Alexander Howard
Dad, writer, cyclist, citizen, cereal dilettante. Advocate for freedom of information, open governance, & democracy. Lover of the Oxford Comma, hater of hubris. Recovering journalist. Trying to move carefully, & fix things. https://civic-texts.ghost.io
- Eliminating a famous program that cost just $32 million but delivers an estimated $40 billion in annual savings on utility bills just as our nation faces increasing costs & soaring demands has to be one of the dumbest public policy choices on a very competitive list. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/06/c...
- In 2023, @wyden.senate.gov introduced a bill that would require sitting presidents & presidential nominees of major parties to disclose tax returns; www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-ne... POTUS Biden, @pelosi.house.gov & @schumer.senate.gov didn’t prioritize enacting good governance reforms in 2021
- Someone buying $TRUMP family's memecoin to get access to the president at a dinner to push POTUS to take an official act that benefits the buyer of the token. That only becomes a "bribe" or even in the realm of a bribe if the official act is then taken. So it's potential corruption.
- “to trigger the Emoluments clause, it is not necessary that the elements of a bribery prosecution be satisfied. The Constitution prohibits gifts, not bribes. The Framers were worried about corruption caused by foreign influence, not whether a transfer might satisfy the standards for a conviction”
- “After library officials resisted, the DOJ officials departed without resolving the conflict.” One of those sentences that tells you who and where we are as a country in 2025: librarians are braver than law firms and CEOs.
- Trump is engaging in emolumental corruption on a global scale, not nudt “stay to sway” & “play to play” small ball at hotels & golf courses but “pay to play” cryptocurrency schemes that explicitly connect investment with access & a “flying palace.” He’s violated the Constitution every day in office.
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- The New York Times published a masterful investigation of Trump’s emolumental corruption in 2020, based upon its analysis of his tax returns, public records, and social media. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
- ABC News reports Qatar is going to give President Donald J. Trump a luxury jet for his use in office, in defiance of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause barring gifts from foreign States. abcnews.go.com/Politics/tru...
- President Trump has fired the Director of the US Copyright Office. www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-f...
- @morelle.house.gov: “a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis. Surely no coincidence he acted less than a day after she refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.” democrats-cha.house.gov/media/press-...
