The Discontent of Content

 Let's just recap yesterday's Friday news dump with Richardson. 

- Millions of Epstein files were released, with Trump's name prominent in many of them, and many with his name were the then subsequently scrubbed. Among the allegations were forcible and statutory rape by Trump and beating up a girl. 

- They arrested journalist Don Lemon for recording a protest at a church. They had to venue shop in order to find a grand jury willing to indict, as judges turned them down.

- Massive protests in subzero weather, which barely registered in the media.

- Trump threatened military action against Iran.

- Trump announced his candidate to head the Federal Reserve...and his name was in the Epstein files.

- We have a partial government shutdown, though Republicans and Democrats agreed in funding for everything but DHS, while they try and rein in the abuses there. Because Mike Johnson is a toady, he has the House in recess, but we shall see if they come back and keep the lights on.

- Oh yeah, Catherine O'Hara died, but that's not really relevant to this.

Among the many lenses through which to view Trump and his cronies is the lens of "Content Creator" - itself a vacuous designation of "just some idiot with a camera." Bannon and Trump have seized on the micro-attention spans of America and provided a firehose of "content" that thwarts efforts to grasp and understand (and counter) all of his awfulness. You think shooting a VA nurse in the back is bad? How about we go ahead and arrest a journalist? You like that? No? How about we bomb Iran?

The thing is, it gets old after a while. It gets exhausting. Those of us who are slaves to following the news have been exhausted since this time last year. For most Americans, it's background noise...until you shoot a VA nurse in the back ten times. 

I saw my conservative cousin paste something on Facebook, which is the usual nonsense about Trump. "I wish he didn't tweet so much. I wish he wasn't so verbally mean and crude. But, gosh darn it, he's authentic and I just can't quit him." The thing is, unless you are part of the 27%, you simply get exhausted. This shit ain't OK.

Anyway, we probably are going to war with Iran to distract from the evidence in the Epstein files that Trump may have killed someone.

The Fault Line

 Morris makes an important - really important - point. Trump maintains a level of popularity that exceeds his policies. For whatever reason, people like Trump. They don't like his policies. This is why Republicans perform so much worse when he's not on the ballot.

The military-style occupation of Minneapolis is the new child separation policy. As Trump's policies become more and more unpopular, his own popularity plummets. The GOP should see that plummet further. What's more, his voters stay home.

He's old. He looks like shit. Death comes for us all. When he's gone, that movement will collapse.

It's Not Going To Get Better

 While I've argued that we have to celebrate the small victories, like Greg Bovino getting canned, that should not obscure the fact that the authoritarian march of Trump is not abating. They and the Republican Party is more or less committed to his project of turning America in a competitive authoritarian state, like Hungary. They might try and round off some rough edges, like shooting people in the back on the street, and they will seize any opportunity to try and rally their base, but it sure seems like we have reached a tipping point.

Things are not going to get better on their own, and may in fact get worse in the short run.

At this point, I'm back to actively rooting for some sort of massive own goal, like an economic collapse or the leaking of those damned Epstein Files.

The Red, White And Blue Revolution

 Krugman compares the resistance to ICE in Minneapolis to the color revolutions that swept the former Soviet Union - with varying degrees of success - after its collapse. The point of these revolutions was to establish liberal democracy in countries that really never had them. In the United States, there are already robust institutions of liberal democracy that are surviving to varying degrees the onslaught by Trump and Project 2025. The press is free, but compromised. Federalism remains a bulwark to Trumpist overreach. The Courts continue to try and preserve the Constitution and civil liberties. If Democrats can gain control of Congress, we can legitimately see a pathway to preserving American liberty.

However, much of this will actually depend on actions like the incredible disciplined protests from Minnesota. No Kings is a decent start, but it will have to be expanded and continued. While firing Greg Bovino is not the solution to this problem, earning victories - no matter how small - are important to maintaining momentum and gaining converts. The doomerism that pervades many online spaces is simply not the right response. Steely resolve, yes. "This doesn't matter", no.

The rest of the world looks at the US with dismay. It will be up to the majority of Americans who oppose this to restore both our democracy and our reputation. 

Woof

 Adam Serwer is the indispensable sage of Trumpistan. His axiom, "the cruelty is the point", remains the most cogent summary of Trump's curdled worldview. 

He just published on the situation in Minneapolis. He ends with this:

The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.

No matter how many more armed men Trump sends to impose his will on the people of Minnesota, all he can do is accentuate their valor. No application of armed violence can make the men with guns as heroic as the people who choose to stand in their path with empty hands in defense of their neighbors. These agents, and the president who sent them, are no one’s heroes, no one’s saviors—just men with guns who have to hide their faces to shoot a mom in the face, and a nurse in the back.

Taking The W

 Yesterday, I predicted that Bovino would make an easy scapegoat for the catastrophic invasion of Minneapolis. Guess what? 

So, yeah, I take this as a personal win, but I think the Very Online Left needs to understand that you have to take your wins and celebrate them. Twitter was full of people saying "This is not enough. Miller and Noem have to go, too." 

Sure! I would LOVE that. But in a long campaign, you have to celebrate the wins you have. That's what allows you to build momentum. It's not enough just to record the win, you have to celebrate it. At the same time, you actually don't want to go overboard, because that could make Trump react in the opposite direction. Just don't crap all over the victory. 

Maybe?

 During the Iraq debacle, some idiot claimed that they were seeing "green shoots" of stability in the country racked by civil war. It's the same sort of thing I feel today, when I see the response to the state execution of Alex Pretti. The man was a literal Boy Scout, a literal choirboy. As Krugman notes, he is not being subjected to the same character assassination as Renee Good, who had the audacity to be a queer woman who didn't defer to the Big Strong Man sufficiently. Yglesias, who has developed a real knack for Steelmanning the indefensible, is actually unable to make the case for this bullshit. We are starting to see "unnamed sources close to the President" begin to ask very real questions about what is going on.

The videos of Pretti's murder are disturbing, but that is precisely the point. (I cannot fathom what his parents must thing, having to see the murder of their seemingly extraordinary son plastered across screens around America and the world.) The video makes it impossible for the Trump Administration to lie - or rather it has made it impossible for them to lie in a way that is defensible except by the hardest core of MAGA. 

Josh Marshall made the point about "escalation dominance" that clearly motivates Miller, Noem, Bovino and Lewandowski. They are "content creators" in our descent to fascism. 

They want the video.

Right up until they don't.

As of this moment, the GOP is fracturing over this issue. The public is appalled. They can try and push the narrative of Pretti having a gun on him, but that only infuriates the Second Amendment crowd. 

Trump believes in dominance politics, and his sending in shock troops and Brown Shirts to terrorize Minneapolis is an expression of that. 

He is also fickle and self-centered. If he sees this (if his addled brain is capable of taking in new information) and thinks "This is hurting me", then he will jettison people soon. If I had to guess that Lilliputian Martinet, Greg Bovino, would make an easy sacrifice. I wouldn't feel safe if I were Noem either, but Bovino is even more of an aesthetic embarrassment than Noem, as Trump doesn't like short little guys but like women who have butchered their faces for the male gaze. Seriously, I think that's it.

If Trump DOES throw aside Noem, I would absolutely expect her to go scorched earth, the way Marjorie Traitor Greene did. These are awful people - narcissistic, insecure, cruel - and they will turn on each other in a feral display of their own barbarism.

This is not "the end of Trump" and likely not even the end of Stephen Miller, despite him being the true architect of all this. However, we know Trump will case aside those he feels do not reflect well on him. This could be the moment when we begin to see them turn on each other.

I'm not necessarily optimistic, because after the initial outrage ends, the GOP will fall dutifully in-line. Still, it could be a start. Trump backed down over Greenland; he could back down here.  

Yes, Trump Is A Fascist

 I came about to this after resisting it during his first term, but Jonathan Rauch makes a pretty comprehensive case for the term.

Relatedly, in trying to process the execution of Alex Pretti, I realize that the last time I felt like this was January 6th. I feel that same white-hot rage that this is being done to our country, our ideals, our institutions. Rauch's catalog of Trump's fascism is just the academic framework for my anger. I can remember early on election night, when I realized that, no, the American people would re-elect this felon, this open sewer of human foibles. I drove out to the woods and screamed in pain and anger into the darkness. 

This is why.

Cringey liberals were right all along. 

Law Versus Order

 Paul Campos links to a Gessen piece about the nature of totalitarian and terror regimes. He's among the more alarmist of the writers I read (doesn't make him wrong, just saying), and I don't think we have a totalitarian regime right now. That seems absurd. If we did, there would be no coverage at all of the execution of Alex Pretti. It is clear though that what Trump and his legions want to implement is state terror. 

What ICE is doing in Minneapolis is not remotely "legal" under any earlier understanding of the word. It is not constitutional, certainly, as they routinely engage in illegal searches, they attack people exercising their First Amendment rights and they basically kidnap people without warrants. We can add extrajudicial killings to the litany of illegal actions. Instead, as a commentator note, what they want is not "law" but "order," which is to say compliance. Renee Good and Alex Pretti would be alive, if they simply laid down and did not challenge the state's actions - actions, again, that are constitutionally highly dubious. 

I have argued in the past that Trumpism is not conservative but reactionary, and I stand by that. The reflex to impose order at the expense of liberty is, however, a hallmark of conservatism. The impulse to bow down to hierarchies is at the root of all conservatism. There are times when that makes a certain amount of sense, but it is certainly not universally true. Conservatives hated Martin Luther King with a white hot passion - not because he was violent, but because he challenged the structures that imposed a brutish order.

Watch the lying the sacks of shit who go before cameras and lie to you about what your own eyes can see. They aren't serving the law or the Constitution, they are serving their ideal of an authoritarian order where the strong crush the weak.

ICE Just Executed A Man On The Streets Of Minneapolis

 You can find the video if you want. It's disturbing. If you can stomach it, watch it. Bear witness. ICE tackled a guy to the ground, beat him ruthlessly and then one guy shot him multiple times as he was lying on the ground. 

If I were Walz, I would be faced with an impossible dilemma. My gut would say that I need to mobilize the National Guard and bring them onto the streets of the Twin Cities and interpose themselves between ICE and the populace. My brain would recognize that as soon as I do that, Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act. 

If this act stands, if ICE is not removed from Minnesota, then we are reasonably looking at the end of America as an idea. The idea that consent of the governed matters, that civil liberties matter, that the Constitution matters is on a knife's edge and this event could tip if off. 

We are approaching a place where "Blue" states need to seriously consider whether remaining in a polity with the states that are OK with "comply or be shot" is tenable. If America "pukes up her ancient soul" then it is no longer America.

UPDATE: Good take from Josh Marshall, as always.

Can The Supremes Actually Apply The Text?

 Yglesias summarizes the Trump Administration's war on birthright citizenship. By just about any standard - the text of the XIVth amendment, the existing precedents, basic bureaucratic paperwork, federalism and the issuing of birth certificates - this should be an open and shut case. There is no defensible position to revoke the plain text of the XIVth, besides racist beliefs in the status of non-white people. 

Ideally, this could be an opportunity to the Sycophantic Six to show that they can actually apply the law as it was intended, rather than giving Trump whatever he wants. They seem to be leaning that way when it comes to the Federal Reserve's independence; they could do the same here.

The Court is so degraded right now, that it is hard to take anything for granted. I do wonder if things like yesterday's protests in Minneapolis could signal to the Court just how fragile their legitimacy is right now. The foundations of Constitutional governance are quaking under our feet right now, and the question is whether the Sycophantic Six will be pallbearers or paladins. 

Irreparable Damage

 This piece on the degradation of the FBI under that Klown Kash Patel is sobering reading. You should just read all the ways that they have warped the premier investigation agency in America into a perverse extension of Trump and Miller's bizarre fixation on immigration. 

The thing is, it's a disaster waiting to happen. The monomaniacal focus on immigration is going to leave gaps that "bad actors" can exploit. What's more, the institutional knowledge and experience is going to be lost. The ripples of this one action are going to be felt for years and there are myriad other examples of precisely this sort of fuckery.

The FBI is arguably the most conservative part of the federal bureaucracy, and they are at wit's end with this shit.

UPDATE: The more you read, the more Chuck Grassley - or more likely the staffers who prop up that desiccated husk of a man - is really fucking awful.

To Secure These Rights

 The Declaration of Independence's ringing words of "All mean are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are well known. The next phrase is important, too. "That to secure these rights, governments are instituted amongst men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

As Morris notes, Trump has lost the consent of the governed. Most notably, in places like Minneapolis, the populace's protest, the broad uproar, is an example of the governed withdrawing their consent. That was true with George Floyd and the protests surrounding his death. Large numbers of Americans rejected the idea of an unaccountable police presence. 

Conservatives often believe that the consent of the governed is limited to a few elections, and then people should submit to authority. If you take something like the civil rights movement, that was an example of a population that could NOT express their consent through elections, so they protested until they could. We are faced with a broadly similar dynamic today. We have to wait until November to express our consent, and until then, protest is our only venue to express that we do not consent to warrantless searches, wholesale corruption and the wanton disregard for laws and treaties.

The 250th anniversary of that declaration is coming soon. We should reinvigorate that document.

Well, That Was Fucking Stupid

 TACO returns. 

Trump chickened out on his plans to annex Greenland (Iceland? Greenland? Iceland?) by coercive means. On some level, this is just the obvious psychology of a bully who had his bluff called. Perhaps someone showed him the polling numbers that have "Annexing Greenland" lower than "Trump's handling of the Epstein Files." More likely the cratering bond markets in the face of a potentially ruinous rupture between the US and Europe got his attention.

The relationship between the US and Europe since 1945 and 1989 has been one of incredible benefits to both sides of the Atlantic. Trump is congenitally unable to conceive of a mutually beneficial relationship. In his warped, blinkered world view, there are only winners and losers, conquerors and victims. When Europe stood up to him - I can just imagine Hegseth and Miller repeating the fiction that Europeans are just cheese-eating surrender monkeys - he must have been shocked. Called on his bullshit, he did what he always does in such situations: he declared "victory" and retreated. 

Still, the damage is done. When Mark Carney, of all people, is declaring that the old order of a US-led community of democracies is dead, I think he means it. I think he's wise to say it. I do think a future, not-insane US president can undo some of this damage, but let's be clear: if you are Europe or Canada or Japan-South Korea, can you really rely on the US? Are you going to put yourself at the mercy of a bunch of misogynist swing voters in the Upper Midwest every four years?

And this was all SO FUCKING DUMB. Greenland? Seriously? The plan, I think, was that this would be the pretext to break up NATO. Trump's insane, rambling screed at Davos sounds like a guy trying to get his third wife to divorce him by abusing her verbally and making her initiate the divorce proceedings. I don't think even Trump wants his fingerprints all over the demise of NATO. He's an expert at creating crises and then getting someone else to hold the bag for them. He's a coward, as we know all bullies are.

Your obligatory reminder that at any moment, the Republican Party could remove this manifestly unwell man from his position of power. Yes, Trump is uniquely awful, among the worst people this nation has ever produced. But he is not doing this alone; the silence of the GOP is as damning as his inchoate whining speeches. 

Europe's Leverage

 Trump is throwing another tantrum. He's pissed that a sovereign country won't bend the knee and cede him Greenland, so he's throwing up tariffs against the entire EU. Krugman points out why this is unlikely to be as effective as he thinks. He makes the point that Trump is completely irrational, and while I largely agree with that, I think there is a rational reason why he's pursuing this: He wants to blow up NATO.

Kelly and others from his first term said that, if reelected, Trump would pull the US out of NATO in his second term. Doing this frontally would engender backlash; if he just pulled us out for no reason, people would question his purpose, even with the craven confines of the GOP caucus. Instead, he picks a stupid fight that itself becomes a loyalty test and then uses that pretext to blow up the Transatlantic Alliance.

Yesterday, stocks dove and bonds rates got very pessimistic about the future. The ultimate weapon the world holds against us is the immense amount of US Treasury bonds that they hold. If they liquidate them, it will hurt, but it will also crater that value of US debt and make it much harder to finance the reckless tax cuts that Trump has passed. 

Trump's bluster has backed everyone into their corners, including himself. That's a dangerous place to be. Trump's social media output reeked of flopsweat and desperation, throwing unhinged rants in every direction. His approval ratings continue to tank, even on immigration. The generic ballot is 51-43 among registered voters, but 55-42 among committed voters. That latter number is worth watching, as some MAGA will likely just sit out the midterms in the wake of his continuing shitshow of an administration.

Europe will hopefully show more resolve than they typically do, even if it tips the world and them into an economic slowdown. The alternative might be an unthinkable war.

One Year In

 It's been a year. We are going to be subjected to a bevy of Cleetus Safaris as the news orgs all send reporters to places that voted for Trump and ask Trump voters if they still like Trump. I've already seen one before I brushed my teeth. 

Here's the thing. First, few people who voted for Trump and feel abandoned by him are going to go on camera and say, "Whelp, I fucked up." The people on camera are hardcore partisans. The other group are people who voted for Trump, are upset but simply aren't going to talk about it. Anyone eager to go on camera and admit they were wrong about Trump is not going to admit that they were wrong on camera.

There was one Trump voter - a farmer - who was dismayed by the collapse in prices. He "doesn't know who dropped the ball in Washington." Yeah, it was Trump. It was the tariffs. This is rudimentary stuff. I don't know if that guy is reachable. I would guess things would have to get much worse before he would realize that it is, in fact, Trump who has screwed him and most other farmers in pursuit of his 19th century economics. There was one woman who said she thought Trump was doing great because of her 401K. Again, things would have to get a lot worse for her to switch.

Except she won't switch. OK? The best you can hope for is demoralizing these rural, white, hardcore Republicans so that they sit out the 2026 election. Having invested their emotions and reputations in him, they cannot easily abandon him publicly without triggering massive cognitive dissonance. They can, however, stay home. 

Trump's job approval is terrible, but he hasn't yet crossed enough lines with enough voters to get to 27%, which is the Crazification Factor that no Republican can fall below. Even the worst possible revelations from the Epstein Files would only take him to 27% or thereabouts.

We are a quarter of the way through a terrible time in the moral history of our country. I'm not sure why interviewing the people who enabled that makes for good journalism.

Dignity Wraiths

 In Trump's first term, Josh Marshall coined the term "dignity wraiths" to describe those creatures who debased themselves to get into Trump's good graces, only to be further humbled and laid low by Trump's essential depravity and cruelty. Lindsay Graham was a good example. I think Bill Cassidy, who was the deciding vote to put that charlatan RFK, Jr. in charge of America's health, is another example. For his trouble, he has earned a primary challenger, boosted by Trump. 

Krugman makes a similar point with regards to the business leaders who have flattered and bribed Trump in order to avoid his wrath and cultivate his support. History has shown that this rarely works out well. Take Maria Corina Machado, who gave away her Nobel Prize, thinking it would move Trump into actually taking over Venezuela. He took it, she looked the fool and Trump is content to commit more piracy in seizing Venezuelan oil tankers.

On this MLK Day, Richardson reminds us that heroes are not perfect people. King himself was a serial philanderer. Heroism is not the same as saintliness. Heroism is meeting a challenge with courage and resolve. America needs more heroes right now. We need people who are in comfortable positions and enjoy great privilege to show half the resolve and courage as the Minnesotans protesting the military occupation of their cities. We need people like Lisa Murkowski to leave the Republican Party instead of knitting her brow and expressing her concern. 

You cannot placate this man. I have a hunch that NATO sending tripwire troops to Greenland will have the needed effect and Trump will not invade that country. They will negotiate some watered down, bullshit deal for minerals or basing rights, Trump will slink away, and his cultists will extol the Art of the Deal.

You cannot negotiate with the howling void at the center of this man's soul, and doing so will only lead to your own living damnation.

Europe's Next Steps

 The EU and NATO leadership is aghast at Trump's latest fetish for annexing Greenland. They should be. It's appalling. 

What should they do? They've sent tripwire forces to Greenland with the clear message that any military action would risk war with European countries. While Rep. Don Bacon has said that this would lead to impeachment, does anyone believe that Republicans would advance articles of impeachment? Or that enough Republicans in the Senate would vote to remove? "These men are coward, Donny."

If Europe cannot rely on Republicans to have a backbone, what should they do? I would say exactly what they are doing and more. Send NATO warships to Nuuk. Be crystal clear what would happen if Trump thinks he can send in some Rangers and Marines and seize Greenland. There are two reasons why this should work and one reason it won't.

The first is that Trump tends to bluster and bully, but then back down in the face of real opposition. TACO or Trump Always Chickens Out was about tariffs, but it's true across different events. He's a bully and bullies tend to back down from a show of strength. I'm sure the sycophants around him and his own preconceptions are telling him that Europe is weak and decadent, effeminate. Demonstrating that you won't be pushed around would garner Trump's respect, not a lethal response.

The second is that Trump is so damned thirsty to get peace prizes and sell himself as a peacemaker, that it seems you could leverage that. He's not going to start a shooting war and credibly claim to be the Peace President. Even he can't tolerate that much cognitive dissonance. Look at Venezuela; he okayed a lightning raid, verbally asserted control of the country, but does not seem to be eager for boots on the ground. This is where the bluster and threats break down. He has competing agendas in being Mr. Peace Prize and Mr. Imperialist and it seems unlikely he would do anything that might lead to American soldiers coming home dead.

The reason why it might not work is that Trump is fucking insane. As in detached from reality. He is surrounded by repellant sociopaths like Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth who are capable of any manner of atrocities. Do you want to wager lives on the predictability of Trump's response?

You see the same dynamic, I think, in Minnesota. Walz has called the National Guard on standby to keep the peace. Trump, I think would back down, but Miller is salivating over an opportunity to escalate things in Minneapolis, and Walz calling out the Guard could be the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act.

It is chaos. It is dangerous. The person most responsible for this is chaotic and dangerous - a doddering old maniac with delusions of grandeur. He is quite unpopular. 

But Kamala Harris had a weird laugh so what are you gonna do?

Misogyny

 I read this article in The Atlantic, and I was struck by this definition of misogyny:

If sexism is based on the belief that men are inherently superior to women, misogyny, Manne writes, especially targets “unbecoming women—traitors to the cause of gender—bad women, and ‘wayward’ ones.”

What do you do with a disrespectful woman, a wayward one? Punish her, dehumanize her as an example everyone can learn from. What do you do with a woman who seeks authority for herself? Remind her of her place. 

The author never mentions Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris, but that's the immediate example I thought of. I hesitated to use the word misogyny, because I doubt that the white women or many of the men who voted for Trump, then Biden, then Trump would have defined themselves that way.

Donald Trump is the personification of sexism and misogyny. He won his two races against women who "sought authority for herself" and in fact authority over the country. Their unforgivable sin was the ambition to lead, in a country where many people - including some women - don't believe that women should do that.

Donald Trump is unpopular. He was unpopular in 2018, too. I am convinced that if the Democrats had run a man, Trump would have lost. This is an articulation of why.

Rules And Norms

 My Comp Gov textbook defines a "regime" as the rules and norms that govern political behavior and structures. In the US, the Constitution is the regime, but there are other norms that have governed our political system.

Trump is bulldozing them like the East Wing of the White House.

The partisan gerrymandering is one example of simply making up things as you go along and kudos to Democrats for realizing that unilateral disarmament in this environment is folly. When it comes to something like the presidential pardon power, it was assumed that the President would be bound by public virtue and a sense of the majesty of the office and his obligation to serve the law. Trump's selling of pardons is, it seems, within the scope of the letter of the law. He can be impeached for this behavior, but not prosecuted. He will, of course, pardon the thugs like Greg Bovino and the grifters like his entire family on his way out the door. 

The norms, on other words, aren't working.

We need new rules. 

Trump Is Making New Democrats

 One of the really important and underrated metrics in politics is partisan self-identification. Not which party "registers" more voters, but which party actual voters say they support. This is especially important among "independents" who are really just partisans without the label. A "Republican-leaning Independent" is a Republican.

Elliott Morris notes a massive shift in partisan identification since this time last year. Right before he was inaugurated last year, self-identification was R+4. Some of this was bandwagoning behind the winning candidate. By June it was D+3. The most recent sample was D+8.  This is a bigger gap than in 2017-18, which led to the first Blue Wave. No doubt this was behind the mid-decade re-gerrymandering that Republicans threw all their weight behind. 

However, this level of Democratic self-identification is what creates a dummymander, where they actually make some of their own districts competitive by diluting GOP districts to erode Democratic ones.  At the end, Morris notes that this is not a self-fulfilling prophecy, as Democrats do have to actually turn out their voters, but the trend since Trump arrived on the scene has been that high frequency voters are now disproportionately Democratic, in ways that simply wasn't true before.

The DHS-created chaos in Minneapolis is not reflected in these numbers. Much like Trump's destruction of the East Wing, this is one of those visually compelling stories that tend to break through to low information voters. When Joe Rogan calls ICE a Gestapo type force, that's a really big deal in how the Ariana Grande voter will evaluate Trump.

If the economy drops into recession in the next 9 months, the GOP could lose their Senate seats in places like Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Montana. That's how profound this drop could be. 

Greenland, Red Light

 Trump's obsession with Greenland is just so monumentally stupid, even depraved, that it's a struggle to make sense of it. Of course, it's a struggle to make sense of gutting moneys to research cancer, but here we are. It seems the push to annex Greenland might be a product of some of the following factors:

- Trump sees both the size of Greenland on a Mercator projection and heard that it has a bunch of rare earths, so his smooth brain thinks it will make him a great president.

- Trump is actively trying to blow up NATO, and this is an easy way to do so.

- Trump doesn't care about NATO one way or another, he just wants to bully another country and express his contempt for Europe as a whole. This would be part of his Donroe Doctrine.

We also have to consider that the various creatures around Trump have varying agendas and that they can easily manipulate him, using some combination of the above. That seems to be sort of what happened with Venezuela, where Miller's rabid racism, Rubio's anti-socialism and Hegseth's bloodthirstiness all allow for different levers to be pulls in pursuit of the same end. Whether it's "Kill Brown People", "Topple a Dictator" or "Thing Go Boom" they could all agree to push this mission. There is considerably less consensus among Republicans about actively taking over Venezuela.

With Greenland, we are once again at the fickle mercies of Republicans finding their spine and principles. There are quite a few Republicans that still believe in NATO and might oppose this, but it's essential that they be on the record NOW, before Mango Mussolini commits another war crime.

There is just TOO MUCH NEWS right now, but this is a big one.

Can Americans Reclaim Their Revolutionary Heritage?

 As we enter the 250th anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence, the Trump Administration has decided to behave like a monarchy. Trump assumes the air of a king when he builds his knock-off Versailles, when he conflates opposition to him with treason, when he uses the language of force rather than consensus.

In Richardson's dispatch, she notes that Joe Rogan has likened the militarized ICE presence in Minnesota to the Gestapo. I know most people to his left consider Rogan a meathead, whose embrace of vaccine quackery and general rightward tilt make him suspect. If you're going to persuade America that Trump is acting, in fact, like a despot, then it's Rogan that you have to flip. It's Theo Von. 

The state's "monopoly of violence" is actually a monopoly of legitimate violence, and the citizens of Minneapolis have made very clear what they think of ICE's good squad intimidation tactics. So have Chicago, LA and Portland. All policing requires the consent of the community, or else it ceases to be policing and becomes tyranny.

Americans have historically been a difficult lot to govern. Our institutions with their veto points and separated powers reflect this. Hopefully more and more Americans will become ungovernable in the face of Trump's emerging police state.

The Politics Of Renee Good's Murder

 Josh Marshall asked (sarcastically) "Is it good politics to defend a harmless woman getting shot in the face?" He was rebutting the idea that Trump has some mastermind media strategy that allows him to shape reality. In fact, that's clearly not the case - or not exactly the case.

The initial polling is pretty clear on two things: Democrats are outraged at this, Independents are pretty much opposed and Republicans are mostly OK with it. This polling will likely change, especially as there is a continuous stream of video from Minneapolis of people being harassed or beaten by ICE goons. Given both the pushback from the residents of Minnesota, the besieged psyche of ICE/BP, the belligerent nature if ICE/BP folks and the clear message that acts of violence will be met with official impunity, I suspect we shall see another shooting sooner rather than later.

What's more: It's Minnesota. Yeah, the Twin Cities are lefty-coded, but Minnesota could not be more centrally in the actual "Heartland." This isn't Portland or San Francisco or LA. It's white people being shot. There is a certain sociopathic segment of the Right that will cheer this on, but if this sort of state violence continues, I think it's going to make more and more segments of our society REALLY uncomfortable.

The Fed Is The Bright Red Line

 Trump's spurious prosecution of Jerome Powell is both deeply chilling and unlikely to work. The Federal Reserve was specifically constructed to avoid political pressure. They have to make the hard choices that presidents and congressional members cannot. Paul Volcker purposefully forced the country into a brutal recession from 1979-1983 in order to kill the inflation that had curdled the American economy. Powell has skillfully navigated the post-Covid inflationary period to quell inflation without forcing us into a deflationary recession.

As Krugman notes, this is part of Trump's overall assault on anyone with the temerity to not kiss his ass. He is so ensconced in sycophants that he cannot be contradicted, cannot be defied, and Powell wouldn't cut interest rates. (By the way, why now? Why launch a prosecution now? I have to wonder if they are seeing some flashing red lights on the economy and are that desperate for a rate cut.)

Last year, the Sycophantic Six on the SCOTUS basically allowed the president to fire anyone at any agency, even if it had been set up to be beyond the reach of presidential firings. They specifically said that this does not apply to the Federal Reserve. The reason is that the Court ultimately works for the Money. Yeah, they may secretly thrill to Trump's attacks on Democrats or minorities, but their real purpose was to overturn Chevron and gut the regulatory state. 

The broadest trends in macroeconomics are fuzzy at the moment. The tariffs have not really been universal and the effects have not been as profound as the published rates. There is still some hope that the Court will overturn them, for the same reason that they might protect Powell. The economy is soft, but not receding, and that softness has largely come from Trump's erratic policy making. No one knows what he might do with tariffs or punishing a specific industry from one day to the next. No one wants to go into Venezuela because he might simply walk away from it and stare out the window at his construction project in the old East Wing. 

The economy is frozen in uncertainty, even as Trump guts regulatory oversight and funnels money to the rich. Attacking the Federal Reserves' independence is unlikely to sooth markets and allay the concerns of business.

The Policy Incoherence Of Morons

 I'm teaching Progressivism this week, and we are looking at how there are two aspects of Progressivism that were in direct tension with each other: the desire to have experts direct policy and the desire to have more democracy to represent the "people" and not the "interests." Both were and are laudable goals, but they can work at cross purposes.

Under Trump we have the dual incompatibility of the attack on experts and the destruction of democratic norms. Part of me thinks that someone read something about Progressivism, and then decided to undo anything that smacked of it. This would certainly be consistent, for instance, with Trump's war on Jerome Powell. In fact, the new year has brought such a torrent of terrible news that it seems to have slipped the banks of a coherent narrative. But the attacks on Powell, on Minnesota, on science, and the literal attacks on Venezuela, Syria and maybe Iran or freaking Greenland are all part of the "logic" of authoritarianism.

The reason why authoritarianism is historically unpopular is because authoritarianism - with some exceptions, like maybe Singapore - typically has to business for technocrats. This gives us the darkly comical moment of Trump waging a war for oil in Venezuela and the oil companies saying, "Nah, we're good, dude."

Trump promised an economic utopia when he ran in 2024, and gullible people conflated the circumstances of 2019 with Trump's alleged business acumen. In fact, he's given is a noticeably weak and sluggish economy that Krugman argues is sluggish because of the incoherence and chaotic nature of an autocrat making shit up on the fly. It's all very noisy, but the combination of chaotic tariffs, the prospects of AI taking white collar jobs and general overall problems like firing 300,000 government workers has all led to a period of instability.

Simon Rosenberg notes that Republicans are beginning to break with Trump over issues of clear policy malfeasance. Hopefully, this becomes contagious, and they pass veto proof resolutions denying Trump the ability to invade Greenland or to protect Jerome Powell and the independence of the Federal Reserve. If Trump gets his tiny little paws on the Fed, we are well and truly cooked, and I think even most Republicans know this to be true.

Of course, on one level, the policies pursued by Trump are not incoherent. They are completely coherent with his curdled worldview. They are coherent to his own ignorance and impulses.

Famously some Bush 43 lackey said of Iraq: "We are an empire. We make our own reality." 

How did THAT work out?

RFK, Jr's Reign Of Error

 The Atlantic published a series of thumbnail bios of people who have been fired or accepted retirement or quit on principle over the last year. It's a sobering example of the gutting of the Federal bureaucracy of it's institutional ballast.

What becomes clear is that the devastation wrought by RFK to public health and public science is brutal, far reaching and soon to be lethal. 

That gasoline, gargling creature with a face like a dried apricot is among the many sins of the swing voters who thought, "Eggs are pricey, what's the worst that can happen."

Maybe?

 Simon Rosenberg is an optimist - his place is called the Hopium Chronicles. He ponders that for everyone who is doomcasting about the end of democracy in America and the end of the postwar liberal order, what if it wasn't? He points to the protests in Iran, Ukrainian resiliency on the battlefield (something Philip Bump mentions in this conversation) and even a possible democratic or at least not kleptocratic Venezuela. What if Orban finally loses in Hungary?

Imagine if there are far more people like this Iranian woman?

I think history suggests that there are. And maybe the US engulfed in democratic backsliding means that Europe and other places are going to have to step up and maintain the world order until we get our shit together? What if Iranians are protesting not only their awful government, but because they know no one else is coming to help them?

Maybe America remembers its antifa past. 

It's pretty to think so. 

DHS

 The Abolish ICE mantra has been embraced by people as diverse as Bill Kristol. I think Josh Marshall is right though that we need to think more generally about basically eliminating Homeland Security. DHS was a weird reaction to 9/11, as Democrats were looking for a way to "get tough" on terrorism without countenancing pogroms against Muslims in America. It was very much of the Liberal Organizational Flowchart school of technocracy. 

The idea was to take a host of disparate agencies and house them in one place. There was always a slight fascist aesthetic to a lot of DHS, right down to the words "homeland security." The Boys gave the name Homelander to their fascist Superman. There has to be some form of border patrol, for instance. Democrats would be insane to embrace the Open Borders lunacy that some spouted in 2020. Housing Border Patrol in a different department would be the first step towards accountability and oversight. As we have seen with Trump, Miller and Noem, DHS was just ripe for the sort of abuses that they are visiting on American cities and citizens.

"Terrorist Agents"

 I was reading this Times piece about the mass protests in Iran. The language the regime is using to describe the pro-democracy protests is pretty much the identical language that Trumpists are using to describe protests in America. 

If - hopefully, hopefully - the Iranians finally throw off their awful government, Trump will no doubt take credit for it, but make no mistake, he wants to be Supreme Leader himself.

Alexandra Petri Is A National Treasure

 This is a brilliant, funny and even poignant piece of writing.

King Donald The First

 The atrocious murder of Renee Good in Minnesota by masked agents of the state has been likened to the Orwellian line of  "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." This connects - and rightly so - the actions of the Trump administration with 20th century totalitarianism. I don't think they've achieved it, but that is clearly their goal.

However, in describing Trump himself, I think Krugman is correct here and here. Trump clearly sees himself as a monarch, a sovereign. His actions work to blur the lines between the state and his person. He sees the achievements of the state as HIS achievements and the resources of the state as HIS resources. This is why dissent of any kind is "treason," because the king is the sovereign. 

The basic, foundational idea of America - the thing we are celebrating this year's 250th anniversary - is that the people are sovereign. Trump's "L'etat cest moi" bullshit is deeply, deeply Unamerican. The raid to get Maduro was a very impressive bit of work by the extraordinary professionals of Joint Special Operations Command. Trump thinks he did it. He crowed about watching it on TV, like he was playing some sort of video game and the controller was in his hands. His desecration of the East Wing of the White House is reminiscent of some fading potentate building a palace in his own honor to stave off the looming reality of his own mortality. 

I honestly am not going to predict the fallout from Good's murder or Trump's illegal actions in Venezuela. I've been humbled trying to predict things where Trump is involved. Still, shooting a white mom in the face is not likely to increase support for his internal deportation policies. Those policies were never popular, as people wanted more border security, not attacks on their schools and neighborhoods in an effort to deport some roofers, line books and housekeepers. Before these events we had two polls on Trump's job approval. CBS had 41-59 or 18 points "underwater" and Rasmussen (Rasmussen!) had him 45-53 or 8 points down. 

ICE itself has seen support collapse, from +16 to -14 in November. That number is sure to fall further. People want the border "secure" but they don't want raids on apartment buildings, they don't want masked goons provoking confrontations on American streets. Support for abolishing ICE entirely has reached 42%, up from 29% in 2018. Not yet the majority position, but this was before ICE start shooting people in the face and then being held unaccountable for their actions.

I've been learning about pre-Norman Britain, and it is striking how the character of government often depended so completely on the character of the king. Trump is a man of low character, and his administration reflects this. I was reflecting on the fact that "shame" isn't actually a bad thing, if it serves a moral code. Relentless shame is debilitating, but if you wrong someone and feel shame, that's actually good. It allows you to make amends and rectify your behavior.

Trump's superpower is shamelessness, and that extends to his courtiers, who smear Renee Good rather than reflect on their actions that led to her slaughter in the streets of her hometown by agents of the state that are not welcome there. Their king revels in the blood on his hands, he bathes in it.

But hopefully, America remembers that we are not a nation of kings.

The Lying Is The Point

 Yesterday, video clearly showed an ICE officer in Minneapolis shoot and kill a woman who was "in the way" of an ICE raid. He violated many basic rules of law enforcement - don't stand in front of a vehicle; don't discharge your weapon into a moving vehicle - and he basically murdered her for "not complying."

Immediately the Trump administration made false claims about the woman, the incident and the nature of the threat to ICE. There are so many disturbing aspects of this incident that it does remind me of January 6th, in terms of which aspect I should be angriest about.

This happened for one reason only: Trump and Stephen Miller are looking for performative acts of oppression and intimidation in "blue" cities. They aren't finding the hundreds of thousands of "illegals" in these cities, and maybe they are stupid enough to think that this is just a matter of more raids. In fact, these wholesale assaults on civil liberties very much feels like the point of all of this. They've started to focus on Minnesota because of a fraud case surrounding day cares, which is currently being adjudicated. Yes, it was a crime, but it's being dealt with appropriately. The pretext is all that matters.

It is, of course, depressing to go online and see the inevitable toeing of the party line for what amounts to the lynching or extrajudicial killing of Renee Nicole Good. All the Trump sycophants and fascists immediately assumed the GroupThink about radical antifa leftists and the utter bullshit that - apparently in their minds - justifies shooting a mother in the head from point blank range.

It is also incredibly depressing to see the "she should have just complied" crowd place the cause of her death on her as opposed to the ICE agent who was very much NOT in danger of imminent death. That these are the same people who think Ashlii Babbit is a martyr and January 6th was no big deal is not surprising.

It is the ability of Trump and Trumpism to get their followers to believe the lies - even with obvious video evidence showing the opposite - that is truly terrifying. The actual act of violence is appalling, but life can be cruel and capricious. Terrible things do happen. 

It is watching the entire Republican Party bow down before an altar of lies that is so unsettling. How can you recreate civic democracy under those circumstances?

Stupid Imperialism

 As Trump's imperial project stalls at home, with the National Guard removed from American cities and Republicans beginning to buck him in the House, Trump looks afield to sate his imperial pretensions. As with everything he does, it's stupid - a sort of "Didn't Do The Reading" attempt to mimic the late Gilded Age of McKinley: tariffs and wars of empire.

Richardson notes his rambling, incoherent speech yesterday, and how it ties to his renewed threats against Greenland. This is a great example of Stupid Imperialism. (All imperialism is pretty stupid, but this stuff is...woof.) Trump wants Greenland because it looks huge on a Mercator projection and because he heard they have rare earths. Rare earths are not "rare" but are simply hard to refine. China - who doesn't give a shit about polluting its own air and water - have moved into a monopolistic position on rare earths because they have built infrastructure, not because they own the dirt.

Even with Venezuela, Krugman notes that much of Venezuelan oil wealth is hypothetical to the point of being fictional. It's heavy, bitter crude rather than the light, sweet crude that refines most easily into usable petroleum. 

Let's leave aside the stupidity of Trump saying we "run" Venezuela, when we obviously do not. Let's leave aside the stupidity of tearing apart the NATO alliance to annex Greenland for no meaningful advantage. Yes, the process is stupid and thuggish.

The thing is, the GOAL is stupid, too. The original mercantilism arose from Malthus' insight into the economics of scarcity. If there was a limited amount of a good or resource, it made sense to have a national monopoly on that. Adam Smith and the industrial revolution ended that basic idea - even if it took a century to learn that it was dead. There is no advantage to an empire, which is why - leftist caterwauling to the contrary - America largely did not pursue a true empire. When we did, it largely ended poorly.

The dumbification of America has happened, because one of our two major parties has lobotomized itself to reflect the imbecility of their Orange God. 

January 6th

 Richardson makes a compelling case about the links between Republican rhetoric surrounding Democratic electoral victories that stretches back to the 1990s, and Trump's efforts to overthrow electoral democracy five years ago today.

She goes on to note the common thread from his two impeachments and the complete faceplant from Merrick Garland to delay the appointment of Jack Smith and then the SCOTUS' grant of immunity for presidential actions and how that created the lawlessness we see from Trump now.

Trump's whole life has been a bully who uses his money to bully contractors and debtors and escape the most significant consequences for his actions. He ran for president - allegedly - to boost his ability to start some sort of OANN type "Trump TV" to challenge Fox from the right. (Let that sink in.) Once he won, he now has to continue to bully and threaten to stay on top. The entire system of constitutional checks and balances is as foreign to him as calculus is to a sea urchin. 

January 6th was the moment when the old Republican Party could have held him responsible for his actions and we could have escaped this nightmare. If ten more Republican Senators had voted to convict in the Senate - and they all knew he was guilty - then we would not be staring down the insanity of 2025 and now 2026. We would not be threatening Greenland/Denmark. We would not be levying tariffs on whatever seizes his fancy. We would not be rounding up citizens and residents and deporting them to offshore gulags. In fact, there probably (certainly) would be a Republican president right now anyway, given the anti-incumbent tides that swept the world after Covid. They could have had their tax cuts and deregulation. 

Instead, it has become a party steeped and dependent on fear-mongering conspiracy theories.

Instead, democracy in our country is undergoing a series of battering blows every day. 

The Locus Of Evil

 Donald Trump is a depraved, small, heartless man with the mental architecture of a Jersey Turnpike toilet. However, the real locus of evil on this fell times is Stephen Miller. His recent incantation of the threats against Greenland and Denmark is a great example of just how batshit insane his political impulses are. 

The threats against Greenland are a great example of the stupidity and evil of Trumpistan, and how they are effectively the same thing. Greenland hosts American military bases as a member of NATO. They are our allies, especially against Russia and maintaining the UK-Iceland gap. It is otherwise a barely inhabitable frozen wasteland. It has "rare earths", but again, rare earths are not rare, just hard and dirty to refine. It also looks huge on a map. This cascading features of stupidity are what drives Trump and Miller to threaten a long time ally. 

And this doesn't even cover his jackbooted thugs breaking into schools.

Miller is most likely universally reviled in whatever remains of the old Republican Party - a party that itself was hardly a beacon of intelligence and decency. I am hopeful that there are enough of the old Republicans left to muzzle this rabid Pomeranian before he does even more damage to our country.

The Donroe Doctrine

 Among the more stupid utterances from our most stupid president was Trump's assertion of a Donroe Doctrine because people "hadn't heard about the Monroe Doctrine." That's always a tell that he has just learned something. Now, most anyone with a working knowledge of US History remembers the Monroe Doctrine, but the reason they remember it is often muddled.

The Monroe Doctrine was largely the brainchild of John Quincy Adams, Monroe's Secretary of State and an experienced diplomat. Quincy Adams had been our minister to Russia during the Revolution when he was about 19 years old. The situation was that during the Napoleonic Wars, Spain had been both weakened and liberalized during Napoleon's conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. Existing elites in the Spanish New World colonies were upset at the democratic and anti-clerical reforms coming from the puppet government in Madrid, so Continental Spanish America rose up in wars of independence stretching from Mexico to Argentina. 

After Napoleon had been defeated and the forces of monarchical conservatism had created the Concert of Vienna to maintain order in Europe, they looked westward to reestablish Spanish control of the New World. Britain, who had benefitted from the newly opened ports and was ideologically disposed to freer trade, wanted to enlist American help in guaranteeing Spanish America's independence. 

Adams realized that the real guarantor of that independence was the British Navy. Still, riding the wave of American nationalism that resulted from the War of 1812 (fought against the British, and therefore making it hard to visibly align with Britain), Adams wrote the doctrine that the New World was to be free from further colonization of any kind, and it was American policy to guarantee this. In return - in a laughable boast at the time - the US would remain aloof from European affairs. 

Very few people on either side of the Atlantic took much note of the Doctrine at the time. It was not a law or treaty, it was just something James Monroe said. Britain made sure no one crossed the Atlantic to reinstate Spanish colonialism, until the Civil War came. With both the US and UK preoccupied by the war, France installed a Hapsburg prince, Maximillian, as Emperor of Mexico. Once the war was over, Grant moved a full army to the Rio Grande, France withdrew support and Maximillian died before a Mexican firing squad. The Monroe Doctrine was revivified a bit there.

However, the real prominence of the Monroe Doctrine came at the end of the 19th century, with America's war against Spain. This conflict focused American military planning on the building of the Panama Canal after the war and this in turn led to America - a country founded on anti-imperialism and self-determination, which the Monroe Doctrine buttressed - becoming an imperial power. We seized and held Puerto Rico, Guantanamo Bay and would later help wrest Panama from Colombia. 

Teddy Roosevelt would issue his corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, stating the US was the sold policeman and debt collector for the Western Hemisphere, especially the Caribbean. Many of the small countries rimming the Caribbean were deeply in debt to European powers and incapable of paying those debts off, at least in part due to the corruption in their Customs Departments. Because most revenues at the time came from import duties, control of the Customs Houses was a great way to get rich. This had been true in the US as well, until civil service reform helped end that corruption. Roosevelt initiated a period of American bullying and quasi-imperialism that lasted until his cousin, Franklin, began the Good Neighbor policy.

To recap: The original Monroe Doctrine was an expression of America's deep antipathy towards imperialism. In the late 19th and early 20th century, it actually became a lever to shift America into a quasi-imperial power, leaving the US very much hated until FDR reversed that policy. Since then, America had vacillated between supporting and opposing democracy in the Caribbean basin.

What Donald Trump is expressing in his Donroe Doctrine is a return to the worst of Teddy Roosevelt's imperialism but ramped up to 13 out of 10. TR - and Wilson with his invasion of Mexico - embraced the sort of paternalistic racism that at least had benevolent intentions - as misguided as they were. TR took over Customs houses in order to forestall European creditors from coming in and doing the same. Wilson invaded Mexico, because they were under a terrible miliary dictator during a revolution. Neither wanted or certainly stated such a naked statement of intentions to loot those countries. 

Donald Trump's operational persona is and always has been that of a wannabe Mafia Boss. He uses threats and boasts to cow opposition, but as we have seen, he usually backs down when he's opposed with sufficient resolve. This bullying persona meshes with Don Trumpeone, the insecure mob boss who needs to display dominance and opulence, because deep down, he knows he's the son his parents were disappointed in.

Trump is stripping away even the pretense of paternalism in favor of naked predation. In the Puzo/Coppola mythology of the mob, the first Don Corleone was a protector of the poor immigrants of New York, whereas Michael becomes simply a ruthless, heartless killer. Trump is that ruthless killer, devoid of human connection or feeling, alone in his darkened mental landscape and seeing the entire world as either wolves or sheep, and visualizing himself as the biggest wolf of all.

This is, to borrow a phrase from conservatism, deeply un-American.

A Distraction, Not A Lifeline

 The idea that Trump launched his raid in Venezuela to distract from both the Epstein Files and Jack Smith's testimony about Trump's criminality is a solid theory. I do think, however, that there were a lot of agendas pushing the escalating attacks on Maduro over the last year. Rubio wants regime change in Caracas and Havana. Hegseth wants to watch Delta Force kill people. Trump wants the oil. It is worth noting that Venezuela's oil is of notorious low quality, making it difficult to refine and use productively. However, that subtlety is unlikely to matter to Trump's lizard brain. For instance, rare earths are not "rare" it's just hard to refine them. Still, that fucking moron just heard "rare" and wants to annex Greenland.

As Elliot Morris points out, Americans do not want to go to war in Venezuela. The results are pretty stable, as most Americans remember what happened the last time we invaded a country to install a friendly government. A plurality of Republicans oppose this move as well, especially those who aren't in the MAGA cult.

Morris also noted a few days ago how different the perceptions of Trump are depending on whether you watch Fox News. This is a huge problem in deprogramming people from the MAGA cult. As long as they get this incredibly warped view of reality from Fox, their loyalty to this president will be unchallenged. In the Fox Cinematic Universe, Trump did a cool-assed John Wick-Rambo raid. For the rest of us, the essential impression is that this was tactically impressive and strategically incoherent. Amazing job kidnapping the president of a sovereign country, I guess. What now?

The fundamental question at this moment is whether we really will be putting "boots on the ground." If we are, that requires Congressional approval that I don't think will be forthcoming. Trump will likely ignore this and do it anyway, which creates yet another chapter in our ongoing constitutional crises. 

So, does this distract from the Epstein and Smith news? Yeah, sure. But not in a good way, because people aren't really on board with another example in naive nation building.

The Historical Precedents of Regime Change

 We have no way of knowing what comes next in Venezuela. There is a democratic opposition there, although a lot of them are in exile. While we removed Maduro, the basic power structure that surrounded him is still in place and can likely only be dislodged by a full ground invasion. 

Let's take a moment to look at the history of American-led coups and removals from power. In 1954, the CIA helped overthrow Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz. The coup was successful, but two young radicals - Che Guevara and Fidel Castro - began to look at the US as the fundamental enemy of liberty and equality in Latin America. Later, the CIA would try and remove Castro via the Bay of Pigs invasion. This pushed Castro to ask the Soviets for nuclear weapons for self-defense. The resulting Cuban Missile Crisis nearly ended human civilization.

Also in 1954, we overthrew the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh. The resulting brutality of the Shah's rule led to growing anti-American sentiment that erupted in the 1978 revolution, the consequences of which we are still wrestling with.

In 1963, we gave support to the Vietnamese military to overthrow Ngo Dinh Diem. The subsequent chaos and destabilization led inexorably to America's military presence being necessary to prop up the South Vietnamese government. To be clear, Diem was terrible (like Maduro), but by supporting Thieu's coup, we "owned" the outcome. This led to Colin Powell's "Pottery Barn Rule" which states that when "you break it, you own it." It's why coalition forces did not march on Baghdad in 1991.

In the late '60s and '70s, we supported right wing regimes in South America and at least one coup in Chile. While I don't think replacing Allende with Pinochet necessarily made America any safer and it led to thousands of political killings and repression in Chile, it wasn't an abject failure the way many other coups were.

Similarly - and really the most similar to today - we deposed Manuel Noriega in 1989, because of his ties to the Colombian cartels and the coming cession of the canal to Panama. The US had a long presence in Panama and the transition to better governance was fairly easy, once Noriega was gone. I have no doubt that this was the model for someone like Rubio. Venezuela is not Panama.

Under HW Bush, we not only invaded Panama, but we did NOT invade Iraq. We did, however, try and stabilize Somalia, a haphazard plan that led to the Battle of Mogadishu.  

The most recent examples of US-led or abetted regime change are, of course, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Iraq has remained a troubled, fractious place, and it took a decades long occupation and thousands of American deaths. Of the three, it was the most successful example. Afghanistan immediately collapsed back into Taliban rule and Libya remains a failed state. 

If we look at the Fragile State Index, Afghanistan is tied for 7th, Libya is 16th and Iraq is 31st. Venezuela is 30th, which suggests that there is precious little stability to build on. Trump is out there saying that we are going to "run" Venezuela. That is impossible without Congressional consent. Existing authorities in Venezuela are calling bullshit on this.

(In case you're wondering, the US has fallen to 141st out of 179 countries, ranked the same as Argentina, Hungary and Barbados.)

As I'm writing this, that big fucking dumbass is on TV basically admitting that we attacked and deposed Maduro for oil. Unless we are prepared for an Iraq-style military occupation, it seems very unlikely that we are going to find much support within Venezuela for this. Sure, Venezuelan emigres in South Florida are going to be stoked. But within the power structures of Venezuela, you cannot maintain political legitimacy by being a Quisling traitor to your own national sovereignty. You had Trump bloviating about how the new president, Delcy Rodriguez, was eager to work with America to help exploit their oil at the very same time that she was on TV denouncing the attack.

I know why Rubio wanted this. He wants regime change in Venezuela and Cuba, because he's a neo-con whose parents fled Cuba. I know what Hague-seth wanted this. He's got a war-boner and loves the idea of sending Delta Force on a Chuck Norris mission.

Trump, however, is a fucking mobster. He wants the oil. He was likely promised the oil by Rubio in order to get permission. Rubio strikes me as precisely the same sort of credulous boob who though we would be welcomed in Baghdad as liberators. 

They have no idea what is going to happen next.

Congratulations, Team Trump. You won the news cycle! 

That means nothing if you can't implement something productive out of this gross violation of international law and the American Constitution. 

Pure, Unadulterated Trumpism

 This morning's strikes on Caracas and the arrest/kidnapping of Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, is a perfect distillation of Trumpist policy.

First, it was likely tactically pretty sound. If they really did manage to get Delta in and out of the capital with the president of another country...that's pretty impressive. However, we should note that this is fundamentally impressive on the level of staff officers in the US military. Trump - even Hegseth and Rubio - were not stooped over a table gaming out scenarios. They gave JSOC a mission, and the mission was successful. To this point. 

Winning the daily news cycle is Trump's biggest political strength.

Second, what was the strategic endgame here? Politically, Maduro is a bad guy who no one is going to feel much sympathy for. Here are some other unsympathetic bad guys: Saddam Hussein, Moammar Ghaddafi and Sheik Omar. We toppled or helped topple these dictators and the result has been decades of chaos, civil war and civic unrest. 

Trump and the people around them are not long term planners.

Third, this was almost certainly illegal. Having a warrant for Maduro does not give the US the right to invade a country - even for a few hours. Rubio and Hegseth lied to Congress a few weeks back when they said they were not pursuing regime change in Venezuela. There is no recognized "right to attack another country because you don't like their leader." 

Trump and his minions routinely lie and break the law.

The stated reasons for invading Venezuela are going to be some boilerplate about drug smuggling and - I think - weapons charges (which seems thin). Trump has pardoned the former president of Honduras who was convicted of being a drug smuggler and the head of various crypto schemes designed to launder money for cartels. It's not about the drugs. It's about the oil. Yes, Hegseth and Rubio aren't going to admit that, but Trump already has! He can't fucking help himself. This is about looting natural resources.

Trump is obsessed with oil, rare earths, you name it, in the pursuit of immediate material gain.

I saw one response along the lines of "There is no international rules-based order, might makes right and we wanted him gone, so he's gone." This is a form of hyper-realist foreign policy thinking that a state is alone in an anarchic world and must pursue its advantages with single-mindedness. International Law is therefore a joke. This represents a fundamental shift in American policy that is more cohesive than "Trump like dictators." Trump likes power and the expression of power. What we did in Caracas was smarter than what Putin has done in Ukraine, but it's the same fundamental approach to international affairs: might makes right. It is also part of the Trumpist foreign policy that makes the Western Hemisphere America's hegemonic playground. 

Trump's admiration of Xi and Putin is based in their willingness to violate international norms, which he has always wanted to do.

 This is a distraction from a lot of bad news. Millions of Americans are going to be priced out of health insurance in the next week. The Epstein files are trickling out. Trump's declining health is in the news. He's tremendously unpopular.

Trump - when cornered - commits outrageous acts to change the subject.

So, that's it. That's the nature of Trump's political persona in one lethal act.

More to follow.

UPDATE: Trump is basically saying we are going to annex Venezuela because of the oil.

The Corruption Is The Point

 If you want to get a really compelling vision of how Trump 2.0 has led to a web of shady dealings, kickbacks and grifts, The New York Times did a great job with this story.

New York

 I was hoping that the end of the mayoral election would mean being able to stop paying attention to NYC politics. 

I was naive. 

As Krugman points out, NYC is doing great. It's recovered from Covid in ways that place like San Francisco really hasn't (yet). Crime is down, life expectancy is up. Some good policy decisions, like congestion pricing, have worked; others are still up for grabs, and NYC is a great ground zero for "abundance" experimentation, when it comes to housing.

Having just driven to JFK yesterday, I can attest both that the area around Flushing has improved a lot over the last decade, it's still vaguely dystopian in its aesthetics. Business fronts just look dirty and tired. The Van Wyck remains the single worst road in America, with construction that has never ended. If you were from a small town, and flew into NY via JFK or even LaGuardia, you would probably think it was a failed city on the brink of collapse. 

But it's not. It's old and grungy, sure, but it works in it own chaotic way. It will be interesting to see what Mamdani can actually achieve, given NYC's fractious politics and power structures. I'd wager he does some good, but falls far short of the dreams of his most ardent supporters. 

Best of luck, New York. Except for the Mets.