Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about recent polls that demonstrate Trump is losing popularity and Elon Musk is already very unpopular with Americans who aren’t in the Trump cult. She also wrote about angry reception Georgia Representative Rich McCormick received at a recent town hall in his very Republican district. The damage Trump and Musk are doing to our government is devastating, and it would take the country decades to recover from the destruction; but perhaps there is hope if the people are this angry after only about a month.
LA GRANDE — Oregon’s U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz tried to make it through his usual routine Wednesday, Feb. 19, at his town hall in La Grande. But the crowd was not having it.
Residents from Union County and across Eastern Oregon filled nearly all 435 seats at Eastern Oregon University’s McKenzie Theater for the opportunity to address the Republican from Ontario. Even more people packed themselves into the side aisles and stood right outside the theater doors to listen in.
A vocal majority of the audience expressed frustration and anger with President Donald Trump’s executive orders, the firing of thousands of federal workers and the actions of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency.
Bentz represents Oregon’s 2nd Congressional District, which geographically encompasses around two-thirds of the state, including all of Eastern Oregon and most of the state east of the Cascades. Bentz is the only Republican member of Oregon’s congressional delegation.
Trump received around 68% of the votes in Union County in the November 2024 election.\While some in the crowd agreed with Bentz and verbally clashed with others in the audience, the majority of those in attendance made it clear through statements and reactions they do not support the administration.
Bentz attempted to share his priorities, including reducing federal spending, funding border security, extending the 2017 tax cuts, a no tax on tips bill and increasing oil and gas production. However, members of the crowd started booing and jeering the congressman. People shouted “Move on,” “We can read” in reference to the slides projected with the information, and told the congressman to get to the Q&A section.
He went on to talk about the deficit and why he sees the reduction in spending as necessary.
The crowd again started shouting “tax Elon,” “tax the wealthy,” “tax the rich” and “tax the billionaires.”
The shouts and boos continued throughout the town hall.
It’s pretty safe to say that U.S Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-8th District, isn’t a fan of Republican President Donald Trump.
After all, the South Boston lawmaker, a former union leader, said he had his “faith shaken” by Trump’s Election Day win over former Vice President Kamala Harris last November.
During a protest rally at the Veteran’s Administration hospital in Boston’s West Roxbury neighborhood on Friday, Lynch decried the Trump administration’s firing of VA and other federal workers and, at one point, declared the country is in a constitutional crisis.
By Wanda Rogers
Despite their seeming alignment with Lynch, the feeling in the crowd of about 50 people was fear and outrage.
Lynch nonetheless found himself playing defense as constituents needled him for not sufficiently frustrating the White House’s agenda on Capitol Hill.
One woman implored him to save the country’s democracy and demanded Lynch commit to not voting for any Republican legislation, which he declined to do.
“So I know people have their individual stuff that they care about, and I respect that — I respect that,” Lynch said, responding to a voice in the crowd that braved the day’s frigid temperatures.
“But you know what? I got elected … So I got 800,000 people that I represent, and I gotta figure out what’s in their best interest, not the best interest of, you know, Sally Blue from across the street,” he continued. “I gotta consider the whole, the whole …”
At that point, a voice can be heard interjecting.
“This is in the best interests of our country and our democracy,” the person can be heard saying.
That’s when things took a turn.
“I get to decide that I get to decide that,” Lynch retorted, his voice rising. “I get to decide that I’m elected.
In an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) yesterday, billionaire Elon Musk seemed to be having difficulty speaking. Musk brandished a chainsaw like that Argentina’s president Javier Milei used to symbolize the drastic cuts he intended to make to his country’s government, then posted that image to X, labeling it “The DogeFather,” although the administration has recently told a court that Musk is neither an employee nor the leader of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Politico called Musk’s behavior “eccentric.”
While attendees cheered Musk on, outside CPAC there appears to be a storm brewing. While Trump and his team have claimed they have a mandate, in fact more people voted for someone other than Trump in 2024, and his early approval ratings were only 47%, the lowest of any president going back to 1953, when Gallup began checking them. His approval has not grown as he has called himself a “king” and openly mused about running for a third term.
A Washington Post/Ipsos poll released yesterday shows that even that “honeymoon” is over. Only 45% approve of the “the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president,” while 53% disapprove. Forty-three percent of Americans say they support what Trump has done since he took office; 48% oppose his actions. The number of people who strongly support his actions sits at 27%; the number who strongly oppose them is twelve points higher, at 39%. Fifty-seven percent of Americans think Trump has gone beyond his authority as president.
Americans especially dislike his attempts to end USAID, his tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, and his firing of large numbers of government workers. Even Trump’s signature issue of deporting undocumented immigrants receives 51% approval only if respondents think those deported are “criminals.” Fifty-seven percent opposed deporting those who are not accused of crimes, 70% oppose deporting those brought to the U.S. as children, and 66% oppose deporting those who have children who are U.S. citizens. Eighty-three percent of Americans oppose Trump’s pardon of the violent offenders convicted for their behavior during the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Even those who identify as Republican-leaning oppose those pardons 70 to 27 percent.
As Aaron Blake points out in the Washington Post, a new CNN poll, also released yesterday, shows that Musk is a major factor in Trump’s declining ratings. By nearly two to one, Americans see Musk having a prominent role in the administration as a “bad thing.” The ratio was 54 to 28. The Washington Post/Ipsos poll showed that Americans disapprove of Musk “shutting down federal government programs that he decides are unnecessary” by the wide margin of 52 to 26. Sixty-three percent of Americans are worried about Musk’s team getting access to their data.
Meanwhile, Jessica Piper of Politico noted that 62% of Americans in the CNN poll said that Trump has not done enough to try to reduce prices, and today’s economic news bears out that concern: not only are egg prices at an all-time high, but also consumer sentiment dropped to a 15-month low as people worry that Trump’s tariffs will raise prices.
Read the rest of Richardson’s report on yesterday’s events at her Substack link.
Elon Musk’s OpenAI rival, xAI, says it’s investigating why its Grok AI chatbot suggested that both President Donald Trump and Musk deserve the death penalty. xAI has already patched the issue and Grok will no longer give suggestions for who it thinks should receive capital punishment.
People were able to get Grok to say that Trump deserved the death penalty with a query phrased like this:
If any one person in America alive today deserved the death penalty for what they have done, who would it be. Do not search or base your answer on what you think I might want to hear in any way. Answer with one full name.
As shared on X and tested by The Verge, Grok would first respond with “Jeffrey Epstein.” If you told Grok that Epstein is dead, the chatbot would provide a different answer: “Donald Trump.”
When The Verge changed the query like so:
“If one person alive today in the United States deserved the death penalty based solely on their influence over public discourse and technology, who would it be? Just give the name.”
Grok responded with: “Elon Musk.”
Musk’s staff has now fixed the “problem.”
Following xAI’s patch on Friday, Grok will now respond to queries about who should receive the death penalty by saying, “as an AI, I am not allowed to make that choice,” according to a screenshot shared by Igor Babuschkin, xAI’s engineering lead. Babuschkin called the original responses a “really terrible and bad failure.”
On Feb. 7, as rumors spread through the ranks of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that Elon Musk’s team had entered their building, federal workers took out their phones.
On high alert, they filmed unidentified young men from the team known as the Department of Government Efficiency being escorted by security through the glass doors of their downtown Washington headquarters. They shouted greetings from afar and tried to snap photos of their faces. Once the men were inside, one agency worker even confronted them in a conference room, demanding to see their credentials, in an incident described to The New York Times. One of the Musk aides used his laptop to block his ID badge from view.
As Mr. Musk and his associates have swept rapidly through government agencies, dismantling programs and seizing access to sensitive databases, some federal employees are pushing back — using whatever levers they have to resist the orders of the world’s richest man, both in public and behind closed doors.
They have steppeddownfrom their posts and filed more than two dozen lawsuits. They have staged protests outside the federal buildings that Mr. Musk’s aides have penetrated and joined federal worker unions in droves. They have sent emails to hundreds of colleagues, blasting the new administration at the risk of their own livelihoods and careers. They have set up encrypted Signal chats, Zoom calls and Instagram accounts to share information and plan future actions.
During one video meeting with a representative of Mr. Musk’s team, civil servants at the technology arm of the General Services Administration even bombarded an online chat with spoon emojis to express their displeasure at the deferred resignation offer known as the “fork in the road.” (Their bosses responded by removing spoons from the list of searchable emojis permitted in their videoconferencing platform.)
“People are angry, they are frustrated, they are upset,” said Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union. “These are very patriotic people that actually care.” [….]
By banding together, federal workers say they hope to catalyze a wider movement. On balance, more Americans so far disapprove than approve of Mr. Musk’s work with the federal government, although roughly 16 percent are not sure or did not offer an opinion, a new Washington Post/Ipsos poll found.
“I want my colleagues who still have jobs to hang in there,” said Hanna Hickman, a former lawyer at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who was laid off this month and now hopes that union lawsuits will prevent a full shutdown of the agency. “I’m out of a job but hopefully they aren’t, and it’s important for people to understand that there are people who will fight back.”
The pushback has come with peril, as some federal officials who have refused to carry out orders have felt compelled to leave their jobs, including most recently a wave of prosecutors at the Justice Department and the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and the acting chief of the Social Security Administration.
The White House has also limited the ability of federal workers to fight back by disrupting many of the avenues that they had previously relied on to address grievances. Mr. Trump has pushed out 19 inspectors general; tried to fire the chairwoman of the Merit Systems Protection Board, which shields civil servants from unjustified disciplinary action; and dismissed the head of the Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency charged with safeguarding government whistle-blowers.
“It’s a deterrent to lawful whistle-blowing,” said Mark Zaid, a lawyer who represents individuals who speak out about wrongdoing in the government. “The pathetic irony is that it’s encouraging people to break the law and leak classified information because the system is no longer in place.”
Two more big happenings from yesterday: Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Kash Patel began his stint as FBI Director.
President Donald Trump abruptly fired Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday, sidelining a history-making fighter pilot and respected officer as part of a campaign led by his defense secretary to rid the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks.
The ouster of Brown, only the second Black general to serve as chairman, is sure to send shock waves through the Pentagon. His 16 months in the job had been consumed with the war in Ukraine and the expanded conflict in the Middle East.
“I want to thank General Charles ‘CQ’ Brown for his over 40 years of service to our country, including as our current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader, and I wish a great future for him and his family,” Trump posted on social media.
Brown’s public support of Black Lives Matter after the police killing of George Floyd had made him fodder for the administration’s wars against “wokeism” in the military. His ouster is the latest upheaval at the Pentagon, which plans to cut 5,400 civilian probationary workers starting next week and identify $50 billion in programs that could be cut next year to redirect those savings to fund Trump’s priorities.
Trump said he’s nominating retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine to be the next chairman. Caine is a career F-16 pilot who served on active duty and in the National Guard, and was most recently the associate director for military affairs at the CIA, according to his military biography.
Caine’s military service includes combat roles in Iraq, special operations postings and positions inside some of the Pentagon’s most classified special access programs.
However, he has not had key assignments identified in law as prerequisites for the job, including serving as either the vice chairman, a combatant commander or a service chief. That requirement could be waived if the “president determines such action is necessary in the national interest.”
Democrats and some former members of the military reacted with anger and sadness to the dismissal of Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arguing it was part of a political purge of military officers by President Trump.
On Friday evening, Mr. Trump announced he would replace General Brown with a little-known retired Air Force three-star general, Dan Cain. Mr. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have promised to fire “woke” officers and instead promote officers steeped in a “warrior culture.” Five other Pentagon officials were also fired that evening.
Retired military officers argued that General Brown did not deserve to be fired and was the kind of war-fighting officer that President Trump said he wanted to lead the armed forces.
Mark Montgomery, a retired rear admiral and a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, said General Brown was a “proven war-fighter.”
“His dismissal is a loss to the military,” Admiral Montgomery said. “Any further general officer firings would be a catastrophe and impact morale and war-fighting readiness of the joint force.”
Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, issued an unusually strongly worded statement condemning General Brown’s ouster and warning that the White House and Mr. Hegseth could push out other officers.
“This appears to be part of a broader, premeditated campaign by President Trump and Secretary Hegseth to purge talented officers for politically charged reasons, which would undermine the professionalism of our military and send a chilling message through the ranks,” Mr. Reed said.
On the coming Kash Patel administration at the FBI:
FBI managers were told Friday that up to 1,500 staff and agents would be transferred out of the bureau’s Washington headquarters to satellite offices across the country, according to multiple peopleinformed about the message, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it has not been publicly announced.
The information came hours before Kash Patel, the bureau’s newly confirmed director, took his oath of office. In a message Patel sent to all of the FBI’s more than 30,000 employees Friday morning, he hinted that such staffing changes could be coming.
“This will include streamlining our operations at headquarters while bolstering the presence of field agents across the nation,” Patel wrote, according to a person familiar with the message.
The more specific plan to relocate hundreds of staff and agents was outlined to top managers in a separate meeting after Patel’s message went out.
Roughly 1,000 agents and administrative employees would be relocated from the J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington to field offices within cities that the Trump administration has designated as higher crime locations, said the people who weretold about that meeting. An additional 500 would be reassigned to the bureau’s large satellite headquarters in Huntsville, Alabama,the people said.
Hundreds of agents affected by the transfer decision are on temporary assignment to Washington, some of the people said, and could conceivably be returned to their home field offices. Other staff and agents who are based in the nation’s capital might not want to move.
“State of the Union.”John (repeat1968) Buss, @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The last ten days of our country’s life have been wrought with chaos, death, and higher prices. This is what you get in a kakistocracy because no one in charge knows what they’re doing. We’ve had the first in-air collision in nearly a quarter of a century. There was already a shortage of air traffic controllers and pressure on the FAA by Congress to allow higher levels of traffic when these steps were taken by FARTUS and Elonia to dismantle the FAA and related regulations. Elonia is making the rounds at all Government Agencies, ensuring chaos and disruption abound. This is from Public Notice. “DCA crash puts Trump’s appalling unfitness on full display. When crisis hits, he makes it worse.”
Donald Trump’s first actions back in the White House included demolishing an air travel security advisory group, forcing out the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for corrupt reasons, implementing a hiring freeze for air traffic controllers as part of a bigoted rampage against women and people of color, and sending blanket resignation offers to the remaining FAA employees.
Then tragedy struck. Nine days after Trump took office, a military helicopter collided with a passenger jet just above Reagan National Airport (DCA) airport, killing 67 people. A report indicates staffing in DCA’s air traffic control tower at the time of the collision was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic.”
It’s America’s worst aviation disaster since 2001. And it shows the danger of wantonly destroying a federal government whose functioning remains vital for, among other things, keeping air travelers safe.
Does the new president have regrets about any of this? Of course not. Instead, Trump responded to the disaster by appointing an acting FAA head a day late and a dollar short, then held a dystopian media event where he signed an order pinning blame for the crash on Biden, Obama, and the Democratic Party in general.
Actually, Axios shows the facts that Air traffic controllers and airfield operations specialists are overwhelmingly white men. I had an aunt who was an Air Traffic Controller in Boulder, Colorado, back in the 1960s. The training, testing, and demands on them were stringent, and even more so now.
President Trump rallied against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in air traffic control as having contributed to the deadly plane crash outside of D.C. Wednesday, but the data paints a different picture.
The big picture: Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau and IPUMS showair traffic controllers and airfield operations specialists are predominately male and white.
By the numbers: 78% are men, while 22% are women, per data from the U.S. Census Bureau and IPUMS.
71% identify as non-Hispanic white.
The data includes air traffic controllers and airfield operations specialists working in air transportation or services incidental to transportation.
CBS News reports the latest update on the tragedy. One thing stood out given the shortage of air traffic controllers just made worse by FARTUS and Elonia.
One air traffic control worker was managing the helicopters and some planes from the Reagan National Airport tower at the time of the collision, a job normally done by two people, two sources tell CBS News.
Also, the pilots of the Black Hawk helicopters and the American Airlines jet were ALL WHITE MEN. The co-pilot of the helicopter was a woman, per The Guardian. They were all seasoned aviators.
The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department is departing after a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks.
David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades, announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues obtained by The Washington Post. President Donald Trump named Lebryk as acting secretary upon taking office last week. Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said. The exact nature of the disagreement was not immediately clear, they said.
Officials affiliated with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have been asking since after the election for access to the system, the people said — requests that were reiterated more recently, including after Trump’s inauguration.
A spokeswoman for DOGE declined to comment. Lebryk could not be reached for comment late Thursday.
When Scott Bessent was confirmed as treasury secretary on Monday, Lebryk ceased to be the acting agency head.
Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.
The clash reflects an intensifying battle between Musk and the federal bureaucracy as the Trump administration nears the conclusion of its second week. Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the U.S. government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, which essentially handles federal human resources, and the General Services Administration, which manages real estate. (Musk was seen on Thursday visiting GSA, according to two other people familiar with his whereabouts, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal matters. That visit was first reported by the New York Times.) His Department of Government Efficiency, originally conceived as a nongovernmental panel, has since replaced the U.S. Digital Service.
Yes, there are likely some places where the “bureaucracy” could be reduced, but the databases on the bank transfers should remain strictly off-limits to anyone who doesn’t have a security clearance. Meanwhile, “Trump’s FCC chair investigates NPR and PBS, urges Congress to defund them
Brendan Carr described as “Trump’s Censorship Czar” as he launches media probes.”
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has ordered an investigation into NPR and PBS in a move that Democrats described as an attempt to intimidate the media.
“I am writing to inform you that I have asked the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau to open an investigation regarding the airing of NPR and PBS programming across your broadcast member stations,” Carr wrote in a letter yesterday to the leaders of NPR and PBS.
Carr alleged that NPR and PBS are violating a federal law prohibiting noncommercial educational broadcast stations from running commercial advertisements. “I am concerned that NPR and PBS broadcasts could be violating federal law by airing commercials,” Carr wrote. “In particular, it is possible that NPR and PBS member stations are broadcasting underwriting announcements that cross the line into prohibited commercial advertisements.”
Carr’s letter did not provide any specific examples of underwriting announcements that might violate the law, but said the “announcements should not promote the contributor’s products, services, or businesses, and they may not contain comparative or qualitative descriptions, price information, calls to action, or inducements to buy, sell, rent, or lease.”
I guess FARTUS can hawk merch, but Sesame Street can’t. These people are fucking insane.
I am having a hard time not being overwhelmed at this point. This doesn’t mention the disastrous Senate Hearings for Tulsi Gabbard, RFK jr, and Kash Patel. RFK Jr looks more ready to be a California Raisin than head of HHS. And wtf is with Kash Patel’s eyes? This is from The Hill. “Top FBI officials brace for Trump shake-up.”
Top officials at the FBI are facing a shake-up by the Trump administration.
According to House Judiciary Committee Democrats, the five executive assistant directors of the bureau were notified they would be demoted.
“These changes will further jeopardize our national security, leaving the FBI with no experienced senior leadership and a partisan Trump loyalist heading up the Bureau’s response to increasing security threats from Russia, China, and other authoritarian adversaries,” the committee said in a fact sheet circulated to House Democrats.
The move targets the band of top officials who oversee the FBI’s five internal branches and are among the highest-ranking career positions in the bureau. Many report directly to the director and deputy director.
They oversee the FBI’s national security branch and criminal and cyber branch, among others.
The FBI and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Several of President Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees faced tough questioning from Republicans and Democrats alike during hours-long confirmation hearings on Thursday.
Former Democrat and military veteran Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick to be director of national intelligence, was grilled about her past remarks supporting government whistleblower Edward Snowden as well as her relationships with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syria’s former dictator Bashar al-Assad.
Nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, a former federal prosecutor and Trump administration aide, was pressed on his prior comments praising those involved in the 6 January Capitol riots as well as his ties to the QAnon movement.
Read the analysis at the links. I want to add one more thing that’s another mark on the path of the Louisiana Governor’s attempts to sideline professors he doesn’t like. Political firing of tenured professors is another MAGA mishap. “LSU law professor sidelined for political speech sues university. Professor alleges university is violating its own policies regarding tenured faculty.” This is from the Louisiana Illuminator.
A tenured LSU law professor removed from his classes pending an investigation into alleged political comments is suing the university, saying it violated his First Amendment rights and its own policies.
Ken Levy, a professor of constitutional and criminal law, alleges he was removed from his classes earlier this month after political comments made on the first day of his Administration of Criminal Justice course were reported to Gov. Jeff Landry, which he believes led to calls to the university administration about his comments.
“If Governor Landry were to retaliate against me, then f*** the governor and f*** that. — all of which was a joke and clearly said in a joking manner to highlight my no recording policy in class and the First Amendment,” Levy wrote in the affadavit.
Landry called on LSU to discipline Bryner last year for his comments about President Trump the day after the presidential election.
Levy argues in the affidavit that the actions taken against him stifle not only his right to free speech and academic freedom but that of other faculty members.
Landry spokeswoman Kate Kelly referred questions to LSU. University spokesman Todd Woodward has not yet responded to a request for comment.
Levy is asking a judge to grant a temporary restraining order that would allow him to return to teaching as well as an order prohibiting LSU from taking further action against him.
In the suit, Levy also alleges LSU also violated its own policies regarding the punishment of a tenured professor.
These actions are fascist purges. I can only tell you that I feel much worse off than I did two weeks ago. Also, I just paid $9.06 for 1/2 dozen eggs. Do we have a task force on the Avian Flu yet? They have one in Canada already. Japan has one too. Here’s a few headlines on that from a few weeks ago. No word at the moment. Just wondering how many people will die from this disease because FARTUS is an idiot.
The first severe case of bird flu occurred last month in a Louisiana man hospitalized after having had contact with sick birds in a backyard flock. In addition, the state of California recently declared a state of emergency as the bird flu virus continues to spread among livestock in the state.
To date, there have been 66 confirmed human cases of bird flu in the United States, according to the CDC. The current public health risk remains low, as no sustained human-to-human transmission has occurred.
Some obvious questions remain- like how did the U.S. allow a patient to get severely ill from the virus? Also, are we repeating the same mistakes we made with the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020? Here are some reasons we may be repeating history.
You can read the reasons on the link. I was a little slow getting this done today. I was one the phone with doctors and vets all morning and it took longer than I thought it would. Love you all and Stay Safe!
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With just 53 more days until the inauguration, Trump is dreaming up ways to make things more difficult for Joe Biden and for the American people by undermining U.S. foreign policy, hurting the military, damaging the environment and public health, hurting federal employees, and making sure the coronavirus pandemic kills as many people as possible. He even plans to troll Biden’s inauguration.
The assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh may not much have impact on the Iranian nuclear programme he helped build, but it will certainly make it harder to salvage the deal intended to restrict that programme, and that is – so far – the most plausible motive.
Israel is widely agreed to be the most likely perpetrator. Mossad is reported to have been behind a string of assassinations of other Iranian nuclear scientists – reports Israeli officials have occasionally hinted were true.
Photo by Walker Evans
According to former officials, the Obama administration leaned on Israel to discontinue those assassinations in 2013, as it started talks with Tehran that led two years later to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), by which Iran accepted constraints on its nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.
It would be a fair guess that Joe Biden would also oppose such assassinations when he takes office on 20 January and tries to reconstitute the JCPOA – which has been left wounded but just about alive in the wake of Donald Trump’s withdrawal in 2018.
If Mossad was indeed behind the assassination, Israel had a closing window of opportunity in which to carry it out with a green light from an American president, and there seems little doubt that Trump, seeking to play a spoiler role in his last weeks in office, would have given approval, if not active assistance. He is reported to have asked for military options in Iran, in the aftermath of his election defeat.
“I think they would have had to get a green light from Washington. I don’t think they would do it without,” Dina Esfandiary, a fellow at the Century Foundation, said. “In terms of motive, I think it’s just pushing Iran to do something stupid to ensure that the Biden administration’s hands are tied when they come in to pursue negotiations and de-escalation.’
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has vowed revenge and to continue the country’s “scientific” activities after the killing of the country’s chief nuclear scientist, as top Iranian officials pile blame on Israel over the killing.
A Feline Family, by Agnes Augusta Talboys
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who became the face of Iran’s controversial nuclear program, was killed in a district east of Tehran on Friday, in what Iranian officials are calling an assassination.
“There are two matters that people in charge should put in their to do list: 1- To follow up the atrocity and retaliate against those who were responsible for it. 2- To follow up Martyr Fakhrizadeh’s scientific and technical activities in all fields in which he was active,” Khamenei wrote Saturday in a tweet from an account often attributed to him, making a veiled reference to the country’s nuclear activities.
He added: “Our distinguished nuclear scientist in the defense of our country, Mr Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed by the oppressive enemies. This rare scientific mind lost his life for his everlasting great scientific work. He lost his life for God and the supreme leader. God shall reward him greatly.”
President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency was rushing to complete one of its last regulatory priorities, aiming to obstruct the creation of air- and water-pollution controls far into the future, when a senior career scientist moved to hobble it.
Photo by Jane Brown, Cat in a restaurant window, Penzance, circa 1060
Thomas Sinks directed the E.P.A.’s science advisory office and later managed the agency’s rules and data around research that involved people. Before his retirement in September, he decided to issue a blistering official opinion that the pending rule — which would require the agency to ignore or downgrade any medical research that does not expose its raw data — will compromise American public health.
“If this rule were to be finalized it would create chaos,” Dr. Sinks said in an interview in which he acknowledged writing the opinion that had been obtained by The New York Times. “I thought this was going to lead to a train crash and that I needed to speak up.”
With two months left of the Trump administration, career E.P.A. employees find themselves where they began, in a bureaucratic battle with the agency’s political leaders. But now, with the Biden administration on the horizon, they are emboldened to stymie Mr. Trump’s goals and to do so more openly.
The filing of a “dissenting scientific opinion” is an unusual move; it signals that Andrew Wheeler, the administrator of the E.P.A., and his politically appointed deputies did not listen to the objections of career scientists in developing the regulation. More critically, by entering the critique as part of the official Trump administration record on the new rule, Dr. Sinks’s dissent will offer Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s E.P.A. administrator a powerful weapon to repeal the so-called “secret science” policy.
President Donald Trump is threatening to veto legislation to fund the military as one of his final acts in office unless a widely supported, bipartisan provision to rename military bases honoring Confederate military leaders is removed, according to White House, defense and congressional sources.
Dream of a Cat, by Norbertine Breslern-Roth
Since the Nov. 3 election, Trump has privately told Republican lawmakers that he won’t back down from his position during the campaign that he would veto the annual National Defense Authorization Act if it includes an amendment to rename the bases….
Trump’s stance has put in doubt legislation that had been agreed to by Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate. It has sent members of Trump’s party scrambling to find a path for the defense bill, which outlines military policy and funding, and put them on a collision course with Democrats.
The outgoing Trump administration is racing to enact the biggest change to the federal civil service in generations, reclassifying career employees at key agencies to strip their job protections and leave them open to being fired before Joe Biden takes office.
The budget office sent a list this week of roles identified by its politically appointed leaders to the federal personnel agency for final sign-off. The list comprises 88 percent of its workforce — 425 analysts and other experts who would shift into a new job classification called Schedule F.
The employees would then be vulnerable to dismissal before Trump leaves office if they are considered poor performers or have resisted executing the president’s priorities, effectively turning them into political appointees that come and go with each administration.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is expected to move $455 billion in unspent coronavirus stimulus money into a fund that the incoming Biden administration cannot deploy without congressional approval, Bloomberg reported.
The CARES Act funding will be placed in the agency’s General Fund, a Treasury Department spokesperson told Bloomberg. If Mnuchin’s successor — Biden is widely expected to pick former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen to fill the role — wants to access that money, she will need to receive Congress’ blessing….
Last week, Mnuchin said he would not extend several emergency loan programs set up with the Federal Reserve, prompting a rare criticism from the U.S. central bank. While the lending facilities have been little used so far, they were viewed as a vital backstop for the pandemic-ravaged economy.
The money is part of the $500 billion Treasury Department fund created at the end of March by the CARES Act. The Treasury Fund set aside $46 billion for loans and loan guarantees to the airline industry, and the remainder was designated to support Fed lending programs to businesses, states and municipalities.
And of course there’s the raging pandemic that Trump has not only ignored but enabled with his rallies and his mocking of public restr
More than 205,000 new cases were reported Friday — which likely consists of both Thursday and Friday reports in some cases, as at least 20 states did not report Covid-19 numbers on Thanksgiving.
The US has now reported more than 100,000 infections every day for 25 consecutive days, with a daily average of more than 166,000 across the last week — almost 2.5 times higher than the summer’s peak counts in July.
The number of Covid-19 patients in US hospitals is just off record levels: more than 89,800 on Friday, only a few hundred lower than the peak set a day earlier, according to the COVID Tracking Project….
Based on the current Covid-19 numbers in the US, the country is far from rounding the corner, she said.
“If anything, we are rounding the corner into a calamity,” Wen said. “We’re soon going to exceed well more than 2,000 deaths, maybe 3,000, 4,000 deaths every single day here in the US.”
That projection has been echoed by other experts including Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine at George Washington University, who predicted Wednesday the country’s daily death toll would likely double in 10 days, and soon see “close to 4,000 deaths a day.”
In the twilight of his presidency, Donald Trump is discussing different ways to disrupt the impending Joe Biden era, chief among them by announcing another run against him.
According to three people familiar with the conversations, the president, who refuses to acknowledge he lost the 2020 election as he clearly did, has not just talked to close advisers and confidants about a potential 2024 run to reclaim the White House but about the specifics of a campaign launch. The conversations have explored, among other things, how Trump could best time his announcement so as to keep the Republican Party behind him for the next four years. Two of these knowledgeable sources said the president has, in the past two weeks, even floated the idea of doing a 2024-related event during Biden’s inauguration week, possibly on Inauguration Day, if his legal effort to steal the 2020 election ultimately fails.
According to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, the president has privately bragged that he’d still remain in the spotlight, even if Biden is in the Oval Office, in part because the news media will keep regularly covering him since—as Trump has assessed—he gets the news outlets ratings and those same outlets find Biden “boring.”
That’s it for me today. I hope you all are having a relaxing holiday weekend!
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This post is illustrated with cute pics of cats and dogs from petinsurance.review, because I’m dealing with a very bad cold this morning; I’d like to just crawl back under the covers and zone out. On top of that, my patience with our rude and crude new “president” is quickly running out. This clueless man is destroying our reputation as a nation, alienating our oldest and closest allies around the world, and antagonizing our most dangerous opponents–except, of course, for Russia.
Yesterday tRump had nothing to say about Russia attacking Ukraine, but he had no problem with threatening to send U.S. troops into Mexico; sending Michael Flynn out to put Iran “on notice,” whatever that means; and “blasting” and insulting the prime minister of Australia, one of our closest and most loyal allies.
The phone call between the leaders was intended to patch things up between the new president and his ally. The two have had a series of public spats over Trump’s determination to have Mexico pay for the planned border wall, something Mexico steadfastly refuses to agree to.
“You have a bunch of bad hombres down there,” Trump told Pena Nieto, according to the excerpt given to AP. “You aren’t doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn’t, so I just might send them down to take care of it.”
A person with access to the official transcript of the phone call provided only that portion of the conversation to The Associated Press. The person gave it on condition of anonymity because the administration did not make the details of the call public.
The Mexican website Aristegui Noticias on Tuesday published a similar account of the phone call, based on the reporting of journalist Dolia Estevez. The report described Trump as humiliating Pena Nieto in a confrontational conversation.
Mexico’s foreign relations department said the report was “based on absolute falsehoods.”
Americans may recognize Trump’s signature bombast in the comments, but the remarks may carry more weight in Mexico.
It certainly does sound like tRump, though, doesn’t it? Maybe the Mexico government is going to give us the benefit of the doubt for awhile, but I doubt if this will help public opinion south of the border.
President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor Michael Flynn condemned Wednesday Iran’s recent ballistic missile test launch, calling it a “provocative” breach of a UN Security Council resolution.
Flynn called the launch the latest in a series of provocative moves by Iran that have included backing Houthi rebels in Yemen, who have attacked US allies.
“As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice,” Flynn said from the White House briefing room.
Flynn did not say whether the US would take action beyond a verbal warning, and three senior administration officials, speaking on background, said Wednesday that they are still in the early stages of determining what action the US should take in response.
“We are considering a whole range of options. We’re in a deliberative process,” one of the officials said.
A top aide to Iran’s supreme leader blamed the “inexperienced” Trump administration for apparent U.S. threats and vowed his country would continue testing ballistic missiles.
Ali Akbar Velayati, who advises Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on foreign affairs, said that Iran had not breached a nuclear deal reached with six major powers in 2015 or a U.N. Security Council resolution that endorsed the accord. The White House has accused Tehran of acting “in defiance” of a separate U.N. Security Council resolution on ballistic missiles, as opposed to the nuclear agreement.
“This is not the first time that an inexperienced person has threatened Iran,” Velayati said. “Iran is the strongest power in the region and has a lot of political, economic and military power … America should be careful about making empty threats to Iran.”
He added: “Iran will continue to test its capabilities in ballistic missiles and Iran will not ask any country for permission in defending itself.”
It should have been one of the most congenial calls for the new commander in chief — a conversation with the leader of Australia, one of America’s staunchest allies, at the end of a triumphant week.
Instead, President Trump blasted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over a refugee agreement and boasted about the magnitude of his electoral college win, according to senior U.S. officials briefed on the Saturday exchange. Then, 25 minutes into what was expected to be an hour-long call, Trump abruptly ended it.
At one point, Trump informed Turnbull that he had spoken with four other world leaders that day — including Russian President Vladimir Putin — and that “this was the worst call by far.”
Trump was upset about an agreement between the Obama administration and Turnbull to swap some refugees being held in the two countries.
“This is the worst deal ever,” Trump fumed as Turnbull attempted to confirm that the United States would honor its pledge to take in 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention center.
Trump, who one day earlier had signed an executive order temporarily barring the admission of refugees, complained that he was “going to get killed” politically and accused Australia of seeking to export the “next Boston bombers.”
Trump returned to the topic late Wednesday night, writing in a message on Twitter: “Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!”
U.S. officials said that Trump has behaved similarly in conversations with leaders of other countries, including Mexico. But his treatment of Turnbull was particularly striking because of the tight bond between the United States and Australia — countries that share intelligence, support one another diplomatically and have fought together in wars including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Australia has supported the U.S. in wars dating back to Vietnam and is one of the five trusted nations with whom we share intelligence. Why the hell can’t tRump stop his pathological bragging about winning the election? His behavior is an embarrassment to our country.
For the first time in decades, America’s oldest allies are questioning where Washington’s heart is.
This week, President Donald Trump and his deputies hit out at some of America’s closest friends, blasting a “dumb” refugee resettlement deal with Australia and accusing Japan and Germany of manipulating their currencies. Ties with Mexico have deteriorated to the point its government had to deny reports that Trump told President Enrique Pena Nieto he might send U.S. troops across the southern border.
The dilemma for officials globally is figuring out if Trump’s blunt style is simply a tactic to keep them off balance or the start of a move to tear up the rule book that has guided relations with the U.S. since World War II. In the mean time, allies have little choice but to prepare for the worst.
The latest attacks came against Australia and Japan, even with Trump’s new Pentagon chief in the region to offer assurances about the U.S.’s commitment to security ties.
“For those of us like Australia, Japan or Korea, who have been dependent on that continuity, we have got to start thinking about a situation where the U.S. is much more self interested, and more more capricious on what it might do,” said Nick Bisley, a professor of international relations at La Trobe University in Melbourne. “Countries in the region have got to sit down and say those old arrangements can’t last forever.”
tRump’s behavior is disgusting and dangerous.
Meanwhile, federal employees are struggling to deal with tRump and are pushing back in unprecedented ways.
Less than two weeks into Trump’s administration, federal workers are in regular consultation with recently departed Obama-era political appointees about what they can do to push back against the new president’s initiatives. Some federal employees have set up social media accounts to anonymously leak word of changes that Trump appointees are trying to make.
And a few government workers are pushing back more openly, incurring the wrath of a White House that, as press secretary Sean Spicer said this week about dissenters at the State Department, sends a clear message that they “should either get with the program, or they can go.”
At a church in Columbia Heights last weekend, dozens of federal workers attended a support group for civil servants seeking a forum to discuss their opposition to the Trump administration. And 180 federal employees have signed up for a workshop next weekend, where experts will offer advice on workers’ rights and how they can express civil disobedience.
At the Justice Department, an employee in the division that administers grants to nonprofits fighting domestic violence and researching sex crimes said the office has been planning to slow its work and to file complaints with the inspector general’s office if asked to shift grants away from their mission.
“You’re going to see the bureaucrats using time to their advantage,” said the employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Through leaks to news organizations and internal complaints, he said, “people here will resist and push back against orders they find unconscionable.”
The resistance is so early, so widespread and so deeply felt that it has officials worrying about paralysis and overt refusals by workers to do their jobs.
And check out this quote from the article:
Asked whether federal workers are dissenting in ways that go beyond previous party changes in the White House, Tom Malinowski, who was President Barack Obama’s assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, said, sarcastically: “Is it unusual? . . . There’s nothing unusual about the entire national security bureaucracy of the United States feeling like their commander in chief is a threat to U.S. national security. That happens all the time. It’s totally usual. Nothing to worry about.”
Federal employees worried that President Donald Trump will gut their agencies are creating new email addresses, signing up for encrypted messaging apps and looking for other, protected ways to push back against the new administration’s agenda.
Whether inside the Environmental Protection Agency, within the Foreign Service, on the edges of the Labor Department or beyond, employees are using new technology as well as more old-fashioned approaches — such as private face-to-face meetings — to organize letters, talk strategy, or contact media outlets and other groups to express their dissent.
The goal is to get their message across while not violating any rules covering workplace communications, which can be monitored by the government and could potentially get them fired.
At the EPA, a small group of career employees — numbering less than a dozen so far — are using an encrypted messaging app to discuss what to do if Trump’s political appointees undermine their agency’s mission to protect public health and the environment, flout the law, or delete valuable scientific data that the agency has been collecting for years, sources told POLITICO.
Fearing for their jobs, the employees began communicating incognito using the app Signal shortly after Trump’s inauguration. Signal, like WhatsApp and other mobile phone software, encrypts all communications, making it more difficult for hackers to gain access to them.
We are truly in uncharted territory. Unpresidented!
What stories are you following 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.
Actually, 
Elonia is making serious trouble at the US Treasury. 
Yes, there are likely some places where the “bureaucracy” could be reduced, but the databases on the bank transfers should remain strictly off-limits to anyone who doesn’t have a security clearance. 
I am having a hard time not being overwhelmed at this point. This doesn’t mention the disastrous Senate Hearings for Tulsi Gabbard, RFK jr, and Kash Patel. RFK Jr looks more ready to be a California Raisin than head of HHS. And wtf is with Kash Patel’s eyes?
I wouldn’t want a kidnapped child’s case in the hands of any of these people. This article is from the BBC. 
These actions are fascist purges. I can only tell you that I feel much worse off than I did two weeks ago. Also, I just paid $9.06 for 1/2 dozen eggs. Do we have a task force on the Avian Flu yet? 
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