timelets

Trump’s Deal With His Administration Also Ends His Tax Audits

WASHINGTON—President Trump’s extraordinary agreement with the federal government expanded Tuesday to end all pending tax audits of him and his businesses, according to a document posted by the Justice Department.

In the document, signed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the government said it would be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from pursuing certain claims against Trump, his businesses and family members. The agreement specifically blocks the government from taking any action regarding tax returns that already have been filed.

Tuesday’s addendum includes broad language in which the U.S. pledges to cease pursuing any matters that are or could be pending with the IRS and with other agencies or departments. The statement includes family members and “related or affiliated individuals,” although it doesn’t clearly define those terms.

“He gets the money to spread among his friends and allies and also gets immunity for any review or audit. These guys just have no limit to what they’ll try to get away with.”

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/government-deal-with-trump-expands-to-end-tax-audits-aad8f2bc

Real banana republic stuff.

The future is here. The government now bars private businesses from using [one of] the best available AI system (Antrhopic) because it doesn't comply with the government's ideological requirements. Here, blind loyalty is put above competence explicitly and the principle reaches into everything that the government touches way down in the private sector.

Powered by encrypted messaging apps, anonymized platforms and a growing pool of people willing to move money for a cut, the system is agile, scalable and disturbingly hard to shut down. What began a decade ago as a fringe trend on dark-web bazaars is fast evolving into a sprawling global ecosystem of freelance money movers. Even the biggest criminal groups, long reliant on in-house laundering, are starting to tap it.

This is happening while the Trump administration is shifting funding and priorities away from money laundering investigations while also clearing the way for crypto to take a larger role in global finance. That raises the dangerous possibility that laundering operations could slip entirely beyond the government’s ability to police them, several watchdogs and crypto enforcement agents say.





https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-02-11/drug-cartel-money-laundering-shifts-to-crypto-and-the-gig-economy

Speaking of the Trump administration,

Both the Trumps and Witkoffs began cashing out during the run-up to the inauguration.

On Jan. 16, two lieutenants for Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the U.A.E. president’s brother, signed the deal to purchase a 49% stake in World Liberty for half a billion dollars—a huge sum for a company that at that time had no products. Of the upfront installment, $187 million was directed to Trump family entities, while $31 million was slated to flow to entities affiliated with the Witkoff family. The deal didn’t give the Tahnoon-backed entity any rights to the proceeds of future WLFI token sales, preserving the Trumps’ and Witkoffs’ income stream.

World Liberty stopped selling its WLFI token to the public in March. By then, the company said it had taken in $550 million from the token sales, in addition to the U.A.E. investment money.



https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/trump-sons-crypto-billions-1e7f1414

South Texas is a heightened example of what contractors are facing across the country in areas where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity has intensified. Home builders in Minnesota relayed similar experiences of raids picking up whole work crews, even those with legal documentation, said Grace Keliher, executive vice president of the Builders Association of Minnesota. Nationally, a third of commercial contractors reported being affected by immigration-enforcement actions in the past six months, according to a January report by trade group Associated General Contractors of America.

Two guards at a nearby immigration detention center said they frequently see detainees come in still wearing dusty work clothes from construction jobsites. A significant portion of the men they now guard have valid work permits, they said, which they haven’t seen in previous administrations, but those detainees still wait weeks to see a judge before being released.

Because of that, people are afraid to work whether they have legal authorization or not, a reality that has hit the industry and broader regional economy hard. Paul Rodriguez, CEO of Valley Land Title, estimated that residential construction activity fell 30% in recent months in Hidalgo County.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/texas-immigration-raids-economy-87e23e2e

ICE/DHS agents have quotas for daily arrests and they are highly incentivized to fulfill the quotas. Moreover, arrests counted against the quotas are not revised down even if a person arrested during the raid is released later. Therefore, doing the right thing, i.e. arresting only illegals, puts an honest and conscientious agent at a disadvantage because a) he'd have to spend more time doing verification; b) his numbers would be lower than average because they would not include lawful immigrants. This is a clear case of government corruption, where doing the right thing is disincentivized.

Anyone running a business knows that incentives matter because wrong incentives lead to wrong outcomes. When people voted for Trump in 2024 they partially justified their choice by the fact that in their opinion he was a good (rich!) businessman. What we see now is that he is a good businessman when maximizing his own profits and/or advantages, not pursuing public good. Ultimately, private business and public governance are completely different domains of expertise. I only hope is that the clique of scoundrels (Trump, Witkoff, Lutnick) and morons (RFK jr) will not do too much damage to the country.

upd. One more thing: Trump keeps touting the growing value of people's assets in 401Ks due to the stock market rise. Of course, as a businessman he knows the difference between value of assets and cash flow/liquidity: he himself went bankrupt several times because he was "assert rich and cash poor". This divide — assets vs cash flow — comes loud and clear in surveys, both formal and informal. https://www.wsj.com/economy/consumers/americans-rate-trump-economy-21b85459

We don't need AI to see that ICE, when not parasitizing on the work of regular police, with probability 95% are not doing their job of capturing criminals Trump promised to deport during his election campaign.

Only 13% of those arrested at the beginning of 2025 didn’t have either a conviction or a pending charge.

Since October, 73% taken into ICE custody had no criminal conviction and only 5% had a violent criminal conviction, according to a Cato Institute review of ICE data.

Many of the criminal immigrants the Administration counts among those in detention are convicted criminals culled from prisons.

Syracuse professor Austin Kocher, who tracks official ICE data, finds that between Sept. 21, 2025, and Jan. 7, 2026, single-day ICE detentions increased 11,296. But only 902 of those were convicted criminals, 2,273 had pending criminal charges and 8,121 were other immigrant violators. ICE arrests have been trending upward since January 2025, but criminal arrests have plateaued.

White House aide Stephen Miller’s undisciplined mass deportation and zero-immigration policy is building distrust, and the White House pitch that public safety justifies its enforcement is losing credibility.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/mass-deportation-trump-administration-ice-criminals-minnesota-tim-walz-kristi-noem-7f3bb88b

Хороший пример того, что "понять" означает не выяснить факты, а придумать себе нарратив, который соответствует какому-то внутреннему пониманию мира.

Человек начинает с намерения найти видео о конфликте. Задача необыкновенно простая, потому что таких видео в нормальных СМИ очень много, включая источники, на которые дается ссылка.

Впрочем нигде не могу найти видео начала конфликта: везде показывают, как он сопротивляется повалившим его полицейским.

Но некоторые СМИ утверждают, что есть какие-то видео, где он якобы подходит к ним не с пистолетом, а телефоном.

https://xaxam.dreamwidth.org/1333814.html?thread=8634422#cmt8634422

Что происходит дальше? Каким-то образом, она приходит к нарративу, в котором все факты неверные (разбор после цитаты):

Я так поняла, что они задерживали нелегала, а этот чудик решил зачем-то вмешаться.
Ну и получил, как пелось в той песне маслину.

А тот, кого они пытались задержать - удрал.
То есть мужик жизнь потерял из-за какого-то нелегального криминала.
Чистая премия Дарвина.
Да.

https://julinona.dreamwidth.org/494833.html?thread=5830385#cmt5830385

1. задерживали нелегала -- ICE не задерживал нелегала. Айсовец толкнул в снег женщину, которая снимала его на телефон.
2. чудик -- Мужчина, который решил помочь женщине был совершенно нормальным человеком. Он работал медбратом в системе VA, медицинских учреждений для помощи ветеранам, и у него была безупречная рабочая репутация.
3. получил ... маслину -- Мужчина получил 10 выстрелов в спину после того, как на него набросилось пять или шесть айсовцев.
4. тот, кого они пытались задержать - удрал. -- Женщина, которой помогал убитый, была американской гражданкой. Она никуда не удрала, а продолжала снимать сцену убийства.
5. жизнь потерял из-за какого-то нелегального криминала. -- В происходящем не было не только нелегалов, но и криминальных нелегалов.

Несмотря на то, что в нарративе нет ни одного верного факта (что проверяется элементарно), он является внутренне непротиворечивым рассказом о событиях. Она не врет, не создает спин, а искренне верит, что разобралась в происшедшем наилучшим способом. Никакие последующие обсуждения, не меняют ее нарратив.

Раньше я такое видел у часовщика, когда он по мотивам обсуждения в ЖЖ создавал себе фальшивый нарратив о том, как присяжные неправильно признали Трампа уголовным преступником. Сейчас не могу найти ссылку.

Video clearly shows that Alex Petti is on his knees, pinned to the ground by multiple ICE agents. One ICE agent removes Petti's gun, stored in the holster in his back. After that, another ICE agent pulls out his gun and shoots Petti in the back multiple times.

https://x.com/evanhill/status/2015244452743258324
https://www.instagram.com/p/DT6KrVBFBrz/?hl=en

WSJ Editorial Board is praying for the SCOTUS to grow balls:

The world is waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on the legality of President Trump’s “emergency” tariffs, and Mr. Trump’s weekend tariff spree against European allies underscores again why his abuse of his authority needs to be reined in.

The episode puts in sharp relief how open-ended Mr. Trump’s claim of tariff emergency authority is. He can declare an emergency on his own, he can decide which countries and goods he can hit with the border taxes, and at what rate. This means he can use tariffs essentially whenever he wants for whatever reason he wants. Congress gave him no such expansive power under IEEPA or any other statute.

Tariff apologists will say the Greenland tariffs show the uses of border taxes for foreign policy, but the taxing power is Congress’s under the Constitution unless expressly delegated to the President.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-tariffs-greenland-ieepa-supreme-court-2a4a6591

On polymarket the current bet is 31% chance they won't.

Under Trump, we are moving toward an authoritarian kleptocracy. The latest episode with Jerome Powell shows that money is the last resort against Trump's attacks. That is, the Fed Chairman doesn't appeal to the law because in an authoritarian state the law is on the side of the ruler. Rather, he appeals to the need for the Fed's independence and its importance for the markets.

It would be fun to make a cartoon sketch in the spirit of the Three Little Pigs. The first pig built its house out of norms and Trump easily blew it away. The second pig built its house out of law and Trump easily blew it away. The third pig built its house out of gold and so far we see how Trump is huffing and puffing, but can't make much damage to it, at least internally in the US.

WSJ review shows that ICE agents intentionally create situations that result in shooting of unarmed civilians in vehicles. They also violate rules of safe engagement taught to police officers.

The Journal identified 13 shootings involving ICE or CBP agents and civilian vehicles since July, using court records, news reports and gun-violence databases.

Footage verified by the Journal and a video shared on Friday by DHS show Ross moving in front of the vehicle while its engine was running, which former and current DHS agents say they are trained not to do.

The Minneapolis shooting shares characteristics with others the Journal reviewed: Agents box in a vehicle, try to remove an individual, block attempts to flee, then fire.

Footage from the shootings also shows officers approaching civilian vehicles with their engines still running—a situation police are trained to avoid. According to Kerlikowske, such training is designed to keep officers out of harm’s way.

Videos reviewed by the Journal show officers trying to open vehicle doors, reaching into vehicles and smashing windows, followed by drivers fleeing.

Police are trained to break a window only in specific circumstances, such as if the driver is armed or there is a medical emergency, said Alpert. In footage from the four cases closely reviewed by the Journal, none of the drivers had firearms, but DHS insists they were still dangerous.

Obstructing a moving vehicle
In at least three of the shootings, officers pursued a vehicle on foot. Footage also shows officers moving into the potential path of the vehicle or clinging on to it while it moved.

“It’s like policing 101. Don’t get in front of a car or in their potential pathway, especially if the engine is running,” said Jon Blum, a former North Carolina officer who now develops police training curricula.

Firing into a moving vehicle also creates its own danger, according to Alpert.

“If I shoot you, and I’m successful, now we’ve got an unguided missile,” said Alpert. “What if there are kids playing in the street?”

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/videos-show-how-ice-vehicle-stops-can-escalate-to-shootings-caf17601