Comments

  1. says

    Trump suggests FEMA’s future is in doubt: ‘It gets in the way’

    No one was especially surprised when Donald Trump gave his first post-inaugural interview to Fox News’ Sean Hannity, since the two are longtime political partners. What did raise some eyebrows, however, were the parts of the interview related to federal disaster aid. The Washington Post reported:

    […] Trump threatened to withhold federal aid from California as it works to recover from devastating wildfires, recycling several baseless claims and attacks against California’s Democratic leaders during his first sit-down interview since his inauguration. ‘I don’t think we should give California anything until they let water flow down,’ he told Sean Hannity during a Fox News interview that aired Wednesday night.

    As the president really ought to understand by now, his comments didn’t make substantive sense. What’s more, he was presenting a threat without precedent in the American tradition: The federal government has never told an American community devastated by a natural disaster that its disaster relief funding would be conditional.

    But that was not the only relevant exchange related to federal responses to disasters in the interview. USA Today took note of the Republican’s related comments about the Federal Emergency Management Agency, better known as FEMA.

    ‘FEMA is a whole ‘nother discussion, because all it does is complicate everything. FEMA has not done their job for the last four years,’ he said. ‘But unless you have certain types of leadership, it’s really, it gets in the way. And FEMA is going to be a whole big discussion very shortly, because I’d rather see the states take care of their own problems.’

    In fact, the new president suggested that if a state suffers in the wake of a tornado, he envisions a model in which the federal government doesn’t respond much at all. “FEMA is getting in the way of everything,” Trump added.

    [Bluesky post and video from Aaron Rupar is available at the link.]

    He did not elaborate as to what, specifically, FEMA “gets in the way” of.

    At face value, the Republican’s condemnations of FEMA and its work are difficult to take seriously. Just as importantly, Trump doesn’t appear to be interested in overhauling or reforming the agency, he appears interested in eliminating FEMA altogether.

    […] if the president is serious about states “taking care of their own problems” in the wake of devastating natural disasters, it will create a new test for Republican officials. Are they prepared to go along with the elimination of FEMA? Even in red states like Florida, Texas and Louisiana, which tend to get hit by deadly hurricanes?

    What’s more, it’s worth appreciating where this idea comes from. An Axios report noted, Project 2025 suggests “reforming FEMA emergency spending to shift the majority of preparedness and response costs to states and localities instead of the federal government.” […]

  2. says

    Here are a few links back to the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread.

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/01/03/infinite-thread-xxxiv/comment-page-2/#comment-2251408
    https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
    Rachel Maddow’s new segment discussing Trump’s pardons, and the extraordinary rebukes from some judges (and from a few Republicans), is available at the link above. An excellent segment.

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/01/03/infinite-thread-xxxiv/comment-page-2/#comment-2251376
    Researchers say new attack could take down the European power grid

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/01/03/infinite-thread-xxxiv/comment-page-2/#comment-2251328
    Why Trump’s AI plan made Elon Musk flip out

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/01/03/infinite-thread-xxxiv/comment-page-2/#comment-2251327
    Zelensky speaks about negotiations to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

  3. StevoR says

    I’m half asleep now (maybe even a higher %~age) and all but just what the fuck.. did I just watch on my TV?

    (But, yeah, Biden was the senile one.. yeah? Really? F ing L.)

    How long can even the most craven, gutless, sycophantic media sane-washing cover up this when folks can see it right now live?

  5. says

    Team Trump eyes Congress’ power of the purse as part of new power grab

    […] In an opinion piece for The New York Times, Damon Linker explained that the new OMB director Russell Vought, Trump’s choice to lead the Office of Management and Budget], if confirmed, plans “nothing less than a full-scale assault on the regulatory and spending powers of the executive branch.” The writer added that it’s Vought and his agenda that could end up having “the greatest long-term impact on the shape of American democracy.”

    That might sound overdramatic. It’s not. Indeed, some of Vought’s testimony during his Senate confirmation hearing helped drive the point home. Politico reported:

    The big news out of Russell Vought’s second confirmation hearing Wednesday before the Senate Budget Committee was impoundment. From emergency wildfire dollars to foreign aid and beyond, Democrats repeatedly prodded [Vought] about a stance he has taken for years: He doesn’t believe Congress has the final say on federal spending.

    I suspect some readers will see the word “impoundment,” assume the subject is wonky and boring, and click away. But hang in there; I’m going somewhere with this.

    Throughout American history, officials have recognized that the Congress has what’s known as “the power of the purse”: In our constitutional system, it’s lawmakers who have the sole authority to dictate government spending. When an appropriations bill emerges from Capitol Hill and becomes law, it’s not a recommendation or a suggestion about possible spending; it’s a directive to the executive branch.

    […] [I snipped some history] Nixon, weakened by Watergate, ultimately signed the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which made clear that presidents don’t have the legal authority to ignore Congress on federal spending.

    Vought, Trump’s OMB nominee, not only disagrees with the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, he also believes the law is unconstitutional and should be ignored.

    [Bluesky post from Aaron Rupar, and video, are available at the link.]

    When Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, for example, asked during Vought’s confirmation hearing whether he would comply with existing law, the nominee replied that Trump “ran against the Impoundment Control Act” during the 2024 campaign.

    There’s some truth to that — though it’s obviously a stretch to think “impoundment” was on the minds of many voters when they cast their ballots last fall […] Laws must be honored, even if politicians run on a platform in opposition to those laws.

    At the same hearing Wednesday, there was a similar exchange between Vought and Sen. Patty Murray. The Washington Democratic asked, point plank, whether the OMB nominee would honor existing law. He again testified, “The president ran on the notion that the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional [and] I agree with that.”

    It’s easy to imagine much of the public shrugging with indifference in response to debates like these, but there are foundational principles of government and constitutional law at stake.

    Even if you’ve never seen or heard the word “impoundment,” you’re probably familiar with core American ideas, such as checks and balances and Congress’ power of the purse. What Vought envisions is a new model in which the people’s representatives allocate funds, Trump smiles politely, and the White House then refuses to spend federal funds in line with Congress’ wishes.

    Why should the public care? Because it matters when an authoritarian-minded president and his team seize powers — powers to which they are not entitled — from a co-equal branch of government.

    Or as my MSNBC colleague Hayes Brown recently summarized, “Under Vought’s watch, the executive branch would be transformed fully into the sole branch of government with any real say in how the country functions.”

    […] some congressional Republicans [are] prepared to go along with such a plan, freely handing over power to Trump that belongs on Capitol Hill. […] more than a dozen House GOP members sponsored a bill in the last Congress that would repeal the Impoundment Control Act entirely, “giving Trump unprecedented power to determine which funds are spent.” [Yikes!!]

    Senate Republicans are all but certain to confirm Vought. […]

  7. says

    Trump: “I won youth by 36 points.” (This is a ridiculous lie — Trump lost the youth vote.)

    https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lgessyyz6v2q

    Video at the link.

    Related: Fact check: Trump litters Oval Office interview with false claims

    […] The youth vote in 2024: Trump repeated a false claim he has made repeatedly this week about his supposed performance with young voters in the 2024 election, this time declaring “I won youth by 36 points.”

    […] Because votes in US elections are cast by secret ballot, there is no official source of information on who different subgroups of voters supported in any presidential election. But there is polling – and multiple high-quality surveys found that Trump did not win the youth vote in 2024, let alone by 36 points, even though it is true that he did better among young voters than he did in the 2020 election. According to CNN exit poll data, Vice President Kamala Harris beat Trump 54% to 43% among voters ages 18-24, 53% to 45% among voters ages 25-29, and 51% to 45% among voters ages 30-39. […]

    More details from CNN fact check:

    The Capitol riot of January 6, 2021
    […] Trump repeated his false claim that the House select committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol “deleted and destroyed all of the information that they collected,” reiterating later in the interview that the committee “destroyed all of the work that took place over two years.”

    Trump’s claim that “all” information collected by the committee was deleted is not even close to true. While there has been a long-running dispute between Republicans and Democrats over the status of certain committee records that Republicans said should have been archived and that Democratic committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson argued did not have to be archived […] the committee preserved a large volume of evidence.

    […] the committee released not only a final report that was more than 800 pages long, but also transcripts of interviews with more than 140 witnesses – and, according to Thompson, the committee’s staff worked with the National Archives and Records Administration and other government bodies “in preparing the Select Committee’s more than 1 million records for publication and archiving.”

    Nancy Pelosi and January 6: Trump repeated his false claim that former House speaker Nancy Pelosi is “on tape admitting” that Trump had offered her 10,000 soldiers in advance of January 6, 2021, explaining that he was referring to footage taken by Pelosi’s daughter.

    That’s not what the footage shows, and Pelosi never made any admission that she rejected a Trump offer of 10,000 troops. In fact, she has consistently said she never received such an offer – and she wouldn’t have had the power to reject the offer even if it had been made to her, since it is the president, not the House speaker, who commands the District of Columbia National Guard.

    In the video recorded by Pelosi’s filmmaker daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, on January 6 and later obtained by House Republicans, who posted a 42-second snippet on social media in June, Pelosi was shown expressing frustration at the inadequate security at the Capitol, and she said at one point, “I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more.” But that general statement is clearly not a specific admission that she had rejected a Trump offer of 10,000 troops.

    In fact, another part of the video appears to undermine Trump’s claim that she was the person who turned down the National Guard. She said, “Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?”

    After Trump began referencing this video in June, Pelosi spokesperson Aaron Bennett said in an email to CNN: “Numerous independent fact-checkers have confirmed again and again that Speaker Pelosi did not plan her own assassination on January 6th. Cherry-picked, out-of-context clips do not change the fact that the Speaker of the House is not in charge of the security of the Capitol Complex — on January 6th or any other day of the week.” […]

    More at the CNN link.

  8. says

    Fox News melts down over ‘woke bishop’ who called on Trump to show mercy

    Multiple video snippets plus text excerpts are available at the link.

    Here are just a few excerpts:

    […] “Fox and Friends” host Lawrence Jones exclaimed “Oh my God!” after a clip of Budde’s speech was aired. “As someone who comes from generations of preachers, I would have walked out,” he added.

    […] His co-host Ainsley Earhardt worried that “there are children there that are hearing this message,” apparently concerned that children might hear something about “mercy” toward others in a church—something frequently associated with Jesus Christ and Christianity.

    […] On “Outnumbered,” host (and former Trump press secretary) Kayleigh McEnany complained that Budde was “preaching politics from the pulpit” (something Fox News has encouraged for decades with conservative policy).

    Her co-host Harris Faulkner suggested that rhetoric like Budde’s reflected poorly on the Episcopalian church’s decision to allow women to serve as clergy.

    […] Faulkner [Outnumbered co-host Harris Faulkner] said, “If you believe in the Lord, that was offensive.”

    […] “The Five” co-host Jeanine Pirro labeled Budde as a “woke bishop” and “nasty clergywoman,” and accused her of “hijacking” the service.

    […] Despite the attacks from the sitting president and his cheerleaders at the right-wing cable news channel, Budde remained unbowed.

    “I don’t hate the president, and I pray for him,” Budde told NPR. “I don’t feel there’s a need to apologize for a request for mercy.”

  9. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/white-house-press-corps-so-glad-the

    “White House Press Corps So Glad The Nazis Are Back, WHEW!”

    Uh oh, time to hate the mainstream Beltway media again.

    No, this is not about how the Washington Post has become an utter joke whose editorial board writes with a straight face that Trump setting terrorists and child porn convicts free is the same as Joe Biden preemptively pardoning his family members to protect them from Trump’s Justice Department making up crimes in order to target them under bullshit pretenses.

    Obviously, that is worth your wrath.

    This is about the Columbia Journalism Review’s piece on how excited the White House press corps is to be done with those stinky Bidens and their White House comms team and have the Trump Nazis back, because the Trump Nazis are so much more fuuuuuuun and they talk to them a whole bunch […]

    Do the Trump Nazis consider journalists to be the enemy of the people and regularly incite threats and hatred against them? Well yes.

    Is Donald Trump currently raging that MSNBC should not even be allowed to be on the air? Well yes.

    Was a weather person in Milwaukee fired for criticizing Elon Musk’s Nazi salute? A weather person? Well yes.

    Does that bode well for, you know, the First Amendment? Well no.

    But […] the Biden team wasn’t fun or nice and didn’t invite them out for drinks at the hottest clubs or tell them all the latest gossip and OH MY FUCKING GOD, YOU HACKS, THEY ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE YOUR FRIENDS.

    CJR says:

    The return of Donald Trump to the White House has prompted predictable worries among many DC-based reporters about how his administration might seek to control and intimidate the press. But for a surprising number of people on the daily White House beat, that concern is mixed with another, more privately expressed emotion: relief at finally being rid of the Joe Biden press operation.

    Why yes, that is surprising. Are they morons?

    “I think it’s important for people to understand the context, that we’re coming out of four years of Biden and things haven’t been great,” one White House print reporter told CJR. “There’ve been fewer eyeballs on the press briefings and less attention than under Trump, so people just don’t understand some of the very frustrating things that we’ve dealt with and that we hope are going to be rolled back.”

    OMG Becky tell us.

    Among those frustrations: the Biden press office largely kept reporters at a remove from the president …

    OMG was he busy or something? […]

    Inside the briefing room, reporters who didn’t hold coveted front-row seats felt they got much less opportunity to ask questions.

    “For a lot of people, what was the point in even going?” said a veteran White House reporter.

    Hey, has anybody heard when Trump’s new Kayleigh Huckabee Spicynanny “Karoline Leavitt” has scheduled the first Trump daily press briefing? Or is that just not on the calendar yet?

    Oh well, we are sure she’ll get around to it and it will be awesome for all the reporters currently [complaining] anonymously in this article.

    Trump, on the other hand, adores the attention of the media, even as he frequently maligns the reporters themselves. During his first term, he regularly chatted with White House reporters during strolls to Marine One, and held a number of high-profile, if occasionally ill-conceived, televised sit-downs, with everyone from Axios’s Jonathan Swan to Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy. (On his first night back, Trump spent forty-five minutes casually answering media questions in the Oval Office, while he signed executive orders.)

    “Despite his sometimes strident and sometimes even violent rhetoric about the press, he loves talking to us,” the print reporter said. “And his team—they like talking to us, and they know that they’re going to have a huge audience.”

    THEY ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE YOUR FRIIIIIIEND.

    HE IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE YOUR FRIIIIIIEND.

    We get that in any situation where people share space for long periods of time, a certain level of collegiality will develop, you’ll be aware of when one of them is having a baby or maybe their mother is sick, and you are a decent human being, so you care about that.

    BUT THEY ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE YOUR FRIIIIIIIIEND.

    THE STUPID-HITLER-IN-CHIEF IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE YOUR FRIIIIIIIIEND.

    “I actually think the team that’s coming in is not going to be as horrific as people might imagine,” the veteran White House reporter said. “It’s not going to be like the first Trump term, where nobody had any idea what they were doing.”

    Incoming press secretary Karoline Leavitt and communications director Steven Cheung are seen by White House reporters as “full MAGA, but they’re also professionals,” as the veteran reporter put it.

    Oh yeah? Are they going to be super professional now, while they lie to you? Are they going to be better at lying to your faces than the stable full of mouthbreathers from the first Trump term was?

    […] There’s more in the Columbia Journalism Review article if you want to hear more quotes from Beltway reporters who don’t quite understand what the job of “reporter” is. […]

    Regardless, we’re sure glad for the surely very serious White House press corps that they will now have Trump fascism to keep them entertained.

    […] Useless fucks.

  10. says

    From Trump’s Department of Homeland Security:

    Colleagues,

    We are taking steps to close all agency Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) offices and end all DEIA-related contracts in accordance with President Trump’s Executive Orders titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing” and “Initial Rescissions Of Harmful Executive Orders And Actions.”

    These programs divide Americans by race, waste taxpayer dollars, and result in shameful discrimination.

    We are aware of efforts by some in government to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language. If you are aware of a change in any contract description or personnel position description since November 5, 2024, to obscure the connection between the contract and DEIA or similar ideologies, please report all facts and circumstances to DEIAtruth@opm.gov within 10 days.

    There will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information. However, failure to report this information within 10 days will result in adverse consequences. [WTF?]

    Thank you for your attention to this important matter.

    From Andrew Ferguson, the incoming head of the FTC:

    DEI divides people into castes on the basis of immutable characteristics, and treats them as caste members rather than as individuals. It stokes tensions by elevating race and other immutable characteristics above merit and excellence. It promotes invidious discrimination. And it violates federal and natural law.

  11. says

    Trump speaks to Saudi crown prince in first foreign leader call of second term

    […] The Saudi government’s readout of the call said the kingdom intends “to broaden its investments and trade with the United States over the next four years, in the amount of $600 billion, and potentially beyond that.”

    Speaking virtually at the World Economic Forum on Thursday, Trump called the crown prince “a fantastic guy” and said he’s going to ask Saudi Arabia to increase that investment in the U.S. to $1 trillion. Trump also said he’s going to ask Saudi Arabia and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to bring down oil prices.

    “You got to bring it down, which, frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t do before the election,” he said. “That didn’t show a lot of love by them not doing it. I was a little surprised by that.” […]

    While signing executive orders in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump told reporters that Saudi Arabia was his first foreign trip in his first term because he said it had agreed to buy $450 billion worth of U.S. products.

    Asked where he plans to go now, Trump said that if Saudi Arabia wanted to buy another $450 billion or $500 billion — or more because of inflation — “I think I’d probably go there.” […]

    Sigh.

  12. says

    Nope. That did not go well.

    […] The day after his presidential inauguration, Trump was pressed for some kind of justification for putting violent criminals back on American streets. He said, among other things, “Murderers don’t even go to jail in this country,” which was both wrong and unpersuasive. [!! understatement]

    A day later, while sitting down with Fox News’ Sean Hannity in the Oval Office, Trump gave it another try.

    “Most of the people were absolutely innocent, OK?” Trump claimed, ignoring the fact that many of the people he pardoned had pleaded guilty and that many more were found guilty by jurors who considered detailed and overwhelming evidence.

    As for the violent assaults on police officers, Trump added, “They were very minor incidents, OK? You know that they get built up by that couple of fake guys that are on CNN all the time. They were very minor incidents.” [video at the link]

    For those familiar with the facts of Jan. 6, Trump’s rhetoric was obscene. Roughly 140 officers were injured by pro-Trump rioters, and five officers’ deaths are tied directly to the insurrectionist violence.

    A report in The Guardian noted, “Those pardoned include more than 250 people who were convicted of assault charges, some having attacked police with makeshift weapons such as flagpoles, a hockey stick and a crutch. Many of the attacks were captured on surveillance or body-camera footage that showed rioters engaging in hand-to-hand combat with police as officers desperately fought to beat back the angry crowd.”

    In one especially shocking instance, an officer suffered a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury after a pro-Trump rioter drove a stun gun into the officer’s neck [Repeatedly!]. (In June 2023, the violent felon was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison. He’ll now walk free thanks to a presidential pardon.)

    There were “incidents,” but they were not “very minor.” […]

    As for how and why Trump decided to take such a step, NBC News reported that he settled on a maximalist approach just two days before being sworn in for a second term, to the surprise of members of his team.

    [Maybe, not verified yet by multiple sources.] Trump saw the far-right backlash against Vice President JD Vance, who said a week earlier that violent felons “obviously” didn’t deserve presidential pardons, and it influenced his decision.

    All of which helped create an avoidable and unpopular fiasco to start the president’s second term.

    Link

  13. Reginald Selkirk says

    The Big Chill: How Yosemite Valley and Other Glacial Examples Disprove the Way-Too-Short Biblical Creationist Ice Age

    This article focuses on a subject that has received not much in the way of consideration, the young earth creationist (YEC) view of the Ice Age that they propose followed the super flood. In this examination I am going to put some emphasis on one of the biggest canyons in these United States. Not the often discussed Grand Canyon – the reasons why that colossal ditch was formed as a classic riverine V-shaped valley over millions of years in rocks up to 1.25 billion years old, rather than suddenly cut by a super flood in short order in post-flood deposits, has been well detailed.

    The valley focused on here is Yosemite. Yosemite has received notably little attention in either the anti- or pro- creationist literature. That is both despite, and precisely because, the California canyon poses overwhelming problems that YEC theory lacks practical means of explaining. This article also focuses on the apologetics of the top two creationist organizations, the Institute for Creation Research and, especially, Answers in Genesis headed by the most popular living YEC, Ken Ham…

  14. Reginald Selkirk says

    Judge blocks Trump’s ‘blatantly unconstitutional’ executive order that aims to end birthright citizenship

    A federal judge said Thursday that President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship was “blatantly unconstitutional” and issued a temporary restraining order to block it.

    Judge John Coughenour, a Ronald Reagan appointee who sits in Seattle, granted the request by Washington Attorney General Nick Brown and three other Democratic-led states for the emergency order halting implementation of the policy for the next 14 days while there are more briefings in the legal challenge.

    “I have been on the bench for over four decades. I can’t remember another case whether the question presented was as clear,” Coughenour said…

Leave a Reply