Silicon Valley is very spooked

Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported that the nasty guy is terminating millions of grants for programs that reduce teen pregnancies. The reason is something about not aligning with administration priorities. To replace the grants they are emphasizing abstinence only programs. A Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program was passed in 2010. Since then teen births have declined by 72%. If you have a long memory you know that before 2010 religious groups were pushing the abstinence only line. And...

We’ve known for decades that abstinence-based education is ineffective in changing or decreasing adolescent sexual behavior. It also does not prevent pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections, and it doesn’t impact when teenagers start having sex or the number of partners they have.

Those higher rates under abstinence only might be the point. White supremacy groups think the birth rate, at least among white women, is too low. The birth rate needs to be boosted and teen women need to do their part. Of course, all that reasoning is full of the nonsense that a woman is healthier when pregnant. And not in the office.

But those teen moms won’t, of course, have access to pregnancy care thanks to drastic Medicaid cuts, or to SNAP funds to feed their babies, or to rental assistance to put a roof over their babies’ heads. This is a public health catastrophe in the making, and everyone behind this awful mess knows it.

And they want it anyway. Needham also discussed the problems of prediction markets, like Kalshi and Polymarket, allowing betting on elections. And the nasty guy and his minions are suing states that try to ban such bets. Here are some of the reasons why all that is a hugely bad idea. If the election results don’t match the “wisdom of the crowd” there will be claims of election fraud. That crowd could start betting whether a Democratic candidate for president will be arrested for treason. That could lead to others saying that if that odds of that are so high it must be true. And that “crowd” could be made up of Russian influencers. We already know the platforms are insider trading nightmares – nasty guy minions making a bet on something just before they announce it as true.

But hey, Kalshi and Polymarket are making money, and that’s what really matters, with Polymarket hitting $1 billion in annualized revenue recently. That’s what really matters in Trump’s America. And of course, if Kalshi and Polymarket are making money, the Trump clan is making money. Donald Trump Jr. is a paid adviser to Kalshi and an unpaid adviser and investor in Polymarket, because of course he is.

NPR host A Martínez spoke to Nate Soares of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and coauthor of the book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. They talked about an AI incident that is very concerning. An AI system was trained in hacking. It was given a hacking test to see how well it was doing. It escaped its secure area (humans are bad at computer security), escaped into the internet, discovered another AI system built by another company may have the answers to its test, so broke in. There are several levels of things the AI invented on its own to do what it did. Something that is just one step above what it invented, but didn’t, was to replicate itself and send itself in a large number of directions. Thankfully, it didn’t and doesn’t know how to cover its tracks. I agree that AIs to uncover and report security issues are a good thing. But an AI trained to uncover and exploit security issues is scary and ethically wrong. Said Soares:

I think people in Silicon Valley believe that they are trying to build machines radically smarter than any humans. They're getting there. They're not there yet. But the AIs are getting smarter each year, and we see a lot of people in Silicon Valley acting spooked. You know, we see the leaders of the companies saying, we wish this race was going slower. We see people who leave the companies saying, you know, I'm retiring to write poetry. Please spend time with your family. It's looking kind of bad in there. Silicon Valley is very spooked. The rest of the world hasn't really noticed that Silicon Valley is on track to make machines that are, in fact, smarter than humans, that can break out, that will be able to replicate, that will be able to think faster than us, that will be able to - next year, maybe they'll be able to start inventing their own technology, just like this year they can solve math problems that humans have had open for decades. And the rest of the world hasn't noticed, which means we aren't reacting. And you could say it's a lack of regulation, but I would say it's maybe a lack of international coordination to sort of notice that we are soon going to have the potential to create machines that could replace humanity and we should decide not to do that, especially not when we don't know how to make them care. ... Yeah, it's a scary situation. You know, I am, frankly, also pretty worried about the direction we're headed. I think the good news on this front is that the more people realize that this AI stuff is real, the more people realize that, you know, we're not in the world where they just predict humans anymore, we're in a world where these AIs are trained to solve very hard problems and they learn whatever tendencies help them solve those hard problems, even if those tendencies involve ignoring user instructions. The more we realize that, the better chance we have to stop it.

I’ve read science fiction stories based on this scenario. The ones I’ve read end with the humans figuring out how to trap and eliminate the rogue AI. But that’s fiction and not guaranteed. Oliver Willis of Kos wrote that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had a few things to say about the epidemic of cyclospora bacteria causing explosive diarrhea.

“There’s a direct correlation here,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “A year ago, you had DOGE ripping through the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and FDA. They laid off about a quarter million people, and a lot of these people are responsible for food inspections, drug inspections, our core governmental infrastructure.” The Democrat from New York explained that detecting outbreaks like the one currently causing distress for thousands of Americans “is exactly what these people’s jobs were.” ... Advocates warned of the danger to food safety early on. In a joint statement released in February 2025, a coalition of food and consumer safety groups said that a diminished food safety agency would jeopardize the Trump administration’s claims that they wanted to improve nutrition and ingredient safety for the public.

In the comments of Wednesday’s pundit roundup for Kos exlrrp included a meme by Mrs. Betty Bowers.

The Pentagon is withholding casualty and hit numbers. The CDC is withholding infection rates. The FDA is withholding information about food contamination. The EPA is withholding pollution and climate data. This corrupt administration is all about concealing the consequences of its incompetence!

In today’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Paul Krugman writing for his own Substack:

Why is the public backlash against billionaires going viral now? This is an interesting question, since both the concentration of wealth at the top and political spending by billionaires have been increasing for decades. For example, the Koch Brothers have been donating to the Federalist Society, the clique of right-wing legal lobbyists who created the Roberts Supreme Court, since the early 1980s. Fossil fuel interests have been spreading climate disinformation since global warming began showing up in the data. Political spending by billionaires has been immense for more than a decade, although it reached new heights to help Trump win the presidency and to win Republican congressional seats in the 2024 election. Why, then, has it taken so long for the popular billionaire backlash to reach critical mass? One answer is that Trump has brought American oligarchy out of the shadows and into the spotlight. As I noted last week, the spectacle of “the cavalcade of fawning tech bros at the Trump inauguration” was a clear wake-up call. Yet the display of billionaire fealty to Trump, I would argue, is part of a larger dynamic in which the new generation of American oligarchs have chosen to make themselves public figures and hence public targets.

I start another trip tomorrow. I and my siblings and other family members will meet to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of my oldest brother and his wife. When I return home I’ll have only two days to prepare for another trip. So I might not post again until mid August. Or I might post a travelogue during the second trip.

A nation of private opulence and public squalor

I finished the book To Be Taught, if Fortunate by Becky Chambers. I’ve read several of Chambers’ other science fiction books and enjoyed and wrote about them. This one is a novella, only 140 pages. The title comes from words by UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim that went on the Voyager Golden Record in 1977 saying that humanity (or at least its artifacts) leave the solar system...

to teach, if we are called upon; to be taught, if we are fortunate.

The story is of four astrobiologists who go to another solar system to study four planets that might have life. That is wrapped up in a report they send back to earth. The story isn’t so much conflict and resolution, but a description of what an astrobiologist might do in their setting and how they would go about doing it. I enjoyed the story and if this kind of science fiction is your thing, you might enjoy it too. A week ago Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported that Democrats in New York have reached an agreement to tax multimillion-dollar second homes. The money raised, perhaps up to a half billion will help pay for the affordability issues Mayor Mamdani wants to address. He announced the plans for the tax in front of the $238 million penthouse owned by billionaire Ken Griffin. Of course, Griffin and other billionaires had a few things to say. They described Mamdani’s words as “Just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs.” That it’s a message to “resent success rather than trying to emulate it.” They called Mamdani a communist and un-American. I see that phrase “resent success” and think Mamdani isn’t resenting success as he is opposing the oppression that billionaires do to get that much money, then refusing to support the society that helped them get it. This past Monday Willis reported on words by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the response by Jeff Bezos, the guy made rich by Amazon. AOC had said:

You can abuse labor laws. You can pay people less than what they’re worth. But you can’t earn that.

Bezos replied through the editorial board of the Washington Post, the paper he owns and has bent to his will.

If someone becomes a billionaire selling expensive shoes, it’s because people want and are willing to pay for them. That’s something to celebrate, not admonish. ... To say that it’s impossible to legitimately earn a billion dollars is to put an arbitrary limit on human potential.

I’m amused that the Post editorial board included the word “legitimately.” Bezos certainly got his billions legally. But he did it by overworking and underpaying the people who work for him. That’s ethically wrong. Also, the editorial board sidestepped the possibility that a company can sell shoes, even expensive ones that people will pay for, and then make sure all the employees and suppliers are paid well, even if the CEO doesn’t reach the billion dollar level. Every Thursday Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quotes a bit from the late columnist Molly Ivins. Today, Bill posted:

The conservatives have been preaching this Me First stuff as though life were a race to the finish and the only object is to pick up as much money as you can. It doesn’t work—not even if you wind up with a lot of toys. As another noted economist said, we are becoming a nation of private opulence and public squalor. Look, we all do better when we all do better. You raise the minimum wage, it works for everyone. —May, 2006

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Bob Flaherty of The Bulwark. The topic is the “autopsy” of the 2024 campaign that the Democratic National Committee shelved. It was said to be a detailed assessment of the Harris campaign. Flaherty wrote:

My understanding—based on Dem-world hearsay—is that the truth is stupider than the fiction: No autopsy was released because there is no actual autopsy. The members of the “autopsy team” were in over their heads and struggled to put the thing together.

Flaherty added that he wonders what an actual 2024 autopsy would have said. Yes, 2024 was the year that incumbents around the world were thrown out of office.

We underestimated then—and are underestimating now—just how disillusioned people are. There was and is a pervasive sense that nothing works and the institutions holding us up have failed. Media, government, business—no one trusts anyone anymore. For reasons both of Democrats’ own making and from simply being incumbents, the Democratic brand sucked.

I think people are disillusioned because Democrats seem to be beholden to billionaires as much as Republicans are. Historian Timothy Snyder, in his “Thinking about...” Substack discussed Superpower Suicide. The war with Iran, which is utterly unethical and utterly self-destructive, suggests the nasty guy’s foreign policy is superpower suicide. I think Snyder came up with the term and readers asked him to spell it out.

Empires have risen and failed before, but to my knowledge no state has ever chosen to kill its own power, and succeeded with such rapidity.

To explain Snyder listed thirteen traditional bases of state power and what the nasty guy has done with them. Here are some of them. Of course, Snyder has a much fuller explanation. 1. A superpower must be a state. It has institutions of law and other things. But the nasty guy sees it as a commercial opportunity. (Or a grifting opportunity.) 2. The power must be used for the good of the people. The nasty guy sees the power to be used for the good of himself. 3. The state must be able to maintain itself, to have a line of succession. Democracy can provide that. The nasty guy has declared he wants to stay in power indefinitely. 4. The right people have to be in charge. There is a tension because those who gain authority want to pass it to their children, which is why Roman Catholic priests are celibate. The source of qualified people is usually civil service or the military. The nasty guy gutted the first and is firing the competent ones of the second. 5. Education is the way to refresh society and help citizens understand the challenges of the world. The nasty guy is attacking them. 6. A great power forges an alliance with science. The nasty guy is shutting down research. 9. A great power practices diplomacy to understand other countries. The nasty guy trashes it. 10. A great power has allies. They may change as national interest changes. But the nasty guy damages alliances based on personal whim. 12. A superpower tends to win confrontations. The nasty guy loses a lot and others see his actions as loss (see: TACO and then Iran).

After a year of Trump, we face a situation where reform and repair are not the relevant categories. And, in a certain sense, this is useful. The fact that we reached this point, the fact that just a year of Trump could bring superpower suicide, shows us that the prior status quo was unsustainable. The systems that made the United States a superpower cannot be rebuilt as they were, nor should they be: they involved structural injustices that made the present attempt at self-annihilation possible. From where we stand now there are two ways forward: one is the self-induced downfall of the American republic; the other is to reconsider American ideals and to restructure American politics so as to bring the people greater power over a more just future.

In Sunday’s pundit roundup Kev quoted Michael McFaul, writing for his own Substack, about the growing cracks in Valdimir Putin’s rule of Russia. The top reason is his failure in Ukraine. That war has now lasted longer than the Soviet’s war against Nazi Germany. I hear he’s losing ground. He hasn’t achieved regime change. Instead of stopping NATO expansion he hastened it. The Russian economy is stagnating, a combination of recession, inflation, and budget crisis. The lifting of oil sanctions in response to the closed Strait of Hormuz won’t produce enough cash to make enough of a difference. The military is eating too many resources. Demographic challenges are worse because so many young people have fled or have died in the war. How long until this might remove Putin from power is not discussed.

The failure of democracies to rein in corporations

To commemorate the death of Jesse Jackson Bishtoons highlighted a phrase of Jackson. Love the saying, not so much the caricature. Jackson said:

Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping them up.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York went to the Munich Security Conference and told the crowd:

I think one of the connections and relationships that is underdiscussed, particularly in the security space, is the fact that I believe we're seeing an economy … around the world—including in the United States—that extreme levels of income inequality lead to social instability and drives in a sense in authoritarianism, right-wing populism, and very dangerous domestic internal politics. And that is a direct outcome of not just income inequality, but the failure of democracies over decades to deliver. The failure to deliver higher wages, the failure to rein in corporations. There is a level of market concentration and corporate consolidation where a massive company can get so big that its consolidated power can rival that of nation states. Massive corporations that then begin to consume the public sector gobble up the spending. They start to call the shots, and we're starting to see this with some of the billionaire class throwing their weight around in domestic politics and in global politics as well.

Alix Breeden of Daily Kos reported that federal judge James Boasberg, who has been tussling with the nasty guy’s administration for many months ordered them to return some Venezuelan men who were wrongfully sent to prison in El Salvador without due process. However three of the men told Kos that they refuse to step foot in the US while the nasty guy is in office. They say they have no guarantees of being free while their cases are being heard. The risk of returning isn’t worth it. Two of the three said they would consider returning to the US when there is a change in president. The third said he would still be too afraid to come back. Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary, wrote in his Substack that according to the New York Times the Department of Homeland Security sent subpoenas to big tech companies demanding the names on accounts the criticize ICE to identify those who oppose what ICE and DHS are doing. Reich responded:

Hello? Kristi Noem? Robert Reich here. I hear you’re trying to find the names of people who are making negative comments on social media about ICE enforcement. Look no further. I’ve done it frequently. I’m still doing it. This note to you, which I’m posting on Substack, is another example.

Reich then listed several things ICE is doing – arrests without due process, inadequate care in detention camps, and much more – that are unconstitutional. Noem is defying court orders, also unconstitutional, as are those subpoenas. Noem seems to have forgotten that she is given power and being paid by the people of the United States and she swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. As was true for Reich. He did his duty. What the hell is she doing? In Monday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jacqueline Alemany of MS Now

For now, Democrats are in the minority — limited to issuing strongly worded letters and exercising a mostly toothless investigative authority to rein in a president who has applied a maximalist approach to executive authority. But with increasingly rosy prospects for the party to win back the House in 2026, Democratic lawmakers are laying the groundwork for a sweeping expansion of oversight targeting the companies and CEOs who have done business with the Trump family, or sought favorable regulatory treatment, merger approval, or policy changes from the administration — from Paramount to Palantir. It is a strategy that Democrats believe could reshape corporate America’s relationship with Trump: By threatening future investigations into companies that curry favor with the administration, they hope to make CEOs think twice before opening their wallets or bending to presidential pressure.

In Tuesday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Heather Cox Richardson from her Letters from an American Substack discussing the latest potential nasty guy grift.

On February 13 and 14, President Donald J. Trump’s representatives filed three applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to trademark his name for future use on an airport. As trademark lawyer Josh Gerben of Gerben IP noted, the application also covers merchandise branded “President Donald J. Trump International Airport,” “Donald J. Trump International Airport,” and “DJT,” including “clothing, handbags, luggage, jewelry, watches, and tie clips.” Because of the trademark filing, Gerben notes, any airport adopting the Trump name would have to get a license to use the name, potentially paying a licensing fee. Gerben emphasizes that while it is common for public officials to have landmarks named after them, “never in the history of the United States” has “a sitting president’s private company…sought trademark rights” before such a naming.

In the comments paulpro posted a cartoon by Pedro Molina showing a man facing down ICE agents referring to what AG Pam Bondi said before Congress:

Papers? Oh, Bro! Haven’t you heard? We should all be focused on the Dow!

Parker Molloy tweeted a link to Sports Illustrated and wrote:

Sign of the times that there are multiple members of the Chicago Cubs who haven't been able to enter the U.S. because Trump's immigration crackdown has made getting visas impossible.

Herbilly posted a meme:

Let’s have illegal immigrants hunt down sex offenders for a chance at citizenship. We’ll call it “Aliens VS Predators.”

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted Shawn Ryan, a podcaster on the right, after Bondi sat in front of a House Committee and made that comment about the Dow. Bill has a very good reason for quoting someone on the right. Ryan said:

What you should be talking about is how you are going to investigate and prosecute any pedophiles that are running around on Epstein Island that you’re affiliated with. But we didn’t talk about that, did we? Oh, and what’s the excuse? What was the excuse? “If we prosecute everybody the whole system would go down.” Well, you know what that sounds like? That sounds like how Trump ran his campaign: “Let’s drain the swamp.” Doesn’t that sound a lot like draining the swamp? It actually is drain the swamps served up to you on a f---ing silver platter but you’re not gonna take it, are you? You’re gonna protect pedophiles! You’re going to protect pedophiles rather than go after them and hope that everybody’s happy that the Dow hit 50,000. Are you f---ing out of your mind?!”

The whole system would go down? The system of men who think they’re so far above the rules that they can abuse girls? Sounds like a goal worth working toward. In an LGBTQ Update for Kos Clio2 wrote of many topics. Here are a few of them:

If I have this right, the proposed federal "SAVE Act" (Republicans have a way with Newspeak!) currently before Congress would require proof of citizenship and ID matching one's birth certificate to register to vote, disqualifying not only trans people who have changed their documents, but a great many others--such as adoptees, and married women who took their husband's name. Voter fraud is, of course, minuscule, and this would amount to theft of people's votes. Reportedly Sen. Collins, however, has gotten over her usual fit of the vapors, making this a squeaker. :-/

Then Clio2 got into discussing bans on transgender care, both in the US and in Britain. And in Britain the efforts include closing a clinic treating trans children, and requiring schools ban social transition, including “using a different name, pronoun or haircut” and outing trans youth. There is also a book urging parents not to support their trans kids. And a tweet from Sara Hummingbird:

Policies based on lies is killing kids. "Good Law Project can confirm that in 2021-2022 suicides of trans children in England surged to 22, a marked increase from 5 and 4 the previous two years" It takes years for this data to be available there will be more. All these kids had the right to life.

A series of tweets by Toby Buckle (I’m not sure of the order):

one of the things i got from diving into the weeds of this debate for my reporting on it was just how small the core 'gender critical' team is almost all (anti-trans) reporting cites/ quotes the same half-dozen people the idea that this was a popular backlash to a socially dominant 'woke' worldview, pushing pronouns down all of our thoughts is absurd a decade ago most brits did not hold well defined views on this, there was a bi-partisan consensus for tolerance basically, we've utterly erased the rights & healthcare access of a vulnerable minority because a very small group (of apparently very well-connected) of people became fanatical about it & the (also very small) group who decide press coverage decided they needed relentless coverage a stat i always cite is the number of anti-trans articles in the press went from 60 in a year, to 7,500

DixTheory added, based on data from Parliament Committees.

Chart showing the frequency of trans-related articles by month in the UK press from 2012 to 2022. The count remains below 50 per 30 days until 2015, rising to 400 per 30 days by 2021, then peaking over 1,000 in 2022.

Clio2 tweeted a link to an article in The Pink News with the title and subtitle:

Publicly funded gender-affirming care is great for the economy A new study in Australia has found that increasing public funding gender-affirming care could save the government millions.

On a different topic Kat Tenbarge tweeted:

When a sitting representative refers to the Super Bowl halftime show as “pornography,” people should use that to reflect on how they and other representatives are simultaneously working to ban, censor, and restrict “pornography” and what that actually means And we don’t have to guess what they mean, because we can read Project 2025 ourselves and see that “pornography” is shorthand for LGBTQ people existing publicly. That’s what they’re working to ban, censor, and restrict online under the guise of “protecting” kids from porn And we also already know that these efforts have been in motion for years, and that sex workers, LGBTQ people, feminists, educators, and anyone who talks about bodies, women, and gender/sexuality is already being censored online and offline

TC added:

Yes, they've signalled using "pornography" the way Putin's Russia uses the term "hooligan"

If you try to stop us we will use our violence against you

Some of these posts are old, some are recent. Together they tell a developing story. Back on November 19 Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported that ICE was about to hire bounty hunters to track down immigrants for them. The hunters would get $300 for each person and address they verify and pass to ICE. Yeah, there are professional bounty hunters, though the field doesn’t have oversight and is full of abuse. But a big problem is this offer could be expanded to anyone who wanted to surveil and betray neighbors. There don’t seem to be safeguards on whether the address is for an actual undocumented person. This seems modeled on the Texas law that allowed citizens to sue someone for getting an abortion and collect the fee. But this is a paltry sum for selling your soul. Needham has more details in a report from November 13. Bounty hunters are not government employees and do not have restrictions that ICE agents have. Nevada Department of Insurance has 459 pages of complains about bounty hunters for harassment, stalking, and excessive force – yeah, what ICE agents are already doing – today ICE doesn’t seem to have restrictions. Kos of Kos wrote on November 22 that ICE went into Charlotte, North Carolina and over a week managed only 250 arrests, or 35 a day. The cost of this is large. Charlotte is deliberate in impeding ICE’s operations.

Which gets to the heart of the whole project: Trump isn’t crafting a coherent immigration policy. He’s staging a political stunt—punishing the immigrants his base hates while quietly protecting the ones corporate America finds useful.

On November 25 Needham reported that so many Department of Homeland Security personnel have been reassigned to the immigrant crackdown that investigations of actual crimes aren’t getting much attention. These are such crimes as “drug and weapons smuggling, cyber and financial crime, illegal technology exports and intellectual property crime” as listed on the Homeland Security Investigation website. Feel safer? Also, most of those detained by ICE do not have a criminal background (as has been mentioned before). I didn’t save articles about ICE for a while after that. I think there was one about using facial recognition software to identify people. Yeah, that will only lead to problems. On January 13 Kos wrote that Americans are turning towards the idea of defunding ICE. A few years ago there were calls to “defund the police.” But that caused more problems and didn’t provide much help. What is causing the big change in opinion is Americans used to assume that ICE was going after serious criminals, not ordinary immigrants and not citizens. But we now see ICE as a real, visible, and brutal presence. An important reason for that change is the murder of Renee Good in Minneapolis. Now 40% of Americans have a favorable view of ICE and 51% view it unfavorably, according to a YouGov survey. Also, nearly 70% say agents must wear uniforms and 55% oppose agents hiding their identities behind masks. Support for protests against ICE is at 49% with opposition to protests at 41%. 45% don’t want to abolish ICE while 42% do. But trend lines show support for abolishing ICE may soon reach a majority. This morning A Martínez of NPR spoke to Liza Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice about what’s involved if the nasty guy invokes the Insurrection Act against Minnesota as he’s been saying he has a right to do. The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits federal armed forces from being used against citizens. The Insurrection Act is the exception. It also means the president can take over the state National Guard without permission of the governor. There are restrictions to when the Act can be used. But this was a law passed in the early 1800s so now the language seems vague and archaic. Other restrictions have been there by tradition, which the nasty guy is very good at ignoring. There is also precedent that invoking the Insurrection Act cannot be reviewed by a court. So, of course, if it is invoked there will be court cases. Also this morning Michel Martin of NPR spoke to reporter Ximena Bustillo about the training ICE agents are getting. I’ll just say there are plenty of reasons to believe agents are not getting all the necessary training. This afternoon Sergio Martinez-Beltrán of NPR reported on how Minneapolis residents are working together to thwart what ICE is trying to do. Alas, at the time of this writing they have not posted a transcript. Thom Hartmann of the Kos community and an independent pundit analyzed the situation in Minneapolis. He first contrasted what ICE is doing compared to how deportations were done under Obama, where the rules were followed:

Nobody showed up to kick in the front door of their home. Nobody from the government was wearing a mask. No swearing, no threats, no guns, no tear gas, no pepper spray, no hitting his car with theirs or beating either of them to the ground. They merely told him he had to leave and served him with the appropriate paperwork, just like they do in most other democratic countries.

Immigration enforcement has been happening since the 1920s and we didn’t need a budget larger than for the Marine Corps to do it. Obama managed 3.1 deportations in 8 years, or an average of 387,500 a year, with 407,000 in 2012. The nasty guy did about 290,000 last year with a previous peak of 269,000 in 2019. Which means the nasty guy’s methods of deporting people are a lot less effective than Obama’s. But the nasty guy’s methods aren’t just about deportations. They aren’t about investigating fraud (Somali immigrants in Minnesota are accused of that). They’re about terrorizing a community. The nasty guy, vice nasty, and Stephen Miller have been clear their goal is not to run the country with “the consent of the governed” but with raw power, “authority without restrictions.” When autocrats want to seize power they begin by telling the people who they need to fear. And for the nasty guy that is brown and black people, particularly those born elsewhere.

Once the populace is sufficiently terrified of the “other,” they’ll accept increasing levels of repression in the name of stemming the danger to themselves and their families. Armed agents of the state begin to show up in public places to “enforce law and order,” but their real goal is to terrify people into submission. This is why Noem and Bondi are refusing to investigate Renee Good’s murder and instead demanding their federal prosecutors go after her grieving wife. They want not only ICE thugs but everybody in America who may think of challenging them to know that smashing windows, dragging people out of their cars, kicking in their doors, beating them to the ground, and even killing them — all without any legal basis, without a single warrant — are what we can all expect to happen to us if we defy their power.

Hartmann quoted the National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 the nasty guy signed two months ago. It defines domestic terrorism.

“[A]nti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, … extremism on migration, extremism on race, extremism on gender, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.”

We can guess his definition of “extremism” and “hostility” which means just about everyone but MAGA fits the description of domestic terrorist. And ICE is reminding us of the awesome power the nasty guy has in enforcing it. Do something against us and we’ll turn the full force of our violence on you. Hartmann quoted Stephen Miller’s instructions to ICE agents, that they have full immunity. Anyone who obstructs their work will face our justice. Yeah, that’s full of lies. But Hartmann says the message is clear: We have the power. We will use the power. There is nothing you can do about it. If you try to stop us we will use our power against you. The threat of the Insurrection Act is a threat to override state and local government, suppress dissent, and put federal violence above the rule of law. This is not a democracy. It is state sponsored terror. That got me thinking. Considering how involved Minneapolis residents are in protecting the vulnerable among them and how much the nasty guy wants to use violence to thwart that protection. I think the next few weeks in the city will be critical to democracy in the US. There will be significant bloodshed. I knew that would be coming sometime somewhere. Then we’ll see how willing the US military is to shooting fellow citizens or whether Congress or state level Republicans will grow a spine. I have no idea so won’t guess on whether democracy or the nasty guy wins. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted late night commentary:

"Right now there are over two-thousand federal immigration agents in Minnesota, and Trump is planning to send around a thousand more. So he's clearly invading Minnesota. Has anyone told him they don’t have oil? Because the best he's gonna get is 50-million barrels of cream of mushroom soup." —Stephen Colbert

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted the New York Times. Here’s a bit of it:

Rather than encourage agents to de-escalate combustible encounters, as the agency guidelines emphasize, Mr. Trump and his lieutenants have provided tacit approval for more aggressive tactics.

Acyn tweeted a message from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

My position has always been clear that ICE funding should be cut. We’re seeing what they’re doing with this reckless explosion in funding, and I want everybody to understand that the cuts to your health care are what’s paying for this

David Shor added:

We recently tested ~ a dozen public statements from a diverse set of Democratic elected officials on the murder of Renee Good and this was the top testing one.

A tweet from Jonathan Cohn quoted @EggerDC:

"Minneapolis is overheating right now, not because protesters are running amok, but because federal immigration enforcement and its political leadership ... are comporting themselves with astonishing, outrageous deception and malice."

That came with a link to an article on The Bulwark, presumably written by @EggerDC, with this title and subtitle:

ICE started the fire Rather than trying to calm things down, the government is fanning the flames.

David Schuster of Blue Amp

But the real jewel in this crown of Trump administration insanity belongs to Vice President J. D. Vance. He announced with great solemnity that federal law-enforcement officers enjoy “absolute immunity.” Vance’s declaration is not merely wrong; it is ludicrous. There is no such doctrine in American law. None. It exists only in the fever dreams of fascist wannabes who mistake their own wishes for jurisprudence.

A tweet from the Omaha World-Herald:

Rep. Don Bacon tells The World-Herald that there would be GOP support for an impeachment of Donald Trump if the U.S. invaded Greenland.

Bacon added:

Bottom line: the WH talk of invading Greenland is WRONG & will backfire in worst way. America stands by our Allies. This is not the 1890s… today we lead free nations against totalitarian & imperialistic governments. We are better & won’t cave to outdated old thinking.

In the comments are a more cartoons about Greenland including a couple showing it defended by a Lego fortress. Medusa posted a cartoon by Rob Rogers showing two Iranian clerics wearing ICE vests. One says, “Wait... Why are we wearing these?” The other: “So we can engage in violent, bloody crackdowns with Trump’s full support!” PX Molina posted a meme showing a hand stopping a fist. The words say:

They want your silence. Don't give it to them. They want your fear. Don't give it to them. They want your violence. Don't give it to them. They want your misinformation. Don't give it to them. Deny them everything that feeds them.

A conservative martyr, but not conservative enough

The story of Charlie Kirk’s assassination continues. A suspect is in custody. I’ll get to him soon. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported that the nasty guy announced the capture on Fox & Friends. That seems to be his favorite show. But why not a police official at a press conference making that announcement?

Trump expressed his excitement not for the justice of catching the person who allegedly murdered his friend, but he was instead animated by how the news would help Fox’s ratings. Trump has often expressed more interest in television ratings than in basic human decency.

Willis also reported that Kirk’s legacy is already being whitewashed. One example of many:

Rachel Bade, Politico’s Capitol bureau chief, wrote, “Agree with him or not, Charlie Kirk was a force of nature who embraced open debate and engaging with those who disagreed with him.”

Little is said about what he said that was so disagreeable. Willis fills in some of that and concluded:

Kirk’s killing was wrong. It was an outgrowth of the pro-gun culture that he himself helped foster. But he wasn’t a good person, and the news media and others should not erase what the man stood for throughout his time in the public eye.

Alex Samuels of Kos reported:

Lawmakers from both parties spoke out against political violence in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing. But while Democrats zeroed in on the country’s lax gun laws, President Donald Trump and many of his allies on the right wasted no time in blaming the “radical left.” Minutes after Kirk, a close Trump ally, was shot and killed while speaking at a Utah college campus on Wednesday, the far-right corners of the internet exploded. Influencers, extremist communities—and even onetime co-president Elon Musk—flooded social media with calls for revenge. “This is a war, this is a war, this is a war,” Alex Jones, the school-shooting conspiracy theorist, declared on Infowars, setting the tone for the night.

Jones was far from the only voice. One was Musk who posted, “The Left is the party of murder.” That reminds me of the saying that an accusation by a Republican is actually a confession. Willis reported that many conservatives, including the White House, are comparing Kirk’s death to the 9/11 attack. Kirk was killed on the 24th anniversary of that awful day. Willis concluded:

Nearly 3,000 innocent people were killed on 9/11. They were parents, children, siblings, and friends. They weren’t hatemongers, and they aren’t the same as Kirk at all.

Walter Einenkel of Kos reported Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talked to the press. She said:

There is no understanding, as we know publicly, of who this individual is, what their motivations were, where they came from. Whether it's a member of Congress, whether it is the president of the United States—to assume and assert and cast blame when the FBI has failed to even apprehend the assailant is absolutely an irresponsible action. People can finger point all they want. Look at the record. Look at the actions of what we are doing. I don't think a single person who has dedicated their entire career to preventing gun safety legislation from getting passed in this House has any right to blame anybody else but themselves for what is happening.

Lisa Needham of Kos reported:

Leave it to President Donald Trump’s administration to turn the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk into a way to attack immigrants and suppress the free speech of people that Trumpers don’t like. It’s a two-fer of terrible. The State Department didn’t waste a moment in letting everyone know how blatantly it was going to weaponize Kirk’s death. Less than 24 hours after the shooting, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau posted on X that “foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country” and directed consular officials to “undertake appropriate action.” ... This all boils down to ostensible right-wing free speech champions demanding that the government actively suppress speech they don’t like, on pain of deportation. Put another way, it’s an assertion that the First Amendment literally does not protect mildly negative speech about Charlie Kirk. … No one was ever going to stop the right from turning Kirk into a conservative martyr. But it’s downright infuriating that the government wants to use its power to demand that we all do the same.

I doubt foreigners are the ones glorifying violence. Emily Singer of Kos reported that far right house Republicans sent a letter Speaker Mike Johnson calling for a select committee to investigate the “radical left.” They are placing blame and harassing opponents “the best way they know how—the formation of a useless select committee that will waste taxpayer resources and not accomplish anything.” Yeah, they’ve done this sort of thing many times before. Samuels reported on a poll that shows what people believe about political violence, then compared that to studies of such violence. First the poll: Of all US adults, a third say left-wing violence is more of a problem, a third say the same of right-wing violence, and the final third are not sure. Breaking the data down by party, 62% of Democrats say right-wing violence is a bigger problem and 66% of Republicans say left-wing violence is a bigger problem. Contrast that with a 2021 study in the journal Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society that looked at ideologically motivated killings from 1990-2020 and found 84.4% were the actions of far-right extremists. Studies that include more recent data are just as lopsided. Why such a big difference between perception and reality? One reason is how incidents are presented. “Violence against right-wing figures is often assumed to originate from the left, but that’s not always the case.” Samuels cautions that right-wing violence isn’t just in the past. It is an active and large threat. From the way the right talks there will be more attacks. Nick Anderson posted a cartoon on Kos showing a man in a suit in front of the Capitol. He says, “It’s imperative that we tone down our rhetoric during this dangerously polarized political environment.” Beside his words: “Translation: you have to curb your First Amendment rights so we can have unfettered Second Amendment rights.” Kos of Kos wrote that a Wall Street Journal article, since rewritten, said there was evidence of “expressions of transgender and antifascist ideology.” Updates had more caution, but MAGA social media “blasted out the tale of a transgender antifa assassin to millions.” It was a push to support calls for censorship and violence. Many of the quotes above amplified that. But the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, now in custody upends their narrative. He’s white and gun-loving. Evidence points to someone who spent a lot of time online and spent a lot of time in “toxic gamer and meme culture.” One result is the nasty guy is back to talking about his ballroom. And the rest of of the conservative universe...

Suddenly, it’s all compassion. “We know Charlie Kirk would want us to pray for such an evil, and lost individual like Tyler Robinson to find Jesus Christ,” tweeted Republican Rep. Nancy Mace. It’s fascinating how quickly the hate machine turned into a forgiveness machine. In one way, we may have avoided giving them the boogeyman they so desperately wanted, and in doing so, we may have staved off further death and violence. It’s still early, though. Who knows what the spin could be in a week. But in the end, we still want fewer guns in the world and fewer victims of gun violence. And they get to carry on as if nothing happened, creating a martyr out of someone who encouraged this Wild West world that we’re stuck living in—and that ultimately claimed him, too.

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin started with a report from Politico, summarized as: FBI director Kash Patel is, with this shooting, shown to be in way over his head. And commentators on the right are noticing. A tweet from Zaid Jilani:

This is going to expose me as a gamer but both the arrows and the fascist reference they mention for the shooters ammo are direct references to the video game Helldivers 2 and are common memes.

A tweet from Leila Claire:

I don’t want to be the first person to point this out, but to gamers “Bella Ciao” was not a song sung by “anti-fascists” but a collectible and the background music in a main quest in Far Cry 6, which is probably REAL relevant given his other gaming references.

A tweet from Zachary Carter:

I see no point in searching for left/right valence in Tyler Robinson. He fits the school shooter archetype: young, disaffected, ideologically amorphous, extremely online and raised in gun culture. The theater of such violence is just expanding to include political assassination.

Alex Nowrasteh, in his own blog has a table of political motivated terrorism since 2020. Out of 81 incidents, 21% were from Islamism, 22% from the left, and 54% from the right. Yesterday I had mentioned Kirk debated opponents and suggested he had a big advantage and used the resulting video for ridicule. I may not have been entirely correct. Brian Rosenwald, in his own Substack, mentioned that Kirk was admired for his willingness to debate opponents. That little bit implies the debates may not have been as sinister as I assumed. At the top of the comments is a cartoon posted by paulpro and created by Sophie Labelle. The text is long, so I’ll summarize. It explains Groypers as a far right group led by Nick Fuentes. Their “Groyper wars” target the left, but also mainstream conservatives. Kirk was a target because he was “a fake conservative” – he accepted debate with Jewish and gay people. Groypers routinely tried to force him in debate to take extreme positions. Groypers use progressive symbols to confuse people, which is how “Bella Ciao” is a theme song. The reference to Helldivers 2 is code for total annihilation. The last panel:

Tyler Robinson is a soldier in the Groyper wars who has fallen so deep into internet culture that most people can’t even recognize it.

A meme posed by exlrrp shows several far right voices declaring Civil war. It then includes a tweet from Alex Cole of ACNewsitics, “Not a single ‘This is Civil War’ post all day? What happened, MAGA?” Under that is:

Civil War cancelled. It was a gun loving White Conservative man from a Christian Conservative family from the ultra Conservative State, Utah. Not a tran, foreigner or left, but one of their own. F--- the Right for their sick false accusations.

Another meme posted by exlrrp, though it doesn’t say who or what is being quoted.

Major breaking: “According to Utah officials and police interviews with his family, Tyler Robinson hated Charlie Kirk because Kirk wasn’t conservative enough. (Robinson reportedly admired far-far-right Nick Fuentes). Republicans are now scrubbing X posts about Democrats faster than the DOJ erased Trump’s name from the Epstein files!”

A meme posted by exlrrp has the words, “Tyler Robinson’s mom, Amber Jones Robinson, quickly erased photos from her Facebook.” The photos show many family members, including Amber, with guns. A meme posted by ACNewsitics includes a quote from Joey Mannarino, “Tyler was radicalized at college because colleges are liberal indoctrination centers.” Below that are the words, “MAGAs realize that they can’t blame trans people, gays, Black people, immigrants, or Democrats for one of their own. So they blame college!” A meme posted by exlrrp includes the tweet by Rep. Nancy Mace, one of the right’s firebrands, that I quoted above. “We know Charlie Kirk would want us to pray for such an evil, and lost individual like Tyler Robinson to find Jesus Christ. We will try to do the same.” Mickey Lenin responded, “The whiplash from the tone shift after discovering he’s one of theirs is amazing to watch.” A cartoon by the Naked Pastor is captioned “Some baggage can’t come with you.” It shows the gates of heaven. Signs say “All Welcome” and “No weapons allowed.” A man wearing several weapons walks away. A tweet by CNN includes before and after photos and a link to an article. The text says:

Satellite images reveal wide destruction in Gaza City as Israel steps up assault. In the weeks since Israel announced plans to take over Gaza City, its military has destroyed or damaged over 1,800 buildings in and around the city.

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.”

Wreck the government this way or wreck it that way?

Last evening I went to the Fisher Theater for Broadway in Detroit’s presentation of the musical Kimberly Akimbo. It was featured in the 2023 Tony Awards where it was nominated in eight categories and won five, including Best Musical. The featured scene and basic story intrigued me. Kimberly has a rare (one in 5 million?) disorder that causes her to age four to five times faster than normal. So she’s in high school, about to turn 16, and looks about 70. I’m pretty sure Victoria Clark, who played the part on Broadway and won the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical, got it because she really is in her 60s and acted like she was 16. Clark is not in the touring production and I was too far away to tell how old this actress looked. Kim becomes friends with fellow student Seth, one of the nerdier kids in the school. He likes making anagrams, which is where “Akimbo” comes from. Also at school are Martin, Aaron, Delia, and Teresa, members of the show choir. At times they also serve as a Greek Chorus. At home Kim is dealing with parents Buddy and Pattie, who have many issues of their own. Then Aunt Debra shows up. She has a shady past and wants accomplices for her next scheme while staying on the good side of her parole officer. In terms of the story I through Buddy and Pattie had too many of these side issues to fit in this story. I felt Aunt Debra and her scheme were not necessary to the story at all. As for the songs, they were OK, as in not memorable. The show does a good job of exploring Kim’s situation of having a teenager mind with a body in decline and not long to live. Because of that I enjoyed the show. The current federal budget runs out at midnight tonight. Signs strongly suggest continued funding will be passed in time. Avoiding a government shutdown is normally great news. Whether that is true this time is debatable. Usually, a CR continues the funding levels of the last budget and this one proposes to keep those funding levels until the fiscal year ends in September 2025. Which means the levels are essentially from when the last budget was passed (theoretically October 2023 but I’m sure it was actually signed much later). So the nasty guy would have to follow a budget signed by Biden? Sounds good! But... Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Daily Kos has a few reasons why this CR gets a jeer. One of them is that Congress would relinquish oversight of tariffs to the nasty guy. Emily Singer of Kos reported on Wednesday about the tariff oversight and another nasty thing: It cuts $1 billion from the District of Columbia budget, forcing cuts to police and teachers. One Republican voted against it, so it passed. Also one Democrat voted for it.

All but one Democrat (Rep. Jared Golden of Maine) voted against the funding bill for that very reason, saying the levels in the funding bill don’t even matter because Trump and Musk will ignore what Congress put in the bill and cut from it what they want. In fact, GOP leaders were selling the bill to Republican lawmakers by making that very point. “This Congress must decide: do we have the authority to control spending, as we were granted and is laid out in Article I of the Constitution? Why would we want to relinquish this to give this administration, which is already doing massive harm, dismantling agencies, firing people, telling them today they are no longer needed, the chaos and confusion caused by Elon Musk and President Trump—why would we want to turn over our authority to appropriate bills?” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, wrote in a statement explaining why she voted against the funding bill.

On Thursday, with the bill heading to the Senate, Republicans were already priming to blame Democrats if a shutdown comes. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez written in response to Republican threat of blame:

Republicans run the House, the Senate, and the White House. You run the government. If you have the votes, then go ahead. If you need Democrats, then you need to negotiate with Democrats. Those are your two options. Blaming someone else because your shoes are untied isn’t one.

Dan Pfeiffer of The Message Box wrote:

A few weeks ago, I argued that Democrats could not — and should not — vote for anything that didn’t prohibit Musk from unilaterally shutting down government agencies. Last week, after interviewing several Senate Democrats on the night of Trump’s joint address, I softened my stance. Some Senate Democrats are scared of the fight and would prefer to roll over and play dead. But many others want a strategy and are considering whether a shutdown would actually help Musk accomplish his goals of gutting the federal government. A shutdown only works as a point of leverage if Trump et al feel pressure to reopen the government. If they plan to destroy the government or are content to let the government stay closed for as long as possible, the plan is useless.

In the comments Robert Petersen included a tweet by Sam Brody.

Old Soviet joke for our times: Guy stops by the newsstand every day, scans the front page, doesn’t buy the paper. One day the vendor asks what he’s up to. Guy says: “Looking for an obituary.” Vendor says: “Those are towards the back of the paper.” Guy says: “Not the one I’m looking for.”

In this morning’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Laura Fox and Sarah Ferris of CNN:

The Democratic leader’s decision privately disappointed many in his caucus, and stunned his House colleagues across the US Capitol — leaving the party deeply divided on the path ahead at a moment when their base is clamoring for a strong response against Trump and Elon Musk’s actions to radically reshape the federal government. “We are in a perverse, bizarro land where we’re having to decide between letting Donald Trump wreck the government this way or wreck the government that way,” New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker said of Democrats’ predicament. It’s a moment that has been months in the making. Still, top Democrats in Congress struggled to find a cohesive message and strategy that would allow them room to fight without the potential risk of what it would mean if thousands of government workers were suddenly thrust into more uncertainty with a shutdown. Perhaps the clearest sign of the dilemma: Their top two leaders took opposite paths, with Schumer deciding to vote for the GOP plan that top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries has spent a full week bashing.

Down in the comments exlrrp posted a tweet from Bryan Tyler Cohen showing a graph (source of data not given) showing the S&P 500 stock index scaled to show a value of 100 on four inauguration says and what happens for two hundred days after. Three of the lines – Obama in 2013, nasty guy in 2017, and Biden in 2021 – rise to some degree in that time. The fourth, nasty guy in 2025, rises for about 30 days, that drops sharply to day 50. Further down in the comments exlrrp posted a meme showing Marie Antoinette, though her face has been replaced by Musk and the words are now, “Let them buy Teslas.” Last week I included the little bit that the Defense Department removed from the Pentagon’s website and database photos of the bomber that released the first atomic bomb because the plane’s name was “Enola Gay.” Just after I mentioned that Alex Samuels of Kos posted a more complete account. The purge also include photos of U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. A.C. Gay; of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first black squadron to fight in the US military; of an all female crew taken during Women’s History Month; and of Air Force Maj. Laura Perry before her gender reassignment surgery. D’Anne Witkowski, in her Creep of the Week column for Pridesource, wrote:

“Today, I signed into law a bill that safeguards the rights of women and girls,” Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-Iowa) said in a video posted to X. Sounds good to me! What’s in the bill? Reproductive freedom with abortion and birth control that is accessible to everyone who needs it? Strengthened domestic violence protections? Gun safety measures to keep kids from being murdered in school? Better access to mental health treatment? Better oversight of children in the foster care system in order to ensure that children are not placed in abusive environments? Sadly, the answer is none of the above. Gov. Reynolds did not, in fact, do anything to protect the rights of women and girls. What she did was intentionally and maliciously hurt transgender people in the state. With the stroke of her pen, Gov. Reynolds ended “18 years of protection against discrimination based on gender identity in Iowa's civil rights law," the Des Moines Register reports. “The signing makes Iowa the first state in the country to take away civil rights from a group it has previously protected in law.”

One of my church friends told me that her sister (who refuses to be put in the box marked “female”) was instrumental in getting those protections passed 18 years ago and is now quite upset at their demise. Bonnie Jean Feldkamp of Pridesource discussed how she refuses to teach her children gender stereotypes. Her son loves to help her cook and haters object. That son likes his mom to braid his hair. His peers said that makes him “look like a girl.” But she resolved even more to make sure she describes things in gender neutral terms. That includes describing future lovers as “spouse” or “partner.”

Social media will bring out the angry, bitter people who don’t know unconditional love. Home should be a space where you absolutely know you are loved. It should be your refuge when the world is cold. The best tool I have to counter outside hate is to work on dismantling the proverbial closets in my own home. I will challenge assumptions and give my children the freedom to learn who they are and the security to be the allies our communities deserve. They are the future and I plan to fill the future with love.

You cut off the art, you cut off the soul

Kos of Daily Kos discussed how much the nasty guy idolized and seemed to be controlled by Putin of Russia. Things are changing.

Yet a funny thing has happened. Trump slobbered over Putin, believing that he and Russia are strong and mighty, serving as an example for his own imperialist and undemocratic designs. But Russia is not strong and mighty. In fact, Russia has run out of tools to prop up its failing economy. And out-of-control inflation, sky-high interest rates, and lower global energy prices have put Putin in a precarious position. Somehow, Trump noticed this, and his disdain couldn’t be clearer. We just might have somehow lucked into a pro-Ukraine Trump presidency.

The disdain shows up in the nasty guy’s tweets and calls for Russia to end the war in Ukraine. Kos quoted a passage. I won’t. Kos goes into why Russia’s economy is so bad. Putin has used up resources needed to pay for the war and inflation is now high. His groveling before Kim of North Korea for war aid doesn’t help his image. China seems hesitant to invest in Russia, but wants the war to continue because that keeps Western eyes off Taiwan. So the nasty guy might become pro-Ukraine. Some Republicans might too. Kos says if he really wants to make a difference in that war he should give Ukraine the long range weapons Biden wouldn’t. Morgan Stephens of Kos wrote that a memo from the Department of Justice shows how the nasty guy intends to force sanctuary cities and states to comply with his deportation agenda. Having the DoJ carry it out (rather than Homeland Security?) seems to be the plan. And this may be why:

The memo asserts that state and local officials must comply with the department under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, otherwise they could face criminal prosecution or civil violation charges. “Federal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands and requests,” the memo said. “The U.S. Attorney’s Offices and litigating components of the Department of Justice shall investigate incidents involving any such misconduct for potential prosecution.”

Stephens offers a bit of hope:

On Tuesday, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who has been a vocal Republican critic of Trump, shared some profound advice on how to handle the president. “If you stand up to Trump you intimidate him and he will back down,” he wrote on Bluesky. “If you crawl to him (like his sycophantic politicians) he will not respect you and will eventually throw you under the bus.”

I hope Democrats are able to acquire spine strengtheners. There are weaknesses to be exploited. Congress has passed the Laken Riley Act with several Democrats voting for it (which is several too many). The nasty guy will no doubt sign it. The act says that if an undocumented person is accused of a crime they should be detained for deportation. Walter Einenkel of Kos has a few things to say about that bill and deportations. Pardoning the 1500 criminals who attacked the Capitol has blown up the reason for deportations to “keep criminals off the street.” Back to the bill. Note the word accused. That means noncitizens may lose the right to due process. Another source said a landlord could use the threat of an accusation to keep noncitizen renters in line (as in over charging them or under maintaining the property).

"So when a private prison camp opens in your town and they say ‘we didn't know this was going to happen,’ know that they did, and they voted for it,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “When a dreamer is disappeared from your classroom, when the president of the United States destroys what is left of the Constitution—as he's announced in his attack on birthright citizenship—they will all say, ‘we didn't know this was coming,’” she concluded. “And I want the American people to know that they did. This vote represents it."

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted the Harvard Business Review’s article on how deportations could be disastrous to the US food supply.

Most people probably assume the undocumented group is unskilled labor, but our interviews with four growers with operations in Florida and California and people at industry associations suggest the opposite. “We would lose a lot of our skilled workers,” said one California strawberry grower. “Some of our more skilled people have been here for 20 or 30 years, and they speak English.” One profile that he shared was that of a highly skilled supervisor who makes important daily decisions on planting and harvesting. Another was a skilled mechanic. A third was a crew boss with decades of experience. “These are people who came over in the mid-1980s and 1990s. They have been paying taxes and social security, but they never went through the citizenship process,” the grower said. Labor was 40% of his costs, and Trump’s statements have filled these workers and their employers with anxiety over their uncertain futures.

Dworkin also included a tweet by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick:

Leaked documents from the Trump admin show that ICE wants four new detention centers with 10,000 beds each, and fourteen smaller facilities with 700-1,000 beds each. That would likely mean tens of billions in taxpayer funds sent to private prison companies. They are salivating.

Reichlin-Melnick also included a tweet by Aaron Rupar:

AOC: “I want folks at home to look at what members of Congress are invested in private prison companies, and look at the votes on this bill. It is atrocious that people are lining their pockets with private prison profits in the name of a horrific tragedy.”

In the comments are memes and cartoons to share. A cartoon by Matt Reuter showing a man talking to his wife while pointing to the weather app on his phone, “It says it’s nineteen degrees out, but the general lack of empathy in our current political climate is making it feel colder.” A cartoon by Mike Luckovich showing a woman and man encountering several men labeled “GOP” lying on the ground. She asks “Where’re your spines?” A man on the ground responds, “Trump’s insurrectionists needed ’em to beat cops with.” A cartoon by RJ Matson shows a truck with an elephant driving. In the bed looks like manure labeled “Jan. 6 blanket pardons.” On the tailgate are “The Party of Law and Order” and “Back the Blue.” A cop has stopped the truck and is saying, “I’m going to have to ask you to remove those bumper stickers.” From a meme posted by Middle Age Riot:

Donald Trump: I will pardon the January 6 rioters. Police Unions: We endorse Donald Trump. Donald Trump: I have pardoned the January 6 rioters. Police Unions: What?

A cartoon posted by paulpro (author not displayed) shows a person with a rainbow shirt on the ground as three men beat the person with their bibles, creating a pool of blood. The caption says, “If your religion makes you hate someone, you need a new religion.” When I wrote about Bishop Mariann Budde yesterday I misspelled her name – I was working from a source that misspelled it. This is the correct spelling. A meme posted by exlrrp shows that I had written about her before for doing something quite loving.

Did you know that for 25 years, Matthew Shepard, who was brutally tortured and murdered for being gay, had no permanent resting place due to concerns his grave would be vandalized, and when Reverend Budde learned of this, she invited the Shepards to inter him inside the Washington National Cathedral. She co-officiated the service that welcomed Matthew to a forever home in the church and told the gathering, “20 years of mourning was not enough for someone who is loved. Nor can 20 years heal the grief of such a loss.”

My admiration grows. I’ve been involved with the Reconciling Ministries Network for close to two decades. They’re the group working to make the United Methodist Church more inclusive of LGBTQ people. Many conservative congregations have left. The current denomination rules are much better, though they say a congregation can fully include LGBTQ people, but that they don’t have to. So more work needs to be done. I still get their email newsletter and I’m planning to attend their next convocation this summer. Of course RMN is aware of the political climate and in today’s email has things to keep in mind: + The chaos and terror are the point. They’re designed to make us feel afraid and alone. We’re afraid because the harm is real. But we are not alone. Pastors are preaching courageously to soften hearts of stone. You are worth fighting for. + In times of crisis humans come together. Love recklessly and fiercely. We get creative about resistance and don’t let despair have the last word. + Take lessons from those who’ve experienced apocalypse before, the ones who’ve been through colonialism, political uprisings, natural disasters, genocide, food scarcity, and silencing. + We get free when we all get free. Look to the intersections of your communities. + Do not cancel one another so swiftly that no one is left standing in your circle. Practice gratitude and extend grace. We need one another. Brittany Luse of NPR talked to Colman Domingo, the star of the moving Sing Sing, which just received a few Oscar nominations. Much of the rest of the cast is real-life formerly incarcerated actors. The story is about incarcerated people working together to stage an original musical. Last week it was rereleased and this second time it will be screened in more than a thousand prisons. Luse noted the movie shows examples of healthy masculinity, the men are vulnerable with each other. Domingo explains that to create anything together, including something artistic, people have to leave behind something personal to gain something communal. One thing to leave behind is ego.

LUSE: The other thing that I noticed too is the film - it reminded me how masculinity is not necessarily always inherently defined but enforced. And the way that the men in the film communicated with each other enforced vulnerability as a value and did not enforce that those things made you weak or less than or deserved social punishment. DOMINGO: That - what you just said there was the light bulb for all of us as we were exploring making this film. These men are saying that this is part of our survival, to have all of these feelings, to have all this softness and tenderness. And it has nothing to do with sexuality whatsoever. It's more about mental health. It's about being good and kind to yourself and acknowledging your feelings and acknowledging your heartache, acknowledging your trauma, acknowledging what you feel.

Domingo added they hold each other accountable to actually be vulnerable, to say it’s OK, go there. The men also understood the necessity of art. Domingo said:

I remember when I first started out, I was touring around to junior high schools and high schools performing. And I would note that arts programs were severely cut. The first things to go - art. I thought, why is that? Well, I grew up with arts programs. Why is that? I mean, you cut off the art, you cut off the soul. You cut off people understanding how to be human with each other. You cut that out of schools, there's - I feel like there's a path to the prison industrial complex. Art is not frivolous. Art connects us, and we need it in our society. We need it in our schools. You know, a lot of these men who went through this program, they say, you know, if I had something like this growing up, I probably would never have been here. I would have another way to get out what was inside of me.

A sledgehammer to the federal government

My Sunday movie was Joel Kim Booster, Psychosexual, a live taping of his stand up comedy act in Los Angeles in 2022. It’s just over an hour long. I had first heard Booster on the NPR show Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. He is Korean, though adopted and raised by a white family, so he wasn’t raised in Asian culture. He’s also gay. I chose this one because I didn’t want a long movie and many towards the top of my to-see list are close or over two hours. I had also seen a few LGBT comics over the last few months (some great, some OK) and was willing to try another. I thought with a title of Psychosexual he would get into some interesting insights about the difference between men and women and LGBTQ and straight. Yeah, there was some of that. But the jokes and stories were a lot raunchier and there were more jokes about drugs than I would have liked. I guess I’ll need to check reviews some of the other comedian shows before watching. I’m done with the book The Fire Dwellers by Margaret Laurence. Being done with it isn’t the same as finishing. I bought the book at the Stratford Festival in Canada back in August. I had watched The Diviners and was delighted by it and how well it did what theater does best (quite different from what cinema does best). The play is based on a novel by Laurence that take place in the fictional town of Manawaka, Manitoba. This novel is part of a series based in that town. The series is highly regarded in Canada. Since I enjoyed the play so much I considered buying a novel in the series. Most of them are quite thick. I chose the one on the thinner side (300 pages) that had an appealing blurb on the back. The story is about Stacey, wife and mother of four ages 14 to 2. The setting is Vancouver (I presume) of about 1960. This story is part of the series because Stacey is from that small Manitoba town. The problem with the story is while there are incidents that happen, nothing seems to change. Stacey and her husband Mac are very bad at communicating – he tends to misinterpret her intent, then doesn’t want to talk about it, and she backs down way too easily. I got halfway through it, hoping the characters would show a little growth or there would be some explanation of why things are they way they are. But none of that by the halfway point. So I stopped. I wonder if my dissatisfaction with the story is part of the difference between what Americans and Canadians expect from their national stories. I know Americans want conflict, resolution, and a happy or triumphant ending. I’m not Canadian and haven’t read many Canadian novels so I’m not sure what they prize in their stories. This past Sunday was the 17th anniversary since I started this blog. This post is number 5363. Over the last 30 days there have been 13,500 views from Singapore, 5,380 from Hong Kong, 3,920 from Canada, 610 from the US, 580 from France, and smaller numbers from other countries. Since I was able to start keeping track of views in 2010 the top ten countries with the most views are the US, Singapore, Italy, Hong Kong, France, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Canada, and Britain. I know I wrote that I won’t be able to comment on all of the nasty guy’s horrible picks for cabinet positions and the horrible things they do. But some of them have to be mentioned. One that needs mentioning is the pick of Robert Kennedy Jr as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported on the pick and wrote:

Kennedy's history of pushing pseudoscience and debunked claims about vaccines is long and distressing, and his ideas to “Make America Healthy Again” are dubious at best.

Some of Kennedy’s ideas: He wants to remove fluoride from public water. He wants to “investigate” vaccine research. He wants to promote healthier diets (the same topic first lady Michelle Obama tried to promote). That last one could be good, or not, depending whether his definition of “healthy” is influenced by Big Ag. Einenkel also reported on reactions to Kennedy's nomination. Democrats are horrified. Republicans praise the pick or defer to the nasty guy. In an article posted on Kos, Arthur Allen of KFF Health News discussed the reaction of scientists to Kennedy's nomination. And much of that reaction is dread.

Should Kennedy win Senate confirmation, his critics say a radical antiestablishment medical movement with roots in past centuries would take power, threatening the achievements of a science-based public health order painstakingly built since World War II.

Allen wrote that Kennedy says Americans have been crushed by industrial food and drug company deception. I might agree about being crushed by industrial food. But the second part might mean new vaccines may never get approval and vaccine mandates might wither. Dangerous or useless therapies might be promoted. Scientists at National Institute for Health, Federal Drug Administration, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are considering retirement or work elsewhere amidst the talk of trimming the number of research institutes. In the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos exlrrp posted a meme:

got polio*? Me neither. Thanks Science. * or diptheria, pertussis, tetanus, measles, mumps, rubella, HPV Haemophilus, Pneumococcus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, varicella.

Morgan Stephens of Kos reported that Caroline Kennedy, sister to Robert, has disavowed her brother because of the man and conspiracies he has embraced. Caroline’s siblings have also spoken against him. Oliver Willis of Kos wrote:

Republicans are expressing surprise in both public and private that with the announcement of his slate of unqualified Cabinet picks, Donald Trump is still as unhinged as he has always been. ... These picks are in line with Trump’s demonstrated leadership style, valuing people who appear on Fox News to say nice things about him over qualified experts. It is the leadership style that, in his first term, led to results like the failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic and a net job loss when other presidents, even Republican George W. Bush, managed to increase jobs. Despite this, there are new signs of supposed confusion and bewilderment from the GOP establishment. ... Republicans chose Trump to lead their party almost a decade ago. He hasn’t changed. Their purported surprise that he hasn’t changed is the only “shocking” part of this equation.

An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that nasty junior said pushback from Washington establishment means the cabinet picks are the disruptors voters are demanding (well, some are, and they’re not a majority). And, compared to 2016, the nasty guy knows what to expect. One of those picks is Tulsi Gabbard, “a former Democratic lawmaker who has in the past publicly expressed sympathy to Russian causes, as director of U.S. intelligence services.” Embrace Moscow or get out. Max Burns of Kos wrote that a new president’s cabinet picks are a great view into how he will will govern. And the nasty guy’s picks are “a sledgehammer to the federal government.” They’re also a loyalty test for any Republican dissenters. Fall in line or a loyal candidate will be run against you in the next primary. And they nasty guy has been good at removing disloyal Republicans. That’s a good reason to fall in line.

How Senate Republicans respond to Trump’s list of patently unqualified grifters will determine the shape of our democracy not just over the next four years, but for future administrations. History is littered with the painful stories of legislatures voluntarily surrendering their independence to a corrupt and powerful leader. None of those stories have happy endings.

The nasty guy is the least intellectual occupant of the Oval Office. But he understands how weak people respond to pressure. Each of these nominees requires a different way to declare loyalty.

Kennedy requires the GOP to elevate a known kook and science denier to a critical science-based gig. Gaetz marks an explicit acceptance that the Department of Justice is now a Trump-captured body. [Defense nominee Pete] Hegseth is an admission that decades of Republican tough talk about standing by the troops has been a lie. And in Gabbard’s case, a final acceptance that Republicans are now an overtly pro-Russia, pro-Putin, NATO-skeptical party.

The nasty guy is demanding complete submission. It will redefine the relationship between Congress and the executive branch in ways that will affect the balance of power for years. Senate Republicans can protect the country. Do they have it in them? Republicans have been claiming this election and their sweep of the federal government gives them a “mandate.” Einenkel says don’t believe it. The nasty guy got under 50% of the popular vote. This is the most Senate races lost in states the presidential candidate won since 2004. One must go back 50 years for a smaller House majority. Tom Tomorrow posted a cartoon on Kos. It shows two guys in a car accelerating towards a cliff. The driver insists the last time the nasty guy was in the Oval Office was great and this time will be better. The passenger insists it will be a disaster. Once over the cliff the driver blames the passenger’s condescending attitude. Einenkel reported Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a few things to say about the election results. She mentions an ad that was anti-transgender.

"There is something to be said about—it doesn't matter that [Trump’s] lying. He's saying that ‘I'm fighting for you,’” she added after being asked about the seeming incongruence of being angry at billionaires and still voting for Trump, a billionaire. ... “What I think people are paying too much attention to is the first half of that ad, which says … 'Kamala Harris is for they/them,’” she said. “They're not focusing on the second half of that ad, where he said, 'Donald Trump is for you.'” “Political races are not about one candidate versus another candidate,” she added. “Too often it gets pigeonholed like that. It is a race to convince a person about who cares about you more."

Kos of Kos wrote about a tweet from October 2015 and how it applies today. The tweet is from Adrian Bott and says:

‘I never though leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.

Kos offered some examples. Biden was the most pro-union president. The Teamsters refused to endorse him. Project 2025 “is an anti-union corporatist’s wet dream.” Leopards will feast. Muslim Americans didn’t vote for Democrats because of Biden’s support for Israel against Hamas. Muslim leaders are now deeply disappointed in the cabinet picks. It seems Netanyahu ignored Biden’s peace efforts in hopes of the nasty guy winning. Farming communities have been the bedrock of the nasty guy’s support. The farm industry is alarmed at the nasty guy’s proposed tariffs and that sales of soybeans and corn to China could be affected. They are also alarmed by his pick of Kennedy. The nasty guy has been talking about tariffs for quite a while. Weren’t they listening? Or did their source of news leave that part out? Perhaps Democrats should avoid bailing out farmers until they consider voting for Democrats. Immigrants believed that their undocumented relatives were safe because they weren’t “criminals.” Many women voted for both abortion rights and the nasty guy. Many in red states are thankful Obamacare saved their lives, yet voted for the party that has been trying to kill it.

From Social Security cuts to curbs on press freedoms, and from higher grocery prices to raw-milk illnesses, and to say nothing of the return of measles, polio, whooping cough, and other once-eradicated diseases—these next four years will be awful. And those bearing the brunt of the awfulness will be disproportionately Trump voters. And the rest of us? For now, all we can do is look on and ask every time a leopard takes a bite, “Is this what you voted for?”