#unqualified appointments by trump

[tomorrowusa]

Make (insert name of easily preventable disease) Great Again.

People who are nostalgic for the pandemic emergency are undoubtedly delighted that science-denier RFK Jr. is Trump's nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.

Trump made the COVID-19 disaster worse than it had to be in the US. Think of what he and Worm Brain can do for measles, diphtheria, and hepatitis!

Vaccine misinformation distorts science – a biochemist explains how RFK Jr. and his lawyer’s claims threaten public health

Contact your senator and say that RFK Jr. makes you sick.

U.S. Senate: Contacting U.S. Senators

[usindistress]

The question is how long between inauguration day and when his brain is finished turning into soup and the cabinet have to 25th him and then we have president Vance to worry about instead.

Also Thomas and Alito get to retire now.

“Trump will likely make Americans regret returning him to power. But between then and the moment they could do anything about it, he could wreck the country or the world.”

— Reflections On America’s New Autocracy - by Brian Beutler

[liberalsarecool]

I owe my Trump-supporting friends an apology. I’ve been critical of the Trump presidency and am still exhausted from the experience.

But to be fair, President Trump wasn’t that bad, other than:

• when he incited an insurrection against the government,

• mismanaged a pandemic that killed over a million Americans

• separated children from their families

• lost those children in the bureaucracy

• tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church

• tried to block all Muslims from entering the country

• got impeached

• got impeached again

• had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history

• pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden

• fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia

• bragged about firing the FBI director on TV

• took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community

• diverted military funding to build his wall

• caused the longest government shutdown in US history

• called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate”

• lied nearly 40,000 times

• banned transgender people from serving in the military

• ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions

• vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers

• refused to release his tax returns

• increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion

• had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history

• called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers

• coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist

• refused to concede the 2020 election

• hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House

• walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl

• called neo-Nazis “very fine people”

• suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID

• abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey

• pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans

• incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic

• withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords

• withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal

• withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances

• insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter

• pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op

• failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies

• called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries

• called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation”

• claimed that he single-handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere

• forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader

• believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

• berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe

• suggested the US should buy Greenland

• colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges

• repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people”

• claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases

• violated the emoluments clause

• thought that Nambia was a country

• told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public

• called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p---y” for following the Constitution

• nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet

• nominated a corrupt head of the EPA

• nominated a corrupt head of HHS

• nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department

• nominated a corrupt head of the USDA

• praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies

• refused to allow the presidential transition to begin

• insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death

• spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president

• falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote

• called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser”

• falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year

• considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions

• mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID

• locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones

• used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus”

• hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser

• pardoned several of his shady associates

• gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressman who amplified his batshit crazy conspiracy theories

• got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!)

• had a Secretary of State who called him a moron

• forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history

• botched the COVID vaccine rollout

• tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him

• charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties

• constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate

• claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear

• called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas”

• used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise

• opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling

• got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers

• claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US

• ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings

• blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining

• redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle

• got played by Kim Jung Un and his “love letters”

• threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution

• botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico

• threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them

• pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to “find” him votes

• thought that the Virgin islands had a President

• drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane

• allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing

• rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos

• pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID

• rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers

• held blatant campaign rallies at the White House

• tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man

• refused to attend his successors’ inauguration

• nominated the worst Education Secretary in history

• threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted

• attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci

• promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t)

• allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues

• struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble

• called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ”

• threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders

• went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic

• claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts,”

• seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution

• demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director

• praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles

• completely gutted the Voice of America

• placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service

• claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower

• suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country

• suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public

• overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported

• reduced the number of refugees the US accepts

• insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames

• gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address

• named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties

• eliminated the White House office of pandemic response

• used soldiers as campaign props

• fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him

• demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade

• hired a shit ton of white nationalists

• politicized the civil service

• did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government

• falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts

• claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won

• insulted reporters of color

• insulted women reporters

• insulted women reporters of color

• suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs

• attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him

• summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House to pressure them to overturn the election

• spent countless hours every day watching Fox News

• refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas

• hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer

• tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him

• acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney

• attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a women who accused him of sexual assault

• held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present

• didn’t disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin so that the US had to find out via Russian media

• stopped holding press briefings for months at a time

• “ordered” US companies to leave China even though he has no such power

• led a political party that couldn’t even be bothered to draft a policy platform

• claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers

• tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course

• suggested that the government nuke hurricanes

• suggested that wind turbines cause cancer

• said that he had a special aptitude for science

• fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure

• blurted out classified information to Russian officials

• tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida

• fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban

• hired Stephen Miller

• openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago where everyone could hear them

• interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel

• abandoned Iraqi refugees who’d helped the U.S. during the war

• tried to get Russia back into the G7

• held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden

• seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive

• lost 60 election fraud cases in court including before judges he had nominated

• falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren’t

• shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies

• still hasn’t come up with a healthcare plan

• still hasn’t come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated “Infrastructure Weeks"

• forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID

• told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”

• fucked up the Census

• withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic

• did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings,” allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act

• seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican

• stood before sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win

• constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president which presumably includes four that were assassinated and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump

• claimed Andrew Jackson could’ve stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened

• said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake

• claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him

• claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President

• created a commission to whitewash American history

• retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain

• claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn’t have happened if someone there had a gun even though there was an armed security guard there

• hired a senior staffer who cited the non-existent Bowling Green Massacre as a reason to ban Muslims

• had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others

• bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties

• apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House

• stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians

• falsely claimed Biden wanted to defund the police

• said that the head of the CDC didn’t know what he was talking about

• tried to rescind protection from DREAMers

• gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic

• tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax

• said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn’t count blue states

• deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented

• claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln

• touted a “super-duper” secret “hydrosonic” missile which may or may not be a new “hypersonic” missile or may not exist at all

• retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile

• forced through security clearances for his family

• suggested that police officers should rough up suspects

• suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs

• tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender

• suggested the US not accept COVID patients from a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher

• nominated a climate change skeptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy

• retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden had played a song called “Fuck tha Police” at a campaign event

• hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags

• accused Democrats of “treason” for not applauding his State of the Union address

• claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter because they were “spending too much time” on Russia

• mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault

• obsessed over low-flow toilets

• ordered the re-release of more COVID vaccines when there weren’t any to release

• called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek)

• hijacked Washington’s July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech

• took advice from the MyPillow guy

• claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists

• said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition figure

• never seemed to heed the advice of his wife’s “Be Best” campaign

• falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent

• announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest

• insulted the leader of Canada

• insulted the leader of France

• insulted the leader of Britain

• insulted the leader of Germany

• insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!)

• falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues

• blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually

• continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders,

• said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their “Sony televisions” if the US were ever attacked

• left a NATO summit early in a huff

• stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of five knows not to do that

• called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary

• refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise

And a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember .

[batboyblog]

In the almost month since the election I’ve gone through so many emotions. I’ve felt hopelessly crushed, furious, overwhelmed, and just plain exhausted. I hate that this has happened, and that the orange shitstain is gonna put the most awful people in power. I’m not gonna lay down and die, but I’m just so tired of this. That man has slowly drained the hope out of this nation for the last ten years and I’m sick of it. I know this didn’t start with him, but he certainly emboldened blatant authoritarianism. I know every generation feels at some point the world is ending, but at this point it feels so difficult to try to have hope for the future. I believe we as a country can be better than this, but I’m not sure at the moment how we can get there.

I know the feeling, the tired part any ways.

in 2016 I was in the Hillary campaign and like we talked about HOW! bad Donald Trump could be, Hillary had a tweet "we can't trust a man who can be baited with a tweet with the nuclear codes" and for us inside the campaign we took all that very seriously for us it was not talk we meant it, we believed he was really dangerous, deeply corrupt possibly criminal already, and totally unqualified and unfit. And we said so, and no one took us seriously, I always remember a nice middle aged couple stopped at our office to get some signs they weren't from the state and were just passing through. But Democrats, supporters and I was trying to push them to maybe volunteer (as was my job) and I talked about how a Republican President (Ie Trump) could appoint up to 4 Supreme Court justices and they would surely do away with Roe V Wade. And They literally rolled their eyes at me and said "I know thats a good line but do you really believe that'd happen? they'd do away with Roe?" yes, yes we did.

So any ways I believed Trump 1.0 would be every bit as bad as it turned out to be, it was even on January 6th a little worse. So I went through the emotional roller coaster in 2016

2024 has been just sad, and tired.

But I do feel something growing in the guts of my soul, rage, pure burning rage. Someone once said that the thing that fuels every good activist is rage at the world for being imperfect. I don't know if thats right or true.

But it's whats getting me up in the morning, we offered hope, and kindness and a better world and they threw it back, well fuck 'em. This is my patch of dirt on god's good earth goddamn it and they can't fucking have it without a fight, I'm a miserable cockroach motherfucker, I will out fight them, out last them, and win and stand on the ashes of their fucking fascist dreams.

more to the point, I did feel like giving up, and saying "well they picked this, eyes wide open, now we all suffer, w/e" but I don't get to give up, Bill Clinton said "there are no permeant victories or defeats in politics" and he's right, this is the call and the cause, to struggle unendingly for the better world and if you're very lucky you live to see it turn a little and a new battle for the better of man kind than the one you spent your life on be engaged. For me personally, my nephew is trans, he's 17 looking at colleges, picking states that are safe for him. I don't have the power to protect him, I did EVERYthing in my power to stop this, because of him, and for him, I'll be out there again and again and again. I wish deals with the devil were real because I'd just go to hell so he could be safe and happy, but sadly only hard work and uncertain outcomes are real.

I have no easy answers, no clean hope of a better world or a better America about to be born from the bitter ashes of this election. Harvey Milk said "I know you cannot live on Hope alone, but without it life is not worth living" And the last 10 years, the forces of darkness have across all of society, wearing many different faces tried to take hope out of our souls, and its brought us here. My favorite speech is by Ann Richards and I quote the end a lot, but here I'll quote something she said way way back in 1988

This Republican Administration treats us as if we were pieces of a puzzle that can’t fit together. They've tried to put us into compartments and separate us from each other. Their political theory is “divide and conquer.” They’ve suggested time and time again that what is of interest to one group of Americans is not of interest to any one else. We’ve been isolated. We’ve been lumped into that sad phraseology called “special interests.” ------ No wonder we feel isolated and confused. We want answers and their answer is that "something is wrong with you."  Well nothing's wrong with you. Nothing’s wrong with you that you can’t fix in November! We've been told -- We've been told that the interests of the South and the Southwest are not the same interests as the North and the Northeast. They pit one group against the other. They've divided this country and in our isolation we think government isn’t gonna help us, and we're alone in our feelings. We feel forgotten. Well, the fact is that we are not an isolated piece of their puzzle. We are one nation. We are the United States of America.

in the 2020s we're doing it to ourselves but its helping the cynical just as much. Each of us trapped on our phones in our own personal self made hell, well not self made, there are algorithms feeling you stories designed to make you feel like shit, because when you feel like shit you stay on-line, and keep doom scrolling. We're divided and our culture, the way we speak to each other it only makes us more divided, we're rubbery and inauthentic.

So I guess, you want hope, get out there and find something you believe in and fight for it, there's a local candidate near you I'm sure you can believe in, a ballot measure, a local group, something, and break the isolation we have to talk again because if we don't, well its already eaten us alive and we're trying to get out of the whale.

[pintadorartist]

The Senate Must Block Trump’s Cabinet Nominees

Here is an image of the President-Elect, Donald Trump's cabinet picks for his administration:

These picks are not only bad since most of these picks lack experience in these fields, but some actually have written parts of the Project 2025 guidebook, like Russel T. Vought for example.

And although the Republicans took the Senate, they still need Democrat cooperation to confirm these nominations.

Another factor to consider is that not all of the Republicans are on board with these nominations, an example being Matt Gaetz, who ended up withdrawing his bid for Attorney General after facing backlash from fellow Repubs amid allegations of sexual misconduct

So, I ask that you all Call, Email, and Fax your senators to tell them to reject these nominations.

For more info on the appointees, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4985802-trump-cabinet-nominees-second-term/

Here's where you'll find your Senator:

You can also call (202) 224-3121, where a switchboard operator will connect you directly with the Senate office you request.

If you're nervous about talking with someone call after your senator's office is closed or test RESIST at 50409 to turn your text into an email or fax

Fax tool here:

Scripts;

If your Senator is a Democrat, use this script for calls, email, and fax:

"Hello [Senator name], my name is [Your name], and I urge you to reject Trump's cabinet picks. Instead of competent experts, Trump has picked his most loyal allies as Cabinet members to enforce his authoritarian agenda and disrupt the most essential services for everyday Americans. He's appointed self-serving people like anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health and human services and former Fox News host and white nationalist Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense.

The Senate must reject these Cabinet nominees to protect working Americans from the dysfunction our federal agencies will face under the direction of these appointees. We're worth fighting for, and we deserve better. I urge you and the Senate to reject RFK Jr., Hegseth, and any other extremist Trump nominees who will seek to enact Trump's radical Project 2025 agenda."

If your Senator is a Republican, use this script instead:

"Hello [Senator name], my name is [Your name], and I urge you to reject Trump's cabinet picks. Instead of competent experts with experience, Trump has picked unqualified Cabinet members who will disrupt the most essential services for everyday Americans. He's appointed people who lack qualifications, like anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services and former Fox News host and white nationalist Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense.

The Senate must reject these Cabinet nominees to protect working Americans from the dysfunction our federal agencies will face under the direction of these appointees. We're worth fighting for, and we deserve better. I urge you and the Senate to reject RFK Jr., Hegseth, and any other unqualified Trump nominees who lack the expertise and qualifications for these roles"

Here are also some petitions to sign as well:

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Radley Balko at The Watch:

Since the election, a number of readers have asked how worried we should be, and what we should be looking for in the weeks and months ahead. My general answer: pretty worried! At this point, I see little reason to think that Trump won’t at least attempt his most authoritarian and destructive campaign promises. Whether he succeeds will depend on how much resistance he gets from the courts, Congress, the federal bureaucracy, and the rest of us.

Trump’s nominations to cabinet positions so far are a clear indication that he’s dragging his party further into a nihilist cult of personality. It isn’t just that so many of them are unqualified, corrupt, or destructive (though it’s also all of those things). It’s that they’re uniquely unfit for the specific positions he has appointed them to hold. He’s daring someone to stop him, and learning from what follows.

The Matt Gaetz pick for attorney general was bad, but it wasn’t even his most dangerous. Appointing crank conspiracy theorist and Trump/Assad apologist Tulsi Gabbard to the most sensitive national security position in government is a direct threat to national security and a reflection of Trump’s own fondness for authoritarians. Department of Defense pick Pete Hegseth has never led more than a dozen or so people (the one small nonprofit he did lead, he ran into the ground). As a National Guardsman, he was barred from working security for Joe Biden’s inauguration because he has a tattoo common to white supremacists. He lobbied Trump to pardon war criminals who had been reported by their own platoons, and believes the U.S. military should ignore the Geneva Conventions.

Then there’s the fact that the leader of the QAnon party, a man himself found responsible for rape and credibly accused of sexual assault or misconduct by dozens of women, appointed four — four — cabinet level officials accused of engaging in or covering up sexual misconduct. There’s Gaetz, of course. RFK Jr. has also been accused of sexual assault (he didn’t exactly deny the accusation). The sexual assault allegation against DOD nominee Hegseth are particularly credible. And Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick for Department of Education, was accused in a lawsuit of covering up a ringside announcer’s sex abuse of a boy while she and her husband ran World Wrestling Entertainment.

None of this is all that surprising, given that Trump’s party keeps nominating and electing sex creeps up and down the ballot. Nor does it seem to bother Trump’s congressional supporters. Instead, they’ve decided to single out and bully the first trans woman elected to Congress, barring her from using the women’s bathrooms on Capitol Hill . . . because she’s a “threat” to women. (We’re still waiting to hear which bathrooms male Republicans neutered by Donald Trump will be permitted to use.) Trump is also refusing to subject his nominations to FBI background checks, and his campaign says he won’t release the names of donors to his transition. Both are clear signs that he has no intention of making himself accountable or transparent to anyone. Nearly everything he’s done since the election points to a president who not only intends to buck every norm, convention, and check, he won’t even pretend to try. It’s just open defiance.

In the coming days, I’ll look at the free press and the First Amendment, immigration, and crime and criminal justice. But today, I’ll focus on Trump’s openly-stated plans to weaponize the government against his critics and enemies. I fully expect to see Trump follow through on his promises to seek retribution against people like Jack Smith, Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, Alexander Vindman, Anthony Fauci, and countless others. Whether he’ll do it by ordering the DOJ to make sensationalist arrests and criminal charges or use subtler though still pernicious tools like IRS audits, subpoenas, or parading people before Congress for public ridicule, is hard to say. But investigations alone can ruin lives and careers.

Let’s start with the DOJ. I’m not sure that the Gaetz debacle provides much instruction on whether Senate Republicans have the backbone to provide any real oversight. (It did show us, however, that House Republicans were willing to remove their spines, gift-wrap them, and hand-deliver them to Trump.) I suspect Gaetz’s tendency to anger and insult members of his own party hurt his nomination more than his extremism, sex pestery, and utter lack of qualifications.

Trump’s new AG nominee, Pam Bondi, is less abrasive than Gaetz, but every bit the devout MAGA loyalist. As Florida Attorney General, Bondi was at one point set to join other states in suing Trump University (Florida has more “alumni” than any other state). Shen then mysteriously pulled out of the class action after Trump made a $25,000 donation to her PAC — a donation that came from Trump’s “charity,” by the way — and then held a fundraiser for her at Mar-a-Lago. (Bondi has a long history of that sort of pay-to-play.) Bondi quickly became a full-throated supporter. She’s not only a 2020 election denier, she was part of Trump’s legal team in his bid to overturn the election. She actually stood next to Rudy Giuliani at Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

Bondi has also already made clear that she fully supports Trump’s plan to weaponize the agency he has nominated her to lead.

[...] We’ll see an important test of Trump’s power shortly after he takes office. He plans to fire FBI director Christopher Wray and replace him with Kash Patel, a vengeful loyalist wholly unqualified for that position. The FBI director is supposed to serve outside the political influence of individual presidents. It’s why the position comes with a 10-year term, and why an FBI director can only be fired for cause. Remember that when Trump fired James Comey, Jeff Sessions considered it a serious enough abuse of power to appoint a special counsel. We’ve become so accustomed to Trump’s power grabs that it’s now just widely expected that he’ll fire Wray for pretextual reasons and install an unqualified lickspittle like Patel — a guy who has vowed to imprison journalists and critics. If the Senate allows that to happen, I fear dark days lie ahead. (Trump is also reportedly considering appointing Patel to a position that doesn’t require Senate approval, but which could still give him the power to act as Trump’s retributive hammer.)

[...] Trump is also already planning to devote DOJ resources to “uncovering” evidence that he won the 2020 election, and to prosecuting state officials who resisted his attempts to coerce them. Expect to see a full-throttle effort to rewrite history about that election, only this time Trump will have more power to force federal agencies to provide faux credibility to his bullshit fraud conspiracies. Watch to see which agencies fall in line.

[...] The Post and other outlets have since reported that one of the key architects of Trump’s plan to purge federal agencies of institutionalists is Russ Vought, Trump’s former head of the Office of Management and Budget — one of the most powerful under-the-radar positions in government. Vought was also a key architect of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led blueprint for a Trump II administration so deeply unpopular that Trump repeatedly claimed during the campaign that he had nothing to do with it. That of course was a lie: last week, Trump nominated Vought back to his old position.

[...] Finally, one particularly pernicious pattern we’ve seen from Trump officials and MAGA pundits is the targeting of not just politicians and public officials, but everyday people they see as representative of their enemies — at which point the MAGA faithful swarm with threats and harassment. We saw Trump-loyal publications repeatedly try to dox whistleblowers who exposed corruption and abuse. We saw them upend the lives of people like Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, along with countless other 2020 election workers who signed up for the sort of nonpartisan positions necessary in a functional democracy.

They did it to doctors and nurses during COVID, healthcare workers who treat trans people, and of course to the Haitian immigrants in Springfield — along with any local residents who dared to defend them. The Libs of TikTok account on X run by Chaya Raichik basically exists solely for this purpose — to sic an army of online followers to heap hate and invective on people she has deemed to be on the wrong side of the culture war. Trump’s “co-president” Elon Musk has been particularly eager to weaponize the social media platform he bought for this sort of targeting. Shortly after purchasing Twitter, he selectively released emails, internal documents, and other private correspondence to a few hand-picked “journalists” to create a dubious narrative about public-private censorship. While there were certainly some examples of improper government pressure on Twitter, most of the claims were wildly overblown. More worrying, the whole project — along with the complicity of Republicans in Congress — led to harassment and death threats against former Twitter employees, whistleblowers, misinformation researchers, and others caught in the crossfire.

Radley Balko wrote a great piece on how the incoming Trump Misadministration seeks to weaponize government agencies to be sharp tools to help his authoritarian masturbatory revenge fantasies.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Weltschmerz is a German word that describes a feeling of sadness, weariness, or hopelessness about the world. It's made up of the words Welt, meaning "world", and Schmerz, meaning "pain".

[Thanks Ellen Geller]

* * * *

Put one foot in front of the other. Repeat.

November 16, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

It was a tough week—on the heels of an even tougher week. A few Democrats are revved up and ready to jump back in the fight. But if my inbox is a reliable indicator, many (most?) people are still reeling from the losses on Election Day. They are bewildered, exhausted, tapped out emotionally and financially, and angry. You wouldn’t be human if you did not feel those emotions in some measure. Hopes were high, and the loss was unexpected. The disappointment was exacerbated by PTSD.

The president-elect has a feral sense that many Democrats are emotionally vulnerable. His cabinet picks are designed to rub salt in our wounds and deepen our sense of bewilderment. We must recognize that the ludicrous nominations over the past week are part of a strategy to dispirit and weaken Democrats—in hopes of reducing their resolve to resist his dark plans.

We cannot give in to the president-elect’s transparent ploy. Although I am not a fan of the Godfather movie franchise (no hate mail, please!), every American knows the line, “‘It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.”

Trump’s bizarre, anti-government nominations are not personal. They are strictly business—to Trump and to us. He is using them as an emotional cudgel against Democrats and a test of loyalty for incredulous Republicans. Our job is to defeat as many of the nominations as possible—thereby demonstrating that Trump is vulnerable and weak after his narrow win.

It is possible that Trump will resort to unilateral recess appointments by forcing an adjournment of Congress for ten days so that he can cram his unqualified, anti-establishment choices on the American people.

Doing so would be a mistake and would overplay Trump's hand. The officers would be branded as illegitimate leaders who could not make it through a Senate confirmation. More importantly, such a move would instantly convert Trump into America’s first (and last) dictator.

No other president has forced an adjournment of Congress, much less for the anti-democratic purpose of evading the Senate’s “advice and consent” role under the Constitution. Although lawsuits would challenge the recess appointments unilaterally engineered by Trump, the bigger point is that the move would drop all pretense of a president bound by the rule of law.

Whatever the Framers thought they were doing with the recess appointments and the adjournment clause, none of them believed those clauses could be manipulated to strip the Senate of its constitutional obligation to review presidential nominations.

If Trump manages to remove the Senate’s advice and consent role from the Constitution, he will sow the seeds of his quick undoing.

As I write, it appears that the nominations of Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, and Robert Kennedy are in trouble—at least if they go through the Senate confirmation process.

We can help keep up the pressure by notifying our Senators and Representatives that we oppose the nominations of Gaetz, Hegseth, Kennedy, and Gabbard. See Jessica Craven’s Chop Wood Carry Water for a word script and link to phone numbers. Chop Wood, Carry Water 11/14.

There are two other themes that deserve mention as we head into the weekend.

The first is the stand-alone injury to women across America who hoped that the 2024 election would be a major step to re-establishing their status as equal citizens under the Constitution. Few opinion writers or journalists have mentioned that the re-election of Trump has dashed those hopes—at least for another four years.

Mother Jones has addressed the issue of the election’s impact on women in its article, Of Misogyny, Musk, and Men by Clara Jeffrey. The article runs under the sub-header “Women are not okay. We’re furious.”  

For all of the punditry analyzing the reason for Democrats’ loss on November 5, almost none of them mention the Trump campaign’s explicit appeal to sexism among young men. Any pundit who purports to analyze the reasons for Kamala Harris’s loss and does not list misogyny among the top three reasons is running cover for Trump—whether they intend to or not.

The second issue is the unrelenting tidal wave of pundit analyses that seek to assign blame for the Democratic loss. Spoiler alert: The reason is (allegedly) that Democrats are “liberal elitists” who ignored the working class.

The above analysis is both wrong and lazy. But even if it were accurate, it beggars belief that journalists and pundits are wasting their time assigning blame at the very moment that Trump “is slouching toward Bethlehem” in the manner of the “rough beast” in The Second Coming.1

If the above metaphor is too obscure for a Saturday morning, here is another: Imagine that we are on an oil drilling platform in the North Sea. A fire has started in the galley and threatens to engulf the entire platform. What is the better course of action? To argue over who is responsible for starting the fire in the galley or to work on extinguishing the fire?

It is appropriate and necessary to understand how and why Democrats fell short in 2024. But to do so at a time when we are stranded on a burning platform is suicidal. Assigning blame may fill column inches but it corrodes unity. The legacy media is failing us.

And yet, readers cannot resist the temptation to forward articles to me with the thesis, “Democrats are liberal elitists who got what they deserved.” I get a dozen such emails a day (often multiple duplicates of the latest from NYT or WaPo). I have received hundreds since November 5.

Amplifying such articles merely compounds the journalistic malpractice of the legacy media. We should not give them oxygen. They invite disputation and discord. They are inimical to our prime objective: Resist the efforts of the Trump administration to erode the rule of law.

Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter

[6ilent-9ufferer]

Why did I get a propagandist text from Arkansas? If you receive Trump propaganda to support his harmful agenda, don't listen to it.

This is a screenshot of the message of lies that I received:

I replied:

All his nominees are unqualified and appointed because cronyism (with a dose of nepotism).

Remember: don't listen to his lies and his propaganda.

[truthdogg]

Donald Trump has been out of his mind since well before ran for office.

Back when he was the butt of jokes at real estate conferences, we all knew Ivanka ran most things and that he couldn’t do any work without her or (perhaps) his sons. She appeared to be the business heir, especially in the hotel side of things, and friends in the industry have told me that she was good to work with. We also knew she would have to follow him to the White House. He had no one else that he trusted to make important decisions for him. As a result, there was some valid expectation that she might be making many of those decisions herself.

Ivanka & Jared were both appointed, and it became painfully obvious that both were horribly unqualified for politics, diplomacy or national policy. Thats without even clearly spending too much of their time making their own business deals from inside the executive branch. Career flatterers and sycophants made quick work of undermining these two newcomers, even as Trump tried to put them in charge of initiatives and programs.

So even though Ivanka often appeared to be the only person who cared that Trump might have an unembarrassing legacy, she wasn’t as much of a tempering influence as we might’ve hoped. Ultimately, her father was the man in charge, and she didn’t have the education or experience to handle him, the far right, or (especially) the country. Frankly, none of the Donald Trump heirs have shown themselves to be any better (morally or in business) than him, and Jared might be one of the worst of the entire bunch.

But here’s the thing.

In a 2nd Trump term, should there be one, there won’t be anyone as “normal” as Ivanka or even Jared. There will be no one there aside from the suck ups, the opportunists, and the extremists. We could end up with a genuinely empty-headed puppet who only cares about looking tough, surrounded entirely by some of the absolutely worst people the US has to offer: a literal rapist who is primed to quickly and easily give in to the most base and violent suggestions that his extremist advisors have to offer.

[tomorrowusa]

Philippine Nobel laureate Maria Ressa literally wrote the book on standing up to dictators.

How to Stand Up to a Dictator

She spoke to Ali Velshi about what she has been calling the "Philippinization of America".

Ms. Ressa says that given the Philippine example with President Duterte, six months is all Trump needs to consolidate power in his hands.

Trump appointments are something we should be especially wary of. And we should begin now by opposing his wildly unqualified cabinet nominees. If you live in a state with GOP senators in Washington, you have a special responsibility to lobby them to oppose the pervy and corrupt people Trump wants to place in government.

Contacting U.S. Senators

Don't think it can't happen here. It already has.

@dnlfelix

[wilwheaton]

A Trump appointee with little experience on the bench, Cannon was then randomly assigned to preside over the criminal case when Trump was indicted in June. Meanwhile, a string of errors she’s made in her short time as a judge has come to light. Her most recent hiccup came in June, when she closed jury selection in a child pornography case—denying the defendant’s family and others a seat in the courtroom to watch jury selection. The misstep, an apparent violation of the constitutional right to a public trial, nearly invalidated the proceedings entirely. She also neglected to swear in a prospective jury pool—a mandatory procedure. Cannon, 42, was appointed by Trump in the waning days of his presidency in 2020. She’d been a federal prosecutor for seven years, but has only been a part of eight criminal trials that resulted in jury verdicts—four as a prosecutor and four as a judge. She’s spent a total of just 14 days in trial as a federal judge, The New York Times reported.

Judge Aileen Cannon Comes Out Swinging in Trump’s Favor (Again) in Classified Docs Case

Cannon was deemed UNQUALIFIED by the American Bar Association. In her FOURTEEN DAYS of activity on the bench, she’s confirmed that, over and over again.

This political operative masquerading as a federal judge is a disgrace. She needs to be impeached and removed from the bench.

[misfitwashere]

December 1, 2024 

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

DEC 2

Over the holiday weekend, President-elect Trump continued to name the people he wants in his incoming administration. His picks seem designed to destroy the institutions of the democratic American state and replace those institutions with an authoritarian government whose officials are all loyal to Trump.

Congress—which represents the American people—designed governmental institutions like the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Department of Defense to support the mission of the Constitution, which is the fundamental law of the United States of America. The Constitution is not partisan, and in 1883, after a mentally ill disappointed office seeker assassinated President James A. Garfield, Congress passed a law requiring that the people who staff government offices be hired on the basis of their skills, not their partisanship.

The people who work in governmental institutions—and therefore the institutions themselves—are rather like the ballast that keeps a ship upright and balanced in different weathers. Nonpartisan government officials who clock in to do their job keep the government running smoothly and according to the law no matter whom voters elect to the presidency.

It is precisely that stability of the American state that MAGA leaders want to destroy. In their view, the modern American state has weakened the nation by trying to enforce equality for all Americans, making women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities equal to white, Christian men. But they have been unable to persuade voters to vote away the institutions that support the modern state.

Even in the 2024 campaign, voters so hated the blueprint for destroying the modern government and replacing it with a super-strong president who would impose Christian nationalism that Trump and his allies ran away from that blueprint: Project 2025.

Now, though, with Trump having won the 2024 presidential election by a razor-thin margin, MAGA leaders are claiming a mandate to destroy the American state and replace it with an authoritarian government staffed with partisans whose most obvious quality is their loyalty to Trump.

Russian specialist and military scholar Tom Nichols of The Atlantic notes that the Russians talk about “power ministries,” which are “the departments that have significant legal and coercive capacity.” Nichols notes that in the U.S., those include the Justice Department, the Defense Department, the FBI, and the intelligence community, all of which Trump is attempting to destroy by placing unqualified loyalists at their head.

For the crucially important post of attorney general, who is responsible for overseeing the enforcement of the rule of law across the nation, Trump first tapped former Florida representative Matt Gaetz, whose association with drug use and sex trafficking forced him to withdraw, and then named Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general who has insisted that the legal cases against Trump are proof that the justice system has been “weaponized” against Trump.

To head the FBI, the bureau Trump has long insisted was persecuting him through its investigation of the ties between his 2016 campaign and Russian operatives—ties that Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee have confirmed in detail—Trump has tapped loyalist and conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, who has vowed to use the FBI to exact revenge on those Trump considers his enemies.

That Patel’s appointment is designed to destroy the FBI is clear not least because installing him would require Trump to fire current FBI director Christoper Wray. FBI directors serve ten-year terms precisely so they are not tied to any administration, and Wray was Trump’s own appointee in his first term. Indeed, the idea that the FBI is insufficiently right wing for Trump’s new administration speaks volumes: in its entire history, the FBI has never had a Democrat in charge of it. Under Patel, the nation’s chief law enforcement agency would be a tool of the president.

For director of the CIA, Trump has tapped unqualified loyalist attack dog John Ratcliffe; for director of national intelligence, the person who oversees all American intelligence agencies, Trump has tapped former representative Tulsi Gabbard, whose ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin and Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad make her loyalties suspect. Taken together, Trump’s appointments to these powerful departments amount to an attempt to destroy the nation’s fundamental institutions.

As Charlie Sykes points out, Trump’s appointments are not only a “[m]assive Fuq U to institutions…[b]ut also a huge FU to the Supreme Court because Trump doesn’t think they will be a check on his campaign of lawless retribution.”

The Atlantic’s Nichols told MSNBC today that Trump’s appointees are “there to build an authoritarian cadre and to put themselves beyond the reach of the rule of law.”

With loyalty trumping ability and merit under an autocrat, the quality of government officials plummets. This pays off for an autocratic leader because those appointed to serve in an autocratic government are usually unemployable in a merit-based system, making them fiercely loyal to the leader who has elevated them beyond their abilities.

Autocrats start by rewarding family, and Trump has certainly followed that suit. After years in which Republicans went after President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who was never a government employee, over the weekend, Trump announced that he intends to appoint his daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law, New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner, as ambassador to France. In 2004, Kushner pleaded guilty to 16 federal crimes and served time in prison before Trump pardoned him in 2020. Trump also announced that he will appoint his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law, Lebanese-born billionaire Massad Boulos, as White House senior adviser on Arab and Middle East affairs.

This weekend, an email from the mother of Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, came to light. Written in 2018, when Hegseth was in the middle of a divorce from his second wife, who filed for divorce after Hegseth got a co-worker pregnant, the email told Hegseth to “get some help and take an honest look at yourself.” Writing “[o]n behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way,” Penelope Hegseth said: “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”

Penelope Hegseth has since praised her son.

Meanwhile, those loyal to a rising regime attack public servants to make others afraid to speak out. On Friday, billionaire Elon Musk posted on X that Alexander Vindman, former National Security Council director for European affairs, is “on the payroll of Ukrainian oligarchs and has committed treason against the United States, for which he will pay the appropriate penalty.” Vindman was a key figure in Trump’s first impeachment after being on the phone call in which Trump tried to get Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to smear the Democratic opponent he considered most dangerous to his reelection prospects, then–former vice president Joe Biden, before Trump would release money Congress had appropriated for Ukraine’s defense against Russian incursions.

But Vindman, who famously told Congress that he had assured his father that he was safe speaking up against the president because “here, right matters,” wasn’t taking such an attack quietly.

“Elon, here you go again making false and completely unfounded accusations without providing any specifics,” Vindman posted back. “That’s the kind of response one would expect from a conspiracy theorist. What oligarch? What treason?

“Let me help you out with the facts: I don’t take/have never taken money from any money from oligarchs Ukrainian or…otherwise.

“I do run a nonprofit foundation. The HereRightMattersFoundation.org to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s unprovoked attack on Feb 24, 2022. I served in the military for nearly 22 years and my loyalty is to supporting the U.S. Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. That’s why I reported presidential corruption when I witnessed an effort to steal an election. That report was in classified channels and when called by Congress to testify about presidential corruption I did so, as required by law.

“You, Elon, appear to believe you can act with impunity and are attempting to silence your critics. I’m not intimidated.”

As Trump sets out to turn the government into an instrument for his own power and vengeance, President Biden tonight pardoned his son Hunter Biden. Laying out the history of Republicans’ persecution of Hunter to weaken his father, the president said in a statement, “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son—and that is wrong.... [A]nd there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough…. I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice…. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”

—

[darkmaga-returns]

The collective pearl-clutching by the corporate press and Washington establishment on Wednesday after Trump announced he’d chosen Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general was something to behold. The swamp consensus is that the former Florida congressman is “unqualified” to lead the Justice Department.

Never mind that the people making this claim are themselves deeply unqualified to hold their own positions of power. (Consider Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who dismissed Gaetz as not a “serious” pick. Murkowski is poster-child for unserious and unqualified Beltway drones. She failed the bar exam four times and only got a Senate seat because her corrupt father, Frank Murkowski, appointed her to his seat after he became a one-term governor of Alaska in 2002.)

But how exactly is Gaetz unqualified to lead the Justice Department? Put another way, what does Trump’s incoming attorney general need to be qualified to do?

Mostly, clean house at the DOJ. Going back at least to 2016, the Justice Department has been a viper’s nest of politically motivated prosecutions, sham investigations, coup-plotting, domestic spying and censorship, entrapment schemes, and the terrorization of law-abiding Americans. From illegally spying on Trump to the political persecution of Jan. 6 defendants, the DOJ has become a cancer on our body politic, and we need someone to go in and cut it out.

Above all, we need a Justice Department that will refrain from trying to undermine or remove the duly elected president. As Will Chamberlain noted on X, “The best way to understand the Gaetz pick is that it’s a statement by Trump that it’s not 2016 anymore and there will be no internal coup against the sitting President.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Oliver Willis at Daily Kos:

Republicans have found a new way to try to curry favor with Donald Trump: by pushing to have his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, appointed to the Senate. A number of Republicans are cheering the idea that the daughter-in-law could take the place of Sen. Marco Rubio, who has been picked to serve as secretary of State. As in her current role co-chairing the Republican National Committee, Lara Trump’s main qualification appears to be that she married into the Trump family. “Lara Trump would be a GREAT Senator and represent Floridians well,” Sen. Rick Scott wrote on social media. Scott is reportedly the most prominent Republican pushing for Trump.

Alabama Sen. Katie Britt is also on board the nepotism train. She told Axios that Lara Trump would be a “tremendous pick” and said she “understands the America First agenda.” In a social media post, Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna demanded that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appoint the daughter-in-law. If Rubio leaves the Senate, the decision would fall to DeSantis, one of Donald Trump’s failed primary rivals who was derided as “pudding fingers” in a pro-Trump ad. Trump also floated other demeaning nicknames for DeSantis, including “Meatball Ron.” In an interview on Fox News, which has specialized for years in promoting unqualified Trumps for major positions, Lara Trump said she would “love to consider” taking the position. Lara Trump, who is married to Trump son Eric, was installed as the Republican National Committee’s co-chair earlier this year. She previously served as a producer and host of a pro-Trump video program run by the Trump campaign.

Nepo baby Lara Trump could be in line to fill Marco Rubio’s Senate seat in Florida for at least until the 2026 elections.