I highly recommend this piece (gift link) by Adam Serwer about the right wing crusade against DEI. It’s the best thing I’ve read on the subject and it’s profoundly distressing:
The nostalgia behind the slogan “Make America great again” has always provoked the obvious questions of just when America was great, and for whom. Early in the second Trump administration, we are getting the answer.
In August, speaking with someone he believed to be a sympathetic donor, one of the Project 2025 architects, Russell Vought, said that a goal of the next Trump administration would be to “get us off of multiculturalism” in America. Now Vought is running Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, and the plan to end multiculturalism is proceeding apace. Much of the chaos, lawlessness, and destruction of the past few weeks can be understood as part of the administration’s central ideological project: restoring America’s traditional hierarchies of race and gender. Call it the “Great Resegregation.”
[…]
If the Great Resegregation proves successful, it will restore an America past where racial and ethnic minorities were the occasional token presence in an otherwise white-dominated landscape. It would repeal the gains of the civil-rights era in their entirety. What its advocates want is not a restoration of explicit Jim Crow segregation—that would shatter the illusion that their own achievements are based in a color-blind meritocracy. They want an arrangement that perpetuates racial inequality indefinitely while retaining some plausible deniability, a rigged system that maintains a mirage of equal opportunity while maintaining an unofficial racial hierarchy. Like elections in authoritarian countries where the autocrat is always reelected in a landslide, they want a system in which they never risk losing but can still pretend they won fairly.
Just seeing Trump fire the Black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Hegseth take out the first female Naval top officer in one night shows you that they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore. This is more than just another backlash. It’s a full-fledged cultural revolution.
Read Serwer’s piece if you have the time. It’s important.
This is the best summary of the current geopolitical situation I have seen. Sir Alex Younger was head of MI6 between 2014 and 2020. Really worth watching. pic.twitter.com/XByVBAd5Ri
I found that very interesting. If you can take 7 minutes to listen I think you’ll find it interesting too. And, I’m afraid I have to agree with him although I have zero faith that Donald Trump can see the forest for the trees. Younger’s description of what Trump did with Afghanistan is right on and since he is incapable of ever learning anything, I just can’t see how this ends up any better unless it’s by accident.
I’ve been writing about the inevitability of a new arms race ever since Donald Trump won the election in 2016. It was clear that he was so stupid that he was prepared to tear up the existing world order without any thought for the future except his own ego being stroked. It’s happening now and these escalations almost always result in somebody deciding to use their toys.
The Department of Homeland Securityhas budgeted up to $200 million to run anti-immigrant ads in the United States and overseas that repeatedly thank President Donald Trump for leading an immigration crackdown. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Friday night that these ads were Trump’s idea, and during the administration’s transition to power, the president asked her to star in ads thanking him “for closing the border.”
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference’s Ronald Reagan dinner on Friday night — at a tux and gown affair that served striploin, mashed potatoes, and raspberry cake — Noem recalled Trump telling her after she was nominated: “I want you to do [ads] for the border, and I want you to do those everywhere, not just in the United States, but I want them around the world. I want you to tell people not to come to this country if they’re going to come here illegally.”
She said the president continued: “We’re not going to let the media tell this story, because the media will never tell the truth. We’re going to run a marketing campaign to make sure the American people know the truth of what you’re doing.”
[…]
Noem said that Trump instructed that he didn’t want to be in the ads himself, telling her: “I want you in the ads, and I want your face in the ads … but I want the first ad, I want you to thank me. I want you to thank me for closing the border.”
$200 million for Kristi to fluff Trump on TV. Meanwhile, veterans, scientists, researchers public servants all over the federal government are abruptly losing their jobs.
Trump wants those minerals and he wants them now. He believes he will be hailed as a big hero, the prince of peace, if he obtains Ukrainian natural resources as compensation for the U.S. military support and then forces them to surrender to the murderous dictator who invaded them. He really believes that.
U.S. negotiators pressing Kyiv for access to Ukraine’s critical minerals have raised the possibility of cutting the country’s access to Elon Musk’s vital Starlink satellite internet system, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Ukraine’s continued access to SpaceX-owned Starlink was brought up in discussions between U.S. and Ukrainian officials after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy turned down an initial proposal from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the sources said.
Starlink provides crucial internet connectivity to war-torn Ukraine and its military.
The issue was raised again on Thursday during meetings between Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special Ukraine envoy, and Zelenskiy, said one of the sources, who was briefed on the talks.
During the meeting, Ukraine was told it faced imminent shutoff of the service if it did not reach a deal on critical minerals, said the source, who requested anonymity to discuss closed negotiations.
“Ukraine runs on Starlink. They consider it their North Star,” said the source. “Losing Starlink … would be a massive blow.”
Imminent shutdown. How many people do you suppose would die as a result of all communications being shut off during as the war still rages? (Russia has been mercilessly bombarding Kyiv for the last couple of weeks.)
I would normally say that no country should never be dependent on one madman for essential communications equipment. But now that Musk is the U.S. government, what difference does it make? If Trump wants Ukraine punished, as he obviously does, or if Musk simply wants to please his pal Vlad, they could do this and there would be nothing anyone could do about it.
Would Trump and Musk do it? I have no doubt. We are a gangster state now.
I’ve been wondering about how many federal workers might be MAGA cultists who are helping the DOGE crew come in and destroy the government. It stands to reason there would be some. It turns out that it’s a good career move.
Leaders of the Social Security Administration had just opened an investigation into a career employee they believed was improperly sharing information with Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team when President Donald Trump elevated the employee this week to acting commissioner, according to three current or former government officials with knowledge of the events.
The agency’s leadership team became aware in recent weeks that Leland Dudek, a data analyst working in a small anti-fraud office who had been unknown to many of them,was sharing unauthorized access to information with representatives of Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service, according to the three, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an internal matter.
It’s not clear what data Dudek shared, but his actions raised enough alarm that he may have violated privacy and tax laws that senior officials placed him on paid leave as they launched their investigation. The officials, including attorneys in the general counsel’s office, also were notified late last week that Dudek had sent harassing emails to employees in the agency’s personnel and security divisions to rush them to let several engineers hired by DOGE start work and gain access to agency computer systems. The officials pushed back, saying that they had not completed background investigations into the new hires.
[…]
Representatives for DOGE — which stands for Department of Government Efficiency, though it is not a Cabinet-level agency — toured the headquarters building this month and were eager to gain access to a key database in their search for benefits fraud. When the team learned last week that Dudek would be investigated, the chief information officer called acting commissioner Michelle King to demand answers. Then, on the Sunday of Presidents’ Day weekend, King received an email announcing that Trump had appointed Dudek to replace her. After being effectively forced out, King abruptly retired after three decades of service, the three individuals said. Her acting chief of staff, Tiffany Flick, also retired.
They just fire anyone who even slightly crosses them and elevate anyone who helps them to positions of authority. That asshole is now in charge of our social security information.
This is much like the General who Trump just hired out of retirement as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs because he has a nickname, wore a MAGA hat and told Trump that he could beat ISIS in a week if he were only allowed to used enough force. He supposedly said, “I love you, I would kill for you.”
TRUMP: The NCAA has complied immediately. That’s good. But I understand Maine — is the governor of Maine here?
JANET MILLS: Yeah I’m here
TRUMP: Are you not gonna comply?
JM: I’m going to comply with state and federal law
T: WE are the federal law.
JM: I’ll follow the statutes
T: You better do it bc you’re not gonna get any federal funding at all if you don’t. And by the way, your population, even though it’s somewhat liberal, I did very well there, your population doesn’t want men playing in women’s sports, so you’d better comply otherwise you’re not getting any federal funding
JM: See you in court
T: Good I’ll see you in court. I look forward to that. That should be a real easy one.
JM: It should be for me
T: And enjoy your life after governor because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.
Notice that the rest of those cowards sat there like a bunch of potted plants. They really do yearn to be subjects.
Big round of applause for Mills. She didn’t back down.
“We had our Town Hall with Senator Wyden. We are angry. We aren’t going down without a fight!” says Threads user Christine Schrader.
Axios reports that “some Republicans are privately brushing off a spate of raucous protests and town halls in their districts” in response to the Musk-Trump DOGE actions.
The T-party, ostensibly riled about taxes (but really pissed off about having a black president) drew more coverage in 2009. One wonders what sort of media these protests against Musk-Trump will earn. Perhaps silly costumes would help?
Driving the news: Angry constituents flocked to House Republicans’ town hall events and district offices this week to protest DOGE’s efforts to slash spending and lay off huge chunks of the federal workforce.
What we’re hearing: One swing-district House Republican, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share candid thoughts, told Axios they have “zero concerns” about a protest they’re expecting outside their office.
Republicans seem more afraid of MAGA than their other constituents.
The question is can Musk-Trump’s opponents keep it up, remain loud enough long enough to matter? Staying power is the right’s strong suit.
If I were more conspiracy-minded, I might suspect that the people running our executive branch don’t have American interests and global stability top of mind.
The Trump-Musk axis is drowning an awful lot of our government competency in the bathtub, and now in the Pentagon, at a time when 1) NATO’s confidence is shaken, 2) Russia seems poised to annex more of Ukraine, and 3) China waits for Donald Trump to pull the U.S. even farther back from the world stage and leave Taiwan easy pickings.
An executive order issued by President Donald Trump this week that seems to give him huge power to interpret the law is raising concerns among legal experts that it could dissuade military commanders from refusing unlawful orders and allow the president to exert influence over the military’s legal processes.
“I do worry about the chilling effect … I can definitely see people hesitant to fulfill their duties because they’re afraid Trump will have them punished,” Don Christensen, a retired Air Force colonel who previously served as a military judge and the Air Force’s chief prosecutor, told CNN.
The executive order, released by the White House on Tuesday evening, is focused on giving the president greater control over independent federal agencies but it includes language that says the president and attorney general “shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch,” of which the Defense Department is a part. The order comes as Trump and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have ordered the military to take a bigger role in immigration detention operations at the southern border, and have indicated the administration is open to using the military domestically.
GLUG.
FOLLOWUP: SECDEF Hegseth also firing the CNO, the USAF Vice-Chief, and somewhat unusually and ominously to do in the same breath, the senior JAGs of the Army, Navy, and USAF
In an unprecedented purge of the military’s senior leadership Friday night, President Donald Trump fired the top US general just moments before his defense secretary fired the chief of the US Navy and others.
In announcing the dismissal, Trump called Joint Chiefs Chairman Charles Q. Brown a “fine gentleman” and an “outstanding leader.” Brown is only the second Black man to serve as chairman and was the first Black service chief in US military history when he was confirmed as chief of the Air Force in 2020.
The president hinted at the firings to come in the announcement on his Truth Social platform. “Finally, I have also directed [Defense] Secretary [Pete] Hegseth to solicit nominations for five additional high level positions, which will be announced soon,” he wrote.
Hegseth is going to fire every woman or Black person in military leadership.
Sen. Jack Reed (D) of Rhode Island believes “Donald Trump’s quest for power is endangering our military.” He writes:
The implications for our national security cannot be overstated. A clear message is being sent to military leaders: Failure to demonstrate personal and political loyalty to Trump could result in retribution, even after decades of honorable service. In particular, firing the military’s most senior legal advisers is an unprecedented and explicit move to install officers who will yield to the president’s interpretation of the law, with the expectation they will be little more than yes men on the most consequential questions of military law.
[…]
The firings are sure to create a dangerous ripple up and down the ranks. Leaders might hesitate to refuse illegal orders, speak their minds about best practices or call out abuses of power.
If I were more conspiracy-minded, I might think illegal orders and other abuses of presidential power were just the point.
Did I mention that Trump and the supine Republican Congress this week handed control of the premiere U.S. domestic security agency to a conspiracy theorist? Kash Patel began his tenure as FBI chief by announcing the dispersal of up to 1,500 agents from the nation’s capitol to remote field offices.
Sources tell former Assistant FBI Director for Counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi there is “no logic” to these relocations.
If I were more conspiracy-minded, I might suspect there is. Betting the nation’s security on Trump 2.0 simply seems like whistling past the graveyard. Worse, not every Wormtongue whispering in the dotard, would-be-king’s ear is themselves incompetent. Some may be in fact malevolent.
Tom Nichols calls the events the Friday Night Massacre and warns in The Atlantic:
Now that Trump has captured the intelligence services, the Justice Department, and the FBI, the military is the last piece he needs to establish the foundations for authoritarian control of the U.S. government. None of this has anything to do with effectiveness, or “lethality,” or promoting “warfighters,” or any other buzzwords. It is praetorianism, plain and simple.
Perhaps you’ve noticed that the markets have been nosediving the last couple of days and they are actually below where they were when Biden left office. It’s possible that it’s just a correction. The markets have been soaring for a couple of years. However, there is good reason to believe that there could be some major trouble on the horizon.
In a week in which Trump has firmly allied himself with Russian aggression while falsely claiming that millions of dead people receive Social Security, how many people noticed Tuesday’s executive order that appears to be an effort to strip the Federal Reserve of its ability to oversee and regulate Wall Street?
This is, however, important. The Musk/Trump administration has been weakening financial regulation across the board. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which aims to shield Americans from fraud, has been shut down. All of the agencies that try to supervise and regulate financial institutions, other than the Fed, are now being run by people hostile to the very idea of regulation. Cryptocurrency, which is rife with fraud and scams — indeed, the whole thing may be a scam — is now being actively promoted by the executive branch.
And all of this couldn’t be happening at a worse moment. MAGA may well be laying the foundations for the next financial crisis.
Economists have known for a long time — more than 250 years — that financial institutions should be regulated. Libertarians often invoke Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations for its advocacy of laissez-faire economic policies. But even Smith, who had witnessed the Panic of 1772 that hit Scotland, London and Amsterdam — arguably the first modern banking crisis — called for significant restrictions on banks,
The 21st-century financial system is, of course, far more complex than that of the 18th century, although there are some echoes. Notably, “stablecoins,” crypto tokens that can supposedly be redeemed at will for actual dollars, are a lot like the privately issued bank notes of the 18th and 19th centuries, which could supposedly be redeemed at will for gold and silver coins. The main difference is that while bank notes were clearly useful for legitimate business, cryptocurrencies still don’t seem to have any real use case other than money-laundering.
Did I mention that Howard Lutnick is now the Commerce Secretary? Lutnick has had close financial ties to Tether, which Bloomberg describes as
the stablecoin used by drug traffickers, terrorists and scammers to move money around the world.
And crypto aside, the complexity of modern finance makes it even harder for both consumers and investors to assess banking risks, so we need effective financial regulation to avoid or at least limit financial crises.
Yet the Musk/Trump administration is moving to loosen if not eviscerate financial regulation. And it’s doing so at an especially dangerous time.
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis I, like many economists, became a fan of Hyman Minsky’s “financial instability hypothesis.” At a time when many economists were arguing that financial markets are generally efficient in the sense that asset prices reflect the best information available, Minsky argued instead that they are driven by cycles of greed and fear. A Minsky cycle looks something like this:
In the aftermath of a financial crisis, investors are well aware that markets can go down as well as up. They are cautious about taking risks, and especially about leveraging up — investing with borrowed money. And as a result of this caution, financial markets are calm with relatively few crises.
Over time, however, memories of past disasters fade, in part because those who remember bad things retire or move on, replaced by younger traders who have never experienced a major crisis. This eventually produces markets in which prices seem to go in only one direction — up — and whoever is most willing to take leveraged risks wins. Even those who intellectually know better get sucked in because of FOMO: fear of missing out.
This manic phase doesn’t just induce many people to take on risks they don’t understand. It also creates what the famed investor James Chanos calls a “golden age of fraud.” (I’ll be posting a long talk with Chanos this weekend.) When it seems as if fortune favors the brave, con men or, sometimes, con women find it especially easy to attract suckers, especially if they can hang their promises on a narrative — say, the wonders of crypto or the limitless potential of AI.
The New York Times recently ran a heartbreaking story about how the president of a community-owned bank in Elkhart, Kansas fell for a crypto scam, destroying the bank and quite a few people’s life savings in the process. You can be sure that we’ll hear many more such stories once we reach the final stage of the cycle — the Minsky moment, when euphoria-driven asset price surges give way to fire sales as highly leveraged investors desperately try to raise cash.
The crypto scam makes this whole thing way more dicey than what we’ve experienced in the past. If Krugman is right, we could be looking at something extremely destructive. But then, when it comes to Trump, what isn’t?
Get yourself a drink and read the whole thing. Let’s hope we get lucky this time. There are more than enough atrocities to defeat Trump and the Republicans without a big banking crisis. We really don’t need that.
He is completely off his rocker. I beg you to take the time to listen to the following clips and hear his slurred, fuzzy voice as he says these odious, ignorant things. If he was a drinker, I’d assume he was drunk. He is clearly becoming more and more unhinged.
Even Brian Kilmeade tries to steer him away from the demented notion that Ukraine started the war but he just carries on:
TRUMP: You have a man who has let a country that had the more beautiful cities. They're demolished. Had the most beautiful domes.
KILMEADE: But that's Russia's fault though, Mr President
T: 1,000 year old domes. And everything is demolished. It's sorta like Gaza
TRUMP: You have a man who has let a country that had the more beautiful cities. They’re demolished. Had the most beautiful domes.
KILMEADE: But that’s Russia’s fault though, Mr President
T: 1,000 year old domes. And everything is demolished. It’s sorta like Gaza
K: That’s Putin’s fault
T: I get tired of listening to it
Trump on Zelenskyy: "I've been watching him negotiate with no cards. He has no cards. And you get sick of it. You just get sick of it. And I've had it." pic.twitter.com/37RLR2rOWi
Trump on Zelenskyy: “I’ve been watching him negotiate with no cards. He has no cards. And you get sick of it. You just get sick of it. And I’ve had it.”
In other words, he hasn’t completely capitulated to Trump’s insane demands to suck Putin’s … er, toes and give him all of Ukraine’s natural resources. He’s “sick of it.”
Trump: "Russia was attacked. Russia attacked. But there was no reason for them to attack. You could've talked him out … Every time I say, 'Oh, it's not Russia's fault,' I always get slammed by the fake news. But I'm telling you. Biden said the wrong things. Zelenskyy said the… pic.twitter.com/VDDiuoJDfd
Trump: “Russia was attacked. Russia attacked. But there was no reason for them to attack. You could’ve talked him out … Every time I say, ‘Oh, it’s not Russia’s fault,’ I always get slammed by the fake news. But I’m telling you. Biden said the wrong things. Zelenskyy said the wrong things.”
What he’s saying is that Ukraine should have surrendered their country immediately and Biden should have said what Trump said when Putin invaded:
“I said, ‘this is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine.. Ukraine, Putin declares it as independent. Oh that’s wonderful. Putin is now saying it’s independent, a large section of Ukraine. I said ‘how smart is that?’ And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force. We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re going to keep peace, all right.”
In other words Biden should have applauded Putin’s invasion (excuse me peacekeeping mission )and invited him to do more of it. And Ukraine should have said “thank you sir may I have another.”
I believe that is how he really thinks about it. Just look at his “proposal” for Gaza — it’s coming from the same place. Might makes right, period.
I’m not sure what or who in the United States is going to stop him this time. His defense secretary certainly seems to believe that PUtin had a right to do what he did:
Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, dismisses the danger of Putin invading other Eastern European countries if he isn't stopped in Ukraine:
“It feels like Putin’s give me my shit back war…We used to have the Soviet Union, and Ukraine was part of it, and I… pic.twitter.com/MBJIoFogDL
“It feels like Putin’s give me my shit back war…We used to have the Soviet Union, and Ukraine was part of it, and I want my shit back.”
I suspect any pushback to this insanity will have to come from other countries and that’s very dangerous. Whether it’s a nuclear arms race or perceived permission slip to China or others who have territorial ambitions, this could so easily go sideways.
