This is terrifying: This is even more terrifying: The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 was one of President Joe Biden’s chief legislative victories and the largest investment to fight the climate crisis in U.S. history. Trump and congressional Republicans have taken aim at the law to unwind much of Biden’s legacy and spur domestic fossil fuel production. Among the moves that could raise revenue: revoking the law’s $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit, new vehicle emissions rules and other incentives for clean energy production. Trump and the GOP could also green-light a major expansion of energy production on protected federal lands. Together, the CRFB projected, that could produce $700 billion in cost savings and new revenue over the next decade. One step forward two steps back. It’s a terrible, terrible mistake but I’m fairly sure this will be a priority.
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Chief Justice John Roberts is mad as a hornet about all the criticism: Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday blasted what he called “illegitimate activity” aimed at undermining the independence of the judiciary. While facing criticism of contentious court rulings is part of the job for judges, some recent actions have crossed the line, Roberts said in his annual end-of-year report. He outlined four areas of concern: violence, intimidation, disinformation and threats to defy court judgments. All four “undermine our Republic, and are wholly unacceptable,” Roberts wrote. It’s pretty clear from the report that what he’s really angry about is the criticism that some of the Justices are corrupt and partisan. But it’s also highly unlikely that he’s talking about Trump who calls them every name in the book if they rule in a way he doesn’t ‘t like.
He’s itching to do it The Republicans in Congress are also very, very thirsty for a shooting war. Normally, they’d be agitating for something in the middle east, maybe China, maybe even Ukraine. But since Trump took over they have to pretend that they’re pacifist isolationists. So Mexico it is, at least at first. I wrote about this earlier, based on a lot of reporting by Rolling Stone. They are taking about a “soft invasion” in which they drop in Special Forces to “take out” the leaders of the cartels. (The other option is an actual invasion force at the border.) They just published an update: Rolling Stone talked to half a dozen former special operations soldiers and intelligence agents to see what this saber-rattling might look like in practice. On paper, they argued it was an easy operation to dismantle the cartel leadership, something that our military — particularly units like SEAL Team Six and Delta Force — has mastered after two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. To a man, all said they’d volunteer for the mission.
Any more like Massie on the back bench? Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) is still working to secure enough votes to re-up his speakership despite the endorsement of the president-elect. The House votes to elect a speaker for the 119th Congress at noon today (Friday). With the GOP’s razor-thin margin, more than two defections can sink him. The Hill: Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) affirmed his decision to not support Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) in the Speaker’s race, even if his colleague Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) would land a top spot on the House Rules Commitee. Massie was asked by former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a new host on One America News Network, if he would vote for Johnson if Roy would become the chairman of the influential committee. “Oh no. You can pull all my fingernails out, you can shove bamboo up in them, you can start cutting off my fingers,” Massie responded late Thursday. “I am not voting for Mike Johnson tomorrow, and you can take that to the bank,” he told his former colleague.
Avarice and Artifice Since before the days of traveling medicine shows, Americans displayed a knack both for peddling bullshit and for buying it. Cultural touchstone: Dorothy’s Professor Marvel. Paradigm case: the 2024 presidential election. But the latter is simply a more visible instance of the phenomenon. Let’s look at two cases of Americans’ willingness to believe that private capitalism is always superior at delivering services over collective, government, not-for-profit programs. As with snake oil, it begins with a con man. With avarice and artifice. Timothy Noah this morning considers efforts to privatize Medicare. Donald Trump claims he won’t. (Trump also makes claims about his height, weight, and net worth.) Noah cites a Wall Street Journal report from Wednesday (I don’t have access) that shows that despite widely touted claims that the private sector is more efficient at providing health care, well, it does not.
The NY Times published a fun feature called “11 Data Points and Discoveries That Surprised Us in 2024.” I thought this one was particularly pertinent to Democratic navel gazing about the election: Special elections really were all about turnout, and thus meant little for November Why were Democrats doing so well in special elections, even though polls showed Joe Biden doing so poorly? I collected and analyzed data on who had been voting in special elections, and this chart was my “eureka” moment. On the y-axis: how well Democrats fared in a special election, compared with the 2020 election result. On the x-axis: our estimates for the 2020 vote choice of the same special electorates, based on exactly who voted and our previous estimates for the likelihood that registered voters backed Mr. Biden in 2020. As you can see, there’s a decent one-to-one relationship, implying that these election results were mostly a function of turnout, not persuasion. The biggest surprise, for me, wasn’t simply that there was a decent correlation between turnout and results.
I think we may have found out why Trump is suddenly talking about territorial expansion. Somebody mentioned a little history over dinner and YMCA at MAL and he got all excited. He thinks it will be his Louisiana Purchase and he’ll go down in history as bigger than Alexander the Great. Apropos of nothing: You’ll be glad to know that his minions are hard at work normalizing this lunacy:
Thank you everyone for hanging in with me and the rest of the Hullabahooligans this past year. 2025 is going to be tough but we’ll get through it together! cheers! digby
You don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone People with higher profiles have warned what could happen to this country under Donald Trump if he were reelected to the White House. I did so myself in 2024 here and here and here. Those three posts all referenced Michael Lewis’s “The Fifth Risk,” his celebration of selfless dedication, essentially, in public service by geeks more interested in mission than in money. Blasphemy! In a few short weeks, America will embark on a journey into the unknown. Dave Neiwert published “Alt America” in 2017 about the rise of the eliminationist alt-right movement. Trumpism, an expression of that movement, seeks not only to eliminate non-white immigrants but those very civil servants who make the nation you know the nation you know. Stephen E. Hanson and Jeffrey S. Kopstein consider what it means that Trump 2.0 will be staffed with incompetents and cronies chosen more for their loyalty to one man than to stewardship of the republic that will be 250 years old in 18 months. What Trump and those backing him intend for this country is not new, inventive, or an improvement on popular sovereignty.
He’s the smartest broke billionaire in the room No superlatives are too bigly to describe El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago. Trump knows competence “I always felt we have to have the most competent people in our country. We need competent people. We need smart people coming into our country.” It takes a very stable genius to recognize other extraordinary people like RFK Jr. and foreign models. Trump knows social media Days ago, Trump filed an amicus brief on his desire to rescue TikTok from the Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act that will likely ban the app in the U.S. on January 19. Even the Wall Street Journal found Trump’s argument preposterous. He wants the Court to treat him (a private citizen) as though he’s co-president with Joe Biden before being sworn in (Raw Story): “The brief is extraordinary in several ways, none of them good,” the board said, later adding: “Mr. Trump wants the Court to treat him as if he’s already President before he’s inaugurated.” Trump for all intents and purposes is a “private citizen” until he’s inaugurated, the board countered.