Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Former Harry Reid staffer Adam Jentleson gave a rundown on Xitter:

A quick thread on what seems to be Trump’s plan to obliterate the Senate’s advise and consent responsibility so that he can recess appoint his cabinet, or at least those members who lack the votes to get confirmed by the Senate. 

Remember that only the Senate confirms nominees and judges. The House has no role in the confirmation process itself.

The Constitution allows POTUS to make recess appointments, ie to put nominees in place without Senate confirmation. In the past this has been used sparingly. 

For recess appointments to happen, the Senate has to be in recess. For a decade or so, the Senate has not been going into recess when it adjourns but pro forma sessions, which can last up to 3 days. Long story, it goes back to Rs blocking Obama from doing recess appointments. 

Gonna try to avoid the weeds here, but the fact that Senate has been going into pro forma sessions is why you have the odd spectacle of senators gaveling the Senate in and out of session every three days during longer “recesses” like holiday breaks. ANYWAY… 

To recess, the Senate needs to pass an adjournment resolution, which is and has always been a majority-rule vote (because nearly everything in the Senate used to be majority-rule until relatively recently). The House has to approve the Senate’s adjournment res, and vice-versa. 

The Constitution gives POTUS the authority to adjourn both the House and Senate “in case of disagreement between them” about when to adjourn and for how long. Here’s Article II, Section 3.

In theory – and I think this is Trump’s – he could adjourn the Senate even if it did not want to adjourn. The House passes an adjournment resolution, sends it to the Senate and the Senate rejects it, thus setting up the “disagreement” that triggers POTUS adjournment authority. 

At this point, the Senate would be in a formal recess and Trump could theoretically appoint as many officials as he wants. It wouldn’t matter if his nominees have the votes to be confirmed by the Senate because Trump would have taken the Senate out of the process entirely. 

While the process is a little convoluted, the precedent is not: Trump wants to end the Senate’s advise and consent role in presidential nominations. Period, end of story.

On the politics, it doesn’t seem like Trump is nominating Gaetz and Gabbard as a bankshot play where he sacrifices them to get Hegseth. I think he really wants Gaetz and Gabbard, and will do whatever it takes to get them. 

Some folks are rightly pointing out that while the adjournment resolution is a majority-rule vote on passage, it is amendable, which means Democrats could try to filibuster it by offering endless amendments – but i don’t think that changes the outcome for a few reasons.

Think of this as replicating the Senate from 1917 to the early 2000s when cloture was available but rarely used.

The opposition could delay but whenever they tired the business at hand would come up for a majority-rule vote.

This would be a talking filibuster, basically. 

So problem #1 is the standard limitation on the talking filibuster – if Dems ever ran out of energy to hold the floor and offer amendments, the adjournment resolution would could up for a majority-rule vote.  

Problem #2 is that at any point, Republicans could change the rules and to limit amendments, speeches etc., via a majority-rule vote. Even if they didn’t have the votes initially, it’s easy to see how they would get them after a prolonged delay, under pressure from Trump. 

Problem #3 – and I want to caveat this because I’m not a constitutional scholar – is that under Trump’s theory it is not clear the Senate has to pass an adjournment resolution at all, since the POTUS adjournment power kicks in in case of a disagreement between the chambers.  

This is for the courts to decide, but under Trump’s theory, the House passes an adjournment resolution and if the Senate doesn’t, that constitutes “disagreement.” Who knows if that holds up in court but if things go this way I bet Trump will test it.

If I had to guess I think that under this threat the Senate will simply confirm all of Trump’s nominations quickly and without any controversy. They will be afraid that if he adjourns the Senate to do this thing that he will not call it back into session for any reason except maybe passing a budget which he will write and for which he will expect full approval. As long as Trump has Johnson there ready and willing to create the “disagreement” he can simply make congress irrelevant. The acquiescent House Speaker makes that all possible under the Constitution. I can’t imagine this SCOTUS saying otherwise.

So, l look for Gaetz and Hegseth and Gabbard to be easily confirmed and watch as the Democratic voters who will understandably fail to understand the arcane dynamic I just described, get more and more disillusioned with the Democratic party and withdraw even further from politics.

Neat trick. The only thing that could stop it is if Johnson refuses or the Senate Republican majority rebels. Neither of those things are remotely likely.

Perfectly fine. Nothing weird happening here in the United States. Move along:

A retired U.S. Army officer who clashed with senior officials in Donald Trump’s first White House looked into acquiring Italian citizenship in the run-up to this month’s election but wasn’t eligible and instead packeda “go bag” with cash and a list of emergency numbers in case he needs to flee…

And a former U.S. official who signed a notorious October 2020 letter suggesting that emails purportedly taken from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden could be Russian disinformation is seeking a passport from a European country, uncertain about whether the getaway will prove necessary but concluding, “You don’t want to have to scramble.”

All spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid undermining their own preparations. The planning, they acknowledge, responds to a hypothetical worst case in which a second Trump presidency ushers in systematic suppression of free speech and criminalization of dissent. Trump’s victory alone has set off alarms among some of his most outspoken critics, as well as within parts of the intelligence and national security communities he denigrated as the “deep state” and accused of subverting his agenda.

Their anxiety has intensified amid the drumbeat of picks for critical Cabinet posts. Trump said Wednesday he would make Rep. Matt Gaetz, the Republican firebrand from Florida, his attorney general and Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii and fervent critic of the foreign policy establishment who told world leaders to “embrace the spirit of aloha” after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, his director of national intelligence, a role overseeing the nation’s 18 spy agencies.

“I feel like I’ve stepped through the looking glass,” said the retired Army officer who considered Italian citizenship. Unlike the ordinary Americans who joke each election cycle about leaving the country when their preferred candidate loses, this group of anxious retired officers or government officials includes people whom the incoming president and his allies havesubjected to withering criticism. Even before the election, some were subpoenaed by Trump-aligned members of Congress. Others were placed on watch lists compiled by pro-Trump activists.

Scarcely any described firm plans to leave the country. But they’re also not brushing off the threats as they keep track of personnel named to influential government jobs. Following the selection of Gaetz to lead the Justice Department, many are watching whether Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist who appended a “deep state” list to his 2023 book, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” lands a senior role at a top agency such as the FBI.

Matt Gaetz rode on Trump’s plane yesterday and they had a long talk. Trump then nominated him for AG, surprising his own staff who didn’t know he was under consideration. It’s clear to me that he simply promised Trump that he would go hard after all of his critics without any disclaimers about that pesky “rule of law” or the constitution which, I imagine, his other potential nominees had done.

They’re going to do it, either at DOJ or at the DOD where Trump wants to install his wingnut buddy Hegseth. All these people are right to be concerned.

Josh Marshall has an insightful piece up today called “Reckonings of Contempt” in which he discusses how so many people, including many liberals, hold the Democrats. He looks at some of the many pieces that are offering up criticism of the Harris campaign and the Democrats’ failure in general starting off with a piece by Eric Levitz at Vox which, as I have done here as have many others, looks at the global anti-incumbency mood as well as the more ominous implication of rightward move among the working class of all races and ethnicities. Pretty standard stuff and I think probably correct. However:

Then there’s this piece in Axios. It probably won’t surprise you that I wasn’t terribly impressed with it.

It starts …

Democrats are a lost party. Come January, they’ll have scant power in the federal government, and shriveling clout in the courts and states … The traditional media structure sympathetic to their views, and hostile to Trump’s, was shattered … But the road to the Democrats’ Damascus requires deep, honest self-reflection — and, many party insiders tell us, entirely new leadership … When journalists held up a mirror, they often looked away … Harris just lost what Democrats considered an eminently winnable race, despite relatively light scrutiny and more money than any candidate in U.S. history.

What’s notable is that the Axios piece isn’t so different from stuff you can read in publications at least notionally friendly to Democrats. Another example is this one by Alex Shephard in The New Republic. The tone in both cases is what can only be called one of contempt. But it’s contempt of a particular sort.

Marshall concedes, of course, that losing elections often produce contemptuous retrospectives of the campaigns, the politicians, strategists and pundits who they believe should have seen it all ahead of time (even when they, themselves, did not.) But that’s not what he’s talking about here:

When you sift through the tone, the nature of the indictments and its totality, it is really more a contempt for Democrats generally, a contempt for the kind of people who make up Democratic majorities when they win and minorities when they lose — their condescension and obliviousness, their empty bromides and obsessions, above all their failure. We hear a lot of derision for the “resistance” and especially “resistance moms,” over-educated and out of touch, whiners, stuck in the “MSNBC bubble.” In a Washington Post article whose headline said the Democratic Party is now in “shambles,” Joe Manchin’s chief of staff Chris Kofinis put it in a multiply revealing line: “If you try to win elections by talking to the elites of this country, you’re going to get your ass kicked — there are not enough Beyonces, Oprahs or Hollywood elites to elect anyone.”

Many of the blows in these write-ups remind us of the way even some of the kinder young boys on an elementary school playground will be motivated to get in a punch, while the animal spirits are running, on that one boy who is always the target of bullying. It’s the lure of the predator.

Considering that the tone of so much of those criticisms are sexist and misogynistic — everything is so female coded — that the better analogy would be when some of the kinder boys join in on a sexual assault on a girl — while the animal spirits are running, if you know what I mean.

As Josh says, these are not the type of people you want to listen to in order to improve or correct mistakes.

I found this clarifying. I have been distinctly uncomfortable with the whole “we must find ourselves a Joe Rogan” a guy’s guy who can talk to the men who we desperately need to appease in order to win elections. It’s not because I don’t think liberals and progressives need to adapt themselves to a new media landscape and claim some of that territory for ourselves. This is a new world and the old so-called liberal media is dysfunctional. But the canonization of the dumbshit bro talk as the the only way to do it strikes me as wishful thinking on the part of a whole lot of lefties (you know who you are) who really relate to that stuff and think the whole “girlification” of the Democrats is a drag. The fact that the majority of Democrats are women is considered a liability apparently. Good to know.

There needs to be some creativity here, people. Running with stupid (or pretending to) isn’t going to get it done. Looking down on the Democratic party for not being the kind of people you want to have a beer with is well… stupid. This isn’t about your social life.

Marshall goes on to offer up some of his own analysis on what may have gone wrong and it’s worth listening to. Click over for the whole thing. It’s really good.

As he says, “Voters often want new leaders. But things are always a bit out of joint when it’s leaders who want new voters.”

We have to remember that, traditionally, an incoming administration awards the various constituencies that got it elected with some sort of representation.So the tech bros get Elon, anti-vax freaks get RFK Jr, dog killers get Noem, white nationalists get Hegseth, pedophiles get Gaetz…

— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) 2024-11-13T23:50:51.147Z

And Russia gets Tulsi!

Alex Jones found out

NBC News:

The Onion, the satirical news company that repeatedly spoofed conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, has won the bankruptcy auction for control over his media empire — most notably InfoWars, the far-right, conspiracy-minded website that served as Jones’ primary online platform.

Jones announced the sale on X Thursday morning.

“I just got word 15 minutes ago that my lawyers and folks met with the U.S. trustee over our bankruptcy this morning and they said they are shutting us down even without a court order this morning,” Jones said.

“The Connecticut democrats with The Onion newspaper bought us,” he added.

For those needing a reminder of what this is all about, The Washington Post explains:

Infowars and its property are among the personal assets Jones was forced to sell in a court-ordered auction after a bankruptcy judge in June sought to compel Jones to paythe roughly $1.5 billion in damages he owes for claiming the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax.

Families from the Connecticut-based defamation lawsuit against Jones agreed to accept a smaller recovery to increase the overall value of the Onion’s bid, which enabled its success, according to a Thursday statement from the families’ lawyers.

The auction win gives the Onion control of Infowars’ website, archive, mailing list and production equipment, among other assets, ending Jones’s control of the media company after 25 years.

The “global conglomerate” that purchased InfoWars explains the decision on The Onion’s website:

Today we celebrate a new addition to the Global Tetrahedron LLC family of brands. And let me say, I really do see it as a family. Much like family members, our brands are abstract nodes of wealth, interchangeable assets for their patriarch to absorb and discard according to the opaque whims of the market. And just like family members, our brands regard one another with mutual suspicion and malice.

All told, the decision to acquire InfoWars was an easy one for the Global Tetrahedron executive board.

Founded in 1999 on the heels of the Satanic “panic” and growing steadily ever since, InfoWars has distinguished itself as an invaluable tool for brainwashing and controlling the masses. With a shrewd mix of delusional paranoia and dubious anti-aging nutrition hacks, they strive to make life both scarier and longer for everyone, a commendable goal. They are a true unicorn, capable of simultaneously inspiring public support for billionaires and stoking outrage at an inept federal state that can assassinate JFK but can’t even put a man on the Moon.

Through it all, InfoWars has shown an unswerving commitment to manufacturing anger and radicalizing the most vulnerable members of society—values that resonate deeply with all of us at Global Tetrahedron.

No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds. And yet, in a stroke of good fortune, a formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars.

Make no mistake: This is a coup for our company and a well-deserved victory for multinational elites the world over.

What’s next for InfoWars remains a live issue. The excess funds initially allocated for the purchase will be reinvested into our philanthropic efforts that include business school scholarships for promising cult leaders, a charity that donates elections to at-risk third world dictators, and a new pro bono program pairing orphans with stable factory jobs at no cost to the factories.

As for the vitamins and supplements, we are halting their sale immediately. Utilitarian logic dictates that if we can extend even one CEO’s life by 10 minutes, diluting these miracle elixirs for public consumption is an unethical waste. Instead, we plan to collect the entire stock of the InfoWars warehouses into a large vat and boil the contents down into a single candy bar–sized omnivitamin that one executive (I will not name names) may eat in order to increase his power and perhaps become immortal.

All will be revealed in due time. For now, let’s enjoy this win and toast to the continued consolidation of power and capital.

Infinite Growth Forever,

Bryce P. Tetraeder, Global Tetrahedron CEO

Gotta love The Onion. Now more than ever.

Rolling onto their backs for the big dog

Donald Trump is an idiot. He’s always been an idiot. And much, much worse. That much he’s proved. What’s kept him from falling out of the lifestyle into which he was born is Daddy Fred’s money and his feral instincts honed by Roy Cohn. Trump exerts dominance as instictively as Maverick flies jets. Don’t think. Just do. Not thinking is the easiest part.

Trump nominating a rogues’ gallery of misfits and lackeys to his cabinet is another loyalty test for a man who offers none in return, as Ezra Klein insists. But that’s just the first layer of this onion.

[Having trouble with embeds this morning.]

The second layer is Trump’s goal to demoralize any opposition, tweets Trump niece Mary Trump. “Elevating incompetent fascists” like Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and Matt Gaetz to the cabinet is meant to humiliate his opponents.

He’s gotten away with fomenting an insurrection and stealing state secrets. Now he’s testing how much lower he can go.

Thank you, sir. May I have another?

Getting the GOP-led Senate to confirm these clowns to the president’s cabinet is the third layer. It’s the dominance move. It will show Trump he has broken his allies’ will to his own. If they will roll over on their backs and pee in the air when he barks (submissive peeing), there’s no Trump whim to which they won’t accede. Confirming the unconfirmable is not the floor. It’s the celiing.

Republicans in the House are already on their backs, and Trump hasn’t even started barking.

There will be some opposition. But if they don’t roll over, they’ll be gone swiftly. Elon Musk is already making noise about funding primary opponents to Republicans who won’t kowtow low enough.

Stay tuned.

What an ungracious piece of … garbage:

Melania Trump declined an offer to head to the White House Wednesday and meet with Jill Biden, citing the Biden administration’s raid on Mar-a-Lago as part of the federal government’s investigation into classified documents.

“She ain’t going,” a source familiar with Melania’s decision told The Post. “Jill Biden’s husband authorized the FBI snooping through her underwear drawer. The Bidens are disgusting,” the source said.

“Jill Biden isn’t someone Melania needs to meet,” the source added.

BY the way, Trump’s anything but gracious, but we knew that.

What an unctuous hypocrite. Loathesome creature.

— digby (@digby56.bsky.social) 2024-11-13T16:35:04.541Z

That fucker wouldn’t give Biden a transition, wouldn’t meet with him and wouldn’t come to his inauguration. I feel like throwing up.

I cannot see how this is useful for anything. I can only assume that this is some kind of Christian ethic that I don’t understand.

Oh. My. God.

Trump has shown he understands a cardinal rule of strong man dominance: constantly force your allies to defend the indefensible & to make ever greater concessions they once would have considered beyond the pale. Each surrender paves the way for the next. Gaetz just an opening bid https://t.co/LR3j9Yk1VU

— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) November 13, 2024

When I heard this I thought it was a joke. It is not a joke. Trump nominating Pete Hegseth, Matt Gaetz and Tusli Gabbard is nothing more than a gauntlet thrown in America’s face: “waddaya gonna do about it?”

Matt Gaetz is about as close as you can get to putting Sean Hannity in charge of the Justice Department. A total loyalist who will run investigations into whichever political enemies Trump wants hounded.

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) November 13, 2024

Those on Trump’s enemies list should probably be looking for legal representation right away. Matt Gaetz will have no interest in doing anything but prosecuting them.

Update —

About those recess appointments:

3/ The operative provision is Art. II, Sec. 3, which says only "in Case of Disagreement" between the House & Senate may the President adjourn them. That means if Johnson & Thune agree, Trump can't do it.It also means if they let him, Trump may adjourn them "to such Time as he shall think proper."

— P. Andrew Torrez (@andrewtorrez.bsky.social) 2024-11-13T21:28:33.236Z

If Johnson and Thune must agree in order to stop Trump from doing this, I think he will do it. There is no universe in which Johnson doesn’t do what Trump wants whether Thune wants to resist or not.

Fasten yout seatbelts.

Chris Hayes has this one right. Nobody should think they have the “one true analysis” of the election or the “one true path” going forward. Shit happens.

They’re going to go after all of them:

One of Trump’s Day One executive actions is expected to be an order on so-called interior enforcement, arresting and detaining immigrants in the U.S. illegally, the sources said.

Trump intends to scrap Biden administration guidance that prioritized people with serious criminal records for deportation and limited enforcement against non-criminals, they said.

The Trump order would call for deportations to prioritize people charged with felonies and people who have exhausted their legal avenues to remain, but would not restrict officers from picking up other potentially deportable immigrants.

An estimated 1.4 million immigrants in the U.S. have final deportation orders, according to ICE, a group that will be a focus for the incoming Trump administration.

“A federal judge said, ‘You must go home,’ and they didn’t,” Homan told Fox News on Monday.

Certain groups – such as international students who support Palestinian militant group Hamas and have violated the terms of their student visas – could also be listed as a priority, two of the sources said.

ICE could use military planes in deportations and seek help from other government agencies to transport deportees, one source said. “All options are on the table,” the source said.

Another order would deal with border security, the two sources said. Trump intends to send National Guard troops to the border and declare illegal immigration a national emergency to unlock funds for border wall construction, the sources said.

Wall construction in Arizona – where Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs has opposed Republican enforcement efforts – could be a priority, two sources said.

Trump plans to end Biden’s temporary humanitarian “parole” programs, which have allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to enter legally and access work permits, the sources said.

The programs include an initiative for certain migrants with U.S. sponsors and another that allows migrants in Mexico to use an app to schedule border appointments.

Also, in case you were wondering we’re about to see a Nazified corruption bonanza:

The incoming Trump administration is considering locations and talking to private prison companies about drastically expanding immigrant detention centers that would hold immigrants before they are deported as part of President-elect Donald Trump’s promised mass deportation plan, two sources familiar with the planning told NBC News.

The goal is to double the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention beds — 41,000 are now allocated by Congress — to hold vast numbers of migrants for short periods of time while they await deportation after their arrests inside the U.S., the sources said. 

The plan would also include restarting the policy of detaining parents with their children, known as family detention, which immigration advocates have criticized and the Biden administration stopped in 2021, the sources said. 

So far, people working on the plans with the Trump transition team are assessing which of the facilities the Biden administration closed could be reopened, taking account of available space in county jails and assessing which areas might need temporary facilities to detain migrants as part of the deportation effort.

Trump’s transition team is looking at how many migrants each region can hold, including in Democratic-controlled metropolitan areas across the country. A source familiar with the plans said they prioritize areas with large migrant populations that lack detention facilities, rather than single out Democratic strongholds.

Cities with large populations of migrants — like Denver, Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago — could need additional detention sites built nearby to hold migrants arrested there. The administration might also need to reopen, expand or build new facilities in the Northeast to hold migrants arrested around New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, the source said. 

Homan has assured everyone that there is no plan for camps. But he didn’t say anything about prisons.

This may sound far-fetched but I’m fairly sure that Trump is dead serious about this one and I don’t know who is going to stop him. Even if the Supreme Court says no (which is unlikely) he will almost cettainly say, “you and what army?” This is one of his few fundamental policies that he really cares about. And it serves the double purpose of proving that he’s the toughest, meanest asshole on the planet which he translates to respect. He will do this.