The news is so horrible. Out country is being broken up into pieces and flushed down a drain. And there seems to be nothing anyone can do to stop it. The most recent I’ve seen — NIH cuts billions of dollars in biomedical funding, effective immediately
“The United States should have the best medical research in the world,” NIH said in its announcement. “It is accordingly vital to ensure that as many funds as possible go towards direct scientific research costs rather than administrative overhead.”
As I understand it, this is about the long-standing practice of grant money being split between researchers and the academic / medical centers and research universities in which they work. The “administrative overhead” is going to maintain the facilities in which the research is being done, among other things. I take it that from now on scientists will be expected to just do research in their own kitchens. Josh Marshall has been all over this; see White House Declares War on Academic Medical Centers, The Huge NIH Funding Cuts, and More on Trump’s Effort to End Basic Medical Research in the United States.
Dana Milbank, arguably the last decent editorial columnist left at WaPo — there may be another, but I can’t think of who it would be — has written as good a summation of where we stand as I’ve seen. See Democrats, don’t save Trump from himself.
See also Inside Musk’s Aggressive Incursion Into the Federal Government by a bunch of people at the New York Times.
This morning a federal judge did put a temporary block on Musk’s access to the Treasury payment system, but at this point I don’t know if a judge’s order even means anything. Who’s going to enforce it?
Wired has been doing some good reporting on what the Muskrats are up to. See A US Treasury Threat Intelligence Analysis Designates DOGE Staff as ‘Insider Threat’ and DOGE Builds ‘Firewall’ Between Musk’s Team and [U.S. Digital Services] USDS Workers, for example.
I’m just seeing this — In a harbinger of illiberalism, Trump fired the Archivist of the United States without telling her or Congress why.
That’s enough to digest for now. Please feel free to vent about whatever is most upsetting you in the comments.
One of the muskrats was quoted as saying proudly at a very young age that he was a racist before it was cool in today's NYT piece by Maureen Dowd.
Muskrat is the name being given to Musk's cohorts raiding DC. They call the professional civil servants, dinosaurs.
The Emperor of Chaos title gets attached to Musk also, and Dowd speculates about our future with an AI generated Bot with tiny hands as our next president.
The Horror goes on and on as we go up the river and find Marlan Brando who embraces the horror as his dream life. Two people's dream life is quickly becoming a national nightmare. Can we wake up fast enough?
We're seeing restraining orders pending a full hearing in a bunch of suits. Doge is bounced out fo Treasury. I think the layoffs at USAID have been stopped. Unions are just getting stuff in front of judges but these workers have contracts that aren't made null and void by an idiot and his Sharpie. I'm not sure how reliable the number is but as few as 1% of federal workers have taken the buyout. A judge found the stampede deadline to the offer to be illegal. Whether Trump has the authority to offer the buyout has yet to be heard.
Nobody could file a suit to stop anything until an injury was done. Yeah, we anticipated much of this based on the release of Project 2025. But expecting it doesn't give grounds to get an order to prevent it. I'd liken it to a woman seeking an injunction against an ex who she fears will do her an injury but has never previously been violent. On the other hand, if you can show the judge medical evidence of previous injuries done by the guy, it's a slam dunk.
MAYBE later when there is an established pattern of injuries, a judge will have grounds to support a suit that will prevent an intrusion. For now, we have to get hit before we can get an injunction.
I don't expect Trump will follow the instructions of a federal judge. I'm addressing Maha's anguish that nobody can enforce an order if DOJ is totally "captured." And they are. The debt ceiling has to be raised next month. From what I read, Democrats in Congress are uniting around a theme to resist Trump's contempt for the law. IMO, a shutdown until the administration commits to complying with orders from the judiciary should resonate with the majority of voters. Yes, you're right – I wouldn't trust Trump as far as I can throw him. SO you extend the debt ceiling for 30 days with the understanding the next shutdown will be for longer and will have some enforcement mechanism.
Will this hurt Trump? He seems to think so or he would not have demanded in December that the debt ceiling be eliminated entirely. He knew the mayhem would get pushback and cutting off the money will derail Trump's plans.
Keeping the record up to date on proper terms for the horror, those who favor the chaos and horror are properly called Doge bags.
Note that the only fools who made money on the Chaos Emperor's crypto coin bought in early and sold quickly. A pump and dump scheme for sure. Who would not have guessed it?
Update from Red State Heck
The magats think that "draining the swamp" is awesome and that only 15% of the people in the US of A oppose what is happening in DC. This leads to the point that the previous administration was soooooooper corrupt (who knows what the numbers are but it makes the orangeman's corruption… ok) and a rationalization for shock therapy. The international relations, soft power loss angle is a non-starter and national security is glossed over by the orangeman being so sexily strong and manly. As you know, Fox News is the new Pravda in the Bolshevik USSA. The programming will broadcast to the majority party to rationalize that when the 15% complain that the hammer is justified. And the hammer will come and they will relish in the cruelty.
I hate the Overton window. I grew up in by the a super conservative (not Conservative (TM)) household and a lot of those outmoded traditional values that I still hold are ridiculed. Even though I am just a well-educated nerd, I am now the token liberal. I hate my life.
In his most forwarded piece, Jay Kuo asks, Is Somebody Doing Something?, and talks about the different layers of response, and what's realistic and expected at each level.
Joyce Vance posted a link to Litigation Tracker, a list of the mounting number of lawsuits being hurled at Trump.
I also follow Marc Elias, at Democracy Docket. I watched him in an interview, and he's saying that the judges are getting tired of being flooded with stupid lawsuits, and so their rulings against Trump are getting broader and broader.
Thank God Biden appointed all those judges. It's all heading toward the courts, who will determine how much of a democracy we will have left.