Just when we believe that President Donald Trump’s actions can no longer surprise us, something emerges where reality is stranger than fiction. Now he announced a fund of $1,776 million from the public treasury to compensate his allies who feel that they were “victims” of accusations, investigations or even that they were convicted during the government of Democrat Joe Biden.
Among these “victims” are those responsible for the bloody assault on the federal Capitol on January 6, 2021 to prevent the certification of Biden’s legitimate victory in the 2020 elections. Individuals who, armed to the teeth, attacked police officers and wanted to lynch the then vice president, Mike Pence, and other congressional leaders. They were convicted and were serving prison terms but Trump, after winning the 2024 election, pardoned them and called them “patriots” and “hostages.”
The compensation, of course, does not come from Trump’s pocket but from American taxpayers. The same taxpayers who face high fuel costs due to the war against Iran started by Trump, as well as food, housing and medical care. For those, however, there is no relief because once again Trump shows that he is the president of his contaminated MAGA, but not of the rest of the Americans who suffer the consequences of his public policies.
This shameless idea arises from Trump’s agreement with his own government. The president sued the IRS for $10 billion over the release of his taxes, claiming the government did not do enough to protect this information. He decided to withdraw the lawsuit in exchange for several conditions that include that $1.776 million dollars be dedicated to a fund so that allies of the president who feel that they have been “victims” of investigations can have “compensation.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had the cynicism to state: “The machinery of government should never be used as a weapon against any American, and it is the intention of this department to correct past mistakes while ensuring that this does not happen again.”
This is the same Department of Justice that is actively pursuing Trump’s opponents or those he perceives as his political “enemies” because they investigated him in the past, such as former FBI Director James Comey or New York Attorney General Letitia James, among others.
Apart from being an outrageous proposal because it seeks to reward criminals, it is another example of the waste of taxpayers’ money.
Like his $1 billion ballroom in the White House, or the bottomless barrel into which billions of taxpayer dollars, $170 billion, continue to be thrown into a senseless immigration policy that affects not only the undocumented but citizens and authorized residents. More than 170 US citizens have been detained by ICE. And through the budget reconciliation process, Congress is preparing to grant another $70 billion to ICE and CBP without reforming how their agents operate.
An immigration policy that cost the lives of two American citizens at the hands of immigration agents in Minnesota, not counting the dozens of immigrants killed in detention centers that also receive taxpayer money hand over fist, $45 billion to be exact, but that do not provide adequate medical care and house immigrants, including children, in deplorable conditions.
A system that separates families and affects, especially American children. An analysis by the Brookings Institution found that since Trump took office for his second term, 400,000 immigrants have been detained in the country’s interior. That has impacted some 200,000 children who have lost at least one parent in the process. “Our analysis indicates that it is possible that more than 145,000 US citizen boys and girls have experienced the detention of one of their parents since (Trump) took office, and that more than 22,000 of them have suffered the detention of both parents with whom they lived,” the analysis says.
An immigration policy that discards the economic contributions of the immigrants it detains and deports.
According to the American Immigration Council (AIC), “in 2023, households headed by undocumented immigrants paid $89.8 billion in federal, state and local taxes.” If they stop paying taxes for fear of being located or because they are deported, the United States would lose, according to the Yale Budget Laboratory, between $147,000 and $479,000 million dollars in the next 10 years.
And more than 70% of those detained and eventually deported have no criminal history, contrary to the insurrectionists of January 6, 2021 that Trump now wants to compensate with public funds.
