Change is in the air in Washington—and on the campuses of America’s colleges and universities. As President Trump implements his campaign to reduce the cost of government, eliminate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, American higher education will change. Given that American higher education has been the envy of the world for more than a century, this is not a good thing.

The Trump administration and conservative Republicans believe that Washington is responsible for what it sees as a liberal bias at many schools. The administration sees higher education, with rare exceptions, as hostile to the GOP. It also believes it is the source of initiatives that are obstacles to America becoming “great” again—things like DEI, academic offerings it sees as “woke,” and efforts to curtail free speech by prohibiting right-wing speakers from campus. 

The new administration, with help from Republicans in Congress, has already attacked elite institutions as anti-Semitic and accused all higher education of wastefulness. 

As the FY 2026 Budget is determined, Republicans see an opportunity to kill more than one bird with the stones of their Project 2025-inspired agenda. Several initiatives already are underway via Executive Orders and institutions have taken notice. African American and gay and lesbian studies have been curtailed at some schools, DEI offices closed, gender or ethnic-specific clubs have been banned. The goal is not to be targeted by Trump for deeper penalties.

The efforts to “get in line” may work for some institutions, but the changes in spending and policy under consideration on Capitol Hill and within the Trump administration will change American higher education for the worse. 

The writers of Project 2025 proposed:

The next Administration should work with Congress to eliminate or move OPE [Office of Postsecondary Education] programs to The ETA [Employment and Training Administration] at the Department of Labor. 

This proposal includes major modifications to institutional accreditation to prevent accreditors from requiring things like DEI programs. The goal also is to reorient higher education to increase its focus on job-training. That change conflicts directly with the mission of hundreds of small liberal arts colleges and universities. 

Project 2025 proposed:

Funding to institutions should be block-granted and narrowed to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and tribally controlled colleges. 

This short-sighted proposal is based on a misunderstanding of federal support for HBCUs and tribally controlled colleges. More Black and other minority students are served at non-HBCUs than at them. If the goal is to increase college attainment for underrepresented populations, cutting funding to institutions that serve such students is a major mistake. For reasons that are not clear, Project 2025 ignores Hispanic-serving institutions altogether. 

Research and other grants are important to hundreds of smaller but high-quality colleges and universities, including public institutions. The ability of these institutions to maintain their quality will be undermined if resources are eliminated. 

The Administration also seeks to move programs deemed important to our national security interests to the Department of State. How is the Department of State supposed to oversee such programs if its staff is cut? And given that most funds involved in these programs involve colleges and universities, the State Department doesn’t have the expertise to administer them.

Project 2025 calls for a complete restructuring of federal student loan programs:

The next Administration should completely reverse the student loan federalization of 2010 and work with Congress to spin off FSA [The Office of Federal Student Aid] and its student loan obligations to a new government corporation with professional governance and management.

This proposal calls for returning student lending to banks and other private sector institutions, an action taken in 2010 to reduce the cost of providing student loans. Presumably, the authors of Project 2025 believe creating a “new government corporation” would save money. Maybe call it Sallie Mae 2.0? Hopefully, The Trump Organization is NOT planning to enter the student loan business. 

More important than this change is the proposal to eliminate loan forgiveness and income contingent loan repayment plans including SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education). Project 2025 provides:

The new Administration must end abuses in the loan forgiveness programs. Borrowers should be expected to repay their loans.

It is unclear what “abuses” Project 2025 was referencing. The language in Project 2025 also would have been more honest had it added, “or not borrow federal student loans at all.”

The proposed changes would dramatically increase the cost of borrowing for college. Hundreds of thousands of students would not be able to afford college, most of them from low to moderate-income families. 

The increased cost of borrowing would also result in hundreds of smaller institutions, many affiliated with churches, closing because they will be unaffordable for most students and the schools have little or no endowment or other means of subsidizing tuition. 

House Republicans have also called for an “excise tax” on the endowments of elite colleges and universities (those with large endowments). The rate is already 1.4 percent. Proposals are now under discussion to increase that rate to 14 or even 20 percent.

This tax increase is seen as a means of punishing elite schools for their “liberal bias, “but also would produce revenue savings that could be used to help pay for extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts. One unforeseen result is likely to be a decrease in donations to elite colleges and universities, something that, in the long run, will undermine their excellence.

There are other changes to higher education beyond those referenced in this column. The administration would change Title IX (Ensuring Gender Equity in Education), for example, in a way that would result in fewer athletic opportunities for women attending college.

If you agree that one of the reasons America is great today is because of our colleges and universities and widespread educational opportunity, be afraid of the Republican proposals. They would kill the higher education system that the rest of the world has sought to replicate and put an end to American leadership in technology, science, and engineering. 

J.E. Dean writes on politics, government, and, too infrequently, other subjects. A former counsel on Capitol Hill and public affairs consultant, Dean also writes for Dean’s List on Medium and Dean’s Issues & Insights on Substack.

Scroll back to 1967 when The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly was released. The film was an instant classic. I watched it again recently and enjoyed it thoroughly. That experience led me to do something I’ve done dozens of times since 1967: I used the film’s title as the starting point to analyze something I didn’t like. In this column, I am doing it again.

We are in a “Wild West period” in American politics. A felon is president, and he’s angry. In some ways, he’s on a rampage, energized by power and bent on revenge against people and ideas that he believes wronged him. It’s Old Testament stuff, but the old Donald Trump remains there. He wants to be remembered as a great man despite January 6 and a chaotic first term in the White House. And to achieve that, he must do “big things” and diminish the reputations and legacies of Presidents Biden and Obama and others. Taylor Swift, for example, has repeatedly been the target of juvenile Trump social media posts.

You need a scorecard to keep track of everything Trump has done since winning the November election. (If you want a list, you can find one in the February 9th edition of the New York Times.) Trump has been busy. To keep track, I read the news, discuss issues with others involved in public policy, and monitor Trump’s social media posts (as well as those of his effective co-president, Musk). It isn’t easy to know who is on first.

Where do some of these crazy ideas come from? Why did Trump choose people who he knew, or should have known, were cringeworthy for his cabinet? And how has he managed to create a team that, despite an agenda structured to glorify 78-year-old Trump, shows up to work daily ready to deconstruct government and engage in actions that, with few exceptions, end up in court battles?

To aid in my efforts to understand Trumpism, I expanded the “analytical structure” of the 1967 Clint Eastwood film by adding “The Insane.” I did this because some of Trump’s thinking, relating to his “J6 Patriots,” the Middle East, Canada, and “terminating” the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, can only be categorized as crazy.

Here is part of my working list of what Trump has done since election day 2024:

The Good. 

I don’t have anything yet. It is good that illegal border crossings are down, but that arguable “good” outcome results from Trump’s massive ICE crackdown, which includes mass arrests and, most recently, warehousing arrestees in Guantanamo Bay, where critics accuse Trump of building a “concentration camp.”

The Bad.

Cabinet nominees unfit for service because of lack of experience (Hegseth), doubts about loyalty to the United States (Gabbard), or their personal histories (RFK, Jr., Pete Hegseth, Gaetz, and several others). Did you read that RFK, Jr. disclosed massive credit card debt on his financial disclosure forms? What type of person, regardless of their wealth, has a balance of $1 million in card debt?

Can we admit that Elon Musk is “on the scale” and is not the world’s greatest genius? Trump has set Musk loose with the instruction to deconstruct the federal government as a “special employee” of the U.S. Musk’s DOGE, using young, inexperienced people, many from Musk’s SpaceX or Tesla, is evaluating and recommending the “termination” of federal agencies about which they know little or nothing.

Musk contributed $288 million to the Trump campaign. Why would he do that, regardless of his wealth? And why do you think Musk hates government regulation?

How about nominating Ivanka’s father-in-law — a convicted felon — to serve as ambassador to France? That is more than a garden-variety faux pas.

Suspending the enforcement of a statute that criminalizes U.S. businesses engaging in bribery (The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act).

Canceling President Biden’s security briefing.

Canceling security details for Dr. Fauci, John Bolton, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Canceling security briefings for former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Wouldn’t using both as resources on national security issues make better sense?

Removing General Milley’s portrait from the wall in the Pentagon. Petty, petty, petty.

The Insane:

Talking about “taking ownership” of Gaza. Most of us gasped when we heard this nonsense. U.S. foreign policy should not be hijacked to create real estate development opportunities.

Pardoning January 6 insurrectionists that injured police and destroyed property. One has already been shot dead by police while resisting arrest for a new crime.

Suggesting Canada should be “The 51st State.” Trump was not kidding.

The Panama Canal and Greenland. Imperialism is alive and well inside the White House (or, better said, inside the president’s brain).

Renaming the Gulf of Mexico. Why?

My analysis could go on. My point? The president has chosen to launch dozens of actions that conflict with the law, are poorly thought-out, alienate allies, and Make America Look Foolish Again.

Many of Trump’s illegal actions are already before the courts. Judges are issuing injunctions and blocking the implementation of many of Trump’s Executive Orders. Sadly, Presidents Musk and Trump have condemned the courts for their actions and will likely continue implementing their plans while appealing the court action.

An impeachment resolution (the first of many) has already been introduced in the House of Representatives. Trump should be lawyering up for another House impeachment, likely if the Democrats retake the House of Representatives in the 2026 elections.

A growing number of Americans are taking a look at what Trump has done in less than a month in office and do not like it. Widespread protests against Trump are coming, and none too soon.

J.E. Dean writes on politics, government, and, too infrequently, other subjects. A former counsel on Capitol Hill and public affairs consultant, Dean also writes for Dean’s List on Medium and Dean’s Issues & Insights on Substack.

 

The world held its breath the morning of February 3, 2025. Trump’s tariffs on Canadian, Mexican, and Chinese goods were scheduled to go into effect. Stock markets around the globe panicked. Initial losses were in the billions. Only when Mexico’s President Claudia Scheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced they were deploying more troops at their borders with the U.S. as an additional deterrent to the smuggling of people and drugs in the U.S. did President Trump delay the 25 percent tariffs. 

Already Trump is pounding his chest, congratulating himself for bullying our neighbors. As I write this, China has responded to the 10 percent increase on Chinese goods with retaliatory tariffs and other actions. China also announced a new requirement for export licenses for five metals used for various industrial and defense industries.  A trade war with China may have begun. 

The markets believe that Trump was bluffing, but Trump will claim that his threats of draconian tariffs are real. And his apparent success at making Canada and Mexico offers they couldn’t refuse will only encourage Trump to threaten—and impose—more tariffs against more countries. 

Trump is doing what thugs do—resorting to threats instead of reason or dialogue to get his way. Trump expects to be declared a national hero for what he did, and what he threatens to do.

I am not only not ready to congratulate Trump for a brilliant foreign policy move; I’m ready to see him impeached for it. Trump has told Mexico and Canada that they are not our allies—they are our abusers. And Trump is using threats to end that abuse. If you were Prime Minister of Canada or President of Mexico, how long would it take you to get on the phone to President Xi and initiate talks at how best to respond to the U.S.?

President Trump came into office with peaceful borders with Canada and Mexico. That may come to an end soon. Canada logically might be thinking about allowing the Chinese to open a military base in Manitoba or Alberta. And Mexico, which already perceives itself to be economically exploited by the U.S., might want to embrace China, or even Russia.

Allies do not abuse one another. They do not propose annexing each other or ridicule their allies’ leaders. They work together for their mutual security and prosperity.

I went to graduate school in Toronto. I never once saw Canadians as adversaries or exploiters because they weren’t. Canadians, for the time being, are our friends. Instead of bullying and threatening them, the U.S. should work in tandem with them to address issues that seem to motivate Trump’s rash actions. (With Trump, you can never be sure what drives his actions.)

Trump seems to assume that Americans, or, in his mind, the ones who are not lunatics, support his actions. This will change if he throws the American economy into chaos which is what he appears to be doing.

Trump’s threats of massive tariffs should be seen as the actions of an idiot playing with a stick of dynamite. If Trump’s strategy, based on the aggressive and sometimes illegal practices of The Trump Organization in the real estate business, backfires, it may not be possible to “put the economy back together again” by simply repealing the ill-conceived tariffs. The memory of the tariffs and the recklessness of Trump will remain for many years. Our allies will not forget that America is capable of electing someone like Trump president and letting him recklessly abuse them.

It is too early to suggest that the world will end because of what Trump did on February 3, just as it is also naïve to suggest that his tariff threat worked with Mexico and Canada.

How will China respond to the Trump tariffs if an agreement is not reached to continue talks? More retaliatory tariffs are probable. China will also seek retribution in illegal ways, by increasing industrial spying and intellectual property theft and with additional displays of its military might. In other words, China’s reaction will be different than that of Mexico and China.

 It is not too early to start praying that Trump will either realize the mistake of using tariffs as a weapon or somehow be prevented from doing so again.

Trump is making the world a more dangerous place with his reckless tariff policy. American consumers will pay more for goods. American industry dependent on supply chains and markets in Mexico, Canada, and China will suffer. And the risk of a tariff war with China evolving into something worse is increasing. Thank you, Donald Trump. 

J.E. Dean writes on politics, government, and, too infrequently, other subjects. A former counsel on Capitol Hill and public affairs consultant, Dean also writes for Dean’s List on Medium and Dean’s Issues & Insights on Substack.

 

January 20, 2025 will go down in the history books, but not for the reasons Donald Trump thinks. His inauguration was a “shock and awe” affair, but the shock was at how much Trump’s narcissism has grown and how long his anger over his own mistakes has lasted. That anger has sent Trump on a journey to rewrite the sordid history of his own treason in the hopes that once he is dead, he will still be viewed by some as a great man.

Trump’s inauguration speech this year was as remarkable as that of 2017 but bests it in the depth of its lies and the sheer viciousness, expressed in how the speech treated President Biden and his administration. 

Trump implies that the Biden administration was one of the most consequential—in a bad way—in American history. To believe Trump, Biden, ridiculed for years by Trump as senile and incompetent, not only undid America’s last golden age (2017-2021) but most of the things that made America great before Trump’s first term. 

As president, Trump is entitled to his own perspective on history, but we are entitled to judge its veracity. Similarly, Trump won the presidency, in part, because he is brash and crude, but, as citizens, we have the right to condemn him when his behavior disgusts us. Trump tripped that wire in his inauguration speech.

President and Jill Biden, unlike Trump in 2017, chose to attend the inauguration of his successor despite the viciousness of Trump’s campaign. Starting in 2021, Trump systematically sought to destroy Biden’s presidency and credibility, both through personal attacks and by lying. Trump succeeded. Biden left office with a permanently broken legacy he doesn’t deserve. Biden had every reason in the world not to attend the inauguration.

Had Biden not been the fundamentally decent and patriotic man he is, he would have left Washington on January 19.

Here is what Trump told America in his speech with Biden sitting a few feet away:

“As we gather today, our government confronts a crisis of trust. For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair.

“We now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home while, at the same time, stumbling into a continuing catalogue of catastrophic events abroad.

“It fails to protect our magnificent, law-abiding American citizens but provides sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals, many from prisons and mental institutions, that have illegally entered our country from all over the world.

“We have a government that has given unlimited funding to the defense of foreign borders but refuses to defend American borders or, more importantly, its own people.

“Our country can no longer deliver basic services in times of emergency, as recently shown by the wonderful people of North Carolina — who have been treated so badly — and other states who are still suffering from a hurricane that took place many months ago or, more recently, Los Angeles, where we are watching fires still tragically burn from weeks ago without even a token of defense. They’re raging through the houses and communities, even affecting some of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in our country — some of whom are sitting here right now. They don’t have a home any longer. That’s interesting. But we can’t let this happen. Everyone is unable to do anything about it. That’s going to change.

“We have a public health system that does not deliver in times of disaster, yet more money is spent on it than any country anywhere in the world.

“And we have an education system that teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves — in many cases, to hate our country despite the love that we try so desperately to provide to them.”

President and Jill Biden—and Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff—should have walked out on Trump.

J.E. Dean writes on politics, government, and, too infrequently, other subjects. A former counsel on Capitol Hill and public affairs consultant, Dean also writes for Dean’s List on Medium and Dean’s Issues & Insights on Substack.

 

After watching several reruns of video of the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol, I decided not to write about it this week.  President Biden’s editorial in Monday’s Washington Post said enough about that sad day and the importance of remembering it.  In part, the president wrote:

“We must remember the wisdom of the adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it. We cannot accept a repeat of what occurred four years ago.

“An unrelenting effort has been underway to rewrite — even erase — the history of that day. To tell us we didn’t see what we all saw with our own eyes. To dismiss concerns about it as some kind of partisan obsession. To explain it away as a protest that just got out of hand.

“But on this day, we cannot forget. This is what we owe those who founded this nation, those who have fought for it and died for it.

“And we should commit to remembering Jan. 6, 2021, every year. To remember it as a day when our democracy was put to the test and prevailed. To remember that democracy — even in America — is never guaranteed.

“We should never forget it is our democracy that makes everything possible — our freedoms, our rights, our liberties, our dreams. And that it falls to every generation of Americans to defend and protect it.”

With President Biden’s words in mind, we need to move past January 6, 2021 and focus on the future.  Unfortunately, that future includes soon-to-be President Trump asking Congress to pass major parts of the  MAGA agenda in “one powerful bill.”  Trump wrote:

“Members of Congress are getting to work on one powerful Bill that will bring our Country back, and make it greater than ever before. We must Secure our Border, Unleash American Energy, and Renew the Trump Tax Cuts, which were the largest in History, but we will make it even better – NO TAX ON TIPS. IT WILL ALL BE MADE UP WITH TARIFFS, AND MUCH MORE, FROM COUNTRIES THAT HAVE TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF THE U.S. FOR YEARS. Republicans must unite, and quickly deliver these Historic Victories for the American People. Get smart, tough, and send the Bill to my desk to sign as soon as possible. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

What is wrong here?  Everything. The Framers of the Constitution created a Congress to legislate the laws of the land and an Executive Branch of government to implement the law.  Trump is asking his slim majority in Congress to abdicate their responsibility to take his proposals, deliberate carefully on them, before passing them.

 If Congressional Republicans act on Trump’s none-too-subtle request, there likely would be no hearings, no analysis, no debate, and no opportunity for Democrats to offer amendments to one massive bill that would rewrite immigration policy, radically change energy policy, and extend the Trump 2017 tax cuts.  Unless the bill grants Trump massive, most likely unconstitutional discretion to implement the policies envisioned, the bill will be hundreds of pages long.

Congress must do its work as envisioned by the Framers of the Constitution.  They need to accept Trump’s proposals, analyze them for both programmatic and budgetary impact, hold hearings to receive input on the proposals from stakeholders, and consider the legislation in a deliberative manner.  Trump does not envision this.

On Monday, reports circulated that the President-Elect is inviting Congressional Republicans to Mar-a-Lago to discuss his plan of action.  Let’s hope that at least a few Republicans will not be blinded by the splendor of Mar-a-Lago.  Let’s hope they remember why they were elected to Congress and do their job.

J.E. Dean writes on politics, government, and, too infrequently, other subjects. A former counsel on Capitol Hill and public affairs consultant, Dean also writes for Dean’s List on Medium and Dean’s Issues & Insights on Substack.

 

I will leave it to others to recount the many challenges of Jimmy Carter’s presidency. I recall some of them myself, most notably buying a car with an 18 percent auto loan. I also recall Carter’s “national malaise” speech, delivered by the president wearing a sweater in front of a lit White House fireplace. Carter turned down the heat in the White House during the energy crisis and was ridiculed for his efforts to reduce energy usage, just as he was blamed for failing to rescue the Iran hostages.

By the time Carter left office, he was labeled a failure. I don’t remember him as one, even though the presidency of his successor, Ronald Reagan, was seen by many as a rescue from an America in decline.

I don’t dispute the successes of the Reagan presidency, but I also credit Reagan with consciously working to destroy Carter’s credibility during the 1980 campaign. In many ways, Donald Trump borrowed a page from Reagan’s 1980 win in his treatment of Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and more than a dozen Republican primary challengers in three elections. 

I like to think that if Reagan were alive today, he might regret his harsh treatment of Carter because, on reflection, Carter wasn’t so much a bad president as an unlucky one. His heart was in the right place, and Carter was no clueless idiot. He just won the election at the wrong time.

My first experience with Carter came as a young Capitol Hill aide working under a moderate Republican Congressman who worked with Democrats and once told me that John F. Kennedy’s presidency had inspired him to enter politics.

President Carter’s Department of Justice proposed the reauthorization of two little-known federal statutes that sought to improve juvenile justice, prevent delinquency, and stem the problem of runaway and homeless youth. I worked with my Democratic Hill counterparts and Carter officials to contribute to a strong reauthorization bill that passed both houses of Congress with near-unanimous votes.

Sadly, such bipartisan cooperation is rare today. But in 1977, President Carter seemed to want to find common ground. Carter and his team, as well as the cooperation-minded Democrats on the Education and Labor Committee, made my job easy. Carter tried to work with Republicans even when it wasn’t necessary.

After the juvenile justice bill was approved by the House and Senate, President Carter signed it. A few days later, I received a letter from the White House, signed by President Carter, thanking me for my work on the bill. I had it framed, and it still hangs in my office.

I continued to work on bipartisan legislation until Carter left office, but that wasn’t my last contact with him. Later, in the early 1980s, I boarded a Delta flight from Washington National (not yet Reagan Airport) only to find President Carter seated two rows in front of me, accompanied by a pair of Secret Service agents. I nodded at President Carter as I passed his row.

I took my seat as the rest of the plane boarded. Then Carter did something unexpected. He stood up and asked the flight attendant if he could have a few minutes to greet the passengers before the plane backed off the gate. The answer was yes. Carter then personally greeted every passenger on the plane. Everyone was thrilled, especially me.

I followed Carter’s post-presidential work with admiration. No corporate boards for Carter. He preferred pounding nails for Habitat for Humanity, authoring books, and promoting fair elections in countries where voting fraud is a reality.

I will miss Jimmy Carter. I hope that as America prepares for the Carter State funeral on January 9, we will all think about his life. He deserved a Nobel Prize for his peace-building work, which resulted in the Camp David agreements. He also deserves respect and thanks for being a great man, including his work as our 39th president.

J.E. Dean writes on politics, government, and, too infrequently, other subjects. A former counsel on Capitol Hill and public affairs consultant, Dean also writes for Dean’s List on Medium and Dean’s Issues & Insights on Substack.  

Seasons Greetings, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Joyous Kwanza. I hope I did not leave anyone out.

I wish you safe and happy holidays, hopefully with friends and family who have not spent most of the last two days at the airport or stuck in snow waiting for a road to be cleared.  The winter holidays are meant to be enjoyed. That is why this column is about the holidays rather than about politics.

The past year has been a challenge, but let’s not go into that except to extend our sympathies and prayers to the people killed or injured at the Christmas Market in Magdeburg, Germany. We didn’t need a reminder that we live in challenging times, but we got one anyway.

In recent weeks, I have noticed that most of us want to move past the political acrimony of the last two years. I am among them but am reminded that, “Freedom is not free.”  It must be earned. Nobody is going to make America or the world a more empathetic, healthier, freer place as a gift. That is why giving someone the gift subscription to The Economist or some other objective, well-researched source of news and information is such a worthy  gift. It is a gift that, if used as directed, makes the recipient a better citizen.

The winter holidays, regardless of which one you celebrate, are not about gifts, or shouldn’t be. They should be a time of reflection and camaraderie. Families separated by distance or misunderstanding sometimes reunite during the holidays. Friends who have “lapsed” reconnect, a gift that, with a little luck, keeps on giving.

During the holidays, we get to celebrate the existence of good,something that we need to be reminded of these days. It is also a time to imagine a world without hate, greed, lying, war, disease, and hunger. I like to think of Christmas as the official start of a season of hope.

These days we are deluged by reminders that somewhere, over the last couple of thousand years, Christmas has becomecommercialized. This is not just since the cartoon Santa Claus became popular. It started with Christmas becoming just another holiday on the annual calendar. Today, I know of families—good families of loving people—who celebrate Christmas but don’t invite Jesus or any other hint of the religious origin of the holiday into their special day. I find that sad.

Today I am going to do my part to make Christmas something other than a day off from work, a day to watch football or a day to watch Uncle Bob drink too much wine. I am not going to write a list of what was on the president-elect’s gift list or, even more charitably on my part, what he deserves to get. I am putting my usual snarkiness on ice. I have also resolved not to discuss politics, at all, during Christmas dinner.

Let me close by wishing you, again, happy holidays. Let me also thank those of you who have regularly read these columns, especially readers who disagree with much of the stuff I write. Please know you are appreciated.  I consider your interest in my perspectives, and in the important political debates of our time, a gift.

J.E. Dean writes on politics, government, and, too infrequently, other subjects. A former counsel on Capitol Hill and public affairs consultant, Dean also writes for Dean’s List on Medium and Dean’s Issues & Insights on Substack.  

Donald Trump enjoyed what may be his second biggest win of the year last Friday when ABC settled Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the network and its best-known anchor. The suit related to George Stephanopoulos saying Trump was found “liable for rape.”  ABC, through its foundation, agreed to contribute $15 million to the future Trump Presidential Library, cover $1 million in Trump’s legal fees, and issue an apology. 

The settlement surprised many in the media. While Trump was not found guilty of rape in the E. Jean Carroll case, the judge in the case wrote, “The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word rape. Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

Trump’s victory over ABC was followed yesterday with a lawsuit against The Des Moines Register and pollster J. Ann Selzer over a poll held shortly before election day that indicated Kamala Harris leading Trump by 3 percent in Iowa. Trump won Iowa by 14 percent. . 

Before the election and during his first term in office, Trump threatened “fake news” outlets such as ABC and NBC with revocation of their broadcast licenses. He has also routinely ridiculed media personalities who dare to criticize him.

Earlier in his “career,” in 2006, Trump sued Warner Books and the author of a book titled The Art of Being the Donald, who wrote that Trump was only a millionaire, not a billionaire. Trump’s suit was dismissed.

In October 2022, Trump sued CNN for $2.75 billion. In part, the complaint read: “CNN has sought to use its massive influence – purportedly as a ‘trusted’ news source – to defame the Plaintiff in the minds of its viewers and readers for the purpose of defeating him politically, culminating in CNN claiming credit for ‘[getting] Trump out’ in the 2020 presidential election.”

Trump alleged the term “The Big Lie,” was “uttered” more than 7,700 times on the network from January 2021 to the date of the lawsuit.

In May 2023, Trump sued The Washington Post for $3.78 billion for publishing news relating to the finances of Truth Social, the social media platform that has become the go-to news outlet for the Trump transition. Trump alleged the Post acted with malice to undermine him politically.

There have been other lawsuits filed by Trump or his campaign, including actions against a Wisconsin TV station for running an ad that suggested that Trump had called the coronavirus a hoax, Bob Woodward, and CBS.

After January 20, 2025, will Trump attempt to silence his critics with further attacks on the free press? That is a worry all of us should have. And it gets worse. As traditional news outlets have lost ground to social media sites, podcasts, blogs, and other non-traditional news-sharing, those previously unregulated sources of information (and misinformation) could find themselves subject to new regulations or lawsuits intended to intimidate them against speaking out against Trump and his policies.

Trump’s threats to the media and anyone else criticizing him should be taken seriously. In the case of the media, I wonder whether the nature of the threats will change from lawsuits to governmental action after Inauguration Day.  Will Trump or soon-to-be FBI Director Kash Patel develop an enemies list? 

I also wonder whether the threats themselves will suffice to hush many, or even most, critics, even those outside the media but who may be known in their communities as Trump-haters. If Trump fails to close the IRS, will some of these people find themselves subject to tax audits?

It is ironic that Donald Trump is pursuing “dishonest” media. The Washington Post has cataloged more than 30,573 of what it calls “lies” told during Trump’s first term in the White House.

Remember when Donald Trump said that Senator Ted Cruz’s father was with John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, right before Oswald was shot? The implication was that Cruz’s father was somehow involved in the assassination. To my knowledge, Senator Cruz, today one of President-Elect Trump’s strongest supporters in the U.S. Senate, never sued for defamation.

J.E. Dean writes on politics, government, and, too infrequently, other subjects. A former counsel on Capitol Hill and public affairs consultant, Dean also writes for Dean’s List on Medium and Dean’s Issues & Insights on Substack.