monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Federal judge halts splitting of migrant families at border

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in California issued a nationwide injunction late Tuesday temporarily stopping the Trump administration from separating children from their parents at the border and ordered that all families already separated be reunited within 30 days.

$16.1M in Political, Taxpayer Spending Found at Trump Properties

Since Donald Trump declared his candidacy for president in late 2015, at least $16.1 million has poured into Trump Organization-managed and branded hotels, golf courses and restaurants from his campaign, Republican organizations, and government agencies. Because Trump’s business empire is overseen by a trust of which he is the sole beneficiary, he profits from these hotel stays, banquet hall rentals and meals.

To arrive at the total, we compiled campaign finance reports from the Federal Election Commission; state government spending gleaned from dozens of state websites and portals; and federal agency expenditure records obtained by the Washington-based transparency organization Property of the People. For this project, Property of the People filed Freedom of Information Act requests with 15 federal agencies and sued four of them to obtain records. (The organization is also attempting to procure comparable records for the Obama era.)

The vast majority of the money — at least $13.5 million, or more than 84 percent of what we tracked — was spent by Trump’s presidential campaign (including on Tag Air, the entity that operates Trump’s personal airplane). Republican Senate and House political committees and campaigns have shelled out at least another $2.1 million at Trump properties. At least $400,000 has been spent by federal, state and local agencies. (For example, the Florida Police Chiefs Association held its summer conference last year at the Trump National Doral Miami.) The state and local tally appears to be a gross undercount because of the agencies’ spotty disclosures and reporting.

The use of taxpayer dollars at Trump hotels is under scrutiny in a closely watched lawsuit in Maryland federal court. The District of Columbia and the state of Maryland sued Trump, citing a venerable anti-corruption provision of the U.S. Constitution known as the Emoluments Clause. It prohibits any financial gift, or emolument, from benefiting a sitting public official, including the president.

The judge in that case, Peter Messitte, is expected to make a final ruling by the end of July. Last month, he allowed the case to proceed, concluding in his opinion that a trip to the Trump International Hotel in Washington by Maine Gov. Paul LePage “rather clearly suggests that Maryland and the District of Columbia may very well feel themselves obliged, i.e., coerced, to patronize the Hotel in order to help them obtain federal favors.” The nonprofit group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, which is co-counsel in the Maryland/D.C. case, is also the plaintiff in a separate emoluments suit, which was dismissed; an appeal of that decision is pending.

One of Trump’s lawyers, Sheri Dillon, has argued in the past that paying a hotel bill would never have qualified as an emolument when the Constitution was written; “instead, it would have been thought of as a value-for-value exchange.” (Countered Norman Eisen, chairman of CREW and a former ethics chief under President Obama, “all of these competing interests are openly and nakedly trying to buy off a president…. Obviously, the government spending, whether it’s federal, state, or local, is a domestic emolument.”)

The Trump Organization and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.

There are few ways to avoid the implication that the use of Trump properties is endorsed by the federal government, said Don Fox, the former acting director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, which oversees the government’s ethics rules. One way to avoid the problem, Fox suggested, would be a public statement by Trump along the following lines: “Stay where you need to stay. Basically, do what’s best for the taxpayer.”
But Trump has sent a very different signal with his actions. In his 18 months in office, he has stayed at his hotels or Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach, Fla., estate and club, nearly a third of the time: 161 days and counting.
“Trump appears to be commandeering federal resources in order to maximize revenues at Trump properties, and he does this by visiting properties close to the White House,” said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and an expert in legal ethics. “And when he travels to the golf courses in Florida, Virginia and New Jersey, other agencies that are involved in supporting the president end up spending money.”

There are no rules barring federal employees from patronizing Trump properties. Employees can be reimbursed for expenditures according to federal travel regulations, including the cost of a hotel room or the price of a meal. There are limits to these per diems — employees cover any cost beyond the reimbursable amount — but rates at many Trump properties are within that range, reimbursement records show. (The General Services Administration provides a handy calculator to figure out what the per diems are depending on where an employee is traveling and when.)

But even if a stay at a Trump property falls within federal travel regulations, it’s hard to escape the fact that the president is personally benefiting from taxpayer dollars — and that federal employees have a potential incentive to curry favor with their ultimate boss.

Was there an outcry when the Germans were shipping ‘undesirables’ to concentration camps?

You're using homophobia as an excuse and it sounds like you don't really know what it is.