What The Hell Was That?

 Two head scratchers.

Yesterday, Pete Navarro went on the TeeVee to prep viewers for a bad jobs report. Basically urging markets not to freak out over a bit of bad news. Everyone was preparing for an absolutely apocalyptic jobs number. We got a good one.  While my first impulse was that they cooked the books (and maybe they did), why send out Navarro to warn of a bad one? Maybe they did cook the numbers, Navarro saw the real numbers and no one told him about the fudged numbers. Navarro IS a complete idiot, but it still didn't make any sense.

Then we had the closing of El Paso's airspace ostensibly for days. Then, nope, it was re-opened. Why? Something to do with drones at Fort Bliss, but the original order was for ten days. El Paso is not close to anything (except Juarez). It needs an airport. Maybe the Defense Department wanted it closed and it was pointed out to them that they can't just seal off a small city because they want to. Maybe the original order was for ten hours and those complete fucking morons can't read. The official reason was that they were testing new counter drone technology, except, no, Transportation Secretary MTV Real World says that cartel drones violated the airspace. That's almost certainly bullshit.

Krugman spent some time ripping apart Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick for lying about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Richardson has a fuller run down of the Epstein developments. TL;DR: The Trump administration is lying at a rate that science cannot measure. They are lying about small things and big things. The thing about lying is that it's hard. You have to remember the truth AND the lie. So you get the weird El Paso situation. Someone is lying - likely Real World - and that will lead to cascading series of other lies.

It is tiresome at this point to note that if Scandal X had happened in any other administration then yadda yadda yadda. What's apparent is that MAGA has now dug itself so deeply into a world of outrageous fictions that they cannot go back. What's more, they cannot admit it. MAGA is never wrong, even when it is, in which case, it's Joe Biden or the Crooked Media's fault. 

The genius of democracy is its ability to self-correct. Democracy assimilates information and reacts accordingly. Maybe not always well, but it acknowledges the reality of the situation. If you don't, you lose the next election. MAGA - as a deeply authoritarian movement - cannot self correct. They also cannot tolerate a "loss" so they don't fire hacks like Hegseth or Lutnick. The hackery is the point. 

When a truly shattering crisis comes - and it will come - these idiots will hold the fate of our country and our world in their palsied hands. 

Does Moving To The Center Work?

 Morris argues that - contrary to the narrative - Bill Clinton's tack to the center in 1992 was not responsible for his victory in the election. I do think there's some truth to that, in that 1992 was clearly a "change" election with Bush becoming very unpopular due to the economy. Ross Perot's unusually robust third party campaign took from both Bush and Clinton among voters simply fed up with the whole system. This sort of free range anger is pretty typical when the economy is bad. Trump in 2016 presented as both the Republican candidate AND the third party candidate, as he was so far from any previous type of candidate.

I certainly agree with Morris that 1992 was largely about the poor economy and the 12 years of rampant wealth transfer up the tax brackets.

However, the Democratic Party was in pretty poor shape nationally 1990. Morris notes that Clinton was perceived as being further left than Michael Dukakis, but I have to wonder how much of that was his draft evasion and libertine reputation. Clinton spoke centrist, but vibed left. I also agree with Morris that most voters aren't making ideological decisions when they vote. Every election is a vibes election when you start talking about the politically disengaged.

Here's where I have questions. I do think perceived centrism matters simply as a way to allay swing voters concerns. The critical test case this year might be the Senate race in Texas. Democrats have been trying to flip Texas for quite some time. It's a diverse state with a lot of metro areas, but it's also a deeply conservative rural state. Having a majority of Democratic House members in the Texas delegation seems like a pipe dream. Winning statewide has always been out of reach for reasons that excite the center v left debate.

Obviously, this is playing out in 2026 with the Senate race. Republicans seem intent on nominating scandal factory Ken Paxton and ousting normal Republican John Cornyn. If they do that - if MAGA eats its own - then Texas would SEEM to be ripe for an important pick up in what could be a close contested race for control of the Senate. 

For Democrats, they are going to choose between the firebrand partisan in Jasmine Crockett and the choirboy in James Talarico. The argument Crockett can make is that she will "fire up the base", but previous candidates have tried that and it hasn't worked. Beto O'Rourke ran multiple times as a stalwart of the Progressive Left and came away empty every time. Maybe if he tacked to the center he might have lost by less or won....or maybe Texas simply wasn't going to elect ANY Democrat.

Talarico is betting that he can win statewide by not scaring the swing voters. That anger and dissatisfaction with Trump will not - in an of itself - carry the day. You need to give space to allow someone who typically votes Republican to shift to a Democrat to check Trump. 

Yes, race and gender play into this. Crockett is a brilliant communicator on MSNow and as a House back bencher. She's lacerating and on point, but she is also a Black woman in a state that leans pretty consistently to the right, especially culturally. The "Angry Black Woman" attacks will be relentless, especially if they GOP runs the sewer rat that is Ken Paxton. 

However, it also seems evident that elections are simply not playing out along those lines. If voters in Texas are significantly outraged at Trump, at ICE, at the corruption, at the cost of living, then the candidates themselves might not matter.

In the end, even the election results themselves won't answer this question. The context of every state and every election cycle is different. Let's say Talarico beats Paxton by 5000 votes. Was that because he didn't scare the normies? Was that because Paxton is awful? Was that because Trump is awful? Was that because of 3% inflation? Switch out Talarico for Crockett and the questions are roughly the same.

I do think that Crockett's argument that she will motivate non-voters is pretty weak, simply because this myth of latent progressive voters has been pretty thoroughly debunked. She might be able to ride outrage and disgust but the winning margins are going to come from the Texas suburbs, not some mythical wellspring of people who don't usually care.

Ironically, only one candidate has been able to pull that off has been Donald Trump, but I don't think you can pull off his crudeness, his cruelty, his norm violating, his simmering rage and grievance, his racism, his sexism...and still be a Democrat.

Privilege

 An interesting and slightly odd confluence of columns by Yglesias on DoorDash economics and Krugman on the coddled lives that Trumpists have carved out for themselves at the public's expense. What's the link? The idea of what constitutes comfort and privilege is always changing - both for the general public and individuals.

I've felt this was true, when I look at how unbelievably comfortable life has gotten and yet how unhappy everyone seems to be. The DoorDash thing is a good example. As Yglesias notes, food delivery was formerly restricted to pizza and Chinese food. The idea that you could get a Big Mac or a Starbuck calorie bomb or Lamb Vindaloo delivered to your home in a frictionless transaction is something we couldn't have dreamed of fifteen years ago. As that becomes commonplace (along with Amazon delivering anything you want in a few days) your experience with the world becomes incredibly easy in a way that only the VERY affluent of a couple of decade back would have been able to access. 

As things get easier, our natural hard-wiring about threats and hardships get recalibrated towards whatever the most frustrating or upsetting thing in our lives actually are. 

At this point, you can add in comparison being the thief of joy. As unbelievably coddled as many of us are (historically and globally speaking), we have access to a tiny fraction of the privileges of true wealth. This is where Krugman talks about JD Vance bringing food to Milan. Food.  To Milan.

What he does is link this (and Kash Patel and Kristi Noem's abuse of federal resources) to the "Epstein Class." We rapidly become accustomed to the perks that life offers us, and we become blind to how we got them in the first place. We also become blind to the work that goes into providing them to our every whim. (I don't use DoorDash, because I find it extravagant, but I also know that people rely on working for DoorDash to make ends meet. I'm conflicted.)

With Epstein, we have hundreds of names of prominent people (almost all men) who, at best, looked the other way. Epstein was an extraordinary suck up to rich and powerful men, I would guess especially those rich and powerful men who had a yawning void of insecurity in their core. How many of them actually abused girls? I do hope we find out and hold them accountable. How many of them turned a blind eye to his depravity? I would guess that number is the considerably larger one. 

Pedophilia is a psychological pathology; expecting beautiful girls to fawn all over you is too. Seeing this go on from the corner of your eye and excusing it or denying what your eyes tell you is part of the pathology of privilege. "Epstein is such a great guy, I can't be seeing what I'm seeing" is precisely the mindset of men who have risen to a point where they just don't fucking care about the Little People. (There was an interview with Melinda Gates who attended one of those parties, was creeped out, told her husband and he ignored her concerns.)

As has been said, there are two Epstein scandals. There are the crimes specific to Epstein himself and his cohort like Maxwell. We don't know yet, for sure, who is in that circle. Then there is the second scandal of everyone who saw, who understood, who said nothing. 

Super Bowl Sunday

 As the Team I Hate The Most vies with the Seattle Seahawks for the championship, my miserable, wretched, cursed team decided that they should take one of their most controversial decisions from last year's draft and have it explode in their face. Meanwhile, a co-owner of the Giants is in the Epstein Files, less as a pervert and more as an enabler. 

Even the Olympics are now so riddled with professionals that it saps what used to be so compelling about amateurs competing when anything could happen. 

Meanwhile, my phone keeps telling me I need to get on FanDuels or Kalshi and become a degenerate gambler.

Yeah, He's A Racist

 Yesterday, Trump retweeted an incredibly racist "meme video" of the Lion King that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. (There are no apes in the Lion King.) For those of us not in the cult or not in the Very Serious Media that cannot fathom that Donald Trump (Central Park Five, firing Black dealers at his casino, Birtherism, Charlottesville, yada yada yada) might actually be a seething racist this was hardly a surprise. 

Somewhat surprising was the host of usually sycophantic Republican legislators saying "This is racist, take this down." When a Republican Senator from Mississippi say, "I dunno, but this is pretty racist" then it's a pretty good bet that it's racist.

Also less surprising was the inevitable journey that the White House embarked on when called on this. 

"This video isn't racist. You woke snowflakes in the media can't tell a joke."

"OK, this racist video was actually posted by a staffer who has access to the President's social media accounts at 12:30AM."

Then they ask Trump: "Yeah, I posted it. So what?"

A-plus work everyone. 

This feels similar to the Alex Pretti video where they initially went into attack mode, realized it wasn't playing well AT ALL and then actually seemed to lose support in certain segments of MAGALAND/GOP.

Again, I feel like pointing out that the GOP does not have to actually put up with this shit. When Nixon went off the rails, they cut him loose, because the country and even the party came first. This bloated narcissistic racist piece of shit does, indeed, seem to win elections that he should lose, but this iteration is WAAAAAAY worse that the last time - and getting worse by the day.

They own this fucking guy.

Will It Work?

 Democratic leadership has settled on a set of demands for funding DHS. It is simultaneously ambitious and insufficient in many ways. Personally, I would ban Border Patrol from being anywhere that isn't the border. That will both reduce the gun-slinging cowboy dynamic within cities but also deny DHS a LOT of their foot soldiers.

Still, what Democrats have landed on is pretty popular with the public at large. The most popular reforms are making ICE/BP wear body cameras; independent investigations of ICE shootings; requiring a judicial warrant to enter homes; allowing people to video ICE; banning racial profiling; ban ICE from entering schools and churches; focusing efforts on deporting criminals, not just anyone who looks Brown.

This is where the upside-down nature of American politics in 2026 comes into play. The requested reforms are popular. They really aren't THAT controversial - or wouldn't have been before Trump came on the scene. Yeah, you should have a warrant to enter someone's home. Yeah, we shouldn't have a masked secret police dressed in paramilitary costumes yanking people off the street. 

However, there can be no distance between Republicans and Trump. You cannot defy Dear Leader. Even if Democrats are able to pass these reform bills, there's little chance Trump will actually sign them. Shutting down the government - even just part of the government - has rarely worked to extract concessions from the majority.

Of course, if and when it doesn't work, we will be told it is because Democrats are feckless and won't fight for things. Even as FEMA and TSA close and things get dicey, and Democrats will once again face the fact that closing the government hurts people, they will be expected to cave, because no one expects Republicans to care about people beyond their base. Even though the reforms are very popular, Republicans will simply double down on cruelty in the service of Trump and his hateful legions. 

Broken

 Last night, the lead story on CNN was the disappearance of a media figure's mom. She has dementia, it's a sad story as most stories surrounding dementia are. 

If you think that this is the most important story, I don't know what to tell you.

The Washington Post, as an organization, has largely ceased to exist. I cancelled my subscription after Bezos killed the Harris endorsement, but it has largely been gutted by other decisions Bezos made. The reality is that a regional newspaper really needs to be loss-leader for a wealthy person. It's basically a charitable institution at this point. 

That Post story is more important to the media itself than the disappearance of Ms Guthrie. Still, the media cannot seem to adequately grasp the moment we are in. 

Which is why we are in the moment we are in. I'm sure Bezos thought that re-electing Trump would be good for circulation. Instead, the Trumpification of the paper that brought down Nixon is now complicit in bringing down our Republic.

Democracy dies in Bezos' hands. 

Real vs Hypothetical Dangers

 Trump has threatened to "nationalize" elections. 

This is exactly the sort of bullshit that outlets like the Times or CNN are just completely unequal to covering in a normal way. "Nationalizing" the elections is blatantly, clearly unconstitutional. I know Bannon has been pushing that, too, but that doesn't make it more legal. There is functionally no way that I can see where he could even begin the process of pulling this off. He will not get a bill through Congress, for instance. 

Yes, there are legitimate concerns about Trump and Bannon and Miller using their Brownshirts in ICE to intimidate people at polling stations. I worry about states like Georgia that have a massive, concentrated city of Democratic votes and what Trump might try to do to deter voting. Generally speaking, Georgia Republicans have been pretty solid on election integrity, but Florida? Texas? 

We are sitting here nine months from what should be a Democratic wave that delivers at least the House, but possibly the Senate. That election remains the single most important event in preserving American Constitutional government, and Trump is threatening that. 

The question for "The Resistance" is how much energy to put into fighting something that might be the functional equivalent of his threats to make Canada the 51st state or, yes, annexing Greenland, 

Simplest Demand

 Democrats are going to try and reform ICE in the coming weeks, as they have a two week CR on DHS funding to try and hammer out some guardrails for the increasingly lawless agency.

Some of these suggestions are well and good, but I think one thing they HAVE to demand is that Border Patrol returns to the border. 

The "Border" is arguably the one issue that Trump still has positive approval ratings, as crossings have indeed decreased. Still, Alex Pretti was shot by two BP agents, not "ICE" agents. We have largely conflated the two for ease, but Border Patrol is really where the worst, trigger happy assholes reside. Long time ICE agents don't want to ride with them, because they are the ones most likely to pull their service weapon. They are routinely arrested for various violent crimes like spousal abuse.

The quickest way to both de-escalate what's happening in places like Minneapolis and deprive the purges of needed manpower is to deny Border Patrol from operating more than 15 miles from the actual border.

Consequences

 The central, depressing fact of the Epstein Files is the sheet amount of horrific and criminal behavior seems to have been carried out with full impunity. We see this time and again. The Watergate burglars went to jail, Nixon didn't. The soldiers who tortured people at Abu Ghraib went to jail, the architects of the torture regime didn't. 

Donald Trump has been found in a court of law to have sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll. Donald Trump is all over the Epstein shit. 

Donald Trump will never see the inside of a jail cell. 

All the people who say he "should"...that's true but not relevant. What's more, legions of his horrific creatures will be pardoned, most likely, on his way out the door. Trump is famously disloyal, so maybe he lets certain figures dangle in the wind, but major figures can and will be pardoned preemptively in order to enforce loyalty until the last minute.

The idea of impeaching and removing Kristi Noem is appealing on multiple levels... but it's not happening. However, should Democrats really hit a massive series of Blue Waves - Blue Tsunamis - that get them a Senate majority near 60 votes, they need to start thinking about impeaching various Trump figures after the fact. 

Take this story. This is naked corruption, which has its own clauses in the Constitution. Trump will most likely pardon Witkoff and his sons, but impeaching them and convicting them in the Senate should be still on the table, as that bars them from public office ever again. Ideally, as the Trump Era shudders to some wretched close, there will be a handful of Republicans who will want to slam the door on it. Impeaching will be easy, convicting hard. We saw that after January 6th. However, the MAGA base doesn't give a shit about Witkoff or Miller or Bondi or Noem. 

It's unsatisfying, but likely the only consequences for these creatures that we will ever see. 

Moral and Professional Failure

 I checked on the digital front page of the Times. The lead stories are about the Supreme Court's secrecy, some stuff about Gaza reopening, Minneapolis/ICE, the Grammys and a state visit from the President of Colombia. Only after those clusters of stories do you get anything on Epstein, and that is about the Justice Department "accidentally" posting pictures of victims' faces and nude bodies.

Now, those are all pretty important stories and exactly the sort of things I hope the Times continues to cover.

However, there has been no massive front page story on the actual contents of the released files. Some of that is because they released so much and some of that is because a lot of what they released are anonymous tips and unsubstantiated allegations -  perhaps not false, but not substantiated. Hopefully, the Times (and their lawyers) are simply combing through the files and trying to corroborate what is in them.

The thing is, what was in there is a story. Maybe THE story. We also know that Trump won't sue, because that would entail discovery.

Trump is floundering, when your opponent is drowning, stick a hose in his mouth.

There's Something Happening Here

 Yesterday, there was a special election in a Texas state Senate race. Trump carried the district by 17 points in 2024. Yesterday, the Democrat won by 14 points, a 31 point swing. Democrat Taylor Rehmet spent almost no money compared to his well-funded and Trump-endorsed opponent and still won a landslide. Rehmet is an Air Force veteran and union leader and the sort of male-coded candidate that I personally think will overperform, due to vibes about Democrats being too female, too minority centered. 

Fox News actually does respectable polling, and they have Democrats winning the generic ballot by 6 points, the highest they've ever recorded. As Morris notes, generic ballot polling doesn't tell us what will happen this November, but the party that doesn't control the White House usually picks up about 6 points between January polling and November voting. They start this cycle in the strongest position that they have ever been in. 

Republicans are doubling down, in many ways, on the racism of their immigration policies. Even Americans who might support tighter border controls are not thrilled with the images coming from Minnesota. Trump (or Miller) thinks that they can just change the optics by firing Bovino and his Nazi wardrobe, but that's actually not the imagery that has people enraged. It's five year old Liam Conejo Ramos being arrested for the crime of being brown. 

Meanwhile, with Republicans falling further and further underwater, the slow leak of Epstein files show that that story isn't going away either. As I wrote on Friday, Trump's policies are even less popular than he is himself. Oddly, with Democrats it's usually the opposite. Democratic policies are generally pretty popular - healthcare, taxing the rich, actual infrastructure spending, better education - but Dem pols usually poll worse. Once Trump's personality cult has to assimilate the fact that he really is a pedophile and rapist - if they even can assimilate that information - then the bottom truly does fall out. 

The prevailing fear many of us have right now as we look at the political dynamic is that Trump will throw everything at the wall to try and subvert the midterms in nine months. As of now, he has been largely confined to more or less "legal" attempts like gerrymandering mid-decade. As America rejects him, he will grow more and more dangerous, Stephen Miller will get more and more fevered in his assault on the Constitution. 

However, last night's election results could mean that they won't be able to pull it off. 

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.