The Conversation -- February 5, 2025
Gaza Riviera? Never Mind. From the New York Times' live updates Wednesday of developments in Israel's wars, also linked earlier Wednesday: "Top Trump administration officials on Wednesday walked back elements of ... [Donald] Trump's proposal to 'take over' Gaza and drive out the Palestinian population, insisting that he had not committed to using U.S. troops to clear the territory and that any relocation of Palestinians would be temporary. Mr. Trump's brazen proposal to move as many as two million Palestinians out of Gaza and seize and redevelop it as a U.S. territory met with immediate opposition on Wednesday from key American partners and officials around the world, with many expressing support for a Palestinian state, and experts calling the idea a breach of international law.... Speaking to reporters in Guatemala, Secretary of State Marco Rubio twice suggested that Mr. Trump was only proposing to clear out and rebuild Gaza, not claim indefinite possession of the territory. Steve Witkoff, the special envoy to the Middle East, told Republican senators at a closed-door luncheon that Mr. Trump 'doesn't want to put any U.S. troops on the ground, and he doesn't want to spend any U.S. dollars at all' on Gaza, according to Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri. And at the White House, the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said 'the president has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza.'..." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Trump's handlers should tell the truth, beginning the walk-backs with, "Look, the guy is incredibly stupid and corrupt...."
Hannah Natanson & Laura Meckler of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that aims to ban transgender athletes from competing on girls' and women's sports teams by denying federal funds for schools that allow it.... It's the latest salvo in Trump's attack on transgender rights, adding to previous actions that are already ricocheting through school districts and college campuses across the country.... Trump's orders represent a sharp assertion of presidential power, in particular his threat to pull federal funding from districts that teach about gender, as well as race, in ways he doesn't like."
David Sanger & Julian Barnes of the New York Times: "The C.I.A. sent the White House an unclassified email listing all employees hired by the spy agency over the last two years to comply with an executive order to shrink the federal work force, in a move that former officials say risked the list leaking to adversaries. The list included first names and the first initial of the last name of the new hires, who are still on probation and thus easy to dismiss. It included a large crop of young analysts and operatives who were hired specifically to focus on China, and whose identities are usually closely guarded because Chinese hackers are constantly seeking to identify them.... One former agency officer called the reporting of the names in an unclassified email a 'counterintelligence disaster.'... Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, wrote in a social media post that the sharing of the officers' names was 'a disastrous national security development.'"
David Nakamura & Silvia Foster-Frau of the Washington Post: "A federal judge Tuesday indefinitely blocked ... Donald Trump's effort to curb birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants and foreigners with temporary visas, a decision that is likely to mean the executive order will not take effect as planned this month. U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman issued a preliminary injunction after a court hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a lawsuit brought by civil rights groups aiming to stop Trump's order on the grounds that it violates the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment. The injunction applies nationally and will remain in place as the case is adjudicated. The Maryland lawsuit is one of at least six federal cases brought against Trump's order by a total of 22 Democratic-led states and more than a half-dozen civil rights groups. A federal judge in Seattle previously issued a 14-day restraining order."
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Marie: For the first time I can recall (though it might have happened during Nixon's tenure), the New York Times' headline implies the POTUS* is IN-sane. AND the report's author is the famously both-sides writer Peter Baker. ~~~
⭐"With Gaza Plan, an Unbound Trump Pushes an Improbable Idea." Peter Baker of the New York Times: Donald "Trump basked as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel praised his 'willingness to think outside the box.' But when it came to Gaza, Mr. Trump's thinking on Tuesday was so far outside the box that it was not clear he even knew there was a box. Mr. Trump's announcement that he intends to seize control of Gaza, displace the Palestinian population and turn the coastal enclave into 'the Riviera of the Middle East' was the kind of thing he might have said to get a rise on 'The Howard Stern Show' a decade or two ago. Provocative, intriguing, outlandish, outrageous -- and not at all presidential. But now in his sequel term in the White House, Mr. Trump is advancing ever-more brazen ideas about redrawing the map of the world in the tradition of 19th-century imperialism. First there was buying Greenland, then annexing Canada, reclaiming the Panama Canal and renaming the Gulf of Mexico. And now he envisions taking over a devastated war zone in the Middle East that no other American president would want." MB: I think this is a gift link. If not, I apologize. ~~~
~~~ Michael Shear, et al., of the New York Times: Donald "Trump declared on Tuesday that the United States should seize control of Gaza and permanently displace the entire Palestinian population of the devastated seaside enclave, one of the most brazen ideas that any American leader has advanced in years. Hosting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House, Mr. Trump said that all two million Palestinians from Gaza should be moved to countries like Egypt and Jordan because of the devastation wrought by Israel's campaign against Hamas.... 'The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,' Mr. Trump said at a news conference Tuesday evening. 'We'll own it and be responsible' for disposing of unexploded munitions and rebuilding Gaza into a mecca for jobs and tourism." An AP story is here.
~~~ Unbelievable! Here are the New York Times' live updates of Trump administration developments including Donald Trump's meeting with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu: ~~~
Michael Shear, et al.: "... [Donald] Trump proposed on Tuesday that the United States take over Gaza and that all Palestinians there -- some two million people -- should leave, describing a permanent relocation to one or more sites funded by 'countries of interest with humanitarian hearts.' As he hosted Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for a joint news conference in the White House, Mr. Trump said that he has studied the conditions in Gaza and his idea to seize and develop it has gotten 'tremendous' support from the 'highest of leadership' as a viable plan to bring peace to the Middle East."
Peter Baker: "Trump has now added Gaza to his growing list of territories that he wants to seize around the world, along with Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal.... Trump again takes full credit for a cease-fire deal that was first put on the table and painstakingly negotiated by Biden and his team. 'We weren't helped very much by the Biden administration, I'll tell you that,' Trump says.... Trump makes clear that he sees Gaza as a new U.S. territory, saying it would be a 'long-term ownership position.' He doesn't answer the question about what legal authority would allow him to simply take over sovereign territory.... Trump seems to be picking up an idea advanced last year by Jared Kushner, his son-in-law who said that 'Gaza's waterfront property could be very valuable.'" MB: Indeed, he said Gaza could become "the Riviera of the Middle East."
Erica Green: "Since taking office, Trump has talked about Gaza more like a real estate developer than a world leader confronting a major conflict. Tonight, it's become clear why. He just repeatedly referenced taking over the enclave, developing it and creating 'thousands and thousands of jobs.' It is unclear who would benefit from those jobs if the people who live there are forced to leave." (Also linked yesterday.)
Marie: So the plan is that the Emperor Don will send U.S. troops to plant the U.S. flag in another country, that the soldiers will ethnically-cleanse that portion of the country, that the U.S. soldiers will force other countries in the region to absorb the 2 million people the U.S. soldiers have dispossessed, and that the soldiers then will have secured this portion of a sovereign nation for certain unnamed U.S. developers (Trump, Kushner??) to profit from developing beachfront properties in this new U.S.-owned "Riviera of the Middle East." ~~~
~~~ Frank Thorp & Raquel Uribe of NBC News: "Criticism and concern spread across both sides of the aisle Tuesday night after ... Donald Trump announced that the United States 'will take over the Gaza Strip.' Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called the proposal 'problematic,' adding that he does not think his constituents would be excited about sending U.S. soldiers to take control of Gaza.... Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., slammed the proposal as 'deranged' and 'nuts,' calling U.S. military presence in the region 'a magnet for trouble.'... Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., the only Palestinian American member of Congress..., called the proposal 'ethnic cleansing' and 'fanatical bull---' on X." ~~~
~~~ But then there's supposed Democratic Sen. John Fetterman (Pa.) who told the New York Times "that he would support a potential American occupation of the Gaza Strip...." Paul Campos in LG&$: "This guy has turned into a complete disaster. It should be unnecessary to point out that a US occupation of Gaza would make Fallujah look like a Scout jamboree." ~~~
~~~ The New York Times' live updates of developments Wednesday in Israel's wars are here: Donald "Trump's brazen proposal to move all Palestinians out of Gaza and make it a U.S. territory met with immediate opposition on Wednesday from key American partners and officials around the world, with many expressing support for a Palestinian state and saying that the plan would breach international law. The proposal also threatens a U.S. ambition for normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. In a statement issued before 4 a.m. local time, Saudi Arabia expressed its 'unequivocal rejection' of attempts to displace Palestinians and reiterated that it would not establish diplomatic ties with Israel in the absence of an independent Palestinian state. Egypt's foreign ministry said in a separate statement that aid and recovery programs for Gaza must begin 'without the Palestinians leaving.... The Geneva Conventions prohibit the forcible relocation of populations. The United States and Israel have both ratified the conventions." ~~~
~~~ Here are the Washington Post's live updates for Wednesday. ~~~
~~~ David Rising & Jon Gambrell of the AP: "... Donald Trump's proposal that the United States 'take over' the Gaza Strip and permanently resettle its Palestinian residents was swiftly rejected and denounced on Wednesday by American allies and adversaries alike.... Egypt, Jordan and other American allies in the Middle East have already rejected the idea of relocating more than 2 million Palestinians from Gaza elsewhere in the region.... The prime ministers of Australia and Ireland, foreign ministries from China, New Zealand and Germany, and a Kremlin spokesman all reiterated support for a two-state solution." And so on.
~~~ In today's Comments, Akhilleus liken Trump's Gaza plan to that of one carried out by one of Trump's favorite former presidents. Marie: Akhilleus is wondering who will play Trump in the movie. I'd recommend the Welsh actor Mark Lewis Jones. It's true Jones is much better-looking that Trump, but he is very good at playing vile characters: ~~~
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post: "Gaza peace protesters rallied Americans by the hundreds of thousands to oppose President Joe Biden and vote 'uncommitted' in Democratic primaries. They heckled Vice President Kamala Harris and disrupted her events. On Election Day, Donald Trump prevailed in the majority-Arab town of Dearborn, Michigan. And across the country, many young voters stayed home or even voted for Trump -- likely because, in part, they were disenchanted that the Biden administration had been insufficiently tough on Israel. How's that working out now?"
Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times: Donald "Trump said on Tuesday that he was open to an offer by El Salvador's president to jail convicted criminals, including American citizens, in the Central American nation's notorious 'megaprison.' 'If we had the legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat,' Mr. Trump said. He almost surely does not have the legal right to do it, legal experts say, and any attempt to carry out President Nayib Bukele's plan would probably be challenged in court. But Mr. Bukele's proposal to essentially turn El Salvador into a penal colony for the United States showed how far he is willing to go to define himself as Mr. Trump's primary ally in a region that the American president has disparaged. And for Mr. Trump, even musing over the proposal signaled his willingness to embrace extreme measures to show he is tough on crime and illegal immigration.... [Bukele's] proposal prompted praise from Marco Rubio, Mr. Trump's secretary of state, as well as Elon Musk...." ~~~
~~~ Marie: I don't think Trump will send U.S. prisoners to El Salvador. That's not because he is concerned about the "legality" of it, but because U.S. private prison owners are among his big campaign contributors, and obviously they want to house prisoners in their for-profit jails.
Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "Mr. Trump has opened the throttle on defying legal limits [to his authority]. 'We are well past euphemism about "pushing the limits," "stretching the envelope" and the like,' said Peter M. Shane, who is a legal scholar in residence at New York University.... The array of legal constraints Mr. Trump has violated, Mr. Shane added, amounts to 'programmatic sabotage and rampant lawlessness.' Mr. Trump has effectively nullified laws, such as by ordering the Justice Department to refrain from enforcing a ban on ... TikTok and by blocking migrants from invoking a statute allowing them to request asylum. He moved to effectively shutter a federal agency Congress created and tried to freeze congressionally approved spending, including most foreign aid. He summarily fired prosecutors, inspectors general and board members of independent agencies in defiance of legal rules against arbitrary removal.... Mr. Trump appears to have been basically operating with a philosophy that he will do whatever he wants despite any legal impediments, then fight in court if necessary. Read on. Savage also covers Congressional Republicans' "meekness" (see also Jonathan Chait on this -- linked below).
Perfect. Trump Nominates Sharpiegate Accomplice to Head NOAA. Scott Dance of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump has named Neil Jacobs, an atmospheric scientist who was found to have violated scientific integrity policies during the 'Sharpiegate' scandal of the first Trump administration, to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Jacobs led NOAA on an acting basis from February 2019 through the end of Trump's first term, including when the president used a Sharpie marker to alter an official National Hurricane Center map to suggest that Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama and parts of Florida outside its predicted path.... In response to Trump's [false assertions about the projected path of Dorian], Weather Service forecasters in Birmingham, Alabama, clarified on social media that the state was probably not in Dorian's path. The confusion prompted an unusual and unsigned NOAA statement in support of Trump's warnings to Alabama. An investigation found undue political influence in the process of crafting that statement, in violation of NOAA's standards for scientific integrity, but Jacobs defended the statement and admonished the Birmingham meteorologists." (Also linked yesterday.)
Marie: It's been quite a long time since I've published one of my sports reports, but circumstances demand one now: ~~~
~~~ (1) Alayna Treene & Betsy Klein of CNN: "... Donald Trump is expected to attend Super Bowl LIX at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans on Sunday, a White House official told CNN." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ (2) Michael Silver of the New York Times' Athletic: "According to two [NFL] sources..., league officials recently changed one of the slogans expected to be stenciled in the back of an end zone from 'End Racism' to 'Choose Love.' The game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles will mark the first time since February 2021 that 'End Racism' is not included as a message in the back of a Super Bowl end zone." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ I'll bet you can put (1) and (2) together.
"The Constitutional Crisis Is Here." Jonathan Chait of the Atlantic: "Elon Musk, to whom Donald Trump has delegated the task of neutering the congressional spending authority laid out in Article I of the Constitution, could hardly be more obvious about his intentions if he rode into Washington on a horse trailed by Roman legions. 'This is the one shot the American people have to defeat BUREAUcracy, rule of the bureaucrats, and restore DEMOcracy, rule of the people,' Musk wrote at 3:59 a.m. today [Tuesday] on his social-media platform. 'We're never going to get another chance like this. It's now or never. Your support is crucial to the success of the revolution of the people.'... The Founders, famously, failed to anticipate the rise of political parties. They assumed that each branch of government would jealously guard its own powers, and thus check the others.... Not even the most committed small-government-conservative lawmaker would design a process like the one now occurring: a handful of political novices, many of them drinking deep from the fetid waters of right-wing conspiracy theorizing, tearing through the federal budget, making haphazard decisions about what to scrap." Thank you to laura h. for this gift link. ~~~
~~~ Even Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post Gets It: "No president in history has caused more damage to the nation more quickly. As we enter Week 3 of ... Donald Trump's second term, the chaos and disruption of his first look quaint by comparison. The country survived Trump 1. Now, it faces a real threat that the harm he inflicts during his second term will be irreparable. The United States' standing in the world, its ability to keep the country safe, the federal government's fundamental capacity to operate effectively -- all of these will take years to repair, if that can be achieved at all." (Also linked yesterday.)
Paul Campos in LG&$ republishes a signficant portion of a firewalled Wired story: "A 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government, three sources tell Wired. Two of those sources say that Elez's privileges include the ability not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Housed on a top-secret mainframe, these systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy. Despite reporting that suggests that Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force has access to these Treasury systems on a 'read-only' level, sources say Elez ... has many administrator-level privileges. Typically, those admin privileges could give someone the power to log in to servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: I can't figure out if Josh Marshall wrote the following post or if one of his readers did. In any event, Josh seems confident enough in its accuracy to publish it: ~~~
~~~ Josh Marshall of TPM, publisher: "A 25-year-old DOGE operative named Marko Elez in fact has admin privileges on these critical systems, which directly control and pay out roughly 95% of payments made by the U.S. government, including Social Security checks, tax refunds and virtually all contract payments. I can independently confirm these details based on conversations going back to the weekend. I can further report that Elez not only has full access to these systems, he has already made extensive changes to the code base for these critical payment system.... Phrases like 'freaking out' are, not surprisingly, used to describe the reaction of the engineers who were responsible for maintaining the code base until a week ago. The changes that have been made all seem to relate to creating new paths to block payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been blocked. I want to emphasize that the described changes are not being tested in a dev environment (i.e., a not-live environment) but have already been pushed into production." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "The Treasury Department said on Tuesday that it was not stopping or rejecting federal expenditures and that it was committed to safeguarding the nation's payment system following widespread backlash after Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency was granted access to the system. In a letter to members of Congress [from Jonathan Blum, a legislative affairs official at the Treasury Department], the Treasury Department said that it was conducting a review of the system to 'maximize payment integrity' for agencies and the public. It described the initiative as an expansion of a review that had gotten underway during the Biden administration.... The letter was sent as what appeared to be hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Treasury Department building to express their opposition to Mr. Musk's involvement in the federal payments system. Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrats on the banking and finance committees, called on the Government Accountability Office on Tuesday to begin an investigation into Mr. Musk's access to the payment system.&"
Faiz Siddiqui, et al., of the Washington Post: "The assistant commissioner of a division of the General Services Administration told staff early this week that layoffs across the federal government are 'likely' after the deferred resignation offer expires Thursday ... -- the sharpest move yet toward forcibly removing many of the 2.3 million civilian federal employees.... The email was the latest sign that administration officials fear few career civil servants will take their offer to quit.... Musk's allies are also now running GSA, which manages real estate and some procurement and information technology across the federal government." (Also linked yesterday.)
⭐Spies on the Loose. Katie Bo Lillis & Kaitlan Collins of CNN: "The Central Intelligence Agency on Tuesday became the first major national security agency to offer so-called buyouts to its entire workforce, a CIA spokesperson and two other sources familiar with the offer said, part of Donald Trump's broad effort to shrink the federal government and shape it to his agenda. The offer -- which tells federal employees that they can quit their jobs and receive roughly eight months of pay and benefits -- had up until Tuesday not been made available to most national security roles in an apparent cognizance of their critical function to the security of the nation. CIA Director John Ratcliffe personally decided he also wanted the CIA to be involved, one of the sources said.... Still, even as the offer was sent to the entire workforce at the agency, it was not immediately clear whether all would be allowed to take it."
Michael Sainato of the Guardian: "Staffers with Elon Musk's 'department of government efficiency' (Doge) reportedly entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) in Silver Spring, Maryland, and the Department of Commerce in Washington DC today, inciting concerns of downsizing at the agency 'They apparently just sort of walked past security and said: "Get out of my way," and they're looking for access for the IT systems, as they have in other agencies,' said Andrew Rosenberg, a former Noaa official.... 'They will have access to the entire computer system, a lot of which is confidential information.'... Rosenberg noted it had been a longtime goal o corporations that rely on Noaa data to prevent the agency from making the data public, instead of giving it directly to private corporations that create products based on it, such as weather forecasting services."
Josh Campbell, et al., of CNN: "FBI officials have complied with demands to provide the Justice Department with details of thousands of employees who worked on investigations related to the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot, according to people familiar with the situation.... More than 5,000 employee details were submitted, including employee ID numbers, job titles and their role in the January 6 investigations, sources said, but not their names. There are more than 13,000 agents and 38,000 total FBI employees. Meanwhile, officials dispatched by Elon Musk have been seen at FBI headquarters." MB: Needless to say, it would be childsplay for the little Muskovites to match ID numbers to names. (Also linked yesterday.)
Karoun Demirjian, et al., of the New York Times: "Nearly the entire global work force of the main American aid agency, known as U.S.A.I.D., will be put on leave by the end of Friday, according to an official memo the agency posted online Tuesday night. The notice said only a small subset of 'designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and specially designated programs' would be exempt. Employees designated as direct hires will be put on paid leave, and those posted abroad will be expected to return to the United States within 30 days, the notice said, adding that the agency would 'arrange and pay for return travel.'" Contractors will be laid off if they are not deemed essential. The notice was posted on the agency's website, which had been dark since Saturday." An NPR story is here.
USPS Abides by Trump Tariffs on China. Jacob Bogage & Jaclyn Peiser of the Washington Post: "The U.S. Postal Service abruptly suspended inbound package shipments from China and Hong Kong on Tuesday as President Donald Trump's trade war began in earnest. The vast majority of goods shipped from China arrive outside the mail system, but Trump's order specifically eliminated a 'de minimis' tariff exemption for small quantities of items and low-value items, including those shipped through a postal service. That exemption covered items worth less than $800. The mail agency's move may block or delay, at least temporarily, parcels from retailers including Shein and Temu and some from Amazon. It could also pose significant delays for items mailed from China to the United States and drive up shipping costs.... Temu and Shein are responsible for an estimated 30 percent of packages shipped daily into the United States...." ~~~
~~~ Update. CBS/AFP: "The U.S. Postal Service on Wednesday halted an order to suspend incoming shipments from China that threatened to severely disrupt trade between the two major economies. A day after announcing the suspension in the wake of ... [Donald] Trump's tariffs on China, the postal service said in an online update that it would 'continue accepting all international inbound mail and packages from China and Hong Kong Posts.' It added it was working to 'implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least disruption to package delivery.' Letters and flats were not included in the suspension, the postal service said."
Aah, Nothin' to Worry About, After All. Matt Dixon, et al., of NBC News: "Tech billionaire and newly minted 'special government employee' Elon Musk has received quiet White House reminders in recent days that while he has wide, nearly unprecedented latitude to slash spending and reorient the federal government at a breakneck pace, his power is not unchecked. Trump has suggested publicly, and aides have signaled behind the scenes, that Musk is still a staffer and needs to report to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. 'I'm not sure it was his preferred direction, and it did not seem like he was expecting it,' a Trump aide told NBC News of Musk’s being told he needed to answer to Wiles. 'But it has been reiterated to him in ways that, yes, he reports to the chief of staff.'"
Hannah Knowles, et al., of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump's administration launched one of its most brazen challenges yet to Congress's authority this week when officials led by billionaire Elon Musk gutted and threatened to abolish the U.S. Agency for International Development and suggested that other agencies should brace for overhauls. But Republican lawmakers have raised few objections about the push to ax USAID, alarming Democrats who say the GOP is ceding power to the White House.... Even as Democrats warned of a 'constitutional crisis,' it was business as usual on Republican-controlled Capitol Hill on Tuesday...."
Tyler McBrien of Lawfare in a New York Times op-ed: "The full picture of the government overhaul has yet to come into focus, and the contours of [Elon] Musk's role and mission in that transformation remain sketchy.... Who exactly is running the federal government?... The possibility [is] that the actual answer is Mr. Musk -- the world's richest man -- and other unaccountable, unelected, unconfirmed allies cozy with the president. Political economists have a name for that: state capture.... Revelations of this especially pernicious, widespread form of corruption have occurred in other countries -- a striking example occurred in the country of Mr. Musk's birth, South Africa -- and they offer cautionary tales for democratic governments everywhere." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Chait reminds us that the founders failed to foresee the development of political parties and how those parties would undermine the checks & balances the founders wrote into the Constitution. But here's something they did not overlook: the president must be "a natural-born citizen ... of the United States." As it turns out, the current president* meets that Constitutional standard, but he has ceded a good deal of control to a foreign-born billionaire. So what we have is a corrupt president*, a corrupt Congress and a corrupt Supreme Court all working in service of a corrupt foreign billionaire who is making wantonly illegal decisions, no doubt some to his advantage. We are officially a gigantic banana republic.
Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "A power-mad president possessed of radical theories of executive authority and convinced of his own royal prerogative has given de facto control of most of the federal government to one of the richest men on the planet, if not the richest, whose own interests are tangled up in those of rival governments and foreign autocracies as well as the United States.... Even if anyone had elected Elon Musk to anything, the last week would still be one of the most serious examples of executive branch malfeasance in American history.... No one in the executive branch has the legal authority to unilaterally cancel congressional appropriations. No one has the legal authority to turn the Treasury payments system into a means of political retribution. No one has the authority to summarily dismiss civil servants without cause. No one has the authority to take down and scrub government websites of public data, itself paid for by American taxpayers. And no private citizen has the authority to access the sensitive data of American citizens for either information gathering or their own, unknown purposes.... The president's opponents, whoever they are, cannot expect a return to the Constitution as it was. Whatever comes next, should the country weather this attempted hijacking, will need to be a fundamental rethinking of what this system is and what we want out of it. Anything less will set us up for yet another Trump and yet another Musk."
Shania Shelton & Morgan Rimmer of CNN: "The Senate voted Tuesday night to confirm Pam Bondi as attorney general.... The vote was 54-46. The vote was mostly along party lines though Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania joined Republicans in supporting Bondi. Fetterman told reporters after the vote that he decided to support Bondi because of her qualifications, even though she is not his 'ideal' choice. 'I'm saying that she's, she's qualified, and it's not my ideal pick, but it turns out that (former Attorney General) Merrick Garland wasn't anyone's ideal one either,' he said." MB: "Merrick Garland sucks, too," might not be the greatest excuse for confirming another crappy AG.
Early Tuesday, Senate Chickenshits Came Home to Roost. Amanda Seitz & Stephen Groves of the AP: "Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vocal vaccine skeptic and activist lawyer, appeared on track to become the nation's health secretary after winning the crucial support of Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a doctor who says Kennedy has assured him he would not topple the nation's childhood vaccination program. In a starkly partisan vote, the Republican-controlled Senate Finance Committee advanced Kennedy's nomination 14-13, sending his bid to oversee the $1.7 trillion U.S. Health and Human Services agency for a full vote on the Senate floor. A full Senate vote has not yet been scheduled, but with Cassidy's vote no longer in doubt Kennedy's nomination is likely to succeed absent any last-minute vote switches." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Beatrice Peterson of ABC News: "The Senate Intelligence Committee voted to advance former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard's nomination for director of national intelligence in a closed-door session on Tuesday afternoon. Gabbard advanced in a 9-8 vote along party lines, according to senators leaving the meeting. All Republicans voted in favor of Gabbard while all Democrats opposed her, according to a source familiar with the vote.... Gabbard, a former Democratic Hawaii member of Congress turned Republican, picked up three key Republican votes on Monday from Sens. Susan Collins, James Lankford and Todd Young. They had previously been critical of her past statements on Snowden and her opposition to government surveillance programs." (Also linked yesterday.)
Shaila Dewan of the New York Times: "A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Bureau of Prisons from enacting ... [Donald] Trump's executive order to house transgender women with male inmates and stop medical treatment related to gender transitions. Judge Royce C. Lamberth, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said that three transgender prisoners who brought a suit to stop the order had 'straightforwardly demonstrated that irreparable harm will follow' if their request for a restraining order were to be denied. Judge Lamberth was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan. The lawsuit was one of a barrage of legal actions seeking to stop ... [Mr.] Trump's agenda, including several brought on behalf of transgender prisoners, military service members and young people under 19." MB: Judge Lamberth is an 80-year-old, white conservative and he is married to a woman, so I'm guessing he's straight. Yet he didn't have any trouble seeing that Trump's attacks on transgender people were unlawful.
The Resistance, Ctd. Mattathias Schwartz & Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "Workers from across the federal government set off a legal counteroffensive against ... [Donald] Trump and Elon Musk on Tuesday, challenging the legality of efforts to raze their agencies, single them out publicly or push them out of their jobs. The raft of lawsuits, filed by F.B.I. agents, public sector unions, representatives of older Americans and liberal-leaning legal groups, hinges on fine points of law that deal with matters ranging from the privacy of taxpayer data to intricacies of federal rule-making. But together, they amount to the opening shots in an emerging legal battle over the constitutional order, checks and balances and the founders' vision of the separation of powers. It will be up to the courts to decide whether the president has the power to not only direct the executive branch, but also to forcefully recast it in his own image. It may also be up to the judicial branch of government to find a way to ensure that its own decisions are enforced." ~~~
~~~ The Resistance, Ctd. Jeremy Roebuck & Perry Stein of the Washington Post: "Two groups of FBI agents sued the Justice Department on Tuesday in an attempt to block it from maintaining or publicly releasing a list of thousands of bureau employees who worked on investigations tied to ... Donald Trump or the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Attorneys for nine of the plaintiffs, who filed their suit anonymously in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said the compilation of the list was retaliatory and a possible precursor for unlawful firings. Using case assignment information as a basis to terminate FBI employees would violate civil service protections, they said. The lawsuit also raises concerns that Trump administration officials might make public the names of the agents who were assigned to work on the cases, exposing them and their families to retribution from now-pardoned defendants charged in the Jan. 6 attack." (Also linked yesterday.)
~~~ The Resistance, Ctd. Brad Reed of the Raw Story: "Federal workers have filed an emergency lawsuit demanding that courts mandate that Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency shuts down the server it has set up at the US Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) headquarters. Wired reports that an attorney representing two unidentified government workers is alleging that 'the server's continued operation not only violates federal law but is potentially exposing vast quantities of government staffers' personal information to hostile foreign adversaries through unencrypted email.' The complaint alleges that the DOGE server was installed 'without OPM -- the government's human resources department -- conducting a mandatory privacy impact assessment required under federal law,' writes Wired." (Also linked yesterday.)
The Resistance, Ctd. Sort Of. Jeff Stein, et al., of the Washington Post: "The chaotic blitz by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has triggered legal objections across Washington, with officials in at least a half-dozen federal agencies and departments raising alarms about whether the billionaire's assault on government is breaking the law.... Internal legal objections have been raised at the Treasury Department, the Education Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the General Services Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the White House budget office, among others. 'So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they're playing a quantity game and assuming the system can't react to all this illegality at once,' said David Super ... [of Georgetown Law School.... At a ... fundamental level, several legal experts and government officials expressed alarm over how Musk's team appears to operate as a strike team, outside typical agency rules and constitutional checks on executive power."
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Greenland. Kelsey Ables of the Washington Post: "Greenland on Tuesday passed a law banning foreign contributions to political parties, an assertion of self-governance amid concern over ... Donald Trump's calls for the United States to acquire the island."
News Lede
New York Times: "Search crews on Tuesday recovered the final remains of 67 people who died in Washington last week after a collision between a passenger jet and a U.S. Army helicopter. The authorities said that all but one of the bodies had been identified."
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