Illegal Actions, Missing Consequences
Plus: Does Bubba Has the Answers for Dems in Despair?
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PATRICK EDDINGTON: Illegal Actions, Missing Consequences
TWO WEEKS INTO HIS SECOND TERM as president, Donald Trump has done one salutary service for the nation: He’s obliterated the myth that there is anything politically or morally redeeming about concentrated presidential power.
Trump isn’t acting entirely without precedent, however: In some respects, he’s exploiting—quickly and fairly systematically—successful presidential overreaches or power giveaways from Congress and federal courts to push his radical agenda.
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Bulwark Podcast with Tim Miller: Will Saletan and Scott Lincicome: A Crime Boss Has Taken Over [YouTube: Saletan, Lincicome]
How to Fix It (With John Avlon): Make Congress Work (with Yuval Levin) [YouTube]
The Mona Charen Show: Christianity’s Crossroads: Faith, Democracy, and America’s Future [YouTube]
Bulwark+ Live:
Bulwark Goes to Hollywood: How Tariffs Will Make Movies More Expensive
The Focus Group: At Least He's Doing Something (with Sam Stein) [YouTube]
Shield of the Republic: Charles Lindbergh and the Ghosts of America First [YouTube]
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JOHN AVLON: Bubba Has the Answers for Dems in Despair
“Too many of the people that used to vote for us, the very burdened middle class we’re talking about, have not trusted us in national elections to defend our national interests abroad, to put their values into our social policy at home, or to take their tax money and spend it with discipline. We’ve got to turn these perceptions around or we can’t continue as a national party.”
THESE WORDS SOUND LIKE THEY could be ripped from a Democratic forensic after the 2024 election. But they are three decades old, spoken by then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton at a 1991 meeting of the Democratic Leadership Council, which had been founded six years earlier to recenter the Democrats after three successive presidential losses of more than forty states.
The challenges the Democratic party faces today are not as dire. The 2024 loss was far from a landslide, with Donald Trump winning with less than 50 percent of the vote. It was just the second time since 1991 that Democrats have lost the popular vote.
JOSHUA TAIT: Edward C. Banfield and What Conservatism Used to Mean
IN 1937, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT EMBARKED on what one of its chief chroniclers would later call “one of mankind’s countless recent efforts to take command of its destiny.” It wasn’t meant to be so. Casa Grande—a farm project in Arizona that was administered by the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a New Deal “alphabet agency”—was basically intended to ameliorate the extreme poverty of farmhands in the Dust Bowl and Southwest. In very small circles of conservative policy thinking, Casa Grande would become something of a fable, a cautionary tale about human beings and government intervention. But there might also be a cautionary tale about that cautionary tale—about the ways lessons can be overlearned, and the fact that ideas can have unintended consequences, too.
🚨OVERTIME🚨
“That group has been deleted.” Elon Musk is, without any legal authority, “deleting” programs and “woodchipping” entire U.S. agencies created by and funded by Congress. When will the courts catch up?
As Adam Bonin observes: “[I]t's still unclear *what* has been "deleted"; as many of you have noted DirectFile remains active. Part of the danger of Government-By-Unelected-Nutball is that what's actually *true* is a moving target.” It’s going to get dumber before it gets better. It’s Monday!
Meanwhile, at the Hall of Injustice… U.S. Attorney for D.C. “Eagle” Ed Martin is making referrals to the FBI and preparing his (unfired) prosecutors to go after those “targeting DOGE employees” because individuals on the internet dared type their names and lack of qualifications to be rewiring the federal government for an “agency” that does not formally exist. No wonder they don’t want any attention drawn to these, uh, wunderkinds.
Holds… Democratic Senator from Hawaii Brian Schatz has pledged to hold STATE nominees in response to the attempted “woodchipping” of US AID. Good, as a start. Democrats should do that to every nominee until the courts catch up with this Musk mayhem.
Curtains… For hopes that Republicans would tank Gabbard. Decline is a choice, Senators Lankford and Collins. History will not likely remember your advising and consent of this nominee well.
Heads Trump wins… Tails, Mexico loses. That’s how the MAGA right is framing the stupid trade war. Life is more than a coin flip, you simpletons. If Obama caused billions in economic damage over a weekend, we’d still be talking about it.
A 50 States Protest… Takes place on Wednesday. Here’s what to know about the one in yours.
Are “the phones” dooming Democrats? That’s the take of newly-minted DNC Vice Chair David Hogg. (Wakeuptopolitics)
Why the water Trump ordered released in California… won't help Los Angeles firefighting (CBS)
Delta Smelt: Why Conservatives Have Blamed California Drought On A Tiny Fish For Almost 20 Years (Kat Abu)
Lawmakers Face Record ‘Wide Range’… of Violent Threats. (Daily Beast)
The leopards are eating my constituents' potash… Isn’t this what you voted for, Senator Grassley?
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