Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg will attend President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, according to an official involved with the planning of the event.
They will have a prominent spot at the ceremony, seated together on the platform with other notable guests including Trump’s Cabinet nominees and elected officials.
That image is going to be iconic. It says everything.
The New York Times is reporting that Elon Musk is preparing to set up the Department of Government Efficiency in the Eisenhower Building, which is less than a five-minute walk from the White House. It’s still unclear if the billionaire will have complete unfettered access to the West Wing (that requires a “special pass”), but at this point it’s obvious that the CEO—who has billions of dollars in federal and international contracts—will be a full-time cast member in Trump’s second term.
It’s still unclear what exactly DOGE will look like in D.C., as it is not an official government department and Musk is not a government employee. This would mean Musk and DOGE should be kept out of certain meetings and relationships, especially given the federal contracts Musk’s companies hold. Some Trump transition officials who spoke with the Times suggested that Musk could get an all-access West Wing pass by becoming a “special government employee.” But Trump is also very comfortable blurring those lines, or just erasing them altogether.
And running his businesses at the same time! He’s a busy boy. It’s nice that Musk will be able to keep an eye on all his government contracts from the inside. But then Trump will be doing the same thing so why not?
Trump: When I was president, I demanded that this guy, the governor, accept the water coming from the north, from way up in Canada. And, you know, the north, it flows down through right through Los Angeles. I mean, massive millions and millions of gallons of water a week,… pic.twitter.com/rnfbadSlkk
When I was president, I demanded that this guy, the governor, accept the water coming from the north, from way up in Canada. And, you know, the north, it flows down through right through Los Angeles. I mean, massive millions and millions of gallons of water a week, probably, I think, even a day. Massive amounts coming out from the mountains, from the melts. And even without it, even during the summer, it’s a natural flow of water. They would have had so much water they wouldn’t have known what to do with it. You would have never had the fires. People would have been able to sprinkle their lawns and everything else. You know, the problem is it’s so dry. It was always so dry there. And it’s just it’s just a mess. They could have maintained their forests.
He’s brain damaged.
It was a miracle the planet survived this man being in office for four years. The odds are getting worse every day that we’ll do it again.
I’m sorry to keep banging this drum but it’s never been more relevant that Trump isn’t just ignorant, he’s delusional. This is insane.
As Congress begins confirmation hearings today for Donald Trump’s candidates for key federal posts, I offer simple questions Democrats should ask each.
When Donald Trump nominated you, did you consider saying no because you felt unqualified for the job?
If not, why not?
If yes, why did you accept anyway?
Hell, I’m no more qualified for these posts that Trump’s “look good on TV” nominees.
"What is the Trump team’s rebuttal to Hegseth’s lack of management experience? As incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told The New York Times last week, 'That’s what staff is for.' ”TERRIFIC! How do I apply to be CEO of Apple? thehill.com/newsletters/…
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R) of Louisiana said Monday “there should probably be conditions” on any federal aid package to help California recover from the devastation wrought by apocalyptic wildfires.
Johnson criticized the response of California’s state government, claiming it amounted to dereliction of duty.
“Obviously, there has been water resource management, forest management, mistakes, all sorts of problems, and it does come down to leadership, and it appears to us that state and local leaders were derelict in their duty, and in many respects,” he said. “So, that’s something that has to be factored in.”
Mr. Speaker, as Arlo Guthrie once said to the sergeant, “you got a lot a damn gall” to talk about California’s water resource management, unspecified “problems,” and dereliction of duty.
Large portions of Louisiana parishes, particularly around New Orleans, obviously lie below sea level. Much of your state’s coastline is slowly sinking into the sea. Louisiana keeps its feet dry and protected from flooding by over 3,000 miles of levees, nearly three-quarters installed and maintained with federal tax dollars. (BTW, Californians contribute 14 times as much to the federal treasury each year as Louisiana.) Since 1932, Louisiana has lost “an area nearly twice the size of Rhode Island.” Presently, Louisiana and its state and local leaders lose 25-35 square miles of land each year to the sea.
Lost, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps you can explain that? If not now, the next time you ask for disaster assistance for your state. Or perhaps you’d prefer to ask your bronzered savior to extend his, um, staff, to keep the Gulf of America at bay.
Lack of self-awareness is also a conservative superpower.
Update: Not to put too fine a point on it.
🔥 WATCH: Jon Stewart shreds @senatorhagerty’s cruel hypocrisy about conditioning aid to California Jon is absolutely right that Bill demanded immediate strings-free aid when Tennessee was in need, and that the senator is utterly and completely without shame.Full: www.threads.net/@thetnholler…
Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted President-elect Donald J. Trump on charges of seeking to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, said in a final report released early Tuesday morning that he believed the evidence was sufficient to convict Mr. Trump in a trial if his success in the 2024 election had not made it impossible for the prosecution to continue.
“The department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a president is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s proof or the merits of the prosecution, which the office stands fully behind,” Mr. Smith wrote.
He continued: “Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”
The Justice Department delivered the 137-page volume — representing half of Mr. Smith’s overall final report, with the volume about the classified documents case still confidential — to Congress just after midnight Tuesday morning.
The report, obtained by The New York Times, amounted to an extraordinary rebuke of a president-elect, capping a momentous legal saga that saw the man now poised to regain the powers of the nation’s highest office charged with crimes that struck at the heart of American democracy. And although Mr. Smith resigned as special counsel late last week, his recounting of the case also served as a reminder of the vast array of evidence and detailed accounting of Mr. Trump’s actions that he had marshaled.
I read it. (Being on the West Coast made it easier) It’s what we know but with all the legal analysis that led them to conclude that Trump had committed crimes — even after the Supremes dropped their ridiculous immunity bomb.
It’s pretty clear from the report, although he doesn’t say it, that he believes the Supreme Court decision was an abomination, not least because it left so many loose ends that it would have taken years to unravel (which I assume was a feature not a bug.) I’d guess that was all for the purpose of protecting Dear Leader had he lost the election. They were never going to let him be tried. I think they would have dragged it out until he was in his grave if need be.
I have not read all the footnotes where I assume any juicy tidbits are. I’ll try to take a closer look later but I would guess that Emptywheel is already on it anyway. Just reading the summary recounting once again what a lying, corrupt cretin he is is overwhelmingly depressing. More people voted for this criminal pig than didn’t because the price of eggs was too high and a bunch of others stayed home because they just didn’t give a shit.
Here we go. It looks like Trump and the boys have found an excellent way to get those tax cuts for the wealthy:
House Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed to reporters Monday there’s “been some discussion” of tying California wildfire aid to a debt limit increase, after GOP members raised the issue with Donald Trump in several meetings at the President-elect’s Florida resort this weekend.
The notion that Congress could make the release of disaster relief dollars conditional upon also agreeing to raise the debt ceiling is already facing pushback from some Democrats.
But many California Republicans, including Rep. Doug LaMalfa, said in a brief interview Monday they may have no choice but to pursue that option given the potential urgency around addressing the Los Angles fires, paired with the reality that the nation could default on its borrowing authority in a matter of months.
Linking the two issues together could bring a larger coalition of support to the table from both sides of the aisle and allow Johnson (R-La.) to deliver Trump a debt ceiling increase sooner rather than later.
It looks like all those California Republicans who went to Mar a Lago to kiss the ring over the weekend while their state burned made a deal. Gosh, I sure hope Dear Leader gave them an excellent treat for that. Maybe one of those signed Bibles.
One of the unwritten rules of American politics is that it’s OK to sneer at and smear our big cities and the people who live in them, while it’s an outrageous act of disrespect to suggest that there’s anything wrong with the Heartland. And many people believe the smears; visitors to New York are often shocked to find that one of the safest places in America isn’t the hellscape they were told to expect.
These delusions of dystopia are sometimes funny, but they can have real consequences. As you read this, much of America’s second-largest city is an actual hellscape. But many politicians, from the president-elect on down, are showing zero sympathy, insisting that California — which in its own way gets trash-talked as much as New York —somehow brought this disaster on itself by being too liberal, too woke, or something. And this lack of sympathy may translate into refusal to provide adequate disaster aid.
Somehow I doubt that Florida will get the same treatment when (not if) it has its next big natural disaster. (The Biden administration responded with complete, unconditional support to regions hit by Hurricane Helene and other storms, although that hasn’t stopped Republican politicians, like Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee, from lying and claiming that aid was delayed.)
At a fundamental level the case for helping California get through this is moral: Americans should help Americans in their hour of need. But this also seems like a good time to remind people just how much the Golden State contributes to American greatness.
Before I get there: Yes, California has problems, some of them big. There are pockets of social disorder, although the fact that so many luxury homes are burning tells us that many people who could live anywhere find greater Los Angeles a highly desirable place to be. More important, California suffers terribly from NIMBYism, which has led to grossly inadequate home construction, crippling housing costs and a lot of homelessness.
But California is nonetheless an economic and technological powerhouse; without it America would be a lot poorer and weaker than it is.
Most narrowly, at a time when Donald Trump is making nonsensical claims that America is subsidizing Canada via our bilateral trade deficit, California is literally subsidizing the rest of the United States, red states in particular, through the federal budget.
The Rockefeller Institute regularly calculates states’ balance of payments — the difference between the amount the federal government spends in a state and the amount the state pays in federal taxes. Here’s what per capita balances looked like in 2022, the most recent year available (blue means a state receives more than it gives, orange the reverse):
California paid in a lot more than it got back — $83 billion in total. So did Washington state and much of the Northeast. Most red states were in the reverse position, getting much more from DC than they paid in return. And yes, it’s ironic that states that are so dependent on transfers from other states — if West Virginia were a country, it would in effect be receiving foreign aid equal to more than 20 percent of its GDP — vote overwhelmingly for politicians trying to eviscerate the programs they depend on. […]
High productivity in California (and New York, also included) plays a significant role in making America richer; the nation excluding these powerhouses would have about 6 percent lower GDP per capita.
California makes an especially large contribution to U.S. technological dominance. As I noted a month ago, 8 of America’s top 9 technology companies — all of them if you count pre-Cybertruck Tesla — are based either in Silicon Valley or in Seattle. And while Hollywood doesn’t dominate films and TV the way it once did, Los Angeles still plays a major role in America’s cultural influence (and still generates a lot of income.)
As Krugman says, no state should have to earn empathy and support from the rest of the country in a time of great need:
As it happens, however, California — a major driver of U.S. prosperity and power — definitely has earned the right to receive help during a crisis.
Unfortunately, it looks all too possible that essential aid will be held up or come with onerous strings attached. If so, shame on everyone responsible.
Yeah well, they’re shameless so that means nothing.
There’s been a lot of loose talk since the election about California (and possibly the whole west coast) seceding from the union. It’s just talk, I know. But I have to say that as I listen to right wing politicians demean us and treat us like a colony or a vassal state, it sure feels as if America has seceded from us.
I have long said that shamelessness is the GOP’s superpower. They simply no longer care about honesty and integrity so their supporters no longer care about hypocrisy or accountability.
The New York Times published an analysis noting that a rap sheet “was once a pretty-much-guaranteed disqualifier for the presidency,” which was true. In the not-too-distant past, there was a spirited public discussion about whether a divorced candidate could prevail in a national election; the idea that voters would elect a criminal was too ridiculous to even contemplate.
Indeed, in the wake of Friday’s sentencing, it was hard not to think of something former Ambassador Nikki Haley told NBC News last February, at the height of the fight for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.
“I know the American people are not going to vote for a convicted criminal,” the South Carolinian said. There was simply “no way” this could happen, Haley added.
The assessment might’ve seemed compelling at the time, but GOP primary and caucus voters rallied behind Trump — seemingly indifferent to his laundry list of scandals, controversies, civil disputes and criminal indictments — and just under half of the electorate endorsed the party’s nominee soon after.
When you consider the rogues gallery he’s nominated for his cabinet and ambassadorships, which includes other convicted felons, it’s not just about Trump anymore:
A few days before the president-elect’s sentencing, former Rep. Matt Gaetz told The Tampa Bay Times that he’s “starting to think about” running for governor in 2026, which followed weeks of related comments about his electoral ambitions. At face value, that seemed patently absurd given the devastating recent findings of the House Ethics Committee, which accused the Florida Republican of “regularly” paying women for sex during his tenure on Capitol Hill, using or possessing illegal drugs, accepting improper gifts, and even helping a woman he was having sex with obtain an expedited passport. (Gaetz has long denied any wrongdoing and was never charged.)
But a wide variety of Florida Republicans and prominent MAGA voices shrugged off the findings and said Gaetz might still be a viable GOP candidate for statewide office in the Sunshine State.
Then there’s Hegseth, a man with an obvious drinking problem who has been accused of rape, (and defends war crimes) who appears to be on the cusp of becoming the Secretary of Defense.
Character and criminality clearly do not care anymore. Benen writes:
It is, however, time to reassess what constitutes “career-ending” developments as the Republican Party enters its post-scandal phase. Jonathan Bernstein published a smart piece on this a couple of weeks ago:
… I do not believe that Republicans or conservatives are any more prone to [scandals] than Democrats. What has changed, however, is the incentive structure. Once upon a time both parties were equally likely to rid themselves of bad actors; now Republicans are far more likely to tolerate, and in some cases even celebrate, behavior they once would have shunned.
[…]
…[I]t’s inconceivable that Democrats would consider a presidential candidate with Trump’s background, a gubernatorial candidate with Gaetz’s record, or a defense secretary nominee burdened by the kind of controversies surrounding Hegseth. But in 2025, as the GOP becomes a post-scandal party, the informal partisan rules that define our politics have changed.
I think it’s worse than that. Democrats are subject to massive pseudo-scandals (But Her Emails!) while Republicans are totally immune even from adjudicated criminality. Almost half of American voters have decided to cast off morality and principles, there’s just no other way to look at it.
Not just yet. But the politics of it aren’t very potent
Jonathan Chait takes a look (gift link)at the Democratic strategy which held that if only the party embraced economic populism, the voters would race back into the fold. This idea is still being pushed hard by the likes of James Carville and others who insist that the reason the Dems lost was a lack of attention to the kitchen table issues that Americans care about.
Chait specifically takes on the idea that it was the neoliberalism of the “uniparty” that caused the working class to abandon the Democratic party showing that the Biden administration took that critique seriously by initiating the most populist program since FDR. The progressive wing was passive during the Biden years and for good reason. He passed the kind of legislation they’d agitated for for years.
Unfortunately, that didn’t work out as well politically as we thought it would:
In reality, Biden presided over the most unpopular Democratic presidency since Jimmy Carter’s. In November, working-class voters of all races, the very constituency that Biden’s anti-neoliberal turn was supposed to court, deserted the party. Perhaps hoping for Roosevelt-size majorities was a bit ambitious, but Biden’s sweeping, historic changes ought to have had at least some positive directional impact for the party. Unless, that is, the post-neoliberal theory of politics was wrong all along.
He acknowledges many of the defenses of economic populism in the wake of the defeat and they’re worth looking at as well. They all have some merit, particularly those arguments that the results of Biden’s sweeping policies haven’t taken effect yet so people really had no idea what they would mean to them. Obviously, Biden and the Democrats believed that a second term would see those results and the public would appreciate their accomplishments. However, as he notes, some of them have come online and even if people knew they were a result of Biden’s policies, they just didn’t care. They voted for Trump anyway.
Then there was the problem of inflation which Chait blames on left economic dogmatic rigidity assuming that it wouldn’t be a big deal. (I would have argued that full employment should have been a salve to that problem too, but nobody cares about good high paying jobs when the price of eggs is high, apparently. Live and learn.)
He takes on the idea that it was Biden’s age and the unwillingness or inability of the administration to use the bully pulpit to make its case. He says it was not dispositive but I disagree with Chait here. Biden’s age was almost certainly a huge factor in his unpopularity. I heard it from everyone, people who aren’t engaged in politics and those who follow it as closely as we do. People were incredibly uncomfortable with a geriatric leader and I suspect it was the single most potent reason for his unpopularity.
Harris, of course, wasn’t old. But she was a Black woman who had never been particularly popular with the public and that was if people knew her at all. And she was closely associated with what people believed was a massive failure of the Biden administration.
These were hugely important factors in my opinion. In our fame and celebrity obsessed culture, which is overwhelmingly influenced by propaganda and disinformation, image and narrative are more important than ever. People just didn’t like Biden and Harris much and they inexplicably saw Trump as someone who knew what he was doing.
And I am convinced that the “vibes”narrative hurt Biden immeasurably since the mainstream media absolutely refused to accurately describe economic conditions, hooked as they were on the idea that everyone was suffering. It became a negative feedback loop.
Chait’s take against the anti-neoliberalism is well taken and deserves to be taken seriously. He’s Chait, and therefore annoying, but he’s not wrong. But I shudder to think about his follow up that lays out what he thinks the real reason is that working class Americans abandoned the Democrats and what to do about it. Let’s just say I’m fairly sure he’ll advise Democrats to abandon their values and beliefs about equality, tolerance, pluralism and freedom to accommodate the ignorant paranoia of people who are brainwashed by right wing propaganda.
That won’t work either, I’m afraid. But that’s the way the wind is blowing.
By the way, this is all about the politics. On the merits, economic populism of the sort Biden did was absolutely the right thing to do on the merits. The question is whether it’s enough to win elections and I think that this last election gives us some evidence that it isn’t, at least in this current political environment.
Here is the idea that came to me only as I was saying it, at the end of the discussion with John Heilemann.
Heilemann asked me, What is to be done on policy? And I told him I didn’t know.
And then I said something like: The hard truth is, maybe that’s not what will make a difference for the Democrats.
Maybe the only thing that matters is who presents the policies and ideas. It’s the candidate, rather than exactly what that candidate promises to do.
We didn’t have time to discuss it further at that moment, but here’s what I’ve been thinking since then:
Let’s look back on presidential elections over the past century. Here are the Democrats who became president largely because of their personal magic in the moment. Their personal stories, their bearing, their contrast with the opposing candidate—all of this as opposed to details of their policy platforms.
FDR in 1932—and then 1936, 1940, and 1944. He won in the first place because of the Great Depression, but also because of his jauntiness, his smile, his speeches, his magnetism, in contrast to the honorable but beleaguered Herbert Hoover. As political historians know, FDR ran in 1932 on a platform almost the complete opposite of the New Deal programs he enacted in office. It was the person, more than the policies.
JFK in 1960. The youngest-ever elected president, dashing and impossibly glamorous, after the heroic but aging Dwight Eisenhower, and against Richard Nixon.
Jimmy Carter in 1976. As argued above, he was the country-music-plus-rock-music, born- again Christian, rural South, Martin Luther King Sr-endorsed version of the excitement of JFK.
Bill Clinton in 1992. Yes, it was “the economy, stupid.” But mainly it was a young, energetic, rhetorically gifted, culturally hip new candidate who would look people straight in the eyes and make them feel as if they were the only person who mattered at that moment.
Barack Obama in 2008. See all of the examples above.
By contrast, here are three examples of Democrats who won mainly on “policy” or reasons other than personal magnetism: Harry Truman in 1948, with his “give ‘em hell” campaign. Lyndon Johnson in 1964, thanks to Barry Goldwater and in the wake of JFK’s death. Joe Biden in 2020, thanks to a party united in opposition to Donald Trump.
I think those three—Truman, Johnson, Biden—are exceptions illustrating the rule. Mostly Democrats have won only when their policy ideas, which of course are crucial, are embodied by a candidate who captures lightning at that time.
“Right policy” is necessary but not sufficient. Right person, right vibe, right time—that is how Democrats have mainly won. They had been lucky that the arcs of history and of personal ambition served up, at the appropriate times, FDR, JFK, Carter, Clinton, and Obama, notwithstanding the flaws and limits of each.
I realize that making this point—you need to find a great candidate—is similar to saying “buy low, sell high.” But it’s one more thing that Jimmy Carter’s passing has made me think about. And I’ll try to explore it and other steps in installments to come.
I’ve thought this for quite a while and I would say that it’s never been more important than it is now when it seems that most of politics is conveyed to the masses through memes, symbols and social media posts. I have wracked my brain to see who might fit the bill and I just don’t know. Maybe it’s someone who’s not on the radar just yet.
