The Conversation -- April 18, 2025
Tonight [Friday] is the 250th anniversary of One if by land, Two if by sea. There is a service at Boston's Old North Church, and Heather Cox Richardson is speaking. Paul Revere was one of the bell ringers at Old North, and I will be one of the people ringing the same bells this evening. Link to the live stream on this page. -- NiskyGuy
Sylvan Lane of the Hill: Donald “Trump’s top economic adviser told reporters Friday the White House is exploring how to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell despite the legal guardrails on his position. Kevin Hassett, chair of the White House National Economic Council, backed away from his previous concerns about Powell’s firing and said the White House was looking for ways to replace the Fed chief.... During Trump’s first term, Hassett declared Powell '100 percent safe,' even as the president raged against the Fed chief — a lifelong Republican whom Trump himself appointed to the job — for refusing to cut interest rates.... When pressed on that [first-term] opinion Friday, Hassett said 'the market was in a completely different place' at that time, and his comments were limited to the first Trump White House’s legal analysis.”
Hannah Natanson, et al., of the Washington Post: “Immigrants falsely labeled dead by the Social Security Administration are showing up at field offices with documents proving they are alive, leading staff to reinstate nearly three dozen people over the past week, according to records obtained by The Washington Post. The immigrants who have requested a reversal and been reinstated in Social Security databases include a Haitian asylum seeker and a minor child, the records show. Some immigrants have shown up with driver’s licenses and work permits to prove their legitimacy, the records show. Others have arrived bearing letters of notification that they received from their states declaring them dead. The reversals come after the Department of Homeland Security and Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service pushed to incorrectly label roughly 6,100 mostly Latino immigrants as dead in a bid to pressure the immigrants to leave the country. The administration overrode the objections of senior Social Security staff to labeling the immigrants as dead — a move that current and former top officials at the agency warned was illegal because it violates privacy laws and involves the purposeful falsification of government records....
“Asked about the resurrections, the White House said the 6,000 immigrants were never really listed as dead. 'This reporting is false. These illegal aliens were never classified as dead,' White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said in a statement. 'The “Death Master File” was renamed the ‘Ineligible Master File’ prior to their names being transferred. Once U.S. Customers and Border Protection terminated their parole, these individuals were no longer eligible for benefits....' That statement contradicts statements last week from a White House official and a senior Social Security official, both of whom explicitly confirmed that the immigrants had been labeled dead in hopes of spurring their departures from the U.S. As of Friday, the database is still named the 'Death Master File' in Social Security’s internal systems, per records obtained by The Post, and referred to by the same name on the agency’s public website.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Gosh, sounds like yet another Felonious Trump Official-Action Crime. Of course they're lying about it.
Everything Is Going Very Smoothly. Jonathan Swan, et al., of the New York Times: Donald “Trump has replaced the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service after his appointment just days earlier set off a power struggle between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the billionaire Elon Musk.... Mr. Bessent’s deputy, Michael Faulkender, will be the new acting leader, replacing Gary Shapley, the Treasury Department confirmed on Friday. Mr. Faulkender will be the third acting leader of the agency this week. Mr. Bessent had complained to Mr. Trump this week that Mr. Musk had done an end run around him to get Mr. Shapley installed as the interim head of the I.R.S., even though the tax collection agency reports to Mr. Bessent.... The clash was the latest instance of Mr. Musk’s influence in the Trump administration that has alarmed top officials. It was also the latest upheaval at the tax agency, with much of its staff pushed out or quitting. Mr. Trump earlier this week called for the I.R.S. to revoke Harvard University’s tax-exempt status after the school refused to impose sweeping changes demanded by the administration.... Mr. Trump had picked Mr. Shapley to run the I.R.S. on Tuesday after the previous interim head, Melanie Krause, chose to resign. Ms. Krause quit after the Treasury Department agreed to use I.R.S. data to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement deport undocumented immigrants.... The position of I.R.S. commissioner will be filled in an acting capacity while former Representative Billy Long awaits Senate approval for the role.” The NBC News story is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Shapely had just been named acting commissioner when CNN and others reported that the IRS was "considering" revoking Harvard's tax-exempt status. So he served his purpose. ~~~
~~~ Andrew Duehren, et al., of the New York Times: “In the years after ... Richard Nixon enlisted the Internal Revenue Service to investigate his political opponents, Congress passed a series of laws to make sure the agency would focus on collecting taxes and not use its vast powers to carry out political vendettas. But ... [Donald] Trump has moved swiftly to suppress that independence in the first few months of his second term and, tax experts and former agency officials warn, return the I.R.S. to darker days when it was used as a political tool of the president. His administration has decimated the ranks of I.R.S. civil servants and moved to install political allies in their place. This week, he publicly called for Harvard to lose its tax-exempt status, an extraordinary attempt to enlist the I.R.S. in his feud with the wealthy research university. In the Oval Office on Thursday, Mr. Trump renewed that threat and suggested that several other universities the administration has accused of antisemitism could also lose their tax-exempt status.... The I.R.S. is now weighing whether to revoke Harvard’s tax exemption....”
Alexander Mallin & Peter Charalambous of ABC News: "A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has ordered an immediate halt to the planned firings of nearly 1,500 employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and is ordering the Trump administration to hand over communications and make top officials available for testimony to determine whether they deliberately violated one of her court orders. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson told attorneys for the government she was 'deeply concerned' about the apparently rushed efforts to implement a Reduction In Force, or RIF, of approximately 1483 employees at the CFPB which was set to take effect at 6 pm tonight. Jackson said the moves by CFPB leadership, including Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and general counsel of the OMB Mark Paoletta, in apparent coordination with a staffer from Elon Musk's DOGE operation, Gavin Kliger, may be in direct violation of a preliminary injunction she had put in place -- which the D.C. Circuit upheld in part. That injunction required terminations at the agency to be carried out only after 'particularized assessments' of individual employees' performance."
Tom Sullivan of Hullabaloo republishes a long Bluesky thread Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) ran yesterday on Trump's "insidious coordinated attack on our institutions of democratic accountability, designed to crater democracy before next fall." Worth a read. At the bottom of the page, Sullivan posts a link to National Day of Action (Saturday, April 19) events. Thanks to RAS for the link.
Helene Cooper & Julian Barnes of the New York Times: “Almost three months into Mr. Trump’s second term, the guardrails intended to prevent national security missteps have come down as the new team races to anticipate and amplify the wishes of an unpredictable president. The result has been a diminished role for national security expertise, even in the most consequential foreign policy decisions. Trump administration officials said that is by design. In Mr. Trump’s first administration, some members of his team tried to stop him from executing parts of his agenda, such as his desire to pull U.S. troops out of Syria and Afghanistan, or to deploy them against protesters in American cities. The president does not intend to allow anyone to rein him in this time. But tearing down guardrails has created room for America’s adversaries to operate more freely in the disinformation space, according to Western officials and private cybersecurity experts.... Instead of advice [from the National Security Council, as was the intention of the act establishing it], Mr. Trump is getting obedience.”
Alan Feuer of the New York Times: “After attacking judges and repeatedly sidestepping their orders, the Trump administration has accused a federal judge in Washington of escalating tensions between the judicial and executive branches by seeking to hold the White House accountable for its courtroom behavior. The accusation against the judge, James E. Boasberg, came in a court filing early Friday morning by the Justice Department.... “‘Occasions for constitutional confrontation between the two branches should be avoided whenever possible,’” the department lawyers wrote, failing to mention their own role in fostering such confrontations. 'The district court’s criminal contempt order instead escalates the constitutional stakes by infringing core executive prerogatives.'”
~~~ Leave the Pennsylvania Station 'Bout a Quarter to Four. Stefanos Chen & Patrick McGeehan of the New York Times: “The head of the federal Department of Transportation said on Thursday that the Trump administration would take control of the $7 billion renovation of Pennsylvania Station away from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The move appeared to be the latest salvo in a running confrontation between the Trump administration and New York’s transportation agency, which began when the federal transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, ordered the state to end its congestion pricing program. The station, one of the busiest and also most maligned transit hubs in the world, has for decades been on the verge of a huge overhaul to remedy its cramped and dreary corridors. But the competing priorities of local, state and federal stakeholders have made progress difficult.”
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post: “By any reasonable measure..., Donald Trump’s first 100 days will be judged an epic failure.... Trump, whose 100th day in office is April 30, has achieved one thing that is truly remarkable: He has introduced a level of chaos and destruction so high that historians are hard-pressed to find its equal in our history.... 'It’s not hyperbole to say this is the weirdest 100 days of any president in American history,' says [historian Douglas] Brinkley, 'because, at its root, it is pathological narcissism.'” This is a gift link for a good summary of President* Epic Failure's epic failures. ~~~
~~~ MEANWHILE, at the New York Times, David Brooks is calling “for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.” Yes, David Fucking Brooks. Thanks to Akhilleus for the reminder. See his commentary near the top of today's thread.
Rachel Siegel of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump blasted the Federal Reserve for not lowering interest rates and said its chair’s 'termination cannot come fast enough,' ratcheting up the White House’s public pressure on the central bank.... 'Jerome Powell of the Fed, who is always TOO LATE AND WRONG, yesterday issued a report which was another, and typical, complete “mess!’” Trump wrote.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Paul Krugman explains why we don't want to give presidents, especially President* Trump, control over monetary policy.
Ann Marimow of the Washington Post: “The Supreme Court on Thursday said it will review ... Donald Trump’s attempt to ban automatic U.S. citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants and foreign visitors, scheduling a special court session for next month. The administration had asked the justices to lift or narrow nationwide orders blocking Trump’s birthright citizenship executive action, which Democratic-led states and immigrant advocacy organizations say is at odds with the nation’s history, past court rulings and the Constitution. In a brief order, the justices put off a decision about the lower court rulings and instead scheduled oral argument for May 15. Trump’s order would deny citizenship for new babies if neither parent is a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident, a population that some studies have estimated at more than 150,000 newborns per year. Judges in lawsuits joined by 22 states and D.C. have blocked the citizenship ban nationwide while litigation continues.” (Also linked yesterday.)
The respect that courts must accord the Executive must be reciprocated by the Executive’s respect for the courts. Too often today this has not been the case, as calls for impeachment of judges for decisions the Executive disfavors and exhortations to disregard court orders sadly illustrate.... The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.... We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time. -- J. Harvie Wilkinson, Fourth Circuit Court Judge, order filed April 17, 2025 ~~~
~~~ ⭐ Steve Thompson of the Washington Post: “... the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit on Thursday excoriated the Trump administration for its defiance of a federal judge’s orders that it show how it is facilitating the return of Kilmar Abrego García, a Maryland man who was illegally deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador. 'It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all,' the appeals court said in its quick denial of a Department of Justice motion to pause U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis’s orders, a request the appeals court called 'extraordinary and premature.... 'Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.'” This is an update of a story linked earlier Thursday afternoon. (Also linked yesterday.) Politico's story is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: The seven-page decision is here. I commend it to you. Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, who wrote the opinion with which the other two appellate judges concurred, is a Reagan appointee, and according to on-air & print reporters, is a well-respected, ultra-conservative judge. ~~~
~~~ As Alan Feuer of the New York Times puts it, “A federal appeals court in Virginia reaffirmed on Thursday that the White House needed to play a more active role in seeking the release of a Maryland man who was deported last month to a prison in El Salvador, despite a court order expressly forbidding that he be sent there. In a sternly worded ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit expressed exasperation at the Trump administration’s continued recalcitrance in refusing to help free the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia....
“At a hearing on Tuesday in front of Judge Xinis in Federal District Court in Maryland, Justice Department lawyers offered an exceedingly narrow definition of 'facilitate,' suggesting that all the White House had to do to comply with the Supreme Court’s directives was let Mr. Abrego Garcia into the United States if he somehow managed to make it to the border. But the appellate panel disagreed, saying that “‘facilitate” is an active verb' and does not 'allow the government to do essentially nothing.'” ~~~
~~~ Marie: The appeals court practically begged the Trump administration to respect the Constitutional order and obey the law. I have a feeling Trump is about to back down, because he pulled a version of his "I-know-nothing-about-it" shtick Thursday. This, of course, is how he denies responsibility for his usual screw-ups, and distances himself enough that he thinks he can pretend a 180 is not a capitulation at all. In responses to reporters' questions about the case, he said Thursday, "I'm not involved in it," and "You'll have to speak to the lawyers, the DOJ." And "I've heard many things about him [i.e., Abrego Garcia], and we'll have to find out what the truth is." As Chris Hayes pointed out Thursday night, the mechanism for "finding out what the truth is" is the courts system. (Trump's avoiding responsibility for the case is particularly ironic, inasmuch he is the only person in the chain of likely suspects who cannot be jailed for his criminal contempt or any other crimes associated with these deportations.) ~~~
~~~ Alan Feuer of the New York Times: “Two federal judges in Washington and Maryland handling cases arising from the deportation flights have now declared that they have reason to believe that Trump officials have acted in bad faith by failing to comply with their decrees.... The jurists’ dual moves have brought the two coequal parts of the government closer than ever to an open confrontation.... The language used in the orders and the hearings emerging from these cases suggests how seriously the judges in the five separate courts that have touched them are taking the administration’s recalcitrant approach. The words and phrases they have employed — 'grievous error,' 'shocks the conscience,' 'unconscionable' — are themselves an indication of how out-of-bounds and unchastened they believe the White House has been.... But ... the legal system is almost certain to afford the White House additional opportunities for evasion and delay.” Moreover, two recent Supreme Court rulings indicate the administration will have to do more to grant due process not just to Abrego Garcia but also to all of the men the administration has rendered to El Salvador. ~~~
~~~ One More Way Trump's Unlawful Deportation Program Is a Sham Founded on Hoaxes. John Hudson & Warren Strobel of the Washington Post: “The National Intelligence Council, drawing on the acumen of the United States’ 18 intelligence agencies, determined in a secret assessment early this month that the Venezuelan government is not directing an invasion of the United States by the prison gang Tren de Aragua, a judgment that contradicts ... Donald Trump’s public statements.... The determination is the U.S. government’s most comprehensive assessment to date undercutting Trump’s rationale for deporting suspected gang members without due process under the [1798] Alien Enemies Act.... Trump invoked the act in mid-March, proclaiming without evidence that Tren de Aragua is perpetrating an 'invasion' of the United States 'at the direction' of the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.” ~~~
~~~ ⭐Mary Jalonick & Yolanda Magaña of the AP: “Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen met Thursday in El Salvador with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man who was sent there by the Trump administration in March despite an immigration court order preventing his deportation. Van Hollen posted a photo of the meeting on X, saying he also called Abrego Garcia’s wife 'to pass along his message of love.' The lawmaker did not provide an update on the status of Abrego Garcia, whose attorneys are fighting to force the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the U.S.... The meeting came hours after Van Hollen said he was denied entry into an high-security El Salvador prison Thursday while he was trying to check on Abrego Garcia’s well-being and push for his release.” Nayib Bukele also posted images of the meeting & made some snide remarks. The Washington Post story is here.
Letter from a Louisiana Lock-up. Mahmoud Khalil in a Washington Post op-ed: “Why should protesting Israel’s indiscriminate killing of thousands of innocent Palestinians result in the erosion of my constitutional rights?... The incarceration of 70,000 American citizens of Japanese descent [during World War II] is a reminder that rhetoric of justice and freedom obscures the reality that, all too often, America has been a democracy of convenience. Rights are granted to those who align with power. For the poor, for people of color, for those who resist injustice, rights are but words written on water. The right to free speech when it comes to Palestine has always been exceptionally weak.... I hope this writing will startle you into understanding that a democracy for some — a democracy of convenience — is no democracy at all. I hope it will shake you into acting before it is too late.”
ICE Detains Adjudicated U.S. Citizen. Suzanne Gamboa of NBC News: “A U.S.-born American citizen was being detained at the request of immigration authorities Thursday despite an advocate showing his U.S. birth certificate in court and a county judge finding no reason for him to be considered an 'illegal alien' who illegally entered Florida. Juan Carlos Gomez-Lopez, 20, was arrested Thursday evening by Florida Highway Patrol and charged under a state immigration law that has been temporarily blocked since early this month.... American citizens are protected under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution from unreasonable search and seizure, arrest and detention. Nonetheless, he remains detained locally at ICE’s request, said Thomas Kennedy, a spokesperson at the Florida Immigrant Coalition who attended Thursday’s hearing. 'Everything tracks for him being sent to an ICE detention center,' he told NBC News in a phone interview.”
Cat Zakrzewski of the Washington Post: “Donald Trump’s second presidency has been defined by his conviction that he govern alone, with escalating disregard for the courts or Congress.... As courts challenge Trump’s drive for unilateral authority, the White House is increasingly circumventing unfavorable decisions with a tone of defiance.... Trump’s moves are the culmination of a decades-long conservative movement to expand the power of the executive branch after it was significantly curtailed in the wake of Watergate.”
“Trump's War on Children.” Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post: “... administration officials have been gutting services that keep children alive and well. These include programs that feed kids, teach them the alphabet, provide them medical care, guarantee their rights and shield them from abuse. Destroying these programs is not only cruel and contrary to the far-right’s allegedly pro-family agenda; it’s also tremendously wasteful. Research shows that government dollars spent on kids — especially on low-income kids’ health and education — offer some of the highest returns on investment. This week, for instance, a leaked document revealed the administration’s plans to eliminate federal funding for Head Start. This comes after officials kneecapped the 60-year-old pre-K program by temporarily freezing funding for its care providers; firing its Washington-based employees en masse; and permanently closing half its regional offices around the country. (Just coincidentally, they only closed offices in blue states.)”
Rebecca Dzombak & Lisa Friedman of the New York Times: Donald “Trump on Thursday said he was allowing commercial fishing in one of the world’s largest ocean reserves, introducing industrial operations for the first time in more than a decade to a vast area of the Pacific dotted with coral atolls and populated by endangered sea turtles and whales. Mr. Trump issued an executive order opening up the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, which lies some 750 miles west of Hawaii. President George W. Bush established the monument in 2009 and President Barack Obama expanded it in 2014 to its current area of nearly 500,000 square miles.” MB: How could this be? I thought Donald wanted to save the whales!
Stacy Cowley of the New York Times: “The Trump administration sent layoff notices on Thursday to a large swath of employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, just days after a federal appeals court pared back an injunction that had prevented the agency’s leaders from carrying out plans to fire nearly all of the bureau’s workers. The full scope of the cuts was not immediately clear, but by late afternoon, hundreds of workers across all of the agency’s major divisions had received reduction-in-force notices. Fired employees were told they would lose access to their email accounts and the agency’s work systems on Friday evening. A legal filing Thursday evening by the consumer bureau’s staff union estimated that the terminations could hit as many as 1,500 of the bureau’s 1,700 employees.” The CBS News report is here. MB: As we know by now, there is no better way to rid the federal government of waste, fraud & abuse than by eliminating an agency dedicated to rooting out fraud & abuse against the American people.
Claire Brown of the New York Times: “Hours after a federal judge ordered Citibank to pay out as much as $625 million in federal climate grant money that had been frozen at the Trump administration’s request, an appeals court stayed the decision. The grant money was frozen again before any was sent to recipients. It amounted to at least a temporary setback for nonprofit recipients of $20 billion in funds that were appropriated by Congress through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The grants, which were part of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and are sometimes called 'green bank' funds, were finalized before the November election, then frozen in mid-February at the request of the Trump administration.” (Also linked yesterday.)
Alexander Tin of CBS News: "The Food and Drug Administration is drawing up plans that would end most of its routine food safety inspections work, multiple federal health officials tell CBS News, and effectively outsource this oversight to state and local authorities.... A third of routine food safety inspections were done by states over recent years, a Government Accountability Office report said earlier this year."
Dan Diamond, et al., of the Washington Post: “The U.S. DOGE Service is putting new curbs on billions of dollars in federal health-care grants, requiring government officials to manually review and approve previously routine payments — and paralyzing grant awards to tens of thousands of organizations, according to 12 people familiar with the new arrangements. The effort, which DOGE has dubbed 'Defend the Spend,' has left thousands of payments backed up, including funding for doctors’ and nurses’ salaries at federal health centers for the poor.... Under Defend the Spend, organizations must now include a justification for each transaction. Federal officials then review the justification before deciding whether to approve the payment. The process has been abruptly instituted at the National Institutes for Health, the Administration for Children and Families, and other parts of HHS, with inconsistent instructions on how to proceed....”
Praveena Somasundarum of the Washington Post: “Autistic people and their loved ones have swiftly and publicly rejected statements by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, that people with autism will never play baseball, date, pay taxes or have a job. They say the health and human services secretary’s comments Wednesday, during his first official news conference, misstate the capabilities of many people with autism — and they flooded social media with counterexamples. On X, Facebook and TikTok, autistic people detailed the jobs they hold and how many years they had paid taxes. Parents posted photos of their autistic children in their baseball uniforms. Family members of severely disabled autistic children also pushed back, saying Kennedy was disparaging children who need more support. Many noted that the effects of autism can vary dramatically from person to person — as denoted by the condition’s official name, 'autism spectrum disorder.'” ~~~
~~~ Tara Suter of the Hill: “Minnesota’s first lady, Gwen Walz, slammed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert. F Kennedy Jr. over comments he made Wednesday about autism.... 'Individuals with autism are family, neighbors, students, and coworkers and they contribute more to this nation than this man ever will,' [Gwen Walz wrote on X].”
Andrew Duehren of the New York Times: “A Trump administration official last month asked the Internal Revenue Service to look into concerns from Mike Lindell, the pillow entrepreneur and a leading denier of the 2020 presidential election, that he had been inappropriately targeted for an audit.... David Eisner, a Treasury official, wrote an email in March to a top I.R.S. official that Mr. Lindell, 'a high-profile friend of the President recently received an audit letter, from what I understand, his second in two years.' Mr. Eisner wrote that Mr. Lindell 'is concerned that he may have been inappropriately targeted' and then signed off the message. I.R.S. officials did not act on the email, and instead referred it to the agency’s inspector general, according to the people. But the message alarmed agency staff that ... [Donald] Trump hoped to use the tax collector to protect his friends and allies from normal scrutiny, concerns that have only grown as the Trump administration clears out agency leadership and pushes it to carry out Mr. Trump’s directions.” (Also linked yesterday.)
Theodoric Meyer & Patrick Svitek of the Washington Post: “Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) expressed serious concerns about the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce and other administration policies and said she is worried about speaking out because of the threat of political revenge by President Donald Trump. 'We are all afraid,' Murkowski said Monday at a leadership summit in response to a question about what she would say to Alaskans who are afraid of what the Trump administration is doing, according to video posted by the Anchorage Daily News. 'I am oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real, and that’s not right,' Murkowski added.” (Also linked yesterday.)
We have instances now in western countries where people are being arrested [...] the cop comes knocking on their door, you're going to go to jail for 60 days for posting something online. You know, this is crazy stuff that's happening all over. -- Marco Rubio, yesterday, April 16, 2025
What is the matter with him? Does he not realize that he himself is signing off on precisely the scenario he claims to deplore? How is it possible he can't connect his own & Trump's fascistic behavior with "crazy stuff" he claims is happening in other (unnamed) countries? I wouldn't believe he actually was so blind to his own behavior, but RAS has provided a video that looks and sounds exactly like Little Marco, so unless it's a really swell AI production, that's what he said. -- Marie
Every accusation is a confession from these assholes. -- Cookie Lo, on Little Marco's observation (on the BlueSky thread linked)
On the same BlueSky thread, Ms. M. highlights a Reuters headline from April 9, 2025: "US to screen social media of immigrants, rights advocates...."
David McCabe of the New York Times: “Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in some online advertising technology, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, adding to legal troubles that could reshape the $1.86 trillion company and alter its power over the internet. Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a 115-page ruling that Google had broken the law to build its dominance over the largely invisible system of technology that places advertisements on pages across the web. The Justice Department and a group of states had sued Google, arguing that its monopoly in ad technology allowed the company to charge higher prices and take a bigger portion of each sale.” The AP's report is here.
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Ukraine, et al. Andrew Kramer of the New York Times: “Ukraine and the United States signed a memorandum of understanding late on Thursday as a 'step toward a joint economic partnership agreement,' according to Ukraine’s economy minister, bringing both sides closer to a minerals deal that has gone through multiple, contentious rounds of negotiations. The agreement was thin on details. While it referred to the creation of a fund that would invest in reconstruction in Ukraine — which has been devastated by the war Russia has waged since a full-scale invasion in 2022 — it did not specify the source of such revenue. There was no immediate comment from the White House. But the Ukrainian minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, who is also deputy prime minister, announced the agreement in a post on Facebook, after signing it on a video call with the U.S. Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, who was in Washington. Ms. Svyrydenko said the agreement would 'benefit both our peoples.'” ~~~
~~~ Roger Cohen of the New York Times: “The United States will abandon efforts to end the war in Ukraine if it proves impossible to broker meaningful progress in the next several days, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said as he departed Paris after a meeting on Thursday with President Emmanuel Macron of France. 'If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,' Mr. Rubio told reporters, adding that the Trump administration will decide 'in a matter of days whether or not this is doable in the next few weeks.' His remarks ratcheted up pressure on Russia and Ukraine to end the war and appeared intended to inject urgency into European efforts to prod Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, toward compromise.... [Donald] Trump said on Thursday that he was 'not a big fan' of the Ukrainian leader.” ~~~
~~~ Adam Taylor & Ellen Francis of the Washington Post: “French President Emmanuel Macron signaled Thursday that he had hosted a 'positive and constructive' discussion among senior European, American and Ukrainian officials working to broker a deal with Russia to halt the fighting in Ukraine, though there was no immediate sign of a breakthrough. The hastily convened talks in Paris, announced only a day earlier, marked the start of what appears to be a concerted European effort to intercede in U.S.-led negotiations to end the three-year-old war, after the Trump administration’s bid for rapprochement with Moscow has put the continent on edge.... Thursday’s diplomacy was a boost of sorts for European leaders staking out a more direct role in talks that could significantly influence the continent’s future, but U.S. officials did not immediately embrace Macron’s enthusiasm.”
27 Comments
Reader Comments (27)
The other day, or maybe it was today, or will be today…anyway, the hubris, lies, projection, insults, and hair raising hypocrisy are all part and parcel of everything she does…KKKaroline Leaveitalone, aka Nazi Barbie, sed deporting people without due process is helping to reduce crime in America. Like they really care about that. Cuz if they did, putting her fat blob of a crime boss in the pen would be an instant crime stopper.
Our Miss Brooks goes radical!
Geez Louise! OMB (aka David Brooks) sez it’s time for a national uprising. Holy Moral Panic, Batman.
Looks like he’s joining all those 60s type activists (and pot smoking hippies who have sex without permission and out of wedlock) he’s been blaming all these years for the demise of western civilization.
He finally gets to be one of the cool kids.
But c’mon, it’s not like Fat Hitler popped up out of nowhere. Brooks’ unqualified support for the civil and human rights abuses of the Decider’s brand of far-right fuckery was an immense help in setting the stage for the full blown constitutional crises we see every day now.
Well, better late than never I suppose. And if light dawns on Marblehead (as we used to say in Massachusetts), maybe other pockets of the vast right wing conspiracy and their media enablers will come around to recognizing the existential threat posed by Decider 3.0.
So Dave, getting ready to roll a fattie. You can have a hit, but don’t bogart that thing. Late bloomers. Jesus.
Speaking of moral panic, I see where Lisa Murkowski is Concerned (™ Susan Collins) about speaking up.
Christ, Lise, you’re a fucking senator. If you’re afraid, what should we be? And, oh yeah, isn’t it kinda like your job to speak up against this fascist freak and his band of cutthroats?
Just waking up.
More Trumper Tantrums about Jerome Powell not dropping the interest rate to -3% in order to help hide the clusterfuck that Fatty has made of the economy with his temper tantrum tariffs. The nerve of that guy, doing his job!
So it looks like we’re okay for now (an extremely qualified “okay”) as long as Powell holds out against the idiocy of Trumponomics, but his term ends next May. Who will Mr. 379 Counts of Business Fraud install then to run the Fed? Junior? Mike Lindell? Raggedy Andy?
Get ready to see the interest rates change hourly when that happens. “Too many onions on my Big Mac! Drop the rate!” “Some guy I hate needs a loan. Boost it by 10%!”
Trump, AI, Quantum Mechanics, Capitalism, and Shamelessness
A while back I brought up Slavoj Žižek, my favorite philosophical wild man. But he is truly, in addition to being a hugely iconoclastic philosopher, the essence of what it means to be a public intellectual. If you have 23 minutes to spare for some energetic mind expansion, give him a listen. He touches on a number of seemingly disparate topics but weaves them together in a way that illuminates both the essential qualifiers of each as they affect our lives as well as the fascinating thought process of a truly creative critical mind.
Toward the end he gets a little into psychoanalysis (and makes a very funny observation on what he calls “appearance of meaning”) where he references the French critical theorist and psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan. If you don’t know Lacan, don’t worry about it, just know that he was kind of a rock star in continental theory, post-structuralism, and semiotic investigations back in the 60’s, clearly a seminal time for Žižek.
Anyway, we have mountains of opinionators, prognosticators, and pontificating putzes these days, but far too few pubic intellectuals like this guy.
It’s spring cleaning for the mind, if you have a few minutes. It’s a blast.
Read the Wilkinson opinion last night. Much to like about it, but my favorite line still bothers me a bit this morning.
"The Judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy, to which by dent of custom and detachment we can only sparingly reply."
So sensible, so civilized, so charmingly middle nineteenth century. So not Truth Social. But shouldn't "dent" have been "dint?"
Test
Speaking of public intellectuals, last night I stayed up to watch a completely engrossing “American Masters” documentary on the artist Art Spiegelman, most famous as the creator of “Maus”, a comic book retelling of the Holocaust, drawing on the memories of Spiegelman’s father, who survived Auschwitz.
If you get a chance, do check it out. It’s a waterfall of imagery and storylines in a certain pop culture vein, the world of underground comics in the 60’s, tracing the ideological and artistic forces harnessed at that time as it spread out into our current media morass.
It was especially fun for me as a picture book of bygone days when, as a high school student in ‘69, ‘70, etc. I would ride my bike into Harvard Square on summer nights, to haunt the all-night bookstores, checking out the latest Zap Comix featuring Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, Zippy the Pinhead, and the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. I may have stolen a few glances at the more salacious stuff by R. Crumb as well.
After “Maus” fame, Spiegelman did a bunch of New Yorker covers that referenced some pretty serious topics such as police shootings, showing a cop at a carnival shooting gallery mowing down citizens, which pissed off a lot of people.
One of his more (in)famous covers was a Valentine’s issue showing a Hasidic Jewish man kissing a West Indian black woman (those groups were practically at war back then).
Here’s what he had to say about that, in the best tradition of public intellectuals:
“The painting on the cover of this issue of The New Yorker is by Art Spiegelman, whose Maus, a two volume narrative of the Holocaust in comic-book form, was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992. About the painting, Spiegelman writes: ‘This metaphoric embrace is my Valentine card to New York, a wish for the reconciliation of seemingly unbridgeable differences in the form of a symbolic kiss. It is a dream, of course--in no way intended as any kind of programmatic solution. The rendering of my dream is intentionally, knowingly naive, as is perhaps, the underlying wish that people closed off from one another by anger and fear--Serbs and Croats, Hindus and Muslims, Arabs and Israelis, West Indians and Hasidic Jews--could somehow just 'kiss and make up.' Though I'm a maker of graven images by profession, I respect the fact that in the real world, the world beyond the borders of my picture, a Hasidic Jew is proscribed from embracing a woman outside his sect and his family. (I won't disingenuously attempt to claim that the woman in my painting is his wife, an Ethiopian Jew.) I'm also painfully aware that the calamities facing black communities in New York cannot be kissed away. But once a year, perpaps, it's permissible, even if just for a moment, to close one's eyes, see beyond the tragic complexities of modern life, and imagine that it might really be true that 'All you need is love.'"
What he said.
Spiegelman points out that more and more, any criticism of the government gets you labeled a terrorist. He said that 20 years ago. It’s even worse now. Which is why we need more public intellectuals who aren’t Concerned about speaking up.
As Mr. Natural used to say, keep on truckin’, Art.
The flurry of legal setbacks for the First Crime Boss are all nice and everything, but all of those setbacks can be turned into big wins for lawless authoritarianism when they get appealed up to Johnnie’s Rubber Stamp Factory.
And Ken, yes.. dint is the word. I guess Otto was at work there. Otherwise, the writer dint have a dictionary handy.
Garcia passed consecutive background checks from the Trump administration for his work permit.
No Criminal Record
Cowards at the Oscars of Science
"Seth Rogen’s Criticism of Silicon Valley’s Support for Trump Was Cut From the “Full” Stream of Breakthrough Prize
“And it’s amazing that others [who have been] in this room underwrote electing a man who, in the last week, single-handedly destroyed all of American science,” he said, clearly making Norton uncomfortable. The comment underlined the irony of Silicon Valley’s increasingly cozy relationship with the Trump administration, which has cut federal science funding and defied scientific consensus. “It’s amazing how much good science you can destroy with $320 million and RFK Jr, very fast,” Rogen continued in reference to the vaccine-skeptical secretary for Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr."
Made in China
90 day reprieve
Science
"Kevin Hall, a scientist at NIH, posted this on twitter earlier today:
After 21 years at my dream job, I’m very sad to announce my early retirement from the National Institutes of Health.
My life’s work has been to scientifically study how our food environment affects what we eat, and how what we eat affects our physiology.
Given recent bipartisan goals to prevent diet-related chronic diseases, and new agency leadership professing to prioritize scientific investigation of ultra-processed foods, I had hoped to expand our research program with ambitious plans to more rapidly and efficiently determine how our food is likely making Americans chronically sick.
Unfortunately, recent events have made me question whether NIH continues to be a place where I can freely conduct unbiased science."
Chris Murphy
one-man rapid response team part machine
Tonight is the 250th anniversary of One if by land, Two if by sea. There is a service at Boston's Old North Church, and Heather Cox Richardson is speaking. Paul Revere was one of the bell ringers at Old North, and I will be one of the people ringing the same bells this evening. Link to the live stream on this page:
https://www.oldnorth.com/lanternservice/
Adam Smith he ain’t.
A MAGA mind is a terrible thing to….um…use?
Our beloved Economic Genius in Chief (people are saying), sez he might not want to raise tariffs on China any higher…cuz…um…well, people might not want to buy stuff.
Whoa! Where are the Nobel guys? Did you hear that? Charge people 125% more than they normally pay and…Gee willikers! They might not buy anymore!
Wow! Who’da thunk it?
Only MAGA mind man!
But here’s the rationale. So, MAGA hats made in China could be had for $6 on Amazon (six bucks and your soul). But now those hats will be $60 (just sayin’). Now…they’ll have to buy their MAGA hats directly from Fatty. For the low, low price of $50 (that’s what he charges).
Everyone makes out! Right?
(Not for nothin’…but what moron is ASKING for higher tariffs? This is a classic Fat Hitler con job…Everyone is saying “Go ahead! Nuke Iran. Do it! But I stepped in and calmed everyone down and saved the world from WWIII. Me. The greatest president ever!”)
Some are born stupid. Others work at it. Hard.
The Chattanooga Choo Choo set was lovely!
At first I thought it was linked to the Nicholas Brothers and DD tap-dancing around the stage like DOJ lawyers dealing with Judge Boasberg (the article above it). Then I saw that the article below it was about Penn Station.
That DOJ piece demonstrates vividly the outright effrontery and gall of DiJiT and his DOJ Cohn-heads, saying that Boasberg is seeking Constitutional combat. Deny, distract, delay, attack. The standard DijiT courtroom fandango.
NiskyGuy,
Ring-a dem bells, brother!
I was at the Old North Church for the 200th anniversary celebration. I was still in college at the time. A bunch of us took the subway into Boston for the event. We couldn’t get in (VIP invites, mostly), but I remember Gerald Ford presented the third lantern. We hung around outside with hundreds of other people. It was the kickoff of the Bicentennial celebrations. What a year! Books, speeches, historical essays, fireworks, the Tall Ships in Boston Harbor, all to celebrate our revolution against a tyrannical, demented king.
Who could have predicted that fifty years on we’d have to fight our way past another tyrannical, demented king?
Oh, and that third lantern? Our South African Overlord and his Hitler Youth have decided three lanterns are inefficient. Instead, we’re being given a single headlight from a Tesla Cybertruck that caught fire and exploded. A mere $50,000, check made payable to Elon Musk.
Unreality
"Trump Swaps Out COVID.gov For Page Blaming Chinese Lab For Virus And Attacking Biden’s Pandemic Policies"
Knock On Effect
"The freight guys have really started freaking out over the past 48-72 hours"
Less trade and demand mean less freight and fewer people needed to take it off and drive it around the country. FH likes playing trucker in the driveway, but once again is bad for the real thing.
Good sign if your headed out tomorrow the latest 50501 protests
about the useless chickens in congress
It took a good few many years, but I've finally come around to appreciating Sean Spicer and his full-throated defense of Dear Leader's gigantic crowd sizes.
I know, it sounds crazy, but he did our country a great service.
Those department meetings when everyone is held hostage, cameras rolling, and effusive praise espoused of the Dear Leader's cunning greatness that would make Kim Jong-Un blush? Pure patriotism, people.
Think about it: as the public turns on Dear Leader due to his own self sabotage, as his poll numbers make hin look increasingly like a total loser, an incompetent boob, as the holes he digs get deeper... his anger, frustration, and desire to lash out at all his "enemies" will increase in equal measure. His deep, narcissistic wounds will require retribution against an ungrateful, "shithole" America.
What's standing between America and its imminent destruction if the described scenario unfolds?
Ass-kissing. Ego stroking. YMCA dances. Pointless rallies. MAGA hats. Golf "wins". Young cute woman steaming his pants (thank you for your service Hope Hicks!), love letters from Kim, Fox News sycophancy.
The otherworldly levels of narcissism alongside his unstable personality and omnipresent sources of grievance have all combined to leave America in its most precarious position in its history, governed by the closest embodiment of a king that our Constitutional system allows (thanks John Roberts!), a man who requires constant petty praise, gawdy gold toilets, and faked assurances and smiles to avoid a total Nero-style meltdown.
Maybe we'll all look back at the Sean Spicers of the world and grant them some praise for debasing themselves for the good of us, knowing too well what would have awaited us otherwise.
Fatty’s Penn Station Revenge!
Fat Hitler’s bullying takeover of the Penn Station redevelopment project has a historical antecedent that—big surprise—stems from a massive humiliation involving the usual galactic level Trump braggadocio joined Siamese twin-like with monumental incompetence and delusions of grandeur.
Back in 1985, Trump envisioned an enormous development on New York’s west side at the old Penn rail yards that he touted as the single greatest construction project in world history, a massive, greed and narcissistic fueled fantasy he promised would make the pyramids look like Harlem bodegas.
Back then he “…unveiled drawings and models of his vision for the old Penn Central rail yards on the bank of the Hudson River. It wasn’t just the largest undeveloped tract of land in Manhattan; it was ‘the greatest piece of land in urban America,’ he crowed [natch!]. And on those 76 acres, he intended to build nearly 8,000 apartments and condominiums for up to 20,000 people, almost 10,000 parking spots, some 3.6 million square feet of television and movie studio space, and some 2 million square feet of ‘prestigious’ stores. There would be no fewer than six 76-story towers, and looming atop it all one unprecedented skyscraper twice that height. It was a behemoth endeavor meant to go, his promotional materials proclaimed, ‘beyond the grandeur and excellence that has become synonymous with projects bearing the Trump name.’
In a metropolis of superlatives, he was striving to be New York’s biggest builder, a cocksure [make that small, weird shaped cock] maker of tangible, unmissable things—and here, now, he wanted to build a city within the city, a conspicuously separate entity, of a style and scale no one had accomplished, not even the man who had shaped modern New York, Robert Moses. It was, in the words of the New York Times, his ‘bid for immortality.’ First, he called it Television City; then, simply and unsurprisingly, Trump City. That centerpiece skyscraper would be the world’s tallest building, and he was going to live at the top.
And he failed.”
Miserably.
Cue sad trumpet.
Of course everyone and his sister was to blame for this epic face plant, not Fatty. Everyone should have acknowledged his greatness and dispensed with building permits, planning meetings, and the myriad other considerations involved with developing such a self-glorifying project in a place like Manhattan.
But not anymore. Someone says “Where your environmental impact studies?” he has them deported to an iceberg in Antarctica.
Revenge is what he lives for now.
Covid propaganda continues apace.
A federal government website page dedicated to factual information about Covid, including links to information on Covid vaccines and additional vital health information has been deleted.
The new page links to a Blight House page that says “Covid is all China’s fault. Aieeee!!”
These people work day and night to rewrite history to their own advantage. No information about health awareness or vaccines, just unsupported, lying finger pointing.
Also…
“The web page also accuses Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of pushing a ‘preferred narrative’ that COVID-19 originated in nature.
The origins of COVID have never been proven. Scientists are unsure whether the virus jumped from an animal, as many other viruses have, or came from a laboratory accident. A U.S. intelligence analysis released in 2023 said there is insufficient evidence to prove either theory.”
Of course, the MAGA hair on fire claim about China and Fauci collaborating to murder Americans isn’t a “preferred narrative”.
So, no facts, just more Fat Hitler scare tactics and useless propaganda.
I remember going to a campaign/fund-raising event for Chris Murphy when he first ran for state office in the late 90's. It was at a nearby private residence with ~30-40 people attending. Even Meryl Streep showed up with a check. At the time, Murphy seemed to be somewhat of a dweeb. I'm glad to see that he's matured and grown into his role as a vocal force supporting our democracy.
I think the world needs more neurodivergent people like Aurora, and fewer neurodeficient people like DiJiT and RFK,Jr.