You Removed the Name — and the Curse — of Donald
Inside our Kennedy Center and slush fund successes: Publisher's Roundup 71
You did it, Contrarians. Out of all the over 300 legal cases and matters that your paid subscriptions have helped make possible, few have garnered more attention than our fights to remove Donald Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center and to stop his $1.8 billion slush fund. Now both are finally happening — and that’s good news for our democracy.
Let’s start with the Kennedy Center, where this happened in the wee hours early on Saturday:
The removal of Trump’s name was thanks to our client, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), to my colleagues at Democracy Defenders Action, to our co-counsel Washington Litigation Group — and to your paid subscriptions, which help fuel my and my colleagues’ pro-democracy litigation.
Of course, Trump being Trump, he and his cronies did it in the stupidest and most unlawful way. Throughout the 24 hours before the Friday midnight deadline, Trump & Co. kept trying and failing to get a stay of the order to remove his name. We responded to his desperate gambits with snap filings of our own and defeated him at both the trial and appellate level.
Then Trump blew past the court-ordered midnight Friday deadline in order to erect a scaffold and then hang a tarp, clearly so he could attempt to hide the removal of the letters. It was a literal cover-up! But, true to form, he botched the attempt to hide the removal, allowing photographers to capture an iconic image.
The scale of Trump’s corruption makes Richard Nixon look like a piker — and Trump’s bumbling makes the Watergate burglars look slick. As we noted in response to the regime’s midnight motion to get another 12 hours, “Defendants had two weeks to comply with the order, and only need an extension because of their inexcusable delay.”
Meanwhile, the whole pathetic display only heightened already strong public attention across the nation. Why do people care so much about this case? Trump’s name on that building defaced the memory of a beloved, fallen president. We don’t need more than that to be horrified.
But there is more. The Trump administration has featured the most outrageous corruption of any president in American history. Like the $1.8 billion slush fund (more in a minute about that), the Kennedy Center renaming is a corruption scandal. The naming rights to the building are literally priceless. Congress mandated the name, and by law that is sacrosanct. For Trump to violate that by putting his own name on the structure is yet another theft from the American people.
And the removal of the name is visible, tangible proof that Trump’s corruption and Trump himself can be stopped — that the rule of law still reigns in America and we can take back the institutions of our democracy. And if Trump thinks he’s just gonna leave the tarp there indefinitely to cover up his shame, we have plans for that, too.
We could not fight Trump’s corruption without you Contrarians. We are capping off our week-long pledge drive for new paid subscriptions to support the Contrarian 1-2 punch. The first is our great weekly coverage. The second is the fact that all profits from those paid subscriptions go to help support my and colleagues’ pro-democracy litigation.
Your support was on full display not only at the Kennedy Center but also earlier on Friday when we supported some folks who put the kibosh on Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund. A Virginia federal judge enjoined the fund at the request of a wonderful group of lawyers and their clients. She had this to say about a bipartisan brief that we filed in that case on behalf of a Republican and a Democratic senator:
Senators Booker and Cassidy’s timely brief is very useful by providing the unique perspective of current members of the U.S. Senate and explaining how the Anti-Weaponization Fund implicates significant legal and constitutional issues including the Appropriations and Appointments Clauses of the Constitution, as well as the separation of powers.
The judge also read the following passage from our brief aloud from the bench at the hearing where she granted the injunction:
A scheme deliberately designed to recast insurrectionists — including those who perpetrated violence against law enforcement officers — as victims and legitimate prosecutions as persecution does not merely rewrite history. It creates incentives for similar conduct in the future, with the explicit encouragement of the officials responsible for administering justice.
Kudos to our Democracy Defenders Action co-counsel at Platkin LLP and to our local counsel at WLG, plus the superb lawyers and their clients who brought the case in the first place.
But it’s not enough to stop the slush funds from flowing. We have to hold accountable the people responsible. That’s why we, with Platkin LLP and Susman Godfrey, represented a bipartisan group of 35 former judges who successfully petitioned a Florida federal judge to investigate the whole mess.
That case is important because it provides an additional vehicle to probe the $1.8B and the associated “settlements” purporting to wipe away vast liabilities from Trump and his family. Late Friday night, Trump’s lawyers filed their brief attempting to justify this outrage. It substantially consists of attacking the motives and acumen of our dozens of former federal judges appointed by presidents of both parties and with hundreds of years of collective experience on the bench.
Now it is our turn to file a response explaining why this scandalous behavior — unlike anything we have ever seen in our history — is unjustifiable. Stay tuned.
As I finished this column, the New York Knicks won their first championship in 53 years. Some spoke of the Curse of Donald when the Knicks’ 13-game playoff winning streak was broken on the very night Trump attended. The Curse seemed to persist like a hangover into the next game, with the team falling behind by 29 points. But Knicks fans who hung in there saw their team overcome the largest deficit in NBA Finals history that night and then come from behind again on Saturday to win it all. You Contrarians have hung in there with our democracy (and us) over the past 17 months. We Contrarians and we Americans will also shake off the Curse of Donald and prevail. Our work on the Kennedy Center and slush fund cases are a powerful reminder of that.
For more proof, enjoy our usual rundown of the best of the Contrarian this week:
Injustice at DOJ
Catch-1001: How Coordinated Investigations Have Made Congressional Testimony Dangerous
Former federal prosecutor Alexis Loeb wrote for us on the suspicious convergence of pressure happening as groups like the SPLC and ActBlue are made to testify before Congress while facing active DOJ criminal investigations. “The risks go beyond an unfortunate sound bite.”
Todd Blanche Is Still Donald Trump’s Personal Lawyer
Peter Carr wrote on the corruption driving Trump’s unfit attorney general choice. “His fealty appears to have no bounds — even saying that Americans should be ‘happy’ that Trump is so involved in Justice Department matters.”
The DOJ’s Assault on Civil Rights
Erwin Chemerinsky reported on how the Justice Department just made it much harder for employees to prove discrimination on the basis of sex and race and much easier for employers to avoid liability. “It is astounding to see [DOJ] disregard long-established Supreme Court precedent and nullify a federal statute.”
Foreign Affairs
Cuba Is the Distraction. Ukraine Is the Opportunity
Brian O’Neill analyzed why Trump keeps chasing spectacles of dominance in Cuba and Iran while overlooking the one conflict that could strengthen his position. “Trump could easily portray himself as the leader who finally forced Europe to shoulder more responsibility while pressuring Putin into negotiations … but the conflict carries too many fingerprints he dislikes. NATO. Biden. Zelensky. Institutional.”
Reality Defies Trump-Friendly Predictions
Jen Rubin wrote on how poorly both Trump and Netanyahu predicted both the course of war in Iran — and the extent of the American public’s support for it. “Netanyahu’s reliance on Trump … render[s] Israel more isolated and his coalition more precarious than ever.”
Anti-Civil Rights Cruelty
A Cop in North Carolina Beat a Woman on Video — and Nobody Cares
Carron J. Phillips wrote on the case of a white police officer’s violence against a Black woman in North Carolina — which, despite being caught on tape, “has received minimal attention, illustrating just how desensitized America has become to violence from law enforcement.”
Gillian Brockell spoke with Tim Dickinson about the airlines that profit from Trump’s ICE deportation machine while inflicting new cruelties. “This whole process is just designed to wear [immigrants] down so that they’ll give up on their cases and sign a voluntary removal order to agree to be deported, which … [is] basically submitting to torture.”
I Warned About the Young Republicans’ Racist Group Chat. They Got a Passport.
Michael Franklin wrote on how the same pipeline that produced racist chats and “edgy” fascist jokes is infiltrating more and more Republican immigration talk. “This is how extremist ideas become governing ideas: First they are laughed off as jokes, then defended as debate, then repeated as campaign language, then embedded into bureaucracy, then treated as if they were always legitimate.”
Fighting Back
This Is What an All-Out Redistricting War Looks Like
Tim Dickinson wrote on a redistricting strategy report that could help Democrats beat MAGA Republicans at their own game, scoring as many as 21 new House seats in 2028. “The aim here is not to replicate the GOP’s ambition for permanent power…. The idea is to punish the MAGA GOP for starting this fight.”
The Contrarian Covers the Democracy Movement
This week, we saw protests in Albania, Massachusetts, Arizona, Connecticut, Tennessee, Oregon, and more. Get help organizing from Indivisible, find protests in your area at mobilize.us, and send us your protest photos at submit@contrariannews.org.
Contrarian Calls to Action: Oppose Trump’s Arch, Visit the ‘Trumpsonian’
In this week’s Calls to Action, we featured ways to shatter the corporatization of “Pride,” defend human rights during the World Cup, and block the nomination of Trump toadies.
Cartoons, Culture & Fun Stuff
This week, our cartoonists covered questionable logic (All the Cards, RJ Matson; Horse Sense, Nick Anderson), fickle pleasures (A Smooth Exit, Nick Anderson; Are You Not Entertained?
Michael de Adder), and alien invasion (Tom the Dancing Bug, Ruben Bolling).
What’s in a Name? For Drag Queens, a Lot.
Meredith Blake wrote on how the legal battle between Patagonia and Pattie Gonia shows the complexity of turning subversive art into a brand. “When progressives are squabbling over trademarks, the only people benefitting are the lawyers.”
Chicken with Preserved Lemons and Olives. Jamie Schler gave us a delicious weekend recipe and an ode to bridge-building.
Last but never least, meet Sushi! This cat’s birthday suit is formal wear.
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We need some enterprising pranksters to pull that tarp curtain down.
Preferably today, on the fascist felon's birthday.
Norm, this is one of my favorite lines you've written since starting The Contrarian: "The scale of Trump’s corruption makes Richard Nixon look like a piker — and Trump’s bumbling makes the Watergate burglars look slick." All so true. Thanks for helping restore The Kennedy Center. That's one less mess we'll have to clean up after the grifting buffoon is ousted. This adds another brick to the load he's carrying on his back. He's already essentially a lame duck, having alienated the U.S. Senators who lost their primaries. They have no reason to vote with him now, so I hope The Kennedy Center is a sign of much misery to come. And once this creep is vanquished, we have to elect Democrats who are willing to get tough, change laws, write into law practices that were previously unwritten because no one was ever crooked enough to challenge them, and protect and preserve Democracy so our nation doesn't make the colossal mistake again of putting a bandit in the White House.