money, folks... NEVER forget that.
European leaders are pushing back against US president’s desire to seek takeover of the arctic territory Comment: Actually, I'm beyond comment on this one. Just who the hell does Trump think he is and we are?
Following are excerpts from a current report in The New York Times:
The move against the medical aid group enforces policies limiting criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war and requiring personal details about Gazan employees.
Comment: I have no doubt that a certain MFO poster will fully support this action.
and illegally taking over other nations, America’s supposed leadership class is silent.
Or worse, they’re helping Trump."
"Too many university presidents are silent or caving to Trump’s demands.
Too many senior managers of law firms have surrendered to his tyranny.
Too many directors of large nonprofits are remaining silent.
Almost all Republican leaders are rubber stamping his authoritarianism.
Too many Democratic leaders are barely putting up a fight."
"Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, recently said that he 'fully supports' Trump
and would welcome National Guard troops in San Francisco. (He later walked back his comments
on the National Guard, but continues to back Trump.)"
"Follow the money: Salesforce’s biggest customer is the federal government.
Trump has shown how eager he is to use federal contracts to reward his friends —
and Benioff doesn’t want to piss him off."
"Or look at Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, who recently gave Trump a plaque with a 24-karat golden base
and then showered him with praise at a convening of Big Tech billionaires at the White House."
"Why would Tim suck up to Trump? Because Trump has given Apple special exemptions
from his tariffs. And of course, both Cook and Apple benefit substantially from Trump’s latest round of tax cuts."
"Then there’s Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta.
Zuckerberg has ended Facebook and Instagram’s fact-checking policies,
parroting Trump’s claims that the practice censored conservative views.
And Meta shelled out $25 million to Trump to settle a lawsuit claiming the company censored him
when it removed his accounts. Facebook has also removed an ICE tracking page."
"Why? Meta is investing billions in AI and the power-hungry data centers that fuel it,
and needs a friendly White House to ramp up development."
"And whatever happened to Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank
in the United States, who relishes his position as 'spokesman' of the American business community?
What has he said about Trump’s lawlessness? He’s nowhere. He’s said nothing."
"Dimon also used to talk about the wide-ranging benefits of diversity and inclusion.
No longer. His bank basks in Trump’s good graces — and the tax cuts
and financial regulatory rollbacks that accompany them."
Following are excerpts from a current report in The Guardian:
Pushback from Susan Collins and Thom Tillis is striking amid tepid response from most other Republican senators
Comment: “Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump don’t get to decide what Americans in this country get to say about their government.” Damn straight. Unfortunately only two republican senators seem to agree with that.
And, of course, at least one MFO person believes that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump DO get to decide what Americans in this country get to say about their government.”
Are we all on the same page now?
Greenland good! NATO bad!
He is extremely incoherent as well.
Perhaps it time for yet another cognitive test that he could "ace" and brag about afterward?
https://www.c-span.org/clip/white-house-event/president-trump-in-january-6th-anniversary/5187012
We're in big trouble, folks.
If Trump is as smart as he claims, he should release the complete, unedited results of his cognitive tests!
How many tests has he had and why were multiple tests needed within such a relatively short time period?
Things that make you say hmm...
https://www.c-span.org/clip/white-house-event/user-clip-trump-on-jb-pritzker-stupid-slob---kamala-newsom-and-walz-wouldnt-pass-a-cognitive-test/5187032
This is just pure bullshit from a man who is averse to the truth.
Prior to today, I had not watched a Trump speech in quite some time — he does not sound very well.
https://www.c-span.org/clip/white-house-event/user-clip-fry-shoutout-1-2-26/5187056
Rep. Kamlager Dove (D-CA): “What made you make the decision to put democracy over personal power
or party?”
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger: “What made me do it is just simply my oath.
What shocks me is that there were more people that didn't.
Nothing that I did was heroic, but I was just surrounded by a bunch of cowards
that were too scared to do it."
https://www.c-span.org/clip/news-conference/fmr-rep-kinzinger-i-was-just-surrounded-by-a-bunch-of-cowards/5187022
What does this latest effort by Republicans to minimize what happened on that day,
what does that mean for lawmakers and for the Capitol Police officers who protect them?"
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-the-aftermath-of-jan-6-still-challenges-the-capitol
Comments: We must never forget what actually transpired on January 6, 2021.
Many Republican politicians have lied about and downplayed the events of the day.
GOP leaders who aided and abbetted Donald J. Trump must be held accountable for their actions.
History will not look favorably upon these spineless, feckless so-called leaders!
'preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.'
Almost four years to the day after taking that oath, on January 6, 2021,
Trump caused a violent insurrection that nearly overthrew an election and shattered our democracy."
"The attack on the Capitol was not a spontaneous event.
It was the culmination of a multi-part scheme by Trump and his allies to use lies,
intimidation, coercion and ultimately violence to keep Trump in office.
By leading these unprecedented efforts to subvert the Constitution
and American democracy, Trump disqualified himself under Section 3
of the Fourteenth Amendment from holding any federal or state office, including the presidency."
"Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted after the Civil War as a mechanism
to protect American democracy from those disloyal to the Constitution.
It bars from office any person who swore an 'oath … to support the Constitution of the United States'
as a federal or state officer and then 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same,'
unless Congress removes the disqualification by a two-thirds vote of each house."
• Trump spread knowingly false claims of a “stolen” and “rigged” election —
even after he exhausted legal challenges, the states certified his loss,
and there was no lawful basis to contest the election results.
• Trump personally led an effort to pressure, coerce, and intimidate government officials
— including Pence, state election officials, and Department of Justice officials —
to help him unlawfully overturn the election results.
• Through social media and grassroots Stop the Steal mobilizers,
Trump summoned a violent mob of tens of thousands of his supporters–including
now-convicted seditionists and members of extremist groups such as the Oath Keepers
and the Proud Boys — to travel to Washington, D.C. for a “wild” protest on January 6th.
• Once his mob was assembled on January 6th, Trump incited them to “fight like hell”
to overturn the election results by marching to the Capitol to “stop the steal,”
knowing that many were armed, adorned in tactical gear, and prepared for violence.
• After learning the Capitol was under attack, Trump poured fuel on the fire,
targeting Pence for lacking the “courage” to overturn the election in a tweet
that measurably caused the mob to surge.
• Trump failed to act for nearly three hours as his mob ransacked the United States Capitol,
brutally assaulted police officers, and called for the murder of elected officials.
He failed to deploy a federal response to protect the United States Capitol or call off his mob
despite his constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed”
and his role as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military, including the D.C. National Guard.
• Instead of intervening to defend the Capitol, Trump tried to enlist members of Congress
to deliver on the mob’s goal to delay the election certification.
https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/donald-trumps-disqualification-from-office-14th-amendment/
Comments: The facts surrounding the Jan. 6 insurrection are presented above.
We must not allow GOP leadership, the MAGA movement, or extremist groups
to change the narrative surrounding events which occurred on that historic day.
Because Donald J. Trump fomented an insurrection, he is disqualified from holding
any state or federal office. Trump is an illegitimate president!
The convicted felon should be incarcerated for his criminal activities associated with the insurrection.
'a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World!' But Peter Baker reported in the New York Times
that the opposite was true: Biden and his administration were leaving behind a country
that was in the best shape it had been since at least 2000."
"There were no U.S. troops fighting in foreign wars, murders had plummeted,
deaths from drug overdoses had dropped sharply, undocumented immigration
was below where it was when Trump left office in 2021, stocks had just had their best two years
since the last century. The economy was growing, real wages were rising, inflation had fallen
to close to its normal range, unemployment was at near-historic lows,
and energy production was at historic highs. The economy had added more than 700,000
manufacturing jobs among the 16 million total created since 2020."
"Baker quoted chief economist of Moody’s Analytics Mark Zandi, who said:
'President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets.'"
Comments: Trump inherited an excellent economy from President Joe Biden.
He could have just continued the same policies and taken credit for economic prosperity.
Instead, Trump implemented an ill-conceived tariff policy, fired numerous essential workers,
intervened inappropriately in free markets, and threatened many institutions unless they paid him off.
I guess we should have expected something like this from an incompetent business "mogul"
who somehow managed to bankrupt multiple casinos and hotels!
https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2026/01/06/fifth-anniversary-jan-6-attack-brings-fresh-division-capitol/