Thugs Gang Up on the Little Guy, Because That's What They Do

 

The Stupidity. The Hurtful Stupidity

 

"The Trump administration on Thursday informed hundreds of probationary employees responsible for producing critical weather forecasts, maintaining radar systems, gathering data from satellites and monitoring key commercial fisheries that they were fired." (Scott Dance, WashPost) 

800 souls, doing vital jobs connected to the health and safety of millions of citizens.

The targeted agencies: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service. The jobs named above are actually crucial for tornado season, already underway and predicted to be fierce, and we're only three measly months before the official start of hurricane season.

That's Trump 2.0 for you, stupid in its haste to pose as a showboating strongman, playing to the gullible plebs. 

The real power (and coincidental hit-man), Elon Musk, could give a giant fuck. He has his own weather people.

The Age of (Donald Jethro) Trump

 

Can You Define Irony?

 

Democrats became associated with something that most of us bristle against instinctually ["the status quo"]. American society has always been a society in motion, either progressing or regressing but always moving. The status quo is antithetical to movement. Yet the Democratic Party found itself in an odd position: the party of precisely that — the status quo. The party of the system. The party of institutions (that people didn’t particularly like). The party of the establishment. And, yes, the party of privilege.

--Shadi Hamid

There's truth in that. Because Trump was constantly belittling any version of the US without him ("MAGA! Because this immigrant-sorry nation has become just another shithole country, and only Trump can set it right!"), Democrats felt "forced to insist that America was already great." Defensiveness is never a good look. (Like what we're seeing from Republican House members currently facing stirred-up constituents. Not a good look.)

I'm old. I'm a fan of irony. If Hamid is correct, then the world since I entered political activism (yes, it was 1968) has turned on its head. Because I was the kind of Democrat that Eugene McCarthy represented. A Democrat for me was a rule-breaker, a stile-jumper, an authority sass, a despiser of any Establishment, an idealistic warrior for equal rights to the point of exposing your noggin to a baton.

How did we get here, if Hamid is right? "The system" Democrats defend has developed mechanisms to protect old age from pauperism, to improve the health of every person who can't otherwise afford doctors, to guard the rights of consumers, of depositors, of signers of contracts, of citizens. I shouldn't want to defend all of that (and more -- much more)? What's not worth defending? Isn't it worth exposing your noggin to a baton?

Comedy Is Hard and Totally Necessary in the Age of Trump

 

Todd Stiefel, mocking Jefferson Griffin
at the NC Supreme Court

Todd Stiefel bears watching -- and applauding. He's got the money to be a one-man satiric floorshow mocking the unsymmetric conservative personalities that have recently characterized the standard-bearers for the North Carolina Republican Party. Stiefel started his own political action committee (PAC) -- Americans for Prosparody -- and in the 2024 campaigns he uploaded a 14-fingered, AI-generated Mark Robinson to the social media and mass media airwaves, a somewhat unnerving simulacrum of Robinson speaking in a stilted mechanical voice some of the direct quotes that Mark Robinson was infamous for. The ad gave me the willies. 

Stiefel spent a reported $1 million on that project, which he could well afford because he's a millionaire.

His rather artless take-down of Robinson -- and the fact that Stiefel is a proud and pretty public atheist -- seems to have spooked Josh Stein, who was running against Robinson and who was probably going to beat Robinson anyway without the comedy stylings of Todd Stiefel, but Stein felt obliged to distance himself from the AI Robinson, afraid that the voters might think he approved of such fakery. Perish the thought! Stiefel's eleemosynary donations have been turned down by some non-profits in the Bible belt, so skittish are they to be associated with a crusading atheist (the last truly "untouchable" class among respectable do-gooders).

Stiefel scares some Democrats because Democrats are always prepared to be scared of something, anything, that threatens to jump the ruts and make new tracks through the mud. Stiefel as an independent voter might lean toward a more libertarian contempt for both sides in the "cesspool of American politics" (see the video below), but he was a major donor to both Stein and to the NC Democratic Party. He used to be a Republican but left the party when it went jihad on LGBTQ people. From a Chase Pellegrini de Paur profile of Stiefel published by IndyWeek:

"Stiefel says his family wasn’t strongly religious, but like many he went to college and started questioning the logic behind the faith. A Republican for his early adult life, he was surprised by what he saw as an outright disrespect toward atheists and an overall lack of compassion.

"For a decade, Stiefel has been especially focused on organizing and advocating for atheists. That work morphed into an education campaign against Christian nationalism, which found a perfect target in Robinson and his especially violent brand of political rhetoric."

Other Stiefel japes in 2024 included partnering "with a comedy team to ambush state superintendent candidate Michele Morrow [another favorite target of his] with printouts of her old tweets calling for Barack Obama to be executed." He hired a plane to fly a banner memorializing Morrow's "kill list" (Obama and other Democrats she wanted to execute on pay-for-view TV) over the state fair in Raleigh. While he was very recently trolling Jefferson Griffin outside the NC Supreme Court (photograph above), he hired a digital mobile billboard to cruise around the block with a photoshopped image of five Republican justices roasting marshmallows over burning boxes of ballots.

He's actually funniest when he's just being himself, as in his promotional video posted on the Americans for Prosparody website. He doesn't mince words, and who the hell doesn't love that!

Protesting Foxx and the Trump Admin in Boone, 2/21/25

 

Protest at Congresswoman Virginia Foxx's Boone office. Her staff locked the door and wouldn't let anyone in to voice an opinion.

If a Paper Tiger Roars in the Woods...

 

Some news outlets went a little giddy over the Senate video of Thom Tillis telling on Putin and pushing back hard against Trump's characterization of both Zelenskyy and Ukraine -- without ever uttering Trump's name. This led Morning Joe this morning:

CNN headlined "GOP lawmaker warns that Putin is a 'cancer' in fiery speech." 

But those of us in North Carolina know Thom Tillis better than that. Every time we think he's suddenly gotten a spine, it's all performative strutting, because the next minute he'll be bending the knee and toeing the line and drinking the Kool Aid. The fact that he occasionally speaks truth to power, as in that video above, doesn't mean he'll actually stand up. Talk is cheap. Also fairly safe, apparently. But you know Trump's gonna hear about this.

Rumplestiltskin Is Dragging the Allison Riggs Case

 

Lynn Bonner, for NCNewsline:

Chief Justice Paul Newby

The [Paul Newby] state Supreme Court has rejected a request to speed up the case Judge Jefferson Griffin brought against the state Board of Elections in his attempt to win a seat on the high court.

The State Board and Justice Allison Riggs wanted the case to go right from the trial court, where they won, to the Supreme Court, skipping the Appeals Court. Griffin opposed the move.

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the Board and Riggs’ request in a 4-2 vote.

What it's really about:

If the Appeals Court rules in Griffin’s favor, and the Supreme Court splits 3-3, the Appeals Court decision will stand. In a previous order, three of the Republican Supreme Court justices indicated they are open to Griffin’s arguments. [Republicans have an 11-4 numerical advantage on the NC Court of Appeals. The three Supremes who said they were "open" to Griffin -- Newby, Phil Berger Jr., and Tamara Barringer.]

If the Supreme Court had split 3-3 after agreeing to take the case directly from the trial court, the trial court’s decision in favor of Riggs and the Board would have stood.

Chief Justice Paul Newby is not anything if not a highly partisan, self-righteous, and spiteful ... lawyer. Parroted by two highly partisan associate justices, Baby Berger and Tamara. 

In her dissent, Associate Justice Anita Earls was as incisive and brilliant as she always is. She wrote that skipping the Appeals Court "would have been in keeping with past practice in other cases": 

Judge Riggs 

“There is strong justification for this Court to expeditiously address, with transparency, the significant issues in this case that go to the heart of what democracy requires under the state Constitution,” she wrote.

“Judge Jefferson Griffin’s opposition to the bypass petition begins by asserting that this Court should not hear this case because, as a Court of six members, we might split 3-3 leaving the lower court’s ruling as the final ruling in the case. In other words, he asks us not to hear the case because he might lose. Such outcome-determined reasoning has no place in a court committed to the rule of law.”

In a statement last night, Judge Riggs [who has recused herself from this case] said. “No matter how long this drags out, I will continue to defend our state and federal Constitutions and North Carolinians’ fundamental freedoms. As constitutional officers, judges must respect the will of voters. My commitment to upholding the rule of law is why voters elected me to keep my seat more than 3 months ago.”

Phil Berger Sends a Panicked Message to NC's Chief Justice

 

First reporter who got this out appears to have been Bryan Anderson (whose Anderson Alerts on Substack is required reading). 

Mr. Chief Justice

Looks like Phil Berger knows just how destructive to Republican rule, going forward, and to the entire North Carolina judicial system, how utterly destructive a Paul Newby Supreme Court ruling in Jefferson Griffin's favor would be, giving him that lusted-for seat on the Court in the most cynical way. So, speaking to the press two days ago, Phil Berger sent a message to our Rumplestiltskin Chief Justice: Don't do it, you dolt! Even though his comment singled out Jefferson Griffin and not Newby, any fool can see that Berger's real concern is the naked and crazy partisanship of the little man at the top of the Court who has already said publicly that he likes Griffin's chances.

In a rare public rebuke of a fellow Republican, GOP Senate leader Phil Berger on Tuesday suggested Griffin’s effort to remove voters over clerical issues was a bridge too far.

“The equities are with the voters there,” Berger told reporters on Tuesday. “I don’t think that they had a way of knowing that that was a deficiency as far as their registration is concerned."

Question remains: Will Newby get the message? Certainly, Jefferson Griffin has already shown he's not letting up, so it falls on the conservative super-majority on the NC Supremes to save the NCGOP from itself.

 

Sen. Tillis: Hooked Fish Flopping on the Riverbank

 

To recap the disgrace, Donald Jackoff Trump said in recent days that Ukraine is to blame for the start of the war. He reporters from his Mar-a-Lago estate that Ukrainian leaders “could have made a deal.” Yesterday, he sharpened his criticism, calling Zelenskyy a “dictator without elections.”

Enter Thom Tillis, timidly clearing his throat (according to the NYTimes):

Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, who recently returned from a trip to Kyiv where he and two other senators reaffirmed their support for Ukraine, balked at the “dictator” remark.

“It’s not a word I would use,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

“There is no moral equivalency between Vladimir Putin and President Zelensky,” Mr. Tillis said of the comments Mr. Trump made in a post on his social media site.

But Mr. Tillis, who recently considered and then retreated from a confrontation with Mr. Trump over his defense secretary, was also careful to avoid directly criticizing the president’s approach. Mr. Tillis said he believed Mr. Trump would ultimately listen to his advisers and take note of the discomfort from Republicans on Capitol Hill, who may be privately urging him to avoid appeasing Mr. Putin.

Got new for you, Senator Bucko: Jackoff takes no notice of anyone's discomfort, especially yours and other members of his purported party in Congress.

Phil Berger: "You'll Not Hear Any More About Gambling Casinos Out of Me"

 

Phil Berger -- who tried to sneak four new private industry gambling casinos into rural North Carolina, while his own son who's chair of the Rockingham County Commission was rushing through a rezoning of some prime property already picked out for the Rockingham casino -- Berger got his ears pinned back on that deal. A hardcore group of Puritans in the NC House said no way, and the popular sheriff of Rockingham, Sam Page, led a protest of hometown Rockingham Republicans to Raleigh to denounce Berger's scheme in front of the legislative building. Page is now running against Berger in next March's Republican primary.

What's the saying? Once bitten, twice shy.

When News and Observer reporter Avi Bajpai asked Berger if casino legislation could be revisited this year, "Berger said he isn’t working on it, nor is he aware of any other lawmakers planning to introduce legislation on it." “I don’t think it’s something that will see the light of day as far as the legislative session we’re in,” Berger said.

Just a week ago Berger was telling the NandO's Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan that he saw no reason to talk yet about his plans for 2026 -- “I don't want to prejudge any decision that really doesn’t have to be made until later in the year,” he said -- but then Sam Page made a splash with his announcement that he intended to take out Phil Berger in the next election. Suddenly Phil Berger was announcing his plans to run for reelection. 

“My intent has been, all along, to run again, and I felt that the appropriate thing would be to make the announcement of that closer to the filing period [December],” Berger told reporters. “But, you know, I intend to run, I intend to continue to be the senator from the 26th district.”

Sounds nervous to me.

History Will Condemn Him, But We Must Defeat Him

 

Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago this month, bombing, killing, maiming, torturing, kidnapping a formerly free people. Yesterday in his gaudy bunker in Florida, Donald Jethro Trump blamed Ukraine. "You should never have started it," he said.

I have hate in my heart for that appalling man. I feel rage for the fate of the Ukrainians. I want to start, or at least participate in a shitstorm of protest and resistance.

Trump is delivering Ukraine into the hands of a killer and a tyrant, He is betraying every fiber of what "Americanism" used to mean.

The other bullshit Jethro spouted at Mar-a-Lago -- Zelenskyy's approval rating at 4%, etc. -- came directly from a Russian disinformation handout. Putin dictated it; Jethro repeated it. Plus he's out to extort Ukraine's rare earth minerals as part of his betrayal. There is no Hell hot enough.

Best Tactical Suggestion of the Day

 

Excellent idea! And you know who could make it happen? Ken Martin, the new chair of the DNC. He could do it. If he had any imagination at all.

Golden Calf Worship (cont.)

 

Claudia Tenney

On Feb. 14, Valentine's Day (ahem), Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) introduced the Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day Holiday Establishment Act which seeks to saddle June 14th with two honorees, the second of which is the largely ignored old Flag Day which recognized June 14th as the day in 1777 when the national flag design got approval from the Continental Congress. 

Something the Continental Congress did in 1777 ... boring. Who cares?

A big personality, morally unmoored ... exciting (and proof of cult)

Tenney really loves Trump. Must be that, rather than any need to curry favor with a large MAGA majority, because Rep. Tenney's 24th District in New York (largest city: Syracuse) gave her a 65% majority vote against her Democratic challenger in 2024, despite the district's partisan makeup (according to Dave's): 52.9% Democratic, 45.6% Republican. Trump won the district in 2020 with 54.7% of the vote. Interesting footnote: Tenney also doesn't live in the district.

Marco in Charge

 

"Vladimir Putin's being invited to the United States is the equivalent of Franklin Roosevelt receiving Adolf Hitler in Hyde Park sometime after Hitler marched into the Sudetenland."

--Bret Stephens, NYTimes conservative columnist, 2/17/25

If you don't fully understand by now that Donald Jethro Trump will sell Ukraine down the river to please his BFF Putin -- it was always gonna happen -- then how on earth did you find your way to this URL?

Marco Rubio is Jethro's bagman for this project. Rubio used to be a hawk on Russia and Putin's expansionist invasion of a neighboring and sovereign nation. According to researchers at the Davis Center, Rubio never missed a chance to "co-sponsor punitive measures against Russia" over its unlawful aggression. Rubio also repeatedly co-sponsored bills to "strengthen U.S. entanglement in the NATO alliance," emphasizing that any US exit from NATO should require congressional approval.

Just what did Trump tell Rubio when he arrived at Mar-a-Lago for his job interview? More to the point, how abjectly did Rubio bend every knee to get the job? The churning of his stomach can be heard in an elevator and must discomfort young Rubio all the Riyadh day. Will he have a breaking point?

Rubio, popping Tums, sitting down with that wily old fox Lavrov across the table, armed with nothing more than Trump's druthers, which happen also to be Lavrov's druthers -- it's an effing betrayal of every democratic value.

2/18/25 ... Rubio as nervous as a probationary sophomore
summoned to Vice-Principal Lavrov's office

The 2025 Resistance Movement

 

I've been touring the photos from all across the nation documenting the turnout at protest marches yesterday against Trump 2.0. It was clearly an impressive President's Day out-pouring of disgust and determination, including the packed house at the Boone Town Council chambers (not a 50501-affiliated event but rather a town-hall teach-in by Common Cause NC about the attempted steal of an NC Supreme Court seat by Jefferson Griffin -- the same defiant spirit reigned there as in the big cities).

You can connect with this movement online: https://www.fiftyfifty.one/

The NewSpeak of Trump 2.0

 

The following lifted wholesale from Aaron Blake in the Bezos WashPost:

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts to disrupt the U.S. government and hamstring federal agencies are increasingly predicated on the idea that they’re combating fraud. Trump and Musk used that word more than a dozen times in the Oval Office on [Feb. 11th], and the Trump administration keeps citing fraud in defending itself in court.

“We have massive amounts of fraud that we’ve caught,” Trump said.

Except they seem to be having trouble locating the actual fraud.

They keep saying they’ve uncovered fraud. But when pressed for evidence, they don’t seem to have much or any.

They instead often point to programs that might sound wasteful to some but were congressionally authorized. They have also repeatedly pointed to things that have been known about for years, acting as if they had just uncovered them.

The Understatement Could Crack Concrete

 

Trump took over the board of the Kennedy Center, engineered his election as its new chairman, and fired all the previous leaders and administrators. American high culture is about to be renovated in the Trump style.

“This is low on the pecking order in terms of crisis,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University, “but it’s also emblematic of what we’re dealing with, which is the amassing of centralized power in a way that does not seem consistent with our constitutional traditions.”

The understatement -- the sheer restraint -- by Mr. Kreis provoked a LOL moment for me.

But I confess some conflicted reaction to the trump move -- he gets more Jethro every day -- in that lowbrow is its own style, its own subversion of elite power, and therefore as American as fried chicken. And perhaps I should remind you that in his day Shakespeare was writing throwaway pop culture, and he got rich on it.

Should Rockingham Co. Elect the Self-Righteous Over the Self-Interested?

 

BusinessNC.com interviewed Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page, the man who says he intends to kick Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger to the curb in next March's Republican primary. What motivates Sam Page, BusinessNC wanted to know.

Gambling casinos -- first thing out of Page's mouth. Gambling casinos, one of them specially designed for Rockingham County in backrooms by Phil Berger and other members of his dynastic family, a power move by a man many considered unassailable, which outraged the massively self-righteous chief law enforcement officer for the county.

In fact, and reading between the lines, Page is mainly prompted to action against Berger by a Captain America self-image of standing up against big men with low morals. That's potent stuff. Phil Berger has heaps too much power and needs to be beaten down a peg or two. Who better than a sheriff to do it?

But did I say self-righteous? What also emerged in that BusinessNC interview is the cold heartedness that often undergirds self-righteousness -- Page's dismissal of the poor, because the second plausible reason he gave for primarying the big man was Berger's caving to Roy Cooper to extend Medicaid insurance coverage to some 600,000 North Carolinians who need it. That's a motivation for running for office? Seriously? The desire to make life harder for a whole bunch of people. 

That's as trumpist as it gets.

Stoopid Doormat Quotes

 

Dan Crenshaw (R)

"There is absolutely no way that Donald Trump will be seen -- he will not let himself go down in history as having sold out to Putin. He will not let that happen."

--Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw, this morning, on CBS's "Face the Nation"

Footnote

"Doormat" is meant to refer to the Republicans who say these things, not to the mat you wipe your feet on (though I see the similarity).

Some Good News (For a Change) About the Canton Paper Mill Closing

 

Thanks to Michael McElroy, reporting for Cardinal & Pine:

Pactiv Evergreen closed the Canton paper mill in 2023, a year and a half earlier than the company had agreed to under an economic development deal with the state that included millions of dollars in incentives.

The closure laid off more than 1,000 employees, causing economic ripples in Canton and Haywood County.

Then attorney-general Josh Stein sued the company in 2024 for $12 million, accusing it of breaching the terms of the deal. Under the terms of the settlement announced this week by Stein, now the governor, and current Attorney General Jeff Jackson, Pactiv will repay $5.75 million from its incentives to Canton and Haywood County.

Coverage by Cory Vaillancourt in Smoky Mountain News.

Big Trumpist Sheriff Will Primary Phil Berger Next Year

 

Sheriff Sam Page

Rockingham County High Sheriff Sam Page, who previously led Sheriffs for Trump in 2016 and has participated in multiple law enforcement round tables with the president, has announced that he will challenge the unchallengeable president pro tem of the NC Senate, Phil Berger, the boss of bosses in the General Assembly, in the Republican primary next year.

Multiple people had tried to talk Page, who's been sheriff in Rockingham since 1998, to run against Berger last year over Berger's`apparent corrupt pushing of new gambling casinos, one of which was planned for Rockingham.

Page is as self-righteous as Berger is complacently unethical, so it might prove to be an interesting contest.

The Public Corruption Is So ... Public

 

quid pro quo -- Latin, literally, "something for something"; in English, noun, a favor or advantage granted or expected in return for something.

 

Danielle Sassoon, an honest lawyer
who resisted Trump's corruption of justice

Eric Adams, the current mayor of New York City, was indicted last year on five counts, including bribery, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations, stemming from an investigation that began in 2021. Adams had pleaded not guilty and was scheduled for trial in April. Turns out that Danielle Sassoon, the interim US attorney for the Southern District of New York, was planning to add another charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice against Adams, “based on evidence that Adams destroyed and instructed others to destroy evidence and provide false information to the FBI.” (New York Times)

As previously noted here, Eric Adams has been sucking up to Trump like a groveling underling who knows he's destined for prison. In pre-trial conferences, according to Sassoon, the mayor’s lawyers had “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the [DOJ’s] enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed.” Those "enforcement priorities" primarily apply to the capture and deportation of undocumented immigrants. New York City has laws that make it a so-called "sanctuary city," which simply means that it demands due process: The New York Police Department can only work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when it comes to a criminal detainer, which is ordered by a judge. Adams, to please the man who has control over the Justice Department, had decided to allow ICE agents into the city's jail on Riker's Island to arrest and deport anyone with a funny name.

Emil Bove III

"I'll let ICE run rampant if you drop the corruption charges against me." That's clearly the deal that went down. But rather than dismiss the charges against Adams, which the Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove III (very recently one of Trump's defense lawyers) ordered Sassoon to do, she resigned and wrote a blistering letter which laid out the corruption she was observing at first-hand: “I have always considered it my obligation to pursue justice impartially, without favor to the wealthy or those who occupy important public office, or harsher treatment for the less powerful,” Sassoon wrote to Bove. She also addressed words to Pam Bondi, the new Attorney General, that Bove’s order to dismiss the case was “inconsistent with my ability and duty to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor and to advance good-faith arguments before the courts.”

When Sassoon, a very conservative lawyer in good standing with the Federalist Society, wouldn't perform the corrupt dismissal of charges against Adams, Bove moved the indictment to the Public Corruption section of the Department of Justice and demanded that the ranking officials there dismiss the charges. Five more lawyers (at last count) also resigned rather than carry out the corruption. It was a Thursday night massacre.

As far as I can tell neither Bove nor Bondi has been able to find a chump lawyer to dismiss the charges against Adams, and the knowledge of Trump's outrageous corruption of the DOJ is blossoming beyond his ability to contain it.

UPDATE

When Emil Bove couldn't brow-beat any career prosecutors to sign the motion to dismiss the charges against Eric Adams, he was forced to sign the motion himself (according to the NYTimes). The motion for dismissal still has to go to the judge overseeing the Adams case in Manhattan.

Sen. Ted Budd Defends the "New and Awful Reality" and Its Effect on the State's Flagship Institutions

 

Irony is dead

Democrats see an opening to use Trump’s spending cuts as attack lines about coward Republicans in Congress, "especially those from competitive districts" -- damned for living on their knees and swallowing every bleb of Trump's ego, even the actions that actually harm their constituents.

Instead of standing up to Trump, they play utter hypocrites and ask for "carve outs" for their districts only. Two reporters from the NYTimes uncovered a bunch of attempted evasions/bypasses/exceptions to the Trump wrecking ball and program cuts -- promulgated by Republican members from red states. For example, Senator Katie Britt of Alabama got defensive right quick after the Trump administration directed the National Institutes of Health to slash $4 billion in overhead costs for medical research (one of Trump's ExecOrders that has since been paused by a federal judge). Alabama's received more than $518 million in NIH grants for projects currently active there, a great number of them headquartered at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The senator made weak excuses to the local press and claimed that she would press Trump officials to take a “smart, targeted approach” to cuts -- whatever the hell that means -- so as to “not hinder lifesaving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions.” Elitist.

Cut someone else's money, not ours! What's fair for everyone else is not fair for me. Nor convenient at this present time.

So these cowed men and women in House and Senate stay mouselike in paralyzed fear of being noticed and devoured. Some of them, like Sen. Britt, if you take her at her word, are doing what they can to mitigate the damage to their own constituents. For example, Rep. Tracey Mann (R-Kansas) has made himself the lead sponsor of a House bill that aims to salvage a foreign aid program targeted for extinction by Trump as part of his effort to wipe out the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Mann's bill, cosponsored by several other Republicans from farm states, would transfer oversight of the Food for Peace program, which purchases crops at market price from American farmers and distributes them to hungry people abroad, from USAID to the Agriculture Department.

They're justifiably nervous about the blunderbuss Trump is taking to all the walls of shelter and the roof too over many a marginal rural family trying to hold it together. And hence those R reps are possible sitting ducks politically, if folks get good and tired of the one-size-fits-all programming of Trump 2.0. House Majority PAC, the House Democrats’ main political action group, sent out a message this week titled, “Vulnerable House Republicans Hang Farmers Out To Dry,” which noted how the funding freeze was hitting farmers around the country. The message singled out several Republican lawmakers by name, including Representatives David Valadao of California, Zach Nunn of Iowa and Don Bacon of Nebraska.

Senator Ted Budd of North Carolina, like Sen. Briff of Alabama, represents a state with two of the largest recipients of NIH grants -- Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill. Budd looked totally caught off-guard and unprepared when the Times reporters asked what he was planning to do about the cuts. Budd said he agreed with the Trump administration’s move to limit the amount of taxpayer money used for overhead costs, but, uh, obviously the universities -- which are swell institutions doing valuable research -- "those guys are gonna need time to adjust to their new financial reality." Too bad, so sad. “I think the White House wants to protect them,” Budd added forlornly, flying in the face to all evidence to the contrary. Trump doesn't actually care about much but his own loot.

Trump's Guru of Wasted Youth

Okay, the mandate for today: Understand everything possible about Charlie Kirk.

The King's Touch

Charlie Kirk, widely acknowledged now as "a Christian nationalist culture warrior," is the head of Turning Point USA, "the nation’s pre-eminent conservative youth organization," which he started when he was 18. It has chapters at more than 850 colleges. They register students to vote, bring conservative speakers to campus, and in 2016 launched their own "Professor Watchlist." It didn't take much in the way of a "woke" understanding of history to get yourself blackballed on that list. According to Robert Draper's in-depth profile of Kirk in the NYTimes Magazine, "Turning Point’s half dozen or so annual events, featuring the biggest names on the right from Trump on down, are slick productions that draw enormous crowds."

Kirk. 31. is married with two young children and lives most of the time in Scottsdale, Arizona. The arrival on the national political scene of Trump, for Kirk was like going through the juicing-up of puberty all over again, only this time without the acne but with certain skills for talk and persuasion. Rich older women find him very pettable. Plus he has the Spartan mentality of a warrior who looks forward to pain. Robert Draper: "Kirk does not drink, avoids gluten and lactose and carries a bottle of olive oil and his own branded hot sauce with him to impart flavor to otherwise austere meals."

During Trump’s first presidency, Kirk told Draper, he visited the White House “a hundred-plus” times. When Trump lost in 2020, Kirk offered solace, obeisance, loyalty at Mar-a-Lago, showing up in early February 2021, bending the knee and offering himself as footman, councillor, hitman. He had plans to pursue a crusade through colleges and universities, trolling the waters for bright young things who would buy "The MAGA Doctrine," the title to Kirk's 2020 bestseller. 

Kirk grew up in the affluent professional middle-class of a Chicago suburb. He was an Eagle Scout, and he got involved as a high school student in a Republican senatorial campaign. "Kirk was smitten with the astringent libertarian worldview of Ron Paul," and he attained his first taste of stardom speaking at local Tea Party rallies in 2010. Bit by the political bug, and turned on by Rush Limbaugh, he wrote an essay for Breitbart News alleging liberal bias in high school textbooks, which led to an appearance on Fox Business. He was on his way to campaign usefulness and great success as a fund-raiser.

In October 2020, Kirk began hosting a daily 3-hour podcast, "The Charlie Kirk Show." He had J.D. Vance on his podcast, during which Vance suggested that people without children should pay higher taxes than parents. According to Wikipedia, Kirk's podcast is downloaded between a hair-raising 500,000 and 750,000 times each day. It is currently ranked No. 13 on Apple Podcasts. His 2020 best seller “The MAGA Doctrine,” helped him become a millionaire -- and definitely one of Trump's bosom crowd of rich flatterers. Actually, now a member of the inner circle. Kirk had a big hand in persuading Trump that J.D. Vance was his best bet for vice president.

Within days of Trump’s victory last November, Draper says that Kirk was front and center at Mar-a-Lago among "an intimate group of advisers" and that he was actually in on the vetting of prospective Trump 2.0 appointees. Kirk had an instinct for sniffing out candidates who might prove weak in their loyalty. "On more than one occasion, according to two sources with knowledge of the events, Kirk was in the room with the president-elect to discuss potential cabinet nominees."

Immediately after the November election, Kirk uprooted his family and installed them for a two-month stay in a condo in Palm Beach, Fla., so he could be super-handy to Trump. And for 10 days in January, as the Trump administration took power, he uprooted his wife and two young children again and took them for a lengthy stay at the Salamander hotel in Washington. That's how ubiquitous Kirk has been in this new kingdom. 

Kirk traveled to Greenland on Jan. 7 with his new BFF Don Trump Jr., to help publicize Trump’s proclaimed intent to acquire the place for himself. And...

Kirk was among a select group at Trump’s private party two days before the inauguration at the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia. The night before Trump was sworn in, Turning Point hosted a black-tie gala at which some 1,500 attendees paid from $5,000 to $15,000 (with some V.I.P.s paying more) to be in the company of Trump luminaries including Vance; Trump’s nominee for director of the F.B.I., Kash Patel; and Don Jr., who described Kirk onstage as “one of the true rock stars of this movement.” The following evening, an S.U.V. ferried Kirk from one inaugural ball to the next. Two days later, he was visiting the 47th president in the White House — and again the day after that.

According to Draper, Kirk has assigned himself the project of making life miserable for any Republican who deviates from the path. He played a big part in getting rid of "loser" Ronna McDaniel, the former chair of the Republican Nat'l Committee. But he's especially hard on "weak" Republican senators. He bullied Senator Joni Ernst into voting for Pete Hegseth. He particularly despises Republicans in safely red states who “have taken advantage of Republican primary voters far too long .... They’re not in line with what those voters want. They’re sending money to Ukraine. They’re not strong on immigration. So this is not a veiled threat. I see no good reason not to go after [Sen. Mike] Crapo [of Idaho] or [Senator Mike] Rounds [of South Dakota].” As Kirk saw it, “The behavioral and voting patterns of Senate Republicans would change with one successful primary.”

So he's a bully in the Trump mold. How does that fit with Eager Scout?

Perhaps Kirk has a bit of a chip on his shoulder. With his magnified confidence in his own opinion, he perhaps came to expect easy pavement and open doors everywhere in his future. But while in high school, his application to attend West Point was turned down, and that negative appraisal of his abilities seems to have made him bitter and a kind of cliche of MAGA resentfulness: He told the Liberty Forum of Silicon Valley in a 2015 speech that "his" West Point slot went to "a far less-qualified candidate of a different gender and a different persuasion" (meaning, apparently, a lesbian." According to the Wikipedia article, Kirk mocked her test scores, which he claimed he knew. That, apparently, was a lie manufactured to save face. 

Flattery Will Corrupt the King Every Damn Time! And Attaint the State

 

New York Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, had been charged by Federal prosecutors with bribery, fraud, and the solicitation of illegal foreign campaign donations. The case was set to go to trial in the spring. But hold on, Snoopy, because Trump's Justice Department just ordered New York prosecutors to drop the cases against Adams.

Boy howdy! How flattery of Trump seems always to pay off for some of the worst people in the nation.

Adams began sucking up to Trump immediately after the November elections, clearly angling for a presidential pardon for his money-grubbing in forbidden places and the fraud that went with it. Adams got himself to Mar-a-Lago even before the Inauguration, Jan. 17th, to kiss ass and heap appalling praise on the man who could -- and as it turns out, did -- save his ass from prosecution for crimes against civic integrity.

Yesterday, Trump's Justice Department ordered the prosecutors in Manhattan to drop their charges against Adams, who had, incidentally, stepped up his ass-kissing campaign substantially, meekly meeting with Trump's border czar, apparently promising to help deliver on demand his quota of illegal brown people into the gentle hands of ICE. And just yesterday, before Trump's DOJ demanded the charges be dropped, Adams was telling other high officials of NYCity not to criticize the king -- whatever the hell you do!

Does public corruption ever get more ... uh, public? Flatter the effing king, and he might just kill a fat goose for you.

Elon's "Muskrats," Trump's Time Bomb

Presidents Trump and Musk have merged their cult followings, attention addictions, conspiratorial mind-sets, disinformation artistry, disdain for the Constitution, talent for apocalyptic marketing and jumping-from-thing-to-thing styles.

--Maureen Dowd, "Musk’s Lost Boys and Trump’s Mean Girls," NYTimes

On some weeks, Maureen Dowd's column in the New York Times is worth dipping in bronze:

Trump loves to be admired by the elites, and he adores money. Musk has gotten the keys to the American kingdom so he can attack “the woke mind virus,” which Musk says “killed” his “son,” who transitioned as a teenager. Both men are driven by revenge to smash up the government.

Musk has employed his flying wedge of 20-something hipster lords of the new universe. “Muskrats,” career bureaucrats call them, who are themselves referred to as the “dinosaurs” by the Muskrats in their campaign to rifle every government computer system. Some of the Muskrats have become infamous: "A 19-year-old with the internet pseudonym 'Big Balls' lost an earlier internship for leaking company secrets; a 25-year-old was ousted over racist posts. He wrote on X, 'I was racist before it was cool,' and 'You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,' and 'Normalize Indian hate.' Even though he is married to an Indian American, Vice President J.D. Vance rescued the 'kid,' as he called him, and helped him get his job back."

I realize the MAGA crowd loves all the crudest comments and cruelest decisions coming out of Trump 2.0 (now "squared by Musk," sez Maureen), but what about the sane middle? There is clearly no limit to the Trump wrecking ball, but when will it tear down something essential to the low-information voters? Surely that's happening already, the creeping realization that maybe total annihilation was not what they had in mind. And closer comes the mid-term elections of 2026 -- perhaps our last chance to keep the Republic against the madness of the king.

Legal Armoring RE Donald Jethro Trump, Day 22

 

More than 40 lawsuits seeking to stop Donald J. Trump's ExecOrder fantasies have been filed since January 20th by state attorneys general, unions, and nonprofits. As a result, judicial orders in nine Federal court cases will, for a time, partially bind the administration’s hands -- at least on paper. Those things Trump sought illegally to do include ending automatic citizenship for babies born to undocumented immigrants on U.S. soil; transferring transgender female inmates to male-only prisons; potentially exposing the identities of FBI personnel who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol; coaxing federal workers to accept “deferred resignation” under a tight deadline; and freezing as much as $3 trillion in domestic spending -- all those ExecOrders are now enjoined by judges.

On Friday afternoon, Judge Carl Nichols, a district judge nominated by Trump. said he would issue a temporary restraining order halting the administrative leave of 2,200 employees at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the looming withdrawal of nearly all of the agency’s workers from overseas.

Also, late on Friday night, in the first victory for Trump’s new administration in Federal court, Judge John D. Bates, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, rejected a request by a coalition of unions for an emergency order blocking Elon Musk’s team from accessing Labor Department data. 

The NYTimes reported that while the executive branch is entrusted with the capacity for swift, decisive action, "the judiciary is slow by design, and the legal opposition to Mr. Trump’s opening moves may struggle to keep up with his fire hose of disruption."

The Table Manners of a Billionaire Pig

 

Last December, before Earth went wobbly on its spindle, the US Department of the Treasury wrote a letter to Congress informing it that a Chinese intelligence group had broken into its systems and stolen unclassified material. "A full assessment of that damage has not been made public. But it was a reminder that the Treasury Department — as much as the Pentagon and its contractors, the C.I.A. and the White House — is high on Beijing’s target list" (David E. Sanger, NYTimes).

So here come Elon Musk's band of Silicon Valley hotshot bandits and misfits (at least one as young as 19), with a whole lot more access to Treasury's databases than just "READ ONLY." "Across the federal government, civil servants have witnessed the sudden intrusion in the last two weeks of these young members of the billionaire’s team, labeled the Department of Government Efficiency. As Mr. Musk traipses through Washington, bent on disruption, these aides have emerged as his enforcers, sweeping into agency headquarters with black backpacks and ambitious marching orders" (NYTimes).

They were opening a lot more than their backpacks, and that was precisely the source of Federal Judge Paul A. Engelmayer's order on Saturday to stop these rodents from boring into secrets about every American and his/her money, at least until a trial can be held. Judge Engelmayer cited the risk specifically of the ever-present threat of hacks by foreign adversaries, “the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information.” The Musk Squad's Easter egg hunt looked sloppy and dangerous.

The request for Judge Engelmayer's temporary restraining order came after some 19 attorneys general (North Carolina's Jeff Jackson among them) filed suit on Friday. It took Engelmayer less than 24 hours to (theoretically) shut down Musk Squad's fishing. ("Theoretically," because Trump's appointments are also now occupying the department and have full access to everything, and who the hell knows who they'll share it with.)

Outside experts have described, in detail, what could happen when an outsider gains sudden access to a locked-down system: Personal data could leak, payments could be diverted and information about political rivals could be collected.

Bruce Schneier, a cybersecurity expert at Harvard and the author of a series of books on security vulnerabilities, including “Click Here to Kill Everybody,” called the entry of Mr. Musk’s force “the most consequential security breach” in American history.

Mr. Schneier noted that the intrusion came “not through a sophisticated cyberattack or an act of foreign espionage, but through official orders by a billionaire with a poorly defined government role.” ...

“Hostile intelligence services are likely already at work trying to assess which Musk team members might be sloppy with their digital devices or vulnerable to entrapment or coercion.” (NYTimes)

Wired magazine named six of Musk's "Spartans" (as they like to call themselves, mythologizing their own personal pains), ranging in age from 19 to 24. They've been raised all their life on computers and social media, which means sarcasm and spite, so what could possibly go wrong giving them full access to all our information?

Another Set-Back for Jefferson Griffin, But Will It Matter To the Newby Court?

This happened last Friday, as reported by Jeffrey Billman in The Assembly: 

Wake County Special Superior Court Judge William Pittman rejected Jefferson Griffin’s attempt to overturn his 734-vote loss to Justice Allison Riggs in last year’s state Supreme Court race on Friday, ruling that the State Board of Elections had not erred when it dismissed his challenge in December.

Subhead sez, "The decision isn’t the end of legal battles over the state Supreme Court race, but it is a setback for Griffin’s effort to throw out thousands of votes." All of the issues will eventually meld together before the NC Supreme Court led by partisan Republican Paul Newby.

Griffin has gone largely into hiding since he launched his highly irregular attempt to overturn the last election. But he was present Friday in Judge Pittman's court -- blue suit, yellow tie.

The Smallness of the Big Man

 

A king needs lots of (fake) gold

Donald Jethro Trump has hated the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts since the 2017 Kennedy Center Honors, less than a year into his 1st term, when some of the honorees -- which included LL Cool J, Lionel Richie, and Norman Lear -- said they wouldn't attend if Trump had a role. (Jethro had done plenty by then to earn their disapproval and distaste, including his "good people" comment about the Nazis who rioted in Charlottesville.)

So yesterday Jethro announced he would be firing the current Kennedy Center board of directors and installing himself as chair. "Real tinpot dictator stuff," commented Molly Jong-Fast on Blue Sky. My gawd! Don't you see the moments coming when he enters the Presidential Box for a big gala performance like the Emperor Commodus entering the Coliseum to the cheers of the bread-'n'-circuses chumps.

Trump always needs a fig leaf to cover up the embarrassing details of his naked ego. In his announcement yesterday, he hilariously blamed drag shows that "corrupt our youth" (thought that was his job!) for his seizing of the Kennedy Center. All sorts of community events happen at the Kennedy Center in addition to the high art of opera, symphony, dance, and the Kennedy Center has hosted events specifically for LGBTQ youth in the DeeCee Metro area. How convenient a "cause" for a man who needs grandiosity to prove he exists, so Trump feigns outrage! I tell you, he's outraged. So much so that he's prepared to install his own gaudy lack of taste and tacky pursuit of gilded elegance into the character and the programming of the Center.

Hard pass.

Trump's Button Man at the DOJ

 

Emil Bove III.
Is the face a reflection of the soul?

Emil Bove III was one of Trump's lead attorneys in the Manhattan fraud trial, which despite Bove's aggressive dissing of the trial judge still led to 34 felony convictions for Trump -- Bove, that shark lawyer, was put into the Department of Justice as the acting Deputy Director as soon as Trump was inaugurated, and he quickly began summoning career attorneys to his top-floor office "to calmly deliver the news they were being transferred, marginalized, or otherwise shoved to the exits" (Glenn Thrush et al.). Their sins? You know without asking. They participated in investigations of Donald Jethro Trump.

What else has Bove been up to at Justice? He forced the transfers of "top nonpolitical officials who were seen as a bulwark against political interference." And he unilaterally fired Capitol riot prosecutors in the US attorney’s office in Washington. 

"At no time has Mr. Bove offered evidence those he targeted had done anything improper, illegal or unethical. Instead he has cited the president’s authority under the Constitution." (NYTimes)

And then, to cap off his first week as Acting Deputy Director of DOJ and to earn his Assassin Badge First Class in the Trump Scouts, he launched the effort to collect a complete list of all FBI agents who worked on Jan. 6 cases. That naming-names demand by Bove caused unanticipated, strong pushback from Acting FBI Director Brian "Drizz" Driscoll and his Acting Deputy Director Robert C. Kissane. (I've written about the fearlessness of "Drizz" before in his standing up against autocracy.) According to Glenn Thrush and his fellow investigative reporters, Drizz Driscoll "was neither persuaded nor intimidated by Mr. Bove. Neither was Mr. Kissane."

Drizz correctly saw Bove's unprecedented demand for the complete list of FBI agents who tracked down the men who beat Capitol police to a pulp -- he saw that move as prelude to a purge. Plus, according to Thrush et al., "It provoked a swift, negative reaction among the F.B.I.’s conservative rank-and-file, a work force that [had been] particularly receptive to Mr. Trump’s law-and-order message." Leaders of the conservative FBI Agents Association wrote a letter of protest to Congress: “Special agents who risk their lives protecting this country” are being targeted “for carrying out the orders they were given by their superiors,” the letter said.

Helps explain why the latest Pew Research polling on the J6 pardons doesn't look so good for Jethro among his own slavish supporters: