Was October 5th the same time T**** announced that Republicans wouldn’t have to worry about voting anymore?
No, that was in July and again in September. What event did this strange statement correspond to? Musk had already put a ton of money into the campaign at that point, so it wasn’t PAC money alone.
May 31, 2025 (Saturday)
“I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition,” Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine told her colleagues on June 1, 1950. “It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear…. I speak as a Republican, I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States senator. I speak as an American.”
“Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism,” she pointed out. Americans have the right to criticize, to hold unpopular beliefs, to protest, and to think for themselves. But attacks that cost people their reputations and jobs were stifling these basic American principles, and the ones making those attacks were in her own party.
Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy, who was sitting two rows behind her, led a faction that had cowed almost all of the Republican Party into silence by accusing their opponents of “communism.” Smith recognized the damage McCarthy and his ilk were doing to the nation. She had seen the effects of his behavior up close in Maine, where the faction of the Republican Party that supported McCarthy had supported the state’s Ku Klux Klan.
“Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America,” Senator Smith said. “It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others.”
Senator Smith wanted a Republican administration, she explained, but to replace President Harry Truman’s Democratic administration—for which she had plenty of harsh words—with a Republican regime “that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty would prove equally disastrous to this nation.”
“I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.”
“I doubt if the Republican party could do so,” she added, “simply because I do not believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans are not that desperate for victory.”
“I do not want to see the Republican party win that way,” she said. “While it might be a fleeting victory for the Republican party, it would be a more lasting defeat for the American people. Surely it would ultimately be suicide for the Republican party and the two-party system that has protected our American liberties from the dictatorship of a one-party system.”
“As an American, I condemn a Republican Fascist just as much as I condemn a Democrat Communist,” she said. “They are equally dangerous to you and me and to our country. As an American, I want to see our nation recapture the strength and unity it once had when we fought the enemy instead of ourselves.”
Smith presented a “Declaration of Conscience,” listing five principles she hoped her party would adopt. It ended with a warning: “It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”
In 1950, six other Republican senators signed onto Senator Smith’s declaration, leading McCarthy to sneer at “Snow White and the Six Dwarves.” Other Republicans quietly applauded Smith’s courage but refused to show similar courage themselves with public support.
In a statement in honor of the 75th anniversary of Smith’s Declaration of Conscience, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) noted that our time resembles hers, and decried the “character assassination, baldfaced lies, petty insults, and round-the-clock disinformation” of MAGA Republicans.
“[T]he hollowing out of American political language…tracks the corruption of American government and the disappearance of serious policy debate,” he wrote. “These movements of thought are not just part of one politician’s campaign for power. They are in service of a ruling public philosophy, which treats the government as an instrument for class plunder and private self-enrichment, a get-even-filthier-rich-quick scheme for the president and his family and friends.”
But for those who believe “that the government should be an instrument for the common good of all and the defense of our freedoms and civil rights, the state of politics in the country is a…serious threat to the survival of democratic institutions and the possibility of democratic progress.”
“The essential work of democracy is being trashed by the rule-or-ruin politics of the MAGA party,” Raskin wrote. “This is not a partisan exercise we are engaged in today to save and strengthen democracy in America…. MAGA and [the Department of Government Efficiency] are engaged in a hostile takeover of all the political institutions and programmatic achievements of American democracy.”
“Here in America we have a supreme Constitution, not a supreme leader,” Raskin wrote. “Democracy is not just a static collection of rules and practices. It is an unfinished project in motion, a constant work in progress. And we must never forget that democracy is the political system in service of human freedom.”
A month ago, another Maine senator, Independent Angus King, recalled Smith’s Declaration of Conscience in a speech to his colleagues in the Senate. “I fear that we are at a similar moment in history,” he said. “And…today’s ‘serious national condition’ [involves] the President of the United States. Echoing Senator Smith, today’s crisis should not be viewed as a partisan issue; this is not about Democrats or Republicans, or immigration or tax policy, or even the next set of elections; today’s crisis threatens the idea of America and the system of government that has sustained us for more than two centuries.”
“What’s at stake,” he said, is “the driving force behind the basic design of our Constitution—the grave danger to any society is the concentration of power in one set of hands.” King quoted framer of the Constitution James Madison, who warned: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands…may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
And yet, King said, “this ‘accumulation of all powers’ is exactly what is happening today, before our very eyes. Although many in this body unfortunately seem determined to ignore it, deliberately ignore it, the evidence is everywhere: from the elimination of Congressionally-established agencies to the withholding of appropriated funds…to issuing executive orders purporting to be law in place of legislation to sidestepping if not ignoring court orders: This President is engaged in the most direct assault on the Constitution in our history, and we in this body, at least thus far, are inert—and therefore complicit…. [T]his President is attempting to govern as a monarch, unbound by law or Constitutional restraint, not as a President subject to the constraints of the Constitution and the rule of law.”
King implored his colleagues to “reclaim our power…. You know, do our job.” He reminded them: “Each of us swore—swore, mind you—to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic’; [and that we would] ‘bear true faith and allegiance to [the Constitution].’ Clearly,” he said, “the Framers knew there might someday be ‘domestic’ enemies of the Constitution and made it our sacred obligation to defend the Constitution from them,” and he called for his colleagues to stand alongside him to do so.
Last night, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) told host Jimmy Kimmel that Republican senators are indeed unnerved by Trump’s behavior and the actions of the administration. The problem, Booker said, is what Thomas Jefferson said: “‘When the public fears their government, there is tyranny. When the government fears its people, there is liberty.’”
Republicans in office “are so afraid of Donald Trump that they are letting things go,” Booker said “We the people have to make our politicians fear the consequences of…doing wrong more than they fear that Donald Trump will run a primary against them, or put $100 million, or troll them on the internet. This is…one of those moments when we are not going to see change in Washington unless more of us have said enough.”
Recalling the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Booker said that “the problem today we have to repent for is not just the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people, but also the appalling silence and inaction of the good people. This is the time Americans have to step up and let their voices be heard.”
Seventy-five years ago, Senator Smith’s voice was largely ignored in the public arena. But she was right. Four years later, the Senate condemned McCarthy, and after his death in 1957, Wisconsin voters elected Democrat William Proxmire, who held the seat for the next 32 years. And while Senator Smith was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, McCarthy has gone down in history as a disgrace to his state and to the United States of America.
June 1, 2025 (Sunday)
Even as government agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ramp up their arrests and confrontations, the lug nuts on the wheels of the White House bus continue to loosen.
On Wednesday, officers from the Federal Protective Service, which is part of DHS, handcuffed an aide in the Manhattan office of Representative Jerry Nadler (D-NY). Someone sitting in the office captured the confrontation on video.
Federal agents are trying to meet the quotas the administration has set for arrests by detaining individuals outside immigration courtrooms after they show up for their scheduled hearings. According to Christopher Maag of the New York Times, peaceful protestors gathered on Wednesday outside the Manhattan federal building that holds an immigration court and immigration advocates gathered outside the courtroom. As officers detained immigrants outside the courtroom, advocates reminded the immigrants they had a right to remain silent. Officers threatened to arrest the advocates for loitering, and a member of Nadler’s staff invited some of the advocates to Nadler’s office a floor above the court to defuse the situation.
The video shows a federal agent demanding access to a private area of Nadler’s office, saying “You’re harboring rioters in the office.” When an aide tried to stop them, agents handcuffed the aide. When another aide asked for a search warrant, an agent said they didn’t need one and pushed past her.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said that its officers entered Nadler’s office because they were concerned about the safety of his staff members and that the agents detained the aide so they could complete their safety check.
Nadler, who is the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, identified the invasion of his office as an attempt to intimidate a member of Congress. “The Trump administration is really using totalitarian or even authoritarian practices,” he said. “We have to fight them. We don’t want to be a fascist country.”
Late Friday afternoon, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided a popular San Diego restaurant, Buona Forchetta, just before it was supposed to open in what immigration advocate Aaron Reichlin-Melnick identified as an attempt to get local governments to work with them.
J.W. August of the Times of San Diego reported that, according to the restaurant’s manager, twenty to twenty-five ICE officers “surrounded the building and then came inside,” pushed him against a wall and handcuffed him and the staff, many of whom are students. The agents looked at a computer and at employees and, apparently not finding what they were searching for, arrested two employees because “they didn’t have a physical ID.” When an angry crowd tried to stop them from taking the two workers, the officers threw two flash-bang grenades to push the crowd back.
After the Department of Homeland Security published a list of sheriffs it claimed were noncompliant in working with DHS, the National Sheriffs’ Association issued a statement yesterday saying the publication of the list “has not only violated the core principles of trust, cooperation, and partnership with fellow law enforcement, but it also has the potential to strain the relationship between Sheriffs and the White House administration” and “could create a vacuum of trust that may take years to overcome.”
The organization, many of whose members are Trump loyalists, tried to distance DHS from the president, saying that “DHS has done a terrible disservice to President Trump and the Sheriffs of this country,” and demanded DHS apologize “to the Sheriffs and the American people.”
While apparently using its immigration policies to tighten its grip on the country, the administration itself appears to be in disarray. The acknowledgement in the New York Times that billionaire Elon Musk frequently used drugs during the 2024 campaign was only one weak spot in the administration.
Musk had fought with other administration officials, leading to rumors about the black eye he was sporting in Friday’s press conference. Recently, he had spoken out against the Republicans’ omnibus bill, and after reports that his Department of Government Efficiency had actually cost the government money, President Donald J. Trump reportedly asked his aides, “Was it all bullsh*t?”
After the press conference in which Trump thanked him for his service, the White House withdrew the nomination of Musk’s ally Jared Isaacman to head the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
On Thursday, Emily Kennard and Margaret Manto of NOTUS, the digital publication that covers U.S. politics, noted that the report of the “Make America Healthy Again” Commission, released a week earlier, is full of errors, including misrepresentation of experiments and nonexistent studies.
Margaret Manto of NOTUS wrote that the report appeared to confirm exactly what Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. expected it would: that the primary drivers of chronic disease in children are “ultra-processed foods, environmental toxins, technology and medications, including vaccines.” It calls for a “coordinated national lifestyle-medicine initiative” to improve health with “movement, diet, light exposure, and sleep timing.”
It also calls for the government to apply artificial intelligence to “federal health and nutrition datasets” to “detect harmful exposures and childhood chronic disease trends.”
After news broke of the errors in the report, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the problems “formatting issues.” But AI experts told Lauren Weber and Caitlin Gilbert of the Washington Post that it appears the report’s authors relied heavily on AI. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told Weber and Gilbert, “This is not an evidence-based report, and for all practical purposes, it should be junked at this point. It cannot be used for any policymaking. It cannot even be used for any serious discussion, because you can’t believe what’s in it.”
Trump also appears to be having trouble with the demands of governance. Yesterday, Courtney Kube, Carol E. Lee, Gordon Lubold, Dan De Luce, and Elyse Perlmutter-Gumbiner of NBC News reported that the director of national intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, is trying to figure out how to change Trump’s intelligence briefings to hold his attention. She is apparently considering creating a video of the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) that’s made to look like a broadcast on the Fox News Channel. “The problem with Trump is that he doesn’t read,” one person with direct knowledge of the discussions told the reporters. “He’s on broadcast all the time.”
Since he took office on January 20, 2025, Trump has taken just 14 PDBs, or fewer than one a week on average. In the same period, President Barack Obama took 63, and President Joe Biden took 90.
In a statement, DNI press secretary Olivia Coleman called the NBC story “laughable, absurd, and flat-out false.” But there is no doubt people from within the administration are talking to reporters and the administration is fixated on leaks: Today, Adam Goldman of the New York Times reported that Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Kash Patel is forcing employees to take polygraph tests to find leakers.
Goldman’s story was informed by insiders, though, who told him that Patel has fired so many people that he and his deputy, former political commentator Dan Bongino, have, as Goldman wrote, “obliterated decades of experience in national security and criminal matters at the FBI.” Goldman also reported that the top female agents at the FBI were told to take different jobs in the agency or retire.
There is also no doubt Trump continues to demonstrate that he is more committed to fantasy than reality.
Last night, he reposted a longstanding conspiracy theory that former president Joe Biden was executed in 2020 and that “Biden clones doubles & robotic engineered soulless mindless entities are what you see…. Democrats don’t know the difference.” The post was followed by MAGA and MAHA hashtags.
I sometimes take heart in the many kinds of administrative incompetence that HCR gives of taste of in that letter, by thinking they just can’t carry out a fascist takeover because so few of them have any idea how to do their jobs. But then I swing back to realizing that such incompetence at so many levels is also really fucking destructive and dangerous.
Yeah, the firings at the FBI are a good example. It’s going to take years, maybe decades, to recover that level of knowledge and experience in the Bureau. And that’s happened in nearly every department and agency. Hell, it could be years before we even start to see the full effects of all this carnage.
I was thinking about this yesterday, or a related issue. We know a lot of the things this administration is doing have already cost lives, and will continue to, but many of those will be hard to tie directly to the administration. Some will be increased suicide rates in vulnerable groups, and some of it will just be from health complications from increased stress in people, including government employees. A lot of this is nebulous and impossible to directly quantify, but there will be a way to detect it. It won’t show up for a couple of years, but we should see this reflected in the unexpected deaths statistics. Normally, the number of people who die every year in a large enough population group is predictable and consistent, and proportional to population growth. But when something happens that causes a significantly larger number of people to die, the number of actual deaths will exceed the predicted number, and that’s unexpected deaths. You can use this to see how many people actually died from COVID, and it’s significantly larger than the official number. I have a feeling this number is going to go up under this administration. It will be a couple of years before the data exists, but I think people should look at it.
People have died very recently in “unexpected” tornado touchdowns. Closing NOAA prediction centers is directly tied to the current administration, these deaths are also directly tied to the administration’s actions. There will be many more to come as tornado season is not even half over and hurricane season starts [checks watch] yesterday.
And apparently our new head of FEMA is just now learning that there’s a hurricane season.
June 2, 2025 (Monday)
The Republicans’ giant budget reconciliation bill has focused attention on the drastic cuts the Trump administration is making to the American government. On Friday, when a constituent at a town hall shouted that the Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicaid, the federal healthcare program for low-income Americans, meant that “people will die,” Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) replied, “Well, we are all going to die.”
The next day, Ernst released a video purporting to be an apology. It made things worse. “I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this Earth. So, I apologize. And I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well. But for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my lord and savior, Jesus Christ," she said.
Ernst blamed the “hysteria that’s out there coming from the left” for the outcry over her comments. Like other Republicans, she claims that the proposed cuts of more than $700 billion in Medicaid funding over the next ten years is designed only to get rid of the waste and fraud in the program. Thus, they say, they are actually strengthening Medicaid for those who need it.
But, as Linda Qiu noted in the New York Times today, most of the bill’s provisions have little to do with the “waste, fraud, and abuse” Republicans talk about. They target Medicaid expansion, cut the ability of states to finance Medicaid, force states to drop coverage, and limit access to care. And the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the cuts mean more than 10.3 million Americans will lose health care coverage.
House speaker Mike Johnson has claimed that those losing coverage will be 1.4 million unauthorized immigrants, but this is false. As Qiu notes, although 14 states use their own funds to provide health insurance for undocumented immigrant children, and seven of those states provide some coverage for undocumented pregnant women, in fact, “unauthorized immigrants are not eligible for federally funded Medicaid, except in emergency situations.” Instead, the bill pressures those fourteen states to drop undocumented coverage by reducing their federal Medicaid funding.
MAGA Republicans claim their “One Big, Beautiful Bill”—that’s its official name—dramatically reduces the deficit, but that, too, is a lie.
On Thursday, May 29, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed the measure would carry out “the largest deficit reduction in nearly 30 years with $1.6 trillion in mandatory savings.” She echoed forty years of Republican claims that the economic growth unleashed by the measure would lead to higher tax revenues, a claim that hasn’t been true since Ronald Reagan made it in the 1980s.
In fact, the CBO estimates that the tax cuts and additional spending in the measure mean “[a]n increase in the federal deficit of $3.8 trillion.” As G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers notes, the CBO has been historically very reliable, but Leavitt and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) tried to discount its scoring by claiming, as Johnson said: “They are historically totally unreliable. It’s run by Democrats.”
The director of the CBO, economist Philip Swagel, worked as chief of staff and senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisors during the George W. Bush administration. He was appointed in 2019 with the support of Senate Budget Committee chair Michael Enzi (R-WY) and House Budget Committee chair John Yarmuth (D-KY). He was reappointed in 2023 with bipartisan support.
Republican cuts to government programs are a dramatic reworking of America’s traditional evidence-based government that works to improve the lives of a majority of Americans. They are replacing that government with an ideologically driven system that concentrates wealth and power in a few hands and denies that the government has a role to play in protecting Americans.
And yet, those who get their news by watching the Fox News Channel are likely unaware of the Republicans’ planned changes to Medicaid. As Aaron Rupar noted, on this morning’s Fox and Friends, the hosts mentioned Medicaid just once. They mentioned former president Joe Biden 39 times.
That change shows dramatically in cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA is an agency in the Commerce Department, established under Republican president Richard Nixon in 1970, that monitors weather conditions, storms, and ocean currents. The National Weather Service (NWS), which provides weather, wind, and ocean forecasts, is part of NOAA.
NWS forecasts annually provide the U.S. with an estimated $31.5 billion in benefits as they enable farmers, fishermen, businesspeople, schools, and individuals to plan around weather events.
As soon as he took office, Trump imposed an across-the-board hiring freeze, and billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” fired probationary employees and impounded funds Congress had appropriated. Now, as hurricane season begins, experts in storms and disasters are worried that the NOAA will be unable to function adequately.
Cuts to the NWS have already meant fewer weather balloons and thus less data, leaving gaps in information for a March ice storm in Northern Michigan and for storms and floods in Oklahoma in April. Oliver Milman of The Guardian reported today that 15 NWS offices on the Gulf of Mexico, a region vulnerable to hurricanes, are understaffed after losing more than 600 employees. Miami’s National Hurricane Center is short five specialists. Thirty of the 122 NWS stations no longer have a meteorologist in charge, and as of June 1, seven of those 122 stations will not have enough staff to operate around the clock.
On May 5, the five living former NWS leaders, who served under both Democratic and Republican presidents, wrote a letter to the American people warning that the cuts threaten to bring “needless loss of life.” They urged Americans to “raise your voice” against the cuts.
Trump’s proposed 2026 budget calls for “terminating a variety of climate-dominated research, data, and grant programs” and cutting about 25% more out of NOAA’s funding.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has also suffered dramatic cuts as Trump has said he intends to push disaster recovery to the states. The lack of expertise is taking a toll there, too. Today staff members there said they were baffled after David Richardson, the head of the agency, said he did not know the United States has a hurricane season. (It does, and it stretches from June 1 to the end of November.) Richardson had no experience with disaster response before taking charge of FEMA.
Trump’s proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are even more draconian. On Friday, in a more detailed budget than the administration published in early May, the administration called for cuts of 43% to the NIH, about $20 billion a year. That includes cuts of nearly 40% to the National Cancer Institute. At the same time, the administration is threatening to end virtually all biomedical research at universities.
On Friday, May 23, the White House issued an executive order called “Restoring Gold Standard Science.” The order cites the COVID-19 guidance about school reopenings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to claim that the federal government under President Joe Biden “used or promoted scientific information in a highly misleading manner.” (Schools closed in March 2020 under Trump.) The document orders that “[e]mployees shall not engage in scientific misconduct” and, scientists Colette Delawalla, Victor Ambros, Carl Bergstrom, Carol Greider, Michael Mann, and Brian Nosek explain in The Guardian, gives political appointees the power to silence any research they oppose “based on their own ‘judgment.’” They also have the power to punish those scientists whose work they find objectionable.
The Guardian authors note that science is “the most important long-term investment for humanity.” They recall the story of Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko, who is a prime example of the terrible danger of replacing fact-based reality with ideology.
As Sam Kean of The Atlantic noted in 2017, Lysenko opposed science-based agriculture in the mid-20th century in favor of the pseudo-scientific idea that the environment alone shapes plants and animals. This idea reflected communist political thought, and Lysenko gained the favor of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Lysenko claimed that his own agricultural techniques, which included transforming one species into another, would dramatically increase crop yields. Government leaders declared that Lysenko’s ideas were the only correct ones, and anyone who disagreed with him was denounced. About 3,000 biologists whose work contradicted his were fired or sent to jail. Some were executed. Scientific research was effectively banned.
In the 1930s, Soviet leaders set out to “modernize” Soviet agriculture, and when their new state-run farming collectives failed, they turned to Lysenko to fix the problem with his new techniques. Almost everything planted according to his demands died or rotted. In the USSR and in China, which adopted his methods in the 1950s, at least 30 million people died of starvation.
“[W]hen the doctrines of science and the doctrines of communism clashed, he always chose the latter—confident that biology would conform to ideology in the end,” Kean said of Lysenko. He concludes: “It never did.”
Is he some dirty fer’iner or incredibly stupid?
That might be the most terrifying sentence I have read lately. And that is saying something!
And have we learned anything since then? And I’m not just talking progressives. Do you think moderates learned anything since then, like that T**** is a fucking fascist? Because I think they’ve finally clued into that. I won’t shun them if they are willing to fight. People who sit it out because those allies aren’t pure enough are worthless in the fight we are in NOW.
I doubt it. Stein won millions of almost a million votes (Corrected - thank you, @chenille). Anyone who voted for Stein (or T****, fer chrissakes, or just didn’t vote) because Harris campaigned with Cheney wasn’t actually going to vote for Harris, anyway. They just use it as an excuse to cover their bigotry or self-importance.
June 3, 2025 (Tuesday)
On June 1, Ukrainian forces struck deep inside Russia in “Operation Spider Web.” One hundred and seventeen drones, each operated by its own pilot, hit airfields in five regions. Ukraine says the drones hit 41 strategic bombers that had been attacking Ukrainian cities and destroyed at least 13 of them. Russia does not have the industrial capabilities to replace them.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) head Vasyl Malyuk emphasized that military airfields and the aircraft that are bombing Ukraine are “absolutely legitimate targets…[a]ccording to the laws and customs of war.” The SBU estimates the drones did $7 billion of damage, hitting 34% of the aircraft that delivered cruise missiles.
The operation took more than 18 months of planning. It apparently involved sending trucks loaded with wooden cabins that had detachable roofs that could be opened remotely. Unsuspecting truck drivers hauled the cabins to locations near airbases, where the drones launched.
Once the drones were in the air, the vehicles carrying the cabins exploded. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said the people who helped with the operation from within Russia had been withdrawn and “are now safe.”
Russia denied that the damage was that extensive, but there is no doubt that the attack was a significant blow to Russia’s war effort, demonstrating as it does that Ukraine can bring the war home. As Kateryna Bonder of the Washington, D.C., think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies notes, June 1 was Military Transport Aviation Day in Russia, a significant holiday for the armed forces. Russian president Vladimir Putin frequently ties operations to significant dates—as when he hosted a number of American lawmakers in Moscow on July 4, 2018—and the choice of this date for an attack on military aircraft threw that habit back at him.
Analysts recognize the Ukrainian attack as a new moment in warfare. Using apparently unwitting civilians, the Ukrainians managed to get their drones close enough to their targets to avoid Russia’s air defense systems; then, Bonder explains, the drones relied on a system that allowed operators to pilot them to the planes’ strategic weaknesses. The drones themselves cost between $600 and $1,000 apiece—and by using deception, technology, and strategic surprise, the Ukrainians managed to destroy billions of dollars worth of aircraft.
Bonder notes that the attack heralds a change in modern warfare, in which technological agility will trump industrial capacity and advantage will go to those countries that can adapt quickly to changing conditions.
Some observers are calling the attack the Russian Pearl Harbor, a reference to the attack by the Japanese Navy on the U.S. Pacific Fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, an attack that led to U.S. entry into World War II. But Russia has been attacking Ukraine since 2014 and launched a full-scale invasion in 2022. This attack illustrates extraordinary vulnerability at this point, rather as if Pearl Harbor had happened in early 1945.
A former commander of U.S. Army Europe, retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, posted: “For months, some believed that Ukraine didn’t ‘hold any cards.’ Many of us have refuted that claim, saying an inflection point—due to failing Russian war economy and continued lack of Russian leadership adaptation, but especially due to a continued strong Ukrainian government, military and population support and will mixed with their innovative use of Special Operations, un-crewed systems (various drones), and fiber optic capabilities to counter Russian EW—would soon be felt on the battlefield. The coordinated and synchronized attack today, which appears to have decimated much of the Russian air fleet that were based over 4,000 km from the front line, is showing that Ukraine certainly has many aces in the hole.”
Hertling’s comment that some thought Ukraine didn’t hold any cards is a reference to President Donald J. Trump, who ambushed Zelensky in the Oval Office on February 28, warning him that Ukraine must cut a deal with Putin because Zelensky didn’t “have the cards” to win the war. With that meeting, Trump signaled that U.S. policy, which has supported Ukraine since 1994, would change to favor Russia.
In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assistances, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security assurances from the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Russia that they would honor the sovereignty and borders of Ukraine, a promise Russia broke when it invaded Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014.
During the 2024 U.S. presidential election campaign, Trump vowed that he would end the war in Ukraine in a single day, maybe with a single phone call, and as other victories have slipped away from him, he has appeared frustrated that such an achievement has proved more difficult than he thought.
After the Oval Office meeting, the Ukrainians agreed to a 30-day ceasefire on March 11, but Russia has consistently refused to agree unless Ukraine accepts major territorial concessions and permits Russia to dictate that it not join the defensive North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Rather than negotiating, Putin has launched repeated attacks on Ukrainian civil targets. On Sunday, May 25, Russia launched the largest air attack on Ukraine since the war began, and the week before, it launched its largest drone attack.
Those attacks happened even as Trump was talking directly with Putin, allegedly about a ceasefire. The White House policy has skewed heavily toward Russia against Ukraine even to the point that Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff relied on Putin’s own translators during negotiations on February 11, March 13, and April 11. While Putin speaks English, Witkoff does not speak Russian.
Trump claims to be frustrated with Putin, at one point calling him “absolutely crazy,” which prompted Putin’s spokesperson to suggest that Trump was suffering from “emotional overload.” On May 27, Trump appeared to acknowledge his longstanding relationship with Putin when he posted on his social media site: “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire!”
And yet, although more than 80 senators from both parties have co-sponsored a bill to impose stronger sanctions against Russia, Trump has refused to back it, thus stalling it. Meanwhile, Benedict Smith of The Telegraph today covered State Department acting under-secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs Darren Beattie, who dismantled the office that countered disinformation from Russia, China, and Iran. In 2021, Smith notes, Beattie married a Russian national whose uncle has ties to Putin.
Beattie was dismissed from the first Trump administration after attending a white nationalist rally. He has attacked the United States as the “globalist American empire” and said that Putin should infiltrate western institutions to fight “woke” ideology. In 2021, Beattie wrote that the “position [of the U.S.] in the global order [is] rapidly deteriorating” and that he looked forward to its “prestige and power” collapsing. Praising Putin as “brave and strong,” he said that Putin had “done more to advance conservative positions in the US than any Republican” and that “just about every Western institution would improve in quality if it were directly infiltrated and controlled by Putin.”
Beattie also wrote: “NATO is a far worse threat to the health, liberty, freedom, and flourishing of American citizens than Russia and China combined.”
Administration officials said the Ukrainians did not notify them before launching Operation Spider Web.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian forces detonated underwater explosives attached to the Kerch bridge connecting Russia to the occupied Crimean Peninsula. This is Ukraine’s third attack on the bridge since 2022. The SBU said the explosives “severely damaged” bridge supports, but the bridge reopened hours later.
The Ukrainian operations are only the most dramatic developments in ongoing stories today that show the Trump administration is not calling all the shots.
Trump’s vow to negotiate trade deals in place of his tariff walls has not yet produced any of those deals, and the White House today said it’s “likely” that a call will take place this week with China’s leader Xi Jinping. But Lingling Wei of the Wall Street Journal explained yesterday that Xi has made it clear China will play hardball with the U.S.
Daniel Russel, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs in the Obama administration, told Phelim Kine, Daniel Desrochers, Megan Messerly, and Ari Hawkins of Politico: “Beijing has a sharp nose for weakness, and for all his bravado, Trump is signaling eagerness—even desperation—to cut a direct deal with Xi. That only stiffens Beijing’s resolve.”
Biden administration National Security Council deputy senior director for China and Taiwan Rush Doshi noted that Chinese officials see Trump as “unpredictable” and that Chinese diplomats don’t usually put the leader “at risk of a potentially embarrassing or unpredictable encounter.”
Jake Lahut of Wired reported yesterday that Trump advisors are themselves tired of right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who has Trump’s ear. Their comments to Lahut appear designed to put pressure on Trump to push her away, a sign that for now, anyway, she is entrenched.
Newark, New Jersey, mayor Ras Baraka, whom Department of Homeland Security agents arrested on May 9, 2025, has sued the acting U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, Alina Habba, and the special agent in charge of the Newark Division of Homeland Security Investigations, Ricky J. Patel, for false arrest and malicious prosecution. He is suing Habba alone for defamation.
The suit outlines Habba’s public statements against Democrats in New Jersey and her vow to “turn…New Jersey red.” It says Habba acted “as a political operative” “in her individual personal capacity” “outside of any function intimately related to the judicial process” when she posted on her social media account that Baraka “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon. He has willingly chosen to disregard the law.” After repeated similar public statements, Habba dropped all charges.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem took down her list of “sanctuary cities” she said weren’t cooperating with federal immigration authorities after the National Sheriffs’ Association demanded an apology.
Trump began today by attacking Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) for his opposition to the extraordinary cost of Republicans’ omnibus bill, insisting that the bill would create “tremendous GROWTH.” But this afternoon, billionaire Elon Musk took a firm stand against Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” posting on X: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
Meanwhile, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) released a report showing that Musk’s net worth has increased by more than $100 billion since Election Day. The report listed the many ways in which he used his position in the federal government to stop investigations into his companies, undercut regulations, win federal contracts, gain access to data and sensitive information, attack his enemies, meddle in elections, and secure foreign deals, all without informing the American people of his conflicts of interest.
June 4, 2025 (Wednesday)
Just hours after President Donald J. Trump posted on social media yesterday that “[b]ecause of Tariffs, our Economy is BOOMING!” a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said the opposite. Founded in 1961, the OECD is a forum in which 38 market-based democracies cooperate to promote sustainable economic growth.
The OECD’s economic outlook reports that economic growth around the globe is slowing because of Trump’s trade war. It projects global growth slowing from 3.3% in 2024 to 2.9% in 2025 and 2026. That economic slowdown is concentrated primarily in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and China.
The OECD predicts that growth in the United States will decline from 2.8% in 2024 to 1.6% in 2025 and 1.5% in 2026.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released two analyses today of Trump’s policies that add more detail to that report. The CBO’s estimate for the effect of Trump’s current tariffs—which are unlikely to stay as they are—is that they will raise inflation and slow economic growth as consumers bear their costs. The CBO says it is hard to anticipate how the tariffs will change purchasing behavior, but it estimates that the tariffs will reduce the deficit by $2.8 trillion over ten years.
Also today, the CBO’s analysis of the Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is that it will add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade because the $1.2 trillion in spending cuts in the measure do not fully offset the $3.7 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Republicans have met this CBO score with attacks on the CBO, but its estimate is in keeping with those of a wide range of economists and think tanks.
Taken together, these studies illustrate how Trump’s economic policies are designed to transfer wealth from consumers to the wealthy and corporations. From 1981 to 2021, American policies moved $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. After Biden stopped that upward transfer, the Trump administration is restarting it again, on steroids.
Just how these policies are affecting Americans is no longer clear, though. Matt Grossman of the Wall Street Journal reported today that economists no longer trust the accuracy of the government’s inflation data. Officials from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiles a huge monthly survey of employment and costs, told economists that staffing shortages and a hiring freeze have forced them to cut back on their research and use less precise methods for figuring out price changes. Grossman reports that the bureau has also cut back on the number of places where it collects data and that the administration has gotten rid of committees of external experts that worked to improve government statistics.
There is more than money at stake in the administration’s policies. The administration’s gutting of the government seeks to decimate the modern government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure, and protects civil rights and to replace it with a government that permits a few wealthy men to rule.
The CBO score for the Republicans’ omnibus bill projects that if it is enacted, 16 million people will lose access to healthcare insurance over the next decade in what is essentially an assault on the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The bill also dramatically cuts Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan (SNAP) benefits, clean energy credits, aid for student borrowers, benefits for federal workers, and consumer protection services, while requiring the sale of public natural resources.
These cuts continue those the administration has made since Trump took office, many of which fell under the hand of the “Department of Government Efficiency.” But, while billionaire Elon Musk was the figurehead for that group, it appears his main interest was in collecting data. His understudy, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, appears to have determined the direction of the cuts, which did not save money so much as decimate the parts of the government that the authors of Project 2025 wanted to destroy.
Vought was a key author of Project 2025, whose aim is to disrupt and destroy the United States government order to center a Christian, heteronormative, male-dominated family as the primary element of society. To do so, the plan calls for destroying the administrative state, withdrawing the United States from global affairs, and ending environmental and business regulations.
Yesterday the White House asked Congress to cancel $9.4 billion in already-appropriated spending that the Department of Government Efficiency identified as wasteful, a procedure known as “rescission.” Trump aides say the money funds programs that promote what they consider inappropriate ideologies, including public media networks PBS and NPR; the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides food and basic medical care globally; and PEPFAR, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief that was established under President George W. Bush to combat HIV/AIDS in more than 50 countries and is currently credited with saving about 26 million lives.
Vought appeared today before the House Appropriations Committee, where members scolded him for neglecting to provide a budget for the year, which they need to do their jobs. But Vought had plenty to say about the things he is doing. According to ProPublica’s Andy Kroll, he claimed that under Biden “every agency became a tool of the Left.” He said the White House will continue to ask for rescissions, but also noted that, as Project 2025 laid out, he does not believe that the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which requires the executive branch to spend the money that Congress has appropriated, is constitutional, despite court decisions saying it is.
Representative Rosa DeLaur0 (D-CT) told Vought: “Be honest, this is never about government efficiency. In fact, an efficient government, a government that capably serves the American people and proves good government is achievable is what you fear the most. You want a government so broken, so dysfunctional, so starved of resources, so full of incompetent political lackeys and bereft of experts and professionals that its departments and agencies cannot feasibly achieve the goals and the missions to which they are lawfully directed. Your goal is privatization, for the biggest companies to have unchecked power, for an economy that does not work for the middle class, for working and vulnerable families. You want the American people to have no one to turn to, but to the billionaires and the corporations this administration has put in charge. Waste, fraud, and abuse are not the targets of this administration. They are your primary objectives.”
The use of the government to impose evangelical beliefs on the country, even at the expense of lives, also appears to be an administration goal. Yesterday, the administration announced it is ending the Biden administration’s 2022 guidance to hospital emergency rooms that accept Medicare—which is virtually all of them—requiring that under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act they must perform an abortion in an emergency if the procedure is necessary to prevent a patient’s organ failure or severe hemorrhaging. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act requires emergency rooms to stabilize patients.
The Trump administration will no longer enforce that policy. Last year, an investigation by the Associated Press found that even when the Biden administration policy was being enforced, dozens of pregnant women, some of whom needed emergency abortions, were turned away from emergency rooms with advice to “let nature take its course.”
Finally tonight, in what seems likely to be an attempt to distract attention from the omnibus bill and all the controversy surrounding it, Trump banned Harvard from hosting foreign students. He also banned nationals from a dozen countries—Afghanistan, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen—from entering the United States, an echo of the travel ban of his first term that threw the country into chaos.
Trump justified his travel ban by citing the attack Sunday in Boulder, Colorado, on peaceful demonstrators marching to support Israeli hostages in Gaza. An Egyptian national who had overstayed a tourist visa hurled Molotov cocktails at the marchers, injuring 15 people.
Egypt is not on the list of countries whose nationals Trump has banned from the United States.
That’s the definitely talking point I’ve been hearing from the rightoid talking heads on CNN as of late: the CBO is a partisan organization that is determined to torpedo Trump’s agenda and that the Republican that is the CBO head is a secret Democrat operative. It’s such bullshit.
Any guesses as to what country is missing from the most recent travel ban? More performative bullshit.
That it’s a deliberate distraction seems obvious to many, and yet there it was this morning, top news at CNN’s front page, and probably many others too. Hook line sinker, etc etc
June 5, 2025 (Thursday)
Today the U.S. political world was consumed today by a public fight between President Donald J. Trump and his former sidekick, billionaire Elon Musk. Musk invested about $290 million into the 2024 election, vowing to elect Trump in order to get rid of government investigations into his businesses he worried would “take [him] down.”
When Trump took office, Musk became a fixture in the White House, attending Cabinet meetings and heading the “Department of Government Efficiency.” That group set out to kill government programs by withholding congressionally approved funds at the same time that its staff sucked up information on Americans that could feed the training of artificial intelligence and killed the investigations into his businesses Musk had worried about.
In February, Musk posted on social media: “I love [Donald Trump] as much as a straight man can love another man.”
But Musk overstepped boundaries and overstayed his welcome even as his antics hurt sales of his signature car, the Tesla, inspiring Trump to do a car commercial for him on the White House grounds. Just a week ago, Musk officially left the White House on the same day that an article in the New York Times documented his heavy drug use on the campaign.
Then, on Tuesday, June 3, he took a public stand against the omnibus bill Trump desperately wants Congress to pass, posting on X: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
And with that, the falling out began.
This morning, Trump told reporters he was “disappointed” in Musk. Ron Filipkowski of Meidas followed the saga from there.
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House, and the Republicans would be 51–49 in the Senate,” Musk wrote. “Such ingratitude.”
Trump then suggested that “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
Musk promptly said he would begin decommissioning SpaceX’s spacecraft, which supply the International Space Station.
The two men continued to go back and forth, with Musk saying that “Donald Trump is in the Epstein files,” a reference to the records compiled by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, with whom Trump was friendly. Musk also said Trump’s tariffs will cause a recession, and agreed with another poster who suggested that Trump should be impeached and replaced with Vice President J.D. Vance.
Trump responded to that attack far more weakly than one would have expected, simply turning back to the omnibus bill and insisting it “is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress.”
Musk’s behavior is erratic in its own right, but if there is anything but pique behind it, it appears he is threatening Trump by making a play to control the Republican Party. In response to a post by conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer suggesting that Republican lawmakers are unsure if they should side with Trump or Musk, Musk wrote: “Oh and some food for thought as they ponder that question: Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years.”
It’s quite a gamble, since Trump controls the government contracts on which Musk’s fortune was built and on which he still relies. Some MAGA loyalists appear to see the fight as a victory for Trump and are thrilled to see Musk’s star fall. MAGA influencer Steve Bannon told Tyler Pager of the New York Times that he has advised Trump to cancel all of Musk’s federal contracts and launch a formal investigation of his drug use and his immigration status.
Kylie Robison and Aarian Marshall of Wired noted that TrumpCoin lost more than $100 million in value during the fight. Tesla stock lost $152 billion of value from its market capitalization, prompting Filipkowski to note that the total came to about $9 billion per tweet.
Economist Robert Reich had perhaps the best summary of the fight today when he noted, “That any of us have to care about the messy breakup of these two massive narcissists—and that they both individually wield such massive power—is an indictment of our political system and further proves the poisonous influence of Big Money on our democracy.”
Indeed, today’s White House and today’s America are very different from what they were eighty-one years ago.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his twenty-ninth Fireside Chat on June 5, 1944, and had good news for the American people. The day before, on June 4, Rome had fallen to Allied troops. “The first of the Axis capitals is now in our hands,” Roosevelt said.
The president pointed out that it was “significant that Rome has been liberated by the armed forces of many nations. The American and British armies—who bore the chief burdens of battle—found at their sides our own North American neighbors, the gallant Canadians. The fighting New Zealanders from the far South Pacific, the courageous French and the French Moroccans, the South Africans, the Poles and the East Indians—all of them fought with us on the bloody approaches to the city of Rome. The Italians, too, forswearing a partnership in the Axis which they never desired, have sent their troops to join us in our battles against the German trespassers on their soil.”
This group of ordinary men from many different countries had worked together to defeat the forces of fascism.
But FDR warned Americans that the fall of Rome was only the beginning. “We shall have to push through a long period of greater effort and fiercer fighting before we get into Germany itself,” he said. [T]he victory still lies some distance ahead. That distance will be covered in due time—have no fear of that. But it will be tough and it will be costly.”
FDR knew something his audience did not. On the other side of the Atlantic, paratroopers, their faces darkened with cocoa, were already dropping into France, and the soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Allies were on their way across the English channel.
The order of the day from their commander Dwight D. Eisenhower that day had read: “You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed people of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
“Your task will not be an easy one,” it read, but it assured the troops that the Germans had suffered great defeats and Allied bombing had reduced German strength, while “[o]ur Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!”
Eisenhower’s public confidence did not reflect his understanding that the largest amphibious invasion in military history was a gamble. On June 5, in pencil on a sheet of paper, he had written a message to be communicated in case the invasion failed.
“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops,” it read. “My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and dedication to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”
On the morning of June 6, 1944, five naval assault divisions stormed the beaches of Normandy. Seven thousand ships and landing craft operated by more than 195,000 naval personnel from eight countries brought almost 133,000 troops to beaches given the code names UTAH, OMAHA, GOLD, JUNO, and SWORD. By the end of the day, more than 10,000 Allied troops were wounded or killed, but the Allies had established a foothold in France that would permit them to flood troops, vehicles, and supplies into Europe. When FDR held a press conference later that day, officials and press alike were jubilant.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but it looks like FDR forgot the Brazilian Expeditionary Force (FEB) in his little list.
Sigh
This is the crux of it. Millions of people’s lives hang in the balance. We have to pay attention to this schoolyard fight, not because we want to but because we have to prepare for how it’s going to blow back on us.
June 6, 2025 (Friday)
Last night, billionaire Elon Musk indicated he would be willing to paper over his fight with President Donald J. Trump, perhaps remembering, as Paresh Dave of Wired noted, that his companies stand to lose $48 billion over the next ten years if they lose their government contracts.
Trump spent this morning calling news anchors and telling them he’s not bothered by the fight. According to Nikki McCann Ramirez of Rolling Stone, Trump today called CNN’s Dana Bash, the Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, and CBS News’ Robert Costa to claim he’s “not even thinking about Elon,” before bashing him as “the man who has lost his mind.”
Yesterday, Lauren Goode of Wired reported that big tech investors and executives were trying to walk a fine line between the two men, trying not to take a stand for or against either. J.V. Last of The Bulwark noted that no one was more hesitant to take a side than Vice President J.D. Vance, who wants to keep the favor of his Silicon Valley patrons but also needs Trump’s backing. At 10:28 last night, after Musk was already retreating, Vance posted on social media: “President Trump has done more than any person in my lifetime to earn the trust of the movement he leads. I’m proud to stand beside him.” As Last notes, this was a pretty weak statement, and “Trump is smart enough to understand that this is a confession.”
“Do not doubt, don’t second guess, and do not challenge the President of the United States Donald Trump,” House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) warned Republican lawmakers. “He is the leader of the party. He’s the most consequential political figure of our time.”
After Russian officials said they were prepared to offer Musk political asylum, Musk spent the day posting or reposting material that boosted his businesses and complaints about Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” This evening, he announced: “A new political party is needed in America to represent the 80% in the middle!”
How the fallout from this fight will affect the country remains unclear, but the announcement that the Pentagon is investigating whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s aides were asked to delete Signal messages may well be related to Musk’s fall from favor. In April, Hegseth arranged for Musk to have a top-secret briefing on U.S. military plans in case of war with China. According to Marc Caputo of Axios, Trump himself stepped in to stop the briefing from going forward. Now Hegseth is under investigation.
It does seem likely that the administration will try to pin blame on Musk for the chaos that the “Department of Government Efficiency” launched against the United States government.
Brandon Roberts and Vernal Coleman of ProPublica reported today on the AI prompts the Department of Government Efficiency used to “munch”—the word DOGE employee Sahil Lavingia used for “cancel”—contracts related to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. Lavingia, who worked for two months for DOGE, said the idea was to go after anything that wasn’t “directly supporting patient care.” But the code was deeply flawed, resulting in wildly off-base contract values and a deep misunderstanding of what contracts actually did. “[M]istakes were made,” Lavingia said. “Mistakes are always made.”
Hannah Natanson, Adam Taylor, Meryl Kornfield, Rachel Siegel, and Scott Dance of the Washington Post took a broader view. They reported that “[a]cross the government, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire many federal employees dismissed under DOGE’s staff-slashing initiatives after wiping out entire offices, in some cases imperiling key services such as weather forecasting and the drug approval process.” They outlined how the administration is trying to patch the holes DOGE ripped in agencies: trying to rehire employees who were fired or left voluntarily and, if that doesn’t work, offering overtime, asking for volunteers, and asking employees to serve in new roles. Some new job offerings look a lot like the positions of people agencies just fired.
A White House official told the reporters: “If by chance mistakes were made and critical employees were dismissed, each individual agency is working diligently to bring these people back to work to continue the adequate functions of the federal government.” But morale is terrible, one worker at the Food and Drug Administration told the reporters. “Everyone is stressed and feels the absence of our colleagues.… I’m looking for another job.”
Still, DOGE is not the only group in the administration that has made poor decisions. Hannah Allam of ProPublica reported on Wednesday that the White House has put a 22-year-old recent college graduate with no experience in national security in charge of overseeing the government’s main center for preventing terrorism. Thomas Fugate’s main credentials for his position in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which includes overseeing $18 million in grants to local authorities to combat violent extremism, appear to be his time spent as an intern at the right-wing Heritage Foundation and his loyalty to Trump.
Fugate’s appointment appears to reflect that the administration is downplaying domestic terrorism to shift resources to immigration. In its budget proposal, DHS has called for eliminating the threat prevention grant program Fugate oversees, saying it “does not align with DHS priorities.” One former Homeland Security official told Allam the shift “means that the department founded to prevent terrorism in the United States no longer prioritizes preventing terrorism in the United States.”
Today, after months of maintaining it could not bring back Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully rendered to the notorious CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador, the Trump administration returned him to the U.S. A grand jury in Tennessee has charged Abrego Garcia with participating in a ten-year conspiracy to carry undocumented migrants from Texas to other parts of the country. The indictment alleges Abrego Garcia participated in more than 100 trips that moved children as well as members of the MS-13 Salvadoran gang.
The indictment has issues. Abrego Garcia is the only person named in the “conspiracy,” and the investigation into it began only in April, after the courts ordered the administration to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. The indictment is based on a 2022 incident in which Abrego Garcia was stopped in Tennessee for speeding with eight passengers in his vehicle. He told police they were construction workers and was neither ticketed nor charged. While the indictment alleges that Abrego Garcia lied to the officer by not revealing he was coming from Texas, the referral report says he told the officer he was coming from Houston, Texas.
Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5 in Nashville, Tennessee, noted that the chief of the criminal division for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville, Ben Schrader, resigned on May 21, saying: “It has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where the only job description I’ve ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons.” Williams notes that May 21 is the same day as Abrego Garcia’s indictment.
ABC News reported that Schrader resigned out of “concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons.”
Meanwhile, government raids against immigrants are escalating and seem designed to provoke conflict. Today, masked officials in tactical gear, apparently from the Department of Homeland Security, carried out a number of raids in Los Angeles. Agents pepper sprayed and arrested David Huerta, the president of the Service Employees International Union California (SEIU).
In a statement, the union called for “an end to the cruel, destructive, and indiscriminate ICE raids that are tearing apart our communities, disrupting our economy, and hurting all working people,” adding: “Immigrant workers are essential to our society: feeding our nation, caring for our elders, cleaning our workplaces, and building our homes.”
Andy Craig, who studies election law and policy, noted today that “[m]ass deportation and immigration enforcement in the interior requires a police state, and the more of that you want, the more obviously it will look and act like a police state.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council agreed. He wrote: “In order to build a mass deportation machine to round up and deport 4% of the entire goddamn population, you must first build the police state.”