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African American Life a Hundred Years Ago

Not what most people would think.

Do Dumb Ideas Ever Die?

In one of the great scenes of one of the great gangster movies, Mike Newell’s “Donnie Brasco,” an aging Mafioso named Lefty Ruggiero paces a hospital corridor while his son fights for his life following a drug overdose.

“Twenty-eight years, you can read it on his birth certificate: Bellevue Hospital,” Lefty, played by Al Pacino, tells Donnie, played by Johnny Depp, about his comatose son. “Now he’s back, in there, and I’m out here, worried to my death. And he’s asleep in there, same as 28 years ago, with the same expression. He’s made no progress.”

It’s a line that could apply just as well to America’s policy debates.

Twenty-eight years ago — that was 1997, when “Donnie Brasco” came out — we thought we had made progress, at least when it came to answering some of the larger questions that had roiled 20th-century politics.

Trade protectionism? The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and beggar-thy-neighbor policies of the 1930s showed us the worldwide economic ruin to which that could lead. Government stakes in private enterprise, like the Trump administration’s recent equity stake in Intel? The record of state investment in, or control of, private enterprises, from Solyndra to Sematech (not to mention Alitalia or “Such a Bad Experience Never Again” Sabena), is mostly a story of financial disappointment, taxpayer bailouts, managerial incompetence, political interference and cronyism.

America First? The slogan of Charles Lindbergh and other pre-World War II isolationists should have been buried forever on Dec. 7, 1941. Instead, it emerged from its grave some 75 years later.

But it isn’t just the Trump administration that is reawakening the moral and intellectual zombies of the past. Everywhere one looks there are policy necromancers.

The platform of the national Democratic Socialists of America calls for a 32-hour workweek “with no reduction in pay or benefits”; “free public universal child care and pre-K”; “college for all”; the cancellation of “all student-loan debt”; “universal rent control”; “massive public investment to transition away from fossil fuels”; “guaranteed support for workers in the fossil fuel industry,” and “expansive paid family leave.” Not only would American workers stand to benefit, but so would everybody else, since the D.S.A. wants to offer these benefits to anyone who wishes to come to United States through an open-borders policy.

How would the D.S.A. pay for all this? By soaking the rich, along with “for-profit corporations, large inheritances, and private colleges and universities.” Why did nobody think of this before?

Oh, wait — many did. “Bolivarian socialism,” welcomed by the Jeremy Corbyns of the world, took Venezuela from being South America’s richest country to a humanitarian catastrophe. Sweden attempted a form of socialism in the 1970s and ’80s, only to reverse course after it experienced massive capital flight and a financial crisis during which interest rates hit 75 percent. France’s Socialist government imposed a 75 percent tax on earnings over one million euros in 2012; it dropped the tax two years later as the wealthy packed their bags. Britain’s National Health Service, whose advocates chronically complain is “underfunded,” is in a state of perpetual crisis even as health care, according to the BBC, gobbles up roughly one third of government spending.

“The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money,” Margaret Thatcher once observed. To put it another way, you can’t abolish billionaires, as Zohran Mamdani, the D.S.A.’s poster child, would like, and still expect them to keep footing your bills.

Read the rest here.

9th Circuit: Oregon Right to Life Group Is a Religious Organization

In Oregon Right to Life v. Stolfi, (9th Cir., Oct. 31, 2025), the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, remanded the case to the district court for it to re-evaluate whether requiring Oregon Right to Life to furnish its employees with health insurance covering abortion and contraception violates its First Amendment rights. The majority said in part:

We agree with ORTL that its beliefs are religious and sincerely held.  In light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission, 605 U.S. 238 (2025), which reiterated the constitutional significance of exemptions granted to some religiously motivated organizations but not others, we return this case to the district court to reevaluate whether RHEA’s application to ORTL violates the First Amendment....

ORTL’s religious motivations and beliefs are overt and long-established.  They are announced throughout ORTL’s governing documents, shared by ORTL’s board, and have been publicly declared by ORTL since before this litigation....

Read the rest here. 

Vatican nixes use of ‘Co-Redemptrix’ as title for Mary

The Vatican’s doctrinal office said Tuesday the title of “Co-Redemptrix” is not an appropriate way to describe Mary’s participation in salvation.

In Mater Populi Fidelis (“The Mother of the Faithful People of God”), the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) said when an expression requires frequent explanation to maintain the correct meaning, it becomes unhelpful.

“In this case, the expression ‘co-redemptrix’ does not help extol Mary as the first and foremost collaborator in the work of redemption and grace, for it carries the risk of eclipsing the exclusive role of Jesus Christ,” according to the doctrinal note, released Nov. 4.

Pope Leo XIV approved the document, signed by DDF prefect Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, on Oct. 7.

Read the rest here.

HT: Dr. Tighe

Anglican Church in North America primate goes on leave amidst allegations

The top leader of the Anglican Church in North America — a conservative denomination that broke away from the more liberal Episcopal Church about 15 years ago — has taken a leave of absence after facing allegations of sexual and other misconduct, which he denies.

Archbishop Stephen Wood announced the leave Monday while he awaits the outcome of a church disciplinary process triggered by a formal complaint, called a presentment, of alleged misconduct against him.

The presentment has not yet been made public, but an investigative report by The Washington Post said it alleged Wood tried to kiss a former children’s ministry director at his parish in 2024, shortly before he was elected archbishop. The presentment alleged Wood made other comments and acted in ways that made her uncomfortable since 2021, and made thousands of dollars in payments to her from church funds, the Post said. The presentment also includes allegations that he bullied staffers and plagiarized sermons, the Post reported.

Wood, 62, a married father of four, has denied the allegations.

Read the rest here.

Democrats run the board, winning by wide margins

Nov 4 (Reuters) - The 2025 off-year elections in Virginia, New Jersey, New York City and California provided an early barometer of how some U.S. voters view President Donald Trump's second term and the Democratic Party's efforts to revive its political fortunes.

Here are some takeaways from election night:

New Jersey Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill and Virginia Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger may have provided a blueprint for how Democrats can get their mojo back in next year’s congressional elections.

They have much in common. Each was first elected to Congress in 2018, during the midterms in Trump's first term. This year, they both ran as problem-solving moderates with backgrounds in national security and laser-focused their campaigns on affordability issues while positioning themselves as bulwarks against Trump.

To a party starved for good news, Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot, and Spanberger, an ex-CIA officer, provided it. While their wins were not huge surprises given that their states tend to support Democrats more than Republicans, their broad margins of victory may bolster the argument that their approach could work in next year’s midterms, when Democrats hope to wrest back control of Congress.

With votes still being counted, Sherrill appeared to have bested her opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, by a greater margin in New Jersey than Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris beat Trump there last year. There were also signs that Spanberger was outperforming Harris in Virginia.

Sherrill and Spanberger, along with New York mayoral winner Zohran Mamdani, promoted affordability as a central campaign theme.

Spanberger’s “Affordable Virginia” plan focused on lowering healthcare, housing and energy costs, and she vowed to make tech data centers pay “their fair share” of electricity costs. Sherrill’s “Affordability Agenda” targeted similar concerns. She pledged to declare a statewide energy emergency and freeze electricity rates.

Joel Payne, a Democratic strategist, said that while it’s always tricky to determine how off-year election results might play in the next year’s midterms, Democrats can take some lessons away from Tuesday.

“If Trump keeps taking a sledgehammer to people’s pocketbooks, that is an easy thing for Democrats to run on,” Payne said.

Read the rest here.

US accused of threatening EU diplomats during bid to kill green shipping rules

European negotiators were personally targeted by their American counterparts during a brutal negotiation over green shipping rules, European Commission officials told POLITICO — a highly unusual gambit that left diplomats shaken after the meeting. 

The threats were made last month, as the U.S. maneuvered to block a new effort to tax pollution at a meeting of the International Maritime Organization in London.

Eight envoys, officials and civil society observers from Europe, granted anonymity to describe the fractious closed-door discussions and protect their relationships with those involved, confirmed national delegates had reported they had been threatened with personal consequences if they went against Washington.

“Our negotiators had never seen this before in any international talks,” said one European official, who had spoken to negotiators. “People being summoned to the U.S. Embassy in London — intimidation, threats of cessation of business, threats of family members losing visas.”

Another European Commission official added that diplomats returned home rattled after the meetings: “We had feedback from a number of people involved in the negotiations about the pressure they faced.”

Since Donald Trump’s return to office, the administration has sought to undermine global climate policy and promote U.S. fossil fuel interests. The president has called efforts to combat global warming a “con job.” He was particularly enraged about the maritime emissions effort, saying it would hit American shippers with unwarranted taxes.

Read the rest here.

Tucker Carlson just threw gasoline on the simmering GOP divide over Israel and antisemitism

NEW YORK (AP) — As Republicans accuse Democrats of tolerating antisemitism in their party, the GOP on Friday was roiled by its own schism after the leader of a powerful right-wing think tank defended prominent conservative commentator Tucker Carlson for his friendly podcast interview with a far-right activist known for his antisemitic views.

The comments from Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, sparked outrage from some Heritage staffers, senators and conservative activists. But they also reflect increasing skepticism toward Israel and of Jews among some on the right, complicating the GOP’s efforts to cast the Democratic Party as antisemitic.

The outrage began when Roberts on Thursday posted a video in which he denied his group was “distancing itself” from the former Fox News host, one of the most powerful voices on the right, after Carlson’s podcast hosted Nick Fuentes, whose followers see themselves as working to preserve America’s white, Christian identify.

“The American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right,” said Roberts, adding that, while antisemitism is wrong, conservatives do not need to always support Israel.

The video drew sharp rebuke from Heritage staffers and multiple Republican senators, as well as top Jewish leaders in both parties.

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish member of Congress, called the Roberts statement “deeply disturbing.” Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said in a statement to Jewish Insider that he was “appalled, offended and disgusted.”

The flare-up comes as criticism of Israel and blatant antisemitism have risen in right wing circles. Activists such as Fuentes and Candace Owens have seen the popularity of their podcasts and videos grow, particularly among young conservatives who are increasingly skeptical of the notion that the Republican Party should stand by Israel’s side and support its war in Gaza, given President Donald Trump ‘s “America First” agenda.

Read the rest here.

What's going on with Prince Andrew?

The New York City Mayoral Race

It's all but over. Now comes the fun part. A socialist mayor in charge of the beating heart of global capitalism, in a country with a far right authoritarian president who is almost certain to suggest Manhattan as the first site for his planned revival of nuclear weapons testing.

US-China Summit: Tactical draw (strategic win for China?)

When Donald Trump launched his trade war against China in April, threatening tariffs as high as 145%, the Chinese government said it would never bow to blackmail and vowed to “fight to the end”.

The question now is whether the consensus reached between Trump and Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, on Thursday means that the fight really has come to an end, and if so on whose terms.

Trump rated it as a 12 out of 10 meeting.

Both sides have taken some of their biggest guns off the table, but this appears closer to a truce than a durable peace setting stable boundaries for China’s relations with the US. Nevertheless the outline of a broader long-term diplomatic relationship is visible, with announced reciprocal visits by each leader within a year. That is very different to what China hawks in Congress were hoping when Trump came to power, and will set alarm bells off on both sides of the aisle.

One of the difficulties has been that Trump’s strategic objectives in launching the trade war were not articulated – the balance between protecting traditional US manufacturing, ring-fencing modern technology-based industries critical to US national security, punishing Chinese trade practices, or more broadly generally overpowering China as a competitive threat, were fudged. Gradually the battle morphed in some US administration minds from a trade war into a geopolitical trial of strength between the two world’s superpowers, a trial that left the whole world awaiting its outcome.

As a result it has been a turbulent six months, involving undulating tariffs, export curbs, threats, counter-threats, deferral and monopolies inquiries, interspersed with five rounds of trade talks ranging though Madrid, London, Geneva, Stockholm and Kuala Lumpur, culminating in two hours of direct talks between Trump and Xi, the first meeting between the two men since 2019.

Read the rest here.

Donald Trump Ponders His Place in the Hereafter

A few weeks ago, President Trump momentarily dropped the bombast and the playground insults and the self-congratulation to muse about his eternal soul. “I want to try and get to heaven, if possible,” he said. “I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole.”

Prodded by a reporter this month to elaborate, he repeated the lament without much more explanation. “I’m being a little cute,” he said. But he went on: “I don’t think there’s anything that’s going to get me into heaven. I think I’m not maybe heaven-bound.”

Mr. Trump is hardly the first 79-year-old to dwell on what may come after he departs this mortal coil — or to wonder whether he has earned entry into the pearly gates. But it is so unlike Mr. Trump to express self-doubt that his public rumination has raised questions. What is on his mind lately that makes him fear his fate in the hereafter? What sins might he be regretting?

He has not clarified his thinking, at least not on camera, nor for that matter has he shown any public signs of repentance for scandals that he may believe hold him back from grace. And yet the president’s curious contemplation comes at a time when Mr. Trump seems to be seeking a form of immortality. If absolution is out of reach, perhaps there are more achievable ways of living beyond his natural time on this earth.

And so, the man who over a long career in business slapped his name on buildings around the world now seems intent on leaving his mark in even more grandiose fashion. He demolished the East Wing of the White House last week to make way for a vast, gilded Trumpian ballroom. He wants to erect an arch at the entrance to Washington that resembles Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe. He is even considering having the government issue a new $1 coin with his own face on it, something no president has done in nearly a century.

Read the rest here.

Trump fires board that oversees changes to White House

President Trump on Tuesday fired all six sitting members of a board that oversees architecture in Washington, D.C., CBS News has confirmed, as the president plans a slate of major building projects in the capital city — including a massive White House ballroom.

"We are preparing to appoint a new slate of members to the commission that are more aligned with President Trump's America First Policies," a White House official told CBS News.

Read the rest here.

Juvenile insults are standard replies for White House reporter

Journalists court criticism when they fail to ask subjects of their reporting for comment. Shirish Dáte, a White House reporter for the progressive news site HuffPost, appears to have the opposite problem: He gets clobbered when he does reach out.

Top Trump officials, Mr. Dáte said, tend to reply with insults, often bundled with praise for their boss. Never were they more newsworthy than a recent back-and-forth that spread across the internet.

After President Trump said he would meet with Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, in Budapest, Mr. Dáte (pronounced dah-tay) asked who had recommended the Hungarian capital for a high-stakes meeting.

“Your mom did,” texted Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, in an exchange that she later posted online. “Your mom,” Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, texted moments later, invoking a well-worn maternal insult that, according to the Urban Dictionary, is the “most versatile dis/comeback ever created in the history of your mom.”

“I was kind of like, this is a serious war that’s going on that has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainians in their homes,” Mr. Dáte, 61 — who worked at several mainstream outlets before joining HuffPost in 2016 — said in an interview. “And then your response is, ‘Your mom’?”

Mr. Trump and his aides have regularly bad-mouthed the press and many journalists over the years, turning to disparaging terms like nasty, dying, disgusting and fake. They show less restraint in their pushback against Mr. Dáte, accentuating his somewhat lonely professional existence — reporting for a progressive publication in a building increasingly populated by right-wing outlets supportive of the current administration.

HuffPost has a seat in the White House briefing room and participates in a rotation of journalists covering Mr. Trump’s events. Invective from officialdom seems to come with those privileges. After the flare-up over the Budapest question, for example, Ms. Leavitt told Mr. Dáte via text that he was a “far left hack who nobody takes seriously, including your colleagues in the media, they just don’t tell you that to your face.”

As he reported on a story this fall about Stephen Miller, one of Mr. Trump’s top aides, Mr. Dáte received an expletive-laden text from Mr. Cheung chiding his physical stature and his masculinity, according to a text chain Mr. Dáte provided.

“In nine years, have I ever insulted you?” Mr. Dáte responded. Mr. Cheung then wrote that Mr. Dáte was “being a moron.”

Read the rest here.

Argentina: Libertarians score decisive legislative election win

BUENOS AIRES — Argentines woke up to a politically emboldened President Javier Milei after a dramatic victory in midterm elections on Sunday.

The libertarian president and staunch Donald Trump ally secured more than 40% of the popular vote, and solidified his hold on power in the National Congress, where he had previously struggled to push parts of his agenda through.

The scope of the victory surprised even Milei. His La Libertad Avanza party earned roughly 9 points more than the left-leaning Peronist opposition, and also eked out a victory in the powerful province of Buenos Aires, where Peronists usually dominate. Just over one month ago, the president's party had lost badly in legislative elections in the province of Buenos Aires.

But the story Sunday was very different, and sent a clear message following two years of austerity measures that drastically cut public spending, and helped drive down chronically high inflation. Corruption scandals, and a wild few weeks of economic instability did not dampen the support that he maintains among a sizable part of the population.

The value of the Argentine peso also strengthened considerably on Monday, a show of confidence from the markets after Milei's victory.

Read the rest here.

Review: A House of Dynamite (Spoilers)

So I watched the Netflix movie A House of Dynamite yesterday, and here are some quick thoughts on the film which has been getting a lot of buzz. Scroll down to the final thoughts if you want to skip the spoilers.

The movie is the latest in the long tradition of the Hollywood nuclear apocalypse genre and some of the plot follows a predictable course. A lone nuclear missile is launched at the United States. No one knows who launched it or why and the government has about 15 minutes before it's going to hit a major US city. The film is part procedural drama and part morality play. 

What I liked...

* The acting was generally solid and believable. There were some very sobering and emotional scenes that I thought were pretty realistic. This is not one of those Hallmark Christmas movies mom loved. 

* Most of the people that would be involved in something like this are trained professionals. But they are also human with families. If it looks like it's really happening and the end may be imminent, folks are going to handle that in different ways. I thought the film did a good job showing that.

* For the most part, they got the procedural stuff right. Several news stories reported that people with personal knowledge even claimed the sets used for the the White House Situation Room and the command center at STRATCOM were so dead on, they are assuming one or more people who have been in those rooms helped with the film. 

* The steps that would be taken in the event of a nuclear emergency were about right and mostly in the right order. 

* The bagman and the nuclear football were also more or less correct. 

* The organized chaos and stress that would be going on once you trigger C.O.G. (continuity of government) protocols and start evacuating critical persons was again, likely close to what would be going on. If anything, I think it would probably happen a lot faster and more brutally. Senior people in the line of succession would not be politely asked to come along with short delays to finish conversations or phone calls. It would be closer to the very realistic scene where POTUS is just grabbed and rushed by Secret Service out of a public engagement.

Where I think the movie fell short...

* The likelihood of anyone being able to launch a ballistic missile at the US and our not knowing who did it, either instantly or within minutes is in the same range as a lottery ticket. I realize they needed this for the plot, but their explanation is not realistic. We have multiple ways of identifying who was behind any launch. Even if it somehow happened, we would be able to identify the origin of a nuclear blast fairly quickly from various types of evidence related to the blast, types of radioactive material and so on. Think of it as nuclear fingerprints. The idea of someone being able to successfully carry out an anonymous nuclear strike on the US is Hollywood fantasy.

* In the film a couple of interceptor missiles are launched. One malfunctions and the other misses. The procedure here is pretty accurate. But they are wrong in suggesting we would only fire two missiles and hold the rest in reserve for a possible second wave attack. If a lone missile was launched at the US, the assumption would be that it was either an accident, a rogue, or (spectacularly improbable) a false positive in our computers and satellites. Knowing that millions of Americans faced imminent death and that a bomb going off would push the world to the edge of oblivion, they would throw whatever was needed to take that missile out. 

* In line with the above, the scenes where the military are pressing POTUS to launch a massive retaliatory strike without knowing all the facts was unrealistic. They, perhaps more than anyone, would know that such an act would mean the end of civilization as we know it. The logic behind their arguments was also not credible. The launch now or we will loose all our nukes did not make sense in the face of a single inbound missile. A single missile was not going to take out our defenses or decapitate the government. Most likely, the military leadership would be urging restraint until we know for sure who did what and if the damned missile even explodes. The nightmare scenario is where the computers and satellites are telling us we have a wall of inbound ICBS and ~15 minutes to make a decision. Then we really would be in a bad spot because about a third of our nuclear defenses are in the form of land based ICBMs. Both Russia and China know where they are. So yeah...

* The US would almost certainly have given emphatic assurances to both Moscow and Beijing that we would not launch any attack until we knew who was behind it. And if it turned out to be North Korea, we would not need to overfly either Russian or Chinese airspace to turn that country into a glow-in-the-dark parking lot. Although not publicly discussed, it is well known that we have multiple nuclear ballistic missile subs on patrol in the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean 24/7/365. They are more than capable of dealing with the Hermit Kingdom if needed. 

* Word would have gotten out. For the same reasons some people would almost certainly break protocols and make calls to loved ones, someone would alert the press. Also you can't carry out emergency evacuation of top government leadership without the press taking notice. If the POTUS suddenly gets rushed out of a public event by Secret Service, that by itself is going to be the cause for special news bulletins. There would be widespread public panic.

* This would be made worse by a likely total lack of official communication from the government. Two reasons would be behind this. First, in that 15 minute window there isn't going to be time for a news conference. Secondly, there isn't much the government could do or say that would be terribly helpful. Here is a dirty little secret. There is no national Civil Defense program in the United States. It was quietly done away with in the 1990s when everyone assumed that history had stopped, there would be no more major wars, and the US would never actually be attacked. FEMA (created in 1979 to replace the Office for Civil Defense) still exists. But it's focus is now entirely on natural and non-military disasters. There are no more public fallout shelters. No evacuation plans. No functional air raid sirens. Except in Hawaii. Alone of the 50 states, Hawaii launched a major civil defense program in the wake of explicit threats from North Korea. They actually have plans, public shelters and warning systems in place. The rest of us are pretty much screwed. 

Final thoughts...

All in all this is one of the better films in its genre. It's well acted and directed, highly suspenseful, at times depressingly emotional, and probably the most realistic film in terms of showing the procedural aspects of our nuclear defenses and how it all works. If at times, the plot strays a bit from the otherwise high levels of realism, it can be excused in the name of dramatic license. Bottom line, I don't see this getting an Academy Award nomination, but on balance it's a good movie 

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Trump Pardons a Crypto Billionaire

President Donald Trump signed a pardon Wednesday for convicted crypto executive Changpeng Zhao, who founded the Binance crypto exchange, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

"President Trump exercised his constitutional authority by issuing a pardon for Mr. Zhao, who was prosecuted by the Biden Administration in their war on cryptocurrency," Leavitt said. "In their desire to punish the cryptocurrency industry, the Biden Administration pursued Mr. Zhao despite no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims."

Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison after reaching a deal with the Justice Department to plead guilty to charges of enabling money laundering at Binance, which he ran at the time.

The United States also ordered Binance to pay more than $4 billion in fines and forfeiture, while Zhao agreed to pay $50 million in fines.

Read the rest here.

The war on the rule of law continues.

Trump is demolishing entire East Wing of the White House to add his ballroom

The entire East Wing of the White House will be demolished “within days,” according to two Trump administration officials.

The demolition marks a significant expansion of the ballroom construction project from what President Trump said earlier this summer.

“It won’t interfere with the current building,” Trump said on July 31.. “It’ll be near it, but not touching it, and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.”

The extent of the demolition was first reported by The New York Times.

A White House official told NBC News the “entirety” of the East Wing would eventually be “modernized and rebuilt,” while acknowledging the process is fluid.

“The scope and the size of the ballroom project have always been subject to vary as the process develops,” the official told NBC News.

Read the rest here.

Trump Demands Justice Dept. Pay Him $230 Million

President Trump is demanding that the Justice Department pay him about $230 million in compensation for the federal investigations into him, according to people familiar with the matter, who added that any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit.

The situation has no parallel in American history, as Mr. Trump, a presidential candidate, was pursued by federal law enforcement and eventually won the election, taking over the very government that must now review his claims. It is also the starkest example yet of potential ethical conflicts created by installing the president’s former lawyers atop the Justice Department.

Mr. Trump submitted complaints through an administrative claim process that often is the precursor to lawsuits. The first claim, lodged in late 2023, seeks damages for a number of purported violations of his rights, including the F.B.I. and special counsel investigation into Russian election tampering and possible connections to the 2016 Trump campaign, according to people familiar with the matter. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the claim has not been made public.

The second complaint, filed in the summer of 2024, accuses the F.B.I. of violating Mr. Trump’s privacy by searching Mar-a-Lago, his club and residence in Florida, in 2022 for classified documents. It also accuses the Justice Department of malicious prosecution in charging him with mishandling sensitive records after he left office.

Asked about the issue at the White House after this article published, the president said, “I was damaged very greatly and any money I would get, I would give to charity.”

He added, “I’m the one that makes the decision and that decision would have to go across my desk and it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself.”

Read the rest here.