Oopsie. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt just tweeted this: This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze. It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo. Why? To end any confusion created by the court’s injunction. The President’s EO’s on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented. I assume this is them trying to be clever and moot the court injunction? Probably not a good idea to say this out loud. Meanwhile here’s Potus and his Majordomo entertaining the MAGA faithful with fantasies: Except… note the date They think they’re in a movie. They’re just lucky that the only people paying attention are MAGA cult members and a few die-hards like us.
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So it begins. (That is not what happened. Colombia said they didn’t like Trump landing military aircraft in their country and treating their citizens like shit. Trump agreed to allow Colombia to send their own airplanes to pick them up and treat them humanely.) The total amount US sends to all underdeveloped countries is $60 million. We sent $30 million to Gaza for medicine. The idea that Hamas is using $30 million dollars worth of condoms is insane but it’s the kind of thing the wingnuts love (“dirty, dirty”) so it will join the rest of the lunatic fringe lies that Trump is spewing. Like this one: Total lie. This did not happen. Republicans in DC know this because they aren’t this stupid but they either think it’s clever and funny or they just don’t care that the president is apparently suffering from dementia.
Last week: Tonight: Aviation expert James Fallows wrote last night: There appears to have been a disastrous collision between a regional jet, a CRJ made by Bombardier and flown by American Eagle Airlines, with more than 60 people aboard en route from Wichita, and a military helicopter, reportedly a Blackhawk flown as “VIP Transport” by the US Army. News footage from local TV stations captured the collision, for instance this from local NBC news. The news is tragic and still unfolding. As in all aviation disasters, early reports can be misleading; I’ll follow up with more details tomorrow, as more become known. The most recent mass-fatality crash had been almost 16 years ago. That was in February, 2009, when the crew of a Colgan regional jet, a feeder for United Airlines, apparently mis-managed an icing emergency, and crashed on approach to Buffalo, New York. Since then, the relentlessly safety-minded collaborative culture of the US air travel system has made commercial airline travel in the United States the safest mode of travel ever invented.
Subtlety is not their agenda I’ve long described the right-wing policy ratchet this way: Find the line. Step over it. Dare anyone to push them back. No pushback, or if it fails? New line. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. That was timorous, beta pre-Trumpism. The authoritarian goal today is no line at all. David Graham describes Trump 2.0’s stumble over pausing funding already allocated by Congress as more than ineptitude. “It’s part of a carefully thought-out program of grabbing power for the executive branch,” and not simply chaos, but “a battle over priorities within the Republican Party.” They may mismanage business, but they still mean business: “The great challenge confronting a conservative President is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power—including power currently held by the executive branch—to the American people,” Trump’s nominee to head the OMB, Russell Vought, wrote in Project 2025, the blueprint for a conservative administration created by the Heritage Foundation, a Trump-aligned right-wing think tank.
I don’t know what the observances of these events were in the past but I can’t for the life of me see what the harm was in doing it. It just seems like benign celebrations of our pluralistic society, like St Patrick’s day parades or Mardi Gras. Why is this a problem? But I guess the white guys are upset so they have to stop doing it. Many companies in the private sector are ending their DEI programs as well which I have to assume is being done just to make their MAGA customers happy. And I suppose they’re probably happy to abandon all their anti-discrimination policies as well. But take a look at this: Republican attorneys general from 19 states want Costco Wholesale to ditch its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, making the call days after the retailer successfully defended its DEI policies as good for business to shareholders.
They don’t sprout from thin air The roll-out of Trump 2.0’s “shock and awe” effort has been pretty rocky. This week’s attempt by Trump to “pause” billions in spending on Donald’s whim caused mass chaos across the land. There was enough backlash and a court order pausing the pause that the administration covered up its backtracking by announcing it had rescinded the memo announcing the pause but not the executive commands behind it. (Never admit mistakes.) Yet already one sees critics taking solace in the apparent inability of the Project 2025 team to implement it’s 900-page vision for remaking America as a white-Christian-nationalist dictatorship. But they won’t stop. Ideologues like these are relentless and committed. Wired reports that “the highest ranks of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)—essentially the human resources function for the entire federal government—are now controlled by people with connections to Musk” and to tech industry movers like JD Vance mentor, billionaire Peter Thiel.
Because they are evil, we must stand up to them. But because that are also stupid, we needn’t be afraid to. Dan Pfeiffer has some ideas about that. This is one of them: Here’s a useful heuristic for Democrats — if something makes Trump more popular, don’t do it. Confirming Trump’s nominees with substantial bipartisan majorities could make Trump more popular. Allowing him to sign a border security bill that Democrats only supported because they didn’t want to seem soft on the border (in an election that takes place in November of 2026?)seems like a bad idea. It’s not hard. Trump should be at the apex of his popularity and he is substantially less popular than any newly elected President in history. Here’s one way to think about making Trump and the Republicans less popular: Donald Trump and the Republicans control all three branches of government. They are the only ones with the power to solve pressing problems or address people’s needs. Trump declared that he can fix everything and that America is in a “Golden Age.” He is responsible for all outcomes. Trump will take credit for anything good.
Nominating this freak as HHS Secretary The RFK Jr hearing today was unbelievable. I have concluded that Trump is so angry about the attempts to hold him accountable for his crimes that he just wants to hurt Americans. I also think that he’s showing some serious signs of dementia now. This stuff about the “valve” and sending Elon to space is weird even for him. It’s possible that he’s just owning the libs but I have a sense that it may be more than that. Choosing a conspiracy theorist like Bobby Jr. covers all those bases. He is an insult to all Americans. If the Republicans let him go through despite knowing what a monstrous freak he is, we’re truly in Mad King territory.
The WSJ has the story of Trump’s latest grift: Serious talks about the suit, which had seen little activity since the fall of 2023, began after Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg flew to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida to dine with him in November, according to the people familiar with the discussions. The dinner was one of several efforts by Zuckerberg and Meta to soften the relationship with Trump and the incoming administration. Meta also donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. Last year, Trump warned that Zuckerberg could go to prison if he tried to rig the election against him. Toward the end of the November dinner, Trump raised the matter of the lawsuit, the people said. The president signaled that the litigation had to be resolved before Zuckerberg could be “brought into the tent,” one of the people said. Weeks later, in early January, Zuckerberg returned to Mar-a-Lago for a full day of mediation. Trump was present for part of the session, though he stepped out at one point to be sentenced—appearing virtually—for covering up hush money paid to a porn star, one of the people said.
But this represents millions of our fellow Americans: Philip Bump discusses how COVID lies ended up helping Trump and how it’s affecting the way Republicans see the health institutions today: After insisting with crossed fingers that the coronavirus wouldn’t pose a significant risk to the United States, Trump in early 2020 endorsed broad restrictions aimed at limiting the spread of the virus. The economy stumbled. His reelection bid looming, Trump reverted to trying to wish the whole thing away. He turned government officials such as Anthony S. Fauci into scapegoats, casting them as hyperventilating scolds. The politics of Trump’s base are heavily predicated on rejecting authority, so the play worked like a charm. In fact, it outran Trump, whose support for the rapid development of vaccines targeting the virus became something of an albatross among Republicans who viewed the inoculations as left-wing nonsense.