The Golden Teapot Dome: Mark Kelly Warns “This Is a Very Hard Physics Problem”
Elon Musk’s SpaceX had an even more spectacular failure than his last spectacular failure last night.
Whoa!! Not only did his latest Starship blow up, but fuel tanks nearby caught fire as well.
I was already going to point to this exchange from yesterday, in which astronaut and Senator Mark Kelly quizzed Whiskey Pete Hegeseth about plans for a Golden Dome. But Elon’s continued spectacular failures raise the stakes of it, because SpaceX and Elon’s other fascist buddies are poised to win a lot of the contract to build a Golden Dome.
Elon can’t do what he’s already being paid to do. But Republicans are poised to provide billions more, probably to him, to take on a far more complex problem.
And Mark Kelly, a guy who (even Whiskey Pete recognizes) would know, seems to suspect that Hegseth just fired the people who would tell him that this boondoggle is physically impossible to pull off.
The exchange starts with Senator Kelly trying to understand the goals of Golden Dome. He then tries to get Whiskey Pete to understand the difficulty of the physics behind it.
Kelly: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, I want to talk about the proposed Golden Dome missile defense system. There’s a request to spend $25 billion in this year alone. First of all, is this system designed to intercept a full salvo attack?
Hegseth: Senator, it’s a multi-layer system, that would include different types of salvos–
Kelly: So it’s not just rogue nation. Okay.
Hegseth: Yeah, it’s not meant to be just one nation. It could be utilized —
Kelly: Against Russia, China. Full salvo. So what kind of reliability are you aiming to build into this system? Are we looking for something like four-9s on intercept success?
[Hegseth pauses.]
Kelly explains: 99.99% reliability.
[Hegseth makes hand gesture, seemingly assuring Kelly he’s not that dumb.]
Hegseth: Obviously you seek the highest possible. You begin with what you have in integrating those C-2 networks and sensors. Building up capabilities that are existing with a eye toward future capabilities that can come online as quickly as possible. Not just ground-based but space-based.
Kelly: So against future capability too. So do you believe that we can build a system that can intercept all incoming threats? Do you think we could build that system? This is a very hard physics problem.
Hegseth: You are [points emphatically] You would know as well as anybody, Sir, how difficult this problem is and that’s why we put our best people on it. We think the American people deserve it.
Kelly: So let me tell you what I think we’re facing here.
[Hegseth continues to babble.]
Kelly: You’re talking about hundreds of ICBMs running simultaneously, varying trajectories, MIRVs, so multiple re-entry vehicles. Thousands of decoys. Hypersonic glide vehicles, all at once. And considering what the future threat might be, might even be more complicated than that. And you’re proposing spending not just $25 billion, but upwards of — I think CBO estimated this of at least half a trillion. Other estimates, a trillion dollars. I am all for having a system that would work. I am not sure that the is with physics can get there on this. It’s incredibly complicated.
This video explains some of the difficulties. [Link fixed.]
Then Senator Kelly shifts to concerns about whether the impossibility of the Golden Dome project was behind Whiskey Pete’s recent decision to eliminate most of the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, the office that validates weapons and platforms for DOD.
Kelly: So I want to get to another issue that is — that you’re facing here. How much of the staff of the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation did you cut?
Hegesth: After collaboration, Sir, with the Service — Department of Joint Staff and others, we identified that as a place where there were redundancies and multiple additional layers —
Kelly: I’ll tell you what you cut. You cut 74%
Hegseth: Most of it.
Kelly: Most of it.
Kelly: And was your decision to cut more than half of the Pentagon’s testing and evaluation oval office staff driven in part by concerns about the Office’s plan to oversee testing of Golden Dome?
Hegseth: Uh, the concerns were not specific to Golden Dome, Sir. It was years and years of delays, unnecessarily, based on redundancies in the decision-making process that the Services, COCOMs, and the Joint Staff, together with OSD, identified a logjam that was not–
So Kelly sums up the problem. Trump is demanding $25 billion to pay off the guy who got him elected, and as he’s doing that, Hegseth fired the people who can test whether the whole boondoggle would work.
Kelly: Mr. Secretary, to get the reliability we would need, you need something that’s at four-9s, 99. 99% reliability, with all these challenges. And you cut the staff of the people who are going to make sure this thing works before we make it operational, before we give it to the war fighters. You got to go back and take look at this but I also strongly encourage you to put together some — before we spend $25 billion or $175 billion or $563 billion or a trillion dollars, put together a group of people to figure out if the physics will work. You could go down a road here and spend hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars with the taxpayer money, get to the end and we have a system that is not functional. That very well could happen. And you’re doing this just because the President — I understand your role is the Secretary of Defense. You got to execute what the president says. But this idea, you know, might not be fully baked. And you could get in front of it now and figure out and, and find out if you put the right physicist on this and I’m not saying go to the big defense contractors. Going to scientists and I know there’s a questionable relationship with this administration and scientists but go to some scientist. Figure out what we would have to do to build a system. And then make smart decisions before we spend hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars.
Hegseth: Senator, we are doing that. Leveraging existing technologies and not premising the project on aspirational technologies, what we can actually do.
Kelly: Well, $25 billion in the first year is a lot of money. That’s more than just finding out if we have the ability if we can build a system that can handle a full salvo threat, hypersonic glide vehicles, MIRVs, thousands of decoys. Thank you.
There’s some important background here.
A constant theme between the four appropriations hearings Whiskey Pete survived in the last week is the way Trump has bifurcated DOD’s budget next year.
Much of it is in the budget itself — the budget that Whiskey Pete has not yet filled out and is weeks behind deadline on.
But this part of it — the Golden Dome that spends $25 billion with Elon’s company on a physics problem that Senator Kelly says is very difficult to solve — is in reconciliation, the bill that needs only Republicans to pass.
The same bill in which Republicans will raise the debt ceiling by five trillion dollars.
Donald Trump is trying to push a $25 billion slush fund to his fascist tech bro backers on a promise that Mark Kelly thinks won’t work.
And yesterday, Elon just reminded us of how those billions could go — are likely to go — up in flames.
Update: Corrected MIRVs.
Open Thread: SCOTUS Decisions
[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]
It’s desk clearing time at the Supreme Court with the end of its annual term looming ahead. SCOTUS will dump a bunch of decisions in a short time frame beginning today.
Decisions released today:
Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas
Justice Brett Kavanaugh has 6-3 decision. See: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-1300_b97c.pdf
With this decision SCOTUS overturned the Fifth Circuit which had vacated a license granted to a private waste handler that wanted to build a nuclear waste facility in Texas, permitted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This decision is contrary to Texas state law but hinged on challenge by a nonparty.
United States v. Skrmetti, Attorney General and Reporter for Tennessee, et al.
Chief Justice John Roberts has the decision. See: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-477_2cp3.pdf
This is revolting, allowing Tennessee to continue to undermine bodily autonomy of a small group of persons because they weren’t born into a false binary. The decision upholds the state of Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors because of wretched twistiness regarding “sex” versus “gender” identity.
Updates will follow as summaries are completed and additional information becomes available.
Remember when Brad Lander Caught Kristi Noem Stealing $80 Million?
It’s perhaps a timely moment to recall that Brad Lander has tangled with Kristi Noem before.
Back when DOGE and DHS clawed back $80 million awarded to New York City to house migrants, Lander was the guy who called them out — and insisted on suing.
New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander said the abrupt decision was an illegal diversion by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency of money used to house asylum-seekers admitted to the U.S. under President Joe Biden.
“President Trump and his crony Elon Musk illegally executed a revocation of $80 million in congressionally-appropriated FEMA funding from New York City’s bank accounts,” Lander said in a statement. “This highway robbery of our funds directly out of our bank account is a betrayal of everyone who calls New York City home.”
Lander’s statement came after the Trump administration claimed the city had received disaster relief funds to house migrants in luxury hotels. Musk posted that his DOGE “discovered” the funding on Monday, calling it “a gross insubordination to the President’s executive order.”
The funds were administered by FEMA, a subagency of the Department of Homeland Security. A 2024 report from Lander’s office found that the city paid an average rate of $156 a night for hotel rooms booked through an agreement with the Hotel Association of New York City.
The seizure of funds could result in cuts to city services.
“We can’t recover money we already spent on shelter and services for asylum seekers, so it would require cutting $80 million of some other city expenses,” Lander said.
This happened the very week that Eric Adams was cozying up to Tom Homan — which Dale Ho judged was evidence of a quid pro quo.
Lander took a shot at Mayor Eric Adams for not standing up to Trump, saying that “If instead Mayor Adams continues to be President Trump’s pawn, my Office will request to work in partnership with the New York City Law Department to pursue aggressive legal action.”
Adams said Wednesday that he is in talks with the White House about recovering the money, and that he’s requested an emergency meeting with FEMA to resolve the matter. “The Corporation Counsel is already exploring various litigation options,” he added, in a statement on X.
Adams is scheduled to meet Thursday with Trump border czar Tom Homan, who demanded cooperation from the Democrat during a radio interview Tuesday, saying, “Either he comes to the table or we go around him.”
Adams didn’t insist on getting the money back. On the contrary, Trump’s Administration has continued to steal from New York City.
In fact, the day before Kristi Noem’s goons detained Brad Lander on his third visit accompanying migrants, New York’s lawyers amended their complaint about the theft — to update the Acting FEMA Administrator, to capitalize the words, “Money Grab” (to distinguish it from several other newly alleged harms), to describe the further arbitrary attempts to justify stealing the funds, first by terminating the program six weeks after DOGE took the money, then by launching an onerous investigation.
20. Then, with the purported compliance review apparently uncompleted, FEMA announced on April 1, 2025, that it was terminating SSP entirely. FEMA stated that it was terminating the City’s SSP award for the entirely different reason that the grants “no longer effectuate [] the program goals or agency priorities” (quoting 2 C.F.R. § 200.340(a)(2) (2020)). But the regulation FEMA cited does not permit a federal agency to cancel a grant program funded by Congressional appropriation simply because it has changed its mind and now opposes the program.
21. Not only that. While FEMA’s termination letter provides for a closeout process at the end of which FEMA will determine whether any additional SSP grant funds are owed the City, all SSP funds that were awarded the City and that would have remained available to make any such payment were apparently zeroed out on USASpending.gov more than six weeks earlier.
22. Collectively, these events make plain that Defendants determined to overturn the Congressional appropriation, deny the City SSP funds, and re-take any funds they could find a way to lay their hands on.
125, Despite Defendants’ representations — to the District Court in Rhode Island on February 11 and, as set forth more fully below, a week later in the Remedy for Noncompliance Letter — that the SSP funds were merely being “paused” or “temporarily” withheld pending a further review, Defendants had elsewhere already recorded the funds as no longer available at all.
The amended suit also describes that — as Trump did with Harvard — FEMA has also launched an onerous investigation into the city, and asks questions similar to the ones demanded of Harvard.
221. Joseph N. Mazzara, Acting General Counsel for defendant DHS, sent City OMB a letter dated June 4, 2025 announcing a “Notice of Investigation and Demand for Records: Shelter and Services Program Grant Awards” (“Notice of Investigation”). Under the guise of investigating the City’s expenditure of SSP funds, the Notice of Investigation sets forth a series of document demands and “interrogatories” that reach far beyond the scope of anything related to the City’s expenditures of federal SSP funds
[snip]
222. The scope of the demand far exceeds anything related to the administration of SSP. For example, the demand seeks, without apparent limitation or connection to immigrants served under SSP:
“All documents related to Your compliance with 8 U.S.C. g 1324.”
“All documents related to any instructions, guidance, suggestions, or recommendations for aliens to consider” in completing immigration or other government forms or interacting with any federal or state government officials.”
“All documents related to Your cooperation with law enforcement (including immigration officials) concerning aliens whom You have encountered'”
“All documents related to instructions, guidance, or recommendations, made available to aliens, regarding how to interact with law enforcement.”
A list of al “categories of information You have collected about any aliens.”
223. Despite the exceedingly broad scope of the demands, the Notice of Investigation provides just 30 days within which OMB “must produce” the records and information sought.
Admittedly, the lawyers are the ones now driving this fight, not Lander.
But the fight is about money Lander caught Kristi Noem stealing.
Lander’s detention thus bears a third similarity with that of Ras Baraka: both men had sued DHS, both arrests constituted — per Emil Bove’s representations to Dale Ho — election interference, and in both cases, Noem’s goons premeditated the arrest.
This is beginning to look like a pattern.
Why Kristi Noem’s Kidnapping of Brad Lander Failed … Thus Far
In my opinion, three things thwarted Kristi Noem’s attempt to interfere in Brad Lander’s campaign to be NYC’s Mayor by detaining him yesterday:
Independent media
Solidarity
The law
Independent media
I’m increasingly perplexed that when people make lists of prominent Democrats that Noem’s goons have targeted, they leave off David Huerta, the CA SEIU President arrested on a public sidewalk in front of a garment factory where ICE was conducting a search.
I increasingly think the omission may stem from the dearth of video coverage of his arrest — which basically consisted of two ICE guys picking him up and then pushing him down, leading to him knocking his head on the curb (for which he got hospital treatment).
Brad Lander’s detention, by contrast, was quickly covered by independent media present or close by.
I first learned about the detention when The City’s Gwynne Hogan reported it (and posted a shorter version of the above video) in real time. Here’s their story on the detention.
Hell Gate provided updates, including about the protest outside and Lander’s past visits to the courthouse to accompany migrants to court hearings.
AMNY’s Dean Moses posted this picture, which contrasted the fully masked man conducting the arrest with the violence the ICE goons were using in their detention of Lander.
Mainstream media (with exceptions like Wired) may not save us. But the diligence of independent outlets could.
NYT has the ability to sustain all that independent journalism. But if you can — especially if you live in New York — you might consider supporting them (recall that The City did a lot of the reporting on Eric Adams’ corruption before bigger outlets picked up the story).
That reporting allowed a group (including Zohran Mamdani and four other Mayoral candidates) to peacefully assemble in front of the courthouse. Eventually, even Kathy Hochul came to the courthouse and accompanied Lander as he was released, calling his arrest “bullshit.”
Hochul announced she’ll provide some state funding for the migrants who’re being targeted as they attend court hearings, the problem that Lander was trying to address.
Lander, after he was released, emphasized that he gets to go home but the man he attempted to accompany today, a man named Edgardo, was in ICE detention.
One important point of all this is the underlying solidarity. This was not Lander’s first visit accompanying people; among the folks respond to his detention were one who had been inspired by his actions to engage as well, and another who had provided an Arabic translator some weeks ago. Contrary to what silly pundits have started to argue, the point is not to get arrested. The point is to create friction for Stephen Miller’s dragnet. The point is to bring visibility and opposition to inhumane treatment.
It’s not only the courtroom treatment of defendants that’s egregious. So are the living conditions at 26 Federal Plaza. In an interview with the Prospect, Daniel Coates, director of public affairs at Make the Road New York, said that ICE is using the building to hold people for multiple days before transferring them elsewhere, packing them in so tightly that some have no room to sleep except for on the bathroom floor. The rooms are hot because the air-conditioning is inadequate, detainees have “no opportunities to get a change of clothes or clean themselves,” have no access to medical treatment, and cannot maintain their dietary restrictions, said Coates, who spoke at the press conference held after Lander’s detention.
“The space is exploding,” Coates said, “and it’s sort of a black hole there because ICE is refusing entry to members of Congress,” who are supposed to be allowed to oversee such buildings. It’s an open question of “what actually 26 Federal Plaza is being used for,” he said.
The point is not the arrest. The point is to expand solidarity.
The law
I think there were a number of reasons SDNY couldn’t charge Lander, at least not yet:
According to one of the journalists there, one of the ICE goons said to another before Lander did anything “do you want to arrest the Comptroller?” Like the Ras Baraka arrest, it was premeditated and had little to do with his own actions.
Because media was there, because Moses took that really damning photo, it ensured that there was plenty of footage that would make it viable to rebut a prosecutor’s hypothetical claim that Lander was resisting or (even more outlandish) assaulting them. It’s true that cops can convict on 18 USC 111 charges where someone wrestles with the cop, but here Lander would have a viable argument that this was all about assaulting him.
At one point, Lander asked for one of the ICE officers’ badge number but didn’t get it, and both the goons who arrested him were in plain clothes and one was entirely masked. He repeatedly asked to see a judicial warrant (only an administrative warrant is required); but the ICE officer merely waved a paper at him. To sustain an 18 USC 111 case, the government would have to show that these were officers conducting their duty, both they refused to prove that to Lander before they detained him.
While Lander did get the law wrong on at least one count (that ICE couldn’t arrest US citizens at all), the law does say that they can only arrest without a warrant in case of a flight risk. There is not a chance in hell that NYC’s current Comptroller and aspiring Mayor would flee, so he could make a good case that the arrest itself was illegal.
The problem I laid out yesterday; Emil Bove already told an SDNY judge that Eric Adams merely being prosecuted was election interference. Lander was going to have a very good case that DHS was attempting to help Adams and hurt Lander.
But for both the last two reasons, this may not be over. The NYT quoted a SDNY spox suggesting the government could still charge this, perhaps after the Mayoral race.
A spokesman for the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement that the office was investigating Mr. Lander’s actions, but said nothing about criminal charges. The spokesman, Nicholas Biase, noted that federal law prohibited assaults on law enforcement and other public officials and obstruction of official proceedings.
That doesn’t mean those charges would succeed. It means they might try to avoid the obvious hypocrisy of dismissing charges against one NYC mayoral candidate by waiting to charge another.
Update: I asked SDNY if they had opened an election interference investigation into the people who arrested Lander. Spox Nicholas Biase declined to comment.
Kristi Noem’s Goons Engage in what Emil Bove Calls Election Interference
Update: Lander has been released. He lost a button. The charges were dropped.
Further update: The key to Lander’s release was the superb, immediate reporting from The City and Hell Gate. If you are so inclined, please consider a donation.
According to a reporter from The City, Federal agents just detained NYC Comptroller Brad Lander as he accompanied someone from an immigration hearing.
This comes after early voting in the Mayoral primary has already started.
Just as importantly, it comes four months after DOJ dismissed a years-long investigation into Eric Adams for alleged foreign influence peddling because of this very primary.
Back in February, the government provided two bases to excuse their bid to dismiss the prosecution against Adams: because being subjected to the prosecution amounted to election interference, and also interfered with his ability to carry out his duties as Mayor.
5. In connection with that determination and directive, the Acting Deputy Attorney General concluded that dismissal is necessary because of appearances of impropriety and risks of interference with the 2025 elections in New York City, which implicate Executive Order 14147, 90 Fed. Reg. 8235. The Acting Deputy Attorney General reached that conclusion based on, among other things, review of a website2 maintained by a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and an op-ed published by that former U.S. Attorney.3
6. In connection with that determination and directive, the Acting Deputy Attorney General also concluded that continuing these proceedings would interfere with the defendant’s ability to govern in New York City, which poses unacceptable threats to public safety, national security, and related federal immigration initiatives and policies. See, e.g., Executive Order 14159, 90 Fed. Reg. 8443; Executive Order 14165, 90 Fed. Reg. 8467. The Acting Deputy Attorney General reached that conclusion after learning, among other things, that as a result of these proceedings, Adams has been denied access to sensitive information that the Acting Deputy Attorney General believes is necessary for Adams to govern and to help protect the City.
Judge Dale Ho repeatedly asked Emil Bove about his claim that the long-standing prosecution against Eric Adams constituted election interference (as well as about the claim it interfered with his ability to carry out his duties).
THE COURT: OK. There is also a reference, I think, in the paragraph to interference with the 2025 mayoral election. I have a similar question here, and it’s whether or not that’s a representation about the purpose or the effect of the prosecution or both?
MR. BOVE: I mean, frankly, I think the fact that Mayor Adams is sitting to my left right now is part of the problem. He’s not able to be out running the City and campaigning. I think that is actual interference with the election.
THE COURT: It’s having that effect.
MR. BOVE: Correct. I think the pendency of this motion right now has that effect.
THE COURT: OK.
[snip]
THE COURT: My understanding of that rationale is that it arises from a defendant’s status as a candidate. That it’s because, at least that portion about election interference, I mean, it’s because the defendant in this case is a candidate for office, not because he’s a public official. So, in other words, that rationale could apply to a candidate who’s not a public official?
MR. BOVE: Correct.
THE COURT: And it wouldn’t apply to a public official who’s not a candidate, so an unelected public official or a retiring public official or retired public official wouldn’t apply, the election interference component of what you’re applying to?
MR. BOVE: It applies to candidates. [my emphasis]
“I think that is actual interference with the election,” a (still) top-ranking DOJ official told a Federal judge about a prosecution of one of the candidates in the NYC primary for Mayor.
And then, four months later, Federal agents detained one of his opponents, after the election had already started (to say nothing of interfering with his ability to govern).
By Emil Bove’s standards, Kristi Noem’s goons just violated the law.
Trump’s Blank Page
Great fun has been had, not least by me, with Trump’s joint press conference with Keir Starmer yesterday.
It started with Trump boasting that he and “the great Prime Minister of the UK” had signed “a document.”
He opened a folder to show a piece of paper with his Sharpie signature. But he fumbled it. Several other papers fell out of the folder. Starmer bent down to shuffle up the papers together, looking like Trump’s attendant. Trump blamed the wind. Starmer joked that it was a “very important document.” Starmer laughed nervously as the two tried to reassemble the prop. The British Prime Minister bent his head, perhaps understanding the optics of what just happened.
And so we have our trade agreement with the European Union. [Starmer’s awkward smile melted.] And it’s a fair deal for both. Gonna produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income. And we have a lot of, many many other ones coming.
“But you see the level of enthusiasm is very good,” the President claimed in a deadpan.
The video went viral because of the old man’s gaffe. The EU is not the UK. The UK is not the EU. Trump makes intentional taunts (like continuing to call various Canadian leaders “Governor”). But this looked like a real mistake, perhaps elicited by the fluttering paper mishap.
The President of the United States can’t keep the UK and the trade union it abandoned, as part of the same political wave that elected Donald the first time, straight.
The presser — staged before Trump jumped on a plane to either escape the G7 or rush to kibbitz the assassination of Ayatollah Khameni, amid Chinese warnings about escalation — ended with a question about the significance of the purported deal with the UK, whether the UK is protected from tariffs.
The UK is very well protected. You know why? Because I like ’em. That’s why.
Then Trump babbled about what a great job Starmer has done.
He wandered off, promising — as his Administration has done for two months — that he had more deals in the works.
A lot of them. A lot of them.
It was all great theater — or would have been, had the President not fumbled his props and his lines. But as Justin Wolfers noted, that document was a prop. The paper was blank, save that Sharpie signature. So, it appears, were all the other papers. [Update: No, the papers were not blank, just overexposed.]
To be sure, in an Executive Order released by the White House, Trump did, in fact, implement the deal. But that implementation was, in every way, an exercise of Trump’s fragile unilateral authority. At least by appearance, Starmer got no piece of paper guaranteeing the deal. The EO actually defers the adoption of the favorable import rates for British steel and aluminum. And Trump based his authority to implement the deal on the same IEEPA powers that the Court of International Trade has thrown out (currently on appeal to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals).
Blank page. Flubbed lines. Fumbled prop. Repeated assurances of deals that never come. All Starmer has to hold onto is Trump’s proclamation that the UK is “very well protected … because I like ’em,” a personalist assurance perhaps valid only so long as Starmer will pick up Trump’s papers for him.
The entire press conference was a testament to the way in which the aging reality star has become little but.
It came amid one of the biggest flip flops in an Administration defined by such.
On Wednesday — as described by a NYT ticktock of the flip flop — Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins warned Trump, again, that Stephen Miller’s deportation gulag was posing great risk to (Trump-supporting) farmers. On Thursday, Trump posted the incoherent rant that conceded that, “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business,” were finding it “almost impossible to replace” the migrants who had long done the job, even while suggesting, “the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy” — by which Trump means, other migrants — “are applying for those jobs.” We have to protect job security for migrants from other migrants, the rant affirmed.
“[T]op White House officials were caught off guard,” NYT reports, but doesn’t mention Stephen Miller until the next sentence. “Many of Mr. Trump’s top aides, particularly Stephen Miller, his deputy chief of staff, have urged a hard-line approach.”
Brooke Rollins managed to bypass Miller (as Scott Bessent bypassed Peter Navarro and Elon Musk at various times, to get his way). And overnight the policy changed. No more arrests of “noncriminal collaterals” in work site enforcement operations.
The guidance was sent on Thursday in an email by a senior ICE official, Tatum King, to regional leaders of the ICE department that generally carries out criminal investigations, including work site operations, known as Homeland Security Investigations.
“Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,” he wrote in the message.
The email explained that investigations involving “human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling into these industries are OK.” But it said — crucially — that agents were not to make arrests of “noncriminal collaterals,” a reference to people who are undocumented but who are not known to have committed any crime.
It didn’t last.
A botched birthday parade and presumably some quality time with his consigliere later, Trump was promising invasions of Chicago and New York, specifically because (Trump continues to make lawsuits easier than they otherwise could be),
These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State,
NYT got the scoop confirming the first change in policy; WaPo got the scoop reporting the flip flop.
Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including its Homeland Security Investigations division, told agency leaders in a call Monday that agents must continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels and restaurants, according to two people familiar with the call. The new instructions were shared in an 11 a.m. call to representatives from 30 field offices across the country.
ICE and HSI field office supervisors began learning about a likely reversal of the exemption policy Sunday after hearing from DHS leadership that the White House did not support it, according to one person with knowledge of the reversal.
Again, WaPo uses a kind of euphemism to convey that when it says, “the White House did not support it,” it means, “Stephen Miller did not.”
Miller, an architect of much of Trump’s aggressive immigration policy, had privately opposed carving out exceptions for certain industries that rely heavily on workers without legal status, according to two people with knowledge of his advocacy in recent days against the measure.
Increasingly, it appears that Miller issues the decisions (or countermands the others), all while handing Trump pieces of paper and a Sharpie to make him feel — and, if he doesn’t fumble his papers or his lines — powerful, and give Miller’s assumption of presidential powers the patina of legitimacy. Trump, the reality TV star, is just there for the press conferences.
The most fervid claims of a Joe Biden autopen scandal pale in comparison.
Trump’s deportation flip flop comes as Wired reported rising numbers of SEC filings describing the business risk from the deportations and WSJ described how Miller’s raids are disrupting businesses; NBC took a closer look at the chaos caused in Omaha during John Ewing’s first week as Mayor when ICE targeted a meat packing plant. Everyone knows this policy is damaging the US but in the face of Miller’s omnipresence and pushback from rabid supporters, Trump is helpless to even selectively protect his buddies.
And it has been simple for foreign leaders to exploit Trump’s increasing feebleness. Before he rushed away from the G-7 yesterday, he served as Vladimir Putin’s propagandist, whining that Russia had been expelled and misrepresenting the reason why. Both before and after that, Trump kept posting away futilely on Truth Social, attempting to look like he had some control — or even influence — over what Bibi Nethanyahu has in store for Iran.
“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal,” Trump boasted on Friday, before taking credit for Israel’s strike. “Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!” He went on to claim that Israel was enforcing Trump’s own 60-day deadline (even as the attack preempted Steve Witkoff’s meeting with a now-dead negotiator). “The U.S. had nothing to do with the attack on Iran, tonight,” Trump lied in an attempt to warn Iran off retaliating against the US. Trump would negotiate a deal, he whimpered. Iran should have signed the deal (it did — and then Trump reversed it) Trump repeated as he — insanely — called for a city of 10 million to evacuate. Shut up Tucker Carlson, about my reneging on the promise to avoid World War III! Now he’s redefining America First to encompass whatever it is that Israel has in store. “I have not reached out to Iran for “Peace Talks” in any way, shape, or form. This is just more HIGHLY FABRICATED, FAKE NEWS!” tried to disclaim every pursuing a deal, even while his public statements endorse a give-upping from Iran (which may entail the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei) not on the table last week. His most recent post shares a text from Christian Nationalist Mike Huckabee, invoking Harry Truman’s decision to nuke Japan, while promising, “I believe you will hear from heaven and that voice is far more important than mine or ANYONE else’s.”
As Trump disavows what Tulsi Gabbard (fresh off releasing a weird propaganda video warning of nuclear annihilation) tells him, he seems to have been persuaded to endorse whatever it is Bibi has planned.
The rest is all an attempt to retcon some appearance of control over what Bibi is doing, an attempt to do so even as his MAGAt base fractures over his participation in this escalating war.
Trump is not alone in being manhandled by Bibi. Joe Biden was equally easy to manipulate — he just made affirmative efforts, with little success, to rein in Bibi’s ambitions. Trump appears to lack even that ability.
And the rest is blank papers waved around to give the illusion of power.
Trump Chose to Hunt Law-Abiding Migrants Rather than Right Wing Terrorists Like Vance Boelter.
It will be some time before we learn whether Vance Boelter, the Trump supporter charged with assassinating Melissa Hortman, could have been stopped if Trump hadn’t dismantled efforts to fight terrorists like Boelter.
But we do know that Trump has done real damage to those efforts.
Start with Kristi Noem’s degradation of the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, an office trying to prevent attacks like the one Boelter carried out. Noem’s DHS put a 22-year old with no experience and a day job hunting migrants, Thomas Fugate, in charge of the office designed to fight radicalization.
[T]he 22-year-old with no apparent national security expertise is now a Department of Homeland Security official overseeing the government’s main hub for terrorism prevention, including an $18 million grant program intended to help communities combat violent extremism.
The White House appointed Fugate, a former Trump campaign worker who interned at the hard-right Heritage Foundation, to a Homeland Security role that was expanded to include the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships. Known as CP3, the office has led nationwide efforts to prevent hate-fueled attacks, school shootings and other forms of targeted violence.
[snip]
The once-bustling office of around 80 employees now has fewer than 20, former staffers say. Grant work stops, then restarts. One senior civil servant was reassigned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency via an email that arrived late on a Saturday.
The office’s mission has changed overnight, with a pivot away from focusing on domestic extremism, especially far-right movements. The “terrorism” category that framed the agency’s work for years was abruptly expanded to include drug cartels, part of what DHS staffers call an overarching message that border security is the only mission that matters. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has largely left terrorism prevention to the states.
ProPublica sent DHS a detailed list of questions about Fugate’s position, his lack of national security experience and the future of the department’s prevention work. A senior agency official replied with a statement saying only that Fugate’s CP3 duties were added to his role as an aide in an Immigration & Border Security office.
“Due to his success, he has been temporarily given additional leadership responsibilities in the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships office,” the official wrote in an email. “This is a credit to his work ethic and success on the job.”
[snip]
But Homeland Security’s budget proposal to Congress for the next fiscal year suggests a bleaker future. The department recommended eliminating the threat-prevention grant program, explaining that it “does not align with DHS priorities.”
The FBI — another agency that has worked to prevent terrorism , too, has focused on law-abiding migrants instead of right wing terrorists.
As NBC has been tracking, Trump has ordered a significant number of FBI agents to help chase down law-abiding migrants, shifting some away from counterterrorism.
One of the memos says the goal is to have 2,000 FBI agents across the country working full time on immigration enforcement at any one time.
Given that FBI resources are finite, current and former officials say, a significant increase in immigration enforcement will draw agents away from what have long been top FBI priorities, including counterterrorism, counterespionage, fraud and violent crime.
That shift has only intensified as Stephen Miller struggles to find enough migrants to deport to fulfill the false claims about their numbers he dangled during the election.
FBI field offices around the country have been ordered to assign significantly more agents to immigration enforcement, a dramatic shift in federal law enforcement priorities that will likely siphon resources away from counterterrorism, counterintelligence and fraud investigations, multiple current and former bureau officials told NBC News.
The orders, given in a series of memos and meetings in FBI offices this week, come at a time when the Trump administration is proposing to cut 5% of the FBI’s budget, and as the Justice Department is deprioritizing investigations of certain types of white-collar and corporate crime, according to a memo obtained by NBC News.
[snip]
One federal law enforcement official estimated that the vast majority of agents were uncomfortable with being a part of the immigration operations, saying ICE doesn’t meticulously plan out arrest operations the way that the bureau does.
“This is not what we do, these are bad ideas,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity citing fear of retaliation. “If this was a Democrat administration, I’d be saying this is bad, we shouldn’t be doing this.”
Even as the manhunt continued for the pro-Trump terrorist, even as Minnesota grieves, Trump posted another Truth Social post adopting the language of Nazis and pitting his ICE goons against “Radical Democrat [sic] Politicians,” stoking yet more violence against them.
Stephen Miller and Donald Trump have made a choice: To hunt law-abiding migrants rather than the Trump supporters gunning down Democrats in their homes.
WSJ Memory Holes Trump’s Near-Assassination of His Vice President
In an 800-word story on the rise of political violence, this what WSJ’s Katy Stech Ferek and Tim Hanrahan wrote about Trump’s incitement of thousands of rabid followers, their attack on cops protecting Congress and their open chants calling for the assassination of Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell, Trump’s pardon of most of them (and release of the others), and DOJ’s payment of $5 million to Ashli Babbitt’s estate:
WaPo’s Sarah Ellison and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez said little more in its equivalent piece, ascribing to Trump no role in the January 6 attack and making no mention of his pardon for those who did attack cops and the Capitol.
The January 2021 attack on the Capitol saw a mob of Trump supporters threaten lawmakers gathered to certify the 2020 election.
NYT’s Lisa Lerer, at least, did mention the pardon, but not the things Trump had done to get his mob to chant “hang Mike Pence.”
Mr. Trump has had a hand in that. Since his 2016 candidacy, he has signaled at least his tacit approval of violence against his political opponents. He encouraged attendees at his rallies to “knock the hell” out of protesters, praised a lawmaker who body-slammed a reporter and defended the rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, who clamored to “hang Mike Pence.” One of his first acts in his second term as president was to pardon those rioters.
None of these outlets have the simple journalistic courage to say that Trump nearly got his Vice President assassinated, that Trump incited a brutal attack on a co-equal branch of government, and that his reward for the people who did this has fostered violence against Trump’s adversaries.
Sunday Night WTF: Tankers with a Tantrum
[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]
Journalists need to validate this information and ask Whiskey Pete Hegseth WTAF is going on that so many tanker aircraft were deployed flying due east of the U.S. on a Sunday night.
Note the timing of each post with newer at the top and older at the bottom; the top two were obtained via Threadreader (time not available but assumed to be later than 21:02 ET), the others via Xitter. There may have been newer posts on Xitter but the platform wouldn’t let me dig any deeper without logging in and that’s not an option for me.
The number of tankers dispatched in the same direction on a Sunday night is quite odd given 40,000 active duty personnel deployed at multiple bases in the Middle East and at least two naval destroyers in the vicinity. The vessels are part of an increasing naval presence in the region over the last several months.
Now note the tantrum Trump had this evening on Truth Social – or a tantrum-like statement mimicking Trump’s habits – in which Trump appears to order stepped up ICE raids in blue cities and states, using DHS as a political weapon. (Stephen “Baby Goebbels” Miller, is this your work?)
Note especially the timing of the tantrum.
What a coincidence that one hour after this tantrum on Trump’s blog there are more than 20 military tanker aircraft in the air. It’s almost as if somebody wants their opposition to be too preoccupied to notice there has been no Authorization for Use Military Force or Declaration of War approved by Congress let alone an attack on the US meriting such authorization/declaration.
You might want to contact your members of Congress about this and ask them WTF.
You might also ask them whether they would consider impeachment and conviction for abuse of office in the form of politicization of an entire cabinet-level function.
“The Answer Is Zero:” When Fragile White Supremacists Discover … They Aren’t
There’s a line in Kerry Howley’s entertaining profile of Whiskey Pete Hegseth’s incompetence that, along with the URL title — “Could these be Pete Hegseth’s last days in the Pentagon?” — made me wonder whether she and her editors rushed to publish it in fear that it was about to be Overtaken By Events.
To illustrate her best quote, describing that Whiskey Pete is only playing at Defense Secretary, Howley used the (apparently paraphrased) hypothetical crisis, Israel bombing Iran, to explain what nearly led a longtime Pentagon employee to cry when contemplating how poorly Whiskey Pete’s Pentagon would function.
“Pete is playing secretary,” a source says. “He’s not being secretary.” In crisis — an unplanned evacuation, Israel bombing Iran, China moving on Taiwan — there will be no one with experience to lead. “For any sustained operations, we’re screwed. There’s nobody in the SecDef’s office at this point that has any … they’re not heavyweights. They don’t have the sophistication. They don’t have the experience.” One source described a longtime Pentagon employee discussing the lack of readiness in the office, “close to tears,” saying “the department is so fucked.”
Having spent months crafting a great story about Trump’s woefully incompetent Defense Secretary (though before she had gotten the full story; for example, she didn’t describe the suspected role of DOGE implant Justin Fulcher in fabricating a claim about NSA intercepts), she published it before it became irrelevant.
And here we are, Israel is bombing Iran and Iran is returning fire, and there are probably people crying at the Pentagon and they’re not alone.
Israel’s attack on Iran is not even the biggest risk of having someone as unhinged as Whiskey Pete in charge: the Los Angeles invasion is.
Indeed, over the course of a long week of disastrous Congressional appearances for Whiskey Pete, it became fairly clear he knows fuckall about the invasion of California he has personally authorized. And that is dangerous — inconceivably dangerous — not least because Whiskey Pete also spent the week facing his own inadequacy.
As things (and not just Whiskey Pete’s things) begin to spiral out of control, it’s time we talk about the problems created when people who believe they — a Christian white man with an addiction problem — are supreme, face the kind of public humiliation that destroys the core of their identity.
Whiskey Pete knows fuckall about the Los Angeles deployment
Let’s start with the risk.
Friday, Reuters reported on the first known temporary detention carried out by Marines deployed to Los Angeles. As the shocking video portrays, there were at one point at least five heavily-armed men engaged in detaining Army veteran Marcus Leao.
Leao, who is brown-skinned, was a veteran on his way to the VA office.
Speaking to reporters after he was released, the civilian identified himself as Marcos Leao, 27. Leao said he was an Army veteran on his way to an office of the Department of Veterans Affairs when he crossed a yellow tape boundary and was asked to stop.
Leao, who gained his U.S. citizenship through military service, said he was treated “very fairly.”
“They’re just doing their job,” said Leao, who is of Angolan and Portuguese descent.
[snip]
The troops are authorized to detain people who pose a threat to federal personnel or property, but only until police can arrest them. Military officials are not allowed to carry out arrests themselves.
There’s no hint of what probable cause they had to detain him, at all.
He was going to the VA office.
Imagine what’s going to happen when the target is actually doing something that an itchy trigger might view as a real threat?
Meanwhile, the Secretary of Defense has repeatedly confessed he doesn’t know what is going on with the deployment.
On June 9, for example, the Secretary of Defense claimed the deployed Marines were coming from Camp Pendleton.
There was, to be fair, some as yet unexplained uncertainty whence DOD was deploying 700 Marines, from Pendleton or Twentynine Palms. But within hours of this tweet, the Marines were deploying from the latter base, not the former (where protests against the deployment had already been staged, which is on the edge of San Diego’s suburbs). The Secretary of Defense’s tweet, posted hours before the deployment, ended up being inexplicably wrong.
The next day, Whiskey Pete appeared before the first of three appropriations hearings this week. Pete Aguilar asked some basic questions: Why were the Guard sent without housing or food? How much will it cost? Where is the money coming from?
Each time, Whiskey Pete answered with bluster rather than facts (the Acting Comptroller, Bryn MacDonnell, did an exceptional job all week, and in in this case revealed the deployment would cost $134 million, mostly TDY costs, which would be paid out of contingency funds).
Then Aguilar asked Hegseth what the legal justification was. Hegseth again blustered.
Aguilar pointed to the statute: 10 USC 12406 — the statute cited in Trump’s Executive Order mandating the deployment, and asked which of the three justifications was triggered.
The Secretary of Defense said he didn’t know.
I don’t know. You just read it yourself. And people can listen themselves. But it sounds like all three to me. If you’ve got millions of illegals and you don’t know where they’re coming from, they’re waving flags from foreign countries and assaulting police officers, that’s a problem. The government of California is unable to execute the laws of the United States. The Governor of the [sic] California has failed to protect his people along with the Mayor of Los Angeles and so President Trump has said he will protect our agents and our Guard and Marines are proud to do it.
And yet days after deploying the Guard, Hegseth confessed that he had no fucking idea which of those three clauses justified the deployment.
Fully 15 pages of Judge Charles Breyer’s opinion enjoining the use of the National Guard addresses this issue and Breyer even scolds DOJ for attempting to retcon their justification, precisely what Hegesth himself tried to do in the hearing.
It is concerning, to say the least, to imagine that the federal executive could unilaterally exercise military force in a domestic context and then be allowed to backfill justifications for doing so, especially considering how wary courts are of after-the-fact justifications even where the stakes are lower.
Hegseth had relied on the law, without any sense of how or why (he claimed) it applied, just as Breyer found DOJ itself had done.
Hegseth had another Appropriations hearing on Wednesday, this time before the Senate. In response to a question from Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed whether the troops would use drones and detain Americans, Hegseth refused to answer.
Since then, the military has indeed deployed drones and (as noted) detained at least one American citizen. Reed was correct: The answer Hegseth refused to give was, yes.
Hegseth also stated that both the Guard and the Marines were on the streets.
Only, the Marines weren’t, yet. They hadn’t finished the scant training they were being given.
Some of these gaffes — announcing the wrong base whence Marines would deploy, claiming they were deployed when they weren’t, yet — may represent confusion or DOD changing its mind, which is interesting enough, given the artificial claim of an emergency. But Hegseth disclaimed even knowing the legal basis on which he had deployed 4,700 service members.
Whiskey Pete’s humiliation snowballs
Meanwhile, even as Hegseth is presiding over an invasion of a blue city, even as Howley’s profile was in the works, even as DOD’s Inspector General finalizes a report expected to rebut Hegseth’s claim that he didn’t share classified information on a Signal chat, on the third day of testimony (the Appropriations hearing with Aguilar was Tuesday, the Senate Appropriations hearing with Reed was Wednesday, he had a hearing before the full House Armed Services Committee on Thursday), things got worse.
Here, Democrats, and several Republicans, were far less interested in appropriations; they were teeing up on Hegseth’s manifest incompetence.
Three key exchanges went straight to Hegseth’s incompetence.
Early in the hearing, as many others did and would, Seth Moulton hammered Hegseth on his Signal scandal. As many others did and would, Moulton asked Hegseth to take some accountability for his actions.
But when Hegseth answered (as he did elsewhere) that it didn’t matter if he shared classified information in a Signal chat, that it didn’t matter because the operation itself was successful, Moulton mocked that claim.
Moulton: You talked about the success of the Houthi operation. About how much did it cost? How much money did you spend on missiles, shooting at the Houthis?
Hegseth: Well, you’d have to compare that with what it cost —
Moulton: I’m just asking how much did it cost?
Hegseth: — to divert our shipping lanes.
Moulton: I’m told it’s several hundred million dollars, maybe close to a billion dollars. How many US-flagged commercial ships have transitted the Red Sea since your so-called successful operation?
Hegseth: Well, thankfully, unlike the previous Admin —
Moulton: The answer is zero.
Hegseth: Military vessels transitt–
Moulton: No I didn’t ask you about military vessels.
Hegseth: Which would be the precursor for —
Moulton: How many commercial vessels? It has been several weeks. How many commercial vessels, US-flagged, have transitted —
Hegseth: Well, would you, Mr. Congressman, put civilian ships–
Moulton: The questions are not to me, Mr. Secretary, they’re to you. The answer is zero.
“The answer is zero.” Hegseth tried to cover up the utter pointlessness of the failed operation kicked off on that Signal chat with boasts that two military vessels had sailed through the Red Sea unscathed. But zero US commercial vehicles have, the very opportunity cost Hegseth had tried to use to dismiss the cost of the operation. That’s what success looks like for a guy like Pete Hegseth.
About halfway through the hearing, it was Mikie Sherrill’s turn, fresh off her win in the NJ gubernatorial primary. She started by observing how Hegseth had been using Fox News tactics to try to cover up his incompetence.
Mr. Secretary, your testimony over the last several days before Congress — I’ve heard you speak about all your supposed accomplishments from your time at the Pentagon. I have to say, your training at Fox News has let you spin months of dangerous dysfunction and incompetence into catchy phrases, like “restoring the warrior ethos” and “increasing lethality,” but the truth is it’s really been chaos at the Pentagon under your leadership. You’ve clearly shown you’re unable to manage the Department of Defense but what I’m most concerned about are three specific areas: Your operational incompetence, your managerial incompetence, and your budgetary incompetence.
She then walked through individual incidents substantiating those three kinds of incompetence:
Operational: How Hegseth mistakenly believed Trump wanted to cut off all aid to Ukraine. Hegseth said it was a fake news headline, a Fox News tactic.
Managerial: Why Hegseth fired CJCS CQ Brown and the Chief of Naval Operations Lisa Franchetti without cause — Sherrill said it seemed like it was because Brown is Black and Franchetti is a woman — and when Hegseth would get around to replacing Franchetti. Sherrill asked if qualified Admirals keep turning offers down. Hegseth again claimed it was fake news, but had no answer for why he hadn’t yet replaced Franchetti.
Budgetary: Why Hegseth is blowing money on vanity projects for President Trump — Sherill listed the Qatari plane, the parade, the Houthi campaign, and the Los Angeles invasion — and what priorities he has cut funding for to pay for them. Again, no asnwer.
Each time, Hegseth dodged Sherrill’s questions, and she restated the question — the last time, in a sing-song voice like she was speaking to a surly toddler.
On top of the substantive issues, the exchange proved that, yes, Hegseth is treating oversight questions like they’re Fox News games.
Eugene Vindman (Alexander’s brother, and like him ousted after blowing the whistle on Trump), almost the last questioner, chose a different approach to demonstrate Hegseth’s manifest incompetence.
He quizzed him.
He set it up by explaining that,
Many believe you are unqualified — underqualified — for this role. You’ve been Secretary of Defense for four and a half months now, for the sake of the American people and our service members, I hope you’ve done your homework since.
Then, like the questions Tammy Duckworth posed at his confirmation hearing, Vindman asked about topics that demonstrate several American vulnerabilities: China’s growing naval superiority, a key bottleneck that could cut the Baltics off from land reinforcements, and the rise of sight-directed small drones.
What year can the US fight a war with China?
How many ships does China have?
How many ships does the US have?
How many ships will China field by 2030?
What is the name of a corridor central to NATO reinforcements of the Baltic?
What heavily militarized Russian territory, connected to the Suwalki gap, containing nuclear capable missiles, it threatens all of NATO — it’s right there in the middle of Eastern Europe?
What percentage of frontline Ukrainian casualties are caused by FPV drones?
Which US service has written doctrine or standardized procurement of FPV drones?
Hegseth’s attempt to cover up his ignorance about the specifics of these vulnerabilities adopted similar tactics — those Fox News tactics Sherrill had raised — each time.
First, give a pat answer.
Then, falsely claim the answer is classified.
Then, use a political talking point answering a different question.
Then give up.
The one answer he thought he knew — that the Army had a written doctrine on FPVs — was wrong (to be fair, it was a trick question).
That’s when Vindman shifted to the same topic that Moulton had raised: Hegseth’s refusal to take accountability for placing attack information on a Signal chat. Only Vindman had a twist: He conveyed the opinion and request of the mother of one of the men who had piloted that first attack.
She believes that you need to resign. She also had several questions but one thing: she said she would appreciate an apology, an apology for putting classified information — her son couldn’t even tell her where the Truman was going — into the Houthi PC Small Group Signal chat that risked her son’s life and the mission. Mr. Secretary, yes or no, do you think you owe her an apology?
Hours after Moulton demonstrated that the mission accomplished nothing, Hegseth still resorted to the same ploy that failed with Moulton, claiming “it was an incredibly successful mission, and her son did great work, and thankfully the Houthi campaign was successful. … I don’t apologize for success.”
He doesn’t have to exercise any personal accountability because a mission that failed to achieve its stated objective was a great success.
Perhaps because the House Armed Services Committee is so big — the fullhearing went on over seven hours, perhaps because a chunk of Republicans didn’t bother to show up to defend Hegseth (as noted, several joined the fun in thwacking the Secretary), perhaps it was because Whiskey Pete had no answer for his own actions, for DOD’s budget, and still, for how to keep the US safe. But the very process of the hearing showed that there’s no there there, under Hegseth’s non-stop politicization and Fox News answers.
We always knew he was an empty suit. This hearing exposed that.
Turns out you’re not supreme at all!
And that’s what has me worried.
Kerry Howley seems to think Whiskey Pete may be finished, and she’s not alone. The NBC story on the White House difficulties finding Hegseth babysitters — which is, substantively, far more damning than the Howley profile — ends with a prediction that the Inspector General will issue findings adverse to Hegseth. Two days after WSJ dedicated an entire story to that topic, it published a story describing what a failure the Houthi campaign was.
It’s not just Democrats and some Republicans in Congress who have lost patience with Hegseth. It appears most of the Pentagon has, which is why (as both Sherrill and the NBC story point out) people aren’t applying for key jobs. (Some people speculate it’s why some of the soldiers marching in yesterday’s parade couldn’t be fucked to march in lockstep.)
I’m not so sure. Politically, Trump should fire Hegseth, to minimize the surface area of easy attacks on himself, including from Republicans. Operationally, there’s no question that Hegseth’s continued tenure makes the US far less safe (and just as importantly, mucks up the finely tuned bureaucracy of the Pentagon).
Trump could even use the dud of yesterday’s military parade as an excuse. His Fox News hire couldn’t even make Trump’s long-sought military parade into rousing propaganda.
But Trump just invaded California relying on the authority of a guy who couldn’t be bothered to figure out why he was invading.
To carry out his (or Stephen Miller’s) attempt to pursue a reverse Reconstruction, he needs cabinet members like Kristi Noem and Hegseth who don’t care about the legal niceties but are happy to parrot lines about liberating the largest state, and the world’s fourth largest economy, from its elected leaders.
Without that, Trump himself, the entire project, becomes vulnerable.
If I were Hegseth I might resign on my own, to avoid any further public humiliation like I experienced this week. You had Democrats, women, Latinos (Salud Carbajal’s contempt for Hegseth was particularly scathing), Black people, and LGBT people, all looking smarter than Hegseth, hour after hour, a tremendous advertisement for the proposition that diversity is our strength, which Whiskey Pete loathes so much.
Over the course of seven hours, the contrast between the prepared members and Hegseth’s evasions dismantled Hegseth’s claims to Christian white male superiority. And that’s before he had no answer to Jason Crow’s question about what distinguishes the US from al Qaeda or ISIS.
All Hegseth had to fall back on were Fox News evasions.
It will never get better for Pete Hegseth.
Whiskey Pete will never catch up on mastery of these facts. Worse still, a masterful Howley euphemism suggests the stress of trying to do so has allowed his demons to take hold again.
Hegseth was different after Signalgate, according to six people in a position to know. He was more prone to anger and less likely to be clean-shaven in the morning.
This is a man who is failing because he came in without qualifications, quickly proved an easy mark for political infighting, and as a result keeps making decisions that threaten greater and greater catastrophe.
Whiskey Pete Hegseth has become a perfect advertisement for the lie of white supremacy. Couching your decisions in some claimed inherent superiority, over and over, doesn’t work in a bureaucracy like the Pentagon.
More importantly, for the same reasons he can’t accept accountability for Signalgate, I don’t know how Hegseth could, emotionally, quit. He can’t do so because Trump would turn on him (which Trump will eventually do anyway). He can’t do so because it would cause permanent psychic damage.
If he admits Mikie Sherrill is right, it will destroy him, because his assumed superiority is the core of his identity.
Escalation is no off-ramp
It turns out, freed from the guidance of adults counseling his decisions, that Trump is discovering he was wrong, over and over. In the weeks before Israel started what could be a catastrophic escalation, Trump was pitching what was basically the JPCOA he had overturned eight years earlier. In light of Israel’s attack, Voice of America ordered all its Farsi workers to return to work, just months after Trump ordered the entire service disbanded.
The U.S. Agency for Global Media told employees placed on administrative leave to immediately return to their roles providing counter-programming to Iranian state media as the conflict between the two nations escalated Friday, according to an email seen by POLITICO and three people familiar with the situation.
“Effective immediately, you are recalled from administrative leave,” said the email from USAGM’s human resources department. “You are expected to report to your duty station immediately.”
There are 75 full time employees within VOA’s Persian wing — the language predominantly spoken in Iran — and it’s believed most, if not all, have now been brought back after being put on administrative leave for three months.
In recent days, Trump discovered that Stephen Miller’s immigration jihad is too costly for powerful lobbying interests, so he is reversing course on part of that, too.
In another immigration gulag failure, Kristi Noem thought a smart way to deal with Newark’s concerns about Delaney Hall’s use as an immigration facility was to arrest Newark’s Mayor. Then they changed their mind and charged Congressman LaMonica McIver, instead. In the very same week they indicted McIver, four people (two accused of burglary, the other two accused of more violent crimes) in Delaney Hall escaped through a “drywall with a mesh interior” wall leading into a parking lot after days of unrest because GEO had repurposed the cafeteria to manage detainee movements and so not fed detainees sufficiently. Admittedly, DHS has not yet admitted that they can’t use this facility, but they certainly substantiated Newark’s concerns about its fitness to hold detainees, some of them dangerous.
The problem is, even as Trump is — with his actions — proving that the experts, Barack Obama, and Kamala Harris were right after all, he cannot admit they were right, because his entire political identity is based on a claim that they’re wrong or (in the case of Black politicians) inferior.
At least in Whiskey Pete Hegseth’s case, being confronted with his incompetence only caused him to double down.
The only sign of this disastrous seven-hour hearing on Whiskey Pete’s Xitter timeline, below his pinned “Never back down” tweet, and now sandwiched among the inaccurate claim he was deploying Marines from Pendleton, an RT of a DOD Rapid Response attack showing his refusal to respond to Pete Aguilar, both a DOD Rapid Response and a Rapid Response 47 celebration of his contempt in response to questions from Ranking Appropriations member Betty McCollum about the LA deployment, eight [!!!] posts from the politicized rally at Fort Bragg (about which, Hegseth would claim in the HASC hearing, not to know DOD had imposed political litmus tests on the attendees), various false claims about Los Angeles, various false claims about US involvement in Iran, and various claims to a recruiting bonanza partly debunked in this WaPo article, the only sign of the seven hours of Whiskey Pete’s life when he was publicly and repeatedly exposed as an incompetent hack was this DOD Rapid Response attack on Sara Jacobs’ questioning of him, edited to focus on Hegseth’s response.
The full exchange is rather instructive.
Jacobs starts by noting that she represents the largest military community in the country and noting it was National Women’s Veterans Day. She sandbagged him, getting him to first reiterate his prior statements hailing the service of women. “With your focus on and emphasis on merit, standards, I wanted to tell you about three incredible women.” She then described the most recent performance evaluation of three women described as exceptional. (She didn’t name them, but they might be Erica Vandal, Emily Shilling, and Kate Cole.)
Jacobs: Given their stellar qualifications and accomplishments, and their record of surpassing standards, I assume that you agree that the Pentagon and the Services should do everything they can to retain women like these, correct?
Hegseth: I would commend the Major, the Aviator, and the Instructor for their service.
Jacobs: Great. I’m glad you agree because I also believe we should be recruiting and retaining the very best and brightest to serve in the military. And yet, you’re actually kicking out these three highly qualified solely because of their identity. These are trans women. And you are using the very same arguments used against desegregating the military or allowing women to serve or allowing gay people to serve. And in all those cases, those arguments were wrong. So I think it’s clear that this is actually not about standards or — I’m quoting you again — “an equal, unwavering, gender-neutral merit-based system,” because if it were you would be keeping these women in. Instead, you’re the one injecting culture wars into the military. And it’s at the detriment of our readiness and national security.
What DOD’s Rapid Response thought made Whiskey Pete look good was where he interrupted Jacobs’ next question, to label these women as, “Men who think they’re women.” Hegseth’s own propagandists had to censor the part where Jacobs described the excellence of trans women that Hegseth has ejected from the military, claiming they pose a threat to national security.
It was just another feeble Fox talking point, one that affirmatively buried the actual facts.
The problem with exposing the inadequacy of someone like Hegseth is the logical response — his suppression of the proof of excellence in favor of his forceful Fox redefinition of what excellence among trans servicemembers really is.
The same thing is happening with his Los Angeles invasion. Not only did Hegseth himself tweet false claims about the extent of the violence in Los Angeles, but as Gavin Newsom’s press team exposed, his Rapid Response account has started posting disinformation — old riot footage — as part of its campaign to support the Los Angeles invasion.
Pete Hegseth’s DOD is disseminating Russian-style disinformation to justify their invasion of Los Angeles (as Newsom’s staff noted, DHS has started doing the same).
Whiskey Pete’s response to being exposed as incompetent, DOD’s response to launching an invasion with no basis, has been the same: To double down on the lies, to double down on the dehumanization.
Sure, Whiskey Pete may soon be gone. Blaming him for the failed birthday party would be the easy way to do it.
But he remains particularly dangerous unless and until then, not least because he has ordered the military to be something they are not, and to do so based on his transparently false claims about what America is.
Because Pete Hegseth cannot admit who he is — and more importantly, what he is not — he is demanding that the men and women who serve under him be something they are not.
