Last night the White House submitted a filing to Judge Tanya Chutken that Elon Musk does not lead the DOGE and has no power to do anything but advise the president. Apparently, this was an attempt to head off her potential ruling that DOGE is not properly constituted to do what it’s doing, particularly under the leadership of the unaccountable Musk: That’s bullshit and I hope the judge sees these: Everyone knows that Musk is leading DOGE. They are answering to him, Trump has already made that clear. To say otherwise is ridiculous.
Uncategorized
The NY Times has a good piece today (gift link) looking at the inside workings of the Adams case at SDNY. It is truly astonishing. What this case proves is that what’s happening is truly the complete corrupt Trumpification of the DOJ that goes way beyond just seeking retribution for the Special Counsel prosecutions. This is a remaking of the department as a full-fledged political arm of the president and this case was chosen in particular to demonstrate to the lawyers and the public that they plan to use that power. By choosing to protect a Democrat who made an appeal directly to Donald Trump, licking his boots and promising to do his bidding, they have shown that it’s not about the past, it’s about the future. By choosing the SDNY, the flagship office of the DOJ, they prove that no office has any independence. This is the conclusion of the piece: Across the department, dismay has set in over the standoff in the Adams case, which echoes a grim moment during the Watergate scandal known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Rather than carry out an order from President Richard M.
Never forget that even as President Musk is destroying the government agencies and Trump’s henchmen are taking apart the Department of Justice piece by piece, when he isn’t pretending to be Alexander the Great and playing golf he’s making money for himself and his family. This term they aren’t even trying to hide it: The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration left her job this weekend after a clash with billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service over its attempts to access sensitive government records, three people familiar with her departure said Monday. The Oval Office meeting convened by President Trump brought together the most important leaders in the world of professional golf: Jay Monahan, the top executive at the PGA Tour, and, via telephone, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the chairman of the Saudi Arabia-backed league known as LIV Golf. The stated goal was to figure out a way to eliminate roadblocks preventing the planned merger between the rival two groups. But the gathering earlier this month said something even more important about the Trump administration itself. Mr.
In case you aren’t up on the latest internet lingo ASMR is defined: Note that the original tweet came from the official White House feed. We are dealing with sociopaths. They don’t try to hide it. And because of that it is rational to be horrified and enraged right now about what these people are willing to do to us. Normalizing this level of sadism and cruelty can only lead in one direction. I just assume now that all Republicans agree with these sentiments since none of them have said a peep about any of this.
Abandoning Ukraine and NATO Even as Elon Musk’s Dunning-Kruger saboteurs bleed federal agencies of skilled public servants and threaten nuclear stockpile security at the National Nuclear Security Administration, Donald Trump is selling out Ukrainian allies to Russia and again trying to shake down NATO. Trump on Tuesday blamed President Volodymyr Zelensky for presiding over a country “that has been blown to smithereens” in a war he falsely accused Ukraine of starting. Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago. Zelensky responded, “Unfortunately, President Trump – I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for, the American people who always support us – unfortunately lives in this disinformation space.” As do we all. Nice country you got there The Telegraph of London reports on the $500 billion “deal” Trump’s agents dropped on Ukraine in exchange for its strategic minerals. The Telegraph obtained a Feb.
What Bernie knows in his bones This TokTok is a week old, but if you’re not one of the almost 10 million who have watched it, devote 10 minutes. @bernie Oligarchs are waging a war on the working class, and they are intent on winning. But this is what I know: The worst fear that the ruling class in this country has is that Americans come together to demand a government that represents all of us, not just the wealthy few. ♬ original sound – Bernie Sanders Bernie as a presidential candidate struck me as a one-trick pony: class struggle. But he knows that trick in his bones. “The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats,” entrepreneur Nick Hanauer wrote over a decade ago To: My Fellow Zillionaires: But let’s speak frankly to each other. I’m not the smartest guy you’ve ever met, or the hardest-working. I was a mediocre student. I’m not technical at all—I can’t write a word of code. What sets me apart, I think, is a tolerance for risk and an intuition about what will happen in the future. Seeing where things are headed is the essence of entrepreneurship. And what do I see in our future now?
President Trump took some questions yesterday as he finished yet another round of golf and wound up another long weekend at his Florida resort. Elon Musk was a big topic which appeared to get on his nerves especially when a reporter wanted to know what position the multi-billionaire actually held now that the White House has said that he is not actually running the DOGE department after all. He responded, “So, you know, you could call him an employee, you could call him a consultant, you could call him whatever you want… but you know what? Ukraine’s a bigger deal.” He sounded quite irritated that they were asking him about such trivialities when he is the one who has world leaders quaking in their boots as he re-makes the whole world in his image. He’s clearly delegated the wrecking of the federal government to Musk, to which he’s only peripherally paying attention, so that he can concentrate on wrecking the world order. Both men are doing a bang-up job so far.
Trump: "Inflation is back" pic.twitter.com/r9CStL0xrP — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 19, 2025 It isn’t his fault though, naturally. Nothing ever is. But people aren’t buying it. He promised to fix it on day one: A pillar of Trump’s political strength has been public belief that his policies will be good for the economy, and his rating on the economy remains significantly higher than the final readings of his predecessor in office, Democrat Joe Biden, who ended his term with a 34% approval rating on the economy. But Trump’s rating for the economy is well below the 53% he had in Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted in February 2017, the first full month of his first term as U.S. president. In the latest poll, only 32% of respondents approved of Trump’s performance on inflation, a potential early sign of disappointment in the Republican’s performance on a core economic issue after several years of rising prices weakened Biden ahead of last year’s presidential election. Trump defeated Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, in the Electoral College and narrowly won the popular vote.
“We live in a bureaucracy.” Lol. No, it does not make sense. Here’s a little lesson for Elon that he must have missed when he became a citizen: He does seem to be familiar with this: The Führerprinzip was the basis of executive authority in the government of Nazi Germany. It placed the Führer’s word above all written law, and meant that government policies, decisions, and officials all served to realize his will. In practice, the Führerprinzip gave Adolf Hitler supreme power over the ideology and policies of his political party; this form of personal dictatorship was a basic characteristic of Nazism. The state itself received “political authority” from Hitler, and the Führerprinzip stipulated that only what the Führer “commands, allows, or does not allow is our conscience,” with party leaders pledging “eternal allegiance to Adolf Hitler.
Unless he’s going to ignore a court ruling, he may be getting ahead of himself: The Trump administration on Wednesday nixed federal approval of New York’s “congestion pricing” automobile tolls, which had been instituted just last month to raise funds for the region’s aging mass transit system. In a letter to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the federal government has jurisdiction over highways leading to Manhattan and that these additional tolls posed an unfair burden in motorists outside the city. Duffy called the tolls, targeting Manhattan-bound drivers, “backwards and unfair.” “New York State’s congestion pricing plan is a slap in the face to working class Americans and small business owners,” Duffy said in statement. […] MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber said Wednesday the New York transportation agency will go to court to fight any federal efforts to end the tolls.