When the history of the sordid and cruel megalomaniac who now occupies the Oval Office is written, it may well be that his deal with himself to set up a $1.8 billion fund for reimbursing anyone he feels was harmed by the federal government is chronicled as the final straw.
Why not Trump’s absurd tariffs, which are really import taxes passed on to consumers? Why not Trump’s needless war against Iran, which caused prices to soar and is unlikely to result in a better deal on its nuclear ambitions than the one struck by Obama? Why not his cruel ICE and Border Patrol dragnets? Why not the Epstein files or dozens of other lawless or outrageous things he’s done?
I think because almost everyone knows that the fund will be used to pay off Trump’s supporters — including the 1,500 who attacked the U.S. Capitol and then were imprisoned for it — and that paying them is a bridge too far.
This morning a federal judge barred the government from taking steps to launch the fund or process payments at least until a hearing is held in June in a pending lawsuit challenging its legality.
The order came in a case brought by a group of individuals and entities who say they have faced partisan attacks by the Trump regime but who say they expect to be excluded from accessing the fund.
It’s unusual, to say the least, that such a group would be recognized by a court as having standing to bring such a suit, because their status is entirely speculative. They merely expect to be excluded. But such is the level of cynicism about the motives and processes of Trump that even a district court judge would automatically recognize the validity of such an expectation.
It is impossible to conceive that those who have been attacked by Trump’s Justice Department — such as former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James — would be compensated by Trump’s fund. Nor would the former federal prosecutor who claims he was fired for his work on the January 6 investigation, or people arrested while protesting immigration raids.
Other lawsuits challenging the fund have been filed in the District of Columbia and in California. But the interesting thing is it’s not just lawsuits, and it’s not just Democrats. A number of prominent Republican lawmakers have publicly objected to the fund.
The fact that public money would be spent, and that the fund would be entirely under Trump’s control, also figures in.
Remarkably, 35 former federal judges on Wednesday urged the judge who closed Trump’s case with the IRS — the origin of the fund — to take another look at the terms of the deal. I can’t recall another instance of former judges petitioning a sitting judge to take another look at the terms of a settlement.
The stench of Trump’s self-dealing, compounded by the absurdity of his suing his own Justice Department for $10 billion — and the department’s responding with a “deal” that would give him $1.8 billion to reward his supporters, and future immunity from IRS audits — seems to have tipped some set of cosmic scales.
The scales of justice and also the political scales. Republican members of Congress are hearing an uproar from their constituents about this, which persuaded many to leave town without acting on Trump’s second big reconciliation bill.
I asked earlier this week if Trump has finally overplayed his hand. I believe the cumulative effects of all his wanton and harmful initiatives over the last several months are now setting in. The $1.8 billion fund will be seen as the straw that broke Trump’s legal and political back — the act of hubris that illuminated all the other acts of hubris, the very emblem of Trump’s contempt for anything and everyone beyond himself and his own self-glorification.
Trump’s Department of Injustice Justice has opened a criminal investigation into writer E. Jean Carroll.
I’ve spoken with E. Jean about her cases against Trump and her fabulous (and, believe it or not, hilarious) book about what she’s been through — Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President, which I can’t recommend highly enough. (See the interview Heather Lofthouse and I did with E. Jean on March 14, above.)
First, some background:
In 2022, Carroll alleged that a chance encounter with Trump at Bergdorf Goodman’s Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s ended violently — that Trump slammed her against a dressing room wall, pulled down her tights, and forced himself into her.
In May 2023, a federal jury in New York unanimously found that Trump was liable for sexually abusing Carroll. The judge in that trial clarified that Trump didn’t just “sexually abuse” her. He “raped” her:
The finding of sexual abuse “does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.” Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
(When Trump sued ABC News over George Stephanopoulos’s assertion that Trump had raped Carroll, ABC chose to give in and pay Trump $16 million rather than rely on the judge’s clarification.)
The jury also found that Trump had defamed Carroll by saying she had lied about the assault. The jury awarded Carroll $5 million.
Trump appealed, but the verdict was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. A three-judge panel unanimously rejected Trump’s request for a new trial, concluding that he had “not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings.”
(Last November, Trump asked the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling. It has yet to decide whether to hear the case.)
After the verdict, Trump denied he had assaulted Carroll, called her claims “a complete con job” and a “Hoax and a lie,” and said she was not his “type.”
Trump’s comments caused Carroll to charge Trump with defaming her once again. After this second trial, a unanimous jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million.
The verdict included $65 million in punitive damages. The jury found that Trump had acted with malice in defaming Carroll a second time. Her lawyers had argued that a large verdict was necessary to “make him stop” his attacks on her — which he continued at news conferences, in social media posts, and during the trial itself.
The $83.3 million verdict was upheld by a Second Circuit appeals court in a unanimous three-judge ruling, in which the judges found that Trump “never wavered or relented in his public attacks” on Carroll and that she was subjected to public harassment as a result of his statements, including death threats and threats of physical injury.
Trump has vowed to appeal this case to the Supreme Court as well.
And now Trump is using the Justice Department as another cudgel against the woman he sexually abused (the judge said “raped”).
The mainstream media is characterizing this as “the latest chapter” in Trump’s retribution campaign carried out by the Justice Department — following the department’s criminal investigations of former FBI director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and other Trump opponents.
Wrong. This investigation marks a dangerous escalation of Trump’s use of the Justice Department for personal vendettas.
In going after Carroll, Trump is no longer simply weaponizing the department against people he considers political enemies. Carroll has never been a politician; she’s never served in a president’s administration; she’s never been a prosecutor. She’s a private citizen whom a jury unanimously found Trump had sexually abused (raped), and two juries unanimously found he had defamed.
Hell, if Trump can use his Justice Department to criminally investigate private citizens who have held him civilly accountable for past brutality, there’s no logical end to his potential vindictiveness. Any of us who has tried to hold him accountable, in any way, could be next.
A criminal investigation isn’t a party invitation. It’s hugely costly to the people targeted, time-consuming, often grueling and anxiety-provoking.
The Justice Department’s trumped-up criminal investigation is looking into whether Carroll committed criminal perjury when she said in a 2022 deposition before her first civil lawsuit against Trump that she hadn’t had outside help in funding it — although some of her legal bills were paid by a nonprofit financed by Reid Hoffman (a major Democratic donor and founder of LinkedIn, who may also be the target of a criminal investigation).
But this issue was already considered, and dismissed, in Trump’s appeal of that first verdict — in which Trump’s lawyers accused Carroll of concealing financial support from Hoffman, and her lawyers argued in response that Hoffman’s financial support was irrelevant to Carroll’s legal claims and that she had nothing to do with obtaining the outside funding.
The appellate court found that she had “plausibly … forgotten about the limited outside funding counsel obtained” and that “Carroll simply was not involved in the matter of who was or was not funding her litigation costs.”
For Trump’s Justice Department to now launch a criminal investigation of Carroll on the same claim his lawyers made years ago, which was dismissed by an appellate court, is a transparent abuse of justice, harassment of a private citizen, and violation of the rule of law.
Even worse, Todd Blanche, Trump’s acting attorney general, was the lawyer who represented Trump in Trump’s appeals of Carroll’s verdicts and who made the very argument that the appellate court rejected and the Justice Department is now turning into a criminal investigation.
Although Blanche is said to have recused himself from the probe because of his prior representation of Trump in Carroll’s cases, his fingerprints are all over it. Blanche is desperate for Trump to promote him to full attorney general, and, to this end, has been even more accommodating of Trump’s thirst for revenge than his predecessor, Pam Bondi. Moreover, officials from department headquarters have been involved in the decision to investigate Carroll — officials who directly report to Blanche.
Friends, I was an attorney in the Justice Department soon after Richard Nixon had tried to turn it against his enemies and Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell had gone to jail for his role in Watergate. I was fortunate enough to work for Edward Levi, Gerald Ford’s attorney general, who sought to insulate the department from any similar abuses in the future and regain the public’s trust in our system of justice. President Ford supported Levi’s efforts. Levi’s successors, Griffin Bell and Benjamin Civiletti, continued Levi’s work to depoliticize — and professionalize — the department, with the support of Jimmy Carter.
The next president and attorney general must rededicate themselves and the Justice Department to the same principles.
Nixon’s Justice Department was bad. Trump’s is far worse, and more dangerous.
I sometimes share with you perspectives about what we’re up against from non-American writers and journalists. Asli Aydintasbas, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C., and a former journalist, published this short essay, titled “Trump Will Overplay His Hand: Here’s How to be Ready,” on December 1, 2024, in PoliticoMagazine, just weeks before the start of Trump’s second regime. Eighteen months later, I still find this essay a useful guide.
***
American democracy is about to undergo a serious stress test [this was written January 1, 2025.] I know how it feels, in part because I lived through the slow and steady march of state capture as a journalist working in Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey.
Over a decade as a high-profile journalist, I covered Turkey’s descent into illiberalism, having to engage in the daily push and pull with the government. I know how self-censorship starts in small ways but then creeps into operations on a daily basis. I am familiar with the rhythms of the battle to reshape the media, state institutions and the judiciary.
Having lived through it, and having gathered some lessons in hindsight, I believe that there are strategies that can help Democrats and Trump critics not only survive the coming four years, but come out stronger. Here are six of them.
1. Don’t Panic — Autocracy Takes Time
President-elect Donald Trump’s return to power is unnerving but America will not turn into a dictatorship overnight — or in four years. Even the most determined strongmen face internal hurdles, from the bureaucracy to the media and the courts. It took Erdoğan well over a decade to fully consolidate his power. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Poland’s Law and Justice Party needed years to erode democratic norms and fortify their grip on state institutions. [Reminder: On April 12, 2026, Péter Magyar led his Tisza party to victory with an extraordinary 138 seats over Orbán's Fidesz party, which retained only 55 seats, and the far-right Our Homeland, with 6.]
I am not suggesting that the United States is immune to these patterns, but it’s important to remember that its decentralized system of governance — the network of state and local governments — offers enormous resilience. Federal judges serve lifetime appointments, states and governors have specific powers separate from those granted federally, there are local legislatures, and the media has the First Amendment as a shield, reinforced by over a century of legal precedents.
Sure, there are dangers, including by a Supreme Court that might grant great deference to the president. But in the end, Donald Trump really only has two years to try to execute state capture. Legal battles, congressional pushback, market forces, midterm elections in 2026 and internal Republican dissent will slow him down and restrain him. The bottom line is that the U.S. is too decentralized in its governance system for a complete takeover. The Orbanization of America is not an imminent threat.
2. Don’t Disengage — Stay Connected
After a stunning electoral loss like this, there’s a natural impulse to shut off the news, log off social media and withdraw from public life. I’ve seen this with friends in Turkey and Hungary with opposition supporters retreating in disillusionment after Erdogan’s or Orbam’s victories. Understandably, people want to turn inwards.
Dancing, travel, meditation, book clubs — it’s all fine. But eventually, in Poland, Hungary and Turkey, opponents of autocracy have returned to the fight, driven by a belief in the possibility of change. So will Americans.
Nothing is more meaningful than being part of a struggle for democracy. That’s why millions of Turks turned out to the polls and gave the opposition a historic victory in local governments across Turkey earlier this year. That’s how the Poles organized a winning coalition to vote out the conservative Law and Justice Party last year. It can happen here, too.
The answer to political defeat is not to disconnect, but to organize. You can take a couple of days or weeks off, commiserate with friends and mute Elon Musk on X — or erase the app altogether. But in the end, the best way to develop emotional resilience is greater engagement.
3. Don’t Fear the Infighting
Donald Trump’s victory has understandably triggered infighting inside the Democratic Party and it looks ugly. But fear not. These recriminations and finger-pointing are necessary to move forward. In Turkey, Hungary and Poland, it was only after the opposition parties faced their strategic and ideological misalignment with society that they were able to begin to effectively fight back.
Trump has tapped into the widespread belief that the economic order, labor-capital relations, housing and the immigration system are broken. You may think he is a hypocrite, but there is no doubt that he has convinced a large cross-section of American society that he is actually the agent of change — a spokesman for their interests as opposed to “Democratic elites.” This is exactly what strongmen like Erdoğan and Orban have achieved.
For the Democratic Party to redefine itself as a force for change, and not just as the custodian of the status quo, it needs fundamental shifts in how it relates to working people in the U.S. There is time to do so before the midterms of 2026.
4. Charismatic Leadership Is a Non-Negotiable
One lesson from Turkey and Hungary is clear: You will lose if you don’t find a captivating leader, as was the case in 2023 general elections in Turkey and in 2022 in Hungary. Coalition-building or economic messaging is necessary and good. But it is not enough. You need charisma to mobilize social dissent.
Trump was beatable in this election, but only with a more captivating candidate. For Democrats, the mistake after smartly pushing aside President Joe Biden was bypassing the primaries and handpicking a candidate. Future success for the party will hinge on identifying a candidate who can better connect with voters and channel their aspirations. It should not be too hard in a country of 350 million.
Last year’s elections in Poland and Turkey showcased how incumbents can be defeated (or not defeated, as in general elections in Turkey in 2023) depending on the opposition’s ability to unite around compelling candidates who resonate with voters. Voters seek authenticity and a connection — give it to them.
5. Skip the Protests and Identity Politics
Soon, Trump opponents will shake off the doldrums and start organizing an opposition campaign. But how they do it matters. For the longest time in Turkey, the opposition made the mistake of relying too much on holding street demonstrations and promoting secularism, Turkey’s version of identity politics, which speaks to the urban professional and middle class but not beyond. When Erdoğan finally lost his absolute predominance in Turkish politics in 2024, it was largely because of his mismanagement of the economy and the opposition’s growing competence in that area.
Trump’s appeal transcends traditional divides of race, gender and class. He has formed a new Republican coalition and to counteract this. Democrats too, must broaden their tent, even if means trying to appeal to conservatives on some issues. Opposition over the next four years must be strategic and broad-based.
Street protests and calls to defend democracy may be inspirational, but they repel conservatives and suburban America. Any grassroots action must be coupled with a clear, relatable economic message and showcase the leadership potential of Democratic mayors and governors. Identity politics alone won’t do it.
6. Have Hope
Nothing lasts forever and the U.S. is not the only part of the world that faces threats to democracy — and Americans are no different than the French, the Turks or Hungarians when it comes to the appeal of the far right. But in a country with a strong, decentralized system of government and with a long-standing tradition of free speech, the rule of law should be far more resilient than anywhere in the world.
Trump’s return to power certainly poses challenges to U.S. democracy. But he will make mistakes and overplay his hand — at home and abroad. America will survive the next four years if Democrats pick themselves up and start learning from the successes of opponents of autocracy across the globe.
[Question to you: Does this essay still ring true? In what ways does it seem especially relevant today? Are there ways in which it seems either naive or overly optimistic?]
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