#Hoover Administration

[deadpresidents]

I'm not familiar enough with Hoovers time in office. What, if anything, did he do to fix the Great Depression? He's remembered by the public as doing nothing.

Honestly, the best thing that Herbert Hoover did to fix the Great Depression was lose the 1932 election to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

It's unfair to say that Hoover did nothing to help with the Depression, but the most important thing that he could have done was the one thing that, because of his personality, he seemed incapable of doing: inspiring people not to give up hope. Hoover was a pretty remarkable person and gifted administrator, but he was not inspirational and he didn't have a hint of charisma within him. "Depression" is an economic term, but it's also a pretty good description of how people who are battling for their lives and seeking some sort of relief are genuinely feeling. So, what the country really needed was a leader who helped them feel better and let them know that they could get through whatever it was they were facing. And that was exactly what Franklin Delano Roosevelt IMMEDIATELY did after taking the oath of office. It didn't solve everyone's problems, but it finally gave people some hope, and at least hope was something. It was a first step towards relief which is -- like "depression" -- both an economic term and an emotion.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

John Knefel at MMFA:

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and others in MAGA media have recently praised disgraced Sen. Joe McCarthy and his blacklists, a tactic that Project 2025 partner organization the American Accountability Foundation is attempting to bring to the White House should Donald Trump win in November. According to The Associated Press, AAF is planning to create and publicly post a list of “100 names of government workers to a website this summer to show a potential new administration who might be … ripe for scrutiny, reclassifications, reassignments or firings,” with a focus on “those in senior executive positions who could put up roadblocks to Trump’s plans for tighter borders and more deportations.”

The plan is reportedly underwritten by a $100,000 grant from conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation as part of Project 2025, its far-reaching and extreme effort to provide policy and personnel recommendations for a potential second Trump administration. One of Project 2025’s top priorities is the implementation of “Schedule F,” a scheme to remove job protections from federal workers by reclassifying career staffers as political appointees — a direct attack on federal unions that could be used to fire civil servants deemed insufficiently pro-Trump. AAF is one of more than 100 conservative organizations on Project 2025’s advisory board, and its initiative — synergistically dubbed Project Sovereignty 2025 — is the latest broadside against the 2.2 million people who work for the federal government. The AP article notes that the group’s list of what Heritage referred to as “anti-American bad actors” echoes the blacklist era of McCarthy, the disgraced anti-communist crusader whose name became synonymous with one of the most repressive periods in U.S. history.

[...] Project 2025’s Schedule F and AAF’s proposed blacklist are clear, direct descendants of the literal McCarthyism that MAGA media figures are so quick to praise. The McCarthy era saw massive purges of left-wing federal employees as part of the Cold War’s rightward shift in national politics, halting the potential for American social democracy and helping to plant the seeds for the neoliberal turn of the 1970s and the ensuing rise in inequality that accompanied it. McCarthy and fellow anti-communists like FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover also directed their oppressive tactics toward gay people — and those suspected or accused of being gay — who worked for the federal government during a period known as the Lavender Scare. McCarthy “directly linked homosexuality and Communism,” depicting gay people working in government as a national security threat. Historians estimate that between 5,000 and 10,000 federal workers were forced to resign during this period, often behind closed doors for fear of their gay identity — real or perceived — becoming public.

American Accountability Foundation, a Project 2025 partner, will enact a McCarthyist purge of the civil services if Donald Trump wins election again.

[grindsta]

GAME FEATURES

THIS IS A REALLY LONG POST

There are SO MANY features in The Sims 3 that I keep learning more and more each day, so I decided to start keeping track of all of them. Some of these I've known myself, but most of them come from Reddit and TS Forum.

I'll keep on updating everytime I find new things.

Features are under the cut!

Gameplay

Careers/University/Skills

You can sign autographs as a rock star by clicking on a random building (bookstore, theater, stadium, etc.) and make cash. You can only do it once a week and have them perform the action yourself (similar to the vaccination event you do as a doctor).

If you send a Sim to college, you can get a financial aid grant every 24 hours. Just click on the administration building and select “apply for financial aid”. The better your grades, the more money you’ll get.

Traveling to the past with ambition’s time machine, random events will change your household’s present. (Change careers or add family members).

Sims who reach the highest criminal career level glow red. This is bad for relationships with Sims with Good, Friendly, and Family Oriented traits.  Having maxed out the Charisma skill will mostly prevent it, or even throw “Jar of Friendship” potion at them. Although it is good for relationships with Sims with Evil and Insane traits.

When some rectangles of one (or more) skill is highlighted, it’s because it’s the requirement for the Sim job.

If you protest about low wages, you have the possibility of increasing the wages of everyone.

Parent Sims can have a wish for their kids to have specific careers.

You will get gifts for working on your job for 5 years.

 Singer Sims could sell their albums to other Sims.

 If you click on your Sim work building when they’re at work, you can demand a raise. but if their mood is bad or their relationship with their boss is bad, this can get them fired. You can also go out with your boss and ask for a promotion.

Sims can die while you’re lifeguarding.

Your Sim can get caught if they call in fake sick.

Sims in the medical career can follow up with patients by calling them.

You can fry beetles if you are an evil private investigator (if you have a magnifying glass).

Your Sim can be an evil politician.

Ghost hunters can “appease ghosts” at the graveyard.

Lifeguard and firefighter sims can “demonstrate CPR” on another Sim as a romantic action.

You can select what type of sandcastle to build if you have a high enough skill.

Your Sim can get tattooed and tattoo other Sims. It’s a hidden skill that, if low, tattoos will look like child drawings. You can also get the tattoo removed.

Maids

Some maids actually don’t do their work, you have to fire them so a new one comes up, and is, hopefully, better.

Most Maids will have at least neat and/or perfectionists, brave and flirty, or charismatic traits. Some Maids are also Kleptomaniacs. Exceptions to this are: Delicia Hoover from Bridgeport and Simon Swift from Barnacle Bay, they are Slobs, which means they will never actually clean your House.

Maids will quit if they see Bonehilda in your house.

Toddler/Child/Teen

Kids will gain skills if someone reads them skill books to sleep.

When a witch sim does their homework they accidentally get it done all at once by magic. They grab the blue notebook, but the green bar completes itself immediately and they look confused for a second. In case they fail to do homework by magic, their whole body gets burnt. 

When children and teens are asleep, you can click on them to select a dream, and then they’ll wake up with a moodlet related to it. While the moodlet is active, you can get a special moodlet if their dream comes true. While still sleeping, the game will notify if the dream turned into a nightmare and they will get a negative moodlet.

Toddlers and Kids can build hidden skills with certain toys.

You can put kids in time out and they will stand in a corner crying.

Toys can go on the crib.

Babies can get diaper rash if using the changing station from The Sims 3 Store.

If you take a child of the bouncer, they get bratty and mad.

Children can hold a bear while talking to an adult.

Kids can read the newspapers to see what baked goods sell better.

When you get robbed children can get the lifetime wish to become a cop or a thief. They can also want to become a doctor after seeing someone dying or getting a new sibling, become a musician after seeing someone jam, become a creature robot cross-breeder after seeing a ghost. become a firefighter after a house fire, become a magician after seeing a sim use their magic, become a singer while singing with their imaginary friend.

Child witch Sims have stabilizers on their brooms.

Kids can get sick from prison food.

Your Sim can chat with toddlers through their Teddy Bears.

Parents can play with their toddlers in the ocean.

Children inherit the effects of some Genie Wishes.

Your Sim can get detention if they slack off in school.

You can create custom and random baby DNA at the hospital.

Children can fight teens. 

Parents will have a higher friendship level with their baby with an at home birth than a hospital birth.

Traits

Inappropriate sims can take sponge baths from a sink.

Your Sim can have a hidden trait called “advanced art training” earned by completing the “Skilled Painting” opportunity acquired through working in the art appraiser career. Sims with this trait can paint paintings of any skill level (0 to 9), instead of paintings appropriate only to their painting skill level.

Bookworm sims can join the book club by computer and get mailed books.

Unlucky Sims can’t die. But they can die of transmutation and leave a golden statue.

Party Animals Sims can dance on top of the counter.

Mermaids with the Evil trait can spawn sharks.

Sims with the Green Thumb Trait can Revive Dead Plants.

Brave Sims can ask for a raise.

Frugal Sims will cut coupons from the newspaper.

Daredevil Sims can “play with fire”, and will stick their hands in the fire and pull them back out until their fun motive is full.

If your Sim has the hydrophobic trait they cannot Woohoo or Try for Baby in the shower.

Being in Bot mode (Bot fan trait) will keep your sim from aging.

Sims with the daredevil trait can eat bugs.

Sims who have the childish trait have the option to read a toddler’s book like any other. Others will get the message “Sim can only read this book to a toddler.”

The Good trait Sims could accuse of being meanspirited.

Sims with the Good trait can donate to charity.

Sims with the “Never Nude” trait shower in their bathing clothes.

Moodlets

If you click on a negative need moodlet, the game will have the sim do the activity to fill that need.

If you gift your child Sims too many times in a row, they get a “spoiled” moodlet.

The creepy magical gnome (the one that kinda looks like a devil) will sometimes spawn next to your Sims bed at night with glowing red eyes. Your Sims can get a creeped out moodlet.

Buy a baby, toddler, or child a teddy bear because it gives them a special moodlet when they sleep while having it in their inventory.

You get a moodlet when you have a blog and something from the blog’s theme happens in your Sims real life.

The “rejuvenated” and “completely at ease” moodlet prevents the horrified noodlet from exploring the catacombs.

Sims can make snow angels face down, and when they do, they get the frosty face moodlet.

Mourning over the dead Sim’s gravestone would reduce the negative effect of “Mourning” moodlet.

If you send too many secret admirers texts to the wrong Sim, they will receive a negative “being stalked” moodlet.

You get a moodlet saying “Brrrr! This is cold!” when your Sim sits on ice furniture.

When swimming in the snow you will get a moodlet saying “Polar Bear Club”.

Romance/Woohoo

You can woohoo or make out behind the scenes at the theater hall if you have two romantically involved Sims visit at the same time. It works for any rabbit hole you can visit (town hall, military base, science lab…).

Using the Time Machine to Try for a Baby in the past will result in a biological teen showing up later that day.

Try Online Dating on the computer.

If your Sim is dating someone and that someone is dating someone else, you can tell them they are cheating.

Sims gets a fertility boost after getting a romantic massage.

Sims can get kicked out of theaters for woohooing.

You can give a cinnamon kiss when you flavored your food with it.

If a Sim marries a plumbot the creator of said plumbot officially becomes their parent-in-law.

If your Sim feels betrayed from an unfaithful marriage they can rebound kiss.

Money

To make money, go to the science skill tree until you have enough skill to take samples from gems, and then clone them using the science station.

Adopt a bunch of dogs or have a werewolf Sim and make them hunt.

Go through the trash of wealthy households.

Experiment on bugs until you get a plasma bug then sample and clone it. A cat with high-level Hunting skills will also catch them occasionally.

Master the Martial Arts skill and break space rocks on the board breaker and get lots of valuable gems.

Paintings appreciate in value over time and are the best sold when the Sim dies.

Miner holes are treasure chests. You can also make several holes into a cave system. 

If you have a philosopher’s stone, you can turn pretty much anything into gold. You run the risk of your sim turning into gold and therefore dying. However, if you have a death flower in your inventory you don’t die and you get to keep the gold statue of your sim - making tones of money because of it.

Pets

If you’re cooking food and have a pet, you can throw scraps to them that they will eat.

You can have a rock as a pet.

You can breed fish.

If a pet bowl is outside, any other animal can eat from it.

Gnomes can encourage and discourage cats and dogs on your lot.

Your Sim can pet their dog while they are lying on the couch.

Horses will eat and destroy the newspaper.

When pet birds die, their bodies don’t disappear, they lay there until cleaned up.

Two small dogs can eat from the automatic feeder at once.

Pets can eat garden plants.

Dogs can howl and cats can meow along with instruments.

Your Sim can drop a fish from your inventory onto the ground and their cat can eat it.

If your Sim dog uses the guard-the-house interaction, it will actually bark at any strays that happen to come by your door.

Foals will get a negative moodlet if their mother isn’t around. However, if a Sim gives lots of love and feeds it when it’s hungry, in a couple of days the moodlet changes to a positive one saying that it’s not missing the mother anymore because of all the care you provided

Death

There are only two graveyards in the game with fully unique and custom graves, and no generic ones. They are the graveyards of Sunset Valley and Riverview. Appaloosa Plains is unique in that it has a pet graveyard.

Burning, electrocution, and starvation are by far the most common causes of death among the preexisting graves, with old age being surprisingly common. 

If you make a ghost Sim as a playable Sim and have them paint, all their paintings will get the Simoleon bonus to value from the painter being dead.

Your pets can save your Sim from death.

You can have funerals when a Sim from your household dies.

Small tombstone: Dies before 75,000 lifetime happiness points. Medium tombstone: Dies between 75,000 and 149,000 lifetime happiness points. Large tombstone: Dies at 150,000 and above lifetime happiness points.

Sims Graves have different emblems on them depicting how they died; flames, hands reaching out of water, shark jaws, etc. 

Expansions

You can discover islands on Island Paradiso.

Isla Paradiso is full of hidden chests on secret islands.

Sunlight charm spell changes a wolf to their human form.

Some Supernatural portraits & paintings (marked with purple border in Build Buy) change during a Full Moon.

Vampires can raid the hospital and the grocery store. 

Misc

When out in the ocean, the Kraken can appear. It can attack and sink your Sims small houseboat. It can spawn into Sunset Valley & Lucky Palms if you go out to the furthest point of the water.

If you have a microphone from university life in your inventory, your Sim can greet other Sims by shouting in their face.

You can plant cheese and eggs.

You can upgrade umbrellas.

You can store elixirs in the fridge.

You can waterski.

Sims can mess up an alchemy spell and become a toad.

Birthday cakes can catch on fire.

There are types of objects that aren’t in the catalog that you can make in the toy machine.

If your sims mess up the weather stone, it can rain flowers.

You can open a tab at a bar and if you can’t pay it, they will add it to your bills.

Aliens can steal space rocks from the science lab.

If you steal someone’s clothes after skinny dipping, they’re too mortified to go again.

If your sims are on fire, they can put themselves out in a shower or bathtub. They also put themselves out in dive wells from World Adventures and if you have a shower in a can.

You can upload your Sim sketches and paintings to the digital frames.

Sims can send thank you notes after receiving wedding gifts.

You can place snack bowls on island countertops.

You can announce aptitude test results to other sims.

Not all adult sims get a Midlife Crisis and there are variables involved.

You can go to therapy during a midlife crisis.

Sims who have body hair can get it waxed.

If you place a professional bar at a gym, with a mixologist, they can make protein shakes for your sims and a weird wheat grass-type drinks, graveyards have the tombstone topper and others. The library has basic drinks but one is “alien brain” and is a skill drink and stacks on the library moodlet and the supernatural bonus, so reading skill books takes way less time. 

Sim can free criminals from jail with the mining tool.

Celebrities can’t be abducted by aliens.

You can throw herbs at the fireplace, and it will give you a moodlet that varies depending on what herb you have.

Selling objects in the Consignment store is something you can improve over time.

Your Sim can sue people for slander at City Hall when you’re a celebrity and they spread rumors about you.

You can get arrested for harvesting someone else's plants.

Details

The stones at the bottom of the fishbowl change depending on what you put in it.

Artistic, Can’t Stand Art, Computer Whiz, Evil, Genius, Gloomy, Insane, Neurotic, and Virtuoso Sims all have different and unique painting styles.

Fish can spontaneously breed if you put them in fish tanks.

If you are being robbed, and the police come to put the burglar in handcuffs by their car, while they search your house, you can click on the burglar to set them free. They will even thank you for doing so, promising to make it up to you, although they never do.

Cats can jump onto Sim’s lap and they can pet them.

You can drag the greeting card into a big digital frame.

You can get a “wrong number” call.

Clones will be attracted to the cloned Sim.

Cats can sleep on newspapers.

Sims can get a dirtbag reputation if caught cheating. If caught a lot of times, they get a slimeball reputation.

You can “Play in Sand” in the spots where you painted the terrain with sand.

If you have a big dog and a puppy or a cat and a kitten, they can cuddle together in a big pet bed.

Different bars will serve different food depending on the lot type. You can get onion rings, nachos, and hot wings at the normal lower-tier bars but olive platters and shrimp cocktails are reserved for fancy places like exclusive lounges, vampire lounges, and art galleries. 

Sims can get sick eating bar food at the lower-end bars.

You can preview a house before you buy it by clicking on the magnifying glass.

Sims can chat on the bunkbed and interact on the playpen.

Try using “Disco tags” in the cheats menu (Ctrl+Shift+C) and go to the map view.

Sims can read lying on the beach towel.

You can style the time machine.

Bonehilda will fight robbers.

Hydrophobic sims won’t accept a fishbowl as a gift.

Simbots have 0’s and 1’s instead of zzz’s.

Male Sims can leave the toilet sit up.

Sunglasses have the reflex of the world.

There are 6 types of snowman - classic, evil, tragic clown, hockey, Grim Reaper, and alien.

With no couch, sims will play video games sitting on the ground.

There’s a city in the background of the university world.

Sims can have different sitting positions.

When your Sim spouse dies and comes back to life, they come back divorced.

Horses can ride boats.

When Plumbots pee themselves, oil is what gets on the floor.

If you place a rubber duck on the bathtub, Sims play with it while they bathe. If you place “World’s Brew Bubble Bath”, they will have a bubble bath.

You can change the colors of the street lights.

You get a popup when a pregnant Sim enters a costume party (it reveals the number of hours left for the pregnancy to end).

Store items come with new skills.

You can expand the inventory and relationship tab by dragging it.

Your Sim only earns LHP when your Sims mood is in the “bubble” on the Mood Meter,

If a Sim’s mood drops all the way to the bottom (-100), the Sim may simply refuse to do anything, even if directed to by the player. You can send them on vacation but if they become depressed on their vacation, it will be necessary to send them home.

The volcano in Sunlit Tides can erupt.

Ants crawl in and out of a public picnic basket carrying food.

Every time a Sims learning the Painting skill sells a painting directly from the easel there is a 20% chance that the painting will replace a wall decoration item in the local art gallery.

You can spy on neighbors with tab mode.

Your Sims can get bitten by mosquitos.

Sims can chat with other sims while cooking.

Friends can bring their kids over to play with yours.

Resort Staff NPCs sweep the floors of the resort.

Sims can get nauseous from foods with herbs.

Sims with the Asian Culture trait use chopsticks to eat rather than knives and forks.

Ghosts can swim in swimming pools but you can’t see their body under the surface of the water.

You can double-click on the save file you want to play on the main menu screen and it will start the game.

When you have the cheapest washing machine and your Sim tries to stop it from shaking, you will get a “Victory Over Washer” moodlet.

Magic gnomes spawn at random when you do related activities.

The trash bed in buydebug makes you stinky.

If you put your bird cage outside it might fly away.

The doors on cars matter, if a car has 2 doors, 2 Sims will get in, if a car has 4 doors, 4 (or 5) Sims get in. Also, babies and toddlers will be held by their parents inside the car.

You can wax your Sims, and when you do, their body hair will appear again after a while.

If lightning strikes vehicles during a storm, it will completely destroyed them.

If a Sim is performing an interaction related to a trait, the trait will be highlighted.

You can get a graduation gnome that “hides in your books” during university classes.

Create-a-style

You can drag the whole palette to other objects so they get the same style.

You can swap patterns by dragging one of them onto the dividing line next to the other.

You can randomize patterns + colors by right-clicking on the swatches.

Right-clicking on the color above the color wheel, the game will give you a more appealing color (a different shade) than the one you have selected.

CAS

Right-clicking the icons at the top of CAS randomizes that part of clothing you are on.

You can have hairstyles in different outfits.

Build-Buy

Plants change in size as you place them.

You can make custom object collections.

If you typed in the cheat moveobjects on you can move sims by just clicking on them (on Build Buy mode).

You can set seasonal decor on your home lot to auto-change if you place the debug marker and then decorate accordingly.

 If you press alt when building a foundation, you can change the height of it.

You can paint ceilings.

Mods

If you play with NRAAS Story Progression, no vampires or celebs will be in your town unless you specifically say you want them.

[fairuzfan]

I never claimed Biden's policies never hurt anyone, but it is unfair to blame Biden for Covid when Covid began under the Trump administration and it was Trump's actions that led to its severity and damage. Biden at least attempted to mitigate Covid during the first year of his administration, but by then the damage was already extensive and the politicized culture around it made it impossible for Americans to cooperate and regulations to have any real affect. But blaming Biden for Covid is like blaming Hoover for the Great Depression.

Don't get me wrong, I hate Biden too. But no matter how awful our 2024 presidential choices are, they are our only possible choices for president. Our voting systems are messed up. 3rd party votes only work against us and lots of people also just opt out of voting, which is about as equally affective. The electoral college was founded on literal racism and slavery and is still imposed to this day. But that's the system we have to work with. It's rigged. It's awful. I KNOW.

And like I said voting is not the end all of political action, and reading some of these comments, I can understand your anger. For most elections, yes, a vote IS an endorsement and support for a politician. But presidential elections just don't work that same way. When you vote 3rd party, you might as well just handed over your right to vote to your representative. And I guarantee you your representative is either going to vote for Trump or Biden.

The presidential election is NOT the only election on the ballot. And all other elections in the US make it possible for 3rd party candidates to win. I will vote 3rd party wherever possible locally, and I encourage you to do so too.

Still, reading through all these comments, I have yet to hear an actual solution to this problem that is achievable by November. Our choices are Biden or Trump. That's it. I hate it too, but if you have any better, feasible ideas, please let me hear it.

Except it is an endorsement. Biden literally thinks "they'll get over it" (it being the genocide of palestinians) by the time election comes. He thinks that we will vote for him anyways so he'll do whatever he wants. That's literally an endorsement. The reason the Vote Uncommitted campaign is gaining traction is to threaten Biden into doing something. If he doesn't feel threatened, then he assumes we are going to vote for him no matter what. So that means it's an endorsement.

If Biden doesn't listen to us, that's on him for losing the election. Not on the people who want him to do something else. And I don't want trump to win. I don't. But I will never vote for a person who so brazenly killed my friends and family, lied to my face, and was so unbelievably arrogant in that he thinks he can do whatever the fuck he wants. Feel free to vote for Biden. Just don't say it's for anyone else.

[directdogman]

what year was gay marriage legalized in the dialtown universe (USA or global if that changes it)

Good question!

During Crown's administration, though there obviously was backlash at the time.

There's some DT lore around the lavender scare in DT's universe (and Crown's effect on it) which hasn't been explicitly stated but implied a few times. EG: at the start the last Crown short story, Milt + Crown are discussing J. Edgar Hoover's assassination at Crown's hands (something Crown had done after Hoover derisively called Milt a slur in private. This ended the FBI's persecution of LGBT people during Crown's administration. Milt knew in his heart and soul what Crown had done, but pretended he believed Crown's assertion that he had nothing to do with it, knowing it was a benefit to the country. With Hoover replaced, the lavender scare ended quicker than in reality.)

Crown actually implemented a ton of lesser known reforms, like ranked choice voting (which dismantled the two party system) among many other things, some requiring constitutional changes. Part of Crown's appeal was that he was specifically a one term president and so, he could act on his conscience without having to worry about alienating voter blocs from re-electing him or hurting his successor's chances. (His endorsement of JFK after his presidency was really something borne out of obligation, not genuine admiration.)

Almost all of these reforms were positive, though there's debate about the legality/ethics of how he got them passed, like a slightly more exaggerated version of FDR in real world history.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Matt Wuerker, Politico

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 30, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 31, 2024

On Friday, October 25, at a town hall held on his social media platform X, Elon Musk told the audience that if Trump wins, he expects to work in a Cabinet-level position to cut the federal government.

He told people to expect “temporary hardship” but that cuts would “ensure long-term prosperity.” At the Trump rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Musk said he plans to cut $2 trillion from the government. Economists point out that current discretionary spending in the budget is $1.7 trillion, meaning his promise would eliminate virtually all discretionary spending, which includes transportation, education, housing, and environmental programs.

Economists agree that Trump’s plans to place a high tariff wall around the U.S., replacing income taxes on high earners with tariffs paid for by middle-class Americans, and to deport as many as 20 million immigrants would crash the booming economy. Now Trump’s financial backer Musk is factoring in the loss of entire sectors of the government to the economy under Trump.  

Trump has promised to appoint Musk to be the government’s “chief efficiency officer.” “Everyone’s going to have to take a haircut.… We can’t be a wastrel.… We need to live honestly,” Musk said on Friday. Rob Wile and Lora Kolodny of CNBC point out that Musk’s SpaceX aerospace venture has received $19 billion from the U.S. government since 2008.

An X user wrote: “I]f Trump succeeds in forcing through mass deportations, combined with Elon hacking away at the government, firing people and reducing the deficit—there will be an initial severe overreaction in the economy…. Markets will tumble. But when the storm passes and everyone realizes we are on sounder footing, there will be a rapid recovery to a healthier, sustainable economy. History could be made in the coming two years.”

Musk commented: “Sounds about right[.]”

This exchange echoes the prescription of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, whose theories had done much to create the Great Crash of 1929, for restoring a healthy economy. “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate,” he told President Herbert Hoover. “It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living

will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.” 

Mellon, at least, was reacting to an economic crisis thrust upon an administration. Musk is seeking to create one. 

Today the Commerce Department reported that from July through September, the nation’s economy grew at a solid 2.8%. Consumer spending is up, as is investment in business. The country added 254,000 jobs in September, and inflation has fallen back almost to the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. 

It is extraordinarily rare for a country to be able to reduce inflation without creating a recession, but the Biden administration has managed to do so, producing what economists call a “soft landing,” rather like catching an egg on a plate. As Bryan Mena of CNN wrote today: “The US economy seems to have pulled off a remarkable and historic achievement.” 

Both President Joe Biden and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris have called for reducing the deficit not by slashing the government, as Musk proposes, but by restoring taxes on the wealthy and corporations. 

As part of the Republicans’ plan to take the country back to the era before the 1930s ushered in a government that regulated business and provided a basic social safety net, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) expects to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. 

At a closed-door campaign event on Monday in Pennsylvania for a Republican House candidate, Johnson told supporters that Republicans will propose “massive reform” to the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” if they take control of both the House and the Senate in November. “Health-care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda,” Johnson said. Their plan is to take a “blowtorch to the regulatory state,” which he says is “crushing the free market.” “Trump’s going to go big,” he said.” When an attendee asked, “No Obamacare?” he laughed and agreed: “No Obamacare…. The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.” 

Ending a campaign with a promise to crash a booming economy and end the Affordable Care Act, which ended insurance companies’ ability to reject people with preexisting conditions, is an unusual strategy.

A post from Trump last night and another this morning suggest his internal polls are worrying him. Last night he claimed there was cheating in Pennsylvania’s York and Lancaster counties. Today he posted: “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before. REPORT CHEATING TO AUTHORITIES. Law Enforcement must act, NOW!” 

Trump appears to be setting up the argument he used in 2020, that he can lose only if he has been cheated. But it is increasingly apparent that the get-out-the-vote, or GOTV, efforts of the Trump campaign have been weak. When Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump and loyalist Michael Whatley became the co-chairs of the Republican National Committee in March 2024, they stopped the GOTV efforts underway and used the money instead for litigation. They outsourced GOTV efforts to super PACs, including Musk’s America PAC.

In Wired today, Jake Lahut reported that door-knockers for Musk’s PAC were driven around in the back of a U-Haul without seats and threatened with having to pay their own hotel bills if they didn’t meet high canvassing quotas. One of the canvassers told Lahut that they thought they were being hired to ask people who they would be voting for when they flew into Michigan, and was surprised to learn their actual role. The workers spoke to Lahut anonymously because they had signed a nondisclosure agreement (a practice the Biden administration has tried to stop).

Trump’s boast that he is responsible for the Supreme Court’s overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the constitutional right to abortion is one of the reasons his support is soft. In addition to popular dislike of the idea that the state, rather than a woman and her doctor, should make decisions about her healthcare, the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision is now over two years old, and state examinations of maternal deaths are showing that women are dying from lack of reproductive healthcare. 

Cassandra Jaramillo and Kavitha Surana of ProPublica reported today that at least two pregnant women have died in Texas when doctors delayed emergency care after a miscarriage until the fetal heartbeat stopped. The woman they highlighted today, Josseli Barnica, left behind a husband and a toddler. 

At a rally this evening near Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump said his team had advised him to stop talking about how he was going to protect women by ending crime and making sure they don’t have to be “thinking about abortion.” But Trump, who has boasted of sexual assault and been found liable for it, did not stop there. He went on to say that he had told his advisors, “I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I am going to protect them.” 

The Trump campaign remains concerned about the damage caused by the extraordinarily racist, sexist, and violent Sunday night rally at Madison Square Garden. Today the campaign seized on a misstatement President Biden made when condemning the statement from the Madison Square Garden event that referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” They tried to turn the tables to suggest that Biden was calling Trump supporters garbage, although the president has always been very careful to focus his condemnation on Trump alone. 

In Wisconsin today, when he disembarked from his plane, Trump put on an orange reflective vest and had someone drive him around the tarmac in a garbage truck with TRUMP painted on the side. He complained about Biden to reporters from the cab of the truck but still refused to apologize for Sunday’s slur of Puerto Rico, saying he knew nothing about the comedian who appeared at his rally. 

This, too, was an unusual strategy. Like his visit to McDonalds, where he wore an apron, the image of Trump in a sanitation truck was likely intended to show him as a man of the people. But his power has always rested not in his promise to be one of the people, but rather to lead them. The pictures of him in a bright orange vest and unusually dark makeup are quite different from his usual portrayal of himself.

Indeed, media captured a video of Trump’s stunt, and it did not convey strength. MSNBC’s Katie Phang watched him try to get into the truck and noted: “Trump stumbles, drags his right leg, almost falls over, and tries at least three times to open the door…. Some transparency with Trump’s medical records would be nice.” 

The Las Vegas Sun today ran an editorial that detailed Trump’s increasingly obvious mental lapses and concluded that Trump is “crippled cognitively and showing clear signs of mental illness.” It noted that Trump now depends “on enablers who show a disturbing willingness to indulge his delusions, amplify his paranoia or steer his feeble mind toward their own goals.” It noted that if Trump cannot fulfill the duties of the presidency, they would fall to his running mate, J.D. Vance, who has suggested “he would subordinate constitutional principles for personal profit and power.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[kushblazer666]

'Why I Won't Vote'

By W.E.B. Dubois, The Nation, 20 October 1956

Since I was twenty-one in 1889, I have in theory followed the voting plan strongly advocated by Sidney Lens in The Nation of August 4, i.e., voting for a third party even when its chances were hopeless, if the main parties were unsatisfactory; or, in absence of a third choice, voting for the lesser of two evils. My action, however, had to be limited by the candidates' attitude toward Negroes. Of my adult life, I have spent twenty-three years living and teaching in the South, where my voting choice was not asked. I was disfranchised by law or administration. In the North I lived in all thirty-two years, covering eight Presidential elections. In 1912 I wanted to support Theodore Roosevelt, but his Bull Moose convention dodged the Negro problem and I tried to help elect Wilson as a liberal Southerner. Under Wilson came the worst attempt at Jim Crow legislation and discrimination in civil service that we had experienced since the Civil War. In 1916 I took Hughes as the lesser of two evils. He promised Negroes nothing and kept his word. In 1920, I supported Harding because of his promise to liberate Haiti. In 1924, I voted for La Follette, although I knew he could not be elected. In 1928, Negroes faced absolute dilemma. Neither Hoover nor Smith wanted the Negro vote and both publicly insulted us. I voted for Norman Thomas and the Socialists, although the Socialists had attempted to Jim Crow Negro members in the South. In 1932 I voted for Franklin Roosevelt, since Hoover was unthinkable and Roosevelt's attitude toward workers most realistic. I was again in the South from 1934 until 1944. Technically I could vote, but the election in which I could vote was a farce. The real election was the White Primary.

Retired "for age" in 1944, I returned to the North and found a party to my liking. In 1948, I voted the Progressive ticket for Henry Wallace and in 1952 for Vincent Hallinan.

In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no "two evils" exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say. There is no third party. On the Presidential ballot in a few states (seventeen in 1952), a "Socialist" Party will appear. Few will hear its appeal because it will have almost no opportunity to take part in the campaign and explain its platform. If a voter organizes or advocates a real third-party movement, he may be accused of seeking to overthrow this government by "force and violence." Anything he advocates by way of significant reform will be called "Communist" and will of necessity be Communist in the sense that it must advocate such things as government ownership of the means of production; government in business; the limitation of private profit; social medicine, government housing and federal aid to education; the total abolition of race bias; and the welfare state. These things are on every Communist program; these things are the aim of socialism. Any American who advocates them today, no matter how sincerely, stands in danger of losing his job, surrendering his social status and perhaps landing in jail. The witnesses against him may be liars or insane or criminals. These witnesses need give no proof for their charges and may not even be known or appear in person. They may be in the pay of the United States Government. A.D.A.'s and "Liberals" are not third parties; they seek to act as tails to kites. But since the kites are self-propelled and radar-controlled, tails are quite superfluous and rather silly.

The present Administration is carrying on the greatest preparation for war in the history of mankind. Stevenson promises to maintain or increase this effort. The weight of our taxation is unbearable and rests mainly and deliberately on the poor. This Administration is dominated and directed by wealth and for the accumulation of wealth. It runs smoothly like a well-organized industry and should do so because industry runs it for the benefit of industry. Corporate wealth profits as never before in history. We turn over the national resources to private profit and have few funds left for education, health or housing. Our crime, especially juvenile crime, is increasing. Its increase is perfectly logical; for a generation we have been teaching our youth to kill, destroy, steal and rape in war; what can we expect in peace? We let men take wealth which is not theirs; if the seizure is "legal" we call it high profits and the profiteers help decide what is legal. If the theft is "illegal" the thief can fight it out in court, with excellent chances to win if he receives the accolade of the right newspapers. Gambling in home, church and on the stock market is increasing and all prices are rising. It costs three times his salary to elect a Senator and many millions to elect a President. This money comes from the very corporations which today are the government. This in a real democracy would be enough to turn the party responsible out of power. Yet this we cannot do.

The "other" party has surrendered all party differences in foreign affairs, and foreign affairs are our most important affairs today and take most of our taxes. Even in domestic affairs how does Stevenson differ from Eisenhower? He uses better English than Dulles, thank God! He has a sly humor, where Eisenhower has none. Beyond this Stevenson stands on the race question in the South not far from where his godfather Adlai stood sixty-three years ago, which reconciles him to the South. He has no clear policy on war or preparation for war; on water and flood control; on reduction of taxation; on the welfare state. He wavers on civil rights and his party blocked civil rights in the Senate until Douglas of Illinois admitted that the Democratic Senate would and could stop even the right of Senators to vote. Douglas had a right to complain. Three million voters sent him to the Senate to speak for them. His voice was drowned and his vote nullified by Eastland, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who was elected by 151,000 voters. This is the democracy in the United States which we peddle abroad.

Negroes hope to muster 400,000 votes in 1956. Where will they cast them? What have the Republicans done to enforce the education decision of the Supreme Court? What they advertised as fair employment was exactly nothing, and Nixon was just the man to explain it. What has the Administration done to rescue Negro workers, the most impoverished group in the nation, half of whom receive less than half the median wage of the nation, while the nation sends billions abroad to protect oil investments and help employ slave labor in the Union of South Africa and the Rhodesias? Very well, and will the party of Talmadge, Eastland and Ellender do better than the Republicans if the Negroes return them to office?

I have no advice for others in this election. Are you voting Democratic? Well and good; all I ask is why? Are you voting for Eisenhower and his smooth team of bright ghost writers? Again, why? Will your helpless vote either way support or restore democracy to America?

Is the refusal to vote in this phony election a counsel of despair? No, it is dogged hope. It is hope that if twenty-five million voters refrain from voting in 1956 because of their own accord and not because of a sly wink from Khrushchev, this might make the American people ask how much longer this dumb farce can proceed without even a whimper of protest. Yet if we protest, off the nation goes to Russia and China. Fifty-five American ministers and philanthropists are asking the Soviet Union "to face manfully the doubts and promptings of their conscience." Can not these do-gooders face their own consciences? Can they not see that American culture is rotting away: our honesty, our human sympathy; our literature, save what we import from abroad? Our only "review" of literature has wisely dropped "literature" from its name. Our manners are gone and the one thing we want is to be rich--to show off. Success is measured by income. University education is for income, not culture, and is partially supported by private industry. We are not training poets or musicians, but atomic engineers. Business is built on successful lying called advertising. We want money in vast amount, no matter how we get it. So we have it, and what then?

Is the answer the election of 1956? We can make a sick man President and set him to a job which would strain a man in robust health. So he dies, and what do we get to lead us? With Stevenson and Nixon, with Eisenhower and Eastland, we remain in the same mess. I will be no party to it and that will make little difference. You will take large part and bravely march to the polls, and that also will make no difference. Stop running Russia and giving Chinese advice when we cannot rule ourselves decently. Stop yelling about a democracy we do not have. Democracy is dead in the United States. Yet there is still nothing to replace real democracy. Drop the chains, then, that bind our brains. Drive the money-changers from the seats of the Cabinet and the halls of Congress. Call back some faint spirit of Jefferson and Lincoln,and when again we can hold a fair election on real issues, let's vote, and not till then. Is this impossible? Then democracy in America is impossible.

[hotvampireadjacent]

In reading a book about the great depression and then the dustbowl. I everything is exactly the same in history. The author does a wonderful job of highlighting, and not ignoring what was done to the native people of California, such as the Modoc tribe, and drawing parallels to the anti immigrant and borderer fever in modern day United States.

“Many members of Hoovers’ administration and politicians and business leaders in his orbit also refused to accept, at least publicly, that any threat the United States faced could have originated from within the country and been exacerbated by existing conditions unique to the United States. Such denialists instead made spurious claims about foreign meddling in the nations economy. […]

Xenophobic but more general nuance assessments of this sort expressed by members of the Hoover administration gave cover to more explicitly nativist responses that tapped into racist, anti immigrant sentiments that had peaked in the 1920s” The Golden fortress California’s border war on dust bowl refugees page 56

[rjzimmerman]

The Flood-Protection Rule That Trump Rolled Back. (New York Times)

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

In the summer of 2017, Donald Trump stood in the lobby of Trump Tower and declared he would heal a “massive self-inflicted wound on our country” by eliminating red tape that he said was making construction in America an arduous, expensive process.

One policy he eradicated that day was a set of standards aimed at ensuring that anything built with taxpayer money — including hospitals, sewage treatment plants, bridges and libraries — could withstand flooding and rising seas caused by climate change.

Seven years later and in the wake of hurricanes Helene and Milton, federal officials and flood experts say Trump’s decision to roll back those federal infrastructure standards has had financial ramifications. Those are just starting to come into view as officials continue to tally the damage from the storms.

According to state and federal data, at least five water treatment plants in Florida that were in the path of Helene and Milton were exempt from tougher national building standards and sustained damage from the hurricane ranging from water line breaks to power losses. In total, they were funded with about $200 million in federal spending.

Another seven water plants across the Southeast that together received more than $100 million in federal funding were built to lower flood standards and didn’t receive damage during Helene or Milton. But the plants are considered at high risk for damage in the future, and what worries experts is how many crucial infrastructure plants are similarly exposed.

“We can definitively say that risk increased,” said Alice C. Hill, a senior fellow in energy and environment at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The federal government continues to invest in infrastructure destined to fail in the light of worsening climate impacts.”

“Hurricanes Helene and Milton are a stark reminder that catastrophic flooding, and the climate crisis more broadly, present ongoing and worsening challenges for America’s critical water infrastructure,” said Zealan Hoover, a senior adviser to the E.P.A. administrator, Michael Regan.

Hoover said policies like the flood standard “have real consequences for Americans,” including ensuring that communities can maintain access to drinking water in the wake of disasters.

The standards in question were created under President Obama in 2015, who made the case that climate change would make floods more common and much more destructive.

The rules called for building structures two or three feet above the 100-year flood level, or built at the 500-year level. Alternately, federal agencies could analyze future climate change scenarios like sea-level rise or expected heavier floods, and build according to those projections. But the policy ran into opposition, particularly from homebuilders who argued that new restrictions would lead to higher construction costs even outside federally funded projects.

[simply-ivanka]

‘I think the value or the success . . . of Trump’s foreign policies and approaches to national security only became apparent to many Americans after Biden reversed them.’

H.R. McMaster, who served as White House national security adviser (2017-18), on the Hoover Institution’s “GoodFellows” podcast, July 25:

I think the value or the success of Trump’s, certain of Trump’s foreign policies and approaches to national security only became apparent to many Americans after Biden reversed them. So you could really—I mean, hey, what does it look like when you don’t secure the border? Well, we’ve got that. What does it look like when you supplicate to the Iranians and allow them to fill their coffers with $80 billion to $100 billion of unenforced sanctions—revenue that came because of unenforced sanctions? Well, hey, you get a much more intense—wars, much more intense wars across the Middle East and you get Oct. 7.

What happens when you reinstate funding to the corrupt organization Unrwa or rejoin the Human Rights Council, which now Russia is chairing? I mean, it’s all—the fecklessness of the administration has been astounding in these areas. And the one area of continuity with the Trump administration is I think what they’ve done best at, and that’s the approach to China.

So I think that there’s a strong hand to play if President Trump and his surrogates and J.D. Vance and others—if they talk about real differences in policy between the eight Obama years, the four Trump years and the four Biden years.

[deadpresidents]

HERBERT HOOVER •An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover by Richard Norton Smith (BOOK) •Herbert Hoover: A Biography by Eugene Lyons (BOOK) •Herbert Hoover in the White House: The Ordeal of the Presidency by Charles Rappleye (BOOK | KINDLE) •Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT •Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship by Jon Meacham (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •Traitor To His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by H.W. Brands (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom by Conrad Black (BOOK | KINDLE) •Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life by Robert Dallek (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

HARRY S. TRUMAN •Truman by David McCullough (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year That Transformed America by David Pietrusza (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman by Merle Miller (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman by Harry S. Truman, Edited by Robert H. Ferrell (BOOK) •Harry S. Truman by Margaret Truman (BOOK)

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER •Eisenhower by Geoffrey Perret (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •Eisenhower, Volume I: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890-1952 by Stephen E. Ambrose (BOOK | KINDLE) •Eisenhower, Volume II: The President by Stephen E. Ambrose (BOOK | KINDLE) •The Supreme Commander: The War Years of Dwight D. Eisenhower by Stephen E. Ambrose (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •Eisenhower in War and Peace by Jean Edward Smith (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

JOHN F. KENNEDY •An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 by Robert Dallek (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (BOOK | KINDLE) •Incomparable Grace: JFK in the Presidency by Mark K. Updegrove (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956 by Fredrik Logevall (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vincent Bugliosi (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

[mariacallous]

Every president of the United States has within their grasp the power of a vast surveillance state that has grown significantly over the past few decades and has beaten back any real effort to rein it in. Through America’s numerous enigmatic intelligence agencies, presidents possess the ability to dive deeply into the communications, movements, and relationships of everyday Americans. Presidents of both parties have abused the surveillance state, but under a second Trump administration, this power could be abused in ways it has never been before.

Donald Trump, a now convicted felon and the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has said he plans to prosecute his political opponents should he return to the White House. He’s said he would allow states to monitor pregnant women and prosecute those who seek abortions. Trump wants to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. He plans to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell civil unrest, which means sending the military into the streets. The much publicized Project 2025 outlines how he would quickly replace thousands of career civil servants in the federal government with loyalists.

If a president was interested in prosecuting their political opponents, crushing protests, targeting undocumented immigrants, and had the right people in place to help them carry out those plans, surveillance could become a valuable tool for accomplishing those goals. Like former US president Richard Nixon in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Trump could use the surveillance powers available to him to monitor his political opponents, disrupt protest movements, and more.

Nixon and former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover famously surveilled the president’s political opponents and activists, including Martin Luther King Jr., through a program called COINTELPRO. One of the main goals of the program was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” civil rights groups.

If he so desired, Trump could create his own version of this program, but he’d be working with much more advanced technology—and it’d be in a time when there are countless data points available on every American. Hoover could have only dreamed of a world where everyone was walking around with tracking devices.

“So much of what we depend on, in terms of the rule of law, depends on norms. When those norms are ignored, that’s when things start to fall apart,” says Jeffrey L. Vagle, an assistant professor of law at Georgia State University. “Some of the norms, like prosecutorial discretion, might be eroded or disappear entirely. That could mean a number of things in terms of surveillance.”

Vagle says that if a second Trump administration wanted to defend its abuse of surveillance powers, it could stretch the use of national security as a justification for doing so. He says presidents have done this in the past in other ways.

“Administrations from both parties have invoked the term ‘national security’ and have used national security loopholes to justify surveillance and profiling,” says Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “They have too often used national security as a pretext for law enforcement to target Muslims, communities of color, and immigrants.”

Toomey says Trump has sent “mixed signals” when it comes to how he feels about surveillance, but he’s made it clear he plans to target his political opponents in various ways if he’s elected again.

“A second Trump administration could be disastrous for many of our most fundamental freedoms,” Toomey says.

The administration may not even need to come up with a justification for surveilling Americans without a warrant, because it could simply purchase scores of people's personal data. The federal government has been known to purchase data from private brokers in the past, and doing so doesn’t require a warrant.

“We are just awash in data, and data brokers can just collect and sell these data,” Vagle says. “Law enforcement or quasi-law enforcement can collect that information.”

Surveillance can be done in secret so that the people being surveilled don’t realize they’re being surveilled, or it can be done openly as a way to stifle free expression, Vagle says. The government might tell you they’re keeping an eye on people, and then you might be less likely to speak out.

“If you think you’re being watched, you act differently,” Vagle says. “You could see a Trump version of COINTELPRO—only maybe not so covert. They might be more open about it with the idea that it might chill speech.”

As for the abortion issue, some of what may occur will depend on the future legal status of abortion, which could involve a US Supreme Court decision or congressional action. A major change in its legal status would likely affect how the federal government approaches the issue. If it remains a state issue, the federal government wouldn’t typically get involved in how a state is implementing a law it’s passed, but that’s not to say it couldn’t. If a state wanted help tracking people who are crossing state lines for abortions, for example, the federal government could conceivably assist with that.

“The federal government is not in the business of enforcing state laws, but there are a lot of what-ifs. How crazy might a Trump administration be willing to be?” Vagle says.

Whether it’s monitoring political opponents, activists, immigrants, or pregnant people, there are many ways in which a second Trump administration could utilize surveillance powers to exert more control over the populace. If the FBI and the Department of Justice are staffed with people who won’t push back when Trump orders them to do things that might be legally or morally questionable, they may carry out his wishes, and Americans may discover how much their privacy rights have eroded over the years.

“One of the things about Project 2025 is that it’s clear that the Trump camp, and more broadly the Republican Party that’s behind Trump, want to make it a more organized presidency than his first presidency was,” Vagle says. “It would be very unsurprising if the Department of Justice and the FBI dismissed anyone if they even had a whiff of disloyalty.”

[thefirst3chapters]

Jess nods upward. “Speaking of new, what’s with the hat? I thought you've been wearing all the same clothes since the Hoover administration.”

Luke scowls. “Watch it.”

“No promises.”

“It was just time for a change.”

“Huh.”

Still not entirely sure about this, but it's a one shot of Luke and Jess, Luke and Rory, and some indirect Literati that takes place in the same time frame as the Season 7 holiday episodes and was inspired by a few points of speculation I've seen here over the past year. If you check it out, I hope you enjoy it!

[charlesoberonn]

List of US Presidents and how many future presidents were born during their administrations

Before Independence: 8. Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Quincy Adams, Jackson, William Harrison

Before Presidency: 2. Van Buren, Taylor

Washington: 3. Tyler, Polk, Buchanan

Adams: 1. Fillmore

Jefferson: 3. Pierce, Lincoln, Johnson

Madison: 0.

Monroe: 2. Grant, Hayes

Quincy Adams: 0.

Jackson: 3. Garfield, Arthur, Harrison

Van Buren: 1. Cleveland

Henry Harrison: 0.

Tyler: 1. McKinley

Polk: 0.

Taylor: 0.

Fillmore: 0.

Pierce: 2. Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson

Buchanan: 1. Taft

Lincoln: 0.

Johnson: 1. Harding

Grant: 2. Coolidge, Hoover

Hayes: 0.

Garfield: 0.

Arthur: 2. FDR, Truman

Cleveland: 0.

Harrison: 1. Eisenhower

McKinley: 0.

Teddy Roosevelt: 1. LBJ

Taft: 2. Nixon, Reagan

Wilson: 2. Kennedy, Ford

Harding: 0.

Coolidge: 2. Carter, H.W Bush

Hoover: 0.

FDR: 1. Biden

Truman: 3. Clinton, W. Bush, Trump

Eisenhower: 0.

JFK: 1. Obama

LBJ: 0.

Nixon: 0.

Ford: 0.

Carter: 0.

Reagan: 0.

H.W Bush: 0.

Clinton: 0.

W. Bush: 0.

Obama: 0.

Trump: 0.

Biden: 0.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Emma DelRosso

* * * *

Opposing the president-elect's nominations

December 2, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

Dec 02, 2024

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Trump nominated conspiracy theorist Kash Patel as FBI Director and convicted tax fraudster Charles Kushner (Jared’s father) as Ambassador to France. Trump also nominated his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law, Massad Boulos, as a senior adviser covering Arab and Middle Eastern affairs.

Last week I wrote that “Few imagined how bad Trump's nominees would be.” That statement was made before the nominations of Patel and Kushner, nominations that ratcheted up the sickening stream of dangerous, unqualified, and insulting choices that are collectively and individually the worst nominations in our nation’s history.

It is important to understand how disastrous these nominations will be for the US. However, it is not enough to bemoan and condemn Trump's nominations. This newsletter isn’t intended to be a pity party. It is a call to action.

We must flood our representatives in Congress with feedback from constituents demanding that they place the interests of the United States above the revenge agenda of the Republican leader. In the short term, that is what we can do—so we must do it. In the mid range, we can set about defeating Trump's enablers at the ballot box. There must be a political price to pay for supporting party above country and for being cowards when our nation needed courageous leaders.

Before turning to individual nominees, let’s examine the stakes. For once, Trump has been consistent in his actions and has stayed “on message”—in a bad way. His nominations can be grouped into three broad categories:

He seeks to weaken, if not destroy, the US intelligence community and federal law enforcement agencies—in retribution for their temerity in seeking to hold him to account for his crimes. Matt Gaetz (DOJ), Pam Bondi (DOJ), Tulsi Gabbard (NDI), Kash Patel (FBI), Stephen Miller (Depty. Chief of Staff), Kristi Noem (Homeland Security), Sebastian Gorka (Depty. Ass’t to President), John Ratcliffe (CIA), Pete Hegseth (DOD), and Matthew Whittaker (NATO).

He seeks to weaken, if not destroy, the federal government’s healthcare and science expertise—in retribution for their temerity in challenging his lunatic ideas about COVID. Robert Kennedy (HHS), Dr. Oz (Medicare), Jay Bhattacharya (NIH), Dave Weldon (CDC), and Martin A. Makary (FDA commissioner).

Finally, he seeks to destroy the administrative state—a “quid pro quo” to the business community for supporting a candidacy that was designed solely to evade his criminal liabilities. Elon Musk (Government Efficiency), Vivek Ramaswamy (Government Efficiency), Linda McMahon (Education), Russell T. Vought (OMB), Chris Wright (Energy), Brendan Carr (F.C.C. Chair).

Let’s take a look at Trump's most recent nominations

Kash Patel is the sworn enemy of the FBI—so Trump intends to nominate him as FBI Director

Kash Patel is in a love-hate relationship with the FBI. Patel wants to destroy the FBI while converting it into a weapon of political vengeance.

Patel has promised to “shut down” the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. on his first day as director of the FBI and re-open the FBI Headquarters the next day as a “museum to the deep state.” He said,

I'd shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen the next day as a museum of the deep state. And I'd take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals.

But he has also threatened to use the FBI to harass journalists and politicians who sought to hold Trump accountable for his crimes. Patel said,

[W]e’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.

Note that the man who is supposed to “pursue justice” has said that retribution comes first—and “we’ll figure out” why the FBI is harassing US citizens later.

Patel’s twin aims for the FBI should be immediately disqualifying. But prominent Republicans flocked to the TV talk shows on Sunday to defend Kash Patel as a “reformer” who will “root out” the partisanship in an FBI that is dominated by right-wing MAGA leadership as it is.

Bill Barr famously said that that Kash Patel would be appointed Deputy Director of the FBI “over my dead body.” See Joyce Vance, Civil Discourse on Substack, The New Matt Gaetz.

Likewise, former acting director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, said on CNN,

The fact that Kash Patel is profoundly unqualified for this job is not even like a matter for debate. . . . The installation . . . of Kash Patel as FBI director, can only possibly be a plan to disrupt, to dismantle, to distract the FBI and to possibly use it as a tool for the president’s political agenda.

McCabe was virulently anti-Hillary Clinton, leaking damaging information to the WSJ during the 2016 campaign. (McCabe lied to then Director James Comey about the leak and was later fired for his conduct). The fact that a rogue ex-FBI Director is alarmed by Kash Patel speaks volumes.

The nomination of Kash Patel should be viewed as an assault on the US intelligence community. Although people frequently think of the FBI as chasing bank robbers and kidnappers, it plays a critical role in counterterrorism and intelligence gathering.

The FBI is a member of the US Intelligence Community and has a dual report to the Director of National Intelligence (Tulsi Gabbard). It is charged with US counterterrorism investigations and maintains 60 offices overseas (primarily to coordinate with foreign intelligence agencies).

Indeed, Kash Patel has said that he wants to extricate the FBI from intelligence activities—a move that will make all Americans less safe in a dangerous world. See AP, Trump says he'll nominate Kash Patel as FBI director to remake the agency. Here's what happens next. Per AP,

Patel has also talked about disentangling the FBI’s intelligence-gathering activities — now a core function of the bureau’s mandate — from the rest of its law enforcement operations. It’s unclear whether he intends to carry through on that pledge or how it would be greeted at a time when the U.S. is facing what officials say is a heightened threat of terrorism.

As background for the upcoming fight over Kash Patel, I recommend several sources.

First, Joyce Vance’s excellent analysis in Civil Discourse, The New Matt Gaetz.

Next, The Guardian takes a deep dive into Kash Patel’s conspiracy theory past: Conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to lead FBI, faces Senate blowback | FBI | The Guardian

Finally, see the NYTimes, Kash Patel Would Bring Bravado and Baggage to F.B.I. Role. (Accessible to all.) The Times article is long on detail but short on self-awareness or political insight. For example, whatever Kash Patel's nomination means, it is not about “bravado” or “baggage.”

Patel’s threat to pursue journalists appears more than two dozen paragraphs into the Times’ story. In a democracy that is still hoping and pleading with legacy media to raise the alarm about Trump's intentions, twenty-four paragraphs into a story is not the right emphasis for an article about an FBI enforcement policy that would convert the FBI into a partisan police force directed at the media.

The Senate should reject Patel’s nomination. But Trump may attempt to place Patel in an “acting Director” role by manipulating the Federal Vacancy Reform Act. See Congressional Research Service, The Vacancies Act: A Legal Overview.

Trump's nomination of Charles Kushner as Ambassador to France is insulting to France and the US

Jared Kushner’s father—Charles Kushner—is a convicted tax fraudster who engaged in witness tampering while he was under investigation. Donald Trump pardoned Charles Kushner during Trump's first term. Trump has now nominated Charles Kushner as Ambassador to France.

It is difficult to imagine a less fitting Ambassador to France the Charles Kushner.

While Kushner was under investigation for tax fraud, his brother-in-law was a cooperating witness. Kushner hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law and filmed the sexual encounter in a hotel room between his brother-in-law and the prostitute.

Kushner then sent the video of the sexual encounter to his sister to induce her to dissuade her husband from testifying against Kushner. See ABC News, Trump wants pardoned real estate developer Charles Kushner to become US ambassador to France.

The nomination of Charles Kushner as US Ambassador to France is the diplomatic equivalent of flipping the middle finger to a foreign nation. France would be well within its rights to refuse to receive Kushner as the Ambassador and tell the US to recall Kushner to the states.

In the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, a nation has the unilateral authority to expel an ambassador:

The receiving state may at any time and without having to explain its decision, notify the sending state that the head of the mission or any member of the diplomatic staff of the mission is persona non grata or that any other member of the staff of the mission is not acceptable. In any such case, the sending state shall, as appropriate, either recall the person concerned or terminate his functions with the mission.

See Foreign Policy, So, How Do You Expel an Ambassador, Anyway? – Foreign Policy

Concluding Thoughts

President Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden on Sunday. Against the orgy of Trump pardons of family, friends, and advisers, Biden’s pardon of his son on minor charges pursued for political purposes seems quaint and unremarkable. Biden’s reasons for pardoning his son are understandable—and probably meritorious. But Biden’s decision will become precedent for future pardons—by presidents with flimsy or corrupt reasons for pardoning family members. What is done can’t be undone, but the decision to grant a pardon to Hunter Biden was unwise and will further undermine the presidential pardon power.

And yes, I do understand the differences between Biden’s decision and the pardons issued by Trump. But examining the Hunter Biden pardon through the lens of the interests of the American people, it was unwise.

After I wrote last week that the nomination process has been more difficult than expected, I received several comments from readers (and my Managing Editor), saying, “Thanks for acknowledging that the nomination process has been worse than expected.”

It feels like we are living in a world turned upside down. Sexual abusers and convicted criminals are being nominated to positions of trust and honor. Demagogues who want to destroy the federal government are being granted leading roles in agencies they will seek to destroy. Unqualified, ignorant conspiracy mongers are being entrusted with the health and safety of our children and elderly. Disgruntled and aggrieved “ne’er do-wells” are being placed in charge of the US counterterrorism agencies.

If you feel like the subject in Edvard Munsch’s painting, The Scream, there is nothing wrong with your radar. You should feel that way—and more. I add the “and more” modifier because much of the press is still reporting on the nominations as if they are the player line-up being announced at Yankee Stadium on a Sunday afternoon.

The nominees represent a threat to the safety and stability to our society as a whole. Discussing the nominees’ “bravado” and “baggage” and “lack of experience” is misleading. The “lack of experience” is a feature, not a bug. What better way to destroy a federal agency than nominating someone who has no idea what the agency does? See, e.g., The Independent, Trump taps GOP megadonor with no military experience to head up US Navy.

We must attempt to derail as many of these nominations as possible—but especially Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and Robert Kennedy. Call or write your Senators and make your voice heard: U.S. Senate: Contacting The Senate. Even unsuccessful efforts to stop some nominations will lay the groundwork for opposition to future actions. No effort is wasted, even if the fruits of that effort are not immediately visible.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[fictionadventurer]

Hoover?

Herbert Hoover came from a very poor family in Iowa. After his parents died, he moved in with an uncle in Oregon, and worked at his land office. He didn't attend school after grade school, but when a Stanford recruiter came through, Hoover did so well on his tests (except English) that he was admitted to the college.

He met his wife Lou at Standford, where they both got geology degrees. Hoover got hired with a mining company, and he and Lou oversaw mining operations in Australia and Asia. They were both in China during the Boxer Rebellion. They worked together to translate an ancient Roman mining text for the first time, and they'd give bound copies of it to people as gifts. Lou spoke eight languages, and she and Herbert would speak Mandarin when they didn't want people to understand their conversations.

By the time Hoover was 40, he was a self-made millionaire, working with a company with offices on six continents and a headquarters in London, and while in London, he was looking for a way to engage with public life. Then WWI broke out. He and Lou worked together to set up a charity to help provide food and transportation for American stuck in Europe. Then the crisis in Belgium happened, and he worked with the Belgian government to start the Belgian Relief program. He eventually had 600 ships bringing food to the starving citizens of Belgium. He was called things like "the Great Humantarian" and "the Master of Emergencies".

This caught the attention of Woodrow Wilson, who brought him into his administration as a food administrator, encouraging Americans to reduce consumption of certain foods in light of the war effort. Hoover then became Secretary of Commerce under Warren Harding, and he massively grew that department. Calvin Coolidge put him in charge of disaster relief efforts in 1927 to respond to flooding in Mississippi, which increased his reputation of a guy who was great at responding to emergencies.

He was so popular that he was the obvious Republican candidate for president. Unfortunately, the guy who was a great humanitarian didn't have the personality or the experience to navigate the give-and-take of politics. He preferred just going in and getting the job done to having to work as part of the political machine. He alienated Congress before the Depression. After the Depression hit, he was doing a lot more behind the scenes to respond to things than the public realized at the time--and had more success than he was given credit for--but he was villainized for not wanting to start direct government programs to help people. That was something he had done a ton of as a private citizen, but he didn't think it was the role of the president to do things like that--he wanted to leave that kind of thing to private charities--which unfortunately gave him a reputation of being uncaring.

He was extremely active in his post-presidential life. After WWII, he was again put in charge of relief efforts to bring food to Europe. He ran the Hoover Commission that reorganized the executive branch of the government. He wrote tons of books and papers (and this from the guy who did so badly at English in college that he needed special permission to graduate). For a guy who had such a disastrous presidency, he actually had a pretty amazing and successful life, and I wish more people knew about it.