The 47th President and the Post-Biden World

On MS NOW today, columnist Philip Bump broke down when talking about the shooting of Renee Nicole Good yesterday in Minneapolis. “I have a six year old,” he said. “And…seeing the image of the stuffed animals in the glove compartment of her car—really emotional for me and…what I take away from this is, for me that’s the thing that stands out: that this was a family that could have been like mine.”

Bump went on to emphasize that “there are a lot of situations, a lot of incidents that have involved ICE, have involved the government over the course of the past thirteen months in which there is resonance for other families in similar ways,” but what he hit on in his first reaction to Good’s killing was the one the administration must fear most of all. Good was a white, suburban mother, whose ex-husband told reporters she was a Christian stay-at-home mom, and Bump is a white man.

President Donald J. Trump’s people see that demographic as their base. If it turns on Trump, they are politically finished, as finished as elite southern enslavers were when Harriet Beecher Stowe reminded American mothers of the fragility of their own childrens’ lives to condemn the sale of Black children; as finished as the second Ku Klux Klan was when its leader kidnapped, raped, and murdered 28-year-old Madge Oberholtzer; as finished as the white segregationists were when white supremacists murdered four little girls in church in 1963.

Evidence that President Donald J. Trump has sexually abused children would likely be enough to crater his political support from this group, making it no accident that the administration is openly flouting the law that required the full release of the Epstein Files by December 19, 2025. The Department of Justice has released less than 1% of those files, and many of them were so heavily redacted as to be useless. In a court filing on Monday, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that “substantial work remains to be done” before it can release them all.

But there is no hiding the murder of Renee Good, captured on video by several witnesses as it was. And so the Trump administration is working desperately to smear Good and to convince the public that, contrary to widespread video evidence, the federal agent put in place by the Trump regime shot her in self-defense.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), DHS secretary Kristi Noem, and Trump himself have all insisted that their false narrative is true. Media Matters for America compiled a timeline showing how the Fox News Channel first told viewers that Good had tried to ram officers whose vehicle was stuck in a snowbank, then moderated their language as video appeared, and then, by the evening, parroted the administration’s talking points.

Today, in a press conference on the shooting, Vice President J.D. Vance made even more extreme statements, claiming—all evidence to the contrary—that the woman shot in Minneapolis was part of a “left wing network” and that “nobody debates” that she “aimed her car at a law enforcement officer and pressed on the accelerator.” In fact, among those who “debate” Vance’s version of events are the journalists at the New York Times, who today published a slow-motion analysis that demonstrated conclusively that the vehicle was turning away from the officer when he opened fire.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt increased the attack on Good even more today by saying: “The deadly incident that took place in Minnesota yesterday occurred as a result of a larger, sinister left-wing movement that has spread across our country, where our brave men and women of federal law enforcement are under organized attack.”

The administration appears to be trying to make sure their narrative will get an official stamp of approval by silencing a real investigation. Today, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), a statewide criminal investigative bureau in the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, said the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has shut its officials out of the investigation into Good’s death. The FBI will no longer allow the BCA to “have access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation.” The BCA has, it said, “reluctantly withdrawn from the investigation.”

Law professor Steve Vladeck commented sarcastically: “This is *definitely* how you behave when you’re trying to bring every resource to bear, rather than trying to cover up the unlawful behavior of your own personnel.”

The FBI is housed within the Department of Justice (DOJ), which is run by Trump loyalists Bondi and Blanche, and as Vladeck suggests, there is appropriate concern that it will not conduct a fair investigation. In an illustration of how Trump has tried to stack the DOJ, today U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield ruled that John Sarcone, Trump’s temporary nominee as acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, does not hold that position lawfully. For Sarcone, as for four other U.S. attorneys, Trump has ignored the law to keep his loyalists in control of key Department of Justice offices, where they have targeted people Trump considers enemies. Although judges have said five of Trump-appointed U.S. attorneys are in office illegally, at least three have refused to step down.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty issued a statement saying that her office is “exploring all options” to ensure that a state level investigation of the shooting of Renee Nicole Good continues.

Today Trump appeared to settle into his new role as an American dictator. He announced plans to make the ballroom for which he bulldozed the East Wing of the White House even bigger: despite a longstanding norm that additions to the White House—the People’s House—have a lower profile than the main building, Jonathan Edwards and Dan Diamond of the Washington Post reported today that Trump is now planning for his ballroom to be as tall as the White House. Trump’s architect also said they are considering adding a one-story addition to the West Wing colonnade that runs alongside what used to be the Rose Garden. White House director of management and administration Josh Fisher also said that administration officials plan to renovate Lafayette Square, north of the White House.

And Trump told New York Times reporters David E. Sanger, Tyler Pager, Katie Rogers, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs that as commander-in-chief, he has only one limit on his power: “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” He claimed he gets to determine what is legal under international law, and seemed to stretch that authority to domestic affairs, too, saying that he was already considering getting around a possible decision by the Supreme Court that his tariffs were unconstitutional by simply calling them licensing fees and that he could invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops in the U.S. if he “felt the need to do it.”

Meanwhile, Hamed Aleaziz and Madeleine Ngo of the New York Times reported that the Trump administration is sending more than 100 Customs and Border Protection agents and officers from Chicago to Minnesota after yesterday’s shooting.

This afternoon, federal immigration agents shot and wounded two people in Portland, Oregon. According to Claire Rush and Gene Johnson of the Associated Press, the shooting took place outside a hospital where the two were in a car. Portland mayor Keith Wilson and the City Council asked ICE to end operations in the city during a full investigation of the incident.

Democrats have spoken out loudly against Trump’s grab for dictatorial powers since he took office, and today some Republicans began to push back as well.

Representatives Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), the leading sponsors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, asked U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer to appoint “a Special Master and an Independent Monitor to compel” the DOJ to produce the Epstein files as the law requires. “Put simply,” they wrote, “the DOJ cannot be trusted with making mandatory disclosures under the Act…. [W]e do not believe the DOJ will produce the records that are required by the Act.”

Last month, House Democrats launched a discharge petition to force a vote to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits for three years. Frustrated that Speaker Johnson would not take up such a measure, four Republicans signed the petition to force it to the floor. Today, seventeen Republicans joined the Democrats to pass the measure by a vote of 230–196. It now heads to the Senate.

The Senate also pushed back today.

Senators voted to advance a bill that would stop the Trump administration from additional attacks on Venezuela without congressional approval. The vote was 52–47 with five Republicans joining all the Democrats to move the measure forward. Republicans killed a similar measure in November, but Trump’s enormously unpopular incursion into Venezuela and threats against Greenland prompted five Republicans to reassert congressional authority over military action. CNN called it “a notable rebuke of the president.”

The five Republicans voting for the bill were Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Todd Young of Indiana. Immediately, Trump posted on social media that the five “should never be elected to office again.” By reasserting the power of Congress, he wrote, they were “attempting to take away our Powers to fight and defend the United States of America.”

The Senate also unanimously approved a resolution to hang a plaque honoring the police who protected the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. In March 2022, Congress passed a law approving the plaque and requiring that it be installed, but House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has refused and the Department of Justice has complained that because the plaque lists departments and not individual officers, it does not comply with the law.

On this year’s fifth anniversary of the January 6 attack, the Trump administration blamed the police officers themselves for starting the insurrection, making the Senate’s vote appear to be a pointed rebuke of the president. In response to Trump’s calling the rioters “patriotic protesters” retiring senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) called the January 6 rioters “thousands of thugs” according to reporter Scott MacFarlane.

Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) has agreed to let the plaque hang in the Senate until the Architect of the Capitol—the federal agency that maintains, operates, and preserves the U.S. Capitol—determines its permanent location.

Today, as there were yesterday, there were protests against ICE around the country. Tonight, as there were last night, there are vigils for Renee Good.

President Trump declared on Wednesday evening that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his “own morality,” brushing aside international law and other checks on his ability to use military might to strike, invade or coerce nations around the world.

Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

President Trump said his administration was taking steps to strip some naturalized Americans of their citizenship, with a particular eye for those of Somali descent.

President Trump said on Wednesday evening that he expected the United States would be running Venezuela and extracting oil from its huge reserves for years, and insisted that the interim government of the country — all former loyalists to the now-imprisoned Nicolás Maduro — is “giving us everything that we feel is necessary.”
“Only time will tell,” he said, when asked how long the administration will demand direct oversight of the South American nation, with the hovering threat of American military action from an armada just off shore.

Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

Not sure whether to burst out laughing...or shudder in fear.[/b]

PARIS — France will delay this year’s Group of 7 summit to avoid a conflict with the mixed martial arts event planned at the White House on June 14, two officials with direct knowledge of G7 planning told POLITICO.

Paris had previously announced that this year’s gathering of G7 leaders would take place from June 14 — which is both Flag Day in the U.S. and President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday — to June 16 in Evian-les-Bains on the shores of Lake Geneva.

But Trump in October announced that the White House would host a “big UFC fight” on June 14. Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White told CBS News Thursday that the logistics of the event have been finalized. White said the event will gather up to 5,000 people on the South Lawn of the White House.

The G7 will now run from June 15 to June 17.
[...]

President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet have made a case for acquiring Greenland that’s so simple, even self-evident, it seems hard to refute: U.S. national-security interests in the Arctic are just too important to ignore. Not taking over the autonomous territory of Denmark would “give up the Arctic to China, to Russia, and to other regimes that don’t have the best interests of the American people at heart,” Vice President J. D. Vance declared last March during a visit to the Pituffik Space Base, on Greenland’s northwest coast.

Five years ago, Congress had a similar sense of alarm about Russia and China’s head start in exploring and potentially developing one of the world’s last great untapped regions, with its rich minerals, abundant (if icebound) seas, and strategic location almost connecting the continent of Europe with the northernmost reaches of the Americas.

The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act called for the creation of the Arctic and Global Resilience Policy Office at the Pentagon, which was set up in 2022. The office produced the Defense Department’s 2024 Arctic Strategy, dedicating Washington to increased Arctic defense capabilities, expanded collaboration with allies on Arctic security, and strengthened military readiness for Arctic operations.

The administration’s intense interest in acquiring Greenland, by force if necessary, might appear to be a natural outgrowth of the Pentagon’s work. Instead, it’s a clear repudiation of it. Not only has the demand for Greenland infuriated the same European allies on which the Arctic strategy depends, the Pentagon office itself has been quietly shuttered. In sum, even as the administration says it needs Greenland to advance U.S. security interests in the Arctic, it has closed the office set up to advance U.S. security interests in the Arctic.

The Arctic was a crucial strategic front in the Cold War, the shortest route for potential missile strikes and bomber flights. The United States and the Soviet Union maneuvered submarines in the region, competing for dominance at the top of the world.

A Cold War–era agreement allows Washington broad authority to conduct military operations on Greenland. The agreement, signed by Denmark and the United States in 1951, allows the U.S. to “construct, install, maintain, and operate” bases across the island, station personnel, and set the terms of “landings, takeoffs, anchorages, moorings, movements, and operation of ships, aircraft, and water-borne craft.” Pituffik is the only current U.S. base.

As warming seas open new shipping routes and enable access to natural resources, the United States and its adversaries are again scrambling for position in the Arctic. China released a white paper in 2018 that declared itself a “Near-Arctic State,” using this characterization to assert its interests in the region. In 2020, Russia set a 15-year time frame for a set of aspirations in the Arctic, including the establishment of sovereignty over its northern sea route, the revitalization of Soviet-era military bases, and the creation of new commercial-shipping infrastructure. Russia has grown its fleet of icebreakers and other vessels needed to navigate the Arctic’s challenging conditions, and the Russian navy has held joint drills in the region with China, an ominous development for the United States.

The Pentagon’s Arctic office, in its short life, brought together agency leaders on policy planning to ensure that the government had the communication, intelligence, and surveillance tools for effective deterrence alongside allies with regional know-how. When Trump returned to power early last year, his team discussed restructuring the office, but the plans never materialized. It took too long to get leadership into place, especially Elbridge Colby, who wasn’t confirmed as undersecretary of defense for policy until April.

The office began a slow-motion demise as it shed personnel who were never replaced, three former U.S. officials told us, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. Around the time of the government shutdown last fall, the office effectively ceased to exist. The office’s website now leads to a 404 - Page not found! message. Some of the office’s functions have been moved to other parts of the government, but the number of people working on these issues at the Pentagon has been reduced by almost three-quarters, one of the former officials said. The office’s closure has not been previously reported.

One of the former officials we spoke with said the office was politically vulnerable because it was a creation of the Biden administration and focused in part on responding to climate change. The Pentagon has canceled climate-related programs and sought to weed out contracts and initiatives that even use the word climate. Last spring, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on social media that his department “does not do climate change crap.”

The policy office’s demise also reflects Trump’s interest in hemispheric dominance. Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson, in a statement, said that the office had not been shut down but rather “restructured to better align with the president’s priorities,” with work parceled out to the office of the assistant secretary responsible for homeland defense and the Americas. That puts strategy for U.S. interests around the North Pole together with Venezuela, the Panama Canal, and the Gulf of Mexico. The Pentagon last summer also shifted Greenland from U.S. European Command, responsible for Europe and Russia, to Northern Command, responsible for North America. An administration official told us the closure of the policy office was designed to achieve greater efficiency and noted that there is still an inter-agency team working on Arctic issues.

Meanwhile, Trump has yet to fill the role of ambassador-at-large for Arctic affairs, a position created in 2022 at the urging of Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who represents Alaska. Trump did, however, name Jeff Landry, a political ally and the governor of Louisiana, as special envoy to Greenland. Trump justified the appointment by recalling the Louisiana Purchase—the acquisition from the French of territory including land from 15 current states and two Canadian provinces, in 1803—and said Landry had approached him about the job. “He’s very proactive,” Trump told reporters. Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, told us Greenland would be “better served” if it were protected by the U.S.

In unveiling the Arctic strategy in 2024, senior Pentagon officials stressed international cooperation. Amanda Dory, at the time the acting undersecretary of defense for policy, argued that engagement with allies “underpins the whole document and is foundational to our approach to the Arctic.” She saluted “like-minded and highly capable allies” including Denmark, Norway, and two Arctic nations that were new NATO members, Finland and Sweden.

One former U.S. official based in an allied Arctic nation told us these partnerships were the best U.S. asset in the region. “We had great partnerships that were giving us everything we could ask for in the Arctic,” he said. “Going at it alone, we’re not the strongest power in the Arctic. So we gain less by behaving like a hegemonic power than we gained by working with the partners that were there.”

But recently, those alliances have been severely strained, if not broken. Trump’s repeated insistence on obtaining Greenland has prompted a furious reaction from European governments. In the long run, that may leave Washington less able to counter Russian and Chinese maneuvering in the Arctic—if that was indeed Trump’s aim in the first place. The president recently told The Atlantic that Greenland is “surrounded by Russian and Chinese ships” (a claim that former officials described as unsupported by evidence), but the administration’s National Security Strategy, issued at the end of last year, seemed to shy from competition with U.S. adversaries in favor of maximizing economic gains. The document envisioned “strategic stability with Russia” and called for a “genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing.” It made no mention of the Arctic.