The myth of the self-reliant, salt-of-the-earth American

Last Thursday Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had instituted a policy that any departmental expense greater than $100,000 required her approval. That meant FEMA could not do its usual pre-positioning of its Search and Rescue crews ahead of the central Texas floods. The floods happened on a Friday and Noem didn’t give her approval until the following Monday. A DHS tweet bragged that by Tuesday FEMA had deployed 311 staffers to help with state-led rescue efforts. On Thursday Noem was on “Fox & Friends” and declared CNN’s reporting of the delay was fake news. Abrahm Lustgarten, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos, discussed the flooding and said things will get worse. The effects of global warming are just getting started. Each small increase in average temperature means a large increase in the amount of water the atmosphere can hold, leading to a large increase in the destructiveness of the storms when that water is released. Lustgarten wrote that President Lyndon Johnson was briefed about the coming climate crisis way back in 1965. Here we are ten presidents later still discussing the problem and doing very little about it. And the current guy in the Oval Office has revoked funding for data collection and research into what the climate is doing. Kos of Kos wrote another article on a topic I’ve written about a few times.

One of the most enduring conservative myths is that of the self-reliant, salt-of-the-earth, rural-dwelling American who pulls himself up by his bootstraps, wrestles a steer before breakfast, and builds his own house out of patriotism and chewing tobacco because, by god, they sure do love America! If that were ever true, it hasn’t been for a while. These days, rural America is largely dependent on the federal government it claims to hate. In fact, far from self-reliant, rural America is subsidized by blue states. And it’s not even close.

Kos discussed several of the government programs rural areas depend on because so many young people have fled to the cities over the decades. The big ones are, of course, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Government benefits are a good thing, so none of this is inherently bad, per se. But it does mean those rural areas are dependent on the very social safety net that Republicans are gleefully hacking apart with their cuts on Medicaid, food assistance, and the like. They’re also poorer than expensive urban regions, so they rely more on federal food assistance to eat. But hey, that’s what these voters asked for. Rural areas lean heavily Republican, and farming-dependent counties voted for Trump at an eye-popping average of 78%.

George B. Sánchez-Tello, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos, reported on ICE and Border Patrol agents at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. The park is in an area where a lot of people from Central and South America live and it has a lively scene. The agents thought the could sweep through the park and easily make their quota for the day. But the park was nearly silent.

The previous day, warnings appeared — single sheets of paper taped to light poles, trees and fences around the park — warning locals to stay away. They cited rumors of possible ICE raids at MacArthur Park. Word also spread on Instagram, as well as other social media apps such as Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp.

The park wasn’t completely empty. Local Spanish-language television crews were ready to film. Photographers from various newspapers were there. Dozens of organizers from anti-ICE rapid response teams and legal observers there there too, some using megaphones to warn people to stay away and to tell people their rights. By the time the agents had completed their sweep across the park they were surrounded by hundreds of people. Some yelled, “ICE out of L.A!” Many recorded the confrontation on their phone, livestreaming straight to social media. The agents retreated without making any arrests. Normal life in the park resumed. Signs had been taped to poles in the park:

Military Members Is this what you signed up for? Will you feel proud about what you’re being ordered to do when you look back on it? If you have concerns about mobilizing against civilians, you’re not alone. You have options. You have rights.

Lisa Needhan of Kos discussed the legal challenge to the nasty guy’s executive order banning birthright citizenship when parents are undocumented. The Supreme Court had ruled that lower courts (I think there were three of them) could not place a nationwide injunction against the EO without a class action suit. The previous injunctions were not based on class action cases. So the ACLU filed a class action case, covering the nation. And Federal District Judge Joseph Laplante quickly certified the case as one for a class of plaintiffs and issued a nationwide injunction. Isn’t that what the Supremes told him to do? Well, certifying a case as covering a nationwide class has rules that must be scrupulously followed. These rules take time. And Laplante couldn’t possibly have followed all the rules so scrupulously in so little time. Of course, it was Justice Alito that wagged that finger.

Getting nationwide relief this way is complicated, but it’s necessary. The plaintiffs are fighting the Trump administration, but lower court judges have also found themselves locked in a battle with a lawless Supreme Court, which essentially decided that lower courts are enemies who must be stopped from thwarting Trump. But the lower courts are the ones that are following the rule of law. Someone’s got to.

Oliver Willis of Kos wrote the nasty guy ranted on Truth Social that his base should not be criticizing AG Pam Bondi about the Jeffrey Epstein case. One reason is, contrary to claims the files don’t exist, the nasty guy claimed they were “written” by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. So his base should not waste their time on Epstein, “somebody that nobody cares about.” That Truth Social post brought out something quite rare – many more negative responses than positive. The base was not pleased. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Heather Digby Parton of Salon:

The appointment of Patel and Bongino — as well as Bondi, who jumped into pursuing the scandal with both feet, promising far-right influencers that she was personally overseeing the investigation — made MAGA true believers believe they were about to get their hands on what Glenn Beck called “the Rosetta Stone of public trust.” These new appointees were the very ones who had been chasing this scandal for years, and they were now in a position to blow the lid off the whole thing. All those who had mocked the MAGA movement as kooks would soon be proven fools. The Justice Department’s memo was a slap in the face to the MAGA faithful. They were stunned. And when Trump rudely dismissed their concerns in a cabinet meeting and then admonished them on Truth Social in a long rant blaming former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, demanding that his followers focus on the scandals he wants them to focus on, the crushing betrayal was personal. Never before has a Trump post received such a massive negative response on his own platform. Even his most loyal influencers, including popular MAGA commentator Benny Johnson and Fox News, were hostile. Trump’s loyal base has taken all that heat for so long, defending Trump through everything, and now it appears their Dear Leader is just another deep state operative covering up the crimes of his accomplices — and possibly his own. They are confused and angry and inconsolable. Have they had a mass epiphany and collectively awakened to the fundamental dishonesty and corruption of the man they worshipped for the past ten years? It’s hard to believe.

bear83 of the Kos community reported the Grand Canyon Lodge on the North Rim was destroyed by wildfire on Sunday. It was built in 1937. Dozens of other structures, including individual cabins, were also destroyed. The fire was started by lightning on July 4. It was initially managed as a controlled burn to clear away what could fuel a larger fire. But nine days later low humidity and strong winds and the fire was no longer under control. bear83 wrote that DOGE and the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, terminated a lot of jobs, including people who would have helped prevent and fight wildfires. The nasty guy had said the Los Angeles fires wouldn’t have been so bad if communities would clear the combustible undergrowth. Which the crew at the North Rim were trying to do with perhaps not enough staff to do it safely. The North Rim website has a photo gallery of before. I was at the North Rim as part of a family vacation decades ago. We stayed at the campground near the lodge, though I’m sure we went past it to peer down into the canyon. On the long drive from the main road a large deer jumped onto the road and paused. We had to brake quickly and did not hit it. I’ve been to the South Rim a couple times, much more recently, though still decades ago. The Grand Canyon is a beautiful and impressive place. In Wednesday’s pundit roundup Greg Dworkin of Kos quoted a tweet by Matthew Cappucci, commenting on a tweet by Marjorie Taylor Greene. First Greene:

I am introducing a bill that prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity. It will be a felony offense. I have been researching weather.

She’s the one claiming that Democrats can control the weather and she’s referring to jet contrails that Robert Kennedy Jr. is calling chemtrails, the release of chemicals into the atmosphere to do dastardly things. Cappucci’s response:

It’s not a political statement for me as a Harvard-degreed atmospheric scientist to say that elected representative Marjorie Taylor Green doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about. She’d be equally qualified to fly a Boeing-737, practice nuclear medicine or train zebras.

Dworkin quoted Jack Jenkins and Smietana of Religion News Service discussing the recent IRS announcement that churches can endorse political candidates from the pulpit. This is in response to a lawsuit brought by two Texas churches and religious broadcasters.

Americans — including religious Americans — generally take a dim view of political endorsements in the pulpit. According to an analysis of 2023 polling provided to RNS by the Public Religion Research Institute, majorities of all major religious groups oppose or strongly oppose allowing churches and places of worship to endorse political candidates while retaining their tax-exempt status. That includes white evangelicals (62%) as well as Black Protestants (59%), white mainline or nonevangelical Protestants (77%), white Catholics (79%), Hispanic Catholics (78%), Hispanic Protestants (72%) and Jewish Americans (77%). Researchers noted opposition to the idea among white evangelicals remains virtually unchanged since 2017, when they last polled on the topic. There was one outlier, however: People labeled by PRRI as “adherents” to Christian nationalism — people who agree with statements such as “the U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation” — were statistically more likely (45%) to support endorsements from the pulpit, with only a narrow majority (51%) opposed.

Dworkin added that pastors are wary of splitting their congregations so tend to avoid blatant politics. In the comments is a cartoon by Bill Bramhall. It shows a job interview and behind the boss is a sign saying, “Disclosure: The content of this interview will be used to build a chatbot we will hire instead of you.” In Thursday’s roundup Kev quoted John Timmer of Ars Technica:

From a distance, the gathering looked like a standard poster session at an academic conference, with researchers standing next to large displays of the work they were doing. Except in this case, it was taking place in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill, and the researchers were describing work that they weren’t doing. Called "The things we’ll never know," the event was meant to highlight the work of researchers whose grants had been canceled by the Trump administration. ... Many of the grants were focused on STEM education, and it's extremely difficult to imagine that people will be better off without the work happening.

In Friday’s roundup Dworkin included a tweet from Echelon Insights:

Where do most American voters fall on the political compass? Using nine questions on cultural issues and nine questions on economic issues, we mapped voters onto a political compass.

This is the start of a thread on X I don’t have access to. However, here’s the summary of the results:

Liberals, both economic and social: 43% Populist, economically liberal and socially conservative: 22% Conservative, both economic and socially conservative: 31% Libertarian, economically conservative and socially liberal: 5%

Dworkin added:

This is why Democrats on occasion (and warily) try to recruit populists. Conservatives won’t play and libertarians are too few. But the name of the game is a majority.

Aaron Astor tweeted:

Ever wonder why the CDC is based in Atlanta? The reason: its forerunner was the WWII-era Office of Malaria Control, based in Atlanta to fight malaria around rapidly growing US military communities in the South.

In the comments Zoli Osaze posted a cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz showing an ICE agent confronting a farm worker holding a box of produce on his head.

Agent: Keep your hands up! Worker: Don’t worry, they’re busy holding up your economy.

Desperate to bomb Iran so he can be seen to “kick ass”

On Monday Oliver Willis of Daily Kos offered possible reasons why the nasty guy authorized bombs to be dropped on three Iranian nuclear sites over the weekend. Perhaps it’s because Republican leaders pushed it, as they have doing for many conflicts over the years. Or perhaps Fox News kept pushing for the attacks. The network seems to be the nasty guy’s most influential advisor. Willis listed the praise the network gave Israel’s military operations. Then he listed several network hosts who pushed US involvement. We should also remember the number of Fox News personalities who are in his cabinet and administration – Pete Hegseth, Sean Duffey, Pam Bondi and 20 others. In Tuesday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Bernd Ulrich of the German weekly Die Zeit (translated by Irene Caselli):

It is not the fault of some mythical traits — real or imagined — of the “Orient.” No, there is another reason that things in the Middle East tend to turn out differently than expected, that actions produce unintended and often overwhelmingly negative consequences. It’s not a mirage, nor the shimmering heat, nor the buzzing bazaar that’s to blame — it’s the West itself, repeatedly falling into the same traps. It has interests in the region, but no real interest in the region.

The image at the top of Kev’s post shows a satellite image of line of vehicles outside a building with the caption, “Satellite imagery showing that Iran may have moved significant amounts of enriched uranium prior to Saturday's American strike on Fordo.” In today’s roundup, Greg Dworkin quoted two sets of tweets by Phillips O’Brien:

So the US air campaign against Iran seems to have gone like this. 1) Trump does not want to get involved 2) he is told that Israel is having lots of success 3) he becomes desperate to join so he can be seen to “kick ass” 4) He bombs Iran one night 5) The results of the bombing [6 is not mentioned] Now we have moment 7 7) Trump slaps down Israel because the campaign was really about his personal glory. Ps. Trump does not care a win for Iran or Israel, it’s all what it means for him

And...

There is a chance that Trump's bombing of Iran might turn out to be the most ludicrous use of military force in US history. Not the worst or the most destructive--just the most absurd. A failed attempt by a weak man desperate for glory. Maybe the only good thing to come out of this was that the American people, by a large majority, saw these strikes for the self glorifying gestures that they were, and disapprove. What’s the opposite of rallying around the flag?

Yesterday was the primary election for mayor in New York City. Much to the surprise of many Andrew Cuomo lost to Zohran Mamdani, who has described himself as a Democratic Socialist. He ran on making NYC affordable. Dworkin quoted Mike Madrid on Threadreader:

One of the interesting things to look for is how working class Black and Brown residents voted. If these voters break left after moving towards Trump there’s a lot of water thrown on the ‘racial realignment’ narrative. These voters are becoming more populist NOT more conservative. Voters are absolutely sick and tired of establishment politics. It’s not ideological and that’s what the parties, pollsters and politicians are missing.

A tweet by David Dayen:

It will be tempting to analogize from one idiosyncratic municipal election that the old guard of the Democratic establishment has been wholly discredited and should be dismantled to make way for new leadership. Tempting, and also correct.

In the comments is a cartoon posted by paulpro and created by M. Wuerker to mark the three year anniversary of when Roe v. Wade was overturned. It shows a man in a MAGA hat with a sign saying, “No Masks” and a t-shirt saying, “My body my choice.” Looking at him is a woman with a sign saying, “Pro choice” and also with a t-shirt saying, “My body my choice.” Alexandra Bowman posted a cartoon with characters from Star Wars, Sound of Music, and Indiana Jones. They ask, “Did all those anti-fascist movies teach you nothing?” Alex Samuels of Kos, in a weekly column looking at polls, wrote:

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll reveals significant frustration among Democratic voters who believe their party is too focused on social issues—like transgender rights—and not nearly focused enough on the economy. That disconnect between what voters want and what they think party leaders care about could spell trouble, especially with a critical midterm election map approaching. Sixty-two percent of self-identified Democrats indicated the party’s leadership should be replaced. Just 24% disagreed.

Samuels lists a few issues – taxing the rich, focusing on everyday needs, reducing corporate influence in politics – get high support from Democrats with noticeably fewer saying they think the party leadership feels the same way. On the flip side, only 17% of Democrats feel transgender women competing in women’s sports is a priority while 28% feel the leadership think of it as a priority. I’m with the voters on this one. As much as I believe transgender women need to be allowed to play in women’s sports I agree it is a low priority. The other issues listed above, plus all the things needed to be done to secure our democracy are a much higher priority. Overall, voter mood says Democrats should stop playing nice with the nasty guy and Republicans. Samuels discussed views on how concerned people are of far-right and far-left extremism. 55% are very or somewhat concerned about the far-right and 49% are very or somewhat concerned about the far-left. Not a great deal of difference. Then Samuels noted since 9/11 far-right extremists have killed at least 130 people in the US. Samuels doesn’t list a body count from far-left extremists – perhaps it is zero? – though notes far-left violence does exist. Lisa Needham of Kos reported that the nasty guys judicial picks are now more terrible – nominees are now asked whether Biden won the 2000 election. They quickly learn the correct answer, used by other types of nominees, is: “Joe Biden was certified as the winner of the 2020 presidential election and served four years as president.”

There’s no question that Trump’s first-term nominees were bad in some spectacular ways, eager to help the wannabe autocrat eradicate rights and regulations. But when it came to the wide variety of election conspiracy cases Trump filed in his failed bid to overturn the election, even his own appointees did not sign on, ruling against him. Trump isn’t going to make that mistake again. He doesn’t just need conservative ideologues in the federal courts: He needs judges who won’t stop him no matter what he does, and agreeing to the farce that Biden didn’t win in 2020 is a pretty big tell that these nominees see their primary job as ensuring Trump gets his way, no matter what the law says. ... None of these nominees will act as a check or balance on Trump. It’s pretty obvious they would not have gotten the nod if they believed the judiciary had any authority over the president. So, instead of normal judicial candidates, we’re going to get a motley mix of true believers crawling over one another to prove that they are the most committed to the Big Lie and the most eager to let Trump do whatever he wants. That is going to be terrific for Trump, but terrible for democracy.

Kiley Price of Inside Climate News, in an article posted on Kos wrote that climate change is making protests against climate change harder. The example is the recent No Kings demonstrations where in El Paso, Texas temperatures passed 100F (38C). Protests in such high heat carries public health risks. It can also galvanize climate protesters. Many protests are also in urban areas, which tend to have higher heat and poor air quality.

So how can people stay safe during an outdoor protest? Many tips are fairly simple, such as using sunscreen, wearing sunglasses or a hat and drinking copious amounts of water. As Wired points out in their guide to safe protesting, these supplies can also be used to guard yourself from other threats; sunglasses can shield your face from surveillance while water can be used to clean wounds and flush your eyes if you are pepper-sprayed or hit with chemical gas. Public health experts say it is also crucial to recognize the signs of heat stress, which include heavy sweating, dizziness, cramping and headaches.

A health professional at the Denver protest put it this way:

“Best case? We just hand out water, treat a few heat injuries and eat pizza at the med tent,” Jake Paul, the group’s medical coordinator, told CBS prior to the demonstrations. “If we’re bored, that means everyone’s safe.”

Two weeks ago Nineteenletterslong of the Kos community reported:

Southern Baptists have endorsed a ban to end same-sex marriage in America marking the first time the group has officially opposed the ruling in Obergefell v Hodges, the case which legalized it in 2015. The vote on the motion came during the annual Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas, Texas, attended by over 10,000 church representatives this past Tuesday. The Southern Baptists' resolution does not use the word "ban" directly. Instead, it calls for the "overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God's design for marriage and family" (something something something, separation of church and state though...). The motion additionally calls "for laws that affirm marriage between one man and one woman".

The denomination’s values are shifting to align with the far-right. A reversal would not automatically lead to a nationwide ban of same-sex marriage (as was the case with abortion rights). Same-sex marriage had already been legalized in 36 stated when the Supremes ruled in 2015 and nearly 70% of Americans support it. Alas, Michigan is not one of those 36. It passed a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in 2004, when several other states did (part of a bid to bring Bush II voters to the polls). The federal decision overrules it for now, but if that is overturned Michiganders would lose rights. There is the start of movement to overturn that amendment.

A scam on a massive level that was incredibly successful

I haven’t discussed an episode of Gaslit Nation since just before the new year. I get notices of each new episode then think I would rather read the transcript than spend at least 45 minutes listening. Yes, the ability to take notes and quote passages does have a lot to do with my preference. But a transcript comes a few days later and my usual source for blogging (Daily Kos) gives me plenty of material to write about. So I don’t get back to Gaslit Nation. It’s time for a break from Kos. The Gaslit Nation transcripts page shows 20 entries. So my first task was to decide, from a list that goes back to the inauguration, which one to write about today. I chose a recent one, a summary episode: How We Got Here, excerpts from seven episodes stretching back to 2021, a “best of” montage put together by host Andrea Chalupa, that explain how we got into this mess. This transcript page has links to the original episodes for more detail. Up first is Ari Berman, investigative journalist of Mother Jones and author of the book Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People―and the Fight to Resist It. He was a guest on Gaslit Nation in June 2021 and April 2024 Berman starts with the compromises made when the Constitution was written. The big thing was to get it passed, to have a guiding document for the nation. The first compromise was the makeup of the Senate. James Madison was opposed to two senators from every state because he thought states with a minority of the population to thwart the will of the states with a majority of the population. Which is what has happened. The second was the Electoral College. Many framers wanted direct election of the president. But others thought the people could be duped or weren’t well enough informed for that type of decision (hmm, sounds familiar). Also, small states and slave states (key point there) wanted protection. That reminds me of Elie Mystal’s point that the Constitution was written by slavers. The greater point is there were compromises between democratic and anti-democratic forces (there still are).

What we see over and over again is that the constitution that was created was a product of these compromises, and often what happened is the compromises would favor smaller states or would favor slave states, or it would favor wealthy white property owners. So over and over, these privileged minorities were getting preferential treatment in ways that would hurt this much larger and more diverse majority. And I think that's what sparked and laid the groundwork for minority rule to become a reality across the US society and across the US history.

Jump to 2010 and the Republican reaction to the election of Barack Obama. Wisconsin, a great example of the progressive movement, was converted to minority rule through gerrymandering and voting restrictions. Republicans went after labor unions, the primary support of the Democratic Party. Wisconsin became a national model of how to convert a progressive stronghold into minority rule and autocracy. I wrote about Elie Mystal’s book Allow Me to Retort just a few days ago. He is the Justice Correspondent for The Nation and he has another book out, this one Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America. He was on Gaslit Nation in February this year. Mystal said that Biden gets credit for good policies and programs. But Biden failed at the most important thing he needed to do. Alas, part of that was he didn’t recognize that thing. That thing was to roll back the voting rights restrictions implemented by John Roberts and the Supreme Court in 2013. The Court had implemented those rules because Republicans recognized the election of Obama as the first black president meant the black people had enough power to elect one of their own. The restrictions were to make voting harder so that could never happen again. That voter suppression was what made the nasty guy’s first term possible. So Biden missed job one listed above. He also missed job two: making sure the nasty guy couldn’t run again. Democrats had a chance to secure the guardrails – and didn’t. We’re paying for that now and will be for a very long time. Mystal does a great job of summarizing my view of Biden. Great policies, but not doing the two most important things he needed to do. Back to Berman. Voter suppression had been going on long before the nasty guy’s big lie weaponized it in 2021. But since then the effort has gotten more intense. Republicans are still working to pass voter suppression laws. Now there is a related effort to overturn election results. That was tried after the 2020 election. Republicans are now working to make that succeed in the future by trying to control how elections are run and managed. In Georgia the state election board can now take over local election boards. Where there are Republicans willing to stand up to the nasty guy they are getting primaried, so the party is in lockstep with the nasty guy. This is what happens in authoritarian countries. Stephen Ujlaki created the film Bad Faith about Christian Nationalism. He was on Gaslit Nation in April 2024. Ujlaki talked about Colin Weyrich who had worked for Goldwater in 1964 and co-founded the Heritage Foundation in 1973. He was the one who decided the Republicans should cultivate the Evangelicals, who had stayed away from politics since the Scopes trial of the late 1920s humiliated them. Evangelical leaders were told they would get wealth and political influence if they told their followers that Republicans were the party of God and Democrats were the party of the devil. Many of those followers still believe that. One thing the leaders wanted was protection for their segregated Christian academies. But the rallying cry wasn’t racism, but rights of the unborn. Being against abortion was long a Catholic position, but not Evangelical. But after that deal with Republicans abortion was the reason why the followers were told they needed to vote. Said Ujlaki:

It's a scam on a massive level that was incredibly successful, both the rallying cry and the divisiveness in the country that it caused.

Nancy MacLean is the author of Democracy in Chains, about how powerful plutocrats developed anti-democracy networks to hold the US hostage. She was on Gaslit Nation in June of 2022. The dumbing down of the American public, the huge number of people who believe things easily disproven, began with the ending the Fairness Doctrine of broadcasting in 1986. That doctrine required accuracy and balance on the public airwaves. Its end opened the way for conservative talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News. The industry of disinformation became very profitable. Jesse Eisinger is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist at ProPublica. He wrote the book, The Chicken S--- Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives (the real title doesn’t have dashes). He was on Gaslit Nation in December 2023. In the early 1970s conservatives noticed liberals controlled the institutions of the economy, government, and culture. Pretty much the power in the country. Louis Powell wrote his famous Memorandum, which earned him a seat on the Supreme Court. That Memo was a conservative call to arms. Wealthy people built the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, and a few more while the Koch Brothers built their vast network. The right still claims the left controls the culture when they are actually the ones in control. The left needs to emphasize anti-trust efforts (there is a conservative anti-trust faction). But their efforts are blocked by judges. First, conservative judges did the blocking, but now Obama and Biden judges are also blocking anti-trust efforts. We need a decades long revision in legal thinking. There is the American Constitution Society, the liberal counterpart to the Federalist Society (I didn’t know they existed!). Caroline Frederickson, head of the ACS, admitted (back in 2023) they had made a big mistake – they had vetted judges on social issues like abortion, not economic ones. They hadn’t thought to ask about anti-trust, labor reforms, and regulation attitudes. MacLean talked about the Koch brothers. David ran as a candidate of the Libertarian Party in 1980. The platform was no public schools, no national parks, no postal service. It did include providing for national defense, ensuring the rule of law, and guaranteeing social order and very little else. The overwhelming majority of people rejected that platform. So David and Charles created their network to use disinformation to make their ideas more acceptable. Koch money and influence helped the Federalist Society capture our courts, especially the Supreme Court. On January 6th, 2021 the 147 members of the House and seven of eight members of the Senate who refused to certify that Biden won were all funded by Koch money. Efforts to gerrymander, suppress votes, and change how elections are run are also funded by Koch money. It’s a stealth strategy to rewrite rules of governance, even the Constitution, to return our government to what it was about 1900. At that time workers had no rights and no voice. There was no Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. Only a tiny minority want this vision, which is why disinformation is so central and systematic. Social Security is so widely popular the disinformation on it included the stability of it and dividing current recipients from tax payers by saying it won’t be there when the youngsters need it. Koch money was also behind the Tea Party that appeared in 2009 in response to Obama’s election. They worked to control state legislatures in 2010 and succeeded in 28 states. Those legislatures attacked liberal laws, lying about why that was necessary. They also highly gerrymandered their states and pushed voter suppression masked as preventing voter fraud. Eisinger said that in the 1980s Democrats were crushed by Reagan and became afraid of economic reform. That was their start of no longer being the party of the working class. MacLean said Reagan was good at communicating: “Government is the problem,” and “Welfare Queen.” Though he made a lot of radical changes he did nothing close to what the Koch network wanted. When Reagan understood the cuts he asked for would cut Social Security and benefits for veterans and farmers, his base, he backed off. He didn’t cut spending, but still cut taxes. Between Reagan and Bush II the Koch brothers realized they can’t depend on elected officials. To remain popular enough to get elected again candidates couldn’t be as extreme as the Koch people wanted. That’s why the Kochs turned to disinformation. Anne Nelson is a journalist who has covered a few countries. She also wrote the book Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right. She was on Gaslit Nation in May 2024 to discuss Project 2025. She said:

Institution Project 2025 is a document that was released under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation a few months ago in late 2023. And it is a blueprint for the way that the radical right wing of the Republican Party plans to transform American flawed but functional democracy into a complete dictatorship. That's the short answer, but it goes into 900 pages of detailed information about exactly how they're going to do that throughout virtually every possible branch of the government.

One example from Project 2025 is about climate. The point, as Nelson describes it, is to “burn as many fossil fuels as quickly as possible because the priority is the profit for the profit stream for the fossil fuels industry.” To do that the document says to pull out of climate accords, remove energy ratings from appliances, even remove the Migratory Bird Act. Other parts of it talk about lowering all taxes on the wealthy. Allow fundamentalists to turn the country into a theocracy. Reverse marriage equality. Remove all rights from trans people (and the rest of the LGBTQ community). Challenge the right to birth control. And, the big one, concentrate government power in the White House, including control of the Department of Justice and turning the FBI into secret police. Take over the State Department so cronies become ambassadors able to cut deals at will. Replace all federal workers with loyalists without checking for education or competence. Nelson’s appearance in Gaslit Nation was before the election. I note that because of this comment from her:

Well, I don't think that Trump can win without the support of a hundred plus organizations who signed on to Project 2025.

These are the groups that met with the nasty guy in June 2016 offering money and campaign support. In return they wanted him to stack the federal judiciary, from the Supreme Court on down. Of these hundred groups, about half got funding from the Koch network. That and other funding sources has billions of dollars behind it.

Kids get 3 dolls and 5 pencils. He got $2.9 billion.

I finished the book A Secret I Can’t Tell, The First Generation of Children from Openly Gay and Lesbian Homes by Joe Gantz. The secret is the children had gay parents and were afraid to tell anyone. Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s Gantz did extensive interviews with families headed by gays or lesbians. Well, more accurately he sat there with a tape recorder and let them – parents and children – talk about anything they wanted. After a first round of interviews he briefly contacted the families for an update. Shortly after that he selected five families for inclusion and the book was published. And a few months later the publisher went out of business. The book sat on the shelf for close to 40 years before Gantz tried to get it published again. Before this second edition he contacted some of the children again, now close to or in their 50s, for another update. First, a minor quibble – I wouldn’t call these children the “first” generation. I’m sure lesbian and gay parents ended up raising children decades and centuries before the 1970s. In all but the first story the parents married opposite sex partners before realizing they were homosexual. So part of the story is the breakup of the marriage and how that affected the children. In that first story the couple divorced and only later did the father figure out he was gay. In only a couple of the families did the children feel a lot stress about not being able to explain their parents. That inability tended to isolate the child from their peers. They tended to have few close friends. In other families the children didn’t care much if their friends knew. But there were other stresses – trying to blend the children of two families into one. Going to court so the lesbian couple would have custody (one thing worse than leaving children with lesbians is leaving them with a religious maniac father). Watching their parents’ marriage disintegrate without the parents explaining why. Whether the child will accept the new stepparent giving love and discipline and whether they’ll get along with new stepsiblings. In other words, all the same stresses of straight families experiencing a breakup that are magnified by lesbian and gay issues. One of those issues is the parent going through a second adolescence – wanting to explore their new understanding of their sexual interests while still having to take care of children. This does not imply children do better when raised by straight couples. It does mean the children would do better in a society that doesn’t demonize LGBTQ relationships. I enjoyed the book. It is a good exploration of what lesbian and gay families had to deal with in the years on either side of 1980 when our society more universally condemned same sex relationships. Thankfully, we’ve come a long way since then. No movie on Sunday. I went to Detroit’s Greektown and had supper with Sister and Niece. I was surprised the parking structure nearby showed up on Google Maps but was actually demolished. We did not get the flaming cheese. When a table about ten feet away did Sister said she could feel the heat and did not want a flame that big anywhere close. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported that America First, a legal group founded by Stephen Miller, the most racist of the nasty guy’s advisors, has sued Chief Justice John Roberts in his role of the Judicial Conference. The suit, if successful, would drastically shift power between the Executive and Judiciary branches of government. The Judicial Conference is the organization that manages the federal courts. It issues policy. It handles harassment complaints against judges. It promotes ethics rules. It provides financial, technological, legislative, and program support services. It develops an annual budget. And it produces plans on how to assign judges. Needham explained the reasoning in the suit: The Judicial Conference is an agency, not a court, because it doesn’t issue a decision. It responds to congressional oversight. The claim is that if it is an agency it is part of the executive branch and thus under the control of the president. And if it is under the control of the nasty guy he can do such things as: Slash the budget. Replace congressional oversight (see Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s inquiry into the freebies from billionaires given to Alito and Thomas) with his own. Protect judges who rule in his favor and harass those who don’t. Needham is quite surprised and annoyed that Roberts and Alito haven’t publicly said anything about the case. Both have issued statements and op-eds over far less matters and Needham lists several. Why the silence on a direct challenge to their power? I scanned through the comments to read what others think of Needham’s take. Several say that this is a part of the efforts by the Supremes to allow the nasty guy to become dictator. Some believe the Court is avoiding conflict with the nasty guy so there is no appearance that the Constitution is being violated and that the Court has no power. Others say don’t confuse “the Court” with “conservatives on the Court” – Ketanji Brown Jackson is definitely speaking out and condemning the case. And RETIII wrote this is brought as a lawsuit. It will go to federal court and get tossed. If it is appealed up to the Supremes, they simply refuse to hear the case. Lawsuit blocked. No need to comment on it. As part of a series of explaining the right Oliver Willis of Kos discussed why Republicans are so bad at managing the economy. After showing how the economy always declines under Republicans (at least as far back as Reagan) Willis gets to the explanation. The reason is Republicans push tax cuts favoring the rich and large corporations. Research shows these cuts don’t stimulate the economy. Instead they increase economic inequality and cut the money that could have been used to invest in America. But focusing on the needs of the middle class runs contrary to the interests of the super rich, who disproportionately benefit from the tax cuts. These people are largely unaffected when services and protections for middle and working class people are cut. Don’t cater to the rich and the rich stop donating to Republicans, their major source of money. So Republicans will say again that their economic policies just need another chance. Along with that they claim liberal policies – the ones that restore the economy after every Republican crash – are a failure. Needham didn’t mention that polling shows Republicans do a great sales job on this issue. Voters still rate Republicans better than Democrats at handling the economy. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that Senators Adam Schiff and Elizabeth Warren called for an ethics probe into a recent nasty guy scheme. It appears to be an offer of dinner with the nasty guy to the top investors of his $Trump crypto coin. After the scheme was announced the coin’s value increased by more than 50% and insiders got $0.9 million in trading fees in just two days. Yes, this sounds like “pay to play” corruption, according to the letter to Trade Representative Jamieson Greer written by Schiff and Warren, of ...

selling presidential access to individuals or entities, to include foreign nationals and corporate actors with vested interests in federal action, while personally enriching the President and his family.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted several writers discussing the nomination of Ed Martin for US Attorney for the District of Columbia and how there are predictions his nomination won’t even get through the Senate committee. That prompted Dworkin to add:

Should Ed Martin fail ... maybe we have reached a point where no, anything and everything doesn’t go. And if you defy Trump on this, you can defy him on other things. Crack the wall. Let the tide do the rest.

Down in the comments exlrrp quoted a tweet by Aaron Rupar, who quoted the nasty guy. This comment has been reported several times in news outlets. The comments were made in response to big box stores saying they may have empty shelves before Christmas. Rupar wrote:

Trump: “I don’t think a beautiful baby girl that’s 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls ... they don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”

A response by Nathalie Baptiste:

Every time Trump talks about toys you get more insight into how little he interacted with his children when they were young.

A bit below that exlrrp posted a meme. The first part was from a CBS News report:

Trump family’s net worth has increased by $2.9 billion thanks to crypto investments, new report says.

Andrew Weinstein responded

Your family: 3 dolls and 5 pencils. Trump’s family: $2.9 billion Any questions?

In the comments is a tweet by Fiona Webster, the start a thread. On the left of the image are guns designed for hunting. On the right are guns designed for killing humans. There is a notable difference between the two. In response to the Supremes allowing a ban on transgender troops while the case goes through the courts (and will eventually get to the Supremes) paulpro posted a cartoon (author not specified) showing a military drill sergeant towering over the nasty guy and saying “I’m transgender! You gotta problem with that, punk?” Much further down exlrrp posted a meme of yesterday’s meeting between the nasty guy and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. The meme shows the nasty guy saying “We don’t do much business with Canada.” Below it is a graph showing Canada is our top trading partner with Mexico right behind, each doing more than twice the trade the US does with China. Below exlrrp added “He means Canada’s not paying him anything.” I would put the emphasis on “him.” In a second roundup Chitown Kev quoted Yuval Levin of The Atlantic:

Congress is not doing its job, and the vacuum that its dereliction has created is encouraging presidential and judicial overreach. Congress’s weakness is our deepest constitutional problem, because it is not a function of one man’s whims and won’t pass with one administration’s term. It is an institutional dynamic that has disordered our politics for a generation. It results from choices that members of Congress have made, and only those members can improve the situation. It is hard to imagine any meaningful constitutional renewal in America unless they do. [...] The reasons for the subsequent decline in Congress’s stature and assertiveness are complex, but some of the very measures Gingrich took to consolidate power on Capitol Hill contributed to the trends we are witnessing now. Gingrich advanced an almost-parliamentary model of the House of Representatives. He empowered the speaker and majority leader at the expense of the policy-focused committees, and set in motion a process that robbed most members of the opportunity for meaningful legislative work. His moves dramatically accelerated what was by then a 20-year trend toward the centralization of authority in the hands of congressional leaders. House leaders of both parties have pushed further in that direction in this century, and the Senate has largely followed suit. These efforts were intended to make Congress more effective, but in practice, they rendered most legislators almost irrelevant.

Fear and chaos v. indecision and inaction

My big handbell event last Friday and Saturday went very well. The great music was a welcome balm. My Sunday movie was Bringing Up Baby from 1938. I found this one on a list of the best 100 movies of all time. It is a comedy and is on a few lists of best comedies. The title suggests something about the comedic hazards of raising a child. But Baby isn’t human. And is presumed dangerous. Cary Grant plays the befuddled and staid David, a professor who is missing just one bone from a huge dinosaur skeleton he is assembling for a museum. He is to marry Alice, his assistant, the next day but she wants the ceremony, then wants to get right back to work, no honeymoon or other entanglements allowed. David is off to see Mr. Peabody who represents a rich client ready to donate a million dollars to the museum. He encounters Susan, played by Katherine Hepburn, who bulldozes her way into the situation and his life. Her manner easily flusters him. Many times she seems to intentionally misunderstand him, but doesn’t give him a moment to correct what she’s saying. Once she gets to know him a bit she wants him to help her with Baby. A ways into the story she admits she is going to marry him, though he doesn’t know that yet. The story is about keeping track of Baby, making sure that big donation will still happen through all the complications, plus all the ways she connives to get him to help her so she has time to convince him he loves her. I got tired of her bulldozing ways, though still enjoyed the movie. Mark Sumner, staff emeritus of Daily Kos, discussed the low approval rating of the nasty guy and Republicans, prompting Democrats to gleefully anticipate the 2026 midterm elections and the chance to take back the House and perhaps even the Senate. Republicans should be scared. Sumner says there is currently one problem with that scenario. There is a group with a lower approval rating than the nasty guy and that is ... Democrats. Voters hate what the nasty guy is doing and the support given to him by Congressional Republicans. But they’re not looking for Democrats for help.

Trump is causing fear and chaos. People don’t like that. But you know what the public really hates? Indecision and inaction. That's what they see right now from the Democratic Party. ... Democratic leadership needs to be out there, not just marching with the protestors but leading the protests. They need to be pushing their way into social media and traditional media, shouting down Trump's actions and the support of Congressional Republicans in the strongest possible terms. They need to be angry. They need to be aggressive. They need to be, what's that term? Fired up and ready to go. ... Trump is historically unpopular. He's going to get more unpopular as prices rise, jobs decline, and people realize they've all been taken for a ride. We're even seeing something this cycle that we didn't see in 2018: A large number of Trump voters waking up to their mistake and looking for an alternative. Democrats better give them that alternative soon. Or someone will.

The news out of Canada is that the liberal party won more seats than any other party in their Parliamentary election, just three seats short of a majority. Just three months ago the conservative party had a big lead. Then the nasty guy started threatening them and imposed tariffs on them. The conservative leader Pierre Poliviere was being compared to the nasty guy and he didn’t even win his own seat. Anonymous tweeted, “Trump is the first US president to lose a Canadian election.” That brought a lot of comments in reply. Such as one from CK14. It includes a cartoon of the nasty guy firing a slingshot at China’s Xi, which bounces off his head. Behind Xi is a catapult with a hefty boulder in it. The caption says:

Xi to Trump: America will be a great Chinese province. We can hammer out the deal soon. I can assure you that your new title ‘Governor Trump’ will be well received by the world community. Your neighbor Canada is already on board w/this proposal. See you soon Gov Trump. Yes, we can work w/a peasant.

Last Friday Emily Singer of Kos reported that Judge Hannah Dugan of Milwaukee was arrested by the FBI and charged with obstructing the nasty guy’s efforts to deport Eduardo Flores Ruiz, a Mexican immigrant. The charging document says she had been advised of the warrant for the arrest of Flores Ruiz. But when government agents came to her courtroom she had already escorted Flores Ruiz out the jury door, which allowed him to leave the building safely. As with any warrant issued by this Department of Justice one has good reason to be very skeptical about its truthfulness. Wrote Singer:

The arrest of Dugan is a terrifying escalation of President Donald Trump's war on immigrants and his abuse of executive power to punish political enemies and go after the judicial branch. ... “This administration’s willingness to weaponize federal law enforcement is shocking and this arrest has all the hallmarks of overreach. Federal law enforcement coming into a community and arresting a judge is a serious matter and would require a high legal bar,” Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore of Wisconsin said in a statement.

RETIII of the Kos community discussed on Monday that the Supreme Court said people being deported needed to have due process, a chance for their side of the story to be heard. This decision was in response to deportations to El Salvador, where deportees were not allowed to plead their case. So a deportation case was brought before federal judge David Briones in Texas. His decision was an elaboration on “This Court takes clear offense to [the Government] wasting judicial resources to admit to the Court that it has no evidence.” An excerpt:

Respondents and the Government based the entirety of their case on multiple levels of hearsay, hidden within declarations of declarants who have no personal knowledge about the facts they are attesting to.

The respondents were not the ones who interviewed the petitioner, not the ones who captured her “confession,” not the ones who collected the highly classified “intelligence” they refused to share with the court, and not the ones who interviewed law enforcement who had identified the petitioner. They couldn’t even identify the people who had done those steps. All that comes down to: There is no evidence. Wrote RETIII:

So, that is what you get from the Trump Administration when due process is enforced, and it is why the Trump Administration has fought so hard to avoid its obligations under the Constitution.

On Monday News Corpse of the Kos community reported that after the nasty guy and his administration have wrongfully deported legal residents to El Salvador’s gulag and arrested a judge, press secretary Karoline Leavitt took all this another step in an exchange with Peter Doocy of Fox News.

DOOCY: Would you ever arrest a federal judge or even a Supreme Court justice? LEAVITT: I'd refer you to the DOJ for individuals they are looking at ... anyone who is breaking the law or obstructing federal law enforcement officials is putting themselves at risk of being prosecuted, absolutely

Yeah, she is saying the FBI or the US Marshals or somebody might possibly arrest a Supreme Court Justice. First, justices aren’t prosecuted, they’re impeached and tried by the Senate. I have a bizarre image of a judge tasked with conducting a trial of a justice. Especially on charges brought by the nasty guy’s DOJ. Second, I would study very carefully whose definition of obstructing or breaking the law is being used. News Corpse takes my second point one more step:

By the logic that Leavitt is employing, a Democratic Justice Department could arrest Clarence Thomas for taking millions of dollars in gifts (bribes?) from wealthy defendants who have cases before the Court. They could arrest Samuel Alito for ruling that Trump has "immunity" from the crimes he commits, because that ruling would facilitate obstruction of justice. In both of those examples there is far more justification for taking legal action against the Justices than anything that Trump or Leavitt have alleged. These remarks by Leavitt are among the steps being taken by the Trump regime to turn America into a full fledged dictatorship.

Oliver Willis of Kos discussed why conservatives blame the “deep state” for everything.

In reality, it is a catchall phrase for failure. ... Republicans bring up the “deep state” when they can’t get the job done. To them, when they lose elections, it isn’t because voters rejected them—no, it’s because the “deep state” manipulated voting machines and stuffed ballot boxes. To them, when Trump mishandles the response to a pandemic, it isn’t his fault for underestimating the virus or attacking safety procedures—no, it’s because of the “deep state.” And to them, when the defense secretary blabs about military maneuvers on an unsecured app, the fact that the public knows about it is the dastardly work of the “deep state.” Conservatives refuse to take responsibility for their failures. It’s easier for them to blame the “deep state” and rile up the most diehard followers to fight an invisible force supposedly making everything so terrible. Then the right can coast along without needing to change their behavior. After all, “the deep state” did it.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Thomas Edsall of the New York Times:

Public opinion has turned against him, the economy is faltering, the Supreme Court has ordered him to stand down, his tariffs have backfired and such conservative mainstays as National Review and The Wall Street Journal are questioning his judgment. How does a stymied autocrat deal with defeat? As the opposition gains strength, frustrating the nation’s commander in chief, how will Trump respond? It is unthinkable to imagine him graciously acknowledging defeat, changing direction and moving on. [...] As Trump’s armor begins to crack, you have to wonder: Who is more dangerous — a triumphant Trump or a wounded Trump?

To which I add: This is not a reason to let the nasty guy be triumphant or to stop trying to wound him. Instead, it is a call to be ready for whatever nastiness he pulls. In another pundit roundup Greg Dworkin quoted the Nevada Independent that reported in the first three months of 2025 visitors to Law Vegas fell by 7% compared to 2024. February showed a 12% drop, but that was because Las Vegas hosted the Super Bowl in 2024. Much of the 8% drop in March is attributed to declines in international travel. Dworkin included a tweet by Merriam-Webster, the dictionary people:

Autocorrect has become our worst enema.

Down in the comments exlrrp posted a few memes: First:

Bezos killed the Post’s Kamala endorsement and caved on tariffs as soon a Trump commented. Imagine being that rich and still being such a sniveling coward.

Second, also about Bezos: “Trump bullied me. Now I’m afraid to show what you will pay for tariffs.” Third:

The nasty guy on the phone: My tariffs aren’t working. Tech support guy: Have you tried turning them on and off again?

Much further down exlrrp posted a meme with a quote from RFK Jr.: “There was no autism diagnosed before 1930.” A reply: “Pluto wasn’t discovered until 1930, but I’m pretty sure it was there the whole time.” Mike Luckovich posted a cartoon on Kos:

Left side: We need assault weapons to protect against a tyrannical government! Right side: We need assault weapons to protect a tyrannical government!

In the comments of a third pundit roundup exlrrp posted more memes. First, with images of ICE agents:

If what you’re doing requires hiding your identity, breaking laws, ignoring court orders, and defying the Constitution then you’re the bad guys. This isn’t “law enforcement.” It’s state sponsored kidnapping.

Second: a meme created from a couple tweets:

EssenViews: ICE can now enter your home without a warrant to look for migrants, DOJ memo says. SetPixels: 2nd Amendment ppl are being real quite right now. This is the tyranny you were always talking about.

Third:

Headline: NRA accidentally forgets to rise up against tyrannical government. Subhead: An Embarrassed National Rival Association says it totally forgot to do the one thing it has been saying for years it is solely there to do.

I wondered if this was actual or fake news. So I did a search. Some of the hits are recent and some are from 2020. And from the descriptions I think this is snark, though accurate. I watched another video by the band OK GO. It was posted to YouTube 3 months ago, so it seems to be in the same time period of the Love video (the one with the mirrors) I wrote about last week. This one is called A Stone Only Rolls Downhill. As with their other videos I don’t care much for the music, but the videos are amazing. This one features rows of cell phones. The images on the phones are synchronized so that a person (or just an arm) smoothly moves from one phone to the next. There are images of phones inside images of phones, all marvelously mind-bending. Of course, there is also a video explaining how they made the final product. They mention the more than a thousand individual video bits they put together for the final video.

Which shall rule—wealth or man?

My Sunday movie was Fortune Feimster, Crushing It. I quite enjoyed the first Fortune Feimster comedy video I saw a few weeks ago and this was like a sequel. It was also as much fun. The first story was about the honeymoon she took with her wife Jax to the Maldives. Only on the plane – a 24 hour trip – did Fortune find out being gay in the Maldives is illegal. The trip there included an overnight in Qatar, where being gay is also illegal. She was afraid of gay booby traps the whole time. It was not a romantic honeymoon. Again, there were stories of dealing with her mother. Some were when Fortune was a teen. After her parents divorced her mother started treating Fortune as her husband – even though there were older brothers. Other stories were about dealing with a now elderly mother. And to my delight she talked about being a teen in the church bell choir! Sigh, not the most flattering of stories. My phone has been added to an emergency alert system. It is now 0-3. The first alert I got was a couple weeks ago. The alert said that strong thunderstorms were heading my way and would hit in several hours. By the time the storm reached me it had died out and I think we didn’t even get a sprinkle. The second alert was 6 am Monday morning. It said there was a possible explosion, though unconfirmed. It gave an address, but not a city (and there are a lot of cities in the Detroit Metro area). The alarm sound woke me up. Then my phone chirped about once a minute demanding I read the message. I eventually got out of bed to get it to shut up. Going back to sleep wasn’t easy. I checked the local news this morning. Yes, there had been a fire at that address. Whether there was also an explosion is unknown. If I needed to be concerned about an explosion why did the alert come two hours after the fire started? Yeah, I’m glad it didn’t wake me at 4 am. The fire was about ten miles away. Why did I need to be concerned at all? The third alert is one that didn’t get sent. Sunday afternoon a line of thunderstorms did sweep across the area. It was strong enough my city’s civil defense sirens went off. The news this morning included how many homes had lost power. So why no alert? Who issued these alerts and under whose authority is not mentioned in the messages. As soon as I touch “OK” they disappear. How did I get on this alert system? I’ve had the phone about 22 months before the first alert. How might I get off? I think I would do better on my own city’s system, if I’m on any system at all. Now here on Wednesday evening a thunderstorm is passing through. No alert. So maybe the score should be 0-4. Big news out of the US Senate is the 25 hour speech given by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ). He started at 7 pm on Monday and yielded the floor after 8 pm on Tuesday. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported on the speech as of Tuesday morning.

Throughout his marathon speech, the senator has taken aim at key Trump policies and actions, particularly the systematic attack on multiple government agencies under the guise of Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Trump has signed off on DOGE-led purges of thousands of government employees (some purges of which judges have ruled unconstitutional), closures of federal agencies, and intrusions of sensitive government systems at agencies like the IRS and Social Security Administration. “What kind of man is in our White House that makes fun of the disabled, who lies so much that the fact-checkers lose count, that minimizes the pain and the suffering?” Booker asked.

Alix Breeden of Kos reported this afternoon, and explains a bit more. Yes, this sets a record. The previous longest speech was by Strom Thurmond in 1957, fighting against civil rights. Breeden reported on the response from Democrats, which was strong praise, and on the response from the public.

According to The New York Times, more than 14,000 people called Booker’s office from the time he began his speech Monday until he yielded the floor. He reached young voters on TikTok, amassing more than 350 million “likes” on videos of his speech posted to his profile. On YouTube, his videos have more than 140,000 views. And across social media, the left is praising Booker for lighting a fire under the Democratic Party.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Christian Paz of Vox:

Into his second day of a marathon address on the Senate floor, Booker is engaging in almost, but not quite, a filibuster — an old congressional tradition. Filibusters are marathon addresses used as a procedural tool. They take advantage of the Senate’s rules that allow for unlimited debate or speaking by a senator unless there have been special limits put in place. Senators recognized by the presiding officer can speak indefinitely, “usually cannot be forced to cede the floor, or even be interrupted”…but “must remain standing and must speak more or less continuously,” according to the Congressional Research Service. But Booker’s address isn’t a filibuster — there’s no legislation that he’s trying to hold up. Instead, it’s a form of political theater and protest against the Trump administration. And it comes at a time when overwhelming shares of his party’s membership think their elected leaders aren’t putting up a tough enough fight to resist Donald Trump’s agenda. About two-thirds of Democratic voters would prefer their leaders “stick to their positions even if this means not getting things done in Washington” a March NBC News poll found.

Down in the comments was a lot of praise for Booker. And a rebuke to calling the speech “performative” or political theater. And exlrrp posted a meme, created by The Resistance before the speech ended.

If Senator Cory Booker can stand up and speak out against the fascist regime for over 22+ hours and still going strong, every single Democrat needs to do the same. One after another. We must disrupt business as usual. Our democracy is on fire. This is a national emergency. No more compromises with the fascists. They do not care about the US Constitution, or judges or the rule of law. RESIST. DISRUPT. DO NOT COMPROMISE.

Last Saturday, before yesterday’s Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, wrote a guest post for Kos. Wikler began with a quote by Justice Edward Ryan, chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1873.

The enterprises of the country are aggregating vast corporate combinations of unexampled capital, boldly marching, not for economic conquests only, but for political power. The question will arise, and arise in your day, though perhaps not fully in mine: Which shall rule—wealth or man; which shall lead—money or intellect; who shall fill public stations—educated and patriotic free men, or the feudal serfs of corporate capital?

Wikler brought that quote up to date.

Are we feudal serfs of the richest man in the world, Elon Musk? Or are we free?

Wikler wrote that because Musk spent likely more than $25 million to get the Republican backed candidate, Brad Schimel, elected. Musk came to Wisconsin several times. In the most recent trip he offered two $1 million checks to two selected voters. Yeah, offering money to get someone to vote is election bribery and is a felony. The Wisconsin AG has files suit. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that Susan Crawford, the Democratic-backed candidate, won the seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. This preserves the liberal majority and prompts a big sigh of relief from liberals.

The contest was the most expensive court race on record in the U.S., with spending nearing $99 million, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice. That broke the previous record of $51 million record, for the state’s Supreme Court race in 2023. All of the spending and attention on the race led to high early voting turnout, with numbers more than 50% higher than the state’s Supreme Court race two years ago.

Two years ago the Wisconsin Supreme Court was flipped from a conservative to liberal majority. Emily Singer of Kos has details on how good this win is for Democrats – and how much of a rebuke it is for Musk and the nasty guy. Crawford won by 10 percentage points. All 72 counties had higher Democratic percents than in November. Crawford won ten counties that the nasty guy had won. Oh, yeah. There were to special elections in Florida to fill vacancies in the US House. They were vacant because Matt Gaetz resigned and Mike Waltz became National Security Advisor (though seems to know nothing about security). Both districts are strongly Republican and in both the Republican candidate won, though by a smaller percentage than in November. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported:

The Trump administration announced on Monday that it will be reviewing nearly $9 billion in “multiyear grant commitments” to Harvard University and its affiliates. “Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from anti-Semitic discrimination - all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry - has put its reputation in serious jeopardy. Harvard can right these wrongs and restore itself to a campus dedicated to academic excellence and truth-seeking, where all students feel safe on its campus,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in the statement. ... Under the guise of ending antisemitism, the Trump administration has targeted 10 universities for similar federal investigations, including Columbia University. The attacks have led higher education institutions to pledge to remove protections for marginalized groups while cracking down on speech and activism on campus.

A Martinez of NPR spoke to Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor, who is in the process of leaving Yale University, where he’s been since 2013, for the University of Toronto. Stanley is Jewish and an expert on fascism, including writing the book Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. The page for this segment is a combination of news article and shortened interview transcript. Alas, I think they left out an important point or two. Stanley is moving to protect himself and his family. That fear was prompted by Columbia University (with other universities targeted) agreeing to rework student protest policies to get back $400 million in federal research funding. From the news article:

Though the administration says they are pulling funding from universities to protect students from antisemitism, Stanley says the administration is using Jewish people as an "excuse to take down democracy."

In the interview Stanley said:

But you can't win a war unless you recognize it's a war. This way they're going to pick us off one by one. And history is watching here. Our institutions will be written about. They're being attacked for this entirely fake reason that's furthermore fomenting antisemitism in the United States. It's going to create mass popular anger against Jewish people. So, if universities want to fight anti-Semitism, they need to stand up and say, 'No, we are not threats to American Jews. You are threatening American Jews.'

If I remember right, that anger is because people will see these institutions losing money because of Jewish people. Also, Stanley said instead of allowing the nasty guy to pick them off, one by one, they need to start working together to present a strong and united voice. Stanley said of the University of Toronto:

I have the privilege and good fortune to get a job there. And they have a long term plan of creating a center that will be a refuge for politicians, journalists and professors from democratically backsliding or authoritarian countries like the United States or Russia. And my job will be to work with these people to jointly strategize about how to return our countries to democracy.

Last Friday Singer reported the vice nasty and his wife went to Greenland. They went to a military base quite a ways north and a good distance from actual cities. He was there long enough to give a combative speech, then flew home. In that speech he claimed Denmark, of which Greenland is an autonomous territory, “hasn’t done a good job by the people of Greenland.” So the US just has to take it over. Earlier that day the nasty guy explained, in his rambling way, why he wants Greenland. One phrase: “If you look at the waterways, you have Chinese and Russian ships all over the place.” Kos of Kos offered a rebuttal to the nasty guy and vice nasty.

“Denmark hasn’t done a good job at keeping Greenland safe,” Vance said, which was patently absurd on its face. Has anyone invaded Greenland in decades? Of course not. And the American military presence on the island, part of an array of early-warning radars against a Russian nuclear attack, is the reason why.

Denmark, a member of NATO, has allowed the US presence in Greenland. So yeah, Denmark is keeping it safe. The vice nasty said Denmark hasn’t done enough military spending to keep Greenland safe “from a lot of very aggressive incursions from Russia, China and other nations…” What “aggressive incursions” by Russia and China? Put another way, looking at the nasty guy’s worship of Putin and what’s going on in Ukraine, Greenland should not expect the US to protect it from Russia. Kos included a map of Greenland showing the major cities and the military base. They’re not at all close.

Ultimately, as a NATO ally, Denmark has been open to allowing a greater American military presence in Greenland. There appears to be nothing stopping the NATO alliance, or the United States individually, from building up a presence in Greenland.

Easy to figure out this isn’t about defending Greenland. It’s about the nasty guy appropriating its mineral wealth, now unlocked because of climate change. Since Denmark has universal health care, free college, and low income inequality, is rated the second safest country in the world, and the seventh highest economic freedom score, Kos (and I) like the idea of Greenland annexing the US. disamson of the Kos wrote a variation of what I’ve written a few times. I probably wrote about this when discussing articles on Gaslit Nation. disamson took it from an article posted on Quora.

They don't want to take over the government, they want to destroy that ability of anyone to govern. Traditionally, government was the locus of power in a society. Whether it be right wing or left wing, the most significant power was exerted through government action. That is no longer the case. The real goal of people like Musk & Thiel is corporate feudalism.

I went to that article on Quora. It was written by Feifei Wang, who lives in Seattle. Here are some of the important ideas. A dictator needs a strong central government because that’s how they exert their power. Chaos is bad for maintaining centralized control. But the nasty guy and Musk are not building a central government, even though they have loyalists in the important posts. This looks more like destruction. But a weak government doesn’t help the nasty guy or Musk. The government is a source of enormous wealth for billionaires through the military-industrial complex, subsidies, and regulatory loopholes. A strong central government is the source of their power and money, yet they’re destroying it. So what’s the real goal?

Project 2025 is a “controlled demolition” of the US federal government. Instead of building a competent dictatorship, Trump and Musk (and people from the Heritage Foundation) are gutting federal institutions so they simply cease to function. If you replace career civil servants, scientists, and legal experts with unqualified loyalists, these institutions will be unable to function properly—even if someone competent takes office in the next election. This is not about reforming or restructuring the government for a dictator. It is about rendering it permanently ineffective. ... But what if there are better income sources? What if, instead of gaming the system, they became the system? What if, instead of bending the rules, they make the rules? ... If the government is weak and ineffective, essential services (education, health care, energy, law enforcement, military) will become private industries controlled by the wealthy. When everything is privatized, we effectively live in a plutocracy where corporations run everything, and ordinary people have no democratic protections.

Even if a Democrat were elected president in 2028 they would see the only way to govern is to rely on the private sector. And nationalizing basic government functions would be labeled communism. The nasty guy doesn’t want a functioning government because only a government can hold him accountable. Musk and billionaire tech bros don’t want a functioning government because they want a deregulated playground, one without antitrust laws, labor protections, environmental restrictions, or safety regulations. They become the new ruling class. This is worse than an authoritarian regime like China because they still fill potholes and check food safety. In response to this article Kelvin Bauldry commented:

The Republicans have been running up debt for decades because it makes government look “broken” and starves future governments of the resources needed to fix things let alone adopt new policies like universal health care. Fits right into a plan like what you described.

And Chris Jankowski replied to Bauldry:

You’re right Kelvin, and if you check the record, every single time this has happened, the economy tanks and we vote in a Democrat to fix it. We are a deeply stupid nation...

He suffers from billionaire brain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feigl-Ding added:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul Krugman, writing for his Substack:

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

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

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

Kayyam added:

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

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

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

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

For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.

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

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

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

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