Marjorie Taylor Greene tries to push Russian propaganda about Ukrainian nazis, and is completely shut down by Holocaust Historian and the Leading Scholar on Ukrainian Nationalism in America, Dr. Snyder. pic.twitter.com/ZPjjt9XznY
There have always been stupid people in Congress so Marge isn’t unique in that sense. But she is one of the most arrogantly stupid I’ve ever seen. This is a person who just a few years ago was all in on QAnon and just keeps “doing her own research.” I wish I thought she learned something yesterday but I don’t.
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.
Yesterday, we once again discussed where the Digital Medicis want to take this country. Remake the United States in Silicon Valley oligarchs’ image is more like it. You won’t like it.
Ezra Klein summarized that vision in three words last night: Their visions sucks.
This is my grab a coffee and take the weight off clip for the day. Ezra Klein absolutely nails it.
Klein and coauthor Derek Thompson are on tour promoting their book, “Abundance.” I haven’t read it yet, but it seems like a “look yourself in the mirror” moment for Democrats wondering why voters are turning away from them.
The difference is Republicans have embraced autocracy while Democrats have embraced bureaucracy.
Klein and Thompson rightly argue that conservative politicians aren’t the only ones who have hobbled the government’s essential role in a dynamic and innovative society. In recent decades, Democrats across the country exchanged novelty for NIMBYISM, progress for process and roaring growth for regulatory government. An anti-growth mentality changed many cities into gilded lairs closed to newcomers priced out of inadequate housing. Meanwhile, risk-taking science devolved into grant-seeking for small gains as government support waned and research became less about breakthroughs than paperwork.
Even worse, Americans gave up the ability to follow through, failing to get the most out of what they had already invented. Cheap, multistory apartment buildings, made practical by the emergence of the elevator in 1850s New York, could help ease the housing crisis in big cities. But today, Klein and Thompson write, ungainly regulations and baroque production methods mean that an elevator installed in America costs four times more than its Swiss counterpart.
This story of how American originality lost its way is arresting and well told. On an alternate timeline without Donald Trump in office dismantling the American scientific establishment and Elon Musk kneecapping the American state, it might have been the manifesto of a new politics. Still, there could be life after Trump and, if so, “Abundance” might inspire a demoralized Democratic Party to think big again.
The “idée fixe” is a problem for politics on the left. Ideas that become dogmas that won’t let go. And fads that come and go. Remember safe spaces, microaggressions, call-outs, and tagging every bio with pronouns? For example:
I once asked my late mother-in-law, a Columbia-trained school librarian, how she and her colleagues navigated the educational fads that blew in and out of public education over the course of her career.
“We tried to ignore them until they went away.”
(That’s my approach too.)
Democrats prioritize process over outcomes, Klein and Thompson argue. In the process — very expensive process — they are not delivering for people and in that process pricing young people out comfortable lives their parents took for granted. Hence the “a plague on both your houses” response seen in voter registration.
A Facebook commenter this morning remarked that while her college-age kids are registered Democrats (because she is), none of their peers are. We need to have a serious conversation about why “without regurgitating tired talking points,” she wrote. In my bright blue island, our county is now 43% Unaffiliated, 34% Democrat, and 21% Republican. “We have to turn out our Democrats” is a losing strategy. The rest of the state is more evenly divided, just with independent registrants outpacing Democrats by a bit less. Statewide, they vote Republican. Democrats are figuring out they need a reboot.
It’s not that we can’t do things right (see below), but that we have to fight not only the well-funded, think-tank right, but the factions in the Democratic coalition that insist that if their concerns are not voiced expressly in every ppolicy decision, they’ll take their balls and go home. Except that’s happening despite Democrats’ efforts at inclusivity.
Klein and Thompson argue that delivering a physically better world will be more beneficial politically than ideological posturing. At least, that’s what I hear. Will have to read the book.
The article discusses the cases of Fabian Schmidt, Mahmoud Khalid, and Rasha Alawieh who we’ve discussed previously, and notes:
You have, at some point within the last week, probably broken the law. You jaywalked or smoked in a no-smoking park or ignored a stop sign or any of a thousand other daily things that we hardly think about but which are on paper illegal. The reason you most likely weren’t arrested or even ticketed for these things is because it would not be possible for police to spot every single one of these violations, and because even if the cops did witness it, they decided that it just wasn’t worth the bother (or the paperwork).
But now Trump 2.0 is hunting enemies hiding in woodpiles to detain, arrest, and extrajudicially punish.
For a long time, certain populations in particular have been used to generally favorable discretion. Undocumented immigrants—in particular those from developing countries—never could expect much grace, but high-skill work visa holders, international students, European tourists, Canadian day-trippers, and others in this higher-status sphere enjoyed a lighter touch. Perhaps if there was confusion around their visa, they would get directed to file paperwork to fix it and sent on their way, or at worst merely turned away at the border. But now, it seems, immigration agents are increasingly using the full statutory powers that they always had, choosing to detain, abuse, and deport these tourists and workers instead of working with them.
At this point, traveling outside the country is a risk for holders of visas and green cards if the Trump administration looks at them sideways. And a tourism industry dependent on foreign visitors to the U.S. will begin to collapse. But that’s just the beginning.
Consider this report from NPR on Tuesday’s sparring match between Trump Department of Justice lawyers and U.S. District Judge James Boasberg over their ignoring his Saturday order to halt their deportation of 250 alleged members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang. The DOJ sent the detainees to a supermax prison in El Salvador without any court hearing to test evidence that each was associated with TdA as the DOJ claimed:
In court filings on Tuesday, the Justice Department complied with a judge’s order for a sworn declaration about how planeloads of alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang landed in El Salvador — hours after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued emergency orders temporarily blocking the Trump administration from using wartime powers to quickly deport people.
The DOJ complied with Boasberg’s Monday order with a Tuesday “declaration from Robert Cerna, a top official at the U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement field office in Harlingen, Texas” on what happened and when on Saturday. But Boasberg was unsatisfied. He gave the Justice Department by noon ET on Wednesday to provide a more detailed account of these flights before declaring the DOJ in contempt.
In his Monday filing, Cerna claimed that ICE had vetted each “to ensure they were in fact members of TdA,” but in effect asked the court to take his word for it. Now consider this part of Cerna’s declaration (brackets and bolding mine):
While it is true that many of the TdA members removed under the AEA do not have criminal records in the United States, that is because they have only been in the United States for a short period of time. The lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat. In fact, based upon their [alleged] association with TdA, the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose. It demonstrates that they are [alleged] terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile.
I lack a criminal record and complete profile! Likely, so do you.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the scholar of authoritarianism, warns:
When moral deregulation advances because violence and corruption have been institutionalized, including in the behavior of national leaders, then a society can experience moral collapse. We hear about how authoritarians “hollow out” institutions by removing anyone not loyal to the leader and the party, but they also hollow out people to the point where they will participate in acts of violence, corruption and sabotage against their compatriots.
We are living through processes of moral deregulation and moral collapse in America today under the authoritarian government of President Donald Trump and unelected co-President Elon Musk. Their policies are wrecking a robust national economy, paralyzing government, allying with dictators, creating conditions for the spread of disease, and abandoning the rule of law.
The Trump administration is in open defiance of judicial branch scrutiny.
I don’t have to spell it out. The law no longer protects you.
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.
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