Insurgent movements are not the product of hard times. They are the product of insurgent cultures.
- Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment
This week's featured post is "How Do Things Change?"
This week everybody was talking about the pushback against Trump and Musk
This week, a number of federal judges stepped in with orders to halt some of the administration's illegal actions. Just Security keeps a continuously-updated litigation tracker to help the rest of us stay current. Here are some highlights:
Wednesday, a federal judge in Maryland granted a preliminary nationwide injunction blocking the Trump administration from enforcing its executive order ending birthright citizenship.
The Executive Order interprets the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in a manner that the Supreme Court has resoundingly rejected and no court in the country has ever endorsed
The next day a judge in Washington granted a similar injunction.
Ultimately, the government's position is unavailing and untenable. It does not have the text or precedent to support its interpretation of the Citizenship Clause. And it rehashes losing arguments from over a century ago. ... The President cannot change, limit, or qualify this Constitution right via an executive order.
Yesterday, a federal judge in New Mexico blocked the administration from sending to Guantanamo three Venezuelan men currently in ICE custody. The order applies only to those three.
Thursday, a D. C. federal judge approved an order limiting DOGE access to the Treasury payments system to read-only access for two "special employees", one of who is Marko Elez, the Musk staffer dismissed and then rehired after his racist social media posts became public. This order is at least partially superseded by the order of a New York federal judge who temporarily banned "special government employees" such as DOGE has from accessing "any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees".
Thursday, a Massachusetts federal judge paused the administration's deferred-resignation plan until a hearing can be held today.
Last Monday, a D. C. federal judge blocked the Office of Management and Budget from enforcing its proposed funding freeze.
Friday, a D.C. federal judge blocked USAID from putting employees on administrative leave or removing them from the countries where they are stationed.
Judges in D. C. and Massachusetts blocked the transfer of transwomen inmates to federal men's prisons.
Thursday, a D. C. judge approved an order preventing the government from releasing a list of FBI agents involved in investigating President Trump.
Many other lawsuits are pending, but have not been ruled on. It remains to be seen whether temporary orders will become permanent, or whether Trump will decide to defy some of them, a possibility J. D. Vance floated yesterday.
and leopards unexpectedly eating the wrong faces
I take for granted that Trump doesn't care that he is upsetting people like me. "Owning the libs" is one of the goals of MAGA, not something to be avoided. But this week a number of MAGA-sympathetic groups noticed that Trump's actions were hurting them, in a leopards-are-eating-my-face way.
The first were Christian charities that receive USAID grants.
The controversy began late Saturday evening, when Michael Flynn, a Catholic and retired Army general who previously served as an adviser to President Donald Trump, published a post on X alongside screenshots of a spreadsheet detailing federal funding disbursed to Lutheran groups in the last two years. The spreadsheet — which also included organizations that were not Lutheran — listed groups such as Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (now Global Refuge), one of several organizations that partner with the federal government to resettle refugees; Lutheran colleges such as Pacific Lutheran University; and various local chapters of Lutheran Social Services.
Without citing evidence, Flynn accused the groups — who have longstanding funding agreements with the government — of “money laundering,” a federal crime. He also insisted the numbers amounted to “billions” of American taxpayer dollars, a claim not supported by the attached spreadsheet.
Musk, who describes himself as a “cultural Christian,” quote-posted Flynn’s claims, saying, “the (Department of Government Efficiency) team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments.”
Christianity Today reports:
Most of USAID’s budget goes to grants for specific development projects, including at Samaritan’s Purse, World Vision, World Relief, Catholic Relief Services, and many other faith-based groups. It supports local Christian health clinics in Malawi and groups providing orphan care.
In Kenya, PCEA Chogoria Hospital, a historic mission hospital now run by Kenyan churches, provides comprehensive health care to HIV patients through support from USAID. On January 24 the hospital received a stop-work order for that care and has had no indication of a return of funding despite Rubio’s promises that life-saving HIV care could continue.
The hospital has 3,162 HIV patients in that USAID-funded program, and 42 staff members caring for those patients.
I have to wonder whether hearing the administration lie about their own programs will cause Christians around the country to wonder about Trump's and Musk's truthfulness in general. In many communities, the ax is falling on local charities doing things like refugee resettlement, not distant organizations with projects in Africa.
Another group suffering from Musk's actions are American farmers.
Farmers report missing millions of dollars of funding they were promised by the U.S. Agriculture Department, despite promises from the Trump administration that a federal funding freeze would not apply to projects directly benefiting individuals. ... Farmers who signed contracts with the Agriculture Department under those programs paid up front to build fencing, plant new crops and install renewable energy systems with guarantees that the federal government would issue grants and loan guarantees to cover at least part of their costs. Now, with that money frozen, they’re on the hook.
Kansas Senator Jerry Moran, a Republican, has noticed that USAID food programs benefit Kansas farmers.
The World Food Programme estimated $340 million in U.S. food aid was idled at domestic ports by order of the Trump administration. In total, $566 million in U.S.-grown commodities designated for humanitarian purposes was locked down in warehouses throughout the world.
“Time is running out before this lifesaving aid perishes,” Moran said. “Food stability is essential to political stability, and our food aid programs help feed the hungry, bolster our national security and provide an important market for our farmers, especially when commodity prices are low.”
And another Republican Senator, Katie Britt of Alabama, is concerned about the medical research done in her home state.
While the administration works to achieve this goal at NIH, a smart, targeted approach is needed in order to not hinder life-saving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions like those in Alabama.
Again, if Musk is targeting "ground-breaking research" in Alabama, maybe medical research programs in other states are being hit unfairly.
Trust McSweeney's to find humor in the grimmest situations. Tom Ellison writes the column Elon Musk would write if he were honest: "Here at DOGE, we've streamlined every aspect of America's collapse".
did you know that before DOGE came along, government spending was influenced by an ad hoc network of billionaires behind campaign contributions, dark money groups, and shadowy think tanks? It’s far more efficient to reduce redundancy by placing the entire US Treasury under the centralized control of just one billionaire private citizen (me).
and you also might be interested in ...
For a moment, it seemed like this administration might still be -- just a little -- vulnerable to shame. One of Musk's young DOGE acolytes, Marko Elez, was outed for posting racist statements to social media within the last year. Elez then resigned.
Sadly, though, that wasn't the end of the story. Elon posted a poll on X asking
Bring back @DOGE staffer who made inappropriate statements via a now deleted pseudonym?
J. D. Vance endorsed a Yes vote, arguing against the idea that "stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life". The X community being what it is these days -- non-racists have largely decamped to BlueSky -- 78% voted for reinstatement, which apparently has now happened.
Vox points out what a sham the Musk/Trump administration's "free speech" idealism is: Free speech is for people who agree with them about things like, say, racism; or for people who offer Nazi salutes in public. But if you are a foreign student who participated in protests of Israel's genocide in Gaza, Trump promises to deport you.
This is not merely a case of the typical hypocrisy we expect from politicians. It is a coherent worldview coming into form: The Trump administration has been making clear that while it has plenty of tolerance for not just radical ideas but outright racist words and gestures, it has no room whatsoever for dissent or disagreement.
While we're talking about racism and Gaza, Tuesday Trump openly endorsed ethnically cleansing Gaza so that it could become “the Riviera of the Middle East”. I mean, why should annoying Arabs get to occupy prime waterfront property just because their ancestors have lived there for centuries? They should want to leave.
I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza. I heard that Gaza has been very unlucky for them. They live like hell. They live like they’re living in hell. Gaza is not a place for people to be living, and the only reason they want to go back, and I believe this strongly, is because they have no alternative.
In Trump's telling, the suffering of Gazans is just "unlucky", and not the predictable result of decisions made by the US and its Israeli allies. The place just happened to turn to rubble, and it's nobody's fault that support from agencies like USAID is drying up.
OK, that's the ranting of an evil man. But I'm not giving this story its own headline for a simple reason: You need to recognize when you're being trolled. Trump is not going to occupy Gaza with US troops any more than he's going to invade Greenland, make Canada a US state, or do a bunch of the other crazy stuff he talks about. The whole point of envisioning a US "ownership position" in Gaza was to change the news cycle, which was starting to focus too much on Musk's illegal seizures of power.
Keep your eye on the ball.
New DNC Vice Chair David Hogg has begun posting daily updates "What Democrats Did Today".
Global surface temperature is a combination of a long-term global warming trend and year-by-year circumstances like an El Nino. (That's why each year isn't always hotter than its predecessor.) But the month-by-month records for the hottest months on record have all happened since July of 2023. January 2025 set a record for reasons climate scientists haven't completely puzzled out yet.
Trump is about to issue an executive order bringing back plastic straws. Because: priorities. Human convenience trumps animal suffering.
Somewhat to my surprise, the Gaza truce has still not collapsed.
and let's close with an excuse to buy more books
I have a personal rule about local bookshops: If the reason I know I want a book is because I saw it in a bookstore, I have to buy it at that bookstore, even if I could get it cheaper from Amazon.
But while that works for physical books, what about e-books, which is how I read most things these days? If you're rebelling against Amazon's dominance of e-books, getting your books from Apple or even Kobo isn't that much of a protest.
A new option is Bookshop.org, where profits on e-books can be directed to a local bookstore near you.
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