Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Oh, the stories behind these stories

It’s getting noticed, that story I mentioned Tuesday about Judge Jefferson Griffin, the losing Republican N.C. Supreme Court candidate’, and his desperate attempt to cancel 60,000 votes in an effort to narrow the 734 vote gap between himself and sitting Justice Allison Riggs.

Judd Legum’s Popular Information:

The contest between Griffin and Riggs was very close. The initial count showed Riggs with a lead of 734 votes out of 5.5 million cast. Griffin then exercised his legal right to request a machine recount of all ballots. After that recount, Riggs was still ahead by the same margin. Griffin has now requested a second recount of the ballots, this time by hand. Under North Carolina’s procedures, there will first be a hand recount of 3% of the ballots cast. If the North Carolina Election Board determines that the partial hand recount revealed a sufficient number of discrepancies to suggest the outcome could change, a full hand recount will take place.

There is nothing particularly unusual about requesting recounts in close elections. But Griffin is also taking a page out of President-elect Donald Trump’s playbook and claiming that tens of thousands of votes were cast illegally. Griffin’s campaign sent postcards to the voters whose ballots it is seeking to invalidate, alerting them of the protest. Popular Information obtained a photo of one of the postcards. [See above]

Riggs’ campaign says the “postcards have sowed confusion, anger, and frustration among voters who cast their ballots in good faith to make their voices heard.” Among those receiving a postcard notifying them that their vote was under protest were Riggs’ parents.

The now four friends on my county’s list have had a rude awakening. I don’t think they got the postcards. They were contacted by me. Griffin has challeged nearly 1,600 voters in my county alone.

The Asheville Watchdog’s Peter Lewis (formerly senior writer, editor, and columnist with The New York Times and more) quotes campaign spokespersons:

“Our priority remains ensuring that every legal vote is counted and that the public can trust the integrity of this election,” state Republican Party spokesperson Matt Mercer said in a news release. Embry Owen, Riggs’s campaign manager, said Griffin’s protests were a “last-ditch effort to deny the will of voters across the state.”

Those unfamiliar with election proccesses may not grasp the weediness of the challenge.

The bulk of the challenges involve the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which in North Carolina requires voters to provide the last four digits of their Social Security number or their NC driver’s license number. Anyone attempting to vote in 2024 whose voter registration records did not already include the ID numbers should have been required at the polls to provide those numbers. 

Under state law, all voters in 2024 were required to show proper identification before being allowed to vote. But there is no uniform method among the counties for capturing that information on voter forms. Even if a poll worker requested and verified a voter’s ID, precinct computers are not linked to any database for security reasons, so no corrections or additions to the registration could be made.

That’s correct. It’s not as if these people never presented that information. The state has no process outside the local board offices for logging it. Not the voters’ problem. But that’s the loophole Republicans now want to drive a bus through to narrow the vote gap and overturn the election results.

Republicans insist we need more accurate voter rolls but won’t pay for making it happen. As in so many other cases, they’d rather have the issue to run on than fix the problem. But they will exploit the problem to cancel people’s votes, including their own. There are 300 Republican voters on the challenge list in my county alone.

Oh, the stories behind these stories. But that’s for another time.

Resistance could be fruitful

Step back from the ledge. Take a break from news about the punishments the Jan. 20 Revolution plans to roll out against its enemies, and against friends who won’t publicly abase themselves before the king. “That wasn’t humiliating enough. Grovel lower!”

Need a redoubt against Trumpism that doesn’t require a passport? Fifteen blue states, especially those in which Democrats control both executive and legislative branches, are preparing to hold the line against the incoming Trump administration’s predations. Their weapon of choice? Federalism. What a concept.

Democrats and their lawyers have laid plans to defend reproductive rights and hold the line against mass deportations. But more than that, they’ve outlined “a new progressive vision of federalism—pugilistic and creative, audacious and idealistic.” They mean to “filch tactics” deployed to punishing effect by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott who has perfected a form of “hegemonic federalism” to work his will and annoy Democratic state governments.

Franklin Foer explains at The Atlantic:

I have heard a few hastily sketched ideas for how Democrats could mimic Abbott’s coercive ploys. Blue states might aggressively recruit ob-gyns from states with severe restrictions on abortion, leaving behind a red-state shortage of medical care. Women in those states, even ones who aren’t especially passionate about abortion, might begin clamoring to ease abortion bans—or punishing the Republican politicians who installed them in the first place. The goal is to apply pressure on Republican governors by provoking a political backlash from within.

Another set of proposals involves deploying massive public-employee pension funds that Democratic states control to make strategic investments in red states. By sinking money into Texas’s wind industry, for instance, blue states would do more than just expand alternative-energy options in the state. They would unleash a powerful interest group, which might help reshape the political dynamic in the state.

Muahahaha!

The goal, Foer writes, is to get blue state governors “to think sensationalistically in order to call attention to the failures of Republican policies.” But there’s a more virtuous side too. Think Progressive Era Wisconsin Gov. Robert La Follette and his “Wisconsin Idea.”

Consider: California’s economic clout and population size mean that policies like auto emission standards born there eventually migrate east, not by force of ideology, but by force of the Almighty American Dollar.

The innovation that the new federalists propose is that the blue states begin to leverage their big budgets—and their outsize influence—by acting in concert. Banding together into a cartel, they can wield their scale to bargain to buy goods at discount. There are drafts of plans to form a collective of states that would purchase insulin and other prescription drugs, which might help mitigate the higher costs of living in their states. (After the Dobbs decision, California Governor Gavin Newsom spearheaded an alliance that began to stockpile the abortion pill misoprostol.) Or they could cooperate to buy solar panels en masse, with the hopes of transforming clean-energy markets.

It’s not just about teaming up for the sake of bulk purchases. They can collaborate on creating a joint set of standards, which becomes the basis for legislating and regulating. By creating uniform rules for, say, corporate governance or animal welfare or the disclosure of dark-money contributions to nonprofits, they stand a chance of shaping the standard for the entirety of the country, because it’s cumbersome for a national corporation to adhere to two sets of guidelines for raising chickens.

Whether Democrats can get their acts together enough to act in concert is the trick.

Oh great, another one:

Donald Trump’s pick to head the Internal Revenue Service pressed the agency to investigate and consider stripping the country’s leading animal welfare group of its tax status after it supported an initiative to protect dogs, according to documents reviewed by The Lever.

If former Missouri Republican Rep. Billy Long is confirmed to run the Internal Revenue Services (IRS), he would be in a position to strip — and effectively shut down — the tax status of such nonprofit groups whose missions he disagrees with. And Long could have new powers to do so if Congress enacts a pending House-passed bill to grant the Trump administration new powers to rescind the tax status of groups it deems “terrorist supporting organizations.”

In 2011, Long signed a letter pushing the IRS to launch a probe of the tax-exempt status of the Humane Society of the United States, a nonprofit that focuses on animal welfare and opposes animal cruelty. The letter followed the Humane Society’s support of a successful Missouri ballot measure strengthening regulations on dog breeders.

The letter, which was signed by Long and five other members of Congress, claimed that public documents showed “beyond question that lobbying is a ‘substantial part’ of [the Human Society’s] activities, and feel the IRS’s failure to act is attributable to the politically sensitive nature of [the society’s] activities,” they argued. “Due to this, we write to request investigations by the Inspector General into [the Human Society’s] apparent improper activities and its tax-exempt status.” 

He’s a far-right, Trump worshipping troll. His twitter feed might as well be some Q-Anon freak’s hobby and he’s clearly on it night and day. He even believes that shutting down cruel puppy mills is a socialist plot.

Kakistocracy: government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state.

Idiocracy: a society or group that is controlled by or consists of people of low intelligence.

"You can be the most worthless Republican in America, but if you kiss the ring, he’ll say you’re wonderful." – Ron DeSantis, literally a week ago. pic.twitter.com/gOq3hBOzGw

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) January 21, 2024

Whether Trump abandons Pete Hegseth for Ron DeSantis, the reports that he’s been in talks with DeSantis about a cabinet position since last summer is a sad comment on Ron Desantis. Like so many others, he abandoned all sense of personal pride and integrity to suck up to a man who humiliated him in the most grotesque ways possible:

Donald J. Trump plumbed new depths of degradation in his savage takedown of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a yearlong campaign of emasculation and humiliation that helped force one of the party’s rising stars out of the presidential race after just one contest and left him to pick up the pieces of his political future.

In front of enormous rally audiences, Mr. Trump painted Mr. DeSantis as a submissive sniveler, insisting that he had cried and begged “on his knees” for an endorsement in the 2018 Florida governor’s race.

In a series of sexually charged attacks, Mr. Trump suggested — without a shred of proof — that Mr. DeSantis wore high heels, that he might be gay and that perhaps he was a pedophile.

He promised that intense national scrutiny would leave Mr. DeSantis whining for “mommy.”

Mr. DeSantis shied from fighting back, which only inflicted more pain on his campaign. The governor had portrayed himself as one of the Republican Party’s fiercest political brawlers, but he pulled his punches in the most important race of his life.

Ick. I will never understand how people can be so willing to come crawling to this disgusting bully after he does that to him. There are other jobs, other paths in life than politics. The fact that they are so willing to completely debase themselves for this monster says everything about their character. They’re the last people I would want to see in charge of national security. They’re cowards.

Look who’s complaining about partisan manipultion of the courts:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) vented his displeasure Monday after two Democratic-appointed federal judges reversed their decisions to retire in what appear to be efforts to stop President-elect Trump from nominating their successors.

McConnell called the unusual decisions to forgo retirement following Trump’s sweeping victory last month a “partisan” gambit that would undermine the integrity of federal courts.

“They rolled the dice that a Democrat could replace them, and now that he won’t, they’re changing their plans to keep a Republican from doing it,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.

You cannot make this shit up. McConnell is the guy who held open a lifetime appointment Supreme Court seat until Trump could fill it and then rushed through another one so that he could again allow Trump to fill it. Shamelessness is their superpower.

As Digby wrote earlier, Republicans ought to think twice about confirming Kash Patel, “Hoover had everyone under his thumb, not just the liberals. ”

On Cliff Schecter’s Youtube channel today is a video about Kash Patel, “a very emotionally and intellectually damaged “person,” has long been a fave of Trump’s bc he’s a Stalinist to the core. Not very bright, but very vengeful & very loyal to whichever authoritarian he serves. He was installed at the Defense Dept in 2020 to help w Trump’s coup. Gee, why would Trump want him running “his” FBI??”

Yesterday I watched hours of Kash Patel videos on Rumble and YouTube. The things that people on the left find horrifying, the right LOVES. “Drain the SWAMP! Fire everyone! Prosecute TRAITORS!” But what we have seen is that what upsets the RW is the only way we can stop Trump’s nominees. In the video I watched, Patel on The Shawn Ryan Show September 2, 2024, I found the comment that will get the RIGHT to push him out.

Patel’s plan is to take a way the money making power of 51 intelligence community people by revoking their security clearance.

I think THIS is what will crush his nomination. The intelligence community won’t be obvious that they want to protect their revenue streams, but they will find something bad enough to upset the GOP. Like how they got rid of the DEA sheriff nomination because he was too tough on some mega church pastor in Florida that didn’t follow the COVID laws.
THAT is how you get rid of someone on the right. YOU SHOW the times they were too LEFTY.

What people need to prepared for is that Patel will blame the LEFT for losing the nomination for FBI. But he won’t go away. Just like Matt Gaetz won’t go away. I expect Patel to lash out at EVERYONE, so the RW won’t want their fingers on the leaks/ story. But this is one way government employees will protect themselves against Trump’s nutballs.

As I said on the Nicole Sandler show, we need to keep finding ways to knock down Trump MAGA, the media isn’t going to do it for us. The Dems are afraid, the Republicans are afraid. So we look for who will LOSE money because of Trump’s minions. They can see this as a zero sum game for revenue and play the hardball that we can’t.

Zach Beauchamp at Vox made an inhuman sacrifice:

To try and understand Patel better, I listened to every episode and clip tagged with “Kash Patel” on the War Room website — and a few others that Bannon’s team missed. The overwhelming impression is that Patel is a man whose entire worldview revolves around paranoid conspiracy theories — specifically, conspiracies against both America and Trump, which for him are one and the same. It’s a specific kind of obsession that reminds me of the FBI’s first director: J. Edgar Hoover, a man who infamously abused his power to persecute political enemies.

During his various appearances on Bannon’s show, Patel and/or his interviewees declared that:

-China is funding the Democratic Party and sending “military-aged males” across the Mexican and Canadian borders to prepare for a preemptive strike.

-Barack Obama directs a “shadow network” that is quietly directing the intelligence community and Big Tech to persecute Trump.

-Attorney General Merrick Garland wants to throw “all of us” — which is to say, Trump allies — in prison.

He wants to fight fire with fire:

In one episode, he called on the Republican majority in Congress to unilaterally arrest Garland — invoking an obscure legal doctrine called “inherent contempt” that has never been used in this fashion in the entirety of American history. In another, he outlined a plan for a MAGA blitz of American institutions focused on getting loyalists into high office.

[…]

Patel, in short, is the kind of man who could become Trump’s Hoover: a man willing to push federal law enforcement into dangerously anti-democratic territory in pursuit of alleged domestic enemies.

That’s exactly what Trump wants. And these Republicans ought to think twice about confirming him. Hoover had everyone under his thumb, not just the liberals. That’s why he was given a lifetime appointment.

The corruption is right out in the open. Popular Information reports:

On November 25,Chinese Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun purchased $30 million in crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial, a new crypto venture backed by President-elect Donald Trump. Sun said his company, TRON, was committed to “making America great again.”

World Liberty Financial planned to sell $300 million worth of crypto tokens, known as WLF, which would value the new company at $1.5 billion. But, before Sun’s $30 million purchase, it appeared to be a bust, with only $22 million in tokens sold. Sun now owns more than 55% of purchased tokens.

Sun’s decision to buy $30 million in WLF tokens has direct and immediate financial benefits for Trump. A filing by the company in October revealed that “$30 million of initial net protocol revenues” will be “held in a reserve… to cover operating expenses, indemnities, and obligations.” After the reserve is met, a company owned by Donald Trump, DT Marks DEFI LLC, will receive “75% of the net protocol revenues.”

So before Sun’s purchase, Trump was entitled to nothing because the reserve had not been met. But Sun’s purchase covered the entire reserve, so now Trump is entitled to 75% of the revenues from all other tokens purchased. As of December 1, there have been $24 million WLF tokens sold, netting Trump $18 million.

$18 million as a straight up gift from a crypto billionaire who has already been charged by the SEC with violating the Securities act. Sun’s tokens are worthless to him — well, except as bribes to the soon to be most powerful man in the world.

And nobody gives a damn. None of the major papers have written major stories about this graft (well, they don’t have a lot of resources to devote to it with all the reporters covering the Biden pardon scandal so…)

As Popular Info reports in this story that represents a shocking double standard:

In the leadup to the 2016 election, there was extensive coverage from every major media outlet concerning how foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation created conflicts of interest for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. This was a legitimate subject of journalistic inquiry but differed in several respects from Sun’s enrichment of Trump:

1. Nearly all of the payments to the Clinton Foundation at issue occurred when Clinton was not in public office. Most of the coverage centered around donations made after Clinton left the State Department and before she launched her presidential campaign.

2. The foreign money was donated to benefit the Clinton Foundation, a charity, and not Clinton personally. The money did not go into Clinton’s bank account, but to the foundation’s charitable activities.

3. The Clinton Foundation disclosed its donors, even though it was not required.

4. Clinton had not been elected president.

An analysis by Popular Information reveals that between January 1, 2015, and November 8, 2016 (Election Day), the New York Times published 79 pieces that were about or referenced foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation. That is nearly one story a week for 22 months.

In a February 20, 2015, column by the New York Times Editorial Board — before Clinton had formally announced her candidacy — the paper emphasized why even an indirect connection between a presidential candidate and foreign dollars was deeply problematic:

Foreign nationals are banned by law from contributing to American politicians’ campaign coffers. This ban does not apply to private foundations, but the idea behind it — that influence should not be bought — is relevant to a political campaign, where appearances can count for much.

…Substantial overlap was found between foundation contributors and familiar Clinton campaign donors and money bundlers. Considering the Clintons’ popularity and influence in their party, this is no surprise. But it does make it important that Mrs. Clinton, in defending the family’s efforts on behalf of the world’s needy, reassure the public that the foundation will not become a vehicle for insiders’ favoritism, should she run for and win the White House.

After Clinton declared her candidacy in April 2015, the Clinton Foundation reimposed restrictions on foreign donations, increased the frequency of its voluntary disclosures, and announced it would stop holding events overseas. The New York Times noted that “questions about the donations have created weeks of negative headlines for Mrs. Clinton leading up to her campaign rollout.”

About this time the Times made a deal with Steve Bannon associate Peter Schweizer to coollaborate on this story, much of which was based upon Schweizer’s bogus “expose” called “Clinton Cash.” The stories and editorials were endless, month after month. It was the lowest point in NY Times history since Judith Miller’s WMD stories in the run-up to the Iraq war.

“The foundation’s ties to foreign governments and financiers have long been fodder for Mrs. Clinton’s critics — chief among them Donald J. Trump — who contend that foreigners used donations to the foundation to curry favor with the Clintons while Mrs. Clinton was the country’s top diplomat,” the New York Times reported on October 15, 2016. That story was about a hacked email revealing that the Qatari government, who donated to the Clinton Foundation, requested to meet with Clinton. The email was treated as a potential scandal even though there was no evidence such a meeting ever occurred.

The New York Times’ approach to foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation was not unique. A review of Washington Post coverage over the same time period reveals dozens of similar articles. The Washington Post, for example, highlighted the pledge to stop accepting foreign donations if Clinton won the election meant “donors could race to give money before the deadline — but in time to curry favor with a Democratic nominee who is leading in the polls.”

The Washington Post finally filed a story about the crypto gift yesterday. Nobody else has bothered to note that Trump is putting those millions of dollars directly into his personal coffers from a foreign player since the election.

Oh, and by the way, the top officers in “World Liberty Financial” happen to be Don Jr and Eric. Good thing they aren’t members of the Biden Crime Family or there would be hell to pay.

Clinton rules vs Trump rules vs Biden rules.

It looks like Pete Hegseth is in serious trouble. The sleaze just keeps pouring out from every direction. I doubt Trump or any Republicans really care about the womanizing and misogyny. That’s the brand. But the drunkeness may be a dealbreaker for Trump.

According to Marc Caputo at the Bulwark he’s already looking elsewhere:

DONALD TRUMP AND RON DESANTIS have personally discussed the possibility of the Florida governor becoming the next secretary of defense amid concerns that sexual assault allegations could engulf the president-elect’s current nominee for the post, Pete Hegseth.

The talks, relayed by four sources briefed on them, are in their advanced stages. They underscore the fears within Trump world about Hegseth’s ability to survive a Senate confirmation process—despite public posturing from Hegseth and allies that he remains committed to ending up at DoD.

“These discussions are real. It’s serious. I can’t say it’s definitely going to happen, but the governor is receptive and Trump is serious, too,” a top Republican source familiar with the conversations told The Bulwark on condition of anonymity.

The discussions around DeSantis involvele persona untangling several different political threads. The governor is currently handling the fallout of a separate Trump cabinet pick: Marco Rubio’s nomination to be secretary of state. DeSantis is weighing whether to appoint Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, to fill Rubio’s Senate seat. The possibility that the governor himself could end up at the Pentagon may factor into that decision.

How convenient.

DeSantis is qualified. He’s a Navy vet and has run the state of Florida. I can’t imagine he would balk at Trump’s desire to declare martial law and shoot protesters or send troops to invade Mexico, since he endorsed all those things during his campaign. It’s possible that he might be less likely than a drunken Hegseth to back an order to drop a nuclear bomb on Canada or something but maybe not. He’s as MAGA as MAGA can be, a true blue neo-fascist. If Trump wasn’t such a fool for a good lookin’ man he would have picked him in thefirst place.

Caputo’s source seemed to think that Hegseth is dead in the water: “Trump talking to DeSantis while this is all going on is a sure sign that Trump doesn’t think Pete is gonna make it.”

Loyalty only goes one way. It’s clear that Trump could really not care less if his first choice makes it or not. He’s ready to toss them aside if they get into trouble. He is impervious to criticism, embarrassment or shame. He just does what he wants. If I were Kash, Tulsi and Bobby I wouldn’t waste too much time preparing for these new jobs. There’s every reason to believe they’ll get tossed too, only to be replaced by another MAGA henchman. They all serve at the pleasure of the king.

There are a thousand election hot takes and post mortems floating around these days and I’m sure in due time we’ll come to some consensus about what drove the Trump victory, (now down to a whopping 1.48% margin and shrinking.) But if there’s one thing we do know it’s that he won both of his elections at least in part by shedding some Republican Party orthodoxy that had been bringing them down for ages. He knows a third rail when he sees one.

If there’s one issue that differentiated Trump from other Republicans from the minute he came down that golden escalator it was his promise to preserve the so-called entitlement programs. He made it clear:  “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” and it may have been the key to his success in that first campaign. By so boldly declaring those programs off limits he created an aura of post-ideological Republicanism, something that allowed people to buy into his fake persona as a self-made businessman who played by different rules to get things done.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/596338364187602944

He lied. His proposed budgets cut the programs every year he was in office. As Vox reported back in 2019:

Over the next 10 years, Trump’s 2020 budget proposal aims to spend $1.5 trillion less on Medicaid — instead allocating $1.2 trillion in a block-grant program to states — $25 billion less on Social Security, and $845 billion less on Medicare (some of that is reclassified to a different department). Their intentions are to cut benefits under Medicaid and Social Security.

Medicare was supposed to be cut as well, through a complicated mechanism that reallocated some of its funds. Obviously, the congress didn’t approve those cuts so it didn’t happen but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

That last budget was put together by the man Trump is bringing back as his Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and one of the principal authors of Project 2025, Russell Vought. It’s highly questionable whether Vought will be as circumspect about the plans to cut the programs this time or whether Trump will care because all of that was predicated on Trump’s need to run for office again. Without that hanging over their heads they have no need to hold back. Republicans have wanted to do away with those programs since they were first passed. This may be their chance to finally get it done.

As we know, Trump has pledged to create a sexy new government commission led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy called the “Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE (the acronym cutely chosen to evoke the crypto scheme by the same name in which Musk is heavily invested.) Vought has said that he plans to work closely with the commission to use executive action to accomplish the slashing and burning of government programs they’re promising.

Vought hasn’t openly called for cutting Social Security retiree benefits but has promoted cutting disability payments and Medicaid and fully privatising Medicare. His history suggests, however, that given the go-ahead he will gleefully take a meat ax to the program. Musk however, has been clear that he believes the government has to be cut to the bone immediately which he admits will cause “hardship” that we will just have to bear. After all, he did that with Tesla and Twitter, how is that different from the United States federal government? Well, except for the massive scale and complexity…

This week, the far right Senator from Utah, Mike Lee posted a thread on twitter/X in which he claims that Social Security is a scam that the government mismanages and must be reformed so that people can “invest” their money and avoid “dependence.” (Back when America was Great — the 1890s or the 1790s or whenever — that’s how it worked. Sure many elderly people lived in abject poverty because they forgot to become rich but at least they had their independence.)

Elon Musk found Lee’s fantasy history and disinformation “interesting” and amplified it on his X platform.

It’s the same old story. In fact, the last time they tried this after President George W. Bush declared he had a mandate from his re-election victory, it ushered in a massive Democratic congressional takeover in the midterms and a two term Democratic presidency. The financial crisis hit and everyone in America saw the wisdom of having at least a portion of their old age or disability safety net guaranteed by the government instead of Wall Street. I suppose it’s possible that it’s ancient history to a lot of people but I kind of doubt it is for anyone over 50.

But it’s possible they won’t even try to sell it that way. Musk expects people to suffer in order to save the country from bankruptcy which he has decided is imminent and Vought and his right wing Christian nationalist allies want to completely decimate the “administrative state” so they may just declare that the program is insolvent and cut the benefits across the board.

There are at least some members of congress ready for action. Rep. Richard McCormick of Georgia on Fox said they have to “have the stomach” to make some “hard decisions.”

Rep. Richard McCormick: "We're gonna have to have some hard decisions. We're gonna have to bring in the Democrats to talk about Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare. There's hundreds of billions of dollars to be saved, we just have to have the stomach to take those challenges on."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2024-12-03T15:37:40.527Z

With what will be a tiny majority in the House it’s very hard to see anything like that passing. Unlike Trump they have to face the voters again. But we do know that Vought is a big fan of “impoundment” which basically says that the president can spend money however he wants regardless of what the congress has intended. (He actually used this concept to justify the withholding of funds to Ukraine which led to Trump’s first impeachment.)

This practice was actually outlawed in the 1970s after the previous criminal president, Richard Nixon, refused to allow funds to be spent the way the Democratic congress allocated it but it hasn’t been fully tested in court. It is highly likely that the DOGE group and Vought at OMB are going to try to use this concept to sidestep the congress completely. Whether they have the nerve to attempt it with something as massive as Social Security or Medicare remains to be seen. But those programs are the right’s great white whale and I wouldn’t be surprised if they make another attempt to finally kill them.

Donald Trump certainly won’t care. He never has to face another voter and that is the only reason he ever promised to keep his hands off of the programs in the first place. He can do somersaults on the third rail now and it can’t hurt him at all. His party is another story but then, he doesn’t care about them either. 

Salon