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.