Mostly Monday Reads: Into the Woods

“Wait, what?” John Buss,
@johnbuss.bsky.social. @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I’m still in that hazy period where I can’t believe it’s that dark, and I’m supposed to get up and function like it’s a normal day.  Even my cats gave me a strange look since they know that morning kibble comes with the sunrise. Wasting the morning darkness is seriously cruel. 

I admit I’m also in a hazy period as the US has been making history in ways I never thought possible. Sondheim’s great musical, which is referenced in the title, is my oldest daughter’s favorite. She endlessly listened to it, attended it, and played the Public TV version.  It’s a good metaphor for what we’re going through. It’s a journey we must make to find something. 

I’ll reference another song, but it’s from Paul Simon this time.  “They’ve all gone to look for America.”  You’re allowed to sing “Kathy, I’m lost” to me.  My response is that I am, too. We’re in some kind of twilight but need more discovery.  These days, a soundtrack is in demand.

This sad news is from The Guardian. It jolted me awake. “US added to international watchlist for rapid decline in civic freedoms. Civicus, an international non-profit, puts country alongside Democratic Republic of Congo, Italy, Pakistan and Serbia.”  We may no longer be ‘the home of the free or the brave.’  Let me warm up here if I start referencing songs, I’m going to need to wake up a bit more so I can keep pitch.

The United States has been added to the Civicus Monitor Watchlist, which identifies countries that the global civil rights watchdog believes are currently experiencing a rapid decline in civic freedoms.

Civicus, an international non-profit organization dedicated to “strengthening citizen action and civil society around the world”, announced the inclusion of the US on the non-profit’s first watchlist of 2025 on Monday, alongside the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Italy, Pakistan and Serbia.

The watchlist is part of the Civicus Monitor, which tracks developments in civic freedoms across 198 countries. Other countries that have previously been featured on the watchlist in recent years include Zimbabwe, Argentina, El Salvador and the United Arab Emirates.

Mandeep Tiwana, co-secretary general of Civicus, said that the watchlist “looks at countries where we remain concerned about deteriorating civic space conditions, in relation to freedoms of peaceful assembly, association and expression”.

The selection process, the website states, incorporates insights and data from Civicus’s global network of research partners and data.

The decision to add the US to the first 2025 watchlist was made in response to what the group described as the “Trump administration’s assault on democratic norms and global cooperation”.

In the news release announcing the US’s addition, the organization cited recent actions taken by the Trump administration that they argue will likely “severely impact constitutional freedoms of peaceful assembly, expression, and association”.

The group cited several of the administration’s actions such as the mass termination of federal employees, the appointment of Trump loyalists in key government positions, the withdrawal from international efforts such as the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, the freezing of federal and foreign aid and the attempted dismantling of USAid.

The organization warned that these decisions “will likely impact civic freedoms and reverse hard-won human rights gains around the world”.

The group also pointed to the administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters, and the Trump administration’s unprecedented decision to control media access to presidential briefings, among others.

Civicus described Trump’s actions since taking office as an “unparalleled attack on the rule of law” not seen “since the days of McCarthyism in the twentieth century”, stating that these moves erode the checks and balances essential to democracy.

“Restrictive executive orders, unjustifiable institutional cutbacks, and intimidation tactics through threatening pronouncements by senior officials in the administration are creating an atmosphere to chill democratic dissent, a cherished American ideal,” Tiwana said.

You may not have shared “An Evening with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor” at the Knight Foundation event in Miami. I’d like to share some of her thoughts here this morning.  The purpose of the visit was summarized thusly. “Civil institutions are the foundation of a thriving democracy.”  This highlight is from The New York Times. “Sotomayor Says Presidents Are Not Monarchs and Must Obey Rulings. Speaking in general terms at a Florida college and not naming President Trump, the Supreme Court justice’s remarks took on potency in the current climate.”  The reporter on this is Adam Litpek. The event happened on February 11th.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, speaking at a Florida college on Tuesday, made pointed remarks about the limits of presidential power and her fear that government officials might flout court decisions.

“Our founders were hellbent on ensuring that we didn’t have a monarchy,” she said, “and the first way they thought of that was to give Congress the power of the purse.”

The justice made clear that she was speaking in general terms, but against the backdrop of President Trump’s blitz of executive orders to halt federal programs and the scores of legal challenges that followed, her comments took on a more telling cast.

In the first weeks of his new administration, Mr. Trump has argued that he is free to root out what he says is fraud and waste in the federal government even in the face of congressional commands to spend allocations. A federal judge ruled on Monday that the administration had defied his order to release billions in grant money.

On March 7th, Jacob Knutsen reported in Democracy Docket that “Judge Orders Trump to Release Some Of $2B in Frozen Foreign Aid.” Today is the deadline for that order.

A federal judge gave the Trump administration until Monday to pay several nonprofit groups and aid organizations affected by President Donald Trump’s broad freeze on foreign aid spending and his attempts to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), AP reports.

District Court Judge Amir Ali, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, issued the new deadline at the end of a four-hour hearing that came a day after the Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s emergency appeal asking it to stay one of Ali’s previous orders in the case.

The new deadline comes in a lawsuit filed by a global health group, an AIDS/HIV relief organization and a nonprofit journalism network challenging Trump’s day-one executive order to halt all foreign assistance for 90 days.

The total amount of aid kept from USAID contractors and grant recipients is around $2 billion, but Ali in his order limited payouts to only those organizations involved in the lawsuit. In the judge’s previous directives, he required the Trump administration to unfreeze all funding.

It’s unclear exactly how much money the administration will have to dispense by Monday. In a filing Friday, the plaintiffs said the government has yet to fulfill around 1,200 outstanding invoices totalling approximately $420 million for work already completed. The Trump administration said in a filing Thursday that it released around $70 million to the plaintiffs earlier this week.

So, we’re waiting.  Will he do it? So, that’s my civics wandering today.  I do want to discuss the economy. The amount of anxiety I feel about this should seriously be burning a lot more calories than it appears to be doing.  Maybe it’s been offset by the Trulys and cookies. Who knows? So, Brian Beutler sums this situation up neatly in his blog Off Message. “Be Prepared. Trump is sabotaging the economy, but we shouldn’t assume public opinion will follow automatically.”

Donald Trump has done rapid, serious damage to the U.S. economy, and the MAGA elite knows it.

Saturated as the Trump movement is in fantasies and conspiracy theories, many of the people who manufacture myths for the Republican base do keep abreast of material reality. They fear being caught by surprise. They don’t feel any obligation to prepare for and mitigate risks on behalf of American citizens, but rather to generate storylines about looming crises that hold Trump personally harmless, or paint him as victim or hero.

In a recent New Republic article, the writer Greg Sargent documented the wave of panic washing over Fox News as its hosts and contributors reckon with the fact that Trump has already squandered his inheritance.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent admitted to CNBC that “this economy that we inherited” could be “starting to roll a bit.”

Even Trump himself seems to understand that headlines and indicators are about to turn south.

Which is to say: When they shit-talked the Biden economy throughout the 2024 campaign, they knew they were lying. They know that Joe Biden bequeathed Trump a strong economy, and they know Trump’s convulsive policy edicts (indiscriminate firings, indiscriminate tariff threats, the imposition and partial removal of actual tariffs, etc.) have already throttled growth and driven prices higher.

We may not see recession, we may not see inflation, we may not see the dreaded combination of the two. But we’ll be incredibly lucky to avoid all three.

And if any occur, we’re going to test the power of MAGA propaganda techniques. Can concerted lying convince enough people to deny the existence of economic hardship, or celebrate it, or blame it on Democrats, such that it doesn’t become a political drag on Trump?

For all the brain poison MAGA propagandists pump into our information environment, these early signs of discomfort suggest they know the truth of the matter. Which means they’re conscious of the coming deception: they’ll blame Biden and foreigners and liberals and Jews for causing economic pain, and circle their wagons around Trump, fully aware of their own lies.

Let’s take a look at that article from The New Republic written by Greg Sargent last week.  “Fox News Suddenly Starts Panicking About Trump’s Economy: “Weakening!” Yes, they’re still blaming Joe Biden, but the talking heads at Fox are getting awfully nervous that President Trump might be on the verge of sending the economy into a tailspin.”

Fox News figures are willing to propagandize on President Trump’s behalf on pretty much every horror that he throws our way. Do Fox personalities back Trump when he sells out our allies in tandem with murderous tyrant Vladimir Putin? Yes, indeed. Do they support Trump when he tries to purge federal workers by the thousands to corruptly replace them with loyalists? Enthusiastically. Do they stick with Trump when he declares himself above the law, explicitly using the language of world-historical dictators to do so? Without reservations.

But it turns out there are limits. One topic Fox personalities are not quite as willing to run interference for Trump on is the economy. And with signs mounting that Trump’s economy is hitting the skids, they are beginning to sound the alarm.

It’s the latest indication that Trump’s political project is suddenly looking quite fragile. And it’s a sign that more dissent is coming.

On Fox News on Friday morning, host Maria Bartiromo practically shouted that “the jobs picture is weakening!” She tried to spin this somewhat positively, insisting investors are rallying because the weakening job market means the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates. But Bartiromo was blunt about the latest jobs report, which she pronounced “weaker than expected.”

That jobs report found that the economy created 151,000 jobs in February, which was slightly under expectations. This left some economists seeing a continued softening in the labor market and some news organizations discerning a “slowdown.”

Beyond this, the overall picture is darkening even more: This jobs report does not fully register the federal job losses unleashed by Elon Musk’s cuts via the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which are expected to show up any day now. Trump’s tariffs are deeply spooking investors, and his sudden, temporary cancellation of many tariffs intended for Canadian and Mexican exports is only increasing the agitation. As a scalding New York Times assessment of Trump’s economy put it, the “sudden deterioration in the outlook is striking, because it is almost entirely the result of Mr. Trump’s policies.”

Yet what’s also striking is that Fox News figures are willing to go here—sort of, at least.

“I think the boom times are over,” Fox anchor Charles Payne declared Friday, implicitly admitting that the economy under Trump’s predecessor was a lot better. Payne pointed to declines in consumer spending, which he pronounced “scary.”

The problem is that they know that we will all hang out together. I’m not sure Republican Congress Critters know this, but let’s move on before I start singing, “You see, we piddle, twiddle, and resolve. Not one damn thing do we solve.” Noah Belatsky has this analysis in public notice as we creep closer to breaching the budget deadline. “MAGA’s Big Lie budget. Trump’s economic agenda is about fooling the American people.”  It’s becoming evident that many people in the country need a civics and economics course. Those of us who have often had both are screaming from our rooftops.  And yes, I’m a dismal scientist, and I wish I didn’t feel the need to depress you with all of this.

“In the near future I want to do what has not been done in 24 years — balance the federal budget, we’re gonna balance it,” Trump declaimed in his speech before a joint session of Congress last week.

Trump is obviously lying, as his spending and revenue proposals do not suggest he’s even attempting to make a good faith effort to balance the budget. Nor is this new. Republicans have for decades — at least since Reagan — mounted up massive deficits while claiming to put forward responsible budgets.

Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein refers to this as the GOP war on budgeting. Trump is expanding that war in an especially shameless fashion. Not only is he lying about his desire to cut deficits, he’s also obfuscating about his spending priorities and preferences — especially as they relate to Social Security and Medicaid.

The result is budgeting as Big Lie, as Republicans immiserate the public, give massive handouts to billionaires, jack up enormous deficits, and then pretend to be the party of compassion and fiscal responsibility.

Trump’s economic plans are incoherent and incomprehensible at least partially by design. The goal, by this longtime scam artist, is to bamboozle the American people and take their money.

Insulting your intelligence

Trump has said so much nonsense about the budget and priorities that it’s difficult to summarize. But the central contradiction is that he has said he wants to do three incompatible things:

1. Balance the budget

2. Extend the tax cuts from his first term

3. Keep Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid fully funded

Doing all these simply isn’t possible. You can’t slash revenue by trillions, refuse to cut the biggest items in the budget, and eliminate the deficit. The numbers simply don’t add up.

Trump himself has tacitly admitted that his stated priorities are mutually contradictory. He’s endorsed the House budget framework, which extends his first term tax cuts. That plan raises the deficit by $2.8 trillion through 2034. In contrast, the Senate has proposed a balanced bill, putting votes on extending the tax cuts off until later. But, again, Trump prefers the House bill.

Consider donating to Public Notice and other independent news sources, given they’re far more valuable than most of our legacy media.

So, here’s another thing I thought I’d never see but wow, our Canadian friends are really pissed and they’re not going to take it. This is from the brave folks at the AP. “Ontario slaps 25% tax increase on electricity exports to US in response to Trump’s trade war.”

Ontario’s premier, the leader of Canada’s most populous province, announced that effective Monday it is charging 25% more for electricity to 1.5 million Americans in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war.

Ontario provides electricity to Minnesota, New York and Michigan.

“I will not hesitate to increase this charge. If the United State escalates, I will not hesitate to shut the electricity off completely,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said at a news conference in Toronto.

“Believe me when I say I do not want to do this. I feel terrible for the American people who didn’t start this trade war. It’s one person who is responsible, it’s President Trump.”

Ford said Ontario’s tariff would remain in place despite the one-month reprieve from Trump, noting a one-month pause means nothing but more uncertainty. Quebec is also considering taking similar measures with electricity exports to the U.S.

Ford’s office said the new market rules require any generator selling electricity to the U.S. to add a 25% surcharge. Ontario’s government expects it to generate revenue of $300,000 Canadian dollars ($208,000) to CA$400,000 ($277,000) per day, “which will be used to support Ontario workers, families and businesses.”

The new surcharge is in addition to the federal government’s initial CA$30 billion ($21 billion) worth of retaliatory tariffs have been applied on items like American orange juice, peanut butter, coffee, appliances, footwear, cosmetics, motorcycles and certain pulp and paper products.

This will make an interesting case study in someone’s textbook.  I may need to fire up the STATA and see what happens unless FARTUS and his merry band of poseurs soon suppress the GDP numbers. I wouldn’t put it past them, but I do believe some brave commerce department official will sneak them off to the Fed. Okay, this is too full of brilliant yellow prose for me to ignore.  It comes via The Bulwark and Jill Lawrence. “The Road from ‘Citizens United’ to Trump, Musk, and Corruption. A ‘naïve’ Supreme Court delivered lawless greed and cruelty. We’ll have to save ourselves, if we can.”

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN a greedy geezer with the most powerful job in the world cements himself to a greedy grabber who is the richest man in the world? You get Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and a superpower emeritus about ready to be stripped for parts.

Few foresaw this in 2010, when the Supreme Court launched us onto a dark path. The court’s 5–4 Citizens United decision, allowing unlimited corporate, interest-group, and individual spending on elections, did trigger dire predictions from plenty of doomsayers. But even the most pessimistic among them fell short of imagining American reality today.

“We knew that it was going to be really, really destructive for our democracy,” says Tiffany Muller, president of the group End Citizens United, which is dedicated to electing Democrats committed to seeing the ruling overturned. “Fifteen years after that decision, we’re seeing the full culmination of living under a Citizens United world—where it’s not just elections that are for sale, but it’s that our entire government, and the apparatus of our government, is up for sale.”

It’s hard to believe, but once upon a time there was bipartisan common ground on gun safety, health care, voting rights, climate change, and even limits on campaign funding. The Senate in 2006 voted 98–0 to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, and George W. Bush signed the law. He also added a voluntary prescription benefit to Medicare, with help from Democrats in both chambers.

Bipartisan Senate pairs introduced major climate bills in 2003 and 2007, but their prospects faded amid opposition from the fossil-fuel industry. In 2010, a few months after Citizens United, a cap-and-trade tax designed to reduce carbon emissions passed the House in a landmark vote, but it fell short in the Senate. Democrats had 59 seats and needed just one Republican vote to advance the bill—and they couldn’t get it.

The oil and gas sector now floods the election zone with over six times as much cash as it spent in the 2010 cycle. And it has amassed all the clout you’d expect as contributions have skyrocketed—from defeating a carbon tax–friendly House Republican in 2010 to helping to elect Trump last year.

When Citizens United turned ten, in 2020, the political money-tracker Open Secrets reported on what the ruling had wrought. Super PACs—the non-party committees created to legally raise cash in unlimited amounts to independently promote issues and candidates—spent $4.5 billion over the decade (up from $750 million over the previous twenty years).

The major players of the new era, it turned out, were not corporations. They were millionaires and billionaires. “The 10 most generous donors and their spouses injected $1.2 billion into federal elections over the last decade,” Open Secrets found.

It’s a good read full of good sources.  I highly recommend it.

My social security check got deposited today!  It’s something I now fret about and didn’t before.  Off to pay the mortgage and such. You have a very good week.  Escape with whatever takes the anxiety off of the 11 setting! Sorry, I plagued you my musicisms today.  We all have to cope somehow!

What’s on your Reading and Blogging list today?