Maddy Baloy, 26-year-old who documented her terminal cancer journey on TikTok, dies
Alex Portée and Marlene Lenthang – May 3, 2024
@fruitsnackmaddy via Instagram
Maddy Baloy, a prominent TikTok creator who shared her terminal cancer journey through heartfelt videos and stories, has died at the age of 26.
The family of the content creator, who previously worked as a kindergarten teacher in Florida, confirmed she died on May 2 to NBC News. She was surrounded by her parents and fiancé, the family said.
“Madison was much like her mom and would light up (the) room whenever she came in,” her father, Lucky Talmage, told NBC News. “Regardless if you knew Madison for five minutes or five years, she created a special bond with people that she encountered. She was truly special to us.”
“Cancer really has the ability to break you wide open and it definitely leaves a lot to be revealed. One of the things that it revealed about Madison was, not only her strong will and ability to push through the most severe pain, again and again, but it really reflected on just her character,” said her mother, Carissa Talmage. “She continued to use her comedy, her ability to joke, to get through some of the most horrifying events that any parent should ever have to watch their child go through.”
Her mother added, “Even when she was getting sick, nothing would stay down, her body was rejecting everything — food, water, she still couldn’t help but try to make everybody else around her feel comforted and safe. Despite what she was going through, to give you a smile, to give you a feeling of belonging and being safe with her around.”
Baloy’s followers became familiar with her diagnosis of stage four terminal cancer, which she received at the beginning of 2023.
In a post shared to her Instagram page, Baloy recalled how the stomach pain she first experienced in the summer of 2022 worsened by February 2023, leading to an ER visit. There, doctors discovered a sizable mass in her large intestine, as well as cancerous tumors.https://www.instagram.com/p/C3Bm9GevmGZ/embed/captioned?cr=1&v=12
Carissa Talmage described her daughter as having been “born for something greater than I think anything in this world had to offer.”
“She stood out, just the way that she thought and processed life.”
“I was so glad that she found a way to allow others to see that,” she remarked about Baloy’s TikTok following, which had ballooned to over 452K followers.
The nearly two-minute long post, viewed over 2.5 million times, shows her explaining that in addition to having undergone a colostomy, her cancer had metastasized to the lower half of her body. By that point, Baloy had cancer in her large and small intestines, her colon, uterus and ovaries. She tearfully explained that fear and shame had prevented her from taking a bath since her colostomy placement a year prior but expressed her resolve to overcome it while on a trip to Japan.
“After I had my colostomy place, I just figured that I’d never take a bath again out of fear of making a mess,” she explained. “But I’m in Japan for a very limited amount of time and I’m here, I’m on Earth for a very limited amount of time and I don’t want to be afraid to take a bath. So come take a bath with me.”
Following news of her death, Ramsey shared the video of them dancing in the kitchen, along with a heartfelt message.
“I’m truly at a loss for words by the sad news we received today about the loss of @madison,” he wrote. “She was kind, fun and a true inspiration to me and my three girls. Knowing we were able to make one of her dreams come true will always be cherished by me. She’ll always be my first & last dance in the kitchen and never forgotten. Sending all our love to her fiancé and family.”
Baloy’s bucket list included 18 items she wanted to check off including climbing a mountain and dancing in a DJ booth.
In the comments section of her final post, fans expressed their regret that she had been unable to complete her list.
“I literally was crying bc I wanted her to complete her list,” one user commented. “Rest in peace sweet girl.”
“Rest in peace sweet angel,” another added. “You will be so greatly missed, thank you for sharing your hard fought journey with us.”
Biden says Americans have ‘right to protest but not the right to cause chaos’ on college campuses after another night of mass arrests. Here are the latest updates.
Thursday marked the first time President Biden has directly addressed the student protests since they started in mid-April.
David Knowles, Senior Editor – May 2, 2024
President Biden on Thursday addressed the college protests unfolding across the United States, telling reporters that “dissent is essential for democracy” but that “dissent must never lead to disorder.”
“There’s the right to protest but not the right to cause chaos,” Biden said of the protests, which have seen more than 1,500 arrests nationwide. His remarks at the White House were the first since April 22, when he made brief comments to reporters.
“In moments like this, there are always those who rush in to score political points. But this isn’t a moment for politics. It’s a moment for clarity. So let me be clear. Violent protest is not protected, peaceful protest is,” Biden said.
Police in cities and towns across the country have been deployed in recent days to clear pro-Palestinian demonstrators from a growing number of encampments and occupied buildings on the campuses of American colleges and universities.
Police advance on demonstrators on the UCLA campus early Thursday. (Ryan Sun/AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
More than 90 protesters [The Dartmouth] were arrested at Dartmouth College Wednesday night and early Thursday morning after New Hampshire State Police were called to campus to dismantle the growing encampment.
Late Tuesday, nearly 300 protesters [Bloomberg] at Columbia University and City University in New York City were arrested. Police remained on campus Wednesday at the Ivy League school.
New York police arrested protesters who occupied the lobby of a building at Fordham University [Daily News] on Wednesday. They also cleared away a tent encampment.
Students at Portland State University [KOIN] continued to barricade themselves inside the school’s library, escalating a multiday standoff with officials, who canceled classes Wednesday.
Universities like Brown [AFP] and Northwestern have diffused protests [Associated Press] after pledging to demonstrators this week to take up votes on whether to divest from companies doing business with Israel.
What sparked the protests?
After decades of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians living in the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas, Gaza’s militant government, launched an attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that killed nearly 1,200 people. The incident was the largest single killing of Jews since the Holocaust, and hundreds of hostages were taken.
In response, Israel’s right-wing government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declared war on Hamas and launched an invasion that has so far killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to figures from the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
The scale of Israel’s retaliation for the Oct. 7 attack has received international condemnation, including by President Biden, as indiscriminate and responsible for a heavy civilian death toll.
What do the protesters want?
While there is no single group organizing all of the protests across the U.S., one recurring demand that has emerged among demonstrators is for American universities to divest themselves from companies that have a financial stake in Israel’s government, or from companies that supply Israel with weapons or military technology.
At Columbia University, for example, protesters have often chanted the slogan “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.”
In the 1980s, students protested at colleges across the country to pressure universities to divest themselves from companies that did business with South Africa’s apartheid government. That movement has been credited with the downfall of the regime.
What about free speech rights?
The arrests of protesters at U.S. college campuses can be controversial. After all, the First Amendment of the Constitution protects the right to free speech. The rub, however, comes when demonstrations disrupt the rights of others or put their safety at risk.
“I condemn the violence at UCLA last night,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement issued Wednesday. “The law is clear: The right to free speech does not extend to inciting violence, vandalism, or lawlessness on campus. Those who engage in illegal behavior must be held accountable for their actions — including through criminal prosecution, suspension, or expulsion.”
Ultimately, it may be up to the courts to decide whether colleges that have brought in police to arrest protesters have gone too far.
At Arizona State University, some students arrested over the weekend have filed a lawsuit against the school for allegedly infringing on their free speech rights.
Political fallout
With a significant portion of his political base upset over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war, Biden has walked a delicate line regarding the pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations.
On Wednesday, Biden was content to let his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, field questions about the recent arrests at American universities.
“Americans have the right to peacefully protest, as long as it’s within the law,” Jean-Pierre said. “Forcibly taking over a building is not peaceful. It’s just not.
“Students have the right to feel safe, they have the right to learn, they have the right to do this without disruption,” she added. “They have the right to attend their commencement without feeling unsafe.”
On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump, who has also been critical of Netanyahu, openly mused about whether the protesters detained so far would be treated better than his own supporters who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I wonder if what’s going to happen to them will be anything comparable to what happened to J6, because they’re doing a lot of destruction, a lot of damages, a lot of people getting hurt very badly,” he wrote in a post to his social media site, Truth Social. “I wonder if that’s going to be the same kind of treatment they gave J6. Let’s see how that all works out.”
In Trump immunity case, Supreme Court justices are Trumpists, not jurists
By Gene Nichol – May 1, 2024
Members of the U.S. Supreme Court, seated from left: Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan. Standing, from left: Associate Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson. JACK GRUBER Jack Gruber-USA TODAY
I’ll concede, readily, that in my old age I find it almost unbearable to listen to U.S. Supreme Court arguments. After all, I’ve been studying them, in one format or another, for many decades. This is the bench of Earl Warren, Thurgood Marshall, William Brennan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sandra Day O’Connor, John Marshall Harlan. It’s high ground. Or was.
Now there are other occupants. Massively different driving forces. Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, John Roberts, and the three Trump judges — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Committed enlistees in a Republican crusade. Untethered to law. Lifelong opponents of the high aspirations of independent judicial review. Warriors against the enforcement of the Constitution’s obligations to open and secure the channels of democracy.
It’s hard to hear them talk. To hear them speak as if they pursued actual inquiry — instead of Federalist Society shop talk. To see the masquerade. They’re delivering gold for Donald Trump in last week’s insurrectionist-immunity case. Like you knew they would.
First, there is no straight-faced claim in the case that Trump is immune from the operation of the criminal law. As Jack Smith’s brief put it: “a criminal scheme to overturn an election and thwart the peaceful transition of power is the paradigm example of conduct” that cannot be immunized. And, as the Court of Appeals had held, Trump’s actions sought to interfere with “the constitutionally established design for determining the presidential election” — which provides “no role” for the president. Of course it doesn’t. The framers weren’t nuts.
But Justice Gorsuch said he “wasn’t concerned about this case” — he wanted to “write a rule for the ages.” Of course he does. Gorsuch, Thomas, Kavanaugh and Alito “for the ages.” It makes one nauseous. And it’s the literal definition of judicial legislation.
But it does at least distract. They can simply ignore what Trump has done. (That’s what Republicans do.) Plus, it’ll take forever to craft an unnecessary set of rules. They’ll need more process. Tons of it. They received the memo. Delay, delay, then delay some more. And who knows, presidents may need to stage coups, sell nuclear secrets, assassinate opponents and pay off porn stars. Judges have to be pragmatic futurists — not originalists, not this day.
A second point. A test of imaginative powers. Imagine that Barack Obama had done what Donald Trump did. (I know that’s actually impossible, Obama is the anti-Trump.) But go with me. Assume it was Obama’s case before these faux-judges rather than Trump. Is there any possibility that Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett and Roberts would declare — even for a moment — that Obama was immune, or might be immune, or that his immunity should be examined, except to throw it on the trash bin of history?
I’ve been doing this for 40 years, and I promise there would be no possibility of that. None. No honest lawyer in the country would disagree with that assessment. These are partisans in charade. Nothing more. We should expect no more of them than we would Marjorie Taylor Greene or Matt Gaetz. They do the same work. They just pretend otherwise. They pose. They deserve the same level of respect we afford to the formal nutjobs.
They are also engaged, ironically, in bold, unprecedented election interference. Trumpists, not jurists.
The rest of us need to understand this. Clear eyed. If we are committed to the American democratic experiment, these pretenders must be disempowered – dismantled as the anti-democratic wrecking ball they’ve become. Worry not about the institution. There is no institution left to save. Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, George H.W. Bush and the Republican Party have already done that work. Fully.
Contributing columnist Gene Nichol is a professor of law at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. This story was originally published May 1, 2024.
Voters can’t tell between the arsonist and the fireman
Mark Gongloff, Bloomberg Opinion -The Tribune Content Agency May 02, 2024
US President Joe Biden presents his national statement as part of the World Leaders’ Summit of the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland on Nov. 1, 2021. (Yves Herman/Pool/AFP via Getty Images/TNS) YVES HERMAN/POOL/AFP TNS
If you were shopping for toaster ovens and your choice was between one that posed a 1% chance of setting your house on fire and a competing one that would not only 100% set your house on fire but proudly guaranteed it right on the box, then you would probably go with the 1% model.
U.S. voters face a similar choice this November when it comes to which presidential candidate will set the climate on fire. But they don’t seem to realize how much of a no-brainer that choice truly is.
President Joe Biden may not have a spotless climate record, but he has done much more to ensure a livable environment for future generations than any of his predecessors. Donald Trump, on the other hand, not only has history’s worst climate record, but he has announced, loudly and often, that his second term would be far, far worse.
Voters haven’t received the message, according to poll after poll. The latest is from CBS News, which found that 49% of Americans have heard little or nothing about what Biden has done for the climate. More alarmingly, most Americans think neither Biden’s second-term policies nor Trump’s would make any difference to the climate. That is dangerous nonsense.
The list of what Biden has already done is long and substantial, and it goes beyond the Inflation Reduction Act, easily the biggest climate bill in history. He also passed a bipartisan infrastructure bill and the Chips and Science Act, both with significant investments in the renewable-energy transition. He rejoined the Paris accord to limit long-term warming to 2 degrees Celsius, tightened emissions standards for power plants and cars and limited oil and gas drilling and liquefied natural gas exports. To name just a few things.
Biden has frustrated environmentalists at times with compromises such as approving the Willow drilling project in Alaska and pulling some regulatory punches on emissions and corporate disclosures. But he has done these things mostly in the name of getting reelected – which may sound cynical, until you consider the person who will be elected if Biden is not.
During his first term, Trump ditched the Paris accord and loosened regulatory fetters on the fossil-fuel and other polluting industries at the worst possible moment, just as the global concentration of atmospheric carbon was reaching dangerous levels. A Trump restoration would again come at a key point, just when scientists say the window to avoid the worst effects of a chaotic climate is slamming shut.
And Trump’s advisers are vowing to wreck progress even more aggressively in a second term. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 lays out an agenda for Trump II that includes leaving the Paris accord again; undoing Biden’s efforts to regulate pollution; repealing the IRA or at least neutralizing it by closing the Energy Department loan office; throwing the entire country open to oil and gas exploration; and dismantling the climate-tracking National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. To name just a few things.
A second Trump term would add 4 billion extra tons of carbon to the atmosphere, according to an analysis by Carbon Brief, a nonprofit advocacy group. That’s about two-thirds of what the U.S. produces in an entire year and matches the combined annual emissions of the European Union and Japan. The global clean-energy transition has built up anti-Trump defenses in the past four years, as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Liam Denning and I have written. But make no mistake about it: A second Trump presidency would be a disaster.
So the whole planet needs Biden to do a much better job of communicating the stark contrast between him and Trump. The first step will be overcoming the mistaken sense among his voting base that he has failed them with his compromises.
“The key voters that put Biden in office in the first place – young people, people of color, women in the suburbs – were very concerned about climate,” Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, told me in an interview. “Some of these same demographics think he’s done nothing or worse because of the Willow decision.”
Seven out of 10 Biden voters in 2020 said climate was important to their vote, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Nearly a fifth of Biden voters consider it their top priority, according to an Economist/YouGov poll. If he wants these voters back at the polls in November, then Biden must convince them early and often that staying home and giving Trump the White House would make all their worst fears come true.
The trick is that Biden may also need to win swing voters, most of whom don’t care as much about the environment and may fear (incorrectly) that there’s a trade-off between fighting global warming and growing the economy. That’s one reason Biden and his advisers spend so much time trumpeting the jobs the IRA and other climate actions create.
The good news is that the politics of this issue have shifted drastically in recent years. As evidence, Biden made his climate promises sharper for the general election campaign than during the Democratic primaries in 2020, Leiserowitz notes. Most Americans now think global warming is real and human-made and support Biden’s policies when they hear about them.
But we can’t wait for the battleship of public opinion to complete its U-turn. We don’t have another four years to waste.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Mark Gongloff is a Bloomberg Opinion editor and columnist covering climate change. He previously worked for Fortune.com, the Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
Law Firm Defending Trump Seeks to Withdraw From a Long-Running Case
Ken BensingerUpdated Wed, May 1, 2024 at 8:08 AM CDT·4 min read4.4k
Former President Donald Trump during his criminal trial on Friday, April 26, 2024, in New York.
A law firm that has long defended Donald Trump’s campaign and businesses from employment lawsuits has abruptly asked to withdraw from a years long case over what it calls an “irreparable breakdown in the attorney-client relationship.”
The firm — LaRocca, Hornik, Greenberg, Rosen, Kittridge, Carlin and McPartland — has represented Trump’s political operation in numerous suits dating to his first presidential run, helping secure several settlements and dismissals and billing nearly $3 million in the process.
But late Friday, it asked a federal magistrate judge to allow it to withdraw from a suit filed by a former campaign surrogate, A.J. Delgado, who says she was sidelined by the campaign in 2016 after revealing she was pregnant. The timing of the motion was notable, just two days after the same federal court had ordered the campaign to turn over in discovery all complaints of sexual harassment and gender or pregnancy discrimination from the 2016 and 2020 campaigns — materials that the defendants have long resisted handing over.
In the request, filed in federal court in Manhattan, the lead lawyer, Jared Blumetti, did not provide any details about the dispute, asking permission to “explain” the matter privately with the judge. Blumetti did not respond to a request for comment.
The apparent rupture with a long-trusted firm comes at a busy time, legally speaking, for the former president.
He is in the third week of a criminal trial in a 2016 campaign sex scandal cover-up case involving porn actor Stormy Daniels, and is facing additional criminal charges in Georgia as well as in two separate sets of federal indictments. Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments about whether Trump is absolutely immune from criminal charges for actions he took while in the White House. And he is appealing judgments totaling more than $500 million in two civil verdicts from last year.
It was not immediately clear whether LaRocca Hornik, which has its offices inside 40 Wall St., a building in downtown Manhattan that is owned by Trump, intends to cut all ties with him. But such a break would hardly be new. In January, one of Trump’s defense lawyers, Joe Tacopina, said he would no longer represent him. Last year, at least four of his other lawyers, representing him in a variety of civil and criminal cases, stepped aside.
Delgado, who is representing herself in the matter, objected to the withdrawal in a filing Monday, arguing it should not be allowed until the discovery process has been completed and calling the request a “scheme to avoid compliance.”
Magistrate Judge Katharine H. Parker said that LaRocca Hornik would have to continue to represent the campaign for the time being and that she would schedule a conference with the law firm and the campaign to discuss the matter.
The firm has represented Trump’s business interests for at least a decade, defending Trump Model Management in a wage case filed in 2014, for example. It also represented the campaign in both of Trump’s previous runs for the White House and was paid $1.8 million between September 2016 and December 2020, Federal Election Commission records show. Since then, the former president’s super political action committee, Make America Great Again Inc., has paid LaRocca Hornik an additional $990,000, including a payment of $15,103.90 as recently as March 25.
In addition to the case filed by Delgado, the firm is still representing the campaign in a sexual discrimination and abuse lawsuit filed by Jessica Denson, a former Hispanic outreach coordinator for the 2016 campaign. The most recent filing in that suit, in a New York state court, was made April 16 and makes no mention of a desire to end the legal relationship.
Last year, the firm helped the Trump campaign negotiate a $450,000 settlement in a separate lawsuit filed by Denson that challenged the validity of nondisclosure agreements that campaign workers were obliged to sign during the 2016 race.
And in 2022, it helped negotiate a settlement in a suit brought by protesters who claimed that Trump’s bodyguard Keith Schiller had in 2015 ripped up a sign that read “Trump: Make America Racist Again” and then hit one of them in the head.
Delgado brought her suit against the campaign, as well as against former advisers Reince Priebus and Sean Spicer, in 2019, claiming sex and pregnancy discrimination.
While working for the campaign, she became pregnant by her supervisor, Jason Miller, a senior communications adviser and spokesperson. When she revealed her pregnancy shortly after the 2016 election, her complaint said, she was relieved of most of her duties and “immediately and inexplicably stopped receiving emails and other communications.”
As part of the litigation, she has been seeking all other complaints of gender discrimination involving the campaign.
By Eric Cortellessa, Palm Beach FLA. – April 30 2024
The former President, at Mar-a-Lago on April 12, is rallying the right at home and seeking common cause with autocratic leaders abroad.Photograph by Philip Montgomery for TIME
Donald Trump thinks he’s identified a crucial mistake of his first term: He was too nice.
We’ve been talking for more than an hour on April 12 at his fever-dream palace in Palm Beach. Aides lurk around the perimeter of a gilded dining room overlooking the manicured lawn. When one nudges me to wrap up the interview, I bring up the many former Cabinet officials who refuse to endorse Trump this time. Some have publicly warned that he poses a danger to the Republic. Why should voters trust you, I ask, when some of the people who observed you most closely do not?
As always, Trump punches back, denigrating his former top advisers. But beneath the typical torrent of invective, there is a larger lesson he has taken away. “I let them quit because I have a heart. I don’t want to embarrass anybody,” Trump says. “I don’t think I’ll do that again. From now on, I’ll fire.”
Six months from the 2024 presidential election, Trump is better positioned to win the White House than at any point in either of his previous campaigns. He leads Joe Biden by slim margins in most polls, including in several of the seven swing states likely to determine the outcome. But I had not come to ask about the election, the disgrace that followed the last one, or how he has become the first former—and perhaps future—American President to face a criminal trial. I wanted to know what Trump would do if he wins a second term, to hear his vision for the nation, in his own words.
Photograph by Philip Montgomery for TIME
What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world. To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.
Trump remains the same guy, with the same goals and grievances. But in person, if anything, he appears more assertive and confident. “When I first got to Washington, I knew very few people,” he says. “I had to rely on people.” Now he is in charge. The arranged marriage with the timorous Republican Party stalwarts is over; the old guard is vanquished, and the people who remain are his people. Trump would enter a second term backed by a slew of policy shops staffed by loyalists who have drawn up detailed plans in service of his agenda, which would concentrate the powers of the state in the hands of a man whose appetite for power appears all but insatiable. “I don’t think it’s a big mystery what his agenda would be,” says his close adviser Kellyanne Conway. “But I think people will be surprised at the alacrity with which he will take action.”
The crowd at a Trump campaign rally in Schnecksville, Penn., on April 13.Victor J. Blue for TIME
The courts, the Constitution, and a Congress of unknown composition would all have a say in whether Trump’s objectives come to pass. The machinery of Washington has a range of defenses: leaks to a free press, whistle-blower protections, the oversight of inspectors general. The same deficiencies of temperament and judgment that hindered him in the past remain present. If he wins, Trump would be a lame duck—contrary to the suggestions of some supporters, he tells TIME he would not seek to overturn or ignore the Constitution’s prohibition on a third term. Public opinion would also be a powerful check. Amid a popular outcry, Trump was forced to scale back some of his most draconian first-term initiatives, including the policy of separating migrant families. As George Orwell wrote in 1945, the ability of governments to carry out their designs “depends on the general temper in the country.”
Every election is billed as a national turning point. This time that rings true. To supporters, the prospect of Trump 2.0, unconstrained and backed by a disciplined movement of true believers, offers revolutionary promise. To much of the rest of the nation and the world, it represents an alarming risk. A second Trump term could bring “the end of our democracy,” says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, “and the birth of a new kind of authoritarian presidential order.”
Trump steps onto the patio at Mar-a-Lago near dusk. The well-heeled crowd eating Wagyu steaks and grilled branzino pauses to applaud as he takes his seat. On this gorgeous evening, the club is a MAGA mecca. Billionaire donor Steve Wynn is here. So is Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who is dining with the former President after a joint press conference proposing legislation to prevent noncitizens from voting. Their voting in federal elections is already illegal, and extremely rare, but remains a Trumpian fixation that the embattled Speaker appeared happy to co-sign in exchange for the political cover that standing with Trump provides.
At the moment, though, Trump’s attention is elsewhere. With an index finger, he swipes through an iPad on the table to curate the restaurant’s soundtrack. The playlist veers from Sinead O’Connor to James Brown to The Phantom of the Opera. And there’s a uniquely Trump choice: a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” sung by a choir of defendants imprisoned for attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, interspersed with a recording of Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. This has become a staple of his rallies, converting the ultimate symbol of national unity into a weapon of factional devotion.
The spectacle picks up where his first term left off. The events of Jan. 6, during which a pro-Trump mob attacked the center of American democracy in an effort to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, was a profound stain on his legacy. Trump has sought to recast an insurrectionist riot as an act of patriotism. “I call them the J-6 patriots,” he says. When I ask whether he would consider pardoning every one of them, he says, “Yes, absolutely.” As Trump faces dozens of felony charges, including for election interference, conspiracy to defraud the United States, willful retention of national-security secrets, and falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments, he has tried to turn legal peril into a badge of honor.
The Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol is a profound stain on Trump’s legacy, one that he has sought to recast as an act of patriotism.Victor J. Blue
In a second term, Trump’s influence on American democracy would extend far beyond pardoning powers. Allies are laying the groundwork to restructure the presidency in line with a doctrine called the unitary executive theory, which holds that many of the constraints imposed on the White House by legislators and the courts should be swept away in favor of a more powerful Commander in Chief.
Nowhere would that power be more momentous than at the Department of Justice. Since the nation’s earliest days, Presidents have generally kept a respectful distance from Senate-confirmed law-enforcement officials to avoid exploiting for personal ends their enormous ability to curtail Americans’ freedoms. But Trump, burned in his first term by multiple investigations directed by his own appointees, is ever more vocal about imposing his will directly on the department and its far-flung investigators and prosecutors.
In our Mar-a-Lago interview, Trump says he might fire U.S. Attorneys who refuse his orders to prosecute someone: “It would depend on the situation.” He’s told supporters he would seek retribution against his enemies in a second term. Would that include Fani Willis, the Atlanta-area district attorney who charged him with election interference, or Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA in the Stormy Daniels case, who Trump has previously said should be prosecuted? Trump demurs but offers no promises. “No, I don’t want to do that,” he says, before adding, “We’re gonna look at a lot of things. What they’ve done is a terrible thing.”
Trump has also vowed to appoint a “real special prosecutor” to go after Biden. “I wouldn’t want to hurt Biden,” he tells me. “I have too much respect for the office.” Seconds later, though, he suggests Biden’s fate may be tied to an upcoming Supreme Court ruling on whether Presidents can face criminal prosecution for acts committed in office. “If they said that a President doesn’t get immunity,” says Trump, “then Biden, I am sure, will be prosecuted for all of his crimes.” (Biden has not been charged with any, and a House Republican effort to impeach him has failed to unearth evidence of any crimes or misdemeanors, high or low.)
Such moves would be potentially catastrophic for the credibility of American law enforcement, scholars and former Justice Department leaders from both parties say. “If he ordered an improper prosecution, I would expect any respectable U.S. Attorney to say no,” says Michael McConnell, a former U.S. appellate judge appointed by President George W. Bush. “If the President fired the U.S. Attorney, it would be an enormous firestorm.” McConnell, now a Stanford law professor, says the dismissal could have a cascading effect similar to the Saturday Night Massacre, when President Richard Nixon ordered top DOJ officials to remove the special counsel investigating Watergate. Presidents have the constitutional right to fire U.S. Attorneys, and typically replace their predecessors’ appointees upon taking office. But discharging one specifically for refusing a President’s order would be all but unprecedented.
The U.S. border fence in Sunland Park, N.M..Victor J. Blue
Trump’s radical designs for presidential power would be felt throughout the country. A main focus is the southern border. Trump says he plans to sign orders to reinstall many of the same policies from his first term, such as the Remain in Mexico program, which requires that non-Mexican asylum seekers be sent south of the border until their court dates, and Title 42, which allows border officials to expel migrants without letting them apply for asylum. Advisers say he plans to cite record border crossings and fentanyl- and child-trafficking as justification for reimposing the emergency measures. He would direct federal funding to resume construction of the border wall, likely by allocating money from the military budget without congressional approval. The capstone of this program, advisers say, would be a massive deportation operation that would target millions of people. Trump made similar pledges in his first term, but says he plans to be more aggressive in a second. “People need to be deported,” says Tom Homan, a top Trump adviser and former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “No one should be off the table.”
For an operation of that scale, Trump says he would rely mostly on the National Guard to round up and remove undocumented migrants throughout the country. “If they weren’t able to, then I’d use [other parts of] the military,” he says. When I ask if that means he would override the Posse Comitatus Act—an 1878 law that prohibits the use of military force on civilians—Trump seems unmoved by the weight of the statute. “Well, these aren’t civilians,” he says. “These are people that aren’t legally in our country.” He would also seek help from local police and says he would deny funding for jurisdictions that decline to adopt his policies. “There’s a possibility that some won’t want to participate,” Trump says, “and they won’t partake in the riches.”
As President, Trump nominated three Supreme Court Justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, and he claims credit for his role in ending a constitutional right to an abortion. At the same time, he has sought to defuse a potent campaign issue for the Democrats by saying he wouldn’t sign a federal ban. In our interview at Mar-a-Lago, he declines to commit to vetoing any additional federal restrictions if they came to his desk. More than 20 states now have full or partial abortion bans, and Trump says those policies should be left to the states to do what they want, including monitoring women’s pregnancies. “I think they might do that,” he says. When I ask whether he would be comfortable with states prosecuting women for having abortions beyond the point the laws permit, he says, “It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions.” President Biden has said he would fight state anti-abortion measures in court and with regulation.
Trump’s allies don’t plan to be passive on abortion if he returns to power. The Heritage Foundation has called for enforcement of a 19th century statute that would outlaw the mailing of abortion pills. The Republican Study Committee (RSC), which includes more than 80% of the House GOP conference, included in its 2025 budget proposal the Life at Conception Act, which says the right to life extends to “the moment of fertilization.” I ask Trump if he would veto that bill if it came to his desk. “I don’t have to do anything about vetoes,” Trump says, “because we now have it back in the states.”
Presidents typically have a narrow window to pass major legislation. Trump’s team is eyeing two bills to kick off a second term: a border-security and immigration package, and an extension of his 2017 tax cuts. Many of the latter’s provisions expire early in 2025: the tax cuts on individual income brackets, 100% business expensing, the doubling of the estate-tax deduction. Trump is planning to intensify his protectionist agenda, telling me he’s considering a tariff of more than 10% on all imports, and perhaps even a 100% tariff on some Chinese goods. Trump says the tariffs will liberate the U.S. economy from being at the mercy of foreign manufacturing and spur an industrial renaissance in the U.S. When I point out that independent analysts estimate Trump’s first term tariffs on thousands of products, including steel and aluminum, solar panels, and washing machines, may have cost the U.S. $316 billion and more than 300,000 jobs, by one account, he dismisses these experts out of hand. His advisers argue that the average yearly inflation rate in his first term—under 2%—is evidence that his tariffs won’t raise prices.
Since leaving office, Trump has tried to engineer a caucus of the compliant, clearing primary fields in Senate and House races. His hope is that GOP majorities replete with MAGA diehards could rubber-stamp his legislative agenda and nominees. Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, a former RSC chairman and the GOP nominee for the state’s open Senate seat, recalls an August 2022 RSC planning meeting with Trump at his residence in Bedminster, N.J. As the group arrived, Banks recalls, news broke that Mar-a-Lago had been raided by the FBI. Banks was sure the meeting would be canceled. Moments later, Trump walked through the doors, defiant and pledging to run again. “I need allies there when I’m elected,” Banks recalls Trump saying. The difference in a second Trump term, Banks says now, “is he’s going to have the backup in Congress that he didn’t have before.”
Haley, Scavino, Wiles: AP (3); Bannon, Conway, Homan, LaCivita, Lighthizer, J. Miller, S. Miller, Trump, Vought: Getty Images (9)
Trump’s intention to remake America’s relations abroad may be just as consequential. Since its founding, the U.S. has sought to build and sustain alliances based on the shared values of political and economic freedom. Trump takes a much more transactional approach to international relations than his predecessors, expressing disdain for what he views as free-riding friends and appreciation for authoritarian leaders like President Xi Jinping of China, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, or former President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil.
That’s one reason America’s traditional allies were horrified when Trump recently said at a campaign rally that Russia could “do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO country he believes doesn’t spend enough on collective defense. That wasn’t idle bluster, Trump tells me. “If you’re not going to pay, then you’re on your own,” he says. Trump has long said the alliance is ripping the U.S. off. Former NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg credited Trump’s first-term threat to pull out of the alliance with spurring other members to add more than $100 billion to their defense budgets.
But an insecure NATO is as likely to accrue to Russia’s benefit as it is to America’s. President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine looks to many in Europe and the U.S. like a test of his broader vision to reconstruct the Soviet empire. Under Biden and a bipartisan Congress, the U.S. has sent more than $100 billion to Ukraine to defend itself. It’s unlikely Trump would extend the same support to Kyiv. After Orban visited Mar-a-Lago in March, he said Trump “wouldn’t give a penny” to Ukraine. “I wouldn’t give unless Europe starts equalizing,” Trump hedges in our interview. “If Europe is not going to pay, why should we pay? They’re much more greatly affected. We have an ocean in between us. They don’t.” (E.U. nations have given more than $100 billion in aid to Ukraine as well.)
Trump has historically been reluctant to criticize or confront Putin. He sided with the Russian autocrat over his own intelligence community when it asserted that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Even now, Trump uses Putin as a foil for his own political purposes. When I asked Trump why he has not called for the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been unjustly held on spurious charges in a Moscow prison for a year, Trump says, “I guess because I have so many other things I’m working on.” Gershkovich should be freed, he adds, but he doubts it will happen before the election. “The reporter should be released and he will be released,” Trump tells me. “I don’t know if he’s going to be released under Biden. I would get him released.”
America’s Asian allies, like its European ones, may be on their own under Trump. Taiwan’s Foreign Minister recently said aid to Ukraine was critical in deterring Xi from invading the island. Communist China’s leaders “have to understand that things like that can’t come easy,” Trump says, but he declines to say whether he would come to Taiwan’s defense.
Trump is less cryptic on current U.S. troop deployments in Asia. If South Korea doesn’t pay more to support U.S. troops there to deter Kim Jong Un’s increasingly belligerent regime to the north, Trump suggests the U.S. could withdraw its forces. “We have 40,000 troops that are in a precarious position,” he tells TIME. (The number is actually 28,500.) “Which doesn’t make any sense. Why would we defend somebody? And we’re talking about a very wealthy country.”
Transactional isolationism may be the main strain of Trump’s foreign policy, but there are limits. Trump says he would join Israel’s side in a confrontation with Iran. “If they attack Israel, yes, we would be there,” he tells me. He says he has come around to the now widespread belief in Israel that a Palestinian state existing side by side in peace is increasingly unlikely. “There was a time when I thought two-state could work,” he says. “Now I think two-state is going to be very, very tough.”
Yet even his support for Israel is not absolute. He’s criticized Israel’s handling of its war against Hamas, which has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and has called for the nation to “get it over with.” When I ask whether he would consider withholding U.S. military aid to Israel to push it toward winding down the war, he doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t rule it out, either. He is sharply critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, once a close ally. “I had a bad experience with Bibi,” Trump says. In his telling, a January 2020 U.S. operation to assassinate a top Iranian general was supposed to be a joint attack until Netanyahu backed out at the last moment. “That was something I never forgot,” he says. He blames Netanyahu for failing to prevent the Oct. 7 attack, when Hamas militants infiltrated southern Israel and killed nearly 1,200 people amid acts of brutality including burning entire families alive and raping women and girls. “It happened on his watch,” Trump says.
On the second day of Trump’s New York trial on April 17, I stand behind the packed counter of the Sanaa Convenience Store on 139th Street and Broadway, waiting for Trump to drop in for a postcourt campaign stop. He chose the bodega for its history. In 2022, one of the store’s clerks fatally stabbed a customer who attacked him. Bragg, the Manhattan DA, charged the clerk with second-degree murder. (The charges were later dropped amid public outrage over video footage that appeared to show the clerk acting in self-defense.) A baseball bat behind the counter alludes to lingering security concerns. When Trump arrives, he asks the store’s co-owner, Maad Ahmed, a Yemeni immigrant, about safety. “You should be allowed to have a gun,” Trump tells Ahmed. “If you had a gun, you’d never get robbed.”
On the campaign trail, Trump uses crime as a cudgel, painting urban America as a savage hell-scape even though violent crime has declined in recent years, with homicides sinking 6% in 2022 and 13% in 2023, according to the FBI. When I point this out, Trump tells me he thinks the data, which is collected by state and local police departments, is rigged. “It’s a lie,” he says. He has pledged to send the National Guard into cities struggling with crime in a second term—possibly without the request of governors—and plans to approve Justice Department grants only to cities that adopt his preferred policing methods like stop-and-frisk.
To critics, Trump’s preoccupation with crime is a racial dog whistle. In polls, large numbers of his supporters have expressed the view that antiwhite racism now represents a greater problem in the U.S. than the systemic racism that has long afflicted Black Americans. When I ask if he agrees, Trump does not dispute this position. “There is a definite antiwhite feeling in the country,” he tells TIME, “and that can’t be allowed either.” In a second term, advisers say, a Trump Administration would rescind Biden’s Executive Orders designed to boost diversity and racial equity.
A protester confronts members of the Minnesota National Guard after the murder of George Floyd.Victor J. Blue
Trump’s ability to campaign for the White House in the midst of an unprecedented criminal trial is the product of a more professional campaign operation that has avoided the infighting that plagued past versions. “He has a very disciplined team around him,” says Representative Elise Stefanik of New York. “That is an indicator of how disciplined and focused a second term will be.” That control now extends to the party writ large. In 2016, the GOP establishment, having failed to derail Trump’s campaign, surrounded him with staff who sought to temper him. Today the party’s permanent class have either devoted themselves to the gospel of MAGA or given up. Trump has cleaned house at the Republican National Committee, installing handpicked leaders—including his daughter-in-law—who have reportedly imposed loyalty tests on prospective job applicants, asking whether they believe the false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen. (The RNC has denied there is a litmus test.) Trump tells me he would have trouble hiring anyone who admits Biden won: “I wouldn’t feel good about it.”
Policy groups are creating a government-in-waiting full of true believers. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has drawn up plans for legislation and Executive Orders as it trains prospective personnel for a second Trump term. The Center for Renewing America, led by Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, is dedicated to disempowering the so-called administrative state, the collection of bureaucrats with the power to control everything from drug-safety determinations to the contents of school lunches. The America First Policy Institute is a research haven of pro-Trump right-wing populists. America First Legal, led by Trump’s immigration adviser Stephen Miller, is mounting court battles against the Biden Administration.
The goal of these groups is to put Trump’s vision into action on day one. “The President never had a policy process that was designed to give him what he actually wanted and campaigned on,” says Vought. “[We are] sorting through the legal authorities, the mechanics, and providing the momentum for a future Administration.” That includes a litany of boundary-pushing right-wing policies, including slashing Department of Justice funding and cutting climate and environmental regulations.
Trump’s campaign says he would be the final decision-maker on which policies suggested by these organizations would get implemented. But at the least, these advisers could form the front lines of a planned march against what Trump dubs the Deep State, marrying bureaucratic savvy to their leader’s anti-bureaucratic zeal. One weapon in Trump’s second-term “War on Washington” is a wonky one: restoring the power of impoundment, which allowed Presidents to withhold congressionally appropriated funds. Impoundment was a favorite maneuver of Nixon, who used his authority to freeze funding for subsidized housing and the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump and his allies plan to challenge a 1974 law that prohibits use of the measure, according to campaign policy advisers.
Another inside move is the enforcement of Schedule F, which allows the President to fire nonpolitical government officials and which Trump says he would embrace. “You have some people that are protected that shouldn’t be protected,” he says. A senior U.S. judge offers an example of how consequential such a move could be. Suppose there’s another pandemic, and President Trump wants to push the use of an untested drug, much as he did with hydroxychloroquine during COVID-19. Under Schedule F, if the drug’s medical reviewer at the Food and Drug Administration refuses to sign off on its use, Trump could fire them, and anyone else who doesn’t approve it. The Trump team says the President needs the power to hold bureaucrats accountable to voters. “The mere mention of Schedule F,” says Vought, “ensures that the bureaucracy moves in your direction.”
It can be hard at times to discern Trump’s true intentions. In his interviews with TIME, he often sidestepped questions or answered them in contradictory ways. There’s no telling how his ego and self-destructive behavior might hinder his objectives. And for all his norm-breaking, there are lines he says he won’t cross. When asked if he would comply with all orders upheld by the Supreme Court, Trump says he would.
But his policy preoccupations are clear and consistent. If Trump is able to carry out a fraction of his goals, the impact could prove as transformative as any presidency in more than a century. “He’s in full war mode,” says his former adviser and occasional confidant Stephen Bannon. Trump’s sense of the state of the country is “quite apocalyptic,” Bannon says. “That’s where Trump’s heart is. That’s where his obsession is.”
Trump speaks at his last rally ahead of his criminal trial in Schnecksville, Penn., on April 13.Victor J. Blue for TIME
These obsessions could once again push the nation to the brink of crisis. Trump does not dismiss the possibility of political violence around the election. “If we don’t win, you know, it depends,” he tells TIME. “It always depends on the fairness of the election.” When I ask what he meant when he baselessly claimed on Truth Social that a stolen election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump responded by denying he had said it. He then complained about the “Biden-inspired” court case he faces in New York and suggested that the “fascists” in America’s government were its greatest threat. “I think the enemy from within, in many cases, is much more dangerous for our country than the outside enemies of China, Russia, and various others,” he tells me.
Toward the end of our conversation at Mar-a-Lago, I ask Trump to explain another troubling comment he made: that he wants to be dictator for a day. It came during a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity, who gave Trump an opportunity to allay concerns that he would abuse power in office or seek retribution against political opponents. Trump said he would not be a dictator—“except for day one,” he added. “I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill.”
Trump says that the remark “was said in fun, in jest, sarcastically.” He compares it to an infamous moment from the 2016 campaign, when he encouraged the Russians to hack and leak Hillary Clinton’s emails. In Trump’s mind, the media sensationalized those remarks too. But the Russians weren’t joking: among many other efforts to influence the core exercise of American democracy that year, they hacked the Democratic National Committee’s servers and disseminated its emails through WikiLeaks.
Whether or not he was kidding about bringing a tyrannical end to our 248-year experiment in democracy, I ask him, Don’t you see why many Americans see such talk of dictatorship as contrary to our most cherished principles? Trump says no. Quite the opposite, he insists. “I think a lot of people like it.” —With reporting by Leslie Dickstein, Simmone Shah, and Julia Zorthian
