Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

So Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a partial, very limited cease fire:

Ukraine and Russia agreed to cease fighting in the Black Sea and to hash out the details for halting strikes on energy facilities, the White House said on Tuesday, in what would be the first significant step toward a cease-fire three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion.

But the deal falls short of a complete pause in combat, which Trump administration officials have been pushing, and it remains unclear how and when such a limited truce would be carried out or how firm was either side’s commitment. Last week, Russia and Ukraine agreed in principle to stop attacking energy facilities, only to quickly accuse each other of continuing such strikes.

[…]

And while both Ukraine and Russia confirmed the agreement, which came after three days of intense negotiations in Saudi Arabia, Moscow added significant caveats, at least some of which the United States appeared to agree to while gaining little in return. In a statement, the Kremlin said it would honor the maritime security portion of the deal only after Western countries removed restrictions imposed on Russian agricultural exports after the invasion began in 2022.

Man, Trump and Witkoff really know how to drive a hard bargain, don’t they?

Even amid the uncertainty, the White House’s willingness to cede to a Russian demand over Ukrainian objections was the latest sign of President Trump’s increasing alignment with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Mr. Trump has long complained without evidence that they were both politically persecuted during a Justice Department investigation into Russia’s interference in U.S. elections and had refused in recent weeks to say it was Russia that started the war by invading Ukraine.

Trump administration officials have expressed interest in broadly improving U.S. relations with Russia. In a summary of a call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin last week, administration officials said the leaders had agreed that an improved relationship “has huge upside,” including “enormous economic deals and geopolitical stability when peace has been achieved.”

It’s not a question anymore as to what Trump and Putin want and what they are working together to achieve. Putin wants as much of Ukraine as he can get and the total normalization of the relationship between Russia and the United States. And that’s just the first step. He’s pushing Trump to drop out of NATO so that he can launch incursions into Europe. Trump is more than happy to let him do all of that. He thinks there are some hot real estate deals to be done, which is the key to world peace and prosperity. It’s why he and Steve Witkoff are the only people who can get this job done.

Seriously, in Trump’s mind, his territorial expansionism is just about real estate. It’s like taking over the Gulf and Western building in Manhattan and turning it into Trump Tower. No difference. This is all he knows. He is 78 years old and he has no other frame of reference. I think his buddy Witkoff is exactly the same.

He wants to take over Canada and turn it into an American state (or several.) He wants to take over Greenland and turn it into an American territory and extract its resources. Maybe they can turn it into a Trump resort of some sort as well. And, as we saw, the demented weirdo suggested to the entire world that he wants to take over Gaza and turn it into an “international resort” (after he cleaned it o Palestinians who he believes would be happy to go since he’ll build them some nice condos somewhere.)

Trump believes that foreign policy is nothing more than a real estate transaction and doing a “great deal” will win him the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s ridiculous but even if it were true I think it’s important to remember that he inherited his wealth and his companies went bankrupt 6 times. (Oh, and he and his company have been convicted of massive fraud.) If his alleged business acumen is transferred to his territorial expansionism, we should expect that it will end in a war.

Trump is sending Usha Vance and NSC adviser Mike Walz to Greenland this week for some reason. He says it’s a “friendly visit” and the Greenlanders invited them.

They did not:

Greenland’s government flatly denied a claim made by President Donald Trump that officials from the island invited a U.S. delegation led by Usha Vance, the wife of Vice President JD Vance, to visit the Arctic territory this week.

Vance and her son are expected to land in Greenland on Thursday, alongside Trump‘s National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Energy Secretary Chris Wright. The Vances will watch a dogsled race and “celebrate Greenlandic culture and unity,” the second lady said in a statement. Waltz and Wright plan to visit a U.S. military base.

Some officials in Greenland, including outgoing Prime Minister Múte B. Egede, have described the trip as a “provocation” and “highly aggressive,” given Trump’s stated desire to acquire the Danish territory.

“We are now at a level where this cannot in any way be characterized as a harmless visit from a politician’s wife,” Egede said Monday. “The only purpose is to demonstrate power over us.”

It is not a harmless visit. How do I know this? Because we have a good idea about how Trump is likely thinking about this:

Sadly, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to think that Trump might simply say “they asked us to help them secure their independence” and maybe even find a couple of Greenlanders to back them up (not that it would be needed.) There are only 56,000 people in Greenland so Hegseth could easily send in a few troops to “secure” the Capitol as “peacekeepers.” (We already have troops there…)

Yes, this would shock Europe and NATO but I think Trump is more than willing to take the chance that they would not start a war over Greenland. He’s probably right. It might break up NATO once and for all but he’d be fine with that.

Will this happen? I’d say there’s at least a 30% chance that it does. Maybe higher. He’s crazy and he’s drunk with power. And I think we have just seen a demonstration in living color that the people around him are incompetent toadies across the board.

Update: Here’s JD Vance being a snotty bitch and inviting himself on the trip

Vice President Vance said he’s traveling to Greenland on Friday, a move that comes after the Trump administration provoked backlash from officials in Greenland and Denmark when it was announced that second lady Usha Vance would be heading there.

“There was so much excitement around Usha’s visit to Greenland this Friday, that I decided that I didn’t want her to have all that fun by herself, and so I’m going to join her,” Vance said in a video released on X on Tuesday afternoon.

"This is an embarrassment!" — here's a supercut of Senate Democrats grilling a squirming Gabbard and Ratcliffe about SignalGate during today's hearing pic.twitter.com/CtyLLSQZdk

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 25, 2025

Don’t worry about this, though. President Trump is on it:

US President Donald Trump has commented on the group chat security leak, dismissing it as a leak to NBC News.

Trump told NBC News in a phone call that it was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one”, adding his national security adviser Michael Waltz had “learned a lesson”.

He also said Walz is “a good man.”

Somebody should mention to him that his entire top staff didn’t seem to know if he’d ordered the strike or whether he understood the ramifications of doing it. In fact, it took Stephen Miller stepping in to tell everyone that as he “heard it” it was “green light” and then they all stopped questioning it. What the hell was that about?

Obviously, we don’t have to belabor the rank hypocrisy of all this considering the “butheremails” bullshit. They are shameless. Still, it’s worth recalling the endless investigations into Hunter Biden’s penis, Benghazi etc. It’s pretty clear that will not happen with this.

As you know, the Democrats have been under tremendous pressure from their constituents to DO SOMETHING. Well, now may be the time for the Senate to pull out the Tuberville playbook and block all nominees and anything else related to National Security or the military until they open a bipartisan investigation into this incident.

There should be an FBI investigation and a Pentagon Inspector General investigation at the very least but there won’t be. Trump says it’s no biggie so that’s that when it comes to his fiefdom. But if the Democrats want to at least look like they are something other than useless mannequins in Washington they should try to keep (put) this in the headlines. Whether they will find the time or the energy to do it, I don’t know. But they do have some agency on this.

Maybe they can push the New York Times to do better than this:

CNN put together a collection of clips of various Trump officials who were on the signal chat criticizing Hillary Clinton’s email server pic.twitter.com/JsgBkylILB

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 25, 2025

The Director Of National Intelligence, ladies and Gentlemen,

America held hostage

From my earliest weeks in these pages, I’ve warned about metastasized capitalism: “we’re dealing with people who would sell you the air you breathe if they could control how it gets to your nose. And if you cannot afford to buy their air, well, you should have worked harder, planned better, and saved more.”

Now we have sitting in the Oval Office a felon convicted 34 times for crimes driven by that avarice, catalyzed by the will to power, and bent on dominating … everyone.

Josh Marshall suggests that Donald John Trump means to cow the states by threatening to cut off the “air supply” of any that hesitate to bow before him.

“It seems clear to me that Trump plans to coerce the states into operating under his direct control by cutting off their flows of federal money from the federal government,” Marshall writes. “We have already seen this with private institutions like Columbia University and other institutions in the form of NIH and other grants. Maine is already a focus because of the verbal confrontation between the state’s Gov. Janet Mills (D) and Trump back in late February.”

Trump is stepping over every constitutional line, jumping every remaining legal guardrail, skirting obstacles to dictatorship, and daring the courts and Congress to stop him. Only the courts (so far) are pushing back, but they have little enforcement power.

Trump’s next move, Marshall suggests, is to claim by presidential fiat which states get which monies budgeted by Congress. The states are in no position to respond in kind since individuals pay federal taxes directly to the IRS, not to their states’ treasurers. This renders them vulnerable to extortion by a president comfortable with it.

Depending on how far the President chose to go these decisions could genuinely cripple states. No money for road construction and the myriad other things that are funded in whole or in part by the federal government. And then there’s the big guns, what about cutting off Medicaid payments to hospitals in a given state? Maybe Social Security checks to people in a given state? These are crippling acts and they’re absurd in any normal world. But they’re not that strange under the kind of presidential power Trump claims to have.

“America held hostage” was how Rush Limbaugh opened his show during Bill Clinton’s terms. It wasn’t just that he and his listeners objected to Clinton’s policies. They rejected living under a government led by a Democrat. Decades later, Trump means to hold states hostage to his will by threatening to cut off federal funding both to state goverenments and to individual citizens. Kiss the ring or forfeit your funding (and Social Security).

Marshall offers that the Guarantee Clause of the constitution, Article IV, Section 4, ensures that states in our federal system can govern themselves:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

But the clause never anticipated the threat coming from inside the (White) house.

Citing Trump’s blithe dismissal of laws and any constitutional constraints on his presidency Marshall continues, “using federal funds to coerce the states” may render the Guarantee Clause inoperative. “Deprive elected officials of their free will and those who elected them are no longer living under republican government,” he explains.

But like so much else in obscurer parts of the Constitution, try enforcing it.

If Trump is unchecked, we are appoaching conditions that led to the Declaration. Except the sovereign at issue lives not across the Atlantic but alongside the Potomac:

I make these points now because it is important in a moment of high crisis like this to fully ventilate all of the Constitution’s provisions, the totality of its meaning. It is critical to understand not just its full meaning but to anticipate those moments when violations of its provisions may become so great that its obligations may no longer hold. Lots of people are thinking about the scenario I’ve sketched out above. A lawless President uses his unauthorized power to bring the states to their knees by fiscal coercion. Then maybe the courts say its fine. Some people have the idea that well that’s not fair and that sucks but there’s no recourse. That’s not so. The essence of monarchy — real monarchy, not the legacy product we see today in Europe — is the King’s arbitrary power. The President doesn’t have that. That is the essence of the distinction. Just how states or the citizens who live within their borders might resist such unconstitutional actions I don’t know. It’s a weighty and dangerous question. But the courts don’t own the Constitution and resisting the actions of a lawless President sometimes becomes necessary precisely to vindicate the constitutional order. The meaning of the Guarantee Clause is just one example of this. The totality of the Constitution is that we will have no Kings. It all starts with understanding just what the document means, requires and promises.

Trump is the nastiest combination of insanity and cruelty this country has seen since George III.

(h/t DC)

* * * * *

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We knew they were unqualified going in

A lot has happened since Monday morning. Judge Patricia Millet of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit admonished Trump administration attorneys over its deporting hundreds of Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador: “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act.” Later in the day we learned that a clusterfuck of Trump officials (my new collective noun) discussed plans for attacking Yemen over an encrypted but unsecured Signal chat that accidentally included Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.

Goldberg writes that using Signal for this exchange “may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of ‘national defense’ information.” He appears to have been invited to the chat by Michael Waltz, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser.

National. Security. Adviser.

“You have got to be kidding me,” tweeted Hillary Clinton who the GOP savaged for years over her handling of emails.

“I’ve worked at the White House for both Democrat and Republican Presidents and I’ve never seen this kind of mishandling of classified info. It’s sloppy at best and puts the military involved in these sensitive operations at risk,” tweeted Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D). “Laws like the Espionage Act, the Presidential Records Act, and the Federal Records Act lay out clear rules for how you can handle classified information — and those laws apply to every one of the people on that text chain,” the former CIA analyst and DoD official added.

Hey ⁦⁦@petehegseth_DoD⁩, this you? pic.twitter.com/ExphQadINl

— Sarah Longwell (@SarahLongwell25) March 24, 2025

Use of Signal by these officials may be construed as an attempt to evade those record-keeping requirements (and later FOIA disclosure), Goldberg notes (gift link):

Waltz set some of the messages in the Signal group to disappear after one week, and some after four. That raises questions about whether the officials may have violated federal records law: Text messages about official acts are considered records that should be preserved.

“Under the records laws applicable to the White House and federal agencies, all government employees are prohibited from using electronic-messaging applications such as Signal for official business, unless those messages are promptly forwarded or copied to an official government account,” Jason R. Baron, a professor at the University of Maryland and the former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration, told Harris.

“Intentional violations of these requirements are a basis for disciplinary action. Additionally, agencies such as the Department of Defense restrict electronic messaging containing classified information to classified government networks and/or networks with government-approved encrypted features,” Baron said.

“Mistakes were made”

The New York Times offered reaction from several GOP officials:

“It appears that mistakes were made, no question,” said Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican who is the chairman of the chamber’s Armed Services Committee. “We’ll try to get to ground truth and take appropriate action.”

Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, said on CNN that his panel would send an inquiry to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and then determine whether a fuller investigation is warranted.

But Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, dismissed the idea of additional investigations or discipline for the officials involved. “I’m told they’re doing an investigation to find out how that number was included, and that should be that,” Mr. Johnson told reporters at the Capitol, referring to White House officials. “I’m not sure that it requires much additional attention.”

Speaker. Of. The. House.

The White House and Republicans in Congress will work to bury this story with all speed. And/or investigate Goldberg for revealing it. The last thing they’ll do is take responsibility for it. If Waltz goes down for this or Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth or Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard, count me surprised. (Waltz was not subject to Senate confirmation.) This security breach isn’t a matter of “You knew I was a snake before you took me in.” We knew these people were unqualified and incompetent before their Senate confirmations. And confirmed them anyway.

Oh @PeteButtigieg is mad pic.twitter.com/YjNEnP888A

— chyea ok (@chyeaok) March 24, 2025

Update: See Marcy Wheeler’s deconstruction of the Signal affair.

* * * * *

Have you fought the coup today?

National Day of Action, Saturday, April 5
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions

Alina Habba dances her way to the stage at Trump Madison Square Garden rally … pic.twitter.com/E5UdHYQtB2

— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) October 27, 2024

A top Trump hatchetwoman gets exiled to New Jersey:

President Donald Trump on Monday named Alina Habba, his personal attorney-turned-White House counselor, to serve as the next interim U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey.

“Alina will lead with the same diligence and conviction that has defined her career, and she will fight tirelessly to secure a Legal System that is both ‘Fair and Just’ for the wonderful people of New Jersey,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform

“As you know, I’ve stood by President Trump, his family, the [Trump] organization, and many other clients in that state where I’ve been born and raised, and I’m raising my babies now, but there is corruption, there is injustice, and there is a heavy amount of crime right in [Sen.] Cory Booker’s backyard and right under Governor [Phil] Murphy, and that will stop,” Habba said without making any specific allegations of corruption.

She lost all of her cases but that’s ok. She was a good loyal soldier who perfected a Trumpian grimace for the TV cameras and sexed up the campaign events.

She was hired as a senior “counsellor” to the president so it’s a bit of a surprise that he exiled her to this relatively low profile job. I’m going to guess that somebody wanted her out of the White House. She should be happy he didn’t send her to Greece like Kimberley Guilfoyle.

Update: OMG. He made the interim New Jersey US Attorney John Giordano Ambassador of Namibia to make room for her.

ABC reports on the hearing today on the El Salvador deportations:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit heard arguments Monday afternoon over the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act last week to deport more than 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan gang to El Salvador with no due process.

“There were plane loads of people. There were no procedures in place to notify people,” Judge Patricia Millett said. “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act.”

Judge Millett noted that alleged Nazis were given hearing boards and were subject to established regulations, while the alleged members of Tren De Aragua were given no such rights.

“There’s no regulations, and nothing was adopted by the agency officials that were administering this. They people weren’t given notice. They weren’t told where they were going. They were given those people on those planes on that Saturday and had no opportunity to file habeas or any type of action to challenge the removal under the AEA,” Judge Millet said. “What’s factually wrong about what I said?”

“Well, Your Honor, we certainly dispute the Nazi analogy,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign said, arguing some of the men were able to file habeas petitions.

I don’t know why he would argue with that. From what Trump says, they’re worse than Nazis and Venezuela is directing them to attack the United States. And yet, even in a world war, we managed to give some kind of due process to the people they said were Nazis or Nazi sympathizers.

This particular hearing wasn’t about whether the administration can use the Alien Enemies Act in this circumstance but rather whether a federal court has the right to block the president from doing anything he wants in the name of national security.

Ensign compared Boasberg’s restraining order to a judge directing a carrier group from the South China Sea to the Persian Gulf — an analogy that drew an immediate rebuke from Millett.

“Hang on. Hang on,” Millett said. “Asserting a power to do that is not ordering ships to relocate in foreign waters, right? That is a straight up judicial process that’s allowed by the Supreme Court and Circuit president.”

The DOJ argues that the prisoners did have a right to petition against their deportation but as the judge said, there’s no process to use it! They grabbed them and put them on a plane without notice.

“So your theory is that they don’t get the challenges until they’re in the Salvadorian jail?” the judge said. “Are you saying that they don’t have a right, until they’re removed from the United States, in U.S. custody, to challenge?”

Yes. That’s exactly what they are saying. Once they have already been deported to that dystopian hellhole in El Salvador they can protest their deportation.

This was the only judge who aggressively challenged the government so who knows what the other two are going to do? They may well decide to punt and say that the case should have been heard in Texas (as one of them suggested) instead of the DC circuit. I won’t be surprised. But this one judge certainly did seem to have their number. I hope she’s prepared for the death threats.

Only The Best People

This story from Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic (gift link) is all over the media and in the before time would have resulted in some people getting axed and big hearings on Capitol Hill. Yeah, I don’t expect to see anything like that either:

The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.

I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.

You have to read the whole article. Mike Walz apparently included him on a Signal thread along with Hegseth. Walz, Vance, Rubio, Gabbard , Ratcliffe, Bessent, Wiles and others without realizing it. They discussed details about war plans the weapons, CIA assets all of it. Goldberg doesn’t share the classified info but shows some of the texts:

SM is Steven Miller. Of course,

This is especially notable. Apparently Vance doesn’t think Trump has a clue:

The account labeled “JD Vance” responded at 8:16: “Team, I am out for the day doing an economic event in Michigan. But I think we are making a mistake.” (Vance was indeed in Michigan that day.) The Vance account goes on to state, “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.”

The Vance account then goes on to make a noteworthy statement, considering that the vice president has not deviated publicly from Trump’s position on virtually any issue. “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”

JD Vance seems a little nervous about that comment being made public. Here’s his statement:

“The Vice President’s first priority is always making sure that the President’s advisers are adequately briefing him on the substance of their internal deliberations. Vice President Vance unequivocally supports this administration’s foreign policy. The President and the Vice President have had subsequent conversations about this matter and are in complete agreement.”

The WH has admitted this is real but says it just shows the “deep and thoughtful policy decisions” the administration makes. Lol.

Speaking of incompetence, how about this?

The Post reports today that the IRS’ internal projections estimate that the DOGE-driven disruptions to the IRS since the inauguration are on track to have reduced tax receipts by more than $500 billion by April 15th. This, to be clear, is not a final tally. It’s not April 15th yet. It’s a projection based on historical data, the number of people who’ve filed, paid owed amounts of tax, etc.

It’s worth taking a moment to put this number into some context in case half a trillion dollars doesn’t do it for you. Non-defense discretionary spending is the cost to fund the U.S. government once you take out mandatory spending (mostly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) and the cost of the U.S. military. For 2023 that number was $917 billion. So that’s most of the stuff we think of as the government, apart from those payment programs and the military. In other words, in about eight weeks DOGE managed to lose the U.S. government — more or less light on fire — more than half of what goes to all non-defense discretionary spending.

Update —

Lol, this picture

Trump has an Executive Order signing ceremony almost every day and we really only know what’s in the most high profile of them. John Elwood, a former DOJ attorney, took a look at a couple that we should probably be aware of. It appears to me that anything that causes them any legal roadblock is met with a new EO to clear it. We have no idea if he has the authority to do all these things but regardless, it’s leading to massive messes down the road. Nobody is going to know how anything works anymore or where to go to find out:

Via BlueSky:

As an alum of the Justice Department unit that reviews EOs for form & legality–the Office of Legal Counsel–I’ve been watching the EOs & memoranda as they came out. What struck me most is the centralization of control and access. Things are happening so quickly that many haven’t realized it yet.1/x

Certain high-profile executive orders — like the one shutting down the Education Department — have drawn the most attention from the press this week. But a trio of mostly overlooked EOs and memoranda released this week seem likely to have great practical importance. 2/x

First: this EO will centralize in GSA procurement of 1) IT, 2) Professional Services, 3) Security, 4) Facilities & Construction, 5) Industrial Products, 6) Office Management, 7) Transportation/Logistics, 8) Travel, 9) Human Capital & 10) Medical. This will reshape contracting landscape. 3/x

Second: If I’m reading it right, this memorandum will permit OPM to fire *any federal employee* for being “unsuitable” based on post-employment conduct on 5 days’ notice. Some previous firings had to be walked back b/c done by people w/o authority. This appears to address that. 4/x

Third: This directs agency heads to allow access to all unclassified data, including “unfettered access to comprehensive data from all State programs that receive Federal funding,” including data “maintained in third-party databases.” Seems to centralize access to LOTS of data. 5/x

I’d be interested in what any experts reading this think, but as an ex-government employee whose own federal personnel records were hacked by the Chinese government, I wonder what permitting such centralized access means for external vulnerability. 6/x

This provision is so specific it seems likely to be responsive to some roadblock DOGE hit. Dept of Labor specifically called out–“unfettered access to all unemployment data and related payment records,” including info from Department’s Inspector General. What is this provision getting at? 7/x

In any event, some very interesting and potentially momentous changes that seem to have flown under the radar so far. 8/8 /FIN

They want their hands on all that juicy data and nothing’s going to stop them from getting it. They also want to bring virtually every important function directly into the White House to be executed by the office of the president. You know, this guy:

This should work out just great.