Slaughtered

 Richardson notes one of the myriad scandals that flies under the radar in the never ending onslaught on professional governance wrought not just by Trump but by Republicans. The Slaughter decision seems to give the President the ability to fire the heads of independent commissions created by Congress. This was an egregiously terrible decision in the way so many decisions - Citizens United, Rufo, Shelby, Trump - have been. It's a wholesale attack on the capacity of the government to produce neutral public goods and competent administration. For the Federalist hacks on the SCOTUS, poor government performance is a feature, not a bug. The worse the government performs, the more it justifies the anti-government, pro-business positions that are what truly motivated the Federalist Six. This makes a 2008 style crash far more likely.

So far, the lower courts are protecting the independence of our elections, but this is why the outcome in November is so critical. Two more years of unfettered Trumpist attacks on the fabric of civil governance and there might not be a government left to save. 

The good news is that the pissy little drama queen watched the Housing Bill become law at midnight last night without his signature. The subsequent problem is that some elements of the bill will have to be put into effect by his cronies and grifters, blunting the ability of the law to actually help ease the housing crunch.

Josh Marshall is correct when he has been arguing that Court reform has to be at the top of the list of any incoming Democratic trifecta.

Gordon Wood

 Gordon Wood died yesterday at the age of 92, amazingly struck down by a car and not his advanced age. Wood was one of the finest living historians of US History and certainly the Dean of Historians when it came to the American Revolution. Himself a student of Bernard Bailyn, Wood argued for the essential revolutionary nature of the American Revolution. He stood against some - and I occasionally include myself - that argued that it was more a War of Independence than a true "revolution," especially if compared against the French or Russian Revolutions. In this telling, the Civil War and Reconstruction Era is much more of a revolution than replacing the monarchy with a representative government.

But of course, establishing a Republic - over so large an area no less - was a revolutionary act. It was fraught with pitfalls and dangers that the generation that framed the Constitutions was very much aware of. 

None more so than James Madison.

It was Madison who spent years thinking about how to preserve liberty and self-government. Today, we think of them as being reinforcing, but it was understood at the time that self-government tended to degenerate to anarchy, which led to the rise of a dictator. As Madison wrote in the Federalist: 

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

This framework is at the heart of our long practice in representative government, of combining democracy and republicanism to create something truly new over 235 years ago when the Constitution was written. 

As Richardson notes at the link above, Madison was also the author of the Bill of Rights. Initially reluctant, he came to see how writing down fundamental rights was part of the needed constraints on those who governed, especially the desire of those who - once in power - might wish to restrict the freedom of the press to blunt criticism of themselves, or perhaps ban public assemblies and petitions to the same purpose. 

It also extended to the free practice of religion, which had been pioneered by Roger Williams of Rhode Island in the 17th century, but then picked up by Virginians like Madison and Thomas Jefferson. If a government could dictate religious belief and practice, what couldn't they dictate? The free exercise of conscience preceded all other rights.

As we begin to mark the commemoration of the Declaration of Independence, we can see these "inalienable rights" under assault from a cabal of wicked people who surround a fundamentally ignorant and weak bully who would destroy those very rights that the Revolution was fought over. Pete Hegseth wants to tell servicemember how to worship. Various creatures wish to destroy the free press and outlaw protests. This is not hyperbole. 

Wood's death - just a few weeks before the 250th anniversary of the declaration of universal, inalienable rights - should help us reflect on how those rights which were so revolutionary 250 years ago are not self-enforcing. Wood reminded us that we are heirs to a revolutionary tradition, and at the heart of the revolution was the belief that government must belong to the governed. 

The Hungarian Model

 For years, conservatives have looked at Viktor Orban's competitive authoritarianism as a model for what they wish to accomplish in the US. They want a white, ethno-state with an enriched elite that buttresses a patrimonial strongman who will prevent them from having to press 1 for English.

The rout of Orban's Fidesz party a few weeks back, however, is now the model for the pro-democracy forces in America. Yesterday, the "Supreme" Court - in yet another lawless, ahistorical nullification of American law - decided to effectively end the Voting Rights Act. Florida moved quickly to change its maps in seeming violation of its state constitution. I would expect Tennessee to follow suit. (All of this is downstream from Rucho, which ruled that partisan gerrymanders were legal, which might be up there with Dred Scott as the worst SCOTUS decisions of all time.)

In order to squeeze more Republican seats out of already gerrymandered states, Texas and Florida have risked "dummymanders." These are gerrymanders that dilute the strength of "red" districts to create more "purple" ones, and in return are susceptible to being overwhelmed in a wave election. If you take an R+15, a D+7 and a D+15 set of districts and create a D+25, an R+8 and R+7 set, you risk losing that original R+15 district in a wave year.

That's what happened to Fidesz and Orban. They has so squeezed the gerrymander and rigged the map that when a true mass mobilization occurred, it carried away those +10 districts.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Democrats winning the House this fall is likely the moment where we will know if America remains a democracy. Trump is almost certain to be less popular in November than he is now. Gas prices are not going to come down. He, himself, is insulated within his fantasy ballroom and his coterie of sycophants. 

I'm not especially concerned with the generic ballot right now, because I think people don't like the Democrats but absolutely HATE Trump, and that shows up in soft support for the Democratic Party that will not dissuade people from either swinging back to Democrats or simply staying home if they are Republicans.

Still, it could require a D+10 wave to overwhelm the efforts of the Supreme Court to end American democracy.

Cursed

 Krugman makes a clickbaity argument that the US might be suffering from the resource curse. The resource curse take two forms. The one I'm most familiar with is that poorer, developing countries that have abundant mineral wealth are usually autocratic. The reason is the inverse of the old revolutionary slogan, "No taxation with representation." In a resource state, there is no need for taxation so there is no representation. Additionally, control of the government means control of the resource (usually oil), and that means losing control of the government means losing access to all that wealth. 

Krugman does not seem to be argument that for the US, and I would agree, we aren't in that state. Yesterday's No Kings rallies may have had 8,000,000 attendees. I would say that they one I attended was not necessarily better attended than the one in the fall, but that supportive honking by passersby was higher. Protesting is...weird. It does however stand in for civic engagement. 

The reason why the US is not likely to rely on resources to become a petrostate is twofold. The first is that despite being the world's largest oil producer, oil is still a relative small part of our overall economy. If you want to get rich in America, you go to Wall Street or Silicon Valley, not to Washington, DC to extract rents from the oil industry. 

The second reason is that America already has a well-established democracy. Yes, Trump is waging wholescale war on our democratic institutions and norms, but just like his war against Iran, his tactical wins do not mean strategic victory. Part of the "logic" of authoritarianism and the heart of Project 2025 is that you can simply overwhelm the opposition through "strength" and speed of action. Trump has achieved speed of action - again, in both his assaults on America's democratic institutions and Iran's military infrastructure. However, he cannot understand that the opposition gets its say, too. 

American history is not a triumphal march of progress. It is a long and painful conflict between our ideals and our baser instincts. It is messy. Right now, it seems like everything is unravelling. However, as I said a few months ago, as a political scientist, I would argue that you should be afraid. As a historian, I would argue that you should be patient.

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. 

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.  

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.

Monopoly Money

 There are two ways to look at the proposed merger of Netflix and Warner merger. One is to look at purely as a business exercise of the relative merits of media consolidation, as Yglesias does. When you do that, it becomes purely an issue of market share and relative competition. Interestingly, it the the economist Paul Krugman who looks at the political angle, which is the increased consolidation of news sources under the control of tech broligarchs. 

There is, I suppose, some utility in allowing Netflix to take over Warner and HBO, in that you are reducing the number of streaming services that you can reasonably sign up for. This landscape is changing so fast, that I can't keep track. We moved to YouTubeTV which also gives us access to HBOMax, but I think we might also have a separate account with HBOMax. Then there is however many accounts we have with Disney/Hulu/ESPN...it's a mess.

The problem is that Warner owns CNN. Now, CNN ain't what it used to be and it used be pretty flawed. It's greatest utility is for breaking news, yet most breaking news is wrong. We are seeing this in real time with the fluid situation with both the Brown shooting and the murder of Rob and Michelle Reiner. CNN isn't expanding our understanding of the news, merely the access to it. 

If a broligarch gets his hands on that, it's objectively bad for the country. In fact, as Krugman notes, we can look at Jeff Bezos' takeover of the Washington Post as a model for all that can go wrong here. Bezos came in as a White Knight to save the ailing paper and restore it as a voice of independent reporting. Trump comes along, puts the squeeze on him and he folds like a lawn chair. Really, in terms of true reporting, the only real independent outlets among papers are the New York Times and, seemingly, the Wall Street Journal (yes, their editorial page is terrible). 

We have seen the impact of letting broligarchs take over the media, too, with the CBS disaster. What was once the premier news network - Murrow, Cronkite, 60 Minutes - is now hosting a second rate right wing podcast of Bari Weiss tongue-bathing Erika Kirk.

Jefferson once said he would prefer a country with newspaper but no government to a country with government but no newspapers. Jefferson could be a bit of an idiot. Still, a free press is essential to a free government, and the media consolidation under the control of tech lords is as big a long term problem for liberal democracy as the lawless Supreme Court.

A Farm-Labor Party

 Krugman notes the wide disparity between what rural Americans need and what they vote for. It's not just the crude dynamic of how tax money moves around the Federal Republic, but that's an easy way to look at it. Krugman's larger point is how much Trump hates his voters, and that's largely true. The problem is that rural voters are in an abusive relationship with the Republican Party, where they plead to be a good if Daddy just stops hitting them.

Even has Trump spends tens of millions to destroy the East Wing of the People's House; even as he sends tens of billions to bail out Argentina; even has he talks about buying Argentine beef; even as he guts the ACA tax credits; even has his Medicaid cuts imperil rural hospitals...they STILL SEEM TO FUCKING WANT HIM TO BE PRESIDENT.

At the heart of this is the epistemological bubble that much of the country lives in, courtesy of Faux News. I had an interaction on Facebook over a local election that hinges on Republican complete mismanagement of our water supply that now leaves the community on the hook for a $34M settlement. My counterpart said it was still better than the "radical Marxist demoncrats who have destroyed the country." It was like he was playing Fox News Mad Libs. 

These bubbles are really problematic, and we see that in how people - especially rural people - see our cities. Chicago is one of the absolute coolest cities in the world. It does have a gang problem that showed up for years in very localized murders. Many Americans, however, think of it as a blood soaked hellscape. 

There IS a problem that Democrats absent mindedly promulgated, which is the overly censorious character of a lot of what Carville calls "Academic Break Room Politics."  The basic thing is "You can't say that." Now a lot of things you probably shouldn't say! And apparently if you point out that Charlie Kirk was a racist, sexist demagogue, you should lose your job. Still, the culture war priorities were often counterproductive.

I would argue that Republican culture war priorities are arguably MORE counterproductive for them.

Still, the media landscape makes every Democrat Rashida Talib or Ayanna Pressley.

I'm not sure how you counteract an entire media ecosystem created to stir outrage over small things. That's what conservatives and some leftists have learned from the Age of the Algorithm. Anger drives engagement.

For Democrats to save democracy next November, I almost think that they have to allow for the creation of a regional party - a Farm-Labor Party like the one in Minnesota, but with the word "Democratic" excised. You can't fight against preconceptions, you just can't. Trump won Nebraska with almost 60% of the vote (and now he's killing their agriculture). Deb Fischer won the Senate seat with 53.3% against Dan Osborn who ran as an independent. I almost have to think that Osborn wins that today if there were a special election. 

The "Democratic Brand" is toxic in large parts of the country. Creating a regional party that appeals to working class voters without being associated with the cultural liberalism of the national party seems a way out. Democrats chose to not run a candidate in the Nebraska senate race to clear the field for Osborn. Some tacit agreement could work here. (It would have to be guarded against someone like Platner running as a third party candidate in Maine.)

In my town, Republicans routinely get 66% of the vote. However, the anger of that water issue I mentioned earlier is leading many normally Republican voters to switch their votes. They are not, however, switching their votes to the Democrats, but to a local Independent Party. Hopefully it works, but we shall see.

Polarization

 It is beyond banal at this point to note that we live in a polarized country in a polarized world. This tends to work both ways, as when one group or issue becomes allied with one side, the other side moves against it. As an example, Netanyahu has tied his political future to Donald Trump, and he has done so at precisely the time when his actions have outraged many liberals. This makes support for Israel a more partisan issue than it has ever been in the past. If/when Democrats regain control of the levers of government, it would not surprise me if military support for a Likud-led Israel evaporates. 

What has been a long standing tradition of cross-party unity foundered on Netanyahu picking a side, and then acting in a way that reinforced that divide. 

Domestically, I think we are beginning to see the same thing with the billionaire class. This story about a tech billionaire who went from being a standard Silicon Valley Democrat to a Trumpist fascist does not seem to be THAT unusual. Because Trump operates under a penumbra of corruption, the idea that the rules are for the little people who can't pay their way out of them is growing. This culture of corruption is highly appealing to Gulf Sheiks and Tech Bros.

What this SHOULD mean is that Democrats need to learn this lesson, too. They have catered to Silicon Valley in order to get large checks for their campaign coffers. Yes, small donors are great, but when a billionaire writes you PAC a massive check, you can relax for a few days before you beat the hustings again. 

For all the talk of the "populist moment" the idea that Donald Trump and Republicans are on the side of the working class is just laughably perverse. The reason they could position themselves there is because Democrats were the party of cultural elites and the power of economic elites seemed less pervasive. Yes, there was the Occupy moment, but that passed. 

Now we have farmers who are going to have to file for bankruptcy because of Trump's trade wars. Now we are paying 50% more for electricity because data centers are sprouting up like spring dandelions. Now we have rural hospitals closing to pay for tax cuts for billionaires.

Democrats have done a great job messaging around the shutdown. Many are linking "tax cuts for billionaires" to the cuts in health insurance benefits. However, for Democrats to really become a majority party in both Houses in 2026, they need to be well-positioned to leverage popular outrage at the very rich. 

Those tech billionaires aren't coming back. They've tasted the honey of corruption and they like it. 

Eat the rich. Break up tech monopolies. Regulate social media. Win fabulous prizes.

War Powers

 The blessing and curse of being a history and government teachers these days is that you are never short of current events to illustrate what you are talking about in class. In my International Relations course, we are talking about the concept of war. What differentiates a "war" from other forms of political violence? This is all more than academic as Trump has basically declared that we are at literally (not metaphorically) at war with drugs. This is taking the form of slaughtering Venezuelans on the high seas without due process.

Now, drug cartels are obviously not sympathetic figures! That no doubt feeds into the Trump/Miller administration's choice to declare war on cartels: make Democrats defend the rule of law by defending the least popular targets. Of course, if you really wanted to punish those who have killed so many Americans, you should probably launch a drone strike on the Sacklers.  

There are a host of analyses today about the fact that it's very much an open question as to whether we are still a democratic republic. Freedom House still lists us as one, but I think that might be a lagging indicator. To the degree that we are still hanging on to our democratic institutions, it's largely because while lower Courts have routinely ruled against Trump, the SCOTUS seems to be using a combination of shadow docket rulings and generally kicking some of these issues down the road until a later hearing. The Republican Congress is supine and worthless. 

However, I can't say that we are no longer a republic. I can say that we are in absolute peril of losing our democratic government if things don't change direction.

This brings me back to the declaration of war against cartels. Governments routinely impinge on civil liberties during wartime. Even acolytes of democratic principles like Lincoln and FDR curtailed rights and liberties during wars. It feels very much like Miller's plan to drag us into war with "the cartels" is a way to aggregate even more power in the White House.

Once "cartels" are the enemy and the enemy is roughly speaking Latin American, you can easily justify the horror show visited upon a Chicago apartment building the other day. Dragging people from their homes in the middle of the night is straight up Gestapo shit and it's unclear if the Courts can stop them, but it's incredibly clear that Congressional Republicans will not. There is no one left to "stand up to Nixon" the way Republicans did in 1974. 

There are a handful of elections left in 2025. Hopefully, Democrats sweep the two gubernatorial races that they are favored in and offer some hope to a beleaguered resistance. The earthquake would be a Democrat winning the special election in TN-7. It's an R+10 district, but that is roughly the margin that Democrats have been overperforming in special elections.

We still have the states, but as Trump decides that he has "war powers" the ability to hold onto some autonomy there will erode.

In the long run, I don't think Trump can govern Blue America. I am not sure we won't face disunion if this continues. 

Finding Out

 With all the focus on Charlie Kirk/Jimmy Kimmel/acetomopeneneagin, there is a serious crisis building under the surface of the news. Trump's trade wars have destroyed the international market for American agricultural goods, especially soybeans, and subsidies for the Affordable Care Act are being slashed, which will raise insurance rates for millions of Americans.

Meanwhile, Trump is planning on bailing out Javier Milei's failed policies in Argentina. Why? Because Milei says nice things about Trump, unlike the starving kids in Africa that are dying because Trump killed USAID. 

Which brings us to the Democrats. Right now, we are barreling towards a government shutdown, and the main Democratic demand to keep it open is to re-fund those ACA subsidies. At some point, we can anticipate a bill to bail out American farmers who are getting crushed by Trump's trade wars.

This is the "finding out" phase of Trumpism. Those working class constituencies - farmers and some small independent operators like hair dressers - are about to get crushed. They did, in fact, vote for this, they just weren't paying attention.

What obligation though do Democrats owe these folks? What's more, why should Democrats work to undo the damage Trump is doing before the 2026 midterms? The assumption is always that only Democrats have agency; if the government shutters, it will be their fault. If farmers get crushed and people lose their health insurance because of Trump's policies, then it will somehow be Democrats' fault.

The broad middle of American politics who swung from Trump to Biden and back to Trump does not typically follow politics that closely. They are vibes voters and they roughly "get" that Democrats want government to "do more" and Republicans want government to "do less." If people's economic status declines - as it already is doing - then they will blame the party in power. Biden didn't cause inflation, but Harris likely lose the election because of inflation.

Democrats - to their credit - want to make people's lives better. They want to use the institutions of political power to make things better for the average person. However, if we are to save American democracy, we may have to immiserate people first.

They fucked around in November 2024. They will have to find out by November 2025.

Kimmel

 The monologue was pretty good - emotional, concise, pointed. As Krugman noted, this is a sign that authoritarianism of the type Trump wants to impose on America is brittle and breaking. Democratic backsliding requires that the wannabe dictator is actually popular. It was amazing that even people like Ted Cruz could see the terrible overreach in using threats from the FCC to take Kimmel off the air.

The breakneck speed of Trump's lawless overreach is precisely because they fear an accountability moment. It should be the midterms, but they are working to rig those as best they can. They WAY they are rigging things  - gerrymandering - suggests that they realize the futility of trying to rig the counting or to rely on massive, militarized vote suppression. 

It's a long, long march through Trumpistan. Take some solace and shelter when you can.

Authoritarianism Is Not Popular

 Richardson reminds us that Trump isn't popular. I mentioned yesterday that Trump seems to exist in some bizarre echo chamber of minions dripping honeyed flattery into his ears. He is either unable, unwilling or unprepared to listen to bad news. Perhaps he does hear it and simply thinks he can control the narrative by simply repeating his bullshit.

The Jimmy Kimmel thing has actually earned a rebuke from people like Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz. They sort of get that this is "bad" in terms of civil liberties. Picking visible fights with people like Kimmel is more impactful than illegal shit happening just out of frame. 

There is also some evidence that Democrats in the Senate "get it" in terms of the Continuing Resolution fight. We shall see.

A Stefon Story

 Bill Hader had a recurring character on SNL called Stefon who touted night clubs with the line "This club has it all.." before rattling off a list of impossibly bizarre features. I think we need to start looking at stories about Trump's administration that "have it all" and this one qualifies. 

The contours are this: The United Arab Emirates is looking to diversify its economy by getting into AI. America leads the world (for the moment) in AI chip technology. The UAE is also pretty friendly to China, so the Biden Administration and even national security officials in the first few months of the Trump Restoration were very, very reluctant to give UAE access to the Nvidia AI chips. 

Enter Steve Witkoff, Trump's new consigliere who has no relevant experience to the multitude of jobs that he has been given. He comes out of New York real estate, the same moral sewer that produced Jabba the President. Witkoff, working with techbro oligarch David Sacks, tried to make an end run around the national security concerns and got a huge assist from extreme MAGA gargoyle, Laura Loomer. Basically, they overrode security concerns to export 500,000 of the advanced chips, and then the UAE invested over a billion dollars into Trump aligned crypto.

This story has everything: corruption and personal enrichment by Trump and tech bros, selling out national security interests, Laura Loomer, incompetent people ignoring expert advice and the growing international web of rich people who exist beyond the interest and control of governments.

It also has implausible denials from "White House spokespeople" who say ridiculous things that often don't deny anything. "The Trump administration is the most honest in history" North Korea media type shit.

Crypto doesn't need to exist. It performs no real useful function that money can't perform, except money laundering, drug and human trafficking and fraud, all of which is removed from banking oversight. Crypto has no intrinsic value, but as we see in this story, it's really good for bribing people under the guise of "investing." Meanwhile, China is almost certain to get their hands on these chips and we will lose that advantage, whatever that's worth in our coming AI dystopia. However, for the international tech bro club, who cares if it's the US, the UAE, China or whoever, as long as you get yours. The startling amorality of tech libertarians is almost its own pathology at this point. 

Does this "make America great again"? Of course not. Anymore than the criminal treatment of South Korean engineers by ICE makes sense. However, the swirling chaos, corruption and incompetence of Trump-world means that as long as someone gets what they want - Witkoff's millions; Loomer's vendettas; Sack's techno-stateless utopia - it can proceed, even if it reduces efforts in another area.

Like I said, this story has everything.

What's Next With Martial Law?

 As Trump's job approval spirals near historic lows, even before the economic cost of his policies is levelled, he seems to be doubling down on military takeovers of local governments.

Much of this is performative. Unlike the masked goons in ICE, the National Guard isn't particularly juiced to become Stormtroopers for Trump. The argument that this is supposed to "normalize" armed soldiery on street corners could be true, or it could be that he's just hoping for a violent response to allow him to crack down further on any dissent. Certainly, deploying troops to Chicago would fit his blinkered view of American Carnage and the hope that some dumb gang member shoots at a Guardsman. 

This is all illegal, of course. Congress returns soon, and in addition to dealing with Epstein, they will have to address the DC takeover. Republicans have a seven seat majority today but that number falls to five by September 23rd after special elections fill empty seats in Democratic districts. That means that four Republican House members or four Republican Senators are all that's needed to end this bullshit "emergency."  In the Senate, I think this could be an issue that unites Collins, Murkowski, McConnell and Paul. A similar mix of what passes for moderates (Don Bacon?) and libertarians in the House could make a coalition to end this.

We can see the lawlessness of the Trump Administration in their moves to deport Kilmer Abrego Garcia again, even as he awaits trial. This is a blatant violation of Garcia's rights, just as the first deportation was. They arrested him after his court hearing, because of course they did. This is not about enforcing the law, but creating precedents for violating it. 

If courts rule that Trump's martial law attempts in California or possible future attempts in Illinois are illegal (which they are), what happens next? The Abrego Garcia case shows that they are unconstrained by judicial rulings. Intimidation is the only law they follow.

In all this, of course, is the supine Republican Congress.

Genuinely Scared

 Early on election night, I realized that my optimistic appraisal of the American electorate was badly flawed and that Trump would likely win. I drove out into the woods and screamed in rage and despair into the darkness. I wasn't sure how bad it would be, but I knew that the country had rejected decency and law in favor of a flawed view of the economy of 2019. 

So far, it has been objectively bad, but bad in a way that I think we can recover from. Yes, the Big Ugly Bill is a horror show; yes, people are being hurt; yes, the economy is being skewed even more towards the rich. You can point to dozens of terrible things this administration is doing or planning on doing. 

Yet, those actions can be undone. Bad bills can be replaced with good bills. America and the world will be worse off because Trump was returned to office, but the world is a resilient place and given time and the opportunity, we can return to a better state of affairs.

The gerrymandering plan being forced on Texas is shaking me up.

Abbott has always struck me as a less charismatic version of Trump. He lacks the gonzo appeal Trump apparently has for many, but he has the same anti-democratic impulses. When Trump asked him to redistrict, he rushed to do so. Texas Democrats have fled the state to deny Republicans a quorum, and now Abbott is talking about stripping them of their seats. Is that legal? I don't know, but I doubt that will stop him.

As Krugman notes, this is a sign of Trump's desperation. Republicans in Trumpistan do measurable worse when he's not on the ballot. The House is razor thin anyway, and every seat could matter in 2026. Forcing mid-decade redistricting on Texas, Florida and Ohio is a blatant attempt to short circuit democratic accountability. 

If it succeeds, that's the ball game. Seriously. I don't see how the country hangs together. We either become a dictatorship or the country fractures. Democrats have to win control of at least one house of Congress in order to exercise a check on the Mad King. If they fail to win either the House or Senate, then all the malevolent bullshit will become the new American normal. I doubt very much whether we would have anything approaching free and fair elections in 2028.

Now, there is another possibility. The descent into authoritarianism has - at least nominally - stayed within the bounds of law. So far, we don't have evidence of tampering with the counting of ballots. Putin and Orban didn't skew the counting, they just shaped the elections in ways that insured their victories. Gerrymandering is from that playbook. 

The Supreme Court enabled this with the Rucho decision that forbid Federal courts from overturning partisan gerrymandering. Even in that decision, they agreed that gerrymandering  might be undemocratic, but that they had no power to intervene. The Texas gerrymander almost certainly violates the Voting Rights Act, but does anyone expect the Courts to uphold that law? Roberts has been trying to overturn it since the the 1980s.

Now, as of this writing, California is thinking about changing their laws to gerrymander that state out of Republican hands. Illinois could do the same. New York...well, they are making the proper noises, but the NY Dems always fuck up, and in fact, fucked up a gerrymander attempt in 2021. 

A gerrymander war could preserve the chances of a Democratic House. There is even the chance that Republicans will create a "Dummymander" (a phrase I just heard) whereby they take districts that Trump won by 10 points and make the 5 point Trump districts. In a wave election, Democrats might win those seats. Right now, Republicans have gerrymandered Texas to create their partisan map. Texas' 3rd, 12th, 15th, 21st, 23rd, 24th, 26th, 31st and 38th districts are all already R+11 or closer. Dilute those at all and a backlash election could tilt the map to Democrats - even in Texas.

However, the gerrymander war or even the dummymander would mean that Republicans could reach for more extreme measures to preserve their rule. Krugman's conclusion is scary, but accurate:

And what if these actions aren’t enough? Remember, Trump supporters, with his clear encouragement, already tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The important point is that right now Trump has immense power, thanks in large part to the cowardice of many of the institutions that should be holding him in check. But he’s also rapidly bleeding support, in large part because he’s completely failing to deliver on his economic promises.

That combination makes this an extremely dangerous moment. And if authoritarianism does come to America, don’t count on it being soft.

They are telling us how little respect they have for democracy. They said it when they refused to vote for impeachment after January 6th. They said it when they renominated Trump. They said when they rolled over for his awful legislation and illegal power grabs. They are saying by launching this gerrymander war. 

If they succeed in gerrymandering Texas, Florida and Ohio even more, and Democrats match them or they dummymander their way out of the majority in a wave election, why should we imagine that Trump and his fascist hangers on will accept that result peacefully?

Does CBS Matter?

 There was a time when CBS - especially CBS News - was the premier network: "The Tiffany Network." Recently, CBS has kowtowed to Trump by settling a baseless lawsuit, gutting 60 Minutes and now firing Stephen Colbert who has consistently derided Trump. (It is interesting that Colbert will stay on the air for months, now free to say whatever the hell he feels.)

As disturbing as this truly is about how elite media sees itself in Trumpistan, I do wonder if this even matters. The problem with controlling CBS or the Washington Post or other venues is that media has become so diffuse that shutting down Colbert will only free him to migrate online. Conan O'Brien has been phenomenally successful after he was fired for no good reason, except making the suits uncomfortable.

The fracturing of media has been bad for our sense of shared national narrative. There is no Walter Cronkite to arbitrate the news for us. However, that fracturing also places it largely outside the control of a malevolent force like MAGA.

At least, I hope so.

Postures, Not Solutions

 Richardson has a nice run down of the history of immigration law and reform, stretching back to the Emergency Quota Act of 1922. Immigration laws have always been tied and constrained by racism and xenophobia, again, this period in American history is really not that new, it's just remarkably undemocratic. 

America has long wrestled with the tension between wanting and as often as not needing more workers and fears both of "others" and depressed wages. Right now, the main opposition to Trump/Miller's deportation scheme is the inhumanity of it, the indiscriminate cruelty. However, it seems fairly likely that this will create long term inflation, especially in agricultural goods. Other areas like construction and certain service areas - restaurants and hotels - could also see price increases.

Now, I and other thought we would be seeing inflationary effects from Trump's tariffs. There was widespread talk of the collapse of container shipping in the Pacific Ocean, for instance. That hasn't happened. Yet. It could be that suppliers had stocked up in anticipation of the tariffs or perhaps slowing overall demand has mitigated the effect of tariffs. Most likely both, but at the moment, MAGA is crowing about the fact that there aren't empty shelves at Target and Walmart.

Still, macroeconomics tends to have the last word. For instance, Good Yglesias showed up today to write about Javier Milei's early success in Argentina. It's a good, balanced take, in that it looks both at what Milei has done and more importantly hasn't done, while noting that Argentina has had false springs before. Basically, Milei ran as a right wing, chainsaw wielding populist, but he's largely governed as a neoliberal austerity guy who's getting help from the IMF. He did NOT do the crazy populist stuff, like abandoning the Argentine peso and replacing it with the US dollar. Instead, he just did what the textbook says and slash government spending (which does immiserate the poor) which - along with IMF help - has stabilized the peso in ways that allow for some business investment (which dried up in the face of runaway inflation).

What's more, Argentina has cycled through good periods and bad periods since it embarked on a series of disastrous macroeconomic policies under Peron. Left and right wing governments oscillate back and forth, occasionally seeing stability and then falling off a cliff. Argentina had nothing to do with causing 2008, but it was crippled nevertheless and has really struggled to recover (then Covid).

So, it's not like Milei is governing the way he campaigned, because he's an economist and "gets it." Meanwhile, Trump IS governing from the Project 2025 playbook - which was his platform, even if he tried to run away from it. In fact, the media's collective shrug when Trump said he wasn't running on the platform that he was actually running on was probably as big a reason we have a Trump presidency as any. 

Populism is best understood as a form of politics AND a portfolio of policies. Milei was a populist politician, but so far has not been a purely populist president. Trump, meanwhile, has taken decades of Republican demagoguery on immigration and placed it at the heart of his governing agenda. Sure, there's the Project 2025 war on basic science, but the beating heart of Trump's populism is hatred of immigration and globalization. (Although apparently the central nervous system consists of QAnon type conspiracy theories.)

For whatever reason, we have not seen quite the inflationary pressures from the combination of Trump's tariffs and his mass deportations of otherwise law abiding immigrants - legal or undocumented. It could be that inflation isn't as bad as predicted because we are already entering a reduction in consumer demand that usually presages a recession. One thing we can be confident of, is that whatever Trump winds up doing, it will not be because he is listening to what mainstream economists think. The contempt for elites and elite-created knowledge is very, very real.

ICE As American Gestapo

 Theda Skocpol notes that the massive resources given to ICE in the OBBB as being an opportunity to create a sort of stormtrooper/Gestapo force in America. The billions of dollars lavished on ICE will allow them, presumably, to hire and resource themselves in ways that might overwhelm other institutions that might otherwise check them.

Richardson notes that ICE showed up for a media-centered raid on MacArthur Park in Los Angeles that seemed designed more to send a message to both LA and anyone whose skin tone is lighter than Trump's makeup. The combined idea is that most law enforcement is trained to, you know, follow the law. While there were always breaches of that covenant, the majority of LEO see themselves as custodians of the law.

By giving ICE all this money, it could enable them to create a cadre of shock troops to overwhelm and cow existing law enforcement agencies.

I suppose it could and we should all be on guard and watch this. I do wonder, however, how many people really want to be a part of this? The number is not zero, I know. I remember the election. But to staff the new Brownshirts, you need to accommodate the following facts:

- If you were already so inclined, I would wager you'd already joined ICE. They were already the law enforcement agency most tolerant of abusive persons.
- A lot of the online Nazis that flood Twitter are lazy, cowardly losers who can't be bothered to go out and do work like this. Or they have a job, and joining the Brownshirts seems superfluous. I mean, after all, they've already poasted Pepe the Frog, what more do you want?
- The masking of ICE agents seems blatantly illegal, but the rationale is that they face threats from doxing. More likely, they are masked so that they won't face doxing or prosecution in the future. Is that a work environment you want to join?

The OBBB and the various Trumpist goons and fascists can appropriate the money to hire people, but who are they going to hire who hasn't already signed up? We are already seeing opposition to Trump's mass deportations from Trump voters who wanted to rid the country of MS13, not Maria down at the bakery or Manuel at work. It was always a stupid choice, but it does represent the idea that an American Gestapo isn't going to be super popular.

I'm reading a biography of John Lewis, and his commitment to satyagraha and nonviolence - not as a tactic, but as a governing philosophy - led him and others to shame the forces of  Jim Crow. I would argue that Jim Crow was a lot more popular in 1960 than Trump's pogroms are today, and it could be that we could see principled nonviolence return as a way to thwart Trump's malignant attempts to destroy American civil society and social cohesiveness. 

Of course, in the end, SCLC and SNCC did rely on a sympathetic federal government to protect them. That ain't happening. Still, I believe there are more of us than there are of them, even if there are far too many of them. 

UPDATE: I mean stuff like this is brilliant.

UPDATE II: I should have added: Every fucker who joins ICE basically outs themselves as a fascist and that makes identifying and marginalizing them easier, when we finally defeat these Children of Darkness.