Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Cuts are coming:

Staffers with Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) reportedly entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) in Silver Spring, Maryland, and the Department of Commerce in Washington DC today, inciting concerns of downsizing at the agency.

“They apparently just sort of walked past security and said: ‘Get out of my way,’ and they’re looking for access for the IT systems, as they have in other agencies,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former Noaa official who is now a fellow at the University of New Hampshire. “They will have access to the entire computer system, a lot of which is confidential information.”

Project 2025, written by several former Trump staffers, has called for the agency to be “broken up and downsized”, claiming the agency is “harmful to US prosperity” for its role in climate science.

Staffers with Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) reportedly entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) in Silver Spring, Maryland, and the Department of Commerce in Washington DC today, inciting concerns of downsizing at the agency.

“They apparently just sort of walked past security and said: ‘Get out of my way,’ and they’re looking for access for the IT systems, as they have in other agencies,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former Noaa official who is now a fellow at the University of New Hampshire. “They will have access to the entire computer system, a lot of which is confidential information.” …

Rosenberg noted it had been a longtime goal of corporations that rely on Noaa data to prevent the agency from making the data public, instead of giving it directly to private corporations that create products based on it, such as weather forecasting services.

What’s the objective?

Project 2025 includes about four pages on NOAA and the National Weather Service. That part was written by Thomas F. Gilman, who was an official in Trump’s Commerce Department.

The document describes NOAA as a primary component “of the climate change alarm industry” and said it “should be broken up and downsized.” 

The National Weather Service, one of six NOAA offices, provides weather and climate forecasts and warnings. The National Hurricane Center is part of the National Weather Service within NOAA.

Project 2025 would not outright end the National Weather Service. It says the agency “should focus on its data-gathering services,” and “should fully commercialize its forecasting operations.”

It said that “commercialization of weather technologies should be prioritized to ensure that taxpayer dollars are invested in the most cost-efficient technologies for high quality research and weather data.” Investing in commercial partners will increase competition, Project 2025 said.

Project 2025 also said the National Weather Service should become a “performance-based organization” held accountable for achieving specific results, even if the head of the agency must “deviate from government rules” to achieve those results.

The document said little about the National Hurricane Center. It said the administration should “review the work of the National Hurricane Center” and that “data collected by the department should be presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate.”

Sure, who needs reliable, science based weather and climate research and forecasting? And anyway, somebody should be able to make a buck off of it, amirite?

The fossil fuel industry would like to get rid of all climate science and under Musk and Trump they may succeed. But climate change is happening whether they like it or not.

Bondi made her first move and it’s purely about vengeance. Trump must be so pleased:

Attorney General Pam Bondi spent her first day on the job Wednesday redirecting the Justice Department’s significant law enforcement authority toward addressing President Donald Trump’s grievances with the agency, making her allegiance to his agenda clear in a series of strongly worded directives.

Despite pledging during her confirmation hearing that “politics will not play a part” in her decision-making, Bondi created a “Weaponization Working Group” to review instances of what she described as “politicized justice” – starting with the federal criminal cases brought against Trump by special counsel Jack Smith. She also pledged to examine what she alleged was federal cooperation in the criminal and civil investigations of Trump in New York — even though they were carried out by state authorities, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Bondi ended the federal moratorium on the death penalty, paused federal justice grant funding for sanctuary cities and demanded “zealous advocacy” of the president’s agenda from the department’s more than 10,000 lawyers.

“Any attorney who because of their personal political views or judgments declines to sign a brief or appear in court, refuses to advance good-faith arguments on behalf of the administration, or otherwise delays or impedes the Department’s mission will be subject to discipline and potentially termination, consistent with applicable law,” Bondi wrote in one directive she signed Wednesday.

All those “norms” Merrick Garland protected are now in the rubbish can. That worked out well.

All I can say is that I’m very glad Joe Biden pardoned his family and the J6 Committee members. Anyone who believes that doing that somehow empowers Trump or that it was unnecessary is a fool. The only reason Biden himself is safe is because of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling to protect Trump.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1887165911200649675

Yeah, it went over really well:

Palestinian president says Trump’s plan would be ‘a serious violation of international law’
Hamas says Trump plan to take over Gaza will pour ‘oil on the fire’
Saudi Arabia says no Israel normalization without Palestinian state
Jordan’s king urged efforts ‘to stop settlement activities’
UAE ‘stressed categorical rejection of any infringement of Palestians’ rights’
France warns against any displacement of Palestinians
UK says Palestinians should ‘must be allowed home’
Germany says Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem belong to Palestinians
Turkish foreign minister says Trump’s Gaza comments are ‘unacceptable’
China says it opposes the forced relocation of people in Gaza
Houthi leader says Trump’s Gaza plan represents ‘American arrogance’

Click the link to read what they said.

Nobody thinks it ‘s a good idea except for Trump, his flunkies and Bibi Netanyahu.

The cacophony of political news is deafening. But Democrats have got to decide on a few simple phrases to say in unison and repeat cover and over again.

This is from “The Frame Lab” newsletter and I think it’s a step in the right direction:

Democrats face three immediate challenges:

1. Grabbing the public’s attention
2. Hammering the right frame
3. Repeating it over and over again

Data for Progress, a progressive polling firm, suggests that framing Musk’s actions as “stealing from you” resonates strongly with voters. From Data for Progress:

Additionally, while saying DOGE will cut programs to “give tax breaks to giant corporations and billionaires like Musk” effectively decreases DOGE’s favorability, a message that combines “steal from you” and “give tax breaks” has an even greater negative impact on voters’ opinion on DOGE, particularly among Independents whose views on DOGE shifted 14 points more unfavorably on net with the combined message.

I believe the frame of “theft” can also unite us as a country against intruders who unjustly take our shared treasure and threaten our prosperity. The core message remains: the wealthiest man in the country is trying to steal what belongs to every American. He doesn’t need anything, yet he’s still pilfering from those who need it most.

I would combine that with “Nobody voted for Musk” which gives some wobbly Trump voters the ability to turn on the agenda without admitting they were dupes which seems to be very difficult for them to do. (MAGA means never having to say you’re sorry…)

Focusing on Musk right now in these early days makes the most sense. He’s not popular and he’s acting like a crazy man.

I have often noticed that the MAGA wingnuts believe that almost everyone in the country (except for trans kids, feminists and Black women) actually agrees with them but all the cheating and rigging is keeping the massive MAGA majority from being heard.

Well, today it was revealed that Politico missed a payroll because of a technical glitch and they decided that it was because USAID is funding the liberal media.

The White House “confirmed” it (probably through reading Twitter trolls) the same way they have confirmed that USAID spent $50 million or $100 million on condoms in Gaza.

Leavitt: "I was made aware of the funding from USAID to media outlets, including Politico, who I know has a seat in this room. I can confirm that the more than 8m taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico will no longer be happening. The… pic.twitter.com/fDlnc0sQEs

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 5, 2025

According to Fox, Politico has received $8million from the feds over the years for something, but only $44,000 from USAID.

That news morphed into this:

Look who endorses this daft idea:

It’s one big simulation put together by our Martian overlords to keep us happy while they rape our children and drink our blood.

And endorsed ethnic cleansing in the process.

Donald Trump and his family have clearly had their eyes on the real estate development possibilities in the Gaza strip for quite some time. Last March, son-in-law Jared Kushner, the president’s middle east adviser (among a dozen different things) in his first term, told the Harvard School of Government that “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable” and suggested that Israel should “move the people out and then clean it up.” On Inauguration day, Donald Trump himself said, “It’s a phenomenal location. On the sea, the best weather, some beautiful things could be done with it. Some fantastic things could be done with Gaza.” Add on a golf course and you’ve got Trump Gaza Golf Resort to go with the new Trump Tower in Jeddah Saudi Arabia and peace will be at hand in the Middle East at long last.

Fortunately for Trump Israel has already done the demolition work for them so it’s just that sticky matter of getting rid of the people who live there. Kushner alluded to it in his talk but it wasn’t until after the campaign that Trump shared his thoughts on how to deal with that. On January 21st on Air force One, Trump told the assembled press corp that he’s spoke with the king of Jordan and asked him to “take” at least some of the Palestinians who live in Gaza and then “we just clean out that whole thing.” That language was just a tiny bit provocative seeing as ethnic cleansing is considered a crime against humanity.

It was clear then that Trump had the brilliant idea all by himself that the Palestinians should just move someplace else which he seemed to think was the obvious “final solution” to the vexing problem which no one had ever thought of before. Yesterday, he announced his fully formed plan, first in one of his Executive Order signing sessions and later in a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Answering reporters’ questions in the signing sessions he went on at some length about how Gaza has been decimated and it’s unsanitary to live there so the Palestinians will be happy to move someplace else where they can have nice houses, to be built by the other rich Arab countries. He claimed that the only reason the Palestinians stayed in Gaza was because they had no other alternative so if Egypt and Jordan offer them land in their countries, they’ll be “thrilled” to go. When a reporter noted that Egypt and Jordan had both bluntly said no to this idea, he noted that Venezuela and Panama had originally said no to him but now they’re doing as they’re told so we can expect every other country to do the same.

So that was pretty weird. But it was nothing to what he said at the press conference with Netanyahu a short while later. He repeated his belief that the Palestinians should be forcibly moved to somewhere, but added a stunning embellishment that nobody saw coming. Standing next to the Prime Minister of Israel who nodded along like a demented marionette, Trump said that the US would take over the Gaza strip and assume a “long term ownership position.”

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1886927694924845340

He says that the US will level it and then build new buildings that will supply jobs for the people of the area. Not Palestinians, though. They’ll be living in their beautiful piece of land (or pieces, as many as 10 or 12) in other countries.

According to Trump, this has been discussed at length and that everyone loves the idea of the United States owning that land and developing it into something magnificent.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1886931538014536160

When asked what he envisions for the place, it sounds as though he really does see it as some kind of international resort where “world people” will come.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1886935271314198949

And for the piece de resistance after going on and on for years about America First and not wanting to get involved in “forever wars”, he just committed sending US troops into the most fraught forever war on the planet.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1886930577825157153

Trump insisted in his remarks earlier that Saudi Arabia and other Arab states are on board but that’s not true. According to CNN, “Saudi Arabia reaffirmed its “unwavering” support for a Palestinian state, and two Arab officials expressed puzzlement and concern, telling CNN it was “hard to grasp and digest.” After all, they have citizens too. As the Washington Post reported, “it would be politically destabilizing in Egypt and Jordan, where leaders fear that any influx of Palestinians would be met with sharp anger because of the appearance of collaborating with Israel.”

Netanyahu said that Trump “sees a different future for that piece of land. It’s worth paying attention to this. We’re talking about it. It’s something that could change history.” Not exactly a full endorsement but you could certainly see why it would appeal to him. Get rid of the Palestinians (the West Bank is on the menu too) and have the US military guard the area for him while they rebuild it into a new home for the Israeli settlers. What’s not to like?

This all fits with Trump’s other delusions of grandeur around seizing Greenland, making Canada into the 51st state, invading Mexico and/or Panama that he’s been talking about non-stop since he was inaugurated. This latest, with its sanctimony about it being done for the good of the Palestinians and to bring peace to the region brought back some very unpleasant memories of the days when the Republicans sold the Iraq war as a crusade to create a Jeffersonian Democracy in the middle east. This cheap real estate pitch (it will be the Riviera of the Middle East!) doesn’t have quite the same lofty ideals but it amounts to the same thing. We all know how that turned out.

Trump bleats about “peace” all the time because he’s determined to win himself the Nobel Peace Prize (maybe two so he can beat Obama.) But he’s anything but a pacifist. Observing his behavior for all these years leaves no doubt about the man’s propensity for domination and violence and the first couple of weeks of his presidency illustrates it more clearly than ever.

It’s hard to imagine that he will actually be able to do any of this. It’s yet another absurd declaration by a man whose ability to escape any accountability for his crimes has led him to believe he’s got superpowers. More likely it will simply result in the breakdown of the fragile ceasefire and more punishment for the Palestinians along with more uncertainty and distrust among America’s allies.

His vainglorious pronouncements of territorial expansion and manifest destiny are making the whole world fear not that he’s going to succeed in any of these crazy schemes but that he’s going to truly lose it and make a catastrophic decision. Everyone knows that as demented as he sounds half the time, he’s still the guy with the nuclear codes.

Salon

In an age of renewed great-power competition

Democrats play for Team USA. Republicans won’t even play for their home team.

Elon Musk and his Elonjungen busted into USAID headquarters last week and illegally shuttered the foreign aid agency that for 60 years has been a key instument for projecting U.S. soft power in the world. He found and posted a list of small-dollar grants supporting mainly diversity-related projects he declared “waste and abuse,” lefty boondoggles proving that USAID had to die. The cited items amount to not even a fraction of a percent of the agency’s $40 billion budget.

On that basis, the unelected Musk declared the agency “a criminal organization” and shuttered its operations around the world.

How many quirky, objectionable line items might be found among the Pentagon’s $800 billion budget? (The public budget, that is, not the “black budget.”) A similar fraction? Similar enough and thus substantially more in dollar sums that means the Pentagon has to die?

Has anyone looked? Just asking. When was the last time the Pentagon passed an audit? Oh, never.

Politco suggests Democrats are walking into a trap by defending USAID from Musk’s predations. Foreign aid being one of taxpayers’ least favorite budget expenditures. But they needen’t defend the few projects Musk pulled out as public embarrassments. What they need to defend is the projection of U.S. soft power in an age of increasing great-power competition:

Republicans had long been proponents of exerting “soft power” — winning global hearts and minds by feeding the hungry, fostering emerging economies and getting vaccines to the most vulnerable populations. China, notably, stands ready to fill the void.

But Republicans as we knew them are extinct. They won’t care that strongmen around the world cheer the dismantling of USAID because they see it as a threat. What were once Republicans now play for Team Autocrat.

Democrats play for Team USA.

Depending on the breaks

A bit over six months ago, President Biden’s June 27 debate with Donald Trump went badly for him. Embarrassingly badly. He looked old, frail. He lost his train of thought. How long had his staff been covering for him? Everyone wanted to know. It was its own mini scandal and led to Biden dropping out of the race a few weeks later. The country elected Donald Trump instead in November.

Then Trump on Tuesday declared in a press conference that the United States would ethnically cleanse 1.8 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, take “a long-term ownership position” there, and develop the beachfront into a series of Trump-branded resorts. (Trump’s ownership stake was implied.)

“Everybody I’ve spoken to [inside his demented head] loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land” and developing it, Trump told a roomful of reporters. It would create thousands of new jobs and be “magnificent,” Trump continued. “The Riviera of the Middle East.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel praised Trump’s “willingness to think outside the box,” reports Peter Baker of the New York Times. 

Not one reporter jumped up and asked the obvious question. “Mr. President, are you out of your fucking mind?”

Al Jazeera has a flood of reaction from the people Trump means to relocate. “Ridiculous and absurd,” “a serious violation of international law,” “a dangerous escalation,” and a raft of carefully worded no-comments from allies and condemnation from adversaries. A UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory called Trump’s proposal “unlawful, immoral and completely irresponsible.”

A MAGA Republican would respond, “And your point is?”

Christian nationalists will start packing for the Rapture.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for Trump’s inner circle to give the 25th Amendment a test drive. They are as unbalanced as their boss. Trump put a reported alcoholic Christian nationalist in charge of the Pentagon, nominated a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist to run the FBI, a suspected Russian asset for national security director, and a worm-addled vaccine skeptic to run the Department of Health and Human Services.

Don’t expect anyone to hound Republicans to ask how long they’ve been covering for a madman.

And don’t expect Republican leaders in Congress to stroll down to the White House and insist Trump resign. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician, voted Tuesday to advance RFK Jr.’s nomination out of committee.

Oh, and Trump would send U.S. troops to backstop his beachfront development project. How many are willing to give their lives in a criminal effort to develop Trump’s next golf resort?

My mind this morning is swimming with scenes of comic fictional madmen. Esposito from Bananas insisting everyone change their underwear every half-hour; General Turgidson from Dr. Strangelove guaranteeing that winning a nuclear war wouldn’t kill more than ten to twenty million Americans, tops; General Garcia from The In-Laws talking to his hand puppet, Señor Pepe, and showing off his black velvet art collection; or Firesign Theater’s general claiming the fried eggs on his plate are flying saucers. At least in the last example, an aide has the presence to ask, “Ah, sir? Are you nuts?”

Not one reporter did yesterday.

Trump Gaza Resorts. They’ll be magnificent. Buy now. Get in on the subterranean floor.

That image invokes another Firesign bit. “This is a line of Indians leaving Rancho Malario. To make room for you! Here’s the beautiful Trail of Tears Golf Course…”

This is what happens when I’m offline for an hour.

Brian Beutler has some useful thoughts on how to focus as we confront this complicated crisis. He writes:

To my mind we have four main kinds of provocation raining down on us: headfakes, attacks on liberal pluralism, policy sabotage, and genuine constitutional crises.

In the headfakes category he has Greenland, The Panama Canal and other grandiose ideas that may or may not happen or could just as easily be like the 25% tariffs which make a big splash but end up just being PR moves for Trump to declare victory.

The attacks on liberal pluralism are all the heinous assaults on DEI, transgender kids, immigrants etc which makes us want to scream but which he says, and I think he’s right, still fit into the category of normal politics even though they are grotesque, cruel and disgusting which is not unprecedented. He says, and he’s right about this too, that a lot of this is bait to make us focus on that while they destroy the very firmament of our government and democracy. And these are all wedge issues designed to create division among Democrats.

The policy sabotage is something he thinks that elected Democrats are well-equipped to focus on and it’s what they’re good at (if they want to be.) I could see the House Democrats just calling a complete halt to any negotiations over the budget and debt ceiling. He writes:

• Policy sabotage refer to things Trump is doing, or intends to do, to upset the applecart domestically and internationally, in ways that are much stickier. Here in the U.S., that’s punishing blue states after natural disasters, angling to kick millions of people off Medicaid, pitting his supporters against the rest of America, further curtailing reproductive freedom etc. Internationally it’s threatening or imposing tariffs on certain allies, rattling his saber at others, undermining NATO. Much of this is improper, irregular, corrupt. But most of it is legal.
• To illustrate the point about overlap, culture-war provocations can veer into policy sabotage easily. When smearing immigrants becomes the Laken Riley Act, it transforms into a rooted policy booby trap; if the government really does build a concentration camp in Guantanamo, and begins to fill it with people, that’s no longer simply psychological warfare against liberals.
• Generally, though, this is where Democrats in Congress feel most comfortable. It’s where Trump’s antics show up in grocery prices and service outages and health care access. It’s where Republicans in Congress feel wedged themselves. It’s already the source of real misgivings among marginal Trump voters.

That’s the electoral side of this which is extremely important since we have to hope that the system holds up enough for Democrats to take back at least one house of Congress in 2026.

And then there’s the Constitutional crisis:

• To the extent Trump is trying to sap our attention with assaults on pluralism, it’s so that he can get away with dictatorial abuses of power. Trump, and his main benefactor Elon Musk have been on a constitutional crime spree. They have violated civil-service laws and laws governing the expenditure of congressionally appropriated funds. Trump has already effectively ended politically-independent federal law enforcement and has expressed a desire to do something similar with respect to the military officer corps. His apparent goal is to be able to sic federal cops on his elite enemies, and sic federal troops on larger populations of nameless immigrants and protesters.
• Ed Martin, the insurrectionist defense lawyer Trump appointed to be the acting U.S. Attorney in Washington, DC, has threatened to prosecute people for publicly identifying the young, far-right Musk acolytes (now government employees)currently rifling through government payments and sensitive records and rewriting the code base for critical government IT systems. A real assault on the first amendment, not the fake kind MAGA posters are always whining about.
• This is where Democrats are least surefooted, for reasons I explained here and in other articles, but where resistance is most urgent. It’s where we have to expect Democrats to set aside proximate concerns about the next election to honor their oaths to protect the Constitution. It’s why I’ve written that Democrats should withhold votes for all must-pass budget legislation until rule of law is restored, and ideally until the Justice Department appoints a real special counsel to investigate the crimes committed in this blizzard of corruption.

He says this is why it’s important to exhort Democrats to take this up. It’s worth calling, faxing, marching, rallying all of that.

He acknowledges that the Democrats are finally responding. Brian Schatz’s leadership on stopping the USAID atrocity and Hakeem Jeffries’ plan to obstruct the budget deal are steps in the right direction. Today elected Democrats held a big rally at the Treasury Department around the slogan “Who Elected Musk?!” which I think is very useful. It serves two purposes: reminding people that we didn’t elect this billionaire Bond villain and reminding Trump that he’s being upstaged by this freak.

Musk could be the future of MAGA if he wants it. He could be the successor to Trump. It would be a huge mistake to let him destroy the constitution and remake the country in his image.

I think we have to do everything. But Beutler is right that the one thing that may not be reversible is the assault on the Constitution. Keeping a special focus on that is job one.

Notus Asked GOP Senators about President Musk and his wrecking crew. They’re more than fine with it:

“He’s doing exactly what he should be doing,” Florida Sen. Rick Scott said Monday night. “He’s going through every agency and looking at how to make sure the money’s spent right.”

Wait, isn’t that explicitly the role of Congress?

“It doesn’t look like Congress is doing their job,” Scott answered simply.

And sure, there may be a little bit of Constitutional hanky-panky but it’s really no biggie:

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, even acknowledged that what Musk is doing is unconstitutional — but “nobody should bellyache about that.”

“That runs afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense,” Tillis said. But “it’s not uncommon for presidents to flex a little bit on where they can spend and where they can stop spending.”

They all seem completely unworried about the fact that the un-elected billionaire drug-addled freak Elon Musk has sent in a bunch of little kids to mess around with the computer systems because they are “holding people accountable.” You can’t make this up:

“The actions that have been taken with USAID are long overdue,” Sen. Bill Hagerty said. “The agency is out of control.”

And Sen. John Hoeven said “they need to be accountable.”

“They’re somehow operating like they’re this independent agency doing their own thing,” he claimed.

Who’s operating like an independent agency? WTF???

Here’s Senator Cornpone Leghorn:

“Mr. Musk is acting under the authority of the president of the United States,” Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana told reporters. “It’s perfectly legal, perfectly constitutional. And the issue, anyway, is not process. The issue is substance. Did they find wasteful spending, or not?”

It is not legal. And Musk’s idea of “finding wasteful spending” is to say that USAIF must die. very thoughtful.

It’s all perfectly fi9ne:

“He’s working with the president, and they’re making recommendations in some cases on agencies,” South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds told NOTUS. “But the whole program here is that we’re spending way more money than what we’re bringing in.”

Nope, that’s not true. Musk is operating independently doing whatever he wants while the orange dementia patient in the White House is ordering the Corps of Engineers to waste 2 billion gallons of water in California because he can’t understand how anything works.

They are completely in the tank. And at the risk of repeating the most boring comment in the world — imagine what they would be saying if Joe Biden or Barack Obama did this?

As one reader said to me today, “this is the continuation of the January 6th attempted coup.” This is correct. And the Republicans in the Congress are all in.