July 28, 2026 — Trump Governs for Trump
Check out this week’s blog post by IP attorney, author Timothy Trainer, host of the podcast and video show Tim’s Travails • Follow Tim on Substack
Image sources: cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov • Thakur v. Trump
Some U.S. citizens have known this for years: the current White House occupant governs for himself. This is not truly an “administration” so much as it is about one person’s empowerment and one person’s self-enrichment. He does not oversee the country in a manner that helps those who voted for him. To say that he engages in any deep thought relating to decisions is giving him (and his advisors?) too much credit. He governs and makes decisions that are first and foremost about satisfying his needs, his cravings. Between his desire to project power (bullying?) and satisfying his pursuit of retribution politics, there’s no room to do anything that would equate to progress for the country.
There is now concrete evidence of this style of “self-governance”, and it exists in the administration’s court filing in recent days. In the case of Thakur v. Trump, the parties suing the administration argued that federal grants had been unlawfully terminated or suspended. The parties initiating the case also raised constitutional issues that their free speech and due process rights were violated. (Here’s a detailed summary of motions, procedures at Thakur v. Trump 3:25-cv-04737 (N.D. Cal.) | Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse.)
Because of a preliminary injunction imposed on the government by the district court judge and the judge’s decision to provisionally certify plaintiffs as a class, the federal government agencies appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Ninth Circuit provided a detailed discussion on the law supporting plaintiffs’ claim of free speech violations by the government. The Court of Appeals reached conclusions about the provisional class certifications by recognizing one class but not another. Ultimately, the Court of Appeals affirmed parts and reversed parts of the district court’s decision and remanded the case to the district court for further proceedings: cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov.
Case: Thakur v. Trump
Unfortunately for Trump, the Department of Energy acknowledged to the district court that:
- With one exception, the 284 terminated grants had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing Senators (“Blue State” grants).
- The remaining approximately 340 grants proposed for termination were not terminated in October 2025, and they have not since been terminated. All such grants had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to President Trump in the 2024 election or has at least one Republican-caucusing Senator (“non-Blue State”).
- DOE accepts that the inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State. DOE will not contend that it looked beyond the prime grantee(s) to consider the political identity or geographic distribution of downstream beneficiaries of the grant funds.
- DOE accepts that the differential treatment resulting in the October 2025 termination of Blue State grants and the non-termination of non-Blue State grants was not based on a rational connection between the recipient’s location and/or place of performance and DOE’s past or current agency priorities. gov.uscourts.cand.450653.211.6.pdf.
Read for yourself the documents and other statements that the government submitted and concedes regarding its actions against states voting for Trump’s political rivals.
Here’s an element of this approach that needs stating.
In every state where Trump’s political rival took the electoral votes, there are many individuals who voted for Trump. Yet, his actions, his instructions to his minions are to turn his back on the millions of his own supporters in states that have demonstrated a majority vote for someone other than him or his handpicked choice. It becomes obvious that he and his administration are incapable of considering the possibility that by taking punitive political actions like those exposed in these documents many who supported him become victims of his revenge tactics.
The Energy Department’s stipulations in court documents are clear evidence of Trump’s governing style that has been obvious from the beginning. Nothing he does is about governing. His actions are about the constant need to satisfy and mollify his personal needs. He is, indeed, the Commander-of-Corruption.
About the Timothy Trainer: Writing books is a passion for attorney Timothy Trainer, who for more than three decades focused on intellectual property issues in his day job. He has worked in government agencies and in the private sector, and his assignments have taken him to 60 countries around the world.
Tim found time to pen a few non-fiction tomes, including his first book, Customs Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights;the 15th edition was published in 2022. Thomson Reuters’ Aspatore Books published Tim’s next title in 2015, Potato Chips to Computer Chips: The War on Fake Stuff.
Fiction was a genre he always wanted to try. In 2019, Pendulum Over the Pacific, was released by Joshua Tree Publishing. “This political intrigue story is set in Tokyo and Washington, D.C., and centers on trade tensions between the U.S. and Japan in the late 1980s,” Tim explains.
In 2023, his first series hit bookstores: The China Connection.
In 2025, he published the sequel, The China Factor, which ranked #63 on the Amazon Asian Literature list in May.
Click here to learn about all of Tim’s books.
