It’s amazing how sharp the boundary is between Minnesota and Wisconsin: you cross the border and suddenly it’s adult novelty stores, billboards for cheese, and roadkill as far as the eye can see.
This sure doesn’t bode well! Our new authoritarian overlords barred an Associated Press reporter from an event in the Oval Office on Tuesday, after the news agency declined a demand to use proper NEWSPEAK term for the Gulf of Mexico, which has now been decreed to be called the Gulf of UHMURICA followed by an eagle-screech sound effect. The offending guidance:
The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.
Oh, the stupid of it all. Trump can executive-order name changes to whatever federal lands and bodies of water inside the US that he wants to. He can call Denali Mount McKinley, or rename Mount Rushmore Mount MAGA or rename Lake Michigan The Kid Rock Basin of Liberal Tears. But the Gulf of Mexico, which has been called that even before there was a USA, borders two other countries, and international waters only extend 12 miles out to sea.
The International Hydrographic Organization sets the standard for charting the seas by the agreement of its 100 member countries, and they aren’t changing the name. So calling the gulf a name that exists only in Trump’s box of whims and notions is a purity test based entirely in the Magalandia mind.
And allowing journalists access to cover the government is some basic First Amendment stuff! How else will we know that Poppy Trump had to babysit Elon’s son X Æ A-Xii while the kid dug for treasures in his nostrils and told Trump to shush? (Why does Musk never rotate in any of his other kids?) [video at the link]
The Associated Press is a nonprofit cooperative news agency sustained by licensing its content, and they’ve always taken great pains to remain politically neutral, no matter how criminal or batshit members of any particular party may appear. But neutral is no longer good enough!
[…] White House spokes-whatever Karoline Leavitt has also announced they will “restore the press passes of the 440 journalists whose passes were wrongly revoked by the previous administration,” an accusation that appears to be entirely made up. The only press pass that almost got revoked was Simon Ateba, correspondent for Today News Africa, who got a warning letter that his credentials could be revoked after he repeatedly interrupted people to scream. Trump administration 1.0 sure revoked a lot of press passes though! Always projection, every time.
[…] neither Obama nor Biden ever barred Fox News from press briefings, no matter how many times Peter Doocy asked Karine Jean-Pierre trollish questions like “How long have you guys known that Vice President Harris does not think that President Biden is effective with his border?” […]
“An estimated 30% to 50% of gang members in Haiti are now children, according to UNICEF.”
Haiti’s children are increasingly caught in the crossfire of gang violence, forced to carry weapons, spy on police and rival gangs and run errands for gunmen, according to a report released Wednesday by Amnesty International.
One of 51 children interviewed by the human rights group said he was constantly pressured by a gang to fight alongside it.
“They killed people in front of me and asked me to burn their bodies. But I don’t have the heart for that,” the unidentified boy was quoted as saying.
An estimated 30% to 50% of gang members are now children, according to UNICEF.
Amnesty International said the children “had no choice, and that their involvement was predominantly out of hunger or fear.”
Nearly two million people are on the verge of starvation in Haiti, and more than one million children are estimated to be living in gang-controlled areas, with 85% of the capital of Port-au-Prince under their rule.
One unidentified boy, 16, said he’s paid to run errands for a gang.
“(The gangs “are in control. And there is nothing you can do about it,” he was quoted as saying.
If children refuse to follow a gang’s orders, they or their family would be killed, according to the report, which relied on a total of 112 interviews and research done from May to October last year.
Children are not only in danger of gangs, but of vigilantes and police officers who believe they’re working for them, according to Amnesty International.
Girls and young women also have been collectively raped by gang members and infected with sexually transmitted diseases, often ending up pregnant in a country where health care is extremely limited.
One teen was raped by six men, and her sister by five others.
“There was so much blood,” the unidentified younger sister said in an interview.
Another teen recounted how she drank bleach to try and kill herself after having a baby after being raped by three men who then left her naked in public.
“People found me on the street and put a dress on me,” she said.
Amnesty International said many of those interviewed “scoffed at the idea of reporting their attacks to authorities.”
A 16-year-old girl who was abducted and raped by several gang members said: “Are you kidding me? It’s not possible…There is no police…The only chief in town are the gang members.”
The violence also has led to injury and death.
One girl, 14, recounted how a ricocheting bullet pierced her lip in September 2024. Three months before that, her 17-year-old brother died from a stray bullet.
“I lost a huge presence in my life. Since then, I don’t know how to be happy,” the girl said. […]
…
And now, MoonPie, the literal cookie, announced they are renaming Florida.
The chocolate cookie said, “The land mass previously known as Florida will now be referred to as MoonPieTown.” Those changes are “effective immediately.” …
On DOGE at the Treasury and freezing payments. Nathan Tankus reviewed recent days’ court filings.
Regarding Marko Elez’s access:
What you are being asked to believe is that the most sensitive systems in the world […] had “accidentally” been put under the full control of Marko Elez. You are also being asked to believe that this applied to only one system and the investigation launched was just to “make sure” nothing “bad” happened during this “accident”. And what do you know, they confirmed it! […] These documents also confirm that Elez had direct access to source code and even that he was changing source code but only in a “sandbox” environment.
[…]
I find the convenience of these explanations preposterous but I want to emphasize […] I do not have specific information at the time of writing to facilitate refuting Treasury’s new stories. […] “Read only” access is still “catastrophic” and it does not matter very much whether dangerous, and possibly unconstitutional, code is put into testing and production by a DOGE employee themselves or ordered by DOGE and implemented by career civil servants
Regarding payment freezing:
the Krause statement is an admission, perhaps inadvertent, that they are pursuing using BFS systems to impound spending and they are going to rhetorically cover this by defining impounded spending as “improper payments [under Trump’s Executive Orders]”.
[…]
What Vona Robinson is saying is that the Trump administration has already reached beyond stopping payments from agencies they do not like to stopping specific appropriations they do not like regardless of the agency doing the spending. […] a flagged payment file is left in the processing stage but a copy is produced [and sent to an administrative agency] reviewing them for “violations” of the president’s executive orders which unconstitutionally order sweeping spending freezes. Thus, this process is operationally elevating executive orders above all other laws. […] a government agency, a cabinet level one no less, was not involved in the review process of its own appropriations.
[…]
Of course, reviewing payment files manually is a high effort process and will not scale […] Marko Elez was directly involved in writing code to automate operationally and unconstitutionally impounding appropriations.
Conclusion:
It appears that we may have avoided the worst case scenarios of system failure and Marko Elez breaking a system he does not understand. This is important and valuable. We truly were in a potentially apocalyptic scenario last week. My inclination is to believe that they are not going to have one of the 20 something DOGE employees mess around with these extraordinarily sensitive systems
[…]
However, my inclination to believe we’ve avoided the worst case scenarios is based on my informed intuition that the leadership in this area, including Musk, are laser focused on impoundment. Thus the constitutional crisis has still intensified
[…]
The focus on data privacy stemmed the bleeding but the Attorney Generals involved with this suit, or some other entities, need to figure out an effective lawsuit over the constitutional issue at hand.
A military plane crashed into the San Diego Bay near Shelter Island while attempting to land, according to the U.S. Navy.
According to a statement by the Navy around 12:15 p.m., the type of plane that crashed was an EA-18G Growler, a variant in the F/A-18 family of military aircraft that combines the F/A-18 “Super Hornet” with an electronic warfare suite…
Military personnel have confirmed only two pilots were on the plane at the time. Authorities say both pilots on the plane have been rescued and were transported to UC San Diego Medical Center in Hillcrest…
Averaging one air disaster per week under the new administration.
Scientists have discovered the world’s largest underground thermal lake in a cave in southern Albania, the results of a new expedition confirm.
Researchers from the Czech Republic first found the lake four years ago, but they did not have the right instruments to measure it at the time, according to a translated statement from the Neuron Foundation — an organization that promotes research by Czech scientists.
Now, the team has announced it returned to the lake in 2024 with state-of-the-art 3D scanners, confirming that the hidden water body is the biggest of its kind known to science.
The scientists named the lake “Neuron” after the foundation, which funded the recent expedition. The lake measures 454 feet (138 meters) long and 138 feet (42 m) wide…
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Another review of the DOGE Treasury court filings.
The filing is a declaration from Joseph Gioeli […] a civil servant
[…]
January 28, the Bureau gave Elez source code in a sandbox environment. Then, six days after giving him that sandbox access, using the same laptop, they gave him read-only access to first two and then one more systems. After he got that access, per a review of the logs, Elez copied some files from the active database onto his Bureau laptop, on which he had the source code. Then, on February 5, Elez got access to the payment system itself—again, with the same laptop on which he had source code. The next day, “it was discovered” (Gioeli does not say by whom, which means we’re not seeing a declaration from that person) that Elez actually “had mistakenly been configured” with read/write access, rather than “read only.”
[…]
No one has asked Elez […] whether he knew he had write access to the payment system.
[…]
Thomas Krause gave a very couched answer about whether Elez had has any ongoing access. “I currently have no reason to believe Mr. Elez retains access to any BFS payment data, source code, or systems.” […] Worse still, Thomas Krause declaration submitted in the NY case doesn’t even say that Elez has left Treasury—only that he has resigned from the [very specific] role
[…]
Elez was made a Treasury employee — contrary to early reports, he was not a SGE. That may make it easier to shuffle him off somewhere else.
[…]
What Gioeli describes is the panic that ensues when a guy who had high level access quits unexpectedly. And to date, we’ve never been given a formal explanation of why he quit—or whether he was asked to do so. We certainly can’t reconcile the claims that he has been reinstated with claims that he’s not doing what he was doing at Treasury.
Everyone has always assumed that Elez quit because his racism was discovered. But given the timeline, we can’t rule out that he quit because of the access concerns (and ongoing investigation) at Treasury.
A government website created by the Trump administration to “track government waste” has been left unupdated [since Feb 4] with a default WordPress sample page that includes language about an imaginary architecture firm. […] Notably, Waste.gov does not comply with various executive orders […] because it contains the word “diverse” […] After this article was published, Waste.gov was put behind a password wall.
But worry not; it was approved under the Biden Administration, so Elon Musk’s DOGE will undoubtedly eliminate this waste. Right? […] there are a few interesting lines that would give auditors second thoughts. […] Strangely, the item is listed under the NAICS code “311999—All Other Miscellaneous Food Manufacturing.”
[…]
There are several other […] items that are linked to the wrong categories: You have “ARMORED SEDAN” under “Soft Drink Manufacturing,” “ARMORED BMW X5/X7” under “Bottled Water Manufacturing,” and finally, ARMORED EV (NOT SEDAN) under “Ice Manufacturing.” […] ($50 million, $40 million, and $40 million, respectively).
Judge O’Toole in Massachusetts dissolves his TRO against the “Fork in the Road” buyouts and denies a preliminary injunction.
He found that the unions lacked standing (which might be fixable in other cases) but—more potentially far-reaching—also found that he lacked jurisdiction because anyone injured was limited to remedies provided under a federal labor-management law.
* Rando: “Quick read (not a lawyer): plaintiffs (employee unions) lack standing and employees must exhaust administrative avenues before seeking relief through the courts.”
The feds clawed back more than $80 million in migrant funds directly from New York City’s coffers, blindsiding Big Apple officials Wednesday – and setting up a potential battle between Mayor Eric Adams and his recent benefactor President Trump.
Adams vowed to press the White House to recoup the controversial FEMA payments, which Department of Government Efficiency honcho Elon Musk claimed in an inaccuracy-filled tweet this week had been wasted on “luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants.”
It’s one thing to block payments, it’s another to take the money back. Even if FEMA payments had been miss used the Federal Government can’t be allowed to unilaterally take $80 million back from NY without warning.
Seventy-one-year-old woman dies after being sent home from USAID funded hospital. Others die after hospitals close in refugee camps.
[…]
although “life-saving humanitarian assistance” is supposed to be exempt—as well as efforts to tackle diseases such as malaria, newborn deaths and malnutrition—many of these programmes are still waiting for confirmation they can continue.
“Without confirmation, they risk incurring expenses that USAID then refuses to reimburse—a risk they literally can’t afford to take,” he said. “It’s also very unclear at this stage whether the programmes that have definitely been suspended pending review—those that are not providing “life-saving humanitarian assistance”—will be allowed to resume or cancelled.”
The new approach would see reduced humanitarian assistance and a greater role for private equity groups, hedge funds and other investors […] to invest in private-sector projects overseas alongside institutional investors.
The proposal to shift resources is one of several different options being considered within the administration, a senior official said
My bad, I dropped the last character.
.
“NASA Just Funded A Project to Blow Space Structures Out Of Glass [NIAC 2025]”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=p-eGu_RGCOI
“As protests targeting Tesla dealerships grow, Republican lawmakers are inundated with constituent complaints about DOGE.”
On Tuesday afternoon in Washington, D.C., hundreds of people turned out just outside the U.S. Capitol, in Upper Senate Park, to show their support for the civil service and to protest our government being dismantled by President Donald Trump and his top campaign donor, Elon Musk.
That protest followed an equally large and energetic demonstration Monday outside the Washington headquarters of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which the Trump administration is attempting to unilaterally shut down, even though legally that does not appear to be within its power.
It’s worth noting the CFPB handles consumer complaints, including hundreds about Tesla, the car company owned by Musk. It’s also the agency that would oversee a new project Musk just unveiled on his social media platform, X, which used to be called Twitter. Musk said he’s working to transform the platform to offer users a place to do their banking. What could possibly go wrong?
[…] Elon Musk now says he’s killed the agency, posting “CFPB RIP“ on his social media platform. But the president’s top campaign donor doesn’t get a unilateral say in that and those protesters doorstopping outside the CFPB on Monday told him as much, holding signs that read “Hands off our CFPB” and “Elon is stealing your data.”
Outside of Washington, protesters gathered in Parkersburg, West Virginia, which, according to two sources who spoke to ProPublica, might be the next target of Musk’s flying wedge of government saboteurs. After Musk’s DOGE guys got their hands on the Treasury payments system — which is responsible for sending out Social Security checks, veterans benefits and secret payments from intelligence agencies to their assets and sources — they realized that there was another sensitive payment system called the Central Accounting Reporting System. That system is a part of the Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service which has offices in Parkersburg.
After ProPublica reported Friday that Trump was sending Musk’s team out to Parkersburg, the ACLU of West Virginia, the Democratic Party of West Virginia, the Wood County Democratic Party and the people who work at the Treasury Department there quickly sounded the alarm and organized Tuesday’s protest.
We’re also starting to see an upsurge in protests targeting Tesla dealerships and Tesla charging stations, as the corporate representation of Musk. Last week, there was a seemingly impromptu protest at Tesla charging stations in Waterville, Maine. But now it seems they’re happening everywhere. Over the weekend, protesters gathered in front of Tesla buildings in New York, California and Ohio.
According to Forbes, Musk’s personal wealth has dropped more than $42 billion this month, as shares of Tesla have started to fall off a cliff. This follows earlier reports about how Tesla sales all over the world, and especially in Europe, are sinking like a stone, down as much as 60% in the most important European markets. Tesla’s stock price is down 19% in February alone. One prominent analyst warned that the “negative downturn in consumers’ perception” of Musk could result in a “headwind to sales” for Tesla.
Republican members of Congress are even privately expressing concern about Musk. Reporters at The Bulwark got their hands on several letters sent by Republican representatives to their constituents about the billionaire. Sen. John Curtis of Utah wrote a letter to one voter thanking them for reaching out to share their thoughts about DOGE and “Elon Musk’s role in the new administration.” Curtis wrote, “It is important that DOGE operates with appropriate oversight to maintain transparency, prevent conflicts of interest, and ensure its work remains focused on serving the American people.” That’s what he’s telling his constituents but is he actually working to ensure that in the Senate?
Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska told one of his constituents that they were “not the only one who has expressed concern” about Musk’s role. “The Treasury Secretary told me, to my face, that Mr. Musk absolutely does not have full access to the federal payment system,” Flood wrote. But Flood might want to check with the most recent court filing in the case over Musk’s actions at the Treasury Department. In the government’s filings, they admit that it wasn’t only read-only access. It was full access.
Rep. Daniel Webster of Florida also assured a constituent that “Members of the DOGE team are being vetted to ensure qualifications are met and then monitored by Treasury officials throughout their work. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent … granted the DOGE team access to the Treasury’s payment system in a read-only capacity.”
According to the government’s filing in the case, on the morning of Feb. 6, it was discovered that one DOGE employee’s database access to the payment system had “been configured with read-write permissions.” But all these members of Congress are assuring their — apparently quite angry and insistent — constituents that never happened.
Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska told one of her constituents she understands “the Treasury Department’s payment system contains extremely sensitive and confidential data,” and that it “is critical for the Treasury Department to maintain its strict procedures to ensure that this data is protected.” So, what does she think those strict procedures are? Fischer insisted that one DOGE employee had “access to read-only data from the Department’s payment system” But, again, according to the government’s filing, that’s not true. Fischer ended the letter by assuring that constituent she would “continue to closely monitor this situation in the days and weeks ahead.” Well, I don’t know how closely the senator is monitoring it, but what she’s telling her constituents is happening, to reassure them, is not actually what’s happening.
But, perhaps, the most important thing about what we’re seeing is that all these Republican senators and members of Congress now feel compelled to come up with some kind of explanation for what Trump and Musk are doing because their constituents are inundating them with complaints and concerns about it.
Elements of the judicial branch, including public defender offices, have been caught up in the Trump administration’s headlong rush to terminate thousands of leases of government office space, TPM has learned. Unlike the vast majority of federal workers whose office leases are under review for termination, public defenders are not executive branch employees. They work for the judicial branch.
The prospect of President Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE infringing on judicial branch operations and prerogatives raises the constitutional stakes as the new administration sidelines Congress and unilaterally shutters agencies, purges federal workers, and imposes spending freezes.
Some federal public defenders’ offices received a notice last week from the General Services Administration titled “Right-sizing the Federal Inventory.” The notice, obtained by TPM, was issued by acting GSA Administrator Stephen Ehikian and asked recipients to indicate whether terminating the lease on a given office will leave their mission “irreparably compromised,” and whether the location “directly serves the public.”
The possibility that the Trump administration’s opening salvo of aggressive and, in some instances, unlawful executive actions was impinging on the judicial branch was first alluded to by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) during a Monday tele-town hall with Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA). Kaine told listeners that “there are already some moves on some of the expenditures in the judiciary that [Trump] is trying to make unilaterally.”
A TPM reporter on Wednesday tracked Kaine down on Capitol Hill to prompt him to clarify his remark. Kaine exclusively told TPM that his office had received a tip from a whistleblower saying that the Trump administration had told federal defenders and probation officers that it viewed their leases as immediately terminable.
TPM was able to independently confirm that dozens of federal public defender offices have received the GSA notice about potentially terminating their government office leases. TPM was not able to independently confirm that probation offices had received similar notices.
“Obviously any effort to fool around with the court system is very, very serious and I can’t imagine the courts will take that lying down,” Kaine told TPM.
[…] The GSA notices arrived at public defenders’ officers at the same time as Musk’s DOGE has taken the lead in seeking to terminate en masse federal government office leases nationwide. The Associated Press reported that, two weeks ago, regional managers for the GSA were ordered to begin terminating leases on the federal government’s entire, nationwide stock of 7,500 rented offices.
It’s unclear if the notices sent to public defenders’ offices were part of the larger DOGE lease termination spree at GSA, or a separate initiative.
Kaine told TPM that he believed it was likely linked to DOGE’s GSA sell-off.
“It’s probably connected with the larger GSA effort,” he said. “Not specific to Article III, judicial branch, but it affects them.”
It’s also not clear whether DOGE or the Trump administration more broadly recognized that the move had the potential to open conflict with the judicial branch.
Accidental or not, it’s not the first time that DOGE initiatives have ruffled the feathers of the judicial branch. In the first week of the Trump administration, the Administrative Office Of the U.S. Courts rebuked the Office of Personnel Management for emailing the entire judicial branch workforce. Later, federal judges across the country received a “fork in the road” email, proffering the same dubious offer of deferred resignation that executive branch employees received.
Read the letter here: [screen grab of the letter is available at the link]
[…]Here’s a breakdown of the key elements of the budget blueprint, which the House Budget Committee released the text of Wednesday:
– House Republicans want to enact $4.5 trillion worth of tax cuts over the course of the next decade, some of that will include extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts that provided the most benefits to wealthy Americans.
– They propose $2 trillion in federal spending cuts.
– Those spending cuts would offset the cost of the tax cuts, but only partially, meaning the entire proposal would actually end up adding trillions to the national deficit, roughly $3 trillion over 10 years, by the New York Times’ calculation.
– That coupled with plans to raise the debt limit by $4 trillion has fiscal hawks in the House howling, Politico reported. Hardliners in the House Freedom Caucus are reportedly pressing for at least another $500 billion in spending cuts to be outlined in the proposal, plus they want to see work requirements (another GOP word for spending cuts) for Medicaid, food aid benefits and at least one other social safety net program made explicit in the resolution.
– It is not entirely clear where the $2 trillion in cuts will come from, rather the House Budget Committee is proposing that various committees find enough savings to hit fixed spending reduction targets.
So while it is not explicitly stated in the House Budget Committee’s document, Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs are the programs most directly in the crosshairs. Here’s why: The document charges the House Energy and Commerce Committee with finding $880 billion in ten-year savings, more than half of the total cuts outlined in the proposal. It also directs the House Committee on Agriculture to identify another $230 billion in cuts. The Energy and Commerce Committee oversees Medicaid spending and the Ag panel has jurisdiction over SNAP and other nutritional programs.
While House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has pushed work requirement rhetoric in recent days when pressed on the nature of potential impending cuts to Medicaid and other social safety net programs, the magnitude of the spending reductions being proposed means cuts to Medicaid will have to extend far beyond Republicans simply imposing work requirements. That language has become a rhetorical catchall for Republicans for months as they sidestep engaging seriously on the political ramifications of cutting programs for low-income Americans to extend tax cuts for the wealthy.
Per HuffPost:
Republicans could for example try to introduce a “per capita cap” or some other mechanism that would limit federal spending on the program going forward, effectively ending the open-ended funding commitment Washington now makes to the states. Republicans could also roll back several reforms designed to make enrollment simpler, especially for children.
“Cuts of the magnitude required of the Energy and Commerce Committee leave little doubt that the Budget Resolution sets the stage for deep cuts to Medicaid,” Allison Orris, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told HuffPost. “This is not a budget that protects Medicaid enrollees.”
Republicans have been rhetorically creative about shielding their interest in slashing the social safety net for years. And as TPM has reported, even before the new Congress was sworn in this year, House Republicans made it clear Medicaid was on the chopping block, even as Trump vowed to protect Social Security and Medicare at all costs. [Don’t trust what Trump said.]
In the new budgetary blueprint, they’re barely hiding the ball.
House Republicans released a budget proposal Wednesday outlining plans to pay for President Donald Trump’s tax cuts for the rich by forcing deep cuts to programs like food stamps and Medicaid.
[I snipped Speaker of House Mike Johnson’s blather]
The budget blueprint calls for $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid—the program that provides health insurance to 72 million low-income Americans—over the next 10 years, which would require states to either come up with the money to fund it themselves or slash benefits for recipients.
The budget also calls for $230 billion in cuts to food stamps, which the Center for American Progress says amounts to a 20% cut to the program that helps feed 42 million Americans annually. Many food stamp recipients live in red states that Trump won by large margins, such as West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, which have some of the highest populations of food stamp recipients in the country.
And in recent days, Republicans and DOGE bro Elon Musk have suggested that they are coming for Social Security, the popular social safety net program that provides an income for retirees. Politicians have historically avoided cutting Social Security for fear of voter backlash. [Social Security is an earned benefit.]
All of these cuts would be used to pay for the $4.5 trillion renewal of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefited the wealthiest tax payers. A Tax Policy Center analysis found that the top 1% of earners received an average tax cut of more than $60,000 in 2025, while the bottom 60% received an average annual tax cut of just $500.
The Republicans’ budget says that their ultimate goal is to reduce mandatory spending by $2 trillion—this includes Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and veterans benefits. […]
Republicans plan to have a budget hearing on Thursday, with a goal of passing the budget by the end of the month, CNN reported.
Republicans have admitted that those kinds of cuts will be “painful” for Americans. […]
A January poll from the Democratic firm Hart Research found that 76% of voters have a favorable view of Medicaid, and that 78% disapprove of major Medicaid cuts. It also found that 82% of voters disapprove of making cuts to health care programs in order to pay for tax cuts.
Democrats immediately lambasted the Republican budget proposal.
“Senate Republicans’ partisan budget resolution would toss programs like SNAP and Medicaid into the woodchipper—all in service of passing tax giveaways for the wealthiest Americans,” Sen. Patty Murray of Washington wrote on X.
And Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina shared similar opposition to the GOP budget proposal in a post on X.
“They have one agenda — stealing from the poor and giving to the rich.”
Elon Musk called out for raking in $8 million a day from taxpayers.
Video is 7:50 minutes long.
Chris Hayes points out that Musk (as DOGE) really does not provide transparency —because, “Trump’s declaration allows Musk’s efficiency team to skirt Open Records laws.” Musk claimed in that circus-like press conference in the Oval Office that he does provide transparency. That’s a lie.
“[…] And, crucially, he [Musk] can hide everything he is doing from the American public. You see, because Trump has designated his department’s initiative as Presidential Records, which is not what departments are, which means he is now able to skirt Open Records law.”
“It’s the fundamental through line of Trump’s worldview: he hates our allies—and seems to love our enemies. Because our enemies see the world as he does,” says Chris Hayes.
OPM says on its website that the Deferred Resignation Program “is now closed.” “Any resignations received after 7:20pm ET, February 12, 2025 will not be accepted.”
Randos: “7:20pm ET as in 4:20 pacific? Is he really that damn childish?”
“You know he is.”
Command-line aside, Cinnamon is the most effective keeper of the Linux desktop flame — by not abandoning desktop and laptop computers. Yes, there are other desktop GUIs, such as MATE, and the lightweight Xfce, which are valuable options when low overhead is important, such as in LinuxCNC. However, among the general public lies a great expanse of office workers who need a full-featured Linux desktop.
The programmers who work on GNOME and its family of supporting applications enrich many other desktops do their more than their share. These faithful developers deserve better user-interface leadership. GNOME has tried to steer itself into tablet waters, which is admirable, but GNOME 3.x diminished the desktop experience for both laptop and desktop users. For instance, the moment you design what should be a graphical user interface with words such as “Activities,” you ask people to change horses midstream. That is not to say that the command line and GUI cannot coexist — because they can, as they do in many CAD programs.
I remember a time when GNOME ruled the Linux desktop — and I can remember when GNOME left those users behind. Perhaps in a future, GNOME could return to the Linux desktop and join forces with Cinnamon — so that we may once again have the year of the Linux desktop.
I concur. I remember when Gnome 3 came out, and my windows started flying around my desktop unbidden. I started trying out other desktops: Cinnamon, Mate, XFCE.
A teacher in high school once quoted an old proverb to me: “Do something you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life!”
Perhaps 18-year-old Alan Filion encountered a similar teacher during his school years in California, because once Filion learned that he truly loved making fake “swatting” calls to law enforcement—well, he turned the crime into a job, using handles like “Nazgul Swattings” and “Third Reich of Kiwiswats.” Originally it was all about the “power trip,” but it soon became about “money and the power trip.”
“Prices: $40-Gas leak/Fire for EMS/Fire/Gas Leak [$35 for returning customers],” Filion wrote in a 2023 advertisement that ran on various social media channels. “$50 for a major police response to the house [$40 for returning customers]; $75 for a bomb threat/mass shooting threat (they will shut down the school or public location for a day) [$60 for returning customers]. All swats will be done ASAP or present time.”
He worked hard at the job. Between August 2022 and January 2024, for instance, when Filion offered his swatting service to others for money, he made 375 calls. That’s an average of 21 a month, which means that every day and a half, Filion was firing up his many VoIP services, turning on his VPNs, and activating his text-to-speech apps in order to cause mayhem across the US, UK, and Canada.
To make sure everything worked smoothly—and by smoothly, I mean “cause maximum chaos”—Filion even tested his methods against his own home address in late 2022. He made numerous “self-swatting” calls, which he later wrote about. “I swatted myself like 3 times to test my methods,” he said. “It was hard keeping a straight face… When I swatted myself the cops’ extreme reaction was due to my special scenario.” …
A US company that was secretly profiling hundreds of food and environmental health advocates in a private web portal has said it has halted the operations in the face of widespread backlash, after its actions were revealed by the Guardian and other reporting partners.
The St Louis, Missouri-based company, v-Fluence, said it is shuttering the service, which it called a “stakeholder wiki”, that featured personal details about more than 500 environmental advocates, scientists, politicians and others seen as opponents of pesticides and genetically modified (GM) crops.
Among those profiled was Robert F Kennedy Jr, President Trump’s controversial pick for secretary of health and human services.
The profiles – part of an effort that was financed, in part, by US taxpayer dollars – often provided derogatory information about the industry opponents and included home addresses and phone numbers and details about family members, including children.
They were provided to members of an invite-only web portal where v-Fluence also offered a range of other information to its roster of more than 1,000 members. The membership included staffers of US regulatory and policy agencies, executives from the world’s largest agrochemical companies and their lobbyists, academics and others.
The profiling was one element of a push to downplay pesticide dangers, discredit opponents and undermine international policymaking, according to court records, emails and other documents obtained by the non-profit newsroom Lighthouse Reports…
The number of cases in a measles outbreak centered in Gaines County, Texas, has jumped to 24, as health officials in New Mexico investigate a case—the state’s first of the year—in neighboring Lea County.
The Texas State Department of Health Services (TSDHS) said yesterday that the 24 patients, up from 6 reported on February 5, had symptom onsets within the last 2 weeks. All of the patients are unvaccinated and are residents of Gaines County. Sixteen of the patients are school-age children, and two are adults ages 18 and older.
Nine patients have been hospitalized, and health officials are bracing for more cases. “Due to the highly contagious nature of this disease, additional cases are likely to occur in Gaines County and the surrounding communities,” the TSDHS said, adding that it is working with the South Plains Public Health District and Lubbock Public Health to investigate the outbreak…
Donald Trump exposed as faithless ally as USAID workers abandoned by Trump become targets
Video is 8:47 minutes long.
“Dictators around the world are celebrating Donald Trump […] rightwing and autocratic governments have their knives out for USAID […]” Musk’s comments about USAID being a supposedly criminal organization have worldwide consequences.
The presentations are from February 13, last night.
The US Senate on Thursday confirmed the long-time anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
The vote was largely along party lines, with a tally of 52 to 48. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.), a polio survivor and steadfast supporter of vaccines, voted against the confirmation, the only Republican to do so.
Before the vote, Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D–N.Y.) claimed that if there had been a secret ballot today, most Republicans would have voted against Kennedy. “But sadly, and unfortunately for America, Republicans are being strong-armed by Donald Trump and will end up holding their nose and voting to confirm Mr. Kennedy… What a travesty,” Schumer said…
“To hear Trump tell it, Elon Musk’s DOGE operation has already uncovered ‘massive’ fraud and waste. Reality tells a very different story.”
White House officials seem to realize that there’s a serious controversy surrounding Elon Musk and his poorly named Department of Government Efficiency — the scope of their reach, the conflicts of interests, the controversial surrogates, etc. — but Donald Trump and his team want the public to know that the DOGE endeavor is already producing amazing results.
For example, the president and his top campaign donor spoke to reporters in the Oval Office for more than a half-hour this week and mentioned the words “waste,” “fraud” or “abuse” literally dozens of times. By way of his social media platform, Trump has been just as aggressive, publishing a series of items assuring Americans that Musk and his operation have already found a “massive amount of FRAUD, WASTE, INCOMPETENCE, AND ABUSE.”
How much money are we talking about? “Tens of billions of dollars” the president said Tuesday. True to form, Trump said the actual total might yet reach $500 billion. Moments later, he added: “It could be close to a trillion dollars that we’re going to find.”
To be sure, that certainly sounded impressive. Less than a month into the new Republican administration, a controversial billionaire and his surrogates, none of whom appear to have extensive experience in auditing or federal expenditures, have already uncovered “tens of billions of dollars” in spending that shouldn’t have happened? A total that might yet reached $1 trillion? If that’s true, who’d take issue with results like these?
The answer, of course, is that everyone should take issue — because the boasts aren’t true. A fact-check report in The Washington Post explained:
The president’s numbers do not come anywhere close to matching figures posted on the DOGE account on X, Musk’s social media site…. We added up all the figures posted, taking most of them at face value, though virtually no documentation was presented. The numbers add up to about $6 billion a year.
The Post gave the White House an opportunity to dispute the findings. It did not.
Around the same time that fact-check report was published, reporters asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt to substantiate the president’s excessive claims about the DOGE operation’s successes. Trump’s chief spokesperson waved around pieces of paper showing federal expenditures that the White House believes are at odds with the president’s agenda.
The problem with that, of course, is that there’s a qualitative difference between stuff that Trump doesn’t like and actual waste. Indeed, pressed further on whether the spending items on her list constituted fraud or items “contrary to the president’s policies,” Leavitt replied, “I would argue that all of these things are fraudulent.”
But the phrase “I would argue that …” was doing a lot of work in that sentence. Fraudulent government spending is a serious issue. For the White House to give it a new definition for the sake of political convenience is to fundamentally deceive the public.
That said, if Trump and his team are serious about rooting out fraud and abuse, there’s nothing wrong with such a goal in the abstract. In fact, the president could start by rehiring the inspectors general that he fired without cause, while restoring the anti-corruption measures that his administration has kneecapped in recent weeks. [True.]
If that’s too much to ask, Trump and his operation could also try coming up with a real list of fraudulent spending that Musk’s not-quite-real department has uncovered, but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for one.
“Trump used to talk about his unique ability to free American detainees abroad without paying a price. The Marc Fogel prisoner swap helped prove otherwise.”
Related video is available at the link.
Last summer, the Biden administration pulled off an exceedingly difficult diplomatic feat, coordinating with several other countries — many of which do not get along — to bring home a group of U.S. residents who were wrongly imprisoned in Russia. Among those who returned to American soil were journalist Evan Gershkovich and Marine veteran Paul Whelan.
It was, as an NBC News report put it, the kind of “major multinational prisoner exchange” unseen since the days of the Cold War.
Donald Trump, watching the developments from the sidelines, quickly issued a hearty congratulations — to Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The Republican characterized the seven-nation deal as “horrible,” adding that when he was in the White House and wanted to bring American prisoners home, “I never paid anything.”
He was, of course, lying about his own record — Trump agreed to pay $2 million to North Korea as part of Otto Warmbier’s release — but the bogus boast was nevertheless memorable: To take a rhetorical shot at the Democratic White House, Trump talked about his unique ability to free American detainees abroad without paying a price.
It was against this backdrop that there was some great news worth celebrating this week: Marc Fogel, an American history teacher wrongfully detained in Russia, was released and returned to American soil. When a reporter asked Trump whether the United States had to give up anything in return for Fogel’s return, the Republican said, “Not much.”
He did not elaborate or share any additional details.
Soon after, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who’s struggled since arriving at Foggy Bottom, boasted, in reference to Fogel’s release, “I think it’s also important to note it was not in return for anything.”
That wasn’t true. As NBC News reported:
A trade executed Tuesday returned Marc Fogel to the United States after years of imprisonment in Russia in exchange for Alexander Vinnik, who pleaded guilty in the United States to money-laundering charges.
The same report added, “Administration officials would not disclose what, if anything, else Moscow may have gained in the negotiations beyond Vinnik’s freedom.”
In other words, Russia gave up an educator who did nothing wrong, while the United States gave up, at a minimum, a convicted “cybercrime kingpin.”
Bragging to reporters on Tuesday night, the American president said the agreement that brought Fogel home was “not like deals you’ve seen” under other recent presidents. Reality, of course, points in the opposite direction: This was exactly like the deals seen under other administrations.
True to form, Trump added, “We appreciate President Putin, what he did, he was able to pull it off.”
Because if there’s one thing this president is good at, it’s expressing his gratitude to Russia’s autocratic leader.
The dangerous co-optation of the Justice Department by the Trump White House continues in ways both substantive and symbolic.
On the substantive side, NBC News’ Ryan Reilly is reporting that some holdover U.S. attorneys are being fired not by the Justice Department but directly by the White House. Removing U.S. attorneys at the start of a new administration is normal; the White House doing the firings directly is not normal.
Tara McGrath, the Biden-appointed U.S. attorney in San Diego, announced yesterday was her last day on the job. Her office’s press release explicitly noted the White House’s involvement: “As a Presidential appointee, Ms. McGrath was informed of her termination in a communication from the White House, at the direction of the President of the United States.”
Of even deeper concern, Trump defense counsel Todd Blanche refused yesterday during his confirmation hearing for deputy attorney general to commit to recusing himself from matters involving the cases against Trump.
Among the examples of symbolic erosion was the image of Attorney General Pam Bondi last week, on just her second day on the job, doing a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity from the White House lawn (a good catch by former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance). Most attorney generals kept their distance from the White House. Given the furor around the likelihood that Bondi would not maintain any firewall between Trump and the Justice Department, this provocative location was a choice: [image at the link]
This is in addition to all of the other degradations of the DOJ over the past three weeks: dropping the Jan. 6, Mar-a-Lago, and Eric Adams cases; investigating the investigators and reporting on it directly to Stephen Miller; purging the Jan. 6 prosecutors and the FBI; and the list goes on.
Trump’s acting solicitor general says the administration is taking the position that laws protecting the independence of the NLRB, FTC, and Consumer Product Safety Commission are unconstitutional and will urge the Supreme Court to overrule any conflicting precedent.
See also: Reuters link to “US Department of Justice to stop defending independence of FTC, NLRB, letter says.”
[…] Under a 90-year-old Supreme Court precedent, FTC commissioners and members of many other bipartisan independent agencies can only be fired for cause, unlike executive branch agencies whose heads the president can fire at will.
The DOJ will ask the Supreme Court to overturn that ruling to the extent that it protects regulators who wield “substantial executive power” from being fired by the president, Harris wrote, according to the letter. […]
After President Trump ousted President Biden’s appointees to the Kennedy Center board of trustees, the newly constituted board elected Trump as its chairman; terminated the performing arts institution’s longtime leader, Deborah Rutter; and replaced her with the oleaginous Ric Grenell.
I usually let the quote of the day speak for itself, but when the United States abandons the post-World War II security arrangement in Europe at the same time President Trump is undermining Ukraine’s defense of Russia’s invasion, it’s worth noting that this may be the most historically significant news of the past 24 hours:
“I’m … here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States from being the primary guarantor of security in Europe.”–Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at NATO headquarters.
Dozens of Venezuelan migrants sent by the Trump administration to the U.S. military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are being guarded by troops rather than civilian immigration officers, according to people familiar with the operation.
While the Trump administration has portrayed the detainees as legally in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, military guards and medics are handling them in practice, the people said.
In doing so, the civilian law enforcement role of immigration detention is being essentially militarized as the government embarks on a new, legally uncertain course of moving people it intends to deport from U.S. soil into incommunicado detention at an offshore prison.
“This is the first time we’ve seen the government send people from U.S. soil to an overseas camp, and it’s been unclear exactly what role the military is playing,” said Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union immigrant rights lawyer. “All of this potentially raises legal issues we’ve never seen before.” […]
The Trump administration is trying to hide plans to hand off $400 million in taxpayer funds to Tesla, the electric car company owned by the world’s richest man—Trump supporter Elon Musk.
On Wednesday, a document published by the State Department laid out plans for the purchase of “armored electric vehicles” from Tesla during fiscal year 2025. But after reporting on the document emerged, it was edited at 9:12 PM and references to Tesla were removed without explanation.
[…] Despite the very clear potential for massive corruption, the White House has claimed that Musk will voluntarily excuse himself from any possible conflicts of interest that arise. But Musk has spent years already intertwined with the federal government thanks to the billions in federal contracts tied up in his other company, SpaceX.
At the same time, the Trump administration has scaled back and stalled ongoing federal investigations of Musk’s companies that began under the Biden administration.
While the State Department order did not specify what part of Tesla’s product line would be purchased, the armored description appears to point to Tesla’s widely derided Cybertruck. The brainchild of Musk, the unsightly Cybertruck has been plagued with endless flaws and multiple product recalls.
Musk claims that he and Trump are working to create a more efficient and transparent federal government. Instead the two have lied and smeared for weeks. Yet Musk stands to make a lot of money thanks to the politician he bankrolled.
That would be classic corruption.
An armored Cybertruck would be really heavy. And they say it would be an electric vehicle. I foresee all kinds of problems emerging if they try to execute this plan … and that’s in addition to the “endless flaws and multiple product recalls” already associated with Musk’s Cybertruck.
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ #45….
Apparently, the base Cybertruck weighs about 6600 pounds, or 3 metric tons. There is an enhanced motor option that adds about 250 lbs, and an extra battery pack option that adds another 1000 lbs. So…by the time you add armor, you’re probably looking a 4 tonne vehicle.
(From what I’ve read, the sheer weight is why you need a truckers license to drive one in some European countries, and the UK has yet to approve them for public road use.)
whheydt @46, thanks for the additional details. That certainly makes the “armored Cybertruck” idea for military use look less likely to succeed. It will be government waste and fraud.
The Senate voted almost entirely along party lines on Thursday to confirm anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the next secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Democrats excoriated Kennedy during his recent Senate confirmation hearings, pointing out his long and terrible history of promoting junk science, especially around vaccines.
Beyond his debunked anti-vaccine misinformation, the raw-milk-drinking rich guy has a penchant for acting in bizarre and seemingly unhinged ways, such as when he reportedly chainsawed the head off a dead whale and strapped it to the top of his minivan.
As health secretary, Kennedy has promised to investigate vaccine safety, despite their already rigorous testing. He also wants to get rid of public water fluoridation, which is considered a public health victory in protecting young children from tooth decay and worse health outcomes.
“Secretary Kennedy’s confirmation is an important opportunity to reaffirm the longstanding, overwhelming and settled science regarding the safety and efficacy of vaccines, which remain our best defense against many serious infectious diseases,” the Infectious Disease Society of America said in a statement. “We look forward to working with lawmakers to hold Secretary Kennedy to his promise to maintain our nation’s vaccine approval and safety framework, including the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the Vaccines for Children program and other public health vaccine programs.”
Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was the lone Republican vote against Kennedy’s confirmation. A survivor of polio, McConnell chastised Kennedy’s anti-vaccination misinformation career.
“I will not condone the relitigation of proven cures, and neither will millions of Americans who credit their survival and quality of life to scientific miracles,” McConnell said.
Kennedy’s evolution from a Democrat to an independent and then into a craven Donald Trump-endorsing minion is depressing, to say the least. He joins a Cabinet filled with unqualified, wealthy jackals—so he will likely fit right in.
[…] Trump’s ascension to chair of the Kennedy Center on Wednesday led to multiple departures from the Washington, D.C., institution.
Trump last week announced he was replacing several members of the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees and would name himself chair. On Wednesday, the new board elected Trump as chair of the board.
At approximately the same time that Trump announced his takeover, musician Ben Folds said he would resign as artistic adviser to the National Symphony Orchestra, “given developments at the Kennedy Center.”
“It’s been a wonderful 8 years” the former Ben Folds Five singer wrote on Instagram on Wednesday, saying he and the Kennedy Center’s staff encouraged “thousands of fresh new audiences to appreciate symphonic music.”
Award-winning opera singer and actor Renée Fleming said she would depart from her role as artistic adviser at large to the Kennedy Center.
She praised David Rubenstein, whom Trump replaced as chair, saying his leadership is “just one of the many ways he has contributed to America’s cultural and historic heritage. He is the greatest patriot I know.”
Fleming also praised Deborah Rutter, whom the board fired Wednesday as president of the Kennedy Center, saying she “has been a tireless, creative leader, successfully expanding our National Center for the Arts in visionary ways.”
Shonda Rhimes, the renowned television writer and producer, also reportedly resigned from the board after serving as the Kennedy Center’s treasurer.
“Please be advised that as of today, Shonda Rhimes has resigned from the board of the Kennedy Center,” a spokesperson for Rhimes told Deadline.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is being criticized for publicly embracing the notion that Ukraine might have to give up some of its sovereign territory to Russia.
Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014 and began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“We must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective,” Hegseth said during a speech at the NATO headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday.
The statement was a reversal of U.S. policy and consensus from most of Europe that Russia should cease hostilities and restore Ukraine’s territory. He also failed to indicate any role for Ukraine or other European nations in the negotiation process.
“Nothing about Ukraine can be decided without Ukraine,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters after Hegseth’s speech, calling for European involvement in any peace process.
[…] EU Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas called the statement an “appeasement,” saying that the United States was giving Russia “everything they want even before the negotiations have started.”
Foreign policy ministers for Germany and Spain also said that “no decision on Ukraine can be made without Ukraine,” which was also echoed by ministers from the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Poland, among others.
Republicans have remained largely silent since Hegseth’s speech, but one notable criticism came from Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska.
“We should have moral clarity who started this war, who is bombing cities indiscriminately and who our real friend here is. There are consequences of rewarding the invader even if its leader foolishly led over 700,000 of its citizens to slaughter,” he wrote on X.
Meanwhile, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut called out Hegseth for abandoning Ukraine.
“Surrender & betrayal—this SecDef Hegseth message amounts to abandoning Ukraine, & undercutting the security of our European allies,” he wrote on X.
[…] Trump has long made clear his allegiance to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he will continue to mold U.S. policy to avoid a clash with his political ally.
Throwing away years of support from Ukraine […] had always been predicted of Trump’s second term. Now it is happening, and people are going to suffer.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and other top Republican senators vowed to only vote for a permanent, rather than temporary, extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts […]
“Let me just say that a 10-year extension of President Trump’s expiring provisions is over $4.7 trillion according to CBO,” Smith told reporters, referring to the Congressional Budget Office, the official legislative scoring body. “Anything less would be saying that President Trump is wrong on tax policy.”
Before budget cuts, which the House resolution puts at a goal of $2 trillion, the total cost of the Republican agenda could reach as high as $7 trillion, according to an estimate by Andrew Lautz of the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Among other measures to reduce the effects on the deficit, Republicans had been considering shortening the window for extending the Trump tax cuts from ten years to five years.
Sounds to me like Republicans are fighting over just how fucking bad they want this to be for most Americans, and just how great they want this to be for the new billionaire oligarchy in the USA.
Yesterday, Justice Department Nazi Barbie, AKA Attorney General Pam Bondi, got on her best mad face and convened a press conference to announce she had “filed charges against the state of New York, we have filed charges against Kathy Hochul, we have filed charges against Letitia James and Mark Schroeder, who is from DMV.”
Wow, Pam Bondi filed charges against Governor Kathy Hochul, New York AG Letitia James, and Mark Schroeder from the DMV for some reason? Are they ARRESTED? Are they going TO JAIL?
Whoa if true to all of this if it’s true! Whoa!
Ahem.
No. Pam Bondi has sued the state of New York, Hochul, James and Schroeder, which is different. You don’t say “filed charges” when you are talking about “filed a lawsuit.” There are two options here: 1) Pam Bondi totally knows this, but she was trying to sound big and scary […] about it. Or 2) Pam Bondi does not know this, and we must now reconsider every time we’ve ever referred to Pam Bondi in these pages as “a real lawyer.”
Jesus Christ. [video at the link]
The crime for which Pam Bondi is indicting charges of lawsuits? Failure to insufficiently join up with the Trump administration’s Nazi immigration crusade. […] Whatever you want to call it. And you totally can call it anything you want, because Pam Bondi clearly is.
Bondi intoned: “This a new DOJ!” One that doesn’t words very good!
“New York has chosen to prioritize the illegal aliens over American citizens. It stops today! As you know we sued Illinois, and New York didn’t listen, so now, YOU’RE NEXT.”
At that point Bondi feigned beaucoups human emotions as she introduced an “angel mom,” which is the white supremacist Republican term for people whose children have been murdered by Spanish-speaking immigrants, which is somehow worse than getting murdered by a white American man, therefore it deserves its own term.
After the “angel mom” spoke, Bondi, still extremely so very angry and tough, explained, “We did it to Illinois! Strike one! Strike two is New York! And if you are a state not complying with federal law, you’re next, get ready!” [OMFG. Bondi is practicing her bullying skills.]
Bondi’s mangled language aside, the lawsuit appears to center around New York’s “green light” laws, which prohibit the DMV from LOL just kidding, you don’t have to know the details of the lawsuit until we feel confident that Bondi has actually read it herself. In essence, she sued them for failure to Nazi good enough, and failure to smile while doing it.
Noticeably absent from this list of people who Pam Bondi has arrested with lawsuits is New York Mayor Eric Adams. Could that be related to how Pam Bondi’s DOJ just directed prosecutors in New York to drop the criminal case against Adams, but without prejudice, which means they could always bring charges back, saaaaaaaaaaay, if Adams did not enthusiastically go along with their Nazi-ing? Like, real criminal charges, even!
This is a new DOJ! Pam Bondi is here to root out corruption! And take hostages for her boss Trump!
“We’re hoping in New York that Mayor Adams is going to cooperate with us with the sanctuary cities and the illegal aliens,” said Bondi, corrupt-as-fuckly.
She added, “That’s what we want! We don’t want to sue you! We don’t want to prosecute people! We want people to comply with the law!”
We want you to want to Nazi with us! All are welcome.
Relatedly, Adams is meeting today with Trump Border Gestapo chief Tom Homan, who very much hopes Adams will be on board with all the Nazi-ing, wink wink! Adams also reportedly met with New York City commissioners earlier this week and “ordered them not to say anything bad about the president and to give ICE agents in the city as much deference as possible.”
Again, he’s Trump’s hostage, and he has to do whatever Trump says on this issue and all the other things Trump might decide to tack on to ensure his loyalty. (Brian Beutler argues this morning that it’s time for New Yorkers to literally run Adams out of office, and we wholeheartedly agree.)
Kathy Hochul is making fun of getting arrested with lawsuits:
In a lengthy statement released Wednesday night, Gov. Hochul called Bondi’s “dramatic” media briefing “smoke and mirrors.” The governor said the DOJ filed a “routine civil action” about a law passed in 2019 that has been upheld by the courts in the past.
“Here are the facts: our current laws allow federal immigration officials to access any DMV database with a judicial warrant,” Hochul said in the statement. “That’s a common-sense approach that most New Yorkers support. But there’s no way I’m letting federal agents, or Elon Musk’s shadowy DOGE operation, get unfettered access to the personal data of any New Yorker in the DMV system […].”
Hochul said she expects Bondi’s “worthless, publicity-driven lawsuit to be a total failure.”
Meanwhile, Letitia James is one million times the lawyer Pam Bondi is, so we are sure she is popping some popcorn for guests who want to watch the smackdown she is about to deliver to the clownass Trump Justice Department.
Elsewhere in Bondi’s press conference, in response to a reporter’s question, she started yelling “TWO MILLION DOLLARS IS GOING TO GUATEMALA FOR SEX CHANGES,” so if you somehow forgot over the course of this post that Pam Bondi is a serious person, you’re reminded now.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Hailing his executive order that welcomes “the extremely oppressed white people of South Africa” to America’s shores, Donald J. Trump said on Thursday that the move would help alleviate the US’s severe shortage of racists.
“We have a racist shortage in this country like you wouldn’t believe,” Trump told reporters. “When I was putting together my Cabinet, there were barely enough racists to fill all the positions.”
Vowing to “make apartheid great again,” Trump promised the Afrikaners that they would “go far” in America, noting, “My boss is from South Africa.”
[…] On the face of it, we suffered a few big setbacks today.
First, in the morning, the House Health & Welfare Committee voted 8-7 to advance House Bill 138—a bill that would eliminate Idaho’s Medicaid Expansion program and rip away healthcare from 90,000 Idahoans.
Then, in the afternoon, the Senate Local Government & Taxation Committee voted 6-3 to advance House Bill 93—a dangerous voucher bill that would put Idaho on a clear path to an Arizona-style voucher program that drains funding from public schools in order to subsidize private-school tuition.
In both hearings, far more people showed up to testify against the bills than for them. But in both cases, the majority of committee members defied public testimony and voted to advance deeply flawed proposals that threaten Idaho’s quality of life.
These committee hearings were big setbacks indeed. Both bills now advance to the next stage, moving Idaho a big step closer to a repeal of Medicaid Expansion and the enactment of a universal voucher program.
And yet, there were also major victories today—victories that prove our work is not in vain.
First, we lost the Medicaid Expansion decision by just one vote, and opposition to House Bill 138 was bold and bi-partisan. The two Democrats on the committee were joined by five Republicans, all of whom voted to protect Medicaid Expansion.
And today’s hearing set the stage for the next phase of the debate. Our core message about the cost of repeal—both human cost and economic impact—resonated powerfully with legislators of both parties. Without a doubt, this is a debate that we can win.
Similarly, in the afternoon, there was significant bi-partisan opposition to House Bill 93 (school vouchers). Republican Senator Treg Bernt joined with Democratic Senators Ali Rabe and Ron Taylor in opposition to the bill, and two other Republican Senators—Ben Adams and Kelly Anthon—suggested that they remain open to voting against HB 93 on the Senate floor.
Neither of these bills is on an inevitable glide-path to becoming law. Our persistence in the days ahead will make a difference, and it could make all the difference.
If you need one more reason to keep hope alive, here’s a big one:
Earlier today we learned that SJR 101 (the proposed constitutional amendment that would gut Idaho’s ballot-initiative process) stalled out in the Senate.
Instead of moving SJR 101 to the Senate floor for a debate and a vote, Senate leadership moved it to the amending order—likely because the proposal does not have the votes needed to pass.
Back in 2021 and again in 2023, similar anti-initiative proposals sailed through the Senate with minimal opposition. This year is different. If SJR 101 remains stalled for the rest of the session—an outcome that appears likely—it will mark a major victory for the citizens of Idaho, made possible by our good work and the work of our allies.
So take a deep breath and don’t give up. These fights are too important, and the stakes are too high. […]
The aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman collided with a large merchant vessel Wednesday night in the vicinity of Port Said, Egypt, in the Mediterranean Sea.
“The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) was involved in a collision with the merchant vessel Besiktas-M at approximately 11:46 p.m. local time, Feb. 12, while operating in the vicinity of Port Said, Egypt, in the Mediterranean Sea,” a statement from the U.S Navy’s Sixth Fleet said.
The collision involved a rare collision of two large vessels as the 100,000-ton aircraft carrier collided with the 53,000-ton merchant vessel Besiktas-M, a Panamanian-flagged cargo ship.
There are no reports of injuries, nor is there flooding, aboard the carrier, which carries a crew of 5,000 sailors, and the incident is under investigation…
This really is a very big part of what’s going on. It was there during the deep rifts and other things too. A bunch of people want to use social insults and social dominance without pushback. They will keep getting pushback. https://www.wonkette.com/p/the-rights-brave-new-world-vibe-shift
With less than two weeks remaining before the Senate voted on his Cabinet nomination, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confronted the latest in a series of problems. The New York Times reported that the conspiracy theorist, in response to written questions from senators, “disclosed he had reached at least one settlement agreement with a company or individual that had accused him of ‘misconduct or inappropriate behavior.’”
According to Mother Jones’ reporting, senators asked two specific questions: “Yes or no, have you ever reached a settlement agreement with an individual or organization that accused you of misconduct or inappropriate behavior?” and “Yes or no, have you ever agreed to or been subject to a non-disclosure agreement with any individual or organization?”
Kennedy answered yes to both questions. He did not, however, elaborate, and no one on Capitol Hill — or the public at large — knows what the misconduct is.
In a normal political environment, this would be the sort of development that would have put his nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services at risk. In fact, in a normal political environment, Kennedy wouldn’t have even been nominated. But in our current political environment, RFK Jr. was confirmed to the powerful position anyway. My MSNBC colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim explained:
The Senate confirmed Robert F. Kennedy as health secretary on Thursday, putting one of the most prominent anti-vaccine activists in charge of running the country’s public health policy. Kennedy was confirmed on a 52-48 vote. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was the only Republican who voted against Kennedy’s confirmation alongside Democrats.
At this point, it’s tempting to go into great detail, making plain just how utterly bonkers this is. I could write thousands of words about Kennedy’s discredited ideas, bizarre conspiracy theories, opposition to vaccines, personal scandals, lack of experience, and well-documented record as an international menace on matters of science and public health. I’d add in some related thoughts, noting that were it not for his famous name and family, Kennedy would be considered a fringe figure with a handful of Substack subscribers, not a Cabinet secretary.
But I’m going to assume that readers already know this. I’m instead going to shine a light on what I consider to be the single biggest concern about Kennedy and our near future: Americans might confront serious public health challenges during his tenure, and we won’t be able to count on the man leading HHS.
The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof recently wrote a good column along these lines:
One of the biggest potential threats to this country — albeit one difficult to gauge — is an avian flu pandemic, for bird flu is mutating and spreading to cows and other mammals. If there is a pandemic, then vaccines will be essential. … What would happen if there were a need for another Operation Warp Speed, but this time the point man on health was suspicious of vaccines — including those that arrested the last pandemic?
The burgeoning H5N1 threat is serious, but it’s not the only public health challenge facing the nation. We’re also in the midst of a deadly flu season. Kansas is dealing with a tuberculosis outbreak. Texas is dealing with a measles outbreak. In the coming months, Americans might face any number of related threats that remain unpredictable.
And that’s just in this country. There are countless areas around in the world — with populations that travel — with their own health emergencies.
It’s against this backdrop that the Department of Health and Human Services will be led by a conspiracy theorist who has demonstrated a yearslong hostility toward science and evidence.
Remember the names of the 52 Republican senators who decided to put aside everything they learned about Kennedy and voted to confirm him anyway. They might soon be asked a profoundly difficult question: “Why didn’t you protect us from RFK Jr. when you had the chance?”
[…] Tulsi Gabbard’s lack of experience in intelligence, her habit of echoing Russian propaganda, her defense of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime, and the unsubtle warnings that senators heard from former national security officials, common sense suggested that she’d face broad, bipartisan opposition. After all, even the most knee-jerk Republican partisans have their limits, don’t they?
No, evidently they do not. […]
The Senate voted to confirm Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence on Wednesday, elevating a former lawmaker with controversial foreign policy views to the head of the country’s spy agencies. […]
[…] Shane Harris had an interesting new report in The Atlantic that raised a related point: “Several foreign intelligence officials have recently told me that they are taking steps to limit how much sensitive intelligence they share with the Trump administration, for fear that it might be leaked or used for political ends.”
[…] the intelligence dynamic highlighted by The Atlantic and Time magazine was both striking and unfamiliar.
Nearly every Senate Republican apparently didn’t care. They should have.
[…] according to the president, election officials in California “just stopped counting their votes on the 2024 Presidential Election.” It’s unclear why Trump would believe such a claim: The state actually wrapped up the vote-counting process two months ago.
Anti-vaccine, anti-science, pro-brainworm, acknowledged heroin user Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed today to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, despite having no qualifications for the job other than being popular with similarly delusional Trump cultists who think modern medicine is a racket that should be replaced with quack cures and herbs.
Yes, the United States Senate, and yes, the United States Health and Human Services Department, which is not only in charge of the nation’s public health and health research institutions but is also responsible for running Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, assuming any of those are still around in a few years.
Because the US health system comprises so very many huge organizations, there will be additional Trump-appointed quacks working below Kennedy, like TV diet-pill merchant Dr. Mehmet Oz at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), former Republican congressman and current antivaxxer Dave Weldon at the CDC, and Actual Doctor But Fox News Weirdo Marty Makary at the Food and Drug Administration. If the Senate was willing to confirm Kennedy, none of those three has any worries, not even if one or more turns out to be a cannibal alien shapeshifter bent on extracting all Americans’ cerebrospinal fluid for export to another galaxy.
All 47 Democrats in the Senate voted against Kennedy […] All Republicans voted to confirm him except for Mitch McConnell, a childhood polio survivor, who may mistakenly believe that taking a stand against Kennedy, whose antivax group pushed to discontinue the polio vaccine, might keep him out of Hell.
Kennedy has promised that he will …
Actually, why would we even credit what he says he wants to do? He’s a habitual liar who has repeatedly claimed that “no vaccine” is safe or effective, and then insisted he never said that, and that anyone pointing to recordings of him saying it is a liar. So no, we really don’t care what he says he’ll do at HHS. We can only hope he’s so incompetent that he can’t ruin much before he’s fired for calling the body of water between Texas and Florida “the Gulf of Mexico,” and even then he might have to do it on live TV, with Trump in the room.
Unfortunately, we can’t take much hope in the prospect that Kennedy’s stupidity and incompetence will save us, because even if he spends his time in office dithering over what endangered animal he should try to strap to the roof of his car as a prank this time around, there doesn’t appear to be much chance that serious people will have a chance to run things normally while the nincompoops are exploring bringing back the study of bodily humours in medical schools.
The effective silencing of the CDC suggests that it will be harder for real science to come out of the Trump administration, although we should note that today, the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which was shut down after Trump took office, finally published one of three highly anticipated reports on bird flu that had been delayed, as well as a report on the first case of a new strain of monkey pox that’s made it to the Americas, after an infected traveler returned to California from East Africa in November. (The CDC had previously issued a brief news release when the infection was confirmed.)
So, hooray for now, and where are the other two bird flu studies that were supposed to be published in January?
The Washington Post, just to provide further evidence of its utter debasement, chirpily explains that Kennedy has some very enthusiastic allies who
said they were elated to see him take up the helm of HHS, believing he’ll give a voice to people who are outside the mainstream.
“I think we’re going to see a deterioration of just the influence of corporations on policy decisions and a return to better science,” said Jeff Hutt, spokesperson for the Make America Healthy Again political action committee and who was the former national field director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign.
We need more people who don’t know what they’re doing or how science works, because they aren’t motivated by profits, so please go buy all their supplements. […]
“Republicans Fine With Leopards Eating Their Constituents’ Faces First”
If there’s one thing that’s sacred to your free-enterprise capitalist types, it’s a contract between a buyer and a seller, or a borrower and a lender. You make a commitment to sell widgets, you’d better deliver those widgets, and if not, you will be banished from Libertarian Eden and condemned to peddle inferior socialist widgets in Latvia in 1955. That’s how we remember the excitable free enterprise Young Republicans in college at least, when they weren’t trying to bludgeon us with a copy of Atlas Shrugged.
[…] As The New York Times reports (gift link), that may come as a really unpleasant surprise to many in the red states that Trump relied on to win election, because now he’s decided to illegally block federal spending on anything related to clean energy, energy conservation, environmental protection, or people and geographic locations with the word “green” in their names. And as Yr Wonkette pointed out several times while Trump was preparing … OK, waiting, at least — to take office, a whole heck of a lot of the clean energy and manufacturing money from Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act ended up going to companies in red states. About 80 percent of it, as a recent analysis determined.
Update: Just a reminder that this wasn’t by design: The tax incentives for manufacturers were agnostic as to location, and the siting location was up to the companies that took the deals. The south has cheaper labor because because of “right to work” (with no rights), so that was a big factor, as were other state-level incentives aimed at attracting bidniss.
Now, when we pointed that out shortly after the election, back in our callow youth, we naively thought that, as with Pentagon contracts that send a little bit of every weapons system’s components to the home districts of key Congress members’ districts, that widely distributed IRA funding might mean support for keeping the legislation going. After all, local and federal electeds, and the companies getting the tax credits, would lobby hard to keep the money and jobs flowing.
Thing is, even if those interests do want that to happen, Trump and Musk instead decided to bypass the Constitution and have Elon run the federal government. […]
Red State Blues
But even if red states haven’t squawked about it much, they’re definitely feeling the pinch. Since the IRA passed in 2022,
private companies chasing the law’s tax breaks have announced plans to spend $165.8 billion to build factories that make solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and more, according to new data from Atlas Public Policy, a research firm.
On top of the tax incentives, the IRA and the earlier Bipartisan Infrastructure Law have been the sources for tens of billions of dollars in grant money to businesses, state and local governments, and nonprofits. Those grants aren’t just a free bucket of money, they’re binding contracts that have spurred investments, led companies to buy land, hire people, and contract for services, all based on the contractual obligation that the government would reimburse them. That was the deal, right there on paper or PDF, probably both. Now, along comes Trump: [Darth Vader gif at the link]
Since the federal spending freeze was announced January 27, federal courts have placed a hold on it, several times in fact. The most recent decision came Tuesday when an appeals court denied the administration’s request to pretty please let Trump withhold billions and billions of dollars in grants and congressional allocations. That hasn’t actually resulted in any of the funds being restored, however, and that’s been leading to layoffs and furloughs and smaller contractors closing up shop, far beyond the clean energy and tech fields we’re talking about in our story here.
Prosperity On Pause
For red parts of the country, the freeze on energy and climate spending is already taking a toll, per the Times:
In Montana, a biofuels plant did not receive on time a $782 million payment it was owed, the first part of a $1.67 billion federal loan guarantee. In Georgia, $1 billion in projects to modernize the power grid are on hold. In Nevada, a half-dozen large solar projects on federal lands are caught in a permitting freeze
That’s also going to mean trouble for clean manufacturing companies set to open in 2025, valued at roughly $30 billion. While some already faced delays or even cancellation due to factors other than the Trump freeze, the funding cutoff will kill a lot more if it remains in place.
Here’s one such example that the Times didn’t cover: EV maker Rivian paused construction of a planned battery and EV factory in Georgia last year due to uncertainty about the market for its nifty electric pickups, SUVs, and those bulbous electric Amazon delivery vans. Business has since picked up, and in January, Rivian announced the factory was back on schedule, thanks to a new $6.6 billion loan from the US Department under the IRA. Hooray! Jobs! Prosperity! A factory to build the company’s new, more affordable (but let’s be honest, still luxury-market) R2 and R3 midsized models! And then, right on the tail of the happy news, the spending freeze slammed down. So far, Rivian hasn’t commented on whether its loan specifically was affected, but the timing of the loan and subsequent freeze certainly suggests Rivian will be feel the chill.
Green New Schlemiels
Democrats are already sounding the alarm and fighting for clean energy investment to go forward even if it is happening outside their districts, because it’s good for America and the planet. And Republicans are being Republicans.
Here’s how Rep. Michael Rulli (R-Ohio) bravely defended the $415 million in federal funding for his district, some of which will create 650 new jobs in an auto parts plant, but only if the plant opens: “There might be some things in there that are worth saving,” Ruli admits, possibly looking around furtively for one of Elon’s Dogboys. “That’s going to take a little time to figure out.”
And then there are the Republicans who are delighted to see their constituents screwed, although they don’t say that openly; they just deflect. Rep. Rick Allen, whose Georgia district has seen $1.6 billion in private investments driven by the IRA, grumbled — with zero evidence of course — that maybe the federal grant process under Biden was improper, and shouldn’t we all be overjoyed that now everything is on hold, just to be sure? No, he didn’t have any proof, but it was Biden, it had to be corrupt. Binding contracts? Free enterprise? Well not if the contracts were corrupt! No, stop asking me for proof, I’m just asking questions. Please go bother a Democrat now
We were amused that the Times says the freeze has put Republicans in a “tricky position” where they must defend Trump at all costs (must they?), even as they’re “working behind the scenes to protect their towns from the loss of new manufacturing jobs.” Not that any Republicans the Times talked to would go on the record and admit they’re making such “behind the scenes” efforts, of course.
Instead, the accounts of quiet moves to protect jobs in Republican districts came from clean energy industry lobbyists who have been meeting with those politician, and say the Republicans definitely know how bad ending federal clean energy spending will by for their districts. One lobbyist, Bob Keefe of the nonpartisan business group E2, told the Times,
“We just met with more than a dozen key Republican offices, and I can tell you nobody wants to kill jobs. They don’t want to have to go back and face constituents and tell them that the factory I just cut the ribbon on might not be coming. That’s going to put them in a hard place.”
Just don’t say who those Republicans are, please, OK?
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s confirmation as Health and Human Services Secretary on Thursday received a rousing thumbs-up from some of his most prominent supporters, the National Alliance of Funeral Directors.
“For years, the funeral industry has suffered as a result of the Democratic Party’s unabashed anti-death agenda,” the group said in an official statement. “We are confident that Secretary Kennedy will make death great again.”
But the confirmation drew a less enthusiastic reaction from one of Kennedy’s detractors, the worm who spent several years feasting on his brain.
“As a worm, you’d expect me to be pro-death,” the worm said. “But this is insane.”
In a more muted comment, Dr. Mehmet Oz said, “Well, at least I won’t be the biggest quack in the government.”
Aaron Craig Gleason, an anti-LGBTQ+ writer who has accused queer people of “grooming” children for sexual abuse, has been arrested and charged for molesting a child under the age of 12.
Gleason, a 39-year-old middle school teacher and soccer coach who has written for the anti-LGBTQ+ media outlets The Daily Wire, The Federalist, and The Imaginative Conservative, was arrested on January 28 by police officers in Okaloosa, Florida. He has been charged with the “lewd and lascivious molestation of a child under the age of 12 by a person over the age of 18” and was held in jail on a $75,000 bond…
The defense lawyers for Idaho murders suspect Bryan Kohberger are optimistic that newly uncovered DNA evidence will help prove his innocence.
The genetic materials were found on a handrail at the home where the crime was committed, while the other was discovered on a glove…
However, what seemed like an open-and-shut case took a new twist with the discovery of DNA from two other males at the crime scene, per the Idaho Statesman.
One genetic sample was found on a handrail in the home, while the other was discovered on a glove just outside the same residence. Both pieces of evidence were blood-related, and their owners have yet to be identified.
Given the discovery, Kohberger’s lawyer, Anne Taylor, argued at a hearing last month that the unidentified DNA might prove that Kohberger did not fatally stab the four students…
Unfortunately for Kohberger, his DNA was found on a leather sheath for a fixed-blade knife found in the bed of the stabbing victim…
That’s a big fat nothingburger. The presence of other men does nothing to negate the DNA evidence against Kohberger. The writer is trying to jerk the reader around. Here’s a different headline about the same thing:
A relative of Vice President JD Vance says an Ohio hospital has refused to put her 12-year-old daughter on its heart transplant waiting list over her vaccine status.
Jeneen Deal, a mom-of-12 from Indiana who is related to Vance’s half-siblings through marriage, adopted Adaline from China as a 4-year-old knowing the little girl had two heart conditions, Ebstein’s anomaly and Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, that meant she would one day require a transplant.
The girl has been receiving treatment from the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, a leader in pediatric organ transplantation, for almost a decade.
The facility requires that heart transplant patients receive vaccinations for Covid-19 and flu as recipients are at much higher risk of infection. Deal said Adaline’s doctor confirmed to the family that she was in heart failure on January 17.
“My heart’s getting sick,” Adaline Deal told Local 12. “I get tired. My legs get [too] tired to stand.”
Deal and her husband Brayton, who are both members of a non-denominational Christian church, said that the vaccines conflict with their religious and medical beliefs and that they would not be willing to inoculate their daughter.
The pair have broadcast both their faith and vaccine-skepticism in posts on their Facebook pages.
The parents made their decision after “the Holy Spirit put it on our hearts,” the mom told The Cincinnati Enquirer. The hospital, they say, would not honor their beliefs…
U.S. Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota said Thursday she won’t seek reelection in 2026, a decision that has set off a scramble by potential candidates in both major political parties to fill her open seat.
Several Democrats said they would run or quickly signaled their interest, including Gov. Tim Walz, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar and Secretary of State Steve Simon…
President Trump’s ascension to chair of the Kennedy Center on Wednesday led to multiple departures from the Washington, D.C., institution…
At approximately the same time that Trump announced his takeover, musician Ben Folds said he would resign as artistic adviser to the National Symphony Orchestra, “given developments at the Kennedy Center.” …
Award-winning opera singer and actor Renée Fleming said she would depart from her role as artistic adviser at large to the Kennedy Center…
Shonda Rhimes, the renowned television writer and producer, also reportedly resigned from the board after serving as the Kennedy Center’s treasurer…
Some of the board’s new members include “God Bless the U.S.A.” singer and ardent Trump supporter Lee Greenwood, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, second lady Usha Vance and senior adviser Dan Scavino, among others…
This is money the State thinks it might spend but hasn’t committed yet. It says as much as the top of the webpage […] It’s possible, and even probable, that Tesla wouldn’t have done this work. […] no government contract had been awarded to Tesla or any other vehicle manufacturer. […] the Biden administration had asked it to look into how it might add armor to off-the-shelf electric vehicles and it was in the early stages of the project.
[…]
A search of government databases for SpaceX and Tesla Motors returns hundreds of contracts worth billions
[…]
“It should have been a generic entry ‘electric vehicle manufacturer,'” a State Department Spokesperson told me. I think that’s true, but I also think it’s weird that they did a stealth edit without issuing any kind of statement to the press beforehand. It reeks of ass-covering. Hell, it is ass-covering.
[…]
There’s going to be a lot of bullshit over the next four years. […] getting worked up over phantom distributions to Tesla isn’t productive. There’s plenty of real graft to go around.
The top federal prosecutor in New York and two senior federal prosecutors in Washington have resigned after refusing to follow a Justice Department order to drop the corruption charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams, multiple officials said Thursday.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro sued the Trump administration on Thursday over its broad freeze of federal funding, saying in a lawsuit that the effort has ‘jeopardized at least $5.5 billion that has been committed to Pennsylvania’ in federally appropriated money.
Josh Shapiro has a good track record of winning court cases.
When Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced last month that lifesaving humanitarian work would be exempt from a freeze on foreign aid, global health workers breathed a collective sigh of relief.
But a new directive has put such exemptions on hold.
Several senior employees at the U.S.A.I.D. Bureau of Global Health received an email Tuesday telling them to “please hold off on any more approvals” pending further directions from the acting chief of staff, according to a copy reviewed by The New York Times.
Senior officials at the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance received similar instructions during a meeting this week, according to a person familiar with what transpired.
For weeks, U.S.A.I.D. officials and the organizations, contractors and consultants who partner with them have struggled to continue the kind of work that Mr. Rubio promised to preserve — “core lifesaving medicine, medical services, food, shelter and substance assistance.”
[…] the payments system called Phoenix that U.S.A.I.D. relies on to disburse financial assistance has been inaccessible for weeks. That means even programs that received waivers have struggled to continue, according to multiple employees of U.S.A.I.D. and the partner organizations that rely on the funding they distributed.
[…] On Tuesday, Elon Musk[…] told reporters in the Oval Office that the administration had “turned on funding for Ebola prevention and for H.I.V. prevention.” But in reality, the Ebola funding and virtually all of the H.I.V. prevention funding remains frozen, according to two U.S.A.I.D. employees and several aid groups.
Young engineers working for Mr. Musk seized control of the agency’s payments system as they took over in recent weeks. And as part of the dismantling overseen by Mr. Musk, the State Department also recently circulated plans to reduce U.S.A.I.D. staff from about 10,000 workers to 611 who had been deemed essential personnel.
Without access to funding, organizations that partner with U.S.A.I.D. have been unable to pay their workers and suppliers for projects that were dependent on U.S. government funding.
The Norwegian Refugee Council, which does U.S.-backed humanitarian work in about 20 countries, said it has been unable to take advantage of the waivers because the agency’s payments had stopped. […]
Attorneys for a group of news organizations, including NPR, said in a legal filing on Tuesday that evidence used at the sentencing of a rioter charged in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol had ‘disappeared’ from an online government platform.
Asked later Wednesday in Brussels how he would classify Trump’s comments, [Canadian Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau reiterated his past statement that there’s ‘not a snowball’s chance in hell’ that Canada will ever be the 51st state.
My office is hearing that DOGE is now at the IRS. That means Musk’s henchmen are in a position to dig through a trove of data about every taxpayer in America. And if your refund is delayed, they could very well be the reason.
[At TTS, the tech consultancy within GSA] I told you last night that the new leadership had started firing people yesterday starting with a few dozen probationers—people in their first year on the job who are easier to fire under Civil Service law. But apparently the new bosses are still learning […] how to fire people.
[…]
Thomas Shedd, the Musk associate who was appointed as the new head of TTS, sent a message this afternoon to the whole team that it turns out… well, they’re not quite fired yet. “We don’t yet have the go-ahead from HR,”
The executive branch GSA gave notice that it may terminate leases on 160 judiciary locations and freeze new leases above $50k. A judicial Administrative Office of the US Courts is being made to justify all facilities, and they intend to continue operating them all unterrupted.
An executive order directed executive-branch US Marshals to do immigration stuff, but Marshals leadership “assured” that judicial security remains their top priority.
Another memo says court employees should be just as concerned as anyone about compromised privacy from DOGE’s breach at the Office of Personnel Management.
/The possibility of street judges arrived quicker than I’d imagined. Not Dredd so much as left out on the street.
I should note [Danielle Sassoon, former acting US Attorney of SDNY,] is not some partisan Democrat lurking in the DOJ bureaucracy. She was chosen by the Trump administration to run the office while Trump’s choice, Jay Clayton, moves through the confirmation process. She’s a former Scalia clerk and a Federalist Society member.
Holy Shit. They’re burning through people pretty fast now. After Sassoon refused/resigned, the next two people—heads of Public Integrity Section (DC) and the Criminal Division also refused/resigned. […] these are all ‘actings’, so they’re people the Trump crew chose.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Follow-up to #10, #77. Waste.gov had something before the placeholder page.
For at least an hour last night [Feb 12], the site did have this list of “waste,” according to an image on URL scan taken at 5 pm EST. An hour later it was this WordPress placeholder. [Screenshot]
Rando: “‘Malaysian drug fueled gay sex app’ They’re just making this bullshit up as they go.”
Urlscan isn’t a browsable archive, but it preserves dated copies of the page. It offers a screenshot, and it has tabs to dissect the page: notably the text content (in this case, the complete bullet list of ‘waste’) and links (its citations).
* Lots of DailyCaller citations, DailyMail, some Heritage Foundation, Fox, NYPost.
* Lots of usaspending.gov, like for “inclusion”. About as many as DailyCaller.
Jacqueline Sweet also identified a “Peruvian ‘LGBT comic book'” claim on the list, which has a Snopes article (only the 2nd of 3 issues even had a gay protag and bf) because it’d circulated from Fox TV. The WH had pushed it, citing DailyMail.
NEW This may be one of the most important cases.
Doe 1-26 vs. Elon Musk and DOGE
Complaint: “Attempted government takeover” in violation of the Appointments Clause.
Pages 4-13 are USAID members’ testimony, then pages 14-36 are a timeline of DOGE events at various agencies.
J. Doe 2 is a USAID employee and has been with the agency for over 10 years […] cybersecurity and privacy. On January 30, 2025, J. Doe 2 was […] told to provide access to individuals from DOGE. J. Doe 2 conducted research and determined that the people who were trying to get access to these crucial systems were “hackers.” J. Doe 2 was alarmed and raised this issue […] However, […] DOGE personnel had already been given […] root access to these systems […]
On Feb 1, 2025, DOGE personnel who did not have a security clearance, used their administrative rights to grant themselves access to restricted areas requiring security clearance. It is unclear what the DOGE personnel did with that access. DOGE personnel have also taken over delegate rights to every USAID mailbox. With this they have the ability to see every email, delete, and send email on behalf of every user within USAID. J. Doe 2 is also aware that there is rapid preparation to tear down the USAID network to create a condition where USAID employees will not have access to any facilities nor computing environment.
On February 4, 2025, J. Doe 2 was put on administrative leave and lost all access to USAID systems. On February 10, 2025, J. Doe 2 was allowed back into the USAID system, apparently pursuant to a temporary restraining order […]
J. Doe 2 understands that the DOGE personnel had administrative privileges into all the USAID systems and tools and that DOGE personnel took information out of the agency and sent it elsewhere.
DOGE’s actions have caused J. Doe 2 emotional injury, as J. Doe 2 is aware of the extent of confidential information that has been breached and the privacy laws broken.
UNDERSTATEMENT
Page 29:
February 1, Defendants demanded access to classified USAID systems without the required security clearances. This included Defendant Musk making direct calls to USAID’s leadership and security officials in which he demanded that DOGE team members receive access to private data and restricted areas. Defendant Musk threatened to call the U.S. Marshals service to gain access. USAID Director for Security John Vorhees and Deputy Director for Security Brian McGill attempted to block the DOGE team’s access and in turn were placed on administrative leave.
On or around February 1, DOGE personnel gained [root] access to the USAID […] DOGE began blocking USAID employees from accessing their systems. Immediately thereafter, hundreds of USAID civil servants lost access to their emails without prior notification. That same day, USAID.gov went offline,
StevoRsays
Just back from a dogwalk. Everything is so yellowed off and struggling in drought. Water levels so low and quite a lot of dead possums seen presuming high mortalityfrom recent extreme heat.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: StevoR @82:
quite a lot of dead possums
Got me imagining one possum playing dead, followed by a series of passersby getting spooked into forming a cluster of dead possums that grows ever spookier.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Waldo Jaquith (Obama/Biden tech):
This is not a novel observation, but I’m just struck by it again: the administration of “merit, not DEI” has put a series of white male teenagers in charge of many federal agencies with resumes that consist entirely of internships at the Heritage Foundation or SpaceX or wherever.
A 55-year-old Black woman in a position of leadership is a “DEI hire,” but a 19-year-old white kid in a position of leadership is “merit.”
“Elon Musk’s DOGE subordinates received approval to use software at the Labor Department that could be used to transfer large amounts of data, two employees said.”
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has received approval from the Labor Department to use software that could allow it to transfer vast amounts of data out of Labor’s systems, according to records seen by NBC News and interviews with two employees.
The approval for Musk’s team to use the remote-access and file-transfer software, known as PuTTY, has alarmed some of the Labor Department’s career employees. Musk, the head of DOGE, has dispatched subordinates throughout the government to radically overhaul or dismantle federal agencies with the backing of President Donald Trump.
Many of the details around DOGE’s actions have remained secret, though it has moved to gain access to large swaths of data held in the computer systems of individual agencies.
That access has become contentious, and a federal judge issued a restraining order Saturday temporarily forbidding DOGE’s access to sensitive Treasury data, a case that does not involve the Labor Department. Democrats, labor unions and privacy advocates have filed lawsuits trying to halt data access at other government offices. Their concerns include the alleged use of artificial intelligence to analyze federal data and the alleged use of a computer server not familiar to government employees.
[…] After the Labor Department approved DOGE to use PuTTY last week, the two department employees said that access was put on hold, at least temporarily, because of a lawsuit filed by several federal labor unions. NBC News was not able to determine whether Musk’s subordinates at DOGE had already used the software or transferred any data, but the possibility was enough to spark concern within the Labor Department about the security of sensitive information, the two employees said.
The two employees said that they considered the authorization to be a red flag because the DOGE members were new arrivals who, in their view, lacked sufficient vetting and experience for the access they were getting.
“We don’t know who they are, and we’re giving them free rein to extract whatever they want,” one employee said. “This is completely opposite of what we’d do to protect privacy.”
When reached for comment, a White House spokesperson did not directly answer questions about the software access but said that those working with Musk were doing so in full compliance with federal law, with appropriate security clearances and as employees of the relevant agencies, not as outside advisers.
The Labor Department’s press office did not respond to a request for comment.
PuTTY is an open-source application that has been freely available for decades. Some technologists, including in government agencies, use it routinely in their jobs as a tool not only to transfer files but also to access computers remotely.
But government departments tightly control who may install and use the app on office machines because there are strict rules and laws about the security of federal data, the two Labor Department employees said. In general, people who want to use PuTTY or other controlled software must seek permission from system administrators to ensure their use would comply with security rules, they said.
The two Labor Department employees said that five DOGE workers were approved to use two pieces of software: PuTTY, commonly used for large file transfers, and an SQL studio program, used for editing and exploring certain databases.
According to records seen by NBC News, the five people were: Sam Beyda, Derek Geissler, Cole Killian, Adam Ramada and Jordan Wick. Ramada identified himself as a DOGE employee in a sworn declaration in federal court last week, and Killian has been identified as a DOGE employee by news organizations, including NBC News. Wired magazine reported Saturday that Wick is affiliated with DOGE. The names of Beyda and Geissler have not been previously reported as working for either DOGE or the Trump administration.
NBC News sent emails to DOGE email addresses and others with those names and did not receive responses. The White House declined to provide further information about the five people.
The Labor Department has more than 50 electronic systems that include a diverse array of personally identifiable information, according to the department’s chief information officer. The systems hold data for offices such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks the health of the economy; the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, which enforces workplace rules; and the Employment and Training Administration, which provides billions of dollars in grant money annually, including to community colleges and apprenticeship programs. It is unclear which, if any, Labor Department databases the DOGE employees sought access to.
Ramada, one of the DOGE employees, wrote in his court declaration last week that he and his colleagues would comply with all data security and privacy rules. He submitted the declaration in opposition to a proposed temporary restraining order, and he said he was one of three DOGE employees detailed to the Labor Department.
“USDS employees detailed to the Department of Labor are required to be familiar with the legal rules governing access to Department of Labor data systems and are required to comply with those rules,” he wrote. (USDS stands for United States DOGE Service.)
He also pledged to follow rules related to sharing data.
“To the extent USDS-Department of Labor detailees wish to share information garnered during their work duties within the Executive Branch, they are required to comply with all applicable laws and regulations,” he wrote.
He did not say in the declaration why DOGE would need to share data elsewhere within the executive branch. He said DOGE’s overall goal was “to inform policy decisions.”
Musk has said that DOGE needs access to federal data in order to search for waste, fraud and abuse. He has also said that his office doesn’t have any personal data of Americans — an assertion that has been met by skepticism among government workers and Democrats in Congress.
The Washington Post reported last week that DOGE had fed sensitive data from the Education Department into artificial intelligence software to examine the agency’s programs and spending, and citing two people familiar with the project, Wired magazine reported that DOGE was developing an AI chatbot about spending across the government. NBC News has not confirmed that reporting.
The Labor Department’s databases likely include information about Musk’s own companies such as SpaceX and Tesla, both of which have been subjects of publicly reported OSHA inspections, as well as about companies that compete with Musk’s. Neither SpaceX nor Tesla responded to a request for comment on the potential for a conflict of interests. SpaceX has defended its safety record by pointing to training that it calls extensive, according to a 2023 investigation by Reuters into injuries at the company. Tesla has said its goal “is to become the world’s safest company by continuously integrating safety into the way we work.”
DOGE employees turned their attention to the Labor Department last week, after previously causing upheaval at several federal offices, including the Treasury Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Simon Tatham, a British coder who created PuTTY, said he wasn’t surprised to hear that DOGE employees might be using his software. The app is available to anyone under a creative-commons license, and it’s one of many apps that could be used to transfer data. He said it’s up to U.S. authorities to enforce data security laws if anyone violates them.
Whether DOGE’s access to certain federal databases should be prohibited is now before U.S. District Judge John Bates, who’s hearing the lawsuit filed last week in Washington, D.C., by several labor unions. On Friday, Bates ruled against a request by the plaintiffs for a temporary restraining order, finding that they did not have legal standing to sue.
Bates wrote, though, that he “harbors concerns about defendants’ alleged conduct.” He ordered additional briefing in the case, and the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint Tuesday naming other defendants, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The plaintiffs say that the Labor Department’s systems contain personally identifiable information about employees and others, as well as classified information.
“These employees face irreparable harm to their privacy interests if this information is improperly accessed or disseminated (such as by being downloaded to a private server). Once the information is improperly accessed and/or disseminated, recovery may be difficult, and information may already have been used for impermissible purposes,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit doesn’t mention specific software programs, but it asks the court to direct the government “to remove any software installed by DOGE personnel on agency systems.”
Justice Department lawyers wrote in response to the lawsuit that any allegations about transferring data were speculative.
“Whether or not a particular effort to share specific types of information is lawful will depend upon the statutes and regulations that govern the use of those systems,” the lawyers wrote. “There is no basis for concluding, at this juncture, that any violation of the Privacy Act is forthcoming.”
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
I looked into possums a bit, hoping that dehydration might trigger apparent death, but couldn’t corroborate beyond an untrustworthy site. Did find this though.
“I found that when the temperature exceeds around 35 to 36 degrees Celsius, the possums begin losing water when actively cooling by licking their fur, thereby increasing evaporative water loss and thermal conductance. When the air temperature reaches 39 degree Celsius, possums are at risk of feeling the negative effects of dehydration in less than 20 hours.” […] “Although temperatures in Australia can exceed 38 degrees Celsius, during a heatwave possums in dreys are unlikely to be exposed to temperatures higher than this,” Dr Turner said. “Possums often nest in cooler places, such as in dreys located inside tree trunks and branches, which offer a buffer from the heat.”
* They largely lack sweat glands.
* I did see a couple Australia mortality and rescue stories due to heat waves.
[…] Some of the federal agencies firing probationary employees on Thursday, February 13, 2025 (Source: News media and individual agency employees who received the termination emails on federal employee bulletin boards.)
US Forest Service – 3,400 employees (10% of their workforce).
All probationary NNSA employees terminated – At Department of Energy – Maintains the safety, security, and effectiveness of the US nuclear weapons stockpile.
All USDA probationary employees.
VA health researchers are being laid off in mass due to Term Appointments and hiring freeze.
CNN: Scores of firings have begun at federal agencies, with terminations of probationary employees underway at the Department of Education and the Small Business Administration, federal employees and union sources told CNN.
They just fired all probationary employees in OPM. They called a mandatory meeting at 1:30 ET for 2ET. Everyone sat on the call in silence.
Department of education fired all probationary employees yesterday. A lot of colleagues received an email around 5 pm noting termination: “…regret to inform you that your position has been terminated. See attached. Please coordinate with your supervisor to return your equipment and retrieve any belongings that may in the building. Best wishes.”
The Education Department began terminating dozens of probationary employees on Wednesday.
Department of Housing and Urban Development were today to expect up to a 50% reduction in workforce at the housing agency. [end of list]
[…] WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Thursday intensified its sweeping efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce, the nation’s largest employer, by ordering agencies to lay off nearly all probationary employees who had not yet gained civil service protection — potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of workers.
‘Massacre’: Six DOJ officials resign in protest of ‘dangerous’ Trump abuse in widening scandal
Video is 9:30 minutes long.
Ari Melber covers the new developments. Six resignations today.
[…] “The resignations represent the most high-profile public resistance so far to Present Trump’s tightening control over the Justice Department.” [Melber quoting The New York Times.]
[…] “Rather than be rewarded, Adams’s [Mayor of New York, Eric Adams] advocacy should be called out for what it is: an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal of his case.It is a breathtaking and dangerous precedent to reward Adams’s opportunistic and shifting commitments on immigration and other policy matters with dismissal of a criminal indictment.” [Melber quoting Danielle R. Sassoon, who resigned. She is a Republican.] […]
Melber also covers the fact that Trump lied when questioned about the resignations.
The doge.gov website that was spun up to track Elon Musk’s cuts to the federal government is insecure and pulls from a database that can be edited by anyone […] One coder added at least two database entries that are visible on the live site and say “this is a joke of a .gov site” and “THESE ‘EXPERTS’ LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN -roro.”
[…]
doge.gov is seemingly built on a Cloudflare Pages site that is not currently hosted on government servers. […] “Feels like it was completely slapped together […] Tons of errors and details leaked in the page source code.”
The DOGE website appears to be developed and hosted by Outburst Data, run by current DOGE employee Kyle Schutt.
[An ID linked to his Cloudflare account was found throughout the doge.gov html. Googling the ID turned up the guy using his real name in a forum asking for help building a website.]
the account was being used to a host a number of different Elon Musk related websites. […] AMERICA PAC, DOGE, and WinRed
Commentary:
Rando 1: What are the downsides of it being hosted on a private site?
Rando 2: I mean, everyone in the world can hammer on the site for vulnerabilities, and your support team is the corner of the author techbro’s desk. Not to mention technical exploits on the servers, backend, or physical devices
Bekenstein Boundsays
NASA Just Funded A Project to Blow Space Structures Out Of Glass
Won’t they be too fragile? OK, sure, existing ones are more or less just giant aluminum cans, easily punctured. But at least they aren’t going to shatter when they get punctured, so you can limit depressurization to one compartment. You can’t do that if the entire outer hull disintegrates as soon as it gets any damage anywhere.
birgerjohanssonsays
“Highway robbery’: Musk, Trump yank $80m from NYC bank account over migrant lies”
A Russian drone caused significant damage to the radiation containment shelter at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant overnight, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday.
Zelenskyy and the UN’s energy watchdog both said that radiation levels remained normal after the incident, which came as top U.S., Ukrainian and European officials gathered at the Munich Security Conference to discuss the war in Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed Ukraine’s claim as a “provocation”, saying that he did not have precise information on the alleged incident but that Russia does not attack nuclear infrastructure…
A groundbreaking moment for the secular community in Africa has arrived with the unveiling of the continent’s first-ever atheist billboard in Accra, Ghana.
Sponsored by the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) in partnership with Accra Atheists, this historic installation marks a significant milestone in visibility and advocacy for African humanists, atheists, agnostics and skeptics.
The billboard, prominently displayed in the bustling downtown business district on Cantonments Road near Osu, Accra, reads: “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.” It affirms the presence of secular individuals in Ghana and beyond. The display is part of an initiative aimed at fostering awareness, encouraging open dialogue about secularism, and supporting the growing community of freethinkers in the region. It features a photo montage of activities that Accra Atheists members have engaged in, even including a picture of group President Roslyn Mould being interviewed by FFRF Co-Presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor in FFRF’s studio in the United States…
Florida has been struck with a phenomenon of dense fog that has what residents have described as a strange odor. In social media posts on Reddit and X, individuals have called the fog unusual from other fog common in Florida, much more dense and, well, smelly.
The phenomenon has, of course, sparked conspiracy theories online in the absence of credible information, as cataloged by Futurism. Some Redditors have speculated the fog captured chemicals from manufacturing plants in the region, but there is no definitive evidence to prove the claim. The federal government is distracted these days with President Trump effectively shutting down organizations by the day and pressuring its workforce of 2 million to take early retirement offers. We might just be stuck with TikTok experts on this one.
“I’m not the conspiracy type,” said one Reddit user, “but this is 100% happening in central Florida. I thought it was smoke at first, but it is fog. And it has a smell I cannot describe.” Another agreed, saying, “I usually laugh at the conspiracy theorists, but this fog IS weird. Smells off and doesn’t really look like any fog I’ve seen in my 30 years living here.” Another wrote the fog “smells kinda like a mixture of gasoline and rubber. Honestly, I cannot really describe it.” Geo-engineering practices, such as efforts to seed clouds and produce rain, only lend more credence to the conspiracy theories…
And for his next trick, iconic author Stephen King is channeling the work of a few fellow legends. He’s set to release a new spin on the iconic Brothers Grimm fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, with artwork by none other than the late great Maurice Sendak…
johnson catmansays
re Reginald Selkirk @95: Have they checked to see if the Orange Turd is in the area? It has been reported by multiple sources that he smells bad. It would not be unimaginable that he could emit some kind of stinky fog from his body.
“[Trump] first tried to get Russia back into the G7 in 2018. He tried again in 2020. Evidently, Trump is hoping the third time’s the charm.”
By any fair measure, Donald Trump ensured that Wednesday was a very good day for Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The Republican president, among other things, publicly vouched for Putin’s interest in peace, despite the devastating war in Ukraine that the Russian leader began and can end at any time.
Trump also declared that he expects Russia to keep at least some of the land Putin took from Ukraine by force, hedged on whether he considers Ukraine an equal member of the peace process, and again suggested that Russia’s invasion was Ukraine’s fault.
As Wednesday came to an end, former White House national security adviser John Bolton told CNN, “Putin has scored a whole series of victories today. It’s hard to encompass them all.” The former Trump aide added, “They’re drinking vodka straight out of the bottle in the Kremlin tonight. It was a great day for Moscow.”
After another embarrassing display in the White House, the next day was pretty great for Moscow, too.
Over the course of a single afternoon, Trump once again declared that Putin “wants peace,” all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding; once again vouched for the Russian leader’s trustworthiness; blamed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Joe Biden; suggested Barack Obama might also bear responsibility for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; and hedged when asked what Russia should give up in negotiations with Ukraine.
In case that weren’t quite enough, Trump also apparently has a gift in mind for his counterpart in Moscow. NBC News reported:
Trump lamented the fact that Russia was thrown out of the G8 international group as he answered questions from reporters in the Oval Office. “I’d love to have them back,” he said. “I think it was a mistake to throw them out.”
Russia, of course, was suspended from the international organization after it annexed Crimea in 2014. The idea was to impose a diplomatic punishment. More than a decade later, the Republican president apparently prefers the idea of a diplomatic reward. [social media post and video at the link]
Note, Trump added that Putin “would love to be back” in the G7. Though he didn’t elaborate on how, exactly, he knew this to be true, it suggests the two leaders spoke privately about the subject.
For the record, this was not the first time the president broached the subject. Trump first called on the G7 to readmit Russia into the group in 2018, sparking domestic and international pushback. The American president made a related effort in 2020, which went nowhere.
Trump has a notoriously short attention span, but it appears that on this issue, he’s persistent.
The Washington Post, meanwhile, reported that Trump has helped spark “elation in Moscow,” and there’s no great mystery as to why.
“It seemed hard to imagine the president’s relationship with the Kentucky senator getting much worse. Then Trump questioned whether McConnell had polio.”
Even during Donald Trump’s first term as president, he didn’t exactly have a good relationship with Sen. Mitch McConnell. In fact, in 2017, he looked at the Kentucky Republican as someone who would simply follow the White House’s demands. When the GOP’s then-Senate leader tried to explain how government worked, a “profane shouting match” soon followed.
After Trump’s defeat in the 2020 elections, the relationship deteriorated further: Trump condemned McConnell as a corrupt “hack,” targeted his wife, practically begged GOP senators to oust him from his leadership role, said McConnell “has a DEATH WISH” for disagreeing with Trump’s legislative strategies, and told The New York Times, on the record, that he considered McConnell to be “a piece of s—.”
It seemed unlikely that things could get worse — but [Trump] somehow found a way.
About a month before Trump’s second inaugural, McConnell sent some unsubtle shots across the president’s bow, even drawing parallels between the “America First” slogan and the fascists who used the same phrase in the 1930s.
[McConnell] has taken on a new and uncharacteristic role as the only GOP senator willing to oppose the White House’s most outlandish Cabinet nominees, voting against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
[…] As too much of the Republican Party becomes a cult of personality, honoring Trump as The One True Leader, it’s nice to see at least one GOP senator willing to take steps that his colleagues are too afraid to take, opposing nominees who obviously don’t deserve to be confirmed.
The other way to see McConnell’s shift is to acknowledge the fact that his sudden independent streak is far too late to matter, and it’s also proven inconsequential as Trump’s worst nominees cleared the Senate anyway. It’s easy to do the right thing in key moments when it doesn’t involve paying a price or making a practical difference.
Relatedly, the longtime senator has had plenty of opportunities to rid his party of Trump, and in each instance, he’s demurred. As my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones recently noted, McConnell has arguably been “among the biggest enablers of Donald Trump’s rise in the Republican Party and American politics.”
Which of these perspectives is correct? By most measures, I’d say both are.
[…] Trump appears furious, knowing that he no longer has any leverage over McConnell [Trump] told reporters that McConnell is “not equipped mentally.”
Reminded that McConnell is a polio survivor, making his vote against Kennedy something of a no-brainer, Trump apparently questioned whether the senator actually had polio. [social media post and video at the link]
[McConnell] really did have polio — a detail he emphasized in his statement explaining his opposition to [RFK Jr.]
[…] none of his GOP colleagues followed his lead, and for his trouble, he faced a new round of condemnations from his party’s president. They probably weren’t the last.
The coldest burst of Arctic air this season is coming to put an icy exclamation point on America’s winter of repeated polar vortex invasions, meteorologists warn. And it will stay frozen there all next week.
Different weather forces in the Arctic are combining to push the chilly air that usually stays near the North Pole not just into the United States, but also Europe, several meteorologists tell The Associated Press.
This will be the 10th time this winter that the polar vortex — which keeps the coldest of Arctic air penned in at the top of the world — stretches like a rubber band to send some of that big chill south, said Judah Cohen, seasonal forecast director at the private firm Atmospheric and Environmental Research. In a normal winter, it happens maybe two or three times…
[…] Money is the essential factor in funding research. But if we imagine ten processes that are necessary for the money to flow, in many cases five or six have been disrupted even if the money, in theory, isn’t frozen. As you can see I’m talking at a high level of generality here. […] But I’ve communicated with enough people on the inside to have a pretty good read of the overall situation.
There’s another level of the situation that is more elusive and has received, at least in the mainstream press, much less attention. There appears to be a concerted attempt to paralyze the various institutes and centers from within. This includes things like directives that one department can’t communicate with another or various directives against internal communication. Outside speakers aren’t allowed to come to discuss their research and vice versa. It’s very hard to imagine any benign intent behind these actions. They seem to be a mix of creating multiple layers of directives to halt all activity whatsoever combined with an effort to prevent one part of the organization from knowing what political appointees are shutting down or who they’re firing in another. […]
what most civil servants are really in the habit of is getting clear direction and executing it. A lot must have changed, I said. “I don’t think we’ve ever felt hunted for sport before,” this person replied.
But I’ve noticed a different note in these conversations over the last two or three days. And at least within NIH and its associated HHS research agencies that’s something along the lines of ‘where are the lawsuits’? Like where’s the cavalry? On a broad level there’s no opposition cavalry coming over the hill since the opposition is frozen out of all power at the federal level. As far as lawsuits go I suspect that part of the issue is that these are incredibly complicated bureaucracies in the sense that there are multiple centers and institutes and different agencies working on different things and often the nature of administrative law means each has to be litigated individually or perhaps the facts just differ enough in different places that different legal action is required.
[…] you have to find someone with standing to bring a suit. That all comes down to the complexities of the law generally and administrative law particularly. […] there’s more on the line here than empathy.
Danielle R. Sassoon, 38, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, a career prosecutor who has been with the office since 2016. She has sterling credentials: Harvard undergrad, Yale law, and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. She is a Federalist Society member who was named to the acting role just last month by the Trump administration to fill the post until Jay Clayton is confirmed.
Kevin Driscoll, the acting head of the department’s Criminal Division who previously had been in the Public Integrity Section;
John Keller, the acting head of the Public Integrity Section;
Rob Heberle, a prosecutor in the Public Integrity Section;
Jenn Clarke, a prosecutor in the Public Integrity Section;
Marco Palmieri, a prosecutor in the Public Integrity Section.
The Thuggery
Bove’s letter responding to Sassoon’s resignation is as dastardly and villainous as anything I’ve ever seen come out of the Justice Department. It’s comic book villain material. Among the snarling remarks and acts of retaliation:
– Bove put on administrative leave at least two other line prosecutors in the U.S. attorneys office in Manhattan who had worked the Adams case, claiming without basis that the entire prosecution was politically motivated (improbably by a Democratic president against a Democratic mayor in a Democratic city).
– Bove threatened Sassoon and the line prosecutors with internal investigation, by both the attorney general’s bogus “weaponization” group and the Office of Professional Responsibility.
– Bove suggested that Sassoon’s oath to uphold the Constitution was superseded by “the policies of a democratically elected President and a Senate-confirmed Attorney General.
In her letter, Sassoon had revealed: (i) Bove cut her out of his negotiations with Adams’ lawyers of what she alleged was a quid pro quo arrangement; (ii) scotched one of the prosecutors from taking notes of the meeting with Adams’ lawyers; (iii) made his decision to drop the case despite knowing that a superseding indictment was in the works to add additional obstruction charges against Adams.
MUST READ: The Dueling DOJ Letters
Feb. 12: Danielle Sassoon’s letter to Bondi [There’s more in that letter than most media outlets are reporting. So far, I’ve only seen Rachel Maddow do it justice.]
The Other DOJ Travesty
In another flagrant disregard of the law, Attorney General Pam Bondi gave an affirmative green light to Google and Apple to ignore the plain language of the statutory TikTok ban upheld by the Supreme Court.
Emil Bove’s Dirty Secret: He Investigated Jan. 6
Former co-workers from Emil Bove’s brief time as an aggressive investigator of Jan. 6 spill the tea. […]
Will The Courts Stand Firm Against Trump Lawlessness?
Among the at least 70 lawsuits against the Trump administration and 14 court orders blocking executive actions, we’re tracking the most important rulings:
– USAID: In the first USAID case, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols extended his order blocking the Trump administration from pulling workers worldwide off the job.
– USAID: In a second USAID case, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ordered an end to the spending freeze.
– Trans Care: U.S. District Judge Brendan Hurson of Maryland blocked Trump’s executive order banning the federal government from offering gender-affirming care for trans kids.
The Purges
– Government-wide: Some 200,000 government workers on probationary status are being purged.
– CFPB: Dozens of workers fired in after-hours blitz.
– CFPB: Acting head Russell Vought established a “tip line” to snitch on financial regulators who are still doing their jobs despite a White House “stand down” order.
– U.S. Forest Service: Some 3,400 federal employees still within their probationary period purged across every level of the agency beginning yesterday.
The Louisiana Department of Health will no longer promote mass vaccination, the state’s surgeon general, Dr. Ralph Abraham, told state health workers Thursday.
“The State of Louisiana and LDH have historically promoted vaccines for vaccine preventable illnesses through our parish health units, community health fairs, partnerships and media campaigns,” Abraham wrote in a memo addressed to “LDH Team Members” and obtained by CNN. “While we encourage each patient to discuss the risks and benefits of vaccination with their provider, LDH will no longer promote mass vaccination.”
The directive, first reported by the Times-Picayune, came the same day anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services. It was timing that Dr. Jennifer Avegno, director of the Health Department for the City of New Orleans, said she didn’t think was a coincidence.
“Now they have, in the ultimate health authority in America, someone who has been a champion of the same falsehoods that have been promulgated locally,” Avegno told CNN. “During his Senate confirmation hearings, [Kennedy] was given opportunities to walk back his stances on vaccines, and he really didn’t take them. … I think it gives folks who, for whatever reason, are in his way of thinking license to proceed.”
Avegno said New Orleans has an independent health department and isn’t subject to the state’s directive, and “we will not be abiding.”
“When you deprioritize, when you create confusion and doubt to any kind of medical information, then the fact is that folks don’t get it,” she said. “We’re already seeing that; our childhood vaccination rate has dropped in the last year or so, like many other states in the country.
“When vaccination rates drop,” Avegno said, “you get worse outbreaks.”
Louisiana has been struck particularly hard by flu amid a severe season for the whole country, Avegno said. […]
Trump administration officials at the Pentagon invited antisemitic right-wing conspiracy theorist and serial hoaxer Jack Posobiec to accompany Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on his trip to Europe.
The Washington Post reports that a planning document for Hegseth’s trip (where he provoked international ire by throwing Ukraine under the bus) included Posobiec among invited media, and that the decision to include the right-wing activist triggered “alarm among U.S. defense officials worried about the military being dragged into partisan warfare.”
Posobiec is currently employed by the far-right Human Events as a “senior editor” and previously worked for the pro-Trump One America News Network. On his X social media account, Posobiec has on multiple occasions attacked Jewish journalists with antisemitic content.
Posobiec used his account to single out reporters like CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who is Jewish, for harassment by white supremacists and also streamed video from the account mocking the Holocaust, during which 6 million Jewish people were murdered.
Additionally, Posobiec was one of the leading promoters of the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory which falsely claimed that a Washington, D.C. pizza restaurant was a front for a child trafficking operation connected to Democratic politicians. Pizzagate conspiracies inspired a would-be shooter to travel to the restaurant with a gun, later telling police he planned to “self-investigate” the lie spread by Posobiec and other conservatives.
Posobiec also took part in a hoax intended to help Trump and smear his critics during the 2016 election cycle. Trump supporters circulated images in November 2016 purporting to be anti-Trump protesters holding up a sign that read “Rape Melania.” The images went viral and the contents of the sign were condemned. But the sign was actually the handiwork of a group led by Posobiec, intending to discredit opposition to Trump.
In addition to the travel plans with Hegseth, Posobiec also accompanied recently installed Trump Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on his trip to Kiev, Ukraine. […]
Republicans have failed to schedule a confirmation vote for Rep. Elise Stefanik as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations because her vote is needed as House Republicans cut the social safety net.
[…] Republicans are sitting on her nomination until they can figure a way out of the mess they created for themselves.
At the moment, there are several international crises—some triggered by Donald Trump’s actions and rhetoric—that would benefit from a unified American response at the U.N. There is the war in Gaza (and Trump’s plan for ethnic cleansing), the war in Ukraine, and the international feuds that Trump has set off with Canada, Mexico, Denmark, and much of the European Union. […]
The party needs Stefanik—or another Republican in her seat—so they can cut $880 billion from Medicaid alongside a 20% cut to food stamps. There is also a concern that Social Security cuts are an option.
The state of paralysis once again shows that Republicans have prioritized the well-being of the wealthiest above everything else, even America’s role on the world stage.
“An American replication of Israel’s defense system doesn’t make sense. But, experts say, it will likely set up SpaceX for big government contracts.”
When I first reported on President Donald Trump’s promise to “BUILD A GREAT IRON DOME MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD,” an expert summed up the idea as “the insane ramblings of a senile old person.” But, with Trump in office, the “Iron Dome for America” plan is seemingly happening—and the project’s benefits for some of the most powerful people in the world are coming into focus.
In late January, Trump announced details for the Dome. A land-based missile-interceptor system—like the one Israel has—would not be possible to build for a country the size of the United States. Instead, military commentators coalesced around another plan: build a cloud of “satellite missile interceptors” similar to former President Ronald Reagan’s ill-fated 1980s “Star Wars” proposal.
In turn, the US Missile Defense Agency asked defense companies on January 31 to pitch space-based sensors and interceptors that could detect and defeat “advanced aerial threats” from low-space orbit. That means the proposed Iron Dome would almost certainly require thousands of satellites for putting interceptor weapons in space.
The company that currently dominates the market for such equipment? Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
“SpaceX is the only company that currently has the capacity to launch that many things,” Dr. Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists told Mother Jones. “They’re such a critical resource at this point that…if you’re going to launch a lot of things, SpaceX is going to be in the mix.”
There are—according to astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, who maintains a count of pretty much everything orbiting this planet—just over 11,000 working satellites in orbit. 6998 of them are Starlink satellites. That means 62 percent of all working satellites orbiting this planet belong to a company started byElon Musk, a drastic increase from only 5 years ago. More critically: SpaceX has the necessary launch capacity to send thousands of load-bearing satellites into orbit. They already handle the majority of NASA’s launches, for billions of dollars each year.
[…] A paper published in February by the National Security Space Association—a military-industrial think tank—highlights this further: though it might not be capable of efficiently stopping intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), a satellite missile-interceptor system like the proposed American Iron Dome cloud would be uniquely capable of getting Elon Musk paid. […]
Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute put the likely cost at somewhere between $11 and $27 billion for such a system—and pointed out that despite all that money, the system would only be able to intercept up to two rockets at a time. […]
“You need something like three interceptors to have a pretty good chance of taking down one incoming ICBM,” said John Erath, CACNP’s Policy Director. “So the numbers add up quickly, and the math isn’t good.”
[…] Grego, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the re-emergent idea a “fantasy,” more a branding attempt than a useful proposition.
“Invoking Iron Dome is just marketing, trying to manufacture credibility for something that has never worked,” she said. Instead of wasting money on the unachievable, she said, US efforts would be better spent on nuclear disarmament—something Trump threw his support behind this week. But paying companies like SpaceX to create an “American Iron Dome,” Grego argued, would have the opposite of that effect.
“Missile defenses are not a useful or long-term strategy for keeping the US safe from nuclear weapons,” she said.
We don’t know how to tell you this, but Pete Hegseth isn’t doing a very good job as secretary of Defense. We know! We are shocked and surprised too. […]
The other day, Hegseth opened his beerhole in a meeting at NATO HQ in Brussels and shared all his personal beliefs about Ukraine, specifically saying there was no reason to think about going back to Ukraine’s “pre-2014 borders” (AKA Ukraine’s actual borders) and that the United States definitely doesn’t think Ukraine should be in NATO. So don’t you worry about that, Putin […]
Unfortunately those remarks got Hegseth into a wee bit of trouble! Turns out he was kinda talking out of his ass, as they say. What a stupid, stupid boy.
Good thing this doesn’t affect anything important like national security! Oh wait.
Specifically, Hegseth wasn’t really supposed to say the thing about “No Ukraines in NATO.” Of course Trump said it, like five minutes later, back in Washington. […] Trump said he just doesn’t know how “a country in Russia’s position” could let Ukraine join NATO. You know, because in Trump’s compromised dementia brain, Ukraine is not a sovereign state and must ask Russia permission to do things. Also, Trump might be consumed with other geographical pursuits like the “Gulf of America” and grabbing Greenland […] but there’s no reason “a country in Russia’s position” should be bothered by a nation on its border being in NATO. Poland and Finland and Latvia and Lithuania and Estonia are, after fucking all.
But back to Hegseth, who is a loser and a failure and who is not getting the employee of the month parking spot at Trump’s Cabinet meetings. On Thursday, he was required to notify people that he is a little boy who needs to shut the fuck up, that Donald Trump is the president, and the president sets the policy, or at least implements the policy Putin tells the president to implement:
Hegseth, in his remarks to media on Thursday, said he wanted to make clear that “these negotiations are led by President Trump. Everything is on the table in his conversations with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky. What he decides to allow or not allow is at the purview of the leader of the free world — of President Trump.”
Hegseth added that he is “not going to stand at this podium and declare what President Trump will do or won’t do, what will be in or what will be out, what concessions will be made or what concessions are not made.” He cast his previous assessment ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine as “what’s likely” and a recognition of “hard-power realities on the ground.” […]
OK sure bud.
Tommy Vietor, who is now one of the Pod Save guys and previously worked for President Barack Obama in the National Security Council, had this to say about Hegseth’s little tapdance: [social media post at the link: “This was a huge fuckup by Hegseth. There’s no walking back his initial comments that Ukraine won’t join NATO or gain back all the territory lost since 2014. He wrote Putin a big check that has already been cashed. Maybe don’t make an unqualified Fox News host @SecDef?]
Meanwhile, Mississippi Republican Senator Roger Wicker, who chairs the Armed Services Committee and enthusiastically voted to confirm Hegseth, acted like he couldn’t have seen this coming, and oh boy, he is suddenly not mincing words about Hegseth’s original remarks:
“Hegseth is going to be a great defense secretary, although he wasn’t my choice for the job,” the Mississippi Republican told POLITICO on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. “But he made a rookie mistake in Brussels and he’s walked back some of what he said but not that line.”
“I don’t know who wrote the speech — it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool,” Wicker said, referring to the pro-Putin broadcaster.
It’s funny to watch these people fight.
Anyway, Wicker is “heartened” that Hegseth walked his original shit back (right before Trump basically said the same thing but whatever). He also offered this nugget of advice that Hegseth needs to know, whether he is the secretary of Defense, or whether he ends up with a job more suited to his skillset […]
“Everybody knows … and people in the administration know you don’t say before your first meeting what you will agree to and what you won’t agree to,” Wicker said, adding that he was “puzzled” and “disturbed” by Hegseth’s comments.
Everybody knows. Everybody. […]
Wicker, continuing to act like Republican senators are allowed to have independent streaks in Trump’s America, also confirmed that Vladimir Putin is a war criminal, should spend the rest of his life in prison, and that Russia should “absolutely not” be readmitted to the G7, despite how [Trump] is totally open to that idea.
But back to Hegseth again!
He really has said so many stupid things on this trip, it’s hard to keep track. He is just — OOF! — not a smart guy.
There was this, which he said Thursday:
“We can talk all we want about values. Values are important,” Hegseth said. “But you can’t shoot values, you can’t shoot flags, and you can’t shoot strong speeches. There is no replacement for hard power. As much as we may not want to like the world we live in, in some cases, there’s nothing like hard power.”
[…] There are also reports that Hegseth thought it would be a cool idea in a press conference yesterday to essentially tell everybody that the US Navy isn’t tough enough to face the Russian navy, which is as stupid strategically as it is just plain wrong. [social media post at the link: “Pete Hegseith, Defense Secretary, just announced in Brussels at a press conference that the U.S. isn’t prepared to face Russia, particularly at sea [more at the link]]
[…] We would note that they are having a hell of a lot of fun mocking the skunk-headed dipshit on r/military over those remarks. […]
In related humiliating news about bigots named “Hegseth,” apparently Pete Hegseth’s wife accompanied him to Brussels, and the American schools at NATO HQ removed posters of Harriet Tubman and removed origami cranes and removed rainbows in advance of her visit, because they were scared they might run afoul of Trump’s new bigot DEI orders. No really:
Teachers were worried that they would be seen as signs of Black, Japanese and gay culture — and thus run afoul of the new rules from Washington. […]
In the NATO schools preparing for Mrs. Hegseth, in the town of Mons, Belgium, Black history month materials were scrapped. Art displays with even vague references to rainbows — a symbol of gay pride — were removed. A cart at the middle school library held books related to sexual identity and gender issues — including titles like “Allies” and “Gracefully Grayson” — that were pulled from the shelves, based on a photo circulating among teachers and viewed by The New York Times.
Oh how humiliating for all of us, until the end of days.
That comes after earlier this week, when students at a school on a US military base in Stuttgart, Germany, greeted the Hegseths by staging a walkout protest of Trump’s backward Nazi bigot DEI policies. Students in Mons, Belgium, protested too.
The whole world hates these trash people, and so do all decent Americans.
Oh boy breaking right now, Barb McQuade says that “DOJ leadership has put all Public Integrity Section lawyers into a room with 1 hour to decide who will dismiss Adams indictment or else all will be fired.” Update: Reuters reports that someone has volunteered as tribute.
WHAT THE FUCK AND holy ghost of Richard Nixon! Looks like we’ve got another Saturday Night Massacre, (at least) seven people have resigned from the Justice Department, instead of following Pam Bondi and (acting) number two Emil Bove’s orders to drop charges against Eric Adams. Now with an extra side of collective punishment/the prisoner’s dilemma/game of “who’s going to be the Bork?”! Can’t Pammy Jo or Bove just do it themselves? Too embarrassing? But by now the “this is not political” horse has already left the barn, jogged around the block and given an interview to Fox & Friends.
(The original Justice Department “Saturday Night” massacre was during Watergate in 1973, when Tricky Dick tried to fire special counsel Archibald Cox for refusing Nixon’s demand that he drop a subpoena for Nixon’s White House tapes. But the two guys he sent to fire Cox, Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, resigned instead. And Robert Bork ended up firing Cox.)
So already this massacre is more than twice as big, and it hasn’t even been a month with this administration […]
To rewind, it’s sure been a fast-moving week in the Eric Adams world:
On Monday, Emil Bove, the current (acting) Justice Department number two, demanded that the DOJ dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, in a letter that was wantonly quid pro quo-y: “the pending prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that escalated under the policies of the prior Administration.” And he demanded they dismiss the charges without prejudice, so that charges could be brought again if Adams refused to do any future bidding. Just get on your knees and worship the emperor, and all of your legal problems can poof, go away!
Or, as the suckup New York Times calls it, “an extraordinary shattering of norms” and “a highly unorthodox argument.” Washington Post: “highly unusual.” Eye roll.
The corruption Adams was allegedly up to was mighty balls-out; he was charged with five counts of taking at least $100,000 worth of goodies and straw-donor bucks from Turkish officials over the course of almost a decade. Which he helpfully documented in text messages that he tried to hide by changing the password to his phone then claiming he forgot what the new password was! Subtle. The straw donations also let him access $10 million in matching public funds for his 2021 campaign. And it appears that prosecutors had convened a second grand jury in January that was considering an obstruction charge.
BUUUTT the (acting) US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), Danielle R. Sassoon, who is so far right she clerked for Scalia, is a member of the Federalist Society, and was appointed by Trump just three weeks ago, refused to go along. When your scheme is too corrupt for somebody with that resume, you know it’s bad.
In a letter to AG “Pamela Jo” Bondi, Sassoon said she couldn’t in good faith and with a straight face argue to a judge that the case should be dismissed because it was a weak case, or prosecutors misbehaved, or that dismissing it would be in the public interest, especially while Bove was over here saying out loud that dismissing charges would be in exchange for Adams doing the Trump administration’s bidding. Bove also lamely argued that Adams’s case was election interference because the next election is nine months away, LOL. Oh, and Sassoon said that in a meeting, Bove criticized one of her staff members for taking notes and collected those notes at the end.
Holy Stringer Bell! [video at the link]
Anyway, Sassoon offered to resign instead of trying to peddle that “breathtaking and dangerous precedent” bullshit, and that is what she ultimately did.
And Bove responded with a letter, reported the WSJ:
Under your leadership, the office has demonstrated itself to be incapable of fairly and impartially reviewing the circumstances of this prosecution. […] The Justice Department will not tolerate the insubordination and apparent misconduct reflected in the approach that you and your office have taken in this matter.
[…] So anyway Bove and Pammy Jo tried to reassign the case to the public-integrity unit so they could drown it in a bucket. BUUTT the (acting) head of the division, John Keller, resigned, and so did Kevin Driscoll, the top official leading the criminal division (not to be confused with Brian Driscoll, head of the FBI, who’s been leading the anti-Bove resistance there). And then another three officials resigned. And so far, no motion for dismissal has been filed in federal court, so guess Pammy Jo is still trying to find someone willing to do it.
Oh, and Friday morning a seventh resignation, Hagan Scotten, the lead prosecutor on the Adams investigation, writing in his letter:
No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives.
Yeah, if you haven’t noticed by now, “ordered liberty” is the opposite of what the Trump/Musk administration is trying to get going here.
In gratitude, Adams said he’d put ICE agents in Rikers Island, and appeared on “Fox & Friends” with border czar Tom Homan like some kind of butt puppet. Homan’s words, not mine! [video at the link]
In case there were any doubts about this being a quid-pro-quo/hostage situation. Just two months ago, Adams was singing a different tune.
“I’m not a supporter of mass deportation. […] This is inhumane. […] This is a sanctuary city. Those laws are in place. I want people to continue to go to school. I want people to continue to use our hospital systems. I want people to continue to know that if they’re a victim of a crime, they should report those criminal actions against them.”
But sometime between November and when he showed up to Trump’s inauguration, it seems Republican Jesus touched his heart […] He also has lawyers Alex Spiro and William A. Burck, who have defended Elon Musk against SEC complaints […]
And as of now, Adams is still the Mayor of New York […]
Governor Kathy Hochul told Rachel Maddow last night, “This just happened. I need some time to process this and figure out the right approach.” No mayor has ever been removed in New York, and no official has been removed since then-Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt dismissed New York County Sheriff Thomas Farley, a Tammany Hall leader who allegedly grafted more than $360,000 in 1931 dollars (or almost $6 million) from kickbacks in a gambling club he owned.
Pressure is growing on her to do that, especially now that prosecutors are being collectively punished by being locked in a room, so, Judge Judy watch-tapping gif! [Gif at the link]
A federal prosecutor agreed on Friday to file a motion to dismiss the criminal corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, in a bid to spare other career staff from potentially being fired by the acting deputy attorney general, sources briefed on the matter told Reuters.
The decision came amid pressure from Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who imposed a one-hour deadline on all public integrity attorneys on Friday to decide among themselves who would file the motion.
“The president signed an executive order to defund schools that require Covid vaccines for students and staff — but there’s an important catch.”
Those who watched Donald Trump’s campaign stump speeches during the 2024 race know that he had a habit of straying from the script in his teleprompter. There were, however, a few lines he never forgot to deliver.
Take this one, for example: “I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate.”
[Trump] pushed the line in Wisconsin. And Michigan. And Florida. And Washington, D.C. And Texas, Minnesota, and New Jersey. And Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, and Virginia. In fact, Trump has made the same declaration, word for word, for over a year.
For months, there was some discussion about whether he was referring specifically to Covid vaccine mandates or all vaccine mandates, and his political operation never made much of an effort to clarify matters. The public was only told that Trump intended to apply his policy to all public education “from kindergarten through college.”
Nearly a month into the president’s second term, he’s now followed through on his misguided campaign vow. The Hill reported:
President Trump signed an executive order Friday to defund schools and other education agencies that require COVID-19 vaccines for students and staff. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the head of the Department of Education are directed to create a plan to end these mandates and end federal funding for entities that do not comply.
At first blush, this might sound alarming, but an Associated Press report highlighted a highly relevant detail: “The order is expected to have little national impact because COVID-19 vaccine mandates have mostly been dropped at schools and colleges across the United States, and many states have passed legislation forbidding such mandates.”
The grand total of states requiring Covid vaccines for students and staff is zero.
Of course, across the country, school districts require children to be fully immunized against, among other things, polio, measles, hepatitis B, chickenpox, diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis before they can attend classes. These policies have existed for years; they’ve been incredibly effective; they enjoy the support of public health officials; and they haven’t been especially controversial.
Will these policies change? At least for now, the answer appears to be no: Trump’s new order applies to Covid vaccine mandates, and nothing else.
Then again, now that 52 Republican senators have made Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, the secretary of health and human services, vigilance is probably in order.
“There is an apparent expectation in the White House that news organizations will either use Trump-approved language, or they should expect to be punished.”
Donald Trump and his team certainly appear excited about trying to convince people to start referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, but the public appears unconvinced: A national poll from Marquette Law School, released this week, found 71% of Americans oppose the name change. Other recent polling pointed in nearly identical directions.
Evidently, the White House doesn’t care. The Washington Post reported:
On Thursday, for the third day in a row, the White House prevented Associated Press reporters from attending official events, a spokesperson for the news organization confirmed to The Washington Post. An AP reporter was blocked from attending two afternoon events in the Oval Office, including a swearing-in ceremony for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A day later, it happened for the fourth consecutive day.
By way of an explanation, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Wednesday, “I was very upfront in my briefing on Day 1 that if we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable.” She added, “And it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America, and I’m not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that.”
In other words, as far as the president’s chief spokesperson is concerned, it’s a “lie” to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of Mexico. Trump signed an order unilaterally changing the name of the body of water, the argument goes, so everyone has responsibility to just go along with the president’s one-man rebranding campaign.
Two days later, Taylor Budowich, a White House Deputy chief of staff, published a related pitch via social media, accusing the Associated Press of “ignoring the lawful geographic name change,” which according Budowich, “exposes the Associated Press’ commitment to misinformation.”
He did not appear to be kidding.
I received a note a couple of days ago from a reader who suggested the whole “Gulf of America” campaign is too silly to care about. With all of the many abuses and burgeoning scandals surrounding the president and his administration, the reader argued, this is trivia worth ignoring.
t’s not an unreasonable point. In fact, I generally don’t much care what names and phrases Trump comes up with for anything.
But it’s worth appreciating the fact that this isn’t just about rebranding a body of water. Rather, this is about a White House that’s waging an aggressive campaign against the free press, and in this instance, is also trying to bully one of the nation’s leading news organizations into submission as part of an Orwellian campaign.
There is an apparent expectation in the West Wing that news organizations will either use Trump-approved language, or they should expect to be punished.
Welcome to the exciting new era for the First Amendment, in which people and businesses are free to use the words and phrases that Republicans like — or there will be consequences.
Donald Trump welcomed an important international visitor to the White House this week, holding a bilateral meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday. But as it turns out, the Republican president wasn’t the only one to get some facetime with the Indian leader.
NBC News reported that Trump’s top campaign donor, Elon Musk, was also in the Oval Office during Trump and Modi’s comments to reporters. Soon after, the public learned about Musk having his own meeting with the prime minister. Modi said via social media that the two discussed “space, mobility, technology and innovation.”
The New Republic added, “Several parts of Musk’s businesses concern India. The tech mogul is trying to get access for his Starlink satellite internet service in the country, and is fighting with Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, who has competing interests. Musk also is trying to sell low-cost Tesla vehicles in India and get past the country’s tariffs on electric vehicles.”
Was the billionaire meeting with the Indian prime minister in his businessman capacity, or as the head of a quasi-governmental “department”? When the president was asked this question, he replied, “I don’t know.”
How reassuring.
Around the same time, the public learned about Musk’s DOGE surrogates arriving at, of all places, NASA. Given the fact that Musk has a rocket company called SpaceX, the conflicts of interest seem rather obvious.
Asked about the underlying problem last week, the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, “[I]f Elon Musk comes across a conflict of interest with the contracts and the funding that DOGE is overseeing, then Elon will excuse himself from those contracts.”
Or put another way, Team Trump’s plan to address Musk’s potential conflicts of interest, as of last week, was to allow Musk to police himself.
This week, as The Washington Post reported, the president apparently has a new plan.
President Donald Trump on Thursday claimed that he is personally checking to ensure that billionaire Elon Musk, whom he has tasked with leading the U.S. DOGE Service, is not engaging in government matters that pose a conflict of interest for his companies. … The president also claimed that he was personally checking to ensure that Musk had no conflicts of interest and said Musk answers to him.
Ah. So the White House’s solution to Musk’s obvious conflict-of-interest problem is to have the sitting U.S. president — who, presumably, keeps pretty busy with his day job — personally familiarizing himself with the details of his megadonor’s business empire and government contracts, while simultaneously scrutinizing the individual decisions made by Musk and his many Department of Government Efficiency surrogates.
I don’t mean to sound picky, but if this plan is intended to resolve the controversy, it’s badly flawed.
with a feature allowing users to “trace your tax dollars through the bureaucracy.” People can navigate through all federal agencies and offices for details about their head counts, budgets and average ages of employees.
[…]
DOGE’s database provides details on the National Reconnaissance Office, the federal agency that designs, builds and maintains U.S. intelligence satellites. Not only are NRO’s budgets and head counts classified, but the prospect of Musk’s tech team meddling in sensitive personnel information is setting off alarms
[…]
NOFORN stands for “Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals,” meaning information in this category can’t be shared with any foreign governments, international organizations or foreign nationals without specific authorization.
NRO appears to be the only intelligence agency with its data publicly available on DOGE’s website. […] Musk can’t claim he wasn’t aware that the National Reconnaissance Office is one of the nation’s intelligence agencies. His company, SpaceX, has a $1.8 billion contract with NRO to build hundreds of spy satellites.
“Elon Musk’s DOGE Posts Classified Data On Its New Website”
Elon Musk’s team at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has posted classified information about the size and staff of a U.S. intelligence agency on its new website, raising bigger concerns about where Musk’s programmers got this information and what they are doing with it.
DOGE […] launched its website on Wednesday night with a feature allowing users to “trace your tax dollars through the bureaucracy.” People can navigate through all federal agencies and offices for details about their head counts, budgets and average ages of employees.
The website states in tiny print at the bottom that its database excludes information from U.S. intelligence agencies.
But an easy search shows that DOGE’s database provides details on the National Reconnaissance Office, the federal agency that designs, builds and maintains U.S. intelligence satellites. Not only are NRO’s budgets and head counts classified, but the prospect of Musk’s tech team meddling in sensitive personnel information is setting off alarms for some in the intelligence community.
“DOGE just posted secret NOFORN info on their website about [intelligence community] headcount, so currently people are scrambling to check if their info has been accessed,” said one Defense Intelligence Agency employee, who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation from senior leaders.
NOFORN stands for “Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals,” meaning information in this category can’t be shared with any foreign governments, international organizations or foreign nationals without specific authorization.
NRO appears to be the only intelligence agency with its data publicly available on DOGE’s website. The U.S. intelligence community is composed of 18 organizations, and HuffPost searched DOGE’s website for details on all of them. None of the others had any data.
Musk can’t claim he wasn’t aware that the National Reconnaissance Office is one of the nation’s intelligence agencies. His company, SpaceX, has a $1.8 billion contract with NRO to build hundreds of spy satellites.
Two Senate aides who work on intelligence matters confirmed that NRO’s headcount and budget are classified, though they noted there have been debates within the intelligence community as to whether they should be. The reason to keep this information private at all, they said, is because foreign adversaries could use it to extrapolate how much the U.S. is prioritizing certain intelligence activities.
Nonetheless, DOGE sharing this information “is absolutely a problem under the current intelligence standards,” said one of the Senate aides.
And the real concern is that Musk’s surrogates are bumbling around in classified programs. “These 25-year-old programmers, I don’t think they have enough experience to know what they don’t know,” said this aide. “Really, the question is: Where did they get this information and what are they doing with it?” […]
[…] the president’s infamous booking shot—decorated with an ornate gold frame—now hangs in the White House near stately portraits of former presidents, like Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.
At least one outlet, The Independent, has verified that the image is legitimate […]
We already knew that Trump is a narcissist with a huge ego, but this might be a new low for him.
The photo in question was taken by authorities at the jail in Fulton County, Georgia, on Aug. 24, 2023, after Trump was indicted on racketeering and conspiracy charges in an alleged scheme to overthrow the 2020 election results.
Sadly, the convicted felon spent no time behind bars. Trump was released on a $200,000 bond less than 30 minutes after arriving at the Georgia-based facility […]
Notably, it’s not just the mugshot that Trump has framed. He went one step further, hanging a copy of the New York Post’s front-page story about the mugshot. […]
The framed mugshot suggests that—to no one’s surprise—Trump doesn’t feel any shame or guilt for his past actions and is continuing to politicize the image to his benefit.
He’s already profited off of the image. In fact, he made a whopping $7.1 million in the days after his booking photo went viral by selling koozies, mugs, posters, and T-shirts donning the image. […]
Munich Conference: European Leaders Destroy Trump Admin at Conference.
-European leaders stand up to Trump and J D Vance after the awful speech Vance did yesterday.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=lv92XMklr-g
The excerpts add up, but I recommend watching them.
tell us why each of your recent hires should keep their jobs.
[…]
at the Energy Department, a supervisor was given 20 minutes to turn around the justifications. They were limited to 200 characters per employee, including spaces. The directive came from the Office of Personnel Management and follows the human resources agency asking every agency for lists of employees still on their probationary periods [1-2 years]. […] That supervisor was also included on the list, and now fears for their job.
[…]
Similar instructions were given to the Internal Revenue Service and at least some other agencies with an equally tight deadline
“The interviews are anxiety provoking,” said a GSA supervisor whose employees were recently interviewed by a DOGE worker. The tension swells the moment a worker receives a calendar invite from a Gmail account, they said, “frequently with almost no notice and often scheduled over existing client meetings.”
[…]
The DOGE crew’s questions led GSA staffers to believe the group was looking to cull employees who lacked technical skills or added bureaucratic layers to government operations, which some techies like Musk have sought to eliminate for rapid, unregulated innovation.
A measles outbreak in an area of Texas with abysmal vaccination rates continues to mushroom, with cases doubling since Tuesday and expanding into additional counties.
A week ago, officials reported nine confirmed cases in Gaines County, at the border of New Mexico, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates among kindergartners in the state at just about 82 percent. On Tuesday, the cases climbed to 24, all in Gaines. In Friday’s update, the state health department reports that the case count has now reached 48 and spread to three nearby counties, which also have vaccination rates below the 95 percent threshold that prevent vaccine-preventable diseases from spreading onward.
Gaines now reports 42 cases. There’s one case reported in Lynn County to the northeast, which has a 91 percent vaccination rate. Terry County, with a vaccination rate of 94 percent, reports three cases, and Yoakum County, with a vaccination rate of 92.5 percent, reports two cases. Terry and Yoakum are both directly north of Gaines…
The Nigerian government has condemned Canada for denying visas to its senior military officers, including the head of the military.
Chief of Defence Staff Gen Christopher Musa said half of his delegation, who were supposed to be in Canada for an official assignment on Wednesday, were left in Nigeria after not getting the correct paperwork.
Interior Minister Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo condemned the action by Canadian officials, terming it “disrespectful” to the West African country.
The Canadian High Commission in Nigeria said it was aware of the matter but declined to give further details for “privacy reasons” on the specific individuals involved…
Speaking on Thursday, Gen Musa said how he and his colleagues were blocked from attending an event in Canada meant to honour war veterans.
“We were invited along with our team, but while half of us got visas, the other half was denied. It’s very disappointing,” he added…
In response to billionaire Elon Musk’s unlawful takeover of the Treasury Department, about 1,000 citizens and elected Democrats gathered in Washington on Tuesday to protest. Demonstrators waved signs blasting “President Musk” or “King Elon,” noting that no one had elected the Trump adviser to serve as the power behind the throne. This meme of “President Musk” has also spread rapidly on social media, with even Kamala Harris’ former running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, joking, “Elon Musk is a terrible president.”
Unfortunately, Musk gets a kick out of this, because the man is a Bond villain minus the intelligence and coolness. Yet the narrative persists, in part, as an effort to raise awareness about what looks very much like a coup, but also in the misguided hope of driving a wedge between Musk and the man who technically is the president, Donald Trump. He may be the only man in the world whose snowflake-fragile ego surpasses Musk’s. By pointing out that Musk is overshadowing him, the goal is to provoke narcissistic injury in Trump, causing him to lash out and kick the billionaire video game cheater out the door.
It’s a smart theory, one based on basic psychology. Yet after months of taunting Trump with the “President Musk” meme, it doesn’t seem to be working. It has forced Trump to do some ego protection work, like unpersuasively insisting, “Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval.” However, Trump seems mostly content to step back and let Musk run rampant. Trump even runs interference for Musk, making excuses and propping up distractions, like his trolling claim that he wants to occupy Gaza. Headlines claiming that Trump is restricting Musk’s antics are misleading. Sure, a court ordered Trump to rein Musk in, but that’s no guarantee he’ll do it.
So why isn’t the notoriously thin-skinned Trump more upset at the younger, richer Musk for stealing his thunder?
To understand Trump’s indifference, it helps to look back at the happiest time in his life: a reality TV stint pretending to be a successful businessman on NBC’s “The Apprentice.” Before becoming a reality TV host, Trump tried to make it as a real businessman, of course, but failed so spectacularly and often that he may qualify as the biggest business failure of all time. Leaked tax records show that he blew through the half-billion he inherited from his father, sold off huge chunks of his father’s genuinely successful real estate business to pay off debts and went bankrupt multiple times…
JetWind Power Corporation, a company based in the United States, has installed first-of-its-kind Energy Capturing Pods (ECPs) at Dallas Love Field Airport.
This technology is designed to capture aircraft-generated wind and transform it into renewable energy, marking a significant step forward in sustainable energy solutions for transportation infrastructures worldwide…
From text Reginald quoted in comment 122 about the measles outbreak in Texas:
[…] with cases doubling since Tuesday and expanding into additional counties […]
That’s so alarming! Measles, as most people know, is highly contagious.
Reginald @125, I think there are a lot of factors at play, but consider this: Musk is getting a lot of “work” done. Yes, it is destructive “work,” but Musk is doing something Trump can’t do. Trump is too incompetent to get all that done … but, Trump gets to take credit anyway. So, that’s part of why he puts up with the “President Musk” memes. Trump didn’t really do the work of putting “The Apprentice” reality show together, (Mark Burnett did that), but Trump took most of the credit.
Linda McMahon, testifying before a Senate committee considering her nomination to be secretary of education, said she did not know whether a school would be legally permitted to offer a Black history class or allow clubs centered on racial or ethnic identity.
This afternoon termination notices are going out to more than 300 employees at the National Cancer Institute. Locked out of access by the end of the day, four weeks paid leave, and that’s that.
Utah is doing its best to join President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the GOP’s national anti-diversity culture war. A new bill banning pride flags from schools, government buildings, or any government property while still allowing Nazi and Confederate flags to be used in classrooms, passed through the Utah House Education Committee.
The HB77 bill bans pride flags but it does have a list of exemptions that include, “a historic version of a flag … that is temporarily displayed for educational purposes.” According to the Salt Lake Tribune, bill sponsor Rep. Trevor Lee explained to the committee what those exemptions would include.
“There are instances where in classrooms, you have curriculum that is needed to use flags such as World War II, Civil War,” he said. “You may have a Nazi flag. You may have a Confederate flag, and so you are allowed to display those flags … as part of the curriculum, and that is okay.”
Lee later claimed he never mentioned a Nazi flag during the committee meeting. “There is a difference between displaying flags in curriculum when you’re teaching on them,” Lee said, and added that schools should not “censor history.”
The bill, which started out as simply a bigoted school bill, has been expanded to include all government buildings in the state.
Lee and proponents argue that the bill keeps people’s “ideologies” out of the classroom. Opponents point out that the LGBTQ+ communities in Utah are people, and the only political symbol that a pride flag extols is that LGBTQ+ people deserve basic human and civil rights—which while “political” to bigots, is a constitutionally protected right (for now).
During a hearing on the bill Millie Dworkin from the Salt Lake Center for Science Education called the ban “unconstitutional,” reported LGBTQ Nation.
“You all argue semantics, but you all know this is wrong and immoral. Queer people commit suicide at a higher rate than everybody else,” she said. “This is not because they are inherently prone to commit suicide due to their sexual orientation or gender identity. It is because of how they are treated. If you pass this, you will have queer blood on your hands.”
“This new language is likely unconstitutional and a violation of the First Amendment rights of governments to engage in free speech,” Equality Utah’s policy director Marina Lowe told Deseret News.
Lee is your run-of-the-mill modern anti-choice, anti-climate-change Republican, yet he seems keen to up his profile and join the anti-DEI culture war sideshow the Republican Party is involved in. […]
MUNICH (The Borowitz Report)—Crediting the vice president with ushering in a new era of European solidarity, attendees at the Munich Security Conference left Friday’s session united in the belief that JD Vance is a prick.
“I came to Munich full of skepticism that we as a group of nations could find common ground on anything,” Danish delegate Hartvig Dorkelson said. “That all changed the moment that asshat Vance opened his mouth.”
Though he was grateful that all the nations of Europe could agree that Vance is a ginormous dick, Dorkelson warned against taking this historic consensus for granted.
“I worry that our unity could be short-lived,” he said. “So we must invite that fucker to speak again next year.”
Followup to comment 131. Unlike The Borowitz Report, this is not satire:
Vice President JD Vance tried to defend Elon Musk’s interference in the federal government by making a poorly received joke at the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, on Friday.
“I say this with all humor, if American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk,” Vance said.
He then paused for laughter. But there was only dead silence.
Aside from Vance’s terrible comedic skills, the two situations aren’t remotely comparable.
Musk is by far the wealthiest person on the planet. He owns one of the largest social media networks, has earned billions from government contracts, bankrolled the presidential campaign of the current president, and regularly amplifies antisemites, racists, and misogynists.
Thunberg is an environmentalist and activist attempting to stop the climate crisis. She started her protests when she was in her teenage years, and she’s now 22. […]
Musk is the head of a team dismantling key portions of the U.S. government—while making money from that same government.
[…] The bad joke wasn’t the only Vance fumble in Europe.
While covering for Musk on his trip, Vance boosted far-right extremists in Germany, meeting with the leader of Alternative for Germany, or AFD—a party the country’s domestic intelligence service considers so extreme that it warrants surveillance. The party is well known for its antisemitism, ethno-nationalism, and use of Nazi slogans.
Not only did Vance meet with the leader of AfD, he also publicly argued it is an eligible political partner.
“I can tell you plainly: There can be no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions, and the conscience that guide your very own people,” he said in his speech at the Munich Security Conference.
“[W]e don’t have to agree with everything or anything that people say. But when political leaders represent an important constituency, it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialogue with them,” he added.
Germany’s other political parties have formed a consensus not to work with AfD.
“I don’t think it is right for foreigners, including those from friendly foreign countries, to interfere so intensively in an election campaign in the middle of an election period,” a spokesperson for the German government said in response to Vance’s remarks.
Unsurprisingly, Musk has also made recent overtures to AfD, which shares his and Vance’s opposition to immigrants. “Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk wrote in a post on X.
During the recent presidential campaign, Vance earned a reputation for being “weird.” Despite protests from Republicans, his behavior as vice president is only boosting that perception.
[…] The Assistant USAO for the SDNY, Hagan Scotten has resigned rather than participate in the dismissal of Eric Adams. He is at least the seventh attorney to resign over this issue. You can read his one page blistering resignation letter HERE.
Scotten briefly, but in devastating form, addresses the Musk/Trump DOJ’s justification for dismissal.
“the first justification for the motion—that Damian Williams’s role in the case somehow tainted a valid indictment supported by ample evidence, and pursued under four differentU.S. attorneys—is so weak as to be transparently pretextual. The second justification is worse. No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives.”
However, the conclusion is simply strongest exercise in lawyering courage I have ever seen.
“I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.”
The filing does not spell the end of the high-profile case. A federal judge must approve the decision to drop the charges.
The Justice Department on Friday moved to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, the latest move in a legal saga that has led to the resignations of at least seven federal prosecutors and plunged the department into crisis.
The filing does not immediately end the high-profile case. A federal judge must approve the decision to drop the charges.
The extraordinary mutiny from career Justice Department prosecutors was set in motion on Monday when acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered Danielle R. Sassoon, then the top prosecutor in Manhattan, to dismiss the charges. Bove argued in part that the case was interfering with Adams’ ability to help the administration tackle illegal immigration.
[…] After Sassoon refused to dismiss the case, Justice Department officials moved it to the agency’s Public Integrity Section in Washington, which oversees all federal public corruption cases, multiple sources said.
But multiple prosecutors in the unit resigned rather than follow the directive to drop the charges. And on Friday, another top prosecutor in Manhattan also resigned, bringing the number of departures sparked by the order to seven.
The filing to dismiss the case came hours after Bove and Antoinette Bacon, an official with the Justice Department’s criminal division, held a video meeting with members of the Public Integrity Section.
One of the lawyers who ultimately signed the filing was Edward Sullivan, a senior litigation counsel with the section. Sullivan decided to sign it to protect his colleagues, a person familiar with the matter said. Bove and Bacon also signed it.
[…] even amid those calls and the turmoil at the Justice Department, Adams has not shied away from the spotlight.
He appeared on “Fox & Friends” Friday morning with Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan. Adams remained defiant, saying he was not going to resign and pledging to allow federal immigration agents to operate at the city’s Rikers Island jail complex.
Homan celebrated Adams’ pledge.
“I came to New York City and I wasn’t going to leave with nothing,” he said.
But if Adams “doesn’t come through,” Homan warned, he would “be in his office, up his butt saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’”
Yeah. That’s helpful. Homan confirmed that dismissing Adams’ case depended on [still depends upon] the mayor’s cooperation with Trump’s deportation assholery. In fact, the case against Adams can be renewed if he, at any time, fails to live up to his apparent promise of total fealty to Trump.
GOP senator rips Hegseth’s Ukraine remarks: Could be written by ‘fool’ Tucker Carlson
The segment, presented by Chris Hayes, is from tonight’s show, February 14.
Hegseth’s attempt at a walkback was just hilariously bad. Chris Hayes shows an excerpt from the talkback video. John Brennan joined Chris to discuss just how badly the Munich conference was going, and just how far out of his league Pete Hegseth is. Also, Brennan mentions: “A lack of coordination within the Trump administration.” And, he says, “It has been an embarrassment [in Munich].”
Brennan also discusses Trump’s claim that he is going to take over Gaza. The video is 7:06 minutes long.
That segment is followed by See Trump’s ‘blatant quid pro quo’ with Eric Adams play out live on Fox News. The video is 10:53 minutes long.
The number of resignations from the Justice Department is now up to seven.
As Chris Hayes pointed out, Mayor Eric Adams asked Trump for a pardon. He did not get a pardon.
Instead, Trump dangled (continues to dangle) freedom in front of Adams. Trump retains leverage over Adams.
Chris Hayes interviews Andrew Weissmann and Paul Butler about the Public Integrity unit of the Justice Department, and all of the other aspects of the case.
Excerpts from “The Democracy Index” by Joyce Vance, posted today, February 14:
The Courts
[…] Following the attacks on the judiciary by Vance, Musk, and other Senators, something previously unseen happened. A few Republican Senators decided that attacking judicial review was a bridge too far. They spoke up to say something that would have been unremarkable in any other area—that parties (including the government) who disagree with a judge’s decision can appeal it, but they must obey the orders of the courts:
– Senator Josh Hawley told Business Insider, “‘Oh, we’re just going to completely ignore the decision?’ That, I think you can’t do.”
– Senator Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley stated, “We’ve got a system of checks and balances, and that’s what I see working…I learned in eighth grade civics about checks and balances, and I just expect the process to work its way out.”
– Senate Majority Leader John Thune acknowledged to CNN that the judiciary serves to resolve differences between executive and legislative branches, and that he expects federal courts to play “the important role of ensuring that the laws in the country are followed.”
These GOP responses provide encouraging signs of life, especially when viewed in concert with the majority of orders emerging from the judiciary. They are important gains for our rule of law. But we cannot be confident that they will be the final word. Any discussion of disregarding the courts is a profound concern and has the potential to move us closer to autocracy than democracy.
All of the cases challenging Trump’s executive branch actions are still at a very early stage. Judges are freezing the status quo so litigation can proceed without irreparable harm to plaintiffs. As the cases move forward, Trump will win some, and he will lose some. The expectation is that courts will stand for the rule of law, and that presidents—who are not kings—will do things by the book, especially when that means seeking Congress’s approval…instead of assuming they have it with the stroke of a Sharpie.
DOGE
Despite Musk’s claims that he and his band of boys are looking for waste and fraud, he’s sent coders into agencies, not forensic accountants or investigators. It defies belief that in a couple of days, he and his tech apprentices have uncovered significant fraud. Instead, it seems increasingly likely that DOGE is a front for bulldozing parts of the federal bureaucracy that have run afoul of Trump or Musk’s sensitivities. […]
There are now multiple lawsuits challenging DOGE’s activities. But the complaints about alleged unconstitutional conduct are coming from the lawyers and the left. Trump’s party has remained hushed, even as Musk and DOGE have intruded into the Department of the Treasury payment system and the Office of Personnel Management’s sensitive personnel records, while advocating for wholesale firings of career government employees and closure of entire agencies because of “waste.” […]
Who is the Administrator of the United States DOGE service? No one seems to know. After a hearing on DOGE access to Treasury payment systems, […] I asked one of the DOJ attorneys who argued on behalf of the administration.
“I don’t know the answer to that,” he replied.
Yesterday, an amended complaint was filed in Lentini v. DOGE, a case […] that Musk/DOGE have violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The plaintiffs claim that Musk, while taking credit for DOGE’s activities, “is not the USDS administrator.”
Despite purpoting to be the head of DOGE, taking credit for its activities, and making statements based on non-public information available to DOGE, Musk is not the USDS Administrator. “A White House record seen by Business Insider says his job is simply ‘unlisted’. Though Musk has a White House access badge […] the White House has not confirmed Musk’s title.
Chris Geidner (Law Dork): “This is unreal. I was thinking earlier in the week that they couldn’t be this stupid, but I guess that’s on me.”
StevoRsays
Aussie ABC’s excellent informative TV & YT series If You’re Listening has this revelatory behind the scenes well worth watching episode on how Trump has been manipulated into his ethnic cleansing “plan” and out of making peace with and becoming friends and allies with the PA President Abbas here – The shocking story behind Trump’s plan to “own”Gaza. ( Approx 20 mins long.)
Every web page ordered restored by the court that features anything related to gender now contains this notice. [Screenshot]
[…] Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate [blah blah…]
KGsays
JD Vance stuns Munich conference with blistering attack on Europe’s leaders. Vance’s spew of insults and lies will be welcome if it finally wakes European leaders (including Starmer) to the fact that the USA under Trump is not an ally, let alone a “friend”, but a fascist enemy, and ally of our other fascist enemy in the Kremlin, as well as the fascist threat from within. Democratic Europe’s situation is desperate, but not terminal if we actually face up to it.
So far, Starmer has focused completely on appeasing Trump, in the face of Musk’s absurd lies about Labour’s “tyranny”. I have absolutely no faith in the man, but he should realise that nothing short of total subservience and unquestioning obedience will be accepted by Emperor Donald.
The Journal reported, “Vance said the option of sending U.S. troops to Ukraine if Moscow failed to negotiate in good faith remained ‘on the table,’ striking a far tougher tone than did Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who on Wednesday suggested the U.S. wouldn’t commit forces.”
Hard to say if this is the US flip flopping or just chaos internally over what the US position is. With an outside chance Vance is trying to stake out his own more aggressive position because he knows Trump doesn’t really care and Vance is still looking at his own political future.
Hegseth, the former Fox News morning show host, walked back comments he made during the NATO summit earlier in the week. On Thursday, he clarified that Ukraine joining NATO was still a possibility as part of peace negotiations — just a day after suggesting it was unlikely and argued that Europe should instead guarantee Ukraine’s security by building up its military capabilities. Hegseth also raised eyebrows across the globe by saying Ukraine returning to its pre-2014 borders was an “unrealistic” goal, effectively conceding territory to the invading Russians.
Most of what Hegseth said is reasonably realistic but terrible to say in public. Starting negotiations with a hostile country by conceding most of their position is just bad. You would think a guy with a background in news reporting would understand that a lot of his job is actually publicity.
Practically Ukraine is unlikely to get Crimea and other sections taken by Russia before the current invasion back. Joining NATO takes time and the NATO countries are not going to want such a messy border. And the US would certainly prefer the EU states provide the soldiers on the ground securing the border, though expecting them to provide all of the soldiers is also unrealistic.
JMsays
@124 birgerjohansson: I have seen a lot of speculation about that sort of thing over the years. It is interesting but I don’t put much confidence in a model built from a sample size of 1. It’s way to easy for a person to write their assumptions into the model without even realizing it because with nothing to compare to they don’t even realize they are assumptions.
I will agree that intelligent life is probably easier then early research said. It has become clear that several things originally thought to be big difficult evolutionary steps have happened multiple times on the Earth, suggesting they can’t be that hard. For a long time the development of multicellular life was assumed to be a big step but we know now it has happened many times.
Bekenstein Boundsays
U.S. Forest Service: Some 3,400 federal employees still within their probationary period purged across every level of the agency beginning yesterday.
Meta unveiled on Friday Project Waterworth, a 50,000-kilometer subsea cable network that will be the world’s longest such system. The multi-billion dollar project will connect the U.S., Brazil, India, South Africa, and other key regions. The system utilizes 24 fiber pairs and introduces what Meta describes as “first-of-its-kind routing” that maximizes cable placement in deep water at depths up to 7,000 meters.
The company developed new burial techniques for high-risk areas near coasts to protect against ship anchors and other hazards…
lon Musk claimed that his team found 150-year-old people collecting Social Security! He implied there were dead people being sent benefits, with checks cashed by someone else.
But no—the people getting paid are very much alive. They are collecting their own benefits. They’re not committing fraud. They’re just not 150 years old, of course. [video at the link]
Reports say that his group at DOGE is made up of fairly young people. What those kids don’t realize is that Social Security uses VERY OLD computers. They’re programmed with an old version of the programming language COBOL.
A bit of history. On May 20, 1875 a bunch of countries got together to create the International Bureau of Weight and Measures which established uniform standards of mass and length. Later on, the Bureau established rules for dates as well. The dates standard used a starting date of May 20 1875 to honor the creation of the Bureau.
Old versions of COBOL use that date as a baseline. Social Security’s computers use that old version. Dates are stored as the number of days AFTER May 20 1875.
So what happens if Social Security doesn’t know a birthdate? That field is empty in its records. Thus that person appears to have a birthday of May 20 1875—about 150 years ago.
That’s why the crack team of youngsters Musk uses found 150-year-old people in Social Security getting benefits. It’s all really as simple—and as stupid—as that.
You’d think that those bright MAGAheads would notice that ALL those 150 year olds have THE SAME BIRTHDAY: May 20, 1875.
But they didn’t. Genius Elon Musk didn’t. And, of course, STABLE GENIUS Donald Trump didn’t either.
The natural environment took an unprecedented pounding during the war in Gaza. And as the territory’s inhabitants have returned home since the ceasefire, the extent of the environmental devastation is becoming clear, raising crucial questions about how to reconstruct Gaza in the face of severe and potentially irreversible damage to the environment.
The war has knocked out water supplies and disabled sewage treatment facilities, causing raw effluent to flow across the land, polluting the Mediterranean and underground water reserves essential for irrigating crops. More than two-thirds of Gaza’s farmland, including wells and greenhouses, has been damaged or destroyed by bombardment and military earthworks.
Detailed satellite images taken since the ceasefire began on January 19 show 80 percent of Gaza’s trees lost. In addition, vital wetlands, sand dunes, coastal waters, and the only significant river, the Wadi Gaza, have all suffered extensively. The UN Environment Programme warns that the stripping of trees, shrubs, and crops has so badly damaged the soils of the once-fertile, biodiverse, and well-watered territory that it faces long-term desertification.
Nature is the “silent victim of Israel’s war on Gaza,” says Saeed Bagheri, a lecturer in international law at the University of Reading in the U.K.
[…] Both wildlife and the human population have been sustained by its abundant underground water reserves. “The shallow sand wells provided an ample supply of the sweet life-giving water,” says Mark Zeitoun, director general of the Geneva Water Hub, which advocates for peace through diplomacy on water. This water, overlain by fertile soils, was why so many Palestinians fled to Gaza after being expelled from their homes by militias following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.
But Gaza’s population has since soared to more than 2 million inhabitants, making it one of the most densely populated places on Earth—it vies with Singapore, but without the high-rises. That has put immense pressure on the underground water. Extraction prior to the war was more than three times greater than recharge from rainfall and seepage from the Wadi Gaza, which had dwindled due to dams upstream in Israel.
As water tables fall, salty seawater has infiltrated the aquifer. By 2023, more than 97 percent of Gaza’s once-sweet underground water was unfit for drinking, according to the World Health Organization. Increasingly, well water has been restricted to irrigating crops. Public water supplies have come largely from seawater desalination plants built with international aid, augmented by water delivered from Israel through three cross-border pipelines.
[…] Last October, the Palestine Water Authority reported that 85 percent of water facilities were at least partially out of action. Output from water-supply wells had fallen by more than a half, and desalination plants lacked power, while Israel had reduced deliveries down the pipelines.
A survey found that only 14 percent of households still relied on public supplies. Most were taking water from potentially contaminated open wells or unregulated private tankers. In September, Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, the UN special rapporteur on human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, charged that limiting access to clean water “is clearly employed as a weapon in Gaza against [the] Palestinian civil population.”
Israel denies this […]
the fate of the once-abundant underground water—the lifeline for both human and natural life—hangs by a thread. With most wells currently out of use for irrigated agriculture, withdrawals from the aquifer may have been reduced. But the war has increased contamination of what water remains.
The threats are various. UNEP warns that Israeli efforts to use seawater to flood the estimated 300 miles of underground tunnels Hamas has dug beneath Gaza could be contaminating the groundwaters beneath. (The IDF has said on social media that it “takes into consideration the soil and water systems in the area” before flooding tunnels.) Meanwhile, sewage treatment has all but ceased, with facilities either destroyed by military action or disabled by lack of power. Even the solar panels installed at some treatment works have reportedly been destroyed.
Raw sewage and wastewater spills across the land and into water courses or the Mediterranean—up to 3.5 million cubic feet every day, according to UNEP. The porous soils in most of Gaza mean sewage discharged onto the land readily seeps into underground water reserves. “The crisis threatens long-term environmental damage as contaminants seep into groundwater,” says the UN Development Programme (UNDP).
The marine environment is also choking in sewage.[…]
“Sources name conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt and far-right journalist John Solomon as potential replacements.”
The acting head of the National Archives announced his resignation on Friday, paving the way for Donald Trump to continue his takeover of the government’s records and the agency that serves as custodian of the nation’s history.
Deputy Archivist William Bosanko informed staff in an email Friday that he will step down on Tuesday. Bosanko, who has worked at the agency since 1993, has been the acting head of the National Archives and Records Administration for just a week, after Trump fired Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan.
Under federal law, a president can fire the archivist but must also “communicate the reasons for any such removal to each House of the Congress.” Trump did not do that. Over a week ago, the Trump White House moved to make Secretary of State Marco Rubio the acting archivist, despite standing law that the deputy archivist assumes those responsibilities if the position is vacant.
Bosanko’s exit is part of a Trump putsch at the agency, which was deeply involved in the case of the top-secret documents Trump removed from the White House when he left office in 2021. According to two sources familiar with the situation, Bosanko was pushed out by Jim Byron, a 31-year old who was recently president of the Richard Nixon Foundation. Byron delivered Bosanko an ultimatum: Resign now or be fired next week. […]
[…] We would certainly love to listen to Vance try to explain how an environmental activist [Greta Thunberg] is in any way comparable in influence and authority to a ketamine-addled Nazi billionaire who has been empowered by the president of the United States to rampage through the nation’s bureaucracy, destroying decades of work that have made America a world leader in scientific research, medicine, space exploration, educational attainment, conservation of public lands, and about a million other areas of accomplishment that are currently being fed to an industrial shredder along with hundreds of thousands of jobs, causing immiseration and desperation for tens of millions of people, but we probably wouldn’t last five seconds before telling the bearded jackass to shut his word hole and go play with his toes while the adults try to figure a way out of this galactic mess he has helped get us into.
Vance might as well have just been an AI chatbot trained on nothing but right-wing Twitter feeds and beamed in from a server farm in Modesto. […]
The problem here, which everyone in the room except Vance realized, is that he was pushing for more tolerance of the same far-right xenophobia and bigotry that Europe has had more than enough experience with over the last couple of thousand centuries, thank you very much. Vance had just toured the concentration camp at Dachau. Yet somehow, he is incapable of making the connection.
Then after he finished giving the speech, he met with Alice Weidel, leader of AfD, Germany’s most far-right political party since the Nazis were in power. Germany has national elections in nine days, and we guess Vance wanted to give AfD the Trump administration’s seal of approval.
Vance did not meet with Germany’s Chancellor, which sends a message to German voters, and it is not a good one.
So here is how we can summarize JD Vance’s trip to the Munich Security Conference this week: He toured Dachau, then almost immediately afterwards met with the leader of a far-right German political party full of neo-Nazi sympathizers. Not that we have a hell of a lot of respect for Vance’s intelligence, but does anyone else see a bit of intellectual inconsistency here?
Unless the trip to Dachau was supposed to be somehow aspirational. […]
One German leader, Defense Minister Boris Pistorious, was so incensed by Vance’s speech that he later abandoned his own prepared remarks so he could spend a few minutes excoriating [Vance]:
“This is not acceptable,” Pistorius said. “This is not the Europe, not the democracy where I live and where I conduct my election campaign right now. And this is not the democracy that I witness every day in our parliament. In our democracy, every opinion has a voice.”
No, it’s the Europe of right-wing fever dreams, the Europe JD Vance hears about from Twitter users with names like @cum69420. (Or maybe Jack Posobiec, who was allegedly in Germany as a guest of Pete Hegseth.) The Europe that is supposedly being overrun by foreigners of a duskier hue. The Europe that is ignoring its own (WHITE) people, and not catering to bigotry in ways sufficient enough to satisfy Vance.
So congrats, [Vance]! You charmed everyone with 18 minutes of adolescent whining […] Next time […] leave the geopolitical policy-making to the grownups.
Here we see just one tip of the growing, menacing iceberg: https://azmirror.com/briefs/arizona-cattle-milk-test-positive-for-bird-flu/
1)It is spreading
2)Pasteurizing may?! kill it. But, when it mutates again?
3)The magat in chief is ignoring it just like he did with covid.
4)Let’s hope RFKjr and all those anti-science imbeciles drink lots of infected unpasteurized milk!
5)The chicken and egg ‘question’ has already cost billions and it will only get worse
EXCLUSIVE Records show how DOGE planned Trump’s DEI purge — and who gets fired next
“A DOGE team plans to fire federal workers who are not in DEI roles and employees in offices that protect equal rights, internal documents show.”
A team of workers from the U.S. DOGE Service developed step-by-step plans for carrying out […] Trump’s order to purge diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives from the federal government — and over the next six months intends to expand that campaign dramatically, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. DOGE aims to target staffers who are not in DEI roles and employees who work in offices established by law to ensure equal rights, internal DOGE documents show.
[…] DOGE has planned for the Trump administration to trim staff from dozens of offices across the executive branch, including those that protect employees’ civil rights and others that investigate complaints of employment discrimination in the federal workplace. Among the groups targeted are a Veterans Affairs office that works to ensure all veterans receive equal access to care and an office within Health and Human Services that provides information about the health of minority populations.
[…] It is unclear precisely how DOGE intends to decide whether employees’ jobs are tied to DEI. Such a strategy will push, if not violate, the law and could draw legal challenge, team members wrote in the documents.
The internal documents reveal the scope, speed and ambition of DOGE’s work. Over the past three weeks, DOGE has torn through one federal agency after another, gaining access to sensitive data and winning control of the flow of federal cash. […]
But even before Trump took office, a DOGE team that included Elon Musk’s top aides — who have links to his companies but little to no government or political experience — was planning actions far beyond DOGE’s original remit of reducing the government’s size and spending. […]
Help us report on DOGE
The Washington Post wants to hear from people affected by DOGE activities at federal agencies. You can contact our reporters by email or Signal encrypted message.
Hannah Natanson: [email protected] or (202) 580-5477 on Signal.
Read more about how to use Signal and other ways to securely contact The Post. [embedded links are available at the main link]
DOGE staffers developed a three-part plan for Trump’s anti-DEI campaign, internal documents show. “Phase 1” marked the first day of Trump’s presidency, when Trump signed an executive order stating that all DEI offices, positions and programs within the executive branch must be terminated within 60 days. The DOGE plan laid out how, on Inauguration Day, all federal agencies should begin placing DEI workers on paid leave and shutting down DEI websites and social media accounts. Those changes transpired almost exactly as DOGE laid out.
The nation is now in DOGE’s “Phase 2,” which is scheduled to last until Wednesday, according to the documents. In this stage, DOGE planned for the Trump administration to place on leave some employees working at statutorily required offices. The administration is also supposed to cancel “DEI-focused” federal contracts and grants. And the administration is meant to identify workers across the government who hold non-DEI jobs but who can be tied to diversity initiatives through unspecified other means, according to the DOGE planning documents.
[…] At least some of Phase 2 appears to be underway, particularly at the Education Department. The department last month placed on leave nearly 100 employees in non-DEI roles after DOGE staffers unearthed personnel records showing most took a diversity training during the first Trump administration, The Post reported. As of this week, DOGE representatives at the department have directed the agency to cancel 29 “DEI training” grants at the department totaling $101 million, according to a post on X from DOGE. [List at the link]
[…] DOGE’s “Phase 3” starts later this month, on the 31st day of the administration, and lasts until the 180th day, which is in mid-July, according to the documents. That stage moves from placing workers on paid leave to calling for large-scale firings, the documents show. Ultimately, DOGE intends for the Trump administration to terminate all DEI-linked employees via a Reduction In Force (RIF) action — the federal form of layoffs — including some who work for legally mandated offices.
Goals for Phase 3 are listed in brief bullet points in the DOGE document.
[…] One such option emerged this week. On Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order paving the way for federal agencies to reshape or terminate offices legally mandated to exist.
[…] “The White House’s position is that we are ridding the federal government of DEI, full stop,” a White House spokesman said Friday. “DOGE is there as a collaborator ensuring that we get rid of waste, fraud and abuse. And if DEI is waste, fraud and abuse, it’s gone.” […]
‘Under what authority’
DOGE has maintained a veil of secrecy, refusing to disclose the names of staff, what positions they hold or how much they are being paid. But The Post has reported that more than 30 people work closely for or with DOGE, about half of whom have ties to Musk or his companies.
[…] In early January, DOGE staffers started filling out spreadsheets tracking various diversity-related elements of the government, including DEI offices, contracts and spending, records and documents obtained by The Post show.
The records show a handful of DOGE team members active in workshopping the plan: Stephanie Holmes, a former Jones Day lawyer who now runs human resources at DOGE; Anthony Armstrong, a banker who advised Musk on his acquisition of Twitter; Brian Bjelde, a 20-year SpaceX employee; and Noah Peters, an attorney who once worked at the Federal Labor Relations Authority. Holmes was the creator of many of the documents and spreadsheets, according to metadata reviewed by The Post.
Armstrong, Bjelde and Peters have been heavily involved in DOGE’s work reshaping the Office of Personnel Management, The Post and other outlets have reported. Another frequent contributor to the planning was Adam Ramada, a DOGE team member whom Business Insider has identified as a Miami venture capital investor with a stake in a SpaceX supplier. Ramada has recently been active in efforts to slash spending and staff at the Education Department, according to records obtained by The Post. […]
The DOGE team identified 131 agencies within the federal government, then assigned one of at least 30 reviewers to examine all the agency’s sub-offices and employees. DOGE staffers searched each agency’s structure and personnel for the terms “diversity,” “equity,” “inclusion,” “DEI” and “justice.” Reviews were often completed within a day or two, records show.
The group also compiled two lists, titled “DEI Grants to Eliminate” and “DEI 10 Contracts to Eliminate,” […]
The documents also detail scripts for what Office of Personnel Management staff should say in calls to interim agency heads explaining the president’s anti-DEI executive order, as well as what those interim agency heads should say in calls to employees tasked with carrying out that order. The first set of calls were supposed to last 15 minutes each; the second were supposed to last 20 minutes, the scripts show. […] [Screengrab at the link]
The DOGE documents further include suggested versions of the email agencies could send to inform employees in DEI roles that they were being placed on administrative leave.
The emails sent to such employees in January matched a DOGE draft email nearly word for word, a Post examination found
.
A FAQ that DOGE created for agency heads showed that the team members did not always feel confident in the powers they were assuming. […]
‘Corrupted branches’
Over the course of about three weeks, the DOGE team outlined a plan to radically reshape the government — including proposing shutting down offices required by law […]
A DOGE document dated Jan. 9 identifies 225 DEI-related offices and councils across the federal government. Forty-two of these should be shuttered immediately under Trump’s day-one executive order, the document states. The rest — including civil rights and employment discrimination offices mandated by law — should be terminated later.
[…] But a later document, dated Jan. 13, walked that back. Under the revised plan, the DOGE team reduced the number of targeted DEI offices to 76. DOGE also shifted the plan: The aim would be to cut staff from offices required by law, rather than eliminate those offices outright.
[…] The new plan, the document shows, was to “identify the non-statutory branches / DEI employees and place them on administrative leave.”
By Jan. 17, DOGE had reduced its goals still further, naming 33 offices protected by law that should be trimmed down to eliminate DEI elements. The list includes offices of equal employment opportunity at agencies including the Agriculture Department, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It also includes 100-plus staff from the Energy Department’s Office of Energy Justice and Equity.
As of last month, the total number of employees DOGE planned to cut in its DEI purge was at least 583, according to a spreadsheet — but is likely far more, since the DOGE staffers stopped filling out employee tallies for targeted offices a third of the way through the document.
The ultimate goal is to fire all employees identified as doing DEI-related work, the documents make clear.
DOGE staffers worked through several iterations of how they could do so without running afoul of the law, the records show.
[…] Another option was to reassign DEI staff to a new office; but that would delay their goal of overall staff reductions, according to the document.
A third option, labeled “DOGE … Recommended,” suggested placing DEI employees on 10-day paid administrative leaves, then firing them. According to the document, this approach was best because it was “difficult to challenge”; “reasonable legal authority exists to extend beyond 10 days”; and it allows “time for legal preparation to anticipated challenges.”
This appears to be the option agencies across the federal government are following.
“Phase 3” of the Trump administration’s DEI purge is slated to begin Wednesday, according to the documents. That period lasts until July 19, or the 180th day of the presidency. […]
The “Phase 3” period is supposed to include “three workflows,” per a DOGE planning document. First, the Trump administration will identify and place on leave “additional DEI-related employees” who do not work in a DEI office but are “dispersed through normal operating divisions.” Second, the administration will lay off DEI offices “in their entirety.” Third, the administration will lay off the “corrupted branches” of statutorily required offices that work on civil rights and employment discrimination: “We are exploring options for this,” the document reads.
A set of bullet points headlined “Next Steps Underway” shows that DOGE staffers were actively looking for legal arguments to justify the planned firings.
A spreadsheet from Jan. 17 suggests a path.
There, under the heading “Broad Ideas,” is a proposal for presidential action: Trump could issue an executive order “to re-focus [Equal Employment Opportunity] offices on their statutory mandate, removing DEI from them.
”
The executive order Trump signed this week may serve that goal.
The order calls on federal agency heads to develop “reorganization plans.” Within 30 days, agency heads are supposed to produce a report identifying the laws that created their agency, as well as every agency office that is required by law.
The order concludes: “The report shall discuss whether the agency or any of its subcomponents should be eliminated or consolidated.”
@154 lynna, OM posted: National Archives Head Resigns as Trump Takes Control of Records “Sources name conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt and far-right journalist John Solomon as potential replacements.”
I reply: They are trying to destroy recorded history everywhere. And, the magat in chief (in spite of his fugly dancing to ‘YMCA’) just proved he is an evil transphobe: https://truthout.org/articles/stonewall-monuments-transgender-history-scrubbed-by-trump-administration/
Stonewall Monument’s Transgender History Scrubbed by Trump Administration
“Let us be clear: Stonewall is transgender history,” the Stonewall Inn said in a response.
This is not hyperbole but it is terrifying: https://digbysblog.net/2025/02/14/occupied-america/
Occupied America – Published by Tom Sullivan on February 14, 2025
Suddenly, and not accidentally, people who work for the American federal government are having the same experience as people who find themselves living under foreign occupation. — Anne Applebaum
More than a few of us not in federal employ feel the same. People I know have, like the refugees in Casablanca, fled the occupation. Except today it is the U.S. they are fleeing, not fleeing to.
James Gates, a theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland, warned an audience this month at the Royal College of Art in London, “My country is in for a 50-year period of a new dark ages.”
I remark: I told ya so!
HR Directors at HHS have been ordered to revoke access for employees after they open and read the email informing them they have been fired.
DOWNLOAD ALL […] PAPERWORK YOU NEED BEFORE YOU OPEN THESE EMAILS.
[…]
Again, do NOT open these firing notices until you have downloaded everything you need because your access will be revoked once you’ve read them. […] I do not know if this impacts other agencies, but it’s probably safer to download everything […] before you’ve read […] regardless of the agency you work for.
A bunch of U.S. Digital Service employees (including me) were fired tonight. It’s still unclear exactly how many. There is no visibility whatsoever into what determined who was let go. Legacy USDS (i.e., pre-DOGE) leadership was not involved in the decision about whom to let go and was not notified in advance that people were going to be fired.
[…]
I was in charge of information security for VA.gov, which has millions of users per month and stores and processes huge amounts of veterans’ personal information. I’ve been told by people I’ve worked with that I’m the best at what I do of anyone they’ve ever worked with. Now there will be _no one_ in charge of information security for VA.gov.
[…]
I have connections to people who are involved in helping feds who were fired illegally take legal action, so any federal worker who is looking to get connected with legal representation is welcome to DM me […] while it’s true that probationary workers have fewer protections, they still can’t be fired without cause. All of the firings in the past few days have been illegal.
There are certainly other people at VA working on infosec for VA.gov. They will certainly be able to backfill part of what I was doing there. But I was brought in to lead infosec there because they needed a leader with a security-focused approach rather than the compliance-focused approach which tends to dominate in government. […] There are very few people with my skills willing to take a pay cut to work for the government. […] all indications are that DOGE will do everything they can to stop agencies from hiring anybody at all.
There are probationary employees who are new in government service and those who are labeled as probationary because of a job switch but who have continuous government service prior to their current job. If you are in that latter category, and if you are fired as a probationary employee in these category terminations taking place now, there is a good chance your termination was illegal. And it is illegal in a way that courts will vindicate.
[…]
I say the above after conferring with someone who has relevant expertise
“Ukraine rejects initial Trump request for half its rare mineral wealth”
“Ukraine is hoping to reach a deal on a counter-offer […]”
MUNICH — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected a Trump administration request this week that Kyiv hand over 50 percent of its rare-earth mineral resources — an extraordinary demand that could significantly overshadow the value of aid that has been sent to Ukraine. Ukrainian officials are working on a counterproposal that would still offer Washington more access to the country’s natural resources but would bolster U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine, four people familiar with the discussions said.
Zelensky told reporters Saturday that he had not agreed to the Trump administration’s proposal “because it’s not ready yet.”
He said that security guarantees were not part of the U.S. proposal, and that Ukraine needed that in any agreement with the United States.
“We can consider how to distribute profits when security guarantees are clear. So far, I have not seen that in the document,” he told reporters at an annual gathering of U.S. and European security elite. [Yeah, Trump is trying to get something for nothing.]
The request came when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent visited Kyiv on Wednesday, becoming the first Trump Cabinet official to meet the Ukrainian leader, according to two senior Ukrainian officials […]
The offer and Ukraine’s consideration of it rippled through European diplomatic circles not only for its audacity but also because the war-ravaged country appeared to be seriously considering how to reach a deal in the hope of a commitment from the United States to help defend against Russia’s aggression.
Ukraine’s rare-earth mineral resources could be worth trillions of U.S. dollars, with rising demand in electronics, defense systems, drones, and the clean-energy and automotive industries, among others. They are difficult to extract at scale, and while Ukraine has some reserves, it does not mine them at the moment. China currently produces the vast majority of rare-earth minerals. Many but not all of Ukraine’s reserves are in territory occupied by Russia.
[…] One of the senior Ukrainian officials said that Kyiv received the proposed U.S. mineral deal just four hours before Bessent met with Zelensky in Kyiv on Wednesday. In that meeting, the treasury secretary “insisted” that Zelensky sign it immediately. Zelensky did not, the official said. [Bessent is a trumpian bully.]
The Ukrainians continued to discuss the proposal on Friday, when Zelensky met with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Munich. Ukraine has told the Trump administration that it cannot legally sign away its mineral resources in the way proposed by Washington, but Ukrainians have continued to discuss alternatives […]
The Friday meeting was delayed for several hours when Rubio’s plane experienced mechanical difficulties and had to turn around — buying the Ukrainians valuable time to come up with a counterproposal, one of the officials said.
Zelensky had only a few minutes to read the U.S. proposal before his Wednesday meeting with Bessent, said one person familiar with the discussions.
[…] Ukraine would expect any such deal to last for decades to come and wants such an arrangement to be ratified by its parliament.
[…] Zelensky first suggested providing the United States with the materials during a meeting with Trump in September, prior to the election.
[…] If the United States is granted Ukraine’s mineral wealth, Senator Lindsey Graham said, “we will have something to defend. We will have an economic interest in Ukraine we’ve never had. And that’s a nightmare for Putin.”
“Investment now in the Ukrainian critical minerals sector could make a lot of sense. But President Trump’s initial offer seems unreasonable, exploitative, and unlikely to help end the war. This is not a good way to promote American interests.” said Simon Johnson, an economist at MIT who has been involved in helping Ukraine with its economic planning
.
“I expect the Ukrainian reaction to be dismay and disbelief,” he said.
“The individuals, who work in an agency that oversees the nation’s nuclear stockpile, had been fired on Thursday and lost access to their federal government email accounts.”
WASHINGTON — National Nuclear Security Administration officials on Friday attempted to notify some employees who had been let go the day before that they are now due to be reinstated — but they struggled to find them because they didn’t have their new contact information.
In an email sent to employees at NNSA and obtained by NBC News, officials wrote, “The termination letters for some NNSA probationary employees are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel.”
The individuals the letter refers to had been fired on Thursday and lost access to their federal government email accounts. NNSA, which is within the Department of Energy and oversees the nation’s nuclear stockpile, cannot reach these employees directly and is now asking recipients of the email, “Please work with your supervisors to send this information (once you get it) to people’s personal contact emails.” [See Sky Captains’s comment 160.]
[…] Trump’s administration has acted with unprecedented speed — and in some cases, questionable legality — in seeking to cut large portions of the federal government, laying off staff and ending contracts. But that speed has resulted in complications, including firing people agencies actually want to keep. [“Complications”? That’s misleading. “Resulted in major fuckups that threaten national security” is a better description.]
The emails come after multiple staff — all civil servants — at the NNSA received termination notices late Thursday, according to a source with direct knowledge of the notifications. NBC News reviewed the termination notification, which included the subject line: “Notification of Termination During Probationary/Trial Period.”
The NNSA is tasked with designing, building and overseeing the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.
The termination notices, which read “effective today,” came within hours of a Russian drone striking the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine. NNSA tracks nuclear risks in Ukraine, including through sensor systems.
[…] The federal cuts have been met with pushback from Democrats, labor unions and progressive organizations. More than 60 lawsuits against the Trump administration alleging executive overreach and other violations are pending.
In the discussion below, there are questions about the baseline in COBOL being May 20 1875.
There are many different versions of COBOL. Early versions used the standards set in ISO 8601:2004. Here’s the relevant info for that version from the Wikipedia link:
The standard uses the Gregorian calendar, which “serves as an international standard for civil use”.[
ISO 8601:2004 fixes a reference calendar date to the Gregorian calendar of 20 May 1875 as the date the Convention du Mètre (Metre Convention) was signed in Paris (the explicit reference date was removed in ISO 8601-1:2019). However, ISO calendar dates before the convention are still compatible with the Gregorian calendar all the way back to the official introduction of the Gregorian calendar on 15 October 1582.
So what I posted was correct. (You doubters! I fart in your general direction!) The date was removed in later versions of the ISO standard. And it’s understandable that COBOL programmers didn’t know or didn’t remember this obscure fact. The information isn’t spelled out explicitly in the COBOL programming language—it’s simply part of the standard ISO definition used in the early versions of COBOL.
Since SS stores your birth date as the number of days after the base date of 5/20/1875, when SS calculates your age it subtracts your birth date from today’s date. If your birth date is blank in the database, it shows as 5/20/1875 in the calculation. Thus you’re almost 150 years old. It’s not that COBOL itself has that info—it’s that the Gregorian calendar used by COBOL works that way.
Also, probably the people Musk found are NOT actually getting benefits. They’re in the database, but SS has security methods to make sure that people who seem to be too old do not get benefits. I think the age limit is 114, but I’m not sure. I’m too lazy today to check.
Many employed undocumented immigrants have fake Social Security numbers. They pay INTO SS but will never get payments FROM SS. SS welcomes their money. No one ever complains about that.
“House Dems Want To End Citizens United So We Never Get Musked Again”
In the last election cycle, Elon Musk spent more than $270 million on getting Donald Trump elected. For him, it was money well spent, because he is now $170 billion richer, is able to act as shadow president, and has been raking in huge amounts of money in government contracts. for his various businesses.
Given that the average wealth of folks in the top 1 percent of the country is about $35.5 million, he’s just about one of the only people in the country who could afford to buy that much power and influence. But he really shouldn’t be able to.
Unfortunately, ever since the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United vs. FEC, this has been allowed. Rather than being limited to the $3,300 cap on individual donations to federal candidates, corporations and billionaires like Musk are able to fund super PACS as much as they like. It’s almost as if that cap doesn’t even matter! Because of how it doesn’t.
Thankfully, Democrats in the House are (once again) trying to get rid of that terrible decision, through the We The People Amendment, which would clarify that “the rights protected and extended by the Constitution are the rights of natural persons only,” and that “artificial entities, such as corporations, shall have no rights under the Constitution and are subject to regulation.”
“Corporations are not people and money is not speech,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who introduced the We The People Amendment in the House. “In every election cycle since the disastrous Citizens United decision, we have seen more and more special interest dark money poured into campaigns across the country — this year, with a billionaire paying millions to buy a seat as Shadow President. My We the People Amendment hands power back to the people by finally ending corporate constitutional rights, reversing Citizens United, and ensuring that our democracy is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people — not corporations.”
The bill is cosponsored by Alma Adams (NC-12), Shontel Brown (OH-11), Salud Carbajal (CA-24), Joaquin Castro (TX-20), Judy Chu (CA-28), Yvette Clarke (NY-9), Rosa L. DeLauro (CT-3), Lloyd Doggett (TX-37), Maxwell Frost (FL-10), Raúl M. Grijalva (AZ-7), Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, Jr. (GA-4), Ro Khanna (CA-17), Summer Lee (PA-12), Seth Magaziner (RI-2), Betty McCollum (MN-4), Seth Moulton (MA-6), Jerrold Nadler (NY-12), Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC-AL), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), Jimmy Panetta (CA-19), Scott Peters (CA-50), Delia Ramirez (IL-3), Andrea Salinas (OR-6), Rashida Tlaib (MI-12), Paul Tonko (NY-20), Juan Vargas (CA-52), Nydia M. Velázquez (NY-7), and Nikema Williams (GA-5).
It’s not the first time Jayapal has attempted to pass a bill ending Citizens United, but it seems even more urgent today, given all of the Musk nonsense.
There are reasons there are caps on campaign donations. It’s to prevent people from being able to buy influence the way Elon Musk has done. It’s to ensure that the rich don’t have far more say in our elections than the poor. Personally I’d like to see donations eliminated entirely in favor of publicly funded elections, which would also have the effect of making it easier for people who are not ridiculously wealthy themselves to run for office.
But that would just make way too much sense.
[…] One poll found that 83 percent of Americans supported another bill that would have ended Citizens United, and another found that 88 percent disapproved of Citizens United — including 66 percent of Republicans.
And yet, not a single Republican is cosponsoring. Shocking! Democrats don’t have the votes to get this passed by themselves, but even just introducing it (and introducing it over and over and over again) is important and helpful, because it lets Americans know who is on their side and who isn’t.
Carusone: “They’re going to blame the deep state, malicious implantation, right? And theyre going to use that anger and kinetic energy and turn it right back around to gather more power”
Video at the link.
JOY REID (HOST): It appears as though we have officially reached the ‘find out’ phase of Donald Trump’s presidency, as red states are starting to feel the pain of what actually happens when Trump’s plans are put into action. Popular Information is reporting that in Huntsville, Alabama, about 250 customers of a public utilities company received a letter informing them that their account has been debited $100. They say it is a direct result of an executive order signed by Trump that froze a grant meant to assist low income residents with their energy bills.
[…] all of Trump and Elon Musk’s dismantling of government programs and slashing federal funds, yeah, spoiler alert, that’s going to hurt red states, too. USAID, for example, has a program called Food for Peace, which spends hundreds of millions of dollars buying goods from American farmers and businesses to distribute around the world to help fight hunger. So, gutting the agency means hurting farmers in places like Kansas, where the program was founded. On top of that, you have Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, for years, probably Trump’s most notorious enabler, now warning his constituents in an op-ed that the tariffs Trump is promising could have negative consequences for the state’s 75,000 family farms that sell their crops around the globe, or the hardworking Kentuckians who craft 95% of the world’s bourbon, or our auto industry.
Joining me now is Angelo Carusone, President and CEO of Media Matters, and Antjuan Seawright, Democratic strategist. Who would have thunk it, Angelo, that a lot of these cuts willy-nilly being made by some 20-somethings and the “normalize Indian hate” guy are going to hurt Trump’s own base? Is that message, do you think, getting out beyond just local news? You watch the media.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): It’s not yet, and that’s I think the top line takeaway here. […] that low income heating program where those people lost that money, that was straight out of Project 2025. I mean, right in the 900 page book, that was one of the programs that they were targeting. So, in effect, Trump is just implementing a lot of the things that they’ve already written and prepared for. Which means we know what’s coming next, and we know the people that are going to be affected by it, which means there’s no excuse for Democrats, for the news media not to be able to connect the dots.
And your question is the important one here, because if we don’t help build that connective tissue from his actions to the harms that people are already experiencing, what’s going to happen is that, because they have narrative dominance and they have that massive megaphone, that when people start to ask questions — “Hey, why is this happening?” — they’re going to blame the deep state, malicious implementation, right? And they’re going to use that anger and kinetic energy and turn it right back around to gather more power for themselves. So, it is both an important opportunity, but we also need to make sure we’re telling this story so that we don’t — we actually prevent them from using it to get stronger. […]
REID: Yeah. I mean, and by the way, who’s going to gain the most, Angelo, are, you know, Trump and his family. They’re already reaping money. They’re selling meme coins. […] enriching themselves. Elon Musk is signing himself up for contracts while canceling Medicaid money.
CARUSONE: Yeah, I mean, 800,000 people lost money in that deal. You know, they thought they were going to get rich. They thought they were going to make some money off of Trump’s momentum and they lost it. And that’s the nature of a lot of these scams. And that’s a part, you know, that’s the part about this that makes this even more intense, is that it’s not just that they’re using policies to directly affect people and harm people and transfer wealth, they’re also then using their cultural and social influence to then fleece them and pick their other pocket, with the sort of with, you know, with these other gambits. […] then further line their pockets. And I mean, they are really successfully managing to double dip in the most odious ways. […]
REID: Last word to you on this, Angelo, […] you said they were going to pivot and just blame someone. […]
CARUSONE: They are. They are, and that’s a strategy. […] they organize power on the fringes. And when you bring all those people in from the fringes, now each of them get their small little piece of the puzzle. And there’s a very strong segment of the right-wing that wants to erase trans people. There’s a big push in right-wing media about two years ago that said that “this was the trans lie,” and that “it was only gay white men that were at Stonewall. There weren’t even anybody that wasn’t white there.” That is the narrative that they push. And part of it is to divide and to weaken. But it’s also a reflection of the fact that they are fighting a culture war here and recognize that politics is downstream from culture, which is partly why he hung that portrait of himself in that mugshot in the White House. It’s about culture, it’s about vibes.
MUNICH, Feb 15 (Reuters) – Europe won’t have a seat at the table for Ukraine peace talks, Donald Trump’s Ukraine envoy said on Saturday, after Washington sent a questionnaire to European capitals to ask what they could contribute to security guarantees for Kyiv.
Trump shocked European allies this week by calling Russian President Vladimir Putin without consulting them or Kyiv beforehand and declaring an immediate start to peace talks.
Trump administration officials have also made clear in recent days that they expect European allies in NATO to take primary responsibility for the region as the U.S. now has other priorities, such as border security and countering China.
The U.S. moves have stoked fears that Europeans may be cut out of a peace deal that would also impact their own security, particularly if it is seen as too favourable to Russia.
Kellogg told a global security conference in Munich that the U.S. would act as an intermediary in the talks, with Ukraine and Russia as the two protagonists.
Asked about the prospects of the Europeans being at the table, Kellogg said: “I’m (from) a school of realism. I think that’s not gonna happen.”
At a later event at the conference, Kellogg sought to reassure Europeans by declaring this did not mean “their interests are not considered, used or developed”.
But European leaders said they would not accept being shut out of the talks.
“There’s no way in which we can have discussions or negotiations about Ukraine, Ukraine’s future or European security structure, without Europeans,” Finland’s President Alexander Stubb told reporters in Munich.
[…] Stubb said the questionnaire the U.S. sent to Europeans “will force Europeans to think”.
A European diplomat said the U.S. document included six questions with one specifically for European Union member states.
“The Americans are approaching European capitals and asking how many soldiers they are ready to deploy,” one diplomat said.
France is discussing with its allies the possibility of holding an informal meeting among European leaders on Ukraine to discuss these matters, although nothing has been decided at this stage, a French presidency official said on Saturday. […]
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday proposed that the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine — which is nearing three years — shows the need for the European Union to create a unified army.
“I really believe that time has come,” Zelensky said early Saturday, per The Associated Press. “The armed forces of Europe must be created.”
“Three years of full-scale war have proven that we already have the foundation for a united European military force,” he added, according to the AP. “And now, as we fight this war and lay the groundwork for peace and security, we must build the armed forces of Europe.”
His speech at the Munich Security Conference only bolstered the Ukrainian leader’s push for greater military and economic support from his EU counterparts, along with the U.S. He has also consistently warned that other parts of Europe could be vulnerable to the Kremlin’s expansion efforts. […]
“Ukraine will never accept deals made behind our backs without our involvement, and the same rule should apply to all of Europe,” Zelensky said, adding that “not once did (Trump) mention that America needs Europe at the table.” […]
JMsays
@167 Lynna, OM: This seems close to a setup to sell out Ukraine. The other European countries won’t commit to much in negotiations they are not part of. There is a chance Putin and Trump are going to negotiate terms for dividing up Ukraine’s resources and call it a peace treaty. I’m not sure if Trump is doing this intentionally or just so easily manipulated but either way it could happen.
There is a chance they are going to be disappointed though. I can see them writing up some terms and presenting them to the world and Ukraine and the EU tell them to shove it. That will result in Trump pulling US support but at this point the Russian army is weak enough I think Ukraine doesn’t need it any more. At the start of this war the US was the only army that could supply Ukraine fast enough for Ukraine to fight back. Now they are dominating Russia in most ways and their biggest problem is not having the man power to easily retake land from Russia.
[DOGE sent Gavin Kliger.] “Their interest […] included the operation of enforcements, it included taxpayer service in terms of function and the personnel footprint, and they wanted extensive system access […] What exactly that would look like, I’m not sure […] Levels of data protection at IRS are higher than at other agencies. Not only is improper disclosure illegal, but improper inspection of data internally is illegal. […] It’s hard to think about what extensive system access would look like for these guys that wouldn’t violate the law.”
[…]
the DOGE staffer had a handful of phones, which struck the agency’s employees as “bizarre.” “He basically had the vibe of a McKinsey consultant and came in and asked about headcount and how many people are in each department […] He had a black Mac, which didn’t seem to be government issue, and five iPhones.”
[…]
in the wake of Kliger’s meeting with the IRS, Trump administration officials were discussing plans to lay off roughly 9,000 employees at the tax agency
[…]
the main thing DOGE is asking for is extensive access to the tax agency’s information and internal systems. “They’re just trying to snap up data right now,”
[…]
“The weirdest thing was just the five iPhones,”
San Francisco City Hall […] The three men were wearing DOGE shirts and Make America Great Again hats […] The men, who had fled by the time sheriff’s deputies arrived, were carrying flash drives to copy the records. The city employees did not hand over the information, and authorities do not believe the individuals were actual DOGE workers.
Text quoted by Sky Captain @170,“The weirdest thing was just the five iPhones,”
Standard criminal operating procedure?
JM @169, basically, I agree. The fact that Trump and his lackeys can’t see that Putin is damaged and on his way to losing really irritates me. Still, Ukraine would have a very hard time “winning” (whatever that means) that war. They don’t have enough active soldiers.
Decisions from oil producer group OPEC+ take a long-term view of the global markets and are aimed at providing market stability, Secretary General Haitham Al-Ghais said at the India Energy Week conference on Tuesday.
The comments came after U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly called on the producer group to increase oil production to help reduce prices.
Ignoring the political babble about market stability this is simple. OPEC going for maximum profits, pushing up oil prices. With Russia cut off from the market OPEC has enough control over the volume for sale to push oil prices up for the first time in years. The invasion causes oil prices to spike way up. It has since dropped a bit but OPEC production cuts have kept it from dropping back to pre-war levels.
😳🇸🇦 “I saw someone saying that there will be a meeting in Saudi Arabia at the level of the presidents of the US and Russia. Some kind of peace talks. They even put up our flag… I don’t know what this is. This is not serious,” — Zelensky
EXCLUSIVE
“Trump team to start Russia-Ukraine peace talks in Saudi Arabia”
“A Ukrainian official said Kyiv wasn’t informed and doesn’t plan to attend.”
MUNICH — Senior Trump administration officials are heading to Saudi Arabia to start peace talks with Russian and Ukrainian negotiators, according to a Republican lawmaker and two U.S. officials familiar with the plan.
However, a Ukrainian official told POLITICO that the announcement of the Saudi talks came as a surprise to Kyiv, and as of now there were no plans to send a delegation.
Mike McCaul, a Republican lawmaker from Texas, confirmed the plans for Waltz and Witkoff to join Rubio in Saudi Arabia to start talks between the two warring sides during an interview at the POLITICO Pub on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
Two U.S. officials, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiation matters, confirmed the plans but did not elaborate on other details about the meetings […]
Trump on Wednesday told reporters he expects to hold a face-to-face meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Saudi Arabia. “We ultimately expect to meet,” he said. “We’ll meet in Saudi Arabia, see if we can get something something done.”
At the Munich conference, top European officials stressed Ukraine must be directly involved in any talks between Trump and Putin.
“There will only be peace if Ukraine’s sovereignty is secured,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the conference on Saturday. “A dictated peace will therefore never find our support.”
McCaul, who is former chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, agreed. “The president wants peace. But it’s got to be a deal where the Ukrainians are at the table in this deal now,” he said.
Hundreds of top foreign leaders and national security officials flocked to Munich for the annual security conference. The gathering underscored deep unease and anxiety among Europeans over future American commitment to the transatlantic alliance under Trump, laid bare after a fiery speech by U.S. Vice President JD Vance that shocked many attendees.
European officials and U.S. lawmakers have stressed that any peace deal must be negotiated in a way that doesn’t simply pause the fighting and allow Russia to rearm and regroup to launch a new invasion in the future. [Yeah. Russian seriously needs a pause … so don’t give it to them.]
[…] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he does not trust that Putin is ready for genuine peace talks following three years of war. “Trump said to me that Putin wants to stop the war. I said to him ‘Putin is a liar. I hope that you will pressure him because I don’t trust him,’” Zelenskyy said at Munich. […]
Judge Hurson (D.Md) just issued a comprehensive opinion & TRO prohibiting the Trump administration from enforcing its EO banning gender-affirming care.
It’s not only a great result, it’s a roadmap for other judges reviewing Trump’s illegal actions.
Calling it a “straightforward” separation of powers question, […] no President can place conditions on federal funds that Congress did not prescribe. “There is no provision in the Constitution that authorizes a President to enact, amend, or repeal statutes.”
The court cites […] the 1998 Supreme Court decision declaring the line-item veto unconstitutional because the President cannot unilaterally “effect the repeal of laws, for his own policy reasons.” Even if Congress wants him to.
And that’s what most of these cases come down to […] To be clear: this is a nationwide injunction.
[…]
p. 38 responds to the Trump admin’s bullshit arguments that courts can’t review executive orders with “oh really? I seem to recall you assholes cheering when the Roberts Court was striking down Biden EOs six months ago…” (slight paraphrase)
“A union representing the judges said it “makes no sense” to make cuts to immigration courts as Trump promises to carry out mass deportations, which must go through the courts.”
WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice fired multiple immigration judges on Friday, according to two sources familiar with the decision and a statement from one of the judges on LinkedIn. The move threatens to throw sand in the gears of an already strained immigration system as the Trump administration moves to rapidly reshape the federal workforce.
The terminations were enacted by the acting director of the Executive Office of Immigration Review at the Justice Department, which oversees immigration courts.
A union representing immigration judges said that since the start of the Trump administration, more than two dozen immigration judges, managers and new hires have been fired.
Five midlevel assistant chief immigration judges and 13 candidates to become new judges received termination notices on Friday, according to the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.
“You have a president now who campaigned on immigration and removing people from the country on the one hand. And on the other hand, he’s actually firing the very judges that have to hear these cases and make those decisions. So, it makes no sense. It’s a head scratcher,” said Matt Biggs, the president of the IFPTE.
Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the administration has fired at least four top managers in the Executive Office of Immigration Review as well as a fifth senior manager, the union said.
[…] “There’s bipartisan support across the board to actually hire more immigration judges. I mean, there’s a backlog of almost 4 million cases as it is, so this administration, with these firings, they’ve been very successful in increasing the backlog,” Biggs said.
[…] Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan has recruited staff from several federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, to aid ICE in making immigrant arrests.
“It’s just not ICE. We had DEA, FBI, ATF, US Marshal Service, DOJ is all in,” Homan told NBC News following a mass deportation operation in Chicago in January.
The Department of Homeland Security has asked the Internal Revenue Service to target businesses believed to be hiring immigrants working illegally in the country and investigate human trafficking, per a memo by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
NBC News previously reported the administration is considering using Defense Department funding to hire contractors that would vastly expand the scale of immigrant arrests and deportations. The new funding would go toward paying civilian-run companies to expand and staff temporary detention facilities. […]
Muhsin Hendricks, a pioneering figure dubbed the world’s first openly gay imam, has been shot dead in South Africa.
The 57-year-old cleric ran a mosque in Cape Town intended as a safe haven for gay and other marginalised Muslims. He was killed on Saturday morning after the car in which he was travelling near the southern city of Gqeberha was ambushed.
“Two unknown suspects with covered faces got out of the vehicle and started firing multiple shots at the vehicle,” police said in a statement…
Hendricks’ work challenged traditional interpretations of Islam and championed a compassionate, inclusive faith…
Trump goes after religious groups—and they’re fighting back
[…] That’s where this lawsuit comes in. Twenty-seven Jewish and Christian religious groups, representing national denominations and interdenominational associations with millions of members, sued to reinstate the sensitive locations policy and prohibit immigration enforcement actions in places of worship unless there are exigent circumstances. They contend that the government’s actions violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
The RFRA was enacted in 1993 and provides for religious exemptions from federal laws.
It prohibits the government from substantially burdening someone’s exercise of their religious beliefs, even if it stems from a generally applicable rule, unless the government shows that the burden is the least restrictive means of pursuing a compelling government interest.
RFRA is a conservative fan favorite. Indeed, two powerhouse conservative legal organizations, the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Becket Fund, were founded after RFRA’s passage just to litigate religious freedom cases, usually for evangelical Christians. The RFRA underpinned Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby’s holding that the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate violated the religious freedom of the evangelical owners of Hobby Lobby. The RFRA is what the Supreme Court’s most conservative justices routinely lean on when dissenting in cases that expand rights for LGBTQ people. Basically, Christian litigants trot the RFRA out every time they want to be exempt from any laws protecting reproductive freedom, LGBTQ rights, and anything else they don’t like.
But the RFRA has been used successfully by other religious litigants, including in the context of immigrants. In 2020, a federal judge threw out the convictions of three Unitarian Universalist church members who had been arrested for leaving food and water for migrants in the desert. The judge found they were exercising their sincere religious beliefs in leaving supplies and held that applying the criminal law to them violated the RFRA.
[…] the 27 groups suing to restore the sensitive location policy spend much of their complaint detailing how caring for immigrants is core to their faith. They reference that welcoming strangers, or immigrants, is central to the Torah and present throughout the Christian Gospels. They explain that their religion teaches that all human beings are created in the image of God and therefore deserve care. They state that as citizens of God’s kingdom, they reject all hierarchies of race, language, nationality, and legal status. [Well that doesn’t ring true.]
They also detail their other actions to serve their communities, such as food distribution and preschools, and that providing those services is foundational to their religion. […] several plaintiffs explain that their faith requires them to worship together in person, an argument foundational to COVID-19-era challenges by conservative churches seeking exemptions from stay-at-home orders.
Put simply, what all the plaintiffs are saying is that if ICE can come in and arrest immigrants in houses of worship, that substantially burdens their ability to exercise their religious beliefs that require them to serve and protect everyone. If the groups continue to serve undocumented persons, they are serving them up to ICE, which violates their religious duties of welcoming and care. […] Fewer people are attending services because of fear of ICE, clergy members are having to take time away from ministering to secure resources to keep undocumented congregants safe, and fewer community members are using services like soup kitchens.
[…] The government has not yet filed a response in this case. However, there’s no question their position will be that there is such a compelling interest in arresting undocumented people that it overrides the right of the plaintiffs to practice their religious beliefs. Any compelling interest the Trump administration will put forth, though, is based on their fiction that there is a border invasion of hardened criminals.
Even if a court agrees with that fiction, plaintiffs should still prevail. That’s because the government has to show that the action they want to take—here, sending ICE agents into a church to arrest someone—is the “least restrictive” means of furthering that compelling interest.
[…] No one really knows what the federal courts will do when the sincere belief of millions of people runs headlong into the administration’s desire to terrorize immigrants. […]
“Fentanyl czar, fentanyl czar, does whatever a fentanyl czar does.”
There’s a new sheriff in town, and he’s here to fight tariffs.
Not fight the actual tariffs on Canadian goods America’s alleged commander-in-chief has been argle-bargling about ever since a bunch of billionaires bought him another election, but rather by being a shiny new object to wave in his face to hopefully get him off the path of mutually assured destruction he appears to have his black little heart set on.
Former RCMP deputy commissioner Kevin Brosseau […] has been picked as Canada’s newly minted fentanyl czar and tasked with winning America’s war on drugs. Brosseau also served as deputy national security adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau […]
As the feds’ new go-to guy on the fentanyl file, Brosseau is expected to work with US law enforcement agencies to “accelerate Canada’s ongoing work to detect, disrupt and dismantle the fentanyl trade,” according to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office. […] Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid doctors prescribe for pain but also cooked up in sketchy drug labs like the one under Lavandería Brillante in “Breaking Bad,” kills roughly 80,000 people each year across North America. The drug has a lot to answer for, not least for taking Prince from us, but it’s beyond ridiculous to insist it’s mostly coming from Canada.
The White House recently announced that 43 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the northern border last year, a “massive 2050 per cent increase” over the previous one, when a mere two pounds were discovered. This is meant to be cover for shaking down America’s former closest friend but they left out the part of a third of the haul having instead been seized in Spokane — roughly 100 miles from the border with British Columbia but close enough for government work — in a drug bust that led to charges against three Mexicans. (For comparison, more than 21,000 pounds are claimed to have been confiscated at the southern border over the same stretch of time.) Canadian border agents caught another 10 pounds of outbound down over the same period although it was mostly headed for the Netherlands […]
The new gig was actually Canada’s own idea to sweeten existing plans to harden the world’s longest undefended border, which include spending the nearly one billion dollars we’d already agreed to with President Joe Biden but letting Dear Leader pretend was all due to him. Also we’re going to get some cool new Blackhawk helicopters and drones! And we agreed to designate Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations, which is sure to hurt their feelings if they ever show up. There have even been grassroots efforts to comply with his demand to have eyes on the border 24/7, including from a Manitoba family who had the bright idea to plant hockey sticks with googly eyes near the 49th parallel. [image at the link]
Canadians tend to defer to British spelling, which would probably be a reason to invade if spelling was something Fox News expected viewers to care about, and normally we’d have to name a tsar instead. Wikipedia even defaults on searches for czar to tsar. It might’ve been fun to appoint a czarina instead but it’s obviously unrealistic to expect MAGA to work with a woman. Better to go with a square-jawed white dude straight out of central casting.
Calling Brosseau a czar is actually a form of appeasement in itself as it’s essentially a made-up job title mostly used only by Americans. You will recall how Republicans successfully smeared Kamala Harris as the “border czar” even though she had nothing to do with border security.
But it sure seems like a missed opportunity given “fentanyl sentinel” was sitting right there!
The first record of the term being used in North America was as a description for Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who was named commissioner of baseball after the Black Sox scandal in 1919 when eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the World Series. It entered the political lexicon in the 1940s when FDR named special transportation, manpower, production, shipping, and rubber czars to oversee resources needed to fight the Nazis, which was the style at the time.
It may seem a bit on-the-nose nowadays as a term associated with Russian monarchs but the Slavic word actually derives from “Caesar” as a title for bigshots. We should probably expect all of Orange Julius’s Cabinet picks to soon be referred to as czars […]
But in Canada we prefer our caesars to have vodka and clamato juice, eh.
“Fire debris and potentially toxic ash could make the water unsafe for surfers and swimmers, especially after rainfall that can transport chemicals, trash and other hazards into the sea.”
On a recent Sunday, Tracy Quinn drove down the Pacific Coast Highway to assess damage wrought upon the coastline by the Palisades Fire.
The water line was darkened by ash. Burnt remnants of washing machines and dryers and metal appliances were strewn about the shoreline. Sludge carpeted the water’s edge. Waves during high tide lapped onto charred homes, pulling debris and potentially toxic ash into the ocean as they receded.
“It was just heartbreaking,” said Quinn, president and CEO of the environmental group Heal the Bay, whose team has reported ash and debris some 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of the Palisades burn area west of Los Angeles.
As crews work to remove potentially hundreds of thousands of tons of hazardous materials from the Los Angeles wildfires, researchers and officials are trying to understand how the fires on land have impacted the sea. The Palisades and Eaton fires scorched thousands of homes, businesses, cars and electronics, turning everyday items into hazardous ash made of pesticides, asbestos, plastics, lead, heavy metals and more.
Since much of it could end up in the Pacific Ocean, there are concerns and many unknowns about how the fires could affect life under the sea.
“We haven’t seen a concentration of homes and buildings burned so close to the water,” Quinn said.
[…] Scientists on board a research vessel during the fires detected ash and waste on the water as far as 100 miles (161 kilometers) offshore, said marine ecologist Julie Dinasquet with the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Things like twigs and shard. They described the smell as electronics burning, she recalled, “not like a nice campfire.”
Runoff from rains also are a huge and immediate concern. Rainfall picks up contaminants and trash while flushing toward the sea through a network of drains and rivers. That runoff could contain “a lot of nutrients, nitrogen and phosphate that end up in the ash of the burn material that can get into the water,” said Dias, as well as “heavy metals, something called PAHs, which are given off when you burn different types of fuel.”
[…] Beyond the usual samples, state water officials and others are testing for total and dissolved metals such as arsenic, lead and aluminum and volatile organic compounds.
They also are sampling for microplastics, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, that are harmful to human and aquatic life, and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a group of man-made chemicals shown to cause cancer in animals and other serious health effects. Now banned from being manufactured, they were used in products like pigments, paints and electrical equipment. […]
“It was the deadliest workplace in America. So why didn’t safety regulators shut it down?”
“Inspectors issued more than 100 safety violations and millions in fines. Yet deaths and injuries continued.”
The police lieutenant sounded unnerved as he stepped inside the old lumber mill. The power was off. The giant saws were quiet. […] In the darkened factory, sunlight streamed through jagged holes in the rusted metal walls as Lt. Marc Cutt walked across a machine that turned logs into lumber.
“Has it been rendered safe?” Cutt asked another police officer as his body camera recorded the scene.
“Safe is a relative term in this place,” the officer responded.
The police knew this place well. So did federal safety inspectors.
At Phenix Lumber Co., [in Alabama] workers had lost fingers, broken bones and been mangled by machines — at least 28 employees had reported injuries since 2010, at a company with only about 50 people on the payroll at a time. Three had died. A medical examiner’s report detailed how just 23 pounds of one employee was recovered after he was caught in a machine. It had reached the point, some former workers said, that they would pray before the start of their $9-an-hour shifts.
Phenix Lumber was the deadliest workplace in America over the past five years. No other office or factory posted a higher rate of work-related fatal incidents per worker, according to a Washington Post analysis of Occupational Safety and Health Administration fatality reports since 2019. The analysis examined deaths by workplace location, rather than by company, using OSHA data on fatalities investigated by the agency, which generally does not cover small farms or federal workers.
OSHA is tasked with ensuring that American work environments are safe. “There’s no way to characterize the history at this workplace as acceptable,” the agency said in a statement.
The story of Phenix Lumber — drawn from thousands of previously undisclosed documents and recordings obtained by The Post, along with interviews with officials and former workers and managers — shows the limits of OSHA’s powers. It cannot shut down companies even after years of repeated violations and penalties, even when workers die. It even lacks the power to ask a judge to do so.
It can request a shutdown from the court only in rare cases of “imminent danger,” such as a looming roof collapse. Causing the death of a worker by willfully violating safety rules is a misdemeanor under federal law. The maximum sentence is six months in prison, less than the penalty for killing an endangered animal. In the past five years, OSHA sent fewer than 50 cases to the Justice Department for a criminal review, records show, and it’s unclear how many of those were prosecuted.
[…] Since at least 2003, federal safety inspectors have fined the company nearly $5.3 million. They issued more than 180 citations for health and safety violations, accusing the company of knowingly ignoring workers’ safety “for monetary gain.” A quarter of the violations were deemed “willful,” the most severe category. Phenix Lumber workers told inspectors that they were routinely instructed to put their hands into the jaws of stuck machines to clear jams — without first cutting the power, a clear hazard. And the machines were in such bad shape that they regularly broke down. [Graph at the link shows “Workers killed on the job jumped 15% from 2013 to 2023.”]
[…] “This must stop,” they repeatedly warned the mill’s owners — one of the wealthiest families in eastern Alabama.
[…] [Snipped description of one “accident.” Video at the link]
[…] An attorney for the lumber mill said in a court filing after Streetman’s death that his “negligence proximately contributed to cause the accident resulting in his death.”
[…] But change was finally coming for Phenix Lumber. It would just have nothing to do with federal safety regulators.
Of all his companies, John Menza Dudley loved Phenix Lumber the most.
“I come here at 7 a.m. and leave at 5 p.m. every day,” he once told OSHA investigators.
[…]Johnny Dudley, as most people knew him, was one of Alabama’s largest private landowners […] He developed subdivisions. He owned a local bank.
[…] For years, Phenix Lumber had a reputation as a place to land a quick job, former workers said. The work was hard and hot. It was dangerous. […]
[I snipped more descriptions of accidents, and details of the company’s failures to follow basic safety procedures. for example: “Before workers try to fix a machine, safety protocols require them to turn it off and secure the power source with a personal lock so it can’t be accidentally turned back on. It’s a common industrial practice. OSHA says it prevents 120 deaths and 50,000 injuries annually.”]
[…] Broadwater [Doug Broadwater, Dudley’s right-hand man] also blamed employees, saying that “they are lazy and don’t want to” follow the rules. [Yikes. Many of the workers are Black.]
[…] Mayor Eddie Lowe said he struggled to understand how OSHA had allowed Phenix Lumber to stay open despite its years of problems. […]
That changed after city firefighters responding to Streetman’s death noticed a plastic pipe hooked to a yellow fire hydrant on the property, according to city officials. The mill appeared to be illegally tapping city water.
A municipal investigation calculated that the mill owed Phenix City nearly $3.8 million in water and sewage fees — more than what Phenix Lumber had paid OSHA in fines over the years.
City officials then took a step federal regulators couldn’t: They issued a cease-and-desist order that immediately closed down Phenix Lumber. The lumber mill couldn’t reopen until the building and fire code problems — such as the lack of proper permits and a sprinkler system — were fixed and the city was paid for the allegedly stolen water.
[…] Negotiations dragged on for weeks. In December, three months after Streetman’s death, the two sides clashed at a City Council meeting. Bill Finley, an attorney for the mill, said the city’s cease-and-desist letter was “not a pro-business decision.” He said Phenix Lumber had “hired folks that other folks won’t hire.” […]
“I’m just going to be honest and frank,” Mayor Lowe said. “When it comes to safety, that has to be the number one thing for any council. […]
The mayor and City Council voted unanimously to revoke Phenix Lumber’s business license.
The mill closed. […] Dudley’s heirs [Dudley died in 2022] fought over his estate in court. The legal cases against Phenix Lumber in the workers’ deaths slowly worked their way through the courts. […]
Last month, Phenix Lumber filed for bankruptcy. The company painted a dire financial picture, with assets of less than $50,000 and liabilities of more than $50 million. That included $2.47 million in OSHA penalties in Streetman’s death and $3.78 million for its unpaid municipal water and sewer bill.
OSHA needs more options for enforcement. Republicans have always worked against that. Now that Musk is involved, the difficulties regarding worker safety will be even worse. See below.
See also: What Will DOGE’s Moves on Government Agencies Mean for OSHA? by Eyal Press, writing for The New Yorker.
[…] Dismantling the Department of Labor would be an audacious undertaking for a President who owes his second term, in no small part, to the support of working-class voters. The D.O.L.’s mission is to foster the welfare of working people and to safeguard their rights and benefits. Like a growing number of tech oligarchs, Musk appears to regard the very idea of empowering the government to perform such functions as an affront. […]
Musk is unlikely to hold a more charitable view of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration [OSHA], a branch of the Labor Department whose mission is to protect employees from hazardous working conditions and to hold employers who put them at risk accountable. In recent years, OSHA has repeatedly fined Musk’s companies for serious safety violations, including an incident at a SpaceX facility in Texas in which a worker fell to his death from a truck whose cargo had not been properly secured.
[…] in an exposé published in 2023 by Reuters which documented at least six hundred previously unreported injuries at the company; its facility in Brownsville, Texas, had an injury rate six times higher than the industry average. […] OSHA has also fined another of Musk’s companies, Tesla, for exposing workers to hazardous chemicals and has issued a fine for multiple violations involving chemical burns and other injuries sustained by employees at a third Musk-owned business, the Boring Company.
[…] Every year, five thousand workers in America are killed on the job and more than two million suffer injuries and illnesses. […] a reason for this is not that OSHA has too many federal inspectors on its payroll but too few: just one for every eighty thousand workers in the country. Yet Trump has never shown any inclination to address this problem. To the contrary, during his first term, forty-two per cent of the leadership positions at OSHA, including the job of chief administrator, were left vacant. The vacancies persisted at the start of the pandemic, when unions pleaded with Eugene Scalia, a corporate lawyer whom Trump appointed as Secretary of Labor, to issue an emergency temporary standard that would require employers to follow specific rules to protect their safety and slow the spread of covid-19. Scalia, who had devoted much of his career to helping corporations evade government regulations, brushed the appeals aside.
[…] despite receiving more than ten thousand complaints from workers alleging unsafe conditions at their workplaces in the months that followed, OSHA issued just two citations. […]
[…] when it comes to labor rights Trump and Musk appear to see eye to eye, a fact that may cause millions of workers irreparable harm in the years to come.
Surprising absolutely no one, the DOGE child hacker Gavin Kliger admits to being inspired to join DOGE by reading a Nazi’s screeds.
[Screenshots from “Why I joined DOGE“, crediting Ron Unz.]
[Screenshots from Wikipedia. A holocaust denier who endorsed blood libel.]
This has happened repeatedly […] It has become a cruel punchline within the federal bureaucracy […] that “some child” from the DOGE team “will threaten to call Elon Musk, if you don’t do what the child wants,”
[…]
“It was so fucking stupid,” says another federal official, who was on the receiving end of the “Karen”-style DOGE threats about calling the cops—in this case, Elon Musk. “I can’t believe this is how they’re blowing up the Constitution, with this little nerd army… God help us. What else can I say?”
just to give you a feel—frequent instances of people being fired by people who refuse to identify themselves, with letters that are unsigned or people refuse to sign. I just read one of those letters. Starts “Hello,” then please read this immediately and then “thank you for your service to America.” And that’s it. These don’t seem to be written by seasoned HR professionals let’s say.
Bonneville Power Administration could lose nearly 20% of its workforce […] 200 of the agency’s more than 3,000 employees have accepted the Trump administration’s offer to resign and receive eight months of severance pay […] 90 job offers at BPA were rescinded as a result of the administration’s freeze on federal hiring. Chief financial officer is among the open positions […] another 350 to 400 probationary employees could be cut […] The employees taking the buyout include linemen, engineers, substation operators and power dispatchers—positions that take years of apprenticeship to learn.
[…]
“The reliability impacts of this could be very serious. I mean the lights go out. Unplanned outages.” […] “We have several mission critical employees with decades of institutional knowledge who have accepted the offer.”
[…]
the former BPA administrator, said he considered the Bonneville staff reductions to be ironic because the agency is self-funded. It receives no money from taxpayers and funds all of its staff and programs with its power and transmission sales. […] “It doesn’t save one penny towards reducing the Federal deficit.”
Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson just issued an order preventing the Trump administration from: 1. Deleting CFPB data. 2. Firing CFPB employees. 3. Transferring money from CFPB’s reserve fund.
Right after the order was issued, nearly all CFPB employees were placed on administrative leave. Prior to this order, […] almost all of them would be terminated this afternoon.
Hearing that the DOGE chaos hurricane is hitting HUD soon, and the plan is to devastate federal housing funding. Let’s be clear: this would cause a cascade of catastrophic impacts nationwide, shutting down housing and dumping families into the street.
[…]
incomprehensibly bad—projects will be frozen, die, or go under. Do you want to double homelessness overnight? Here’s how. Even from a pure cost-cutting standpoint this is insane, because dealing with families living on the brink of annihilation through emergency services alone is orders of magnitude more costly than maintaining existing housing programs.
David Burbach (Professor of International relations and natsec):
so draconian it appears to give colleges 14 days to rehouse students in voluntary ethnic affinity groupings, to cancel or redo courses mid semester, probably to ban informal Cinco de Mayo parties, or else lose all financial aid and research funding. It also *requires* schools to use standardized tests in admissions, and casts grave doubts on the use of personal essays at all. Appears to be intended to apply to this year’s admission process which of course is already well underway.
Hiding in Plain Sight: Disbarred Trump consigliere John Eastman’s *2006* report for Heritage Foundation laying out a legal attack on birthright citizenship that goes far beyond children of undocumented persons to establish a president/king’s power to take citizenship away from… anyone.
[…]
Eastman begins w/ 1884 SCOTUS case Elk v. Wilkins, which he says “correctly” excluded Native Americans from birthright citizenship. Doesn’t mention in main text subsequent law that changed that. Erasure.
Here’s the kicker: Eastman argues citizenship can be limited only to children of those w/ “total & exclusive allegiance” to the U.S. One parent holds, say, double citizenship in Ireland? Nixed. A parent once wrote, “Fuck the USA”? Possibly nixed. Who decides? Power decides.
[…]
he claims birthright citizenship is really sort of a remnant of feudalism, subjects of a king’s lands.
As many as 22 remaining Biden-appointed US attorneys had their government-issued devices deactivated Friday without being told they’ve been fired or provided an explanation […] now scrambling to figure out how they can continue performing their functions
[…]
Some of the other remaining US attorneys appointed by Biden were fired Feb. 12 at the direction of […] Trump. […] Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who the US attorneys report to, has made a series of moves […] to seize tighter control of field operations. […] DOJ headquarters gave all US attorneys two business days to explain why prosecutors they’ve hired in the past two years who aren’t focused on Trump priorities such as immigration and public safety should be retained.
Reginald Selkirksays
@191 CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain
What they really meant to say:
Here’s the kicker: Eastman argues citizenship can be limited only to children of those w/ “total & exclusive allegiance” to the U.S.Trump
Another week of Donald Trump’s presidency is in the rearview. And like the two weeks before it, it was filled with lawless actions, lies, and ridiculous behavior that Republicans lined up to defend.
Trump threw Ukraine under the bus and appears likely to let murderous Russian dictator Vladimir Putin seize control of the sovereign nation. He also fired more independent watchdogs, let more corrupt politicians off the hook, slashed grants to medical research, and he even said he might ignore court rulings blocking his unlawful actions. [Embedded links to sources are available at the main link.]
And like the pathetic lapdogs they are, Republicans defended every move.
After multiple federal judges of all ideological stripes blocked some of Trump’s executive actions, Republicans pushed the country further into a constitutional crisis by backing Trump when he suggested he’ll ignore those court orders and do whatever he wants.
“It seems hard to believe that a judge could say, ‘We don’t want you to do that.’ So maybe we have to look at the judges. ‘Cause I think that’s a very serious violation,” Trump said on Tuesday.
Trump likely got this idea from his own vice president, who wrote in an X post on Feb. 9 that judges shouldn’t be allowed to stop the president’s executive power. [Snipped Vance’s blather.]
And other Republicans agreed with the false statement that the courts are not allowed to check the president’s power—when that’s exactly what the Constitution dictates.
“Of course the branches have to respect our constitutional order but there’s a lot of game yet to be played. This will be appealed, we’ve got to go through the whole process, and we’ll get the final analysis. In the interim, I will say that I agree wholeheartedly with Vice President JD Vance, my friend, because he’s right,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said during a news conference on Tuesday.
Later that day, he said that the courts should back off of Trump altogether.
“I think that the courts should take a step back and allow these processes to play out. What we’re doing is good and right for the American people,” Johnson told reporters, specifically referring to the cuts co-President Elon Musk is trying to make with his fake agency, the Department of Government Efficiency.
“I don’t believe judges, courts have the authority or power to stick their nose into the constitutional authority of the president,” Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said.
“These judges need to back off and get out of the way of what the executive branch is doing to administer the government,” Roy said on Fox News.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah also expressed agreement that courts don’t have the power to challenge Trump’s executive orders.
“These judges are waging an unprecedented assault on legitimate presidential authority, all the way down to dictating what webpages the government has. This is absurd,” he wrote on X.
Rep. Darrel Issa, Republican of California, claimed that “nowhere in our Constitution is a single federal judge given absolute power over the President or the people of the United States.”
But, of course, the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark 1803 Marbury v. Madison case that the judiciary has the power to declare laws or actions unconstitutional.
[…] A handful of other Trump sycophants went a step further, saying that they would launch an impeachment effort against the judges who block Trump’s actions.
“I’m drafting articles of impeachment for US District Judge Paul Engelmayer. Partisan judges abusing their positions is a threat to democracy. The left has done ‘irreparable harm’ to this country. President Trump and his team at @DOGE are trying to fix it,” Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona wrote on X, referring to the federal judge who blocked Musk from accessing Treasury data.
And Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia wrote on X that he is backing Crane’s efforts.
“The real constitutional crisis is taking place in our judicial branch. Activist judges are weaponizing their power in an attempt to block President Trump’s agenda and obstruct the will of the American people. [Crane] and I are leading the fight to stop this insanity,” he wrote.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia called for the impeachment of another federal judge who blocked Trump’s freeze on congressionally appropriated federal funds.
“This judge is a Trump deranged Democrat activist. Below is proof he is not capable of making good decisions from the bench. He should be impeached,” Greene wrote on X.
Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio backed those efforts, saying the judges blocking Trump’s actions “should be mocked and ignored while articles of impeachment are prepared.”
“These clowns are undermining every lower court, leaving the sole burden on SCOTUS. This is not sustainable. Sadly, excesses in judicial and executive authority are a symptom of the real problem: Congress keeps failing to take action. Time for #DeedsNotWords,” he wrote on X.
Meanwhile, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, once a fierce defender of watchdogs, was fine with Trump axing the inspector general of the U.S. Agency for International Development who said that Trump’s unlawful shuttering of the agency let hundreds of millions of dollars worth of food aid go to waste.
Grassley said that he “should have been fired,” and gave Trump a workaround to make the firing legal.
“I’m just trying to make the president’s job easier,” Grassley said, completely ditching his past watchdog advocacy to bow down to Trump.
Other GOP lawmakers chose Trump over their own constituents, who are being directly harmed by the president’s actions.
Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio said that Trump’s decision to drastically cut back National Institutes of Health funding for medical research institutions is a good thing, even though it would decimate institutions in his own state and beyond.
[snipped Moreno’s blather]
And Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri said that Trump’s funding freeze, which is hurting farmers who are not being paid for contracts, is just a “little bit disruptive.”
“But that’s what this administration promised whenever they were coming to Washington,” Smith said on CNN, “is that they would be disruptive.” [Social media post and video at the link]
You may have noticed that wealthy international businessmen—the jet set class with the means to be anywhere—do not typically choose to live and headquarter their businesses in Russia. Nor do they choose to base themselves in Hungary, or El Salvador, or North Korea. No, you will find them most often in places like London and New York. This offers a hint to the answer of the question: What is it that businesses need to flourish?
Here are some of the basic ingredients of a truly pro-business atmosphere: The rule of law; a functional and predictable court system; enforceable contracts; intelligible regulations; trustworthy and accurate government data; widely available well educated and healthy workers; and strong public services that create a customer base that is, itself, healthy and wealthy and flourishing enough to spend money freely. These are the things from which strong companies and economies grow. Encouraging and protecting these things is therefore in the interest of the business community writ large. If these things fall apart, you can be sure that business will, in aggregate, suffer…
President Donald Trump asked the US Supreme Court to let him fire the head of an independent US agency that protects government whistleblowers, seeking high-court intervention for the first time in his campaign to oust federal officials who don’t embrace his views…
More than 100 miles of Texas’ borderlands could be leased or sold to the federal government as part of the state’s partnership with […] Trump to harden the border, Gov. Greg Abbott said in an interview with The Texas Tribune on Thursday.
Abbott is in Washington this week to lobby Congress for $11 billion to compensate Texas for money spent on his Operation Lone Star initiative, which he said was needed to fill gaps in the Biden administration’s immigration enforcement. The three-term Texas governor said he was ready to hand over to the federal government more than 50 miles of constructed border wall, nearly 20 miles of planned border walls, 100 miles of easements to build more walls, over 2,000 military beds for National Guardsmen and 4,000 jail cells to detain migrants.
The exchange of real estate and working border infrastructure built under Operation Lone Star differentiates this request from past appeals Texas has made to the federal government for border enforcement, Abbott said.
“This is not really a reimbursement,” said Abbott during a 10-minute interview at his Washington hotel. “This is a payment for real estate assets and improvements provided by the state of Texas as payment for services rendered by the state of Texas that benefits everybody in the United States of America.”
[…] Abbott met with Texas Republicans and House Speaker Mike Johnson this week to make his case, as well as White House officials. Abbott also met with Trump last week.
It remains to be seen if Congress will allocate the funds or if Trump will support the move. Slashing federal spending is among Republicans’ highest priorities this year. Abbott didn’t say if his meetings with Johnson or Trump yielded support, but he described them as “very appreciative of everything that Texas did, and they thank us for Texas holding the line during the four years of open border policies under [President] Joe Biden.”
[…] House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington, R-Lubbock, presented a draft budget resolution Wednesday, which would include $300 billion for border security and defense spending. Arrington supports the payment to Texas, calling it “the right and responsible thing” to do. But he acknowledged he would need to make sure whatever mechanism to send out the money is fiscally responsible. That would mean collaborating with members outside of the Texas delegation.
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, one of the most hawkish conservatives on reining in spending, was supportive of the reimbursement, saying Texas invested in infrastructure the federal government should have built.
[…] U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, serves on the House Appropriations Committee and said he was confident all Republicans on the committee would support the effort. He said it would be an easier sell because the infrastructure is already in place.
Abbott launched Operation Lone Star in 2021 […]
Abbott signed an agreement with the Trump administration earlier this month authorizing Texas National Guard soldiers to make immigration arrests as long as they work in tandem with federal agents. Abbott clarified Thursday that the agreement means they have the same authority as any ICE or Border Patrol agents, including “apprehending, arresting, jailing, and going through the deportation process.” He added Department of Public Safety officers were also working with ICE, embedding with ICE agents in their operations in Texas.
[…] His office later clarified that DPS agents were not directly arresting migrants but were partaking in ICE operations by creating security perimeters, investigating and using drones to locate migrants that ICE is targeting.
[…] many migrants without criminal records have reportedly been deported. The White House has recently said that all migrants who crossed into the country illegally should be treated as criminals and deported. Abbott said he agrees with Homan, who said migrants without criminal records could be arrested when searching for migrants who do.
[…] The sharpest decline in border crossings was from December of 2023 to January of 2024, from over 300,000 encounters to about 176,000. Crossings continued to decline into June 2024, hovering around 100,000 encounters a month after then, according to the Department of Homeland Security. […]
Bekenstein Boundsays
The Business Community Is Extraordinarily Stupid
Shhh! Don’t tell Morales! He’ll have a conniption! :)
[Context: Bosnia is 50% Muslim with large minorities of Serb Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholic Croats.]
On a 2018 visit to the Balkans, [Peter Marocco] secretly met with […] ethnonationalist Bosnian Serb separatist leaders. Those politicians had been working for years to defy their nation’s constitution and undermine the American-backed peace deal in an effort to promote a Christian Bosnian Serb state.
[…]
After the State Department, the Trump administration sent Marocco to a senior post at [USAID], where he attempted to delay or halt dozens of programs—including those that benefited Bosnia and Herzegovina’s unified government—and reinvent the agency […] overtly militaristic and Christian nationalist. The complaints about Marocco alarmed agency leaders so much that they significantly curtailed his duties
[…]
Marocco is now the director for foreign assistance at the State Department and has been delegated the power of deputy administrator of USAID—helping lead the two agencies that previously rejected him. And unlike last time, Marocco is now without strictures and answers to few […] Marocco drafted the order shutting down all of USAID’s programs and freezing foreign aid. He’s led the efforts to place nearly all of the agency’s staff on administrative leave
[…]
seen inside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, according to footage […] He was not charged with a crime
[…]
Experts in and outside government now consider Marocco to be orchestrating the new Trump administration’s foreign aid policy largely by himself.
[I’m a] former FAA air traffic controller (26 years) and current Airline Transport rated commercial pilot.
On Friday, hundreds of FAA technicians and engineers were terminated. […] They were identified as “probationary” and there is a reasonable speculation that AI was used to “find” probationary employees, assuming that meant that they were new hires. That is not an accurate assumption.
A newly hired federal employee is probationary and may be subject to at will termination, but the term “probationary” is also applied to promotions […] if the promotion or transfer is not successful, the employee would return to the pre-promotion position. That allows the government to retain needed expertise. However, even that is not the case in these positions as workers were indeed succeeding in their new roles.
FAA technicians undergo years of specialized training to maintain mission critical systems and cannot be replaced quickly. […] Once our aviation safety infrastructure is compromised, it will take decades to bring it back. Money will not be saved and lives may be lost.
Sky Captain @201 and 202, the number of dangerous errors Musk’s minions continue to make is just astounding. And, the number of Musk’s minions who have been caught cozying up to wannabe Nazis and Christian Nationalist (or other rightwing whackos) is equally astounding.
The picture is clear if you put all the puzzle pieces together.
“Trump is unfairly detaining immigrants at Guantanamo as terrorists, families say,” by by Perla Trevizo and Mica Rosenberg, for ProPublica and Texas Tribune
ProPublica and The Texas Tribune have identified nearly a dozen immigrants who have been flown to Guantanamo Bay. Government officials have refused to release the names of detainees or provide details about the crimes that landed them in detention.
The military planes departed from Texas in quick succession, eight flights in as many days. Each one carried more than a dozen immigrants that the U.S. alleged are the “worst of the worst” kinds of criminals, including members of a violent Venezuelan street gang.
Since Feb. 4, the Trump administration has flown about 100 immigrant detainees to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a facility better known for having held those suspected of plotting the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Officials have widely touted the flights as a demonstration of […] Trump’s commitment to one of the central promises of his campaign, and they’ve distributed photos of some of the immigrants at both takeoff and landing. But they have not released the names of those they’re holding or provided details about their alleged crimes.
In recent days, however, information about the flights and the people on them has emerged that calls the government’s narrative into question. ProPublica and The Texas Tribune have identified nearly a dozen Venezuelan immigrants who have been transferred to Guantanamo. The New York Times published a larger list with some, but not all, of the same names. [Embedded links are available at the main link.]
For three of the Guantanamo detainees who had been held at an immigration detention center in El Paso, Texas, ProPublica and the Tribune obtained records about their criminal histories and spoke to their families. The three men are all Venezuelan. Each had been detained by immigration authorities soon after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and was being held in custody, awaiting deportation. In some cases, they had been languishing for months because Venezuela, until recently, was largely not accepting deportees. According to U.S. federal court records, two of them had no crimes on their records except for illegal entry. The third had picked up an additional charge while in detention, for kicking an officer while being restrained during a riot.
Relatives of the three men said in interviews on Tuesday that they have been left entirely in the dark about their loved ones. They all said that their relatives were not criminals, and two provided records from the Venezuelan Interior Ministry and other documents to support their statements. They said the U.S. government has given them neither information about the detainees’ whereabouts nor the ability to speak with them.
Attorneys say they have also been denied access. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Wednesday, arguing that the U.S. Constitution gives the detainees rights to legal representation that shouldn’t be stripped away just because they have been moved to Guantanamo.
[…] [snipped details of some personal stories, and reactions of family members]
[…] In response to questions about the Guantanamo detentions, officials at the Department of Homeland Security insisted, without pointing to any evidence, that some — but not all — of the immigrants they have transferred to Guantanamo are violent gang members and others are “high-threat” criminals. “All these individuals committed a crime by entering the United States illegally,” an agency official said in a statement. Some detainees are being held in Guantanamo’s maximum-security prison while others are in the Migrant Operations Center that in the past has been used to house those intercepted at sea.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, responding to the ACLU lawsuit, said in an email that there was a phone system that detainees could use to reach attorneys. Writing in all caps for emphasis, she added, “If the AMERICAN Civil Liberties Union cares more about highly dangerous criminal aliens including murders & vicious gang members than they do about American citizens — they should change their name.”
[…] Among the things law enforcement has used to identify members of the group have been certain tattoos, including stars, roses and crowns, though there’s disagreement on whether the practice is reliable. Lawyers have expressed concern that the government sometimes uses national security concerns as a pretext to avoid scrutiny.
The Guantanamo detentions may be among the highest-profile moves the Trump administration has made as part of its mass deportation campaign, but federal agents have also fanned out across the country over the last several weeks to conduct raids in neighborhoods and workplaces. Data obtained by ProPublica and the Tribune shows that from Jan. 20 through the first days of February, there have been at least 14,000 immigration arrests. Around 44% of them were of people with criminal convictions, and of those, close to half were convicted of misdemeanors. Still, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, has said that he’s not satisfied with the pace of enforcement.
Government data obtained by the news organizations shows that the Trump administration has averaged about 500 deportations per day, well short of the more than 2,100 per day during the 2024 fiscal year under former President Joe Biden. However, the difference could be attributed to lower numbers of border crossings, which have been dropping since last year.
Trump directed the departments of Defense and Homeland Security last month to prepare 30,000 beds at Guantanamo and later said the site was for “criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.”
[…] Palma said in Spanish of her brother. “Having tattoos is not a sin.”
Palma, who is currently living in Ecuador, said her brother left Venezuela years ago, first living for a time in Ecuador and then in Costa Rica. He decided to try his luck in the United States last year, crossing with a group that included his wife and cousin, who were soon released into the U.S. to pursue asylum claims, they both said in interviews. All three women said Simancas was proud of his work on construction sites and shared TikTok videos he made showing the progress of some of his projects, set to music. Simancas called his cousin on Feb. 7 saying he was being taken to Guantanamo. “It is truly distressing,” his sister said. […]
Duran’s father only learned of his son’s potential whereabouts after recognizing his face in a TikTok video with some of the images released by the U.S. government of men in gray sweats and shackles being led into military planes in El Paso.
[snipped more personal stories and details]
We are still reporting. Do you have information about the U.S. immigration system you want to share? You can reach our tip line on Signal at 917-512-0201. Please be as specific, detailed and clear as you can.
Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett on Sunday made what she called an “admission to MAGA” about immigrants taking jobs. […]
“There’s an immigrant taking people’s jobs… his name is Elon Musk,” the lawmaker wrote. “He’s snatching farms, government jobs (even those in which they manage our national security), and definitely those whose jobs are to root out fraud (inspector generals), & those that are keeping us safe (FAA), meals on wheels workers, head start, and the list goes on, so I’ll be the bigger person and admit to MAGA that I was wrong when I said immigrants wouldn’t take our jobs. You were 1000 percent correct.”
Ukrainian forces have liberated the village of Pishchane in Donetsk Oblast, about 5 km south of Pokrovsk. Russian troops have also reportedly been pushed back from several nearby settlements. This is reported by spokesman for the Khortytsia Regional Administrative District Viktor Tregubov.
More good news from the area south of Pokrovsk. [….] Pokrovsk continues to be the most active area along the front.
[…] The General Staff reported that Russian troops stepped up their attacks on the battlefield significantly on 15 February, with 250 combat clashes as of 22:00. The largest number, 67, took place on the Pokrovsk front. The total number of assaults increased two and a half times compared to the previous day.
[…] Russia continues to burn through men and machines in an attempt to retake the Kursk area.
[…] First images of the destruction of the RF’s 155th Marine Brigade armored assault near #Nikiskii, #Kursk AO, earlier today. Note that the vehicles are flying the red soviet flag which is considered the “victory” flag.
“Right now it’s just a complete mess near Nikolskoye. The 155th column, fucking hell, under red flags, like at a parade, went head-on into a swarm of Ukrainian drones along a mined road!!!! Don’t rub your eyes, we wrote everything correctly – precisely under the red flags of Victory…
[…] The 155th is also taking some heat for leaving the North Koreans high and dry.
The Russians once again abandoned their North Korean allies. North Korean units and Russian Navy infantry staged a retreat from Nikolsky in the Kursk region, with 50-100 fighters leaving their positions. Z-channels blame the Russian 155th Brigade for mysteriously failing to provide support.
[…]
Another state employee in #Russia, who just happened to oppose the war, also just happened to fall out of a window Artyom Primak, 44, from Nikolaevsk-on-Amur, who worked at #Khabarovsk city hall, died after “falling from the 9th floor” according to TASS.
The Czech Republic steps up.
🇨🇿🇺🇦 Czechia to continue initiative to supply artillery ammunition to Ukraine.
Petr Pavel: “We have received enough resources from our allies to cover Ukraine’s needs until April 2025, and here at the conference I also held talks with allies to consider the possibility of providing more resources.”
[…] This loser was invited along with the Treasury Department team that visit Kyiv and tried to strong-arm Zelenskyy into signing away Ukraine’s mineral rights.
Jack Posobiec said Bucha never happened, pushed the biolabs conspiracy and retweets Dugin. Trump has sent this man as part of his delegation to Ukraine. That’s all you need to know about the respect he has for Zelensky.
“The world’s richest man is trying to sway politics on six continents.”
Details at the link.
John Moralessays
Yeah, Lynna. Details at link.
“That turn toward international politics coincided with Musk’s first year owning X, formerly Twitter, a platform that not only allows him to sway public opinion globally but also exposes him to global disputes.”
That was widely lambasted as an idiotic, money-losing, egoistic loss of face and money at the time.
(Remember? Many posts about that right on this thread)
Dust produced by wear of the road, tyres, and brakes, known as “non-exhaust emissions”, are now the major type of emissions from road transport, surpassing exhaust emissions […] brake dust is often the main contributor, but it’s not yet subject to regulation. […] We grew cells in the lab to mimic the lining of the lung, and exposed these cells
[…]
interestingly, when we treated this brake dust with a chemical to neutralise copper, its toxic effects were diminished. […] Almost half of all copper in the air we breathe comes from brake and tyre wear.
[…]
Unfortunately, while the switch to electric vehicles will eliminate exhaust emissions, […] because they tend to be heavier, electric vehicles can generate more non-exhaust dust than petrol or diesel vehicles
[…]
Euro 7 emissions standards that will be introduced in November 2026 will place limits on brake dust emissions […] California and Washington have passed legislation to reduce copper content within brake pads, although this was primarily in response to concerns about the runoff of copper from brake dust into waterways, affecting aquatic life.
birgerjohanssonsays
I have not kept up with events.
-Are Americans aware that the president has confused Gaza province, Mozambique, East Africa, with Gaza, Middle East?
Biden’s administration apparently sent $ 59 million’s worth of condoms to Gaza, East Africa to curb the spread of HIV.
The president went on TV claiming Biden had sent condoms for $ 50 million to Hamas, who are using them to make explosives.
Two days later he repeated the claim, but now it was $ 100 millions.
Are the mainstream media mentioning this at all?
Following the Gulf’s name change in Google Maps last week, Developer Bryce Bostwick created the Restore the Gulf of Mexico extension to revert it back, which he says in a YouTube video is “the world’s smallest form of protest.” …
Kim Sae-ron, an award-winning South Korean actor whose career was derailed after a 2022 drunk-driving accident, was found dead in her house in Seoul on Sunday, police said. She was 24.
“She was found dead and there is no sign of foul play,” a police official told AFP, without giving more details…
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 211
Are the mainstream media mentioning this at all?
Pfffft… No. Even if they did, it’s not as if the people will believe them. The “lie” of hard-earned America’ money being spent be sexually depraved liberals on behalf of “terrorists” is far more acceptable for the knuckle-dragging, willfully-illiterate masses.
A U.S. judge has scheduled a rare holiday court hearing on Monday, in a case brought by Democratic state attorneys general seeking to protect major federal agencies from Elon Musk’s government cost-cutting team known as DOGE.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C., on Sunday called the hearing for Monday, the Presidents Day holiday when federal courts are closed.
There would be no reason to hear the case today unless Chutkan expected to issue an immediate order against Musk. If she thought it was up in the air it could at least afford to wait one day when the government is largely closed. The case in question is Democratic AGs asking for a pretty broad temporary restraining order preventing Dodge from accessing information at all from several important government departments.
The issue at this point isn’t the ruling, it is what the judge is going to do to enforce it. The Trump administration has already violated a couple of orders and Trump is posting about how saving a country is never against the law. At some point a judge is going to have to step up and do something beyond asking the Trump administration from violating the law.
About a month after the 2024 elections, after Donald Trump announced plans to nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for a Cabinet post, a group of congressional Republicans had an idea. Five GOP senators — Kansas’ Roger Marshall, Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville, Florida’s Rick Scott, Wyoming’s Cynthia Lummis, and Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson — launched what they called the “MAHA Caucus.”
The acronym, of course, stood for “Make America Healthy Again.”
It wasn’t altogether clear that this Senate contingent would do, exactly, but the general idea was to champion the vision of the notorious conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine activist. (One member of the quintet, Kansas’ Marshall, was a medical doctor before getting into politics.)
The Senate caucus will now apparently have a companion commission in the executive branch. NBC News reported on Kennedy and his new role chairing a new federal panel focused on addressing chronic disease.
[…] Trump established the commission Thursday with an executive order he issued just hours after the Senate confirmed Kennedy. The Make America Healthy Again Commission, as it’s called, will consist of several high-ranking federal officials, including the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and the directors of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For now, let’s not dwell on the oddity of seeing someone lead a panel on addressing chronic ailments despite having no background whatsoever in science, medicine, health care, medical treatments, medical research, or policymaking at any level of government.
Let’s instead consider why it’s difficult to take the “MAHA Commission” seriously.
In the abstract, the idea behind the commission certainly seems worthwhile. Who would be opposed to making Americans healthier and assisting those with chronic diseases?
The fine print, however, matters. Some of the language in the executive order creating the commission, for example, raised alarms among those on the lookout for an anti-vaccine agenda.
What’s more, as The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell recently explained in a column, the policy agenda embraced by the Trump White House and congressional Republicans — which includes Medicaid cuts, cutting investments in nutritional programs, and dismantling environmental protections — would do little to make the public healthier. [True!]
[…] the public was confronted with a series of related reports, just from the past few days:
– As the Trump administration fires scores of federal workers, among those who’ve been ousted are public-health officials, some of whom are responsible for emergency preparedness and response.
– NBC News similarly reported on Team Trump ousting so-called “disease detectors”: officials at the Laboratory Leadership Service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who work on supporting outbreak response efforts.
– NBC News similarly reported that the White House has restricted communications that have hobbled public health officials’ response to a burgeoning bird-flu threat.
Information from the CDC on influenza and H5N1 has been taken down from online resources without explanation.
If administration officials wants to help make Americans healthy, perhaps they can stop taking steps in the opposite direction?
Actions the Trump administration is taking will result in more people dying. That is not a formula for making American healthy again.
[…] And Russian media was like … ehhhhhhhhh, excellent Russian journalists cannot even with this one!
RT News wrote that Alina Habba’s comment “leans on debunked claim USAID was sending $50m to embattled enclave for ‘bomb-making condoms.’” It added, “It was to Gaza in Africa.”
And Julia Davis, Daily Beast reporter and prolific watchdog of the Russian state media, tweeted, “I’ve lived long enough to see RT fact check Alina Habba.” […]
Even then RT doesn’t quite have it right, or at least elides its usual commitment to thorough factchecking. But saying “it was Gaza in Africa” is a piece of the truth about the origin story of this particular bullshit, if you are curious. There is a province in Mozambique called “Gaza” — kind of like how there is a Paris in Tennessee and a Rome in Georgia! — and it was the recipient of foreign aid, though “condoms” don’t actually appear in there, so the DOGE incels are either lying or they’re just ignorant.
Forsooth, as the president of Refugees International explained on Twitter: [social media post at the link: “[…] $50m would be ONE BILLION condoms […]]
But yes, if there is any sort of kernel of an origin for this, it is about the Gaza province of Mozambique:
According to the HHS grants database, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation in Mozambique received more than $83m in funding since 2021 for reproductive health projects in two provinces: Inhambane and Gaza. […]
As the White House moves forward with plans for a broader trade war, there are reports that the European Commission is considering tough new restrictions on agricultural imports. As Reuters reported, Donald Trump was asked about the possibility, though he didn’t seem to care.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday shrugged off the European Union’s reported push to block imports of U.S. soybeans and other foods made to different standards […] Trump, speaking to reporters after a quick trip to Daytona Beach for the Daytona 500 car race, said the U.S. was sticking to its plans to start implementing reciprocal tariffs.
“That’s all right. I don’t mind,” Trump said. “Let them do it. Let them do it.” [video at the link]
What the president did not acknowledge, of course, was that if EU limits agricultural imports from the United States, that would necessarily mean fewer consumers for American farmers.
In isolation, that might not seem especially notable, but in the larger context, Trump and his White House team have made a variety of related moves that also undermine the interests of American farmers. The Washington Post reported last week, for example, on the millions of dollars in federal funding that the farmers were expecting but have not received.
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump ordered the USDA to freeze funds for several programs designated by President Joe Biden’s signature clean-energy and health-care law, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The freeze paused some funding for the department’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which helps farmers address natural resource concerns, and the Rural Energy for America Program, which provides financial assistance for farmers to improve their infrastructure.
The Post’s report added that farmers “paid up front to build fencing, plant new crops and install renewable energy systems with guarantees that the federal government would issue grants and loan guarantees to cover at least part of their costs.” But when the Trump administration froze the funding, it left the farmers on the hook.
The Post also published a separate report on the effects of the White House firing federal employees, some of whom worked specifically to benefit farmers.
What’s more, the White House is trying to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and those efforts don’t just hurt vulnerable populations abroad. As a NOTUS report explained last week, “Over 40% of the food distributed through USAID programs is purchased from farmers in the U.S., amounting to about $2 billion per year.”
Unfortunately, we can keep going: The White House’s anti-immigrant agenda is very likely to undermine the agricultural industry, which has long relied on migrant field workers, and the Trump administration’s haphazard approach to the burgeoning bird-flu threat is similarly poised to hurt, among others, farmers.
It’s not exactly an electoral secret that the president and his party have fared well in rural areas in recent election cycles, and farmers have earned a reputation as a reliable GOP voting bloc. If Trump is aware of this, he appears uninterested in rewarding that political support. On the contrary, he and his team keep taking steps that will end up hurting farmers.
birgerjohanssonsays
Lynna @ 219
Thank you!
.
“EU to Replace US with Canada for Gas Import: A Crushing Blow to American Exports”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=l6VdEaXATQ4
Who could have seen this coming ??? It is almost as if they regard USA as an unreliable partner…
Since the Tory newspapers work for a rival party, they will delight in reminding people Reform UK praised Trump’s economic policies once they go bad.
(Schadenfreude 😼☠️)
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 220
Farmers have earned a reputation as a reliable GOP voting bloc, which makes it all the more striking to see [Trump] undermining their interests.
Oh please! They didn’t vote for Republicans due to their economic policies, but, like all backwoods hicks, for JEEZ-us, guns, and protecting the “white race” from the race-mixing, trans, Muslim commies.
The burgeoning controversy surrounding the Justice Department and New York City Mayor Eric Adams has one quality some of Donald Trump’s first-term scandals lacked: It’s incredibly simple.
If the allegations raised by a former federal prosecutor are correct, the Trump administration effectively told a politician charged with corruption, “We’ll make your legal troubles go away if you play ball with us.” You don’t need a flow chart to understand the story. You don’t need a law degree to appreciate its significance.
At issue is an alleged quid pro quo. The Democratic mayor was indicted; he wanted to get out of his legal mess; and so, according to the allegations, he, his lawyer, and a Trump appointee struck a backroom deal: Adams would help the White House on immigration policy, and in exchange, prosecutors would temporarily put aside put the felony charges. And while several key figures in the story have denied any wrongdoing, as controversies go, this one’s quite straightforward.
What’s more, given that the controversy has led at least seven Justice Department officials to resign on principle, refusing to go along with the apparent agreement, it’s tough for partisans to pretend there’s nothing to the underlying story.
[…] as The Hill reported, some of the preliminary GOP lines are unusually weak.
Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) on Sunday defended the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) order for federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. “Well, I think the priority would be immigration,” Zinke said in an interview on NewsNation’s “The Hill Sunday” when asked to explain why the order to drop charges is not an example of politicization at the DOJ in favor of President Trump.
The Montana Republican — who served as a Cabinet secretary in Trump’s first term — went on to say, “The president looked at it, the priorities. He’s got to work with New York. He found a willing partner.” Zinke concluded, “Obviously, the Trump administration looked at it and said, ‘You know what? What’s more important right now is getting New York back to safety and getting the illegal immigration problem out of New York.’”
So, Zinke’s defense was to effectively admit that the basic claims at the root of the controversy are true. Zinke’s argument, however, was rooted in the idea that Trump and his team were right to cut a backroom deal because undocumented immigrants in New York City are bad.
On the other side of Capitol Hill, the reaction was, by some measures, worse. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said in a statement to HuffPost that the decision to drop the case against Adams was “evidence that President Trump feels Biden’s Justice Department was weaponizing itself against Mayor Adams, just like they used it against Trump.”
This is the worst kind of partisanship: It’s just lazy.
Indeed, the Iowa Republican — who ostensibly has a responsibility to take controversies surrounding federal law enforcement seriously — told overlapping falsehoods as part of his effort to pretend the Adams fiasco is unimportant. Grassley said the Biden-era Justice Department was “weaponized” (it wasn’t), and that prosecutors unfairly targeted Trump (they didn’t).
What’s more, Grassley’s pitch was rooted in a baseless conspiracy theory — the Democratic administration was out to punish a Democratic mayor — that’s so wrong that even the Trump administration hasn’t peddled it. Similarly, the GOP senator’s claims have already been contradicted by prosecutors with sterling conservative credentials.
In case that weren’t quite enough, both Zinke and Grassley appeared to concede that the president was directly involved in dismissing the charges against Adams, reinforcing the impression that there was direct political interference in the case that was in the hands of prosecutors.
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, added fresh weight to the allegations on Friday morning, appearing on Fox News alongside Adams. “If he doesn’t come through,” Homan said, pointing to the mayor, “I’ll be back in New York City and we won’t be sitting on the couch. I’ll be in his office, up his butt saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’” (Despite referring to an “agreement” with Adams, Homan later said it was “ridiculous” to allege a quid pro quo.)
“It took generations of work to establish the foundations of the Western alliance, and Team Trump appears eager to take a sledgehammer to those foundations.”
Donald Trump’s first term as president strained relations between the United States and our longtime allies, especially in Europe, and some of the reactions in Germany helped capture the severity of the circumstances.
The European edition of Politico published a report in 2018, for example, that said, “It’s difficult to overstate just how enraged Germany is about Trump. By questioning and criticizing such bastions of the Western order as NATO, the World Trade Organization and even the EU, Trump has thrust Germany’s leadership into an existential torpor it has yet to escape.”
Around the same time, a senior German official told The New Yorker’ Susan Glasser, “It took Germany the longest of all partners to come to terms with someone like Trump becoming president. We were very emotional, because our relationship with America is so emotional — it’s more of a son-father relationship — and we didn’t recognize our father anymore and realized he might beat us.”
Seven years later, conditions appear considerably worse. Take this New York Times report from Saturday, for example.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany on Saturday accused Vice President JD Vance of unacceptably interfering in his country’s imminent elections on behalf of a party that has played down the atrocities committed by the Nazis 80 years ago. A day after Mr. Vance stunned the Munich Security Conference by telling German leaders to drop their so-called firewall and allow the hard-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, to enter their federal government, Mr. Scholz accused Mr. Vance of effectively violating a commitment to never again allow Germany to be led by fascists who could repeat the horrors of the Holocaust.
The new American vice president made quite an impression during his appearance in Munich, lecturing our ostensible allies about democracy and democratic principles, downplaying the importance of threats from authoritarian powers, raising fresh doubts about U.S. support for Ukraine, and even cozying up to Germany’s right-wing AfD — a political party that’s monitored by the country’s domestic intelligence agency for suspected extremism.
The intensity of the related diplomatic shockwave is still being measured. NBC News reported, “The past week has left America’s European allies reeling and searching for alternatives after the Trump administration seemingly set itself in opposition to a rules-based system that the U.S. and its trans-Atlantic friends have spent decades building together.”
A New York Times reported that an “epochal breach appears to be opening in the Western alliance.”
To be sure, this was hardly the new Republican administration’s first international incident. On the contrary, the last four weeks have featured one such incident after another, with avoidable incidents related to Ukraine, Gaza, Colombia, Canada, Greenland, and even Taiwan — which did not go unnoticed in Beijing.
But by forcing new divisions between the United States and our Western allies, the scope of Trump’s damage is difficult to overstate. It took generations of arduous and bipartisan work to establish the foundations of the Western alliance, and the Republican appears eager to take a sledgehammer to those foundations for reasons he’s struggled to explain.
The only apparent beneficiary of such a foreign policy is Vladimir Putin’s Russia — which Trump has been eager to reward, and which has long dreamed of a White House willing to break with the United States’ traditional European allies.
birgerjohanssonsays
A Different Bias:
“Tories Starting to Turn on Trump”
(I am deliberately leaving the window open so you can read the headline)
birgerjohanssonsays
Dang! Not a good image.
The text is “Anderson told to take Musk’s dick out of his mouth by tory MP.”
Anderson is an asshole who defected from the conservatives to the even worse Reform UK. He naturally supports Musk and Trump as they betray Ukraine.
Adding to the list of similarly sycophantic efforts, a GOP congresswoman unveiled an actual bill to make Donald Trump’s birthday a federal holiday.
[…] In case there are any doubts, this isn’t intended as satire. The New York Republican [Rep. Claudia Tenney] really did introduce an actual bill, H.R. 1395, which does not yet have any cosponsors, though it seems safe to assume other far-right GOP lawmakers will soon follow suit.
By way of an explanation, Tenney issued a press statement saying that her proposal has merit because, as she put it, “No modern president has been more pivotal for our country than Donald J. Trump. As both our 45th and 47th President, he is the most consequential President in modern American history.” The GOP congresswoman, in apparent seriousness, added that recognizing Trump’s birthday as a federal holiday would “recognize him as the founder of America’s Golden Age.”
To be sure, it’s tempting to ignore this silly legislative effort, which will almost certainly go ignored, but there’s a larger pattern that’s worth appreciating.
After all, Tenney’s bill comes on the heels of a bill intended to carve Trump’s face into Mount Rushmore, which came on the heels of another measure to allow Trump to seek a third term.
There are also pending bills to rename Dulles Airport after Trump — an effort, incidentally, that Tenney has also endorsed — as well as legislation to “expunge” Trump’s first two impeachments.
In the last Congress, a Republican pushed a bill to put Trump’s face on $500 bills, and while the effort hasn’t yet been reintroduced in the current Congress, it’s probably only a matter of time.
As The New York Times recently summarized, “A competition of sorts has broken out for whom the Republican base will see as the most pro-Trump member.” From the article:
The rush of flattering legislation, some of which even the lawmakers concede is unlikely to pass, stands apart from merely carrying out Mr. Trump’s agenda. … “It shows the power that Donald Trump has within the Republican Party these days, and that Republican members want to stay on his good side,” said Sean M. Theriault, government professor at the University of Texas at Austin. […]
This was published before a New York congresswoman pushed her proposal to make Trump’s birthday a federal holiday.
I’m reminded anew of the response to the Ogles bill from Filipe Campante, a professor at Johns Hopkins University: “The reason why this is bad is the very fact that it’s transparently ridiculous: It shows how this is becoming a Kim Jong-Un-style cult of personality, where the sycophants try to outdo one another in their groveling to get the attention of Dear Leader.”
That competition, alas, appears likely to get more intense.
birgerjohanssonsays
Next up: huge portraits of the Dear Leader everywhere.
[…] Only the Wall Street Journal dedicated feature-length coverage to Musk and Altman’s battle to control the future of America’s AI industry, and would you believe they fumbled the ball completely? Instead of digging into the huge power Musk would amass by controlling OpenAI and its main product, ChatGPT, the Journal instead focused on the high drama of two rich dudes at war. The media can’t help but turn a fight over the future of American information security into one more piece of vapid horse race coverage.
Musk’s acquisition of OpenAI would make him undeniably the most powerful tech tycoon in the world. More importantly for Musk’s aims, it would also put him in charge of the world’s largest and best-funded generative AI platform at a time when disinformation and misinformation are major threats—and judging by Musk’s own Grok AI platform, priority No. 1 would involve shifting ChatGPT’s ideology sharply to the right and filling it with pro-Republican training data.
A healthy democracy could depend on federal regulators to investigate any potential sale of OpenAI to Musk. That’s not the case in this hollowed-out Trump administration, where Alex Samuels reports that Musk has amassed even more control of federal policymaking. Without safeguards like the Federal Trade Commission to keep Musk from using federal influence to bully his rivals into selling their businesses, it’s anyone’s guess who owns OpenAI by this time next year. If it’s Musk, get ready for a tidal wave of disinformation crashing onto Americans’ screens just in time for the 2026 midterms. Yeesh.
As they try to agree on a plan that will cut enough services out of the federal budget to cover at least some of the massive costs of extending Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the already obscenely rich, Republicans are again considering letting children in low-income families go hungry so that billionaires can profit. Republicans aren’t saying that upfront, of course, and the policy they’re kicking around doesn’t even make explicit mention of cuts to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC.
As Salon’s food editor Ashlie D. Stevens explains, it’s a very tricksy way to take food away from hungry children without actually cutting the budget for WIC. Instead, [they] are looking at making changes to two other safety net programs, Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), aka food stamps.
Currently, a process called “adjunctive eligibility” means that families can qualify for WIC if they’re enrolled in separate programs that are based on family income, like SNAP or Medicaid. You meet the income requirements for either of those, and you can sign up for WIC, because the income rules are roughly the same. Saves families headaches, and saves the federal government the cost and processing hassle of doing redundant paperwork.
But Republicans want to save some money for billionaires by tightening eligibility for SNAP and Medicaid, and that would mean fewer families could use the shortcut for WIC. They’d need to submit a separate application, and whenever benefits get harder to qualify for, fewer people bother, and fewer get the benefits they’d otherwise qualify for.
That’s the idea, of course, because Republicans are scum who like throwing up arbitrary barriers to poor people getting help even when they’re eligible for it.
At the risk of causing your eyes to roll right out of their sockets, we must throw another abbreviation at you, but this one is essential to understanding what these creeps want to do. Republicans are discussing eliminating “Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility (BBCE)” in the SNAP program. That’s a provision that lets states provide SNAP benefits more widely by extending eligibility for the program to folks whose family income is just a little bit above the federal income threshold. BBCE gives families the ability to keep receiving SNAP — never a princely sum anyway — if they work a few more hours or otherwise go a tiny bit over the income limit. And remember, qualifying for SNAP also qualifies them for WIC under adjunctive eligibility […]
A policy brief from the National WIC Association estimates that if BBCE were ended, it would toss 3.1 million people off SNAP. As a knock-on effect, Stevens notes,
Given that 11.6% of SNAP recipients are preschool-aged children, this could mean that at least 359,600 infants and young children would lose their automatic WIC eligibility.
Isn’t that a neat trick? Sure, some families would jump through the hoops to apply separately for WIC, but many wouldn’t.
Now, Trump pushed to eliminate BBCE once before, back in 2019, although the change never went through. This time out, Republicans may be hoping nobody will notice one more slap in the faces of poor kids if they jam it into their big reconciliation bill among a lot of bigger, sexier awfulness.
On top of changes to SNAP, the Big Bill will almost certainly make Medicaid more difficult to qualify for, especially if some Republicans achieve their dream of repealing Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. Since 80 percent of participants in WIC get their healthcare through Medicaid, making Medicaid harder to sign up for would — adjunctive eligibility again! — reduce the number of folks who automatically qualify for WIC, even if they still can get it by applying separately.
Jesus Christ on a gyro-stabilized electric unicycle, you can already hear Republicans saying “well if they’re too lazy to do a little extra paperwork, maybe their kids aren’t all that hungry, now are they?”
Mind you, SNAP, Medicaid, and WIC are only three of many safety net programs that Republicans are eyeing for cuts in their Big Billionaire Boosting Bill. All told, as this depressing brief from First Focus on Children details, Republicans are looking at a staggering menu of cuts to programs that help poor kids, which combined will drive more and more kids into poverty. And that’s sure to have terrible long-term costs for America that won’t simply be a matter of dollars and cents. [Additional embedded links to sources are available at the main link.]
Child poverty is not just a policy decision — it is an economic liability. When children grow up in poverty, they are more likely to experience poor health, struggle in school, and require government assistance as adults. The costs associated with child poverty in the United States are staggering, estimated at up to $1.1 trillion annually in lost productivity, increased health care spending, and higher crime rates, according to the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM).
Republicans, of course, will explain that if people don’t want those problems, they should work harder and not be poor.
[…] Republicans always insist that big tax cuts help everyone, even though the reality is that they mostly help the already very wealthy become more obscenely wealthy. But hooray, megacorporations will be able to do stock buybacks, improving shareholder value very far away from those hungry kids and their annoying crying.
The great part is that the people who write the changes into law, and the people who benefit, won’t ever meet the people who get hurt […]
birgerjohanssonsays
Lynna@ 219
Myself @ 211
“Fact-checking Elon Musk’s claims in the Oval Office – BBC News” https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyjz24ne85o
.
The Gaza province of Mozambique and Elon Musk: There are not even any condoms!
The eejits read “HIV prevention” and thought “condoms”. They read “Gaza province” and thought “Middle East”.
As team Musk passed the claim to Trump’s staff no one on either side bothered to check the facts before the predident went on TV to repeat the claim. This is the state of the administration of USA.
.
Gaza Province https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Province
Reginald Selkirksays
@228
There are also pending bills to rename Dulles Airport after Trump…
“Storms battered parts of the eastern United States, with nine deaths in Kentucky and one in Georgia.”
A powerful storm has killed at least 10 people as it batters parts of the eastern United States, prompting flash flood warnings in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee this weekend.
“We are seeing dangerous and life-threatening conditions across the state, and things are only going to get tougher due to widespread flooding and incoming weather,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said in a statement Sunday afternoon.
The governor’s office said the confirmed deaths in Kentucky occurred across multiple counties: There were vehicle-related deaths of men in Hart and Nelson counties and floodwater-related deaths of a man in Clay County, a woman and a child in Hart County, two men in Pike County and a woman in Washington County. Beshear posted on social media later in the evening that another death had been confirmed in Pike County, bringing the state’s total to nine. [video at the link]
Beshear said President Donald Trump approved an emergency disaster declaration for Kentucky, which makes federal funding available. [Hypocritical Trump]
[…] Before the storms, Trump launched a review of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem said last week that she would recommend that the president “get rid of FEMA the way it exists today.” She proposed allowing local officials to have more say about how federal aid is used after disasters. […]
“Lebanon’s government has opposed any further delay in the Israeli pullout under the ceasefire agreement that ended fighting with the Hezbollah militant group.”
Israeli forces will remain in five strategic locations in southern Lebanon near the border after Tuesday’s deadline for their full withdrawal, an Israeli official said Monday.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
Lebanon’s government has opposed any further delay in the Israeli pullout under the ceasefire agreement that ended fighting with the Hezbollah militant group. There was no immediate comment from Lebanese or Hezbollah officials. Earlier on Monday, an Israeli strike in Lebanon killed a senior Hamas leader.
The news came as Israelis were marking the 500th day since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, which ignited the war in the Gaza Strip and rippled across the region, eventually setting off a full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah. [related video at the link]
[…] Peace Now, which favors a negotiated two-state solution to the conflict, accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of pressing ahead with settlement construction while dozens of hostages captured in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack languish in captivity in the Gaza Strip.
“The Netanyahu government is operating ‘on steroids’ to establish facts on the ground that will destroy the chance for peace and compromise,” it said in a statement.
[…] The original withdrawal deadline was in late January, but under pressure from Israel, Lebanon agreed to extend it to Feb. 18. It remains unclear whether Israeli troops will complete their withdrawal by Tuesday.
Since the ceasefire, Israel has continued airstrikes in southern and eastern Lebanon, saying it is targeting military sites containing missiles and combat equipment. Each side has accused the other of violating the truce.
Recently confirmed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is reportedly laying off nearly half of the public health workforce, which handles responding to emergencies like the measles outbreak unfolding in Texas.
Employees at the Epidemic Intelligence Service, a vaunted training program run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are among the nearly 1,300 health workers being terminated. The EIS focuses on investigating disease outbreaks both domestically and internationally.
“This will destroy the EIS, which is one of the absolute crown jewels of global public health,” Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, told State news.
Along with firings at the National Institutes of Health, Politico estimates that RFK Jr., DOGE Chair Elon Musk, and President Donald Trump have targeted at least 3,600 federal health workers in a downsizing effort of administrative infrastructure. [That’s not a “downsizing effort.” It is destruction.] […]
“This is absolutely tragic,” one CDC employee told NPR. “If we lose these people, we lose important capacity and in a very real sense we lose our CDC future.”
“The country is less safe,” former top-ranking CDC official Anne Schuchat told CBS. “These are the deployable assets critical for investigating new threats, from anthrax to Zika.”
Meanwhile, Texas is experiencing one of its worst measles outbreaks in decades. The number of confirmed cases, which started in the state’s under-vaccinated Gaines County, has routinely doubled—reaching 48 on Friday. [Map of measles outbreak]
The Houston Chronicle reports that Texas health officials fear that 200 to 300 people have already been infected.
“HHS is following the Administration’s guidance and taking action to support the President’s broader efforts to restructure and streamline the federal government. This is to ensure that HHS better serves the American people at the highest and most efficient standard,” HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon said in a statement to NPR. [Propaganda]
The dismantling of public health under the Trump administration continues as the United States also faces an ongoing avian flu outbreak, affecting livestock across the country and resulting in egg shortages and skyrocketing prices.
But don’t worry, without a public health or disease control apparatus, Trump’s team has a solution: “A better, smarter, perimeter.”
On Sunday, Kevin Hassett, Trump’s former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that “what we need to do is have better ways with bio-security and medication and so on to make sure that the perimeter doesn’t have to kill the chickens. To have a better, smarter, perimeter … they’re killing chickens to stop the spread, but chickens don’t really fly.” [social media post and video at the link]
Hassett, who referred to Americans as “our human capital stock” during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, blamed the Biden administration for killing chickens infected with the avian flu.
His fix for public health issues seems to be creating a magic “perimeter” while killing all of the wild ducks and geese in the United States. Between that and RFK Jr.’s mass public health layoffs, what could possibly go wrong?
Hell just froze over. A leading tory said something that was both true and important.
*It was 30 years since he was in power. The moral quality of tories have gone even worse since then.
birgerjohanssonsays
Trump and Musk have 18 kids by 7 mothers. Not exactly consevative family values.
…
Ancient Roman Innovation: The Earliest Ball Bearing Example
Before delving into Leonardo da Vinci’s pivotal sketches, it’s essential to acknowledge an earlier instance of ball bearing usage. The earliest known example dates back to around 40 AD, discovered in a Roman shipwreck in an Italian lake. This ancient device, a rudimentary form of ball bearing, was part of a revolving table. It featured balls placed beneath the table surface, presumably to facilitate the rotation of the table, allowing diners to easily access different foods…
An in-depth analysis of da Vinci’s sketches reveals a remarkable similarity to contemporary ball bearing structures. Notably, his conceptualization of a ‘cage’ to maintain the position and uniform distribution of the balls within the bearing assembly was a groundbreaking idea, demonstrating his foresight into the dynamics of friction and load distribution…
A landmark in the history of ball bearings was the patent granted to Philip Vaughan in 1794. Vaughan, a Welsh inventor, conceptualized a design that laid the foundation for modern ball bearing technology. His design featured balls running along a groove in an axle assembly, a significant leap from earlier friction-reducing methods. This patent is often hailed as the first modern design of the ball bearing, marking a pivotal moment in the evolution of this crucial mechanical component…
Legislators heard a bill on Friday that would make Montana the first state to ban the use of mRNA vaccines.
House bill 371, sponsored by State Rep. Greg Kmetz (R-Miles City) and introduced alongside a dozen other Republicans, would ban the use of mRNA vaccinations on humans, and provide for misdemeanors to be issued to violators…
A plane crashed and flipped on its back at Toronto’s Pearson airport Monday afternoon, injuring at least 15 passengers and closing down the airport’s runways.
Pearson airport’s runways are now closed until at least Tuesday, according to a notice to aviation officials.
The airport didn’t immediately provide further information on the nature of the emergency, but a photo submitted to CBC from a passenger shows a plane flipped on its back.
All passengers and crew are accounted for, the airport said in a post to X just before 3 p.m.
Peel Region paramedics told Radio-Canada that 15 passengers in total were hurt, after initially saying they believed eight had been injured…
A superintendent with the Peel Region paramedic service says all of the other roughly 80 passengers and crew are accounted for and not believed to be injured at this time…
The Delta Air Lines plane, a Mitsubishi CRJ-900LR, has capacity for 95 seats and was built by Bombardier Inc., according to an aircraft registration posted on FlightAware, an online flight tracking platform. It has been registered to Delta Airlines since January 2010, according to the website.
In an online update posted Monday afternoon, Delta Air Lines said it was aware of the crash involving flight 4819, operated by subsidiary Endeavor Air…
Fuckety, does the CBC have no competent journalists? I had to Google to find that flight originated in Minneapolis-St. Paul. On closer search of the article, the Minneapolis origin is mentioned once, in a photo caption.
The apparent leader of the Zizians has been arrested in Maryland along with another member of the radical online group, Maryland State Police said Monday.
Jack Lasota, 34, was arrested Sunday along with Michelle Zajko, 33, of Media, Pa. They face multiple charges, including trespassing, obstructing and hindering, and possession of a handgun in the vehicle…
The Zizians, who’ve been referred to as cult like, have been tied to the killing of U.S. Border Patrol agent David Maland near the Canadian border on Jan. 20 and five other homicides in Vermont, Pennsylvania and California…
Recently released January 6, 2021 insurrectionists are trying to argue that their presidential pardons should apply to separate crimes they were charged with while they were being investigated for storming the Capitol, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Edward Kelley, who was pardoned after assaulting police at the Capitol, is also hoping to overturn a conviction for conspiring to murder FBI agents who investigated him, forming a “kill list.” He allegedly planned to use drones to bomb the FBI’s Knoxville, Tennessee, branch, and thinks that conviction should be thrown out.
“In this instance, there can be no dispute that Kelley’s case in this court is related to the events of January 6th and is covered by the President’s executive action,” his lawyer Mark Brown wrote in a motion on January 27.
Fellow rioter Andrew Taake, who served six months in prison for spraying officers at the Capitol with bear spray, was released from prison on January 27 even though he still had outstanding charges for solicitation of a minor in 2016. It took Houston police more than a week to track him down.
The lawyer for David Daniel, who is facing child pornography charges, stated that “pretty much all” of the evidence of his client’s pornography crimes stemmed from Daniel’s house being raided due to his January 6 involvement, which, the attorney argues, means those charges should be null and void since he was pardoned for his actions on January 6 four years ago…
A Jewish man in Miami Beach is facing charges of attempted murder following accusations that he opened fire on two men he believed were Palestinians but reportedly turned out to be Israeli visitors.
According to arrest documents, at 9.30pm on Saturday surveillance video appeared to show Mordechai Brafman, 27, getting out of his truck and opening fire with a semiautomatic handgun at a vehicle as it passed. Brafman allegedly fired 17 times, striking one victim in the left shoulder and grazing the other’s left forearm.
While in custody, Brafman spontaneously told detectives that while he was driving his truck, “he saw two Palestinians and shot and killed both”, arrest documents said.
Law enforcement officials did not confirm if the victims were in fact Palestinians and the Miami Herald reported that they were actually two vacationing Israelis, naming them as Ari Rabey and his father…
Protests are set to take place on Monday across the country to make it known that this President’s Day, Americans are pissed at President Donald Trump and unelected co-president Elon Musk’s power grab of democracy.
The demonstrations, called “No Kings on Presidents Day” or “No Kings Day,” are led by 50501, an online grassroots activist group that started on Reddit. The group initially stood for “50 protests, 50 states, one day,” but it has morphed into “50 protests, 50 states, one movement.”
The No Kings Day protest was the group’s second wave of anti-Trump and Musk demonstrations. The first nationwide protests took place on Feb. 5 across state capitols. The movement focused on the White House’s dismantling of government agencies and threatened prosecution for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. It explicitly targets Musk’s hostile takeover of sensitive personal data in the U.S. government.
This time, 50501 partnered with Political Revolution to list nearly 80 events on its website. This allowed users to find a protest happening near them to attend. The group is a “leaderless” movement, which encourages others to create their own activist groups in their circles.
According to a press release, 50501 states that the coalition was created to demand “justice,” “transparency,” and “accountability” to “uphold the Constitution” and end Trump and Musk’s “executive overreach.”
Videos of protests began trickling in on social media on Monday. website. This allowed users to find a protest happening near them to attend. The group is a “leaderless” movement, which encourages others to create their own activist groups in their circles.
[snipped details … video and photos are available at the link]
Protests will take place at multiple state capitols and city halls throughout the day, including on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Multiple events are also scheduled across Washington state and California.
This comes as another group of protesters targeted Tesla dealerships over the weekend. Musk’s Tesla sales have been in an unprecedented decline since he got on the right-wing political scene in support of MAGA.
Ever the classy man, Trump announced his own President’s Day celebration by posting his mugshot—the same one he now keeps outside the Oval Office—and presidential photograph on Monday using the official White House Instagram account.
[…] Presidents Day was created in the 1880s to celebrate the birthday of President George Washington, but in Trump’s second term, it’s shaping up to be a day of resistance.
“We stand firm at a critical moment in history, demanding that the American people be heard and that the White House be governed by the true will of the people—not by a tech billionaire who seeks to buy influence and control,” the group said in a press release.
“Germany Tries To Explain History To Vice President [Vance]”
What a great first overseas trip for American Reichsleiter — excuse us, American Vice President — JD Vance, the feral ignoramus the American people in their wisdom have chosen to put one 78-year-old heartbeat away from the world’s most powerful office. Well, second-most, next to whatever office Elon Musk occupies in the White House.
We wrote the other day about Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in Germany last week, when he excoriated European leaders for not listening to the Trump Nazis and white nationalists in their midst, while also whining that he had for going on a decade had to listen to the grating voice of Greta Thunberg and her crusade to try and keep Earth habitable for his children […]
The speech drew a rebuke from Germany’s defense minister, engendered a lot of stunned talk at whatever cocktail parties were being held around Munich, and oh yeah, went a long way towards upending the post-World War II era of liberal democracy. It was a nice 80 years! Or at least a relatively nuclear-holocaust-free 80 years, which we personally appreciated. (And now European leaders are spending their Monday holding an emergency summit on confronting a future without an ally called “America.”)
Vance followed up his idiot-bull-in-a-china-shop routine by snubbing a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the elected leader of the country, in favor of a get-together with Alice Weidel, leader of the neo-Nazi-adjacent Alternative for Germany party (AfD). In his own speech on Saturday, Scholz basically told the young whippersnapper to fuck all the way off, though he said it much more diplomatically.
Here’s a little flavor from The New York Times:
Mr. Scholz said the AfD had trivialized Nazi atrocities like the concentration camp at Dachau, which Mr. Vance visited on Friday. The chancellor said Germany “would not accept” suggestions from outsiders about how to run its democracy — or directives to work with such a party.
“That is not done, certainly not among friends and allies,” Mr. Scholz said.
Scholz also told his audience that the concept of “never again” and the AfD are not compatible, and that “this ‘never again’ is the historical mission that Germany as a free democracy must and wants to continue to live up to every day. Never again fascism, never again racism, never again war of aggression.”
[…] Elsewhere in the Times, one of its reporters ran down some facts that Vance missed. Such as that while the AfD is sitting at about 20 percent in the polls for this week’s parliamentary elections, no other party in Germany will consider forming a coalition with it for reasons that are obvious to everyone except current American leadership:
German intelligence agencies have classified parts of the AfD as extremist. Members have been arrested in connection with multiple plots to overthrow the government. […]
Decades of German law and political practice have revolved around the belief that to prevent another Hitler from coming to power, the government must ban hate speech and shun political parties deemed extreme.
This way of thinking upsets Vance, who thinks of far-right voters as simply disaffected voices that people should listen to. That we have perhaps listened to them, found them to be a bunch of unappeasable bigoted shitheads whose views are harmful to a democratic society, and understand shunning them is also an exercise in free speech apparently never occurred to him.
On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to defend Vance’s horseshit on “Face the Nation,” which he beamed into from somewhere overseas in what looked like a hostage video. […]
“Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan summarized Vance’s week and then asked Rubio what the vice president had accomplished “other than irritating our allies,” which is about as confrontational a question as we might have ever heard Brennan ask.
Rubio replied:
“Why would our allies or anybody be irritated by free speech and by someone giving their opinion? We are, after all, democracies. The Munich Security Conference is largely a conference of democracies in which one of the things that we cherish and value is the ability to speak freely and provide your opinions.
“And so, I think if anyone’s angry about his words, they don’t have to agree with him, but to be angry about it, I think actually makes his point.
But see, Li’l Marco, that’s part of free speech. Vance is allowed to offer his opinion that Germany isn’t listening enough to the residual Nazi wing of its society, and Germans are allowed to respond with, Holy hell, […] There are several million reasons you might have heard about why Germany has laws against hate speech and has banned political parties deemed too extreme. You just visited Dachau the other day, did you get the mistaken impression it was some sort of day spa, or that we keep it around as a monument to German ingenuity? What is wrong with you […]
Typical conservatives, they want all the benefits of free speech for themselves without the unavoidable fact that people might get pretty pissed at what they are saying. [True!]]
What we would tell Rubio is that other nations might get less irritated if Vance speaks to them in a less condescending and more diplomatic manner […]
Brennan also tried to explain to Rubio that Vance was standing in a country that had once weaponized free speech “to conduct a genocide.” Therefore, maybe there was some context for German speech laws and reactions that both men were forgetting about.
Rubio, naturally, answered in a way reminding everyone that he used to play football and probably got hit in the head a lot:
“Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities and they hated those that they- they had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews. There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no opposition.”
Holy hell, man, read a book. Do you think the Nazis sprung up fully formed at Germany’s founding? Of course they weaponized free speech to enable their rise to power. If the Weimar Republic had not allowed at least some free speech and freedom of association, the Nazi Party might never have gotten off the ground! Hitler would not have been able to come out of prison after the Beer Hall Putsch — which took place in Munich, no less — and picked up exactly where he had left off! He would not have been allowed to publish Mein Kampf! The Nazis used the levers of democracy to take power, and then ended it so Hitler could rule as a dictator. [Fairly accurate.]
Also the idea that there was “no opposition” in Nazi Germany, good Lord. You don’t even have to read a book, you can just go to Wikipedia for a pretty definitive list of ways Hitler’s opponents tried to take him out after he took power.
[…] It’s good to know insulting people is still okay, though, because Rubio and Vance and the rest of the creatures in the White House of Dr. Moreau are giving us nonstop reasons to do it.
Tuesday’s edition of the Washington Post was supposed to feature a very straightforward message: Fire Elon Musk. Two advocacy groups teamed up to buy an ad placement that would have wrapped the paper in the call for Musk’s outing. But, according to one of the groups involved in the ad buy that spoke with The Hill, the Post backed out of the agreement and said it would not run the message on the outside of the paper.
Common Cause, a nonprofit watchdog organization, teamed with the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund on the advertisement. They claimed to The Hill to have signed a $115,000 agreement with the Post to full cover messages on the front and the back of the Washington Post’s Tuesday issue, along with a full-page ad inside the paper. The ads would have appeared on the papers of people working at Congress, the Pentagon and the White House…
Meanwhile, vice fuhrer Vance is back from Europe, where he told European countries they need more free speech.
“Trump’s global funding freeze leaves anti-terror programs in limbo”
“U.S. officials say now-suspended programs across Africa were designed specifically to respond to national security threats and contain the spread of terrorism.”
[…] Trump’s sweeping freeze on U.S. foreign assistance has threatened programs intended to counter al-Shabab bombmakers, contain the spread of al-Qaeda across West Africa and secure Islamic State prisoners in the Middle East, according to U.S. officials and aid workers.
Hours after taking office last month, Trump put a 90-day pause on foreign aid programs, signing an executive order that said the “foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests” and “serve to destabilize world peace.”
But four current and former U.S. officials, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared government retaliation, said that many of the affected programs were specifically designed to respond to national security threats, and that their suspension could endanger the United States and its international allies. [!!!]
[…] American security partners in Africa and the Middle East, which receive a much smaller share of the foreign aid budget, have seen vital security programs grind to a halt. [Graph at the link]
Of particular concern is the Anti-Terrorism Assistance program, which the United States spent $264 million on in 2023 to improve the capacity of allies to respond to extremist threats. Other programs counter transnational organized crime and narcotics and strengthen local law enforcement. Almost all are now suspended.
[…] In Somalia, where Washington has supported the government in its long-running battle with al-Shabab, a powerful insurgent group aligned with al-Qaeda, a U.S. defense official said the sudden shutdown triggered security risks for some of the hundreds of American troops stationed there.
Contractors responsible for building and maintaining bases for U.S.-trained Somali special forces, known as Danab, left so abruptly that U.S. soldiers had to scramble to pick up the slack, he said. Nearly 400 Danab graduates were left outside an American military base with no provision for food, fuel or electricity.
Another private contractor, which conducts medevacs for wounded Somali soldiers, had personnel in a remote combat zone when the stop-work order came down, the U.S. defense official said. It was unclear if they would be reimbursed for the return flight or any subsequent medevacs.
The funding freeze has also hit U.S.-supported laboratories in Mogadishu and Garowe, Somalia, that analyze ballistics, DNA, bombs and other evidence. Lt. Col. Mohamed Mohamud Ahmed, head of the police forensics team in the criminal investigation division, said the Mogadishu lab provided fingerprints and other crime scene data to Interpol and the FBI.
[…] Al-Shabab militants have launched deadly attacks over the years in neighboring Kenya, another staunch U.S. ally.
[…] A security expert who has worked extensively in Somalia put it bluntly: “If all U.S. money stops forever, this war [against al-Shabab] is over very fast,” he said.
[…] Also on hold now is a program to counter IEDs — including the creation of a database to detect patterns in bomb construction, forensically identify bombmakers and gather evidence for trials.
Kenyan security forces have a long record of human rights abuses. But American funding and guidance has made a real difference, current and former officials say, and U.S. funds support an independent police watchdog that prosecutes rogue officers.
[…] Under Trump’s executive order, programs that deliver lifesaving assistance or are judged to be “mission-critical” are exempt from the freeze. But members of Congress are still in the dark about how the administration is granting exemptions, a congressional aide familiar with discussions said.
“We’ve not seen criteria for the waiver process … and the few publicized waivers are barely being implemented,” the aide said. “We see no evidence of a review process.”
The State Department has said it is terminating $1 billion worth of programs, he said, but Congress has “no way to assess the legal, financial, or national security risks.”
[…] we just got through the headlines about DOGE demanding access to literally everybody’s and every companies’ tax returns at the IRS. It seems like they now have that access, though we don’t know that for certain. (We’re basically entirely dependent on leaks since DOGE works entirely in secret.)
Now news just broke that the DOGErs appear to have busted their way into the Social Security Administration, forcing the resignation of the acting commissioner, Michelle King, when she resisted their demands to give DOGE access to the Agency’s most sensitive government records.
According to the Post, the DOGErs or, nominally, President Trump had to pass over “dozens of other senior executives who sat higher on the agency’s leadership hierarchy” until they found a guy named Leland Dudek who had apparently been talking up DOGE on social media and thus seemed up for playing ball. […]
“Top Social Security official exits after clash with Musk’s DOGE over data”
“Yet another top career staffer is leaving the administration amid a disagreement over a request by Elon Musk’s team for sensitive government information.”
The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration left her job this weekend after a clash with billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service over its attempts to access sensitive government records, three people familiar with her departure said Monday.
Michelle King, who spent several decades at the agency before being named its acting commissioner last month, left her position Sunday after the disagreement, the people said.
President Donald Trump appointed Leland Dudek, a manager in charge of Social Security’s anti-fraud office, as acting commissioner while Frank Bisignano, the president’s nominee for permanent commissioner, is vetted by the Senate, according to three individuals who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly. A public announcement is expected this week. Dudek had posted positive remarks on social media about DOGE’s efforts to cut costs and search for fraud in federal agencies, according to two of the individuals.
“President Trump has nominated the highly qualified and talented Frank Bisignano to lead the Social Security Administration, and we expect him to be swiftly confirmed in the coming weeks,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement. “In the meantime, the agency will be led by a career Social Security anti-fraud expert as the acting commissioner. President Trump is committed to appointing the best and most qualified individuals who are dedicated to working on behalf of the American people, not to appease the bureaucracy that has failed them for far too long.” [Propaganda]
In selecting Dudek, Trump bypassed dozens of other senior executives who sat higher in the agency’s leadership hierarchy, touching off alarm in and around the agency, which has already faced years of budget and staffing difficulties.
“At this rate, they will break it. And they will break it fast, and there will be an interruption of benefits,” said Martin O’Malley, the Social Security commissioner under the Biden administration and a former Maryland governor.
[…] “What I know is that DOGE wanted access to SSA’s sensitive files — the same way they’re trying to do at Labor and Treasury — and the acting commissioner wouldn’t give it, and she was replaced,” said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, a left-leaning group, citing conversations with several current officials at the agency.
Musk has increasingly turned his attention to Social Security in recent days, arguing that the program is rife with fraud and erroneous payments without offering evidence for his claim.
[…] King, a career staffer, has worked at the agency since 1994, according to the agency’s website. She has also held senior positions in its Office of Retirement and Disability Policy and the Office of Budget, Finance and Management.
[…]The Social Security Administration’s records include all Social Security numbers, comprehensive medical records for those who have applied for disability benefits, bank information, earnings records and more, Altman said.
“There is no way to overstate how serious a breach this is,” she said.
In case anybody is interested:
@245 Reginald Selkirk wrote about: Police arrest apparent leader of Zizian group tied to killing of U.S. border agent near Canada
I remember when PZ posted about Rebecca Watson’s article about them: https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/02/07/zizians/
video by Rebecca Watson on them: https://youtu.be/M0hmXDY_HmI
She has a lot of good articles
Of course, right now, we are facing destruction of our government and society by a more dangerous cult. There doesn’t seem to be any person or group that can or will stop this MUMP cult and its evil little minions. I wish this was all just a terrible nightmare from which we could awaken. I fear for our decades long investments in Social Security and Medicare and I am so angry that these evil little nightcrawlers may now have our personal info. WTF
Bekenstein Boundsays
Any word yet on the cause of this latest crash of an American plane flight?
Last week, Elon Musk appeared alongside Trump in the Oval to defend the work of DOGE. Looking directly at Musk, Trump asked, “Could you mention some of the things *your team* has found?” [Video]
Tonight, the government claimed that Musk isn’t in charge of DOGE & isn’t a DOGE employee.
In a new filing, an official in the Trump Administration says that Elon Musk is not the Administrator in charge of DOGE. He’s a Senior Advisor to the President, per declaration. [Docket image]
It remains unclear who actually runs DOGE. The filing doesn’t say.
So if Musk doesn’t run DOGE, and DOGE isn’t a real government agency, then no one has to listen to Musk or do what the DOGE bros tell them to do, right?
NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter join Geoff Bennett to discuss the latest political news, including President Donald Trump’s expanding executive power nearly one month into his second term.
President Trump’s social media post over the weekend that implied he is above the law triggered alarm bells from experts who were already concerned about the legal and constitutional boundaries tested during his first few weeks in office. Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, joins Amna Nawaz to discuss for our new series, “On Democracy.”
@256 Bekenstein Bound
Any word yet on the cause of this latest crash of an American plane flight?
It is questionable to call it an “American plane flight.” It was an international flight, originating in Minneapolis-St. Paul and landing in Toronto, where the incident occurred. The carrier was USAian, but the jet itself was a Bombardier CRJ-900, from a Canadian manufacturer.
…
Video obtained by CNN shows the rear landing gear of the jet buckling and the right wing shearing away in a fireball after the plane landed hard on the runway.
The plane briefly skids on its belly before flipping over, sending smoke and loose snow shooting into the air…
Video of the crash does not appear to show the usual “flare” of the jet, where the pilot pulls the nose up just before landing, exposing the wings to more air resistance.
“There was no attempt to flare at all, which slows the plane down,” said CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general of the Department of Transportation…
“What we can say is the runway was dry, and there was no crosswind conditions,” Aitken, the airport fire chief said.
However, an air traffic controller told the Endeavour pilot that there were winds of 26 mph gusting up to 38 mph, blowing across the plane’s path at a 40-degree angle, according to a recording of airport tower radio traffic. The wind at Pearson was reportedly blowing snow into the air with a visibility of five miles.
The weather conditions may have become treacherous before the pilots were able to adapt, said retired jet pilot Les Abend. ..
‘The IRS is freaking out’: Trump pushes to give Musk acolyte access to Americans’ personal tax data
Video is 4:32 minutes long. Maddow also mentions the DOGE incursion into the Social Security system.
Debunked explanations for Musk’s reckless firings expose true goal of wrecking the government
Video is 8:27 minutes long.
‘Have you considered resigning?’: Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Video is 7:02 minutes long.
If his social media feed is any indication, Elon Musk has been thinking about Social Security a lot lately. In fact, Donald Trump’s biggest campaign donor and the head of the quasi-governmental DOGE operation, keeps tweeting bizarre claims about alleged fraud and “inconsistencies“ he thinks he’s identified in the Social Security system.
Those claims have invariably collapsed under scrutiny, necessarily raising questions about whether the billionaire is genuinely confused about the basics or content to mislead the public.
Either way, the bottom line remains the same: Musk and his team have arrived at the Social Security Administration. For those concerned about the integrity of the system and its future, that doesn’t appear to be encouraging news. The Washington Post published this striking report on Saturday, for example:
Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service is seeking access to a heavily guarded Internal Revenue Service system that includes detailed financial information about every taxpayer, business and nonprofit in the country, according to three people familiar with the activities, sparking alarm within the tax agency.
[…] the DOGE operation is positioned to gain access to the highly sensitive Integrated Data Retrieval System (IDRS), “which enables tax agency employees to access IRS accounts — including personal identification numbers — and bank information. It also lets them enter and adjust transaction data and automatically generate notices, collection documents and other records.”
The IRS, the Post added, is “under pressure from the White House” to make this happen.
It’s against this backdrop that NBC News reported that the interagency dispute became so severe that Michelle King, the top official at the SSA, “left her position this weekend after she refused a request from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to access sensitive government records at the agency.”
For advocates of the Social Security system, and those concerned about privacy rights, these developments raise all kinds of red flags. But in terms of the political implications, it’s worth appreciating the fact that White House officials have also made public comments about Musk, DOGE and Social Security benefits.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that Musk and his surrogates “suspect that there are tens of millions of deceased people who are receiving fraudulent Social Security payments.”
There is no reason to take such a figure seriously, and no one at the White House has even tried to substantiate the claim with evidence.
As part of the same on-air appearance, the president’s chief spokesperson added, “Rest assured to all of the people watching your show tonight, if you paid into the system honestly, you will continue to receive your Social Security checks.”
But that wasn’t quite as reassuring as Leavitt probably intended.
Whether he understands the basic governing details or not, Musk is already claiming that many Social Security beneficiaries are receiving checks they’re not entitled to. Such comments suggest the Trump administration is likely to go after the alleged irregularities, which may or may not exist.
With this in mind, the White House press secretary effectively told Fox viewers that if Trump and Musk believe you paid into the system honestly, “you will continue to receive your Social Security checks.” What could possibly go wrong?
Even most congressional Republicans tend to see Social Security as a political third rail to be avoided at all costs to prevent an electoral backlash. Keep this in mind as DOGE arrives at the SSA, and Musk makes highly dubious claims about Social Security checks.
“[Trump] wants a longtime Republican operative to be the top prosecutor in the nation’s capital. Given Ed Martin’s recent record, that’s not good news.”
It might seem like ages ago, but about a month after Election Day 2024, Donald Trump had a specific employment plan in mind for Ed Martin: The longtime Republican operative was poised to serve as the White House Office of Management and Budget’s chief of staff.
At the time, this was a controversial move, given Martin’s record as a far-right anti-abortion activist, organizer for the misguided “Stop the Steal” movement and lawyer representing Jan. 6 criminals. But Trump made the call anyway.
It wasn’t long, however, before Martin took on even greater responsibilities. A month after being chosen for the OMB role, Martin learned that Trump had also tapped him to serve as the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. And a month after that, the president has apparently decided that the word “interim” should be removed from Martin’s title. NBC News reported:
[…] Trump has nominated the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia — a “Stop the Steal” organizer who advocated for Jan. 6 defendants — to be the district’s top prosecutor on a permanent basis.
Announcing the nomination by way of his social media platform, the president described Martin as “highly respected” — a phrase Trump has long used to refer to people who agree with him — adding that during Martin’s tenure as the interim U.S. Attorney in the nation’s capital, the Republican lawyer “has been doing a great job … fighting tirelessly to restore Law and Order.”
As it happens, that’s not quite how I would describe Martin’s work over the last four weeks. As the interim head of the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., the former “Stop the Steal” organizer:
– launched a wildly unnecessary “Project 1512” initiative, in order to review the prosecutions of Jan. 6 rioters;
– made a creepy public vow to wield his prosecutorial powers against those who get in Elon Musk’s way;
– engaged in a truly brazen display of conflict of interest, effectively taking on both sides of a criminal case involving a Jan. 6 defendant;
– and kicked off an unnecessary investigation into Jack Smith and a law firm that gave the former special counsel pro bono legal services.
Or put another way, when the president said Martin “has been doing a great job,” perhaps he was grading on an overly generous curve.
For the record, we’re talking about a Republican who didn’t just endorse Trump’s anti-election conspiracy theories after his 2020 defeat. Rather, Martin called on “die-hard true Americans” to work until their “last breath” to “stop the steal” in a speech at the U.S. Capitol on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
In a normal administration, he might struggle to step foot in Main Justice. In this administration, this is the lawyer/activist Trump now wants to lead one of the nation’s most important prosecutorial offices. [!]
This is a Senate-confirmed position, and Martin’s confirmation hearing is bound to be interesting. Watch this space.
The Purges
The most sweeping phase of the mass purges of federal workers ramped up Friday and into the weekend against some 200,000 probationary employees, who enjoy lesser levels of civil service protection. The WaPo obtained internal documents that map out an expanding purge over the next six months. Among the reported purge targets:
– NIH and other HHS agencies and components;
– a key office handling bird flu response;
– FAA staff;
– the Bonneville Power Administration
In an sign of the chaos and haphazard nature of the purges, the Trump administration raced to try to recall fired nuclear safety workers but was struggling to figure out how to reach them.
The Resignations
Alongside the purges are forced resignations or resignations under duress, among them:
– Social Security Administration: Michelle King, the acting commissioner who was handpicked by the Trump administration last month, resigned after Elon Musk’s DOGE sought access to American’s sensitive personal data.
– National Archives: The acting archivist of the United States and several senior staff members have resigned.
– FDA: A top official resigned over the widespread cuts across the agency.
Thousands turned up to protest the Trump administration in Washington DC and across the United States yesterday. Dubbed “Not My President’s Day,” people in DC rallied at the Capitol Reflecting Pool outside of the US Capitol Building and called for Congress to exert its constitutional authority to act as a check on Donald Trump’s blatant flouting of longstanding laws.
In other words, this was DC area residents, many of them veterans and federal workers, calling on elected officials to do their goddamn jobs.
A retired Army officer, who spent 40 years in the service, refused to give their name, MOS (job), age or area of residency because, she said, “I’m afraid if I tell you anything, they could come after my pension and benefits.”
The young, unelected employees Elon Musk brought in as staffers for “DOGE,” his unincorporated, non-governmental organization with no legal authority — “TraitorTots,” as one sign read — have generated an exhaustive slew of headlines by attacking federal workers. In less than 30 days, they have attempted to fire civil servants en masse, canceled domestic and foreign aid programs, and illegally clawed back federal spending. [“TraitorTots” is a good description.]
It’s scaring the hell out of people who spent their careers forgoing high-paying private sector gigs in favor of lower-paying government jobs where they could do the dirty work of actually making the world a better place.
Alex, 30, of Maryland, worked for the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH). Last week he was suddenly fired by the DOGE team. Alex was carrying a sign that simply read, “I kept pacemakers safe.”
”CDRH makes sure things like pacemakers don’t kill people,” Alex said. “It’s complicated to explain everything CDRH does really quickly, but it’s the kind of thing that doesn’t really cost taxpayers any money, and saves lives.”
It was a something I heard repeatedly throughout the day. Someone’s rather nerdy and boring job was not easy to explain in a short, sexy sentence, but it was important because it prevented unnecessary death and suffering. How, they wondered, could anyone want to lower the quality of life for humanity in the name of personal profit? [Yeah, that’s what I’ve been wondering.]
Sara Bernard, 46, of DC, is a retired lieutenant commander in the US Navy. “This is an injustice, what’s happening today,” Bernard said while holding a sign that read, “Vets stand united with USAID.”
“There’s a complete lack of process and procedure. People don’t realize what they [DOGE, Trump, Musk, et al.] are doing.”
Nobody seemed more concerned than actual residents of DC. The recently introduced “BOWSER Act,” so named after DC’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, would repeal what little governing authority the city has. The 1973 DC Home Rule Act gave DC some governing autonomy, and the city bitterly fought and won for some budgetary authority in 2017. But there is always some petty and ignorant congressman who insists on screwing with DC residents like a feudal lord.
“If they wanted, they could turn our schools into for-profits,” said David Magee, 41, a life-long DC resident and a teacher in DC public schools. “Erasing accountability at every level does not seem to be making things any better. Why not try to fix what we have?” […]
For democracy advocates, Donald Trump and much of his agenda is rather terrifying. […] “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law” [Trump posted] — described by The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie as “the single most un-American and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an American president.”
Meanwhile, on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue in the nation’s capital, Americans see a Republican-led Congress that’s grown far more interested in glorifying Trump personally than conducting oversight or honoring the legislative branch’s proper role in a checks-and-balances system. [All too true.] Indeed, GOP lawmakers routinely shrug their shoulders with indifference in response to White House abuses and excesses.
t’s reached the point at which Steve Levitsky, a political scientist at Harvard University, told The New Republic’s Greg Sargent that Americans should recognize the contemporary Republican Party as “an authoritarian political party. “
The question then becomes how much of the party’s base would mind. The latest national Pew Research Center survey included some striking findings:
In contrast, a 59% majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say many of the country’s problems could be addressed more effectively if Trump didn’t need to worry so much about Congress or the courts. Republicans who say they ‘strongly’ identify with the GOP are particularly likely to say the nation’s problems could be more effectively addressed by giving Trump more power: 78% say this.
[Aiyiyiyiyi]
The partisan divisions were enormous: 90% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents concluded it would be “too risky” to give Trump more power without checks and balances, but according to the Pew data, a majority of GOP voters came to the opposite conclusion.
(The survey was conducted from Jan. 27 to Feb. 2, 2025.) [more details at the link]
[…] The Associated Press reported last spring on a national AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey, which found that 57% of Republicans endorsed the idea of Trump “taking action on the country’s important policy issues without waiting for Congress or the courts.” [!!]
[…] Retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter has maintained a very low public profile since stepping down from the high court in 2009, but as longtime readers might recall, he delivered some memorable remarks in 2012 about his broader political fears.
“I think some of the aspects of current American government that people on both sides find frustrating are partly a function of the inability of people to understand how government can and should function,” Souter said. “It is a product of civic ignorance.”
After quoting Benjamin Franklin’s admonition about democracy struggling to survive “too much ignorance,” the retired justice added, “I don’t worry about our losing republican government in the United States because I’m afraid of a foreign invasion. I don’t worry about it because I think there is going to be a coup by the military, as has happened in some of the places. What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed, people will not know who is responsible. And when the problems get bad enough … some one person will come forward and say, ‘Give me total power and I will solve this problem.’ That is how the Roman republic fell.” [!!]
Souter concluded, “If we know who is responsible, I have enough faith in the American people to demand performance from those responsible. If we don’t know, we will stay away from the polls. We will not demand it. And the day will come when somebody will come forward, and we and the government will in effect say, ‘Take the ball and run with it. Do what you have to do.’ That is the way democracy dies. And if something is not done to improve the level of civic knowledge, that is what you should worry about at night.”
The results of the national Pew Research Center poll renewed the relevance of the retired justice’s warning.
The so-called Department of Government Efficiency—the advisory commission that […] Trump tasked co-President Elon Musk to run in order to find ways to cut the federal budget—has been an abject disaster.
Indiscriminate firings of federal employees are leading to national security threats. Staff purges, largely spearheaded by DOGE, are putting safety of the country’s air travel, food supply, air and water quality, and personal health at risk. And unqualified and unvetted DOGE staffers’ access to critical government payments systems and Americans’ personal information has led to concerns about the security of Americans’ private information.
Yet, as states, unions, research universities, and federal employees sue to try and stop DOGE’s destruction, the Trump administration is now claiming that Musk’s DOGE has nothing to do with the firings.
“Nowhere have my friends offered a shred of anything, nor could they, to show that Elon Musk has any formal or actual authority to make any government decisions himself,” a Department of Justice lawyer told a federal judge on Monday during a hearing on a lawsuit that seeks to block Musk and DOGE from accessing government data and carrying out mass firings.
The judge, Tanya Chutkan, basically told the DOJ they were liars. “I think you stretch too far,” she said. “I disagree with you there.”
All evidence points to the fact that Musk and DOGE are leading to the cuts.
Trump signed an executive order on Day 1 of his disastrous second term that created DOGE, and put Musk in charge. Since then, the unelected billionaire has given news conferences from the Oval Office to provide updates on DOGE’s actions, has tweeted hundreds of times a day—often with lies or misinformation—about DOGE’s actions, and Trump himself has said Musk is the one working to find cost reductions. [Good points.]
“I’m going to tell [Elon Musk] very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News that aired ahead of the Super Bowl. “He’s going to find the same thing … Then I’m going to go, go to the military. Let’s check the military.”
So far, DOGE has been a disaster.
For example, in the name of cost savings, Musk and DOGE spurred a mass firing of government workers. That led the administration last Thursday to fire more than 300 people at the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile. Realizing this was a mistake with potentially devastating implications, the Trump administration scrambled to rehire those workers. But according to CNN on Monday, only 25 of the 300 have been reinstated. [Whoa. That’s a small number of National Nuclear Security Administration personnel.]
What’s more, after receiving criticism for its opaqueness, DOGE then created a website to show the cuts it’s made. But according to Wired, the website is a “security mess,” with anyone on the internet able to edit its databases.
DOGE also blew through its own self-imposed deadlines to release information on what exactly it has cut and how much money it has supposedly saved taxpayers. But now that the information is on the website, DOGE has posted personal information of people whose contracts have been canceled.
The website also claims it has saved $55 billion. However, Daily Kos reviewed the savings DOGE listed on its website, and the two categories of receipts it provides (contracts and real estate) total less than half of what DOGE claims to have saved. The site says there are “savings” in other categories, like workforce reductions and fraud elimination, but it doesn’t currently provide data for those, so it is impossible to verify their top-line claim of $55 billion.
Those supposed savings also don’t take into account how much money DOGE is spending on its own staff, nor how much money the federal government has to spend to defend against the bevy of lawsuits DOGE is being hit with. [True.]
With DOGE in destructo mode, Democrats are urging their constituents to call their lawmakers and show up to lawmaker events to voice their concerns, as lawmakers react to public outcries.
“They only win if their tactics convince us to stay silent,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said on Friday. “We have power in numbers and solidarity. If we respond by getting LOUDER, instead of going silent like they want, we send a clear message that they can’t win. Show up more. Organize more. Post more.”
There are a lot of contradictions involved in the anti-vaccine movement. People who would rather watch their children die from measles than have autism. People who would rather die themselves than get a vaccine, because they think the vaccine will harm their health in some capacity.
That’s the category Ken Long of Eaton, Ohio, falls into, because the 54-year-old veteran is literally choosing to die rather than get a vaccine so he can get a heart transplant … because he thinks the vaccine will give him heart problems. Also because of his “personal religious beliefs.”
“When I decide something, I mean it, and if it takes dying, it’s what it is,” Long told KOMO TV. “They don’t know enough about it, and plus it’s already done a lot of damage. People have said blood clots. There are known cardiac issues.”
“And our personal religious beliefs!” his wife Christina added, without explaining what on earth those religious beliefs are. Given that even Christian Scientists are not opposed to vaccines and the couple doesn’t appear to be either Hasidic or Amish, it’s unclear what those would even be.
Via KOMO:
“I don’t want to die because I got a granddaughter and my wife and everything and my kids, but I believe so hard with not taking the vaccine that I’m willing to die for,” Long said.
By sharing his story, Long hopes to influence hospitals to change their vaccination policies.
“I’m 54 years old, but there are kids out there right now that are sick, and they’re over there with beliefs of not vaccinating, and that’s why I’m doing this,” Long said. “It’s more important for these kids to have the opportunity to live.”
Except for how having a heart transplant affects one’s immune system, meaning that a kid “with beliefs of not vaccinating” would have a far greater chance of dying from COVID (or measles, or the flu, or any illness really).
Long is far from the first to pull this. Just last week, 12-year-old Adaline Deal, a distant family member of JD Vance, was denied a heart transplant because her parents claimed it was against their religion as “non-denominational Christians.” There is not, to anyone’s knowledge, a single thing in the Bible about vaccines.
Because the hospital could not, in good conscience, give Long a heart, they gave him a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) to pump blood to his heart.
“I can hardly do anything. If the power goes out, I have to worry about my batteries and my charger,” Long said. “You can’t get wet, so showering is an issue.”
So this man is willing to die […] just to avoid getting a vaccine. And, if you can believe it, it gets even more stupid than that! While Christ Hospital refuses to give him a heart transplant, there are, apparently, some places that will. Long, however, will not go to them, because he wants to make a point.
“Do we want to switch hospitals to save his life? No,” Christina said. “We would hope that Christ would continue to see him and grant him a transplant and recognize that this is his personal choice.”
In a video interview with Long and his wife Christina, Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom President Stephanie Stock called the situation “vaccine status discrimination” and suggested that the treatment Long received was “punishment” for not taking the vaccine. Because, of course, what doctors are concerned about is hurting his feelings or ensuring that Bill Gates can track his whereabouts at any given time. Not that it’s literally a health issue or anything.
As Christ Hospital explained:
At The Christ Hospital Health Network, the goal with any organ transplant is to focus on helping each patient have long-term success and live a long and healthy life post surgery.
Our expert multidisciplinary team of physicians, psychologists, care coordinators and social workers carefully evaluate each individual to determine their eligibility and placement on the waiting list. Organ donation is a gift from another patient and family, and it is our responsibility to ensure that the gift is used with the maximum chance of success once transplanted.
Patients who receive transplants will be immunosuppressed for the rest of their lives. Vaccines play a vital role in mitigating a patient’s risk of life-threatening infections especially in the first year after transplant. Decisions about eligibility for transplantation involve discussions between our providers, the patient and their family and are always made in the best interest of the patient following established national guidelines for organ transplant.
There are lots of reasons why someone might be denied a heart transplant. If they have a drug problem, if they have other health problems, then they can’t get a transplant, because there just is not an endless supply of quality organs for those who need them, and they need to go to the people they will help for the longest amount of time.
We all understand that these people think vaccines are bad, that they think they will cause them harm of some kind, but that’s not factually true and no one should have to waste a heart because they want to have their ridiculous beliefs coddled.
MOSCOW (The Borowitz Report)—Vladimir Putin has entered into negotiations with Elon Musk over the ownership of Donald J. Trump, the Kremlin confirmed on Tuesday.
Those negotiations, however, are proving contentious, as the Russian president is arguing that, having fully owned Trump between 2017 and 2021, he is entitled to a majority stake now.
For his part, Musk claims that he purchased Trump outright by spending nearly $300 million on his 2024 campaign.
In one heated exchange, Musk reportedly told the Russian leader, “You’re being greedy, Vlad—you already own Tulsi.”
Actions the Trump administration is taking will result in more people dying. That is not a formula for making American healthy again. – Lynna, OM@217
Maybe the idea is that if you kill off those who are most vulnerable, the average health of the living will improve. That, after all, was the approach of co-president Musk’s heroes.
“Dear Leader Watch: […] Sucking Up To Trump Lately?”
[…] We have watched for years as Donald Trump’s sycophants have fallen all over themselves to praise Dear Leader like eager puppies begging for treats. Watching his Cabinet secretaries in his first term open meetings by slobbering all over his baby-carrot knob in front of television cameras remains one of the more grotesque sights of the millennium. And his enablers in Congress and in right wing media spend so much time on Fox News or OANN lauding his genius that we now have a Dramamine IV permanently hooked into our veins.
Yet still — still! — we regularly roll across odes and encomiums to the God-King’s greatness that bring us up short. Are we living inside a TV set in North Korea? We don’t think so! Although it might explain why our house smells like kimchi all the time. It’s that or a rage-stroke.
So here we present Dear Leader Watch, a recurring feature we could probably write every single day but will probably only do when stuck in the clutches of either overwhelming self-hatred or a Dramamine high.
First up: We knew someone was going to suggest making Trump’s birthday a federal holiday at some point. We didn’t think it would be only a month into his second term, but hell, there are a lot of things we didn’t think would happen this fast: [social media post at the link]
Trump’s birthday, June 14, is already recognized as Flag Day, so that date would henceforth be the Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day holiday. Truth be told, we’re shocked Tenney didn’t suggest moving Flag Day to a different date. Or maybe suggest we celebrate Trump’s birthday on Christmas. Is there anyone besides Jesus who is worthy of sharing Donald Trump’s birthday with him? And even Jesus would think it was a toss-up.
In a statement, Tenney said that “no modern president has been more pivotal for our country than Donald J. Trump.” Which might wind up being true, but certainly not for the reasons Tenney thinks.
And that might not be the dumbest bill anyone has introduced in the House in the last few weeks with the express purpose of enshrining Trump in the pantheon of our greatest presidents. In January, Rep. Andy Ogles introduced a bill to rewrite the 22nd Amendment to allow Trump to run for a third term in office. But only Trump. The proposed change would only allow a third term if someone served the first two non-consecutively. Presumably, this is so Barack Obama doesn’t get any funny ideas about 2028.
Could this bill have had anything to do with Andy Ogles being under federal investigation for campaign finance violations, which Trump could make go away with one tweet aimed at his attorney general? Heaven forfend we imply there might be some corruption in the Trump administration.
Not to be outshone in the race for biggest suck-up amongst House Republicans, Anna Paulina Luna of Florida introduced a bill to carve Trump’s face into Mt. Rushmore:
“President Trump’s bold leadership and steadfast dedication to America’s greatness have cemented his place in history. Mount Rushmore, a timeless symbol of our nation’s freedom and strength, deserves to reflect his towering legacy—a legacy further solidified by the powerful start to his second term,” said Congresswoman Luna. “He will be forever remembered among the great like Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.”
Trump had been in office for all of eight days when Luna introduced this bill, which makes mentioning the “powerful start to his second term” even more blatantly sycophantic. Which is a Luna specialty.
Anyway, leave Mt. Rushmore alone. We white people have defaced the mountain enough without adding Outer Borough Pol Pot to it.
Other incidents have been a bit more subtle. So subtle, in fact, that we are almost loath to point out this recruitment ad for the Army that premiered over the weekend. Watch to the end and see if you can guess what jumped out at us: [video at the link]
So okay, all the soldiers in this ad are wearing numbers on their breastplates for some reason. And the Army has strict rules about appearing partisan.
But the soldiers wearing “47” when Donald Trump just became the 47th president and wingnuts have been slapping the number “47” on hats and bumper stickers and tattooing it on their foreheads really seemed to get very noticeable placement, did they not?
It is a measure of how much sycophancy is flowing to Trump now that this few seconds in a one-minute ad caught our eye. And sure, it could be a coincidence. Or … ha ha ha, who are we kidding, it was totally on purpose.
But for pure, uncut, he’s-not-breathing-call-911 suck-up-age, we’re not sure anything could possibly beat Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s run on Fox News on Monday: [video snippets at the link: "Watching President Trump in the beast, leading the pace car, leading the field of the most talented drivers in the world, kicking off the entire Nascar season for America, when he was doing that it reminded me of how he's actually leading the world. He was courageous during his first term, but this time he's fearless. He's operating at a next level. He's at a different gear ... His ideas are brilliant, and they're powerful, and they're simple."]
Holy hell. That was about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the balls. The amount of dignity people will surrender just for the opportunity to gut the National Park Service is really remarkable.
There’s probably a whole bunch of other Dear Leader crap that we missed that we’ll put in a new edition in a few days, except by that point there will be approximately 27,549 new atrocities to choose from. Like, for instance, we didn’t even mention Rep. Buddy Carter’s bill to let Trump seize Greenland and change its name to — wait for it — Red, White and Blueland.
Everything is going great.
KGsays
Lynna, OM@228,
These should-be-satire-but-isn’t efforts by Republican congresspersons to get their tongues unprecedented distances up Trump’s fundament are all too reminiscent of those of ultra-sycophantic senators under the Roman Empire. I wonder who will be the first to propose voting him divine honours? Or slightly less extreme, the title “Augustus”, which Octavian, recognised historically as the first Emperor, took because taking the title of “King” would have risked unpopularity – th Romans having, like today’s Americans, having got rid of their kings some time earlier. This would fit with the USA’s penchant for appointing “tsars” of various policy areas. The tile “tsar” derives from the name “Caesar”, and under the 3rd century Emperor Diocletian, the Empire was divided into Eastern and Western halves, each with its own “Augustus”, and each of these Augusti had a “Caesar” as second-in-command and intended heir – although this aspect of the system never really worked.
KGsays
Reginald Selkirk@248,
There are of course Palestinian citizens of Israel (around 20% IIRC), so the racist shooter could have been right even if the victims were Israeli tourists (although perhaps Palestinian citizens of Israel avoid foreign travel in case they are not allowed back in). In this case it’s clearly not so, and indeed one of the victims reportedly posted “death to Arabs” on social media after the shooting, blaming antiemitism for the attack. But even Yahoo doesn’t appear to realise that there are, indeed, Palestinian Israelis.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: Lynna @272:
so they are trying to protect Elon Musk from prosecution over actions taken by DOGE?
let me talk about the various kinds of lawsuits filed so far against Trump’s attacks.
[*snip*: enumeration of plaintiffs and violated statutes]
The injury suffered by each set of plaintiffs and legal theory largely limits the ability of judges to weigh in. So, for example, if a suit is arguing only Privacy Act violations, a judge can do no more than limit the dissemination outside of authorized channels of the data of the plaintiffs, something that has been ineffective once agencies started giving DOGE formal authorization to access computer servers. If a suit worries about firings, but the government instead puts tons of people on paid leave (as happened with USAID), then the plaintiffs are not yet suffering an irrevocable injury.
Here’s how the Appointments Clause theory, arguing that Elon is exercising powers that need to be created by Congress and confirmed by them, looks in the complaint. […] You can see why the White House has decided that Elon is boxed away inside the White House with no direct control over the dismantling of government […] the right wing judges on SCOTUS feel very strongly about the Appointments Clause. And Trump is on the record relying on it, most spectacularly in convincing Aileen Cannon that Jack Smith had to be confirmed by the Senate before he could indict Trump.
In practice, Trump is saying Elon can dismantle entire agencies without Senate confirmation, but Jack Smith couldn’t prosecute him as a private citizen without it. Or he was. Now he’s arguing that all this is happening without Elon’s personal direction.
[…]
before DOJ gave this answer and blew off Judge Chutkan’s order to provide details of the ongoing firing spree, she seemed inclined not to grant a restraining order to stop all this.
It’s unclear whether this defiance will change that. […] What is clear is that the White House recognizes a real risk if Elon is held accountable for all the things Elon has done.
KGsays
Biomarker panel offers hope for early pancreatic cancer detection – birgerjohansson@260
Well that’s good news of course, but the biomarkers relate to pancreatic cystic lesions, and it sounded like you’d probably need to get samples from those cysts, and although some of the markers are in blood, you’d still need to test for them. I lost a friend to pancreatic cancer last year: he went to his doctor with severe abdominal pain – no previous symptoms – was diagnosed within a few weeks, and died little more than a year after that. Still, it’s a step on the way to a routine test I guess.
KG @278, yes, trumpian cult followers can go to even further extremes of ridiculousness in order to worship him (or appear to worship Trump). It does make me wonder what defect in the human brain feeds that need to have a god-figure to worship. It must be powerful if they will settle for a doofus like Trump. Maybe any doofus will do?
Intended heirs include Donald Junior and Barron? Ivanka seems to have rejected the role. It was disturbing to see how hard and long Republican audiences cheered and applauded for Barron at events leading up to the election.
Mass resignations among federal prosecutors are incredibly rare in the American tradition, which made last week’s developments in New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ case so extraordinary. Donald Trump’s Justice Department allegedly struck an improper deal with the mayor to make the corruption charges against him go away, and the agreement was so brazen that at least seven prosecutors resigned in protest.
The Washington Post published a report soon after, noting that in the current moment, the prosecutors’ courage “could create a precedent for further acts of resistance if Trump orders other government officials to do things they find inappropriate or believe would violate their legal responsibilities.”
It was against this backdrop that, four days after the Adams case prompted a slew of principled resignations, it appears to have happened again. The New York Times reported:
A veteran federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., responsible for overseeing major criminal cases in one of the nation’s most important offices abruptly resigned on Monday, according to an email sent to colleagues. Denise Cheung, the head of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, resigned rather than carry out a directive from the office’s Trump-appointed leadership, according to several people with knowledge of her actions who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
The specific details surrounding Cheung’s departure are still coming into focus, but Reuters reported that she wrote in her resignation letter to interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin that she’d been ordered to investigate a government contract awarded during the Biden administration and pursue a freeze of the recipient’s assets.
[…] according to Cheung, the directive “was not supported by evidence.”
As for the nature of the contract, the Washington Post published a related report […] that said Cheung’s principled resignation stemmed from “a Justice Department effort to assist President Donald Trump’s new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, who said last week that he would try to rescind $20 billion in grants awarded by the Biden administration for climate and clean energy projects, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly.”
The Post added that the Justice Department has the authority to freeze assets, “but it can only take that step when it has evidence suggesting the assets can be traced to a crime,” and in this instance, Cheung and Martin “disagreed over whether halting releases was inappropriate and unethical without such evidence, or whether she was disobeying the department’s leadership and investigative strategy of stopping releases and looking for evidence.”
Martin, of course, is the Republican activist the “Stop the Steal” organizer whom Trump has nominated as the permanent U.S. attorney to serve as the top prosecutor in the nation’s capital.
Or put another way, we probably haven’t heard the last of this story.
[…] ProPublica has the list of all the DOGE people and there are lots of people with a lot more professional experience, either lawyers or longtime employees of Musk’s firms. So why does it continue to be this really small group of guys? [“the dozen or so under 25 techies – as the landing parties who go in and actually force their way into these departments”] They almost all have connections as interns at Musk companies. But interns, not people he’s worked with for years and presumably knows at a deep level.
As I was sitting here yesterday evening it came to me. I think Musk keeps using these guys because they’re willing to do things these other more experience people are not. I want to be crystal clear. This isn’t something I’m reporting. I think it’s just the most logical reading of the available evidence.
The big picture bad act here is that the Congress had the power of the purse. This whole operation involves seizing that power away from Congress. That’s the big bad act. But in the mechanics of how this is being carried out there appear to be a lot of more granular and specific criminal conduct – how you treat confidential information, authorization to take certain actions, cancel contracts, fire people, take possession of computer systems, offload government data to private servers. It’s hard to know precisely because everything is intentionally opaque. […]
But back in the real world there are still laws. And if you’ve got a career and a family a mortgage, maybe you say you believe [Musk and Trump’s] theories but that’s still not the same as being perfectly happy to just walk into these places and just do absolutely anything Elon tells you to do. Because sure Trump has your back today. But tomorrow is a long time. And there are state courts and bar associations and civil suits. […] Lawyers cost money. […]
The federal government is really, really big. Musk doesn’t care about any of these agencies. But even if you’re intent is to break them, some basic understanding of how they work would help. None of these kids have any of that. Having seven or eight guys slowly work their way through the federal bureaucracy with all its different agencies is going to take time. Why not have one DOGE lead hit every agency on Day One? Again, I think this is the reason. These guys aren’t concerned about the consequences.
Rando 2: White people with freckles, welcome to the resistance
Rando 1: The Trump admin has placed a ban on Julianne Moore’s children’s book ‘Freckleface Strawberry’ for being related to DEI.
[Affecting 160 DoD schools for military families.]
It’s about a little girl who dislikes her freckles but eventually learns to live with them when she realizes that she is different ‘just like everybody else’
–
Rando 3: I have so longed for this day where we pasty faced people get our moment in the shade.
* Pulled from shelves pending review for potential DEI violation. Not yet officially a permanent ban.
We’re moving from deliberate recession to deliberate depression territory.
And also, it makes the import of Pam Bondi covering up for corrupt banks the LAST time this all crashed more important.
[Bloomberg Law]
The Trump administration is planning to lay off at least 40% of the workers at the [Federal Housing Administration] that provides mortgage insurance on loans for people who otherwise wouldn’t qualify […] The FHA is one of the largest mortgage insurers in the world
Reporting from Ukraine: BEGINNING OF THE END! Russian Forces ARE EXHAUSTED!
Ukraine has continued to carefully push Russian forces away from Pokrovsk. Pokrovsk is an important target for Russia and they have spent much of the last year slowly advancing towards it. Ukraine is now retaking some key areas near Pokrovsk. They have kept this up for several weeks now. Combined with a small advance by Ukraine in Kursk, it shows that Russian forces are spread too thin.
Russians are not getting supplies and fresh units to the front and weak spots in their lines are showing. Part of the Russians problem is that Ukrainian drones are forcing Russians to keep their supplies and personal further and further from the front. Supply gets hard when Russian soldiers have to walk kilometers back and forth to get supplies.
whheydtsays
Re: JM @ #289…
Some recent Russian milbloggers were posting reports that the roads are under 24/7 drone observation, the roads are mined, and the troops have to walk 18Km to get from their staging area to the front. Slava Ukraini!
KGsays
JM@269,
I’m somewhat wary of such sites (I’m not familiar with that particular one, but some report imminent Ukrainian triumph/Russian collapse every day), but there do seem to be a few signs the Russian offensive is grinding to a halt. The overall dynamics of the war may resemble (at a very different technological level) WW1, which saw see-saw campaigns on several fronts, with the attackers exhausting themselves, often for small gains, and the other side then attacking and gaining ground but becoming exhausted in turn. Both then and now, the defenders appear to have big advantages (attackers tend to need more troops and take more casualties in most situations, but by how much varies a lot). Then, the defenders relied mainly on barbed wire, trenches, machine guns and mines; now, mines and trenches or similar linear defences again, but also drones. Those dynamics won’t last forever now any more than they did then – first on the eastern front as Russia collapsed following a failed offensive, then in the Balkans where Bulgarian forces collapsed, then on the western front when the final German offensive ran out of steam and the Entente counterattack, reinforced by fresh American troops (and more important, financial support), forced the Germans to ask for an armistice. The great danger now is, as a comment on the site says, that Trump pulling the plug on the Ukrainians – as he clearly intends to do – will be what tips the balance. Western Europe must replace American support as far as it can – but does it have the will and the political space to do so? Ironically, the outrageous lies and insults of Trump, Vance and Musk might just give the European leaders both.
Not satisfied with buying himself a president, Elon Musk is now buying judges and legislators:
As 2024 got underway, Elon Musk’s electoral perspective was hardly a mystery. The billionaire was not only using the social media platform he owns to condemn Democrats and praise Republicans, he was also cozying up to Donald Trump in unsubtle ways.
But in early March, Musk nevertheless made a public declaration that didn’t appear to offer any wiggle room: In the 2024 elections, the world’s wealthiest individual wrote online, he wouldn’t be “donating money to either candidate” for president.
That was a promise he did not keep. The Washington Post recently published a final tally, based on Federal Election Commission filings, which concluded that Musk spent “at least $288 million to help elect President Donald Trump and other Republican candidates” in last year’s election cycle. Despite his public vow 11 months ago, Musk became the president’s single biggest donor.
The investments, however, did not mark the end of the contributor’s interest in campaign spending. On the contrary, it appears Musk was just getting started writing checks to advance his electoral preferences.
About a month after Election Day 2024, for example, Trump’s most generous megadonor said he was prepared to start financing primary campaigns against Democratic incumbents in Congress whom he didn’t like.
Now, as The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, a Musk-backed effort is also starting to invest in a closely watched state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin.
Conservative Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel said just recently he was hoping conservative third-party groups would start buying up TV time in the state ‘very soon.’ Ask and you shall receive. Federal records show Building America’s Future, an Elon Musk-backed dark money group, began buying TV time in Wisconsin on Monday.
According to the local report, […] the Musk-backed organization “has already purchased more than $670,000 of air time for the next two weeks on TV stations throughout the state.”
That might not sound like a lot of money, especially given the sums spent in 2024, but in an off-year state Supreme Court race, that’s a significant expenditure, and there’s no reason to assume it’ll be the last.
“Musk is trying to buy off Brad Schimel and take over control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court so that Schimel can rubber-stamp an extreme agenda of banning abortion and cozying up to corporations,” a Crawford campaign spokesperson told the Journal Sentinel. […]
The election in Wisconsin is scheduled for April 1, and it will pit Susan Crawford, generally supported by the left, and Schimel, who’s backed by the right. (The contest is technically non-partisan, which is why there are no labels related to party affiliation.) The outcome will dictate the majority on the state Supreme Court. Watch this space.
In an email circulated today by the federal Department of the Interior, the Trump administration has issued a stop-work order for organizations providing legal services, funded by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, to unaccompanied minors entering the United States. The order will lead to 25,000 minors losing the legal representation they now have, as well as about a hundred thousand missing out on programs designed to educate them about their rights.
The new order comes little more than a week after the Trump administration rescinded an earlier stop-work order and funding freeze for four programs providing legal services to undocumented immigrants. I previously reported on how this funding freeze was not only an attack on the rights of immigrants, but also on Congress’ “power of the purse”:
Following a flurry of anti-immigrant executive orders by Donald Trump on his first day in office, the Department of Justice sent emails last Wednesday ordering legal service providers in immigration courts to “stop work immediately.” The order was sent to organizations working within four federally funded programs designed to help people navigate the complex immigration court system, through assistance outside the courtroom—like going over legal paperwork and court date requirements—and inside the courtroom, through direct legal representation….
Bettina Rodriguez Schlegel, chief of staff at immigrant rights organization Acacia Center for Justice, said via email that “members of Congress from both sides of the aisle” in both Republican and Democratic administrations “have agreed that these vital programs help individuals better understand their rights and obligations while they are in immigration proceedings.” She adds, “Particularly as the administration announces plans to ramp up detention and enforcement operations around the country, it is more vital than ever that people have access to due process protections, afforded to everyone in the U.S – regardless of immigration status – under the Constitution.”
Lukens sees the recent executive action to defund and ban immigration support as another clear violation of the constitutional “power of the purse,” a key plank of the Constitution which gives Congress power over how federal funds are spent. “The executive branch is obligated to spend funds that have been appropriated,” Lukens says. “That’s just basic constitutional law.” His organization is moving forward with the lawsuit; he hopes for a verdict that will make those obligations even clearer, and prevent future attempts to bar immigrants from receiving legal services.
That lawsuit, which challenges the Trump administration’s previous attempt to usurp Congress’ constitutional power over how federal funds are spent, is still ongoing. And even though those four programs are restored for now, as I wrote in that previous article, there was no reason to believe Trump wouldn’t attempt something similar in the future—as he now looks to have done.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Tuesday refused the request of 14 Democratic state attorneys general to immediately impose wide-ranging restrictions on Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The coalition of states, led by New Mexico, claims Musk’s far-reaching role heading DOGE is unconstitutional since he was not confirmed by the Senate, and the states sought to block DOGE from accessing seven federal agencies.
Chutkan refused their demand to do so at the current stage of the case, saying they had not made the necessary showing of irreparable harm.
“Plaintiffs legitimately call into question what appears to be the unchecked authority of an unelected individual and an entity that was not created by Congress and over which it has no oversight,” Chutkan wrote in her ruling.
“In these circumstances, it must be indisputable that this court acts within the bounds of its authority,” she continued. “Accordingly, it cannot issue a TRO [temporary restraining order], especially one as wide-ranging as Plaintiffs request, without clear evidence of imminent, irreparable harm to these Plaintiffs. The current record does not meet that standard.”
However, in a footnote, the judge suggested that the Justice Department may have stretched the truth in court filings regarding the breadth of DOGE’s power over personnel issues. […]
This bad news might be temporary. Chutkan gave the plaintiffs a roadmap to bring the case back to her court. I hope the request of the 14 Democratic state attorneys general is amended promptly and resubmitted.
“Federal judge reinstates employee appeals board member fired by Trump” Link
Related video is available at the link.
A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily reinstated a member of a three-person federal employee appeals board who was fired by President Trump.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras said Cathy Harris, who chaired the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) during the Biden administration, must be reinstated to her position and returned full access to the benefits of her office until further order of the court. The judge also barred recognizing any other person as a member of the MSPB in Harris’s position.
“The Court concludes that Harris has established a strong likelihood of success on the merits, that irreparable harm is likely to occur in the absence of injunctive relief and that the public interest weighs in favor of enjoining Defendants’ actions,” Contreras wrote. “Harris has thus carried her burden to establish that a temporary restraining order is warranted here.”
Harris was fired via a one-sentence email from the Presidential Personnel Office last week. She had four years left in her seven-year term on the MSPB, from which the president can only remove members for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”
Linda Correia, a lawyer for Harris, called Trump’s directive “illegal” and indicated Harris and the board itself stand to suffer irreparable harm over her removal.
“Every day she is not in that position is a day she cannot exercise her deliberate judgment,” Correia said during a hearing Thursday. “And those are days she can never get back and no court can restore.”
Justice Department lawyer Madeline McMahon said any order barring Harris’s removal would create a “significant imposition” on Trump’s executive power, contending that the president must be able to remove MSPB members at will.
The litigation stands to reach the Supreme Court, challenging key precedent that lets Congress make presidents show cause before firing board members overseeing independent agencies.
Overturning the 1935 ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States that established that precedent would vastly expand presidential powers and clear the way for firings of critical watchdogs.
“Because the MSPB falls within the scope of Humphrey’s Executor, Congress has the power to specify that members of the MSPB may serve for a term of years, with the President empowered to remove those members only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” Contreras wrote.
“The President did not indicate that any of these reasons drove his decision to terminate Harris,” he continued. “The Court thus concludes that Harris has demonstrated that she is likely to show her termination as a member of the MSPB was unlawful.”
It’s so cute when Republicans pretend to care, as we’re now seeing since American farmers have started complaining to Republican members of Congress about the economic hit that shutting down foreign aid is delivering to those farmers. As we’ve mentioned previously, some 40 percent of the food that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) sends to poor nations is purchased from American farmers, to the tune of about $2 billion annually. Also, more than 80 percent of companies that provide contract services to USAID are based in the USA.
[…] the disruptions have been so bad that they aren’t just hurting the criminals and communists who hurt America by investigating Elon Musk, but also decent Americans in Republican districts, prompting some Republicans to bleat — very carefully, without implying any fault on the behalf of Trump or His Chosen Billionaire — that maybe we should keep some aid going, not for Those People Over There, who can probably die for all they care, but for Our Brave Farmers.
“President Trump and his team need to turn this stuff back on. You know, it’s one thing to find a few programs that are bad or being mismanaged, but just a blanket turn off impacts our farmers,” Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican on the House Agriculture Committee, told NOTUS.
Bacon expressed surprise that leopards appeared to be eyeing his own face, even though he is named after a delicious pork product.
Despite a promise from thoroughly spineless Trump henchman Marco Rubio, who is somehow the secretary of State, that some emergency food and medical aid would receive waivers so it could be delivered, the waivers seem more of a fictional fig leaf than anything
[…] Rep. Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania, who chairs the House Agriculture Committee, [said] “This food is going places, and I love it. I mean, it’s packaged with an American flag printed on it. […] It’s good diplomacy, and quite frankly, if we can address food insecurity, it reduces the likelihood of us having to do any intervention abroad if there’s terrorism or war.”
Yes, that’s always been the rationale, but again, is, um, that happening? Since last Thursday, when a judge ordered aid work resume, we haven’t seen any reports of the aid actually being unlocked, delivered, moved from ships to refugee camps, or even converted to biodiesel or dumped because it spoiled. […]
Last week, several Republicans who are fans of USAID’s “Food For Peace” program, its biggest aid program internationally, introduced a bill to move Food For Peace from USAID directly to the Department of Agriculture, which hasn’t been shut down just yet, possibly because Elon Musk doesn’t currently own any farms. Supporters of the change made some muted mouth noises about how the program “fits” better with USDA, but also didn’t deny that they hoped changing its institutional mailing address might help spare it, and the farmers who sell it food, from the DOGE axe. […]
Ag Committee chair Thompson [said] it was just too bad that, umm, the “temporary” freeze had become all “political,” but you bet we need to make sure any aid is proper and not fraud, OK?
Other Republicans, like Ag Committee member Derrick Van Orden (R-Wisconsin), were all in on Trump halting foreign aid, because he’s pretty sure taxpayer funds for USAID might be “feeding terrorists. And USAID is a pit of vipers,” he added, without pointing out any particular vipers other than those libs who definitely want to feed terrorists […]
Everything is fine, OK? Just take a relaxing flight on an airplane and stop worrying so much, OK?
“U.S. weighs destroying $500 million in stockpiled covid tests”
“The government is reviewing proposals to shut down the program that ships free covid tests to American households and is considering destroying 160 million tests.”
The Trump administration has been evaluating the costs of destroying or disposing of tens of millions of coronavirus tests that would otherwise be provided free to Americans, according to two officials at a federal public health preparedness agency and internal documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
Internal documents show that officials in the Department of Health and Human Services have been considering two options: either disposing of or continuing to ship more than 160 million tests, valued at more than half a billion dollars. Only a small fraction of the tests are expired, according to the officials.
Documents also show that employees were asked Tuesday to identify initiatives, projects and webpages related to covid-19 as part of a process to comply with an executive order. President Donald Trump signed an order rescinding many of President Joe Biden’s executive orders, including some on the covid response and increasing the testing supply.
[…] The agency is proposing to shut down one of the channels for distributing them, COVIDTests.gov, Tuesday night, according to the agency officials and internal documents. That is the government website where consumers can order free tests to be shipped to their households.
Consumers would still be able to purchase tests over the counter.
[…] The pending decision on coronavirus tests represents yet another turning point in the fight against a virus that has posed political and public health challenges for Trump since the pandemic began five years ago.
Trump initially touted his coronavirus response as a defining moment of his first presidency, labeling himself a “wartime president” as the virus surged in early 2020 and the nation reeled.
But he came to resent the advice provided by public health experts, accusing them of attempting to politically damage him by encouraging shutdowns. Trump has since distanced himself from the government’s coronavirus response, including signing an executive order last week aimed at ending Biden-era coronavirus vaccination mandates in schools and universities. The anger toward public health agencies has helped fuel his new assault on the federal bureaucracy.
The program to ship free coronavirus tests directly to American households has been paused and revived more than a half-dozen times since it began, in keeping with the threat posed by the virus. It was paused, for example, in March 2024 and revived in September for the seventh time, in advance of the winter respiratory illness season.
Public health experts agree that there is no urgent need for free tests to be sent to American households now, given low levels of covid-19. But they said keeping the tests on hand is an insurance policy in case the virus evolves to cause a large outbreak again.
Since January 2020, ASPR has provided more than 2 billion free over-the-counter tests, according to a news release. It is best known for the more than 900 million tests sent directly to households that requested them on COVIDTests.gov in a partnership with the U.S. Postal Service. ASPR also provides free tests to community organizations that distribute them locally, such as nursing homes and health departments. The fate of that program is unclear.
“Destroying an asset that was paid for by the American people, that doesn’t make any sense,” said Tom Inglesby, who was White House national coordinator for coronavirus testing from the end of 2021 to April 2022. In the event covid becomes resurgent again, “we need to be able to figure out who is sick, who is not sick, who needs medicine, who is, in fact, contagious, who may be someone who’s vulnerable. These diagnostics really help you make really good decisions, help families make good decisions about how to stay healthy.”
[…] Ashish Jha, who led the White House covid-19 response from March 2022 to April 2023, said the stockpiled tests are valuable to have on hand.
“The virus is not posing a major public health threat now,” Jha said. But he added that trashing the tests “feels like an act of self-destruction here. It’s going to be expensive. And it takes away a tool that the administration would want to use in the scenario that we get a highly immune-evasive variant.”
The Biden administration policy was to stockpile enough tests to last six to eight weeks, so the country would never again experience the shortages that hit the United States in late 2021, “when no one could find an over-the-counter test,” O’Connell said. […]
I know people who have recently used those tests to help them to distinguish between the flu and COVID. One did have COVID and was treated with Paxlovid.
“After Walking a Fine Line With Trump, Zelensky Shows His Annoyance”
“Left out of a meeting between American and Saudi officials, the Ukrainian leader also canceled a trip to Riyadh.”
Shortly after the United States’ opening meeting with Russian officials on Tuesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine lashed out at the Trump administration’s negotiating tactics in his harshest terms yet for excluding Ukrainians from talks on their own country’s fate.
The meeting in Riyadh ended with an agreement to establish teams to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine and normalize relations, and with upbeat statements and pledges for closer ties between the United States and Russia — continuing a thaw in relations that Kyiv and European allies have found unnerving.
Mr. Zelensky protested his exclusion from the discussions by canceling his own planned trip to the Saudi capital.
“Decisions on how to end the war in Ukraine cannot be made without Ukraine, nor can any conditions be imposed,” Mr. Zelensky said from Turkey, where he had traveled as part of a planned tour of the Middle East. “We were not invited to this Russian-American meeting in Saudi Arabia. It was a surprise for us, I think for many others as well.” [Why does The New York Times characterize that as “lashing out”? Sounds more like a reasonable assessment of the changing conditions for negotiations.]
Ukraine, he said, learned of plans for the gathering from the media. Mr. Zelensky suggested that he had intended to meet American officials after the gathering in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, on a previously scheduled state visit to Saudi Arabia.
“I don’t know who will stay, who will leave, or who is planning to go where. To be honest, I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t want coincidences, and that’s why I will not go to Saudi Arabia.” [Yep, good assessment.]
Ukraine has been seeking talks that would provide it protection against future aggression by Russia, with a commitment of membership in NATO or peacekeepers deployed into the war zone. Ukraine has also asked nations to consider prosecutions for Russian war crimes and reparations for a conflict that has leveled whole cities and killed and wounded tens of thousands of civilians, as well as about a million soldiers on both sides.
Those kinds of demands were nowhere near the conversation in Riyadh, where American negotiators instead focused on “the incredible opportunities” that would come with an improved relationship with Moscow, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
[…] The pointed remarks represented a shift from Mr. Zelensky, who has tried to walk a fine line in the face of Trump administration pronouncements, avoiding direct criticism. He has offered praise in recent speeches and interviews, over the weekend telling NBC that President Trump could succeed in pressuring Russia into a settlement because the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, feared him.
But as the meeting in Riyadh came together, he sharpened his criticism of the negotiating process.
In an interview with the German broadcaster ARD on Monday, Mr. Zelensky said the United States was seeking a quick cease-fire by “saying things that Putin really likes.” The aim of the American negotiators, he said, was to move quickly to a presidential summit with Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin and announce a truce.
“But what they want, just a cease-fire, is not success,” Mr. Zelensky said.
The United States and European nations, he has said, should first outline the terms of postwar security in Ukraine, and he has insisted that Russia accept security guarantees to prevent violations or a resumption of the war.
[…] Mr. Zelensky has also been rebutting accusations from Mr. Putin that he is an illegitimate leader because Ukraine has not held elections (it cannot do so while it is under martial law).
Asked whether the United States supports Russia’s demand that Ukraine hold elections before any final peace settlement, Mr. Trump said it was his administration that is pressing for Ukraine to have new elections soon, not Russia.
“Yeah, I would say that, you know, when they want a seat at the table, wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have to say, like, it’s been a long time since we’ve had an election?” he said. “That’s not a Russia thing, that’s something coming from me and coming from many other countries also. You know, Ukraine is just being wiped out.”
Mr. Trump claimed that Mr. Zelensky’s approval rating had declined because of the destruction in Ukraine and falsely suggested that the Ukrainian president was to blame for the devastation caused by Russia. [OMFG. Trump is just spouting Putin’s talking points.]
[…] “At this point, it is clear that neither side will win this war on the battlefield,” Mr. Zelensky said on Tuesday. “Russia wanted this, it failed. No one believed in Ukraine, yet we proved ourselves and defended our independence at an incredibly high cost in the lives of our soldiers, our people. This proves that a shift toward diplomacy must happen, but it must lead to a just peace.”
Mr. Zelensky has said he hopes to reach an agreement with the Trump administration that would exchange a share of profits from natural resources for military aid. A Trump administration proposal had demanded half of the government’s proceeds from natural resources, an official familiar with the proposal said.
Mr. Zelensky had balked at the deal, saying it did not detail any security commitments from the United States in exchange.
“This is a very important issue for us, and we are highly interested in signing an agreement” with the United States, Mr. Zelensky said in a video call with reporters in Kyiv on Monday from Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates.
Mr. Zelensky, though, said that Europe was also interested in investing in Ukraine. “I told our American partners that we also have offers from Europe,” he said. Mr. Zelensky has said any deal on resources in Ukraine should consider other backers of the Ukrainian war effort.
By choosing words like “annoyance” and “lashing out,” I think that the NYT demeans President Volodymyr Zelensky.
[…] Going into the talks, Lavrov [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov] said his job was to “listen” to the American proposals and report back to the Kremlin.
State Department spokesperson Bruce similarly said the U.S. was there to determine how serious Moscow was about finding a negotiated settlement.
Yet Lavrov made clear in advance he would reject any notion of returning land annexed by Russia back to Ukraine.
“They say we should probably give territorial concessions — but what for?” said Lavrov. “So ethnic Russians who live there can be destroyed?” alluding to alleged atrocities by Ukrainian troops that have not been independently verified.
[…] The U.S. negotiators’ work was further complicated by statements out of the White House even before the talks began.
[…] Trump has publicly said any peace rested on Ukraine ending its NATO ambitions and relinquishing territory seized by Moscow — in essence ceding to two key Russian demands. [JFC]
Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser, tells NPR he expects Trump’s America First agenda means the U.S. president has little interest in the specific terms of a settlement.
“Trump wants to end the war,” said Markov, adding that beyond that “the only thing which Trump is concerned about is his image. He has the image of a strong guy. He shouldn’t look like a loser.”
Putin has extended an invitation for Trump to visit Moscow in the near future. The gesture has caused speculation Trump could join Putin on Red Square this May — when Russia commemorates the 80th anniversary of its victory in another war: World War II.
It looks to me like Russia is not conceding or compromising on any of their demands. Meanwhile, Trump is making all kinds of concessions, while also dutifully spouting Putin’s talking points. It’s disheartening to watch this.
The United States and Russia agreed in high-level talks Tuesday to re-establish embassy staffing […], fueling fears in Kyiv and building up Moscow’s hopes of re-entering the international mainstream.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that both countries had agreed to re-establish ‘the functionality of our respective missions in Washington and Moscow’ and that Washington would create a high-level team to work on a path to ending the war in Ukraine.
A freeze on the hiring and onboarding of thousands of federal firefighters could have deadly consequences as the national wildfire response operates at a ‘diminished capacity,’ a federal firefighting captain told NBC News.
The federal hiring freeze ordered last month by […] Trump will hinder the U.S. Forest Service’s ability to “deliver the lifesaving service that Americans deserve,” said Capt. Ben McLane, who serves in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, in southern Washington.
The U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service employ more than 15,000 career and temporary seasonal firefighters who conduct fuel management, fight wildland fires and assist other agencies in emergencies under the National Incident Management System.
Hiring federal firefighters is a lengthy process because federal background checks are required, raising concerns among McLane and other high-ranking firefighters that the federal force will be understaffed going into the 2025 fire season, which technically begins next month but in practicality has become year-round. […]
Steve Benen summarizes news from Politico’s report:
The struggling Pentagon chief has no evidence to substantiate this conspiracy theory:
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Monday accused the Biden administration of orchestrating a last-minute audit of him and his wife by the IRS before last month’s transition of power.
Mexico is threatening to take Google to court over its ‘Gulf of America’ name change on maps for users in the United States, pointing out that much of the body of water lies outside U.S. maritime borders in regions controlled by Mexico and Cuba.
Remember Jeffrey Clark, the former acting assistant attorney general in the Trump DOJ’s environmental division? He became infamous in the first days of 2021, when Donald Trump tried, unsuccessfully, to install him as attorney general mid-coup attempt. Now, Clark is reportedly back in government, in a top post at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It’s an agency that Trump, Elon Musk and other allies have taken steps to paralyze in recent weeks.
You’ll recall Clark was behind efforts to use the power of the Justice Department to pressure Georgia lawmakers to throw out President Joe Biden’s win in the state not long after the 2020 election. While his name was ultimately dropped as a co-conspirator, Clark was initially indicted in Georgia as part of Fulton County’s racketeering case against Trump and his allies for attempts to overturn the results of the election there. Clark’s law license was also suspended for two years, and he faces threats of disbarment in D.C. for his efforts to help Trump subvert the will of the voters in 2020.
Now, according to new reporting from American Banker, Clark has been installed as a senior adviser to attorney Mark Paoletta, the CFPB’s new chief legal officer. Per American Banker:
Clark and at least five other new hires showed up in the CFPB’s email directory this weekend, according to people familiar with the situation. They are now listed as part of the CFPB’s front office working under acting CFPB Director Russel Vought, who is head of the Office of Management and Budget.
Clark’s placement at the CFPB comes as other Trump loyalists within the bureau push forward with plans to effectively shutter the agency. The ubiquitous Russ Vought took over as acting director earlier this month, and halted all of the agency’s investigations and even closed the building. In the past week, the Trump administration began purging employees.
On Friday, CFPB employees were alerted that they’d been placed on indefinite administrative leave. Those reports emerged just before the Trump administration agreed in court to a temporary pause on terminating staff. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Friday issued an order stating the Trump administration had agreed to not fire more staff, delete agency data or transfer money out of its reserves — at least not until March 3. That’s when Berman Jackson will hold a hearing on a lawsuit that the National Treasury Employees Union filed on behalf of ousted CFPB staff. It is one of a handful of lawsuits that have been filed by former employees and other agency advocates in response to purges.
Musk and his cronies at DOGE have had their sights set on dismantling CFPB for weeks. Musk made those intentions public when he tweeted “CFPB RIP” earlier this month.
It is unclear what role Clark will play in his position at the bureau, which was created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), to monitor banking systems and protect Americans from financial scams. But Clark, Paoletta and Vought all worked together both in the first Trump administration, and also at a right-wing think tank they set up that advocates for expanding executive authority, the Center for Renewing America. The group recently published a piece — written by “CRA staff” — advocating for the bureau to be “shut down” and explaining how best to do it.
Embedded links to additional sources are available at the main link.
JMsays
@291 KG: I suppose I should put a warning on some of what I link to. When I’m looking for a link to include usually I search a bit for a good article. Reporting from Ukraine is very pro-Ukraine and slanted but there is also not much that is as current as their daily updates.
Russia’s current offensive is in bad shape and seems to be that way because of lack of rested manpower and supplies. It is a very big leap to saying Russia as a whole is in trouble or that they can’t eventually recover. Historically a bunch of people have made that mistake and paid for it. Though Ukraine is better prepared to handle the winters.
JMsays
@303 Lynna, OM:
Putin has extended an invitation for Trump to visit Moscow in the near future. The gesture has caused speculation Trump could join Putin on Red Square this May — when Russia commemorates the 80th anniversary of its victory in another war: World War II.
Oh crud. Trump’s going to see another big military parade and want one for himself.
Musk ally Thomas Shedd requested “admin/root access to all components of the Notify.gov system,” which is a government system used to send mass text messages to the public […] Shedd is a former Tesla engineer who now runs Technology Transformation Services (TTS), a group of coders and software engineers within the GSA, who is closely allied with […] DOGE.
[…]
this would allow Shedd to “view all personally identifiable information (PII) moving through […] for members of the public.” […] Shedd “would be able to download and store this data without anybody else receiving a notification.”
[…]
“Someone at TTS resigned rather than surrender a vast trove of data to Thomas Shedd,” one employee said. “I’m scared that we’ll run out of people who will tell him no.” […] “Notify contains […] names, phone numbers, and the status of participating in public benefit programs which are based on financial status.”
[…]
[By statute, it is legally required] that to provide someone access to a system they must go through an Authorization to Operate (ATO) process that determines who should have access to what systems, and for what reasons. The resigning worker said […] they had been “instructed to skip that process and place the system in non-compliance.”
* Shedd was the guy who proposed violating privacy consent for login.gov and asked the TTS devs to help him make AIs that could code, so he could replace employees (such as themselves). Then screwed up firing them.
For the convenience of readers, here are a few links back to the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/01/03/infinite-thread-xxxiv/comment-page-4/#comment-2254277
Sudan and Russia agreed “on everything” regarding creating a Russian naval base in the country – foreign minister of Sudan during his visit to Russia. […]
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/01/03/infinite-thread-xxxiv/comment-page-4/#comment-2254276
Switzerland has announced a $1.6 billion support program for Ukraine for 2025–2028. This program aimed at Ukraine’s recovery, reforms, and sustainable development.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/01/03/infinite-thread-xxxiv/comment-page-4/#comment-2254273
White House demands more money for border scheme amid funding freezes
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/01/03/infinite-thread-xxxiv/comment-page-4/#comment-2254269
Netanyahu warns ‘intense fighting’ will resume in Gaza if Hamas delays hostage release
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/01/03/infinite-thread-xxxiv/comment-page-4/#comment-2254255
In a bizarre and surreal Oval Office circus, Elon Musk and Donald Trump ratcheted up DOGE’s infiltration of the federal government.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/so-all-the-other-white-house-reporters
Amnesty International details gruesome impact of gang violence on children in Haiti
“An estimated 30% to 50% of gang members in Haiti are now children, according to UNICEF.”
MoonPie Has Renamed The State Of Florida, And Everyone Is Loving It
Satire, maybe.
Pritzker trolls Trump, jokingly renames Lake Michigan to ‘Lake Illinois’
On DOGE at the Treasury and freezing payments.
Nathan Tankus reviewed recent days’ court filings.
Regarding Marko Elez’s access:
Regarding payment freezing:
Conclusion:
U.S. Navy fighter jet crashes near Shelter Island while attempting to land
Averaging one air disaster per week under the new administration.
World’s biggest underground thermal lake discovered in Albania at bottom of 330-foot abyss
Another review of the DOGE Treasury court filings.
EmptyWheel – Marko Elez “resigned” the day his write access to payment systems was discovered
404media – Elon Musk’s Waste.gov is just a WordPress theme placeholder page
US State Department has budget line for ‘Armored Teslas’ worth $400 million
Roger Parloff (Lawfare):
* Rando: “Quick read (not a lawyer): plaintiffs (employee unions) lack standing and employees must exhaust administrative avenues before seeking relief through the courts.”
NY Post: Trump admin claws back $80M in FEMA migrant funds from NYC, setting up battle with new prez pal Mayor Adams
It’s one thing to block payments, it’s another to take the money back. Even if FEMA payments had been miss used the Federal Government can’t be allowed to unilaterally take $80 million back from NY without warning.
Telegraph – US aid freeze claims first victims as oxygen supplies cut off
Trump advisers look to shift US foreign aid to wall street ally
A military fighter jet has crashed. Yet another accident since Trump started dismantling aviation safety.
http://youtube.com/post/UgkxPytYiJPYJ-BGSKTTqJXtoZQGOzS-_CjB
The new co-president
http://youtube.com/post/UgkxGuwQZo6dsh63WicmyohsmRZSJDzVqoH6
Wait, what? I must have misread that.
Eh, it still looks the same.
Switzerland? Has taken a side in a war?!
This really is the end times, isn’t it.
NASA Just Funded A Project to Blow Space Structures Out Of Glass [NIAC 2025]
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=p-eGu_RGCO
My bad, I dropped the last character.
.
“NASA Just Funded A Project to Blow Space Structures Out Of Glass [NIAC 2025]”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=p-eGu_RGCOI
Followup to Sky Captain @ comment 9.
Everyday Americans are demanding answers on Elon Musk, by Rachel Maddow
“As protests targeting Tesla dealerships grow, Republican lawmakers are inundated with constituent complaints about DOGE.”
EXCLUSIVE: Judicial Branch Swept Up In Trump-Musk Lease Termination Spree
Federal public defender offices given notice of possible lease cancellation
Alarming, real life budget stuff:
Link
Cartoon: Sith and boogers
Followup to comment 23.
Link
https://www.msnbc.com/all
Elon Musk called out for raking in $8 million a day from taxpayers.
Video is 7:50 minutes long.
Chris Hayes points out that Musk (as DOGE) really does not provide transparency —because, “Trump’s declaration allows Musk’s efficiency team to skirt Open Records laws.” Musk claimed in that circus-like press conference in the Oval Office that he does provide transparency. That’s a lie.
“[…] And, crucially, he [Musk] can hide everything he is doing from the American public. You see, because Trump has designated his department’s initiative as Presidential Records, which is not what departments are, which means he is now able to skirt Open Records law.”
Much more in the Chris Haye’s video.
Hayes: Trump’s Putin call proves he hates our allies and loves our enemies
https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/hayes-trump-s-putin-call-proves-he-hates-our-allies-and-loves-our-enemies-231821381761
08:05 minutes
Regarding the buyout emails.
Anna Bower (Lawfare):
Randos: “7:20pm ET as in 4:20 pacific? Is he really that damn childish?”
“You know he is.”
Is It Time For a Change In GNOME Leadership?
I concur. I remember when Gnome 3 came out, and my windows started flying around my desktop unbidden. I started trying out other desktops: Cinnamon, Mate, XFCE.
Serial “swatter” behind 375 violent hoaxes targeted his own home to look like a victim
US-funded ‘social network’ attacking pesticide critics shuts down after Guardian investigation
Not everything in the world is bad.
“Tory Media Have to Scrap Headlines as Economy Grows”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=iZNqRiMZGRw
Measles outbreak in Texas rises to 24 cases as New Mexico reports illness
Opossum Hospitalized After Gorging On A Costco Chocolate Cake
‘Very obviously Donald Trump’s fault’: Red states feel the pain of Trump’s heedless funding cuts
Video is 11:17 minutes long.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
Donald Trump exposed as faithless ally as USAID workers abandoned by Trump become targets
Video is 8:47 minutes long.
“Dictators around the world are celebrating Donald Trump […] rightwing and autocratic governments have their knives out for USAID […]” Musk’s comments about USAID being a supposedly criminal organization have worldwide consequences.
The presentations are from February 13, last night.
“A sicker America”: Senate confirms Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary
“This New Idea Could Explain the Laws of Nature”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=-aGkL7RCXO0
White House struggles to back up baseless claims about ‘fraudulent’ spending
“To hear Trump tell it, Elon Musk’s DOGE operation has already uncovered ‘massive’ fraud and waste. Reality tells a very different story.”
Why the details of this week’s Marc Fogel prisoner swap matter
“Trump used to talk about his unique ability to free American detainees abroad without paying a price. The Marc Fogel prisoner swap helped prove otherwise.”
Related video is available at the link.
Link
Same link as in comment 40.
See also: Reuter’s link to the letter as a PDF.
See also: Reuters link to “US Department of Justice to stop defending independence of FTC, NLRB, letter says.”
Same link as in comment 40.
Same link as in comment 40.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/us/gitmo-migrants-trump.html
State Department buries massive payout to Tesla after public outcry
An armored Cybertruck would be really heavy. And they say it would be an electric vehicle. I foresee all kinds of problems emerging if they try to execute this plan … and that’s in addition to the “endless flaws and multiple product recalls” already associated with Musk’s Cybertruck.
Re: Lynna, OM @ #45….
Apparently, the base Cybertruck weighs about 6600 pounds, or 3 metric tons. There is an enhanced motor option that adds about 250 lbs, and an extra battery pack option that adds another 1000 lbs. So…by the time you add armor, you’re probably looking a 4 tonne vehicle.
(From what I’ve read, the sheer weight is why you need a truckers license to drive one in some European countries, and the UK has yet to approve them for public road use.)
whheydt @46, thanks for the additional details. That certainly makes the “armored Cybertruck” idea for military use look less likely to succeed. It will be government waste and fraud.
Followup to Reginald @36.
Oh great, anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. officially in charge of health care now
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug presents a Calvinesque and Hobbesian look at a criminal presidency
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4q4ziw4qk2hxxaxfu7jweuey/post/3lhyxkrcgnc23
Stars flee Kennedy Center groups after Trump seizes chair
‘Betrayal’: Hegseth’s NATO speech sparks anger at home and abroad
Oh FFS.
Link
Sounds to me like Republicans are fighting over just how fucking bad they want this to be for most Americans, and just how great they want this to be for the new billionaire oligarchy in the USA.
Pam Bondi ARRESTS NEW YORK WITH LAWSUITS For Failure To Nazi Cheerfully
Link
The Borowitz Report is satire.
Idaho news update from Reclaim Idaho:
US aircraft carrier collides with ship in Mediterranean Sea
This really is a very big part of what’s going on. It was there during the deep rifts and other things too. A bunch of people want to use social insults and social dominance without pushback. They will keep getting pushback.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/the-rights-brave-new-world-vibe-shift
Senate Republicans were supposed to protect us from nominees like RFK Jr. His confirmation is proof of their failure.
Link
News summarized by Steve Benen:
Sources are Trump’s social media post and CNN.
‘The Daily Show’ skewers Trump and Musk’s obscene Oval Office presser
Video and text excerpts are available at the link.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/rfk-jr-confirmed-by-senate-to-make
https://www.wonkette.com/p/republicans-fine-with-leopards-eating
“Republicans Fine With Leopards Eating Their Constituents’ Faces First”
Link
Conservative writer who accused drag queens of “grooming” kids arrested for child molestation
Idaho Murders Suspect Bryan Kohberger ‘Could Walk Free’ Due To Bombshell DNA Evidence
That’s a big fat nothingburger. The presence of other men does nothing to negate the DNA evidence against Kohberger. The writer is trying to jerk the reader around. Here’s a different headline about the same thing:
Idaho murder suspect Bryan Kohberger’s bloody new defense claim could fall apart, profiler says
JD Vance’s relative, 12, refused heart transplant over vaccine status
Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith won’t run in 2026. Fellow Democrat Gov. Tim Walz and others eye the seat
Stars flee Kennedy Center groups after Trump seizes chair
I hear Ted Nugent is available.
Follow-up to 11, 45, 46.
Gizmodo – The $400 million armored Tesla story is a fake scandal
NBC News:
NBC News:
Josh Shapiro has a good track record of winning court cases.
New York Times:
Link
NPR:
CBC:
Sen Ron Wyden:
Follow-up to #10.
David Gilbert (Wired):
TPM – D’oh!: Musky Clown Show Temporarily Disrupts Firings at TTS
Paraphrased for bevity.
TPM – Judicial Branch Scrambles To Limit Spillover From Trump’s Executive Branch Rampage
Return-to-office orders have led displaced executive staff to inquire about setting up shop in courthouses. A memo advised against this due to concerns over security, confidentiality, and congressional appropriations.
The executive branch GSA gave notice that it may terminate leases on 160 judiciary locations and freeze new leases above $50k. A judicial Administrative Office of the US Courts is being made to justify all facilities, and they intend to continue operating them all unterrupted.
An executive order directed executive-branch US Marshals to do immigration stuff, but Marshals leadership “assured” that judicial security remains their top priority.
Another memo says court employees should be just as concerned as anyone about compromised privacy from DOGE’s breach at the Office of Personnel Management.
/The possibility of street judges arrived quicker than I’d imagined. Not Dredd so much as left out on the street.
Added context for Lynna @72.
TPM – Defiance in New York
Josh Marshall (TPM):
Follow-up to #10, #77. Waste.gov had something before the placeholder page.
Jacqueline Sweet:
Rando: “‘Malaysian drug fueled gay sex app’ They’re just making this bullshit up as they go.”
Urlscan isn’t a browsable archive, but it preserves dated copies of the page. It offers a screenshot, and it has tabs to dissect the page: notably the text content (in this case, the complete bullet list of ‘waste’) and links (its citations).
* Lots of DailyCaller citations, DailyMail, some Heritage Foundation, Fox, NYPost.
* Lots of usaspending.gov, like for “inclusion”. About as many as DailyCaller.
Jacqueline Sweet also identified a “Peruvian ‘LGBT comic book'” claim on the list, which has a Snopes article (only the 2nd of 3 issues even had a gay protag and bf) because it’d circulated from Fox TV. The WH had pushed it, citing DailyMail.
On the DOGE breach at USAID.
Ryan Goodman (Former DoD Special Counsel):
Pages 4-13 are USAID members’ testimony, then pages 14-36 are a timeline of DOGE events at various agencies.
Docket, pages 5-6:
UNDERSTATEMENT
Page 29:
Just back from a dogwalk. Everything is so yellowed off and struggling in drought. Water levels so low and quite a lot of dead possums seen presuming high mortalityfrom recent extreme heat.
Re: StevoR @82:
Got me imagining one possum playing dead, followed by a series of passersby getting spooked into forming a cluster of dead possums that grows ever spookier.
Waldo Jaquith (Obama/Biden tech):
https://www.msnbc.com/all
‘Highway robbery’: Musk, Trump yank $80m from NYC bank account over migrant lies
Video is 7:46 minutes long.
Kristi Noem (Trump’s new Secretary of Homeland Security) confessed to taking the money. Details in the video.
EXCLUSIVE from NBC News
DOGE software approval alarms Labor Department employees
“Elon Musk’s DOGE subordinates received approval to use software at the Labor Department that could be used to transfer large amounts of data, two employees said.”
I looked into possums a bit, hoping that dehydration might trigger apparent death, but couldn’t corroborate beyond an untrustworthy site. Did find this though.
Research finds ringtail possums tackle heatwaves by letting body temperature rise to conserve water
* They largely lack sweat glands.
* I did see a couple Australia mortality and rescue stories due to heat waves.
Link
https://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari-melber
‘Massacre’: Six DOJ officials resign in protest of ‘dangerous’ Trump abuse in widening scandal
Video is 9:30 minutes long.
Ari Melber covers the new developments. Six resignations today.
Melber also covers the fact that Trump lied when questioned about the resignations.
More in the video.
404media – Anyone can push updates to the DOGE.gov website
Sam Curry (Car hacker):
Commentary:
Won’t they be too fragile? OK, sure, existing ones are more or less just giant aluminum cans, easily punctured. But at least they aren’t going to shatter when they get punctured, so you can limit depressurization to one compartment. You can’t do that if the entire outer hull disintegrates as soon as it gets any damage anywhere.
“Highway robbery’: Musk, Trump yank $80m from NYC bank account over migrant lies”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=PUvgwUgboBc
Russian drone damages Chernobyl nuclear plant’s shelter, Zelenskyy says
First-ever atheist billboard in Africa unveiled in Ghana with FFRF support
Floridians Are Complaining About Dense Fog That Smells Funny
Stephen King’s New Book Is Incredibly Unexpected
re Reginald Selkirk @95: Have they checked to see if the Orange Turd is in the area? It has been reported by multiple sources that he smells bad. It would not be unimaginable that he could emit some kind of stinky fog from his body.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
Gov. Hochul giving new consideration to removing NYC Mayor Adams amid crisis at DOJ
Video is 8:08 minutes.
‘A six resignation kind of day’ at DOJ following Trump’s sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Video is 11:53 minutes.
Trump has a new gift in mind for Putin amid ‘elation’ in Russia
“[Trump] first tried to get Russia back into the G7 in 2018. He tried again in 2020. Evidently, Trump is hoping the third time’s the charm.”
After confirmation votes, Trump’s offensive against McConnell gets uglier
“It seemed hard to imagine the president’s relationship with the Kentucky senator getting much worse. Then Trump questioned whether McConnell had polio.”
Very cold weather coming. US about to get 10th and chilliest polar vortex this winter
‽
Josh Marshall:
Link
Mississippi woman sentenced for unnatural intercourse with dog
Follow the link if you want details.
Followup to comments 89, 92 and 98.
Followup to comment 104.
Link
Louisiana Department of Health says it will no longer promote mass vaccination
More at the link.
Pentagon head [Pete Hegseth] offers crucial invite to antisemitic Pizzagate pusher
Link
Cartoon: My Fascist Valentine
Trump’s “Iron Dome” Looks Like Another Payday for Elon Musk
“An American replication of Israel’s defense system doesn’t make sense. But, experts say, it will likely set up SpaceX for big government contracts.”
https://www.wonkette.com/p/sounds-like-secretary-shtfaced-needs
https://www.wonkette.com/p/justice-department-massacre
Followup to comment 112.
Federal prosecutor will sign motion to dismiss Adams charges in bid to save colleagues’ jobs, sources say
I expect more details to leak to the press soon.
The key flaw in Trump’s executive order about school funding and vaccine mandates
“The president signed an executive order to defund schools that require Covid vaccines for students and staff — but there’s an important catch.”
The White House’s ‘Gulf of America’ push takes a needlessly aggressive turn
“There is an apparent expectation in the White House that news organizations will either use Trump-approved language, or they should expect to be punished.”
Asked about Musk’s conflicts, Trump offers an unintentionally amusing answer
Elon Musk’s DOGE posts classified data on its new website
Huffington Post link
“Elon Musk’s DOGE Posts Classified Data On Its New Website”
Link
Munich Conference: European Leaders Destroy Trump Admin at Conference.
-European leaders stand up to Trump and J D Vance after the awful speech Vance did yesterday.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=lv92XMklr-g
The excerpts add up, but I recommend watching them.
Many federal supervisors this week had just hours to send tweet-length justifications to save their employees’ jobs
Government workers describe their DOGE interviews
@33
Measles outbreak in undervaccinated Texas area doubles—again
Nigeria angered after military chief denied Canada entry
Does planetary evolution favor human-like life? Study ups odds we’re not alone
https://phys.org/news/2025-02-planetary-evolution-favor-human-life.html
Why the “President Elon Musk” mockery doesn’t seem to bother Donald Trump
World’s first pods that convert aircraft wind into energy installed at US airport
From text Reginald quoted in comment 122 about the measles outbreak in Texas:
That’s so alarming! Measles, as most people know, is highly contagious.
Reginald @125, I think there are a lot of factors at play, but consider this: Musk is getting a lot of “work” done. Yes, it is destructive “work,” but Musk is doing something Trump can’t do. Trump is too incompetent to get all that done … but, Trump gets to take credit anyway. So, that’s part of why he puts up with the “President Musk” memes. Trump didn’t really do the work of putting “The Apprentice” reality show together, (Mark Burnett did that), but Trump took most of the credit.
Washington Post:
Josh Marshall:
Link
Link
Followup to comment 131. Unlike The Borowitz Report, this is not satire:
Link
JD Vance is weird and clueless. And arrogant. And he praises NAZI wannabes, and then hangs out with them.
Followup to comments 112 and 113.
Update, with a few more details:
Link
And there is this from NBC: Justice Department moves to dismiss Eric Adams case after extraordinary internal revolt
The filing does not spell the end of the high-profile case. A federal judge must approve the decision to drop the charges.
Yeah. That’s helpful. Homan confirmed that dismissing Adams’ case depended on [still depends upon] the mayor’s cooperation with Trump’s deportation assholery. In fact, the case against Adams can be renewed if he, at any time, fails to live up to his apparent promise of total fealty to Trump.
https://www.msnbc.com/all
GOP senator rips Hegseth’s Ukraine remarks: Could be written by ‘fool’ Tucker Carlson
The segment, presented by Chris Hayes, is from tonight’s show, February 14.
Hegseth’s attempt at a walkback was just hilariously bad. Chris Hayes shows an excerpt from the talkback video. John Brennan joined Chris to discuss just how badly the Munich conference was going, and just how far out of his league Pete Hegseth is. Also, Brennan mentions: “A lack of coordination within the Trump administration.” And, he says, “It has been an embarrassment [in Munich].”
Brennan also discusses Trump’s claim that he is going to take over Gaza. The video is 7:06 minutes long.
That segment is followed by See Trump’s ‘blatant quid pro quo’ with Eric Adams play out live on Fox News. The video is 10:53 minutes long.
The number of resignations from the Justice Department is now up to seven.
Followup to comment 134.
As Chris Hayes pointed out, Mayor Eric Adams asked Trump for a pardon. He did not get a pardon.
Instead, Trump dangled (continues to dangle) freedom in front of Adams. Trump retains leverage over Adams.
Chris Hayes interviews Andrew Weissmann and Paul Butler about the Public Integrity unit of the Justice Department, and all of the other aspects of the case.
https://www.msnbc.com/all
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/the-democracy-index-6ae
Excerpts from “The Democracy Index” by Joyce Vance, posted today, February 14:
Anna Bower (Lawfare):
Chris Geidner (Law Dork): “This is unreal. I was thinking earlier in the week that they couldn’t be this stupid, but I guess that’s on me.”
Aussie ABC’s excellent informative TV & YT series If You’re Listening has this revelatory behind the scenes well worth watching episode on how Trump has been manipulated into his ethnic cleansing “plan” and out of making peace with and becoming friends and allies with the PA President Abbas here – The shocking story behind Trump’s plan to “own”Gaza. ( Approx 20 mins long.)
Alejandra Caraballo:
JD Vance stuns Munich conference with blistering attack on Europe’s leaders. Vance’s spew of insults and lies will be welcome if it finally wakes European leaders (including Starmer) to the fact that the USA under Trump is not an ally, let alone a “friend”, but a fascist enemy, and ally of our other fascist enemy in the Kremlin, as well as the fascist threat from within. Democratic Europe’s situation is desperate, but not terminal if we actually face up to it.
Trump agrees to ‘friendly meeting’ with Keir Starmer after making surprise call.
So far, Starmer has focused completely on appeasing Trump, in the face of Musk’s absurd lies about Labour’s “tyranny”. I have absolutely no faith in the man, but he should realise that nothing short of total subservience and unquestioning obedience will be accepted by Emperor Donald.
David Pakman show YT clip They’re treating Trump AS IF he has dementia! (8 mins length.)
JD Vance Says U.S. Troops Fighting Russia In Ukraine Is ‘On The Table’ In Stunning Reversal
Hard to say if this is the US flip flopping or just chaos internally over what the US position is. With an outside chance Vance is trying to stake out his own more aggressive position because he knows Trump doesn’t really care and Vance is still looking at his own political future.
Most of what Hegseth said is reasonably realistic but terrible to say in public. Starting negotiations with a hostile country by conceding most of their position is just bad. You would think a guy with a background in news reporting would understand that a lot of his job is actually publicity.
Practically Ukraine is unlikely to get Crimea and other sections taken by Russia before the current invasion back. Joining NATO takes time and the NATO countries are not going to want such a messy border. And the US would certainly prefer the EU states provide the soldiers on the ground securing the border, though expecting them to provide all of the soldiers is also unrealistic.
@124 birgerjohansson: I have seen a lot of speculation about that sort of thing over the years. It is interesting but I don’t put much confidence in a model built from a sample size of 1. It’s way to easy for a person to write their assumptions into the model without even realizing it because with nothing to compare to they don’t even realize they are assumptions.
I will agree that intelligent life is probably easier then early research said. It has become clear that several things originally thought to be big difficult evolutionary steps have happened multiple times on the Earth, suggesting they can’t be that hard. For a long time the development of multicellular life was assumed to be a big step but we know now it has happened many times.
But … but then who will rake the forests?
George Monbiot covers a fair bit of metaphorical ground here – REVEALED: Trump & Elon Musk’s BRUTAL Secret -12 mins – on billionaires vs the rest of us, class war and suggested action.
Meta To Build World’s Longest Undersea Cable
Author Ashley St. Clair Says She Gave Birth to Elon Musk’s 13th Child 5 Months Ago
RFK Jr. Is Already Taking Aim at Antidepressants
The Guardian
British professor makes ‘thrilling’ breakthrough for cancer that killed his mother
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/feb/15/british-professor-paul-workman-cancer-breakthrough-chordoma
.
JD Vance decried as extremist over attack on UK abortion clinic safe zones
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/15/jd-vance-decried-as-extremist-over-attack-on-uk-abortion-clinic-safe-zones
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
‘Not well received’: Hegseth, Vance embarrass themselves on international stage
Video is 8:54 minutes.
DOJ’s Eric Adams drama may enter new chapter as judge considers attempt to dismiss case
Video is 4:47 minutes.
Rachel Maddow Show segments from last night,
Cartoon: Shush yo’ mouth
Nope. There are no 150-year-olds on Social Security. It’s COBOL!
JFC. DOGE tech wizards = bunch of doofuses.
Consequences:
Link.
More at the link.
National Archives Head Resigns as Trump Takes Control of Records
“Sources name conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt and far-right journalist John Solomon as potential replacements.”
Followup to comment 132.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/american-vice-president-terrified
Here we see just one tip of the growing, menacing iceberg:
https://azmirror.com/briefs/arizona-cattle-milk-test-positive-for-bird-flu/
1)It is spreading
2)Pasteurizing may?! kill it. But, when it mutates again?
3)The magat in chief is ignoring it just like he did with covid.
4)Let’s hope RFKjr and all those anti-science imbeciles drink lots of infected unpasteurized milk!
5)The chicken and egg ‘question’ has already cost billions and it will only get worse
Washington Post link
EXCLUSIVE
Records show how DOGE planned Trump’s DEI purge — and who gets fired next
“A DOGE team plans to fire federal workers who are not in DEI roles and employees in offices that protect equal rights, internal documents show.”
@154 lynna, OM posted: National Archives Head Resigns as Trump Takes Control of Records “Sources name conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt and far-right journalist John Solomon as potential replacements.”
I reply: They are trying to destroy recorded history everywhere. And, the magat in chief (in spite of his fugly dancing to ‘YMCA’) just proved he is an evil transphobe:
https://truthout.org/articles/stonewall-monuments-transgender-history-scrubbed-by-trump-administration/
Stonewall Monument’s Transgender History Scrubbed by Trump Administration
“Let us be clear: Stonewall is transgender history,” the Stonewall Inn said in a response.
This is not hyperbole but it is terrifying:
https://digbysblog.net/2025/02/14/occupied-america/
Occupied America – Published by Tom Sullivan on February 14, 2025
Suddenly, and not accidentally, people who work for the American federal government are having the same experience as people who find themselves living under foreign occupation. — Anne Applebaum
More than a few of us not in federal employ feel the same. People I know have, like the refugees in Casablanca, fled the occupation. Except today it is the U.S. they are fleeing, not fleeing to.
James Gates, a theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland, warned an audience this month at the Royal College of Art in London, “My country is in for a 50-year period of a new dark ages.”
I remark: I told ya so!
Mueller, She Wrote – If you work for HHS, read this BEFORE you open certain emails
Jonathan Kamens:
Jonathan Kamens:
TPM – Important Note for Federal Civil Servants
Washington Post link
“Ukraine rejects initial Trump request for half its rare mineral wealth”
“Ukraine is hoping to reach a deal on a counter-offer […]”
Trump administration wants to un-fire nuclear safety workers but can’t figure out how to reach them
“The individuals, who work in an agency that oversees the nation’s nuclear stockpile, had been fired on Thursday and lost access to their federal government email accounts.”
Cartoon: Piece negotiations
Followup to comment 152.
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/house-dems-want-to-end-citizens-united
“House Dems Want To End Citizens United So We Never Get Musked Again”
On MSNBC’s The ReidOut, Angelo Carusone discusses conservative media’s role in implementing Project 2025
Carusone: “They’re going to blame the deep state, malicious implantation, right? And theyre going to use that anger and kinetic energy and turn it right back around to gather more power”
Video at the link.
Europe will not be part of Ukraine peace talks, US envoy says
More at the link.
Zelensky floats unified European Army: ‘The time has come’
@167 Lynna, OM: This seems close to a setup to sell out Ukraine. The other European countries won’t commit to much in negotiations they are not part of. There is a chance Putin and Trump are going to negotiate terms for dividing up Ukraine’s resources and call it a peace treaty. I’m not sure if Trump is doing this intentionally or just so easily manipulated but either way it could happen.
There is a chance they are going to be disappointed though. I can see them writing up some terms and presenting them to the world and Ukraine and the EU tell them to shove it. That will result in Trump pulling US support but at this point the Russian army is weak enough I think Ukraine doesn’t need it any more. At the start of this war the US was the only army that could supply Ukraine fast enough for Ukraine to fight back. Now they are dominating Russia in most ways and their biggest problem is not having the man power to easily retake land from Russia.
TPM – Inside the ‘bizarre’ meeting with DOGE at the IRS
Copycats.
Men claiming to be DOGE flee City Hall after demanding records on wasteful spending, fraud
Text quoted by Sky Captain @170,“The weirdest thing was just the five iPhones,”
Standard criminal operating procedure?
JM @169, basically, I agree. The fact that Trump and his lackeys can’t see that Putin is damaged and on his way to losing really irritates me. Still, Ukraine would have a very hard time “winning” (whatever that means) that war. They don’t have enough active soldiers.
Reuters: OPEC takes long-term view of global oil markets, aims for stability
Ignoring the political babble about market stability this is simple. OPEC going for maximum profits, pushing up oil prices. With Russia cut off from the market OPEC has enough control over the volume for sale to push oil prices up for the first time in years. The invasion causes oil prices to spike way up. It has since dropped a bit but OPEC production cuts have kept it from dropping back to pre-war levels.
Followup to JM @169:
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:sey7sepxyhnke3h5aa6ttbon/post/3lia5eshfdc2q
Followup to comments 169 and 174:
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:6y3honhec2jch2ryrbuyx5a5/post/3li7hvvfukk2n
Politico link
EXCLUSIVE
“Trump team to start Russia-Ukraine peace talks in Saudi Arabia”
“A Ukrainian official said Kyiv wasn’t informed and doesn’t plan to attend.”
Less than a month in and it’s total chaos.
Expanding upon a line in Lynna’s #105.
Andrew Torrez (Law and Chaos):
Justice Department fires multiple immigration judges amid case backlog
“A union representing the judges said it “makes no sense” to make cuts to immigration courts as Trump promises to carry out mass deportations, which must go through the courts.”
Trump Descends Into Madness As He Rants About Magnets
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=wbh9h9aczu4
Have I Got News For You, American Version
“Elon Musk & Big Balls! Mitch McConnell vs RFK Jr! A Popcorn Surprise!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=r3hl8iUBC4s
World’s ‘first openly gay imam’ shot dead in South Africa
Trump goes after religious groups—and they’re fighting back
Link
Cartoon: Will the real president please stand up?
https://www.wonkette.com/p/a-czar-is-born
“A Czar Is Born”
“Fentanyl czar, fentanyl czar, does whatever a fentanyl czar does.”
Scientists racing to discover the depth of ocean damage sparked by the LA wildfires
“Fire debris and potentially toxic ash could make the water unsafe for surfers and swimmers, especially after rainfall that can transport chemicals, trash and other hazards into the sea.”
Washington Post link
“It was the deadliest workplace in America. So why didn’t safety regulators shut it down?”
“Inspectors issued more than 100 safety violations and millions in fines. Yet deaths and injuries continued.”
OSHA needs more options for enforcement. Republicans have always worked against that. Now that Musk is involved, the difficulties regarding worker safety will be even worse. See below.
See also: What Will DOGE’s Moves on Government Agencies Mean for OSHA? by Eyal Press, writing for The New Yorker.
More at the New Yorker link.
From Bluesky:
RollingStone – DOGE’s ‘nerd army’ is breaking the government by threatening to snitch to Elon
Josh Marshall:
Power staff departures raise concerns about Northwest electrical grid
Jeff Legum:
Will Stancil:
David Burbach (Professor of International relations and natsec):
Jeff Sharlet (Author of The Family):
Bloomberg Law
@191 CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain
What they really meant to say:
>
Check out the GOP’s pathetic excuses for Trump’s lawlessness this week
The Business Community Is Extraordinarily Stupid
Cartoon: MAGA world domination
Trump Asks Supreme Court to Let Him Fire US Agency Head
Texas could sell 100 miles of border to feds, Abbott says
Shhh! Don’t tell Morales! He’ll have a conniption! :)
Heh. He will, will he?
(Don’t poke the bear!)
Article/Audio: Trump Official Destroying USAID secretly met with Christian nationalists abroad in defiance of U.S. policy (11:42)
Rick Perlstein (Historian of US conservatism):
We knew this was coming: North Dakota Republicans push bill to force “Intelligent Design” in science classrooms
Sky Captain @201 and 202, the number of dangerous errors Musk’s minions continue to make is just astounding. And, the number of Musk’s minions who have been caught cozying up to wannabe Nazis and Christian Nationalist (or other rightwing whackos) is equally astounding.
The picture is clear if you put all the puzzle pieces together.
“Trump is unfairly detaining immigrants at Guantanamo as terrorists, families say,” by by Perla Trevizo and Mica Rosenberg, for ProPublica and Texas Tribune
DailyKos link to repost of ProPublica report.
Raw Story:
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4aqzua5vsewimmusg66fyajl/post/3licbk3afdc23
Map at the link.
Link
How Elon Musk is boosting far-right politics across the globe
“The world’s richest man is trying to sway politics on six continents.”
Details at the link.
Yeah, Lynna. Details at link.
“That turn toward international politics coincided with Musk’s first year owning X, formerly Twitter, a platform that not only allows him to sway public opinion globally but also exposes him to global disputes.”
That was widely lambasted as an idiotic, money-losing, egoistic loss of face and money at the time.
(Remember? Many posts about that right on this thread)
TheConversation – Car brake dust can be more harmful than diesel exhaust
I have not kept up with events.
-Are Americans aware that the president has confused Gaza province, Mozambique, East Africa, with Gaza, Middle East?
Biden’s administration apparently sent $ 59 million’s worth of condoms to Gaza, East Africa to curb the spread of HIV.
The president went on TV claiming Biden had sent condoms for $ 50 million to Hamas, who are using them to make explosives.
Two days later he repeated the claim, but now it was $ 100 millions.
Are the mainstream media mentioning this at all?
Today is President’s Day in the USA. I am wearing black.
A Chrome extension lets you change the Gulf of America back.
Actor Kim Sae-ron, 24, found dead at home by her friend in Seoul
@ 211
Pfffft… No. Even if they did, it’s not as if the people will believe them. The “lie” of hard-earned America’ money being spent be sexually depraved liberals on behalf of “terrorists” is far more acceptable for the knuckle-dragging, willfully-illiterate masses.
Reuters: Judge calls rare hearing on a holiday in case against Musk’s DOGE
There would be no reason to hear the case today unless Chutkan expected to issue an immediate order against Musk. If she thought it was up in the air it could at least afford to wait one day when the government is largely closed. The case in question is Democratic AGs asking for a pretty broad temporary restraining order preventing Dodge from accessing information at all from several important government departments.
The issue at this point isn’t the ruling, it is what the judge is going to do to enforce it. The Trump administration has already violated a couple of orders and Trump is posting about how saving a country is never against the law. At some point a judge is going to have to step up and do something beyond asking the Trump administration from violating the law.
It’d be easier to the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda seriously if the White House weren’t moving quickly in the opposite direction.
Actions the Trump administration is taking will result in more people dying. That is not a formula for making American healthy again.
This feels like a typical day after 2016.
.https://youtube.com/shorts/816iJf8ZA6M
birger @211, about those condoms and the confusion about which Gaza:
See: https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/01/03/infinite-thread-xxxiv/comment-page-4/#comment-2252830
See: https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/01/03/infinite-thread-xxxiv/comment-page-4/#comment-2253418
Excerpt:
See: https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/p0krbdgz
See: https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5139292-usaaid-closure-impact-gaza/ “No, the US is not funding condoms for Hamas”
See: https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/29/politics/gaza-condoms-fact-check/index.html
Fact check: $50 million for condoms in Gaza? Five big reasons to be skeptical Trump’s story is true
Farmers have earned a reputation as a reliable GOP voting bloc, which makes it all the more striking to see [Trump] undermining their interests.
Lynna @ 219
Thank you!
.
“EU to Replace US with Canada for Gas Import: A Crushing Blow to American Exports”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=l6VdEaXATQ4
Who could have seen this coming ??? It is almost as if they regard USA as an unreliable partner…
A Different Bias:
“Reform UK Will Regret Talking About the Economy”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=HXRMPvhWyns
Since the Tory newspapers work for a rival party, they will delight in reminding people Reform UK praised Trump’s economic policies once they go bad.
(Schadenfreude 😼☠️)
@ 220
Oh please! They didn’t vote for Republicans due to their economic policies, but, like all backwoods hicks, for JEEZ-us, guns, and protecting the “white race” from the race-mixing, trans, Muslim commies.
Some Republicans have tried to defend the Justice Department’s alleged quid pro quo with New York City Mayor Eric Adams. It didn’t go well..
Vance adds to the White House’s list of avoidable international incidents. Related video at the link.
“It took generations of work to establish the foundations of the Western alliance, and Team Trump appears eager to take a sledgehammer to those foundations.”
A Different Bias:
“Tories Starting to Turn on Trump”
(I am deliberately leaving the window open so you can read the headline)
Dang! Not a good image.
The text is “Anderson told to take Musk’s dick out of his mouth by tory MP.”
Anderson is an asshole who defected from the conservatives to the even worse Reform UK. He naturally supports Musk and Trump as they betray Ukraine.
JFC.
Republican bill would make Trump’s birthday a federal holiday
Adding to the list of similarly sycophantic efforts, a GOP congresswoman unveiled an actual bill to make Donald Trump’s birthday a federal holiday.
Next up: huge portraits of the Dear Leader everywhere.
Followup to comment 208.
Link
Cartoon: Rapid unscheduled disassembly
cross-posted from paddington: Happy ‘American Emperor’s day’, everyone, as proclaimed by the two emperors themselves! /I’m choking on sardonic sarcasm
Republicans Once More Fixin’ To Let Babies Go Hungry, But In America This Time
Lynna@ 219
Myself @ 211
“Fact-checking Elon Musk’s claims in the Oval Office – BBC News”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyjz24ne85o
.
The Gaza province of Mozambique and Elon Musk: There are not even any condoms!
The eejits read “HIV prevention” and thought “condoms”. They read “Gaza province” and thought “Middle East”.
As team Musk passed the claim to Trump’s staff no one on either side bothered to check the facts before the predident went on TV to repeat the claim. This is the state of the administration of USA.
.
Gaza Province
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Province
@228
So they want to call it Dullard Airport ‽
Zoe Williams:
“The new world order is exactly what it looks like. Are we too frozen with fear to name it?”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/17/the-new-world-order-is-exactly-what-it-looks-like-are-we-too-frozen-with-fear-to-name-it
At least 10 dead in the Southeast after flooding and heavy rains
“Storms battered parts of the eastern United States, with nine deaths in Kentucky and one in Georgia.”
Israeli forces to remain in five locations in southern Lebanon after removal deadline
“Lebanon’s government has opposed any further delay in the Israeli pullout under the ceasefire agreement that ended fighting with the Hezbollah militant group.”
More at the link.
RFK Jr. guts health agencies even as measles cases surge in Texas
A Different Bias:
“Former Prime Minister
John Major Attacks Free Speech Hypocrisy”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Jlf4euOpp6s
Hell just froze over. A leading tory said something that was both true and important.
*It was 30 years since he was in power. The moral quality of tories have gone even worse since then.
Trump and Musk have 18 kids by 7 mothers. Not exactly consevative family values.
Who Invented the Ball Bearing?
Proposed bill would ban administration of mRNA vaccines in Montana
Plane crashes, overturns during landing at Toronto’s Pearson airport
Fuckety, does the CBC have no competent journalists? I had to Google to find that flight originated in Minneapolis-St. Paul. On closer search of the article, the Minneapolis origin is mentioned once, in a photo caption.
Police arrest apparent leader of Zizian group tied to killing of U.S. border agent near Canada
Warnock at National Cathedral: ‘Don’t tell me you reject DEI when you live in a White House built by Black hands’
January 6 Insurrectionists Take Trump Pardons to Horrifying Level
Jewish man mistakes two Israeli tourists for Palestinians and opens fire on them in Miami
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/germany-tries-to-explain-history
“Germany Tries To Explain History To Vice President [Vance]”
Group Claims Washington Post Wouldn’t Run ‘Fire Elon Musk’ Advertisement/a>
Meanwhile, vice fuhrer Vance is back from Europe, where he told European countries they need more free speech.
Washington Post link
“Trump’s global funding freeze leaves anti-terror programs in limbo”
“U.S. officials say now-suspended programs across Africa were designed specifically to respond to national security threats and contain the spread of terrorism.”
Josh Marshall: First IRS, Now DOGE Busts Its Way Into the Social Security Administration
Followup to comment 253.
Washington Post link
“Top Social Security official exits after clash with Musk’s DOGE over data”
“Yet another top career staffer is leaving the administration amid a disagreement over a request by Elon Musk’s team for sensitive government information.”
In case anybody is interested:
@245 Reginald Selkirk wrote about: Police arrest apparent leader of Zizian group tied to killing of U.S. border agent near Canada
I remember when PZ posted about Rebecca Watson’s article about them:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/02/07/zizians/
video by Rebecca Watson on them: https://youtu.be/M0hmXDY_HmI
She has a lot of good articles
Of course, right now, we are facing destruction of our government and society by a more dangerous cult. There doesn’t seem to be any person or group that can or will stop this MUMP cult and its evil little minions. I wish this was all just a terrible nightmare from which we could awaken. I fear for our decades long investments in Social Security and Medicare and I am so angry that these evil little nightcrawlers may now have our personal info. WTF
Any word yet on the cause of this latest crash of an American plane flight?
YT short by Zeteo Ilhan Omar Slams Elon Musk
Follow-up to #137 on Musk’s title.
Anna Bower (Lawfare):
Katie Phang (MSNBC):
Ryan Goodman (Politico):
^ Botched my link to Katie Phang above.
Biomarker panel offers hope for early pancreatic cancer detection
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-02-biomarker-panel-early-pancreatic-cancer.html
Urinary DNA methylation test shows some promise for noninvasive bladder cancer screening
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-02-urinary-dna-methylation-noninvasive-bladder.html
Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/tamara-keith-and-amy-walter-on-trumps-expanding-executive-power
Plus also via PBS Newshour :
Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-the-start-of-trumps-second-term-looks-like-some-autocracies
Happy Pluto Discovery Day (18th February – back in 1930) everyone!
See YT Short here – How Clyde Tombaugh was able to find Pluto
Stephen Colbert
Family Meeting With John Oliver
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=zqBP5R557dg
It is questionable to call it an “American plane flight.” It was an international flight, originating in Minneapolis-St. Paul and landing in Toronto, where the incident occurred. The carrier was USAian, but the jet itself was a Bombardier CRJ-900, from a Canadian manufacturer.
A Delta flight crashed then flipped upside down while landing in Toronto. Here’s what we know
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
‘The IRS is freaking out’: Trump pushes to give Musk acolyte access to Americans’ personal tax data
Video is 4:32 minutes long. Maddow also mentions the DOGE incursion into the Social Security system.
Debunked explanations for Musk’s reckless firings expose true goal of wrecking the government
Video is 8:27 minutes long.
‘Have you considered resigning?’: Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Video is 7:02 minutes long.
Link
Trump taps ‘Stop the Steal’ activist to be D.C.’s top prosecutor
“[Trump] wants a longtime Republican operative to be the top prosecutor in the nation’s capital. Given Ed Martin’s recent record, that’s not good news.”
Link
Cartoon: It just wasn’t in the budget …
Fired Federal Workers Protest Being Purged By Benevolent King Trump
Lots of photos at the link.
Sky Captain @258, so they are trying to protect Elon Musk from prosecution over actions taken by DOGE?
In other news: Poll: Majority of GOP voters would reject checks, balances to give Trump more power
Followup to Sky Captain @258: Who’s to blame for the DOGE disasters? Not Musk, says White House
Wow. Cognitive dissonance.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/anti-vaxxer-thinks-hes-a-big-hero
Link
Maybe the idea is that if you kill off those who are most vulnerable, the average health of the living will improve. That, after all, was the approach of co-president Musk’s heroes.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/dear-leader-watch-who-outdid-who
“Dear Leader Watch: […] Sucking Up To Trump Lately?”
Lynna, OM@228,
These should-be-satire-but-isn’t efforts by Republican congresspersons to get their tongues unprecedented distances up Trump’s fundament are all too reminiscent of those of ultra-sycophantic senators under the Roman Empire. I wonder who will be the first to propose voting him divine honours? Or slightly less extreme, the title “Augustus”, which Octavian, recognised historically as the first Emperor, took because taking the title of “King” would have risked unpopularity – th Romans having, like today’s Americans, having got rid of their kings some time earlier. This would fit with the USA’s penchant for appointing “tsars” of various policy areas. The tile “tsar” derives from the name “Caesar”, and under the 3rd century Emperor Diocletian, the Empire was divided into Eastern and Western halves, each with its own “Augustus”, and each of these Augusti had a “Caesar” as second-in-command and intended heir – although this aspect of the system never really worked.
Reginald Selkirk@248,
There are of course Palestinian citizens of Israel (around 20% IIRC), so the racist shooter could have been right even if the victims were Israeli tourists (although perhaps Palestinian citizens of Israel avoid foreign travel in case they are not allowed back in). In this case it’s clearly not so, and indeed one of the victims reportedly posted “death to Arabs” on social media after the shooting, blaming antiemitism for the attack. But even Yahoo doesn’t appear to realise that there are, indeed, Palestinian Israelis.
Re: Lynna @272:
EmptyWheel – Why Elon Musk can’t run DOGE [sic] anymore
Well that’s good news of course, but the biomarkers relate to pancreatic cystic lesions, and it sounded like you’d probably need to get samples from those cysts, and although some of the markers are in blood, you’d still need to test for them. I lost a friend to pancreatic cancer last year: he went to his doctor with severe abdominal pain – no previous symptoms – was diagnosed within a few weeks, and died little more than a year after that. Still, it’s a step on the way to a routine test I guess.
KG @278, yes, trumpian cult followers can go to even further extremes of ridiculousness in order to worship him (or appear to worship Trump). It does make me wonder what defect in the human brain feeds that need to have a god-figure to worship. It must be powerful if they will settle for a doofus like Trump. Maybe any doofus will do?
Intended heirs include Donald Junior and Barron? Ivanka seems to have rejected the role. It was disturbing to see how hard and long Republican audiences cheered and applauded for Barron at events leading up to the election.
Text quoted by Sky Captain @280:
Yes, that was my conclusion.
In other news: Yet another prosecutor resigns in protest: DOJ’s criminal division chief in D.C. quits
Josh Marshall:
Link
From Twitter:
* Pulled from shelves pending review for potential DEI violation. Not yet officially a permanent ban.
A new theory explains how water first arrived on Earth
https://phys.org/news/2025-02-theory-earth.html
EmptyWheel:
* TheAmericanProspect – When Pam Bondi protected foreclosure fraudsters
Novel antibiotic BTZ-043 can also target TB bacteria hiding in dead lung tissue
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-02-antibiotic-btz-tb-bacteria-dead.html
Reporting from Ukraine: BEGINNING OF THE END! Russian Forces ARE EXHAUSTED!
Ukraine has continued to carefully push Russian forces away from Pokrovsk. Pokrovsk is an important target for Russia and they have spent much of the last year slowly advancing towards it. Ukraine is now retaking some key areas near Pokrovsk. They have kept this up for several weeks now. Combined with a small advance by Ukraine in Kursk, it shows that Russian forces are spread too thin.
Russians are not getting supplies and fresh units to the front and weak spots in their lines are showing. Part of the Russians problem is that Ukrainian drones are forcing Russians to keep their supplies and personal further and further from the front. Supply gets hard when Russian soldiers have to walk kilometers back and forth to get supplies.
Re: JM @ #289…
Some recent Russian milbloggers were posting reports that the roads are under 24/7 drone observation, the roads are mined, and the troops have to walk 18Km to get from their staging area to the front. Slava Ukraini!
JM@269,
I’m somewhat wary of such sites (I’m not familiar with that particular one, but some report imminent Ukrainian triumph/Russian collapse every day), but there do seem to be a few signs the Russian offensive is grinding to a halt. The overall dynamics of the war may resemble (at a very different technological level) WW1, which saw see-saw campaigns on several fronts, with the attackers exhausting themselves, often for small gains, and the other side then attacking and gaining ground but becoming exhausted in turn. Both then and now, the defenders appear to have big advantages (attackers tend to need more troops and take more casualties in most situations, but by how much varies a lot). Then, the defenders relied mainly on barbed wire, trenches, machine guns and mines; now, mines and trenches or similar linear defences again, but also drones. Those dynamics won’t last forever now any more than they did then – first on the eastern front as Russia collapsed following a failed offensive, then in the Balkans where Bulgarian forces collapsed, then on the western front when the final German offensive ran out of steam and the Entente counterattack, reinforced by fresh American troops (and more important, financial support), forced the Germans to ask for an armistice. The great danger now is, as a comment on the site says, that Trump pulling the plug on the Ukrainians – as he clearly intends to do – will be what tips the balance. Western Europe must replace American support as far as it can – but does it have the will and the political space to do so? Ironically, the outrageous lies and insults of Trump, Vance and Musk might just give the European leaders both.
Sorry – #290 responds to JM@289, not 269.
Duh! #291, not #290!
Scientists at U.S. weather forecasting agency ordered to get clearance before talking to Canadian counterparts
Trump’s musings on ‘very large faucet’ in Canada part of looming water crisis, say researchers
Not satisfied with buying himself a president, Elon Musk is now buying judges and legislators:
Link
Why would you buy a Tesla when you could just give money to the Nazi Party directly?
Link
“Chutkan refuses to block Musk, DOGE from 7 federal agencies.”
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5151676-chutkan-musk-doge-federal-agencies/
This bad news might be temporary. Chutkan gave the plaintiffs a roadmap to bring the case back to her court. I hope the request of the 14 Democratic state attorneys general is amended promptly and resubmitted.
“Federal judge reinstates employee appeals board member fired by Trump”
Link
Related video is available at the link.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trumps-evil-usaid-cuts-hurting-farmers
Washington Post link
“U.S. weighs destroying $500 million in stockpiled covid tests”
“The government is reviewing proposals to shut down the program that ships free covid tests to American households and is considering destroying 160 million tests.”
I know people who have recently used those tests to help them to distinguish between the flu and COVID. One did have COVID and was treated with Paxlovid.
New York Times link
“After Walking a Fine Line With Trump, Zelensky Shows His Annoyance”
“Left out of a meeting between American and Saudi officials, the Ukrainian leader also canceled a trip to Riyadh.”
By choosing words like “annoyance” and “lashing out,” I think that the NYT demeans President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Followup to comment 302.
Link
More at the link.
It looks to me like Russia is not conceding or compromising on any of their demands. Meanwhile, Trump is making all kinds of concessions, while also dutifully spouting Putin’s talking points. It’s disheartening to watch this.
NBC News:
NBC News:
Steve Benen summarizes news from Politico’s report:
Washington Post:
Oh FFS.
Trump’s First-Term Inside Man [Jeffrey Clark] At The DOJ Has Scored A Top Post At The CFPB
Embedded links to additional sources are available at the main link.
@291 KG: I suppose I should put a warning on some of what I link to. When I’m looking for a link to include usually I search a bit for a good article. Reporting from Ukraine is very pro-Ukraine and slanted but there is also not much that is as current as their daily updates.
Russia’s current offensive is in bad shape and seems to be that way because of lack of rested manpower and supplies. It is a very big leap to saying Russia as a whole is in trouble or that they can’t eventually recover. Historically a bunch of people have made that mistake and paid for it. Though Ukraine is better prepared to handle the winters.
@303 Lynna, OM:
Oh crud. Trump’s going to see another big military parade and want one for himself.
404media – Musk ally demands admin access to system that sends mass texts
* Shedd was the guy who proposed violating privacy consent for login.gov and asked the TTS devs to help him make AIs that could code, so he could replace employees (such as themselves). Then screwed up firing them.