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It looks like Ivanka Trump is finally coming out of stealth mode. Ever since her father lost his job as president and she lost her job as special advisor to the president, Ivanka has been keeping a low profile in Miami and largely staying off social media.

On Tuesday, however, the former first daughter posted on Instagram and Twitter for the first time in eight months, showing off photos of herself distributing free food boxes to families upstate New York.

It was very good of Ivanka to take time out to volunteer, as she has quite a bit on her plate at the moment. On the same day that Trump chose to break her social media silence, New York attorney general Letitia James dramatically turned up the heat on her ongoing investigation into the Trump Organization.

In court papers filed on Tuesday, James accused the Trump Organization and Donald Trump of inflating the value of their assets to secure preferential loans and other economic benefits. The Trump Organization has released a statement calling Jamess allegations baseless.

Its not just the former president who is in hot water; the court filings also note that the investigation had uncovered incriminating information about Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka. A snippet from these allegations: Until January 2017, Ms. Trump was a primary contact for the Trump Organizations largest lender, Deutsche Bank. In connection with this work, Ms. Trump caused misleading financial statements to be submitted to Deutsche Bank and the federal government.

To be clear: this is all still just an inquiry. If James finds enough evidence of wrongdoing, she can then decide to file a civil lawsuit. (Meanwhile, the Trump Organization is also under criminal investigation for tax fraud and there are various other lawsuits related to sexual assault allegations, inheritance, and whether Trump should be held personally liable for inciting the January 6 insurrection.)

And the Trump family isnt just facing a flurry of lawsuits, theyre busy filing their own: last month the former president sued James in an attempt to stop her inquiry into his business practices on the grounds of political bias. Trumps lawyers have also tried to block James from questioning Trump and his children under oath. (Although it should be noted that Eric Trump, executive vice-president at the Trump Organization, was questioned in October 2020. He reportedly invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 500 times.) The motions filed on Tuesday were to try and compel Trump and the kids to appear in sworn testimony.

In short, you can see why Ivanka who has always managed her personal brand a lot more carefully than her blowhard brothers have might decide now would be a good time to post photos online of her benevolently helping the poor. Particularly as Ivanka wasnt just showing off her ability to haul boxes of apples in the snow, she was also calling out the fact that shed teamed up with Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya for the initiative.

Ulukaya is something of a liberal darling; hes a Turkish immigrant who has pledged much of his vast personal fortune to the Tent Partnership for Refugees, a charity he founded. He is one of the last people one might expect to align his brand with the Trumps. Still, it seems he and Ivanka are on chummy terms. Ivanka told the New York Post that the food drive really evolved out of a discussion Hamdi and I had over lunch one day as the holidays were approaching and the dollar is going less far due to inflation.

Ivanka may have helped fill a few stomachs last week but does she have any hope of changing hearts and minds? Can she regain the standing she once had amongst liberals?

Ivankas food photoshoot hasnt been the only form of image management shes been engaged in recently. She also seems to have been subtly distancing herself from her father. She didnt attend his rally in Arizona last weekend and there have been various leaked reports lately that Trumps reports that about the stolen 2020 election were driving Ivanka and Jared Kushner away.

Mary Trump, Donalds estranged niece, has previously opined that she believes the former presidents adult children could very well sacrifice their father to save themselves. If that happens, I think I know wholl be first in line to dob in dad. And, if all else fails, and Ivanka cant fix her tarnished brand with food deliveries, she can always follow the lead of former White House aide, Hope Hicks, and join Celebrity Big Brother.

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It will take more than charity food boxes to fix Ivanka Trumps tarnished brand - The Guardian

The days of country over party are a relic of the past

Do you remember when President Obama left a letter of congratulations and encouragement for the incoming president, Donald Trump? Do you remember when it was likely that Vice President Al Gore had won the 2000 presidential election but he nevertheless conceded to George W. Bush to avoid a constitutional crisis? Do you remember when Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton voluntarily testified before Congress for 11 grueling hours regarding the Benghazi investigation?

Kimberly Atkins Stohr is 100 percent correct in her Jan. 14 Opinion column, When it comes to subpoenas, Congress must use its power or lose it. The days of country over party and doing the right thing are a relic of the past, at least for now. A prime example is that former president Trump and his Republican colleagues have made it the norm to refuse to voluntarily appear before Congress and voluntarily produce documents.

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection issued a fresh set of subpoenas Tuesday, including for Trump aide Rudy Giuliani. Congress must use its subpoena powers and the courts to the full extent to enforce its constitutional authority to pursue this investigation or risk permanently losing this fundamental constitutional check and balance. Given the nations dangerous shift toward authoritarianism, this is a particularly important step right now.

Gil Hoy

Brookline

There has to be a penalty to hold over those who refuse to testify

Kimberly Atkins Stohr warns, quite prudently, that we can lose congressional subpoena power if we dont use it. But she omitted one fundamental from her otherwise compelling column: namely, that Congress seems to have forgotten the literal meaning of the Latin sub poena: under penalty. That is, an individual summoned to testify at a hearing must do so under penalty of noncompliance. Until Congress can distinguish proactively between the power of a subpoena and a voluntary appearance, the discovery process for investigations of this sort will continue to stagnate.

Ira Braus

Pembroke

Hillary Clinton set the example for showing up

I am disgusted by the Republican toadies of former president Donald Trump, including aides and members of Congress (most of them male) who are refusing to testify before Congress. Its interesting that, as Kimberly Atkins Stohr notes, Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, sat through nearly two years of political harassment by Republicans, and never once refused to testify. She has more mettle than all of these others.

Paul Miles-Matthias

Seekonk

House panel can issue an interim report while it keeps searching for truth

The article House panel unsure of pressuring Pence, GOP lawmakers (Page A4, Jan. 17) frames the question of issuing a subpoena to former vice president Mike Pence and others as a binary choice: Hold high-ranking officials accountable, or issue a prompt report. Its feasible to do both: Issue subpoenas and fight for them in court, while issuing an interim report while any legal challenges are being considered.

Further, while its not permitted in a criminal court to use an invocation of the Fifth Amendment as an indication of guilt, the House panel is not a court, and these potential witnesses havent asserted Fifth Amendment protection. Its therefore entirely appropriate to see a refusal to comply with a subpoena as exactly what it is: an attempt to continue the ongoing attacks on our democracy.

Peter Squires

Cambridge

Excerpt from:
Without subpoena push, Jan. 6 investigation is going nowhere fast - The Boston Globe

A 21-year-old Chicago man accused of stealing several items from a Thorntons Gas Station was charged with resisting arrest after refusing to comply with a police officer early on the morning of Dec. 16.

Forest Park police were directed to the alleged thief who was walking away from the gas station in the 600 block of Harlem Avenue just before 2 a.m. The suspect was taken to the ground by officers after allegedly ignoring multiple commands to stop.

Once he was handcuffed, the man was combative. When asked for his name and date of birth, the man replied Fifth Amendment numerous times. None of the items allegedly stolen from the gas station were located in the mans possession.

A fingerprint analysis at the Forest Park Police Department revealed the mans identity. He was charged with resisting a police officer.

This information was obtained from police reports filed by the Forest Park Police Department. Unless otherwise indicated, anybody named in these reports has only been charged with a crime. These cases have not been adjudicated.

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Alleged thief tries 'Fifth Amendment' with cops - Forest Park Review

Tom Blong letter| Abilene

This letter is in response to the op-ed piece by John Powell (Reporter-News, Dec. 4).

More: 'Because we can' doesn't make it right

The argument for abortion is very similar to the argument for slavery.

The U.S. Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case of 1859 ruled that slaves were property and, under the Fifth Amendment, had no legal rights and their owners could do with them as they wanted.

The argument in Roe v.Wade uses a similar argument that the unborn child is property of the mother, who has the right to do whatever she wishes to it.

If you equate the womb to a plantation, you can see the similarities.

As a believer, it is my belief that life of a person starts at conception and, therefore, taking of this life is murder, as much as hanging of a slave is murder.

The John Powells of this world would have applauded the ruling of 1859.

Tom Blong, Abilene

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Tom Blong letter: Similarities of abortion and slavery - Abilene Reporter-News

In the face of record-breaking inflation, another COVID surge, a disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, rising crime, and supply scarcity, the Democrat Party has decided to make a few hours of rioting at the U.S. Capitol its entire campaign platform, while ignoring months of riots that sent cities and small businesses up in flames from coast to coast.

Rioting in all its forms should be condemned, but the lefts bald willingness to overlook its own while targeting private citizens for peaceful protests that occurred independently from the events on Capitol Hill last January just makes its hysteria over Jan. 6 look desperate. Breaking into the Capitol was wrong, but it was not 9/11, the people involved are still entitled to the Fifth Amendment, and screaming threat to democracy! is not enough to rescue fumbling Democrats in the 2022 midterms.

If you dont think Democrats in government and the media are exaggerating when they call the unrest at the Capitol the biggest threat to democracy ever, here are five other things they insisted would bring down our system of governance.

When an elected majority in the U.S. Senate, including West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, determined not to pass President Joe Bidens Build Back Bankrupt plan, the left erupted in cries that this act of democratic governance was, in fact, threatening democracy itself.

Manchin is killing the Biden legislative agenda, and perhaps the future of American democracy too, tweeted MSNBCs Mehdi Hasan.

If Manchin is no on both BBB and voting, Biden is done. Democracy is hanging by a thread, observed Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post. The Daily Beasts Wajahat Ali pined that Manchins decision not to vote for Bidens agenda reflects the need for massive structural reform and change. In its absence were a shell of a democracy.

The GOP Is a Grave Threat to American Democracy, ran a serious headline at The Atlantic in April.

Americans must get serious about fighting the Republican threat to our democracy, blared another headline in the Chicago Sun-Times, adding the party has become a corrupt force spouting violent rhetoric and plotting to overthrow our democracy.

Its not your grandfathers Republican Party now, unless your grandfather was a fascist, the pretentious subhead warns. The GOP is dangerous, and we must take action to make sure our children live in a free country.

The GOP has proven to be an even greater threat to US democracy than Trump in 2021, experts warn, said a headline from Insider, as if the allusion to experts blessed the piece with scientific objectivity.

We all know about the letter from the National School Boards Association to Attorney General Merrick Garlands Department of Justice smearing concerned parents of schoolchildren as domestic terrorists. The NSBA letter begged the DOJ to use domestic terrorism laws to go after parents who showed up to school board meetings to protest critical race theory, masking kids, and even rape in school bathrooms.

In response, Garland issued a directive to federal law enforcement and attorneys to address a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nations public schools.

An op-ed in the Mercury News said it even more bluntly: Attacks on school boards are a threat to democracy.

New York Magazines Eric Levitz threatened last month that If the Courts right-wing majority finds that it can continually push the boundaries of conservative judicial activism without undermining its own popular legitimacy, then the consequences for progressivism and popular democracy could be dire.

Two-thirds of the justices have now been appointed by a party thats won the most votes just once in the last eight presidential elections. The very existence of a court thats both so powerful and so far out of step with public opinion undermines the democratic values on which our system rests, added Brennan Center fellow Zachary Roth.

The bicameral design of our legislative branch, set up in Article I, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution to ensure that Americans were represented based on both population size and state interests, is a threat, according to some unhinged predictions from the left.

The Electoral College, another institution hated by the left when it contradicts their desires, poses a smaller long-term threat to American democracy than the Senate, urged a Vox article, because the Senate undermines principles of equal democratic representation.

The Senate will continue to give small states, which tend to be rural and conservative, far more clout than their size deserves. Thats not just a problem for democracy in the abstract, the Brennan Centers Roth continues.

He goes on to indicate his real, politically-motivated problem with the founders design: Because these states are more likely to support Republicans, it gives the GOP a built-in advantage, and makes it all but impossible to achieve large-scale progressive outcomes in Washington, even those that are popular. Nevermind the fact that the 17th Amendment, ratified in 1913, already gave popular voters more control over the election of senators compared to the founders intended design.

So next time you hear a politician or pundit try to tell you that a few inexcusable hours of unruly behavior comprised the biggest threat to democracy in the nations history, remember theyre using similar language to condemn parents, political parties, our judicial branch of government, one of our two houses of Congress, and the very system in which an elected majority votes on proposed legislation. If you think the Jan. 6 rioters are the only target they want to destroy, you havent been paying attention.

Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.

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5 Things The Left Also Called A 'Threat To Democracy,' Such As Voting - The Federalist