Morons

 Among the more disturbing trends over the past 25 years has been the movement of Moron-Americans into one political party. Given the way our elections and politics works, this means that we are always one election away from having just the stupidest fucking people in the world running things.

If there's anything more depressing than reading the thoughts of Trump voters, I don't know what it is.

Perhaps, once Trump is done erasing the New Deal framework and these morons are face to face with the fact that government programs have protected them from their own mouthbreathing idiocy, they might...might...rethink their hostility towards things like having actual doctors advise on public health or actual economists advise on trade policy. I have my doubts, but again it comes down to the fact that in the past we had morons distributed amongst both parties. Now they seem to all be gravitating towards the Trumpist Republican Party.

It's also been exasperating over the past 13 years watching people gleefully support the guy who cannot open his mouth without lying. Then, once they started supporting him, they embrace all the lies as truth.

Not sure there's a "media strategy" for dealing with that.

Whatever

 Looks like Flavor of the Month, Gretchen Whitmer, is finished as a Democratic contender in 2028. I don't care. She's photogenic and not devoid of some political chops. But basically she was a contender because she's from Michigan.

Also - I know, I know - Democrats can't nominate a woman. Not entirely because men are misogynistic, but because so many women are. 

I never really got the Whitmer fandom, so I guess I'm glad it was strangled in the crib.

Fight Everywhere

 There's a fascinating interview and article at The Atlantic where they interview Trump within the context of his political comeback. As they accurately note, Trump was deservedly left for dead after January 6th and then he claws his way back to actually winning a plurality of the popular vote. It's remarkable and deeply disheartening. 

One of the insights from the interview was Trump's basic style - deny everything, attack everywhere - does seem to legitimately have fueled his political resurrection. He still won't or can't admit he lost in 2020. He hasn't fired Hegseth. He won't climb down from the tariffs. 

Never apologize, never back down, dominate the narrative with a firehose of outrages. 

Trump's assault on democracy is less a coherent plan than an attempt to overwhelm America's natural defenses against autocracy by sheer mass and repetition. Listening to Trump lie repeatedly and shamelessly is really hard for people like me to even respond to. How can that be OK in an American president? Hell, I wouldn't accept it in a real estate developer.

In the shocking aftermath of his election victory, the natural question became "How can Democrats resist him?" He has seemingly - once again - violated the political laws of gravity. In fact, he had won more votes than the Democratic candidate for the first time.

The Very Savvy take was to focus on a few economic issues that were most likely to resonate with swing voters. That's why you had so many Democratic politicians talking about the price of eggs.

Then came "Liberation Day." 

While this did some of the heavy lifting of convincing American voters that Trump's plans were both bad and erratic, what's fascinating is that it is not solely on the economy where his numbers are tanking. You also have speeches like the stemwinder that Illinois governor JB Pritzker delivered (in New Hampshire, of course).

Pritzker makes the point that you have to oppose Trump when he does something wrong like the Abrego Garcia case. The Savvy Consultant will tell you - and not without reason - that any discussions of Trump and immigration helps him, because that issue is where he's strongest. What Pritzker and others, including AOC, are saying is that you have to attack him when he does something as transparently awful as that and you can't be solely reactive.

And it seems to be working. 

Marshall reminds us that public opinion matters, even in a would-be dictatorship. Trump can only be dictatorial as long as he remains somewhat popular. I think the recent attacks on the Judiciary will combine with tanking approval ratings to embolden the Courts to stand up to him. Yes, the Republican Congress is a weak, weak reed, but at some point they will get the message that this guy is toxic - again.

It's not that denying January 6th is a popular position, nor were the pardons. People legitimately hated that (not his cult, but most people). Denying that it was bad over and over again did give a permission structure for many Republicans to support him again. It was still bad and leaning into the pardons made him less popular.

Because Trump only knows how to attack and deny, his tariff fiasco is likely to continue - at least for a little while. We shall see what Trump does when store shelves start to empty. Yes, again, his cultists will proudly embrace the economic pain as the price of MAGA. Most people will not. It will suck and he will be 100% responsible for it. Biden contributed at the margins of inflation, but it was a global phenomenon. Trump is the sole reason for the coming freeze in global trade.

Because all he knows how to do is deny and attack, though, he will struggle to change course. The "adults in the room" are largely gone. 

There's an old saying that "personnel is policy." The people you staff your government with will determine how and what you actually do. Biden staffed his administration with a people from the Progressive "groups" and that moved his policy to the left of where Biden likely was himself. Trump has staffed his government with sycophants and cultists. 

There will be no easy retreat from the aspects of MAGA that America hates and fears, but that is actually our hope. 

The show Andor is about how rebellions happen (within the Star Wars canon). It seems perfect for this moment. One of the characters writes

There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this: Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction.

Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

And then remember this: The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.

And know this: the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. 

Remember this. Try.

After Winter, There Will Be Spring

 Richardson lays out all the ways that Trump is selling American governance to line his own pockets. My guess is the actual tally is much, much more extensive. The corruption of Trump 2.0 is an underreported story, given all the other outrages, but I do think it's something intrepid reporters should be working on.

As Krugman reminds us, all power is unitary. Trump's disastrous economic policies are going to really start biting soon. Trump's approval ratings are plunging. As he quips, did Peter Navarro save democracy?

Richardson's comparison to Gilded Age corruption is informative. Public outrage over the corruption helped usher in the Progressive Era. That could certainly happen again, if the public is suitably informed.

The doomsayers about Trump have proven both right and wrong. He has, indeed, launched a full bore attack on American democracy; he is ceaselessly corrupt; he is cruel and vindictive; Project 2025 is real. However, it is the very cruelty, corruption and authoritarianism that will - I hope, I believe - limit his ability to destroy America.

Cul de Sac

 Paul Krugman makes the same point many others are making, especially with regards to the bonkers Time interview with Trump. Here's the excerpt he shares:

Your trade adviser, Peter Navarro, says 90 deals in 90 days is possible. We're now 13 days into the point from when you lifted the reciprocal, the discounted reciprocal tariffs. There's zero deals so far. Why is that?

No, there’s many deals.

When are they going to be announced?

You have to understand, I'm dealing with all the companies, very friendly countries. We're meeting with China. We're doing fine with everybody. But ultimately, I've made all the deals.

Not one has been announced yet. When are you going to announce them?

I’ve made 200 deals.

You’ve made 200 deals?

100%

Let's start with the fact that there are not 200 countries in the world. As always at moments like this, we have to contend with the question, "Is the president of the United States lying or stupid?" Krugman goes on to note that almost every country that has tried to talk to the Maladministration leaves, frustrated by the incoherent demands and false premises. There are no deals to be made, because the very premises about trade that these tariffs seek to remedy are confabulations. 

We are seeing Trump's approval rating plummet even before the worst impacts of the trade war are being felt. Lots of companies ran up inventories just in case and those inventories will deplete. Container ship traffic in the Pacific has all but dried up. 

Even on immigration - Trump's strongest issue - his cruel and illegal overreach is turning people against him. 

Put more succinctly, all those dumb libtards were 100% right when they warned about what Trump 2.0 would be.

The problem, as Krugman reminds us, is that we live in a presidential, not a parliamentary, system. We are stuck with this stupid, demented, cruel old man. Unless his arteries close, we have little recourse. However, as Josh Marshall reminds us, Trump is term limited (and old). Congress is not. 

If the tariffs really do tank the economy and Trump's approval plummets to the Crazification Factor, when will the cowards of the GOP take a stand?

The Boob Tube

 My mom used to call television the "boob tube" because the assumption was that TV made you stupider. This was before smartphones came along and really made us dumber.

Donald Trump is the perfect TV president. He "generates content" for news channels at an astonishing pace. Take Biden, in contrast. He did not generate the same torrent of stories, so the one story about him - his age and mental acuity - became THE story. His many tangible achievements aren't really good TV. A solar factory that will open in four years doesn't really generate headlines and coverage the way that threatening to attack Greenland does.

As Richardson notes, though, Trump's presidency is really an effort to keep the hits coming for Fox News. The result is poor governance and illegal actions - at the very least, unwise ones. Yesterday, the FBI - at the behest of chunderheaded goon Kash Patel - arrested a Wisconsin judge at her courthouse. They did not ask her to come in and be processed, they arrested her at her place of work. The reason you do this is to send two messages. The first, of course, is to other judges. The second is to throw more content to your slavering base of Fox addled elders. 

As to the first message, I have a hunch that message won't resonate the way that they hope. This is a clear effort to intimidate a judiciary that has been refreshingly resolute in denying Trump's illegal actions, particularly on immigration, but really on everything. As Harvard and the American Association of Colleges and Universities has shown, the way to fight back against Trump is as a collective. The judiciary tends to protect its own prerogatives. 

If you were serious about running the country in the manner in which you felt was best - and there are obvious differences on that, which is what normal politics is about - then you pitch your actions as much towards permanence as you can. Trump pitches his policies towards the cameras, towards the couch of Fox and Friends. 

I tried to read the transcript of Time's interview with Trump. It is a combination of bald faced lies, repeated beliefs about trade that are fundamentally untrue and verbal incoherence. When you actually read his words, the inanity is hard to ignore.

For a mind addled on TV - a mind like his, and mind like his cultists - I'm sure it all makes perfect sense.

Tr(i)ump(h) of the Will

 Richardson points out how Trump represents the logical end point of 45 years of Republican rhetoric about government being the problem in American life. There was an argument you could make about regulation in 1980 being too high and there is always room to tweak regulations after they've played out in the real world. 

But this rhetoric wasn't about governance, it was about winning elections. It relied on a myth of American rugged individualism symbolized by the cowboy - Reagan's leitmotif as president. The cowboy - the rugged loner - could dispense justice easily and brutally without the niceties of law. If you want an antidote to this idea, I recommend Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven.

As Richardson notes, Trump's form of rugged individualism isolates America itself. It's one thing to lie to voters in Mississippi that the government does nothing for them, when Mississippi in fact gets a ton of federal money. It's one thing to use that lie to funnel wealth upwards.

It's another to leave the country - the country that created an international system that benefitted itself and the world - fundamentally alone on the international stage. Or worse than alone, we cuddle up to Putin and Bukele while insulting Canada and Japan.

Great work everybody.

Important Trend

 We are starting to see octogenarians step aside and not run for reelection. I don't know if Biden had chosen to step aside if that might have made a difference. I guess running a governor would have been smart, and maybe Harris was hurt by the lack of a primary mandate. Tough to say, but I can be persuaded.

What I do know is that several House members decided to run for reelection despite having grim cancer and health diagnoses and two have died, leaving the seats vacant.

On Worms And Turning

 The blitzkrieg of Project 2025 was very much designed to "move fast and break things." They understood, on some level, that there would be a thermostatic reaction to bad and unpopular policies. The idea was to lock in those bad and unpopular policies before resistance could form.

Fundamental to this dynamic would be Trump's approval numbers. For reasons that defy belief, he actually started as fairly popular. Perhaps because - unlike in 2016 - he had an electoral mandate with a plurality of the vote or perhaps because he was suffused in the glow of nostalgia for the pre-2019 economy. As long as he remained popular, they could count on limited friction, especially from otherwise wavering Republicans. 

Well, Pew is the latest entry in reputable polling that shows his approval rating collapsing pretty quickly. To be at 59% disapproval before your 100 days are up is a pretty impressive cratering.

What's more, you see this across the board. You have wankers like Nate Silver arguing that Democrats should focus on the economy and ONLY on the economy, because any discussion of immigration or due process rights plays into Trump's strengths. This was true during the campaign, but that's because people assumed Trump would do what they wanted him to do rather than what he was always going to do. 

Trump is now underwater on immigration. He's still popular on border control, but his rampant lawlessness - which Silver suggests we ignore to focus on the economy - has soured people on the way he is trampling civil and legal rights. The Reuters/Ipsos poll has 82% of respondents saying Trump should follow court orders, even if he disagrees with them. Pew has the number at 78%, but it rises to 88% if it's the Supreme Court. Even 65% of Republicans say that Trump should stop doing something if a court says it's illegal with that number rising to 82% of Republicans when the Supreme Court says so. 

Pew finds that 59% of Americans think Trump and Musk are being "too careless" in their cutting, and that is before people start missing checks from Social Security or the VA. 

Authoritarianism is brittle, precisely because it relies on overwhelming brute force. This was the logic of the speed of Project 2025. For all the Very Savvy commentators like Silver saying that Chris Von Hollen steps on core messaging by caring about the due process rights of one of his constituents, the reality is that you do have to oppose everything. 

Finding a common language is important. I'd argued that "tyranny" works better than fascism, because it resonates with the 250th anniversary of American independence, but also because it works across so many levels. 

Trump is a tyrant for deporting people without due process and joking (or not) that he wants to do the same to American citizens. Trump is a tyrant for leveling tariffs without congressional approval. Trump is a tyrant for gutting agencies and budgets created by the people's Congress and in contravention of all existing law. Trump is a tyrant for enriching himself personally with barely disguised bribes and refusing oversight.

You oppose Trump's tyranny because you oppose tyranny. It couldn't be more American. Shit, MAGAs started out 15 years ago resurrecting the Gadsden flag, because they thought giving more Americans health care was tyranny. 

Trump's falling approval ratings are almost certainly linked to his failures on the tariffs. We could be on the verge of the sort of empty shelves that we last saw with Covid. When a president loses the basic support of the people on one thing, he loses it across the board. However, those cracks can appear anywhere. 

Keep attacking him. On everything. People are starting to listen. 

The Chaos Will Continue

 Krugman points out the extraordinary corruption in plain sight with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant speaking to a closed door meeting of J.P. Morgan Chase folks. That is simply a manifest case of insider trading and a violation of open government. The second part was that Bessant basically announced that we will strike a trade deal with China any day now, because what's happening in untenable. Bessant likened it to an embargo, which it is.

So, we have behind closed door reversals of policy coming not from the president who loves tariffs but Bessant, who does not. Will this get reversed? Maybe! Who knows?

It sure looks like the 30 year bond market is still "inverted". The dollar is still weak against the Euro. Layoffs have started. Trump is walking back his attacks on Jerome Powell, but that's only a little comforting, as Powell's term expires next year and you can bet Trump will put some idiot in charge of the Fed.  Maybe Eric?

"Cut, Elon, Cut!"

 We live in a red part of a blue state, and yesterday we drove up past this one house that always has massive painted political signs in their front yard. Very Trumpy. Currently there is one sign hating on our Senators, and the other says "Cut Elon Cut.'

Yeah. About that.

Richardson aggregates some of the really troubling signs from DOGE-world. Basically, what they are doing is largely indistinguishable from a malicious hack. The craziest thing we've seen is someone trying to log into federal systems using DOGE credentials from Russia. Meanwhile...<waves in the direction of Pete Hegseth>.

As Krugman points out, there are two principle drags on the US markets right now. The first is the actual Trump policies - notably the insane tariffs. The second is the policy "process" which seems to be whatever Grampa Shoutypants is tweeting from the shitter at 2am. 

That moron with his signs is actually the problem with American politics and he always has been. His idea of how the government works is incredibly flawed. He's the sort of idiot who thinks that 30% of the federal budget if foreign aid and that government should be run "like a business." He thinks illegal immigrants are coming here to sponge off Social Security benefits and half the athletes on the local girl's lacrosse team are actually men. He thinks crime is the worst it's ever been and also that Trump will keep us safe. If Trump says that Ukraine caused the war, then that must be so. He hopes the next pope will actually be a Catholic.

It is an open question what sort of institutions we will have left by 2028. The thing, though, about institutions is that they are very "sticky." They don't change easily, because they have accrued wisdom and practices over time. Trump's war on our institutions are neatly encapsulated by DOGE and cheered on by that freaking idiot and his yard signs. 

We are entering the "find out" part of FAFO and it won't be pretty. 

The Homeless

 I only sometimes agree with Erik Loomis about stuff - he's sort of an old school labor lefty with some...strident takes - but he's oddly moderate on San Jose's homelessness program. The basic contours of  the program begins with "it is not OK to be voluntarily homeless." That means arrests and mandatory housing. His moderation on this is likely because he's lived in the Pacific Northwest with all of their homeless issues. 

It's striking that he posted this the same day Pope Francis died. Francis was not perfect, he had some of the oddball Catholic ideas surrounding families that are probably to be expected from a priesthood unable to marry. (As an aside, the concept of papal infallibility is really, really strange in the 21st century. The Pope is basically the last meaningful monarch.)

Francis was focused on re-centering the poor in the mission of the Catholic Church. We have a homeless problem in our country, and we have untaxed mega-churches who do almost nothing to contribute to solutions to this problem.

We Might Be An Open Book To Russia

 This summary by Cheryl Rofer is from a whistleblower who worked cybersecurity at the National Labor Relations Board and tangled with DOGE. There's a lot, but this is Rofer's summary:

Highlights (or lowlights):

• DOGE were given “tenant owner” privileges, which allowed them full control over NLRB’s cloud.
• They disabled logging tools so that their actions wouldn’t be logged.
• 10+ GB spike in outbound data.
• Within 15 minutes of DOGE accounts being created, attackers in Russia tried logging in using those new creds. Correct usernames and passwords.

The DOGE teams seem to use their “official” status to gain access to computers, but disabling logging tools suggests that they are not working for the federal government. If they were, logging would be part of the job. It’s been clear for some time that DOGE is taking a lot of sensitive data (our formerly private and personal data) for themselves. The Russian attack is a bit of a surprise; they also disabled some of the safeguards like two-factor login, so it could have been part of the continuing Russian attacks to hack government data. I will leave you to imagine other possibilities.

It's entirely possible that either DOGE is so disabling governmental security measures that Russia is able to hack into our personal information or that they are selling that information to Russia. Honestly, which is worse?

Meanwhile, Pete Hegseth continues to be an active security threat while serving as SecDef. Remember that this is just the shit that's come to light in the first 100 days of Trump 2.0. 

You Know Who Else Loved Tariffs?

 Hitler.

For the record, once more, I would not call Trump a fascist, though many of his followers - especially Stephen Miller - fit the bill. Given Trump's cognitive decline and lack of policy detail, his lack of true fascist beliefs doesn't matter. He's made them the decision makers.

No, I think the better term to refer to Trump is "tyrant." In the Greek world, a tyrant was one who ruled outside the law. That fits him perfectly.

What's more, it was what Americans called King George 250 years ago. We should harness that American history for our opposition to the Man Who Would Be King.

What Next?

Predictions are hard, especially about the future. Paul Krugman has been trying to figure out what the hell is going on in financial markets. The reason it's been hard to say "This is what is happening" seems to be two reasons. The first is that so much of this is being driven by the chaotic nature of Trump and his decision making. It's just very hard to know what will come next. The second is that we have a limited number of historical case studies to model, and this one is kind of unique. Theories can be applied, but theories sort of depend on perfect information, and Trump is not a source of perfect information.

For instance, after the tariffs went into effect, we had what looks like a liquidity crisis AND a financial crisis. The really weird behavior of the bond markets and the strength of the dollar was what had economists confused. When stock prices fall, bond yields go down as investors seek safety. Instead, bond yields went up, because US debt wasn't seen as safe anymore, because we have a mad man as president. The dollar should also have gotten stronger, and instead it fell.

I have to wonder if this is a form of covert economic warfare, with European and Asian economies divesting from America's bonds and currency. This could be a decoupling from the dollar and US debt as the world's reserve currency. If that happens, it will have really negative effects on the American economy.

Stock markets have seemed to stabilize, because - as Nathan Tankus suggests - those markets are not so much processors of information as conventional wisdom. That would be Keynes' "animal spirits." Markets reacted favorably to Trump's tariff modifications, even though those modifications are pretty minimal. The overall tariff rate didn't really change, but it gave the impression that Trump was listening to market feedback, even though he launched genuinely insane tariffs on China.

It's the bond and currency markets that are still signaling that things are fucked. 

Back in 2008, we had the collapse of Bear Stearns in the early spring, but then we went through a weird few months. Gas prices spiked in the early summer. (My theory is that financial institutions were monkeying about creating a bubble in gas prices to restore balance sheet problems. It is only a theory.) Gas prices usually fall in a recession (like they are falling now). We had a few more smaller financial institutions like IMG go under that summer. Then September came and the shit hit the fan. Lehman fell and AIG nearly did. 

The markets were very imperfect predictors of the coming financial crisis, and I think the stock market is not going to be very helpful this time. The recession that is likely coming late this summer or fall will be a recession caused by these tariffs. In fact, the timing is fine, because while Trump will blame the recession on Biden, that will be untenable even for him, given that timeline. 

The idiots profiled yesterday said that they would be willing to accept short term pain for long term gain. 

They are lying. 

What's more, what they see as short term pain is barely above normal inflation. They are OK with prices rising 4%, wait until they spike by 10-15%. Wait until store shelves go empty. The long term gain they think they are getting - increased manufacturing jobs and "respect" - aren't going to happen either. If the bond and currency markets are seeing a massive sell-off of US debt and currency, then that's a clear sign of people not respecting us! The jobs aren't coming back because no one actually wants to do them. 

If the midterm elections were next month, I think Democrats win the House. If we have a full bore recession this fall, they will win the Senate in 2026.

Shoot Me Now

 The Times interviewed Trump voters. 

Just mind numbingly dumb takes.

A few things that come across:

- These are "break things because things are broken" voters. It will be interested to see how they react to a true recession or collapse in governmental function.

- They really hated Kamala Harris. Sorry, but the misogyny is real. 

- They are all convinced Trump will abide by term limits, which is noteworthy.

- They are all convinced that Trump won't do things that actively hurt them. Just others.

- The Hispanic voter were the most emphatic in supporting deportations.

- They buy into "the world has been taking advantage of us" rhetoric.

Actual Lawfare

 I had a couple of interesting conversations yesterday. One was with friends worried about Trump involving the Insurrection Act and turning it on Americans. The other was with our Head of School about the decision of our umbrella organization to cancel it's People of Color Conference. The basic gist of so many conversations these days is: How afraid should I/we be?

With the Insurrection Act, I actually think the risk is pretty low. Yes, he might send the army to the Mexican border, but I'm not sure that holds up to legal scrutiny. If he's claiming an "invasion" then that's not an insurrection. Sending troops to patrol the Arizona deserts is not a huge concern for me, given everything else that's going on. However, my friend was going to Mexico and wondering if they would be let back into the country. 

There are certainly anecdotes about people being harassed at customs, even US citizens. Still - at least as of this writing - citizens have rights. If Trump tries to override two and a half centuries of American rights, the Courts will tell him to fuck off. If he violates the Courts, then we could very well be in an 1859 moment. Maybe the country disintegrates. 

The thing is, you can't live in that constant tremulous fear all the time. What's more, it is that fear that constitutes their greatest weapon. They have almost zero legal standing for what they are doing. They need people to be afraid.

Which brings me to the discussion about how private schools are navigating this moment. The gist of it was that while most schools disagree with the decision to cancel the POCC, they are hoping to avoid a showdown with the limitless resources of the Federal government. Josh Marshall kind of runs through the calculations about how to fight back. It's possible, but the sheer scope of what could be over the horizon is really daunting. If you're the Sierra Club, how much money are you prepared to sink into lawyers to defend yourself against the entire Justice Department?

I get it.

However, as Paul Krugman points out, these people are fucking idiots. They are really pretty incompetent. They obscure their idiocy with violence of action, but it's still idiocy. Take the situations with Harvard. They sent the letter by mistake and then, when Harvard stood up to them, they said, actually we did mean the letter that we didn't mean to send. Elsewhere in Krugman's post, he talks about how Bessant went behind Navarro's back to get the modest reductions in tariffs. 

These people are a clown show, but because they are scary clowns people are backing away.

Universities are both some of the most vulnerable institutions to this illegal set of actions, and also, perhaps well suited to fight back.

But only if they fight back together. 

David Brooks - David Fucking Brooks - gets it.

It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.

This is exactly right (It's Brooks, he goes off the rails a bit at the end). The president is not sovereign; the people are. If there is a coordinated effort across all segments of American society to resist this lawlessness, then we can stop this before the midterm elections that are oh so far away.

One of the things I've been worried about is the generational damage Trump can do to the Federal workforce. The DOGE purges will weaken us as a country for years. However, at this point, I think any lawyer with respect for the rule of law needs to draw a line that they will not cross.

It would be supremely ironic if DOGE is out there crippling the government through illegal layoffs and lawyers at the DOJ crippled MAGA by resigning en masse.

If the greatest cudgel that Trump holds is the possibility of endless lawsuits, he needs a large supply of lawyers. What has become apparent from the jump is that most MAGA lawyers fall into the Alina Habba camp: manifestly incompetent. 

Harvard punching back has shown the cracks that every single bully has. If 1,000 universities band together, how will Trump react? If he order the DOJ to pursue prosecutions in violation of the law, the lawyers should resign. In fact, I'd love to see some of the phalanx of pissed of judges begin disbarment proceedings against some of the lawyers who are operating in contempt of court.

Heather Cox Richardson delivered remarks in celebration of the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere's ride.

Paul Revere didn’t wake up on the morning of April 18, 1775, and decide to change the world. That morning began like many of the other tense days of the past year, and there was little reason to think the next two days would end as they did. Like his neighbors, Revere simply offered what he could to the cause: engraving skills, information, knowledge of a church steeple, longstanding friendships that helped to create a network. And on April 18, he and his friends set out to protect the men who were leading the fight to establish a representative government.

The work of Newman and Pulling to light the lanterns exactly 250 years ago tonight sounds even less heroic. They agreed to cross through town to light two lanterns in a church steeple. It sounds like such a very little thing to do, and yet by doing it, they risked imprisonment or even death. It was such a little thing…but it was everything. And what they did, as with so many of the little steps that lead to profound change, was largely forgotten until Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used their story to inspire a later generation to work to stop tyranny in his own time.

What Newman and Pulling did was simply to honor their friendships and their principles and to do the next right thing, even if it risked their lives, even if no one ever knew. And that is all anyone can do as we work to preserve the concept of human self-determination. In that heroic struggle, most of us will be lost to history, but we will, nonetheless, move the story forward, even if just a little bit.

And once in a great while, someone will light a lantern—or even two—that will shine forth for democratic principles that are under siege, and set the world ablaze.

Financial Armageddon

 Where are the markets? That question has dominated coverage of Trump's disastrous tariff regime. Right now, the DOW is below 40,000, which feels psychologically significant. The bond market looks - if I'm reading this correctly - still inverted and troubled. Consumer confidence is in the toilet. Layoffs have commenced, even beyond the reckless slashing of the Federal workforce.

In other words, the economy that was the "envy of the world" is now teetering on the edge of recession and stagflation because Trump is a fucking idiot.

All of this makes Trump's sudden attacks on Fed Chief Jerome Powell even more concerning. It would be concerning regardless, because the independence of the Fed is critically important. As Krugman notes, the Fed makes mistakes, but it does so because it can be hard to discern what is happening or predict what might happen. The Fed screwed up massively in the early '30s because they literally were making up monetary policy at the time.

I think we are already in the "bad place" when it comes to relying on Federal economic data. Trump has stopped collecting data on consumer injuries, because if you aren't counting them, they aren't happening. This was his attitude towards Covid at one point. Why wouldn't he pursue this when it comes to the unemployment rate? So, if he's manipulating economic statistics - unemployment, consumer confidence, household income - why wouldn't he manipulate interest rates? 

The consumer injuries is an important example, because it's not actually Trump that's doing it; it's one of his minions. The same would hold true for the Fed. Powell's term ends in May, 2026. At that point, I would anticipate that we are in the shit, economically speaking.

We have already seen immense damage done to America's basic credibility when it comes to human rights, economic stewardship, strategic alliances and basic not-being-an-asshole. If Trump gets his hands on the Fed, that's a huge, huge problem. 

I'm sure Susan Collins will furrow her brow and Lisa Murkowski will write a blistering Op-Ed. Maybe by that time, two more Senate Republicans will...stop laughing...will...why won't you stop laughing?

Is Trump A Fascist?

 I agree that this is the wrong question. Trump himself may or may not ascribe to a conscious theory of fascism. There can be zero doubt that people like Stephen Miller are true fascists. Miller and his fellow travelers have a complete theory if power and racial hierarchies. Trump is just an authoritarian goon, a tin-pot dictator. He loves power for power's sake. Democratic accountability is his true enemy. Trump may not be crossed!

There are other ways to be authoritarian, and Trump embodies them. However, the "move fast, break things" ethos of Project 2025/The Dunning-Kruger DOGE Kids/Liberation Day seems to be slowly grinding down. The threat by Trump to remove Jerome Powell would be absolutely disastrous if he achieved it. It is, of course, illegal. The strength the of Federal Reserve is its independence. 

As Krugman notes, the strength of America has been its rule of law - as opposed to the whims of absolute monarchy. Monarchism or absolutism is bad precisely because no one person is THAT smart and Trump himself is notably stupid. Could a true genius do some good as an absolute dictator? Maybe for a while, maybe even a few years. In the end, though, any individual is fallible. 

The Narcissist in Chief will never understand that.

UPDATE: This post was written when I was scattered. Josh Marshall says it better:

We can talk endlessly about whether we’re still in a democracy or whether Trump wants to be or is acting like a dictator. We can debate words ‘fascism’ that were unknown before a century ago. But what we are seeing right now is the definition of tyranny, a half-archaic concept the founders of the American Republic were very familiar with. Trump’s rule is both lawless and arbitrary. He has taken the bundle of powers the constitution provides him to govern and defend the constitution and turned them to an entirely different and corrupt purpose: using them as weapons to attack the people and institutions he deems his enemies.

This kind of creature is precisely what the core architects of the constitutional order said document could never be used to create. The President is no King; he is subject to the law. And yet here we are. And it is the fraudulent doctrine of unitary executive authority which is walking before him like a statutory bushwhacker, clearing a path for him through every law and restraint. As I wrote above, this doctrine is based on theories and philosophical principles totally unknown to the architects of the constitution. It’s legitimacy can only rest on an argument about function. It fails the test totally. The constitution was sold to the American people, designed to prevent such a creature from emerging from its words and structures. But this doctrine turns out to be that creature’s greatest ally.

Running America Like A Business

 As I've said recently, if you study political science, your message is "Be afraid!"  If you study history, your message is "Be patient." We are seeing some of that in action right now. 

One of the most pernicious ideas in American politics is the idea that we "need to run America like a business." The fact is most businesses fail. Government cannot be allowed to fail, and if you don't believe me, take a look at failed states. 

"Business" typically organizes things hierarchically, with little democratic accountability. This results in things like terrible products - or good products/ideas that become worse over time as the product moves from the engineers or inventors to the MBAs. To the degree there's accountability it usually takes the form of bankruptcy or some other form of "restructuring" or mergers. None of these is really acceptable in a country.

What's more, there is no secret cheat code that unlocks when you become a businessman. We have all sorts of incompetence being demonstrated daily, like the hamfisted way they are shuttering grants. 

Even the two most central animating principles of the Trump Restoration - tariffs and deportations - are being botched, simply as policy. Take tariffs. (Please, take them.) They are being touted as "Art of the Deal!" style negotiating. Trump is playing 11th dimensional chess! The reality is that every possible potential positive way to use tariffs has been botched. No one with two functioning brain cells should trust Trump to abide by any new trade deals, when he's violated the existing ones. He's isolated us from our allies at precisely the time he's decided to launch a trade war with China - which require coordination with allies. 

On deportations, Trump (or more likely Stephen Miller) has taken the worst possible political stance on what was his strongest issue. He's deported people without due process and even suggested he would do this to citizens. The Abrego Garcia case has become central to our understanding of his policies, and that is the ground he is least favored on. Rather than take an actual MS-13 member who ideally has committed a serious crime, Trump has picked on a legal resident who is a good citizen. You want to see his poll numbers plummet among Hispanics? This should do it!

If you do down the line, from USAID to Education to cancer research, you can see a through line of stupid decisions executed incompetently. This is New Coke. This is enshittification. 

Trump is now unpopular, and given how slowly new information sinks in, those numbers probably understate the collapse in his popular support. What's more, the real bite from his moronic tariff policy hasn't sunk its teeth into people's wallets yet. Recessions usually start in the fall for some reason, so maybe that will be the moment when we tip into the spiral that leads downwards into a true, undeniable recession. 

When Trump ran his business, he ran it as a closely held corporation: no board oversight. Now, he's trying to turn America into the Trump business model. You know, the one he kept bankrupting because he's so fucking stupid.

Constitutional Crisis Is Misleading

 There's a lot of asserting in social media that we are now in a "constitutional crisis" because of the Trump Administration's seizing of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia and refusing to accede to court requirements that they bring him home. Yes, in many senses we are. 

However, "constitutional crisis" feels like language designed as much to create despair as action. We are in a constitutional conflict between the Executive and Judicial Branch. That conflict has chilling consequences for the very concept of constitutional rights of accused. It is part of the authoritarian agenda of the Stephen Millers of the world. Crisis suggests that constitutional government is in the actual process of ending. It is clearly in a contested space. However, as Josh Marshall has noted, we can focus on the conflict between a lawless Executive and the Judicial Branch, but there are other nodes of sovereignty, including the states and the people themselves.

Democracy doesn't have an on-off switch. We are clearly in a period where things we thought were settled constitutional issues have become unsettled. We are clearly in a period of conflict over whether we will abide by the very ideals and practices that have defined at least American aspirations if not always our practices.

If you need to use the term "crisis," OK. However, nothing is finally resolved. Trump might very well win this battle in this moment. But he's going to die one day. All the outrages of Project 2025 can be reversed.

This sucks, but it is not final. What's more, while some of these issues are somewhat abstract, the idea that Trump could seize a citizen off the street without a trial and send them to a Salvadoran prison is clear enough to register with just about anyone.

Make America Maoist

 Really insightful piece by Franklin Foer about Trumpist's class warfare against the "Creative Class" or basically people with college degrees who run things in a technocratic manner. If we look at the Cultural Revolution or Pol Pot's killing fields, we can see extreme examples of this, but are we really that far away when it comes to motives? 

Today's horror show in the Oval Office with President Bukele of El Salvador is about one man falsely sent to a Salvadoran prison. It's bigger than that, and I don't mean just the constitutional crisis of Trump defying the Supreme Court. I mean...that's big. Trump no doubt feels that he can defy SCOTUS, because the sort of people who care about things like due process rights are usually from that college educated "Creative Class." We think more abstractly, and can extrapolate from Trump seizing a legal immigrant and sending him to a foreign prison without due process from him doing that to an American citizen. He mused as much during the press assembly.

If you're freaking out about MS-13, then sending a few innocent people to a foreign prison may be the price you are willing to pay for security. You are considering a certain tangible outcome. MS-13 is really awful, but deporting random people is unlikely to solve that problem. Still, you're not really considering someone else's due process rights as being critical to your own. That's not how your brain has been trained, and if you're poor, you might well fear that sort of immediate violence. 

Trump needs to crush the college educated managerial class - whether in the bureaucracy, the universities, law firms or just suburban Wine Moms. I don't know that he can, because successful revolutions usually need the Middle Classes' buy-in, but he can do real and lasting damage as he tries.

Industrial Policy

 A couple of days ago, I argued that we shouldn't romanticize manufacturing jobs.  There was a poll out this week that said roughly 80% of Americans felt we should have more manufacturing in the US, but only 20% wanted to work in a factory. In other words, no one yearns for the factory floor. There are other ways to earn a good living without a college degree, as Krugman reminds us here.

The other thing Krugman suggests is that there really is a compelling argument for reducing our dependence on supply chains, especially to China. The proper way to address this is through what we can broadly call industrial policy. The general idea is that you target a specific industrial product - say computer chips - and subsidize those industries.

Which is what Biden did.

And it worked.

And Biden and Democrats did not get enough credit for it.

We did have some comical moments where Mike Johnson promised to repeal the CHIPs Act and he was quickly disabused of the notion by a Republican House member whose district has benefited from it. 

The problem is that Republicans cannot admit that industrial policy if the best solution to genuinely solving the issue of supply chains. There are two reasons. The first is Cleek's Law. If Democrats support it, it must be bad.

The second goes back to the second basic organizing principle of the GOP: Government can't do anything right. This is the impulse behind DOGE, but really it's true of almost anything besides policing and national defense. To the degree that a "compassionate conservative" advocates for something to help actual humans, you have someone like Mitt Romney using the tax code to help poor children. It tends to be the absences of burdens rather than the presence of positive policy.

Krugman is right that Democrats need to shut the fuck up with "Trump has a point on tariffs, but..." because that's bad policy and bad politics. I do wonder if making the argument for industrial policy will be a heavy lift, given the overall American attitudes towards government support. Of course, farmers, homeowners, the elderly and children already are supported by the the government in various ways, but that rarely registers.

And not for nothing, but the Trumpist assault on university research is actively counter to any effort to retain America's economic security.

The War On Information, Part II

 The White House released Trump's annual physical. It is such an obvious and blatant set of fabrications that it defies belief. 

Let's start with the glaringly obvious. It claims Trump is 6'3". Maybe. It then claims he weighs 224 lbs. That would probably require him to have about 6% body fat. I defy anyone to look at a picture of him and conclude that that number is anything but fraudulent. 

Many have dunked on this obvious fabrication, but let's go further. It says his BP is 128/74 and his resting pulse is 62. Heart rates and BP tend to increase with age. A resting pulse rate of 62 would be impressive for someone my age. I work out a fair amount and that's a little below mine. The American Heart Association like to say that 130/80 is the "good" blood pressure, but we now expect an 80 year old man to be more in the range of 140-150/90. Instead, what they did is they looked at the "best numbers" and then added 2 BPM for the heart rate and took away a few points for the BP from the BEST possible result.

As someone who has seen students cheat or fake their way through work for the past 30 years, this is VERY much someone making up numbers.

They mention his gun shot wound, which - again - no one has independently corroborated. 

He scored 30 out of 30 on his cognitive test. I defy you to listen to him speak off the cuff for any period of time and conclude that THIS guy has all his mental faculties.

His lipid panel is ridiculously good with an HDL of 77 and an LDL of 51. Those numbers are perfect. As someone who went through his own physical and blood work recently, you always have a few weird outliers. All of his numbers are perfect. The report touts his active lifestyle, which is pretty much driving around a golf course, getting out, whacking a ball and getting back in the cart. Nevertheless, the report lauds his "frequent victories in golf events."

The Times reports all this with as much credulity as it can. It concludes (rather than leads off) with some of the other questions about previous reports. There's this:

Mr. Trump, a fast-food enthusiast, is fueled by a diet heavy on ice cream, red meat and soda.

The president has referred to himself as “very much of a germaphobe” and says he does not drink alcohol or smoke, which was noted in the report. He has said he sleeps about five hours a night. Medical reports have described him as standing 6-foot-3.

There are two reasons why this otherwise comical story is not so funny.

The first is that again, we are asked to believe things that are just observably false, which is part of how fascists warp our sense of what is real.

The second is that Trump looks like he could keel over at any minute. He looks like absolute dogshit. If he DOES keel over in the next two to four years, his cultists will point to this nonsense as proof that the Deep State poisoned him. 

Mark it down.

We Have Lost Our Capacity For Outrage

 Look, yes, plenty of normie libs are outraged all the time. In fact, I think the aggregating avalanche of outrageous acts is destroying the mental health of my friends and family members who pay attention to the news. I'm not talking about them.

I'm talking about America as a nation, as a common polity who shares certain values. We have degraded our collective capacity to be outraged by the sheer cascade of corruption that has emanated from Trump since he shambled onto the national stage. 

The exercise of "imagine of Obama did that" or "imagine if a Democrat did that" has lost all significance. As Richardson explains, we have had a series of scandals in the past three weeks that would have been administration ending for any other person. There has been:

- The Signal Scandal
- The disappearance of Kilmer Abrego Garcia into an El Salvadoran prison without due process, and the administration refusing to bring him back, despite court orders to the contrary.
- Trump's tariff disaster as a policy
- Trump's tariff incoherence as a likely avenue for insider trading.
- Trump's indifference to the chaos that he has brought to the global economy while he golfs and pals around at his garish resort.
- Trump sending his attack dogs after two former officials for the official crime of opposing Trump.

Any one of these atrocities to good governance would be blaring headlines at any other time. Instead, today it's tariffs as we await tomorrow's markets and the bond market especially. Tomorrow, it could be something else horrifying.

This is the problem when half of America is so woefully uninformed about the actual merits of just good, solid, competent government. This is the problem when they see politics as the latest installment of reality TV. 

Man-ufacturing

 One of the regrettable tics from well-meaning liberals when talking about Trump's tariffs goes something like this: "The decline of American manufacturing is genuinely awful and we should do more to reverse that buy Trump's tariffs are just too chaotic and extreme a way to do that." Here's an example from the Times editorial board:

We want to emphasize that Mr. Trump has a point about the pain caused by free trade. The decades in which the United States threw open its doors to imports from other countries left many Americans without jobs and decimated the nation’s industrial heartland. Washington’s naïveté about China’s rise, accomplished partly through its own trade barriers and theft of intellectual property, is particularly regrettable.

A revival of American manufacturing is a worthy goal. It would not heal past wounds, but it could provide a basis for future generations of Americans to build lives and to rebuild communities that are more prosperous and more secure.

That is the tragedy of Mr. Trump’s trade war. Instead of addressing the ills he has diagnosed, he has embarked on a reckless campaign that threatens to discard the benefits of trade without delivering a meaningful economic revival.

Bullshit.

Here's the thing. America is responsible for roughly 16% of global manufacturing, which is, indeed, half of China's share. It is also the second highest level in the world, including Germany. China also has roughly three times the population of the US, so producing twice as much manufactured goods is actually not at all surprising. The US, which makes up 4% of the global population, makes us over 25% of global GDP.

How are we losing?

The average wage in manufacturing jobs in the US is around $51,000 a year. The average wage for a school teacher is $71,000. A police officer?  $62,000 a year. Even sales personnel earn around $54,000. 

Manufacturing jobs will not "make America great again." 

If you want to help the Rust Belt towns who lost those manufacturing jobs, then do it. Using tariffs to bring back jobs that pay...OK, isn't going to reverse anything. What's more, the tariffs are going to jack up prices, so those people who are earning $50G in their shiny new manufacturing job aren't going to be able to afford anything.

You want a good paying job for someone without a college degree? Construction pays $52,000. Electricians, $61,000. 

Build homes, not factories.

The War On Information

 Josh Marshall wonders why we haven't seen any of the "agreements" that various parties have entered into with the Trump Administration. He's referring to the "deals" with law firms and universities, but this could extend to the alleged deals with foreign countries over tariffs.

Heather Cox Richardson catalogs the firing of important national security figures, but also the weaponization of IRS data against immigrants. 

My sister has a friend - a lawyer no less - who was returning from Central America and ICE tried to search his phone, then revoked his Global Entry when he refused.

DOGE continues to burrow its way into more and more government systems.

The Bond Curve remains inverted, even as stocks rallied.

The presence of the various Broligarchs in and around Trump and the Project 2025 has created what might actually be the greatest crisis at the moment for American representative government. Modern systems run on information; the world is awash in data. If malevolent actors control that data, that gives them extrajudicial levers to well and truly fuck shit up.

I would think, also, that relying on government data becomes similarly problematic. Why should we trust jobs reports? If we destroy agencies like NOAA, how will weather forecasting work?

All of this looks to be an effort to finally achieve Grover Norquist's old goal of "shrinking the government until it's small enough to drown in a bathtub." I feel confident that Americans won't like that.

The Weasel And The Damage Done

 Paul Krugman, I think accurately, describes Trump's first 80 days as the "Third Worlding of America." It would not have been unexpected if Trump's tariffs led to a surge in the value of the dollar. Both the extreme levels of tariffs and the chaotic nature of the entire 80 days has led the rest of the world to treat the US not as the world's largest economy, but as an untrustworthy developing world nation, ruled by a dictator of unsound mind and policies.

Krugman:

The common thread in currency and bond markets is that, thanks to Trump, dollar assets — traditionally the foundation of the global financial system — are no longer perceived as safe.

The combination of interest rates soaring amid a slump and the currency plunging despite rising interest rates isn’t what we normally expect for advanced countries, let alone the owner of the world’s leading reserve currency. It is, however, what we often see in emerging-market economies. That is, investors have started treating the United States like a third-world economy.

Did I see this coming? No, not really. Unlike the sanewashers, I knew that Trump’s policies would be irresponsible and destructive. However, even I didn’t expect him to destroy credibility accumulated over 80 years in less than three months. But he has.

And even if Trump were to backtrack on everything he’s done, we wouldn’t get the lost credibility back. The whole world, sanewashers aside, now knows that America is run by a mad king, surrounded by enablers, who can’t be trusted to behave rationally.

I don’t know how this ends. In fact, I don’t know what policy will be next week. But that’s basically the point.

It may seem incredibly premature to think about what happens after Trump, but I think this basic thread I've seen everywhere raises that question. We see it a lot with regards to countries like Canada or other NATO allies saying, "We can no longer rely on the United States." or "The old order is gone."

That could very well be the case, but I don't think it's as locked in as people think. When a French politician said, "Europe cannot be held hostage to what 10,000 voters in Wisconsin think every four years" that does seem like a truly important shift. Europe as an entity is going to need to step up in ways that might prove difficult. The exact problem the EU has with America - the capricious idiocy of Donald Trump - is exactly why America has been the indispensable nation in the liberal world order. Our president has wide latitude to act, especially in international relations. Europe has no president in the same way that we use the word. Getting Europe to act in harmony is likely to prove a challenge.

Similarly, I have no doubt that Trump's policies - if they continue, and who the hell knows what he will do next week - will make America poorer. However, the loss of America as a foundation of the global economy is likely to make almost everyone poorer.

Now, there is the darkest timeline, where Trump tries to seize even more power by somehow degrading or cancelling the midterm elections. At that point, America likely collapses. That is not off the table, but it does feel very unlikely. If there are Democratic majorities in 2026, there might be some constraints on the Mad King. Dictators become dictators because they both promise good things and then at least partially deliver them. The worse things get, the less likely Trump becomes a true dictator.

Once we emerge from Trumpistan - and I don't think he can transfer his perverse charisma to a successor - the world may be deeply skeptical of us, and rightly so. Those 10,000 Wisconsinites are still an issue. The sheer force of gravity that the US exerts however, might lead to some return - though in now ways a complete return - to the status quo ante. 

The reason Trump is such an awful figure in world history will be precisely because the rest of the world has relied on the US for leadership - however flawed that leadership may be from administration to administration, from crisis to crisis. The primary force for this was that the US most of the time, stood for principles that mattered, but the lapses in those principles were very real and very damaging, even in the past. How many murderous dictatorship did we prop up during the Cold War? And yet we were still trusted.

I can't say with 100% certainty that America will be a democracy in 2029. I think it will be, but I can't be completely sure. If we are, then the same factors that made us preeminent in 2015 will still be there.

If we survive.

If.