Skip to content

Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Elon Wanted Him Out

Published by digby on January 30, 2025

More on Musk’s interference with the FAA on behalf of his businesses:

The Federal Aviation Administration’s leader stepped down on Jan. 20, months after Elon Musk demanded that he quit. The move by Michael Whitaker means the FAA has no Senate-confirmed leader for one of the biggest crises in its history because he quit before Donald Trump took office. Whitaker ran the FAA for just a year but announced in December that he would step down on Jan. 20, as the new president was sworn in.

Nobody has taken his place. Last week, specialist aviation site The Air Current reported that industry veteran Chris Rocheleau had been sworn in as deputy FAA administrator, which would put him in acting charge of the agency. The Wall Street Journal had first reported that he would become deputy.

Whitaker’s departure came after he clashed with Musk, who is now in charge not just of SpaceX but of the new Department of Government Efficiency. In September Whitaker had proposed fines of more than $600,000 for SpaceX, prompting Musk to demand his resignation and promise to sue.

Whitaker, Space.com reported in September, told a congressional committee that the fines were “the only tool we have to get compliance on safety matters.” But Musk had kept up the attacks on X, at a time when he was campaigning at Trump’s side. On Sept. 17 he accused Whitaker’s agency of harassment, posting, “The FAA space division is harassing SpaceX about nonsense that doesn’t affect safety while giving a free pass to Boeing even after NASA concluded that their spacecraft was not safe enough to bring back the astronauts.”

And in a reply to a tweet by an Australian YouTuber who posts videos about space and who has said the FAA “should not exist,” Musk accused Whitaker of standing in the way of his vision of putting human life on Mars.

“The fundamental problem is that humanity will forever be confined to Earth unless there is radical reform at the FAA!” he tweeted at Marcus House.

By the way:

The FAA had already been wrestling with persistent shortages of air traffic controllers. And this week, air traffic controllers were included in the Trump administration’s offer of buyouts to all federal workers.

The investigation into the crash will be led by the independent National Transportation Safety Board, which is chaired by Jennifer Homendy. She has also clashed with Musk, over the safety of self-driving software in his Tesla cars.

Look for her to be labeled DEI and disparaged as incompetent right out of the gate. Only white males are capable of anything but picking crops and having babies.

Nobody said much about this when it happened a couple of weeks ago but maybe they should have:

QOTD: George Conway

Published by digby on January 30, 2025

Because they are evil, we must stand up to them. But because that are also stupid, we needn’t be afraid to.

Dan Pfeiffer has some ideas about that. This is one of them:

Here’s a useful heuristic for Democrats — if something makes Trump more popular, don’t do it. Confirming Trump’s nominees with substantial bipartisan majorities could make Trump more popular. Allowing him to sign a border security bill that Democrats only supported because they didn’t want to seem soft on the border (in an election that takes place in November of 2026?)seems like a bad idea.

It’s not hard. Trump should be at the apex of his popularity and he is substantially less popular than any newly elected President in history.

Here’s one way to think about making Trump and the Republicans less popular:

Donald Trump and the Republicans control all three branches of government. They are the only ones with the power to solve pressing problems or address people’s needs. Trump declared that he can fix everything and that America is in a “Golden Age.” He is responsible for all outcomes. Trump will take credit for anything good. Our job is to make sure he gets the blame for everything else. That’s certainly how the GOP and the media treated President Biden. During several news cycles of Biden’s presidency, he was hammered on the difficulty of buying a turkey on Thanksgiving or people’s gifts not arriving in time for Christmas.

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Egg prices going up because of the avian flu? That’s on Trump. People not getting needed aid because of the federal funding freeze? Trump’s fault. Crime and disorder happening around the country? Trump. Chaos abroad? Trump. A collapse in the Gaza ceasefire? Also Trump.

The world has felt particularly chaotic in recent years. Part of that is real, and part of it is the refracted lens of social media. Trump won the presidency despite his flaws because he promised to make everything better. We need to hold him accountable when he fails.

God yes. All of it.

For instance, last night we had a catastrophic plane crash. Trump let Elon Musk fire the head of the FAA two weeks ago. It’s his fault.

The NY post (!) reports:

Federal Aviation Administration Chief Michael Whitaker resigned from his position just 10 days before the deadly plane and Black Hawk helicopter crash over Washington, DC, Wednesday. 

Whitaker — who held the post for only a year and had four years left in his term — announced he would step down after President Trump was sworn in, leaving the FAA without a leader in a time of virtually unprecedented disaster for the agency.

Elon Musk, a close Trump advisor who also heads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had called for Whitaker’s ouster after the erstwhile FAA chief proposed more than $600,000 in fines for SpaceX — Musk’s aerospace firm.

Dispatch From Surreality Central

Published by digby on January 30, 2025

But this represents millions of our fellow Americans:

Philip Bump discusses how COVID lies ended up helping Trump and how it’s affecting the way Republicans see the health institutions today:

After insisting with crossed fingers that the coronavirus wouldn’t pose a significant risk to the United States, Trump in early 2020 endorsed broad restrictions aimed at limiting the spread of the virus. The economy stumbled. His reelection bid looming, Trump reverted to trying to wish the whole thing away. He turned government officials such as Anthony S. Fauci into scapegoats, casting them as hyperventilating scolds.

The politics of Trump’s base are heavily predicated on rejecting authority, so the play worked like a charm. In fact, it outran Trump, whose support for the rapid development of vaccines targeting the virus became something of an albatross among Republicans who viewed the inoculations as left-wing nonsense.

On the right, the surreal narrative about the pandemic triumphed over reality — just as would the anti-establishment, conspiratorial narratives about the legitimacy of Trump’s reelection loss and the violence of his supporters at the Capitol.[…]

In retrospect, the right’s repercussion-free rejection of reality was likely one of the engines of the Democrats’ own grim fantasy. There was no obvious political price incurred among those who railed against mask-wearing or vaccination efforts. Perhaps, then, the political price would be an electoral one, a literal Darwinism that manifested on Election Day.

It didn’t. More than 1 million Americans died during the pandemic that began on Trump’s watch — and in the next presidential election Trump returned to office. He won in part by embracing the surreal narrative about the pandemic and, upon winning, tapped Kennedy to run the agencies that ensure vaccine availability and respond to future pandemics.

This will almost ensure that if (when) we face another health emergency the response will be much worse than it was before. But in MAGA Bizarroworld it won’t matter how many people die. They want to own the libs so badly they’re willing to die for it.

Obliterate The Line

Published by Tom Sullivan on January 30, 2025

Subtlety is not their agenda

I’ve long described the right-wing policy ratchet this way: Find the line. Step over it. Dare anyone to push them back. No pushback, or if it fails? New line. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

That was timorous, beta pre-Trumpism. The authoritarian goal today is no line at all.

David Graham describes Trump 2.0’s stumble over pausing funding already allocated by Congress as more than ineptitude. “It’s part of a carefully thought-out program of grabbing power for the executive branch,” and not simply chaos, but “a battle over priorities within the Republican Party.”

They may mismanage business, but they still mean business:

“The great challenge confronting a conservative President is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power—including power currently held by the executive branch—to the American people,” Trump’s nominee to head the OMB, Russell Vought, wrote in Project 2025, the blueprint for a conservative administration created by the Heritage Foundation, a Trump-aligned right-wing think tank. The strategy is to seize power and dare both Congress and the courts to stop it. This tactic is unpredictable, as this week’s misadventures show, but it’s also relatively low-risk. The ideologues inside the administration want to see what they can get away with, and if it doesn’t work, so be it.

Find the line. Step over it. Dare anyone to push you back.

Returning power “to the American people” is a cruel conceit. That’s the last thing Trump and his backers intend. Trump’s motto may be “L’État, c’est moi,” but lackeys like Vought mean to use him as a front for their own power grab, starting with challenging the Impoundment Control Act Vought refused to commit to following during his confirmation hearings.

Trump simply might have asked Congress to claw back the funds instead of issuing his failed edict. He has the support there to pull it off, writes Graham. But seizing executive power is the real objective.

Graham concludes:

Because this effort is core to the ideological agenda of Project 2025 principals such as Vought, the revocation of this executive order likely won’t be the last effort we see along these lines. And having to back down for political reasons tends to make the internal battles only fiercer. Trump’s attempts to decimate the civil service and clear out career bureaucrats are well known, but Project 2025’s authors reserved special animus for those they expected to be on their side during the first Trump administration.

“I had a front-row seat on many of these issues and importantly [saw] how bad thinking would end up preventing what we were trying to accomplish, from less-than-vigorous political appointees who refused to occupy the moral high ground, particularly in the first two years of the president’s administration,” Vought said in a 2023 speech. He has no intention of letting that happen again.

We’re not in Kansas anymore. Brace yourselves for a particularly Orwellian period in which the cure for bad thinking is right-thinking, as with fringe ideologues it always is. Occupying “the moral high ground” transmits a darker, dog-whistle meaning most Americans will not catch. Its meaning has nothing to do with preserving the republic for which the flag stands, or did, any more than a MAGA hat means “patriot.”

The civil war of which the right has long dreamt and for which cosplaying militiamen have long armed themselves is here. But it is a cold one not fought with AR-15s but with a string of proxy battles and political power plays meant to whittle away at the republic from the edges, Ho Chi Minh-style.

A smaht, I say, a smaht chicken would be more subtle so as not to be so obvious in Washington. But these amped-up testosterone junkies are mini-Lokis not interested in subterfuge. They want conquest and want to be seen doing it.

Tony Stark: Yeah, divide and conquer is great, but he knows he has to take us out to win, right? THAT’S what he wants. He wants to beat us, he wants to be seen doing it. He wants an audience.

Steve Rogers: Right. I caught his act at Stuttgart.

Tony Stark: Yeah, that was just previews. This is – this is opening night. And Loki, he’s a full-tilt diva, right? He wants flowers, he wants parades. He wants a monument built to the skies with his name plastered…

[Stark pauses; he and Rogers look at each other knowingly]

Tony Stark: Sonofabitch!

What Are Little Nazis Made Of?

Published by Tom Sullivan on January 30, 2025

They don’t sprout from thin air

https://digbysblog.net/2021/07/28/coterminous-with-fascism/

The roll-out of Trump 2.0’s “shock and awe” effort has been pretty rocky. This week’s attempt by Trump to “pause” billions in spending on Donald’s whim caused mass chaos across the land. There was enough backlash and a court order pausing the pause that the administration covered up its backtracking by announcing it had rescinded the memo announcing the pause but not the executive commands behind it. (Never admit mistakes.)

Yet already one sees critics taking solace in the apparent inability of the Project 2025 team to implement it’s 900-page vision for remaking America as a white-Christian-nationalist dictatorship. But they won’t stop. Ideologues like these are relentless and committed.

Wired reports that “the highest ranks of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)—essentially the human resources function for the entire federal government—are now controlled by people with connections to Musk” and to tech industry movers like JD Vance mentor, billionaire Peter Thiel. Indeed, many have noticed that OPM’s “Fork in the Road” memo seems to be a cut-and-paste job from a RIF memo issued by Musk to Twitter employees after his takeover. This controversy came after the directive to quash all DEI efforts:

Last week, federal employees across the government received emails encouraging them to turn in colleagues who they believed to be working on diversity, equity, inclusion, and access initiatives (DEIA) to the OPM via the email address DEIAtruth@opm.gov.

“This reminded me,” says Kelman, “of the Soviet Stalinism of turning in your friends to the government.”

While the country was captivated by the “cruelty and loyalty” show Trump made of signing executive orders prepared by ideologues in his orbit, it begins to seem more obvious that the easily manipulated Trump is merely a Trojan horse for an oligarch class flirting with dictatorship.

The parallels between Trump 2.0 and another dictatorial regime have not gone unnoticed. In particular, one clip Rachel Maddow used in her fall profile of JD Vance began spinning out online last night. “We need a De-Ba’athification program….”

One recalls the hubris of the Bush ideologues who implemented the De-Ba’athification program in Iraq. And how well that worked out. One might find that abject failure encouraging except for the chaos Bush-Cheney unleashed from Syria to Afghanistan. Not to mention hundreds of thousands dead.

Maddow’s review of Vance’s history includes his taking a lot of his ideas not only from Peter Thiel, but from “self-described monarchist Curtis Yarvin.” Quoth Yarvin, “If Americans want to change their government, they are going top have to get over their dictator phobia.” (They don’t want to govern. They want to rule.)

Those looking forward to Trump’s passing of natural causes may need to rethink that. Because then we get Musk-Thiel-Yarvin in the guise of JD Vance. The broligarchs are trying to implement their agenda now under Trump the Ignorant and with the useful-idiot assistance of white-Christian-nationalists. They’ll all have more free reign — and I use the term purposefully — under Vance.

Who Needs ‘Em?

Published by digby on January 29, 2025

Last week:

Tonight:

Aviation expert James Fallows wrote last night:

There appears to have been a disastrous collision between a regional jet, a CRJ made by Bombardier and flown by American Eagle Airlines, with more than 60 people aboard en route from Wichita, and a military helicopter, reportedly a Blackhawk flown as “VIP Transport” by the US Army. News footage from local TV stations captured the collision, for instance this from local NBC news.

The news is tragic and still unfolding. As in all aviation disasters, early reports can be misleading; I’ll follow up with more details tomorrow, as more become known.

The most recent mass-fatality crash had been almost 16 years ago. That was in February, 2009, when the crew of a Colgan regional jet, a feeder for United Airlines, apparently mis-managed an icing emergency, and crashed on approach to Buffalo, New York.

Since then, the relentlessly safety-minded collaborative culture of the US air travel system has made commercial airline travel in the United States the safest mode of travel ever invented. Not counting today, a total of two people had died in US airline accidents (over more than 12 billion passenger journeys) in the preceding 15+ years.

Now, tragically, that record is at its end.

On his second day in office, as part of his careless-or-intentional destruction of the institutions that have made the United States strong and safe, Donald Trump disbanded a group called the Aviation Security Advisory Committee.

As I had planned to write that day, this casually punitive gesture had the potential of undermining everything that had made US aviation safety the marvel of the world. It was collaborative; it combined public, private, military, civilian, academic, and other institutions to pool knowledge; it avoided blame; but it focused relentlessly on lessons learned. You can see a list of its members here.

I didn’t write about it that day, because life got in the way in various forms. But if I had I would have said: Destroying this institution probably won’t make a difference this week. Or this month. Or maybe even this year. But in the long run, some day, it will be part of an erosion of safety —part of the thoughtless destruction of the taken-for-granted institutions that have made modern as safe as it is.

That dismantling order, one week ago, wasn’t part of tonight’s tragedy—whose specific origins no one knows, as I write. But unless reversed, it will be part of tragedies in the future.

Nothing is perfect and accidents happen. But the dismantling of expertise that we are embarking on as a country is going to make them much more likely in many realms of everyday life. Elon Musk’s delusions of grandeur can’t keep American safe.

Update—

Trump blamed DEI:

President Donald Trump on Thursday blasted former President Joe Biden and Democratic diversity measures after a midair collision between an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter above Washington, D.C., the night before.

Trump, speaking at the White House, claimed that DEI “could have been” to blame for the collision, the deadliest U.S. plane crash since November 2001.

Trump did not provide evidence that the Biden-era efforts had anything to do with the crash, and criticized a reporter who asked if he was getting ahead of the investigation.

The comments showed the president quickly reverting to well-worn attacks on his political enemies after initially striking a somber tone and offering condolences to the victims and their families.

Trump at the press briefing also said he was appointing Christopher Rocheleau as “acting commissioner” of the Federal Aviation Administration.

At the time of the incident, the FAA did not have a permanent head. The agency’s former administrator, Mike Whitaker, stepped down on Jan. 20, the day Trump took office. Rocheleau had been serving as the FAA’s deputy administrator since Jan. 21.

It looks like we’re going to have four years of blaming women, Black, Brown and LGBTQ people for everything that goes wrong in this world.

Corruption Watch 1/29/25

Published by digby on January 29, 2025

The WSJ has the story of Trump’s latest grift:

Serious talks about the suit, which had seen little activity since the fall of 2023, began after Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg flew to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida to dine with him in November, according to the people familiar with the discussions. The dinner was one of several efforts by Zuckerberg and Meta to soften the relationship with Trump and the incoming administration. Meta also donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. Last year, Trump warned that Zuckerberg could go to prison if he tried to rig the election against him. 

Toward the end of the November dinner, Trump raised the matter of the lawsuit, the people said. The president signaled that the litigation had to be resolved before Zuckerberg could be “brought into the tent,” one of the people said. 

Weeks later, in early January, Zuckerberg returned to Mar-a-Lago for a full day of mediation. Trump was present for part of the session, though he stepped out at one point to be sentenced—appearing virtually—for covering up hush money paid to a porn star, one of the people said. He also golfed, reappearing in golf clothes and talking about the round he had just played, the person said.

Trump has long been a prolific filer of lawsuits, with mixed results. In recent weeks, that has changed, as U.S. corporations have rushed to make inroads with the new administration. ABC News in December settled a defamation lawsuit Trump filed against the network and anchor George Stephanopoulos, agreeing to pay $15 million to Trump’s library. Paramount Global executives have also discussed settling a lawsuit Trump filed over a CBS News interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump’s lawyers are working to capitalize on that momentum. In December, a lawyer for Trump filed a letter in an unrelated case—in which the president had sued publisher Simon & Schuster and author Bob Woodward over publishing recordings of their interviews without permission—urging the defendants to follow ABC’s lead. Attaching a copy of the ABC settlement, the lawyer wrote, “President Trump is hopeful that the Defendants in this case follow Mr. Stephanopoulos’ expression of contrition.”

Trump voters all believe that he is so rich that he can’t be bought. The opposite is true. He is a grasping con artist consuming bribes from a firehose. This appears to be his latest grift — suing companies with bogus claims as a way for them to put money directly into his pockets. Look for more of this. It’s a very easy way to pay tribute to the Dear Leader and they all seem very eager to do it.

Delusions 1/29/2025

Published by digby on January 29, 2025

So it begins.

(That is not what happened. Colombia said they didn’t like Trump landing military aircraft in their country and treating their citizens like shit. Trump agreed to allow Colombia to send their own airplanes to pick them up and treat them humanely.)

The total amount US sends to all underdeveloped countries is $60 million. We sent $30 million to Gaza for medicine. The idea that Hamas is using $30 million dollars worth of condoms is insane but it’s the kind of thing the wingnuts love (“dirty, dirty”) so it will join the rest of the lunatic fringe lies that Trump is spewing.

Like this one:

Total lie. This did not happen. Republicans in DC know this because they aren’t this stupid but they either think it’s clever and funny or they just don’t care that the president is apparently suffering from dementia.

The War On Decency

Published by digby on January 29, 2025

I don’t know what the observances of these events were in the past but I can’t for the life of me see what the harm was in doing it. It just seems like benign celebrations of our pluralistic society, like St Patrick’s day parades or Mardi Gras. Why is this a problem? But I guess the white guys are upset so they have to stop doing it.

Many companies in the private sector are ending their DEI programs as well which I have to assume is being done just to make their MAGA customers happy. And I suppose they’re probably happy to abandon all their anti-discrimination policies as well.

But take a look at this:

Republican attorneys general from 19 states want Costco Wholesale to ditch its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, making the call days after the retailer successfully defended its DEI policies as good for business to shareholders.

In a letter on Monday to Costco CEO Ron Vachris, the AGs accuse the retailer of “clinging to DEI policies that courts and businesses have rejected as illegal,” and called on it to account for the legal risks of its actions. 

Led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, the Republican officials instructed Costco to let them know within 30 days whether it would get rid of its DEI policies or explain why not.

Costco did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The GOP letter came after Costco shareholders overwhelmingly rejected a proposal that the wholesale club operator evaluate any risks associated to its DEI practices. The shareholder behind the resolution, the National Center for Public Policy Research, argued that DEI “may sound benign,” but in fact is “weaponized language concealing a radical Marxist agenda.” 

Costco’s board, however, urged against the conservative think tank’s motion ahead of its annual meeting.

“Among other things, a diverse group of employees helps bring originality and creativity to our merchandise offerings, promoting the ‘treasure hunt’ that our customers value,” the retailer stated. Costco’s “commitment to an enterprise rooted in respect and inclusion is appropriate and necessary. The report requested by this proposal would not provide meaningful additional information,” it added.

A day after Costco held its ground on its DEI policies, discount store chain Target joined Walmart and other corporations in scaling back on diversity initiatives under attack from conservative activists emboldened by high court decisions and President Trump, who recently banned DEI programs across the federal government. 

I don’t know why they think this is their business but apparently the idea is that these programs are illegal because of the Supreme Court’s recent affirmative action decision. Or maybe it’s just because Dear Leader has proclaimed it. But it just isn’t true. (And it goes without saying that diversity has absolutely nothing to do with Marxism and it’s insanely depressing to see state Attorneys General argue that it is.)

There has been no decision on whether private business can allow their companies to celebrate racial or ethnic diversity. And considering that we’re allegedly still a free country I can’t believe that anyone would think it’s the government’s job to tell them they can’t do it. The mind reels.

Trump’s Greatest Insult

Published by digby on January 29, 2025

Nominating this freak as HHS Secretary

The RFK Jr hearing today was unbelievable.

I have concluded that Trump is so angry about the attempts to hold him accountable for his crimes that he just wants to hurt Americans. I also think that he’s showing some serious signs of dementia now. This stuff about the “valve” and sending Elon to space is weird even for him. It’s possible that he’s just owning the libs but I have a sense that it may be more than that. Choosing a conspiracy theorist like Bobby Jr. covers all those bases. He is an insult to all Americans. If the Republicans let him go through despite knowing what a monstrous freak he is, we’re truly in Mad King territory.