#payoffs

Today's cartoon by Allan McDonald.

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 16, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson

Feb 16, 2026

On February 13 and 14, President Donald J. Trump’s representatives filed three applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to trademark his name for future use on an airport. As trademark lawyer Josh Gerben of Gerben IP noted, the application also covers merchandise branded “President Donald J. Trump International Airport,” “Donald J. Trump International Airport,” and “DJT,” including “clothing, handbags, luggage, jewelry, watches, and tie clips.”

Because of the trademark filing, Gerben notes, any airport adopting the Trump name would have to get a license to use the name, potentially paying a licensing fee. Gerben emphasizes that while it is common for public officials to have landmarks named after them, “never in the history of the United States” has “a sitting president’s private company…sought trademark rights” before such a naming.

In October, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought withheld billions of dollars Congress appropriated for a tunnel between New York and New Jersey under the Hudson River, saying he wanted “to ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional DEI principles.” Trump told Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that he would release the funds if Schumer would agree to name Dulles Airport outside Washington, D.C., and New York City’s Penn Station after him.

After a Florida state lawmaker proposed putting Trump’s name on the Palm Beach International Airport, Jason Garcia of Seeking Rents today reported that the Florida legislature is currently pushing through measures to change the name of that airport to the “Donald J. Trump International Airport.” The amount of money proposed in Florida’s budget to make the change is $2,750,000, but Garcia notes this is likely a placeholder: the budget request is for $5.5 million.

The Trump grab for an airport named after him is just the latest grift in a presidential term that experts so far estimate has enriched the Trump family by at least $4 billion. That windfall includes merch, political contributions, and multiple cryptocurrency deals that have led, for example, to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who manages the United Arab Emirates’ sovereign wealth fund, buying a 49% stake in the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto company for $500 million days before Trump took office. This deal put $187 million immediately into Trump family entities and at least $31 million into entities owned by the family of Steve Witkoff, whom Trump had just named his Middle East envoy.

“President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public—which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said of the UAE deal. “President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest.”

Earlier this month, Trump, his sons Don Jr. and Eric, and the Trump Organization sued the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Treasury Department for $10 billion in damages after an IRS contractor during Trump’s own first term was convicted of leaking their tax information, along with that of thousands of other Americans who are not suing, to news outlets. Trump has control over the IRS, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says he will write whatever check he is told to cut. This move advances Trump’s use of the presidency to enrich himself into the realm of autocratic rulers who move their country’s money to their own accounts.

In 1789, when George Washington took the oath of office as the first president of the United States of America, no one knew what to expect of leaders in a democratic republic. Washington understood that anything he did would become the standard for anyone who came after him. “I walk on untrodden ground,” he wrote in 1790, the year after he assumed the office of the presidency. “There is scarcely any part of my conduct w[hi]ch may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.”

After watching colonial lawmakers under royal rule demand payoffs before they would approve popular measures, Washington rejected the idea of profiting from the presidency. In his short Inaugural Address, he took the time to state explicitly that he would not accept any payments while in the presidency except for an official salary appropriated by Congress.

Washington noted that the support of the American people for the new government was key to its survival. He hailed the pledges of the new nation’s lawmakers to rule for the good of the whole nation, not for specific regions or partisan groups. He also predicted that the power of the government would come not from military might but from its determination to serve the needs of the public. He promised “that the foundations of our National policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality; and the pre-eminence of a free Government, be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its Citizens, and command the respect of the world.”

Washington put a hopeful spin on human nature to launch the institution of the presidency, but the Framers had no illusions. They constructed the Constitution to pit men’s ambitions against each other so no individual could gain enough power to become a tyrant. Later, the rise of formal political parties in the 1830s guaranteed hawkish oversight of those in power by those out of it, exposing corruption or personal vices before those exhibiting them made it to the height of the government.

As recently as the 1970s, those systems held strongly enough that Republican senators warned Republican president Richard M. Nixon that the House was about to impeach him for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress for his actions during and after the Watergate break-in during which operatives tried to bug the headquarters of the Democratic National Convention. And, they told him, when the House impeached, the Senate—including Senate Republicans—would convict. They urged him to resign, which he did on August 8, 1974, the only president so far to resign the office of the presidency.

Since then, Republicans have fallen into the trap Washington warned against in his Farewell Address, putting party over country. Such partisanship, he said, would “distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration,” agitate “the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms,” kindle “the animosity of one part against another,” foment “occasionally riot and insurrection,” and open “the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passion. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.”

Fierce partisanship would lead partisans to seek absolute power through an individual who “turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty,” Washington warned. And as Washington predicted, today’s Republicans have replaced the prerogatives of Congress with loyalty to Trump.

They have also ignored the vices of Trump and his loyalists. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explained to a podcaster on February 12 why he doesn’t worry about Covid. “I’m not scared of a germ,” he said. “I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.”

Jonathan Landay and Douglas Gillison of Reuters reported yesterday that Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought took $15 million in unlawfully impounded money that Congress had appropriated for the U.S. Agency for International Development, which fed starving children, for his own security detail. Michelle Hackman, Josh Dawsey, and Tarini Parti of the Wall Street Journal reported that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her affair partner Corey Lewandowski travel in a $70 million luxury 737 MAX jet with a private cabin in the back.

Over all are the horrors of the Epstein files, in which Trump’s name appears so often observers have suggested it is the one place that could legitimately be rebranded with Trump’s name as the Trump-Epstein files.

And so, Washington’s dire warnings have come true.

Profiting off his name is only part of why Trump appears to want to splash it anywhere he can: so far, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a new class of battleships, and perhaps “The President Donald J. Trump Ballroom” where the East Wing of the White House used to be.

It’s also about his legacy. In a tour of George Washington’s Virginia home, Mount Vernon, in April 2019, Trump expressed surprise that the first president hadn’t named any of his property after himself. “If he was smart, he would’ve put his name on it,” Trump said. “You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you.”

In fact, Americans remember and revere Washington because of his reluctance to promote himself, not in spite of it. John Trumbull’s portrait of him resigning his wartime commission after negotiators had signed the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War hangs in the U.S. Capitol as a moment that defined the United States: a leader voluntarily giving up power rather than becoming a dictator. Then, when voters made him president of the new United States in 1789, he refused a second time to become a king, emphasizing that he was the servant of the people and then, after two terms, voluntarily handing power to a successor chosen not by him but by the people.

As Washington predicted, the presidents Americans revere despite their faults—George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt—are those who used the enormous power of the U.S. government not for their own aggrandizement but to secure and expand the rights and the prosperity of the American people.

Trump has made no secret of wanting his image carved onto Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, where sculptor Gutzon Borglum carved the busts of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln in the Black Hills of the Lakotas. Beginning his sculpture in 1927, Borglum chose President Washington because he had founded the nation, Jefferson because he had launched westward expansion, Lincoln because he had saved the United States from destruction, and Roosevelt because he had protected working men and helped fit democracy to industrial development.

But Trump’s interest in being added to Mount Rushmore does not appear to be related to a desire to advance the interests of the American people. In September 2025 the IRS granted tax-exempt status to the Donald Trump Mount Rushmore Memorial Legacy, making it a charity that can accept tax-free donations.

Happy Presidents Day 2026.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Remember headlines similar to this?

“England’s rivers, lakes and streams ‘among worst in Europe’ amid concern over sewage and farm pollution.”  (Independent: 15/09/21)

And more recently:

“Sewage entered rivers and seas on average 825 times a day last year Water companies released raw sewage into rivers and seas in England for more than 1.75 million hours last year. (BBC News: 31/03/23)

Does our Tory government care? No, not one jot. This is what we read in the media today.

“Michael Gove is set to announce a weakening of water pollution rules placed on housing developers in England, in a move that has angered groups across the UK’s green economy.”  (edie.net: 29/08/23)

Gove is doing this to encourage more house building which up until now has been supposedly held back by anti-pollution laws and the cost this has for housing developers. From now on the building industry will not be held accountable for increases in nitrates and phosphates into out waterways.

In October 2021 the Tory government published a paper entitled: Nitrates: challenges for the water environment.  In it they listed the dangers of too much nitrate in our waterways:

Risk to human health

Eutrophication of lowland surface waters (Eutrophic waters are often murky and may support fewer large animals, such as fish and birds, than non-eutrophic waters.)

Acidification and eutrophication of upland waters

Adverse impact on Groundwater Dependent Terrestrial Ecosystems.

In short, nitrates poison the water both above and below ground and can be a risk to human health as well as to birds, animals and aquatic life in general.

In December 2022, the government published another report:.

It found that phosphates cause eutrophication in the same way nitrates do:

“Eutrophication increases the cost of drinking water abstraction and treatment, adversely affects angling, water sports and other recreational activities, and causes the loss of sensitive plants and animals in rivers and lakes.” (Environment Agency: Phosphorus and freshwater eutrophication: challenges for the water environment./ December 2022)

So, we have a government who knows the dangers of increasing the levels of nitrates and phosphates in our waterways yet they  decide to relax laws controlling these chemicals  regardless of the environmental consequences.

 Why!

The answer is, as is so often the case, “follow the money”.

Craig Bennett, Chief Executive of the Wildlife Trust had this to say on the Today programme this morning.

“I've been at the last few Conservative Party conferences over the last few years, and when you walk into the exhibition space, the biggest, fanciest exhibitions are by the big house building organisations. The most lavish parties and receptions put on at the Conservative Party conference over the last few years have been from the house building industry. They seem to have plenty of money when it comes to them lobbying, and guess what? - we discover this morning that money talks.”

To back up this claim, we find that in 2021, "property developers gave Tories £892,00 in the first three months of that year. And in May this year we read that:

“Millions in Tory donations at risk as property developers hit back. Housebuilders and developers - who in the past have accounted for around a fifth of all donations - have turned off the taps.”(Independent: 30/05/23)

There is a sneaking suspicion that the relaxation of water pollution laws has more to do with Tory Party funding than the housing shortage. Given the housing industry is one of the Conservative Party’s biggest donors, is it any wonder that under the new law, developers will no longer have to dip into their profits to offset nutrient pollution from new homes.

And just to prove the Tory Party has a sense of humour, not only will our waterways be more polluted than ever before but:

I finally did it, and just in time for Endwalker. Took me almost a year off and on, but my MSQ is done and I can ignore that and not worry about getting it done in time.

“An unprecedented tax hike on the middle class and a national abortion ban are just a glimpse of the secret, backroom deals Speaker McCarthy made with extreme MAGA members...

mourningtears said: Not saying it is a bastion of human rights. But if you study history you know what Putin is actually doing. History repeats. I get with this guy is trying to say but really honestly he’s a German and he’ll be the last person I listen to. Ukraine for all‘s fault is a Sovereign nation. To avoid war we are ignoring our past. In 2014 Ukraine did give up some land and look where it got them. Again I know that Ukraine is a toilet but they are a sovereign nation and don’t deserve to be annihilated. —————————————————————— Right. Ukraine is a sovereign toilet. The question is who made it that way? The answer is the US and the EU politicians. What the hell did Romney, McCain, Pelosi, Graham, Hillary and others do in Ukraine in 2013 and 2014? Demented old Joe was supposed to be fighting corruption in Ukraine while his crackhead son was sitting on the board of one of the most corrupt energy companies in Europe. Does it make any sense to anyone? The UK politicians were as much involved in Ukraine as the US ones. It rapidly lost its sovereignty under Obama. Obama promised a lot but delivered nothing. “Ukraine lost Crimea under Obama. Under Biden Ukraine lost everything.” /Trump/ He’s absolutely right. Do you really believe $40 bill. went to the Ukrainian people who lost everything in this war? Trump was impeached just for asking simple questions. The left media rushed to the rescue, labeled the Hunter laptop as Russian disinformation, and 50 US corrupt intel officials happily agreed with NYSlimes, WaPo, fake news CNN and MSDNC. But it turned out Trump was right on the money. By the way, you ever studied the Russian history, you would have known that Crimea was a part of Russia for centuries. Yes, it was foolishly given to Ukraine by one of the Soviet leaders. Putin recognized that. In 2014 all he wanted from the US and the EU was to let people vote. Of course, the Obama administration declined any discussion. When Putin actually invaded Crimea, Obama cowardly stated “Ukraine doesn’t represent the vital US interest.” 😂 Yeah, right.

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Good Morning fine people! Let's get into it!

Everyone needs to use their free speech! Debates are always welcome here.

The media has been telling tales/narratives. You must do research and more research to seek the truth.

Never go to the first pages of Google. They are only going to post very socialist views.

Notice they are all the same no matter what article you see? How did that happen? Don't we have any independent journalists? Where are the investigative reporters?

Many are on the payroll of the clowns in America. Yes, it's propaganda being pushed.

The Wizard of OZ, don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain! Stay asleep in the poppy fields.

Many people are getting rich selling out our country.

Thank you for your Anon!