Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education had an article high-lighting the plight of college and university professional staff.  It referred to an essay, by Kevin R. McClure who described how many college workers are trapped in jobs that provide no opportunities for advancement. Those affected have limited options: They can simmer in silence, pursue more credentials, or leave.

“It’s hard to conclude anything other than that higher education has done a spectacularly bad job of managing talent,” wrote McClure, an associate professor of higher education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

The Chronicle wanted to know what readers made of McClure’s diagnosis, so we posted some open-ended questions. A large number — more than 150 — of you responded, describing frustration at the lack of clear career ladders, bitterness at being passed over for jobs, and bewilderment at seeing those on the outside, often with less education, finding more financial success. Below is a sample of the replies.

In my fifty-plus year career as both faculty and administrator, I understand the plight of the career staff member.  I have given a lot of advice to people who have worked with me and doctoral students interested in pursuing a professional career.  My basic advice has been not to limit oneself to one institution but to move on to other colleges and universities for advancement.  In my career, I worked at six different colleges with each move advancing what I wanted to do

Tony

PS:  The Chronicle has a report available (see graphic above) that reviews the issue of staffing.  A bit pricey at $179.00 but it might of interest to readers.

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“I’ve been stunned at how little focus there is on career advancement. I’ve had six different supervisors over five years, and only one ever seriously talked to me about how I hoped to grow within my position or within the university. Across the board, managers here are solely focused on their advancement or keeping their jobs. It is not surprising to me that dozens of my colleagues have left the institution, and sometimes higher ed altogether, in the short time I’ve been here.”

“I’ve given up trying to pursue higher education as a career after 10 years of trying to get a full-time position. I’ve interviewed once for a spot during that time. Getting closer to this industry means seeing the ugly truth and hopelessness that pervades our administrations and systems.”

“While for the most part I love my work, I am increasingly exploring options for leaving the profession. My boyfriend is eight years younger than me and has only a B.A. but is earning almost twice in the private sector what I make.”

“At my institution there have been long-timers in leadership positions who have no intention of retiring anytime soon, which means there is no way for any midcareer professionals to move up. It gets worse when we staff up: We are bringing even more people into the organization without giving them anywhere to go. It’s like we are all the marching band in “Animal House” when they turn down the alley and march into the wall.”

“I am still passionate for my students, but it hurts that I am equipping them to make more money than I will ever see. I have no opportunities for a raise unless I change titles or leave. I don’t want to leave my students, and I love my job, but I’m stuck with no opportunities for growth unless I leave, which would severely uproot my family.”

“I’ve been in a position with no upward mobility for the last seven years. I’ve lost my faith in higher-education administrators and feel defeated when I see the progression of friends’ paths in non-higher-ed organizations.”

“I have been working only 18 months at higher ed in research administration, and I can already see the writing on the wall for a future filled with no career growth. I love the mission and work that I do, but there is a reason my university is understaffed. I can see LinkedIn inquiries becoming more tempting.”

“We’ve had so many staff members quit that it’s miserable for the rest of us who have stayed behind. I can’t get travel reimbursements processed. I can’t get the website updated. I can’t even spend the money my office was allocated (because I’m a temporary administrator). It’s a Dumpster fire. And there’s no evidence the administration is going to do anything to fix it.”

“Higher ed is a scam of a career, making us get master’s degrees for a career of low-paying jobs unless we are willing to get doctorates or hop across the country every few years.”

“None of the colleges I have worked for have a formalized path for career progression, which would have gone a long way toward keeping me employed there. It is difficult to sit in a job for many years without knowing if it will ever go anywhere, especially as you see your colleagues jumping ship for better opportunities.”

“Training and investment in me as a new employee. I basically had to teach myself the job from a disorganized Dropbox folder of documents and a few colleagues in other departments taking pity on me.”

“For people who are holding on to their leadership role for a long time (20 years) or are close to retirement age, there ought to be a point where their boss reassigns them to some kind of “special adviser/special assistant” role where they can keep doing some of the things they are really good at but clear the field for new blood to take over departments or programs.”

“Institutions should consider valuing administrative talent as they do academic talent. Academic department heads and deans are often identified through national searches, while administrative deans/directors and department heads are often pursued with a “who can we get for the least money that will do the most work” mind-set. We are well past the age when “anyone” can be a higher-ed administrator (including faculty members who choose to dip their toes into these waters). For those that move into administration from other roles, a formal professional-development plan relevant to their new role is needed. My Ph.D. program prepared me to be an administrator, not a faculty member. We should recognize the reverse is also true.”

Dear Commons Community,

A charity fundraiser for children created by NFL player Damar Hamlin has been receiving millions of dollars in donations since the Buffalo Bills safety experienced a cardiac arrest on the field Monday night.

Just days before his collapse, Hamlin posted on Instagram about his charity foundation — The Chasing M’s Foundation — holding its third annual toy drive for children in need. After about two years, the drive finally met its goal of $2,500, according to Hamlin’s GoFundMe page for the event. 

But the fundraiser was suddenly inundated with nearly $6 million contributed by 200,000 individual donors after Hamlin’s collapse during the “Monday Night Football” game. The 24-year-old player needed his heart restarted on the Paycor Stadium field in Ohio after a tackle during the Bills’ game against the Cincinnati Bengals.

The fund is continuing to skyrocket.  As reported by various media.

During the first quarter of the game, Hamlin tackled Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins, resulting in a heavy hit to what appeared to be the Bills player’s chest and shoulder area. Hamlin got to his feet before collapsing, shocking his teammates and fans during the nationally televised game.

The Bills released a statement later saying Hamlin experienced cardiac arrest. Medical personnel restored his heartbeat on the field before an ambulance took him to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.

Hamlin was sedated and in critical condition early Tuesday, according to the team. Some Bills players decided to stay in Cincinnati to remain close to their teammate.

Hamlin started a GoFundMe page for his toy drive in December 2020, when he was just finishing his college career and preparing for the NFL draft process. He wanted to create a toy drive at Kelly and Nina’s Daycare Center in his hometown of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania.

“As I embark on my journey to the NFL, I will never forget where I come from and I am committed to using my platform to positively impact the community that raised me,” he wrote when he created the GoFundMe page. “I created The Chasing M’s Foundation as a vehicle that will allow me to deliver that impact, and the first program is the 2020 Community Toy Drive.”

Hamlin said he hopes that the drive positively impacts children “who have been hardest hit by the pandemic.” Every dollar raised would go directly toward purchasing toys for children in need, he said.

“Thank you so much for supporting me on and off the field,” Hamlin wrote on the page. “I am grateful to have the opportunity to work with you to help make the holiday season a little brighter for the kids in our community.”

On Dec. 25, Hamlin posted a video on Instagram showing the 2022 toy drive’s success. The player is seen giving toys to children, posing for pictures and playing with them, and signing jerseys and footballs.

The donations to the GoFundMe range from $5 to $5,500. The comments are now filled with prayers for a swift recovery and words of encouragement, including from fans of other NFL teams.

Hamlin’s loved ones updated the GoFundMe page on Tuesday after it became flooded with donations, thanking the community and confirming that the page is the only fund being used by his family.

“This fundraiser was initially established to support a toy drive for Damar’s community, sponsored by the Chasing M’s Foundation. However, it has received renewed support in light of Damar’s current battle and we can’t thank all of you enough,” the family wrote. “Your generosity and compassion mean the world to us.”

We pray he fully recovers!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Damar Hamlin

Dear Commons Community,

If you were watching the Bills/Bengals football game last night, you saw an horrific scene unfold as Buffalo defensive back Damar Hamlin collapsed after making a tackle and needed CPR to revive his heartbeat. An ambulance carried him off the field as his teammates literally were crying as they gathered around him.  Hamlin was in critical condition this morning after the Bills say he suffered a cardiac arrest on the field following the  tackle, leading to the indefinite postponement of Buffalo’s showdown against the Cincinnati Bengals.  As reported by the Associated Press and other media.

“Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest following a hit in our game versus the Bengals. His heartbeat was restored on the field and he was transferred to the UC Medical Center for further testing and treatment,” the Bills said in a statement. “He is currently sedated and listed in critical condition.”

In a chilling scene, Hamlin was administered CPR on the field, ESPN reported, while surrounded by teammates, some of them in tears, while they shielded him from public view. He was hurt while tackling Bengals receiver Tee Higgins on a seemingly routine play that didn’t appear unusually violent.

The NFL announced Hamlin’s condition shortly after he was taken to a hospital, but neither the league nor the hospital released any other details about the 24-year-old’s medical condition. The team’s statement was released before its flight arrived back in Buffalo early Tuesday. There was no immediate update about the future status of the game.

On the play the 6-foot, 200-pound Hamlin was injured, Higgins led with his right shoulder, which hit the defensive back in the chest. Hamlin then wrapped his arms around Higgins’ shoulders and helmet to drag him down. Hamlin quickly got to his feet, appeared to adjust his face mask with his right hand, and then fell backward about three seconds later and lay motionless.

Hamlin was treated on the field by team and independent medical personnel and local paramedics, and he was taken by ambulance to University of Cincinnati Medical Center. Teammate Stefon Diggs later joined Hamlin at the hospital.

About 100 Bills fans and a few Bengals fans gathered on a corner one block from the emergency room entrance, some of them holding candles.

Jeff Miller, an NFL executive vice president, told reporters on a conference call early Tuesday that the league had made no plans at this time to play the game, adding that Hamlin’s health was the main focus.

An ambulance was on the field four minutes after Hamlin collapsed while many players embraced, including quarterbacks Buffalo’s Josh Allen and Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow.

“Please pray for our brother,” Allen tweeted.

Hamlin collapsed at 8:55 p.m., and when he was taken off the field about 19 minutes later in what seemed like an eternity, the Bills gathered in prayer. A few minutes after the ambulance left the field, the game was suspended, and players walked off the field slowly and into their locker rooms where they awaited word on Hamlin and the game.

“I’ve never seen anything like it since I was playing,” NFL executive Troy Vincent, a six-time Pro Bowl cornerback during his career, said in the conference call early Tuesday morning. “Immediately, my player hat went on, like, how do you resume playing after seeing a traumatic event in front of you?”

Hamlin’s uniform was cut off as he was attended to by medical personnel. ESPN reported on its telecast that Hamlin was also given oxygen.

Vincent said the league took no steps toward restarting the game and did not ask players to begin a five-minute warmup period as ESPN’s broadcasters had announced.

“It never crossed our mind to talk about warming up to resume play,” Vincent said. “That’s ridiculous. That’s insensitive. That’s not a place we should ever be in.”

Vincent said the Bills were returning early Tuesday morning to the team facility in Orchard Park, New York, with the exception of a few players who stayed behind with Hamlin.

There was a heavy police presence at Buffalo Niagara International Airport when the team arrived at about 2:45 a.m. A small group of fans gathered across the street from the players’ parking area near the airport. Police blocked off the road to allow the players to leave.

The Bengals led 7-3 in the first quarter of a game between teams vying for the top playoff seed in the AFC. Cincinnati entered at 11-4 and leading the AFC North by one game over Baltimore, while AFC East champion Buffalo was 12-3.

“The NFLPA and everyone in our community is praying for Damar Hamlin,” the players’ union said in a statement. “We have been in touch with Bills and Bengals players, and with the NFL. The only thing that matters at this moment is Damar’s health and well being.”

Indeed the only thing that matters is his health!

Tony

Hope Hicks

Dear Commons Community,

Hope Hicks, a former senior adviser to Donald Trump, vented to a fellow White House aide during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that “we all look like domestic terrorists now.”

Text messages released by the House select committee investigating the attack show Hicks texting Julie Radford, former chief of staff to Ivanka Trump, as Trump supporters were laying siege to the U.S. Capitol.

Hicks complained that the insurrection had ruined their employability.

“In one day he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local proud boys chapter,” Hicks said, apparently referring to the then-president and the Proud Boys right-wing extremist group.

“Yup,” Radford replied.

“And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed,” Hicks added. “I’m so mad and upset.”

“We all look like domestic terrorists now,” she added.

Radford replied: “Oh yes I’ve been crying for an hour.”

“Not being dramatic, but we are all fucked,” Hicks said in another message, adding that “Alyssa looks like a genius” for leaving, referring to Alyssa Farah Griffin, who resigned her post as White House communications director a few weeks after Trump lost the 2020 election.

Later in the day, Hicks texted Radford: “Attacking the VP? Wtf is wrong with him?”

During the riot at the Capitol, Trump tweeted that his vice president, Mike Pence, “didn’t have the courage” to help him overturn the election. Pence was inside the Capitol to participate in the certification of the Electoral College results; he was forced to flee as Trump supporters, some of whom were calling for him to be hanged, forced their way into the building.

Hicks was interviewed by the Jan. 6 committee in testimony that aired in its final public hearing last month. She said there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and she was concerned that Trump was damaging his legacy by spreading disinformation about the results.

When she expressed those concerns to Trump, she said, Trump said something along the lines of, “‘You know, nobody will care about my legacy if I lose, so that won’t matter. The only thing that matters is winning.’”

Following her departure from the Trump administration, Hicks worked on the U.S. Senate campaign of Pennsylvania hedge fund executive David McCormick, who lost to Trump-endorsed candidate Mehmet Oz in the Republican primary.

We wish her good luck with her job hunting!  Telling the truth will help her!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading David Grann”s  Killers of the Flower Moon:  The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.  My wife Elaine recommended it to me a week ago.  It turned out to be a page turner that I could not put down.  Published in 2017, it was lauded as a “Best Book of the Year” by several major media organizations.  Dave Eggers in The New York Times Book Review called it riveting.  Grann weaves the story of 1920s Oklahoma when members of the Osage were mysteriously dying one by one.  As the death toll rose, J. Edgar Hoover assigns a crack investigator, Tom White, to uncover the circumstances in the death of the Osage.  I won’t give away any of the conclusions only to say that Grann keeps the reader on his seat as he reveals each new element in the case.

I highly recommend Killers…if you are looking for a first-rate non-fiction whodunnit.

Below is a review that appeared in The New York Times.

Tony

Three Osage Sisters

The New York Times

The Osage Indians Struck It Rich, Then Paid the Price

By Dwight Garner

April 12, 2017

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON
The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
By David Grann
Illustrated. 338 pages. Doubleday. $28.95.

If you taught the artificial brains of supercomputers at IBM Research to write nonfiction prose, and if they got very good at it, they might compose a book like David Grann’s “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.”

This is not entirely a complaint. Grann’s new book, about how dozens of members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma in the 1920s were shot, poisoned or blown to bits by rapacious whites who coveted the oil under their land, is close to impeccable. It’s confident, fluid in its dynamics, light on its feet.

What it lacks is the soulful, trippy, questing and offhandedly cerebral quality of his last and best-known book, “The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon” (2009). That volume is deservedly regarded as one of the prize nonfiction specimens of this century.

That was a book with a personality. It seemed to be written by someone who was, as Charles Lamb said of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an archangel a little damaged. There was some strange junk in its cupboards.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” has cleaner lines, and it didn’t set its hooks in me in the same way. But the crime story it tells is appalling, and stocked with authentic heroes and villains. It will make you cringe at man’s inhumanity to man.

About America’s native people, Saul Bellow wrote in a 1957 essay, “They have left their bones, their flints and pots, their place names and tribal names and little besides except a stain, seldom vivid, on the consciousness of their white successors.”

The best thing about Grann’s book is that it stares, hard, at that stain, and makes it vivid indeed.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” describes how the Osage people were driven from their lands in Kansas onto a rocky portion of northwestern Oklahoma — out of sight, out of mind. It became apparent within a few decades, however, that immense oil deposits pooled below those Oklahoma rocks.

The Osage people became wealthy from leasing their mineral rights; so wealthy that white America, stoked by a racist and sensationalistic press, went into a moral panic, a collective puritanical shudder.

“Journalists told stories,” Grann writes, “often wildly embroidered, of Osage who discarded grand pianos on their lawns or replaced old cars with new ones after getting a flat tire.” A reporter from Harper’s Monthly Magazine wrote, ominously: “The Osage Indians are becoming so rich that something will have to be done about it.”

Something was done about it. The federal government appointed white guardians to monitor many of the Osage members’ spending habits. Even tiny purchases had to be authorized. The chicanery and graft were remarkable. Then things got worse.

Tribe members began to be killed. They were, in the evocative words of a reporter at the time, “shot in lonely pastures, bored by steel as they sat in their automobiles, poisoned to die slowly, and dynamited as they slept in their homes.”

Few if any of these crimes were solved. Who cared about, Grann writes, using the intolerant lingo of the times, a “dead Injun”?

These murders were an embarrassment for the still-green F.B.I., however. J. Edgar Hoover sent a former Texas Ranger, the perfectly named Tom White, to investigate. It was dangerous work, and White had steely nerves and the upright aplomb of Henry Fonda in “Twelve Angry Men.”

“Killers of the Flower Moon” builds to a cinematic court scene filled with outrages and recantations. White gets his man, a local cattleman and a figure of genuine evil. But it is among Grann’s larger points that these murders were hardly the work of one human. It took a village — a “culture of killing,” in his words — to eliminate this many people.

The government estimated that 24 Osage members were murdered. As Grann pores over the evidence, however, he realizes the number was almost certainly higher, perhaps in the hundreds.

He spends time with the descendants of some of those killed, and he pokes through old files and turns up new information. His own outrage, though kept at a simmer, is unmistakable. “While researching the murders,” he writes, “I often felt that I was chasing history even as it was slipping away.”

The period photographs in “Killers of the Flower Moon” are exceptional in their impact; they bore into you. If the book has a heroine, it is an Osage woman named Mollie Burkhart, whose sisters and other family members are picked off one by one. The beautiful and implacable faces of Mollie and her brown-eyed sisters gaze, as if in accusation, across the ages.

Grann is a staff writer at The New Yorker and always a welcome byline to find there. Reading his book reminded me that the magazine’s founding editor, Harold Ross, once dreamed of starting a serious true-crime magazine he planned to call “Guilty?”

This never came to pass. Grann’s book investigates one painful splinter of America’s treatment of its native people, and it snips the question mark off Ross’s title.

Dear Commons Community,

Arkansas’ Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson said yesterday that the pro-Trump Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection on Capitol Hill “disqualifies” Donald Trump from winning the 2024 GOP nomination as he considers his own challenge to the former president.

“I do not believe that Donald Trump should be the next president of the United States. I think he’s had his opportunity there. I think Jan. 6 really disqualifies him for the future. And so, we move beyond that. And that’s what I want to be focused on,” Hutchinson, who will soon travel to the early primary state of Iowa, told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.

Karl pressed Hutchinson on if that view meant he definitively wouldn’t support Trump should Trump emerge as the Republican nominee for the White House in two years.

Hutchinson demurred and only said he would consider the options out of what is likely to be a crowded field.

“I want to see what the alternatives are. And it’s premature, Jonathan, to get into what might happen in 2024. That issue will come up. But I want to see everything I can do to make sure there is the alternative and that Donald Trump is not the nominee of the party. That’s the first thing, and let’s figure out how to do that,” Hutchinson said.

His comments come after the House panel investigating the 2021 Capitol attack recently referred criminal charges for Trump and others to the Justice Department over their alleged roles in the violence, including what the committee said was Trump conspiring to defraud the U.S. and aiding the insurrectionists.

Trump has repeatedly said he did nothing wrong and accused the House committee of politically persecuting him.

Hutchinson has consistently said he does not think Trump should be the 2024 nominee but acknowledged in his “This Week” interview that the former president remains the “front-runner,” citing recent polling and his name recognition from his celebrity status and four years in the White House.

Still, Hutchinson said he disagrees with considerations by the party to insert a rule into 2024 primary debates binding presidential candidates to support the GOP’s ultimate nominee.

“I think it would be a mistake to do that. I think it’s obvious that you’ve got a divided party in the sense that you’ve got a base of loyal Trump supporters. But you’ve got what to me is even a larger majority of those that say, ‘We want to go a different direction,'” he said.

Hutchinson has strongly suggested that he’ll make a run of his own after Trump launched his third presidential campaign in November. But he told Karl that there was nothing to announce yet.

“Obviously, I’m going to Iowa later this month. I’m excited about that. But no decision has been made now. And we can’t make a decision until a little bit later. But I want to be a part of the solutions for America,” he said.

That vision of problem-solving, he said, was one way other conservatives could differentiate themselves from Trump in the lead-up to the 2024 race.

“He does not define the Republican Party. And we have to have other voices. … It’s an opportunity for other voices to rise that’s going to be problem-solving, commonsense conservatives. And they can shape the future of the Republican Party but also provide the right counterbalance to [President Joe] Biden’s failed policies. And, to me, that’s what we have to do in 2023,” Hutchinson said.

Looking ahead to other possible 2024 contenders, Hutchinson said that Trump — despite his continued popularity within the GOP — no longer had the appeal of being “new” on the political scene. He argued that Trump’s blend of “chaos” and “anger” could be a turnoff.

“That’s not a new thing anymore. And so I think people move away from it rather than embrace it,” he said.

“You need to have simply a message that’s authentic to yourself, a message that is problem-solving and say, ‘This is what we need to do as a country.’ And that, to me, is the right contrast,” he said.

Hutchinson, who served four years in the House before serving in other federal and state roles, also knocked Rep.-elect George Santos, R-N.Y., after it was revealed following Santos’ midterm election victory that he fabricated or embellished several parts of his resume and personal life.

“There has to be accountability for that. That is unacceptable. I don’t know whether you can go so far as to not seat him but certainly the Ethics Committee should deal with this, and he has to be held accountable for that,” Hutchinson said. “That’s unacceptable in politics. It breaches the trust between the electorate and their elected official.”

The more I see and hear from Hutchinson, the more I think he would make a fine presidential candidate for the Republican Party.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Peace, Health, and Happiness for 2023!

Tony

Image courtesy of Jim Cooke / Los Angeles Times.

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, the House Ways and Means Committee released Donald Trump’s tax returns which contained thousands of pages of documents.  The New York Times has done an initial review and below is their analysis of key takeaways.

One item that The New York Times does not mention  is the finding that Trump had significant investments in foreign countries including China, Azerbaijan, India, Indonesia, Panama, the Philippines, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

These raise the issue of potential conflicts of interest for the commander-in-chief of the United States and are one reason presidents normally release their tax returns.

I am sure that Trump’s tax returns will be the subject of a good deal of news analysis over the next several weeks.

Tony

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The New York Times

Key Takeaways From Trump’s Tax Returns

By Jim Tankersley, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner

Dec. 30, 2022

Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee have followed through with their vow to make public six years of former President Donald J. Trump’s tax returns, giving the American public new insight into his business dealings and drawing threats of retaliation from congressional Republicans.

The release on Friday morning contained thousands of pages of tax documents, including individual returns for Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, as well as business returns for several of the hundreds of companies that make up the real estate mogul’s sprawling business organization.

The committee had this month released top-line details from the returns, which showed that Mr. Trump paid $1.1 million in federal income taxes during the first three years of his presidency, including just $750 in federal income tax in 2017, his first year in office. He paid no tax in 2020 as his income dwindled and his business losses mounted.

The documents contain new details not revealed in those earlier releases. New York Times reporters are combing the pages for key takeaways. Here is a running list.

Trump made no charitable contributions in 2020.

As a presidential candidate in 2015, Mr. Trump said he would not take “even one dollar” of the $400,000 salary that comes with the job. “I am totally giving up my salary if I become president,” he said.

In his first three years in office, Mr. Trump said he donated his salary quarterly. But in 2020, his last full year in office, the documents show that Mr. Trump reported $0 in charitable giving.

Also in 2020, as the pandemic recession swiftly descended, Mr. Trump reported heavy business losses and no federal tax liability.

In the earlier years, White House officials made a point of highlighting which government agencies were receiving the money, starting with the National Park Service in 2017. The tax documents released Friday show that Mr. Trump reported charitable donations totaling nearly $1.9 million in 2017 and just over $500,000 in both 2018 and 2019.

In a bad year for business, Trump didn’t take a full refund.

Mr. Trump reported nearly $16 million in business losses in 2020, which swamped his other income and left him with no federal income tax liability. But the tax documents show that he made nearly $14 million in tax payments to the federal government over the course of the year.

Those payments left him with the potential for a large income tax refund from the government — like the ones many taxpayers find when they go to file their taxes every spring. In Mr. Trump’s case, he chose not to immediately take the full refund available to him. He claimed a refund of just under $5.5 million, then directed the Internal Revenue Service to apply another $8 million to his estimated taxes for 2021.

His own tax law may have cost him.

The tax law Mr. Trump signed in late 2017, which took effect the next year, contained some provisions that most likely gave him an advantage at tax time — including the scaling back of the alternative minimum tax on high earners.

But one provision in particular drastically reduced the income tax deductions Mr. Trump could claim in 2018 and beyond: limits that Republicans placed on deductions for state and local taxes paid.

The so-called SALT deduction disproportionately hit higher earners, including Mr. Trump, in high-tax cities and states like New York. In 2019, he reported paying $8.4 million in state and local taxes. Because of the SALT limits included in his tax law, he was able to deduct only $10,000 of those taxes paid on his federal income tax return.

Those losses could have been mitigated at least in part by other sections of the law that were favorable to wealthier taxpayers like Mr. Trump.

Fred Trump is a silent actor in the returns.

Fred Trump, Mr. Trump’s long-deceased father, has continued to have an effect on his son’s finances.

In 2018, after a decade in which the former president declared no taxable income, he reported taxable income of more than $24 million and paid $1 million in federal taxes, nearly the entire total he paid as president.

That income, as previously detailed by The Times, appeared to be the result of more than $14 million in gains from the sale of an investment his father made in the 1970s, a Brooklyn housing complex named Starrett City, which became part of Mr. Trump’s inheritance.

But the new documents show that the effect of his inheritance in 2018 was far greater: Mr. Trump reported $25.7 million in gains from the sale of business properties that he and his siblings inherited or took through trusts, including the sale of Starrett City.

The sales of business properties Mr. Trump created himself came at a loss, however, dragging down his net proceeds and somewhat reducing his tax liability, the tax itemization shows.

That included a total of $1 million in property sold at a loss by 40 Wall Street, his office building in Lower Manhattan, and DJT Holdings LLC. He recorded another $1 million loss bailing his son Donald Trump Jr. out of a failed business to build prefabricated homes.

Mr. Trump also received tens of thousands of dollars in dividends while he was in the White House from trusts that were established for him when he was young, his tax returns show.

A new tax firm got involved in 2020.

For years, Mr. Trump used the accounting firm Mazars USA to prepare his taxes and those of his businesses. Donald Bender, Mr. Trump’s longtime accountant at Mazars, had long been listed on the former president’s taxes as his accountant.

The firm formally cut ties with Mr. Trump and his businesses this year, saying it could no longer stand behind a decade of annual financial statements it prepared for the Trump Organization.

But it turns out Mazars and Mr. Trump had begun distancing themselves from each other as early as 2020. That year, BKM Sowan Horan, a Texas-based accounting firm, prepared Mr. Trump’s taxes, his returns show.

Republicans are threatening retaliation.

The release of the documents on Friday set off a new round of attacks between Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, including threats of escalating — and politically motivated — future releases of private tax information.

Democrats cast the move as necessary oversight on a president who broke decades of precedent in declining to release his returns.

“Trump acted as though he had something to hide, a pattern consistent with the recent conviction of his family business for criminal tax fraud,” Representative Don Beyer, Democrat of Virginia and a Ways and Means Committee member, said in a news release. “As the public will now be able to see, Trump used questionable or poorly substantiated deductions and a number of other tax avoidance schemes as justification to pay little or no federal income tax in several of the years examined.”

But Republicans — who won control of the House in November — warned Democrats that they had started down a dangerous road, and that public pressure could push the incoming majority to release returns from President Biden’s family or a wide range of other private individuals.

“Going forward, all future chairs of both the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee will have nearly unlimited power to target and make public the tax returns of private citizens, political enemies, business and labor leaders, or even the Supreme Court justices themselves,” Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement on Friday.

Mr. Trump weighed in late Friday morning with an email statement that also raised the threat of retaliation.

“The Democrats should have never done it, the Supreme Court should have never approved it, and it’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people,” he said. “The great USA divide will now grow far worse. The Radical Left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!”

Alyssa Farah Griffin and Kayleigh McEnany

Dear Commons Community,

Former White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin gave a scathing assessment of her Trump administration colleague Kayleigh McEnany during her interview with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“Kayleigh is a liar and an opportunist,” Griffin said in her April interview with the panel, according to a transcript released Thursday. “She’s a smart woman. She’s a Harvard law grad. She knew we lost the election, but she made a calculation that she wanted to have a certain life post-Trump that required staying in his good graces. And that was more important to her than telling the truth to the American public.”

McEnany served as Donald Trump’s White House press secretary and perpetuated his “stolen election” narrative, even after those lies inspired the violent insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. Griffin resigned a few weeks after Trump lost the 2020 election.

Griffin told Jan. 6 committee that she believed McEnany knew Trump’s claims about the 2020 election were false but peddled them to the public for personal gain.

“I think she saw that as a moment to kind of, like, if I do this one last public-facing stand for Trump, I’m going to be set,” she said. “And I mean, it did. She got her Fox News gig. It worked out precisely how she’d always planned it to, but she knew better.”

Griffin now sits on ABC’s “The View” panel while McEnany co-hosts “Outnumbered” at Fox News. Griffin has been critical of the Trump administration since her departure; McEnany has continued to be a staunch supporter of the former president.

Trump sleaze breeds sleaze! McEnany is where she belongs on Fox!

Tony