Sunday, February 09, 2025

CBS POLL: VOTERS APPROVE OF TRUMP BECAUSE HE'S STRONG AND WRONG

Years ago, Bill Clinton said:
"When people are feeling insecure, they'd rather have someone who is strong and wrong rather than somebody who is weak and right."
That seems to be borne out by a new CBS poll.



These aren't great early numbers for Trump -- at a similar point in Joe Biden's presidency, he had a 59%-35% job approval rating according to Politico/Morning Consult, a 53%-40% rating according to The Economist/YouGov, and a 60%-40% rating according to The Hill/HarrisX. Nevertheless, Trump is in positive territory.

Some of his policies appear to be genuinely popular. There's 59%-41% support for the deportation program and 64%-36% support for sending troops to the southern border. Also, when respondents are asked whether Trump's focus on certain issues is too much, not enough, or the right amount, "right amount" is the top answer for "Cutting government spending," "Ending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs," and "Cutting U.S. foreign aid programs" (though in each case, "right amount" is chosen by less the a majority of respondents).

But some of the numbers in the poll suggest that respondents like Trump because he's very vigorously doing something, even if they don't necessarily like it or think it will work.



The numbers start to look weird when you see these paired results:



So voters approve of Trump's approach to Gaza while disapproving of what is apparently the centerpiece of his approach to Gaza.

In a separate question, respondents are asked, "What do you think is Donald Trump’s goal when he talks about the U.S. taking over Gaza?" The answers are:
Have the U.S. take over Gaza: 22%

Start negotiations with countries in the Middle East for something else: 28%

Both: 29%

Neither: 21%
If you add choices 1 and 3, it seems that 51% of respondents think Trump actually wants to take over Gaza -- which only 13% of respondents think would be a good idea! But 54% think he's doing a good job on Gaza anyway.

By a large margin, the respondents don't believe that Trump is focusing enough on prices:



In fact, 47% of respondents say that in recent weeks the prices for things they buy have been increasing, while only 3% say they're decreasing, and 63% say egg prices are going up. Trump's approach to the economy gets a lukewarm-to-negative response overall. Only 35% of respondents think Trump's policies will make them financially better off. A majority -- 51% -- think his policies will make food prices go up, while only 28% think the policies will lower food prices. The respondents aren't very fond of tariffs:



In fact, 73% of them think new tariffs will raise prices on the the things they buy, and only 32% think they'll help create U.S. jobs. Only 33% of respondents believe tariffs will reduce the amount of fentanyl in this country, while 55% think it will have no effect.

But there's a lesson here for Democrats who think they can watch all the madness and just shout, "What about egg prices?" Trump isn't addressing voters' #1 issue in the 2024 election, and the respondents in this poll know that -- and yet his job approval is positive. That tells me that voters are pleased to have a president who's taking some kind of decisive action and making sure we know he's taking decisive action -- unlike Joe Biden.

It will probably take a while for disillusionment to settle in. Democrats need to talk about everything that has the potential to go wrong, and not be deterred if the message doesn't get through right away. Right now, quite a few Americans like the administration's energy, and appreciate a few of the policies. But it's not the level of optimism that's normal at the beginning of a presidential term, and there's skepticism on several fronts. Anti-Trump messages ought to start making sense to many voters in the next few months. Let's hope the totalitarian capture of the government can at least be partly reversed by then.

Saturday, February 08, 2025

JUST DISBAND CONGRESS (updated)

Here's some news:
The State Department on Friday announced a $7 billion arms sale to Israel, circumventing the congressional review process, according to Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee....

During the standard congressional review process, the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are notified of the arms sale and given time to raise concerns and ask questions. But even with questions outstanding from Meeks, the administration pushed forward with the sale.

“This move is yet another repudiation by Donald Trump of Congress’ rightful and legitimate oversight prerogative,” Meeks said in a statement Friday. “Furthermore, (Secretary of State Marco) Rubio has failed to provide adequate justification or documentation for bypassing the Congressional Committee review process.”
This is just a show of pure force. Aid for Israel would have sailed through Congress. John Fetterman would have begged the Republican majority to allow him to co-sponsor the bill. In November, Bernie Sanders tried to block a $20 billion aid package, but only 19 out of 100 senators voted to reject any portion of the outlay.

It's clear that the Republican majority in Congress won't do a thing to prevent the dismantling of America's constitutional checks and balances -- the GOP is winning and Republican members of Congress are still getting paid, so what's not to like, as far as they're concerned?

Since we don't have a functioning Congress anymore, here's a very simple bill I'd file on Monday if I were a congressional Democrat.
WHEREAS the majority of members of the party controlling both the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate have concluded that Congress no longer needs to perform its duties as laid out in the Constitution of the United States; and

WHEREAS these legislators have chosen to cede their power entirely to the Executive Branch; therefore, be it

Resolved, that the United States Congress is hereby disbanded.
The wording might not be perfect and, technically, Congress can't be disbanded with a simple bill -- a constitutional amendment would be necessary. But the Constitution is effectively suspended right now. This just makes it all official.

I realize that proposing a bill like this would be a cheap stunt, but I think a few cheap stunts would be a good idea for Democrats right now. They have the potential to become man-bites-dog stories, and even if the stories aren't written with an air of seriousness, they might get some attention. Also, it's a better look for Democrats to mock Republicans once in a while instead of howling in agony every time they do something. The agonized howls are an appropriate response, but at some point you have to look like the bratty kid who's daring the teacher to send him to the principal's office -- at least for a moment, you, the brat, seize power.

And speaking of brattiness, here's something simple we all can do:

Print out this cover, from a magazine the president takes very seriously. It depicts Elon Musk, not Donald Trump, behind the Resolute Desk.



Place it in an envelope and mail it to:
President Donald J. Trump
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington DC 20500
Or maybe to:
President Elon Musk
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington DC 20500
How grumpy will Trump be if a million of us do this?

I'd give a sizable contribution to anyone willing to erect billboards in all fifty states that say ELON MUSK IS PRESIDENT. That would piss Trump off.

It would also focus America's attention on Musk's growing unpopularity. The Washington Post reports:
Constituents have flooded the phone lines at the U.S. Capitol this week, many of them asking questions about billionaire Elon Musk “feeding USAID into the wood chipper” and his access to government systems....

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said the Senate’s phones were receiving 1,600 calls each minute, compared with the usual 40 calls per minute. Many of the calls she’s been receiving are from people concerned about U.S. DOGE Service employees having broad access to government systems and sensitive information. The callers are asking whether their information is compromised and about why there isn’t more transparency about what is happening, she said.

“It’s asking for a lot of clarification,” Murkowski said, noting that Alaska has a high concentration of federal workers.

“It is a deluge on DOGE,” said Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minnesota). “Truly our office has gotten more phone calls on Elon Musk and what the heck he’s doing mucking around in federal government than I think anything we’ve gotten in years. ... People are really angry.”

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said he’s been hearing from constituents “constantly” on DOGE and Musk. “We can hardly answer the phones fast enough. It’s a combination of fear, confusion and heartbreak, because of the importance of some of these programs.”
Democrats should be in Just Asking Questions mode. Their public statements should be: What are they doing with this data? Will they cut off your Social Security check if you helped your kid make a poster for Black History Month ten years ago and posted about it on Facebook?

And: The Constitution says all these spending decisions have to be approved by Congress. Maybe you think it's good they're cutting red tape, but here's the problem: If this can break these laws, they can break any law. They can get into your bank account and take all your money. They can tell your employer that you voted for Obama once or that you or someone in your family is gay or trans. Is that what they plan to do? We really don't know. But we do know that they do whatever they want, because the Republican majority in Congress won't stop them, and they don't care if what they're doing is illegal because they think they're above the law.

Okay, that's earnest and agonized. Maybe the insolent version is this McSweeney's humor piece, written in Elon Musk's voice. What if someone posted an edited version of this on social media as if it was an actual pronouncement from Musk?
... consider the waste and bloat in how the US government used to give away taxpayer dollars via an overcomplicated system of lobbying, tax breaks, and bloated contracts. This will become much more optimized once I force the entire US population to pay a 5 percent transaction fee to conduct Social Security transactions on X, The Everything Website (20 percent if they have pronouns in their bio)....

We are also hustling to streamline and reduce redundancy in how Americans’ privacy is violated. Experian breaches, dark web data brokers, unregulated social media, Chinese PLA hacking? Who has time for it all? Now, we can get this done in one fell swoop by putting every US citizen’s Social Security number on a public Google Sheet administered by the nineteen-year-old who programmed Grok’s sense of humor.

My record speaks for itself. I have led X, which will now be crowdsourcing air traffic control via live posts, to become incredibly efficient at serving up pornographic Adolf Eichmann memes.
This is what the right would do if the parties were reversed: rewrite this slightly and post it on social media, with the words ascribed to Musk. Use bots to amplify these posts alleging that Musk actually plans to impose a 5 percent transaction fee to conduct Social Security transactions on X and intends to put every citizen’s Social Security number on a public Google Sheet. Which he might really do! So we should let the rumors spread.

(Edited to remove a musical portion of this post that seemed inappropriate.)

Friday, February 07, 2025

IT'S THE GOP, STUPID

What Axios describes here sure looks like a movement:
More than a dozen Democratic lawmakers and aides said in interviews with Axios that their offices have received historically high call volumes in recent days....

* Aaron Fritschner, a spokesperson for Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), said his office's phones have been "ringing off the hook without pause since we opened yesterday morning."

* On social media sites such as X and Bluesky, another aide said, "Every Dem is getting lit up by the neo-resistance folks being like 'do more.'"

... "We had the most calls we've ever had in one day on Monday in 12 years," said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.).

* Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who has served in Congress since 1997, told Axios: "I can't recall ever receiving this many calls. People disgusted with what's going on, and they want us to fight back."
If the parties were reversed and this were happening at the start of a Democratic president's term, there'd be breathless coverage of the movement in the mainstream media, regardless of how popular the president appeared to be. Remember the Tea Party at the start of Barack Obama's term? The message of the coverage would be that Real Americans aren't on board with what the president is doing. But the movement Axios is describing is Democratic, so it will never be portrayed as the true voice of the people in the mainstream press.

Axios tells us that Democrats on Capitol Hill find this all rather annoying:
Some lawmakers feel their grassroots base is setting expectations too high for what Democrats can actually accomplish as the minority party in both chambers of Congress.

* Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told Axios: "What I think we need to do more is: Put the onus on Republicans, so that the calls that we're getting are directed toward Republicans."

* "There has definitely been some tension the last few days where people felt like: you are calling the wrong people. You are literally calling the wrong people," said one House Democrat.
But the callers are simply doing what they believe will be most effective. Since Donald Trump's first term, Indivisible and other activist groups have told voters to limit their calls to their own representatives and senators.
Members of Congress don’t care what people outside of their district (for House) or state (for Senators) think. Remember, MoCs care first and foremost about getting re-elected—and the people who can cast actual votes for or against them are their own constituents. If you can’t vote for or against them in their next election, they don’t care what you think....

For example, if Senate staffers have the sense that most phone calls are coming in from out of state, they will tell their boss that. That gives the Senator a reason to dismiss call volume as the concern of “out-of-state troublemakers” (which they don’t care about) instead of the concerns of their actual constituents (which they should and most times do care about).
But maybe it's time to start ignoring this advice. Maybe we should be making life miserable for Republican staffers, too. Maybe we should lie about where we live. If a staffer asks for an address or a zip code, maybe we should be ready with a fake one.

I agree that some angry people don't understand how little power Democrats have. But why don't Democrats have power? Because Republicans never break ranks. Republicans nearly always vote in lockstep. This was true before Trump took over the party and it's true now. Occasionally Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski votes against a GOP priority, but only when the party can spare those votes, as in the case of the final vote on Pete Hegseth's appointment as defense secretary. When the final votes are taken on Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, and Robert Kennedy Jr., they'll all be confirmed.

But most Americans don't know that. They don't know that our Trump problem is actually a Republican problem, just the way they didn't understand that our failure to pass meaningful gun legislation after Sandy Hook was (and is) because Republicans won't budge on guns -- ever.

Why don't voters know this? Partly it's because the media doesn't report on it. The media treats Republican party-line voting as just a fact of life and not as a choice. Pundits scold Democrats for allegedly failing to understand the concerns of right-wing voters, but no one ever scolds Republicans for ignoring voters to their left.

And Democratic politicians regarly describe a world in which bipartisanship is possible. Here's a social media message from the Democratic leader in the House:

Republicans have been ordered by their billionaire Puppet Master to end Medicare as we know it. Democrats have 215 members in the House who can stop this extreme effort. All we need is three House Republicans to join us.

— Hakeem Jeffries (@hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social) February 6, 2025 at 7:26 AM


But that will never happen. Yet many voters don't understand that, in part because Democrats prattle on about bipartisanship and frequently praise the rare Republicans, such as Liz Cheney, who challenge the party orthodoxy on one or two issues. Every day, Republicans and the right-wing media blame Democrats and liberals for everything that's wrong in the world. Democrats attack Trump, but never talk about GOP lockstep voting. In fact, for all their willingness to be conciliatory, it's Democrats who have the reputation for ideological purity and extremism, while death-before-compromise Republicans are seen as less extreme, or extreme only because Donald Trump has intimidated them and compelled them to suppress their usual middle-of-the-road instincts.

I don't know what the solution to this is -- but issue polling and referendum voting make it clear that quite a few Republican voters disagree with their party on many issues. Abortion right referenda pass in red states. So do referenda aimed at increasing state minimum wages. Polling shows across-the-board support for higher taxes on the rich and some gun control measures. And in the present moment, the institutions Trump is threatening have strong support:



Democrats should name and shame the GOP. Who knows? Maybe Republicans' own constituents will start lighting up the phones.

Thursday, February 06, 2025

TRUMP AND MUSK THINK REALLY BAD THINGS WILL NEVER HAPPEN, AND SO DO THE SANEWASHING JOURNALISTS WHO COVER THEM

After President Trump announced a proposal to forcibly remove Gazans, clear the territory, and turn it into a "Riviera," Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times assured us that cooler heads are likely to prevail and Trump is likely to walk away from the idea:
Several advisers to Mr. Trump said they expected the Gaza ownership idea to die away quietly as it became clear to Mr. Trump that it was unfeasible. And that already seemed to be happening by Wednesday afternoon.
In a separate Times story, Patrick Kingsley told us not to worry our pretty little minds, because Trump didn't really mean what he said.
But it is the very outlandishness of Mr. Trump’s plan that signaled to some that it was not meant to be taken literally.

Just as Mr. Trump has often made bold threats elsewhere that he ultimately has not enacted, some saw his gambit in Gaza as a negotiating tactic aimed at forcing compromises from both Hamas and from Arab leaders.
So relax! Trump won't actually pursue this terrible idea!

But, in fact, Trump told us on Truth Social this morning at 6:32 Eastern time that yes, he intends to pursue this:



(No, I have no idea why he's calling Chuck Schumer a Palestinian.)

You can argue that the elite media sanewashes Trump and his henchmen because elite media outlets actually support Trump and are pleased that he's doing what he's doing. But if that were true, I think stories and editorials critical of Trump would disappear altogether in these news outlets. The Times endorsed Kamala Harris. It publishes writers such as Jamelle Bouie and Michelle Goldberg who regularly denounce Trump. I think we have a different problem.

When you're a successful journalist, it's easily to fall into the habit of believing that the system works and powerful people are sincerely trying to do a good job -- after all, powerful people rewarded you with a plum position at The New York Times or CNN or The Atlantic. Your life is good, so the system must be benevolent.

If that's your worldview, it might be hard for you to imagine that functioning institutions could be taken over by madmen and simply stop working properly. You assume something like that can't really happen. The news organizations that have employed you have functioned well. The government you cover has always functioned well enough to sustain the country's status as the globe's dominant power. If you've gone from birth in an economically comfortable family to good school after good school and a series of mentor-mentee relationships that have efficiently advanced your career until you're finally at or near the top of your profession, maybe the idea of a complete breakdown in any system is impossible for you to imagine.

The two men running the country have their own problems imagining calamity. Both Donald Trump and Elon Musk are sons of rich men who became even richer. Trump has experienced what should have been calamity -- at one point in his life, he was nearly a billion dollars in debt -- but he survived that. His political viability survived a mass casualty event in the final year of his first term, and lawyers, ideologue judges, and a massive army of right-wing propagandists got him through multiple legal cases.

So he thinks he's bulletproof -- as does Musk, who ran Twitter into the ground, build cars that regularly catch on fire, and is still the richest man in the world, and getting richer by the day.

Last night I watched the final episode of HBO's Chernobyl, which I'd missed when it first aired. That final episode dramatizes the events leading to the Chernobyl meltdown.
The disaster occurred while running a test to simulate cooling the reactor during an accident in blackout conditions. The operators carried out the test despite an accidental drop in reactor power, and due to a design issue, attempting to shut down the reactor in those conditions resulted in a dramatic power surge. The reactor components ruptured and lost coolants, and the resulting steam explosions and meltdown destroyed the containment building, followed by a reactor core fire that spread radioactive contaminants across the USSR and Europe.
In the HBO dramatization, an arrogant plant supervisor orders workers to conduct the test and continue carrying it out despite their strenuous objections. We all know what happened.

I thought of this while reading a CNN story about Musk's takeover of Twitter and the lessons it holds for federal workers:
... former Twitter employees say Musk sees laws, regulations and procedures as unnecessary speed bumps meant to be ignored.

... For example, in an infamous incident, the billionaire unexpectedly forced a Twitter team to take one of the company’s data centers offline for cost savings on Christmas Eve in 2022. According to [a] former senior employee, best practice would have been for the servers to be wiped clean for data privacy reasons, but they were not.

“When we were going to shut down this data center, the people from the data center team worked with him, and were basically saying, ‘Look, if we want to do this and do it safely, it’s going to take ... like six months or eight months,’” the former senior employee said. “(Musk’s) like, ‘Ah, f**k that.’”
As far as Musk is concerned, nothing terrible has happened as a result of this incident or any other moment of reckless at Twitter -- it's still up and running, it still has millions of users, it's now a highly successful far-right propaganda outlet, and he's still stinking rich. So now that he has access to government computers that can have a literal life-or-death impact on millions of Americans, he undoubtedly thinks, Fuck it -- what's the worst that can go wrong?

And Trump will continue to empower Musk and toss out reckless policy proposals because his life has been an uninterrupted luxury vacation for more than four gold-plated decades. (See also Robert Kennedy Jr., who continued to live a life of privilege, ease, and sexual excess even after his father and uncle were assassinated and he became a youthful heroin addict. He's fine. No one he knows personally has lost a child to a disease that can be prevented by a vaccine.)

And while the reporters who cover these men haven't lived lives that are nearly as soft, they fall into the habit of believing that the system -- which has always worked for them -- will prevent everything from going completely off the rails. In 2025, that's not a safe assumption.

Wednesday, February 05, 2025

WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE COUP, DADDY?

On Monday there was a demonstration outside the headquarters of the U.S. Agency for International Development to protest the illegal dismantling of the agency by the Trump/Musk administration. Several members of Congress were there, and Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii announced on Monday that he was placing a blanket hold on all of the administration's State Department appointees.

These were early events in what's shaping up to be a much larger resistance movement. There was a rally at the Treasury yesterday to protest the illegal takeover of payment systems by Elon Musk. Quite a few Democrats in Congress spoke.



But some fossilized old Democrats have fixated on the Democratic response to the dismantling of USAID and concluded that it's very, very bad for the party. Politico's Rachael Bade writes:
After three months of soul-searching about how to revive their party, some Democrats this week believe they have finally found a rallying point following Donald Trump’s presidential victory.

Billionaire Elon Musk’s campaign to dismantle the federal bureaucracy piece by piece at Trump’s behest, starting with the U.S. Agency for International Development, lit a fire under many Democratic lawmakers — several of whom rallied Monday outside USAID headquarters.

But relaunching the resistance to defend one of the least popular corners of the federal budget could be a monster miscalculation — and some prominent Democrats told me they have serious strategic reservations about how their party is fighting back.

When I asked veteran strategist David Axelrod whether Democrats were “walking into a trap” on defending foreign aid, he literally finished my sentence.

“My heart is with the people out on the street outside USAID, but my head tells me: ‘Man, Trump will be well satisfied to have this fight,’” he said. “When you talk about cuts, the first thing people say is: Cut foreign aid.”

Rahm Emanuel — the former House leader, Chicago mayor and diplomat — told me much the same: “You don’t fight every fight. You don’t swing at every pitch. And my view is — while I care about the USAID as a former ambassador — that’s not the hill I’m going to die on,” he said.
These people -- Bade as well as Axelrod and Emanuel -- have absolutely no idea what's happening in America right now. They think this a normal policy battle begun by a normal administration and fought by normal means. They think Democrats have chosen USAID as the centerpiece of their resistance.

We're in an all-out war to salvage what's left of America. The war can end one of two ways: with Donald Trump and his henchmen laying waste to our system of government, or with an effective fight on many fronts that pushes the totalitarians back, limits the damage they do, and begins the process of restoring what we had. If Trump's people win, it won't matter whether you chose this battle or that battle or a whole series of battles -- you'll be marked as a traitor. But if the good guys win, what people will remember is that you fought -- wherever and however you fought.

This is the central battle of our times. One way or the other, the first sentence of every prominent political figure's obituary will tell what that person did or didn't do in either the glorious Trump Revolution or the traitorous Trump Rebellion. So, yes, defend USAID. People won't look back on this and think, "Eeeuww, Democrats defended foreign aid!" They'll think: Trump seized absolute across-the-board power, and these Democrats put up a fight. If Trump wins, they'll see that as treason. If he loses, they'll see it as heroism.

Do you get the feeling that Trump might be overreaching a wee bit?
President Donald Trump on Tuesday proposed that the United States take a “long-term ownership position” over Gaza, moving its residents to a “good, fresh, beautiful piece of land” in another country and developing the war-torn territory under U.S. control, offering a vision of mass displacement likely to inflame sentiments in the Arab world.

Trump’s proposal, which he offered as he welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House, was likely to provoke a furious reaction from many Palestinians as well as their Arab allies in the region, since it suggested permanently removing Gaza’s 2.2 million residents from Palestinian territory and settling them outside of their land. It would also pull the United States even more deeply into the conflict by taking over territory that belongs to Palestinians.
Did even MAGA voters want this? Did anyone want this, apart from a certain member of Trump's family?

AP Breaking News banner over a March 19, 2024 AP story.

[image or embed]

— Jesse Lee (@jessecharleslee.bsky.social) February 4, 2025 at 7:14 PM


Mere months after he won a large portion of the young male vote, in part by arguing that Democrats were likely to get us into World War III, Trump seems to be calling for U.S. military involvement all over the world. The freshman senator from Arizona is angry:



But look at Gallego's voting record:

The Senate has taken 20 votes so far. Most votes AGAINST Trump: Hirono, Sanders, and Warren (18) Most votes WITH Trump: Slotkin (14), Shaheen (14), Hassan (13), Peters (13), Fetterman (12), Gallego (12), Warner (11) docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

[image or embed]

— Jonathan Cohn (@jonathancohn.bsky.social) January 27, 2025 at 10:54 PM


Why are so many Democrats -- including some, like Gallego, who joined the protests this week -- continuing to try to meet Trump halfway, or much more than halfway? Look, I understand that if you're from Arizona, a purple border state that went for Trump in 2024, you might want to stay to the right of the average Democrat on immigration. But what are you getting out of voting for Trump's pick to be secretary of veterans affairs? Do you seriously believe that will appease Trump if you criticize him at at other times? Do you think it will make death-before-compromise Republicans in the Senate more willing to work with you? Do you think swing voters will remember this vote six years from now when you're up for reelection (assuming we still have elections)?

Everyone in the Democratic Party needs to see the big picture: that Trump is laying waste to every institution in our political order, that he won't stop when he's consolidated his gains because he's addicted to the process of generating headlines and owning the libs, and that he's not doing this with any understanding of when he might have threatened his own standing with his recklessness. At the end of all this, he'll either preside triumphantly over a diminished pariah nation or he'll be defeated through irregular means -- popular unrest, lawsuits, or something more violent -- not through committee hearings or legislative horse trading. Democrats have to act with the big picture in mind. There's no possibility now that Democrats can win one battle or one lawsuits and restore normality.

Even though this can't be solved in Congress alone, given Republicans' lockstep support for Trump, it's worthwhile for Democrats to send a signal that business can't proceed as usual in Congress. I like Norm Ornstein's recommendations for what Democrats should do to throw sand in the gears of the Senate and send a signal of absolute non-cooperation. Some of these ideas may be familiar to you, but a few were new to me:
1. Insist that the Journal of the Senate be read at the onset of every day’s business, soaking up time otherwise spent on legislating.

2. Deny unanimous consent to every action. The Senate operates by unanimous consent, and getting around it is time-consuming and uncomfortable.

3. Refuse to allow committees to meet when the Senate is doing business on the floor.

4. This is the relevant portion of Senate Rule 26: A committee may not meet (or continue a meeting in progress) on any day (1) after the Senate has been in session for two hours, or (2) after 2:00 p.m. when the Senate is in session. The Senate routinely waives this rule via unanimous consent. Deny it.

5. In Rule 14, there is a requirement that every bill is to be read in full three times before passage. That is routinely waived to include only reading a summary. Require the full reading, especially with omnibus bills.

6. Use the filibuster on every bill and confirmation. Draw a page from the Mitch McConnell playbook; raise the bar to 60 on legislation and use all the delays that can come with filibusters on confirmations. It is a regular misconception that filibusters have been taken away from confirmations. In fact, the cloture barrier has been moved from 60 to a simple majority. But even if these confirmations can pass ultimately, they can be delayed significantly by exploiting the rules.

7. Use the hold to block many if not most confirmations. A hold is simply a senator indicating he or she will deny unanimous consent to move forward on a confirmation, but it has been respected for many decades as a norm blocking action. Holds are no longer anonymous, but that is not a barrier. This something applied more than once by Senate Republicans during the Biden presidency; it was not just Tommy Tuberville and military promotions. Rand Paul, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, among others, used blanket holds to protest Biden policies or just to gum up the works. Kudos to Hawaii’s Brian Schatz for showing how it is done, with today’s blanket hold on State Department nominees over the hostile takeover of AID. It should be done by others for Treasury, Justice, Defense, Education, and other departments.
But even all this won't be close to enough. It's not partisan politics as usual. This is Civil War II, and it will need to fought on many fronts.

Tuesday, February 04, 2025

THE DEFAULT TONE OF MAINSTREAM NEWS IS THE REASON IT'S FAILING US NOW

Last night I was reading a long New York Times story, written by Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, and four other reporters, that attempted to make sense of Elon Musk's government takeover. But instead of portraying what's happening as the constitutional crisis it is, the story mostly just enumerates Musk's acts of aggression, describing them with quiet awe.

Here's the headline:
Inside Musk’s Aggressive Incursion Into the Federal Government

The billionaire is creating major upheaval as his team sweeps through agencies, in what has been an extraordinary flexing of power by a private individual.
There's a common tone to most mainstream media reporting about men in expensive suits acting aggressively. When mainstream journalists write about these men, they adopt the awestruck language that became a default during the Reagan years, when hyperaggressive CEOs were portrayed as America's new "rock stars." There was more of this during the rise of the tech industry, whose CEOs sought to "disrupt," to "move fast and break things."

So Swan, Haberman, and their colleagues aren't inclined to describe what they're seeing as bad, or even potentially bad. It's just a power move. What's important is what the aggressors are doing and how aggressively the aggressors are aggressing, not what might actually result from all the aggression.

So we read a recitation of what's happening -- and we're effectively reassured that it's all happening inside the guardrails.
In Elon Musk’s first two weeks in government, his lieutenants gained access to closely held financial and data systems, casting aside career officials who warned that they were defying protocols. They moved swiftly to shutter specific programs — and even an entire agency that had come into Mr. Musk’s cross hairs. They bombarded federal employees with messages suggesting they were lazy and encouraging them to leave their jobs.

Empowered by President Trump, Mr. Musk is waging a largely unchecked war against the federal bureaucracy — one that has already had far-reaching consequences.
Emphasis added. We're told it's okay for Musk to do what he's doing -- to break laws -- because Trump is president and Trump says it's okay. If the Constitution and the relevant laws were still being enforced, Trump couldn't "empower" Musk this way. But the Times reporters don't tell us that.

The dry recitation of Musk's legally and constitutionally impermissible acts continues:
Mr. Musk’s aggressive incursions into at least half a dozen government agencies have challenged congressional authority and potentially breached civil service protections.

Top officials at the Treasury Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development who objected to the actions of his representatives were swiftly pushed aside. And Mr. Musk’s efforts to shut down U.S.A.I.D., a key source of foreign assistance, have reverberated around the globe.
Followed by more heavy breathing in response to Musk's aggression:
Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, is sweeping through the federal government as a singular force, creating major upheaval as he looks to put an ideological stamp on the bureaucracy and rid the system of those who he and the president deride as “the deep state.”

The rapid moves by Mr. Musk, who has a multitude of financial interests before the government, have represented an extraordinary flexing of power by a private individual.
This is a romance novel, not an account of a constitutional crisis.

It's only in paragraph 15 that we're told -- briefly -- that this might be more than just an unusually fierce power battle:
The historian Douglas Brinkley described Mr. Musk as a “lone ranger” with limitless running room. He noted that the billionaire was operating “beyond scrutiny,” saying: “There is not one single entity holding Musk accountable. It’s a harbinger of the destruction of our basic institutions.”
But be reassured that it's all being done through normal channels.
However, the president has given Mr. Musk vast power over the bureaucracy that regulates his companies and awards them contracts.
Trump can't give Musk all this power -- not legally. Congressional Republicans won't step assert to assert their own prerogatives, so Trump can do it illegally. But we're not told that here.

This is the point where you all pull up that meme of the Kool-Aid pitcher that says, "The media likes Trump and wants him to win," or whatever ther post-election version is. But I don't believe that. I think much of the media would prefer a right-centrist deficit hawk as president (Nikki Haley, Chris Sununu), or a corporatist with relatively liberal social views (Mike Bloomberg). I don't believe the mainstream media wants agents of chaos in the White House. Even the right-leaning Murdoch press has denounced Trump's tariff wars and appointment of Robert Kennedy Jr.

But the traditional language of journalism -- a combination of "just the facts" and fan club press releases for aggressors in the C-suites -- is inadequate for the moment we're in.

Readers of that Times story know what they should be reading right now, and know they're not getting it. Here are some of the comments most recommended by readers:
Why aren't you using the word coup?

****

Musk and his teenage minions have no constitutional authority to do any of this.

All of the media reporting on DOGE's actions as if it has any legitimacy is falling into Trump and Elon's false narrative that any of this is lawful.

****

We did not vote for Musk. He was not confirmed as an appointee. Is what he’s doing even legal?

****

Absolutely none of this is legal or constitutional. A private unelected citizen does not have the authority to stop payment on authorized government contracts or shutter a Congressionally-created agency.

Indeed, the President doesn't even have that authority. Those belong strictly to Congress. This is a coup, rubber-stamped by the President, to overthrow the separation of powers in this country.

****

Why is the media just reporting illegal actions as if they’re facts?

Instead of “Elon shakes up Washington” how about some context? “Unelected Billionaire Appointed to Run Non-existent Agency Conducts Illegal Actions Across the Federal Government.”

****

Please stop sane-washing these actions—it’s not an extraordinary flexing of power—it’s an illegal takeover of the government!
This is 9/11. It's Pearl Harbor. It's the attack on Fort Sumter. The press should report it that way. But the media says it's just a power struggle that's a bit fiercer than usual.

Monday, February 03, 2025

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT MAGA VOTED FOR

Quoting a story from Wired, Digby writes:
Is this what MAGA voted for?
Elon Musk’s takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college....

WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24 ... —who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project....
Wired has now reported the names and backgrounds of all these young fellows. One has recently graduated from high school, three more were interns at X and SpaceX and another worked for an AI firm and wrote a Substack extolling the virtues of Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth. One of them was a senior at Harvard as of last September and has his own AI startup.

These are the people who’ve been given access to classified materials, social security numbers, health records and banking information of American citizens, businesses and charities with an apparent mandate to decide which ones are waste and fraud.
Why would any of this bother MAGA voters?

I know what you're thinking: Didn't they vote for Trump because of the price of eggs? How does any of this lower egg prices? But that's not why MAGA voters voted for Trump -- it's why non-MAGA swing voters chose Trump, but it wasn't the motivation for Trump's base. The majority of Trump voters are dyed-in-the-wool Trumpers or dyed-in-the-wool Republicans with Fox News brain poisoning, but they weren't enough to give Trump the win. Price-of-eggs swing voters put Trump over the top, but they were a smaller percentage of his electorate.

What did Trump/GOP base voters want? They wanted what they always want: to own the libs. They want us howling in anger and giving up in despair. They want Republicans to smite us and smite any group identified with us (people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ people, government employees, academics, entertainers, and so on). They want to see evidence that Democrats and liberals will very literally be eliminated from public life -- from all positions of power and influence in government, the media, education, entertainment, and business -- if not from America altogether.



The QAnon fans among them probably believe that this is "the Storm" -- the glorious moment Q promised them, a moment when everyone they hate is crushed.

They want us destroyed despite the fact that they're very happy -- much happier than liberals, as New York Times pundits such as Thomas Edsall and David Brooks frequently remind us. And why shouldn't they be happy? As I wrote in 2023, when Joe Biden was still president:
Deep down, they know that life is pretty sweet for people like them. No one's really coming for their guns -- they have plenty, and it's easy to buy more. No one's really coming for their red meat or their big-ass SUVs. No one's forcing them to be gay or bi or trans. Politically, they run half the states. They run the Supreme Court and will control it for decades. They run the House, and they have an excellent chance of taking the Senate and the White House next year.
MAGA people have boats! That's why they were able to have boat parades in 2020. If you can afford to buy and maintain a boat, why should you care about the price of eggs?

We can't reach these people with economic arguments -- swing voters, yes, but not the MAGA base. The MAGA base just wants us destroyed. Complaining about egg prices seemed like the way to get that done last year. Now Musk and his goons are getting to the real work of turning all non-conservatives into non-citizens.

We need to persuade the people who aren't MAGA voters that this is bad. Maybe price increases will help do the job for us.

Wow, that was fast. Irving Energy, company that provides propane/fuel oil customers in New England, says it will pass on the full 10% tariff cost to all their customers immediately (reposting with fixed figure - meant to say 10%, not 30%)

[image or embed]

— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) February 2, 2025 at 8:48 PM


Maybe some people who run businesses will become alarmed at the fact that the Trump/Musk team intends to defy the terms of contracts, which is something rich industrialized countries simply don't do. Last night, The Bulwark's Jonathan Last wrote this:
Elon Musk allegedly has control of the system the U.S. government uses to disburse congressionally mandated payments. Further, Musk claims that he, personally, is putting a stop to payments that he does not like.

First: This obviously could not happen unless the FBI had been neutered....

Second: If Musk is personally deciding what money comes out of the Treasury, then it is impossible to predict where economic disruptions will hit. Will Musk stop payments to social services vendors in South Dakota? Or to aerospace contractors in New Jersey? Will he refuse to make interest payments on government debt? Will he ratchet back Social Security disbursements? If you cannot predict government disbursements after laws have mandated them then you cannot predict the future economic environment.
Businesses want stability. This is all massively destabilizing. But do the people who run businesses and who don't have an in with the regime really understand what's going on?

Last said last night that if markets dropped more than 5% in response to everything Trump and Musk are doing, that would be a sign that the financial world knows we're in a crisis. A smaller drop?
Drop is < 5 percent: The markets do not believe that Trump’s tariffs on Mexico and Canada are likely to remain in place. Nor are they especially concerned by the reports of turmoil in Washington over the weekend. They basically believe everything is normal and that Trump will quickly revert to par, allowing the broader economy to continue more or less as normal.
The declines in overseas markets, and in early trading in U.S. markets, have been much smaller. Last said that would be a sign that people don't get how bad everything is:
I am not so sure the markets are capable of understanding the level of risk we currently face. It’s too big and too novel. It’s beyond any of the participants in the markets’ ken....

I suspect that the markets do not quite understand the gravity of our situation because they have never seen anything like it in a first-world country. They have never witnessed a global hegemon attempt suicide.
Last believes the markets will get it sooner or later:
... even if it’s too late to stop the dismantling of the federal government, I’m confident that the markets will understand eventually. Because when the old political and financial orders fall, someone is going to make a killing.
I think Trump's swing voters will understand eventually, when prices skyrocket, Social Security checks don't go out, Medicare reimbursements don't happen, ideologically "incorrect" libraries and health clinics close down, and so on. But curbing the power of Trump, Musk, and Russell Vought will be much more difficult then. And MAGA will still be thrilled.

Sunday, February 02, 2025

"THEY JUST WANT TO OVERWHELM US" SHOULDN'T BE AN EXCUSE TO DO NOTHING

A couple of days after Donald Trump's inauguration, a scholar named Jennifer Walter posted this at Threads:
As a sociologist, I need to tell you:

Your overwhelm is the goal

... The flood of 200+ executive orders in Trump's first days exemplifies Naomi Klein's "shock doctrine" - using chaos and crisis to push through radical changes while people are too disoriented to effectively resist. This isn't just politics as usual - it's a strategic exploitation of cognitive limits.

... Media theorist [Marshall] McLuhan predicted this: When humans face information overload, they become passive and disengaged. The rapid-fire executive orders create a cognitive bottleneck, making it nearly impossible for citizens and media to thoroughly analyze any single policy.
She recommended staying engaged and active, while developing ways of coping with the excess:
Set boundaries: Pick 2-3 key issues you deeply care about and focus your attention there. You can't track everything - that's by design. Impact comes from sustained focus, not scattered awareness.

... Remember: Feeling overwhelmed is the point. When you recognize this, you regain some power. Take breaks. Process. This is a marathon.

... They want you scattered. Your focus is resistance.
Many Trump opponents are quoting Walter's advice, which I think is quite useful. I hope it helps.

But now along comes Ezra Klein with a dangerous variation on this message. In the opening essay from his latest podcast, Klein in effect says: Trump is trying to overwhelm us. If we respond at all, he wins.
... If you overwhelm the media — if you give it too many places it needs to look, all at once, if you keep it moving from one thing to the next — no coherent opposition can emerge. It is hard to even think coherently.

... The flood is the point. The overwhelm is the point. The message wasn’t in any one executive order or announcement. It was in the cumulative effect of all of them. The sense that this is Trump’s country now. This is his government now. It follows his will. It does what he wants. If Trump tells the state to stop spending money, the money stops. If he says that birthright citizenship is over, it’s over.

Or so he wants you to think.... Don’t believe him.
Klein's argument is that Trump simply can't do all the things he wants us to believe he can do.
Trump has real powers — but they are the powers of the presidency.

... the president cannot rewrite the Constitution. Within days, the birthright citizenship order was frozen by a judge — a Reagan appointee — who told Trump’s lawyers, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.”
Yes, but the Supreme Court hasn't weighed in.
A judge froze the spending freeze before it was even scheduled to go into effect, and shortly thereafter, the Trump administration rescinded the order, in part to avoid the court case.
Yes, but now Trump has Elon Musk and his goons going through the budget line by line, in search of anything that's "woke" or pro-trans or pro-immigrant or that acknowleges the mere existence of racism or climate change.

Klein wants to tell us that Trump categorically cannot get away with everything he's attempting to do, but even he knows better. So he argues that Trump probably can't get away with it, which is the next-best thing:
Perhaps this Supreme Court, stocked with his appointees, gives him powers no peacetime president has ever possessed. Perhaps all of this becomes legal now that he has asserted its legality. It is not impossible to imagine that bet paying off.

But Trump’s odds are bad. So what if the bet fails and his arrogations of power are soundly rejected by the courts? Then comes the question of constitutional crisis: Does he ignore the court’s ruling? To do that would be to attempt a coup. I wonder if they have the stomach for it.
Of course they have the stomach for it! Klein writes, "The withdrawal of the Office of Management and Budget’s order to freeze spending suggests they don’t," but press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the policy was still in place, and only the memo was withdrawn.

Klein is correct to say that the courts might really rebuff Trump on a number of these policies. But Trump is flooding the zone for attorneys and judges, too. Meanwhile, real damage is being done that probably won't be reversible even if courts rule against Trump and Trump obeys the rulings. The U.S. Agency for International Development has effectively been dismantled. What reason is there to believe that it can be reconstituted? The veteran career employee who was in charge of the federal payments system has been forced out, and Elon Musk -- who said in 2023 that he wanted Twitter to expand its services to include online banking, while predicting that it would become a universally adopted financial app that would replace ordinary banking -- is now in charge of the payments system. Does Klein think that the former employees who are being forced out will all get their jobs and simply repair everything that's been broken so we won't even notice that it was ever in a state of Trumpian/Muskian chaos?

I know I should think of Ezra Klein as part of the problem. But he's posturing here as an ally. He's saying that the proper strategy against Trump is to avoid responding at all. That's a message that could easily resonate with do-nothing Democrats who are already reluctant to take bold action. As it is, some of them are boasting about how non-reactive they are. Here's Hakeem Jeffries:
Speaking to reporters Friday, the Brooklynite invoked Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge to defend his strategy, arguing it is better for Democrats to pick and choose their fights and focus on a clear message.

“One of the reasons that [Judge is] a great hitter is that he does not swing at every pitch. He waits for the right one and then he swings,” he said. “We're not going to swing at every pitch. We're going to swing at the ones that matter for the American people.”
I assume Democrats in D.C. read Ezra Klein or listen to his podcast. Jeffries and others already prefer not to rock the boat very much, and now here's Klein telling them: Rock the boat? Don't do it at all! It's what Trump wants you to do!

Jennifer Walter is right: Develop strategies so the flood doesn't cloud your mind, but keep fighting.

Saturday, February 01, 2025

CREATE SOME DRAMA AND EXPOSE THE COUP

Politically engaged Americans know that this is a coup, though I'm not sure the rest of America gets it yet:
Aides to Elon Musk charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees, according to two agency officials....

The systems include a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers, the officials said.

"We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems," one of the officials said.

These people weren't elected, they're not Senate-confirmed and they're not even filling Schedule C positions. Who is even paying them? Why is security even allowing them in the building? Where are House and Senate Democrats? This is effectively a government takeover.

— Brandon Friedman (@brandonfriedman.bsky.social) January 31, 2025 at 3:43 PM


Musk's goons are sleeping in the offices, or at least they want workers to believe they are.
A team including current and former employees of Musk assumed command of OPM [the Office of Personnel Management] on Jan. 20, the day Trump took office. They have moved sofa beds onto the fifth floor of the agency's headquarters, which contains the director's office and can only be accessed with a security badge or a security escort, one of the OPM employees said.

The sofa beds have been installed so the team can work around the clock, the employee said.

Musk ... installed beds at X for employees to enable them to work longer when in 2022 he took over the social media platform....
Musk has also forced the retirement of a career civil servant who, among other duties, oversaw payments to ordinary citizens.
The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department left the agency after a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems....

David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades, announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues.... Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year...

Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems.... Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients, and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.
What should Democrats do? I think Josh Marshall is a little off base:
... Democrats’ job is to make the case every day what a disaster Trump governance is and ask voters whether they’ve decided yet that they’d like to make a change. In a way any opposition must almost exalt it’s powerlessness. We’d love to stop these horrible things for you, voters. But you have to put us in power to do it.
No, no, no. This is not the time to talk about future elections, or to acknowledge Democrats' powerlessness as long as Republicans control the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court. Most voters don't understand why Democrats can't stop this. Also, when Republicans are shut out of power, they don't go on Fox News and say, "We'd love to stop this, but we're helpless." They just make noise. They get angry. They try to make their voters angry. They do what they can to create a groundswell of outrage. During the Biden years, they did it on immigration, on inflation, on trans people, on the (nonexistent) crime wave, and on many other real and imaginary issues (critical race theory! wokeness!).

So what can Democrats do? Here's a thought:



Congressional Democrats should march to the White House and demand a meeting with Co-President Musk. They should march to the buildings where Musk's goons have committed their pirate raid on government computers and demand to be admitted, especially Democrats who are members of congressional committees that oversee the relevant agencies.

And they should start asking questions. What's the plan here? Is it to fire every government employee who's a registered Democrat? Is it to deny Social Security payments or Medicare reimbursements or student loans to anyone who voted for Kamala Harris or Joe Biden? Is that the plan?

(I know Democrats aren't very popular right now, but I think most non-Republicans in America have a sense of fairness and don't believe there should be ideological litmus tests for government programs, or for non-political government jobs.)

Also, who are these people? Who vetted them? What personnel process did they go through? Does the U.S. government now have an HR office of one, and that one is Elon Musk? Who elected him?

Don't forget the recent poll numbers from Quinnipiac:
In the survey from Quinnipiac University, 53 percent of respondents said they are not in favor “of Elon Musk playing a prominent role in the Trump administration,” while 39 percent said they are in favor of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO playing a prominent role in the Trump administration.
If the Democrats aren't allowed to speak to anyone, that's fine. That's good theater. They should loudly declare a cover-up. They should stand outside the buildings and ask the questions that they would have addressed to the people who are now in charge, and they should ask why those people are afraid to answer the questions.

In short: Make some noise. Create some drama. Give the media something compelling to cover. Don't just issue another damn press release.