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…
The only thing American about supporters of Donald Trump’s rolling coup is their birth certificates. Elon Musk, Peter Thiel (and others) excluded, of course. *
Resistance isn’t futile, The Ink reminds readers this morning. Trump 2.0’s revival last week of NIxon’s Saturday Night Massacre, and its rejection of the rule of law nowadays is “just what happens on a Thursday.”
The Ink begins:
JD Vance claimed last week that mere judges had no place restraining the president’s “legitimate power.” Bad enough. But over the weekend, his boss went further. A lot further.
New York Timescolumnist Jamelle Bouie called it “the single most un-American and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an American president.” And it’s hard to think of one that outdoes it.
the single most un-american and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an american president
But the refusal of acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle R. Sassoon, last week to carry out AG Pam Bondi’s demand to dismiss corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams demonstrated that the rule of law is not dead yet. Other DOJ prosecutors from the public integrity who survived Bondi’s escape room last week may yet receive their pink slips or resign unless they can find ways to defend the ramparts from the Project 2025 barbarians.
Six more U.S. attorneys would quit in turn, each refusing to carry out the order. Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten, who resigned after Sassoon and attorneys Kevin O. Driscoll and John Keller, filed a downright heroic letter to Bove that will surely find its way into the history books (assuming such things are still legal) as a testament to the lawlessness of this age, and — hopefully — to the beginnings of real opposition to that lawlessness.
[…]
Sassoon, Scotten, and the other U.S. attorneys in the Adams case have given everyone in America an example of how to respond. They’ve decided that the Trump administration’s actions — undeniably the acts of an aspiring king looking to rule by decree rather than a government representing the will of the people — are so intolerable they cannot be endorsed. Will Congress take that to heart? It’s hard to say. But ultimately, it falls to the rest of us.
But there is more afoot than some U.S.-based tech plutocrats in thrall to Curtis Yarvin’s monarchist fantasies. Darker ideologies underlie them. At the Munich security conference, J.D. Vance promoted tolerance for far-right hate groups like Alternative for Germany (AfD) under the rubric of free speech. Vance later met with AfD president, Alice Weidel, reportedly to discuss “the war in Ukraine, German domestic politics and the so-called brandmauer, or ‘firewall against the right’, that prevents ultra-nationalist parties like AfD from joining ruling coalitions in Germany.” The group’s leaders, the Anti-Defamation League claims, are associated with “Nazi slogans, Holocaust trivialization and more.”
Bouie posted this regarding one of Musk’s DOGE team:
seems like it is a big deal that the unifying ideology of the doge team is neo nazism
Several outlets, most notably Wired, have published the identities of some of Musk’s henchmen. Many are men in their early twenties who work for Musk or Peter Thiel; one, Gavin Kriger, has an apparent social media history filled with neo-Nazi posts. Such information is of extreme public relevance: What these people are doing is not just illegal, it is an attempted coup in progress. Federal agencies are set up and funded by Congress, not the president, and Musk has not been elected to anything. Americans would easily understand the implications of an unelected billionaire sending goons in to take control of government ministries if it were happening in, say, Venezuela.
Just as in autogolpes, just as in Germany’s in 1933, they are using our democratic insitutions to undermine those very institutions.
He Who Would Be King on Saturday gave dubious legal advice to those who would do him harm. That’s not what he intended. He meant to declare that no law can touch him, to issue a royal corollary to his Fifth Avenue declaration. But the chaos inside his brain case instead issued a statement with a dual meaning that escaped a man once nicked by an assassin before he becoming legally bulletproof.
The statement is not original. Donald Trump picked it up online like a dime on the sidewalk. One of his believers likely found it first and dropped it there weeks ago. The quote is from a movie on Napoleon, not likely by the emperor himself. But it’s serviceable enough for a naked emperor to pick up, try on, and walk around in.
Today is Presidents Day, so presumably the would-be-king will not be celebrating. But those opposed to a return of the monarchy will be anti-celebrating “Not My President’s Day” today across the country:
These demonstrations are being organized by the 50501 Movement, which stands for “50 protests. 50 states. 1 movement.” The protests are a response to what organizers describe as “the anti-democratic and illegal actions of the Trump administration.” This marks the second nationwide protest by the group, following an event held on Feb. 5.
“We the people will not live under a king,” said organizer Kai Newkirk. “We will not allow Trump and Musk’s administrative coup.”
We the People will not live under a King.We will not allow Trump and Musk’s administrative coup.Join us at the AZ state capitol on Presidents Day as part of a national day of peaceful protest in solidarity with the @50501movement.bsky.social and all who believe in liberty and justice for ALL.
Multiple events taking place across North Carolina today are organized by Common Cause. They mean to keep public focus on the interminable efforts by 2024 NC GOP state Supreme Court candidate, Judge Jefferson Griffin (R), to overturn his election loss in the very GOP-controlled state Supreme Court that he means to join by any means necessary. Democratic elections being un-necessary.
Pay close attention. If Griffin, his lawyers [Troy Shelton, Craig Schauer & Mike Dowling of the Dowling Firm, and Phil Thomas of Chalmers, Adams, Backer & Kaufman], the RNC, and the NC GOP win here, Republicans will bring the same Cleta Mitchell-inspired vote-cancelling arguments to elections and courts near you. And may anyway. Losing once does not mean they stop trying. (Thomas promotes himself as the tip of the GOP spear.)
This isn’t the most important thing in the scheme of things but it’s telling. Trump is taking over the Kennedy Center to create a new MAGA cultural center, no doubt based upon his fabulous playlist of Pavorotti and The Village People. And now he apparently wants to literally turn the White House in mar-a-Lago so he can hold court exactly as he does at his hideous gilded palaces. He truly thinks he’s a king:
He has told associates that he wants to rip up the grass in the Rose Garden, one of the White House’s most iconic and meticulously maintained spots, and replace it with a hard surface to resemble a patio like the one he has at Mar-a-Lago.
Designers have drafted options for how to remake the surface of the Rose Garden, which sits just outside the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room. Mr. Trump has discussed whether it should be limestone or an easily interchangeable hard surface, with the possibility of installing hardwood floors for dancing, according to four people briefed on the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. […]
Mr. Trump has other plans for the West Wing. He wants to hang a grand chandelier from the ceiling of the Oval Office, the people briefed on the matter said…
There are also gold vases and statuettes and at least one gold figurine embedded in an elevated wall molding. The figurine was screwed into the wall by Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager at Mar-a-Lago, who traveled to Washington to perform the task, the people said.
Mr. Trump has also privately revived an idea he first pitched to Mr. Obama’s advisers when the former president was in office: to build a ballroom at the White House, “like I have at Mar-a-Lago,” which Mr. Trump says would cost $100 million.
Sure, why not? There’s plenty of money available now that we’re no longer spending it on cancer research or starving children.
