Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

I have been told that we’re not supposed to talk about Hitler and the Nazis because it evokes unpleasant comparisons to the modern authoritarian movement that’s getting ready to assume power in the United States. Indeed, we’re supposed to try to “make deals” with them so it wouldn’t be prudent to say anything that might make them mad. At least that’s what I hear…

Nonetheless, I don’t see how we can talk about this without mentioning the Nazis so I will:

President-elect Donald J. Trump is likely to justify his plans to seal off the border with Mexico by citing a public health emergency from immigrants bringing disease into the United States.

Now he just has to find one.

Mr. Trump last invoked public health restrictions, known as Title 42, in the early days of the pandemic in 2020, when the coronavirus was tearing across the globe. As he prepares to enter office again, Mr. Trump has no such public health disaster to point to.

Still, his advisers have spent recent months trying to find the right disease to build their case, according to four people familiar with the discussions. They have looked at tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases as options and have asked allies inside the Border Patrol for examples of illnesses that are being detected among migrants.

They also have considered trying to rationalize Title 42 by arguing broadly that migrants at the border come from various countries and may carry unfamiliar disease — an assertion that echoes a racist notion with a long history in the United States that minorities transmit infections. Mr. Trump’s team did not respond to a request for comment.

They seem to be serious. As I posted earlier, Stephen Miller told the GOP Senators that they are going to use Title 42.

Here’s a little history:

Nazi propaganda often portrayed people persecuted by the regime as vermin, parasites, or diseases. Nazi ideology focused on the idea that Germany’s “racial purity” was under attack from the “blood of weaker peoples,” and Nazi propaganda often depicted Jews, political opponents, and others as parasites that threatened the overall health of the so-called “national community” (“Volksgemeinschaft“).¹ During the years of the Nazi regime, German doctors argued that Jews spread disease. Reflecting common themes in Nazi propaganda, these medical professionals repeatedly pushed the false claim that Jews were responsible for outbreaks of typhus—a deadly contagious disease spread by lice.²

The Nazi propaganda poster featured here was created in 1941 for public display in German-occupied Poland. The Polish-language words translate roughly to “Jews are lice; they cause typhus.” Designed to link Jews and typhus closely together in the minds of non-Jewish Poles, the poster shows one of the feared typhus-ridden lice drawn on top of the face of a Jewish man that has been made to look like a skull. Several other examples of antisemitic Nazi propaganda depict Jews covered in lice, but this image seems designed to suggest that Jews and lice are similar creatures equally responsible for spreading the disease.

German doctors and public health officials in the Nazi regime helped advance these antisemitic ideas. They did not acknowledge that the German invasion of Poland and the creation of ghettos were actually responsible for creating typhus epidemics in occupied Poland by imposing hunger, poverty, overcrowding, and unsanitary conditions.³ Instead, German medical professionals published essays claiming that Jewish people’s supposedly “low cultural level” and “uncleanliness” were to blame.

The respected status of German physicians helped spread the lie that Jews were responsible for spreading typhus. Concerned only with preserving the health of German personnel, German public health officials in Poland repeatedly urged occupation authorities to isolate Jews further from the rest of the population and deny them access to medicine.⁴ Their professional medical advice was used to rationalize the creation of ghettos throughout occupied Poland.⁵ German occupation authorities used posters like this one to spread these unfounded justifications for the isolation of Jews from Polish society.

It’s just a good thing that only doctors and scientists of the highest integrity will be manning the government health agencies under Trump.

100 Executive Orders

Trump and his henchmen met with Republican Senators yesterday to preview his immediate plans.

• Senators were given previews of some of what they were told would be 100 executive orders, two sources who were in the room told Axios.
• Stephen Miller, Trump’s longtime immigration adviser, dove into how they intend to use executive power to address the border and immigration starting Day 1.
• It’s unclear if all will be technical executive orders, or more broadly executive actions taken by Trump or federal agencies.

One big border plan: Reinstating Title 42, according to multiple sources.

• The pandemic-era public health policy cites concerns about spreading illness to allow for the rapid expulsion of migrants at the border — preventing them from even a shot at asylum.
• There were millions of Title 42 expulsions from early in the COVID pandemic until President Biden ended the policy in 2023.

Other executive actions and plans that Miller outlined included:

• More aggressively using a part of the Immigration and Nationality Act — 287(g) — which allows some state and local law enforcement to assist in some of the duties of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
• Building the border wall, constructing soft-sided facilities to hold migrants and implementing other asylum restrictions.

They want to put on a really big show right out of the box:

The incoming Trump administration is considering conducting a high-profile raid targeting undocumented immigrants in its initial days, according to three people familiar with the discussions. The raid could target immigrants allegedly living in the United States illegally at a workplace in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, the people said.

In meetings between the Trump transition team and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, the Trump team has repeatedly asked about resources and logistics immediately available to carry out workplace raids, the three people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak to the media about transition discussions, said.

Maybe they could come out here to LA to do it. They could find some immigrants who’ve been left homeless from the fires and really give their rabid base a thrill.

It sounds like they are going to get the show on the road the minute they get back in the White House. I guess this is what America voted for.

Never mind. More capitulation from Democrats:

By all indications, at least nine Senate Democrats will vote to advance the Laken Riley Act, a sweeping measure that mandates the detention of undocumented immigrants who have committed nonviolent crimes, all but ensuring that it will move forward. This is a classic GOP “message bill”: It forces Democrats to either oppose the package, creating instant ad fodder against them, or swallow the whole thing, even though it contains some awful policies that most Democrats would surely oppose in isolation.

Unfortunately, some Senate Democrats are making this mess worse than it has to be—and in so doing, are flirting with an early surrender to Donald Trump. It suggests that some Democrats, spooked by Trump’s comeback, have already decided there’s no percentage in even attempting to challenge anything carrying the aura of “toughness” on immigration. That doesn’t bode well for their capacity to resist the terrible crackdown that’s coming, but fortunately, it’s not too late to find a better path.

Of particular note here: Senators John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Ruben Gallego of Arizona. When they endorsed the bill this week, it appeared inevitable that more Democratic senators would follow, given that each seems to know how to politically survive in challenging swing states. And indeed, the nine that have now backed the bill ensures that it will get 60 votes needed to break cloture and move forward.

Apparently, Gallego and Fetterman raced to gratuitously endorse the bill upsetting the rest of the Democrats. Even worse, they did it in ways that reportedly help Trump!

Senator Alex Padilla of California has been telling colleagues that rushing to endorse the bill in full is not necessary and potentially harmful. “Democrats should use the leverage we have in the Senate to demand practical and necessary improvements,” Padilla told me in a statement.

It looks like Manchin and Sinema passed the torch.

You can read more about this despicable bill here.

Oh great:

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) plans to meet with President-elect Trump, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to Axios.

Fetterman has become a voice of bipartisanship and is among the few Democratic senators to have met with Trump’s Cabinet nominees, showing a rare willingness to engage with parts of the MAGA camp.

 “President Trump invited me to meet, and I accepted,” Fetterman said in a statement.

• “I’m the Senator for all Pennsylvanians — not just Democrats in Pennsylvania,” he continued. “I’ve been clear that no one is my gatekeeper. I will meet with and have a conversation with anyone if it helps me deliver for Pennsylvania and the nation.”
• The meeting will take place at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, CBS reports.

Fetterman is a co-sponsor of a GOP-led immigration bill.

• The Laken Riley Act would require the detention of undocumented immigrants charged with some nonviolent crimes.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin says Obama is "kissing the ring" with Trump at Carter's funeral because "Trump is the most popular man in the world, and probably the most popular man in our lifetime around the world. And everybody recognizes that now." pic.twitter.com/x5rrVbJGpz

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 9, 2025

The only person at the funeral who openly snubbed that miscreant was Karen Pence. Karen Pence!

I’m with Murshed:

Even Obama and Kamala cannot deny who the alpha male in the room is pic.twitter.com/85nZvpIvNh

— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) January 9, 2025

All I feel is betrayal right now. It’s not rational, I know. But that’s how it is.

I’m having a hard time gathering my thoughts today. It’s been a couple of very long nights here in the LA area. I have friends who lost everything and having to cope with the ignorant sociopath who will soon be the most powerful man in the country again is almost too much to bear.

I’m outsourcing my commentary for the moment to California native son Brian Beutler:

• Donald Trump is a lying scumbag, who heads a degenerate family and political party.
  
• This has been true all along, but it comes into sharpest relief when he intentionally creates or exploits human misery—such as when a natural disaster strikes a state that didn’t vote for him. (I’ll get to the Los Angeles fires in a minute.)
  
• His patterns of repugnance are so tired and predictable, we can script them out in advance.
  
• If a disaster strikes a red part of a red state, it’s MAGA hands across America for the beleaguered victims.
  
• If a disaster strikes literally any other part of the country, he will spread lies about it and probably try to deny victims federal assistance.
  
• When Hurricane Helene flooded red Appalachia before the election, he spread lies about the FEMA response because the president was a Democrat. Misleading people in need of relief was worth it to him, so long as he could also mislead swing-state voters into thinking his opponent’s administration had failed.
  
• Most of his hurricane lies were about Appalachian North Carolina, because the state was in play, the victims leaned Republican, but the governor was a Democrat.
  
• If a disaster were to strike a blue city in a red state (Atlanta, say) he would praise the governor, attack the mayor, and spitefully attach strings to federal aid.
  
• When a fire incinerated a red town in California during his first presidency, he only approved federal aid after his advisers convinced him the victims were Trump supporters.
  
• Now, as heavily populated parts of greater Los Angeles burn, he and his loyalists and family members and inner circle are lying and cracking jokes about the fire departments, the mayor, the governor. When he becomes president in 11 days, he’s very likely to suspend federal support for the victims, or at least try. It’s repulsive.
  
• His sad apologists will try to spin this sociopathy into something defensible—he just wants the parks and forests to be better managed or some shit. They are also lying scum. They know California burns because it’s hot, dry, and windy—that’s it!—and that Trump’s punishing people for how they vote or who their political leaders happen to be.
  
• I asked this on Bluesky but will repeat for the newsletter audience: It’s been about 30 years since Republicans embarked on a strategy of buying up more and more media in order to slander Democrats and minorities as widely as possible. What’s the plan? Even if there’s no way to achieve parity with right-wing propaganda in the near-term, what’s the plan for persuading today’s casual observers that these liars are lying? Many Democrats in Washington think they’re super savvy for saying they’re eager to work with Trump on areas of overlapping interest. The people of California do not thank you. They need their leaders to say, “these people are lying scum, we can’t trust them and won’t work with them.” Or perhaps, “these people are lying scum, we’ll work with them because we have to, but you can’t trust a single thing they say in public.”

My exact words would be a bit more profane but that’s why I’m not a public official.

About those Jack Smith reports

Attorney General Merrick Garland told Congress he plans to release Jack Smith’s special counsel’s report on the Jan. 6 investigation. The secret documents case is the second volume of the two-volume report (CNN):

Garland, in a letter sent Wednesday to House and Senate Judiciary Committee chairs and ranking members, outlines how he wants to confidentially provide to them Smith’s volume on the classified documents case and how he wants to release to Congress and to the public the volume on Trump’s 2020 election interference criminal charges.

Garland specifies he would do so “when permitted to do so by the court.”

Both cases have been dismissed before any findings of guilt or innocence, and the defendants are currently challenging the release of all parts of Smith’s report, signaling a major shift in the approach to transparency from the Justice Department that is expected in Trump’s administration.

“Consistent with local court rules and Department policy, and to avoid any risk of prejudice to defendants Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, whose criminal cases remain pending, I have determined, at the recommendation of the Special Counsel, that Volume Two should not be made public so long as those defendants’ criminal proceedings are ongoing,” Garland wrote.

The “when permitted to do so by the court” language is a nod to Judge Eileen Cannon’s likely overstep when she issued an order to prevent their release:

After Cannon granted their request for an emergency order blocking the report’s release, Trump’s attorneys shifted gears and asked the Eleventh Circuit to remand the case back to Cannon.

But of course they (he) did. The matter may be decided by the Eleventh Circuit Court this morning.

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance notes the problem Nauta and De Oliveira pose for Trump if he wants Smith’s report on the documents case kept from the public eye:

The Government told the court that its plan is to release the entire volume of the report that is related to the January 6 prosecution in Washington, D.C., but they do not plan to publicly release the volume about the classified documents because that case is still pending. They will, however, share a redacted version of that part of the report with House and Senate Judiciary Committee leaders, who must promise to keep it secret until the case concludes. That puts the new Trump administration on the horns of a dilemma: Let that case proceed, and the report stays behind the scenes (although the evidence would come out at trial or during guilty plea hearings). Or pardon the defendants or dismiss the prosecution, and Democrats in Congress no longer need to keep the report confidential.

Who knew being a criminal autocrat was so complicated? Not that the effort will make Trump’s bronzer run.

Like properties, Trump knows how to pick ’em

Our president-elect has named former U.S. Rep. Billy Long of Missouri, a former auctioneer, to run the Internal Revenue Service. He boasts experience as a tax adviser. Trump in December praised Long for “32 years of experience running his own businesses in Real Estate and, as one of the premier Auctioneers in the Country.” Long, attended the University of Missouri, per Ballotpedia, but never graduated.

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) serves on the House Ways and Means Tax subcommittee. He calls Long a “terrible mistake.”

ProPublica offers:

He advertises his credential as a certified tax and business advisor, and he adds CTBA to his name on his X profile. That profile encourages people to message him to “save 40% on your taxes.”

But tax experts told ProPublica that they have never heard of CTBA as a credential in the tax profession. The designation is offered by a small Florida firm, Excel Empire, which was established just two years ago and only requires attendance at a three-day seminar. That is in stark contrast to the 150 credit hours and the rigorous exams required to become a certified public accountant, a standard certification for tax accountants.

In most tax cases, only lawyers, CPAs and enrolled agents — federally authorized tax practitioners — can represent taxpayers at the IRS.

New Agers here in the 90s would print up business cards and hang out a shingle after receiving a laser-printed certificate from their $50 weekend workshop at the Airport Ramada. The incoming president thinks Long’s workshop qualifies him to run an agency with roughly 90,000 employees. (Long paid maybe $5,000 for his three-day training.) Students at Donald Trump’s one-time unlicensed “university” paid “between $1,495 and $35,000.“

Rachel Maddow offered her observations on Long’s qualifications.

@maddowshow

The qualifications portion of a Rachel Maddow Public Servant Announcement is always fun. If you’ve missed any so far, we made a YouTube playlist at http://MSNBC.com/PublicServantAnnouncement More on the way! #fyp #news #politics #trump #irs #government #taxes @MSNBC

♬ original sound – The Rachel Maddow Show

CBS reports that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has doubts about Long:

While serving as a representative, Long, a Republican from Missouri and a former auctioneer, co-sponsored legislation that aimed to wipe out much of the tax code. After leaving office, he served as a tax adviser to businesses seeking to employ a controversial tax credit, the Employee Retention Tax Credit, or ERTC.

In her Jan. 9 letter to Long, Warren raises questions about Long’s tax expertise as well as his promotion of the ERTC, which has been flagged by the IRS for its high rate of fraud. Unlike other recent IRS tax commissioners, Long doesn’t have a depth of experience in the tax industry, nor does he have a degree in accounting or tax law. 

“[Y]our lack of significant management or tax experience — and your promotion of credits that have been “magnet[s] for fraud” — raise serious questions about your qualifications to lead the IRS,” Warren wrote in the letter, noting that the Senate Finance Committee will hold his confirmation hearing early this year.

During his time in Congress, ProPublica adds, “Long pursued legislation to abolish the IRS and establish a national sales tax.” Thirty percent, Maddow notes, an idea promoted since the 1990s by the Church of Scientology.

Only the best for Trump.

Trumpers whine incessantly about their victimhood. But in the face of actual tragedy that affects people they don’t see as Real Americans or even human. They are using the horror in LA as an excuse to treat the residents and its leaders like garbage:

Rep. Andy Biggs is on Newsmax responding to the LA fires by attacking California Democrats. They're skipping right over thoughts and prayers. pic.twitter.com/wCIGjS6wJh

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 8, 2025

Idiocracy was a documentary pic.twitter.com/4d44VCrzWg

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 8, 2025

Watters: You have a political leader just not doing his job. They have contained 0% of this fire, and he didn't need to be this way. This man cannot manage water or forests. You know they have had record rainfall and he hasn't built a single reservoir? pic.twitter.com/4U3lvbEzI5

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 8, 2025

Watters: And you know just happened? There is no water coming out of the fire hydrant because this man mismanages the water there. pic.twitter.com/YEpNBrHSnf

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 8, 2025

(FYI, everything Watters says is a lie. Of course.)

Blitzer: Many fire hydrants, we're told, in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood have actually gone dry. 

CA Fire Battalion Chief: Yeah, I've been up in that area since about three this morning. I've seen no no sign of water deficit up there… pic.twitter.com/DTPwYOzANY

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 8, 2025

Roberts: Trump back in 2020 was very critical of California for not making sure the forest floors were clean to stop the fires from spreading so rapidly. Why does this keep happening?

Fox Reporter: This fire started in a residential area. pic.twitter.com/3ok2hkuIYo

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 8, 2025

More from the Asshole in Chief-elect, who has been tweeting garbage like this all day long:

sick and twisted stuff pic.twitter.com/qpk5hjPAOl

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 8, 2025

In all my years in and studying disaster management, I have never seen a president (elect) blame a jurisdiction WHILE the disaster was still out of control. It distracts, is cruel to first responders and victims, and could impede effective response. https://t.co/S0q9iEXBDt

— Juliette Kayyem (@juliettekayyem) January 8, 2025

The idea of secession is sounding better all the time.

Kash Patel and Pam Bondi are being nominated to purge the “Deep State” of all people who have not pledged fealty to Donald Trump. But there’s no reason to believe the DOJ or the FBI will be emptied. There are plenty of Trump loyalists in those agencies and have been from the very beginning.

Recall that James Comey revealed the “investigation” into the Anthony Weiner laptop just days before the 2016 election largely because he was aware that the NY FBI field office was full of Trumpers who were planning to leak the information. (He should have just let them and we could have called it the phony dirty trick it was. Instead it became front page news. two weeks before the election.)

Now we have more evidence of Trumpers in the woodpile. Philip Bump reports:

In early 2020, the coronavirus pandemic reached the United States, leaving state governments and the Trump administration scrambling to respond. Trump pushed for a quick return to normal, with his reelection bid looming. His subsequent disputes with medical experts and the increasing toll from the virus became central elements of the 2020 presidential campaign.

In late October, the New York Post reported that the Justice Department was seeking more information from several states with Democratic governors, suggesting that death tolls at nursing homes had been underreported. If true, this implied that perhaps the negative effects of the pandemic were a function of Democratic leaders instead of Trump — a potential asset to the president’s reelection bid.

On Tuesday, Reuters reported that this leak may have been specifically intended to have that effect. An assessment from Horowitz, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, found that three senior officials in the Justice Department informed the New York Post about the letters. One sent a text message describing the move as being “our last play on them before the election but it’s a big one.”

Horowitz wrote that these senior officials’ conduct “raised serious questions about the partisan political motivation for their actions in proximity to the 2020 election,” according to the Reuters report.

Ya think?

If the intent was to aid Trump’s reelection, it was obviously insufficient. But it continues the pattern: pre-election information that aids, rather than hinders, Trump’s political prospects.

It’s a pattern that is worth remembering as Trump returns to the White House. For all of his insistences that federal law enforcement is eager to take him down — insistences that depend heavily on dismissing the Jan. 6 and classified documents cases as invalid — there are also examples that very much suggest the opposite.

The Bulwark’s Tim Miller interviewed Ryan Reilly who has been covering the January 6th investigation and trials for the Huffington Post since it happened. Reilly told him that there was a lot of resistance among FBI and DOJ employees to that investigation and in some cases it may have ended up hindering it and causing delay.

This seems obvious to me. Law enforcement generally is conservative and I would guess many of them think that Trump’s “support” for knocking heads and immunity for rogue cops, not to mention his racism and xenophobia, is a positive. They don’t care that he broke the law because he’s a rich white billionaire who hates who they hate. He’s a role model.

I assume that the “purge” is going to be aimed at the straight arrows who believe in the rule of law. And there are probably fewer of them than we might think.

This is the most psychotic thing I’ve maybe ever seen in politics and that’s truly saying something!

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes.bsky.social) 2025-01-08T19:24:38.883Z

I can hardly believe that this is real:

There’s a nascent, concerted effort to make Oklahoma the first state to ban new renewable energy projects. And it’s picking up steam.

Across the U.S., activism against wind and solar energy has only grown in intensity, power, and scope in tandem with the recent renewables boom. This is in direct contrast to hopes many in the climate movement had that these technologies would become more popular as they entered communities historically hostile to the idea of switching away from fossil fuels. If anything, grassroots angst toward the energy transition has only surged in many pockets of the country since passage of the nation’s first climate law – Inflation Reduction Act – in 2022.

Nowhere is this more true than Oklahoma, which on paper resembles a breadbasket of possibilities for the “green” economy. Oklahoma is the nation’s third largest generator of wind energy, home to a burgeoning solar energy sector, a potential hydrogen hub, and maybe even the nation’s first refinery for cobalt, a rare metal used in electric vehicles. Yet yesterday, hundreds of people flocked to Oklahoma City, filled a giant hall in the state’s capitol building to the brim, and rallied for the state’s governor Kevin Stitt to issue an executive order to stop new wind and solar energy facilities from being built.

Donald Trump is leading this charge. He never fails to mention how terrible wind and solar power are. It doesn’t matter that these new technologies will create a boatload of jobs. They just don’t want it because Trump says it’s bad and it owns the libs. Nothing else matters.