Posts Made By: Rod Kaufman

Trump border czar, Tom Homan, who was on the Bill Maher show last Friday evening extolling the virtues of the proper way of immigrants waiting in line to enter America and thereby doing the right thing:

"President Donald Trump's border czar Tom Homan accepted a $50,000 bag of cash from an undercover FBI agent last year..."

"In the alleged scheme, Homan promised immigration-related government contracts when he joined the Trump administration in exchange for the money,..."

"FBI Director Kash Patel ordered the investigation closed over the summer, one of the sources said. Homan could not be reached for comment."

"The probe into Homan started around August 2024 near the end of President Joe Biden's administration and stemmed from a separate national security investigation, one of the sources told Reuters."

"In that unrelated probe, the target repeatedly brought up Homan, saying he was collecting bribes in exchange for future government contracts, the two sources told Reuters."

"An undercover sting operation was set up, and Homan was caught on a recording accepting a $50,000 bribe in a bag from the restaurant chain Cava, the sources said."


https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-aide-homan-accepted-50000-bribery-sting-operation-sources-say-2025-09-21/

Quite the read from Edward A. Purcell, Jr., Joseph Solomon Distinguished Professor Emeritus of New York Law School:

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/5523050-scotus-trump-cases-republic-fate/

"President Trump can remove Rebecca Slaughter from her role as Federal Trade Commission commissioner while the Supreme Court considers executive authority over independent agencies, the justices ruled in a majority decision on Monday."

"Why it matters: The 6-3 ruling suggests the Supreme Court is poised to overturn a 90-year-old precedent that protects the heads of independent agencies from being fired by presidents when the justices hear arguments in the case in December."

"State of play: The ruling on the court's emergency docket did not outline the conservative majority's reasoning for its decision, which the three liberal justices dissented."


"Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent that the conservative majority had in stay order by stay order "handed full control" of agencies to the president."

"He may now remove — so says the majority, though Congress said differently — any member he wishes, for any reason or no reason at all. And he may thereby extinguish the agencies' bipartisanship and independence," she added."

"Our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars. Still more, it should not be used, as it also has been, to transfer government authority from Congress to the President, and thus to reshape the Nation's separation of powers."


https://www.axios.com/2025/09/22/supreme-court-trump-ftc-commissioner-firing


RELATED:

"The Roberts Court Is Winning Its War on American Democracy"

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/roberts-court-winning-war-american-100000369.html

"How The Roberts Court Became The Trump Court"

https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/24/politics/john-roberts-20-years-legacy-trump

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

"After mechanical challenges, UN says Trump’s team to blame for nonworking escalator and teleprompter"

"President Donald Trump broke from his prepared remarks at the United Nations on Tuesday to bemoan an inoperable escalator and a defective teleprompter, using the incidents to portray the global body as dysfunctional."

“All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle,” he mused, chopping the air with his hand."

"As he began his speech, Trump also noted that the teleprompter wasn’t working. He joked that whoever was running the teleprompter “is in big trouble.”

"The White House was operating the teleprompter for the president."

https://apnews.com/article/trump-un-escalator-teleprompter-ddfc0875301f29d71625b353f2c2f832

Trump responds!

"Trump calls for ‘triple sabotage’ investigation over UN escalator, teleprompter, audio issues"

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5520552-trump-escalator-teleprompter-issues/

"After mechanical challenges, UN says Trump’s team to blame for nonworking escalator and teleprompter"

"President Donald Trump broke from his prepared remarks at the United Nations on Tuesday to bemoan an inoperable escalator and a defective teleprompter, using the incidents to portray the global body as dysfunctional."

“All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle,” he mused, chopping the air with his hand."

"As he began his speech, Trump also noted that the teleprompter wasn’t working. He joked that whoever was running the teleprompter “is in big trouble.”

"The White House was operating the teleprompter for the president."

https://apnews.com/article/trump-un-escalator-teleprompter-ddfc0875301f29d71625b353f2c2f832

"Fox News contributor on Comey indictment: ‘I don’t think there’s a case"

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5523758-fox-news-comey-indictment/

Ya think?!...

Originally Posted by James Brown

Hi Rod, life has been coming at me fast and furiously, so I don’t have the energy to comment at length.   Please note that these are preliminary rulings, not the end of democracy.

Hmm, you mean you've got better things to do than read and comment on the astromart political forum?! Well, I, in a huff,  never will understand this and here I am posting on topics of national interest, a a veiled attempt to keep the forum going, and nobody bothers to respond. I mean these aren't Davis posts, for crying out loud. 

And your excuse is that you're too busy?! Aren't you retired? Aren't all you guys retired? How busy can you be? Are you training and planning on going up on the next Amazon launch like William Shatner did at age 90? Ok, if that's the reason, then you're excused...

Originally Posted by James Brown

Hi Rod, life has been coming at me fast and furiously, so I don’t have the energy to comment at length.   Please note that these are preliminary rulings, not the end of democracy.

Getting down to cases here, I think we need to add some context specific to SCOTUS and it current modus operandi.

In regards to "preliminary rulings", herein lies the problem.

Case in point:

1. Kavanaugh defended the shadow docket rulings as essentially not being complete and fully articulated decisions and certainly not at the level of a precedent.

2. Alito and Gorsuch issued a warning to a lower court judge that their rulings decided in such dockets should not be obviated by his actions.

3. The lower court judge responded that while he was sorry and didn't intend to undo a SCOTUS decision, he didn't  realize the shadow docket decision that evidently superseded his decision that was based upon his citation of a precedent did, in fact, constitute a new precedent!  Ouch!

Originally Posted by James Brown

On the merits of this particular case, do you actually think that the Trump administration is exceeding executive authority?  I have not read the briefs or studied this at all, but my first impression is that it is perfectly normal operation of the government for Congress to approve a top-level budget and for the Executive to implement the actual expenditures.  Different Presidents have different priorities.  You know, elections have consequences.  This is surely not the first time that dramatic changes in governmental spending priorities were made mid-expenditure, when administrations change.  

I get it that it sucks for the affected former recipients of an expenditure, but that does not make it unconstitutional.  

On the other hand if this is indeed an unconstitutional move by the Trump administration, we can discuss the biases of the Court when they issue a final ruling.  J

"On the merits of this particular case, do you actually think that the Trump administration is exceeding executive authority? "

It's one thing for an administration to reallocate funds that haven't been utilized--which is a practice engaged in by various administrations--but it's quite another thing to retract funds that have already been authorized by congress, allocated and executed for their intended programs. Will the cons in SCOTUS concern themselves with this merit of the case that is really the point of contention? I doubt it and therein lies the problem...

Jim,
My condolences to you and your family on the recent losses of your loved ones and friend. 
My congrats on the news of the wedding, truly an uplifting event.

We had to have our dog, Lucky, put to sleep after 17 years, due to age and failing health. It hurts when you lose them because they become part of the family. We'll eventually get another, but not for awhile, and it'll likely be a rescue from a shelter like our previous dogs have been. Good luck on training yours...