Comments

  1. says

    Don’t believe what RFK Jr. says about measles — or french fries

    “The HHS secretary sinks to new levels of misinformation when he blames this measles outbreak on nutrition and when he praises beef-fried french fries as healthier.” By Dr. Kavita Patel, physician and health policy researcher

    In a Fox News interview last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested that poor nutrition played a role in making an unvaccinated school-age child in West Texas’ Mennonite community the first person to die in the United States of measles in 10 years. “It’s exceedingly difficult for measles to kill a healthy individual,” Kennedy stated, adding that “there’s a connection between those who suffer from measles and individuals who lack proper nutrition or don’t engage in regular physical activity.”

    Then, a few days later, Kennedy appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program and praised Steak ’n Shake’s decision to fry its french fries in beef tallow. “Steak ’n Shake has been fantastic,” the health secretary and vocal seed-oil opponent proclaimed. “We are very thankful to them for RFK’ing their french fries. They’ve turned my name into a verb.”

    Kennedy’s celebration of fast food directly contradicts his stance on nutrition’s role in disease outcomes. And, to be clear, linking poor nutrition to a measles death — as a way to avoid taking accountability for his disparagement of childhood immunizations — is dishonest and insulting. Though Kennedy characterized West Texas as “somewhat of a food desert” and suggested malnutrition “may have been an issue” for the child who died, his remarks were promptly refuted by health officials in Texas who reported the child had “no known underlying conditions.”

    Dr. Wendy Parker, a Gaines County, Texas, physician who serves numerous Mennonite patients, directly challenged Kennedy’s characterization. She pointed out that Mennonites typically avoid processed foods, raise their own livestock and bake their own bread. “They’re the healthiest people around,” she asserted. “Nutritionally, I would compare them to anyone.”

    And, still, not only did that child die, but an unvaccinated adult in New Mexico also tested positive for measles after the death. There had been more than 250 cases of measles and 22 hospitalizations in Texas and New Mexico as of Thursday afternoon. Most of the cases have been of school-age children who are either unvaccinated or whose vaccination statuses are unknown.

    Kennedy is sinking to new levels of misinformation to blame this measles outbreak on nutrition — and also spreading misinformation when he suggests that Steak ’n Shake’s beef-fried french fries are healthier. His promotion of beef tallow over seed oils misses the essential point: Fast-food french fries, regardless of what they’re fried in, are processed, calorie-dense foods with minimal nutritional value. It’s precisely the type of food that contributes to America’s chronic disease epidemic, which Kennedy has vowed to address as HHS secretary.

    Kennedy’s false and contradictory messages are problematic in and of themselves, but they’re especially troubling in light of additional actions by HHS that have incapacitated health professionals, researchers and public health authorities. Recent termination of the National Institutes of Health funds for vaccine hesitancy research will be counterproductive and only widen the chasm of distrust among the American public. The science on measles is clear: Vaccination is the most effective prevention strategy. Two doses of the MMR vaccine provide 97% protection. But Kennedy wrongly claimed to Hannity that the measles vaccine itself is deadly.

    Before vaccines were available, measles killed approximately 500 children a year in the United States — many of whom were previously healthy.

    The virus doesn’t discriminate based on dietary habits. For every 1,000 people infected with measles in the United States, there are one to three deaths, and approximately 40% of those who were infected last year required hospitalization. These aren’t statistics that can be mitigated by avoiding seed oils or embracing beef tallow or exercising.

    Every utterance from a top health official matters. As wrong as Kennedy is to cite poor nutrition as a reason a person may die of measles, and as wrong as he is to try to sell people on french fries fried in beef tallow, there are people who are going to believe him. When our nation’s top health official wrongly blames poor nutrition for a measles death and then celebrates eating fast food, we face a dangerous contradiction that undermines public trust and confuses Americans seeking reliable health guidance.

  2. says

    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-7/#comment-2257760
    According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the combined net worth of Bezos and Musk fell by a staggering $177 billion by March 10.

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/01/03/infinite-thread-xxxiv/comment-page-7/#comment-2257758
    Putin orders swift expulsion of Ukrainian forces before peace talks

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/01/03/infinite-thread-xxxiv/comment-page-7/#comment-2257757
    SAD! Despite DOGE’s drastic cuts, federal spending is up

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/01/03/infinite-thread-xxxiv/comment-page-7/#comment-2257743
    DOJ got hammered in two court cases.

  4. says

    Demolishing The Dept. Of Education Dumps Fuel On A Public Ed Crisis Already Underway

    “Schools are already facing significant financial pressures, many created by Trump-backed policies separate from the assault on DOE.”

    As far as most American families were concerned, schools’ post-pandemic reopening brought an end to an era of uncertainty in public education. In reality, the end of that era was never all that clearly defined. Now, as the Trump administration sweeps into office with reams of radical proposals, a new era of uncertainty for teachers and families has clearly arrived.

    On Tuesday night, news broke that the U.S. Department of Education would purge nearly half its staff. Earlier, it was widely reported that the administration planned to ultimately go even further, and would imminently publish an executive order to wind down the U.S. Department of Education to the greatest extent possible — while calling on Congress to eliminate it entirely. The order hasn’t yet materialized, but, in addition to 1,300 jobs, the administration has already slashed $900 in education research funding, over $600 million in professional development for teachers, and $350 million in grants sustaining centers for studying and sharing best practices in schools.

    Its next steps aren’t clear, but they range from making significant cuts to core federal K–12 funding for high-poverty schools, English learners, and students with disabilities — to zeroing these funds out entirely.

    These antics couldn’t come at a worse time. Schools were entering an era of significant financial pressures before Trump, DOGE, and new Education Secretary Linda McMahon began hurling wrenches into the federal government’s gears. Factors ranging from the expiration of the Biden Era’s pandemic recovery funds, public dollars increasingly flowing to conservative school voucher programs, falling birth rates, and heightened immigration enforcement mean that public schools’ finances are already hurting. Against that backdrop, the administration’s threat to evaporate federal education programs has become just the latest, broadest front in a comprehensive attempt to defund public schools.

    Pandemic Recovery Funding Ending

    This school year, $190 billion in federal pandemic recovery funds wound down — meaning that many school districts are going to have to make cuts to return to their pre-pandemic budgets. This one-time splash of federal K–12 cash was more than 10 times the size of the federal government’s annual budget for supporting schools in low-income communities. That public investment allowed many districts to maintain, expand, and/or enhance their offerings during an uncertain moment in U.S. schools and society. These funds sustained tutoring programs, afterschool programming, new technology, social-emotional learning programs, and much more. Many districts used these dollars to add staff. The coming fiscal year will likely be particularly painful in their communities.

    Investments in Exotic Conservative School Choice Programs

    As those federal funds neared their expiration date, conservative state policymakers have been seeking ways to shift public education dollars to private schools. States like Georgia and Wyoming have grown their school voucher programs, allowing families to divert public education funding to private schools of their choice. Texas is pushing in the same direction.

    Meanwhile, other states are experimenting with novel school choice policies like “education savings accounts” that allow families to use public education dollars for a range of educational expenses, including technology, instruments, and vacations. Similarly, dozens of states offer “tax-credit scholarship programs” that allow individuals and organizations to garner tax benefits when they donate to non-profits subsidizing private school tuition.

    While these programs appear to have mixed — at best — results for improving student achievement, they generally result in decreased funds available for public schools. Analysts at the Education Trust argue that Arizona’s expanded school choice program dramatically overshot its budget and reduced funding for public schools. The latter is a relatively common problem with these programs, particularly in rural areas where school budgets often cannot sustain the funding cuts that can come with the voucher-fueled reductions in student enrollment.

    […]

    A New Era Of Crisis For Public Schools

    There’s never a good time to trim, let alone slash, education budgets. Public investments in children’s development and learning are amongst the most important things a human society can do. But given the present context — expiring pandemic recovery funds, dropping enrollments, conservative lawmakers’ investments in private schools, and more — it’s time to call the administration’s Department of Education-slashing federal efforts what they are: the capstone of a comprehensive effort to defund public schools.

    In the coming era of tight public school budgets, even relatively small changes to federal education funding would have produced extra heartburn in school districts across the country. But small reductions feel like a baseline minimum right now, so students, families, and educators should expect to feel much more punishing cuts.

    More at the link.

  7. Reginald Selkirk says

    @prev 499 JM

    I’m pretty sure going after SS, Medicare and Medicaid was part of the plan all along.

    Sure, it’s part of somebody’s plan.

    I am convinced Trump himself does not have a plan. Beyond feeding his ego and escaping prison, I don’t think he has a thought or a care about how to run the country. I think his policy is 100% for sale. He tells the Federalist Society, “Back me and I’ll nominate all your judicial picks.” He tells RFK JR., “Back me and I’ll let you screw over the American health system.” He tells Musk, “Back me and I’ll let you do to the U.S. government what you did to Twitter.” And so on. Apparently he intends to keep all of his campaign promises, no matter how horrendous they may be; that’s as close to a plan as he gets.

    As for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Trump has said contradictory things and did not make a campaign issue of screwing them up, so it’s probably someone else’s plan. Someone who paid for the privilege of being able to do it.

  11. JM says

    Financial Times: Russia says it does not want a temporary ceasefire in Ukraine

    Yuri Ushakov, the Russian president’s foreign policy adviser, told state television on Thursday that the 30-day ceasefire proposed after talks between the US and Ukraine this week was “nothing other than a temporary breather for Ukrainian troops”.

    Russia is taking a hard line stance, they want Ukraine to effectively surrender. This puts the ball back in Trump’s court because Russia’s terms are not something Ukraine or Europe will accept. The terms Russia is looking for not only demand Ukraine not joing NATO but that countries east of Germany be kicked out so that the Russian sphere of power can be expanded.
    Russia and the US are also looking to make negotiations more secret. This likely is so that they can come up with terms and then spring them on Europe and Ukraine as a fixed deal, do it or else. They probably also want to keep negotiations out of the press because pressure on the Trump administration goes up when Russia’s extreme position is made public.
    Russia’s position is so extreme it’s possible they are not interested in negotiations at all. Putin may think Russia can win given enough time. The Russian diplomats are just stringing Trump along and trying to limit US aid to Ukraine. If the only concerns were military this could be true but at some point the Russian economy is going to collapse. Putin probably also has an inflated sense of how well Russia is doing.

    “Hopefully we can get a ceasefire from Russia,” Trump said after meeting Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin on Wednesday. “I’ve gotten some positive messages, but a positive message means nothing. This is a very serious situation.”

    Trump doesn’t realize he is being played. Russia will provide all the positive messages Trump wants but that doesn’t mean they are going to ever actually negotiate. Trump has talked about more sanctions but that is pointless at this point. The only easy and meaningful way to put pressure on Russia is more military aid to Ukraine.

  14. JM says

    The Hill: Trump adding copper to trade protections, Commerce secretary says

    Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said President Trump plans to introduce steep tariffs on copper imports after he directed Cabinet officials to investigate the country’s ability to rely on its domestic supply chain for the metal instead of foreign trade partners.
    “The president wants steel and aluminum in America. And let me be clear, nothing’s going to stop that until we’ve got a big, strong domestic steel and aluminum capability,” Lutnick said Wednesday on Fox Business Network’s “Varney & Co.”

    I suspect Trump has latched on to tariffs because it’s something he can most do without review and they are well suited to slogan logic. So he can throw tariffs around with simple minded rationals as a demonstration of his power without all the problems he is having with other matters.

    NBC News: Trump threatens 200% tariff on E.U. wine and liquor, says world is ‘ripping us off’

    President Donald Trump threatened Thursday to impose 200% tariffs on alcohol from the European Union in response to the region’s retaliatory 50% tariff on U.S. whiskey, further escalating tensions between two longtime trading partners.

    The big issue that Trump is running into is that other countries are allowed to respond to his tariffs. They have retaliated with their own tariffs when Trump imposes arbitrary big tariffs. Trump is a bully and his natural inclination is to add more tariffs when challenged. This could quickly spiral out of control and wreck economies.

    Lutnick: Canada becoming US state ‘best way’ to merge economies

    “The best way, the president has said it, the best way to actually merge the economies of Canada and the United States is for Canada to become our 51st state. If they want to merge it, that’s how you make it the 51st state,” Lutnick said on Fox Business Network’s “Varney & Co.”

    Lutnick is working as a PR propagandist who is willing to say anything to back Trump’s position. Notice that he carefully includes “president has said” so he can slip out when challenged. He is taking some flack for not matching Trump but Trump’s rationals are constantly shifting. In his first term Trump burned through PR people because of this, Lutnick will probably pay the price at some point.

  15. Reginald Selkirk says

    Trump yanks CDC nominee minutes before Senate hearing

    President Donald Trump abruptly yanked his nominee to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday morning shortly before a scheduled Senate confirmation hearing.

    A source familiar with the discussions said Trump pulled David Weldon’s nomination because he did not have the votes to be confirmed…

  20. JM says

    Politico: Thousands of fired federal workers must be rehired immediately, judge rules

    A federal judge on Thursday ordered federal agencies to rehire tens of thousands of probationary employees who were fired amid President Donald Trump’s turbulent effort to drastically shrink the federal bureaucracy.
    U.S. District Judge William Alsup described the mass firings as a “sham” strategy by the government’s central human resources office to sidestep legal requirements for reducing the federal workforce.

    He we go, judge Alsup has directly ordered the rehiring of fired employees. Expect an attempt at an emergency stay by the government, which may or may not work.
    I am curious what the Supreme Court does. This is the sort of case that could get an express to the Supreme Court but the government’s case is so bad that the conservatives may evade taking this case.

  21. Reginald Selkirk says

    ‘We Are Witnessing a New Brain Drain’ as Scientists Flee America for France

    Aix Marseille University in France has said that 40 U.S. scientists have “answered the call” it put out earlier this month offering safe harbor to fleeing Americans. Scientists in the U.S. under the Trump regime are facing a sudden loss of funding and stricter regulations on speech and areas of research. According to Aix Marseille University President Eric Berton, some of them will find a home in France.

    In a press release about its “Safe Space for Science” initiative, the University announced that the 40 U.S. scientists included people from Stanford, Yale, NASA, the National Institute for Health, and George Washington University. It said that most of their research topics were related to “health (LGBT+ medicine, epidemiology, infectious diseases, inequalities, immunology, etc.), the environment and climate change…as well as the humanities and social sciences…and astrophysics.”

    Aix Marseille University put out the call to American scientists on March 7 as news continued that the Trump administration was pulling funding from many universities and putting heavy restrictions on research topics. “We are witnessing a new brain drain,” Benton said on March 12. “We will do everything possible to help as many scientists as possible continue their research. But we cannot meet all the requests alone.” He then called on the French and European governments for help…

    “Lafayette, we are here. Do you have a job for us?”

  22. says

    Reginald @20, well that is a significant unintended consequence. Or, on second thought, some conservative politicians may think that moving a lot of scientists from the USA to France is good for the USA.

    I am impressed by French institutions that decided to take advantage of the situation. This will encourage other European countries to do the same.

  23. says

    Trump picks the wrong fight, smears federal employees who ‘don’t work at all’

    “If the president wants to spark a debate about firing federal employees who don’t work enough, is there room for a conversation about his own schedule?”

    As the White House continues to dismantle a variety of federal departments and agencies, laying off thousands of federal employees, Donald Trump was asked for his feeling about the many civil servants whose careers he has derailed. NBC News reported:

    […] Trump said Wednesday that he feels “very badly” for the thousands of civil servants who have lost their jobs in recent weeks but that “many of them don’t work at all.” Asked by NBC News whether he feels responsible for so many people losing their jobs, Trump said: “Sure I do. I feel very badly … but many of them don’t work at all. Many of them never showed up to work.”

    He appeared to be rather serious about this, as if he’d completed a detailed review of personnel records and could say with certainty that countless federal workers were receiving paychecks despite doing no work. [Social media post from Aaron Rupar, with video]

    The timing could’ve been better: Right around the time the president made the unscripted comments, Politico reported that a television has been installed in Elon Musk’s White House office so he can “play video games” at work.

    But even putting that aside, the obvious problem with Trump’s comments is that they represented a baseless smear against people who deserve better. A similarly obvious problem is that if the fired workers were so awful and lazy, it necessarily raises questions about why the Trump administration has scrambled to rehire so many of them.

    The less obvious problem is that the president is inviting a conversation that doesn’t do him any favors.

    As a candidate in 2016, the Republican seemed eager to give voters the impression that he’s a workaholic. At an event in New Hampshire, for example, while complaining about Barack Obama’s golf outings, Trump declared that if he were in office, “I’d want to stay in the White House and work my ass off.” Soon after, he assured voters, “I’m going to be working for you. I’m not going to have time to go play golf.”

    After taking office, Trump proceeded to golf rather obsessively throughout his first term. His second term is offering more of the same: A recent Washington Post analysis noted that in the first month after the president’s second inaugural, Trump spent 16 of his first 31 days at Trump-owned properties, and 10 of his first 31 days playing golf.

    This weekend, Trump is reportedly scheduled to return to Mar-a-Lago, marking his sixth trip to the glorified country club since taking office seven weeks ago.

    […] even inside the White House, Trump hasn’t exactly earned a reputation as a workhorse. Axios published an interesting scoop in early 2019, highlighting the president’s private workday schedule from the previous three months. It showed that Trump spent around 60% of his scheduled time in unstructured “executive time.”

    As we discussed soon after, “executive time” was a euphemism the White House came up with to describe Trump’s many hours of downtime, leaving the president to do as he pleases, including watching an inordinate amount of television.

    If the president wants to spark a debate about firing federal employees who don’t put in enough hours of actual work, I’m all for it. We can start with the most powerful federal employee of them all.

    Trump was projecting again. He doesn’t work a lot, so he assumes other people are the same.

  24. says

    ‘It Sends Little Chills Down My Spine’

    In a closely watched emergency hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell quickly recognized the threat to the rule of law posed by […] Trump’s executive order targeting Seattle-based law firm Perkins Coie – and moved immediately to issue an order blocking key portions of it.

    “I am sure that many in the legal profession are watching in horror at what Perkins Coie is going through here,” Howell said. “The order casts a chilling harm of blizzard proportions across the legal profession.”

    Howell is not alone. Duke law professor Samuel W. Buell, a former prosecutor, told the NYT: “This is certainly the biggest affront to the legal profession in my lifetime.”

    The executive order, among other things, sought to terminate government contracts with Perkins Coie or “with entities that do business with Perkins Coie”; denied Perkins Coie employees access to federal buildings and officials; and stripped them of security clearances.

    In an unusual twist and a possible sign that career DOJ lawyers want nothing to do with the case, the executive order was defended in court by Chad Mizelle, the Justice Department’s chief of staff who is also serving as the DOJ’s acting No. 3.

    Mizelle struggled to allay Howell’s concerns about the constitutionality of the executive order.

    “This may be amusing in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ where the Queen of Hearts yells, ‘Off with their heads!’ at annoying subjects … and announces a sentence before a verdict,” Howell said, “but this cannot be the reality we are living under.” [Excellent literary reference.]

    Meanwhile, the NYT reported that other big law firms were hesitant to defend Perkins Coie, which was “rebuffed” by at least one firm before Williams & Connolly rose to the occasion.

    “I have enormous respect for Williams & Connolly,” Howell said in court, “and enormous respect for them taking this case when not every law firm would.” [Good point. Point made.]

    Link

  25. says

    Chutkan Slams Gov’t Conduct In Crazy EPA Case

    The Trump administration’s over-the-top effort to claw back Biden-era EPA grants was tested in open court for the first time, and U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan was having none of it.

    To orient you a bit, this case is a civil lawsuit brought by one of the grant recipients seeking to unfreeze monies it was due, so the case doesn’t directly touch on the Trump DOJ’s baseless effort to use the criminal process to freeze the funds and intimidate the bank holding them and the grant recipients. Those corrupt efforts by acting D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, you’ll recall, led to the forced resignation of a senior prosecutor who refused to go along with it.

    But even in the confines of the civil case, Chutkan said the government needed to provide some basis for freezing the funds: “Can you proffer any evidence that [the grant] was illegal, or evidence of abuse or fraud or bribery — that any of that was improperly or unlawfully done, other than the fact that Mr. Zeldin doesn’t like it?” Chutkan asked the DOJ lawyer, referring to EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, who purported to terminate the entire $20 billion program the day before the hearing, the timing of which also chagrined Chutkan.

    Same link as in comment 23.

  26. says

    Quote Of The Day

    “My ethical duty as a Department of Justice employee — and now a former one — is to the laws of the United States and the people that I was entrusted to serve. It is not to the bullies who are currently running the Department of Justice.”–Elizabeth Oyer, the U.S. pardon attorney fired by the Trump DOJ after not agreeing to restore Mel Gibson’s gun rights.

    Same link as in comment 23.

  27. says

    DOGE Watch

    U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan became the first judge to order Elon Musk to produce documents in a court challenge to DOGE’s slash-and-burn attack on the federal government.

    DOGE is making its latest errors harder to find. New York Times link

    Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), the chair of the House DOGE subcommittee, called for the Trump DOJ to investigate recent attacks on Tesla properties.

    Excerpts from the New York Times link referenced above:

    Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has repeatedly posted error-filled data that inflated its success at saving taxpayer money. But after a series of news reports called out those mistakes, the group changed its tactics.

    It began making its new mistakes harder to find, leaving its already secretive activities even less transparent than before.

    Mr. Musk’s group posted a new set of claims to its website on March 2, saying it had saved taxpayers $10 billion by terminating 3,489 federal grants.

    Previously when it posted new claims, DOGE, Mr. Musk’s government-restructuring effort, had included identifying details about the cuts it took credit for. That allowed the public to fact-check its work by comparing its figures with federal spending databases and talking to the groups whose funding had been cut.

    This time, it did not include those details. […]

    The New York Times, at first, found a way around the group’s obfuscation. That is because Mr. Musk’s group had briefly embedded the federal identification numbers of these grants in the publicly available source code. The Times used those numbers to match DOGE’s claims with reality, and to discover that they contained the same kind of errors that it had made in the past.

    Mr. Musk’s group later removed those identifiers from the code, and posted more batches of claims that could not be verified at all.

    […] The website is the only place where this very powerful group has given a public accounting of its work. […] it is extremely valuable, providing a window into the group’s priorities, and revealing its struggles with the machinery and terminology of government.

    […] the group is now going to fill its site with uncheckable claims […]

    “They responded by giving less information publicly, so that it’s harder to question them,” […]

    Nonetheless, that list of canceled contracts still contains errors. On Wednesday, the group was still claiming credit for saving $1.9 billion by canceling an Internal Revenue Service contract for tech help. But that contract was canceled under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

    The website posted it, deleted it, then restored it. […]

    The new, harder-to-trace set of claims deal with another kind of federal spending: not contracts, but grant payments. Those disbursements are often made for services performed by a nonprofit or nongovernmental organization, such as those affiliated with the United Nations.

    The public-facing website displayed only a few details about each grant, including the name of the agency that gave out the grant and the dollar amount saved after cancellation. That is not enough to identify which grants it was referring to. However, the website’s source code listed identifiers for each of the terminated grants.

    The group deleted this identifying information from the code later in the week. But The Times had previously downloaded the code before that change was made, and used the identifiers to match the group’s claims with real grants.

    At least five of the 20 largest “savings” appeared to be exaggerated, according to federal data and interviews with the nonprofits whose grants were on the list.

    The largest item on the list was savings of $1.75 billion, which the group said it achieved by cutting a U.S. Agency for International Development grant. But the organization that got the grant — a public-health nonprofit called Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — said that information was wrong twice over.

    For one, the grant had not been terminated. Second, the government had already paid out all the money it owed. So even if the grant had been terminated, the savings would have been $0.

    In other cases, Mr. Musk’s group seemed to misunderstand a key figure in U.S.A.I.D. grants.

    Nonprofits said these grants often contain a ceiling value — an upper limit on what the government might pay. […]

    “It’s not a promise, in any sense,” said Traci Baird, the chief executive of a nonprofit called EngenderHealth.

    In her group’s case, DOGE said it had saved $83.6 million by terminating EngenderHealth’s grant to fund family-planning work in the developing world. Ms. Baird said that Mr. Musk’s group seemed to have wrongly treated the grant’s $89.8 million ceiling as an I.O.U.

    In reality, she said, the government had promised her group $1.2 million in funding, of which her group had already been paid $500,000. So the real savings of terminating her group’s grant was about $700,000.

    […] Ms. Baird and other nonprofit executives said it was incorrect to say that DOGE had saved money that the government had not yet agreed to spend.

    […] “There is no reason that they should not be putting out the specifics and details behind what they’re cutting,” said Gary Kalman, executive director of the anti-corruption nonprofit Transparency International U.S. […]

  29. says

    Trump takes his plan to end birthright citizenship to the Supreme Court

    The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to narrow nationwide injunctions that have blocked the president’s plan to end automatic birthright citizenship.

    Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris said in three concurrently filed emergency applications in different cases that it was a “modest” request.

    Notably, she is not asking the court to issue a decision on the merits of the plan that would apply nationwide. Instead, the government wants to the court to limit lower court injunctions to individuals or groups that sued over […] Trump’s order, and potentially to people who live in the Democratic-led states that challenged it.

    She also asked that the court allow agencies to be able to work on how the executive order issued by Trump on his first day in office could be implemented, if it ever does go into effect.

    If the request is granted, the administration could move forward with developing its policy and try to implement it in some form.

    Most legal experts say the proposal is doomed and unlikely to ever be put into practice because the Constitution’s 14th Amendment is clear that anyone born in the United States is a U.S. citizen.

    At least five votes on the nine-justice Supreme Court are needed for an emergency request to be granted.

    Trump’s lawyers argue that birthright citizenship should be limited to those who have at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.

    The Trump administration filings arise from three cases around the country challenging the proposal. Federal judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state all ruled that the policy is likely unconstitutional and blocked it. Appeals courts upheld those preliminary findings and refused to put the rulings on hold.

    The lower court rulings apply to the entire country, but Harris said in her filings that judges did not have the authority to order such broad relief.

    Such broad injunctions “compromise the executive branch’s ability to carry out its functions,” Harris wrote.

    “This court should declare that enough is enough before district courts’ burgeoning reliance on universal injunctions becomes further entrenched,” she added. […]

  30. says

    Trump family is getting in on yet another sketchy crypto grift

    Trump family representatives have been in discussions to take a financial stake in the U.S. arm of crypto exchange Binance, whose founder served four months in prison for money laundering.

    Binance, along with former CEO Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty to charges of money laundering, unlicensed money transmitting, and sanctions violations in 2023.

    A deal with the Trump family would allow the previously banned company to return to the United States.

    Billionaire New York real estate developer and Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff has reportedly been involved in the talks with Binance.

    This is just the latest example of […] Trump’s willingness to align himself with the shady—and often illegal—crypto world. Trump’s billionaires club is filled with tech bros who have both made and been floated by considerable amounts of money in the crypto space.

    Trump has seen how much more lucrative a grift of the barely policed crypto world is in comparison to previous ventures, like selling shiny gold sneakers.

    Trump launched his own meme coin $TRUMP shortly after inauguration in a clear money grab, pulling in millions while exploiting hundreds of thousands of suckers. But more importantly it was a naked pay-to-play scam, allowing foreign agents and fellow grifters to curry favor with the president—like Tron founder Justin Sun, who was facing a civil fraud case started under the Biden administration.

    After Sun “invested” tens of millions into Trump’s meme coin, he was rewarded by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission cutting a deal and dropping the case.

    As the Trump family continues talks with Binance, the potential investment—and whether or not it would include one of Trump’s patented pardons—remains to be seen.

  31. says

    The Tesla Takedown

    […] People in many countries are refusing to buy Tesla cars. Consider these declines: Australia down 72%, Norway and Denmark down 48%, Sweden down 42%, France down 45%, Portugal down 53%, Germany down 76%, China down 49%, Canada down 70%, Spain down 10%, Italy down 55%, Netherlands down 24%, and the U.S. down 6%.

    But there is more. Tesla shares reached a high of $480 a share on December 17, 2024. It is now trading at $240. A decline of 50% has wiped out half of the stock’s value. But there is more. Analysts at JP Morgan cut their price target on Tesla by about 41%, from $230.58 to $135. This is where they expect the stock to be in a year. Down. Down. Down. To stimulate sales, Tesla has continued to lower the sales prices of models, which decreases their profit margins. Musk has used Tesla stock as collateral to borrow money. It is estimated that if Tesla shares fall to $114, Musk will experience margin calls on those loans, forcing him to liquidate shares to pay off the loan, thus driving the stock price even lower.

    But there is more. There have been protests at many Tesla dealerships. Unfortunately, there have also been a number of instances of vandalism at dealerships and Tesla charging stations.

    But there is more. Trump’s tariffs will negatively impact costs, as they will for all U.S. automakers.

    But there is more. Tesla board members are selling Tesla stock. This includes James Murdoch, who sold $13.2 million, and board chair Robyn Denholm, who liquidated close to $117 million. Tesla CFO Taneja Vaibhav sold 7,000 shares for $2.7 million. Kimbal Musk, Elon Musk’s brother and Tesla board member, sold 75,000 Tesla shares for $27.5 million. […]

    But there is more. Outside institutional investors are also selling Tesla stock. Graham Tanaka has liquidated $21.5 million of Tesla stock held in his Tanaka Growth Fund over the last six months. Market Analyst Axel Rudolph writes, “Institutional investors, who typically provide stability during market volatility, have been reducing their Tesla positions according to recent SEC filings. This shift in institutional sentiment suggests a more cautious approach to the company’s prospects among professional money managers.” (Source)

    But there is more. Now, there are calls […] for institutional investors to liquidate their Tesla stock.

    Twenty-three state senators in New York sent a letter to New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli asking him to divest the state pension fund of Tesla shares. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, known as CalPERS, reduced its holdings by half, down to 4.9 million shares in late November 2024. And there is pressure from civil rights groups on CalPERS to sell the remaining stock.

    Randi Weingarten, union president of the American Federation of Teachers, has sent letters to T. Rowe Price, TIAA-CREF, Fidelity, Vanguard, State Street, and BlackRock asking them to analyze Tesla stock to see if it merits divestment. While her focus is explicitly on the dismal performance of the stock, threats to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education likely motivated the letters.

    Despite Trump opening up a Tesla showroom at the White House and threatening protestors at Tesla dealerships, this is the whirlwind that Musk has brought down on himself. To curry Trump’s favor and influence, Musk just contributed $100 million to Trump’s political apparatus. That will not buy him favor with the public. Tesla, once the darling of environmentally conscious liberals and institutional investors, has become the pariah […]

    This movement is called the Tesla Takedown. Valerie Costa, a co-founder of the Seattle-based environmental group Troublemakers, is one of the many organizers involved in the Tesla Takedown. She has caught the attention of Musk, who lied when he X/tweeted, “Costa is committing crimes.” Musk has probably forgotten the First Amendment. Trump certainly has, but free speech and peaceable protest are permissible ways of addressing grievances against the government and others. In America, they are called freedoms.

    Costa’s opinion piece in “The Guardian” is entitled, “Elon Musk targeted me over Tesla protests. That proves our movement is working.” (Source) Costa counters in her piece, “In fact, Musk and Trump are the ones committing crimes.” She adds, “If we can’t show our opposition to what the government is doing, we are living in a dictatorship. If we are criminalized for calling out the rich and powerful for their illegal actions, that is a dictatorship. I don’t want to live in a dictatorship.” According to Costa, there will be at least 91 Tesla Takedown protests planned across the world this coming weekend and more the following weekend. […]

  32. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/idaho-middle-school-tells-teacher

    “Idaho Middle School Tells Teacher Her ‘Everyone Is Welcome’ Poster Is Too Divisive”

    “No more indoctrinating vulnerable kiddos with this ‘decency and respect’ ideology!”

    An Idaho middle school teacher has been told by her school district that she has to remove two posters with positive, affirming messages, because they supposedly violate state law and school policy too, because what if someone who objects to their embrace of equality and dignity takes offense?

    Sarah Inama teaches 6th grade world civilization at Lewis and Clark Middle School in Meridian, a big suburb just west of Boise, and has had the posters in her classroom for four years without any problems, but Times Are Different Now. One cheerful poster says “Everyone is Welcome Here,” above an illustration of raised cartoony hands in various skin tones. The other carries the apparently divisive message “In this room, everyone is welcome, important, accepted, respected, encouraged, valued.” Each word in a different-colored rectangle, but not in the prismatic arrangement of a rainbow flag, so there’s one bullet dodged by the clever woke poster manufacturers.

    But apparently these very civilized messages scared administrators in the West Ada School District, because on February 3, Inama was told that the posters had to go, because they “don’t allow people to express differing opinions, that it is controversial in today’s political environment.”

    […] I first encountered the story when this popped up on YouTube. [video at the link]

    Inama notes in that report that she was told nobody had complained about the posters, so we guess the district was motivated by fear that some asshole would call the posters “DEI” or some other woke horror. Sure sounds like complying in advance, in hopes that Idaho-based leopards will leave West Ada Schools’ faces alone.

    The West Ada district shared emails it sent to Inama with the Idaho Statesman (free with email, or here’s an archive link) in which Chief Academic Officer Marcus Myers informed Inama that the posters had to be removed. Allegedly, the posters violated the “Dignity and Nondiscrimination in Public Education Act,” Idaho’s cookie-cutter law banning divisive content, one of the many passed in the made-up rightwing panic over “critical race theory.” Oh, yes, and they also somehow violated district policy requiring that classroom posters be “content neutral and conducive to a positive learning environment,” although the email failed to explain how that rule is subverted by “you are welcome and valued here.”

    Myers even pointed out that maybe the posters would violate the Idaho Lege’s recently passed anti-LGBTQ flag ban, which prohibits “flags or banners that present political, religious, or ideological views, including but not limited to political parties, race, gender, sexual orientation, or political ideologies,” which was nice of him, maybe, but that bill hasn’t actually been signed into law by Gov. Brad Little, and won’t take effect during the current school year anyway. Freaking Idaho. (Hey, won’t that ban a poster with the Ten Commandments, too?) The Statesman also cleverly notes that the email “did not explain how a sign reading “Everyone is welcome here” would be in violation of that law.”

    After being ordered to remove the posters, Inama complied at first, but added that darn it, “I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. I came back in on a Saturday with my husband and my baby, and I put it back up.” […]

    The district appears to have offered evolving rationales about that “Everyone is welcome here” sign, too. Inama told local TV station KTVB that her higher-ups told her that “Everyone is welcome here” is “not something everybody believes,” making it a banned personal opinion, not just basic common sense in a classroom.

    However, West Ada District spox Nikki Scheppers told the Statesman in an email that the words were just fine as a “general statement of being welcoming,” but that “concerns arose around the specific visual presentation of the signs in question” because of those different skin tones, you see. […]

    […] Happily, Inama has seen overwhelming support from the community, which is not full of cowardly school administrators. […]

    Parents, fellow teachers and former students have sent her positive messages, she said. Five people, including parents and strangers, sent her bouquets of flowers on Wednesday. She said students wore homemade bracelets and shirts containing words from her signs. […]

    We wish Ms. Inama well, and hope that the school district realizes it has Striesand Effected itself right into the kind of public controversy it seems to have been trying to avoid. […] The kids are watching.

  33. says

    EXCLUSIVE, WAR IN UKRAINE

    Kremlin told U.S. it didn’t want Trump’s Ukraine-Russia envoy at peace talks

    Keith Kellogg “is a former American general, too close to Ukraine. Not our kind of person, not of the caliber we are looking for,” a Russian official told NBC News.

    […] Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia was excluded from high-level talks on ending the war after the Kremlin said it didn’t want him there, a U.S. administration official and a Russian official tell NBC News.

    Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg was conspicuously absent from two recent summits in Saudi Arabia — one with Russian officials and the other with Ukrainians — even though the talks come under his remit.

    […] Kellogg did not attend U.S.-Russia talks in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, on Feb. 18. Russian President Vladimir Putin thought he was too pro-Ukraine, a senior Russian official with direct knowledge of the Kremlin’s thinking told NBC News.

    […] A U.S. official in the Trump administration, who is also not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed to NBC News that Russia didn’t want Kellogg involved. […]

    Where this leaves Kellogg is unclear.

    […] National Security Council spokesman James Hewitt said that Trump had “utilized the talents of multiple senior administration officials to assist in the bringing the war in Ukraine to a peaceful resolution.” He added that Kellogg remained “a valued part of the team, especially as it relates to talks with our European allies.”

    Kellogg, 80, is a staunch Trump loyalist who served in various roles in the president’s first term, including a stint as then-Vice President Mike Pence’s national security adviser.

    Before being confirmed Trump’s envoy for Russia-Ukraine peace in January, he wrote about what he called the Biden administration’s “incompetent” foreign policies.

    In a paper for the America First Policy Institute, which was founded to promote Trump’s policies, he suggested that to end the war the U.S. should arm Ukraine and strengthen its defenses, thus ensuring that “Russia will make no further advances and will not attack again after a cease-fire or peace agreement.”

    […] On Thursday, Trump dispatched Witkoff to Russia again.

    Shortly after his arrival, Putin told a news conference that he agreed “with the proposals to stop the hostilities,” but there were issues that needed to be discussed. He added that he may need to “have a phone call with Trump.”

  36. Reginald Selkirk says

    @26

    U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan became the first judge to …

    Will federal judges save us? Keep in mind this is a short term victory. And remember who has the power to appoint new federal judges.

  37. Reginald Selkirk says

    Trump nemesis Rosie O’Donnell joins the growing list of celebrities leaving the United States

    Comedian and former talk-show host Rosie O’Donnell has joined the growing list of celebrities who have talked about leaving the United States or have already left, citing the president and current political climate as reasons.

    In a video posted on TikTok on Tuesday, the 62-year-old said that she had moved to Ireland on Jan. 15 and was currently in the process of getting her Irish citizenship as she has Irish grandparents…

  38. johnson catman says

    re Reginald Selkirk @36: For some of us, there is no option to move to another country. We are stuck living in the USA and trying to endure the stupidest person to have EVER been elected president and all the damage he is doing.

  39. Reginald Selkirk says

    UMass disbands its entering biomed graduate class over Trump funding chaos

    With federal funding imperiled by brutal funding cuts under the Trump administration, biomedical graduate programs nationwide are making tough decisions that will scale back the next generation of scientists.

    On Wednesday, news broke that UMass Chan Medical School—a public school in the University of Massachusetts system—has rescinded all offers of admission to biomedical graduate students for the 2025–2026 school year. That means an entire class of future scientists has been wiped out. Those who were initially accepted to the program can try to join again in a future cycle under a priority consideration that won’t require them to reapply, according to a letter sent to a previously admitted student that was shared on social media.

    In a statement provided to NBC10 Boston, a spokesperson for the school confirmed that several dozen applicants had their acceptance offers rescinded. “With uncertainties related to the funding of biomedical research in this country, this difficult decision was made to ensure that our current students’ progress is not disrupted by the funding cuts and that we avoid matriculating students who may not have robust opportunities for dissertation research,” the statement reads…

  40. Reginald Selkirk says

    Protesters occupy Trump Tower following arrest of Columbia student

    Scores of people poured into the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City on Thursday to protest the arrest and detention of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, whom the Trump administration aims to deport over his pro-Palestinian activism…

    Jewish Voice for Peace, which describes itself as a progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization, carried out Thursday’s demonstration. The group said it was “taking over the Trump Tower to register our mass refusal.” …

    At least 150 protesters gathered at Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the New York Police Department estimated…

    Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States…

  41. birgerjohansson says

    I just learned Chuck Shumer is caving about voting for the Republicsn bill on Friday.

  42. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Josh Marshall (TPM, 3 hrs ago):

    Here’s my thoughts about where things stand now after Schumer has finally shown his cards.

    The plan seems to be to vote for cloture and then Thune agrees as his part of the bargain to allow a vote on basically an amendment to the bill. […] So you give up the 60 vote threshold. Have a vote on each version and the GOP one wins. End of story.

    Seems clear he has enough Yes votes on cloture to give Trump and Musk their bill. He probably has at least a couple to spare. The vote is tomorrow morning. The odds look long. But I don’t think this is over. Additional pressure has a shot at upsetting this apple cart even now.
    […]
    Schumer tried to play his voters for fools here. He tried to engineer a performative stand down. He wanted to keep his hands clean while still allowing the CR to pass.

    The events of the last 24 hours made that impossible. He had to put his cards on the table. Very very hard to ever forget that happened. As I said, there’s still a chance the tide cld shift here again. I wonder how much the level of voter anger of this will register over the next 18 hours.

    Some more from him:
    “In addition to all the other grave consequences of this bill it essentially defunds a big chunk of local DC government.”
    “One additional thing this bill does: it takes away Congress’s main levers to take away Trump’s tariff lever.”

    Josh Marshall:

    I will just put this out there. If all the senators who are saying they want to block this bill really wanted to badly enough they could force Schumer’s hand. This isn’t ‘if Mike Pence has courage’. A leader doesn’t buck the overwhelming majority of his caucus. Doesn’t happen.

    Josh Marshall (1 hr ago):

    I didn’t realize this until now and the point is kind of technical. But it’s significant. No one has actually filed for cloture on the bill itself. So that means that even if Dems fold tomorrow this is going to go past the deadline and into shutdown.
    […]
    When you pass a bill in the senate you need to do cloture (60 votes) to start the debate and to end it. And there’s things that have to happen between those votes. If those rules are all followed this bill won’t pass until the beginning of next week.

    So not only do Dems now have to cave they’re going to have to agree to help Thune set aside the rules and speed things up.

  43. Bekenstein Bound says

    Trump Shames Ireland at White House Meeting, Elon’s Charisma Bubbles Over, My Pillow Mike Vs Fed Ex

    Wait, what? I’ve seen mosquitoes with more charisma than Musk.

    Also, Mike Lindell is still trying to be relevant?

    Tesla board members are selling Tesla stock.

    Not exactly a vote of confidence in their own brand, eh?

    This includes James Murdoch, who sold $13.2 million, and board chair Robyn Denholm, who liquidated close to $117 million. Tesla CFO Taneja Vaibhav sold 7,000 shares for $2.7 million. Kimbal Musk, Elon Musk’s brother and Tesla board member, sold 75,000 Tesla shares for $27.5 million.

    Restructuring their golden parachutes, perhaps in the expectation that they might soon be pulling the ripcords.

    Idaho Middle School Tells Teacher Her ‘Everyone Is Welcome’ Poster Is Too Divisive

    wat.

    The survival of life during a snowball event is adressed from the 36 minute mark.

    Hydrothermal vents?

    (No, I’m not about to click on an at-least-36-minute video, I have far too many things to do and far too little time. Why can’t you find text articles for things like this? Text articles tend not to be as long-winded, and moreover text can be skimmed.)

    Comedian and former talk-show host Rosie O’Donnell has joined the growing list of celebrities who have talked about leaving the United States or have already left, citing the president and current political climate as reasons.

    At this rate, Trump just might end up convincing the entertainment industry to hurry up and finish the process of moving house from Hollywood to Vancouver.

    Unless maybe instead they’re shifting their range northward in response to climate change?

    I just learned Chuck Shumer is caving about voting for the Republicsn bill on Friday.

    Traitor.

    America, the land of the fee and the home of depraved.

    P.S. I just had yet another glitch with posting here. It said, above the comment input form, “Logged in as Bekenstein Bound.”, but previewing showed a post by “Anonymous” with the wrong Gravatar for my email address, and attempting to post was rejected with “you must be logged in to post”. I had to log out and back in again to fix this.

    Why was it incorrectly acting like I was in some kind of partially-logged-out limbo state? I had not done anything that could plausibly cause that, say by initiating the logout process and then interrupting it partway through. Did someone else do so, without my permission? If so, how do I lock them out of being able to do that again? When I log in and log out of any of my internet accounts should be under my sole control. I haven’t authorized anyone else to act on my behalf at this or any other site.

  44. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Re: Bekenstein Bound @42:

    above the comment input form, “Logged in as Bekenstein Bound.”, but previewing showed a post by “Anonymous” […] and attempting to post was rejected with “you must be logged in to post” […] Why was it incorrectly acting like I was in some kind of partially-logged-out limbo state?

    Previewing doesn’t reload the whole page. The cookie that remembers who you’re logged in as likely expired while you were composing. So only the preview would be updated to reflect the lost identity. Cookie timeouts are infrequent, just to force a fresh login now and then.

    Had you reloaded the page, it probably would have uniformily presented the logged-out state.

  45. StevoR says

    @ ^ Bekenstein Bound : I’ve had that glitch too FWIW. Dunno what causes it or what todo about it but FYI you’re not alone in that.

    .***

    For other Aussies and those who can see this internationally – on tonight’s lunar eclipse :

    The Moon might look a little different to usual if you look up in the eastern-most parts of Australia on Friday night.

    While many parts of the world will see a stunning “blood red” moon eclipse on Friday, a fraction of Australia will catch just the final moments of a partial eclipse as the Moon rises.

    Jonti Horner, an astronomer with the University of Southern Queensland, has gone so far as to call this Friday’s eclipse a “non-starter” for most Australians.

    But for those lucky enough to see it, the Moon will appear to be missing a sliver against the twilight sky as our neighbour moves out of Earth’s shadow..

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2025-03-13/march-lunar-eclipse-australia-partial-blood-moon/105036274

  46. StevoR says

    Sigh. Everything here is so very dry and plants and gardens struggling so much – and a serious bushfire concern. Plus so bad even for our tough and resilient bushland that has evolved to cope with so much .. but maybe not much more?

    Although South Australia is connected to Queensland via the Murray-Darling Basin, experts and authorities do not expect much of the water from the downpours will provide any relief to the dry areas of Australia, including western New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. …(Snip)…experts say water generated by rainfall and flooding from ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred is unlikely to make the full journey from the Northern Basin into the Southern Basin. …(snip).. Professor McKay said much of the rainfall from the weather event went to the eastern side of the Great Dividing Range, while some made it into the Northern Basin. “If the rainfall continues or there is another cyclonic event — which is not impossible — then some parts of the northern Murray-Darling will be wet and then it’s more likely that the water will get down here,” she said.”But the Darling is generally dry and so it would be very hard for it to transmit all the way to us, unfortunately.”

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-14/water-from-ex-tropical-cyclone-unlikely-to-bring-drought-relief/105046150

  47. StevoR says

    I love the different Deimos image here with a very blue Mars backdrop :

    Europe’s Hera mission, on its way to the Didymos–Dimorphos double asteroid system, has performed a close flyby of Mars, receiving a crucial gravitational slingshot, testing some of its instruments, and gaining new images of Mars’ little-seen moon Deimos, which could answer questions about the origin of the Red Planet’s moons.

    The flyby took place on Wednesday (March 12), and the European Space Agency presented the images during a webcast today. The images presented show Deimos set against a backdrop of the Red Planet below it as Hera flew within 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) of Mars and just 621 miles (1,000 kilometers) of Deimos.

    Source : https://www.space.com/the-universe/mars/tiny-mars-moon-deimos-gets-a-rare-close-up-thanks-to-europes-hera-asteroid-probe-photos

  49. Reginald Selkirk says

    Saturn runs rings around Jupiter

    The International Astronomical Union on Tuesday ratified the recent discovery of 128 previously unknown moons orbiting Saturn, taking the gas giant’s count of known natural satellites to 274.

    The ratification mean Saturn goes well ahead of Jupiter, which has a puny population of 95 known moons.

    The moons were discovered by a team of astronomers who in 2023 used the Canada France Hawaii Telescope at Mauna Kea in Hawaii to observe Saturn…

  51. Reginald Selkirk says

    Musk Retweets ‘Hitler Didn’t Murder Millions’ Message Amid Ongoing Nazi Controversy

    Tesla chief and presidential adviser Elon Musk shared a post Thursday that said public sector workers, not Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, murdered millions of people, marking the billionaire’s latest Nazi-related post as he and his electric vehicle company face continued backlash and boycotts as critics say his embrace of right-wing politics is veering more extreme…

  52. Reginald Selkirk says

    Are We Inside a Black Hole? Wonky Galaxy Movements Suggest It’s Possible, Physicist Says

    One researcher’s analysis of Webb Space Telescope images could indicate that we’re all stuck in a black hole, according to research published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

    “The main finding of the study is that the vast majority of the galaxies in the universe, as seen from Earth, rotate in the same direction,” explained Lior Shamir, an astronomer at Kansas State University and lead author of the study, in an email to Gizmodo. “That adds another observation that disagrees with the existing current cosmological model.”

    The current cosmological model, called Lambda CDM (short for Cold Dark Matter), has faced numerous stress tests over the years. One such test indicated that data from the decommissioned Planck satellite would be better explained if the universe was round.

    It’s becoming increasingly clear that “Lambda CDM is at least incomplete,” Shamir added. “Perhaps the advantage of this observation is that anyone can very easily see it by just looking at the images of the early Universe.”

    Shamir’s study examined 263 galaxies in the Webb telescope’s Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, or JADES. About two-thirds of the galaxies rotated clockwise, he found, while just a third rotate in the opposite direction. Though the motion was detected quantitatively, Shamir said that Webb’s sharp vision made it possible to visually determine the direction each galaxy’s rotation…

  54. StevoR says

    Via DW News :

    One month has passed since the start of Donald Trump’s second US presidency. In a letter to the incoming president, Nature urged Trump and his administration to build on the nation’s legacy and achievements in science, and further boost research for the sake of prosperity and security (Nature 637, 517; 2025). The administration has chosen the opposite path, launching an unprecedented assault on science, on research institutions and on vital international organizations and initiatives.

    Almost immediately after being sworn in as president on 20 January, Trump put his signature to piles of executive orders cancelling or freezing tens of billions of dollars in funding for research and international assistance, and putting the seal on thousands of lay-offs. Orwellian restrictions have been placed on research, including bans on studies that mention particular words relating to sex and gender, race, disability and other protected characteristics.

    Source : https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00562-w

  55. StevoR says

    Plus – they also just had an interview shown on Aussie News24 (ABC news channel) :

    President Donald Trump and his team have laid off thousands of employees at US science agencies: These include senior positions at NASA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is considered one of the world’s most important sites for climate and weather research. The job cuts have involved work on nuclear safety, disease surveillance — including that of measles and avian flu, both currently circulating in the US — extreme-weather forecasting and climate research. Even among those scientists who have retained their jobs, some are questioning whether they still have a future at American agencies and research institutes.

    Also :

    The prospect of a US science brain drain is seen as “a great opportunity for Europe as a research location,” said Cramer. (President of Genrmany’s Max Planck Society.- ed.) Applications from US scientists to the group of 84 Max Planck Institutes have at least doubled and, in some cases, tripled. “But for research as a whole, it is a clear step backwards, something that worries me greatly,”

    In addition to :

    On March 7, thousands of researchers and science supporters protested in cities across the US against the Trump administration’s policies. These “Stand Up for Science” protests mobilized across Europe, as well, including at nearly 40 university cities in France. They were inspired by the March for Science movement, inaugurated during President Trump’s first term in office between 2017-2021.

    Source : https://www.dw.com/en/trumps-assault-on-science-bad-for-the-us-good-for-eu/a-71897988

    There were photos of marchers for Science agisnt Trump’s attacks on it in the DW news show just seen.

  56. StevoR says

    I’m not surprised but good.

    Stressed students who interacted with a friendly dog reported less stress, had a reduced heart rate and had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their saliva, researchers said in the journal PLOS One. The experience also appears to be beneficial for dogs, researchers added. Fecal tests showed that canine cortisol levels were lower a week after hanging with a human.

    “Even brief interactions with dogs can significantly reduce stress levels among university undergraduate students,” concluded the research team led by senior investigator Jaruwan Khonmee with Chiang Mai University in Thailand. For the study, researchers recruited six friendly dogs 3 to 6 years old to interact with college students. They included five chihuahuas raised by veterinarians and a Shetland sheepdog raised by a psychologist.

    Source : https://phys.org/news/2025-03-playing-dogs-relieves-stress-humans.html

  57. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show

    Tech ‘solution’ makes a fool of Trump again; Federal return to office order bungled
    video is 4:27 minutes

    ‘A sham’: Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
    video is 11:56 minutes

    Federal judges order Trump to rehire thousands of fired probationary federal employees
    video is 3:03 minutes

  58. says

    Sky Captain @43, that’s correct. Thanks for posting explanation.

    In other news: The collapse of Trump’s Guantanamo plan adds to a growing list of embarrassments

    About a week into his second term as president, Donald Trump announced a plan that he seemed rather excited about. Reversing several years’ worth of progress, Trump began a process that would detain tens of thousands of migrants at the U.S. military camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

    Trump assured the public that the facility would detain “the worst criminal illegal aliens,” and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted soon after that Guantánamo Bay was “a perfect place” for migrants.

    In hindsight, perhaps “perfect” wasn’t an ideal choice of words. The Washington Post reported:

    The Trump administration has removed all the migrants who were being held at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba and flown them back to the United States, a Defense Department official said Wednesday. The 40 men have been transported to Louisiana, where there is a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Alexandria. It comes two weeks after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent another group of 48 migrants back to the same city from Guantánamo.

    [Waste of government money … flying all of those migrants back and forth.]

    The article dovetailed with a related report from The Wall Street Journal that noted there are still hundreds of U.S. troops guarding an empty and unused tent city, although they’ll soon be redeployed. The Journal added, “The operation has so far cost at least $16 million, according to lawmakers who recently toured the naval base.”

    There are several recent examples of the Trump administration reversing course and abandoning controversial ideas, but in nearly all of those instances, those reversals came in response to court rulings, political pressure, embarrassing news coverage or some combination thereof.

    The collapse of Trump’s Guantánamo Bay policy, however, is qualitatively different: The administration is backing down, not because of a judge or public backlash, but because its own officials grudgingly acknowledged the unavoidable fact that the misguided policy was a poorly thought-out disaster.

    As NBC News reported last week, “[A]s agencies spar over responsibility for operations [at the base] and over blame for what has gone wrong, there is a growing recognition within the administration that it was a political decision that is just not working.” The report added:

    Among the major issues, especially as the Trump administration works to slash spending throughout the government, is the cost. Taking detained immigrants to Guantánamo means flying them there, and the administration has sometimes chosen to use military planes that are expensive to operate. On Tuesday of last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was on hand at Guantánamo when a military C-130 carrying nine immigrants landed at the base. The Defense Department calculates the cost per flight hour to operate a C-130 at $20,756, so for a trip of five to six hours, it cost the Pentagon $207,000 to $249,000 round trip, or $23,000 to $27,000 per detainee.

    [!]

    There is no reason to spend American taxpayer money so ridiculously. I realize that the camera-ready trips made for a few dramatic segments on Fox News, but there was no substantive or security need for these incredibly expensive flights.

    The entire policy was mired in bureaucratic and logistical challenges from the outset, which was probably inevitable given that the entire idea apparently stemmed from one of Trump’s hollow impulses and subjected to no serious governing analysis.

    This isn’t the White House’s only fiasco […]

    See also “Tech ‘solution’ makes a fool of Trump again; Federal return to office order bungled” in comment 56.

  59. says

    Trump’s preoccupation with the U.S./Canada border takes a weird turn

    The New York Times reported last week on some provocative recent conversations between Donald Trump and Canada’s then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, one of which included Trump reading “a long list of grievances.” Trump, however, also reportedly brought up “something much more fundamental.”

    He told Mr. Trudeau that he did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between the two countries was valid and that he wants to revise the boundary. He offered no further explanation. The border treaty Mr. Trump referred to was established in 1908 and finalized the international boundary between Canada, then a British dominion, and the United States.

    […] Trump has spent parts of this week suggesting the reporting was entirely accurate.

    On Wednesday, for example, after hosting an infomercial on the White House South Lawn for his biggest campaign donor, the president set aside some time to pontificate on the border separating the United States and Canada. [video at the link]

    After describing the dividing line as “artificial,” Trump added, “[It] looks like it was done with a ruler, and that’s what it was. Some guy sat there years ago and they said, ‘rah.’”

    A day later, as NBC News reported, Trump held an Oval Office event alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, and again told reporters that he sees the border between the United States and Canada as “an artificial line,” adding, “Somebody did it a long time ago, many, many decades ago, and [it] makes no sense.”

    […] Among the oddities of these developments is how new this is. […] it’s not as if there’s a sizable group of voters demanding revisions to the 1908 border treaty.

    Nevertheless, just this week, Trump twice brought this up unprompted, and according to the Times’ account, he also pressed the same point to the Canadian prime minister during a recent phone meeting.

    I haven’t the foggiest idea who put this thought in his head, though it’s worth noting for context that there is another prominent international figure who routinely references an “artificial” line between his country and his neighbor: Vladimir Putin has used the same rhetoric in recent years when describing the border between Russia and Ukraine.

  60. says

    What Trump doesn’t know (but should) about the European Union

    “It’s not just that Trump is wrong about the EU being formed ‘to screw the United States.’ It’s also the question of who put this absurdity in his head.”

    Throughout Donald Trump’s first term, he had an odd habit of arguing that the European Union came together as part of an anti-American initiative. Trump never explained why he believed this or how he even arrived at such a conclusion, but he peddled the false claim quite a bit.

    As his second term unfolds, he’s picking up where he left off.

    A couple of weeks ago, for example, at the first White House Cabinet meeting of the year, Trump declared that the European Union “was formed in order to screw the United States.” He added, “I mean, look, let’s be honest. The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States. That’s the purpose of it.”

    His use of the “let’s be honest” phrase suggested Trump perceived his comments as candid, but he clearly had no idea what he was talking about. In fact, soon after, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who ran the European Council during Trump’s first term, stepped up to explain reality, though that message apparently didn’t make its way to the Oval Office.

    On the contrary, in a social media message this week, Trump wrote that the European Union “was formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States.” An hour later [he posted] “the polluted thinking of the European Union, which was formed for the primary purpose of ‘screwing’ the United States of America.”

    The historical record on this is unambiguous. Kevin Kruse, a historian at Princeton University, wrote a piece responding to Trump’s rhetoric and explained that the president’s characterization “is 100% backwards.”

    At every stage of its creation and evolution, the European Union was designed to facilitate American foreign policy goals and to protect American interests from the pressures of the Soviet Union. Its origins and evolution were, in fact, closely tied to the greatest foreign policy initiative of the post-World War II era — the Marshall Plan. … At every step of the way, the European Union was understood — by Americans and by everyone else — as a measure that was promoted and perfected with the full support of the United States of America. [True]

    This support was bipartisan and enduring — at least until Trump came along.

    With this in mind, Kruse described the president’s claim as “deeply stupid.”

    The question then becomes who put this absurdity in Trump’s head in the first place. I won’t pretend to know the answer, though there can be no doubt that seeing an American repeatedly and publicly rebuke the European Union is exactly what Russia’s Vladimir Putin wants.

    Putin’s puppet.

  61. says

    Pete Hegseth appoints his personal lawyer to a powerful Pentagon post

    “The defense secretary made his personal lawyer a Navy commander in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. The closer one looks, the worse it appears.”

    […] Pete Hegseth’s new career as secretary of defense got off to a rough start. In the weeks immediately following his confirmation, the former Fox News host faced heckling and protests from military families at U.S. European Command headquarters; he made public comments that even Republicans panned as a “rookie mistake”; and he inexplicably brought a right-wing influencer and conspiracy theorist with him on an overseas trip.

    But as Hegseth settles in at the Pentagon, conditions are clearly getting worse, not better.

    […] Hegseth has ordered U.S. Cyber Command to halt offensive cyber operations and information operations against Russia. And made indefensible hires. And derailed the Defense Department’s efforts to take the climate crisis seriously. And shuttered the Office of Net Assessment, the Pentagon’s internal think tank for the last half-century that focused on long-term security threats.

    But perhaps most important of all, Hegseth fired several key officials, including the top lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force. The removal of three judge advocates general sent shockwaves through the military community and triggered a stunning New York Times op-ed from Frank Kendall, the former secretary of the Air Force.

    “Our country is in uncharted territory,” Kendall wrote. “We have an administration that is waging war against the rule of law. The evidence is everywhere. We don’t yet know how far it will go as it seeks to control, reinterpret, rewrite, ignore or defy legal constraints, including the Constitution itself. The replacement of the military JAG leadership is one skirmish in that war, but it’s time for the American people, across the political spectrum, to recognize what is happening. America has a rogue president and a rogue administration, and we need to acknowledge that and respond.”

    A couple of weeks after that piece was published, Hegseth began the process of replacing the JAG — and he started by hiring his own personal lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, as a Navy commander in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

    If Parlatore’s name sounds at all familiar, it’s probably because he had another very high-profile client: Parlatore was part of Donald Trump’s legal defense team after the president was charged with multiple felonies in the classified documents/Mar-a-Lago scandal.

    But as Jason Dempsey wrote for The Atlantic, that’s not what makes Hegseth’s decision notable.

    [Parlatore’s appointment] reflects not just the norm-breaking approach that Hegseth is bringing to the job, but an odious philosophy of warfare. Like his new boss at the Pentagon, Parlatore has a pattern of providing support to soldiers accused of grave misconduct, even war crimes. He notably represented Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL court-martialed on charges including the murder of a captured fighter (though he was found guilty only of one, lesser charge), along with a second SEAL accused of serious sexual offenses. Elevating a lawyer with this record does not bode well for the armed services Hegseth hopes to build.

    The Guardian reported the controversial Pentagon chief is “expected in the coming weeks to start a sweeping overhaul of the judge advocate general’s corps as part of an effort to make the US military less restricted by the laws of armed conflict.”

    […] Hegseth’s office [is considering] changes to the interpretation of the US rules of engagement on the battlefield [and to] the way that charges are brought under the military justice system.”

    It’s worth emphasizing for context that Hegseth suggested in one of his books that the U.S. military should disregard international human rights treaties, including the Geneva Conventions. […]

    Fifty Senate Republicans voted to confirm Hegseth. With each new decision by the secretary, the scope and scale of those senators’ consequential misjudgment comes into sharper focus.

  62. says

    […] If you still harbored any doubt that President Trump’s ongoing attack on Columbia University – a private institution – is drawn straight from the authoritarian playbook, then the latest development should be clarifying.

    The Trump administration – specifically the Department of Education, HHS, and GSA – sent a letter yesterday to Columbia attempting to extort an array of concessions in how the university is run before it may consider restoring some $400 million in frozen federal funding.

    Imposing an arbitrary March 20 deadline, the Trump administration demanded that Columbia complete a laundry list of internal restructurings, policy changes, and submissions to federal authority. Among the most alarming demands: put the Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department in what it calls “academic receivership” for at least five years.

    If Columbia complies by the deadline, then and only then will the Trump administration “open a conversation about immediate and long-term structural reforms” at the university. If it’s not clear, it sure should be: Even if Columbia submits to this extortion letter, it doesn’t get federal funding restored. It merely sets itself up for a later round of bullying, exorbitant demands, and more extortion.

    The extortion letter came the same day DHS agents executed search warrants at the residences of two Columbia students. “According to the sources, it was part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on individuals it has described as espousing the views of Hamas and threatening the safety of Jewish students,” ABC News reported.

    This all transpired as Columbia graduate and pro-Palestinian protest leader Mahmoud Khalil remained in federal detention as the Trump administration attempts to deport him even though he’s a legal permanent resident. His lawyers amended their filings as they obtained new information about his detainment. In an interview with NPR, a top DHS official could not articulate what wrongdoing Khalil was being accused of.

    Meanwhile, The Atlantic reported that the Trump administration had targeted at least one other person at the same time as Khalil:

    It turns out Secretary of State Marco Rubio identified a second individual to be deported, and included that person alongside Khalil in a March 7 letter to the Department of Homeland Security. Both were identified in the letter as legal permanent residents, […]

    The officials did not disclose the name of the second green-card holder, and did not know whether the person is a current or former Columbia student, or had been singled out for some other reason. The person has not been arrested yet, the U.S. official said.

    The Trump administration’s bullying of a private university is being done under the guise of rooting out antisemitism. But the real authoritarian move here is to bring higher education under the thumb of the president. Columbia’s not the only example, but it’s the most extreme.

    “So far, America’s leading universities have remained virtually silent in the face of this authoritarian assault on institutions of higher education,” the Harvard student newspaper editorialized.

    Link

  63. says

    Biggest Anti-Purge Developments Yet

    Two federal judges on opposite coasts threw up big stop signs Thursday to President Trump’s mass purges of government workers.

    In the morning, a clearly irate U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco ordered purged probationary employee to be reinstated. His order covered the Defense, Treasury, Energy, Interior, Agriculture and Veterans Affairs departments.

    Later in the day, U.S. District Judge James Bredar of Maryland issued an even broader order to reinstate probationary employees at 18 major agencies, ruling that the government hadn’t followed the proper procedures for layoffs.

    [See videos referenced in comment 56.]

    The Purges

    Gov’t Wide: Government agencies had a deadline yesterday to submit plans to the White House for a “mass reduction” of the federal workforce but few details on those plans have been made public.

    IRS: DOGE officials instructed the acting IRS commissioner to eliminate 18,141 jobs across the agency by May 15 [!]

    Collateral Damage: Johns Hopkins University will cut more than 2,000 workers in the United States and abroad funded by federal aid.

    Doge Watch

    The Trump administration sacked the top lawyer at the IRS in a clash over getting access to the agency’s highly sensitive data to use to deport immigrants. William Paul, a career employee, had been serving as the acting chief counsel at the IRS since the end of Biden’s term.

    Elon Musk visited the National Security Agency on Wednesday to meet with its leadership on staff reductions and operations.

    The AP has obtained a list of which government office leases will be canceled this year and when. [Embedded links available at the main link.]

    Same link as in comment 61.

    Other news:

    Newsmax revealed publicly for the first time that it paid $40 million in the September settlement of Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuit against it arising from the right-wing outlet’s coverage of the 2020 election.

  64. says

    Vice President JD Vance [attended] a performance by the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center Thursday night. As he and second lady Usha Vance settled into their seats, they were met with a chorus of boos and jeers from the audience. [video at the link]

    The boos lasted for about 30 seconds, according to witnesses. The Vances’ appearance is said to have delayed the show by 20 minutes due to security logistics. […]

    Second lady Vance is one of the many Trump loyalists stuck on the Kennedy Center board. She is joined by other Trump acolytes like patriotic singer Lee Greenwood, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, senior adviser Dan Scavino, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Fox News’ Laura Ingraham—to name a few.

    Link

    The video is a nice schadenfreude moment.

  65. says

    Trump can’t stop bragging that he ‘invaded’ California

    […] Trump boasted yet again that he “invaded” California in order to turn on its magic water faucet, solving its wildfire problems.

    “I invaded Los Angeles, and we opened up the water and the water is now flowing down. They have so much water they don’t know what to do. They were sending it out to the Pacific for environmental reasons,” he told reporters on Thursday. [video at the link]

    This was similar to Trump’s claim in January, which was factually incorrect in almost every possible way. There was no invasion of U.S. troops into California’s Lake Kaweah and Lake Success reservoirs.

    Rather, Trump’s public relations stunt resulted in the draining of two major California water reservoirs with none of the water making it anywhere near the wildfires.

    But that’s not how Trump sees it. “I didn’t think anything, like, could happen like this, but they didn’t have enough water. Now the farmers are going to have water for their land and the water is in there. But I actually had to break it, and we broke in to do it,” he said. […]

  66. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Sahil Kapur (NBC):

    Trump praises Chuck Schumer for saying he’ll allow a vote on the House-passed Republican funding bill. [Screenshot of TruthSocial]

    Sahil Kapur:

    Extraordinary moment—Nancy Pelosi issues a statement calling on Democratic senators to reject the House funding bill, i.e. to defy Chuck Schumer.

    “Democratic senators should listen to the women,” she says, referring to Murray/DeLauro who want a 1-month stopgap bill instead. [Screenshot]

  67. says

    Followup to Sky Captain @55.

    Link

    […] Cortez-Masto Explains Her Decision To Vote For Cloture: “He can cherry pick which agencies that he wants to open. He can cherry pick who gets paid, who gets fired, who gets their job back. It’s outrageous,” she told us of the dangers of a shutdown.

    Cortez-Masto Is A Yes: ‘I Cannot Vote’ For A Shutdown: “This was not an easy decision. I’m outraged by the reckless actions of President Trump, Elon Musk, and Republicans in control of Congress, so I refuse to hand them a shutdown where they would have free reign to cause more chaos and harm,” Sen. Cortez Masto said in a statement this afternoon.

    “A government shutdown would be devastating for the American people. It would force tens of thousands of Nevada military personnel, union members, law enforcement agents and nurses to work without pay. Shutting down the government gives President Trump and Elon Musk even more power to cherry-pick who is an essential employee, who they want to fire, and what agencies they want to shutter. And a shutdown would force federal courts to slow work on lawsuits against this administration’s illegal actions … I cannot vote for that.“ [Good point]

    […] Jeffries Calls It A ‘False Choice’ Between CR And Shutdown: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) reiterated his conference’s opposition to the CR during a Dem leadership press conference Friday.

    “House Democrats remain strongly opposed to the partisan Republican spending bill that will hurt families, hurt veterans, hurt seniors and hurt the American people,” he said. “It is a false choice that Donald Trump, Elon Musk and House Republicans have been presenting between their reckless and partisan spending bill and a government shutdown.”

    […] Pelosi: ‘Listen To The Women’

    “Donald Trump and Elon Musk have offered the Congress a false choice between a government shutdown or a blank check that makes a devastating assault on the well-being of working families across America,” Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. “Let’s be clear: neither is a good option for the American people. But this false choice that some are buying instead of fighting is unacceptable.”

    “Democratic senators should listen to the women,” she continued. “Appropriations leaders Rosa DeLauro and Patty Murray have eloquently presented the case that we must have a better choice: a four-week funding extension to keep government open and negotiate a bipartisan agreement. America has experienced a Trump shutdown before – but this damaging legislation only makes matters worse. Democrats must not buy into this false choice. We must fight back for a better way. Listen to the women, For The People.” […]

    I am finding all of the explanations for voting one way or the other confusing. Ditto for the behind-the-scenes machinations involving voting for cloture and allowing (or not allowing) amendments. Bottom line, it looks like Democratic legislators are choosing their own personal versions of lesser-of-two-evils, and Republicans are choosing Trump/Musk/Authoritarianism/Oligarchy.

    More, from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse:

    “We’ve never seen a long shutdown in which the executive branch wanted the shutdown to continue for the destruction opportunities that are presented, including potentially to courts,” Whitehouse told reporters when asked about the implications of a shutdown on the judiciary. [Note that Musk wants a shutdown.] “They could simply decide … we’re not going to fund the courts that are like the DC Circuit, or the First Circuit. We’re going to do the Fifth Circuit, and 11th circuit. We’re only going to do MAGA judges and not real judges. So there are a lot of unknowns about this but it was a serious danger zone.”

    “I’m an announced ‘No,’ but I find it aggravating that we are in a situation provoked by the Republicans — which they are enjoying right now — in which Democrats are fighting with each other over which would be worse, rather than focusing on the people who set up this whole problem, who are accomplishing the destruction, who are looting the government, who are opening the skies to polluters, all for a bunch of creepy billionaires,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) told reporters […]

    “We have lost our focus, and frankly, that’s not a good place to be, Whitehouse added. “We got to refocus on where the real danger is. And the real danger isn’t the difference between a rotten CR and a rotten shutdown. The real danger is the folks who set this whole thing up and orchestrated it and refused to allow a bipartisan appropriations bill to go forward — that was very close to a conclusion.”

  68. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    The New Republic – Trump admin nixed contract helping kidnapped Ukrainian kids

    The State Department has quietly terminated a contract that was in the process of transferring evidence of alleged Russian abductions of Ukrainian children—a potential war crime—to law enforcement officials in Europe […] The nixed award could make it harder to continue tracking down the kidnapped Ukrainian kids and complicate efforts to seek accountability […] abductees number in the “thousands,”
    […]
    the State Department has been underwriting work by the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which has been using […] satellite imagery […] and biometric data, to identify and locate the abducted kids. […] in a “systematic program of coerced adoption and fostering.” […] the evidence itself—which is essential to proving the abductions—is highly complicated and must be moved via secure channels.
    […]
    It’s unclear who ordered the reported cancellation

  70. says

    JFC.

    Propaganda, not education:

    Oklahoma’s Department of Education, led by far-right Superintendent Ryan Walters, tried to sneak a provision into the state’s social studies curriculum that would force teachers to teach students that there were “discrepancies” in the 2020 presidential election, the Oklahoma Voice reported on Friday.

    President Donald Trump and the Republican Party have been lying for years that the 2020 election was stolen from Dear Leader. Republicans have made baseless allegations of fraud they’ve never provided any evidence for, election deniers have run for office explicitly on the platform of making sure future elections aren’t “stolen,” and Trump himself has led a successful purge of GOP lawmakers who dared admit that he was wrong for saying the election was stolen and inciting an insurrection over it.

    But the move by the state’s Education Department takes that lie to the next level, forcing it into the school’s curriculum so that impressionable kids view the Big Lie as canon, rather than being taught the actual history that Trump and his GOP defenders lied about fraud and incited a riot to help Trump remain in power despite his defeat.

    According to the Oklahoma Voice, the new curriculum would make high school students “identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results,” including “sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters and the unprecedented contradiction of ‘bellwether county’ trends.”

    The Oklahoma Voice reported that Walters absurdly claimed that the new curriculum is “not set up to either support or negate a specific outcome in the 2020 Presidential Election.”

    […] However, even putting the idea into kids’ heads that there were “discrepancies” in the 2020 election is a disgusting distortion of the truth and history.

    The only thing students should be taught is that Trump and his GOP defenders lied about fraud in order to explain away his loss and to spur an uprising to help keep him in office.

    […] Walters has a long history of using the state’s school system to pander to Trump.

    In November, Walters tried to force schools to show a video in which he criticized the “radical left” and “woke teachers’ unions,” and asked students to pray for Trump—a blatant violation of the separation of church and state.

    And in another violation of the separation of church and state, Walters also tried to purchase 55,000 Bibles for Oklahoma schools, and ensure that one of the Bibles the state could purchase was the Bible that Trump endorsed and profited off of. On Monday, the Oklahoma State Supreme Court blocked Walters from being able to purchase the books.

    Link

  71. says

    WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump’s threatened 200 percent tariff on alcohol from the European Union has caused Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to angrily resign, the Pentagon confirmed on Friday.

    Speaking to reporters, Hegseth said that he considered the tariffs on “Irish whiskey, French Sancerre, and the exquisite sherry of Portugal” to be “an act of war.”

    In an eleventh-hour bid to keep Hegseth on board, Eric Trump, the president of Trump Winery, offered Hegseth a free lifetime supply of the company’s products, but was immediately rebuffed.

    “I’ve had those Trump wines and they taste like ass,” Hegseth said. “Jesus, I’d rather be sober.”

  72. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    NPR – DHS official defends Mahmoud Khalil arrest, but offers few details on why it happened (mp3, 5:36)

    Michel Martin: He’s a legal permanent resident. I have to keep insisting on that. He is a legal permanent resident. So what is the standard? Is any criticism of the Israeli government a deportable offense?
    […]
    Martin: Is any criticism of the United States government a deportable offense?
    […]
    Troy Edgar: imagine if he came in and filled out the form and said, ‘I want a student visa.’ They asked him, ‘What are you going to do here?’ And he says, ‘I’m going to go and protest.’ We would have never let him into the country.

    Martin: Is protesting a deportable offense?

    Edgar: You’re focused on protests. I’m focused on the visa process. […]

    Martin: Are you saying he lied on his application? He’s a lawful permanent resident, married to an American citizen.

    Edgar: I think if he would have declared he’s a terrorist, we would have never let him in.

    Martin: And what did he engage in that constitutes terrorist activity?
    […]
    Martin: Do you not know? Are you telling us that you’re not aware?
    […]
    Martin: I think you could explain it to us. I think others would like to know exactly what the offenses are […] Well, perhaps we can talk again and you can give us more details

  73. says

    Everyone in our organization wishes schumer would just crawl off and die. He is a LIAR, a COWARD and a TRAITOR. He is aiding and abetting the fascists trying to run this country.

  74. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Kate Riga (TPM):

    Democrats are no longer demanding […] an amendment to the GOP CR
    […]
    Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) has been calling for […] a continuing resolution that would fund the government for an additional 28 days. Some Democrats floated demanding a vote on the bill as an amendment to the GOP CR but […] Murray wanted the vote to be called off since it would fail […] Murray is still separately pushing for her short-term CR, but the amendment vote would be purely for show.

    The short-term CR would keep the government open without ratifying the far-right spending bill passed by the House

  75. Reginald Selkirk says

    @62 Lynna, OM

    Newsmax revealed publicly for the first time that it paid $40 million in the September settlement of Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuit against it arising from the right-wing outlet’s coverage of the 2020 election.

    Newsmax will pay $40 million to settle Smartmatic voting machine allegations

    …
    Newsmax still faces another lawsuit from the voting machine company Dominion. “While Newsmax Media is vigorously defending the Dominion suit, an unfavorable outcome in the matter could have a material adverse effect on the Company’s financial position, results of operations and cash flows,” Newmax’s filing reads.

    Smartmatic settled with One America News last year, while a judge recently ruled to allow its $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox Corp. to continue. Fox News agreed to pay Dominion $787 million in 2023.

  77. says

    Musk finds new and unexpected way of putting military lives in danger
    Not sure “danger” is the right word. It might be if the credit card fiasco Muck engendered increases the difficulties when veterans cannot access care.

    Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, empowered by […] Trump, has cut off or limited credit card access for thousands of government workers. These changes have led to disruptions that are now negatively affecting the development of key safety equipment used by members of the military.

    DOGE put in place a $1 limit on government purchase cards issued by the General Services Administration through that agency’s GSA SmartPay Credit Card system. DOGE also recently canceled 200,000 cards across 16 agencies.

    But those cards are used by researchers developing safety materials used by the armed services. The charge cards are used to purchase raw materials used in testing ballistics on body armor and for helmet-impact experiments. The Washington Post also reported that the freeze has also affected the government’s ability to pay contractors who assist the Army in identifying soldiers killed years ago in combat.

    “Even after canceling 200k, there are still twice as many government credit cards as there are government employees!” Musk wrote, praising the cuts.

    But this is not true.

    Shauna Weatherly, head of Federal Subcontract Solutions, told the Federal News Network that there are around 700,000 active cards. Last month, there were more than 3 million people employed by the federal government, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    Furthermore, the cards are often used to save the government money.

    “The government wants to get those refunds on the travel. They want to get the tax-exempt status on the travel, so they don’t have to pay taxes, and then go chase after it and try to recoup taxes. There are those benefits to having the card, and that’s why those people have them,” Weatherly explained.

    […] The charge-card disruption is just one way the actions of DOGE and Musk, the wealthiest person in the world, have hurt the military.

    Veterans are in the crosshairs of DOGE-initiated cuts at the Department of Veterans Affairs. By cutting VA staff, the already-squeezed agency is likely to reduce veteran access to health care.

    “They’re going to put guys like me and my fellow Marines that rely on the VA in the ground,” Gregg Bafundo, a Marine veteran of the first Gulf War, told the Associated Press.

    Republicans have long claimed to support the troops, but thanks to Trump, Musk, and DOGE, the party is leaving active military members unprotected and without the care they need when they become veterans.

    Posted by readers of the article:

    I retired from Federal Civil Service a couple of years ago. We had individual credit cards for work related travel to cover costs of airline tickets, hotels, and other expenses. As you noted, any cash back or benefits went back to the government. Benefit for the employee was that the credit card company was directly paid from the government once the travel voucher was approved after the travel. In addition, other credit cards were used for admin items such as supplies, etc. […] The whole card process made things, what is the word, efficient.
    ———————–
    Government credit cards have been in use for Travel for decades. I used to have one back in the 90’s when I worked in DoD. They were only used for travel and reimbursement for services. They never carried a balance and were used as the article above states. They saved money and allowed employees not to have to fork out their own money and wait for weeks to be reimbursed for travel. Imagine having to pay out of pocket for your mandatory travel for work. A major inconvenience that the government solved 30 years ago and now Musk is claiming he is saving money.

  78. says

    Gutless Postal Service chief bends to DOGE with 10,000 job cuts

    The head of the U.S. Postal Service announced in a letter to Congress Thursday that the agency would cut 10,000 workers as part of an agreement with Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

    In the letter obtained by The Associated Press, outgoing Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said that he reached an agreement with Musk to identify and achieve “further efficiencies” at USPS.

    “This effort aligns with our initiatives; while we have accomplished a great deal, there is much more to be done,” he said. “I ask that you please engage with the Postal Service, our DOGE representatives, and the Federal agencies that need to adapt to the critically necessary changes involved and to correct for the deficiencies of the past that can and must be corrected.”

    USPS has long faced financial struggles, losing more than $100 billion since 2007 but reporting a fourth-quarter profit of $144 million last month.

    Despite Musk targeting and dismantling various federal agencies since President Donald Trump began his second term, DOGE had not yet aimed at USPS, which employs nearly 635,000 workers.

    It’s possible that this latest move is simply the first step toward privatization of USPS, which Musk and Trump have advocated for despite warnings from the American Postal Workers Union president that this would “end universal service.”

    […] In his letter to Congress, DeJoy—a Trump appointee who has faced criticism for his management of the agency—indicated that USPS had already reduced its workforce by 30,000 since the 2021 fiscal year but planned to cut another 10,000 employees in the next 30 days through a previously announced voluntary retirement program.

    DeJoy also highlighted several challenges that he claimed were affecting USPS, including “management of retirement assets and its workers’ compensation program by other government agencies, unfunded mandates, and burdensome regulatory requirements.”

    DeJoy’s collaboration with DOGE has already drawn opposition from some Democrats.

    “This capitulation will have catastrophic consequences for all Americans—especially those in rural and hard to reach areas—who rely on the Postal Service every day to deliver mail, medications, ballots, and more. Reliable mail delivery can’t just be reserved for MAGA supporters […],” Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee that oversees USPS, said in a statement. […]

  81. JM says

    ArsTechnica: AI coding assistant refuses to write code, tells user to learn programming instead

    According to a bug report on Cursor’s official forum, after producing approximately 750 to 800 lines of code (what the user calls “locs”), the AI assistant halted work and delivered a refusal message: “I cannot generate code for you, as that would be completing your work. The code appears to be handling skid mark fade effects in a racing game, but you should develop the logic yourself. This ensures you understand the system and can maintain it properly.”

    Pretty funny.

  82. says

    The Hill:

    he U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) chief counsel resigned two days after her appointment, according to a Thursday announcement from the agency. ‘Hilary K. Perkins has resigned from her position as Chief Counsel of FDA, effectively immediately,’ the FDA wrote in a post on the social platform X.

  83. says

    NBC News:

    Longtime Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., a leading progressive voice on the environment and climate change, died Thursday from ‘complications of his cancer treatment,’ his office announced in a statement. He was 77.

  84. says

    Politico:

    Portugal is getting cold feet about replacing its U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets with more modern F-35s because of Donald Trump — in one of the first examples of the U.S. president undermining a potential lucrative arms deal.

    […] outgoing Defense Minister Nuno Melo was asked by Portugese media Público whether the government would follow that recommendation, he replied: “We cannot ignore the geopolitical environment in our choices. The recent position of the United States, in the context of NATO … must make us think about the best options, because the predictability of our allies is a greater asset to take into account.”

    The defense ministry later sent a statement to POLITICO saying: “F-35s fighters were not ruled out from the F-16 replacement selection process.”

    […] With the dramatic realignment taking place under Trump — who said again he would annex Greenland and threatened Canada — there are fears the U.S. government could decide block access to software updates and spare parts needed to make the F-35 fully operational.

    […] A spokesperson for the jet-maker said: “Lockheed Martin values our strong partnership and history with the Portuguese Air Force and looks forward to continuing that partnership into the future. The F-35 is the most advanced, survivable and connected fighter aircraft in the world, enabling 21st Century Security® and allied deterrence. Questions about foreign military sales of the F-35 are best addressed by the U.S. government.”

    Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans said earlier this week that the Netherlands would not cancel its contract for the jets. However, Lisbon hasn’t signed a deal yet.

    Portugal is holding a snap election after the collapse of its center-right government.

  85. says

    Senators moved quickly to cobble together a standalone bill to shield Washington D.C. from a $1 billion budget cut written into the House Republican continuing resolution that 10 Senate Democrats helped pass Friday.

    The D.C. bill passed with unanimous consent on a voice vote, a sign of its bipartisan backing.

    “This legislation will make sure that we take care of the residents of the District,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said from the floor Friday afternoon. “It will support law enforcement and firefighters and teachers and city services. The legislation is very good news for the residents of the District of Columbia.” […]

    Link

  86. says

    Trump’s Department of Justice Takeover Complete: In Speech From DOJ Podium, Trump Declares Cases Against Him ‘Bullshit’

    “Trump names specific enemies, tells DOJ that CNN and MSNBC should be ‘illegal.’”

    On Friday, another stunning sign of the complete White House takeover of the Justice Department arrived: […] Trump delivered a speech to DOJ’s staff, declaring his intent to go after “rogue actors and corrupt forces” from the previous administration, the press, and in American society, and to transform a Justice Department that, he contended, had been “weaponized” against him.

    Presidential visits to DOJ headquarters are rare, and this one hit distinctly Trumpian notes […] At one point, he even denounced particular individuals, naming a lawyer who worked at a non-profit good government group and describing him as “scum.” He railed against the press, and told the assembled DOJ staff that CNN and MSNBC’s coverage of his administration was, in his “opinion,” “illegal.”

    The disjointed speech focused at times on crime during the “Biden regime” and the oft-invoked, false claim that the 2020 election was “rigged.” But it primarily pushed on his claims that the DOJ, in investigating him over the last decade, surrendered to both “weaponization” and “corruption.” He would now, he claimed, ensure that it would “restore fair, equal, and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law.”

    That, for Trump, meant retribution: He proceeded to lay out his plan for retaliation against some of the people who he claimed are responsible for the “lies and abuses” of the former administration’s Justice Department.

    “Unfortunately, in recent years, a corrupt group of hacks and radicals within the ranks of the American government obliterated the trust and goodwill built up over generations,” he said. “They weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to try and thwart the will of the American people.”

    He then said that he demanded “full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred,” vowing to expose the “egregious” misconduct of “rogue actors” within the department.

    From the start of his administration, Trump has made good on his campaign-trail vow to punish his perceived enemies — indeed, going further and moving faster than many expected, installing loyalists into various leadership positions within the department. Some of those allies have launched investigations into the DOJ’s investigations of Trump, and have forced out those who have balked at their demands.

    He shouldn’t even be speaking at the Department of Justice. Pam Bondi should not have escorted him in there so he could tell his lies.

  87. says

    Followup to comment 85.

    […] Trump called U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who helped dismiss his classified documents case, a “brilliant” judge, while condemning “horrible human beings” whom he accused of disparaging Cannon.

    “It’s totally illegal what they do. I just hope you can all watch for it, but it’s totally illegal, and it was so unfair what they were doing to her,” Trump said.

    After deeming the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 as “the most humiliating time in this history of our country,” Trump repeated his false claims of a rigged election in 2020.

    “What a difference a rigged and crooked election had on our country, when you think about it. And the people who did this to us should go to jail. They should go to jail,” he said, without specifying anyone by name. Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence that Democrats interfered in the 2020 contest.

    On Friday he also said, “Our predecessors turned this department of justice into the department of injustice,” adding that he would “insist upon and demand full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred.” [I take that to mean that he not yet done harassing, threatening and firing DOJ personnel.]

    Calling former special counsel Jack Smith “deranged,” Trump referred to the hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants he pardoned on his first day in office as “hostages” and said the Justice Department would not return to what he declared as an era of weaponization.

    […] When Trump finished his speech, a mainstay of his campaign rallies, the song “Y.M.C.A.,” played over the speakers inside the Justice Department’s Great Hall.

    Link

  88. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Marisa Kabas (The Handbasket):

    The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) office was just on lockdown for close to an hour while members of the DOGE team tried to enter the building […] Security has now escorted out remaining staffers who’ve been told to telework until further notice.

    Anjali Dayal: “Even if I hadn’t been lucky enough to spend time at USIP this would read like a bad dystopian joke.”

    Steven Heydemann:

    During the 8 years I worked at USIP its non-USG status was always front and center in how it defined itself. A .org not a .gov.

    Anjali Dayal: “It’s not an executive agency, but it is government funded.”

    Andrew Blum: “This argument took place 2x daily when I worked there. 🤪”

    Annoyed Diplomat:

    Technically, USIP is not part of the White House chain of command, and DOGE should have no authority to tell them to do anything or demand entry. The statute spells out processes for the president to remove members of the board of directors, but doesn’t give the WH any direct control over operations.

    Andrew Blum:

    It’s a quasi-governmental organization with dedicated funding from Congress but not actually part of the executive branch. The Smithsonian is a decent analogy. The National Endowment of Democracy is another good analogy. They just sued over their funding being cut off and won.

    Wikipedia – United States Institute of Peace

    provides research, analysis, and training to individuals in diplomacy, mediation, and other peace-building measures. […] USIP was established in 1984 by congressional legislation signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. It is officially nonpartisan and independent, receiving funding only through a congressional appropriation to prevent outside influence.

    Rando 1: “Why do the DOGEies need to enter the US Institute of Peace after business hours on a Friday?”

    Rando 2: “DOGE: We must be allowed to fight here, this is the peace room!”

  89. Bekenstein Bound says

    Extraordinary moment—Nancy Pelosi issues a statement calling on Democratic senators to reject the House funding bill, i.e. to defy Chuck Schumer.

    Wait, what? Pelosi went and found herself a notochord?

    Fascinating.

  90. Bekenstein Bound says

    House Republican continuing resolution that 10 Senate Democrats helped pass Friday.

    Oh no they didn’t!

    Seriously? 10 Dems voted to destroy Medicaid?

    I hope this was not a secret ballot, so those responsible for this crime will be known to the public and answerable for their treachery.

    The F-35 is the most advanced, survivable and connected fighter aircraft in the world … software updates

    “Connected”, especially if it receives “software updates”, means “backdoored”. The F-16 is, presumably, clunky old legacy analog tech, which means “it works” and “the owner can trust it”. Even if one day they end up at war with the country where it was originally manufactured.

    Speaking of backdoored, have you disabled your Windows Updates yet? We have to assume that at some point the regime will use its ability to pressure Microsoft, a US-based company, to in turn use its update mechanism to Trumpify unprotected Windoze PCs. Whatever that might end up meaning. (Surveillance is a sure bet, and possibly censorware or rat-you-out-ware or worse too.) Mark my words, they will use such methods to target dissidents, both to surveil domestic ones and identify them for purposes of harassment or arrest, and to monitor and sabotage foreign ones.

    I’ve disabled it permanently on my machine and plan to have some sort of Linux rather than Windoze (or MacOS or anything else controlled by an American megacorp) on my next one.

    You might also want to think about migrating to a browser not controlled by any large US-based organization (or, obviously, Russian or Chinese). A Firefox fork backed by an EU-based organization might be best. Firefox itself is a risk, since Mozilla is, last I checked, US-based and big enough to be on the regime’s radar when the time comes. I wouldn’t count on them refusing to knuckle under or even just not knuckling under silently, given the somewhat questionable things they’ve been doing in their extension “store” recently. Waterfox allows unsigned extensions (so you escape from Mozilla’s control of extensions with it) and is developed by a company based in the UK; apparently it is free and open source. And presumably it auto-updates from UK servers, not US ones. That will make it significantly safer than Firefox, let alone anything that Google has infected. So that future machine of mine will likely be running Linux and Waterfox, along with a Linux-native email client and similarly.

  91. whheydt says

    Re: Beckenstein Bound @ #89…
    So far as I know, the Senate doesn’t do secret ballot. As for the 10…start with Schumer.

    If you want to get started with Linux, get a Raspberry Pi Single Board Computer (SBC). That will not only break you out of the WinTel/Apple duopoly, but they are designed in the UK and use ARM processors. For your purposes, I’d recommend starting with a Pi5, either 4GB or 8GB. (Memory is not upgradable, but Linux is a lot leaner than MS Wiindows.) The supported OS–RPiOS–is solid and well maintained. Support is through their web site, raspberrypi.com . If you need more on getting started, ask.

  92. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Peter Sterne (City & State NY):

    One very telling detail from Khalil’s arrest:

    Mr. Khalil saw an agent approach Agent Hernandez and say, “the White House is requesting an update.”

     
    Josh Gerstein (Politico):

    Trump administration asks Judge Cooper to reconsider his order that DOGE has to comply with FOIA. And, wait for it… there’s an Amy Gleason declaration.

    1. My name is Amy Gleason. The following is based on my personal knowledge or information provided to me […]
    2. I currently serve as the Acting Administrator of USDS.
    […]
    4. […] I oversee all of USDS’s employees and detailees to USDS from other agencies.
    5. I report to the White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles.
    6. Elon Musk does not work at USDS. I do not report to him, and he does not report to me. To my knowledge, he is a Senior Advisor to the White House.

    Anna Bower (Lawfare): “just Amy Gleason repeating what the DOGE Executive Order says the DOGE administrator is supposed to do. And there are no deets on when she became administrator ”

    Rando: “Plot twist will be that Amy Gleason is actually running Tesla.”
     
    EmptyWheel – Pete Hegseth’s DOD says it is too fragile to make 16 new badges

    The government has filed a request that Judge William Alsup stay his order requiring six agencies to reinstate fired employees […] the six agencies submitted declarations—most of which appear to be based off the same template, making the same claims—talking about what a hardship it would be to have to reinstate those people.
    […]
    great hardship—potentially even whiplash!!!! […] an agency that employs 950,000 people would have to make 16 new badges.

    I absolutely expected DOD to degrade quickly […] But holy hell!?!?!?

    The DOD declaration even says “extreme whiplash”.

  93. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Wisconsin man who showed up to support an anti-trans bill does something amazing

    Members of the public showed up to give testimony both for and against the bill. […] Some people had to wait all afternoon […] one elderly man […] ‘Larry’ says he turned up to support the legislation. He had to wait in the overflow room to have his moment to speak.

    “First of all, I’d like to apologize to you people […] I was invited here to give my support for bill 104. I have a very little knowledge of gay people and things like that there. So when I came here, my eyes were opened. I was one of the critics that sat on the side and made the decision there was only two genders, so I got an education that was unbelievable.”

    “And I don’t know just exactly how to say this but my perspective for people have changed. So I don’t want to take up no more of your time. I’d like to apologize for being here and I learned a very lot about this group of people.”

    As Larry gets up to leave, others in the room applaud him.

  95. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show

    Trump hones Justice Department as weapon of revenge; some dull edges remain
    video is 8:29 minutes

    Diverse groups opposing Trump-Musk agenda coalesce around date for nationwide protest
    video is 3:12 minutes

    Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
    video is 8:14 minutes

  96. says

    The anti-Swasticar guerilla billboard campaign is gathering pace in London.

    The 0-1939 poster was the first. Also appearing around London now:

    Tesla: The Swasticar. Now with white-power steering.

    Thinking about buying a Tesla? You’re in for a Nazi surprise.

    Tesla: The Swasticar. Autopilot for your car. Autocrat for your country.

    Elon’s Musk: Parfum de 1939. Pour wankers.

    Hate doesn’t sell. Ask Tesla!

    Elon Musk is a bellend.

    My favourite is a billboard-sized mock movie advert. “The Fast and the Fuhrer! Heil Tesla!”. We are informed that the movie is a Nuremberg Film Festival winner and recipient of five Adolf’s. There’s even a PG warning: “Parental Guidance: Tesla’s CEO is a far-right activist. Don’t give him your money”.

    Link

    Image at the link.

  97. says

    So, the Offal in the Oval wants to send troops to Greenland. I wonder if we shouldn’t let him. Given his recent success rate, we’d wind up a Danish protectorate inside a week. On the other hand, a war of aggression under our current commander in chief runs the risk of the “launching nukes without realizing Elon fired the guy in charge of opening the silo doors” scenario.

    Safe to say, the honeymoon is over. Indeed, the honeymoon suite has burned down, and the ground beneath it has been salted, as the Dotard faces his worst-ever economic approval ratings.

    Now, obviously, no President wants to see numbers like that, but when your whole dang cult of personality is held together with government cheese and your ever-dwindling residual reputation for business acumen from a stint hosting a game show, well, suddenly you’re pitching Bezos a buddy reality comedy where you and Bashar al-Assad split a duplex in exile on the outskirts of some ritzy Moscow suburb.

    I think the big takeaway here is before you start a trade war, make sure you understand what tariffs are, and how they work. Cuz when you don’t, it’s sorta like entering WWI on the presumption that mustard gas is good for you. So now the stock market’s hacking and spasming, and sure, you could pass out gas masks at any time, but that would entail admitting you were wrong, so bring on the “correction,” I guess.

    Meanwhile, our would-be oligarch overlords are furious, because none of their bullshit works without a booming, inherited economy to coast on and take credit for. Look at Sean Hannity, impotently chastising a disobedient stock market, while Laura Ingraham orders her audience to simply ignore their disappearing 401(k)s. Tom Petty-defiling Fox bleating head Lara Trump insists us plebs “ought to be kissing the feet of Elon Musk and Donald Trump,” which strikes me as a good way to get real, real sick.

    Good luck with that, dorks. Karoline Leavitt can stamp her feet and scream TARIFFS DO WHAT DADDY SAYS THEY DO until she’s blue in the face…but they don’t. And they never will.

    Incidentally, this self-inflicted economic debacle is brought to you by Crazy Donnie’s New & Used Rolling Deathtraps! And if you find the spectacle of the President of the United States shilling cars at the White House a trifle undignified, know that he was well compensated: Elon pledged to pour an additional $100 million into the MAGA grift trough, starting with more than $10 million to buy a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat for the pathologically unimpressive Brad Schimel.

    (This seems like a good spot to mention that there’s no better way to say “fuck plutocracy” than by donating to Susan Crawford’s campaign. Losing a State Supreme Court majority in a critical battleground state is probably not the best idea right now.)

    Still, all the emerald money in the world can’t buy love, especially when you’re responsible for firing more veterans than anyone in American history. Musk is actually even less popular than his pet presidential puppet, though I must caution, current polling does not yet reflect his efforts to blame Hitler’s atrocities on “public sector employees.”

    Poor Elon is having a hard time wrapping his Ketamine-addled mind around the fact that he didn’t purchase the entire United States government, just one particularly subservient political party. I mean, he called Mark Kelly a “traitor,” and not one single stormtrooper battered down the Senator’s door, what’s up with that?

    Not only are pesky journalists constantly debunking the lies behind DOGE’s famous “wall of receipts,” but now the federal judiciary says his unaccountable incel brigade must comply with Freedom of Information Act requests. And now he has to un-fire all those workers? It’s South Africa all over again!

    I wonder if it was “Big Balls,” or the “normalize Indian hate” kid who decided to stop feeding the TSA’s bomb-sniffing dogs? Are these kids the ones gutting the nation’s scientific research capacity, or have we eliminated the middleman, and allowed the CCP to make those calls directly? It’d certainly be…efficient.

    A federal judge blocked Off-Brand Orbán’s blatantly unconstitutional attack on the law firm Perkins Coie, and so, seeking consolation, he took another feeble swipe at his least favorite amendment: the first one. At the very Department of Justice, he proclaimed CNN and “MSNDC” (HAW HAW HAW GET IT) illegal, for the high crime of Accurately Reporting How Tariffs Work, but hopefully Pam Bondi’s new duties as Tesla’s head of security will keep her too busy to pursue things any further.

    Yes, even with a “free speech absolutist” [Elon Musk] pulling the strings, the First Amendment is under assault in America today. Why, it’s getting so’s a sex trafficker [Andrew Tate] can’t even monetize a podcast about “pimping hoes” anymore.

    […] Seems like just last week when our treacherous administration disabled a loyal ally’s American-made weapons right smack dab in the middle of a shooting war…probably because it was. Anyhoo, now NATO ally Portugal is reconsidering a large purchase of F-35s, just in case you thought the tariffs were the only way Donnie Dumbfuck was screwing American companies over. [See comment 83]

    So, turns out one of President Rapist’s “spiritual advisers” is a child molester. Dude named Robert Morris. Remember when that would’ve been headline news? For a week, at least? Once upon a time, reporters would’ve dogged a politicians’ steps for the rest of his fucking days, demanding he denounce and re-denounce and re-re-denounce his PEDOPHILE SPIRITUAL ADVISER; nowadays we get Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend (incidentally…ew) cracking Rosie O’Donnell jokes while the world burns.

    At the United Nations, Donald Trump’s Amerikkka was the lone dissenting vote against a resolution proclaiming an International Day of Hope, on the grounds that it “contains references to diversity, equity and inclusion,” because hope is just for white people now, silly rabbit.

    I see Linda McMahon lacks a rudimentary understanding of the Department of Education’s most basic functions, (they must not cover the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in wrestling promoter school) though I suppose you don’t strictly need to know how to read to burn down a library. I imagine it helps not to.

    The lying lamestream media wanted you to think Kash Patel would weaponize the FBI against Republicans’ political enemies, but just days into his tenure, he’s already broken up the notorious “Habitat for Humanity” cartel, as part of a wider crackdown on EPA grant recipients.

    Health and Human Services Secretary/Steak ‘n Shake spokesdolt RFK Jr. says sure, the measles outbreak that’s already killed an unvaccinated child is still spreading, but don’t worry, it’s nothing a little a rotting whale head juice from the family vineyard can’t fix.

    Proposed CDC Director David Weldon and DNI Deputy Director Daniel Davis joined the impossibly ignominious Too Shitty to Serve in the Trump Administration Club. They have been exiled to Matt Gaetz’s beachfront trailer in the Florida panhandle, where they will be made to knife-fight to the death over a single post in his burgeoning methamphetamine distribution empire.

    You might chuckle at headlines declaring, “Steve Bannon won’t rule out a Presidential bid,” but if the current administration’s plan to repeal and replace birthright citizenship with Paul Gosar’s bill enfranchising a variety of indigenous slime molds goes through, the Electoral College math shifts in a hurry.

    Putin, in contrast, appears to be in no hurry to accept a proffered ceasefire, saying he needs a little time to come up with some new demands, since the Shart of the Deal gave him everything he asked for before even sitting down at the table.

    Link

    Embedded links to sources are available at the main link.

  98. says

    Followup to comments 85 and 86.

    Election Denier Michael Flynn Attended Trump’s Justice Department Speech

    “Afterward, the disinformation merchant and early QAnon promoter posed for a photo with FBI director Kash Patel.”

    […] Trump stormed into the Justice Department on Friday to give a speech that news outlets described with a grab-bag of foreboding words, including “bellicose” and “unprecedented.” In the speech, Trump railed at his political opponents, whom he described as “scum” and “thugs,” and falsely claimed, once again, that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.

    Seated in the audience was retired General Mike Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, who’s spent a great deal of time pushing both stolen election claims and QAnon-related ideas. (Flynn has distanced himself publicly from QAnon. Two of his family members also sued CNN for a chyron calling them “QAnon followers.” Flynn reportedly called QAnon “total nonsense” in a private conversation with attorney Lin Wood, who released a recording of the call on Telegram.)

    Trump singled out Flynn for special praise during his speech; afterward, Flynn’s sister snapped a picture of him posing with FBI director Kash Patel. […]

    “I was attacked by a political opponent and probably it helped that I was attacked more than anybody in the history of our country,” Trump also claimed, before adding a bizarre metaphor, comparing his treatment to that of a notorious gangster. “Alphonse Capone, the great Alphonse Capone, legendary Scarface, was attacked only a tiny fraction of what Trump was attacked.”

    Trump also specifically praised Flynn, saying, “General Flynn, thank you for being here. Here’s a man who went through hell, by the way, and he shouldn’t have. It was—he’s a patriot, he went through hell.”

    Flynn was pardoned by Trump in 2020 after pleading guilty twice to lying to the FBI; since then, he’s turned peddling far-right conspiracy theories into what the New York Times called a “lucrative and sprawling family business” and commands a vast and loyal audience on social media, including Twitter, where his previously banned account was restored in 2023 after Elon Musk took over the company. In October, he claimed that “weather modification operations” controlled by the Department of Defense were “clearly connected” with Hurricane Helene.

    Flynn’s sister Mary Flynn O’Neill was present with him for the speech; O’Neill posted a photo of Flynn and Kash Patel afterward, writing, “My 2 Favorite Hero American Giants! Gentlemen, time to Save Our Country, the Kids and take out the Trash while you’re at it!!!” Flynn himself posted on Twitter, in all caps, “A GREAT DAY AT THE DOJ!”

    The significance of Flynn’s attendance wasn’t lost on anyone. Republican propagandist and journalistic plagiarist Benny Johnson also posed for a photo with him, tweeting, “The last time General Flynn was in the DOJ the demons running this building had him in handcuffs and were preparing to end his life. Now, Flynn returns as a free man, totally vindicated, a conqueror. What man intends for evil, God intends for good!”

  99. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/oh-this-poor-dumb-trump-lawyer-trying

    Oh This Poor Dumb Trump Lawyer Trying To Defend Military Trans Ban In Court!”

    “At least read your own filings next time maybe?”

    Three weeks ago, one federal Judge Ana Reyes epically scorched President Bone Spurs’ lawyers’ butts in court in the case of Talbott v. Trump, which challenges his and Secretary of Defense Beerhole’s hateful, fact-free Executive Order and memo to exclude transgender people from military service.

    That hearing went so badly for the government that Chad Mizelle, the chief of staff for US Attorney General Pam Bondi, immediately trotted to file a complaint at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that Judge Reyes was too mean to their poor, unprepared lawyer, and had the audacity to ask him questions about animus.

    Now that Hegseth has released guidance on this policy, Wednesday was another hearing on the question of, as Judge Reyes put it, “whether the military under the equal protection rights afforded to every American under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, if the military […] can do that and targeting a specific medical issue that impacts a specific group that the administration disfavors.”

    The DOJ showed up with a new, different lawyer this time, Jason Manion, who looks like he is 15 years old. And over the five or so hours of the hearing that ensued, he did not fare much better than Wahoo Jason Lynch did at the last hearing. Lawyers for the plaintiffs spoke for less than five minutes, and the rest of the time was DOJ lawyers getting their asses handed to them.

    First of all, Judge Reyes wondered, how does the government plan to define the people who exhibit “symptoms of gender dysphoria,” which is mighty vague? Turns out the government has no guidance on that.

    And, why is the government only concerned about hormone therapy for trans people, but not for any other service members who receive hormone therapy? Or take other prescribed medications, like insulin for diabetes or whatever?

    […] And just how many people are there serving in the military with gender dysphoria, anyway? Government lawyers did not know. “Not only do you not have the data, you have no access to get the data because the military does not track people by gender identity,” she noted. Yeah, it’s kind of hard to find evidence that trans people are single-handedly bringing down the entire US military with their disruptive pronouns, when the government does not know how many of them there even are, or how they even define who they are.

    She asked government lawyers questions about three reports that the policy cited and “egregiously misquoted,” and the DOJ’s position on whether or not she should rely on Hegseth’s representation of them. But oops, turns out that the lawyers had not even read the reports in their own filing.

    The judge was not pleased with this, and asked, if the government had cited a Beyoncé album in their anti-trans policy, would the attorney demand she ignore common sense and just listen to the album? Manion sputtered back, “I don’t think you need to know the answer in regards to your Beyoncé question.”

    But this ain’t a Beyoncé album, it is the law, and so court was paused for half an hour so the lawyers could read what they were attempting to defend. Then the judge and lawyers painstakingly went through the studies Hegseth cited together.

    And what do you know? Studies and reports Hegseth cited as references to show that transgender service members hurt troop readiness and weaken units did not say that at all, and actually said the opposite. Transgender service members were more deployable and had fewer lapses in service than people diagnosed with depression, and they are not automatically excluded from service. The government’s own reports found that transgender individuals receiving gender-affirming care experience “literally no regrets” and “very high levels of satisfaction.”

    REYES: You quote the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Do you know who that is?

    ATTORNEY: No?

    REYES: He’s the highest ranking uniformed military member. Feel free to ask the service member behind you if you need to verify.

    Burn! And it turned out that again, the general quoted said the opposite: that being trans doesn’t in itself impact deployability or unit cohesion.

    […] she noted, it is mighty confusing how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s public statements and posts on X contradict all of those studies that he put in his own memo. So Judge Reyes told Manion to secure a written retraction from Hegseth clarifying his public statements by Monday. We’ll keep an eye out for that!

    Also, what about the cost and the argument that it’s expensive to treat transgender service members? Well, the government didn’t show up with the numbers on that either, because again, they have not been tracking who these people are, or how many there are of them. The judge asked DOJ lawyers if they knew how much the military spends on Viagra annually. When they couldn’t answer, she told them the US military spent $42 million on Viagra in 2024, and compared that to the $52 million spent on gender dysphoria treatment over 10 years. That’s a lot of drug-induced boners! “It’s not even a rounding error, right?”

    Meanwhile, the Pentagon is still under orders to try to identify service members who have “a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria,” so that they can be removed from their jobs.
    […]
    Judge Reyes said she hopes to rule next week on this nonsense, while acknowledging that whatever she does the government will appeal anyway.

    “I have no doubt that I am not the last step on this strange journey. I just have to do the best I can with the evidence in front of me.”

    In the meantime, though, sure was nice of her to give government lawyers the ass-handing they so richly deserve.

  100. says

    New York Times link

    “Bread Lines and Salty Drinking Water: Israeli Aid Block Sets Gaza Back Again”

    “Shipments surged into Gaza after Israel and Hamas reached a cease-fire, even if they weren’t enough. Then Israel blocked the border again to pressure Hamas in truce talks.”

    Outside the Zadna Bakery in central Gaza one recent afternoon, the long lines of people waiting for bread were threatening to dissolve into chaos at any minute.

    A security guard shouted at the crowds that pushed toward the bakery door to wait their turn. But no one was listening.

    Just a few steps away, scalpers were hawking loaves they had gotten earlier that day for three times the original price. The sunset meal that breaks Muslims’ daylong fast during the holy month of Ramadan was approaching and across Gaza, bread, water, cooking gas and other basics were hard to come by — once again.

    Lines had not been this desperate, nor markets this empty, since before the Israel-Hamas cease-fire took hold on Jan. 19. The truce had allowed aid to surge into Gaza for the first time after 15 months of conflict during which residents received only a trickle of supplies.

    But no aid has gotten in since March 2. That was the day Israel blocked all goods in a bid to pressure Hamas into accepting an extension of the current cease-fire stage and releasing more hostages sooner, instead of moving to the next phase, which would involve more challenging negotiations to permanently end to the war.

    Now, the aid cutoff, exacerbated by panic buying and unscrupulous traders who gouge prices, is driving prices to levels that few can afford. Shortages of fresh vegetables and fruit and rising prices are forcing people to once again fall back on canned food such as beans.

    Though the canned food provides calories, experts say, people — and children in particular — need a diverse diet that includes fresh foods to stave off malnutrition. [photos at the link]

    For the first six weeks of the cease-fire, aid workers and traders delivered food for Gazans, many still weak from months of malnutrition. Medical supplies for bombed-out hospitals, plastic pipes to restore water supplies and fuel to power everything also began to flow in.

    Data from aid groups and the United Nations showed that children, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers were eating better. And more centers started offering treatment for malnutrition, the United Nations said.

    These were only small steps toward relieving the devastation wrought by the war, which destroyed more than half of Gaza’s buildings and put many of its two million residents at risk of famine.

    Even with the sharp increase in aid after the truce began, Gaza health officials reported that at least six newborn babies had died from hypothermia in February for lack of warm clothes, blankets, shelter or medical care, a figure cited by the United Nations. The reports could not be independently verified.

    Most hospitals remain only partly operational, if at all.

    Aid groups, the United Nations and several Western governments have urged Israel to allow shipments to resume, criticizing its use of humanitarian relief as a bargaining chip in negotiations and, in some cases, saying that the cutoff violates international law.

    Instead, Israel is turning up the pressure.

    Last Sunday, it severed electricity supplies to the territory — a move that shuttered most operations at a water desalination plant and deprived about 600,000 people in central Gaza of clean drinking water, according to the United Nations.

    The Israeli energy minister has hinted that a water cutoff might be next. Some wells are still functioning in central Gaza, aid officials say, but they supply only brackish water, which poses long-term health risks to those who drink it. […]

    More at the link.

  101. says

    Ukraine allies plan meeting of military chiefs next week
    Dated March 15, 2025

    Military chiefs from about 30 Kyiv allies will hold a fresh “operational planning meeting” in London on Thursday [next week] to game out how they would commit peacekeeping troops to a post-war Ukraine.

    U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the British-French-led talks after he hosted a call Saturday morning with the leaders of Ukraine, 25 other allied nations, NATO, the EU and the European Council — but not the U.S. [smart move to leave the USA out of it]

    Starmer, with French President Emmanuel Macron, is pulling together a “coalition of the willing” of allied nations to protect Ukraine after any peace deal. But major questions remain about what that will look like if a deal is signed without U.S. aerial intelligence and air cover, as the U.K. and French leaders are lobbying the White House to provide.

    Starmer told fellow leaders that allied nations should be “prepared to defend any deal ourselves.”

    He added that he believed “sooner or later” Russian President Vladimir Putin would have to “come to the table and engage in serious discussion, but … we can’t sit back and simply wait for that to happen. We have to keep pushing forward and preparing for peace, and a peace that will be secure and that will last,” he said.

    Yet in a Downing Street press conference Saturday, Starmer continued to insist that the plan would need a U.S. security backstop to work. “I’ve been clear that it needs to be done in conjunction with the United States,” he said. “The position on doing this in conjunction with the United States hasn’t changed.” [Hard to see how that will work out.]

    […] Starmer said the leaders on Saturday “agreed to accelerate our practical work to support a potential deal.” Thursday’s military meeting will aim to “put stronger robust plans in place to swing in behind a peace deal and guarantee Ukraine’s future security,” he said.

    […] Those joining Saturday’s call included the leaders of France, Finland, Poland, Germany, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as well European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council chief Antonio Costa. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte spoke on the call.

    Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has positioned herself as a European bridge to U.S. President Donald Trump, also joined the call despite earlier reports that she would not take part. Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also participated.

    The U.K. prime minister said Ukraine was “the party of peace” after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — who joined Saturday’s call — “committed to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire.” By contrast, “Putin is the one trying to delay” a ceasefire, Starmer said.

    In a televised address Thursday, Russia’s president laid out a raft of caveats for accepting the proposal put forward by the U.S. and Ukraine […]

    Former White House adviser Fiona Hill, who is part of a team drafting Britain’s review of defense capability, warned this week that “there’s a genuine rupture in the relationship between the U.S. and its allies at this point.” She told the Foreign Affairs podcast that Putin’s behavior had made it “much more likely” that European countries, Japan and South Korea would be “rushing to get a nuclear weapon,” due to fears they can no longer rely on the U.S. […]

  102. says

    New Yorker link

    “The Data Hoarders Resisting Trump’s Purge”
    “Can librarians and guerrilla archivists save the country’s files from DOGE?”
    By Julian Lucas

    The deletions began shortly after Donald Trump took office. C.D.C. web pages on vaccines, H.I.V. prevention, and reproductive health went missing. Findings on bird-flu transmission vanished minutes after they appeared. The Census Bureau’s public repository went offline, then returned without certain directories of geographic information. The Department of Justice expunged the January 6th insurrection from its website, and whitehouse.gov took down an explainer page about the Constitution. On February 7th, Trump sacked the head of the National Archives and Records Administration, the agency that maintains the official texts of the nation’s laws, and whose motto is “the written word endures.” [Awesome motto.]

    More than a hundred and ten thousand government pages have gone dark in a purge that one scientist likened to a “digital book burning,” and which has proved as frightening in its imprecision as in its malice. Racing to comply with executive orders banning “D.E.I.” and “gender ideology extremism,” agencies have cut materials on everything from supporting transgender youth in school to teaching children about sickle-cell disease, which disproportionately affects people of African descent. But they have also axed records having little to do with the Administration’s ideological priorities, seemingly assisted by A.I. tools that flag forbidden words without regard to context. A recently leaked list of pages marked for deletion on military websites includes references to the Enola Gay—not, as it turns out, a member of the L.G.B.T.Q. community but, rather, the B-29 bomber that nuked Hiroshima.

    Oblivion menaces every scrap of information that doesn’t spark joy in the Oval Office. […] But on this front, at least, the Administration is facing well-organized resistance. It comes from a loose coalition of archivists and librarians, who are standing athwart history and yelling “Save!” They belong to organizations such as the Internet Archive, which co-created a project called the End of Term Web Archive to back up the federal web in 2008; the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, or edgi; and libraries at major universities such as M.I.T. and the University of Michigan. Like the Encyclopedists of Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation”—who race to compile a collapsing empire’s accumulated knowledge—they’re assembling information arks to ride out the chaos.

    […] The U.S. government is one of the world’s biggest publishers, and its research on everything from carbon emissions to infant mortality is conducted on a scale that few private institutions can match. […] As the doge-led assault on civil society continued, [people] began saving files and hosting “datathons” at their universities.

    […] What if the backups languished on private hard drives? What if archivists duplicated one another’s work? She [Lynda Kellam, a social scientist and data librarian] created a Google Doc to centralize information about initiatives—an archive of archives, with detailed instructions on how to contribute to each. “It was really just meant to be a place where people could go and nominate things for the End of Term crawl,” she said. Within days, though, there were more than a hundred people in the document at any given time. Kellam met with the heads of other data-librarian organizations, and together they founded the Data Rescue Project to preserve the enormous data sets that website-focussed efforts had missed. Its tracker now catalogues more than four hundred publicly accessible volunteer backups of government repositories, from the C.F.P.B.’s Consumer Complaint Database to the C.D.C.’s National Immunization Survey.

    […] “I think we’ll be surprised by how many things have been saved by people we don’t yet know, because they haven’t had a chance to give it to someone,” he told me. When I asked who they were, Majstorovic had a simple answer: “Nerds who care.”

    They came, in many cases, from r/DataHoarder, a subreddit with nearly a million members devoted to preserving files. […]

    […] The subreddit has spawned archiving efforts in response to terms-of-service changes at Kindle, the recent near-ban of TikTok, and Elon Musk’s threat to buy Wikipedia. In November, several weeks after Trump’s election, a few members began worrying about scientific reference data at federal agencies. They were roundly mocked by right-wing users. “The TDS”—Trump Derangement Syndrome—“is real,” one commented. Another: “What is this? Foundation?” Then, in late January, a Bluesky account purportedly run by C.D.C. staffers warned of impending deletions, and the data hoarders spun up their drives.

    “That was basically total chaos—posts all day, every day, half of them thanking us and half of them [complaining] that there wasn’t a megathread,” Nicholas Serra, one of the subreddit’s moderators, said of the busy first weeks; he created a pinned post to “direct traffic.” A software developer in Youngstown, Ohio, he usually archives rock-concert footage, and tries to keep the forum nonpartisan. A few right-wing users have objected to the recent campaign, Serra told me, but he sees data preservation as beyond politics […]

    By mid-February, the Data Rescue Project was recruiting from r/DataHoarder and a few related networks. Majstorovic and others began teaching the less experienced members how to back up government data with ArchiveTeam Warrior—an app whose creators have launched a data-rescue campaign—and to upload it to a secure public repository called DataLumos. Kellam had never even heard of data hoarders before this year. But in the first week, she told me, just one of them contributed an estimated forty per cent of the uploads. They’re a largely anonymous bunch, but those willing to speak to me were all young, male I.T. professionals—normie counterparts of the doge tech tyros joyriding through civil society’s back end. [Interesting.]

    A volunteer named Sze, who works as a product manager at a health-care startup in Richmond, started preserving federal data as an alternative to doomscrolling. “I’ve been trying to get out to some of the protests, but, with a job and family, that’s just difficult,” he told me. Every night, after work, he downloads files to an old Dell laptop that he uses as an external hard drive; when we spoke, he was pulling data sets from fema and the C.F.P.B. Sze was born in Hong Kong. In 2019, he watched helplessly as the city’s protest movement was crushed by mainland authorities; when censorship came to the United States, he was determined not to sit idly by.

    Andrew, who goes by the nom de guerre Grumpy—a reference to the dwarf in “Snow White”—is a tech-support professional in Kansas. […] His wife, a family doctor, relies on C.D.C. apps in her practice. Once the agency began removing educational materials from its YouTube channel—such as H.I.V.-prevention tips and Spanish-language tutorials on caring for newborns—he was shocked into preserving as many as he could.

    […] Thanks, in part, to these volunteer efforts, the archivists I spoke to were confident that much less government data will be permanently lost than was initially feared. But they also saw little reason for complacency. “What we don’t know is how much material has been changed,” Mark Graham, the director of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, told me. His team is tabulating how many dot-gov pages with certain keywords have been modified or deleted; in the lead are “health policy,” “World Health Organization,” and “systemic racism.” […] What use is an archived F.D.A. finding aid if it’s been disconnected from back-end data, and doctors without coding skills can’t use it to research clinical trials?

    “It’s a lot easier for the archival community to say, ‘Yeah, we have a bunch of data,’ than it is to say, ‘Yeah, we’re hosting a bunch of server-side applications that will help you navigate the data,’ ” Jack Cushman, the director of Harvard Law School’s Library Innovation Lab, told me. Last month, his organization released a backup of the more than three hundred thousand data sets hosted by data.gov. (At least three thousand of the originals have been removed.) They’re also working on open-source tools to make all this data navigable.

    […] Last week, the guerrilla archiving movement reached an important milestone, when restored CDC.org went online. It’s a replica of the health agency’s pre-Trump website based on backups from r/DataHoarder—one that’s fully functional, with a reconstructed back end and interactive tools. But fresh challenges loom. Librarians and data hoarders have been able to save only publicly available records; restricted ones, such as the D.O.J.’s National Database of Police Misconduct—or the internal records being shredded by employees of U.S.A.I.D.—may be gone for good. Some publicly available data sets have proved unmanageably large, such as N.O.A.A. weather data, which is generated more quickly than volunteers can pull it down.

    The Data Rescue Project’s next priority is finding a decentralized storage solution for the data it already has. Majstorovic is working on a way to break up hundreds of terabytes into chunks small enough to share via BitTorrent, which stores files distributively among users. The result might be less vulnerable to censorship than central servers. But it would also require even more people to donate their time and terabytes. He’s encouraged by the commitment shown by volunteers who ran out of hard-drive space on a previous campaign. “They started uninstalling their games,” he told me. “I thought that was the ultimate nerd sacrifice.” ♦

  103. says

    Who is the latest to sue the administration?

    Farmers! The White House is withholding Inflation Reduction Act funds for clean energy initiatives, leaving farmers awarded USDA grants to install solar panels, but with no funds to pay for work that had already begun. Five farms sued to force the administration to unfreeze the already-allocated funds.

    Fun fact: Roughly 65% of the climate-related farm funding in the IRA was set to go to states where Trump won the 2020 election.

    Link
    At the link, several news reports are presented. The text above represents just one of those reports.

  105. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/texas-bill-will-ban-furries-in-schools

    “Texas Bill Will Ban ‘Furries’ In Schools Because No Dumb Conspiracy Ever Dies”
    “It’s an anti-trans messaging bill, anyway. Those never go out of style.”

    Just to demonstrate that no truly stupid idea ever goes away, a Texas Republican lawmaker, state Rep. Stan Gerdes, has introduced a bill to prohibit “non-human behavior” by kids in public schools, because apparently he either 1) believes there are actually kids being given litter boxes to poop in; 2) is literally stuck in a time warp from 2022-23; or 3) believes it will get him attention and donations from rubes who think option 1 is real. […]

    We assume the astute readers of Wonkette, at least three-quarters of whom are furries anyway, already know that the rightwing freakout over “kids identifying as animals” is simply an ugly myth that was made up to mock transgender folks. It’s very much a fake outrage based on the idea that trans identity is as absurd as insisting you’re a cat.

    Of course, in the real world, outside the rightwing bubble, there aren’t any children insisting they’re animals (beyond the occasional very imaginative preschooler for a few days). But there are trans kids and adults, and they stubbornly insist on existing even if you torture them with “conversion therapy” or make it impossible for them to access life-saving gender affirming care.

    Texas has already banned gender-affirming care for minors, and seeks to relentlessly pursue parents and medical providers who help trans kids, so apparently, with nothing else left to ban, Rep. Gerdes decided to address the nonexistent threat of furries in schools. Goofy teens hopped up on anime and clowning around might lead to dancing, for gosh sakes.

    Gerdes even came up with a clever acronym for his bill, calling it the “Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education (F.U.R.R.I.E.S) Act, which you have to admit is more memorable than “Texas HB 4814 (2025).” So the hell with Gerdes, we’re calling it HB 4814.

    The bill would amend Texas’s education code to prohibit “any non-human behavior by a student, including presenting himself or herself … as anything other than a human being.”

    There are exceptions for school mascots, Halloween, school plays, and school dress-up days, just as long as there are no more than five such days in a school year, and the days are themed around “an era in human history,” a holiday, or a school event. […]

    But there’s one more disqualifier, because this Gerdes dipshit or whoever helped him write the bill really thought this stuff through, and wanted to rule out sneaky loopholes from pro-furry educators: Those theme days absolutely must NOT be “solely or primarily related to the history or celebration of a biological or artificial species other than homo sapiens.” […]

    The bill explains that “non-human behavior” means “any type of behavior or accessory displayed by a student in a school district other than behaviors or accessories typically displayed by a member of the homo sapiens species,” and the examples of course lead off with those goddamn litter boxes, which may not be used for “the passing of stool, urine, or other human byproducts.”

    Here is where we remind you that the grain of sand of truth in these fucking “child furry” stories is that some schools keep kitty litter on hand in the case of children being locked down in their rooms because of a school shooter, which Texas has done less than nothing about.

    […] Also banned are tails, leashes, collars, or other pet accessories; fur, “artificial, animal-like ears”; and “other physiological features that have not historically been assigned to the homo sapiens species through a means of natural biological development,” which comes perilously close to endorsing evolution, egad. And to be on the safe side, such non-human accoutrements are banned whether they’re simply worn, or “through surgical means,” because wouldn’t it be just like a Woke Lib to have a doctor add a long striped tail to their child […]

    To cover all the bases, banned behaviors include “licking oneself or others for the purpose of grooming or maintenance,” so kids with a cowlick on photo day will have to find a comb, not lick a couple fingers to smooth it out.

    And just try enforcing this in a middle school: The list also bans “barking, meowing, hissing, or other animal noises that are not human speech,” although it appears agnostic on making armpit farts.

    Students could face penalties including suspension or even expulsion, since the anti-furry stuff is shoehorned into a section of the state education law that prohibits real things like bullying, sexual harassment, and threats of violence. Talking about shooting up your school, wearing a cat ear headband and clip-on tail, both are bad.

    This gets especially gross when the bill addresses adult conduct: A completely serious list of prohibitions on causing or allowing kids to be harmed by bullying, assault, neglect, sexual assault, and the like suddenly has added to it the crime of “allowing or encouraging the child to develop a dependance (sic) on or a belief that non-human behaviors are societally acceptable.” Violations of that last could bring a penalty of $10,000 for a first offense, $25,000 for subsequent criming.

    None of these pretended threats is real, but in a speech to a group of pastors in Austin Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott endorsed HB 4814, claiming that the furry threat is “alive and well” in schools, and needs to be snuffed out by legislation.

    “In some small rural sections of school districts in the state of Texas, they have in their schools, what are called furries. Y’all know what this is?” Abbott asked the crowd, which responded with a smattering of “yeahs.”

    “Kids go to school dressed up as cats with litter boxes in their classrooms,” Abbott said.

    Abbott insisted that he knew of cases in two rural school districts that parents had complained about, but didn’t name them. […]

    OK, that’s enough of that nonsense. Here’s much nicer nonsense, from the wonderful absurdist anime Nichijou. Enjoy 8-year-old genius inventor Hakase Shinonome and her robot housekeeper Nano just saying “It’s me-ow!” and “It’s cute!” to each other again and again. [video at the link]
    […]

  106. says

    Washington Post link

    “Trump invokes Alien Enemies Act against Venezuelan Tren de Aragua members”

    “The proclamation came ahead of a hearing in which civil rights groups will ask a federal judge to halt the Trump administration from using the law to broadly deport migrants”

    […] Trump has invoked a centuries-old wartime law to declare that a Venezuelan gang has “invaded” the United States, clearing the way for the “immediate apprehension, detention, and removal” of anyone the government says falls into that category.

    Trump issued the proclamation hours after a federal judge in D.C. preemptively blocked the president from deploying the Alien Enemies Act to quickly deport five Venezuelan men on Saturday. Civil rights lawyers say the migrants are at risk of being removed without a court hearing.

    U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg in Washington granted the temporary restraining order to bar the Trump administration from using the law to deport several men the administration alleges have ties to the Venezuela-based gang Tren de Aragua. The American Civil Liberties Union says the men do not have any ties to the criminal group. [See Rachel Madddow’s report: “Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history” referenced in comment 94.]

    […] “The Trump administration’s intent to use a wartime authority for immigration enforcement is as unprecedented as it is lawless,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead counsel. “It may be the administration’s most extreme measure yet, and that is saying a lot.”

    A lawyer for the Trump administration filed a notice of appeal within hours of the restraining order being granted, and ahead of a hearing scheduled for Saturday afternoon. Boasberg, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, barred the Trump administration from removing the men for 14 days. But the ACLU said it will ask him to extend the order to any migrants who might be at risk of removal under the act.

    On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly promised to use the Alien Enemies Act, saying it was warranted as a measure to combat gangs like Tren de Aragua, which his administration has designated as a terrorist organization. He also previewed his plans to invoke the law on Inauguration Day, mentioning it in his inaugural address and in an executive order.

    The order directed the Attorney General and Homeland Security secretary, after consulting with the Secretary of State, to make “operational preparations” in case Trump invoked the act to respond to any “qualifying invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.” He also ordered them to ready facilities to accelerate deportations.

    “By invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, I will direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to U.S. soil, including our cities and inner cities,” Trump said in his Jan. 20 inaugural address.

    Tren de Aragua has aroused fears throughout the Americas. But experts on criminal organizations say the group has not established a strong foothold in the United States, where its members probably number only in the hundreds — a small fraction of the nearly 800,000 Venezuelans who live in this country.

    The Alien Enemies Act allows for the detention and removal of individuals who come from a country with which the United States is at war, or in the event of an “invasion or predatory incursion.” It was last used around World War II to intern Japanese, Italian and German nationals and laid the foundation for the internment of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans.

    Legal scholars say invoking the Alien Enemies Act is a way for the Trump administration administration to speed up deportations by steamrolling due process rights. Several predicted the law would be challenged in court because the United States is not at war.

    […] The latest lawsuit comes weeks before the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans are set to lose their temporary protected status, putting them at risk for deportation. The Department of Homeland Security recently rescinded the Biden administration’s extension of temporary protected status for Venezuelans who became eligible in 2023, prompting two lawsuits from Venezuelan migrants and civil rights organizations. Venezuelans are the largest group in the United States with temporary protected status. Another group of Venezuelans, who had arrived by 2021, are set to see their status expire in September.

  107. says

    Germany’s conservative Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz has reached a breakthrough with the Greens on a massive spending plan to unleash hundreds of billions of euros for defense and infrastructure.

    “Germany is back,” Merz told reporters in Berlin on Friday. “Germany is making its great contribution to the defense of freedom and peace in Europe.”

    The agreement with the Greens clears the way to a vote that will effectively exempt defense spending from the strictures of the country’s constitutional debt brake and create a €500 billion special fund to finance infrastructure projects outside of normal budgetary spending.

    The new deal could also mean a windfall for Ukraine. Under the plan, defense spending exceeding 1 percent of gross domestic product will be exempted from the strictures of the country’s strict debt brake, which drastically limits the structural budget deficit. But under the latest draft, that exemption also now includes aid for countries unlawfully attacked under international law — one of the key demands of the Greens.

    That means, assuming the plan passes through parliament as now expected, Germany will be able to provide many billions in aid to Ukraine through borrowing. Spending to counteract cyber threats as well as intelligence services will also be included under the debt-brake exemption, said Merz.

    Merz, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and winner of Germany’s Feb. 23 election, had struck a deal with his likely coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), this month on the massive spending package. But in order to pass the necessary amendments to the constitution through parliament, Merz needs a two-thirds parliamentary majority and the support of Germany’s Greens, who had — until now — been withholding support.

    The deal today paves the way for the measures to pass in the Bundestag on Tuesday. Merz’s goal is to have the amendments to the constitution passed by March 25, by which time the newly elected parliament is set to convene. That’s because the far-right, pro-Kremlin Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and The Left party, which opposes military spending, would have the strength to block constitutional reforms — and by extension, the massive spending package — in the next parliament. [Yikes. Better hurry up then.]

    […] Germany’s debt brake came into force in 2009, during former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s reign and in the midst of the European debt crisis.

    But given the massive challenges Germany and Europe now face — including Russia’s gains in Ukraine, U.S. President Donald Trump’s vacillations on aid for the Ukrainian military, Trump’s demands for more military spending within NATO as well as Germany’s chronically ailing economy — the conservatives changed course to allow for hundreds of billions of euros in new borrowing.

    […] The Greens broadly agreed to Merz’s plan after securing commitments to apply infrastructure spending towards climate policies. Concretely, €100 billion of the infrastructure fund will go toward meeting climate goals and the transition to renewable energy, according to the agreement.

    In addition, the deal grants Germany’s federal states more borrowing capacity for key infrastructure and energy projects.

    Under the plan, state governments will have access to €16 billion in additional funds, which can be used to modernize local infrastructure, expand district heating networks and support clean energy.

    That’s a considerable concession for Merz, who, ahead of the election, had lambasted the Greens for favoring climate policies over economic growth. […]

    Politico link

  108. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Follow-up to #87.

    USIP – Press Release

    March 14, 2025, several members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), arrived at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) unannounced accompanied by two FBI agents. They were met at the door by the Institute’s outside counsel who informed them of USIP’s private and independent status as a non-executive branch agency. Following that discussion, the DOGE representatives departed.

    Marisa Kabas: “This is the first time I can recall hearing the FBI assisted with an attempted DOGE attack.”

    I take it DOGE were thwarted by the lockdown, not the instigators of it. (The escorting out of USIP staff to telework would’ve been out of character for DOGE.) Still, this USIP press release weirdly mentioned their desire for comity and cooperation with Trump and aggressively pursuing efficiency. A Feb 24 press release expressed a desire to work cooperatively with DOGE. Maybe that’s diplomacy talking.

    Marisa Kabas:

    USIP staffers were alerted of the lockdown by an announcement over the PA system from security. The alert did not specify what was happening, just that people could not leave the building

  109. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Kathryn Tewson (Paralegal):

    the government is operating in such profound bad faith that it may no longer be reasonable to extend them professional courtesy.

    tl;dr: the EPA asked for a 24-hour adjournment of a TRO hearing as a courtesy, got Climate United’s consent, and then used that time to terminate CU’s funding in a way that likely would have been enjoined if the hearing had proceeded as scheduled.
    […]
    I realize that already sounds like madness—”why is ANYONE EXTENDING THESE FUCKS PROFESSIONAL COURTESY RIGHT NOW”—so let me just explain how fuckin’ sacrosanct this unwritten rule is.

    Attorneys aren’t their clients […] sometimes “being a living human” and “hitting every single rigid deadline” is just not compatible. People get sick, people’s kids get sick. […] When this happens, you reach out to opposing counsel and […] the expectation is that they will say yes if they can make it work, because they’re gonna need it too at some point.
    […]
    These expectations are so deeply entrenched that even pitched enemies will abide by them. Like, if you DON’T, it will piss the judge off—that’s what a big deal this is.
    […]
    Like, imagine if there was an NFL football game, and the teams were lined up on the line of scrimmage, and suddenly one team’s QB called for a timeout, and then as soon as the ref blows the whistle, the free safety runs onto the field and hits a corner in the knee with a tire iron.

    That is the level of “not done, not okay” that the EPA’s actions here rise to

     
    Leroy (Paralegal)

    Professional repercussions include things like not taking someone’s word at face value, not granting standard requests without full motion and hearings, treating them like a Pro Se litigant, being a hard ass on every little thing, that kind of stuff. And in extreme cases referring to Bar.

    Bar discipline can result in fines, additional CLE [continuing legal education], probation, and disbarment. And while I’ve never seen unprofessional courtroom conduct getting someone disbarred around here. I have seen the others happen.

    * I couldn’t vet Leroy, but Kathryn liked the reply.

  110. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    WaPo – Arlington Cemetery website scrubs links about Black and female veterans

    it removed internal links directing users to webpages listing the dozens of “Notable Graves” of Black, Hispanic and female veterans and their spouses. On these pages, users could read short biographies
    […]
    still accessible through other internal links, such as “U.S. Supreme Court” or “Prominent Military Figures.” But the categories “African American History,” “Hispanic American History” and “Women’s History” no longer appear prominently. Those landing pages can still be accessed via search
    […]
    The cemetery has completely removed educational materials on the Civil War and Medal of Honor recipients, among other topics. […] lesson plans, walking tours and other material. […] One of the lesson plans […] contains information about […] Black American regiments that served in the Union Army.

     
    LesLeigh Ford:

    Just when I think they can’t go lower. My cousin Army Major General Charles Calvin Rogers, who received the Medal of Honor for his service in Vietnam, has been removed from the Department of Defense’s website. Just checked. “Page not found”. He was the most senior Black soldier ever awarded.

    He is also buried at Arlington Cemetery. I’m disgusted that the agency’s leadership is erasing his sacrifices, memory and countless contributions to the armed forces including his efforts to advance racial and gender equality in the military.

    in case anyone cares about the lengths that folks are going to remove or make it impossible to find archived articles or other content, note what they added to the original article url. “DEI” [Screenshot, from elsewhere]

    * As of Mar 5, the original page existed.
    * As of Mar 15, Wayback found the normal url had become a redirect to a similar url with “dei” inserted before “medal-of-honor”, a page which did not exist.

  112. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (American Immigration Council):

    Holy crap. The DOJ is arguing that the President can unilaterally deport anyone he wants without ANY statutory authority, just on his inherent authority as President over national security.

    That is a terrifying claim to make and not one that has ever been recognized before in US history.
    […]
    His argument here is expressly that even if the Alien Enemies Act […] does NOT authorize him to do this, he nevertheless has inherent authority as president to “summarily remove” (i.e. with no due process) any accused member of Tren de Aragua.

    No, the President cannot unilaterally deport under the Constitution. The Constitution actually assigns the power over immigration to Congress, which sets laws around deportation that the President enforces.

     
    Aaron Reichlin-Melnick:

    [Judge] Boasberg grants a 14-day TRO against the Trump Admin barring the use of the AEA against […] “All noncitizens in US custody who are subject to the [AEA] Proclamation and its implementation”
    […]
    “any planes that are going to take off or is in the air need to be returned to the United States,” and that all people on those planes within the class must immediately be returned to US detention during the course of the TRO.

    ACLU pointing out urgent need to address this, says one plane is in the air right now to Honduras and another is in the air to El Salvador. Boasberg says if any planes have already landed, it’s too late for him to order people to come back.

  113. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    AP – Critics warn staff cuts at federal agencies overseeing US dams could put public safety at risk

    A federal judge on Thursday ordered the administration to rehire fired probationary workers, but a Trump spokesperson said they would fight back, leaving unclear whether any would return.

     
    The Onion YT – Memorial honors victims of imminent dam disaster (2:31, 2008)

    since a spillway gate began to leak 4 years ago, the dam has become a symbol of doom […] the Sacramento County government finally decided to act, by budgeting $20k to construct a memorial for the victims of the inevitible tragedy.

    That is a good one.

  114. JM says

    China Observer: In China, People Can’t Afford to Die; Burial Costs Surpass Housing Prices
    Covers several problems with burial practices in China but the big one is the current pricing problems. The amount of space for cemeteries is capped by the government. Around the big cities all of the cemetery space has been used and very small plots are going for huge prices. To the point that in some areas apartment rental prices are lower then cemetery plot prices and people have taken to renting cheap apartments, sealing them up and using them as mausoleums.

  115. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    SeattleTimes – A ‘dead’ person on Social Security in Seattle, with plenty to say

    Johnson is 82 and still kicking. Yet sometime last month, someone or something led Social Security to both tag him as dead and start clawing back his benefits.
    […]
    Ned found that his February Social Security check hadn’t been paid, and he’s yet to receive his March check, either. His Medicare insurance had been canceled. He also learned that when you die, your credit score gets marked as “deceased, do not issue credit,” which makes it tough to get a loan.
    […]
    [The bank] said an electronic notification had been triggered on Feb. 18 that he had died back in November. But I’m on the phone with you right now, he told them. Also, what did I die of? Take it up with Social Security, they said.

    What followed was a nearly three-week battle to resurrect himself. He called Social Security two or three times a day for two weeks, with each call put on hold and then eventually disconnected. Finally someone answered and gave him an appointment for March 13. Then he got a call delaying that to March 24. […] It’s one of the buildings proposed to be closed […] It was like a Depression-era scene, he said, with a queue 50-deep jockeying for the attentions of two tellers. The employees were kind but beleaguered. […] After waiting for four hours, Johnson admits he jumped the line […] Once in front of a human, Johnson said he was able to quickly prove he was alive, using his passport
    […]
    on Thursday this past week, the bank called to say it had returned the deducted deposits to his account. As of Friday morning he hadn’t received February or March’s benefits payments. “When I was in that line, I was thinking that if I was living solely off Social Security, I could be close to dumpster diving about now,”
    […]
    What’s concerning is that no one has been able to tell him how he ended up in the agency’s “death master file.”

  116. Bekenstein Bound says

    If you want to get started with Linux, get a Raspberry Pi Single Board Computer (SBC).

    I’ve never seen this brand of computer being sold in any area stores. Certainly the chain stores like Staples don’t carry them, only the usual suspects like Lenovo, Dell, Acer, etc.

    ARM processor sounds like that would likely preclude being able to run some legacy Windoze applications via WINE or similar. I doubt those emulate the entire hardware stack like video game console emulators do. And if they did there’d be a giant performance hit.

    On the other hand, one has to wonder if a Trumpified America is going to start backdooring hardware. That might be extremely hard to avoid. Where are ARM processors made? Even if that’s not the US, or China-or-Taiwan-but-controlled-by-a-US-company, it’s not just the processor, it’s the BIOS, it’s the graphics card, it’s the network card, it’s everything that has a chip in it and some ability to communicate with the outside world. Most likely if it contains a microchip, it’s hooked into the system bus, and the whole machine isn’t airgapped, it can betray you, and then you want to source that component from a non-US company that isn’t vulnerable to a US-orchestrated (or Israel-orchestrated, remember the exploding pagers?) supply-chain attack. I’m not even sure any exist, outside of maybe China. Best bet outside there would be the EU I am guessing.

    One thing’s for sure, I’m increasingly not trusting the “trusted computing” module, UEFI or whatever they’re calling it these days. Sure, it’s supposed to make you rootkit-proof … as long as the people who made the UEFI chip and the people who control the bootloader code signing keys aren’t the ones rooting you. How far can they be trusted if they are susceptible to US federal arm-twisting? Probably not far anymore.

    Mr. Khalil saw an agent approach Agent Hernandez and say, “the White House is requesting an update.”

    Meaning Trump personally had him arrested, like a king from the bad old days. Rule by men instead of rule of law.

    The DOJ is arguing that the President can unilaterally deport anyone he wants without ANY statutory authority, just on his inherent authority as President over national security.

    More kingly rule-by-decree crap. Has anyone told this guy that he’s not allowed to relitigate 1776’s little contest? It’s over, the anti-royalist side won.

    Germany’s conservative Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz has reached a breakthrough with the Greens on a massive spending plan to unleash hundreds of billions of euros for defense and infrastructure.

    A rapidly militarizing Germany. What could possibly go wrong?

    Ned found that his February Social Security check hadn’t been paid

    So it’s begun.

    Let’s hope this sparks the uprising we all need right now. Medicaid and Social Security are sacrosanct, at the level of “you can have it when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers”, the last time I looked.

  118. whheydt says

    Re: Berkenstein Bound @ #115…
    John Morales reference is a good start, but I’ll cover some of your points. The board designers and software porting and maintenance work is by a UK company located in Cambridge. The System on a Chip (SoC) that contains the CPU cores and graphics cores is designed by Broadcom and fabricated by TSMC. There is no BIOS in the way you’re used to thinking about. The newer models (Pi4 and Pi5) have an on-board EEPROM that does some of those functions, but it can be updated.

    Pis don’t use UEFI, though there are some software ways to fake it to look like that is present.

    You are correct that doing hardware simulation will slow things down considerably. The better option is to find native Linux programs that provide the functions of the MS Windows program rather that trying to simulate an x86. WINE does run natively, so if you use programs like box86 to do the instruction set simulation, you can run Windows executables.

    One other advantage to Pis in this day and age…the latest version (Pi5) can run on 15W, though to provide maximum power to USB devices, you need a 5A 5v PSU. The RPL labeled 27W PSU lists for $12 in the US. (They are made with pretty much any national plug you can name.)

    Generally speaking, major stores don’t carry them. Most sales are mail order. Go here: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-5/ and pick your country to find local resellers (or a nearby country if this are bit thin on the ground where you are). There are two resellers listed for Sweden, though one looks like it’s actually in Denmark.

    Minimum to get started, assuming you’ve got a spare keyboard, mouse and monitor, would be a Pi, PSU, video cable (Pi4 and Pi5 have micro-HDMI ports), and a micro-SD card. The SD card should be at least 16GB and these days, 32GB is better. (Sigh….back in the beginning of Pis I used to install full systems on 4GB cards and once built a “lite” system–no GUI installed–on a 2GB card.)

  120. JM says

    ABC News: Judge blocks Trump from deporting noncitizens under Alien Enemies Act, orders flights turned around

    Less than two hours after President Donald Trump attempted to invoke the 18th century law to deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order that blocks the Trump administration from deporting noncitizens currently in custody pursuant to the president’s recent proclamation.

    The judge rather sensibly said that allowing the deportations would cause irreparable but delaying things wouldn’t. The government tried to counter that blocking the flights would do irreparable harm to presidential authority but this holds no water. The people in question can be held by the government until the issue is resolved so it isn’t causing the government great harm to delay.

  121. whheydt says

    Re: John Morales @ #118…
    And let it be plainly said that “Windows IoT” is NOT–in general–what people mean when they say “Windows”. WIoT does NOT run MS Windows applications programs.

  123. John Morales says

    Heh. Thanks, whheydt.
    I checked with MS Copilot, and after a few interactions, I got this:

    “Me: it’s not even a partial windows experience, if it can’t actually run windows apps
    Copilot: You’re absolutely right—without the ability to run standard Windows apps, it falls far short of what most people would consider even a “partial” Windows experience. The branding creates an expectation of compatibility and functionality that simply isn’t there, which can be frustrating for anyone looking for a versatile Windows-like environment on the Raspberry Pi. It’s more of an operating system framework for developers in specific IoT use cases rather than a general-purpose Windows platform. A missed opportunity, no doubt.”

  125. birgerjohansson says

    Canadian Liberal Party Sees WILD Surge In New Poll
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=RnIJewQzVZ8

    Good news- the conservatives had a bloody awful PM (wossname? Harper?) the last time who copied the worst policies of Dubya and somehow ignored the few good policies of GW Bush.

  127. says

    DOGE attacks on Social Security officials could have dire consequences

    “The SSA recently announced its intent to eliminate 7,000 jobs, slicing the agency’s already skeletal staff down to the marrow.”

    With Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency leading the charge, the Trump administration is intensifying attacks on the Social Security Administration and jeopardizing the vital benefits 1 in 5 Americans rely on. Under President Donald Trump-appointed leadership, the SSA recently announced its intent to eliminate 7,000 jobs, slicing the agency’s already skeletal staff down to the marrow. The SSA’s shrinking workforce already has been covering an increasing number of beneficiaries for years. With no capacity to spare, the consequences could quickly turn dire.

    As the baby boomer generation ages, a record number of Americans are hitting retirement each year, making this exactly the moment when seniors most need Social Security’s systems to function in order to access the benefits they have earned. But as former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley recently warned, the administration’s actions could break those systems and interrupt benefit payments.

    If Social Security benefits stop — or even experience delays — the impact will be immediate and catastrophic. In a recent survey, 42% of Americans age 65 and up reported they wouldn’t be able to afford necessities like food, clothes or housing without their monthly Social Security retirement benefits./b> Over 11 million disabled Americans under age 65 also receive benefits through Social Security — payments that are subject to strict rules limiting recipients’ ability to earn wages or accrue savings. For these disabled Americans, too, even a few days’ delay could mean not putting food on the table.

    Even if the Social Security Administration can keep payments flowing to existing beneficiaries despite these cuts, the rollbacks will still harm people seeking benefits. Already, Social Security staff are inundated to the point of being unable to process retirement claims, compounded by an aging IT system experiencing an increasing number of outages. And more than 1 million Americans are waiting on an initial determination for a disability claim. Often they are forced to run up credit card debt or sell their home as they wait for an answer with little to no income and often no health insurance. Staffing cuts and overtime restrictions will slow processing further and worsen the backlog.

    The Trump administration’s cuts will also chip away at the customer service that claimants need. On Wednesday, the agency suddenly stopped allowing claimants to change their direct deposit arrangements by phone. According to the Washington Post, the SSA and Musk’s DOGE team had considered ending phone service entirely, but abandoned the idea after the Post reported on the proposal.

    Yet even the smaller change has big consequences: Claimants will be forced to visit a field office in person or use the internet simply to update their bank information. This presents real accessibility challenges: Senior Americans, who make up the majority of claimants, are least likely to have broadband internet access at home, while DOGE posts have stoked fears of upcoming field office closures. As for the services still available by phone, wait times have skyrocketed to hours.

    These attacks on the Social Security Administration coincide with other ominous signals about the program’s future. Trump’s joint address to Congress falsely alleged “shocking levels of incompetence and probably fraud” lurking within Social Security. He threatened to “find out where that money is going,” and suggested it’s “not going to be pretty.” Meanwhile, Musk called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” — a frequent talking point of the program’s right-wing critics like Project 2025 author Stephen Moore. House Republicans have floated the idea of cutting Social Security benefits for some disabled children, and groups like the Republican Study Committee have sought for years to cut benefits by raising the retirement age. The current attacks on the Social Security Administration may only be the beginning.

    Each month, over 70 million Americans check their mailbox or bank account for their Social Security benefits. For many, these checks can mean the difference between making rent and losing their home, between buying groceries and going hungry. By hamstringing the agency that provides these critical benefits, the Trump administration is putting the well-being of millions on the line.

  128. says

    Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act: Notes on Preserving the American Republic, by Josh Marshall

    A short time ago, former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade posted this passage from a Chronicle of Higher Education interview with Lee Bollinger, First Amendment scholar, former law school dean and former president of the University of Michigan and of Columbia. I note the thumbnail biography because Bollinger, apart from subject qualities, has ascended to the the peaks of two of the foundational nodes of power in American civil society: the legal profession and the university system.

    He said this …

    We’re in the midst of an authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government. It’s been coming and coming, and not everybody is prepared to read it that way. The characters regarded as people to emulate, like Orbán and Putin and so on, all indicate that the strategy is to create an illiberal democracy or an authoritarian democracy or a strongman democracy. That’s what we’re experiencing. Our problem in part is a failure of imagination. We cannot get ourselves to see how this is going to unfold in its most frightening versions. You neutralize the branches of government; you neutralize the media; you neutralize universities, and you’re on your way.

    We’re beginning to see the effects on universities. It’s very, very frightening.

    […] that first sentence is important: “We’re in the midst of an authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.” That is what is happening. And we’re in the middle of it. As semi-familiar as the words and concepts are, we all collectively need to concentrate on that statement. It’s neither a future possibility nor an accomplished fact. We’re in the midst of it, as Bollinger says.

    […] everything we do right now has to be guided toward defeating this takeover. These aren’t one and done things. It’s complicated. It’s often incremental, albeit sometimes unfolding very fast. Gains can be reversed. In the political realm it’s almost a zero sum game with the power of the Democratic Party, simply because that’s the one organized political force in the country that can contest the takeover in the political arena. You may say you’re done with the Democratic Party. And fine … but then you are just going to have to reassemble the more or less identical coalition under a different label. So the difference doesn’t terribly concern me.

    But it’s not only politics, or more specifically, it’s not only electoral politics.

    A free society exists not simply because there are limits on the power of the government. The state may have a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. But it does not have a monopoly on power. It’s free because there are multiple nodes of power — cultural, economic, social — in the national space. Universities are one of those. The private sector economy is another.

    There’s another that’s been in the news over the last week. And I’m going to discuss it here, briefly, because, while it can seem sort of niche and on the margins, it’s very far from it. It’s the nation’s “Big Law” law firms. The President recently signed an executive order targeting Perkins Coie, a big national law firm headquartered in Seattle.

    The actions against Big Law firms may end up being some of the biggest stuff happening right now. […] there are lots of small firms and independent operators. But that’s like saying there are small independent media outlets like TPM. They’re critical. We’re critical […] But you don’t want the press to be reduced to just those places. Once that’s all you’ve got, civil society is on life support. The Big Law firms provide a lot of the access to the more complex and regulatory-dependent parts of the private economy and commerce. Often, you really, really want one those people as your defense lawyer. If the big firms are cowed up into state subservience, that’s a really, really big deal.

    […] in any society, the truly powerless need at least some level of support within the structures of power. You may have access to the courts. But if you lack access to the right lawyers, your access rapidly becomes notional.

    Perkins Coie, we should note, is or was at least close to being the law firm of the Democratic Party. (Watch that front in concert with the growing partisan and governmental attacks on ActBlue.) Even if Perkins Coie gets Trump’s attack EO knocked down in court, if you’re a big corporation do you want to work with them? The White House has made it clear it views them as enemies? Why do you want to take that on? It’s the same reason the big diversified corporations that own many of the country’s big news organizations like ABC and CBS have been falling over themselves to settle absurd lawsuits with Donald Trump and hose him down with millions of dollars.

    […] despite the fact that a federal judge had already blocked Trump’s Perkins Coie order. He has followed up with similar attacks on Paul, Weiss and Covington & Burling.

    […] One thing we’ve seen with the universities is that at least mostly and at least up until now each target has been hit and handled the situation more or less alone. I heard from a source this week who shared with me how a sizable flagship public university in a very red state had just taken a bodyblow loss of funding tied to scientific research and they were just trying to lay low, saying as little about it as possible. Clearly, collective action is going to be necessary to fight this off among the universities, the legal profession and numerous other nodes of power the White House wants to bend to its will.

    We’ve got a huge job on our hands and there’s no guarantee we’ll succeed. But the first step of acting is knowing exactly where you are. People who are thinking in terms of Viktor Orbán are not surprised by each successive move. It’s actually pretty textbook. How it all shakes out comes down to the decisions countless private actors make. It also means supporting institutions that are meaningfully supporting free society. That doesn’t have to be a matter of performative spectacles. At its most essential, it means not changing behavior. One bright moment on the Big Law front came last week when the medium-sized but highly prestigious Big Law firm Williams and Connolly took on Perkins Coie’s case and filed a lawsuit in which 14 individual lawyers, including the firm’s former chair, signed as lawyers on the case.

    Again sounds all very insidery and niche. But these are critical nodes of power in a free society. They may be richies and they may be the establishment and a lot of their muscle goes into servicing the powerful. But when their power ebbs the power of the state swells into its place. Meanwhile, all the gutting going on inside the government right now is being carried out for the one purpose: that the power of the state is really the erratic and degenerate will of one man, Donald Trump.

    […] clarity in itself has power. Once you know where you are you stop being bewildered by each new development. You begin to be able to construct strategies based on the reality before you. […] The great majority of political media in the United States doesn’t get this or isn’t interpreting the news through this prism. […]

    I don’t want to re-litigate the events of last week in the Senate. That’s done and you know where I stood. What is still worth saying is that you should have made your decision (and all such future decisions) about the right course of action based on which one was more likely to slow, impede or defeat what Bollinger rightly calls “an authoritarian takeover” of the U.S. government.

    This is where we are. Observe, orient, decide, act. The side which acts faster and smarter wins.

  129. says

    Elon Buys the GOP

    Tesla CEO and shadow President Elon Musk already owns most of the Republican Party. This week, he moved to buy what little remained in the form of a rumored $100 million “donation” to President Donald Trump’s political operation. But while mainstream media outlets reported on Musk’s unprecedented gift to his alleged boss, only Daily Kos dug into exactly what Musk would be buying with all that cash.

    When Trump turned the White House lawn into the world’s tackiest Tesla commercial, Markos Moulitsas reported that “Trump’s pathetic Tesla stunt proves he’s chosen billionaires over his base.” The event was Trump at his infomercial best, but even Fox News remarked on how out of place his marketing stunt felt amid an ongoing stock market meltdown. This is just real life now, folks.

    Musk has a good reason to buy his way to safety: As Daily Kos reported on Wednesday, Musk’s much-hyped cuts from his so-called Department of Government Efficiency haven’t reduced federal spending. In fact, total government spending is up, leading some White House insiders (especially an irate Secretary of State Marco Rubio) to call for Musk’s immediate humbling. Fat chance when Musk is on track to become the single largest donor in Republican Party history. As it turns out, being a nearly bottomless source of ethics-free financing makes you a pretty untouchable force in right-wing politics.

    For now, Musk’s fat wallet can still buy him a place at the decision desk. But with federal courts overturning his mass firings and Cabinet secretaries bristling under his bumbling mismanagement, Musk’s money is no longer a guarantee that anyone in the White House will be listening forever. As Musk’s star dims, Trump’s demands for cash will only increase—an impossible ransom, even for the richest man in the world.

    Link

  130. says

    International travelers concerned about President Donald Trump’s trade policies and bellicose rhetoric have been canceling trips to the United States, depriving the U.S. tourism industry of billions of dollars at a time when the economy has started to appear wobbly.

    Canadians are skipping trips to Disney World and music festivals. Europeans are eschewing U.S. national parks, and Chinese travelers are vacationing in Australia instead.

    International travel to the United States is expected to slide by 5 percent this year, contributing to a $64 billion shortfall for the travel industry, according to Tourism Economics. The research firm had originally forecast a 9 percent increase in foreign travel, but revised its estimate late last month to reflect “polarizing Trump Administration policies and rhetoric.”

    The number of overseas visitors to the United States fell 2.4 percent in February from a year earlier, government data shows, with the biggest drops in travelers from Africa (down 9 percent), Asia (7 percent) and Central America (6 percent). Meanwhile, travel from China — a frequent target of the president’s ire — is down 11 percent.
    Penelope Poole, who lives in the Philippines, is scrapping plans for a family cruise in Florida with her 90-year-old mother. Instead, she and nearly 30 relatives are heading to a lakeside resort in Canada.

    “My siblings and I decided that given the early volatility and hostility of this administration, we couldn’t take a chance,” the 66-year-old said, adding that some relatives would be traveling from Indonesia and Mexico. “We were increasingly concerned about personal safety.”

    This moment isn’t without precedent. Sacks notes that international tourism slowed sharply during the first Trump presidency, amounting to roughly $20 billion in unrealized revenue, even before covid-related disruptions. Back then, it was tourists from Mexico, China and the Middle East who were pulling back, deterred by the administration’s travel bans, tariffs and tough talk on immigration.

    This time, Canada — the top source of international travel to the United States — is poised to lead the way. Trump has for weeks said he wants to make the country a “51st state.” In response, Canada’s former prime minister, Justin Trudeau, urged Canadians not to vacation in the United States.

    […] Altogether, Tourism Economics expects a 15 percent decline in travel from Canada this year, translating to $3.3 billion in lost spending.

    […] Notably, the hospitality and leisure industry has posted two months of job losses at a time when the broader labor market is growing.

    […] Jens Muellers and his father were preparing to travel to Seattle from Germany this summer for a road trip through Olympic, Mount Rainier and Glacier national parks. But after the administration’s attacks on Europeans and its efforts to downsize the national parks system, Muellers said they changed their plans. They are heading to Canada.

    Washington Post link

  132. Reginald Selkirk says

    @105, 119

    US deports hundreds of Venezuelans despite court order

    Planes carrying more than 200 Venezuelans deported by the US have landed in El Salvador, hours after a US judge ordered the Trump administration not to do so.

    El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, wrote on social media that 238 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had arrived, along with 23 members of the international MS-13 gang, on Sunday morning.

    Their arrival in the central American nation came after a federal judge blocked US President Donald Trump from invoking a centuries-old wartime law to justify the deportations – something Bukele made fun of in a later post.

    “Oopsie… Too late,” he said…

  134. Reginald Selkirk says

    Elon’s Grok Chatbot Calculates Probability That Trump Is a Russian Asset

    Elon Musk’s supposedly “anti-woke” chatbot, Grok, keeps spewing outputs that are hilariously opposed to the billionaire’s views — including that newly-minted President Donald Trump is likely a Russian asset.

    Responding to a prompt from Arizona Republic columnist EJ Montini, Musk’s “maximally truth-seeking” AI, which is built into X, said after an analysis that the probability of the president being in the pocket of Vladimir Putin is between 75 and 85 percent…

  135. Reginald Selkirk says

    Tesla cameras versus the Wile E. Coyote test.

    Can you trick a Tesla’s camera-based Autopilot system, which has been linked to hundreds of crashes, using simulated rain, fog? Will it barrel through a wall covered in an image of the road beyond, like Looney Tunes’ Wile E. Coyote slamming into the Road Runner’s fake tunnels?

    Yes you can, according to Engineer and YouTuber Mark Rober’s testing. (Bonus: Rober also uses LiDAR to map Disney’s pitch-black Space Mountain coaster. )
    (video 18:54)

  136. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Marco Rubio reposted Nayib’s derisive “Oopsie”.

    NYT – Trump sends hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador in face of judge’s order

    President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador posted a three-minute video on social media on Sunday of men in handcuffs being led off a plane during the night and marched into prison. The video also shows prison officials shaving the prisoners’ heads.
    […]
    The precise timing of the flights to El Salvador is important because Judge Boasberg issued his order shortly before 7 p.m. in Washington, but video posted from El Salvador shows them disembarking the plane at night. El Salvador is two time zones behind Washington

    * The restraining order @111 was at 6:46pm EDT. The NYT corroborates that wasn’t late reporting.

    Adam Isacson (Washington Office on Latin America) posted screenshots of flight data, but I think his zone math was off. The screenshots distinguished Texas’ CDT vs El Salvador’s CST, for instance, but he only added 1 hour to convert CST to his unstated EDT. I’ll standardize to UTC.

    Washington Order, EDT (UTC-04:00)
    06:46pm 18:46 EDT = 22:46 UTC

    El Salvador landings, CST (UTC-06:00)
    06:02pm 18:02 CST = 00:02 UTC
    10:05pm 22:05 CST = 04:05 UTC
    11:03pm 23:03 CST = 05:03 UTC
    Plane doors likely opening later than that.
    The latter flights had a stop in Honduras.

  137. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Stephen Jacob Smith (Center for Building in North America):

    Doctors at Seminole Memorial Hospital, in Gaines County, noticed a sudden and ominous drop in the number of measles patients coming in, with those showing up being much sicker than before. They blame it on a quack doctor nearby who records anti-vax podcasts and gives out cod liver and vitamin A.
    [NYT article]

    Oh my god, RKF Jr.’s nonprofit is directly funding this measles outbreak! Literally paying for free quack prophylaxis to lure people without measles to stand in line next to people with actively and highly contagious infections.

    Ben Edwards, is well known in the area for producing podcasts that [malign] vaccines, and for his wellness clinic in Lubbock, which rejects […] the idea that germs cause certain diseases. […] Kennedy said he had spoken with [him] and learned “what is working on the ground.”
    […]
    The treatments were free […] an anti-vaccine nonprofit that Mr. Kennedy helped found […] created a donation page online that has raised more than $16,000 to help cover the cost

  138. Reginald Selkirk says

    Ancient mammals had mostly dark brown coats during the dinosaur era, new study reveals

    Ancient mammals that lived in the time of dinosaurs were mostly the same dark-brown colour, according to a new study providing clues about how those mammals evolved as they faced giant predators.

    The study, published in the journal Science, used scientific techniques that have similarly shown the colouring of various dinosaurs and ancient birds from their fossils. Advances in dinosaur knowledge have trickled into museums and popular depictions of the animals over the past years, something the new study’s authors hope can now happen for ancient mammals…

    Using six well-preserved fossil specimens and powerful microscopy, the researchers were able to detect the shape of pigment-producing parts of cells known as melanosomes. Previous work has shown that shape corresponds to the colour of the animal’s fur…

    Based on only six specimens? Fuck me.
    And it is rather rare for cellular tissue to be preserved, so a study like this should not be generalized too far.

  139. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Steve Vladeck (Law professor):

    Axios: The White House says it ignored a court order […] because the flights were over international waters and therefore the ruling didn’t apply

    A federal court’s jurisdiction does *not* stop at the water’s edge. The question is whether the *defendants* are subject to the court order, not *where* the conduct being challenged takes place.

    Were it otherwise, the government could act lawlessly overseas and courts would be powerless to stop it.

    Rando: “Were the planes over the Gulf of America?”
     
    Eric Columbus (Obama DHS/DoJ appointee, Gitmo detainee defense attorney):

    Interestingly, Rubio says that El Salvador is holding them on behalf of the US. Thus the judge still has jurisdiction to order Rubio to return them.

    Marco Rubio: […] which El Salvador has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price […]

  140. says

    Sky Captain @136, well that makes me feel sick … and I don’t currently have any illness. Kennedy, and the doofus anti-vaccine podcaster, should be sued for putting people’s lives in danger. They are actually spreading the measles.

    Reginald @137, I agree, “a study like this should not be generalized too far.”

  142. says

    Followup to comments 131 and 135.

    Transplant Surgeon Deported Despite Judge’s Order

    A kidney transplant surgeon, highly trained, highly skilled, highly in demand, in the US on a valid H1-B visa, went to visit her family in Lebanon. When she returned to Boston’s Logan airport (she works at Brown University in Providence), she was detained and told she was being deported. (Reasons? We don’t need no stinking reasons!) While her plane was on the tarmac, a judge ordered her deportation halted — but the plane took off anyway.

    Brown Medicine doctor deported despite federal court order. What we know.

    Despite. A. Federal. Court. Order.

    A federal court order that would have halted the immediate deportation of a Rhode Island doctor was issued Friday evening while the doctor’s departing plane sat on the tarmac at Boston Logan International Airport, said a family friend and colleague.

    But the plane ultimately took off, carrying Dr. Rasha Alawieh out of the country for reasons still unclear to her family, her lawyer and Brown Medicine colleagues such as Dr. Basma Merhi.

    “They did not do anything to stop the plane,” said Merhi, who was learning details of the event through information relayed by Alawieh family members. “So, clearly, they wanted to deport her regardless of if there was a judge’s order or not. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

    The court was acting on a complaint filed by her cousin:

    “Despite repeated requests from Dr. Alawieh’s family members and a volunteer attorney, CBP refuses to provide any justification for their detention, refuses to allow the attorneys to talk to Dr. Alawieh, and refuses to provide assurances that Dr. Alawieh will not be deported to Lebanon.”

    The complaint also noted that

    Alawieh had graduated from medical school in 2015 and held fellowships and residencies at three U.S. universities.

    Her visa was valid until 2027.

    This follows immediately after another deportation that ignored a court order: Trump admin deports hundreds of migrants, despite judge’s order stopping removal.[…]

    Embedded links are available at the main link.

  145. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    GoComics Doonesbury – 2025-03-16

    “So, [Al Gore], wasn’t government reform once your jam?”

    “It was […] In just seven years, we shrunk the federal workforce by 426,000, consolidated 800 agencies, and eliminated 640,000 pages of rules.”

    “Wait… what? Why didn’t I know that?”

    “Because you didn’t notice at the time […] because the process was carefully planned and responsibly executed. It never disrupted essential public services. Compare that to now.”

    [Yellow Minions in nazi garb axing, burning, & eating an office as a the letter X in sunglasses oversees them.]

    Rando (Retired fed asset mgr): “It’s true I was a federal employee during that time it was called a RIF and laws were followed. It wasn’t a massacre. [heart emoji]”

  146. says

    Trump’s move to silence pro-democracy media sparks outrage

    “Voice of America and Radio Free Europe among outlets forced to make cuts as U.S. seeks to curtail funding.”

    […] Trump’s move to stop financing U.S.-funded media including Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is stirring anger and indignation.

    On Saturday, journalists from VOA, RFE/RL and other U.S.-funded media outlets were put on leave or otherwise told to stop work after Trump moved to effectively freeze funding to media that have correspondents all over the world and provide coverage of regions including Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

    “These media outlets have been a beacon of truth, democracy, and hope for millions of people around the world,” the European Commission told POLITICO on Sunday. “In an age of unmoderated content and fake news, journalism and freedom of press are critical for democracy,” it said.

    “This decision risks benefiting our common adversaries,” the EU executive added.

    “I am deeply saddened that for the first time in 83 years, the storied Voice of America is being silenced,” VOA’s director Michael Abramowitz said on Saturday, announcing that more than 1,300 VOA journalists and employees, including himself, have been placed on administrative leave.

    Trump on Friday signed an executive order to reduce to the minimum the functions of several agencies, including the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM,) which oversees media including VOA, RFE/RL, Office of Cuba Broadcasting, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

    “The cancellation of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty grant agreement will be a huge gift to America’s enemies,” RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus said on Saturday.

    […] VOA and RFE/RL are designated as undesirable foreign organizations by Russia.

    Radio Free Asia is expected to start furloughing some of its staff in the coming days, POLITICO reported on Friday.

    Reporters Without Borders, the international nongovernmental organization, said it “condemns the decision as a departure from the historic role of the United States as a defender of free information.” The NGO called on the U.S. “Congress and the international community to take action against this unprecedented move.”

    Trump’s administration baselessly accused the affected media of being biased.

    The decision “will ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda,” the White House said in a statement on Saturday.

    Kari Lake, a senior adviser to USAGM appointed by Trump, said “this agency is not salvageable,” arguing that “from top-to-bottom, this agency is a giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer.”

    VOA was created in 1942 and broadcasts globally. […]

    Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) earlier this month imposed a 30-day freeze on funding USAGM outlets including VOA and RFE/RL, as a possible first step to a permanent cut in government support to those outlets.

  147. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Josh Gerstein (Politico):

    DOJ […] Tells court “some gang members… had already been removed from US territory.” The filing also seems to try to shift the time of Boasberg’s second order, which was issued verbally at about 6:45 PM ET and took effect “immediately.” DOJ points to the docket entry about 40 minutes later.

    Brad Moss (Natsec attorney): “They will find any technicality to allow their lawyers to wiggle out of contempt sanctions.”
     
    Eric Columbus (Obama DHS/DoJ appointee):

    This DOJ statement does not address the possibility that that part of the order was knowingly defied. […] Looks like—perhaps deliberately?—the administration is not speaking in one voice with regard to whether it’s defying court orders.

    Marc Caputo (Axios): One administration official said Trump was not defying the judge, whose ruling came too late for the planes to change course: “Very important that people understand we are not actively defying court orders.”

    Evan Bernick (Law professor):

    Sorry I really do think it’s funny that the admin is frantically trying to correct stories saying that they’re actively defying the courts. They’re not just liars, they’re cowards.
    “SCOTUS, we’re still cool, right? Right?! … Sam, we know *you’re* cool.”

    Evan Bernick:

    “Please don’t put it in the paper that we’re actively defying the courts.”
    “What about what the Secretary of State just tweeted.”
    “…That’s a typo.”

  148. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Lindsay Toczylowski (Immigrant Defenders Law Center):

    Our client worked in the arts in Venezuela. He is LGBTQ. His tattoos are benign. But ICE submitted photos of his tattoos as evidence he is Tren de Aragua. His attorney planned to present evidence he is not. But never got the chance because our client has been disappeared.

    We last spoke to our client on Thursday before he was supposed to have a hearing in immigration court, but ICE didn’t bring him. The govt atty had no info about why […] the TX facility where he was last held, more than 1300 miles from the San Diego detention center he was in when we started […] told us he was no longer there. This morning he disappeared from online detainee locator.

    Our client came to the US seeking protection but has spent months in ICE prisons […] he has been forcibly transferred, we believe, to El Salvador.
    […]
    One bright spot in this madness that I see are the many lawyers and advocates across the country who spent their Saturday fighting like hell to preserve justice in the face of horrific cruelty. And we will keep fighting. [raised fist emoji]

  149. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Follow-ups on Serbia.

    CNN – Serbian MPs toss smoke grenades in parliament (Mar 4)

    opposition lawmakers threw smoke grenades and tear gas inside the chamber to protest against the government and support demonstrating students. […] MPs lit flares and tossed smoke grenades and eggs, while others leapt from their seats to brawl with security guards. As the room filled with smoke, some unrolled a banner reading: “Serbia rises up to bring down the regime.”

    Three members of the ruling [right-wing] Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), including a pregnant woman, were injured in the melee, with one suffering a stroke
    […]
    Serbia’s political crisis began after the canopy of a railway station in the city of Novi Sad collapsed in November, killing 15 people. The tragedy became a flashpoint for latent discontent that had been brewing over Vucic’s 12 years in power. What began as vigils for the dead have led to four months of near-daily protests […] The crumbled canopy—which many believe collapsed due to hasty work by shoddy subcontractors—has come to serve as a symbol of what many see as corruption at the heart of the Serbian state.
    […]
    Parliament was due […] to confirm the resignation of Prime Minister Milos Vucevic, who announced in January that he would stand down in an attempt to calm the political tensions. However, the protesters saw the move as an attempt by the president to deflect blame […] Lawmakers attempted to resume the session, but opposition MPs continued to whistle and blow horns.

    AP (Mar 4)

    Opposition parties have insisted that the government has no authority to pass new laws. Leftist lawmaker Radomir Lazovic […] said the only way out of the current crisis would be a transitional government that would create conditions for a free a fair election

     
    BBC – Serbia’s largest-ever rally sees 325,000 protest (Mar 15)

    While the government put attendance at 107,000 across Belgrade, an independent monitor said 325,000—if not more—had gathered […] Despite multiple resignations […] the protests have only continued to grow.
    […]
    While the protests over the Novi Sad collapse began with students, they have been joined by taxi drivers, farmers and lawyers.

    Ahead of the big protest, motorbike riders pulled up outside the National Assembly, facing off against the tractors surrounding a camp of pro-government counter-protesters.

    Then a parade of military veterans received a rousing welcome. They said they would make a citizen’s arrest on anyone who attacked the students.
    […]
    The students have been calling for full transparency and accountability over the collapse […] all the documentation relating to the renovation […] They also want those responsible for the disaster to be charged and convicted. Prosecutors have indicted at least 16 people […] But the charges have yet to go to trial.
    […]
    Prime Minister Milos Vucevic announced his resignation at the end of January. But that has yet to be ratified by the National Assembly and he remains in his post.

    But the real power in Serbia lies with [President Aleksandar Vucic], who insists that he is going nowhere. “I don’t give in to blackmail,”

  150. Bekenstein Bound says

    Generally speaking, major stores don’t carry them. Most sales are mail order.

    Mail order = credit card needed = no good.

    Minimum to get started, assuming you’ve got a spare keyboard, mouse and monitor, would be a Pi, PSU, video cable (Pi4 and Pi5 have micro-HDMI ports), and a micro-SD card.

    Wait, what? The PSU is sold separately? The thing comes only half-built?

    The SD card should be at least 16GB and these days, 32GB is better. (Sigh….back in the beginning of Pis I used to install full systems on 4GB cards and once built a “lite” system–no GUI installed–on a 2GB card.)

    Wait, that little thing is supposed to be the main hard drive? That’s not going to fly. I’ve got literally terabytes of data as well as hundreds of megs of programs. I doubt you could fit just the operating system and Waterfox in 32GB,
    let alone mail client, video/audio player, Irfanview or something equivalent, and other basics, to say nothing of big productivity stuff: development environments, GIMP/Photoshop/etc., Virtualdub and Audacity, LibreOffice, or what-have-you. And this is before adding in space for documents, photos, videos …

    You might be able to make a decent firewall or maybe even a little streaming box (as long as it didn’t have to store very much and was just acting as a go-between) with this. But it won’t be any substitute for a full-featured laptop or a desktop workstation. The storage and all the other specs look far closer to those typical of a phone or tablet to me.

    Also, integrated graphics? That probably means poorish performance in any scenario involving gaming, unless the games are very very legacy. AFAIK outside of dedicated gaming consoles ATI and nVidia still rule the roost. It also casts doubt on doing anything compute intensive via GPU, and would the CPU be able to offer, say, 12 threads at 3+GHz apiece?

    Good news- the conservatives had a bloody awful PM (wossname? Harper?) the last time who copied the worst policies of Dubya and somehow ignored the few good policies of GW Bush.

    Begging your pardon, but what “good policies of GW Bush”?

    Responding to a prompt from Arizona Republic columnist EJ Montini, Musk’s “maximally truth-seeking” AI, which is built into X, said after an analysis that the probability of the president being in the pocket of Vladimir Putin is between 75 and 85 percent …

    Personally, I think it’s underestimating that probability by 15 to 25%, and perhaps more.

    Kennedy, and the doofus anti-vaccine podcaster, should be sued for putting people’s lives in danger.

    Sued? How about arrested? This is criminal negligence.

  151. whheydt says

    Re: Beckenstein Bound @ #149…
    I know of stores locally that carry Pis, so it doesn’t have to be mail order. I generally do anyway, if only because the shipping cost is less than the cost of gas to get there and back (never mind the value of my time). It’s no more “half built” than a laptop with a power brick is. The only difference is that no one assumes you’re at all likely to have a spare power brick for the laptop lying around the house. While the official PSU is highly recommended, it’s not a requirement. It’s just that it gets observed that people who try to power Pis with random kicking-around-the-house “chargers” tend to have a lot more power issues than those that use the RPL banded PSUs. With the Pi5 specifically, while it will run on a 3A supply (which is the base PD 5v rating), you won’t find many PD supplies that will deliver 5A at 5v, no matter what the total power rating.

    You’d be surprised at how much you can fit into 32GB. You can certainly have the full LibreOffice and GIMP, plus two browsers, language processors, and editors in that much space. Linux is much more compact than Windows. I did note that that is the minimum config you’d want to start. The Pi5 exposes a single PCIe 2 lane and there is an official RPL add-on board, and a whole bunch of third party boards that use that lane to provide an M.2 connector for NMVe SSDs. If you limit yourself to the official adapter, or similar ones (which means using either 2230 or 2242 drives), you can still go up to 4TB. There are some adapters that can handle 2 2280 SSDs, and those go to 8TB…each.

    The GPU is primarily aimed at video decoding and processing. A Pi5 can output two 4K60 streams. Most of the games you’re referring to won’t run–natively–on ARM, anyway.

    The “beefiest” Pi I am currently using is a Pi8 8GB with a 512GB NVMe SSD attached. Everything kind of rattles around loose in that much space:

    pi@pi5-1:~ $ df
    Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
    udev 4082736 0 4082736 0% /dev
    tmpfs 825360 6560 818800 1% /run
    /dev/nvme0n1p2 491774864 84156228 382623292 19% /
    tmpfs 4126784 30896 4095888 1% /dev/shm
    tmpfs 5120 48 5072 1% /run/lock
    /dev/nvme0n1p1 522230 77442 444788 15% /boot/firmware
    tmpfs 825344 176 825168 1% /run/user/1000
    pi@pi5-1:~ $

    People have overclocked Pi5s to 3GHz. It has 4 CPU cores, so you won’t get 12 threads, but you’re not paying a couple of thousand dollars to build the system, either.

    As I said initially…if you want to get started working with Linux, a Pi is a good way to start. That uSD–once you’re set up and have taken a backup–gives you the ability to completely trash the system and restore it in about 10 minutes just by restoring the backup and rebooting. Or you can get several SD cards and put one OS on each then do a “shut down, swap card, boot” cycle to try out different OSes. Try that on your PC.

  153. birgerjohansson says

    Actress Emilie Dequenne 1981-2025. Cancer sucks. At the millennium, I hoped medicine would catch up with the “emperor of maladies” during my lifetime. Now, I am not so sure.

  157. JM says

    Rolling Stone: Trump Tries to Undo Biden Pardons Via Social Media Proclamation

    President Donald Trump attempted to nullify preemptive pardons granted to members of the Jan. 6 committee that he has suggested he would like to prosecute.
    “The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT,” Trump wrote in the early hours of Monday morning on Truth Social.
    The president attempted to justify his social media proclamation by claiming that the pardons Biden issued were invalid because “they were done by Autopen.” The accusation was based on viral, yet unsubstantiated social media claims made earlier this month by The Heritage Foundation, who claimed they had analyzed a slate of Biden’s signatures and found them to be identical. Regardless of Biden’s alleged usage of an autopen (which has been employed by presidents since Thomas Jefferson was in office), the pardon power of a president is virtually unquestioned, and there is no constitutional provision allowing future presidents to revoke pardons issued by their predecessors.

    This isn’t a real thing yet, just a post on Truth Social. It’s hard to say if anything will come of it but Trump has followed through with some of his absurd ideas. If he does want to try and make this real he will have a lot of trouble getting it by the courts.
    If he was more rational I would say he doesn’t really plan to undo the pardons, rather this is an excuse for a long and punitive investigation. The DOJ can stall and say the issue of the pardons will be dealt with if a case is actually brought. The way Trump is acting right now, who knows? He certainly wants to use the DOJ has his personal enforcers and the pardons get in his way.

  158. whheydt says

    Re: JM @ #156…
    Someone should point out to That Felon in the White House that–if he succeeds in undoing pardons–a future president could under the ones he issued, including the mass pardon of those convicted of J6 offenses.

  159. says

    Followup to JM @156.

    Trump says he’s invalidating some Biden pardons, claiming power he doesn’t have

    Donald Trump doesn’t have the authority to invalidate Joe Biden’s pardons. Trump is apparently simply asserting the right anyway.

    Midway through Barack Obama’s third year as president, Congress approved a controversial measure related to national security, with just 15 minutes to spare before certain surveillance powers were set to expire. The president, however, was in France when the bill cleared Capitol Hill.

    In generations past, this might’ve posed a logistical challenge, but thanks to modern technology, White House officials weren’t concerned: Obama authorized use of the presidential “autopen” to sign the legislation into law. Some House Republicans weren’t pleased, but the administration pointed to a Justice Department guidance, written for George W. Bush, on the legal permissibility of the tool.

    In the years that followed, discussion about the use of autopens has largely evaporated, though late last week, it apparently made a comeback: During remarks at the Justice Department on Friday, Donald Trump questioned Joe Biden’s use of the tool, saying that measures signed by his Democratic predecessor might not be “valid.”

    Two days later, the Republican incumbent posted an item to his social media platform, suggesting that it was the autopen, and not Biden himself, who served as president for four years.

    Shortly after midnight, Trump went considerably further, claiming he was invalidating at least some of Biden’s pardons. [See comment 156]

    There’s a lot to unpack in this 158-word harangue, and there’s probably no point in highlighting every individual error of fact and judgment. The bottom line, however, is relatively straightforward: Trump claims that Biden didn’t actually sign pardons for members of the bipartisan House Jan. 6 committee, so as far as Trump concerned, prosecutors are free to go after them, despite the fact that there’s literally no evidence that they did anything wrong.

    The entire pitch is based on the president’s apparent belief that (a) his immediate predecessor used an autopen to sign the pardons; (b) documents signed by autopens don’t count; and (c) Biden suffered from mental deterioration to such a horrific degree that he wasn’t aware of his own policies and preferences.

    The first point is dubious, given that there’s no evidence that Biden used the tool to issue the pardons; the second point appears unsupported by law; and the third point is offensive on its face.

    But let’s also not lose sight of the forest for the trees: For the first time in American history, a sitting president is asserting the right to invalidate a predecessor’s pardons.

    In other words, as the United States deals with a sustained offensive against the rule of law, Trump has made up a new power for himself that does not exist.

    To be sure, there’s often a disconnect between what Trump says he’s doing and what he’s actually doing. Trump has now claimed in writing that he’s voiding some Biden-era pardons, but given recent history, it’s entirely possible that in the coming hours and days, the White House will pretend he never actually published such a message. […]

    But if Trump seriously takes steps to undo Biden’s pardons, because he feels like it, the coming fight will be dramatic.

  160. says

    In 2021, Joe Biden used his power to raise the minimum wage for federal contractors to $15 an hour. Donald Trump is now turning back the clock.

    Republican leaders understand that the GOP has earned a reputation for championing the interests of the wealthy, but they occasionally make the case that the party has changed.

    Around this time four years ago, for example, then-House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy declared, “The uniqueness of this party today is we’re the workers party.” Around the same time, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas wrote online, “The Republican Party is not the party of the country clubs, it’s the party of hardworking, blue-collar men and women.” [Blatant, laughable bullshit. But they were at least trying to make the claim.]

    It’s difficult to say with confidence whether GOP leaders ever believed their own rhetoric when it came to workers’ interests, but Donald Trump continues to take steps that leave little doubt that the contemporary Republican Party is most certainly not “the workers party.” Bloomberg Law reported:

    President Donald Trump scrapped Biden-era executive orders that raised the minimum wage for federal contractors to $15 and drove federal infrastructure investments toward companies that agree to union neutrality. … In addition to union neutrality, the now canceled EO 14126 favored companies that offer equitable compensation practices and participate in registered apprenticeships.

    […] it was in early 2014 when Barack Obama raised the minimum wage for federal contractors to $10.10 an hour. As we discussed at the time, because government contracts can be lucrative, and so many private enterprises want federal work, the Democratic president, with a stroke of a pen, gave a raise to a whole lot of employees. The shift also sent a message to the private sector that to compete in the labor force, businesses should follow suit.

    Republicans were less than pleased but faced a messaging challenge: Since most Americans support a higher minimum wage, the GOP didn’t want to be seen attacking the Democrat for doing something popular. As an alternative, Republicans pretended to be outraged that Obama advanced one of his goals by way of an executive order.

    Republican Rep. Randy Weber of Texas, for example, called Obama a “Socialistic dictator” and the “Kommandant-In-Chef.” (I assume he meant “chief.”) Then-House Speaker John Boehner suggested the minimum-wage hike for contractors was unconstitutional. Ted Cruz was so incensed that he wrote an op-ed condemning the “imperial presidency of Barack Obama.”

    Undeterred, Biden built on the policy in 2021, raising the wage for federal contractors to $15, amid a series of related efforts to use White House power to encourage corporations that do business with the government to adopt pro-labor policies.

    Trump has now used his power to undo all of these Biden-era steps.

    Trump’s move comes four months after he appeared on NBC News’ “Meet the “Press” and faced a question about the federal minimum wage. Host Kristen Welker reminded him that the federal minimum wage has been $7.25 for more than 15 years and asked whether he was prepared to raise it.

    “It’s a very low number,” Trump conceded, referring to the status quo. “I will agree, it’s a very low number.”

    As the exchange continued, however, Trump, who has spent years offering confusing and contradictory positions on the issue, declared that he believes having a federal minimum wage doesn’t “work.”

    Evidently, he apparently believes raising the minimum wage for federal contractors doesn’t work, either.

  162. says

    Scrotum has given the magat tRUMP a permanent get out of jail free card.

    Now tRUMP has destroyed any remaining rule of law by ignoring court rulings

    The felonious muskrat’s ignorant little cockroaches are destroying Social Security millions may starve

    For many additional criminal reasons, including the murderous acts of the felonious muskrat and the cowardice and lies of schumer the whore, people will die and:

    This nation is far down the death spiral

    Martha and the Vandellas were correct: nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide

  163. KG says

    The characters regarded as people to emulate, like Orbán and Putin and so on, all indicate that the strategy is to create an illiberal democracy or an authoritarian democracy or a strongman democracy. – Babr McQuade quoted by Josh Marshall quoted by Lynna, OM@127

    No: the strategy is to create a pseudo-democracy. Neither Putin nor Orbán nor Trump has any intention of allowing elections or any other constitutional procedure that could remove them from power.

  164. says

    Followup to comments 156, 157 nd 158.

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/tyrant-idiot-thinks-he-can-undo-biden

    […] Now that we think about it, how many January 6 rioters did Trump pardon his first day in office eight-weeks-that-feel-like-eighty-years ago? Fifteen hundred or so? Did he sign all 1,500 pardon documents manually? Because if he didn’t, VOID, VACANT, OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT.

    You may be wondering if the question of whether presidential signatures done with autopens are legally valid has ever come up before. As it happens, the Office of Legal Counsel under George W. Bush wrote a 30-page opinion on the subject back in 2005. The conclusion? It’s legal, shut up:

    The President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill he approves and decides to sign in order for the bill to become law. Rather, the President may sign a bill within the meaning of Article I, Section 7 by directing a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to such a bill, for example by autopen.

    Those are the first sentences of the opinion. You don’t need to read past that! Or at least the aide who has to present the conclusion to Trump with small words and finger puppets doesn’t have to read past that, since we don’t think reading isn’t in his skillset.

    If [Trump] would like to order his own OLC to withdraw that opinion and — ahem — pen a new one that aligns with his own personal view that he should be able to send Adam Schiff to Guantanamo for the crime of performing constitutionally mandated congressional oversight, he’s welcome to try! The OLC is currently headed by a Federalist Society wingnut, so we assume granting Trump whatever power he wants is a mere formality.

    You may also be wondering, can a president even revoke a pardon signed by one of his predecessors? Isn’t the pardon power one of the very few powers granted a president that he can wield with no oversight or accountability, as if he really was the king that Trump’s toadies tell him he is?

    Well, the answer to that is no, a president cannot revoke a pardon granted by his predecessor once the pardon document has been delivered to the person being pardoned. […]

    Nonetheless, if there is any Trump quisling willing to open an investigation, it would be Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Nazi Barbie doll who might soon make us long for the relatively legally ethical reign of Jeff Sessions. So don’t be surprised if the Justice Department claims by the end of Monday that it is looking into whether the pardons were fraudulent because Sleepy Joe Biden was too senile to sign them himself.

    Imagine the number of hours and the amount of labor that various lawyers and judges are now going to have to devote to convincing the Supreme Court that a document signed by the president is valid even if he used an autopen. […]

    Also, this passage in Trump’s statement caught our eye:

    Therefore, those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level.

    Trump has been claiming for a long time that the Select Committee destroyed all its records. Needless to say, he is lying. But when has that ever stopped him: [video at the link]

    The committee did have some videos of witness interviews that were not released due to what it deemed “sensitive” details. Those interviews were archived at … drum roll … the White House and the Department of Homeland Security. So if Trump wanted to get his hands on them, we’re guessing he could.

    The committee didn’t have any documents that proved Trump’s innocence, because such documents do not exist, because he is guilty as fuck. We wonder who he’ll fire when the nonexistent evidence never turns up, due to it being nonexistent.

    Another reason this issue may be popping up now is this story from The New York Post a week ago. It seems the Heritage Foundation claims many of Biden’s executive orders were signed with an autopen, thereby making them invalid for some reason. The only problem, as Newsweek explains, is that Heritage is looking at online and digitized versions of the documents, not the originals. Newsweek says that might explain the discrepancy:

    These copies use a computer-generated signature for where the President signed the document, meaning that online copies of Biden’s signature appear to be auto-signed, but they’re not the original version. There is photographic proof of Biden signing many of the documents that The Heritage Foundation is claiming were signed by autopen.

    You know what else might explain it? That the Heritage Foundation is full of shit. That is the simplest, and therefore correct, explanation.

    Posted by a reader of the article:

    US currency has mechanically reproduced signatures of the Treasurer and Secretary of the Treasury. Does this mean our money is no good?

  165. KG says

    Sorry: the quote @127 actually comes from Lee Bollinger – I got confused by the quote-chain!

  166. birgerjohansson says

    “Why I took down my climate science video”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=vDsjeKo3u3o

    A brief summary: Hossenfelder does not deny that climate change might have played a role on increasing the probability for the LA wildfires (she agrees climate change is very real), she is pissed off because the study seems to be done poorly.

    My spontaneous reaction: as climate deniers cheerfully lie it is extra important to get the facts right (otherwise you give ammunition to the liars). This article was not peer-reviewed but a thing like getting the colors wrong still seems a bit meh.

  167. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Popular Info – Memo details plan to sabotage the Social Security Administration

    The biggest change contemplated by Diaz’s memo is to require “internet identity proofing” for “benefit claims… made over the phone.” When an SSA customer is “unable to utilize the internet ID proofing, customers will be required to visit a field office to provide in-person identity documentation.”

    Currently customers can make claims and verify their identity without using the internet or visiting a SSA office. Fraud is extremely rare because there are many safeguards in place. […] 40% of all claims are currently processed over the phone.
    […]
    The Diaz memo estimates it would require 75,000 to 85,000 in-person visitors per week to SSA’s offices to implement the policy. SSA offices do not currently have the resources to handle an influx of in-person appointments of this size. In 2023, the most recent data available, there were about 119,128 daily visits, on average, to SSA offices. Eight-five thousand more week visits would be a 14% increase. SSA offices no longer accept walk-ins and the wait time for an appointment, even before these changes, averaged over a month.

    The memo anticipates creating a huge surge in demand for in-person appointments as the SSA slashes [12% of its] staff and closes [dozens of] offices. […] Some people need to travel more than 100 miles to get to the nearest location.
    […]
    The memo predicts “service disruption,” “operational strain,” and “budget shortfalls.” It also says preventing people who cannot use the internet or travel to an in-person office from receiving benefits could result in “legal challenges and congressional scrutiny.”
    […]
    On March 12, the day before the Diaz memo was sent, the Washington Post reported that the SSA was considering a proposal to “end telephone service for claims processing.” […] SSA issued a press release saying that “reports in the media that Social Security plans to eliminate telephone services are inaccurate.”
    […]
    The SSA source believes the Diaz memo “is DOGE’s workaround.” The agency can technically claim that Americans can still make claims over the phone. But the fine print of the new policy means these [“unverified”] claims will never be approved without using the internet or making an in-person visit.

  168. says

    […] A lot has changed since Trump first occupied the White House […] During his remarks in 2018, Trump praised some journalists, calling them “incredible, brilliant, powerful, smart, and fair people.” Now, outlets who dare to challenge the president are labeled as being “corrupt.”

    The fact that most administration officials chose not to attend the Gridiron Club dinner, coupled with Washington D.C. insiders breaking the unspoken tradition of toasting the president, suggests that Trump’s relationship with the Beltway media is at a point of no return.

    This makes ample sense. After reclaiming the White House in January, Trump banned the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One because the outlet refused to comply with Trump’s ridiculous request to refer to the “Gulf of Mexico” as the “Gulf of America.” Meanwhile, Trump’s FCC chairman has launched inquiries into three broadcast news outlets after a conservative group alleged they were biased against the president.

    On Friday, Trump also suggested in a speech that media outlets who don’t cover him positively (i.e., that tell the truth) should be deemed illegal. He also dismantled the U.S.-funded broadcast entity, Voice of America, accusing it of being too “radical.”

    […] In January, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced plans to change the briefing room, including allowing bloggers and podcasters into the space.

    Of course, we’ve seen plenty of places bend to Trump since January, such as ABC News submitting to Trump over his defamation lawsuit against the network, but it seems like now, media outlets are finally reaching a breaking point.

    Indeed, reports from the dinner indicated that attendees were well aware of the president’s recent attacks on the press. Politico reported that Woodruff, in a not-so-subtle dig at the president, showed videos of past presidents attending the event, including Trump. According to the Times, this year’s dinner also featured a skit where two attendees portrayed DOGE bro Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

    “I’ll turn the GOP into the AFD [the far-right German party]. What can they do to stop me, Mon frere?” quipped the journalist playing Musk.

    The jokes didn’t stop there. One of the evening’s speakers, Democratic Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland, poked fun at Trump’s friendly relationship with Russia.

    “If I actually wanted to be president, I wouldn’t do any of this,” Moore said. “Instead, I would take my case directly to the people who are in charge of our democracy, the Kremlin.”

    This drew some negative attention from the few attendees still in the president’s orbit. In response to a dig regarding Vance, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, a Trump appointee who was also at the event, walked out in protest, according to the Times.

    This weekend’s event comes ahead of this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, scheduled for April 26. In another break from tradition, Trump did not attend the event throughout his first term, and Leavitt announced on Friday that she would also not be attending this year’s affair.

    As Trump continues to undermine the First Amendment and wreak havoc on the economy, he’s somehow found time to praise outlets that have shifted toward friendlier coverage of him—such as Bezos’ Washington Post.

    Link

  169. says

    A federal appeals court in a 2-1 decision Monday declined to immediately block a judge’s order that the Trump administration reinstate fired probationary employees at six federal agencies.

    The new ruling, which does not address the legality of the firings, refuses the administration’s request for an administrative stay that would temporarily freeze the ruling until the next stage of the appeal.

    “Given that the district court found that the employees were wrongfully terminated and ordered an immediate return to the status quo ante, an administrative stay of the district court’s order would not preserve the status quo,” the court wrote in its ruling. “It would do just the opposite — it would disrupt the status quo and turn it on its head.”

    U.S. Circuit Judge Bridget Bade, a Trump appointee, dissented from her two Democratic-appointed colleagues. Bade warned of a “potential whiplash effect” where the employees rehired under the judge’s order could be fired again.

    “Plaintiffs do not contest these assertions. They argue that government services upon which they and their organizational members rely have been thrown into chaos by the terminations and that they will continue to be injured by the government’s inability to render services,” Bade wrote.

    […] The administration appealed after U.S. District Judge William Alsup, an appointee of former President Clinton who serves in San Francisco, last week ordered officials to reinstate those terminated at six agencies by finding the firings were unlawful. Hours later, a federal judge in Baltimore issued a similar ruling that covered roughly a dozen other agencies.

    As part of Monday’s ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered that written briefing be concluded by Thursday on the administration’s motion to block Alsup’s ruling, pending the full appeal.

    Link

  171. Reginald Selkirk says

    Physicists unlock another clue to brewing the perfect espresso

    Many variables can affect the quality of a steaming cup of espresso, including so-called “channeling” during the brewing process, in which the water doesn’t seep uniformly through the grounds but branches off in various preferential paths instead. This significantly reduces the extraction yield and thus the quality of the final brew. Scientists from the University of Warsaw have gleaned insights into the underlying physics of channeling that will help coffee lovers achieve more consistent results when brewing espresso. They presented their preliminary findings at the American Physical Society’s Global Physics Summit in Anaheim, California, this morning…

  172. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Re: Lynna @168: Reading appeals results is always a roller coaster of counting negations in a sentence.

  173. says

    Scott Bessent Makes Steven Mnuchin Seem Charming

    There are many ways you could describe the current Trump administration.

    Cruel. Feckless. Lawless. Fascistic.

    However, one thing they have in common, whether due to their power or wealth, is that they are detached. There is no better example of this than Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” [video at the link]

    It’s hard to describe how little expectation we had for this cabinet position after it was occupied by lipless charisma void and an ‘80s kids’ movie tycoon villain Steve Mnuchin in the previous Trump administration. But, in one Sunday show appearance, Bessent has somehow made Mnuchin seem like a “man of the people” by comparison.

    Host Kristen Welker asked about how the stock market has reacted to the Trump administration’s actions. Bessent showed how out of touch he truly is.

    WELKER: Worst week for the market in two years. Does that worry you, Mr. Secretary?

    BESSENT: Not at all. I’ve been in the investment business for 35 years. And I can tell you that corrections are healthy. They’re normal. […]

    WELKER: I hear you say you’re not worried about the markets. But nearly 60 percent of Americans are invested in the markets. That’s their retirement savings. What do you say to Americans who have real concerns that their retirement savings may be in jeopardy?

    BESSENT: I say that one week does not the market make.

    Again, this is people’s retirement funds. In an administration that is doing everything possible to gut Social Security, simultaneously destroying people’s 401ks and investments can be disastrous. It’s also rich to be lectured about how little effect the stock market dip should have on average Americans after Trump practically did a Tesla infomercial on the White House lawn because Elon allegedly was crying about his own stock market losses. [Trump Reportedly Only Bought A Tesla To Keep Elon From Sobbing His Whole Face Off ]

    Later, Welker asked Bessent about the Trump administration’s mixed answers about a possible recession. Bessent’s answer was not very reassuring.

    WELKER: Mr. Secretary, can you guarantee the American people here and now that there will be no recession on President Trump’s watch?

    BESSENT: Well, Kristen, you know that there are no guarantees.

    That’s not the answer you give if you truly think this is just a healthy stock market correction, or that your policies are gonna help the economy.

    But Bessent’s worst statement came when Welker played a clip of him lecturing Americans about “cheap goods,” to justify consumers paying more arbitrarily for goods they need because Trump doesn’t get how tariffs work.

    BESSENT: What I’m saying is the American dream is not, “Let them eat flat screens.” […] The American dream is not contingent on cheap baubles they get from China. That it is more than that. And we are focused on affordability. But it’s mortgages, it’s cars, it’s real wage gains.

    Few things:
    – How are Americans supposed to afford homes when the price of them rises due to tariffs on lumber from Canada or building materials from Mexico and China?
    – How does the price of vehicles magically get lower when so many auto-making materials come from Canada, Mexico, and China and that tariffed cost gets passed on to consumers?
    – Considering how conservative assclowns in both parties have fought against a living wage, what “gains” is Bessent talking about?

    I bet Scott Bessent thought he had a banger when he deployed that misattributed Marie Antoinette line he practiced all night in the mirror. However, Bessent unironically showed how his $521 million blinders have made him as aloof to the suffering of the people as the French monarchy was in 1789. [Image showing Fortune headline confirming Bessent’s $521 million in assets]

    Most Americans realistically know they won’t become ultra-wealthy. They just want a life worth living and a way to afford that. They put up with crap bosses, politically caused turmoil, and ever-eroding infrastructure to once in a while treat themselves. Enjoying the Sunday games on your TV or playing your gaming console or a small trip to make memories […]

    […] Scott Bessent might not be a former Hollywood executive producer like Steve Mnuchin was, but he’s doing his part to contribute to an American remake of Les Misérables.

  174. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Video/Transcript: 60 Minutes – US Marine Band forced to cancel concert with students of color after Trump DEI order (13:27)

    there was excitement, last year, when the Marines judged a contest for teenage musicians. The winners would perform with the band. Thirty students were chosen. The concert was scheduled. But, last month, it was canceled. President Trump had issued his executive order against diversity programs, and the young musicians were Black, Hispanic, Indian and Asian. Because they were silenced, many wanted to hear them including veterans of military bands who gathered in an improvised orchestra […] 22 students who had lost their chance to play tuned up with the military band veterans for the concert that was not meant to be heard.
    […]
    American orchestras today are 80% White, 11% Asian, 5% Hispanic and 2% Black. […] The argument behind the executive order is that America has eliminated racism, that no one in this country is held back by race any longer.
    […]
    With the active-duty Marines ordered to stand down, Equity Arc reached out to retirees who answered the call from everywhere, former band members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, Westpoint, the Naval Academy and the Marines. […] The original Marine Band concert would have been seen by hundreds. Here, tonight, these musicians are being heard by millions.

  175. says

    Semisonic blasts use of ‘Closing Time’ in White House deportation video

    “The video, shared on the White House’s official social media accounts, featured a handcuffed man being patted down as the band’s ’90s hit played in the background.”

    Semisonic said it did not authorize and does not condone the White House’s use of their hit “Closing Time” in a video that appears to depict deportation, the band said in a statement Monday. […]

    [video available at the link]

    In the next shot, the audience can see “BORDER PATROL” in capital letters, as people climb up stairs to an airplane in the background, seemingly to be deported from the U.S. […]

    The Minneapolis rock band was quick to denounce the usage of their 1998 hit.

    “We did not authorize or condone the White House’s use of our song in any way. And no, they didn’t ask,” Semisonic said in a statement shared by their publicist. “The song is about joy and possibilities and hope, and they have missed the point entirely.”

    This is one of many incidents in which musicians say they did not authorize President Donald Trump’s campaign or administration to use their songs.

    Last year, Céline Dion’s management team and record label, Sony Music Canada, said the use of her 1997 hit“My Heart Will Go On” at a Donald Trump campaign rally in Montana was “unauthorized.”

    Rihanna did the same in 2018 after “Don’t Stop the Music” was played at another rally.

    The list goes on, with Adele, Steven Tyler and Neil Young also criticizing Trump for using their tunes in rallies over the years.

  176. says

    Sky Captain @173, that was an exceptionally well done 60 Minutes episode.

    The young musicians were great. The Trump administration came off looking both petty and ignorant … without the moderators ever saying that.

  177. says

    42 dead in severe storms and tornadoes that swept across U.S.

    […] Multiple states woke up on Monday morning to damage from dust storms, wildfires, rain, and tornadoes, following nearly 1,500 storm reports across the country from Friday to Sunday.

    Two children died in Transylvania County, North Carolina […] Overall, three deaths were reported in Alabama, three in Arkansas, 12 in Missouri, four in Oklahoma, eight in Kansas, six in Mississippi, two in North Carolina and four in Texas, according to a tally by NBC News.

    Over the weekend, a twister outbreak ripped across seven states — Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana — uprooting trees, tearing apart homes and businesses, and downing power lines. […]

    The strongest confirmed twister was a powerful EF-4 with 190mph winds reported in Jackson County, Arkansas.

    […] Wildfires also raged across Texas and Oklahoma, causing at least four deaths. In Kansas, a dust storm caused a highway pile-up that killed at least eight people.

    […] Heavy snow and intense 60-mph wind gusts are expected to blanket the Sierra Nevada on Monday. Snow will also fall across the Plains and into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan into Tuesday.

    NBC’s Al Roker said conditions would be “bone-dry” in the middle part of the country, creating a critical risk for fire from Denver down to San Angelo, Texas, and east to Oklahoma City.

    On Monday, 42 million people are under fire alerts across the Great Plains and the Florida peninsula. […]

  178. says

    Team Trump is simultaneously condemning judges and criticizing those who condemn judges, which is every bit as bizarre as it seems

    As a rule, Donald Trump’s perspective on criticizing judges depends entirely on whether he’s faring well or poorly in the courts. After his 2020 defeat, for example, Trump, more than any modern American political leader, went after sitting judges with a vengeance — at times even targeting members of their families.

    But when he had better luck in some courts, his position changed. And in the run-up to Election Day 2024, Trump invested a fair amount of time condemning those who criticize judges — as if his own rhetorical record didn’t exist. Such criticisms, Trump said in August, are “probably illegal.” Two weeks later, he went a little further, adding that judicial criticisms should be “illegal.”

    In case that wasn’t quite enough, Trump — who, again, spent years publicly chastising judges — went so far as to declare, “These people should be put in jail the way they talk about our judges.”

    At face value, this seems fairly predictable: The president admonishes judges when he’s struggling, and he condemns those who criticize judges when he’s succeeding. What’s weird, however, is when Team Trump takes both positions simultaneously.

    On Friday, for example, Trump delivered unhinged remarks at the Justice Department, where he defended U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump-appointed conservative who helped dismiss his classified documents case. “It’s totally illegal what they do,” the president told the law enforcement officials in the audience. “I just hope you can all watch for it, but it’s totally illegal.”

    That was, of course, bonkers. In the United States, it’s still legal to criticize judges, especially when they badly mishandle important cases.

    But while the president suggests it’s “totally illegal” to criticize a judge he likes, those around him are targeting judges who dare to rule in ways the White House doesn’t like. The Associated Press reported:

    As the courts deliver a series of setbacks to his dramatic attempt to change the federal government without congressional approval, President Donald Trump’s supporters are echoing some of the rhetoric and actions that elsewhere have preceded attacks on the judiciary.

    The Wall Street Journal had a related report over the weekend, too:

    Having taken the White House and captured the Congress, President Trump’s movement is unleashing its fury on the one branch of government it doesn’t fully control: the judiciary.

    As more judges have blocked or slowed some of Trump’s initiatives, the president’s surrogates have been increasingly strident in their responses, casting adverse rulings as not only incorrect but also illegitimate.

    This isn’t just a simple matter of hypocrisy; it has quickly devolved into incoherence.

    As the president condemns public criticisms of judges, prominent members of his White House team — from Elon Musk to Karoline Leavitt to Stephen Miller — have ramped up their public criticisms of judges, often in highly provocative ways.

    In the meantime, some congressional Republicans are talking about impeaching judges, and Fox News had a segment over the weekend in which the network literally showed photographs of judges who had ruled against the administration in recent weeks. […]

    Sigh. I’m sure there is more of this to come.

  179. says

    The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will no longer offer gender-affirming medical treatment to transgender former service members, the department announced Monday, citing an executive order President Trump signed on his first day back in office.

    Steven L. Lieberman, the department’s acting undersecretary for health, wrote in a March 14 memo first reported by NPR that the VA would rescind a 2018 directive outlining “the respectful delivery of health care to transgender and intersex Veterans.”

    The 2018 policy protected access to treatments like hormone therapy and pre- and post-operative care for gender-affirming surgery, though the VA has never offered transition-related surgeries. The policy also allowed trans veterans to use restrooms and be assigned rooms in VA facilities that match their gender identity and required staff to use their chosen names and pronouns.

    In a news release on Monday, the VA said it was reversing the policy to comply with Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order proclaiming that the U.S. government recognizes only two sexes, male and female, and preventing federal dollars from being spent on what the White House has called “gender ideology.” […]

    Link

    More at the link.

  180. says

    WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Demonstrating his seriousness about declaring war on Canada, on Monday Donald J. Trump obtained a medical note from his new podiatrist exempting him from military service.

    The podiatrist, Dr. Mehmet Oz, indicated in the note that a “Vietnam War-era issue involving bone spurs” would prevent Trump from participating in an invasion of America’s northern neighbor.

    “President Trump’s bone spurs would become dangerously inflamed if exposed to Canada’s frozen tundra,” Oz wrote. “If he decides to put boots on the ground, his feet should not be in those boots.”

    Link

  181. birgerjohansson says

    Lynna, OM @ 179
    Here is another item from the site.

    “Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg announced on Friday that the company was reconsidering its fact-checking policy after the community notes system called him a sociopath.

    Although that clinical term was the first choice of most users to describe him, community notes also favored jerkwad, asshat, and tool.” 😃

  182. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Aaron Rupar‬:

    [WH Press Sec] Leavitt: “We want to restore the Department of Justice to an institution that focuses on fighting law and order.” [Video clip]

    ‪Eric Columbus: “Mission accomplished!”

    ‪Aaron Rupar:

    There are actually questions about whether a verbal order carries the same weight as a written order”—Leavitt on court orders and Trump’s compliance (or lack thereof) with them. [Video clip]

    Anna Bower:

    I’m gonna scream.
    A VERBAL ORDER FROM THE BENCH IS STILL A JUDICIAL ORDER WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!
    THIS IS WRONG. WHAT?!
    update: I AM STILL SCREAMING

    ‪Eric Columbus: “It’s not an Order unless it’s from the Order region of France. If not, it’s just sparkling jurisprudence.”

    Brad Moss: “And this precedent is so well established the only example we found was from another circuit 35 years ago. Further, since Boasberg DID issue a written order the case isn’t even on point.”

    Rando 1: “Fronting for an administration that rules via Tweets…”

    Rando 2: “Please talk about the fringe on the flag next.”

    Rando 3: “Judges love being told what they say doesn’t matter.”
     
    Anna Bower: “Update: I’M STILL SCREAMING BC THESE MEMBERS OF THE BAR ARE ACTUALLY GOING WITH THE ‘A VERBAL ORDER FROM THE BENCH IS NOT ENFORCEABLE’ DEFENSE”

    Joshua Friedman:

    DOJ tells Judge Boasberg that he should CANCEL the 5 p.m. hearing “because there has been no violation of the Court’s orders, and because the government is not prepared to disclose any further national security or operational security details.” […] he should “vacate the hearing and de-escalate the grave incursions on Executive Branch authority that have already arisen.”

    DOJ: “Contrary to Plaintiffs’ assertion, an oral directive is not enforceable as an injunction.”
    […]
    DOJ: Even if DOJ *did* defy the court’s orders, the court has no right to constrain the president’s “inherent Article II authority […]”
    […]
    Note that the attorney general of the United States put her name on this.

    Anna Bower: “Judge Boasberg DENIES government’s request”
    Rando 4: “Was it a verbal or written denial?”
    Anna Bower: “sry judge I won’t be complying with ur order, it was signed by autopen”

  183. says

    Sky Captain @181, well I guess that Trump lackeys at DOJ will try anything, no matter how incredibly stupid it is.

    In other news: On Ukraine, Trump struggles with the meaning of ‘sarcasm’ (again)

    Related video at the link, with Richard Engel reporting from Ukraine.

    It’s no secret that Donald Trump repeatedly promised voters that he’d end the devastating war in Ukraine before he was sworn in a for a second term, and he failed. Trump similarly promised the public that he’d resolve the crisis “within 24 hours” of returning to the White House, and he failed.

    In fact, by some accounts, Trump didn’t even try to keep his promise.

    Nearly two months later, The Associated Press reported on his new explanation for ignoring his vow.

    […] Trump said Friday that he was “being a little bit sarcastic” when he repeatedly claimed as a candidate that he would have the Russia-Ukraine war solved within 24 hours — and even before he even took office.

    Trump was asked about the vow he repeatedly made on the campaign trail during an interview for the “Full Measure” television program as his administration is still trying to broker a solution 54 days into his second term.

    “Well, I was being a little bit sarcastic when I said that,” Trump said in a clip released ahead of the episode that aired over the weekend. [video at the link]

    The obvious problem with this is that it’s plainly false. Then-candidate Trump repeated the vow, in apparent seriousness, throughout the campaign season — without a hint of humor or sarcasm.

    The less-obvious problem is that the president keeps using the word “sarcastic,” but he doesn’t appear to know what it means.

    About a year ago, for example,Trump accidentally conflated House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi with former Ambassador Nikki Haley, and instead of simply acknowledging the fact that he’d misspoken, he instead insisted that he was being “sarcastic” when he made the error.

    It was not the first time. In 2020, for example, after the president suggested injecting Covid patients with disinfectant, Trump responded to public ridicule by saying the comments were intended to be “sarcastic.” He was obviously lying.

    But it was a familiar lie. When Trump argued publicly that Barack Obama was “the founder of ISIS,” he later defended the rhetoric by saying it was “sarcasm.” In 2014, he referred to Jimmy Carter as the “late, great Jimmy Carter,” adding soon after that he was “just being sarcastic.”

    The president also said that he wanted White House officials to treat him the way North Korean officials treat Kim Jong Un. When reporters pressed for some kind of explanation for what he meant, Trump said: “You don’t understand sarcasm.” (The video of his original comments makes clear he wasn’t being sarcastic.)

    In 2019, Trump reflected on his 2016 call for Russia to intervene in the elections on his behalf, telling a CPAC audience that it was another example of him being “sarcastic.”

    A year later, Trump confused Nobel Prizes with the Pulitzer Prize, only to defend the comments by claiming — you guessed it — that it was an example of “sarcasm.”

    To borrow a line from “The Princess Bride,” the president keeps using the word “sarcastic,” but I don’t think it means what he thinks it means.

  184. says

    Conor McGregor, the bigoted UFC fighter, visited the White House on St. Patrick’s Day to plead on behalf of Ireland.

    “Our government has long since abandoned the voices of the people of Ireland, and it’s high time that America is made aware of what is going on,” McGregor said alongside press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

    McGregor went on to claim that rural towns in his home country are “overrun” by “illegal immigration racket” and locals have become “a minority” in “one swoop.” [JFC]

    […] McGregor has become a figurehead for the far-right movement in Ireland, and his statements seem to echo a similar sentiment that Trump’s voter base has in the U.S. McGregor is also well known for his racist and homophobic remarks.

    However, Ireland’s government was quick to say that the Irish do not share McGregor’s nationalist values. Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin took to X to call McGregor’s remarks wrong, adding that they “do not reflect the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day, or the views of the people of Ireland.”

    The country’s minister for foreign affairs also addressed the fighter’s visit to the White House. Speaking to reporters in New York City, Simon Harris said that McGregor “is not here in the United States representing Ireland or the people of Ireland. … He doesn’t speak for Ireland. He doesn’t speak for the people of Ireland. He has no mandate to do such.”

    […] McGregor and Trump share a few things in common, like their history of alleged sexual assault. In 2024, McGregor paid $250,000 to a woman who accused him of raping her in a Dublin hotel room in 2018. […]

    while on the surface this may be nothing other than some camaraderie, the growing connection between UFC and far-right ideology has been deepening.

    Trump’s inauguration guest list alone had White, McGregor, podcast host and UFC commentator Joe Rogan, fighters and boxers Jon Jones, and Jake and Logan Paul.

    Bryce Mitchell, another UFC fighter who attended the inauguration, praised Adolf Hitler and denied the Holocaust on his podcast shortly before the event. […]

    Link

  185. says

    Fired workers return to federal agencies — but are put on paid leave

    As a result of recent court orders, federal employees are returning to their jobs — but are being put on paid leave. [!]

    A spokesperson for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told The Hill that as a result of a court restraining order, it was rescinding the terminations of 419 employees.

    The spokesperson said that these employees are “mostly in an administrative leave status.”

    The Hill also obtained a notice that the Commerce Department sent to a staffer it had fired. The notice said that the employee will be reinstated, but that for the time being the employee will be placed in “paid, non-duty status.”

    The employee will remain on paid leave until the court case is resolved or until the department decides otherwise, according to the notice viewed by The Hill. Employees are subject to being fired again depending on the ultimate outcome of the case.

    […] more firings are expected in the weeks ahead, as the Trump administration seeks additional staff cuts. Another 1,000 workers are slated to be cut at NOAA, while the National Park Service could lose 30 percent of its payroll.

  186. Reginald Selkirk says

    Trump plan to fund Musk’s Starlink over fiber called “betrayal” of rural US

    A federal broadband official departed the US government with a warning that a Trump administration plan will strand rural Americans with worse Internet access in order to help Elon Musk secure public money for Starlink.

    “Stranding all or part of rural America with worse Internet so that we can make the world’s richest man even richer is yet another in a long line of betrayals by Washington,” wrote Evan Feinman, who had been a Commerce Department official and director of the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program since 2022.

    As Politico reported, Feinman made the statement in “a blistering email to his former colleagues on his way out the door Sunday warning that the Trump administration is poised to unduly enrich Elon Musk’s satellite Internet company with money for rural broadband.”

    Feinman left the department on Friday. His departure came less than two weeks after Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick announced that BEAD was reversing the Biden administration’s decision to prioritize fiber Internet networks when distributing grants from the $42.45 billion fund…

  188. says

    Tom Homan Is Boss Of Trump Nazi Immigration Gym Class, Obey His Whistle!

    “Whistle! WHISTLE!!!!!”

    In an administration that selects for idiot blowhards, it takes some work to make yourself stand out. So mazel tov to gaseous shit goblin Tom Homan for doing the work. He’s the perfect Trump lickspittle: he’s glib, he’s cruel, he’s so dumb […], and he’s so very loudly but confidently wrong about everything. […]

    Homan, the White House border czar, was out in public with his trademark gravel-voiced bluster on Monday, trying to provoke a contest with the American judiciary over the Trump administration’s trafficking a couple of hundred Venezuelans to be used as slave labor in an El Salvador mega-prison. This, as best we can tell, is like 90 percent of Homan’s job: TV hits aimed squarely at the melting Cabbage Patch doll in the Oval Office, who loves nothing more than to see his apple-polishers acting like tough guys while praising him on the idiot box.

    First, he stopped by “Fox & Friends” to chat with some dude who is not Steve Doocy, but was filling in […]

    Hey, do you want to listen to five minutes of a sneering human thumb all but daring a judge to exercise his judicial authority? Of course you don’t! [video at the link]

    That’s neat, the way these two are practically jizzing in their pants at the sight of the deportees shackled, heads newly shaved, being manhandled onto buses and taken to an El Salvador prison, where again, they will be used as slave labor, according to El Salvador’s president. There is another term for what this action represents, and it rhymes with yuman grafficking.

    Anyway, here’s some of Homan’s word vomit:

    “The judge made some comment about returning the flights. We’re already in international waters. We’re outside the borders of the United States. I’m the border czar. Once you are outside the borders, you know, it is what it is.”

    The planes were over international waters. Were Tom Homan and the brain trust that runs ICE over international waters? They were not! They were still very much in the United States, representing the very American government that is the entity the judge is directing, not the physical flights. There is no “drrrrr plane was over international waters so suck it, Your Honor drrrrrr” exception. [Good points!]

    Homan went on to sneer that he couldn’t believe a “radical judge” wouldn’t want these “terrorists,” whom he accused of being an invasion force directed by the government of Venezuela to wreak havoc inside the US, out of the country. Which is not what the judge wants. What he wants is for due process and the law to be followed, which is his goddamn job. […]

    We’d say that Homan knows this and is blustering, but he might not know it. He’s pretty dumb.

    “We’re not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the left thinks. We’re coming.”

    Judges love hearing you don’t care what they think. Thank you for basically writing Judge Boasberg’s criminal contempt ruling for him, we’re sure he appreciates it.

    Okay, we’re getting ahead of ourselves, but we’re guessing at least some judges still take the judiciary’s role seriously. Otherwise, what is the point of them?

    And even taking Homan at face value is conceding the assertion that all the people on the flights were members of Tren de Aragua, which we are very much not conceding. How do you know these guys are all gangbangers? Apparently it involves reading entrails or something, as Homan told a scrum of reporters later on Monday: [video at the link]

    He went on to add that the processes of identifying gang members is “law enforcement sensitive,” which is cop speak for There’s no criteria, we’re guessing based on some shit we heard on a Daily Wire podcast.

    Homan was further shocked, SHOCKED WE TELL YOU, that the media would question the president’s authority to deport terrorists instead of celebrating […]

    In the longer clip, a reporter mentions that Trump is claiming the authority to carry out these deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which is an old law. Homan responds that it’s not as old as the Constitution, and “we still follow that, don’t we?”

    NO, WE REALLY DON’T THINK WE DO FOLLOW THE CONSTITUTION ANYMORE […] THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT.

    Homan might have even more reason to be mad later, since Judge Boasberg called for a hearing late Monday afternoon to find out why his explicit orders concerning the deportation flights was ignored. (DOJ tried to convince him to cancel the hearing — in a filing signed by the dream team of Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, maybe nobody left at DOJ with any self-respect was willing — and he almost immediately told DOJ to suck it.) We don’t imagine the judge is going to be happy a) because of the ignoring of his orders, and b) because DOJ tried to weasel out of having to answer for it.

    Unfortunately, we imagine Tom Homan will continue gracing us with his screen presence, partly because he’s trying to placate the boss, who is reportedly mad that deportations haven’t been happening faster. But also because he’s a giant toady.

    Embedded links to additional sources are available at the main link.

  189. Reginald Selkirk says

    Harvard offers free tuition to families earning less than $200,000

    Harvard University has announced that it is making tuition free for families who earn less than $200,000 (£154,000) a year.

    For families earning less than $100,000, Harvard will also cover expenses like housing and health insurance.

    The move is aimed at making Harvard more affordable for middle-income families..

    Interesting what they consider to be the poverty level.

    This does not put poor students on an equal level, since they are much less likely to have a parent who is an alumnus/alumna, and therefore less likely to be offered legacy admission status.

  190. says

    Followup to Reginald @185 and me @186.

    This live coverage is interesting. It tracks Judge Boasberg’s interactions with Justice Department lawyers.

    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/03/17/us/trump-news

    […] Judge Boasberg lays out what he wants to know from the government in this hearing on the deportation flights: how many planes left the U.S. on Saturday carrying immigrants deported to El Salvador; where those planes landed; what authority these people were removed under; and what time the planes took off and what time they landed. He says he also wants to know what time individuals were transferred into the custody of foreign countries.

    […] Boasberg says the whole point of this hearing is to find out what happened. Kambli [Justice Department lawyer] keeps repeating that no flights took off from U.S. territory after the Boasberg’s order was issued on Saturday night.

    Judge Boasberg cites two flights leaving Texas and headed toward El Salvador and asks if Kambli can confirm at least that. But Kambli says the only information he is authorized to disclose — even to the judge — is that the government did not violate the order. He cannot say more, he says, based on “national security concerns.”

    Just for the sake of context, Judge Boasberg once sat on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and has deep experience with some of the nation’s most classified secrets. […]

  191. says

    Update to comment 189:

    Judge Boasberg now addresses the government’s argument that it did not violate his order because the planes had passed outside of U.S. airspace by the time his written ruling came down. The judge says the problem with that position is that he still has power over the officials who make the decisions about the planes, even if the planes themselves were outside of U.S. territorial jurisdiction.

  192. lumipuna says

    Hello.

    In July 2023, this Russian neonazi was arrested on an international warrant (for war crimes in Ukraine) while he attempted to travel through Finland, to visit relatives in France:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Petrovsky

    By that time, he was already also widely sanctioned and banned entry by most western countries. He entered Finland under the new name Voislav Torden, which is apparently his current legal name in Russia and Finland. I gather that he had acquired a residence permit in Finland with that name, and was planning to live here more or less permanently with his wife and kids – he may have been hoping to maintain his previous networks with Nordic neonazis. However, the border authorities caught up on him.

    The Finnish justice system refused to extradite him to Ukraine due to human rights concerns, but he was tried here instead. Last week, he was convicted on four counts of war crimes and given a life sentence. Predictably, the Russian embassy condemned the conviction as bogus, just because they say so.

    Now, Russia is notorious for arresting and convicting foreigners (mainly US citizens) on bogus charges, to be used as trading pieces in prisoner exchange for Russian spies, saboteurs and assassins who have been detained in the west. Torden may eventually become a target of these exchange deals, possibly involving the US government. The current US president seems to have a habit of claiming, rather laughably, that no concessions are made in deals negotiated under his leadership whenever some US citizen is released from Russia. I want to remind that nobody – especially US citizens but also Finns and others – should believe that claim, or travel to Russia under any circumstances.

  193. says

    Followup to comments 185, 186, 189 and 190.

    Here is NBC’s live coverage, in case some readers cannot access the New York Times coverage:
    Trump administration live updates: Judge holds a hearing on deportations

    The NBC live coverage also covers trade tensions (tariffs), a campaign finance complaint filed against a group associated with Elon Musk, the back-and-forth about returning the Statue of Liberty to France, and Trump’s baseless claims about pardons issued by Biden.

    Related video at the link.

  194. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (American Immigration Council):

    their third argument, which is inherent presidential authority to move military forces.
    /again, these were not military flights!

    Dara Lind (Immigration journalist):

    the word contempt was uttered, by Boasberg, as a way of summarizing his line of questioning related to compliance with his TRO.
    Only once, without an explicit threat attached, but still.

    Boasberg: Two more questions for Mr. Kambli (US) that don’t relate to contempt / disobeying court orders. […]

    Katie Phang (MSNBC):

    Boasberg: Tomorrow by Noon give me the info that I previously ordered and also include a written declaration about the third flight.

    Also Boasberg: “and I will memorialize all of this in written form because apparently my oral orders don’t carry much weight.”

    damn

  195. Reginald Selkirk says

    @many

    ‘We’re not stopping’: Trump border czar vows deportations to continue despite court orders

    President Donald Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan doubled down on the administration’s mass deportation campaign on Monday, saying he plans to continue the aggressive roundups and removals despite court rulings and injunctions halting them.

    “We’re not stopping,” Homan told Fox News in an interview. “I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the left thinks. We’re coming.” …

  196. Reginald Selkirk says

    Former Texas megachurch pastor accused of child sex abuse surrenders in Oklahoma

    A former pastor of a Texas megachurch accused of child sexual abuse surrendered to Oklahoma authorities Monday.

    Robert Preston Morris, 63, turned himself in to officials in Osage County, where he was charged last week with five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child, Phil Bacharach, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office, told The Associated Press.

    Court records show an Osage County judge set a $50,000 bond and ordered Morris to surrender his passport…

  197. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Follow-up to #107.

    Marisa Kabas (The Handbasket):

    NYT reports DOGE returned to United States Institute of Peace […] today and gained entry this time. Working on finding out more.

    NYT didn’t give any more detail. It was just a ‘live’ mini article.

    Nahal Toosi (Politico):

    Good Lord. Latest from US Institute of Peace:

    The following is attributable to USIP Acting President and CEO George Moose: “DOGE has broken into our building.“

    USIP has repeatedly told DOGE that it’s not a federal agency or part of the executive branch. But DOGE demanded access anyway. Which makes me wonder: Does DOGE want access to any org that gets federal funding?

  198. Reginald Selkirk says

    Iguanas likely crossed the Pacific millions of years ago on a record-setting rafting trip

    Researchers have long wondered how iguanas got to Fiji, a collection of remote islands in the South Pacific. Most modern-day iguanas live in the Americas — thousands of miles and one giant ocean away.

    They thought maybe they scurried there through Asia or Australia before volcanic activity pushed Fiji so far away.

    But new research suggests that millions of years ago, iguanas pulled off the 5,000 mile (8,000 kilometer) odyssey on a raft of floating vegetation — masses of uprooted trees and small plants. That journey is thought to be a record — further than any other land-dwelling vertebrate has ever traveled on the ocean.

    Scientists think that’s how iguanas got to the Galapagos Islands off of Ecuador and between islands in the Caribbean. Initially they thought Fiji might be a bit too far for such a trip, but in a new study, researchers inspected the genes of 14 iguana species spanning the Americas, the Caribbean and Fiji. They discovered that Fijian iguanas were most closely related to desert iguanas from North America, and that the two groups split off around 31 million years ago.

    The researchers created a statistical model using that information and other tidbits about where iguanas live today and how they may spread. It suggested that the iguanas most likely floated to Fiji from North America…

  199. says

    lumipuna @191, thanks for that update.

    In other news, as reported by The New York Times:

    Harvard announced on Monday that it plans to offer free tuition for students whose families earn $200,000 and below, making it the latest elite school to expand financial aid after the Supreme Court banned the use of racial preferences in college admissions. The plan with the new income cap will take effect starting this fall. Previously at Harvard, only families with incomes under $85,000 were offered free tuition. The median household income in the United States is about $80,000.

    Good news. Harvard expanded the offer of free tuition.

  200. says

    The Brave New World of Oligarch Lordships, by Josh Marshall

    A couple weeks ago, the clarion of digital wrongdoing in the second Trump administration, Wired, published an article entitled ‘Startup Nation’ Groups Say They’re Meeting Trump Officials to Push for Deregulated ‘Freedom Cities’. I wrote about these guys, or one subset of them, in early January. Dryden Brown is chief of a startup called Praxis, which is in the “business” of founding new sovereign “start up societies.” On paper, he claims to have raised half a billion dollars for his company. But, actually, those are commitments contingent on his founding a new sovereign state. So that’s kind of like a lot of richies committing money to your new unicorn farm contingent on your finding two unicorns. In any case, Dryden had been focused on finding a chunk of land to found a new “network state” in the Mediterranean after getting bounced out of Africa. But once Donald Trump started making noises that Greenland might be on the market, he flew to Greenland to meet with officials and see if he could buy it.

    In any case, that’s our boy Dryden. This new piece in Wired is about Trey Goff, the “chief of staff” of a thing called “Prospera,” which is a sorta, kinda “network state” recently established in Honduras, which the current government of Honduras is already trying to abolish. Prospera and a few other “network states” in the making are based on laws for “Special Economic Zones” which exist in some countries. The conceptual structure stems from certain duty-free areas that exist in certain countries, free ports of various kinds which have long existed and have often, but not always, been tied up with the history of European colonialism and, of course, the Special Administrative Regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau. U.S. urban policy has a sort of pale version of this in “enterprise zones” where businesses starting up in a certain area get certain tax benefits or expedited regulatory review. If you read about “Prospera,” a decent amount of at least the surface appeal is having these kind of boutique nerdvilles where tech micro-bros can high five each other because, like, if you want to buy a croissant at the coffee shop you have to pay in bitcoin. Stuff like that. The “government,” very much by design, follows the structure of venture investing, with different classes of stock and thus voting power. All that fun stuff.

    Goff is working with a lobbying group called Freedom Cities Coalition, which Goff claims is getting a great reception at the White House and on Capitol Hill, with the idea of drafting legislation to create 10 “freedom cities” in the United States. The model they seem to be most interested in is creating interstate compacts in which two states neighboring each other set aside contiguous pieces of land and hand it over to a tech bro to run. I’m skeptical we’ll be seeing that legislation anytime soon, though I’m certainly not ruling it out, depending on how the next couple years go. You often have this kind of rah-rah talk at the beginning of a new administration. But I’m focusing on it because in addition to it being fascinating and thoroughly dystopian in itself, it’s an important window into what’s happening right now with DOGE. Once you get beneath what we might call the cyber-libertarian spray tan, these are really digital lordships which at a fundamental level would be very at home in the Middle Ages or in the early transitional phases of a number of European maritime empires.

    The second paragraph of the Wired piece gives you a good idea of what the real goals are …

    According to interviews and presentations viewed by WIRED, the goal of these cities would be to have places where anti-aging clinical trials, nuclear reactor startups, and building construction can proceed without having to get prior approval from agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

    You can see some of the problems right away. I actually believe we should, under a tight regulatory regime, be investing more in civilian nuclear power. But you can see the problem here for anyone who lives downwind of a “freedom city” owned by a group of tech bros. They’d be able to crank up a nuclear reactor without any sign off from federal nuclear regulators. Same goes for whatever they might want to do with other pollutants and the EPA.

    I’ve had a lot of people ask me as Elon’s crew has taken his DOGE firing squads door-to-door through NIH: why are they doing this? Everyone gets why some ultra-rich people want to abolish Social Security or Medicare. They don’t need it. But anyone can get cancer. How can they possibly think that’s a good idea? As I explain, part of it is the MAGA/oligarch belief that higher education and the research sector are the seedbed of the people they see as their political foes. So destroying America’s biomedical research capacity is, to them, kind of like draining the swamp. Perverse, but that is really how they see it. And from a certain degenerate perspective, they’re kind of right. A lot of these folks also think that AI is ready to take over. I’ve talked to a lot of medical and biomedical researchers over the last two months. And not a single one of them doesn’t think machine learning isn’t at least a major new part of research. But this is different. A lot of the people in Silicon Valley think AI is ready to take over entirely. But as you can see from that graf above, there’s another simple thing at play: they want to bring Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” ethos to clinical trials. In Nerdville you can try out the latest gene editing idea without the now-obsolete, rival nerds at the FDA getting in anyone’s business. Just click through the EULA and you’re good to go.

    Some people won’t agree with me on this. But the level of risk aversion we apply to the regulation and testing of medications is fundamentally a matter of democratic self-government. Just as Congress would be totally within its rights if not wisdom to shut down USAID and a slew of other agencies, if the American people through their organs of self-government decide that we should take greater risks for greater potential gain, they can do that. But you can see that the real idea here is to stand up what amounts to a sovereignty-free-zone where private corporations can step out of democratic self-government, which is of course the point. As I said, there’s nothing particularly “digital” or “networked” about any of this. These are just lordships which oligarchs now want to carve out of a democratic Republic. And that is the best way to understand DOGE. It’s not geographical. But it amounts to what we might call a time-out from the Constitution and democratic self-government. It’s all up to Musk. Yes, Donald Trump could pull his license, probably. But with that license, it’s all his call.

    And in case you think I’m exaggerating, you should look at this thread from earlier this month from Balaji Srinivasan, an extremely influential Silicon Valley venture capitalist in what we might call the Elon-Thiel-o-sphere. As he proposed in a tweet on March 5th, the key to rebuilding American manufacturing was the creation of a Special Elon Zone in Texas. “There’s a simple way to rebuild manufacturing in the US: just give @elonmusk control of a huge swath of land surrounding Starbase, Texas and allow him to set whatever regulations he wants.”

    He goes on …

    Given the security risks Elon faces, he’ll need border control. So you might designate the land surrounding Starbase to be a military base or something similar, so that he can fence it off and determine at his sole discretion who can enter. Similarly, ideally every single person in the zone has opted in to be there, so no one can complain about the pro-builder regulations.

    And what about the laws of the state of Texas or the United States? Well, it turns out Balaji, as he seems to be universally known, has an innovative idea of how executive orders work. He continues …

    President Trump and Governor Abbott of Texas can use executive orders to remove obsolete laws at state and federal level. And for anything they can’t remove, they can direct state and federal police to exercise discretion in terms of non-enforcement. Think of Starbase as a “sanctuary city”, but for innovation — using leftist tactics in reverse.

    And it gets better.

    Nail it, then scale it. Once there’s traction, replicate the idea in other states, giving other proven founders like @PalmerLuckey their own special economic zones. I’m sure Florida and Ohio would want theirs after Texas proves it out.

    Luckey, in case you’re not familiar with him, is another member of the Elon-Thiel-o-sphere. He founded Oculus and then sold it to Facebook. He was a tech mogul for Trump before it was cool, way back in 2016. He now runs the military contractor Anduril. His sister is married to Matt Gaetz. Apparently Palmer gets a lordship too.

    Will Elon soon be the sovereign over a chunk of Texas? Are we about to start handing out digital lordships to the top oligarchs? I have no idea. What interests me about this, however, is that we’re actually in the midst of one such experiment. A digital lordship is really what DOGE is. It’s not geographical. Or rather, it’s the entire country. We don’t know how long it will last. And, of course, there’s a lot else that’s going on at the same time. It’s happening within Donald Trump’s rapid effort to turn the American Republic into an autocracy. But it’s distinct. And it really lines up in every particular with the proposed Tech Oligarch lordships operating under the banner of “freedom cities.”

  201. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Fact checking a line in an otherwise terrible Schumer NYT interview.

    Eric Umansky (ProPublica):

    Schumer told the NYT, “I started my career protesting the Vietnam War.”

    What a classmate recalled: Schumer “wanted to avoid taking any firm stance.”

    [HarvardCrimson – Harvard’s ‘Marshmallow Revolution,’ 50 Years Later]

    Blustein remembers Schumer as “one of the liberal movers and shakers” at the time. On the other hand, Daniel J. Pipes ’71, an SJP organizer, remembers him as someone who “wanted to avoid taking any firm stance.” Pipes claims that his peers never thought Schumer would be able to go into politics.

  202. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    AP – Trump administration guts board of US Institute of Peace

    The Trump administration fired most of the board […] and sent its new leader into the Washington headquarters […] on Monday […] The remaining three members of the group’s board—Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Defense University President Peter Garvin—fired President and CEO George Moose on Friday
    […]
    [DOGE] entered the building despite protests that the institute is not part of the executive branch. USIP called the police, whose vehicles were outside the building Monday evening.
    […]
    Moose vowed legal action, saying that “what has happened here today is an illegal takeover by elements of the executive branch of a private nonprofit.” […] Moose noted that “it was very clear that there was a desire on the part of the administration to dismantle a lot of what we call foreign assistance, and we are part of that family.”
    […]
    White House spokesperson Anna Kelly pointed to USIP’s “noncompliance” with Trump’s order. After that, “11 board members were lawfully removed, and remaining board members appointed Kenneth Jackson acting president,” she said. “Rogue bureaucrats will not be allowed to hold agencies hostage. The Trump administration will enforce the President’s executive authority and ensure his agencies remain accountable to the American people.”

    Jackson had been seen earlier Monday trying to get into the nonprofit’s building.

    Moose said the organization had been speaking with DOGE since last month, trying to explain its independent status. Speaking of Trump, he said, “I can’t imagine how our work could align more perfectly with the goals that he has outlined: keeping us out of foreign wars, resolving conflicts before they drag us into those kinds of conflicts.”
    […]
    Chief of security Colin O’Brien said police on Monday helped DOGE members enter the building and that the private security team for the organization had its contract canceled.

    * The three stooges were automatic board members per USIP’s founding statute, per the Wikipedia link @87.

  203. Bekenstein Bound says

    The TL;DR of the “digital lordships” thing being that their endgame there is being allowed to employ slave labor and experiment on people. Paging Dr. Mengele …

  204. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Follow-up to #201.

    NBC – US Institute of Peace says DOGE has broken into its building

    USIP employees called the Metropolitan Police Department and reported it as a break-in. Police cars were outside USIP headquarters

     
    Anjali Dayal (International politics professor, Former USIP 2022-2023):

    It appears as though the DC police let DOGE in against the wishes of USIP officials and then kicked those USIP officials out, a situation which is even more troubling than first reported [Screenshot]

    [NYT live post]: Lin said that the U.S. Institute for Peace called the D.C. police on the Musk team members in an effort to stop them from trespassing […] But instead, the D.C. police allowed them to enter and kicked out the institute’s officials. Before the D.C. police arrived, the Musk team had tried for hours to enter the building.

    It’s hard to imagine what legitimate grounds MPD could have had for kicking officials out of their own building and letting DOGE into a building that the U.S. government does not own.

    This is again one of those situations that makes you sound like a lunatic if you explain it in plain language to someone else.
    […]
    first, in contrast to the New York Times piece above, this NBC report only says the MPD was present, not that they let DOGE in (the piece doesn’t address the logistics of how DOGE got in). Second, the stronger claim—that MPD let DOGE in—comes from USIP’s lawyer. [Screenshot]

    [NYT live post]: with the help of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, a lawyer for the institute said.

    “DOGE just came into the building—they’re inside the building—they’re bringing the F.B.I. and brought a bunch of D.C. police,” said Sophia Lin, a lawyer with the firm Picard Kentz and Rowe. She was speaking on the phone from the street outside the institute’s building after she, her co-counsel and the institute’s chief security officer were forced out, she said.

    the NYT reports her claim that MPD arrived at let DOGE in; NBC reports MPD cars outside. I’m not a reporter but I do have a mania for precision, except for the all the typos; in a situation like this, it matters a lot to get the details right, & I don’t know all the details

    Anjali Dayal:

    That’s per USIP’s lawyer, so presumably they called the MPD and she’s relaying that to the reporter; without trying to be a conspiracy theorist but because precision matters, the article doesn’t independently report that it’s the MPD who showed up, but it seems like a reasonable conclusion.

  205. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    ProPublica – Trump halted an Agent Orange cleanup

    Workers were in the middle of cleaning up the site of an enormous chemical spill, the Bien Hoa air base, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio abruptly halted all foreign aid funding. The shutdown left exposed open pits of soil contaminated with dioxin, the deadly byproduct of Agent Orange, which the American military sprayed across large swaths of the country during the Vietnam War. After Rubio’s orders to stop work, the cleanup crews were forced to abandon the site, and, for weeks, all that was covering the contaminated dirt were tarps, which at one point blew off in the wind.

    And even more pressing, the officials warned in a Feb. 14 letter […] Vietnam is on the verge of its rainy season, when torrential downpours are common. With enough rain, they said, soil contaminated with dioxin could flood into nearby communities, poisoning their food supplies.

    Hundreds of thousands of people live around the Bien Hoa air base, and some of their homes abut the site’s perimeter fence, just yards from the contaminated areas. And less than 1,500 feet away is a major river that flows into Ho Chi Minh City, population 9 million.
    […]
    They received no response from Washington […] Instead, Rubio and Peter Marocco […] have not only ordered the work to stop, but they also have frozen more than $1 million in payments for work already completed by the contractors […] Then, on Feb. 26, Rubio and Marocco canceled both companies’ contracts altogether before apparently reversing that decision about a week later […] As of Thursday, the companies had not been paid.
    […]
    the companies are scrambling—at their own expense—to secure the Bien Hoa site before it starts raining […] in 95 degree heat, surrounded by toxic soil. The site has a skeleton crew of less than half of what they previously had […] terrified the U.S. will pause the work again.
    […]
    addressing Agent Orange is more akin to restitution than charity because the U.S. brought the deadly substance there in the first place. “The dioxin remediation program is one of the core reasons why we have an extraordinary relationship with Vietnam today,” a State Department official told ProPublica, “a country that should by all rights hate us.” […] Human rights groups, environmentalists and diplomats consider the cleanup work—along with disability assistance that the U.S. has provided to Agent Orange victims across the country—to be one of the most successful foreign aid initiatives of all time.
    […]
    “If you stop in the middle, it’s worse than if you never started.” […] The cleanup work is dangerous and laborious. People hired by the contractors wear extensive protective equipment in the sweltering humidity and must have their blood tested regularly for dioxin. When levels get too high, they are no longer allowed to work […] Contractors are halfway through a 10-year project set to happen in stages, and the bulk of the excavation work must be done between December and April when there is less rain.

  206. says

    Followup to comments 105, 114, 119, 135, 146, 181, 189, 190 and 193.

    New York Post says Musk is ‘way out of his lane’ in calling for impeachment of Judge Boasberg

    The editorial board of The New York Post went after tech billionaire Elon Musk on Sunday, stating that he is “way out of his lane” in calling for the impeachment of a judge who temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.

    “Elon Musk is way out of his lane in cheering a bid to impeach federal Judge James Boasberg, who’s put a temporary hold on deportation flights of illegal migrant gangbangers,” the editorial board wrote in their Sunday piece, which was highlighted by Mediaite.

    […] Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) on Saturday said on the social platform X that he is going to “be filing Articles of Impeachment against activist judge James Boasberg this week.”

    “Necessary,” Musk said in his own post on Sunday, responding to Gill.

  208. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    DemocracyDocket – If the Marshals go rogue, courts have other ways to enforce
    Opinion by David Noll (Law professor: civil proc, admin law, conlaw)

    Contempt of court is classified as either civil or criminal depending on whether a court seeks to compel compliance with its orders or punish obstruction of justice. When it comes to criminal contempt, the executive really does hold a veto […] Civil contempt is different. The Supreme Court has long held that “a pardon cannot stop” courts from punishing cases of civil contempt. And while the marshals have traditionally enforced civil contempt orders, the courts have the power to deputize others to step in if they refuse to do so. This authority is recognized in an obscure provision
    […]
    To be sure, a court that appointed someone other than the marshals to enforce a civil contempt order would be breaking new ground. […] the courts have rarely, if ever, had to turn to other parties to have their orders enforced. If forced to do so, however, individuals from court security officers and probation officers to local police and sheriffs have the training and experience to bring contemnors into court. And unlike the marshals, these individuals would be responsible to the court alone.

    Even a rogue marshal’s service, in other words, is not an insurmountable obstacle

  209. says

    Israel’s military said early Tuesday it was “conducting extensive strikes” against Hamas targets in Gaza, further straining an increasingly fragile ceasefire between Israel and the militant group. [This report was posted at 7:15 PM MDT, Mountain Daylight Time in the USA, and updated at 10:10 PM MDT.]

    The Israel Defense Forces were striking Hamas targets throughout the Gaza Strip, with the aim of “the release of all our hostages — living and dead,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’’s office said.

    “From now on, Israel will act against Hamas with increasing military force,” it said.

    Gaza Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal said that dozens of people have been killed and wounded and that there have been more than 35 attacks on homes.

    “Our crews are unable to deal with the attacks due to limited resources and the dangerous situation,” Basal said. “We call on the world to stop this aggression.”

    The strikes were the heaviest Israeli military bombardment in Gaza since the ceasefire deal was reached in January.

    Hamas said the strikes violated the agreement.

    “Netanyahu and his extremist government have decided to overturn the ceasefire agreement and are exposing the prisoners in Gaza to an unknown fate,” it said in a statement.

    White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Fox News that Israel consulted the Trump administration and the White House about the strikes.

    The latest Israeli military action follows separate Israeli strikes that, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, killed at least 14 people in 24 hours over the weekend. The ministry reported the deaths in a statement Sunday. […]

    In Gaza, explosions could be heard at various locations, and ambulances were arriving at Al Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza, The Associated Press reported.

    The status of the ceasefire agreement in the 17-month-old war remained unclear. […]

    Link

  211. John Morales says

    From your link, StevoR:

    “After a crew swap on the weekend, the pair, along with two other astronauts, have undocked in a replacement SpaceX capsule bound for Earth.”

  212. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    When Twitter racist DOGE Marko Elez was at the Treasury, he emailed a spreadsheet of personally identifiable info, unencrypted, to GSA without approval.

    Docket – Testimony of David Ambrose (Treasury BFS Chief of Security)

    I have been employed at the Bureau for over 19 years.
    […]
    After Elez resigned in early February, Bureau security personnel performed a forensic analysis on Elez’s email account and issued laptop. […] The laptop review included forensic disk imaging and memory capture. The forensic analysis revealed that Elez did not make any alterations or changes to Bureau payment systems.
    […]
    Elez sent an email with a spreadsheet containing PII to two United States [GSA] officials. The PII detailed a name (a person or an entity), a transaction type, and an amount of money. The names in the spreadsheet are considered low risk PII because the names are not accompanied by more specific identifiers, such as social security numbers or birth dates. […] was contrary to BFS policies, in that it was not sent encrypted, and he did not obtain prior approval
    […]
    employees with an interim Secret clearance can be granted access to Bureau Systems and Equipment while the appropriate background investigation is being completed if there are favorable results from an initial screen [of citizenship and criminal record]. […] On January 22 […] Elez was granted an interim Secret clearance

    Disk imaging is standard incident response and law enforcement. A copy of everything, including free space, even gaps between partitions. Explore the inert copy elsewhere in isolation and recover deleted files (often partly garbled) w/o tainting the original evidence.

    Rather optimistic to hope memory capture would find anything but worth a shot given the agency’s concerns. Hm, well actually, if he merely hibernated instead of shutting down, interesting stuff could’ve been preserved across sessions. Even so, memory is a very messy soup of data.

    The fact that he used a spreadsheet instead of a database implies an upper limit on how many rows a not-foolish person would be dealing with. Spreadsheets get unwieldy when you put lots in. The email attachment limit is another ceiling. It could be a few megs, but that’s up to the agency’s email provider to set.

  213. StevoR says

    Not surprising but still deserves to be headline news and one of the grimmest things ever read given the implications for the rest of our lives and indefinitely ever after. Excerpts :

    Zeldin is rolling back 31 environmental rules (Make America Dirty Again?) including the EPA’s 2009 finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, which has been the legal basis for all US action against climate change. In short, Trump’s America is abandoning climate action.

    …(Snip)…

    .. In those three decades, human use of fossil fuels has increased 54 per cent.

    The withdrawal of America, and the influence that will have on other countries and companies, means the COP30 delegates might as well stay home this year.

    The global effort to prevent climate change which began with COP1 in Berlin in 1995 and peaked two years later with a burst of optimism in Kyoto, is pretty much over; it’s dead.

    …(Snip)…

    …My French is limited, but the (French govt- ed) plan ( for a world that’s 4 degrees average hotter -ed) looks quite inadequate for the catastrophe that sort of rise in global temperature would bring. At least they are thinking about it.

    For Australia, warming of 3-4°C would see the complete destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, constant flooding of south-east Queensland and northern NSW, cyclones as far south as Coffs Harbour, frequent bushfires everywhere else, and a massive refugee flood as Bangladesh and Pacific Islands are inundated.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-17/climate-change-religion-trump-zeldin-epa-wind-back-rules/105057538

  215. Reginald Selkirk says

    @30

    94 Percent Of Germans Say They Won’t Buy A Tesla Because Elon Musk Is A Dangerous, Far-Right Loser

    Tesla is in a bad way right now, as evidenced by outrageous financing deals, Cybertrucks piling up on dealer lots and constant price decreases. The issues extend far beyond the U.S., though. Certain places in Europe — especially Germany, it would seem — are none too pleased with CEO Elon Musk’s hard push to the extreme right of politics.

    A new survey from German publication T-Online polled about 100,000 of its readers and found that 94 percent of the respondents said they’d never buy a Tesla. Just three percent said they would even still consider a car from Musk’s company. This is disastrous news for Tesla.

    Of course, competition from other electric vehicles is putting a bit of the squeeze on Tesla, but that doesn’t account for all of it — not at all. T-Online asserts that Musk himself is playing a huge role in all of this, and I agree. They say, “His political escapades, his closeness to Trump, his forays into the world of conspiracy theories – they’re scaring away buyers and investors.” It’s not just Musk’s bad politics, either. It’s also his financial decisions. He has lowered prices to boost sales, and in turn, used Teslas are losing value quite rapidly, according to T-Online. It’s the same story here in the U.S., too…

  216. Reginald Selkirk says

    Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison investigating MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s charities

    The legal activity swirling around MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell now includes an investigation into his charities by the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office.

    Documents filed in Ramsey County District Court show Attorney General Keith Ellison has been investigating three nonprofit corporations that list Lindell as president since last summer over potential violations of state charity law.

    In August, the Attorney General’s Office served three civil investigative demands on the charities asking for “basic information about their charitable activities, governance, and finances.” The charities have not shared that information, according to a memo filed by Assistant Attorney General Chloe Raimey that asks the court to intervene and make the charities comply with the investigation.

    Raimey alleges that public documents and evidence has uncovered conflicting financial transactions and a “lack of charitable activities that suggest at least some of the charities may be shams.”

    The charities are the Lindell Foundation Inc., the Lindell Recovery Network, and Lindell Foundation Outreach Inc.

    According to Guidestar, a database of nonprofits, Lindell Foundation Outreach’s purpose is to use the love of Jesus to “serve the poor — and others who are struggling” while the Lindell Recovery Network aims to “serve with the love of Jesus Christ those who are struggling with drug addiction.”

    The three nonprofits have collectively taken in more than $1 million in contributions over the past six years — though the memo says they appear to have actually received hundreds of thousands dollars more — but they are not registered as soliciting charities with the Attorney General’s Office, a legal requirement in Minnesota…

  220. says

    Chief Justice John Roberts rebukes Trump over call for federal judge’s impeachment

    “The White House has been engaged in an intense fight with the judiciary. By calling for a judge’s impeachment, Trump just took the fight to a new level.”

    As a matter of course, journalists contact the U.S. Supreme Court for comment with some regularity, though the results are nearly always the same: The justices and their offices generally decline to weigh in.

    There are, however, very rare exceptions.

    Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued a highly unusual statement on Tuesday morning, for example, that read, “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

    It’s worth appreciating what precipitated these rather pointed comments.

    In the run-up to Election Day, Donald Trump invested a fair amount of time condemning those who criticize judges — conveniently ignoring his own record of criticizing jurists who’ve dared to rule in ways he disagreed with. Six months ago, Trump went so far as to eventually declare, “These people should be put in jail the way they talk about our judges.”

    To a degree, the president’s line hasn’t changed. As recently as Friday, Trump delivered unhinged remarks at the Justice Department, where he defended U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump-appointed conservative who helped dismiss his classified documents case. Referring to her many critics, the president told the law enforcement officials in the audience, “It’s totally illegal what they do.”

    Four days later, Politico reported on the president calling for a different federal district court judge’s impeachment.

    […] Trump on Tuesday called for the impeachment of the federal judge who ordered a two-week halt to his efforts to remove Venezuelan migrants using extraordinary war powers that haven’t been invoked for decades. Trump’s call to remove U.S. District Judge James Boasberg — the chief judge of the federal district court in Washington, D.C. — is the first time since taking office for his second term that he’s asked Congress to seek a judge’s removal, joining increasingly pointed calls by his top donor and adviser Elon Musk and a segment of his MAGA base.

    Apparently furious about Boasberg’s handling of the Alien Enemies Act litigation, the president published an especially enraged item to his social media platform, referring to the federal district court judge as a “Radical Left Lunatic,” a “troublemaker” and an “agitator.” After a series of all-caps claims about the fact that the jurist isn’t an elected official — in this country, federal judges aren’t chosen by voters — Trump concluded, “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”

    If this talk sounds at all familiar, it’s not your imagination. […] Elon Musk has been “posting incessantly, calling for the impeachment of ‘fake,’ ‘corrupt,’ ‘activist’ judges for ‘violating the will of the people.’ His timeline … is littered with conspiratorial screeds about the dastardly ulterior motives that these judges must have had for preventing an unelected billionaire from assuming the power of the legislative and executive branches all for himself.”

    Similar talk has become relatively common on Capitol Hill. Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, for example, recently posted a message to social media that read, “Corrupt judges should be impeached. And removed.” It came on the heels of a similar message Lee published earlier this month that read, “This has the feel of a coup — not a military coup, but a judicial one.”

    In the U.S. House, a handful of Republican members have introduced four separate impeachment resolutions targeting sitting federal judges, and that total is likely to grow: Republican Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee recently hosted an online “impeachathon” event, displaying a poster of 11 judges he and his far-right colleagues are focused on. The far-right congressman appeared alongside a caption that read “Woke Judge Hunter.” (A clip of the event was promoted by Musk.)

    While Boasberg wasn’t part of the 11, Republican Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas announced this week that he plans to file articles of impeachment against this judge in the coming days.

    This campaign, however, has been largely relegated to the fringe. There are over 250 GOP lawmakers across the House and the Senate, and the total number of Republicans talking about impeaching federal judges is, as a quantitative matter, fairly small. Few, if any, credible observers have predicted that the impeachment push would ever be taken seriously on Capitol Hill.

    But it’s against this backdrop that the sitting Republican president has decided to throw his weight behind an impeachment effort — not because Boasberg committed high crimes or abused his office, but because the judge is handling an important case in a way Trump doesn’t like.

    The White House has been engaged in an intensifying fight with the judicial branch, and there’s been growing speculation about whether the administration might consider defying court rulings that the president doesn’t like. With his impeachment call, Trump just took that fight to a new level.

  221. says

    It’s a new day at the FBI as Dan Bongino joins Kash Patel atop the bureau

    “As of this week, two inexperienced conspiracy theorists are running the FBI. What could possibly go wrong? Unfortunately, quite a bit.”
    Related video at the link.

    FBI Director Kash Patel’s tenure hasn’t quite reached the one-month mark yet, but the conspiracy theorist and partisan operative is already off to a difficult start.

    In recent weeks, Patel has misstated key elements of the FBI’s recent work. He reportedly confused intelligence and counterintelligence. He said he planned to spend a lot of time in Las Vegas, where he’s been living. He ordered officials to relocate 1,500 employees from Washington, D.C., and when told the bureau didn’t have the resources for such a restructuring, he reportedly told his subordinates to simply figure out a way to execute his directive.

    But perhaps most importantly, the highly controversial new FBI director has taken steps to break down the firewalls that used to exist between his office and the White House. NBC News reported last week that Patel went so far as to ask about creating a possible hotline that would facilitate direct communication between him and Donald Trump.

    And now Patel will have a likeminded partner at the bureau’s headquarters. The New York Times reported on right-wing provocateur Dan Bongino declaring on his podcast late last week that he wouldn’t be “some partisan” as he joins the FBI as its new deputy director.

    His arrival on Monday as the F.B.I.’s second in command will test that promise, cementing a major shift at the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, where he joins its director, Kash Patel, in overseeing a bureau of about 38,000 people. It puts two staunch Trump loyalists in charge of an agency long known for its tradition of independence. Collectively, they have the least leadership experience of any pair overseeing the F.B.I. since its founding more than a century ago.

    At this point, some readers might wonder why Bongino only arrived at the bureau this week. If the president appointed the conservative media personality to the position nearly a month ago, and Bongino didn’t require Senate confirmation, why didn’t he get to work sooner?

    As it turns out, Bongino delayed his arrival at the FBI to fulfill contractual obligations with advertisers who sponsored his podcast. [Priorities, right?]

    […] The podcaster has condemned the FBI as “irredeemably corrupt” and called for mass firings within the bureau. Bongino, an unabashed election denier, is even on record falsely accusing the FBI of playing a role in instigating the Jan. 6 attack.

    Just as notably, he’s been equally disdainful of Americans who dare to disagree him. “My entire life right now is about owning the libs,” Bongino has said. “That’s it. The libs, because they have shown themselves … to be pure, unadulterated evil.” [So reassuring.]

    The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg added in a recent column, “When a New York jury found Donald Trump guilty on 34 felony counts last year, the conservative podcaster Dan Bongino made a veiled threat on social media. ‘The irony about this for the scumbag commie libs, is that the cold civil war they’re pushing for will end really badly for them,’ he wrote. Liberals, said Bongino, had been playing at revolution, and would now get a taste of the real thing. ‘They’re not ready for what comes next.’”

    What comes next will soon come into focus, as the least-experienced FBI leadership team in the history of American law enforcement gets to work.

    As Rachel Maddow reported, FBI agents may have helped DOGE break into an independent agency in Washington D.C. See comments 201, 203 and 206.

  222. says

    Followup to comments 201, 203 and 206.

    DC Metro Police Roust Staff of Indy Agency At DOGE’s Request, by Josh Marshall.

    […] I put in a press request with the Marshals Service press office to confirm that these were in fact US Marshalls. But I never heard back. Then yesterday there was similar standoff at the US Institute for Peace which ended with the Marshals again helping DOGE make forcible entry into the disputed premises. Or that’s what the initial reports in the Times said.

    It turns out that’s not what happened at all. According to the later-published full account in the Times, the US Marshals Service wasn’t even there. DOGE operatives arrived in black SUVs along with FBI agents and accompanied “by what appeared to be private security who arrived in separate vehicles and were dressed in street clothing.” This was preceded over the weekend by communications from the FBI and the Department of Justice threatening criminal prosecution if DOGE wasn’t allowed to take over the Institute, which the Institute board says is a congressionally-created independent entity outside of the executive branch.

    But it wasn’t the FBI agents or the “private security” who rousted the USIP staff out of their office. It was the DC Metro police. Here’s the key grafs in the Times piece …

    Mr. Musk’s team did not get into the building until officers from Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department showed up, Ms. Lin said. Institute officials had called the police to report that Department of Government Efficiency members were trespassing, she said, but the police instead cleared institute leaders from the building.

    A police spokesman, Tom Lynch, said that officers were called to the scene on a report of an unlawful entry and said the police left after the people who were seeking unlawful entry had left. He did not say who those people were or provide more information on what happened at the scene aside from the fact that no arrests had been made.

    This is, to put it mildly, very bad.

    It certainly would have been clear to the MPD that whoever was legally entitled to control the office that the USIP staff were the ones who were there and it was the DOGE boys who were trying to kick them out. DOGE had no court order. At best the right to occupy the space is a matter of dispute and as yet unresolved. So why did they force the the USIP staff to leave?

    My best guess is that what happened here is that both sides claimed they were the ones with rightful custody. But the FBI agents were with the DOGE boys. So the MPD officers decided the FBI agents must be right and made the staff leave. […] there’s zero legal basis for what they did. Indeed, I’m pretty sure the FBI agents knew they had no legal basis to use police powers – i.e., force – to resolve the matter. Otherwise why didn’t they do it themselves? That speaks for itself in my mind.

    […] Finally, who are these private security escorting the DOGE operatives around DC? Have they been deputized by some federal law enforcement agency? Why are they there at all? Still hanging in the background is that Elon’s private security was reportedly deputized by the US Marshals. Was that them?

  223. says

    Trump, Putin hold nearly 3-hour call amid ceasefire push in Ukraine

    Sigh. Three hours is plenty of time for Putin to manipulate Trump.

    Trump spoke for nearly three hours on Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, amid the U.S. push to secure Moscow’s agreement to a ceasefire in its war against Ukraine.

    Putin had held back endorsing the U.S.-led ceasefire following meetings in Moscow with Trump’s special envoy for Russia, Steve Witkoff.

    Ukraine accepted the terms of the ceasefire during high-stakes talks with Trump officials in Jeddeh, Saudi Arabia on March 11.

    DEVELOPING

  224. says

    Texas AG Arrests Midwives For Abortion. Do You Feel Safer Yet?

    “Texas’s maternal death rate is up 33 percent since abortion banned in state.”

    The state of Texas, where abortion has been banned since 2021, has made its first abortion-related criminal arrest. Midwife Maria Margarita Rojas, 48, has been arrested for “providing illegal abortions and illegally operating a network of clinics in the Northwest Houston area” and charged with the illegal performance of an abortion and with practicing medicine without a license.

    […] Also arrested were Jose Manuel Cendan Ley, 29, who allegedly assisted Rojas “in at least one abortion” at her clinic in Waller, Texas, and nurse practitioner Rubildo Labanino Matos, 54, whose license was suspended by the state board and who was charged with conspiracy to practice medicine without a license.

    Exactly zero patients were harmed in the commission of these “crimes,” whereas at least three women have died as a direct result of the state’s abortion ban.

    […] the state also accused Rojas in its bail motion of having performed a separate abortion in Harris County earlier this year.

    The charges faced by Rojas and Ley come with fines of $100,000 per abortion and up to 30 years in prison if they are found guilty. On Monday, a Waller County judge set their bond at $500,000 for the abortion charges and $200,000 for the medical license charges.

    To celebrate Rojas’s arrest, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent out a press release that reads like a Handmaid’s Tale flashback, in which he congratulates himself and the state for protecting women from this woman who was (allegedly) trying to save their damn lives.

    “In Texas, life is sacred. I will always do everything in my power to protect the unborn, defend our state’s pro-life laws, and work to ensure that unlicensed individuals endangering the lives of women by performing illegal abortions are fully prosecuted,” Paxton was quoted as saying in the press release announcing Rojas’s arrest. “Texas law protecting life is clear, and we will hold those who violate it accountable.”

    This would be one thing if Rojas and the others were attacking pregnant women at random on the street with knitting needles and coathangers instead of providing them with the abortions they desperately want. Alas, Paxton and others like him have to ignore the fact that those who seek abortions actually want them […]

    Maternal deaths rose by 33 percent in the state from 2019 to 2024, even as they’ve decreased by 7.5 percent nationwide, and the sepsis rate in second-trimester miscarriage hospitalizations has risen by more than 50 percent since the ban went into effect, and Paxton has the gall to say that Rojas is “endangering the lives of women”? […]

    As if that weren’t enough, Paxton’s office closed out the press release by noting that “Texas law holds abortion providers — not patients — criminally responsible for unlawful procedures,” even as Republicans in the state are trying to pass a bill that would charge those who have abortions with homicide.

    […] Paxton’s press releases for the other two arrests were equally spine-chilling, and even included an extra dash of xenophobia, noting that “Ley is a Cuban national who entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 and was later paroled under the open borders policies enacted by the lawless Biden Administration” (which, nota bene, did not actually exist outside of the feverish imaginations of people like Ken Paxton) and slyly noting that Rubildo Labanino Matos was returning from Cuba upon his arrest.

    There’s something so deeply cruel in Paxton’s trying to flip the script and paint himself as some great protector of women — whom he clearly believes are not only too stupid to make the decision to have an abortion themselves, but too stupid to recognize full-on 1984-style rhetorical mindfucks when he deploys them, to see that he is infantilizing women and not “protecting” them.

  226. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/putin-celebrates-ceasefire-by-continuing

    “Putin Celebrates Ceasefire By Continuing To Bomb Sh*t Out Of Ukraine, With Trump’s Blessing”

    “Has Trump ended the war in 24 hours yet?”

    And now it’s time for another installment of “How is Trump trying to give Putin everything today?”

    That 30-day ceasefire that started last Thursday, AKA five days ago? Guess what, was another Putin joke! In Russia, the fire ceases YOU! Putin said “we agree with the proposal,” and then, as predicted by everyone on earth, acted as if the conversation never happened and attacked Ukraine harder than ever.

    Now Trump is reportedly thinking of recognizing illegally annexed Crimea as part of Russia in exchange for Putin agreeing to a ceasefire like really for real, this time. Russia’s economy, already smaller than Texas’s and is collapsing. And after three years of trying to take over Ukraine they have never managed to infest no more than about a fifth of the country. It is Putin who seemingly has NO CARDS, and yet he’s got Trump by all of his short-and-curlies. […]

    [map at the link]

    Anyway, over the weekend, Russia retook the town of Sudzha plus two villages in Kursk, after sending over about 178 attack drones Friday night. Ukraine reported 148 combat clashes, including “98 airstrikes Ukrainian units and at settlements, 161 KAB glide bombs, […] 6,000 artillery strikes, including 188 involving multiple launch rocket systems” and “2,735 kamikaze drones,” in “Zakharivka, Hrypuni, Cossack Lopan Kharkiv region; Ivanopillya, Bagatir, Sergiyivka, Pokrovsk, Novoukrainka, Suhiy Yar, Novoolenivka, Nova Poltavka, Gorihove, Oleksiyivka, Leontovichi, Novopavlivka, Mirnograd, Novopil Donetsk region; Gulyaipole, Novodanilivka, Mala Tokmachka of the Zaporizhia region.” You can follow along with the war on this map.

    […] So it was all for nyet, that whole embarrassing Wrestlemania kayfabe where Trump yelled at Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, then disabled Ukraine’s access to satellite images and cut off their funding and weapons because Zelenskyy did not wear a tie. The office of Li’l’ Marco Rubio said last Tuesday that the US had restored aid to Ukraine, 10 days after Trump’s li’l’ fit, but who knows how much aid has been restored, or for how long. So all that Trump’s episode was good for was letting the world know what a shit friend the US is now.

    […] Putin’s decided he’d like at least a little Kursk, for a treat, even though it still has Ukrainian forces in it. And Trump says he and Putin will be dividing up certain Ukrainian assets, including land and power plants, though they are of course places and things neither he nor Putin have any legitimate claim to. […]

    Putin also would like it if nobody would hold him accountable about any past or future war crimes, and to launder some rubles into currency that will buy things from places other than China and Pyongyang, so Trump just hopped right on that. The Department of Justice said it was pulling out of the International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine in the Hague, which was established to hold Russia and its allies Belarus, North Korea, and Iran accountable for a category of crimes listed as aggression under international law. […]

    Meanwhile, Canada and France are hanging out without us. Brand-new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney flew over to France to lunch with President Emmanuel Macron, though normally a Canadian Prime Minister would meet with the US president first. Carney and Macron both cast some polite side-eye shade, pointedly remarking about the importance of each other as “reliable allies.” […]

    NATO countries are not interested in Ukraine rolling over, and are talking about doubling their defense budgets. So much for that end to war in Ukraine in 24 hours or before Trump even takes office promise! Now he says IT WAS SARCASM!! You dumb reporters missed the part right after he said he’d “end the war in 24 hours” when he rolled his eyes […]

    Over the weekend he went on a show called “Full Measure” with Sharyl Attkisson (a former CBS reporter who claimed that Rod Rosenstein tried to hack her); transcript here:

    SHARYL ATTKISSON: I’m not understating the complexity of all this, but as a candidate, you said you would have this war settled in 24 hours?

    TRUMP: Well, I was being a little bit sarcastic when I said that, what I really mean is I’d like to get it settled and I think I’ll be successful.

    ATTKISSON: What’s the plan if Putin doesn’t agree to a ceasefire?

    TRUMP: Bad news for this world, because so many people are dying. But I think, I think he’s going to agree. I really do. I think I know him pretty well and I think he’s gonna agree.

    [video at the link]

    So, concepts of a plan. He added, “we have a ceasefire agreement with the Ukrainian group, and we are trying to get that with Russia too.” BUT IT IS NOT A CEASEFIRE IF BOTH SIDES DO NOT AGREE, you gobdaw! That is just Trump and Putin demanding that Ukraine sit there and get bombed, and not rudely shoot down the drones that Russia is launching into their airspace. […]

    So here we are, on one side we’ve got Trump and Putin, making peace for Ukraine without involving Ukraine in it. On the other side Ukraine and Europe, who haven’t agreed to shit with two dumb bullies. What happens when Trump announces that Russia owns Kursk now, and Ukraine and NATO are like, the fuck they do?

    We will find out, in the next installment of Putin’s Coming To Dinner.

  227. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/calling-out-in-transit-tabs-tues

    […] Ooh, huuuuuuuge protests against pro-Putin/pro-Trump tyrants all over the world! Democracy spring! Democracy spring! And America gets to (has to) play this time! Anyway, read about the enormous one in Serbia. [AP]

    Of course, as Rachel Maddow noted last night, Serbia’s loathed leader told Donald Trump Jr. in an interview recently — you know, because obviously, why wouldn’t Junior be suckin’ [up to authoritarians] in Serbia? — that all the people protesting are an “imported revolution.” You know, just like how Hillary Clinton caused the 2013-14 pro-democracy protests in Ukraine, and how Ukrainians are still fighting for their country only because Joe Biden made them, and how Americans are showing up in the streets and at town halls to scream at their congressmen because they’re being paid by George Soros. We guess “pretending the democracy protesters are being funded by outside sources” is one of the stages of authoritarian grief on the path to accepting that humanity really loathes you that much.

    Hundreds of thousands in the streets in Hungary! Everybody hates Viktor Orban! Protests in Romania! Protests in Georgia!

    […] Elon Musk’s young men’s circle-jerking incel scout troop showed up to attack the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) last night. That’s an independent agency, not affiliated with the Executive Branch, not even really part of the US government. DOGE is a bunch of incel democracy-killing pipsqueaks whose balls have definitely dropped for sure (perhaps), but at least as far as we knew, they were only attacking Executive Branch agencies. New Rubicon crossed. USIP called the DC cops. And the DC cops … let DOGE continue its break-in? When they first tried to show up at USIP on Friday, DOGE brought the FBI with them. Because all the government’s thugs are being converted into Stupid Hitler’s Gestapo, we guess.

    So that’s a whole fucking thing. Here, watch last night’s Maddow about it: [video at the link]

    At my Friday place, ‘twas time for a massive update to my project where I’m tracking all the pastors and priests and youth pastors and other conservative Christian leaders caught/accused/prosecuted/jailed for abusing kids. Still not a drag queen in the bunch! Big former Trump spiritual adviser, though. […]

    Donald Trump’s latest DEI purge is getting rid of all evidence of the Navajo Code Talkers who helped the United States win two world wars, by transmitting secret messages in the secret “code” that was their own fucking languages. (Which the US had otherwise worked very hard to eradicate.) Just more evidence of what absolutely morally bankrupt human trash the entire MAGA movement is, how irredeemable, how unforgiven, how unforgivable.

    Can’t imagine why we might all need this song right now. In fact, let’s get all our playlists in good working order. Seems more important every day. [R.E.M. video]

    Leavin’ it there. Too many words, the weight gets too heavy.

    Embedded links to sources are available at the main link.

  228. Reginald Selkirk says

    @219 Lynna, OM

    Chief Justice John Roberts rebukes Trump over call for federal judge’s impeachment

    “The White House has been engaged in an intense fight with the judiciary. By calling for a judge’s impeachment, Trump just took the fight to a new level.” …

    Never forget that this bit of leopardly face-eating was enabled by the Supreme Court, in a number of rulings favorable to Trump, including one that decided the 14th amendment doesn’t mean what it says.

  230. says

    Reginald @227, I agree. Good point. Supreme Court doofuses reap what they sowed.

    In other news: Trump and Putin began laying the groundwork for a ceasefire in Ukraine as Russia agreed not to attack energy targets

    “The Kremlin told Russian state outlet TASS that Putin has agreed to halt strikes on energy infrastructure for 30 days.”

    Related video at the link.

    The White House said Tuesday that President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have agreed that the process to reach a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine would begin with an energy infrastructure ceasefire.

    “This conflict should never have started and should have been ended long ago with sincere and good faith peace efforts,” the White House said in a readout of the call between the two leaders.

    Trump and Putin agreed that the movement to peace “will begin with an energy and infrastructure ceasefire, as well as technical negotiations on implementation of a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, full ceasefire and permanent peace. These negotiations will begin immediately in the Middle East,” the White House said. [No mention of concessions from Russia, with the exception of not bombing energy infrastructure. No mention of response if Russia does not hold up its end of the bargain.]

    The Kremlin told Russian state outlet TASS that Putin has agreed to halt strikes on energy infrastructure for 30 days.

    It was not immediately clear what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s response was to the announcement Tuesday. Zelenskyy has warned that he doesn’t trust Putin to stick to a ceasefire because Russia hasn’t abided by previous agreements with Ukraine under his leadership. [True]

    The White House also signaled that the Trump administration wants to improve relations between the U.S. and Russia, saying in the statement, “The two leaders agreed that a future with an improved bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia has huge upside. This includes enormous economic deals and geopolitical stability when peace has been achieved.”

    The call began around 10 a.m. ET and lasted at least an hour and a half. [That doesn’t match earlier reports of three hours.]

    Trump said late Monday that he looked forward to the call with Putin in a post on Truth Social, adding that “many elements of a Final Agreement have been agreed to, but much remains.”

    While the White House readout didn’t include specific details of what a permanent ceasefire would entail, the call most likely involved a discussion of what Ukraine will have to give up to achieve a pause after three years of fighting since Putin ordered his troops to invade Russia’s neighbor.

    Trump, who has been trying to win Putin’s support for a 30-day ceasefire proposal that Ukraine accepted last week, said late Sunday that discussions with Putin would involve “dividing up certain assets” that included land and power plants.

    Trump has intimated that the Zaporizhzhia power plant, Europe’s biggest nuclear facility, as well as land — Ukraine controls part of the Russian region of Kursk, while Russia holds several regions of Ukraine — will be up for discussion.

    He told reporters in Washington on Monday that Ukrainian soldiers in the Kursk region were “in deep trouble,” according to Reuters, adding that his administration’s temporary suspension of military and intelligence assistance to Kyiv was an attempt to “get Ukraine to do the right thing.”

    Putin has repeatedly indicated that Russia wants to cement his country’s land grabs during the war and stop Kyiv from ever joining NATO. Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, told ABC News on Sunday that the prospect of a pathway into NATO for Ukraine was “incredibly unlikely.”

    […] Keir Giles, a fellow with the London-based think tank Chatham House, told NBC News that the discussion between the two leaders would “primarily be about meeting additional demands from Putin at the expense of Ukraine.”

    Referring to Trump’s comments over the division of assets, Giles said the call was “the classic Russian principle of demanding somebody else’s cake and then settling for only half of it, with those demands being enforced by an outside third party.” [Well put.]

    […] implementing a ceasefire would involve access to ports and a potential agreement over the Black Sea.

    The apparent territorial ambitions of Putin have upended the security landscape in Eastern Europe, with Ukraine’s neighbors upping their defense budgets and beginning to remilitarize in recent years.

    In that vein, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania said Tuesday that they were withdrawing from the Ottawa Treaty, an international agreement banning antipersonnel mines.

    “The U.S. is negotiating with Russia about other people’s territory, which is precisely the nightmare scenario that not just Ukraine, but other countries in the east of Europe had feared,” Giles said.

    He added that the impact was limited not just to Europe, but also to other U.S. allies “watching this process with horror because they know…that they could be next.”

  231. says

    Followup to comment 145.

    China expresses delight with many of Trump’s most radical moves

    […] Steven Herman, a longtime Voice of America correspondent, published a “requiem” over the weekend, writing, “To ​effectively shutter the Voice of America is to dim a beacon that burned bright during some of the darkest hours since 1942.” The Post’s Dana Milbank added in his latest column, “Adolf Hitler couldn’t silence it. Joseph Stalin and his successors, right up through Vladimir Putin, couldn’t silence it. Mao Zedong and his successors, through Xi Jinping, couldn’t silence it. Ruhollah Khomeini and the ayatollahs couldn’t silence it. But Donald Trump has just silenced the voice of freedom.”

    And China couldn’t be more pleased. NBC News reported:

    Chinese state media are celebrating President Donald Trump’s move to gut Voice of America and other U.S. government-funded news outlets that push back against authoritarian regimes. … The government of China, where media is tightly controlled by the ruling Chinese Communist Party, has long criticized coverage by VOA and other U.S. government-funded news outlets. In an editorial Monday, the state-backed nationalist tabloid Global Times called VOA a ‘lie factory’ with an ‘appalling track record’ when it comes to China-related reporting.

    This wasn’t exactly a surprising reaction. Given that Voice of America existed “to counter authoritarian propaganda for foreign audiences with independent news,” it stands to reason that it was unpopular with officials in Beijing.

    What is surprising, however, is the frequency with which China celebrates news out of the White House.

    The Chinese government, for example, is eager to capitalize on the international tumult created by the American president’s tariffs and trade war. NBC News reported, “Even as it faces a slowing economy, China appears to be making a strategic decision to present itself as a global stalwart amid a world in turmoil as Trump upends international trade and long-standing alliances, eroding U.S. prestige and creating an opportunity for China to fill the void.”

    China had reason to celebrate Trump turning against Ukraine. China similarly cheered when Trump gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development.

    It reached a point recently that Politico published a report that described the Republican as “the U.S. president China fantasizes about.”

    If you voted for the GOP ticket last fall because you believed Trump’s rhetoric about “getting tough on China,” I have some very bad news for you.

  232. says

    Followup to comment 230.

    Defying Trump, several US-funded international broadcasters are still reporting the news

    The leaders of several US-funded international networks have instructed their organizations to continue broadcasting, ignoring a Trump administration order, because they believe last weekend’s terminations were unlawful, according to a person involved in the matter.

    The entities – including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks – are continuing to operate around the world while network executives contemplate next steps, including potential legal action.

    Lisa Curtis, who chairs the board of Radio Free Europe, wrote on LinkedIn that “our pro bono legal team is prepared to take all necessary steps to ensure that RFE/RL continues its Congressionally authorized mission.” […]

    The top story on the English-language edition of Radio Free Asia’s website Tuesday morning noted that “Asian dissidents” and activists were voicing “dismay” over the funding freeze.

    […] VOA employees work directly for the federal government, which is why Trump loyalist Kari Lake – recently named a senior adviser to the agency – was able to take such dramatic action.

    But most of the agency’s other networks are structured as nonprofit organizations that are funded through federal grants, and that distance is making a big difference right now.

    […] People with knowledge of the situation in both Europe and Asia expressed concern that some journalists could be left in harms’ way due to the funding freeze.

    Specifically, there are Russian-born journalists living in exile in Europe and working for Radio Free Europe who face imprisonment if they return home.

    “If they lose their jobs, that could trigger visa expirations, leaving them essentially in legal limbo,” another source told CNN. “Without further support in the countries where they’re currently located, they face the risk of being stateless, deportation – things like that are all possibilities.”

    “A lot of people who are citizens of authoritarian countries… are extremely worried, because this could leave them very vulnerable” and upend the “safe haven” they had been granted, the source added. […]

  233. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Will Lockett – Starship was doomed from the beginning

    The January test had […] 8% of its designed payload. Meanwhile, the most recent test had just half of this in a transparent attempt to reduce vibration
    […]
    incredible pressure on SpaceX to save weight […] SpaceX is having to make the rockets […] fragile, meaning that just the vibrations from operation with a fraction of its expected payload would be enough to destroy the rocket.
    […]
    with the planned Block 3 version of Starship. It is even longer than Block 2 to accommodate even more propellant […] But somehow, it weighs significantly less than the smaller Block 2.

    Where have these weight savings come from? They aren’t changing any major materials. They aren’t changing any structural designs. They aren’t redesigning the entire engine or fuel tank setup. The only way is if major systems are built with a smaller safety factor
    […]
    That is why Starship keeps failing and will continue to fail. Let’s not forget that for […] approval, launches and landings have to be almost 100% reliable.
    […]
    Musk isn’t an engineer and doesn’t understand iterative design, and now SpaceX and NASA are facing a sunk cost fallacy.

    You never achieve iterative design with a full-scale prototype. It is incredibly wasteful […] I used to engineer high-speed boats—another weight—and safety-sensitive engineering field. We would always conduct scale model tests of every aspect of design, iteratively changing it as we went so that when we did build the full-scale version, we were solving the problems of scale, not design and scale simultaneously.
    […]
    Falcon 9 was initially meant to be fully reusable until he discovered that the useful payload would be zero. That was his iterative design telling him Starship was impossible over a decade ago, as just making the rocket larger won’t solve this! But he went on ahead anyway.

  234. says

    Trump administration moves to reinstate 24,000 federal workers after judge’s order

    The Trump administration has taken steps to reinstate thousands of probationary workers who were fired in its effort to downsize the federal government, according to court filings in one of two cases where the terminations were deemed unlawful.

    U.S. District Judge James Bredar, an appointee of former President Obama, last week ordered the mass reinstatement of fired probationary workers at 18 federal agencies after determining the government’s claims its terminations stemmed from “performance” issues “isn’t true.”

    More than a dozen declarations filed by the government Monday night indicate the administration has moved to reinstate more than 24,000 federal probationary employees. The filings provide the clearest look yet at the sweeping terminations.

    In them, officials at the agencies said most reinstated workers were placed on paid administrative leave, though some have been returned to full employment.

    They warned that the change could cause chaos for fully reinstated employees, in particular, who must be onboarded and trained again but could lose their positions once more if an appellate ruling reverses Bredar’s decision. [Chaos]

    “Whether required by operation of the TRO here or another court or administrative order, reinstatement of removed employees to full duty status could impose burdens on DOE and cause significant confusion and turmoil for the terminated employees,” Reesha Trznadel, acting chief human capital officer at the Department of Energy, wrote in one of the filed declarations. […]

  235. says

    France to reopen fourth nuclear air base as Europe rushes to rearm

    “Emmanuel Macron announces site near Germany will be modernized to host nukes amid fears Donald Trump will desert the continent.”

    France will modernize one of the country’s main air bases so it can host nuclear weapons, French President Emmanuel Macron announced Tuesday.

    “The Luxeuil air base is about to be upgraded in an unprecedented way and regain its full role in France’s nuclear deterrent,” he said, speaking from the area, adding it will need a “massive investment” to house two squadrons of Rafale jets able to carry nuclear weapons.

    The plan is not entirely new, as the chairman of the Senate’s foreign affairs and defense committee, Cédric Perrin, hinted at it in June.

    Announcing the storage of modern nuclear missiles on an air base less than 200 kilometers from the German border is strategic signalling. It also comes after Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz said he wanted to hold talks about France’s nuclear deterrent as fears grow of a U.S. retreat from the continent.

    The Luxeuil-Saint-Sauveur base hosted nuclear weapons for decades, until Rafale fighter jets were transferred to another location in 2011.

    Now, France will invest €1.5 billion and by 2035 the base will host F5 Rafale fighter jets as well as ASN4G air-launched hypersonic nuclear missiles. The staff will double to 2,000 people.

    Macron also confirmed that France would order more Rafales from Dassault Aviation, without providing a number. Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu previously said that the French air force would need about 20 more, adding to a fleet expected to reach more than 180 warplanes.

    “If we are to avoid war, our country and our continent must continue to defend, equip and prepare themselves,” Macron said.

    The French president said he would make more announcements soon on the country’s rearmament.

  236. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    NYT – Elon Musk’s Starlink expands across White House complex

    As [DOGE Chris Stanley] opened a door leading to the roof of the building, which is directly opposite an entrance to the White House, he tripped an alarm that alerted the Secret Service to his presence. It created a dramatic scene

    David Burbach (Space NatSec professor):

    If I try to charge a USB device from my government client it will alert IT to will send someone to my office to investigate but Musk’s crew is just casually setting up their own [White House / Eisenhower] wifi, no vetting no ATO [authorization to operate], and replacing fiber with slower Starlink. Lol nothing matters

    Rando: “Also, the WiFi at the White House is overtaxed? I refuse to believe that they aren’t absolutely swimming in the nicest Cisco access points you can buy.”

  237. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Minor follow-up to 201, 203, 206, 221.

    Marisa Kabas (The Handbasket):

    Some US Institute of Peace employees just received an email from the […] Trump-installed president […] They’ve been told to pass along this email to other employees (???) and to telework indefinitely.

    the Board […] legally and lawfully removed Mr. George E. Moose from the role of President and designated me, Kenneth Jackson, as the Acting President. […] telework until further notice.

  238. says

    Trump fails to get Putin to stop the shooting

    “Russia insists on terms to end the war that spell the end of democratic Ukraine, and has followed up the Trump call with an assault on Kyiv.”

    “Plan A is: Get the shooting to stop,” said U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday, noting the U.S. administration’s main goal is to secure a quick ceasefire before moving on to broader talks about a settlement to permanently end Russia’s war on Ukraine.

    But that clearly isn’t what Russian President Vladimir Putin has in mind, as he demonstrated by withholding his agreement to a full 30-day ceasefire in his 90-minute phone conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday. Shortly after the call, Russia launched a drone assault over Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.

    Offering the diplomatic bare minimum, the Russian leader said he would hold off striking at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for 30 days — a self-serving concession as that will save Russia’s energy system from being hit by the Ukrainians, who have just dramatically increased the range of their powerful Neptune subsonic cruise missiles from 200 kilometers to 1,000 kilometers.

    […] The Kremlin’s read-out from the call was long on the idea of a broad Washington-Moscow reset — on topics ranging from economic cooperation to ice hockey — and short on anything that looked like a meaningful peace deal for Ukrainians.

    In a sign that a real breakthrough is a remote prospect, Russia stuck firmly to its maximalist guns on demanding an end to military aid and intelligence to Kyiv, while wanting a fix to the “root causes” of the war — Kremlin shorthand for eviscerating democracy in Ukraine and thwarting the country’s political trajectory toward NATO and the EU.

    The Trump camp is showing it is all too ready to go along with Putin as he purposely mixes discrete stages of the Ukraine negotiations, changing the sequencing either to ensure any final settlement is firmly in Russia’s favor or to avoid acceding to a full ceasefire altogether. [Yep]

    The Russian leader and his top aides […] want guarantees Ukraine will never join NATO; that it will remain geopolitically neutral and unable to command its own fate, with severe limitations on weapons. Moscow also wants Crimea and the four eastern oblasts they claim as part of the Russian Federation to be internationally recognized as such. And they’ve ruled out the deployment of European troops to monitor any peace deal that’s agreed.

    In short, Russia is delivering an absolute “no” to the security guarantees Ukraine wants to protect it against what its sees as inevitable further attacks from Putin.

    Rather than wait for formal peace talks, the Kremlin is trying to cajole agreement on its red lines now, holding the ceasefire proposal hostage without having to formally reject it — a move that would risk Trump’s wrath. Trump has promised more sanctions against Moscow if Putin doesn’t commit to a peace deal but, for now at least, he’s allowing the Russian president to slip off the hook and set the tempo.

    Watching this play out, some commentators argue Putin is dithering, playing for time and unable to make up his mind. But it can also be said that he is merely dipping into a playbook he’s used before. Much like he did with American negotiators over Syria, he’s forcing his interlocutors deeper into a labyrinth of conditions and “root causes,” seeking to wear them down and either manage to secure his main goals or drive everything into an interminable back-and-forth.

    As far as the Kremlin sees it, negotiations are the continuation of war — just by other means.

    In flipping the negotiation process, Putin is getting a helping hand from Team Trump. […]

    More at the link.

  239. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Carol Anne Donohoe (Immigration attorney):

    They were not DEPORTED. Deported means sending them back to their country of origin. These people were sent to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, without any due process or any analysis as to whether they feared harm in El Salvador!

    Southpaw (Lawyer):

    It is human trafficking. […] shipping these people into indefinite involuntary servitude in El Salvador […] It’s an enslaving operation. Look at how El Salvador’s president Bukele describes the future these captives are facing […]

    these actions combined with the production already being generated by more than 40,000 inmates engaged in various workshops and labor under the Zero Idleness program will help make our prison system self-sustainable. As of today, it costs $200 million per year.

     
    Ryan Goodman (Just Security):

    Quite the admission in a government Declaration submitted late last night in the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) case: “It is true that many of the TdA members removed under the AEA do not have criminal records in the United States.”

    This does not instill confidence that the Government has accurately or properly identified individuals under the Alien Enemies Act: Government declaration: “[T]he lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose.”

    Brian Finucane (Just Security):

    The Trump administration is fundamentally misusing the AEA.

    And as a result, admin is trying to thread an impossible needle of not quite saying Venezuela is invading the US (b/c of fears of jeopardizing VZ cooperation on migration) while claiming TdA is connected to VZ government for AEA purposes.

    Anna Bower (Lawfare): Government lawyers in the AEA case, basically:

    Tren de Aragua is considered an invading foreign government because of its deep ties to the Maduro regime, which is a close ally in our efforts to expel members of the Tren de Aragua terrorist organization.

    Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (American Immigration Council):

    The Proclamation itself contains a similar nonsensical contention; TdA is a foreign government because it’s an arm of the Maduro government, and also it’s a foreign government because in Venezuela, it’s the “de facto” government in places where Maduro has lost control. Both can’t be true!

  240. JM says

    @235 CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain: I’m sure networking in the White House is powerful but every last thing that you do is logged in detail and permission to do anything is hard to get. DOGE is a “ask permission afterwards” type of organization and probably intentionally losing records of what exactly they are doing.

    @238 There is good commentary here: Youtube: Legal AF Trump is basically trying to declare war through executive order and failing that abuse the meaning of “invasion”. It’s one of those where the Constitution obviously means a military invasion but doesn’t try to exactly define it because there are corner cases, such as border raids by bandits that don’t represent any country.

  241. says

    Followup to comment 221 … more from Josh Marshall

    […] It’s actually worse than what I suspected.

    According to the MPD, they first got involved when they were contacted by the DC U.S. Attorney’s Office, the one currently run by acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, the election denier and Jan 6th lawyer. The U.S. Attorney’s office told the MPD that there was a disturbance at the U.S. Institute of Peace offices and that some intruders or trespassers were refusing to leave. They gave the MPD the contact information for the guy Trump says he has appointed to run it. That would be Kenneth Jackson, though the statement doesn’t include his name. They talked with Jackson and then forced the USIP staff to leave based on what the U.S. Attorney’s office told them about who had rightful possession of the office.

    They play coy about exactly why the staff left.

    MPD members went to the USIP building and contacted an individual who allowed MPD members inside of the building. Once inside of the building, the acting USIP President requested that all the unauthorized individuals inside of the building leave. Eventually, all the unauthorized individuals inside of the building complied with the acting USIP President’s request and left the building without further incident, and no arrests were made.”

    “Eventually” is doing a lot of work there.

    As I said, they’re coy about just who made who do what. But that’s not really the point here. The police showed up and said the staff had to leave and they left. I don’t think the USIP folks or their lawyers were up for a police-and-barricades situation. The real issue here is that the U.S. Attorney or at least the U.S. Attorney’s office contacted the MPD and told them that there was no legitimate dispute and they had to make the staff leave and they did.

    Two additional points.

    According to the Times story and USIP staff, they contacted the MPD first. It seems possible that the DOGE and/or FBI people there saw this communication and reached out to Ed Martin to try to intervene. That part is my speculation. The MPD statement doesn’t say anything about it. But that seems like the most likely chain of events.

    The second point is that the Senate passed that bill to restore the funding for the DC government which had been axed in the House’s continuing resolution. The Senate passed it, but it still has to be passed by the House and Trump needs to sign it. In other words, Trump has the DC government by the throat at the moment. Those are near-existential levels of funding for DC. They’re simply not in any position to tangle at all with the White House at the moment. And from everything I’ve seen so far, the mayor and at least certain members of the city council aren’t saying a word.

  242. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Bloomberg – Musk Ally, DOGE member Stanley tapped for Fannie Mae board

    Mortgage giant Fannie Mae has added Christopher Stanley, a cybersecurity engineer at SpaceX and [Twitter]—who is also involved with the Department of Government Efficiency—to its board of directors […] The board shakeup comes days after Pulte was confirmed to his post to lead the [Federal Housing Finance Agency ], the agency that sits at the crux of the US housing market, with oversight of Fannie and Freddie Mac. […] an entity that has been under government supervision since the 2008 financial crisis. Investors have pushed the Trump administration to release Fannie and Freddie from government conservatorship, a move that has the potential to net hedge funds billions.

    In addition to having sway over the government-sponsored entity, [DOGE guy] Stanley also has the potential to access Fannie’s home-lending data as a member of its board.

    BrianKrebs (Cybercrime journalist):

    BTW, I mentioned Stanley in a writeup […]:

    Stanley, 33, had a brush with celebrity on Twitter in 2015 when he leaked the user database for the DDoS-for-hire service LizardStresser, and soon faced threats of physical violence against his family.

    My 2015 story on that leak did not name Stanley, but he exposed himself as the source by posting a video about it on his Youtube channel. A review of domain names registered by Stanley shows he […] was the former owner of a pirated software and hacking forum […] as well as […] a video game cheating community.

    Stanley is the DOGE guy who caused a mini panic […] on the roof of the Eisenhower Building [@235]

  243. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-derangement-syndrome-bill-guy

    ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ Bill Guy Arrested For Soliciting A Minor For Prostitution

    What a difference a day makes … just 24 little hours.

    On Monday morning, Minnesota state Sen. Justin Eichorn was one of the five Republicans who introduced a bill to declare “Trump Derangement Syndrome” an “official” mental illness, on the grounds that they believe you’d have to be crazy not to love Donald Trump. [Whoa. Whacko for sure.]

    On Monday afternoon, Minnesota state Sen. Justin Eichorn was arrested for (allegedly) soliciting a minor for prostitution. […]

    According to the Bloomington Police Department, which was apparently carrying out some kind of “To Catch A Predator”-style sting operation, Eichorn “thought he was talking to a 16-year-old female” and arranged to meet her — but was instead surprised by a group of police officers who arrested him instead. […]

    Eichorn, who is married with four children, has presented himself as a big “law and order” type guy. For the last year, he has been railing on his Facebook page against DFL state Sen. Nicole Mitchell, who was arrested in April of last year for allegedly trying to break into her stepmother’s home in order to retrieve some objects of sentimental value, including her father’s ashes. [social media post at the link]

    Not that we condone burglary or anything, but trying to retrieve a loved one’s ashes is a somewhat more understandable crime than trying to pay a 16-year-old for sex. Then again, we’d also say that it’s a tad more deranged to pay a 16-year-old for sex than it is to criticize the president of the United States.

    Naturally, Eichorn’s a big fan of the police … when they’re not arresting him for the solicitation of a minor. [social media post at the link]

    “As a 40-year-old man, if you come to the Orange Jumpsuit District looking to have sex with someone’s child, you can expect that we are going to lock you up,” Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges told reporters, adding that he hopes the Minnesota Legislature will “take this case and this type of conduct more seriously.”

    The “Orange Jumpsuit District” appears to be some kind of branding for the Bloomington Police, as well as a YouTube TV show they were trying to do. [Does everybody need a “brand” and a TV show?]

    “As a 40-year-old man, if you come to the Orange Jumpsuit District looking to have sex with someone’s child, you can expect that we are going to lock you up,” Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges told reporters, adding that he hopes the Minnesota Legislature will “take this case and this type of conduct more seriously.”

    The “Orange Jumpsuit District” appears to be some kind of branding for the Bloomington Police, as well as a YouTube TV show they were trying to do.

  244. says

    NBC News:

    A federal judge ordered the government to reinstate U.S. Agency for International Development systems on Tuesday, ruling that the accelerated shutdown of the agency led by Elon Musk “likely violated the United States Constitution in multiple ways.”

  245. says

    NBC News:

    More than 400 Palestinians were killed in overnight Israeli strikes on Gaza, with hundreds injured, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces struck Hamas targets throughout Gaza in an effort to secure “the release of all our hostages — living and dead,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said, adding that Israel would act against Hamas “with increasing military force.”

  246. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Kevin Beaumont (Cybersecurity journalist):

    What a farce. The front page of CISA’s website has turned into a court order. They’re rehiring those they fired… and then placing them on immediate leave. They don’t know who they fired apparently so they’re asking people to email them. The DOGE kids don’t know what they are doing.
    [Screenshot] [Archived cisa.gov]

    [If you] believe that you fall within the Court’s order please reach out to [cisa’s email]. Please provide a password protected attachment that provides your full name, your dates of employment (including date of termination), and one other identifying factor such as date of birth or social security number. […] Upon your reinstatement, you will be placed on administrative leave […] Nothing in this process implicates your ability to voluntarily resign.

    […]
    If anybody is wondering btw, they asking you supply the password to the ZIP containing your PII by email… to the same mailbox. Which is totally insecure.

  247. says

    NBC News:

    The Justice Department on Tuesday refused to answer questions from a federal judge seeking more details on deportations carried out under a rarely used wartime act, leading the judge to issue a new order for the information.

  248. says

    Associated Press:

    Top Democrats on the House Judiciary and House Oversight committees have filed a lengthy Freedom of Information Act request questioning whether the Trump administration’s DOGE Service is operating ‘outside the bounds of federal law,’ The Associated Press has learned. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Rep. Gerald Connolly of Virginia are seeking detailed information about the authority of the Department of Government Efficiency Service, including billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk and some 40 other people, to carry out firings of federal workers and dismantling of federal agencies.

  249. says

    Associated Press:

    The Pentagon said Monday that internet pages honoring a Black Medal of Honor winner and Japanese American service members were mistakenly taken down — but staunchly defended its overall campaign to strip out content singling out the contributions by women and minority groups, which the Trump administration considers “DEI.”

  250. Reginald Selkirk says

    U.S. could lose democracy status, says global watchdog

    …
    “If it continues like this, the United States will not score as a democracy when we release [next year’s] data,” said Staffan Lindberg, head of the Varieties of Democracy project, run out of Sweden’s University of Gothenburg.

    “If it continues like this, democracy [there] will not last another six months.” …

  251. says

    […] Trump fired the two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday, a rejection of the corporate regulator’s traditional independence that will clear the way for the administration’s agenda and could draw a legal challenge.

    The White House told the Democrats, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, that the president was terminating their roles. Congress created the F.T.C. to enforce consumer protection and antitrust laws. It typically has five members, with the president’s party holding three seats and the opposing party two.

    “Today the president illegally fired me from my position as a federal trade commissioner, violating the plain language of a statute and clear Supreme Court precedent,” Ms. Slaughter said in a statement. “Why? Because I have a voice. And he is afraid of what I’ll tell the American people.”

    Mr. Trump’s maneuver is his latest attempt to assert the power of the presidency over independent regulators at agencies inside the U.S. government. Most of those regulators are presidential appointees who have traditionally had wide latitude to determine the direction of their agencies.

    But the Trump administration has disregarded the traditional protections for those presidential appointees.

    New York Times link

  252. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Commentary @245:
    Kevin Beaumont: “It says to email them and password protect it. I asked a former CISA person who emailed them—they said put password in email.”

    BrianKrebs: “lol @ please provide a password protected attachment. OMG are they going to get attachments.”
    Kevin Beaumont: “Password protect so you avoid anti malware scanning too.”

    Rando 1: “Yes hi I was recently fired and they did a really good job deleting my employee data so here’s the info you’ll need to get me back in the system and deposit that paycheck I missed.”
    Rando 2: “My salary was $2M/year.”

  253. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Ryan Goodman (Just Security):

    In one of the most important cases to watch [Does 1-26 v. Musk], federal district court [Judge Chuang] finds Elon Musk actions (in this case toward USAID) in violation of the Appointments Clause—sufficient to issue a preliminary injunction. A very big deal.

    at least during the time period relevant to this Motion, Musk was, at a minimum, likely the official performing the duties and functions of the USDS Administrator. […] the record of his activities to date establishes that his role has been and will continue to be as the leader of DOGE, with the same duties and degree of continuity as if he was formally in that position. […] Musk, without having been duly appointed as an Officer of the United States, exercised significant authority reserved for an Officer
    […]
    the Court finds that Plaintiffs have demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of the Appointments Clause claim as to the decision to permanently close USAID headquarters.

    Also a reminder that in a separate Appointments Clause case [New Mexico, et al. v. Musk], Judge Chutkan, in denying a TRO, nevertheless signaled strong support for the plaintiffs’ theory of the case when it reaches the merits.

    Accepting the Plaintiffs’ allegations as true, Defendants’ actions are thus precicely the “Executive abuses” that the Appointments Clause seeks to prevent.

  255. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    ABC – Judge says dismantling of USAID was unconstitutional

    Chuang ordered Musk and his [DOGE] to immediately give USAID employees access to their “email, payment, security notification, and all other electronic systems,” and ordered a pause on any efforts to shut down USAID. […] the exact implications of the decision on the operations of USAID are unclear.

    DOGE and Musk were also ordered to submit a written agreement within two weeks that ensures USAID can reoccupy its former headquarters in the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C.

  256. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    The Handbasket – Trump to declare “illicit” fentanyl “Weapon of Mass Destruction”

    heads of the US Departments of Commerce, Defense, Justice and State received a copy of a draft executive order (EO) likely sometime last week stating that President Trump would be designating “illicit” fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction […] Here is the text of the draft in its entirety [*snip*]
    […]
    The EO may be published as early as next week […] The source speculates the purpose is a combination of designating fentanyl cartels as terrorist organizations and creating justification for conducting military operations in Mexico and Canada. They also suspect that it will be used domestically as justification for rounding up homeless encampments and deporting drug users who are not citizens.
    […]
    [The Policy Coordination Committee meeting read out of departments’] concerns include the fact that the EO “cites a statute that does not entail an authority to ‘designate’ substances as WMD,” concerns about “negative effects on entities that legitimately handle, ship, and deliver opioids for pharmaceutical purposes,” and acknowledges that “fentanyl can be treated as a chemical weapon when it is developed or used as a weapon… which risks muddying clearly defined roles and responsibilities between the counternarcotics, counterproliferation, and arms control communities.”

    Marisa Kabas: “Draft refers to ‘illicit’ fentanyl but doesn’t define what that means and makes no distinction between legal uses”

  257. JM says

    Straight Times: Russia, Ukraine accuse each other of attempting cross-border attacks

    Russia and Ukraine accused each other of trying to launch cross-border attacks on March 18, with each saying its forces had repelled attempted incursions.
    Both sides said their forces were in full control of their territory on their own sides of the border and had inflicted losses on enemy troops.

    Not clear what, if anything, really happened. There is some reasonably credible sources saying Ukraine pushed into Belgorod (next to Kursk) and indications Russians made an attack near Sumy. Both sides would have had good reason to discredit the other side leading up the phone call between Trump and Putin. The build up of Russian forces near Sumy had been noted before.

    Mediaite: Russian Bomb Reportedly Cuts Power in Ukrainian City Just Hours After Putin Promised Trump He’d Stop Attacking Energy Facilities

    A Russian bomb reportedly cut power in a Ukrainian city just after President Vladimir Putin agreed to stop attacks on energy facilities.
    Putin and President Donald Trump on Tuesday had a phone conversation to talk about a ceasefire deal between Russia and Ukraine. As they spoke, Trump proposed that both countries refrain from attacking “energy infrastructure facilities” for 30 days. According to the readout published by the Kremlin and translated from Russian, Putin was receptive to the idea and even acted on it right away.

    Russia may have violated the cease fire only a few hours after agreeing. Given Russia’s use of saturation fire with low accuracy bombs and drones they couldn’t abide by such a selective cease fire even if they wanted too. It isn’t clear if this was a result of Trump over stating what Putin agreed to or Putin just agreeing and ignoring the promise as soon as he got off the phone. It will be interesting to see if this holds up and what Moscow says in response.
    As of this time Ukraine has not signed on to the limited ceasefire yet and Russia may use that to walk it back themselves.

  258. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Follow-up to the injunction of USAID dismantling at 252, 254.

    EmptyWheel:

    Not to be a party pooper, but I don’t see any way that this order will work.

    Pete Marocco can just tell DOGE they can do everything they already did and they can do it all over again.

    Defendants shall not take any other actions relating to USAID without the express authorization of a USAID official with legal authority to take or approve the action.

    […]
    While Judge Chuang says many of the actions at DOGE were ratified by Marocco or Rubio, he says there’s no evidence that anyone but DOGE shut down the building or the website.
    […]
    Judge Chuang just trolling [Anna Bower] at this point.

    Vivek Ramaswamy and Amy Gleason, have been referenced by the President or the White House as being a leader of DOGE. The position is therefore not personal to a particular individual.

  259. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    AP – FDA staff return to crowded offices, broken equipment and missing chairs

    Thousands of employees returned to the Food and Drug Administration’s headquarters Monday to find overflowing parking lots […] Some workers reported waiting up to one hour to clear security checkpoints […] Once inside, employees confronted broken desks, missing chairs and locked offices for which they didn’t have keys. […] “We have no supplies. People are hunting around all of the buildings on campus for pads of paper and other basics.”
    […]
    All the employees told the AP that they brought their own drinking water Monday. That’s due to a monthslong issue involving Legionella, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease, which was detected at several FDA buildings. The [GSA] has been working on the issue since last summer.

    FDA staff received an email earlier this month that all water is safe to drink, but it did not detail the latest testing results or corrective actions taken.

  260. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Nathan Tankus – Can the Trump administration arbitrarily take money from anyone’s bank account? (Mar 13)

    On February 11, 2025, the [FEMA], an agency housed in the Department of Homeland Security, removed $80.5 million from New York City’s main bank account, which is an account with Citibank. Well, that’s not exactly accurate. […] they, in essence, sent New York City’s main bank account to negative 79.5 million dollars. Citibank kindly agreed to forgive the overdraft fee. […] what exactly are the current limits to what the Trump administration can do and how easy is it to break those limits?
    […]
    the Automated Clearing House (ACH) payment system is one of the foundational building blocks of all payments made in our society. […] Recognizing the importance of payment finality, the National Automated Clearing House Association has promulgated rules in this area. Meanwhile, the laws congress has passed about ACH payments are broad and vague. However, […] Nacha rules can and are currently superseded in a variety of ways by what is called “agency rulemaking”. […] to “interpret” the law for practical use […] Thus, there is nothing in payments law that provides a clear or unambiguous check on the Trump administration’s actions if they decide to reinterpret payment statutes in order to weaponize […] the ACH system.
    […]
    So if the bank-based payment system or payments law is not a constraint, are there others? At first glance, it might seem like there are. Administrative agencies can’t just decide to debit accounts. They have to get payment reversals or separate debit transactions certified at a central point. […] The body that certifies debit transactions is… the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. With DOGE’s Thomas Krause as Fiscal Assistant Secretary, it is unlikely, to say the least, that the Bureau of the Fiscal Service will be blocking such requests from agencies.
    […]
    I worry that the most foundational legal issues may not be resolved, or even seriously litigated, in New York City’s lawsuit
    […]
    it has been extremely difficult to find sources willing to be quoted, or really even vaguely characterized. […] Imagine you were such a person and you believed that the Trump administration was in the process of successfully claiming for itself the power to arbitrarily reverse any government payment or even, in the worst case scenarios, arbitrarily confiscate the funds in any person’s bank account without due process of law. Would you be willing to risk being targeted[?] […] I have never encountered the kind of alarm and panic regarding personal safety that I have in reporting this story.

    Rando: “Hear me out but the federal government should have this power… to delete the billionaires.”

  263. says

    Four people have been killed and at least 200 have been injured in an outbreak of wildfires in Oklahoma, officials said.

    There has been one death each in Lincoln, Garfield, Haskell, and Pawnee counties, the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management said in an update Monday. The medical examiner’s office determined the deaths were due to the fires or high winds.

    It’s believed that one person in Pawnee was trying to escape his home when “it became engulfed in flames, hindering his ability to evacuate,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release Saturday.

    […] The State Department of Health has identified at least 200 injuries. The Emergency Management Department said more than 400 homes across the state have been damaged. Residents are asked to report damage at damage.ok.gov to help officials identify affected areas.

    Because of gusty winds and low humidity, much of the state remains under a red flag warning until 10 p.m. Tuesday.

    link

  264. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    RFJ Jr. talks about bird flu. Prepare your shocked face.

    NYT – Kennedy’s alarming prescription for bird flu on poultry farms

    Instead of culling birds when the infection is discovered, farmers “should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it,” Mr. Kennedy said [repeatedly] on Fox News. […] Mr. Kennedy does not have jurisdiction over farms. But Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, also has voiced support for the notion.
    […]
    veterinary scientists said letting the virus sweep through poultry flocks unchecked would be inhumane and dangerous, and have enormous economic consequences. […] Every infection is another opportunity for the virus, called H5N1, to evolve into a more virulent form.
    […]
    “The way we raise birds now, there’s not a lot of genetic variability,” Dr. Hansen said. “They’re all the same bird, basically.” Public health regulations would forbid the very few birds that might survive an infection from being sold. In any event, those birds might only be protected against the current version of H5N1, not others that emerge as the virus continues to evolve.

  265. says

    Judge blocks Trump’s effort to ban transgender troops

    U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said the ban was “soaked in animus.”

    The Pentagon cannot enforce President Donald Trump’s order banning transgender people from serving in the military, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, saying it is “soaked in animus” and unconstitutionally discriminates on the basis of sex.

    “The cruel irony is that thousands of transgender servicemembers have sacrificed — some risking their lives — to ensure for others the very equal protection rights the Military Ban seeks to deny them,” U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes wrote in a 79-page opinion.

    Reyes ruled that the Trump administration had mischaracterized medical studies in its effort to justify the ban, which Trump enacted in an executive order on the first day of his second term. The administration, she wrote, had misquoted research on transgender people while ignoring data that supported military service by transgender individuals.

    The judge, a Biden appointee to the bench in Washington, D.C., acknowledged that courts must give extraordinary deference to the military on matters of troop readiness and lethality. But that deference does not need to be “blind” when there are constitutional violations, she wrote.

    Reyes delayed the effect of her order until March 21 to give the Trump administration time to pursue an emergency appeal.

    The ruling is a painstaking rejection of the Trump administration’s justification for the policy. It came in a lawsuit brought by a group of transgender members of the military who expect to be removed as a result of Trump’s executive order. Among them, Reyes notes, are service members who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq and have earned numerous military decorations, including a Bronze Star. Those facts on their own undermine the administration’s claim that transgender troops diminish military readiness, the judge wrote.

    Reyes also said the administration failed to conduct any analysis of the impact of transgender people serving openly in the military since 2021, when Joe Biden lifted restrictions imposed during the first Trump presidency.

    “That is unfortunate,” Reyes wrote. “Plaintiffs’ service records alone are Exhibit A for the proposition that transgender persons can have the warrior ethos, physical and mental health, selflessness, honor, integrity, and discipline to ensure military excellence.”

    She noted that the Justice Department agreed with her on that point. “So why discharge them and other decorated soldiers?” she wondered. “Crickets.” […]

  266. says

    New York Times link

    “I Don’t Believe a Single Word Trump and Putin Say About Ukraine”

    Ever since President Trump returned to office and began trying to make good on his boast about ending the Ukraine war in days, thanks to his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, I’ve had this gnawing concern that something was lost in translation in the bromance between Vlad and Don.

    When the interpreter tells Trump that Putin says he’s ready to do anything for “peace” in Ukraine, I’m pretty sure what Putin really said was he’s ready to do anything for a “piece” of Ukraine.

    You know those homophones — they can really get you in a lot of trouble if you’re not listening carefully. Or if you’re only hearing what you want to hear.

    The Times reported that in his two-and-a-half-hour phone call with Trump on Tuesday, Putin agreed to halt strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, according to the Kremlin, but Putin made clear that he would not agree to the general 30-day cease-fire that the United States and Ukraine had agreed upon and proposed to Russia.

    The Kremlin also said that Putin’s “key condition” for ending the conflict was a “complete cessation” of foreign military and intelligence assistance to Kyiv — in other words, stripping Ukraine naked of any ability to resist a full Russian takeover of Ukraine. More proof, if anyone needed it, that Putin is not, as Trump foolishly believed, looking for peace with Ukraine; he’s looking to own Ukraine.

    All that said, you will pardon me, but I do not trust a single word that Trump and Putin say about their private conversations on Ukraine — including the words “and” and “the,” as the writer Mary McCarthy famously said about the veracity of her rival Lillian Hellman. Because something has not smelled right from the start with this whole Trump-Putin deal-making on Ukraine.

    […] Why else am I suspicious? Because Trump keeps saying that all he wants to do is end “the killing” in Ukraine. I am with that. But the easiest and quickest way to end the killing would be for the side that started the killing, the side whose army invaded Ukraine for utterly fabricated reasons, to get out of Ukraine. Presto — killing over.

    Putin needs to enlist Trump’s help only if he wants something more than an end to the killing. […] the only way for Putin to get the extra-large slice that he wants and the postwar restrictions that he wants imposed on Ukraine — without more warfighting — is by enlisting Trump to get them for him.

    Why else am I suspicious? Because Trump has left all our European allies on the sidelines when he negotiates with Putin. Excuse me, but our European allies have contributed billions of dollars in military equipment, economic aid and refugee assistance to Ukraine — more combined than the United States, which Trump lies about — and they have made clear that they are now ready to do even more to prevent Putin from overrunning Ukraine and coming for them next.

    So why would Trump enter negotiations with Putin and not bring our best leverage — our allies — with him? And why would he visibly turn U.S. military and intelligence aid to Ukraine off and then on […]

    […] What also smells wrong to me is that Trump appears to have no clue why Putin is so nice to him. As a Russian foreign policy analyst in Moscow put it to me recently: “Trump does not get that Putin is merely manipulating him to score Putin’s principal goal: diminish the U.S. international position, destroy its network of security alliances — most importantly in Europe — and destabilize the U.S. internally, thus making the world safe for Putin and Xi.”

    Trump refuses to understand, this analyst added, that Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping both want to see America boxed in to the Western Hemisphere rather than messing around with either of them in Europe or Asia/Pacific — and they see Trump as their pawn to deliver that.

    […] Finally, and pretty much summing up all of the above, it smells to me that Trump has never made clear what concessions, sacrifices and guarantees he is demanding from Russia to get a peace deal on Ukraine. And who goes into a negotiation without a very clear, unwavering bottom line in terms of core American interests?

    There are sustainable ways to end a war and keep it ended and there are unsustainable ways. It all depends on the bottom line — and if our bottom line departs fundamentally from that of Ukraine’s and our allies’, I don’t think they are going to just roll over for the Trump-Putin bromance.

    Putin wants a Ukraine with a government that is basically the same as his neighboring vassal Belarus, not a Ukraine that is independent like neighboring Poland — a free-market democracy anchored in the European Union.

    What kind of Ukraine does Trump want? The Belorussian version or the Polish version?

    […] color me very, very skeptical of every word Trump and Putin say on Ukraine — including “and” and “the.”

  268. says

    Sky Captain @263, Wow. RFK Jr. is looking dumber by the day. That guy is so stupid.

    And so dangerous now that he has a position of power.

  270. Bekenstein Bound says

    Something is wrong here. In the comic book that had Lex Luthor manage to become President, Superman came along and stopped him.

    So where the fuck is he already?

  273. birgerjohansson says

    Myself @ 271
    I forgot to mention it, Swastika Guy is at it again (not Elon Musk this time).

  276. Reginald Selkirk says

    @269 Bekenstein Bound

    Something is wrong here. In the comic book that had Lex Luthor manage to become President, Superman came along and stopped him.
    So where the fuck is he already?

    Superman is still looking for a phone booth in which to change clothes.

  277. Reginald Selkirk says

    Tesla Value Tanks So Hard It’s Not Even Elon Musk’s Most Valuable Asset Anymore

    Another day, another update on the dire state of things at American automaker Tesla. After witnessing its first decline in sales for almost a decade last year, being subject to attacks on its dealerships and getting hit with numerous calls for boycotts as a result of company boss Elon Musk’s work gutting the U.S. government, Tesla’s misfortunes are finally coming back to hit musk where it hurts: his wallet.

    Well, his enormous wealth, to be specific, as the free-falling stock price at Tesla now means that Musk’s share in the automaker is worth less than his stake in SpaceX for the first time in more than five years, reports the Guardian. The price of shares in Tesla fell from its high of almost $480 per share in December to around $225 per share at the time of writing. This hit Musk’s stake in the company, which is now worth around $127 billion and is less than his $147 billion stake in SpaceX:…

  278. Reginald Selkirk says

    X bounces back to $44 billion.

    Investors have reportedly valued the social media giant at the same amount Elon Musk purchased it for in 2022, a sharp jump after it was deemed worth less than $10 billion in September 2024.

    Musk’s plum position in the White House might have something to do with X’s change of fortunes, though that hasn’t helped Tesla, which is in the midst of a 50 percent stock slump since December.

  279. Reginald Selkirk says

    Steven Pinker talks at Richard Dawkins

    This is a lengthy conversation between Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker. It took place in Boston at the Chevalier Theatre in September 2024. The video appeared on YouTube last month.

    In my opinion, the important point is how deeply Pinker buys into the adaptationist perspective of Dawkins. He asks no challenging questions and he seems to be of the opinion that the Dawkins’ view of evolution is the dominant view of evolutionary biologists. I’m an admirer of Richard Dawkins but I have not drunk the Kool-Aid.

    Pinker has drunk the Kool-Aid and most of the video is him pontificating about his incorrect views of evolution…
    (video 1:37:01)

  282. birgerjohansson says

    Map of every colonial battle fought by colonial powers.
    https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1ACtmegStG/

    (New Zealand clearly got mauled so badly, it got pushed 3000 miles southwest)
    .
    -BTW Sweden, Switzerland, Bolivia and Mongolia (plus recently independent countries)  have never been at war with Britain. All the others have at some point, if you include the natives of the empire [and the colonies of countries at war with Britain].
    .
    I am not certain about microstates like Andorra or Lichenstein. The papal state (curently the Vatican) would have been at war with Henry VIII and Elizabeth.

  283. birgerjohansson says

    Addendum; Bhutan north of India and maybe Nepal. Tibet if we recognize it as a legitimate state under occupantion. Not Iceland- it belonged to Denmark when Nelson bombarded Copenhagen.

  284. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Politico – The alleged DOGE admin has also been working at HHS
    Amy Gleason filed a sworn statement claiming to be the full-time DOGE administrator, omitting that she’s been simultaneously at HHS since February as a consultant (first as DOGE detailee then plain HHS employee, upon suspicion of intra-DOGE data sharing across agencies). Also in Mexico for a while. She’s very efficient. DoJ tried to keep the HHS position sealed from public eye, but a judge made em reveal it.

  285. says

    Followup to comments 263 and 267.

    Washington Post link

    Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. needs to stop saying vaccines are “a personal choice.”

    They’re not. Speed limits aren’t a personal choice. Smoking on airplanes isn’t a personal choice. Paying taxes isn’t a personal choice. In wartime, the draft isn’t a personal choice. (Kennedy, who was born two weeks before me, is old enough to remember those days.) […] Each of us gives up some personal freedoms so we all stay alive. Opposing lifesaving mandates is childish libertarian nonsense.

    Sadly, our top health official is a childish libertarian.

    […] If enough of us refuse to obey a sensible protective law, people will die.

    School vaccine mandates are the law in all 50 states, and in most cases have been so for more than 100 years. Such laws were passed starting in the 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution filled cities and public schooling gathered children together. Epidemics exploded. There was only one vaccine then, against smallpox, and it was unquestionably dangerous; in rare cases, it led to encephalitis, amputation of the vaccinated arm or death. However, since smallpox killed 30 percent of its victims and left some survivors hairless and scarred, the risk was regarded as worth it.

    Courts upheld mandatory vaccination. The most important case was 1905’s Jacobson v. Massachusetts, in which the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that a state could punish a citizen who refused to be vaccinated. Compulsory measures to protect public health, the justices held, were “within the police power of a State.”

    That “police power” aspect is important. Religion was not an issue (even though Jacobson was a minister). The Rev. Jacobson could be fined for the same reason you can be arrested for firing a gun in a Walmart even if the Second Amendment says you can own one: Having a transmissible disease makes you dangerous to others. Your personal preferences aren’t relevant.

    […] Vaccines are a medical procedure. There is nothing religious about them, any more than a hernia operation or a root canal is a religious act. Seat belts aren’t religious; there is no faith-based exemption to laws requiring that we buckle up.

    Moreover, it was a fallacy. Every major religion is adamantly in favor of vaccination. The Vatican and top Jewish and Muslim scholars have studied vaccine ingredients and endorsed them — even though some contain trace amounts of pork gelatin stabilizer or DNA from aborted fetuses — because they save lives. Nonetheless, after 1998, with the start of the false “measles vaccines cause autism” rumor, the anti-vax movement encouraged parents to abuse what were meant to be very rare exceptions. Sham “churches” were even founded to hand them out.

    [I snipped examples of past legal decisions.]

    […] Kennedy also needs to stop recommending cod-liver oil, budesonide and clarithromycin. He is shilling for patent medicines. Five years ago, Richard Bartlett, a physician Kennedy praised in a Fox News interview, was claiming that budesonide was a “silver bullet” for covid-19. This happens in every epidemic: Profiteers appear with nostrums that make no biological sense and are never seriously tested. Once it was bloodletting. In the 1910s, it was radium solution. In the 1970s, it was vitamin C for colds and cancer. During the AIDS epidemic, it was Kemron and Pearl Omega in Kenya and oxytherapy and Virodene in South Africa. [I snipped more examples.]

    […] Everything our leading health official has said about measles so far is somewhere on the spectrum from incomplete to tendentious to outright mendacious, and it’s seducing some Texans into avoiding care that could save them. He should shut up or step down.

  287. says

    I got another money begging mailing with a ‘personal message from chuck schumer’ yesterday. So instead of sending money I sent my Crawl Off And Die form letter in the post paid envelope they enclosed!
    How do we get off this Death Spiral?

  288. says

    […] Elon Musk went on Fox News Tuesday night to whine about protests at Tesla car dealerships across the country, claiming he has no idea why anyone would be mad at him, since he’s just a benevolent guy trying to help Americans.

    “It’s really come as such a shock to me that there’s this level of hatred and violence from the left. I always thought that the left, that Democrats, were supposed to be the party of empathy, the party of caring,” Musk said in a Fox News appearance Tuesday night. “I’ve never done anything harmful, I’ve only done productive things. … This doesn’t make any sense. I think there are larger forces at work.” [Awww. The poor man-baby is innocent. Nope.]

    [video at the link]

    Of course, Musk has done extremely harmful things since he bankrolled […] Trump’s 2024 campaign and wormed his way into a nebulous and powerful role within the federal government.

    Through his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Musk has convinced Trump to ignore the law and cut congressionally approved funding, shutter government agencies, and make it harder for Americans to obtain their Social Security benefits.

    The moves have already had tangibly harmful effects.

    For example, his role in virtually shuttering the U.S. Agency for International Development—which a federal judge ruled on Tuesday violated the law—has led people in impoverished countries to die, including an 10-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl who were receiving HIV treatment through a USAID program [!!] Shuttering USAID and the programs it ran to feed the starving and treat the sick could cause hundreds of thousands of people to die from hunger or diseases. And those diseases could spread to the United States if they are not kept under control.

    As part of DOGE’s push, the Social Security Administration announced new changes on Tuesday that will force elderly and disabled people to verify their identities online rather than over the phone. If elderly people are unable to use the online system, they’ll be forced to go to a Social Security office in-person—which Social Security officials say is a major hardship for older Americans who might be too frail to travel or cannot drive.

    Even worse is that DOGE is cutting 7,000 jobs and shuttering dozens of Social Security offices, which will make recipients who need to verify their identities have to travel further or face long wait times due to staffing shortages.

    “DOGE is closing nearly 50 Social Security offices across the country—including in White Plains—and now they’re limiting phone support,” Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York said in a post on X. “Make no mistake, this is a full-blown attack on Social Security. Elon Musk is trying to take away benefits you earned.”

    Musk has also falsely claimed multiple times that dead people are receiving Social Security benefits. And that lie has led DOGE to accuse living people of being dead and cancel their Social Security and Medicare benefits.

    […] Musk has also pushed cuts to medical research into new treatments for diseases like cancer and diabetes. The cuts have led to layoffs and hiring freezes at major research institutions.

    [I snipped details regarding harm Musk has caused my firing tens of thousands of federal workers, including veterans.]

    Link

  289. says

    UNREAL. ICE implies in a sworn declaration that MOST of the Venezuelans sentenced to hard labor in a brutal Central American prison without charge or trial or so much as a cursory hearing had never been convicted or even charged with ANY CRIME whatsoever, not even a trivial one, anywhere, ever!

    https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zhcfq6acrvb6ermtjt644w2n/post/3lknsoz24js2m

    NEW today from @miamiherald.com: more men sent to El Salvador on Saturday have been identified by their families, including a 27-year-old who entered legally at a port of entry in 2023 through the CBP One app and a 29-year-old father of a baby born here last year. Neither have any criminal record.

    https://bsky.app/profile/reichlinmelnick.bsky.social/post/3lknrmflifk2p

    Photos at the link.

  291. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/trumps-unequal-opportunity-employment

    Trump’s Unequal Opportunity Employment Commission Investigating Law Firms For Hiring Non-White Non-Men

    Do Trump administration officials ever get tired of acting like 14-year-old internet trolls? Clearly not! They are on a mission, it seems, to gaslight the American public by constantly insisting that up is down […]

    This week, the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission made clear that it has fully abandoned its entire purpose of protecting workers from discrimination in favor of smugly pursuing the nonsense idea that policies meant to prevent discrimination are the real discrimination. EEOC (acting) Chair Andrea Lucas sent out a letter to 20 top law firms demanding information about their efforts to hire people other than straight white heterosexual cisgender men.

    A press release about the letters reads:

    Based on publicly available information, the letters note concerns that some firms’ employment practices, including those labeled or framed as DEI, may entail unlawful disparate treatment in terms, conditions, and privileges of employment, or unlawful limiting, segregating, and classifying based on race, sex, or other protected characteristics, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII).

    These practices include things like advertising job openings in places where people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities will see them, commitments to at least occasionally interview a few people who are not straight white heterosexual cisgender men, and policies meant to prevent hostile work environments.

    According to people like Lucas, who are somehow not doing an absurdist satire of what a delusional bigot might think, such policies amount to discrimination against the aforestated men, who might lose out on a job should the law firm find someone else more qualified. […]

    A diversity survey conducted by the American Bar Association (ABA) in 2022 discovered that a mere 81 to 93 percent of equity partners across all firms were white people, as were about 70 to 90 percent of non-equity partners and 70 to 79 percent of associates. It also found that 80 percent of equity partners and 70 percent of non-equity partners were men. In 2020, the vast majority of law firms did not hire a single Native American, Pacific Islander, or LGBTQ+ person. Also, six percent of new male employees were hired as equity partners, while only two percent of new female employees were.

    Curiously, at the associate level, “female attorneys were hired at a rate of 53 percent and male attorneys were hired at a rate of 47 percent.”

    […] A more recent ABA report found that although women make up 56 percent of law students and have been the majority of law students since 2016, they still make up only 42 percent of attorneys. This is partly due to the fact that the vast majority of older lawyers are men, but hiring data strongly suggests that it is far from the only factor.

    The facts do not really seem to support any kind of widespread discrimination against white male attorneys. Rather, like so many other “problems” the Trump administration is hell bent on “addressing,” this seems to be an issue that exists exclusively in the “guts” of people who feel that it must be happening. The fear, as usual, seems to be that if given equality, people of color, white women, and all LGBTQ+ people will treat straight white cisgender men the way straight white cisgender men treated them. [True]

    It should be noted that Andrea Lucas is only the acting chair of the EEOC, and will hopefully gladly step down from her position just as soon as they find a man to replace her.

  292. says

    U.S. District Judge James Boasberg gave the Trump administration a one-day extension to turn over information about deportation flights that left the country Saturday, as the government suggests it may invoke a state secrets privilege.

    Boasberg issued the extension minutes before the Justice Department’s Wednesday noon EDT deadline to provide the information.

    “Although their grounds for such request at first blush are not persuasive, the Court will extend the deadline for one more day,” Boasberg, an appointee of former President Obama, wrote in a brief order.

    […] The judge’s latest order gives the administration until Thursday at noon EDT to either hand over the information or formally invoke the state secrets privilege.

    Though the extension is short, it provides an appeals court a window to intervene beforehand. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is weighing the Trump administration’s request to block Boasberg’s decisions and could rule anytime after the final brief is submitted late Wednesday afternoon.

    Link

    More Trump administration delaying tactics.

  294. Reginald Selkirk says

    FedEx Data Scraping and Telecom Insider Bribes Powered Nationwide iPhone Theft Operation

    Federal authorities have broken up an international crime ring that stole thousands of iPhones from porches nationwide [non-paywalled link], arresting 13 people last month after a sophisticated operation that combined high-tech tools with old-fashioned bribery.

    The thieves created software to scrape FedEx tracking numbers and paid AT&T store employees to provide customer order details and delivery addresses, according to WSJ, which cites prosecutors. Armed with this information, runners intercepted packages at doorsteps moments after delivery.

    Demetrio Reyes Martinez, known online as “CookieNerd,” developed code that circumvented FedEx limits on delivery-data requests, while AT&T employee Alejandro Then Castillo used his credentials to track hundreds of shipments and reportedly received up to $2,500 for recruiting other employees. Stolen devices were funneled through Wyckoff Wireless in Brooklyn, a store owned by Joel Suriel, who was already on supervised release from a previous wire-fraud conviction. The merchandise was then shipped overseas for sale and activation…

  295. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Anna Bower (Lawfare):

    The United States Institute of Peace is suing over DOGE’s “lawless assault” on the independent non-profit organization established by Congress.

    [Defendants: DOGE, (Amy Gleason, James Burnham, Jacob Altik, Nate Cavanaugh), USIP Board stooges (Rubio, Hegseth, Garvin), Trump.]

    Worth noting that one of the named defendants in this suit is Jacob Altik, a 2021 University of Michigan Law graduate who has been selected to clerk for Justice Gorsuch starting *later this year.*

    Quinta Jurecic (Lawfare):

    tired: weighing separation of powers issues as a scotus clerk
    wired: getting named as a defendant in a lawsuit over the violation of the separation of powers

    Rando:

    I was like, I know the name James Burnham from somewhere! And then I remembered he was a Kozinski clerk.

    I have been told that Burnham was originally hired by Kennedy prior to Kennedy’s retirement, but when Kennedy decided he was going to retire, [Kavanaugh] hired Kozinski’s son, Clayton Kozinski, and [?someone?] pushed Gorsuch to hire Burnham the next term.

    It’s all very cozy up there in nepoland.

    * Burnham did clerk for Kozinski then Gorsuch. Phrasing of the push was unclear.
    * AP – Kavanaugh’s ties to disgraced mentor Alex Kozinski loom (2018)

  296. says

    @219 Lynna, OM informed us of:
    https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-crosses-new-line-calls-judges-impeachment-escalating-fight-judic-rcna196882
      Chief Justice John Roberts rebukes Trump over call for federal judge’s impeachment

    I must state that it seems obvious, by careful reading of the wording of the statement by SCROTUM chief roberts, that roberts was not really trying to protect that judge, he was trying to cover his own ass, trying to make it harder for the magat to impeach him if he opposes the magat too intensely.

  297. KG says

    CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain@232,

    So, it turns out that rocket science… is indeed, rocket science! And Musk is no rocket scientist.

  298. KG says

    Well, his enormous wealth, to be specific, as the free-falling stock price at Tesla now means that Musk’s share in the automaker is worth less than his stake in SpaceX for the first time in more than five years, reports the Guardian. – Reginald Selkirk quoting Jalopnik@276

    We may hope that SpaceX soon follows Tesla, when the mugs realise that Starship will never work (see #232); and hopefully, the ESA (in practice, France) gets going on an alternative to Starlink.

  299. Reginald Selkirk says

    Can NASA remain nonpartisan when basic spaceflight truths are shredded?

    Spoiler alert: Betteridge got this one right.

    A drone near the landing site captured incredible images of Crew Dragon Freedom as it slowly descended beneath four parachutes…
    Kate Tice, an engineer from SpaceX on the webcast, noted that touchdown was imminent. “We’re going to stand by for splashdown located in the Gulf of America,” she said…
    For those of us who have closely followed the story of Wilmore and Williams over the last nine months—and Ars Technica has had its share of exclusive stories about this long and strange saga—the final weeks before the landing have seen it take a disturbing turn.

    In February, President Trump and the chief executive of SpaceX, Elon Musk, began to say that the two astronauts were “stranded” in space because the Biden administration did not want to bring them home. “They got left in space,” Trump said.

    “They were left up there for political reasons,” Musk concluded.

    Just what those political reasons were was never specified. But the basic message was clear: Biden, bad; Trump, good.

    The reality is that NASA set a plan for the return of Wilmore and Williams last August. The spacecraft that brought them back to Earth on Tuesday safely docked to the space station in September. They could have come home at any time since. NASA—not the Biden administration, which all of my reporting indicates was not involved in any decision-making—decided the best and safest option was to keep Wilmore and Williams in orbit until early this year. Musk knew this plan. He had to sign off on it. Senior NASA officials earlier this month confirmed, publicly and on the record, that the decision was made by the space agency in the best interests of the International Space Station Program. Not for political reasons.

    And still, the lies came…

    Ars Technica is s science and technology site. The rocket science fan bois are the last group there to accept that Musk has gone full Nazi, cutting him tremendous amounts of slack because of the success of SpaceX. I am not going anywhere near the comment section on that post.

  300. JM says

    NBC News: Ukraine is ‘ready to implement’ a partial ceasefire with Russia on energy and infrastructure, Zelenskyy says

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz said that after Trump spoke to Zelenskyy by phone Wednesday morning, the two leaders agreed “on a partial ceasefire against energy,” according to a joint statement released by the White House.

    Zelenskyy said in his statement that he and Trump have instructed their teams “to resolve technical issues related to implementing and expanding the partial ceasefire” and will meet in the coming days in Saudi Arabia to “continue coordinating steps toward peace.”

    You can see how this will work. The US is going to meet with Russia in a few days to “resolve technical issues” and no ceasefire until then. Both Zelensky and Putin are going to agree with Trump publicly while Putin stalls in private. The Ukrainian military will ignore the empty words from Russia and watch what Russia is actually doing, while Zelensky makes friendly in public.

    Trump said “the United States could be very helpful in running those plants with its electricity and utility expertise. American ownership of those plants would be the best protection for that infrastructure and support for Ukrainian energy infrastructure,” the secretary of state and national security adviser said, according to Leavitt.

    Any comment I could make about that would get me banned.

  301. says

    EU slams the door on US in colossal defense plan

    “Bloc aims to build up military-industrial complex to deter Russia and brace for the U.S. shift away from Europe.”

    United States arms-makers are being frozen out of the European Union’s massive new defense spending plan, which aims to splash the cash for EU and allied countries, according to defense spending plans released Wednesday.

    Also left out — for now — is the United Kingdom.

    “We must buy more European. Because that means strengthening the European defense technological and industrial base,” said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in announcing the Readiness 2030 program.

    In a bid to strengthen ties with allies, Brussels involved countries like South Korea and Japan and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) in its program that could see as much as €800 billion spent on defense.

    […] In recent years, about two-thirds of EU procurement orders have gone to U.S. defense companies.

    […] The threat from Russia is the main driver for strengthening the continent’s military-industrial complex — but shifts in the U.S. under […] Trump are also forcing the EU to move fast.

    The danger of relying too much on the U.S. was highlighted by Trump’s sudden decision to undermine allied Ukraine by halting arms deliveries and intelligence-sharing to pressure Kyiv into accepting peace talks with Russia.

    […] The most concrete proposal is a Commission pledge to lend up to €150 billion to member countries to be spent on defense under the so-called SAFE instrument.

    While the loans will only be available to EU countries, friendly states from outside the bloc may also take part in joint weapons purchases.

    Joint procurement under the SAFE proposal is open to Ukraine; EFTA’s Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein; as well as “acceding countries, candidate countries and potential candidates, as well as third countries with whom the [European] Union has entered into a Security and Defence Partnership.”

    As of the end of January, the EU had six defense and security partnerships: with Norway, Moldova, South Korea, Japan, Albania and North Macedonia.

    Turkey and Serbia, as EU candidate countries, could also potentially join.

    That leaves out the U.S. and the U.K. — although Britain’s status could change. “We are working on having this defense and security partnership with U.K. I’m really hoping that for the summit which is in May, we can have results,” Kallas said.

    Canada has also made clear it wants a tighter security relationship with the EU. The Commission on Wednesday also floated greater defense cooperation with Australia, New Zealand and India.

    […] In a further attempt to tighten the screws on non-EU companies, the deal bans foreign countries from accessing classified information.

    It also sets a minimum threshold that 65 percent of the components eligible for funding must be European, with that definition including Ukraine and Norway. The planned fund would exclude weapons systems where a non-EU country has design authority — meaning controlling its constructions or use. That would seem to cover most joint ventures producing U.S. military equipment in the EU. [And Musk’s Starlink system.]

    The loans will finance joint projects by two or more members in a bid to create an EU-wide defense industry. […] In an attempt to kickstart arms purchases immediately, the Commission will allow EU countries to place orders individually for the first 12 months.

    The plans released Wednesday also allow EU member countries to get around the bloc’s strict budget limits. They will be able to overshoot the EU’s public spending limit up to a maximum of 1.5 percent of GDP for a period of four years.

    The deadline for requesting loans is June 30, 2027, and countries may receive the cash until the end of 2030. They must repay loans to the Commission within 45 years.

  302. birgerjohansson says

    Addendum to my @ 292.
    “More than 40,000 members of the Canadian Armed Forces served [in Afghanistan] and 158 Canadian soldiers died during the Afghanistan mission. Thousands of other veterans of the war were wounded physically and psychologically, leading to additional deaths by suicide.”

    According to J D Vance, this is a “sob story”.
    His big mouth would look better with a big fist meeting it.

  303. says

    A followup of sorts to comment 300.

    Putin showed ‘true face’ by bombing Ukraine after ceasefire call, says Finland’s president

    Only arming Kyiv “to its teeth” will deter Russian leader, Alexander Stubb says in an interview.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has revealed his real intentions in Ukraine by bombing civilian energy infrastructure after telling Donald Trump that Moscow would stop such attacks, said Finnish President Alexander Stubb
    .
    The only real solution to deter Moscow, Stubb told POLITICO on Wednesday, was to “militarize Ukraine to its teeth.”

    The Finnish president was speaking after a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Helsinki, one day after Trump held a two-hour phone conversation with Putin. Despite agreeing to a pause on attacking energy infrastructure, Russia unleashed a barrage of drone and missile attacks on Ukraine after the call, including against civilian and energy targets. [Russia even bombed a Ukrainian hospital.]

    “As someone who’s mediated the ceasefire in Georgia in 2008, I can say this is a fairly typical Putin tactic,” Stubb said in an interview. “We have an aggressor who says he wants a ceasefire and peace, but refuses to commit.

    […] Asked what sort of pressure would ultimately convince Putin to stop his attacks on Ukraine, Stubb said: “Deterrence — which is based on militarizing Ukraine to its teeth.” He also cited future membership in the European Union and in NATO.

    Ahead of a leaders’ gathering in Brussels this week, the Finnish president also urged EU countries to ramp up pressure on Moscow by bolstering sanctions, seizing frozen Russian assets and continuing financial support to Kyiv. “It’s very important now to get a message from Europe that the military, political and economic support continues,” he said.

    […] “I would encourage Europe to get its act together,” Stubb went on. “For me this means that you have the national security advisers of the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, perhaps Poland and then someone from the European institutions” present during negotiations.

    As things stand, Europe’s efforts were too “à la carte, too intergovernmental,” he said, adding that he had repeatedly raised this idea with other EU leaders.

    Separately, Stubb has proposed the idea of appointing a special envoy on Ukraine — similar to the role he held during Russia’s 2008 war against Georgia. But, he added, “there’s doesn’t seem to be an appetite for this right now.”

  305. says

    WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Millions of Americans were gobsmacked on Tuesday upon hearing that a prominent Republican official had shown respect for the United States Constitution.

    Across the country, U.S. residents expressed shock and disbelief that a member of the GOP had openly validated the rule of law.

    “At first I thought it was a hoax,” said one American, echoing the views of many. “Then I was like, maybe it’s a different John Roberts? It’s a pretty common name.”

    At the White House, a furious Donald J. Trump said that the Constitution “isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on,” noting, “When I was stealing documents I never even considered taking it.”

    In his harshest rebuke of the 238-year-old document, he alleged, “The Constitution has treated me very unfairly.”

    Link

  306. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Randos:

    What I just can’t wrap my brain around is I assume all the people participating in the destruction of the US government believe they’ll be on the winning side. And then what? They become the Royalty of the Wreckage?
    –
    I’ve thought this of Putin since he invaded Ukraine and pounds a thriving country and its people into the dust.
    –
    It’s like wanting to be a random storm trooper that Vader or the Emperor kills without batting an eye as soon that individual is perceived as no longer useful.

     
    Bret Devereaux (Roman economy/military historian)

    So this is absolutely an attack on democracy, but I am struck by the sequencing, because it doesn’t resemble—to me at least—the normal sequencing for an authoritarian takeover. But I think it makes sense given a conspiratorial and inaccurate view of where liberal support comes from.

    The usual sequence for these kinds of takeovers is, so far as I can tell: come into power -> engineer legitimacy fig-leaf (enabling acts, constitutional reform, royal assent, etc) -> dismantle opposing groups -> attack the courts.

    Here, they have jumped pretty directly to the end.

    (There’s often also a lot of cotton-candy economics, printing money, debt finance, etc. which is bad in the long run but makes folks happy in the short run. Tariffs and shutting down large parts of the government are pretty close to the opposite of this.)

    My sense, from the swamp that is Twitter, is that this may be ideological: these folks have talked themselves into the idea that American liberalism is wholly synthetic, entirely the product of government money diverted into ‘George Soros’ projects, illegal immigrants voting, etc. and so on.

    And if you believe that liberal support is entirely synthetic, then you might think that if you just dismantle the institutions (federal workforce, higher education, BigLaw, etc.) you imagine to be producing that synthetic demand, the Democratic Party will simply wither into nothing.

    But the obvious problem is that neither liberalism nor progressivism in the USA are synthetic movements. Liberalism is the founding ideology of the country and progressivism is more than a century old. They won’t go away if you cut the funding, they’ll get angry and vote harder. Which isn’t to say that the authoritarian attempt here will necessarily fail, just that the skewed and conspiratorial viewpoints of the folks running it is opening vulnerabilities: each action that crashes and burns in the courts is a chance to chip away at the legitimacy of the attempt.

    And almost inevitably, at some point, that legitimacy will be tested—open defiance of a SCOTUS ruling, sending Congress home, initiating a war, violence against protests could all be it—and it will either hold or break. And right now, it seems like MAGA is spending that currency down.

    Eliot Higgins (Bellingcat) wrote a couple threads on disordered discourse capturing government. Retroactively labelling phenomena we’re already familiar with to construct a cyclic Lysenkoising model. “It’s not a culture war. It’s institutional epistemicide.”
     
    Courtney Milan (Historical romance author):

    I think actually that many of the Trump administration’s failures (and everything they do is a failure, but I mean this here in the sense of “thing they have done that will substantially frustrate their end goal”) are because they have simply been huffing too many of their own farts.

    For instance, I think that a lot of people in conservative Trump-o-land genuinely thought that Canada would be honored and delighted to be offered a spot as the fifty-first state, and that annexation could be achieved simply by holding it out and threatening a few tariffs.

    They honestly think that the US military can accomplish any military objective they desire and nobody can stand in their way, and that’s why they’re simultaneously spinning out military fantasies about Panama, Mexico, Greenland, and Canada.

    They honestly believe that they’ll be able to get more and more Americans rushing to their side by repeating FOX News garbage, when the reality is that they will never pass the 50% threshold.

    They think that America importing a large number of things that are necessary for our way of life can be solved with tariffs, when the reality is what is going to happen over the next handful of years is a rapid decline in the standard of living.

    They think that they can threaten neighbors and near-neighbors with aggression and there will be no consequences globally because we’re #1, when the reality is that the rest of the world could bring us to our feet with an embargo in about two months.

    Their mental model of the world is so distorted that they cannot win. But god, they can still make the rest of us lose.

  307. Reginald Selkirk says

    Vancouver Auto Show Kicks Tesla Out Due To Security Concerns

    The hits just keep coming for Tesla as the automaker was kicked out of the Vancouver International Auto Show because of security concerns following mass protests and vandalism against Tesla vehicles. The move to remove came after Tesla was apparently given “multiple opportunities to voluntarily withdraw.” I, for one, am shocked that an Elon Musk-led company would be this stubborn.

    The show features over 200 vehicles over the course of five days from automakers like Cadillac, Ford, Hyundai, Chevy and Toyota, but Tesls will no longer be among them. As of the morning of March 18, Tesla was still included, but by the afternoon, it had been removed from the show’s website, according to the Vancouver Sun. The show’s executive director said their primary concern was “the safety of attendees, exhibitors and staff…

  308. Reginald Selkirk says

    Loyalty Tests Now Part Of Ohio Traffic Stops, As Canadian Folk Duo Cassie And Maggie Recently Discovered

    The U.S. has never actually lived up to the ideals we were taught in school, but less than two months into Trump’s second term, our country has become a truly dangerous place to visit. So it shouldn’t be surprising that a pair of power-tripping cops who had nothing to do with immigration enforcement took it upon themselves to harass non-citizens, including subjecting Canadian folk duo Cassie and Maggie MacDonald to a completely uncalled for loyalty test during an Ohio traffic stop, as the Globe and Mail reports. And it doesn’t sound like something two different cops independently came up with, either.

    The sisters, who were in the U.S. on a tour, admit the initial stop was valid — Maggie MacDonald took a phone call behind the wheel of their Chevrolet Malibu rental car, and Ohio’s hands-free law makes it illegal to hold a cell phone while driving — but what should have been a quick ticket turned into a much longer ordeal after the cops learned they were Canadian. They were forced to wait while two Guernsey County Sheriff’s Deputies brought out a drug dog that allegedly discovered narcotics. Except when the cops searched the car, all they could find was a bottle of wine and some prescription medication. Curious, right?

    Instead of writing the ticket and letting them go, the deputies continued to question the women, seemingly convinced that Trump’s already debunked Canadian fentanyl claims weren’t obvious lies. “The officer speaking to me seemed to believe that Canada was the root of where all these drugs were coming from,” Cassie MacDonald told the Globe and Mail. “It seemed very much in line with the narrative that has recently been touted.” Almost none of the fentanyl brought into the U.S. comes from Canada…

  309. Reginald Selkirk says

    @307

    Their search for drugs that didn’t exist may have been a bust, but the deputies also put the sisters in separate patrol vehicles and started asking even more inappropriate questions. “Mine asked, ‘I have an important question to ask you, which do you prefer, Canada or the United States?'” Cassie told the Globe and Mail. “It seemed weighted, as if whether we were going to be given a further difficult time or if we were going to have the opportunity to go on our way depended on the answer I gave.” …

  310. Reginald Selkirk says

    Federal Reserve issues FOMC statement

    Recent indicators suggest that economic activity has continued to expand at a solid pace. The unemployment rate has stabilized at a low level in recent months, and labor market conditions remain solid. Inflation remains somewhat elevated…

    In support of its goals, the Committee decided to maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 4-1/4 to 4-1/2 percent…

  311. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-to-environment-drop-dead

    Trump To Environment: Drop Dead

    In a money saving move, ‘Enabling Polluters Always’ keeps the same initials as ‘Environmental Protection Agency.’

    While it was busy firing everyone last week, the Trump administration was also having a real hootenanny gutting America’s environmental laws, from killing a lawsuit against a Louisiana chemical plant in “Cancer Alley” because it would be racist to help Black cancer victims, to an announcement of the “Biggest Deregulatory Action in U.S. History” from EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who laid out 31 moves the agency is taking to undo environmental protections and enrich corporate polluters. [Embedded links are available at the main link.]

    Remember how Trump boasted during the campaign that he had “the cleanest air, the cleanest water,” and insists at every opportunity that he loves clean air and clean water? He means, of course, that as long as you can’t see the pollutants, the air and water are clean.

    And wouldn’t you know it, carbon dioxide and methane, the top two culprits in global warming, are colorless and odorless, so they can’t be pollutants. (Science fact: For safety, “natural” gas, which is mostly methane, has the rotten egg stank added, to make leaks easier to detect.)

    Deregulation Bloodath … Err, Oilbath!

    In a brief video posted to Musk State TV, Zeldin declared that the EPA will henceforth no longer waste time or effort on “environment” or “protection,” freeing it up to more effectively enrich Republican campaign donors. Instead, the EPA’s new mission is to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business” by throwing more fossil fuels and toxic sludge at everything. [video at the link]

    “From the campaign trail to Day 1 and beyond, President Trump has delivered on his promise to unleash energy dominance and lower the cost of living,” Mr. Zeldin said. “We at E.P.A. will do our part to power the great American comeback.”

    The New York Times notes […] that “Nowhere in the video did he refer to protecting the environment or public health, twin tenets that have guided the agency since its founding in 1970.” […]

    Zeldin’s announcement on its own doesn’t reverse any policies, but identifies a swath of regulations the administration plans to modify or reverse altogether, whatever courts let them get away with. To hold up in court, such rule changes have always had to follow federal procedures on rulemaking, including public comment, rigorous evidence, proof that they’re allowed by law and all that. So unless courts also allow new, sloppier rule-making, this shit will take some time to enact, and we can fight it. [Good point.]

    Several of the 31 items on Zeldin’s hit list had already been reported, like his decision to kill off the EPA’s 2009 finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and the public welfare, because carbon dioxide and methane and the lot cause climate change. Reversing it would strip the EPA of the ability to regulate greenhouse gases altogether. Environmental law experts say that would be a long shot, but hey, Roberts Court.

    Zeldin was SO EXCITED about that one, saying in the video,

    “I’ve been told that the Endangerment Finding is the Holy Grail of the climate change religion. For me, the US Constitution and the laws of this nation will be strictly interpreted and followed. No exceptions. today the green new scam ends!”

    [JFC]

    Did you see that sleight of hand, kids? He’s suggesting a conflict between regulating greenhouse gases and the Constitution that doesn’t exist. There is no “climate change religion,” and the Endangerment Finding has been upheld in the courts several times.

    Zeldin repeated that theme, only a bit more violently, in the EPA press release heralding the Return to Filth, exulting that “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.” [Oh FFS. The “climate change religion” thing again.] He also lied that the energy policies of[…] Obama and Joe Biden “have suffocated nearly every single sector of the American economy.” You know, apart from the record low unemployment and boom in manufacturing that Trump is already reversing.

    […]Zeldin’s EPA plans to

    overturn limits on soot from smokestacks that have been linked to respiratory problems in humans and premature deaths as well as restrictions on emissions of mercury, a neurotoxin. It would get rid of the “good neighbor rule” that requires states to address their own pollution when it’s carried by winds into neighboring states. And it would eliminate enforcement efforts that prioritize the protection of poor and minority communities.

    In addition, when the agency creates environmental policy, it would no longer consider the costs to society from wildfires, droughts, storms and other disasters that might be made worse by pollution connected to that policy, Mr. Zeldin said. [!]

    Other Biden administration regulations Zeldin is gunning for include:

    – Emissions limits on cars and trucks, which Trump — and now Zeldin too! — always lied about, calling the standards an “EV mandate.” In reality, the rule still would have allowed gas and diesel vehicles to make up around half of new car sales by the 2032 model year.

    – Emissions limits on power plants, which would have required coal plants to “clean up or close” by 2032, and imposed tight CO2 emissions standards on new fossil gas plants.

    – Limits on carcinogenic pollutants from petrochemical plants and other industrial facilities.

    – Recalculating the “social cost of carbon” to allow far higher carbon emissions […] You know, just in case killing off the Endangerment Finding doesn’t work.

    Following Zeldin’s announcement, all the big polluters and their lobbyists said yay, while people who think it might be nice for future generations to have a habitable planet said it was pretty fucking bad, including former EPA administrators under Democratic and Republican presidents who weren’t Trump, all of whom blasted Zeldin and Trump for undermining the whole point of the EPA. [embedded links at the main link]

    Fire All The Scientists So Pollution Goes Away

    In a follow-up to the big regulatory rollback, the EPA is also planning to entirely eliminate its research and development office and fire 1,155 scientists. Without those troublesome eggheads and their stupid “research,” it’ll be harder to write regulations or even know about environmental threats. […]

    An EPA spokesliar insisted this is all wonderful, echoing Trump’s boilerplate lies about “clean” air and water.

    Molly Vaseliou, an EPA spokeswoman, said the agency “is taking exciting steps as we enter the next phase of organizational improvements,” but said changes had not been finalized.

    “We are committed to enhancing our ability to deliver clean air, water and land for all Americans,” she said.

    […] they’re just lying.

    In related news, Elon Musk’s Wrecking Crew appears to be targeting for closure the office that manages the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, which has tracked atmospheric greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere since 1958. You know, for “efficiency.”

    Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been A Climate Scientist?

    And finally, in an ominous Bluesky message Tuesday, journalist and former Jezebel Editor in Chief Laura Bassett reported,

    From a source: “Just had a co-presenter for a buildings research conference bow out. She’s a dual citizen and the FBI came knocking to ask her about her involvement in coauthoring chunks of the Paris Agreement.

    Climate science is being literally (and I mean literally) criminalized.”

    At least two climate journalists asked Bassett publicly to see if the source is willing to be interviewed, so we may find out more about this. Because Jesus Christ on a solar-charged e-bike, if Trump is targeting climate scientists with unspecified threats to their immigration status, that’s a terrifying escalation in two directions. [True!]

    […]

  313. says

    White House targets federal judge, gets fact-checked in real time

    “White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to go after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg during a briefing. It did not go well.”

    On Tuesday, Donald Trump broke new ground, calling for U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s impeachment, not because the jurist did something wrong, but because he issued a ruling the president didn’t like in an Alien Enemies Act case. A day later, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt kept the offensive going during a briefing with reporters.

    It reached the point, however, in which the presidential spokesperson had to be fact-checked in real time.
    [video at the link]

    LEAVITT: This judge is a Democrat activist. He was appointed by Barack Obama.

    NBC: He was originally appointed by George W Bush.

    https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3lkqprhu5xs2j

    “I would just like to point out that the judge in this case is essentially trying to say that the president doesn’t have the executive authority to deport foreign terrorists from our American soil,” Leavitt began. “That is an egregious abuse of the bench.”

    This was not a good start. Indeed, if the administration is convinced that the hundreds of people that Team Trump flew to El Salvador were “foreign terrorists,” they could present some evidence along those lines to the courts and/or the public. That hasn’t happened.

    Nevertheless, Leavitt kept going, condemning Boasberg as “a Democrat [sic] activist” who was “appointed by Barack Obama.” The White House press secretary than complained about the judge’s wife’s campaign contributions before concluding that Boasberg has “consistently” shown “disdain” for the Republican administration.

    If Leavitt thought this was persuasive, she was mistaken. For one thing, to simply assume that Obama-appointed jurists can’t be impartial is ridiculous. For another, that the White House is talking about the private decisions of a federal judge’s wife is inherently sketchy.

    As for the suggestion that Boasberg’s record is one of a Democratic “activist,” reality tells a very different story. [Embedded links to sources are available at the main link.]

    But if that weren’t quite enough, NBC News’ Garrett Haake took a moment to remind Leavitt that Boasberg was first made a judge by George W. Bush — who, if memory serves, was not exactly a far-left Democratic partisan — before Obama elevated him to the federal district court. (What’s more, it’s worth noting for context that Boasberg was also appointed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who has also never been mistaken for a liberal ideologue.)

    Reminded of these relevant details, the White House press secretary didn’t question what Haake said, but she did seem eager to change the subject, arguing that “67% of all of the injunctions in this century have come against which president? Donald J. Trump.” [I wonder why.]

    I have no idea if that statistic is accurate, but even if it is, there are two ways to look at it. One way, which Leavitt apparently prefers, is to see it as proof that a cabal of nefarious judges are hostile to the incumbent Republican’s agenda.

    The other way is to note that courts keep enjoining Trump’s provocative and legally dubious moves because — wait for it — Trump keeps pushing provocative and legally dubious moves, far more than his predecessors from either party. [True!]

    As lawyer David R. Lurie summarized, in response to Leavitt’s curious argument, “Maybe, just maybe, it is an indication that Trump — a convicted felon — habitually breaks the law.” [True!]

    As for the president’s remarks from last week in which he suggested criticizing judges should be seen as “totally illegal,” apparently the White House has moved on from that rather quickly.

  314. says

    Emails Reveal Top IRS Lawyer Warned Trump Firings Were a ‘Fraud’ on the Courts

    “The Trump administration cited ‘performance’ failures to justify its mass firing of IRS workers. But this claim was ‘false,’ a senior agency attorney warned officials, because the administration had not conducted any such performance assessment.”

    On Feb. 20, nearly 7,000 probationary employees at the Internal Revenue Service began receiving an unsigned letter telling them that they had been fired for poor performance.

    Trump administration lawyers insist that the IRS and other federal agencies have acted within their authority when they ordered waves of mass terminations since Trump took office. But according to previously unreported emails obtained by ProPublica, a top lawyer at the IRS warned administration officials that the performance-related language in his agency’s termination letter was “a false statement” that amounted to “fraud” if the agency kept the language in the letter.

    The emails reveal that in the hours before the IRS sent out its Feb. 20 termination letter, a fierce dispute played out at the agency’s highest levels.

    Joseph Rillotta, a senior IRS lawyer, wrote that “no one” at the IRS had taken into account the performance of the probationary workers set to be fired. Rillotta urged that the language be struck from the draft termination letter.

    [I snipped more details related to Rillotta’s email comments] The IRS sent out the Feb. 20 termination notice with the disputed language in it, according to copies received by fired workers who shared them with ProPublica. […]

    In fact, many of the employees had received laudatory reviews with no hint of any concerns.

    Soon afterward, the inspector general for the IRS took preliminary steps to look into the matter […]

    Michelle Bercovici, a lawyer who represents federal workers, told ProPublica that Rillotta’s ignored warnings should make it easier for plaintiffs to show that the mass firings were “arbitrary and capricious,” the legal standard needed to invalidate a federal agency’s action. She added that the emails could also help plaintiffs recover attorneys’ fees from the government.

    […] An Office of Personnel Management spokesperson referred ProPublica to a revised memorandum stating that OPM “is not directing agencies to take any specific performance-based actions regarding probationary employees.” [CYA memo from OPM. Disingenuous.]

    […] Multiple federal lawsuits are now challenging the Trump administration’s mass firings. Last week, two federal judges temporarily blocked the IRS and other firings, but the lawsuits continue.

    […] In mid-March, Judge William Alsup issued a preliminary injunction in the case, saying the administration’s probationary firings were based on “a lie.” Alsup ordered several federal agencies, including the Treasury, to reinstate thousands of fired employees. The Trump administration has appealed Alsup’s ruling.

    Another suit, filed in Maryland federal court by nearly two dozen Democratic state attorneys general, also claims that the IRS mass firings were unlawful and should be reversed. (In that case, administration lawyers asserted that the mass firings were lawful.)

    […] A high-ranking Treasury Department official instructed a senior IRS personnel employee named Traci DiMartini to identify all probationary IRS employees and fire them “based on performance,” according to an affidavit DiMartini later filed in court.

    […] When DiMartini asked the Treasury Department official why they were firing so many probationary employees, she was told that the order came from OPM, which was staffed by Trump appointees and members of DOGE.

    In her affidavit, DiMartini confirmed what Rillotta wrote in his emails — that it was false to say probationary employees were fired for performance. DiMartini’s office “did not review or consider” any probationary employees’ job performance or conduct. Nor did the Treasury Department. “I know this because this fact was discussed openly in meetings,” DiMartini stated in her affidavit.

    […] DiMartini refused to sign the mass-termination letter, according to her affidavit. The then-acting commissioner of the IRS, Douglas O’Donnell, also refused to sign the letter.

    When thousands of affected IRS employees finally received the letter, it arrived from a generic email account. No agency official’s name appeared anywhere in the document. [Telling detail.]

  315. says

    Trump and Musk Are Running a Disinformation Campaign on Social Security

    “Why are they telling so many lies about this program?”

    Donald Trump keeps saying he has no intention of slashing Social Security, but…he and his mini-me, Elon Musk, won’t stop making outlandish claims about the program and appear to be setting the table for cuts that they will try to call something other than “cuts.”

    Just about every time they mention the program and entitlement spending, they lie. Musk recently denigrated Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme.” It isn’t, but if it were, shouldn’t you whack away at it? And during an interview with Fox Business, he claimed there’s $500 to $700 billion in annual waste and fraud within entitlement spending—when there is no evidence of that (as Forbes notes). Moreover, he and Trump have falsely insisted there are a gazillion dead people on the rolls, implying checks are going out to ghosts.

    This duo of deceit is doing all they can to raise doubts […] Musk and his dodgy DOGErs have moved to shitcan or force out thousands of employees at the Social Security Administration […]

    Unlike ideologues of the right who have long salivated at the thought of shrinking entitlements and privatizing Social Security, Trump realizes such a move could be political suicide.

    [I don’t think Trump really cares. For now, he is mouthing the conciliatory words, but his actions do not match. I think Trump knows he will not be president (or king) for long. He will either truly be too old, or he will die. So to him, consequences be damned. In the meantime, he is going to fit in as much criminal, unethical, or grift-related activity as he possibly can.]

    So Trump has repeatedly vowed not to reduce the program. But should his promise be believed? After Musk uttered an inartful statement this week about eliminating purported waste and fraud within entitlement programs—which some people interpreted as an expression of his desire to kill these programs—the White House rushed out a press release declaring, “The Trump Administration will not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits. President Trump himself has said it (over and over and over again).” But here’s the tell that the White House cannot be trusted on this front: The statement was full of lies about entitlement spending. [True]

    The press release claimed Musk was correct to opine that waste and fraud in entitlement programs totaled up to $700 billion each year. To back this up, the White House listed four “facts” and provided citations. Nerd that I am, I clicked on the links and discovered—wait for it—these citations did not support what the Trump White House was asserting. Let’s run through them:

    [Claimed] FACT: The US Government Accountability Office estimates taxpayers lose as much as $521 billion annually to fraud—and most of that is within entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid.

    That is not what the GAO said. Its report stated, “The federal government could lose between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud.” That is, could. Not that it does. And this estimate of possible fraud included Covid pandemic-fraud, which likely boosted the number. As for the claim that most of this comes from entitlement program, the citation supplied by the White House links to a GAO report that says there was an estimated $236 billion in “improper payments” in 2023. But it adds, “Such payments are essentially payment errors that can be the result of many things—including overpayments, inaccurate recordkeeping, or even fraud.” Medicare and Medicaid did have the most payment errors—$186 billion—but, again, that’s not necessarily due to fraud.

    [Claimed] FACT: Over the past two decades, the federal government has made an estimated $2.7 trillion in “improper payments”—the majority of which come in the form of “payments to deceased individuals or those who no longer [are] eligible for government programs.”

    This is highly misleading. The GAO report cited says that most of the improper payments were overpayments. As an example of an overpayment, it pointed to “payments to deceased individuals or those no longer eligible for government programs.” It did not say that payments to dead people or ineligible recipients comprise the majority of these improper payments—only that they account for some of these errant payments.

    [Claimed] FACT: The Social Security Administration made an estimated $72 billion in improper payments between 2015 and 2022.

    This “fact” left out important context. The inspector general of the SSA, who came up with this statistic, noted that the $72 billion was “less than 1 percent of the total benefits paid during that period.” While $72 billion seems like a lot of money, a 1 percent error rate is rather admirable for an immense and complex program. Plus, the IG said that some of these payments were deemed improper because of errors made by beneficiaries in reporting changes in their circumstances. These might not be instances of fraud.

    [Claimed] FACT: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services estimated it made $140+ billion in improper payments in 2024 alone.

    This was quite the whopper. Click on that link and you get a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services fact sheet on improper payments. Add up the figures, and the total is $86 billion, not $140-plus billion. More important, the CMS states, “It is important to keep in mind that not all improper payments represent fraud or abuse. Improper payments are payments that do not meet CMS program requirements. They can be overpayments, underpayments, or payments where insufficient information was provided to determine whether a payment was proper. Most improper payments involve a state, contractor, or provider missing an administrative step.” It added, “Of the 2024 Medicaid improper payments, 79.11% were the result of insufficient documentation.” In other words, these payments might have nothing to do with waste and fraud. [!!]

    You can see what’s going on here. The White House is mugging the truth to foster the impression that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are ridden with fraud. No doubt, within enormous programs that disburse a combined total of about $2.8 trillion a year, there will be waste, abuse, and fraud. That needs to be addressed, and the feds routinely spend a lot of resources each year trying to do so (without having to be besieged by the minions of DOGE). In its fact sheet, CMS reported that the improper payment rate had dropped for several of its major programs.

    By and large, the stats ain’t so bad. Yet Trump and Musk are running a disinformation campaign that targets Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, inaccurately depicting them as rotting with criminality. Why do that? What are they setting up? It’s not too hard to imagine.

  317. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Follow-up on DOGE at USIP.
    Strange priorities.

    Marisa Kabas:

    After breaking into the US Institute of Peace (USIP) Monday, DOGE members immediately got to work taking down signs [Photos taken yesterday at the link]

    Marisa Kabas: “USIP owns their building. DOGE is vandalizing a building the federal government DOES NOT OWN.”

    Aaron Reichlin-Melnick:

    Outright thuggery. A hearing has been scheduled in the USIP lawsuit as of 2:00 this afternoon on a motion for a TRO. Seems likely a lot of stuff will be destroyed just in the interim, because the DOGE folks know they can smash quickly before the pushback from the courts.

    Marisa Kabas:

    Marjorie Taylor Greene is lying and saying USIP employees destroyed their own building to prevent DOGE from getting in. All USIP staff were instructed to telework late Monday, and the vandalism happened Tuesday. Pretty hard to commit a crime if you’re not there. These people are fucking sick.

     
    From court filings today.
    Josh Marshall (TPM):

    Quite a fun moment when the security contractors who had been terminated by the USIP but had switched their allegiances to DOGE entered the property with an unconfiscated key and headed immediately to the gun safe. [Screenshots]

    So we also have FBI agents telling agents of USIP that they are subjects of a criminal investigation for resisting DOGE’s efforts to take over the agency. [Screenshot]

    Here’s the moment where DC metro police, which had been called to intervene against the former private security firm which had switched allegiances to DOGE, decided themselves to side with DOGE (apparently because the US ATTY in DC told them to). [Screenshot]

    USIP decides to suspend the services of their security contractor, Inter-Con, because of fears that they may be pressured by DOGE. Inter-Con acknowledges suspension. [Screenshot]

    There it is. Inter-Con contractor told USIP head of security that “DOGE threatened to cancel every federal contract Inter-Con held” if they didn’t assist the break in. [Screenshot]

    Josh Marshall:

    How much of a threat was this? According to USASpending dot gov Inter Con has $209 million in US govt work across 252 separate contracts. So I’d say DOGE made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.

    Sean Brennan (Attorney): “This is just armed trespass and everyone involved should be in handcuffs awaiting hearing right now.”

    CNN

    According to USIP’s chief security officer Colin O’Brien, the organization on Monday called the DC Metropolitan Police after former security contractors, whose contracts were suspended Sunday, entered the building without permission.

    When he went to greet the police, O’Brien recounted, “they held the door open and allowed members of DOGE to enter the building, where they were also followed by 10 to 12 police officers, uniformed DC police officers.”

    Those DOGE personnel, most of whom O’Brien said would not identify themselves, told him, USIP’s general counsel and members of the operations staff to exit the building, he said.

    More police officers arrived later in the day with lock-picking devices and were seen entering a side door of the building.
    […]
    Some USIP officials remained in the building after DOGE’s arrival, including Moose, a retired career diplomat. He was later forced to exit the building by DC police.

    In an interview done by phone from his locked office as DOGE went through the building, Moose said he had expected DOGE would return to try to gain access to USIP.

    Over the weekend, he said, “representatives of the FBI and of the US Attorney’s Office of the District of Columbia were approaching members of our staff and our workforce to try to intimidate their way into getting into the building.”

    “We had not expected that the FBI would succeed in enlisting the support and collaboration of the District of Columbia police, with whom we have had a great relationship,” Moose said. “Somehow, FBI has managed to convince the DC police that this is a building that is owned by the US government and not by the US Institute of Peace.”

    O’Brien told CNN that the FBI called him over the weekend, and two FBI agents went to the home of one of his security officers.

     
    WaPo

    DOGE agents Jacob Altik and Nate Cavanaugh showed up at the USIP door with two others who said they were FBI agents but did not further identify themselves.
    DOGE presented an undated document on what appeared to be USIP letterhead firing the institute’s president […] signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth and Peter Garvin […] as members of its board.

    At the door, USIP officials informed DOGE that its president could only be dismissed by a majority of its 15-member board, chaired by John J. Sullivan, Trump’s first-term ambassador to Russia, for one of three reasons—felony conviction or malfeasance, recommendation of the board majority, or a majority vote of four separate congressional committees.

    Noting that the building […] was not the property of the U.S. government […] and that its personnel were not federal employees, the institute officials asked if DOGE had a court order for admission. The DOGE agents acknowledged they did not and withdrew.

    At an emergency meeting Saturday, the USIP board decided to lock the building and tell employees not to come to work Monday. They also decided to suspend their building security contract with Inter-Con, a global company with a number of government contracts that USIP security chief Colin O’Brien said he suspected was working with DOGE.
    […]
    “On Sunday, I [O’Brien] personally notified the [Inter-Con] guard force that their contract was suspended and had them depart … letting them know all [entry] badges had been deactivated and they were not authorized on the property,” O’Brien said in an interview. The contract was officially canceled Monday.

    “On Monday, at approximately 2:30 p.m.” four members of Inter-Con’s local office “came onto the property and attempted to use their key cards to open the doors. Ken Jackson was sitting in a government Lincoln Navigator on 23rd Street.” The security guards “walked around, trying different badge readers” on different doors. Eventually, one “who had retained a manual key to the building” used it to open a side door.
    […]
    When the four entered and refused to leave, O’Brien said, the head of the Inter-Con team “said DOGE had called them and threatened every one of their federal contracts if we didn’t let them in.”

    The four headed for the locked armory, where firearms for security personnel at the site were kept. One remained at the opened weapons safe while the three others headed for the front door, O’Brien said. “I called 911” at 2:59 p.m., he said, telling the dispatcher that four individuals “had illegally entered USIP.”

    O’Brien said he activated “lockdown procedure” preventing the opening of any doors. As the security contractors approached the door, “members of DOGE were running up to enter the building. When they were unsuccessful, they went back to their cars.” It was all, he said, on USIP security cameras.
    […]
    When the police arrived at about 5:30 p.m., O’Brien went outside to meet them, believing that they were responding to USIP’s 911 call hours earlier. “I invited them in so they could take a statement,” he said. One of the officers opened the door to allow Jackson and other DOGE representatives inside, along with about a dozen additional uniformed officers.
    […]
    All USIP personnel present, including Moose, whose locked door on the fifth floor was forced open, were escorted by police from the building and prevented from reentering.

     
    Anjali Dayal (Former USIP):

    To really process this story, you need to know that George Moose, the USIP president who locked himself in his office while DOGE entered the building, is an 80 year old retired diplomat who looks like he wears a necktie in his own house on a Sunday.
    […]
    Also, not that it matters, but like, it’s literally the institute of peace guys.

  318. Reginald Selkirk says

    Erdogan rival arrested days before becoming presidential candidate

    Turkish authorities have detained the mayor of Istanbul, just days before he was due to be selected as a presidential candidate.

    Ekrem Imamoglu, from the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP), is seen as one of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s strongest political rivals.

    Prosecutors accused him of corruption and aiding a terrorist group, calling him a “criminal organisation leader suspect”.

    Police detained 100 people – including other politicians, journalists and businessmen – as part of the investigation, and the Istanbul governor’s office has imposed four days of restrictions in the city…

  319. Reginald Selkirk says

    U.S. officials cracking down on people trying to bring valuable eggs across the border

    U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly said the flow of the deadly drug fentanyl across the border must be stopped.

    But U.S. border officials are increasingly cracking down on another valuable product these days: eggs.

    Officials made 3,254 egg-related seizures in January and February 2025, according to new data released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). That’s a 116 per cent increase in egg seizures compared to the 1,508 events the same two months a year ago…

    Egg interceptions at the Detroit border crossing (where most eggs are coming in from Canada) increased 36 per cent in the 2025 fiscal year compared to the same time period in 2024, according to data provided by CBP to CBC News.

    In Windsor, Ont., a dozen large white eggs at Walmart currently costs about $3.93. On the other side of the border in Michigan, a dozen large white eggs at Walmart costs about $8.50 Cdn…

    Fentanyl, on the other hand, was intercepted by CBP 134 times in January and February this year, down 32 per cent from 197 seizures the same two months in 2024. Of those 134 events in 2025, nine were at the northern border with Canada, working out to 0.53 kilograms of the 740 kilograms seized so far overall.

    Canada has represented less than one per cent of all seized fentanyl imports into the U.S., according to federal data. About 19.5 kilograms was seized at the northern border last year compared to 9,570 kilograms at the southwestern border…

  320. Reginald Selkirk says

    Social Security Administration to require in-person identity checks for new and existing recipients

    In an effort to limit fraudulent claims, the Social Security Administration will impose tighter identity-proofing measures — which will require millions of recipients and applicants to visit agency field offices rather than interact with the agency over the phone.

    Beginning March 31st, people will no longer be able to verify their identity to the SSA over the phone and those who cannot properly verify their identity over the agency’s “my Social Security” online service, will be required to visit an agency field office in person to complete the verification process, agency leadership told reporters Tuesday.

    The change will apply to new Social Security applicants and existing recipients who want to change their direct deposit information…

    It’s gonna take a lot more staff to handle all those identity checks. They must be hiring like crazy.

    The plan also comes as the agency plans to shutter dozens of Social Security offices throughout the country and has already laid out plans to lay off thousands of workers…

    Hmmm.

  321. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Southpaw (Lawyer):

    Judge Howell sounds like she’s gonna issue a TRO in the USIP case. All the DOJ attorney, Brian Hudak (if I heard his name right), seems to have prepared for the argument is an appeal to Myers, which is just a very very different case.
    […]
    I read her tone wrong. She’s denying the TRO. […] Howell’s comments from the bench seemed to obviate the possibility of a preliminary injunction as well. […] She sounded pretty disheartened. It’s hard to find the justice in what just happened.

    Commentary

    Marisa Kabas: I cannot process her complete about face. What the fuck.
    –
    Rando (Lawyer): She thinks the government is likely right that the statute is unconstitutional under Myers.
    –
    Southpaw: That, or she’s been observing the pressure building on the judiciary and lost her nerve. I mean I heard her 40 minutes earlier explaining to Hudak that Myers was a very different case involving a postmaster exercising genuine executive functions, not just accepting money and making expenditures like any other nonprofit.”

    Anna Bower (Lawfare):

    Judge Beryl Howell is presiding over an emergency hearing on whether she should grant USIP’s request for a temporary restraining order against DOGE.
    […]
    Howell asks about the “signing statement” issued by Reagan when he signed the statute creating USIP into law. In the statement, he says that the provisions of the statute aren’t supposed to restrict the president’s removal powers.

    USIP counsel: A signing statement isn’t the law, look to statute.
    –
    Howell: If I count up the number of law enforcement officers at the USIP building on Monday, it was DC police, security officers, and FBI agents… all coming to help get DOGE in? “That’s a lot of law enforcement at a charitable organization’s building to enforce an executive order,” she says. […] Threatening? […] When there are so many other lawful ways to accomplish the goals of the EO? Why? WHY? Just because DOGE is in a rush?
    –
    Howell: Are things being shredded? Are files being deleted?

    Counsel for the government: My understanding is that nothing is being deleted… if you look at the documents in the photos, they are things the government routinely shreds bc there are electronic copies
    […]
    At one point, Howell says to counsel for the government: I am offended on behalf of the American citizens that Mr. Moose [and others at USIP] were treated so “abominably”.
    –
    Howell: I’m going to issue my ruling. And it involves a type of agency that has not clearly come up in the removal powers cases… “I’m going to deny the TRO.” I think there’s confusion in the complaint and TRO motion that makes me very uncomfortable
    […]
    Howell: I’m particularly concerned about plaintiff’s likelihood of success on the merits in part bc the plaintiffs have sued in official capacity to regain positions on the board, which is generally a personal claim.

    Howell: I think they were not removed pursuant to statute but under current precedent can’t show irreparable harm… I’m also concerned that this may very well be an executive branch agency… I think there’s significant questions about whether institute falls under the ruling in Myers.

    Howell: I think likelihood of success and irreparable harm are just a “stretch” here though I need more information… going to leave it at that and ask the parties to confer to come up with expedited briefing schedule on summary judgement

    Brad Moss (Security clearance attorney):

    Just a reminder, despite what the White House and conservative pundits try to tell you, judges largely rule on the law. Not their personal feelings.

    Howell is clear she is personally disgusted by what DOGE is doing. She is also making clear she does not feel the USIP officials have justified a TRO.

     
    Marisa Kabas (The Handbasket):

    Govt says no physical records at USIP that don’t have duplicates or digital records have been shredded. Sure, jan.
    –
    Gov’t says the president always has the right to remove members serving executive functions in executive branch. But, as judge points out, USIP is not an executive agency!!!

    Gov’t says USIP is actually part of the executive branch because “it’s an agency because you can submit FOIA requests for it.” Because USIP can disburse money, distribute grants, must post notice of meetings in federal register, travel expenses reimbursed, subject to OMB budget process, the government says that makes them an executive agency—despite being created by Congress.
    […]
    Wow. Judge Howell is worried that if she orders DOGE to leave the USIP building it could turn into an “armed standoff” over unwillingness to vacate, and points out law enforcement has shown willingness to help DOGE. Asks if we’ll need foreign mediators to come in.

    Judge Howell DENIES the temporary restraining order against DOGE at US Institute of Peace.

    Marisa Kabas: “My only conclusion is that Howell has been intimidated somehow.”
     
    Anjali Dayal (Former USIP):

    I honestly don’t know how to express how bad this is. You’ve moved beyond losing a specific constitutional order when there’s reasonable fear that armed actors will take it on themselves to resolve conflicts between the branches of government.

  322. Reginald Selkirk says

    A Republican’s Response To A “Tax The Rich” Chant At His Town Hall Is Going Viral

    Town halls haven’t been going so hot for Republicans lately.

    Republican Representative Mike Flood is the latest lawmaker to face a hostile crowd during his town hall event in Columbus, Nebraska. FWIW, he won reelection in his last race with 60% of the vote.
    …
    But one moment went super viral, and it’s the moment when the crowd started chanting, “Tax the rich!”

    It kind of flustered Representative Flood, and he asked the crowd, “So your proposal to solve this is tax the rich?”

    NEBRASKA CROWD: *CHEERS WILDLY*
    …

  323. Jean says

    Re #317

    Prelude of what is likely to happen in 2026 and 2028 in the US. I would be very surprised if there is a truly free and fair federal election in the US in the foreseeable future. It may not be as overtly done as what you see in Turkey but it might. In any case, expecting any reduction in GOP control over the government, regardless of what the majority of people want, seems overly optimistic.

  324. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Marisa Kabas (The Handbasket):

    Keith Sonderling, Trump’s Deputy Secretary of Labor, has been named the Acting Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), an agency source tells me. He’ll arrive tomorrow at their office with DOGE and their security detail.

    Wikipedia – IMLS

    an independent agency […] the main source of federal support for libraries and museums within the United States, having the mission to “advance, support, and empower America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations through grantmaking, research, and policy development.” […] IMLS was established by the Museum and Library Services Act (MLSA) on September 30, 1996

  325. Reginald Selkirk says

    Mysterious Weapon Fired From Bradley Fighting Vehicle During Exercise

    The U.S. Army has released a picture of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle using its BGM-71 TOW anti-tank guided missile launcher to fire something else referred to simply as the “670,” which appears to be previously unseen.

    “A U.S. Army Bradley Fighting Vehicle launches a 670 during Project Convergence-Capstone 5 (PC-C5) on Fort Irwin, Calif., in March 2025,” the image’s caption reads. “PC-C5 is the premier Joint, Combined experiment hosted by Army Futures Command to demonstrate how technology enhances cross-domain military operations.”
    …
    No further information about the 670 looks to be readily available and TWZ has reached out to the Army for more details…

  326. Reginald Selkirk says

    Study finds AI-generated meme captions funnier than human ones on average

    A new study examining meme creation found that AI-generated meme captions on existing famous meme images scored higher on average for humor, creativity, and “shareability” than those made by people. Even so, people still created the most exceptional individual examples.

    The research, which will be presented at the 2025 International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, reveals a nuanced picture of how AI and humans perform differently in humor creation tasks. Still, the results were surprising enough to have one expert declaring victory for the machines…

  327. says

    NBC News:

    Israel’s military sent ground troops back into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, the spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces announced, just over a day after it broke a two-month ceasefire with a sprawling bombing campaign that killed hundreds across the enclave. The ‘targeted ground operation’ has focused on the central and southern Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, the IDF said in a statement.

  330. says

    Followup to Sky Captain @320.

    Josh Marshall:

    […] I want to draw out a critical element of what happened on Monday and which we learned today. DOGE went to the private security contractor working for USIP and essentially said, you don’t have a clear legal or ethical ability to do this. But if you don’t want to lose all your federal contracts, you have to. And they did.

    This cuts to the core of DOGE’s role as a rogue operation inside the federal government and critically one that very much by design engineered its ability to work across the entire federal government. One department or another … none of that matters. DOGE is operating everywhere.

    The critical point is this: There are a lot of very large federal security contractors who wield violence and force on behalf of the US government. In theory, they do it under the state’s monopoly over the legitimate use of violence and under law. But those contractors are also extremely vulnerable to DOGE because DOGE can make contracts disappear, absent any kind of review process, beyond the reach of the clout of stakeholders within any one agency, anywhere in the government.

    So the basic transition that occurred here has many potential applications. Maybe DOGE says to a policing contractor. Look, it’s not pretty. But if you don’t want to lose your contracts you’re going to have to break up that protest. Or maybe you need to take the mayor into custody. Simple point: lot of capacity of state violence and a lot of cash. And DOGE operates front to back across the transaction.

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/zoom-in-on-this

  332. birgerjohansson says

    @ 330
    Let this sink in: The for-profit corporate immigrant detention facilities have zero incentive to make the process simpler, more transparent or less arbitrary. The more people they have locked up, the more money they get.

  334. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Brian Beutler – The Trump administration goes to war with health-care quality

    The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality—or AHRQ or “ark”—is like an in-house think tank for HHS […] “AHRQ is the only federal agency with statutory authorization to generate health services research. Their work improves health care quality, effectiveness, and accessibility by determining what works, how, for whom, and at what cost—driving meaningful change.”
    […]
    The letter to Kennedy alludes gently to the fact that crippling this agency would be illegal, and contradict Kennedy’s written, sworn testimony to the Senate. “The research supported by AHRQ not only improves health but also increases the efficiency of and effectiveness of our healthcare system, saving the government billions of dollars annually,”
    […]
    the process began weeks ago: First with indiscriminate, DOGE-directed firings of probationary employees, then with a carrot-and-stick approach to driving more senior people out of the agency. The carrot, an early retirement inducement or buyout offer; the stick, a warning that the overwhelming majority of those remaining will be terminated in a “reduction in force,” until perhaps 90 percent of the original staff has been eliminated. The deadline for AHRQ employees to choose one or the other was Friday—the day the lawmakers wrote to Kennedy—and remaining employees have been told to expect the RIF by mid-April if not much sooner. […] The gist was: ‘We can’t understand what you do so we’re not going to keep you around.’
    […]
    it will be all but impossible to rebuild. […] it is a public good. If the government doesn’t provide it, most likely nobody will. And why would highly specialized analysts, economists, and data scientists seek employment there in the future
    […]
    Fire experts who compile best practices for patient safety, and most Americans will never know. Hospital-acquired infections might go up; people might die unnecessarily of heart disease; but those kinds of consequences lie far downstream.

  336. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    The Guardian – Greenpeace must pay hundreds of millions over Dakota pipeline protests

    [The oil company] sued Greenpeace for $300m alleging defamation and orchestrating criminal behavior by protesters […] The five-week trial saw Energy Transfer attempt to tie a host of misdeeds […] to Greenpeace, which has maintained that its involvement was small and at the request of the Standing Rock tribe.
    […]
    Marty Garbus, a longtime first amendment lawyer who is part of the monitoring group, said: “In my six decades of legal practice, I have never witnessed a trial as unfair as the one against Greenpeace that just ended in the courts of North Dakota … Greenpeace has a very strong case on appeal. […]”

  337. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    The Verge – DOGE stranded USAID workers with laptops full of sensitive data

    Around two-thirds of USAID’s 10,000 employees are posted overseas, and recently terminated workers were told they’d get shipping labels to return equipment […] including computers and phones […] But some have been waiting more than a week since their last day at work to receive the slip. Others have been waiting since January, when the cuts began. That delay makes each individual responsible for keeping devices secure to protect sensitive information.
    […]
    access to government systems is inconsistent, making compliance with any incoming agency instructions difficult […] Some people still are able to access email and parts of the intranet while others are locked out. […] PIV cards issued to federal agency employees not only allow a person to log into their own personal device, they’re also typically used to enter government buildings

    Stuff in the US that has been returned has been collected shabbily for destruction. Ordinarily, equipment would be reused by USAID or other fed/state agencies, donated, or auctioned. Safe to assume even the destruction will be insecure, hazardous, and obviously wasteful.

  338. Bekenstein Bound says

    security contractors who had been terminated by the USIP but had switched their allegiances to DOGE entered the property with an unconfiscated key and headed immediately to the gun safe.

    The Institute of Peace.

    Has a gun safe.

    Only in America, folks!

    DOGE threatened to cancel every federal contract Inter-Con held” if they didn’t assist the break in.

    That’s overt extortion.

    I’d say DOGE made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. … This is just armed trespass and everyone involved should be in handcuffs awaiting hearing right now.

    And facing RICO charges. They’re acting like fucking mobsters, not any kind of legitimate government agency.

    I cannot process her complete about face. What the fuck.

    Blackmail.

    Govt says no physical records at USIP that don’t have duplicates or digital records have been shredded. Sure, jan.

    Why is “jan” not capitalized here … and who is she? Someone working with Hudak?

    Wow. Judge Howell is worried that if she orders DOGE to leave the USIP building it could turn into an “armed standoff”

    So, if it risks turning into an “armed standoff” the law won’t be enforced in the US anymore? Excellent! Now gimme a gat and a car, I’ve got some large withdrawals to make at some large American banks.

    Marisa Kabas: “My only conclusion is that Howell has been intimidated somehow.”

    Hole in one.

    I honestly don’t know how to express how bad this is. You’ve moved beyond losing a specific constitutional order when there’s reasonable fear that armed actors will take it on themselves to resolve conflicts between the branches of government.

    Yeah, at that point you’re into “coups, revolutions, and civil war” territory.

    The critical point is this: There are a lot of very large federal security contractors who wield violence and force on behalf of the US government. In theory, they do it under the state’s monopoly over the legitimate use of violence and under law. But those contractors are also extremely vulnerable to DOGE because DOGE can make contracts disappear, absent any kind of review process, beyond the reach of the clout of stakeholders within any one agency, anywhere in the government.

    So the basic transition that occurred here has many potential applications. Maybe DOGE says to a policing contractor. Look, it’s not pretty. But if you don’t want to lose your contracts you’re going to have to break up that protest. Or maybe you need to take the mayor into custody. Simple point: lot of capacity of state violence and a lot of cash. And DOGE operates front to back across the transaction.

    Well, shit. When Hitler had the Prussian police in his pocket, that was it. Game over. If DOGE can blackmail the mercenaries-for-hire businesses (which is what they are), Musk has an instant gestapo at his beck and call, and quite possibly can use it to arrest Trump once DOGE can grow no further in Trump’s shadow, let alone to reshape American society. This isn’t just a cyber-coup of files and firings anymore. Shit is getting real.

    I am increasingly of the opinion that the only way to get even a somewhat good ending out of this will require the US military to intervene. At least now we have a clearer picture of who the soldiers in Civil War II will be: not the US army vs. redneck militias and assorted gun-waving yahoos from out west, but the US army vs. Blackwater and the other private armies that the US neocon right has been cultivating since 9/11, if not earlier.

    I always knew those mercenary companies would be bad news. I just thought it would happen under Bush II originally, and when it never went that far they more or less slipped my mind, even after Snowden exposed the intelligence-gathering side of the same apparatus. Now DOGE will have control of both, and I’ve got to imagine that Thiel has his fingers in this pie as well, given his own association with shady defense industry dealings.

    The bad guys have been assembling their neoConfederate army right under our noses this whole time, but they may have tipped their hand when they blackmailed that small security firm to let them into USIP. I just hope some people at mid-levels of the US armed forces’ chains of command notice the same things we’ve all done here … and ignore any stand-down orders from the Trump-appointed hacks higher up.

    LOOK at all the commenters from The Before Time!

    From before what, though? Some big split or kerfuffle during the teens?

  340. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Meanwhile in the Venezuelans trafficking case.

    Josh Gerstein (Politico):

    Insolent DOJ filing says Judge Boasberg is engaged in ‘picayune dispute over the micromanagement of immaterial factfinding’ & beating ‘dead horse’ re whether USG defied his order re deportation planes. US may invoke state secrets privilege.

    Secrets and Laws (Former CIA attorney):

    This is one of the most remarkable passages I’ve ever seen in a DOJ brief: the world will end if we tell the former head of the FISA Court, in an ex parte classified setting, about flight details that Marco Rubio already disclosed in a tweet. [Screenshot]

    submission would result in a flood of media inquiries […] addressing the Court’s pending questions would undermine the Executive Branch’s ability to negotiate with foreign sovereigns in the future by subjecting [negotiations and arrangements to] micromanaged and unnecessary judicial fishing expeditions and potential public disclosure.

    This might be the second most remarkable passage I’ve ever seen in a DOJ brief: we think the Chief Judge of the District Court for the District of Columbia, who oversees sensitive grand jury matters & was former head of the FISA court, will unilaterally disclose classified information to the public. [Screenshot]

    Eric Columbus: “Worth noting that it was Chief Justice Roberts who named Judge Boasberg to head of the FISA Court.”

  341. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Re: Bekenstein Bound @337:

    Govt says no physical records at USIP that don’t have duplicates or digital records have been shredded. Sure, jan.

    Why is “jan” not capitalized here … and who is she?

    Microblog posts tend to have lax capitalization.

    Wiktionary – Sure, Jan

  342. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Adam Bonica (PoliSci professor):

    Judges across ideological lines are ruling against Trump at strikingly similar rates (84% liberal, 86% centrist, 82% conservative). This isn’t partisan opposition to Trump—it’s the judiciary functioning as intended by cutting across partisan lines to uphold the Constitution. […] This isn’t commonly the case—ideology is typically a moderate to strong predictor of case outcomes […] What changed? The nature of the challenges—today’s cases pose more fundamental constitutional violations
    […]
    When judges across the ideological spectrum reach similar legal conclusions about attacks on our Constitution, we should see it for what it is: a flashing warning sign that we are facing a clear and present danger to our democratic and constitutional order.

    Eek, bipartisanship!!!

  343. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Southpaw: “Trump doxxes his own lawyer’s private info in otherwise newsless JFK release.”

    WaPo – Social Security numbers and other private info unmasked in JFK files

    private information of more than 200 former congressional staffers and others were made public Tuesday in the unredacted files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy
    […]
    “It’s absolutely outrageous. It’s sloppy, unprofessional,” said former Trump campaign lawyer Joseph diGenova, 80, whose [SSN and DoB] was included
    […]
    release of the information raises legal questions under the Privacy Act […] Many whose Social Security numbers were exposed had become high-ranking officials in Washington […] and prominent lawyers.
    […]
    The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the roughly 80,000 pages were “previously-classified records that will be published with no redactions.”

  344. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Kyle Cheney (Politico):

    In new sworn declaration, DOGE administrator Amy Gleason says DOGE has 89 employees and no “formal front office or organizational chart.”

    Gleason again doesn’t mention her dual role as an HHS employee.

    Randos: “But they have a washer and a dryer. And a gaming TV.”

    Rando: “if she is not counting herself… the total would be 88 employees”

    Wikipedia – DOGE, Members

    An investigation by TechCrunch categorized DOGE members as inner circle, senior figures, worker bees, or aides.

  345. Reginald Selkirk says

    Trump Has a Terrifying Plan to End Future Court Losses

    Donald Trump is planning to nominate troves of loyalist judges to the federal judiciary, and their confirmations will likely go off without a hitch, according to Politico.

    Trump is likely to unveil his first round of judicial nominations in the coming weeks, four people familiar with the conversations told Politico Tuesday. During Trump’s first administration, a whopping 234 judges were confirmed, some of whom proved to be fierce loyalists willing to upend Trump’s legal battles—such as Judge Aileen Cannon, who has since been floated for a potential seat on the Supreme Court.

    This time, Trump is looking for more judges willing to demonstrate their fealty, according to Mike Davis, who served as the former chief counsel to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley…

  346. Reginald Selkirk says

    Scientists Announce Possible Breakthrough in Delaying Alzheimer’s

    We might be on the precipice of a pivotal moment in Alzheimer’s disease research. In clinical trial data released this week, scientists have presented early evidence that it’s possible to delay symptoms in people genetically fated to develop Alzheimer’s at a young age.

    Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine led the study, which aimed to test whether an experimental anti-amyloid drug called gantenerumab could help people with an inherited form of Alzheimer’s. In a subset of patients treated the longest, the drug appeared to reduce their risk of developing symptoms as expected, by 50%. The findings will require a follow-up, but outside experts are cautiously optimistic about what this could mean for the future of treating Alzheimer’s…

  347. rorschach says

    @334,
    “nothing in particular in the thread, I have no clue why I saved it but just LOOK at all the commenters from The Before Time!”

    Wild! Louis is around in socials occasionally, so is Ing, the others, I honestly have no idea!

  349. birgerjohansson says

    Canadians are standing up for right and justice. Just look at the Canadian B-film ‘Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter’ where a Canadian Jesus stands up for the downtrodden, especially the LBGTQ community!

  350. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show

    ‘The plan is to scuttle the agency’: Democrats demand answers from Musk on Social Security cuts
    Video is 7:30 minutes

    Trump coziness with Putin [manifests as] U.S. backing off countering Russian sabotage in Europe: Report
    Video is 9:23 minutes

    DOGE overstepping with raid of independent agency prompts calls for congressional oversight
    Video is 5:02 minutes

    Snyder: Trump deference to Musk, Putin over U.S. public opinion is ‘unsustainable’
    Video is 6:48 minutes

  351. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/all

    Idaho teacher fights back after order to remove ‘Everyone is Welcome Here’ poster
    video is 8:27 minutes

    ‘Now is the time to break glass’: Chris Hayes reacts to Schumer interview
    video is 10:33 minutes

    FULL INTERVIEW: Chuck Schumer joins Chris Hayes
    Video is 28:02 minutes

  352. says

    Followup to the Rachel Maddow video in comment 350.

    Trump administration reportedly suspends some efforts to counter Russian sabotage

    “The Trump administration has made a series of moves that seem part of a coordinated effort to placate Russia.”

    As international fears of Russian sabotage campaigns grow, common sense might suggest that U.S. officials would be ramping up its efforts to combat Moscow’s tactics. According to a Reuters report, however, the Trump administration is doing largely the opposite.

    Several U.S. national security agencies have halted work on a coordinated effort to counter Russian sabotage, disinformation and cyberattacks, easing pressure on Moscow as the Trump Administration pushes Russia to end its war in Ukraine.

    […] Biden administration officials briefed the incoming Trump administration during the transition period, urging the Republican team “to continue monitoring Russia’s hybrid warfare campaign.”

    After Donald Trump’s inauguration, however, “much of the work has come to a standstill,” Reuters added. The same report went on to say, “Some officials involved in the working groups said they are concerned that the Trump administration is de-prioritizing the issue despite intelligence warnings. The change follows the unwinding of other Russia-focused projects launched by Biden’s administration.”

    It’s that last point that’s of particular interest. The Reuters report, in isolation, is unsettling. But considered in a broader context, the pattern paints an even more alarming image.

    Last week, for example, Vladimir Putin and his regime let U.S. officials know that they did not want retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg — the White House’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia — to be involved in ceasefire negotiations. Trump promptly reassigned him. Around the same time, the White House abandoned the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine.

    The developments were hardly unfamiliar:
    – The Trump administration halted cyber operations and information operations against Russia.
    – Trump upbraided Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy while peddling Kremlin-style talking points.
    – Trump suggested Putin was a victim of the 2016 Russia scandal.
    – The Trump administration is terminating an initiative to protect Ukraine’s energy grid.
    – Trump is prepared to reward Russia by welcoming it back into the G7.
    – The Trump administration disbanded the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force.
    – The Trump administration pared back enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
    – The Trump administration disbanded the Justice Department’s program responsible for enforcing Russian sanctions and targeting oligarchs close to the Kremlin.
    – The Trump administration slashed the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
    – The Trump administration targeted U.S. intelligence officials as part of its mass firing campaign.
    – Trump’s delegation to the United Nations voted with Russia — and against U.S. allies — on a resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine.
    [Embedded links to sources are available at the main link.]

    And did I mention that Senate Republicans, at Trump’s behest, confirmed Tulsi Gabbard as the nation’s director of national intelligence, despite her habit of echoing Russian propaganda? Because that happened, too.

    What’s more, this list might yet grow. Reuters also recently reported that the administration is also eyeing an overhaul to existing U.S. sanctions on Russia.

    Imagine a hypothetical scenario in which Putin spoke privately to Trump and provided the American president with a to-do list. Would it look much different than the White House’s agenda from the last two months?

  354. birgerjohansson says

    “China Will Soon Lead World in Science and Tech::
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=2e0Q8_f7fic

    Meanwhile, Musk and the oligarchy are burning down the basis of US science.
    At lest EU is investing in science and tech, so if you move here you will not be unemployed. The word is turning upside down.

  355. JM says

    Reuters: Situation in Russia’s Belgorod region ‘difficult’, at least one killed, government says

    The situation in Russia’s Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine remains difficult, local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Wednesday, a day after Moscow said its forces had thwarted attempts by Kyiv’s troops to push across the border.

    It’s clear now that Ukraine did make some sort of attack against Belborod but the scale and success are still unknown. Russia has retaken almost all of Kursk at this point, the Ukrainians forced to make a withdraw due to Russian pressure and loss of US support for a few days. The Russians are making a lot of small attacks across the front but are not making any progress, too much of their forces are still tied up in Kursk.
    The Russians are also collecting evidence of war crimes in Kursk. Expect to see more about that soon, it will be a useful talking point and helpful during negotiations. Given the length and intensity of fighting I’m sure the Russians can find some events that can be plausibly painted as war crimes and surely will invent even more. It won’t be anything like the systemic war crimes the Russians have been committing.

  356. says

    USAID still exists, though it’s a shell of its former self. The agency is getting new leadership, though the team doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

    After the quasi-governmental Department of Government Efficiency helped gut the U.S. Agency for International Development — better known as USAID — Elon Musk was apparently feeling a bit defensive. “No one has died as a result of a brief pause to do a sanity check on foreign aid funding,” Donald Trump’s top campaign donor recently said. “No one.”

    It led The New York Times’ Nick Kristof to explain in his latest column, “That is not true. In South Sudan, one of the world’s poorest countries, the efforts by Musk and President Trump are already leading children to die.”

    The columnist added, “Trump and Musk are right that U.S.A.I.D. needed reforms. It was endlessly bureaucratic, and much of the money went not to the needy but to American companies that knew how to work the system. Yet what Trump and Musk undertook was not reform but demolition.”

    To be sure, USAID still exists, though given the “demolition,” it’s a shell of its former self. The good news is, the agency is getting new leadership. The bad news is, given the new team’s background, it’s difficult to be optimistic about the beleaguered agency’s future. NBC News reported:

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio is delegating authority over the U.S. Agency for International Development to DOGE, senior staffer Jeremy Lewin, who will now run the day-to-day operations of the largely dismantled agency. … In an email to the remaining staff of USAID last evening, Pete Marocco, who had been acting deputy administrator and oversaw the cuts to 84% of its foreign aid programming, said he was returning to his post as the head of the State Department’s Foreign Assistance bureau.

    To be sure, there is still a pending legal dispute surrounding USAID, with a federal judge ruling this week that the Trump administration’s efforts to effectively destroy USAID “likely violated the United States Constitution in multiple ways.” That case is ongoing.

    But while the legal developments unfold, these personnel developments are important in their own right.

    Jeremy Lewin, as an Associated Press report noted, played “a central role” in slashing USAID. He’ll now lead USAID. Lewin will work alongside Kenneth Jackson, a State Department official who was also named the acting president of the U.S. Institute of Peace, who’ll serve as USAID’s chief financial officer. [Bad actors everywhere.]

    As for Marocco, as he passes the reins and takes control of the State Department’s Foreign Assistance bureau, his record remains highly relevant. In 2020, for example, Politico reported that Marocco, who held a variety of positions in the first Trump administration, left “a bitter trail” at the Pentagon and at the State Department, “dogged by criticism that he created a toxic work environment by undermining and mistreating career staffers.”

    Months later, when Marocco worked at USAID, Politico further reported that his colleagues were “so fed up” with him that they “crafted a lengthy memo chronicling their frustrations” in the hopes that Trump administration officials would intervene. [And yet, it looks like the doofus was promoted.]

    Most important of all, NBC News reported that online sleuths who aided the FBI in cases against Jan. 6 rioters “identified Marocco and his now-wife as being among the rioters who stormed the Capitol in 2021.”

    Marocco, who was not charged with any crimes, has never explicitly denied entering the Capitol on Jan. 6, though he has complained on the record about undefined “smear tactics and desperate personal attacks.”

    Earlier this month, during a congressional hearing, a Democratic lawmaker asked Marocco where he was on Jan. 6, 2021. He declined to answer.

    Two weeks later, Marocco received a promotion at Rubio’s State Department.

  357. says

    Highly inappropriate stock tip:

    Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick became the latest Trump administration official to try to help Elon Musk stem the bleeding from his flailing car company, telling Americans to buy Tesla stock in a wildly unethical appearance on Fox News.

    “I think if you want to learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla,” Lutnick said in an interview with misogynistic and racist Fox News host Jesse Watters. “It’s unbelievable that this guy’s stock is this cheap. It’ll never be this cheap again.” [video at the link]

    Tesla’s stock has fallen dramatically in the past month, losing more than 40% of its value since the year began, as Musk’s efforts to slash the federal government have caused backlash from Americans. [graph at the link]

    To try to stop the stock’s slide, Trump administration officials and other Republican lawmakers are hawking Tesla vehicles and vowing to go after people who protest at Tesla dealerships to show their disgust with Musk’s destructive government cuts.

    In a disgusting spectacle on March 11, President Donald Trump hosted a Tesla infomercial on the White House lawn, singing the praises of Musk’s car company and saying he was personally purchasing a vehicle for White House staff to use. Trump even read from prepared notes that had pricing information about the cars. [social media post and photo at the link]

    Attorney General Pam Bondi threatened to punish people who protest at Tesla dealerships, saying that the Department of Justice will view anyone who vandalizes Tesla cars as domestic terrorists.

    “The swarm of violent attacks on Tesla property is nothing short of domestic terrorism,” Bondi said in a statement on Tuesday. “The Department of Justice has already charged several perpetrators with that in mind, including in cases that involve charges with five-year mandatory minimum sentences. We will continue investigations that impose severe consequences on those involved in these attacks, including those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.” [Conservatives at just about every level of government are blaming George Soros, which is a dog whistle blame-the-Jews conspiracy theory that they use to rile up the MAGA base.]

    Aside from trying to boost Tesla, the Trump administration is also lining Musk’s pockets by giving lucrative government contracts to Musk’s satellite internet company, Starlink.

    The Federal Aviation Administration was mulling ending a $2.4 billion contract with Verizon and instead going with Starlink, leading to accusations that Musk is illegally benefitting from his role in the administration.

    The Trump administration is also trying to nix a Biden administration plan to expand broadband internet to rural areas with fiber optic cable, and instead use Musk’s Starlink, which would give the company a boost of up to $20 billion. [!] [Embedded links to sources are available at the main link.]

    And The New York Times reported on Monday that the White House now uses Starlink Wi-Fi, and that Starlink has been set up at other government agencies, including the General Services Administration, where Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency goons have installed themselves as they slash federal spending and jobs.

    The Trump administration is helping Musk benefit financially as Musk’s efforts screw over average Americans.

    Musk’s DOGE cuts have stolen food assistance from poor kids, decimated medical research for everything from diabetes to Alzheimer’s to childhood cancer, taken Social Security away from eligible seniors, and cut jobs from public servants and veterans.

    Democrats have slammed the Trump administration’s efforts to line Musk’s pockets while taking away benefits from everyone else.

    “It’s wrong and illegal for the Commerce Secretary to be promoting Tesla stock or any specific stock for that matter,” Sen. Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, wrote in a post on X. “It’s also wrong and illegal for people to vandalize and destroy Tesla cars. Corruption and violence both damage our democracy.”

    And after all that, Lutnick’s unethical attempt to line Musk’s pockets didn’t even work.

    Tesla’s stock fell on Thursday when the market opened.

    Sad!

    Link

  358. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/does-trump-know-how-much-putin-makes

    “Does Trump Know How Much Putin Makes Fun Of Him To His Face?”

    “Somebody should tell him, repeatedly!”

    Yesterday, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz went on “Fox & Friends” and told host Lawrence Jones — one of the two hosts, the other being Brian Kilmeade, who at all times has this confused look on his face like a cartoon piano just fell on his head — that it is “COMPLETELY FALSE GARBAGE FAKE NEWS” that Vladimir Putin kept Donald Trump waiting for hours for their big scheduled phone call this week.

    “Donald J. Trump does not sit and wait for an hour for any head of state,” he insisted, pretending other heads of state respect Trump.

    Buuuuuut there is video of Putin, at a conference, being reminded that he’s way late for his call with Trump, waving it off and laughing, and everybody in the audience laughing along with him too.

    You do not need to speak Russian to understand what is happening in this clip, but there are subtitles anyway: [social media post and video at the link]

    It’s long been known that making people wait is one of Putin’s dominance moves, and Putin is certainly alpha dog over his little [pet] Trump. Newsweek notes that Putin did the very same thing earlier this month to Steve Witkoff, the random-ass clown real estate developer Trump has made his Middle East envoy, and also his unofficial envoy to the Kremlin. Eight hours that time. (Trump, a pathological liar, said that’s fake news.)

    So that’s Putin, not just doing his dominance move, but also publicly making fun of Trump in front of all his Russian friends, in Russian, and also in the universal language of laughing after you say “Trump.”

    […] And according to Trump 1.0 impeachment witness and former Trump administration Russia expert Fiona Hill, Putin is well-known for making fun of Trump, right to his face, in Russian. And he has no idea, because he’s stupid, he’s unprepared, and he has zero people around him with the knowledge or expertise — or courage — to tell him.

    Good to keep in mind while Mr. Art of the Deal tries to “negotiate” the end of the war in Ukraine, while we watch Putin play Trump like a fiddle and keep the war going just like he likes it.

    The other day, Hill appeared on a podcast for Foreign Affairs with Dan Kurtz-Phelan, and if you want to spend an hour on the treadmill listening, we’d recommend it. But this passage really jumped out at us. Hill is speaking about language:

    “The very first time I was in one of the phone calls with Putin, I was listening very carefully to the Russian, because the interpreters don’t always capture everything. They don’t capture the nuances. And particularly when it’s the Russian interpreter, who’s translating into a language that’s also not their native language, all kinds of things are missing. And Trump said, ‘What a great conversation.’ I thought, actually, not really. There was all kinds of menace in what Putin had said. He chooses words very carefully.

    “Many times when Putin and Trump are interacting, Putin’s actually making fun of him. It’s just completely lost in the translation. I can give lots of episodes of this. Or he’s goading him and urging him onto something because he’s trying to see how he will react. And the translation smooths over all of that. That context is absolutely missing. And he doesn’t do a readout afterwards.”

    Vladimir Putin speaks perfect English, of course. […] But in Russian, Putin makes fun of Trump to his face. Because Trump is the laughingstock of the world, whether he’s with leaders who are supposed to be our allies or leaders who are supposed to be our adversaries.

    Hill makes her own fun of Trump’s thirstiness toward Putin, how Trump so fervently believes that he and Putin have been though so much “together,” likening it to a “teenage romance where everybody’s been trying to keep them apart, and he just wants to get back together with Putin in spite of everybody.”

    And she shares a specific example of Putin making fun of Trump to his face, without Trump knowing it:

    “Well, one of the classics was in Osaka at the G-20, which is also another famous incident where the Russians swapped out the interpreter for a very attractive, very skilled young woman. During that moment, they were standing off and chest-beating about who had hypersonic missiles first. And Trump was saying he would get them, and Putin was basically somewhat sarcastically saying, ‘Yes, you will, but I’ve got them first,’ kind of thing.

    “And then they started talking about Israel. And we did have this really amazing, historic meeting among the national security advisers of Israel, Russia, and the United States. It came around this time, because at that point, the Russians were trying to make the case that they were protecting Israel and being supportive of Israel by being in the Golan Heights and the activities that were doing in Syria.

    “And Putin was talking about this, and then Trump said, ‘Ah, but I do more for Israel than anybody else. They’ve named this after me and that after me in Israel.’ And Putin looked at him and said, ‘Well, Donald, perhaps they should name the country after you.’ And the way that he said it in Russian, it was so sarcastic. And you could see his guys around him smirking. But when the interpreter, who was the only person that Trump was looking at, basically said it, it just came out as more — sort of softer. And Trump responded and said, ‘Oh, no, I think that would be too much,’ almost as if it was a genuine suggestion.”

    LOL, that’s so sad. The nuances of language are important!

    [snipped Hills’ criticism of Zelensky speaking English when he met with Trump in the oval office.]

    […] She notes that all Putin’s people also “speak impeccable English and they know all their talking points.” […]

    She talks about how excited they really are in Russia about having Trump in full lipstick-out mode, begging at Putin’s feet. But also she gets into what Russia might be the slightest bit uneasy about, “kind of feeling that maybe they’re the dog that caught the car” here, and what it might actually look like for Ukraine to become a failed state between Russia and Europe, with the United States as a non-actor. (Europe at war with Russia, and also China and Iran and North Korea, that’s what she says it looks like. Cue the new nuclear arms race!)

    […] the point, which we made at the top, is that Vladimir Putin mocks Trump to his face, he mocks him behind his back, and he mocks him on live TV in front of audiences of Russians.

    What’s it like to be the true laughingstock of the world? Donald Trump would know if he ever experienced one millisecond of true self-awareness.

    […] Here’s the full podcast: [video at the link]

  359. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/gentlemen-you-cant-do-an-armed-invasion

    A federal judge in Washington DC on Wednesday turned down a request by the US Institute of Peace to end the takeover of the Institute by Elon Musk’s DOGE goon squad. US District Judge Beryl Howell said that while she was “very offended by how DOGE has operated” in taking over the institute, and that Donald Trump’s abrupt Monday firing and replacement of USIP’s board didn’t follow the law, the complaint filed by ousted USIP board members was insufficient to justify a temporary restraining order reversing the takeover.

    Howell said that the weird position of USIP as an independent nonprofit established by Congress, but with a board consisting of some executive branch officers and Senate-confirmed presidential appointees, made it unclear whether she could issue a restraining order.

    Guess that’s how it goes in the Trump Era: You win some, you lose some democratic institutions. This is early going, however, and Howell, who oversaw the grand juries during the criminal investigations of Donald Trump during the Biden administration, doesn’t seem inclined to be friendly to the administration.

    DOGE initially showed up, along with some FBI agents, at the USIP headquarters in Washington on Friday, but when asked to show a court order, the goons went away. Employees told Musk’s tech snots that USIP is an independent nonprofit and not part of the executive branch; its employees are not paid by the US government and its building is owned by the institute, not the government.

    But on Monday, the DOGE snots were back, this time with a key, the FBI, and armed State Department police, and when USIP staff called the DC Metro Police, the cops instead showed up and helped DOGE remove the employees from the building, including the institute’s president, George Moose.

    As it turns out, the DC Metro Police had already been contacted by Trump’s toady Ed Martin, the acting US attorney for DC, who informed the department that Moose was no longer the president of USIP, and had been replaced by Kenneth Jackson, a Trump administration official who’s also been helping dismantle the US Agency for International Development. Oops. Perfectly normal American scene under Trump.

    Even though Howell declined to reverse the takeover, she had plenty of criticism for DOGE at yesterday’s hearing, [See Sky Captain’s comments 321.]

    Democracy Docket explains what makes the institute such an odd duck, an independent nonprofit that nonetheless has a lot of connections to the US government:

    Founded in 1984 under former President Ronald Reagan, the institute is a congressionally funded “independent nonprofit corporation” led by a bipartisan board of directors. The board must include the secretary of state, secretary of defense and president of the National Defense University, but the 12 remaining board members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

    The lawsuit argues that Trump acted illegally by illegally firing USIP board members and replacing them with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and a Navy admiral for some reason. Those three then voted to remove Moose and replace him with Jackson.

    The complaint said that attacks on the institute “culminated in the literal trespass and takeover by force by Defendants, including representatives of DOGE, of the Institute’s headquarters building on Constitution Avenue.”

    As justification for the move, the Trump administration argued that even though Congress created the USIP as an independent nonprofit in 1984, with clear rules on how board members can legally be removed, Ronald Reagan added a signing statement insisting that presidents could still shitcan board members for any reason at all, whenever they wanna, whatever Congress said, so there. (We are paraphrasing a little.)

    Despite her decision that she couldn’t issue a restraining order based on the uncertainty over USIP’s status in the government, Howell did at least order expedited briefings in the case, and is worried about how far this crap may go:

    During the hearing Wednesday, Howell pondered what would happen if she did block DOGE from the building, given that it resorted to using law enforcement so quickly.

    “Is that just going to invite, like, an armed battle at the institute? Am I going to have to call in a mediator from abroad to help you out here?” she asked.

    [Rachel Maddow made a similar point, referencing a “shoot out” between opposing forces.]

    Hey, Heritage Foundation creep Kevin Roberts already told us that Trump would bring a “second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the Left allows it to be.” Not that he meant it literally, unless he did.

  360. says

    New York Times link

    “Musk Donates to G.O.P. Members of Congress Who Support Impeaching Judges”

    “[…] Elon Musk gave the maximum to the campaigns of Republicans who back ousting judges who impede the administration.”

    Elon Musk has made the maximum allowable donation to Republican members of Congress who support impeaching federal judges who are impeding actions taken by President Trump, according to five people with knowledge of the matter.

    Mr. Musk has given what had been until recently the legal maximum hard-dollar donation — $6,600 — to the campaigns of seven Republicans who have either endorsed judicial impeachments or called for some form of “action” in response to recent rulings against the Trump administration, including a weekend decision by Judge James E. Boasberg of Federal District Court in Washington.

    On Saturday, Judge Boasberg ordered the administration to turn around planes carrying alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador and return them to the United States. The administration did not comply with that order, prompting concerns about a constitutional showdown.

    Mr. Trump subsequently said on social media that Judge Boasberg should be impeached.

    Mr. Musk contributed on Wednesday to Representatives Eli Crane of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin and Brandon Gill of Texas. He also donated to Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, according to two of the people briefed on the matter. […]

    “We didn’t do it so Elon Musk would give us a campaign donation,” Mr. Crane said in an interview shortly after learning of Mr. Musk’s donation. “But I think it’s great that individuals like Elon are throwing support behind those of us willing to take action.” […]

  362. says

    Vance hits his daily ick quota with disgusting claim about Harris

    Vice President JD Vance called in to right-wing podcaster Vince Coglianese’s show this week to berate his predecessor, former Vice President Kamala Harris, saying that the main difference between the two is that he doesn’t drink before work.

    “Well, I don’t have, you know, four shots of vodka before every meeting. That’s one way, I think, that Kamala really tried to bring herself into the role is, is these word salads. And I think that I would need the help of a lot of alcohol to answer a question the way that Kamala Harris answered,” he said. [video at the link]

    Some choice words from a guy whose daytime food-ordering skills rival a 4 AM college run to Dunkin’ Donuts. Not to mention Vance’s infamous word salad about “childless cat ladies” and his embarrassing attempt at bullying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval office. […]

    During the podcast episode, Vance also said that Harris “was just less empowered to do her job.” That’s quite the statement coming from the same person whose campaign claimed that former President Joe Biden was controlled by Harris.

    Trump and Vance built their campaign on blaming Harris for all of Biden’s “bad” policies and accusing her of failing in her role as the mythical “border czar.”

    But Vance’s gratuitous takedown of a perceived political enemy is unfortunately nothing new for the Trump administration. Whether it’s taking down portraits of Trump’s “enemies” or revoking security protections from officials he does not like, the Trump administration is fueled by pettiness and revenge.

  363. says

    […] One-on-one, Pritzker [Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois]comes across as a kind, avuncular figure. He tells me about efforts to lend a hand to federal workers summarily laid off—whether that means hiring them for state government positions or holding job fairs. Still, there is only so much he can do. “I am seeing in our Department of Economic Security, where we handle unemployment, that there are thousands of workers that are no longer with the federal government now, collecting unemployment,” he noted.

    The pain will be profound. If the federal government pulls back on Affordable Care Act subsidies, some of the 770,000 people getting coverage through the ACA will go without insurance. The prospect of huge cuts to Medicaid also looms. “I’m going to do whatever it is that I can do, but I can’t come up with $8 billion to keep a federal program going in my state,” he said. “I can spend hundreds of millions of dollars to try to provide free health care for people who are most acute, but people are going to die because of what they’re doing.”

    Pritzker certainly can go for the jugular. He recalls during Covid having to reroute millions of quality masks as well as ventilators through customs in Alaska (rather than through Chicago’s O’Hare teeming with customs agents) to avoid the experience Massachusetts Republican Governor Charlie Baker endured; having the federal government confiscate materials Massachusetts had sourced from overseas (!). He also recalls speaking to Peter Navarro about sending aid. “He said, ‘I think we can help you but only if you’ll go on the Sunday programs and say nice things about the president.’” Pritzker is still incredulous. “Even during a national crisis it’s about him getting positive press.” Ouch.

    Pritzker also puts home state Rep. Mike Bost (R-Ill.), a veteran who chairs the House Veterans Affairs Committee, on the hotseat when it comes to massive cuts at the VA. “I can’t help but think that if you’re a Republican congressman, and veterans in your district are hurting, you’re not going to respond to that in some way that helps them.” It’s fear that keeps them loyal to Trump, he says, but when real constituents feel real pain and voice their anger, Republicans need to decide how far they’re willing to go for Trump while stiffing constituents.

    I asked him about his reaction to Trump’s bullying of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. “This president has basically switched sides, and so people are appalled,” he said bluntly. “The hero here is Zelensky. Our enemy is Vladimir Putin. How is it that the United States is switching sides to support the villain?”

    Pritzker has not announced his intentions for 2028, although many expect him to run. He can authentically and emotionally espouse his love of country to a large crowd. He choked up while telling the audience that America is still the greatest country on earth, and one worth defending for the freedom, security, and world leadership it offers. To read it, that might sound hokey or trite. In person, it was moving.

    These days, Democrats could surely use a plain-spoken politician who can take on the MAGA billionaires—with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye that tells the audience they are all onto the Trump scam and can overcome it.

    Democrats could do a lot worse than seeing a 2028 matchup between Pritzker and any one of the off-putting Trump imitators.

    Link

    More at the link.

  364. Reginald Selkirk says

    Experts investigate cause of massive honeybee colony die-offs

    Cornell University bee experts are analyzing samples of bees and related material to help identify the cause of unprecedented managed honey bee losses this winter.

    The colony die-offs became apparent as U.S. commercial beekeepers geared up to transport colonies to California, where approximately 70% of the nation’s managed honey bees are trucked to pollinate almonds each year.

    Average recent losses have been upward of 60% of honey bee colonies, leading to combined financial losses of at least $139 million, according to an ongoing survey of 234 beekeepers from across the country. The survey is being conducted by Project Apis m., the American Beekeeping Federation, the American Honey Producers Association and extension programs and beekeepers.

    “Based on early numbers that are coming in, it’s suggestive that this will be the biggest loss of honey bee colonies in U.S. history,” said Scott McArt, associate professor of entomology and program director for the Dyce Lab for Honey Bee Studies at Cornell.

    The Bee Research Laboratory at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, Maryland, has collected samples of honey bees, wax, pollen and honey from dead and living hives. The government facility is now testing samples for parasites (such as varroa mites) and viruses. But due to government staffing cuts and the high expense involved with testing samples for pesticides, USDA staff and commercial beekeepers approached McArt to see if Cornell could handle pesticide analyses…

  365. Reginald Selkirk says

    Carney to call snap election as Canada faces trade war with US – reports

    Newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is likely to call a national election for 28 April, potentially as soon as this Sunday, multiple news outlets report.

    With Canada’s businesses reeling from a trade dispute with the US, Carney – a former two-time central banker – is expected to pitch himself as the candidate best equipped to take on Donald Trump.

    The 60-year-old political newcomer took over as leader of the Liberal Party after former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stepped down from his nine-year term.

    The prime minister’s announcement to call an election and request the dissolution of Parliament will kick off a five-week campaign for Carney and his political opponents.

    While the timing of the request to dissolve parliament is clear – the exact election date is not. ..

  366. Reginald Selkirk says

    GOP Lawmaker Who Ousted Liz Cheney Says It’s ‘Bizarre’ How ‘Obsessed’ People Are with Government at Explosive Town Hall

    Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman faced an angry crowd at a local town hall on Wednesday, March 19, marking one of several recent incidents where constituents have confronted Republican members of Congress about the Trump administration’s aggressive actions.

    Hageman — who ousted incumbent Liz Cheney in a landslide victory in the 2022 election for the state’s only congressional district — laughed aloud during the public event as a crowd of frustrated Wyomingites booed her praise for President Donald Trump and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency…

    “It’s so bizarre to me how obsessed you are with federal government,” she added…

    WTF? This is the person serving as Wyoming’s representative in the House. The only reason people would come to see her at a town hall would be if they cared about federal governance.

  368. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/laura-ingraham-knows-how-broken-trumps

    […] Trump went on an absolute dry-drunk bender about Canada, and she [Laura Ingraham] tried and tried and tried to keep him on course, to reset his brain, to remind him that Canada is our friend, to remind him there are greater threats in the world.

    To no avail.

    The Bulwark’s Tim Miller did a rapid response thingy to the interview last night, so you can watch along with that. Below we’ll tell you highlights: [Video at the link, it’s a good one, video is 1:29 minutes]

    Trump said “Canada was meant to be the 51st state, because we subsidize Canada by $200 million a year. We don’t need their cars. We don’t need their lumber. We gotta loooootta lumber!” (He said it like a used car salesman from the outer boroughs. We gotta lotta lumber!)

    He said that he had just freed up the lumber, last week, so that you can now cut a tree down in the United States without “being given the death penalty.”

    What?

    Ingraham let him babble, then finally, incredulously, said, “You’re tougher with Canada than you are with some of our biggest adversaries! Why?”

    “Because it’s meant to be our 51st state.”

    “OK, but we need their territory, they have territorial advantage. We’re not going to let them get close to China, right?”

    She was trying.

    He was too angry at that point, too far off on his bender.

    “One of the nastiest countries to deal with is Canada,” he sneered […]

    He specified that he was talking about “Governor Trudeau,” whose “people were NASTY.”

    Trump continued:

    “And they weren’t telling the truth. They never told the truth. You know, they’d say, well, we don’t charge. Well, they do. They charge tremendous! They charge tremendous!”

    Great. They charge fuckin’ tremendous.

    More babbling, then Ingraham finally reached the end of her rope again: “But what’s the endgame?”

    He said we have a huge trade deficit with Canada. She interjected that it was 60 billion. He said “Much more!” She said, “I don’t think so.”

    Trump insisted, “I love Canada! I love Wayne Gretzky! I love his wife!”

    Ingraham noted that now the Liberal Party is likely going to win the Canadian elections (implying that his tariff war made that more likely), as opposed to the Conservative Party. She suggested this might push Canada closer to China.

    “The conservative that’s running is stupidly no friend of mine,” he whined, and said he’d rather the Liberals win. Or maybe he doesn’t care! “It doesn’t matter to me at all!”

    Ingraham, trying again: “So your endgame is what with them?”

    He doesn’t want to have a big deficit, and Canada would be better as our 51st state, then he bragged about his economy in his first term, and then he remembered he was talking about Canada and said they were theeeeee WOOOOORST to negotiate with.

    Ingraham, again looking incredulous, reminded Trump that he had negotiated this huge trade deal with Canada during that first term he just mentioned for no reason.

    He acknowledged that he had negotiated the USMCA trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, “but they cheat!” And Mexico cheats!

    Ingraham reminded Trump that China cheated too. Trying, trying, trying so hard to get Trump to talk about something important, instead of his laser pointer brain-damaged obsession with Canada.

    Around and around and around.

    And that was just one five-minute clip of the interview! The whole thing was 22 minutes or something.

    Laura Ingraham knows.

    When Trump started babbling the second time or eighth time that the Russia-Ukraine war would never have happened if he had been president, she just interrupted and talked over him, because she knows.

    (In that segment, Trump uttered the words, “As a student of history, which I am.” You may watch it over and over again if you need a laugh.)

    Ingraham asked about Chief Justice John Roberts making a rare plea of please stop, after Trump called for the impeachment of the judge who ordered him to stop randomly deporting brown-skinned people and selling them into slavery in El Salvador, he said, “Well, he didn’t mention my name in the statement. I just saw it quickly. He didn’t mention my name.” […]

    More at the link.

  370. Reginald Selkirk says

    New Hampshire legislators vote to end state childhood vaccine buying program

    A bill that would repeal the New Hampshire Vaccine Association narrowly passed the New Hampshire House on Thursday.

    The bill’s passage, which would disband an association that funds a childhood vaccine purchasing program in the state, comes at a time of rising vaccine skepticism across the country and a measles outbreak in Texas.

    Speaking against the bill Thursday, Rep. Jessica LaMontagne, D-Dover pleaded with the House to not “go backwards” on vaccines, describing her father-in-law’s battle with polio in an emotional speech. She said dissolving the program would cost the state more money and result in fewer children being vaccinated.

    But Rep. Jim Kofalt, R-Wilton, argued that the bill has “nothing to do” with the merits of vaccination and would not affect vaccination rates. Instead, he described the program as cumbersome, untransparent, and unnecessarily costly, arguing that the private sector should handle the buying of vaccines…

  371. KG says

    Lynna, OM@363,

    Jen Rubin is optimistic bordering on delusional to think there will be anything approaching a free and fair US election in 2028.

  372. says

    Trump issues executive order seeking to abolish Education Department

    Related video at the link.

    As a presidential candidate in 2024, Donald Trump never came up with a detailed plan related to education policy, but he did make one thing explicitly clear: He wanted to shut down the Education Department if given a second term.

    In September 2023, for example, he released a video, which was posted to social media, in which he vowed to scrap the Cabinet agency “very early in the administration.” He added in March 2024, “It’s time. Close it up.”

    As the president’s second term gets underway, he’s apparently following through on this — or at least taking steps in that direction. On Thursday afternoon, Trump did, in fact, sign an executive order designed to start the process of closing the department. NBC News reported:

    […] Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to start dismantling the Department of Education. “It sounds strange, doesn’t it? Department of Education. We’re going to eliminate it,” Trump said while speaking in the East Room of the White House at a ceremony where he was flanked by children seated at school desks.

    The order will not literally shutter the agency — a step that would require an act of Congress. Rather, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, the Education Department will still perform its “critical functions,” including oversight of student loans.

    The executive order, in other words, will start the dismantling process, but it will not permanently and completely close the department’s doors.

    The announcement comes on the heels of Education Secretary Linda McMahon sending an email to her agency’s staff. The title on the message read, “Our Department’s Final Mission.”

    Subtle, it was not. A few days later, McMahon was asked on Fox News whether the country needs her department. “No,” she replied, “we don’t.”

    There’s ample evidence to the contrary. At the federal level, the Education Department is responsible for everything from overseeing a massive federal student loan program to administering grants, collecting key data used in policymaking to enforcing civil rights laws.

    McMahon, incidentally, will get a different job, Trump announced at the signing event.

    There is no great public appetite for such a dramatic change. In fact, publicly available polling has long suggested the American public is broadly against scrapping the Education Department. In fact, a recent Washington Post analysis noted that while there hasn’t been a lot of recent public opinion research on the issue, “virtually all of the polling … suggests this is not what the American people want. Indeed, it appears to be among the more unpopular things Trump has pushed for.”

    Evidently, the White House is moving forward with its plans anyway, executing a plan that, like so much of Trump’s agenda, was part of the right-wing Project 2025 blueprint.

  373. says

    ‘Woefully Insufficient’: Trump DOJ Keeps Giving Alien Enemies Act Judge The Runaround

    The federal judge overseeing the Alien Enemies Act case is growing increasingly irate over the Trump administration’s refusal to provide details about the removal of hundreds of people from the country last week. He called the government’s responses to his orders “woefully inadequate” in a Thursday order, and demanded that the administration explain why its decision to deport more than one hundred people under the Alien Enemies proclamation didn’t violate a court order not to do so.

    From the order, it seems that D.C. Chief Judge James Boasberg’s patience with the Trump administration is wearing thin. He’s already spent a week trying to wrest basic information about two planes full of deportees, at least some of whom the administration claims were subject to Trump’s Alien Enemies Act proclamation, that the government removed to a prison in El Salvador.

    Now, Boasberg is demanding that by Friday at 10:00 a.m. the Trump administration produce a “sworn declaration by a person with direct involvement” in “Cabinet-level discussions” around whether to invoke the state secrets privilege for this information. DOJ lawyers have spent the week since the Alien Enemies Act removals musing about invoking the law to shield information from the court. But even though Boasberg demanded that Trump officials either invoke the privilege with a justification by noon on Thursday or provide him the data, he said that the government had still “evaded its obligations.”

    Instead, Boasberg wrote that he received a six-paragraph declaration shortly after deadline from ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations’ acting field director in Harlingen, Texas. Only the last two paragraphs somewhat addressed the two flights, he said, but they did not provide the information that Boasberg requested. Rather, the only new information it seemingly provided was the author’s understanding that “Cabinet Secretaries are currently actively considering whether to invoke the state secrets privilege.”

    “This is woefully insufficient,” Boasberg wrote, adding that an “official with direct involvement” in the Cabinet discussions would now be required to attest to that in the filing […]

    In addition to trying to yank Boasberg around, the government has also asserted that Trump has near-dictatorial powers when it comes to anything that he can describe as “national security” or “foreign affairs,” that the court’s jurisdiction terminates where U.S. airspace ends, and suggested that the judge didn’t know what he was talking about.

    Boasberg, an extremely well-respected judge who has served as head of the FISA court and Alien Terrorist Removal court, has been pressing for simple details about when the two planes left U.S. airspace, how many people were removed on the basis of the Alien Enemies Act proclamation, and when those people were transferred into foreign custody.

    The judge also demanded that the government explain on the facts why not returning the deportees to the United States on the same planes was not a violation of his order. He also said that he expects deliberations about the state secrets privilege to conclude by March 25.

    Read the order here: [Order available at the link]

  374. says

    Associated Press: Federal judge blocks DOGE from accessing Social Security personal information for now

    A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from Social Security systems that hold personal data on millions of Americans, calling their work there a “fishing expedition.”

    The order also requires the team to delete any personally identifiable data in their possession. [Who is going to followup to see if this order is followed? DOGE, Musk and Trump will just lie.]

    U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander in Maryland found that the team got broad access to sensitive information at the Social Security Administration to search for fraud with little justification.

    “The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion,” she wrote.

    The order allows DOGE staffers who undergo training and background checks to access to data that’s been redacted or stripped of anything personally identifiable.

    The ruling comes in a lawsuit filed by labor unions, retirees and the advocacy group Democracy Forward. They argued that DOGE access violates privacy laws and presents serious information security risks. The lawsuit included a declaration from a recently departed Social Security official who saw the DOGE team sweep into the agency said she is deeply worried about sensitive information being exposed.

    […] DOGE detailed a 10-person team of federal employees at the SSA, seven of whom were granted read-only access to agency systems or personally identifiable information, according to court documents.

    Attorneys for the government argued the DOGE access doesn’t deviate significantly from normal practices inside the agency, where employees are routinely allowed to search its databases. But attorneys for the plaintiffs called the access unprecedented.

    Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, called the ruling a “major win for working people and retirees across the country.”

    Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, said that “the court recognized the real and immediate dangers of DOGE’s reckless actions and took action to stop it.”

    DOGE has gotten at least some access to other government databases, including at the Treasury Department and IRS.

    At SSA, DOGE staffers swept into the agency days after Trump’s inauguration and pressed for a software engineer to quickly get access to data systems that are normally carefully restricted even within the government, a former official said in court documents.

    The team appeared to be searching for fraud based on inaccuracies and misunderstandings, according to Tiffany Flick, the former acting chief of staff to the acting commissioner. […]

  375. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Follow-up to #324.
    Marisa Kabas: “Confirmed DOGE is currently inside IMLS headquarters.”

    Several posts at /r/Fednews by “ruskiytroll” fwiw.

    DOGE is at the Institue of Museum and Library Services right now (14:16 UTC)

    DOGE and the new Acting Director (also somehow DepSec of Labor) Keith Sonderling […] Homeland Security personnel […] There is no media present to document this efficiency saving of .004% of the federal budget.

    DOGE IS SCARED at The Institute of Museum and Library Services (15:48 UTC)

    At this point they’ll trace me because I stupidly didn’t use a burner account, but DOGE is at IMLS right now trying to figure out why their silent takeover and dismantling didn’t work out so silently. […] The new acting director, Keith Sonderling was sworn in this morning in the lobby […] PRESS NEEDS TO GET THERE NOW. PROTESTERS NEED TO SHOW UP NOW.

    Update (16:31 UTC)

    employees are still in the office. They will not be fired today or escorted off the premises because DOGE doesn’t want a media scene. They will likely be fired tonight/tomorrow […] DOGE intends to RIF notify/place employees on admin leave while no one is in the office because DOGE doesn’t want video of employees being escorted out.

    DOGE is unhappy with the “leak”, unhappy with public discussion of illegal firings, and unhappy with the reaction in this subreddit. […] It was enough to spook them. This is good. Report every time they’re around town on this subreddit and more widely on the niche subreddits […] IMLS is still likely to be shuttered by the weekend, but DOGE didn’t have free reign because you all reacted here and boosted this to news media.

    OP Update: Someone is trying to reset my user password […] If this is taken down, it wasn’t me

    Yesterday they posted a screenshot of an AFGE 3403 local union statement expecting administrative leave today. I was unable to source it.

  376. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    EmptyWheel:

    For those who think that Beryl Howell went easy on DOGE or was scared in her ruling on USIP yesterday, here’s what Richard Leon said in his very equivalent ruling in the USADF case.

    [Deposed President] Brehm has not identified […] irreparable harm to himself as opposed to potential harm to the agency […] loss of employment in and of itself is not irreparable harm. […] the Court could remedy any harm by reinstating […] and ordering back pay.

    Brehm […] argues that the harm stems from his “statutory right to function” as President of USADF. […] He claims that if defendants achieve their goals regarding the agency, it will no longer be “an agency dedicated to fulfilling its statutory mission” […] That is not […] irreparable harm to Brehm. To the extent courts have accepted such a claim, it has been on different facts.

    EmptyWheel:

    I keep thinking about the fact that the sole “proof” DOJ could offer that the Institute of Peace is Federal was that it is subject to FOIA. Meanwhile, it was shut down by DOGE boys, even as DOGE says it is not subject to FOIA.

     
    Follow-up to #258.
    Roger Parloff (Lawfare):

    On same day Maryland judge ordered DOGE to stop directing USAID, Rubio appointed Jeremy Lewin, former DOGE Team leader for USAID, to lead USAID’s day-to-day operations. Lewin avers that DOGE has no “formal” or “legal” authority to direct his actions.

    No need for a USAID boss to rubber stamp DOGE if a DOGE is made a USAID boss.

  377. says

    NBC News:

    Hours after agreeing to a partial ceasefire with Russia in a phone call with President Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted 10 images to his Telegram channel of fires and damage in the country’s central Kirovohrad region. “Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, despite its propaganda statements, do not stop,” he wrote alongside the images, some of which showed firefighters standing on ladders and cranes, hosing down flames.

  378. says

    New York Times:

    Canada is in advanced talks with the European Union to join the bloc’s new project to expand its military industry, a move that would allow Canada to be part of building European fighter jets and other military equipment at its own industrial facilities.

    USA military-industrial complex is going to lose money/contracts.

  379. says

    New York Times:

    The Justice Department plans to create a path for people with criminal convictions to own guns again, an issue that became contentious at the agency when officials there sought to restore that right to the actor Mel Gibson, a prominent supporter of President Trump’s.

  380. says

    NBC News:

    A Minnesota state senator who was caught in a sting operation resigned under fire Thursday after he was charged with soliciting a minor for prostitution. Republican Justin Eichorn, of Grand Rapids, submitted his resignation in a letter to Gov. Tim Walz, Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson said in a statement.

  381. says

    NBC News:

    The Pentagon restored some webpages highlighting the crucial wartime contributions of Navajo Code Talkers and other Native American veterans on Wednesday, days after tribes condemned the action.

  382. says

    Tesla recalls nearly all Cybertrucks as Musk’s headaches get bigger

    Tesla’s downward trajectory took another hit on Thursday, after it was reported that over 46,000 Cybertrucks—almost all of them—are being recalled. The issue stems from the glue holding the stainless steel paneling to the Cybertruck’s exterior possibly detaching, creating a dangerous road hazard.

    The recall feels almost symbolic of everything world’s richest man Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency represents to Americans these days. Vehicles under the recall include all 2024 and 2025 vehicles produced, as well as some from the end of 2023. That is nearly all of the Cybertrucks that have been delivered to customers. This is the eighth recall of Cybertrucks in just over a year.

    Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick spent Wednesday night with Fox News’ Jesse Watters, imploring people to buy Tesla stock.

    [Snipped details of Trump and his lackeys trying to promote sales of Musk’s shoddy vehicles. See comment 357.]

    Since December, Tesla has lost nearly 49% of its market cap. Clearly desperate, the carmaker has been sending out tone-deaf surveys to frustrated customers and offering big discounts to existing customers in an attempt to get them upgraded to new models.

    Musk went on Fox News’ “Hannity” Tuesday night, to get almost weepy about how much of an angel he is and how he is being persecuted.

    “Tesla is a peaceful company; we’ve never done anything harmful. I’ve never done anything harmful, I’ve only done productive things. So, I think we just have a deranged … there’s some kind of mental illness thing going on here because this doesn’t make any sense.” […]

  383. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (American Immigration Council):

    Sworn declarations filed last night confirm the Trump admin sent INNOCENT people to rot in prison El Salvador, including a professional soccer player jailed and tortured by the Maduro regime, who entered this country LEGALLY to seek asylum, and who has NO CRIMINAL RECORD in either country.
    […]
    ICE policy says a person can be deemed a gang member if any ICE officer notes two “Gang Membership Identification Criteria.” In Mr. Reyes Barrios’ case, that appears to have been:
    1) A tattoo modeled off the Real Madrid [football club] logo.
    2) A picture from social media of him throwing the horns.
    That was it!
    […]
    Here is the ICE policy [Screenshot] a person can be declared a “gang associate” based only on a SINGLE “Gang membership identification criteria.”

    [Photo of Ted Cruz throwing the horns]

     
    Aaron Reichlin-Melnick:

    On Hugh Hewitt’s [radio] show, Marco Rubio says El Salvador is “housing” people sent by the US. But he never says on what possible legal authority? […]

    Rubio’s position seems to be:
    – We get to say who is a terrorist. Our decision is final. It can’t be challenged. Just trust us.
    – Once we decide you are a terrorist, we can immediately deport you. No judges.
    – After we deport you, we can make you rot in a foreign prison. No criminal charges needed.

    Sara Rosenburg (Civil rights attorney):

    Bringing a legal challenge to this nightmarish practice is its own nightmare.

    People are disappeared *with no notice*. Habeas petitions can only be filed by people “in custody.” By the time families & lawyers know they’re gone, they’re in a foreign jurisdiction—out of U.S. custody. NO process.

     
    Southpaw:

    Are there any elected officials talking about the morality of carrying innocent people off captive to a brutal slave labor camp in a country they’ve probably never been to before? Does Hew Hewitt, the author of several works on Christianity, have anything to say about that?

    Wikipedia – Hew Hewitt

    In a June 2018 interview […] Hewitt repeatedly pressed Sessions about the morality […] Hewitt said, “I don’t think children should be separated from biological parents at any age, but especially if they’re infants and toddlers. I think it’s traumatic and terribly difficult on the child.”

  384. says

    ‘Naked power grab by the President’: Fired FTC Commissioner speaks out on his dismissal
    Video is 5:47 minutes.

    Democratic FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya was fired by President Trump and plans to sue the administration to reverse the dismissal. He discusses how he discovered his firing, why the Federal Trade Commission is so important in holding large companies accountable, and more.

    Musk demoted, markets sink & voters recoil from Trump slump: Ezra Klein x Ari Melber
    Video is 32:00 minutes.

    The New York Times’ Ezra Klein joins MSNBC’s Ari Melber for an extended conversation on the Trump-Musk agenda, Biden’s legacy, the role of media and the internet in shaping politics, and Klein’s new book “Abundance.” Parts of this extended interview aired on MSNBC. (The Beat’s YouTube playlist: https://msnbc.com/ari Beat merch: http://www.msnbc.com/Beat5 )

  385. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Josh Marshall (TPM):

    Jon Rauch (Journalist): A friend drove two hours today for her breast cancer chemotherapy only to learn it was canceled due to NIH cuts. Clinical trial ended midstream. No treatment, no restart, no plan, no information. Her bro-in-law’s chemo was also canceled.

    This stuff is happening across the country and even more intensively downstream of the veterans admin but it’s happening in so many places at once and without any public notification that it’s still only barely emerging in the news.
    […]
    This isn’t a penny pinching from an insurance co. This is Elon Musk and his 20 something flunkies deciding none of this stuff matters. And laughing abt it. Shutting off research into cancer cures, literally shutting off care.

  386. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    BrianKrebs (Cybercrime journalist):

    A few weeks ago I published a story about one of the then-DOGE lieutenants who has since gone back to his full time job of IT director at X—Branden Spikes.

    The story mentioned Spikes had set up a website for the California Russian Foundation, an entity that his Russian (now ex) wife was the CEO of. The CRF also went by other names, like the Russian Heritage Foundation. Both of these organizations ran fundraisers tied to the Russian Orthodox Church, which has broken with the rest of the Eastern Orthodox churches for its strong support of the Kremlin in its war against Ukraine.

    I bring this up again because I just finished reading this informative post about the alignment between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Kremlin […]

    While officially a religious organization, under President Vladimir Putin’s regime, the ROC has increasingly acted as a soft power tool […] Its collaboration with the state extends beyond traditional religious functions, encompassing strategic information campaigns, cultural diplomacy, and efforts to influence foreign religious communities in line with Moscow’s broader foreign policy objectives. […] faith-based narratives to legitimize political and military actions, both domestically and internationally.

  387. John Morales says

    Early Human Occupation of Eastern Australia

    19 Mar 2025

    Evidence from northwest Australia suggest that people arrived in Australia by around 65,000 years ago and potentially earlier and until recently there was a lack of late Pleistocene sites along the eastern seaboard. Recently, evidence has emerged from Minjerribah, North Stradbroke Island, of two archaeological sites that are greater than 40,000 years in age. These two sites also provide evidence of continuous occupation over the last 50,000 years, with marked responses to environmental change from the artefacts found within these locations. This presentation will provide an overview of these two sites, particularly in terms of linking with the broader landscape change across southeast Queensland that has been derived from pollen analysis of archaeological sediments samples, as well as a number of wetland sites across the region. In addition, indirect evidence of human arrival will be examined based on palaeoecological data from the Wet Tropics of northeast Queensland and there will also be discussion of the environmental implications of people arriving into eastern Australia prior to 40,000 years ago in terms of fire history, vegetation change and megafauna extinction.

  388. JM says

    @377 Lynna, OM: Putin’s playing the game that I and analysts predicted. Putin “agreed” to the ceasefire but also said there are issues. Then go ahead and bomb and say that there isn’t a ceasefire until the issues are resolved and both sides formally agree. Russia is likely to pull this multiple times because Putin can manipulate Trump so easily. It won’t catch Ukraine off guard but it’s an easy way to drag things out with Trump until Putin actually wants a ceasefire.
    Putin doesn’t want to close off negotiations because it looks bad, will upset Trump, there is a risk that EU countries will put boots on the ground in Ukraine and at some point Russia will want to negotiate some sort of peace.

    @381 Lynna, OM: This sort of behavior is standard authoritarian and bad executive behavior. Make big sweeping changes and the go back and fix the parts that are noticed as broken. Then take credit both for the sweeping changes and for fixing the stuff the changes broke.

  391. Bekenstein Bound says

    At this point I only see three ways this end. In order from best to worst case these are:

    Case 1: The courts intervene in a major way. Unsuborned judges quietly put their heads together and come up with a plan to deal with this rampant lawlessness, then march on DOGE with signed warrants in hand backed by a phalanx of bailiffs and whatever cops they could find who’d side with them to arrest Musk and associates and halt the Musk coup.

    Analysis: They probably wouldn’t touch Trump, who is, nominally, a duly elected President. The focus would be on Musk and the chaos he’s unleashed, and the clear violations of Congressional prerogatives, the separation of powers, and the limits of executive branch authority more generally. They would also face reversals from the corrupt Supremes and probably other appelate courts down the line. A lot of the people they jailed would be freed not long after. But the coup’s momentum would be blunted, and that would hopefully be enough to prevent it from succeeding.

    End result: with luck, the rest of the next four years is “just” a repeat of 2017-2020, with H5N1 standing in for Covid-19 at the end.

    Case 2: The courts prove unwilling or unable to act coherently enough to do more than throw a little bit of sand in the gear, but the military takes action fairly soon and carries out its own counter-coup, removing both Trump and Musk from power.

    Analysis: This requires there be enough loyalists in the upper-mid-chain-of-command with enough gumption to overcome any attempts by their Trump-selected higherups to paralyze them into inaction. It also requires that the bulk of the formal, rank-carrying US military still hold to ideals of defending the republic and its constitution.

    End result: the United States suffers a military coup. After that, it’s all up to the generals. Hopefully their loyalty to the constitution leads to them restoring order and then stepping down, either carrying out a do-over election or leaving some non-lunatic in the Presidency — likely the first “moderate” Republican they can find along the line of succession, on the grounds that that’s the political party the electorate chose. Trump and Musk wind up dead or in jail, or maybe just deposed from power.

    Case 3: Neither the courts nor the military act until Musk’s plans are far advanced. By then he has suborned the mercenary-industrial complex, who do not have a culture of loyalty to the republic or its constitution, and is using them to quell protests and (probably) to oust Trump, a spent booster Musk no longer needs at that point to legitimate his own position and hold onto power. At this point the only hope is for either a huge groundswell of public resistance to overwhelm Musk’s forces, or for the military to belatedly step in, likely only succeeding with military help.

    End result: Civil War II, unless a general strike or something similar occurs and proves sufficient to oust Musk.

    If none of the above happens, you, and probably the whole world, are in for a rough couple of decades. If it does, it could still be a rough year or two, especially in the third case.

  393. whheydt says

    Re: Berkenstein Bound and chigau @ #391, 392…
    Or death through natural causes, or enough Republican voters finding that the meat axe approach to the government is hurting them that Congressional Republican start having a greater fear of the voters tossing them out than they do of Musk financing primary opponents.

  394. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Follow-up to #376.

    EmptyWheel: “Judge Chuang is unimpressed with DOGE’s attempt to get around his injunction by putting DOGE guy Jeremy Lewin in charge.”
    Docket

    Lewin is bound by the Preliminary Injunction […] The definition of the class of individuals bound […] specifically includes all individuals with a past or present affiliation with defendants or DOGE to address the most likely perpetrators of constitutional violations and to prevent circumvention […] The Court reserves the right to modify the Preliminary Injunction to expand the definition

  395. KG says

    If none of the above happens, you, and probably the whole world, are in for a rough couple of decades. – Bekenstein Bound@391

    More like a rough couple of millennia. With Trump doing his utmost to accelerate climate disruption, dismantle defences against future pandemics, allow Musk and other techbros to do their worst, and destabilise geopolitics, the chances of avoiding a civilization-ending catastrophe of some kind are growing smaller by the day.

  396. KG says

    at some point Russia will want to negotiate some sort of peace. – JM@388

    That’s far from obvious. Putin’s aim is the same as it was in 2022: the destruction of Ukraine as an independent state. He’s shifted Russia to a wartime economy, he’s got Trump fully trained and doing exactly what he wants, he’s apparently in full control at home, his armies are grinding forward – at great cost in Russian troops’ lives, but what does he care? Nor does he want to give Europe the time to get its act together politically and militarily – a possibility he may have discounted too complacently. About the only thing that might persuade him he needs a serious pause are the successful Ukrainian attacks on Russian infrastructure, particularly oil refineries and the like. That’s why he wants a “truce” (which he of course will break while accusing Ukraine of doing so) covering nothing but energy infrastructure.

  403. StevoR says

    Here’s hoping the year gets better in the next astronomical quarters (Equinox-Solstice-Equinox-Solstice-Equinox etc.. ) but things aren’t looking good..

    Will Trump Declare Martial Law On 4 / 20? (9mins long.) Sounds a little far-fetched and yet at the same time scarily plausible and these days, yeah, wouldn’t rule this scenario out and reasonable case made for thsi being quite possible I reckon.

  404. Reginald Selkirk says

    Feds charge three over Molotov attacks on Tesla sites in multiple states

    Three individuals face federal arson charges labeled as domestic terrorism after a spate of Molotov cocktail attacks on Tesla properties in the US.

    Federal Attorney General Pamela Bondi announced the charges on Thursday but a Department of Justice (DoJ) press release didn’t name any of the individuals accused.

    However, descriptions of the offenses and locations in which they were committed align with previously reported charges dating back to February.

    One case in Salem, Oregon, involved an individual armed with a suppressed AR-15 firearm who threw eight Molotov cocktails at a Tesla dealership.

    The Oregon AG’s office described very similar charges against 41-year-old Adam Matthew Lansky earlier this month. Lansky allegedly threw the incendiary devices on January 20 and returned almost exactly a month later to pepper the Tesla dealership and at least one car with bullets on February 19.

    The DoJ described a second case in Loveland, Colorado, in which someone again lit up a Tesla dealership with Molotov cocktails and was later found in possession of materials that could be used to create additional incendiary weapons.

    This description matches that of the Colorado AG’s office, which charged Lucy Grace Nelson, 42, also known as Justin Thomas Nelson, in late February following a fire at a Tesla dealership caused by a Molotov cocktail.

    Days later, Nelson is alleged to have returned to the dealership to vandalize it using black spray paint, writing “Nazi,” and prosecutors claim they then returned again to write unspecified expletives on the front windows.

    On February 24, almost a month after the initial Molotov incident on January 29, Nelson was allegedly found at the dealership again and this time was confronted by police who found a container of gasoline, a box of bottles, and wick – the same materials seemingly used in the prior attacks.

    The final case described by the DoJ was in Charleston, South Carolina, where a third person allegedly wrote nasty messages about President Trump around Tesla charging stations before lighting them up with Molotov cocktails.

    This description matches the charges against 24-year-old Daniel Clarke-Pounder, who is alleged to have spray-painted the Tesla chargers with “Fuck Trump” and “Long Live Ukraine” before throwing five Molotovs at them…

    So – all people who had already been charged. “Trumped-up charges” takes on renewed meaning.

  405. Reginald Selkirk says

    Tesla Reportedly Can’t Find $1.4 Billion, But We’re Sure It’s Fine

    Typically, it’s considered a big problem if someone loses $1.4 billion. That is, after all, a whole lot of money, at least to poors like you and me. So it’s understandable that you would read the new Financial Times report claiming Tesla can’t account for a missing $1.4 billion and be worried something’s wrong with the federal government’s favorite automaker. It’s probably fine, though. Accounting departments lose track of money all the time. This is probably all just a political hit job from those Marxists SJWs who run the far-left Financial Times.

    Were you to take FT at its word, the money Tesla spent on assets in the second half of 2024 doesn’t match the value of the assets it allegedly purchased and is, in fact, off by about $1.4 billion. Specifically, Tesla claimed it spent $6.3 billion on “purchases of property and equipment excluding finance leases, net of sales,” but on its balance sheet claimed its PP&E value only increased by $4.9 billion…

    Put DOGE on the job!

  406. JM says

    @391 Bekenstein Bound: Your missing the good chance that Trump dies or becomes incapacitated. His condition isn’t good to begin with and his mental state seems to be deteriorating. Best case then is Vance, Musk and the cabinet get into a long running fight for power. This is particularly likely if Vance is an acting president and doesn’t want to/can’t just overturn everything Trump has done. Another good possibility is that Vance becomes president and then spends the rest of his term installing his own loyalists and trying to organize things.

    @396 KG: I didn’t mean to imply that Putin would want a free Ukraine. But even if Russia captures Ukraine they are going to want to reopen trade. They will install a puppet government in whatever remnant of Ukraine they setup, “negotiate” peace with their puppet, then go talk with the US/EU. Putin probably thinks that if he can capture Ukraine then the US and EU will give up and reopen most trade after a short time. Putin may be right as long as Trump is still in control of the US.
    Also, Putin has been in the past reasonable enough to understand at some point he may have to accept Ukraine until he can rebuild the army and economy. Russia may run out of soldiers, they may suffer an economic collapse and there is an outside chance China may go after contested land along the Russia/China border. I’m not sure Putin may understand that now because he is so invested in the war but the 2010 Putin certain would have.

  407. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show

    ‘Our client has been disappeared’: Lawyer seeks answers on Venezuelan imprisoned with no due process
    Video is 5:07 minutes

    Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing
    Video is 11:16 minutes

    Walz reacts to NYT report that Pentagon will brief Musk on secret plan for potential war with China
    Video is 4:26 minutes

  408. JM says

    Reuters: US slaps Iran-related sanctions on oil tankers, China ‘teapot’ refinery

    The U.S. on Thursday issued new sanctions intended to hit Iran’s oil exports, including what the State Department said were the first U.S. measures targeting a Chinese “teapot refinery” processing the crude.
    It was Washington’s fourth round of sanctions on Iran’s oil sales since President Donald Trump said in February he was re-imposing a “maximum pressure” campaign including efforts to drive down the country’s exports to zero.

    This sort of move will not have much effect, the Chinese companies dealing with Iran are quietly supported by the state and more sanctions won’t change their actions.
    I’m more curious about why Trump is doing this. I think Trump wants a big win someplace and as it becomes clear that Ukraine may not be quick/easy Trump is looking for other targets. Iran may not have many options to fight back but it has been resisting the US for decades and won’t be an easy win. Iran will sign a treaty with the US only if Trump botches the negotiations and Iran can easily go around it.

  409. Reginald Selkirk says

    Heathrow airport is closed.

    It’s scheduled to last until midnight Friday due to an early morning fire at an electrical substation in West London that powers the European continent’s busiest airport. Passengers have been told not to travel to the airport “under any circumstances” with “significant disruption” expected over the next few days…

  410. Reginald Selkirk says

    What stage of capitalism is this?

    DoorDash is partnering with Klarna so users can pay for groceries and takeout in installments. “Buy now, pay later” services like Klarna can be a convenient way to split up big purchases, but can also be debt traps. It’s the type of service the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was looking into — before Elon Musk and the Trump administration began gutting the agency.

  411. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    BBC – Tourist in US chained ‘like Hannibal Lecter’

    A tourist held in the US for 19 days was removed […] Becky Burke, 28, arrived home in Wales on Tuesday from her ordeal which began half way through a backpacking trip across North America. […] “traumatised” after being taken in “leg chains, waist chains and handcuffs”.
    […]
    what her family think was a misunderstanding […] She got free accommodation for helping host families “around the house” […] The US State Department says people on visitor visas are prohibited from carrying out “employment” during their stay. […] nobody outside of the detention facility knew she had been taken. […] Becky’s parents said they were not sure their daughter was on the plane until she walked through the gates.
    […]
    At the end of February she went to Seattle with plans to go to Vancouver, in Canada. But at the border, Mr Burke said Canadian authorities refused her entry, saying she needed to return to the US. There she was held at a detention centre in Tacoma, in Washington state.

  414. rorschach says

    KG @353
    ,
    chigau@335,
    sigh I miss Caine!

    I officially do not. I miss Brownian, and Jadehawk, and Sastra, and Truthy whose pool picture I still have saved on some hard drive lol. And the obsessed one, what was his name again? He was a good sort too.

  415. says

    Sky Captain @394, Ha! Well said and well done by the judge.

    In other news: The Trump administration’s approach to food safety continues to be tough to swallow

    “The Trump administration’s approach to food safety was already controversial. Now, it’s worse.”
    Related video at the link.

    New safeguards related to food safety were poised to take effect in January 2026, but as The New York Times reported, that’s apparently no longer going to happen.

    The Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday that it would delay by 30 months a requirement that food companies and grocers rapidly trace contaminated food through the supply chain and pull it off the shelves. Intended to ‘limit food-borne illness and death,’ the rule required companies and individuals to maintain better records to identify where foods are grown, packed, processed or manufactured.

    The Times quoted Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at Consumer Reports, saying, “This decision is extremely disappointing and puts consumers at risk of getting sick from unsafe food because a small segment of the industry pushed for delay, despite having 15 years to prepare.”

    […] Making matters worse is that it’s not the only step backward for food safety that the Trump administration has taken lately.

    The day before the Times published the aforementioned report, the newspaper ran a related article that noted, “At the Food and Drug Administration, freezes on government credit card spending ordered by the Trump administration have impeded staff members from buying food to perform routine tests for deadly bacteria. In states, a $34 million cut by the F.D.A. could reduce the number of employees who ensure that tainted products — like tin pouches of lead-laden applesauce sold in 2023 — are tested in labs and taken off store shelves.” [video at the link]

    The same article went on to note that at Trump’s Agriculture Department, “a committee studying deadly bacteria was recently disbanded, even as it was developing advice on how to better target pathogens that can shut down the kidneys. Committee members were also devising an education plan for new parents on bacteria that can live in powdered infant formula.” [!]

    This came on the heels of multiple reports that the Trump administration disbanded two federal committees tasked with advising policymakers on food safety, the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods and the National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection.

    Alas, the list keeps going. The Times also reported that the administration has “slowed or stopped some testing of grocery items for hazardous bacteria and monitoring of shellfish and food packaging for PFAS, chemicals linked to cancer and reproductive harm.”

    What’s more, the Department of Health and Human Services recently sent out emails asking most of its workforce to consider an offer to quit their jobs in exchange for $25,000. The list included food inspection workers at the FDA — of which there are already too few.

    And did I mention that the administration appointed Donald Trump Jr.’s hunting buddy to serve to the FDA’s Human Foods Program, overseeing all nutrition and food safety activities? Because that happened, too.

    There is some good news, however: These developments should only matter to Americans who eat food.

  416. says

    A group funded by Elon Musk is behind deceptive ads in crucial Wisconsin Supreme Court race

    MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A group backed by billionaire Elon Musk is behind a set of deceptive attack ads and text messages targeting voters just weeks ahead of the election for a seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, employing a battleground state strategy it used last year against Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

    The ads are labeled as coming from a group called Progress 2028 and are made to look like authentic messages of support for Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford, who is backed by Democrats. They describe her as a “progressive champion” who will “stand up for immigrants,” defend Planned Parenthood and promote a justice system that gives criminals “second chances.”

    But records show the ads that appear on Facebook and Instagram and in text messages to some voters are underwritten by Building America’s Future. That’s a national conservative group that counts Musk among its biggest donors, a Wall Street Journal report revealed.

    The ads largely hew to the facts in Crawford’s background but focus on hot-button issues such as abortion, immigration and criminal justice reform. They call for Crawford to “boldly proclaim her progressive values,” language that potentially diminishes her standing with moderate or conservative voters in a race that is — at least officially — nonpartisan.

    The new collection of ads is the latest example of how Musk’s extraordinary wealth has been used to promote the Republican Party’s political interests, including in a contest for ideological control of the highest court in one of the country’s most important presidential swing states.

    The April 1 election will determine whether liberals maintain their 4-3 majority on the court. Looming are major cases dealing with abortion, union rights, election law and congressional redistricting — some that could influence the race for president in 2028.

    Musk’s America PAC is the biggest outside spender in the supreme court race so far, doling out more than $3.2 million to benefit Crawford’s Republican opponent, former Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, according to state records. Building America’s Future has invested some $2 million in the race, records show.

    The world’s richest man and top adviser to President Donald Trump also has sought to broaden his political influence. Federal Election Commission filings show Musk spent nearly $300 million supporting Republican campaigns last year. And in December, he threatened to fund congressional primary opponents for Republican federal lawmakers who stand in the administration’s way.

    This isn’t the first time Building America’s Future has used this deceptive advertising tactic. Last September, the group registered in Virginia to use Progress 2028 as a fictitious name, Open Secrets revealed at the time. Progress 2028’s website was created three days later.

    The following month, the group began running fake ads made to look as though they came from Democrats. They falsely claimed Harris supported policies such as eliminating gas-powered vehicles and giving voting rights to immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. […]

    The amount of money poured into campaigns expanded exponentially, and then the number of lies (deceptions) followed suit.

    More at the link.

  417. birgerjohansson says

    Lynna, OM @ 415
    Any chance we can talk Dick Cheney into becoming a new hunting buddy for him?
    .
    Also, far-right kook Candace Owens is spreading a rumor the wife of the French president is trans. Because any country that turns its back on the orange t*rd must be punished.
    BTW I think I will spell aboot as ‘aboot’ from now on in honor of the Canadians.

  419. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Mary Robinette Kowal (Author, TV puppeteer)

    [Mar 20] I just checked in at the Atlanta airport and the kiosk wanted me to show a “passport or permanent residence card.” The airline rep who was helping me said “I don’t know why it’s doing this it’s been doing it all morning.” She was moving people from kiosk to kiosk to see if she could get one that wouldn’t trigger that message.

    Fortunately, I had my passport with me. Also, I’m a 56 year old white cis-woman. The rest of this book tour is going to be fun. Whee!

    In answer to a question people keep asking. “Could this be related to the new Real ID requirements?” I have a Real ID. This happened when I tapped my boarding pass to check my bags. […] This was a domestic flight from Atlanta to Houston. Needing to show my passport for international travel would not have been surprising.

    [Mar 21] Today, out of Houston to Chicago was totally normal.

    What was weird about yesterday was that it happened for a domestic flight. I have a Real ID, CLEAR, and TSA pre-check.

    Marisa Kabas (The Handbasket):

    Someone else in the comments confirms it happened to them and I was directly sent a third case of this happening. The all had Real IDs and were traveling domestically.

    Rando 1: “Who carries a passport when traveling domestically?”
    Rando 2: “Doesn’t this screw over the 50% of Americans without passports?”
    Rando 3: “And Real IDs are not yet even required for domestic air travel.”

  420. says

    […] The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk is poised to receive information on “the U.S. military’s top-secret war plans for China,” including “maritime tactics and targeting plans.” The Journal’s report, citing two unnamed U.S. officials, noted that the briefing — which is being held at the billionaire’s request — could give Musk “access to sensitive military secrets unavailable to business competitors.”

    […] there’s The New York Times’ report, which included details that dovetail with the Journal’s reporting, noting that the briefing would include information on “the U.S. military’s plan for any war that might break out with China.” [Related video at the link]

    The Times added that this briefing, if it proceeds, “would also bring into sharp relief the questions about Mr. Musk’s conflicts of interest as he ranges widely across the federal bureaucracy while continuing to run businesses that are major government contractors. In this case, Mr. Musk, the billionaire chief executive of both SpaceX and Tesla, is a leading supplier to the Pentagon and has extensive financial interests in China.”

    It’s that last point that is of particular interest. Musk isn’t just a billionaire and Republican megadonor. He also isn’t just overseeing a quasi-governmental “department” in the executive branch. Musk is also businessman with extensive financial interests in China and close contacts with China’s government.

    All of which is to say, providing Musk with sensitive military information about China represents a profound and unnecessary risk.

    For his part, Trump published an item to his social media platform insisting that China “will not even be mentioned or discussed” during the DOGE chief’s visit to the Defense Department. [Well that just reeks of one of Trump’s ways of telling a real whopper of a lie: insisting on promoting, loudly and insistently, the opposite of the truth.] Of course, if the president still had any credibility, such a denial might be more convincing. (Trump added soon after, “Elon is NOT BEING BRIEFED ON ANYTHING CHINA BY THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR!!!” The War Department became the Department of Defense in 1949.)

    Politico noted that Musk responded to the developments with threatening rhetoric, writing online that he looks “forward to the prosecution of those at the Pentagon who are leaking maliciously false information” to the Times. “They will be found,” he added.

    Link

  421. says

    WTF!?

    Paul, Weiss Has Gone ‘America First’, by Josh Marshall.

    Pretty surreal moment today. Paul, Weiss is one of three firms targeted in new Trump executive orders. The firm’s chairman, Brad Karp, has reached an agreement with President Trump that essentially allows the White House to dictate its internal personnel policies as well as what cases it agrees to take on. Most notably it obligates the firm to provide $40 million of pro bono legal services to pro-Trump causes including “the President’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, and other mutually agreed projects.” Note that “other mutually agreed projects.” So this is essentially a pro-bono legal defense fund at President Trump’s personal disposal. It appears this “agreement” is between Karp and the President personally.

    At this point I wouldn’t imagine that many potential clients will be choosing Paul, Weiss to sue the administration. But even on a more general standard of zealous representation, if you were involved in litigation antagonistic to the White House and represented by Paul, Weiss, is there any possible way you could feel confident in the integrity of your defense or its lawful loyalty to your interests?

  423. says

    Social Security chief demands DOGE staff—or he’ll shut it all down

    Sounds like it might be an empty, blustering, bullying threat to me … but these days, who knows. We have to take it seriously.

    Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek threatened to shut the whole agency down because he’s angry that a federal judge temporarily blocked co-President Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency goons from accessing sensitive information at the agency.

    “Really, I want to turn it off and let the courts figure out how they want to run a federal agency,” Dudek said, according to a report from Bloomberg News.

    Dudek is angry that U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander ruled that DOGE staffers have improper access to Americans’ sensitive personal information as they attempt to sort through Social Security data to prove Musk’s lies that millions of dead people are fraudulently receiving benefits.

    “The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion,” Hollander wrote in her decision. She added, “To be sure, rooting out possible fraud, waste, and mismanagement in the SSA is in the public interest. But, that does not mean that the government can flout the law to do so.

    If Dudek follows through with his petulant temper tantrum, he’d be hurting the more than 73 million Americans who receive Social Security benefits annually. […]

    Dudek has already done vindictive things. He canceled a contract in Maine that automatically processed Social Security numbers for newborns, which would have forced new parents to go in-person to register them.

    Dudek admitted this week he canceled that contract in part to punish the state’s Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, who stood up to President Donald Trump at a meeting with governors from across the country.

    […] Dudek was even fired from his job in February for giving DOGE access to Social Security beneficiary data, which Bloomberg News reported is “a highly sensitive and controlled system that includes the names, addresses, Social Security numbers, birth dates, work histories and bank account information of millions of Americans.”

    But Musk and Trump rehired Dudek and put him in charge of the agency.

    “There ARE good people in the government who want to eliminate fraud & waste. Amazingly, Leland was fired by Social Security Administration upper management for helping @DOGE find taxpayer savings. Can you believe that??” Musk wrote in a post on X. “Thanks to President Trump, Leland was brought back right away and now HE is upper management.” [Yikes. An endorsement from Musk.]

    Social Security Works, a group that works to expand Social Security, slammed Dudek’s behavior.

    “Plucked from administrative leave, Dudek was elevated over more than 100 higher-qualified civil servants because he was willing to give Musk’s DOGE complete, unfettered access to Americans’ most personal, sensitive data,” the group wrote in a post on X. “Dudek’s leadership has been the darkest in Social Security’s nearly 90 year history. He has sown chaos and destruction. Now, he is threatening to shut down Social Security completely.” [Sounds like yet another stable genius.]

    Musk, for his part, has been actively lying about Social Security fraud to justify making cuts […] Those lies have led to serious negative consequences for Americans, including some people who have been wrongfully declared dead and lost their Social Security income and Medicare—and had to jump through hoops to get it back.

    DOGE has also forced the closure of Social Security offices across the country and fired thousands of staff, which will make it harder for Americans to get claims processed or correct errors.

    And now, DOGE is forcing elderly Americans to either use an online system to verify their identities or else be required to go to one of the remaining Social Security offices in person, a major burden […]

    A memo obtained by the newsletter Popular Information said the DOGE change would cause an additional 75,000 to 85,000 people going to Social Security offices per week, which would lead to “longer wait times and processing times.” Already, wait times for appointments are more than a month.

    “By requiring seniors and disabled Americans to enroll online or in person at the same field offices they are trying to close, rather than over the phone, Trump and Musk are trying to create chaos and inefficiencies at SSA so they can privatize the system,” Rep. John Larson (D-CT), ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement. “We must bring them before the Ways and Means Committee to provide answers for the American people, but our Republican colleagues are protecting them from even having to turn over documents to the United States Congress.”

  425. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Regarding law firms capitulating to Trump, as in #421.

    Anna Bower (Lawfare):

    hours after the Paul Weiss news broke, an associate at Skadden Arps sent a firm-wide email: “Please consider this email my two week notice, revocable if the firm comes up with a satisfactory response to the current moment… We do not have time. It is now or it is never…”

    The associate, Rachel Cohen, recently organized an open letter that called on Big Law to respond to Trump’s executive orders designed to sanction three prominent firms. The letter was signed by more than 300 Big Law associates.
    […]
    “If being on this career path demands I accept that my industry—because this is certainly not unique to Skadden—will allow an authoritarian government to ignore the courts, I refuse to take it any further,” she wrote on LinkedIn.

    [Screenshots of the firm-wide email and linkedin statement]

  426. Reginald Selkirk says

    Boeing will build the US Air Force’s next air superiority fighter

    Today, it emerged that Boeing has won its bid to supply the United States Air Force with its next jet fighter. As with the last fighter aircraft design procurement in recent times, the Department of Defense was faced with a choice between awarding Boeing or Lockheed the contract for the Next Generation Air Dominance program, which will replace the Lockheed F-22 Raptor sometime in the 2030s.

    Very little is known about the NGAD, which the Air Force actually refers to as a “family of systems,” as its goal of owning the skies requires more than just a fancy airplane. The program has been underway for a decade, and a prototype designed by the Air Force first flew in 2020, breaking records in the process (although what records and by how much was not disclosed)…

    Boeing has a firm reputation of building deadly aircraft.

  427. KG says

    Trump added soon after, “Elon is NOT BEING BRIEFED ON ANYTHING CHINA BY THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR!!!” The War Department became the Department of Defense in 1949. – Lynna,OM@420, quoting MSNBC

    So for once, we can be certain Trump has made a true statement. And he has not denied that Musk has been shown the plans for war with China by the Department of Defense.

  428. JM says

    Mediaite: ‘They Will Be Found’: Elon Musk Threatens Prosecutions of Trump Pentagon Officials After Bombshell New York Times Report

    Elon Musk has broken his silence on a New York Times report alleging he was to be briefed on a potential war with China, blasting the paper as “pure propaganda” while threatening prosecutions of the Times’ anonymous sources.
    Musk was set to be briefed Friday on plans for any war the U.S. might have with China, two anonymous U.S. officials told the paper. A third said the briefing would focus on China, but did not offer details.

    The response to this is hilarious, with Trump, Musk and pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell all saying this is fake news and that they will catch whoever leaked it. At least settle on one lie, even if implausible.

  429. says

    Sky Captain @425, good. People are organized and are joining forces. They are refusing to bow to Trump’s bullying. Let’s hope that continues.

    KG @427, LOL.

    JM @428, they can’t keep their lies straight. As with all of the Trump administration’s other endeavors, there is a distinct lack of coordination, communication and planning. Funny, but scary.

  430. says

    WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Negotiations over Ukraine appeared to stall on Friday after Russian President Vladimir Putin kept Donald Trump on hold for 45 minutes listening to balalaika music.

    According to White House sources, Trump consumed 18 cans of Diet Coke during the lengthy musical interlude.

    Although the Russian president never picked up his call, Trump took to Truth Social to declare it a “perfect phone call.”

    “President Putin honored me by ordering his Russian banjo players to sarrinade (sic) me for ALMOST AN HOUR!” Trump wrote. “He never would have done that for Sleepy Joe!”

    Link

  432. says

    In the recent past, there was reason to believe Donald Trump might face criminal accountability for Jan. 6 and his actions after his 2020 defeat. Those hopes were dashed, however, by the results of the 2024 election and the demise of former special counsel Jack Smith’s case against the president.

    There is, however, another potential avenue for accountability — a series of civil lawsuits filed against Trump — though as The New York Times reported, the Justice Department appears to be taking steps to derail this option, too.

    The Justice Department made an unusual effort on Thursday to short-circuit a series of civil lawsuits seeking to hold President Trump accountable for his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Department lawyers argued in court papers filed to the judge overseeing the cases that Mr. Trump was acting in his official capacity as president on Jan. 6 and so the federal government itself should take his place as the defendant. That move, if successful, could protect Mr. Trump from having to face judgment for his role in the Capitol attack and from having to pay financial damages if he were found liable.

    […] the legal maneuver appeared to be the latest effort to use the powers of the Justice Department to Trump’s advantage “by effectively having himself removed from the lawsuits.”

    For those who might benefit from a refresher, in the aftermath of the insurrectionist violence, among those who filed lawsuits against Trump were police officers injured during the insurrectionist violence. In fact, multiple cases were filed:
    [I snipped details of the cases filed.]

    Those civil cases have since been consolidated and are pending before U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta.

    […] while the Justice Department has a policy prohibiting federal criminal charges against a sitting president, the Supreme Court has already ruled that sitting presidents can face civil suits while in office, and claims from Trump’s lawyers that he’s immune in these cases have already been rejected by two courts.

    It’s against this backdrop that the Justice Department decided to intervene. The Times’ report added, “The department has argued that under the law federal officials acting within the scope of their office or employment cannot be sued personally, and that in such instances the government is the only entity that can be targeted.”

    It’s an argument rooted in the idea that those who claim to have been harmed by the president’s actions on Jan. 6 should be able to sue the federal government, but shouldn’t be able to sue the Republican directly.

    Will this work? Watch this space.

    Link

    Trump was actually in campaign mode when he encouraged the January 6th MAGA crowd to “fight.”

  433. says

    Watch AOC and Sanders rip into Republicans on powerful swing state tour

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, joined Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, on his Fighting Oligarchy tour Thursday, making stops in Nevada and Arizona.

    Similar to Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, who is hosting town halls in red districts where Republicans are hiding from their constituents, Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders are rallying in swing state areas, highlighting how the GOP is actively undermining the working class.

    “Fox News and the right wing will have you believe that these American values are something out of the Communist Manifesto. That we believe these things because we went to college and read them in a book somewhere. I don’t believe in health care, labor, and human dignity because I’m a Marxist. I believe it because I was a waitress,” Ocasio-Cortez said in Las Vegas. [video at the link]

    “Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security were promises that we as a people have made to each other about the kind of country we are and the kind of society we want to live in. And I don’t know about you, Arizona, but I want to live in an America that guarantees health care to every person,” she said in Tempe, Arizona. [video at the link]

    The GOP’s proposed budget cuts instruct the House Energy and Commerce Committee to find $880 billion to cut from the federal government in order to pay for tax cuts for the rich. A significant portion of that money would come from Medicaid, threatening a purported 600,000 Arizonans.

    Sanders kept the focus on growing wealth inequality and the paradoxes of GOP politicians pleading poverty when it comes to social safety net programs.

    “We are not a poor country! There is no excuse in God’s earth that people have to make a choice between food and the medicine they need to stay alive,” he said in Arizona. [video at the link]

    “One thing I love about Arizonans is that you all have shown that if a U.S. Senator isn’t fighting hard enough for you, you’re not afraid to replace her.” Ocasio-Cortez said, taking a jab at former Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. [video at the link]

    Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, and Walz aren’t afraid to face Republican constituents who have been neglected by their own party.

  434. says

    OMFG.

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/measles-are-good-for-you-say-parents

    ‘Measles Are Good For You’ Say Parents Whose Kid Died Because Of Measles

    “They claim it prevents cancer, which it very much does not.”

    People often don’t like to admit that they’ve made bad decisions or had bad ideas. […]

    We’ve seen this a lot in recent years. People who wanted to hold the moral high ground while voting for Trump in 2016, despite his “grab them by the [P-word]” comments, started to claim that, actually, he was running a whole operation to free all of the children from Satanic sex traffickers. People who were mad about COVID restrictions claimed it wasn’t that bad and glommed onto increasingly ridiculous explanations for why people were “actually” dying (or weren’t dying at all). Then they opposed the vaccine and came up with increasingly outlandish theories about why the vaccine was bad and Bill Gates was using it to implant microchips into people. They wanted to use horse dewormer to treat it instead, and now they claim Ivermectin cures every disease on earth.

    This is also often the case with those who oppose other vaccines. Those opposed to the MMR vaccine are no longer just anti-vaccine because they think it causes autism, but because they are now pro-measles, often citing an episode of the Brady Bunch to prove how innocuous it is.

    […] We’re going to pause here to highlight this fact from a very interesting but paywalled Bulwark post about RFK Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again”:

    How about infectious diseases? In 1900 half of all deaths in America were from communicable diseases. Through medical advances—especially vaccines—we got that number down to about 5 percent—until COVID. All by itself COVID accounted for 12 percent of all deaths in the United States in 2021.

    So again: If you want America to be healthy you’d do exactly the opposite of what the Trump administration is doing and urge everyone to get vaccinated.

    And here is a fact sheet about measles that is still, for now, up at the CDC:

    In 1912, measles became a nationally notifiable disease in the United States, requiring U.S. healthcare providers and laboratories to report all diagnosed cases. In the first decade of reporting, an average of 6,000 measles-related deaths were reported each year.

    A vaccine became available in 1963. In the decade before, nearly all children got measles by the time they were 15 years old. It is estimated 3 to 4 million people in the United States were infected each year. Among reported measles cases each year [before the vaccine was created], an estimated:
    – 400 to 500 people died
    – 48,000 were hospitalized
    – 1,000 suffered encephalitis (swelling of the brain)

    Now, faced with at least 309 cases of measles reported in Texas (more than in the whole of the United States last year), 40 hospitalizations and one death so far (in Texas, there was another in New Mexico), you might think this would be a difficult position to maintain, especially for the parents of the child who died.

    You would be wrong.

    In fact, the Mennonite parents of the six-year-old girl who died did an interview with Children’s Health Defense (RFK Jr.’s wackadoo anti-vaxx group) this week in which they said they stood by their decision and discouraged other parents from “rushing out, panicking,” and getting their kids vaccinated.

    The girl in question did not specifically die of measles, but due to pneumonia induced by measles, which many (stupid) people believe does not count as dying from measles, but dying with measles. […]

    “We spent the morning at Dr. Ben Edwards’ clinic,” said interviewer Polly Tomney of Children’s Health Defense, referring to a doctor recently praised by RFK Jr. for treating measles patients with vitamins and cod liver oil, “and the parents are all still sitting there saying they would rather have this than the MMR vaccination because they’ve seen so much injury, which we have as well.”

    Narrator: They had not “seen so much injury.”

    “Do you still feel the same way about the MMR vaccine versus measles and the proper treatment with Dr. Ben Edwards?” she asked the couple.

    “Absolutely not take the MMR,” the mother said. “The measles wasn’t that bad as they’re making it out to be. [The other children] got over it pretty quickly. And Dr. Edwards was there for us.”

    Yes, but the one other child literally died. Four out of five is a reasonable enough percentage when we are talking about dentists recommending a particular chewing gum brand, but not so much when we’re talking about a communicable disease that kills people.

    The couple helpfully explained that the child’s death was actually the will of God, who they believe wanted to spare her from this terrible world. To be fair, I suppose he would not have had that opportunity had the girl been vaccinated, but if he were really committed to killing a six-year-old child, I’m sure he’d find a way.

    Speaking through an interpreter of Low German, the father explained that “the measles are good for the body” — that they build up the immune system (they actually weaken it … a lot) and “prevent cancer.”

    […] Via NBC:

    Ainsley Nelson, a spokesperson for Covenant Children’s Hospital, which treated the child, said in a statement that the hospital could not comment on the case because of patient confidentiality laws but that “misleading and inaccurate claims” were circulating online. “What we can say is that our physicians and care teams follow evidence-based protocols and make clinical decisions based on a patient’s evolving condition, diagnostic findings, and the best available medical knowledge,” Nelson said.

    In this case, I’m gonna believe the hospital.

    These people are so committed to their beliefs that they literally lost their daughter and are still convinced that, somehow, the vaccine is worse. What is it that they think is worse than death? I get that they don’t want to feel responsible for their daughter’s death (which, let’s be clear — they absolutely are), but if that doesn’t convince them they are wrong, I’m not certain anything will.

  436. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Trump tweeted about the Tesla vandals.
    Aaron Rupar:

    Trump threatens to put American citizens on deportation flights to a slave prison in El Salvador. [Screenshot]

    Rando 1: “Note the gleeful acknowledgement that the point of sending people there is to be tortured.”

    Rando 2: “So weird coming from a guy with 34 felonies.”
    Rando 3: “Who pardoned 1500 people who attacked & vandalized the US Capitol in an attempted coup d’état.”

  437. says

    O.K. We must now accept the fact that whenever felonious tRUMP or muskrat or their cockroaches lips move, they are LYING!
    And, based on all the court orders being ignored with impunity, I declare that there is no more ‘rule of law’!

  438. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    That law firm capitulating to Trump.

    Anna Bower (Lawfare):

    I obtained a copy of the firm-wide email and attachment that Brad Karp, the chairman of Paul Weiss, sent to employees […] The documents detail the agreement Karp reached with the White House

    The screenshots are heavily moired, but there’s alt text, when you click to expand that, for all but the last lines.
    tldr: “Blah blah nonpartisanship is a bedrock principle. Blah blah $40m in pro bono for Trump projects.”

    Brian Neuharth (Nonprofit lawyer):

    Pro bono work exists to close the justice gap, not to serve the powerful. When it’s used to defend billionaires or the politically connected, it becomes the opposite of what it’s meant to be—a poverty fund for the rich. The PW agreement is incredibly sad and offensive to me on a personal level.

    Michael Kagan (Law professor):

    Not mentioned by Paul Weiss:
    “A lawyer, as a member of the legal profession, is … a public citizen having special responsibility for the quality of justice.”
    – From the ABA Model Rules of Professional Responsibility, Preamble
    “As a public citizen, a lawyer should seek improvement of the law, access to the legal system, the administration of justice…”
    “A lawyer should be mindful of deficiencies in the administration of justice”

    Nowhere do the professional codes say that lawyers may not express partisan or political viewpoints in their work. In fact, it may be a lawyer’s responsibility to do so, if part of the lawyer’s responsibility for the “quality of justice.”

    Marc Elias (DemocracyDocket)

    The attachment he attributes to the White House is different in key ways from what Trump posted as the agreement. [NYT reported on Trump adding DEI avoidance and Pomerantz criticism.] There is a difference in the pro bono language as well.

  439. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/america-i-vladimir-putin-thank-you

    “America! I, Vladimir Putin, Thank You For President Who Is Easier Than Siberian Night-Woman”

    Are you hanging up? Nyet! You hang up first. I’m not hanging up first. Nyet! You! Okay, neither of us hang up. Let’s just talk until we fall asl—

    Oh, das vidanya, corpulent Wonkette piss jockeys! I did not see you there. It is I, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, now only America’s second-favorite dictator, here to make words at you! Today I am very sad because I have had to pass off title of favorite American dictator, but then I remember that I lost title to Donald Trump because you voted for him! After all he did to you! As my fellow Russian Yakov Smirnoff used to say, what a country!

    Yes, I am having the speaking with Donald right now! We have much discussion about many things. Our feelings, our hopes for our two nations, what we should rename phony nation of Ukraine when we finish dividing it up. Is so hard! I vote for just calling it “Russia.” Donald suggest so many others. “Branding, Vladimir!” he says. “Sure, Russia is great country and everyone calls it Russia very powerfully, but also is such old name! Where are you rushing to, anyway? Russian to get all the rare earths, maybe! Ha ha ha!”

    Then he say, Vladimir, there are so many names. People love the name Mar-a-Lago, why not go with that? Mar-a-Lago Europe. It has ring, no? You should look at that very strongly.

    I say, ha ha, you are right, Donald! You are smartest president America ever have. You should make them give you third term. Yes, you are almost 80 years old, and in Russia we would have already ground you into nutritious paste for zoo animals so you no longer waste resources, but you are so smart and strong. You will live to be 150. Like all those people you are paying Social Security to!

    Then we have big laugh while I make … what is word? … wanking motion with hand near crotch. Do not tell Donald! I do not want him to get mad and stop telling me everything. He has promised to write down nuclear codes before our next call.

    Then I tell Donald, perhaps we will call Ukraine Trumpland, or Trumpistan, or Trumpia. Or how about Trump Trump? His name twice! Like Pago Pago or Bora Bora. He like that one because he does not get jokes.

    Wonkette, have I been by to thank you for re-electing Donald Trump? Hm, let us consult glorious Wonkette archive … ah, yes! New Year’s! Well, please to let me thank America again, very powerfully, as Donald would say. This has gone even beyond Vladimir’s wildest dreams. Donald has been president for less than nine weeks, and America is more confused than old babushka lady ordering coffee in Starbucks. […]

    Where was I? Oh, yes, Donald as president! Look at what he has done in only nine weeks. NATO is kaput. North America is in turmoil. […]

    Donald even has Canada mad at him. How do you make Canada mad at you? Even Vladimir can’t do it! Once, I tell skinny tween Justin Trudeau I am sending hordes of Cossacks across ocean to pillage Ontario, and he says, oh, no need for pillage, Vladimir! We love tourists. Do Cossacks need hotel rooms? I can recommend excellent Mongolian restaurant in Toronto. Let me know if I can expedite visas. We Canadians are a very hospitable people, eh?

    Way to take all the fun out of it, Trudeau! […]

    What else has Donald done? Oh, tourism! Tourists do not want to come to America anymore, because you keep locking them in gulag for no reason. Even the white ones! […]

    Vladimir knew that would happen, actually. Donald very much admire our own prison camps. Many times he say, Vladimir, your people respect you because you show strength. Someone look at you funny, boom! Off to Siberian gulag! I can’t do that in America. We must have a reason for sending scum off to gulag. I always tell him, Donald, you have too many laws. You should just ignore them! What will they do, throw you out of office? We have much laughter about that one.

    Donald is really getting into spirit of it! Now he express joy about putting people in El Salvador prison for setting Teslas on fire. Pushing Elon Musk on him may have been Vlad’s masterstroke. Two children with combined IQ of cabbage set loose in toy store and told they can break anything they want. Only toy store is America and instead of breaking, say, Dora the Explorer playset, they are breaking cancer research and famine relief.

    […] Wonkette, do not tell Donald this, but sometimes I am even almost jealous of his relationship with Elon. Do you see way they look at each other? And Donald take him everywhere. They have sleepovers at White House. Vladimir has never had sleepover at White House!

    But then Donald call and we talk for two hours, and all is back to normal. He tells me how great and strong I am. I tell him he is also great and strong. Then I tell him to not forget who he works for, and he giggles. Have you ever heard Donald Trump giggle? Is disturbing sound, like herd of musk ox all farting at same time.

    Then I call Elon and tell him same thing, while thanking him for doing such good work immiserating America and wrecking economy. He is so happy, like little boy with first prostitute. He offered to “doge up” Russia next, but I tell him we are already barely functional and all the people hate me but can’t do anything about it. In other words, we’re good. But I will call him if we want fireworks show in Moscow, perhaps he can launch one of his rockets over city and save us trouble?

    That one he find less funny, so I tell him I am kidding. Again, while making wanking motion. Then I compliment him on how good he is at Diablo, and all is fine again.

    Is too easy, Wonkette. Next time, you will tell America, give Vladimir a challenge.

  440. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Re: shermanj @437:

    I declare that there is no more ‘rule of law’!

    Welp, it’s official then, waitaminute…

  441. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/elon-musk-legitimately-believes-we

    “Elon Musk Legitimately Believes We Hate Him Because He Is Beautiful”

    “He is really in his feelings this week.”

    Elon Musk is not having a great week. Not only have some people taken to vandalizing Tesla dealerships, but Tesla has also had to recall all 46,000 Cybertrucks made in 2024 and 2025, as it turns out they have something of a tendency to vandalize themselves by literally falling apart on the highway. This will be the eighth recall so far. Quality machinery there.

    Oh, there’s also the little matter of Tesla stock taking an incredible nosedive, with major investors calling for him to step down as CEO if he’s going to spend all of his time destroying every government program that helps people in any way. Even his own brother has dumped 75,000 shares.

    “My companies make great products that people love and I’ve never physically hurt anyone,” Musk posted on Xitter on Monday. “So why the hate and violence against me?”

    Oh gosh, what could it be? Whatever could it be? Could it be the fact that he’s a crazed white supremacist who has been going around firing thousands of people at random for the past two months? The fact that he’s an evil billionaire using his power to support and establish far-right authoritarian regimes around the nation?

    Or do we just hate him because he is beautiful?

    Well, close enough. His theory is that he is “a deadly threat to the woke mind parasite and the humans it controls.”

    Sure, in that he’s encouraging people to pretend as though systemic injustice (against people other than white men) does not exist. That is factually true. He is actively encouraging people to be their best asshole selves and act like fucking 15-year-old edgelord internet trolls and most of us don’t want to live in a world in which that is the norm.

    It’s a really bad time.

    But he seems really convinced that this “woke mind virus” or parasite or whatever he’s calling it now is a legitimate, real thing and that people are being brainwashed to believe he is isn’t wonderful, that trans people (like his own daughter) exist, and that people other than white guys are qualified to have jobs.

    This, by the way, was a response to a post from Xitter user Insurrection Barbie reading “The left cannot name one thing they hate Elon Musk for. They cannot name one thing the has taken away from them. Or one thing he has done to earn their insane ire. History will study this deranged cult like behavior.”

    There’s something so strange about this mindset, and they all have it. They believe that all humans, in their natural state, actually agree with them on everything and everyone who doesn’t is pretending somehow, for some reason. Sometimes it’s because they’re being paid by George Soros, or because they have “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” or (again) a “woke mind virus” or because we’re in a “cult.” You know, because we’re the ones who have infallible leaders whom we worship and praise on the regular.

    But I digress. Because this was not any kind of one-off moment of self-pity. He also took his act on the road to Fox News, in order to cry on the shoulder of a deeply sympathetic Sean Patrick Hannity. [Video at the link]

    “It’s really come as quite a shock to me, this violence from the Left. I thought the Democrats were supposed to be the party of empathy, the party of caring, and yet they’re burning down cars, and firing bullets into dealerships,” he said, not realizing that the entire reason people hate him is because they have empathy, they care about other human beings and they don’t want to see those human beings hurt by everything he is doing to this country.

    “Tesla is a peaceful company; we’ve never done anything harmful, I’ve never done anything harmful; I’ve always done productive things,” he added, definitely believing his own bullshit. “So there’s some kind of mental illness thing going on because this doesn’t make any sense.”

    “It turns out when you take away the money people get fraudulently, they get very upset,” he continued. “They basically want to kill me because I’m stopping their fraud, and they want to hurt Tesla because we are stopping this terrible waste and corruption in the government. I guess they are bad people. Bad people do bad things.”

    Oh yes, that’s absolutely what’s going on. He is but a babe in the woods, an innocent widdle lamb what never did no harm to no body. The entire Left has been profiting from fraud and we are mad at him for stopping it.

    To be clear, he hasn’t stopped any fraud, he’s literally just gone around firing people at random, many of whom have needed to be rehired immediately afterwards (probably all of whom should be rehired, if we want to have a functioning country).

    He then suggested that there were perhaps “larger forces” behind it, wondering “Who’s funding it? Who’s coordinating it?” like there’s some other arch-nemesis billionaire out there shelling out piles of cash for Molotov cocktails and spray paint.

    It’s such a bizarre mindset. […]

    By Thursday, Musk seemingly came up with another reason for why people have been protesting Tesla dealerships — they’re all transgender.

    This time, he quoted another post from Insurrection Barbie that read “Of course 3 out of 4 of the people who have been arrested for vandalizing Teslas are transgender or nonbinary.”

    Mother Jones reports that:

    The user appeared to be parroting a story from the right-wing Daily Caller website, which identifies three people who have been arrested — Lucy Grace Nelson, Erin White, and Adam Matthew Lansky — who appear, based on media reports or their social media accounts, to be gender non-conforming. (It’s unclear, though, how Nelson, White, and Lansky self-identify.) According to a DOJ spokesperson, Lansky and Nelson are two of three people — along with Daniel Brendan Kurt Clarke-Pounder — who are facing charges related to allegedly vandalizing Tesla property.

    Musk’s comment? “What are the statistics on trans violence? The probability of a trans person being violent appears to be vastly higher than non-trans. Hormone injections cause extreme emotional volatility. That is simply a fact.”

    Here’s a statistic on “trans violence” — since 2017, 298 transgender and other gender non-conforming people have been the victims of homicide. Here’s another — from 2017 to 2021, the homicide rate for trans people nearly doubled. That’s likely because of people like Elon Musk, who have dedicated a significant portion of their existence to attacking transgender people and trying to take their rights away. So he might want to keep his mouth shut on that one.

    It seems worth pointing out that his transgender daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, is on the cover of this month’s Teen Vogue, for an interview in which she excoriates Musk as a father who was absent most of the time and cruel when he was there.

    […] [People do not like Elon Musk] because he is a shitty person who does shitty things and is walking into our government and dismantling it without knowing how it works […] They do not like him because he goes around Sieg Heiling and thinks it’s cute. They do not like him because he bought himself a president and people aren’t supposed to be able to do that in this country. They do not like him because he is a union buster. They do not like him because he turned Twitter into a Nazi cesspool, they do not like him because he is a person who is perfectly comfortable having (reportedly) $327 billion dollars and never saying to himself “Hey! I could literally end homelessness in the United States for $30 billion, and never even feel it missing, so why don’t I do that?” — instead of claiming that it’s not even a problem and going after programs and services that actually do help the poor.

    They do not like him because he he’s such a freakishly insecure jackass that he has to lie about why people dislike him.

  442. birgerjohansson says

    Not a “mandate”.
    Farron Cousins has done the numbers.
    USA had 340 million people 2024.
    Of these, 245 million are eligible to vote. Only 156 million voted. Of these, Trump got 77.2 million votes, Harris got 74.9 million. Trump got 49.8 % of the votes, Harris got 48.3% so Trump won by 1.5% among the people who showed up. 90 million people did not show up.
    Of all eligible voters 31.5 % voted for Trump, 30.5% voted for Harris. So now Trump’s lead is only 1% .
    Of the entire population, only 22.7% voted for Trump.
    .
    “Conservative Pollster (Christine Andersen) Warns Trump Is In SERIOUS Trouble”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=Tr3vr1g4KNk

  445. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/on-trumps-order-education-dept-grabbed

    “On Trump’s Order, Education Dept Grabbed Off Street, Sold Into Salvadoran Supermax”

    “Administration denies knowledge. You know, in general.”

    Donald Trump yesterday signed an executive order aimed at shutting down the US Department of Education. For once, Trump actually acknowledged that only Congress can actually eliminate a Cabinet department that it created, so the order actually tells Education Secretary Linda McMahon to wreck as much of the agency as she can get away with while waiting on Congress to finish the job. It’s not clear that any such bill can actually pass — and it’s even possible Democrats could, conceivably, actually filibuster it. McMahon earlier this month shitcanned about 1,300 staff at the department, which combined with earlier firings and buyouts reduced its employees by half.

    In a particularly gross bit of theater, Trump signed the order in the East Room of the White House flanked by two rows of children sitting at school desks, isn’t that adorable? It was a remarkably ethnically diverse group of kids, so we can only assume that the White House staff responsible are now under investigation for promoting DEI.

    Trump said, as he prepared to delight the children,

    “It sounds strange, doesn’t it? Department of Education. We’re going to eliminate it.” […] Before he signed the order, Trump turned to the children and asked, “Should I do this?”

    Introducing McMahon, Trump said that “hopefully she will be our last secretary of education.” He vowed “to find something else for you, Linda.”

    All very merry and delightful, like getting a super deluxe train set for Christmas and immediately smashing it with a sledgehammer.

    Trump lied that even “the Democrats know it’s right, and I hope they’re going to be voting for it, because ultimately it may come before them.” That’s one of his favorite weird little rhetorical habits; not even he believes it, but someone must have told him he can alter reality by insisting people “know” his dumb opinions are the truth. But it’s irritating enough that we remarked on it, so now he’s controlling your mind, dear readers.

    Following the signing ceremony, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), who chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, hurried to Twitter so he could promise he’d introduce a bill to kill the department “as soon as possible.” Any such bill would need at least seven Democrats to avoid a filibuster, or Senate leadership would have to do away with the legislative filibuster.

    Goopers might also try to kill the Education Department as part of their planned Great Big Tax Cuts reconciliation bill, which can pass on a simple majority, but since that would be a policy matter going far beyond taxing and spending, it shouldn’t qualify for reconciliation. Not that we’re terribly confident Republicans will worry about such procedural niceties.

    But red states still have public schools, many of which depend on the roughly 10 percent of funding schools get from the federal government, especially in rural areas. And the student loan program is administered by the Education Department too, so GOP lawmakers will definitely be hearing from superintendents and from college presidents urging them not to eliminate the department. Apart from the fundagelical crazies who make up much of the GOP base, parents of all political stripes also broadly support public schools, so there will be enormous pushback on legislators who are already being flooded with angry feedback from constituents.

    […] White House Minister of Lies Karoline Leavitt explained to reporters that the department’s

    “critical functions” would continue, including the enforcement of civil rights laws and oversight of student loans and Pell grants.

    “The Department of Education will be much smaller than it is today,” Leavitt said, adding that the order directed McMahon “to greatly minimize the agency. So when it comes to student loans and Pell grants, those will still be run out of the Department of Education.”

    A “senior administration official” assured NBC News that the EO won’t affect Title I grants to schools with a large percentage of low-income students — that’s frequently rural schools, despite GOP blather about Failing Urban Schools […] or the department’s mandate to ensure that students with disabilities receive a “free appropriate public education” as required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

    Some 7.5 million kids with physical and learning disabilities are helped by the Education Department’s assistance with special education and individualized education plans (IEPs), but if Trump and the Project 2025 crew have their way, that could change drastically. Project 2025 called for special education funding to shift to HHS, which has already been cut dramatically, and for most funding for both Title I and special education to be converted to block grants, which generally allow more fuckery by states that might choose to divert the money to other things […]

    Worse, IDEA’s requirement that students with disabilities receive an equal education is already not being met or funded in most states, and it only applies to public schools. Trump is all in on the “school choice” scam, which shifts public education funding to pay for private school tuition — mostly subsidizing tuition already being paid by well-off families, not helping mythical poor parents who seek to escape those allegedly failing public schools. [!!]

    As we mention, private schools don’t have to educate any students with disabilities at all, so when federal education dollars are block granted and then shifted to “school choice,” the already inadequate support for kids with disabilities will be chopped even further. That’s going to hurt parents in red states too, since disabilities are not merely a liberal affectation. [True]

    But while that’ll certainly matter to millions of parents, it isn’t a concern for Trump and his fascist allies, and those allies are becoming increasingly open about their love of eugenics. Consider this clip from Fox News this week, where Greg Gutfeld gave the game away and laughed about it: [video at the link]

    JESSICA TARLOV: When I hear Republicans out there talking about their plan for education in America, I don’t hear them talking about making sure disabled kids have access to a public education. I don’t hear them talking about empowering

    GREG GUTFELD (interrupting): —Because we’re against it.

    TARLOV: I know you are. Thank you for admitting it in such a public forum.

    GUTFELD: (very pleased-with-himself laughter)

    The contempt is right in the open now, and it’s of a piece with Trump’s belief that some people with disabilities, including children, should just die and save the rest of us a lot of money and trouble.

  446. coffeepott says

    @442 birgerjohansson
    frequently lately, i’ve been reminded of an excellent song by gil scott-heron, ‘b-movie,’ which opens with:
    ‘well, the first thing i’d like to say is – mandate, my ass!’

    it’s a song about ronald reagan, ‘the closest thing [american voters] could find to john wayne’

  447. says

    More embarrassing moments, courtesy of Trump:

    Donald Trump’s fascination with and rhetoric about airplanes became an unexpected staple of his first term, which came to mind anew as the president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the new F-47 fighter jet during an Oval Office event. The New York Times reported:

    […] Trump announced that Boeing has won the contract for the next-generation fighter, which he said would be called the F-47 — a number clearly chosen to memorialize his presidency. He described it as a very stealthy fighter, though it has been highly controversial, in part because many experts believe that by the time it is fielded, manned fighters will be outdated and outmaneuvered by autonomous and semi-autonomous aircraft.

    Not surprisingly, Trump had quite a bit to say about the new plane, telling reporters, for example, that the F-47 is “virtually unseeable.” He also made curious comments about international customers, saying that many U.S. allies were interested in buying the aircraft, and that the United States would likely sell them “toned down” versions “because someday, maybe they’re not our allies.”

    [Trump] took a moment to claim that the plane’s price is still a secret. [video at the link]

    JD Vance was also on hand for the event because, as the vice president put it, he thinks “airplanes are pretty cool.”

    But of particular interest was the choice of designations. Trump is the 47th U.S. president (as well as the 45th president), which helped explain why he said during, “The generals picked a title, and it’s a beautiful number.”

    I haven’t seen any reporting about how, exactly, “the generals” chose this specific designation, though it’s worth noting that the U.S. military already flew an F-47 during World War II.

    Evidently, the United States will now have another F-47 […]

    Link

  448. says

    Just in time for tornado season, Musk’s ruining weather reports

    The National Weather Service on Thursday announced that it is suspending weather balloon releases in eight locations around the country, after co-President Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency slashed jobs at the agency indiscriminately leading to critical staff shortages.

    “Effective immediately, and until further notice, the National Weather Service (NWS) is temporarily suspending weather balloon observations … due to a lack of Weather Forecast Office (WFO) staffing. Offices will perform special observations as needed,” the NWS said in a statement.

    Two locations—one in Omaha, Nebraska, and another in Rapid City, South Dakota—will no longer release weather balloons. Six others—in South Dakota, Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nebraska, and Wyoming—will reduce weather balloon releases to once per day.

    Weather forecasters say fewer balloons means weather reports will be less accurate because there won’t be as much data for forecasters to model.

    “I can’t imagine April 26th of last year without having known what the atmosphere was,” Omaha’s Chief Meteorologist Bill Randby told a local Nebraska television station, referring to a tornado outbreak in 2024 that destroyed hundreds of homes and killed one person. “Having that detailed information was critical in trying to figure out when tornadoes were going to form, how quickly they might form. If you had staff to do it this morning, but now you don’t have staff to do it this, this evening says that this decision was made by somebody that doesn’t understand weather.”

    Less accurate weather forecasts endanger lives, as accurate predictions of severe weather lead to evacuations and storm preparation that keep populations safe. […]

    NWS is cutting critical weather reporting functions as severe weather season is about to start, such as tornado season in the Midwest.

    “These cuts at 8 NWS stations aren’t just a Midwest problem,” storm chaser Ryan Hall [said]. “Fewer weather balloon launches means less atmospheric data feeding into national forecast models. Weather doesn’t respect state lines, and neither does bad data.”

    Of course, […] Trump—who deputized DOGE to make these cuts and is responsible for whatever negative impacts those cuts have—doesn’t care about accurate weather forecasting.

    Who could forget when he used a Sharpie to amend a hurricane path forecast. Trump had inaccurately said that a storm was going to hit Alabama, and when the actual expert reports showed that was wrong, he took the sharpie and drew an additional circle to claim the storm was going to hit Alabama.

    […] And now the cuts are harming weather forecasting, with Randby telling the local Nebraska television station that the blanket cuts DOGE made to the NWS without determining their impacts is only making things worse.

    “If you’re going to cut weather balloons, there are probably better ones that could be cut that wouldn’t impact the ability of forecasters, in severe weather areas like this,” Randby said. “To have a void of data right in the middle will make it harder for the computer models to be accurate all across the country.”

  450. says

    Zelensky says he and Trump discussed Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, but not U.S. ownership

    President Volodymyr Zelensky is pushing back against White House claims that President Donald Trump proposed bringing Ukrainian nuclear power plants under U.S. ownership.

    Following a phone call between the two leaders on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt told reporters that Trump had suggested to Zelensky that “American ownership” would be the “best protection” for Ukrainian power plants. This talking point also appeared in a statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House National Security Adviser Michael Waltz.

    According to the Ukrainian president, however, no such proposal was discussed on the call. At a press conference in Oslo on Thursday, Zelensky told reporters that he and Trump had only talked about the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is occupied by Russian forces, and that the issue of ownership wasn’t raised.

    [The Americans] want to take it back from the Russians, and they want to invest and to modernize [the facility]. This is a separate issue. This issue is open to discussion. We can talk about it. But we definitely didn’t discuss the question of ownership with President Trump.

    Zelensky also said that he told Trump it would be illegal for the Zaporizhzhia plant to resume operating unless it was returned to Ukraine. “President Trump asked me: ‘What do you think about this plant?’ I told him that it won’t work for anyone unless it’s Ukrainian. It’s illegal,” he said.

  451. says

    So, is there a partial ceasefire or not? The Kyiv Independent is tracking Russia’s recent drone/missile attacks.

    Ukraine on March 21 accused Russia of deliberately attacking the Sudzha gas metering station in Kursk Oblast in an attempt to pin the blame on Kyiv.

    No strikes were reported against Ukrainian energy infrastructure on March 19.

    Civilian infrastructure hit on March 20 includes, but is not limited to:
    – Critical infrastructure, residential areas, and social facilities in Kherson Oblast
    – An agricultural enterprise, and 12 homes in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast
    – A residential high-rise, a shopping center, and several shops in Odesa Oblast

    Civilian infrastructure hit on March 19 includes, but is not limited to:
    – Homes, residential buildings, and railway infrastructure in Kropyvnytskyi in Kirovohrad Oblast
    – Four high-rise buildings, 18 houses, and a cellular tower in Kherson Oblast
    – Six houses and a medical clinic in Kharkiv Oblast
    – One apartment building, one house, and a shopping center in Sumy Oblast
    – Twenty-six reports of damage to cars, apartments, private houses, outbuildings, and infrastructure facilities in Zaporizhzhia Oblast

    Link

  453. says

    New Yorker link

    “Inside Trump and Musk’s Takeover of NASA” by David W. Brown

    On January 20th, in his Inaugural Address, Donald Trump spoke rapturously about space exploration. “We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars,” he said. Later that day, Elon Musk, owner of the aerospace firm SpaceX and a longtime proponent of Mars settlement, addressed a post-Inauguration celebration. The President had made him the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was about to start slashing the federal bureaucracy. “It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured,” Musk told Trump supporters. “We’re going to take DOGE to Mars.”

    NASA headquarters, in Washington, D.C., observed Inauguration Day as a holiday, but many of its employees worked anyway. The agency had astronauts in orbit, rockets to launch, and astronomical data to decipher. […] Bill Nelson, the administrator of NASA under the Biden Administration, stepped down from his post. NASA had briefly indicated that Jim Free, its highest-ranking civil servant, would take over as interim director while Trump’s nominee, the billionaire and private astronaut Jared Isaacman, awaited Senate confirmation. But, at 9:41 p.m., an e-mail was sent to nasa employees with the subject line “A Message from Acting Administrator Janet Petro.” […] Petro, a graduate of West Point, had previously overseen the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida. […]

    In a second e-mail, Petro announced that nasa would be complying with an executive order by shutting down all contracts and offices related to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (D.E.I.A.). […] During the first Trump Administration, NASA’s strategic plan had prioritized the targeted recruitment of a diverse workforce; managers within the agency had been tasked with advancing equal-employment opportunities and implementing D.E.I. policies. But the second Trump Administration would punish people who had carried out these orders.

    At NASA headquarters, a longtime employee read Petro’s message at her desk, dumbfounded. She went straight to a friend’s office. “What the fuck?” the employee mouthed.

    The friend motioned at her to come in and close the door. […] “Where are we working that this is what we are doing?” the employee said. They wondered aloud whether Petro deserved a measure of sympathy; she was the first woman to lead NASA, and wouldn’t the D.E.I.A. letter have gone out regardless of who was in the job? Then they began to discuss some samples from outer space. This was NASA, after all, and the work went on.

    NASA headquarters, a bland stone office building that is currently owned by a Korean investment firm, is situated a few blocks southeast of the National Mall. Darren Bossie, the new White House liaison to nasa, arrived shortly after Trump’s Inauguration. Darren Bossie was more or less unknown at the agency […] He had spent four of the past seven years bouncing around conservative politics, with a stint as Trump’s White House liaison to the Department of Veterans Affairs, and had worked as a senior consultant for unnamed companies. For the bulk of his professional life, however—from 2006 to 2018—he had been an assistant manager at a Total Wine & More in Palm Beach County, Florida. [,,,]

    […] Darren is the brother of David N. Bossie, the president of Citizens United—the conservative group whose litigation before the Supreme Court empowered mega-donors and corporations to make unlimited contributions to political candidates. […] (In 2019, Trump distanced himself from David Bossie after he was accused of profiting off the President’s likeness […]) In response to questions, a White House official said that Darren Bossie has “extensive experience” and “is playing a key role in ensuring NASA realigns its priorities to deliver on [Trump’s] vision.”

    Shortly after Trump began his second term, he directed all federal employees to return to the office for in-person work. His Administration also gave agencies four days to share lists of various “probationary” employees […]

    On January 28th, the O.P.M. sent an e-mail with the subject line “A Fork in the Road” to more than two million federal employees. It contained a pre-written “deferred resignation” letter. […] Employees had a little over a week to decide.

    […] On February 7th, nasa employees again received “A Message from Acting Administrator Janet Petro.” “I know the recent executive orders and subsequent guidance are weighing on many of you,” she wrote. She noted the fortitude and dedication of nasa employees, then got down to business. The deferred-resignation offer—what some nasa scientists were calling “the derp”—had been extended. [snipped details about orders to remove pronouns in email address, etc.]

    Next came an executive order that outlined a “Workforce Optimization Initiative” led by DOGE. It instructed federal agencies to prepare “large-scale reductions in force.” They were to prioritize the termination of anyone whose job was not legally mandated, including those who worked on D.E.I.A. and those who were not designated as “essential” during government shutdowns. DOGE would soon arrive at NASA headquarters.

    […] “NASA lost some folks that are true, worldwide-acknowledged experts in their field,” a leader at the agency told me. “You scare people into retiring, and it’s not just that NASA will be slower without them. We are going to lose entire abilities. We don’t understand the long-term implications in a field that’s this hard until it’s too late.”

    In recent years, NASA and Elon Musk have become increasingly interdependent. Today, the agency is almost completely reliant on his rockets to launch astronauts to the International Space Station and probes to the outer solar system. SpaceX is one of NASA’s largest contractors—they are building the agency’s crewed moon landers, and would inevitably be central to an American Mars-colonization program. […] Jared Isaacman, the presumptive future administrator of NASA, reportedly paid hundreds of millions of dollars for multiple trips to space on Musk’s rockets. In late January, Petro announced that Michael Altenhofen, who she said spent fifteen years at SpaceX, was now a senior adviser to the NASA administrator.

    NASA has robust conflict-of-interest policies based in the U.S. legal code, but any influence that Musk exerts over his largest customer will call into question NASA’s independence. [snipped details about lack of money to pursue lunar program or Mars program]

    […] NASA leadership was contemplating cutting as many as thirteen hundred probationary employees, according to reports. At a graying agency where employees cultivate hyper-specific skill sets, every loss, from senior executive to intern, is felt. “Space flight is an art,” the nasa leader told me. Written procedures only go so far. “The fact that Pin 38 on some connector has to be installed at an angle because you’ll scratch Pin 40—that’s never in a procedure. That’s the kind of knowledge you don’t even know you have until you need it, and you can only learn it by watching others.”

    […] Some workers whose jobs were at risk were at Vandenberg Space Force Base, in California, and Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, where spacecraft were being prepped to be launched within weeks. […]

    According to my sources, Petro listened to the arguments. O.K., she said: We’re going to say we don’t have any expendable workers. […] The Office of Personnel Management must have accepted her recommendation.

    [I snipped details of further DOGE incursions, including the “reply to this e-mail with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager” episode.]

    A week later, […] a federal judge ruled that a mass firing of probationary workers would be unlawful. According to reports, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said, “OPM does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe to hire and fire employees within another agency.”

    […] But my sources anticipated that a more drastic third phase—“reductions in force” that are shrinking numerous federal agencies—would cut significant numbers from nasa’s workforce, not by targeting individual employees but, rather, by eliminating their positions altogether. […] After a meeting that involved Sennott, from DOGE, NASA leaders decided to eliminate the Office of the Chief Scientist, a team of six that gave unbiased scientific advice to the administrator. […] The Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy was dissolved, too. […]

    My sources warned of the potential consequences. “As soon as we lose our values, we’re going to kill somebody,” the nasa leader said. “We’re going to blow up a spacecraft.” They added that China’s space program—including its scientific research efforts—is growing rapidly. […]

    “Do you want to be the Administration that killed astronauts?”

  454. Reginald Selkirk says

    Her grandfather waters his garden with laundry water. She tested it for science

    This winter, there was a drought in India’s Punjab province, where Tanvir Mundra’s grandfather lives.

    One of his tricks for saving water is to pour water from his laundry, known as grey water, onto his garden. It’s a tip he shared with his granddaughter, who lives in Vancouver, during their regular Facetime calls.

    And it inspired a science project that recently won Mundra first prize in the Earth and Environmental Sciences category of the Taiwan International Science Fair.

    Mundra, now a Grade 10 student at St. John’s School in Vancouver, asked her grandfather if his laundry water ever harmed the flowers, vegetables and herbs he grew. He said he never gave it much thought.

    Mundra wondered if the trick to making that work was her grandfather’s detergent.

    “My grandparents, they’re often telling me how nowadays we’re always the ones using so many man-made synthetic cleaning chemicals when there are natural alternatives out there,” she recalled.

    For laundry detergent, her grandfather uses soap nuts — the fruit of a tree called Sapindus mukorossi, which is native to parts of southern and eastern Asia. They contain high levels of natural detergents called saponins. Eco-blogs and at least one environmental group recommend them as an eco-friendly soap, and they’ve even been pitched as a laundry detergent to CBC’s Dragon’s Den.

    Mundra decided to test out her grandfather’s method of growing plants with laundry water…

  457. JM says

    Newsweek: Donald Trump Suggests US Could Join British Commonwealth

    President Donald Trump suggested that the United States could join the British Commonwealth on Friday in a post to Truth Social, his social media platform.
    The president shared an article from British tabloid The Sun reporting that King Charles III was making a “secret offer” to the White House, and that plans are in process for the U.S. to become an associate member of the international organization.
    “I Love King Charles. Sounds good to me!” Trump wrote in response to the report.

    Don’t know what to make of this except possibly that Trump wants King Charles’s approval and a knighthood.

  458. whheydt says

    Re: JM @ #457…
    Take a leaf from G&S and give him the title of Duke of Plaza-Toro.

  459. says

    Josh Marshall:

    Fridays are becoming bloodbath day in the federal workforce. In the same way that bad news stories used to be held for Friday late afternoon, that’s when we now hear about a lot of these firings

    Midafternoon, I heard that the Department of Homeland Security had essentially abolished all its international civil rights and detention abuse agencies. They abolished the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman and the Office of the CIS Ombudsman. In other words, basically everyone in the department charged with providing some oversight of the treatment of people by the department’s various policing agencies or when in detention. They’re all gone. The only exception is the department Inspector General. […] Those are all, I believe, statutory offices. I know the Office of Civil Rights is. So you really can’t abolish those. Except when you do. So that’s where we are.

    Just a few moments ago I heard that USAID had terminated about 160 personal service contractors. These are longterm contract positions for people whose brief is essentially to shepherd aid deliveries abroad. So essentially they serve as the U.S. government’s eyes and ears to make sure the money is used for what it’s meant to be used for, that it gets to the intended recipients. For those who are familiar with this kind of work, all 160 are part of Disaster Assistance Response Teams. At some point when we’re back to the normal world and some terrible earthquake happens somewhere, I think this basically means if the U.S. wants to send some help … well, we fired the people who do that stuff.

    It’s easy to lose track of the fact that most of this stuff is illegal.

    Link

  460. Bekenstein Bound says

    At the end of February she went to Seattle with plans to go to Vancouver, in Canada. But at the border, Mr Burke said Canadian authorities refused her entry, saying she needed to return to the US.

    Why did Canadian authorities refuse her entry?

    Musk group offers $100 to Wisconsin voters ahead of pivotal state Supreme Court election

    Isn’t that flagrantly illegal?

    Farage Whatsapp Leak Shows Reform UK Lied

    Wait, what?

    A political party lied?

    Mon dieu! Stop the presses!!

    Boeing will build the US Air Force’s next air superiority fighter

    Welp, so much for the US Air Force’s air superiority then. Their adversaries (including us!) can just provoke them into scrambling their jets, wait for them to fall out of the sky, and then get ours in the air and clean their chronometers. :)

    Boeing has a firm reputation of building deadly aircraft.

    Indeed. Hence why no one wants to fly on any of them anymore!

    Plus, if it’s anything like the F-35 it’ll have some stupid software DRM auto-update crap. Winning against that is simply a matter of jamming the right signals so the aircraft can’t verify that their licenses are valid. :)

    F-47 is “virtually unseeable.”

    That’d be because it’s below the radar floor by at least the depth of the crater it made. :)

    [Trump] took a moment to claim that the plane’s price is still a secret.

    If you’d spent that much on a sure lemon you’d be embarrassed to tell people how much you’d been taken for too.

    I wonder, too, how long it will take for it to dawn on him what “F 47” literally means, and that it’s a very common sentiment among his political foes …

    Elon Musk has broken his silence on a New York Times report alleging he was to be briefed on a potential war with China, blasting the paper as “pure propaganda” while threatening prosecutions of the Times’ anonymous sources.

    I have no idea why people seem so shocked that a sitting President is being briefed on war scenario planning. I thought that was normal!

    JM @428, they can’t keep their lies straight. As with all of the Trump administration’s other endeavors, there is a distinct lack of coordination, communication and planning.

    One more reason I expect President Musk to try to jettison Trump like a spent booster as soon as is practicable.

    According to White House sources, Trump consumed 18 cans of Diet Coke during the lengthy musical interlude.

    Unless, of course, Trump manages to cark it first. Can his decrepit old carcass even handle that much caffeine in one sitting?

    Not that him kicking will help very much at this point. It’s too late for that now. Vance would take over, Thiel’s protégé and cut from the same general cloth as Thiel and Musk. They’d then run a much tighter ship. If anything, we’d be better off if extreme misfortunes befell both Vance and Musk while sparing Trump at least temporarily.

    Two locations—one in Omaha, Nebraska, and another in Rapid City, South Dakota—will no longer release weather balloons.

    The Nebraska one is smack dab in the middle of tornado country, and balloons get critical information about two numbers, CAPE (convective available potential energy) and lifted indices, that are integral to predicting tornado risk.

    They wondered aloud whether Petro deserved a measure of sympathy; she was the first woman to lead NASA, and wouldn’t the D.E.I.A. letter have gone out regardless of who was in the job? Then they began to discuss some samples from outer space.

    If that is where they’re from, then I say we should return Trump and Musk to outer space. Call it a deportation flight. :)

  461. JM says

    Youtube: Meidas Touch

    Trump Claims HE NEVER SIGNED his OWN ORDER on War Powers

    Passing comment from Trump. He probably doesn’t understand what this means. If literally true the order should not in force and everything done under it’s power was illegal. Trump can’t delegate to somebody else to decide if and when a order is signed. He can only have somebody use a tool to put his signature instead of him physically doing it himself.
    Likely if pressed Trump and lawyers just dodge around what Trump said, saying people are misrepresenting him.

  462. says

    Not how it works.

    […] In a post on Truth Social Thursday, Trump attacked the judges who have issued injunctions against his policies, calling them “radical left judges” and “lunatics” who “want to assume the Powers of the Presidency, without having to attain 80 Million Votes.” (FACT CHECK: Trump won the 2024 election with 77 million votes, and federal judges are appointed to their positions, not elected.)

    “STOP NATIONWIDE INJUNCTIONS NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” he added, before calling on Chief Justice John Roberts to intervene. “If Justice Roberts and the United States Supreme Court do not fix this toxic and unprecedented situation IMMEDIATELY, our Country is in very serious trouble!”

    On Friday morning, Trump again suggested in a Truth Social post that federal judges are attempting to “assume the duties of the President of the United States.”

    With more than 100 lawsuits against Trump’s policies to date, the administration has claimed that judges are improperly using nationwide injunctions to impede the president’s agenda and to override his executive powers. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt accused those judges of being “partisan activists.”

    […] The Justice Department is currently awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling on a request to narrow orders from several judges who have blocked Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order from taking effect nationwide. But as The Associated Press pointed out, the high court appears to be in no hurry to decide.

    Trump asks the Supreme Court to stop judges from blocking his policies

    Related video at the link.

  464. JM says

    @460

    Musk group offers $100 to Wisconsin voters ahead of pivotal state Supreme Court election

    Isn’t that flagrantly illegal?

    Dancing around the limits of what is legal. People who are registered to vote are being offered $100 to sign a petition that takes Musk’s position but doesn’t explicitly name a candidate or require them to vote. It’s advertised in ways that lean Republican. If I was a Democratic leader in the area I would be collecting people to sign up since they can take Musk’s $100 and vote however they want.

  465. says

    BB @460:

    [Lynna quoting the Borowitz Report:] According to White House sources, Trump consumed 18 cans of Diet Coke during the lengthy musical interlude.

    Unless, of course, Trump manages to cark it first. Can his decrepit old carcass even handle that much caffeine in one sitting?

    The Borowitz Report in comment 430 is satire.

  466. says

    […] “The executive order calling for the Secretary of Education to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education could have a significant impact on the training of future doctors as well as biomedical researchers and other health professionals,” David J. Skorton, president and CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), said in a statement to The Hill.

    The AAMC is a co-sponsor of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), the accrediting body of medical schools in the U.S. The LCME is recognized by the Department of Education as well as the World Federation for Medical Education. […]

    According to projections from the AAMC, the U.S. faces a physician shortage of 86,000 by 2036 if further investments aren’t made in training new physicians. Doctors who are at or over the age of retirement comprise a fifth of working physicians—representing a significant decrease in the future workforce as they age out.

    Link

  467. StevoR says

    Still World Glacier day over in the States :

    The first-ever World Day for Glaciers, to be celebrated on 21 March 2025, urges global action to protect glaciers and their crucial role in sustaining life on Earth for future generations. With over 2 billion people relying on glacier and snowmelt for freshwater—and projections showing that one-third of glacier sites could disappear by 2050—raising awareness and taking action to protect these vital ecosystems has never been more urgent.

    Source : https://www.unesco.org/en/days/world-glaciers

  469. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    John Skiles Skinner (Former 18F):

    From Nov 2023 to Jan 2024 I worked on a tool we called the AI sandbox. Our goal: let federal software devs test out AI tools in a safe way, to discover if they have any use. […] Renamed GSAi, the tool has been claimed by DOGE. […] No one from the new admin wrote single line of code for it.
    […]
    [WaPo – We don’t want an AI demo, we want answers: federal workers grill trump appointee during all-hands]

    They demo’d GSAi like it was pure magic to them. […] While saying “this is incredible” over and over, Musk’s GSA head Stephen Ehikian asked GSAi to “write me a website.” The output was not compliant with federal law. It said “Welcome to Our Company” on it and did not resemble a federal website at all. This garbage demo had a terrified audience. One viewer said “if this is the tool meant to replace us, thank God”.
    […]
    I actually don’t think that’s the plan.
    […]
    On stage, Ehikian asked GSAi to “write me a plan to rewrite the FAR” The FAR, Federal Acquisition Regulations, are laws that control how the gov’t buys stuff. They are legendary in their complexity for a good reason: to prevent corruption. To protect taxpayer money from theft by beltway bandits.

    The AI’s “plan” to simplify the FAR was generic and unusable, of course. But it is a subject that Ehikian and DOGE keep returning to: Contracting. The money.
    […]
    I believe the firings and the AI have the same purpose: to get humans out of the loop of evaluating contracts. To automate the process of spending government money. To rig up a computer that sends taxpayer dollars directly to the broligarchy. And to ensure no democracy or nonpartisan civil service can ever switch that computer off.

     
    John Skiles Skinner:

    Key to understanding “DOGE” is that it’s not a department. It’s not an organization at all: it has no firm membership list, no acknowledged leadership.

    The guy who liquidated 18F has been sent to destroy Dept of Labor tech. He’s not “part of DOGE” but also he is.

    Based on body language, Thomas Shedd is terrified. His voice trembles during the meetings he had with us. He said several times that he was scared to interact with the team on Slack.

    He’s clearly under a great deal of pressure from somewhere; when directly asked, he would not state where from. It seems inescapable that his terror ultimately comes from Elon Musk, the only boss he’s ever had in his career. Musk runs DOGE, insofar as anyone does.

    While you might expect power concentrated in one man would produce centralized decisions, that’s not what happens: Some within DOGE clearly want federal workers back in the office. Others are trying to sell federal offices as fast as possible. DOGE boys were deployed to interview 18F in an attempt to poach us. They buttered us up, then fired us all overnight. These actions are apparently uncoordinated.

     
    WaPo – Brother of Trump’s GSA leader tried to buy prime federal property

    John Skiles Skinner:

    Thank god for US inspectors general, the office which *actually* fights “fraud, waste, abuse, and misconduct”.

    DOGE apparently thinks these things weren’t already illegal? FAFO you can’t sell government buildings to your family at a discount.

    The DOGE mantra of “fighting waste, fraud, and abuse” is just a phrase they lifted from existing policy while firing the people who actually enforce that policy.

    Indeed, every DOGE idea I’ve seen so far is either:
    1. something the government already does, or
    2. something illegal

  470. JM says

    @469 CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain

    Key to understanding “DOGE” is that it’s not a department. It’s not an organization at all: it has no firm membership list, no acknowledged leadership.
    The guy who liquidated 18F has been sent to destroy Dept of Labor tech. He’s not “part of DOGE” but also he is.

    The lack of a clear organization is typical of super compressed constantly changing command structures in some tech companies. You have team members, team leads, and the team leads are reporting to executives. The teams change from project to project or even task to task. Team members are often unclear what the reporting structure is because there are political games for power going on that they are unaware of, which executive report to which changes without anybody telling the bottom level staff.
    No clear membership list is bull, this sort of organization always has a staff list and a record of who has access to what. Having a disgruntled employee walk out with company secrets, client list or install a kill switch are basic fears of this sort of organization. At DOGE they would be worried about an employee going to the press, it’s a huge concern in the Trump administration.

  472. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY):

    Tonight an unbelievable **34,000 people** gathered for our Denver rally to take on billionaires and win our country back. This was the largest political gathering in Denver since Obama in 2008. Also bigger than the 2024 DNC. And the largest ever rally in Bernie’s career (and obviously, mine too). [Photos]

    Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

    We expected 2,000 people out in GOP-held Greeley, Colorado. 11,000 people showed up. Something special is happening, folks.

    Various rallies and protests can be found at mobilize.us. Outside of capitols, listed events tend to be regular political meetups. Saturday Apr 5th might be another of those nationwide synchronies vs the takeover.

  473. StevoR says

    One more for yesterday’s (most places – guess maybe not Alaska, Hawaii and some Pacific islands onthe sluggish side of the timezones) World Glacier Day (#467-8) also via DW News :

    Five of the past six years have witnessed the most rapid glacier retreat on record, according to new research by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS). Vast mountain glacial flows created in the ice age in the US, Canada, Scandinavia, Central Europe, New Zealand and beyond, will be lucky to see the end of the century say researchers who warn of “cascading impacts” on economies, ecosystems, and communities downstream.

    Since records began in 1975, glaciers have reduced by more than 9,000 billion tons, according to Michael Zemp, director of the WGMS. The loss in that time is equivalent to a “huge ice block of the size of Germany” that is 25 meters thick, he said.

    Source : https://www.dw.com/en/how-bad-is-glacier-melt-and-why-does-it-matter/a-71985326

    Pace of melting seems to be accelerating. If it’s this bad now – & it is or worse – what will things be like and with what consequences tomorrow metaphorically speaking?

  474. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show

    Missed Social Security checks no big deal to Trump commerce secretary as attacks on agency escalate
    Video is 7:32 minutes

    Musk deploys squandered credibility in desperate bid to hold ailing Tesla together
    Video is 6:50 minutes

    Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
    Video is 5:41 minutes

  475. says

    The substance of these articles can be found in many credible news sources:
    RULE OF LAW? HA, HA, HA, GOOD JOKE!
    https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-tesla-el-salvador
    ‘Delusional’ Trump Threatens to Send Tesla Vandals to Prison for 20 Years… in El Salvador
    “If genuine steps are taken to remove U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to prisons in El Salvador,” said one legal expert, “this removal would violate not only U.S. law but the U.S. Constitution.”
    Jon Queally Mar 21, 2025

    RULE OF LAW? HA, HA, HA, GOOD JOKE!
    https://www.commondreams.org/news/doge-social-security
    Judge Blocks DOGE ‘Fishing Expedition’ in Sensitive Social Security Data Systems
    “The court saw that Elon Musk and his unqualified lackeys present a grave danger to Social Security and have illegally accessed the data of millions of Americans,” said one union leader.
    Jessica Corbett Mar 20, 2025

    DEATH OF COLUMBIA UNIV. INTEGRITY:
    https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-columbia-demands
    ‘Columbia Has Lost Something It May Never Regain’: Outrage as the University Yields to Trump’s Demands
    Eloise Goldsmith Mar 22, 2025

    DEATH SPIRAL SYMPTOM:
    https://www.commondreams.org/news/finland-happiest-country
    Social Democracies Keep Top Spots on World Happiness Report as US Falls to Record Low
    In the U.S., “the downward trend in life satisfaction is particularly steep among young people under 30, especially women.”
    Julia Conley Mar 21, 2025
    and –
    https://www.juancole.com/2025/03/america-unhappy-suspicious.html
    America, the Unhappy: Lonely, Suspicious, Gun-ridden, and Stingy, the US Ranks Low for Well-Being
      AND they have ‘Made America Great Again’ to the point that the life expectancy is also dropping

  476. says

    Of course, all those court rulings are being COMPLETELY IGNORED WITH IMPUNITY by tRUMP and the muskrat. Which just proves how well the ‘RULE OF LAW’ is working!

  478. rorschach says

    Lynna @433,

    “Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, and Walz aren’t afraid to face Republican constituents who have been neglected by their own party.”

    The time to do this was 4 years ago. So was the time to not vote to finance Israel’s genocide, which they did anyway. Spare me with these pretenders. Until people who still vote for Democrats as if they were a better alternative don’t wisen up, the USA is lost.

  479. says

    Judge Points Out That Pregnant Women Have Become The New Undesirable Patients

    A federal judge ruled Thursday that emergency room abortions in Idaho will remain legal at least until he issues a final decision in a case where Idaho argues that its abortion ban supersedes federal emergency room mandates.

    Congress passed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) in the first place to crack down on the practice of “patient dumping,” where a hospital would turn away patients who couldn’t pay for their treatment.

    “When EMTALA passed, these ‘undesirable’ patients were the indigent,” Judge B. Lynn Winmill of the District of Idaho wrote. “Today, they are pregnant women. Although Congress could not have foreseen this dimension of patient dumping — women transferred to other facilities not because they are poor but because the emergency service they need has been criminalized — EMTALA’s requirements are deliberately broad.”

    The opinion had the odd feature of including Supreme Court justice quotes about this specific case, due to its odd trajectory. A previous iteration of the lawsuit made it to the Supreme Court, which ultimately kicked it back down to the 9th Circuit, deciding it had intervened preemptively. That case formally ended Friday, as the Trump Justice Department declined to continue advancing a lawsuit filed by the Biden administration.

    The new case was brought by an Idaho hospital system, and has now notched an early win. Idaho has argued, eyebrow-raisingly, that abortions are never needed care in emergency situations.

    “When Idaho’s abortion ban went into full effect for six months in 2024, St. Luke’s Health System was forced to airlift six pregnant patients with emergency medical conditions to neighboring states where they could receive the appropriate care. In contrast, only a single pregnant patient was airlifted in the entirety of 2023,” Winmill wrote. “This sad but illuminating natural experiment shows that Idaho’s ban on emergency abortions is not compatible with hospitals’ stabilization obligations under EMTALA.”

    Link

    Several reports, including the one quoted above are available at the link.

  481. says

    Author and Activist Bill McKibben on Climate Progress in the Age of Trump 2.0

    The administration is “rejecting flat-out the science,” he says, “about the single most dangerous thing that’s ever happened.”

    [Trump] intends to undo not just Joe Biden’s environmental legacy, but an entire generation’s worth of action on climate change. The administration has announced it is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. It has frozen Inflation Reduction Act grants, stopped issuing permits for offshore wind development, and declared an “energy emergency” to boost fossil fuel production. The White House appears to be preparing to go after the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding,” which undergirds EPA regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, while cutting EPA spending by 65 percent.

    How should environmentalists respond? Activist and author Bill McKibben has been a leading voice on climate change since 1989, when he published The End of Nature, the first book on the subject aimed at a general audience. McKibben spoke to e360 contributing writer Elizabeth Kolbert about the urgency of the moment, the role of protest, the future of clean energy, and where he sees glimmers of hope.

    Question: If you care about the future of the planet, what do you do at a time like this?

    Answer: I think it’s fair to despair a little bit. I mean, we should acknowledge what a remarkable moment it is that the government of the most powerful country on Earth, at least for the moment, is rejecting flat-out the science that’s been developed over many decades, often by scientists working for the government, about the single most dangerous thing that’s ever happened in human history. And the level of irresponsibility, indeed just craziness, is off the charts.

    The Inflation Reduction Act represented the first significant act by the US Congress to deal with climate science. It was a far from perfect bill, but powerful in many ways. So powerful that the fossil fuel industry needed to do what it could to shut it down and to shut down the energy transition to the extent that it could. And hence, the oil industry spent unprecedented sums of money—the number I saw most recently was $455 million—on the last election cycle.

    I’d say the two slight saving graces are, one, as the US retreats from leadership here, there are others, especially the Chinese, who have been stepping up to fill this vacuum. I have a lot of problems with the Chinese government and don’t particularly look forward to their hegemony. But on issues around energy, they’ve been more responsible than we have and built out most of the world’s clean energy at this point.

    And the second saving grace is that though they can delay this energy transition, they can’t stop it. It’s rooted in the simple fact that we now live on a planet, as of the last three or four years, where the cheapest way to produce energy is to point a sheet of glass at the sun. And that won’t change. So, Americans may be denied some of the fruits of that technological revolution, and it will be delayed in ways that make the climate crisis far worse, but it’s not as if [the Trump administration] has complete control of this situation.

    Much more at the link.

  482. says

    Three people were killed and 14 others were injured in a Friday night shooting in Las Cruces, New Mexico, according to police.

    The Las Cruces Police Department said the shooting happened at around 10 p.m. at Young Park, over 200 miles south of Albuquerque. Three victims, a 16-year-old boy and two 19-year-old men, were found dead.

    “The injured range in age from 16 years to 36 years,” police said in a news release, adding that the identities of the victims will not be released at this time.

    The police department has not shared any details about what circumstances led to the shooting. Multiple shots fired from the incident could be heard in a video shared to social media.

    No arrests have been made in connection with the shooting as of Saturday morning, but police are following “multiple leads.” […]

    Link

  483. JM says

    @478 rorschach:

    The time to do this was 4 years ago. So was the time to not vote to finance Israel’s genocide, which they did anyway. Spare me with these pretenders. Until people who still vote for Democrats as if they were a better alternative don’t wisen up, the USA is lost.

    How very much like your namesake. Rorshach has great difficultly seeing the difference between something bad and something terrible. In his eyes all wrongs are roughly equal and anything less then perfect is evil.

  484. rorschach says

    “How very much like your namesake. Rorshach has great difficultly seeing the difference between something bad and something terrible. In his eyes all wrongs are roughly equal and anything less then perfect is evil.”

    Candidate for the most ill informed and stupid thing I have read here in the last 17 years, in a crowded field. Schumer is not less than perfect, he is a traitor and collaborator. So are Fetterman, the other 9 traitors who voted for the CR budget, and AOC and Bernie, the wannabe progressive Dems who wave through Israel’s genocide. You need to wake up.

  485. KG says

    Until people who still vote for Democrats as if they were a better alternative don’t wisen up, the USA is lost. – rorschach@478

    What’s “simple truth” is that the world would have a much better chance of escaping catastrophe if the Democrats had won the presidency and Congress last November than they do now. Things would still be very bad, but the gap between that possibility and the actual situation is vast.

  486. says

    I hope that one day in the far distant future we can have a society governed by just laws. But, for now:
    RULE OF LAW, HA, HA, HA
    https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-admin-ignores-judges-order-bring-deportation-planes/story?id=119857181
    ABC News = Trump administration ignores judge’s order to turn deportation planes …
    6 days ago Officials said the planes had to land for “national security” reasons. President Donald Trump’s administration made a calculated decision to ignore a judge’s directive to turn around two flights …

    https://claytoonz.com/2025/03/21/maga-king/

  487. says

    Inside Trump’s war on kids

    In another concession to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, the Trump administration shut down a crucial program that catalogued war crime. This included a database that tracked the mass deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia—another obvious sign that President Donald Trump has little to no care for the wellbeing of children.

    Managed through an initiative at Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, the database played an important role in the International Criminal Court’s 2023 charges against Putin related to the illegal deportation of children.

    Researchers were informed last month that the State Department had “quietly” terminated the contract to comply with Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, though sources say that the database may have been deleted in the confusion wrought by DOGE’s cuts.

    “We have reason to believe that the data from the repository has been permanently deleted,” Democratic Rep. Greg Landsman of Ohio wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

    The news comes after a report from The New York Times about the Trump administration halting food testing programs and shutting down a group that studied bacteria in infant formula.

    […] Meanwhile, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has exposed his lack of integrity when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable populations, particularly through his awful mishandling of the ongoing measles outbreak in Texas.

    Couple that with Kennedy’s plan to destroy children’s teeth by eliminating fluoride from drinking water, and the threat to U.S. children’s health is glaring.

    Before that, the Department of Agriculture pulled $1 billion in funding for programs that helped feed school-aged and low-income children. The programs, which were created during the Biden administration, provided funding to local farmers and food vendors to help combat food insecurity.

    And, of course, Trump has made it clear that he plans to dismantle the Department of Education, which Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been working toward by firing half of the department’s staff. […]

    But this is just the tip of the iceberg of the hypocrisy displayed by Trump and Republicans who claim to crusade for children’s welfare yet enact policies and maintain alliances that actively cause them harm.

  488. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/bet-you-didnt-have-trees-are-dei

    Rejoice, America! Donald Trump’s war on wokeness has chalked up another victory over the forces of Marxism and divisiveness, so we will never again be torn apart by racial hatred aimed at white people. In the name of combating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (this is the new rightwing code for Black people and gay people existing in public) as ordered by the Great Leader his first day in office, the US Forest Service in February cancelled all unspent funds in a $75 million grant that had already started planting trees in communities all over America. You probably thought that trees were green, but it turns out that these particular trees were also anti-white, at least according to the Trump administration.

    The program was meant to help grow trees in neighborhoods that lacked them, to provide shade, make the places nicer, reduce the “urban heat island effect” that makes cities more miserable in the summer, and even capture some carbon. The grant, from funds in Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, was administered by the revolutionary cadres at the National Arbor Day Foundation, which distributed the money to around 100 cities, nonprofits, and tribes.

    As NPR reported Friday, such dangerous slight improvements to the lives of some Americans had to be stamped out, as the Forest Service explained in a form letter advising the affected green freaks that the tree ride was over. The program, the letter said, “no longer aligns with agency priorities regarding diversity, equity and inclusion.” And so the program had to be not just nipped in the bud but destroyed, root and branch.

    Oh yes, and let’s once more remind you, dear reader, that pulling back the funds doesn’t merely breach a contract between the Forest Service and the Arbor Day Foundation, it’s also blatantly unconstitutional, because Congress appropriated the funding for the IRA, and Trump has no legal authority to stop it from going for its intended purpose.

    Arbor Day Foundation Executive Director Dan Lambe said the sudden termination of the program uprooted some terrific efforts, telling NPR that the project had been an opportunity to join with partners to “plant trees in communities, to create jobs, to create economic benefits, to create conservation benefits, to help create cooler, safer, and healthier communities.” Now, it seems, these communities will have to do without the magic of frondship.

    Among the local tree-planting programs shut down was an effort to 1,600 plant trees in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. The city lost some 200,000 trees in Hurricane Katrina, and replanting was an important part of improving climate resilience, since trees not only cool urban neighborhoods, they also help slow stormwater and improve air quality.

    […] labeling of the tree planting program as a crime of “equity” may have at least partly been due to the kind of boneheaded CTRL-F search for wokeness that we’ve seen in other parts of the War On DEI:

    […] in this context, equity meant planting trees in neighborhoods without them.

    […] The NPR story also looks at municipal forestry projects in infamously woke inner-city ghettos like Butte, Montana (90.8 percent white), and the small town of Talent, Oregon (population 6,332, 86.5 percent white). In Talent, a scary DEI grant of about $600,000 was supposed to go to replanting parts of town scorched by the 2020 Almeda Wildfire, including mobile home parks where greenery has been slow to come back, but thank goodness, Donald Trump ensured the place will continue looking like a lifeless post-fire hellscape for the foreseeable future.

    […] Ladd Keith directs the University of Arizona’s Heat Resilience Initiative, and points out that trees in urban areas are a great investment, resulting in far more benefits than they cost, in the form of improved health, lower utility bills, and even higher property values, not that Trump wants anyone but himself seeing those.

    […] Considering that the clawback of funding for this modest program is insanely unconstitutional, we hope there will be lawsuits by states and nonprofits harmed by it. Trees should be an uncontroversial good. But in the larger picture of Trump’s attempts to undo democracy, and to make sure Americans can never have nice things, this one may get lost in the chaos. That would be a damn shame. Maybe some of the donors who have been quietly filling in part of the funding gap for other frozen climate resilience efforts will help out.

    […] eventually this Trump winter must end, and if the roots are strong, all will be well again in the garden.

  489. says

    It’s hard to keep up with all the ‘wonderful’ things the felonious muskrat has done. I will not suggest violence to solve the felonious muskrat disaster. But, I will suggest that anyone with an older car might want a parking space closer to the store, blocking access to tesla supercharger parking spaces!

    This: https://crooksandliars.com/2025/03/co-president-trump-suggests-prison-el
    Co-President Trump Suggests Prison In El Salvador For Tesla Attackers
    Conover Kennard, Mar 21st, 2025

    And This: https://crooksandliars.com/2025/03/fox-news-death-penalty-tesla-vandals
    By RedStateRachel — March 21, 2025
    The Fox News anchors discuss the DEATH PENALTY for people who vandalize Tesla cars.

    And This: https://crooksandliars.com/2025/03/commerce-secretary-does-infomercial-tesla
    Elon Musk has decided to have the U.S. Secretary of Commerce do infomercials for Tesla cars

    And This: https://crooksandliars.com/2025/03/tesla-missing-14-billion-its-balance-sheet
    https://www.jalopnik.com/1815435/tesla-accounting-1-4-billion-dollars-missing-report/
    Tesla Missing $1.4 Billion?
    Financial Times broke a story that might interest people who are worried about President Musk and his DOGE muskrats. This money can’t be accounted for!

    And This: https://crooksandliars.com/2025/03/tesla-recalls-swaticars-because-pieces-are
    Tesla Recalls Swasticars Because Pieces Are Literally Falling Off.
    Red Painter, Mar 21st, 2025
    8th recall for nazitruks, now a physical recall of 46,000+, the owners must take them to a tesla dealer and wait for the repair.

  490. says

    Washington Post link

    “Trump said he didn’t sign the Alien Enemies Act proclamation.”

    […] Trump told reporters Friday evening that he did not sign the controversial proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act to quickly deport migrants his administration says are violent gang members from Venezuela.

    So what did happen? Did Trump misspeak? Is he trying to deflect responsibility for a decision under heavy legal scrutiny by suggesting he was merely following through on an idea proposed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio? And if he didn’t sign it, who — or what — did?

    “I don’t know when it was signed, because I didn’t sign it,” Trump said on the South Lawn of the White House as he prepared to leave for his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. “Other people handled it. But Marco Rubio’s done a great job. And he wanted them out, and we go along with that. We want to get criminals out of our country.”

    Trump’s signature appears on the digital image of the proclamation available for viewing with the Federal Register, the government repository of official documents. And White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said late Friday that Trump did personally sign the proclamation.

    But rather than say that the president misspoke, Cheung said Trump’s claim that he “didn’t sign it” was a reference to the law passed 227 years ago and not the more recent document — an explanation immediately questioned on social media given that reporters had specifically asked about the newer proclamation.

    “President Trump was obviously referring to the original Alien Enemies Act that was signed back in 1798,” Cheung said. “The recent executive order was personally signed by President Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act that designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization in order to apprehend and deport these heinous criminals.” [JFC, and LOL]

    […] U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg asked why the proclamation was “essentially signed in the dark” so that deportation flights could begin immediately. The White House had announced the proclamation’s signing after preparations to deport 137 Venezuelan migrants had already begun.

    […] In a statement the past weekend, Marco Rubio hailed Trump’s decision-making.

    “Under the President’s direction, his administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act to initiate the removal of hundreds of dangerous members of Tren de Aragua (TdA), a vicious and violent Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), which has been threatening our nation, conducting irregular warfare, and terrorizing Americans,” he wrote in a statement. […]

  491. says

    @488 Lynna reported: ordered by the Great Leader his first day in office, the US Forest Service in February cancelled all unspent funds in a $75 million grant that had already started planting trees in communities all over America.
    I reply: So, now they aren’t satisfied with creating food deserts, they are trying to keep less affluent neighborhoods ACTUAL DESERTS DEVOID OF TREES.
    How beneficent of emperor tRUMP. /sarcasmus maximus

  492. says

    […] the “Department of Government Efficiency” makes the federal government almost comically inefficient.

    At the IRS, employees spend Mondays queued up at shared computers to submit their DOGE-mandated “five things I did last week” emails. Meanwhile, taxpayer customer service calls go unanswered.

    At the Bureau of Land Management, federal surveyors are no longer permitted to buy replacement equipment. So, when a shovel breaks at a field site, they can’t just drive to the nearest town or hardware store. Instead, work stops as employees track down one of the few managers nationwide authorized to file an official procurement form and order new parts.

    At the Food and Drug Administration, leadership canceled the agency’s subscription to LexisNexis, an online reference tool that employees need to conduct regulatory research. Some workers might not have noticed this loss yet, however, because the agency’s incompetently planned return-to-office order this week left them too busy hunting for insufficient parking and toilet paper. (Multiple bathrooms have run out of bath tissue, employees report.)

    I’ve spent the past few weeks interviewing frustrated civil servants, whose remarks typically rotate through panic, rage and black humor. Almost none are willing to speak on the record because of concerns about purges by the U.S. DOGE Service. But their themes are easy to corroborate: Routine tasks take longer to complete, grinding down worker productivity. DOGE is also bogging down employees with meaningless busywork, which sets them up to be punished for neglecting their actual duties.

    For example, many have been diverted away from their usual responsibilities in order to scrub forbidden words from agency documents, as part of Trump’s crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

    […] What counts as DEI wrongthink also changes almost daily, meaning employees must perform the same word-cleansing tasks repeatedly.

    […] Another Kafkaesque executive order requires agency heads to send the White House a list, within 60 days, of their agency’s “unconstitutional regulations” — the ultimate “When did you stop beating your wife?”-style directive.

    […] there are costs to, say, not feeding the Transportation Security Administration’s bomb-sniffing dogs. And if contracts lapse when they could have been easily extended, projects must restart the time-consuming and expensive bid process. Again, this stops other critical work, costing both the government and the public.

    At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, no contracts may be initiated or extended without sign-off from the commerce secretary, creating a bottleneck. One NOAA contract that expires soon is for maintenance and repair of the all-hazards weather radio network, which broadcasts tornado warnings and watches, among other life-and-death alerts. The contract has been stuck in limbo, just as an already-deadly tornado season is getting underway.

    […] The IRS, meanwhile, is deleting all non-English forms and notices, employees were told this week. This will mean less taxpayer compliance and more work for employees. Lose-lose, if you’re trying to keep the government efficiently run. […]

    Washington Post link

    More at the link.

  493. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Anna Bower (Lawfare):

    WITAOD WATCH: Elon Musk’s own lawyers told a judge in Delaware that he is “in charge of Establishing and Implementing the President’s [DOGE]…”

    His own lawyers tried on Mar 19th to wriggle out of letting Musk be deposed, on grounds that it’d be burdensome for such a busy CEO and high-ranking gov official.

  494. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/-the-answer-is-they-die-trump-musk-cuts-to-usaid-having-deadly-consequences-in-africa-235104326002

    The answer is they die’: Trump-Musk cuts to USAID having deadly consequences in Africa
    Video is 5:15 minutes

    MSNBC’s Ali Velshi is joined by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who has just returned from South Sudan, to discuss the very real and very deadly consequences that Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s cuts to USAID funding are having.

  496. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    John Elwood:

    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 […] What struck me most is the centralization of control and access. […] a trio of mostly overlooked EOs and memoranda
    […]
    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.

    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.

    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. […] 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.

    EmptyWheel: “Both the OPM and the data dissemination are attempts to override judges orders. If a judge has already ruled that OPM can’t fire people from other agencies, how does an EO make it legal?”

  500. JM says

    @496 CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain

    EmptyWheel: “Both the OPM and the data dissemination are attempts to override judges orders. If a judge has already ruled that OPM can’t fire people from other agencies, how does an EO make it legal?”

    It doesn’t but does give you a chance to fire some people and then force them to go to court and get the judge to hold a new set of hearings and issue new court orders. It’s all cases they should lose but this could be used to keep resetting the clock.
    I don’t think the administration is actually that organized. More likely the new rules were drawn up and issued without much consideration for their legality. If X has been a problem in court then issue an order making X legal. That this is almost always itself illegal doesn’t matter, that is what Trump wants.