Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Pro Publica took a look at a new study about what would happen if the MAHA freaks get their way with vaccines:

Before vaccines, death and disability stalked children. Then shots turned once-common infections into something doctors only read about in textbooks. When immunization rates drop, however, plagues from the past can come roaring back, as measles has in American communities where parents decided not to vaccinate their children. Imagine what would happen if even the people who wanted shots couldn’t get them.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who founded an antivaccination group, is considering changes that could prompt the handful of companies that make most shots for American children to stop selling them here. Over the last year, he has been transforming a government that long championed the lifesaving benefits of vaccines into one that questions their safety here and around the world.

Shortly after Kennedy was nominated, questions swirled over how he might overhaul America’s immunization system. Two Stanford University researchers wondered how many people would suffer if vaccination rates dropped or shots became entirely unavailable for four of the most infamous diseases: polio, measles, rubella and diphtheria.

Outbreaks often start when an American catches one of these illnesses abroad and returns home. So epidemiologists Mathew Kiang and Nathan Lo, who is also an infectious diseases doctor, built a model to simulate how the four contagions could spread from sick travelers based on each state’s vaccination rates.

[…]

The professors ran thousands of simulations for each disease, producing a range of possible outcomes. From there, they figured out the average number of deaths and disabilities over a 25-year period.Their model shows that at current vaccination rates, the nation is already teetering on the brink of an explosion in measles cases — one that would be virtually wiped out with just a 5% increase in vaccination. But if current rates drop by half, all four diseases could return.

The researchers’ modeling of the worst-case scenario assumes a quarter century where no one could get the shots. It doesn’t account for the likelihood of parents going abroad to find vaccines or politicians intervening to ensure drugmakers offer them again. But the results demonstrate in stark terms how vital shots are and what’s at stake if policy changes interfere with Americans’ ability to vaccinate their kids.

It’s not good. Without the polio vaccine at least 23,000 kids will be paralyzed, and that’s al low estimate. Without the measles vaccine over 230,000 will be dead over 25 years and 41,000 babies could be born with congenital rubella syndrome. On average, the model predicts 138,000 deaths from diphtheria, could be a million over 25 years. And those are just the worst cases of paralysis and death. The degree of suffering would be a million times worse.

That’s what these unqualified quacks and weirdos want to do to us.

Read the whole thing for the details. It’s terrifying but important. The medial profession has to step up and put themselves on the line to oppose this quackery.

Here is an interesting piece by Jake Taylor at MS Now about some of the internal discomfort with Trump’s massively stupid Iran non-strategy, particularly the so-called messaging which is something you’d expect from a cartoon villain in a Batman comic:

Nearly one month after the U.S. began strikes on Iran, President Donald Trump is sending thousands of troops to the Middle East to potentially fight in a war he said he has “already won.”

That contradiction has frustrated some senior White House aides and outside allies, three of whom spoke to MS NOW about the president’s public messaging. They described it as confusing, internally inconsistent and increasingly detached from battlefield reality.

Trump calling the war already won is “mostly hyperbole,” said a senior White House official granted anonymity to speak candidly about the administration’s thinking. “It’s part [of Trump] just wanting to declare victory and move on.”

That impulse, the official said, has become more pronounced in recent days.

“[Trump] is getting a little bored with Iran,” the official said. “Not that he regrets it or something — he’s just bored and wants to move on.”

A second White House official who was granted anonymity for the same reason said that Trump has begun to “move on” from the conflict and has started shifting conversations and personal focus toward the economy, domestic issues and the upcoming midterm elections. 

The White House’s public communications have suggested a similar detachment, presenting the conflict less as an ongoing war with human lives at stake and more as a cultural moment that generates online content.

These people are monsters. They are using the most lethal weapons on earth (short of nuclear arms) killing thousands and displacing millions and they treat it like it’s a pastime? The president is bored? My God.

This is even more grotesque:

In the past few weeks, official White House social media accounts have leaned on internet memes to flippantly promote the conflict, using clips from movies like “Iron Man” and “Top Gun,” characters from cartoons like “SpongeBob SquarePants” and rap music overlaid on footage of unclassified videos of bombs striking Iranian targets. 

“The war videos are cringe and disrespectful and gross,” the senior White House official told MS NOW. “It makes me feel embarrassed.”

[…]

“The social media post of bombs being dropped, OK, cool, but what do we get out of this?” added a former official in the Trump White House, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Someone else told him that there are really two different messaging channels, one the official White House account with the cringe videos and — wait for it — Trump’s Truth Social account which apparently is considered the serious one. This person said there’s a divide among officials about how to approach the messaging.

The former Trump official said, “he has learned he can tell the American people his feeling, and, with enough time, the American people will accept his lie. Just telling us the war is won isn’t good enough. We need to see it; we need to feel it.” No kidding.

His “messaging” if you want to call it that (it’s more like incoherent verbal mush) is so contradictory that all but the most fervent MAGA cultists are already discounting anything he says. But inside the White House they’re all just clapping like trained seals hoping to get through the day without a catastrophe.

“So many people are afraid of being on the outs that they are just drinking the Kool-Aid and going along with it,” said the former White House official.

Thanks a lot.

Lisa Needham at Public Notice discusses something that I’m increasingly worried about:

We’re a month into President Donald Trump’s increasingly disastrous Iran war, and we have no idea what’s really going on. In part, that’s because Trump is now nothing but a creature of pure id surrounded by enablers, running the country like an enormous out-of-control toddler. But it’s also because the administration is not at all interested in providing the American people with objective, reliable information.

That erasure of truth leaves us unmoored.

It is very difficult to get through the day now without being stunned by just how overwhelmingly dishonest virtually everything that comes out of the U.S. Government really is. Needham suggests that it’s partly the strategy — chaos and cacophony makes it easier for them to get away with the extreme, nefarious agenda they’l determined to enact as quickly as possible. And she rightly notes that a whole lot of money is being made in the process.

But there’s an even bigger problem:the war on objective truth and data makes it impossible for politics and government to function. The MAGA people and others for whom their salaries on it, choose to believe Trump while the rest of us scramble to find out the truth. And everything is up for debate.

The whole society is affected by this. We’re not operating on a shared reality anymore and it’s getting worse every day. Since there is simply no penalty for lying it means that it’s basically a free-for-all and it’s not confined to politics.

I remember people like Lynne Cheney ranting about the left’s post-modernism and “moral relativity” and how it was driving the culture to perdition. As usual it was projection. It’s the right that’s making a profit at it.

I’ve read this simple tweet five times and am still reeling. https://t.co/mwwFmbifJh

— Juliette Kayyem (@juliettekayyem) March 26, 2026

Aaaand:

The Iran war has handed Russia’s beleaguered economy a much-needed lifeline.

High oil prices are boosting the Kremlin’s coffers, helping plug a hole in its federal budget and sustain the war effort in Ukraine. But beyond oil, a global scramble for natural gas and fertilizer supplies – also choked off by the Iran conflict – could further boost Russia’s financial gains.

“The biggest winner of the (Iran) conflict is Russia,” said Ben Cahill, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tank in Washington, DC. The Kremlin can now sell previously discounted Russian crude “at full market prices,” marking “a pretty big turnaround” for the economy, he added.

And they continue to say that any investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia were nothing but partisan witch hunts.

If he were literally acting as an agent for American adversaries would it be any different?

The head of Europe’s central bank just said financial markets don’t understand what they’re in for.

This is Christine Lagarde saying the damage is already done. Most people have absolutely no idea. Here is what she actually said.

Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. That… pic.twitter.com/nX8WlDbWem

— Gandalv (@Microinteracti1) March 26, 2026

That’s the head of Europe’s Central Bank on the consequences of Trump’s Iran misadventure:

The head of Europe’s central bank just said financial markets don’t understand what they’re in for. This is Christine Lagarde saying the damage is already done. Most people have absolutely no idea. Here is what she actually said.

Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. That chokepoint carries 20% of the world’s oil and gas. Markets shrugged. Investors assumed it would blow over.

Lagarde told The Economist that technical experts are not talking about months for recovery. They are talking about years. Helium travels through the Strait of Hormuz. Helium is not a balloon gas. It is the invisible ingredient inside every advanced microchip on earth. Qatar supplies 35% of the world’s commercial helium. Qatar’s facilities have gone dark. Spot prices have surged past $450 per thousand cubic feet. Most chip fabricators carry less than three months of inventory.

The world is building AI data centers at record speed. The raw material that makes the chips possible is now scarce.

Meanwhile Brent crude has hit $99. Earlier spikes passed $120. US gasoline is up 30%. Iraq cut 1.5 million barrels a day. Saudi Arabia paused its largest refinery. Europe is heading into this with gas storage at 30% capacity. And the ECB is not cutting rates to soften the blow. It is considering hiking them to fight inflation. Slow economy. Rising prices. Tighter money. All at once.

Eggs are still affordable so it’s all good.

Don’t just party and go home. Again.

Not to be a complete downer this morning, an anecdote about No Kings 3 tomorrow. I chatted the other day with a neighbor I had not seen in years. Standing in her yard as I walked by, she told me she planned to attend Asheville’s No Kings rally on Saturday. She has never attended a protest in her life, she said. Her husband planned to attend as well. The last time he joined a protest, she said, he was running from police in Chicago. Nearly 60 years ago. That means something.

I plan to attend out of solidarity, but do not expect much to come of another nationwide rally four months apart. Consistency matters. Few have the endurance for it, even if they are angrier now than at No Kings 1 or 2. The protests are cathartic, a national primal scream. Then people go home. Things will change when they refuse to.

Paul Waldman writes this morning about what lessons Democrats should take from the 3,000+ rallies planned for tomorrow:

The first and most obvious one is that people are mad, and anger is one of the most powerful motivators in politics. Don’t let the festive costumes and funny signs mislead you; millions of people won’t turn out to protest unless they’re seriously fed up.

Democrats talk a good game about fighting without backing it up with actions. It’s why people perceive the national Democratic Party as weak. Take risks. Your actions have to mate up with your apocalyptic rhetoric. Show us what you got.

Waldman continues:

The second lesson of the No Kings rallies is that this moment isn’t just about Trump — but in the short term it’s still mostly about Trump. It can’t be denied that without a president so horrid in so many ways, this kind of mobilization wouldn’t be possible. We’ve seen large protest movements before, but never one focused so intently on the issue-spanning idea that the inhabitant of the White House is a danger to the country. 

Maybe stop criticizing his policies as if Trump is anything resembling a normal president. Focus that anger on him. He’s weakened. Recent election flips prove it. Hammer his weaknesses.

As Rachel Maddow recently pointed out, Trump has committed an extraordinary number of abuses of power just since the last No Kings event, including bulldozing the East Wing of the White House, trying to arrest six members of Congress for explaining the moral and legal obligations of servicemembers, slapping his name on the Kennedy Center, waging war on the city of Minneapolis, and starting what increasingly looks like it will be a disastrous war in Iran. Anyone who was angry and frustrated before has even more reason to be so now.

Trump is weakened. Recent election flips prove it. Hammer his weaknesses.

Which leads to the next lesson of No Kings: Act like you’re the majority, because you are. The last No Kings event drew 7 million participants, according to the organizers; other estimates put the figure only slightly smaller. Either way, it was the biggest one-day protest in American history. While that may be a minority of the public, you don’t get that many people out in the streets unless they represent tens of millions more who didn’t participate.

Trump’s numbers are in the toilet. His cabinet members’ cringeworthy licking of his boots simply amplifies that impression and highlights weak wills no bluster, tattoos, or pushups can conceal. These are people Americans should be ashamed to have in leadership. Democrats should pull no punches in broadcasting it and making Team Trump feel it.

Waldman points out that underlying the surface anger is the same unease (mislabeled The Deep State) that helped elevate Trump in 2016. But it’s not civil servants who really have average Americans by the short hairs. That was Trump misdirecting anger the way he blames immigrants for people’s economic woes (NBC News):

According to the latest NBC News survey, 59% of registered voters agreed that those systems are stacked against them, while 38% disagreed with that sentiment and 3% were not sure. The share who agreed with that notion tied a high point in April 1992, a record set after NBC News began polling this question in 1988.

An overwhelming share of voters (84%) say they agree with the statement that “the very rich and powerful are above the law when they do something wrong, they look out for each other, using their power and connections to get special treatment,” while 14% disagree and 2% agree.

Waldman adds:

It matters to people that this president is so nakedly corrupt, that the Supreme Court is controlled by partisan hacks, that America’s image around the globe lies in tatters, and that the entire federal government has been degraded. They can see the connections between the way power operates and the fact that they don’t have affordable health care or better wages. Politicians have to show they understand that too.

The key lesson I’ve learned from my streetcorner and overpass antics of the last seven months is that people feel unseen by either major party. The first Gen Z woman who spoke in the Bulwark Focus Group I mentioned Monday said just that. It’s one thing to hear it or to read about it. It’s another to experience it in person day after day out on the street. Democrats who pitch policies before communicating that they see Americans’ struggles are tone deaf.

Waldman finishes up by emphasizing (again) that mobilizing is not organizing. Democrats are good at the first. Republicans are better at wrapping their partisans in movements that make being citizen activists part of their identities.

If Democratic politicians can understand these lessons, they can take them into governing the next time they win power. Then maybe they’ll actually make progress on creating the change all those protesters are demanding.

See you in the streets tomorrow.

The ad writes itself

The U.S. is scattering land mines in Iran in a war Congress has neither approved nor stopped. Travelers are arriving at Kennedy Airport at 1 a.m. in hopes of departing New York on time or at all. There is an epidemic of “mind blowing corruption” revealed in a $1.5 billion bet on oil futures. The Department of Homeland Security insists it will not stop arresting immigrants outside courtrooms after the Department of Justice(?) admitted DHS has no authority to. The president insists on his Sharpie signature being smeared across all new U.S. currency. Oh, and the U.S. has lost its “long-term status as a liberal democracy – for the first time in over 50 years.”

Goodbye Pax Americana

Donald J, Trump is collapsing the world we knew. Ronald Reagan declared morning in America. Trump embraces the sunset. The Financial Times saw it coming in 2016. The 2026 ad writes itself.

Heather Cox Richardson reports:

In an interview with Reuters on Monday, Singapore’s minister for foreign affairs, Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, put in bald language the change in the world order instigated by President Donald J. Trump.

“For 80 years,” Balakrishnan explained, “the US was the underwriter for a system of globalisation based on UN Charter principles, multilateralism, territorial integrity, sovereign equality.” That system “heralded an unprecedented and unique period of global prosperity and peace. Of course there were exceptions. And of course, the Cold War was still in effect for at least half of the last 80 years. But generally, for those of us who were non-communists, who ran open economies, who provided first world infrastructure, together with a hardworking disciplined people, we had unprecedented opportunities.

“The story of Singapore, with a per capita GDP of 500 US dollars in 1965. Now, [it is] somewhere between 80,000 to 90,000 US dollars. It would not have happened if it had not been for this unprecedented period, basically Pax Americana and then turbocharged by the reform and opening of China for decades. It has been unprecedented. It has been great for many of us. In fact, I will say, for all of us, if you look back 80 years.

“But now, whether you like it or not, objectively, this period has ended…. Basically, the underwriter of this world order has now become a revisionist power, and some people would even say a disruptor. But the larger point is that the erosion of norms, processes, and institutions that underpinned a remarkable period of peace and prosperity; that foundation has gone.”

In its place, as scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder said to me in a YouTube conversation yesterday, Trump is aligning himself with international oligarchs like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), and China’s Xi Jinping. Because of his position as the president of the United States of America, this means he is aligning the United States of America with this oligarchical axis as well, abandoning the country’s democratic principles and traditional allies.

It’s not so much a Trump plan as the convicted felon’s reflex for corruption, taste for violence, pathological need for dominance, sociopathy, and flagrant ignorance.

A passing commuter shouted at me on Thursday, “You’re a f%cking idiot!”

I could be president.

Trump’s hand-picked clones have already agreed to put him on a 24k gold memorial coin and they’re actively talking about putting him on the dime. Now this:

President Donald Trump has spent much of his second term in office working to leave his mark on Washington, DC. He’s draped enormous banners of his face over government buildings, plastered his name onto the Carrara walls of the Kennedy Center, and covered the White House in gold accents while demolishing the East Wing to build a 90,000-square-foot ballroom.

Now the Trump administration is taking another unprecedented step toward brand ubiquity: His Treasury Department plans to add his signature to US currency.

Trump’s autograph will be added to all denominations of US bills, Vanity Fair has learned. The process of developing new printing plates is underway, I’m told, and the new bills will go into circulation in the coming months.

The measure is not temporary: Trump’s name will appear on bills until a future administration decides to take it off.

This will be the first time in US history that the sitting president’s signature will appear on American currency. US bills typically feature the signatures of the Treasury secretary and the US treasurer. Trump’s signature will replace that of the latter official, Brandon Beach, and sit alongside Scott Bessent’s.

“As the 250th anniversary of our great nation approaches, American currency will continue to stand as a symbol of prosperity, strength, and the unshakable spirit of the American people under President Trump’s leadership,” Beach said in a statement to Vanity Fair. “The president’s mark on history as the architect of America’s golden age economic revival is undeniable. Printing his signature on the American currency is not only appropriate, but also well deserved.”

It is appalling. All of it. But Trump is intent upon slapping his disgusting brand on every American symbol he can, from the White House to coins to airports and beyond.

Once he is out of office it’s vitally important that the Democrats rid the country of all this but I honestly don’t think they will. It will infuriate the MAGAs and they won’t want to create more friction by tearing down their dear leader while they’re still screaming in agony over the election being stolen. (Yes, they will assume that.) But we really can’t continue to have him be a ubiquitous figure in American society. It’s poison and it needs to be purged.

I hope that some rich person will fund a citizens effort to lobby for the removal of his hideous name from every public building and retire all the money with his name on it.It may take years but it has to be done.

Primary season is in full swing and it’s important to remember to bookmark Boltsmag.org for all the news at the state and local level as well as the big marquee races we’re all following:

Two statewide votes are headlining the election calendar in April. First, Wisconsin will choose a new supreme court justice, with major implications for voting rights. Then, Virginia will decide whether to allow the new congressional map proposed by Democrats.

But there are plenty of other storylines to watch. Many school districts are electing new school board members this month—in Alaska, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin—with familiar battles over book bans and the rights of LGBTQ students.

Also on the menu? Voters are filling vacant congressional seats in Georgia and New Jersey. Appointees of Wisconsin’s Democratic governor are fighting to survive against conservative challengers. Some Missourians and Oklahomans are weighing in on important tax referendums. And voters will decide who controls Anchorage, Alaska, Rio Rancho, New Mexico, Waukesha, Wisconsin, and other cities.

Enter Bolts’ guide to the 40 elections to watch in April.

The guide starts with a busy April 7, when voters will head to the polls in Wisconsin, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Missouri, and Oklahoma. On April 14, watch municipal races in California and New Mexico, followed by a New Jersey congressional race on April 16. On April 21, we’re tracking ballot measures in Virginia and Florida, and on April 28 a local race in New York.

As always, this guide is just our selection of key races to monitor, and not an exhaustive list of all elections in April. Some cities in Florida, Missouri, South Carolina, and Texas are electing city council members, for instance; plus, voters in several small towns have the opportunity to recall local officials, and some Missourians and Oklahomans are mulling tax and levy measures.

Return on and after each Election Day; we’ll update this page as the results are known. 

Click over here. The Democrats have been kicking ass all across the country over the past year and winning many state races that are going to be super important as we face the assault on voting rights — all rights — that the Trump administration is pushing through at the federal level.

The DOJ is obviously in total disarray. Joyce Vance wrote about the latest cock-up:

Judge Aileen Cannon forbade it. There would be no release of Volume II of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report, the part that dealt with the discovery that Donald Trump kept classified documents, some at the Top Secret/SCI level, when he left the White House. When Smith testified before Congress, he carefully tailored his responses to avoid violating the court’s order

But not so much the Trump White House. In what appears to be a sloppy but serious error, the administration released a document to Congress that MSNOW’s Carol Leonnig and Jacqueline Alemany reported on yesterday. They write, “In a January 2023 ‘progress memo’ reviewed by MS NOW, Smith’s office discussed the possible motive after the FBI discovered that Trump held on to many documents related to his businesses.” Although the document isn’t publicly available, it sounds like the sort of reports agents and/or prosecutors might prepare for supervisors. This one contains some fascinating details.

The document was released as part of a regular document production DOJ has been making to Congress in support of the Republican inquiry into Smith. House Judiciary Democrats put it like this: “This particular production contained a memorandum detailing non-public information about the classified documents Trump stole when leaving office. The newly produced materials offer a startling view of evidence gathered by Special Counsel Jack Smith during his investigations into the criminal activity of President Trump, even as DOJ continues to suppress Volume II of his final report.”

L.O.L!!!

They are just so bad at everything.

Vance points out that the crimes Trump was charged with don’t require a motive. The statute says that prosecutors instead have to “prove to a jury that Trump unlawfully possessed classified information and willfully refused to return it to the National Archives when asked to do so. But prosecutors don’t have to establish why the defendant did that.”

Still, they knew that jurors would likely want to know why. (I wouldn’t be that interested because I think Trump just wanted to keep stuff for his own purposes which could be anything. His mind is very disordered.) However, Vance is right that people would be curious.

Smith and co. thought the documents indicated they might be useful for Trump business interests. I don’t doubt it.

Vance continues:

The reporting so far doesn’t reveal precisely which Trump business interests are involved, but Raskin engages in some educated speculation in the letter, which involves a classified map Trump had. “Without access to Volume II of the Special Counsel’s final report or the investigative files, we do not know what that classified map contained, nor can we determine from this memo the relationship between the classified documents President Trump stole and their pertinence to his ‘business interests,’” Raskin acknowledged. He continued, however, “We do know that around the time of this flight to Bedminster, President Trump was entering into partnerships with Saudi-backed LIV Golf and state-linked real estate firm Dar al Arkan.”

The flight is one where Trump allegedly showed others the map in question, and Raskin notes, “A month after this flight, in July 2022, President Trump played golf at Bedminster with Yasir al-Rumayyan, head of the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia—the same official who plied the Trump family with tens of millions of dollars as the family began to run out of money between terms. During this trip, President Trump defended his business partners from criticism levied by the families of 9/11 victims protesting the Saudi government’s role in the attack.” Raskin say that in this time period Trump boasted about having maps and said “that it was only the hawks who wanted to attack Iran, not him, and that he had Pentagon war plans ‘done by the military and given to me’ about such a potential attack.”

Now think about that in the current context. WTF? Does Donald Trump ever do anything in foreign policy that isn’t designed to help America’s adversaries? Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, they always benefit from his decisions. America and out allies, not so much.

For instance:

The Pentagon is considering whether to divert weapons intended for Ukraine to the Middle East as the war in Iran depletes some of the U.S. military’s most critical munitions, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Although a final decision to redirect the equipment has not yet been made, the shift would highlightthe growing trade-offs required to sustain the U.S. war againstIran, where U.S. Central Command has hit more than 9,000 targets in just under four weeks of fighting.

The weapons that could be diverted away from Ukraine include air defense interceptor missiles,ordered through a NATO program launched last year in which partner countries buy U.S. arms for Kyiv, the three people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the Pentagon’s sensitive deliberations.

Trump is gleeful at the prospect of handing Ukraine to Russia, obviously. He literally hates them because Rudy Giuliani convinced him that they were behind the “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax.”

Meanwhile, we’re threatening to do the exact war crimes Russia has been committing in Ukraine, making Putin the big winner in all of this.