As an outside observer, it's hard for me to assess how serious the division in MAGA-world is. Trump campaigned as an opponent of America's recent wars, and painted Harris as the kind of hawk who might start another one. But then, Trump campaigned on a lot of things that are long forgotten now, like lowering the deficit and cutting prices. Tariffs were all going to be paid by foreigners and the millions of migrants he was going to deport were violent criminals. He wasn't going to cut Medicaid.
All that is ancient history now, and the pattern has been that a few MAGAts say, "Wait, what?" for a day or two, but then they get back in line.
This flap seems a bit more serious, with folks like Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and Marjorie Taylor Greene speaking out against attacking Iran. There's little love for Muslims in MAGA-world, so nobody is going to mourn dead Iranians any more than they mourn dead Gazans. But still, it's hard to shake the feeling that this is Netanyahu's war, and Trump has been manipulated into going along. If you're already of the opinion that Jews secretly run the world -- which is a more popular view in MAGA-world than anybody likes to admit -- it all smells bad.
Will the exposure of Trump's false promises make any difference this time? I wouldn't bet on it, but it's worth watching.
and the Supreme Court
The other featured post examines one decision from this week: Tennessee's law banning gender-affirming care can stand.
A federal judge in Massachusetts on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from refusing to process and issue passport applications for transgender and nonbinary people in accordance with their gender identity.
And Mahmoud Khalil is free, after being detained for three months for supporting Palestine and criticizing Israel.
The regime is pushing three big initiatives designed to limit oversight, kneecap states that refuse to cooperate, and dramatically increase the number of ICE agents and detention facilities. ... To understand this threat, we need to look carefully within the pages of Trump’s “Big, Beautiful” budget. That bill contains a funding increase for ICE of $27 billion dollars, or 10,000 more ICE officers. Trump is planning to use these billions to recruit an army of masked, armed and largely unaccountable agents. This is a break-the-glass moment for our democracy, hiding within the line items of a single, massive bill.
But the bill doesn’t just add more agents. It also earmarks an eye-popping $45 billion for new ICE detention centers—enough to house 125,000 people.
It’s hard to look at that number and realize that it represents the same number of people of Japanese descent who were put inside of 10 internment camps during World War II.
Students of fascism also understand that, once such centers are built, they won’t just be used to house undocumented migrants subject to mass deportation. The regime, now caught in a horrific dance with private contractors like Erik Prince who will build and profit from these centers, will come to view them as convenient places to house and then disappear its political opponents, perhaps on their way to one of the many gulags it is now contracting with third countries to establish.
The proposal is unlikely to generate much revenue for the government; there is almost no private-sector interest in the mail trucks, and used EV charging equipment — built specifically for the Postal Service and already installed in postal facilities — generally cannot be resold.
The point seems to be to for Republicans in Congress to thumb their noses at people who care about climate change.
Computer science was once the career of the future, but apparently no more.
But if the decline [in computer science majors] is surprising, the reason for it is fairly straightforward: Young people are responding to a grim job outlook for entry-level coders. In recent years, the tech industry has been roiled by layoffs and hiring freezes. The leading culprit for the slowdown is technology itself. Artificial intelligence has proved to be even more valuable as a writer of computer code than as a writer of words. This means it is ideally suited to replacing the very type of person who built it.
The Atlantic's Rose Horowitch comments:
Whether the past few years augur a temporary lull or an abrupt reordering of working life, economists suggest the same response for college students: Major in a subject that offers enduring, transferable skills. Believe it or not, that could be the liberal arts. Deming’s research shows that male history and social-science majors end up out-earning their engineering and comp-sci counterparts in the long term, as they develop the soft skills that employers consistently seek out. “It’s actually quite risky to go to school to learn a trade or a particular skill, because you don’t know what the future holds,” Deming told me. “You need to try to think about acquiring a skill set that’s going to be future-proof and last you for 45 years of working life.”
and let's close with something nostalgic
Many fans of song parodies and humorous music in general no longer recognize the name of Dr. Demento, whose radio show popularized the genre. He's shutting it down after 55 years. In the Doctor's honor, here's a song I wouldn't know if not for him: The Cockroach that Ate Cincinnati.
In short, individuals’ right to protest the government is one of the fundamental rights protected by the First Amendment, and just because some stray bad actors go too far does not wipe out that right for everyone. The idea that protesters can so quickly cross the line between protected conduct and “rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States” is untenable and dangerous.
There is no featured post this week; this weekly summary is all I'm writing.
It was a news-heavy week, most of it bad. In an earlier draft of this post, the opening quote was Shakespeare's "Hell is empty and all the devils are here."
This week everybody was talking about right-wing political assassinations
Early Saturday morning, a man impersonating a police officer killed Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband at their home. He also shot and seriously wounded State Senator John Hoffman and his wife in a similar fashion. Hortman was the ranking Democrat in the Minnesota House and a former Speaker. A suspect has been captured and charged with murder and attempted murder.
A very good summary of what is known is in the NYT. Apparently, the Hoffmans were killed first, and their daughter called 911. Police checked on Hortman's house and found a fake police vehicle in the driveway. The suspect was present and exchanged gunfire before running away.
A federal law enforcement official said that the vehicle was found with a list of about 70 potential targets. Also found were papers that referenced the “No Kings” protest, a series of anti-Trump rallies that were to be held on Saturday.
I've seen claims elsewhere that all 70 were Democrats, but I haven't seen enough to trust that as a fact. The suspect did not register with a political party, but has given sermons against abortion and LGBTQ rights. A friend reported that he voted for Trump.
I have been briefed on the terrible shooting that took place in Minnesota, which appears to be a targeted attack against State Lawmakers. Our Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and the FBI, are investigating the situation, and they will be prosecuting anyone involved to the fullest extent of the law. Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America. God Bless the great people of Minnesota, a truly great place!
But by Sunday he had revered to form, telling ABC News that he "may" call Governor Walz, who is "a terrible governor" and "grossly incompetent".
The gold standard for responses to violence from your supporters is the statement Bernie Sanders made after the Steve Scalise shooting.
I have just been informed that the alleged shooter at the Republican baseball practice is someone who apparently volunteered on my presidential campaign. I am sickened by this despicable act. Let me be as clear as I can be. Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms. Real change can only come about through nonviolent action, and anything else runs against our most deeply held American values.
I'd love to hear Trump say outright that he doesn't want his supporters committing violent acts, and calling on anybody who is planning such an act to stop. But I suspect I never will.
and Trump's military occupation of Los Angeles
Federalized National Guard units and hundreds of Marines remain in Los Angeles, but I've had a hard time googling up any articles about what they've done these last two days. I hope that means they've been behaving themselves, protecting federal facilities and personnel, and not performing law enforcement tasks that would violate the Posse Comitatus Act.
A Washington Post reporter posted a video of police firing non-lethal shells at non-violent anti-ICE protesters approaching a federal building. But that's ordinary police-escalated violence, and appears to have nothing to do with the military.
In case you've been wondering, Posse Comitatus does actually have something to do with the posses that sheriffs round up to pursue bank robbers in the Western movies. Oversimplifying just a little, the law says that military forces can't be part of a law-enforcing posse.
Both uses derive from the Latin verb posse, which means to be able or have power.
Thursday, a federal judge ordered President Trump to return command of the federalized California National Guard troops to Governor Newsom. It hasn't happened, because an appellate court stayed the order until it can have a hearing tomorrow. It's easy to imagine that Trump might abuse the slowness of the judicial process to keep the troops there as long as he wanted to anyway.
Like the Alien Enemies Act case (still awaiting final decision), this case revolves around legislation that grants the president additional powers in certain situations. In each case, the question being challenged in court is whether the appropriate situation exists. Trump's lawyers argue that it is up to him to judge whether the conditions to extend his powers apply. In practice, this would mean that the President has additional powers whenever he decides he wants them. So far, the courts are not buying this argument.
Between the unique concerns raised by federal military intrusion into civilian affairs and the fact that federal officials are not uniquely positioned to ascertain what is happening on the ground (as compared to, say, state and local officials), the Court is not convinced that the judiciary cannot question presidential assertions about domestic activities leading to military action. ... Indeed, as Justice [Robert H.] Jackson explained using examples from Weimar Germany, the French Republic, and World War II–era Great Britain, “emergency powers are consistent with free government only when their control is lodged elsewhere than in the Executive who exercises them.”
The law in question allows federalization of the National Guard when there is a rebellion against he US government. But Judge Breyer skeptically applied the conservative principle of originalism: What did "rebellion" mean at the time the law was passed?
... the Court observes that the dictionary definitions from the turn of the century share several key characteristics. First, a rebellion must not only be violent but also be armed. Second, a rebellion must be organized. Third, a rebellion must be open and avowed. Fourth, a rebellion must be against the government as a whole—often with an aim of overthrowing the government—rather than in opposition to a single law or issue.
... The protests in Los Angeles fall far short of “rebellion.” ... Moreover, the Court is troubled by the implication inherent in Defendants’ argument that protest against the federal government, a core civil liberty protected by the First Amendment, can justify a finding of rebellion.
I expect the appellate court to uphold that finding; the only question is how long it will take. I predict Trump will end his occupation of Los Angeles before the Supreme Court can also rule against him.
Pundits speculate about whether or not Trump and his people will obey a clear court order, but that's not the only issue here. The National Guard units themselves will have to make a decision about which set of orders they receive are the legal ones.
The Department of Homeland Security and the officers and the agencies and the departments and the military people that are working on this operation will continue to sustain and increase our operations in this city. We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor had placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.
Take a minute to process that statement. Trump and his administration have sent military troops to LA to "liberate" the city from its elected leaders. Presumably, they expect Californians to be grateful to be relieved of the "burden" of democracy. What cities and states might they "liberate" next?
Thursday, California Senator Alex Padilla was forcably removed from a Kristi Noem press conference, then pushed to the floor and handcuffed.
Noem lied about the incident afterward, saying that Padilla did not identify himself and no one recognized him. The idea that no one recognized one of the two California senators is ridiculous on its face. But tape shows Padilla clearly identifying himself. And Noem has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee's panel on immigration, citizenship and border safety, where Padilla is the ranking Democrat. She knew who he was.
Warplanes struck the Natanz nuclear facility, while other operations killed Iran’s top military general, the leader of its Revolutionary Guards, the head of its Air Force, and at least six nuclear scientists. News images showed apartment buildings in Tehran with smoke billowing from specific rooms, indicating precisely targeted attacks (though Iran said that eighty civilians were also killed). An unnamed security source told Channel 12 that the Mossad intelligence services had recently established bases inside Iran, where they kept precision missiles and suicide drones. The news aired grainy black-and-white footage of masked Mossad agents on the ground there, delicately setting down what were reportedly explosive drones, aimed at destroying the country’s air defenses. For twenty years, Israel had threatened to attack Iran’s nuclear program. Seemingly within minutes, it suddenly had.
Whether or not it makes strategic sense for Israel to start a new war with Iran is another question that depends largely on the goal: Is the idea to "mow the lawn" by destroying resources Iran can eventually replace? Or is Israel aiming at some kind of regime change?
Iran has struck back with missile attacks on Israel, which are less sophisticated and less well targeted than the Israeli attacks.
My reading of history is that no matter how big your current advantage may be, no one keeps the upper hand forever. So my question for the Netanyahu government and the Israeli electorate: Is maintaining permanent superiority your plan, or is there some vision of a stable equilibrium that you hope to achieve someday? I mean: an arrangement that your current enemies will someday accede to voluntarily, without an iron fist constantly over their heads?
Trump is fond of claiming that any bad thing in the world -- the Ukraine War, the October 7 Hamas attack, post-pandemic inflation, and so on -- would not have happened if he had been president when it started. Such alternate-time-line boasts are nearly impossible to check, no matter how unlikely they seem.
But this is a case where a bad thing is directly attributable to Trump: If he had not junked Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, this war would not be happening.
As is so often the case, Trump claimed he could get a "better deal" and wound up with no deal. Trump's prowess as a deal-maker is a big part of his myth, but has very little grounding in reality. Real deal-making isn't about bombast and theatrics, it's about understanding what your partner in the deal really wants, and what you can give up without trashing your own position. Trump's brain can't handle that level of detail and nuance. It's not a matter of age; he never could.
Trump has tried to have it both ways with respect to this attack. He claims he had nothing to do with it, but also that he knew it was coming and that he warned the Iranians.
Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!
If I were an Iranian reading that tweet, I'd assume I was at war with the United States, not just with Israel.
and the No Kings protests
Other cities may have had larger turnouts, but San Francisco's protest had the most style. Here's a human banner at Ocean Beach.
Dan Fromkin's PressWatch blog has an article I wish more journalists would take seriously: ‘How many people were arrested?’ is a lousy way to cover protests. Fromkin points to a common way of covering protests that is particularly lazy and cowardly: Just talk to the cops.
Tell us what brought people out. Was it a range of issues or mostly just one? Tell us what some of the signs said – were they funny, angry, both? Tell us what the protesters did – did they march, chant, scream?
Were there speakers? What did they say? What are the organizers hoping to accomplish? What are their short-term goals and their long-term goals?
Describe the makeup of the crowd and give a rough indication of its size (yes you can make a reasonable estimate.) A sense of scale is crucial information.
and Trump's sad military parade
No doubt when Trump envisioned his taxpayer-funded $45 million birthday bash, he pictured it being the biggest story of that news cycle, with even the denunciations drawing attention to it. In fact, it barely registered. I have not found an estimate of the crowd size, but numerous pictures show empty bleachers, and AP reported that
attendance appeared to fall far short of early predictions that as many as 200,000 people would attend the festival and parade.
Ostensibly, the parade was to honor the 250th birthday of the US Army, not Trump's 79th birthday. But a similar anniversary is approaching for the Navy, and no similar spectacle is planned. And some spectators sang "Happy Birthday" to Trump after his speech.
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Republican senators need to pay more attention the lyrics of Paul Simon's "The Boxer":
I have squandered my resistance For a pocketful of mumbles Such are promises. All lies and jest Still, a man hears what he wants to hear And disregards the rest.
Finally, in his testimony, he noted repeatedly that Roe had been upheld by Planned Parenthood v. Casey, describing it as “precedent on precedent.” When I asked him would it be sufficient to overturn a long-established precedent if five current justices believed it was wrongly decided, he emphatically said “no.”
The latest example of Republican senatorial gullibility is Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. A doctor who gained prominence by vaccinating low-income kids in his home state, Cassidy might have blocked RFK Jr.'s nomination as HHS secretary, and for a time appeared inclined to do so over Kennedy's anti-vax activism. But after voting Yes in a key committee hearing,
Cassidy explained that he’d received “serious commitments” from the Trump administration that made him comfortable with voting yes. Speaking later on the Senate floor, he added that RFK Jr. had promised to “meet or speak” with him multiple times a month, that the Trump administration would not remove assurances from the CDC’s website that vaccines do not cause autism, and that the administration would give his committee notice before making any changes to the nation’s existing vaccine-safety-monitoring systems.
Medical staff are still required to treat veterans regardless of race, color, religion and sex, and all veterans remain entitled to treatment. But individual workers are now free to decline to care for patients based on personal characteristics not explicitly prohibited by federal law.
Language requiring healthcare professionals to care for veterans regardless of their politics and marital status has been explicitly eliminated. Doctors and other medical staff can also be barred from working at VA hospitals based on their marital status, political party affiliation or union activity, documents reviewed by the Guardian show.
The very poor tend to be unpopular, with a lot of Americans believing they are lazy bums who deserve what they get. (I'm not claiming that, I'm just pointing out that a lot of people believe it.) But I want to call your attention to the working poor: people in the 2nd and 3rd decile who probably work as hard as anybody, but in low-paying jobs. They are also worse off if this bill passes.
Meanwhile, the Senate's version of the Big Beautiful Bill looks likely to include a provision to sell 3 million acres of public land. The proposal is dressed up as a solution to the national housing shortage, but in fact most of this land is far from any expanding town. An analysis by Headwaters Economics found that most of the land near expanding towns has high wildfire risk, while other sites are prone to drought or flood.
What's the real reason to sell this land? Probably just an ideological hatred of public ownership.
Philips O'Brien draws attention to something the mainstream media isn't paying attention to: More and more, Trump officials echo Putin's worldview.
A. R. Moxon answers a question Rep. Nancy Mace threw at Governor Walz: "What is a woman?"
This is a pretty standard question from the type of bigot that Nancy Mace is. It's meant to erase the existence of trans women, who are being especially targeted for cruelty and exclusion by [Trump] and all his little minions. The question is asked to attempt to enforce the asker's own narrow definitions, and then to accuse anyone who refuses to accept those restrictions of sexism and bigotry.
Moxon suggests answering: A woman is not a what. A woman is a who.
I have noticed that what [Trump] and his hateful crew do as almost an instinct is reduce a who to a what, and they do it to women in just the same way as they do it to immigrants and anybody else they want to target, and for the same reason, which is to exclude them from their full humanity so that they can be more easily abused.
Everything that’s happened over the past six months has been a response to an imaginary crisis. There is no immigrant invasion. No trade crisis. No scientific or governance crisis. Just people completely high off their own supply trying to fundamentally reorder society. None of this had to happen.
Yes, yes, the schadenfreude was amazing, but this bromance breakup points out a few important facts about our current situation.
We take Trump's corruption for granted. The graph above illustrates how Tesla's stock price fluctuated as the spat unfolded. Think about what this means: A big chunk Tesla's near-trillion-dollar market capitalization consists of the favoritism its CEO can expect from the President, versus the revenge the President might take should the CEO oppose his policies. In no other administration has the good will of the President had so much market value. It's impossible to imagine the value of, say, J.P. Morgan Chase fluctuating because of what Jamie Dimon and President Biden might have been saying about each other. These kinds of fluctuations would be scandalous in any other administration, but hardly anyone has been remarking on it at all. Our major journalists and pundits just take for granted that Trump abuses his power to help his friends and harm his enemies.
Privatizing key government functions is dangerous. Part of the back-and-forth sniping involved Trump threatening Musk's government contracts. Musk retaliated by saying that SpaceX would decommission the Dragon spacecraft, which is currently the only way for NASA to get astronauts to or from the space station. (Musk later pulled back the threat.) But why is the US in a situation where some unreliable individual, for whatever reason, can threaten to cut us off from our space station? Privatization. NASA should have its own launch ability, and not have to contract launches out to any company.
Musk is exploiting the gap between what Trump promised and what he's delivering. Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" cuts Medicaid and food stamp services needed by the working poor in order to fund a tax cut for billionaires. In addition, it increases rather than decreases the federal deficit. Did anybody vote for that? Efforts to shrug this off, like Joni Ernst's "We all are going to die", don't seem to be working. But Musk speaking up gives Republican senators cover to oppose this monstrosity.
Musk completely failed to find the trillions of dollars of "waste, fraud, and abuse" he claimed existed. Nobody believes government money is spent perfectly. But to the extent WF&A exists, it's subtle and exists in small pockets. Rooting it out often requires bureaucratic oversight that is more cumbersome and costly than the abuse itself.
Money plays too big a role in our politics. This was always true and got considerably worse after the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. Now a guy like Musk can openly buy his way into power. Nobody voted for him, but his opposition is a problem.
John Adams is rolling in his grave. Adams is generally credited for the phrase "a government of laws, not of men". The Trump administration is a government of men -- unstable ego-driven men, unfortunately.
But OK, once you appreciate all that, go ahead and enjoy the schadenfreude. My favorite response was AOC's: "Oh man. The girls are fighting, aren't they?"
the allegations against Abrego Garcia are damning. A federal grand jury found that the 29-year-old was an MS-13 member who transported thousands of undocumented immigrants, including children, from Texas to states across the country for profit for nine years. He allegedly also transported firearms and drugs, abused female migrants and was linked to an incident in Mexico where a tractor-trailer overturned and killed 50 migrants.
Maybe he did all that and maybe he didn't, but that's not the point that concerns me or should concern you. The important point is that his due process rights are being respected. He won't just vanish down a rat hole. He will get a trial, and a jury will decide whether or not he's guilty.
Even if he is found guilty, that will not justify what the Trump administration did to him. Due process is the foundation of all other rights. If somebody can be sent to a foreign prison on nothing but Trump's say-so, then anybody can be sent to prison on Trump's say-so.
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Ever since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and abortion rights, people on both sides of the issue have been wondering whether Obergefell and same-sex marriage rights were next. This week, the Southern Baptist Convention will vote on whether to pursue that goal.
I'll repeat something I've said before: Same-sex marriage became feasible -- and indeed obvious -- in America because of the ways that opposite-sex marriage changed over the last two centuries. Once, men and women were different classes of citizens with different rights. Similarly, husband and wife were different roles treated differently under the law.
In that legal regime, same-sex marriage made no sense: Who is the "husband" in a lesbian marriage, and how does that "husband" perform the role without the legal privileges of masculinity?
But in a world where men and women are equal citizens, and neither husbands nor wives have special roles under the law, requiring spouses to have opposite genders has no justification beyond prejudice against gays and lesbians.
When you understand this, you'll see that overturning Obergefell is a step towards Gilead. It leads to seeing man/woman and husband/wife as inherently unequal. This is the hidden content in what the resolution calls "God's design for marriage and family", which cannot be disentangled from patriarchy.
I think it's important not to be "nice" about this. If you claim this is really what the Bible says -- and not just your interpretation of a multi-faceted text -- you've given the rest of us a good reason to reject the Bible. If this is what your God wants, it reflects poorly on your God.
In other anti-LGBT news, Defense Secretary Hegseth is changing the name of the USS Harvey Milk, so that Navy recruits don't have to be posted to a "gay" ship. This is a prime piece of Pride Month trolling.
Missouri has been running the pilot program for Project 2025 for at least a decade. We have been under the boot of a GOP supermajority for 22 years. Republicans have purposely defunded our public schools for so long that 33% of Missouri schools run a four-day week.
But why?
To curate failure — to say that public schools are broken and public school teachers are inept all in a push to privatize public schools. To dumb down the populace. To demonize a system that educates over 90% of kids in this state. To send taxpayer money to grifters who will line their pockets while opening the fly-by-night private schools operating out of the old Pizza Hut buildings dotting the heartland.
It’s a scam. It’s always been a scam.
As he did in his first term, Trump has declared a travel ban. It takes effect today and targets 19 countries:
The order, which Trump signed last week, restricts the nationals of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entering the US.
Nationals from a further seven countries - Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela - will face partial travel restrictions.
The stated goal of the policy is "to protect [US] citizens from aliens who intend to commit terrorist attacks, threaten our national security, espouse hateful ideology, or otherwise exploit the immigration laws for malevolent purposes." Trump cited the recent attack on pro-Israel demonstrators by an Egyptian immigrant as a motivation for the ban, but Egypt is not on the list.
Trump declared a travel ban from seven Muslim-majority countries early in his first term. He lost initial court cases on its constitutionality, but eventually produced a ban that passed muster with the Supreme Court. Biden reversed that ban, just as the next president will reverse this one.
There is a special exception for Afghans who hold the Special Immigration Visas, which were given to those who helped our troops during our 20-year Afghan war. But many of our former allies fall into grey areas and don't have such visas. Others have them, but now won't be able to get their relatives out of Afghanistan.
Trump's commitment to stopping terrorism seems a little suspect. He just appointed 22-year-old Thomas Fugate as the Homeland Security official in charge of the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships. "Known as CP3, the office has led nationwide efforts to prevent hate-fueled attacks, school shootings and other forms of targeted violence."
One of the looming climate disasters that environmentally aware people worry about is the possible collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (AMOC), which Grist calls "an enormous system of currents that carries water and nutrients across the world and plays a large part in stabilizing the global climate".
Should the current break down, the most frightening predictions describe a world thrown into chaos: Drought could destroy India, South America, and Africa; the Eastern Seaboard of the United States would see dramatic sea level rise; and an arctic chill would spread across Europe.
Well, good news, sort of: Recent research appears to show the AMOC breaking down gradually rather than heading towards a sudden collapse.
Extreme heat is mostly a silent killer; lots of heat-related deaths get recorded as heart attacks or strokes. But studies indicate that heat waves actually kill twice as many people as hurricanes and tornadoes combined do.
That understanding led NOAA to form a Center for Heat Resilient Communities, which worked with cities and towns to better understand their vulnerability to heat waves. Well, no more. The Center just got defunded. People will have to go on dying from heat waves so that billionaires can pay lower taxes.
In so holding, the court does not pass upon the wisdom or likely effectiveness of the President’s use of tariffs as leverage. That use is impermissible not because it is unwise or ineffective, but because [the law] does not allow it.
That's the subject of the featured post. The decision of the US Court for International Trade revolves around what powers Trump has and how he exercises them. In the conclusion I note that there are legal ways to achieve Trump's legitimate purposes, but he has chosen illegal ways that put him into conflict with the courts.
You can view that tendency in a sinister way, as Trump seeking conflict as he angles toward dictatorial power. But the Atlantic's David Graham puts a different spin on it.
Some of Trump’s most notable collisions with the law and courts are less a product of him wanting powers that he doesn’t have than about him wanting things to happen faster than his powers allow. The president has a great deal of leeway to enforce immigration laws, but he is unwilling to wait while people exercise their right to due process, so instead he tries to just erase that right.
Trump could lay off many federal workers using the legally prescribed Reductions in Force procedure; instead, he and Elon Musk have attempted to fire workers abruptly, with the result that judges keep blocking the administration. Similarly, Trump could try to get Congress to close the Education Department or rescind funding for NPR, especially given the sway Trump holds over Republicans in both the House and the Senate. Instead, he has tried to do those things by executive fiat. Last week, a judge blocked his effort to shut down the department, and this week, NPR sued the administration over the attempt to slash funding, arguing that only Congress can claw back funds it has appropriated.
and Elon's last day
Another SpaceX Starship rocket failed Tuesday. Friday was Elon Musk's official last day as a "special government employee", a status which was always supposed to have a 130-days-per-year time limit -- pretty close to the time since Trump's inauguration on January 21.
Trump and Musk marked the occasion with a joint Oval Office press conference. Send-offs are times for reflection, and this one raises a bunch of questions.
Is he really leaving?Trump says no, for what that's worth.
Elon is really not leaving,” Trump said. “He’s going to be back and forth. I think I have a feeling [DOGE is] his baby, and I think he’s going to be doing a lot of things.
It's hard to know how seriously to take that. On the one hand, Musk is still the richest man in the world and can single-handedly finance campaigns at multiple levels. He still owns X/Twitter, which is a powerful force for injecting his point of view into the public mind. So if he wants to have influence in politics, he can.
On the other hand, Musk's time as the face of the (mostly illegal) DOGE firings and budget cuts has probably not been a fun experience for him. He's been widely vilified. Trump may well see Musk as a used-up shield. He absorbed blame from Trump's policies, but became so unpopular that Trump may well not want to be linked with him going forward.
It had to hurt when fellow mega-billionaire Bill Gates said:
The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one. I’d love for him to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money
So Musk may look back on his involvement in government as an unpleasant mistake. Time will tell.
What did he accomplish for the country? For the conservative cut-government-spending movement, not much. He came in promising to find $2 trillion of waste, fraud, and inefficiency. But in spite of all the people he fired or tried to fire, numbers of that size were never on the table. In the end, DOGE claimed it had saved $160 billion, but even that number was inflated. CBS reported an estimate from Partnership for Public Service that balanced that $160 billion with $135 billion in additional costs, resulting in a net savings of $25 billion. Once you factor in lost revenue (like the additional taxes those fired IRS employees might have collected) DOGE may have increased the federal deficit.
In addition, much of what Musk cut had real value, like medical research and the food and medical aid that Gates was talking about. Michelle Goldberg writes:
There is one place, however, where Musk, with the help of his minions, achieved his goals. He did indeed shred the United States Agency for International Development. Though a rump operation is operating inside the State Department, the administration says that it has terminated more than 80 percent of U.S.A.I.D. grants. Brooke Nichols, an associate professor of global health at Boston University, has estimated that these cuts have already resulted in about 300,000 deaths, most of them of children, and will most likely lead to significantly more by the end of the year. That is what Musk’s foray into politics accomplished.
Since the start of the second Trump administration, federal agencies that had scrutinized Musk and his business empire in recent years have begun to look a lot different. At the Department of Agriculture, for example, President Donald Trump fired the person who had been investigating the Musk company Neuralink. At other agencies including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Trump and Musk have tried to slash the number of employees — potentially hobbling those regulators’ ability to enforce the law against companies including Musk’s Tesla and X.
In the past few months, Trump’s Justice Department has dropped a case against Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, and his Labor Department has canceled a planned civil rights review of his automaker, Tesla. Another regulatory matter against SpaceX has entered settlement talks with the National Labor Relations Board.
And in more than 40 other federal agency matters, regulators have taken no public action on their investigations for several months or more — raising questions about whether those cases may have become dormant, according to an NBC News review of regulatory matters involving Musk’s companies. Those matters range widely, from safety investigations into Tesla’s “self-driving” features to alleged workplace safety violations at SpaceX.
So maybe the $277 million he spent on the Trump campaign was a good investment.
and Ukraine's well designed raid
Just a few months after Pearl Harbor, American spirits were lifted by a daring bombing raid on Tokyo, which everyone -- including the Japanese -- had believed was out of range. It became known as the Doolittle Raid, after its leader, Jimmy Doolittle. Doolittle's team figured out how to launch the ordinarily land-based B-25 bomber from an aircraft carrier, then maneuvered the carrier close enough to make the attempt. All 16 planes were lost, but Doolittle got the Medal of Honor for the propaganda victory.
Sunday, Ukraine launched a similarly audacious attack, as it smuggled 117 drones close enough to Russian air bases deep in Siberia that it could destroy dozens of the Russian bombers that had been hitting Ukraine. The attacks hit three separate air bases. Ukraine claims to have damaged 40 Russian aircraft, and says that all drone operators are now safely out of Russia.
Whenever Trump announces massive tariffs, stock prices plunge. But then something almost always happens, like he puts the tariffs on pause, and then stock prices rebound. If you had known he would do that, you could have "bought the dip" and profited hugely when prices went back up.
Well, among Wall Street traders, this buy-the-tariff-dip strategy became known as "the TACO trade", where TACO stands for Trump Always Chickens Out. In other words, he'll talk tough about high tariffs, but will always find some way to back down.
One idea that has been discussed is to transform the [presidential daily briefing] so it mirrors a Fox News broadcast, according to four of the people with direct knowledge of the discussions. Under that concept as it has been discussed, the national intelligence director’s office could hire a Fox News producer to produce it and one of the network’s personalities to present it; Trump, an avid Fox News viewer, could then watch the broadcast PDB whenever he wanted.
A new PDB could include not only graphics and pictures but also maps with animated representations of exploding bombs, similar to a video game, another one of the people with knowledge of the discussions said.
“The problem with Trump is that he doesn’t read,” said another person with direct knowledge of the PDB discussions. “He’s on broadcast all the time.”
One tool of the creeping surveillance state is the automated license plate reader. Put enough of them in enough places, and you can track who drives where. Like all powers, this can be used for good or ill purposes.
This week 404 Media reported that a Texas police officer used Flock to perform a nationwide search of more than 83,000 ALPR cameras while looking for a woman who had had an abortion. Abortion is almost entirely illegal in Texas but law enforcement reportedly looked at cameras in states such as Washington and Illinois, where abortion is legal.
Jay Kuo's brother Kaiser responds to Secretary of State Rubio's announcement that the US has started revoking the visas of Chinese students.
The soft power cost is immeasurable. For decades, a degree from a U.S. university was the golden ticket, and not just for the prestige and the improved job prospects back home. It was often the start of a lifelong affinity for America, its values, and its people. Some of China’s best-known reformers and tech founders were educated in the U.S. They returned to China with not just skills and credentials, but admiration for an open society that welcomed them. Those days are ending. We are actively teaching the next generation of global talent that America is hostile, capricious, and unwelcoming.
Sam Stein is an American-raised Jewish Israeli citizen who devoted half a year to being a "protective presence" for Palestinians in the West Bank occupied territories.
For six months, I lived alongside those I’d been relentlessly warned would kill me at first opportunity. The truths I learned there must be shared, especially with others raised on the same fears.
The Real News Network's Adam Johnson does a takedown of Jake Tapper and his new book "Original Sin".
So Tapper has found the great scandal of the Biden years, and it is, of course, not one that upsets anyone at the Pentagon, the US Chamber of Commerce, the editorial boards of the New York Times or the Atlantic or AIPAC. The Biden aging story is the perfect pseudo-scandal for corporate media, and thus the perfect Jake Tapper story: vaguely true, but ultimately of peripheral importance, scapegoating a handful of Biden flunkies and, most important of all, it allows Tapper to polish his Speaking Truth to Power brand without speaking truth to anyone in a position of actual power.
Johnson's candidate for the real Biden scandal is supporting Israel's genocide in Gaza.
[I]n over 15 months of co-hosting the influential Sunday news show State of the Union during the Gaza genocide under Biden, Tapper never once platformed a single Palestinian guest, while giving ample platform to a revolving door of Biden officials, Israeli spokespeople, and two softball interviews with Israeli Prime Minister—and fugitive from international justice—Benjamin Netanyahu.
Consistent with his yawning through the genocide under Biden, Tapper mostly ignores it under Trump and only chimes in to frame the latest Israeli war crime in terms favorable to Israel. Even worse than never bothering to interview a single Palestinian, his Sunday news show, since Israel recommenced its genocide on March 18, hasn’t brought up Gaza as a topic once.
Anthropologist Anand Pandian has traveled the country speaking to people of all backgrounds and opinions.
In my writing, I try to show how everyday structures of isolation – at home and on the road, for the body and the mind – magnify the social and political divides we lament so often. These interlocking walls of everyday life sharpen the divide between insiders and outsiders, making it hard to take unfamiliar people and perspectives seriously, to acknowledge the needs of others and relate to their struggles.
So much turns on the edges between the familiar and the foreign, these lines we’ve come to live with on a daily basis. Can we learn once again to take these edges as spaces of encounter, rather than hard divides between ourselves and the world beyond?
and let's close with an intriguing thought
David Farrier considers the possibility that AI might crack animal languages, and what it might do to human consciousness if we learned how other species communicate.
In interspecies translation, sound only takes us so far. Animals communicate via an array of visual, chemical, thermal and mechanical cues, inhabiting worlds of perception very different to ours. Can we really understand what sound means to echolocating animals, for whom sound waves can be translated visually?
The German ecologist Jakob von Uexküll called these impenetrable worlds umwelten. To truly translate animal language, we would need to step into that animal’s umwelt – and then, what of us would be imprinted on her, or her on us? “If a lion could talk,” writes Stephen Budiansky, revising Wittgenstein’s famous aphorism in Philosophical Investigations, “we probably could understand him. He just would not be a lion any more.”
