The Conversation -- February 10, 2025
Mattathias Schwartz of the New York Times: "A federal judge on Monday said the White House has defied his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants, marking the first time a judge has expressly declared that the Trump White House was disobeying a judicial mandate. The ruling by Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island federal court ordered Trump administration officials to comply with what he called 'the plain text' of an edict he issued last month. Judge McConnell's ruling marked a step toward what could quickly evolve into a high-stakes showdown between the executive and judicial branches, a day after a social media post by Vice President JD Vance claimed that judges 'aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power,' elevating the chance that the White House could provoke a constitutional crisis...."
"On Friday, 22 Democratic attorneys general went to Judge McConnell to accuse the White House of failing to comply with his earlier order. The Justice Department responded in a filing on Sunday that money for clean energy projects as well as transportation infrastructure allocated to states by the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure bill was exempt from the initial order, because it had been paused under a different memo than the one that prompted the lawsuit. Judge McConnell's ruling on Monday explicitly rejected that argument."
Andy Borowitz of the Borowitz Report: "Donald J. Trump tightened his grip on the American arts scene on Monday by naming himself principal ballerina of the Kennedy Center Ballet. Announcing a purge of the company's ballerinas, Trump declared on Truth Social, 'I will soon be announcing a new roster of ballerinas, with an amazing principal ballerina, DONALD J. TRUMP.' He said he was 'disgusted' to discover that all of the company's current ballerinas were women, a state of affairs that he blamed on DEI." See also Akhilleus' commentary in today's thread.
Claire Moses & Shawn McCreesh of the New York Times: Donald "Trump said the nearly two million Palestinians that he wants to displace from the Gaza Strip would not be allowed to return to the territory under his hypothetical plan to rebuild it. In a clip from a Fox News interview scheduled to air on Monday, Mr. Trump elaborated on his recent proposal for an American-led takeover of Gaza. Asked if Palestinians who would be removed from the territory while it is cleared would have the right to eventually return to their homeland, he said: 'No, they wouldn't. Because they're going to have much better housing -- in other words, I'm talking about building a permanent place for them.'"
Travis Gettys of the Raw Story: "Four young staffers working under Elon Musk gained access to highly sensitive personal data held by a consumer protection agency before shutting it down. White House budget director Russell Vought ordered wider access to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau materials by staffers working for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency over the weekend before agency chief operating officer Adam Martinez ordered all its employees to stay home for the week, reported Bloomberg News.... 'Just nine days before his DOGE team visited CFPB, Musk's X ... announced that it had struck a deal with Visa to process peer-to-peer payments,' Bloomberg reported. 'Musk has publicly mused about expanding into payment-services since he first took control of X in 2022. Entering that business could bring CFPB oversight under rules the agency finalized in November. The records DOGE can now access would include sensitive and potentially competitive information.'" ~~~
~~~ Nothing to see here, people. Musk is self-policing."
Hurubie Meko of the New York Times: "Lawyers for the Trump administration argued late Sunday that a court order blocking Elon Musk's aides from entering the Treasury Department's payment and data systems impinged on the president's absolute powers over the executive branch, which they argued the courts could not usurp. The filing by the administration came in response to a lawsuit filed Friday night by 19 attorneys general, led by New York's Letitia Jame, who had won a temporary pause on Saturday. The lawsuit said the Trum administration's policy of allowing appointees and 'special government employees' access to these systems, which contain sensitive information such as bank details and social security numbers, was unlawful. Members of Mr. Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which is not actually a department, have been combing through the databases to find expenditures to cut. The lawsuit says the initiative challenges the Constitution's separation of powers, under which Congress determines government spending."
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "There is no universally accepted definition of a constitutional crisis, but legal scholars agree about some of its characteristics. It is generally the product of presidential defiance of laws and judicial rulings. It is not binary: It is a slope, not a switch. It can be cumulative, and once one starts, it can get much worse. 'We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now,' [Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley] said on Friday. 'There have been so many unconstitutional and illegal actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency. We never have seen anything like this.' His ticked off examples of what he called President Trump's lawless conduct: revoking birthright citizenship, freezing federal spending, shutting down an agency, removing leaders of other agencies, firing government employees subject to civil service protections and threatening to deport people based on their political views." Other law professors Liptak cites agree. And Liptak reminds us, "Mr. Trump has already disregarded one Supreme Court decision, its ruling last month upholding a federal law, passed by lopsided bipartisan majorities, requiring TikTok to be sold or banned." ~~~
~~~ Jonathan Chait of the Atlantic: "The United States is sleepwalking into a constitutional crisis. Not only has the Trump administration seized for itself extraconstitutional powers, but yesterday, it raised the specter that, should the courts apply the text of the Constitution and negate its plans, it will simply ignore them.... What makes ... [Trump's demands to ignore Constitutional Congressional prerogatives] so astonishing is that Trump could persuade Congress, which he commands in personality-cult style, to follow his demands. Republicans presently control both houses of Congress, and any agency that Congress established, it can also cut or eliminate. Yet Trump refuses to even try to pass his plan democratically. And ... he is now threatening to ignore [courts,] too.... Given his party's near-total acquiescence in every previous step toward authoritarianism, perhaps Trump would not have to be crazy to take the next one.... The crisis lies not in the structure of government so much as in the character of the party that runs it, which refuses to accept the idea that its defeat is ever legitimate or that its power has any limits." Thank you to laura h. for this gift link. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Because Trump is at least going through the motions of addressing court orders, I suppose we still are in the "constitutional crisis" mode. But we're awfully close to an autogolpe or self-coup, and we are slouching toward Masada primarily because Congressional Republicans are willing to jump off a cliff when Trump says "jump." It is one thing that many of them agree with Trump's cruel, harmful policies. But it is quite another to let him get away with setting the policies unilaterally. Members of Congress have a right to be stupid, but they have a Constitutional duty to stand up to the president* when he usurps their Constitutional powers. Update: Here's someone who sees the handwriting on the wall: ~~~
~~~ Lisa Needham of Public Notice: "While Trump and his henchmen deconstruct the administrative state, his lawyers are embracing the logic of dictatorship. The core argument emerging in their legal filings and executive orders -- one without support anywhere in the Constitution or the law -- is that simply by being elected, Trump has the power to do whatever he wants.... When executive orders are challenged in court, government attorneys typically point to the underlying laws that give the president the authority to issue the order. Trump seems to have dispensed with that requirement, however.... The administration's stance appears to literally be that federal laws are irrelevant in the face of Trump's wishes and the courts can't stop him. If Congress and the judiciary no longer check or balance the executive branch, no separation of powers is left.... That's tearing democracy down to the studs and rebuilding something entirely different and much worse in its place.... This sounds a lot like dictatorship, and a despotic one at that."
Dean Obeidallah on Substack: "If you just watched corporate news..., you would think Donald Trump is all powerful, all knowing and 'all' just about everything. They are breathlessly covering Trump wall to wall and by doing so are by design trying to make him appear omnipotent, that 'resistance is futile' and that he is winning in ways never seen before. Why? Simple, the corporate media executives want the tax cuts, less regulations and freedom to merge their companies as Trump has promised them. But back in the real world, not only are we finally seeing organized resistance by a growing number of Democratic leaders, we are also seeing Trump losing over and over in the courts this week -- with even a Trump appointed judge ruling against him. Those standing up to Trump deserve far more coverage than the corrupt corporate media is providing them." Obeidallah highlights Democratic members of Congress, grassroots organizations, judges & the people and organizations who are bringing suits against the Trump administration. Thanks to RAS for the link. MB: Obeidallah's assessment of the media coverage could explain why the majority of Americans think Trump is doing a great job (CBS poll linked below).~~~
~~~ Steve M. has some more suggestions as to steps that can be taken to stop/ridicule/diminish Trump, Musk & do-nothing Congressional Republicans. Thanks to RAS for the link. ~~~
~~~ Also from Steve M.: Plutocrats to the Rescue! "I suspect that the people with the most power to stop Trump are the plutocrats.... They thought electing a Republican president would let them pursue unlimited mergers and other deals, but that's not the case[.]... Right now, the markets are shrugging all this off. But the plutocrats are probably the only people who scare Trump, and they don't seem happy. Their disgruntlement, and the disgruntlement of ordinary consumers, might be the only thing that can save us if all the other guardrails are gone."
Daniel Wu, et al., of the Washington Post: "Farmers report missing millions of dollars of funding they were promised by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, despite promises from the Trump administration that a federal funding freeze would not apply to projects directly benefiting individuals. On his first day in office..., Donald Trump ordered the USDA to freeze funds for several programs designated by President Joe Biden's signature clean-energy and health-care law, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.... Farmers who signed contracts with the USDA under those programs paid up front to build fencing, plant new crops and install renewable energy systems with guarantees that the federal government would issue grants and loan guarantees to cover at least part of their costs. Now, with that money frozen, they're on the hook.... The USDA has also halted funding for other programs, including scientific research grants in agriculture and producing climate-smart crops.... [This is] another blow to farmers who are also facing threats of tariffs and freezes to foreign-aid spending that involved food purchased from American producers." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Surely many of these farmers are Trump voters. But, hey, if Trump isn't going to run for re-election he doesn't need them anymore, does he? I guess he'd just call them suckers & losers if he ever thought for one second about stiffing them.
Jonathan Edwards of the Washington Post: A young Wisconsin man died of an asthma attack when his pharmacist told him his insurer would no longer cover the cost of his inhalers, so he'd have to pay $539 for a three-months supply instead of the $67 he'd been paying. His parents are suing both the insurer -- a subsidiary of United Health Group -- and the pharmacy -- Walgreen's -- for not informing the man of alternative medicines the insurer would cover. MB: They really don't care, do they? That Walgreen's pharmacy sounds just as good as my CVS. P.S. Stick an "alleged" in front of all this.
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Noah Millman, in a New York Times op-ed, argues that the U.S. is in its fourth Constitutional revolution. The first was the Constitutional Convention itself, which was called to merely revise the Articles of Confederation. The second was the body of Reconstruction Amendments that followed the Civil War. The third was the New Deal that expanded the government's role in the economy and established the administrative state. But these earlier revolutions, unlike Trump's, "did not represent fundamental ruptures in the nature and balance of the Constitution that could be enacted only by violating pre-existing norms and processes.... Trump has already taken numerous steps to seize direct control of the federal bureaucracy in ways that violate norms of independence.... The central justification for all of these moves is the view that the American constitutional order has become sclerotic." Millman calls Trump's effort "Caesarian in character" and observes that "a constitutional Caesarism is a contradiction in terms."
David Goldman & Chris Isidore of CNN: "... Donald Trump, speaking to reporters on Air Force One Sunday, said he planned on announcing a 25% tariff on all steel and aluminum imports into the United States Monday. 'We'll also be announcing steel tariffs on Monday,' he said, adding, 'any steel coming into the United States is going to have a 25% tariff.... Aluminum, too.'... Trump also said he planned to hold a separate news conference Tuesday or Wednesday to announce massive new reciprocal tariffs, which could match other countries' tariffs on US goods dollar-for-dollar.... He did not provide many details about how expansive the new tariffs would be or when they may go into effect. It's not clear if the new steel and aluminum tariffs will be on top of the tariffs already in place on exports from countries like China." (Also linked yesterday.) The New York Times story is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: I'm no economist, but all other things being equal, if you raise the price of raw materials U.S. manufacturers need to make products, then those same products manufactured abroad from foreign-produced raw materials can be made and sold cheaper to U.S. customers. Let's say it costs $400 to make a stove anywhere in the world. Then the U.S. imposes tariffs on the raw material needed to make the stove, so that it costs $500 to make a stove in the U.S. But it still costs only $400 to make the stove everywhere else. So foreign manufacturers can afford to sell their $400-cost stoves to Americans for less than American manufacturers can offer their $500-cost stoves for sale.
Josh Marshall of TPM: "I suspect this will just end up being something Old Man Trump said on a plane and we won't hear about it again.... On Air Force One today en route to the Super Bowl, Trump told reporters that DOGE analysts (whatever that means) had found 'irregularities' in U.S. treasuries and that the U.S. may not be obligated to pay some of them. 'Maybe we have less debt than we thought,' he said. Needless to say, this is quite literally violating the express language of the 14th Amendment which says: 'The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.' If financial markets actually thought Trump was serious about this, that he would follow through on this, they'd probably go completely haywire.... Trump seems to be basing this on some analysis from the DOGE boys.... Imagine thinking that by downloading a ton of data and having a few days to analyze it you could make the determination that a significant amount of the U.S. national debt wasn't real and didn't have to be paid. It's ... worth noting how nuts that is." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Do note that the most favorable thing a reasonable person can say about POTUS* and his ideas is that he doesn't know what he's talking about and his remarks are so addled we -- and he -- can forget about them.
Alex Gangitano of the Hill: Donald "Trump on Sunday announced that he asked the Treasury Department to stop producing pennies, calling the one cent coin wasteful. He said in a Truth Social post that he told Treasury Secretary< Scott Bessent to end minting the small-value coins with President Abraham Lincoln's image on them.... The cost of making a penny was nearly 3.7 cents in Fiscal Year 2024 and the coin has cost above face value to make for 19 consecutive fiscal years, according to the U.S. Mint's annual report. Pennies were made of copper before 1962 and are currently made majority of zinc but with copper plating. Lincoln has been on the penny since 1909 and the penny was the first coin made by the U.S. Mint, according to the Treasury Department.... Elon Musk, who has been tasked by Trump with cutting waste in the U.S., targeted the penny in a post on X last month." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: I bet Trump can't stand the idea of honoring a person popularly known as "Honest Abe" and the president who "freed the slaves." (It was actually the Thirteenth Amendment that "freed the slaves,"; Lincoln actively supported it.) Oh, and this: ~~~
~~~ Yan Zhuang Erica Green of the New York Times: "It is unclear whether Mr. Trump has the power to do this. It is Congress, not the Treasury or the Federal Reserve, that authorizes the manufacture of the nation's coins, according to the U.S. Mint.... Countries around the world have eliminated their smallest-denomination coins in recent decades. In 2012, Canada stopped producing pennies, describing them as essentially a waste of time and space and arguing that the move would save millions of dollars a year. Since then, cash transactions have been rounded to the nearest nickel, after federal and provincial sales taxes are added."
The Emperor Trump. Joe DePaolo of Mediaite: "... Donald Trump told the largest American television audience of the year that he plans to pursue the annexation of Canada as the nation's 51st state. In an interview on the Super Bowl LIX pregame show on Fox, Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked Trump about recorded comments in a private meeting made by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau -- in which Trudeau claimed the United States is serious about 'absorbing' Canada.... 'Is it a real thing?' Baier asked Trump. 'Yeah, it is,' Trump replied. [']I think Canada would be much better off being a 51st state. Because we lose $200 billion a year with Canada. And I'm not going to let that happen too much. Why are we paying $200 billion a year essentially in subsidy to Canada? Now if they are a 51st state, I don't mind doing it.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Hail, Caesar! Al Jazeera: "... Donald Trump has reiterated his controversial proposal to take control of Gaza, saying he is committed to 'buying and owning' the war-ravaged enclave. Speaking to reporters on board Air Force One on Sunday, Trump said Gaza should be thought of as a 'big real estate site' and other countries in the Middle East could be tasked with handling its redevelopment. 'As far as us rebuilding it, we may give it to other states in the Middle East to build sections of it; other people may do it, through our auspices,' Trump said while en route to New Orleans to attend the Super Bowl. 'But we're committed to owning it, taking it, and making sure that Hamas doesn't move back. There's nothing to move back into. The place is a demolition site.' Trump also claimed that displaced Palestinians would prefer not to return to Gaza despite his proposal prompting backlash from Palestinian representatives and much of the international community."
~~~ BUT perhaps what we're really seeing is an incredible, shrinking empire, courtesy of Presidents* Musk & Trump. ~~~
~~~ The Rise & Fall of the Pax Americana. Paul Krugman: "Elon Musk -- with Donald Trump's acquiescence, but clearly Musk was calling the shots -- has effectively destroyed USAID, the aid agency that was, aside from its humanitarian role, a major pillar of US foreign policy. This move was clearly illegal, and a court has already put a hold on some of Musk's actions. But it may already be too late... By furloughing the agency's employees, ordering those working abroad to come home and canceling crucial programs and grants, the Musk/Trump administration undermined decades' worth of relationship-building.... USAID is just the most extreme example of how the Musk/Trump administration is sabotaging the American Empire. For yes, America is or was an imperial power, although in a different way from most past empires -- less reliant on force, more reliant on good will and trust. What Musk and Trump have done is to destroy much of the basis for U.S. influence, leaving America far weaker than it was just a few weeks ago." Krugman goes on to argue how damaging Trump tariff threats are, not to mention his threats to take over Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal (and now Gaza), and his failure to honor international agreements. "All of this makes us distrusted and friendless. It also makes us weak, because America needs allies even more now than it did during the Cold War."
Vance Hints at Self-Coup d'État. Charlie Savage & Minho Kim of the New York Times: "Vice President JD Vance declared on Sunday that 'judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power,' delivering a warning shot to the federal judiciary in the face of court rulings that have, for now, stymied aspects of ... [Donald] Trump's agenda. The statement, issued on social media, came as federal judges have temporarily barred a slew of Trump administration actions from taking effect.... Mr. Vance, a 2013 graduate of Yale Law School, has repeatedly argued in recent years that presidents like Mr. Trump can and should ignore court orders that they say infringe on their rightful executive powers. While his post did not go that far, it carried greater significance given that he is now vice president. The post may also offer a window on the administration's thinking toward the orders against it as Mr. Trump has openly violated numerous statutes.... It also raised the question of whether the administration would stop abiding by rulings if it deemed them to be illegitimately impeding his agenda....
"Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday as he went to New Orleans for the Super Bowl, Mr. Trump said the judge [who temporarily prohibited DOGE personnel from accessing the Treasury Department's payroll systems] had overreached, calling the Treasury ruling a 'disgrace.' But he appeared to be contemplating appeals, saying the court case 'had a long way to go.' Mr. Trump added: 'No judge should, frankly, be allowed to make that kind of a decision.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Jill Colvin of the AP: "Over the past 24 hours, officials ranging from billionaire Elon Musk to Vice President JD Vance have not only criticized a federal judge's decision early Saturday that blocks
~~~ Tara Suter of the Hill: "Tech billionaire Elon Musk called for the annual firing of judges following an early Saturday decision from a judge stating that the Treasury Department should bar access to its payment systems to anyone besides 'civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties.' 'I'd like to propose that the worst 1% of appointed judges, as determined by elected bodies, be fired every year. This will weed out the most corrupt and least competent,' the tech mogul said in a post on his social platform X." MB: It's great Musk is being so reasonable. One would have thought he would demand the right to fire federal judges himself.
Former Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, Jacob Lew & Janet Yellen in a New York Times op-ed: "Regrettably, recent reporting gives substantial cause for concern that ... efforts ... to unlawfully undermine the nation's financial commitments ... are underway today.... While significant data privacy, cybersecurity and national security threats are gravely concerning, the constitutional issues are perhaps even more alarming.... A key component of the rule of law is the executive branch's commitment to respect Congress's power of the purse.... The role of the Treasury Department -- and of the executive branch more broadly -- is not to make determinations about which promises of federal funding made by Congress it will keep, and which it will not.... Any hint of the selective suspension of congressionally authorized payments will be a breach of trust and ultimately, a form of default. And our credibility, once lost, will prove difficult to regain."
Stacy Cowley of the New York Times: Since 2011 when it was created, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau "has clawed back $21 billion for consumers. It slashed overdraft fees, reformed the student loan servicing market, transformed mortgage lending rules and forced banks and money transmitters to compensate fraud victims.... [Donald] Trump on Friday appointed Russell Vought, who was confirmed a day earlier to lead the Office of Management and Budget, as the agency's acting director.... Mr. Vought was an author of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for upending the federal government that called for ... abolishing the consumer bureau. In less than 36 hours, Mr. Vought threw the agency into chaos. On Saturday, he ordered the bureau's 1,700 employees to stop nearly all their work and announced plans to cut off the agency's funding. Then on Sunday, he closed the bureau's headquarters for the coming week. Workers who tried to retrieve their laptops from the office were turned away, employees said."
Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "A federal judge barred the U.S. government on Sunday from sending three detained Venezuelan men to the Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, according to a lawyer for the migrants. Lawyers for the men, who are detained at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in New Mexico, asked the court on Sunday evening for a temporary restraining order, opening the first legal front against the Trump administration's new policy of sending undocumented migrants to Guantánamo. Within an hour of the filing, which came at the start of the Super Bowl, Judge Kenneth J. Gonzales of the Federal District Court for New Mexico, convened a hearing by videoconference and verbally granted the restraining order, said Baher Azmy ... of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is helping represent the migrants."
Marie: This next story is more shocking than you might think and possibly more dangerous that anybody knows: ~~~
~~~ Judd Legum & Rebecca Crosby of Popular Information: "Today, the National Security Agency (NSA) is planning a 'Big Delete' of websites and internal network content that contain any of 27 banned words, including 'privilege,' 'bias,' and 'inclusion.' The 'Big Delete,' according to an NSA source and internal correspondence..., is creating unintended consequences. Although the websites and other content are purportedly being deleted to comply with ... [Donald] Trump's executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion, or 'DEI,' the dragnet is taking down 'mission-related' work.... The memo acknowledges that the list includes many terms that are used by the NSA in contexts that have nothing to do with DEI.... The NSA is trying to identify mission-related sites before the "Big Delete" is executed but appears to lack the personnel to do so."~~~
~~~ Marie: As we already know, Trump's executive order makes these kinds of deletions a problem all across the federal government. Legum & Crosby note that "An analysis by the Washington Post of 8,000 federal web pages "found 662 examples of deletions and additions" since Trump took office." Now, take a look at Akhilleus' commentary below. Akhilleus was responding to several comments in yesterday's thread about films and other art forms that address Nazism and totalitarianism. Then look at those videos (you don't have to watch the whole videos) in the right-hand column about the origins of the Moonwalk. What Akhilleus' commentary and those Moonwalk videos show is that even when we think a particular film scene or dance move is original or unique, it ain't so. If there is genius, it comes in new ways to synthesizing, coordinating and adapting other peoples' ideas. And if the need to build on other peoples' work is true of brilliant artists, it is most certainly true of government bureaucrats. When ideas have been presented and tested and approved and recorded in government documents, they are available sources for new, perhaps innovative, work that may make us safer or healthier or more financially secure. If we throw out thousands of pages (of taxpayer-funded research) because the pages contain, say, the word "privilege," all that work is lost. Forever.
Marie: So all of the stories and opinion pieces linked above and over the past weeks turn out to be secret, underground information shared among only a minority of Americans. ~~~
~~~ Anthony Salvanto, et al., of CBS News: "With most describing him as 'tough,' 'energetic,' 'focused' and 'effective' -- and as doing what he'd promised during his campaign --... [Donald] Trump has started his term with net positive marks from Americans overall. Many say he's doing more than they expected -- and of those who say this, most like what they see.... His deportation policy finds majority approval overall -- just as most voters said they wanted during the campaign -- and that extends to sending troops to the border, too." Overall, 53% of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing and 47% disapprove."
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