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Cherokee / Ko-Ko (Charlie Parker) I SWR Big Band feat. Jakob Manz & John Beasley - April 3rd 2022, Porsche Arena Stuttgart
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Maraming netizens ang napa-wow sa makukulay na dekorasyon ng bahay ng mag-asawang ito mula Pozorrubio, Pangasinan.
Kuwento ni Bayan Patroller Michael Sta. Ana, bunga ito ng imahinasyon nila ng asawang si Jobessa. Gumamit sila ng pinagsama-samang vintage, surplus, at handmade items para rito.
Para sa mga kaugnay na ulat ng @bayanmoipatrolmo: https://www.abscbn.news/BMPM
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Peter Erskine & The Dr. Um Band
"On Call"
(Fuzzy Music 2017)
https://songwhip.com/peter-erskine/on-callPeter Erskine – drums, percussion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_ErskineBob Sheppard – saxophone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Sheppard_(musician)John Beasley – keyboard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Beasley_(musician)Benjamin Shepherd – electric bass
https://www.discogs.com/artist/3901503-Benjamin-Shepherd#nowlistening #jazz #music #JazzMusic #JazzFusion
#PeterErskine
#BobSheppard
#JohnBeasley
#BenjaminShepherd -
Finally Friday Reads: Page Not Found
“The National Divorce is a difficult time for all of us.” John Buss, repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It seems uniquely American to be focused on the drama between two rich narcissistic men when so many things are going sideways in this country and this world. It’s embarrassing and depressing.
The current zeitgeist appears to be privileged, cis white men trying to get rid of their small penis energy by displaying a hypertoxic version of masculinity. The entire White House has a Lord of the Flies vibe about it. The press has totally gotten carried away with the narcissistic displays of abuse, seemingly jolting between adolescent bouts of testosterone overdose, middle-life crises complete with bright red Teslas, and male menopause.
Meanwhile, a coterie of women display Lady Macbeth levels of ruthlessness, ambition, and descent into madness and body dysmorphia with their clownish plastic surgery. This is a mad court worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy with policies worthy of a Sinclair Lewis novel. The level of ignorance on display is beyond description. I can’t believe the news all day yesterday was obsessed with the madness of Yam Tits and Musk. Let’s focus on the damage they’ve done and leave them to their latest reality show.
I think political cartoonists have a better take on this ordeal than any media outlet. Then there’s the silent majorities in Congress, saying nothing, and doing anything but the people’s business. Not since the Iraq war have I seen more shock and awe. They governed during Watergate. Are they all afraid of the cult that serves Yam Tits? Maybe we should flood their offices with copies of the Constitution with Sharpie instructions saying DO YOUR JOB!
I’m sitting here wondering if I should even start in on all the mainstream media articles and coverage about Musk and Trump. Way to feed two men with obvious narcissistic personality disorder and a side of antisocial personality disorder.
Right now, I’ll start with ProPublica, which has reliably searched out stories worthy of Upton Sinclair or Nellie Bly. Once again, our own government is doing wrong by our veterans. It’s quite sad. “DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts. DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts. We obtained records showing how a Department of Government Efficiency staffer with no medical experience used artificial intelligence to identify which VA contracts to kill. “AI is absolutely the wrong tool for this,” one expert said.” This bit of investigative journalism is by Brandon Roberts, Vernal Coleman, and Eric Umansky.
The more I know about AI, see its use, and am forced to sit in seminars to learn the Purdue way of dealing with it, the more I want to write a sci-fi book where their programs go mad. I do not trust bros with personality disorders, likely on the spectrum, to think with real human insight. It makes me long for Isaac Asimov.
As the Trump administration prepared to cancel contracts at the Department of Veteran Affairs this year, officials turned to a software engineer with no health care or government experience to guide them.
The engineer, working for the Department of Government Efficiency, quickly built an artificial intelligence tool to identify which services from private companies were not essential. He labeled those contracts “MUNCHABLE.”
The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.
The DOGE AI tool flagged more than 2,000 contracts for “munching.” It’s unclear how many have been or are on track to be canceled — the Trump administration’s decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box. The VA uses contractors for many reasons, including to support hospitals, research and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans.
VA officials have said they’ve killed nearly 600 contracts overall. Congressional Democrats have been pressing VA leaders for specific details of what’s been canceled without success.
We identified at least two dozen on the DOGE list that have been canceled so far. Among the canceled contracts was one to maintain a gene sequencing device used to develop better cancer treatments. Another was for blood sample analysis in support of a VA research project. Another was to provide additional tools to measure and improve the care nurses provide.
ProPublica obtained the code and the contracts it flagged from a source and shared them with a half dozen AI and procurement experts. All said the script was flawed. Many criticized the concept of using AI to guide budgetary cuts at the VA, with one calling it “deeply problematic.”
Cary Coglianese, professor of law and of political science at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the governmental use and regulation of artificial intelligence, said he was troubled by the use of these general-purpose large language models, or LLMs. “I don’t think off-the-shelf LLMs have a great deal of reliability for something as complex and involved as this,” he said.
Sahil Lavingia, the programmer enlisted by DOGE, which was then run by Elon Musk, acknowledged flaws in the code.
“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made. I would never recommend someone run my code and do what it says. It’s like that ‘Office’ episode where Steve Carell drives into the lake because Google Maps says drive into the lake. Do not drive into the lake.”
Though Lavingia has talked about his time at DOGE previously, this is the first time his work has been examined in detail and the first time he’s publicly explained his process, down to specific lines of code.
Further technical information can be found in this follow-up article at ProPublica. “Inside the AI Prompts DOGE Used to “Munch” Contracts Related to Veterans’ Health.”
Sahil Lavingia, who wrote the code, told it to cancel, or in his words “munch,” anything that wasn’t “directly supporting patient care.” Unfortunately, neither Lavingia nor the model had the knowledge required to make such determinations.
“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months, in an interview with ProPublica. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made.”
It turns out, a lot of mistakes were made as DOGE and the VA rushed to implement President Donald Trump’s February executive order mandating all of the VA’s contracts be reviewed within 30 days.
ProPublica obtained the code and prompts — the instructions given to the AI model — used to review the contracts and interviewed Lavingia and experts in both AI and government procurement. We are publishing an analysis of those prompts to help the public understand how this technology is being deployed in the federal government.
The experts found numerous and troubling flaws: the code relied on older, general-purpose models not suited for the task; the model hallucinated contract amounts, deciding around 1,100 of the agreements were each worth $34 million when they were sometimes worth thousands; and the AI did not analyze the entire text of contracts. Most experts said that, in addition to the technical issues, using off-the-shelf AI models for the task — with little context on how the VA works — should have been a nonstarter.
Lavingia, a software engineer enlisted by DOGE, acknowledged there were flaws in what he created and blamed, in part, a lack of time and proper tools. He also stressed that he knew his list of what he called “MUNCHABLE” contracts would be vetted by others before a final decision was made.
Even the word “munchable” makes these guys sound like 7th graders. I don’t even know what to say about the University of Michigan. I was a 7th grader when anti-Vietnam War protests picked up, but I don’t recall anything like this.
However, all over our institutions are in the service of racist and xenophobic Big Brother. (I really wish I could stop using references to dystopian literature, but sadly, it works.) This is from The Guardian. “University of Michigan using undercover investigators to surveil student Gaza protesters. Revealed: security trailing students on and off campus as video shows investigator faking disability when confronted.”
The University of Michigan is using private, undercover investigators to surveil pro-Palestinian campus groups, including trailing them on and off campus, furtively recording them and eavesdropping on their conversations, the Guardian has learned.
The surveillance appears to largely be an intimidation tactic, five students who have been followed, recorded or eavesdropped on said. The undercover investigators have cursed at students, threatened them and in one case drove a car at a student who had to jump out of the way, according to student accounts and video footage shared with the Guardian.
Students say they have frequently identified undercover investigators and confronted them. In two bizarre interactions captured by one student on video, a man who had been trailing the student faked disabilities, and noisily – and falsely – accused a student of attempting to rob him.
The undercover investigators appear to work for Detroit-based City Shield, a private security group, and some of their evidence was used by Michigan prosecutors to charge and jail students, according to a Guardian review of police records, university spending records and video collected in legal discovery. Most charges were later dropped. Public spending records from the U-M board of regents, the school’s governing body, show the university paid at least $800,000 between June 2023 and September 2024 to City Shield’s parent company, Ameri-Shield.
Among those who say they’re being regularly followed is Katarina Keating, part of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (Safe), a local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Keating said the surveillance has caused her to feel “on edge”, and she often looks over her shoulder since November, when she was first followed.
“But on another level it sometimes feels comedic because it’s so insane that they have spent millions of dollars to hire some goons to follow campus activists around,” Keating added. “It’s just such a waste of money and time.”
How’s this for government efficiency? The NYPD and ICE mistakenly arrest a Chilean woman on vacation in New York City. Police left her 12-year-old daughter on the street alone. This country is no longer safe from arbitrary arrest and detention by morans in law enforcement.
There appears to be a bit of a correction of the DOGE overreach in the Federal Government. This is reported in the Washington Post by Hannah Natanson, Adam Taylor, Meryl Kornfield, Rachel Siegel, and Scott Dance. That’s a lot of reporters for a lot of agencies. “Trump administration races to fix a big mistake: DOGE fired too many people. Across the government, officials are rehiring federal workers who were forced out or encouraged to resign.” Do you suppose all the Trump/Musk drama is just a distraction from the kind of news that’s falling off the front pages but should be screamed in front-page headlines? They fucked up folks! Let’s bury the lede!
Across the government, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire many federal employees dismissed under DOGE’s staff-slashing initiatives after wiping out entire offices, in some cases imperiling key services such as weather forecasting and the drug approval process.
Since Musk left the White House last week, he and Trump have fallen out bitterly, sniping at each other in public over the cost of Trump’s sweeping tax legislation and government subsidies for Musk’s businesses. But even before that, the administration was working to undo some of DOGE’s highest-profile actions.
Trump officials are trying to recover not only people who were fired, but also thousands of experienced senior staffers who are opting for a voluntary exit as the administration rolls out a second resignation offer. Thousands more staff are returning in fits and starts as a conflicting patchwork of court decisions overturn some of Trump’s large-scale firings, especially his Valentine’s Day dismissal of all probationary workers, those with one or two years of government service and fewer job protections. A federal judge in April ordered the president to reinstate probationary workers dismissed from 20 federal agencies, although a few days later the Supreme Court — in a different case — halted another judge’s order to reinstate a smaller group.
Some fired federal employees, especially those at retirement age or who have since secured jobs in the private sector, are proving reluctant to return. So the administration is seeking work-arounds and stopgaps, including asking remaining staff to serve in new roles, work overtime or volunteer to fill vacancies, according to interviews with 18 federal workers across eight agencies and messages obtained by The Washington Post. A Post review found recent messy re-hirings at agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, the IRS, the State Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In some cases, the government is posting new online job listings very similar to positions it recently vacated, a Post review of USAJobs found
The ever-shifting personnel changes are yet another strain on a workforce already weary of Trump-induced uncertainty, said current and former employees, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“They wanted to show they were gutting the government, but there was no thought about what parts might be worth keeping,” said one FDA staffer who was fired and rehired. “Now it feels like it was all just a game to them.”
Notice they just had to point out the Trump/Musk WWE event just to distract you for even a moment. It seems we no longer have caped crusaders but black-robed ones. This is from The Harvard Crimson. “Judge Blocks Trump Proclamation Banning International Students From Entering U.S. on Harvard Visas.” I’m just seeing Trump failures everywhere. No wonder they needed a new reality show season.
A federal judge granted Harvard’s request for a temporary restraining order hours after the University asked her to block the Trump administration’s Wednesday proclamation banning international students from entering the United States on Harvard-sponsored visas.
The order was issued just four hours after Harvard filed an amended complaint accusing the Trump administration of retaliating against the University by preventing incoming international students from entering the U.S. to attend Harvard.
U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs also announced that the court would extend the TRO first granted to Harvard on May 23 — one day after the DHS revoked Harvard’s eligibility to host international students — until June 20, the date requested by the University. Burroughs had already agreed to extend the TRO once before, following a May 29 hearing.
Thursday’s TRO will reinstate international students’ ability to enter the country to attend Harvard until a June 16 hearing scheduled by Burroughs — but the University will need to file for a preliminary injunction to extend its ability to host international students until the court determines its legality in court.
In the amended complaint, Harvard wrote that Trump’s proclamation was “a transparent attempt to circumvent the temporary restraining order this Court already entered against the summary revocation of Harvard’s SEVP certification.”
It argued that — without urgent action — the proclamation would have dramatic costs for admitted students attempting to enter the U.S. and subject current students to fear they would be arbitrarily deported.
Burroughs, in an order published well after working hours Thursday night, deemed that Harvard had made a “sufficient showing” that it would sustain “immediate and irreparable harm” unless a TRO was granted.
But both the TRO — and a future preliminary injunction, if Harvard seeks one and Burroughs rules favorably — are only provisional protections.
CBS shows that the Yam Tits Administration still thinks getting every little thing to the Supreme Court will solve all of its problems. Melissa Quinn reports that “Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow mass layoffs at Education Department.
President Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for it to continue with its efforts to dismantle the Department of Education and lay off more than 1,300 employees while a legal fight over the future of the department moves forward.
The Justice Department is seeking the high court’s intervention in a pair of disputes brought by a group of 20 states, school districts and teachers unions, which challenge Mr. Trump’s plans to unwind the Department of Education. The president signed an executive order in March directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to facilitate the department’s closure to the maximum extent allowed under the law.
As part of Mr. Trump’s pledge to get rid of the department, the administration canceled a host of grants and executed a reduction in force, or a layoff, that impacted 1,378 employees — roughly a third of the department’s workforce. Affected workers were placed on administrative leave and were to receive full pay and benefits until June 9.
Mr. Trump also announced that the Small Business Administration would take over the Education Department’s student-loan portfolio, and the Department of Health and Human Services would handle special education, nutrition and other related services.
In response to the lawsuits challenging Mr. Trump’s actions, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the administration from carrying out its layoffs, finding that the reduction-in-force was a unilateral effort to close the department, which would violate the separation of powers.
Okay, this is an update, and I just had to put it up
Oh, speaking of those delightful Republican Congress Critters, here’s a headline for you from The Guardian. “Republican senator employs aide fired by DeSantis over neo-Nazi imagery. Nate Hochman, staffer for Eric Schmitt, also peddled far-right conspiracy theories as experts decry rise in extremism.” Gosh, another Cis White Male Christian Nationalist for Adolf! What a surprise!
A staffer for Missouri Republican senator Eric Schmitt was previously fired from Ron DeSantis’s unsuccessful presidential campaign after making a video containing neo-Nazi imagery, and later peddled far-right conspiracy theories in a Marco Rubio-linked thinktank.
Nate Hochman’s job in the hard-right senator’s office, along with earlier Trump appointments to executive agencies, suggest to some experts there are few barriers to far-right activists making a career in Republican party politics.
The Guardian contacted Eric Schmitt’s office for comment.
Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told the Guardian: “Hochman’s position shows once again that there are no guardrails against extremists in the GOP nowadays.”
She added: “Racism, antisemitism and other abhorrent beliefs don’t seem to stop extremists from appointments with far-right politicians, including in the highest office of the presidency.”
Hochman, 26, has worked for Schmitt since February, according to congressional information website LegiStorm, a development that was first noted on political newsletter Liberal Currents.
He has also posted dozens of times to X to publicize Schmitt’s initiatives, media appearances, and speeches.
The Guardian reported last September on Hochman’s previous job at America 2100, an organization founded in 2023 as a thinktank. The organization was founded by Mike Needham, who served as Marco Rubio’s chief of staff from 2018 to 2023 when Rubio was a senator and who is once again his chief of staff at the state department.
In that and subsequent reporting, it was revealed that Hochman’s work for America 2100 was focused on producing videos, some of which targeted Haitian migrants in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, and others that rehearsed conspiracy theories about LGBTQ people and human rights organizations.
This was the latest in a string of scandals in the young operative’s political career.
In July 2023 he was fired from the presidential campaign of Florida governor Ron DeSantis after retweeting a pro-DeSantis, anti-Trump video.
As the Guardian reported, the video portrayed a “‘Wojak’ meme, a sad-looking man popular on the right, against headlines about Trump policy failures before showing the meme cheering up to headlines about DeSantis and images of the governor at work”, all to the tune of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill.
Finally, it superimposed DeSantis on to ranks of marching soldiers and a Sonnenrad – a Norse symbol frequently appropriated by neo-Nazis.
As Hochman departed the campaign, Axios reported he had made the video but endeavored to make it “appear as if it was produced externally”.
The New York Times has a Guest Op-Ed up from two law professors about how the Trump administration is giving a loyalty test to anyone looking for a job within the Federal Government. How unconstitutional is that? “How to Stack the Federal Work Force With ‘Patriotic Americans’ Who Agree With Trump.”
The White House took a step last week that significantly undercuts the idea that federal employment should be nonpartisan. A May 29 memo from the Office of Personnel Management may seem technical, but the policy that it outlines has grave implications for how the government functions and creates an unconstitutional political test for federal hiring.
At heart, the new policy is about viewpoint discrimination: People applying for federal jobs whose views the Trump administration does not like will not be hired. This is the most recent of the administration’s actions to undermine the nonpartisan Civil Service and consolidate control over almost all federal employees in the White House.
In a densely worded, 12-page memo, Vince Haley, an assistant to the president for domestic policy, and Charles Ezell, the acting O.P.M. director, make fealty to the president’s agenda a criterion for hiring for most federal positions. Imposing such a litmus test for nonpolitical positions runs afoul of the nearly 150-year-old federal Civil Service law, the 1939 Hatch Act and the First Amendment.
Under federal law, about 4,000 federal jobs are filled by political appointees. These positions allow the president to appoint those who share his views and to remove those who do not support his policy priorities. Most remaining federal jobs are hired based on nonpartisan and objective assessments of merit, and the hiring criteria are tied to the job duties.
The recent memo would, in effect, dramatically expand that exception for political appointees to include everyone at what’s known as level GS-5 or above — a group that includes clerical positions, technicians for soil conservation and firefighters. The ideologies and views of these individuals should play no role in their potential hiring.
The policy announced in the memo requires every person applying for a position level GS-5 or above to submit four essays. One requires that the applicant address: “How would you help advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.” Another prompt: “How has your commitment to the Constitution and the founding principles of the United States inspired you to pursue this role within the federal government? Provide a concrete example from professional, academic or personal experience.”
Imagine that someone applying to be a secretary or a soil technician or a firefighter were to answer with: I believe the founding principles of this country were racist and I do not adhere to them. Or: I will perform my job to the best of my abilities and will follow federal law, but I do not see my position as political in any way.
It’s hard to imagine that those people would be hired. And yet, the Civil Service was created in the 19th century precisely to avoid such politically based hiring. The prohibition on political considerations in hiring was strengthened by the Hatch Act, which was enacted at the behest of conservatives who worried that too many Democrats had been hired to staff New Deal agencies.
One more Op-Ed from Dana Milbank at the Washington Post before I close. “They are not good at this. Nearly five months into Trump’s new reign of error, his administration’s mistakes are multiplying.
On May 29, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem released a “comprehensive list of sanctuary jurisdictions.” She was “exposing these sanctuary politicians” because they are “endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens.”
But it immediately became clear that the list of more than 500 states, counties and cities was riddled with errors: misspellings, cities and counties mistaken for each other, and places that don’t exist. Cincinnati became “Cincinnatti,” Campbell County (Kentucky) became “Cambell” County, Greeley County (Nebraska) became “Greenley” County, Takoma Park (Maryland) became “Tacoma” Park, while “Martinsville County” (Virginia) was invented. And so on.
Worse, scores of the “sanctuary politicians” she called out turned out to be leaders of MAGA counties and towns with no sanctuary policies on their books. Complaints poured in from Trump allies across the country. “You don’t have that many mistakes on such an important federal document,” said Pat Burns, the Trump-backing mayor of the right-wing stronghold of Huntington Beach, California, mislabeled as a sanctuary city. He told the Associated Press that “somebody’s got to answer” for this “negligent” behavior.
Good luck with that. The only answer was to disappear the list this week, leaving behind a “Page Not Found” error.
Such a massive screwup hadn’t happened since … well, the previous week, when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went to the White House and released his ballyhooed “Make America Healthy Again” report full of citations of studies that don’t exist, the product of AI hallucinations.
This, in turn, was reminiscent of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff rollout, which targeted an island full of penguins and other unpopulated or sparsely populated corners of the globe — and raised taxes on most of the world based on a math error.
And these, of course, were on top of the “mistakes” that led Trump officials to share war plans with a journalist, to deport people protected by court order, to launch a destructive fight with Harvard University, to fire and then attempt to rehire thousands of crucial federal workers, to cancel and then reinstate various vital government functions, and to misstate, often by orders of magnitude, the alleged savings from its cost-cutting attempts.
Trying to make sense of any of this? Page Not Found.
It’s obvious Trump is not interested in the best and brightest. They give him facts and truth over what he wants to hear and do, and that’s not what his massive need for attention and ego-stroking requires. Oh, up to 4000 words, and I still have managed to do something other than cover the two biggest jerks in the world jousting for air and social media time.
As you know, my Dad bombed NAZIs. I’d like to think I’d be capable of doing something brave if I were called to duty. He made it back. Many others did not. I’d just like to close with a remembrance of D-Day. There are still some D-Day vets out there who returned to the field. This is from the AP. “D-Day veterans return to Normandy to mark 81st anniversary of landings.” I remember growing up in absolute awe of all the men and women I met in my life who helped free the world of Fascists. I do not understand why the country is failing to do that now.
COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France (AP) — Veterans gathered Friday in Normandy to mark the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings — a pivotal moment of World War II that eventually led to the collapse of Adolf Hitler’s regime.
Along the coastline and near the D-Day landing beaches, tens of thousands of onlookers attended the commemorations, which included parachute jumps, flyovers, remembrance ceremonies, parades, and historical reenactments.
Many were there to cheer the ever-dwindling number of surviving veterans in their late 90s and older. All remembered the thousands who died.
Harold Terens, a 101-year-old U.S. veteran who last year married his 96-year-old sweetheart near the D-Day beaches, was back in Normandy.
“Freedom is everything,” he said. “I pray for freedom for the whole world. For the war to end in Ukraine, and Russia, and Sudan and Gaza. I think war is disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”
Terens enlisted in 1942 and shipped to Great Britain the following year, attached to a four-pilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighter squadron as their radio repair technician. On D-Day, Terens helped repair planes returning from France so they could rejoin the battle.
Let us forever be thankful for their service and sacrifice. May we also remember that we were not alone in these battles. We have allies. At least at this moment. This song by the Dropkick Murphys is about World War 1, but the sentiment is the same.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DDay #ICEKidnappings #JudgesRuleAgainstTrump #TrumpAdministrationScrewUpsAndCrimes #TurningBackTheDogeDisasters
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Gena Rowlands: A Woman Under the Influence:
"Scene from"A woman under the influence" (John Cassavetes) with Gena Rowlands. Emotionally devastating drama that charts the mental disintegration of a California housewife."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dob7CiyAK2g
#GenaRowlands #AWomanUnderTheInfluence #PeterFalk #JohnCassavetes #Cinema #FilmHouse
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Fake Investor John Bernard Sinks Norwegian Green Shipping Dreams https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/01/fake-investor-john-bernard-sinks-norwegian-green-shipping-dreams/ #Ne'er-Do-WellNews #JohnCliftonDavies #Nils-OddTønnevold #ALittleSunshine #FreidigShipping #InsideKnowledge #HaraldBerglihn #HaraldVanvik #WebFraud2.0 #JohnBernard #TheWeeknd #GuyDevos #Uber
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“So it begins, a proud moment in our history. Another trump first. MAGA.” John Buss @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m moving a little slow today. I woke up to Temple snuggled utterly beside me. She usually sleeps down by my feet. She stood up, looking like she was trying to assume the position, then darted off the bed. Fortunately, she got down there. I spent the wee hours of the morning cleaning up the floor. She seemed much better when we went for our morning walk, but dawn is always too early for me. I’m used to lecturing and gigging at night.
I did check the phone. BB had texted me this. It totally changed my thoughts about what I share with you today. Of course, I’d planned on covering one of the most historical trials in history, and we’ll get to that. I’m not sure this excitement will start until after the jury is seated. However, it’s Trump, and who knows what the overgrown toddler will do. So, back to the matter at hand. This is from Vox’s Ian Millihiser. “The Supreme Court effectively abolishes the right to mass protest in three US states. It is no longer safe to organize a protest in Louisiana, Mississippi, or Texas.”
This is especially key down here. #SCOTUS just decided that there is basically no right to protest in Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi. Welcome to the first massive step to undoing democracy. That follows up well with what the Louisiana D’ohvenor just did. If you see a peaceful protest, and it’s in your way, just slam the pedal to the floor and run right over them. That crime is allowed, but if someone sabotages your protest by throwing a rock. All bets are off, and the organizers pay for all damage. Here are just some of those headlines. “Louisiana could outlaw protests near residences, despite First Amendment concerns.” This was written just 5 days ago when there were First Amendment Concerns. Then there is this. “New legislation aims to offer protection to drivers who hit protesters that are performing road-blocking maneuvers. “GOP politicians across the US are proposing increased penalties for demonstrators who run onto highways and legal immunity for drivers who hit them.”
Baton Rouge, 2016. Jonathan Bachman/Reuters. This evidently isn’t protected speech now.
So, forced birth advocates can do whatever shenanigans they want and be protected by some warped take on religious freedom and freedom of speech. The rest of us may be liable for things others did that take away our freedom and strip us of all our assets. This is from Ian’s analysis.
The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. The decision not to hear Mckesson leaves in place a lower court decision that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
Under that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act.
It is possible that this outcome will be temporary. The Court did not embrace the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision attacking the First Amendment right to protest, but it did not reverse it either. That means that, at least for now, the Fifth Circuit’s decision is the law in much of the American South.
For the past several years, the Fifth Circuit has engaged in a crusade against DeRay Mckesson, a prominent figure within the Black Lives Matter movement who organized a protest near a Baton Rouge police station in 2016.
The facts of the Mckesson case are, unfortunately, quite tragic. Mckesson helped organize the Baton Rouge protest following the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling. During that protest, an unknown individual threw a rock or similar object at a police officer, the plaintiff in the Mckesson case who is identified only as “Officer John Doe.” Sadly, the officer was struck in the face and, according to one court, suffered “injuries to his teeth, jaw, brain, and head.”
Everyone agrees that this rock was not thrown by Mckesson, however. And the Supreme Court held in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware (1982) that protest leaders cannot be held liable for the violent actions of a protest participant, absent unusual circumstances that are not present in the Mckesson case — such as if Mckesson had “authorized, directed, or ratified” the decision to throw the rock.
Indeed, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out in a brief opinion accompanying the Court’s decision not to hear Mckesson, the Court recently reaffirmed the strong First Amendment protections enjoyed by people like Mckesson in Counterman v. Colorado (2023). That decision held that the First Amendment “precludes punishment” for inciting violent action “unless the speaker’s words were ‘intended’ (not just likely) to produce imminent disorder.”
The reason Claiborne protects protest organizers should be obvious. No one who organizes a mass event attended by thousands of people can possibly control the actions of all those attendees, regardless of whether the event is a political protest, a music concert, or the Super Bowl. So, if protest organizers can be sanctioned for the illegal action of any protest attendee, no one in their right mind would ever organize a political protest again.
Demonstrators marching in the street holding signs during the March on Washington, 1963 [Source: Library of Congress]
The fact that the outcome may be temporary does not preclude a chilling effect on the historical importance of demonstrations in U.S. History. Think about the Boston Tea Party or the March on Washington Dr. Martin Luther King led. Amy Howe, writing for SCOTUSblog has this analysis. “Court declines to intervene in lawsuit against Black Lives Matter organizer.”
The case is one with which the justices were already familiar. In 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit allowed the officer’s lawsuit to go forward. Mckesson then appealed to the Supreme Court, where he argued that the lawsuit against him was barred by the First Amendment and the Supreme Court’s 1982 decision in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., which limited the NAACP’s liability for a nonviolent protest that it organized.
In November 2020, the court sent the case back to the 5th Circuit with instructions to seek guidance from the Louisiana Supreme Court on whether state law would in fact allow Mckesson to be held liable.
After the Louisiana Supreme Court issued an opinion indicating that, under the facts alleged by the officer, a protest leader could be sued for negligence, a divided 5th Circuit issued a new opinion allowing the lawsuit to go forward. Doe had alleged, the majority wrote, that Mckesson had “organized and directed the protest in such a manner as to create an unreasonable risk that one protester would assault or batter” the officer.
Judge Don Willett dissented from the panel’s ruling. He agreed that Doe “deserves justice” and should be able to sue the person who actually injured him. But he rejected the idea that Doe can sue Mckesson, arguing that the theory on which the majority relied was “foreclosed — squarely — by the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent.”
Mckesson returned to the Supreme Court last fall, asking the justices to weigh in. But after considering the case at seven consecutive conferences, the justices denied review.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a statement regarding the court’s decision to deny review. She noted that since the court of appeals issued its decision, the Supreme Court in Counterman v. Colorado “made clear that the First Amendment bars the use of an objective standard like negligence for punishing speech, and it read Claiborne and other incitement cases as demanding a showing of intent.” Because the Supreme Court may turn down cases “for many reasons,” Sotomayor stressed, the denial of review in Mckesson’s case “expresses no review about the merits of” his claim. Moreover, she added, the court of appeals should “give full and fair consideration to arguments regarding Counterman’s impact in any future proceedings in this case.”
Demonstrator at the Vietnam Moratorium, 1969 [Source: Library of Congress]
Evidently, the right-wing judges in the case fear protestors at their steps more than they truly believe in the intent of the Bill of Rights. It also makes me wonder about the protests on January 6. Does this mean that everyone there can be sued for the resulting damage? I guess I’m just going to have to wait to hear the legal minds talk about it on the News tonight. They’re already on overtime given the start of the Stormy Daniels Hush Money Case today.
As with all Trump Trials, the days before the trial began, we had more Trumpertantrums. This is from Nick Robertson writing for The Hill. “Trump rages at judge hours before hush money case begins.”
Former President Trump railed against the judge in his criminal hush money case early Monday, just hours before the first criminal trial against a former U.S. president is set to begin.
Repeating complaints he has made for months, Trump argued that Judge Juan Merchan is corrupt and the charges against him are political in nature and baseless, and he dubbed the entire effort a “witch hunt.”
“The Radical Left Democrats are already cheating on the 2024 Presidential Election by bringing, or helping to bring, all of these bogus lawsuits against me, thereby forcing me to sit in courthouses, and spend money that could be used for campaigning, instead of being out in the field knocking Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST President in the History of the United States,” he wrote in one early morning Truth Social post. “Election Interference!”
Trump’s criminal hush money trial will start jury selection Monday in Manhattan, where prosecutors claim the former president illegally covered up payments made to hide a previous affair during the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump also again denounced the gag order placed against him, which was expanded after he berated Merchan’s wife and daughter in prior social media posts.
“I want my VOICE back. This Crooked Judge has GAGGED me. Unconstitutional!” Trump wrote. “The other side can talk about me, but I am not allowed to talk about them! Rigged Trial!”
It is unclear if Trump will testify during the trial, though he is expected to attend it in person, including Monday’s session.
Sorry, dude, if you protest too much and damages result, you will have to pay for everything. Ask your SCOTUS buddies. The New York Times has live updates on its website today.
As the first criminal trial of an American president headed toward jury selection on Monday, the judge overseeing the case against Donald J. Trump once again declined to step aside, and prosecutors sought to punish the former president for possibly violating a gag order.
Before beginning the arduous process of choosing a jury for the landmark trial — on allegations that Mr. Trump falsified documents to cover up a sex scandal involving a porn star — the judge announced his decision to remain on the case, rejecting Mr. Trump’s latest effort to oust him.
Michael Tomasky has this delightful headline at The New Republic. “We May Finally Get to Write: “Convicted Felon Donald Trump.” The former president’s lawlessness has dodged many an obstacle over the years, but he’s facing a new challenge now: a jury of his peers.” Tomasky asks my favorite question, and I am paraphrasing. How the fuck does Trump get away with all of this continually?
We’re finally here. This week, Donald Trump will sit in a courtroom and face criminal charges. The courtroom has not been kind to Trump this year: A Manhattan jury found the Trump Organization guilty on 17 counts of tax fraud last December, and E. Jean Carroll won that hefty judgment against Trump for sexual abuse, but these were civil proceedings. So mark this down as the week the criminal justice system finally managed to haul Trump before the bar of justice.
The only real question here is why this took so long. It’s not as if it wasn’t obvious in 2015 that Trump had total contempt for the law. That was easy for all to see. How has he gotten away with it for this long?
It’s partly due to an utterly docile Republican Party, whose leaders know very well that Trump’s a brigand but are afraid to say so. It’s partly Trump’s reliance on an old Roy Cohn legal strategy—delay, deny, accuse the other side of what you yourself have done, conjure up totally fictional defenses that should be laughed out of court but at least slow down the proceedings. And conservative judges have played their role, such as Aileen Cannon and the U.S. Supreme Court.
But crucially, this is also a media story—more precisely, it’s the story of our two medias, the mainstream and the right-wing. The mainstream media have consistently held Trump to a lower standard of behavior than other politicians, and the right-wing media have held him to no standard of behavior, making excuses for everything.
It’s so important to understand this phenomenon. We have two medias in this country. One wakes up every morning looking for a fight, and the other, with some exceptions, wakes up every morning looking for nuance and rationalizations. It’s a huge part of the story of how we got here.
Take this now completely forgotten tale from the very early days of the Trump administration. On January 24—Trump’s fourth day in office—then–national security adviser Mike Flynn was interviewed by the FBI about his Russia connections. On January 26 and 27, Sally Yates of the Justice Department told the White House about her department’s suspicions about Flynn.
That same night of January 27—the first week of his presidency—Trump had dinner with then–FBI director James Comey. The FBI was investigating Flynn. It was also, we learned shortly thereafter, investigating Trump’s 2016 campaign.
What was said at that dinner? We don’t know everything, but that May, Trump admitted that he asked Comey if he, Trump, was under investigation. The mere asking of the question, as Lawrence Tribe said at the time, was a high crime and misdemeanor—an attempt to intimidate and to obstruct justice.
That should have launched a congressional investigation at the very least. But the Republicans controlled the House at the time, so that wasn’t going to happen. In fact, then-Speaker Paul Ryan came out and called Comey compromised, backing Trump all the way.
And the media? Oh, it was a story all right, I wouldn’t deny that it was. But while I haven’t done a content analysis, I’d bet you that Bill Clinton’s tarmac visit with Loretta Lynch inspired more outrage in both medias than this episode did. Naturally, I’m not defending what Clinton did. But he was an ex-president with no power over Lynch. Trump was the sitting president will all power over Comey—which he exercised that May by firing him.
This is one of dozens of examples in which Trump flagrantly violated norms and standards. It made a little stink for a moment or two, but it eventually faded away, quietly departing the front pages, blending into the blurry background of half-remembered Trumpian lies and outrages that have proven to be too numerous for the media watchdogs to actually keep track of, leaving one feeling overwhelmed.
That’s why this week is different. This, finally, is a court of criminal law. There will be facts submitted for the record. There will be testimony, under oath. And eventually, in an estimated six weeks or so, there will be a verdict from a jury of Trump’s peers.
Let’s hope just does, in fact, prevail. I’m not a lawyer, so I must listen to them. However, I should know about equities, as I’ve never seen anything like this before.
I have no words about this last move on DJT stock other than, what is wrong with NASDAQ and the people holding this stock? It already has a negative P/E ratio, and you want to further decimate shareholder value? At the very least, it’s unethical, but is this legal? This is from CNBC. Kevin Breuninger has the analysis. “Trump Media shares plunge more than 15% after company files to issue additional DJT stock.” This plan sounds fishy and appears based on allowing Trump to cash out when allowed. The use of warrants here is legal but off. People need to dump this stock quickly and learn a lesson or fifty.
Shares of Trump Media plunged more than 15% on Monday after the company filed to issue millions of additional shares of stock.
Trump Media’s dramatic slide came as Donald Trump sat in a Manhattan courtroom for the start of his criminal trial on hush money-related charges. Trump is the majority stakeholder in the company.
Trump Media, which created the Truth Social app and trades under the stock ticker DJT on the Nasdaq, fell nearly 20% last week.
Since the company began public trading on March 26, its share price has fallen more than 62%, from an opening price of $70.90 that day down to around $27 on Monday.
As a result, its market capitalization has been slashed by nearly $6 billion, leaving it at around $3.7 billion as of Monday.
The company’s intent to issue more common stock was disclosed in a preliminary prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The shares cannot be issued until a registration statement with the SEC takes effect.
The filing describes a plan to offer more than 21.4 million shares of common stock, issuable “upon the exercise of warrants,” the filing shows. Stock warrants give their holder the ability to buy shares at a predetermined price within a certain time frame.
Trump Media predicted in the filing that it will receive “up to an aggregate of approximately $247.1 million from the exercise of the Warrants.”
The closing price of Trump Media’s warrants was $13.69 as of Friday, according to the filing. The warrants are being traded on the Nasdaq under the ticker “DJTWW.” That ticker was down more than 8% as of 11 a.m. ET.
The company also seeks to offer the resale of up to 146.1 million shares of stock from “selling securityholders,” 114.8 million of which are held by Trump himself. Trump owns 78.8 million shares of the company, and stands to obtain 36 million “earnout shares” if the stock stays above $17.50 for enough trading days.
Trump’s current stake in the company — nearly 60% of its shares — was worth more than $2.2 billion at Monday morning’s share price. Trump is not allowed to sell his shares until a six-month lockup period expires.
So, another week under the glare of the Orange Crashing Meteor. Please let all of this end so we can return to being the country we should be.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#Repeat1968 #AmericanRequiemBeyonce #BillOfRights #BlackLivesMatterProtests #CorruptSupremeCourtJustices #JohnBuss #MckessonVDoe #RightToAssemble #StormyDanielsHushMoneyTrial #TrumpStockCrashing
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Filling a void while living the dream. John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Back in 1982, I was finishing up my first Masters in 1982, taking a much-needed vacation to Europe to celebrate the event, trying to save the Savings and Loan Industry after the rug was pulled out of fixed rate assets with 30-year obligations, yet Congress decided in 1980 to let their liabilities be “open to the market” which was running amok with double-digit inflation. I also was pregnant with my oldest. I had a modest two-story, two-bedroom townhouse with a 30-year loan fixed at 16.7% but mercifully put to 12% because I worked at the Lender. I also could do nothing to stop them from heading to bankruptcy. I’d worked at a small commercial bank where the problem was having to pay interest now on checking accounts. This upset of the status quo left over from the Depression Days basically threatened homeownership and business. Repricing their liabilities more to market was a killer but considered necessary because savings funds were going to money market accounts. I also spent some time trying to explain these things to Congress. The only good advice I got there was never to get in an elevator with Strom Thurmond. The eighties economy was a mess, but you’d never know if you had read anything besides economic studies in journals. It didn’t really get better until we got what we call a regime change.
I planned on attending law school, taking the exams while noticeably pregnant with my oldest daughter, getting accepted to several, etc. I visited the University of Chicago as an undergrad. All I could think was there were too many damn lawyers around the country. So, I became a Financial Economist with eyes on my doctorate. I missed this seminal event in American History where a group of people worked to undermine the Justice System to benefit the wealthy. The Federalist Society, nicknamed FedSoc, was founded that same year. I don’t often rely on Wikipedia, but when I do, I make sure they’ve got citations.
The Federalist Society was founded in 1982 by a group of students from Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, and The University of Chicago Law School with the aim of challenging liberal or left-wing ideology within elite American law schools and universities. The organization’s stated objectives are “checking federal power, protecting individual liberty and interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning”,[1] and it plays a central role in networking and mentoring young conservative lawyers.[5] According to Amanda Hollis-Brusky, the Federalist Society “has evolved into the de facto gatekeeper for right-of-center lawyers aspiring to government jobs and federal judgeships under Republican presidents.”[8] It vetted President Donald Trump‘s list of potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees; in March 2020, 43 out of 51 of Trump’s appellate court nominees were current or former members of the society.[10]
In 2018, Politico Magazine wrote that “it is no exaggeration to suggest that it was perhaps the most effective student conference ever—a blueprint, in retrospect, for how to marry youthful enthusiasm with intellectual oomph to achieve far-reaching results.”[13] The society states that it “is founded on the principles that the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental powers is central to our constitution, and that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.”[2]
The society looks to Federalist Paper Number 78 for an articulation of the virtue of judicial restraint, as written by Alexander Hamilton: “It can be of no weight to say that the courts, on the pretense of a repugnancy, may substitute their own pleasure to the constitutional intentions of the legislature … The courts must declare the sense of the law; and if they should be disposed to exercise WILL instead of JUDGMENT, the consequence would equally be the substitution of their pleasure to that of the legislative body.”
“Trump is an expert in lawfare, and his life has revolved around manipulating the judicial system. He’s out on bail while facing 54 more criminal charges and awaiting sentencing for conviction of 34 felonies. It is entertaining listening to MAGA whine about the corrupt DOJ while the corruption is all Trump.” John Buss @repeat1968
That sounds almost mundane, doesn’t it? The virtue of judicial restraint? Protecting individual liberty? However, we now have judges so far off the rails of restraint that it’s not even funny. Some of them are now vehemently anti-MAGA and Donald, but they’re still very much at the root of the problem. I found this ironic when I read it last year at WAPO. “Conservative Case Emerges to Disqualify Trump for Role on Jan. 6. Two law professors active in the Federalist Society wrote that the original meaning of the 14th Amendment makes Donald Trump ineligible to hold government office.”
Two prominent conservative law professors have concluded that Donald J. Trump is ineligible to be president under a provision of the Constitution that bars people who have engaged in an insurrection from holding government office. The professors are active members of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group, and proponents of originalism, the method of interpretation that seeks to determine the Constitution’s original meaning.
The professors — William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas — studied the question for more than a year and detailed their findings in a long article to be published next year in The University of Pennsylvania Law Review.
“When we started out, neither of us was sure what the answer was,” Professor Baude said. “People were talking about this provision of the Constitution. We thought: ‘We’re constitutional scholars, and this is an important constitutional question. We ought to figure out what’s really going on here.’ And the more we dug into it, the more we realized that we had something to add.”
He summarized the article’s conclusion: “Donald Trump cannot be president — cannot run for president, cannot become president, cannot hold office — unless two-thirds of Congress decides to grant him amnesty for his conduct on Jan. 6.”
Yet, this is the same group that vetted all of Trump’s appointments. But it didn’t start there, and it doesn’t end there. This is from The New Republic. “Clarence Thomas Is Hiding Even More Money Than We Knew. The justice has received millions of dollars worth of gifts, far more than his colleagues, but only reported a fraction of it.” These judges are not only activists whose findings are not based on anything in the Constitution or precedent, but they take cash for their positions. The news on Clarence Thomas is so bad that I cannot believe Dick Durbin won’t open an investigation or call him and his enablers to a hearing.
Crime doesn’t pay, but it seems that Justice can get you millions.
A new report from Fix the Court, a judicial watchdog and advocacy group, found that justices on the U.S. Supreme Court received close to a total of $3 million in gifts, at least, over the last 20 years—with more than $2.4 million of those gifts being directed solely to Justice Clarence Thomas.
Thomas has repeatedly been the focus of ethical scrutiny over reports that he received exorbitant gifts and vacations from Republican billionaires, never paid back a loan for his beloved R.V., and cavorted with the Koch brothers, while failing to adequately disclose many of the perks he’s received. All of this has been reported on extensively by publications such as ProPublica. Now, Fix the Court has worked to add it all up.
Fix the Court was able to identify 103 gifts that Thomas received between 2004 and 2024, totaling a value of $2,402,310. Overall, it found 193 when counting some gifts that were received before that period. These gifts could be a number of things: often meals or lodging, with a free flight counting as one gift and a round-trip journey counting as two.
The court’s gift-reporting threshold has slowly risen over the course of 20 years. In 2004, it was $285, and in 2023, it was $480. Of those 193 gifts, Thomas only disclosed receiving 27.
Fix the Court was also able to identify 101 “likely gifts”—mostly trips to exclusive clubs Bohemian Grove and Topridge—Thomas received during those 20 years, which added an additional value of $1,787,684. Including those “likely gifts,” Thomas has reportedly received $4,189,994 worth of perks.
For context, in January 2001, an associate Supreme Court justice like Thomas would’ve made $194,300, a sum that has since risen to $285,400, according to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation. Through gifts, Thomas has roughly doubled his official published income from the last 20 years, which would sit at approximately $4,747,700. To Thomas, being bought and paid for appears to be a second job altogether. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
When counting “likely gifts” furnished to Thomas, justices seated on the U.S. Supreme Court received an astounding 445 gifts valued at $4,780,720. Without those “likely gifts,” the justices’ tallies still hit 344, worth $2,993,036.
Here’s the report from Fix the Court, which details the massivCourtunts of grift. Of course, it’s the darlings of FedSoc that run amok with the bribes.
The tally captures the value of Thomas’ yacht trips to Russia, the Greek Isles and Indonesia, as well as some new information on the Thomas flights Tony Novelly paid for and the Scalia and Alito fishing trips Robin Arkley paid for that’s included in the congressional record. The value of the gifts Scalia received on his ill-fated trip to Marfa, Tex., in 2016 are also included.FTC estimated the value of most of the medals, plaques and trophies the justices received over the years and didn’t list on their disclosures — and there were several dozen, including 62 accepted by O’Connor — at $200, i.e., under the gift-reporting threshold. Several similar awards were accepted by Ginsburg, many of which have been auctionedoff by the Potomack Company to benefit various charities. That said, in some instances — namely for three of Ginsburg’s recent awards, two of which appear to be above the reporting threshold — FTC reached out to the gift-givers to inquire about value and is waiting to hear back.
Other awards unearthed by FTC include a blanket and gift basket Minnesota Law gave to Chief Justice Roberts; personalized Louisville Slugger bats given to Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett by the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center; silver julep cups given to Gorsuch by UK’s Heyburn Initiative; and football “gear” (likely a sweatshirt) and a skybox ticket given to Justice Kagan by the University of Wisconsin. Vague gifts from FTC’s open records requests — a photograph UF Law sent to Thomas, an “engraved gift” URI sent to Sotomayor and a something UW sent to Kagan — are also included.
FTC notes that several entities Thomas listed on his 2000 and 2002 disclosures as “reimbursing” him for “private plane” travel did not, in all likelihood, own private planes at the time (e.g., high schools, small colleges, civic organization, etc.). Those flight-legs were then gifts, 20 in total.
A fairly significant portion of several justices’ gift haul came in the form of honorary memberships at various golf, tennis and social clubs. These types of free memberships were largely outlawed by a law Congress passed in 2008, which is why they mostly drop off the tally after that year.
The reason FTC is focusing on the last 20 years is two-fold: first, it was 20 years ago that the L.A. Times filed its oft-referred to report on the justices’ gifts, and second, the record of the justices’ disclosures gets a bit fuzzy before 2004, since throughout the 1980s and 1990s and into the early 2000s, the justices’ disclosures were typically only available for inspection at the Supreme Court and were only later distributed by the judiciary on paper, in a thumb drive or on a database.
In terms of crunching the numbers, the tally counts “meals” and “lodging” as two separate gifts, and FTC counted each leg of a round-trip flight as one gift, so it’s two gifts per round-trip. Unless otherwise stated, FTC assigned the cost per hour of a flight on a private plane to be $10,000 (can range from $5,000 to $25,000-plus, depending on plane size and other circumstances). Awards accepted by retired justices were not included.
Newsweek has three charts that give you an idea of who was a crook and who took their job more conventionally.
According to Fix the Court’s analysis, Justice Clarence Thomas received the largest portion of gifts, identifying 193 for the George H.W. Bush appointee who has served since 1991.
Second was the late Sandra Day O’Connor with 73, who died last year. O’Connor was the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, by then President Ronald Reagan, and served from 1981 to 2006.
The late Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were third and fourth with 67 and 61 identified gifts respectively. Scalia served 29 years on the court, and Ginsburg 27.
David Souter, who spent 18 years on the court before he retired in 2009, and Brett Kavanaugh received just one gift, according to the findings.
Thomas led here as well, with likely gifts totaling $4,042,286.
Justice Samuel Alito is alleged in the findings to have received just over $170,000 worth of gifts.
The Supreme Court justices with the lowest total value of gifts were Kavanaugh, Souter and Amy Coney Barrett, with $100, $349, and $500 respectively.
More importantly, the Newsweek report shows the split between disclosed and undisclosed gifts.
According to Fix the Court, Thomas was the worst offender on this front. The watchdog believed he openly disclosed just 8.5 percent of all gifts he received.
Kavanaugh and Barret disclosed none of their gifts, however, the report estimates the pair only received $600 worth of gifts between them.
Souter and the late John Paul Stevens were the only two SCOTUS justices to disclose 100 percent of their gifts.
Thomas filed his disclosure report last week. Here’s the coverage from the Washington Post. “Justice Thomas discloses two 2019 trips paid for by Harlan Crow. 2023 financial disclosure reports for Supreme Court justices also show six-figure book payments for Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Jackson.”
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has disclosed for the first time trips to Bali and to a private club in California in 2019 paid for by his friend and benefactor, Texas billionaire Harlan Crow, according to financial disclosures released Friday for eight of the nine justices.
The required annual reports, covering activity in 2023, also show three justices — Brett M. Kavanaugh, Neil M. Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson — received six-figure book payments.
Jackson also accepted four tickets worth nearly $4,000 from Beyoncé to one of her concerts, and two pieces of art worth $12,500 to display in her chambers.
“Justice Jackson is Crazy in Love with Beyoncé’s music. Who isn’t?” said court spokeswoman Patricia McCabe.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor reported a star turn as a cartoon character on the PBS children’s show “Alma’s Way,” an animated series about a Puerto Rican girl and her family from the Bronx. The justice was paid about $1,900 for voice work on one episode in which she played herself.
The reports show several justices earning additional income from teaching at law schools and accepting free travel to speak at events at universities and legal organizations.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was granted an extension to file his report, as he has received in past years.
Many Judges and Justices take their jobs seriously and do not go in with a political agenda. As BostonBoomer has reported, Judge Loose Cannon is one of those Judges who seems devious and incompetent simultaneously. This is from CNN. “Isolated and inexperienced: A portrait of the judge overseeing Trump’s documents case from veterans of her courtroom.”
Since Trump was first indicted a year ago, Cannon has dragged out the proceedings in ways that have flummoxed legal scholars and put a trial initially scheduled to begin last month on hold indefinitely.
Several attorneys who have practiced in front of Cannon – and who spoke to CNN for this story – pointed to her isolation as one explanation for her conduct. Cannon’s solitary post in the Fort Pierce courthouse, one that rarely sees high-profile action, deprives her of the informal, day-to-day interactions with more seasoned judges who sit at the other courthouses and could offer her advice, the lawyers told CNN.
They also said Cannon’s lack of trial experience, both as a lawyer and a judge, is apparent. In her seven years as a Justice Department attorney, Cannon participated on the trial teams of just four criminal cases. And on the bench, she’s only presided over a handful of criminal trials – and Huck took over one of them.
For this account of Cannon’s judicial demeanor, CNN spoke to ten attorneys who have had cases – both criminal and civil – before her. The lawyers spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity because of the professional and ethical risks of speaking to press about a sitting federal judge in front of whom they practice.
To corroborate their characterizations of Cannon’s approach, CNN reviewed the public dockets of scores of cases that have traveled through her courtroom.
The attorneys described Cannon as extremely diligent and well prepared, a tough questioner who accepts nothing at face value, and thoughtful in her rulings. But they also said that some of her habits that have raised eyebrows in Trump’s case have plagued her approach from the bench more generally.
Those tendencies include a penchant for letting irrelevant legal questions distract from core issues, a zero-tolerance approach to any technical defects in filings, and a struggle with docket management that allows the type of pretrial disputes that other judges would decide in weeks go unresolved for months.
“She is not efficient,” said one attorney who practices in south Florida. “She is very form over substance.”
Another attorney described her as “indecisive.”
A third attorney who’s had cases before Cannon said, “She just seems overwhelmed by the process.”
The Senate needs to take its review of judges much more seriously. This has been going on since Thomas sat on the court, and it’s the one thing I can never forgive Biden for, along with his coziness with Southern Senators on the busing issue, which also bothered me. We’ll lose more personal liberties if we don’t do something now. One more interesting article which outlines the results of a study. This is from PsyPost. “Why do Republicans stick with Trump? New study explores the role of white nationalism.”
A new study explores why many Americans, particularly Republican voters, continue to support former President Donald Trump despite serious charges against him. Researchers found that white nationalism and political views play crucial roles in shaping public attitudes towards these charges. The study, published in The British Journal of Criminology, sheds light on the interplay between racial attitudes and political allegiances in contemporary America.
The attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, by Trump supporters resulted in significant consequences, including fatalities, injuries, extensive property damage, numerous arrests, and psychological trauma. The subsequent investigation by the United States House Select Committee aimed to determine the role of Trump in inciting this attack and whether criminal charges were warranted.
Despite the evidence against Trump, polls indicated that a significant portion of Republican voters continued to support him. The study aimed to understand why this segment of the population remained loyal to Trump despite the serious allegations.
This introduction is followed by a thorough list of their control variables. Here are some of the specific findings.
The results demonstrated a clear interaction between participants’ racial and political views and their support for the Select Committee’s recommendations. White nationalists and individuals with conservative political views showed strong support for the Committee when it found no evidence against Trump and recommended no charges. However, their support drastically declined when the Committee recommended criminal charges based on incriminating evidence.
On the other hand, individuals who did not hold white nationalist views and those with liberal political views were overwhelmingly supportive of the Committee’s recommendations when charges were proposed but showed little support when no charges were recommended.
For example, 82% of white nationalists supported the Committee if it found no evidence against Trump, but only 35% to 39% supported the Committee when charges were recommended. In contrast, 76% to 80% of participants without white nationalist views supported the Committee when it recommended charges, but only 34% supported it when no charges were recommended.
The researchers found that right-wing political views mediated the relationship between white nationalism and support for the Committee. White nationalist attitudes were strongly associated with right-wing political views, which in turn influenced reactions to the Committee’s findings. This suggests that individuals with white nationalist beliefs are more likely to align themselves with conservative politics, and this political alignment significantly shapes their responses to the Committee’s recommendations.
“Our experiment suggests that for a non-trivial number of Americans, the desire to keep the United States a ‘white nation’ appears to be stronger than their desire to ensure that the country is led by a law-abiding president,” the researchers concluded.
John Buss has been a roll, and I’m using it! Lucky John graduated with Ginnie Thomas from our high school. I only had to put up with it for about a year. But wow, she was a hot mess then. She didn’t rebel against her Bircher parents, that’s for sure. What should be done with her and Alito’s wife? Ginnie’s help with the insurrection should be investigated. I have a feeling that a few of those leaks from the SCOTUS came from Martha Bombthrower.
Anyhow, have a great weekend, and see you on Monday!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/06/07/finally-friday-reads-judicial-just-ice/
#Repeat1968 #FedSoc #IsJusticeJUSTICE_ #JohnBuss #JusticeDelayedIsJusticeDenied #JusticeLooseCannon #SlowWalkingCases #SupremeCourtGrifting #TheFederalistSociety
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Finally Friday Reads: TACO Tales
“The most transparent administration ever..” John Buss @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m hoping we’re entering a Golden Age of Journalism because the number of stories floating around out there today indicates that we need more investigative journalists than ever before. Because of that, I cannot seem to play the Wake Forest Commencement by Sixty Minutes‘ Scott Pelley enough. His first statement rang true throughout the world. “Our sacred Rule of Law is under attack.” The Speech was entitled “The Meaning of You.”
The path to self-discovery starts with finding what kind of person you are when times get dark. As I’ve said before, these times are very dark. Do you shy away from speaking out? Do you take fighting action on whatever level you can? Do you melt away? Do you just go along or cheer it? I’ve come back to this speech this week because the headlines today show how important the press can be in exposing the dark times and the dark ones and their actions to light. It is then up to us to do something about it and to get our elected officials on it.
The New Republic’s Parker Molloy briefly discusses the importance of the Pelley Speech and the evil MAGA’s response. “Scott Pelley Warns Graduates About the Threats to American Democracy. The “60 Minutes” correspondent never mentioned Trump by name, but his call to defend democratic institutions was apparently too much for the MAGA crowd to handle.”
Earlier this month, journalist Scott Pelley delivered what should have been a fairly standard commencement address at Wake Forest University. The 60 Minutes correspondent spoke about seeking truth, defending democracy, and the importance of courage in difficult times—the kind of boilerplate inspiration you’d expect from a veteran journalist addressing graduates.
But because we live in very normal times, the speech went viral over Memorial Day weekend and triggered a conservative meltdown that’s been fascinating to watch unfold.
The fury started when a pro-MAGA account clipped portions of Pelley’s speech and shared them on X, writing “Scott Pelley raged at Trump in angry, unhinged commencement address at Wake Forest.”
What did Pelley say that sent the right into such a tizzy? Well, he had the audacity to suggest that “our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack. Freedom of speech is under attack.” He warned of “insidious fear … reaching through our schools, our businesses, our homes, and into our private thoughts, the fear to speak in America.”
And perhaps most provocatively, Pelley criticized the administration’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, saying, “Diversity is now described as ‘illegal.’ Equity is to be shunned. Inclusion is a dirty word. This is an old playbook, my friends.” He also referenced “masked agents” who “abduct a college student who wrote an editorial in her college paper defending Palestinian rights and send her to a prison in Louisiana charged with nothing.”
Pelley’s speech comes as Trump is suing CBS for $20 billion over alleged “election interference” and CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon abruptly resigned, citing disagreements with the company amid the legal pressure.
What’s remarkable is how a fairly conventional call for civic engagement and democratic values could generate such hysteria. But then again, when you’re running an administration built on exactly the kind of authoritarian playbook Pelley described, I suppose any critique—no matter how measured—feels like an existential threat.
Reading the speech in full, it’s hard to see what’s so “unhinged” about urging graduates to be engaged citizens and defend democratic institutions. Unless, of course, you’re deeply invested in attacking those very institutions.
A complete transcript of the speech follows. Also, you may listen to and watch Paley’s address here. The headlines today may be bleak, but the important thing is that reporters and the people supporting the work investigate and can find unbelievable corruption, stark depravity, and many examples of bad human conduct, demeanor, and actions. Then expose it!
When I was born, and as I grew up and my family moved into the middle class, I was instilled with the importance of reading magazines and watching the news. My Grandfather on my mother’s side always sent me books for my birthday and Christmas. My Nana on my mother’s side sent my sister and me subscriptions to National Geographic and The Christian Science Monitor. We read the local newspapers and the Des Moines Register every morning and evening. When I asked my Dad while I was in high school if I could get a subscription to The Manchester Guardian and to Paris Match, he didn’t even hesitate. I can tell you my show and tell performance, as well as my reports from newspapers, were altogether different from my Council Bluffs and Omaha friends.
When I hit university, all the foreign students whom I continually sought out for all dorm meals originally thought I was from Canada. When my family travelled to Europe, I tried to blend in as much as possible and just observe. It is perhaps this that makes me blog today, even though the only journalism classes I took were in high school. I wrote for the school newspaper, an underground newspaper, and the junior high newspaper. I always assumed everyone was as news-hungry as I was growing up in some of the most boring and inane places on the planet. I couldn’t live with oatmeal after reading about Belgian waffles. Can you imagine what happened when I got my first bite of one?
Knowledge of news is important for good citizenship, it’s important for making decisions that impact your household, and it’s important just because things are moving faster than ever. So let me get down to my first suggested reads today.
One of the things I find most threatening these days is seeing my students, my university, and many places leave their brains behind and try to make things easy using AI. It may have a future, but presently, any good professor worth their salt can tell when someone uses it. You should get good at spotting it on the internet, and you will be annoyed when you’re making an important call about something or chatting with some company, and even when it’s given a name, you can tell by the idiosyncrasies and the lack of niceties of American English, this thing ain’t human.
I’ve noticed that the grammar check my University uses completely breaks down when dealing with nuances and colloquialisms. It seems to excel mostly at filling my writing with commas and catching typos. That’s okay by me and easy, but believe me, I can tell when a student overuses AI. We’re being trained at spotting it as well as teaching students how to use it correctly. However, someone who knows what they are doing from years of doing it can make a better decision about its use than those still on the learning curve.
I say this because I watched a news program where the new AI installed at the Social Security phone line repeatedly ignored the question they asked, then kept squawking “Can I help you with something else?” endlessly. This is the point where I hear my Nana’s voice telling little me, “Well, you can, but may you?” AI does not grok manners and polite conversations. It could be because human mutants like Elon Musk and his Dodge cluster have never quite figured that out either. Garbage in, garbage out. But, then maybe that’s what they want. Cease being polite and just be technically acceptable. Okay, it’s long but I’m getting there, I promise.
This phenomenon played out yesterday as one of RFK Jr.’s prodigal research adventures turned into something I wouldn’t even expect from an undergrad or, actually, even someone sitting in my high school or university composition class. He was, of course, a legacy student there because of his father. We also know he was the dorm’s drug dealer from my fellow Westside High School journalism classmate, Kurt Anderson. One thing Westside always turned out was students who knew how to write. That skill got me through all the rest of my degrees because, damn I could write a good paper. Evidently, RFK Jr. did not get that skill.
It’s rather interesting given the difficult times Harvard is facing in protecting its foreign students. Now granted, I helped many a colleague from distant lands to get their excellent research into prime American English form. Everyone always sent them to me before they were sent to a journal for publishing, which bought me a cheap pub. But, every one of them took me farther down the path of being a numbers and stats guru. Did you know kids in India start their calculus classes in like 5th grade? It was also easier for me to actually come up with a sweet hypothesis to test because I was taught to be both analytical and creative. That’s what a good public school can do for you. A good university exposes you to what’s possible and exposes you to all kinds of interesting thinkers. But, again, I guess RFK Jr. was too busy with drugs to take advantage of anything like that. That’s why he’s likely never going to be part of a blog community, a book club, or a group that goes to the Saturday Night Midnight movies.
Okay, I really am getting to the read now. At his advanced age, with his unlimited educational opportunities and his money, he cannot write a research paper. And yet, it showed up in the public sphere because he was trying to prove his very wrong hypotheses at any cost. He didn’t prove anything. He turned to all manner of things to argue his hypothesis. None of his antics were academically sound. At first, the White House’s dumbest Press Secretary announced there were “formatting” errors. But, how could that be when, after investigating sources, reporters found them either made up or seriously in error? The Make America Healthy Again report was just embarrassing.
MSNBC anchor Jen Psaki derided White House Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s defense of a “Make America Healthy Again” Commission report filled with errors and broken links.
NOTUS reported the paper, released under the administration of President Donald Trump and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., cited at least seven sources that do not appear to exist. The news publication contacted epidemiologist Katherine Keyes, who the MAHA report lists as the first author of a study it cited on adolescent anxiety, and discovered Keyes didn’t write the paper.
“The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” Keyes told NOTUS. “We’ve certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title.”
NOTUS also reported two other studies pertaining to direct-to-consumer drug advertisements for ADHD medications and antidepressants for kids appear nowhere “to be found.” Reporters also could not validate another section claiming 25% to 40% of mild cases of asthma are overprescribed. Additionally, the author of a corticosteroids study’s the MAHA report cited to support its arguments denied writing the study.
NOTUS reporter Jasmine Wright was in the White House briefing room Thursday and asked Leavitt: “does the White House have confidence that the information coming from HHS can be trusted?”
“Yes, we have complete confidence in Secretary Kennedy and his team at HHS,” Leavitt responded. “I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA report that are being addressed.”
Psaki, a former White House press secretary herself, did not contain her scorn.
Well, the nation’s biggest and most disappointing media of record investigated and found some interesting things in the MAHA report. Let’s start with the Washington Post. “White House MAHA Report may have garbled science by using AI, experts say. The report, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was intended to address the reasons for the decline in Americans’ life expectancy.” Well, that’s typical of a lot of students. If they can’t do it, they pay someone who can. You can always tell this, though, because if you’ve seen any previous work, you recognize their voice and you know when something is different. AI is the most recent example of buying a paper online, but with a lower cost and perhaps a lower chance of getting caught because you won’t find a cheat paper by searching it verbatim with your student’s work. Believe me, the discussion on this in teacher lounges and faculty clubs is de rigueur these days. Evidently, RFK Jr. didn’t even know the most tell-tale of the signs.
Some of the citations that underpin the science in the White House’s sweeping “MAHA Report” appear to have been generated using artificial intelligence, resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies, AI experts said Thursday.
Of the 522 footnotes to scientific research in an initial version of the report sent to The Washington Post, at least 37 appear multiple times, according to a review of the report by The Post. Other citations include the wrong author, and several studies cited by the extensive health report do not exist at all, a fact first reported by the online news outlet NOTUS on Thursday morning.
Some references include “oaicite” attached to URLs — a definitive sign that the research was collected using artificial intelligence. The presence of “oaicite” is a marker indicating use of OpenAI, a U.S. artificial intelligence company.
A common hallmark of AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, is unusually repetitive content that does not sound human or is inaccurate — as well as the tendency to “hallucinate” studies or answers that appear to make sense but are not real.
So, our Secretary of Health and Human Services is so bereft of research skills that he can’t even avoid the number one Rookie mistake. Does he have anyone around him who knew better and could catch this? I can tell you that a team of peers that checks every research paper headed to publication in an academically sound journal would never let this go through to print. If you’re the main author, you try to avoid any humiliating mistakes for serious journals.
AI technology can be used legitimately to quickly survey the research in a field. But Oren Etzioni, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington who studies AI, said he was shocked by the sloppiness in the MAHA Report.
“Frankly, that’s shoddy work,” he said. “We deserve better.”
“The MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again,” which addressed the root causes of America’s lagging health outcomes, was written by a commission of Cabinet officials and government scientific leaders. It was led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a history of misstating science, and written in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump.
The New York Times published the first media review pointing out made-up sources. “White House Health Report Included Fake Citations, ‘A report on children’s health released by the Make America Healthy Again Commission referred to scientific papers that did not exist.” Now, I’m not a scientist, but I lived with a Yale-educated Doctorate in Microbiology who published a lot of things on RNA transcription, ran a lab at a public university, and wound up with the NSF. I have no idea if he’s retired or if he went with the current purge of scientists. I read many of his works pre-publication, and he got published in all the big ones. I think the science journals are more nerve-wracking to write for than the Economics and Finance. Usually, it’s based on lab data rather than the Federal Reserve Beige Book or World Book data, which gets a pass even though the methodology and the model itself get the eagle eye. This report was a hot mess on all accounts.
The Trump administration released a report last week that it billed as a “clear, evidence-based foundation” for action on a range of children’s health issues.
But the report, from the presidential Make America Healthy Again Commission, cited studies that did not exist. These included fictitious studies on direct-to-consumer drug advertising, mental illness and medications prescribed for children with asthma.
“It makes me concerned about the rigor of the report, if these really basic citation practices aren’t being followed,” said Katherine Keyes, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University who was listed as the author of a paper on mental health and substance use among adolescents. Dr. Keyes has not written any paper by the title the report cited, nor does one seem to exist by any author.
The news outlet NOTUS first reported the presence of false citations, and The New York Times identified additional faulty references. By midafternoon on Thursday, the White House had uploaded a new copy of the report with corrections.
Dr. Ivan Oransky — who teaches medical journalism at New York University and is a co-founder of Retraction Watch, a website that tracks retractions of scientific research — said the errors in the report were characteristic of the use of generative artificial intelligence, which has led to similar issues in legal filings and more.
Dr. Oransky said that while he did not know whether the government had used A.I. in producing the report or the citations, “we’ve seen this particular movie before, and it’s unfortunately much more common in scientific literature than people would like or than really it should be.”
Asked at a news conference on Thursday whether the report had relied on A.I., the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, deferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the department, did not answer a question about the source of the fabricated references and downplayed them as “minor citation and formatting errors.” She said that “the substance of the MAHA report remains the same — a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic-disease epidemic afflicting our nation’s children.”
The false references do not necessarily mean the underlying facts in the report are incorrect. But they indicate a lack of rigorous review and verification of the report and its bibliography before it was released, Dr. Oransky said.
“Scientific publishing is supposed to be about verification,” he said, adding: “There’s supposed to be a set of eyes, actually several sets of eyes. And so what that tells us is that there was no good set of eyes on this
So, after finding out about all of that, this should make you feel really at ease.
The Trump administration has quietly spread Palantir’s technology through U.S. agencies, paving the way to easily compile data on Americans. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since President Trump took office. nyti.ms/4dJfR0o
— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) 2025-05-30T16:16:57.733Z
I think we can start making the Big Brother is watching you references now. This is the subheading, which is startling IMHO. “The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work with the government, spreading the company’s technology — which could easily merge data on Americans — throughout agencies.” Getting your passport ready yet?
In March, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the federal government to share data across agencies, raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.
Mr. Trump has not publicly talked about the effort since. But behind the scenes, officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable his plan. In particular, they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm.
The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work across the federal government in recent months. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Mr. Trump took office, according to public records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. (This does not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the company last week, which has not been spent.)
Representatives of Palantir are also speaking to at least two other agencies — the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service — about buying its technology, according to six government officials and Palantir employees with knowledge of the discussions.
The push has put a key Palantir product called Foundry into at least four federal agencies, including D.H.S. and the Health and Human Services Department. Widely adopting Foundry, which organizes and analyzes data, paves the way for Mr. Trump to easily merge information from different agencies, the government officials said.
Creating detailed portraits of Americans based on government data is not just a pipe dream. The Trump administration has already sought access to hundreds of data points on citizens and others through government databases, including their bank account numbers, the amount of their student debt, their medical claims and any disability status.
Mr. Trump could potentially use such information to advance his political agenda by policing immigrants and punishing critics, Democratic lawmakers and critics have said. Privacy advocates, student unions and labor rights organizations have filed lawsuits to block data access, questioning whether the government could weaponize people’s personal information.
So, while all this is going on, we’re beginning to hear some interesting information on Elon Musk as he exists stage right. This is from Forbes Magazine. “Lucky” Susan Dorn got this assignment. “Musk Used Heavy Drugs Including Ketamine And Ecstasy While He Became Close To Trump, Report Says. Elon Musk used a copious amount of drugs—and travelled with a pill box that appeared to contain Adderall—last year as he ramped up his donations to President Donald Trump, according to a New York Times report that comes on his last official day at the White House.” He’s the Wolf of Austin, I guess.
Key Facts
- Musk told confidants he was taking so much ketamine it affected his bladder, according to The Times, citing unnamed sources who said he also took ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms.
- The Times also reported it obtained a photo that showed a medication box Musk travelled with containing about 20 pills, including Adderall.
- The alleged drug use overlapped with his campaign activity last year on behalf of Trump—with an endorsement in July followed by $250 million to help elect him.
- The report comes as Musk is set to exit the White House Friday after announcing Wednesday his time leading the Department of Government Efficiency had come to an end.
- Neither Musk nor his lawyer responded to The Times’ request for comment, but Musk has said previously he was prescribed ketamine for depression.
The New York Times has more details. “On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama. As Mr. Musk entered President Trump’s orbit, his private life grew increasingly tumultuous, and his drug use was more intense than previously known.” Of course, they sent two women after this story, too. Kirsten Grind and Megan Twohey were the assigned reporters.
As Elon Musk became one of Donald J. Trump’s closest allies last year, leading raucous rallies and donating about $275 million to help him win the presidency, he was also using drugs far more intensely than previously known, according topeople familiar with his activities.
Mr. Musk’s drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it.
It is unclear whether Mr. Musk, 53, was taking drugs when he became a fixture at the White House this year and was handed the power to slash the federal bureaucracy. But he has exhibited erratic behavior, insulting cabinet members, gesturing like a Nazi and garbling his answers in a staged interview.
At the same time, Mr. Musk’s family life has grown increasingly tumultuous as he has negotiated overlapping romantic relationships and private legal battles involving his growing brood of children, according to documents and interviews.
I’m not about to go to the Gossip Rag road, but there are rumors about Mush and Steven Miller’s wife if you’re interested. This is from the Independent. “Stephen Miller’s wife leaves the White House to work for Elon Musk ‘full time’, Kate Miller was working as an adviser for Elon Musk at the Department of Government Efficiency.” I should eat some lunch, and I really will not ruin it by going any deeper into these. BLECH.
So, we lose a clown and gain one. Seriously, none of these Trump men are strangers to make-up. This is from ABC News. “Trump taps former right-wing podcast host Paul Ingrassia for key watchdog post. Ingrassia would replace Hampton Dellinger, who opposed Trump’s mass firings.”
President Trump announced Thursday night that he was tapping Paul Ingrassia, a former far-right podcast host, to lead the Office of Special Counsel — an independent watchdog agency empowered to investigate federal employees and oversee complaints from whistleblowers.
The Trump administration has previously taken aim at the Office of Special Counsel, firing the head of the agency, Hampton Dellinger (a Biden appointee) in February. Dellinger expressed opposition to the Trump administration’s firing of federal employees under DOGE-led cuts, noting that many had been fired or laid off without notice or justification.
Dellinger challenged his firing in court and was briefly reinstated to the post until a federal appeals court allowed for his dismissal. Dellinger decided to drop the challenge.
ABC News exclusively reported in February about how Ingrassia, in his role as White House liaison to the Department of Justice, was pushing to hire candidates at the DOJ who exhibited what he called “exceptional loyalty” to Trump. His efforts at DOJ sparked clashes with Attorney General Pam Bondi’s top aide, Chad Mizelle, leading Ingrassia to complain directly to President Trump, sources told ABC News.
Ingrassia was pushed out of DOJ and reassigned as the White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, where he was serving prior to Trump announcing his new role, according to a White House official familiar with the matter.
In a post on X, Ingrassia wrote in response to his nomination: “It’s the highest honor to have been nominated to lead the Office of Special Counsel under President Trump! As Special Counsel, my team and I will make every effort to restore competence and integrity to the Executive Branch — with priority on eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal workforce and revitalize the Rule of Law and Fairness in Hatch Act enforcement.”
For the Senate-confirmed five-year term, Ingrassia will likely face tough questions over his lengthy history of media appearances and posts on social media promoting Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election as well as his ties to far-right media figures.
He was previously spotted at a 2024 rally hosted by white nationalist Nick Fuentes and has publicly praised figures like Andrew Tate — who has faced criminal charges for alleged sexual assault (Tate denies all wrongdoing).
All the best people, folks, all the best. So, I know you just want to know the latest information on the American Soap Opera “As the Tarrifs and the TACO Turns.” This is from CNBC. “Trump accuses China of violating preliminary trade deal.” Dan Managan gets all the serious stories, you know.
President Donald Trump on Friday said that China has “totally violated its” preliminary trade agreement with the United States, and suggested he would take action in response.
“So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!” Trump wrote in a social media post that said China had reneged on a deal that paused retaliatory tariffs between that country and the U.S.
Stock futures fell Friday morning on the heels of Trump’s statement.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, in a CNBC interview Friday morning, echoed Trump’s allegation, saying “we’re very concerned with” China’s purported non-compliance with the temporary trade deal.
The “United States did exactly what it was supposed to do, and the Chinese are slow rolling their compliance,” said Greer.
He called that “completely unacceptable and has to be addressed.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in a Fox News interview on Thursday, said that trade talks with China “are a bit stalled.”
CNBC has requested comment from China’s embassy in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. and China on May 12 agreed to a 90-day suspension on most tariffs imposed on each other’s imports.
The agreement was reached after Trump slapped sky-high tariffs on imports from China into the U.S., and China retaliated in kind.
“Two weeks ago China was in grave economic danger!” Trump wrote in his post on Truth Social on Friday.
“The very high Tariffs I set made it virtually impossible for China to TRADE into the United States marketplace which is, by far, number one in the World,” Trump wrote. “We went, in effect, COLD TURKEY with China, and it was devastating for them. Many factories closed and there was, to put it mildly, “civil unrest.” I saw what was happening and didn’t like it, for them, not for us. I made a FAST DEAL with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation, and I didn’t want to see that happen.”
“Because of this deal, everything quickly stabilized and China got back to business as usual. Everybody was happy! That is the good news!!!” the president wrote.
“The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US. So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!”
Trump posted his screed two days after he lashed out at CNBC reporter Megan Cassella at the White House when she asked about the term “TACO trade,” which refers to the phrase “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
The term, coined by a Financial Times columnist, suggests that stock pickers can make money by buying shares after markets fall on news of new tariffs imposed by Trump, knowing that he invariably will pause or reduce the tariffs, sending markets higher.
You had to know he had to have a bully story to cover up all the Court sha-la-la about his on-again, off-again tariffs. Wow, my Grammarly got really dash happy there! Actually, I did it but wondered if it would notice anything and it did. One missing comma. I evidently have a thing against commas.
So, at least it’s the weekend! Hope y’all have a great one! I say TACO, they say TACO!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#FartusDeportUs #JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DrugAddict #ElonMuskNAZI #kakistocracy #PalantirDataTheftSpecialists #ScottPelley #TACO #WhoAreYOU_ #WifeStealer
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This week’s #FridayThrillerClub leading Dirty Dozen are Charles Bronson, Donald Sutherland, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Lee Marvin, Telly Savalas, Tom Busby, Ben Carruthers, Trini López, Colin Maitland, Al Mancini, George Roubicek, and Clint Walker
#TheDirtyDozen #CharlesBronson, #DonaldSutherland #JimBrown #JohnCassavetes #LeeMarvin #TellySavalas, #TomBusby #BenCarruthers #TriniLopez, #ColinMaitland #AlMancini #GeorgeRoubicek #ClintWalker -
This week’s #FridayThrillerClub leading Dirty Dozen are Charles Bronson, Donald Sutherland, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Lee Marvin, Telly Savalas, Tom Busby, Ben Carruthers, Trini López, Colin Maitland, Al Mancini, George Roubicek, and Clint Walker
#TheDirtyDozen #CharlesBronson, #DonaldSutherland #JimBrown #JohnCassavetes #LeeMarvin #TellySavalas, #TomBusby #BenCarruthers #TriniLopez, #ColinMaitland #AlMancini #GeorgeRoubicek #ClintWalker -
This week’s #FridayThrillerClub leading Dirty Dozen are Charles Bronson, Donald Sutherland, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Lee Marvin, Telly Savalas, Tom Busby, Ben Carruthers, Trini López, Colin Maitland, Al Mancini, George Roubicek, and Clint Walker
#TheDirtyDozen #CharlesBronson, #DonaldSutherland #JimBrown #JohnCassavetes #LeeMarvin #TellySavalas, #TomBusby #BenCarruthers #TriniLopez, #ColinMaitland #AlMancini #GeorgeRoubicek #ClintWalker -
Diligere, Equity-Invest Are New Firms of U.K. Con Man https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/08/diligere-equity-invest-are-new-firms-of-u-k-con-man/ #TheInsideKnowledge #Ne'er-Do-WellNews #JohnCliftonDavies #ArdelisSolutions #Equity-Invest #JohnBernard #Codes2You #Diligere
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A Serial Tech Investment Scammer Takes Up Coding? https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/04/a-serial-tech-investment-scammer-takes-up-coding/ #BlackstoneCorporateAllianceLtd #SafeSwissSecureCommunicationAG #TheInsideKnowledgeGmbH #Ne'er-Do-WellNews #AlanJohnMykhailov #JohnCliftonDavies #ALittleSunshine #DomainTools.com #SecureSwissData #MariaYakovleva #MariyaKulikova #ColetteDavies #Drydennow.com #Breadcrumbs #IgorGubskyi #IgorHubskyi #IrynaDavies #JohnBernard #CodesToYou #DavidBruno #MySolve
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Finally Friday Reads: It’s late but I took some ME time
“Well, I don’t know why I came here tonight
I’ve got the feeling that something ain’t right
I’m so scared in case I fall off my chair
And I’m wondering how I’ll get down the stairs” John Buss, Repeat1968 with h.t t;o Stealers WheelsGood Day, Sky Dancers!
I took some time today to enjoy a friend from FDL, sushi from Lin’s at St Roch Market, and the Bywater and Marigny right up to the edge of the Quarter. The only way to explore my neighborhood is by foot or by bus. That way, you really get to know us. The stores on LA49 (better known as St. Claude Avenue) are small, locally owned, and full of surprises. I don’t think I can ever emphasize how much I love this city. It’s probably why I stay here and don’t go elsewhere anymore. I first discovered this because when I ventured around the state or country, I had dreams about not being able to find or go home, which ended immediately when I opened the front door. I really wish you this feeling. It’s amazing.
It gave me a breath from reading stuff today. So, here I go, right into the thick of it. This is from Dr. Paul Krugman’s Substack. “The Third-Worlding of America. How to destroy 80 years of credibility in less than 3 months.” Like all excellent economists, he’s got charts and numbers to prove it. I got all these degrees to help people understand financial markets and economic policy. Now, I live with knowledge; I just pray it still empowers people, even if it feels disheartening today.
Remarkably, the sanewashing continues despite the unprecedented craziness of the past 10 days. Many observers assert that Trump has backed down on tariffs and will speedily make a bunch of trade deals. The first assertion is just false, while the second is very unlikely.
In fact, savvy traders have realized that there’s no coherent economic strategy. There’s an old line about military analysis: “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals talk about logistics.” Well, when it comes to taking the pulse of financial markets, amateurs talk about stocks, but professionals talk about bond and currency markets. That’s because bond and currency markets are generally less driven by emotion. There’s no “meme gambling investing” in bond and currency markets. And these markets are both signaling major loss of faith in America.
First, about tariffs: It’s true that for the time being Trump has scaled back some of the tariffs displayed on his big piece of cardboard last week. For example, unless we have another policy swerve, the European Union will now face a 10 percent tariff over the next three months rather than a 20 percent tariff. But the tariff on China, our third-biggest trading partner after Canada and Mexico, has gone from 34 percent to more than 130 percent. And we still have high tariffs on steel, aluminum and so on. In effect, observers who claim that tariffs have gone down are missing the biggest part of the story.
Economists who have actually run the numbers, like those at the Yale Budget Lab, estimate that the April 9 tariff regime will raise consumer prices more than the April 2 regime because of the extraordinarily high tariff rate on Chinese imports. Specifically, the budget lab estimates that the latest version of Trump’s trade war will raise consumer prices by 2.9 percent. This is roughly ten times the probable impact of the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930.
It’s hard to overstate the craziness of announcing a radical tariff plan, then announcing a quite different but equally radical plan just a week later. Furthermore, the claim that the wild zigzags in policy were always part of Trump’s plan just adds to the destruction of the administration’s credibility.
But are these tariffs just an opening gambit for trade negotiations? I doubt it. Bear in mind that Trump and Peter Navarro, his tariff guru, start from the premise that other countries are cheating, that they’re taking advantage of America and treating us unfairly. In fact, however, most of them aren’t. Take the case of the European Union. The EU imposes an average tariff on U.S. goods of just 1.7%, and there aren’t any significant hidden barriers.
So what are we supposed to be negotiating about? Nations can’t promise to lower their trade barriers when there aren’t any barriers. Navarro has been claiming that value-added taxes are de facto tariffs, but they aren’t, and EU nations literally can’t afford to give them up.
I guess other countries might make fake concessions that Trump can claim as fake victories. This is what he did with China during his first term, claiming that it had made significant concessions — claims which were, in the end, false. In fact, American soybean farmers have never fully recovered the loss of market share. And remember too how Trump made minor changes to NAFTA and claimed to have negotiated a whole new trade pact.
However, Trump is now clearly high on his own supply. Even with the April 9 tariff regime, Trump is imposing high tariff rates on our three largest trading partners. Currency and bond market traders — no fools they — are certainly not acting as if we’re on a path to successful deals.
The Chinese are pranking Trump today. This is from the Washington Post. “China raises tariffs on U.S. goods to 125 percent as trade war deepens. Beijing hit back in response to the Trump administration’s move to raise tariffs on Chinese goods to 145 percent, saying it would “fight to the end.” They can afford to. They’re making deals with South Korea and Japan, among other countries. The only group this is hurting is US importers and Exporters. This includes farmers.
The response underscored China’s decision to stand firm in the face of pressure from Washington and deepened the showdown between the world’s two largest economies.
“If the U.S. insists on substantively damaging China’s interests, China will firmly retaliate and fight to the end,” China’sState Council said in a statement.
The move came after Trump increased the levies on Chinese goods to 145 percent on Wednesday, while also announcing that the tariffs he had previously imposed on more than six dozen other countries would be fixed at 10 percent during a 90-day pause.
The State Council derided Trump’s move to continue ratcheting up the levies and said it would ignore further hikes. The tariffs are a “joke” and “no longer have any economic significance,” its statement said, because the current levels make U.S. exports to China not financially viable. The new Chinese tariffs, which increased from 84 percent, are effective Saturday.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in a meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Friday, stressed that trade wars have no winners and called for China and Europe to “jointly oppose unilateral bullying,” according to state media. European leaders also emphasized the damaging effects of uncertainty beyond the 90-day pause.
Experts in Beijing expressed concern about the latest turn in tensions with Washington. “U.S.-China trade will soon be almost nonexistent,” said Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at China’s Renmin University. “To ease tensions, Trump must first make concessions.”
Turmoil over tariffs drove fluctuations in global markets on Friday.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 and Topix indexes dropped by5percent, before trimming their losses to under 3 percent by market close. South Korea’s Kospi and Australia’s ASX 200 fell by less than1 percent, while Taiwan’s bourse kicked off the day with a fall of under 1 percent before logging a 2.5 percent gain. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index and China’s Shanghai composite index were mostly flat, with the Hang Seng closing just over 1 per cent higher.
Major European markets fell slightly after opening on Friday, following rebounds the previous day. By 6 a.m. Eastern time, Germany’s DAX was down 1.62 percent, France’s benchmark CAC fell by 1.11 percent and London’s FTSE 100 was down around 0.3 percent.
It’s almost as if… and stay with me now… It’s almost as if Republicans aren’t as good at the economy as they claim to be! 🤷♂️
CNN has this headline today for a story written by Ella Nilsen. “Trump’s budget plan eviscerates weather and climate research, and it could be enacted immediately.” I guess I better hurry to put that Weather Station up in the Pergalo.
The Trump administration intends to eliminate the research arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, close all weather and climate labs and eviscerate its budget along with several other NOAA offices, according to internal documents obtained by CNN.
The documents describe the administration’s budget proposal for 2026, but indicate the administration expects the agency to enact the changes immediately.
The cuts would devastate weather and climate research as weather is becoming more erratic, extreme and costly. It would cripple the US industries — including agriculture — that depend on free, accurate weather and climate data and expert analysis. It could also halt research on deadly weather, including severe storms and tornadoes.
The administration intends to make significant cuts to education, grants, research and climate-related programs in NOAA, the plan says, which the administration believes “are misaligned with the … expressed will of the American people.”
While the phrase “climate change” refers to the manmade influence on the global climate system via planet-warming fossil fuel pollution, “climate” in NOAA parlance is simply the weather that has been observed over time.
CNN has reached out to the White House and the Department of Commerce, which houses NOAA, for comment on the plan.
Additionally, NASA is on the chopping block! Does this include all that money going to Elonia? This is from ars TECHICA‘s Eric Berger. “Trump White House budget proposal eviscerates science funding at NASA. “This would decimate American leadership in space.” #FARTUS seems dead set on sending us back to the Gilded Age. Even the best of the Modern Era is about to be erased.
This week, as part of the process to develop a budget for fiscal-year 2026, the Trump White House shared the draft version of its budget request for NASA with the space agency.
This initial version of the administration’s budget request calls for an approximately 20 percent overall cut to the agency’s budget across the board, effectively $5 billion from an overall topline of about $25 billion. However, the majority of the cuts are concentrated within the agency’s Science Mission Directorate, which oversees all planetary science, Earth science, astrophysics research, and more.
According to the “passback” documents given to NASA officials on Thursday, the space agency’s science programs would receive nearly a 50 percent cut in funding. After the agency received $7.5 billion for science in fiscal-year 2025, the Trump administration has proposed a science topline budget of just $3.9 billion for the coming fiscal year.
Among the proposals were: A two-thirds cut to astrophysics, down to $487 million; a greater than two-thirds cut to heliophysics, down to $455 million; a greater than 50 percent cut to Earth science, down to $1.033 billion; and a 30 percent cut to Planetary science, down to $1.929 billion.
Although the budget would continue support for ongoing missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, it would kill the much-anticipated Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, an observatory seen as on par with those two world-class instruments that is already fully assembled and on budget for a launch in two years.
We’re also unlikely to see other countries send their best and brightest to our US Universities with all this craziness. As some with with multiple degrees and ones that aren’t that easy to achieve, I would just like to say that my teachers, my students and grad assistants, and my colleagues and fellow students were consistently the best part of higher education school. I owe so much of my math chops to fellow students from India, Iran, Hong Kong, Turkey, and Taiwan. Both of my Doctorate advisors came here as students. One from India. The other is from Bangladesh. This brain drain will put us on the road to mediocrity.
This is from the AP. “Immigration judge finds that Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil can be deported.”
Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil can be kicked out of the U.S. as a national security risk, an immigration judge in Louisiana found Friday during a hearing over the legality of deporting the activist who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
The government’s contention that Khalil’s presence in the United States posed “potentially serious foreign policy consequences” was enough to satisfy requirements for his deportation, Immigration Judge Jamee E. Comans said at the conclusion of a hearing in Jena.
Comans said the government had “established by clear and convincing evidence that he is removable.”
Lawyers for Khalil said they plan to keep fighting. The judge gave them until April 23 to seek a waiver. Meanwhile, a federal judge in New Jersey temporarily barred Khalil’s deportation.
Addressing the judge at the end of the hearing, Khalil mentioned that she said at a hearing earlier in the week that “there’s nothing more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness.”
Let me just say that Jena, Louisiana, is a hell realm.
I don’t believe you is above contempt?! Right
— T GauthierⓂ️Ⓜ️🦋🦮🦮🦮 (@1redcupcake.bsky.social) 2025-04-11T21:09:49.330Z
Is it a Constitutional Crisis Yet, Momma? Brad Reed has that Raw Story headline.
The United States Department of Justice said on Friday that it will not comply with an order from Judge Paula Xinis to reveal information on the whereabouts and status of deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
As reported by Politico’s Kyle Cheney on BlueSky, the DOJ information Judge Xinis that it would not be able to provide the information she requested on Garcia because the court set an “impracticable” deadline to do so.
Judge Xinis had originally demanded that the DOJ provide information about Garcia’s status by 9:30 a.m. on Friday after the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration needed to facilitate bringing him back from the prison in El Salvador where he had been sent improperly.
The judge extended the deadline to 11:30 a.m. on Friday morning and scheduled a court hearing on the case for 1 p.m.
So, I hope you’re trying to stay positive and calm. I’m going to go walk Temple and feed the kitties. That’s something I can do right now without feeling depressed.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMAIsqvTh7g
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #Repeat1968JohnBuss #DisastrousDon #economicImpactOfFARTUSTariffs #kakistocracy #MarketsContinueToCrash
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Finally Friday Reads: The Incompetent and The Cruel
“Kristi Noem is so thoughtful.” John Buss, @repeat1968.
@johnbuss.bsky.socialGood Day, Sky Dancers!
Cartoonist John Buss continues to blow me away with his renditions of all the monsters inhabiting the Trump Regime. You never know how far they will go. Incompetency and cruelty are their defining parameters. The only thing you know about this regime is that they are negatively correlated and huge. You know the negative impact on the country in a big way, but the actual actions leading to the outcomes are unimaginable. You know they’re going to a new low that will be shocking and unimaginable. I’m beginning to think that some are designed to take our eyes away from the dismantling of our government and democracy.Today’s Featured Funny was more than I had hoped when I put this on his Facebook thread. “Hi! It’s your dark muse again. You have to do something about Kristin Noem doing a glam shot in front of all the shirtless, bearded men she likely sent to be tortured and enslaved. Abu Ghraib, but this administration has no shame!” She had paraded down here in a similar outfit during the Super Bowl, but instead of looking like a slutty ICE agent, she looked like a Slutty police officer. She just oozes psychopath, doesn’t she? She’s LARPing all those war criminals that psychologically torture whatever they capture. Just thinking about how the really bad ones torture animals first, and her poor puppy.This is from the Washington Post (article gifted). “How Kristi Noem’s $50,000 Rolex in a Salvadoran prison became a political flash point. The high-end Swiss watch lent a striking contrast to her tour of a notoriously overcrowded mega-prison in one of Latin America’s poorest countries.” I supposed she could wear that “I don’t care, do you?” jacket, but then everyone would miss her signature whitie tightie boob shot op. She must have a closet full of those. She wore them daily during her Super Bowl tour. This is reported by Drew Harwell and Alec Dent.
When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem visited El Salvador’s most notorious mega-prison on Wednesday, she sported an eye-catching piece on her wrist that experts have identified as an 18-karat gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch that sells for about $50,000.
The high-end Swiss watch lent a striking contrast to Noem’s tour of the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where imprisoned men watched silently from a crowded cell as she recorded a video for a social media post warning undocumented immigrants not to enter the United States.
“If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face,” Noem said.
Noem’s choice of watch kicked off a race among internet sleuths to identify it and infuriated immigration advocates, who said the juxtaposition was insensitive to the harsh reality of mass imprisonment and deportation.
“You’re in front of all these people in a very poor country, who are in the bottom 10 or 20 percent of their country … and it looks like you’re just flaunting your wealth while you flaunt your freedom,” said Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group.
“This is an administration that is trying to be populist, anti-elite, appeal to the common man,” he added. Meanwhile, there’s “people stacked up like cordwood behind her.”
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the make of the watch in a statement, saying that “then-Governor Noem chose to use the proceeds from her New York Times best selling books to purchase an item she could wear and one day pass down to her children.”
While the #FARTUS purge of immigrants looks like an SS round-up. I fear escalation to Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen (killing squads). It is difficult to predict if they will actually go that far. We’ve already had children in cages and family separation. We also have midnight raids that have spirited away graduate students who have taken part in demonstrations or written op-eds against the bombing of Palestinian civilians in GAZA. This is from Mike Masnik from TechDirt. “Trump’s Secret Police Are Now Disappearing Students For Their Op-Eds.”
For years, we’ve been hearing breathless warnings about a “campus free speech crisis” from self-proclaimed free speech warriors. Their evidence? College students doing what college students have done for generations: protesting speakers they disagree with, challenging institutional policies, and yes, sometimes attempting to create heckler’s vetoes.This kind of campus activism — while occasionally messy and uncomfortable — has been a feature of American higher education since the 1960s. It’s how young people learn to engage with ideas and exercise their own speech rights. Sometimes that activism is silly and sometimes it’s righteous. Often it’s somewhere in between, but it’s kind of a part of being a college student, and learning what you believe in.But now we face an actual free speech crisis on campus that goes beyond just speech. It’s an attack on personal freedoms, due process, and liberty. The federal government isn’t just pressuring universities over speech — it’s literally disappearing students for their political expression. If you support actual free speech, now is the time to speak up.The latest example of this authoritarian overreach is particularly chilling: Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish PhD student at Tufts who was here legally on a student visa, was abducted by masked agents in broad daylight. She was disappeared without due process or explanation — only later did we learn she had been renditioned to a detention center in Louisiana.The video of her kidnapping (because that’s what it was) is terrifying enough.If you listen, you hear her quite understandably surprised reaction with a scream, and then she asks to call the police, only to be told “we’re the police.” None of them are in uniforms. Most of them are masked.Her supposed crime? A year ago, she co-authored an op-ed in The Tufts Daily criticizing her university administration’s stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Not advocating violence. Not supporting terrorism. Not even criticizing the U.S. government. Just exercising core First Amendment rights by publishing criticism of her own university’s policies in a student newspaper.The government has attempted to justify similar renditions (and there is a growing list of victims) by falsely painting targets as “terrorist supporters” — a dangerous conflation of political speech supporting Palestinian rights with support for terrorism. But even those cases typically involved people involved in public protests, which are themselves constitutionally protected activities. This case goes even further: disappearing someone over an innocuous piece of student journalism published a year ago.Everyone should be alarmed. Everyone should be demanding that she (and others) be released and that ICE and DHS stop this horrifying and unconscionable practice. Everyone should be demanding that Trump and Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem stop this Gestapo bullshit.Even if — especially if — you disagree with her views on Israel and Palestine. This isn’t about that. This is about the very concept of freedom. The rights everyone — even visitors — are supposed to have in this country. The right to speak your mind, even if (especially if!) it is opposed to those in power. The right to walk down a street without being kidnapped. The right to due process.If the government genuinely believed Ozturk had violated immigration law or her visa terms (she hadn’t), there are established legal procedures to address such issues. Instead, they chose to send masked goons to disappear her without warning or due process — a chilling message to every other international student that their supposed right to express political opinions comes with the risk of rendition.And, of course, the implied threat is that this won’t stop at international students.
I have taught university classes for decades. Finance and Economic policy are inherently political. We stick to established theory and mention policies in the past that did not work. The two big ones are Tariffs and Tax cuts for the very rich. We have data that shows they don’t work and years of published papers. I fear the Commerce and Labor Secretaries will kill the data, so we cannot teach the theory and the reality using current economic and financial data. Since I’m now technically retired and only teach as an adjunct, I worry a lot about the current faculty. The Republicans have been after tenure for years. Universities and research are a significant source of progress. The attacks on research and the inability to run graduate programs and graduate Doctoral students will mean a lack of qualified professors after we old folks retire, which will severely curtail our leadership in science and the exercise of free thought. That is their goal.This is from Forbes Magazine. “Trump Orders Department Of Education Closure: What Happens Next.” The story is reported by Sarah Hernholm.
President Trump has issued an executive order to close the Department of Education, a move that will reshape federal education policy and affect America’s 49.5 million public school students. The order mandates redistributing the department’s functions across multiple federal agencies by the end of the year, marking a major change in how the federal government approaches education.This decision, long championed by conservatives who believe education should remain primarily a state and local matter, has sparked disagreement about the federal government’s role in education policy, funding, and oversight.The executive order outlines specific transitions for key education functions:
- Civil rights enforcement will move to the Justice Department
- Federal student loan programs will shift to the Treasury
- Special education oversight will transition to Health and Human Services
These changes will affect the management of federal education funding streams totaling over $150 billion annually, including:
- $18.8 billion in Title I funding for high-poverty schools, serving approximately 26 million students
- $15.5 billion in IDEA funding, supporting 7.3 million students with disabilities
- $120.8 billion in Federal Student Aid programs, helping 10.8 million college students
Educational stakeholders stress the importance of ensuring these resources continue without disruption during the transition period, particularly for disadvantaged students who rely heavily on federally funded programs.This will hurt rural and poor urban schools that rely on the funding to offer help for disadvantaged students and students with disabilities. I’m also wondering what will happen to ESL (English as a second language) teachers, programs, school nurses, and psychologists. These things are incredibly expensive.
“The backpedaling is something to behold..” John Buss, @repeat1968.
@johnbuss.bsky.socialThen there’s Pete Hegseth and his keystone cops LARPing military leadership. We got all the war moves and none of the conversation about what it means to target and bomb a civilian apartment. Hey! Hey DOJ! How many kids did they kill that day? They’re all suggesting it was successful, but really? What has all that incompetence brought us?This is breaking news from CNN. “Officials say texts sent by Waltz, Ratcliffe in Signal chat may have damaged US’ ongoing ability to gather intel on Houthis.” Evidently, the intelligence they got from the Israelis was from an on-site agent. But of course, no heads are rolling in any of the meeting’s inept Cabinet. They’ve declared war on The Atlantic instead. This story is reported by Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen,
Current and former US officials have told CNN they believe two texts sent by national security adviser Mike Waltz and CIA Director John Ratcliffe in the now-infamous group chat involving senior US officials discussing battle plans to strike Houthi targets in Yemen, may have done long-term damage to the US’s ability to gather intelligence on the Iran-backed group going forward.
Although messages from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth detailing the sequencing, timing and weapons to be used in a March attack on the Houthis have drawn the most scrutiny because they could have endangered US servicemembers if revealed, the messages from Waltz and Ratcliffe, in the chat Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg was added to, contained equally sensitive information, these sources said.
In one of the messages, Ratcliffe told other Cabinet members who were discussing whether to delay the strikes that the CIA was in the act of mobilizing assets to collect intelligence on the group, but that a delay might offer them the opportunity to “identify better starting points for coverage on Houthi leadership.”
That text, according to the current and former officials, exposed the mere fact that the US is gathering intelligence on them — bad in and of itself — but also hinted at how the agency is doing it. The language about “starting points,” these people said, suggests clearly that the CIA is using technical means like overhead surveillance to spy on their leadership. That could allow the Houthis to change their practices to better protect themselves.
Then, in a later message, Waltz offered an extremely specific after-action report of the strikes, telling the thread that the military had “positive ID” of a particular senior Houthi leader “walking into his girlfriend’s building” — offering the Houthis a clear opportunity to see who the US was surveilling and potentially figure out how, thus enabling them to avoid that surveillance in the future, the sources said.
The Houthis have “always been difficult to track,” said a former intelligence official. “Now you just highlight for them that they’re in the crosshairs.”
Trump administration officials, including both Waltz and Ratcliffe, have repeatedly insisted that no classified information was shared in the text. Ratcliffe, in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, specifically referenced his text about “starting points.”
But current and former officials have disagreed vehemently with that assessment: The kinds of information in not just Hegseth’s texts, but Ratcliffe’s and Waltz’s, included very clear references to sources and methods. Even if it wasn’t an explicit or technical description, these people say, it is information that the US government would typically withhold because it might allow an adversary to make an educated interference about US sources and methods.
Ratcliffe’s use of the Signal app in this way is raising eyebrows inside Langley, current and former officials said.
“I think he is going to be viewed skeptically for using the app for that purpose,” one US official told CNN.
“(Ratcliffe) was basically talking as if he was in a SCIF,” said another former intelligence official, referring to a secure room hardened against electronic surveillance that is designed for discussions of classified material.
“He’s the director,” said the first former official, calling Ratcliffe’s text “irresponsible.” “He should know better.”
A CIA spokesperson told CNN, “Director Ratcliffe takes his responsibility to safeguard America’s ability to gather intelligence extremely seriously.”
“Nothing he conveyed in the chat posed any risk to any sources or methods,” the spokesperson said. “The only lasting damage is to the Houthi terrorists who have been eliminated.”
CNN has reached out to the National Security Council for comment.
The primary tool of Trump’s spokespeople is to lie and deny and protect FARTUS at all times.Former Secretary of State penned this Op-Ed in the New York Times today. “Hillary Clinton: How Much Dumber Will This Get?” Remember, it will get worse; we just can’t forecast how because only the incompetent and cruel can come up with such batshit crazy pogroms. Throw in narcissism and sociopathy, and it’s a forecaster’s nightmare. Clinton’s name has been evoked recently because the same folks who were traumatized by her personal emails being released by their Russian buddies are taking this incredible breach of security cavalierly.
It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity. We’re all shocked — shocked! — that President Trump and his team don’t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws. But we knew that already. What’s much worse is that top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That’s dangerous. And it’s just dumb.
This is the latest in a string of self-inflicted wounds by the new administration that are squandering America’s strength and threatening our national security. Firing hundreds of federal workers charged with protecting our nation’s nuclear weapons is also dumb. So is shutting down efforts to fight pandemics just as a deadly Ebola outbreak is spreading in Africa. It makes no sense to purge talented generals, diplomats and spies at a time when rivals like China and Russia are trying to expand their global reach.
In a dangerous and complex world, it’s not enough to be strong. You must also be smart. As secretary of state during the Obama administration, I argued for smart power, integrating the hard power of our military with the soft power of our diplomacy, development assistance, economic might and cultural influence. None of those tools can do the job alone. Together, they make America a superpower. The Trump approach is dumb power. Instead of a strong America using all our strengths to lead the world and confront our adversaries, Mr. Trump’s America will be increasingly blind and blundering, feeble and friendless.
Let’s start with the military, because that’s what he claims to care about. Don’t let the swagger fool you. Mr. Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (of group chat fame) are apparently more focused on performative fights over wokeness than preparing for real fights with America’s adversaries. Does anyone really think deleting tributes to the Tuskegee Airmen makes us more safe? The Trump Pentagon purged images of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb that ended World War II because its name is the Enola Gay. Dumb.
Instead of working with Congress to modernize the military’s budget to reflect changing threats, the president is firing top generals without credible justification. Five former secretaries of defense, Republicans and Democrats, rightly warned that this would “undermine our all-volunteer force and weaken our national security.” Mass layoffs are also hitting the intelligence agencies. As one former senior spy put it, “We’re shooting ourselves in the head, not the foot.” Not smart.
There’s more at the link, which has been gifted.It’s hard to get through the day without the next chain of what the hell did they do now coming out to beat us senseless. They’re worried about the midterms because FARTUS sent Elise Stefanik back to Congress yesterday. The poor woman won’t get that deluxe apartment in the sky now. This is from Politico. “Stefanik’s withdrawal suggests Republicans are sweating their thin margins. Democrats insist Republicans are panicking.” Democrats shouldn’t be so complacent.
President Donald Trump’s decision to keep Rep. Elise Stefanik in Congress is the clearest sign yet that the political environment has become so challenging for Republicans that they don’t want to risk a special election even in safe, red seats.
A pair of April elections in deep-red swaths of Florida next week was supposed to improve the GOP’s cushion in the House and clear the path for Stefanik’s departure, until Trump said he didn’t “want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise’s seat.”
The decision to pull Stefanik’s nomination came as Republicans grew increasingly anxious about the race to fill the seat of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz on April 1. Polling in the district, which Trump carried by 30 points, had tightened, and the president himself is hosting a tele-town hall there to try and bail out Republican Randy Fine.An internal GOP poll from late March showed Democrat Josh Weil up 3 points over Fine, 44 to 41 percent, with 10 percent undecided, according to a person familiar with the poll and granted anonymity to discuss it. Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s pollster, conducted the survey. That result spooked Republicans and spurred them to redouble efforts to ensure a comfortable win in the district, according to two people familiar with internal conversations.Some Republican strategists said it’s not worth taking the risk of losing Stefanik’s sprawling northern New York seat, which Trump won by 20 points in 2024.
“Can they defend her seat? Absolutely. But why do you do that right now?” asked Charlie Harper, who was a top aide to former Rep. Karen Handel on her successful 2017 bid in a special election in Georgia.
Harper is not the only Republican making that calculation.
“If we’re far underperforming in seats Trump won by 30 then there’s obvious concern about having to chance special elections in seats Trump won by a lot less,” said one top GOP operative granted anonymity to speak candidly. “The juice is not worth the squeeze sweating them out.”
Okay, that’s enough shock and awe for now.What’s on your reading and blogging list today?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufw9dVys3t0
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #Repeat1968JohnBuss #abuGhraibTortureAndPrisonerAbuse #CabinetOfIncompetentImbeciles #DepartmentOfEducationBlues #EliseStefanikIsACunt #EveryOneGoesToElSalvador_ #FARTUS #higherEducation #HillaryClintonOnSignalGate #KidnappingGraduateStudents #KristiNoemSociopathAndCunt #PeteHegsethWeirdoSexualAssaulter #TheWhiskeyLeaks
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Finally Friday Reads: Shutdown or Meltdown?
“So, not even two months. Here we are.” John Buss, @repeat1968, @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’ve always been an opponent of letting the US Government shut down. As an economist, I know what kind of misery that creates for many people as well, as the possibility of a government default, which could haunt us for many years. My worry is real, but this situation is unique, and typically, the party that tries to shut the government down takes the political heat. I understand what he’s worried about. If we default on debt we become a risky debtor. If we shut the Government down, the weakest among us will suffer needlessly. Default has incredible consequences for the Social Security trust fund, the strength of our dollar, and if anyone will ever buy a US t-bill or t-bond now or ever. That includes war bonds if we ever need them again. I don’t like it, but a default would be unbelievably destructive to the country’s future. I hate that we’re in this position.
How it played out this last night and this morning pitted Schumer against many of his most strong-willed colleagues. Schumer’s support even earned him a pat on the head from #FARTUS. Trump’s always one to take advantage of a bad situation. He interpreted the move as support of the Doge Bulldozer moving through government agencies and policy. That was something one of my Canadian friends from way back in my Fired Dog Lake days predicted. I’d like to read your thoughts on that because I’m unsure how it will be received by folks outside Beltway machinations.
Let’s review what’s out there in the Press and Social media about the move that separated many Democratic senators from the leader. This is from AXIOS as proffered by Andrew Sollender. “House Dems go into “complete meltdown” as Schumer folds”.
House Democrats erupted into apoplexy Thursday night after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he would support Republicans’ stopgap government funding measure.
Why it matters: House Democrats feel like they “walked the plank,” in the words of one member. They voted almost unanimously against the measure, only to watch Senate Democrats seemingly give it the green light.
- “Complete meltdown. Complete and utter meltdown on all text chains,” said the member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer sensitive details of members’ internal conversations.
- A senior House Democrat said “people are furious” and that some rank-and-file members have floated the idea of angrily marching onto the Senate floor in protest.
- Others are talking openly about supporting primary challenges to senators who vote for the GOP spending bill.
Driving the news: Schumer said in a floor speech Thursday that while the GOP measure is “very bad,” the possibility of a government shutdown “has consequences for America that are much, much worse.”
- “A shutdown would give Donald Trump the keys to the city, the state and the country,” Schumer said.
- The comments likely clear a path for at least eight Senate Democrats to vote for the bill — enough for Republicans to overcome the upper chamber’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.
Zoom in: All but one House Democrat voted against the bill earlier this week, in large part because it lacks language to keep the Trump administration from cutting congressionally approved spending.
- “There were many battleground Dems in the House … that were uncomfortable, semi-uncomfortable, with the vote,” said one House Democrat. “The Senate left the House at the altar.”
- House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), in remarks to his House colleagues at their annual retreat Thursday, lauded them for standing up to President Trump by voting against the bill, according to multiple sources.
- When he praised House Democrats’ votes, he received a standing ovation. When he mentioned Senate Democrats, members booed.
What we’re hearing: House Democrats’ text chains lit up Thursday night with expressions of blinding anger, according to numerous lawmakers who described the conversations on the condition of anonymity.
- “People are PISSED,” one House Democrat told Axios in a text message.
- Several members — including moderates — have begun voicing support for a primary challenge to Schumer, floating Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) as possible candidates, three House Democrats said.
- One lawmaker even vowed at the House Democratic retreat to “write a check tonight” supporting Ocasio-Cortez, said the senior House Democrat.
- Another Democrat told Axios the ideation has gone a step further: “There is definitely a primary recruitment effort happening right now … not just Schumer, but for everyone who votes no.”
More gossip and speculation at the link.
Schumer himself appeared on Chris Hayes last night as well as wrote an Op-Ed for the New York Times. “Chuck Schumer: Trump and Musk Would Love a Shutdown. We Must Not Give Them One.”
Over the past two months, the United States has confronted a bitter truth: The federal government has been taken over by a nihilist.
President Trump has taken a blowtorch to our country and wielded chaos like a weapon. Most Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, have caved to his every whim. The Grand Old Party has devolved into a crowd of Trump sycophants and MAGA radicals who seem to want to burn everything to the ground.
Now, Republicans’ nihilism has brought us to a new brink of disaster: Unless Congress acts, the federal government will shut down Friday at midnight.
As I have said many times, there are no winners in a government shutdown. But there are certainly victims: the most vulnerable Americans, those who rely on federal programs to feed their families, get medical care and stay financially afloat. Communities that depend on government services to function will suffer.
This week Democrats offered a way out: Fund the government for another month to give appropriators more time to do their jobs. Republicans rejected this proposal.
Why? Because Mr. Trump doesn’t want the appropriators to do their job. He wants full control over government spending.
He isn’t the first president to want this, but he may be the first president since Andrew Jackson to successfully cow his party into submission. That leads Democrats to a difficult decision: Either proceed with the bill before us or risk Mr. Trump throwing America into the chaos of a shutdown.
This, in my view, is no choice at all.
Emptywheel (a friend from my Fire Dog Lake Doays) wrote a scathing piece on the situation. It indicates how desperately we need the Democrats in Congress to get their acts together. It isn’t easy dealing with chaos, but it’s even worse if you contribute to it. “Democrats Have to Stop Making Political Decisions with an Eye Towards 2026.” I’m unsure if that’s all they’re thinking about or if they’re just running around like chickens with their heads caught up.
I’ve been out of pocket as events moved towards today’s cloture vote on the dogshit continuing resolution Republicans have written. It’s not yet clear whether seven Democrats (in addition to John Fetterman) will join Chuck Schumer — who has said he’ll vote for cloture — in helping Republicans pass it, or whether a Democrat will buy some time.
It’s clear that Schumer’s excuse only emphasizes that there are no good options. He says if there’s a shutdown, Republicans will only reopen those parts of government they want. In the face of the shuttering of USAID and dismantlement of Department of Education, that seems like a futile worry.
Among the best arguments I’ve seen against a shutdown, laid out but dropped here by Josh Marshall, is that a shutdown would provide Trump a way to halt legal proceedings by deeming those lawyers non-essential.
I was told yesterday that a major driver for Dems was the fear that a shutdown would slow down or stop the various court cases against DOGE. Honestly, that sounded so stupid to me that I was skeptical. But this afternoon I heard it from other key directions. I don’t know if it’s the biggest driver but just on the basis of what I heard I get a sense that it’s a major one. That seems so wrongheaded, so lawyer-brained, that when I got the final piece of the puzzle in front of me and realized this was a real thing, it was hard for me to even process.
Schumer described it this way in his speech yesterday:
Justice, and the courts, extremely troubling, I believe. A shutdown could stall Federal court cases, one of the best redoubts against Trump’s lawlessness, and could require a furlough of critical staff at the courts, denying victims and defendants alike their day in court, dragging out appeals and clogging the justice system for months and even years.
I don’t think this is lawyer-brained at all. Trump could simply call the lawyers engaged in these suits non-essential, stalling legal challenges in their current status, and then finding new test cases to establish a precedent while judges were stymied.
In both Phoenix, where a reduction in force affected all the people running the courthouse, and in the Perkins Coie lawsuit, where a hearing the other day reviewed all the Executive Branch personnel, from Marshals to GSA, who keep the courthouse running, the Executive’s ability to limit the Judiciary via manipulation of facilities and staff has already become a live issue. Here’s how Beryl Howell described the way in which Trump’s attempt to exclude Perkins Coie from federal buildings could be enforced via Executive branch personnel.
THE COURT: I just want to make sure because we, in the judiciary — we’re the third branch. We are not the executive branch. We are not subject to this guidance. But our landlord, and all of the federal courthouses around the country is GSA —
MR. BUTSWINKAS: GSA.
THE COURT: — General Services Administration. And the people who do the security at our front doors, all across the country in federal courthouses, are DOJ-component employees from the U.S. Marshals Service or court security officers. So they are all executive branch employees.
Meanwhile the court cases are making progress. Just this week, we’ve had two judges order reinstatement of all the people fired, grant FOIA status to DOGE, and grant discovery to Democratic Attorneys General (plus in one of the two reinstatement cases, Judge Alsup ordered a deposition from an OPM person involved in the firing). As of this week, DOGE now has to answer for its actions in the courts.
Imagine, for example, if a shutdown made it easier for DHS to keep Mahmoud Khalil in Louisiana for the duration of a shutdown, even if they simply said moving him back to SDNY (or New Jersey) is not a priority. There are other cases where the government is being ordered to pay back payments; a shutdown would make such recourse unavailable to anyone who has not yet sued. In the financial clawback cases (where EPA and FEMA seized funds already awarded), a shutdown would give the FBI time to try to frame the case against plaintiffs they’re pursuing, while the plaintiffs get no protection in the meantime. A key flaw was revealed in the lawsuit against Perkins Coie in the hearing the other day (which I’ll return to); if given the time, I would expect Trump to try the same trick against another law firm, fixing that flaw, in an attempt to eliminate any anti-Trump legal teams in the country.
So the concern that a shutdown would eliminate one of two sources of power is real.
I’m agnostic about whether a shutdown brings more advantage than risks.
The rest of her essay argues that everyone is far too interested in the midterm elections.
(snip)
One thing I am absolutely certain of, however, is that Democrats on both sides of this debate are framing it in terms of 2026. Those justifiably furious at Chuck Schumer are thinking in terms of primaries against any Senator who supports cloture. They’re demanding a filibuster so that elected Democrats, as Democrats, be seen wielding some power, so the party doesn’t look feckless to potential voters. Those afraid of a shutdown are discussing electoral consequences in 2026. Polls are measuring who would be blamed in the polls.
This mindset has plagued both sides of Democratic debates for two months, with disastrous consequences.
Democracy will be preserved or lost in the next three months. And democracy will be won or lost via a nonpartisan political fight over whether enough Americans want to preserve their way of life to fight back, in a coalition that includes far more than Democrats. You win this fight by treating Trump and Elon as the villain, not by making any one Democrat a hero (or worse still, squandering week after week targeting Democratic leaders while letting Elon go ignored).
Either way, this is an untenable situation.
Today is another day of the country finding out none of this is normal. NBC News has a running thread on every crazy thing on deck for the Beltway today. “Government shutdown live updates: Senate to vote on funding bill today; Dr. Mehmet Oz faces confirmation hearing. President Donald Trump will deliver remarks at the Justice Department, a frequent target of his and his allies’ government weaponization claims.” Have I mentioned I have a TV, but it’s been sitting in a box for nearly three years? I just don’t have the stamina to set it up and watch all this craziness on a big screen.
Reality TV stars and swindlers are about all Trump has to offer up these days.
Hassan grills Dr Oz about promoting a bunch of scam "medical" products on TV, including "raspberry ketones." She notes that "it seems to me you are still unwilling to take accountability for your promotion of unproven snake oil remedies to millions of your viewers."
The only good news I found today was this.
Judges order Trump to rehire thousands of fired federal workers.
Two federal courts are ruling that the firings of probationary federal workers were improper and that tens of thousands of those employees must be immediately reinstated. The Trump administration is calling the ruling absurd and unconstitutional and is vowing to fight back. NBC’s Garrett Haake reports for “TODAY.”
It seems we are fully reliant on the Judiciary Branch to stop the destruction of our Government and democracy. It’s not like we didn’t warn people, either. This is in Fortune, as reported by the AP. ” The Trump administration must bring back thousands of federal workers fired by Elon Musk’s DOGE, judge rules.” The Judge really read the riot act to the Federal attorney also.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to reinstate thousands—if not tens of thousands—of probationary workers let go in mass firings across multiple agencies last month, saying that the terminations were directed by a personnel office that had no authority to do so.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ordered the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Interior and the Treasury to immediately offer reinstatement to employees terminated on or about Feb. 13 and 14 using guidance from the Office of Personnel Management and its acting director, Charles Ezell.
Alsup directed the agencies to report back within seven days with a list of probationary employees and an explanation of how the departments complied with his order as to each person.
The temporary restraining order came in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions and organizations as the Republican administration moves to dramatically downsize the federal workforce.
The White House and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Alsup expressed frustration with what he called the government’s attempt to sidestep laws and regulations governing a reduction in its workforce — which it is allowed to do — by firing probationary workers who lack protections. He was appalled that employees were fired for poor performance despite receiving glowing evaluations just months earlier.
“It is sad, a sad day, when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” he said. “That should not have been done in our country.”
Opinion: 3 ways DOGE challengers could win court cases from CNN
It’s the day before my favorite holiday, The Ides of March. For those who don’t know, if I could go back in time and eliminate before they came into power, it would be the baby that became Julius Ceasar. They offed him too late to help history. So, there’s likely a few folks walking around the White House right now that should Beware the Ides of March. Nipping the Roman Empire in the bud would have definitely put us farther away from the Dark Time Line.
Here’s tomorrow’s version of the Ides of March.
Donald Trump has suggested that the US should buy Gaza, will get Greenland “one way or another” as well as the Panama Canal, ignited a new trade war, floated the annexation of Canada, and hired the world’s richest weirdo (who also happens to be the world’s richest man) to fire tens of thousands of federal employees. And that’s just one country.
Romania’s leading presidential candidate was arrested after winning the first round of elections with the assistance of Russian bots, showing that Putin is determined to mess with all his neighbors. Look for the Moldovan election in a few months; Russia is sowing chaos with energy sabotage.
Germany’s most successful far-right party since World War II just had a record-breaking result after the the US basically endorsed them. And don’t be fooled by Friedrich Merz’s lack of flair: The Europeans are about to try to build an independent defense, give the American abdication.
China’s DeepSeek has upended the AI market, throwing Silicon Valley into full-blown panic mode. And it will soon dominate the renewable energy market and have just been given a monumental soft-power gift the US abdication of 80 years of global leadership of the free world.
Tara Palmeri writes this on her blog, Red Letter. “Fear and Loathing in the West Wing. Inside the revolt against Elon Musk…”
The tolerance for Elon Musk inside of the White House is wearing thin, as they deal with the fallout of his calamitous interview with Larry Kudlow when he touched the third rail – entitlements. Even though Trump’s staffers are terrified of Musk, they know that if you try to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, you die, politically speaking.
“It’s no longer simmering resistance, people are fucking furious,” said a source with knowledge of the situation.
“Medicaid is not just for Black people in the ghetto, these are our voters,” said a Republican operative close to the White House.
Even before the interview, I’m told that the White House communications team was adamantly against letting Musk do the interview with Kudlow, even though he’s a former administration official and ally. They know that FOX News is a network that their older, white working-class voters watch closely and this was a rare televised interview for Musk, not the same as getting high with Joe Rogan.
Now they’re playing cleanup. Sure, they sent out a “Fact Check” memo from the White House highlighting that his words were garbled when he said he’s looking at the “waste and fraud in entitlement spending,” not entitlements all together. But then Musk went further, falsely claiming in the interview that Democrats use entitlement programs to attract illegal immigrants into the country so that they can add them to their voter rolls. It doesn’t help that earlier this month, Musk referred to Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
You can even see Kudlow shifting around uncomfortably during the interview.
Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung denied that there was an issue. “We love [Musk] doing media,” he said, pointing to his joint interview with Trump on Sean Hannity.
As promised, I want to share the ins and outs of my reporting process with you, so I first reached out to Trump’s personal pollster John McLaughlin after I learned about the meltdown over Musk’s interview to ask if he’s been polling Musk’s response in the interview. And I was shocked to learn that McLaughlin has not polled Musk at all, even though he’s clearly a political liability to the President. McLaughlin has been polling Trump for decades and was one of the main pollsters alongside Tony Fabrizio on the campaign. He said the last poll that he conducted that even remotely touched on Musk was about DOGE in November 2024 and it did not mention Musk by name.
“No one has asked us to do that poll,” McLaughlin told me.
Well, the public polling shows that the numbers for Musk – what some would call Trump’s heat shield – have been in free fall since Trump took office, with more than 53 percent of people having an unfavorable opinion of Musk, according to a new CNN poll. But surely Trump’s political operation, which to be fair is an impressive one, would want to know if Musk was starting to become a liability. No political consultant in Washington trusts public polling. They’d probably trust the opposition party’s polling over public polling. So that leaves me to believe that they are afraid of Trump’s appendage or it’s because Musk just donated $100 million to Trump’s political arm, which just so happens to be run by Trump’s other pollster Fabrizio. When I asked Fabrizio if he’s conducting polls on Musk favorables, he didn’t get back to me.
Regardless, I’ve heard that the White House is aware that Musk’s numbers are “dog shit,” according to a source. “
More at the link.
Just one more thing to ruin your weekend and I’m sorry but it’s story that needs telling. This is from The New Republic. “Trump Gives New Orders to U.S. Military on Panama Canal Takeover, Donald Trump is moving forward on his plans to seize the Panama Canal.”
The Trump administration has asked the U.S. military to draw up options for retaking the Panama Canal.
President Trump has been pushing for retaking the canal since December, and repeated his desire in a joint address to Congress last week, without any elaboration. The rest of the Trump administration hasn’t attempted to explain what he means, either.
The military is drawing up options, according to NBC News, that range from a closer partnership with the Panamanian military to soldiers seizing the Panama Canal by force, according to unnamed officials. The use of force depends on how much Panama’s military is willing to work with the United States, the officials told NBC News.
The commander of U.S. Southern Command, Admiral Alvin Holsey, presented the different strategies to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth earlier this week. The plan to use military force against Panama will only be considered if posting additional U.S. military personnel does not accomplish Trump’s goal of “reclaiming” the canal, the officials said.
Right now, the U.S. has more than 200 troops in the country, including Special Forces units working with Panamanian units to combat internal unrest. Trump claims China has troops in the canal, which Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino denies, as does China. In February, Panama decided not to renew an infrastructure agreement with China, drawing criticism from the country toward the U.S.
One tin soldier rides again.
So, I just want to watch a few more Star Wars movies and eat the tabouli I made last night. We’re seriously in trouble, and I don’t see Captain America out there anywhere, or Wonder Woman, or any of the other Super Heros we could use right now. At least it’s almost crawfish season.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #ChuckSchumer #Doge #FARTUS #governmentShutdown #JudgeOrdersRehireOfFederalWorkers
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Finally Friday Reads: Shutdown or Meltdown?
“So, not even two months. Here we are.” John Buss, @repeat1968, @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’ve always been an opponent of letting the US Government shut down. As an economist, I know what kind of misery that creates for many people as well, as the possibility of a government default, which could haunt us for many years. My worry is real, but this situation is unique, and typically, the party that tries to shut the government down takes the political heat. I understand what he’s worried about. If we default on debt we become a risky debtor. If we shut the Government down, the weakest among us will suffer needlessly. Default has incredible consequences for the Social Security trust fund, the strength of our dollar, and if anyone will ever buy a US t-bill or t-bond now or ever. That includes war bonds if we ever need them again. I don’t like it, but a default would be unbelievably destructive to the country’s future. I hate that we’re in this position.
How it played out this last night and this morning pitted Schumer against many of his most strong-willed colleagues. Schumer’s support even earned him a pat on the head from #FARTUS. Trump’s always one to take advantage of a bad situation. He interpreted the move as support of the Doge Bulldozer moving through government agencies and policy. That was something one of my Canadian friends from way back in my Fired Dog Lake days predicted. I’d like to read your thoughts on that because I’m unsure how it will be received by folks outside Beltway machinations.
Let’s review what’s out there in the Press and Social media about the move that separated many Democratic senators from the leader. This is from AXIOS as proffered by Andrew Sollender. “House Dems go into “complete meltdown” as Schumer folds”.
House Democrats erupted into apoplexy Thursday night after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he would support Republicans’ stopgap government funding measure.
Why it matters: House Democrats feel like they “walked the plank,” in the words of one member. They voted almost unanimously against the measure, only to watch Senate Democrats seemingly give it the green light.
- “Complete meltdown. Complete and utter meltdown on all text chains,” said the member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer sensitive details of members’ internal conversations.
- A senior House Democrat said “people are furious” and that some rank-and-file members have floated the idea of angrily marching onto the Senate floor in protest.
- Others are talking openly about supporting primary challenges to senators who vote for the GOP spending bill.
Driving the news: Schumer said in a floor speech Thursday that while the GOP measure is “very bad,” the possibility of a government shutdown “has consequences for America that are much, much worse.”
- “A shutdown would give Donald Trump the keys to the city, the state and the country,” Schumer said.
- The comments likely clear a path for at least eight Senate Democrats to vote for the bill — enough for Republicans to overcome the upper chamber’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.
Zoom in: All but one House Democrat voted against the bill earlier this week, in large part because it lacks language to keep the Trump administration from cutting congressionally approved spending.
- “There were many battleground Dems in the House … that were uncomfortable, semi-uncomfortable, with the vote,” said one House Democrat. “The Senate left the House at the altar.”
- House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), in remarks to his House colleagues at their annual retreat Thursday, lauded them for standing up to President Trump by voting against the bill, according to multiple sources.
- When he praised House Democrats’ votes, he received a standing ovation. When he mentioned Senate Democrats, members booed.
What we’re hearing: House Democrats’ text chains lit up Thursday night with expressions of blinding anger, according to numerous lawmakers who described the conversations on the condition of anonymity.
- “People are PISSED,” one House Democrat told Axios in a text message.
- Several members — including moderates — have begun voicing support for a primary challenge to Schumer, floating Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) as possible candidates, three House Democrats said.
- One lawmaker even vowed at the House Democratic retreat to “write a check tonight” supporting Ocasio-Cortez, said the senior House Democrat.
- Another Democrat told Axios the ideation has gone a step further: “There is definitely a primary recruitment effort happening right now … not just Schumer, but for everyone who votes no.”
More gossip and speculation at the link.
Schumer himself appeared on Chris Hayes last night as well as wrote an Op-Ed for the New York Times. “Chuck Schumer: Trump and Musk Would Love a Shutdown. We Must Not Give Them One.”
Over the past two months, the United States has confronted a bitter truth: The federal government has been taken over by a nihilist.
President Trump has taken a blowtorch to our country and wielded chaos like a weapon. Most Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, have caved to his every whim. The Grand Old Party has devolved into a crowd of Trump sycophants and MAGA radicals who seem to want to burn everything to the ground.
Now, Republicans’ nihilism has brought us to a new brink of disaster: Unless Congress acts, the federal government will shut down Friday at midnight.
As I have said many times, there are no winners in a government shutdown. But there are certainly victims: the most vulnerable Americans, those who rely on federal programs to feed their families, get medical care and stay financially afloat. Communities that depend on government services to function will suffer.
This week Democrats offered a way out: Fund the government for another month to give appropriators more time to do their jobs. Republicans rejected this proposal.
Why? Because Mr. Trump doesn’t want the appropriators to do their job. He wants full control over government spending.
He isn’t the first president to want this, but he may be the first president since Andrew Jackson to successfully cow his party into submission. That leads Democrats to a difficult decision: Either proceed with the bill before us or risk Mr. Trump throwing America into the chaos of a shutdown.
This, in my view, is no choice at all.
Emptywheel (a friend from my Fire Dog Lake Doays) wrote a scathing piece on the situation. It indicates how desperately we need the Democrats in Congress to get their acts together. It isn’t easy dealing with chaos, but it’s even worse if you contribute to it. “Democrats Have to Stop Making Political Decisions with an Eye Towards 2026.” I’m unsure if that’s all they’re thinking about or if they’re just running around like chickens with their heads caught up.
I’ve been out of pocket as events moved towards today’s cloture vote on the dogshit continuing resolution Republicans have written. It’s not yet clear whether seven Democrats (in addition to John Fetterman) will join Chuck Schumer — who has said he’ll vote for cloture — in helping Republicans pass it, or whether a Democrat will buy some time.
It’s clear that Schumer’s excuse only emphasizes that there are no good options. He says if there’s a shutdown, Republicans will only reopen those parts of government they want. In the face of the shuttering of USAID and dismantlement of Department of Education, that seems like a futile worry.
Among the best arguments I’ve seen against a shutdown, laid out but dropped here by Josh Marshall, is that a shutdown would provide Trump a way to halt legal proceedings by deeming those lawyers non-essential.
I was told yesterday that a major driver for Dems was the fear that a shutdown would slow down or stop the various court cases against DOGE. Honestly, that sounded so stupid to me that I was skeptical. But this afternoon I heard it from other key directions. I don’t know if it’s the biggest driver but just on the basis of what I heard I get a sense that it’s a major one. That seems so wrongheaded, so lawyer-brained, that when I got the final piece of the puzzle in front of me and realized this was a real thing, it was hard for me to even process.
Schumer described it this way in his speech yesterday:
Justice, and the courts, extremely troubling, I believe. A shutdown could stall Federal court cases, one of the best redoubts against Trump’s lawlessness, and could require a furlough of critical staff at the courts, denying victims and defendants alike their day in court, dragging out appeals and clogging the justice system for months and even years.
I don’t think this is lawyer-brained at all. Trump could simply call the lawyers engaged in these suits non-essential, stalling legal challenges in their current status, and then finding new test cases to establish a precedent while judges were stymied.
In both Phoenix, where a reduction in force affected all the people running the courthouse, and in the Perkins Coie lawsuit, where a hearing the other day reviewed all the Executive Branch personnel, from Marshals to GSA, who keep the courthouse running, the Executive’s ability to limit the Judiciary via manipulation of facilities and staff has already become a live issue. Here’s how Beryl Howell described the way in which Trump’s attempt to exclude Perkins Coie from federal buildings could be enforced via Executive branch personnel.
THE COURT: I just want to make sure because we, in the judiciary — we’re the third branch. We are not the executive branch. We are not subject to this guidance. But our landlord, and all of the federal courthouses around the country is GSA —
MR. BUTSWINKAS: GSA.
THE COURT: — General Services Administration. And the people who do the security at our front doors, all across the country in federal courthouses, are DOJ-component employees from the U.S. Marshals Service or court security officers. So they are all executive branch employees.
Meanwhile the court cases are making progress. Just this week, we’ve had two judges order reinstatement of all the people fired, grant FOIA status to DOGE, and grant discovery to Democratic Attorneys General (plus in one of the two reinstatement cases, Judge Alsup ordered a deposition from an OPM person involved in the firing). As of this week, DOGE now has to answer for its actions in the courts.
Imagine, for example, if a shutdown made it easier for DHS to keep Mahmoud Khalil in Louisiana for the duration of a shutdown, even if they simply said moving him back to SDNY (or New Jersey) is not a priority. There are other cases where the government is being ordered to pay back payments; a shutdown would make such recourse unavailable to anyone who has not yet sued. In the financial clawback cases (where EPA and FEMA seized funds already awarded), a shutdown would give the FBI time to try to frame the case against plaintiffs they’re pursuing, while the plaintiffs get no protection in the meantime. A key flaw was revealed in the lawsuit against Perkins Coie in the hearing the other day (which I’ll return to); if given the time, I would expect Trump to try the same trick against another law firm, fixing that flaw, in an attempt to eliminate any anti-Trump legal teams in the country.
So the concern that a shutdown would eliminate one of two sources of power is real.
I’m agnostic about whether a shutdown brings more advantage than risks.
The rest of her essay argues that everyone is far too interested in the midterm elections.
(snip)
One thing I am absolutely certain of, however, is that Democrats on both sides of this debate are framing it in terms of 2026. Those justifiably furious at Chuck Schumer are thinking in terms of primaries against any Senator who supports cloture. They’re demanding a filibuster so that elected Democrats, as Democrats, be seen wielding some power, so the party doesn’t look feckless to potential voters. Those afraid of a shutdown are discussing electoral consequences in 2026. Polls are measuring who would be blamed in the polls.
This mindset has plagued both sides of Democratic debates for two months, with disastrous consequences.
Democracy will be preserved or lost in the next three months. And democracy will be won or lost via a nonpartisan political fight over whether enough Americans want to preserve their way of life to fight back, in a coalition that includes far more than Democrats. You win this fight by treating Trump and Elon as the villain, not by making any one Democrat a hero (or worse still, squandering week after week targeting Democratic leaders while letting Elon go ignored).
Either way, this is an untenable situation.
Today is another day of the country finding out none of this is normal. NBC News has a running thread on every crazy thing on deck for the Beltway today. “Government shutdown live updates: Senate to vote on funding bill today; Dr. Mehmet Oz faces confirmation hearing. President Donald Trump will deliver remarks at the Justice Department, a frequent target of his and his allies’ government weaponization claims.” Have I mentioned I have a TV, but it’s been sitting in a box for nearly three years? I just don’t have the stamina to set it up and watch all this craziness on a big screen.
Reality TV stars and swindlers are about all Trump has to offer up these days.
Hassan grills Dr Oz about promoting a bunch of scam "medical" products on TV, including "raspberry ketones." She notes that "it seems to me you are still unwilling to take accountability for your promotion of unproven snake oil remedies to millions of your viewers."
The only good news I found today was this.
Judges order Trump to rehire thousands of fired federal workers.
Two federal courts are ruling that the firings of probationary federal workers were improper and that tens of thousands of those employees must be immediately reinstated. The Trump administration is calling the ruling absurd and unconstitutional and is vowing to fight back. NBC’s Garrett Haake reports for “TODAY.”
It seems we are fully reliant on the Judiciary Branch to stop the destruction of our Government and democracy. It’s not like we didn’t warn people, either. This is in Fortune, as reported by the AP. ” The Trump administration must bring back thousands of federal workers fired by Elon Musk’s DOGE, judge rules.” The Judge really read the riot act to the Federal attorney also.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to reinstate thousands—if not tens of thousands—of probationary workers let go in mass firings across multiple agencies last month, saying that the terminations were directed by a personnel office that had no authority to do so.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ordered the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Interior and the Treasury to immediately offer reinstatement to employees terminated on or about Feb. 13 and 14 using guidance from the Office of Personnel Management and its acting director, Charles Ezell.
Alsup directed the agencies to report back within seven days with a list of probationary employees and an explanation of how the departments complied with his order as to each person.
The temporary restraining order came in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions and organizations as the Republican administration moves to dramatically downsize the federal workforce.
The White House and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Alsup expressed frustration with what he called the government’s attempt to sidestep laws and regulations governing a reduction in its workforce — which it is allowed to do — by firing probationary workers who lack protections. He was appalled that employees were fired for poor performance despite receiving glowing evaluations just months earlier.
“It is sad, a sad day, when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” he said. “That should not have been done in our country.”
Opinion: 3 ways DOGE challengers could win court cases from CNN
It’s the day before my favorite holiday, The Ides of March. For those who don’t know, if I could go back in time and eliminate before they came into power, it would be the baby that became Julius Ceasar. They offed him too late to help history. So, there’s likely a few folks walking around the White House right now that should Beware the Ides of March. Nipping the Roman Empire in the bud would have definitely put us farther away from the Dark Time Line.
Here’s tomorrow’s version of the Ides of March.
Donald Trump has suggested that the US should buy Gaza, will get Greenland “one way or another” as well as the Panama Canal, ignited a new trade war, floated the annexation of Canada, and hired the world’s richest weirdo (who also happens to be the world’s richest man) to fire tens of thousands of federal employees. And that’s just one country.
Romania’s leading presidential candidate was arrested after winning the first round of elections with the assistance of Russian bots, showing that Putin is determined to mess with all his neighbors. Look for the Moldovan election in a few months; Russia is sowing chaos with energy sabotage.
Germany’s most successful far-right party since World War II just had a record-breaking result after the the US basically endorsed them. And don’t be fooled by Friedrich Merz’s lack of flair: The Europeans are about to try to build an independent defense, give the American abdication.
China’s DeepSeek has upended the AI market, throwing Silicon Valley into full-blown panic mode. And it will soon dominate the renewable energy market and have just been given a monumental soft-power gift the US abdication of 80 years of global leadership of the free world.
Tara Palmeri writes this on her blog, Red Letter. “Fear and Loathing in the West Wing. Inside the revolt against Elon Musk…”
The tolerance for Elon Musk inside of the White House is wearing thin, as they deal with the fallout of his calamitous interview with Larry Kudlow when he touched the third rail – entitlements. Even though Trump’s staffers are terrified of Musk, they know that if you try to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, you die, politically speaking.
“It’s no longer simmering resistance, people are fucking furious,” said a source with knowledge of the situation.
“Medicaid is not just for Black people in the ghetto, these are our voters,” said a Republican operative close to the White House.
Even before the interview, I’m told that the White House communications team was adamantly against letting Musk do the interview with Kudlow, even though he’s a former administration official and ally. They know that FOX News is a network that their older, white working-class voters watch closely and this was a rare televised interview for Musk, not the same as getting high with Joe Rogan.
Now they’re playing cleanup. Sure, they sent out a “Fact Check” memo from the White House highlighting that his words were garbled when he said he’s looking at the “waste and fraud in entitlement spending,” not entitlements all together. But then Musk went further, falsely claiming in the interview that Democrats use entitlement programs to attract illegal immigrants into the country so that they can add them to their voter rolls. It doesn’t help that earlier this month, Musk referred to Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
You can even see Kudlow shifting around uncomfortably during the interview.
Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung denied that there was an issue. “We love [Musk] doing media,” he said, pointing to his joint interview with Trump on Sean Hannity.
As promised, I want to share the ins and outs of my reporting process with you, so I first reached out to Trump’s personal pollster John McLaughlin after I learned about the meltdown over Musk’s interview to ask if he’s been polling Musk’s response in the interview. And I was shocked to learn that McLaughlin has not polled Musk at all, even though he’s clearly a political liability to the President. McLaughlin has been polling Trump for decades and was one of the main pollsters alongside Tony Fabrizio on the campaign. He said the last poll that he conducted that even remotely touched on Musk was about DOGE in November 2024 and it did not mention Musk by name.
“No one has asked us to do that poll,” McLaughlin told me.
Well, the public polling shows that the numbers for Musk – what some would call Trump’s heat shield – have been in free fall since Trump took office, with more than 53 percent of people having an unfavorable opinion of Musk, according to a new CNN poll. But surely Trump’s political operation, which to be fair is an impressive one, would want to know if Musk was starting to become a liability. No political consultant in Washington trusts public polling. They’d probably trust the opposition party’s polling over public polling. So that leaves me to believe that they are afraid of Trump’s appendage or it’s because Musk just donated $100 million to Trump’s political arm, which just so happens to be run by Trump’s other pollster Fabrizio. When I asked Fabrizio if he’s conducting polls on Musk favorables, he didn’t get back to me.
Regardless, I’ve heard that the White House is aware that Musk’s numbers are “dog shit,” according to a source. “
More at the link.
Just one more thing to ruin your weekend and I’m sorry but it’s story that needs telling. This is from The New Republic. “Trump Gives New Orders to U.S. Military on Panama Canal Takeover, Donald Trump is moving forward on his plans to seize the Panama Canal.”
The Trump administration has asked the U.S. military to draw up options for retaking the Panama Canal.
President Trump has been pushing for retaking the canal since December, and repeated his desire in a joint address to Congress last week, without any elaboration. The rest of the Trump administration hasn’t attempted to explain what he means, either.
The military is drawing up options, according to NBC News, that range from a closer partnership with the Panamanian military to soldiers seizing the Panama Canal by force, according to unnamed officials. The use of force depends on how much Panama’s military is willing to work with the United States, the officials told NBC News.
The commander of U.S. Southern Command, Admiral Alvin Holsey, presented the different strategies to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth earlier this week. The plan to use military force against Panama will only be considered if posting additional U.S. military personnel does not accomplish Trump’s goal of “reclaiming” the canal, the officials said.
Right now, the U.S. has more than 200 troops in the country, including Special Forces units working with Panamanian units to combat internal unrest. Trump claims China has troops in the canal, which Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino denies, as does China. In February, Panama decided not to renew an infrastructure agreement with China, drawing criticism from the country toward the U.S.
One tin soldier rides again.
So, I just want to watch a few more Star Wars movies and eat the tabouli I made last night. We’re seriously in trouble, and I don’t see Captain America out there anywhere, or Wonder Woman, or any of the other Super Heros we could use right now. At least it’s almost crawfish season.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #ChuckSchumer #Doge #FARTUS #governmentShutdown #JudgeOrdersRehireOfFederalWorkers
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Finally Friday Reads: The Turn of the Screw
“Meanwhile, at Mars-a-Lago… Donold’s training pays off..” John Buss, @repeat1968,@johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
With its tumultuous and ineffective leadership, the aptly named chaos caucus again plays a game of brinkmanship that risks American lives and the economy. I’m getting way too old for this kind of torment. The Republican-led Congress has completely forgotten its role in governance and its duties, ensuring the stability required for all the entities that rely on that and the rule of law to function. They only seem to air grievances and feed their raging ids. This year’s version comes with a dangerous twist. The prime chaos factor is the richest man on earth who was not elected or officially appointed to anything. His claim to fame is funding the Trump campaign and those of other Republican elected officials, and he has no clue about our system of government, our institutions, our Constitution, or, for that matter, anything. He’s also bugfuck crazy.
President Eject Incontinentia Buttocks is huddled down in Florida doing God knows what, and J Dank has gone missing. Milk cartons will soon have to show his picture and ask, “Have you seen this vice president?” Bayou Moses looks to be the next biggest loser of the House Speaker’s Gavel. The country looks like some twisted version of The Mouse That Roared. How are we to deal with a Cabal of Billionaires empowered by an angry crew of religious nuts, bigots, and know-nothings? They appear to own the house and the Supreme Court at the moment.
Meanwhile, back in the world of the same old shit, we get Mitch McConnell suddenly lecturing everyone and seemingly trying to protect the old magic ways of the US Senate. McConnell thinks he can swiftly change roles from Macbeth to King Lear. The Democratic Party is appointing the same old group that hasn’t been able to do anything to stop this to leadership positions. I cannot be the only one who doesn’t see any of this ending well.
So, how on earth did Elon Musk blow up a bipartisan deal on the budget? This is from Sam Stein writing at The Bulwark. “Elon Killed the Budget Deal. Cancer Research for Kids Was Collateral Damage. Advocates were celebrating the inclusion of money and provisions to help fund pediatric research. And then the tweets started.”
THE DECISION BY REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP to scuttle a bipartisan funding deal on Thursday night has left lawmakers scrambling and others anxiously bracing for a government shutdown.
For a host of issue advocates, however, the prevailing mood in Washington, D.C. was one not of chaos but utter devastation.
The initial deal that congressional leaders had agreed to included a number of key priorities that, in the course of hours, were jettisoned by GOP leaders looking to calm Elon Musk’s pique and satisfy Donald Trump’s demands. And though the slimmed-down bill that Trump endorsed in its place failed to pass the House, few people expected that the initial deal would make a comeback—meaning that many of its components were likely gone for good.
The list of provisions left in the dust heap was lengthy. The initial compromise bill included language to ensure that providers of internet service to rural areas weren’t ripping off customers, to protect consumers from hidden hotel fees, to secure semiconductor supply chains, to restrict U.S. outbound investment in China, even to prohibit deepfake pornography. All those were all gone in the successor bill.
But some of the hardest cuts to swallow involved medical research. In particular, advocates say, the revised funding bill delivered a devastating blow to the fight against pediatric cancer.
The slimmed-down version was stripped of language that would have allowed children with relapsed cancer to undergo treatments with a combination of cancer drugs and therapies. (Currently the Food and Drug Administration is only authorized to direct pediatric cancer trials of single drugs.) The bill also didn’t include an extension of a program that gave financial lifelines, in the form of vouchers, to small pharmaceutical companies working on rare pediatric diseases. It was also missing earlier provisions that would have allowed for kids on Medicaid or CHIP—that is, poor children—to access medically complex care across state lines.
And, of course, Trump wants to ensure that there’s a two-year extension of the Debt Ceiling so that he can give away the Treasury to his Cabal and grift off the nation without having to take on the burden of once again landing the Federal Budget into record-setting red zones. He seriously believes that the voters will blame all these shenanigans on Biden, who is trying to Trump-proof things and get Federal judges appointed to the bench. Musk is on a rampage to replace the governments that once fought NAZIs with NAZIs all over the world and evidently has the money to attempt it. This is from New York Magazine. “Musk Pauses Torment of GOP to Praise German Extremists.” Nia Prater has the analysis.
Elon Musk has spent the better part of this week working to derail Congress’s attempt to fund the government, but he found time early Friday morning to express support for the politics of Alternative für Deutschland or Alternative for Germany, the country’s most prominent far-right political party.
“Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk wrote on X early Friday morning.
The comment was in response to a video posted by Naomi Seibt, a German far-right activist, that criticized Friedrich Merz, the leader of the conservative party Christian Democratic Union of Germany. Recently, Merz has been leading in the polls to become the nation’s next chancellor next year. The caption for Seibt’s video read, “The presumptive next chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) is horrified by the idea that Germany should follow Elon Musk’s and Javier Milei’s example. He staunchly rejects a pro-freedom approach and refuses any discussion with the AfD.”
The AfD is a nationalist and anti-immigration party that has seen its popularity steadily grow over the last several years. In September, the party won its first state election, becoming the first far-right party to win an election in Germany since the Nazis, per CNN. AfD’s candidate in that race, Björn Höcke, is a controversial figure who has been fined for using a Nazi slogan and criticized for a speech many denounced as antisemitic.
Olaf Scholz, the current chancellor of Germany, was dismissive of Musk’s words when asked about them during an unrelated press conference with Estonian prime minister Kristen Michal on Friday. “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multibillionaires,” Scholz said, per Bloomberg. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain good political advice.”
This is not the first time that Musk has indicated support for AfD. Last year, The Guardian reported that Musk shared a pro-AfD post that criticized Germany funding charity groups that operate ships that rescued migrants, referring to the migrants as “illegal immigrants.”
“Let’s hope AfD wins the elections to stop this European suicide,” the post read.
Musk, who intends to play an starring role in Donald Trump’s second term, has similarly shown an affinity for other conservative leaders in Europe. He’s been pictured with Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni and Nigel Farage, a British politician who leads the right-wing populist party Reform UK. In recent days, there’s been speculation that Musk might be considering a massive multimillion-dollar donation to Farage’s party, prompting worries among watchdog groups.
Musk has such a manic schedule, given he’s also trying to give parts of Ukraine to Putin, threatening to oust the Canadian PM, and blowing up the US economy today. Canadian TV had this headline last week. “Elon Musk calls Justin Trudeau ‘insufferable tool’ in new social media post.” Musk is channeling his inner Lex Luther!
Billionaire Elon Musk is calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “an insufferable tool” in a new social media post on Wednesday.
“Won’t be in power for much longer,” Musk also wrote about the prime minister on “X.”
Musk was responding to a video posted of Trudeau, in which the prime minister described Kamala Harris’ U.S. presidential loss as a setback for women’s progress.
“We were supposed to be on a steady, if difficult sometimes, march towards progress. And yet, just a few weeks ago, the United States voted for a second time to not elect its first woman president,” Trudeau said during a speech at the Equal Voice Foundation Gala in Ottawa on Tuesday night.
Trudeau also said women’s rights and women’s progress are “under attack overtly and subtly,” and that he “always will be a proud feminist.”
Musk, who is the CEO of Tesla and founder of space company SpaceX, has been tasked to co-chair U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency. He was also a prominent figure in Trump’s election campaign.
Wednesday’s post is Musk’s latest swipe at the prime minister since Trump was re-elected in November. Responding to a user on “X” on Nov. 7 asking for Musk’s help to get rid of Trudeau, Musk wrote “He will be gone in the upcoming election.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford says he let Trudeau know his comments were “not helpful.”
Ford, who with the rest of Canada’s premiers, met with the prime minister and several of his cabinet ministers on Wednesday to discuss how Canada would respond to Trump’s tariff threats.
“Donald Trump was elected democratically,” Ford said, adding that the premiers made sure Trudeau “got the message loud and clear.”
Musk’s post also comes during a tense time in Canada-U.S. relations.
Trudeau has been facing social media jabs from Trump following the prime minister’s visit to Mar-a-Lago nearly two weeks ago to discuss Trump’s tariff threat. Last month, Trump threatened to impose a 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian imports on his first day in office unless Canada addresses his border security concerns.
Following that meeting, U.S. network Fox News reported Trump joked during the dinner in Florida that if the potential tariffs would harm the Canadian economy — as the prime minister conveyed to him — perhaps Canada should become America’s 51st state(opens in a new tab).
Days later, Trump posted an A.I.-generated image to social media that depicted him standing next to a Canadian flag(opens in a new tab) and overlooking a mountain range with the caption “Oh Canada!”
Evidently, since he managed to buy the US Presidency and dupe enough dolts into voting for the Dotard, he thinks he can do it with Canada and a good portion of Europe. He’s also being all kissy-face with the UK’s Nigel Farage. The AP characterizes all these shenanigans thusly. “Musk ascends as a political force beyond his wealth by tanking budget deal.” Is the legacy media going to sleep through all of this and cover it like mundane news? Thomas Beaumont has the analysis.
In the first major flex of his influence since Donald Trump was elected, Elon Musk brought to a sudden halt a bipartisan budget proposal by posting constantly on his X megaphone and threatening Republicans with primary challenges.
The social media warnings from the world’s wealthiest man preceded Trump’s condemnation of a measure negotiated by GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson, which effectively killed the stopgap measure that was designed to prevent a partial shutdown of the federal government.
Washington was scrambled a day after Musk’s public pressure campaign. Trump on Thursday first declined to say whether he had confidence in Johnson. But later in the day, Trump praised him and House leaders for producing “a very good Deal,” after they announced a new plan to fund the government and lift the debt ceiling.
Before the new deal was reached, Congressional Democrats mocked their GOP counterparts, with several suggesting Trump had been relegated to vice president.
“Welcome to the Elon Musk presidency,” Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California wrote on X.
What was clear, though, is Musk’s ascendance as a political force, a level of influence enabled by his great wealth. In addition to owning X, Musk is the CEO of Tesla and Space X.
Since the Supreme Court decided Citizens United, unelected billionaires have bought Supreme Court Decisions and Justices. That’s taken a while to ferret out because the crooked Supreme Court Justices haven’t reported their spoils, and they have no ethics standards. We know they’ve got lobbyists that hand out checks, but most of them do not want to be caught in the act of kleptocracy. Musk has the audacity of a Bond villain. It’s just out there for all to see and the press to cover.
House Speaker Bayou Moses has yet another agreement to put forward as the clock ticks to midnight EST. This is from The Hill. “Johnson says he has plan C to avert shutdown, vote expected.” I’ll believe it when I see it, frankly.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he has a plan C to avert a shutdown and the House will vote Friday morning on the legislation — but Republicans indicated there is not yet widespread agreement.
“Yeah, yeah, we have a plan,” Johnson said Friday morning as he entered the Capitol. “We’re expecting votes this morning, so you all stay tuned. We’ve got a plan.”
He did not say what it entails. And lawmakers leaving meetings in Johnson’s office Friday morning indicated that there was not yet an agreement on a path forward.
“Anybody who’s telling you there’s an agreement is just a little bit ahead of themselves,” Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), chair of the Republican Main Street Caucus, said as he left the Speaker’s office later Friday morning.
Lawmakers have little time to avoid a shutdown: Government funding runs out when the clock strikes midnight late Friday.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said on CNBC on shortly after Johnson’s comments Friday morning that he thinks Washington will probably avoid a shutdown since “we’re pushed up against Christmas here,” saying a “clean” funding extension is likely.
“There’s a chance today a clean CR [continuing resolution], short-term clean CR — it may be for two, three weeks,” Mullin said. “That was something that was discussed, you know, late last night, you know, even some discussions this morning. I’m not going to say that’s going to happen, but you know, that’s really the option that’s on the table.”
This is the usual way for them to avoid the problems. Just keep kicking that can. This just prolongs things. This process has historically been messy and difficult. We may see a technical shutdown tonight, and that does not bode well, given the current antics and players. This is from The Hill. “NY Democrat: ‘Elon Musk has Donald Trump in a vise.” Joanne Haner has the lede.
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) on Thursday suggested Elon Musk is the one directing the Trump administration, not President-elect Trump, pointing to the tech entrepreneur’s leading position in opposing the government funding stopgap measure.
“Elon Musk has Donald Trump in a vise,” Goldman said on MSNBC on Thursday. “And it is very clear that Elon Musk is now calling the shots.”
Musk made several social media posts Wednesday criticizing the spending measure deal unveiled by House Republicans this week. He called the more than 1,500-page measure a big “piece of pork” while calling on GOP lawmakers to oppose it.
Trump later in the day also called for the bill to be dismissed, suggesting instead that Congress pass a clean continuing resolution with a debt hike increase. That proposal was rejected Thursday night, and Congress is now working on a plan C with less than 24 hours to go before the deadline.
“We need to face the reality: Right now, we have President Elon Musk. And Trump? Maybe he’s vice president, I guess,” Goldman said. “Vice presidents don’t do much, so that makes sense. He might be the chief of staff. I don’t know what you call him, but he is not calling the shots.”
Goldman is not the only Democrat saying Musk is the one calling the shots in the administration; a number of Democrats have made similar arguments, while the White House has said Trump and the GOP are doing the bidding of billionaires.
Meanwhile, the government is making plans for a shutdown. This is from the Washington Post.
House Republicans are discussing the latest plan from leadership to fund the government and avoid a shutdown before a midnight deadline. Several Republicans said the Rules Committee will meet to send two separate bills to the floor, which would need a simple majority to pass. They are: A clean extension of current fiscal levels until mid-March that includes an extension of a farm bill that requires reauthorization, and a $110 billion relief bill to help natural disaster survivors and aid farmers. Republicans had no plans for an immediate vote on suspending the debt limit, despite President-elect Donald Trump’s repeated demands. At the White House, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lashed out at Republicans who had agreed to a bipartisan deal and then abandoned it. “This is a mess that Speaker [Mike] Johnson created, that is his mess to fix,” she told reporters at the daily briefing, adding that there was “still time” for Republicans to “do the right thing.” The Office of Management and Budget alerted federal agencies Friday morning to prepare for an imminent government shutdown.
The budget fiasco isn’t the only thing threatening the US and the Global Economies. Trump is just not giving up on his ignorant view of tariffs. This is from CNBC. Trade negotiations are not subject to the art of the Deal. They are gamesmanship on an entirely different level. “‘Tariffs all the way’: Trump says European Union must buy U.S. oil and gas in trade ultimatum.” He thinks he looks like a tough guy, but anyone who knows about economic policy knows he just looks like an idiot.
Trump has made threats of sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners including China, Mexico and Canada a signature part of his presidential campaign — and he’s continued the narrative as he prepares to enter office, despite economists warning of risks to domestic inflation.
Analysts say there is high uncertainty over the extent of the tariffs Trump will be willing — or able — to follow through with, and how much of his rhetoric is a starting point for striking deals.
His latest comment comes after EU heads of state held their final meeting of the year on Thursday, during which the topic of Europe-U.S. relations was discussed.
“The message is clear: the European Union is committed to continue working with the United States, pragmatically, to strengthen transatlantic ties,” European Council President António Costa said following the meeting.
Enrico Letta, former prime minister of Italy and dean of the IE School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday that the EU needed to be prepared to retaliate to Trump’s threat.
“I think it is a transactional approach, we have to respond to this transactional approach. [Trump] mixes together energy and tariffs on goods, manufacturing and so on. I think it’s incorrect because the two topics are completely different,” Letta said.
“If the deal is proposed by Trump — such an asymmetric deal on topics that are not linked one to the other — I think we have to do the same.”
“Considering that the most asymmetric part is the relationship on the financial side, we have to start considering that maybe replying on the financial side could be a solution,” he said.
Ahead of the U.S. election in November, EU officials spent months preparing for a lurch toward U.S. protectionism and for a more confrontational relationship with the White House, in the event of a Trump victory. The EU has also made moves toward strengthening its relationship with the U.K., which left the bloc in 2020, as a guard against potential clashes over trade and defense.
It’s disturbing that many folks and the media are acting like Joe Biden is already out of the picture. However, Republican dysfunction could also deal the final blow to the Republican Party. Jeffries has control over his congress critters. It’s obvious Johnson doesn’t. You may remember that John Boehner threw up his arms and retired over the many chaotic factions. It hasn’t improved since then. Digby has an interesting view in her Salon column. “Elon Musk just killed Donald Trump’s honeymoon. We are seeing is an emerging crack in the GOP coalition.”
The activist base that had recently fashioned itself as the Tea Party after Obama’s election in 2008, quietly reinvented itself as the MAGA movement and lost all interest in fiscal austerity the minute Trump came on the scene. But there has always been some restiveness among the right-wing ideologues in the House and Senate who really want to massively cut discretionary spending and the so-called entitlements to the bone. They’re true believers in the idea that government should not help people, period. They were relegated to the back bench during Trump’s first term and spent most of their time tilting at windmills because Trump was happily spending like the treasury was his own credit line at Deutsche Bank.
He had no appetite for big spending cuts that might hurt his chances for re-election. After all, he didn’t run as a budget-cutting deficit hawk. He always claimed that he didn’t need to drastically cut spending because the debt would disappear with tariffs and unprecedented growth. He said the same thing during the 2024 campaign, insisting that it would even pay for government-funded child care, the worst of all possible worlds.
He pays lip service to cutting spending but he doesn’t really care about it. He’s told people he’s not worried about a U.S. debt crisis as he’ll be out of office by then. And he’s got stuff he wants to spend a lot of money on, like deporting millions of immigrants!
That’s never been clearer than this week when Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., presented the bipartisan continuing resolution to fund the government until March and all hell broke loose in the House. Those rascally, backbench Tea Party/Freedom Caucus ideologues finally got the leader they’ve been waiting for and his name is Elon Musk, the richest man in the world.
It was a given that the Freedom Caucus gang would not vote for the bill. They vote no on everything. It had been negotiated by the bipartisan negotiators in both chambers with the knowledge that the Senate was still in Democratic hands and the tiny GOP majority in the House required a bipartisan compromise. Everyone knew that the screamers in the House would have a fit and call for Mike Johnson’s head (which is why they changed the rule raising the threshold from one member to nine.) And since the speaker knows better than to go to the john without getting Trump’s permission, you can be sure that Trump was kept informed of all of this. They all agreed that they would get rid of this hot potato, adjourn quickly and go home for the holidays.
That didn’t work out the way they planned it. Trump thought he had cleverly boxed Musk out of real power by creating a powerless “commission” for him and his sidekick Vivek Ramaswamy to come up with enormous spending cuts to reduce the federal government by as much as a third, which he knows won’t happen. However, Trump has essentially empowered Musk to speak for him by having him by his side every minute for the last three months. And seeing as he’s the richest man in the world who owns a major social media platform, he has plenty of power all on his own.
I have actually heard several talking heads think that Trump’s disinterest in the actual work for the job is worse this time around. The suggestions that he just ran for office to stay out of jail and that he would just be a figurehead may come to fruition. His dementia has worsened. He disappears from the public a lot. He doesn’t appear to have a craving for attention or energy. It may be that Doddering Don will be happy for everyone else to do his work as long as he can cuddle up to foreign dictators. I’m surprised Musk got this much press coverage and went rogue on the budget negotiations. The Donald that stalked Hillary wouldn’t have liked that.
But, who am I but a mostly retired economics professor who sometimes would just rather play the piano or guitar all day than think about this and have to unravel it for students.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968JohnBuss #BayouMoses #ElonMuskIsANAZI #FederalBudgetAndDeficit #HouseSpeakerMikeJohnson #PresidentEjectIncontinentiaButtocks
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Mostly Monday Reads: The Press Bends the Knee
“So I’m guessing reducing everyone’s electric bill by half isn’t gonna happen either..” John Buss, @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancing!
I wanted to start this morning with something very normal, American, and positive. Today, President Biden will designate a National Monument in Maine for the late great Secretary of Labor under FDR Francis Perkins. She was the first woman to serve as a Secretary in a President’s Cabinet. She inspired me since she played a major role in economic and labor policy during the Great Depression. She was appointed in 1933 and served 12 years. She should be known as the Mother of Social Security. Her role in implementing and determining policy during the New Deal programs cannot be underestimated. She has touched the lives of all of us even though she left office in 1945.
The Hill has an article up today about her tenure and the memorial today.
During Perkins’s tenure, the Labor Department oversaw Immigration and Naturalization Services, a role she used to aggressively lobby to admit larger numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe.
Perkins was considered a stalwart ally of labor unions during her tenure, which included her counseling Roosevelt against breaking a 1934 waterfront strike that shut down much of the West Coast. She also refused to deport Australian-born longshoremen’s union head Harry Bridges for his membership in the Communist Party, which led the House Un-American Activities Committee to introduce an unsuccessful impeachment resolution against her.
Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, arrives for a special meeting, September 16, 1938 Image: Library of Congress ID hec.25045
She claimed to have been radicalized after she witnessed the notorious Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York in 1911, in which 146 garment workers were burned or leaped to their deaths after they were locked inside for the workday.
The national monument will comprise the nearly 60 acres that were once Perkins’s family’s homestead in Newcastle, which her family has owned for nearly three centuries.
The designation comes after Biden earlier in March signed an executive order calling on the Interior Department to identify sites with significance in women’s history in America.
You may read the Biden announcement at this link to the White House. I found this journal article written about her by Harris Chaiklin, Ph.D. at VCU Libraries Social Welfare History Project. “Perkins, Frances, Change Agent in: Eras in Social Welfare History, Great Depression, People, Recollections. Frances Perkins: She Boldly Went Where No Woman Had Gone Before.” A wealthy daughter of a wealthy Boston family, she had the type of education that generally sent a woman to ‘spinsterhood.’ Her upbringing prepared her for her role, shaping some of the most strategic and important policies of the time. Fannie Perkins persisted. She eventually landed in Greenwich Village, where she became a mediator. Her friends included Sinclair Lewis and Robert Moses.
A transforming event occurred while she was having tea with a wealthy friend who lived in Washington Square. Word came that the Triangle Shirtwaist factory was on fire. They rushed to it. The horror they saw there helped forge in Frances a lifelong commitment to worker’s safety and rights. That she was with a wealthy friend is significant. Though not wealthy she knew this life style and associated with wealthy people. Good friends from this group provided a place for her to live at key points in her career when her earnings were not enough to meet her needs.
After the fire there was increasing activity in campaigning for worker’s rights and safety while the social work job continued. Once a social worker who lived in the settlement house with Frances asked for help in getting a teenage boy out of jail because he was supporting his family. Frances went to the Charity Organization Society which after a long investigation deemed him “unworthy.” A friend suggested she try the Tammany Hall in the client’s district. The problem was helped within 24 hours. Her lobbying activities also put her in contact with other machine politicians. She met and struck up a close relationship with Al Smith. Working together they succeeded in getting a bill passed that limited women to a 54 hour work week. It was a compromise and liberals attacked her for giving up too much to get it passed. She knew that without the compromise there would have been no bill and not even the limited protection this bill offered. The lessons in becoming a skilled politician were piling up. In the past she had looked down on politicians but now concluded, “…that venal politicians can sometimes be more useful than upstanding reformers (Downey, 2009,p. 39).” Understanding and accepting the value of working within the political order was one of the secrets of her success.
Her experiences in these activities taught her another valuable lesson. A politician told her that men trusted women who were motherly and not seductive sirens. Downey says, “She began to see her gender, a liability in many ways, could actually be an asset. To accentuate this opportunity to gain influence she began to dress and comport herself in a way that reminded men of their mothers, rather than doing what women usually like to do which is making themselves more physically attractive to men (Downey, 2009, p. 45). At this time she was 33 years old. Up to then the papers had characterized her as “perky” “pretty” “dimpled.” They now began to label her as “Mother Perkins” a name she disliked only a little less than being called “Ma Perkins.” Such was the price for shaping herself into a highly effective politician. In these activities Frances was aware of her limitations as a woman and avoided places where women did not usually go. She did her lobbying in hallways and not bars. This too became a lifelong skill. When people were brought together to work out differences she stayed in the background. Others often got credit for her greatest accomplishments. Who today identifies her as the moving force behind achieving Social Security?
Well, me. I know what it took to get that kind of great change written into law and policy. You may read more at the link.
And, unfortunately, we have the antithesis to her and the people she worked with and for today. This is from Mark Jacob’s writing on his blog Stop the Presses. “Here’s what we WON’T do when Trump takes over. We won’t shut up and give up – we’ll stand up and power up.” This is necessary since we have learned yet another big Media outlet has caved to President-Eject Incontinentia Buttocks. The brilliant suggestions continue past this bit.
As democracy defenders, we’re facing hard times when authoritarian Donald Trump takes office Jan. 20. But what will we do about it? For now, I’m focusing on what we won’t do:
We won’t shut up.
We won’t retreat from the news.
We won’t lose our ability to be outraged.
We won’t be duped by a fake “crisis” that serves as a pretext to send the military against American citizens and turn our country into a police state.
We won’t sit on our couch and watch protests on TV when we should be out protesting in front of the TV cameras.
We won’t tolerate abuse of women simply because the person who won the last presidential election is a sexual predator.
We won’t get exhausted. Instead, we’ll pace ourselves, find ways to relax and enjoy life, and be ready to go at the crucial moments.
We won’t accept the notion that “all politicians lie.” More politicians lie when the news media and public accept lying and thus make it advantageous to lie.
We won’t forget to be kind.
We won’t expect the New York Times, the Washington Post and the TV networks to wake up and seriously confront the threat of fascism when they didn’t do it before the election.
We won’t forget that Trump won by just 1.5 percentage points — not a mandate, and certainly not a statement that most Americans want to surrender their rights to him.
The little tomboy girl I was who wanted to do everything boys do and do it better is still in me. Not backing down. Nope. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent at this juncture. This is from Lisa Needham at Public Notice. ABC was never a station we watched much as my Dad was a big fan of Huntley-Brinkley. Also, George Stephanopoulos has never been on my list to receive any news or advice. This disappoints me but doesn’t surprise me at all. “ABC bends the knee. Corporate media is surrendering already.” That’s exactly what a stumbling despot wants on his way to power. He wants control of the media. Wouldn’t want the truth sneaking out while you’ve got that propaganda thing going.
Since the election, plenty of the richest among us have rushed to curry favor with Donald Trump by showering him with cash.
Meta’s Mark Zuckerburg is giving Trump $1 million for his inauguration, as is OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Amazon, which will also stream the ceremony on Prime. But perhaps even more galling is ABC’s move to settle an absurd defamation lawsuit brought by Trump over George Stephanopoulos’s completely defensible on-air statement that Trump had been found liable for rape.
ABC will donate $15 million to Trump’s presidential library — a thing that has not yet been built and currently exists only as a website maintained by the National Archives. The network also agreed to pay $1 million toward Trump’s lawyer fees, continuing Trump’s streak of never paying for his own legal bills. And ABC and Stephanopoulos pledged to make a statement saying they “regret” the remarks.
It’s a bad omen for mainstream media coverage of Trump 2.0 and speaks to the importance of independent outlets that won’t be so easily intimidated.
Trump’s lawsuit rested on the incredibly flimsy argument that it defamed him to say he was found liable for the rape of E. Jean Carroll when he was actually found liable for forced digital penetration. But Stephanopoulos’s comments were consistent with how the presiding judge described the case.
So, since I seem to be going all economist on you these days, let me just say that I love Paul Krugman’s substack. I’m glad he left the New York Times, even though he really didn’t state a reason other than it was time. Here’s today’s offering at Krugman Wonks Out. “Crypto is for Criming. It’s not digital gold — it’s digital Benjamins.” You can write me down as a crypto hater. I will never know how this Ponzi scheme took root, but then I can’t explain the appeal of President-Eject Incontinentia Buttocks to me either. I have decided that some folks just want to be lied to if it feeds their raging ID and be told lies and sold a bill of goods just to think they may have something going for themselves and take a breather from their anger and resentment.
‘The tech bros who helped put Trump back in power expect many favors in return; one of the more interesting is their demand that the government intervene to guarantee crypto players the right to a checking account, stopping the “debanking” they claim has hit many of their friends.
The hypocrisy here is thick enough to cut with a knife. If you go back to the 2008 white paper by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto that gave rise to Bitcoin, its main argument was that we needed to replace checking accounts with blockchain-based payments because you can’t trust banks; crypto promoters also tend to preach libertarianism, touting crypto as a way to escape government tyranny. Now we have crypto boosters demanding that the evil government force the evil banks to let them have conventional checking accounts.
What’s going on here? Elon Musk, Marc Andreesen and others claim that there’s a deep state conspiracy to undermine crypto, because of course they do. But the real reason banks don’t want to be financially connected to crypto is that they believe, with good reason, that to the extent that cryptocurrencies are used for anything besides speculation, much of that activity is criminal — and they don’t want to be accused of acting as accessories.
You may take the Good Doctor’s Monetary Theory lecture at the link. I can’t believe Milton Friedman would have anything positive to say about this development at all. He wrote the book on money and was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics. And I also am having a huge hissy over the potential targeting of the FDIC. I worked in banking. I’ve worked for the Fed. This is my bailiwick. My daughter, the finance guru, didn’t fall for crypto, so I must have done something right. Don’t fall for this, either! This is from Reuters. “Trump’s floated idea to shutter FDIC would be political heavy lift, say analysts.” Fannie Perkins would really be in the fray on this one. How could they forget the Great Recession? It started with financial overreach in the banking industry too. CEOs and their marketing execs are more interested in becoming bigger than running an effective business.
U.S. bank stocks were unfazed on Friday after a report that President-elect Donald Trump’s team had floated the idea of shrinking or eliminating a top banking regulator, with analysts saying such a plan would not win the necessary political backing.
In recent interviews with bank regulator candidates, Trump advisers have asked whether the incoming president could abolish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) and move its deposit insurance function into the Treasury Department, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Officials from the newly founded Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been tasked with finding major government savings, participated in the interviews, the WSJ said.
However, while the current system comprising three federal and multiple state bank regulators is complex, a major restructure would struggle to garner the political support needed to get through Congress, which is also expected to be tied up on tax reform and crypto legislation next year, analysts and academics said.“It would require congressional action and despite the Republican party majority in both the Senate and the House, it would require support from the Democrats which remains very unlikely,” ING sector strategist Marine Leleux wrote in a note.
Bank stocks were little changed on Friday.
The Trump transition team has been interviewing candidates for financial agency roles, including the bank regulators, in recent days, said two people with direct knowledge of the matter. DOGE officials have been involved in some of those interviews, one said
I cannot see Senator Elizabeth Warren being quiet about any of this. However, the ink of the press is focused on the man with the most responsibility for this mess. Senator Mitch McConnell is objecting a lot now that he’s an ineffective backbencher. Look, he doesn’t like Polio! He wants the vaccine still! Look, he’s got something to say about how wonderful the Bush years were because we tried and failed to bomb “American Exceptionalism” into the Middle East, but it’s good policy!. But just because we know better doesn’t mean Legacy Media does. This is from MSNBC and Steve Benen, which means I assume Rachel saw this, too. “Why Mitch McConnell’s latest clashes with Trump matter. Despite his recent partisan history, Mitch McConnell has thrown a lot of brushback pitches in Donald Trump’s direction lately.” WTAF?
It was hard not to wonder how Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a polio survivor, would respond to the news. As it turned out, we didn’t have to wait too long to find out.
In a statement to NBC News, the Kentucky Republican — who’ll soon step down from his GOP leadership post — didn’t mention Kennedy by name, but the longtime senator said anyone seeking a confirmation vote must be specific about their intentions related to the polio vaccine.
“Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts,” McConnell wrote. He added that “efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous.”
It was a notable brushback pitch from a key GOP official, but it was also part of a recent pattern: McConnell has thrown a lot of these pitches at Trump and his team lately.
- In an interview with the Financial Times, published last week, McConnell warned about the dangers of isolationism, which he seemed to tie directly to his party’s incoming president. “We’re in a very, very dangerous world right now, reminiscent of before World War II,” the senator said, adding, “Even the slogan is the same. ‘America First’ — that was what they said in the ’30s.”
- McConnell has a newly published essay in Foreign Affairs magazine, warning against the “right-wing flirtation with isolation and decline.” Referencing a signature phrase from Trump, the Kentucky Republican added, “America will not be made great again by those who simply want to manage its decline.”
- The senator’s written piece echoed a speech he delivered earlier this month, rejecting his party’s isolationist wing.
- In Congress last month, Matt Gaetz’s bid to become the next attorney general collapsed in the face of opposition from GOP senators. While there was no official tally on the scope of the Republican opposition to the former Florida congressman, The New York Times reported that McConnell was among those staunchly opposed to his prospective nomination.
When political observers take stock on Capitol Hill, looking for Republicans who might be a thorn in the president-elect’s side, they tend to focus on members such as Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins. But what if McConnell — who’s expected to retire at the end of his term, and who doesn’t appear to have anything to lose by standing up to Trump — unexpectedly joins the faction of Trump skeptics?
To be sure, it’d be a mistake to get one’s hopes up.
These folks are the heirs of Edward R. Murrow? Seriously? Let me just leave you with a quote from the guy that covered the NAZIs running rampant over Europe and didn’t mince words. Extra points if you know this was his sign-off!
Good Night and Good Luck!
“Surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communications to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities that must be faced if we are to survive”
Edward R. Murrow
So here I am at the keyboard, your nerdy friend. We don’t have the same number of folks reading us that we used to back in the day when we were one of the top 25 Political Blogs. But we’re here, and we’re still fearless. It is actually nice to see the country’s public intellectuals doing the Old School Blog thing these days on Substack. Throw them some bling if you can! I started out on Fire Dog Lake way back in the day. I know BB was at The Daily Kos until the anti-Hillary stuff flared. We’re here because we don’t like one-sided stories. We like to find the facts.
We’ve had terrible technical trouble with WordPress since they seem to have turned something that can’t figure out how to let people comment. Half the time, I can’t even comment on my posts here. I have to dive behind the front page to the dashboard. But, you know what … there’s a lot of stuff here from many people, and it’s still in the files. It’s been very close to 20 years now, too. I’m unsure how to get it to any place safer now. So, we’re here. We won’t shut up. We’re a Refuge.
I have one more thing to share with you. It’s important. Please read it. This is the Methodist church I want to remember. It’s also a story I’m familiar with. Our neighbors from south of our border were here helping us clean up after Katrina when everyone else wasn’t. I still want a taco truck on every corner, and we’re a lot closer to that down here in New Orleans than we used to be. It just occurred to me that I likely wrote a lesson plan for my high school students when I was in my 20s, and my heart was an open book. I actually taught civics then. Can you believe it? This story is important.
In a world full of Kari Lakes, be a Francis Perkins. In a world full of George Stephanopoulos, be an Edward Murrow.
My church kept ICE from deporting our neighbor Jose. The Bible told us so.President-elect Donald Trump has plans to end a policy that generally restricts ICE from arresting undocumented people at or near so-called sensitive locations. http://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb…
— Democracy Skies in Blueness – Resist (@democracyblue.bsky.social) 2024-12-15T14:10:26.674Z
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Finally Friday Reads: Let’s talk Kleptocracy!!
“Felon of the Year!” John Buss, @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The Golden Age of Self-Dealing is about upon us! This year, we’ve had all kinds of new descriptions to assign the type of government the dumbest among us will usher in on Jan 20th. We’re in a polycrisis that will be managed by the least qualified and skilled among us; a kakistocracy. We will be governed by the least fit, the most incompetent, and the proven corrupt. I spent a lot of time in my doctoral program studying Corporate Governance. However, we, the People, are much more than mere stockholders in our government. The powers invested in our Federal Government could lead to more serious crimes than even the worst things committed by companies like Enron. Corporations can not print that universally accepted thing called government-backed currency. They cannot declare war and make and break treaties and alliances. That’s probably the biggest responsibility. But our health, happiness, justice, and liberty are at stake. Are we really that expendable to them?
Much of what’s being discussed right now is dismantling agencies that have been vested with the responsibility to ensure many things businesses do won’t kill us or bilk us. So, what will likely happen if we are left to the wolves of Wall Street with no oversight? What about putting the conspiracy crowd in charge of guarding our public health or our safety when we fly, drive, or use any form of transportation? What about letting anyone with the financial ability to set up shop call themselves a university, a daycare, or any other form of school? Should we leave children to the likes of the folks who tell pollsters they don’t think Arabic numbers should be taught in school? The overlords will ship off their kids to the top boarding schools in the country while everyone else gets stuck with whatever the undereducated in their community will scream about. It’s a pretty depressing future.
So, I’m not even sure where to start, but how about with RFK Jr, the one with the worm that ate his brain, and the television and web-based Snake Oil Salesman, Mehmet Oz. A USA Today headline blares this bit of happy news. “Dr. Mehmet Oz had up to $33 million in companies doing business with agency he’d run.” I don’t care if it’s in a blind trust; he knows if he owns it. Erin Mansfield has the analysis.
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be the top health insurance regulator in the country, Dr. Mehmet Oz, has invested in companies that do business with the agency he would run.
Oz, Trump’s choice to run Medicare, Medicaid and the insurance marketplace under the Affordable Care Act, owned up to $33.7 million stock in these companies when he filed a financial disclosure during his unsuccessful 2022 campaign for Senate in Pennsylvania.
The TV talk show host owned between $280,000 and $600,000 in UnitedHealth Group and between $50,000 and $100,000 in CVS Health, which both provide health insurance plans under Medicare Advantage.
He also owned between $5.8 million and $26.7 million in Amazon and between $1.6 million and $6.3 million in Microsoft, two major technology providers for the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services, the agency he would run.
Accountable.US, a left-leaning group that compiled some of the research, said it reviewed filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and was unable to find evidence that Oz sold stocks in Amazon or Microsoft since the 2022 filing.
“All nominees and appointees will comply with the ethical obligations of their respective agencies,” Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition, said in a statement to USA TODAY when asked if Oz still owns these stocks.
Oz will be required to fill out the same form after his official nomination as administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Oz in 2020 said the federal government should allow all Americans to purchase coverage through Medicare Advantage, a program in which private insurance sell Medicare-regulated plans to seniors and people with disabilities.
In 2022, Oz owned stock in the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, which covered 29% of Medicare Advantage patients in 2024, according to the health care organization KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation. CVS Health covers another 12%.
I won’t give you my usual microeconomics lectures on monopoly, but for all that shouting about free markets these billionaires do, they sure love themselves markets that are so concentrated that you can count the number of providers with one hand. This year’s study from this 2024 report by the US Government Accountability Office will give you the willies. Oh, and DOGE is after that Federal Agency, along with others. Just to make it short, these markets are dysfunctional. The producer side of the equation has too much power in the market. In this case, it’s literally the power of life and death. And, it’s made based on whether they hit their profit goals for their stockholders. Businesses only make money by cutting costs because doing anything inventive is hard. You know what that leads to. “Private Health Insurance: Market Concentration Generally Increased from 2011 through 2022.GAO-25-107194.”
Several companies may be selling health insurance in a given market, but, as we previously reported, most people usually enroll with one of a small number of insurers. Known as market concentration, this can result in fewer choices of insurers and higher premiums due to less competition in the market.
Market concentration generally increased from 2011 through 2022, with three or fewer insurers holding at least 80% of the market share for the individual and employer group markets in at least 35 states. However, the markets for individuals became slightly less concentrated from 2020 to 2022.
In November 2022, GAO reported that, from 2011 through 2020, enrollment in private health insurance plans was concentrated, meaning a small number of issuers of those plans enrolled most of the people in a given market (GAO-23-105672). Specifically, GAO considered a market concentrated in a state if three or fewer issuers held at least 80 percent of the market share of enrollment. For this report, GAO examined the individual (coverage primarily sold to individuals who lack access to group coverage), small-group (coverage offered by small employers), and large-group (coverage offered by large employers) health insurance markets from 2011 through 2022 and found that concentration generally increased. Specifically:
The overall individual market became more concentrated from 2011 through 2022. Concentration in this market peaked in 2019 and became slightly less concentrated through 2022.
The small-group market became more concentrated from 2011 through 2022, but the rate of increase slowed more recently.
The large-group market remained concentrated with only slight increases from 2011 through 2022 (see figure).
Companies do not merge for the purpose of cost efficiencies. They merge because they think they will own more of the market and have more market power. This concentration will lead to much higher profits and less for everyone else. I can spend an entire semester showing how broken concentrated markets are and that they desperately need supervision. But that serves everyone but the guys at the top, so these studies are written, empirical evidence is provided by nerds like me and think tanks, and nothing gets done policy-wise.
In the case of this market, people die for the illusion that all markets set free of oversight magically function on their own. That’s a philosophical hypothesis that tests wrong over and over. Few markets meet the critical structure that makes them efficient by leaving them alone. Most of those are wholesale commodities markets and not complex markets like those that try to find a price for financial contracts that tend to be very specific and unique, involve middlemen and market confusion, and can’t find a price with just interaction between buyer and seller.
I ran across this Blue Sky thread by billionaire Mark Cuban. He gets it. There’s more of this thread here. I can tell you anecdotally what it took me to get out of the Mutual of Omaha provide providers, which was basically Catholic Management sending patients to Catholic hospitals when I had my high-risk pregnancy. I basically told my ex, who was one of these ghoulish cost cutters for that company, that he better get them to pay for me delivering at Methodist or that I would go there to deliver, and he could fricking pay for it for the rest of his natural born days.
He got the person in charge to send me to Methodist since it was the only hospital with a neonatologist at the time. He was a nice Jewish OB/GYN who later was in charge of Doctor Daughter’s residency. Methodist Hospital obviously cared if their patients lived while having a complicated pregnancy. You might notice that the way I got this treatment was to send an AVP of the company to twist their arm. I remember that one of my friends doing his rotation in OB/GYN watched a patient at Creighton Medical Center get a lecture from a Priest brought in by her doctor on why she should carry her pregnancy to term despite the condition the baby had was a brain undeveloped so badly that it was spilling out from a lack of skull. There was no chance of survival, but there was a lot of risk to the mother. I was not about to go through that. I was a happy little Methodist then, and that’s where I wanted to deliver my youngest. The C-section went fine, and we both went home, although I did drive myself to the emergency room 10 weeks before she was due to hemorrhaging.
All this leads to Mark Cuban. Leave these decisions to Doctors. not cost-cutting paper pushers like my MBA ex-husband.
If you want to understand why healthcare pricing is horrific, the first thing to know is that our system puts 100% of the credit risk for deductibles, copays and co-insurance on hospitals and doctors. That's insane. We have turned them into Sub Prime Lenders 🧵
When they can't collect payment, they raise prices to make up that loss. Plus they need to have all the administration of a mortgage loan servicer to try to collect those amounts. Which of course also puts people who can't afford the cost, in medical debt, which often leads to bankruptcy
Then there are insurance companies. The crazy thing is that for more than 50m people,those covered by self insured entities,ins comps don't actually provide insurance. They act as Care Authorizers and payment processors. Can the care occur and how much will be paid.
Their primary role is to make sure that there is not fraud by providers (think overuse of operations to inflate revenue , or services not covered by the plan the user is covered by and/or determine if care is "medically necessary "
That authorization process is one we should not be asking ins comps to do. That role should be performed by INDEPENDENT TPAs. With zero economic incentive to approve or deny. The first step is for self insured entities to use 3rd party TPAs and move away from insurance companies for this service
If they do this, they can use the insurance companies for their networks and software. But better yet, I think direct contracting is the future. For my employees, we are direct contracting with providers. We are stipulating that there will be no pre authorizations. We will trust the provider
Imagine that! He says to trust the Doctors, not the guys making money off the ill.
So, I am staying with the theme of Health Care because BB alerted me to this while preparing to write this post. JJ couldn’t believe they would actually do this to us. This headline is horrifying! It’s from Reuters. “Trump to discuss ending childhood vaccination programs with RFK Jr.” This is what happens when idiots vote for supposed “businessmen.” WTF do either of these men know about vaccines?
Trump says could get rid of some vaccinations “if I think it’s dangerous”
Kennedy is known for anti-vaccine stance, linked to debunked autism claims
Experts warn ending vaccine programs could lead to disease outbreaks, deaths
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in an interview published on Thursday said he will be talking to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services, about ending childhood vaccination programs.
When asked if he would sign off if Kennedy decided to end childhood vaccinations programs, Trump told Time magazine, “we’re going to have a big discussion. The autism rate is at a level that nobody ever believed possible. If you look at things that are happening, there’s something causing it.”
When asked if the discussion could result in his administration getting rid of some vaccinations, Trump said: “It could if I think it’s dangerous, if I think they are not beneficial, but I don’t think it’s going to be very controversial in the end.
Asked in the Nov. 25 interview if he thinks childhood autism is linked to vaccines, Trump said: “No, I’m going to be listening to Bobby,” referring to Kennedy. Trump said he had a lot of respect for Kennedy and his views on vaccinations.
Can you hear me screaming all the way from the Mississippi River way down yonder in New Orleans? And this is the headline that did it to me from The Guardian. “RFK Jr key adviser petitioned regulators to revoke approval of polio vaccine. Aaron Siri is helping Trump’s health secretary pick to select top jobs despite long history of attacking vaccines.” I wonder what Mitch McConnell might say if he could.
A key legal adviser to Robert Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary, is at the center of efforts to push federal drug regulators to revoke approval for the polio and hepatitis B vaccines and block distribution of 13 other critical vaccines.
Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has been helping Kennedy select top health administrators as part of the Trump transition process, is deeply embedded in longstanding efforts to force the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to withdraw a raft of vaccines that have saved the lives and health of millions of Americans.
Siri has been sitting alongside Kennedy in interviews in which they have asked candidates for top health jobs where they stand on vaccines, the New York Times reported on Friday.
Kennedy, a leading vaccine sceptic, has insisted he has no plans to revoke vaccines should he be confirmed by the US Senate for the health secretary position. But his close ties with Siri are raising concerns about the incoming Trump administration’s intentions, given the lawyer’s intimate involvement in the anti-vaccine movement.
Siri works closely with the Informed Consent Action Network (Ican), a “medical freedom” non-profit founded by Del Bigtree, whose has long waged war on vaccines including as producer of the anti-vaccination documentary, Vaxxed. The New York Times report noted that Siri filed the 2022 petition calling for the FDA to revoke approval for the polio vaccine on behalf of ICAN.
Poliovirus, the cause of a disease that used to be one of the most feared by Americans, has been eliminated from the country by the US through polio vaccines. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that the best way to avoid its return and keep people safe is through vaccination.
Siri has not only been involved in lawsuits calling for the withdrawal or suspension of the polio and hepatitis B vaccines, but he has also petitioned the FDA to “pause distribution” of 13 other vaccines, according to the Times.
Trump said this week that Kennedy may investigate vaccines for a supposed link with autism. The remark to NBC suggests that his pick for health secretary may run with the conspiracy theory that there is a connection between childhood vaccinations and autism that has been thoroughly debunked yet is repeatedly peddled by Kennedy.
Kennedy’s spokesperson, Katie Miller, confirmed to the Times that Siri has been advising Kennedy but said his vaccine petitions had not been discussed.
“Mr Kennedy has long said that he wants transparency in vaccines and to give people choice,” she said.
When you have a savior complex, you think nothing will get you. There are a lot of those types up for Cabinet jobs. Kari Lake is about to become the Voice of America. I’ve already dubbed her Lady Haw-Haw after an American NAZI sympathizer who was a propagandist on the radio during World War 2. NPR has a lot to say about that. “Trump says Kari Lake will lead Voice of America. He attacked it during his first term.” Our taxes are funding MAGA propaganda here.
President-elect Donald Trump says Kari Lake, a local television news anchor-turned-MAGA politician, will lead the federally funded broadcaster Voice of America.
If successful, the move would put a loyalist at the helm of a news outlet that Trump sought to bring to heel under his appointee during the final year of his first term. Trump officials sought to strip the network and its parent agency of their independence during his first term, including actions later found to be illegal and in one case, unconstitutional.
But Trump doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally install Lake; the hire is dependent on a bipartisan board beneath the chief executive of its parent agency.
Voice of America (VOA), which is funded by Congress, operates in nearly 50 languages and reaches an estimated 354 million people weekly across the globe. It is part of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the government agency that oversees all non-military, U.S. international broadcasting.
Trump said Wednesday on Truth Social that Lake will be appointed by and work closely with the incoming head of that agency, “who I will announce soon.”
A free press is central to VOA’s mission: It aims to bring unfettered reporting to places that do not have it, and show political debate and dissent in the U.S. even when that reflects critically on the administration in power.
Trump’s White House took the unprecedented step in spring 2020 of openly attacking VOA in public statements over its perceived failures to explicitly blame the Chinese government for the pandemic.
On Wednesday, Trump wrote that Lake and his as-yet-unnamed agency leader will “ensure that the American values of Freedom and Liberty are broadcast around the World FAIRLY and ACCURATELY, unlike the lies spread by the Fake News Media.”
I’d say it’s highly likely that Tulsi Gabbard will be more than willing to provide material for those broadcasts. I’m sure Putin will oblige. The latest outrage, for me, anyway, is that all the Trump TechBros are funding his inauguration with millions of dollars, and Presidential Reject Incontinentia Buttocks is inviting all the favorite despots from the world over. This is from CNN. “Xi’s RSVP is a snub to Trump, but the inauguration invite is still a big deal.”
Getting Xi to fly across the world would be an enormous coup for the president-elect — a fact that would make it politically unfeasible for the Chinese leader. Such a visit would put the Chinese president in the position of paying homage to Trump and American might — which would conflict with his vision for China’s assumption of a rightful role as a preeminent global power. At the inaugural ceremony, Xi would be forced to sit and listen to Trump without having any control over what the new president might say while lacking a right of reply. Xi’s presence would also be seen as endorsing a democratic transfer of power — anathema for an autocrat in a one-party state obsessed with crushing individual expression.
Still, even without a favorable response, Trump’s invitation to Xi marks a significant development that sheds light on the president-elect’s confidence and ambition as he wields power ahead of his second term. CNN’s team covering Trump reported that he’s also been asking other world leaders if they want to come to the inauguration — in a break with convention.
This is a reminder of Trump’s fondness for foreign policy by grand gesture and his willingness to trample diplomatic codes with his unpredictable approach. The Xi invitation also shows that Trump believes that the force of his personality alone can be a decisive factor in forging diplomatic breakthroughs. He’s far from the only president to pursue this approach — which rarely works since hostile US adversaries make hardnosed choices on national interest rather than vibes.
Then, when will his cult figure this one out about his lie about being able to bring prices down, which he just admitted he can’t do?
Wake me up when this is all over.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968JohnBuss #antiVaccinationTwits #DrMehmetOzWeirdo #KarLakeWeirdo #RFKJrWeirdo #SelfDealingTrumpCabinet #Self_ #TrumpCabinetRapeGang #TrumpCabinetWeirdos #VoiceOfTrump
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Mostly Monday Reads: A little too much Biggus Dickus Energy
“American Oligarchs parade to MAGAville to grovel before the newborn king.” John Buss, @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I feel like I’m spending far too much time in Spamalot and Life of Brian, where the President-Elect, Incontinia Buttocks, makes pronouncements with his First Lady, Biggus Dickus, watching over his shoulder. It’s been weird watching all the Tech Bros and Nepo Babies running to Mara Lardo to bend the knee. They are undoubtedly trying to encourage tariffs to take out other American Businesses, not theirs. The next act of resistance will be flying my flag at half-mast on January 20th. I have also heard a few folks are flying Pirate Flags, too. I’m already trying to envision a massive blizzard in the District. Maybe I can get the local VooDoo Priestess to join in. Naughtiest Maximus (pictured up top)has already shown up to kiss Incontina Buttocks. Melania even showed up for a visit by Justin Trudeau, who was closely watched by his wife. I imagine there’s never been this much ass licked before ascension.
So, I agree with this headline from Public Notice. Noah Berlesky speaks for us all. “Kash Patel’s nomination signals how bad things can get. The worst timeline comes into view.” I hope the Republican Senators find their balls before this one comes up for review. That is if he or any of them come up for Senate review, which would be close to following the Rule of Law for President-Elect Incontinia Buttocks.
Patel is considered unqualified for the post even by staunch Trump-supporting conservatives. He’s made it clear he intends to use his power to attack the “deep state,” which he frames as a needed populist purge of a corrupt establishment. But in reality, Patel is poised to use the resources of the FBI to target Trump’s political opponents and criminalize resistance.
Rather than reforming the FBI, Patel and Trump are promising to embrace the worst of the bureau’s legacy, extending its use as an authoritarian cudgel to pursue grudges and crush dissent. The FBI, with its often ugly history, is a blunt instrument that Trump is intent on weaponizing — a goal that mostly eluded him during his first term when he failed to completely bend the bureau to his will.
Patel’s primary qualification for running the FBI is a spotless record of doing whatever Trump wants him to do. He was an undistinguished Florida defense attorney and DOJ staffer until 2017, when he was hired to work for the House Permanent Select Committee, which at the time was led by MAGA flunky Devin Nunes.
Patel headed the committee’s investigation of Russian interference on behalf of Trump in the 2016 campaign. He was the main author of the “Nunes memo,” a partisan attack on the Justice Department intended to obscure links between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Trump was delighted by Patel’s open hackery and declassified the document despite Justice Department objections.
…
Following Trump’s reluctant departure from office, Patel continued to serve as a willing and eager jack-of-all-lies.
Patel failed to show up for at least one deposition before the January 6 Committee, which wanted to talk to him about his role in Trump’s coup plotting. Trump gave Patel access to his presidential records, supposedly to write an account of his term that denied Russian collusion in the 2016 election. When it became clear that Trump had improperly removed some classified presidential records, Patel rushed to his defense, claiming in an interview with Breitbart that Trump had magically declassified everything. But other Trump administration officials disputed that, and Patel ended up testifying before a grand jury in return for immunity.
So, we will see more of Lickus Bottomus, Bottom for short.
Fortunately, the actual President still has power. He gave his son, Hunter, a blanket pardon, so Trump has one less person to torment. Let’s hope First Dog Commander can get one, too.
He’s also giving ambassador positions to cronies, criminals, and children’s inlaws. This is from the BBC. “Trump chooses Jared Kushner’s father for ambassador to France.” I guess he’ll be out there searching for the next Trump properties.
President-elect Donald Trump announced Saturday that he has selected Charles Kushner as his pick for ambassador to France.
Mr Kushner is a real-estate developer and the father of Jared Kushner, husband of his daughter Ivanka Trump. Trump pardoned Mr Kushner during his first term, waving away a federal conviction in 2020.
In a post to his social media site Truth Social, Trump said Mr Kushner is “a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker, who will be a strong advocate representing our Country & its interests”.
The nomination appears to be the first administration position that Trump has formally offered to a relative since his re-election.
Trump’s first real pardons will likely be all the felons and traitors on January 6. They’ll be joining whatever form of the SS gets dreamed up by Tulsi Gabard and Pam Bondi. These are the two Vestal Virgins that worship Incontina Buttocks. It’s said the VVs are always chosen before puberty and guard the sacred hearth where all the evidence is burned. Matt Gaetz will likely be installed as a White House Satyr in charge of recruiting initiates.
Of course, we’re discovering much more about the other Satyr still on the Cabinet list, Pete Hegseth. This is from The New Yorker, as reported by Jane Mayer. “Pete Hegseth’s Secret History. A whistle-blower report and other documents suggest that Trump’s nominee to run the Pentagon was forced out of previous leadership positions for financial mismanagement, sexist behavior, and being repeatedly intoxicated on the job.” Thanks to BB for following his Bacchanalian romps.
After the recent revelation that Pete Hegseth had secretly paid a financial settlement to a woman who had accused him of raping her in 2017, President-elect Donald Trump stood by his choice of Hegseth to become the next Secretary of Defense. Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, issued a statement noting that Hegseth, who has denied wrongdoing, has not been charged with any crime. “President Trump is nominating high-caliber and extremely qualified candidates to serve in his administration,” Cheung maintained.
But Hegseth’s record before becoming a full-time Fox News TV host, in 2017, raises additional questions about his suitability to run the world’s largest and most lethal military force. A trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues, indicates that Hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran—Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America—in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct. Remember, Satyrs often attempted to seduce or rape nymphs and mortal women alike, usually with little success. That’s why most of them rely on money to get the deeds done.
A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events. The detailed seven-page report—which was compiled by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February 2015—states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization’s female staffers, whom they divided into two groups—the “party girls” and the “not party girls.” In addition, the report asserts that, under Hegseth’s leadership, the organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth’s staff had attempted to sexually assault her at the Louisiana strip club. In a separate letter of complaint, which was sent to the organization in late 2015, a different former employee described Hegseth being at a bar in the early-morning hours of May 29, 2015, while on an official tour through Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, drunkenly chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!”
In response to questions from this magazine, Tim Parlatore, a lawyer for Hegseth, replied with the following statement, which he said came from “an advisor” to Hegseth: “We’re not going to comment on outlandish claims laundered through The New Yorker by a petty and jealous disgruntled former associate of Mr. Hegseth’s. Get back to us when you try your first attempt at actual journalism.”
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, described the report of Hegseth’s drinking as alarming and disqualifying. In a phone interview, Blumenthal, who currently leads the Senate committee that will review Hegseth’s nomination, told me, “Much as we might be sympathetic to people with continuing alcohol problems, they shouldn’t be at the top of our national-security structure.” Blumenthal went on, “It’s dangerous. The Secretary of Defense is involved in every issue of national security. He’s involved in the use of nuclear weapons. He’s the one who approves sending troops into combat. He approves drone strikes that may involve civilian casualties. Literally life-and-death issues are in the hands of the Secretary of Defense, and entrusting these kinds of issues to someone who might be incapacitated for any reason is a risk we cannot take.”
Let’s go back to Pam Bondage for this analysis by Marci of Empty Wheel. “America Just Failed the Test of Responding to Trump’s Politicized Prosecutions.” This really puts Biden’s Pardon of his son in place. We know what’s coming next, and Well, it ain’t that pretty at all.
Let’s imagine that, two years from now, Pam Bondi rolls out charges against some onetime adversary of Donald Trump. To the extent that journalists will still be employed and reading court filings, to the extent that prosecutors under Emil Bove (who at SDNY oversaw a team sanctioned for discovery violations) comply with discovery requirements, the adversary in question learns the following about his prosecution:
- The case started when an investigator started looking into a transnational trafficking network
- The investigator discovered that the prominent adversary had paid one of the sex workers trafficked in the network
- Rather than pursuing the traffickers, the investigator used the payment for sex as cause to open an investigation
- Of course, no one is going to charge a John … so the investigator starts pulling divorce records and four year old tax returns to try to move from that payment for sex work to something that can be charged
- Then the investigator started incorporating oppo research from Peter Schweizer into his investigation
- Kash Patel’s FBI set up protected ways to accept tips from Trump supporters who’ve doctored documents to create a crime
- Trump called up Bondi and told her to take more aggressive steps
- Trump called up foreign leaders asking for help on this prosecution
- Bondi then set up a way to launder that information from foreign sources, including known spies, into the investigation of the adversary
- Patel’s FBI asked a partisan informant to fabricate claims against the adversary
- Trump publicly called out prosecutors — resulting in them and their children being followed — because they had not yet charged his adversary
- Ultimately, the adversary got charged on 5-year old dirt, and only then, after charging, did prosecutors quickly do the investigative work to win the case at trial
Now, as I’ve described it, you surely imagine you’d say, wow, that looks like a thoroughly corrupt prosecution, a clear case of Trump using DOJ to punish his adversaries.
Right?
It’s not so much that investigators didn’t, after the fact, find a crime to charge. They did. If you investigate most high profile people long enough, you’ll find something to charge, particularly if multiple people come to DOJ with doctored evidence to help create that crime.
It’s that someone found the name of an adversary in the digital records of crimes that were more important to investigate, and instead of pursuing that crime, used the electronic record as an excuse to keep looking until they found some evidence of a crime against Trump’s adversary.
Everyone would recognize that’s what happened, right?
Of course not. Of course no one would recognize that that was a political prosecution.
We need no further proof than the fact that none of those very same details showed up in any of the coverage of the Hunter Biden investigation. Not now that he has been pardoned. Not when all these details came out last year. Not in any of the retrospectives of the times Trump demanded investigations on his adversaries.
What will happen instead is that a bunch of self-important DC scribes will chase the most salacious allegations, provide endless headlines about sex workers and wild parties. The DC scribes will ignore every detail about the legal investigation — every one!! — and instead use the prosecution as an opportunity to sell political scandal. And also, they will point to their Tiger Beat coverage as proof, they say, they are not politically biased.
Rather than diligently rooting out the obviously politicized prosecution, the press will be complicit in it.
And rather than deciding that the adversary was the target of an obviously politicized prosecution, American public opinion would instead decide that the adversary was icky, and because he is icky, his statements about Trump cannot be credited.
That is what political prosecutions look like. That is, of course, precisely what the Hunter Biden prosecution was (ignoring the assurances from prosecutors who say no one with the fact set Hunter faced would be charged). Every single bullet has an analogue in the Hunter Biden case. That obviously political prosecution is what happened.
Once the GOP got the House majority, they did nothing else but platform these claims, which a different set of self-important scribes treated as an interesting process story, not an obvious case of a great abuse of government power.
And now that Biden has pardoned his son, the very same self important scribes who ignored all the signs this was a political prosecution, are giving non-stop coverage to a pardon that — unlike those of Trump’s Coffee Boy, National Security Adviser, campaign manager, personal lawyer, and rat-fucker — are not about self-protection, most with no mention of all the evidence Trump ordered up this prosecution to target Joe Biden.
The question is, what are we going to do about this, now that we have rock solid proof the press establishment is not only incapable, but wildly uninterested, in rooting out this kind of politicized prosecution — at least not when they can instead sell scandal?
In the face of seeing Pam Bondi and Kash Patel preparing to redouble efforts to find politicized prosecutions against Donald Trump’s adversaries, Joe Biden chose to end the process, with his son, at least.
I’m actually on the record opposing the pardon — but not for the reasons everyone else is. I don’t think pardoning Hunter in this circumstance is corrupt. I take Biden at his word that he changed his mind about pardoning Hunter. I’m far more interested in Trump admitting he was lying about his plans to implement Project 2025 than that Biden reneged on assurances no one much believed anyway.
I oppose the pardon because it eliminates Hunter’s standing to appeal and with those appeals to begin telling the story that the media chose to ignore. I oppose the pardon because if we don’t start laying out how Trump already politicized DOJ while there’s a good base of legitimate judges in place, it’ll be far too late.
I frankly will give Biden a pass on this, knowing that he’d never do it if Harris was on her way to inauguration. I know the Rule of Law is important. But how do we know what will be left of that once Trump takes office? Frankly, I hope he’s staying up nights Trump-proofing things. All you have to do is go to the Memeorandum page to see how obsessed the legacy media is with this action.
- Betsy Woodruff Swan / Politico: We haven’t seen a pardon as sweeping as Hunter Biden’s in generations
- Ivana Saric / Axios: What to know about presidents pardoning family members and allies …
- Rebecca Shabad / NBC News: White House press secretary defends Hunter Biden pardon: ‘Enough is enough’
- Alexander Burns / Politico: Joe Biden’s Parting Insult
- Alexander B. Howard / CIVIC TEXTS: On pardons, smartglasses, an authoritarian administration, and a case of the Cyber Mondays
Okay, let me address that last one. Here are Alexander’s thoughts.
I understand why President Biden pardoned his son, even if I believe doing so set a terrible precedent at the exact wrong time in our history, along with breaking a promise he had repeatedly made for years.
It’s the icing on a rotten cake, in terms of allowing the appearance of corruption to fester and then issuing a sweeping pardon to encompass all acts for a decade, presumably to head off Trump persecuting Hunter Biden further.
I do not, however, buy arguments that Biden’s pardon someone now gives permission to Trump to abuse the pardon power or accelerates the shredding of constitutional and legal norms that the Trump administration began 8 years ago. Trump.
On his way out the door, Trump pardoned dozens of his supporters, including those convicted of far worse crimes that lying about substance abuse when buying a gun or tax offense. He’s been dangling pardons to people convicted of assaulting federal police or engaging in seditious conspiracy. There is no good faith from that quarter, so do not treat his claims about the abuse of the pardon power with any seriousness.
Yeah, what he said. And also what he said on this.
As Tom Nichols observed in the Atlantic, commenting on Trump’s nomination of a conspiracy theorist who has promised to weaponize federal law enforcement against his political enemies and the press to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI, “If you want to assemble the infrastructure of an authoritarian government, this is how you do it.”
Republican Senators are now a final bulwark against tyranny, after failing to uphold their oath by removing a corrupt demagogue from power & banning Trump from office in his second impeachment trial. The initial signs are not promising, but enough lawmakers are expressing doubt about appointing a
Every institution has now failed to check and balance Trump’s corruption and criminal conspiracies, from the Justice Department to Congress.
Worse lies ahead, if Trump is successful in installing loyalists across the defense, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies.
A transition insider told Axios that Trump “no longer listens to people, usually Senators, who tell him ‘that’s not how it’s done’ or ‘it doesn’t work that way.’ He no longer accepts that rationale.”
Senators must choose between their oaths to our Constitution, or Trump.
Yes, don’t forget the Senate.
The Romans used the name senatus for their most important seat of government, which derives from senexmeaning ‘old’ and meant ‘assembly of old men’ with a connotation of wisdom and experience. Members were sometimes referred to as ‘fathers’ orpatres, and so this combination of ideas illustrates that the Senate was a body designed to provide reasoned and balanced guidance to the Roman state and its people.
And, originally, our Senate was designed to “protect the rights of individual states and safeguard minority opinion in a system of government designed to give greater power to the national government.”
The Senate has two important and specific duties. Senators are empowered to conduct impeachment proceedings of high federal officials, are tasked with exercising the power of advice and consent on treaties, and play an important role in the confirmation (or denial) of certain appointments including ambassadors and judicial court justices.
You can’t look at those two things; one from an explanation of historical Rome, and the bottom one is Senate.gov describing itself to realize the institution has morphed. But then we still have to look at the voters to determine how someone as nauseating as Ted Cruz continues to weasel his way back into office. Those two important and specific duties of Senators have not been carried out very well in the times of Incontinia Buttocks. What happens in the Senate and what doesn’t happen in the Senate will materially impact our lives. I’m not certain that my two Senators are reachable, although Cassidy has done the right thing several times, much to my surprise. I’m not sure it will help, but all I can think of right now is that we all need to hold their feet to the fire or be consumed by it.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968JohnBuss #BidenPardonsHunter #BiggusDickus #IncontiniaButtocks #MattGaetzWeirdo #montyPython #Nepobabies #Nepotism #PamBondiWeirdo #PeteHegsethWeirdoSexualAssaulter #Satyrs
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Finally Friday Reads: Your Cassandra Daily
Nothing says Thanksgiving to me more than the WKRP Turkey Drop! Thank you, John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
My first short story remains in my scrapbook in its purply blue mimeograph ink. It has my drawing of Cassandra and my interpretation of my favorite Greek Character, who was dedicated to the Greek God Apollo but was fated to make true prophecies no one ever believed. I was drawn to her in my 5th-grade mythology class. I remember my mother listening to me once and starting to question me before she interrupted herself by telling me this. “I don’t know why I question you; you’re almost always right.” I usually don’t believe everything I read, but I remember it. Prognostication is less godly and more mathematical these days, but when you know what’s likely to happen when you do that S-VAR model based on solid theory and a new hypothesis, you don’t always want to welcome the results.
I’ve been running around with my hair on fire since the Orange Demon started obsessing about tariffs again. He tried them during his last Reign of Terror and nearly drove our farmers out of business. Congress had to rescue them with huge subsidies that paid them for not selling their crops or livestock. Trump started a Trade War with China. He needed a visit from Herbert Hoover’s Ghost and to listen to the huge chorus of economists who warned him, but he persisted. Luckily, it didn’t take out the U.S. economy, but it ran up the deficit and jeopardized the Agriculture sector.
This warning is from the AP. “Trump’s tariffs in his first term did little to alter the economy, but this time could be different.” Trump’s misunderstanding of tariffs could wreck the economies of North America. This analsyis comes from Josh Boak.
Donald Trump loved to use tariffs on foreign goods during his first presidency. But their impact was barely noticeable in the overall economy, even if their aftershocks were clear in specific industries.
The data show they never fully delivered on his promised factory jobs. Nor did they provoke the avalanche of inflation that critics feared.
This time, though, his tariff threats might be different.
The president-elect is talking about going much bigger — on a potential scale that creates more uncertainty about whether he’ll do what he says and what the consequences could be.
“There’s going to be a lot more tariffs, I mean, he’s pretty clear,” said Michael Stumo, the CEO of Coalition for a Prosperous America, a group that has supported import taxes to help domestic manufacturing.
The president-elect posted on social media Monday that on his first day in office he would impose 25% tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico and Canada until those countries satisfactorily stop illegal immigration and the flow of illegal drugs such as fentanyl into the United States.
Those tariffs could essentially blow up the North American trade pact that Trump’s team negotiated during his initial term. But on Wednesday, Trump posted on social media that he had spoken with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and she had agreed to stop unauthorized migration across the border into the United States.
Trump also posted on Monday that Chinese imports would face additional tariffs of 10% until Beijing cracks down on the production of materials used in making fentanyl.
President Sheinbaum immediately denied Trump’s characterization of their conversation. This headline from HuffPo says it all. “Trump Mocked After Mexico’s President Blows Up His Brag About Their Call.” Josephine Harvey reports on the response.
Donald Trump seemed to offer alternative facts on Wednesday about his recent call with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and was swiftly rebutted by the leader herself, prompting mockery on social media.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the U.S. president-elect declared that Sheinbaum had “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.”
Shortly afterward, Sheinbaum shared a Spanish-language message about the conversation, writing, “We reiterate that Mexico’s position is not to close borders, but to build bridges between governments and communities.”
Both leaders characterized the call as positive. The two spoke after Trump on Monday threatened to impose a 25% tax on all products entering the country from Canada and Mexico as soon as he takes office. Trump said, “This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” He also threatened to put an “additional 10%” tariff on goods from China.
This week’s news was somewhat reminiscent of Trump’s claim ahead of the 2016 election that he would make Mexico pay for “100%” of a proposed wall at the U.S. border. Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s president at the time, disagreed. Mexico did not pay.
Social media users sarcastically celebrated Trump’s fictional victory this week.
“All it took was one call. Donny deals,” journalist Sam Stein posted online.
Mike Nellis, a former aide to Vice President Kamala Harris, said, “Trump thinks he convinced the President of Mexico to stop all migration across the border LOL.”
Olivia Troye, who was a White House official in Trump’s first term, offered a “Translation” of the president-elect’s comments about Mexico.
Just had a conversation with the President of Mexico who didn’t allow me to bully her, which left me confused about my charm…she pointed out that this is very bad…very bad for me if I do these tariffs…” Troye wrote.
China and Canada were also blunt about DonOld’s mischaracterizations of his conversations with their leaders. USA Today‘s Kim Hjelmgaard reported it this way. “‘Counter to facts and reality’: China, Mexico, Canada respond to Trump tariff threats.”
Officials in China, Mexico and Canada criticized Tuesday a pledge made by President-elect Donald Trump on social media to impose new tariffs on all three of the United States’ largest trading partners on the first day of his presidency.
Trump said the move, which appears to violate the terms of a free-trade deal Trump signed into law in 2020, is aimed at clamping down on drugs − fentanyl especially − and migrants crossing into the U.S. illegally.
The president-elect said he would sign an executive order immediately after his inauguration introducing a 25% tariff on all goods coming from Mexico and Canada and a 10% tariff on goods from China.
Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, a platform he owns. “It is time for them to pay a very big price!” He accused China in a separate post of failing to block smuggling of U.S.-bound fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.
There was quick pushback to Trump’s comments from all three countries.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said: “No one will win a trade war or a tariff war” and “the idea of China knowingly allowing fentanyl precursors to flow into the United States runs completely counter to facts and reality.”
Mexico’s finance ministry said in a statement the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a trade pact Trump sponsored during his first term, provided “certainty” for investors. “The response to one tariff will be another, until we put at risk companies that we share,” Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said, naming General Motors and Ford, among others. Sheinbaum said her comments, read aloud in a press conference, were sent in a letter to Trump.
Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, said the tariffs would be “devastating to workers and jobs” in both the U.S. and Canada.
A tariff is effectively a tax imposed by one country on the goods and services imported from another country. Oil is the top U.S. import from Canada, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The largest category of goods imported to the U.S. from Mexico is cars and components for cars. The U.S. imports a significant amount of electronics from China. Some goods are exempt from tariffs because of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Businesses are already responding to the tariff threats. This will not be good for American Consumers. NBC News reports: “Here’s where consumers could feel the price pain if Trump’s tariffs go into effect. Trump has made threats about tariffs in the past. Businesses are nevertheless taking the latest threats seriously.” This guy hasn’t even taken the oath of office, and he’s already acting like he’s sitting in the Oval Office.
An estimate from The Budget Lab at Yale shared Wednesdaywith NBC News found that the cost to consumers from Trump’s proposed tariffs could reach as much as $1,200 in lost purchasing power on average based on 2023 incomes, assuming retaliatory duties on U.S. exports are put into place.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has already warned that any new tariffs imposed by the U.S. would be met with retaliatory ones by her country. Canada is similarly considering its own options, including possible tariffs on U.S. goods, according to The Associated Press.
America’s biggest import from Canada is oil — and any increase in energy prices would likely be felt throughout the economy.
“Another way to think about this is it’s 4 to 5 months of a normal year’s inflation in one fell swoop,” Ernie Tedeschi, The Budget Lab’s director and the former chief economist under the Biden administration, said in an email.
The three countries Trump has selected for a new round of targeted tariff proposals — China, Mexico and Canada — represent nearly half of all U.S. import volumes.
While Trump has insisted other countries end up paying the cost of tariffs, most economists agree those costs wind up getting passed on to shoppers. And at a time when rising prices remain a top concern, the types of goods that could see higher costs are the ones consumers interact with every day.
Some companies are warning that particularly import-heavy parts of the economy could be hit hard. Best Buy CEO Corie Barry warned Tuesday that any added costs on U.S. imports “will be shared by our customers.” Electronic goods account for the largest share of U.S. imports from China as of 2023.
“There’s very little in [the] consumer electronics space that is not imported. … These are goods that people need, and higher prices are not helpful,” Barry said.
This is what happens when morons vote for a moron. David R. Lurie of Public Notice has this analysis on other Trump plans. These endanger our National Security. “Tulsi Gabbard and Trump’s scheme to gut the intel agencies. It’s hard to envision a less suited intelligence chief. That’s a feature, not a bug.”
Donald Trump has selected Tulsi Gabbard, former congresswoman and notorious Putin stooge, as his nominee for director of the office of national intelligence.
It’s difficult to imagine a candidate less suited to carry out the DNI’s mission, and that’s very likely just the reason that Trump chose her. Gabbard has virtually none of the experience or expertise required to competently assume DNI’s weighty responsibility of marshaling the information and analyses gathered by the nation’s intelligence agencies and coordinating their work.
Gabbard’s longstanding association with a shadowy rightwing cult, her history of suspicious uses of campaign funds, her habitual conspiracism and advocacy for the interests of bloodthirsty dictators (including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as Putin) all raise a multiplicity of red flags.
But, as Donald Trump made clear during his first term in office, national security is hardly at the top of his list of priorities. In fact, hobbling the nation’s intelligence agencies is one of his principal goals.
Donald Trump has selected Tulsi Gabbard, former congresswoman and notorious Putin stooge, as his nominee for director of the office of national intelligence.
It’s difficult to imagine a candidate less suited to carry out the DNI’s mission, and that’s very likely just the reason that Trump chose her. Gabbard has virtually none of the experience or expertise required to competently assume DNI’s weighty responsibility of marshaling the information and analyses gathered by the nation’s intelligence agencies and coordinating their work.
Gabbard’s longstanding association with a shadowy rightwing cult, her history of suspicious uses of campaign funds, her habitual conspiracism and advocacy for the interests of bloodthirsty dictators (including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as Putin) all raise a multiplicity of red flags.
But, as Donald Trump made clear during his first term in office, national security is hardly at the top of his list of priorities. In fact, hobbling the nation’s intelligence agencies is one of his principal goals.
Marc Zuckerberg perfects his role as Surrender Monkey by dining with the Dotard at Mara Lardo. This is from the BBC. “Mark Zuckerberg dines with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.” It was definitely a Baboon butt moment.
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has visited Donald Trump at his resort in Mar-a-Lago, further evidence of the apparent thawing in their once frosty relations.
The president-elect already has a close, high-profile relationship with another of the leading figures in tech, X owner Elon Musk.
Historically, though, there has been no such closeness between Trump and Mr Zuckerberg – with Trump barred from Facebook and Instagram after the Capitol riots, and Trump threatening the Meta boss with jail if he interfered in the 2024 presidential election.
However, there has recently been evidence those strained relations are improving, culminating in Mr Zuckerberg dining with the president-elect at his Florida mansion.
“Mark was grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration,” a Meta spokesperson told the BBC.
“It’s an important time for the future of American Innovation,” the statement added.
The Detroit Free Press featured an Op-Ed by the AG of Michigan, Dana Nessel. It is difficult not to notice the incredibly large number of Sexual Predators Trump has been appointing to his Cabinet and other leadership positions. It seems like a feature and not a bug, “Michigan AG Nessel: Trump cabinet picks show disdain for victims of sex assault.” We continue to see a parade of the stupid and the lawless.
Every 68 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted.
Only a third of the estimated 440,000 victims over the age of 12 each year will ever report, often due to negative emotions such as guilt, shame, and self-blame.
Survivors feel they won’t be believed, so why bother reporting, opening themselves up to ridicule, judgment and shame?
So what is it we are telling victims of these brutal, life-altering crimes, when our President-elect seeks to elevate alleged fellow perpetrators to cabinet positions and other high levels of power in our government?
To lead the Department of Defense, Trump has nominated Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, who settled an accusation that he raped a woman and entered into a non-disclosure agreement with the victim. To lead the Department of Health and Human Services, he nominated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has been accused of groping a young woman who worked for him as a babysitter on several occasions. For Secretary of Education – responsible for ensuring the schooling of our nation’s children – he nominated Linda McMahon, who has been sued for criminal negligence for enabling the grooming and sexual abuse of children by employees of her organization. And as the nation’s top law enforcement officer, he nominated former Representative Matt Gaetz — who withdrew from consideration last week — the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation, following accusations he paid minors for sex. And Trump still has more nominations to make.
With these nominations, we are telling survivors of sexual assault that they don’t matter, that their trauma is meaningless and that they should stay silent.
And they will.
The American Prospect calls them “The Rape Gang.”
The presumptive Secretary of Education is married to a man whose former employee alleges he forced her to perform sex acts with his friend for an hour and a half after he defecated on her head. The presumptive Commerce Secretary preemptively sued his former assistant in 2018, after her lawyer threatened to publicize “not pretty” 2 a.m. text messages she’d received from him and his wife. The presumptive Health and Human Services director’s explanation for forcibly groping a former nanny’s breasts while holding her hostage in a kitchen pantry was that he “had a very, very rambunctious youth”; he was 46 at the time. The White House efficiency czar, currently a defendant in a putative class-action lawsuit filed by eight former employees who accuse him of perpetrating an “Animal House” work environment of “rampant sexual harassment,” and paid a quarter of a million dollars to a flight attendant who says he got naked and asked her to touch his erect penis in exchange for the gift of a horse.
And of course the presumptive Defense Secretary was accused of raping a woman who was tasked with monitoring what she described to police as his “creeper vibes” after a Republican women’s conference at which he was a keynote speaker, just a month and change after the birth of his fourth child with a woman who was not his wife at the time. (Reader, she married him.)
The aggressive rapeyness of the second Donald Trump administration is so tyrannical it’s almost enough to make a girl wistful for Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman who withdrew his name from attorney general contention yesterday (to make way for the despicable Pam Bondi) amid an orgy of leaks from two investigations into his sexploits with a 17-year-old procured by a convicted sex trafficker friend. Multiple witnesses testified that Gaetz did not actually know the 17-year-old was underage, you see, and that he ceased having sex with her when he found out.
We definitely have a kakistocracy coming our way. We can see the incompetence, the total lack of knowledge of policy, and the complete inappropriateness of every candidate for Cabinet. It comes from the ultimate dotard. The only thing we have going for us now is our resolve and the fact that the Republican Majority in both Houses is narrow. Both houses have also had lots of experience in gumming up the works for Trump. Trump’s so-called mandate is a bald-faced lie. The LA Times asks, “As Trump’s lead in popular vote shrinks, does he really have a ‘mandate’?” Of course, Trump will be oblivious to all that, so he’s relying heavily on executive mandates that may or may not be legal.” Jenny Jarvis has the details.
Though Trump overwhelmingly won the electoral college vote, his tally in the popular vote is hardly a landslide.
In the last 75 years, only three other presidents had popular-vote margins that were smaller than Trump’s.
When Trump exaggerates his presidential mandate, he is not an outlier but drawing from bipartisan history.
In his victory speech on Nov. 6, President-elect Donald Trump claimed Americans had given him an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.”
It’s a message his transition team has echoed in the last three weeks, referring to his “MAGA Mandate” and a “historic mandate for his agenda.”
But given that Trump’s lead in the popular vote has dwindled as more votes have been counted in California and other states that lean blue, there is fierce disagreement over whether most Americans really endorse his plans to overhaul government and implement sweeping change.
The latest tally from the Cook Political Report shows Trump winning 49.83% of the popular vote, with a margin of 1.55% over Vice President Kamala Harris.
The president-elect’s share of the popular vote now falls in the bottom half for American presidents — far below that of Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, who won 61.1% of the popular vote in 1964, defeating Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater by nearly 23 percentage points.
In the last 75 years, only three presidents — John F. Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon in 1968 and George W. Bush in 2000 — had popular-vote margins smaller than Trump’s current lead.
“If there ever was a mandate, this isn’t it,” said Hans Noel, associate professor of government at Georgetown University.
There is a slim majority margin in the US House of Representatives. There is no mandate radical change there. This is from Politico, “Where the slim House margin might matter most.” The analysis is by Anthony Adragna.
Republicans are vowing an all-out war in the opening days of the next Congress against Biden administration regulations in areas as varied as energy, financial, housing and education policy.
They’re hoping for a redux of 2017 and 2018, when Republicans used their unified control of government and the powers of the Congressional Review Act to ax 16 regulations. With a coming 53-47 majority, GOP senators say they’re again primed to use the CRA, one of their most potent tools to undo Democratic policies — and one that tends to unite the often fractious Republican conference.
But — and it’s a major but — an extremely narrow House margin could make things hard to pull off, at least for the first couple of months of the Trump administration. While the GOP could lose as many as three votes in the Senate with Vice President-elect JD Vance (R-Ohio) casting tie-breakers, the House very well be at a one-vote margin until early April (more on that math below).
Still, that hasn’t dampened Republicans’ enthusiasm around the CRA.
“We’re going to want to go and evaluate everything that fits into the jurisdiction” of the 1996 review law, incoming Senate Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told Inside Congress. Invoking it involves passing simple-majority votes in both chambers plus a presidential signature, no filibusters allowed.
President Joe Biden’s administration recognized this looming threat and prioritized early completion of rulemakings to shield them from congressional challenge. Still, dozens of regulations were finalized after Aug. 1, 2024, leaving them vulnerable to the CRA, according to Public Citizen, which closely tracks the potential use of the law. (That corresponds to the date identified by the Congressional Research Service after which rules might be vulnerable to revocation.)
Barrasso’s hardly alone with vows of aggressive use of the tool, which had only been successfully used once before Trump’s first term.
“We’ll do every possible regulation we can get to,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said. “It’s a wonderful tool for undoing the bureaucratic excess of the Biden administration.”
“On some of these crazy policies we ought to just get rid of them as fast as we can,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who said he’d instructed his staff to find regulations that may be good targets for challenges.
“This is the only time the Congressional Review Act actually has teeth, otherwise it’s a messaging vehicle,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said, referring to the first months of a new trifecta, since using the CRA effectively requires one party to control the presidency and both chambers of Congress, a relatively infrequent occurrence in modern politics.
Hopefully, this turns into a Can’t Do Anything Congress.
Have a good weekend! Hope you had a great day for feasting! I’m off to eat a turkey sandwich!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968JohnBuss #DonnyDotardAndTheChaosCult #TrumpCabinetRapeGang
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A Serial Tech Investment Scammer Takes Up Coding?
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/04/a-serial-tech-investment-scammer-takes-up-coding/
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A Serial Tech Investment Scammer Takes Up Coding? https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/04/a-serial-tech-investment-scammer-takes-up-coding/ #BlackstoneCorporateAllianceLtd #SafeSwissSecureCommunicationAG #TheInsideKnowledgeGmbH #Ne'er-Do-WellNews #AlanJohnMykhailov #JohnCliftonDavies #ALittleSunshine #DomainTools.com #SecureSwissData #MariaYakovleva #MariyaKulikova #ColetteDavies #Drydennow.com #Breadcrumbs #IgorGubskyi #IgorHubskyi #IrynaDavies #JohnBernard #CodesToYou #DavidBruno #MySolve
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A Serial Tech Investment Scammer Takes Up Coding? https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/04/a-serial-tech-investment-scammer-takes-up-coding/ #BlackstoneCorporateAllianceLtd #SafeSwissSecureCommunicationAG #TheInsideKnowledgeGmbH #Ne'er-Do-WellNews #AlanJohnMykhailov #JohnCliftonDavies #ALittleSunshine #DomainTools.com #SecureSwissData #MariaYakovleva #MariyaKulikova #ColetteDavies #Drydennow.com #Breadcrumbs #IgorGubskyi #IgorHubskyi #IrynaDavies #JohnBernard #CodesToYou #DavidBruno #MySolve
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A Serial Tech Investment Scammer Takes Up Coding? https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/04/a-serial-tech-investment-scammer-takes-up-coding/ #BlackstoneCorporateAllianceLtd #SafeSwissSecureCommunicationAG #TheInsideKnowledgeGmbH #Ne'er-Do-WellNews #AlanJohnMykhailov #JohnCliftonDavies #ALittleSunshine #DomainTools.com #SecureSwissData #MariaYakovleva #MariyaKulikova #ColetteDavies #Drydennow.com #Breadcrumbs #IgorGubskyi #IgorHubskyi #IrynaDavies #JohnBernard #CodesToYou #DavidBruno #MySolve
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A Serial Tech Investment Scammer Takes Up Coding? https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/04/a-serial-tech-investment-scammer-takes-up-coding/ #BlackstoneCorporateAllianceLtd #SafeSwissSecureCommunicationAG #TheInsideKnowledgeGmbH #Ne'er-Do-WellNews #AlanJohnMykhailov #JohnCliftonDavies #ALittleSunshine #DomainTools.com #SecureSwissData #MariaYakovleva #MariyaKulikova #ColetteDavies #Drydennow.com #Breadcrumbs #IgorGubskyi #IgorHubskyi #IrynaDavies #JohnBernard #CodesToYou #DavidBruno #MySolve
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Friday Night Reads: Disappearing Democracy
“Blockbuster Trade Announcement.” John Buss @repeat 1968
Good Evening, Sky Dancers!
I was late getting this post started today. I’ve had two doctor’s appointments the last two days, and I’m just exhausted. I guess I have one more test to go next week, and they’re leaving me alone until September. The good news is that I finally got to pick up my new glasses, so I can see clearly now! There is so much news today surrounding habeas corpus and free speech that I can’t believe what I’m seeing live on TV. I’m going to start with this headline from PBS. “WATCH: Stephen Miller says Trump administration is ‘actively looking at’ suspending habeas corpus.”
Stephen Miller, a top White House adviser, said the administration is looking for ways to expand its legal power to deport migrants who are in the country illegally.
Watch Miller’s remarks in the video player above.
“The Constitution is clear — and that of course is the supreme law of the land — that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” he told reporters. “So it’s an option that we’re actively looking at.”
Miller added that “a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”
Habeas corpus refers to people’s right to challenge their detention in court.
This, of course, is completely false, but that never matters to any of the Psychopaths surrounding #FARTUS. Steve Vladeck, a professor of law at Georgetown University, writes this at his Substack One First. “148. Suspending Habeas Corpus. In response to adverse rulings in numerous immigration cases, Stephen Miller is raising the specter of suspending habeas. His argument is factually and legally nuts, but it’s worth explaining *why.*”
“I was going to wait until Monday’s regular issue to note the sad news out of the Supreme Court on Friday (that retired Justice David Souter passed away Thursday at the age of 85). But then Stephen Miller went on television Friday afternoon and made some of the most remarkable (and remarkably scary) comments about federal courts that I think we’ve ever heard from a senior White House official. Reacting to a series of high-profile losses in immigration cases this week, Miller raised the specter of President Trump suspending habeas corpus:
Well, the Constitution is clear. And that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion. So … that’s an option we’re actively looking at. Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not. At the end of the day, Congress passed a body of law known as the Immigration Nationality Act which stripped Article III courts, that’s the judicial branch, of jurisdiction over immigration cases. So Congress actually passed what’s called jurisdiction stripping legislation. It passed a number of laws that say that the Article III courts aren’t even allowed to be involved in immigration cases.
I know there’s a lot going on, and that Miller says lots of incendiary (and blatantly false) stuff. But this strikes me as raising the temperature to a whole new level—and thus meriting a brief explanation of all of the ways in which this statement is both (1) wrong; and (2) profoundly dangerous. Specifically, it seems worth making five basic points:
First, the Suspension Clause of the Constitution, which is in Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 is meant to limit the circumstances in which habeas can be foreclosed (Article I, Section 9 includes limits on Congress’s powers)—thereby ensuring that judicial review of detentions are otherwise available. (Note that it’s in the original Constitution—adopted before even the Bill of Rights.) I spent a good chunk of the first half of my career writing about habeas and its history, but the short version is that the Founders were hell-bent on limiting, to the most egregious emergencies, the circumstances in which courts could be cut out of the loop. To casually suggest that habeas might be suspended because courts have ruled against the executive branch in a handful of immigration cases is to turn the Suspension Clause entirely on its head.
Second, Miller is being slippery about the actual text of the Constitution (notwithstanding his claim that it is “clear”). The Suspension Clause does not say habeas can be suspended during any invasion; it says “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” This last part, with my emphasis, is not just window-dressing; again, the whole point is that the default is for judicial review except when there is a specific national security emergency in which judicial review could itself exacerbate the emergency. The emergency itself isn’t enough. Releasing someone like Rümeysa Öztürk from immigration detention poses no threat to public safety—all the more so when the release is predicated on a judicial determination that Ozturk … poses no threat to public safety.
Third, even if the textual triggers for suspending habeas corpus were satisfied, Miller also doesn’t deign to mention that the near-universal consensus is that only Congress can suspend habeas corpus—and that unilateral suspensions by the President are per se unconstitutional. I’ve written before about the Merryman case at the outset of the Civil War, which provides perhaps the strongest possible counterexample: that the President might be able to claim a unilateral suspension power if Congress is out of session (as it was from the outset of the Civil War in 1861 until July 4). Whatever the merits of that argument, it clearly has no applicability at this moment.
Fourth, Miller is wrong, as a matter of fact,about the relationship between Article III courts (our usual federal courts) and immigration cases. It’s true that the Immigration and Nationality Act (especially as amended in 1996 and 2005) includes a series of “jurisdiction-stripping” provisions. But most of those provisions simply channel judicial review in immigration cases into immigration courts (which are part of the executive branch) in the first instance, with appeals to Article III courts. And as the district courts (and Second Circuit) have explained in cases like Khalil and Öztürk, even those provisions don’t categorically preclude any review by Article III courts prior to those appeals.
There’s more at the link. Here’s the bottom line from NBC News and Dan Mangam. “Top White House adviser Stephen Miller says ‘we’re actively looking at’ suspending due process for migrants. The “privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended at a time of invasion. So I would say that’s an action we’re actively looking at,” Miller told reporters outside the White House.” How on earth they keep insisting that immigration is an invasion is beyond me.
Top Trump adviser Stephen Miller told reporters Friday that the administration is “looking at” ways to end due process protections for unauthorized immigrants who are in the country.
“The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended at a time of invasion. So I would say that’s an action we’re actively looking at,” Miller said in the White House driveway.
“A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not,” Miller said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for clarification on whether he was referring to a specific group of people who’ve entered the country illegally, or all the people who have. It also did not comment on what he meant by the courts doing “the right thing.”
In his remarks, Miller maintained that the courts don’t have jurisdiction in immigration cases. “The courts aren’t just at war with the executive branch; the courts are at war, these radical rogue judges, with the legislative branch as well too. So all of that will inform the choices the president ultimately makes,” he said.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly voiced frustration about constitutional due process protections slowing down his efforts at mass deportations.
“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” he said in an interview with Kristen Welker that aired Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
Welker pointed out the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says “no person” shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” and that the Supreme Court has long recognized that noncitizens have certain basic rights, but Trump complained that those protections take too much time.
“I don’t know. It seems — it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials,” he said, adding that some of the people the administration wants to deport are “murderers” and “drug dealers.”
Welker then asked if he needs to uphold the Constitution.
“I don’t know,” Trump replied. “I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”
A clause in the Constitution says due process protections can be suspended during an invasion: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
Trump claimed the U.S. was being invaded back in March, when he invoked the rarely used Alien Enemies Act to send alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to a prison in El Salvador.
What really held me up in writing this by the time I got home was watching ICE thugs rough up an 80-year-old congresswoman and arrest the Mayor of Newark. This is from the AP, which is the news organization that refuses to go along with renaming the Gulf of Mexico, which was named 500 years ago. #FARTUS reminds me of some prehuman creature picked up by explorers in some version of the Land Time Forgot. Kristen Noem is the enforcer in just about any movie about a fascist dystopian you’ve ever seen. It’s ICE ICE BABY. “New Jersey mayor arrested at ICE detention center where he was protesting, prosecutor says.” Which century and country do we live in these days?
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested Friday at a federal immigration detention center where he has been protesting its opening this week, a federal prosecutor said.
Alina Habba, interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, said on the social platform X that Baraka committed trespass and ignored warnings from Homeland Security personnel to leave Delaney Hall, a detention facility run by private prison operator GEO Group.
Habba said Baraka had “chosen to disregard the law” and added that he was taken into custody.
Baraka, a Democrat who is running to succeed term-limited Gov. Phil Murphy, has embraced the fight with the Trump administration over illegal immigration.
He has aggressively pushed back against the construction and opening of the 1,000-bed detention center, arguing that it should not be allowed to open because of building permit issues.
Linda Baraka, the mayor’s wife, accused the federal government of targeting her husband.
“They didn’t arrest anyone else. They didn’t ask anyone else to leave. They wanted to make an example out of the mayor,” she said, adding that she had not been allowed to see him.
A crowd gathered to protest outside the building where Baraka was being held, with many chanting, “Let the mayor go!”
Witnesses said the arrest came after Baraka attempted to join three members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation, Reps. Robert Menendez, LaMonica McIver, and Bonnie Watson Coleman, in attempting to enter the facility.
So if you want the laughable and extremely sad headline today from our GOOBERment, here it is from Homeland Security. “Members of Congress Break into Delaney Hall Detention Center, Delaney Hall Currently Holds Murderers, Rapists, Suspected Terrorists, and Gang Members. “ How exactly do we know all that if none of them have been before a court yet? I’m not going to excerpt that, but do recommend you read this and realize it’s from OUR government.
Here’s Insider NJ with a more truthful angle. “Reps. Watson Coleman, McIver, Menendez, Exercise Oversight Authority in Visit to ICE Detention Facility.” I watched the entire event live on MSNBC today. Again, it’s why I was even later than I originally had planned to be today. I was watching and listening to the representatives demand that the masked ICE thugs take their hands off them.
Today, following an inspection of the Delaney Hall ICE facility in Newark, New Jersey with Reps. LaMonica McIver and Robert Menendez, Jr., Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman released the following statement:
“At around 1pm today, my colleagues Rep. Lamonica McIver and Rep. Rob Menendez, Jr. and I arrived at the Delaney Hall ICE detention facility in Newark to exercise our oversight authority as Members of Congress.
“Contrary to a press statement put out by DHS we did not “storm” the detention center. The author of that press release was so unfamiliar with the facts on the ground that they didn’t even correctly count the number of Representatives present. We were exercising our legal oversight function as we have done at the Elizabeth Detention Center without incident.
“Reopening Delaney Hall won’t make us safer and it won’t create an immigration system that is fair and secure for all families.
“Private Prison companies like GEO Group create a perverse incentive to increase incarceration to increase corporate profits. It’s no accident that GEO Group was the first corporation to max out donations to Trump’s Super PAC, to the tune of $500,000 dollars. And they’re being rewarded with huge contracts to imprison immigrants like we’re seeing here at Delaney.
“New Jerseyans don’t want more private prisons just to increase shareholder income at the expense of taxpayers. They want a fair and secure immigration system that reflects our values and respects our Constitution.”
Meanwhile, judges continue to free students arrested by ICE under the weird ass interpretations of Habeas Corpus put forth by Miller. “She was arrested for an op-ed. Now a judge has ordered her freed. Her detention “chills the speech of the millions and millions of people who are not citizens,” a federal judge said.” This is from VOX’s Andrew Prokop.
A Trump administration spokesperson anonymously claimed in March that “DHS and ICE investigations found Öztürk engaged in activities in support of Hamas.” But to this day they have conspicuously failed to produce any evidence of that — including, when Öztürk filed suit, before a judge.
What did the judge say? Judge William Sessions III ordered Öztürk released “immediately.” Ruling from the bench, he sounded appalled by the Trump administration’s conduct, which he said “chills the speech of the millions and millions of people who are not citizens.”
He said Öztürk had made “very substantial claims of First Amendment and due process violations,” and that, furthermore, the government had offered “no evidence” about their motivation for detaining her other than the op-ed
Is this case over, then? No. Öztürk was ordered released from detention. But the question of whether the US government can legally revoke her visa remains unresolved. While Sessions sounds very likely to rule in her favor, it’s unclear if conservatives on the Supreme Court will do the same, should the case reach them. Still, this case has been an embarrassment to the Trump administration, and perhaps there’s a faint glimmer of hope they’ll decide to just drop it. Too optimistic? Probably.
Films of her release from the Louisiana ICE Detention Center have been shown on all the news stations today. Meanwhile, WAPO reports that “ICE moves detainees to Texas facility where judge declined to halt deportations. One Philadelphia man was transferred to Texas in apparent violation of a court order requiring that he be kept in Pennsylvania as his case played out there.”
As the Trump administration battles to use awartime law to speed deportationsof alleged gang members, it has moved dozens of detained Venezuelans to the one court district in the nation where a federal judge for now has declined to stand in its way.
U.S. District Judge Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee sitting in the Northern District of Texas, refusedlast month to pause removals under the Alien Enemies Act of detainees who the government says are affiliated with the Tren de Aragua gang — even as judges in Colorado, Pennsylvania, New York and other parts of Texas have done so.
The administration views Hendrix’s district as a “favorable venue,” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Tim Macdonald alleged at a recent court hearing in Denver. He and other immigrant advocates say the rush of relocations to the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas, has forced targeted Venezuelans to contest their removals in a court they see as ideologically aligned with the president.
“What the government was doing,” Macdonald said in the hearing, “was finding Venezuelan men, rounding them up and shipping them to the Northern District of Texas.”
The Department of Homeland Security declined to answer questions about how many Venezuelan migrants are housed at Bluebonnet. It also would not say how many had been moved there from other facilities in recent weeks or why those transfers were made.
For now, the Supreme Court has indefinitely paused all Alien Enemies Act deportations in Hendrix’s district as it weighs whether migrants there are being given adequate opportunity to challenge their designations as “alien enemies.” The administration does not appear to have deported any migrants under the law from anywhere in the country since it first sent more than 130 Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador in March.
I want to end with Senator Murphy reading the riot act to Cos-Playing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. It’s really worth watching.
ABC News also had this write-up on the Senate Committee’s visit with her. “Democrats slam DHS secretary as Noem says Abrego Garcia ‘not coming back’ to US. Noem was in front of the Senate testifying on the 2026 DHS budget.”
“Senate Democrats sparred with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday over whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia will be returned to the United States, as well as the Department of Homeland Security’s spending.
During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who traveled to El Salvador to meet with Abrego Garcia, asked if the Trump administration would comply with the Supreme Court’s decision that the U.S. government must facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, Noem replied that the government is following the law but didn’t say yes or no.
“What I would tell you is that we are following court order,” Noem shot back. “Your advocacy for a known terrorist is alarming.”
Van Hollen said he isn’t “vouching for the man” but rather due process.
“I suggest that rather than make these statements here, that you and the Trump administration make them in court under oath,” he added.
Van Hollen then accused Noem of a political speech, and Noem said she would suggest Van Hollen is an “advocate” for victims of illegal crime.
Last month, after Abrego Garcia’s family filed a lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the U.S. The Supreme Court affirmed that ruling on April 10.
No one in this administration appears to be ready to comply with court orders to return Albrego Garcia. I wonder if Chief Justice Roberts has already offered up his balls to #FARTUS. We haven’t heard a peep from him since the court sent out the ultimatum to return Garcia.
So, there is so much here to cover that I’m hoping BB can pick up where I leave off. All of this is illegal, unconstitutional, and un-American. It’s about time someone defangs them all.
What’s on your reading and writing list?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #BringKilmerHome_ #dueProcess #FARTUS #HabeasCorpus #IllegalDeportations
