If you don’t follow her orders she will shoot you down like a dog. You know she’ll do it, too:
Tonight, I’m announcing a nationwide and international multimillion-dollar ad campaign warning illegal aliens to leave our country NOW or face deportation with the inability to return to the US. This serves as a strong warning to criminal illegal aliens to not come to America. If… pic.twitter.com/VcVgJYfSKR
As they destroy the lives of Americans by firing half the federal workforce in the name of eliminating waste, they’re spending millions on vanity projects like that piece of work.
US President Donald Trump on Sunday attended the Daytona 500 which is a NASCAR Cup Series motor race, but more than his attendance, it was his mode of transport that gathered quite the chatter online and offline. Trump took his Air Force One to attend the sports event at the Daytona beach. NASCAR fans were thrilled to see the Air Force One flyover the area before Trump rode in the presidential limousine onto the Daytona International Speedway.
Air Force One took off from Palm Beach International Airport shortly after noon. The White House in a statement said that he was accompanied by his son Eric, grandson Luke, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum among others.
[…]
While some were relishing in their fan moment, others were not so happy about the whole show. @CalltoActivism shared the disappointment and pointed out how American taxpayers’ money was being wasted. “Since we’re on the topic of government waste, Donald Trump’s joyride around the Daytona 500 cost American taxpayers around $5,000,000,” the tweet said. Giving further breakdown, the user wrote,
The government is being run on a day to day basis by our Prime Minister Elon Musk and various henchmen. King Trump appears to be mostly doing ceremonial duties, as monarchs tend to do.
These ceremonies cost a lot of money but they are important to ensure that the public is given many moments they can relish as assurances that their president is a star. As you know, when you’re a star they let you do it.
“I’d understand a strategic reduction in force if needed,” said one USDA employee, who was fired over the weekend. “But this was a butchering of some of our best. Does the public know this?”
The termination letters hitting inboxes all struck the same note: Probationary workers were getting the ax for poor job performance. But many of those fired had just received positive reviews, or had not worked in the government long enough to receive even a single rating, according to interviews with federal employees and documents obtained by The Post.
[…]
Firing employees en masse with the same claim of poor performance is illegal, said Jim Eisenmann, a partner at the Alden Law Group, a law firm specializing in litigation by federal employees. It violates federal law covering career civil service employees, he said.
“It can’t be true,” Eisenmann said. “They’re clearly not articulating this on an individual basis, which is what makes it so suspect.”
One of those civil servants fired for “performance” is from nearby. This FB account from Jenifer Bunty popped up this morning. She’s a local employed by the U.S. Forest Service (also USDA) involved in disaster relief. Or she was:
Terminated, Effective Immediately
At the risk of exposing what a nerd I am, I’ll tell you that when I first opened my Forest Service uniform, I held my badge and cried. I was so proud to be part of the agency whose mission is “caring for the land and serving people”. I thought about how proud my dad would be. He instilled in me a sense of duty, patriotism, and a strong desire to do what’s right, especially when people need it most.
For the past 19.5 months, I’ve been working in disaster recovery for the National Forests in North Carolina. I worked on 6 hurricanes or major storms and a dozen or more wildfires during that time, including deployments to western states.
I also took a temp promotion as the District Ranger for the Grandfather Ranger District two weeks before Hurricane Helene ravaged Pisgah National Forest, western NC, and other states. While my own family didn’t have power or a way to keep food and medication cold, I went in and worked 19 days straight before someone made me take a break.
I led the District to the best of my ability through something none of us signed up for. I had to. People needed us. Our first focus was clearing a path to get to 35 kids and their teachers who were trapped in a facility behind several landslides and giant piles of debris. After that, we focused on supporting search and rescue, clearing roads for emergency access, and helping everywhere we could.
I returned to my normal role on the disaster recovery team in January and started working towards long-term recovery for the Forest and our local communities. On Thursday, I stood on the ruined part of I-40 with a team planning how to stick an interstate back on the side of a mountain. People probably don’t realize that portion sits on National Forest land and cannot be fixed without Forest Service employees. That afternoon we got word that 14 of our employees were indiscriminately fired. All of them were actively working on hurricane recovery.
Photo via Jenifer Bunty’s FB page.
Yesterday, I received the call that I was being fired. We’ve lost 17 in total from the National Forests in North Carolina. Every single one was working on hurricane recovery projects. The majority of them hold firefighter or incident management qualifications and actively support wildfire operations. The US Forest Service has reportedly lost more than 4000 employees at this point. More than 10% of the agency.
My termination letter said it was “based on performance”. The supervisor that called me said I was the best hire they had ever made. My performance reviews have always been excellent. I love what I do and, like so many of my colleagues, I care about getting it right to meet our mission.
In my time working for this agency, I think I’ve made a difference. Besides growing personally and professionally, I’ve tried to be an example of a strong, caring woman for my daughters. I talk with them about how we can do hard things and we should always “do what we can, with what we have, where we’re at.” When I told them that I wasn’t allowed to do my job anymore, they cried with me. We have all sacrificed for my work. I’ve taught them to believe it matters.
It still matters.
I hope I get to do it again one day.
I was planning a second post this morning about something much scarier. But Jenifer’s story needed a wider audience.
Yes, their plans are a bizarre geek wet dream. And yes, these gullible “geniuses” are high on their own supply. That doesn’t mean there isn’t an overarching plan flying below the chaos. Or perhaps competing plans.
That jerk-off dance Donald Trump does regularly is actually a fair representation of the forces behind the scenes yanking his strings. Amidst the chaos he’s created in just his first month back in office, it’s now clear just which faction of reactionaries has the figurative upper hand.
FDR’s populism built the middle class that competed with the rich for class and economic domination. Yes, the New Deal helped make the U.S. the predominant world power in the 20th century, and yes, the rich got richer. (Much richer after the Reagan revolution.) But God, man, those uppity poors in the 1960s actually wanted to share power!
Remnants of the conservative old guard, the Koch-style plutocrats behind the Powell memo and the think tanks they built in the 1970s, have longed for decades to tear down New Deal programs. (Even better, privatize them.) Movement conservatism meant to put an end to government that served people besides America’s Most Wealthy. But without killing the golden goose, naturally.
What they didn’t see coming were the techno-state monarchists who wanted to burn down all of it and opt out of society.
Liza Featherstone writes at The New Republic that the burn-it-down boys are not wreaking chaos among popular government programs simply out of hubris:
Most likely, their popularity is precisely what the Trump-Musk administration dislikes about them. For anti-government ideologues, it’s important that people not have good experiences with the government. Every clean energy investment in your community, every Social Security check, every child enrolled in Head Start, every improvement in air and water quality, is a threat to right-wing ideological dominance. They know it, and they want to stop Americans from having those positive associations.
Even Republicans who voted against the Inflation Reduction Act rushed to take credit for its investments in red-state communities. Shutting it down and laying off government employees who form the base of economies in many places over alleged “performance” is not only illegal but guaranteed to be highly unpopular. Which for the DOGEes is just the point.
The ruling class of the 1930s and ’40s would have loved to be in Elon Musk’s position. Although he and his young minions may seem merely like nihilistic psychos, they’re also conservatives doing something that makes rational sense for their political movement. By going after the most popular government programs, they are thinking long-term, planning for a world where no one defends government agencies because these agencies don’t do anything that we value. Elon Musk isn’t just trying to bypass all checks and balances, ignore popular will, plunder our public goods, and wreck the world, though he is doing all that. As we protest this vandalism, we need to remember that he aims to build a future in which we have nothing left to defend.
That is perhaps a tad more disruption than classic conservatives can tolerate. The autocrats also jerking Trump’s strings may wish to see democracy crushed. But paired with capitalism, democracy produces consumers, and consumers produce demand, and demand generates wealth for the plutocrats. And plutocrats pay off autocrats and dictators.
In the tug-of-war among the tech barons, conservative fat cats, American-style fascists, and global autocrats vying for control of the Oval Office, Elon Musk and his delusional DOGEes seem to have the upper hand just now.
As Dave Karpf summarizes in the piece Digby cited yesterday:
The tech barons think they should be allowed to opt out society. They do not know what the administrative state does. They do not care to find out. And they figure we could save a whole lot of money if we just turn the whole thing off.
“Efficiency” is a DOGE smokescreen that plays well in focus groups not told it means they’ll lose their incomes and safety net. By the time they figure it out, the damage is done.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D) of Maryland lays out the game in a recent interview with Brian Tyler Cohen that Gil Duran transcribes:
We’re dealing with a band of incorrigible, lawless plutocrats who think that they can just control the whole US government. And I keep thinking about what Steve Bannon said about Elon Musk. He said he’s a truly evil individual … But, you know, in the Silicon Valley that network of right-wing billionaire libertarian-turned-authoritarians, they are very open about the fact that they think that democracy is obsolete and we’re living in a post-Constitutional America, the Constitution no longer fits, and they are trying to get everybody ready for a techno-state monarchy.
And in their writings about it they suggest that seizure of the control of technology and computers and financial payments is the essence to moving from one form of government to another. So we’re really talking about people who would like to abolish American constitutional institutions and representative democracy, and the rights and freedoms of the people. Their guy Yarvin, who’s, you know, their big intellectual hero, has said people have got to overcome their fear of the word dictator. He says a dictator is basically just like a corporate CEO. They’re all “dictators” in their businesses and so we need a dictator [for] the corporation that’s the United States of America and obviously they have Elon Musk in mind…
Here’s news on just one of the plans Musk-as-dictator has in mind:
Food and Drug Administration employees reviewing Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink were fired over the weekend as part of a broader purge of the federal workforce, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.
The cuts included about 20 people in the FDA’s office of neurological and physical medicine devices, several of whom worked on Neuralink, according to the two sources, who asked not to be identified because of fear of professional repercussions. That division includes reviewers overseeing clinical-trial applications by Neuralink and other companies making so-called brain-computer interface devices, the sources said.
Both sources said they did not believe the employees were specifically targeted because of their work on Neuralink’s applications.
Neuralink had its application for human trials denied several years ago after his company “founded in 2016, didn’t seek permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) until early 2022 – and the agency rejected the application, seven current and former employees told Reuters.”
The looney thing is that Musk’s efforts are foreshadowed in a 1960s satire, The President’s Analyst (1967). Dr. Sidney Schaefer (James Coburn) is pursued across the country by alphabet-agency spies from across the planet eager to know what he knows of the president’s mind. Schaefer eventually is captured by the shadowy TPC. They want his help in legislating that everyone have microchips implanted in their brains prenatally. The joke in 1967 was that TPC is The Phone Company. Their goal is efficiency too, to save billions by scrapping all their costly hardware, maintenance, and workforce.
“Can you imagine the ease, the fun, with which you can place a call?” asks Arlington Hewes (Pat Harrington Jr.), the genial president of TPC.
“You’re a megalomaniac,” Schaefer tells Hewes.
We find out later that Hewes is also a Disneyesque animatron. Musk is just the former for now.
Americans are alarmed at the idea of Musk being inside their private data. He wants to be inside their heads as well.
I did a walkthrough, here’s a timelapse. This is probably the biggest demo in D.C. so far post-inauguration, brought together by the 50501 Movement which originated on Reddit.Everyone was chanting “fire Elon!” while I was filming this.
Gathered with perhaps 400 friends and neighbors in front of Frederick city hall to register our protest at recent happenings. Many good signs and this was one of my favorites.
I was unhappy earlier today about all the media attention to some Arizona voters who told a focus group that they think Donald Trump is just dreamy. It’s the same old same old form the media who are once again working feverishly to pump up Trump’s popularity. But Philip Bump at the Washington Post had some interesting information that indicates that an Arizona focus group may not have its finger on the pulse:
YouGov measures the popularity of past presidents among all Americans. And a pair of professors conducts a survey asking members of the American Political Science Association to evaluate presidential “greatness.”
At the upper end of the spectrum, there’s general agreement. Abraham Lincoln is the most positively viewed president among both groups. George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt are near the top as well.
There’s some deviation on John F. Kennedy, who’s third on YouGov’s list and 10th among the presidential scholars. But that deviation is nothing compared with what happens at the other end of the spectrum.
The worst-performing past president among the general public is James K. Polk, to a significant extent because so few Americans have an opinion of him (quite justifiably). Historians, meanwhile, think the worst president on that measure of greatness was … Donald J. Trump.
No president has a larger gap between his rankings by the public and by the experts. He’s 20th on the public’s list (one place behind Biden) and 45th on the scholars’.
[…]
The average for Trump’s first term and Biden’s was under 50 percent, thanks to Trump. Trump’s second term has started a bit better — but his approval rating average at this point is still below everyone except himself, eight years ago.
There’s been reporting that Trump is pleased that a recent CBS News-YouGov poll showed his approval at 53 percent. His average is still below 50 percent, though, and that 53 percent is lower than Biden’s average approval rating at the same point in 2021. But one finds solace where one can. For Trump, it’s outperforming 2017 counts.
YouGov has also tracked Trump’s favorability (that is, views of Trump himself) and approval (views of his presidency when he’s been in office) since early 2016. You can see that his favorability ticked upward after the 2016 and 2024 elections and that his initial approval rating now is higher than his initial approval rating eight years ago. You can also see that his approval rating is already starting to slip downward.
Basically, Republicans like him but nobody else does. That does not translate to a ;public groundswell for DOGE, the Gaza resort, abandoning Ukraine, deportation to Gitmo and everything else. He is not popular, he just isn’t. The fact that he’s slightly more popular at this stage than he was in his first term is not indicative of a popular mandate. He won by 1.4% and a couple hundred thousand votes in swing states out of about 150 million.
I’m struggling to keep that in mind and keep the faith that the people aren’t going to stand for this. There were quite a few out in the streets today with grassroots protests. It’s just getting started.
The Great replacement in the United States is the American version of a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory that racial minorities are displacing the traditional white American population and taking control of the nation. Versions of the theory “have become commonplace” in the Republican Party of the United States, and have become a major issue of political debate. It also has stimulated violent responses including mass murders. It resembles the Great Replacement theory promoted in Europe, but has its origins in American nativism around 1900. According to Erika Lee, in 1894 the old stock Yankee upper-class founders of the Immigration Restriction League were, “convinced that Anglo-Saxon traditions, peoples, and culture were being drowned in a flood of racially inferior foreigners from Southern and Eastern Europe.”
A May 2022 poll by Yahoo! News and YouGov found that 61% of people who voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 U.S. presidential election believe that “a group of people in this country are trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants and people of color who share their political views.”
They claim that the Democrats are enticing immigrants to come to America for all the entitlement goodies (as if we actually have a generous welfare state) and they will be so grateful they will always vote for them. Illegal immigrants do not get social security, Medicare or Medicaid. If they become citizens, they will be entitled to them but there is no guarantee that they will vote Democratic. In fact, the last I heard, Latinos were voting in large numbers for Republicans these days, many of them immigrants.
This theory is just a way for the anti-entitlement wingnuts to push the same ideology they’ve had for decades and for the anti-immigrant haters to make the racists agree to give up their benefits.
It’s not surprising that Musk would be a promoter of this racist fringe conspiracy theory. But now that he has the keys to the government, he’s in a great position to destroy social security in ways that will impact all of us. In fact, it’s almost guaranteed to happen if the little DOGE-bags get their hands on it. Like most wealthy people, Musk believes that the government safety net is for losers and that people who depend on it are parasites on the backs of the real producers like Musk himself.
Trump has promised not to cut Social Security and Medicare but he’s a liar. And even if he’s sincere in that desire he’s so easily manipulated by Musk et al that they can easily convince him that the cuts are merely curbing fraud and that real people will not be hurt by it. And frankly, I don’t think he cares anymore if he’s fulfilling his promises because he’s driven by his lust for power and revenge and believes that MAGA (indeed, the vast majority of the world) loves him no matter what he does. Just look at how he’s admitting that his vow to bring prices down immediately was bs and that Americans are just going to have to contend with higher prices as a result of his tariffs. His promises are worth nothing.
I heard an interesting anecdote over the weekend from some people who had attended a rally last week. They noted that it was attended by quite a few people with gray hair and they were protesting Musk’s assault on social security, Medicare and Medicaid. (Something like one quarter of Medicaid payments go to pay for people in nursing homes.) If you want to see some people get angry who have a lot at stake and a lot of time on their hands go after the seniors. They aren’t going to buy this Great Replacement excuse.
The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration left her job this weekend after a clash with billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service over their attempts to access sensitive government records, three people familiar with her departure said Monday.
Michelle King, who spent several decades at the agency before being named its acting commissioner last month, has now left her position after the disagreement, the people said.
President Donald Trump appointed Leland Dudek, a manager in charge of Social Security’s anti-fraud office, as acting commissioner while Frank Bisignano, the president’s nominee for permanent commissioner, is vetted by the Senate, according to three individuals who spoke on the condition anonymity to speak candidly. A public announcement is expected this week. Dudek had posted positive remarks on social media about DOGE’s efforts to cut costs and search for fraud in federal agencies, according to two of the individuals.
Dave Karpf wrote about the Silicon Valley Edgelords’ plan for world domination and it’s important:
Balaji Srinivasan’s 2022 book, The Network Stateis a blueprint of sorts. It is the wild fever-dream of Silicon Valley’s libertarian investor-class. It imagines a near future in which online communities use the blockchain to opt out of government and form their own competing “network states.”
It’s essentially just Galt’s Gulch, plus blockchain.
If you want to know what the Tech Barons are attempting to replace democracy with, then it is important to take Srinivasan seriously.
But Balaji is not a serious person. The book is manifestly ridiculous. It is a blueprint drawn in crayon. Balaji’s ideas are stunningly undercooked, offered with such conspiratorial self-certainty that you have to wonder whether anyone has bothered to ask him if he’s alright.
That’s the lesson I drew last week, while reading this pitiful excuse for a book (you can read the 135-post bluesky reaction thread here): The tech barons do have a blueprint. But they have not thought any of their plans through.
We ought to take them seriously; we ought to laugh in their faces.
I would laugh if it didn’t make me want to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head — forever. But they are ridiculous:
(1) Start by launching an online community, organized around “One Commandment” or shared belief.
(2) Build a capacity for collective action and resource acquisition.
(3) Buy property, distributed across the globe, connected through the blockchain and Artificial/Virtual Reality.
(4) get “diplomatic recognition” from existing nation-states. Boom, congratulations, the future has arrived.
This is all delivered in painfully stilted startup-speak. To Balaji, governments are just like startups. Social movements are just like startups. There is a real “Boss Baby tweet” motif throughout the book. Srinivasan simply can’t think beyond his own proximate life experience.
Read the whole thing. It’s not the first time I’ve read something about this bizarre geek wet dream. A bunch of them have actually been buying up land in California to build their Disney-style “City of Yesterday”:
Tens of thousands of acres later, a group backed by Silicon Valley’s wealthiest says it’s done buying up land in northern California for its walkable, utopian city.
Flannery Associates has been grabbing plots of land in Solano County, about 60 miles from San Francisco, for the past five years. The company has spent about $800 million to purchase tens of thousands of acres of farmland with the support of tech billionaires, including Marc Andreessen and Laurene Powell Jobs.
Renderings of the company’s plan show two- to three-story rowhouses, children biking in the middle of the streets, and parents taking a stroll — all without a car in sight. Jan Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader, said the company wants to build a “city of yesterday.” The project has been named California Forever.
Now, the company says it has all the land it needs to carry out its vision.
There have been many science fiction stories based on this idea. None of them turn out well.
I urge you to read Karpf’s entire piece because we desperately need insight into what’s going on beneath the surface of this chaos. The Bitcoin nonsense, the silly vision of utopia informed by movies and TV, it’s all nonsense. But they have a lot of money and it’s giving them power to actually act on this lunacy.
Trump is an idiot who just wants revenge and has been convinced he’s an emperor. His narcissism and ignorance are being used by these cyber-barons to see their puerile visions come to fruition (and they are very, very stupid visions.) But we have to pay attention because it’s all so dangerous.
Karpf concludes:
The reason we have to take Balaji’s musings seriously at all is that they provide a window into what Elon Musk and the DOGEkiddies are trying to accomplish.
The tech barons think they should be allowed to opt out society. They do not know what the administrative state does. They do not care to find out. And they figure we could save a whole lot of money if we just turn the whole thing off.
Gil Duran has an excellent newsletter, The Nerd Reich, that covers all their activities.
They have tried to establish their own private tech-utopia cities. Multi-billionaires have invested millions into these schemes — which is either proof that they are serious or proof that they have such absurd wealth that they throw away millions on unserious larks (or, more likely, both).
They have spent hundreds of millions, bankrolling political candidates and trying to take over existing governments. At the national level, in the United States, it seems they have succeeded.
They have taken control of the U.S. financial system and begun to weaponize it (please read Henry Farrell’s latest, if you haven’t already).
Balaji provided the blueprint in 2022. His self-published diatribe was taken very seriously by very rich people who are entirely convinced of their own self-importance.
It would be a mistake to dismiss this out of hand. It is a serious threat.
But also, it is so very, very foolish.
Vast wealth in the hands of a bunch of emotionally infantile, intellectually stunted nerds (with the help of a bunch of Wall Street pirates) has brought us to a major crisis. We need to understand it.
They aren’t omnipotent, they’re just rich. Their ideas are inane. They can be defeated.
President Trump says USAID is rife with fraud. But Andrew Natsios, a Republican former administrator of USAID, calls that “utter nonsense.” Natsios says USAID is “the most accountable aid agency in the world.” https://t.co/4MwUokAAdXpic.twitter.com/X7hLBiUlYg
Natsios describes himself as a very conservative Republican and strict constructionist who believes that we may be headed to a constitutional crisis if Trump decides to ignore the orders of the Supreme Court. What happens then, he’s asked? “I don’t know,” he replies.
None of us do. Trump and his henchmen, especially Musk, are now in something of a fugue state, seemingly beyond reason. They’re dragging massive numbers of people along with them including the Republicans in Washington to appear to believe that they really do have the power to change reality. They don’t, of course, but whether they can dupe enough people into believing they can is an open question.
I had thought there were many people like this man, conservative Republicans with whom I disagreed on most policies but who shared a belief in the basic constitutional order. There are many fewer of them than I knew. If the US Congress is any guide, the vast majority of the GOP has adopted the personality of internet trolls whose main political goal is to punish their enemies. And that’s about half the country.
Meanwhile, Trump’s co-president believes he is a god. He’s impregnating as many women as possible (through IVF so he doesn’t have to engage in the dirty work apparently) in order to spread his seed to create some sort of master race. That’s not hyperbolic. He really is that nuts.
He has no idea what he’s doing with the US Government and neither does Trump, obviously. (He has never understood how government works.) They are simply taking a wrecking ball to all these government agencies and if somebody dies or people’s lives are ruined by doing that they say they’ll take a look at how they might fix the problem. That’s what he did with his companies and that’s what he thinks will work now.
If you don’t care about people at all then this actually makes sense. They are just guinea pigs in your experiment and if they die you learn from what you did wrong. All the years of trial and error, research and implementation are tossed out the window so that a group of teenage coders can “fix” the problems that didn’t exist in the first place.
Last month SpaceX carried out a test launch of its in-development Starship rocket. Liftoff was achieved, but as the company later announced, “Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn.” In other words, it exploded.
It would be wrong to think of this explosion as a disaster; new products often experience failures during testing. That is, after all, why we test them. Still, the euphemistic language reeks of unwillingness to take responsibility and admit that things didn’t go as planned. But then again, what would you expect from a company owned by Elon Musk?
And here’s the thing: If a rocket blows up, you can build a new rocket and try again. “Move fast and break things” is sometimes an OK approach if the things in question are just hardware, which can be replaced. But what if the object that experiences “rapid unscheduled disassembly” is something whose continued functioning is crucial to people’s lives — say, something like the U.S. government?
This isn’t a hypothetical question: Musk, with backing from Donald Trump, is blowing up significant parts of the U.S. government as you read this. And we can already see the shape of multiple potential disasters.
He runs down a long list of the atrocities which I’m sure most of you have read about. It’s comprehensive and dangerous. The damage to scientific research alone is overwhelming.
And they have no idea what they are doing.
So what is this about? Think of it as austerity theater: suddenly getting rid of thousands of federal workers looks strong and decisive to people who don’t understand what it will do. Remember, just a few weeks ago workers all across the federal government received a mass email urging them to take a buyout offer and “move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.” The new wave of layoffs probably reflects the fact that not many workers took the offer, realizing, correctly, that it was almost surely a scam.
Well, it seems all too likely that Americans are about to learn the real costs of austerity theater. Many of the suddenly laid off workers were providing essential services. Nor should we underestimate the demoralization the vindictive layoffs have created even among those workers who still have their jobs (so far.)
So when we experience our next wave of devastating forest fires, when significant numbers of Americans begin dying from preventable diseases and faulty medical devices, remember: These disasters will be partly the fault of arrogant, ignorant men who decided to smash up a reasonably functional government.
I suspect that’s true although I’m not entirely convinced. It’s possible that all the suffering will end up being popular with enough people that there won’t be the backlash we might expect. There is a sickness running through our culture, a joy in hurting others, and I’m not sure we have the antibodies to fight it anymore.
But assuming we do, the backlash should be as severe as possible. One of the reasons we are where we are is because people who know better have clung to the norms and rules the other side threw into the garbage heap. They are completely useless if only one side believes in them.
Donald Trump swept into Daytona, Florida for the Daytona 500 on Sunday while the arrival of a rainstorm — combined with the president’s own pre-race stunt — threatened to delay the race for hours.
Sunday afternoon storms forced race officials to stop NASCAR’s biggest event on the 11th lap. Initial reports indicated that the race could be held up until around 7 p.m. EST.
But the rain couldn’t stop the president from hogging the spotlight, which a crowd of cheering Trump fans in the audience didn’t appear to mind. The president took a lap around the track in “the Beast,” the president’s armored vehicle, followed by his motorcade ahead of the race’s start, while the Foo Fighters’ “There Goes My Hero” blared comically loud throughout the track.
If it was meant as an ironic gesture, it was lost on the crowd who cheered the flyover of Air Force One and the arrival of Trump’s motorcade.
Sunday’s event marked Trump’s second episode of crowd work in as many weeks; his attendance at the Super Bowl last weekend in New Orleans also drew a reaction (one that was notably more mixed) from the fans in that arena.
But his latest — and expensive — stunts serve as a reminder that there remain limits to his administration’s purported goals to cut “waste” in government spending.
His appearance at Sunday’s race prompted social media users to ask “where’s DOGE?” referring to Elon Musk‘s so-called Department of Government Efficiency operation taking the axe to federal agencies.
There is no limit on how much taxpayer money Trump can spend to celebrate the new Thousand Year Reich … er sorry, Golden Age of America. Look for more of this.
A series of legislative proposals introduced by House Republicans, seemingly aimed at currying favor with President Donald Trump, would almost be funny, according to their Democratic colleagues, if they didn’t hint at a darker reality.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., introduced a bill to put Trump’s face on Mount Rushmore. Freshman Rep. Addison McDowell, R-N.C., has a bill to rename Dulles International Airport in Trump’s honor. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has introduced proposals to help Trump rename the Gulf of Mexico and expunge his twoimpeachments.
Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., meanwhile, has floated a constitutional amendment that would let Trump seek a third term in the White House.
“It’s kind of sick … They want to get on his good side,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., ranking member on the Rules Committee. “It’s like a cult. And I think they need help.”
It’s unprecedented to do this sort of thing for a sitting president. It is a cult and he is their Deal Leader. This is solely to appeal to his vanity which is the size of Mt Everest. And that means this little penny ante tributes aren’t going to be enough to get his attention. He’s going to need some truly monumental tributes. Perhaps re-naming the White House, “Trump House” or changing Florida to Trumpland. If they can change Gulf of Mexico to Gult of America, why not change the Atlantic Ocean to The Sea of Trump? Planet Trump!
I’m joking, but not entirely. I fully expect that they will start this renaming stuff in earnest in the next few months and there;’s no doubt they’re going to change the names of Dulles International to Trump International and probably a lot more highways, schools, Post Offices, Government office buildings and more. I won’t be surprised to see statues pop up, possibly even in DC itself. These are easy things to do, much easier than voting for things their constituents don’t want.
Axios conducted a focus group that I’m seeing touted all over the media as if it’s the Oracle of Delphi. I’ll let you be the judge if anyone should take this seriously:
Public opinion can constrain presidents when Congress does not. But these 11 voters — all of whom backed Joe Biden in 2020 but switched to Trump last November — said they’re good with Trump aggressively testing disruptive, expansionist expressions of presidential power that are piling up in court challenges.
It’s needed to “get America back on track,” one participant said.
One notable area of disagreement with Trump: The idea of the U.S. displacing Palestinians and taking over and redeveloping Gaza. These swing voters want Trump to stick with Americans’ needs inside the U.S.
Some would like to see him do more, sooner, to rein in consumer costs. But several said they don’t mind that Trump’s early actions haven’t primarily focused on inflation — even when that was their top issue in the election — and said they can be patient if prices don’t come down for a while.
Several doubt the warnings that tariffs may translate to long-term price increases for American consumers.
Several expressed views that “waste, fraud and abuse” are so prevalent that government agencies can be slashed or eliminated without hurting services on which they depend.
The voters participated in two online focus groups, conducted Feb. 11. They included 11 Arizonans who backed Trump last year, after rejecting Trump for Biden in 2020. Eight were independents, two were Republicans and one was a Democrat.
While a focus group is not a statistically significant sample like a poll, the responses show how some voters are thinking and talking about current events.
“I agree we need the Constitution and we need rules and procedures,” said Courtney L., 34. “But at the same time, how are we going to make big changes? If someone like Trump [is] being unconventional, we need him to be doing these things, to be making these executive orders and making these big changes for big changes to happen.”
“I like how he’s cleaning house in the government,” said Jonas G., 55.
“I approve because I believe he’s transparent, and we haven’t had that for the last four years,” said Ann B., 54.
Other respondents were supportive of Trump’s executive orders on immigration and efforts to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Seven of the 11 voters rejected that the president is trying to deliberately “flood the zone” to dilute attention on any one action.
Trump “has to get started early on as soon as he gets elected into office, get to work,” said Melvin G., 30.
“He said he was going to do this, this, this and this, and this is what he is starting to get done,” said Ann B.
Eight of the 11 respondents also said they approve of Musk’s efforts in the administration.
Few had concerns Musk is motivated by personal gain — or that his status as the world’s richest man, who controls companies with billions of dollars in government contracts and faces investigations and regulatory hurdles, presents conflicts of interest.
[…]
Vice President JD Vance and other prominent Republicans this week expressed the sentiment that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”
This view has raised concerns from Democrats and even some GOP lawmakers that the Trump administration could flout an eventual court ruling.
The Arizona swing votersrejected concerns Trump could subvert the judiciary.
“That wouldn’t happen. I’m not even thinking about it,” said Jonas G., when asked about the hypothetical of Trump rejecting a Supreme Court decision.
Ann B. said it’s “fearmongering.”
“I agree we need the Constitution and we need rules and procedures,” said Courtney L., 34. “But at the same time, how are we going to make big changes? If someone like Trump [is] being unconventional, we need him to be doing these things, to be making these executive orders and making these big changes for big changes to happen.”
“I like how he’s cleaning house in the government,” said Jonas G., 55.
“I approve because I believe he’s transparent, and we haven’t had that for the last four years,” said Ann B., 54.
Other respondents were supportive of Trump’s executive orders on immigration and efforts to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Trump “has to get started early on as soon as he gets elected into office, get to work,” said Melvin G., 30.
“He said he was going to do this, this, this and this, and this is what he is starting to get done,” said Ann B.
I wonder what a group of MAGA hardcore’s would sound like in contrast? Why do I suspect that’s exactly what they are?
Maybe they represent America, I don’t know. I’m certainly prepared to believe it. The world has gone mad, after all. But I’m going to reserve judgement until I see some real polling.
It does validate my belief that Trump’s pathological lying works in his favor for people who love him. He can say anything and they simply believe whatever part of it they like and discard everything they don’t. The only way any of them will be dissuaded of his genius will be if something happens to them personally. Otherwise, they will rationalize or disregard all the negatives. Some, as you can see, simply enjoy watching the fire burn everything down.
By the way, the completely non-partisan, fellow who conducted the “focus group” said, “the prospect of a looming constitutional crisis is completely inconceivable to them” and Trump, Vance and Musk “should be ecstatic and Democrats should be scared to death.” He said they were all “delighted by Musk’s Trump-endorsed government housecleaning,” So at least we know we’re getting objective information.
Update: The Wall St Journal followed up with some swing voters and it wasn’t quite as euphoric. Weirdly, I haven’t seen the media spend hours dissecting this article as they have the other focus group:
Staci White said she voted for President Trump because she wanted lower prices and to stop fentanyl from coming into the U.S.
Now, with widespread federal layoffs and expected cuts, she worries her family will lose their house if her partner is laid off from his government-adjacent job. At the dialysis unit where she works, staff have started doing drills for what to do if Immigration and Customs Enforcement comes to deport their patients, some of whom are in the country illegally.
“When we said safer borders, I thought he was thinking ‘let’s stop the drugs from coming into the country,’” she said. “I didn’t know he was going to start raiding places.” She said she didn’t believe he would actually follow through on some of the more hard-line policies he touted during the campaign.
“Now I’m like: ‘Dang, why didn’t I just pick Kamala?’” said the 49-year-old Omaha, Neb., resident, referring to the former vice president and last-minute Democratic nominee.
A poll released last month by The Wall Street Journal found that most wanted a tempered, less assertive set of policies than Trump promised in the most unbridled moments of his campaign. The Journal in recent weeks followed up with nearly two dozen of Trump’s supporters and discovered a divergence: Some expressed regrets or concerns, while many were gleeful over his early actions to shake up Washington.
They did talk to some former RFK voters who are happy but let’s face facts those are all weirdos.
I suspect that public opinion may not be quite as clear as that focus group says. We’ll have to wait and see…
