Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

I remember a decent United States

Some say you can’t legislate morality. Others push back saying that every piece of legislation reflects moral choices. “Budgets are moral documents” is often attributed to Rev. Martin Luther King. Over at Slate, Nicholas Enrich argues that if the U.S. wants to redeem its moral standing after the predations of the Trump era, it must begin with restoring USAID. Lawmakers stood by as Trump and DOGE “killed a congressionally mandated federal agency that had enjoyed broad bipartisan support for more than six decades.” That action left a stain:

The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development has taken a devastating toll, with more than 750,000 lives already lost—most of them children—due to the cuts, and far worse yet to come. The reckless destruction of USAID stands out as one of the most costly decisions of the Trump administration to date. That decision, however, does not have to be a permanent one.

Candidates for president should make it a campaign pledge to rebuild USAID:

This should be an easy promise for anyone seeking office. The case for USAID is both unequivocal and overwhelmingly popular. The agency was one of the best investments across the entire government. On less than 1 percent of the federal budget, USAID saved 92 million lives around the world in the past two decades alone. And it made Americans safer too. The agency helped countries develop early warning systems to ensure that infectious disease outbreaks were rapidly detected and contained before they risked spreading to our borders. It projected American generosity and soft power in ways that built lasting alliances far more efficiently than could ever be achieved militarily.

But USAID didn’t make things go BOOM! Donald Trump like things that go boom.

“USAID worked well. It was dismantled to satisfy the ego of a billionaire at a cost of the suffering of millions,” Enrich writes. “It is not enough to decry the damage done by DOGE’s destruction. USAID can be rebuilt, and it must be.”

The agency’s logo—a handshake over the words From the American People—was a ubiquitous reminder that the U.S. was committed to making the world a healthier and safer place. That is why Congress created USAID as an independent agency in the first place, and now Congress must insist that it be reestablished.

One of my neighbors retired from USAID. Get him to talk about projects he worked on around the world and your pride in America swells. I’d like that feeling back. Wouldn’t you?

On the lack of human decency front, this announcement from the “goes boom” Trump administration that it will reinstate death by firing squad;

“The prior administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.  “Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims.”

Raw Story collected online response:

“So the government that can’t deliver mail reliably now gets to decide who dies and how?” Political commentator Joe Lowson wrote on X.

“Wealthy men in suits who have never seen up close or engaged in violence now seemingly obsessed by it,” television personality Damon Bennett wrote on X.

“Was anyone anywhere asking for this? The lack of focus on the real issues is frightening,” Peter Hopey, writer and former columnist for the Bleacher report, posted on X.

“Let’s see how this one plays out,” film critic April Wolfe wrote on Bluesky.

“I thought this was an Onion headline at first,” Cristóbal Muñoz, who self-identifies as a Southern California Business owner, wrote on Bluesky.

The death penalty as the “ultimate punishment” has been a talking point on the bloodthirsty right for as long as I can remember. Decades ago, I heard this topic debated on the radio. The right alleges without evidence that we need the the ultimate punishment (death) as a deterrent to vicious crime. But, the Opposed debater asked, what’s so ultimate about the death penalty?

“For every criminal you do not execute, you’re taking an innocent life,” Opposed said, mocking the right’s position. So what if you could demonstrate that a sentence to a life of torture was a better deterrent? Then would the right argue that for every criminal you do not execute, you’re taking an innocent life?

A moral society has limits and adheres to them, Opposed argued. The state should not practice behavior it legally condemns.

Opposed did not foresee the Trump administration.

He’s in. He’s out. He’s in….

A flagging economy isn’t the only thing Donald Trump has trouble propping up. Also, his own eyelids.

Trump is about to hit REM on camera during an Oval Office event. It's just incredible. pic.twitter.com/h0BwcHLURJ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 23, 2026

The New Republic:

Our nearly 80-year-old president appears to have nodded off during a meeting, for the umpteenth time. 

President Trump’s eyes grew visibly heavy around the halfway point of his televised announcement of a deal with drug company Regeneron on Thursday afternoon, closing fully and reopening multiple times while suited Cabinet members and pharmaceutical executives stood behind him in the Oval Office. 

This is the same man who keeps calling former President Joe Biden “Sleepy Joe.” 

Bat-eared fox kits. Awwww…

We can’t wait for you to HEAR this news! We are thrilled to share that bat-eared foxes Jane and Chewbacca became parents on March 12 to three new kits, two males and one female.

This Wild Beginnings birth announcement is presented by @saintlukeskc. Stay tuned to our social… pic.twitter.com/fSAN04JkHQ

— Kansas City Zoo & Aquarium (@KansasCityZoo) April 22, 2026

They’re little canines!

This peculiar-looking canine lives in the open savannas and shrublands of Africa, where it burrows underground and uses its exceptional hearing to hunt for termites and beetles.

What does a bat-eared fox look like?

As members of the Canidae family, these animals resemble small, thin dogs. Notably, they have exceptionally large ears, making them look almost like giant bats. 

Their bodies are covered in a silvery-brown fur coat, with a distinctive raccoon-like mask covering their eyes, and black lower legs, feet, and tail tips. They usually weigh between 7 and 12 pounds, similar in size to a large house cat.

Bat-eared foxes are found in two distinct subpopulations in eastern and southern Africa. The animals are adapted to live in the grasslands and savannas of these regions, where wide-open vistas make it easy for them to spot predators and hunt for prey. 

These foxes are prolific diggers, excavating large dens and burrows with the aid of long claws on their forefeet. The dens serve as a shelter and a place to raise their young. The foxes typically sleep in these dens during the daytime and emerge around twilight, although this can vary based on the activity level of their preferred prey.

Bat-eared foxes can have several large dens in their territory. Multiple entrances and exits in each den help them slip by predators, including jackals, eagles, and hyenas. 

What do bat-eared foxes eat?

Primarily insects! Bat-eared foxes are the only member of the dog family that specializes in eating insects. Around 90 percent of their diet in the wild is made up of insects, particularly the harvester termite. 

The remaining part of their diet is just about anything else they can find — fruits, berries, seeds, lizards, eggs, rodents, grasshoppers, beetles, scorpions, crickets, and even some species of fungi. 

Bat eared foxes have the most teeth of any placental mammal — 46 to 50 in total — which scientists believe is an adaptation to help them crunch up insects. 

Bat eared foxes get their name from their ears—and it’s easy to see why. Their ears can reach 5 inches (13 centimeters) long, which helps explain their incredibly good hearing. 

Their hearing is so strong they can pick up on beetles and termites burrowing underground. 

Their ears also help them regulate heat, a handy adaptation for life on the African savanna. By pumping blood through their ears, they can cool themselves off when the weather gets too hot. 

After all the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth over the Virginia redistricting voter being “undemocratic” and “disenfranchising” rural voters, get a load of what Ron Desantis has up his sleeve:

Florida bans lawmakers from intentionally creating congressional seats to give their party an advantage. But Gov. Ron DeSantis quietly has launched a three-tiered power play to evade the ban — and create more GOP-friendly seats — in November.[…]

DeSantis rejected lawmakers’ calls to have an open process and draw the maps during the regular January lawmaking session. Instead, he’s embarked on a plan to have his office redraw Florida’s map, rush the plan through the legislature — and try to run out the clock on Democratic court challenges as the state gears up for the Nov. 3 elections. DeSantis’ clock-management strategy is rooted in three factors:

1. The “Purcell Principle” — Named after a 2006 U.S. Supreme Court case, this generally limits lower courts from overturning election laws too close to an election to avoid voter confusion.

• Critics have long complained that Purcell rewards lawmakers who manipulate the clock with late-breaking redistricting changes.

2. The Apex Doctrine and executive privilege — Because his employees are drafting the maps, DeSantis’ team is expected to argue in court that executive privilege shields them. His office argued that in a 2022 redistricting court challenge.

• In that case, top DeSantis officials involved in drafting those maps also fought to avoid depositions under the Apex Doctrine, which forces a plaintiff to first exhaust efforts to examine low-level employees before targeting high-level ones. That burns court time.

3. Secrecy — DeSantis’ office is drafting the maps in such secrecy that plaintiffs could have trouble finding whom to depose and what records to look for. That would cause more delays.

• In 2022, DeSantis became the first Florida governor in recent history to submit his own congressional maps that were drafted out of the public eye. Normally, the maps are drawn by legislators, providing a record that court challengers could use draw from to prove intent.
• DeSantis’ process is so clandestine that Florida legislators who are to vote on the new maps Tuesday hadn’t seen them as of Thursday night.

It’s pointless to call out GOP hypocrisy since they are completely shameless but this is so bad you have to almost admire their chutzpah. They really don’t give a damn about any kind of integrity anymore.

There’s another reason why they’ve been delaying doing this. It’s because they’re already about as gerrymandered as you can get with safe seats. If they do this they may regret it:

There’s a risk in creating more Republican seats in Florida, which requires breaking up Democratic districts or diluting them. That can make surrounding GOP-held seats vulnerable as they get more Democratic voters.

• And as gas prices climb and Trump’s poll numbers fall, Republicans could lose once-safe seats as Democrats and independents are added to a district.
• “It’s yin-and-yang: To make blue seats more purple, you have to make red seats more purple,” said one Florida legislative Republican.

Nevertheless, national Republicans who aren’t familiar with the vagaries of Florida’s political geography hope DeSantis will somehow carve out about four new GOP-leaning seats.

Go for it Ron.If it works you’re a hero. If not you’ll go out of office in a blaze of glory (hopefully set back so much that you won’t even have the nerve to run for president in 28. )

Trump on Joe Biden (2024): “He has an ability to fall asleep while on camera…in minutes, he’s stone-cold out, and he’s got cameras because he’s the president…You’ll never see me sleeping in front of a camera.” https://t.co/a6gmqaRTHv pic.twitter.com/5UdZuK4NIT

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) April 23, 2026

Maybe if he didn’t stay up all night writing gibberish on Truth Social he wouldn’t be so tired.

TPM’s Kate Riga reviews Mollie Hemingway’s new book on the right wing firebrand Justice and it’s so revealing:

At first glance, Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway’s Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution is certainly delusional, but not in a way that’s particularly interesting or insightful for a MAGA movement rooted in a cult of personality.

The hagiography of the Court’s most openly partisan archconservative, premised on insider access to the justices and those in their orbit, reads like the gushing raptures of a K-pop stan. 

“Years before the attacks on the Court intensified and conservative justices could still be seen in public, Justice Alito and his wife attempted to get brunch in New Haven, Connecticut, after a speaking event at Yale. Turned away because of a long line and lack of reservation, they ‘calmly walked away and went down the street,’” she writes, his not forcing himself into a packed restaurant apparent proof of a rare moral rectitude. 

But as I reread, the humor in her labored attempts to dredge up proof of the curmudgeonly justice’s humanity — his devotion to the Phillies does much of the heavy lifting — curdled into something much darker. 

Hemingway seeds her book with the omnipresent threat of leftist violence from its opening pages, where her treatment of anti-Kavanaugh protesters (with no mention of why they were protesting his nomination) puts them on par with the January 6 insurrectionists. 

“One woman scaled the gigantic statue Contemplation of Justice on the left side of the main steps and perched, first raised, on the marble lap of the seated female figure. The activist later justified her lawbreaking by declaring, ‘This is our court, these are our steps, these are our institutions!’” she writes. 

That harrowing anecdote, page 3, is around where her examples of left-wing violence untether from reality completely.

Right. A woman scaling a statue and claiming the court belongs to the people is far worse than beating up police, and storming the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power, not to mention the chanting of “hang Mike Pence” with a gallows conveniently assembled outside on the lawn. Certainly the fact that the president of the United States invited them to do it no big deal compared to the alleged leftist violence that has Republicans terrified of being dragged from their beds and lynched on the spot.

Riga totally gets it:

Paeans to Alito’s brilliance and humility can only produce so much juice; this book, like the MAGA movement, needs at least the threat of violence to justify its sense of being under siege. 

In her telling, the still mysterious leak of Alito’s Dobbs opinion, which would overturn Roe v. Wade, is less a shocking piercing of the Court’s well-insulated bubble and more an open declaration of war on the conservative justices. 

“Abortion supporters had an incentive to kill one or more of the justices in the majority to change the outcome,” she writes, straight-faced. 

Fergawdsakes. Get over yourself Mollie.

She actually goes on to name the liberal clerks she suspects are the ones who leaked it. Nice.

Alito is a far right ideologues badly infected with Fox New brain rot, barely able to contain himself. His wife can’t. To paint him as the middle of the road, dispassionate jurist battling the forces of far-left extremism is kind of hilarious. But it’s a perfect example of how they think.

Gee, I wonder how they got themselves into this dilemma? Oliver Darcy reports:

Journalists across Washington are trying to determine how to respond if Donald Trump derides the press at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Status has learned. “There are lots of discussions about it,” one high-profile Washington journalist told me Thursday. “If he starts attacking us, I think it is a fair question as to what the appropriate response is. Obviously some people will want to walk out, but the question about such a thing is: does that not give him exactly what he wants, making us the opposition, not the Fourth Estate? Making us the story instead of the journalists covering the story? And, suggesting that we can dish it out but we can’t take it? And so I don’t think there is any easy answer.”

Of course, that’s precisely right. There is no great answer for how to respond in such a scenario—which is why some journalists have said it is better to skip the event entirely, given the WHCA’s decision to invite Trump. Perhaps outlets like MS NOW will give their talent more leeway in how they respond. And, with thousands of journalists in the room, my guess is there could be some audible boos or voicing of disagreement with any attacks. In any case, most journalists will not want to make themselves the story, putting them in an awkward position as the cameras pan. But trying to laugh it off risks projecting the wrong optics, too. So what is the right response?

► Related: The NYT explained why it has for years opted against attending the annual dinner: “We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on.”

This was when I knew the event had jumped the shark. It was 2002:

I only wish he had broken out into a rousing rendition of “War Pigs.” It would have been so apropos for 2002.

The only one of these things that’s been truly worthwhile was this one:

Ballsiest performance I’ve ever seen.

What the SPLC has to do with the 2020 election is anyone’s guess but for some reason his scattered mind rushes to any excuse to remind people of his devastating, humiliating loss. He’s obsessed with it to such a degree that it’s warped whatever small piece is sanity was left and eats away at him like a parasite devouring him from within.

But sure, he’s fine. That kind of statement from the president of the United States is no reason to worry that we might be in some kind of existential danger. Carry on.

Trump is about to hit REM on camera during an Oval Office event. It's just incredible. pic.twitter.com/h0BwcHLURJ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 23, 2026

Reporter: Is the government going to buy a stake in Spirit Airlines?

Trump: They were going to merge with People Express or one of them and Obama decided it was a bad idea. How did that work out? I think we just buy it. And when the price of oil goes down, we’ll sell it for a… pic.twitter.com/dYKc6NhLjc

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 23, 2026

People Express hasn’t existed since the 1980s and if he’s talking about Jet Blue, it was Biden not Obama. But ok. Biden was just so old.

“In the end, the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.” — George Orwell, “1984” https://t.co/8yFPDag2SW

— Niall Stanage (@NiallStanage) April 23, 2026

You should watch that whole press event if you get the chance. It’s … something.

MAGAs are losing it

Win McCormack at The New Republic contemplates what makes bullies like Donald Trump cave. It may be, he considers, Trump’s saving grace:

My principal concern right now is the midterm elections, and whether our system of democracy will continue to prevail or be seriously compromised or even snuffed out completely by Trump. I didn’t mention above my conviction that Trump is, above all, a destroyer, and his goal, consciously or unconsciously, is to destroy every good aspect of the American project, top to bottom, in every field of endeavor and accomplishment. But I also didn’t mention what I consider his saving grace, though that might not be the right term for it. I refer to the all-important fact that he is, I believe, quintessentially a coward, with a host of fears that run very deep and haunt him. He can be brutal, but only when it is easy and safe to be brutal—when he thinks the field before him is wide open to such behavior.

What concerns me is not just what Trump will do in the days leading up to and after the November election, but how his ride-or-die supporters will react to Dear Leader and MAGA Republicans gettting body-slammed by voters and facing in a Democrat-controlled Congress honest-to-god, rigorous investigations of adminstration perfidy (fingers crossed). They are painfully aware of how bad the economy is. They know his promise to lower prices “starting on Day One” was a fraud. He’s irrational besides, writes McCormack.

The tariff issue, on which The Donald still refuses to acknowledge that tariffs are paid by the receiver of foreign goods rather than the sender, is one example of the actual operation of his befuddled mind.

His supporters are paying the price for it.

For the first time in 16 years, today's Fox News survey has Democrats holding a four-point advantage over Republicans on the economy, @ForecasterEnten reports. pic.twitter.com/7fX5pznuWl

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) April 24, 2026

Trump has betrayed them on keeping America out of foreign wars. The Iran war has driven up the cost of everything. They know it every time they fill up or buy groceries. Any reminder drives some of them ape-shit.

Ten days ago I recounted the reaction of one driver to a roadside message: PLAN NOW FOR YOUR $5/GAL STAYCATION. The driver of a work truck doing about 35 mph, popped open his door and stepped out onto the running board of the vehicle he was driving to scream at Sign Guy. He risked his life, the life of his passenger, and the lives of surrounding motorists in the process. He was that out of control.

Everyone feels like the wheels are coming off the country. So the point of such a message is not to goad MAGAs (a minority here; the county went 61-37 for Kamala Harris in 2024). It is to acknowledge commuters’ struggles, to help them feel seen. But it’s also a Rorschach ink blot that an unbalanced handful perceive as a poke in the eye.

This week features a sign inspired by the cookie aisle at the grocery store (image above): $4 OREOS IN 2024 NOW COST OVER $6. * It’s a product everyone knows, fondly remembers from childhood, and buys for their kids. It’s not an economic abstraction. It’s personal. And in Trump’s economy, it’s become unaffordable. The entire cookie aisle on Sunday was lined with sale stickers. No one’s buying. Guess why.

A driver this week was so incensed at being reminded that $4 OREOS IN 2024 NOW COST OVER $6 that he exited and initiated a physical altercation that ended with the intervention of pedestrians. I asked if he really wanted to explain to a judge that he assaulted a senior citizen over the price of Oreos. But they are that crazy.

It will get worse before it gets better, others have said before me. But if they’re this crazy now, the worse the economy gets for them and for Trump through the summer, and the worse prospects look for Republicans heading into November, they’ll feel even more like cornered animals. Buckle up.

On advice of friends, Sign Guy ordered a body camera.

Update: Photos by Julie Harrison

* One woman threw her hands wide behind her windshield and said (I could read her lips), “I know, right!?”

The come-to-Jesus apology that isn’t

Michelle Goldberg considers the press that Tucker Carlson is getting this week over his admission(?) that he’d “be tormented for a long time by the fact that I played a role in getting Donald Trump elected. And I want to say that I’m sorry for misleading people.”

Carlson went on, speaking to his brother, Buckley: “You and I and everyone else who supported him – you wrote speeches for him, I campaigned for him – I mean, we’re implicated in this for sure,” Carlson said. “It’s not enough to say, ‘Well, I changed my mind’. “

That’s the exchange that drew all the headlines. But the brothers Carlson were not done. They went on to construct a conspiracy theory for explaining where Trump went wrong.

Goldberg writes (gift link):

I’m all for embracing converts to the anti-Trump cause. But if you listen to the dialogue between Tucker and his brother, it’s clear that rather than honestly reckoning with their role in America’s derangement, they’re developing a new conspiracy theory to explain it away.

Trump, they strongly imply, has been compromised — maybe even blackmailed and physically threatened — by Zionist or globalist forces seeking the deliberate destruction of the United States. On Tucker’s podcast, Buckley described a systematic undermining of America through the George Floyd protests, mass migration and now the war with Iran.

“It can’t be a confluence of random events,” Buckley said. “It is clearly by design. It’s clearly been a long-term plan.”

So is his brother Tucker’s career. Trump is on his way out. So Tucker Carlson is putting some daylight between himself and Trump without putting daylight between himself and the MAGA audience that keeps him living the celebrity lifestyle to which he’s become accustomed. Tucker will need them to keep buying what he’s selling in a post-Trump America. Knowing they’ll choose a TV huckster rather than a competent lawmaker, perhaps as some speculate, he even sees an opening to run for president himself. This isn’t Carlson’s come-to-Jesus moment some are celebrating. It’s positioning.

Goldberg lets the hot air out of the Carlsons’ ass-covering, “the Jews made Trump do it” theory. The plain truth is, Goldberg explains, Trump has “never been better than this, and he didn’t need to be manipulated to make everything in America worse.”

Nor did Tucker Carlson, as Jon Stewart pointed out on CNN’s “Crossfire” 20 years ago.

Rolling Stone reminds its readers that Carlson’s performative career has always involved presenting one face to the right wing media-consuming public while keeping his real opinions to himself:

In private text messages to his colleagues at Fox News — which were only revealed after the network was sued for defamation by Dominion Voting Systems — Carlson referred to the president as a “demonic” around the time of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. “I hate him passionately,” Carlson wrote at the time. “I can’t handle much more of this.”

And yet within a year, he was campaigning for Trump’s reelection and floating conspiracy theories that the Jan.6 attack on the capitol was simply the work of “tourists.”

If Carlson had reservations about the president — and we know he did — he pushed them down and did what he swore he would never again do after being burned by the Iraq war. He once again set aside his own concerns, his disdain, and his supposed principles, in service of the right-wing movement du jour. Carlson likely did so believing that even though he despised the president, the ends would justify the means, and he could use his platform and connections to influence outcomes and check the excesses of the man he once called the “single most repulsive person on the planet.”

Carlson’s admission that he had fallen for the charlatan figurehead of this movement should not be mistaken for an act of true contrition. His break with the president comes after years of documented disgust of Trump, and at a moment where a public rebuke of the president comes with no severe political cost. The Iran war is unpopular, Trump’s approval is at a historic low, and his conservative allies are becoming increasingly comfortable breaking with him on an issue-by-issue basis — or entirely.

Before I’ll credit him with conversion, I’ll wait until Tucker Carlson apologizes for being Tucker Carlson.