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Seizing Opportunity from Chaos

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I have always said — and reiterated, in some form, on Friday — that the most immediate way to reverse the damage Trump is doing is seizing opportunity out of a catastrophe he creates.

The most likely way you will get Republicans to start breaking from Trump, the most likely way you will get Republicans to actually take action against Trump rather than simply mewling weakly, is if a catastrophe threatens the world Republicans — as distinct from average Americans — care about.

The global crisis Trump has created is one such possible moment. But it will require keeping focus and wits in a moment of chaos.

Last week, Democrats had several moments of solidarity, first with the Cory Booker Senate speech, then with Saturday’s protests. Those twin events gave aging white liberals who, before this moment, often complained about fecklessness, a sense of direction.

Then there’s the opportunity created by chaos. Both Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson have warned against Trump’s tariffs. Last week the Senate passed a Tim Kaine bill reversing Trump’s claimed emergency on which he based his Canadian tariffs (with Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Rand Paul, and Mitch McConnell voting in support). Chuck Grassley’s bill with Maria Cantwell to reclaim Congressional authority over tariffs has seven of the 13 GOP supporters it would need to pass so far (with Grassley, Collins, Murkowski, and McConnell, plus Thom Tillis, Jerry Moran, and Todd Young). Don Bacon is introducing a similar bill in the House (where it would need more supporters to bypass Mike Johnson’s control).

There’s more overt opposition from the banksters who foolishly believed that Trump would help business, with Bill Ackerman undergoing a moment of cognitive dissonance in real time.

Thus far Trump has doubled down in the face of whatever lobbying he’s getting privately.

But Trump is, in my opinion, wildly overestimating his leverage over foreign countries and probably even Wall Street. China immediately responded to Trump’s tariffs with retaliation. I expect China has a belief that it can cut the US out of global trade flows, and eventually undermine the US role as reserve currency — though to be sure, Trump has telegraphed plans to retaliate using using precisely those tools.

Not only have Trump’s attacks on Canada reversed the Liberal Party’s fortunes [corrected] in advance of an election this month. But Mark Carney’s hard line has quieted Trump’s taunts (at least until after the election). And his experience as a central banker of both Canada and England makes him a natural leader of efforts to make sense of this chaos.

The EU has not yet decided on a response, but among the tools under consideration are sanctions against US tech companies.

Which is to say, other countries may soon disabuse Trump’s fantasy that he wields absolute power.

But in the last several weeks, Trump has gotten several court rulings that will help him accelerate his assault on the Federal government. A week ago Friday, a conservative panel on the DC Circuit ruled that Trump has authority to fire commissioners on panels that Congress has mandated to operate independently, effectively overruling Humphrey’s Executor [corrected] in anticipation that SCOTUS may ultimately do so. The plaintiffs are asking for an en banc review, as of yet to no avail. In the wake of this and an earlier DC Circuit ruling, Trump has successfully argued that Trump has broader authority to dismantle agencies than District judges have initially recognized. And this ruling makes it more likely that Trump will go after the Fed. [Update: The full Circuit reversed and unfired the commissioners.]

Then on Friday SCOTUS overruled a Temporary Restraining Order, thereby permitting Trump to cancel grants to teachers involving DEI, suggesting that the court will eventually side with DOJ’s argument that existing grants must be litigated in Court of Federal Claims. This reflects Amy Coney Barrett switching positions from an earlier USAID lawsuit. This will lead District court judges to pause before granting similar TROs on an Administrative Procedures theory.

The courts have slowed Trump down and on some matters the courts will continue to be a brake, but the twin legal theory that Trump can fire anyone and after installing his own leader dismantle what is left will accelerate some kinds of attacks. It may also encourage him to fire Jerome Powell, which will really spook the markets.

The 2008 bank crash created an opportunity that Barack Obama largely squandered in his effort to save the big banks from their own foolishness. Here, the foolishness is all Trump’s, with banks and hedgies on the hook only for their arrogance that they would be better off with a racist nihilist. That presents a kind of opportunity, even if Trump’s personal appeal counsels indirect counterattacks (for example, on Elon rather than Trump) for the moment.

Here, the task remains the same as it was last week, and the week before, and the week before that. Hold DOGE accountable for dismantling the government. Warn about what DOGE (and Congress) are in the process of doing to Social Security and Medicaid. Make government visible, especially with stories of those fired and great government projects killed. Get non-political networks — PTAs and library reading groups and disease communities — involved in the fight. Tell the stories of the human beings stripped of their due process rights.

Do everything you can to peel off right wingers.

Help your neighbors.

To the extent you are able as you try to protect your retirement and pay the bills, though, try not to lose your head over Trump’s economic catrastrophe. Lots of people are losing their head right now and the people around Trump are stuck defending tariffs on penguins, badly (and inconsistently). It is absolutely horrible, and billions of people are being hurt by Trump’s attacks.

The economic calamity is of a piece with the constitutional one. And the economic calamity may present a path out of both that and the constitutional calamity.

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MAGAts Confess They Cannot Compete with Penguins on a Level Playing Glacier

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Trump is well on his way to causing, with his stupid tariffs, the same kind of economic damage as COVID did, but without a global epidemic as catalyst and excuse, just himself and the batshit advisors who refuse to tell him no.

At least some of Trump’s handlers hope this will lead one after another country to supplicate Trump, begging for favors. Depending on who you ask, that may have been one of the poorly considered and often conflicting goals.

But even before price hikes start to affect consumers, there are signs of pushback.

After the Senate passed a (thus far) mostly symbolic law sponsored by Tim Kaine reversing Trump’s emergency declaration for Canada, Chuck Grassley teamed with Maria Cantwell to propose restoring Congressional authority over such taxes. (Grassley did not support Kaine’s bill; Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Rand Paul, and Mitch McConnell did.) See this Aaron Fritschner thread for an explanation of why this second effort might have more prospect of success: because the House has not yet stopped time with regards to the latest emergency Trump declared to accrue more power.

The pure insanity of Trump’s tariffs is best (ahem) personified by his inclusion of Heard and McDonald Islands, which are inhabited largely by penguins.

Two tiny, remote Antarctic outposts populated by penguins and seals are among the obscure places targeted by the Trump administration’s new tariffs.

Heard and McDonald Islands – a territory which sits 4,000km (2,485 miles) south-west of Australia – are only accessible via a seven-day boat trip from Perth, and haven’t been visited by humans in almost a decade.

[snip]

Like the rest of Australia, the Heard and McDonald Islands, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Christmas Island are now subject to a tariff of 10%. A tariff of 29% was imposed on the Norfolk Island, which is also an Australian territory and has a population of about 2,200 people.

Heard Island, though, is barren, icy and completely uninhabited – home to Australia’s largest and only active volcano, Big Ben, and mostly covered by glaciers.

It is believed the last time people ventured on to Heard Island was in 2016, when a group of amateur radio enthusiasts broadcast from there with permission of the Australian government.

Taken literally, Trump’s inclusion of two islands (over)run by penguins means that he believes American workers cannot compete with penguins without some kind of help — a 10% tariff — to level the playing field. A glacier field.

Right wingers who applaud Trump’s insanity are, effectively, confessing that their own industry and pluck is no match for a colony of penguins.

The penguins are useful for something beyond the MAGAt confessions that they are not as industrious as penguins. They help to identify how the Trump Administration came up with this hocus pocus.

James Surowiecki figured it out — the Administration took the trade deficit (Surowiecki later figured out it’s only the trade deficit in goods, not services) and split it in half.

This was largely confirmed when the Deputy WH Spox attempted to dispute Surowiecki’s description, only to confirm that’s precisely the formula they used (sorry, you need to click through for the pure dumber-than-a-penguin-glory).

So because the penguins have shown up as trading partners in a few different years, they’re included on here.

Russia is not. Russia, Belarus, North Korea. The Administration says that’s because sanctions effectively mean we have no trade with them, but we do — certainly more than we do with the penguins.

I guess Trump is more terrified of the Russians than he is the penguins.

This is a shit show. But it’s the kind of shit show that may disrupt the Republican lockstep in Congress. Whether the penguin tariffs were the cause, John Thune had to pull the first of the budget resolutions that were supposed to give legal sanction for Trump’s agenda (as well as massive tax cuts to the rich) yesterday. And Teddy Cancun Cruz has spoken up against the sanctions, calling them (accurately) taxes.

Even before constituents start to pay through the teeth, Republicans are beginning to accurately describe that these are taxes.

It’s unclear how this will end up, and billions of people will be hurt in the process (though, as with much else that Trump has done out of pique this Administration, China will likely find a way to capitalize on Trump’s idiocy). But this is the kind of disruptive event that presents opportunity to disrupt Trump’s power.

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Honesty, Humility, Integrity: Pete Hegseth Fails to Meet Standards He Claims Trans Service Members Lack

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Amid the torrent of scandal and legal fights characterizing Donald Trump’s second term, the United States faces a moral and ethical question about what it means to be honest, humble, to have integrity.

On the one hand, you have over forty (thirty-two, eight, two) plaintiffs, challenging Donald Trump’s ban on their service in the military. They include Commander Emily Shilling, a naval aviator who flew over 60 combat missions before serving as a test pilot and now leading acquisition programs, Lieutenant Colonel Ashley Davis, who serves as an Air Battle Manager flying the E-3 AWACS, Major Minerva Bettis, who serves as an Air Force weapons instructor at Nellis Air Force Base, First Lieutenant Sean Kersch-Hamar, who serves as an Air Force weapons systems officer, Master Sergeant Logan Ireland, who serves as Flight Chief in the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, Staff Sergeant Vera Wolf, who serves as an Air Force weapons specialist.

While this is just a selection of the 40 plaintiffs, these happen to be the kinds of people who make strikes like those launched against the Houthis on March 15 happen.

These plaintiffs are being kicked out of the military for no other reason than because they are transgender. To justify kicking out these service members, Donald Trump accused all transgender people of lacking the honesty, humility, and integrity, not to mention the “warrior ethos,” to serve in the armed forces, a claim adopted in DOD’s implementation of Trump’s order.

They are being kicked out by Pete Hegseth.

During his confirmation hearing to be Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth confessed to serial adultery. He confessed to that as a way to dodge questions about drinking before work, spousal abuse, and sexual misconduct. He confessed to serial infidelity but denied the other allegations.

After denying the allegations, Hegseth refused to say whether showing up to work drunk, engaging in spousal abuse, or sexually assaulting a woman would disqualify him from serving as Secretary of Defense.

Pete Hegseth refused to say whether showing up to work drunk, engaging in spousal abuse, or sexually assaulting a woman would prove he lacked the honesty or integrity to work at DOD, much less lead it.

But questions about Hegseth’s fitness did not end with his confirmation hearings.

In his time as Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth has brought his spouse to sensitive international meetings. To be fair, he may simply not know better. Along with serial infidelity, in his confirmation hearing, Hegseth confessed that he had conducted almost no such international negotiations in the past. Maybe he simply doesn’t know that including spouses undermines candor and security?

Hegseth also hired his brother, Phil, who did PR at the non-profit which Hegseth financially ruined, to a senior position at DOD. This at least looks like nepotism, the hiring of someone because of who he is, other than merit. As he has with his spouse, Hegseth has toted his brother along to meetings: to his first big overseas trip, to Gitmo, to the Conor McGregor meeting at the White House.

All that might not have been enough to revisit questions about Hegseth’s honestly, humility, and integrity.

But then, Pete Hegseth — the guy kicking out every trans service member based on a claim they lack honesty, humility, and integrity — shared National Defense Information on an insecure Signal chat that happened to include a journalist. While the compromise of attack information did not, in real time, get anyone killed, between his comments on the chat and those of Vice President JD Vance and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, the compromise may expose service members — people like Commander Shilling, Lieutenant Colonel Davis, Major Bettis, First Lieutenant Kersch-Hamar, Master Sergeant Ireland, or Staff Sergeant Wolf —  to possible legal danger going forward, because they raise questions about the presidential authorization for an operation that knowingly targeted a civilian residence.

Just as troubling, after his reckless actions were exposed, Hegseth has persistently lied about how sensitive the information is.

He has refused to accept responsibility for his own actions.

As the NYT describes, Hegseth’s intransigence has led those flying such missions to question whether the Secretary of Defense is going to get them killed, in part because he lacks the humility to admit that he did something wrong.

On air bases, in aircraft carrier “ready rooms” and in communities near military bases this week, there was consternation. The news that senior officials in the Trump administration discussed plans on Signal, a commercial messaging app, for an impending attack angered and bewildered men and women who have taken to the air on behalf of the United States.

The mistaken inclusion of the editor in chief of The Atlantic in the chat and Mr. Hegseth’s insistence that he did nothing wrong by disclosing the secret plans upend decades of military doctrine about operational security, a dozen Air Force and Navy fighter pilots said.

Worse, they said, is that going forward, they can no longer be certain that the Pentagon is focused on their safety when they strap into cockpits.

“The whole point about aviation safety is that you have to have the humility to understand that you are imperfect, because everybody screws up. Everybody makes mistakes,” said Lt. John Gadzinski, a retired Navy F-14 pilot who flew combat missions from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. “But ultimately, if you can’t admit when you’re wrong, you’re going to kill somebody because your ego is too big.”

And that’s why I keep obsessing about the fact that Hegseth continues to lie about the Signal chat even as DOJ continues to insist that Commander Shilling, Lieutenant Colonel Davis, Major Bettis, First Lieutenant Kersch-Hamar, Master Sergeant Ireland, or Staff Sergeant Wolf lack honesty, integrity, and humility.

Hegseth is relying on such claims even though there’s absolutely no evidence to support it in the case of these 40-some named plaintiffs.

Here’s how Judge Benjamin Settle, a George W. Bush appointee, described it in the third of three orders freezing the trans ban.

Commander Emily “Hawking” Shilling, for example, transitioned within the Navy beginning in the fall of 2021 in reliance on the Austin Policy. She has been a Naval Aviator for 19 years. She has flown more than 60 combat missions, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was a Navy test pilot. She has 1750 flight hours in high performance Navy jets—including the F/A-18 Super Hornet—and has earned three air medals. She asserts without contradiction that the Navy already spent $20 million training her. There is no claim and no evidence that she is now, or ever was, a detriment to her unit’s cohesion, or to the military’s lethality or readiness, or that she is mentally or physically unable to continue her service. There is no claim and no evidence that Shilling herself is dishonest or selfish, or that she lacks humility or integrity. Yet absent an injunction, she will be promptly discharged solely because she is transgender.

Settle reached his conclusion via different means that Judge Ana Reyes, whose injunction focused on the clear animus targeting trans service members.

Settle didn’t deny there was animus; he just didn’t rely on it, focusing instead on DOD’s failure to present any evidence to support the stated goals of the trans ban, a ban that goes further even than the Mattis policy approved in Trump’s first term, which permitted trans members already serving, including some of the plaintiffs, to remain. DOJ relied on suppositions made in formulating the Mattis policy during Trump’s first term and ignored the reality of the last seven years — the honorable service of the plaintiffs who’ve served openly — that debunked those suppositions.

But Settle did hold that the stigma of being fired based on these shoddy claims would likely support a due process claim, even if DOD ousts these plaintiffs via an honorable discharge, which the government claims would eliminate any stigma.

The Military Ban and Hegseth Policy’s demeaning language is repeated even here in the government’s response: “The Commander has determined that it is ‘the policy of the United States Government to establish high standards for troop . . . honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity,’ and that this policy is ‘inconsistent with the . . . constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria.’” Dkt. 76 at 41 (quoting Military Ban). In effect, the government, in line with the Military Ban and Hegseth Policy, posits that, as a class, transgender service members are only in the military as the result of a radical, insane, false gender ideology. See, e.g., Military Excellence and Readiness Fact Sheet (“During the Biden Administration, the Department of Defense allowed gender insanity to pervade our military organizations.”). There is no evidence in the record supporting these assertions.

One discharged from service based on these grounds is plainly stigmatized. The accuracy of the government’s proclamations is obviously contested, and plaintiffs are about to lose their military careers because of them. An honorable discharge does not erase or sanitize the language the government uses to describe the character of separated service members under the Military Ban and Hegseth Policy.

Plaintiffs have demonstrated the Chaudhry elements of a stigma-plus Procedural Due Process claim. They have also demonstrated that the Military Ban violates “bedrock” Due Process fairness principles precluding arbitrary or vindictive measures that upset settled expectations. On the record before the Court, they are likely to succeed on the merits of their Procedural Due Process claim.

There’s been a lot of attention to the arbitrary claims Trump has used to target one after another law firm (even while protecting Jones Day), though in my opinion far too many journalists have treated these grievances as real, ignoring the falsehoods Trump used to manufacture grievance. There has, similarly, been a lot of attention on the protected free speech that the government has used to justify kidnapping Mahmud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, and others.

That’s all justified attention.

But there’s something especially noxious about this manufactured claim — the enthusiasm with which Hegseth has adopted Trump’s slander of all trans people as dishonest and lacking integrity.

When it came to his own alleged conduct, for which there was at least credible (if aggressively contested) evidence, Hegseth refused to concede whether dishonesty would disqualify him. Yet since then, Hegseth has used baseless insinuations about honesty, integrity, and humility to kick out people who’ve served honorably for two decades.

Pete Hegseth is lying about how dangerous his actions were. In doing so, he’s putting his career above those doing the riskiest work.

And all the while he’s slandering others about lacking honesty, integrity, and humility.

Talbott v. Trump docket

Ana Reyes opinion granting preliminary injunction

Shilling v. Trump docket

Benjamin Settle opinion granting preliminary injunction

Ireland v. Hegseth docket

Christine O’Hearn order granting TRO

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How’s Tim Kaine Working for You Dems?

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At this point of the evening, let me remind you that Tim Kaine, former Governor of Virginia, is the DNC Chair presiding over this debacle tonight.

Sure, sure, it’s a wave election. Presidential parties always lose in the first midterm.

But Virginia:

  • Bob McDonnell wins
  • Ken Cuccinelli wins
  • Tom Periello loses
  • Glenn Nye loses
  • Rick Boucher loses

(Gerry Connolly is still neck and neck with his challenger Keith Fimian.)

I mean this guy has presided over the loss of his entire state to the Republicans. Much less significant swaths of our country.

Someone please set an alarm for Barack Obama tomorrow morning–so he can wake up first thing and fire Tim Kaine.

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Liz “BabyDick” Cheney and DNC: Ideological Soulmates?

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A number of people have taken the DNC to task for its Rovian attack on RNC Chair Michael Steele for comments suggesting we might fail in Afghanistan (Glenn Greenwald, Greg Sargent, Adam Serwer). The only thing I would add to their comments is to note that not only a majority of the Democratic caucus in the House–as Glenn points out–but also two-thirds of Democrats in polls are ready to end the Afghan war, most of them strongly. Is the institutional Democratic Party trying to score political points on an issue that a solid majority of their party opposes? Really, we’ve gotten that stupid?!?

But what really demonstrates the stupidity of the move is how it puts us in ideological and political partnership with Liz “BabyDick” Cheney–who has called for Steele’s firing over his comments.

“RNC Chairman Michael Steele’s comments about the war in Afghanistan were deeply disappointing and wrong,” Cheney’s statement read. “The chairman of the Republican party must be unwavering in his support for American victory in the war on terror — a victory that cannot be accomplished if we do not prevail in Afghanistan. I endorse fully Bill Kristol’s letter to Chairman Steele. It is time for Chairman Steele to step down.”

Where BabyDick calls Steele’s comments “wrong” DNC calls them “unconscionable.” Where BabyDick demands that the RNC Chair “must be unwavering in support” for the Afghan war, DNC warns that Steele’s “words have consequences.”

Tim Kaine? A little unsolicited advice. BabyDick has spent a year and a half trying to undermine President Obama at every turn. She has done so using authoritarian dictates about what should and shouldn’t be done. It’s bad enough the party adopted a strategy pioneered by Karl Rove. But the day we’re moving in concert with Baby Dick and her Daddy? That’s a pretty good sign that we’ve made a mistake.

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