What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White
What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White
Know Anyone Who Thinks Racial Profiling Is Exaggerated? Watch This, And Tell Me When Your Jaw Drops.
This video clearly demonstrates how racist America is as a country and how far we have to go to become a country that is civilized and actually values equal justice. We must not rest until this goal is achieved. I do not want my great grandchildren to live in a country like we have today. I wish for them to live in a country where differences of race and culture are not ignored but valued as a part of what makes America great.
"The Trump administration is assigning denaturalization cases to regular prosecutors, which could lead to a surge of people stripped of U.S. citizenship.
People reciting an oath during a naturalization ceremony at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, N.J.Kent J. Edwards/Reuters
The Justice Department has identified 384 foreign-born Americans whose citizenship it wants to revoke, part of a push to increase the pace of denaturalizations by assigning the cases to prosecutors in dozens of U.S. attorney’s offices across the country.
Senior Justice Department officials in Washington told colleagues during a meeting last week that civil litigators in 39 regional offices would soon be assigned to file denaturalization cases against the individuals, according to an official familiar with the announcement who was not authorized to describe it on the record. Two people familiar with the plans confirmed the broader effort to ramp up denaturalizations. It was not clear what led the department to target the 384 individuals.
Under federal law, the government may ask a court to strip the citizenship of people who obtained it fraudulently — for instance, by entering into a sham marriage or by withholding information about their past that would have made them ineligible. Some who commit crimes may also be denaturalized. The government must present evidence to a federal judge through a civil or criminal proceeding, making the process challenging and time-consuming.
Traditionally, experts in the department’s office of immigration litigation have handled denaturalization cases. But the effort to enlist regular prosecutors to pursue these cases could lead to a surge in denaturalizations, which have been rare in recent decades. It also comes just months after Trump administration officials ordered Department of Homeland Security staffers to refer upward of 200 denaturalization cases a month to the DOJ.
Matthew Tragesser, a Justice Department spokesman, said that officials were “pursuing the highest volume of denaturalization referrals in history” from the Department of Homeland Security.
“The Department of Justice is laser focused on rooting out criminal aliens defrauding the naturalization process,” he added.
“Citizenship fraud is a serious crime; anyone who has broken the law and obtained citizenship through fraud and deceit will be held accountable,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman.
The push indicates that the Trump administration aims to make good on its plan to increase the pace of denaturalizations as part of its crackdown on immigration. The move will likely scare many naturalized immigrants as the Trump administration has sought to curtail immigration across the board and spoken disdainfully about migrants from certain countries.
“The message it sends is that naturalized citizens don’t have the same rights and stability as native-born citizens,” said Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia. “The government has used this power in the past to target people it views as political opponents.”
Between 2017 and late last year, the government sought to strip just over 120 naturalized Americans of their citizenship. Such cases were far less common before President Trump was first elected, said Ms. Frost, who has written about the history of denaturalization. Between 1990 and 2017, the government filed 305 denaturalization cases, an average of 11 per year.
People who become U.S. citizens are extensively vetted. Applicants must provide biometric data and answer wide-ranging questions about their travel history, run-ins with the law and ties to the Communist Party. Some qualify through marriage to U.S. citizens after three years. Others become eligible after having held green cards for at least five years. The final steps of the naturalization process include passing civics and English tests.
There have been instances of fraud. In 2017, the inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security said in a report that an initiative to digitize fingerprints collected on paper in old immigration cases revealed that more than 800 immigrants obtained American citizenship despite having been previously deported under a different name.
Naturalized citizens enjoy almost all the rights and responsibilities of native-born citizens (a notable exception is that foreign-born citizens may not run for president). As such, the bar for stripping someone of citizenship is high.
During last week’s meeting, Francey Hakes, the director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, described the 384 individuals identified for denaturalization “the first wave of cases” the government intended to pursue. Ms. Hakes acknowledged that several civil divisions at U.S. attorney’s offices are understaffed and struggling to cope with an avalanche of lawsuits filed by immigrants challenging the legality of their detentions.
“I hope these cases will not be too much of an additional burden,” Ms. Hakes told colleagues, adding that boosting denaturalization cases was a “White House initiative.”
Ms. Jackson, the White House spokeswoman, said “this isn’t a White House initiative — it’s federal law.”
Making denaturalization cases a core part of the work of civil divisions at U.S. attorney’s offices stands to divert resources from the type of cases its litigators have historically prioritized. Those include health-care fraud, procurement fraud, enforcement of civil rights laws and asset forfeiture cases.
A rise in denaturalizations may also send a chilling message, said Ms. Frost, the law professor, hearkening back to an era in the 20th Century during which the government denaturalized political activists it disdained. President Trump said in an interview in January that Americans of Somali descent could be among those targeted in the denaturalization push.
During the years when the government pursued denaturalization cases infrequently, it tended to go after people who had committed war crimes overseas before becoming Americans.
“This kind of mass denaturalization campaign will be based on a distortion of the law and is another transparent effort to destabilize long-established principles of US citizenship,” said Lucas Guttentag, a former DOJ official in the Biden administration and a professor at Stanford Law School. “Genuine fraud when it actually occurs has always been aggressively pursued.”
In recent months, the Trump administration has filed denaturalization cases against a broad range of immigrants. They include a Marine from Ghana who was court-martialed over a sex crime, an Argentine man accused of having obtained citizenship by falsely claiming to be Cuban and a Nigerian man convicted of running a tax-fraud scheme.
Ernesto Londoño is a Times reporter based in Minnesota, covering news in the Midwest and drug use and counternarcotics policy. He welcomes tips and can be reached at elondono.81 on Signal.
Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times."
“A report by the West Bank Protection Consortium details escalating sexualized violence and harassment by Israeli soldiers and settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. This violence, including forced nudity, invasive searches, and threats, is used to pressure and displace Palestinian communities. The report highlights the severe impact on women and girls, leading to school dropout, early marriages, and job loss, while emphasizing the culture of impunity surrounding these attacks.
Experts say attacks, also carried out by settlers, are leading girls to quit school and enter early marriages
Israeli soldiers standing guard in an alleyway in Hebron, West Bank. Photograph: Mohammad Nazal/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images
Israeli soldiers and settlers are using gendered violence and sexual assault and harassment to force Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank, human rights and legal experts say.
Palestinian women, men and children have reported attacks, forced nudity, invasive and painful body cavity searches, Israelis exposing their genitals, including to minors, and threats of sexual violence.
Sixteen cases of conflict-related sexual violence were recorded by researchers for the West Bank Protection Consortium over the last three years, a figure that is likely an under-reporting because of the shame and stigma faced by survivors.
“Sexualised violence is used to pressure communities, shape decisions about remaining or leaving their homes and land, and alter patterns of daily life,” the group of international humanitarian organisations said in a report.
The study, “Sexual violence and forcible transfer in the West Bank”, details accounts of escalating sexualised attacks and humiliation of Palestinians in their communities and inside their homes since 2023.
Other forms of reported violence include urinating on Palestinians, taking and distributing humiliating photographs of bound and stripped individuals, stalking women who are using latrines, and threatening sexual violence against women. The case studies are anonymised because of the stigma surrounding sexual violence.
Sexualised attacks were hastening the displacement of Palestinians, according to the report. More than two-thirds of households surveyed identified rising violence against women and children, including sexual harassment targeting girls, as a tipping point in their decision to leave, the consortium said.
“Participants described sexualised harassment as the moment when fear shifted from chronic to unbearable. They spoke of watching women and girls endure humiliation and of calculating what might happen next,” the report said.
Israeli soldiers present during abuse had repeatedly failed to prevent it or prosecute those responsible. One woman was subjected to a painful internal search by two female soldiers who entered her home with settlers then ordered her to remove her clothes for a full body search.
“She described being instructed to open her legs in a way that caused pain, and she described derogatory comments and touching of intimate areas,” the report said.
Men and boys were also targets of sexual assault and harassment. Last month, Israeli settlers stripped 29-year old Qusai Abu al-Kebash, from the northern Jordan valley community of Khirbet Humsa, put a zip tie on his genitals and beat him in front of his community and international activists, witnesses said.
In October 2023 settlers and soldiers stripped, handcuffed and beatPalestinians from the village of Wadi as-Seeq, urinated on them, attempted to rape one with a broom handle, and took photographs of them naked which they then distributed publicly.
Sexual violence and harassment had severe impacts even when communities were not displaced, and women and girls were particularly badly affected. To limit the chance of coming into contact with Israelis who might assault or harass them, girls had quit school and women had stopped working.
It had also led to a rise in early marriage, as parents desperate to protect their daughters sought ways to move them away from the threats. At least six families interviewed for the report arranged weddings for girls aged between 15 and 17.
The Ramallah-based Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC) has also documented the use of sexualised violence and harassment of Palestinian women and girls to fragment and displace communities.
The WCLAC said women in the occupied West Bank had reported sexual assault, including forced penetration during searches, and abuse, including Israeli soldiers exposing themselves to girls at checkpoints and molesting them during searches. Humiliation had included the mocking of girls who were menstruating, she said.
“Girls aren’t going to schools, and you see early, forced marriages. These are minors, but we know their mothers and fathers are trying to protect them by sending them out of the area,” said Kifaya Khraim, the advocacy unit manager at WCLAC.
“Women lose their jobs because they can’t get to work because of the sexual violence and then deciding to stay at home.”
Khraim said she believed her team knew about only a fraction of the cases of sexualised violence by Israeli soldiers and settlers. “This is maybe 1% of the cases, and we had to do a lot of research in local communities just to earn the trust for people to tell us about these cases.”
Milena Ansari, the head of the occupied Palestinian territory department at Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, said the rise in sexualised violence and harassment in the occupied West Bank was happening amid a broader culture of impunity for attacks on Palestinians.
A recent decision to drop charges against soldiers for the filmed rape of an inmate at the Sde Teiman centre sent a particularly clear message.
“Israeli officials are effectively green-lighting the use of sexual violence, when they decide not to prosecute the most high-profile case, which is extremely well documented,” Ansari said. “There is a culture of accepting sexualised assault against Palestinians.
“There was a discussion in the Knesset about whether or not it is OK to rape a Palestinian. Even the prime minister didn’t say that Israel opposes raping detainees.”
Israel’s failure to prosecute settlers who attacked Palestinians in the West Bank led to the country’s former prime minister, Ehud Olmert, calling for the international criminal court to intervene to save Palestinians from “Jewish terrorists”, in an interview with the Guardian.
The report on sexualised violence as a tool of forced displacement drew on 83 interviews with Palestinian communities across the occupied West Bank, including those facing settler violence and movement restrictions.
Participants included people at risk, those already forced to flee their homes, women, youth activists and community leaders. The findings are not meant to be a statistically representative sample of the West Bank.
The Israel Defense Forces did not respond to questions about allegations of sexual abuse by soldiers.
Kash Patel has filed a defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic, accusing the magazine and its reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick of defamation over an article that alleged the FBI director has a drinking problem.
“We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel, and we will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists against this meritless lawsuit,” The Atlantic said.
The article, citing about two dozen anonymous sources, details Patel’s alleged “conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences;” claims the director is often “away or unreachable, delaying time-sensitive decisions needed to advance investigations;” and that Patel is “deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy.”
POLITICO has not independently corroborated The Atlantic’s reporting.
Patel’s lawsuit states that the unnamed sources had “obvious axes to grind,” and highlights that the White House, Department of Justice and Patel himself all denied the allegations in the article. It also alleges that a pre-publication letter sent to The Atlantic went “ignored.”
In a statement to POLITICO through his lawyers, Patel reiterated that the allegations in the article are false.
“The Atlantic’s story is a lie. They were given the truth before they published, and they chose to print falsehoods anyway,” Patel said. “I took this job to protect the American people and this FBI has delivered the most prolific reduction in crime in US history. Fake news won’t report it, and their toxicity will never erode nor stop our Mission.”
Patel is seeking $250 million in damages and the disgorgement of any profits made from the article’s publication. He has sued media outlets previously; a lawsuit he filed against POLITICO in 2019 for defamation remains pending.“
“President Trump is grappling with the challenges of a sustained military conflict with Iran, balancing his impulsive style with concerns about potential casualties and the war’s impact on the global oil supply. Despite his public bravado and aggressive rhetoric, including threats to destroy Iranian civilization, Trump is reportedly seeking a negotiated resolution to the conflict. He is also reportedly frustrated with the lack of support from European allies and NATO, who have declined to join his campaign against Iran.
The president’s impulsive style has never before been tested during a sustained military conflict; ruminating on Jimmy Carter
An image posted on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps official Telegram channel appears to show a U.S. transport plane and two helicopters destroyed during a rescue mission to locate one of the U.S. airmen.
One airman was recovered quickly, but it wasn’t until late Saturday that Trump received word that the second airman had been rescued in a high-stakes extraction. What could’ve turned into the lowest point in Trump’s two terms, wouldn’t. After 2 a.m., Trump, too, went to bed.
Six hours later, the chest-thumping president was back with another audacious gamble to loosen Iran’s grip on its most powerful point of leverage, the Strait of Hormuz. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell,” he blasted on social media Easter morning from the White House residence, adding an Islamic prayer to the post.
A president who thrives on drama is bringing an even more intense version of his unorthodox, maximalist approach to a new situation—fighting a war. He is veering between belligerent and conciliatory approaches and grappling behind the scenes with just how badly things could go wrong.
At the same time, the president sometimes loses focus, spending time on the details of his plans for the White House ballroom or on midterm fundraisers—and telling advisers he wants to shift to other topics.
Trump at a news briefing about the rescue mission. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Trump is dealing with his own fear about ordering troops into harm’s way where some will be injured and some not return home, similar to other presidents who have been at war, people familiar with the matter said.
Trump has resisted sending American soldiers to take Kharg Island, for example, the launch point for 90% of Iran’s oil exports. While he was told the mission would succeed, and the territory’s capture would give the U.S. access to the strait, he worried there would be unacceptably high American casualties, the people said. They’ll be sitting ducks, the president said.
Still, he has made risky pronouncements without input from his national security team—including his post about plans to destroy the Iranian civilization—saying seeming unstable could help spur the Iranians to negotiate.
At one point he even mused he should award himself the nation’s highest military honor, the Medal of Honor.
An Iranian woman holds a gun next to a picture of new supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei. Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA/Shutterstock
Trump campaigned on ending foreign wars but wagered that he could solve, with American air and naval power, a national security problem that had bedeviled seven previous presidents. Now, a cease-fire is in doubt, a critical trade route has been closed for weeks and Iran’s regime has been replaced with radical new leaders, all threatening to lengthen an operation that Trump has repeatedly said would only last six weeks—a deadline already missed since the war began Feb. 28.
White House officials said they believe a breakthrough in negotiations with Iran could be reached in coming days, and they are eyeing more talks in Pakistan.
The president’s impulsive style has never before been tested during a sustained military conflict. Unlike the successful operation in Venezuela, which buoyed his confidence, Trump is confronting a more intractable foe in Iran, which is so far unwilling to bend to his demands.
“We are witnessing astonishing military successes that do not add up to victory and that is squarely on the president and how he’s chosen to do his job—lack of attention to detail and lack of planning,” said Kori Schake, a senior fellow at the right-leaning think tank American Enterprise Institute who served on former President George W. Bush’s National Security Council.
A screenshot of a Truth Social post by Trump.
Soon after Trump’s holiday post, aides fielded calls from Republican senators and Christian leaders. They asked, why would he say “Praise be to Allah” on Easter morning? Why would he use the F-word? Trump swears profusely in private but usually calibrates it in public and on social media.
When one adviser later asked him about it, he said he came up with the Allah idea himself. He said he wanted to seem as unstable and insulting as possible, believing it could bring the Iranians to the table, senior administration officials said. It was a language, he said, the Iranians would understand. But he was also concerned about the fallout. “How’s it playing?” he asked advisers. (Iran’s parliamentary speaker called the threat reckless.)
On the Tuesday after Easter, he issued the most dramatic ultimatum of his presidency, saying that unless Iran struck a deal in 12 hours, a whole civilization would die.
Again, the post was improvisational, and not part of a national security plan, the administration officials said.
A screenshot of a Truth Social post by Trump.
People around the U.S. and the world were gripped with fear and confusion about what the president intended to do. Behind the scenes, top aides saw the move as a way to spur negotiations in a war the president was desperately ready to end. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told others privately it was language that might actually bring the Iranians to negotiate.
What Trump really wanted, advisers said, was to scare the Iranians, and to end the conflict. Less than ninety minutes before his deadline, Trump announced a precarious two-week cease-fire.
“President Trump campaigned proudly on his promise to deny the Iranian regime the ability to develop a nuclear weapon, which is what this noble operation accomplishes,” said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary. She said the president had “remained a steady leader our country needs.”
Trump is keeping close score on the war, measuring how many Iranian targets have been destroyed as a key metric of success, officials said.
‘Blood and sand’
Trump’s decision to venture into the war surprised many who knew him best. “Blood and sand,” he told advisers in his first term to describe the region, explaining why he wasn’t interested in getting drawn into any Middle East conflict.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on March 19. Ronen Zvulun/PRESS POOL
Plumes of smoke in Tehran on March 1. Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images
In Iran, the war started with the execution of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top Iranian officials. Trump was shown clips every morning of stunning explosions across the Iranian terrain. Advisers said Trump remarked to them how impressive the military was, seeming in awe of the scale of bombs.
But Trump had done little to sell the American public on the war, and soon grew frustrated that his administration wasn’t getting the same kind of external praise. Leavitt attributed his frustration to what she deemed unfair news coverage of the administration. His team showed him poll results for the November midterm elections that showed him the war was dragging down Republican candidates.
Still, Trump himself wasn’t up for re-election—and he thought a win over Iran would give him a chance to reshape the global order in a way he couldn’t in his first term, two top officials said. Trump said early in the military operation that if we get this right, we are saving the world, according to a person who heard his comments.
With the strait’s closure choking off some 20% of the global oil supply, energy CEOs soon grew nervous. In mid-March, Energy Secretary Chris Wright appeared at a board meeting of the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s primary lobbying group, and said the war would be over in weeks, according to people at the meeting. The energy leaders have at times worried that war would drive up prices far more than the White House seemed to appreciate if Trump continued an escalation that matched his rhetoric, people familiar with the matter said.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright spoke in Platteville, Colo., on March 9. Jesse Paul/Colorado Sun/ZUMA Press
Trump vacillated, people close to him said, between considering economic worries in calls with advisers including Wright and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and insisting that he was going to keep the war going. He told advisers that they needed to watch the markets, and his words often moved them.
But Trump quickly began ruminating on how the military action could turn into a catastrophe.
Speaking to Republican lawmakers in Doral, Fla., a little over a week into the war, Trump ticked through Democratic presidents who oversaw foreign policy debacles, including the withdrawal from Afghanistan under President Joe Biden. He then dwelled on Carter’s failed attempt to rescue U.S. hostages held by the same Iranian regime he was bombing.
He grew angry with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for being slow to allow U.S. forces to use U.K. bases and derisively mocked the French President as “Emmanuel,” dragging out the syllables in an exaggerated French accent, in White House meetings after the two sparred over both the war and Emmanuel Macron’s wife. When NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte came to Washington earlier this month for a pre-scheduled meeting, Trump told officials afterward it was largely a waste of time because Rutte couldn’t force his members to help.
A tanker anchored in Port Sultan Qaboos, Oman, on March 12. Benoit Tessier/Reuters
The strait has been a particular source of frustration. Before the U.S. went to war, Trump told his team that Iran’s government would likely capitulate before closing the strait, and that even if Tehran tried, the U.S. military could handle it, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Some of the president’s advisers were caught off guard that tanker traffic would grind to a halt so quickly after the bombing began, according to a person in contact with the White House.
Trump has since marveled at the ease with which the strait was closed. A guy with a drone can shut it down, Trump has said to people, expressing belated irritation that the key waterway was so vulnerable. He has publicly oscillated betweendemanding support from allies to help open it and insisting that the U.S. doesn’t need or want military assistance.
In late March—about a week before the Iranians shot down the plane—Trump had ordered his negotiating team to find a way to start talks, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
By early April, the price of gas was up by more than $1 a gallon, and industry leaders worried that the market still hadn’t properly priced the risk that the war was posing to the oil supply. The president, through his force of personality, was doing a good job talking down the price of oil, but reality would soon set in, said one person familiar with the industry.
But they’ve been told Trump is willing to take the political hit for higher prices for a short period of time, the person said.
A Miami gas station on April 6. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The president’s competing impulses, playing out in early-morning missives, concerned his aides who were growing worried the war was becoming a political albatross.
Trump’s top aides have taken turns telling the president that he should limit the impromptu interviews because they were only convincing the public he had contradictory messages. At times, Trump would joke with Leavitt that he had talked to a reporter and made big news, but she would have to wait and see what it was, White House officials said. For a bit, he agreed to curb them—then soon returned.
Trump addressed the nation on April 1.Alex Brandon/PRESS POOL
Some advisers encouraged him to do a speech to the nation. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles thought it would reassure the country that Trump had a plan. Trump wasn’t initially interested. What would he say? He couldn’t declare victory. He didn’t know where it was going. He was eventually persuaded to make the address on April 1, and aides along with outside advisers filled the room hoping to encourage him.
The U.S. had succeeded on the battlefield and the U.S. military objectives would be completed “very shortly,” he told skeptical Americans. The speech, which didn’t clarify how the U.S. would exit the war, didn’t increase public support.
Minute-by-minute rescue
The repeated crises prompted by the war have led to scrambles inside the administration.
For 24 hours over Easter weekend, Trump’s team dialed into the Situation Room: Vice President JD Vance from Camp David, Wiles from her home in Florida. They received almost minute-by-minute progress reports, of the military entering Iran, the rescue planes getting stuck in the sand, the efforts to distract the Iranians. They called the last airman by a code name.
Trump wasn’t included in the meeting but received updates by phone.
The president returned to the White House after visiting his golf club on April 5. Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
After Trump’s subsequent threat to destroy Iranian civilization, White House officials talked to Pakistani counterparts about mediating a cease-fire. Trump was too mad at the Europeans for any of them to serve the role, administration officials said.
As the world waited on the president’s 8 p.m. deadline, Trump flitted between topics, aides said. He talked to officials about endorsements in an Indiana state race. His team prepped for the midterms. He listened to officials talk about cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence policy.
He also asked Wiles and Steve Witkoff, the U.S.’s chief negotiator with Iran, where things stood. Push them to a deal, he told Witkoff repeatedly.
White House concerns about security threats have been heightened, aides said.
In recent weeks, for example, Trump and his team have noticed an increase in security. On a cloudless night in April at Mar-a-Lago, every umbrella was up on the patio in an unusual arrangement, guests said. Club members were told that there was an effort to limit drone visibility, a Mar-a-Lago member said.
Rubio told others about standing outside his home at the military compound where he lives and watching a suspicious drone, administration officials said. Secret Service protection teams have expanded to carry weapons White House officials had never seen before.
Despite the high pressure moments, Trump has also told advisers he wants to talk about other topics and see the media focus on other issues. When guests showed up for a meeting of Kennedy Center officials in March, the president pulled some of them aside to talk about the ballroom he is constructing on White House grounds. Out came drawings showing a large hole in the ground—he was amazed at all that could be built underneath. Advisers said he has multiple meetings a week on the topic and views himself as the general contractor.
Trump showed renderings of the proposed ballroom on March 29. Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
Also on his mind: raising money for the midterms. Hours after the war began on the last Saturday in February, he was at a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago. When some staff questioned if they should cancel it, Trump said he would have to eat dinner regardless.
At another gathering, one night after threatening to end Iranian civilization, Trump stood in the White House with donors and top staff for a reception ahead of America’s 250th celebration this summer. He mused about giving himself the nation’s highest military honor, the Medal of Honor, designed to honor bravery, courage and sacrifice, according to people who were at the reception.
He then told a story about why he said he deserved it: In his first term as he flew into Iraq for a surprise holiday visit to the troops, his jet descended in the dark toward an unlit runway. In dramatic fashion, he counted down the feet to the plane landing, and recalled how scary it was. The pilots kept reassuring him, he said, and they landed safely.
He couldn’t get the medal, he said, because White House counsel David Warrington, who was standing nearby at the event, wouldn’t allow it.
Leavitt, the White House spokeswoman, said he was joking.
Josh was part of a team of journalists who won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2022 for the newspaper’s coverage of Jan. 6 and won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the newspaper's coverage of the role of the AR-15 in American life. He also is a two-time recipient of the White House Correspondents Association award for news reporting. He is also a lecturer at the Allbritton Journalism Institute.“
