Last night’s Senate vote to confirm the colossally unqualified Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense reminded me a bit of the disastrous 2002 Iraq War resolution vote. A bunch of Democrats who should have known better voted for the resolution. Apparently they thought a no vote would hurt them politically. But at least a few of them — John Kerry and Hillary Clinton in particular — probably regretted that vote later, and not just because the Iraq War was plainly wrong. IMO Kerry and Clinton would have had a better chance in their presidential bids were it not for that vote. I believe that vote cooled Democratic enthusiasm for Kerry in 2004 and was part of what cost Clinton the nomination in 2008. Not that I mind that Clinton lost the nomination in 2008.

Hegseth could seriously screw up the military, and not just because he might be making critical decisions with the help of his good friend Jim Beam. Discouraging women and LGBTQ folks from serving will reduce the ranks quite a bit, I suspect. (See Women, gays, transgender and queer Americans serve in the military because men won’t.) Hegseth also thinks the U.S. military is just way too woke about war crimes, and if we don’t let our boys (note masculine pronoun) massacre civilians now and then we’re holding them back from being warriors, or something. I hate to think about the quality of the recruits over the next four years. We could end up with a military full of Trumpy incels. We’d be doomed.

So all those spineless Republicans who confirmed Hegseth in spite of his obvious inadequacies for the job are counting on him not screwing up so much that their low-information voters notice. Otherwise, that confirmation vote could come back to bite them. We’ll see.

Of course, it’s also the case that Hegseth’s nomination chances probably improved because of Trump’s mass pardon of the J6 thugs. It appears now that Trump can unleash mobs of brownshirts on the Capitol whenever he likes and neither he (thanks to the Supreme Court) nor they will be held accountable.

The atrocities continue. From WaPo:

The White House late Friday fired the independent inspectors general of at least 12 major federal agencies in a purge that could clear the way for President Donald Trump to install loyalists in the crucial role of identifying fraud, waste and abuse in the government.

The inspectors general were notified by emails from the White House personnel director that they had been terminated immediately, according to people familiar with the actions, who like others in this report spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private messages.

The dismissals appeared to violate federal law, which requires Congress to receive 30 days’ notice of any intent to fire a Senate-confirmed inspector general.

The affected agencies were the departments of Defense, State, Transportation, Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Energy, Commerce and Agriculture, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, Small Business Administration and the Social Security Administration. Some of these people had been appointed during Trump’s first term. Oddly, the purge overlooked the inspector general of the Justice Department, an Obama appointee. Maybe Trump hasn’t figured out a way to monetize Justice for his personal benefit yet.

As far as the law is concerned — what law? The Supreme Court said Trump doesn’t have to obey laws.

On the deportation front, in spite of the White House making a big show of ICE raids, so far he hasn’t actually deported that many people.

A federal judge has blocked Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship. Federal District Court judge, John C. Coughenour called Trump’s order “blatantly unconstitutional.”

“Frankly,” he continued, challenging Trump administration lawyers, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.”

Twenty-two states have challenged the order in court, which suggests that if Congress did try to amend the Constitution in the normal way, it would fall short of the 38 states needed for ratification. I assume Trump will appeal up to the Supreme Court eventually, and then we’ll see how many of the so-called “originalists” are prepared to flush the Constitution down the toilet on Trump’s say-so.

One of the most disturbing thing I’ve seen today is at Washington Monthly,  Three Disturbing Signs of Fourth Estate Failure by Bill Scher. And may I add that fourth estate failure in regard to Trump is hardly new. But, basically, a lot of news outlets are tip-toeing around the current radicalism rather than calling it out plainly, and Scher provides some examples. I’ve seen others. I read today that CNN is laying off many employees and re-working its schedule and news approach, and somehow I doubt any of this will give CNN’s coverage of Trump a spine. CNN’s political coverage has been mostly useless for a long time, as far as I’m concerned.  Possibly now it will be even more useless.

We still have the MSNBC evening lineup, and Trump is vowing to shut the network down. And I bet he will try.

Meanwhile, Trump has begun dismantling the National Institute of Health.

President Donald Trump’s return to the White House is already having a big impact at the $47.4 billion U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), with the new administration imposing a wide range of restrictions, including the abrupt cancellation of meetings including grant review panels. Officials have also ordered a communications pause, a freeze on hiring, and an indefinite ban on travel.

The moves have generated extensive confusion and uncertainty at the nation’s largest research agency, which has become a target for Trump’s political allies. “The impact of the collective executive orders and directives appears devastating,” one senior NIH employee says. …

… Separately, HHS announced a communications ban through 1 February in a memo issued yesterday. (The Washington Post and Associated Press first reported the memo’s existence.) It orders a stop on the publishing of regulations, guidance documents, grant announcements, social media posts, press releases, and other “communications,” and the canceling of speaking engagements. Any exceptions must be applied for and approved through the president’s appointees.

So they’re muzzled, just in time for a bird flu pandemic to slam into us. Also there’s a “hiatus” on medical research funding. This hasn’t been widely reported, but Talking Points Memo is getting it from medical researchers.

And all of this is just the tip of a big iceberg. But we can always lighten it up by laughing at Marjorie Taylor Greene. Today she’s slamming the UK for refusing to comply with the name change of the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. She is pushing to get Congress to pass a law making the change, because she thinks this will force other countries to comply.

The blowback begins. A number of news stories today say that Trump’s blanket pardon for nearly all J6 convicts caught a lot of Republicans off guard. I don’t know why; it certainly didn’t surprise me. I would have been more surprised if he’d only pardoned a few of them. But apparently a lot of Republicans had been confident the rioters who had assaulted the police would remain in jail. And now they’re flapping around trying to decide what would hurt them more politically — supporting the release of violent criminals who assaulted cops or disagreeing with Trump. Miz Lindsey says he’ll have something to say by the weekend. Police unions that had endorsed Trump criticized the move. Even the Wall Street Journal is miffed about it, I hear. After all this time, they still are trying to see Trump as a better man than he obviously is.

And if any of those freed rioters does any harm whatsoever to anyone else, the Dems had better hang that around Trump’s neck with lead weights.

But I mostly want to talk about birthright citizenship today. I was seeing all kinds of disinfo on social media claiming that “birthright citizenship” is only available to people who can give full allegiance to the U.S. I found out this allegiance talk is coming from the Nazi Heritage Foundation. And I’m having a hard time understanding now a newborn baby has any allegiances at all, other than to Momma. But I’ll come back to this.

Regarding illegal aliens, note that when the 14th Amendment was passed by Congress and ratified — in 1866 and 1868 — there was no such thing as an “illegal alien.” There couldn’t be, because there were no federal immigration laws. Anyone who got off a boat onto these shores from anywhere had a right to be here, as far as federal law was concerned. Newcomers needed no permission, no papers, no clearances of any sort. I believe the first law restricting immigration was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Here’s an article on The Birth of ‘Illegal’ Immigration that’s worth checking out.

The larger point is that the politicians who drafted the 14th couldn’t possibly have been concerned about whether babies were being born to “illegal aliens,” because there was no such thing in 1866.

The Heritage Foundation is claiming that the 14th didn’t cover people who were citizens of other countries who came here and had children. But technically, nearly everyone who showed up here from somewhere else was still a citizen of another country, unless they’d be banished or something. And there was no naturalization process. You just showed up and started living here. If you follow the Heritage logic, no one could be a citizen until they were second generation.

The 14th Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” Heritage hangs a lot of their argument on the word “jurisdiction.” They are blowing smoke about different kinds of jurisdiction and which ones require allegiance to a “sovereign.” I didn’t know we had a sovereign.

Heritage does mention the Supreme Court case that settled what “jurisdiction” means in the 14th, which is United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898). According to Heritage, the Wong Kim Ark case involved a man born in the U.S. whose parents were “lawful permanent residents.” Unfortunately for Heritage one can find the text of the Wong Kim Ark decision online. It begins,

A child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China,…

So, yeah, they were not here illegally, because there were no immigration laws when they arrived. But they were considered subjects of the Emperor of China, which kind of kills the “allegiance” theory, seems to me.

Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco in 1873 to immigrant parents. His parents returned to China when he was a teenager, but Wong Kim Ark remained in California. In 1895 he visited his family in China, but when he came back to the U.S. he was denied entry because he was obviously of Chinese ethnicity, and the Chinese Exclusion Act was in effect.  Per the National Archives,

His appeal eventually went all the way to the Supreme Court resulting in the 1898 precedent-setting ruling affirming birthright citizenship and protecting U.S.- born descendants of immigrants from being denied this citizenship, regardless of the ethnicity, nationality, or status of their parents.

Notarized paper that affirmed Wong Kim Ark was born in the U.S.

The Wong Kim Ark decision goes on and on about jurisdiction, and it’s clear in context the justices interpreted “jurisdiction” to mean “within the jurisdiction of U.S. law.” For this reason, babies born to diplomats assigned to a foreign embassy within the U.S. don’t get to be U.S. citizens, because the parents are not subject to U.S. law. And originally the decision excluded Native Americans born on reservations, because reservations have a special status apart from U.S. law. An act of Congress corrected that several decades ago, so that Native Americans born on reservations are citizens now..

Otherwise, if you are in the United States, legally or otherwise, you are subject to U.S. law, and if you have a baby here the baby can claim citizenship. This is not really all that complicated. The Nazi Heritage Foundation can blow all the smoke it likes about sovereign allegiances and all the different varieties of “jurisdiction.” Any court that tries to overturn Wong Kim Ark is wrong, and corrupted. End of argument.

In other news: In the spirit of “let’s see what the Creature has been up to while I was writing this,”  — You’ll like this one —

President Trump on Wednesday revoked a 60-year-old executive order banning discrimination in hiring practices in the federal government, his latest action aimed at gutting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

His order, which the White House called “the most important federal civil rights measure in decades,” revokes Executive Order 11246 signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. It prohibited discriminatory practices in hiring and employment in government contracting and asserted the government’s commitment to affirmative action.

In other words Only White Men Need Apply.

Trump is also having one of his signature prolonged temper tantrums over remarks made in a prayer service in the National Cathedral by the Right Rev Mariann Budde, Bishop of the District of Columbia and part of Maryland. This was part of a prayer service that was an official inauguration activity, and Trump with Melania and J.D. Vance and his wife were in attendance. Here is the part of the sermon that seems to have set him off —

If you want to watch the entire sermon, here it is. Anyway, Trump has demanded an apology from the Bishop. Further,

Trump hit back in the early hours of Wednesday on his social media platform Truth Social, calling Budde a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” who is “not very good at her job” and demanding an apology.
“She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart,” he said.

“Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one,” he added.

The Bishop shouldn’t worry. In spite of the National Cathedral’s charter, it’s run by the Episcopal Church, not the government. So Trump can’t fire her for being a DEI hire and replace her with a man.

I’m still mostly ignoring news. I watched Maddow last night, and that was it. I couldn’t help but catch some headlines today, though. The Great Orange Moron has in fact directed the Department of the Interior to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America in all official communications. Although maybe not all of it.

As such, within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of the Interior shall, consistent with 43 U.S.C. 364 through 364f, take all appropriate actions to rename as the “Gulf of America” the U.S. Continental Shelf area bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the States of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and extending to the seaward boundary with Mexico and Cuba in the area formerly named as the Gulf of Mexico.  The Secretary shall subsequently update the GNIS to reflect the renaming of the Gulf and remove all references to the Gulf of Mexico from the GNIS, consistent with applicable law.  

I trust the rest of the world will continue to call the entire body of water the Gulf of Mexico. But I’m thinking of U.S. map and textbook publishers right now. I can see the staff putting together some el-hi social study series wondering if they have to scrap all the Western Hemisphere maps already. I’m betting they won’t, unless specific state editions (like Texas and Florida) require it. The California textbook board might object and want to keep Gulf of Mexico in California editions, though. This’ll be fun.

I also saw headlines saying that Trump was halting programs to lower prescription drug prices, especially for people on Medicare and Medicaid. Since I’m on Medicare and finally got on Medicaid too, this concerned me. I see that what happened is that Trump recalled a Biden directive to develop ways to lower prescription drug prices that hadn’t been fully put into effect yet, so for now there shouldn’t be any changes to current prices. What concerns me is that Trump and the wackadoo Congress will eliminate the government negotiation of drug prices under the Inflation Reduction Act.

And as expected he is trying to end birthright citizenship by executive order. Several states and organizations have already filed lawsuits to stop that from going into effect.

Trump says he wants a 25 percent tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico to go into effect on February 1, but I’m not sure he’s issued that directive yet. I’m sure Canada and Mexico are prepared to retaliate.

Did I mention that a one-dozen carton of store-brand eggs at the local ShopRite grocery was $6.49 today? If you wanted name brand, or anything “free range,” think $8 to $9 a dozen. And the bird flu is spreading, I understand.

And the January 6 pardons are an atrocity, of course. May they all get bird flu.

This is at Slate:

Our big, beautiful boy is about to become a man for the second time, and life has never been so good. Trump heads into his Monday inauguration with the entirety of both the Republican Party and the business world fawning over him in a way they didn’t when he was first inaugurated in 2017. Democrats in Congress have substituted the #Resistance for the #RelativeCooperation. The many confirmation hearings this week for his nominees, controversial or not, went without serious incident that would call into question their viability. Trump and his envoys played a major role in working with the Biden administration to achieve an elusive ceasefire in Gaza this week. He was going to be chilly at the outdoors inauguration—the setup for which a lot of resources had been devoted to—so he got them to move it indoors. Once that’s done, he’s going to be firing off executive orders at a rapid clip. The Resolute Desk Diet Coke Button will be reinstalled. Plus: He doesn’t have to go to jail! If that’s not a plus, what is?

Trump must think he’s king of the world right now. He’s getting everything he’s always wanted. The wealthy and powerful are swearing allegiance to him. He’s going to hold what was, at least, the most respected political office in the world. He’ll be immune from prosecution and can do what he likes. Elisabeth Bumiller in the New York Times writes that billionaires and multimillionaires “are flocking to Washington,” buying houses in the most prestigious neighborhoods. Who wouldn’t be first in line for the oligarchy, if you had the money?

Put more plainly, the pigs are lining up at the trough.

Trump suddenly has a lot more money, too.

The $TRUMP memecoin — a financial asset that didn’t exist on Friday afternoon — now accounts for about 89% of Donald Trump’s net worth.

Why it matters: The coin (technically a token that’s issued on the Solana blockchain) has massively enriched Trump personally, enabled a mechanism for the crypto industry to funnel cash to him, and created a volatile financial asset that allows anyone in the world to financially speculate on Trump’s political fortunes.

After another massive overnight rally, as of Sunday morning Trump’s crypto holdings were worth as much as $58 billion on paper, enough — with his other assets — to make him one of the world’s 25 richest people.

Where it stands: While the Biden administration broadly took the view that memecoins like $TRUMP are securities subject to SEC regulation, the incoming Trump administration has pledged to be much more crypto-friendly and to regulate such coins with a light or nonexistent touch.

Some news sources tut-tutted about ethics and conflicts of interest and self-dealing and such, but they’re no fun.

Trump held a pre-inauguration rally and the actual Village People performed there. Does it get any better?

Trump is at his peak, says The  Economist. It’s all downhill from here. “Mr Trump is at the peak of his power, before he has had to do anything unpopular, or disappoint any of the factions competing for his attention. … The beginning of the end of the Trump era will kick off with large-scale deportations on Tuesday, once the inauguration festivities have come to a close.”

And the price of eggs will continue to climb.  Once Trump actually starts doing stuff, the glow might wear off pretty darn fast. I dare say the oligarchs won’t care.

I understand all parties have signed the Gaza cease fire deal, and that exchanges of hostages/prisoners are already beginning. I hope it holds up. A lot can go haywire.

Needless to say, I will not be watching the inauguration or following the news about it.

Commentary like this is why I hate to miss Chris Hayes on MSNBC. Here he goes off on the manly men of MAGA.

Today President Biden released a statement saying that the Equal Rights Amendment did eventually receive enough votes to be ratified and ought to be considered part of the Constitution. If he were going to do this I wish he’d done it sooner, particularly when there was a Dem majority in the Senate. The original amendment had a time limit for getting enough states for ratification, and that deadline passed decades ago. This article from the Brennan Center explains that this probably means the only way to get the ERA into the Constitution is to start over again.

Netanyahu is already screwing up the ceasefire deal announced yesterday.

An Israeli cabinet meeting to approve a ceasefire and hostage deal with Hamas was delayed Thursday morning after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the militant group of “reneging” on parts of the agreement.

Netanyahu’s office said the cabinet would not convene until Hamas accepted all elements of the deal. A Hamas official said on social media that the group is committed to the agreement announced Wednesday. Neither provided any further details.

Discussions are ongoing about how prisoners will be exchanged, so the deal is not dead. And as expected, Trump is claiming credit for the deal. It will be a real joke on Trump if it falls apart after he’s inaugurated.

If you missed President Biden’s farewell address, here it is:

The part about the oligarchs is getting some attention.

Update: This seems to be a big deal.

JERUSALEM, Jan 15 (Reuters) – Israel and Hamas agreed to a deal to halt fighting in Gaza and exchange Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, an official briefed on the deal told Reuters on Wednesday, opening the way to a possible end to a 15-month war that has upended the Middle East.

The agreement follows months of on-off negotiations brokered by Egyptian and Qatari mediators, with the backing of the United States, and came just ahead of the Jan. 20 inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

I understand this is basically the same plan President Biden was working toward in May. And I’m sure Donald Trump is already taking credit for it.

If I had to guess, I’d say Pete Hegseth will get the job as DoD head after all. It looks like there aren’t enough Senate Republicans with the guts to block him. We’re bleeped.

I am not watching the confirmation hearings, because it’s pointless. The fix is in. All the Democrats can do is lay down markers for the future — this candidate is a pile of bleep — so they can slam Republicans with their bad judgment in the 2026 midterms. At least maybe — maybe — they’ll nix Tulsi Gabbard. But I bet all the rest of the flying monkeys will be confirmed.

From Jennifer Rubin’s new Contrarian substack column:

Watching Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth demonstrate his appalling lack of credentials, knowledge, and character for the job for which he was nominated I am compelled to ask: Is the Trump administration running a DEI program for incompetent, unqualified, and/or ethically compromised Whites?

Heh.

Here’s a story from yesterday that really should have gotten more attention: Reuters reports that Trump says he will create new agency to collect revenue from foreign sources.

Donald Trump said on Tuesday he will create a new government agency called the External Revenue Service “to collect tariffs, duties, and all revenue” from foreign sources as he readies new import tariffs ahead of his inauguration next week.

Trump said in a social media post he would create the department on Jan. 20, the day he takes office as president for a second term, adding that Americans have been taxed for too long by the Internal Revenue Service.

This reinforces what I’ve long believed, that Trump really doesn’t understand what tariffs are. His campaign talk about collecting money from China wasn’t just talk for the rubes. He thinks that’s how tariffs work. Of course, the U.S. has long had a very efficient method of collecting tariffs and duties, which has been handled in our ports by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency since 1789.

Trump is such a moron. We are so bleeped.

Here it is.

Here’s some big news — Jennifer Rubin is leaving the Washington Post. She’s joining a new substack site called The Contrarian that says it is dedicated to fighting authoritarianism. Other writers who are said to have joined include George Conway, Barbara McQuade, and Andrew Weissmann. So we’ll see how that goes.

WaPo under Bezos is getting more and more useless. Rubin used to be an apologist for George W. Bush, but she never bought into Trumpism and has been one of the most intelligent and prolific critics of Trump for a decade now. Now WaPo is losing her. Several months ago WaPo somehow lost two of their other best, and progressive, opinion writers, Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman. There aren’t many WaPo opinion writers left who are worth reading. WaPo still has Eugene Robinson, Dana Milbank, Alexandra Petri, and Colbert King, but the rest of them I can think of run the gamut from mushy to deranged, IMO. They still have Philip Bump and Aaron Blake doing politics reporting, but I’ve noticed a lot of their news reporting is getting mushier, too. Jeff Bezos is killing a once-great newspaper.

The fires in southern California continue and threaten to get worse, I understand. The Biden Administration is sending aid. Once Trump takes over, that’s likely to change. Eric Lutz, Vanity Fair:

As Politico reported, Trump on Sunday held a dinner at Mar-a-Lago with several House Republicans, during which he discussed tying wildfire relief funding to a debt limit increase—something he’s been agitating for since the end of last year, when he called for the debt ceiling to be abolished during a government funding fight. House Speaker Mike Johnson was not present, according to Politico, but several top Republicans were, including some with authority over the appropriations process.

Earlier Sunday, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso predicted to CBS News’ Margaret Brennan that he believes “there will be strings attached to money that is ultimately approved” for fire relief. “It has to do with being ready the next time,” Barasso said Sunday on Meet the Press, “because this was a gross failure this time.” Last week, Ohio Congressman Warren Davidsonsuggested outright to Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo that aid could be withheld to “put pressure on the California government to change course” in its forest management policy. “If they want the money, then there should be consequences where they have to change their policies,” the Republican said Friday.

As I wrote last week, righties refuge to acknowledge the role of climate change in fires of unprecedented intensity in bleeping January and blame the disaster on Democratic party mismanagement and DEI hiring. See the Guardian, US right wing fans misinformation fires as firefighters battle Los Angeles blazes. Gov. Newsom has set up a web page to counter the lies, but of course no rightie is going to believe Gavin Newsom.

More Stuff to Read:

Trump’s thuggish response to the California fires is a bad omen by Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice catalogs a lot of the lies being spread.

Of course Trump himself rushed to join the outflow of gaseous garbage. On Truth Social, he ranted that California did not have enough water to fight the fires because Gov. Gavin Newsom had chosen “to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt” and “refused to sign the water restoration declaration.” Trump continued to heap abuse on Newsom throughout the week and weekend, even as the governor worked to respond to an unprecedented disaster.

I’m surprised he didn’t mention the giant faucet. Turns out there is no such document as the “water restoration declaration” and no one seems to know how it got into Trump’s head that there was. No, there’s no shortage of water.

See also Paul Krugman, In Praise of California.