That is a move usually done by horrible dictators, like Pinochet. As the image up top illustrates, the women of the disappeared in Chile during the reign of Pinochet could only protest by dancing in silence with the photo of the missing pinned to their clothes. I wonder if this will become a form of protest here, but I get the feeling Trump would not even allow that.
Yes. If DHS can barge in, say your visa was revoked, be told you have a green card, say it's revoked too, and then disappear you so that neither your lawyer nor your family can find you, then all the guardrails are gone. There is no policy, practice, or law protecting anyone.
A federal judge in NY has blocked any effort by the Trump administration to deport Mahmoud Khalil – whose arrest and imminent deportation Trump celebrated on Turth Social today — until further proceedings play out. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us…
This shit is as mortifying as it is dangerous. And Hasset’s smirk makes it all the more infuriating. Haha! We’re threatening war with a longtime ally and the country with which we share the longest border in the world! These assholes should never, ever be allowed to live this down.
America apparently now doing the Russia-style "secret [ie totally made up] chemical labs in your country justifies the cross-border menacing we were already doing" move.
There are only two things that stand between Trump and being a dictator — the courts and elections. Trump wants to send a clear message to law firms that he will go after them. It is ok to be afraid, the question is what do you do. Do you hide and cower in fear or stand tall and say it is wrong?
They Dance Alone (Cueca Solo)’ appears on the 1987 album ‘Nothing Like The Sun’. The track, which was about the Cueca, a dance that the “Mothers of the Disappeared” used to do to remember their missing loved ones was banned in Chile and had the ignominy of being the first Sting solo single not to chart in the UK. Despite this it remains one of Sting’s most enduring and powerful songs and one of his most overtly political.
They Dance Alone (Gueca Solo)
Why are these women here dancing on their own? Why is there this sadness in their eyes? Why are the soldiers here Their faces fixed like stone? I can’t see what it is that they despise They’re dancing with the missing They’re dancing with the dead They dance with the invisible ones Their anguish is unsaid They’re dancing with their fathers They’re dancing with their sons They’re dancing with their husbands They dance alone, they dance alone
It’s the only form of protest they’re allowed I’ve seen their silent faces they scream so loud If they were to speak these words they’d go missing too Another woman on the torture table what else can they do They’re dancing with the missing They’re dancing with the dead They dance with the invisible ones Their anguish is unsaid They’re dancing with their fathers They’re dancing with their sons They’re dancing with their husbands They dance alone, they dance alone
One day we’ll dance on their graves One day we’ll sing our freedom One day we’ll laugh in our joy And we’ll dance One day we’ll dance on their graves One day we’ll sing our freedom One day we’ll laugh in our joy And we’ll dance
Ellas danzan con los desaparecidos Ellas danzan con los muertos Ellas danzan con amores invisibles Ellas danzan con silenciosa angustia Danzan con sus padres Danzan con sus hijos Danzan con sus esposos Ellas danzan solas Danzan solas
Hey Mr. Pinochet You’ve sown a bitter crop It’s foreign money that supports you One day the money’s going to stop No wages for your torturers No budget for your guns Can you think of your own mother Dancin’ with her invisible son They’re dancing with the missing They’re dancing with the dead They dance with the invisible ones Their anguish is unsaid They’re dancing with their fathers They’re dancing with their sons They’re dancing with their husbands They dance alone, they dance alone
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“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.
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”.
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.
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 Republicwritten 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.
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 Bulwarkand 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?
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Good morning, I spent the day yesterday celebrating International Women Day with my daughter…it was a coochie day! We went to Athens and got some piercings.
I have no clue what the orange turd did, and to be honest, I don’t want to know. So, I’ve just got cartoons and a few nice stories for you…
So look for “it” when the video slows down, it is in the background in the woods. It made me think of South Park’s Scuzzlebutt:
Scuzzlebutt is a basket-weaving monster who lives on top of a mountain in South Park. He has a piece of celery as an arm and Patrick Duffy as a leg. He appears prominently in the Season Oneepisode, “Volcano“.
As usual, there is so much bad news out there that I don’t know where to begin. Everything is awful, but we have to go on with our lives amid the madness. Honestly, I think Trump is insane. His dementia is progressing. He is obsessed with punishing anyone in or out of the government who ever criticized him or offended him in any way. It’s really hard to believe this is happening in America. I have no idea what will happen next, but it does seem that his erratic behavior is beginning to get to some powerful people. It also looks like there is some trouble in paradise for Elon Musk. That will be the focus of most of this post.
Anyway, I’m just going to share some stories that hit home with me today, and then try to have a normal weekend while I still can.
Yesterday, we learned what led to the deaths of Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa.
For years, actor Gene Hackman’s doting wife Betsy Arakawa would do whatever she could to help keep him healthy, whether it meant wearing a mask everywhere she went or encouraging him to stay fit by riding his bike or doing yoga on Zoom.
In late February, the couple was found dead in their New Mexico home, a heartrending end to the life they shared. Arakawa, 65, died of hantavirus and days later, Hackman, 95, died of heart disease, the New Mexico medical investigator’s office revealed Friday.
Authorities, working to lay out a timeline of what happened, said Hackman had Alzheimer’s disease and may have not realized he was alone in the days before he died.
Clues as to what the couple’s life looked like before their tragic deaths could be gleaned from their last interactions with loved ones. Close and longtime friends of the couple say they seemed to be in good health at their most recent encounter.
“Last time we saw them, they were alive and well,” Daniel Lenihan told CNN’s Erin Burnett last week. Barbara, Lenihan’s wife, said she had last seen Arakawa a few weeks ago at a home decor shop the two had opened together in Santa Fe….
Using evidence gathered from their home, authorities pieced together what they now believe happened, answering many of the questions behind what began as a mystery.
What probably happened:
Arakawa’s last known interactions were on February 11. She had a short email exchange with her massage therapist that morning and later visited a Sprouts Farmers Market, CVS pharmacy and a dog food store before returning to her gated community at around 5:15 p.m., Santa Fe Sheriff Adan Mendoza said Friday. After that, there was no other known activity or outgoing communication from her, the sheriff said.
“Numerous emails were unopened on her computer on February 11,” Mendoza said.
Arakawa died from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a rare disease that results from infection through contact with rodents, according to Dr. Heather Jarrell, chief medical examiner for the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator. Pills found scattered on the bathroom floor near Arakawa’s body were prescription thyroid medication and not related to her death, Jarrell said. Zinna, one of the animal-loving couple’s dogs, was found dead in a crate in the bathroom near her body.
“Based on the circumstances, it is reasonable to conclude that Ms. Arakawa passed away first,” Jarrell said.
What Hackman’s days looked like after his wife of more than 30 years left his side has yet to be fully pieced together, but the end came in a matter of days.
Hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease took the acting legend’s life, likely on February 18 when his pacemaker last recorded his heartbeat, according to Jarrell. The device recorded Hackman was experiencing atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart rhythm.
His body was discovered on the ground near the kitchen, with a walking cane and sunglasses next to him, on February 26.
Authorities said he was “in a very poor state of health.” Hackman had “advanced” Alzheimer’s disease, which was “a significant contributory factor” in his death, and it was possible the actor was “not aware” his wife had died several days earlier, Jarrell said.
Was Arakawa really his only caregiver? That must have been really difficult. Did these two have close family members? If that was my Dad, I would have been checking in every day. I don’t understand how it took so long for the bodies to be discovered.
Betsy Arakawa, pianist and wife of actor Gene Hackman, died of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, New Mexico chief medical examiner Heather Jarrell said Friday at a news conference.
Arakawa, 65, and Hackman, 95, were found deadin their Santa Fe home last month.
Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome is a rare illness spread by rodents that was first detected in humans in the United States about three decades ago. Here’s what to know….
Hantaviruses can develop into hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a lung disease that kills about 38 percent of people who develop respiratory symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Symptoms typically start to show between one and eight weeks after first contact with the virus.
The disease presents with flu-like symptoms, such as fever, muscle aches and a cough, Jarrell said. About half of patients experience headaches, dizziness, chills and abdominal problems such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and stomach pain, according to the CDC.
As the disease progresses, it attacks capillaries in the lungs and can cause them to leak, damaging lung tissue, causing fluid buildup and severely affecting heart and lung function, according to the Mayo Clinic. Symptoms of this stage of the illness can include difficulty breathing and an irregular heart rate.
There is no specific treatment. Breathing support, including intubation, may help some patients….
Hantavirus disease is rare. There were 864 reported cases in the United States between 1993, when the CDC began tracking the illness, and 2022, the last available CDC data.
The states with the highest number of cases during that time were New Mexico (122), Colorado (119), Arizona (86) and California (78). The vast majority of cases originate west of the Mississippi River, according to the American Lung Association. In New Mexico, authorities have documented between one and seven cases in humans annually in recent years, state public health veterinarian Erin Phipps said Friday.
The disease is transmitted through rodent droppings, urine, or saliva. This whole episode is so sad. It kind of reminded me of what happened to William Holden–not that the deaths are similar, but Holden was a famous person who died alone in his home and wasn’t found for some time. He was very drunk and fell and hit his head on a table. His body was found by his building superintendent several days after his death. He was only 63.
After the Washington Post ran a front-page photo of President Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu sitting in front of the Oval Office fireplace on February 4, careful reader Thomas M. Sneeringer fired off a letter to the editor. “It appears the fireplace mantel in the Oval Office has been subjected to President Donald Trump’s Midas touch,” he wrote. Sneeringer observed that the spray of Swedish ivy that has adorned the mantle for more than half a century had vanished, replaced by what he speculated might be… golf trophies?
By Ellen Haasen
“I was instantly offended and instantly understood how it happened,” Sneeringer told me in an interview. “It was just so consistent about what we know about Trump’s taste.”
He knew that the missing ivy was no ordinary plant. Irish ambassador Thomas J. Kiernan had given it to President John F. Kennedy as a gift in 1961, and ever sinceit has been a consistent backdrop to some of the most famous White House meetings. Back in 1984, during the Reagan administration, Kurt Anderson wrote a tribute to “The Plant” in Time magazine:
“The Oval Office may be the headiest place in America. When the President, sitting in his desk chair at the southern tip of the Oval, stares dead ahead to the far wall, he sees The Plant. Anywhere else it would be a robust but unremarkable Swedish ivy. But there on the marble mantelpiece, day after consequential day, it basks in the power and the glory. No matter who has been inaugurated since 1961, The Plant has always stayed…The Swedish ivy, given its potential for leaks, is an Administration team player first and last.”
The hardy plant’s scalloped green leaves are center stage in photos of Ronald Reagan meeting Gorbachev, George H.W. Bush schmoozing with Bruce Willis and Nelson Mandela, and Jimmy Carter conferring with Yitzhak Rabin or having lunch with his wife Rosalynn. Nelson Shanks painted Bill Clinton leaning next to the ivy in his official presidential portrait.
The plant survived Trump’s first term, and it was even there to bear witness to that awkward meeting between Trump and Joe Biden after the 2024 election.
But no more.
So where is it now? The White House did not respond to several inquiries about the plant’s whereabouts or the gold statues that replaced it.
Like so many things that Trump and his DOGE team are heedlessly destroying, the Oval Office ivy has a constituency that may not be immediately obvious to those wielding the chainsaws. With its own Instagram account and generations of progeny that even Elon Musk can’t rival, the humble houseplant enjoys a cult following.
I hope he didn’t just throw the plant in the trash. Trump really does destroy everything he touches.
Could Trump be tiring of Elon Musk pretending to be president?
Marco Rubio was incensed. Here he was in the Cabinet Room of the White House, the secretary of state, seated beside the president and listening to a litany of attacks from the richest man in the world.
Seated diagonally opposite, across the elliptical mahogany table, Elon Musk was letting Mr. Rubio have it, accusing him of failing to slash his staff.
You have fired “nobody,” Mr. Musk told Mr. Rubio, then scornfully added that perhaps the only person he had fired was a staff member from Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Mr. Rubio had been privately furious with Mr. Musk for weeks, ever since his team effectively shuttered an entire agency that was supposedly under Mr. Rubio’s control: the United States Agency for International Development. But, in the extraordinary cabinet meeting on Thursday in front of President Trump and around 20 others — details of which have not been reported before — Mr. Rubio got his grievances off his chest.
Mr. Musk was not being truthful, Mr. Rubio said. What about the more than 1,500 State Department officials who took early retirement in buyouts? Didn’t they count as layoffs? He asked, sarcastically, whether Mr. Musk wanted him to rehire all those people just so he could make a show of firing them again. Then he laid out his detailed plans for reorganizing the State Department.
Mr. Musk was unimpressed. He told Mr. Rubio he was “good on TV,” with the clear subtext being that he was not good for much else. Throughout all of this, the president sat back in his chair, arms folded, as if he were watching a tennis match.
After the argument dragged on for an uncomfortable time, Mr. Trump finally intervened to defend Mr. Rubio as doing a “great job.” Mr. Rubio has a lot to deal with, the president said. He is very busy, he is always traveling and on TV, and he has an agency to run. So everyone just needs to work together.
The meeting was a potential turning point after the frenetic first weeks of Mr. Trump’s second term. It yielded the first significant indication that Mr. Trump was willing to put some limits on Mr. Musk, whose efforts have become the subject of several lawsuits and prompted concerns from Republican lawmakers, some of whom have complained directly to the president.
A bit more:
In a post on social media after the meeting, Mr. Trump said the next phase of his plan to cut the federal work force would be conducted with a “scalpel” rather than a “hatchet” — a clear reference to Mr. Musk’s scorched-earth approach.
Mr. Musk, who wore a suit and tie to Thursday’s meeting instead of his usual T-shirt after Mr. Trump publicly ribbed him about his sloppy appearance, defended himself by saying that he had three companies with a market cap of tens of billions of dollars, and that his results spoke for themselves
But he was soon clashing with members of the cabinet.
Just moments before the blowup with Mr. Rubio, Mr. Musk and the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, went back and forth about the state of the Federal Aviation Administration’s equipment for tracking airplanes and what kind of fix was needed. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, jumped in to support Mr. Musk.
Mr. Duffy said the young staff of Mr. Musk’s team was trying to lay off air traffic controllers. What am I supposed to do? Mr. Duffy said. I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers?
Jess Bidgood wrote a follow-up to the Haberman/Swan story, also at The New York Times:
Yesterday, President Trump did something he’s seemingly been loath to do in the first seven weeks of his new administration: He reined in Elon Musk.
My colleagues Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman have the details of the extraordinary cabinet meeting where everything unfolded, and you’re going to want to read every word….
What was clear was that some of the nation’s cabinet secretaries had hit their breaking point with Musk’s efforts to steamroll the federal government. And while Trump said he still supported Musk’s mission, he gave his secretaries something they wanted. As Jonathan and Maggie wrote:
“From now on, he said, the secretaries would be in charge; the Musk team would only advise.”
The encounter stood as the first indication that Trump is willing to put some limits on the billionaire, even if those limits would do little more than bring the realities of Musk’s wide-ranging role more in line with how the administration’s lawyers have described it in court.
John Cielukowski, Fat Cat Electric
But the limits, if they hold, could raise bigger questions about the role Musk will play in the government going forward — especially if his history in the business world is any guide.
Ryan Mac, a colleague of mine who covers big tech, has reported on Musk for a long time. Today, I asked him if Musk had ever been content with an adviser-style role, one in which he doesn’t run the show.
Ryan’s answer was simple: No.
Musk has never liked being one voice among many, Ryan explained. Vivek Ramaswamy, who was initially going to be Musk’s partner in leading the Department of Government Efficiency, is long gone. Musk doesn’t sit on a lot of boards. And throughout his corporate history, whenever he hasn’t initially had control over a company, he’s tended to seek it.
At Tesla, where he was an early investor, he became the chief executive. Before he bought Twitter and renamed it X, he almost joined the company’s board. Then he decided to acquire the company outright, fire its board of directors and executives and become the chief executive. (He later named a new C.E.O. but retains considerable control over the company.)
Not all of Musk’s bids for control have worked. Decades ago, for example, he was forced out as the chief executive of PayPal. His effort to get control of OpenAI — a nonprofit he co-founded in 2015 — failed, as did his more recent bid to buy it.
Musk, it seems, prefers to be the bride, not the bridesmaid. The question now is whether he’ll stick to Trump’s directive that he simply advise — and whether he’ll be content if he does.
President Donald Trump’s shift on the Department of Government Efficiency began with a warning from an unlikely source.
Jesse Watters, a co-host of the Fox News hit show The Five, is usually a slick deliverer of MAGA talking points. But on February 19, Watters told a surprisingly emotional story about a friend working at the Pentagon who was poised to lose his job as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the federal workforce. “I finally found one person I knew who got DOGE’d, and it hit me in the heart,” said Watters, who urged his Fox colleagues to “be a little bit less callous.”
Although Watters soon resumed championing DOGE, the moment went viral. Trump watched the clip and asked advisers if it was resonating with his base of supporters, according to one of three White House officials I spoke with for this story (they requested anonymity so they could discuss private conversations).
Over the ensuing weeks, the president grew unhappy with the television coverage of cuts affecting his voters, according to two of those officials, while the White House fielded calls from Cabinet members and Republican lawmakers frustrated by Elon Musk, the billionaire tech mogul empowered to slash the federal government. Some of Trump’s top advisers became worried about the political fallout from DOGE’s sweeping cuts, especially after seeing scenes of angry constituents yelling at GOP members of Congress in town halls.
All of this culminated in Trump taking his first steps to rein in Musk’s powers yesterday. The president called a closed-door meeting with Cabinet members and Musk, one that devolved into sharp exchanges between the DOGE head and several agency leaders. Afterward, Trump declared that his Cabinet would now “go first” in deciding whom in their departments to keep or fire.
DOGE lives. Trump has made clear that Musk still wields significant authority. And those close to Trump say that the president is still enamored with the idea of employing the world’s richest man, and still largely approves of the work that DOGE is doing to gut the federal bureaucracy. Some in the White House also believe that clarifying Musk’s purview might help the administration in a series of lawsuits alleging that Musk is illegally empowered.
But Trump’s first public effort to put a leash on Musk appears to mark the end of DOGE’s opening chapter, and a potential early turning point in Trump’s new administration.
Federal workers, Democrats and even some Republican lawmakers want to believe that President Donald Trump clipped billionaire adviser Elon Musk’s wings Thursday.
But many of them aren’t counting on it.
Roller skating cat, by Martin Leman
After Trump privately told his Cabinet that they are in charge of their departments and Musk does not have the authority to fire government workers — a stunning shift in their alliance should it pan out — rank-and-file federal employees said they were skeptical in light of weeks of confusing and contradictory guidance. None of the more than a dozen federal workers POLITICO spoke to reported being told by their supervisors or labor unions that anything had changed directly due to Trump’s Cabinet meeting and subsequent comments.
“I don’t really expect them to necessarily start implementing what they say they will,” said David Casserly, an employee at the Department of Labor who said he was speaking in a personal capacity. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
The news of Thursday’s Cabinet meeting set off rampant speculation within the federal workforce about the true intent of Trump’s comments, which come amid growing legal and political scrutiny. A pair of lawsuits argue that the empowerment of Musk within the Trump administration is so far-reaching that, barring confirmation from the Senate, it exceeds constitutional limits.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture worker chalked up Trump’s comments to “damage control” after the president said in his joint address to Congress Tuesday that Musk is the “head” of the Department of Government Efficiency. That could prove to be a legal liability after Trump’s White House previously argued in court that Musk was not the leader of DOGE and had no authority to make distinct policy decisions himself.
Musk’s popularity is also sinking in polls, and Republicans in Congress have faced angry constituents at town halls who have complained about DOGE’s slash-and-burn approach to cutting the bureaucracy.
“It’s total bullshit. I don’t know what else to say,” quipped a second Labor Department employee. “I don’t trust a word of it,” said a third federal worker, who described it as Trump “attempting to insulate himself a bit from the court losses and the shift in public opinion, but I don’t think it will change anything.”
We can only hope.
That’s all I have for you today. I’m going to try to take my mind off all the horror stories for the rest of the day.
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“EEK!” John Buss, @repeat1968, @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Backpfeifengesicht is the German word for “a face worthy of being slapped.” That might be the most usable word in the dark timeline, which is the second term of #FARTUS (Felon, Adjudicated Rapist, Traitor of the United States). JJ found this sweet article at The Guardian and shared it with BB and me this morning. It’s an Op-Ed written by Marina Hyde about JD Vance, but it could apply to any subhuman of the modern MAGA movement. “There are 1,000 grotesque memes of JD Vance – and they’re all more likable than the real thing. Angry, rude and addicted to web troll-ery, the vice-president has the Make America Awful Again portfolio. Seems a perfect fit.” Ayup.
You may well be aware that Backpfeifengesicht is the German word for a face that is worthy of being slapped. Even so, how has this not been internationalised? Or at the very least Americanised, where its dictionary definition would presumably be adorned by a picture of the face of US vice-president JD Vance – already faultlessly playing the role of worst American at your hotel. You can immediately picture him at breakfast, can’t you? Every single other guest on the terrace with their shoulders up round their ears, just thinking: “Where is he now? How unbearable is he being NOW?” Next, imagine breakfast lasting four years.
I say the Backpfeifengesicht definition would be accompanied by JD Vance’s face … but then again, what is the face of JD Vance? The internet is awash with people suffering an acute case of not being able to remember it any more, having seen so many hideous comic distortions of Vance that those meme versions are not simply the only results on the first page of your own mental Google search, but stretch deep beyond the second and into the third. Somewhere on page four, where you might as well publish the nuclear codes or pictures of Taylor Swift giving cocaine to babies, is an unmodified snap of what JD Vance actually looks like. Or at least what he looks like with eyeliner.
Before you get there – and you don’t, really – your synaptic filing systems throw up every variety of Photoshopped Vancefake: swollen manboy, face wearing a Minion suit, a bearded egg … I’m hoping that sooner or later, an American news outlet will accidentally use a modified photo, because even the picture editor has forgotten what the vice-president looks like, and then we can have one of those massively self-regarding legacy media-blow-ups, where the entire staff has to resign after a remorseless investigation by the executive editor reveals Vance isn’t actually a big purple grape. “This is a stain on our newspaper’s history. A big purple stain.”
Vance is more meme than man, now, and it is, of course, something of a consolation that he is so extremely online that he can’t help but have noticed this. The VP is like a one-man government troll-feeding programme – please don’t cut him, Elon! – which is probably why people have become so heroically committed to taking the piss. The probability of the vice-president seeing you insulting him is basically one.
Just as previous holders of his office like Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon once did, Vance spent a notable amount of this week both denying he suggested Britain and France were random countries that hadn’t fought a war in 40 years, and replying to random X posters called things like “Jeff Computers” to counter the suggestion that he wasn’t loved and feted on his recent skiing holiday.
While JJ found that amusing read today. BB brought home the rancid bacon. This is an op-ed by Brett Wagner in The San Francisco Chronicle today. “Is Trump preparing to invoke the Insurrection Act? Signs are pointing that way. A joint Department of Defense and Homeland Security report will soon recommend whether or not to invoke the Insurrection Act over illegal migration.”
The clock is ticking down on a crucial but little-noticed part of President Donald Trump’s first round of executive orders — the one tasking the secretaries of the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security to submit a joint report, within 90 days, recommending “whether to invoke the Insurrection Act.”
Many of us are now holding our collective breath, knowing that the report and what it contains could put us on the slippery slope toward unchecked presidential power under a man with an affinity for ironfisted dictators.
Adding to the suspense was the recent “Friday Night Massacre” at the Pentagon — the firing of the nation’s top uniformed officer and removing other perceived guardrails (i.e., the top uniformed lawyers at the Army, Navy and Air Force) standing between the president and his long-stated intention to declare martial law upon returning to power.
Coincidence?
As we wait to find out, this would be a good time to take a closer look.
Say, for example, that Trump were to invoke the Insurrection Act and declare martial law. He wouldn’t even be required, by the letter of the law, to allege an “insurrection.” All that would be required is to assert that “unlawful obstruction” has made it “impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States” (as President Dwight D. Eisenhower did when he ordered the Arkansas National Guard to enforce the desegregation of Little Rock, Ark., schools).
This is where all the false claims and outright lies Trump and his political allies have been pushing will come into play: Trump falsely alleging, for example, that an entire city in Colorado has been taken over by Venezuelan street gangs, that a city in Ohio has been overrun by Haitian refugees who are eating all the cats and dogs, and other vague assertions that “millions and millions” of “illegals” are pouring into our country every week (or “day” depending on who’s telling the lie at the moment).
Each of these false claims and outright lies could be distilled, to declare martial law, into catchy phrases (beginning with the legalese word “Whereas”) to establish the legal premise for invoking the Insurrection Act, and to lay the predicate to begin going door-to-door, wherever they please, under the pretense of searching for undocumented immigrants who don’t exist.
I bring you the reality on the ground from Joy Reid on Threads. “This is inhumane, hideous and repugnant. If this is what MAGA America is, count me out. I’m ashamed that this is what our government is doing. Shame on them. Shame.” What it is is a 21-year-old girl with cancer who relies completely on her immigrant mother, who is in no way a criminal or bothering anyone. When protesters came to protest, they were arrested. How many laws and constitutional rights can this miserable administration break before they completely break all of us? This story comes from El Monte, California. You can read the hatred of the MAGA monsters in the threads below on YouTube. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t want to leave the house and take a chance at seeing a FARTUS supporter in my neighborhood. I’m fine with all the immigrants, though. Everything they do makes my neighborhood a better place.
“I can’t even wake up properly… she helps me, she bathes me, she changes me, she makes my food.”Deportation didn’t protect anyone it only stole a mother from the child who needs her most-Blake Coronadowww.threads.net/@blakecorona…
The US Military and US Vets are under attack from this Administration. This cannot be denied. This is from the AP this morning. FARTUS has always had a thing against military service and those who fight for values that he seems to hate very much. “War heroes and military firsts are among 26,000 images flagged for removal in Pentagon’s DEI purge.” So much of this just comes as an attack against the diversity of our nation being represented in all of its institutions. But is that really it? Why the disappearance of all people of color, women, and the LGBTQ community? Are white cis men really that sensitive?
References to a World War II Medal of Honor recipient, the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan and the first women to pass Marine infantry training are among the tens of thousands of photos and online posts marked for deletion as the Defense Department works to purge diversity, equity and inclusion content, according to a database obtained by The Associated Press.
The database, which was confirmed by U.S. officials and published by AP, includes more than 26,000 images that have been flagged for removal across every military branch. But the eventual total could be much higher.
One official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details that have not been made public, said the purge could delete as many as 100,000 images or posts in total, when considering social media pages and other websites that are also being culled for DEI content. The official said it’s not clear if the database has been finalized.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had given the military until Wednesday to remove content that highlights diversity efforts in its ranks following President Donald Trump’s executive order ending those programs across the federal government.
The vast majority of the Pentagon purge targets women and minorities, including notable milestones made in the military. And it also removes a large number of posts that mention various commemorative months — such as those for Black and Hispanic people and women.
Are they just trying to up their odds that one will be less likely to disrupt the plan when martial law is declared? Everything they’ve been doing shows their delight in being the worst kind of bullies. Just yesterday, they announced they will deport Ukrainians who fled to the US for safety. We are no longer a safe harbor. Not even close. Heather Cox Richardson discusses this in detail this morning in her Substack Letters from an American.
This morning, Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke of Reuters reported that the Trump administration is preparing to deport the 240,000 Ukrainians who fled Russia’s attacks on Ukraine and have temporary legal status in the United States. Foreign affairs journalist Olga Nesterova reminded Americans that “these people had to be completely financially independent, pay tax, pay all fees (around $2K) and have an affidavit from an American person to even come here.”
“This has nothing to do with strategic necessity or geopolitics,” Russia specialist Tom Nichols posted. “This is just cruelty to show [Russian president Vladimir] Putin he has a new American ally.”
The Trump administration’s turn away from traditional European alliances and toward Russia will have profound effects on U.S. standing in the world. Edward Wong and Mark Mazzetti reported in the New York Times today that senior officials in the State Department are making plans to close a dozen consulates, mostly in Western Europe, including consulates in Florence, Italy; Strasbourg, France; Hamburg, Germany; and Ponta Delgada, Portugal, as well as a consulate in Brazil and another in Turkey.
In late February, Nahal Toosi reported in Politico that President Donald Trump wants to “radically shrink” the State Department and to change its mission from diplomacy and soft power initiatives that advance democracy and human rights to focusing on transactional agreements with other governments and promoting foreign investment in the U.S.
Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency” have taken on the process of cutting the State Department budget by as much as 20%, and cutting at least some of the department’s 80,000 employees. As part of that project, DOGE’s Edward Coristine, known publicly as “Big Balls,” is embedded at the State Department.
As the U.S. retreats from its engagement with the world, China has been working to forge greater ties. China now has more global diplomatic posts than the U.S. and plays a stronger role in international organizations. Already in 2025, about 700 employees, including 450 career diplomats, have resigned from the State Department, a number that normally would reflect a year’s resignations.
Shutting embassies will hamper not just the process of fostering goodwill, but also U.S. intelligence, as embassies house officers who monitor terrorism, infectious disease, trade, commerce, militaries, and government, including those from the intelligence community. U.S. intelligence has always been formidable, but the administration appears to be weakening it.
Trump, bitcoin, political cartoon
We’re being turned into part of the Trump Grift Mafia. Nothing will be left standing of any of the good we have done in the world. This is neocolonialism and neomercantilism. We’ve retreated to some of the worst historical ideologies ever. The most symbolic thing happened yesterday. The latest Space X project blew up in the sky and shut down many flights yesterday. “Breakup of SpaceX’s Starship Rocket Disrupts Florida Airports. The video showed the upper stage of the most powerful rocket ever built spinning out of control in space, a repeat of an unsuccessful test flight in January that led to debris falling over the Caribbean.” This is what we’re spending money for? Elonia is pushing his company to the brink of getting to Mars and looking down at the rest of us. The report is from The New York Times‘s Kenneth Chang.
Starship — the huge spacecraft that Elon Musk says will one day take people to Mars — failed during its latest test flight on Thursday when its upper stage exploded in space, raining debris and disrupting air traffic at airports from Florida to Pennsylvania.
It was the second consecutive test flight of the most powerful rocket ever built where the upper-stage spacecraft malfunctioned. It started spinning out of control after several engines went out and then lost contact with mission control.
Photographs and videos posted on the social media site X by users saying they were along the Florida coast showed the spacecraft breaking up. The falling debris disrupted flights at airports in Miami, Orlando, Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, and as far away as Philadelphia International Airport.
The Starship rocket system is the largest ever built. At 403 feet tall, it is nearly 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty atop its pedestal.
It has the most engines ever in a rocket booster: The Super Heavy booster is powered by 33 of SpaceX’s Raptor engines. As those engines lift Starship off the launchpad, they will generate 16 million pounds of thrust at full throttle.
The upper part, also called Starship or Ship for short, looks like a shiny rocket from science fiction movies of the 1950s, is made of stainless steel with large fins. This is the upper stage that will head toward orbit, and ultimately could carry people to the moon or even Mars.
The rocket lifted off a little after 6:30 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday from the SpaceX site known as Starbase at the southern tip of Texas near the city of Brownsville.
Starship’s mammoth booster again successfully returned to the launchpad, just as it had during the previous test flight. In the last half minute before the upper-stage engines were to shut off, several of them malfunctioned. Video from the rocket showed a tumbling view of Earth and space until it cut off.
Trump jokingly declared himself a sovereign last month, while his advisers distributed AI-generated photos of him wearing a crown and an ermine robe to celebrate his order to end congestion pricing in New York City. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” he’d decreed a few days earlier, using a phrase sometimes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, the emperor of the French.
I had no idea one of my greats who signed the Declaration had made of the copies of it. But the weird thing here is that Trump seriously wants the document to hang in the Oval Office. My question is, why take it from the people who can see it in the archives?
Since returning to power, Trump has moved quickly to redesign his working space. He has announced plans to pave over the Rose Garden to make it more like the patio at his private Mar-a-Lago club, as well as easier to host events with women wearing heels. He has also revived planning for a new ballroom on the White House grounds. “It keeps my real-estate juices flowing,” Trump explained in a recent interview with The Spectator.
Golden trophies now line the Oval Office’s mantlepiece. Military flags adorned with campaign streamers have returned. And portraits of presidents past now climb the walls—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Martin Van Buren, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, among others. Gilded mirrors hang upon the recessed doors. A framed copy of his Georgia mug shot appears in the outside hallway. And the bright-red valet button, encased in a wooden box, is back on the desk.
In addition to the National Archives’ original Declaration, the government has in its possession other versions of the document. The collection includes drafts by Jefferson and copies of contemporaneous reprintings, known as broadsides, that were distributed among the colonies.
Alarmed by the deterioration of the original Declaration in the 1820s, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams commissioned William J. Stone to create an engraving of it with the signatures appended. That version forms the basis of the document since reproduced in school history books—the one with which most Americans are familiar. Adams tasked Stone with engraving 200 copies—but in what passes for a mini 19th-century scandal, Stone made an extra facsimile to keep for himself, the documents dealer and expert Seth Kaller told us.
Many of those Stone copies of the document have now been lost; roughly 50 are known to survive, Kaller said. The White House already has in its archives at least one of the Stone printings. Kaller told us that one of his clients who had recently purchased a Stone facsimile was visiting the White House when President Barack Obama asked him whether he could help procure a Stone printing for the White House.
“The client called me, and I said, ‘I can’t—because, one, there aren’t any others on the market right now, and two, the White House already has one,’” Kaller told us. In 2014, Kaller visited the White House to view the Stone Declaration, which the curator displayed for him in one of the West Wing’s rooms. (The White House curator’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment, including on whether the Stone copy still resides under its purview.)
It is unclear where Trump first got the idea to add a Declaration to the Oval Office’s decor. Since returning, Trump has shown interest in the planning for celebrations next year of the 250th anniversary of the document’s signing. Days after taking office, he issued an executive order to create “Task Force 250,” a White House commission that will work with another congressionally formed commission to plan the festivities.
I hope he’s not trying to go with one of those grandiose military parades again. And if he does, will he eliminate everyone but the white guys? It can’t be anything other than another way for him to get attention, that’s for sure. Again, this all continues to be an appalling cosplay of how FARTUS wants to view himself in relation to his imagined ideas of American History. I can’t even with the economy today. Just know he’s changed his mind on tariffs again for Canada and Mexico, and employment figures are worsening. He’s turned a strong economy into a weak one in a matter of weeks. He’s also shaken the Equity markets to their core. What’s on is this: “Trump’s “Crypto Reserve” is a world historical grift. Corruption doesn’t get much more blatant than this.” My Finance Daughter and I both find crypto to be a huge Ponzi scheme. I lecture against it. She doesn’t consider it a product that brokers should be involved in. In short, we stay as far away as possible. But, you know, grifters gotta grift. This is from Public Notice.
Authoritarian regimes by definition have no accountability to voters or the public. That means autocrats and their cronies can gorge themselves at the public trough and blatantly steal from taxpayers with few if any consequences.
It’s not really a surprise, then, that as part of his authoritarian power grab, Trump has embraced brazen and open self-dealing. The most ludicrous example of this is the scheme he announced last Sunday for a national crypto reserve.
As with many of Trump’s big orange dreams, it’s not exactly clear what the crypto reserve will entail or how it will work. But the brilliance of the half-baked idea is that Trump and his cronies can make bank just by talking about it. The president can use his bully pulpit to manipulate markets. And who’s going to stop him?
Trump, fresh off avoiding 88 felony charges, obviously feels confident that the answer is “no one.”
Government on the blockchain
Crypto refers to digital currencies which are generated and stored in a digital ledger, or blockchain. In theory, cryptocurrencies do not rely on a central government authority. Proponents say they are useful for quick or anonymous transactions. Critics point out that cryptocurrency seems designed for hiding illegal transactions and/or creating what are essentially Ponzi investment schemes.
Because of the downsides, President Biden created moderate guidelines to try to regulate some of the worst excesses of the industry, which made him an enemy of hardcore crypto boosters. But Trump in his first term expressed even deeper skepticism about cryptocurrencies, saying they are based on “thin air.”
During the 2024 election, though, crypto investors spent tens of millions on Republican campaigns. Trump, who never saw a quid pro quo he didn’t love, changed his tune, embracing crypto-friendly policies. After his victory, he followed through by appointing venture capitalist and Elon Musk crony David Sacks as a White House crypto czar.
Another reason Trump flip-flopped on crypto is that his family figured out how to cash in. Following the election, Trump squandered some of the goodwill he had built up with the crypto industry when he and his wife Melania launched memecoins — essentially valueless crypto confidence games — that both surged in value, making the Trumps billions (but undermining the credibility of crypto in the process). That came after his two adult sons, Eric and Don Jr, launched their own crypto company during the campaign called World Liberty Financial. Boosting crypto as president, then, allows Trump and his family to profit directly from his public office.
Trump announced his thank you to the industry last Sunday, when he declared that he would create a “Crypto Strategic Reserve” in order to make the US “the Crypto Capital of the World.” He of course claimed the move is part of “MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”
But the actual point of the crypto reserve, much less the details, are sketchy at best. Proponents argue crypto is a store of value, like gold, and could help damp inflation. But the major cryptocurrencies tend to rise and fall in value based on broader macroeconomic sentiment. And since crypto is volatile and, unlike gold, has no intrinsic value, it’s hard to credit its usefulness as a currency stabilizer.
If you have any questions about any of this, I’d be glad to try to answer them. Seeing such craziness in our economic policy has been hard on me. I’m just waiting for the major attack on the Federal Reserve Bank. They’re the only ones that bring credibility to the dollar these days, and I’m afraid he’ll have a go at them. The mess at the Treasury is already impacting the banking business. Don’t even get me started on the Budget Crisis, either. I’m tired of the repeats of that one by disingenuous Republicans.
I hope all of you can close your doors and stay sane inside the one place you can control, home. I have a few more tests next week, so I will be out at clinics again, being poked and prodded. This weekend, I will just relax and try to avoid the ever-changing Trump Surreality Show.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
You may not have shared “An Evening with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor” at the 
On March 7th,
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 
Let’s take a look at that article from 
The problem is that they know that we will all hang out together. 
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. 
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 
While JJ found that amusing read today. BB brought home the rancid bacon. This is an op-ed by Brett Wagner in 
The US Military and US Vets are under attack from this Administration. This cannot be denied. This is from the AP this morning. FARTUS has always had a thing against military service and those who fight for values that he seems to hate very much. 
Are they just trying to up their odds that one will be less likely to disrupt the plan when martial law is declared? Everything they’ve been doing shows their delight in being the worst kind of bullies. Just yesterday, they announced they will deport Ukrainians who fled to the US for safety. We are no longer a safe harbor. Not even close. Heather Cox Richardson discusses this in detail this morning in her Substack 
I had no idea one of my greats who signed the Declaration had made of the copies of it. But the weird thing here is that Trump seriously wants the document to hang in the Oval Office. My question is, why take it from the people who can see it in the archives?
peej
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dakinikat
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mablue2
Mama Lopez
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Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
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