Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

IMaginot that?

Donald Trump’s Project 2025 forces overran Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, illegally impounded $3 trillion in funds for a host of congressionally mandated spending, and “threw the nation into chaos.” Officials administering “Meals on Wheels, Head Start, school lunches, child-care help, student loans, disaster relief, crime-fighting assistance and Medicaid” were left wondering what hit them and whether they could continue operating Wednesday morning.

“No president in history—not even Trump in his first term—ever logged so many illegal actions in so short a time,” Timothy Noah observes. “This is not a close legal call. Trump’s previous violation of this law concerning aid to Ukraine prompted Trump’s first impeachment 11 months into his first term.”

What else would we expect from a 34-time convicted felon?

Not even the White House seemed to know what it had done with its Monday night memo to “pause” the spending. White House’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, 27, with Sean Spicer-esque confidence, declared, “President Trump is back, and the Golden Age of America has most definitely begun.” Leavitt made sure reporters knew who Trump meant to target with the cutoff. But asked if Trump’s hold order cut off Americans on Medicaid, Leavitt answered, “I’ll check back on that and get back to you.”

I need to be sure everybody caught this…“No more funding for illegal DEI programs… no more funding for the green new scam… no more funding for transgenderism and wokeness across our federal bureaucracy and agencies.”Trump froze federal grants & loans just to target BIPOC & marginalized groups.

— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline.com) 2025-01-29T02:24:41.177Z

Dana Milbank reports:

How long would the cutoff be? Leavitt could only say that it was “temporary” and that Russell Vought, Trump’s nominee to run the Office of Management and Budget, “told me to tell all of you that the line to his office is open for other federal agencies.” So the guy directing this cataclysmic “pause” is an unconfirmed nominee who doesn’t even work for the federal government? (Later on Tuesday, a federal judge delayed the freeze until at least Feb. 3.)

They don’t care about government efficiency or saving taxpayer dollars. They are literally going to pay civil servants to QUIT THEIR JOBS! The goal is to eviscerate the government so that they can privatize everything & let corporations run rampant.

All in Project 2025. https://t.co/xaoAZm3pgl

— Maxwell Alejandro Frost (@MaxwellFrostFL) January 28, 2025

But Trump 2.0 was not done for the day. The man known for slapping gold leaf onto his properties offered civil servants of questionable loyalty a golden parachute that was neither. The message? Quit or be fired (Washington Post):

The White House’s Office of Personnel Management sent an email blast Tuesday to federal employees offering them a way to resign with pay through Sept. 30, the most sweeping effort yet by the new Trump administration to shrink the ranks of the federal workforce.

The email instructed workers to reply to the message if they want to resign and take the offer, which expires Feb. 6. According to a White House Q&A, most of the 2.3 million federal workers are eligible for the incentive, which landed as many employees were facing return-to-office mandates and threats of layoffs.

[…]

A website details the offer for federal employees. The email sent to the federal workforce said employees who choose to resign will be exempt from the return-to-office requirements until Sept. 30. An Office of Personnel Management memo issued late Tuesday said employees who do resign should “promptly have their duties re-assigned or eliminated and be placed on paid administrative leave” until the end of September, but left room for agency directors to require employees to keep working for some time.

Not being a Beltway denizen, it’s not clear to me whether Trump legally can direct funds this way. But observing the law is no longer even a hindrance to Trump. It’s not clear what this “deal” means for workers, their severance or benefits. It appears a slap-dash an effort at replacing civil servants with MAGA loyalists as the Monday memo from the acting director of OMB. This isn’t an effort to reform government so much as to occupy it.

This is grossly irresponsible reporting by the AP. What’s being offered is not a buyout. The deal is if you agree to resign in September you can continue working remotely until then. There is no buyout or severance.

— Judd Legum (@juddlegum.bsky.social) 2025-01-29T11:55:50.557Z

What Trump is asking of career civil servants is to become collaborators in a powerless Vichy government between now and when he finally eradicates the old republic in September and consolidates control. He’s not offering an olive branch.

Kim Lane Scheppele, the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton, writes that Trump is moving swiftly, as autocrats do, to disorient opponents with a flood of stunning actions. His governing principle in his second term is rooted in cruelty and loyalty:

Trump seeks to govern through cruelty and loyalty. Defending our constitutional democracy requires that we don’t look away when cruelty is visited on members of our community and that we refuse to allow our democracy to crumble into personalistic attachment to the leader. To stand up to this will require a unity of purpose so that we cannot be divided by fear and it will require that we defend the principle that no man is above the law—nor can he change the law to put himself above it. Those of us concerned about the future of our democracy need to regroup and prepare for a long hard fight. We cannot let ourselves be divided and conquered—or distracted by everything that is flooding the zone right now.

Meantime, Trump’s ICE deportations are not ethnically cleansing America fast enough to satisfy Trump.

Trump: Round up MORE than the usual suspects!

— Tom Sullivan (@tmsullivan.bsky.social) 2025-01-27T19:41:22.902Z

IMaginot that?

I had a feeling that this blatantly unconstitutional power play would wake Democrats out of their stupor and it appears that it did. I watched Ruben Gallego on Chris Hayes make it clear to night that something has changed. He says that he won’t vote for Russ Vought and it sounds like they are all ready to oppose him. Whether there are any Republicans willing to join in is unknown.

Whether Vought makes it or not, it does appear that the Democrats have relinquished their insane plan to ignore Trump and focus on “kitchen table issues.”

According to Axios, “One week after the 2025 inauguration, it feels more like the winter of 2017.” Hurrah:

• Democrats have flipped overnight from retreat to obstruction after Trump fired government watchdogs and froze (some) government spending.

They have no plans to stop unless or until Trump backs down.

• “This is about Trump wanting to seize control of everything,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) told reporters today.

A coherent Democratic counteroffensive is starting to emerge.

• Make noise: Jeffries’ messaging arm urged House Dems to hold press conferences and go live on social media. Schumer’s Dems audibled today’s press conference from Jan. 6 pardons to Trump’s spending freeze.
• Block bills: Senate Dems filibustered a GOP bill sanctioning the International Criminal Court (ICC). Democrats were resigned yesterday that they’d be jammed on the bill. Now they know they can increase their negotiating position if they stay unified.
• Protest votes: Nearly two dozen Senate Democrats voted against Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s confirmation, a day after the chamber voted unanimously to advance his nomination.
• Lawsuits: A federal judge blocked Trump’s spending freeze plans this afternoon. But all day, Democrats decried Trump’s move. The lawsuit will give them time to create a narrative about the real-world impact of the cuts. Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers will be hearing from their (potentially) angry constituents.

This is what’s required. Let’s hope they stick with it.

Trump has apparently offered 8 months severance pay to 2 million federal employees. Here’s Tim Kaine urging them not to do it:

Tim Kaine tells federal employees to ignore Trump’s offer to quit w/ pay for months. “Don’t be fooled. He’s tricked hundreds of people w/ that offer. If you accept that offer & resign he’ll stiff you just like he stiffed the contractors. He doesn’t have any authority to do this.” pic.twitter.com/iQI3a8grRG

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) January 29, 2025

This is how it’s done.

Trump pulled security from John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and his assistant John Hook despite the assassination contract put out by Iran. Just another example of Trump inviting political violence against his enemies:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will announce he is “immediately pulling” retired Gen. Mark Milley’s personal security detail and security clearance, multiple senior administration officials tell Fox News. 

The secretary is also directing the new acting Inspector General to conduct a review board to determine if enough evidence exists for Gen. Milley to be stripped of a star in retirement based on his actions to “undermine the chain of command” during President Donald Trump’s first term, officials say. 

The Pentagon will also be removing a second portrait of Gen. Milley inside the Pentagon. This one is from the Army’s Marshall Corridor on the third floor honoring his service as chief-of-staff of the Army. Fox is told the removal of this second portrait will take place as soon as tonight. This means there will be no more portraits of Gen. Milley inside the Pentagon. 

[…]

The now retired Gen. Milley and other former senior Trump aides had been assigned personal security details ever since Iran vowed revenge for the killing of Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike in 2020 ordered by Trump in his first term.

Trump and his MAGA henchmen want him dead.

And remember, killing Soleimani was Trump’s decision. If there’s a better lesson in this, I don’t know what it might be. Follow his orders at your own peril. He might have your back. But he might not. King Donald might just wake up on the wrong side of the bed one morning and decide that you’re out. Sometimes you can insult him ferociously, as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have done, yet still be rewarded with his favor. But he could change his mind too. (Li’l Marco should probably sleep with one eye open.)

That misogynist pig Pete Hegseth, friend of war criminals and Tito’s vodka, being in a position to demote someone like Milley is enough to make you scream.

If he manages to evade assassination over the next four years, I would hope that one of the first things a Democratic president will do is to restore his rank and hang his picture.

Former Ambassador Caroline Kennedy sent a litter to Senators about her cousin Bobby. If they care to listen there is no way they could ever even dream of putting him in charge of anything:

He is a sociopath: “he enjoyed showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in the blender to feed his hawks. It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence.”

Sadly, I won’t be surprised if that actually cinches it for him. Republicans will love him all the more.

When you elect a criminal, you should expect him to commit crimes

It’s not a kitchen table issue so …

For over a week now, Donald Trump and the Justice Department have been flouting the law meant to shut down TikTok. The legislation was unambiguous and was passed by large, bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress; it was affirmed by a unanimous Supreme Court less than two weeks ago. And for the most part, both Republicans and Democrats have sat quietly by as Trump has waved away their previously stated concerns, as well as the constitutional powers and institutional prerogatives of Capitol Hill.

He has also broken the law pertaining to the process for firing Inspector Generals and is ignoring the Impoundment Act by shutting down funding of programs he doesn’t like. He’s discriminating against all kinds of people.

But that’s what you get when you allow a criminal to become the most powerful man on earth and imbue him with immunity for virtually any crime he commits. He has demonstrated that he will pardon anyone who backs him if they run afoul of the law as well and having been impeached twice and saved by his GOP lackeys, he has no fear of being accused of abuse of power. He’ll never have to run again. He is completely unaccountable.

He is to all intents and purposes a dictator. Who’s going to stop him?

It’s happening:

Multiple states locked out of Medicaid portal. This is a Trump shutdown, except this time it’s unlawful.

— Brian Schatz (@schatz.bsky.social) 2025-01-28T16:27:19.123Z

There was some question as to whether student loans would be allowed to continue and from what I can see at the moment that, like everything else in the federal government,that decision is being decided by some flunky political appointee but nobody knows if it’s going to work or not.

Trump’s gauleiter at the Department of Education is deciding which congressionally appropriated funds can be disbursed and which cannot.

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw.bsky.social) 2025-01-28T17:28:45.691Z

This situation is developing rapidly so who knows whether this will last past the day. If you look at the memo that went out suggesting that it’s being done because of “Marxist” policies, transgenderism and the green new deal, it’s pretty clear that the memo was written by a moron. So who knows?

My office just got a phone call from a domestic violence shelter — the only one serving multiple counties — that says they may have to close their doors if President Trump doesn’t reverse course.

— Senator Mark Warner (@markwarner.bsky.social) 2025-01-28T17:25:57.763Z

"What happened last night is the most direct assault on the authority of Congress, I believe, in the history of the United States. It is blatantly unconstitutional," Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) says of Trump's OMB halting all federal grants."If this stands, then Congress may as well adjourn."

— Jen Bendery (@jbendery.bsky.social) 2025-01-28T17:35:04.821Z

Meanwhile, as Trump is contemplating taking food away from children and old people, ending cancer research and HIV funding as well as dozens of other atrocities, he’s prepared to reward his buddies in the Tech and Military Industrial Complexes with a big pile of money to develop some bullshit:

President Trump has ordered the development of a next-generation missile defense system he likened to Israel’s Iron Dome in an executive order he signed on Monday that described ballistic missiles and other advanced aerial weapons as “the most catastrophic threat facing the United States.”

But experts immediately raised questions about whether an Iron Dome-style system was feasible for the United States, which is more than 400 times the size of Israel.

He apparently thinks we need to have a defense from Canadian and Mexican rocket attacks. Maybe he really is planning on invading them too.

I’ve written a boatload about Russ Vought over the past couple of years. He’s the architect of all this and I suspect that the “shock and awe” of is is pleasing him greatly. After all, he said out loud that he wants to traumatize federal workers so they will quit. Also he’s a sadistic, Christian nationalist weirdo.

Remember this?

NEW We went undercover in Project 2025. Our investigation uncovered details of the secretive second phase of Project 2025 being led by a Trump insider, with plans to feed hundreds of highly-confidential battle plans directly into the Trump transition team. Watch here.

Remember this guy? Trump just made him director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Shout-out to everyone who tried to convince us he knew nothing about Project 2025. pic.twitter.com/t6RdA7xccq

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) November 23, 2024

By the way, if you were thinking that the GOP Congressional appropriators would be miffed since the Constitution gives them the power of the purse, think again:

In the face of a massive assault on the basic functions of the federal government, the Democrats have decided they are going to ignore it and talk about kitchen table issues, crime and the border.

Less than 48 hours after President Donald Trump was inaugurated, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries held a closed-door meeting with Democratic lawmakers to issue a warning and a clarion call.

The new administration was going to “flood the zone,” and Democrats couldn’t afford to chase every single outrage — or nothing was going to sink in for the American people, Jeffries told them, according to a person in the room who requested anonymity to discuss the private meeting.

Jeffries, D-N.Y., urged members to focus their message on the cost of living, along with border security and community safety.

“The House Republican Contract Against America is an extreme plan that will not lower costs for everyday Americans,” Jeffries told reporters the next day, referring to the GOP agenda and spending cuts it is weighing. “It will make our country more expensive.”

Burned by their failures to end the Trump era the first time, Democrats are crafting a new playbook for his second administration that departs from the noisy resistance of his first presidency. The new approach, according to more than a dozen party leaders, lawmakers and strategists, will be to zero in on pocketbook issues as they lay the groundwork for the 2026 midterm elections and beyond. And they plan to focus less on his cultural taunts and issues that don’t reach the kitchen table.

Yeah, ok fine. Basically, this is just crossing your fingers and hoping that Trump and the Republicans will implode and somehow the democracy will survive and you’ll be all that’s left standing. But sure, whatever. Maybe they’ll make some good “deals” with the Republicans to lower taxes for rich people in exchange for only putting a 20% tariff on food. Very kitchen table.

Acosta announces on air that he's leaving CNN and says, "it is never a good time to bow down to a tyrant … don't give in to the lies" pic.twitter.com/VObFTZJASX

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 28, 2025

They told him he would have to switch to a midnight show despite his ratings being the highest on the network in daytime. So he left.

This is CNN.

And not in a good way

This oligarch cover of “All Over the World” won’t be spawning flash mobs. At least not the dancing kind.

Anne Applebaum writes in The Atlantic:

During an American election, a rich man can hand out $1 million checks to prospective voters. Companies and people can use secretly funded “dark money” nonprofits to donate unlimited money, anonymously, to super PACs, which can then spend it on advertising campaigns. Pod­casters, partisans, or anyone, really, can tell outrageous, incendiary lies about a candidate. They can boost those falsehoods through targeted online advertising. No special courts or election rules can stop the disinformation from spreading before voters see it. The court of public opinion, which over the past decade has seen and heard everything, no longer cares. U.S. elections are now a political Las Vegas: Anything goes.

That is not how it works in other countries, Applebaum explains. Campaign spending in European countries is limited by law, and such barricades against the influence of Big Money exist elsewhere. Donor transparency, equal time, rules against hate speech, etc., are intended “to create conditions for fair debate, to build trust in the system, and to inspire confidence in the winning candidates.”

Tech billionaires with enough money to control the weather threaten popular sovereignty. They are aided by a system of cryptocurrencies that can channel dark money into anonymous disinformation accounts across social media. Both have undermined our democracy here and are now at work internationally. What was once a Cold War practice of nation-states surrepetitiously funding foreign political parties is now practiced by an impossibly rich class of transnational oligarchs seeking “agenda setting” power beyond the legal reach of popular will to bring them to heel.

Only one institution on the planet is large enough and powerful enough to write and enforce laws that could make the tech companies change their policies. Partly for that reason, the European Union may soon become one of the Trump administration’s most prominent targets. In theory, the EU’s Digital Services Act, which took full effect last year, can be used to regulate, fine, and, in extreme circumstances, ban internet companies whose practices clash with European laws. Yet a primary intent of the act is not punitive, but rather to open up the platforms: to allow vetted researchers access to platform data, and to give citizens more transparency about what they hear and see. Freedom of speech also means the right to receive information, and at the moment social-media companies operate behind a curtain. We don’t know if they are promoting or suppressing certain points of view, curbing or encouraging orchestrated political campaigns, discouraging or provoking violent riots. Above all, we don’t know who is paying for misinformation to be spread online.

Enter Trump-Vance:

In November, the European Commission fined Meta more than $800 million for unfair trade practices. But for how much longer will the EU have this authority? In the fall, J. D. Vance issued an extraordinarily unsubtle threat, one that is frequently repeated in Europe. “If NATO wants us to continue supporting them and NATO wants us to continue to be a good participant in this military alliance,” Vance told an interviewer, “why don’t you respect American values and respect free speech?” Mark Zuckerberg, echoing Vance’s misuse of the expression free speech to mean “freedom to conceal company practices from the public,” put it even more crudely. In a conversation with Joe Rogan in January, Zuckerberg said he feels “optimistic” that President Donald Trump will intervene to stop the EU from enforcing its own antitrust laws: “I think he just wants America to win.”

I read that twisted use of “free speech” and thought “To Serve Man.” They’re using our own principles against us.

Where once Vladimir Putin was the most prominent player seeking to undermine European sovereignty, Applebaum explains, now it’s über-rich Americans:

… because they don’t want to be regulated—and they may have the American president on their side. Quite soon, the European Union, along with Great Britain and other democracies around the world, might find that they have to choose between their alliance with the United States and their ability to run their own elections and select their own leaders without the pressure of aggressive outside manipulation. Ironically, countries, such as Brazil, that don’t have the same deep military, economic, and cultural ties to the U.S. may find it easier to maintain the sovereignty of their political systems and the transparency of their information ecosystems than Europeans.

In my earlier post, I cited a Laura Clawson comment that “Once again I feel like this reality is brought to us by a writer badly in need of an editor.” For myself, this growth of tech oligarch power resembles the plot of a bad 50s sci-fi flick I saw as a kid. Anne Applebaum suggests it’s spreading all over the world.

(h/t DJ)

More headlines we’re sure to see

Donald Trump is already making America “great again” … for lowlifes.

This first gentleman’s demise predates Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons, but he might have received one if he’d still been in jail. Plus, if he’d owned a GMC Denali, it would now be a McKinley, January 4:

A man who fired an assault rifle inside a Washington, D.C., restaurant in December 2016 while claiming to investigate the “pizzagate” hoax died this week after being fatally shot by police during a traffic stop in Kannapolis, North Carolina.

On the night of Jan. 4, Edgar Welch was a passenger in a 2001 GMC Yukon that was stopped by officers, Kannapolis police said Thursday in a news statement.

The traffic stop was conducted after officers linked the vehicle to Welch, who was wanted at the time on an outstanding arrest warrant, police said.

When officers recognized Welch and moved to arrest him, he produced a handgun from his jacket and pointed it at one of the officers, police said, and after refusing commands to drop the gun, two officers opened fire on him.

“Florida Man” revisited, January 22:

A Florida man who prosecutors alleged attacked police with an explosive device during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol — and whose case was dropped following President Donald Trump’s sweeping pardons and commutations issued Monday, was arrested Wednesday on pending federal gun charges, according to court records.

Daniel Ball, 39, was taken into custody Wednesday morning, according to an arrest warrant, on a separate indictment returned by federal prosecutors in Florida last summer that charged him for unlawfully possessing a gun as a felon.

“Indiana State Police did not provide additional details,” January 26:

An Indiana man who was recently pardoned for his participation in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was shot and killed during a traffic stop by a sheriff’s deputy Sunday.

Matthew Huttle, 42, was involved in a traffic stop at 4:15 p.m. by a Jasper County sheriff’s deputy, authorities said in a news release. It alleged that Huttle resisted arrest and was found to have a firearm on him.

“An altercation took place between the suspect and the officer, which resulted in the officer firing his weapon and fatally wounding the suspect,” the release said.

Still wanted after all these years, January 27:

A Houston man who was pardoned by President Donald Trump after being convicted of assaulting police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was released from a federal prison last week but is now wanted in Harris County on a pre-existing charge of online solicitation of a minor.

Andrew Taake, 36, was sentenced to six years in prison in June 2024 after pleading guilty to assaulting officers with bear spray and a whip-like weapon during the attack in Washington D.C. Taake was released from a federal prison in Florence, Colorado, on Jan. 20, after he and more than 1,500 others involved in the insurrection were pardoned by Trump on his first day in office.

[…]

On Monday, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare confirmed in a statement to Houston Public Media that Taake is still wanted under a pending state warrant for the alleged online solicitation of a minor in 2016.

How many of the Trump “very special” 1,500 will be back in headlines and/or obituaries in the coming months?

So in less than a week we’ve got one January 6 pardon killed by police at a traffic stop and another wanted for online solicitation of a minor? Once again I feel like this reality is brought to us by a writer badly in need of an editor.

— Laura Clawson (@lauraclawson.bsky.social) 2025-01-27T22:24:07.998Z

Please review Digby’s post from last night about Donald Trump’s freezing of “all federal grants and loans, domestically and internationally.” Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck remarks ominously, “If presidents can impound appropriated funds at any time and for any reason, then there’s not much point to having a legislature.”

Then again, maybe that’s Trump’s point … or ultimate goal. Is this just the start?