The Corruption - The Guardrails Are Gone

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

The Corruption: The Guardrails Are Gone

Attorney General Pam Bondi has eviscerated the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section,   NBC News reports , in another sign that rampant unrestrained public corruption will be a defining feature of the Trump era.

We didn’t get here overnight. A social, political, and legal transformation over the past decade has removed many of the most important guardrails to contain public corruption. The 2016 Supreme Court decision in   McDonnell v. United States   was the most overt early sign that democracy’s endemic but manageable corruption was going to be allowed to run free.

The implications of that and similar subsequent decisions are hard to isolate from the wholesale corruption that Donald Trump brought to the table beginning that same year. But the rank corruption of his first term pales next to the structural changes he’s already wrought less than two months into his second term.

The Trump White House’s takeover of the Justice Department writ large is the greatest boon to public corruption, but there have been a series of particularly egregious actions – like Trump’s   executive order   crapping all over the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act – that have cleared the way for more wrongdoing and less accountability for wrongdoers.

Bondi’s decision to strip the Public Integrity Section bare leaves Main Justice’s experienced career prosecutors on the sidelines in public corruption cases, shifts the onus to bring (and not to bring) such cases to more politically malleable U.S. attorneys, and weakens the mechanism for ensuring nationwide consistency across investigations and cases.

Unrestrained public corruption creates its own perverse political culture. It feeds into cynicism and nihilism about government that in turn is exploited by figures like Trump to justify further weakening and undermining the rule of law. It’s a death spiral and we’re now firmly in the grips of it.

Ed Martin Threatens Another Dem In Congress

Acting D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin now appears to be harassing people involved in the first impeachment of Donald Trump,   sending one of his inappropriate letters of inquiry   to Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-VA), the twin brother of former Trump national security aide Alex Vindman.

Martin purports to be seeking information about a company the brothers founded to help arm Ukraine against Russia and about the congressman’s personal financial disclosures, the WaPo reports.

Perkins Coie Sues Over Trump Executive Order

In a full-throated defense of itself and the legal profession, Seattle-based law firm Perkins Coie   filed   a   federal lawsuit   in Washington, D.C., to block President Trump’s executive order targeting it and its clients.

Appeals Court Judges Warn Of Threats To The Judiciary

Two GOP-appointees to the federal appeals court   warned publicly   of the increasing threats to judges not just as a safety concern but as an attack on judicial independence.

Judge Takes Up Mahmoud Khalil Case Today

U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman of Manhattan will   hold a hearing   this morning on the Trump administration’s   detention   of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a legal resident of the United States.

The first order of business   will likely be   whether Furman has jurisdiction over the case or whether the government spirited Khalil to Louisiana fast enough to avoid jurisdiction in the Southern District of New York.

The case has   roiled   Columbia University but has national implications for free speech, the rule of law, and the legal protections afforded green card holders.

Judge To Trump: What About The Appointments Clause?

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon of Washington, D.C.,   declined to block   the Trump White House’s takeover of the U.S. African Development Foundation – but he zeroed in on the most concerning aspect of the episode: Whether President Trump can bypass the Senate in appointing a new board for the foundation after he fired the old one.

“Where is the president’s authority to appoint without Senate confirmation?” Leon   asked during Tuesday’s hearing . “How is that possible?”

Leon quickly issued a   ruling   in the case denying a temporary restraining order but putting the government on notice he would expect testimony from the DOGE representatives dispatched to take over the foundation and strip it bare.

Document Destruction At USAID Paused For Now

A   highly unusual email   to remaining USAID workers with instructions to   shred and burn   classified materials and personnel records   set off a scramble   Tuesday to try to stop the destruction of documents.

Lawyers involved in some the pre-existing USAID lawsuits   raced   to obtain court orders to halt the shredding and burning of the documents, with a particular focus on those that would be relevant to the ongoing litigation over the purging of workers and the dismantling of the agency.

By the end of the day, the Trump administration had   agreed to stop any further destruction of documents   at USAID headquarters without first notifying opposing counsel and giving them a chance to take the matter before a judge. The administration denied it had destroyed any personnel records and said it would provide later today a sworn accounting of what exactly happened.

Sanctions Time

Acting OPM Director Charles Ezell is willing to endure promised sanctions by a federal judge in San Francisco rather than comply with a court order to provide testimony about the Trump administration’s purges of the federal workforce.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup had ruled Monday that Ezell couldn’t have his cake and eat it too by submitting a sworn declaration but declining to be cross-examined about it. “[T]he Trump administration Tuesday evening informed the court Ezell would not testify and withdrew his written declaration suggesting he did not order the probationary firings across government,”   Government Executive reports .

Musk Watch

The Purges

The Destruction

CDC Nominee Trafficking In Anti-Vax Disinformation

Dave Weldon, President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the CDC, was still   pushing the debunked link between vaccines and autism   as recently as last month in a meeting with Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), she told Bloomberg.

Quote Of The Day

“Johns Hopkins has bet very heavily on a century and a quarter of partnership with the federal government. If the federal government decides it doesn’t want to know things anymore, that would be bad for Johns Hopkins and devastating for Maryland.”– Dr.   Theodore Iwashyna , a critical-care physician at Johns Hopkins University

House-Passed CR Heads To The Senate

With a   Friday deadline   to fund the government, the GOP-controlled House   passed   a continuing resolution to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year. Attention now turns to the Senate, where   Democrats are divided   over whether to filibuster the CR and shut down the government to try to extract some concessions from the Trump White House.

The Scale Of The Trump Carnage Is Staggering

I find it useful to use longtime foreign policy and national security reporters whose voices are familiar as a gauge for how far and fast things are eroding:

In a span of only 50 days, President Trump has done more than any of his modern predecessors to hollow out the foundations of an international system that the United States painstakingly erected in the 80 years since it emerged victorious from World War II. …
But perhaps the more remarkable thing is that Mr. Trump is eroding the old order without ever describing the system he envisions replacing it with. His actions suggest he is most comfortable in the 19th-century world of great-power politics, where he, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Xi Jinping of China, negotiate among themselves, and let lesser powers fall in line.

Here’s the big question: As Trump takes the wrecking ball to the old version of American foreign policy, what does he intend to construct in its place? His career shows little evidence of strategic thinking. He has been a disrupter and dealmaker rather than a builder. His first term was marked by constant changes in personnel and policies, with few enduring achievements. …
Trump seems to envision a new balance of power with three poles: the United States plus Russia and China, whose leaders he sees as kindred spirits. The rest of the world, including the United States’ oldest allies, must fend for itself.

Neo-Manifest Destiny: Go North, Young Man

President Trump’s   saber-rattling, bullying, expansionist rhetoric   toward   Canada   might offer a glimpse of the ultimate destination for the runaway MAGA train: a neocolonial world with geographic spheres dominated by the United States, China, and Russia.

But, as sobering as that prospect is, it comes with an insane level of stupidity and ignorance, not the least of which is a 21st century president cosplaying as William McKinley, the last president of the 19th century who oversaw American expansionism abroad at the height of the last Gilded Age:

Trump: "When you take away that artificial line that looks like it was done by a ruler … you look at that beautiful formation of Canada and the US, there is no place anywhere in the world that looks like that. And then if you add Greenland, that's pretty good."

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar ( @atrupar.com )   March 11, 2025 at 4:06 PM