The executive order, like all too many, is lawless

Back in mid January I watched the movie Hugo. Part of it was an homage to early film making and the films of Georges Méliès. At the time I mentioned the Georges Méliès festival at the Detroit Film Theater at the end of March. We’re now at the end of March and the festival was last evening. It really wasn’t a “festival.” There were eleven films, but they all fit in 80 minutes. Since these were silent films, the earliest from 1898, they were accompanied by three musicians. I’m not sure if they have an independent name or were assembled to accompany these films on tour, of which Detroit was the first stop. Perhaps the name Right in the Eye is the name of the package of films and musicians. That name refers to the image of the man in the moon being hit in the eye by a rocket ship. That image was featured in Hugo. Alas, that film wasn’t included. The films shown indicate a man who understood at a very early time what cinema could do. The Lilliputians and the Giants played with scale. Fat and Lean Wrestling Match showed the director could stop filming to make a substitution in the scene – one fighter would deliver a blow which would turn the other into something flat or a dismembered manikin and a few moments later turn into a human again. The longest film was The Kingdom of Fairies where a group of people used a variety of vehicles to visit fantastical lands while pursued by bad guys. No matter how many times the vehicles crashed the occupants emerged unharmed. Since there is no sound all the actors gesticulated wildly, constantly in motion. I quite enjoyed this early look into cinema. Alas, these films probably won’t be seen on streaming. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos looked over the media responses to Signal-gate, where the top military and intelligence discussed plans on the unsecured signal app, and found media “sanewashing” it. They called it such things as a “relatable fail,” a “blunder,” and a “mishap.” They were not calling it what it was – a severe breach of national security, for which participants should lose their jobs, but probably won’t. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported the nasty guy escalated his assault on democracy by issuing an executive order that threatens to withhold federal grant money to force states to comply to voter suppression tactics already enacted in several states. It also grants DOGE and the Department of Homeland Security access to voting records. As is typical the claims given to support the order are lies. The nasty guy did not win by a landslide. The American voting system is already quite secure. And millions of undocumented immigrants are not voting.

Danielle Lang, a voting rights lawyer at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center told The Guardian that there is nothing constitutional about Trump’s order. “The short answer is that this executive order,” she said, “like all too many that we’ve seen before, is lawless and asserts all sorts of executive authority that he most assuredly does not have.”

My friend and debate partner tells me his Social Security check is still coming. That’s reassuring. But it’s likely still coming because he’s already in the system – at least for a while. Emily Singer of Kos titled her report “It only took two months for Trump and Musk to break Social Security.” The workforce has been cut, field offices closed, and rules for verifying one’s identity have changed. The website has crashed four times in ten days because servers were overloaded. The agency’s ability to serve the public has diminished, but one can’t complain because the office to monitor customer experience is gone. The rule changes mean identity verification can’t be done over the phone. One can do it online (and I started tangling with the verification system and gave up, to tackle when I have lots of time) or in person. Many seniors don’t use computers or live in rural areas without good internet. One has to find an open office and it now may be a good distance away. Then make an appointment with a lot more people having to do the same and a lot fewer agents able to help them. And one must get there – not always easy for seniors. My friend is likely fine. But my eventual application process may be much more difficult than his was. Singer says breaking Social Security is “politically moronic.” It is quite popular, has broad public support, and is critical to highly reliable voting block. Older voters are already packing Republican town halls demanding they stand up to DOGE. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jonathan Weiler who writes Jonathan’s Quality Kvetching Newsletter:

The point is to remind ourselves and the political leaders who seek to represent us that their approach to endless rightwing fulminating needs to change fundamentally. It's both bad politics and unprincipled to cave in to blatant bad faith out of some misguided notion of decorum, or fear of losing popular support, or because maybe Republicans have a point about some tempest in a teapot (Hunter Biden’s laptop, anyone?) when, in this era, Republicans’ only goal is to seize power and then abuse it once they have it. Democrats have limited tools at their disposal right now, as we all know. But they need to start practicing, both for the sake of the party’s future, and the country’s, a different mode of politics. As Josh Marshall wrote yesterday, one thing they can do is adopt a parliamentary opposition’s approach. In parliamentary systems, the opposition has a shadow cabinet. One purpose of that is to provide the public with an ongoing narrative about what the government is doing wrong and how the opposition would act differently if and when they return to power. The point of this exercise isn’t to lie about your opponents. It’s in part to ensure that the public doesn’t only hear one side of the political story.

Dworkin quoted a tweet by Orla Joelsen. I went to it directly to see the whole thing.

Representatives of the American government have been going door to door in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, in recent days ahead of the now-canceled visit by the U.S. Second Lady, Usha Vance. This is according to TV 2’s correspondent in Nuuk, Jesper Steinmetz.

American representatives have been walking around, practically knocking on one door after another in the past few days to ask if people might be interested in a visit from the Vice President’s wife. Everywhere, the answer was the same: ‘No, thanks.’

He suffers from billionaire brain

The nasty guy rarely misses a chance for a branding opportunity or turn an event into something tacky. This time it is the White House Easter Egg Roll. Alex Samuels of Daily Kos wrote:

According to reports from CNN and The New York Times, which viewed a nine-page guide available for potential sponsors, companies willing to pay between $75,000 and $200,000 can earn perks such as branding rights, having their logos or names featured on event signage, and mentions in social media posts and press releases. The most expensive package—Platinum—includes “branding for a key area or activation,” 150 tickets to the event (100 general admission, plus 50 VIP), and exclusive tickets to an invitation-only brunch inside the White House with first lady Melania Trump. ... However, there’s a reason past administrations haven’t sought to blur the line between the private sector and the government: doing so raises numerous legal and ethical concerns. For one, federal regulations prohibit government employees from using their public offices for personal gain or “for the endorsement of any product, service, or enterprise.”

A Pagan in Arizona of the Kos community posted a photo of Greenland’s new red MAGA hat. It says, “Make America Go Away.” Walter Einenkel of Kos reported Canada has adopted the rallying cry of “Elbows Up!” A video in the post explains the phrase came from the great hockey player Gordie Howe as a way of saying he was always ready to for a fight. It was brought to modern awareness by Mike Myers, who returned to Saturday Night Live to portray Musk in sketches over the last few weeks. During two of those shows Myers wore a shirt saying, “Canada is not for sale.” Emily Singer of Kos reported:

President Donald Trump is sending his national security adviser and the second lady of the United States to Greenland as he continues to saber-rattle about taking over the Danish autonomous territory—a move Greenlandic officials are slamming as “highly aggressive,” The New York Times reported. Usha Vance, the wife of Vice President JD Vance, will leave for Greenland on Thursday, while national security adviser Mike Waltz and Energy Secretary Chris Wright will go earlier in the week. ... Unsurprisingly, Greenland officials are pissed. “What is the national security adviser doing in Greenland?” Greenlandic Prime Minister Mute B. Egede said on Sunday, according to The New York Times. “The only purpose is to demonstrate power over us.”

I know today is Thursday. I’m still two days behind in reading news on Kos. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted tweets by David Frum:

The unsought-by-Greenland visit by Second Lady Usha Vane feels like a Trump administration project to goad Greenlanders into protest - after which the administration can demand apologies. If/when the apologies are deemed unsatisfactory, next step may be reprisals.

Down in the comments a tweet by Eric Feigl-Ding quoted a tweet by Same Knowlton. First Knowlton:

What’s the story here, and how could this possibly make sense? Firing the scientists who maintain the National Plant Germplasm System jeopardizes 127 years of agricultural genetic preservation. This system safeguards 600,000+ crop varieties that serve as America's agricultural insurance policy against emerging plant diseases and other unforeseen threats to crop production. The NPGS costs 0.000008% of the federal budget while insuring a $1.5 trillion food system. When stem rust threatened global wheat supplies in 1999, these collections provided the resistant genes that prevented widespread crop failure. Similar genetic resources from the bank generate $91+ million annually for the apple industry alone.

Feigl-Ding added:

America’s doomsday seed vault just got defunded by Trump/Musk. If we ever have an agricultural calamity that wipes out plant life on Earth, it’s the seed vault that will repopulate the Earth and feed humanity after the fallout. This is so stupid.

A cartoon by Toonerman shows Howard Lutnick sitting on top of a big pile of bags of money. A man struggles up the pile.

Man: Oh Great Greedy Gazillionaire Howard Lutnick. I didn’t get my Social Security Check. Why? It’s my money and I need it to survive: Lutnick: Quit whining! You sound like a fraudster. Just STFU and accept it. Stocks dropped for a third day in a row... you don’t see me whining.”

Singer discussed the story of the top military and security people discussing plans to attack a Houthi base in Yemen on the unsecure Signal messaging app and mistakenly including Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic in the group. Goldberg said this breach of security could have harmed American military personnel. It violated several provisions of the Espionage Act. It violated federal record laws. Democrats are calling for investigations, calling this “one of the biggest and most incompetent national security breaches in history.” Then Singer gets to the irony.

First, almost every member of that chain criticized former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, citing national security concerns.

Each one of them is listed with their attack on Clinton. And...

Even more ironic is that just last week, Hegseth reported that the Department of Defense was going to be investigating who leaked his plan to brief co-President Elon Musk on the United States' plans for war with China—another thing that makes Americans less safe as there is no reason Musk should be privy to that information. ... Worst of all, as Democrats lambast the Trump administration officials and call for investigations, Republicans have been virtually silent—even though they would be screaming to the heavens if a Democratic administration had done anything even remotely similar.

Those Republicans who did comment were pretty muted. And the nasty guy claimed ignorance.

If the commander in chief did not yet know about the fact that his top aides were putting the country at risk by discussing military operations via text message, then that’s a scandal in and of itself.

In a second roundup Chitown Kev quoted an article in Der Spiegel written by Patrick Beuth, Jörg Diehl, Roman Höfner, Roman Lehberger, Friederike Röhreke, and Fidelius Schmid.

Private contact details of the most important security advisers to U.S. President Donald Trump can be found on the internet. Der Spiegel reporters were able to find mobile phone numbers, email addresses and even some passwords belonging to the top officials. [...] Most of these numbers and email addresses are apparently still in use, with some of them linked to profiles on social media platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn. They were used to create Dropbox accounts and profiles in apps that track running data. There are also WhatsApp profiles for the respective phone numbers and even Signal accounts in some cases. As such, the reporting has revealed an additional grave, previously unknown security breach at the highest levels in Washington. Hostile intelligence services could use this publicly available data to hack the communications of those affected by installing spyware on their devices. It is thus conceivable that foreign agents were privy to the Signal chat group in which Gabbard, Waltz and Hegseth discussed a military strike. [...] It was particularly easy for Der Spiegel reporters to discover Hegseth’s mobile number and email address. They turned to a commercial provider of contact information that is primarily used by companies for sales, marketing and recruitment.

Paul Krugman, writing for his Substack:

Musk is incompetent and evil. He suffers from billionaire brain — that special blend of ignorance and arrogance that occurs all too frequently in men who believe that their success in accumulating personal wealth means that they understand everything, no need to do any homework. But he also clearly detests anything that makes life better for non-billionaires.

In a third roundup Dworkin quoted a tweet by Juliette Kayyem that included a tweet by Alexander Panetta. First Panetta:

Report: A library and opera house that straddles the Canada-U.S. border and has been a symbol of binational friendship for 100 years will have its Canadian entrance cut off by U.S. authorities.

Kayyam added:

Our nation went from powerful to petty in just a few months.

Sen. Chris Murphy commented on a video showing Howard Lutnick’s comment that only fraudsters would complain about missing Social Security checks.

They are getting ready to destroy Social Security. Because the billionaires don’t need it. Prepping the ground here by shaming people who dare complain if their Social Security check disappears.

In a report posted on Tuesday last week Singer wrote about Judge James Boasberg, who ruled against the nasty guy sending a couple planes of of Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious jail in El Salvador. The nasty guy is now calling for Boasberg to be removed. And House Republicans are drafting articles of impeachment against Boasberg and other judges who have ruled against the nasty guy or Musk. There are saner voices saying judicial impeachment is going too far. Even Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued a mild statement, showing he thinks the talk is not just bluster. Roberts wrote:

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.

On Wednesday of last week Singer reported House Republicans are supporting the impeachment of judges. Singer wrote the effort is time consuming (and taking away from other House efforts of enacting more of the nasty guy’s destruction) and is destined to fail. The effort is destined to fail, says a Republican aide, because “There aren’t the votes.” If it does come to a vote that record could be politically damaging. And there aren’t 14 Democratic senators who would vote to convict. On Thursday of last week Oliver Willis of Kos reported that after nasty guy commented about impeachment federal judges are receiving death threats and have serious concerns for their safety. Some judges have received pizza deliveries, a way of telling judges their home addresses are known. That’s part of an intimidation campaign. The sister of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett received an emailed threat of a pipe bomb in her mailbox. Thankfully, it was a hoax. Lisa Needham of Kos took the DOGE phrase of “move fast and break things” and suggested that’s what judges should be doing.

Federal judges are still treating the Trump administration like a good-faith litigant, and that has to stop. The administration doesn’t believe it has to follow court orders it doesn’t like and keeps figuring out ways to avoid complying.

Of course, she has several examples of not complying. And they’re not complying partly because of a lack of consequences. Judges are giving the administration the benefit of the doubt and also giving deference to the office of the president. That allows the administration to get away with tactics that no other litigant could. An example is stalling litigation by refusing to say who the actual head of DOGE is. So stop giving the benefit of the doubt. Stop giving deference. Use the power of civil and criminal contempt to force compliance with orders. Sanction Department of Justice attorneys when arguments are not brought in good faith or a filing is for an improper purpose, such as harassment.

If a judge does finally impose any sort of penalty, the Trump administration will inevitably race to the friendly confines of the United States Supreme Court to get them to undo it. That court has ruled, though, that federal courts have inherent power to impose contempt for “disobedience to the orders of the Judiciary.” Right now, federal courts are sending the message that court orders don’t really mean anything if the Trump administration thinks they don’t. There’s no reason to treat the government, the most powerful litigant in the country and one with boundless resources and thousands of attorneys, with kid gloves. The administration knows full well what it’s doing, and what it’s doing is mocking the authority of the federal courts. The federal courts should stop helping them.

Subsidizing small, rural states is not efficient

My Sunday movie was The Fabelmans, directed by Steven Spielberg. This is Spielberg’s origin story, how he became interested in making movies. It is based on real events, though enhanced for dramatic purposes. Sam Fabelman represents Spielberg as a child. As a boy he uses his dad’s camera. By the time he’s a teen he has his own camera and editor and he’s creating his own films. Some are stories he created with his buddies as actors, some adapted from family events. And through editing those films he begins to understand his family dynamics. There are also scenes of high school where he seems to be the only Jewish kid around. Of course it’s a very good movie. All the lead actors did an excellent job. I enjoyed it. I finished the book Arthur and Teddy are Coming Out by Ryan Love. In the opening chapter Arthur is 79 and he and his wife Madeleine have just celebrated 50 years of marriage. They invite their children Patrick and Elizabeth over for dinner and at the end of the meal Arthur announces he is gay. Elizabeth does not take it well. When her son Teddy hears why his mother is so upset he realizes he can’t yet tell her he is also gay. He must wait until Elizabeth is more accepting of her father. We know that the marriage of Arthur and Madeleine has been happy and they continue to be friends. Eventually we learn they saved each other from difficult situations. After coming out Arthur faces the question: Now what? He came out to be more authentic, but what does that mean to someone his age? Teddy gets an internship at a newspaper, good for his goal to be a journalist. But his mom was a well known columnist at the paper and got him the internship. So he can’t be out at work because word would get back to Mom. Ben is a fellow intern, desperate for the full time job Teddy appears to be gliding into. When Teddy hears Ben is gay we know where this is heading, though it seems to get there way too quickly. Also in the story are Teddy’s besties Shakeel, also gay, and Lexie. Teddy is out to them. It’s a warm story, with more complications than one might expect, though with happy endings. I enjoyed it. I heard in the news over the weekend a quote from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (billionaire):

Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law, who's 94, she wouldn't call and complain. She just wouldn't. She thinks something got messed up and she'll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise screaming, yelling, and complaining. And all the guys who did PayPal, like Elon knows this by heart, right? Anybody who's been in the payment system and the process system knows the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen.

I knew immediately that he had just called every one of the millions of Americans who wouldn't get through the month without their Social Security check a fraudster. That claim would set up an excuse for shutting down Social Security. Emily Singer of Daily Kos has details. Since Lutnick is a billionaire his mother-in-law probably isn’t depending on her SS check and would be able to live quite well for a long time without it.

Approximately half of the population aged 65 or older living in households that receive at least 50% of their family income from Social Security benefits, and about 25% rely on Social Security benefits for at least 90% of their family income, according to a 2017 report from the Social Security Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics. For those Americans, missing a Social Security payment could be the difference in affording rent, food, or medical expenses. ... Lutnick’s comments raise the question about whether the Trump administration will target people who have issues with their Social Security payments, accusing them of fraud if they reach out for help and shutting off their earned benefits for good.

Over the last few days the news has been full of the story of military and intelligence officials doing a group chat on the app Signal as they work out details for attacking the Houthi rebels of Yemen. They mistakenly included Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic in the group. Of course the pundit roundups on Kos include several quotes of opinions about the mess. I’ll let you read most of them on your own. One of interest is in a roundup by Chitown Kev quoting Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo:

Especially in the national security domain many things the government does have to remain secret. Sometimes those things remain secret for years or decades. But they’re not secrets from the US government. The US government owns all those communications, all those facts of its own history. Using a Signal app like this is hiding what’s happening from the government itself. And that is almost certainly not an unintended byproduct but the very reason for the use. These are disappearing communications. They won’t be in the national archives. Future administrations won’t know what happened. There also won’t be any records to determine whether crimes were committed. This all goes to the fundamental point Trump has never been able to accept: that the US government is the property of the American people and it persists over time with individual officeholders merely temporary occupants charged with administering an entity they don’t own or possess.

The roundup by Greg Dworkin has quotes that are more about the participants responding to the scandal. Kos of Kos wrote that West Virginia voted hard for the nasty guy. Yet he’s screwing them over. Examples: Charging high fees for Chinese ships visiting US ports is making agriculture exports more difficult. Most of of WV is rural and agricultural. Also, these ships are hauling less coal, hurting the state’s coal industry. A program to help schools buy from local farmers was cut. The state would be hard hit if cuts to programs to feed the poor were enacted. Medicaid keeps their rural hospitals afloat.

Common sense should dictate that if your state is the third most dependent on federal dollars you should maybe vote for the party that supports federal funding. I know, I know, trans this and trans that. But is destroying your entire economy worth the sacrifice for that bigotry? ... It’s called the “Department of Government Efficiency,” and it turns out that subsidizing small, rural states is not efficient. Those farmers aren’t paying enough in property taxes to cover expenses, which is why urban and blue-state folks are subsidizing it. But we liberal voters were fine with paying those subsidies because we’re all American, and we’re all in this together! But if West Virginians thought the federal safety net would have their backs, boy they’re in for some disappointment.

Oliver Willis of Kos talked about the conservative obsession with erasing history – except for Confederate history. I’ve already talked about the Defense Department removing several photos of female and black heroes and removing photos of the Enola Gay, the plane that carried the first atomic bomb to Japan, because of “gay” in the name. As for the second half of the opening statement, Willis mentions several military bases that Biden renamed because the original names celebrated Confederates. The nasty guy is changing them back. Willis traces this desire for erasure to the Confederate mythology of the “Lost Cause” that tried to rewrite the causes of the Civil War. There was also President Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That was the impetus for the South shifting from Democrat to Republican.

The right is in a quandary. It has political power, but it still cannot force millions of Americans to concede to the white supremacy that motivates much of conservative politics. That’s why it’s so driven to erase history. When Trump and his administration push for the Confederacy and try to disappear the diverse past, they are delivering on the political primal scream that the right emitted after Obama won. It’s doubtful that Trump will succeed in erasing the country’s collective memory, but like the men who tried to keep chattel slavery legal, Republicans are willing to give their crusade one last Confederate try.

Last Friday Walter Einenkel of Kos reported Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders started on a Fighting Oligarchy tour in Nevada and Arizona. They’re contrasting what Americans want the government to do with what the nasty guy, Musk, and Republicans are doing. AOC talked about Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

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.

On Monday Einenkel posted an update. Their rally in Denver attracted 34,000 people, the largest rally in Sanders’ career, and an estimated 86,000 showing up for the five events with another 1.5 million watching on livestream.

“When I talked about oligarchy over the years, I think for some people it was an abstraction,” Sanders told NPR on the success of the tour. Sanders explained that with the rise of Musk and President Donald Trump’s billionaire-rich Cabinet, “people understand you have to be blind not to see that what we have today is a government of the billionaires, by the billionaires and for the billionaires."

The tour caught Musk’s attention. He claimed: “The Dems just move around the same group of paid ‘protesters.’” Hmm. What would it take to haul 34,000 people to five different venues? I figure that would be close to 700 buses. Sheesh, just the logistics! Last Wednesday Singer reported:

A Republican senator on Tuesday admitted that Republicans are not standing up to President Donald Trump or co-President Elon Musk because they are scared that the richest man on the planet will spend his fortune to kill their electoral prospects.

One who is standing up is Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski. She called out the timidity of her fellow Republicans, noting their silence is because they fear being taken down. She said she would not compromise her integrity by staying quiet. And Musk may target her. After comments like that I wonder if it is all fear of Musk. I suspect many of those Republicans like what Musk is doing to the government. They’ve been searching for ways to do the same thing while surviving voter disapproval. Now that Musk is doing it for them they just have to separate themselves from his actions. Though that isn’t going all that well – Singer documents several Republicans praising Musk (or at least Tesla) and demanding Americans praise him too. A week ago Singer reported that on Fox News Musk whined about the hatred and violence from Democrats, supposedly the party of empathy. Then he said, “I’ve never done anything harmful, I’ve only done productive things.” How completely clueless can one guy be? Singer documented several of Musk’s actions and how harmful they have been. Shutting down USAID meant people in impoverished countries have died because their HIV treatments were interrupted and others have died from hunger or disease. His tightening of requirements for Social Security is harming seniors. People he claimed were getting benefits even though they were dead are harmed as they try to prove they’re still living. He has cut medical research, including treatments for cancer. He’s fired tens of thousands of federal workers and many struggle to obtain unemployment benefits because he falsely claimed they were fired for poor performance. His actions could trigger a recession. He’s at least completely clueless. This is a time to ask the questions: Harmed who? Productive for whom? From his thinking if it benefits billionaires like himself it can’t be harmful. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, has cheers (amazingly) for Andrew Forrest, CEO of Australian iron ore mining company Fortescue.

“I’ve always found that the customer is always right, which is why we’re going renewable and moving away from oil and gas because our customers are saying, ‘we want energy but not at any cost, and if you can give us green energy at the same price as dirty [energy] then we are going to buy green every day.’ That’s my job, and that’s Fortescue’s job,” Forrest told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday. “You’ve got data centers popping up all over Europe and they want green energy if they can get it. They’ll take dirty if they can’t, sure. That’s Exxon Mobil’s and Total’s argument: ‘Well, we’re just doing what the customers want.’ Actually, you’re not. Your customers want green energy. [If the] oil and gas [industry] doesn’t want to supply green energy, guess what? Fortescue will.”