Doublespeak?

Posted on February 26, 2025 by Joe Weber

The White House puts Orwell to shame

British journalist Eric Arthur Blair, better known as George Orwell, in 1946 bemoaned the corruption of words by politicians. “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible,” he wrote in the essay “Politics and the English Language.”

Discussing totalitarian outrages ranging from the British rule of India to Russian purges and deportations, he argued that “political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” Blair, who as Orwell invented Newspeak – a language that served the purposes of a tyrannical regime in “1984” – added: “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better.”

Should Karoline Leavitt, press secretary to President Donald J. Trump, know better?

Blair’s insights come to mind when one considers how Leavitt, a former Fox News intern and failed Congressional candidate, speaks. As she moved to limit media access to her boss, Leavitt justified her actions with phrases that would send the long-dead British reporter into full spin cycle in his grave.

Leavitt recently announced that the White House is now taking on the right to appoint the reporters who get access to the president in small gatherings, the so-called press pool. That choice has long been the privilege of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

The WHCA “should no longer have a monopoly” on organizing such pools, Leavitt said. Instead, the White House will make those selections.

No monopoly there, right? No Orwellian language there, right?

As Politico reported, the pool is a group of 13 journalists who attend sessions in the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One and other venues too small for the full press corps. Usually including reporters from such outfits as CNN, Reuters, the Associated Press, ABC News, Fox News and The New York Times, the pool shares information from the meetings with the larger group of White House reporters.

Speaking far more plainly than Leavitt has, WHCA president Eugene Daniels, a Politico reporter, condemned the White House usurpation.

“This move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States. It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps,” Daniels said. “Since its founding in 1914, the WHCA has sought to ensure that the reporters, photographers, producers and technicians who actually do the work – 365 days of every year – decide amongst themselves how these rotations are operated, so as to ensure consistent professional standards and fairness in access on behalf of all readers, viewers and listeners.”

Similarly, a spokesman for The New York Times lambasted the change. “The White House’s move to handpick favored reporters to observe the president — and exclude anyone whose coverage the administration may not like — is an effort to undermine the public’s access to independent, trustworthy information about the most powerful person in America,” the spokesman said.

The three major wire services also weighed in. “It is essential in a democracy for the public to have access to news about their government from an independent, free press,” the top executives at The Associated Press, Reuters and Bloomberg said in a joint statement. “We believe that any steps by the government to limit the number of wire services with access to the President threatens that principle. It also harms the spread of reliable information to people, communities, businesses and global financial markets that heavily depend on our reporting.”

For her part, Leavitt couched the White House’s journalistic power grab in further Orwellian language. “All journalists, outlets and voices deserve a seat at this highly coveted table,” she said.

For now, however, that “all journalists” group, excludes AP, which supplies thousands of news outlets worldwide with information.

Recall that Trump barred AP from the Oval Office, miffed that it refuses to acquiesce to his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. Of course, that usage change itself smacks of Newspeak, since the gulf has been known by the Mexican term since at least the late 16^th century, well before the U.S. or Mexico existed. “Mexico” derives from the Aztec language.

In Trump’s coinage for the gulf, one hears the sounds of infamous diktats by usurpers of various sorts, echoes that would similarly infuriate Orwell. Consider the Bolsheviks 1924 move renaming Saint Petersburg as Leningrad. (The earlier name was restored by public referendum in 1991.) Trump’s new usage also seem redolent of “Oceania,” the “1984” state that included both North and South America.

AP has sued over its expulsion from the pool. The judge in that case has warned the White House that the law isn’t on its side in that case and slated a hearing for March 20.

Leavitt said the White House plans to stock the pool with reporters that she argued are “who are well suited to cover the news of the day.” She said the group would include “new media” outlets — such as digital sites, streaming services and podcast, adding “Legacy media outlets who have been here for years will still participate in the pool, but new voices are going to be welcomed in as well.”

To critics, those “new voices” seem to mean Trump-friendly outlets. Among them are Sage Steele, a former ESPN broadcaster-turned-podcast host who has filled a “new media seat” in the White House briefing room. Steele, who publicly backed Trump, is a big fan of Tulsi Gabbard, the former cultist recently appointed as Director of National Intelligence, and of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the vaccine-averse head of the Department of Health and Human Services.

The WHCA president pushed back on Leavitt’s implication that the association limits new voices. “For generations, the working journalists elected to lead the White House Correspondents’ Association board have consistently expanded the WHCA’s membership and its pool rotations to facilitate the inclusion of new and emerging outlets,” Daniel said.

But, in a remarkable fillip, Leavitt argued that “by deciding which outlets make up the limited press pool on a day-to-day basis, the White House will be restoring power back to the American people.”

That tortured claim irked even a correspondent for Trump-friendly Fox. Jacqui Heinrich, a Fox senior White House correspondent, wrote on X: “This move does not give the power back to the people — it gives power to the White House.” Heinrich is a board member of the correspondents’ association.

Remember that Leavitt, known for flaunting a crucifix like a weapon in her press briefings, previously distinguished herself by telling Sean Hannity that “President Trump campaigned alongside Elon Musk, and President Trump promised voters on the campaign that he was going to make our government more efficiency [sic].” One commenter on X noted “that’s unpossible.” Another noted: “Make English Great Again.”

When asked about how long it might take for Trump to lower prices, this Kewpie doll — at 27, the youngest person ever to be named press secretary — sought clarification of the question, saying, “Prices at the store and at the grocery pump?”

More substantially, Leavitt appears to have lied — directly or by omission — in August 2024 in saying that “Project 2025 has nothing to do with our campaign,” despite her involvement with that conservative policy blueprint. Leavitt contributed to the project’s “Conservative Governance 101” training program and appeared in a training video titled “The Art of Professionalism.” In the video, she discussed her work in the White House during Trump’s first term and offered guidance to potential future administration members. As WCTU, a Cleveland broadcast station noted, Leavitt concluded her remarks by encouraging trainees, stating, “So best of luck, and if you need us as a resource, we are here to help.”

Trump denied connections to the infamous Heritage Foundation project, but he has implemented many of its recommendations. As journalists at Politico have reported, these including moves Trump has taken on immigration, government staffing, energy, foreign affairs, the economy and social issues such as ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs, using the Civil Rights Act to remove gender ideology and critical race theory from schools, and narrowing gender identity.

Of course, a Washington flack lying isn’t all that surprising, especially in light of who she works for. But what’s more disturbing is that Trump’s moves against the media are having a profound effect beyond the briefing room.

The most recent blow came at The Washington Post, where opinion page editor David Shipley quit after the paper’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, issued a directive putting his heavy hand on that page. Bezos mandated that the paper’s editorial page would now advocate “personal liberties and free markets” and not publish opposing viewpoints on such topics.

As The New York Times reported, The Post has published a wide variety of views from the left and the right, including such liberal champions as David Ignatius and Ruth Marcus, along with such conservative voices as George Will and Charles Krauthammer. As the Times noted, “The new direction envisioned for The Post’s opinion section appears to be a rightward shift for the paper.”

Margaret Sullivan in 2016, source: The Seattle Times

Margaret Sullivan, the former Post media columnist, was far less measured in her judgment of Bezos’s efforts at the paper.

“Especially in the light of the billionaire’s other blatant efforts to cozy up to Donald Trump, Bezos’s move is more than a gut punch; it’s more like a death knell for the once-great news organization he bought in 2013,” Sullivan wrote in The Guardian.

“It’s unclear what will happen to such excellent left-of-center columnists as Catherine Rampell, Eugene Robinson and EJ Dionne. And it’s unclear to what extent this ruling eventually will affect the paper’s hard-news coverage, which so far has been unbowed in covering the chaotic rollout of the new Trump administration,” she wrote. “What is clear is that Bezos no longer wants to own an independent news organization. He wants a megaphone and a political tool that will benefit his own commercial interests.”

In an email to her, former Post executive editor Martin Baron told her, “What Bezos is doing today runs counter to what he said, and actually practiced, during my tenure at the Post.” Baron added: “I have always been grateful for how he stood up for the Post and an independent press against Trump’s constant threats to his business interest. Now, I couldn’t be more sad and disgusted.”

This is hardly the first instance of Bezos genuflecting to Trump in ways that have dented the newspaper’s reputation. As Sullivan noted, the Post lost some 300,000 subscribers just before the November election after Bezos blocked an editorial endorsement of Trump’s rival, Kamala Harris. And, more recently, the paper refused to publish Ann Telnaes’s cartoon that showed American oligarchs, including Bezos, bowing to Trump; in protest, Telnaes — like Shipley — resigned.

To be clear, Trump can wield a big club with Bezos. Let’s remember that in 2018, he threatened to punish Bezos’s Amazon possibly by changing its tax treatment. Trump was weary of criticisms in The Washington Post — criticisms that, at least on the editorial page, may suddenly become more muted.

There’s no Orwellian doublespeak in the comments of Bezos’s critics, though his “liberties” and “markets” comment may well prove to be such. Does anyone hear echoes there of Orwell’s “sheer cloudy vagueness?”

Heads in the sand?

Posted on February 20, 2025 by Joe Weber

A look at how politics in the Trump era reflects our deepest fears, values and blindnesses

Long before Donald J. Trump exploited our many differences in America, people have disagreed about politics. We fought a Civil War — or the War Against Northern Aggression, as some in the South would have it — over politics. Over the last nearly 250 years, we’ve broken into many parties over disputes about how best things should be run nationally or locally.

And today, of course, families are often split over politics. One side digs in its heels over various issues important to them — immigration, feeling cheated in race relations, government spending, taxes, inflation. The other over other issues — fairness, economic wellbeing, justice, morality. And Trump, of course, has brilliantly tapped into the priorities of the former to win over a substantial minority of American voters.

The split, perhaps, is more dramatic and involving more issues than probably anything since the Civil War. Yes, many of us recall the fights over Vietnam and Civil Rights — similarly polarizing issues — but most Americans still maintained an adherence to some common values even through that tough period.

The question is why are we so divergent now?

And, perhaps more important, why do we seem to talk past one another, dismissive of the viewpoints of the other side? Why are so many seemingly immune to facts and data that would undercut their views? Why, against all evidence, do they cling to convictions and find reassurance in misinformation that supports their entrenched views? And, from the other side, why do we not listen to one another’s worries, respect and address one another’s anxieties?

No doubt, many of us have friends and relatives who find it easy to reject news accounts and analyses that point to the toxic effects of Trumpism. The president’s budget cuts threaten services as diverse as national park staffing, scientific and academic research, Medicaid and more, and yet we all know people who shrug such things off. His tariffs threaten to rekindle nascent inflation — a key part of his campaign — but his supporters dismiss that as fear-mongering. His foreign policy, especially towards Ukraine, threatens longstanding alliances and could further empower dictators such as Vladimir Putin, but they turn a blind eye.

With such matters, Trump backers, it seems, engage in what seems like willful ignorance. On the other hand, Trump critics play down or avoid the sometimes legitimate concerns he invokes if not addresses.

We may find some answers to the riddle of our divided politics in smart academic work. Michael Huemer, a philosophy professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, in 2016 published a paper exploring the basis of political disagreement, for instance. For sheer disputatiousness, he argued, only religion and morality rival politics.

“This should strike us as very odd,” Huemer wrote. “Most other subjects—for instance, geology, or linguistics, or algebra—are not subject to disagreements at all like this; their disputes are far fewer in number and take place against a backdrop of substantial agreement in basic theory; and they tend to be more tentative and more easily resolved. Why is politics subject to such widespread, strong, and persistent disagreements?”

His answer: political stances are products of “rational irrationality.”

“The beliefs that people want to hold are often determined by their self-interest, the social group they want to fit into, the self-image they want to maintain, and the desire to remain coherent with their past beliefs,” Huemer theorized. “People can deploy various mechanisms to enable them to adopt and maintain their preferred beliefs, including giving a biased weighting of evidence; focusing their attention and energy on the arguments supporting their favored beliefs; collecting evidence only from sources they already agree with; and relying on subjective, speculative, and anecdotal claims as evidence for political theories.”

This is where Trump, Fox News and their ilk come in.

For all his flaws, Trump is first and foremost an astute salesman — how else could he have overcome his repeated business failures to succeed first in television and then in politics? Like a marketer who knows his audience, he knows in his gut exactly what buttons to push to motivate the less than 50 percent of American voters who backed him, matters that touch on race, demographic change, immigration and economic insecurity.

Trump has succeeded eminently well in pounding on these matters.

And his cheerleaders at Fox News and Newsmax, along with various folks in right-wing radio and social media, reinforce his claims and ignore or play down adverse information and news. By attacking the legitimate press, Trump also played up longstanding feelings among many Americans that the the press is biased and “fake,” tapping into widespread discomfort about accuracy and fairness. In their selective news diets, Trumpers don’t even know what they are missing.

Trump’s approach has been crude but enormously effective.

In 2016 and again in 2024, he masterfully rolled all his touch points into a gauzy, sentimental and fictitious evocation of an ideal America, his “Make America Great Again” campaign. Never mind that for most of its history the U.S. hasn’t been all that great for many minorities or those mindful of social justice. Trump’s mostly white and historically oblivious base warmed to his portrait of the good old days, hoping to see them again.

For their part, many Democrats have been oblivious to the worries and in some cases real concerns of Republicans. The Biden Administration didn’t address issues such as inflation in a timely way. It didn’t come up with smart responses to immigration concerns quickly enough (thus allowing Trump to kill reform efforts and seize the issue).

Biden and other Democrats ceded anxieties about demographic change to the GOP. They may have failed to recognize that racism and sexism would likely figure into Harris’s defeat. If, in an open primary, a more centrist white male, such as Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear emerged, would we even be having this discussion today? Recall that Harris lost the popular vote by just less than 2.3 million votes, a fraction of those cast. Would Beshear or someone like him have captured those and more?

Other political scientists and observers echo some of these views as they point to basic issues on which Americans are deeply split. A well-regarded retired political scientist from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln shed some light on what animates Trumpers, for instance. In “The Securitarian Personality: What Really Motivates Trump’s Base and Why It Matters for the Post-Trump Era,” Professor Emeritus John Hibbing pointed to their key issues: immigration, gun rights, the death penalty and defense spending. By contrast, for those who supported Kamala Harris the key issues are racial justice, healthcare, women’s rights and income inequality.

Hibbing, who developed this taxonomy from his observations, his work with focus groups and from a national survey that included more than 1,000 Trump backers, took his analysis a bit further. He argued that those in the Trump base crave a particular form of security that revolves around their key issues, suggesting that Trump speaks powerfully to their insecurities.

Trumpers, Hibbing contended, feel threatened by those they regard as outsiders, groups that include welfare cheats, unpatriotic athletes, non-English speakers, religious and racial minorities, and people from other countries. Their drive – which allows them to disregard Trump’s immorality, dishonesty and corruption – is to elect someone they believe will shield them, their families and their dominant cultural group from these “outsider” threats.

This “us and them” approach suits native white Americans who feel they been losing ground for years. As they’ve seen Blacks, as represented most dramatically by Barack Obama and Harris, move up in society, they’ve felt like they’ve been moving down. They feel shunted aside as preferences have in their view given minorities an unfair leg up.

Thus, we have seen bitter attacks and retrenchment on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, as well as affirmative action and critical race theory. We’ve seen the erosion of efforts to protect and preserve voting rights for minorities, as the majority asserts itself.

If Hibbing’s framework is correct, what Trumpers crave is the opposite of a traditional national executive; they want a strongman who will do their bidding and protect them, perhaps restore a mythical MAGA past. Trump’s well-honed image as an alpha male checks most of the boxes for them. Indeed, perverse as it may be, his prolific sexual history (including assaults) may only reinforce his macho image.

And, as they prize the strongman, it may be that no amount of journalism, partisan criticism and careful think-tank evaluation about how he is undermining American democratic traditions could sway them. They may even applaud as he shoves aside the concerns of courts and doesn’t bother with niceties such as legislation while imposing his vision, which presumably they share. He’s giving the finger to the system they feel is deserting them.

No matter how many fair, thorough and well-grounded pieces of journalism such Trumpers are exposed to — if they even choose to read past the headlines — they will not and cannot shake off or even doubt their long-held views. Their self-images and identities are bound up in supporting Trump, making them incapable of bending even in the face of evidence. Even those whose self-interest he hurts — consider farmers damaged by trade wars, for instance — are unable to think twice, incapable of doubting their cherished attitudes and biases.

Psychologists have long known that people are not necessarily “rational” beings but “rationalizing” ones, as Columbia University psychology Prof. Derald Wing Sue has written. He has contended that many voters acknowledge Trump’s immoral and unethical nature, for instance, but they rationalize their actions as support of conservative judges, anti-abortion legislation, overturning unfair trade agreements, tax benefits, or protecting the Second Amendment.

Sue also pointed to what he called “a deeper and more frightening explanation” for this damn-it-all approach. That is that Trump’s bigoted beliefs, attitudes and behaviors may reflect the unconscious values of a large segment of the population. He argued that “Trumpism” taps into an underlying groundswell of anger, resentment, grievance and even fury at our institutions, the news media, medical science and policies that intrude on individual freedom — perhaps including the “right” to be anti-Semitic, racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.

And what has changed in the last couple decades is that Trump-friendly media are willing — indeed eager — to go along for the ride and the ratings. They lose perspective, they stress the scandals that sell to their audience.

On that, let’s consider just one issue that Trump and the Republicans have exploited well — transgenderism.

Less than 1 percent of the U.S. population identifies as transgender, perhaps just some 2.3 million people in a population of 340 million. And yet, for the Trumpist right the phenomenon pushes many buttons — from matters of religion to perceived unfairness to “wokeness.” When Fox News and other outlets trumpet incidents of muscular former male transgender athletes competing against other women, for instance, they play right into fears and angers on the right, no matter how rare such athletes are. Thus, we saw campaign ads and now see a spate of anti-trans legislation, orders and practices.

Is that really a rational concern in light of the small numbers? And is that something that should move beyond athletics to military service and the use of bathrooms? Or, might one suggest, is it just sheer demagoguery appealing to those who can’t abide social change, especially on such profound personal matters?

Shouldn’t transgenderism be a matter for psychologists, doctors, patients and parents, rather than politicians? Should it be a national issue?

For those who see politics as fundamentally irrational, a matter of deeply felt emotions and biases, such considerations seem easy to push aside. Transgenderism is just one of a constellation of personal matters and values that no amount of rational analysis can penetrate.

For those of us who bemoan the collapse of democratic norms, devotion to law, personal decency and propriety, these are tough times. For the others, it’s see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, and for them it’s all good — at least it will be until the shortcomings touch them in the form of economic stress, losses of vital government services and global turmoil.

Then, perhaps, there could come a reckoning. Then, perhaps, the sand they’ve buried their heads in will prove to be suffocating.

Is resistance futile?

Posted on February 14, 2025 by Joe Weber

Trump has the whip hand now, but …

Artists and writers often seem to be ahead of the rest of us. Sixty years ago, TV’s “Lost in Space” featured the memorable phrase “resistance would be futile.” That evolved into a 1976 “Dr. Who” episode with a character saying, “resistance is futile now,” and the more recent “resistance is futile,” a catchphrase of the Borg in 1990s installments of “Star Trek.”

Today, a couple decades on, the phrase may come to mind as we see Congress and the Senate, as well as some courts and media magnates, roll over before the outrages of the Trump Administration. Barely a month into its tenure, this gang seems like an irresistible juggernaut, neutering or “assimilating” everything in its path, making a mockery of supposed checks and balances.

But is it just a matter of time before a credible resistance arises? Will Americans come to realize the depredations they are dealing with? Most Americans didn’t vote for Trump, and it may be that the tally of those disgusted by him will grow. As more people are hurt by his efforts to replace our government with a patronage system beholden to the president, will national revulsion rise?

Certainly, there’s plenty of reason in the short term for discouragement.

Danielle Sassoon, source: New York Times

Department of Justice lawyers, such as former Chief Justice Roberts’ clerk Hagan Scotten and former Antonin Scalia clerk Danielle Sassoon, who resigned rather than drop the prosecution of Trump toady Eric Adams in New York are making a courageous and self-sacrificing statement, but surely the administration hacks will find willing replacements. The gutting of the federal workforce seems to be proceeding after a momentary legal hiccup. The approvals of Trump’s clown cabinet continue with an erratic former cultist now running intelligence, a wacko non-scientist running health and human services and a womanizer and abuser with a drinking problem now running defense. And Trump’s deportations are likely to have a major economic impact.

Globally, the sellout of Ukraine in a private Trump-Putin deal has people throughout the West alarmed, but it’s not clear that resistance by Europeans will amount to anything. Tariffs are poised to poison international relations and renew inflation at home with nary a peep from Trump supporters who thought their boy would lower their grocery prices. And efforts to take over Greenland, parts of Panama and even Canada seem to be proceeding.

So, is there any reason to believe resistance will be anything but futile? Well, courageous folks in the press continue to shine a spotlight on the pernicious effects of these Trumpian moves. They highlight the deadly global costs of the attack on USAID. They draw attention to the corruption of an Adams. They detail the shortcomings of the Cabinet buffoons and make note of the spinelessness of nearly all the Senate Republicans. They highlight protests, such as the dissent by military families in Germany on the visit of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Yes, the president is doing his best to muzzle the press. He has cowed some media magnates, such as Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and Disney head Jeff Iger, and intimidated Meta chief Marc Zuckerberg. Trump’s Federal Communications Commission is doing its best to stifle critical reporting at CBS and NPR. He is ham-handedly trying to bludgeon the Associated Press into accepting his preposterous Gulf of America coinage.

But the spotlights, for now, continue to be trained on Trump’s overreaches and shortcomings. To the extent that factual information is power, they are flexing their muscles and letting Americans who are inclined to see the facts have access to them. In time, one would hope, more of the public will see the administration’s faults for what they are.

Even publications such as The Wall Street Journal, whose editorial pages have long genuflected to Trump, are exposing him and his family for the self-dealing frauds they are. A recent piece broke down the ways Trump has cashed in on his election, with tens of millions flowing into his pockets and into organizations he controls. Trump’s profiteering is the very face of corruption.

“The pace and volume of the family’s moneymaking efforts so far are unprecedented, surpassing even the activity of Trump’s first term, which drew condemnation from ethics watchdogs and congressional Democrats,” the WSJ piece reported.

Think tanks are churning out critical analyses. Surprisingly, the conservative Cato Institute is raising red flags about Trump’s deportation plans. “To the extent Trump’s broad deportation promises come to fruition, we can expect many immigrant-dependent industries to suffer, few American workers to gain, many other Americans to lose …” a Cato commentator wrote.

And plenty of capable people are taking to Substack to shed light on the administration’s destructions. They continue to find audiences.

Former CBS anchor Dan Rather, for instance, reported critically on Trump’s Ukraine betrayal, quoting a Washington policy institute, as saying: “Trump has given the upper hand to Putin, a dictator and alleged war criminal. He has given Russia free rein to decide Ukraine’s future, jeopardizing Ukrainian sovereignty, security, and prosperity. This isn’t just about being a bad partner to our European allies; it’s a critical national security failure. A stronger Russia is a bad deal for Ukrainians, it’s a bad deal for Europeans, and it’s a bad deal for Americans who want to deter future Russian aggression against U.S. allies.”

Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman called out Trump’s Department of Justice for pursuing “the paramount value of whitewashing Trump’s federal offenses.” As he put it, “The day will come when it is remembered with deep shame. For now, it falls on all of us, but especially DOJ alumni, to keep the spotlight on the unprofessional, immoral practices of the Trump crowd and stand up for its victims within the department.”

Former Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin in her new online publication, The Contrarian, recently wrote of how inspectors general whom Trump fired have done far more than Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to root out overspending. Several IGs have sued. “The IG firings and lawsuit reveal that Musk/Trump either have no idea how to root out waste, fraud, and abuse (e.g. by deploying skilled IGs to investigate and nominating competent people), or that the new clique is interested in disabling government regardless of the harm inflicted on people,” Rubin wrote. “What these characters are plainly NOT doing is reforming government to safeguard the taxpayers’ money.”

Lawsuits such as the IG one continue to climb against the administration’s outrages, with more than 65 now crowding judicial dockets, many with legal actions filed by officials of more than 20 states. The disgust that so many Americans feel is playing out in these actions. The legal moves will take time to wind their way through the courts, but Trump may well suffer some major black eyes before too long.

That will give most Americans victories in the opening rounds at least. And, of course, if Trump defies more courts, as he already has appeared to do, the backlash against him could grow. A contempt of court finding would foul even the seemingly unassailable Trump and would imperil those who serve him. “Public officials are well within the scope of the judiciary’s contempt power,” reported the Brennan Center. “Although federal courts have never held a sitting president in contempt of court, they have used the power to compel action by and punish government agencies, officials, and civil servants responsible for carrying out government actions.”

Shonda Rhimes, Ben Folds; Source: USA Today

Already, in the cultural sphere, we are seeing repulsion to Trump arise. His petty move to take over the Kennedy Center in Washington, for instance, has led the more thoughtful artists to thumb their noses at him by cancelling their performances. Some involved in the center, such as “Gray’s Anatomy” creator Shonda Rhimes and musician Ben Folds have quit their associations with the center. One can expect subscriptions to shrivel there.

Certainly, by the midterm elections two years hence, more Americans will be onto Trump’s perfidies. In the end, the races to drive Trump sycophants out of the House and Senate may be the most powerful corrective, the most useful check and balance on a would-be tyrant.

For now, Trump has the whip hand and it’s difficult for thoughtful folks to watch him wield it. But whether his efforts to diminish our democracy will ultimately – and enduringly – pay off for him remain to be seen. The first month has been hellish and, no doubt, future months will bring home the awful costs of recent weeks.

But the pendulum can swing back. Resistance may seem futile now, but we’re in early days. As the casualties of Trumpism mount, there will be reason for hope again. This regime’s downward spiral is likely to accelerate. Thoughtful people will just have to find ways to undo its damage.

About the F word

Posted on February 8, 2025 by Joe Weber

Will the courts save us from Donald Trump’s worst predations?

The official website of the Supreme Court speaks in lofty terms about that body’s role in the U.S. system.

“First, as the highest court in the land, it is the court of last resort for those looking for justice,” it says. “Second, due to its power of judicial review, it plays an essential role in ensuring that each branch of government recognizes the limits of its own power. Third, it protects civil rights and liberties by striking down laws that violate the Constitution. Finally, it sets appropriate limits on democratic government by ensuring that popular majorities cannot pass laws that harm and/or take undue advantage of unpopular minorities.”

Given the blizzard of executive orders by Donald J. Trump — at least some of which are likely to face tests before the high court — will that court “set appropriate limits” when the time comes? Will it rein in an executive who, like tyrants such as Benito Mussolini, seems to think he has no limits?

The question is reminiscent of a Wall Street Journal editorial that ran shortly before the presidential election. The piece, “The ‘Fascist’ Meme Returns,” argued against the widespread concern that Donald J. Trump would prove to be a “fascist” if he regained the Oval Office. Most Americans, it held, did not see him as a unique threat to democracy, noting that Trump 1.0 “was hemmed in by American checks and balances,” as Trump Redux would be.

“We have confidence that American institutions—the Supreme Court, the military, Congress—would resist any attempt to subvert the Constitution,” the editorial maintained.

But it seems more recently that the folks at the WSJ are having second thoughts. They are the sort of doubts that bring to mind the supine Congress and, by contrast, the actions of various federal courts, including the Supreme Court. The latter at least so far has proved to be something of a bulwark against the worst of Trump’s impulses with its decisions forcing him to face sentencing in his felony conviction case as well as a series of other judgments during and after his first term.

Recall that those WSJ editorial writers helped to get Trump elected – albeit with a slim majority of Americans still voting against him. And note the different tune that the paper’s journalists and some commentators now are singing. While they stop short of using the F word, they are coming close.

“Modern presidents have continually pushed to expand the contours of their power,” noted a piece headlined “Trump Kicks Aside Congress With Sweeping Claims of Presidential Power: With aggressive reading of Constitution, president aims to upend the balance of power in Washington.” The piece reported: “But Trump is proving to be unique, say legal experts, in both the breadth of authority he is asserting and his claims that even if Congress has put its preferences into law, he has the power to chart a different course.”

The story laid out Trump’s extraordinary measures so far. They included unilaterally suspending asylum laws for immigrants, casting them aside as ineffective in light of the “invasion” of border-crossers. Also, Trump fired inspectors general without giving Congress the required notice. He halted spending for a bevy of programs approved by Congress, including those under the landmark infrastructure and renewable-energy laws signed by former President Joe Biden.

Trump delayed enforcement of a law that banned TikTok, a law that had passed with overwhelming House and Senate majorities. In a jaw-dropping bit of self-glorification, he also let his lawyers argue in a December court filing that his status as “one of the most powerful, prolific and influential” social media personalities gave him unique abilities to evaluate the app.

Trevor Morrison, a law professor at New York University, told the WSJ that Trump’s willingness to ignore laws passed by Congress across a range of policy and personnel areas marked him as distinct from prior presidents, as the Journal so drily put it. “Trump is asserting a constitutional prerogative to ignore, disregard or even openly violate laws that are inconsistent with his policy,” Morrison said.

Consider still other overreaches among the president’s early efforts. Trump’s order to invalidate birthright citizenship—the constitutional provision that anyone born in the U.S. is a citizen — may be the most brazen. But we also have Trump’s offer, per Elon Musk’s cost-cutting plans, for two million federal employees to resign and receive eight months of pay. The move would involve an expenditure of money not authorized by Congress.

Moreover, Trump supporters argue that he can impound, or refuse to spend, money for programs he doesn’t like, as he has also sought to do.

“His unelected and unvetted friend Elon Musk swoops into government agencies to decide whether he deems their programs efficient or not, and shuts down one agency entirely,” the WSJ reported in a piece headlined “Will the Other Two Branches Dare to Push Back Against Trump?: The president’s blizzard of executive orders is a bold challenge to the powers of Congress and the courts. The Constitution expects them to check and balance.”

Trump is also trying to spread his arms overseas. He aims to coerce Denmark into ceding Greenland to the United States, press Panama into giving the U.S. its canal, despite a treaty that said otherwise, and breathtakingly (but laughably), suggests the U.S. take over Gaza, oust two million people from there and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

At his regained home in Washington, he is even moving into cultural realms with his plans to fire the Kennedy Center board and name himself its chairman. “At my direction, we are going to make the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., GREAT AGAIN,” Trump said on his social media site. “I have decided to immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the Chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture. We will soon announce a new Board, with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!”

A “golden age?” Perhaps we’ll see wrestling competitions in the venue.

Are Trump’s techniques, fantasies and self-adoring efforts akin to those of a Mussolini, the creator of fascism? Do we hear echoes of what Britannica reported about Il Duce: “His attitudes were highly theatrical, his opinions were contradictory, his facts were often wrong, and his attacks were frequently malicious and misdirected; but his words were so dramatic, his metaphors so apt and striking, his vigorous, repetitive gestures so extraordinarily effective, that he rarely failed to impose his mood”?

Beyond that, what of those checks and balances the WSJ editorialists referred to in October? More recently, a writer for the paper mused: “At what point will Congress stand up for itself? And when and where will the nation’s courts draw the line on the aggressive use of presidential power?”

While Congress and the Senate have been acquiescent – and the Senate is likely as soon as this week to bless more unqualified Cabinet members – some courts, thankfully, are bringing a bit of sanity to bear.

A federal judge paused a Trump deadline for federal workers to accept buyouts, while other judges have at least temporarily blocked his birthright-citizenship order and one imposing a broad freeze on federal spending. Still another judge has, for now, stopped Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury Department records that contain personal data such as Social Security and bank account numbers for millions of Americans. One more has halted for now Trump’s USAID shutdown. And yet another stopped Trump’s order moving transgender women to men’s prisons and ending their gender-affirming care.

The list of legal challenges Trump and his minions are facing is extraordinary, topping 40 at this point and likely to grow. It will take weeks, if not months, for cases those judges are handling to be resolved. Ultimately, the highest court will surely have to weigh in on the most important ones.

There’s little doubt that this was expected by Trump’s forces, especially those involved with the Project 2025 effort that candidate Trump disavowed but the president has embraced. The tsunami of executive orders — part of a “shock and awe” campaign that Trump minions developed — were certain to draw opposition. But, as the actions lumber through the courts, the ranks of federal workers may decline, the recipients of vital federal services will go unserved and Trump-style chaos will reign.

Still, with our elected leaders failing us, the courts may prove to be the last refuge of justice over time. Perhaps they will short-circuit Trump’s great usurpation. They may prevent what one of the more right-wing WSJ writers suggested in a piece headlined “Trump’s Imperial Presidency?: We may be heading to the outer limits of America’s system of checks and balances.”

Bemoaning Trump’s power grabs, that WSJ writer argued that “Congress is supposed to represent the country’s varied interests, down to 435 separate congressional districts. And they are different. Mr. Trump is displacing that federalism of interests with the simpler idea of a uniform national interest, defined and executed by the president.”

He concluded that Trump’s “instinct, evident this first week, is to be unbound by much of anything. Conservatives, not least his own people, will need to hold the 47th president to account.”

Would it not have been better, however, if the folks at the WSJ last fall had sought to prevent the tests of the checks and balances they fervently suggested would save us? Would we be better off if more Americans had seen the threat that the paper pooh-poohed? Would we have been better served if Trump had been more roundly condemned before Nov. 6?

For now, at least, the courts — with all their delays and flaws — remain the last stumbling blocks in the would-be-tyrant’s way. How reliable will they be? In the end, too, can we count on the highest court to recognize the danger Trump poses and serve democracy better than our servile legislators have? The verdict has yet to come on that.

Are there any grownups in the room?

Posted on February 4, 2025 by Joe Weber

Trump’s clown car makes a mockery of government

So just who will run the U.S. government over the next four years? And is this something that Trump voters actually voted for?

Will the guy in charge be the thrice-married philandering felon with a history of sexual abuse and business fraud who occupies the Oval Office? Or will it be the autistic billionaire and father of 12 who is now dismantling U.S. agencies, trying to fire tens of thousands of government workers, and who has given access to the entire federal payroll system to a handful of barely post-adolescents including a dropout from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln?

Of course, Donald J. Trump is the nominal head of the circus. But the clown car, on which Elon Musk seems to fill the driver’s seat as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, is far more colorful than just this pair.

Consider the Cabinet that Trump is assembling. Unless something surprising happens, the U.S. Senate is now on its way to approving Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. In case you know little about her, Gabbard’s divine teacher – her “guru dev” – is a former Hare Krishna devotee who set up a cult in which followers mix his toenails into their meals and use his shoes as prayer totems. Gabbard was raised in that cult.

We kid you not.

Gabbard distinguished herself during her confirmation hearing by refusing to use the word “traitor” for Edward Snowden, a former government contractor who leaked highly classified NSA documents. He then fled to Russia where President Vladimir Putin granted him citizenship. In the past, Gabbard made a name for herself by blaming NATO for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and, most notably, met with now-deposed Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad, later arguing that he was not a threat to the United States.

She is a turncoat former Democrat just cleared for the DNI job by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in a partisan 9-8 vote who most likely will slide through the full Senate and soon take the helm of all the nation’s spy agencies. Eighteen organizations, from the CIA and FBI to the intelligence branches of the military services and the Drug Enforcement Agency, will operate at her whim.

Gabbard served in the Army National Guard for more than 20 years, deploying to Iraq and Kuwait, and represented Hawaii for four terms in the U.S. House. However, she’s never run anything and her politics have been, well erratic. She sought the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, quit the race and endorsed Joseph Biden. Then, she switched parties, became a Fox News contributor and took to appearing with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at Trump rallies.

A stable person? The kind of person that Trump voters want overseeing the nation’s most important secrets and foreign security efforts? Is this the sort of person that Trump voters voted for?

But then Gabbard will most likely to share the Cabinet room with RFK Jr., whose nomination as secretary of health and human services is also on a greased path. The Senate Finance Committee voted 14-13 to approve this man who has no scientific training but believes childhood vaccines cause autism.

RFK Jr., whose main qualification seems to be fealty to Trump, during the COVID-19 pandemic touted ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and suggested that social media companies conspired with public health leaders to suppress effective treatments. He wrote a bestseller, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” that accused the former chief presidential medical adviser of masterminding “a historic coup d’état against Western democracy.”

Kennedy has warned of false dangers of aluminum, acetaminophen, and fluoride. He headed an organization that launched a campaign against Gardasil, the vaccine for preventing HPV. He has argued that psychiatric drugs are to blame for the rise of mass shootings in the U.S. And he has asserted that Wi-Fi causes cancer—or, more specifically, “Wi-Fi radiation” from cellphones causes “cellphone tumors.”

The Wall Street Journal, in editorializing against RFK’s appointment, argued that senators “would be wise to believe RFK Jr.’s career of spreading falsehoods rather than his confirmation conversions.” His own cousin, Caroline, warned in a letter that “siblings and cousins who Bobby encouraged down the path of substance abuse suffered addiction, illness and death while Bobby has gone on to misrepresent, lie and cheat his way through life.”

Is this the sort of person Trump voters voted for?

Both of them will likely share spots at the table with Pete Hegseth, the approved Secretary of Defense. Hegseth, readers will recall, has long had a drinking problem and lots of other baggage, some from at least one of his three marriages. His former sister-in-law in a sworn affidavit told investigators that he so frightened his second wife, Samantha, that she feared for her personal safety. He also had a Trump-like fancy for adultery.

Aside from such, um, moral flaws, Hegseth is now running a huge government department with global responsibilities equipped with what one might call the slenderest of backgrounds in running anything. Before becoming a Fox News host – perhaps the only credential that Trump really cared about – Hegseth was forced to step down from two organizations he ran – Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America – because of allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety and personal misconduct.

Is this the sort of person Trump voters really want atop the Defense Department? Do the evangelicals look to him as a role model for their young men?

It may be that Trump voters actually want people such as these in charge. Perhaps they warm to such obvious incompetents because they believe the pap about the “deep state” and see these folks as welcome dismantlers.

The last thing they would want are adults in the room even of the sort that Trump had in his first term – especially those with substantial military backgrounds. These were people such as retired Army Gen. Mark Milley, who chaired the Joint Chiefs of Staff and later called Trump a “fascist;” former Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer, a Marine veteran who faulted Trump’s understanding of what it means to be in the military, and former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, a career Army officer and combat veteran who said Trump “repeatedly compromised our principles in pursuit of partisan advantage and personal gain.”

No, what Trump wants – and perhaps what his followers want – are toadies who will never say “no” to their erratic leader.

It’s often been remarked that Trumpers are cultists, fanatical devotees who will surrender basic American principles — things like democracy and common decency — in obeisance to their leader. Gabbard is a prime example, with real history in a cult. RFK Jr. similarly seems to toe the line on whatever crazy ideas Trump has about former science adviser Fauci (as well as a bevy of his own nutty notions). Hegseth will stand and salute, as shown by his persecution of former Gen. Milley.

The real tragedy, however, is there appears to be no one on the GOP side of the U.S Senate or Congress with the courage to stand up and put a halt to the craziness. Is that also what Trump voters voted for?

The Big Picture

Monthly Archives: February 2025