Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast: "The water comes down from the northwest parts of Canada, I guess, but the Pacific Northwest. And it comes down by millions and millions of barrels a day and uh, I opened it up. It wasn't that easy to do. But I opened it up and it's pouring… pic.twitter.com/UcHiv8uZRe
I like the bit at the end where he claims that his own plane uses a completely different air traffic control system from another country because it is better. https://t.co/8xPb5Kd8IV
Josh Marshall has been pushing the idea that the best opportunity for Democrats to stop Trump/Musk’s wrecking ball is in the upcoming budget and debt ceiling negotiations that have to be done my March. It’s almost impossible for the GOP to pass anything without Democratic help and the wild, extreme nature of what Musk is doing is having the effect of making Democrats band together. He writes:
The standard should be: no help on the budget or the debt ceiling until the lawbreaking stops. Period. End of story. No wilding gangs marauding through the federal government. End the criminal conduct. Period.
That’s it. No nuance….
If you’re concerned about the constitutional crisis, I would use every opportunity to convey to lawmakers that a flat “no” on any assistance until the criminal conduct stops is the only acceptable position. It is the right thing to do, the constitutional thing to do and it is the only path that holds the possibility of meaningfully changing the situation in the short to medium term. It also demonstrates and shows an understanding of how to use power. And that is something the opposition desperately needs. Make them come to you.
I more or less said the same thing actually a while back only I phrased by saying they haven’t o get rid of Musk and DOGE, period. I think it pretty much amounts to the same thing.
Trump is very exercised about the debt ceiling and very angry that they didn’t raise it before he took office. That’s the leverage point. People are waking up to the chaos and the consequences of a government shutdown will accrue to the Republicans (as if always does) because they are in charge and should be able to get it done without the Democrats.
Meanwhile, Republicans still can’t agree on whether to do one big bill or two. Here’s the state of play from Punchbowl News:
As Johnson and the House Republican Conference search for common ground between unyielding conservative hardliners and everyone else, the Senate has gotten tired of waiting.Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham(R-S.C.) announced that he’s going to mark up his own $300 billion budget resolution next week, throwing a massive wrench into Johnson’s plans. Graham announced the budget-resolution markup as Johnson insisted that the House needs to move first.
The Senate’s budget plan won’t look at all like what the House is envisioning. Graham’s proposal would include $150 billion for the Pentagon and other defense programs, plus $150 billion for border security, including Trump’s border wall. There’ll also be energy policy provisions. Graham says the new spending will be offset by cuts to mandatory programs, but he didn’t say which ones.
Graham and Senate Majority Leader John Thune want to hand Trump an early win on the border, defense spending and energy policy — something the president might find attractive. Senate GOP leaders plan to return to extension of the 2017 tax cuts later this year with a second reconciliation package. If the Senate passes its budget resolution before the House moves, it would put the Senate in the driver’s seat in dictating the legislative contours of the 119th Congress.
Meanwhile, Johnson, House Ways and Means ChairJason Smith (R-Mo.) and Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) want a single reconciliation package that includes the totality of Trump’s agenda, everything from border security to energy to tax cuts. House Republicans think one bill is easier to pass than two.
Graham’s gamble —and it is one — may not make it through the House. Graham and Thune admitted as much during the Senate GOP lunch Wednesday, according to multiple Republican senators who attended the session. Yet Graham and Thune insisted that something had to be done, adding that they had little faith in Johnson or House GOP leaders.
This Senate drama shows how badly Johnson is getting squeezed on every side, just weeks after he barely survived a vote to be speaker. And that was only because of Trump’s direct intervention. Conservative hardlinersspoke up in a closed party meeting Wednesday, telling Johnson that they want two reconciliation bills, not one. A number of conservative hardliners — Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and others — are backchanneling with Senate Republicans to urge them to spoil the speaker’s plans.
So far, Trumphas deferred to Johnson’s one-bill strategy. But the president has left the door open to the idea that two bills may be easier. And there are White House aides who privately agree with Graham, not Johnson.
House and Senate Republicans are sniping at each other with some worried that if they don’t do their precious tax cuts early they could find themselves backed against a wall next fall when they run out. It’s a big mess and there is no reason on earth that Democrats should even think of bailing them out under these circumstances.
Puck reported this a couple of days ago:
Senator Patty Murray usually flies under the radar—she’s not a social media hyperventilator—relying on her considerable power as the vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee to talk for her. So it was notable that, while news cameras flocked to outraged Democrats protesting Elon Musk, Murray firmly told Punchbowl that it would be “extremely difficult” for Democrats to agree on a spending bill when the president was “illegally blocking” funding approved by Congress. “Democrats and Republicans alike,” she warned, “must be able to trust that when a deal gets signed into law, it will be followed.”
For those versed in Murray-ese, her commentary could be interpreted only as a shutdown threat. Given their margins, House Republicans can’t pass spending bills without Democratic votes unless they achieve near total unity within their conference—a mathematical reality that gives otherwise powerless Democrats their only serious leverage. Indeed, Murray’s seemingly dry statement caught a lot of attention around the Hill.
It would not be the Democrats shutting anything down. The Republicans have the majority. If they can’t round up enough votes to pass their agenda that’s on them. If they want Democrats to help them out they have to give them something in return and Democrats want this DOGE bullshit to stop. If Republicans don’t want that then they can figure out some other way to pass their bills.
Unfortunately, the press is characterizing this as the Democrats “telegraphing a possible willingness to play chicken with the global economy” but they really shouldn’t care about that. This is too important.
Of course, when Republicans make such threats, they typically extract a few concessions, dutifully cave, and wind up dealing with the opposition to pass a compromise bill. Threats, as Donald Trump will tell you, are just jumping-off points to start negotiations. (See: tariffs.) But there are reasons to take Murray more seriously than the more prolific blusterers of the Senate. She’s the most senior Democratic senator, at the peak of her powers. She’s a close ally of minority leader Chuck Schumer, and she’s not known to go rogue. When Murray speaks, it should be assumed the entire caucus is behind her. She is, moreover, one Democrat that Republicans actually listen to. And whatever the fate of spending negotiations in March, she has crystallized how Democrats see their dispute with Musk: as a war for Congress’s very survival as an independent branch of government.
I have a sneaking suspicion there are a few Republicans who will be glad to see the Democrats take a hard line on this. They’re too cowardly to buck Trump but I believe they’ll play the game to the Democrats’ advantage if they see it could result in shutting down DOGE.
Keep in mind that Trump isn’t really into all this cutting business. It was never his thing. He thinks if he can do tariffs and drill, baby, drill he’ll get enough growth to erase the deficit without having to cut anything. But he’s willing to let Musk run with this for the moment because he’s bought into the shock and awe strategy. I just have a feeling that’s not going to last. Musk is getting too much attention and he’s making Trump look sort of weak and pathetic.
REPORTER: Do you have a reaction to the new Time Magazine cover that has Elon Musk sitting behind your resolute desk?
TRUMP: No. Is Time Magazine still in business? I didn't even know that. Elon is doing a great job. pic.twitter.com/AUXoNOed5F
As Paul Krugman said Friday, what the Musk and Trump are attempting is a self-coup with “the full support of every Republican in the House and the Senate.”
“The president is openly violating the law and Constitution on a daily basis,” Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, told The New York Times:
“We’re talking about the idea of whether the president has to follow the law at all,” Nyhan said. “That’s a sentence I never thought I’d have to say about the United States, but here we are.”
The GOP has not only rejected democracy, as David Frum predicted tardily six years ago., but the American experiment itself. The very idea of it. All that’s left of the Republican Party is crumpled bunting. It’s not clear if their goal now is the return of the monarchy or feudalism. Oligarchy is too soft a term. Trump wants to be king. He’s always wanted to be king. But Musk? He and his Silicon Valley chums want to be gods. Ill-tempered ones at that.
And a large faction of our neighbors, both the complacent and the violent, are prepared to allow it.
This week has felt like one of those nightmares in which you’re trying to run from a pursuer but your legs don’t seem to work.
What’s stunned us (even those who warned what was coming) is the speed and nastiness of Trump 2.0. Trump with his vengeance-palooza and Musk with his deep hatred of people who spend their lives in public service not trying to maximize their wealth. Trump thinks they’re losers out to get him. (He thinks the world is out to get him.) Musk, as evidenced by his palling around with racists and a eugenecist, really does seem to embrace a “master race” ethos. He wants inferiors not just out of the government but out of the gene pool. He’s as gleeful about his work as a Bond villain mowing down the hired help. (He’d find the comparison flattering.)
Musk is malware burrowing deep into the software of the United States, and no one is quite sure what he’s doing in there.
Also stunning is how Senate Democrats (unless I missed it) did not make more of an issue of Pam Bondi’s confirmation evasions by drawing a direct, very public parallel with Bill Barr’s confirmation and tenure as Trump AG. Barr elided through his grinning teeth during direct Senate questioning and then went to work serving as Trump’s personal attorney instead of guardian of the law. No one should have missed that that’s just what Pam Bondi would do the moment she was sworn in. But they missed the opportunity to state the obvious. Now that she’s launching investigations into a list of enemies she swore her department would never have, it simply looks like for Democrats it was fool me twice, shame on me.
I had been somewhat pessimistic about what I was seeing from congressional Democrats on this front. But starting yesterday they began to change their tune and started saying explicitly that the budget and debt ceiling were a key lever for them in handling the situation. That’s real progress. But I think the terms need to be sharpened a lot. The standard should be: no help on the budget or the debt ceiling until the lawbreaking stops. Period. End of story. No wilding gangs marauding through the federal government. End the criminal conduct. Period.
The long wait is over. After more than 20 months of pregnancy, Rose-Tu, a 30-year-old Asian elephant at the Oregon Zoo, gave birth at 4:29 p.m. Saturday afternoon. Staff are keeping their distance to give the pair time to bond, but the calf appears to be a healthy, strong female, weighing in the vicinity of 200 pounds.
“We couldn’t be happier with how everything is going so far,” said Steve Lefave, who oversees the zoo’s elephant program. “This was one of the smoothest births I’ve ever seen. Rose knew just what to do. She helped her baby up right away. The kid was standing on her own within 15 minutes and took her first steps soon after that.”
Zoo staff had been on baby watch since Jan. 29, when Rose-Tu’s progesterone levels dropped to near zero, indicating labor should begin soon. Rose experienced early labor throughout the day on Feb. 1 and began showing signs of active labor a little after 3 p.m.
Veterinary staff have yet to conduct their first check-up, but once Rose and her calf are ready, they’ll weigh the baby and confirm its sex. Based on their observations so far though, everything is going very well. “Rose is a fantastic mom,” Lefave said. “She’s so gentle and protective, and the calf is already nursing well. These are signs that they will have a strong bond, which is exactly what we want to see. We’re ready to help if needed, but so far mom and baby are doing just fine on their own.”
It might take a little time before the new baby is ready for visitors, Lefave says, but once they’re feeling comfortable they’ll spend time in Forest Hall, where guests can catch a glimpse of the smallest member of the herd. “We want to make sure the calf continues to do well and that Rose-Tu is calm and comfortable with people around,” Lefave said. “And we also want to give the baby a chance to bond with the rest of the elephant family.”
Considered highly endangered in their range countries, Asian elephants are threatened by habitat loss, conflict with humans and disease. It’s estimated that just 40,000 to 50,000 of them remain in fragmented populations from India to Borneo, and their home range overlaps with some of the most populous human areas on the planet — 20% of people worldwide live in or next to Asian elephant habitat.
The Oregon Zoo is recognized worldwide for its elephant care program, which has spanned more than 60 years. The zoo supports a broad range of efforts to help wild elephants and has established a $1 million endowment fund supporting Asian elephant conservation.
Yesterday Trump unveiled his priorities for his tax bill. Everyone needs to understand what’s going on here. It’s a massive tax giveaway to the rich and powerful, financed by deadly cuts to programs like Medicare and the ACA that help regular people. I explain it here — Chris Murphy
Yesterday Trump unveiled his priorities for his tax bill.
Everyone needs to understand what's going on here. It's a massive tax giveaway to the rich and powerful, financed by deadly cuts to programs like Medicare and the ACA that help regular people.
In a closed-door meeting with House Leadership today President Trump reportedly outlined his tax priorities. According to press reports, they included extending the expiring pieces of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA); expanding the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction; enacting tax breaks for goods made in America; cutting taxes on income from tips, overtime pay, and Social Security benefits; and eliminating tax breaks for carried interest and stadium owners.
Depending on the details of these proposals, our rough estimate is that a package of this nature would:
Reduce revenue by $5.0 trillion to $11.2 trillion over ten years.
Lower revenue by 1.3 to 3.0 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Boost debt to between 132 and 149 percent of GDP by 2035, if not offset, compared to nearly 100 percent today and 118 percent under current law.
This is why they need to eradicate as much government spending as they can. Musk and the boys need their tax cuts and Trump wants to deliver on his promises:
Obviously, this is just a wingnuts wet dream. But you can bet that the tax cuts for the wealthy and the corporations will go through on a party line vote no matter what. They always do. The big question is how much they’re going to take out of the hides of the rest of us to make it happen.
On Wednesday evening, one day into her tenure as U.S. attorney general, Pam Bondi announced the end of the Kleptocracy Initiative, launched by the Justice Department in 2010 to battle high-level corruption worldwide and return ill-gotten funds to victims of financial crimes. The former Florida attorney general and legal counsel to President Trump during his first impeachment trial, who spent the last several years as a corporate lobbyist, also closed the KleptoCapture task force, created under AG Merrick Garland in 2022 to target Russian oligarchs violating U.S. economic sanctions imposed because of Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine. Through the initiative, the DOJ has prosecuted frauds worth billions, recovering embezzled funds and seizing assets like megayachts and luxury condos.
The irony of this is simply overwhelming:
Bondi’s DOJ is now presumably free to spend a multi-billion dollar forfeiture fund of money seized through these efforts — otherwise repatriated to the nations it was stolen from — however it likes. That could mean anything from expanded contracts with private prisons (Trump has already reversed a Biden administration order that prevented the Justice Department from renewing such contracts) to new mass detention camps for immigrants in Guantánamo Bay and along the border.
Kleptocrats using the kleptocrats’ stolen billions. Sweet.
The word “Orwellian” is overused but this is actually Orwellian. 404 Media reports:
While responding to the most damaging wildfires in the history of California, FEMA employees received an order “for immediate compliance” this week that states they must immediately change their vocabulary to comply with the Trump Administration’s preferred terminology on gender and immigration.
For example, FEMA employees are no longer allowed to call undocumented immigrants “migrants” or “undocumented individuals,” they must instead call them “undocumented aliens or illegal aliens.” FEMA can no longer refer to the idea of “integration,” it must begin to say “assimilation.”
The subject line of the email was “For Immediate Compliance.”
“While the chart presents examples of terminology that should be replaced, it should not be considered to be comprehensive, particularly in the immigration space. Please consult your program counsel for additional language if you are unsure,” the email says.
Last year, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded its Nobel Prize in economic sciences to a trio of researchers based at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Chicago. Their work assessed “how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.” The team’s 2000 paper, “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation,” for example, argued that the difference in wealth between Europe and Africa is largely a function of the former having more robust institutions.
Were that paper submitted today to the National Science Foundation for funding, however, it likely wouldn’t have been approved. The NSF supports research considering “how social, economic, political, cultural and environmental forces affect people’s lives,” but the introduction to the paper includes the words “inclusion,” “institutional” and “political” — all of which are red flags for reviewers during the second Trump administration.
As The Post reported on Tuesday, NSF staff have been comparing existing grants to a lengthy list of terms to establish whether the work being conducted violates President Donald Trump’s executive orders uprooting “DEI,” a catchall term for programs aimed at addressing historic systems of discrimination.
Staff have been asked to look at the title or abstract of the research proposal, checking whether any of the worrisome terms — like “gender” or “status” — appear. Then staffers consider the project summary and, finally, the project description. If any of the terms — like “advocate” or “trauma” or “women” — appear, the proposal is flagged. There are about 100 terms included in the review. (Also included: “inequities,” “racial,” and “female,” though not “male.”)
You can’t use the word “women” or “female” in a scientific paper. Wow. And that’s not all:
Ugh, the Declaration of Independence includes words that would trigger a review by the NSF. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/int…
He’s been “advising” behind the scenes already so it shouldn’t make too much difference now that he’ll be in the office and anyway Musk has been given the go ahead to wreck whatever he can get away with. The only thing that might stop him are judicial orders but since everything is so secretive we really don’t know if they’re following them.
Still, for all of Vought’s and DOGE’s ability to feverishly slash and burn, they really can’t do it all. But they don’t have to. This week the Senate also confirmed Pam Bondi as the Attorney General of the United States. At the swearing in ceremony, led by Justice Clarence Thomas, (of course)Trump said: “I’m supposed to say she’s going to be totally impartial when it comes to Democrats but I’m just going to say that she’ll be as impartial as a person can be,” so that was reassuring.
Adopting the patented Trump/Musk shock and awe technique, she hit the ground running. Working with her two top deputies, former Trump personal defense lawyers Emil Bove and Todd Blanch, she has issued a flurry of orders demonstrating that she is on a mission from Dear Leader. The Washington Post reported that on her first day:
Despite pledging during her confirmation hearing that “politics will not play a part” in her decision-making, Bondi, within hours of taking office,created a “Weaponization Working Group” to review instances of what she described as “politicized justice” — starting with the federal criminal cases brought against Trump by special counsel Jack Smith.
She also ordered an examination of what she alleged was federal cooperation in the criminal and civil investigations of Trump in New York — even though they were carried out by state authorities, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
She wrote, “these steps are required because, as President Trump pointed out following his second inauguration, ‘[t]he prior administration and allies throughout the country engaged in an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process.'” She added, “No one who has acted with a righteous spirit and just intentions has any cause for concern about our efforts to root out corruption and weaponization.” I’m sure that was very reassuring.
At least one employee almost surely is very happy with this edict. That would be the Acting US Attorney in Washington DC, the former Stop the Steal lawyer, Ed Martin. He’s so committed to ending partisan weaponization that he posted the following letter on X addressed to Musk saying “Dear @elon, Please see this important letter. We will not tolerate threats against DOGE workers or law-breaking by the disgruntled. All the best. Ed Martin”
Martin has a very bright future in the Trump Justice Department.
Chris Geitner at Lawdork reported on another Bondi memo effectively ending any remaining norm that the Department of Justice would operate as an independent arm of the government, answerable only to the law and the Constitution. She demanded “zealous advocacy” of Trump’s agenda and threatened that dissent would not be tolerated:
“Any attorney who because of their personal political views or judgments declines to sign a brief or appear in court, refuses to advance good-faith arguments on behalf of the administration, or otherwise delays or impedes the Department’s mission will be subject to discipline and potentially termination, consistent with applicable law”
She issued yet another order titled, “Ending Illegal DEI and DEIA Discrimination and Preferences” and ordered a report from the Civil Rights Division on the private sector’s “illegal” use of DEI for potential criminal investigation. (This tracks with a group of GOP state AGs, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton threatening COSTCO for keeping its DEI policies in place.)
Her use of DEIA, which adds “accessibility” to the usual DEI slur indicates they are prepared to challenge the Americans With Disabilities Act as discriminatory which is all the way through the looking glass.
The former Florida attorney general and legal counsel to President Trump during his first impeachment trial, who spent the last several years as a corporate lobbyist, also closed the KleptoCapture task force, created under AG Merrick Garland in 2022 to target Russian oligarchs violating U.S. economic sanctions imposed because of Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine. Through the initiative, the DOJ has prosecuted frauds worth billions, recovering embezzled funds and seizing assets like megayachts and luxury condos.
That’s got to make some of the world’s rich oligarchs very happy. In fact, one might even call it the first legal foreign bribe under the new Trump administration. One only wonders if anyone’s getting something in return.
All in all it’s been a very productive week so far for the new Attorney General. As far as I know she’s yet to weigh in on the anticipated purge of the FBI, but I think we can be assured that she’s for it. After her deputy fired the Jack Smith prosecutors, on Trump’s personal order, and put a number of others on notice that they are to be demoted if they refuse to resign, it’s very clear that Bondi and her henchmen are turning the Justice Department into Trump’s personal law firm. Since all three of the top officials have actually been Trump’s defense attorneys, that makes a lot of sense. He’s finally found his Roy Cohn.
That would be the same Susie Wiles who, when her boss spoke this week of the U.S. ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip to occupy and develop the prime beachfront property, looked like this:
Lahut spoke with MSNBC’s “Way Too Early” this morning on the tensions Elon Musk’s Agents of DOGE are generating inside the White House.
By the kids the South Africa-born boy genius enlisted to take a wrecking ball to the federal government — like 19-year-old hacker “Big Balls” and the racist-eugenecist Marko Elez — Musk means to wreak as much havoc as he can without considering or caring about the consequences for others. Much like the Narcissist-in-Chief who’s letting him trash federal personnel and policy infrastructure unsupervised. This is the plot of a Superman movie.
Four federal-government IT professionals The Atlantic spoke with are “terrified” about incursions into federal computer systems by Musk’s Agents of DOGE wannabe supervillains:
“This is the largest data breach and the largest IT security breach in our country’s history—at least that’s publicly known,” one contractor who has worked on classified information-security systems at numerous government agencies told us this week. “You can’t un-ring this bell. Once these DOGE guys have access to these data systems, they can ostensibly do with it what they want.”
There is a level of danger in the untrained tinkering with complex systems built up over years.
The four experts laid out the implications of giving untrained individuals access to the technological infrastructure that controls the country. Their message is unambiguous: These are not systems you tamper with lightly. Musk and his crew could act deliberately to extract sensitive data, alter fundamental aspects of how these systems operate, or provide further access to unvetted actors. Or they may act with carelessness or incompetence, breaking the systems altogether. Given the scope of what these systems do, key government services might stop working properly, citizens could be harmed, and the damage might be difficult or impossible to undo. As one administrator for a federal agency with deep knowledge about the government’s IT operations told us, “I don’t think the public quite understands the level of danger.”
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) told FLYING it would welcome any serious initiative to modernize the ATC system, but not without a seat at the table.
“It is critical that the experts who know and understand the intricacies and have detailed knowledge of the very complex system—the dedicated aviation safety professionals represented by NATCA—are involved in the process from design to testing and to implementation,” the union said in a statement.
Musk is trying to reimagine the federal government they way he mismanages a software company. The approach echoes the “move fast and break things” culture of Silicon Valley (elsewhere in The Atlantic):
Here’s the problem: The federal government is not a software company. “The stakes are wildly different,” a former senior Twitter executive told me recently. This person, who requested anonymity because they worked closely with Musk during his takeover and fear retribution, argued that Musk seems incapable of recognizing the limits of his own knowledge. When I asked them to describe Musk’s managerial strategy, they borrowed a term of art from SpaceX’s own rocket mishaps: “This is a rapid unscheduled disassembly of government services.”
Listen. I am/was a mechanical engineer. The ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code books I used fill 4-5 ft of shelf space. There is a lot of materials science in them. But also a lot of trial and error. The code has built up over a century-plus. A lot of it, like airline design, comes from forensic analysis of boilers, etc., that failed or blew up. Some killed people. Oh, let’s not build them THAT way again. Better update the code.
Like a friend’s observations about legacy computer code — cuneiform by 21st-century standards — deep below the surface of programming Big Balls and Marko take for granted, there’s stuff in the boiler code that no one alive knows why it’s in there. That doesn’t mean it’s useless and that ripping it out will do no harm. It means the reason it’s in there has been lost to time, but there was a damn good reason for it. And likely still is.
Musk and his brigands haven’t a clue about that. Even while Musk is having to learn through trial and error how to fly his rockets, he’s standing on the backs of government-funded research with rockets that blew up for years before they got the science and engineering right. (There are 20 min. reels on YouTube.) But he’s having too much fun breaking things.
