The bipartisan Senate bill on border security would take U.S. border policy in entirely the wrong direction, for reasons I pointed to here. The ACLU doesn’t like it at all. But I have to admit it’s probably smart politics, and there’s little chance the thing will pass. And yes, the new bill includes money for Ukraine, Israel, and Gaza.

Josh Marshall:

House Republicans are now clearly refusing to support provisions they’ve been demanding for years. Now they claim that they are refusing to support or even allow a vote on the deal because it doesn’t go far enough. But it’s a bit late for that since they were already pretty open already about simply refusing to vote for anything until Trump becomes President again.

They certainly aren’t the only political party to opt for the politics in an election year over the policies they purportedly want. But if they’re going to do that, it’s elementary that the other party will and should hit them over the head with that. Trump told them to kill the bill and the House leadership is doing everything it can to accomplish that. Trump owns them. They follow his commands.

If they can stick by their effort, they can kill the bill. But that at a minimum gives Democrats an affirmative answer every time House Republicans plan one of their safaris down to the Rio Grande River. The same goes for every time Fox News spies a new ‘caravan’ heading toward the southern border. 

Josh Marshall goes on to say that just about every House Republican has put out a statement about how this bill is DOA and not good enough and blah blah blah. But they clearly want it to die in the Senate so they won’t have to vote against it. If it passes in the Senate and gets killed by Republicans in the House, they will have just handed Democrats their border security talking point for the rest of the year.

Speaker Mike Johnson trotted out his own stand-alone aid package for Israel alone, but the wingnuts are crabbing about that bill also.

I’m having wifi issues today and will publish this while I have a chance. More later, maybe.

Here’s why our politics are screwed up in one headline.

Here’s the story, no paywall.

At most, 45 percent of Republicans said they knew about legal issues: specifically, the documents case and his being found liable for assaulting the writer E. Jean Carroll. Only a quarter knew about the value-inflation suit, and only 4 in 10 knew about the criminal charges in Manhattan related to the hush money payments to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels.

How could they not know? The answer must be that they’re not consuming real news from anywhere. And if they don’t know even this how could they possibly understand anything else that’s going on? No wonder they make such stupid choices in the voting booth.

I guess if they ever do hear about this stuff it’s going to be a real shock to them. The penalty in the value-inflation suit should happen next week. Maybe they’ll hear about that. Trump seems to want to use his legal problems as a campaign platform to persuade voters that the Biden Administration has “weaponized” the government againsst him, so they’ll hear about it eventually. Maybe.

But if you go to the poll results, you see it isn’t just Republicans. There’s a remarkable lack of awareness across the political spectrum. Only 35 percent of all voters age 18-29 knew that Trump had been found liable for sexually assaulting and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll. This poll was being taken during the second trial. How could they not know? 

The Democrats need to be getting this information in front of the voters, somehow.

In other Trump news, recent campaign finance filings revealed that Trump’s weird “union” rally in Detroit during the auto workers’ strike was entirely paid for by the Trump campaign. It was intended to give the impression that he was addressing a real auto workers’ rally, I guess. It didn’t work.

As near as I understand them, yesterday’s airstrikes against Iran-backed militants in the Middle East was a sane response to the deaths of three U.S. service members. Lindsey Graham would have started World War III. Trump would have blamed the soldiers for not getting out of the way of drone strikes.

As mentioned yesterday, Trump’s PACs spent about $50 million in legal fees in 2023. Today David Kurtz at TPM asks what Trump might be getting for his money.

Trump using campaign funds to defend himself is one thing, but it’s the use of those dollars to provide criminal defenses to co-defendants, witnesses, and other associates that pushes the political envelope in ways we’ve never really seen before. He’s buying loyalty. He’s paying for adherence to the defense strategy his lawyers are mapping out for him. He’s circling the wagons to protect himself at the expense of others and of the public good. And he’s doing it at the same time he’s running for president again.

Do read the whole thing. Kurtz says that legal feels are eating about a quarter of Trump’s campaign donations. It’s likely that percentage will get higher in 2024.

Regarding the border “crisis”:  I found this chart on the Cato Institute web page, of all places.

My goodness! As soon as Trump became POTUS the number of “illegals” who successfully crossed into the U.S. went up and up and up! And here he is going around bragging that while he was POTUS we had the most secure border in history! Clearly it was more secure during the Obama Administration.

Here’s the link to the Cato page. It argues that Trump’s policies made the problem worse.

The Trump border policy had a single??minded focus: keep out asylum seekers. Yet the ability to apply for asylum meant that fewer people tried to sneak in. One border crosser in 2018 told the Wall Street Journal that he had turned himself into the first Border Patrol agent he saw and was seeking “the immigration office.” Rather than direct these crossers to legal crossing points, the Trump administration blocked applicants from applying at ports of entry.

After first separating families and then attempting ban asylum, Trump started returning asylum seekers to Mexico to await hearings in homeless camps on the other side of the border line. This led to a wave of crimes against immigrants. Some were kidnapped, other raped, and some murdered. When the pandemic hit, the government suspended all hearings for those already returned to Mexico and began expelling all others with no hearing all.

It was inevitable that as the opportunity to obtain asylum disappeared or the costs to do so increased (such as through family separation). A greater percentage of people would attempt to sneak around ports of entry.

I’m not hearing this discussed anywhere. It needs to be.

Speaking of other things that need more attention — if you didn’t catch Chris Hayes last night, here is his opening segment. Worth watching.

Finally, the Quinnipiac University poll sees better election odds for Joe Biden.

As signs point to the 2024 presidential election being a repeat of the 2020 race between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Biden holds a lead over Trump 50 – 44 percent among registered voters in a hypothetical general election matchup, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University national poll of registered voters released today.

In Quinnipiac University’s December 20, 2023 poll, the same hypothetical 2024 general election matchup was ‘too close to call’ as President Biden received 47 percent support and former President Trump received 46 percent support.

The biggest change was among women voters moving to Biden. Fallout from the E. Jean Carroll trial?

David Gilbert writes at Wired that the Meatballs for God convoy is not going well.

On Monday morning, the organizers of the Take Our Border Back convoy kicked off their road trip to the Texas–Mexico border in Virginia Beach. Though they claimed that up to 40,000 trucks would be joining, only 20 vehicles made up the convoy as it rolled into Jacksonville, Florida, 14 hours later. The promised support had not materialized—not a single truck showed up, tires were reportedly slashed, participants got lost, and paranoia struck the group. In short, the convoy was a complete mess.

Do read the whole thing. It’s hysterical. This crew is going to be lucky to find Texas, although if they keep going west it’s hard to miss.

Our Swami quoted this Business Insider article in the comments to the last post, and I want to be sure everybody sees it. Basically, here’s the box Trump is in:

Sometime in the next few days, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan will issue a written order to Trump to pay the $83.3 million in damages awarded by the E. Jean Carroll jury. Once that is done, Trump has 30 days to file an appeal. Trump will have to put up at least $90 million to do that. The extra is for interest potentially owed to Carroll if Trump loses the appeal.

The court may or may not accept that much money in cash. Judge Kaplan accepted Trump’s payment of $5.5 million after the first trial. That money is sitting in a court-managed bank account. But courts usually prefer a bond from a major financial institution for really big sums, I take it. And it’s possible Trump doesn’t really have that much cash on hand.

If Trump goes with a bond, the article says,

Taking into account interest and other fees, including the potential need to secure an irrevocable letter of credit from a bank, Trump taking the appeal-bond route could bring his total outlay to $100 million and beyond.

A surety company could make Trump provide an extra 10 percent of collateral, and would require he pay a bond premium of anywhere from $250,000 to $1 million. A surety executive who spoke on condition of anonymity said the premium was money Trump would never see again.

Such a large bond could probably be handled only by one of the surety giants — such as Travelers Insurance, Liberty Mutual, Chubb, or JP Morgan Chase, said the expert, whose employer doesn’t allow press statements.

The big wrinkle: Judge Arthur Engoron is expected to issue his decision this week on what penalties Trump will have to pay in the civil fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. James has asked that Trump pay $370 million and be banned from doing business in the state. And James wants a five-year ban on Trump applying for loans from any New York-registered financial institution.

If the latter is imposed, who is going to extend any credit to him to get his bond? What major financial company is not registered in New York?

No wonder Trump seems a tad tense lately.

In another wrinkle, it has been revealed that in 2023 Trump was spending nearly $1 million a week in legal fees, and that money came out of donations to his PACs. Steve Benen:

After Trump’s defeat in 2020, his followers sent millions to his Save America political action committee, hoping the money would go toward overturning the election results, as the Republican bombarded his base with brazen lies. (It didn’t.)

When the former president’s legal fees took a severe toll on Save America’s finances, the PAC did something weird: It asked an allied super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., to give $60 million back, in order to ease the once-flush Save America operation’s financial strains. (The money was supposed to go toward primary-season advertising. Much of the money went to Trump’s lawyers instead.)

Do read the whole thing. The Trump campaign is required to file a financial report with the FEC at the beginning of every month, which is tomorrow. That report will be looked at closely, one suspects.

And then there’s the $48 million loan for Trump’s tower in Chicago that can’t be documented. The Trump organization cannot produce any sort of loan agreement documentation, or any other documentation for that matter, that says the loan existed. Trump and his lawyers and his representatives are on temper tantrum overdrive right now over the revelation of this alleged loan. But all they’d have to do is cough up proof that the load was real and not just something Trump made up to reduce his tax liabilities. Surely there are bank statements somewhere showing that money was here, and now it’s there, and here are payments on the loan, etc.

If they can provid documentation they had better scrape it together really fast, because Judge Engoron could be issuing his ruling any minute now. He could be writing it even now.

One does remember that Trump never held a real job in his life. The only boss he ever had to answer to was his father, who apparently was as big a mess as Donald. Trump has never been part of a corporate structure in which he has had to answer to anybody. Trump apparently has no idea how big companies actually are run. He just wings it. Badly. He should have stuck to real estate.

Following up the last post — at Popular Information, Judd Legum points to The Second Insurrection.

Texas is continuing to interfere with the federal government’s access to Shelby Park, in clear violation of the Constitution and federal law. On January 23, the Department of Homeland Security wrote a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), demanding “the ability to access the border in the Shelby Park area that is currently obstructed by Texas.” In a January 26 response, Paxton rejected the Department of Homeland Security’s request and informed the federal government that Texas will continue “to protect its southern border against every effort by the Biden Administration to undermine the State’s constitutional right of self-defense.” 

The conflict that Texas is creating with the federal government will almost certainly end up back at the Supreme Court. And Texas is inviting a constitutional crisis by signaling that it is prepared to ignore the Supreme Court if it does not get its way. 

Do read the whole thing; it’s very informative. But this does look more and more to me like another insurrection. The Meatballs for God convoy is scheduled to arrive at Eagle Pass on February 3, and then it’s all going to get a lot more dangerous. Depending on how many Meatballs there are, I really do think Biden should federalize the Guard to keep the peace and to keep the Meatballs from killing anybody.

At Politico, see Can Dems Flip the Border Script? I was thinking this yesterday also. The Republicans may be handing the Dems an issue on which Biden is vulnerable. The Dems need to be coordinated and assertive to capitalize on this.

For months now, polls have shown voters putting the migrant crisis at the southern border among their top concerns — and blaming Democrats for the mess.

Could that be about to change?

With bipartisan legislation hanging in the balance and the Homeland Security secretary on the verge of impeachment, Democrats are readying to play offense on border politics, for once. They are undertaking a campaign to upend public opinion in the coming weeks by casting Republicans as being more interested in theatrics than solutions.

They’ve got a lot of material to work with: Trump and his allies are pressuring Republicans to abandon any border deal the Senate might reach — with some openly admitting that they don’t want to hand Biden a win before November.

As top Senate negotiator JAMES LANKFORD (R-Okla.) put it yesterday on “Fox News Sunday,” after months of pushing for border security, “it’s interesting … when we’re finally getting to the end, [Republicans are] like, ‘Oh, just kidding, I actually don’t want a change in law because of presidential election year.’”

That’s just one of the sound bites that Democratic admakers have been collecting in recent weeks as an insurance policy of sorts if Republicans end up tanking the still-to-be-unveiled Senate border deal.

“There’s a real opportunity here, where Dems around the country can raise their hand and be like: ‘It turns out they were bluffing. They weren’t serious. It was a sound bite for them,’” one plugged-in Democratic campaign operative told Playbook last night. “They’ve been talking about it, highlighting it and freaking everyone out — then when there’s a bipartisan deal, with a lot of Dem compromises in it, they went running for the hills.”

Update: See also The Border Is Now Becoming a GOP Crisis.

Update: Greg Sargent, GOP Senator Reveals the Sick Truth About the Trump-MAGA Border Scam

In other news: Barbara Jones is a retired federal judge who was appointed by Judge Arthur Engoron to keep an eye on Trump’s New York assets during the fraud trial brought by NY AG Letitia James. Basically, she’s making sure Trump doesn’t try to transfer anything out of state to keep it out of the reach of the court.

On Friday Jones informed the court that the Trump financial information provided to her is a mess. It’s incomplete, inconsistent, riddled with errors. Among other things, a $48 million loan Trump has been claiming as a liability on his taxes apprently never existed. Tax evasion, anyone?

Today’s headline at Daily Beast: Trumps Throw Tantrum Over Court Monitor’s Financial Bombshell.

Now that the retired federal judge babysitting the Trump Organization has uncovered potential tax fraud at the company, the Trumps responded over the weekend by tasking their own accountant as a monitor that monitors the court monitor.

In an indignant court filing Monday morning, a lawyer for the Trumps for the first time launched an all-out attack on Judge Barbara S. Jones—calling her latest report on the family company an absolute lie, a cheap attempt to justify her government-mandated job, and a last-minute ploy to bolster the New York Attorney General’s bank fraud case that just wrapped up.

All they would have had to have done is cough up some records to verify that this $48 million loan was real. I take it they can’t.

AG James is asking for a $370 million fine. The decision could come as early as this week.

Stuff to Read: David French, When the Right Ignores Its Sex Scandals. No paywall.

The situation at the Texas border is getting more bizarre, and more dangerous. Now there’s a bunch of wackadoos with guns heading for the border to “help.”

A trucker convoy of “patriots” is heading to the U.S. border with Mexico next week, as the standoff between Texas and the federal government intensifies.
The organizers of the “Take Our Border Back” convoy have called themselves “God’s army” and say they’re on a mission to stand up against the “globalists” who they claim are conspiring to keep U.S. borders open and destroy the country. 

“This is a biblical, monumental moment that’s been put together by God,” one convoy organizer said on a recent planning call. “We are besieged on all sides by dark forces of evil,” said another. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. It is time for the remnant to rise.” (The remnant, from the Book of Revelation, are the ones who remain faithful to Jesus Christ in times of crisis).

Yeah, this is not good. On top of that, Texas is calling for “volunteers” to “defend” the border as well as National Guard from other states, and some states have sent Guard already. And they’re doing this in defiance of the Supreme Court and the federal Border Protection agents. I believe this really is as close to civil war as we’ve been since that little misunderstanding over Fort Sumter. See also Texas’ Border Stunt Is Based on the Same Legal Theory Confederate States Used to Secede.

The wingnuts want to see the Supreme Court overturn Arizona v. United States (2012), which you can read about here. As I understand it, the Court decided that states can’t enact their own laws regarding immigrants that conflict with federal laws. See also a good overview of the current mess at Vox and a timeline of the conflict so far at CNN.

I appreciate that President Biden is in a hard place here. How aggressive should he b here? He’s being told to federalize the Guard in order to neutralize them. There also are arguments (coming, I assume, from the Right) that he can’t federalize the Guard unless he can declare a national emergency. Seems to me Greg Abbott is creating a national emergency. Remember Hans von Spakovsky? I wrote about him back in 2007. Now Spakovsky is opining that President Biden doesn’t have the legal authority to federalize the Guard.  Current statutes require the president to seek the consent of a state governor to federalize the Guard, he says. But there are exceptions to that.

Under 10 U.S.C. § 252, the president can “call into Federal service the militia of any State” when “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any state by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.”

Clearly, there is no insurrection going on in Texas as defined in that law. 

Nor is Texas violating any court order issued in “the ordinary court of judicial proceedings.” The state has been placing barbed-wire fencing on state-owned and private property, and no court has ordered Texas to remove or cease installing that fencing.

Didn’t the Supreme Court say otherwise? SCOTUS last week vacated an injunction that barred the feds from removing the razor wire Texas has installed in the Rio Grand. But the feds are still not being allowed access to the razor wire, which seems to me to defy the SCOTUS. And what Abbott is doing seems to me to fit the definition of “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, mak[ing] it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any state by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.”

President Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas Guard ito prevent Gov. Orval Faubus from using them to stop nine Black students from attending Little Rock High School in 1957, and he also deployed the 101st Airborne to Little Rock. In 1963 President Kennedy federalized the Alabama Guard to enable the integration of the University of Alabama. If that was legal, surely Biden’s federalizing the Texas and whatever else Guard is in Texas is also legal. Biden could order them to allow the feds to have access to the entire border and also keep the peace when the Meatballs for God show up in their trucks.

In what might prove to be a brilliant move to turn the tables — or not — President Biden is offering to shut down the border if Congress passes a bill currently in the Senate.

President Joe Biden urged Congress on Friday to pass a bipartisan bill that he argued would address an escalating immigration crisis, vowing to “shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed.”

“What’s been negotiated would – if passed into law – be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country,” Biden wrote in a statement. “It would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.” …

… The agreement would give the Department of Homeland Security the authority to expel undocumented migrants if the number of daily border encounters passes 4,000. That authority would become mandatory if the daily number surpasses 5,000 over the course of a week. 

Biden’s statement also called for more funding for “an additional 1,300 border patrol agents, 375 immigration judges, 1,600 asylum officers, and over 100 cutting-edge inspection machines to help detect and stop fentanyl at our southwest border.”

“For everyone who is demanding tougher border control, this is the way to do it,” Biden wrote. “If you’re serious about the border crisis, pass a bipartisan bill, and I will sign it.”

But Trump doesn’t want to make a deal, because he wants the border to remain an issue for the general election. So he’s ordered Republicans in Congress to not make the deal.

Republican front-runner Donald Trump said he wants to be held responsible for blocking a bipartisan border security bill in the works in the Senate as President Biden seeks emergency authority to rein in a record surge of unauthorized border crossings.

Trump’s remarks are being thrown back at him by the White House.

“Donald Trump demonstrated tonight he’s campaigning against solutions for the American people, and is actively rooting against America,” campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa said after his speech. “President Biden is the only candidate focused on governing and addressing the issues the American people demand action on.”

So we’ll see how this goes. But now every Democrat in the Western Hemisphere needs to be pointing out that Biden offered to close the border and Trump opposed it.

So will he learn to shut up now? The jury took less than three hours to deliberate. I want to know if the three hours included lunch Just curious.

Nicole Lafond at Talking Points Memo:

After deliberating for less than three hours, the jury in the E. Jean Carroll civil trial against Donald Trump has determined that the former president must pay the writer $83.3 million in damages for defaming her in 2019 when she came forward accusing him of sexually assaulting her in the 1990s. 

Broken down, the jury determined Trump must pay $11 million in compensatory damages for a reputation repair program, $7.3 million in compensatory damages outside of the reputation program and $65 million in punitive damages. …

… The $83.3 million is in addition to the $5 million in damages a separate Manhattan jury awarded Carroll in May 2023 when the jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll —  $2 million in damages for her civil battery claim and nearly $3 million for successfully proving her defamation claim against the former president. Today’s damages verdict is related to a separate lawsuit the writer filed against Trump for defaming her in 2019.

Trump is pissed. More to come.

Update: I’m learning that in order to file an appeal, Trump has to come up with the money to pay the penalty. From the New York Times —

Mr. Trump can pay the $83.3 million to the court, which will hold the money while the appeal is pending. This is what he did last year when a jury ordered him to pay Ms. Carroll $5.5 million in a related case.

Or, Mr. Trump can try to secure a bond, which will save him from having to pay the full amount up front.

A bond might require him to pay a deposit and offer collateral, and would come with interest and fees. It would also require Mr. Trump to find a financial institution willing to lend him a large sum of money at a time when he is in significant legal jeopardy.

So this is going to hurt him now. It’ll be fun to see what he does. On MSNBC somebody pointed out that Trump Tower was appraised at just about $83 million.

After his New Hampshire win, which was a solid win but not quite as big a win as polls projected, Trump’s “victory speech” was mostly a temper tantrum aimed at Nikki Haley. Haley had spoken first and had delivered a pretty good “we really won by coming in second” address, which is practically traditional after New Hampshire primaries. But where a traditional politician who had actually won would have delivered something rousing to his audience, Trump spat venom at Haley. Steve Benen, who also noted the irony —

Reflecting on his reaction to the former ambassador’s remarks, Trump told supporters, “I said, wow, she’s doing a speech like she won. She didn’t win. She lost. Let’s not have somebody take a victory when she had a very bad night. She had a very bad night.

It was quite a speech. During relatively brief remarks, the likely GOP nominee not only slammed Haley for appearing pleased about the primary results, he also referenced unnamed Haley scandals that “she doesn’t want to talk about” and even took aim at her attire.

“You can’t let people get away with bull—-,” Trump added. “And when I watched her in the fancy dress that probably wasn’t so fancy, I said, ‘What’s she doing? We won.’”

The former president concluded, “I don’t get too angry, I get even.”

On his social media platform, he was every bit as agitated, condemning Haley as “DELUSIONAL!!!” for sticking around after losing. He added, “Could somebody please explain to Nikki Haley that she lost — and lost really badly.”

For good measure the former president wrote, “NIKKI CAME IN LAST, NOT SECOND!”

Like the man said — oh, the irony. Note that polls had put him up by 20 points, and instead the margn of victory was about 11 points. Most politicians would have accepted the victory without having an emotional meltdown, though.

Today CNBC is reporting that Trump let it be known he will “blacklist” all Haley campaign donors. He wrote on “Truth Social,”

When I ran for Office and won, I noticed that the losing Candidate’s “Donors” would immediately come to me, and want to “help out.” This is standard in Politics, but no longer with me. Anybody that makes a “Contribution” to Birdbrain, from this moment forth, will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp. We don’t want them, and will not accept them, because we Put America First, and ALWAYS WILL!

Somehow I think he will still take the big checks, but whatever. And then he turned on Kayleigh McEnany because she very mildly and obsequiously suggested that he needs to pay attention to the Republicans and independents who didn’t vote for him before the general election. Huffpost:

McEnany, now a Fox News host, had offered Trump some compliment-laden advice during the network’s primary analysis. She suggested he should think ahead to the general election and recognize that there is a segment of Republican and independent voters that he has not captured.

“President Trump, I would go home tonight, I’d go to my victory party, I would celebrate, I’ve made history yet again. But then I’d go home and I’d look under the hood,” she said.

Trump threw a fit.

I’ve been waiting to see if anything interesting might happen in New Hampshire, but it doesn’t seem Haley is making it close enough to be interesting, and Trump is projected the winner just 16 minutes after the polls close. Haley is speaking now and is saying  I’m not losing as much as they said I would, so I am staying in the race. We’ll see. She’s an empty suit if there ever was one, but it would have been nice if Trump’s march to his coronation had hit a speed bump.

Meanwhile, here’s some good news — No Labels Sued by New York Donors Claiming ‘Bait and Switch’ by Maggie Haberman at the New York Times (no paywall).

Two members of the powerful Durst real estate family in New York have sued the centrist group No Labels, accusing it of pulling a “bait and switch” by seeking donations for a bipartisan governing group and then moving to fund a third-party presidential candidacy.

The breach of contract and “unjust enrichment” suit was filed in New York State Supreme Court on Tuesday by the chairman and president of the Durst Organization, Douglas and Jonathan Durst, who are cousins. It seeks damages and reimbursements after the Dursts donated $145,000 years ago, when No Labels was founded on the promise of finding governing solutions.

No Labels has been getting ballot access on behalf of a third party presidential ticket yet to be named. I keep hearing that Joe Lieberman is behind this. Once a weasel, always a weasel. Maybe this lawsuit will slow them down.

See also The New Republic, New Transcript Blows Up James Comer’s Entire Hunter Biden Argument. Comer has had so much blow up in his face it’s a wonder he still has a head.

Greg Sargent is now writing for The New Republic. Here he shreds Elise Stefanik. Enjoy.

Here’s something completely different — the parent company has laid off the entire staff, or most of it, of Sports Illustrated, apparently.  SI is the most widely read sports publication in the U.S., with an average audience of 40.86 million, and it’s about to go under. The cause seems to be massive incompetence on the part of the publisher. See Greed Killed Sports Illustrated at New York Magazine.

The publisher is a company that bought the magazine in 2019 and, as they say, ran it into the ground. For example:

In February, management laid off the magazine’s sports editors, one employee told me. “Genuinely, everyone looked around at each other and said, ‘What do we do when one of the NBA writers files something when the editor was just fired?’ And that repeated over and over, in every sport. Like, you guys, I don’t know if you’ve read the title of our publication.” 

It’s certainly possible SI could be resurrected, but not without a staff. But this is an old, sad story. I saw variations of it when I was in publishing. What essentially happens is that the people who occupy the big offices and make the big decisions that impact how the work gets done are nearly always people with backgrounds in finance or marketing but no hands-on experience making the product. And they make stupid decisions that hobble productivity. The problems caused are not necessarily bad enough to sink the company, but it does hold the company back. And nearly always everybody who has worked for very long in the production, editorial, and manufacturing departments could tell you how workflow and cost efficiency could be improved, but the Big Shots don’t listen. From time to time they’d hire consultants who’d swoop around for a day or two and then make more stupid decisions that had to be undone eventually because deadlines were being missed. I saw it over and over again in the industry.

Boeing has been back in the news lately, and that’s another example. I wrote back in 2019,

Basically, the 737 Max is the plane built by MBAs and financial experts instead of engineers; the fruit of popular business theory. The flaws are bigger than just glitchy software. The creation of the plane from inception to crash was marked by corner-cutting and disregard for engineering and production skill.

For more, do see Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Inquirer. I had not realized that the Great Honking Idiot Elon Musk had publicly blamed the Boeing door plug incident on diversity hiring. Musk hasn’t noticed what a joke he is now, I take it. Will Bunch:

But then, you don’t need to be some kind of corporate Sherlock Holmes to sleuth out the real culprit at Boeing: the surrender of an engineering-driven, safety-oriented culture to one dominated by cost-cutting and a quarterly profit mentality aimed at boosting shareholder value above all else. Since the dawn of the 21st century, Boeing has been led by protégées and acolytes of the legendary and also notorious late GE boss Jack Welch, who pioneered the managerial philosophy of steering dollars toward investors and away from other stakeholders — including customers like the hapless souls who clung to their dear lives aboard Flight 1282.

The 346 people killed aboard Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 were not so lucky. Despite Boeing’s initial attempt to blame the pilots, it soon became clear that an engineering flaw led to the twin crashes, and that shoddy practices and a penny-wise and pound-foolish decision to redesign its old 737s, instead of spending the $20 billion on designing a new class of jetliners from scratch, was largely to blame. And yet Boeing seems to have learned little from that fiasco.

After the Alaska Airlines door plug landed in an Oregon family’s backyard earlier this month, the Lever reported that the subcontractor that made the faulty part and had been spun off from Boeing, Spirit AeroSystems, is facing a federal lawsuit from former employees. They charge that cost-cutting, including major layoffs in 2020, triggered production problems, yet executives ignored their warnings of “an excessive amount of defects.”

Simply put, it wasn’t “a Black guy” — or a slew of Black guys, or women, or any other nonwhite hires — behind the new wave of airline safety concerns. It was the shortsightedness of late-stage capitalism.

Do read the whole article. And speaking of diversity programs, do read ‘America Is Under Attack’: Inside the Anti-D.E.I. Crusade by Nicholas Confessore at the New York Times. And then read Inside the Heritage Foundation’s Plans for ‘Institutionalizing Trumpism’ by Lulu Garcia-Navarro (no paywalls).

Update: Rhonda Santis dropped out of the race, ABC says.