Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him; The New York Times, July 24, 2026

Tony Romm and Brad Plumer, The New York Times ; Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him

Federal officials said in court documents that they halted billions of dollars in funding for energy projects to states “based solely” on whether they backed President Trump in the 2024 election.

[Kip Currier: Think about how completely unbalanced and destructive this scorched-earth behavior is: Trump 2.0's admission of "canceling grants to states that did not vote for him".

Trump's vindictive, ruthless actions -- against states that didn't vote for him in the 2024 election -- impact not just citizens who oppose him in those states but also his own voters and supporters who live, work, and have businesses and financial interests in those states!

I envision a not-too-distant time when many people (not just historians) will ask "how was this behavior enabled to happen? How could so many in positions of power, authority, and privilege support someone who continually engages in such clearly unethical, corrupt conduct that debases and damages our democracy, country, and world?"

The law firms that capitulated to baseless threats.

The university leaders and their boards of trustees who said and continue to say nothing.

The media organizations and journalists who have folded and disseminate and amplify misinformation and disinformation.

The oligarchs and corporations that have enriched themselves, while lobbying against basic standards of living and access to healthcare and medicines for human beings throughout the world. 

The government officials, legislators, and judges who took oaths of office to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

The religious leaders and institutions who support administrative policies that go against the most basic tenets of their respective faith teachings and traditions.]

"When the Trump administration canceled more than $7.5 billion in Biden-era federal grants for clean energy projects in October, it framed the move as an urgent corrective to protect taxpayer funds from waste.

But it wasn’t true.

In little-noticed court documents, federal officials acknowledged this month that they had terminated the funding “based solely” on political criteria, targeting projects in states that were represented by Democrats and had voted for Kamala Harris, the party’s presidential nominee, in the 2024 election.

The admission showed how President Trump has weaponized the provision of federal education, energy, health, housing and infrastructure aid in his second term. Far from rooting out the sort of misspending that Mr. Trump sees as rife in Washington, the White House has instead sought to leverage the budget as a tool to assist its allies — or as a cudgel to hurt the president’s foes."

The One Thing Trump Wanted That Pam Bondi Failed to Deliver; The New York Times, April 2, 2026

Jeffrey Toobin , The New York Times; The One Thing Trump Wanted That Pam Bondi Failed to Deliver

"But the core of Mr. Trump’s dissatisfaction with the attorney general was apparently her failure to serve his need for revenge against his enemies. She did not prosecute enough of Mr. Trump’s adversaries, and the cases she did bring were failures...

The worst consequence of the Justice Department’s pursuit of cases involving otherwise law-abiding but undocumented individuals is that it has led to untold suffering among those targeted, their families and the economies they support. Ms. Bondi’s lawyers have spent considerable time and money on the harassment, and worse, of people who have done no harm to anyone...

Perhaps worst of all, Justice Department lawyers under Ms. Bondi have often behaved in shockingly unethical ways. For decades, federal judges have looked at assistant U.S. attorneys and other Justice Department lawyers as something more than mere combatants. For good reason, judges assumed that federal lawyers told them the truth about the facts and the law of their cases. In legal terms, the actions of the Justice Department received a “presumption of regularity,” which the private bar did not enjoy. But based on the frequently appalling conduct — for instance, lying, gaslighting, hiding facts and evidence — of Justice Department lawyers in the Bondi era, many judges are no longer giving government lawyers the benefit of the doubt. Nor should they.

Replacing Ms. Bondi with her deputy, Todd Blanche, or the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, to name two likely successors, will not solve this problem unless the new attorney general makes the commitment, unlikely under the circumstances, that the Justice Department will return to its tradition of honesty and integrity."

‘Foundation’ Creator David S. Goyer on Those Season 3 Finale Twists and Why He’s Leaving the Show; The Wrap, September 12, 2025

Adam Chitwood, The Wrap ; ‘Foundation’ Creator David S. Goyer on Those Season 3 Finale Twists and Why He’s Leaving the Show

"Note: The following contains spoilers from the “Foundation” Season 3 finale...

"Then you have Dusk – or Darkness – who is behaving entirely out of spite.

I don’t think he has any clue or even interest in solving the problem or being a good steward of the galaxy. I think it’s truly a guy who, the center obviously cannot hold and he knows he can’t fix things, but he can burn everything down. And I would argue that there are people like that operating in power on Earth today that have personality disorders, and Dusk clearly has a personality disorder – it’s all personal for him. A switch has been flipped, and that’s a bad person to have in charge of a weapon like that.

So heading into Season 4 he’s all alone with what little power Empire has left.

He doesn’t have a Day or a Dawn or a Demerzel to counsel him. He just has yes men and yes women who are all terrified of him, and no one to give him any sort of counterbalancing advice.

I’m sure that’ll end well.

Even as I say that I’m like, “Huh, is there anyone else like that right now in today’s society that’s operating like that?”"