A Faint Glimmer of...
Saturday, April 5, 2025
10:13 pm
Muzz
Self-titled
Purple juice and Old Forrester
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Here I am, on the second of a two-game NCAA Final Four pre-recorded set, taking assessment of the week’s events and by god, it seems like there may be some pulse left after all in this country of ours.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of depressingly awful shit that Trump and the Cronies have done this week. I could write a whole entry based on that. Alas, this week, let’s turn the page a bit and show the counterbalances.
For months, Trump has run roughshod over so much of our political system, society and culture without any serious pushback that is symbolic, notable, or significant. Last week, we saw a mix of all three.
On the symbolic end, there were a few examples.
Early in the week, the symbolism was getting prime time attention when Cory Booker, for reasons unclear to me, decided to launch into a lengthy speech that ended up setting the record for the longest recorded speech (25 hours and five minutes) in modern US Senate history. Offering his explanation of why Trump sucks, Booker made plenty of good points throughout his speech, but what was lost on me is why he did it when he did. Sure, a lot of kids went on Instagram or apparently not-yet-banned TikTok to check out Booker briefly. But what was the point? He didn’t tie the speech to any particular issue.
I can think of two easy things Booker could have called to the attention of all of those randos who tuned into his speech. First, the Republican budget bill, which essentially will lead to a tax increase for most Americans who earn less than $191,000. Second, the recent GOP-led effort to eliminate a rule that requires banks to charge no more than $5 in overdraft fees. I’m sure Booker had his reasons for what he did. But if the Dems want to move past symbolism and turn it into a motivator that could lead to results, as Republicans are quite good at doing, they need to give people a good whack over the head with an issue.
Then there was the 51-48 vote in the Senate that saw Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell join every Democrat and reject Trump’s tariffs on Canada. The vote - which again, I know is only symbolic, as made clear by the fact that the House very likely won’t even consider the legislation - came just hours after Trump announced his absolutely insane idea of tariffs, apparently personally ordered by the Boss himself despite actual economists on his team working on a different plan, against the literal world, minus Russia, North Korea and a few of the other New World Order allies.
Also on the symbolism front was the effort in the House over proxy voting. The issue has become a sort of proxy war for Democrats, giving them the rare opportunity to have leverage over House leadership because of a small but strong coalition of pissed off Republicans, led by Anna Paulina Luna. The week ended with Luna winning the standoff because she flexed her muscles and got the Boss to back her. By late next week, the theater will have been an insider’s afterthought.
And yet, the symbolism of the week matters because it laid the groundwork for members of Congress to actually flex their political muscles once again.
For years, Congress has abdicated more and more responsibility to the presidency. Both Democrats and Republicans in the White House have taken advantage, with Trump being the latest and most frightening version of using political power. The question is whether the symbolism of the two acts in Congress are enough to lay the groundwork for additional meaningful battles in the future. There’ll certainly be a few more opportunities very soon, especially with some (certainly not enough) Republicans quickly indicating they were getting agida about the Plan to Tax Penguins otherwise known Trump’s tariffs.
On the notable end, there’s no shortage of things to note.
Seemingly happening at the same time as Booker’s speech, two Senate Democrats - Adam Schiff and Ruben Gallegos, of California and Arizona, respectively - announced their intentions to place “blanket holds” on specific Trump nominees.
Schiff’s hold is on Ed, who calls himself “Ed the Eagle,” Martin, the nominee to be and is currently serving as US attorney for D.C. This guy Martin is pretty awful. Look him up if you want to know more about how much he sucks aside from his self-proclaimed nickname. He’s come up at several points in previous entries. Gallegos, meanwhile, says he’s going to block the confirmation of a top leader at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
I’m no expert on Congress or anything but, it sounds as though placing a hold on a presidential nominee has a way to delay the nomination for potentially weeks, grinding the Senate to a slow pace. The question, like the Booker scenario, is why these nominees? Why didn’t Democrats try this earlier? Didn’t they think any other nominees were worth using the stall tactic with? Were they worried that doing so would make them look like extremists?
Looking extremist is pretty tough to do when the Trump administration is literally rounding people up and sending them to gulags or having Trump go golfing with Saudis at his taxpayer-funded resort rather than meeting the families of four American soldiers who died overseas. I’ve got a feeling most Americans - not everyone would admit it - would see who the extremist is in this scenario.
Then there was Barack Obama, who finally came out of his turtle shell and decided to tepidly offer his two cents on what’s happening in the nation he led nearly a decade ago. During an appearance at Hamilton College in New York, Obama - who should immediately announce his candidacy for president in 2028 under a banner of “Barry” while wearing a fake afro, sunglasses and white shirt and red tie to piss off Donnie - criticized Trump’s tariffs because they would not be good for the country. Then Obama added, “I’m more deeply concerned with a federal government that threatens universities if they don’t give up students who are exercising their right to free speech.”
Obama correctly pointed out the obvious outrage from the MAGA-ites if he removed Fox News from the White House press corps.
On the smaller scale of notability, there was the news that the inspector general of the Department of Defense was launching an investigation into Pete Hegseth’s use of Signal in Operation IDIOTS. Sure, it’s a longshot that anything notable will come out of this investigation. And sure, I don’t know that I have a lot of faith in this report ever seeing the light of day. But still, the announcement of the investigation is one more thing to put the MAGA-ites on their heels. And that’s not nothing.
Perhaps most notable this week were the final two items.
The first is the significant and widespread opposition Trump faced for his bar napkin tariff plan. A few examples:
Ben Shapiro said the policy was “probably unconstitutional.”
The Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, called it a “massive tax on US consumers.”
Fed chairman Jay Powell said tariffs were “highly likely to generate at least a temporary rise in inflation.
JP Morgan, which often doesn’t comment on presidential actions, let alone government, noted it would be the largest tax increase since 1968 while indicating the likelihood of a recession occurring this year went from 40 to 60 percent.
The Wall Street Journal published its own editorial with a warning that Trump’s “blowing up the world trading system” had consequences that the Boss “isn’t advertising.”
The Financial Times, which has an editorial stance that Wikipedia describes as economic liberalism (including advocating for free trade and free markets), described the Trump plan as “one of the greatest acts of self-harm in American economic history. They will wreak untold damage on households, businesses and financial markets across the world, upending a global economic order that America benefited from and helped to create.”
And that’s not to mention the move by Fox News this week to drop its Wall Street ticker for the first time in 28 years because the market was reacting so poorly to the napkin plan. Nor Mike Pence’s criticism of the plan. Several manufacturers, including Stellantis and Whirlpool, quickly announced plans to pause production at assembly plants and lay off workers.
The last notable item from this week actually took place Saturday, when thousands of people flooded the streets of 1,400 cities across the country to express their dismay with what’s happening in DC. The movement is the most significant single-day action that has occurred since Trump took office.
The question is not whether the protests will have any impact on Trump. Karoline Leavitt made it abundantly clear when she told USA Today “protests, lawsuits and lawfare” won’t alter Trump’s efforts “INSERT ANOTHER LEAVITT LIE HERE.” Trump couldn’t care less about the protests. He’s very much of the PT Barnum school of thought: there is no such thing as bad press.
The more important thing about the protests is whether the outrage people clearly have across this country will turn into anything meaningful. Will there be direct action like we saw on college campuses last year? Will there be people putting their members of Congress in uncomfortable situations, kind of like we’ve seen at town halls already, but at restaurants and hotels? Will the public unleash the power that they have but don’t necessarily wield all too often because it takes an effort to ditch the distractions and give a shit for once? The protests are a notable sign, but what is done next is even more important.
On the significant end of developments this week, there were three.
First, there appears to be some effort by those in the legal community to stand up to the Boss’s bullshit. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal noted how 23 Democratic attorney generals are working on a “near daily basis” on ways to use the courts to stop Trump.
“So far they have brought 11 lawsuits against Trump and his administration and have won temporary restraining orders or preliminary injunctions in eight cases, with two requests pending, according to the Democratic Attorneys General Association. In one, a bid to block some actions of Elon Musk’s and the Department of Government Efficiency, they failed to get immediate relief and are awaiting a full hearing.
Although none of the injunctions represent final rulings, they constitute a rare batch of victories for a Democratic Party reeling from electoral defeats in November, which left its brand tarnished, base deflated and leaders in Washington tangled in infighting.”
The news of the state AGs doing their jobs is certainly a bright spot. But once again, I’m wondering what took so long and why there are only 11 cases. I could think of a shitload of more reasons to sue the MAGA-ites.
On Friday, 504 law firms signed onto a court brief filed on behalf of Perkins Coie, the first law firm targeted by a Trump executive order. Although none of the nation’s top law firms jumped on board, the fact that more than 500 law firms did come together is notable. Think about this fact: you probably couldn’t get 500 law firms to agree on much these days.
Sandwiched between the Journal’s AG story and the Perkins Coie news came word that Germany is apparently so pissed off with Trump’s tariff bullshit, the nation is thinking about yanking its 1,200-ton gold stockpile valued at more than $113 billion that is currently in New York because of fears that Trump is unpredictable. The story, from The Telegraph, notes several German officials are demanding the ability to inspect their reserves. They haven’t forgotten about the bullshit a few weeks back when Trump and Musk were shittalking about visiting the federal reserve. No need for there to be a Michael Bay and Nick Cage heist-style movie when it's the federal government going into the reserves under the guise of official business. Yes Germany, if I were you, I’d force my way into that vault. As Fox Mulder believed, Trust No One.
The consideration from Germany is just one of many signs that nations around the world are quite pissed off at what’s happening here. In an extremely rare alliance, China, Japan and South Korea are apparently working on a unified response to the Trump tariff plan. China also said it would impose a 34 percent tariff on all US imports. While the EU said it is working on its response, the UK prime minister said his country would consider its “range of levers” and “nothing is off the table.” Canada’s prime minister promised to use “purpose” and “force” in his response. And that’s just a smattering.
The global pushback couldn’t come at a worse time for Trump, as he continued this week to get pummeled on many fronts, including his tariff plan (which resulted in $6 trillion being erased from the stock market in two days), the continued attention on Operation IDIOTS, the horrible optics of golfing with Saudis rather than respecting soldiers, all while horrible storms and weather are ravaging communities across the country as the National Weather Service is being intentionally destroyed.
And then there were the somewhat surprising results in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. With Elon Musk dumping millions of dollars into the race, including by directly and successfully bribing voters, it looked like there was the potential for Republicans to once again deliver another blow to Democrats.
But the actual results revealed not only a rejection of Musk and the rest of the rats, but a very significant shift for Wisconsin voters, less than six months after the state chose Trump by nearly 30,000 votes. According to the New York Times, voters in every single one of Wisconsin’s 72 counties shifted to the left compared to last year’s presidential election.
As Reid Epstein of the New York Times put it:
“For Democrats, the result is a jolt of momentum. They have been engaged in a coast-to-coast rhetorical rendering of garments since Mr. Trump returned to the White House in January and embarked with Mr. Musk on an effort to drastically shrink federal agencies, set aside international alliances and alter the government’s relationships with the nation’s universities, minority groups, immigrants and corporate world.”
For those who weren’t following the race closely - I certainly was not - the fact that Democrat Susan Crawford defeated Brad Schimel, who, according to Epstein, dressed as Trump for Halloween in the days before the election, means liberals will hold onto a majority of the state Supreme Court until at least 2028. Whatsmore, the liberals on the court could apparently redraw the state’s congressional lines, resulting in Democrats potentially gaining at least two seats and even, maybe, just maybe, the House majority.
Noting the importance of the race before the results were in, Musk insanely oversold, saying, “I feel like this is one of those things that may not seem that it’s going to affect the entire destiny of humanity, but I think it will.”
In a way, I hope Elon’s right. And if that’s not enough to get you thinking optimistically, I’ll leave it to the man of Hope and Change when said this week that “history zigs and zags” with “times of stupidity” and danger.
“Don’t get discouraged,” Obama said. “I know it’s a little crazy right now, but we’re going to be OK.”
And now for this week’s roundup.
On the Musk/DOGE beat:
The 25-year-old DOGE staffer who quit in February when his racist tweets were highlighted by the media is back, now working for the Department of Labor and has access to sensitive data at several federal agencies.
As the Indiana Daily Student correctly noted, a former Indiana University dropout is now the head of the U.S. Institute of Peace, just weeks after DOGE took over the government-funded nonpartisan organization. Among the college dropout’s early acts: trying to give DOGE the agency’s $500 million building.
Tesla is being investigated by the Canadian government after the car company claimed four dealerships sold 8,653 cars in three days, or two cars a minute, to qualify for a $30 million subsidy. Canada’s prime minister said the subsidy payments would be frozen while the government determines if the purchases were “valid.”
WIRED noted the Proud Boys and other militias have launched “Tesla Shield,” an apparent defense of the company.
Pam Bondi called for a man accused of firebombing a Tesla dealership to face 20 years in prison.
NOTUS, a DC-based publication started by a former Politico publisher, analyzed DOGE’s 7,200 “terminated” contracts and determined the vast majority were in areas represented by Democrats.
DOGE has gotten its hands on the Wilson Center, which was created in 1968 and is named after Woodrow Wilson. Once viewed as one of the most influential think tanks in the world, the Wilson Center has seen its president resign and more recently employees sacked.
Politico noted Trump recently told members of his team that Musk would be stepping aside from his role in the government in the coming weeks.
Evidently it has become increasingly hard to trade Cybertrucks into Tesla.
DOGE is making cuts at the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
Layoffs in the United States rose by 205% in March compared to the year before, in part fueled by DOGE firings, according to CBS News.
On the immigration/deportation beat:
In an attempt to get around a judge’s hold on deporting more people to a gulag, the State Department announced it had recently completed a “counter-terrorism mission” in partnership with El Salvador resulting in 17 people who the government said were foreign criminals being deported.
A lawsuit from the ACLU over the government’s deportation system includes what the administration is calling an “Alien Enemy Validation Guide.” The guide apparently instructs ICE agents how to determine whether a person can be removable under Trump’s invoking of the Alien Enemies Act, using six categories. Anyone who gets 8 points or higher on the 81 point total guide can be deported. The points can be awarded based on a person’s tattoos, social media posts and - sadly I’m being deadly serious here - wearing Chicago Bulls or Michael Jordan attire.
The ICE validation guide apparently is one of the reasons a man with a tattoo that marked the time of his son’s birth was sent to El Salvador, according to NPR.
The Atlantic revealed the government’s admitted an “administrative error” was the reason a Maryland father was mistakenly sent to the gulag.
ProPublica examined how flight attendants who were previously told they would be providing service to sports teams and rock bands were having to work deportation flights chartered by the government.
ICE said it revoked a University of Minnesota student’s visa because of a drunk driving infraction and not because the student had protested.
A Cornell student who had his visa revoked because he was involved in “disruptive protests” announced his plans to self-deport.
News broke recently about an Idaho Republican state lawmaker who had her farm raided by ICE agents after a local Republican used social media to urge border czar Tom Homan to “please send some illegal immigration raids.”
A spokesperson for the State Department declined to say whether the administration was using lists provided by a group called Betar, a self-proclaimed Zionist group, with thousands of names of visa holders who “come to the West to rage against America and support US-designated terrorist organizations.”
A 50-year-old mother in Texas, who has lived in the country for decades, was taken by ICE.
ABC News published a story exploring the families defending five of the men sent to the El Salvador gulag.
A Nobel Laureate and former president of Costa Rica had his visa revoked after comparing the Boss to a “Roman emperor.”
The Bulwark had a story about how ICE unsuccessfully tried to deport a woman who came to the US seeking asylum because she was tortured in Columbia.
The Washington Post did good by noting how the White House touted the arrest of 72 people by ICE. Yet, the paper revealed many were already behind bars before ICE got involved.
The Department of Justice placed one of its attorneys on leave after the government lawyer admitted a Maryland man should not have been sent to El Salvador and expressed frustration with his lack of answers for a judge. In a statement, Pam Bondi said all DOJ attorneys are “required to zealously advocate” on behalf of the government, adding, “Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences.”
On the education beat:
The Trump administration is reviewing nearly $9 billion in federal grants and contracts that Harvard receives, per the Wall Street Journal.
A professor at Indiana University who studies cybersecurity was fired and scrubbed from the University’s website on the same day the FBI apparently raided his house for still unknown reasons. An association of professors protested his firing, saying it occurred without the “highest level of scrutiny and process.”
A resolution recently approved by the Rutgers University Senate is calling for the formation of a Mutual Academic Defense Compact with other Big Ten schools in hopes of having all participating institutes committing to a shared or distributed defense fund to help cover any institutions facing “political or legal infringement.”
Dozens of federal grants, totaling an unknown amount, to Princeton have been paused.
Tufts University became the first school to stand behind one of its detained international students.
In another brazen attempt to blackmail, the Trump administration sent a memo to top education officials throughout the country threatening to withhold federal funding from all public schools unless they comply with eliminating DEI.
Brown University might have $510 million in federal funds halted.
On the legal affairs beat:
Trump pardoned Jason Galanis, who was serving 14 years in the pokey for defrauding Native Americans and apparently managed to help the Republican effort to impeach Joe Biden while he was behind bars.
In what critics are saying is the first apparent effort to pardon a corporation, Trump granted pardons to the co-founders of BitMEX, a crypto exchange that three months ago was ordered to pay a $100 million fine for violating the Bank Secrecy Act.
One of the people who Trump pardoned when he was last in office, Jonathan Braun, recently made headlines after he was arrested on assault charges, including punching a man in the face and shoving a three-year old.
A federal judge has delayed the administration’s efforts to end temporary protected status for 350,000 Venezuelan migrants.
A federal appeals court denied the administration’s attempt to enforce a ban on transgender troops.
In yet another set of depressing deals with Trump, law firms Milbank and Wilkie Farr & Gallagher, which recently hired Doug Emhoff, have separately agreed to provide $100 million in pro bono legal work for causes the Boss supports.
A federal judge permanently prohibited the Trump administration from limiting funds from the National Institutes of Health that support research at universities and medical centers.
A federal judge said the Trump administration must release FEMA funds to at least 19 states that had their money held back because they had sanctuary laws for immigrants.
The Supreme Court affirmed a ruling that allows the Trump administration to terminate $65 million in Department of Education grants for teacher training that does not align with the Trumpies’ anti-DEI efforts.
On the ongoing Operation IDIOTS beat:
The Wall Street Journal revealed Mike Waltz had multiple group chats on Signal in addition to the one he added Atlantic editor Jeff Goldberg to join.
Later in the week, Politico discovered had set up at least 20 Signal chats to discuss “crises across the world.”
The Washington Post noted Waltz and his staff has been using Gmail while conducting government business.
CNN noted the hypocrisy of Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Dan Bognino and Ed Martin previously calling for criminal probes against Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and yet towing the party silence on the Signal chat issue.
On the economics beat:
In an unsurprising move, the New York Times reported the White House is looking at potentially giving more money to farmers to keep them quiet about the trade war.
Attempting to get ahead of Trump’s tariff plan, Israel announced it would eliminate all tariffs on US imports.
A long-delayed Tik Tok deal was apparently nearing a resolution but was pulled at the last minute by China after Trump’s tariff plan was announced.
Pre-orders for customers in the US buying the latest Nintendo Switch have apparently been delayed because of the tariffs. The video game kids aren’t going to be pleased.
A conservative leaning group filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s tariffs.
On the rewriting history beat:
The Naval Academy removed items commemorating female Jewish graduates before Pete Hegseth visited.
The Naval Academy also removed 381 books from its library on subjects including the Holocaust, civil rights, feminism and racism.
The New York Times did a great deep dive into the White House’s efforts to erase history.
And the rest:
A leaked memo from the USDA indicates the agency is banning words like “climate,” “vulnerable” and “safe drinking water” from its vocabulary.
The Associated Press noted the recent firings of an assistant US attorney in LA and a US attorney in Memphis as “norm-shattering moves.”
In a move that is unimaginable to Americans today, a Paris court banned Marine Le Pen, the far right leader in France who was a frontrunner for president, from running for office for five years while ordering her to serve a prison sentence for embezzling money.
Our unfortunate attorney general Pam Bondi told the Department of Justice to dismiss a lawsuit challenging a Georgia election overhaul law that critics said was a form of voter suppression (a subject highlighted in the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm).
Politico found the quietly sworn in head of the FDA signed off on the plans to fire the agency’s top vaccine doctor.
In this week’s DJT Dicksucker of the Week, Tennessee congressman Andy Ogles has apparently recently put up a “wanted poster” for judges outside of his office.
Nearly every worker at the 77-employee Institute of Museum and Library Services, which was created by Congress, has been placed on leave.
An open letter signed by 2,000 doctors, scientists and researchers says the Trump administration has launched a “wholesale assault on U.S. science.”
In related news, employees at the Department of Health and Human Services continued to undergo layoffs, this time with employees lining up on April Fools Day to see if their badges worked at their offices to find out if they had been fired. Former FDA commissioner Robert Califf said the “FDA as we’ve known it is finished” while another FDA employee told CNN the layoffs were “a bloodbath.” Among the layoffs at HHS were employees who worked at the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, which focused on childhood lead exposure, cancer clusters, asthma, and air pollution and was responsible for the discovery of lead contamination in applesauce pouches a few years ago. Also part of the layoffs: a leading Parkinson’s disease researcher. Another
Pam Bondi ordered federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione, the man who killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December.
Politico reported the administration has held tens of millions of dollars in funding for nine state Planned Parenthood affiliates.
Jim Jordan, the House judiciary chairman and weirdo who can’t wear a suit jacket but can look the other way on sexual abuse, wrote a letter asking the House appropriations committee to address “the abusive use of nationwide injunctions.”
Citing a lapsed contract, the National Weather Service is apparently no longer going to provide severe weather alerts in languages other than English. Because, you know, the weather only speaks English.
Fresh off the heels of JD Vance’s visit to Greenland, the White House is looking at how much it would cost for the federal government to control the territory, according to the Washington Post.
The Social Security Administration is looking into why its website has been crashing.
Ed Martin, the nut otherwise known as the acting DC US attorney, has launched an inquiry into whether Joe Biden was competent while issuing pardons to his family members and others before he left office, according to the New York Times.
Trump’s social media company filed paperwork that would allow Trump’s trust to sell nearly 115 million shares, which based on the current price of the stock, would generate $2.3 billion.
A federal judge officially dropped the corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams while rejecting the government’s request to retain the right to refile the charges - making the brazen attempt to coerce Adams into compliance quite clear.
In the of-course-this-would-happen column, a Republican congressman quoted Nazi Joseph Goebells during a congressional hearing.
In separate Florida special elections, Republicans Randy Fine and Jimmy Patronis were elected to Congress. Fine previously called for anyone who hands out anti-Israel flyers to face five years in prison while Patronis may have buried thousands of insurance complaints.
In the least surprising news column, the head of the Social Security Administration was behind the effort to cancel contracts with the state of Maine in an effort to get back at Janet Mills for defying Trump, according to emails obtained by a congressional Democrat.
Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on cars assembled outside the US took effect.
ABC News had a story about the US sending “at least” six nuclear-capable bombers to a base in the Indian Ocean that is near Iran and Yemen. In a related development, a Houthi group said at least 50,000 people in western Yemen were without water after the US bombed a drinking water tank. If the claim is true, it would otherwise be known as a violation of the Geneva conventions and a war crime. Alas, this has already become forgotten news.
A lawyer who has frequently attacked voting rights is now the Senate-confirmed head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
Conspiracy theorist and likely one of Trump’s many goomahs, Laura Loomer, successfully got several people fired from the National Security Council, including the head of the NSA and Cyber Command.
A British judge ordered Trump to pay $820,000 in legal fees to a company he unsuccessfully sued dating back to the 2016 dossier about him doing dumb shit before he became president.
After RFK pumped up the benefits of vitamin A to fight measles, doctors in Texas have reported seeing a handful of unvaccinated kids taking so much vitamin A that they were damaging their liver.
And finally, the quackpot known as Dr. Oz has been Senate confirmed and will now lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.