Frustrating Friday Reads: Where are the pitchforks, torches, and guillotines?

“Resist!”
John (repeat1968) Buss
‪@johnbuss.bsky.social‬

It’s another Sad Day, Sky Dancers!

This may be the only hope we have left. Three GOP seats are heading to Special Elections. A Democratic Party Trifecta would be enough for Dems to regain control!  The rest of the news has the indicators of a Constitutional Crisis and, as BB and JJ have said, a Coup. Former US Attorneys Barbara McQuade and Harry Littman have inside information on something that makes Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre look like a picnic.  JJ and BB are flooding my sms with some of the worst headlines I have ever seen.

The last three weeks have been unending and brutal. The roll-out of Project 2025 is the most consequential threat to our Republic since the Civil War.  And it’s coming from the White House.  This headline from The Salt Lake Tribune shows how horrifying it’s getting in the states that are Republican Red have gone down the War Path against everything decent, just, and fair.  “Nazi flags can fly in Utah schools, but not pride flags, GOP lawmaker says. A new bill would allow for Nazi and Confederate flags to be displayed in some instances in Utah schools and government buildings, but pride flags would be banned.”

Here are the Litman and McQuade conversations about the DOJ’s Thursday night Slaughter.

Strong rumor with credible sourcing: DOJ has put all of public integrity line attorneys in a room and told them they have an hour for someone to choose who will sign motion to dismiss and if nobody does, they will all be fired. The nastiest strong-arming in DOJ history by a long shot.

— Harry Litman (@harrylitman.bsky.social) 2025-02-14T16:07:55.931Z

This is Saturday night massacre in free fall. A day that will live in infamy in DOJ. 22 people in room. it's savage. hard to imagine greater disrespect for DOJ professionals.

— Harry Litman (@harrylitman.bsky.social) 2025-02-14T16:11:12.111Z

Very proud of the 8 DOJ attorneys who have refused to dismiss the Adams case. Their oath is to the Constitution, not the president.

— Barb McQuade (@barbmcquade.bsky.social) 2025-02-14T12:28:35.393Z

McQuade shared this from the New York Times.

In less than a month in power, President Trump’s political appointees have embarked on an unapologetic, strong-arm effort to impose their will on the Justice Department, seeking to justify their actions as the simple reversal of the “politicization” of federal law enforcement under their Biden-era predecessors.

The ferocious campaign, executed by Emil Bove III — Mr. Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer who is now the department’s acting No. 2 official — is playing out in public, in real time, through a series of moves that underscore Mr. Trump’s intention to bend the traditionally nonpartisan career staff in federal law enforcement to suit his ends.

That strategy has quickly precipitated a crisis that is an early test of how resilient the norms of the criminal justice system will prove to be against the pressures brought by a retribution-minded president and his appointees.

On Thursday, the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Danielle R. Sassoon, resigned rather than sign off on Mr. Bove’s command to dismiss the corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York. Ms. Sassoon is no member of the liberal resistance: She clerked for the conservative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, and had been appointed to her post by Mr. Trump’s team.

Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of the Department of Defense Pete Hegseth headed to Europe to evidently blow up the relationships with all of our major allies. The two surly men’s visit was not appreciated. This happened while Trump announced that he and Putin would be visiting each other’s country to tie up Ukraine’s surrender.  Vance has been sent to chat with Ukriane’s President Zelensky at the Munich Conference, which they are both attending.   Analysis of his speech can be found at this link. ‘Threat I worry most is threat from within,’ Vance criticises European leaders – summary.”

US vice-president JD Vance has urged Europe to put forward a positive case for freedom and act against “the threat that I worry most, the threat from within” which he put as “the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values” through restrictions on free speech, content moderation rules online, and political firewalls against radical parties.

Meanwhile, The Guardian also reports a drone attack on Chornobyl. “Russian drone detonates on Chornobyl nuclear plant containment shell.” The International Atomic Energy Agency has some astounding pictures shown in the article.

A Russian drone carrying a high-explosive warhead struck the protective containment shell of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine overnight, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.

He described the move, coming amid speculation about potential peace talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin, as “a very clear greeting from Putin and Russian Federation to the security conference.”

Ukrainian security services said the drone was a Geran-2, the Russian name for the Iranian-designed Shahed-136, and had been intended to hit the reactor enclosure, Reuters noted.

Zelenskyy said the damage to the shelter was “significant” and had started a fire, but he added that radiation levels at the plant had not increased.

The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, denied Moscow was responsible for the attack. Without presenting evidence, he said Ukrainian officials wanted to thwart efforts to end the war through negotiations between Trump and Putin.

In a wide-ranging and fiery speech peppered with European references, he accused European leaders of abandoning their roots as “defenders of democracy” during the cold war by what he believes is the process of shutting down dissenting voices (14:51).

He said they were increasingly looking “like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet era words like misinformation … who simply don’t like that idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion” (14:55).

He criticised “cavalier” statements from European officials “sounding delighted” about the cancelled presidential elections in Romania or expansive content moderation powers or other free speech restrictions in the US, Germany and Sweden, saying there were “shocking to American ears” (14:46).

He also criticised European leaders for “running in fear of your own voters,” including on migration, saying that risks destroying democracy from within by disenchanting the population from taking part in democratic processes (15:01).

He dismissed any criticism of Elon Musk’s alleged interference in European elections, saying “if American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.”

He called for an end of political “firewalls,” a pointed reference to the German arrangement keeping out the far-right parties such as the Alternative für Deutschland, just nine days before the federal election next Sunday (15:01).

But notably, he doesn’t say much about Ukraine, other than a brief comment that the US administration “believes we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine” (14:44).

The New Republic’s Hafiz Rashid has this take. “JD Vance Escalates Conflict With Europe in Alarming Speech at Munich.”

The vice president criticized European leaders for being afraid of their own voters, in a nod to European far-right parties, such as the AfD in Germany, seeming to threaten a chilling of relations with governments whose ideologies differ from his and Trump’s.

“If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you, nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump,” Vance said.

Hanging over the conference was Thursday’s attack in the German city, where a car driven by an Afghan immigrant ran into a crowd of people, injuring at least 28. Vance used the incident to bolster a nativist argument for restricting immigration.

“How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction?” Vance asked.

“If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk,” Vance said, downplaying a man currently threatening America’s democracy, as well as that of Germany, and drawing a false equivalence between a climate activist and the world’s richest man.

The vice president may think he struck a blow for the Trump administration’s worldview in Munich Friday, but he’s missing the hypocrisy of his own words. The Trump administration has so far rammed through executive orders instead of passing laws, gutted the federal workforce, undermined the right to a free press, and ignored the outcry from all Americans outside of the MAGA bubble.

Politico has the hot take on Pete Hegseth’s visit to the Munich Security Conference.  An actual Republic Congress critter may have a criticism!  Amazing! Well, he did try to soften the blow with some obvious ass kissing too. Read for yourself.  “Senior Republican senator ‘puzzled’ and ‘disturbed’ by Hegseth’s Ukraine remarks.  Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker is breaking with the line from the Trump White House.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made a “rookie mistake” when he said a return to Ukraine’s pre-war borders was “unrealistic,” Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker said Friday.

Hegseth on Thursday pulled back some of the comments he made about Ukraine a day earlier, where he said that NATO membership for Kyiv was off the table and that the country could not return to its internationally recognized borders.

“Hegseth is going to be a great defense secretary, although he wasn’t my choice for the job,” the Mississippi Republican told POLITICO on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. “But he made a rookie mistake in Brussels and he’s walked back some of what he said but not that line.”

“I don’t know who wrote the speech — it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool,” Wicker said, referring to the pro-Putin broadcaster.

Speaking to Jonathan Martin at the POLITICO Pub in the Munich conference, Wicker — a staunch Ukraine supporter — said he was “surprised” by Hegseth’s original comments and “heartened” that the new defense secretary had reversed course. Wicker said he favors a firm posture with Moscow.

“Everybody knows … and people in the administration know you don’t say before your first meeting what you will agree to and what you won’t agree to,” Wicker said, adding that he was “puzzled” and “disturbed” by Hegseth’s comments.

While I just criticized the governor of Utah, let me not forget to kick the governor of Lousyana in the balls a few times.  He’s trying to kill us. This is also from Politico. “Louisiana to end mass vaccine promotion, state’s top health official says.  The department will still “stock and provide vaccines,” according to a department memo.”

The Louisiana Department of Health “will no longer promote mass vaccination” according to a Thursday memo written by the state’s top health official and obtained by The Associated Press.

A department spokesperson confirmed Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham had ordered his staff to stop engaging in media campaigns and community health fairs to encourage vaccinations, even as the state has experienced a surge in influenza.

Abraham’s announcement occurred the same day vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in by the U.S. Senate to serve as President Donald Trump’s health secretary.

In a separate letter posted on the department’s website, Louisiana’s surgeon general decried “blanket government mandates” for vaccines and criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 vaccination push. Individuals should make their own decisions about vaccinations, Abraham said.

“Government should admit the limitations of its role in people’s lives and pull back its tentacles from the practice of medicine,” said Abraham, a Republican.

I gagged on that last statement because that certainly doesn’t apply to women and girls with functioning ovaries and uteruses.  Meanwhile, Trump is planning mass firings at the CDC. Bird Flu, anyone?  This is from STAT.  “Trump administration to fire thousands at health agencies. Employees across agencies who were hired in the past one to two years are being targeted.”  Considering he also wants to end Medicaid, I would say we are about to have a serious amount of deaths on our hands.

The Trump administration is set to eliminate thousands of federal health care jobs Friday, targeting employees across public health and science agencies who were hired in the past one to two years.

Senior officials were informed in meetings Friday morning that roughly 5,200 people on probationary employment — recent hires — across agencies including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be fired that afternoon, according to sources briefed on the meetings. CDC leadership was told the Atlanta-based agency would lose about 1,300 workers. The numbers at the NIH are not clear, but exceptions are being made for certain probationary employees, according to a memo viewed by STAT.

The workers will be given a month’s paid leave but lose access to work systems by the end of Friday, according to sources.

In addition to the probationary workers, an unspecified number of contract workers at the CDC and other Health and Human Services agencies have been informed over the course of the past week that their jobs had been terminated, including dozens at the Vaccine Research Center housed at NIH. Many jobs at these agencies are done by contract workers.

Other changes are expected, particularly at the leadership levels of organizations. When Susan Monarez, a former ARPA-H official, was named acting director of the CDC, she informed staff she would transition into the role of acting principal deputy director once Dave Weldon, the nominee to lead the agency, is confirmed. That move signaled that the current acting principal deputy director, Nirav Shah, who joined the CDC in March 2023, was likely out of a job. Earlier this week, Shah told CDC staff that his last day at the agency would be Feb. 28, a source told STAT.

Head of ARPA-H and Biden appointee Renee Wegrzyn told staff Friday morning that she was fired, a source told STAT. The agency, established in 2022 by Biden to work with the private sector on breakthrough medical technology, employs less than 200 workers. Because of the agency’s newness, most employees are considered probationary and could be targeted for layoffs.

Once again, I feel the need to share Tim Miller’s latest at The Bulwark.  Trying to preserve American democracy makes for strange bedfellows.  Also, they have a Valentine’s poem for everyone!

Roses are red,
The Bulwark is rad—
As we’ve always said:
Orange Man Bad.

Here’s Miller’s lede. “Kash’s Honesty Problem.”  Ya think?

For all the many, many, MANY faults of Trump’s other nominees, none of them impulse-lied to senators’ faces while under oath in a confirmation hearing, as if they were a troublemaking toddler telling their parents they didn’t drop the cake, hoping no one noticed their face was covered in chocolate icing.

But that seems to be what Kash Patel did—and not on a matter of negligible import. Patel told the Senate Judiciary Committee that “I don’t know what’s going on right now over there” in the FBI, and that he was “not aware” of plans to fire FBI agents and officials who had investigated Donald Trump and January 6th. But according to several whistleblowers and contemporaneous notes, this was not true. From the Washington Post:

“KP wants movement at FBI,” one attendee purportedly wrote in the notes Durbin reviewed.

This was just the latest in a string of ostentatious lies that Patel told the senators set to confirm him—and basically anyone else who has had the displeasure of recently encountering him. Here’s just a modest sampling:

• Patel had previously said “we went to the studio and recorded [the J6 Prison Choir], mastered it, digitized it, and put it out as a song” but during his confirmation hearing he told Sen. Adam Schiff that the “we” repeatedly invoked in that sentence did not actually include him because he was not involved. He claimed he was using “the proverbial we”—I guess he means the royal “We”—you know, the editorial. It is the type of semantic lie that would make even Slick Willy blush.
• A state court judge overseeing one of the January 6th cases said Patel was “not a credible witness” because his testimony was “not only illogical . . . but completely devoid of any evidence in the record.”
• Patel has vastly exaggerated his résumé, claiming, among other things, that he was the “the Main Justice lead prosecutor for Benghazi” when in fact he had a junior supportive role—one he began after the investigation had started and left before the first case went to trial.
• A Trump adviser told the Atlantic that Patel had more than once claimed he was the person who “‘gave the order’ for U.S. forces to move in and kill the ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019”—even though he was not even in the Situation Room.
• Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper wrote in his book that Patel’s lies about a Seal Team Six hostage rescue in Africa led to an international incident that put their lives at risk.
• Patel has repeatedly lied about the FBI having a role in January 6th, advancing the absurd Ray Epps conspiracy theory.
• Then there were his claims that he was present when Trump magically declassified the documents he was keeping at Mar-a-Lago, and then pleaded the Fifth when asked about it in front of a grand jury.

I could keep going, but really, the story of Kash is best summed up in this anecdote from Elaina Plott Calabro’s Atlantic profile. Calabro wrote that Patel often says he and Trump are “just a ‘couple of guys from Queens,’” when Patel isn’t even from Queens. He’s from Garden City! That’s not the 313.

We’re still not living in the United States of America, are we?  The abhorrent actions of Trump, Musk, and underlings puts the word Banana in the Republic.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?