Autopens Are Not the Problem 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱

Shiny Objects:  Don’t be distracted by Trump’s claim that because Biden used an autopen to sign them his pardons aren’t legitimate, presidents have been using mechanical signing devices since Jefferson.  That claim, like Trump’s assertion that he won another golf tournament at his club last weekend is bogus, although unlike his false golf braggadocio, the pardon claim could result in legal expenses for the people affected.  Also, don’t be distracted by Trump’s Kennedy Arts Center shenanigans, they’re egregious and like his promise to host some, if not all of the center’s future performances, are another indication of his damaged mind, but while they’re bad, they are low down on the list of bad things he’s doing and probably the most reversable.  Be more concerned by Trump’s unrelenting attacks on the judges standing in the way of his likely illegal actions, his extrajudicial deportations, his dismantling of environmental protections, his kowtowing to Putin at the expense of Ukraine, his continued attacks on our northern neighbor, his cavalier statement that a recession would be worth the pain, his MAGA abetted efforts to cut Medicaid and Social Security, and the myriad other programs and safeguards, like the ones that prevent disease and keep nuclear weapons safe,  that he and his DOGE master Elon are engineering. Also don’t ignore that he’s had his Defense Secretary, the one with a history of excessive drinking and abusing of women, eliminate references to minority heroes from the Pentagon’s website, an effort that in addition to erasing the contributions of the Navajo Code Talkers, the elite Marines, who devised an unbreakable code during World War II as well as a number of Black war heroes and medal recipients including Jackie Robinson (yes that Jackie Robinson) has deleted references to the Enola Gay plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima as well, not because of the nuke part, but because a plane with Gay in its name celebrates an “unacceptable” life style. Makes you wonder what group be targeted next, because more will be.    

Illegalities: As to the judges, Trump’s bigly mad because a series of them have issued temporary restraining orders against a lot of his actions.  This week’s biggest target is on James Boasberg, the chief judge of the US District Court for the District of Columbia. Trump posted on social media that Boasberg, was a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge,” adding “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”  And naturally, some of Trump’s House MAGA’s did as they were told, introducing an impeachment measure. It’s not easy to impeach judges and Boasberg won’t be impeached but the call and the MAGA response are not good things. Judge Boasberg’s crime, questioning Trump’s use of the Alien and Sedition Act to do an end run around due process to deport somewhere around 200 mostly Venezuelan migrants, some but not all violent gang members, to a particularly heinous prison in El Salvador. Judge Boasberg has further infuriated Trump by engaging in fact finding, asking questions about the INS’s deportation timeline to discern if they, with Trump’s blessing, flagrantly ignored his order to turn around the planes flying the migrants to El Salvador. As to the concerns that some of the migrants flown to El Salvador have no criminal records, INS officials actually told Boasberg that the lack of information about each individuals crimes should be ignored because they might be dangerous even if their danger can’t be shown. To put it mildly, Boasberg wasn’t impressed with that argument.  Judge Boasberg isn’t the only one getting under Trump and his MAGA followers’ skin. Yesterday, US District Judge Ana Reyes, also of the DC Court, blocked Trump’s ban on transgender service members, writing that the ban “is soaked in animus and dripping with pretext….it’s unabashedly demeaning, its policy stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit, and its conclusions bear no relation to fact.” District Court Judge Tonya Chutkan, DC Court again, blocked for now the termination of $14 billion in grants awarded to three climate groups by the Biden Administration, saying the Trump administration’s allegations of fraud were “vague and unsubstantiated” likely because there is no fraud, just an effort to address climate change, an issue that the coal loving Trump prefers to ignore.  Also yesterday, Judge Theodore Chuang of the US District Court of Maryland ruled that efforts by Elon Musk and his team to permanently shutter US AID likely violated the Constitution and robbed Congress of its authority to oversee the dissolution of an agency it created because Musk despite being Trump’s bagman is not a properly appointed US officer. In response to Trump’s call to impeach judges he doesn’t like, Chief Justice John Roberts issued a rare statement “rebuking” Trump and his MAGA allies for calling to impeach judges who have ruled against the administration saying “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose." That’s nice but pretty meaningless coming from the guy who empowered Trump with last year’s immunity decision and donors like Musk with his 2010 Citizens United decision that made it possible for rich guys to buy politicians including presidents. Roberts’ statement doesn’t mean that he together with the rest of the Court’s conservative majority won’t ultimately rule in favor of Trump’s policies when the cases make it to SCOTUS. Worth noting, despite Trump’s whining about all those radical judges appointed by “Barack HUSSEIN Obama,” judges across ideological lines have been ruling against his policies at similar rates with 84% of them liberal, 86% centrist and 82% conservative because upholding the Constitution isn’t supposed to be ideological.       

More:  The Trump administration has cut a clause from federal contracting rules that had been on the books since the 1960s so companies will no longer be explicitly prohibited from having segregated facilities. How long before “Colored” people and “Jews” (yes, there used to be such signs) are directed to their own washrooms the way they used to be before the Civil Rights Act?  The Wall Street Journal reports that the administration is considering making major cuts to funding for domestic HIV prevention, not surprising when you consider that RFK Jr doesn’t believe that AIDs is caused by a virus and anyway why shouldn’t we want to see more AIDs cases and even more virulent strains. Maybe more raw milk and vitamin A will help?  And in probably the least surprising stories of the day, Minnesota state Senator Justic Eichorn, the Republican who recently introduced legislation seeking to name “Trump derangement syndrome” as an official mental illness, was arrested for soliciting a teenage girl for sex while Trump’s one-time spiritual advisor, Megachurch pastor Robert Morris turned himself into Oklahoma authorities on child sexual abuses charges.

Fog:  With Trump’s blessing, Israel is back to bombing Gaza and Hamas is back to reporting what are likely inflated causality statistics which doesn’t meant that there aren’t casualties and that casualties aren’t bad, however, one way to stop them would be for Hamas to release more, maybe all of the hostages but that doesn’t appear to be in the cards, at least right now.  Despite Trump’s “bigly” successful call with Putin, bombs are flying there as well and somehow or other the US is no longer helping to track Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia.       

#BringThemAllHomeNow