Rogue State 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱

Doge Days:  Yesterday, the White House revealed that Amy Gleason, a Tennessee based health care “expert” from the first Trump administrator who is currently on vacation in Mexico, rather than billionaire Elon Musk who sleeps in the Old Executive Office building adjacent to the White House when not residing at Mar a Lago and spends his days shadowing Trump is the head of DOGE. That’s bull💩 but the White House assertion about Gleason’s role is just another example of how Trump, Musk, and their mutts and minions, especially Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, lie and get away with it, or at least get away with it with the too large crowd that buys everything Trump says.  Yesterday Musk and his mutts and maybe Gleason but probably not because she’s probably downing margaritas quietly admitted that much of the savings that they earlier bragged about achieving was phony.  Specifically: the $8 billion Immigration and Customs enforcement contract they claimed to have canceled, it was worth only $8 million; three $655 million cuts at US AID, a duplication error, there was only one $655 million almost finished contract and the actual savings by DOGE is closer to $18 million; a $232 million technology contract cut at the Social Security Administration, they only cut a tiny piece of the contract so the actual savings just $560,000; and that $1.9 billion cut at the Treasury Department, it was from a contract that was canceled by the Biden administration. While the savings cuts are minor in the context of the total US budget, the disruptions that Musk and his mutts have created are real and significant especially for the many who’ve lost their jobs or have seen them put in limbo pending the outcomes of the legal cases wending their way through the courts.  Then there’s that “what did you do last week” email.  Over the past few days, federal employees have been told to respond to the email or else, to just ignore it, to respond if they want to, and my favorite, advice from nepo RFK’s Health and Humans Services, that if they respond they should be careful about what they include because their emails may be read by “malign foreign actors.” Many stunned federal employees have responded as have thousands from the general public who have flooded the DOGE mailbox with spam.  So much for government efficiency.

State of Play:  Yesterday, US District Judge Amir Ali granted a motion to enforce his previously issued temporary restraining order, requiring the State Department and USAID, to restore foreign-assistance funds for contracts and other awards.  That’s good news except that almost all USAID workers have been fired and it’s not clear whether anyone in Trump-land cares about court orders anymore and whether anyone at the top will care if some lower-level minions are hauled off to jail in contempt.  As former US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall wrote in the NY Times, we now have a rogue president. And while Musk’s continues to serve as a deflector shield, last night with no Democratic support and only one Republican, Thomas Massie, in opposition, the Republican led Congress voted 217 to 215 for a budget resolution that calls for $880 billion of budget cuts. House budget resolutions are just starting points, they are instructions to House committees, but those cuts can’t and won’t be achieved by Musk cutting phantom contracts, firing lots of federal employees, and disrupting government services, they can only be achieved by cutting the social safety net, and the net targeted is Medicaid. The reason those cuts are “needed” is so that Trump can renew and add to the expiring tax cuts that were put in place during his first administration.  Cutting $880 billion will leave millions of poor Americans without health care, including many of the working poor, who can’t afford to buy insurance without Medicaid funded subsidies.  It’s not just the poor who will be impacted, more than 60% of the elderly rely on Medicaid to pay for their nursing home care. Cutting Medicaid will also irreparably harm community health care providers including hospitals and clinics, but billionaires need more yachts, and Musk wants more government contracts so there’s that.  And to help push their message while drowning out all others, the Trump White House announced yesterday that it is stripping the responsibility for determining which press organizations get to closely cover Trump away from the White House Correspondents Association because that’s what Viktor Orban would do.

Justice?  We also have a rogue Justice Department, particularly in Washington DC where, because the capitol is not part of any state, the US Attorney is responsible for both federal and local law.  Washington DC’s interim soon to be permanent US Attorney is a “save the steal” lawyer named Edward Martin.  Martin who posted on social media that US Attorneys are Trumps’ (sic) lawyers and as such are “proud to fight to protect his leadership” as opposed to representing all of us, what’s supposed to be their real job, has announced his intention to go after Trump’s opponents, including Democratic members of Congress, and media outlets like the Associated Press (the AP). Another indication of his MAGA affinity, in his capacity as DC’s top attorney, Martin refused to sign off on an arrest warrant against Republican Congressman Cory Mills of Florida who last week was accused of physically assaulting his 27-year-old girlfriend. Mills is married, the abused girlfriend had fresh bruises on her arm and shared a tape of a phone call with the responding police in which he’d told her to lie about the situation but nothing to see because Mills is all in on MAGA, abusing women is apparently a good thing, and anyway Mills supports Trump changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America unlike those obviously criminal AP reporters.  

Fog:  Three years ago, Russia invaded Ukraine but according to the US that’s not Russia’s fault because Putin couldn’t help himself.  On Monday, the US opposed a UN resolution backed by Ukraine and major European countries that called for Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine, voting instead with Russia, North Korea, Belarus, Sudan and 13 other countries.  Sadly, Israel which should know better, was one of those 13 other countries. While it’s true that given its dependence on US support, Israel votes in lockstep with the US at the UN, payback for the US vetoing most of the UN’s anti-Israel votes, this vote was particularly awful to see but then again Bibi Netanyahu is the Eric Adams of world leaders, he needs US aid and also needs Trump’s support to continue on as Prime Minister because like Adams he’s got lots of legal problems. As to New York Mayor Adam’s legal problems, they’ve gone nowhere. On Monday, Judge Dale Ho delayed issuing a ruling on the Justice Department’s request to drop the corruption case against him, instead Ho took the unusual step of appointing an outside lawyer to present independent arguments on the motion.  His appointee is Paul Clement, a widely respected conservative who served as solicitor general during George W Bush’s administration.

#BringThemAllHomeNow