Democrat Politics

President-elect Donald Trump’s outlandish threat to seize control of the Panama Canal was made as his companies face ongoing financial and legal troubles in the Central American nation. 

During a Sunday speech and in subsequent posts on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump whined about Panama’s canal fees and suggested that the U.S. could take the Panama Canal back from the Central American nation. 

However, an ongoing tax evasion lawsuit reveals the Trump Organization’s troubled history with Panama. 

“The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous, highly unfair. Especially knowing the extraordinary generosity that has been bestowed to Panama, I say very foolishly, by the United States,” Trump said at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Arizona. 

He continued: “If the principles, both moral and legal, of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America, in full, quickly, and without question.” 

Not surprisingly, Panama’s president has already responded to Trump’s laughable comments. He essentially said that Panama’s canal is not for sale—which it’s not. Built at the turn of the 20th century, the canal was peacefully turned over to the Panamanians on Dec. 31, 1999, as a result of a 1979 treaty signed by President Jimmy Carter.

But the president-elect’s not-so-subtle threats could be yet another instance of him holding grudges and seeking retribution against his political and financial enemies. And as his second term in the White House looms, Trump’s statements regarding Panama serve as another reminder of how he may wield power once officially in office.

In this March 5, 2018 file photo, a man removes the word Trump off a marquee outside the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama City. The luxury hotel that used to bear the Trump name was formally rebranded after a bitter dispute over control. The 70-story, sail-shaped tower is now the JW Marriott. 

Indeed, Trump’s comments likely weren’t made in isolation. In 2019, ProPublica revealed that the owners of a hotel tower in Panama City that formerly operated under the Trump brand accused Trump Panama Hotel Management LLC and Trump International Hotels Management LLC of not paying the 12.5% required taxes to the local government. A legal filing at the time accused the companies of “intentionally evading taxes,” which left the hotel owners liable for millions of dollars.

“Had Trump been honest with Ithaca about its failure to pay taxes on the management fees it earned and its failure to properly report employee salaries to Panama’s social security agency, Ithaca would have never entered into the [licensing deal],” read an updated complaint filed in 2020, according to Newsweek.

While there’s no direct evidence linking Trump’s recent threat to the ongoing tax case, which is still pending in New York District Court, the timing of it all hasn’t escaped notice. Some prominent political commentators have suggested that Trump’s sudden interest in controlling the Panama Canal is derived from his companies’ outstanding tax issues.  

This wouldn’t be shocking if proven true. Since Election Day, the president-elect has made thinly veiled threats against and trolled several foreign nations, including Canada and Greenland. 

It’s entirely possible, then, that Panama is just the latest foreign nation to stoke Trump’s ire. The problem is that come January, the petty grudge-holder will have the power of the world’s most powerful military behind him.

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Companies are ripping off their diversity, equity, and inclusion masks and reaffirming the driving force behind their company-wide policies: profits above all. 

Following the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020, many companies ramped up their diversity efforts in response to a majority of U.S. voices (i.e., consumers) expressing a desire for representation. 

However, as some experts speculated, company changes to workplace environments appear to have been more of a temporary effort to appease disgruntled pocketbooks. 

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With felon-elect Donald Trump preparing to take the White House, some companies are leaning into Trump’s “anti-woke” and anti-DEI rhetoric and rolling back programs to make their workplaces more inclusive. 

Additionally, following the Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision to strike down affirmative action in colleges, companies seemingly moved away from their diversity efforts in an apparent fear of legal repercussions.

Here are some of the companies who have dropped their DEI policies in the past year. 

Sure, it’s a family story they can chuckle about NOW. But Lisa Highfill wasn’t laughing that December day almost 20 years ago.

She had just parked the car in the garage when her then-8-year-old son let loose with something he had found out while at school.

“My son looks at me, he goes, ‘There’s no Santa. You’ve been lying to me,'” recalls Highfill, 56, of Pleasanton, California. “He caught me red-handed, I didn’t know what to say.”

She’s not alone in that. Welcome to the holiday season. It’s that time of year filled with Christmas cheer, presents, and the ever-present parental question: Do we tell the kids the truth about Santa Claus? (And if you don’t know what that truth is, you shouldn’t be reading this story! Stop it! Stop it right now!)

RELATED STORY: We all stop believing someday, but nobody should hear it from Trump

There’s no getting away from Santa Claus, the jolly, bearded old man who’s been celebrated for the better part of two centuries for bringing presents in a one-night, world-wide giving spree. He’s been the subject of poems and stories, movies and songs, invoked as the judge of naughty or nice, the recipient of countless cookies and glasses of milk to sustain him on his journey.

Not bad for someone who doesn’t actually, you know, exist.

(Too late for a spoiler alert?)

Many parents want to give their kids magic

For a lot of parents and other adults, perpetuating that Santa Claus is real is a chance to give young children a bit of holiday magic, a brief, precious time before the realities of life sweep the illusions away. Others, though, are more skeptical, raising concerns about some of the messaging in Santa’s story, such as the constant surveillance over behavior, and in an era where we’re all worried about disinformation, misinformation and parents lying to children.

For David Kyle Johnson, a professor of philosophy at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the concern is the lengths some parents go to in order to eke out the last bits of belief from their kids, such as denying their dawning suspicions as they get older over how Santa Claus could logically do what he’s supposed to.

“Yeah, it’s Santa, it’s fun or whatever. But you’re teaching them lessons about how to think and how to evaluate evidence, right?,” Johnson says. “And how many people grow up then as adults who believe things just because they want to believe things, because it feels good — believe things because it confirms the world view that makes them feel good, right?”

For Tara Boyce, it’s about being consistent about being factual and truthful with her two sons, 6 and 7, that she’s always been Santa, and that Christmas doesn’t need him to be magical. At the same time, she’s told them that people in other homes do things differently, so it’s not on her boys to try to disillusion their friends.

Her sons “love Christmas. They love the lights. They love the movies. They love the music. They love the cartoons. They love all the trappings,” says Boyce, 46, of Livermore, California.

“They can’t miss what they never had, which is like the mystery of Santa, but they appreciate all the other things.”

The modern ‘Santa’ recipe has many ingredients

An American creation amalgamated from a variety of European cultures and immigrant communities, Santa Claus emerged in the 19th century and was firmly entrenched in American culture by the early part of the 20th century.

He’s unique among made-up characters like the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny because a whole story, a world, has been developed around him over the decades, says Thomas Ruys Smith, professor of American literature and culture at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom.

“Where does he live? Is he married? Who makes his toys? We could all give you answers to those questions based on pieces of popular culture,” he says. “We feel we know Santa Claus.”

There’s no empirical evidence whatsoever that shows any kind of definitive harm or good coming to children over a belief in Santa Claus. Candice Mills, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Dallas who has done a research study into how children felt about learning Santa isn’t real, found that for most kids in the study, negative feelings over discovering the truth were usually short-lived.

“They look forward to new traditions. They get to celebrate with their siblings. They get to still enjoy getting presents from Santa Claus, even though they know it’s not real,” she says.

And when talking to parents, Mills’ research found that many of those planned to or were incorporating a Santa tradition for their kids even as they recalled being upset at learning the truth as children themselves.

It was tradition that had Highfill and her husband bringing Santa Claus into their Christmas celebrations with their sons to begin with, echoing as parents what their parents had done for them.

She hadn’t thought about how it would conflict with the parenting lessons they were trying to impart to the boys, that telling the truth was paramount. Those were lessons the boys had taken to heart, as the upset in the car made clear, she recalls with a laugh.

“I go inside, he won’t come out of the car. … He’s in there screaming and crying. He’s very upset. I’ve deceived him. His life is a lie. `How could you have done this?’”

It was a big moment, but it didn’t destroy her son’s enjoyment of the holiday in the years afterward. If anything, Highfill says, it became a special thing he shared with his parents, especially when it came to keeping his younger brother from finding out.

“He wanted to keep it from his brother, which was kind of funny,” Highfill says. “He’s like … we don’t want to spoil it for him because he’s really into it. He’s a 6-year-old.”

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President Joe Biden on Monday vetoed a bill that would have allowed Donald Trump to stack federal district courts with dozens of new judges. It’s the latest move by the outgoing president to block Trump from imposing his ruinous will on the country.

The bill, titled the JUDGES Act of 2024, would have created 66 new judgeships over the next 10 years, with Trump getting as many as 25 of those new judicial seats to fill, according to Rep. Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat and the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee.

In a statement, Biden said he vetoed the legislation because it is unclear “how the new judgeships are allocated.” Biden added that the bill would have rewarded the Republican senators who purposefully blocked his judicial nominations.

“Those efforts to hold open vacancies suggest that concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now,” Biden wrote.

By vetoing the legislation, Biden ensures that Trump gets to install fewer right-wing judges. Trump’s appointees for his second term are likely to oppose abortion rights; support deregulation that lets corporations discriminate against workers, pollute the earth and aid in global warming; and allow Trump carte blanche with presidential immunity—among other things.

President Joe Biden greets Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson ahead of the State of the Union address at the Capitol, March 7, 2024, in Washington.

Despite Republicans’ attempts to block Biden’s judicial nominees, Biden was still able to put 235 judges on the federal bench—one more than the 234 Trump got confirmed in his first term. Biden also appointed more Black judges than any president in history‚ including the Supreme Court’s first Black woman, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. In just one term, Biden appointed 63 Black judges, outdoing both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who shared the previous record of 62 across two terms.

The veto came a day after Biden commuted the sentences of 37 inmates on federal death row, before Trump could return to office and resume executions. Those prisoners will serve life in prison, but will not be put to death.

Biden opposes the death penalty, and halted federal executions while in office. Until Trump resumed them, federal executions had been paused for 15 years.

In 2021, before he was forced out of office kicking and screaming, Trump rushed to execute federal death row inmates before Biden could take office.

In the days leading up to Biden’s inauguration, Trump executed five prisoners—even though there had been a 130-year-old precedent of not executing inmates during a presidential transition.

In total, Trump executed 13 death row inmates in his four years in office. It was a massive killing spree, as just three prisoners had been executed in the 60 years prior to Trump, the Associated Press reported.

Last week, the Biden administration began pulling back pending regulations. The move ensures Trump can’t manipulate them for his own goals and enjoy the progress made by their original iterations. Instead, the AP notes, Trump will have to start at square one.

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More shoppers than ever are on track to use ”buy now, pay later” plans this holiday season, as the ability to spread out payments looks attractive at a time when Americans still feel the lingering effect of inflation and already have record-high credit card debt.

The data firm Adobe Analytics predicts shoppers will spend 11.4% more this holiday season using buy now, pay later than they did a year ago. The company forecasts shoppers will purchase $18.5 billion worth of goods using the third-party services for the period Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, with $993 million worth of purchases on Cyber Monday alone.

Buy now, pay later can be particularly appealing to consumers who have low credit scores or no credit history, such as younger shoppers, because most of the companies providing the service run only soft credit checks and don’t report the loans and payment histories to the credit bureaus, unlike credit card companies.

A cartoon by Clay Bennett.

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Congressman Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, shared with Fox News on Monday his outrage over the release of the long-awaited Matt Gaetz investigative report from the House Ethics Committee.

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“I think it’s vindictive in nature,” Burchett said. “I just don’t see the point in all this is, a couple of old timers are going to cackle about it, and again, it’s not been proven, this is just a report,” stressing that it is “not a court of law.”

The allegations against Gaetz, of which Burchett doesn’t think the public should be made aware, include paying multiple women—including a minor—for sex and purchasing and using illegal drugs while serving in office.

“The Committee concluded there was substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress,” the report concluded.

The context for the release of the report is twofold: One, Gaetz served as a member of Congress from 2017 until last month, a time during which he had a say in the creation of laws affecting millions of Americans. And two, Donald Trump nominated Gaetz as attorney general—a role in which he would have massive power in determining the application of federal law.

At the time, Trump wrote that Gaetz “distinguished himself in Congress through his focus on achieving desperately needed reform at the Department of Justice.”

Before the release of the damning report, Gaetz sought a restraining order to keep it sealed. He has denied the allegations in the report.

Just a few weeks ago, the Republican-led House Ethics Committee was on the same side of the issue as Gaetz and voted to block the document’s release. It was only after a series of reports on the allegations against Gaetz and Trump’s decision to pull his name from consideration for attorney general that the committee reversed course.

Gaetz is set to join the pro-Trump One America News Network as the host of “The Matt Gaetz Show,” which will be a part of the unpopular network’s primetime lineup. At the time of this story, the report on Gaetz had not been acknowledged on the One America News website or social media accounts.

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A cartoon by Clay Jones.

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Victims’ families and others affected by crimes that resulted in federal death row convictions shared a range of emotions on Monday, from relief to anger, after President Joe Biden commuted dozens of the sentences.

Biden converted the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The inmates include people who were convicted in the slayings of police, military officers and federal prisoners and guards. Others were involved in deadly robberies and drug deals.

Three inmates will remain on federal death row: Dylann Roof, convicted of the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; the 2013 Boston Marathon Bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history.

From left: Robert Bowers, the gunman who massacred 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue, Dylann Roof, who committed racist slayings of nine members of a Black South Carolina congregation, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted for carrying out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing attack.

Opponents of the death penalty lauded Biden for a decision they’d long sought. Supporters of Donald Trump, a vocal advocate of expanding capital punishment, criticized the move as an assault to common decency just weeks before the president-elect takes office.

Victims’ families and former colleagues share relief and anger

Donnie Oliverio, a retired Ohio police officer whose partner was killed by an inmate whose death sentence was commuted, said the execution of “the person who killed my police partner and best friend would have brought me no peace.”

“The president has done what is right here,” Oliverio said in a statement also issued by the White House, “and what is consistent with the faith he and I share.”

Heather Turner, whose mother, Donna Major, was killed in a bank robbery in South Carolina in 2017, called Biden’s commutation of the killer’s sentence a “clear gross abuse of power” in a Facebook post, adding that the weeks she spent in court with the hope of justice were now “just a waste of time.”

“At no point did the president consider the victims,” Turner wrote. “He, and his supporters, have blood on their hands.”

Decision to leave Roof on death row met with conflicting emotions

There has always been a broad range of opinions on what punishment Roof should face from the families of the nine people killed and the survivors of the massacre at the Mother Emanuel AME Church. Many forgave him, but some say they can’t forget and their forgiveness doesn’t mean they don’t want to see him put to death for what he did.

Felicia Sanders survived the shooting shielding her granddaughter while watching Roof kill her son, Tywanza, and her aunt, Susie Jackson. Sanders brought her bullet-torn bloodstained Bible to his sentencing and said then she can’t even close her eyes to pray because Roof started firing during the closing prayer of Bible study that night.

In a text message to her lawyer, Andy Savage, Sanders called Biden’s decision to not spare Roof’s life a wonderful Christmas gift.

Tyrone Sanders and Felicia Sanders comfort each other at the graveside of their son, Tywanza Sanders, on June 27, 2015, at Emanuel AME Cemetery in Charleston, S.C.

Michael Graham, whose sister, Cynthia Hurd, was killed, told The Associated Press that Roof’s lack of remorse and simmering white nationalism in the country means he is the kind of dangerous and evil person the death penalty is intended for.

“This was a crime against a race of people,” Graham said. “It didn’t matter who was there, only that they were Black.”

But the Rev. Sharon Richer, who was Tywanza Sanders’ cousin and whose mother, Ethel Lance, was killed, criticized Biden for not sparing Roof and clearing out all of death row. She said every time Roof’s case comes up through numerous appeals it is like reliving the massacre all over again.

“I need the President to understand that when you put a killer on death row, you also put their victims’ families in limbo with the false promise that we must wait until there is an execution before we can begin to heal,” Richer said in a statement.

Richer, a board member of Death Penalty Action, which seeks to abolish capital punishment, was driven to tears by conflicting emotions during a Zoom news conference Monday.

“The families are left to be hostages for the years and years of appeals that are to come,” Richer said. “I’ve got to stay away from the news today. I’ve got to turn the TV off — because whose face am I going to see?”

Biden is giving more attention to the three inmates he chose not to spare, something they all wanted as a part of what drove them to kill, said Abraham Bonowitz, Death Penalty Action’s executive director.

“These three racists and terrorists who have been left on death row came to their crimes from political motivations. When Donald Trump gets to execute them what will really be happening is they will be given a global platform for their agenda of hatred,” Bonowitz said.

Politicians and advocacy groups speak up

Biden had faced pressure from advocacy organizations to commute federal death sentences, and several praised him for taking action in his final month in office.

Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, said in a statement that Biden “has shown our country — and the rest of the world — that the brutal and inhumane policies of our past do not belong in our future.”

Related story: Biden commutes 37 death sentences before Trump can resume executions

Republicans, including Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, on the other hand, criticized the move — and argued its moral ground was shaky given the three exceptions.

“Once again, Democrats side with depraved criminals over their victims, public order, and common decency,” Cotton wrote on X. “Democrats can’t even defend Biden’s outrageous decision as some kind of principled, across-the-board opposition to the death penalty since he didn’t commute the three most politically toxic cases.”

Liz Murrill, Louisiana’s Republican attorney general, criticized the commuted sentence of Len Davis, a former New Orleans policeman convicted of orchestrating the killing of a woman who had filed a complaint against him.

“We can’t trust the Feds to get justice for victims of heinous crimes, so it’s long past time for the state to get it done,” the tough-on-crime Republican said in a written statement to the AP.

One inmate’s attorney expresses thanks — and his remorse

Two men whose sentences were commuted were Norris Holder and Billie Jerome Allen, on death row for opening fire with assault rifles during a 1997 bank robbery in St. Louis, killing a guard, 46-year-old Richard Heflin.

Holder’s attorney, Madeline Cohen, said in an email that Holder, who is Black, was sentenced to death by an all-white jury. She said his case “reflects many of the system’s flaws,” and thanked Biden for commuting his sentence.

“Norris’ case exemplifies the racial bias and arbitrariness that led the President to commute federal death sentences,” Cohen said. “Norris has always been deeply remorseful for the pain his actions caused, and we hope this decision brings some measure of closure to Richard Heflin’s family.”