Schatz: The drumbeat below all of this has to be, not just that prices aren’t going down, but specifically that the policy of the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans is to rip regular people off. They’re transferring wealth from regular working people, the elderly,… pic.twitter.com/mVTGrLuf7H
The drumbeat below all of this has to be, not just that prices aren’t going down, but specifically that the policy of the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans is to rip regular people off.
They’re transferring wealth from regular working people, the elderly, students, the disabled, from Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, Social Security—all of that.
They’re cutting all those programs, cutting all those benefits, and taking the money saved to shove it to the wealthiest corporations and the wealthiest individuals that have ever walked this planet.
On some level, we want to keep it extremely simple: They’re ripping you off.
We have to make it clear that this is all about the corruption feeding the Billionaire Boys Club that Trump so desperately needs to be a part of.
They were both Democrats until five minutes ago. What could be worse than that?
Among the most shocking actions taken by President Trump and the Republicans in the first week of his administration, and there were many, confirming a totally inexperienced, 44 year old, weekend TV show host with extreme character flaws and a penchant for war criminals as Secretary of Defense was one for the books. Pete Hegseth will be in charge of the world’s most powerful military and the country’s largest bureaucracy and he is completely unqualified in every way. But he is a Trump loyalist and it says something about the president’s coterie of followers that Hegseth is the best he could do.
There was some slight discomfort among a few GOP Senators. Three actually voted against him, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky the former majority leader. He and Lisa Murkowski, R-Ak., and Susan Collins, R-Me., voted no, which required the Vice President to cast the tying vote. There were others who had expressed reservations but who came home in the end, likely because Hegseth is a true blue MAGA warrior with the full backing of the hardcore base which made its wishes known in no uncertain terms. You can tell that it left a bad taste in some of the Senators’ mouths but they weren’t willing to poke those bears.
There are a couple of nominations coming up this week that may give them an opportunity to pretend to themselves that they actually have some integrity and try to salvage some self-respect. There will be hearings for former Congresswoman from Hawaii, Tulsi Gabbard and Anti-Vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr for their nominations for the Director of Intelligence and Secretary of Health and Human Services respectively. Neither of them have relevant experience for those positions and they both have some unique characteristics that are disqualifying in themselves.
Gabbard is a shocking choice for this particular job sitting atop the entire Intelligence Community because of the fact that she’s literally suspected of being sympathetic to America’s adversaries, particularly Russia. Perhaps her most famous act as a politician was to travel to Syria under false pretenses to meet clandestinely with its president, the recently deposed Bashar al-Assad, a dictatorial monster who was waging war on his own people. Assad is now in exile in Russia, the country whose talking points Gabbard has been using for the last couple of years to attack the US, most pointedly for allegedly causing the war in Ukraine. To say she is a bizarre choice for a top Intelligence job is an understatement and it’s causing some severe consternation among America’s allies.
But there’s more to Gabbard than just that, although it should be enough. She was born into what most people would call a cult and remains a member as is her husband and most of her closest aides. According to The Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey, that relationship is the one “throughline” in her politically peripatetic career. Following the tenets of the “Science of Identity Foundation”, an offshoot of the Hari Krishnas led by a man named Chris Butler, she started out as a conservative anti-gay politician but soon morphed into a progressive, Bernie Sanders star in the Us Congress followed by her bizarre turn as a pro-Assad advocate and an eventual falling out with the Democratic party. After that she went on Fox news, as one does, charming the MAGA faithful and endorsed Donald Trump. And here she is today about to become America’s top Intelligence official.
But who is Gabbard, really? She’s only been a Republican for a few years now. She ran for president on the Democratic ticket in 2020! Can MAGA really trust someone with that history? The National Review doesn’t think so, calling her “an atrocious nominee who deserves to be defeated.” She does not appear to be the type of nominee to inspire the sorts of threats and intimidation that Hegseth did so if any GOP Senators feel the impulse to try out a little independence, this one is probably pretty safe from MAGA horde.
And that probably goes double for Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who ran in the 2024 election as a Democrat before switching opportunistically to Independent and then endorsing Trump in exchange for favors which turned out to be a cabinet position. It’s hard to imagine that Trump actually cares that much if he’s the HHS Secretary and may even be hopeful that the Senate will save him since it’s clear that he’s going to be nothing but trouble.
By this time, most people are aware that Kennedy is a crank and a weirdo who believes that vaccines have caused a Holocaust among children and has admitted to picking up a dead bear and leaving it in Central Park as a joke — when he was over 60. Among other looney conspiracy theories he pushes, he told Joe Rogan that “Wi-Fi radiation” could be causing autism, food allergies, asthma, eczema or other chronic conditions saying “I think it degrades your mitochondria and it opens your blood-brain barrier.” He directly had a hand in the deaths of dozens of Samoan children by pushing bogus anti-vax ideas.
He even contradicts germ theory, suggesting that if the body is healthy it cannot be damaged by microbes. These ideas are downright medieval and he has no business being in government in any capacity much less overseeing the public health agencies, Medicare and Medicaid. It is an abomination that he has even been nominated.
And now it turns out that he appears to be corrupt as well, having made millions from getting a piece of the action from anti-vax suits brought by a couple of law firms with which he’s been affiliated. He says he has no intention of foregoing that money as the HHS Secretary even though he would have direct control of the nation’s vaccine policy.
Kennedy is a member of the most famous Democratic Party family in America. He was a member himself until five minutes ago. He is pro-choice, which is generally a deal breaker in GOP politics and that has brought out at least some token opposition from outside groups including one led by former Vice President Mike Pence. He’s assured all the GOP Senators that he won’t let his life-long liberal affiliations get in the way of Donald Trump’s agenda but if any of them have even the slightest concerns for the health of the American people (or even themselves and their families) surely they can find the tiny bit of courage it would take to tell Trump that they just can’t vote for a pro-choice nominee.
All of this is assuming any but Murkowski, Collins and McConnell, all of whom have indicated they won’t vote for either of these absurd nominees, give a damn. There is little reason to think they care about anything but keeping their seats. But if they do have a tiny bit of integrity left, Gabbard and Kennedy offer a way for them to oppose them. All they have to do is say they just can’t vote for a Democrat. Surely, the MAGA mob will understand that and let them off the hook.
Trump The Ignorant’s longstanding claim that the U.S. is “the only country in the world” that awards citizenship to persons born within its territory is not true. The years have not informed the “stable genius” otherwise. Donald Trump thus signed a disputed executive order on Day One of his second term purporting to revoke the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment.
It is an institution with English roots and a U.S. tradition before Americans codified it in 1868. Nativist radicals like Trump, his coterie, and his cult now wish its destruction. We’ll see them in court. A federal judge on Jan. 22 temporarily enjoined the order for fourteen days.
In 1869, the British jurist Lord Chief Justice Alexander Cockburn summed up English law as:
By the common law of England, every person born within the dominions of the Crown, no matter whether of English or of foreign parents, and, in the latter case, whether the parents were settled or merely temporarily sojourning, in the country, was an English subject, save only the children of foreign ambassadors (who were excepted because their fathers carried their own nationality with them), or a child born to a foreigner during the hostile occupation of any part of the territories of England. No effect appears to have been given to descent as a source of nationality.
That was the aside.
David J. Bier, Director of Immigration Studies at Cato, testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement last week on the same day as the judge’s order (C-Span). He described an immigration system left “in shambles” by the first Trump administration and improved by Joe Biden, thus drawing the ire of Republican members.
I was invited by @HouseJudiciary to testify at a hearing on "restoring enforcement of immigration law." They should have picture and picture to allow you to see the members' faces. Few ever heard these facts. My written testimony had pages of charts to back it up. pic.twitter.com/mj61P54V8U
“President Trump abused his authority to cut legal immigration from abroad by nearly 80 percent.” “Refugees by 92 percent.” “He shut down asylum for legal crossers.” “He removed requirements to target public safety threats. As a result, he released twice as many convicted criminals from detention as President Biden.” “He forced US attorneys to prioritize misdemeanor family separation prosecutions of parents over sex offenders.” “By the time President Biden took office, the US immigration system was in shambles. Immigration courts, consulates, ports of entry—all shuttered. Even detention centers were at half capacity.”
There’s more (with charts) you can review at the links above.
The other posting I invite you to review comes from historian Heather Cox Richardson.
Abraham Lincoln, then 28, in his 1838 Lyceum speech, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions,” warned of the sort of men who, “Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane,” thus “make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much as its total annihilation.”
(You don’t need a weatherman to know which way this wind blows.)
The Lyceum speech argued for the defense of American institutions and law while arguing that bad laws should be repealed. “But the underlying structure of the rule of law, based in the Constitution,” Richardson recounts, “could not be abandoned without losing democracy.”
Lincoln didn’t stop there. He warned that the very success of the American republic threatened its continuation. “[M]en of ambition and talents” could no longer make their name by building the nation—that glory had already been won. Their ambition could not be served simply by preserving what those before them had created, so they would achieve distinction through destruction.
For such a man, Lincoln said, “Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm; yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.” With no dangerous foreign power to turn people’s passions against, people would turn from the project of “establishing and maintaining civil and religious liberty” and would instead turn against each other.
And hand men of cruel ambition the power to do it, Lincoln didn’t say.
The passions that gave birth to the American experiment must fade, Lincoln said, and they had. To sustain it would require “general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws.”
Lincoln would face in just over 20 years a different kind of passion, one fed not by a thirst for national liberation but by the need of a regional privileged class to maintain the bondage of a permanent underclass and its own cultural and political supremacy. That passion has not faded in over a century and a half and may yet unmake “the proud fabric of freedom” for us all.
Lincoln invoked the name of Washington as inspiration for maintaining what the Revolution had birthed. Don’t expect to hear Trumpists invoke Lincoln’s name as inspiration for saving the constitution and laws they mean to destroy.
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Progressives are allowed to have their advocates too. I’m very sorry if that offends the right wingers who are supported by just about every business on the planet (and believe me they are losing their shit over this ad) but that’s how it is.
Last weekend, before his inauguration, Trump floated in conversations the notion of redirecting funds from the $370 billion Inflation Reduction Act, the massive infrastructure bill with a hilariously disingenuous name, to projects he wants to underwrite. The idea also came up earlier this week when he met with Republican congressional leaders, according to a person who received a rundown of the meeting. Rep. Sam Graves, the new chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, told me that’s not an immediate priority, but will happen “later in the year.”
Graves said it would be part of the Surface Transportation Reauthorization bill, which funds highways and, well, surface transportation projects, which will begin to come into focus in the second half of the year. Or, Trump could ignore the Impoundment Act, the law that requires the administration to spend money on what Congress legislated, as his allies have suggested for a host of issues.
Someone needs to ask Russ Vought what he plans to do on this. I don’t think it was in any of their plans to be spending money on this stuff. They want to redirect the money to thinks they have to spend in the near term so that the Congress can cut programs. I guess we’ll see which way they go. Trump definitely wants his name all over the place.
Freshman Rep. Addison McDowell (R-N.C.) introduced legislation this week to rename the Dulles International Airport (IAD) near Washington after President Trump.
McDowell, who represents North Carolina’s 6th Congressional District, proposed the bill on Thursday alongside Reps. Guy Reschanthaler (R-Pa.), Brian Jack (R-Ga.), Riley Morre (R-W.Va.) and Brandon Gill (R-Texas).
If the legislation ends up passing through Congress and is signed into law, the airport will be named ‘‘Donald J. Trump International Airport’’.
I believe there is a 99% chance that they will actually do this. It costs nothing and Dear Leader will be thrilled beyond belief.
After President Petro of Colombia denied entry of two US repatriation flights of Colombian migrants, President Trump has announced these retaliatory measures. Petro said he wouldn’t allow the flights in until Trump establishes a protocol for the dignified treatment of migrants.
The move reflects how Mr. Trump is making an example out of Colombia as countries around the world are grappling with how to prepare for the mass deportations of unauthorized immigrants that he has threatened.
[…]
Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, said earlier Sunday in a series of social media posts that Colombia would not accept military deportation flights from the United States until the Trump administration provided a process to treat Colombian migrants with “dignity and respect.”
Mr. Petro also said that Colombia had already turned away military planes carrying Colombian deportees. While other countries in Latin America have raised concerns about Mr. Trump’s sweeping deportation plans, Colombia appears to be among the first to explicitly refuse to cooperate.
“I cannot make migrants stay in a country that does not want them,” Mr. Petro wrote, “but if that country sends them back, it should be with dignity and respect for them and for our country.” He said he was still open to receiving deportees on nonmilitary flights.
[…]
Mr. Petro also cast attention on Americans living in Colombia. In a social media post, Mr. Petro said that more than 15,000 Americans were living in the country without authorization, and called upon them to “regularize” their immigration status.
Colombia is America’s long time ally in the region, longer than any other country. But whatever. They dissed Dear Leader, they will pay.
Note that last paragraph. There are plenty of American expats living in other countries and I would guess that they may very well become pawns in this game too. There are almost 2 million of them living in Mexico alone.
Not that Trump cares. He probably thinks they shouldn’t be allowed to live overseas and keep their American citizenship anyway. But two can play at this game and there is a very good chance this is the kind of tit-for-tat that could lead to something very dangerous. It’s how wars begin.
I posted this a year and a half ago, pointing out that Donald Trump was consorting with some truly vile, fringe figures, among them Paul Ingrassia, now working for the White House:
Amanda Marcotte has written a fascinating deep dive report on online radicalization for Salon that I highly recommend. I’ll just excerpt this piece of it:
The same rabbit-hole phenomenon that can draw social media users deeper into the world of eating disorders or suicidal ideation also appears to be a factor in online radicalization. Lisa Sugiura notes that many of the men she interviewed while researching the “incel” community were first drawn into that world through unrelated or apolitical online material, before the algorithm turned their heads toward darker stuff. One interviewee, she said, had done a “simple Google search” about male pattern baldness and eventually ended up on “incel forums, which were heavily dissecting and debating whether being bald is an incel trait.”
That man became an incel “very much through the algorithm,” Sugiura said, and through online conversations with people who “showed him a different way to view the world.”
“Pathologies like eating disorders and suicidality exist on a continuum with radicalization,” said Brian Hughes, the American University scholar. “In a lot of cases, they’re co-morbid. Depression and radicalization are commonly seen together.” Just as online merchants hawking dangerous diet products exploit young women’s insecurities, he added, the world of far-right influencers displays “an obsession with an idealized masculine physique, which often leads to steroid abuse.”
The most famous example of that phenomenon is Andrew Tate, a British influencer currently being held by Romanian authorities on charges of rape and human trafficking. Tate’s alleged victims say he choked them until they passed out, beat them with a belt and threatened them with a gun. A former kickboxer, Tate has made a fortune by showing off his muscular physique and expensive toys, gizmos and gear to attract a massive online following of young men, promising that he can turn them into “alpha males.” Tate has become so popular with boys and young men in the English-speaking world that educators are organizing and sharing resources in an effort to combat his influence.
“There’s been a huge increase in rape jokes that the boys are making,” a seventh-grade teacher in Hawaii told Education Week.
“Pathologies like eating disorders and suicidality exist on a continuum with radicalization,” said Brian Hughes of American University. “Depression and radicalization are commonly seen together.”
Conspiracy theories and right-wing propaganda often hook people, as Tate does, by appealing to anxiety and insecurity, especially regarding hot-button issues like race, gender and status. In his legal brief in the case of Steven Carrillo, Hughes explained that the murderer “was gratified by the feelings of anger and indignation” from far-right videos he saw on Facebook and “was rewarded with more extreme, more angering content.” (Carrillo pleaded guilty to murder and eight other felony charges last year, and is serving a life sentence without parole.)
There are some possible solutions and she goes into them. It’s going to be a challenge but it’s not impossible.
If you think this stuff is just a fringe concern, here’s Paul Ingrassia, a Claremont fellow and Trump insider:
It’s not surprising that incel fringers would have been hanging out with Trump down at Mar-a-Lago. It was a daily freak show. But I confess that I didn’t think they’d actually put a BFF of Andre Tate at the Department of Justice. My bad. Of course they would.
My dad was tortured by the Gestapo for 4 days and thrown in a concentration camp for being in the Norwegian Resistance. Growing up, he would tell me things he learned in the Resistance. I thought, I’m never going to need this stuff. Here’s some of those things #Thread
First, you’re never going to win a head on battle with an adversary that’s got you outgunned. That’s not the point of the Resistance. The point is to create friction, make it hard for your adversary to operate, to increase transaction costs.
Second, resistance doesn’t have to be a dramatic act. It can be a small act, like losing a sheet of paper, taking your time processing something, not serving someone in a restaurant. Small acts taken by thousands have big effects.
Third, use your privilege and access if you’ve got it. He and his buddies stole weapons from the Nazis by driving up with a truck to the weapons depot, speaking German, acting like it was a routine pick up, and driving away.
Fourth, and this is part of the third point really, sometimes the best way to do things is right out in the open. Because no one will believe something like what you’re doing would be happening so blatantly. All good Social Engineers know this.
Six, and this is a no brainer, operate in cells to limit damage to the resistance should they take you out. Limit the circulation of info to your cell, avoid writing things down and . . .
Seven, be very careful with whom you trust. Snitches and compromised individuals are everywhere. My Dad was arrested because of a snitch. His friends weren’t so lucky, the Gestapo machine gunned the cabin they were in without bothering to try and arrest them.
Eight, use the skills you have to contribute. Dad was an electrical engineer. When the Nazis imposed the death penalty for owning a radio (the British sent coded messages to the Resistance after BBC shows) he said he became the most popular guy in town.
He adds sarcastically:
But everything’s cool and we’re not going to need to engage in any of this. We don’t have a President who openly admires and coddles dictators while trashing our democratic allies. Our President has read the Constitution he’s taken an oath to uphold, and so have his followers.
Yeah…
I was listening to a podcast yesterday with JV Last at the Bulwark and he suggested that lawyers in the DOJ not resign when they’re asked to do some of the unethical, illegal and unconstitutional things that Trump and Bondi are going to demand they do. He says they should stay there and just fuck up the work. And maybe that applies across the government. I don’t know if it will work but these are huge agencies employing millions of people and it’s hard for me to believe that the toadies Trump hires to supervise know what they’re doing. I mean, Russ Vought can’t oversee every detail, right?
Anyway,these are thoughts that apply to all of us. We are looking at two years of being relatively powerless in the institutional sense (although the House of Representatives is so close that it’s going to be very difficult for them to get any legislation passed —- unless Democrats cooperate and they’d better not.) So these ideas about subversive resistance are useful and I really hope people are thinking along these lines. Trump’s agenda is massive and it’s in danger of hurtling completely out of control. Resistance in whatever way we can find it vital.
That comment is Elon with his full two months of being a gadfly in Mar-a-Lago wielding influence over a complex health and financial issue he knows nothing about.
Yes, the richest man in the world is going to be pushing to take bare subsistence money away from disabled people.
We are hearing that Susie Wiles is trying to build some walls between Elon and the Prez and rein in DOGE but who knows? And I don’t know how Trump could mess with SSDI unilaterally but I’m sure they have some ideas. It’s just insane that this idiot has influence on the government in any way.
Democrats? Can’t you do something with this?
By the way, here’s Elon being cute as always (when he isn’t talking to Nazis and delivering a Sieg Heil at the inauguration:
