Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s sweeping effort to purge and reshape the federal government is underway.
Federal employees have arrived at a “fork in the road,” the new administration proclaimed in a Tuesday night announcement. Their offer is that employees can choose to voluntarily resign effective September 30, but receive full pay and be exempt from return-to-office requirements before then. Or, employees can choose to stay — but they’ll be subject to higher expectations and no guarantee of job security.
The announcement comes after a week in which Trump’s team has instilled “fear and confusion” into the federal workforce. They’ve fired some employees (including in legally dubious ways), put others on administrative leave, and demanded government employees fess up to any effort to hide DEI programs by changing their names.
All of that now seems intended to “encourage” many federal employees to quit — saving Trump and Musk the trouble of pushing out employees with legal protections against firing. However, the administration also begun the process of trying to rip away those protections for many positions. This would let them hire more political appointees who the president would unambiguously be able to fire at will.
And keep in mind that this has all unfolded in just nine days; there is likely much more to come. It’s rapidly becoming clear that this will be the most ambitious and extensive effort to radically remake the federal government in our lifetimes.
In part, this is Trump’s effort to get revenge on what he calls the “deep state,” prevent future investigations of himself, and sweep aside checks on his power. It’s also, in part, the fulfillment of long-held conservative ambitions about sweeping aside federal bureaucrats and reducing spending.
Wednesday Reads: The Latest Trump Horrors
Posted: January 29, 2025 Filed under: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, just because, Regime of Chaos, U.S. Politics | Tags: Congressional Democrats, government employees, Impoundment Control Act, Medicaid, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump freeze on government payments, Trump horrors 9 Comments
Chaos, by Michael Lang
Good Afternoon!!
In less than 2 weeks, Trump has thrown the entire U.S. government into chaos. It’s difficult not to feel defeated and despairing. The latest outrages: the so-called “president” is working to get rid of long-term, non-partisan government employees and he has illegally usurped the power of the purse, which the Constitution assigns to Congress only.
It’s particularly frustrating that Congressional Democrats have so far not risen to the occasion. I can only hope that after the latest horrors, they will finally wake up and fight back. They don’t have control of either the House or Senate, but they could be speaking out publicly and working together on messaging. Some individuals, such as Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are doing that, but the Democrats need a coordinated strategy.
Today, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is appearing at a confirmation hearing. Read updates at The New York Times, The Washington Post, or The Guardian. From The Guardian (no paywall):
Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate finance committee, criticized Robert F Kennedy Jr for having “spent years pushing conflicting stories about vaccines”.
As he began his questioning, Wyden quoted some of Kennedy’s podcast interviews in which he claimed that “no vaccine is safe and effective” and that he regretted vaccinating his own children. But in his opening statement, Kennedy denied being anti-vaccine.
“Mr Kennedy, all of these things cannot be true,” Wyden said. “So, are you lying to Congress today when you say you are pro-vaccine, or did you lie on all of those podcasts? We have all of this on tape.”
Kennedy replied that his previous comment about vaccines’ safety had been truncated and had since been corrected, telling Wyden, “You know about this, Senator Wyden, so bringing this up right now is dishonest.”
Wyden retorted that Kennedy has “a history of trying to take vaccines away from people,” citing his signature on a 2021 petition calling for the Food and Drug Administration to block access to coronavirus vaccines. Kennedy suggested that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had mishandled the recommendation process for those vaccines.
More from Wyden:
Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate finance committee, also pressed Robert F Kennedy Jr on his role in a deadly measles outbreak that struck Samoa in 2019.
The measles outbreak in Samoa – which claimed the lives of 83 people, most of them young children – came just months after Kennedy visited the island nation.
Quoting Kennedy’s book that raised doubts about the potential lethality of measles, Wyden said, “The reality is measles are in fact deadly and highly contagious – something that you should’ve learned after your lies contributed to the deaths of 83 people, most of them children, in a measles outbreak in Samoa. So my question here is: Mr Kennedy, is measles deadly, yes or no?”
Kennedy replied that the death rate from measles has historically been quite low, and he again denied any role in the Samoa outbreak.
“I went there nothing to do with vaccines. I went there to introduce a medical and thematic system that would digitalize records in Samoa,” Kennedy said. “I never taught or gave any public statement about vaccines. You cannot find a single Samoan who will say, ‘I didn’t get a vaccine because of Bobby Kennedy.’”
He concluded, “I went in June of 2019. The measles outbreak started in August. So, clearly I had nothing to do with the measles.”
That final comment seemed curious given that reports have pointed to the timeline of Kennedy’s visit as potentially incriminating, considering the outbreak followed just a couple of months later.
Medieval Chaos, by Mario Ortiz Martinez
From Senator Michael Bennet:
Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat of Colorado, said that he agreed with Robert F Kennedy Jr on some of his criticism of the US healthcare system, but he painted Kennedy as woefully unqualified to lead the department of health and human services.
“What is so disturbing to me is that out of 330 million Americans, we’re being asked to put somebody in this job who has spent 50 years of his life not honoring the tradition that he talked about at the beginning of this conversation, but peddling in half-truths, peddling in false statements, peddling in theories that create doubt about whether or not things we know are safe are unsafe,” Bennet said.
Bennet then launched into a series of damning, rapid-fire questions about Kennedy’s past comments on a range of healthcare topics, including the coronavirus pandemic and AIDS.
“Did you say that Covid-19 was a genetically engineered bioweapon that targets Black and white people, but spared Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people?” Bennet said.
Kennedy replied, “I didn’t say it was deliberately targeted. I just quoted an NIH-funded and NIH-published study.”
More from Bennet:
Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat of Colorado, continued his rapid-fire questioning of Robert F Kennedy with more quotes from Kennedy’s past writings and interviews.
Bennet asked, “Did you say that Lyme disease is highly likely a materially engineered bioweapon?”
Kennedy replied, “I probably did say that.”
Bennet asked, “Did you say that exposure to pesticides causes children to become transgender?”
Kennedy replied, “No, I never said that.”
Bennet challenged that claim, saying he would submit the record to the committee chair. He then asked, “Did you write in your book, and I quote, ‘it’s undeniable that African AIDS is an entirely different disease from Western AIDS’?”
Kennedy replied, “I’m not sure.”
Bennet concluded his questioning by reminding Kennedy of the importance of the job he is seeking, noting that Americans rely on the department of health and human services to provide accurate medical information.
“This matters. It doesn’t matter what you come here and say that isn’t true, that’s not reflective of what you really believe,” Bennet said. “Unlike other jobs that we’re confirming around this place, this is a job where it is life and death.”
From Nicholas Florko at The Atlantic: This Is About More Than RFK Jr. A day for pseudoscience in Congress.
Shortly after birth, newborns in the United States receive a few quick procedures: an Apgar test to check their vitals, a heel stick to probe for genetic disorders and various other conditions, and in most cases, a hepatitis B vaccine. Without that last one, kids are at risk of getting a brutal, and sometimes deadly, liver condition. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana happens to know quite a lot about that. Before entering Congress in 2009, he was a physician who said he was so affected by an 18-year-old patient with liver failure from the virus that he spearheaded a campaign that vaccinated 36,000 kids against hepatitis B.
Cassidy, a Republican, will now play a major role in determining the fate of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary, whose confirmation hearings begin today on Capitol Hill. Kennedy has said that the hepatitis B vaccine is given to children only because the pharmaceutical company Merck colluded with the government to get the shot recommended for kids, after the drug’s target market (“prostitutes and male homosexuals,” by Kennedy’s telling) weren’t interested in the shot. Kennedy will testify in front of the Senate Finance Committee, where Cassidy and 26 other senators will get the chance to grill him about his views. Though it might seem impossible for an anti-vaccine conspiracist to gain the support of a doctor who still touts the work he did vaccinating children, Cassidy has not indicated how he will vote. Similar to the Democratic senators who have come out forcefully against Kennedy, Cassidy, in an interview with Fox News earlier this month, said that RFK Jr. is “wrong” about vaccines. But he also said that he did agree with him on some things. (Cassidy’s office declined my request to interview the senator.)
Chaos, by Celes Orozco
That Kennedy even has a chance of winning confirmation is stunning in its own right. A longtime anti-vaxxer with a propensity for far-fetched conspiracy theories, RFK Jr. has insinuated that an attempt to assassinate members of Congress via anthrax-laced mail in 2001 may have been a “false flag” attack orchestrated by “someone in our government” to gin up interest in the government preparing for potential biological weapon threats. He has claimed that COVID was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people,” and that 5G is being used to “harvest our data and control our behavior.” He has suggested that the use of antidepressants might be linked to mass shootings. Each one of these theories is demonstrably false. The Republican Party has often found itself at war with mainstream science in recent years, but confirming RFK Jr. would be a remarkable anti-science advance. If Republican senators are willing to do so, is there any scientific belief they would place above the wishes of Donald Trump?
A number of Republicans have already signaled where they stand. In the lead-up to the confirmation hearings, some GOP senators have sought to sanewash RFK Jr., implying that his views really aren’t that extreme. They have reason to like some of what he’s selling: After the pandemic, many Republicans have grown so skeptical of the public-health establishment that Kennedy’s desire to blow it up can seem enticing. And parts of RFK Jr.’s “Make America healthy again” agenda do in fact adhere to sound scientific evidence. His views on how to tackle America’s epidemic of diet-related diseases are fairly well reasoned: Cassidy has said that he agrees with RFK Jr.’s desire to take action against ultra-processed foods. Kennedy appears to have won over the two other Republican doctors on the committee, Senators Roger Marshall of Kansas and John Barrasso of Wyoming. Marshall has been so enthusiastic about Kennedy’s focus on diet-related diseases that he has created a MAHA caucus in the Senate. Although Barrasso hasn’t formally made an endorsement, he has said that Kennedy would provide a “fresh set of eyes” at the Food and Drug Administration. (Spokespeople for Barrasso and Marshall did not respond to requests for comment.)
The immediate emergency we are dealing with is Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional executive order to freeze massive amounts of government payments already approved by Congress. This has literally thrown the country in chaos and will likely lead to a Constitutional crisis if the order is not reversed. For now, a federal judge has blocked the order.
Nicholas Riccardi at the AP: Trump makes moves to expand his power, sparking chaos and a possible constitutional crisis.
Just a little over a week into his second term, President Donald Trump is taking steps to maximize his power, sparking chaos and what critics contend is a constitutional crisis as he challenges the separation of powers that have defined American government for more than 200 years.
The new administration’s most provocative move came this week, as it announced it would temporarily halt federal payments to ensure they complied with Trump’s orders barring diversity programs. The technical-sounding directive had enormous immediate impact before it was blocked by a federal judge, potentially pulling trillions of dollars from police departments, domestic violence shelters, nutrition services and disaster relief programs that rely on federal grants.
Though the Republican administration denied Medicaid was affected, it acknowledged the online portal allowing states to file for reimbursement from the program was shut down for part of Tuesday in what it insisted was an error.
Legal experts noted the president is explicitly forbidden from cutting off spending for programs that Congress has approved. The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to appropriate money and requires the executive to pay it out. A 50-year-old law known as the Impoundment Control Act makes that explicit by prohibiting the president from halting payments on grants or other programs approved by Congress.
“The thing that prevents the president from being an absolute monarch is Congress controls the power of the purse strings,” said Josh Chafetz, a law professor at Georgetown University, adding that even a temporary freeze violates the law. “It’s what guarantees there’s a check on the presidency.”
Democrats and other critics said the move was blatantly unconstitutional.
“What happened last night is the most direct assault on the authority of Congress, I believe, in the history of the United States,” Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, said Tuesday.
Russell Berman at The Atlantic: ‘It’s an Illegal Executive Order. And It’s Stealing.’
Buried within one of the dozens of executive orders that President Donald Trump issued in his first days in office is a section titled “Terminating the Green New Deal.” As presidential directives go, this one initially seemed like a joke. The Green New Deal exists mostly in the dreams of climate activists; it has never been fully enacted into law.
Chaos and Order by Scatts
The next line of Trump’s order, however, made clear he is quite serious: “All agencies shall immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.” The president is apparently using “the Green New Deal” as a shorthand for any federal spending on climate change. But the two laws he targets address much more than that: The $900 billion IRA not only funds clean-energy programs but also lowers prescription-drug prices, while the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law represents the biggest investment in roads, bridges, airports, and public transportation in decades. And the government has spent only a portion of each.
In one sentence, Trump appears to have cut off hundreds of billions of dollars in spending that Congress has already approved, torching Joe Biden’s two most significant legislative accomplishments. The order stunned even some Republicans, many of whom supported the infrastructure law and have taken credit for its investments.
And Trump didn’t stop there. Yesterday, the White House ordered a pause on all federal grants and loans—a move that could put on hold an additional tens of billions of dollars already approved by Congress, touching many corners of American life. Democrats and government watchdogs see the directives as an opening salvo in a fight over the separation of powers, launched by a president bent on defying Congress’s will. “It’s an illegal executive order, and it’s stealing,” Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told me, referring to the order targeting the IRA and infrastructure law.
Withholding money approved by Congress “undermines the entire architecture of the Constitution,” Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland told me. “It essentially makes the president into a king.” Last night, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Trump’s freeze on federal grants and loans “blatantly disobeys the law.”
The Constitution gives Congress the so-called power of the purse—that is, the House and the Senate decide how much money the government spends and where it goes. Since 1974, a federal law known as the Impoundment Control Act has prohibited the executive branch from spending less than the amount of money that Congress appropriates for a given program or purpose. During Trump’s first term, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the administration had violated that law by holding up aid to Ukraine—a move that became central to Trump’s 2019 impeachment.
I hope you’ll read this excellent article. You can use this gift link.
Even though a judge has temporarily stopped the spending freeze, a great deal of damage has already been done.
Nicole LaFond at Talking Points Memo: What To Know About How Trump’s Funding Freeze Screwed Up Medicaid Portals In All 50 States.
In the wake of mass chaos and reports of Medicaid payment portals being shut down in states across the U.S., a federal judge on Tuesday evening temporarily paused a portion of the Trump administration directive to halt the disbursement of federal loans and grants.
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan ordered the Trump administration to not block any federal funds that were already locked in to be disbursed until Feb. 3, temporarily maintaining the status quo while the constitutionality of the Trump move is assessed in court.
The space between order and chaos, by Massimo Giannoni
After OMB Acting Director Matthew Vaeth issued the memo that sparked panic and confusion Monday announcing a supposed “temporary pause” on federal grants, loans and other financial assistance programs — a move that my colleague Josh Marshall and others have described as creating a wide-ranging constitutional crisis and a “unilateral government shutdown on steroids” — the OMB was forced to issue another directive by midday Tuesday claiming it had been misunderstood.
In the Tuesday memo, the OMB claimed that the 90-day pause, which was set to take effect 5:00 p.m. ET Tuesday, was meant to give agencies a window to bring federal spending in line with directives in Trump’s recent spate of executive orders, like those that gutted U.S. foreign aid programs and Trump’s sweeping agenda targeting anti-discrimination programs.
In the Tuesday memo, the OMB said that certain programs like Medicaid, food stamps, small business assistance, rental assistance and preschool programs like Head Start would be excluded from the funding freeze, as Trump seemingly attempts to swipe budget authority from Congress.
But that’s not exactly what happened. Reports surfaced from states around the country Tuesday afternoon that payment portals for Medicaid funding had already been shut down in certain states. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s office was one of the first to announce that his state had been shut out of the program.
Read the rest at TPM.
Could this ha ve actually lit a fire under the somnolent Democrats?
HuffPost: ‘A 5 Alarm F-ing Fire’: Trump’s Federal Funding Freeze Is Jolting Some Dems Into Fight Mode.
Democrats on Capitol Hill are fuming about President Donald Trump’s Monday night announcement that he is freezing all federal grants and loans, a stunning action that appears as unconstitutional as it is harmful to millions of Americans.
They also seem to have been jolted awake in a way they haven’t been in months. For the first time since Trump’s win in November, there is a whiff of resistance back in the air.
“This is a 5 alarm f-ing fire,” Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) said Tuesday on social media. “We work hard not to shut government down in Congress. Trump has decided he can do by fiat out of petulance and blind allegiance to the Project 2025 crowd. You either enable him or stand up to him in this moment. There is no other option.”
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with Democrats, all but told his colleagues to step it up in their role as federal lawmakers or go home.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) had a more blunt take on the president’s claim he was only temporarily halting all federal grant spending: “Bullshit.”
“What happened last night is the most direct assault on the authority of Congress, I believe, in the history of the United States,” King said at a Tuesday media event. “If this stands, then Congress may as well adjourn. The implications of this is the executive can pick and choose which congressional enactments they will execute.”
Trump’s sweeping action, directed by the Office of Management and Budget, is so vaguely written that it’s not even clear which programs, if any, are exempted, meaning billions if not trillions in federal dollars will stop flowing to even the most vital of programs all over the country. Some already affected by the freeze include Head Start, critical medical research and even Medicaid, which has reportedly seen its portals go down in all 50 states.
Chaos and Order by Randell Henry
I’d like to see the Democrats show some fight. Press conferences are useless. They need speak out–get on TV! And find ways to educate people in their home districts
The most recent outrage is Trump’s effort to get rid of long-time government employees. This plan is being executed by Elon Musk and his pals.
Andrew Prokop at Vox: Trump and Musk’s plan for a massive purge of the federal workforce, explained.
A bit more:
But Musk and others in what’s become known as the “tech right” have their own grand ambitions — to “disrupt” a federal workforce they view as bloated, incompetent, and ideologically unsympathetic to them — and build something better in its place.
Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist close to Musk and involved in the Trump transition’s planning, recently argued that the current federal government was basically built by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s and ’40s, but had since become an “out-of-control bureaucracy” without its “founder” around to lead it.
So, Andreessen argued: “You need another FDR-like figure — but in reverse. You need somebody, and a team of people around them, who’s actually willing to come in and take the thing by the throat.” That, he said, “is a lot of what this administration plans to do.”
But it’s far from clear whether the ambitions of Trump and the tech right are truly in alignment beyond hostility to a common enemy. The tech right claims to want a government that can help the country achieve great things and a workforce that prizes merit and talent. Yet Trump’s chief concern is political loyalty, freedom from checks on his power, and the ability to better wield federal power against his enemies. Who is using who?
Read the rest at Vox.
The Scream, Edvard Munch
Wired: Elon Musk Is Running the Twitter Playbook on the Federal Government.
Elon Musk is only one week into his role in President Donald Trump’s new administration, but the US federal government is already rolling out the Twitter playbook to manage its spending and personnel. Just like Musk did when he took over the social media platform, Trump’s team is attempting to drastically reduce the number of government staffers and ensure those who remain are loyal to the president’s agenda.
On Tuesday, federal employees received an email that mirrors the “Fork in the Road” missive sent to Twitter (now X) staff shortly after Musk bought the company in 2022. The email asks federal workers to resign by February 6 if they do not wish to return to the office five days a week and commit to a culture of excellence. Those who choose to resign will continue to get pay and benefits until September, according to the memo.
“The federal workforce should be comprised of employees who are reliable, loyal, trustworthy, and who strive for excellence in their daily work,” reads the email, which was later published on the US Office of Personnel Management website. “Employees will be subject to enhanced standards of suitability and conduct as we move forward.”
The news comes as Musk’s minions take over the US Office of Personnel Management, which acts as a human resources department for the federal workforce. Elon Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED. The Office of Personnel Management also did not respond to a request for comment.
Musk and his advisors, including Trump’s newly appointed AI and crypto czar David Sacks, used a remarkably similar strategy at Twitter. About a week after the acquisition was complete, Musk laid off half the workforce. Sacks helped advise him on which teams and people would be cut.
About two weeks later, remaining employees received an email with the subject line “A Fork in the Road.” Musk said that they would need to be “extremely hardcore” in order to realize his vision for Twitter 2.0. This meant “working long hours at high intensity.” He noted that “only exceptional performance” would receive “a passing grade.” Employees were asked to opt into this vision via a web form. Anyone who failed to do so by the following day would receive three months severance, Musk said. Thousands of Twitter employees would later sue, arguing that they were not paid their full severance. Musk ultimately was able to get the suit dismissed.
“We are all shaking our heads in disbelief at how familiar this all feels,” says Yao Yue, a former principal engineer at Twitter. “Except, the federal government and its employees have specific laws in terms of spending, hiring, and firing.”
In this case, federal employees are being asked to send an email with the word “Resign” in the subject line in the next 10 days. “Purging the federal government of dedicated career civil servants will have vast, unintended consequences that will cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government,” Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union of federal workers, said in a statement. “This offer should not be viewed as voluntary. Between the flurry of anti-worker executive orders and policies, it is clear that the Trump administration’s goal is to turn the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot stay even if they want to.”
I’ll end there, because this post is far too long already. I’m sure there will be new outrages today. We have to preserve our sanity. Be sure to take breaks from the news and do things that help you relax and enjoy life just for today.
Mostly Monday Reads:
Posted: December 30, 2024 Filed under: kakistocracy, kleptocracy, Regime of Chaos, Republicans against democracy | Tags: @johnbuss.bsky.social John Buss, Biden's Federal Judge Appointments, Happy New Year, MAGA Bigotry, RIP Jimmy Carter 10 Comments
Thank you for your service, President Carter. John (repeat1968) Buss
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Yesterday, we lost a good man, a veteran, a fine president, and an outstanding public servant. I gave my very first vote to Jimmy Carter in 1976. I could not put the man who forgave Richard Nixon back in office. Former President Carter helped rebuild New Orleans after Katrina and spent many days and weeks in the 9th ward. He led an amazing and good life. This is from the Carter Center.
Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States and winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, died peacefully Sunday, Dec. 29, at his home in Plains, Georgia, surrounded by his family. He was 100, the longest-lived president in U.S. history.
President Carter is survived by his children — Jack, Chip, Jeff, and Amy; 11 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his beloved wife, Rosalynn, and one grandchild.
“My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and unselfish love,” said Chip Carter, the former president’s son. “My brothers, sister, and I shared him with the rest of the world through these common beliefs. The world is our family because of the way he brought people together, and we thank you for honoring his memory by continuing to live these shared beliefs.”
There will be public observances in Atlanta and Washington, D.C., followed by a private interment in Plains, Georgia. The final arrangements for President Carter’s state funeral, including all public events and motorcade routes, are still pending. The schedule will be released by the Joint Task Force-National Capital Region at https://jtfncr.mdw.army.mil/statefunerals/.
Members of the public are encouraged to visit the official tribute website to the life of President Carter at www.jimmycartertribute.org. This site includes the official online condolence book as well as print and visual biographical materials commemorating his life.
The Carter family has asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to The Carter Center, 453 John Lewis Freedom Parkway N.E., Atlanta, GA 30307.
I found this article in the Washington Post intriguing. “11 facts about Jimmy Carter that may surprise you. The peanut farmer-turned-president, who died Sunday at 100, put solar panels on the White House and once spent 89 seconds inside a melting nuclear reactor.”
Jimmy Carter, the Georgia peanut farmer who became the 39th president of the United States, was known for his no-frills lifestyle, early focus on climate change and concerns about growing divisions in the country.
During his single White House term, from 1977 to 1981 — almost one-third of which was clouded by the 444-day-long Iran hostage crisis — the Navy veteran brokered a historic peace accord between Egypt and Israel and pioneered renewable energy as a cheaper alternative to foreign oil. He was the first Democratic president since 1888 not to win reelection. As the United States’ longest-living former president, he spent decades working to advance peace and humanitarianism, efforts for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Here are some facts that may surprise you about Mr. Carter, who died on Sunday at the age of 100 at his home in Plains, Georgia.
Jimmy Carter was the first future president born in a hospital
James Earl Carter Jr. was delivered on Oct. 1, 1924, in a 60-bed hospital in Plains. — becoming the first future president to be born in such a setting. A hospital birth may seem unremarkable today, but at the beginning of the 20th century, nearly all childbirths still took place at home, including the majority at the time of Mr. Carter’s birth. His mother, Lillian, was a registered nurse at the unit in which he was delivered, and his father, James Earl, was a farmer. Four years later, the family moved from Plains to a nearby farm — where his father grew corn, cotton, peanuts and sugar cane.
He was the first president to be inaugurated by a nickname
When Mr. Carter was sworn into office in 1977 on a family Bible held by his wife, Rosalynn Carter, he took the presidential oath of office using the name “Jimmy” instead of “James” — his actual first name, which he rarely used. Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, who also used their nicknames in the White House, opted to be sworn in using their full names during their inaugurations. After Mr. Carter was sworn in, the organizers of his inauguration ceremony floated a giant peanut-shaped balloon in a parade to honor his roots.
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were married longer than any other presidential couple
They were married for 77 years. The day after Jimmy took Rosalynn on a date to the movies — in 1945 — he told his mother that he knew he wanted to marry Rosalynn. A year later, when he was 21 and she was 18, they were married. “Over the years, we became not only friends and lovers, but partners,” Rosalynn said close to seven decades later, at Jimmy’s 90th birthday celebration. “He has always thought I could do anything.” The pair had known each other for all of Rosalynn’s life; she lived down the road in their hometown of Plains and was a frequent playmate of Ruth Carter, Jimmy’s little sister.
You may read more at the link. Former President Carter was a man of principles and strongly held ethics. He stands in contrast to what gets put into the White House again next month. This is just out from the AP. “An appeals court upholds a $5 million award in a sexual abuse verdict against President-elect Trump.” No wonder this piece of trash is selling merch while supposedly preparing for his next 4 years running the country into the ground. How could people vote for a felon and adjudicated rapist?
A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a jury’s finding in a civil case that Donald Trump sexually abused a columnist in an upscale department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a written opinion upholding the $5 million award that the Manhattan jury granted to E. Jean Carroll for defamation and sexual abuse.
The longtime magazine columnist had testified at a 2023 trial that Trump turned a friendly encounter in spring 1996 into a violent attack after they playfully entered the store’s dressing room.
Trump skipped the trial after repeatedly denying the attack ever happened. But he briefly testified at a follow-up defamation trial earlier this year that resulted in an $83.3 million award. The second trial resulted from comments then-President Trump made in 2019 after Carroll first made the accusations publicly in a memoir.
In its ruling, a three-judge panel of the appeals court rejected claims by Trump’s lawyers that trial Judge Lewis A. Kaplan had made multiple decisions that spoiled the trial, including his decision to allow two other women who had accused Trump of sexually abusing them to testify.
The judge also had allowed the jury to view the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump boasted in 2005 about grabbing women’s genitals because when someone is a star, “you can do anything.”
“We conclude that Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings,” the 2nd Circuit said. “Further, he has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial.”
Meanwhile, we’re about to get steamrolled. Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice has this analysis today, as the Vivek and Elonia comments on American workers hit them below their belts. “Trumpers discover a type of bigotry they oppose (against themselves). Vivek Ramaswamy gives MAGAs a taste of their own medicine.”
Donald Trump hasn’t even been inaugurated yet, and his leading supporters are already tearing at each other’s throats like a pack of frothing and foul-smelling Klansmen over whether there are any good immigrants.
“Take a big step back and F**K YOURSELF in the face,” Elon Musk tweeted Friday night in defense of immigrants who worked for him, in response to a Trump supporter with a more hardline view.
The spectacle of billionaire Musk, techbro Vivek Ramaswamy, would-be Goebbels Steve Bannon, and gibbering Islamophobe and Trump-whisperer Laura Loomer all screaming and bellowing at each other is entertaining in a morbid way. Acrimony is inevitable in a coalition held together by bile, hatred, and racism. And if Democrats can get their act together, they may well be able to take advantage of MAGA dissension.
At the same time, it’s important not to not over-interpret the intra-Trumper feud. Racism is a lie, which means it’s always incoherent — and racist coalitions often therefore end up fighting amongst themselves about who’s in the in group and who gets targeted by the regime.
But historically, these arguments at the margins have often coexisted with massive human rights abuses. Ramaswamy and Bannon may disagree about the exact trajectory of MAGA. But they can still come together to hurt a lot of people — and that is exactly what they will try to do.
For MAGA, all bigotry is not created equal
This week’s round of MAGA on MAGA violence was ignited by Loomer, who was most recently in the news for her oddly close relationship to Trump in the weeks following the Butler shooting.
On December 23, Loomer attacked Sriram Krishnan, who Trump selected as an advisor on artificial intelligence, criticizing his support for H-1B visas. H-1Bs allow highly skilled workers to come to the US to work and are especially prevalent in tech, where they’re used by many Indian and Chinese engineers. Loomer tweeted that support for H-1Bs was “not America First policy.”
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Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo pointed out that the MAGA spat is the inevitable outcome of “Trump’s deep-seated and extreme transactionalism.” Indeed, Trump has few real policy commitments beyond self-aggrandizement and revenge.
Various people — Musk, Loomer, Bannon, RFK Jr., whoever — glommed onto Trump for fame or fortune or to advance their own agendas. Now they have to fight among themselves because Trump himself doesn’t really care enough to impose a vision, much less any kind of discipline.
That’s certainly part of the dynamic here. But it’s also important to note that the ideological divisions on display are in part the natural result of founding a movement on racism and bigotry.
Racism is as thoroughly debunked as any ideology can be. There is no consistent difference in intelligence or ability between different groups of humans; we’re all the same race. That means that “racial differences” are all made-up nonsense.
And that in turn means that two racists are likely to make up slightly different nonsense from each other. MAGA can hate all immigrants, but idolize Musk — or, if they hate Musk, they can idolize Melania. Ramaswamy can spew a bunch of racist tropes and apply them to Americans as a group rather than to other groups we’re more used to seeing get picked on.
Again, there is more to read at the link. Just in time for the man who botched COVID-19 with deadly results, we have a new Virus sweeping the country. This is from The Hill. “Norovirus outbreaks surging across the US: CDC data.”
Norovirus cases are surging across the country this winter, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.
There were 91 outbreaks reported by state health departments during the week of Dec. 5, up from 69 in the last week of November, according to the CDC.
The highest number for the same period over the last several years was 65 outbreaks.
But the data are not comprehensive. Currently, state, local and territorial health departments are not required to report individual cases of norovirus illness to the CDC, and only 15 states participate in the National Outbreak Reporting System.
Additionally, the CDC pointed out some people may not seek health care for their illness, and most hospitals and doctor’s offices do not generally test for norovirus.
Norovirus is extremely contagious and can cause diarrhea, vomiting, nausea and stomach pain within 12 hours to 47 hours after being exposed, the agency said.
Most people with norovirus get better within one to three days, but they can still spread the virus for a few days after.
Norovirus is the leading cause of foodborne illness in the United States. Each year, there are about 2,500 reported outbreaks. They can occur throughout the year but are most common between November and April, the CDC said.
Just in time for the Republicans who want to dismantle the FDA. Speaking of today’s Republicans, this may or may not shock you. This is from AXIOS. “Nearly half of GOP voters support using military to put immigrants in camps.”Russell Contreras has the analysis.
Almost half of Republican voters believe the U.S. military should round up undocumented immigrants and put them into detention camps until they can be deported, a new survey finds.
Why it matters: President-elect Trump has suggested that he’ll use the military in immigration raids and turn to a 1798 law to put immigrants in camps.
- His base appears to support those plans despite the likely fierce opposition from most Americans.
By the numbers: 46% of Republicans endorse using the military in mass deportation raids and placing immigrants in camps, according to a nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) post-election survey.
- That’s more than double that of independent voters (19%) who agree with the idea.
- And that’s more than five times as Democratic voters (8%) who supported this policy.
What they’re saying: “There have been questions in the Trump era where I’ve thought…I can’t believe that we need to know the answer to this question,” Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI, tells Axios.
- “I guess the good news is that three-quarters of the country rejects this idea that we should be putting immigrants in the country illegally into internment camps guarded by the military.”
- Jones said the bad news is that nearly half of people who consider themselves members of a mainstream political party do.
State of play: Trump said in his recent TIME “Person of the Year” interview that he would be open to using camps to hold detained immigrants in the U.S.
- Trump in the TIME interview suggested deporting 21 million people, which would likely require an increase in detention centers to hold people suspected of being in the U.S. without authorization before they’re deported.
Reality check: Study after study shows there are 11 million undocumented people in the country, not 21 million, as Trump has repeatedly and falsely said.
- There are roughly 24.5 million noncitizen immigrants in the U.S., including those here awaiting asylum decisions or otherwise here lawfully, according to the Pew Research Center.
This is the annual American Values Survey. You may read about their methodology at the link. Ask me again why I never leave Orleans Parish anymore. I try not to run into these kinds of folks.
Zoom in: The PRRI survey also found that American voters who hold highly authoritarian views were six times as likely to endorse putting undocumented immigrants into such camps than American voters who reject authoritarianism (48% v. 8%).
Lawyer Marc E. Elias suggests you watch him discuss how Joe Biden and Senate Democrats had a big victory in confirming federal judges with Brian Tyler Cohen.
So that’s it for me this year! I will see you in the New Year!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Finally Friday Reads: Your Cassandra Daily
Posted: November 29, 2024 Filed under: American Fascists, corruption, Donald Trump, Regime of Chaos | Tags: @johnbuss.bsky.social, @repeat1968. John Buss, Donny Dotard and the Chaos Cult, Trump Cabinet = Rape Gang 7 Comments
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.
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Though Trump overwhelmingly won the electoral college vote, his tally in the popular vote is hardly a landslide.
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In the last 75 years, only three other presidents had popular-vote margins that were smaller than Trump’s.
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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?
Mostly Monday Reads: Only the Very Psycho
Posted: November 25, 2024 Filed under: Regime of Chaos | Tags: #TrumpCult, All you fascists bound to lose, Project 2025, Regime of Chaos, Trump quackery cabinet, With Liberty and Justice For All 4 Comments
“Coming soon, FAFO,” John Buss, @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’ve been trying to focus on how bad the Trump Regime’s economic policies will be for the economy since I am a Financial Economist. Today, we must face the horrific white christofascist appointments that will kill more women and endanger the lives of the GLBTQ+, as well as threaten the lives of young children, the elderly, and those with preexisting conditions. We will have a combination of VooDoo Economics, VooDo medicine, and VooDoo exorcism. People will die. People will be incarcerated. People will righteously fear for their lives. When the words “Liberty and Justice for all” were enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, they signed on to “all,” and “all” stood until this regime. The Supreme Court, Congress, the President, and the People firmly moved the path of American history to ensure that “all” meant “all.” Many of my family members nobly signed on to the Declaration and the wars, even though it meant they sacrificed their lives and liberty. They did so because they wanted to hand a legacy of freedom down to us. Shame on us if we let this band of psychopaths steal our past and our future.
The list of “undesirables” and those that must be controlled by specific kinds of white men is long and threatening. Just living, just doing your job, just attending school, just trying to start a family, just being you and not bothering anyone else will be illegal in this country if Donald and his cronies have their way.
The Independent reported today that “Trump reportedly plans to kick trans troops out of the military within days of inauguration. Trump’s actions could eject thousands of current trans service members.” This comes on the heels of the nominee for the Defense Department’s desire to remove women from all kinds of duties in the military. These actions will hurt military readiness and create stress within the ranks of the military.
Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order that would remove transgender service members from the military as soon as his first day in office.
The president-elect is reportedly preparing to issue an order following his inauguration on January 20 that would effectively ban trans people serving in the military — and then medically discharge the thousands of currently serving trans service members in the armed forces.
In his first term in office, Trump declared that the US would no longer “accept or allow” trans people in the military, citing “tremendous medical costs and disruption,” he tweeted in 2017. The ban took effect in 2019.
President Joe Biden reversed that policy, which was the subject of several lawsuits. Now, Trump is expected to immediately rescind Biden’s order and go further by ejecting currently-serving trans troops, according to The Times, citing sources familiar with the president-elect’s plans.
The executive action is among a stack of orders the president-elect is planning to issue as soon as he re-enters the White House, including sweeping actions on immigration, all of which are expected to draw significant legal battles.
Senator and military veteran Tammy Duckworth continues to push back on the notion that women can’t do the jobs they’ve passed all kinds of tests to perform. From CBS News’ Face the Nation, “Sen. Duckworth says Trump defense secretary pick is “flat-out wrong” about women in combat roles.”
“Our military could not go to war without the 220,000-plus women who serve in uniform,” Duckworth said. She added that having women in the military “does make us more effective, does make us more lethal.”
Lisa Needham of Public Notice writes, “Trump hoodwinked voters about his worst policy commitments. They signed up for Project 2025 whether they knew it or not.” It’s easy to hoodwink idiots. What amazes me is the number of people who seem to want us to be mean and petty.
Before digging into the steps Trump is taking to force the worst of Project 2025’s personnel and policies on the country, let’s tackle that whole mandate question first.
Besides the fact that the Trump campaign deliberately obscured some of its most consequential policy goals to win votes, there’s the fact that his victory is proving far less decisive than it initially appeared. As votes have continued to be counted, Trump’s popular vote margin is going to be less than two percent, smaller than Hillary Clinton’s popular vote win in 2016 and in fact the smallest popular vote margin since 2000. Declaring you have a mandate doesn’t make it so, but it is The Republican Way going back to George W. Bush.
Back to Project 2025. Despite lying about it throughout the campaign, Trump wasted no time appointing several of the project’s authors to key positions in his new administration. Because they’ve been steeped in hypocrisy for so long, Republicans see nothing odd about Trump embracing Project 2025 after feigning a complete lack of familiarity and having called it “ridiculous and abysmal.”
Project 2025 co-author Russ Vought, who led the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) during Trump’s first term, got caught on tape saying the quiet part out loud during the campaign when he told undercover reporters to trust that Trump would implement a national abortion ban if he returned to power, despite his public statements to the contrary. But far from being rapped on the knuckles for linking Trump to a stance he ostensibly opposed, Vought has been rewarded by getting his old OMB job back.
Besides being one of Trump’s abortion-whisperers, Vought is going to be instrumental in executing Trump’s plan to strip federal workers of job protections and replace them with hard-right partisans who see their only job as executing Trump’s wishes. Vought won’t stop there, though. He’s said we’re living in a “post-constitutional” time, which for Vought apparently means that Trump gets to turn the military on protestors and to cut spending whether Congress agrees or not.
If this sounds to you a lot like an imperial presidency, of deforming the whole of the federal government to make it solely a weapon to implement Trump’s desires, you’re not wrong. And Vought is by no means alone in being one of the Project 2025 denizens who Trump is ushering into high-level government positions.
Trump’s pick for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr, wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC. In it, Carr proposes that the FCC regulate big technology companies like Apple, Meta, and Google so that what Carr called the “censorship cartel” can be dismantled. Carr also backs Trump’s plan to penalize broadcast networks for “bias,” having already raised the specter of killing a Paramount-Skydance merger over Trump’s nonsense conspiracy theory about 60 Minutes deceptively editing an interview with Kamala Harris.
You can expect Carr’s vision of free speech to look a lot like what X/Twitter looks like under Trump pal Elon Musk: protection of hate speech and suppression of viewpoints critical of Trump.
Trump’s Surgeon General and FDA chair appointments are as appalling as the rest. They also stand to endanger the lives of many Americans. The health of women, children, and the elderly is in danger. It gets worse. The over million lives lost to Trump’s mismanagement of COVID-19 will look like a joy ride if either of the next two incoming diseases turns into a pandemic. They may be because the people most equipped to deter them will be supervised by idiots. The CDC pick is a nightmare waiting to happen, too. This is from NPR. “What to know about Trump’s picks for CDC, FDA and surgeon general.” It’s reported by Will Stone.
In a series of high-profile announcements Friday evening, President-elect Trump made his picks for three top health positions in the new administration.
Johns Hopkins surgeon Marty Makary is his choice for Food and Drug Administration commissioner. He wants former Rep. Dave Weldon, a Republican from Florida, to serve as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a Fox News contributor, is in line to be the next surgeon general.
Trump made all three announcements on Truth Social and in press releases. Together the picks would help the incoming president shift the priorities of agencies that are linchpins in public health. But the choices also come with controversy.
Here are some snips on all three cabinet candidates.
A frequent guest on Fox News, Makary has authored several books on health care, is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and holds a master’s in public health from Harvard. He gained visibility for his writing and research on the high cost of health care, medical errors and the need for more transparency in medicine, among other topics.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, he also emerged as a vocal critic of various aspects of the public health response, particularly vaccine mandates and what he called the “complete dismissal of natural immunity.”
He voiced support for lockdowns early in the pandemic and encouraged universal masking. But in the subsequent years, he became increasingly outspoken against certain COVID-related decisions made by federal health agencies. He called the CDC under the Biden administration, “the most political CDC in history.”
<snip>
“He’s a well-trained internist. He’s practiced medicine,” says Dr. Georges Benjamin, head of the American Public Health Association. “He doesn’t [seem to] have traditional public health training, but we’ll learn more when he goes through Senate confirmation.”
As a congressman from Florida, Weldon “worked with the CDC to enact a ban on patents for human embryos,” Trump said in his Truth Social post. Weldon also introduced protections for health care workers and organizations that do not provide or aid in abortions. Known as the Weldon Amendment, the clause has been attached to the annual HHS spending bill in Congress since 2005.
The Weldon Amendment and related policies apply to public funds. But according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, it also “emboldens health insurance plans, health care institutions and medical providers to deny abortion services and coverage … often under the rubric of protecting ‘conscience’ or ‘religious freedom.’ “
<snip>
As with several of his picks for his Cabinet, Trump’s new surgeon general comes with experience at Fox News.
Nesheiwat is a medical contributor for the network and author of Beyond the Stethoscope: Miracles in Medicine, a book described on her website as “a vivid Christian memoir” that recounts her experiences during the pandemic and after. She’s also medical director at CityMD, a network of urgent care centers in New York and New Jersey — experience she has drawn on in selling her own line of vitamin supplements.
Along with Dr. Oz and RFK, jr., we should see a healthy business, perhaps called Trump Pharmaceuticals, in quack medicine. We also see the footprints to ensure children get polio again and that women die from pregnancy again. This comes after ProPublica has found yet another black woman who died unnecessarily from the Trump Abortion Ban law put into place in Texas. “Are Avoiding D&Cs and Reaching for Riskier Miscarriage Treatments. Thirty-five-year-old Porsha Ngumezi’s case raises questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to avoid standard care even in straightforward miscarriages.”
Wrapping his wife in a blanket as she mourned the loss of her pregnancy at 11 weeks, Hope Ngumezi wondered why no obstetrician was coming to see her.
Over the course of six hours on June 11, 2023, Porsha Ngumezi had bled so much in the emergency department at Houston Methodist Sugar Land that she’d needed two transfusions. She was anxious to get home to her young sons, but, according to a nurse’s notes, she was still “passing large clots the size of grapefruit.”
Hope dialed his mother, a former physician, who was unequivocal. “You need a D&C,” she told them, referring to dilation and curettage, a common procedure for first-trimester miscarriages and abortions. If a doctor could remove the remaining tissue from her uterus, the bleeding would end.
But when Dr. Andrew Ryan Davis, the obstetrician on duty, finally arrived, he said it was the hospital’s “routine” to give a drug called misoprostol to help the body pass the tissue, Hope recalled. Hope trusted the doctor. Porsha took the pills, according to records, and the bleeding continued.
Three hours later, her heart stopped.
The 35-year-old’s death was preventable, according to more than a dozen doctors who reviewed a detailed summary of her case for ProPublica. Some said it raises serious questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to diverge from the standard of care and reach for less-effective options that could expose their patients to more risks. Doctors and patients described similar decisions they’ve witnessed across the state.
Leonard Leo continues to be a religious crusader against human rights and still has the billions to do so. This article from NPR is probably one of the reasons why MTG wants to defund it NPR and NPTV. Haven’t we been through all this before? Don’t we learn anything? “The man who helped roll back abortion rights now wants to ‘crush liberal dominance’.” It’s not liberal dominance. It should be a dominance of facts, law, and sanity. Here’s some of an interview that shows where he wants to stick his tentacles next.
Inskeep: Mr. Leo, I want people to know about something called the Teneo Network, if I’m pronouncing it correctly. There’s been some reporting on this, an effort that you’re involved with to bring conservative influence to businesses Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, in the same way that you brought more conservative influences to the judiciary, will you help me understand what you’re doing there? With judges, you identified young law clerks, young lawyers to try to promote them into the judiciary. What are you doing with, say, Hollywood?
Leo: It’s very important, in my view, to create pipelines of talent and networks of very driven, strategic people in all sectors of American life. If you want to introduce, you know, the Western cultural tradition and traditional values. So in the case of Hollywood, for example, the idea is to recruit and identify talented young professionals who have a knack for content creation and other aspects of the production of entertainment. People who believe in a sort of family-centered entertainment, where there’s a high demand. And Hollywood recognizes that. And then really helping them find opportunities to use their skills to create that kind of entertainment in the Hollywood space and beyond. And there are a lot of young professionals in entertainment and in journalism and in business and finance who are looking for opportunities to inject their traditional values and the Western cultural tradition into other aspects of American social and cultural life.
Inskeep: ProPublica obtained a video of you promoting this project and saying you wanted to “crush liberal dominance.” Is that what you want to do?
Leo: Yes! And the reason Steve – and I would really call your attention to the words I used: I want to crush liberal dominance. In other words, I want to make sure that there’s a level playing field for the American people to make choices about the lives that they want to have in their country. I’m perfectly happy having a world where people can make choices between various kinds of things. But what I don’t want is a system where our entertainment system or our world of news media or our business and finance worlds are heavily dominated by left ideology that either chokes out other ways of thinking about things, or that just creates a system where sort of inappropriate political and policy decisions are being made in places where politics and policy don’t really have a proper place.
Politico asks this question. “Could Trump sideline government watchdogs? Some are already quitting. The president-elect’s allies have called for a wholesale replacement of the more than 70 inspectors general across the federal government.”
Two in-house investigators at U.S. intelligence agencies recently quit their jobs. There’s growing fear in Washington that they could be the start of an exodus — or a purge — of government watchdogs.
A wave of departures by inspectors general would give President-elect Donald Trump the opportunity to nominate or appoint people of his choice to the watchdog posts — leaving dozens of federal departments, agencies and offices subject to oversight by people who would owe their positions to Trump.
In the wake of Trump’s election, CIA Inspector General Robin Ashton and Intelligence Community Inspector General Thomas Monheim revealed they plan to leave government in the coming weeks. Neither cited Trump’s victory as a basis for the decision, but the timing of the announcements troubled some longtime advocates for IGs.
“I’m very disappointed that the two IGs have resigned,” said former Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich. “My view is that when things get tough, IGs should not resign, but instead redouble their efforts to do their jobs. Doing a tough job in difficult circumstances is what they bargained for. I think preemptively resigning makes things too easy for the incoming administration to avoid oversight. To prematurely run for the exits, in my view, that is not the way to handle the responsibility.”
Trump frequently clashed in his first term with some IGs, who are responsible for investigating alleged misconduct by the government, and his team briefly floated a plan to call on all of them to resign, though Trump never did. This time around, Trump allies have urged the president-elect to clean house and remove from their positions all watchdogs appointed by other presidents, though it’s unclear if Trump will do so.
This kind of chaos is just what Trump thrives on. It gets him all junked up so he can lie and get media attention. It will be incumbent on all of us to protect the vulnerable people that this Regime of Chaos will go after. There are fewer safeguards against his desire to join the Putin circle. We must also steel the nerves of the public servants and representatives in this battle of law and order against Thievery and chaos.
This news is a stab in the heart of Lady Justice. “Special counsel Jack Smith asks judge to dismiss Trump’s election interference charges.” No Justice. No Peace.
Vive la résistance
I’m updating this to include something I just read on @threads tonight. Look what he’s announced and he’s not even in office yet. Be prepared. https://www.threads.net/@dakinikat/post/DC0U99Rt7Ts
Canada and Mexico? It’s like we’re just blowing ourselves and all of North America up!
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