Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Is the one-man rapid response team part machine?

The Old Man: Nice shootin’, son. What’s your name?
RoboCop: Murphy.

Went out for dinner last night. Looked around the restaurant and said, “This is what it’s like living in a dictatorship.” Normal to most appearances. Except it’s not.

“We are all afraid,” Alaska’s Sen. Lisa Murkowski said on Thursday. She took a long pause to consider what she just admitted aloud. “And I’ll tell ya, I’m often times very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real.”

Well, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut is not afraid. The one-man rapid-response team has been everywhere except El Salvador lately speaking out against the criminal Trump administration. Perhaps he’s part machine. This long thread from Thursday afternoon is a solid indictment (with recommendations for action at the end).

We were warned. Half of voters didn’t listen. Murphy is not dancing around the descent info fascism led by Donald Trump’s.

Thank God for Mike Luckovich without whom the sanity of many would be lost.

Donald Trump is wiping his ass in public with the “due process” clause of the Constitution while his staff looks on admiringly. He has the unquestioning support of Vice President JD “slippery deception” Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the “utterly reprehensible” Attorney General Pam Bondi, propaganda chief Stephen Miller, spokesliar Karoline Leavitt, and, of course, Border Czar Tom Homan.

The only thing American about them are their birth certificates.

4/ The modern, time-tested way to destroy a democracy is NOT a coup or burning down the Parliament or a public confrontation with the judiciary.

It’s a slow methodical campaign to weaken the structures of accountability necessary for the political opposition to win elections.

Murphy lays out his case:

11/ This is all happening so fast it’s hard for the public to see it all as part of one plan. But it is. And the press, lawyers, colleges and opposition political groups don’t have to be DESTROYED in order for this plan to work.

12/ They just have to be weakened enough so the tools of accountability don’t work anymore. The press can’t tell enough truth. The lawyers won’t protect our rights. Campus protest disappears. Opposition funding dries up. We still have elections. But the regime always wins.

Trump? “He’s an idiot.” So much is happening at once that it is clear whomever is stage-managing this multi-front assault on constitutional order, it’s not him. But it matters less which Wormtongue is whispering in his ear than it does what we can do to stop it.

Murphy offers his take:

13/ How do we stop it? First, though solidarity. Each set of institutions can’t let the regime pick one off from each others. The legal profession failed miserably at this this, but the universities can model a collective strategy to fight back and win.

14/ Second, through mass mobilization. When hundreds of thousands of people rally against this kind of assault on democracy, history shows it works. There is a strange, magic power to mass activation which makes supporters of the regime start to jump ship.

15/ Third, through risk taking by political leaders. No citizen will take the risk to mobilize if leaders are playing it safe. This means speaking daily truth to the regime and taking tactical risks (like voting against the CR or boycotting the SOTU would have been).

16/ I believe those three steps, taken together, will arrest Trump’s assault. But if it doesn’t, then civil disobedience. And this conversation will need to happen sooner than we would like. We still have the power, but we have less time than most think.

Tomorrow is the 250th Anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. A quarter of a century later, there are still royalists among us trying to restore the monarchy even while waving flags and celebrating the start of the Revolutionary War.

See you in the streets tomorrow.

* * * * *

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BREAKING: Trump says that "If I ask him [Fed Chair Powell], he'll be out of there. I don't think he's doing the job. He's always too late..I'm not happy with him… If I want him out, he'll be out of there real fast, believe me."

FACT: The President has zero authority to fire… pic.twitter.com/ZnMRoaiJi8

— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) April 17, 2025

Certainly. Will he? Who knows? But I think Elizabeth Warren is right about this:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., warned Thursday that U.S. markets will “crash” if President Donald Trump has the power to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.The comment from Warren, a frequent Powell critic, on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” came hours after Trump wrote in a social media post that the Fed chair’s “termination cannot come fast enough!”

A senior White House official later told CNBC that Trump’s broadside should not be seen as a threat to fire Powell, and that there are no plans being made to end his term early.Powell has previously said the president does not have the power to fire him.

“I have tangled with [Powell] on a regular basis about both regulations and interest rates,” Warren acknowledged in her remarks at the New York Stock Exchange.“But understand this: If Chairman Powell can be fired by the president of the United States, it will crash markets in the United States,” she said.

Warren, the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, said the “infrastructure” upholding the stock market — and therefore the global economy — is “the idea that the big pieces move independent of the politics.”

He was pissed at being asked about that so I would guess that they’ve been pressuring him hard no to do it, at least right now. The markets are very volatile right now and they have not even come close to recovering from the huge drops around the tariffs. But he seems to be making a lot of decisions impulsively these days so it could happen.

Atlantic writer Derek Thompson says:

We really did it. We took a growing US manufacturing economy, declared it broken, started a trade war, and … broke US manufacturing. In last 48 hours:

– Philly Fed Survey: “New orders fell sharply, from 8.7 in March to -34.2, its lowest reading since April 2020” – NY Fed Survey: Expected orders and shipments plunging Again, this is a policy to revive US manufacturing.

Thompson said that he got blowback because he’s just a journalist and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. So he talked to someone who does:

I talked to @Molson_Hart, a manufacturing CEO, about how the tariffs are affecting his business. He told me America could be sleepwalking into a small business apocalypse:

It’s just a little disturbance. Nothing to see here.

We knew that Trump and Musk’s abrupt withdrawal of USAID funds, particularly the Pepfar programs’ HIV work in Africa, was going to result in a lot of death. It’s beginning. Not that he cares. NPR reports some of the stories in Zambia and it’s just horrific. It opens with a church service:

“We are close to 300 [worshipers] but nowadays we are only less than 150. People are sick at home,” says Chondwe — or Pastor Billy as everyone calls him — as he greeted congregants on a Sunday in early April at the entrance to his church, the Somone Community Center, a branch of the Pentecostal Holiness Church in Zambia.

People are falling ill because the U.S.-funded clinics where they got their HIV medications and care have suddenly been shuttered. The staff is gone. The electricity has been shut off. Some patients have already run out of their daily pills that keep HIV at bay — and they have started to feel the physical consequences of the virus surging back.

The Trump Administration, in January, abruptly halted the vast majority of U.S. foreign assistance in light of their America First agenda. Officials said that lifesaving aid — such as HIV medications — would continue to flow. But the reality on the ground shows otherwise. An untold number of people with HIV have simply and suddenly lost access to their medication.

That is largely because the halting of foreign assistance and cancelling of programs crippled the systems that enabled people to get their AIDS medicines. And, of the small number of programs that are technically allowed to continue, many report not being paid by the U.S. government and, thus, having to close their doors and lay off workers. The State Department, which oversees foreign assistance, did not respond to requests for comment.[…]

“The main victim that is paying the price of this disruptive decision to cut the U.S. aid funding is the ordinary Zambian person living in poverty,” says Chris Zumani Zimba, a Zambian political scientist affiliated with the University of Central Africa. According to the World Bank, more than 60% of the population there lives in poverty. And, more than 10% of adults in the country have HIV — half the rate of a decade ago.

A study out this month in The Lancet estimated what would happen if the U.S. does not continue its flagship HIV/AIDS program that’s been pivotal to reversing the downward trend in life expectancy due to AIDS. The researchers from Oxford University and elsewhere found that half a million additional children will die of AIDS in the next 5 years in sub-Saharan Africa and nearly 3 million more African children will be orphaned by AIDS. In many Zambian communities, people say these numbers will soon be more than just a forecast.

I’m pretty sure that the deaths are a feature not a bug to Elon Musk. In his mind, these people are not genetically superior enough to live. Trump no doubt agrees. I wish I was being hyperbolic but I’m not.

Kevin Hall, a scientist at NIH, posted this on twitter earlier today:

After 21 years at my dream job, I’m very sad to announce my early retirement from the National Institutes of Health.

My life’s work has been to scientifically study how our food environment affects what we eat, and how what we eat affects our physiology. Lately, I’ve focused on unravelling the reasons why diets high in ultra-processed food are linked to epidemic proportions of chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity. Our research leads the world on this topic.

Given recent bipartisan goals to prevent diet-related chronic diseases, and new agency leadership professing to prioritize scientific investigation of ultra-processed foods, I had hoped to expand our research program with ambitious plans to more rapidly and efficiently determine how our food is likely making Americans chronically sick.

Unfortunately, recent events have made me question whether NIH continues to be a place where I can freely conduct unbiased science. Specifically, I experienced censorship in the reporting of our research because of agency concerns that it did not appear to fully support preconceived narratives of my agency’s leadership about ultra-processed food addiction.

I was hoping this was an aberration. So, weeks ago I wrote to my agency’s leadership expressing my concerns and requested time to discuss these issues, but I never received a response. Without any reassurance there wouldn’t be continued censorship or meddling in our research, I felt compelled to accept early retirement to preserve health insurance for my family. (Resigning later in protest of any future meddling or censorship would result in losing that benefit.)

Due to very tight deadlines to make this decision, I don’t yet have plans for my future career. The NIH has been a wonderful place because it allows scientists to take risks, form unique collaborations, and do studies difficult to conduct elsewhere. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished and I’m fortunate to have had such wonderful colleagues and scientific collaborators.

I hope to someday return to government service and lead a research program that will continue to provide gold-standard science to make Americans healthy.

This scientific brain drain is so depressing.

I recommend reading this fabulous piece by Rick Perlstein from before the election discussing science and politics, specifically the way the right sees it, in light of the unprecedented Scientific American endorsement of Kamala Harris. Let’s just say that any reticence among scientists to speak out in service of some norms that they should remains apolitical is misplaced. (Also read what he says about norms in general, pointing out that liberal resistance or advances almost always requires the destruction of certain norms that serve as obstacles to liberal governance. Very interesting.)

“We are all afraid,” Murkowski said, taking a long pause. “It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. And I’ll tell ya, I’m often times very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”

Gee Lisa, imagine how the people who aren’t powerful U.S. Senators feel.

Will the GOP elites defend Harvard?

Sen, Ted Cruz: "I  can also assure you that were this a Republican president, a Republican Attorney General, and a Republican IRS that were targeting Democrats, I at least would speak out just as vigorously against it because if we are going to respect rule of law, the apparatus… pic.twitter.com/LgEIifUkkY

— Sarah Longwell (@SarahLongwell25) April 16, 2025

CNN Reports:

The Internal Revenue Service is making plans to rescind the tax-exempt status of Harvard University, according to two sources familiar with the matter, which would be an extraordinary step of retaliation as the Trump administration seeks to turn up pressure on the university that has defied its demands to change its hiring and other practices.

A final decision on rescinding the university’s tax exemption is expected soon, the sources said.

The administration already has blocked more than $2 billion in funding from the nation’s oldest university, which is fighting the White House’s policy demands, citing the constitutional right of private universities to determine their own teaching practices.

President Donald Trump in recent days raised the idea of punishing the Ivy League university for not complying with what the administration has sought to portray as a campaign to fight antisemitism.

“Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’ Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Tuesday.

This you ⁦@JDVance⁩?

"This is about whether we have functional constitutional government in this country. If the IRS can go after you because of what you think or what you believe or what you do, we'd no longer live in a free country.“ pic.twitter.com/fBD4y5V4OS

— Sarah Longwell (@SarahLongwell25) April 16, 2025

It looks like environmental groups are next to be targeted.

Update: There’s this too:

The Trump administration has significantly dialed up its pressure on Harvard University, not only freezing $2 billion in federal funding but now threatening its eligibility to host international students after school leaders refused to make key policy changes the White House also is demanding of other elite US colleges.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sent Harvard “a scathing letter demanding detailed records on Harvard’s foreign student visa holders’ illegal and violent activities by April 30, 2025, or face immediate loss of Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification,” her agency said Wednesday in a news release that refers to antisemitism but does not detail specific incidents.

It accuses Harvard of creating a “hostile learning environment” for Jewish students. “It is a privilege to have foreign students attend Harvard University, not a guarantee,” reads the letter, which a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson gave CNN after some of its details first were reported by the student-run Harvard Crimson.

Here’s the thing. This is all easily solved by simply bending the knee to give Donald Trump big juicy blowjobs on a regular basis. Just give him everything he wants. Easy-peasy.

Goebbels had nothing on these guys

An item from Brian Stelter’s newsletter sets one aspect MAGApublican behavior in shaprer relief:

Disinformation dangers

Disinformation has completely destabilized global politics, from the Oval Office to the town council level. Deliberate lies and disinformation campaigns make it much harder for neighbors to relate to one another and share the same reality. But – as if to prove the point – conservative thought leaders decided several years ago that the real danger was “censorship.”  Ergo, “Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday announced the closure of the agency’s hub for fighting foreign disinformation campaigns,” Politico’s Maggie Miller wrote. Rubio’s announcement was titled “Protecting and Championing Free Speech at the State Department.”   >> Eileen Guo, who broke the news for MIT Technology Review, said it’s “a win to foreign governments like Russia, Iran, and China — and the office’s mostly conservative critics.”   >> In a more constructive political environment, we’d be able to hold two thoughts in our head simultaneously: That free speech must be protected and that disinformation must be recognized as a danger. Alas…

It’s no accident that the White House now uses preventing antisemitism as cover for clamping down on free speech and academic freedom. Debunk disinformation and this administration will call it censorship.

Spin is a long-recognized tool in both major parties’ campaign toolbox. (You’ve got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive | E-lim-i-nate the negative, as Johnny Mercer wrote in1944). But that’s not what we see nowadays from a radicalized right wing. It’s outright, bald-faced, relentless lying.

In the case of the MAGA king, it’s often unclear whether he believes the nonsense he extracts his ass or not. But that’s not the point. The lies are, and the fact that the press refuses to challenge them in real time, if at all.

What left my mouth agape this week was White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller completely misrepresenting the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Even Reason magazine rolled its “eyes”:

“The Supreme Court said the district court order was unlawful and its main components were reversed 9-0 unanimously,” Miller told Trump.

The term misinformation has become somewhat overused in recent times. But it seems applicable here. Miller egregiously misrepresented what the Supreme Court actually said in its order. Was he lying? Did he fail to correctly read the Court’s order and is now publicly operating based on his erroneous understanding? Either way, it was a disgraceful performance.

For her part, AG Pam Bondi stands by DOJ claims and Miller’s, citing court documents for Abrego Garcia’s 2019 arrest based on heresay, “Gang Field Interview Sheet” (GFIS) statements by a Prince Georges County detective, and his wearing a Chicago Bulls hat. Abrego Garcia has no criminal record. But the detective does … now:

When Mr. Abrego’s lawyers in 2019 went to interview the detective and find out more about this supposed informant, they were unable to talk with him because they were told he was suspended. What they couldn’t know at the time was that he had been suspended less than two weeks after making the accusation against Mr. Abrego for the crime of trading police secrets to a sex worker in exchange for  sex. The detective wasn’t publicly indicted until June 2020, after Mr. Abrego’s case had already concluded.

At his bond hearing, ICE submitted that GFIS document as evidence of his membership in MS-13 — and nothing else.

But I digress.

What I see clearly is that the MAGAfied Trump cult has, following Dear Leader’s cues, adopted lying as company policy. Not spin. Not misinformation. Lying.

They’ve adapted “Fake it till you make it.” It’s now accepted practice to lie about “it” until the public accepts the lie as true. Until they’ve broken reality and the republic. Goebbels had nothing on these guys.

* * * * *

Have you fought dictatorship today?

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North Carolina’s state Supreme Court soap opera continues

There was promising election news from North Carolina on Tuesday. Project 2025’s predations continue apace, DOGE continues its Long March through government agencies, and President Donald Trump may appear any day with a generalissimo’s epaulets atop his ill-fitting suits. But prospects for stopping a Republican election theft of a Supreme Court race in North Carolina brightened (WFAE):

The North Carolina Board of Elections said in a court filing Tuesday that only 1,675 voters will be impacted by Republican Jefferson Griffin’s challenge against Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs for a seat on the state Supreme Court.

The board said it will require 1,409 overseas voters in Guilford County to provide photo ID within 30 days for their ballot to count. Griffin had challenged Guilford voters, as well as overseas voters in three other Democratic-leaning counties.

But the Democratic-controlled state elections board said it will only require Guilford voters to provide ID, since Griffin’s challenge of that county’s overseas voters was his only protest completed in time, as required by state law.

Griffin will appeal the Board’s following black-letter state law on the filing deadline. But win or lose, consider this GOP election-stealing effort a shakedown cruise for challenging election losses near you. If you live in a red or purple state with a GOP-majority state Supreme Court, you could see this in coming elections.

To recap, after two recounts, Riggs led Griffin by 734 votes. Griffin refused to concede. He filed challenges to over 60,000 votes, alleging based on the digital records that most were from improperly registered voters, another 5,500 military and overseas absentee votes were invalid for not including photo IDs, and another couple of hundred were invalid votes from so-called “never residents.” Griffin challenged votes from four of North Carolina’s largest, bluest counties.

Last Friday, the state Supreme Court dismissed the 60,000 registration challenges, but instructed the appeals court to work out the details on the remainder with the state Board of Elections.

Now the Board has informed the U.S. District Court that the remaining federal challenges will be limited to the only county where Griffin filed his challenge by the deadline. This leaves only 1,675 votes in question: 1,409 overseas and military votes from Guilford County, and the votes (statewide) from perhaps 266 “never residents.”

But wait. Popular Information and Anderson Alerts researched the “never resident” votes and published a report on Monday that many voters on Griffin’s challenge list actually live or lived in the state. Some previously voted in person in North Carolina:

Overall, Popular Information and Anderson Alerts identified 29 people — through voting records, publicly available information, and interviews — whose votes were discarded who have lived or currently live in North Carolina. There were numerous others who also appear to be erroneously included on the list, but whose history could not be definitively established. These errors are particularly harmful because the North Carolina Supreme Court did not give impacted voters any opportunity to prove their eligibility.

How would these people end up on a list of people who never resided in North Carolina? According to Gerry Cohen, a member of the Wake County Board of Elections, the people ended up on Griffin’s list by filling out a Federal Post Card Application for an absentee ballot and checking the box that read, “I am a U.S. citizen living outside the country, I have never lived in the United States.”

It is possible that some voters checked that box in error. (In an interview, one voter confirmed they had checked the box by mistake.) In other cases, there could be an error in the records kept by the North Carolina Election Board. But either way, it does not make these voters “never residents” or invalidate their ballots.

The Board in its filing Tuesday referenced these reports and pledged to replicate its procedures for validating “never resident” absentee voters. The Board will instruct county boards to review submitted forms to verify that voters did indeed check the “never lived” box. Next, they must “review the voter’s registration record and voter history record to ensure that the voter in question does not have a record of registering previously or voting previously under a claim of residency in the county.”

Having voted in person or absentee before or before would “show that the challenged voter attested, under penalty of perjury, to having resided within the county during a prior election.” They would thus fall outside the scope of Griffin’s “never resident” challenge. Local Boards will mail remaining voters to inform them of the challenge and give them 30 days “to submit a sworn affidavit stating that they have resided in the county and identifying their prior residence address.”

This filing will, of course, infuriate Griffin. He will challenge the Board’s proposed course of action. But his late filing on the other counties is not a mistake other GOP losers will make next time, perhaps in your state.

But the clock is ticking on the current makeup of the State Board of Elections. The lame-duck legislature moved authority over elections from the governor to the (Republican) state Auditor. The Auditor’s authority to appoint new Board of Elections members begins on May 1. If the current Board’s plan for limiting the scope of Griffin’s challenges somehow gets rejected, it could be a different Board with a Republican 3-2 split that will reformat the plan.

Riggs has already appealed the order by her state Supreme Court colleagues to federal court. She had recused but remains on the court until the election dispute is settled. This isn’t over.

Republicans are relentless.

Update: I want to repeat for those who missed it, Griffin has provided no evidence of anyone voting illegally. His challenges are based on mere allegations backed up by the kind of shoddy digital data scrapings common among proponents of voter fraud. Popular Information and Anderson Alerts showed that up as garbage. Instead of Griffin having to back up his illegal voting charges (as required by law, IIRC), he demands that thousands of voters he’s challenging prove they voted legally.

* * * * *

Have you fought dictatorship today?

National Day of Action, Saturday, April 19 (Details coming; scroll for local events)
The Resistance Lab
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The NY Times reports that the big law firms didn’t know they were being turned into indentured servants. Have they met Donald Trump?

When some of the nation’s biggest law firms agreed to deals with President Trump, the terms appeared straightforward: In return for escaping the full force of his retribution campaign, the firms would do some free legal work on behalf of largely uncontroversial causes like helping veterans. Mr. Trump, it turns out, has a far more expansive view of what those firms can be called on to do.

Over the last week, he has suggested that the firms will be drafted into helping him negotiate trade deals. He has mused about having them help with his goal of reviving the coal industry.And he has hinted that he sees the promises of nearly $1 billion in pro bono legal services that he has extracted from the elite law firms — including Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; and Willkie Farr & Gallagher — as a legal war chest to be used as he wishes.

“Have you noticed that lots of law firms have been signing up with Trump: $100 million, another $100 million for damages that they’ve done,” Mr. Trump said at an event last week with coal miners, without specifying what he meant by damages.

None of the firms have acknowledged any wrongdoing. They were targeted with punitive executive orders or implicit threats for representing or aiding Mr. Trump’s political foes or employing people he sees as having used the legal system to come after him.

[…]

But now that nine firms have agreed to deals and committed to nearly $1 billion worth of pro bono legal work, some Trump advisers have started having discussions about a range of options for what the firms’ lawyers can be deployed to work on, according to two people briefed on the matter. That work could include sending the lawyers to help Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency or deploying them to aid the Justice Department, they said.

White House officials believe that some of the pro bono legal work could even be used toward representing Mr. Trump or his allies if they became ensnared in investigations, according to the two people.

Are they just going to go along with this? I don’t kniow but I think this accurately describes what’s going on:

“They thought they made one-shot deals which they would fulfill,” said Harold Hongju Koh, a professor of international law at Yale Law School who was an author of a paper that called executive orders targeting the firms unconstitutional retaliatory measures. “But the administration seems to think that they have subjected these firms to indentured servitude.”

Of course he does. But why wouldn’t they know this? Have they met Donald Trump?