I'm keeping a log of perspectives that matter to the survival of the United States of America. Attitudes. I can't just put my head in the sand, but I wish I had started back in January. Who knew how badly, how quickly Trump's gangrenous poison would spread? Our country is infected.
This and the news that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is alive were heartening. Still, we must make our voices heard!
HCR
HCR. April 4, 2025 (Friday)
The stock market rout continued today. As expected, China announced retaliatory tariffs in response to those President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday. Chinese leaders say they will impose a 34% tariff on all U.S. goods imported into China next Thursday. Apparently, Trump did not think China would respond to his tariffs, and tried to sound as if he was still in control of the situation.
Trump is spending a long weekend in Florida, where he is attending the LIV golf tournament at his Doral club. But at 8:25 this morning, he reposted on his social media channel a video in which the narrator claimed that Trump is crashing the markets on purpose. The video claimed that legendary investor Warren Buffet “just said Trump is making the best economic moves he’s seen in over fifty years.” It went on to explain how “the secret game he’s playing” “could make you rich.” Buffett’s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway quickly denied Buffett had said any such thing as the video claimed. “All such reports are false,” it said. In March, Buffett called tariffs “an act of war, to some degree.”
Then, about an hour before the U.S. markets opened, Trump posted on his social media channel: “CHINA PLAYED IT WRONG, THEY PANICKED—THE ONE THING THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO DO!” About twenty minutes later, he posted: “TO THE MANY INVESTORS COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES AND INVESTING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY, MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE. THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH, RICHER THAN EVER BEFORE!!!”
When the markets opened, they plummeted again. During trading today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2,231 points, or 5.5%, on top of the 1,679 points it fell yesterday. The S&P 500 fell 5.97% following the 4.84% it lost yesterday. The Nasdaq Composite dropped a further 5.8% after yesterday’s drop of nearly 6%. Oil prices also fell sharply despite the fact that Trump had exempted the U.S. energy industry from tariffs, as traders anticipate lower economic growth and thus less demand for gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.
Twenty-five minutes before the market closed, Trump posted: “ONLY THE WEAK WILL FAIL!”
After-market trading continued downward.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said today that Trump’s tariffs are “highly likely” to increase inflation and risk throwing people out of work. Economists at JPMorgan now place the odds of global recession at 60% unless the tariffs are ended.
Natalie Allison, Jeff Stein, Cat Zakrzewski, and Michael Birnbaum of the Washington Post reported how Trump came to impose the tariffs. After aides from a number of different government agencies came up with options for Trump to review, he decided instead on a different option, one that has drawn ridicule because it is crude and has nothing to do with tariffs at all. He reached the amounts of tariff levies by dividing the trade deficit of each nation (not including services) by the value of its imports and then dividing the final number by 2.
The reporters note that Trump didn’t land on a plan until less than three hours before he announced it, and made his choice with little input from business or foreign leaders. Neither Republican lawmakers nor the president’s team knew what Trump would do. “He’s at the peak of just not giving a f*ck anymore,” a White House official told the reporters. “Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a f*ck. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. He’s going to do what he promised to do on the campaign trail.”
While right-wing media and Republican lawmakers have worked hard to spin the economic crisis sparked by Trump’s tariffs, Financial Times chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch used charts on social media to show that Americans are not happy. Consumers give Trump’s economic plan the worst ratings of any administration’s economic policy since records began. He has had the same impact on economic uncertainty as the global coronavirus pandemic did. Almost 60% of Americans expect the economy to deteriorate over the next year, and they are very worried about job losses.
Burn-Murdoch noted that despite the attempt of right-wing media to hide the crisis, more than half of Americans have heard unfavorable business news coverage of the government’s policies. While MAGA continues to approve of Trump, he’s rapidly losing support among the rest of the coalition that put him into office.
The administration apparently doesn’t care much more about the law than it does about the reactions to the tariffs that are crashing the economy. Today, U.S. District Court judge Paula Xinis ordered the government to bring back to the United States no later than 11:59 p.m. on April 7 a legal resident it mistakenly sent to a notorious prison for terrorists in El Salvador. On Monday, administration lawyers told the court that the government had swept up Kilmar Abrego Garcia because of an “administrative error” but that it could not bring him back because he was outside the reach of American laws.
Priscilla Alvarez and Emily R. Condon of CNN note that in a hearing about the case, Xinis said that Abrego Garcia, who was in the U.S. legally and was not charged with any crimes, was arrested last month “without legal basis” and was deported “without justification of legal basis.” “This was an illegal act,” Xinis said. “Congress said you can’t do it, and you did it anyway.”
Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, responded to the judge’s order by calling Xinis a “Marxist judge” who “thinks she’s president of El Salvador.” The White House responded to the judge’s order by saying, “We suggest the Judge contact President Bukele [of El Salvador] because we are unaware of the judge having jurisdiction or authority over the country of El Salvador.”
Legal analyst Steve Vladeck responded that while a U.S. federal court cannot order the Salvadoran government to release Abrego Garcia, the U.S. government should be able to secure his release. If it can—and in this case it should be able to—the court can order it to do so.
If that were not the case, the administration could simply get rid of anyone it wanted to by sending them to a prison outside the jurisdiction of the United States and then claiming it had no way to get them back.
Tonight, as the economy is in turmoil, Trump is speaking at a $1 million-per-person candlelight fundraising dinner at the Trump Organization's Mar-a-Lago property for the super PAC, MAGA Inc., that supports Trump. By law, MAGA Inc. can’t coordinate with Trump’s campaign organization, so the invitations for the dinner say that Trump is simply a guest speaker and is not asking for donations.
The terrible storms in the middle of the country continue. Authorities have issued flash flood emergencies in parts of Missouri, Texas, and Arkansas, and heavy rains are also expected in Kentucky.
Finally, four soldiers who died when their military vehicle sank in a deep swamp in Lithuania during a training exercise came home to Dover Air Force Base, in Dover, Delaware, today. Their recovery took about 200 U.S., Polish, Estonian, and Lithuanian personnel a week and required drones, search dogs, Navy divers, and ground-penetrating radar, as well as 70 tons of sand and gravel.
“We consider US soldiers in Lithuania as our own,” the Lithuanian Defense Ministry said after thousands of people joined Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda and other dignitaries in a dignified departure ceremony of the soldiers from Lithuania. “The farewell ceremony once again demonstrated our society's solidarity, respect, and gratitude to the Americans.”
HCR
April 3, 2025 (Thursday)
Trump’s announcement last night that he was placing high tariffs on countries around the world came after the stock market closed, but it drove stock futures dramatically downward. Overseas, global markets also plunged. Today, before the stock market opened, Trump posted on his social media site: “THE OPERATION IS OVER! THE PATIENT LIVED, AND IS HEALING. THE PROGNOSIS IS THAT THE PATIENT WILL BE FAR STRONGER, BIGGER, BETTER, AND MORE RESILIENT THAN EVER BEFORE. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
Fittingly, it was former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani who rang the bell opening the stock market today. Giuliani represented Newsmax, the right-wing media channel with ties to Trump. As soon as the market opened, stocks fell straight down. By the end of the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had dropped 1,679 points, falling about 4%, its biggest fall since the coronavirus pandemic took hold in 2020. The S&P 500 fell 274 points, or 4.8%. The Nasdaq Composite fell more than 1,050 points, or almost 6%. The losses wiped out about $2 trillion.
Trump justified the tariffs by declaring that the U.S. is in the midst of a national emergency, but this afternoon he left the White House for a long weekend in Florida, where his private Doral resort outside of Miami is holding the first domestic golf tournament of the season of LIV Golf, which is financed by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.
Trump’s tariffs are not an economic policy. Tariffs are generally imposed on products, not on nations. By placing them on countries, the White House was able to arrive at its numbers with a nonsensical formula that appears to have been reached by asking AI how to impose tariffs—a suggestion so outlandish that I dismissed when I saw it last night, but economist Paul Krugman today identified it as being a likely possibility. CNBC’s Steve Liesman said: “Nobody ever heard of this formula. Nobody has ever used this formula. So I’m sorry, but the conclusion seems to be the president kind of made this up as he went along....”
Today, former treasury secretary Lawrence Summers posted: “It’s now clear that the [Trump] Administration computed reciprocal tariffs without using tariff data. This is to economics what creationism is to biology, astrology is to astronomy, or RFK thought is to vaccine science. The Trump tariff policy makes little sense EVEN if you believe in protectionist mercantilist economics.”
Editor of The American Prospect David Dayen notes that there is no apparent policy behind the tariffs, no thought, for example, as to whether it is even possible for the U.S. to ramp up the kind of domestic manufacturing Trump claims to want. While Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CBS, “You’re going to see employment leaping starting today,” in fact, both automaker Stellantis and appliance manufacturer Whirlpool announced layoffs because of the tariffs.
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo points out that building and establishing a new plant in the U.S. will take a minimum of three to five years even if investors are inclined to support one, but Victoria Guida reported in Politico that corporate executives are saying they cannot invest in manufacturing until they can project costs, and Trump is far too unpredictable to enable them to do that with any confidence.
Dayen writes that Trump’s tariffs are essentially sanctions on the rest of the world. His behavior is, Dayen says, “no different from a mob boss moving into town and sending his thugs to every business on Main Street, roughing up the proprietors and asking for protection money so they don’t get pushed out of business.” Dayen notes that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent argued last year for using the extraordinary power of the U.S. economy to force other countries to do as the U.S. wants, creating a U.S. sphere of influence through economic pressure.
Extending the comparison to a mob boss, Dayen notes that “protection money” could take many forms: “curbing migration, taking in more U.S. farm exports or weapons systems, reducing industrial capacity in China and forcing more consumption, buying long-dated U.S. debt on the cheap, siding with a war strategy against Iran, literally anything the White House wants.”
Trump’s son Eric appeared to confirm that the tariffs are a shakedown when he posted: “I wouldn’t want to be the last country that tries to negotiate a trade deal with [Trump]. The first to negotiate will win—the last will absolutely lose. I have seen this movie my entire life.…” Foreign affairs journalist David Rothkopf was more graphic: “These aren’t tariffs,” he wrote. “They are a horse’s head in the bed of (almost) every world government and business leader.” Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman suggested that if a government refused to negotiate with Trump, that country’s major companies should deal directly with Trump, exempting that company’s products from tariffs in exchange for a new factory or some other investment Trump wants.
Trump is overturning the past 80 years of global trade cooperation in order to concentrate power in his own hands. Congress began to take down the tariff walls of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when it passed the 1934 Reciprocal Tariff Act enabling the president to lower the high tariff rates Republicans had established with the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff. That tariff had worsened the Great Depression. With the turn away from tariff walls and toward international cooperation, global trade has fostered international cooperation and created the rising prosperity of the twentieth century.
“The global economy is fundamentally different today than it was yesterday,” Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney said today. “The system of global trade anchored on the United States…is over. Our old relationship of steadily deepening integration with the United States is over. The 80-year period when the United States embraced the mantle of global economic leadership, when it forged alliances rooted in trust and mutual respect and championed the free and open exchange of goods and services is over. While this is a tragedy, it is also the new reality.”
Ending systems of global free trade dovetails with the idea of getting rid of the international rules-based order created after World War II. After that horrific war, world leaders decided to create a system of international institutions, like the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), to provide ways in which countries could protect their sovereignty and work out their differences without going to war.
Trump’s threats against other countries, including Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark, are a direct rejection of those principles. That rejection reinforces the Trump regime’s embrace of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which invaded Ukraine first in 2014 and again in 2022 and is trying to justify grabbing Ukrainian territory. Under Trump, the U.S. is siding with Russia rather than Ukraine in this war in a stunning rejection of the institutions and principles that have stabilized the globe since World War II.
Putin is now threatening NATO countries, prompting them to prepare for defense. “We are not at war,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said recently, “but we are certainly not at peace either.”
Some of those advocating tariff walls and forcing our allies to maintain their own defense suggest that creating a U.S. sphere of influence is the best way to counter a rising China, but there is no doubt that the concept of such spheres caters to the worldview of Russian and Chinese leaders. As scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder points out, weakening the U.S. and its allies also benefits Russia by increasing Russia’s power relative to other countries, making it easier to establish the multipolar world Russia wants.
The Trump administration is also undermining post–World War II democracy at home. Last night, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) identified Trump’s tariffs as “a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief.” Murphy pointed to Trump’s shakedown of prominent law firms, four of which he has attacked with executive orders. He also pointed to Trump’s attacks on universities, withholding government funding until their administrators bow to MAGA’s ideological demands.
Sarah D. Wire of USA Today reported that earlier this week the Institute for Museum and Library Studies was effectively closed, and over the past two days the administration told libraries across the country that grants awarded last year have been terminated. Today the administration cut federal grants for arts and humanities across the country: museums, archives, historic sites, educational projects, and so on—all defunded. It also cut this year’s funding for National History Day, a popular history program in schools that is already underway.
On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services slashed jobs and programs in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), even as measles continues to spread and two Louisiana infants have died of whooping cough. Today, news broke that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is implementing a hiring freeze even as flash floods and tornadoes just today have killed at least seven people in the Midwest to the mid-South.
The plan, as Vice President J.D. Vance explained in a 2021 interview, is to destroy the current government, business, educational, cultural, and scientific pillars of the United States in order to replace them with a new system, although there is tension between the Project 2025 wing of MAGA and the technocrats’ wing over whether that new system will be a theocracy or a technocracy. In either case, it will be an authoritarian government in which power and money concentrate in a very few hands.
The administration’s crusade against the state of Maine shows what this looks like. After Maine governor Janet Mills told Trump the state would follow state and federal law rather than bow to his demands, acting Social Security Administration commissioner Leland Dudek canceled contracts permitting Maine parents to apply for Social Security numbers for their newborns from the hospital and for Maine families to report deaths from funeral homes. Told such a change would risk identity theft and wasteful spending, Dudek told the agency to do it anyway in order to punish Mills.
After an outcry, Dudek backtracked, but yesterday the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, announced she was freezing federal funds for Maine educational programs. The Trump administration would stand against “a leftist social agenda,” Rollins wrote.
The problem for Republicans is that while the sort of inflammatory language Rollins used has been a staple of the party for decades, the MAGA agenda itself is not popular. Only about 4% of voters who knew about Project 2025 wanted to see it enacted, and billionaire Elon Musk, who runs the “Department of Government Efficiency” that is slashing through government programs, is so unpopular that his support for a candidate in Tuesday’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election actually appeared to have hurt, rather than helped, that candidate.
Now party members have to deal with the fact their president has tanked the economy by enacting what the National Review says is likely the largest peacetime tax hike in U.S. history. Now countries around the globe are imposing reciprocal tariffs on the U.S. while also negotiating their own trade agreements that cut out the U.S. Those agreements are not only for products like soybeans, but also for weapons, a development the administration is protesting.
Republican members of Congress could stop Trump at any time. In the case of tariffs, they could simply reassert their constitutional power to manage tariffs. If they choose not to and the economy doesn’t recover and thrive as Trump keeps promising, voters can be expected to hold them, as well as him, to account.
Right now Republican leaders appear to be hoping that Trump’s attempt to extort other countries will work and the tariffs will be short lived. But their enthusiasm for that strategy seems to be well under control.
Today, Bill Ackman resorted to defending the tariffs by posting: “Sometimes the best strategy in a negotiation is convincing the other side you are crazy.”
------
3.20.20 As a distraction to the destruction of the Department of Education (currently led by a woman who ignored the sexual abuse of children to protect her brand, fake wrestling) the Shitweasel released thousands of meaningless archives about the JFK assassination.
https://www.fiftyfifty.one/ If you can get around. For those (like myself) who can't
there's https://5calls.org/. I put the app on my phone and vent my (tempered) spleen every
day. I'm looking forward to taking this action to the park. Maybe making it a group call.
feel free to share these images widely:
Update 2.16.25 From Robert Reich
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2.4.25
Trump will overplay his hand. Be ready for when he does.
ROBERT REICH 2.4.25
I sometimes share with you perspectives about what we’re up against from non-American writers and journalists. Asli Aydintasbas, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. and a former journalist, published this short essay recently in Politico Magazine. As we prepare for Trump’s regime, I thought you’d find her views useful.
American democracy is about to undergo a serious stress test. I know how it feels, in part because I lived through the slow and steady march of state capture as a journalist working in Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey.
Over a decade as a high-profile journalist, I covered Turkey’s descent into illiberalism, having to engage in the daily push and pull with the government. I know how self-censorship starts in small ways but then creeps into operations on a daily basis. I am familiar with the rhythms of the battle to reshape the media, state institutions and the judiciary.
Having lived through it, and having gathered some lessons in hindsight, I believe that there are strategies that can help Democrats and Trump critics not only survive the coming four years, but come out stronger. Here are six of them.
1. Don’t Panic — Autocracy Takes Time
President-elect Donald Trump’s return to power is unnerving but America will not turn into a dictatorship overnight — or in four years. Even the most determined strongmen face internal hurdles, from the bureaucracy to the media and the courts. It took Erdoğan well over a decade to fully consolidate his power. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Poland’s Law and Justice Party needed years to erode democratic norms and fortify their grip on state institutions.
I am not suggesting that the United States is immune to these patterns, but it’s important to remember that its decentralized system of governance — the network of state and local governments — offers enormous resilience. Federal judges serve lifetime appointments, states and governors have specific powers separate from those granted federally, there are local legislatures, and the media has the First Amendment as a shield, reinforced by over a century of legal precedents.
Sure, there are dangers, including by a Supreme Court that might grant great deference to the president. But in the end, Donald Trump really only has two years to try to execute state capture. Legal battles, congressional pushback, market forces, midterm elections in 2026 and internal Republican dissent will slow him down and restrain him. The bottom line is that the U.S. is too decentralized in its governance system for a complete takeover. The Orbanization of America is not an imminent threat.
2. Don’t Disengage — Stay Connected
After a stunning electoral loss like this, there’s a natural impulse to shut off the news, log off social media and withdraw from public life. I’ve seen this with friends in Turkey and Hungary with opposition supporters retreating in disillusionment after Erdogan’s or Orbam’s victories. Understandably, people want to turn inwards.
Dancing, travel, meditation, book clubs — it’s all fine. But eventually, in Poland, Hungary and Turkey, opponents of autocracy have returned to the fight, driven by a belief in the possibility of change. So will Americans.
Nothing is more meaningful than being part of a struggle for democracy. That’s why millions of Turks turned out to the polls and gave the opposition a historic victory in local governments across Turkey earlier this year. That’s how the Poles organized a winning coalition to vote out the conservative Law and Justice Party last year. It can happen here, too.
The answer to political defeat is not to disconnect, but to organize. You can take a couple of days or weeks off, commiserate with friends and mute Elon Musk on X — or erase the app altogether. But in the end, the best way to develop emotional resilience is greater engagement.
3. Don’t Fear the Infighting
Donald Trump’s victory has understandably triggered infighting inside the Democratic Party and it looks ugly. But fear not. These recriminations and finger-pointing are necessary to move forward. In Turkey, Hungary and Poland, it was only after the opposition parties faced their strategic and ideological misalignment with society that they were able to begin to effectively fight back.
Trump has tapped into the widespread belief that the economic order, labor-capital relations, housing and the immigration system are broken. You may think he is a hypocrite, but there is no doubt that he has convinced a large cross-section of American society that he is actually the agent of change — a spokesman for their interests as opposed to “Democratic elites.” This is exactly what strongmen like Erdoğan and Orban have achieved.
For the Democratic Party to redefine itself as a force for change, and not just as the custodian of the status quo, it needs fundamental shifts in how it relates to working people in the U.S. There is time to do so before the midterms of 2026.
4. Charismatic Leadership Is a Non-Negotiable
One lesson from Turkey and Hungary is clear: You will lose if you don’t find a captivating leader, as was the case in 2023 general elections in Turkey and in 2022 in Hungary. Coalition-building or economic messaging is necessary and good. But it is not enough. You need charisma to mobilize social dissent.
Trump was beatable in this election, but only with a more captivating candidate. For Democrats, the mistake after smartly pushing aside President Joe Biden was bypassing the primaries and handpicking a candidate. Future success for the party will hinge on identifying a candidate who can better connect with voters and channel their aspirations. It should not be too hard in a country of 350 million.
Last year’s elections in Poland and Turkey showcased how incumbents can be defeated (or not defeated, as in general elections in Turkey in 2023) depending on the opposition’s ability to unite around compelling candidates who resonate with voters. Voters seek authenticity and a connection — give it to them.
5. Skip the Protests and Identity Politics
Soon, Trump opponents will shake off the doldrums and start organizing an opposition campaign. But how they do it matters. For the longest time in Turkey, the opposition made the mistake of relying too much on holding street demonstrations and promoting secularism, Turkey’s version of identity politics, which speaks to the urban professional and middle class but not beyond. When Erdoğan finally lost his absolute predominance in Turkish politics in 2024, it was largely because of his mismanagement of the economy and the opposition’s growing competence in that area.
Trump’s appeal transcends traditional divides of race, gender and class. He has formed a new Republican coalition and to counteract this. Democrats too, must broaden their tent, even if means trying to appeal to conservatives on some issues. Opposition over the next four years must be strategic and broad-based.
Street protests and calls to defend democracy may be inspirational, but they repel conservatives and suburban America. Any grassroots action must be coupled with a clear, relatable economic message and showcase the leadership potential of Democratic mayors and governors. Identity politics alone won’t do it.
6. Have Hope
Nothing lasts forever and the U.S. is not the only part of the world that faces threats to democracy — and Americans are no different than the French, the Turks or Hungarians when it comes to the appeal of the far right. But in a country with a strong, decentralized system of government and with a long-standing tradition of free speech, the rule of law should be far more resilient than anywhere in the world.
Trump’s return to power certainly poses challenges to U.S. democracy. But he will make mistakes and overplay his hand — at home and abroad. America will survive the next four years if Democrats pick themselves up and start learning from the successes of opponents of autocracy across the globe.
2.4.25
For eight years, every time I've posted about the weaknesses and cracks and crevices in the Trump operation, every time I've suggested that the left has far more options and tools at his disposal than analogies to Nazi Germany or fascist Italy would suggest, every time I've suggested that those analogies were more confusing than they were revealing, every time I've pointed out the failures and missteps of Trump, every time I've showed that he's not in command of the American polity, every time I pointed out how Trump failed to get something through Congress and was forced to rely on executive powers that could be undone by the next person, every time that I've doubted that Trump 2.0 is so much more ready for prime time than Trump 1.0, every time I've insisted that overstating Trump's power is doing the work of fear that Trump wants and needs done, I've been accused of being an apologist, a minimizer, an enabler, complicitous, or worse. I've gotten these accusations—and some have been far nastier—from liberals, leftists, centrists, ex-conservative Never Trumpers, and more.
I wonder how people are going to make sense of what seems to be a new line coming together from the discourse, as evidenced by three different kinds of voices of opposition to Trump in the last several weeks, voices that are fairly influential and will shape, I'm sure, how the rest of us talk and think about the next four years.
Here's JAMELLE BOUIE, whom I'd describe as a strong left liberal, with the sharpest historical analysis of the intersections between racism and capitalism, and a deep awareness of how institutions affect politics:
1. "It is very telling of these guys’ [Trump and his followers] conception of how power works that they see issuing a flurry of executive orders as evidence of presidential strength and vigor and not a sign that the president is too weak to pursue a serious legislative agenda."
2. "We have a president with a tenuous grip on small legislative majorities who is out of the gate with a flurry of dramatically unpopular orders and who has just demonstrated his weakness on the international stage. if i were an elected member of his domestic opposition, i might try to draw real blood."
3. "i think this should be factored into how states, counties, localities and hospitals respond to these executive orders. 'we will investigate you if you teach DEl.' okay, with what agents, specifically? with what state capacity?"
4. "not to downplay the seriousness of any of this but i think a lot of you are imagining the united states as a country of 30 million people and not a country of 330 million people. 'he'll enforce this with proud boys!' okay, there are > 13,000 public school districts in the US. there are roughly 100,000 primary and secondary schools. trump pardoned 1500 people."
Here's EZRA KLEIN, whom I'd describe as a mainstream liberal, bordering on the centrist, who often sets the pace of more respectable commentary:
"Donald Trump’s first two weeks in the White House have followed Bannon’s strategy like a script. The flood is the point. The overwhelm is the point. The message wasn’t in any one executive order or announcement. It was in the cumulative effect of all of them. The sense that this is Trump’s country now. This is his government now. It follows his will. It does what he wants. If Trump tells the state to stop spending money, the money stops. If he says that birthright citizenship is over, it’s over.
"Or so he wants you to think. In Trump’s first term, we were told: Don’t normalize him. In his second, the task is different: Don’t believe him."
...
"There is a reason Trump is doing all of this through executive orders rather than submitting these same directives as legislation to pass through Congress. A more powerful executive could persuade Congress to eliminate the spending he opposes or reform the civil service to give himself the powers of hiring and firing that he seeks. To write these changes into legislation would make them more durable and allow him to argue their merits in a more strategic way....But Republicans have a three-seat edge in the House and a 53-seat majority in the Senate. Trump has done nothing to reach out to Democrats. If Trump tried to pass this agenda as legislation, it would most likely fail in the House, and it would certainly die before the filibuster in the Senate. And that would make Trump look weak.
...
"That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him.
"The flurry of activity is meant to suggest the existence of a plan. The Trump team wants it known that they’re ready this time. They will control events rather than be controlled by them. The closer you look, the less true that seems. They are scrambling and flailing already. They are leaking against one another already. We’ve learned, already, that the O.M.B. directive was drafted, reportedly, without the input or oversight of key Trump officials — 'it didn’t go through the proper approval process,' an administration official told The Washington Post. For this to be the process and product of a signature initiative in the second week of a president’s second term is embarrassing."
...
"What Trump wants you to see in all this activity is command. What is really in all this activity is chaos. They do not have some secret reservoir of focus and attention the rest of us do not. They have convinced themselves that speed and force is a strategy unto itself — that it is, in a sense, a replacement for a real strategy. Don’t believe them."
And here's REBECCA SOLNIT, one of the preeminent voices of The Resistance, whose politics I can't always figure out but whom no one would accuse of downplaying threat of Trump:
"I found this really insightful and encouraging analysis," she writes, referring to the following statements from Timothy Noah, a solid liberal journalist who keeps a close eye on things related to workers and unions, and Greg Sargent, another solid liberal journalist, statements that she posts on her page.
1. Noah: "Trump is, I have argued, not a strong president. He is a weak president. He has authoritarian tendencies, but he’s weak. He’s mentally weak. He is subject vulnerable to all sorts of manipulation by his aides. He tries to do all sorts of contradictory things. He is not competent. And on the evidence of this particular example, neither are his enablers....These are all signs of a weak presidency."
2. Sargent: "I want to get at your point about weakness and failure here. An interesting thing is how this contrasts with Trump/MAGA propaganda right now. That propaganda is relentlessly pushing the idea that Trump and his allies are ruthlessly forging ahead with his agenda. You see it all over Twitter. All of MAGA’s tweeting immense congratulations to Trump, he’s crushing the libs, he’s doing this, he’s doing that. ... The real story here is that they’re actually screwing up already....I don’t want to be too optimistic here. They’re going to do a lot of damage—already are doing a lot of damage. But clearly what we’re seeing now is that they’re not going to be able to roll over the bureaucracy and our institutions, as easily as they thought, as easily as John Harris thinks, as easily as that credulous New York Times piece portrayed, right?"
Back to me: I'm less interested in crowing or scoring points with my critics (though I'd be less than honest if I didn't say it hurt to be called these things publicly by people who've known me personally and worked with me for a long time, sometimes as far back as graduate school) than in pointing out something I noticed about a month or so ago. During Trump 1.0, people found it useful, for reasons I remain unclear about, to say that we were living under a fascist regime, even though the very fact that they could say that publicly suggested otherwise, and to warn of fascism as a way, I guess, of mobilizing people to vote or act.
Now that it's become clear that yelling fascism won't make it— whatever "it" is—go away, now that people realize that a constant state of alarm imposes genuine political costs, people are looking for different kinds of analysis that show all the ways in which the familiar tools of politics are the tools we have to fight with, that a lot of the Trump power performance is just that, performance, that a lot of what we consider democracy still exists, and that we're all going to have to look harder at institutions and actions and cracks and crevices—and less to the courts or revelations about Russia and pee (remember that one?) or to the passing street demonstration.
I'll be interested to see how this commentary develops further.
_______
I wrote this out so that I will be prepared when I call my senators and representative this morning re: Musk's illegal takeover of USAID this weekend and Musk's illegal break in and data breach at the Treasury Dept and OPM.
I thought I would share in case anyone would like to use or modify it as they make their own phone calls.
(I'll put the links to the senate and house phone numbers in comments. I'm calling both their DC and local offices. I've also emailed through their contacts on the federal website.)
Introduction:
"Hello, my name is [name], and I am a constituent from zip code [zip code]. I am calling to express my concerns about the recent reports regarding Elon Musk's authority and illegal actions regarding breaking in, accessing and copying confidential information at USAID, the Treasury and the OPM. He and his cohorts have no authority to access that information or to copy it. That they are using unsecured hard drives is a further security risk as well as a breach of America's trust.
Furthermore, I understand that he misrepresented himself and his cohorts by saying he was backed by the US Marshal's Office.
State the Issue:
"I am greatly troubled and more than a little bit angry that Elon Musk has been given this significant authority by the president and that he is abusing this power, particularly this weekend. I believe it is essential for elected officials to ensure that checks and balances are in place to prevent any potential misuse of authority. The president has made up a government position for Musk and is now allowing Musk to dismantle congress-approved departments, ie USAID. Musk has also orchestrated, and carried out, a data breach at the US Treasury and at OPM.
Express Your Position:
"I strongly oppose any individual, including Elon Musk, having unchecked authority and potentially abusing that power for personal or political gain. It is crucial for our democracy that oversight mechanisms are in place to hold individuals accountable for their actions and to stop further abuse. Furthermore, I believe in the checks and balances of our government. With our Congress allowing the President to usurp their powers of authority, we no longer have the checks and balances our constitution provides. When Senator/Representative [name] gives away his own authority by doing nothing, or worse, supporting this usurping of his own authority, he is acting against the protection of his constituents and against the protection of our nation as a whole. Provide Supporting Information:
"Not only does Elon Musk have no security clearance, he has known ties to nations who are not our allies, including China and Russia. With these ties, he should not have access to any information that requires a security clearance. He should not be in our White House and he should not have the ear of the president.
Allowing Elon Musk to continue, unchecked and with the president's cooperation is endangering our national security. This is a matter of great importance to me as a constituent."
Ask for a Response:
"I would like to know where Senator/Representative [Name] stands on this issue and what actions he plans to take to address these illegal abuses of power. I urge [him/her] to consider the implications of allowing individuals to wield excessive authority without proper oversight."
Thank Them:
"Thank you for taking the time to listen to my concerns on this matter. I hope that Senator/Representative [Name] will take this issue seriously and work to ensure accountability and transparency in government actions."
***
Note that the USAID break in is now being carried on reputable news sources. So far, I've found very little about the Treasury and OPM data breach. I have found this article by Wired Magazine.
Link in comments.
Wired is a reputable news organization. Here is one of the articles I found that refers to the Treasury and OPM data breach.
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