Like a Russian nesting doll of fuck-ups
- Jeremy Konyndyk, former USAID official
on Trump's foreign-aid freeze
This week's featured post is "Campaign or Movement?"
This week everybody was talking about tariffs
After long threatening tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and China, Trump ordered tariffs on Saturday: 10% tariffs on China and energy imports from Canada, 25% tariffs on Mexico and non-energy imports from Canada. The tariffs take effect tomorrow.
It's always hard to know what Trump's true intentions are, so it's possible some deal to avoid the tariffs might be worked out before they take effect. Ostensibly, the reason for the tariffs is that the three countries aren't doing enough to prevent fentanyl from being smuggled into the US. So if there's even a fig leaf's worth of progress on that issue, Trump could cancel the order and declare victory. [Sure enough: The Mexican tariffs have already been paused for a month.]
If not, Canada has already announced its reprisals. Mexico has pledged to retaliate, but so far I haven't seen specifics.
and Musk's takeover of government systems
Much of Trump's first two weeks has consisted of the new administration puffing up to look bigger and more powerful than it actually is under the law. For example, Trump confidently cancelled the 14th Amendment's guarantee of birthright citizenship without having any authority to do so. His government spending "freeze" was promptly unfrozen by two federal judges -- again, because it is not based on any legal authority. (Once Congress has appropriated money, the executive branch has a responsibility to spend it as directed.)
But simultaneously, important things are happening in the shadows, with even members of Congress puzzled about what is going on. It's hard to get clear information, but it seems that private-sector employees of Elon Musk's companies have been inducted into his DOGE department, and have been taking over major government computer systems. Wired reported Wednesday on Musk's takeover of the computer systems at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the federal government's HR department. Other Musk loyalists have taken control of the payment system at the Treasury's Bureau of Fiscal Service. BFS writes $6 trillion of checks each year. Still others have captured the General Services Administration.
It's not clear what kinds of abuse Musk intends, but using the BFS payments system he could do his own version of impoundment: simply kill the checks paying for any program he disapproves of. Conversely, Matt Yglesias suggests a different use:
— Appropriations lapse in March, government shutdown
— But DOGE just illegally keeps paying the bills Trump believes should be paid
A fourth agency Musk has taken over is USAID, which oversees foreign aid grants. Musk has declared USAID "beyond repair" and says he intends to shut it down. His legal authority to do this is, well, zero.
DOGE was established by executive order two weeks ago, and given the mission to modernize "Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity". I don't see how you get from there to shutting down an agency established by Congress. USAID's security officers tried to prevent DOGE employees from getting access to systems with sensitive and perhaps classified information, but those officials were then put on administrative leave.
On his blog Doomsday Scenario, Garrett Graf imagines how our press would cover this if it were happening in a Third World country "Musk's Junta Establishes Him as Head of Government".
What started Thursday as a political purge of the internal security services accelerated Friday into a full-blown coup, as elite technical units aligned with media oligarch Elon Musk moved to seize key systems at the national treasury, block outside access to federal personnel records, and take offline governmental communication networks.
With rapidity that has stunned even longtime political observers, forces loyal to Musk’s junta have established him as the all-but undisputed unelected head of government in just a matter of days, unwinding the longtime democracy’s constitutional system and its proud nearly 250-year-old tradition of the rule of law. ... The G-7 country’s newly installed president, a mid-level oligarch named Donald Trump, appeared amid Musk’s moves to be increasingly merely a figurehead head of state.
The freeze on money for states was set aside by two judges, but the freeze on foreign aid grants apparently stands, with potentially deadly results.
Some of these grants fund NGOs in third-world countries where a little money can mean the difference between life and death.
Among the programs that remain grounded as of Friday: emergency medical care for displaced Palestinians and Yemenis fleeing war, heat and electricity for Ukrainian refugees and HIV treatment and mpox surveillance in Africa.
Meanwhile, The Guardian reports on two other programs on hold. One is working on malaria vaccines, and the other studies drugs for HIV prevention.
Some products, such as injectable HIV prevention drugs, are not yet available outside research settings, he said, leaving participants with no alternative source to continue treatment.
If the level of drugs in a participant’s body falls to nonprotective levels, it not only puts them at risk of infection, but means their infection is more likely to develop drug resistance. That makes their treatment more complicated, and if they then infect someone else, the resistance will spread.
Ostensibly, the freeze is just 90 days, so that the programs can be reviewed by Trump appointees. But there appears to be no mechanism for a review to take place.
One example of abuse is in the all-government emails that have been coming from OPM. One (I know somebody who got it, and then saw it reported) announced a "mandate" that all federal employees return to the office five days a week. It offered a "deferred resignation" option for people who didn't want to come in: Simply by replying to the email with "resign", an employee could continue to be paid until September, when the resignation would take effect. Major media falsely characterized this as a "buyout" offer.
From top to bottom, this email had no legal authority behind it. Work-from-home options are written into several ongoing union contracts, which nameless minions inside the Trump administration -- or even Trump himself -- have no power to cancel. So there is no legal across-the-board return-to-the-office mandate.
There also is no "buyout" offer. The OPM email doesn't say the resigning workers get to stop working, only that they won't have to come into the office. It doesn't say they can't be fired before September. And the money to pay them has not been authorized. (The whole government is only funded through March 14.)
So the memo basically has no legal content. It makes an unauthorized threat and offers an unauthorized escape from that threat.
and plane crashes
Wednesday, an Army helicopter and an American Eagle jetliner collided over the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport in D.C. Trump promptly repeated the pattern I pointed out three weeks ago: Despite the fact that he knew nothing about the actual causes of the crash, he blamed it on his political enemies. Rather than turn tragedy into a unifying national experience of sorrow and grief, he turned it into a divisive experience of finger-pointing and misinformation.
This time the culprit was DEI: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. His implication was that somebody somewhere in this tragedy wasn't a White man, and that it all could have been prevented if that particular position had been filled by a White man.
All the Trump acolytes -- J. D. Vance, Pete Hegseth, etc. -- echoed his sentiments, with Trump Jr. bragging that the new administration puts "merit ahead of skin color". What's really laughable about this is that no merit-based system would produce a Vice President Vance or Defense Secretary Hegseth. Both of these men are completely unqualified for the jobs they hold, and it's impossible to imagine a woman or a person of color being chosen with so little relevant experience.
and you also might be interested in ...
Another Trump order that is being challenged in court relates to his order insisting there are only two sexes. One consequence of this order is that transwomen in federal prison have to be reclassified as men and moved to a men's facility. The danger of rape and other brutalization should be obvious.
One such prisoner has succeeded in getting a court to block her transfer, and rights organizations have filed a second case covering three women.
and let's close with some getaways
Can't manage a vacation right now? Check out "The 20 Most Beautiful Places on Planet Earth" in this video.
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