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During the last election economics were on everyone’s minds. Despite the greater economy being healthy with an extraordinary job market not seen since the 1960s, people told pollsters that they were extremely upset about the high cost of living that had been brought on by the disruption of the pandemic and took a couple of years to finally sort out. In poll after poll, Americans said that inflation was the biggest problem facing the nation. When asked what he planned to do about this, then candidate Donald Trump’s only answers were “tariffs!” and ” growth.” It was the cure all for every economic pain that ailed you. Here he is answering a question about what specific legislation he would propose to deal with the high cost of child care. Yes, you guessed it. Tariffs. He promised over and over again that he was going to lower the cost of living and he made it clear that the way he planned to do it was with his beloved tariffs. Well, we’re about to find out how that’s going to work.

This is an excerpt of a piece by legal expert Sam Bagenstos laying out a few of the illegal acts committed by Trump and Musk in the past two weeks.

At least one of them is: At the press conference outside of USAID headquarters, Senator Brian Schatz: "If you want to change an agency, introduce a bill and pass a law. You cannot wave away an agency that you don't like or that you disagree with by executive order, or by literally storming into the… pic.twitter.com/st0kaEmibI — Art Candee 🍿🥤 (@ArtCandee) February 3, 2025 At the press conference outside of USAID headquarters, Senator Brian Schatz: “If you want to change an agency, introduce a bill and pass a law. You cannot wave away an agency that you don’t like or that you disagree with by executive order, or by literally storming into the building and taking over the servers. That is not how the American system of government works.” The WSJ reports: Sen. Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii) said he would place a “blanket hold” on all of President Trump’s State Department nominees until the administration’s attack on the leading U.S. foreign-assistance agency ends, a move that threatens to stall Trump’s ability to get his foreign-policy team in place.

Here we go JV Last at the Bulwark provides a handy guide to what’s happening this morning in the financial markets. The question is will the drop stay below 7 percent? The Dow plunged over 600 points right out of the gate. Donald Trump just launched the “dumbest trade war in history.” Thus saith the Wall Street Journal. While people are screaming for more affordable housing, Trump dramatically increased the price of lumber out of Canada just ahead of the spring building season. That’s on top of the “five-alarm fire” Trump started in firing inspectors general and FBI agensts from coast to coast. Oh, and Mr. America First allowing Elon Musk to shut down USAID: In Washington, USAID’s headquarters was closed for the day, with employees told in an email to remain at home. Logos and photos of its aid work have been stripped from building walls. And its website and social media accounts have gone dark, replaced with a reduced version of its webpage on the State Department’s website.

A man Ben Smith from Semafor calls a “MAGA Intellectual” (a contradiction in terms) has been tapped for Assisstant Secretary of State: Beattie has been a vocal critic of broad swathes of American foreign policy and represents a dramatic step away from the establishment Republicanism Rubio long embodied:  In a widely-circulated essay on the site he founded, Revolver, Darren Beattie compared the “color revolutions” that Western democracies backed in Eastern Europe in the 1990s and 2000s to “the coordinated efforts of government bureaucrats, NGOs, and the media to oust President Trump.” Beattie, who has a PhD in political theory from Duke University, where he also taught, was fired in 2018 after attending a conference with white nationalists. He was appointed by Trump in 2020 to a the Commission for the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad, a move that the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, called “outrageous” at the time. (Greenblatt declined to comment Sunday.) The commission works with other governments to preserve sites related to World War II and the Holocaust.

Is this what MAGA voted for? Elon Musk’s takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college. Most have connections to Musk and at least two have connections to Musk’s longtime associate Peter Thiel, a cofounder and chairman of the analytics firm and government contractor Palantir who has long expressed opposition to democracy. WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within DOGE, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer. Wired has now reported the names and backgrounds of all these young fellows.

When the snake oil bites…. Trump is counting on you to be one of his rubes. Fans of Trumpism, even its operators, are going to feel its impacts very, very soon. Oh, and all y’all as well. The snake behind the oil is about to bite. CNN: Just about everyone thought it was a bluff. Top analysts from the biggest banks on Wall Street said it was highly unlikely. Stocks were trading like it wouldn’t happen. Some companies built contingency plans, but they weren’t exactly rushing to make changes. But the tariffs are coming — in full force. President Donald Trump announced Saturday that a massive 25% tariff on all goods from Mexico and most imports from Canada will go into effect Tuesday. An additional 10% tariff on Chinese goods will be enacted the same day. Trump in a message posted on Truth Social Sunday said, “We don’t need anything they have.

I wrote about Ed Martin, the new US Attorney for Washington DC, the other day. He was one of the organizers of the Stop the Steal rally, spoke on January 5th, and raised money for the defense of the January 6th insurrectionists. Here he is sucking up to President Musk and assuring him that he’ll use his police power against his opponents: They know there will likely be big protests eventually. It just seems inevitable. We’re already seeing them happen in cities where the immigration raids are taking place. When they do, especially if there’s a big march in DC, I suspect there will be violence. It would be nice if the big march, should it happen, be led by women again. It would not preclude the police crackdown because that’s what Trump and his henchmen are looking for. But it will illustrate for the American people more clearly who they really are. By the way, I came across this about Martin. He’s quite a piece of work:

He said he would do it but they didn’t believe him I wonder how many people feel this way: EL PASO — On a recent windy, cold afternoon in this border city, dozens of people gathered at a park for an immigrant rights demonstration to denounce the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Some held signs reading: “Immigrants Make America Great.” Alan, a local police officer, and his wife came and held a Mexican flag. He said he joined the demonstration because he worries about his father, an undocumented immigrant who works at a farm in southern New Mexico. Alan said he voted for Donald Trump because of worries about the economy and because he believes Trump is pro-police and would combat the public’s negative perception of law enforcement. He said he believed Trump’s promises to make everyday items affordable for middle-class families. But after two weeks of Trump in the White House, Alan — who declined to give his last name because he fears retaliation against his father — said he now regrets his vote. Partly because he was angered when Trump granted clemency to people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S.

As Josh Marshall said in this earlier post, this is almost certainly illegal and there needs to be immediate legal action to stop it. We have no idea who these people are, whether they are competent or if they have nefarious goals. It’s literally just Musk’s boys taking over the very closely held US payment system. It could not be more dangerous. I wonder if Republicans are really a-ok with this. Do they all think Musk is a genius godhead who can be trusted? Or are they just cowards who are so afraid of losing their seats that they won’t question Dear Leader and his henchmen? Let’s just say I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for them to take a stand. Update — It gets worse: Update II — The New York Times now has the story: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency full access to the federal payment system late on Friday, according to three people familiar with the change, handing Elon Musk and the team he is leading a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending.