Remember that story from a couple of weeks ago about all the Big Money Boyz celebrating that mainly Trump and the boys were back and they could treat people like shit in the workplace again. They might have to re-think that a little bit in the not too distance future. Their business is still business. Here come the leopards: It took less than a month for the second Trump administration to cool the enthusiasm of chief executives and dealmakers. Consumer sentiment is down and inflation expectations are rising, driven in part by worries about the impact of a threatened trade war. The deals market just ended its quietest January in a decade. A Justice Department that was expected to wave through acquisitions instead sued to block a big technology merger. Corporate bigwigs are now using phrases like “fragility,” “volatility” and “wait and see” to describe their outlooks. “Nobody knows what’s up,” Nick Pinchuk, chief executive of toolmaker Snap-on, said on a conference call Thursday. “It’s like being on Space Mountain at Disney World.
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This is a Trump voter who works for the US government. Apparently, she didn’t think Trump would actually do what Project 2025 said they planned to do because Dear Leader lied to them and said he had nothing to do with it: We voted for border security. We didn’t vote for my husband to lose his government career and benefits for which he has worked so hard.” “This possibility is looming over countless families right now. We don’t know what our financial future holds. My husband dedicated the better part of his life to this country, first in the military and now working for the government. I have watched as he busted his ass every single day for this job. Our story is like many others, yet they [the Trump Administration] see them as budget line items. We are not a fucking line item. We are real people with families who need to put food on the table just like everyone else. We have done nothing but support this country. To be disregarded and tossed out to save a buck is sickening. I support Trump on many things, but I won’t support him on this.
You’ve been boarded Suddenly, and not accidentally, people who work for the American federal government are having the same experience as people who find themselves living under foreign occupation. — Anne Applebaum More than a few of us not in federal employ feel the same. People I know have, like the refugees in Casablanca, fled the occupation. Except today it is the U.S. they are fleeing, not fleeing to. Applebaum suggests that whether Musk-Trump’s Project 2025 saboteurs call their goal “Liberation Day,” or replacing all mid-level bureaucrats with MAGA loyalists (RAGE, in Curtis Yarvin’s coinage), or Steve Bannon’s “deconstruction of the administrative state,” regime change from within is the goal although their motivations may differ.
Baby tapir named Ume. Who knew they were so cute? Born last Sunday, Feb. 2, to mom Yuna, little Ume sports the signature white spots and stripes of a newborn tapir, making her look like a tiny, fuzzy watermelon. 🉠Mom and baby are thriving behind the scenes, and we can’t wait to share more updates soon. pic.twitter.com/T9qH8UabmS — Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium (@PtDefianceZoo) February 11, 2025 How is it possible that baby Ume keeps getting cuter? This fuzzy little watermelon is just ten days old and had some zoomies while trying to nurse from mom behind the scenes. Watch until the end to see 900-pound Yuna roll over so her playful tapir calf can nurse. Such a good mom! pic.twitter.com/PIN2cWTa9O — Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium (@PtDefianceZoo) February 13, 2025 The adorable tapir calf is already mastering the art of wiggling its tiny trunk. 🥰 Baby tapirs use their tiny trunks for sniffing, exploring, and even grasping small objects. Their trunks are an extended upper lip and nose, which helps them sense their surroundings and forage.
I would guess that we’re all in pretty much the same boat with that question right now. I don’t have any answers except to say that this is a serious crisis and it’s hard to see a way out. It’s overwhelming mostly because the entire Republican Party has signed on and they hold all the institutional power. (We’re about to find out if they at completely willing to castrate the judiciary as thoroughly as they castrated themselves.) Josh Marshall addresses a couple of the big questions in his piece today. The first that’s commonly asked is whether or not this strategy of holding up the budget and/or the debt ceiling really makes any sense in light of the fact that the Republicans and the White House are all liars and we can almost bet on them reneging on any deal that’s made and not even attempt to make it look legitimate. Might makes right, right? Marshall says the key is for Democrats to remember that it’s Trump who needs a deal not them.
REPORTER: If you have received billions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon and the president is directing you to look into the DoD, does that present a conflicts of interest? MUSK: First of all, I'm not the filing the contract. It's people at SpaceX pic.twitter.com/JFQKHAQDvZ — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 11, 2025 Elon Musk: "There's a limestone mine where we store all the retirement paperwork. You look at this picture of this mine, this mine looks like something out of the '50s because it was started in 1955. It's like a time warp. And then the limiting factor is the speed at which the… pic.twitter.com/4CGQcSKk9y — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 11, 2025 Reporters: But if there is a conflict of interest when it comes to you yourself, for instance, you’ve received billions of dollars in federal contracts.. Is there any sort of accountability check and balance in place that would provide any transparency for the American people? Musk: If you see anything you say like, wait a second, Elon, that seems like maybe that’s, you know, there’s a conflict there. They’ll say it immediately.
Assassination by innuendo By now you’ve seen Tuesday’s bizarre press event in the Oval Office. The leader of the free world expounded at length on rooting out fraud and waste in the U.S. government while Donald Trump, his lieutenant, sat inert behind a large desk. REPORTER: If you have received billions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon and the president is directing you to look into the DoD, does that present a conflicts of interest? MUSK: First of all, I'm not the filing the contract. It's people at SpaceX pic.twitter.com/JFQKHAQDvZ — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 11, 2025 I don’t know what they teach in journalism schools these days, but insisting that political figures back up wild claims with checkable data and facts seems to have fallen out of the curriculum.
If at first you don’t succeed…. “North Carolina will be the first and only state where elections oversight is within the state auditor’s office,” explains Ren Larson at The Assembly. Why is that and how did it happen? Therein lies a tale. Let’s skip the odd bio of Dave Boliek, North Carolina’s newly elected Republican state auditor, and review the subhead, “Eight Years, Six Tries.” It started when Republicans lost the governor’s mansion in 2016 to Democrat Roy Cooper. The Republican-controlled legislature in a lame-duck session attempted a brazen power-grab aimed at transferring to the legislature some of Cooper’s appointment powers, including over the state Board of Elections: In January 2018, the state Supreme Court ruled that the state legislature’s transfer of appointment powers from the executive branch to the legislature was unconstitutional. Yet again Republican legislators struck back, passing a bill in June 2018 to allow voters to decide whether to amend the constitution and allow the legislature to make all eight appointments.
In response to’ the flurry of cases being brought against the Trump administration for its radical attempts to slash and burn all aspects of the federal government without constitutional authority, we’re seeing some arguments from Republicans that lead to the conclusion that there is at least some consideration being given to simply ignoring the courts orders. Some have evoked the likely apocryphal statement attributed to President Andrew Jackson in which he was said to have declared “[Chief Justice] “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it” which raises the question if Trump is planning to abide by Court rulings he doesn’t agree with. The NY Times described the famous quote as “potent” because it does perfectly illustrate perhaps the most important “norm” in our system of government, the acknowledgement and acceptance of the idea set forth by The Marshall Court in the 1803 case Marbury v. Madison that “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.
Even Republicans are trying to tell their representatives something. (Have some pride and dignity fergawdsakes) Yes, it’s true that members of that 40% may threaten to kill you if you cross Dear Leader but again, have some pride and dignity… I read yesterday that Hakeem Jeffries and others in the leadership are angry at “the Groups” for rallying their members to call Congress. “People are pissed,” a senior House Democrat who was at the meeting said of lawmakers’ reaction to the calls. The Democrat said Jeffries himself is “very frustrated” at the groups, who are trying to stir up a more confrontational opposition to Trump. A Jeffries spokesperson disputed that characterization and noted to Axios that their office regularly engages with dozens of stakeholder groups, including MoveOn and Indivisible, including as recently as Monday “There were a lot of people who were like, ‘We’ve got to stop the groups from doing this.’ … People are concerned that they’re saying we’re not doing enough, but we’re not in the majority,” said one member.