Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

The Brazen Corruption…

One thing about life under an autocracy: it spawns a particular kind of black humor. Among the various telling memes and cartoons making the rounds, one especially has captured (at least in my mind) the essence of our current situation. The cartoon shows Nixon and Trump; Nixon is famously saying “I am not a crook.” Trump is saying “I am a crook. So what?”

I think that sums up how far we’ve traveled–and in what direction.

I’m willing to believe that some of our former Presidents have been less than honest. But those who failed to meet social expectations of honor and virtue did work to hide their bad behaviors–to deny dishonesty or venality, to appear to be the sort of leaders Americans had the right to expect. Trump doesn’t bother.

Most of us who find this administration horrifying have focused upon the damage being done to the federal government and  Constitution, and on the out-and-proud racism and misogyny motivating so much of that damage. Only recently has the media turned to what has been the elephant in the room: the immense corruption that Trump makes no effort to hide.

In the Contrarian, Norm Eisen recently addressed the enormity of that corruption.

As a former White House Ethics Czar, I have been stunned by the sheer number of ethics issues afflicting Donald Trump’s first 100 Days. But Trump and his cronies’ ethics violations have been overshadowed by his other frequent and flagrant transgressions. For example, in his first term, there was heavy mainstream media attention from day one of his selling hotel rooms to foreign governments and the like. This time around, not so much–although they have been a steady theme here on The Contrarian and for the Democracy Movement.

This should be a national scandal, which is why I co-authored this major report on Trump’s crypto corruption. It is the single most profound Presidential conflict of the modern era: a POTUS who has almost 40% of his net worth in his crypto ventures, at the same time as he is regulating the digital currency industry–and, for good measure, has substantial foreign government cash pouring into those ventures!

Eisen is not alone in highlighting the unprecedented corruption. Senator Mark Kelly–among others–recently blasted what he called Trump’s “corruption in broad daylight.”

Kelly is one of the sponsors of what is called the “End Crypto Corruption Act,” which would prohibit the president, vice president, senior executive branch officials, members of Congress and their immediate families from issuing, endorsing or sponsoring crypto assets, such as meme coins and stablecoins.

As Kelly put it in a news release, “Trump is cashing in on his presidency and making millions from his own crypto coins — this is corruption in broad daylight. I’m supporting this bill to make it illegal for the President and other government officials to make a profit from crypto assets. It’s time to put a stop to this.”

A number of other lawmakers and media outlets have reported on what can only be called Trump’s open invitation to bribe him. The most egregious example: he has invited the 220 largest holders of his personal $TRUMP “memecoin” to a dinner at which the top 25 will get “exclusive access” to the president.

As the official in charge of crypto policy for the Securities and Exchange Commission during the Biden administration put it, “This is really incredible. They are making the pay-to-play deal explicit.”  The executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics was even more blunt.

“I’m not sure we ever saw anything as blatant as this meme coin dinner. This is over the top — even for Trump — because while the practice of putting money in his pocket and subsequently gaining access to the presidency is far from new, it is more shameless than it has ever been.”

The entire Trump crime family is participating in the grift. Several media outlets have reported that an Abu Dhabi state-backed investment firm is making a $2 billion investment in the Trump family’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial– the latest example of a foreign entity making a major investment in a Trump family business. Anyone who thinks that such an “investment” doesn’t give that foreign entity leverage with the administration is smoking something strong.

As the extent of the Trump corruption becomes more widely known, the question will be whether it matters to the MAGA cultists. After all, they are getting exactly what they voted for: an administration promoting White Christian nationalism.

Thus far, there’s no evidence that they care about the honesty or competence of those they’ve elected, or about the America the Founders bequeathed us.

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An Excellent Open Plea

My sister was one of those Hoosiers who once held out hope that Indiana’s Senator Todd Young would grow a spine. After all–unlike Senator Jim Banks–he appears to have a working brain and at least a dim understanding of the current constitutional crisis. But after several attempts to communicate with him, she concluded direct messaging was useless–that he is simply more concerned with retaining his seat in the Senate than in fulfilling his constitutional duties or protecting the common good. Frustrated, she has written an “open letter” to him, and sent it to local media outlets.
I don’t know whether those media outlets will print it, but today I am reproducing–and enthusiastically endorsing– it.
______________
Senator Young,
I am one of the many constituents who have written, phoned, and/or visited your office, and given the non-responsive form letters I’ve received in return, I seriously doubt if any of my concerns have been heard, so I am writing this open letter in hopes that someone will share it with you. (I have not made a similar effort to communicate with Senator Banks, who is clearly a lost cause, but due to previous actions and remarks on your part, I had hoped you might be more independent, more open to reason – thus your recent behavior has disappointed me greatly.)
You were a Marine. You are currently a member of Congress. In both of those capacities, you swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. You did not swear allegiance to a person or a party, but to our founding document – to a set of principles. You continue to violate that oath in multiple ways.
In spite of his obvious gross incompetence and lack of qualifications for the job, you voted to confirm Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, putting the lives of service members and the national security of our country at risk. You put your loyalty to a cult leader ahead of concern for the health of your constituents by confirming another grossly unqualified candidate – a conspiracy theorist without any scientific background – as head of the HHS. You ignored questions about the dependability of Tulsi Gabbard to guard sensitive information necessary to the safety of our country. These are just three of the many example of times you have shirked your duty.
The United States is in a crisis, one that could be somewhat mitigated if only a few Republicans would put country before party and the good of the people before their own self-interest – if they would remember their oath to uphold the Constitution and take back the power it grants them and which they have so cravenly ceded to a wannabe dictator.
You could help negate Trump’s executive orders, most of which are grossly illegal. You could help counter the horrific consequences of Elon Musk’s attempts to destroy government agencies that provide critical services to your constituents. (And whose actions have, coincidentally, put an end to several of those agencies’ investigations into his very questionable business dealings.) How does cutting off funding for cancer research or Alzheimer’s disease benefit the residents of Indiana? How will gutting Education and the Arts help citizens of this (already under-educated) state? Tell me how your own children will benefit from leaving them an environment with less breathable air, drinkable water, and safe food. How do you think women and other marginalized groups in Indiana feel about being returned to second class citizenship, and how do citizens on the edge of retirement—many of them Hoosiers who have struggled for years to put food on their tables– feel about the GOP’s vicious proposed cuts to Social Security and Medicaid?.
In my almost 78 years (several of which I spent as a member of a Republican Party that no longer exists), I have never seen an administration that is so brazenly corrupt. History will record that every member of Congress who failed to protest this corruption, who cravenly enabled our would-be autocrat, was complicit in that corruption.
It’s probably just as well that former principled Republicans such as William Ruckelshaus, Dick Lugar, and Bill Hudnut are not here to see the debacle you have made of a once Grand Old Party.
_________
Those of you who are so inclined might forward a copy of the letter to Young’s office, with a note suggesting your agreement with its message. Given the sentiments expressed at Young’s “empty chair” Town Hall, it’s clear my sister speaks for a significant number of angry Hoosiers…..
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Consequences…

As the evidence of Trump’s mental illness gets stronger and more difficult to hide, and the resistance gets stronger, it’s possible to envision an end to MAGA’s horrific assault on America’s philosophy, norms and institutions and to engage in speculation about what comes next. Just how much of the damage being done is irrevocable? What can be fixed, and what harms lie beyond repair?

There is no denying the amount of damage done in just the first hundred days. It isn’t simply the “I’m king (or Pope) delusions–Trump and Musk have mostly resembled toddlers who somehow got control of the family’s technology, not understanding how it works or what the intended uses are–and are just gleefully smashing mechanisms they don’t begin to understand.

The rest of the world has looked on with a mix of horror and schadenfreude. (Our anguish has actually prompted some sanity elsewhere–both Canada and Australia have repudiated Trump-lite candidates in the past couple of weeks.) The Guardian recently reported that the United States has been added to the watchlist maintained by an international organization monitoring democratic progress and regression.

Civicus, an international non-profit organization dedicated to “strengthening citizen action and civil society around the world”, announced the inclusion of the US on the non-profit’s first watchlist of 2025 on Monday, alongside the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Italy, Pakistan and Serbia.

The watchlist is part of the Civicus Monitor, which tracks developments in civic freedoms across 198 countries. Other countries that have previously been featured on the watchlist in recent years include Zimbabwe, Argentina, El Salvador and the United Arab Emirates.

Not exactly the company we’re used to keeping….

The decision to add the US to the first 2025 watchlist was made in response to what the group described as the “Trump administration’s assault on democratic norms and global cooperation.”

In the news release announcing the US’s addition, the organization cited recent actions taken by the Trump administration that they argue will likely “severely impact constitutional freedoms of peaceful assembly, expression, and association.”

It’s instructive that the organization cited assaults in two separate domains: democratic norms that affect our internal governing behaviors, and the attacks targeting international cooperation, because my own reading of the daily damage being done reflects a similar division.

Assuming the success of what I have been calling the resistance, We the People will face the formidable–but ultimately “do-able”– task of reconstructing our federal governing apparatus. It won’t be easy, and a lot of Americans will be badly hurt before repairs can be made. Much like the occupants of a house destroyed by a hurricane, ordinary citizens will have lost a great deal–but they can also (to use Biden’s terminology) “build back better.” (Perhaps the threatened drastic cuts to Medicaid and other social welfare programs will finally prompt us to emulate the other Western countries where citizens have access to national health care systems. Etc.)

In other words, given sufficient time, Americans can repair the domestic damage. That is very unlikely to be the case with our international stature. Trump has demonstrated–vividly–that America cannot be trusted, that we are always just one election away from irrationality and chaos. We are already seeing the EU step up to fill the leadership gap in NATO. (We are also seeing China and Russia savor the moment–a more troubling development.)

America is in the process of learning an important lesson: it’s much too late to retreat from the global economy. Trump’s insane tariffs will hurt us badly, but the fallout will also demonstrate the folly of trying to retreat from an increasingly integrated world ecosystem. We can re-enter the global marketplace and economic reality, but I am convinced that the days of America’s overwhelming global dominance are over. Permanently.

And pardon me for my arguably unpatriotic reaction to that reality: it’s probably for the best. Our efforts to control the international order have too frequently been Machiavellian rather than noble. We have certainly done a great deal of good–which is why the assault on USAID is so horrific–but we’ve also flexed our international muscle in ways that were unwise and even shameful.

A global order in which we actively participate but don’t dominate–an international order in which no one country is able to call the shots–would be a step forward.

And while we’re not telling everyone else what to do and how to do it, we’ll have a civic house to rebuild.

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The War On Women Continues

One of the constants of Trumpism has been its war on women. Trump himself sees women only as sexual objects; the Christian Nationalists who support him see us as “feeders and breeders”– designed by God to submit to men and produce babies.

I was reminded of MAGA’s war on women when I read that Trump’s “big, beautiful budget” will defund Planned Parenthood, among other obscenities that will differentially hurt women.

During the first Trump  administration, Trump blocked women’s access to health care through legislation, regulations, judicial appointments, and legal action, slashing funding for family planning, rolling back rules requiring employers to offer no-cost birth control coverage, and revoking multiple protections against sexual harassment, sexual assault and discrimination.

Trump II has been more of the same–and then some.

Trump has decimated boards that administer workplace anti-discrimination laws, rescinded prior Executive Orders against discrimination, reduced enforcement of the Pregnant Workers Act, and undercut civil rights and anti-discrimination laws across the government, with anti-DEI efforts front and center. The administration has cut funding for research on women’s health, erased vital information from federal websites, and eliminated the Gender Policy Council. It proposes huge cuts to Medicaid, SNAP and other programs disproportionately depended upon by women and children. (There’s much more at the link.)

All of these measures are part of the Right’s hysterical resistance to culture change.

A significant minority of Americans feel existentially threatened by the progress of women and minorities. That progress challenges their worldviews, their beliefs about the “proper” order of the world. Trump was elected by those hysterical people. Even those who recognized his personal repulsiveness supported him because he promised to reverse what most of us consider social progress– to turn back the cultural changes that so frighten and infuriate them.

I wondered what research tells us about whether government can reverse cultural changes, so I looked into it.  

Studies tell us that such efforts face significant structural, social, and generational resistance. It turns out that entrenched social changes are really difficult to reverse. Shifts of attitudes about race, gender roles, sexuality, and religion occured over generations, and as a result, contemporary perspectives on individual autonomy and diversity are unlikely to be reversed.

 
 
 
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Three Cheers For The Indiana Bar!

It’s easy to be critical of Indiana, and especially of the collection of ideologues, MAGA wanna-bes and invertebrates who dominate our state legislature, so it is especially gratifying when an Indiana organization speaks up for democratic governance and the rule of law.

That organization–hopefully, one among many to come–is the Indiana Bar, the organization that represents the legal profession in Indiana. A few days ago, the president of the Bar association released the following statement. In normal times, this statement would be anodyne–a “this is who we are” reminder to citizens who may not appreciate the role of law and lawyers in maintaining stability and civic fairness. But in the Age of Trump and MAGA, it is a heartfelt and incredibly important reaffirmation of the importance of the rule of law and the determination of lawyers to protect it.

Here is that letter.

Each year on May 1, Law Day offers a moment to reflect on the foundational principles that shape our democracy. Chief among them is the Rule of Law, a concept that not only guides our profession but ensures a just and orderly society.

But what exactly is the Rule of Law? And why does it matter?

At its core, the Rule of Law means that no one is above the law and that laws are applied fairly and consistently. It guarantees that our rights and liberties are protected through transparent legal processes. The Rule of Law empowers a parent to challenge a school policy, enables a small business owner to enforce a contract, and protects a citizen who questions government actions. It ensures that power is exercised within bounds, and that all individuals are held accountable under the same legal standards.

The Rule of Law also depends on an impartial and independent judiciary. It is enshrined in both our U.S. and Indiana Constitutions and has long served as a safeguard against tyranny and injustice. Further, under our system of justice, everyone has a right to representation. Lawyers must be free to represent clients without fear of retribution, and clients must be free to choose their counsel without worry of sanction. Our country’s founders, having lived through systems of unchecked authority, built our country rooted in the idea that the rule of law must govern.

Speaking during the first National Law Day in 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said: “The clearest way to show what the Rule of Law means to us in everyday life is to be reminded of what happens when there is no Rule of Law.” He saw this firsthand during World War II while battling Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. His words remain relevant as we consider the global and domestic challenges that test the strength of our institutions today.

Respect for the Rule of Law is not a given; it must be valued and actively upheld by each generation. One of the greatest threats today is a growing misunderstanding of the Rule of Law. We see its benefits in every trial and every instance of due process. As legal professionals, we have a duty not only to follow the law, but to promote it. That means defending judicial independence, the ability of attorneys to zealously represent clients, and protecting the right of all people to be heard.

President Ronald Reagan put it succinctly: “True peace rests on the pillars of individual freedom, human rights, national self-determination, and respect for the Rule of Law.”

President John F. Kennedy likewise offered this reminder: “Only a respect for the law makes it possible for free people to dwell together in peace and progress… Certain other countries may respect the rule of force. We respect the Rule of Law.”

These ideals are not partisan. They are foundational.

The Indiana State Bar Association stands firm in this commitment. We believe that the Rule of Law is more than a professional ideal, it is the bedrock of our civic life. And we call on every Hoosier attorney, judge, legal professional, and citizen to join us in protecting and promoting it. If the Rule of Law suffers, we all suffer. If the Rule of Law is threatened, we are all threatened. By deeply understanding its significance, honoring its principles, and vigorously defending it, we ensure that the Rule of Law, America’s foundation, endures undiminished.

Let this Law Day be not only a commemoration, but a recommitment.

Michael Jasaitis

ISBA President

Kudos to the Indiana Bar Association!!

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