The Conversation -- December 15, 2024
Thanks for Encouraging Trump, ABC News! David Enrich of the New York Times: A "small flurry of threatened defamation lawsuits is the latest sign that the incoming Trump administration appears poised to do what it can to crack down on unfavorable media coverage. Before and after the election, Mr. Trump and his allies have discussed subpoenaing news organizations, prosecuting journalists and their sources, revoking networks’ broadcast licenses and eliminating funding for public radio and television. Actual or threatened libel lawsuits are another weapon at their disposal — and they are being deployed even before Mr. Trump moves back into the White House.... On Saturday, ABC News said it had agreed to give $15 million to Mr. Trump’s future presidential foundation and museum to settle a defamation suit that Mr. Trump filed against the network and one of its anchors, George Stephanopoulos.... The deal set off criticism of ABC News by those who perceived the network as needlessly bowing down to Mr. Trump. And it led some legal and media experts to wonder whether the outcome would embolden Mr. Trump and others to intensify their assault on the media...."
What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Jackson Barton of the Washington Post: "Dallas-based start-up American Rounds rolled its first automated retail ammo [vending] machine into a Fresh Value grocery store in Pell City, Alabama, late in 2023, selling various brands of rifle, shotgun and handgun ammo. The company advertises its machines as a safer and more convenient way to buy ammo than at a large retail store or online. But public health experts have questioned whether the company’s suicide prevention efforts are sufficient, and elected officials in areas where machines were set up have worried that the easy availability of ammunition could lead to impulsive purchases by people who seek to do harm."
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Army-Navy Game Features Rogues' Gallery. Michael Shear of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump attended the annual Army-Navy football game in Maryland on Saturday with Pete Hegseth, his embattled choice for defense secretary, sending a message of support ahead of Senate confirmation hearings that are likely to take place next month. Allies and aides of Mr. Trump’s posted video of the president-elect and Mr. Hegseth on the social media site X. In one video, the two men, along with Vice President-elect JD Vance, can be seen standing for the national anthem.... Mr. Trump was also accompanied at the game by Daniel Penny, a former Marine who was acquitted this week on a charge of criminally negligent homicide after putting a man in a chokehold in a New York subway car. Other allies of Mr. Trump’s, including Elon Musk and House Speaker Mike Johnson, were also at the game." (Also linked yesterday.)
More Rogues for the Gallery.
~~~ Bad Moooos. Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "....Donald J. Trump announced on Saturday that he would appoint Devin Nunes, a former member of Congress who had used his role as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to try to delegitimize the Trump-Russia investigation, to head an independent advisory board on espionage policy. The organization — the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board — dates back to the early Cold War and consists of private citizens with top-level security clearances who are supposed to help the White House analyze spy agency effectiveness and planning. Its members do not need Senate confirmation, so presidents can pick whomever they want for it.... Some members of the advisory board also serve on a presidential Intelligence Oversight Board, which was created in the 1970s after a congressional investigation into abuses by national security agencies and which tries to ferret out illegal spying activities. That group typically includes the larger board’s chair, so it is likely that Mr. Nunes will participate in it as well." The NBC News story is here. MB: But will Devin Nunes' Cow get a seat on the Oversight Board? Surely somebody has to oversee Devin. ~~~
~~~ Elizabeth Williamson of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump named Richard Grenell, his former ambassador to Germany and former acting director of national intelligence, as his 'envoy for special missions,' Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Saturday. A loyalist known for unbridled social media attacks on Mr. Trump’s perceived critics and many others, Mr. Grenell led a shambolic effort to challenge the 2020 election results in Nevada after Mr. Trump’s loss, and he has lobbied assiduously for a diplomatic job in the new administration. He got his start in government before Mr. Trump’s rise, as a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations under multiple presidents. But his online toxicity, foreign business contacts and tendency toward biting personal attacks on political opponents and the media turned off many centrist conservatives, helping propel him toward Mr. Trump, a man he denounced in 2016 as 'dangerous.'"
Hugo Lowell of the Guardian: "The problem with [Kash] Patel leading the FBI in the second Trump administration is that typical checks on the power of the FBI director would almost certainly be gone, according to former FBI assistant director Frank Figliuzzi and other former officials familiar with the matter.... The alarm has come as Patel, who has called for shutting down FBI headquarters and drafted what critics call an ‘enemies list’ of Patel’s opponents, appears set to have his nomination supported unanimously by Republicans on the Senate judiciary committee.... 'And then going through files? I imagine on the first day in office, he’s going to say, "I need every file that has the word Trump in it,’” Figliuzzi said. 'That should be a real concern, that Kash Patel is going through informant files and saying, "Look at that, this guy coughed it up on Trump."’... Figliuzzi also suggested that Patel working in tandem with the Trump White House could exert influence over things like background checks, both for first-time applicants for security clearances and reinvestigations of people who previously went through FBI vetting.” Thanks to Akhilleus for the link. See also his commentary and Ken W.'s in yesterday's thread. ~~~
~~~ Marie: IOW, access to FBI files will give Patel what he needs to expand his already-established "enemies list." In her post linked below, digby begins with a mention of Nixon's enemies list. Nixon's original list had only 20 people on it. Nixon aide Charles Colson expanded the list to 220. According to the New York Times (June 1973), "a memorandum written by [John] Dean in August, 1971, to President Nixon's top advisers, H. R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman — Mr. Dean suggested 'how we can use the available Federal machinery to screw our political enemies.' Another memorandum that Mr. Dean said he prepared recommended using Internal Revenue Service machinery to harass political opponents of the President.” I'm quite certain Patel can think up plenty of ways to "use the federal machinery to screw Trump's [perceived] political enemies." And Patel will do it. ~~~
~~~ Digby writes an excellent essay on why Chris Wray should have stood up to Donald Trump and forced Trump to fire him.
Kevin Kruse in a Substack essay: "The odds are good that pretty much all the president’s men (cough) will be confirmed.... The danger with some of Trump’s nominees isn’t that they’ll abuse their power and turn their agencies to evil ends, it’s that they’ll run their agencies into the ground, quite deliberately, in order to bring them to an evil end." Speaking of ends, read to the end of this one. As Jeanne wrote yesterday, it's karma. Thanks to RAS for the link.
Jacob Bogage, et al., of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump has expressed a keen interest in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service in recent weeks, three people with knowledge of the matter said, a move that could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains and push hundreds of thousands of federal workers out of the government.... Told of the mail agency’s annual financial losses, Trump said the government should not subsidize the organization, the people said.... [Trump] feuded with the nation’s mail carrier as president in 2019, trying to force it to hand over key functions — including rate-setting, personnel decisions, labor relations and managing relationships with its largest clients — to the Treasury Department.... As congressional Republicans and others in Trump’s orbit have clamored in recent weeks for federal cost-cutting, the Postal Service has emerged as a prominent target. People who will work on the 'Department of Government Efficiency,' a nongovernmental panel led by tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, have also held preliminary conversations about major changes to the Postal Service...." The Guardian's story is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Hardly a surprise. As Ken W. noted yesterday morning, "There's just so much money to be made by making public services private." Let's see. Who should lead the King Donald Postal Service on the road to disaster? How about Prince Donald Junior? And how is it that Trump was "told of the mail agency’s annual financial losses"? Everybody who reads a real newspaper has known that for years. It is periodically repeated -- often when the USPS asks for another hike in the price of stamps. ~~~
~~~ Scott Lemieux in LG&$: "This is a classic Republican economic policy in that 1)it will be disastrous for rural and exurban areas that are the most reliable sources of Republican support and 2)won’t hurt them with the typical voter in these areas at all even if they go through with it and their lives are negatively impacted." MB: And that's at least partially because people who live in the boonies are living in information deserts; they don't know WTF is going on & they don't know it's their favorite politicians who are sticking it to them.
Alan Feuer & Michael Grynbaum of the New York Times: "ABC News agreed on Saturday to give $15 million to .... Donald J. Trump’s future presidential foundation and museum to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by Mr. Trump concerning on-air statements made by the network’s star anchor George Stephanopoulos. The network and Mr. Stephanopoulos also published a statement saying they 'regret' remarks made about Mr. Trump during a televised interview in March. ABC News, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, will pay Mr. Trump an additional $1 million for his legal fees, under the terms of a settlement agreement filed in Federal District Court in Miami. The outcome marks an unusual victory for Mr. Trump in his ongoing legal campaign against national news organizations. Several of his previous attempts to sue media outlets for defamation, including lawsuits against CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post, ended in defeat.... The settlement agreement was signed on the same day that a federal magistrate judge ordered Mr. Trump to sit for a deposition in the case next week in Florida. Mr. Stephanopoulos was also on the verge of being deposed." (Also linked yesterday.) The AP's report is here. ~~~
~~~ Read on. Of course the suits should not have caved. Maybe they were upset that NBC News got the only post-election MSM interview with Trump and they figured a $16MM suck-up would put them in Trump's good graces. Fat chance. ~~~
~~~ Here's the headline on Paul Campos' post on LG&$: "ABC pays sex assaulter $15 million for saying jury found he had raped woman, as opposed to sexually assaulting her." Campos writes, "That’s slicing the libel bologna extraordinarily thin, but on the other hand if you think of it as protection money it all makes sense. Except it won’t actually buy much if any protection. Just like in the other made for TV rackets." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Quite right. The jury's charge was for sexual assault, but as the linked AP report explains, the judge in the case "said the verdict did not mean that Carroll 'failed to prove that Mr. Trump "raped" her as many people commonly understand the word "rape." Indeed ... the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.'”
Motoko Rich of the New York Times: "As the United States ambassador to Japan, a country where change typically follows a long process of quiet consensus-building referred to as 'nemawashi,' [the brash Rahm] Emanuel, 65, was initially seen as an unorthodox appointment. But maybe, he suggests, he was just what Japan needed.... In the past three years, Japan has doubled the amount earmarked for military spending, acquired Tomahawk missiles from the United States and, in a reversal of postwar restrictions on weapons exports, agreed to manufacture American-designed Patriot missiles to sell to the U.S. government. Although he acknowledged the groundwork was laid before he arrived, Mr. Emanuel said these changes didn’t simply coincide with his term as American envoy to Tokyo. 'While I was here, they did more, went faster and farther and deeper than I think they themselves originally thought,' he said during an interview late last month in the library of his residence in Tokyo. 'Did I contribute to that?' Mr. Emanuel said. 'Uh, yeah.' Just how much credit should go to Mr. Emanuel is a matter of perspective."
Karoun Demirjian of the New York Times: "Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, had hip replacement surgery on Saturday after falling while on an official trip to Luxembourg, her office said in a statement. 'Earlier this morning, Speaker Emerita Pelosi underwent a successful hip replacement and is well on the mend,” Ian Krager, a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi, said in a statement. Ms. Pelosi traveled to Luxembourg as part of a congressional delegation attending a ceremony to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, a pivotal fight during World War II. On Friday, she tripped and fell while going down marble stairs at the Grand Ducal Palace...."
Marie: We have been discussing the structural problems that have led the country to the sad state of affairs. Mister Mix of Balloon Juice has an idea that would help correct one of those structural problems: liberal-leaning media should follow part of Fox's successful model, not the part where they make up stuff, but by making "it left-wing infotainment, and not always overtly political or even about politics." That is, carry stories that support or show the need for liberal policies. This is much like what Dan Froomkin suggested a few days ago, but more specific: "The kinds of stories I’m talking about are stories of people being denied insurance coverage, women dying in parking lots for lack of a D&C, farmers who wouldn’t be able to harvest crops or keep cattle without immigrant labor, and youth pastors raping kids." While these are depressing, Mix also suggests positive stories that show liberal ideas working like urban gardeners & volunteers helping their communities. ~~~
~~~ Since I don't watch Fox, I didn't realize how they were using real stories -- okay, anecdotes -- to reinforce their "political philosophy." I wasn't aware how calculating their infotainment was. What it is, I think, is strategically using local news tactics -- "if it bleeds, it leads" -- to hold and increase viewership. Local news, theoretically anyway, tells its stories without an agenda any deeper than the station's own ratings, but Fox tailors those stories to make right-wing points. So if it works for local news stations and it works for Fox (the highest-ratest cable news station), then it should work for MSM and liberal-leaning media, too.
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Florida. Hannah Critchfield & Juan Chavez of the Tampa Bay Times: "Florida banned local governments from providing increased oversight for workers exposed to high temperatures earlier this year, saying businesses and federal regulators alone could keep laborers safe. But the Tampa Bay Times found far more workers have died from heat across the state than authorities even know. The missing deaths bring recorded heat fatalities in Florida to at least 37 over the past decade — double the number federal regulators had tallied during the same period. Employers are supposed to notify the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which oversees worker safety, about employee deaths within hours. OSHA has fined six businesses in the state after discovering they didn’t follow the rule when workers died from heat. The Times identified 19 additional heat-related deaths kept from the agency.... The Times found that Florida companies have failed to report the vast majority of heat fatalities as required.... The vast majority were people of color. At least half were immigrants....
"Florida’s ban on local governments adopting heat regulations drew national attention and criticism with nearly 90 environmental, faith-based and labor groups writing to Gov. Ron DeSantis asking him to veto the legislation before he signed it." MB: DeSantis signed the bill. Of course.
Drones Over New Jersey, New York, Maryland. Angie Hernandez, et al., of the Washington Post: "On Monday, Gov. Phil Murphy (D) attempted to soothe worries that the mysterious drones flying in New Jersey airspace posed a threat to public safety. But growing concern — and additional sightings — moved Murphy to write to President Joe Biden on Thursday, emphasizing the need for more federal resources.... The New Jersey State Police have received reports of drones since Nov. 18, Murphy wrote. The sightings have been spotted near homes, businesses, military research facilities and ... Donald Trump’s golf course in Bedminster. Federal investigators said they don’t have answers yet but added they don’t believe the drones pose a public threat.... The Federal Aviation Administration has imposed drone flight restrictions near Bedminster and Picatinny while authorities investigate.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said in a statement Saturday that she was also requesting that the Biden administration surge federal law enforcement to her state after the runways at Stewart Airfield, about 70 miles north of New York City, were shut down on Friday night for about one hour 'due to drone activity in the airspace.' Earlier this week, the Bowie Police Department in Prince George’s County[, Maryland] began receiving calls from community members about drone sightings and the calls have continued
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Syria. The Washington Post's live updates of developments Sunday in Syria are here: "U.S. officials have been in direct contact with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Syria’s new Islamist leaders, hoping to encourage the rebel group that deposed President Bashar al-Assad to steer the transition to a government representing all Syrians. Assad’s sudden ouster a week ago prompted celebrations across Syria, upending half a century of authoritarian rule. But Western officials worry that a peaceful transition of power is not assured in a country wracked by years of civil war. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was in the Middle East for talks with regional officials, said Saturday that Washington is urging Syria’s interim leaders to adopt a set of governing principles that respect human rights and spurn extremism."
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Reader Comments (10)
Sunday Sermon No. __?__
PENNYWISE?
To me, Trump’s appointment of Elon Musk and Victor Ramaswamy to lead an effort to promote government efficiency smacks of the absurd. After all, both billionaires have the way the federal government functions to thank for their fortunes.
Simply put, Musk’s vast wealth would not exist without government grants, contracts and regulations.
A South African immigrant, Musk began his life in the United States on a student visa, but he never attended school in the United States (thestanforddaily.com). He remained here illegally while he began his business career. Tesla, which has provided most of his unimaginable fortune, would not exist without an initial $465 million government low interest loan. Tesla has also benefited indirectly from the tax incentives offered to EV buyers and directly from the sale of government regulatory credits to vehicle manufacturers who do not meet their government’s fuel efficiency standards. The sale of those regulatory credits here and abroad has netted Tesla over nine billion dollars over the years, accounting for nearly half of the company’s profits (insideevnews.com). Additionally, during its profitable years Tesla has frequently paid its executives, including Musk, more than it has paid in taxes (investor.com). Musk’s multi-million-dollar Space X government contracts also haven’t hurt his bottom line.
The federal government has certainly been efficient—for Musk.
In a different way, the same is true for Victor Ramaswamy, the other member of Trump’s government efficiency duo. After degrees from Harvard and Yale, Ramaswamy began his business career as a partner in a hedge fund, where he took advantage of the hedge fund tax loophole which limited his tax rate to 23 percent on his earnings instead of the near 40 percent others in his income bracket would pay. In 2014 he founded Roivant Services, a biotech firm he incorporated in the tax haven of Bermuda. Based on empty promises of a miracle Alzheimer’s drug, the company’s value quickly inflated to over three billion dollars before its value collapsed. The company never made a profit, but by selling some of his company’s stock when its price was high, Ramaswamy made an estimated $100 million in capital gains (wikipedia.org).
Since its tax policies already favor the wealthy, and the short-staffed Securities and Exchange Commission never examined Ramaswamy’s questionable timing of some of his major stock purchases and sales (forbes.com; newsweek.com), it’s hard to see why Ramaswamy would complain about government inefficiency.
So, what is Trump’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) going to look at? We can bet it will not be inefficiencies in tax collection or government oversight of business practices. Nor will it be anything that might get in the way of private profit.
In their “Wall Street Journal” op-ed. Musk and Ramaswamy took a few swings at the subject, saying they would recommend eliminating The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, certain international organizations and Planned Parenthood. They went on to say they would target programs and agencies whose Congressional spending authorization has expired. Because Veterans’ health care, by far the largest of those, currently serves 9.1 million, it will likely remain immune. But other currently unauthorized programs and agencies such as investment in opioid treatment, housing assistance, the State Department, and some smaller programs like Head Start, NASA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) may be on the chopping block (cbsnews.com).
I’ll take a wild guess. As long as Musk has contracts with NASA, NASA will remain safe, but NOAA, which monitors climate change and the global warming which Trump has called a “scam,” (nytimes.com) could well get the inefficiency axe.
DOGE also plans to take aim at federal employees, eliminating the option of telecommuting, hoping that many of the 2.3 million private federal employees will just quit. How such a plan would work out, how greatly it would curtail government services, and how much it would save the government are open questions. As it is, federal employee wages are but four percent of the total budget (edition.cnn.com)
Like many things, inefficiency will be identified by the eye of the beholder.
Benjamin Franklin, one of our nation’s Founding Fathers, praised the virtue of thrift when he wrote “a penny saved is a penny earned.” But equally pertinent to Trump’s government efficiency enterprise is Robert Burton’s (1577-1640) “pennywise and pound foolish” adage, which warns that short-term savings often entail long-term costs.
The questions I’d ask of Misters Musk and Ramaswamy are: Whose pennies are you trying to save, yours or someone else’s? And how much will those “savings” cost the nation, its lands, and most of its citizens?
We’ll soon see.
@Ken Winkes: Very well-put. And informative. I did not know, for instance, that employee salaries represented only 4 percent of the federal budget. Voters need to know that.
This is exactly the kind of thing the dopes out there in the hinterland need to read. So to the dopes in your particular hinterland: read on!
12 days of Trump
Boys Club
"No women will lead House committees for first time in 2 decades
The committees will be dominated by white men when the new Congress is seated."
digby points out that there is a Mar a lago magazine filled with ads.
"At the end of the evening, Mr. Trump gave Mr. Trudeau a copy of Mar-a-Lago’s magazine, which included details about membership, as well as ads for plastic surgery and other products and services, according to the Canadian official, who was not authorized to speak with the press and asked for anonymity."
Based on the many photos taken of ladies going down to visit the Orange Turd they know who they are advertising too.
The Youth
Digby: "I’ve been wondering about the problem of young people growing up in a time when Donald Trump is ubiquitous and seen as a normal political leader. The youngest voters were only 6 years old the last time we had a presidential election in which he wasn’t the candidate.
She also talks about a new casual racism and sexism among her peers. There’s no defense for such behavior, of course. But can we be surprised by it? Look at the leadership of the winning political party. Look at the voters who support them. Look at all these important media figures and business leaders rushing to cater to Donald Trump, the most openly crude person to ever win the presidency, ushering in a whole new era of hate and bigotry into our politics. Why would kids not think this isn’t acceptable in our society, celebrated, even? It clearly is!
We had the chance to repudiate this grotesque public behavior and we failed. So now we will have 12 straight years of it. If we are to assume that most people become slightly politically sentient at about 12, that means when Trump finally ends his tenure (if he does) nobody in this country under the age of 24 will have ever been aware of a world in which the president and his followers behaved any differently."
Marie: Yes, voters need to know that. But if past is prologue, such facts will get lost in the wind. Voters in the past have not found such facts useful or interesting, and today would probably find it impossible to pick out as a signal among all the noise of BS flooding the zone.
Back in the early '90s the new Clinton/Gore admin tried to "Reinvent Government", seeking "best practices", "thinking outside the box", outsourcing, etc. There was lots of bizbabble, and in part the effort degenerated into OMB and VP Gore demanding across the board cuts in agencies' staff and funds. But inside most agencies, initially, the teams assembled to effect "Reinvention" were diligent and sincere. Many on those teams had been through prior iterations (Graham-Rudman-Hollings during Reagan; Zero Base Budgeting during Carter; Whip Inflation Now with Ford; etc.). Those agency people therefore knew the tricks and legerdemain that would keep OMB and Congress at bay while at the same time protecting critical functions. They generally did not use those tricks in the effort.
But the Clinton/Gore goal seemed at first to be a real try to reorder assets and priorities to create better government.
The Department of State had a particular challenge in that effort: since the US had "won the Cold War" and US hegemony was assured by our military capability (Desert Storm "proved" that armor and smart weapons made diplomacy less useful), the budgeteers' knives were out for the Department of State. In dealing with this pressure, State's "Reinvention Team" developed a value proposition that showed that a dollar spent on diplomacy saved many dollars of military operational costs, and earned many dollars of commercial-GDP gain. The analysis was honest and thorough, with many many facts about the square of the hypotenuse. But only three factoids resonated with the congressional appropriations staffs at the time:
1. The US then spent more on potato chips each year than on the entire FT 150 Appropriation (which covers ALL foreign expenditures, including aid to foreign countries.) This compared to survey data which indicated that the US voter on average thought that 20-25% of the federal budget is "giveaways to foreign countries."
2. US military services' marching bands have more members than the entire US Foreign Service payroll, domestic and overseas.
3. There are more people on USG-funded payroll at Fort Liberty (then Fort Bragg) than the entire global payroll of the Department of State.
In the end, OMB just wanted staff cuts and budget limits, and State was cut arbitrarily. Good analysis, good management and honest evaluation was not a winner. It was pretty clear that the average voter thought of diplomacy as la di da striped pants cookie pushers swanning around at soirees at taxpayer expense. Net investment in people and systems at State was nonexistent for the rest of the 90s.
Until 1998. And then 2001. When terrorists blew up Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, State had the receipts of years of budget requests for security and operational investments that had been denied by OMB and Congress. State made it clear that the blame game would show individual, named Hill persons and OMB persons in budget decisions, denying persistent requests for years. The money started to flow only after the "War on Terror" raised the fear factor of those whose personal asses were not physically on the line. The boogedy-boogedy of waving the bloody shirt allowed for the hiring and investment that reams of good analysis did not produce.
That's a long story. The whole story is even longer. But the point is: NONE OF THIS STUFF registers with voters until it involves fear and blame. And I haven't checked, but suspect that we still spend more on potato chips each year than on the entire foreign affairs budget. $4.79 for a 7.75 ounce bag of Utz Ripples chips?? Holy Spud, what's wrong with this country??!!
In my 35 years with the postal service there has never been a time without privatization lurking in the background. The one constant has always been to peel off the profitable services and leave the core of public delivery alone.
Today you have parcel delivery services, UPS, Amazon, who use the USPS for the "final mile" of their service. With the growth of shop by internet, this is where the profit is. Privatizing that would make a lot of money for some politically well connected businesses. It would also reduce our postal service to a third world level. Handling By Mail Voting would be impossible for what would be left of the USPS. But that would be a plus in the eyes of GOP/MAGA.
Here's another thought about NOAA. It's the parent organization for the National Hurricane Center. With the storms becoming more frequent and stronger it doesn't seem efficient to go back to the 1950s "Hurricane Hunters".
The Drones and Conspiracies
"People are all over the internet with videos of what are obviously airplanes shrieking about drones the size of SUVs. It’s possible that there’s something going on with drones in New Jersey but with Fox News screeching about an “Iranian mothership” launching them off the Jersey shore we really have reached full Idiocracy. ABC News broadcast about a mysterious orb [it is Venus] in the sky."