Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: June 7, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, ICE Immigration and Customs Enforcement, immigration | Tags: "Big Beautiful Bill", House budget bill, ICE raids, Kilmar Abreago Garcia, Los Angeles, Medicaid, NASA, social safety net, Social Security, Trump-Musk breakup | 11 Comments

Their Cat, by Pauline Bewick

Good Afternoon!!

The epic spat between Trump and Musk is still dominating the media landscape, but that childish story should get some competition soon from the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the U.S. The Trump administration finally decided to bring him back after they invented some “crimes” to charge him with and took them to a grand jury in Tennessee. The trumped up charges led a long-time prosecutor there to abruptly resign. Meanwhile, even though Musk is gone, DOGE is still working to steal all our private data. On the ICE/mass deportation front, Los Angeles looked like a war zone yesterday.

I’ll get to each of these stories, beginning with Abrego Garcia.

The Return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia

CNN: Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been returned to the United States to face criminal charges.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March, has been returned to the United States to face federal criminal charges, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday.

For months, the Trump administration has been locked in an intense standoff with the federal judiciary over court orders for the government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador, where he was mistakenly deported in mid-March, in a situation that one federal judge warned could present an “incipient crisis” between the two branches.

Abrego Garcia has been indicted on two criminal counts in the Middle District of Tennessee: conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain and unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain.

The indictment unsealed Friday afternoon accuses Abrego Garcia and others of partaking in a conspiracy in recent years in which they “knowingly and unlawfully transported thousands of undocumented aliens who had no authorization to be present in the United States, and many of whom were MS-13 members and associates.”

Abrego Garcia and his family say he fled gang violence in El Salvador and have denied allegations he’s associated with MS-13.

The White House and the State Department made the decision to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S.

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney for Abrego Garcia, accused the Trump administration of “playing games” with the legal system and said his client should appear in immigration court, not criminal court.

“The government disappeared Kilmar to a foreign prison in violation of a court order. Now, after months of delay and secrecy, they’re bringing him back, not to correct their error but to prosecute him. This shows that they were playing games with the court all along,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said in a statement to CNN. “Due process means the chance to defend yourself before you’re punished, not after. This is an abuse of power, not justice.”

The alleged “crimes”:

The allegations date back to 2016 and involve a half-dozen alleged unnamed co-conspirators, with one, identified as CC-6 of Guatemala, described as being a “primary sources of supply of undocumented aliens for the conspiracy.”

Man with cat, Theresa Tanner

The conspiracy allegations outline how, over the years, Abrego Garcia and others worked to move undocumented aliens between Texas and Maryland and other states more than 100 times.

Working with another co-conspirator, referred to as CC-1, Abrego Garcia and that unnamed individual “ordinarily picked up the undocumented aliens in the Houston, Texas area after the aliens had unlawfully crossed the Southern border of the United States from Mexico,” the indictment said.

The two “then transported the undocumented aliens from Texas to other parts of the United States to further the aliens’ unlawful presence in the United States.”

You can read more details on the trumped up charges at the CNN link.

ABC News: Abrego Garcia indictment led top federal prosecutor in Tennessee to resign: Sources.

The decision to pursue the indictment against Kilmar Abrego Garcia led to the abrupt departure of Ben Schrader, a high-ranking federal prosecutor in Tennessee, sources briefed on Schrader’s decision told ABC News.

Schrader’s resignation was prompted by concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons, the sources said.

Schrader, who spent 15 years in the U.S. A

ttorney’s Office in Nashville, and was most recently the chief of the criminal division, did not respond to messages from ABC News seeking comment.

Analysis by Alan Feuer at The New York Times (gift link): Return of Wrongly Deported Man Raises Questions About Trump’s Views of Justice.

When Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on Friday that Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia had been returned to the United States to face criminal charges after being wrongfully deported to a prison in El Salvador, she sought to portray the move as the White House dutifully upholding the rule of law.

“This,” she said, “is what American justice looks like.”

Her assertion, however, failed to grapple with the fact that for the nearly three months before the Justice Department secured an indictment against Mr. Abrego Garcia, it had repeatedly flouted a series of court orders — including one from the Supreme Court — to “facilitate” his release.

While the indictment filed against Mr. Abrego Garcia contained serious allegations, accusing him of taking part in a conspiracy to smuggle undocumented immigrants as a member of the street gang MS-13, it had no bearing on the issues that have sat at the heart of the case since his summary expulsion in March.

Those were whether Mr. Abrego Garcia had received due process when he was plucked off the streets without a warrant and expelled days later to a prison in El Salvador, in what even Trump officials have repeatedly admitted was an error. And, moreover, whether administration officials should be held in contempt for repeatedly stonewalling a judge’s effort to get to the bottom of their actions.

Well before Mr. Abrego Garcia’s family filed a lawsuit seeking to force the White House to release him from El Salvador, administration officials had tried all means at their disposal to keep him overseas as they figured out a solution to the problem they had created, The New York Times found in a recent investigation.

Will Barnet, Interlude

Feuer discusses the Trump administration’s machinations:

In the days before the administration’s error was made public, officials at the Department of Homeland Security discussed portraying Mr. Abrego Garcia as a “leader” of MS-13, even though they could find no evidence to support the claim. They considered ways to nullify the original order that had barred his deportation to El Salvador. And they sought to downplay the danger he might face in one of that country’s most notorious prisons.

To Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, it was no surprise that the same officials who had fought so hard against securing his return suddenly agreed to bring him back to U.S. soil after they had obtained an indictment that bolstered the story they had been telling from the start.

“Today’s action proves what we’ve known all along — that the administration had the ability to bring him back and just refused to do so,” said Andrew Rossman, one of the lawyers. “It’s now up to our judicial system to see that Mr. Abrego Garcia receives the due process that the Constitution guarantees.”

Questions have already been raised about the criminal case, filed in Federal District Court in Nashville. There was concern and disagreement in recent weeks among prosecutors about how to proceed with the charges, two people familiar with the matter said, leading to the resignation of a supervisor in the federal prosecutor’s office handling the case.

Use the gift link to read the whole article. You can also read Marcy Wheeler’s take on the indictment at Emptywheel.

The Trump-Musk Split

There are gossipy article at the NYT, the WaPo, and the Atlantic.

Tyler Pager, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, Theodore Schleifer, and Ryan Mac at The New York Times: Buildup to a Meltdown: How the Trump-Musk Alliance Collapsed.

Just minutes before he walked into the Oval Office for a televised send-off for Elon Musk last week, an aide had handed him a file.

The papers showed that Mr. Trump’s nominee to run NASA — a close associate of Mr. Musk’s — had donated to prominent Democrats in recent years, including some who Mr. Trump was learning about for the first time.

The president set his outrage aside and mustered through a cordial public farewell. But as soon as the cameras left the Oval Office, the president confronted Mr. Musk. He started to read some of the donations out loud, shaking his head.

This was not good, the president said.

Artist Luis Garces Bonhemio y el gato

Mr. Musk, who was sporting a black eye that he blamed on a punch from his young son, tried to explain. He said Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur who was set to become the next NASA administrator, cared about getting things done. Yes, he had donated to Democrats, but so had a lot of people.

Maybe it’s a good thing, Mr. Musk told the president — it shows that you’re willing to hire people of all stripes.

But Mr. Trump was unmoved. He said that people don’t change. These are the types of people who will turn, he said, and it won’t end up being good for us.

The moment of pique was a signal of the simmering tensions between the two men that would explode into the open less than a week later, upending what had been one of the most extraordinary alliances in American politics.

That’s the NYT take. Obviously, having a friend as head of NASA would be very good for Musk’s businesses.

Cat Zakrzewski, Natalie Allison, Elizabeth Dwoskin, Jeff Stein, and Emily Davies at The Washington Post (gift link): Inside the battles that shattered Trump and Musk’s alliance.

President Donald Trump was dejected, processing his very public split with the world’s richest man.

Rattled in the wake of Elon Musk’s public attacks and apparent call for his impeachment, Trump worked the phones, debriefing close confidants and casual acquaintances alike. His former ally was “a big-time drug addict,” Trump said at one point as he tried to make sense of Musk’s behavior, according to a person with knowledge of the call, who like others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Musk has acknowledged using ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, which he says was prescribed for him to treat depression. The New York Times recently reported that he was using so much ketamine on the campaign trail that he told people it was affecting his bladder, and he traveled with a pill box with medication with the marking of Adderall. White House officials said that Trump’s concern about Musk’s drug use, stemming in part from media reports, was one factor driving the two men apart.

But the president, who historically hasn’t hesitated to fire off deeply personal, blistering social media posts about others who have insulted him, was more muted regarding Musk than friends and advisers expected. In the aftermath of his Thursday faceoff with Musk, he urged those around him not to pour gasoline on the fire, according to two people with knowledge of his behavior. He told Vice President JD Vance to be cautious with how he spoke publicly about the Musk situation.

But although the break between Musk and Trump only exploded into public view on Thursday, cracks in the alliance began to appear much earlier. As Musk’s “move fast and break things” bravado complicated the White House’s ambitions to remake American society, the billionaire alienated key members of the White House staff, including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and quarreled with Cabinet members, physically coming to blows with one.

That’s the introduction; read all the gossip at the WaPo. I’ve included a gift link, because it’s an interesting article.

Jonathan Lemire, Ashley Parker, Michael Scherer, and Russell Berman at The Atlantic (gift link): Inside the Trump-Musk Breakup.

For once, President Donald Trump was trying to be the adult in the room.

Trump and Elon Musk, two billionaires with massive egos and combustible temperaments, had forged an unlikely friendship over the past year, one built on proximity, political expediency, and, yes, a touch of genuine warmth. Relations between the president and his top benefactor had grown somewhat strained in recent weeks, as Trump began to feel that Musk had overstayed his welcome in the West Wing. Musk had suggested privately that he could stay on at the White House, an offer that Trump gently declined, two people familiar with the situation told us. (They, like others we talked with for this story, spoke anonymously in order to share candid details about a sensitive feud.) But Musk was still given a gracious send-off last Friday—complete with a large golden, albeit ceremonial, key—aimed at keeping the mercurial tech baron more friend than foe.

Will Barnet, The Closed Window

The peace didn’t last even a week.

On Tuesday, Musk took to X to attack the Republican spending bill being debated in the Senate, trashing Trump’s signature piece of legislation as “a disgusting abomination.” Even as the White House tried to downplay any differences, Musk couldn’t let go of his grievances—the exclusion of electric-vehicle tax credits from the bill, and Trump’s rejection of Musk’s pick to run NASA.

Yesterday, the planet’s richest man attacked its most powerful. Each took aim at the other from their respective social-media platform, forcing rubberneckers into a madcap toggle between Truth Social and X. Trump deemed his former aide “CRAZY,” while Musk went much further, dramatically escalating the feud by calling for Trump’s impeachment, suggesting that the president had been part of Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious sex-trafficking ring, and—likely worst of all in Trump’s mind—taking credit for the president’s election in November.

For one day, Musk made X great again. The spectacle seemed to subside today, as Trump showed—at least by his standards—some restraint. The president insisted that he was not thinking about Musk and wanted only to pass the reconciliation bill that had featured in the brawl. Musk, meanwhile, has far more to lose: his newfound stardom within the MAGA movement, his personal wealth, and government contracts worth billions to his businesses.

Steven Bannon, the influential Trump adviser who has long been critical of Musk, crowed that the tech billionaire’s attacks on Trump were so personal that he won’t be forgiven by the MAGA crowd. “Only the fanboys are going to stick with him—he’s a man without a country,” Bannon told us.

Use the gift link to read the whole thing if you’re intersted.

Greg Sargent strips away the gossip and gets to the meat of the Trump-Musk disagreements at The New Republic: The Real Reason for the Trump-Musk Feud is Uglier Than You Think.

As the war between Donald Trump and Elon Musk worsens, what’s truly odd about this whole spectacle is that the actual substantive disagreement between them seems to be of little interest to media observers. And when you strip away the trolling and shitposting, here’s what becomes clear: This is really a battle over how comprehensively to screw over poor and working people, largely to the benefit of the wealthy.

The superficial argument between them, of course, is over Musk’s opposition to the “big, beautiful bill” that the House passed and that Trump wants the Senate to adopt. That opposition is rooted in Musk’s claim that the bill is loaded with “pork” and will explode the deficit. Trump, meanwhile, is infuriated by Musk because he can’t brook criticism and wants the bill to pass to notch a victory.

But the respective positions underlying those stances are mysteriously missing from the whole Trump-Musk discourse. Flush them into the open, and it helps illuminate the true spectrum of the MAGA movement’s ideological goals—and why its “pro-worker populist” pretensions are so thoroughly phony.

The House GOP bill would entail a large upward transfer of resources. The bill, which would continue Trump’s 2017 tax law and add new tax giveaways for wealthy investors, heirs, and others, would deliver a big tax cut to those in the highest income brackets. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the tax cuts enjoyed by those in the bottom 20 percent in 2027 would be one seven-hundredth the size of those reaped by the top 1 percent.

By Theresa Tanner

Worse, those relative table scraps for the bottom could be erased by other changes. The bill’s massive cuts to Medicaid and other health care changes would result in over 10 million people losing health insurance. Add in other cuts to the safety net, and you see why the bill ultimately would lower household resources for the bottom 10 percent while raising them for the top 10 percent—a sizable redistribution upward. As Paul Krugman notes, the bill’s “cruelty is exceptional even by right wing standards.”

Musk is angry about the $2.4 trillion those changes would add to the debt. But, crucially, he’s said little—if anything—about the role that those tax cuts for the rich would have in that outcome. He is primarily obsessed with the bill’s “pork,” meaning that he wants the bill to cut more spending—much, much more.

Where would that money come from? Musk’s cuts via his Department of Government Efficiency have already decimated foreign aid and other programs, producing more starvation, disease, and death among the global poor. Given that DOGE searched for “waste, fraud, and abuse” and found very little, if Musk wants massive additional cuts, by definition they would fall more heavily on important government programs, almost certainly ones that low-income Americans rely upon.

Another way to say this is that their real difference is over how far to push the “waste, fraud, and abuse” scam.

Read the rest at TNR.

What DOGE Is Up To

The New York Times: After His Trump Blowup, Musk May Be Out. But DOGE Is Just Getting Started.

Elon Musk’s blowup with President Trump may have doomed Washington’s most potent partnership, but the billionaire’s signature cost-cutting project has become deeply embedded in Mr. Trump’s administration and could be there to stay.

At the Department of Energy, for example, a former member of the Department of Government Efficiency is now serving as the chief of staff.

At the Interior Department, DOGE members have been converted into federal employees and embedded into the agency, said a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. And at the Environmental Protection Agency, where a spokeswoman said that there are two senior officials associated with the DOGE mission, work continues apace on efforts to dismantle an agency that Mr. Trump has long targeted.

“They are still internally going forward; we don’t really feel as if anything has stopped here,” said Nicole Cantello, a former lawyer for the E.P.A. who represents its union in Chicago.

Whether DOGE keeps its current Musk-inspired form remains an open question. Some DOGE members on Friday expressed concern that the president could choose to retaliate against Mr. Musk by firing people associated with the initiative. Others could choose to leave on their own, following Mr. Musk out the door. And DOGE’s role, even its legality, remain the subject of legal battles amid questions over its attempts to use sensitive government data.

But the approach that DOGE embodied at the outset — deep cuts in spending, personnel and projects — appears to have taken root.

Even with Mr. Musk on the sidelines, DOGE on Friday notched two legal victories. The Supreme Court said that it can have access to sensitive Social Security data and ruled that, for now, the organization does not have to turn over internal records to a government watchdog group as part of a public records lawsuit.

Yes, the Supreme Court has struck again.

NBC News: Supreme Court allows DOGE to access Social Security data.

The Supreme Court on Friday allowed members of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency to access Social Security Administration data.

By Will Barnet

The conservative-majority court, with its three liberal justices objecting, granted an emergency application filed by the Trump administration asking the justices to lift an injunction issued by a federal judge in Maryland.

The unsigned order said that members of the DOGE team assigned to the Social Security Administration should have “access to the agency records in question in order for those members to do their work.”

The lawsuit challenging DOGE’s actions was filed by progressive group Democracy Forward on behalf of two unions — the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the American Federation of Teachers — as well as the Alliance for Retired Americans.

“This is a sad day for our democracy and a scary day for millions of people,” the groups said in a statement. “This ruling will enable President Trump and DOGE’s affiliates to steal Americans’ private and personal data.” [….]

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a dissenting opinion questioning the need for the court to intervene on an emergency basis.

“In essence, the ‘urgency’ underlying the government’s stay application is the mere fact that it cannot be bothered to wait for the litigation process to play out before proceeding as it wishes,” she added.

Dramatic Protests Against ICE in Los Angeles

Los Angeles Times: Los Angeles ICE raids spark protests, fear, outrage. ‘Our community is under attack.’

A series of surprise U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps in downtown Los Angeles on Friday prompted fierce pushback from elected officials and protesters, who decried the enforcement actions as “cruel and unnecessary” and said they stoked fear in the immigrant community.

Tensions remained high in downtown into the evening. The Los Angeles Police Department declared an unlawful assembly and ordered about 200 protesters who remained gathered by the Los Angeles Federal Building to disperse around 7 p.m.

Portrait of Edward Gorey with his cat, by Sam Kalda

The use of so-called less-lethal munitions was authorized at 8 p.m. following reports of a small group of “violent individuals” throwing large pieces of concrete at officers, police said. A citywide tactical alert was issued shortly thereafter.

Chaos erupted earlier in the day in the heart of the Fashion District after federal immigration authorities detained employees inside a clothing wholesaler, and used flash-bang grenades and pepper spray on a crowd protesting the raid around 1:30 p.m.

Hundreds of people then rallied outside the Los Angeles Federal Building at 4 p.m., condemning the crackdown and demanding the release of Service Employees International Union California President David Huerta, who was injured and detained while documenting a raid, according to a statement from the labor union.

“Our community is under attack and has been terrorized,” Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, told the crowd of protesters. “These are workers, these are fathers, these are mothers.”

Forty-four people were administratively arrested and one person was arrested for obstruction during Friday’s immigration action, said Yasmeen Pitts O’Keefe, a spokesperson for Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of ICE. Federal agents executed four search warrants related to the suspected harboring of people illegally in the country at three locations in central Los Angeles, she said.

One more at The Washington Post: Protests erupt in Los Angeles after dozens detained in immigration raids.

Multiple ICE raids in Los Angeles on Friday set off a wave of protests that were met with a show of force by officers in tactical gear, as the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on immigrationescalates.

Aerial video footage from local media showed officers outside clothing wholesaler Ambiance Apparel, one of the reported locations of the raids, putting handcuffed individuals into white vans, with protesters trying to stop themfrom leaving.Later footage shows officers in tactical gear riding armored vehicles as stun grenades go off throughout the crowd.

Angelica Salas, director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, said at a news conference that as of Friday afternoon, there were seven raids happening throughout the city, including at two Home Depots, a doughnut shop and the clothing wholesaler. She said the organization had confirmed that more than 45 people were detained in the operations, which she described as “random sweeps” that appeared to be carried out without a warrant. The Washington Post could not independently confirm the nature of the raids.

“This has to stop. Immigration enforcement that is terrorizing our families throughout this country and picking up our people that we love must stop now,” Salas said.

Photos from Friday show police wearing riot gear and holding shields, batons, guns that shoot pepper balls, and zip ties, as well as chaotic scenes with tear gas going off and demonstrators running away. In a video captured by local media, one protester tries to stop one of law enforcement’s SUVs and is knocked down when the vehicle keeps moving forward….

Among demonstrators detained Friday was David Huerta, president of Service Employees International Union California, the state’s largest public-sector union, who was injured at one of the ICE raids and treated in custody. SEIU California is calling for his immediate release.

Bill Essayli, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, a Trump appointee, responded to Huerta’s arrest on social media, writing, “Federal agents were executing a lawful judicial warrant” when Huerta “deliberately obstructed their access.”

“I don’t care who you are — if you impede federal agents, you will be arrested and prosecuted,” Essayli said.

That’s it for me–sorry this is so long. Have a great weekend, Sky Dancers!

Wednesday Reads

Posted: June 4, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Donald Trump, Elon Musk | Tags: Abotion, Big Beautiful Bill, Congressional Budget Office, electricity costs, Harvey Milk, House budget bill, ICE, immigration, Medicaid, medicare, Pete Hegseth, renaming navy ships, Sen. Joni Ernst, Tesla, Trump Tariffs | 6 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

I’m illustrating this post with relaxing paintings today, because I desperately needed a break from current events.

It seems I may have been wrong about Elon Musk’s departure from the White House. On Saturday, I wrote that I thought he would continue to work with and influence Trump and DOGE. But then Musk began attacking Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”

Actually, it seems as if Trump has fired Musk, and Musk is not happy about it. Lawrence O’Donnell discussed it on his show last night. Here’s what Lawrence had to say:

Musk has been slamming Trump’s budget bill since their last meeting in the Oval Office, and Trump has not responded so far. Here’s the latest:

The Daily Beast: Elon Musk Keeps on Dissing Trump in Flurry of New Posts.

Elon Musk continued his rampage against Donald Trump’s spending bill on Tuesday night, setting the stage for an ugly showdown with the president’s faithful.

“Mammoth spending bills are bankrupting America!” he wrote, sharing a graphic depicting rising national debt over the past three decades. “ENOUGH,” he added.

He also responded with a “100″ emoji to an X user who wrote that Musk had “reminded everyone: It’s not about Right vs. Left. It’s about the Establishment vs the People.”

He then posted an American flag emoji under a post from conservative satire site The Babylon Bee, highlighting a story titled, “The Lord Strengthens Elon One Last Time To Push Pillars Of Congress Over And Bring Government Crashing Down.”

Earlier Tuesday, the billionaire unleashed hellfire on Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill, lambasting the president’s flagship legislative package as “outrageous,” “pork-filled” and a “disgusting abomination.”

“Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it,” he wrote of the package, which scraped through the House last month solely on Republican votes.

Also from The Daily Beast: Insiders Reveal Why Musk Is Trashing Trump’s Bill: ‘Elon Was B*tthurt.’

Elon Musk’s full-throttle assault on Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” is less about fiscal policy and more about bruised ego, insiders say, claiming the billionaire is “b-tthurt.”

A path in the woods, by Vincent Van Gogh

The drama reportedly began when Musk’s pick for a top federal post, billionaire astronaut Jared Isaacman, was rejected by Trump’s inner circle. Sources said it was Sergio Gor, Trump’s longtime aide and current personnel chief, who blocked the nomination.

“This was Sergio’s out-the-door ‘f–k you’ to Musk,” a White House source told Axios.

This triggered a rift which started with the Tesla CEO soft-launching his dissent last week, hours after his time as a “special government employee” had elapsed.

In a sit-down with CBS News’s Sunday Morning, the Department of Government Efficiency architect said he was “disappointed” with the bill, which he said “increases the budget deficit” and undoes his cost-cutting task force’s work.

Not that Musk actually did any real cost-cutting.

He soon went nuclear against the bill in a series of public posts that culminated in him labeling Trump’s economic legislation “outrageous,” “pork-filled,” and a “disgusting abomination.”

“Elon was b-tthurt,” one source said.

Insiders have now told Axios that his dissent has spiraled into a full-blown meltdown. Musk is reportedly rattled because the bill slashes the electric vehicle tax credit—a key benefit for automakers like Musk’s Tesla….

White House officials also reportedly hurt Musk’s feelings by blocking him from staying on in some capacity after his “special government employee” status was up after 130 days of service.

He was similarly annoyed, sources said, when the Federal Aviation Administration decided against using his Starlink satellite system for national air traffic control.

The White House overlooking his ally, Isaacman, served as the final straw on Saturday night, Axios reported.

Why isn’t Trump pushing back? HuffPost: Lawrence O’Donnell Reveals Why Donald Trump Hasn’t Dared To Clap Back At Elon Musk Yet.

Donald Trump has so far kept silent on former special government employee Elon Musk’s criticism of his “big, beautiful” spending bill as a “disgusting abomination.”

On Tuesday, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell suggested why the typically “explosively rageful” president has not yet said a thing.

By David Hockney

“That is how you know who Donald Trump fears in this world,” he said. “If you attack Donald Trump and Donald Trump says nothing, Donald Trump’s silence is the biggest expression of fear that he has.”

Musk, the world’s richest person, pumped a fortune into Trump’s 2024 election campaign. Trump rewarded him with the top role at the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency, which was tasked with slashing public spending. Musk left last week.

The president likely now fears Musk may use his cash against Trump-backed candidates in GOP primaries, said O’Donnell.

Trump “fears the richest person in the world convincing Republican members of the Senate and the House not to vote for Donald Trump’s budget bill that Elon Musk now calls a ‘disgusting abomination,’” he added.

Meanwhile, Tesla is in trouble. Yahoo Finance: Tesla stock slumps amid Musk-Trump budget rumpus.

Tesla (TSLA) stock slumped Wednesday in the immediate fallout of the very public policy blowout between President Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

The one-time leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) whined angrily on Tuesday, “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” adding, “Shame on those” in the House who voted for it.

Musk added early Wednesday morning, “If the massive deficit spending continues, there will only be money for interest payments and nothing else!”

Musk’s rhetoric on Trump and the Republican-backed “big, beautiful bill” was ramping up recently with Musk’s comments to “CBS News Sunday Morning” and hit detonation levels with Tuesday’s post….

Musk’s closeness to the Trump administration had been seen as a boon for Tesla, given its range of business with SpaceX and NASA and the regulatory levers NHTSA could pull with getting autonomous driving rules in place for Tesla’s robotaxi testing.

But demand weakness in the EU and recent protests at US Tesla showrooms have followed Musk’s controversial foray into politics, causing some Tesla owners to become alienated by Musk, specifically by his right-leaning tendencies, DOGE, and outward support of President Trump.

Tesla’s big robotaxi test is slated for June 12 in Austin. Much of the company’s value is tied to whether it can fully unlock autonomous driving for robotaxi purposes and individual owners.

I’ll believe that when I see it.

Today, the Congressional Budget Office released its estimate of the cost of Trump’s big ugly bill. Politico: House GOP gets megabill’s official price tag: $2.4T.

Congress’ nonpartisan scorekeeper released its full score Wednesday of the tax and spending package House Republicans passed along party lines last month, predicting that the measure would grow the federal deficit by $2.4 trillion….

Path in the field, Tatiana Karchevskaya, Indonesian artist

And while top Republican lawmakers are expected to downplay the significance of the complete price tag from the Congressional Budget Office, the numbers will influence what lawmakers are able to include in the final package they are endeavoring to send to President Donald Trump’s desk this summer.

The scorekeeper’s analysis will also be used to determine whether the bill follows the strict rules of the reconciliation process Republicans are using to skirt the Senate filibuster and pass the measure along party lines.

Because Republicans in the Senate are now making changes to the package the House passed two weeks ago, the budget office will need to score the cost of each piece of the new version senators are assembling, followed by another full price tag for the whole package.

Unlike the earlier scores CBO released of the separate chunks of the House bill, the analysis released Wednesday takes into account how policies in one part of the package might influence the budget and economic impacts of others. It also shows that the House-passed legislation would lead to nearly 11 million people going uninsured, with more than 7.8 million of those individuals getting kicked off of Medicaid and millions more losing coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

Here’s the full CBO report.

Could Joni Ernst’s Senate Seat be vulnerable because of the big ugly bill?

David Dayen at The American Prospect: The First Casualty of the Big Beautiful Bill?

Yesterday, the Yale School of Public Health sent a letter to Senate Democratic leaders with a new analysis showing that the One Big Beautiful Bill’s changes to federal health care programs would kill more than 51,000 Americans annually. Nearly 15 million are liable to lose health coverage as a result of the bill, due to enrollment changes on the Affordable Care Act exchanges, Medicaid cuts that are the largest in U.S. history, and the end of support for the Medicare Savings Program, which grants access to subsidized prescriptions. Those cuts would cost about 29,500 people their lives, the Yale researchers estimate. Another 13,000 largely poor nursing home residents would die from the repeal of the Biden administration’s safe staffing rule, which would remove the minimum number of nurses on call in those facilities. And close to 9,000 would die from the government’s failing to extend enhanced premium support for the ACA that expires at the end of the year, making health coverage unaffordable for another five million Americans.

It’s not easy to wring a compelling message out of legislation that will cause 51,000 deaths. You can lie that the cuts aren’t cuts, but that only gets you so far. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), for example, was clearly flummoxed when confronted at a town hall in Butler, Iowa, last Friday with the fact that people will die because of the bill. So she went philosophical.

“Well, we all are going to die,” Ernst said, in one of the most misguided attempts to quiet constituent fears I’ve seen in my political lifetime.

The reaction was immediate both in the room and on social media. And instead of walking back the comments, Ernst doubled down with a creepy “apology” video of her walking through a cemetery. “I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that yes, we are all going to perish from this Earth,” she said, before snarking about the tooth fairy and making a pitch for embracing Jesus Christ as a personal savior who guarantees life in the hereafter.

Now, Ernst may have a challenger for her Senate Seat. From the David Dayen post above:

About 200 miles from Butler, in Sioux City, state representative J.D. Scholten was getting ready for the funeral of a local Democratic activist named Gary Lipshutz. Former Sen. Tom Harkin, whose seat Ernst now holds, was at the memorial service. “What she said was going viral as I walked in,” Scholten told me in an interview. “I thought about all the work Gary was doing, and at a funeral you question your life and your purpose. When she doubled down, which was very disrespectful, I was like, game on.”

Scholten, 45, who nearly beat anti-immigrant nationalist Steve King in a northwest Iowa congressional seat Donald Trump won by 27 points in 2018, had been mentioned on short lists of potential challengers to Ernst. But his timeline was set to later in the year, in part due to his summer gig as a pitcher on the minor league Sioux City Explorers. Then Ernst implanted her foot directly in her mouth. “She was not wrong in that we all are going to die, but we don’t have to die so billionaires can have a bigger tax cut,” Scholten said.

He decided to immediately announce a campaign for Senate, thereby making clear it was a direct response to the choices Republicans are making to skyrocket inequality and harm millions of vulnerable Americans.

Click the Prospect link to read the rest.

More on the Ernst town hall from Stephen Gruber-Miller at The Des Moines Register: What’s next for the Iowan who shouted ‘people will die’ at Joni Ernst over Medicaid cuts.

The Iowan who became part of a viral moment by recently shouting at U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst that “people will die” because of proposed Medicaid cuts is a Democrat who is using the moment to launch a campaign for the Iowa House.

India May, a 33-year-old from Charles City, drove to Parkersburg on May 30 to attend Ernst’s town hall. As Ernst was answering a question about Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s tax cut bill, May said she “got a little worked up.”

She shouted at Ernst, “People will die!”

Ernst’s response was, “People will not — well, we all are going to die. For heaven’s sakes, folks.” [….]

In the wake of the town hall, May capitalized on the resulting attention by launching her campaign for the Iowa House of Representatives in 2026.

May is the director of the Ionia Public Library and is a registered nurse and a death investigator for Chickasaw County.

She first moved to northeast Iowa four years ago from Kansas.

She is running for Iowa House District 58, which includes Chickasaw County and parts of Floyd and Bremer counties.

Trump tariff news: Trump’s steel tariffs take effect today.

One more on the big, ugly bill from The New York Times: Electricity Prices Are Surging. The G.O.P. Megabill Could Push Them Higher.

The cost of electricity is rising across the country, forcing Americans to pay more on their monthly bills and squeezing manufacturers and small businesses that rely on cheap power.

And some of President Trump’s policies risk making things worse, despite his promises to slash energy prices, companies and researchers say.

This week, the Senate is taking up Mr. Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill, which has already passed the House. In its current form, that bill would abruptly end most of the Biden-era federal tax credits for low-carbon sources of electricity like wind, solar, batteries and geothermal power.

Repealing those credits could increase the average family’s energy bill by as much as $400 per year within a decade, according to several studies published this year.

The studies rely on similar reasoning: Electricity demand is surging for the first time in decades, partly because of data centers needed for artificial intelligence, and power companies are already struggling to keep up. Ending tax breaks for solar panels, wind turbines and batteries would make them more expensive and less plentiful, increasing demand for energy from power plants that burn natural gas.

That could push up the price of gas, which currently generates 43 percent of America’s electricity.

On top of that, the Trump administration’s efforts to sell more gas overseas could further hike prices, while Mr. Trump’s new tariffs on steel, aluminum and other materials would raise the cost of transmission lines and other electrical equipment.

These cascading events could lead to further painful increases in electric bills.

Trump tariff news:

By David Hockney

The Guardian: Trump’s 50% tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum come into effect.

The US has doubled tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum imports to 50%, pressing ahead in the face of criticism from key trading partners with a measure that Donald Trump says is intended to revive the American industry.

After imposing and rapidly lifting tariffs on much of the world, only to reduce them, Trump last week refocused on the global steel and aluminum markets – and the dominance of China.

Trump signed an executive order formalizing the move on Tuesday. Higher tariffs “will more effectively counter foreign countries that continue to offload low-priced, excess steel and aluminum in the United States market and thereby undercut the competitiveness of the United States steel and aluminum industries”, the order said.

The increase applies to all trading partners except Britain, the only country so far that has struck a preliminary trade agreement with the US during a 90-day pause on a wider array of Trump tariffs. The rate for steel and aluminum imports from the UK – which does not rank among the top exporters of either metal to the US – will remain at 25% until at least 9 July.

About a quarter of all steel used in the US is imported and data shows the increased levies will hit the closest US trading partners – Canada and Mexico – especially hard. They rank first and third respectively in steel shipment volumes to the US.

The Washington Post: Businesses brace for steel and aluminum tariffs, which double today.

Tariffs on steel and aluminum are doubling to 50 percent Wednesday, adding higher costs and new uncertainty for businesses across the country that rely on metal imports for machinery, construction and manufacturing.

In the order doubling the tariffs, which said it would take effect at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time, President Donald Trump wrote that the higher levies “will provide greater support to these industries and reduce or eliminate the national security threat posed by imports of steel and aluminum articles and their derivative articles.”

But for American companies that rely on specialized metals that aren’t available domestically, the order set off a fresh scramble to raise prices and rethink hiring and investment.

“It’s a big, eye-catching tariff: 50 percent is a high number,” said Gary Clyde Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “Aluminum goes into all kinds of products — aircrafts, autos, construction — and steel is used throughout the economy, so you’re talking higher prices and lost jobs across the U.S. manufacturing industry.” [….]

U.S. manufacturers say the sudden onslaught of tariffs is making it harder to operate. Many rely on foreign sources of steel and aluminum to make their products and say it’s been tough to find domestic suppliers.

A few more recommended reads:

Reuters: Exclusive: CDC expert resigns from COVID vaccines advisory role, sources say.

Pediatric infectious disease expert Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos of the U.S. CDC resigned on Tuesday as co-leader of a working group that advises outside experts on COVID-19 vaccines and is leaving the agency, two sources familiar with the move told Reuters.

Panagiotakopoulos said in an email to work group colleagues that her decision to step down was based on the belief she is “no longer able to help the most vulnerable members” of the U.S. population.

In her role at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s working group of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, she co-led the gathering of information on topics for presentation.

Her resignation comes one week after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time vaccine skeptic who oversees the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, said the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women had been removed from the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule.

The move was a departure from the process in which ACIP experts meet and vote on changes to the immunization schedule or recommendations on who should get vaccines before the agency’s director made a final call. The committee had not voted on the changes announced by Kennedy and the CDC does not yet have a permanent director.

The Guardian: US immigration officers ordered to arrest more people even without warrants.

Senior US immigration officials over the weekend instructed rank-and-file officers to “turn the creative knob up to 11” when it comes to enforcement, including by interviewing and potentially arresting people they called “collaterals”, according to internal agency emails viewed by the Guardian.

Officers were also urged to increase apprehensions and think up tactics to “push the envelope” one email said, with staff encouraged to come up with new ways of increasing arrests and suggesting them to superiors.

“If it involves handcuffs on wrists, it’s probably worth pursuing,” another message said.

The instructions not only mark a further harshening of attitude and language by the Trump administration in its efforts to fulfill election promises of “mass deportation” but also indicate another escalation in efforts, by being on the lookout for undocumented people whom officials may happen to encounter – here termed “collaterals” – while serving arrest warrants for others.

The emails, sent by two top Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials this past Saturday, instructed officers around the country to increase arrest numbers over the weekend. This followed the Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, and the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, pressing immigration officials last month to jack up immigration-related arrests to at least 3,000 people per day.

One of the emails, written by Marcos Charles, the acting executive associate director of Ice’s enforcement and removal operations, instructs Ice officials to go after people they may coincidentally encounter.

“All collaterals encounters [sic] need to be interviewed and anyone that is found to be amenable to removal needs to be arrested,” Charles wrote, also saying: “We need to turn up the creative knob up to 11 and push the envelope.”

We’re already living in a police state.

AP: Trump administration revokes guidance requiring hospitals to provide emergency abortions.

The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it would revoke guidance to the nation’s hospitals that directed them to provide emergency abortions for women when they are necessary to stabilize their medical condition.

That guidance was issued to hospitals in 2022, weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court upended national abortion rights in the U.S. It was an effort by the Biden administration to preserve abortion access for extreme cases in which women were experiencing medical emergencies and needed an abortion to prevent organ loss or severe hemorrhaging, among other serious complications.

The Biden administration had argued that hospitals — including ones in states with near-total bans — needed to provide emergency abortions under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. That law requires emergency rooms that receive Medicare dollars to provide an exam and stabilizing treatment for all patients. Nearly all emergency rooms in the U.S. rely on Medicare funds.

The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it would no longer enforce that policy.

The move prompted concerns from some doctors and abortion rights advocates that women will not get emergency abortions in states with strict bans.

More women will die.

A Pathway in Monet’s Garden, Claude Monet

Military.com: Hegseth Orders Navy to Strip Name of Gay Rights Icon Harvey Milk from Ship.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to take the rare step of renaming a ship, one that bears the name of a gay rights icon, documents and sources show.

Military.com reviewed a memorandum from the Office of the Secretary of the Navy — the official who holds the power to name Navy ships — that showed the sea service had come up with rollout plans for the renaming of the oiler ship USNS Harvey Milk.

A defense official confirmed that the Navy was making preparations to strip the ship of its name but noted that Navy Secretary John Phelan was ordered to do so by Hegseth. The official also said that the timing of the announcement — occurring during Pride month — was intentional.

Military.com reached out to Hegseth’s office for comment on the move but did not immediately receive a response.

However, the memo reviewed by Military.com noted that the renaming was being done so that there is “alignment with president and SECDEF objectives and SECNAV priorities of reestablishing the warrior culture,” apparently referencing President Donald Trump, Hegseth and Phelan.

CBS News: Navy set to rename USNS Harvey Milk, mulls new names for other ships named for civil rights leaders.

The U.S. Navy plans to rename the USNS Harvey Milk, a fleet replenishment oiler named after the slain gay rights leader and Navy veteran, and is considering renaming multiple naval ships named after civil rights leaders and prominent American voices, CBS News has learned.

U.S. Navy documents obtained by CBS News and used to brief the secretary of the Navy and his chief of staff show proposed timelines for rolling out the name change of the USNS Harvey Milk to the public. While the documents do not say what the ship’s new name would be, the proposal comes during Pride Month, the monthlong observance of the LGBTQ+ community that also coincides with the anniversary of the Stonewall uprising of 1969. WorldPride celebrations are being held in Washington, D.C., this year.

The documents obtained by CBS News also show other vessels named after prominent leaders are also on the Navy’s renaming “recommended list.”

Among them are the USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, USNS Harriet Tubman, USNS Dolores Huerta, USNS Lucy Stone, USNS Cesar Chavez and USNS Medgar Evers.

That is beyond sickening.

Wednesday Reads: Trump’s Big, Ugly Bill

Posted: May 21, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Donald Trump, House of Representatives, just because, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: food stamps, Lawrence O'Donnell, Medicaid, medicare, Mike Johnson, Rep. Brendan Boyle, Rep. Gerry Connolly, Trump's big beautiful bill, U.S. Treasuries | 21 Comments

Good Morning!!

Rep Gerry Connolly

Breaking News: Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia has died.

The New York Times: Gerald Connolly, Top Democrat on House Oversight Committee, Dies at 75.

Representative Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia, a nine-term congressman who was the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, died on Wednesday, his family said in a statement. He was 75.

Mr. Connolly died at his home surrounded by his family, the statement said. It did not give a cause of death. Mr. Connolly had announced in 2024 that he was being treated for cancer of the esophagus.

In April, he announced that his cancer had returned and that he would not seek re-election in 2026. He also said he would soon relinquish his spot on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

From PBS: Rep. Gerry Connolly, Democratic fixture of Virginia politics, dies at 75.

U.S. Rep. Gerald “Gerry” Connolly, an outspoken Democrat who sought key reforms in the federal government while bringing transformational development to his populous Virginia district, died Wednesday. He was 75….

The spirited and at times bullheaded Fairfax Democrat became known for his voluble nature and willingness to engage in spirited debates. In one hearing, he accused Republicans of engaging in a witch hunt against the IRS, asking a witness if they ever read Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.”

“I am heartbroken over the loss of my dear friend,” said Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia. “To me, he exemplified the very best of public service.” He said Connolly “met every challenge with tenacity and purpose, including his final battle with cancer, which he faced with courage, grace, and quiet dignity.”

A fixture of Virginia politics for three decades, Connolly was first elected to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors in 1995. On the county board, he steered the transition of northern Virginia’s Tysons Corner from a traffic-heavy mall area to a downtown business hub.

In 2003, Connolly was elected board chairman, and he continued pushing for transportation investment that had been debated among officials for decades. Connolly sought billions in state and federal dollars to develop the regional rail system’s Silver Line connecting the national capital region to Tysons Corner.

Connolly’s dream was realized with the Silver Line’s opening in 2014, and eight years later, the rail line was extended an extra 11 miles (18 kilometers) to reach Dulles International Airport.

What’s happening in politics today:

The news getting the most attention today is the so-called “big beautiful bill” that Trump and House Republicans are trying to pass and send to the Senate. Yesterday, we got some shocking news about this nightmare bill. Not only does it cut nearly a trillion dollars from Medicaid. It also cuts Medicare by more than $500 billion from Medicare. If you watched Lawrence O’Donnell’s show last night, you heard all about it. In case you missed it, here is O’Donnell’s interview with Rep. Brendan Boyle:

You can read the transcript of the interview at ACA Signups.net: Surprise! GOP Medicaid Massacre bill is also a Medicare Massacre bill!

Rep. Boyle: The one thing I would point out, though, is this bill is actually significantly worse [than the GOP’s ACA repeal attempt in 2017], because this piece of legislation will throw 13.5 million, almost 14 million Americans off their healthcare.

First, you’re cutting people off Medicaid. But second, this does include very deep cuts to Obamacare as well. And finally, I have breaking news for you tonight, that literally just came out in the last few minutes as I’ve been sitting here: The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the official authority on these figures, has now confirmed that this bill, in addition to Medicaid cuts, in addition to Obamacare cuts, includes $500 BILLION WORTH OF CUTS TO MEDICARE that is now in this bill as well.

Lawrence O’Donnell: That is breaking news…$500 billion in cuts to Medicare. That’s the biggest cut to Medicare ever contemplated by the Congress. There have been, over the years, trims to Medicare for budget reasons, but nothing on this order has ever been done to Medicare. What happened? Talk more about that, about that breaking news piece that the CBO has projected in here. Is that because of interactions that Medicare has with the Medicaid program?

Rep. Boyle: Yeah, and forgive me this…given your great experience on the Senate Finance Committee, you’ll understand this, but it does get a bit wonky for normal folks. Basically it’s because of those interactions and specifically because of a provision called “Paygo” that will force a certain amount of Medicare sequestration, again, to the tune–and these aren’t my figures, these are the Congressional Budget Office official figures–$500 billion.

So they take the biggest cuts to Medicaid in American history. They take massive cuts to Obamacare. And then, add on top of that, the impact of all their policies mean a result of the biggest cuts to Medicare in American history on top of all of it.

Click the link to read the rest.

Finally Friday Reads: Will no one rid us of this Turbulent Pest?

Posted: May 16, 2025 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: "presidential immunity", #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Corrupt and Political SCOTUS, democracy is threatened, Democratic Backsliding, kakistocracy, Polycrisis | Tags: @johnbuss.bsky.social John Buss, Big Beautiful Bill attacks Abortion, Birthright citizenship, FEMA not ready for Hurricane Season, ICE Barbie, Medicaid, SCOTUS, Walmart earnings call | 11 Comments

“True,” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

It’s not often I quote the Daily Mail, but it has that British humor touch that just puts the right tone on what should be a Monty Python Sketch. I used to have an apron that said, “Who invited all these tacky people?” Well, it’s Yam Tits and all those Republican Senators that approved the cast of this freak show. Every headline these days about the Regime of Orange Caligula and his cabinet of crazies is outrageous and depressing. Today, we’ll discover both categories. And, btw, I send apologies out to Henry II for messing with his lament. We’ve become the worst caricature of ourselves.

“ICE Barbie Kristi Noem is backing insane reality TV show where immigrants compete for fast-tracked citizenship.” Doesn’t that just have that perfect mixture of cruelty, inhumanity, and pathos that makes the news cringeworthy these days?

She’s been called ‘ICE Barbie’ for treating her Cabinet position like a TV production, but now Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is pushing for an actual reality show pitting immigrants against each other ‘for the honor of fast-tracking their way to U.S. citizenship’.

It may sound like a joke, but the idea is for real and is outlined in a 35-page program pitch put together in coordination with the DHS secretary, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal.

Noem is even offering up officials from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to tally votes for the made-for-TV contest.

The pitch comes from Rob Worsoff, a writer and producer known for Duck Dynasty, the A&E reality show about a Louisiana family and its hunting empire, and Bravo’s Millionaire Matchmaker.

The proposed series is called The American, named after the train that contestants would ride around the country, competing in regionally specific ‘cultural’ contests such as rolling logs in Wisconsin.

It would lead to a grand finale with the winner getting sworn in on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

‘Along the way, we will be reminded what it means to be American – through the eyes of the people who want it most,’ reads Worsoff’s pitch.

Worsoff – who himself was born in Canada – said: ‘I’m not affiliated with any political ideology. As an immigrant myself, I am merely trying to make a show that celebrates the immigration process, celebrate what it means to be American and have a national conversation about what it means to be American, through the eyes of the people who want it most.’

Tricia McLaughlin, the top spokesperson for DHS, acknowledged that agency staff are reviewing this pitch and had a call with the producer last week. She insisted Noem is yet to be briefed on the initiative.

However, DailyMail.com has confirmed that Noem supports the project and wants to proceed.

And McLaughlin said: ‘I think it’s a good idea.’

Worsoff’s project comes as Noem is wanting to showcase what it means to become an American, amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

She and her agency have been working for weeks to get such a project greenlit from Netflix or another streaming or cable service, sources tell DailyMail.com.

But while past outreach has fallen flat, they’re hoping this one has a real chance.

In his pitch, Worsoff, 49, expresses confidence that The American would be a commercial hit and ‘lends itself to enormous corporate sponsorship opportunities’.

At the same time, there’s concern among some in DHS about the possible optics of turning the plight of immigrants into a reality game show, sources say.

“If you read the speech bubble using RFK Jr’s halting, raspy, tinny voice, it helps get past the grossness.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Isn’t that what brought us here? Illiterate, unhappy people who believe that “reality” shows are real? Cosplay Barbie isn’t alone for being out of her league, but melodramatic enough to keep the big guy happy. Yesterday, I listened to the most surreal edition of a Supreme Court hearing I’d ever seen. How on earth did this thing make it to the docket, and what’s next? This is from Slate. “The Supreme Court May Pick the Worst Possible Case to Cede More Power to Trump.” This analysis is provided by Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern. As usual, the Women on the Bench Rule and the guys drool.

During one of the term’s biggest sets of oral arguments on Thursday, everyone at the Supreme Court seemed to agree that the United States is in the midst of an emergency. But there was far less agreement about what specifically that emergency is. During debate over three nationwide injunctions currently protecting birthright citizenship from President Donald Trump’s attacks, the justices were deeply split over what manner of legal crisis the court—and the country—truly faces. And the growing gender divide emerged once again: The four women seemed concerned that the president is trying to undo the final restraints on his exercise of unconstitutional power, and doing so in ways that include breaking norms and defying courts. The five men, in contrast, sounded irked at allegedly monarchical district court judges who dare issue broad orders blocking the White House’s policies, even when they’re blatantly unconstitutional.

These five men, of course, make up the majority of the Supreme Court. And, as they keep reminding us, they can do anything they want with their authority. But there is reason to believe that one or two of these justices might balk at the mayhem they could unleash by limiting lower courts’ power to constrain the executive branch. And not onejustice even hinted that they think Trump should eventually win on the merits and get the green light to start stripping birthright citizenship from immigrants’ children. What they spent two and a half hours debating, in painstaking detail, is whether nationwide or universal injunctions are the way to stop that from happening.

It’s anybody’s guess how the court will come down on that question. It seems the majority wants to have it both ways, reining in lower courts that are—across all political and ideological lines—battling Trump’s lawlessness, and somehow doing so without itself blessing that lawlessness as the administration would like to deploy it against American children of noncitizens. That may well be an impossible task, and their attempt to pull it off in this case could provoke destabilizing confusion across the judiciary. In trying to resolve one perceived emergency, the majority may end up provoking many more.

During one of the term’s biggest sets of oral arguments on Thursday, everyone at the Supreme Court seemed to agree that the United States is in the midst of an emergency. But there was far less agreement about what specifically that emergency is. During debate over three nationwide injunctions currently protecting birthright citizenship from President Donald Trump’s attacks, the justices were deeply split over what manner of legal crisis the court—and the country—truly faces. And the growing gender divide emerged once again: The four women seemed concerned that the president is trying to undo the final restraints on his exercise of unconstitutional power, and doing so in ways that include breaking norms and defying courts. The five men, in contrast, sounded irked at allegedly monarchical district court judges who dare issue broad orders blocking the White House’s policies, even when they’re blatantly unconstitutional.

These five men, of course, make up the majority of the Supreme Court. And, as they keep reminding us, they can do anything they want with their authority. But there is reason to believe that one or two of these justices might balk at the mayhem they could unleash by limiting lower courts’ power to constrain the executive branch. And not onejustice even hinted that they think Trump should eventually win on the merits and get the green light to start stripping birthright citizenship from immigrants’ children. What they spent two and a half hours debating, in painstaking detail, is whether nationwide or universal injunctions are the way to stop that from happening.

It’s anybody’s guess how the court will come down on that question. It seems the majority wants to have it both ways, reining in lower courts that are—across all political and ideological lines—battling Trump’s lawlessness, and somehow doing so without itself blessing that lawlessness as the administration would like to deploy it against American children of noncitizens. That may well be an impossible task, and their attempt to pull it off in this case could provoke destabilizing confusion across the judiciary. In trying to resolve one perceived emergency, the majority may end up provoking many more.

Thursday’s arguments in Trump v. CASA were a muddle, exacerbated by the Trump Justice Department’s pretzel of a request for emergency resolution of a side issue, and accepted on those narrow terms by the Supreme Court’s own design. The court agreed to consider three different injunctions issued by district courts against Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order abolishing birthright citizenship for thousands of children. These orders would have denied U.S. citizenship to babies born in the United States to immigrants lacking permanent legal status and holders of temporary visas. A small army of plaintiffs—including pregnant women, advocacy groups, and 22 states—promptly sued.

Three district courts, in Maryland, New Jersey, and Washington state, all separately held that Trump’s ban unequivocally violates the 14^th Amendment, which expressly grants citizenship to “all persons born” in the U.S., with minor exceptions for the children of diplomats and members of invading armies that are irrelevant here. So each court issued a “universal injunction” prohibiting the Trump administration from implementing the policy nationwide. These courts reasoned that narrower injunctions would fail to fully protect the plaintiffs’ right to complete relief from the unconstitutional policy. As a result, the executive order was paused across the nation. Three federal appeals courts refused to disturb the injunctions.

Trump’s DOJ then asked the Supreme Court to step in, claiming that being thwarted from stripping birthright citizenship from the 14^th Amendment represented an emergency that needed to be resolved on the so-called shadow docket. But, perhaps recognizing that it was destined to lose on the constitutional merits, the department did not ask SCOTUS to rule that Trump’s executive order was lawful. Instead, it asked the justices to narrow the injunctions to the named plaintiffs, arguing that it was long past time to crack down on universal injunctions proliferating against the administration, and to resolve the decades-old problems of know-it-all trial court judges and forum-shopping litigants (a problem Republican litigants were far less concerned about when these weapons were wielded aggressively against the Biden administration). The high court agreed to consider whether these sweeping injunctions were appropriate—a question that’s related to, but wholly separate from, the larger and arguably far more pressing issue of whether the underlying executive orders are unconstitutional.

If you squint, you can see the logic of what SCOTUS did here. Maybe the justices thought they could issue a compromise decision that would give Trump a procedural victory by trimming the nationwide injunctions while teeing up a someday defeat for him on the merits in the near future. This was the kind of Solomonic “grand bargain” that some commenters hoped would come with last year’s Jan. 6–related cases, in which the majority ultimately allowed the once and future president to run the table. It became painfully clear during Thursday’s oral arguments that any such vision here was a mirage: There is no clean way to separate the merits of the 14^th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship to everyone born in the United States from the effort to claw back broad injunctions. To allow the states and plaintiffs to lose on the latter is to give away the farm on the former.

“Pretty sure this one’s headed to the trump library too..” John Buss, @repeat1968

Slate’s Mary Ziegler at Slate has another example of the sneaky, backdoor way the Project 2025 Klan has of making things worse for everyone. “Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Is a Sneak Attack on Abortion.”

“With Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” of tax and Medicaid cuts up for consideration, abortion might be the last thing on anyone’s mind. But a provision buried in the bill is Republicans’ latest attempt to stop losing on reproductive rights. The current version of the GOP budget reconciliation bill includes language denying Medicaid funding to any “large provider of abortion services.” This marks a big change in the GOP’s recent approach to abortion policy. Through the early months of the Trump administration, Republicans in Congress have been remarkably reluctant to do anything big on abortion. But now they are using the president’s signature legislation to wade back into the fight.

What made this bill different? The idea seems to be that Republicans can reframe unpopular attacks on reproductive rights as more acceptable government cost-cutting measures by relying on the Department of Government Efficiency to do their dirty work. If Americans like saving money, and are prepared to believe Elon Musk’s arguments about fraud and waste, the theory goes, maybe Republicans can deliver for their socially conservative constituents without the plan backfiring. But the GOP’s latest gambit is a reminder that there’s still no magic bullet for conservatives when it comes to reproductive rights.

It’s no surprise that anti-abortion leaders themselves have seized on this strategy. Trump has made some moves to placate abortion opponents, like announcing that no one will be prosecuted for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which protects access to clinics and places of worship, and pardoning several defendants convicted of violating it. But for the most part, he has frozen out the anti-abortion movement. The Department of Justice hasn’t started enforcing the Comstock Act as an abortion ban. When conservative state attorneys general sued to force a shift, the Trump administration just last week asked the court to dismiss the suit for procedural reasons.

That doesn’t mean Trump won’t give anti-abortion leaders what they want later. Just Wednesday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the Food and Drug Administration would investigate the safety of mifepristone and potentially impose new restrictions on it. But the anti-abortion movement will have to cajole Trump and hope for the best. He is the one holding all the cards.

For that reason, dressing up an abortion restriction as a DOGE priority makes sense. The administration has cut everything from funding for cancer research to military aid to Ukraine. Republicans in Congress, who seem primarily concerned about pleasing Trump, are also banking on the fact that the president will approve of abortion restrictions as long as they can be sold as something Elon Musk would love. And defunding providers could be consequential. Local clinics have struggled in recent years, as have state Planned Parenthood affiliates. Cutting these providers out of Medicaid will make it harder for them to remain open.

But the new strategy has risks, as the few Republicans who won districts Trump lost recognize. Cutting Medicaid is deeply unpopular. Most Americans see the program positively. One poll found that under 20 percent of Americans want Congress to cut Medicaid funding. So, cutting Medicaid in any way will likely be a political loser.

And “political loser” is a good way to discuss the GOP’s conventional position on abortion. Most Americans want abortion to be legal. The go-to move for Republicans—to argue that Democrats are the true extremists on the issue—is harder when Republican-controlled states are considering ever more sweeping bans, many of them targeting people in states where reproductive rights are protected, or punishing people for donations or speech about abortion.

Still, the GOP may be emboldened because Trump won in 2024, even when Kamala Harris went all in on reproductive rights. Since then, Democrats seem less focused on the issue.

At the same time, if voters actually are paying less attention, it’s probably because less seems to be happening. Republicans in Congress have sat on their hands. Trump has yet to make a big move. The truth is that plenty is still going on, with cases moving through state and federal courts, states poised to pass stringent new bills, and Trump’s future moves still shrouded in uncertainty. The minute one of these events makes news, there’s no reason to believe voters will be any happier with Republicans’ position than they ever were.

I don’t know about you, but I feel like running for the Canadian border. Why would anyone want to come here under these circumstances? I’m also very afraid of this year’s hurricane season. This is from ABC News. “FEMA ‘not ready’ for hurricane season, internal review finds. The acting agency head told staff that planning is about 80-85% complete.” The season starts on June 1st. There have already been disturbances reported. This administration seems hellbent on killing people. This might make Heckuva Job Brownie look like an efficiency expert.

The acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency told staff members on Thursday that he believes President Donald Trump is a bold man with a bold vision for the agency — but that FEMA doesn’t yet have a full plan to tackle hurricane season.

“I would say we’re about 80 or 85% there,” Acting FEMA Administrator David Richardson told staff on a conference call, parts of which were obtained by ABC. “The next week, we will close that gap and get to probably 97-98% of a plan. We’ll never have 100% of a plan. Even if we did have 100% of a plan, a plan never survives first contact. However, we will do our best to make sure that the plan is all-encompassing.”

The conference call came after an internal document prepared for Richardson as he takes the helm of the agency responsible for managing federal disasters indicated the agency was ill-prepared for the upcoming hurricane season, which starts on June 1.

“As FEMA transforms to a smaller footprint, the intent for this hurricane season is not well understood, thus FEMA is not ready,” according to the document, which was obtained by ABC News.

In the conference call, Richardson said he and staff sat down for “about 90 minutes” and started to come up with a plan for this year’s disaster season.

He said the plan would be ready soon.

“Listen closely: The intent for disaster season 2025 (is to) safeguard the American people, return primacy to the states, strengthen their capability to respond and recover, and coordinate federal assistance when deemed necessary, while transforming to the future of FEMA,” Richardson said.

Richardson was placed at FEMA by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after former acting Administrator Cam Hamilton was fired last week because of his testimony in front of a House panel, according to a source familiar with the matter, which went against the shuttering of the agency.

The acting administrator said this version of FEMA will look different than the agency of the past.

Meanwhile, the Tariff turbulence is coming to fruition. This is from CNBC. “Walmart CFO says price hikes from tariffs could start later this month, as retailer beats on earnings.” Melissa Repko has the story.

Walmart on Thursday fell just short of quarterly sales estimates, as even the world’s largest retailer said it would feel the pinch of higher tariffs.

Even so, the Arkansas-based discounter beat quarterly earnings expectations and stuck by its full-year forecast, which calls for sales to grow 3% to 4% and adjusted earnings of $2.50 to $2.60 per share for the fiscal year. That cautious profit outlook had disappointed Wall Street in February. Wall Street was also underwhelmed by the results Thursday, as shares closed slightly lower.

Walmart also marked a milestone: It posted its first profitable quarterfor its e-commerce business both in the U.S. and globally. The business has benefited from the growth of higher-margin moneymakers, including online advertising and Walmart’s third-party marketplace.

In an interview with CNBC, Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said tariffs are “still too high” – even with the recently announced agreement to lower duties on imports from China to 30% for 90 days.

“We’re wired for everyday low prices, but the magnitude of these increases is more than any retailer can absorb,” he said. “It’s more than any supplier can absorb. And so I’m concerned that consumer is going to start seeing higher prices. You’ll begin to see that, likely towards the tail end of this month, and then certainly much more in June.”

Reuters reports the bottom line here. There’s only so long you can eliminate loss leaders, lower earnings, and try to slow things down. We will feel it everywhere, and it will be next month. Jennifer Saba has this headline: “Walmart can discount tariffs only so much.” So this is your friendly economist speaking, stock up and hunker down. It’s going to get real real soon.

Walmart (WMT.N), opens new tab wheeled its trolley cart right into President Donald Trump’s ankles. The largest U.S. retailer and a bellwether for consumers said on Thursday that tariffs would force it to raise prices, just a month after it expressed confidence that it would keep them low. Boss Doug McMillon may be able to do both at once, on a relative basis, but it also sends a clear signal to the White House that shelves are stocked with only so many ways to shield shoppers.

Flagship U.S. Walmart locations open for at least a year generated 4.5% sales growth for the three months ending April 30 from the same stretch in 2024, a second consecutive quarterly slowdown. McMillon warned that import levies are starting to take a toll. Supply-chain pressure began in late April and accelerated in May. The $750 billion company is trying to hold the line on food even as the cost of bananas, coffee, avocados and flowers increases, but it is unwilling to eat them everywhere.

McMillon and his deputies took a markedly different tone a few weeks ago. The CEO told investors that U.S. duties, which at the time were 145% on Chinese goods, remained a question mark, but that Walmart would focus on “managing our inventory and our expenses well.” Following news that those levies would be slashed to 30%, at least temporarily, McMillon cautioned of a challenging environment, implying that he can squeeze suppliers only so much.

He’s not alone either. JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon warned, opens new tab on Thursday that recession remains a threat despite Trump’s trade truce. Taiwanese contract manufacturing giant Foxconn, which assembles iPhones and makes Nvidia servers, also slashed its full-year outlook this week, blaming the stronger Taiwan dollar and “rapid changes” in U.S. tariff policy.

Equity investors took comfort from the lower duty rates, pushing the S&P 500 Index up 5% this week, to higher than where it started the year. Business leaders are clearly less impressed. Sustained gloom from industry titans like Walmart will keep pressure on the president to reconsider his own pricing power.

Every day I read the headlines, all I can think is that we shouldn’t be in this position. But, here it is. Don’t even get me started on Drunk and rapey Pete Hegseth. (Must Read. VF: “VF editors are joined by special correspondent Gabriel Sherman to discuss Pete Hegseth’s tumultuous tenure atop the Department of Defense, and why the president is reluctant to break with his friend from Fox.)

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Wednesday Reads: Trump’s Endless, Boring, Lie-Filled Speech, and Other News

Posted: March 5, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Corrupt and Political SCOTUS, Donald Trump, Elon Musk | Tags: Greenland, John Roberts, Joint speech to Congress, Medicaid, Rep. Al Green, Social Security, Stagflation, Trump lies | 9 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

The Nightmare, by Henry Fuseli

Trump’s speech last night was long and full of lies. I didn’t really watch or listen to it; I had it on TV with the sound muted. I turned it on when I noticed he was lying about Social Security, and then I tuned out again. Here’s what he had to say about the popular program that for 80 years has kept old people from starving on the streets.

We’re also identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors, and that our seniors and people that we love rely on.

Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old. It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119. I don’t know any of them. I know some people who are rather elderly but not quite that elderly. 3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129. 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139. 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149. And money is being paid to many of them, and we are searching right now.

In fact, Pam, good luck. Good luck. You’re going to find it. But a lot of money is paid out to people, because it just keeps getting paid and paid and nobody does — and it really hurts Social Security, it hurts our country. 1.3 million people from ages 150 to 159, and over 130,000 people, according to the Social Security databases, are age over 160 years old. We have a healthier country than I thought, Bobby.

Including, to finish, 1,039 people between the ages of 220 and 229. One person between the age of 240 and 249 — and one person is listed at 360 years of age. More than 100 years — more than 100 years older than our country. But we’re going to find out where that money is going, and it’s not going to be pretty. By slashing all of the fraud, waste and theft we can find, we will defeat inflation, bring down mortgage rates, lower car payments and grocery prices, protect our seniors and put more money in the pockets of American families.

It seems pretty clear that Trump plans to destroy Social Security and leave millions of Americans to starve in the streets. Americans need to fight back, and force Democrats to wake up and actually see what is happening.

Rick Wilson posted a scathing review of the speech on his substack, “Rick Wilson’s Intel and Observations”: 100 Minutes Of Lies. Dear God, That Was Worse Than Even I Expected.

Well, that’s 100 minutes of our lives we’ll never get back.

Trump’s big Joint Address to Congress read as if the White House staff told ChatGPT, “Give me a State of the Union speech that’s Castro in length, Von Munchausen in facts, and Culture War Carnival Barker in style. Oh, and make it tendentious, boring, and ugly.”

What else did one expect?

Trump’s speech last night was dull yet terrifying. It was self-referential and self-aggrandizing yet vaguely desperate. It was Trump at his worst, but it also showed America that all he’s got is his base and his same tired bit, his greatest hits played over and over, louder and louder, to an audience getting older, poorer, and more vicious in its demands that their umber demigod give them that old-time religion.

It was divisive, terrible, and badly written, a speech so clunky and organizationally and rhetorically grotesque that even if Ted Sorenson, Ray Price, and William Safire rose from the grave and sat down with Peggy Noonan and Aaron Sorkin for a fortnight, they couldn’t find enough creative mayonnaise to turn that chickenshit into chicken salad. Almost every State of the Union speech ends up with a kind of freight-train problem; too many constituent groups inside the Administration need their paragraph, their nod to their importance.

This graceless bucket of rhetorical fish guts was a catalog of “Now That’s What I Call Culture War! Volume 27” tropes, riffs, and attacks on the usual Catalog of Imaginary Demons that informs MAGA belief and behavior. None of it was new or more shocking than the first 1,000 times.

But it was the stunning disregard for truth that set this speech apart.

Trump opened his lie hole and sluiced a torrent of outright lies into the willing maw of his dull-eyed, bovine audience watching at home hooked to their Fox feed of amygdala-stoking fear porn. The absurdity of his lies was rivaled only by their scope.

The rest is behind a paywall, but here are reports on the lies. (I can’t post excepts–there are just too many lies):

CNN Staff: Fact-checking Trump’s address to Congress.

Glenn Kessler at The Washington Post: Fact-checking 26 suspect claims in Trump’s address to Congress.

Here is video from CNN of fact checking by Daniel Dale:

Happenings during and after the speech:

NBC News: Democratic Rep. Al Green removed after disrupting Trump’s speech.

Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, was removed from the House chamber Tuesday night after he disrupted President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress.

Green, who has long pushed to impeach Trump dating to his previous term in office, stood and shook his cane toward the president in the opening minutes of his speech.

Other lawmakers cheered and booed Green, causing further chaos on the House floor as Trump paused. The uproar prompted House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to read aloud from House rules.

“Members are directed to uphold and maintain decorum in the House and to cease any further disruptions,” Johnson said, an admonishment aimed at Green.

After Green refused to sit and allow Trump to continue, Johnson called for the House sergeant at arms to remove him from the chamber.

“Nah nah nah nah, goodbye,” Republicans chanted as Green was escorted from the room.

Outside the chamber, Green told NBC News that as “a person of conscience,” he believes Trump “has done things that I think we cannot allow to continue.”

What Green yelled at Trump was “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid!”

Trump reiterated his desire to take over Greenland. Politico: ‘Greenland is ours’: Greenland prime minister rebukes Trump pledge to acquire the territory.

Greenland’s Prime Minister Múte Bourup Egede proclaimed that “Greenland is ours” in response to President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress Tuesday night, where he said the U.S. will get Greenland “one way or another.”

“Americans and their leader must understand that,” Egede wrote on Facebook Wednesday, using the Greenlandic name for the island. “We are not for sale and cannot simply be taken. Our future will be decided by us in Greenland.”

Egede’s remarks follow Trump’s pledge to acquire the territory — despite emphasizing Greenland’s self-determination — during his Tuesday speech.

“We strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America,” Trump said, stressing that acquiring the territory would improve U.S. national and international security.

“I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it,” Trump added.

David Kurz at Talking Points Memo: Donald Trump Personally Thanks John Roberts For Keeping Him Out Of Jail: ‘I Won’t Forget It.’

It wasn’t Rep. Al Green (D-TX) being escorted out of the House chamber after his disruptive protest, and it wasn’t the long list of Trump absurdities cobbled together into an endless speech. Nope, it was Trump rubbing Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ face in their mutual corruption:

“Thank you again. Thank you again. Won’t forget it,” Trump says while shaking the hand of Supreme Court Justice John Roberts after the State of the Union.

— Anna Bower (@annabower.bsky.social) 2025-03-05T05:18:11.964Z

Let’s stipulate that we’re reasonable people who can see this for what it is: a reference to the Supreme Court’s disastrous ahistoric discovery of vast presidential immunity from criminal prosecution that saved Trump from going to jail.

Trump’s mob boss mentality has led to other moments like this, where he extravagantly highlights the moral and ethical compromises that a sycophant has made on his behalf as a way of demonstrating that they really are no better than he is and of lashing them even more firmly to his side. If they resist, he calls them out for being hypocrites, pointing to their compromised behavior and mocking their previous pretensions to ethical behavior.

But this time Trump did it to the sitting Supreme Court chief justice in public on the floor of the House. Whatever high regard John Roberts still held himself in has been directly challenged in the most excruciating and a dignity-robbing way. Trump has a way of doing that to everyone who comes in contact with him. Roberts had it coming. No pity for him.

Commentary on Trump’s horrible speech:

Jamelle Bouie at The New York Times: Trump’s Revenge Tour Finds Its True Target.

Donald Trump rambled, ranted and raved his way through the 2024 presidential campaign, but he was clear on one point. When he was elected, he would get revenge.

“I am your retribution,” Trump said to crowds of his supporters throughout the campaign.

This was not an abstraction. He had a few targets in mind.

“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” he said in 2023.

There were also the judges, prosecutors and politicians who tried to hold Trump accountable for his crimes, both the ones for which he was indicted and the ones for which he was convicted. He refused to rule out an effort to prosecute Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who prosecuted the Stormy Daniels hush-money case against him, and attacked Justice Juan Merchan, who presided over the trial, as “crooked.” Trump shared an image that called for the former Republican representative and Jan. 6 committee member Liz Cheney to be prosecuted in “televised military tribunals,” and he accused Gen. Mark Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of treason, calling his actions “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”To get his revenge, Trump would turn the I.R.S., the F.B.I. and other powerful parts of the federal government against his political enemies. He would hound and harass them in retaliation for their opposition to his law stretching and lawbreaking.For once in his public career, Trump wasn’t lying. As president, he has made it a priority to go after his political enemies.

You all know the things Trump has done to get revenge in his brief time in office so far. But Bouie argues that Trump’s real revenge target is the American people.

Altogether, Trump has done more to actualize his desire for retribution than he has to fulfill his campaign promise to lower the price of groceries or reduce the cost of housing. A telling sign, perhaps, of his real priorities in office.This fact of Trump’s indifference to most Americans — if not his outright hostility toward them, considering his assault on virtually every government function that helps ordinary people — suggests another dimension to his revenge tour. It is almost as if he wants to inflict pain not just on a specific set of individuals but on the entire nation.

Read the whole thing at this gift link. It’s very good.

By Mark Bryan

Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse: Let’s Be Honest About The State Of The Union.

It wasn’t necessary to watch all of Trump’s speech last night to understand where we are as a country. The state of our union, as I noted Sunday night, is compromised. And that comes as no surprise to any of us. But two moments from last night are worth noting, as markers of where we are.

The Stupid: “I have created the brand new Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Perhaps. Which is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight,” Trump said during his speech.

Only one problem. That’s not what the Justice Department has been telling judges in litigation involving the Musk-led effort to privatize government. They’ve been doing everything they can to claim Musk is not in charge of DOGE, including telling the judge that a woman named Amy Gleason, who was on vacation in Mexico when they made the representation to the court, is the Acting Administrator. It didn’t take lawyers long to point that out. Trump was barely finished when Kel McClanahan filed a “Notice of New Evidence” in Lentini v. DOGE, one of three cases that have been consolidated to hear claims about DOGE’s legality in the District of Maryland.

McClanahan argued that Trump’s statement about Musk “conclusively demonstrates that expedited discovery is urgently needed to ascertain the nature of the Department of Government Efficiency and its relationship to the United States DOGE Service.” The best outcome for Trump, following his epic foot in mouth, is that Judge Jia Cobb grants the motion to expedite which would make this the first case where pro-democracy lawyers would gain access to information about the inner workings of DOGE, likely a treasure trove that would further underscore the lawless manner in which Trump is acting.

The worst case is that someone gets held in contempt, either civil or criminal. That would open an entire can of worms about how the courts enforce their orders against a Trump administration that has at least suggested it might not comply with ones it doesn’t like. But that fight is, inevitably, coming, and judges don’t like it when parties lie to them, especially when it’s so explicit and when it’s the government doing it, here, rather uniquely, with the president’s involvement.

Hahaha!

Vance also comments on Trump’s behavior toward the SCOTUS justices:

The Corrupt: After his speech, Trump shook hands with people in the room, including the four active Supreme Court Justices who were present in their long black robes. Their tradition of dress is meant to ensure that no one mistakes who they are. It separates them from the political fray, even as they attend. That message, however, was lost on Trump.

The moment was captured on CSPAN. Trump thanks the Justices. He doesn’t say what for, but of course, we all know.

“Thank you very much, appreciate it,” he says to Elena Kagan, whose face is a mask in the moment. Then, he moves on to the Chief Justice. “Thank you again. Thank you again,” he says to John Roberts. Then he awkwardly slaps him on the shoulder and says, “Won’t forget it.” The moment has an almost classic mob boss feel to it in context.

Roberts, followed by Kagan, peels off and leaves without comment and immediately.

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