Turning On The Giant Faucet Of Bullshit - US Politics February 2025

Here's Jay Michaelson (who I do not know and am not standing for):

Hello! I'm posting in response to the many sincerely anguished claims that not enough is being done to stop Trump. This is not reflected in the facts.

> - Represented by Public Citizen Litigation Group and State Democracy Defenders Fund, the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) filed suit on Monday against the Treasury Department “for sharing confidential data with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), run by Elon Musk.” Go to Public Citizen's website to learn all about this lawsuit, which is very likely to prevail.

> - On USAID, appearing with other Democratic lawmakers outside USAID offices on Monday, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) shouted, “Elon Musk, you didn't create USAID. The United States Congress did for the American people … like Elon Musk did not create USAID, he doesn't have the power to destroy it. And who's going to stop him? We are... This a constitutional crisis that we are in today.” Lawsuits have also been filed in this matter, and are also likely to prevail.

> - Hakeem Jeffries has announced lawsuits have been filed regarding the firings of inspectors general.

> - On Jan 21, Democracy Forward, was filed at 12:01 p.m. ET on Monday and accused Elon Musk's DOGE of being a "shadow operation led by unelected billionaires" that flouts federal transparency rules. That should win.

> - National Security Counselors filed a suit arguing that DOGE meets the requirements to be a federal advisory committee and is therefore legally required to have "fairly balanced" representation, keep regular minutes of meetings and allow public access to meetings. Clearly accurate.

> - Eighteen state attorneys general and a slew of immigrants' rights groups brought swift legal action against Trump after he signed his executive order seeking to ban birthright citizenship for some children born in the U.S., arguing that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment. Obviously, clearly unconstitutional.

> - "Schedule F" has been challenged in court by the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents employees in 37 agencies and departments.

> - Several immigrant rights groups in the United States, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s ban on asylum claims.

> - GLAD Law and the National Center For Lesbian Rights (NCLR) have sued to stop Trump's ban on trans people in the military.

> And there are many more - I'll link to a great list of them in the comments.

> Yes, there are Trump judges in the courts, and if Aileen Cannon types get these cases, Trump may prevail. But most judges are not like her. These actions are clearly illegal and/or unconstitutional, and they WILL be stopped.

> Just like the tariffs were not meant to prevail -- Trump won that round, "forcing" Canada and Mexico to take "action" on fentanyl -- these actions are not meant to prevail. They're meant to flood the zone with shit, confuse and immobilize us. They said they'd do "Shock and Awe" and that's what they've done. Nothing here should be surprising.

> Shock and Awe is up to YOU. I am not shocked, I am not in awe.

> Oh, and the "mainstream media" has reported on all of these. The info above has come from Newsweek, the NY Times, and other mainstream sources. Please stop attacking journalists when we are being threatened by the FBI. Who do you think you're helping by doing that?

> Stop it with the doomsaying and gloomsaying. Want to make a difference? Give thousands of dollars to Public Citizen, the ACLU, and similar groups. Show up at marches. Put your ass on the line and help protect people from ICE. If you're safe, do simple symbolic things (like changing your social media pictures) to support people who are not safe. Just like we should not obey in advance, we should not panic in advance either. This is not the end of democracy. That is just what the bad guys want you to think. Get over it and fight.

* stanning

the shit will only stop when it hits enough red-hat folks

already starting, with the end of USAID grain purchases from midwest farmers

yeah but then they just pass carve-outs that service the voters they're worried about losing

Right, there was an effort a few days ago by GOP reps to move the Food for Peace under Agriculture.

"A survey from The Economist/YouGov released Wednesday revealed the president's net favorability rating among those aged 18-29 is minus 18 points. This is a drop from the plus 19 favorable rating he scored among this demographic in the days following November's race."

Huh. If only there were signs that he might be a liar and swindler!

This is a great point. I feel like Democrats have been leaning on the same rhetoric for decades: variations on giving everyone a fair shot, providing opportunities to achieve the American Dream, building out the middle class, etc. These are all cliches at this point, but they're also very individual-oriented. (The middle class in their imagination isn't a space for solidarity, it's a measure of individual status.) They have sort of an abstract vision of a society that is more egalitarian, but it seems like that's about it.

otm

I'm hearing reports from friends that their kids who were accepted to grad programs related to Environmental Science and Sustainability are having their acceptances rescinded, and job positions in those fields are being revoked as well.

wait until Trump decides to kick out all the students from China attending US universities

As usual welcome to the #resistance Mitch

too fucking little and at least two decades too late

I wish I had something clever or funny or inspiring to say, but today it all just feels… flat.

Won’t say what my workplace is but it brutally quiet.

i'm not an accelerationist by any means - i think that not only can it get much worse, but that getting worse doesn't necessarily lead to anything better. people eating raw onions during the dark ages would find no solace in the idea that their misery was accelerating our glorious present.

buuuut, i think there's a real power/idea/courage vacuum in the democratic party right now, noticeable even more than usual. i think an incredible movement could fill that space. the doesn't have a lack of ideas of how a meaningful future could exist, and it doesn't have a lack of courageous, passionate people. they're embedded in communities, they're the people keeping things going right now, in the absence of political leadership and vision. the most powerful ideas on the left are driven by equity, sharing, and community, and the right wing doesn't have an equivalent for that except in churches.

it's an old thought and nothing new, but yes, i do think god is dead, that we killed him, and that many people are now a bit spiritually lost. the traditional third places are gone, for many people, and replaced with objects, technology, dreams of being immortal (not even joking, unfortunately), and the thrill of watching digital monetary values change. fine. let the right wing provide a home for those who love the material 21st century capitalist life - there are a lot of them! but i think most people desire something else, and sadly, as time goes on they don't even know what they're longing for, any more. (i think they're longing for pre-internet, and people under the age of 35 or so don't have memories of that, ooof). a political party that i would be enthusiastic about has an answer for these problems, or at least acknowledges them.

for some reason this article just broke me

https://www.sfgate.com/california-parks/article/yosemite-national-park-in-chaos-20163260.php

I have to admit the cravenness is kinda funny. One of Drunken Pete Hegseth's first actions as Secretary of Defense was to re-rename Fort Liberty Fort Bragg. It had been changed because it was originally named for traitorous Confederate scum Gen. Braxton Bragg. But in fact, the fort is now named in honor of World War II-era private Ronald Bragg. They want to call it Fort Bragg and win points with racist scumbags, but since Congress has banned the naming of military installations after traitors, they have to do this and hope the coal-rolling hordes don't notice.

xp - I'm sorry Raymond, sending good thoughts your way. There's been a lot of worry and anxiety at my workplace as well. Feels awful to have that extra added layer of job security impacted by all this shit.

let the right wing provide a home for those who love the material 21st century capitalist life

but it seems that this current batch want something more - to reshape the country into a very weird, dark form of christianity that jettisons all the forgiveness stuff (actual jesus) and goes back to the old testament full of smiting and prepping for the end times. And they don't just want it for themselves, they want it codified into law... Not the Trump family, obviously, they're just the useful idiots that are helping us move in the direction that they want: a few rich white men at the top, with a bible in their hands - and the rest of us cowed and quiet

speaking as a Jew, callous cruelty and prepping for the apocalypse is as much a misread of the old testament as it is of the new.

there's no true spiritual basis in any of this depravity

for some reason this article just broke me

https://www.sfgate.com/california-parks/article/yosemite-national-park-in-chaos-20163260.php

I'm a bit suspicous of that Alt National Parks social media account but they have been a three alarm fire of bad news for weeks now.

holy shit

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/nyregion/danielle-sassoon-quit-eric-adams.html?unlocked_article_code=1.wk4.vldS.Q-_P2I2o4v-L

i read an article this morning stating what a bad ass right winger she was--Heritage Foundation and everything

ha ha this one!

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/nyregion/adams-prosecutor-danielle-sassoon-profile.html

good for her

I remember that Alt National Parks account from 2017-era Twitter. There were a few accounts like it that purported to have inside information about what was going on in the federal government, and some of them shaded too far into Resistance grifting. I don't recall what Alt National Parks was like, exactly, but I'm looking at its Facebook page now and I'm put off by the fact that it's posting news items -- not original reporting, but publicly available information -- without links. I wouldn't be able to trust any of it without confirming elsewhere.

the traditional third places are gone

I'm in a bar with my friends about weekly, and I stopped drinking.

Glad to see some coalescing around some big (hopefully) protests coming up soon - this Saturday protests at Tesla dealers, Monday protests at the White House and state capitols and February 28th trying to get an economic blackout for big corporations.

How much of a difference they'll make? Who knows. But these are good things to see and help out with.

when the grift is naked as a jaybird, better to cover it up a bit

State department removes word ‘Tesla’ from $400m US armoured vehicles list

The US Department of State has removed the name “Tesla” from a list of planned purchases, after an earlier version of the list said it would spend $400m buying new electric armoured vehicles, even as the carmaker’s boss, Elon Musk, leads efforts to slash government spending under Donald Trump.

A procurement forecast produced by the department showed the $400m (£320m) proposed spending on “armoured Tesla (production units)” in December. The most likely Tesla model was the Cybertruck, the company’s electric pickup, given Musk’s claims that the vehicle is bulletproof.

However, a spokesperson for the department said the document was incorrect, and should have been a generic entry reading “electric vehicle manufacturer”. The department said the order was on hold.

yeah that alt national parks account does things like post "Three" ... then follow up with "this is an internal message that only people in the government get" uh yeah, ok. it hasn't posted anything false though.

i read an article this morning stating what a bad ass right winger she was--Heritage Foundation and everything

maybe they're mad that he's pushing to exonerate a democrat. in which case, surprise MAGA people: Trump and Musk are pro-corruption. They don't fucking care what party people belong to, this is like the Joker letting Arkham free.

(also why the fuck does the State Department need armored electric trucks?)

U.S. diplomats are not exactly popular worldwide, Andy (and the forecast is for their popularity to decline rapidly)

it might be that the Dept of Defense would have to put the procurement up for an open bid (with caterpillar, GM, etc.) whereas the State Dept can just purchase shoddy Tesla trucks outright, to drive Marco Rubio around El Salvador

On second thought I'd be okay with Marco Rubio dying in an exploding Tesla while working for Donald Trump and Elon Musk. That would be kinda fuckin poetic

Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm all for members of this administration being driven around in those notoriously terrible vehicles, but I don't wanna get fleeced for them.

It might be a 'bridge to nowhere' pork purchase for Musck, and the cybertrucks just end up rotting in a garage in Alexandria

I mean, be paid $200+ million to help get Trump elected, he deserves a little sugar for that

i read an explainer on bsky where it was clear the dude understood how the DOD and the state department procurement worked and the Tesla thing he said was just like the agency saying "this is how we might spend our money" versus actually allocating $ to buy Teslas.

https://gizmodo.com/the-400-million-armored-tesla-story-is-a-fake-scandal-in-a-sea-of-real-graft-and-horror-2000563641

NIH network down

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to keep federal funding in place for hospitals that offer gender-transition treatments for people under the age of 19.

The temporary restraining order issued by Judge Brendan A. Hurson, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, came in a case brought by six transgender individuals between the ages of 12 and 18, along with parents and advocacy groups. They sued to block President Trump’s executive orders targeting medical treatments for trans youths.

The order is not a final decision on the legal issues but is a setback for the Trump administration. It creates a second legal roadblock to Mr. Trump’s broad effort to prohibit the government and taxpayer-funded institutions from recognizing transgender Americans according to their gender identities. Earlier this month, another federal judge blocked Mr. Trump’s directive to withhold gender-transition medical treatment for federal prisoners, and to house transgender women inmates with men.

Judge Hurson was appointed by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Since 18 year olds are legally adults idg how Trump can claim the ability to interfere with their medical care decisions.

a core tenet of this administration is to interfere with everyone's medical care decisions

Because the whole world has been running around insisting that everyone under 25 is a child?

well, you can stay on your parents' health care until 26

https://gizmodo.com/the-400-million-armored-tesla-story-is-a-fake-scandal-in-a-sea-of-real-graft-and-horror-2000563641

― a (waterface), Thursday, February 13, 2025 2:51 PM (forty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is the kind of thing that is making me tear my hair out. There is obviously a lot of genuinely awful and scary shit happening. There are also things that look bad but may not be (or at least not as bad as they look), but the context in which they are happening makes it hard to tell the difference, and it's hard to blame people for freaking out about them. The information environment right now just feels really messy.

Some things are all too clear.

US president Donald Trump insisted he believed Putin “wants peace”. “I think he would tell me if he didn’t,”

The phrase "dangerously stupid" has never been more perfectly exemplified.

The information environment right now just feels really messy.

Almost as if it has been tampered with.

On purpose, and for reasons.

Who might have done a thing like that?

US president Donald Trump insisted he believed Putin “wants peace”. “I think he would tell me if he didn’t,”

Sorry, I’m sitting in a brewpub reading this and just laughed so loud that surrounding tables are looking at me.

Because the whole world has been running around insisting that everyone under 25 is a child?