This is the biggest thing ever to happen on drug prices … it’s going to reduce the cost of health care because health care is probably 50 percent drugs, right?... This achievement alone should win us the midterms. -- Donald Trump, at a rally in North Carolina, December 2025 ~~
~~~ Dan Diamond of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump on Thursday is set to launch TrumpRx.gov, a government website aimed at helping Americans purchase medications at discounted prices, capping his nearly year-long pressure campaign to extract pricing concessions from pharmaceutical companies. The scheduled 7 p.m. event, announced by the White House, has been one of Trump’s top political priorities ahead of this year’s midterm elections.... As part of the initiative, pharmaceutical companies have agreed to list their drugs on TrumpRx.gov, which officials say will connect shoppers to discounts offered by the companies and help them purchase medications without using insurance.... Trump has portrayed the effort ... as one of his signature policy accomplishments, often appearing alongside pharmaceutical executives to showcase price concessions his administration secured.”
Old Man Trump Is Very Confused. Avery Lotz of Axios: Donald "Trump on Thursday said Attorney General Pam Bondi insisted that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard attend the search of Fulton County's election center, contradicting Gabbard's claim that the president requested her presence.... Gabbard 'took a lot of heat ... because she went in at Pam's insistence ... and she looked at votes,' Trump said at Thursday's National Prayer Breakfast. 'They say why is she doing it?' he said. 'Because Pam wanted her to do it.' But when asked during his Wednesday NBC News sit-down why Gabbard was present at the raid, he replied, 'I don't know but, you know — a lot of the cheating comes from — it's — it's international cheating.'... Gabbard tells a different story about who sent her to Georgia. She explained in a Monday letter to Democratic lawmakers that Trump requested her presence. To advance the effort toward "safeguarding" election integrity, Gabbard wrote, Trump 'specifically directed my observance of the execution of the Fulton County search warrant.' Gabbard's office says there's 'no contradiction' and that both the president and Bondi asked for her to be there."
Jeff Cox of CNBC: "Layoff plans hit their highest January total since the global financial crisis while hiring intentions reached their lowest since the same period, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported Thursday. U.S. employers announced 108,435 layoffs for the month, up 118% from the same period a year ago and 205% from December 2025. The total marked the highest for any January since 2009, while the economy was in the final months of its steepest downturn since the Great Depression. At the same time, companies announced just 5,306 new hires, also the lowest January since 2009, which is when Challenger began tracking such data. The crisis recession officially ended in March 2009." ~~~
~~~ But Trump doesn't care: ~~~
~~~ Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: “The Trump administration finalized a new policy on Thursday that would strip job protections from up to 50,000 federal workers, a move that would make it easier for ... [Donald] Trump to remove or discipline them.... Until now, the roughly 4,000 people appointed by the president, known as political appointees, were the only federal workers who could be fired at will. The policy issued on Thursday allows the administration to expand that number to include career employees whom the administration considers to also have policy-related roles.... The announcement represents another push in the administration’s campaign to reshape the federal work force, which has included mass firings, layoffs, pressured resignations and early retirements. In total, more than 352,000 employees left the federal government in 2025, according to the most recent data from the Office of Personnel Management. The announcement is also the latest step the administration has taken to replace nonpartisan civil servants with employees who are ideologically aligned with the president.” ~~~
~~~ AND Jeff Bezos really doesn't care: ~~~~~~ “Doors Open at the Watergate.” Erik Wemple of the New York Times: “One night in June 1972..., [Martin Weil of the Washington Post] paused upon hearing this [on the police scanner]: 'Doors open at the Watergate.' He decided against chasing down the meaning of those words that night. But the next day, he approached the city desk to ask if anything was afoot. The answer was yes — the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex had been burglarized. And The Post, of course, was pursuing that story and many, many others, until it attained what the newspaper’s publisher at the time, Katharine Graham, later termed a position of 'dominance' in the Washington region. On Wednesday, The Post announced plans to move on from that legacy as part of widespread cuts to the newsroom. The layoffs ... are landing hard on the local news desk, where Mr. Weil has worked since 1965. He was among those laid off, one of the last ties to the paper’s Watergate era.”
Kyle Cheney of Politico: “The top federal prosecutor in Minnesota says his short-staffed office has been abandoning 'pressing and important priorities' to manage the flood of immigration cases stemming from ... the Trump administration’s mass deportation push in the Twin Cities. U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen, in a little-noticed filing last week with the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, said his office is buckling under the crushing weight of hundreds of emergency lawsuits filed by immigrants arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in recent weeks. He said 427 had been filed in January alone, and that the pace is expected to continue into February.... Rosen’s admissions contradict claims by the Department of Homeland Security that the flood of immigration cases filed in federal court has not overtaxed the Justice Department. A spokesperson said Wednesday that the administration is 'more than prepared to handle the legal caseload' caused by the mass deportation effort.... The rupture between DHS and DOJ has been on display in Minnesota, where DOJ attorneys say they’ve struggled to gain cooperation from ICE amid the enforcement surge....”
Andy Mannix, et al., of ProPublica: “... local police did not open investigations into six of the 12 shootings by on-duty federal agents that have led to the deaths or injuries of citizens and immigrants since September, a ProPublica analysis found. In three other shooting cases, state or local police said they have opened inquiries, which they called a routine practice in those jurisdictions. And in Minnesota, where ICE and Border Patrol shot and killed two U.S. citizens and injured a Venezuelan man last month, state police have tried to conduct independent investigations only to be thwarted by the Trump administration, which has gone so far as to block officers from a scene, even when they had a judicial warrant. In almost every instance, President Donald Trump’s administration blamed the injured and dead for the shooting within hours of the incident, raising questions about whether federal officials can fairly and objectively investigate their own....
“Given the aggressive tactics employed by immigration agents under the Trump administration..., legal experts said local police and prosecutors are morally obligated to at least try to hold federal law enforcement officers accountable.... Immigration agents at the border have long been criticized for use of deadly force and lack of rigorous investigations afterward. But now the same militarized force is on display in major American cities far from the border....”
It was a brutal lie against the American public....This was really about immigrants purportedly occupying apartments unlawfully, which is radically different than the story they told. -- Mark Fleming of the National Immigrant Justice Center ~~
~~~ Melissa Sanchez & Jodi Cohen of ProPublica: “For months, the Trump administration has justified its dramatic midnight raid on a Chicago apartment complex by saying that it had intelligence that the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had taken over the building. But officials have provided no evidence to back up the claim. Now, new documents confirm in the government’s own words that what prompted the raid was more pedestrian: allegations that immigrants were squatting in the complex. And the landlord had given federal officials ... the blessing to search the building.... [Arrest] records [say] that agents entered and searched the complex with the 'owner/manager’s verbal and written consent.' Agents wrote that they launched the operation 'based on intelligence that there were illegal aliens unlawfully occupying apartments.' They said they focused their search on units 'that were not legally rented or leased at the time.' That narrative appears word for word in [two] arrest reports — for a Venezuelan man and a Mexican man.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: So no doubt millions of our taxpayer dollars -- this was the big, made-for-teevee show where agents rappelled down from a Blackhawk helicopter in the middle of the night, broke down doors and dragged people, including terrified children, out into the street in their underwear -- went to help some slum landlord clear squatters out of his building.
~~~~~~~~~~
Alex Woodward of the Independent: “Donald Trump’s demands for Republican officials to 'nationalize' elections have animated far-right media that has thrived for years on the president’s bogus narratives of 'stolen' and 'rigged' outcomes in contests he didn’t win. Now, his former adviser Steve Bannon claims federal immigration officers will 'surround the polls' in midterm elections this fall, dovetailing the president’s election threats with the administration’s efforts to deport millions of people.... 'You’re damn right we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November,' Bannon said on his War Room podcast Tuesday. '... And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.'... His remarks echo a conspiracy theory that Democratic officials are relying on illegal votes cast by ineligible immigrants.... Democrats and voting rights advocates fear that a threat of ICE 'surrounding' polling places could ... suppress voter turnout.” ~~~
~~~ Heather Cox Richardson elaborates on the history of the GOP's "stolen election" lies: "This lie about undocumented immigrants voting has been part of the Republicans’ rhetoric since 1994, the year after Democrats under President Bill Clinton passed the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, the so-called Motor Voter Act, which made it easier to register to vote at certain state offices. In 1994, Republicans accused Democrats of winning elections by turning to 'illegal,' usually immigrant, voters.” She carries the theme even further back, to the late 19th century, and North Carolina's "White Declaration of Independence."
Matt Lavietes of NBC News: "The Trump administration will withdraw 700 federal immigration agents from Minnesota, border 'czar' Tom Homan said on Wednesday.... 'My goal, with with the support of President Trump, is to achieve a complete drawdown and end this surge, as soon as we can,' Homan said at a news conference. He reiterated that the president 'fully intends to achieve mass deportations during this administration.'" (Also linked yesterday.)
Michael Kunzelman & Alanna Richer of the AP: “A government lawyer who told a judge that her job 'sucks' during a court hearing stemming from the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota has been removed from her Justice Department post, according to a person familiar with the matter. Julie Le had been working for the Justice Department on a detail, but the U.S. attorney in Minnesota ended her assignment after her comments in court on Tuesday.... Le was assigned at least 88 cases in less than a month, according to online court records. [U.S. District Judge Jerry] Blackwell told Le that the volume of cases isn’t an excuse for disregarding court orders. He expressed concern that people arrested in immigration enforcement operations are routinely jailed for days after judges have ordered their release from custody.... 'Fixing a system, a broken system, I don’t have a magic button to do it. I don’t have the power or the voice to do it,' [Le told Blackwell].” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Alan Feuer, et al., of the New York Times: “A federal prosecutor in Minneapolis was fired from the U.S. attorney’s office on Wednesday after she expressed exasperation with the crippling case load arising from the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown.... After her remarks in court, Ms. Le’s temporary post at the U.S. attorney’s office was ended.... It remained unclear whether she had also been fired from her job at ICE.” Update: The link has been changed to one that appears to be a gift link.~~~
~~~ Marie: Le probably should have asked for whistleblower protections before she told the judge what was really going on within “Operation Metro Surge.” She lost her job because she made a public statement about what a screwed-up mess the Trump administration was. I suspect, however that the screw-ups are by design. The sadistic firm of Trump, Miller, Gnome, & Co. is delighted to leave people -- the vast majority of whom they would say "look like illegals" -- to remain in lockups where judges have determined they never should have been sequestered in the first place. (After I read bits of the transcript of Judge Blackwell's hearing, I could see that he agrees with me as to who are the sources of these repeated miscarriages of justice & violations of the Constitution.) Related NBC News story linked yesterday. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Update. Kyle Cheney & Josh Gerstein of Politico: “Shortly after the candid courtroom exchange on Tuesday, Le was removed from her temporary post and returned to the Department of Homeland Security, where she works on immigration cases within the executive branch, said a Justice Department official....” MB: So at least she didn't lose her job; in fact, she got what she wanted: to be relieved of her overwhelming duties in Minnesota & sent back to her old DOJ job. Cheney & Gerstein go on to write, “... it’s clear that the cases Le handled are not outliers. Court records and transcripts reveal widespread miscommunication, bungling of court filings and suddenly rampant violations of judges’ orders. The administration’s handling of its immigration operation provoked a five-alarm emergency among federal judges in the state, who have grown increasingly frustrated at what they see as overt defiance — caused not by the local prosecutors in Minnesota but by DOJ and DHS leadership in Washington. Contempt threats are now almost routine.” ~~~
~~~ Alan Feuer, et al., of the New York Times: “Ms. Le’s outburst on Tuesday ... was an extraordinary expression of personal frustration from a lawyer on the front lines of the White House’s aggressive immigration sweeps. The remarks cost her her job at the Justice Department, where she had been working on a temporary basis to help handle habeas corpus petitions.... But they also opened a window onto a broader problem: how the courts in Minnesota are buckling beneath the weight of a deluge of cases arising from the statewide campaign that the administration has called Operation Metro Surge. The turmoil in the courts has demoralized prosecutors, outraged judges, exhausted defense lawyers — and left many immigrants languishing in detention in violation of court orders.... The increasingly loud warnings that the Trump administration’s immigration policies are overloading the federal judiciary extend beyond Judge Blackwell’s courtroom.” The writers cite numerous cases of judges complaints about DHS violations of court orders regarding habeas cases. ~~~
~~~ Here's the full transcript (pdf) of the hearing, about which Feuer & team write, “The hearing was held so that Judge Blackwell could grill Ms. Le and her supervisor in the U.S. attorney’s office about why they had ignored his orders in cases in which he had determined that immigrants had been illegally detained by federal agents. While the men were all eventually released from federal custody, the judge wanted to get to the bottom of the government’s noncompliance in missing court-imposed deadlines.” ~~~
~~~ Chris Geidner, the Law Dork (who provided the transcript): "It is an unfathomable exercise to read lawyers and a federal judge discussing at length the ways in which the rule of law is slipping through our nation’s fingers, but it is an absolutely necessary document to read for anyone who wants to protect the rule of law — and America."
Lauren Lumpkin of the Washington Post: “A group of Minnesota school districts and educators has asked a judge to order federal officers to stay away from schools, alleging that the nation’s largest immigration operation has spilled onto campuses, affecting attendance statewide, according to a lawsuit filed against the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday morning.... The public school districts in Fridley and Duluth, representing almost 12,000 children, along with Education Minnesota, an 89,000-member teachers union, accuse federal officers of breaking a promise to stay away from schools. While DHS claimed in September it was not raiding or targeting schools, officers have 'conducted a slew of enforcement operations at or near schools and school bus stops,' according to the lawsuit.”
Marie: Donald Trump's pretext for unleashing a gigantic goon squad of violent, armed masked men on Minnesota was to root out all the fraud committed by Somalian immigrants. Now there's this: ~~~
~~~ Jonah Kaplan & Scott MacFarlane of CBS News: "The four prosecutors who spearheaded a $250 million Minnesota fraud case ... [have] all left the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Minnesota in recent days, along with more than a dozen others in a growing wave of resignations. The departures have left the already-diminished office with as few as 17 assistant U.S. attorneys, according to sources inside the office — down from 70 during the Biden administration. Former prosecutors Joe Thompson, Harry Jacobs, Daniel Bobier and Matthew Ebert — the four attorneys who had been leading the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud case, which was the first shoe to drop in the massive Minnesota fraud scandal — have handed off the prosecution to relative newcomers to the office. Harry Jacobs, who was recently named head of the office's criminal division, was also involved in the prosecution of Vance Boelter, the man accused of assassinating former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark." ~~~
~~~ Almost makes you think Trump was really interested in prosecuting criminals.
Claire Rush of the AP: “U.S. immigration agents in Oregon must stop arresting people without warrants unless there’s a likelihood of escape, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai issued a preliminary injunction in a proposed class-action lawsuit targeting the Department of Homeland Security’s practice of arresting immigrants they happen to come across while conducting ramped-up enforcement operations — which critics have described as 'arrest first, justify later.'... Courts in Colorado and Washington, D.C., have issued rulings like Kasubhai’s, and the government has appealed them....
“Kasubhai said the actions of agents in Oregon — including drawing guns on people while detaining them for civil immigration violations — have been 'violent and brutal,' and he was concerned about the administration denying due process to those swept up in immigration raids. 'Due process calls for those who have great power to exercise great restraint,' he said. 'That is the bedrock of a democratic republic founded on this great constitution. I think we’re losing that.'”
David Sanger & William Broad of the New York Times: “On Thursday, the last nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia expired. For the first time since 1972, it leaves both superpowers with no limits on the size or structure of their arsenals, at the very moment both are planning new generations of nuclear weapons and newly evasive means of delivering the deadly warheads. Despite a new era of superpower confrontation, talks over a new treaty — or even an informal extension of the current one — never got off the ground, frozen by the war in Ukraine. When ... [Donald] Trump was asked in January why he had not taken up President Vladimir V. Putin’s offer for a one-year informal extension, he shrugged. 'If it expires, it expires,' he told The New York Times in an interview. 'We’ll do a better agreement' after the expiration, he insisted, adding that China, which has the world’s fastest-growing nuclear arsenal, and 'other parties' should be part of any future accord. The Chinese have made clear they are not interested.” A France 24 (English) story is here.
Jeremy Herb, et al., of CNN: “The Justice Department failed to black out identifying information about many of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims and redacted the details of individuals who may have aided the convicted sex offender, prompting an outcry from survivors who accuse DOJ of botching the release of more than 3 million documents last week. A CNN review of the Epstein documents identified several examples of people whose identities were blacked out possibly helping to connect him with women, including redacted co-conspirators in a much-anticipated draft indictment of Epstein from the 2000s. A redacted individual wrote [to Epstein] in [a] 2014 email in the files...: 'Thank you for a fun night… Your littlest girl was a little naughty.” But the name of the individual who wrote that message is redacted.'” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Not only should the name of the sender have been left bare, this brief message alone proves the lie to Bondi's and Blanche's claims that the files contain no more evidence of crimes. Who is DOJ protecting here? Who is this monster who will describe a night of abusing the "littlest girl" as a "fun night" -- and then show the good manners to write Epstein a thank-you note. The rich are different from you and me; they lack ordinary decency. But they're not so different from Bondi & Blanche.
Matthew Goldstein, et al., of the New York Times: “Brad Karp, the longtime chairman of Paul Weiss, one of the nation’s top corporate law firms, suddenly resigned on Wednesday evening after a series of embarrassing emails between him and Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier, became public in recent days.... Mr. Karp ... will remain at Paul Weiss.... The law firm’s statement announcing Mr. Karp’s resignation as chairman gave no explanation for his decision. But it included a quote from him saying, 'Recent reporting has created a distraction and has placed a focus on me that is not in the best interests of the firm.'... Last March, Mr. Karp faced intense scrutiny within the legal community and Paul Weiss after the firm reached a deal with ... [Donald] Trump to sidestep an executive order that could have harmed its business by effectively barring the firm from representing clients before the federal government. The deal was widely seen in the legal community as a capitulation to Mr. Trump, and several high-profile partners left Paul Weiss, but Mr. Karp had appeared to weather the storm.” Update: the link has been changed to one that looks like a gift link. A CNBC story is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: IMO, Karp's "interactions" with Epstein explain his facile capitulation to Trump. They were both men of the Epstein Circle, and they were accustomed to accommodating one another.
Hannah Rabinowitz, et al., of CNN: “A Justice Department review found that Ed Martin improperly handled grand jury materials that were part of an investigation targeting Donald Trump’s political enemies.... It was at least part of the reason Martin was pushed out of DOJ headquarters early this year. The review, which was overseen by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s office..., found that Martin had shared the secret grand jury material in the [Adam] Schiff case.... Martin initially denied sharing the material with unauthorized people..., but emails soon surfaced showing that Martin had in fact shared the grand jury material.... Martin was removed as the head of the so-called Weaponization Working Group on the first day of 2026 and he was relocated out of department headquarters to a building across town that houses the pardon attorney — Martin’s one remaining role.” Thanks to RAS for the link. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
Jeff Bezos can afford one of the world's largest and most expensive yachts (about $500 million). He can afford to spend $75 million on "Melanie the Movie." He can afford a $56-million-dollar wedding in Venice. That's because, according to Philip Bump, who appeared on MS NOW, Jeff pulls in about $70 million every damned day. Yet he can't afford to run a newspaper: ~~~
This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations.... The Post’s challenges, however, were made infinitely worse by ill-conceived decisions that came from the very top — from a gutless order to kill a presidential endorsement 11 days before the 2024 election to a remake of the editorial page that now stands out only for its moral infirmity. Loyal readers, livid as they saw owner Jeff Bezos betraying the values he was supposed to uphold, fled The Post. In truth, they were driven away, by the hundreds of thousands. -- Marty Baron, former Washington Post Editor
If Jeff Bezos is no longer willing to invest the mission that has defined this paper for generations…then The Post deserves a steward who will. -- Washington Post Guild ~~~
~~~ Benjamin Mullin, et al., of the New York Times: “The Washington Post told employees on Wednesday that it was beginning a widespread round of layoffs that are expected to decimate the organization’s sports, local news and international coverage. The company is laying off about 30 percent of all its employees, according to two people with knowledge of the decision. That includes people on the business side and more than 300 of the roughly 800 journalists in the newsroom, the people said. The cuts are a sign that Jeff Bezos, who became one of the world’s richest people by selling things on the internet, has not yet figured out how to build and maintain a profitable publication on the internet. The paper expanded during the first several years of his ownership, but the company has sputtered more recently. Matt Murray, The Post’s executive editor, said on a call Wednesday morning with newsroom employees that the company had lost too much money for too long and had not been meeting readers’ needs. He said that all sections would be affected in some way, and that the result would be a publication focused even more on national news and politics, as well as business and health, and far less on other areas.” The link appears to be a gift link. An AP story is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
This is happening for one reason only: Because Jeff Bezos is currying favor with Donald Trump, because it’s in Bezos’s financial interest to do so. This is plutocracy in its purest and most corrupt form. -- Paul Campos, in LG&$ ~~~
~~~ “Watergate Started as a Local Story.” Ashley Parker, now of the Atlantic, late of the Washington Post: “Over recent years, [Jeff Bezos and Will Lewis, the publisher he appointed at the end of 2023, have] repeatedly cut the newsroom — killing its Sunday magazine, reducing the staff by several hundred, nearly halving the Metro desk — without acknowledging the poor business decisions that led to this moment or providing a clear vision for the future. This morning, executive editor Matt Murray and HR chief Wayne Connell told the newsroom staff in an early-morning virtual meeting that it was closing the Sports department and Books section, ending its signature podcast, and dramatically gutting the International and Metro departments, in addition to staggering cuts across all teams.... Among the many failures here—of leadership, management, business, imagination, courage—the actual journalism stands strong.” Thank you to akaWendy for this gift link. ~~~
~~~ Jonathan Last of the Bulwark: Will “Lewis was a disgraced Brit with no experience in American media and no track record of success in digital publishing. He was a reliable hack, though: He would do whatever he was told and clearly he had been told to make the paper friendlier to Donald Trump, no matter the cost. Lewis’s tenure has been an unbroken streak of failure. Every single initiative he has undertaken became a cost-sink.... What happened to the Washington Post over the last three years happened for one reason and one reason only: Because Jeff Bezos wanted it to be so. Because he gets off on civic vandalism.”
Justin Jouvenal of the Washington Post: “The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed for now a new California voting map that could help Democrats gain up to five seats in Congress, the latest twist in a national fight between liberals and conservatives seeking advantage in this year’s midterm elections. The justices cleared the state to use a map pushed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and approved by voters that was intended to offset a redistricting effort by Republicans in Texas sought by ... Donald Trump. The Texas map could net the GOP up to five additional seats. The high court’s ruling will remain in effect while a lawsuit challenging California’s map works its way through the courts. The Supreme Court ruled in December that the Texas map was constitutional, so many legal experts expected the justices to approve the California map as well.” (Also linked yesterday.) The AP report is here. ~~~
~~~ Jen Rice of Democracy Docket: "Racial gerrymanders are against the law, but partisan ones have been considered legal by federal courts since a 2019 ruling by the Supreme Court. Republicans have filed seven lawsuits attempting to derail California’s attempt to counteract GOP gerrymanders. All of them have been unsuccessful."
Joe.My.God., in a brief post on Bill Stevenson, the first husband of Jill Biden, who has been charged with the murder of his wife Linda in December 2025. Joe, citing the Daily Beast: “In 2023, [Stevenson] called ... Donald Trump a 'president that I love and respect,' and claimed the 'Biden crime family' was targeting Trump due to several criminal investigations into Trump at the time. Bill Stevenson had also been critical of Jill Biden during the waning days of the Biden presidency.” Thanks to RAS for the link.
~~~ Marie: In yesterday's Comments, Akhilleus remarked that it was likely the Trump gang would try to pin Linda's murder on Joe Biden. That was even before he learned of Bill's "love and respect" for Trump. Now Joe tells us that one of Bill's friends, who is a Newsmax personality, opined on X that Bill could not have done it. It's a short leap to "Joe did it!"
Michael Brown of the Washington Post: “Lee H. Hamilton, a deliberative, soft-spoken Indiana Democrat who won bipartisan respect for his integrity and foreign policy expertise during 34 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, and who later helped steer high-profile inquiries into the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Iraq War strategy, died Feb. 3 at his home in Bloomington, Indiana. He was 94.”
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21 comments:
(Would you actually argue that Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin - or anyone who admires Ayn Rand and the ideas found in The Hobbit - "intellectuals" and "thinkers"?)
Laura K. Field, in The Atlantic describes The Intellectual Edgelords of the GOP
"Macho displays and transgressive memes mark a significant shift in how the federal government sees and promotes its mission—and sanctions state violence. It may be tempting to see this change as an organic or bottom-up phenomenon, as if federal agencies are appealing to Proud Boys to lure more ICE recruits. But the reality is that this transformation is the culmination of years of work by niche groups of conservative intellectuals who have long rejected America’s liberal traditions—and now dominate the halls of power."
Wendy,
Of course, Peter Thiel is an idiot, but Curtis Yarvin is a much more dangerous idiot.
Yarvin is one of these guys who is always telling everyone how smart he is, bragging about his IQ (sound like a certain fat fascist? ), a guy stupid and impressionable people see as EXTRA smart because he can throw around historical references and adapts a popular sci-fi movie meme as the basis of his personal animus toward democracy and egalitarianism, both of which he despises.
This guy has called for the destruction of all democratic institutions, the excision of the Constitution, the firing of all government civil servants (something Project 2025 agrees with), and the imprisonment of any who don't go along with his crackpot worldview. He believes Hitler as a good guy who was only reacting in self-defense when he started WWII and murdered millions of Jews.
An excellent description of Yarvin's personal political philosophy: "...a highly distorting mix of gross oversimplification, cherry-picking and personal interpretation presented as fact". This is the sort of thing that truly appeals to numbnuts like Shady Vance and other faux right-wing "intellectuals". This is the stuff of late night college dorm discussions led by a very high self-described subversive iconoclast who believes himself the only one who truly understands the world and knows how to fix it: Put him in charge.
No wonder the Trumpy democracy hating authoritarians love this idiot.
So Tom (Immigrant Family Separation Man) Homan sez he's gonna pull 700 of Fatty's murderous goons out of Minneapolis? Great. That only leaves OVER TWO THOUSAND and THREE HUNDRED still there. This is like a doctor telling you he's only gonna cure a quarter of your cancer. Thanks for nothin'.
Waldman on backing a dead horse:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-186975859
If you subscribe to Jonathan Last's theory (and I do) that Jeff Bezos' destruction of the Post was intentional, it's hard not to see the hiring of Will Lewis as part of a plan. According to accounts, Lewis had little to recommend him and his track record at the Post bears that out. It's sort of like he was a Ted Lasso hire (a hiree who has no chance of succeeding) - except that Ted had many good qualities and ultimately wins in the end.
Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog has what I think is a useful way of looking at the sad, and preventable demise of a once great newspaper, the Washington Post. It was purchased by a guy who must be thinking along these lines:
"I'm a genius! ... So why is this so hard?"
The techbros like Bozos and Thiel and others who have made a crap ton of money doing one thing believe that success in that one area proves that not only are they geniuses, it means they can do anything they like and if it's not an immediate success, there must be some other explanation. The same sort of narcissism infects the Orange Monster's worldview, with one notable exception. Unlike Bozos and Zuckerberg and some of the other techbros, Fatty never built ANYTHING that was any good.
He was handed his real estate business and tens of millions of dollars and when it was all about to go south, after a dozen or more embarrassingly awful business failures (seriously...who fucks up casinos? Casinos are magic cash machines--you build it, they come, they give you piles of money--but not Trump. He went belly up not once, not twice, but three times(!) in the casino business--this is fiasco-flopdom on a galactic scale) along comes NBC to reinvent this sad loser into a made for TV genius bidness-man, a role he then believed meant he actually WAS a genius, which translated among the misfiring synaptic jungles to "I can do anything better than anyone else!--like run the country!"
And I'm not entirely sure Bozos thinks "Why is this so hard?", but it's likely. Trump, on the other hand, is so married to the image of himself as the Greatest Human Being in History that it's impossible for him to consider anything as being too hard. If things go south, it must be someone else's fault. If he can't understand it, understanding is not worth the effort.
And so, very much like the now dilapidated and dissipated Washington Post, the United States, under the criminally negligent and otherworldly stupidity of Fat Hitler's stewardship, is becoming a sad shadow of itself, painfully obvious to the rest of the world, but not to him.
Unfortunately, unlike all those former WaPo subscribers, we can't just end our subscription to the United States. But we're still stuck with the current owner, an imbecile who thinks he's a genius.
Why it this so hard for voters to see?
Rhetorical question there. No response necessary.
Victoria,
I'm not entirely sure Bozos' plan was to destroy the Post. I think he saw it as another world for him to conquer with his genius. Also, it was useful for giving the little people a peek at his conception of the world, the world through the eyes of the Amazon Man. And it wasn't lost on him the value of owning a hugely influential media outlet which could be used to bring his other Genius Plans to fruition.
The problem for Bozos, I think, came about when he realized that he needed to placate a certain fat cretin, a fat cretin who would demand that the Post's reporters stop making him look bad, otherwise Jeffy's other projects, which required political muscle to succeed, would never get off the ground. The Post, then, became expendable. The fact that the paper was losing money was another reason to jettison so much of what made it great. But the money losing side of things was the direct result of Bozos not understanding the media business AND hiring an idiot like Will Lewis, who had already proven that he was a dismal failure, and not to be trusted over in Britain. The destruction of the Washington Post was almost guaranteed because of Bozos mismanagement, but I'm not sure that was the plan from the start. Whether it was or not, that's the outcome.
And we're all the poorer for it.
And one other thing about the casual extirpation of certain departments of that paper. The Metro section of the Washington Post is now a section in name only with a handful of reporters left on the job. Watergate was originally just a local story reported in the Post's Metro section. Had Bozos been running things back then, it's likely the Tricky One would have gotten clean away with everything.
All that being said about Jeffy Bozos and his dismantling of the Post, here are some numbers, courtesy of the Huff Post:
Amount Amazon MGM Studios spent on the rights to “Melania” the movie: $40 million.
Amount Amazon MGM spent marketing “Melania:” $35 million.
Reporters laid off while in the middle of a war zone: At least one.
Number of Middle East correspondents and editors fired: All of them.
Amount of sports department remaining: None of it.
Reporters and editors in India and Australia: All laid off.
Books coverage: Gone entirely.
Journalists laid off: More than 300.
Presidential endorsements muzzled: One.
Cost of Jeff Bezos’ yacht: $500 million.
Median salary of a Washington Post employee in the Post’s Newspaper Guild: $99,904.
Estimated cost of Lauren Sanchez’s wedding dress: $300,000.
Jeff Bezos’ net worth: $245 billion.
Words Bezos and Washington Post publisher Will Lewis have devoted to addressing the cuts: 0.
Last reported annual losses of the Post: $100 million.
Number of years of losses Bezos could reportedly absorb with what he makes in a single week: Five.
So, a couple of things about this...The Post has been required reading in official Washington for decades. I'm guessing quite a few of the brigands, bullshitters, and bilious bombast pukers in DC are thrilled that there will now be no more Middle East coverage in the Post. Nothing from India or Australia, fewer stories about wars abroad, and next to no coverage of local politics.
Most people won't care about the sports department disappearing, but back in the day, the Post was home of some of the best sports writing in the country. Columnists like Shirley Povich, Michael Feinstein, and Tom Boswell were not only exceptional sports reporters, they were all great writers. I've read book by all of them.
Speaking of books, the Post's Book Section is gone as well. Not a big loss for many in DC. Who in the White House reads books? Some of them (one, anyway) is barely literate.
And about the Post losing money? Sure it does, because of mismanagement and terrible decisions by the owner. But you know how much the owner makes, every day? $70 to $200 million. Every day. In 2023, according to Yahoo Finance, Bozos made $7.9 million an hour. Every hour, of every day.
Guess that's not enough to keep a great paper operating.
Okay....enough of this. It's all too depressing.
Master of Branding
"The Trump administration has turned to an unusual weapon in its attempt to resurrect coal mining – a cartoon lump of coal, complete with giant eyes and yellow mining garb, called “Coalie”. The administration’s new mascot, kitted out with a helmet, boots and gloves, was introduced in a picture posted online by Doug Burgum, Donald Trump’s interior secretary."
It looks like a giant turd, which is appropriate considering the whole administration is full of shit and because the internet has been speculating recently about Fat Hitler probably dirtying his diapers at one of his pressers in front of the media.
Immigrants
"For each year from 1994 to 2023, the US immigrant population generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government.
Over that period, immigrants created a cumulative fiscal surplus of $14.5 trillion in real 2024 US dollars, including $3.9 trillion in savings on interest on the debt.
Without immigrants, US government public debt at all levels would be at least 205 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)—nearly twice its 2023 level."
Morning Joe segment on the Cato paper
New York Times
"Current economic conditions and Trump administration policies could lead to “a widespread collapse of American agriculture,” a bipartisan coalition of former Agriculture Department officials and leaders of farm groups warned in a letter on Tuesday.
While there are many reasons for increasing farm bankruptcies and decreasing profits, “it is clear that the current administration’s actions, along with congressional inaction, have increased costs for farm inputs, disrupted overseas and domestic markets, denied agriculture its reliable labor pool, and defunded critical ag research and staffing,” the letter warned."
Only Real Americans* May Apply
"SBA says legal permanent residents will be ineligible for its loan program
"The Small Business Administration said in a policy note that green card holders won’t be allowed to apply for SBA loans, effective March 1. The move is the latest by the SBA as it works to tighten loan restrictions and restructure the agency.
Last year, it tightened a requirement that businesses applying for loans must be 100% owned by U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, or lawful permanent residents, up from a 51% standard."
None of us can know exactly what Bozos' motivation was in buying the Post, and probably he is unsure about it, too.
But surely losing money was not important to a man who pulls down $70MM/day.
As Akhilleus writes, Bozos' main goal was probably along the lines of having a media outlet that would serve his own needs and his own ego. Like that big ole yacht he built. And then couldn't get out of the build site and out to sea because he forgot about those darned bridges between the port and the sea. Anyway, when Trumpolini became the Republicans' presidential* candidate in 2024, Bozos' needs vis-a-vis his vanity newspaper changed.
I'd like to own a major newspaper, too, and if I did, I wouldn't want it to have an editorial section like the Wall Street Journal's. I wouldn't want the page to serve my needs, the way Bozos does, but I would want it to loosely reflect my "values." If Rupert wills you the WSJ, won't you fire most of the columnists & the editorial board? I'm sure I would.
The other issue, of course, is the quality of the Post's content. Obviously, by shedding reporters and other staff, the quality of that content is going to worsen. Bozos, like probably every billionaire, suffers from the belief that because he proved to be good and ultra-successful at one thing -- in Bozos' case, implementing & maybe managing a huge new sales methodology and operation -- that he would be good and ultra-successful at other things -- like occasionally meddling with a newspaper. So his failure at the Post may just be a sort of Dunning-Kruger effect: he thinks he's doing a better job than he is.
"CIA ends publication of World Factbook reference tool
Close the cover on the CIA World Factbook: The spy agency announced Wednesday that after more than 60 years, it is shuttering the popular reference manual.
[...]
First launched in 1962 as a printed, classified reference manual for intelligence officers, the Factbook offered a detailed, by-the-numbers picture of foreign nations, their economies, militaries, resources and societies."
I think Bezos may have initially wanted a feather in his cap by owning a prominent national newspaper. He may have even had dreams of being lauded for the intrepid reporting like the good old Watergate days. But then the reality set in. He was getting personally attacked and punished by Fat Hitler in his first term for the honest reporting of his paper. It started threatening his financial streams a bit and they even had the audacity to do a tiny bit of reporting on Bezos himself, and not all of it glowing (like it should be). He quickly soured on the idea of a paper that could be a liability to his finances and reputation so he brought in Lewis to emulate Murdock's control of Faux News and the NY Post. Then when FH starts getting close to reelection he goes all in because he knows he has the money, power and monopoly that will allow him to thrive in the corrupt world of Trump. I think like a lot of the tech billionaires that he got jaded and angry that the little people stopped seeing his genius and started complaining incessantly about his treatment of workers and their oh so generous pay he allowed them. The rest of us just can't comprehend his brilliance and keep harping only on the negative. What does a billionaire who doesn't own a sports team need with the sports section of a paper? He already controls what books will be popular with his Amazon algorithms. He doesn't need the paper screwing up any foreign deals he has or will have by exposing wrongdoing overseas and annoying their dictatos. All governments are corrupt and have a price to him and the rest of the super rich. And a corrupt US government is better for Bezos and his loser friends because it is easier to exploit people if you can make it legal to do so or you know that nobody in power will stand up for the non rich as long as you slide a little money their government's way now and again.
"Ron Wyden Only Talks Like This When The Spies Do Something *Real* Bad
It's a short letter. It's a letter about a letter. Specifically, it's a letter to CIA Director John Ratcliffe to alert Ratcliffe to a classified letter Wyden also sent. Now, that's not quite right. It's not really a letter to Ratcliffe. It's a public record that can be released to you, via reporters like me, noting that Wyden sent a classified letter to the CIA director about the "deep concerns [he has] about CIA activities."
More on "voter fraud" fraud.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/opinion/trump-elections-nationalizing-voting-citizens.html
Tom Sullivan links to some Trae Crowder videos on Qanon and ICE.
The Cato numbers on immigrants' contribution to the US economy are crazy. And these numbers are from CATO! not some hyper-liberal, tree hugging, welfare state loving numbers cruncher. I guess when you guzzle the Kool-Aid, you can easily ignore numbers that show exactly how off you are when it comes to finger pointing and assigning blame for "destroying the economy". The real moochers are red states, and the Trump Crime Family.
"Trump Admin Whitewashes Medgar Evers Monument
The National Park Service has removed visitor brochures from the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Home National Monument. Among the anticipated changes? No longer calling his murderer a “racist.” Edits to the brochure have removed that reference to Byron De La Beckwith, according to Park Service officials, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution. Other edits include eliminating the reference to Medgar Evers lying in a pool of blood after being shot."
Bob Geiger
"This Date in History:
February 5, 1994: White supremacist convicted of killing Black civil rights leader Medgar Evers over 30 years after the crime occurred.
Or, as Trump supporters now refer to it, “well-meaning American patriot persecuted by woke activist judge.”"
I'm sure he can and will go lower, but...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-asked-dulles-penn-station-named-exchange-gateway-money-released-rcna257708
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