domingo, 31 de maio de 2026
Matthieu Valet consistently condemns all forms of rioting, framing urban unrest as the work of "thugs" and calling for a severe judicial and financial response against delinquents. As a Member of the European Parliament (MEP), spokesperson for the National Rally (RN), and a former police captain, his remarks strongly emphasize total support for law enforcement and strict public order.
.jpeg)
Matthieu
Valet remarks about the riots
Matthieu
Valet consistently
condemns all forms of rioting, framing urban unrest as the work of
"thugs" and calling for a severe judicial and financial response
against delinquents. As a Member of the European Parliament (MEP), spokesperson
for the National Rally (RN), and a former police captain, his remarks strongly
emphasize total support for law enforcement and strict public order.
His notable
public positions and statements regarding riots and urban violence include:
Tactical
Shift for Law Enforcement []
- Proactive Policing: Following recent unrest, Valet
argued that security forces must shift from defensive to offensive tactics.
- Dynamic Deployment: He explicitly stated that
authorities "need proactive police officers, not static riot police
deployed to guard perimeters".
- Protecting the Protectors: He frequently fights back
against anti-police rhetoric, emphasizing that "the police should not
be the mops of the Republic".
Financial
and Judicial Retribution
- Hitting the Wallet: Valet demands that rioters and
delinquents face immediate financial consequences, arguing that
authorities "must hit the delinquent in the wallet".
- Condemning Left-Wing Enablers: He claims that ordinary
working citizens are left to "pay for the crazy actions of
leftists" who tolerate or excuse rioting.
- No Excuses: He criticizes the French
justice system for what he calls "lax security," asserting that
the state too often "excuses everything to thugs and forgets the
victims".
Media
Reactions to Specific Incidents
- Paris Influencer Riot: When a promotional restaurant
event descended into street clashes in central Paris, Valet took to social
media to applaud the police for apprehending "thugs determined to
pick a fight, throw projectiles, and sow chaos".
- Condemnation of "Les
Soulèvements de la Terre": He labeled the environmental activist group violent
and dangerous, comparing their radical demonstrations to unlawful rioting.
- Political Exploitation: Valet routinely accuses
far-left parties, particularly La France Insoumise (LFI), of using
anti-police sentiment and urban riots as "electoral fuel" while
ignoring the safety of the public
French police arrest 780 after violent clashes as PSG fans celebrate Champions League win
.jpeg)
French police arrest 780 after violent clashes as PSG fans
celebrate Champions League win
Interior
minister says 57 officers injured as rioters set fires and vandalise shops in
about 15 cities
Nadeem
Badshah
Sun 31
May 2026 17.31 BST
French
police have detained 780 people involved in violent clashes in Paris and other
French cities that erupted on Saturday night after Paris Saint-Germain defeated
Arsenal to win the Champions League.
The
interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, said 57 officers were wounded, with most
suffering minor injuries, as football fans set off fires and vandalised shops.
One small group even tried to storm a Paris police station.
At a news
conference on Sunday he said the situation had largely been brought under
control.
“Most of
the celebrations took place peacefully” across the French capital, he said,
noting most incidents happened in the Champs Élysées neighbourhood and close to
PSG’s Parc des Princes in western Paris, where fans had gathered to watch the
match.
Police
also intervened five times overnight to prevent people from blocking traffic on
the main ring road around Paris, he said.
Nuñez
said incidents took place in about 15 cities in France, describing “one to two”
shops vandalised in those other than Paris. He said 780 people were detained in
all, with 480 in the Paris area alone.
The Paris
prosecutors’ office said 277 people had been formally placed in police custody,
including 82 minors, for alleged offences. Most were for assaulting police
officers while other allegations included theft, vandalism and disturbing
public order.
One
serious accident involved a driver losing control of a car that rammed into a
restaurant’s terrace, leaving two people wounded including one seriously, Nuñez
said.
However,
Nuñez said planned celebrations for the team’s win on Sunday afternoon at the
Champ de Mars, near the Eiffel Tower, would go ahead as scheduled. The PSG team
will then be hosted by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, at the Élysée
Palace.
Footage
aired on the news channel BFM showed brief skirmishes around PSG’s Parc des
Princes in western Paris, where more than 40,000 people watched the club win
its second consecutive title on penalties at the Puskas Arena in Budapest on
giant screens.
By 11pm
(10pm UK time), police had already made more than 130 arrests, Paris police
said.
Some PSG
fans aimed fireworks at police officers, who responded with teargas during the
celebrations, according to reports in France, while some were seen wearing
T-shirts emblazoned with “FU*K ARSENAL 2026” as they stood next to burning Lime
bikes on the city’s streets.
Smoke
rose from several areas during the clashes. Police were seen sprinting after
groups of fans with riot gear and stamping out flares discarded on the road.
France
had deployed 22,000 police to uphold order in the capital. Last year, two
people died and close to 200 were injured after PSG won the Champions League
for the first time by beating Inter.
The
Champs-Élysées, which authorities had partly cordoned off, was filling with
mostly peaceful PSG fans, TV footage showed. Police estimated the crowd size at
20,000. Some supporters let off fireworks and lit flares.
The Paris
police prefecture said smaller groups caused disturbances in various locations,
with some vandalising shops and setting fires. Cars were also set ablaze. Those
who attempted to storm a police station in the upmarket 8th arrondissement
neighbourhood were dispersed, police said.
Associated
Press and Reuters contributed to this report
The Fire of Stupidity Cannot Be Contained
David
French
The Fire
of Stupidity Cannot Be Contained
May 31,
2026
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/31/opinion/communism-fascism-authoritarianism-democracy.html
By David French
Opinion
Columnist
It’s the
year 2026, and sometimes it feels as if we’re taking a nice leisurely walk
through a Museum of Wretched Ideas.
Consider
what’s happening at home. Tariffs raise prices and restrain economic growth,
while the federal government embraces both Gilded Age corruption and a version
of the spoils system.
A
disturbing number of young people on the right are fascinated
with fascism. An extraordinary 34 percent of young people overall express
a favorable view of communism, and young Americans are
far more likely than their parents or grandparents to say that political
violence is “sometimes OK.”
And
hovering over American culture like a dark cloud is the rise of antisemitism on both the left and the right.
Once again, ancient slanders are circulating through the culture.
Or
consider what is happening abroad. Germany rearms to confront the Russian threat. Japan rearms to deter China. War rages in Europe and
in the Middle East. Threats of territorial expansion haunt the world. Russia is
trying to grab Ukraine. China continues to covet Taiwan. And the Trump
administration, incredibly enough, has cast its expansionist eyes on Greenland.
When you
step back and actually think about it, these trends are confounding. I mean, I
can understand the temptation to return to some of the discredited ideas of the
recent past, I guess, but to revive so many, all at once? And to do it so soon
after those wretched ideas ravaged the world?
What is
going on?
The
answer lies in part in the interplay between two political sayings
that are so oft-repeated that they have become clichés. When they should be top
of mind, though, they seem to have lost their impact.
Here’s
the first (and you can probably say it along with me), from George Santayana in
1905: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We can
argue about the precise historical parallels, but the echoes of the past are
everywhere.
Here’s
the second, from Winston Churchill in 1947: “It has been said that
democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that
have been tried.”
It is no
coincidence that authoritarianism is once again appealing to people at a time
when two things are happening at once. Liberal democracies are struggling to
meet the needs of a substantial portion of their citizens, and entire
generations have come of age with no living memory of the totalitarian horrors
of the 20th Century.
In other
words, millions upon millions of people are enduring democracy as “the worst
form of government” without the necessary balanced understanding (that citizens
in the mid-20th century had gained through firsthand observation) of “except
all those other forms that have been tried.”
So even
fascism and communism — for some people, at least — are no longer avatars of
atrocity, but dynamic alternatives to a sclerotic present. In their
frustration, all too many people are attracted to the theoretical benefits of
authoritarianism, and they don’t have the experience or the education to
understand its actual and inevitable defects.
They do
not understand the link between their fashionable and transgressive ideologies
and the oceans of blood that fascism and communism spilled across the globe.
In this
ahistorical context, even political violence can seem justified — perhaps even
a bit daring and romantic — unless you’ve lived through, say, the riots that
swept American cities in the 1960s, a cataclysm that was far more violent,
deadly and prolonged than anything that happened in the United States in 2020.
The
compromises and restraints of diplomacy, which can often mean granting painful
concessions to terrible regimes, can seem like a fool’s errand, unless you’ve
witnessed the indescribable horrors of world wars.
I’m
reluctant to draw exact matches between current and past events. Should we
compare Vladimir Putin’s ambitions in Ukraine with Hitler’s partition of
Czechoslovakia in 1938? Or with Stalin’s Winter War against Finland at the
outset of World War II? Or maybe it’s more reminiscent of the instability of
the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913.
As for
the rise of antisemitism, are we approaching a dangerous spectrum that ranges
from the Dreyfus Affair to Kristallnacht?
But
debating the precise analogues can obscure the underlying truth — we are
heading backward, toward the great crimes and mistakes of the past. We know
what happens when militarily aggressive great powers seek more territory. We
know what happens when a culture indulges — and promotes — conspiracy theories
about Jews. We know that even the most utopian forms of authoritarianism
devolve into regimes of grinding oppression and profound corruption. Some are
always more equal than others.
In 2024,
I taught an undergraduate class with a catchy title, “Why American Politics
Went Insane.” At the risk of shortening a semester to a sentence, the
devolution proceeded in three stages, from victory to separation to
radicalization.
When the
Cold War ended, the United States, for the first time since the wars against
Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, faced no external challenges to its prosperity
and power. We were, in the words of the former French foreign minister Hubert
Védrine, the “hyperpower.”
I began
with “The End of History,” to borrow a term from Francis Fukuyama’s
misunderstood book, but I began with his prescient warning near the end:
If men
cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was
victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the
just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. They will struggle, in
other words, out of a certain boredom: for they cannot imagine living in a
world without struggle. And if the greater part of the world in which they live
is characterized by peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy, then they will
struggle against that peace and prosperity, and against
democracy.
That is
exactly what we are doing. We are struggling against each other. Some of us are
struggling against democracy itself. America is the only nation out of 25
comparable countries in which a majority of people believe that their fellow
citizens are morally bad. It should be no surprise, then, that negative partisanship (when you support your party
primarily because of your disdain for its opponents) is a central factor in
American politics.
This
drives us apart. Ever increasing numbers of American citizens live in one-party
states or so-called blowout counties, where one side or the other wins
presidential elections by 50 points or more.
And what
happens when people of like mind gather together? The law of group polarization, first applied to political
decision making by the law professor and author Cass Sunstein in 1999, teaches
us that when like-minded people deliberate, they become more extreme.
Create a
monoculture, and red becomes deep red. Blue becomes deep blue. And as the two
sides move farther apart, both geographically and ideologically, we lose even
the capacity to understand each other’s lives and thoughts.
If I
taught the class over again, though, I’d add a fourth stage: amnesia. The
problem isn’t just that we’re at each other’s throats; it’s that we’re turning
to the worst of recent history’s alternative ideas in response.
It’s no
coincidence that this is happening at a time when a generation of world leaders
has no experience with world wars and rising millions of young people have no
experience with real fascism and actual communism.
When
experience ends, education has to begin. You can’t just know what the Holocaust
was; you also have to understand the Holodomor. The phrase “the guns of August”
should mean something to you, and when you see every great power press on the
military gas — with no one pumping the brakes — that should trigger the most
urgent concern.
Few
things are demonstrating that what’s old is new again more than the rising tide
of antisemitism. How many times must ancient lies be debunked? Must it happen
every generation, for thousands of years?
So now we face
a test. Can we educate ourselves away from disaster? Is there enough knowledge
left to penetrate not just the minds, but also the hearts, of people who are
deeply discontented?
A few
weeks ago, a clip from the remarkable HBO series “Band of Brothers”
went viral online. It was from the episode in which the boys of Easy Company
discover a concentration camp. The impact is visceral. It’s impossible for a
decent person to watch it without vowing to himself or herself, “Never again.”
I’m also
reminded of a horrific scene at the opening of Netflix’s science
fiction drama, “3 Body Problem,” featuring a struggle session during China’s
Cultural Revolution. Once again, the impact is visceral. The brutality is hard
to watch.
Television
isn’t enough. Books aren’t enough. The stories of fathers and mothers,
grandmothers and grandfathers, aren’t enough. It will take everything —
watching, reading, listening — to make us remember.
We have
to know that the world as it is, with all its inefficiencies and injustices, is
better than the world that was. I pray that we can learn that lesson before
bitter experience teaches us once again that this imperfect
democracy and this frustrating liberal world order are
infinitely better than the violence and oppression — the deliberate starvation
and slaughter of millions of men, women and children — of the none-too-distant
past.
Is $1.8 Billion slush fund for supporters of President Trump, possibly including Jan. 6 rioters a way to create a private army directed to an insurrection?
Is $1.8
Billion slush fund for supporters of President Trump, possibly including Jan. 6
rioters a way to create a private army directed to an insurrection?
The newly
established $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is officially
structured as a legal compensation mechanism, though critics heavily argue it
acts as a political reward system.
The
Official Purpose vs. Political Criticism
- The Administration’s Stance: The U.S. Department of Justice announced the fund as part
of a settlement agreement where President Trump dropped his personal $10
billion lawsuit against the IRS over leaked tax records. Acting Attorney
General Todd Blanche stated the fund creates a lawful process to
compensate victims of "lawfare and weaponization" who were
allegedly targeted by the Biden administration for political reasons.
- The "Private Army"
Accusation: The
characterization of the fund as a means to build a "private
army" or finance a future insurrection stems primarily from sharp
rhetoric used by congressional Democrats. For instance, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer stated on the
Senate floor that "Trump is shaking hands with himself in order to
fund his insurrectionist army to the tune of two billion dollars."
Similarly, Representative Jamie Raskin described the deal as a racket to
pour money into a "slush fund... to hand out to his private militia
of insurrectionists." [1,
2,
3,
4,
5]
Eligibility
and January 6th Defendants
The fund is
designed to review claims from individuals and entities who faced federal
investigations or prosecutions during the Biden administration.
- Who is eligible: This pool includes the nearly
1,600 individuals charged or convicted in connection with the January 6th
Capitol attack.
- How it is managed: A five-member commission
appointed by the Attorney General will determine who receives payouts.
When asked if those who committed violence against police on January 6th
would receive money, President Trump stated that allocations would be
entirely up to that committee.
- Future legal liability: A notable disclaimer in the fund's term sheet states the U.S. government holds
"no liability whatsoever" for how the money is safeguarded or if
it is misused after disbursement, which watchdogs warn removes oversight
on how the cash is ultimately spent.
Current
Status and Pushback
The fund
avoids immediate congressional approval because it is drawn from the Treasury's
Judgment Fund to settle a civil dispute. However, it is facing immense
pushback:
1.
Legal Challenges: The House Democrats' Litigation Task Force has filed motions in court
attempting to block the settlement on the grounds that it is an
unconstitutional payout.
2.
Legislative Action: Lawmakers have introduced measures like the Ban Presidential Plunder
of Taxpayer Funds Act to prevent sitting executives from orchestrating
federal settlement funds for political allies.
3.
Internal Dissent: The unconventional settlement bypassed normal judicial oversight,
prompting high-profile pushback—including the sudden resignation of the Treasury
Department's General Counsel.
Inside the Deal to Drop Trump’s $10 Billion Suit Against the I.R.S.
Inside
the Deal to Drop Trump’s $10 Billion Suit Against the I.R.S.
Discussions
among a group of lawyers with allegiance to the president were closely held.
Some senior White House officials were said to have felt blindsided as the
agreement took shape.
An
agreement to set up a $1.8 billion fund to pay people deemed to have been
harmed by government “weaponization” and to grant tax benefits to President
Trump, his family and businesses was brokered by a tight-knit group of lawyers.
Alan
Feuer Andrew
Duehren Glenn
Thrush Ben
Protess Maggie
Haberman
By Alan
FeuerAndrew DuehrenGlenn ThrushBen Protess and Maggie Haberman
May 30,
2026
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/30/us/politics/trump-irs-lawsuit-deal.html
Time was
running out.
President
Trump had sued the I.R.S. for $10 billion, and a federal judge was pressing the
Justice Department to explain how it could muster an independent defense of the
agency against the man who ultimately controlled it.
Behind
the scenes, the job of addressing the vexing problem of how to settle the suit
fell to a tight-knit group of lawyers, all of whom had allegiance to Mr. Trump.
On one
side of the talks was a Justice Department run by Todd Blanche, the acting
attorney general who once served as Mr. Trump’s criminal defense lawyer.
On the
other were the president’s private lawyers, among them Boris Epshteyn, who was
a former client of Mr. Blanche’s. Mr. Epshteyn played a significant role in
moving forward the deal to end the suit, coordinating and holding discussions
with all of the sides involved: Mr. Trump, the president’s personal lawyers and
Justice Department officials, according to multiple people familiar with the
matter.
The
discussions were so closely held that some senior White House officials told
others that they were blindsided, learning of them only once the agreement was
nearly complete.
In the
end, the lawyers’ solution did not give Mr. Trump what his lawsuit had
demanded, which was simply to move funds from the Treasury Department into his
own pocket. But the agreement that was reached was still a big victory for the
president and his allies: It set up a $1.8 billion fund to pay people deemed to
have been harmed by so-called government “weaponization” — possibly including
hundreds of rioters charged with storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — and
released Mr. Trump and his businesses from potentially costly I.R.S. audits.
This
article is based on interviews with more than a dozen people who discussed
internal deliberations about the I.R.S. suit on the condition of anonymity.
The White
House did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Epshteyn declined to
comment.
A
spokeswoman for the Justice Department said that anyone who believed they were
a victim of government weaponization could apply for money from the fund,
claiming that many people had been victimized by the Biden administration.
Much is
still unknown about how the arrangement came about. But the plan drafted by a
group of Trump allies posed conflicts of interest that are remarkable, even for
an administration riddled with them.
As
questions have mounted about the nature of the deal, the federal judge who
oversaw the lawsuit, Kathleen M. Williams, took the extraordinary step on
Friday of revisiting the case, asking whether the parties had deceived her.
When the
details of the agreement were first revealed two weeks ago, Democrats and
former government officials lodged accusations of corruption and self-dealing,
and even some Republicans reacted with scornful disbelief. Some G.O.P. senators
were so angry they abandoned plans to approve a measure to finance the
administration’s immigration crackdown.
Within
days of the agreement becoming public, and before the judge raised questions
about it, senior administration officials began preparing to get rid of the
fund amid the intense blowback. Those discussions were reported earlier by The
Wall Street Journal.
But while
the agreement appeared to have emerged abruptly, it fused two ideas that had
been kicking around in Mr. Trump’s circle for years: a desire by him and his
family to avoid extensive tax audits, and a longing by his allies to obtain
financial restitution for legal wrongs they claimed to have suffered during the
Biden administration.
In its
broad strokes, the plan was in keeping with other maneuvers by Mr. Trump. As
president, he has often used the levers of power at his command to serve
himself at a moment when he still maintains control over the government,
including having the United States accept a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar
that he could fly as president and intend to take later. But in establishing a
fund that would involve billions in taxpayer money, the deal stands alone.
The
president himself has said little about how the agreement came together or who
played a role in resolving the suit, which faulted the I.R.S. for the leak of
his tax information to The New York Times during his first term. The closest he
has come in recent days was a post on social media in which he declared that he
had given up “a lot of money” by “allowing” the fund to be created.
“I could
have settled my case, including the illegal release of my Tax Returns and the
equally illegal BREAK IN of Mar-a-Lago, for an absolute fortune,” Mr. Trump
wrote. “Instead, I am helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil,
corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, JUSTICE!”
Trump v.
Trump
Mr.
Trump’s lawsuit against the I.R.S. landed at the Justice Department with a thud
in late January.
By early
spring, lawyers there were already wrestling with the legal dilemma the
president’s pleading had created.
After
all, to defend the I.R.S. against Mr. Trump, the department would have to fight
a sitting president who was technically in charge of the agency and who
demanded total loyalty from his subordinates.
Department
lawyers were not the only ones who had identified this problem. Judge Williams,
an Obama appointee who sits in Miami, had also homed in on it, wondering
whether there was actually a conflict to adjudicate, given that Mr. Trump was
effectively on both sides of the suit.
The suit
contended that the I.R.S. had not done enough to prevent a contractor for the
agency, Charles Littlejohn, from leaking to the news media reams of Mr. Trump’s
tax information, along with the returns of hundreds of other very wealthy
Americans during the president’s first term in office. Even though Mr.
Littlejohn was prosecuted by the Biden administration and sentenced to five
years in prison, Mr. Trump argued he was owed $10 billion by the I.R.S.
At first,
there was a hope inside the Justice Department that lawyers would respond to
the suit with a procedural maneuver to side step or delay the case. One option
department lawyers quietly discussed was to ask Judge Williams to put the suit
on hold until after Mr. Trump left office.
But that
never happened. And it left Mr. Blanche and his team in a tight spot: They did
not want the Justice Department to go into court and fight the suit, as it
normally would, but also did not want to settle it by paying Mr. Trump
directly, according to people familiar with their thinking.
Ending
the case by funneling taxpayer money straight to the president struck them as
politically untenable. Some department officials even worried that doing so
could, under a future Democratic administration, expose them to a criminal
investigation of conspiracy to defraud the government.
Inside
the I.R.S., the suit was treated more or less as business as usual, even though
the plaintiff was the president. Lawyers at the agency followed normal
procedures for responding to claims and prepared a 25-page memo for the Justice
Department, outlining their views of the case.
In the
memo, the I.R.S. recommended that the department move to dismiss the suit,
pointing to two main problems: It had been filed too late and had wrongly
blamed the I.R.S. for the actions of Mr. Littlejohn.
I.R.S.
officials sent the memo to colleagues in the Treasury Department but it remains
unclear whether those Treasury officials ever passed it on to the Justice
Department. In fact, no Trump administration lawyer responded to the
president’s suit at all — or even made an appearance on the court docket.
What
finally pushed Judge Williams into action was a request on April 17 from one of
Mr. Trump’s private lawyers, Alejandro Brito — not from a government lawyer —
to delay all proceedings in the case for three months. A week later, the judge
effectively ordered the Justice Department to tell her whether it intended to
defend the I.R.S., giving the department until May 20 to provide an answer.
The
pressure of that deadline set off a scramble, as lawyers on both sides of the
suit started looking for a way to resolve the case and avoid further scrutiny
from the judge.
Central
in the negotiations was Trent McCotter, Mr. Blanche’s senior deputy and a
rising star in the department, according to people familiar with the talks. He
served as one of the administration’s chief interlocutors with personal lawyers
in Mr. Trump’s orbit, including Daniel Epstein, who often works with Mr.
Epshteyn and once served as a special assistant to Mr. Trump during his first
term in the White House.
Ultimately,
the discussions about settling the I.R.S. suit were combined with talks about
ending two other unusual claims previously filed by Mr. Epstein, who works for
America First Legal, the outside group co-founded in 2021 by Stephen Miller,
Mr. Trump’s powerful White House adviser. Those claims demanded that the
Justice Department pay the president about $230 million in compensation for the
investigation into possible ties between Russia and his 2016 campaign, as well
as the well-publicized F.B.I. search of Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate for
classified documents in 2022.
The idea
that emerged was a global settlement of all of the claims that would push Mr.
Trump away from the politically damaging effort to take money for himself.
Instead it would create a fund for his allies and supporters — including the
pardoned Jan. 6 rioters — who believed they had been wronged in the courts by
previous Democratic administrations.
Mr.
McCotter proposed a patriotic marketing gimmick, setting the fund’s amount at
the symbolic sum of $1.776 billion, according to people familiar with the idea.
Still, it
was not entirely a new idea.
In
mid-2025, Ed Martin, a longtime advocate for the Jan. 6 rioters who was leading
the Justice Department’s pardon office and a special working group intended to
counteract government weaponization, had proposed a plan to address what he
believed was mistreatment of Trump supporters by the legal system, according to
people familiar with the matter. Mr. Martin envisioned a “truth commission” of
sorts that would assess accusations of misconduct by the Justice Department and
possibly make payouts to worthy claimants.
He even
floated the idea to senior administration officials like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,
the health and human services secretary who has long complained that Americans
were harmed by the government’s response to Covid-19, according to a person
with direct knowledge of the exchange.
Mr.
Blanche, who has often clashed with Mr. Martin, rejected the idea, the person
said. But with the May 20 deadline quickly approaching, the Justice Department,
at Mr. McCotter’s urging, came up with its own plan to redress the supposed
past wrongs suffered by the president’s supporters.
The plan
was closely based on an Obama-era case called Keepseagle v. Vilsack, a
class-action lawsuit that gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Native
American farmers to settle accusations of government discrimination. Mr.
McCotter took the idea to the Office of Legal Counsel, which offers advice on
the law to Justice Department leaders. The office, run by T. Elliot Gaiser, a
former clerk for Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., blessed the proposal, agreeing
that Keepseagle could serve as a model.
When the
plan was made public, it faced an avalanche of criticism. The Treasury
Department’s top lawyer, a Trump appointee, resigned.
Among the
loudest critics were former Justice Department lawyers who had worked on the
Keepseagle case, who pointed out that the Keepseagle settlement was overseen by
a federal judge after years of litigation and analysis of the claims and
evidence.
The
resolution to Mr. Trump’s suit against the I.R.S., by contrast, was reached in
private by lawyers loyal to the president and without any judicial oversight.
Appearing
on CNN in recent days, Mr. Blanche was asked directly who came up with the
terms of the agreement and said that there had been negotiations between Mr.
Trump’s “outside counsel” and the Justice Department.
But he
quickly added, “Not me.”
Broad
Immunity From Audits
There was
more.
Even as
the two sides were hashing out the contours of the fund, there were also
discussions about a second agreement that would end the lawsuit: a plan to give
the Trump family and their businesses broad protection from I.R.S.
investigations of tax returns they had already filed.
The tax
immunity agreement was more like a rescue operation than a formal legal
settlement. It called for the I.R.S. to absolve Mr. Trump and his businesses of
all audits they were currently facing — including a yearslong battle with the
tax agency that could have cost the president more than $100 million.
That
fight stemmed partly from a refund that Mr. Trump had claimed — and collected —
starting in about 2010. He justified the refund by declaring huge business
losses, including on his tower in Chicago.
Early in
Mr. Trump’s first term in the White House, the matter was put on hold, but it
came back to life before he left office.
More
recently, the company had entered settlement talks with the agency, laying the
groundwork for a potential resolution, according to a person with knowledge of
the matter.
Now, it
seemed, the audit would vanish.
Acting as
a cheerleader for the overall plan, including the tax deal, was Mr. Epshteyn,
Mr. Trump’s top outside legal adviser who has been close to the president for
about a decade, both when he was in and out of office.
Mr.
Epshteyn played a significant role in moving the proposals forward, according
to multiple people familiar with the matter, discussing the issue with Mr.
Trump and circulating drafts of the tax agreement to Trump advisers.
While the
origins of the tax maneuver remain somewhat obscure, the Justice Department
began to assess the proposal about a week before Judge William’s May 20
deadline, according to people familiar with the matter. One of the questions
raised was whether giving the Trumps protection against I.R.S. scrutiny would
run afoul of a law barring the tax agency from dropping audits at the direction
of the president or his aides.
The tax
proposal did not end up appearing in the initial document that declared the
lawsuit resolved and described the details of the compensation fund. That
document was signed by the Justice Department’s No. 3 official, Stanley
Woodward Jr., who had worked with Mr. Blanche on Mr. Trump’s defense team and
represented several of the president’s close aides in various investigations.
In a
curious twist, the tax addendum was posted, without fanfare, on the Justice
Department’s website one day after the terms of the main agreement were
released. It was a murky piece of writing, full of long sentences stuffed with
subordinate clauses and the Trumpian use of words in capital letters. Only Mr.
Blanche, and no one from the I.R.S., signed it.
The
details of the fund were also somewhat inscrutable. Although the Justice
Department had explicitly stated that the Trump Organization and the Trump
family were ineligible for the fund, one confusing clause appeared to open the
door for them to file claims.
Indeed,
officials at the Trump Organization briefly discussed whether to do so,
according to people with knowledge of the matter. No decision was made. On
Friday, a federal judge in Virginia temporarily froze the fund.
Devlin
Barrett and Russ Buettner contributed reporting.
Alan
Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the
criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former
President Donald J. Trump.
Andrew
Duehren covers tax policy for The Times from Washington.
Glenn
Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written
about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and
prisons.
Ben
Protess is an investigative reporter at The Times, covering President Trump.
Maggie
Haberman is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President
Trump.
What the Meat Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know
Opinion
Nicholas
Kristof
What the
Meat Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know
May 30,
2026
Nicholas
Kristof
By
Nicholas Kristof
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/30/opinion/pigs-farm-bill-meat-industry.html
Opinion
Columnist
We raised
pigs for a time on our family farm in Oregon when I was a teenager, and they
had stronger personalities than some of my human friends.
While
some of our pigs were friendly, docile or ingratiating, one sow named Brunhilda
was grumpy, vocal and very strong-willed. But she was a devoted mom, constantly
checking on her piglets and leading them around our farm — while showing them
how to be independent-minded, too.
Nobody
would have mistaken Brunhilda for a saint, but nobody could forget her, either.
Exasperating as she was, I would never have punished her by locking her in a
cage so small, she couldn’t turn around. That sounds like torture to me.
And to
many people, it seems. One poll found that 84 percent of Americans considered
it unacceptable for pregnant sows to be kept in tiny cages called gestation
crates — as is routine on American factory farms today. Voters in California
passed a ballot measure in 2018 by a 63 percent majority, as did Massachusetts
voters in 2016 by a 78 percent majority, to improve treatment of farm animals
and, in particular, to ban the sale of pork from hog operations that tightly
confine hogs in this way.
The pork
industry, ahem, squealed. It repeatedly filed lawsuits to block these
referendums but lost in the Supreme Court. So having failed both at the ballot
box and in the courts, the industry pulled a fast one.
It added
a provision, Save Our Bacon, to this year’s farm bill in the House of
Representatives to block these state laws as well as any similar future state
efforts to improve pig welfare. “U.S. pork producers need a farm bill that
protects American farmers from California’s overreach,” protests the National
Pork Producers Council. It complains that it is unfair that the California law
applies to pork from pigs raised in other states but sold in California.
The farm
bill with the Save Our Bacon provision passed the House of Representatives. Now
it’s up to the Senate and the eventual congressional conference committee to
decide whether to include this provision, which aims — this is my telegraphic
version — to suppress the will of voters so that giant meat companies can abuse
pigs. Some senators are backing away from Save Our Bacon, but others are
expected to push to include it. Enactment of this provision would mark a
substantial setback for animal rights in America’s livestock gulag.
Fortunately,
at a time when Americans can’t seem to agree on anything else, animal rights
are a rare issue on which many conservatives and liberals periodically find
common ground. In 2005, American Conservative magazine had a cover showing
confined pigs and a cover line that read, “Why conservatives should care about
animal cruelty.” Left and right may fight over immigrant rights, women’s rights
or L.G.B.T.Q. rights, but many of us do agree on pig rights.
Prominent
conservatives like Tomi Lahren, Mike Cernovich and Laura Ingraham have stood
firm against this provision. Cernovich called it “demonic,” and Lahren referred
to it in a way that is unprintable here. A number of Republican House members,
led by Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, have challenged the measure in Congress.
Opposition
to the provision isn’t just about pig well-being. Some conservatives object to
this effort to overturn the will of voters. Others note that the largest pork
producer in America is Smithfield, now owned by a Chinese company, and they
wonder why Congress would privilege a Chinese behemoth over the American
electorate.
For me,
the prime concern is animal cruelty. To confine animals in stinking cages, so
many never see the sun or touch earth, is to deny their very nature. The ethos
was described in a 1976 article in Hog Farm Management that said: “Forget the
pig is an animal. Treat him just like a machine in a factory.”
The hog
industry now argues that this system is actually good for pigs, protecting them
from predators and cold and heat. “So our animals can’t turn around for the 2.5
years that they are in the stalls producing piglets,” a pork producers
spokesman said in 2012. “I don’t know who asked the sow if she wanted to turn
around.”
I’m sure
some readers are wondering why I’m writing about pigs at a time when there are
so many other pressing issues, from the Iran war to Ebola to President Trump’s
proposed slush fund. It’s a reasonable question.
I’d
answer by saying that one of the great but incomplete moral revolutions of our
lifetime has been the expansion of our compassion to encompass farm animals in
a limited way, even as corporate agriculture pushes in the other direction. The
stakes of the Save Our Bacon provision are enormous, for more than 120 million
hogs are slaughtered in the United States each year. That is approximately
equivalent to the human populations of California, Texas, Florida, New York and
Pennsylvania put together and means that roughly four pigs are slaughtered
every second, on average, around the clock.
We
tolerate cruelty toward pigs, I think, because the suffering is largely
invisible and we see pigs as an undifferentiated mass rather than as Brunhildas
with emotions, just like our own pets. Many Americans are ambivalent, not
wanting animals to suffer unnecessarily yet also wanting inexpensive and tasty
meat. The trade-offs are real, for the pork industry indeed excels at producing
cheap sausage, but think of your dog enduring what pigs face, and you realize
that the moral cost is incalculable.
Nicholas
Kristof
Opinion
columnist
One
reason I periodically write about abuses of factory farms is that I live on an
Oregon farm and grew up raising livestock in 4-H and FFA, and that left me
thinking that the bright line between farm animals and pets isn't as clearcut
as society thinks it is. That's why I threw golden retrievers into my argument
here. Sure, I'd rather have a golden retriever as a pet than a pig, but I think
we have to face the uncomfortable fact that they aren't so different in their
intelligence, social behaviors or capacity to suffer. I'm curious: Do you find
that argument compelling? Does the story of Brunhilda make you feel any more
compassion toward factory farmed pigs?
Read 198
replies
The Identitarians: charming far-right with slick PR
The
Identitarians: charming far-right with slick PR
©
Backlight
Sanne
Stevens 27 april 2018
https://tegenlicht.vpro.nl/artikelen/de-identitairen-charmant-extreemrechts-met-gelikte-pr
In
'Radical Right Vanguard' a number of important leaders of the Identitarians can
be seen. They look hip, have slick PR and are very friendly. But in the
meantime, their ideology is unadulterated far-right.
The
classic neo-Nazis
I catch
myself surprised: they have the clothing style of a hipster sipping a soy latte
in an authentic coffee shop with 'local products'. A style that I generally do
not associate at all with the ultra-conservative, xenophobic and nationalistic
ideas that are being expressed here. Apparently there is something in me that
expects radical right-wing young people to be clumsy bald creeps.
Of
course, that expectation is also based on something. I met them, the violent
neo-Nazis. In the provincial town where I grew up, you sometimes met them. That
was not pleasant. My most terrifying encounter with Nazis was in Berlin, when I
and friends encountered two huge bald guys at night who were chasing a black
boy. First the boy came running, terrified in his gaze. And then those huge,
bald figures. I saw a swastika necklace glistening in the light of a lamppost.
In total bewilderment, I said to my friend just a little too loudly: 'Did you
see that - Nazis...!' One of the figures immediately interrupted his pursuit
and turned threateningly towards me. 'Was the....Nazis?!' I stumbled a bit, and
the final rescue was the second Nazi, who, after some discussion, insisted that
the pursuit of their original victim should be continued. I always hoped that
he had been given enough time to get away by now. It was not heroic - and to
this day I don't know what to do, or what to do, in such a case.
Such
neo-Nazis were active on the margins all over Europe: in the Netherlands, even
more so in Germany, in Sweden and Eastern Europe. There were arson attacks,
attacks on immigrants or left-wing subcultures. And they are still there. In
fact, the number of cases of far-right violence has skyrocketed in Germany, for
example. The Identitarians are unmistakably not such neo-Nazis. They do not use
violence, but focus on public actions. They are modern, intellectual
millennials.
Reconquest
Not that
there are no links with the more 'classical' neo-Nazi movements. Take Daniel
Fiss, seen as the head of the Identitarian movement in Germany: he was
previously involved in a neo-Nazi movement, which has since been banned. He
calls it a 'youthful sin' and swears to have chosen the peaceful path. They
invariably fall into a victim role when someone associates them with Nazis: it
is the mainstream press that tries to destroy us, nationalism just has a bad
name in Germany. 'We are not fascists, we are patriots!'. Oh yes. Who also
happen to want to stop all immigration and fight for a 'reconquest of Europe
from Islam'. The word comes up a few times in the broadcast: Reconquista. A
historical term that refers to the Crusades and a period in medieval Spain, in
which Christian kingdoms managed to reconquer the area from the Muslims. A
period of violent expulsion and persecution of Jews and Muslims. The Identitarians like to opt for this kind
of historical references. Their symbol is a circle with the ancient Greek
letter lambda, after the Spartan shields and as seen in the movie '300'. In the
'Radical Right Vanguard' you can see a designer of the Identitarians working on
a knightly illustration, under the watchful eye of an Eagle statue. There is
something clumsy about it.
In
general, the design of the Identitarians is anything but clumsy - and that is
precisely their strength. Especially the French branch, with which it started
in 2012, excels in a professional slick communication style. Take their latest
action campaign: a border guard patrol in the Alps. In this video, the sleek
campaign logo adorns a shiny Jeeps and a helicopter; who skims past proud boys
and girls. Looking straight into the camera, they stand in identical sporty
soft blue jackets among the mountains. Everything is white, red or blue. A
beautifully orchestrated image. And other videos are also great; Even painting
a banner - which will no doubt be hung over a mosque somewhere with an
unfriendly text - looks quite glamorous with the right filters and assembly.
Pure
No, these
are indeed not muscular, bald neo-Nazis: method and style are completely
different. Where it really pinches is the content. Behind those beautiful
filters is a very aggressive message. It is not often explicitly about race,
but about a culture belonging to the fatherland, which must above all remain
pure. Pure from immigration, from other cultures that belong elsewhere. All
Muslims and other immigrants must leave, willingly or unwillingly. That is the
obvious agenda. In addition, there is a pronounced conspiracy thinking and
underdog feeling; One is a victim of a left-wing, progressive elite that is in
charge everywhere. They even call themselves victims of the 'generation of May
'68', to whom they declare war with a great sense of drama. Because this
generation would have made abject things like multiculturalism and feminism big
for them. Would have power over all important institutions, and run them in a
progressive way. It is a well-known right-wing story - also in the Netherlands
the left-wing oppressive elite seems to be in charge. The fact that the VVD has
been the largest party for years, the Telegraaf is still the largest newspaper
and the best-watched programs are football matches time and time again, seem
irrelevant details. The left is in power, and oppresses the people.
This
hatred for an imagined progressive elite and the overarching ideology of the
new radical right-wing movements - including the American Alt-Right - is very
well represented in the very complete article 'War against the baby boomers' by
Jaap Tielbeke in the Groene Amsterdammer. An absolute must for more
understanding of the ideology behind the faces of the freshly dressed boys.
War
against the baby boomers
For the
new right, May '68 is both a point of entry and a source of inspiration. Using
the same tactics as the 'soixante-huitards', a coalition of unsavoury currents
is fighting for a right-wing revolution that will save European civilisation.
Tasteless
stunts
There is
also a branch of the Identitarians active in the Netherlands, who try to
generate publicity with striking actions. For the time being, the low point is
an action that followed the unveiling of a statue of Nelson Mandela. The
Identitair Verzet, as the Dutch branch calls itself, placed a car tire next to
a cardboard sign with 'communist terrorist' near the statue. A stark reference
to the gruesome execution method 'necklacing', which was widely used in
lynching actions during Apartheid. Mainly tasteless and in no way the PR value
of the actions by their French or Austrian 'brothers'
The
latter are very successful, by the way, but also have a pretty unsuccessful
stunt to their name, which ended with an absurd plot twist. It is the story of
the large ship that had to stop migrants at sea, which also comes to the fore
in the broadcast. They still sell this as a heroic success. But the mission was
a succession of failures. For example, the boat was stopped in the Suez Canal
when the captain could not provide a correct crew list; the crew turned out to
consist partly of unregistered Sri Lankans, who wanted to apply for asylum in
one of the ports on the way. Even more ironic was the end of the mission, when
the ship had engine trouble and had to be rescued by one of the aid
organizations that are at sea to rescue refugees.
Warm
tyres
This kind
of story is reassuring: the Identitarians are, after all, a marginal phenomenon
that gets a lot of attention because they produce good publicity stunts, but
otherwise get little done. But it is a given that the radical right is also
growing outside these action groups. In addition, there is a warm bond between
the various organizations and political parties. In Austria, for example, where
an investigation by the internal security service into connections between FPÖ,
neo-Nazis and identitarians was interrupted by a raid by a police service under
the authority of the FPÖ. That at least gives food for thought.
New
right, alt-right, or Nazi hipsters; The similarity is their shared ideology of
intolerance, conservatism and xenophobia. An ideology of a fatherland free of
all blemishes, where tradition and family are central. The fact that they
prefer to call themselves 'patriots' and proclaim this philosophy in a tight
shirt, with a hip haircut and a charming smile, does not detract from that.
More
background: in short
• The
Identitaire Movement started in France with Génération identitaire (youth
section 'Bloc identitaire', which emerged from the 'Unité radicale', which was
banned in 2002). Predecessors of
Identitarian Movement: are also CasaPound (Italy).
• The
German Identitäre Bewegung (IB) arose from the Neue Rechte; Neue Rechte arose
from the NPD.
• Central
conspiracy in Identitäre Bewegung is 'omvolking' or what is called exchange
(Austausch). They agitate against immigration, Islam, the culture of guilt in
Germany as a result of the Second World War and the Holocaust, asylum and aid
to people and countries outside Germany and Europe. In addition to refugees,
immigration and Islam, there are also demonstrations against #metoo and
feminism. The German Identitäre Bewegung has clear, personal connections with
Pegida, Pro-NRW, Bürgerbewegung Pro Deutschland, HoGeSa and the NPD. Recently,
AfD in Germany and FPÖ in Austria have been added.
Since its
inception, there have also been connections with Deutsche Burschenschaft, a
network of German and Austrian 'student associations' that strive for a Greater
Germany.
• The
Identitäre Bewegung network includes funds, publishers, magazines. 'Blaue
Narzisse' by Felix Menzel, 'Compact' by Jürgen Elsässer, the weekly magazine
'Junge Freiheit', and the publishing houses of Götz Kubitschek that is featured
in the episode (Institut für Staatspolitik, Sezession, Verlag Antaios)
(thanks
to wltrrr)
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