“It might be helpful for you to know that you are not alone. And that in the long, twilight struggle which lies ahead of us, there is the possibility of hope.”
“The Long Twilight Struggle.” Babylon 5, created and written by J. Michael Straczynski, Season 2, Episode 20, 1995.
Here’s what I’ve found interesting:
- D.C. Democrats need to show some urgency or get out of the way;
- Suggestions for what an opposition party could do right now;
- The clarity provided by reporting about our Constitutional Emergency from the perspective of a foreign correspondent;
- How women’s sports were used as a trojan horse to attack the transgender community;
- Trump orders the release of Tulare water for no purpose;
- Shari Redstone is selling out 60 Minutes;
- RFK Jr. accidentally reveals Trump’s plans on abortion;
- The American Monarchist Tech Leaders love;
- Yes, headlights are brighter now; and
- Let’s not allow Trump to rewrite the history of the January 6, 2021, insurrection he instigated.
Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.
#1
In Tense Call, Governors Push Schumer to Fight Harder Against Trump (Reid J. Epstein, New York Times, Link to Article)
A group of six Democratic governors pressed Senator Chuck Schumer of New York during a tense call on Wednesday night to be more aggressive in fighting back against President Trump’s nominees and agenda, all but begging the minority leader to persuade Senate Democrats to block whatever they could.
The call, described in detailed notes as well as interviews with two participants and five other people briefed on the conversation, revealed the growing tensions among Democrats about how forcefully they should oppose Mr. Trump.
Senators reach deal to advance Cabinet nominees, avoid weekend session (Ted Barrett and Morgan Rimmer, CNN, Link to Article)
Bipartisan senators reached an agreement to cast three votes Thursday at 6:15 p.m.
The first will be to confirm Doug Burgum as Interior secretary.
The second will be to break a filibuster of Christopher Wright to be Energy secretary.
The third will be to break a filibuster of Doug Collins to be Veterans Affairs secretary.
By the agreement, confirmation on Wright and Collins will happen sometime Monday.
This means the Senate won’t be in Friday or over the weekend, which was possibly going to happen.
Comms Advice for Democratic Lawmakers (Charlotte Clymer, Charlotte’s Web Thoughts, Link to Article)
The past eleven days have seen a relentless avalanche of unconstitutional, illegal, and immoral actions by this administration—transparently cruel and horrific—and with few exceptions, the Democratic messaging to all of it has been incredibly weak.
We know you’re out of power. We understand you’re in the minority. We hear that, loud and clear.
What we’re not hearing is your anger. We’re not hearing your outrage. We’re wondering whether or not you actually hear us.
I have seen numerous statements from Democratic lawmakers this week that are embarrassingly subdued in tone and out-of-touch. A complete failure to read the room.
Why Are Democrats Suddenly Acting Like Cypher From ‘The Matrix’? (Stephen Robinson, The Play Typer Guy, Link to Article)
Nonetheless, Democrats seem stuck in a hopeless state of unexpected shock and awe, with no clear, coordinated response. (Senate Democrats are reportedly trying to figure out how to go viral in their communications when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is just down the hall.) Resistance appears futile, and even while Trump was issuing executive orders that are either illegal, immoral, or both, Democrats couldn’t bring themselves to uniformly reject all of Trump’s unqualified Cabinet nominees. Seven Democrats voted to confirm confessed dog murderer Kristi Noem as Trump’s secretary in charge of mass deportations.
Hakeem Jeffries is the worst version of Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) from The Matrix — a hokey leader who hand waves constant defeat with quasi-spiritual mumbo-jumbo. You almost understand why so many longtime, loyal Democrats are losing faith in Democratic leadership. Moms Demand Action founder and self-described “normie Democrat” Shannon Watts wrote in her newsletter, “Instead of speaking from a place of outrage, they’re going on Sunday cable shows and spewing consultant speak. Instead of pushing back on Trump’s reckless and dangerous orders, some are voting to pass his legislation and approve his cabinet picks. Instead of giving the 75 million voters who supported them their marching orders, they’re either ignoring us or sending emails asking for money.”
I’m not ready to start collaborating with the enemy, but I can understand now why Cypher from The Matrix (Joe Pantoliano) just gave up and sunk his teeth into some delicious imaginary steak.
“You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist,” he tells Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) during their dinner date. “I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.”
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
Why are Democratic elected officials acting like it is a surprise that the Trump Administration was going to use shock and awe tactics to implement the Project 2025 agenda?
We’ve known about Project 2025 for two years. Trump supporters told us they were preparing many executive orders for the first week of the Administration. We knew the terrible nominees that we would see during hearings this month. For example, why were Democrats, as Marcy Wheeler explains, so unprepared to handle the Kash Patel hearings this week?
Why are Democrats cutting deals to make it easier to confirm Trump’s nominees while Elon Musk, a private citizen, is taking over personnel and budget programs and locking out civil servants from their computers? Shouldn’t there be some outrage? Some objections? Maybe a press conference?
Where is the urgency? Where is the anger? Why are Democratic political leaders acting like all of this is normal?
Democrats should be doing everything they can to object to what Trump and Musk are doing and throw every possible obstacle in their way to slow it down. Senate Democrats have more tools at their disposal since so much of that chamber’s functioning requires unanimous consent.
Senate Democrats should object to everything—no more unanimous consent agreements. There should be no deals while Musk is allowed to terrorize civil servants. There should be no deals while Trump signs executive orders that outline a genocide against transgender people.
Trump and Republicans need to pay a price for what they are doing.
If the current Democratic leaders would rather pretend it is 1997 and enjoy some Matrix-like steak dinners while remaining blissfully unaware, resigning is absolutely okay. I can respect that decision. What we face today may not be what they signed up to do.
But this ongoing capitulation is not acceptable. Democrats in Congress need to demonstrate that they care as much about our system of government as their voters do. Unless they have decided that ignorance is bliss, and they will go along with the end of our Republic.
Senate Democrats announced late Sunday that they will hold a press conference at 3:45 p.m. on Monday. I hope that is a belated start to some visible opposition to all of the extra-Constitutional crimes underway. However, Capitol Hill press conferences seemingly designed to get on the legacy television evening news are not the way to mobilize people in 2025.
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#2
What might an opposition party be doing right now? (Seth Masket, Tusk, Link to Article)
To quickly review what happened on Friday, private citizen Elon Musk and his former Twitter/X employees occupied the Office of Personnel Management and the Treasury Department and prevented federal employees from doing their jobs; Trump vowed to fire Department of Justice employees for the sole reason that they investigated the January 6th insurrection, and Trump pressured federal agencies to remove vital data pertaining to trans people from their websites. I believe these actions constitute a significant attack on democracy and the rule of law.
I don’t think I’m overreacting to these actions, but I’m quite confident the opposition party is under-reacting to them. With very few exceptions (possibly Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamie Raskin, and J.B. Pritzker), prominent Democratic leaders seem to be taking a very blasé attitude toward all this, complaining about the price of avocados and sending fundraising e-mails. I agree with Charlotte Clymer that “with few exceptions, the Democratic messaging to all of it has been incredibly weak.”
Okay, but what could they actually be doing? Democrats are in the minority in both the House and the Senate. They can’t run congressional hearings or subpoena people, they don’t control the FBI or any other federal law enforcement office, they can’t pass laws stopping this, etc. These are all fair points. But even a minority party in the House and (especially) the Senate has some power to direct attention, slow things down, and demand concessions.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
The tools are limited, but there are things Democrats can do to slow down some of the Trump-Musk atrocities.
As an added benefit, taking action will inspire Democratic supporters, who are also horrified by what they are seeing the Trump-Musk regime do in its opening weeks.
Grind the Senate to a halt. Give reporters something to cover with press stunts. Facilitate lawsuits.
Forget the norms. Republicans have broken all of those deals. As Masket reminds us, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Pretending AL) shut down military promotions for months all by himself last year.
Rick Wilson wrote a thread describing what Senate Democrats should consider doing. These are good ideas. (I didn’t think about stoking rivalries among the MAGA leaders, but Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is easy enough to wind up.) Indivisible Co-Founder Ezra Levin shared the obstruction memo former Senator Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) wrote to his colleagues in 2009 about all of the ways they could use the Senate rules to obstruct the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
Fight back. Give people something to follow. Make some news. Give people a reason to hope.
And we may even win a few important battles along the way.
#3
Musk’s Junta Establishes Him as Head of Government (Garrett Graff, Doomsday Scenario, Link to Article)
I’ve long believed that the American media would be more clear-eyed about the rise and return of Donald Trump if it was happening overseas in a foreign country, where we’re used to foreign correspondents writing with more incisive authority. Having watched with growing alarm the developments of the last 24 and 36 hours in Washington, I thought I’d take a stab at just such a dispatch. Here’s a story that should be written this weekend:
…
WASHINGTON, D.C. — What started Thursday as a political purge of the internal security services accelerated Friday into a full-blown coup, as elite technical units aligned with media oligarch Elon Musk moved to seize key systems at the national treasury, block outside access to federal personnel records, and take offline governmental communication networks.
With rapidity that has stunned even longtime political observers, forces loyal to Musk’s junta have established him as the all-but undisputed unelected head of government in just a matter of days, unwinding the longtime democracy’s constitutional system and its proud nearly 250-year-old tradition of the rule of law. Having secured themselves in key ministries and in a building adjacent to the presidential office complex, Musk’s forces have begun issuing directives to civil service workers and forcing the resignation of officials deemed insufficiently loyal, like the head of the country’s aviation authority.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
Garrett Graff provides one of the best summaries I’ve seen about the past two weeks of events by taking a step back and reporting about our constitutional emergency in the way U.S. foreign correspondents would about other nations.
I hope you’ll read it. Besides, Graff will likely remind you of horrific events you missed or had forgotten about in the deluge.
#4
It was never about women’s sports (Lindsay Gibbs, Power Plays, Link to Article)
Trump and his team have made so many sweeping changes in such a short period of time that it’s impossible to even begin to process them all. But today I think it’s really important to focus in on his attacks on the transgender community.
These attacks are, of course, not surprising in the least. That doesn’t make them any less horrifying or damaging. The Republican party passed an onslaught of anti-transgender laws across the country during President Joe Biden’s term in office, and found success in the court of public opinion by framing all transgender rights issues around the false pretense of “protecting women’s sports.” Trump carried that message and momentum right into the White House.
But Trump’s first days in office prove what the transgender community and its allies have known all along: This was never about women’s sports.
It was about reinforcing traditional gender roles, asserting control over women’s bodies, and, most terrifyingly, eradicating transgender people from public life completely.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
Do you know what word you won’t find in Trump’s genocidal executive orders targeting the transgender community? Sports.
Do you know what you will find? An effort to erase our trans and nonbinary neighbors from existence and an attempt to create fetal personhood.
No, these attacks are not about protecting someone who finished in a tie for fifth in her NCAA swimming meet (and, no, this person did not lose a national title as she sometimes implies during her frequent appearances on Fox News). They were also not about making sure a player didn’t have an unfair advantage in women’s volleyball while competing against red state university teams.
People bought that framing, though. Republicans made the inclusion of a few dozen (at most) trans athletes into an issue they spent over $200 million to attack Kamala Harris about in the last election.
But now we see what it was about. Not sports. Something much worse.
What do Republicans want instead? Jessica Kant explained it in a vital-to-understand BlueSky thread:
If you cannot call it what it is when all in a week: a government removes every mention of a group of people, destroys information about them en masse, bans their discussion in schools, restricts their ability to travel and starts seizing and refusing their official identification, when will you?
Our healthcare infrastructure has been gutted, criminalized, and threatened. Our scientists have been labeled criminals, our scientific literature destroyed. Medications many need to live banned. Our very physiology is officially decreed “mutilated”, legally lesser, or declared not to even exist.
Our ability to freely use public space rescinded, our bathroom use policed and criminalized, our literal freedom of expression declared legally obscene and our very depiction labeled pornography. Fired en masse from the military. Parents who love us declared collaborators and abusers.
The worst part? They told you they were going to do this YEARS ago, and you did nothing. We begged and you looked away.
There’s a word for this — use it.
Genocide. There it is. That’s the word. We need to understand what is happening and what the stakes are for all of us.
Because, as The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer explains, “Anyone naive enough to think that the government can deny fundamental rights to one group without putting another’s at risk is in for some nasty surprises.”
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#5
Trump’s emergency water order responsible for water dump from Tulare County lakes (Lois Henry, SJV Water, Link to Article)
The sudden announcement Thursday by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that Kaweah and Success lakes would immediately begin dumping water was in response to President Trump’s Jan. 24 executive order mandating that federal officials exert all efforts to get more water to fight southern California wildfires, the Army Corps confirmed Friday.
“Consistent with the direction in the Executive Order on Emergency Measures to Provide Water Resources in California, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is releasing water from Terminus Dam at Lake Kaweah and Schafer Dam at Success Lake to ensure California has water available to respond to the wildfires,” wrote Gene Pawlik, a supervising public affairs specialist in the Army Corps’ Washington, D.C. office.
Indeed, President Trump boasted about the releases on his X page Friday posting a photo of a river and writing: “Photo of beautiful water flow that I just opened in California. Today, 1.6 billion gallons and, in 3 days, it will be 5.2 billion gallons. Everybody should be happy about this long fought Victory! I only wish they listened to me six years ago – There would have been no fire!”
Tulare County water managers were perplexed and frustrated, noting both physical and legal barriers that make it virtually impossible for Tulare County river water to be used for southern California fires.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
Yeah, none of that water will help fight southern California fires. But farmers were expecting to have that water available to them this summer.
This is not how the California water system works. But I don’t think the president is listening to many experts.
Trump got a photo. Based on the political demographics of Central Valley farmers, Trump harmed his voters with this stunt.
I suspect this won’t be the last time we see this dynamic in play.
#6
Heartbreak for CBS News (Dan Rather, Steady, Link to Article)
Most of America’s biggest news organizations have, over the past 40 years, been swallowed up with merger after merger, and acquisition after acquisition — to the point where they are now tiny parts of immeasurably larger corporate entities. The priority for those entities is not news. Saying it again for those in the back: The corporate parents of news organizations do not care about news.
They care about stock price, profit margins, and increasing shareholder value. And those corporations may also have regulatory issues before multiple arms of the government concerning a vast array of business interests that have nothing to do with their newsrooms. And that is the case with CBS News’ parent company, Paramount Global.
Paramount is in the midst of a multimillion-dollar merger, which needs approval by the Federal Communications Commission, now run by Trump’s appointee. And Shari Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder and board member, stands to make billions if the deal goes through. See where this is going?
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
We have seen the billionaires who own press outlets capitulate to Trump since the election. The Washington Post. ABC. Meta/Facebook.
Now Paramount is going to settle one of the most frivolous of all lawsuits, about the editing of a promo for the interview 60 Minutes did with Vice President Kamala Harris. Priorities, after all. Shari Redstone needs to get her billions from the Ellison family in this sale before Paramount loses more value under her watch.
It’s clear the for-profit news business no longer serves our nation because the billionaires who own these institutions don’t consider them a public trust.
I would love to see some of these billionaires invest in the future of news. They could do so much by endowing nonprofits to manage these organizations and more local news efforts.
Instead they capitulate even as our country enters week three of the most serious Constitutional emergency it has faced since the Civil War. We have seen the billionaires who own press outlets capitulate to Trump since the election. The Washington Post. ABC. Meta/Facebook.
Now Paramount is going to settle one of the most frivolous of all lawsuits, about the editing of a promo for the interview 60 Minutes did with Vice President Kamala Harris. Shari Redstone needs to get her billions from the Ellison family in this sale before Paramount loses more value under her watch.
Priorities, after all.
It’s clear the for-profit news business no longer serves our nation because the billionaires who own these institutions don’t consider them a public trust.
I would love to see some of these billionaires invest in the future of news. They could do so much by endowing nonprofits with the funds required to secure these organizations and more local news efforts.
Instead, they capitulate even as our country enters week three of the most serious Constitutional emergency it has faced since the Civil War.
(Hat-tip to Tracy B. for sending me this article.)
#7
RFK Jr. Accidentally Reveals Trump’s Plan on Abortion (Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, Link to Article)
Here we go: At his confirmation hearing [last week], RFK Jr. revealed how the Trump administration is thinking about restricting abortion—dropping hints not just about mifepristone, but abortion ‘complication’ reporting, emergency abortions, and the possibility of a national ban. (Yes, really.)
Watch key excerpts here with more details below, and click to skip ahead to a particular section: Mifepristone, Abortion Reporting, Emergency Abortions, National Ban on ‘Late’ Abortions.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
If you care about women having the right to control their reproductive health care, I strongly encourage you to review what Jessica Valenti has captured about RFK Jr.’s positions on abortion-related issues.
RFK Jr. has to work to gain the confidence of the pro-forced birth movement because of his previous pro-choice record. So, while he tried to be careful, he did lay out the roadmap for making reproductive health care much more difficult for people to receive nationwide.
That’s right: living in a blue state won’t protect people from what RFK Jr. explained during his confirmation hearing.
He may have been subtle. But, as Valenti explains, the threat is all too real.
#8
The Dubious History of America’s Most Famous Monarchist (Jamelle Bouie, The New York Times, Link to Article)
We do not have kings in the American Republic, but we do have capitalists. And in particular, we have a set of capitalists who appear to be as skeptical of liberal democracy as any monarch. They want to hear that they are the indispensable men. They want to hear that their parochial business concerns are as vital and important as the national interest. Aggrieved by the give-and-take of democratic life, they want to hear that they are under siege by the nefarious and illegitimate forces of a vast conspiracy. And hungry for the kind of status that money can’t buy, they want to hear that they deserve to rule. Yarvin affirms their fears, flatters their fantasies and gives them a language with which to express their great ambitions.
Never mind that the actual substance of his ideas leaves much to be desired. Take his illuminating interview with The Times, in which he gives readers a crash course in his overall political vision. He makes a studied effort to appear as learned and erudite as possible. But linger just a little on his answers and you’ll see the extent to which they’re underproofed and overbaked.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
It is vital to understand who Curtis Yarvin is because the oligarchs around Donald Trump find him so interesting.
But, as Bouie helpfully explains, Yarvin doesn’t understand history, and his analysis is painfully inadequate.
But he tells the oligarchs that they should be in charge and gives them facile talking points to justify their efforts to ignore democratic institutions.
That makes him dangerous—and explains a lot about what the people around Trump are doing as they ignore our democratic norms and laws because they are above such niceties.
#9
Asleep at the Wheel in the Headlight Brightness Wars (Nate Rogers, The Ringer, Link to Article)
The sun had already set in Newfoundland, Canada, and Paul Gatto was working late to give me a presentation on headlights. This, it should be said, is not his job. Not even close, really. Gatto, 28, is a front-end developer by day, working for a weather application that’s used by the majority of Canadian meteorologists, he told me on a video call, occasionally hitting his e-cig or sipping on a Miller Lite. As to how he ended up as one of the primary forces in the movement to make car headlights less bright—a movement that’s become surprisingly robust in recent years—even Gatto can’t really explain.
“It is fucking weird,” he said. “I need something else to do with my spare time. This takes a lot of it.”
Gatto is the founder of the subreddit r/FuckYourHeadlights, the internet’s central hub for those at their wits’ end with the current state of headlights.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
Nope, you aren’t imagining things. The LED lights on many cars today are much brighter than their halogen predecessors.
You want details about how this has happened and why it may be impossible to remedy the problem in the near term? This is the story for you.
Just prepared to be frustrated and perhaps express an explative or three.
The Reality of the January 6, 2021, Insurrection
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump instigated a violent insurrection against the United States government.
People were hurt and police officers died protecting the Capitol. Vice President Pence and other elected officials just barely escaped danger. Our national streak of peaceful transfers of power ended.
It was not, as Trump claims, a “day of love.” And we must resist his efforts to rewrite the history of that dark day.
Post-Game Comments
Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:
“I don’t think the D.E.I. backlash and anti-woke whining emanating from Republican state leaders is about free speech. Just like I don’t think the extreme abortion bans are about protecting life. Both are about control. In the case of anti-D.E.I. rhetoric, it’s about cultural control. We never told the truth in this country about its founding and who did the building. Only in the past few decades have we begun to approach telling the truth, and that tiny taste is proving too much for some. Either they truly fear their position being threatened by that truth, or they see profit in peddling fear to others, or both. Regardless, they know our memories and attention spans are short, and if they can miseducate another generation or two, they can shift the narrative for the long term and maintain that control.” (Baratunde Thurston, Puck, A.I., SVB & “Woke” Finance Fears.)
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