Pete Hegseth might end up in charge of the Pentagon after all. One of the senators expected to block him, Republican Joni Ernst of Iowa, has reportedly caved after threats from Trump. From the New York Times:
Mr. Trump’s hard-line backers paid for ads in Ms. Ernst’s home state, questioned her Republican bona fides on social media and even threatened to launch primary challenges against her in 2026 to push her toward supporting Mr. Hegseth as the nominee.
Some prominent Trump activists, including Charlie Kirk and Stephen K. Bannon, the right-wing strategist, pushed to recruit Kari Lake, the former Republican candidate for governor of Arizona who grew up in Iowa, as a potential challenger to Ms. Ernst.
The onslaught of pressure put Ms. Ernst in a bind. Over two terms in the Senate, she has built a reputation for being a principled leader on matters of sexual assault and the military. As a combat veteran, she also holds strong views on the role of women in the military that clash significantly with those of Mr. Hegseth, who has said women should not serve in combat roles.
Sen. Ernst has not explicitly said she would approve Hegseth’s nomination, but it looks like she’s moving in that direction.
And then there’s this, from David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo:
Heritage Action is launching a pressure campaign against these GOP senators to support Trump’s nominees. It’s small, mostly nothingburger effort to allow Heritage Action to tout its pro-Trump bona fides, but it’s a reasonably good proxy for the list of GOP senators to keep an eye on:
- Senate Majority Leader John Thune (SD)
- Mitch McConnell (KY)
- Lisa Murkowski (AK)
- Susan Collins (ME)
- Joni Ernst (IA)
- Bill Cassidy (LA)
- Thom Tillis (NC)
- Todd Young (IN)
- John Curtis (UT)
Mitch McConnell is 82 and intends to stay in the Senate until his term ends in January 2027, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he bails out sooner.
Republicans in Congress might have noticed yesterday’s report that during Trump’s first term, Bill Barr’s Justice Department was helping itself to congressional staff records looking for sources of leaked information.
Investigators also sought congressional staff members’ records to try to find the sources for a number of Washington Post articles. They included one about a secret surveillance court order against the former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, others about a Russian ambassador’s conversations with senior Trump advisers, and another about the Obama administration’s efforts to fight Russian election interference. …
… Two Democratic members of Congress and 43 congressional staff members at the time of the 2017 articles had their communications records subpoenaed by the Justice Department. Of the staff members, 21 were Democrats, 20 were Republicans, and two held nonpartisan jobs in Congress.
Just being a Republican won’t save you over the next four years.
Stuff to read: This is a big one — You Should Be More Worried About Trump’s Planned Military Purge by Don Moynihan. Trump is going to destroy the U.S. military as we know it if he isn’t stopped.
The blitzkrieg is coming. I am quite sure no one is quite ready for so much change at this speed. What I see are people set in their ways who are having a very hard time dealing with the way things are now. How are they going to adapt to this chaos. Oh, the torrent of unintended consequences with everything changing at lightning speed not knowing who or what to trust.
It is top-down leadership by a pack of authoritarian haters. Onward to the great vision of 2025. You will be amazed at just how bad things can get so fast.
Horror at the speed of lightning. Still, some are optimistic.
Trump wants one thing from DoD – that they become a domestic Gestapo, loyal only to Trump. Trump's pick is gonna try to "clean house" and fire anyone who isn't willing to follow orders, regardless of the legality or morality.
Hegseth isn't the point – if he is rejected, the next pick will be no different and no better. The question is whether the military will go along with being ordered to occupy and pacify Chicago. There's a military mindset that American soldiers can kill "others" and it's OK if they don't look like us. But doing it within US borders isn't something soldiers are conditioned to. Officers all know it's a violation, but I think a lot of combat troops will find it hard to fire on unarmed US citizens.
I'm not sure how things would go under the the UCMJ. (Uniform Code of Military Justice.) This is something that officers with legal training will find hard to suddenly disregard. And that's the only way Trump will get a military conviction for refusing to obey an illegal order. Yes, Trump will try to stack the deck by selecting a judge who is a loyalist.
I'm not saying it can't be done but I am saying it won't be easy. It will also be a PR nightmare if several levels of the military have to be fired before there is a group of inexperienced and incompetent Joint Chiefs of Staff. The media will eat it up. The USSC may strike it down. (That would put a serious crimp in Trump's plans.)
No matter what, the military will be decimated by the Trump regime. But we may see men and women of principle rise up against Trump from a place we never expected, the US Officer Corps.
What are Trump's guardrails? Swan and Haberman took that on in a NYT article. They suggest TV and the Stock Market are the big ones that seem to redirect him.
We have seen Choas drive the market down in the past, the Nixon administration being one historical example. It is hard to conclude that even a fraction of the implementation of his and/or the 2025 plan would cause instability. Just the red states moving hard right (as reported today) would do that. There seems to be no third rail he does not want to touch, and the military is a definite third rail. Then, like Hoover, he is likely to make poor choices trying to recover. These poor choices are cited as the reasons for capitalism's great busts of the past.
If those are truly his guardrails, he will almost certainly hit them. The probability he will correct the right way appears slim and none. We will see how bad it gets, and the odds are not what one would like.
You make a good point. The stock market likes stability and Trump is the King of Chaos. Trump may promise that tariffs will not raise prices but the market won't believe it – even before the tariffs take effect.
I think Trump believes he can raise enormous sums through tariffs. The deportation scheme (I read) may get budgeted at 600 Billion and stuck in the reconciliation bill with the extended tax cuts for the rich. That's a problem for those conservatives who want to offset the increase to the deficit from extended tax cuts with reduced spending.
See the conflict? Do the mass deportations and you do the exact opposite to the deficit than fiscal conservatives are demanding. Yeah, some will try to pay for it with cuts to medicare and SS, but that hits Trump's base – older white retirees – in the dingleballs.
My prediction: Trump will demand the money to do the deportations in the reconciliation bill in 2025. (Otherwise, the USSC may strike done the plan to do the job on the cheap with the Army. And then Trump can't ask for the money until the next reconciliation bill in 2026, I think.) Early in 2025, the House majority may be only three votes due to Trump appointments from the House to the Administration, Fiscal hawks will be able to demand concessions.
Trump is gonna go big early with tariffs and pressure OMB to use Trump's projections of huge revenue from tariffs. Then Trump will try to sell the House on the idea that the spending IS offset by revenue – and Wall Street will tank. Trump will get squeezed by harsh realities when decisions have to be made. That time is coming soon.
Think again. Minimal bullying needed to cow that lot into compliance. For example, how many times can you remember Susan Collins "concerns" being sufficient to get her to actually do the right thing?