Not happy and for good reason: Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, has reportedly been criticised by some of the party’s state governors for not resisting Donald Trump’s agenda and cabinet nominees strongly enough. The exchange took place in a conference between Schumer and six Democratic governors that laid bare differences within the party over how to counteract a seemingly rampant Trump as he wreaks upheaval across the political landscape with an avalanche of executive orders, the New York Times reported. The governors, led by JB Pritzker of Illinois and Maura Healey of Massachusetts, pleaded with Schumer to slow down the confirmation of Trump’s cabinet by persuading fellow senators to vote against his nominees wherever possible. They said the party needed to generate more public opposition than senators had managed in the chamber so far. The appeal came in the week the Senate is meeting to confirm two of Trump’s most contentious cabinet picks, Robert F Kennedy Jr, as health and human services secretary, and Tulsi Gabbard, for the role of national intelligence director.
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Two can play at that As Digby reported yesterday, Sen. Chuck Schumer, one of several Beltway Democrats past their expiration dates, is catching shit from a half dozen Democratic governors. They are mad as hell at Donald Trump’s newest reality show, the Project 2025 Demolition Derby, and they’re not going to take it anymore. They insist somnolent Democrats on Capitol Hill — how did Trump put it? — fight, fight, fight. Paul Krugman concurs in his newsletter, offering similar political advice he normally eschews: Today, however, I’m going to make an exception, and offer three words of advice to Democratic politicians and MAGA opponents in general: oppose, oppose, oppose. And make noise. A lot of noise. Don’t make conciliatory gestures in the belief that Trump has a mandate to do what he’s doing; don’t stay quiet on the outrages being committed every day while waiting for grocery prices to rise. I can’t promise that taking a tough line will succeed, but going easy on Trump is guaranteed to fail. Trump and his MAGA minions deserve no quarter and certainly no deference.
They’re not even trying to hide it: When Donald J. Trump sued CBS for $10 billion days before the 2024 election, accusing the company of deceptively editing a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, many legal experts dismissed the litigation as a far-fetched attempt to punish an out-of-favor news outlet. Now Mr. Trump is back in the White House, and many executives at CBS’s parent company, Paramount, believe that settling the lawsuit would increase the odds that the Trump administration does not block or delay their planned multibillion-dollar merger with another company, according to several people with knowledge of the matter. I will not be surprised to hear of corporate executives down at Mar-a-Lago whispering that if Trump were to sue them over… whatever … they would have to talk to their board about “settling it”, if you know what I mean.
Nobody did. But he’s is our new overlord anyway This is incredibly concerning: The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department is departing after a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks. David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades, announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues obtained by The Washington Post. President Donald Trump named Lebryk as acting secretary upon taking office last week. Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said. The exact nature of the disagreement was not immediately clear, they said. Officials affiliated with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have been asking since after the election for access to the system, the people said — requests that were reiterated more recently, including after Trump’s inauguration.
This is probably what Trump was babbling about the other night when he said he’s sent in the military to “turn on the valve” to bring water to southern California. Good Lord: Water managers were relieved Thursday evening after the Army Corps of Engineers agreed to back off of a sudden decision earlier in the day to dump massive amounts of water from Kaweah and Success lakes. Water managers said they got about an hour’s warning from the Army Corp’s Sacramento office to expect the Tule and Kaweah rivers to be at “channel capacity” by Thursday night. Channel capacity means the maximum amount of water a river can handle. For the Kaweah, that’s 5,500 cubic feet per second and for the Tule, it’s 3,500 cfs. Those levels were last seen, and surpassed, during the 2023 floods, which destroyed dozens of homes and businesses and caused significant damage to infrastructure.“We were able to get them to back off that,” said Eric Limas, General Manager of the Lower Tule River and Pixley irrigation districts, of the Army Corps.
“… meaning the lumber” Bloomberg is reporting that he’s going with the 25% tariffs. I haven’t seen that confirmed anywhere else. But it’s certainly causing trouble already: Trump’s 25% Tariff Vows Send Canada, Mexico FX Tumbling President Donald Trump’s renewed pledges to slap 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico on Feb. 1 jolted foreign exchange markets late in the New York trading session, sending currencies from both countries plunging against the US dollar. The Mexican peso slid 1.1% and Canada’s dollar fell as much as 1.2% after Trump told reporters at the White House he would follow through on trade restrictions, which he’d vowed during his inauguration, on Saturday. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index erased an early loss to gain as much as 0.2%. All because he’s mad that they haven’t properly licked his boots. Enjoy your guacamole today because it’s going to be unaffordable before long.
Is there any point to keeping count? Remember when politicizing a tragedy was gauche? Not just among Republicans inside the Beltway but among Fox News hosts and right-wing talkers? Well, those tragedies typically involved mass shootings, often at schools. But a mass casualty event in D.C. involving an airliner and an Army helicopter in the first month of Donald Trump’s watch? It’s a perfect opportunity for the president to make political statements and display his skill at stopping the buck anywhere but his desk. Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post documents that the president’s rants attributing blame for the midair collision on his doorstep this week to DEI policies were four Pinocchios-worthy (gift link): In the aftermath of the deadly collision between a jetliner and a Black Hawk helicopter at Reagan National Airport, Trump held an extraordinary news conference during which he speculated on the cause of the accident. At length, he attacked former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden for imposing what he called “a big push to put diversity” that he said weakened the Federal Aviation Administration.
But they can still do a lot of damage The Trump “Rolling Thunder” operation, as former presidential adviser Steve Bannon calls it, hasbeen in full effect in the week and a half since Donald Trump was restored to the presidency. Day after day, one atrocity after another has been perpetrated on the American people as Trump and his henchmen take a wrecking ball to the federal government. Do they know what they’re doing or are they just throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks? Over the course of these 10 tumultuous days Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences of all the January 6th rioters and his Justice Department has closed any pending cases. Various agencies have fired and demoted personnel, some of which can only be seen as acts of retribution such as the firing of career prosecutors who worked on the Jack Smith Special Counsel cases and the dismissal of almost all the Inspectors General.
This Bluesky thread was written by former Obama and Biden administrator, Zealan Hoover: I ran $100 billion in Infrastructure and IRA programs at EPA. We obligated over $70 billion onto signed awards and contracts to protect public health and the environment. All that funding is currently frozen. Here are the facts… On January 20, Trump signed Executive Order 14154 (“Unleashing American Energy”) that directed agencies to “immediately pause the disbursement of funds” from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Law (IIJA/BIL). NOTE: EOs do not give agencies special power to break the law. Not paying grantees with signed grant agreements is illegal. While there are certain activities EPA has discretion to pause, such as designing new competitions and making new awards, once a grant award is signed with a grantee the government is legally obligated to pay them. This obligation to pay is clearly enshrined in 2 CFR § 200.305.
On Sunday, @CaliforniaDFW brought 3 orphaned mountain lion cubs to Oakland Zoo’s vet hospital. The trio, estimated to be about 3 months old, were found in Portola Valley. CDFW believes the mother of these cubs is the same female mountain lion that was killed by a car in the same… pic.twitter.com/D7QWzUjoDY — Oakland Zoo (@oakzoo) January 29, 2025 This past Sunday, January 26th, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and brought three orphaned mountain lion cubs to Oakland Zoo for rehabilitation and care. These rescues mark the 30th mountain lion rescue for the Zoo, with close collaboration with CDFW. Oakland Zoo’s advanced Veterinary Hospital has enabled the Zoo to assist in numerous mountain lion rescue cases for those who were sick, injured, burned, or orphaned. The three mountain lion cubs, now named Fern (female), Thistle (male), and Spruce (male), are currently recovering at the Zoo’s Veterinary Hospital Mountain lions in California face many threats, including car strikes and wildfires. These factors contribute to human-wildlife conflict, increasing encounters as mountain lions encroach on urban areas and developments.