He can dish it out but he can’t take it. I think that means everyone should carry signs, huge ones, planes should fly banners, people should yell “Taco Trump!”every time he appears in public.
"what digby sez..."
Month: May 2025
The ick factor is so huge on this I’m reluctant to share, but here goes. A few months a go WIRED reported on the strange relationship between Musk, Stephen Miller and his wife Katie. They were both considered sort of Musk’s handlers with Stephen running interference in the White House and Katie working closely with Musk on his DOGE project. By all accounts the three had become very close, if you know what I mean:
Musk’s relationship with the Millers has become a subject of great intrigue in Washington as DOGE continues to wreak havoc on the federal government. Little is known about how often they interact outside of work and how the relationship grew over the late stages of the campaign into the transition.
“If you can find out anything about Stephen Miller’s social life, I don’t wanna know the answer,” says a longtime Republican operative who knows the couple personally.
“Stephen and Katie are very attentive to [Musk],” the Republican who referred to Stephen as “prime minister” tells WIRED.
Yeesh.
Well…
An aide to President Donald Trump is following Elon Musk out the White House door as she prepares to work for the tech billionaire in the private sector.
Katie Miller – who is married to Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller – is leaving her current gig to work ‘full time’ for the Tesla CEO, unidentified sources told CNN.
Meanwhile, Stephen Miller is angrily sub-tweeting Musk on X:
The rumor mill is swirling. Is Katie moving to Austin to be closer to the boss? Is divorce imminent? After all, Katie is a made MAGA woman from way back. Seems odd she’d give that all up at the height of MAGA power.
On the other hand, Musk is the richest man in the world. Maybe he’s paying her 20 million dollars a year. Or maybe they’ve grown close, as the tea spillers seem to be implying. We’ll soon see. If she’s Elon’s latest, she’ll soon be impregnated.
It’s called extortion
Despite claims by the Defense Department to the contrary, legal teams representing the U.S. and Qatari governments have not finalized an agreement for transferring the luxury Boeing 747-8 jetliner that President Donald Trump wants for Air Force One amid outstanding requests by Qatar for Washington to clarify the transaction’s terms, said officials familiar with the matter.
Qatar is insisting that a memorandum of understanding between Washington and Doha specify that the aircraft’s transfer was initiated by the Trump administration and that Qatar is not responsible for any future transfers of the plane’s ownership, these people said.
If any of you have heard me on the radio or podcasts the last couple of weeks, you’ve heard me say this. He ordered the plane. They didn’t gift it. Steve Witkoff went over to Qatar and asked them about it, they flew it to Palm Beach, Trump toured it and said, “I’ll have that one.” There was never a question that they would give it to him. They’re not stupid.
Sad trombone for his lordship
“The M.O. of the extremist Republican Party: find the lines, cross them, dare people to push them back. Courts have. So now the GOP is going after the courts,” I wrote ahead of the 2016 election. That was near prescient.
The U.S. Court of International Trade on Wednesday slapped down His Majesty’s tariffs as outside his authority. Whaddya figure? The ruling was unanimous.
Trump overstepped. Plaintiffs pushed back (AP):
The lawsuit was filed by a group of small businesses, including a wine importer, V.O.S. Selections, whose owner has said the tariffs are having a major impact and his company may not survive.
A dozen states also filed suit, led by Oregon. “This ruling reaffirms that our laws matter, and that trade decisions can’t be made on the president’s whim,” Attorney General Dan Rayfield said.
The bipartisan panel of judges pushed back too.
The White House responded with more royalist bluster (NPR):
“It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement. “President Trump pledged to put America First, and the Administration is committed to using every lever of executive power to address this crisis and restore American Greatness.”
So many deals, so much losing
The Guardian earlier this morning reported the White House making noise about appealing the ruling:
White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett has said there are three trade deals nearly done and he expects more despite a court ruling blocking Donald Trump from imposing his sweeping tariff regime.
“There are many, many deals coming. And there were three that basically look like they’re done,” Hassett said in an interview with Fox Business Network.
Hassett dismissed a US court of international trade ruling yesterday that blocked most tariffs and found Trump had overstepped his authority as the work of “activist judges”. He said he was confident the administration would win on appeal.
Until then, the court’s injunction is permanent (CNN):
The court ruled in favor of a permanent injunction, potentially grinding Trump’s global tariffs to a halt before “deals” with most other trading partners have even been reached. The court ordered a window of 10 calendar days for administrative orders “to effectuate the permanent injunction.” That means the bulk – but not all – of Trump’s tariffs would be put in a standstill if the ruling holds up in appeal and, potentially, with the Supreme Court.
The order halts Trump’s 30% tariffs on China, his 25% tariffs on some goods imported from Mexico and Canada, and the 10% universal tariffs on most goods coming into the United States. It does not, however, affect the 25% tariffs on autos, auto parts, steel or aluminum, which were subject to Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act – a different law than the one Trump cited for his broader trade actions.
Trump tried to stretch the International Emergency Economic Powers Act beyond the breaking point, claiming powers for the presidency to impose tariffs that it does not grant.
Trump also cited IEEPA in his 20% tariffs on China and 25% tariffs on many goods from Mexico and Canada designed to target fentanyl trafficking into the United States.
But the Trump administration has not met that criteria for an emergency, the plaintiffs alleged. The lawsuit also alleges IEEPA doesn’t give the president the power to enact tariffs in the first place, and even if it was interpreted to, it “would be an unconstitutional delegation of Congress’s power to impose tariffs,” according to a statement.
Meantime, more Trumpian chaos, suggests Catherine Rampell:
What’s more, she suggests, Trump now may invoke other statutes and trigger more lawsuits.
Here we go again.
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Have you fought dictatorship today?
No Kings Day, June 14th
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense
Springsteen’s rock sermon
It was a surprise birthday gift from her husband. Former Obama communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, received a flight to Manchester, England for Bruce Springsteen’s second “Land of Hopes and Dreams” show there. Springsteen made headlines and drew fire from “His Lordship” Trump for his monologue against the actions of America’s wannabe dictator.
“In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration,” Springsteen told fans. “There’s some very weird, strange, and dangerous shit going on out there right now,” he said later, before reciting a bill of particulars not unlike those in the Declaration of Independence. Springsteen assembles his set list to tell a story. He opens with “No Surrender.”
Palmieri reflects in The Bulwark. What struck her most was his hopeful message, “We will survive this moment.”
Survive. The concept hit me with a wave of relief. It was a courageous affirmation of the exceptional nature of America when I needed to hear it most. Even as he acknowledged the ways the president has undermined democracy, and the failures of our system of checks and balances to protect the country from a demagogue, Springsteen was saying there is an innate resilience in the American people. Surviving is what we do.
He now sings “Long Walk Home” as a prayer for the country.
Palmieri reflects on her years in campaign work and on Democrats’ failure to stop a Trump second term. She has been at a loss for how Resistance 2.0 might find its North Star and shakes her head at her own failure to imagine something more meaty than “Democrats should do more podcasts.”
Springsteen’s rock sermon — resolute, unapologetically and authentically patriotic — feels like that North Star. Our charge: to protect the America we love and limit the Trumpian damage until we get through this. We are better than Trump, stronger, with deep roots in this country’s faith in itself. Trump cannot understand that coming because that kind of faith is beyond his comprehension.
The problem is how to hold back barbarians at the gates with hopes and dreams. Palmieri admits her own failure of imagination. Perhaps Resistance 2.0 starts with inspiration. The same old, same old ain’t cutting it. “Adapt or die,” says Billy Beane in Moneyball (2011). I wrote about Democrat’s strategic thinking being medieval three years ago. I wrote about the DNC’s dispiriting winter meeting in February. I’ve attended local protests against Trump’s predations only to see the same, mostly aging hipsters and activists who always show up. Their tactics have not evolved since the 1960s. The same tired chants don’t sound like greatest hits. They sound like tunes from Lawrence Welk’s Champagne Music Makers.
What Springsteen wields is a love of country that for 50 years has felt genuine. He tells American stories that ring truer than patriotic kitsch, the cheap knock-off Trump peddles. In Springsteen’s America, Trump is an archetypal villain, Palmieri writes:
He is the con man who preys on the vulnerable, the guy who ruined the boardwalk in “Atlantic City,” the “Rainmaker” who makes vulnerable people believe “white is black and black is white,” and, perhaps most aptly, the rich man who wants to be king from “Badlands,” which goes on to describe a king who will not be satisfied till he rules everything. But just as any Springsteen villain is never the focus of a song but the obstacle to be overcome, the Land of Hopes and Dreams tour isn’t just about Trump. It’s about how America survives him.
Lefties must find their inner Springsteens. They already know the songs. Now they must tell the stories and listen, not recite talking points and 50-year-old chants.
Ted Glick offers advice for engaging Americans who may have fallen under the spell of the medicine showman. But he begins with this from my favorite Davos panelist.
“Contact engenders more trust, more solidarity and more mutual kindness. It helps you see the world through other people’s eyes. (p. 358) . . . The thing we all need to remember is that those other folks are a lot like us. The angry voter venting on TV, the refugee in the statistics, the criminal in the mugshot: every one of them is a human being of flesh and blood, someone who in a different life might have been our friend, our family, our beloved. (p. 378) . . .Choose the path of compassion and you realize how little separates you from that stranger. Compassion takes you beyond yourself.” (p. 391)
-Humankind, A Hopeful History, by Rutger Bregman
* * * * *
Have you fought dictatorship today?
No Kings Day, June 14th
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense
Sad!
Is Elon Musk the most overrated “genius” in the world? JV Last compiles all the times Elon has said his driverless cars were on the way:
For years, Elon Musk has been promising that Teslas will operate completely autonomously in “Full Self Driving” (FSD) mode. And when I say years, I mean years:
- December 2015: “We’re going to end up with complete autonomy, and I think we will have complete autonomy in approximately two years.”
- January 2016: “In ~2 years, summon should work anywhere connected by land & not blocked by borders, eg you’re in LA and the car is in NY.”
- June 2016: “I really would consider autonomous driving to be basically a solved problem. . . . I think we’re basically less than two years away from complete autonomy, complete—safer than a human. However regulators will take at least another year.”
- October 2016: By the end of 2017 Tesla will demonstrate a fully autonomous drive from “a home in L.A., to Times Square . . . without the need for a single touch, including the charging.”
- March 2018: “I think probably by end of next year [end of 2019] self-driving will encompass essentially all modes of driving”
- February 2019: “I think we will be feature complete—full self-driving—this year. Meaning the car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up, take you all the way to your destination without an intervention, this year.”
I’m going to stop the litany here, but it continued. For a decade Tesla’s “Full Self Driving” has been a running joke. Every year, Musk says that FSD is months, or weeks away. Every year it slips over the horizon. And every year the media and the stock market pretend that Musk hasn’t failed.
But now Tesla’s FSD is really, truly, absolutely about to happen.
Maybe.
Apparently he’s promising to put robotaxis on the streets of Austin next June like it’s some kind of unique innovation. But there have been Waymos on the streets of my town for well over a year. I’ve used them. He’s very late to the party although I’m sure the press will pretend like he’s the big innovator when he isn’t.
As Last notes:
Of course we already have full self-driving technology. It’s called Waymo, it’s run by Google, and it operates a driverless taxi service in a growing number of cities across America. Just a few days ago, Tesla’s head of self-driving admitted that Tesla FSD is “a couple years” behind Waymo, which in Elon-speak probably means a decade. Or more.
So in a sense, Musk was correct that autonomous driving is a “solved problem.” Just not by him. […]
Under its Waymo brand, Google has driverless taxi fleets operating in eight cities (so far). They use a custom Jaguar, fitted with with cameras, sensors, and a fairly high-powered onboard computer. While Elon has been making FSD promises, Waymo vehicles have driven 40 million real-world miles.
What happened?
Elon Musk was stupid. That’s what happened.
More and more I’m seeing why Trump and Musk are so drawn to one another. They have a lot more in common that we might have thought.
That’s the new DOJ pardon czar (formerly the acting US Attorney who was so extreme even the GOP Senate wouldn’t confirm him) reacting to Trump pardoning a MAGA sheriff convicted in two short hours for taking tens of thousands of dollars in bribes.
The people who plotted against Gretchen Whitmer were convicted by a jury of their peers. But apparently they are heroes on the right and are now begging for a pardon from Trump who is considering giving it to them. They wanted to kidnap and kill her. I guess that’s fine since they were just kidding around according to Trump.
President Donald Trump said Wednesday he would look at pardoning the men convicted in a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and swiped at the legitimacy of the case.
“I will take a look at it. It’s been brought to my attention,” Trump said while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. “I did watch the trial. It looked to me like somewhat of a railroad job.”
The president said he thought the men convicted in the case, which occurred on the eve of the 2020 election, “were drinking” and “said stupid things.”
Fourteen men were charged in the plan to kidnap Whitmer, a Democrat, and nine were convicted. The ringleader of the group, Barry Croft Jr., was given the longest sentence at more than 19 years.
Trump is now pardoning anyone who pays him big money, is a fellow Reality TV star who “doesn’t look like a terrorist” and publicly supports him, or is a big MAGA cop.
Everyone else, beware, including judges and fellow politicians threatened with assassination — unless they’re MAGA, of course.
As Garrett Graff wrote in his newsletter today:
A lot of attention has come in recent days to the sheer size of the corruption racket surrounding the president and the White House. The New York Times did a great piece this weekend about how Trump is pillaging the presidency, and Evan Osnos — the current reigning king of reporting on oligarchs and the super-rich — this week has a New Yorker piece about “Donald Trump’s Politics of Plunder.” As one lobbyist told Evan, Trump’s influence-selling behavior in office is “outer-borough Mafia shit.”
But the spreading corruption around the presidency doesn’t stop with the president.
There’s also a broader, equally worrisome trend playing out at the margins of the national headlines: Day by day, we’re seeing the Justice Department effectively decriminalize and wave away crimes by Trump’s friends and instead selectively focus investigatory resources on Trump’s adversaries and enemies.
This is textbook authoritarianism, a classic example of what one-time Peru president General Óscar Benavides captured in his adage: “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”
The Minister of Education says American universities should be in sync with the president and what he’s trying to accomplish. Good to know.
Oh and by the way, get a load of this atrocity from Marco Rubio:
That’s right. Only America has the right to censor foreigners for their political speech — like students who protest or write op-eds for their college newspapers. No one else has that right! Free Speech for me, not for thee!
These hucksters aren’t wrong about there being a profit motive in medicine. Big Pharma is especially culpable but there’s plenty of fat in the medical profession as well that could be solved with universal insurance among other things. However, if you want to see a truly obscene con, look at the sector these fraudsters come out of. The “wellness” and supplement industry is full of snake oil salesmen, conspiracy theorists, woo-woo weirdos and grifters. Some of it is fine — I take some supplements myself. But as a replacement for science and real medicine? My God, I had no idea that’s what they actually had in mind.
I think, once again, this is all projection:
By the way, they are lying when they say that Americans are more unhealthy than they’ve ever been. Utter nonsense. There is an obesity epidemic (which is happening elsewhere in the developed world as well) and their cautions about processed foods are well taken. There are diseases that are caused by our affluent society and we need to fix them. (Just ask Michelle Obama how that actually goes over.) But the fact is that the scientific progress made in the last hundred years is nothing short of a miracle and all the medical research that’s extending people’s lives and allowing us to live healthier lives is at stake with these fringe freaks.
I’d like to think that this can all be put back together in four years but some of it’s going to be impossible to recreate. People are leaving the field (and the country), programs are being dismantled, data is being lost. And who knows if the Democrats can actually win back the presidency and/or the Congress? I wouldn’t have thought that after January 6th they could lose to Donald Trump again but here we are. It’s depressing…
But we can’t give up hope. Job one is to stop them as quickly as we can and that means electing Democrats (yes, I know, but they’re all we’ve got), pushing the states to do their part, supporting those who are fighting the good fight in court and getting the word out so that all the people who are overwhelmed by what’s happening hear it whether they are looking for it or not. It’s a big, strong, rich country and it’s not too late.