“Pfft… don’t tell me chemtrails aren’t real.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
All you have to do is to take a look at Orange Caligula’s response to the 7 million plus Americans letting them know how much he sucks to figure out how deeply we owned his thoughts on Saturday. He had no fake military birthday parade to distract him for this one. The headlines in the legacy media were so overtly blasé that you got a true sense of how deeply they’ve sucked the last decade. The problem is we might be living rentfree in his mind, but he’s still held up in the White House turning it into a mid-century modern whore house.
So, let’s go find the consensus among the public intellectuals who don’t worry about the threats of law suits and shutdowns to their bottom lines. Paul Waldman provides this analysis over at Public Notice. “No Kings was a huge success. Just look at Trump’s response. Turnout was enormous. There was no violence. And the wannabe king is triggered.”
There were some immediate attempts to simply dismiss the No Kings protests; White House spokespeople asked by journalists about the event responded “Who cares?” But President Trump cares very, very much.
The Republican Party has increasingly come to define itself by what and whom it hates. If some new issue bursts into public awareness, they won’t know what they think until they find out what position Democrats were taking so they can take the opposite one. They’re anti-anti-racism, and anti-anti-climate change, and all it takes to get them to denounce something is to tell them liberals like it. They’ll even get worked up about a corporate logo if a bunch of bots tell them it’s woke, apparently because the Founding Fathers would never have stood for sans serif fonts.
So calling this event (and the larger movement it seeks to create) “No Kings” turns out to have been a stroke of genius, because Trump’s response was to essentially say Yeah, I’m the king — and because I’m the king, I can poop on people!
After so many years one would think he had lost the ability to shock, but no — generative AI slop tools give Trump a whole new way to act like a petulant toddler:
Trump posts AI video showing him literally dumping shit on America
Yes, the president of the United States posted a video showing him wearing a crown and pooping on crowds of Americans. Whether you think this is evidence of rapidly advancing dementia or just a new expression of the same vulgar and juvenile impulses Trump has always had, there is no universe in which posting a video like that one is politically beneficial for him.
“The rule of kings is bad and just what America was created to reject” is a pretty fundamental American idea. But in the world of today’s Republican Party, if Donald Trump says kings are good and it’s good that he’s a king, everyone else in the party is required to agree.
Economist and former NYT’s columnist Dr. Paul Krugman had similar thoughts. He freely writes them now on his SubStack. “Civil Resistance Confronts the Autocracy. While MAGA’s spin was both insane and revealing, the No Kings Day 2 Marches were a major step towards taking our country back.”
Last Saturday’s No Kings Day 2 was awesome to behold. The very best of America shone through. From coast to coast, in big cities and small, in red states as well as blue states, Americans peacefully marched to uphold our humanity as a country and to show our solidarity against autocracy and lawlessness.
And also awesome were the right-wing attacks on Kings Day 2 participants in the days before the rallies. They were so extreme and so unhinged, so utterly disconnected from reality, that they defeated their ostensible purpose of intimidating the marchers into silence. While the rest of us saw families, old people, young people, folks in funny costumes, many of them waving the Stars and Stripes, MAGA saw criminals and America-haters.
But I have a theory about the deeper purpose of the MAGA attacks on No Kings Day 2. America, I’d argue, is currently operating in a strange condition — what I would call a “bubble autocracy.” Donald Trump has not yet consolidated anything like absolute political power. But parts of our society — the Republican Party and a number of supposedly independent institutions like, say, CBS — are in effect living inside a bubble in which they operate as if he has. Within that bubble, a cult of personality around Trump has been built, a cult of personality worthy of Kim Jong Un. And to show their fealty to Dear Leader, Republicans must engage in bizarre rhetoric.
Before I explain my theory of how the right lost its mind, some personal observations.
I attended Saturday’s No Kings Day march in Manhattan, for several reasons. As a citizen, I felt it was my duty. As a journalist, I wanted to see with my own eyes the mood, and whether there was violence either by or, far more likely, against the protestors. And I was, to be honest, feeling some anxiety about crowd size: a disappointing turnout would have been a significant blow to our chances of saving American democracy. No surprise that Trump attempted to discourage participation by declaring in advance that “I hear that very few people are going to be there,” while his lackeys spouted insane conspiracy theories.
I needn’t have worried. The march I joined was immense. G. Elliott Morris and the independent science newsroom Xylon estimate that 320,000 people protested in New York, and their median estimate is that more than 5 million protested nationwide. As Morris says, Saturday’s events were very likely “the biggest single-day protest since 1970.” Furthermore, the event was completely nonviolent: The New York Police Department reported zero arrests.
As for me, I’ll stop wearing my No Kings T-shirt when some one pries it from my cold back or when Heather Cox Richardson tells me I can retire it. This is from her Sunday Substack, Letters from an American.”
A video of Trump in a bomber attacking American cities carries an implied threat that the disdain of throwing excrement doesn’t erase. This morning, Trump reinforced that threat when he reminded Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo: “Don’t forget I can use the Insurrection Act. Fifty percent of the presidents almost have used that. And that’s unquestioned power. I choose not to, I’d rather do this, but I’m met constantly by fake politicians, politicians that think that, that you know they it’s not like a part of the radical left movement to have safety. These cities have to be safe.”
That “safety” apparently involves detaining U.S. citizens without due process. On Thursday, Nicole Foy of ProPublica reported that more than 170 U.S. citizens have been detained by immigration agents. She reports they “have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched.”
On Friday, the Trump administration pushed its attempt to use the military in Democratic-led cities, asking the Supreme Court to let it deploy troops in Chicago immediately. Chris Geidner of Law Dork notes that four judges, two appointed by Democrats and two appointed by Republicans, have rejected the administration’s arguments for why they must send in troops. Now the Department of Justice has appealed to the Supreme Court, asking for a decision on the so-called shadow docket, which would provide a fast response, but one without any hearings or explanation.
The administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court warned that there was “pressing risk of violence” in Chicago—a premise the judges rejected—and said preventing Trump from going into the city “improperly impinges on the President’s authority.”
How much difference will the No Kings Day protests, even as big as they were, make in the face of the administration’s attempt to get rid of our democratic political system and replace it with authoritarianism? What good is an inflatable frog against federal agents?
Scholar of social movements Lisa Corrigan noted that large, fun marches full of art and music expand connections and make people more willing to take risks against growing state power. They build larger communities by creating new images that bring together recognizable images from the past in new ways, helping more people see themselves in such an opposition. The community and good feelings those gatherings develop help carry opposition through hard moments. Corrigan notes, too, that yesterday “every single rally (including in the small towns) was bigger than the surrounding police force available. That kind of image event is VERY IMPORTANT if you’re…demonstrating social coherence AGAINST a fascist government and its makeshift gestapo.”
It’s funny how that AI-generated Trump video had nothing intelligent but everything artificial in it. Notice that he gets to reach altitude with nothing covering his face,nose, and barely his mouth. He managed to look like a toddly with a sippy cup urinal. Alan Elrod–writing for Liberal Currents–has this to say about the increasingly isolated Republican Party. He presents an analsyis of what we’ve learned about those gross Young Republican chat logs. We always knew the incels would be the last to leave and failures with the lead. “Sex Is Gay, Rape Is Epic, No Fatties: Young Right-Wing Men Are Obsessed With Male Power and Male Bodies. The group chat leak reveals what over a decade of incel messaging and Bronze Age Pervert have done to Young Republicans.”
It’s tempting to shrug off the language in the Young Republicans’ group chat as the pathetic humor of pasty losers. But the danger is real. As Bates stresses, we have seen incel ideology drive heinous acts of public violence, most notably in the cases of Elliot Rodger in Isla Vista and the Toronto van attack committed by Alek Minassian. As Cynthia Miller-Idriss, an expert on right-wing extremism and terroristic violence, argues in her new bookMan Up: The New Misogyny & The Rise of Violent Extremism:
Such violence is also fueled by the constant dehumanization of women online, along with the casual celebration of violence and harassment directed toward them. One of the neo-Nazi men arrested for plotting an antisemitic attack in New York City in 2022 had previously shared online that he had violently attacked a transgender person and described himself as “most proud of being ‘good at raping women,’ ” according to an assistant district attorney on the case.
In other cases, women are not just targeted with rage as a means of punishment; they are attacked violently as a strategy of elimination. The six Asian women and two others gunned down in a rampage at three Atlanta massage parlors in the spring of 2021 were killed because the 21-year-old gunman believed he deserved to live in a world without the sexual temptation he believed they created for him. It’s hard to think of a clearer example of how mass violence can be generated from a sense of entitlement and male supremacist reasoning. Violent attacks against women in cases like these—as well as in domestic and intimate partner violence and misogynist incel attacks—are not only or even primarily about sex. Rather, they are rooted in what Kate Manne describes as “some men’s toxic sense of entitlement to have people look up to them steadfastly, with a loving gaze, admiringly-and to target and even destroy those who fail, or refuse, to do so.”Supremacy is an all-consuming logic on the MAGA right today. Christian supremacy, white supremacy, male supremacy, almost every corner of MAGA is marked by one or some combination of supremacist logic and a desire to subjugate some other group. This fixation on domination is precisely why I argued back in March that Andrew Tate has natural appeal to many younger Republicans and that rape as an ordering principle defines MAGA politics.
The federal agency responsible for overseeing and modernizing the US nuclear stockpile will furlough the vast majority of its staff Monday as the government shutdown drags on, according to the Department of Energy.
About 1,400 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, will receive furlough notices Monday, while fewer than 400 employees will remain on the job to safeguard the stockpile, Energy Department spokesperson Ben Dietderich told CNN.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright will speak about the shutdown’s impact on the US’ nuclear deterrent efforts Monday while visiting the Nevada National Security Site.
The NNSA Office of Secure Transportation, which oversees the transportation of nuclear weapons around the country, will be funded through October 27.
And remember all that talk of Peace before some one else got the Nobel Prize? This is from the Washington Post. “In tense meeting, Trump told Zelensky to concede land, meet Putin’s demands. Following the trip to Washington, Zelensky has set up a series of calls and meetings with his main European backers.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is rallying the support of his European partners after a bruising meeting with President Donald Trump, in which he was told to make concessions to end the war or risk facing destruction at the hands of Russia.
In a tense meeting at the White House on Friday, Trump tossed aside maps of the front line and urged Kyiv to concede its entire Donbas region to Russia to clinch a deal, according to people familiar with the exchange who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive diplomacy.
“He said [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will destroy you if you don’t agree now,” one of the people said. “Zelensky had his maps and everything, and he was explaining it to him but [Trump] wanted nothing to do with it.”
Trump listened but was not responsive to the Ukrainian message, the person said. “It was pretty much like ‘No, look guys, you can’t possibly win back any territory. … There is nothing we can do to save you. You should try to give diplomacy another chance.’”
So much success! So much winning! How can we even wrap our minds around it? And what about this story on Justice Bondi-style? This is from CBS’ Scott Pelley. The interview came from Sixty Minutes last night.
Erez Reuveni, a fired Department of Justice lawyer who’s now blowing the whistle, says he witnessed a disregard of due process and for the rule of law at the DOJ.
Reuveni previously won commendations for his work and was so effective defending President Trump’s first-term immigration policy that he was promoted quickly in Mr. Trump’s second term. But he says he was put on leave and then fired after refusing to sign a brief in the mistaken deportation case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Reuveni’s whistleblower disclosure helped highlight a growing concern in many courts across the country that the Justice Department is allegedly abusing the limits of the law.
“I took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. And my view of that oath is that I need to speak up and draw attention to what has happened to the department, what is happening to the rule of law,” Reuveni said. “I would not be faithfully abiding by my oath if I stayed silent right now.”
…
When more facts were known about the weekend flights, it turned out a Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, had been deported by mistake.
While people deported in error are normally returned, Reuveni said that in a phone call from a superior, he was ordered to argue that Abrego Garcia was an MS-13 member and a terrorist to prevent his return.
“I respond up the chain of command, no way. That is not correct. That is not factually correct. It is not legally correct. That is, that is a lie. And I cannot sign my name to that brief,” Reuveni said.
Reuveni said what was important was not whether or not Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13 or a terrorist, but whether or not he received due process.
“What’s to stop them if they decide they don’t like you anymore, to say you’re a criminal, you’re a member of MS-13, you’re a terrorist,” Reuveni said. “What’s to stop them from sending in some DOJ attorney at the direction of DOJ leadership to delay, to filibuster, and if necessary, to lie? And now that’s you gone and your liberties changed.”
Reuveni was fired after refusing to sign a brief that called Abrego Garcia a terrorist. In June, he filed a whistleblower complaint with the help of attorneys from the Government Accountability Project.
While, the news still doesn’t feel like we’re living in America, the streets are begining to fill with enough Americans dedicated to truth, justice, and our evolving society, I have hope.
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“Putin addresses the residents of his newly acquired territory.” John Buss, @repeat1968, @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I am having an ongoing debate with myself about the current administration. Is it the stupidity, the arrogance, or the meanness that most damaged our Constitutional democracy? Or is it the greed? I’m tagging all my posts here with the words Polycrisis, Kakistocracy, and Oligarchy or Broligarchy. It’s getting to be a tough search to find a few journalists who will actually tell it like it is.
This article in The Guardian early this month by Jonathan Freeland describes the current president thusly. “Donald Trump is turning America into a mafia state. The pattern is inescapable – with just one caveat: organised crime bosses occasionally display more honour.” I’ll just add a local New Orleans colloquialism. True Dat.
Behold Donald Corleone, the US president who behaves like a mafia boss – but without the principles. Of course, one hesitates to make the comparison, not least because Donald Trump would like it. And because the Godfather is an archetype of strength and macho glamour while Trump is weak, constantly handing gifts to America’s enemies and getting nothing in return. But when the world is changing so fast – when a nation that has been a friend for more than a century turns into a foe in a matter of weeks – it helps to have a guide. My colleague Luke Harding clarified the nature of Vladimir Putin’s Russia when he branded it the Mafia State. Now we need to attach the same label to the US under Putin’s most devoted admirer.
Consider the way Trump’s White House conducts itself, issuing threats and menaces that sound better in the original Sicilian. This week the president said that a deal ending Russia’s war on Ukraine “could be made very fast” but “if somebody doesn’t want to make a deal, I think that person won’t be around very long”. You didn’t need a translator to know that the somebody he had in mind was Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
On Thursday, Trump was confident that the Ukrainians would soon do his bidding “because I don’t think they have a choice”. Almost as if he had made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. Which of course he had. By ending the supply of military aid and the sharing of US intelligence, as he did this week, he had effectively put a Russian revolver to Ukraine’s temple,its imprint scarcely reduced by Trump’s declaration today that he is “strongly considering” banking sanctions and tariffs against Moscow, a move that looked a lot like a man pretending to be equally tough on the two sides, but which should fool nobody.He expects Zelenskyy to sign away a huge chunk of Ukraine’s minerals, the way Corleone’s rivals surrendered their livelihoods to save their lives.
This is how the US now operates in the world. Dispensing with the formalities during his annual address to Congress on Tuesday, Trump repeated his threat to grab Greenland: “One way or the other, we’re going to get it.” That recalled his earlier warning to Copenhagen to give him what he wants or face the consequences: “maybe things have to happen with respect to Denmark having to do with tariffs”. Nice place you got there; would be a shame if something happened to it.
It’s the same shakedown he’s performing on the US’s northern neighbour. Canada’s outgoing prime minister Justin Trudeau spelled it out this week, accusing Trump of trying to engineer “a total collapse of the Canadian economy because that will make it easier to annex us”, adding that: “We will never be the 51st state.” It’s a technique familiar in the darker corners of the New Jersey construction industry: a series of unfortunate fires that only stops when a recalcitrant competitor submits.
Both the substance and the style are pure mafia. Note the obsession with respect, demonstrated in last week’s Oval Office confrontation with Zelenskyy. Between them, JD Vance and Trump accused the Ukrainian leader three times of showing disrespect,sounding less like world leaders than touchy Tommy DeVito, the Joe Pesci character in Goodfellas.
Note too the humiliation of subordinates. In his address to Congress, the president introduced secretary of state Marco Rubio as the man charged with taking back the Panama canal. “Good luck, Marco,” said Trump, with a chuckle. “Now we know who to blame if anything goes wrong.” Cue anxious laughter from the rest of the underlings, briefly relieved that it wasn’t them.
It’s hard for aides and opponents alike to keep up because power is exercised arbitrarily and inconsistently. Tariffs are imposed, then suspended. Indeed, one reason why import taxes so appeal to Trump is that they can be enforced instantly and by presidential edict. That extends to the exemptions Trump can offer to favoured US industries. As MSNBC’s Chris Hayes observed: “This is very obviously going to be a protection racket, where Trump can at the stroke of a pen destroy or save your business depending on how compliant you are.”
This characterization of Trump is so spot on that you really should go read the rest. I’m using this description of FARTUS as a background to the absolutely appalling crap that’s going on today. It’s hard to mentally deal with how quickly he’s disassembled so many long-standing U.S. Institutions in such a short time. This is especially true because it appears that the massive amount of incompetence and ignorance that his appointments display just escalates the damage. Look at this headline in The Atlantic. It’s reported by Jeffrey Goldberg. “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans. U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.” WTAF?
The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.
I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.
This is going to require some explaining.
The story technically begins shortly after the Hamas invasion of southern Israel, in October 2023. The Houthis—an Iran-backed terrorist organization whose motto is “God is great, death to America, death to Israel, curse on the Jews, victory to Islam”—soon launched attacks on Israel and on international shipping, creating havoc for global trade. Throughout 2024, the Biden administration was ineffective in countering these Houthi attacks; the incoming Trump administration promised a tougher response.
This is where Pete Hegseth and I come in.
On Tuesday, March 11, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz. Signal is an open-source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering. I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. I did not assume, however, that the request was from the actual Michael Waltz. I have met him in the past, and though I didn’t find it particularly strange that he might be reaching out to me, I did think it somewhat unusual, given the Trump administration’s contentious relationship with journalists—and Trump’s periodic fixation on me specifically. It immediately crossed my mind that someone could be masquerading as Waltz in order to somehow entrap me. It is not at all uncommon these days for nefarious actors to try to induce journalists to share information that could be used against them.
I accepted the connection request, hoping that this was the actual national security adviser, and that he wanted to chat about Ukraine, or Iran, or some other important matter.
Two days later—Thursday—at 4:28 p.m., I received a notice that I was to be included in a Signal chat group. It was called the “Houthi PC small group.”
A message to the group, from “Michael Waltz,” read as follows: “Team – establishing a principles [sic] group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours. My deputy Alex Wong is pulling together a tiger team at deputies/agency Chief of Staff level following up from the meeting in the Sit Room this morning for action items and will be sending that out later this evening.”
The message continued, “Pls provide the best staff POC from your team for us to coordinate with over the next couple days and over the weekend. Thx.”
The term principals committee generally refers to a group of the senior-most national-security officials, including the secretaries of defense, state, and the treasury, as well as the director of the CIA. It should go without saying—but I’ll say it anyway—that I have never been invited to a White House principals-committee meeting, and that, in my many years of reporting on national-security matters, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app.
Definitely go read this one. I’ve been missing reading John le Carré. I’m assuming anyone with a background in spying would have saucer eyes by this time. Trump’s love of playing checkers with the countries of the world is dangerous and immoral. He plays with everyone’s life like a mad king. This is from Oliver Darcy at Status. It’s a remarkable indictment of how the press enables his heinous policies and statements. “Gulf of Fear. When news anchors tiptoe around the name Gulf of Mexico, it’s not just semantics—it’s a glimpse at how the press starts to flinch under political pressure.”
In China, Taiwan doesn’t exist—at least not as a country. On official maps, it’s a province. The government enforces strict language about Taiwan’s status, shaping how its people—and the rest of the world—talk about it. The goal, of course, is far more significant than the name on a map. It’s not about semantics. It’s about wielding influence and asserting dominance. Controlling the language people use, particularly in relation to global geography, is a powerful capability to possess.
In the United States, that kind of top-down dictation might feel like a distant threat, the kind of thing that happens in authoritarian regimes or dystopian novels like “1984,” not in a country built on free speech safeguarded by the First Amendment. Americans tend to believe our press is too independent and and too proud to ever bow to government pressure. We assume that if a president ever tried to dictate language, the Fourth Estate would resist. We assume that we’re immune from such pressures.
But an important segment of the press—the television news media—over the past week quietly demonstrated that it is far less adversarial and far more compliant than the breathless promos these networks air hyping themselves as fearless truth-tellers. When the eyes of the world fixated on the stranded NASA astronauts being rescued and touching down back on Earth, every channel danced around what precisely to call the body of water they splashed into. A review of transcripts, courtesy of SnapStream, revealed an alarming reality: not one of the outlets could muster up the courage to simply refer to it as the Gulf of Mexico, the water feature’s name since the 16th century.
Instead, television news organizations tied themselves in knots, performing linguistic gymnastics to stay out of Donald Trump’s crosshairs, while also tiptoeing around audiences who would have surely been incensed to see them bend the knee and call it the “Gulf of America.” On ABC News, “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir referred to “spectacular images from off the coast of Florida.” On the “NBC Nightly news,” anchor Lester Holt spoke about the astronauts “splashing down off the Florida Gulf coast.” On the “CBS Evening News,” it was referred to simply as “the Gulf.” And on CNN, anchor Jake Tapper tried to seemingly have it both ways, noting the U.S. government refers to it as the “Gulf of America,” but the rest of the world calls it the Gulf of Mexico.
In fact, I could only one find instance on a television newscast where a journalist referred to the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico. During an appearance on MSNBC, NBC News correspondent Tom Costello used the term, but then quickly corrected himself, almost as if he had realized he was forbidden from doing so. “Six hours from right now, there will be a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico,” he said, before backtracking. “Sorry, however you want to call the Gulf. It will be splashing down in the Gulf.”
Suffice to say, none of this was an accident.
We first saw the capitulation of the tech bros and their social media platforms, including Jeff Bezos, who has ruined The Washington Post. This week, the situation there is getting worse. The first thing any autocrat wants to do is to come for any vestige of a free media. This is from MEDIAITE as reported by David Gilmour. “Trump Claims Jeff Bezos Trashed the ‘Crazy People’ in His Own Newsroom: ‘They’re Out of Control’.
President Donald Trump claimed that billionaire Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos privately expressed regret over the newspaper’s editorial direction and trashed his own “out of control” newsroom for writing “bad articles” about him.
The comments came during a sit-down with OutKick’s Clay Travisaboard Air Force One on Saturday after Travis suggested “it seems” that Bezos may be attempting to make The Washington Post “more fair” in coverage towards Trump.
Trump agreed and didn’t hesitate to praise Bezos, telling Travis “I think it’s great.”
Travis later asked whether Trump had discussed how the newspaper had come after him “like crazy” in the past, AND the president replied: “At length, I talked to him about it. [Bezos is] a good guy. I didn’t really know him in the first term. I mean, it’s such a difference between now and the first time.”
Pressed on what Bezos had said he had planned for The Post’s coverage, Trump said: “Just that. He’s really trying to be more fair.”
Trump continued: “They actually did a couple of bad articles on him. He said, ‘This is crazy, I lose my fortune running this thing and they, you know, they’re out of control.’ These people are crazy. They’re crazy people. They’re out of control.”
“And he’s a actually a very good guy,” the president added. “If you look at the inauguration, look at the people that were on that stage, here was a who’s who of a world that was totally against me the first time. It’s a much different presidency. I have much more support.”
And now, we have the capitulation of top law firms. How many more legs of democracy will we lose? The Bulwark draws the line today. “Stop Making Excuses for Not Fighting Trump. The capitulations and acquiescence we’ve seen so far will only make opposition more difficult down the road.” This is written by William Kristol under the lede “No Excuse.”
Among those who might be expected to stand up against Donald Trump’s authoritarianism, the hills are alive with the sound of excuses.
You’re an elected official. The Trump administration has rounded up individuals and sent them, without any due process and with much carelessness about who’s been seized, to a mega-prison in El Salvador. The administration is boasting about what it’s done and heralding it a prelude to further actions in the same vein.
You’re thinking of condemning these truly grotesque violations of constitutional rights and human decency. Maybe I should say this isn’t right?
Whoa, Nellie! Not so fast, your political advisers hasten to instruct you. The polls on this issue aren’t great. This really isn’t the hill to die on.
You take their advice. But you tell yourself, and you assure others, that of course you will fight one day—on some other hill, on some faraway hill, some time far in the future.
But to fight now? Bad idea.That would simply play into Trump’s hands. After all, Trump and his allies are good at fighting. If you try to do something, there’s a risk they’ll turn it against you. Whereas if you say nothing, nothing can be used against you.
You might worry for a second that silence and acquiescence just plays into Trump’s hands. But you’re not a sophisticated Democratic operative. So you take their advice.
And anyway, there’s a better plan. That plan is that, eventually, Trump will become less popular. Then, the public will rise up. And then you can speak up. It all works out.
It also works out if you’re in the private sector. In fact, if you’re the head of a huge law firm, capitulation isn’t just a regrettable necessity, it’s your duty. You’re acting in the best interests of your clients. It would be wrong and irresponsible to act otherwise.
What’s more, No one in the wider world can appreciate how stressful it is to confront an executive order like this until one is directed at you.
The people in the “wider world”—those serving in the military or waiting tables or cleaning offices at Paul Weiss—they just can’t appreciate the stress that comes from occupying that corner office at 51st and 6th.
Ugh.
All of these excuses—and there are many more!—are distasteful. But what’s worse is that they make it easier and more likely that others will capitulate. They make it seem that you’re kind of a chump if you actually fight Trump’s authoritarian takeover. The excuses offered for capitulation increase the damage done by capitulation.
As usual, Shakespeare saw all. Here’s Pembroke in Act IV, Scene 2 of King John:
And oftentimes excusing of a fault Doth make the fault the worse by th’ excuse, As patches set upon a little breach Discredit more in hiding of the fault Than did the fault before it was so patched.
The excuses offered by our elites for not standing up to authoritarianism have the effect of helping the authoritarians gain further ground.
Zach Beauchamp writes at VOX, “There’s a pattern in Trump’s power grabs. The White House strategy demands we defend alleged criminals and those with unpopular views.”
After rising to power, Nazis pitched power grabs as efforts to address the alleged threat posed by menaces like “Judeo-Bolshevism,” harnessing the powers of bigotry and political polarization to get ordinary Germans on board with the demolition of their democracy.
What’s happening in America right now has chilling echoes of this old tactic. When engaging in unlawful or boundary-pushing behavior, the Trump administration has typically gone after targets who are either highly polarizing or unpopular. The idea is to politicize basic civil liberties questions — to turn a defense of the rule of law into either a defense of widely hated groups or else an ordinary matter of partisan politics.
The administration’s first known deportation of a green card holder targeted a pro-Palestinian college activist at Columbia University, the site of some of the most radical anti-Israel activity. For this reason, Columbia was also the first university it targeted for a funding cutoff. Trump has also targeted an even more unpopular cohort: The first group of American residents sent to do hard labor in a Salvadoran prison was a group of people his administration claimed without providing evidence were Tren de Aragua gang members.
Trump is counting on the twin powers of demonization and polarization to justify their various efforts to expand executive authority and assail civil liberties. They want to make the conversation less about the principle — whether what Trump is doing is legal or a threat to free speech — and more a referendum on whether the targeted group is good or bad.
There is every indication this pattern will continue. And if we as a society fail to understand how the Trump strategy works, or where it leads, the damage to democracy could be catastrophic.
This, too, is a long read that deserves a look. A lot of this goes back to White House aid Stephan Miller. This guy needs to have an entire press detail following him. I’m going to end with a few articles on economics. The first comes from Paul Krugman and will clarify what’s happening with Social Security. “Social Security: A Time for Outrage. Trump’s policies attack his own base — but who will tell them?” I often find myself in conversations with friends, and we all wonder if Trump Supporters will ever show a glimmer of intelligence.
Donald Trump is often described as a “populist.” Yet his administration is stuffed with wealthy men who are clueless about how the other 99.99 percent lives, while his policies involve undermining the working class while enabling wealthy tax cheats.
What is true is that many working-class voters supported Trump last year because they believed that he was on their side. And that disconnect between perceptions and reality ought to be at the heart of any discussion of what Democrats should do now.
Right now the central front in the assault on the working class is Social Security, which Elon Musk, unable to admit error, keeps insisting is riddled with fraud. The DOGE-bullied Social Security Administration has already announced that those applying for benefits or trying to change where their benefits are deposited will need to verify their identity either online or in person — a huge, sometimes impossible burden on the elderly, often disabled Americans who need those benefits most. And with staff cuts and massive DOGE disruption, it seems increasingly likely that some benefits just won’t arrive as scheduled.
Oh, and Leland Dudek, the acting Social Security administrator, threatened to shut the whole thing down unless DOGE was given access to personal data.
Not to worry, says Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Commerce secretary. Only “fraudsters” would complain about missing a Social Security check:
Let’s say social security didn’t send out their checks this month. My mother who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain. She’d think something got messed up, and she’ll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining.
There’s so much wrong with that statement that it’s hard to know where to start. But it’s clear that Lutnick — like many affluent people — has no idea how important Social Security is to the finances of most older Americans. According to a Social Security Administration study, half of Americans over 65 get a majority of their income from Social Security; a quarter depend almost entirely on Social Security, which supplies more than 90 percent of their income. I doubt that these people would shrug off a missed check.
Reliance on Social Security isn’t evenly distributed across the population; it’s strongly correlated with socioeconomic status. In particular, it very much depends on education, with less-educated Americans much more reliant on the program than those with more education:
That Lutnick quote cannot be repeated enough. The last read I’m sharing today comes from The Economist. “Musk Inc is under serious threat. The world’s richest man has lost focus. His competitors are taking advantage.” Well, isn’t that special?
UNTIL RECENTLY Elon Musk had little need to look over his shoulder. He once described competition for Tesla, his electric-vehicle (EV) company, as “the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day”, rather than the “small trickle” of other EV-makers. SpaceX, his rocket firm, had so undercut and outwitted the bloated aerospace incumbents that it had developed an almost invincible aura.
Yet if Mr Musk can tear himself away from the intoxication of shredding the American government, he may notice something. It is not just that the political firestorms he has whipped up this year are singeing his companies’ brands. It is that the two businesses that underpin his corporate empire—accounting for around 90% of its value and probably all its profit—are facing increasingly stiff competition. The world’s richest man has lost focus—and now has a target on his back.
Start with SpaceX. Last year it conducted five out of every six of the world’s spacecraft launches. Through its Starlink division, it owns 60% of satellites in space. In December it sold shares at a valuation of $350bn, two-thirds higher than its previous level. Starlink, its main profit engine, is on track to generate more than $11bn of revenue this year and $2bn of free cash flow, says Chris Quilty of Quilty Space, a consultancy.
Now, however, Mr Musk’s bomb-throwing interventions are alarming SpaceX customers, and at a time when rivals are growing more capable. His on-again, off-again threats to end Starlink’s support for Ukraine have raised the difficult question of trust. European politicians are pondering how reliable Mr Musk will be as a long-term provider of strategic satellite communications. The search for alternatives has helped spur a more than tripling of the share price of Eutelsat, the French owner of OneWeb, which provides satellite services to broadband companies.
No European supplier could come close to matching the 7,000 satellites Starlink has in low orbit. (Eutelsat has a mere 600.) Nor could any compete on price. As Simon Potter of BryceTech, another space consultancy, puts it, for now the concerns are “more noise than action”. Yet Starlink may soon face meaningful competition from Amazon’s Project Kuiper, which aims to put over 3,000 satellites into low orbit, creating a space-based broadband network. If it achieves that, some customers outside America may decide they have more confidence in an Amazon product than in one belonging to the mercurial Mr Musk.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, is also stepping up the pace in the launch business with Blue Origin. His rocket firm is separate from Project Kuiper, but has contracts to fly many of its satellites. In January Mr Bezos’s New Glenn rocket reached orbit on its first try. If Blue Origin manages to make repeated successful journeys with reusable rockets, it could become a meaningful competitor to SpaceX. So could Rocket Lab, SpaceX’s closest rival by number of launches, which is due to debut Neutron, a new rocket, this year.
Here comes the Rooster.
It’s like we’re in a very bad dystopian novel and can’t escape. Anyway, I’m not shutting up any time soon.
What’s on your Reading and Blogging list today?
Here’s a picture of this big boy who keeps crossing the road in front of my house. The rain just stopped, and the sun cleared up, so he’s been yelling at the sun for about an hour now. I feel like he’s some kind of omen.
Here’s an Alice in Chains song about the Vietnam War. That ought to cheer you up.
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Negotiations over the next stimulus package intended to bolster the economy and help struggling Americans pay their bills have stalled on Capitol Hill with Democrats and Trump administration officials walking away after talks broke down on Friday and devolved into partisan finger-pointing.
At a hastily scheduled news conference at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club Friday evening, President Donald Trump laid out the executive actions he said he would pursue if Congress does not reach a deal.
No additional discussions are planned after nearly two weeks of daily meetings, and lead White House negotiators Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said they were recommending Trump move ahead with a series of executive orders.
Trump said Friday the actions would include a payroll tax deferment, extending unemployment benefits, extending an eviction moratorium and deferring student loan payments and forgiving their interest.
It’s not at all clear to me that any of this would be legal, especially cutting the payroll tax, which would starve Social Security and Medicare. Trump is obviously dying to do that. Back to the CNN story:
Cher
Trump said “they’re talking about” deferring the payroll tax until the end of the year. “And I can extend it at a certain period … and it will be retroactive until July 1,” he said. “I’m going to enhance unemployment benefits through the end of the year,” he added, without specifying any amount.
But the executive orders are expected to meet fierce resistance from Democrats who plan to challenge them in court. Democrats warn that executive action taken will be insufficient to address the extent of the economic and public health crisis faced by Americans during the pandemic.
This isn’t a far-off problem that retirees’ grandchildren would face. If this economic downturn is as bad as the Great Recession a decade ago, then the Social Security trust funds could run out of money in 2029, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. After that, beneficiaries could see a 31% cut in retirement payments.
The program’s trustees had projected earlier this year that the trust funds would be depleted in 2035, but that did not take the coronavirus pandemic into account.
It would be the first time the estimated insolvency date was within a decade since the crisis of the 1980s, which prompted several changes, including raising the retirement age, said Shai Akabas, the center’s director of economy policy.
“An already urgent situation has become even more pressing,” Akabas said, noting the severe drop in payroll tax revenue. “We expect that that trend is going to continue for many years as it takes the labor market to recover.”
“Trump’s scheme would weaken the Social Security and Medicare trust funds by diverting the revenue from the employee portion of Social Security and Medicare taxes, and potentially the employer’s share of Medicare taxes, from the programs’ trust funds,” the memo from the Center for American Progress said.
Earlier this year, Congress deferred the employer-portion of the Social Security tax (6.2%) through 2022 under the CARES Act. But they replaced the lost money with an infusion of general Treasury funds.
Trump, the memo said, lacks the authority to appropriate funds, which is Congress’s purview.
Many economists say that implementing a payroll tax cut through an executive order wouldn’t lead to a bump in wages for most workers, since the executive branch can only defer tax payments up to a year and not forgive them. Wiping out the payment requires Congress to act.
Legally, employers remain on the hook for any delayed payment. Firms would likely keep the money since they fear being saddled with a hefty tax bill if Congress didn’t move to forgive it.
Obviously, the fact that this would be illegal won’t stop Trump from trying it.
Paul Krugman weighs in on the economic crisis we face: Coming Next: The Greater Recession. Krugman argues that without a second stimulus package being enacted very soon the economy is going to get much worse.
I’m not sure how many people realize just how much deeper the coronavirus recession of 2020 could have been. Obviously it was terrible: Employment plunged, and real G.D.P. fell by around 10 percent. Almost all of that, however, reflected the direct effects of the pandemic, which forced much of the economy into lockdown.
Ava Gardner, 1946
What didn’t happen was a major second round of job losses driven by plunging consumer demand. Millions of workers lost their regular incomes; without federal aid, they would have been forced to slash spending, causing millions more to lose their jobs. Luckily Congress stepped up to the plate with special aid to the unemployed, which sustained consumer spending and kept the nonquarantined parts of the economy afloat.
Furthermore, evidence from austerity policies a decade ago suggests a substantial “multiplier” effect, as spending cuts lead to falling incomes, leading to further spending cuts.
Put it all together and the expiration of emergency aid could produce a 4 percent to 5 percent fall in G.D.P. But wait, there’s more. States and cities are in dire straits and are already planning harsh spending cuts; but Republicans refuse to provide aid, with Trump insisting, falsely, that local fiscal crises have nothing to do with Covid-19.
Bear in mind that the coronavirus itself — a shock that came out of the blue, though the United States mishandled it terribly — reduced G.D.P. by “only” around 10 percent. What we’re looking at now may be another shock, a sort of economic second wave, almost as severe in monetary terms as the first. And unlike the pandemic, this shock will be entirely self-generated, brought on by the fecklessness of President Trump and — let’s give credit where it’s due — Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader.
In other news, Chief Justice John Roberts is showing his true colors when it comes to abortion.
Soon, if a rape victim in Arkansas wants an abortion, she'll have to notify her rapist first. If a minor wants an abortion, her name will be sent to the local police. Medication abortions will be effectively outlawed.
The Supreme Court’s recent decision in June Medical v. Russo was hailed by many liberal court watchers as a win for reproductive rights, as the court declined to overturn Roe v. Wade and formally eliminate the right to an abortion. On Friday, however, a federal appeals court ruled that June Medical significantly narrowed the constitutional right to abortion access. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel swept away an injunction that had blocked Arkansas from enforcing a slew of abortion restrictions, including a requirement that patients pregnant as a result of rape notify their rapists before terminating their pregnancy. The appellate court’s decision confirms that Chief Justice John Roberts’ controlling opinion in June Medical will serve as a tool to eviscerate abortion rights. Those who briefly heralded him as a champion of reproductive freedom were too caught up in the halftime show to see the game.
Olivia de Havilland
Friday’s ruling in Hopkins v. Jegley greenlights four Arkansas regulations passed in 2017. The first of these laws requires clinics to report the names of abortion patients under 18 to local law enforcement. These clinics must then preserve the fetal tissue and treat it like criminal evidence. The second law forces abortion providers to spend “reasonable time and effort” acquiring a patient’s medical records for her “entire pregnancy history” before performing the abortion. The third law grants equal rights over fetal remains to both partners, with no exception in cases of rape. A patient must notify her partner before the abortion and ask which method of disposal he prefers. If both partners are minors, the patient’s parents get to decide how fetal remains are disposed of. If the patient is a minor but her partner is an adult, then he—not the patient—makes the choice. These rules effectively prohibit medication abortion, which occurs at home, where the provider cannot control the disposal of fetal remains. The fourth and final law bans the safest and most common procedure for second-trimester abortions.
Abortion rights advocates challenged this legislation, arguing that they impose an unconstitutional burden on abortion access. A federal district court agreed in 2017, and blocked the new regulations. In Friday’s decision, three Republican-appointed judges on the 8th Circuit cleared away that injunction. The lower court had analyzed the laws under Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the 2016 Supreme Court decision that required courts to weigh the medical benefits of an abortion restriction against its burdens. But the Supreme Court’s decision last month in June Medical, the 8th Circuit wrote, overturned that standard.
One more story, just for laughs: Jerry Falwell Jr. was forced out of his job as president of Liberty University because of that photo he posted of himself with his pants unzipped and his arm around a woman with her pants also unzipped. Politico: Falwell placed on ‘indefinite leave’ from Liberty University.
Jerry Falwell Jr., one of President Donald Trump’s leading evangelical supporters, has agreed to take “an indefinite leave of absence” from his role as president of Liberty University after the release of a viral photo that showed him vacationing on a yacht with his pants unzipped, holding a drink, and with his arm around a woman.
Lauren Bacall
“The Executive Committee of Liberty University’s Board of Trustees, acting on behalf of the full Board, met today and requested that Jerry Falwell, Jr. take an indefinite leave of absence from his roles as President and Chancellor of Liberty University, to which he has agreed, effective immediately,” the university said in a statement on Friday.
The decision came a day after a top House Republican called on Falwell to resign as president of the large Christian school. Rep. Mark Walker of North Carolina, the vice chair of the House Republican Conference and a former pastor, said that Falwell’s “ongoing behavior is appalling.”
Falwell earlier in the week was widely condemned, including by some conservatives, for posting and then deleting the yacht vacation photo. Liberty University has a strict code of conduct for students that, among other things, prohibits students from having sexual relations outside of a “biblically-ordained” marriage and consuming media with lewd lyrics, sexual content and nudity.
Students on Liberty’s campus are forbidden from drinking alcohol, and are instructed to dress modestly. A poster on Reddit compiled Falwell Jr.’s potential violations in the yacht photograph and an accompanying video, and calculated that a student captured in the same scene could have accrued more than $9,000 in school fines and 900 hours of required service, and possible expulsion.
Faculty and alumni who have been critical of the school’s direction under Falwell Jr. were both shocked and gratified by the news of his leave of absence. “For at least a decade, Liberty’s faculty have labored under Falwell’s increasingly autocratic leadership and been shamed by his public behavior besides,” said Marybeth Davis Baggett, who taught English at Liberty for 17 years and resigned this spring after publishing an op-ed calling for Falwell Jr.’s removal based on his handling of the coronavirus crisis. “One man cannot act this way without many enablers, and any meaningful reform of the school will require a thorough and brutally honest inquiry into the LU culture.”
Jane Fonda, photo by Genevieve Naylor, 1962
Falwell Jr., a businessman with a law degree and no pastoral experience, took over the college when his father died in 2007. He has built the school into a sports powerhouse with a campus filled with luxury amenities, and conservative activists and politicians regularly speak there. The school now boasts more than 15,000 residential students, and more than 100,000 students online.
But Liberty has also been under almost constant national scrutiny since Falwell Jr. endorsed Donald Trump in early 2016, months earlier than other white evangelical leaders embraced the crude casino magnate’s candidacy. Falwell Jr. began 2020 by calling for parts of Virginia to secede from the state and join West Virginia. As the coronavirus crisis encroached, Falwell Jr. initially dismissed it as “hype,” and called a Liberty parent who questioned him on Twitter a “dummy.” He was then criticized for welcoming back any students who wanted to return to campus after spring break. (Fewer than 2,000 of 15,000 residential students ultimately returned, and Liberty has avoided any outbreaks.) In May, Falwell Jr. tweeted a racist image in an attempt to needle Virginia governor Ralph Northam. He eventually deleted the tweet and apologized, but multiple Black employees publicly quit their jobs soon afterward; several high-profile Black athletes also departed. None of these media dust-ups seemed to dent Falwell Jr.’s favorability in the eyes of his hand-picked board of trustees.
There’s much more at the link if you’re interested.
So everything is still FUBAR, but as Dakinikat wrote yesterday, we can still be kind to ourselves and support each other through these terrifying times. As I learned in my recovery from alcoholism, it always helps to live one day at a time. We’re still here, and there’s still a chance we can rid ourselves of Trump and somehow hold onto and rebuild our democracy.
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It’s cold. It’s sleeting. It’s gray. It snowed in Baton Rouge and a few places north of Lake Pontchartrain. I’m officially in and over winter. I can’t seem to get warm. I can’t warm up to anything going on in this country either. I’m sending a dear friend to check out a property on Key Peninsula at least 20 miles from most forms of civilization. There’s a wine store, a dispensary, and a Japanese-owned grocery shop/cafe close with foodstuff. Other than that I’ll have tall trees, a lake, and JoEmma State Park. This one is way doable so I’m hopeful I can head to the blue wall of safety. Oh, and a working fireplace/stove. It’s as bleak as the White House Holiday Decorations or Siberia right now. Take your choice.
Nearly two-thirds of Trump’s lies (65 percent) were self-serving. Examples included: “They’re big tax cuts — the biggest cuts in the history of our country, actually” and, about the people who came to see him on a presidential visit to Vietnamlast month: “They were really lined up in the streets by the tens of thousands.”
Slightly less than 10 percent of Trump’s lies were kind ones, told to advantage, flatter or protect someone else. An example was his statement on Twitter that “it is a ‘miracle’ how fast the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police were able to find the demented shooter and stop him from even more killing!”In the broadest sense, it is possible to interpret every lie as ultimately self-serving, but I tried to stick to how statements appeared on the surface.
Trump told 6.6 times as many self-serving lies as kind ones. That’s a much higher ratio than we found for our study participants, who told about double the number of self-centered lies compared with kind ones. The most stunning way Trump’s lies differed from our participants’, though, was in their cruelty. An astonishing 50 percent of Trump’s lies were hurtful or disparaging. For example, he proclaimed that John Brennan, James Clapper and James Comey, all career intelligence or law enforcement officials, were “political hacks.” He said that “the Sloppy Michael Moore Show on Broadway was a TOTAL BOMB and was forced to close.” He insisted that other “countries, they don’t put their finest in the lottery system. They put people probably in many cases that they don’t want.” And he claimed that “Ralph Northam, who is running for Governor of Virginia, is fighting for the violent MS-13 killer gangs & sanctuary cities.”
The Trump lies that could not be coded into just one category were typically told both to belittle others and enhance himself. For example: “Senator Bob Corker ‘begged’ me to endorse him for reelection in Tennessee. I said ‘NO’ and he dropped out (said he could not win without my endorsement).”
The sheer frequency of Trump’s lies appears to be having an effect, and it may not be the one he is going for. A Politico/Morning Consult poll from late October showed that only 35 percent of voters believed that Trump was honest, while 51 percent said he was not honest. (The others said they didn’t know or had no opinion.) Results of a Quinnipiac University poll from November were similar: Thirty-seven percent of voters thought Trump was honest, compared with 58 percent who thought he was not.
What’s the problem? The other day Senator Orrin Hatch, asked about the program (which he helped create), once again insisted that it will be funded — but without saying when or how (and there don’t seem to be any signs of movement on the issue). And he further declared, “The reason CHIP’s having trouble is that we don’t have money anymore.” Then he voted for an immense tax cut.
And one piece of that immense tax cut is a big giveaway to inheritors of large estates. Under current law, a married couple’s estate pays no tax unless it’s worth more than $11 million, so that only a handful of estates — around 5,500, or less than 0.2 percent of the total number of deaths a year — owe any tax at all. The number of taxable estates is also, by the way, well under one one-thousandth of the number of children covered by CHIP.
But Republicans still consider this tax an unacceptable burden on the rich. The Senate bill would double the exemption to $22 million; the House bill would eliminate the estate tax entirely.
So now let’s talk dollars. CHIP covers a lot of children, but children’s health care is relatively cheap compared with care for older Americans. In fiscal 2016 the program cost only $15 billion, a tiny share of the federal budget. Meanwhile, under current law the estate tax is expected to bring in about $20 billion, more than enough to pay for CHIP.As you see, then, my question wasn’t at all hypothetical. By their actions, Republicans are showing that they consider it more important to give extra millions to one already wealthy heir than to provide health care to a thousand children.
The new acting head of the U.S. consumer finance watchdog is reviewing whether Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) should pay tens of millions of dollars over alleged mortgage lending abuse, according to three sources familiar with the dispute.
The San Francisco-based bank said in October that it would refund homebuyers who were wrongly charged fees to secure low mortgage rates – a black mark against a lender which has already been roiled by scandal over its treatment of customers.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) had been investigating the mortgage issue since early this year, said one current and two former officials. The agency accepted an internal review from Wells Fargo and set settlement terms in early November, said the sources, who were not authorized to speak about internal discussions.
But that matter and roughly a dozen others are in question now that Mick Mulvaney, the agency chief tapped by President Donald Trump, has said he is reviewing the CFPB’s prior work.
Richard Cordray, the former CFPB director who initiated the Wells Fargo action, approved the terms of a possible settlement before stepping down, said the sources.
That proposal envisions a Wells Fargo payout of tens of millions of dollars but likely short of the record, $100 million payout the bank made to the CFPB last year over a phony accounts scandal, sources said.
The Justice Department is taking steps to investigate Planned Parenthood, The Daily Beast has learned.
The head of Justice’s office of legislative affairs has sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee asking for documents from its investigation of Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue practices. The Daily Beast reviewed the letter, which says the requested documents are “for investigative use.”
Planned Parenthood for America did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story. The organization’s website says that only a few of its affiliates share fetal tissue with researchers, and that criticisms of the practice are a “smear campaign.” In October 2015, after undercover videos highlighting Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue programs generated outrage, the organization announced it would stop accepting any reimbursement from researchers for fetal tissue.
The Justice Department’s request refers to a report that the Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans released last December, called “Human Fetal Tissue Research: Context and Controversy.” That report discusses how biomedical research corporations contracted with Planned Parenthood affiliates for fetal tissue. It mentioned contracts between those corporations and several Planned Parenthood affiliates, including Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest, Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, and Planned Parenthood of Northern California. The report detailed the “specimen service fees” that biomedical researchers charged for tissue from a 20-week-old fetus –– $325 for a fetus’s brain, $650 for two eyes –– and questioned whether the biomedical research corporations ultimately profited from their disbursement of fetal tissue. It called for the Justice Department to investigate the matter.
At the time, Planned Parenthood said Grassley’s report did not demonstrate any wrongdoing.
Next up on the Republican Agenda, availability of tax dollars to train clergy and republican candidates on proper ways to stalk children and assault women.
The UN Security Council has convened an emergency session to discuss Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a move that has led to deadly clashes in Palestine and strong condemnation from world leaders.
Eight countries called for the emergency meeting at the UN headquarters in New York on Friday, as Palestinians protested across the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza Strip against the US president’s decision throughout the day.
Several countries resoundly condemned the US’ unilateral move to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, including Olof Skoog, Sweden’s UN ambassador, who said the decision is fuelling tension and instability in the region.
Trump’s declaration “goes against the plea of many friends of the US and Israel, however it does not affect the position of Sweden, the European Union or the wider international community” on the status of Jerusalem, said Skoog.
Clashes erupted in the occupied West Bank and over the Israeli-Gaza border, where one Palestinian was killed.
Tensions are high in the wake of Mr Trump’s announcement. His policy shift was hailed by Israel but condemned across the Arab and Islamic world.
The UN’s Middle East envoy warned of a risk the conflict would escalate.
“There is a serious risk today that we may see a chain of unilateral actions, which can only push us further away from achieving our shared goal of peace,” Nickolay Mladenov told an emergency UN Security Council meeting, by videocall from Jerusalem.
He called on all parties to engage in “constructive dialogue” and “reign in radical elements”.
While the meeting was going on, the Israeli army said it had intercepted a rocket launch from Gaza, but there had been “no casualties and no damage”.
Western allies of the US have disavowed Mr Trump’s move, which reversed decades of US neutrality on the status of Jerusalem.
Israel has always regarded Jerusalem as its capital, while the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem – occupied by Israel in the 1967 war – as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
The US became the first country to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital since the foundation of the state in 1948.
After the White House and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations weighed in this week on the United States’ participation in the 2018 Winter Olympics, the U.S. State Department joined the discussion on Friday.
State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert tweeted Friday morning: “We have a longstanding and successful relationship with the Republic of #Korea. We support their efforts to ensure that a safe and successful winter games will take place. We look forward to cheering on @Team USA at #PyeongChang2018.”
Ambassador Nikki Haley on Wednesday appeared on Fox News and said it was an “open question” as to whether U.S. Olympic athletes would compete in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in February.
On Thursday, White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders sent mixed signals, first saying at a press briefing that, “no official decision has been made” but, “I know that the goal is to do so.” Within the hour, Sanders posted an update on Twitter, writing that, “The U.S. looks forward to participating in the Winter Olympics in South Korea. The protection of Americans is our top priority and we are engaged with the South Koreans and other partner nations to secure the venues.”
My guess he’s doing to be in solidarnost with his boy crush Putin.
In recent years, as high rates of maternal mortality in the U.S. have alarmed researchers, one statistic has been especially concerning. According to the CDC, black mothers in the U.S. die at three to four times the rate of white mothers, one of the widest of all racial disparities in women’s health. Put another way, a black woman is 22 percent more likely to die from heart disease than a white woman, 71 percent more likely to perish from cervical cancer, but 300 percent more likely to die from pregnancy- or childbirth-related causes. In a national study of five medical complications that are common causes of maternal death and injury, black women were two to three times more likely to die than white women who had the same condition.
That imbalance has persisted for decades, and in some places, it continues to grow. In New York City, for example, black mothers are 12 times more likely to die than white mothers, according to the most recent data; in 2001-2005, their risk of death was seven times higher. Researchers say that widening gap reflects a dramatic improvement for white women but not for blacks.
The disproportionate toll on African-Americans is the main reason the U.S. maternal mortality rate is so much higher than that of other affluent countries. Black expectant and new mothers in the U.S. die at about the same rate as women in countries such as Mexico and Uzbekistan, the World Health Organization estimates.
This is appalling and policy must be swift to change this.
Red flag warnings have been extended across much of Southern California through Saturday, and high wind warnings are in effect for mountain and valley areas in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
Winds gusted to over 60 mph in Ventura and Los Angeles counties on Thursday, causing embers to spread even more. Gusts were in the 30 to 50 mph range in San Diego County. Much of Southern California is also experiencing humidity levels in the teens or even single digits. Relative humidity in San Diego on Thursday afternoon was just 5 percent.
They will likely join Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands as forgotten Americans. Welcome to Dystopia! Welcome to our post-Orwellian nightmare!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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Just practicing my rusty college Russian which I’ve mostly forgotten so I’ll be able to keep up when they send me to the gulag for the intelligentsia. My selection of paintings today are from Archibald Motley who painted Black Americans during the jazz age. I’m celebrating uniquely American creativity while I can too … none of this derivative crap like the likes of Kid Rock who delivers ripped off riffs to his meth-headed mofos.
Though Motley received a full scholarship to study architecture at the Armour Institute of Technology (now the Illinois Institute of Technology) and though his father had hoped that he would pursue a career in architecture, he applied to and was accepted at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied painting. In 1917, while still a student, Motley showed his work in the exhibition Paintings by Negro Artists held at a Chicago YMCA. That year he also worked with his father on the railroads and managed to fit in sketching while they traveled cross-country.
Upon graduating from the Art Institute in 1918, Motley took odd jobs to support himself while he made art. An idealist, he was influenced by the writings of black reformer and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois and Harlem Renaissance leader Alain Locke and believed that art could help to end racial prejudice. At the same time, he recognized that African American artists were overlooked and undersupported, and he was compelled to write “The Negro in Art,” an essay on the limitations placed on black artists that was printed in the July 6, 1918, edition of the influential Chicago Defender, a newspaper by and for African Americans. The long and violent Chicago race riot of 1919, though it postdated his article, likely strengthened his convictions.
Motley was a WPA painter during the Great Depression. One of his murals hangs in the post office of Wood River Illinois. Wood River is part of the Greater St. Louis area. It’s painted in a distinctly different style from the beautiful, brightly colored paintings with so much energy that I’ve posted here.
The letter is signed by electors from five states and the District of Columbia. In addition to Christine Pelosi — a California elector — it includes a signature from one former members of Congress: New Hampshire’s Carol Shea-Porter.
Shea-Porter’s three other New Hampshire colleagues — Terie Norelli, Bev Hollingsworth and Dudley Dudley — also signed the letter. D.C. Councilwoman Anita Bonds, former Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate Clay Pell and Maryland activist Courtney Watson round out the nine Democratic signatories. Colorado Democratic elector Micheal Baca, leader of an effort to turn the Electoral College against Trump, is also on the list. Texas’ Chris Suprun, an emergency responder who has been a vocal critic of Trump, is the only Republican elector to sign on.
“Yes, we the Electors should have temporary security clearance to perform our constitutional duty in reviewing the facts regarding outside interference in the US election and the intelligence agencies should declassify as much data as possible while protecting sources and methods so that the American people can learn the truth about our election,” said Pelosi.
Though the letter doesn’t explicitly endorse a separate effort by electors in Colorado, Washington and California to stop Trump from winning the presidency, it represents the latest effort by Democratic electors to look to the Electoral College as a possible bulwark against a Trump presidency. The letter follows on the heels of two Democratic congressmen — David Cicilline of Rhode Island and Jim Himes of Connecticut — who suggested this weekend that the Electoral College should consider whether to block Trump’s election.
Hillary Clinton, her top advisers and former President Bill Clinton, who’s an elector from New York, have remained notably silent on the various Electoral College machinations.
Van Jones is now running a PR firm that is dead set on defeating Trump in the Electoral College. That’s right, Van Jones is actively courting Republican electors to vote against Trump on December 19th.
The firm, called Megaphone Strategies, is currently handling all media inquiries for the first official anti-Trump elector Chris Suprun. But the firm is also in working with other Republican electors, so while Trump has been helping his billionaire friends Van Jones has been raising an anti-Trump “army.”
“Tight around Trump is a little hate army — not every Trump voter — but tight around him is a little hate army of very cynical, nasty people who took over our government,” Jones said. “We have to build a massive Love Army that can take the country and the government back in a better direction.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday said recent findings by the CIA that the Russian government tied to influence the U.S. presidential election should be investigated by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Calling the allegations of Russian meddling “disturbing,” McConnell said the intelligence panel should take the lead, dismissing calls by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and others for a special select committee to review the matter.
He said the Intelligence Committee is “more than capable of conducting a complete review of this matter.”
“We’re going to follow the regular order. It’s an important subject and we intend to review it on a bipartisan basis,” he said.
McConnell noted that he sits on the panel as an ex officio member and that incoming Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) will soon join it in the same capacity.
He also said that McCain will be conducting his own review of cybersecurity threats facing the nation as chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
“Sen. McCain and Sen. Burr will both be looking at this issue and doing it on a bipartisan basis,” he said, referring to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.).
Jason Miller, a spokesman for President-elect Donald Trump, said he was unsure of the last time Trump and McConnell spoke, but dismissed efforts to investigate Russian interference in the election as coming from “people who are bitter their candidate lost.”
Ambassador John Bolton claimed Sunday that hacks during the election season could have been “a false flag” operation — possibly committed by the Obama administration itself.
In an interview with Fox News’ Eric Shawn, Bolton questioned why FBI Director James Comey said during the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private server, there was no direct evidence found of foreign intelligence service penetration, but cyber fingerprints were found in regards to the presidential election.
This entire story and the weird conspiracy theories are unfolding minute by minute. Paul Krugman’s Op ed on the “Tainted Election” is a must read.
The C.I.A., according to The Washington Post, has now determined that hackers working for the Russian government worked to tilt the 2016 election to Donald Trump. This has actually been obvious for months, but the agency was reluctant to state that conclusion before the election out of fear that it would be seen as taking a political role.
Meanwhile, the F.B.I. went public 10 days before the election, dominating headlines and TV coverage across the country with a letter strongly implying that it might be about to find damning new evidence against Hillary Clinton — when it turned out, literally, to have found nothing at all.
Did the combination of Russian and F.B.I. intervention swing the election? Yes. Mrs. Clinton lost three states – Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania – by less than a percentage point, and Florida by only slightly more. If she had won any three of those states, she would be president-elect. Is there any reasonable doubt that Putin/Comey made the difference?
And it wouldn’t have been seen as a marginal victory, either. Even as it was, Mrs. Clinton received almost three million more votes than her opponent, giving her a popular margin close to that of George W. Bush in 2004.
So this was a tainted election. It was not, as far as we can tell, stolen in the sense that votes were counted wrong, and the result won’t be overturned. But the result was nonetheless illegitimate in important ways; the victor was rejected by the public, and won the Electoral College only thanks to foreign intervention and grotesquely inappropriate, partisan behavior on the part of domestic law enforcement.
The CIA only shared its latest findings with top senators last week, the Postreported, but it’s not clear when the agency made the determination. In an interview with MSNBC on Saturday, however, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid—who is known for making bold accusations—said FBI Director Jim Comey has known about Russia’s ambitions “for a long time,” but didn’t release that information.
If that’s true, why didn’t the Obama administration push to release it earlier?
For one, the White House was probably afraid of looking like it was tipping the scale in Hillary Clinton’s favor, especially in an election that her opponent repeatedly described as rigged. Though Obama stumped for Clinton around the country, the administration didn’t want to open him up to attacks that he unfairly used intelligence to undermine Trump’s campaign, the Post reported.
Instead, top White House officials gathered key lawmakers—leadership from the House and Senate, plus the top Democrats and Republicans from both houses’ intelligence and homeland security committees—to ask for a bipartisan condemnation of Russia’s meddling. The effort was stymied by several Republicans who weren’t willing to cooperate, including, reportedly, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. (On Sunday morning, a bipartisan statement condemning the hacks came from incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Jack Reed, a Democrat, and Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham.)
It’s also possible that the administration, like most pollsters and pundits, was overconfident in its assessment that Clinton would win the election. Officials may have been more willing to lob incendiary accusations—and risk setting off a serious political or cyber conflict with Russia—if they had thought Trump had a good chance to win.
The silence from the White House and the CIA was a stark contrast to the Comey’s announcement just weeks before the election that it was examining new documents related to its investigation into Clinton’s emails.
I’m still really upset and I’m just going moment by moment and day by day. How can this being happening to us?
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
Economist and former NYT’s columnist Dr. Paul Krugman had similar thoughts. He freely writes them now on his 
As for me, I’ll stop wearing my No Kings T-shirt when some one pries it from my cold back or when Heather Cox Richardson tells me I can retire it. This is from her Sunday 
It’s funny how that AI-generated Trump video had nothing intelligent but everything artificial in it. Notice that he gets to reach altitude with nothing covering his face,nose, and barely his mouth. He managed to look like a toddly with a sippy cup urinal. Alan Elrod–writing for 
Here’s something scary from CNN to think on with Halloween on the Horizon. 
So much success! So much winning! How can we even wrap our minds around it? And what about this story on Justice Bondi-style? This is from CBS’ Scott Pelley. The interview came from 
This characterization of Trump is so spot on that you really should go read the rest. I’m using this description of FARTUS as a background to the absolutely appalling crap that’s going on today. It’s hard to mentally deal with how quickly he’s disassembled so many long-standing U.S. Institutions in such a short time. This is especially true because it appears that the massive amount of incompetence and ignorance that his appointments display just escalates the damage. Look at this headline in 
Definitely go read this one. I’ve been missing reading John le Carré. I’m assuming anyone with a background in spying would have saucer eyes by this time. Trump’s love of playing checkers with the countries of the world is dangerous and immoral. 
We first saw the capitulation of the tech bros and their social media platforms, including Jeff Bezos, who has ruined The Washington Post. This week, the situation there is getting worse. The first thing any autocrat wants to do is to come for any vestige of a free media. This is from 
And now, we have the capitulation of top law firms. How many more legs of democracy will we lose? 
Zach Beauchamp
This, too, is a long read that deserves a look. A lot of this goes back to White House aid Stephan Miller. This guy needs to have an entire press detail following him. I’m going to end with a few articles on economics. The first comes from Paul Krugman and will clarify what’s happening with 
That Lutnick quote cannot be repeated enough. The last read I’m sharing today comes from 
Good Afternoon!
There are man cruel, inhuman policies on the Republican agenda and in its budget and tax bill. 
Justice in the USA is only available to the privileged. It can also be avoid by the donor class and most violent folks wearing blue and sporting a badge. 
The pseudo Justice Department led by the World’s oldest living Confederate Widow i
Next up on the Republican Agenda, availability of tax dollars to train clergy and republican candidates on proper ways to stalk children and assault women.
Violent clashes have erupted since Trump’s slurry, spit-filled speech
My guess he’s doing to be in solidarnost with his boy crush Putin.
This is appalling and policy must be swift to change this.
Добрый день
Motley was a WPA painter during the Great Depression. One of his murals hangs in the post office of Wood River Illinois. Wood River is part of the Greater St. Louis area. It’s painted in a distinctly different style from the beautiful, brightly colored paintings with so much energy that I’ve posted here.
Van Jones is launching an “army”
Sounds like a stall!
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