They’re coming for the women too. Going all the way back to WWII!
The Air Force Times has more evidence of the “DEI” purge going on at the Pentagon:
Some Air Force webpages on pioneering female pilots — from World War II to the modern era — have been taken offline, as the Trump administration continues its drive to eliminate diversity-related materials from government sites.
Air Force Times identified at least a dozen pages on the WWII-era Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, and retired Maj. Gen. Jeannie Leavitt, the Air Force’s first female fighter pilot, including biographies, photos, museum exhibits, a video and a commentary, were no longer online as of Tuesday.
The removals come as the Trump administration and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have assailed diversity-related initiatives of previous administrations, calling them divisive and a distraction from efforts to make the military more “lethal.” President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office ending those initiatives and later directed the military and other government agencies to swiftly pull such materials from public view.
I guess that figures. It’s quite clear that Hegseth doesn’t think women belong in the military. He’s been forced to sort of accept it for now because they are necessary. But this DEI purge of all recognition of non-white men, LGBT and women pretty much says where he’d like to take it if given the chance. Those white supremacist tattoos and his history of sexual assault should have been the first clue.
Your terrifying bit of news of the day. (Well, the morning anyway.) The New York Times reports that Bobby Jr has some ideas about bird flu. They aren’t good:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, has an unorthodox idea for tackling the bird flu bedeviling U.S. poultry farms. Let the virus rip. Instead of culling birds when the infection is discovered, farmers “should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it,” Mr. Kennedy said recently on Fox News.
[…]
Mr. Kennedy does not have jurisdiction over farms. But Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, also has voiced support for the notion.
“There are some farmers that are out there that are willing to really try this on a pilot as we build the safe perimeter around them to see if there is a way forward with immunity,” Ms. Rollins told Fox News last month.
Yet veterinary scientists said letting the virus sweep through poultry flocks unchecked would be inhumane and dangerous, and have enormous economic consequences. “That’s a really terrible idea, for any one of a number of reasons,” said Dr. Gail Hansen, a former state veterinarian for Kansas.
Every infection is another opportunity for the virus, called H5N1, to evolve into a more virulent form. Geneticists have been tracking its mutations closely; so far, the virus has not developed the ability to spread among people. But if H5N1 were to be allowed to run through a flock of five million birds, “that’s literally five million chances for that virus to replicate or to mutate,” Dr. Hansen said. Large numbers of infected birds are likely to transmit massive amounts of the virus, putting farm workers and other animals at great risk.
Oh, I’m pretty sure it’s going to put all of us at great risk if the virus obtains the ability to spread among people. Which it could. We all know that having become conversant in the mechanisms of viral pandemics after living with one for a couple of years.
Bobby obviously believes that getting diseases make you stronger. And if you are a weakling, (like people his age who don’t take steroids) then sure, you might die. Kids too. Or people with other chronic illnesses. He talks all the time about how he had all the childhood diseases when he was a kid before there were vaccines and they all had tons of fun staying home from school. Well, many did, for sure. But many also had terrible long term effects and many others died. But he doesn’t care about them. Neither do all the MAGAs who care nothing for the million + who died from COVID.
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that there is talk that they are going to end the mRNA research because the cranks now in charge of scientific research in America are down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. But you should know that an mRNA vaccine is showing incredible promise in treating pancreatic cancer, one of the most difficult of all. There are many other trials using this research underway. Bobby and his crew of weirdo health officials are thinking of ending it.
Will something like that be enough to wake America up to what these monsters are doing? I honestly don’t know. So many just don’t believe what they they don’t want to believe. But the fact is that people are going to die because of it. All to serve one man’s gigantic narcissistic need to exact revenge for having been held accountable for his actions.
The Department of Justice says the president has the power to fire all over 40 year olds or female heads of agencies:
“Could the President decide that he wasn’t going to appoint or allow to remain in office any female heads of agencies or any heads over 40 years old?” Judge Karen Henderson, a Reagan appointee on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, asked Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric McArthur Tuesday in proceedings over the fired board members of two independent agencies.
“I think that that would be within the President’s constitutional authority under the removal power,” he responded, adding that “there would be separate questions about whether that would violate other provisions of the Constitution.”
They truly believe that he has no limits although another judge on the panel did remind him that the 14th Amendment still exists. (For now.)
The DOJ is aiming to get these cases to the Supreme Court, where it’s betting that enough of the right-wing justices will agree to overturn the high court’s own precedent on independent agencies — encapsulated primarily in a 1936 case called Humphrey’s Executor — and axe the removal protections that keep leadership at such entities as the NLRB or MSPB insulated from political will or vindictiveness
I would guess they’re going to be happy to give him this one. The right wingers on the court raised in (or under the influence of) the Reagan Revolution really do believe in an extreme definition of presidential power. They may be shocked enough by some of the applications of it they are seeing unfold in this wild administration to find ways to curb some of the worst excesses but this one’s a gimme. They have never believed that any agency or sub-agency of the executive branch should be independent in any way. Trump will be allowed to fire the heads of these “independent agencies” at his whim. Whether he is allowed to close the agencies themselves or fire people en masse without cause are other cases that may have different outcomes simply because they are affected by different precedents that have wider application. But the Supreme majority is going to give him some wins, never doubt it.
Last Friday President Trump gave a speech at the Department of Justice to assembled staff which appeared to be handpicked supporters. He had a prepared transcript about “law and order” but spent most of the hour talking off the cuff about his grievances against the justice system he believes did him wrong. The New York Times described it this way:
He delivered a grievance-filled attack on the very people who have worked in the building and others like them. As he singled out some targets of his rage, he appeared to offer his own vision of justice in America, one defined by personal vengeance rather than by institutional principles. “These are people that are bad people, really bad people,” Mr. Trump said. “They tried to turn America into a corrupt communist and third-world country, but in the end, the thugs failed and the truth won.”
He spent quite a bit of time on the idea that his enemies had intimidated and derided Judge Aileen Cannon who presided over the stolen classified documents case in Palm Beach Florida. He said she was strong and tough, “the absolute model of what a judge should be.” He went on an extended riff about the late basketball coach Bobby Knight explaining that this is a tactic used to “play the refs.”
He said:
He’d scream at the ref. He’d scream so hard, oh boy, it was terrible actually. And the people would come up, his assistant coaches would come up, the players. Coach, coach, don’t do that. Don’t do it…That’s when he threw the chair, he starts going crazy.
And he said, no, he’s not going to change this time, but he’s going to change for the next play.
Trump claimed that’s what his enemies did to Judge Cannon and that he doesn’t think it’s legal. But according to him, it didn’t work with her, she just “got angry.” (If true, it would be interesting to know how he knows that.)
He babbled on for quite a while on the subject of his “unfair” court cases and then said that Supreme Court is also being intimidated:
“Remember the way they treated Justice Thomas and Justice Alito and Justice Kavanaugh, Justice Gorsuch? Chief Justice Roberts gets treated unbelievably badly and they’re hoping that they can sway them to go along because, again, what do they do…they’re humans and they don’t like being accused of incompetence… they’re in a position; they can’t fight back really very well and so sometimes they get weak.”
By this time you are probably screaming to yourself, “Is he kidding? The man who so gravely insulted,threatened and degraded nearly every judge he came in front of they had to throw gag orders on him to keep their families and courthouse staff safe from his rabid followers is saying it should be illegal to criticize judges?” To call it hypocritical is laughably inadequate and chutzpah doesn’t even begin to describe it.
But it does reveal his own motivation in using that very tactic, not that it was hard to discern before. He does exactly what he accused his so-called enemies of doing. He threatens judges he doesn’t think are favorable enough to him with the expectation that they will bend over backwards to show “fairness” and prove they are not biased as he claims they are. The “playing the refs” gambit is hardly a secret and Trump hasn’t exactly been subtle about it.
Any American has the right to criticize judges but defendants usually don’t do it because generally it’s a bad idea to unnecessarily antagonize someone who has such power over your life. Trump behaves more like a Mafia boss whose insults can be interpreted by his lieutenants as an order to commit violence. It’s hard to know how well it works but it’s logical to assume that if nothing else it helped delay some of his cases, even those in which he was ultimately found guilty.
Whether the Supreme Court’s shocking decision to use Trump’s January 6th case to create “presidential immunity” out of nothing was motivated by sympathy or fear is unknown but their delay in deciding it was certainly a factor in making it impossible to further litigate the federal cases against him to determine if they qualified under the new rule.
And Trump is grateful. After the joint session of Congress last month, he walked down to the Supreme Court Justices in attendance and shook the Chief John Roberts’ hand saying, “thank you , thank you, I won’t forget it.” (He later claimed that he was thanking him for swearing him in on inauguration day but that’s hardly believable.) Already facing massive legal challenges to his reckless DOGE program, among other things, he was rightfully suspected of thanking the Chief for that immunity ruling.
Despite his tirade at the DOJ against his enemies “playing the refs” Trump went right out and insulted the judge in the latest case in DC challenging his ludicrous claim to wartime powers to deport people to a foreign prison with no due process. And this time, he’s joined his comrade in arms, Elon Musk as well as House Republicans who are calling for the impeachment of federal judges who don’t immediately capitulate to their arguments:
In a highly unusual move, Chief Justice Roberts put out a statement just hours later which said, “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
Again, keep in mind that Trump knows better than anyone that impeachment will not work unless they have 67 Senate votes to convict in the Senate and Chief Justice Roberts knows that as well. So basically, it appears that Justice Roberts wanted to send a message to Trump that he is not amused by his “ref-playing.”
Trump’s response was:
Roberts is no doubt aware that the comment Trump made after the big speech last month thanking him and saying “I won’t forget it” went viral. And I assume that he hears the talk coming from Trump’s White House like this from Rolling Stone:
Another close Trump adviser simply says that the president’s ultimate leverage against certain judges who try to stand in the way of his agenda is that the judiciary does not command an army, while the president of the United States does. “Are they going to come and arrest him?” the adviser asked, rhetorically.
Trump’s “ref-working” against every judge who doesn’t rule his way is becoming a big problem for the Supreme Court and the Chief Justice knows it. Whether he and his colleagues will have the fortitude to stand up to him and preserve the Constitution and American democracy when the time comes is a bet I wouldn’t want to make after what they did with the January 6th case. Their credibility is already fragile.
But maybe Trump’s antics have broken through a little bit to show that no matter how grateful he is for the get-out-of-jail free card they’re not any safer from the chainsaw than the rest of us.
Salon
Update— This is interesting:
1/🧵 Judges across ideological lines are ruling against Trump at strikingly similar rates (84% liberal, 86% centrist, 82% conservative). This isn't partisan opposition to Trump—it's the judiciary functioning as intended by cutting across partisan lines to uphold the Constitution.
2/🧵 Here is the breakdown by ideological groupings. While liberal judges heard more cases (due to geography and venue selection), the consistency of rulings across ideological lines demolishes the narrative that judicial decisions against Trump reflect political bias.
It may not be a typical one, but when police start busting into private buildings on the order of the president, it sure comes close:
Employees of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency entered the U.S. Institute of Peace on Monday despite protests from the nonprofit that it is not part of the executive branch and is instead an independent agency.
“DOGE has broken into our building,” the organization’s CEO, George Moose, said.
USIP employees called the Metropolitan Police Department and reported a break-in. Police cars were outside USIP headquarters in Northwest D.C. Monday evening.
The alleged intrusion came after the Trump administration fired most of the USIP board and sent its new leader into the Washington headquarters of the independent organization on Monday, in its latest effort targeting agencies tied to foreign assistance work.
The remaining three members of the group’s board — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Defense University President Peter Garvin — fired Moose on Friday, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press.
USIP is a congressionally funded independent nonprofit that works to advance U.S. values in conflict resolution, ending wars and promoting good governance.
Apparently, they were unwilling to let this play out in court. They just went ahead because they believe they are the ones to interpret the law and the Congress is a bunch of potted plants and trained seals who apparently have nothing to say about anything.
“The employees of our building are not federal employees, executive branch employees,” Moose said. “They are employees of the institute. We have our own, separate board; we have our own bypass authority to go directly to Congress in order to get our money. Somehow, all of those arguments have not prevailed.”
The DOGE workers gained access to the building after several unsuccessful attempts Monday and after having been turned away on Friday, a senior U.S. Institute of Peace official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
[…]
The nonprofit says it was created by Congress in 1984 as an “independent nonprofit corporation,“ and it does not meet U.S. Code definitions of “government corporation,” “government-controlled corporation” or “independent establishment.”
Josh Marshall dug into the role of the Metro POlice in this because it’s weird that they actually came in and evicted the legal tenets of a building without any due process. Apparently, they were told to do it by Trump’s personal henchman, Ed Martin the acting US Attorney in Washington:
It’s actually worse than what I suspected.
According to the MPD they first got involved when they were contacted by the DC US Attorney’s Office, the one currently run by acting US Attorney Ed Martin, the election denier and Jan 6th lawyer. The US Attorney’s office told the MPD that there was a disturbance at the US Institute of Peace offices and that some intruders or trespassers were refusing to leave. They gave the MPD the contact information for the guy Trump says he has appointed to run it. That would be Kenneth Jackson, though the statement doesn’t include his name. They talked with Jackson and then forced the USIP staff to leave based on what the US Attorney’s office told them about who had rightful possession of the office.
They play coy about exactly why the staff left.
MPD members went to the USIP building and contacted an individual who allowed MPD members inside of the building. Once inside of the building, the acting USIP President requested that all the unauthorized individuals inside of the building leave. Eventually, all the unauthorized individuals inside of the building complied with the acting USIP President’s request and left the building without further incident, and no arrests were made.”
…The police showed up and said they had to leave and they left. I don’t think the USIP folks or their lawyers were up for a police and barricades situation. The real issues here is that the US Attorney or at least the US Attorney’s office contacted the MPD and told them that there was no legitimate dispute and they had to make the staff leave and they did.
They just do what they want when they want it. There was no real reason for this. It could have been litigated without taking over the place. But that chainsaw has a life of its own.
Today a Judge ordered Elon Musk and DOGE to restore access of USAID employees, including those on administrative leave, to USAID computer systems. Judge Theodore Chuang, Obama appointee, also bars DOGE from actions related to USAID shutdown. I think it’s the first time Musk has been named personally.
These orders against Trump and DOGE are adding up. The Supremes are going to get involved sooner rather than later.
While it’s not entirely clear what set the president off this time, earlier this month, Parker and Scherer had published a piece titled “Trump’s Own Declaration of Independence” about Trump’s outlandish demand to move the Declaration of Independence into the Oval Office.
This request presented as ridiculous for two main reasons. First, the president seems to eschew all the convictions held within the actual document: that all men are created equal, that power is divined from the consent of the governed, and the crucial rejection of monarchy, supposedly celebrated by the president who jokingly calls himself the “King.”
Secondly, on a purely logistical level, it seemed impossible. The original document, made of animal-skin parchment, is kept in an oxygen-free, argon-filled case behind heavy glass, which retracts into the wall at night and is kept away from bright lights.
But Trump seems intent on redecorating his digs to add as much pomp and circumstance as possible—and it seems he got his way, or at least some facsimile of it: A copy of the Declaration of Independence is currently hanging in the Oval Office, shielded by short blue curtains.
The oval office is quickly turning into a beat up Atlantic City casino version of Versailles.
Business surveys are showing the negative effects of Trump's lurching tariff policy and resulting uncertainty. From February to March, the percentage of businesses surveyed by Philly Fed that expected to increase cap ex fell from about 40% to 20%. Literally the largest decline in series history.
Business is pulling back on capital expenditures because Donald Trump has created the most unstable economy (unstable world!) that anyone can remember with his capricious, decision making and Elon Musk’s chainsaw. Nobody can predict anything but chaos going forward and business is betting that taking any risk right now isn’t worth it. I don’t blame them.
Despite all of this uncertainty, the recent data on inflation and unemployment is pretty solid. I was reading Justin Wolfers’s arguments on why recession fears may be overblown. He wrote that “the hard numbers tell us that the economy is in very good shape.” Do you agree? And do you expect that to last in the next couple of months? Because obviously we’re just beginning to understand the effects of all these haphazard policies. The economy came into the year performing exceptionally and growing strongly. GDP last year was almost 3 percent, and growth was almost 3 percent. That’s a really good year. We created 2 million jobs. That’s a lot of jobs. Unemployment was 4 percent across every demographic. That’s very low. And it’s been there now for three years, which is just extraordinary. We have our problems, but the top-line performance of the economy arguably couldn’t be better coming into the year, so it would take a lot to diminish and derail it. But that’s what’s happening.
I can’t think of another example like this of somebody coming in and just single-handedly creating such a bad economic situation. Yeah, recession by design. It will take a lot to push the economy off the rails, but if the president follows through on all the tariffs he’s discussed and articulated, most importantly the reciprocal tariffs, then holds them there — not on again, off again, but says, “Okay, here are the tariffs and we’re sticking to them” — other countries will retaliate. They already are. Once they realize that these tariffs are going to be around for a while, they’re going to respond in kind. Forget about all the other economic policies and everything else going on, that would be enough to push the economy into recession later this year.
I will be shocked if he pulls back the tariffs, although anything is possible. He believes in them like a religion and thinks they will magically force all manufacturing to immediately move to America and basically end trade altogether. It’s stupid and simplistic but that’s what he thinks. With the way his dementia is progressing into even more grandiose delusions, I don’t think reality is going to have much influence on him.
It was nice to hear someone say this:
Do you lay any of the blame for this current situation on Joe Biden’s policies? Or is this all sort of self-inflicted, this new uncertainty? This is all self-inflicted. Again, the economy had its issues. There are always issues. But coming into the year, it was performing exceptionally well. It was far and away the strongest economy on the planet.
The envy of the world. The envy of the world. So it’s hard — impossible in my mind — to lay any of this at the feet of President Biden.
And yet, new polling shows that views of Biden are, as Philip Bump wryly pointed out on BlueSky, “just a tad better than Adolph Hitler.” Sadly, that’s not much of an exaggeration.
They are literally saying that this man got the medal of honor because of DEI?
They restored the page on Monday saying that it was part of an “auto-removal” which can only mean that their system automatically removes Black (and women and other racial/ethnic minorities) under the assumption that they are all DEI and thus undeserving of any recognition. Why else would that have appeared in the new url? (That url was preserved in the wayback machine archive.)
It’s not the only example. You already know that Hegseth fired all the top women in the military and removed the Black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs because he believes they are unqualified. They aren’t big, strong, drunk white rapists like he is. Last week it was reported that:
Arlington National Cemetery has begun wiping from its website histories highlighting Black, Hispanic and women veterans. The change is in line with President Trump’s directive to remove references to and support for diversity, equity and inclusion from the federal government.
Maybe if they can get rid of all mention of minorities and women everywhere in world the insecure white wingnuts can finally feel secure that they are the only people who matter.
Articles about the renowned Native American Code Talkers have disappeared from some military websites, with several broken URLs now labeled “DEI.”
Why it matters: From 1942 to 1945, the Navajo Code Talkers were instrumental in every major Marine Corps operation in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
They were critical to securing America’s victory at Iwo Jima.
Axios identified at least 10 articles mentioning the Code Talkers that had disappeared from the U.S. Army and Department of Defense websites as of Monday.
The Defense department’s URLs were amended with the letters DEI, suggesting they were removed following President Trump’s executive order ending federal diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
The Internet Archive shows the deleted Army pages were live as recently as November, with many visible until February or March. None are shown with error messages until Trump took office.
Asked about the missing pages, Pentagon Press Secretary John Ullyot replied in a statement: “As Secretary [Pete] Hegseth has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department. … We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms.”
“In the rare cases that content is removed that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct components accordingly.”
The statement did not address whether the Code Talkers are considered divisive DEI figures that “erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution.”
Far right MAGA provocateurs have a sick idea to make this country explode
I’m pretty sure this is designed to spur massive street protests so that Trump can do what he wanted to do the first time: shoot protesters:
Prominent supporters of President Trump — led by podcaster Ben Shapiro — are fueling a major push to pardon Derek Chauvin, the white former Minnesota police officer convicted of killing George Floyd in 2020…
Shapiro, whose podcast episodes often break the Top 10 on Apple’s charts, launched the campaign early this month with a petition to convince Trump to issue the pardon. Shapiro has long dismissed the existence of systemic racism.
Earlier this month, Trump said he hadn’t heard of the push to pardon Chauvin. Shapiro’s petition has now surpassed 50,000 signatures.
Shapiro is launching a five-part docuseries titled “The Case for Derek Chauvin” that will start airing on his show Tuesday.
Shapiro claims that Chauvin was unjustly convicted and that Floyd’s death was caused by underlying health issues and drug use.
Chauvin would not be released if Trump pardoned him because he was also convicted on state charges. Shapiro claims that Chauvin could be released earlier if he were pardoned on the federal charges because it would somehow show that the conviction was unjust.
This is why I think it’s a ruse to cause an explosive reaction so that Trump can bring the hammer down. There’s no other reason to do it.
I will not be surprised if Trump goes there. He is addled and drunk with power. Why wouldn’t he?
I know that sounds weird, but that’s what the new leader of the agency says
HBO still Chernobyl
I think we all assumed that the job of the Environmental Protection Agency was pretty specific: the protect the environment. The new administrator says that while they want to ensure that America has clean air and water they have a much bigger priority:
Zeldin touched on regulatory reform and the changes the agency will make that he says will spur economic growth. “It means that it’s going to be easier to purchase a car. It’s going to be easier to heat your home. Operating a small business is going to be easier for people who are looking for employment, are going to have more opportunities.”
The Environmental Protection Agency plans to eliminate its scientific research arm, firing as many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists, according to documents reviewed by Democrats on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
The strategy is part of large-scale layoffs, known as a “reduction in force,” being planned by the Trump administration, which is intent on shrinking the federal work force. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the E.P.A., has said he wants to eliminate 65 percent of the agency’s budget. That would be a drastic reduction — one that experts said could hamper clean water and wastewater improvements, air quality monitoring, the cleanup of toxic industrial sites, and other parts of the agency’s mission.
The E.P.A.’s plan, which was presented to White House officials on Friday for review, calls for dissolving the agency’s largest department, the Office of Research and Development, and purging up to 75 percent of the people who work there.
I guess King Donald is going to sign an Executive Order declaring that all water, air and land be free of pollutants and it will be done. That’s the way America works now, apparently.
By the way:
The E.P.A.’s science office provides the independent research that undergirds virtually all of the agency’s environmental policies, from analyzing the risks of “forever chemicals” in drinking water to determining the best way to reduce fine particle pollution in the atmosphere. It has researched synthetic playground material made from discarded tires; found that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, can contaminate drinking water; and measured the impact of wildfire smoke on public health. The office also helps state environmental agencies figure out how to address algae blooms, treat drinking water and more.
