Thursday, February 27, 2025
postponed
The launch of Starship #8 has been delayed once again, now scheduled for Monday, March 3. Is Musk too busy in Washington to pay enough attention to what is happening at Boca Chica? Losing his edge? Maybe this asshole is finally spreading himself too thinly. The last rocket, Starship 7, exploded over the Turks and Caicos. Since Starship has been launching, about half of the rockets have exploded. Is this a good record? If he expects a lot of people to want to go to Mars on one of his rockets, I think he has to demonstrate himself that they are safe. All aboard, Elon!
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Jim Hightower
Jim Hightower has been on the "right side" his entire life. I have to say it's a good thing to see some Republicans finally having an "aha" moment, or a "WTF" is Trump doing? moment. We tried to tell them repeatedly that Trump is a liar, a conman, and a thief, but I guess many people have to have their own ox gored before they will finally wake the fuck up. Let's hope it's not too late.
Ironically, Trump's Coup Attempt Is Uniting Americans to Fight for Their Common Good
By Jim Hightower
The Trump-Musk administration thought they could just stomp on us and our Constitution, replacing democracy with a MAGA monarchy. But they had not reckoned with one fearsome opponent: Sen. Chuck Schumer.
The Senate's top Democrat says he's getting "furious" about the GOP's oligarchic coup attempt. Wow, he might even fire off one of his strongly worded letters to the White House! So far, though, the Democratic "leader" is meekly urging a horrified public to just weather the storm, predicting that, "Trump will screw up."
Hello, Chuck — history clearly teaches that to fight totalitarianism, you actually have to ... fight.
People are asking: Why the hell is the party's top leadership AWOL? The good news is grassroots people themselves — the little-d democrats — have taken to the streets, leading the charge to STOP this plutocratic, autocratic power grab. So, "leaders" ought to at least follow! All Democratic national officials (including former presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden) should come out and stand together, demonstrating solidarity with the majority of Americans fighting this far-right, un-American assault by rampaging billionaires.
Most encouraging is the fact that workaday people — in red states as well as blue — are erupting in spontaneous protests and unity actions. Ironically, Don & Elon's self-serving plutocratic thuggery is rallying workers, veterans, schoolchildren, seniors, immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, main street businesses — and, well, Americans — against them! The GOP assault on all of us reveals that we commoners really are in this together, and it will take each of us to defend the Common Good for one and all.
This is Jim Hightower saying to get involved in some of the actions in your area. Check out the resources we've listed at jimhightower.substack.com.
GUESS WHAT? HURRICANES AND WILDFIRES DON'T HAVE POLITICAL PREFERENCES
May I just say that the stupidest, most despicable, most self-defeating political "tactic" in our present hyper-partisan climate is the accusation that victims of today's horrific wildfires, floods and such are getting what they deserve because of their political views.
Start with this month's catastrophic floods in Appalachia. If you've never had a river gushing into your home and town, you can't imagine the destruction, muck, stench, injuries, death and despair. Yet, various numbskulls who profess to be progressive have posted taunts online, chortling that these devastated victims are red-state, small-government Trump voters who don't deserve the government's helping hand in their time of dire need.
Likewise, right-wing MAGA squads, including some GOP congress critters, routinely jeer at wildfire victims in blue states and cities, gloating that hellfire is righteous punishment for "ungodly" people who oppose Trump's "divine mission."
Hello — this is not politics, it's disgraceful inhumanity. And those who engage in it are skuzz insults to America's democratic ideals of the Common Good.
Happily, though, even as some of our highest officials spew divisive and violent political rhetoric, the ingrained ethic in practically every community is to rush to the aid of anyone and everyone in times of disaster. I saw this up close when Hurricane Harvey slammed Houston in 2017. Washington officials played politics for weeks as the city was drowning — but hundreds of working people showed up from all over, bringing their small boats and power tools to organize ad hoc rescue teams, not asking anyone their party affiliation.
This is Jim Hightower saying ... That's our truest selves — and it's why it's essential to squash the malignant ethic of anyone who tries to pervert fundamental humanity into their red-blue morass.
To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.
Friday, February 21, 2025
Boca Chica
More Perfect Union/The Class Room has produced a 20 minute documentary on SpaceX at Boca Chica in deep South Texas. It has some new info you may not be aware of.
Monday, February 17, 2025
they are evil
Due to a confluence of events, we have decided now is the time to sell our home on South Padre Island and move inland. With everything going on, namely Trump and Musk, this is probably not the greatest time to put our house on the market. Interest rates are still high too, which will whittle down the number of potential buyers. The wife and I are getting up there in years, and this big house has become too much to handle. The things involved in getting it ready to be on the market are taking up a ton of time, so my posts might slow down even further.
We both feel the need to vacate the island before Musk is able to increase the "cadence" of SpaceX launches from the current 1 every 6-8 weeks to 1 every other week. I see the "cracks in," and the writing on, the wall, and they will get worse with each launch. Musk is being given anything and everything he wants here in Texas, and I don't see that changing anytime soon, as long as the GOP controls Texas.
by The Rude Pundit
Feb 16, 2025
"Evil" is a hard concept to get your head around. We can get close to it when we say things like "The cruelty is the point," but that was truly about the first Donald Trump administration, with its scattershot acts of savagery, many of them mitigated by courts and by stronger Democrats and even a few Republicans who still had souls and spines. The cruelty had no real ideology behind it, just the sheer deranged pleasure of hurting people. Systematic, planned cruelty with a goal of hurting everyone who ever opposed you and your ideology? That's evil. We don't want to think that we are confronting evil now because it seems melodramatic and frankly unfathomable. If we have leaders who keep acting in ways that are evil, as in directly contrary to any concept of "good," then we need to acknowledge that we are in an evil country living through an evil age.
I just can't think of any other clearer way to describe what the Trump/Musk administration has done in this first month of its four-year (minimum) reign of terror. We want them to be stupid, and we need to think of them as incompetent, like when Musk's Department of Government Efficiency fired 300 workers from the National Nuclear Security Administration because they didn't understand that those workers are responsible for the safety of our nuclear arsenal, not a bunch of hippies inhibiting the nuclear power industry or whatever the hell they believed, and now they're scrambling to rehire them. But stupidity and incompetence lets them off the hook to an extent in a "they know not what they do" kind of way. Fuck that.
These motherfuckers know exactly what they're doing. They are seeking to undermine the functioning of the federal government, getting rid of any checks on the power of the president and wanting to privatize much of its work, in order to make the nation a de facto autocracy that exists for the benefit of a few wealthy patrons, with the population kept in line by an enforced Christian nationalist morality. In other words, Trump and his enablers are acting like just about every fucking totalitarian regime in history. And its goal is to harm anyone or any idea that opposes their power, from entire institutions and populations and on down to the lowest-level individual bureaucrat who didn't pledge their loyalty. It is a kind of coup, a willful abandonment of the protections of the Constitution while pretending to save the country from crises that simply don't exist.
I don't know how you describe the actions the administration has inflicted on the country in another way that makes sense. You have to remember that anything they say about why they're doing this gutting of the workforce is nonsense, not only in the amount of money DOGE and Musk claim they are saving, but also in the context of a proposed $4.5 trillion tax cut, which is something like 16 times the salaries of the entire federal workforce. If you fire a couple hundred thousand people who are doing well the jobs they were hired for, completely decimating their finances and upending they're lives and that doesn't help anyone else, that's evil shit.
No matter where you go, evil is at play. Firing people involved in the prevention of bird flu and other viruses. Firing those trying to find a cure for cancer. Freezing and eliminating funding for USAID, which helps people in poorer countries survive diseases like HIV, tuberculosis, and more. The firing of thousands of workers at the Forest Service and national parks. And so very much more. It's not just about the employees themselves, many of whom have been put through hell in the last couple of weeks, but it's about all the people who will be harmed and will die because of these cuts.
And this isn't even getting into the disappearing of migrants to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or to countries where they have no connection; or the proposed complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza so the United States can build some resorts; or the Justice Department's attack on the rule of law in the Eric Adams case; or the move to erase the existence of transgender people' or the unhinged attack on anything that supports non-whites or women as "DEI," which, we should all be reminded, means "diversity, equity, and inclusion," as if those aspirational ideas are bad. Or a thousand other things that I could list and that I'm sure you thought of, all, all, all with a goal to directly harm people or force them to kowtow to Trump and Musk (or, really, Musk because Trump is just his fucking poodle now). I mean, this is some supervillain shit going on right now.
"Evil" provides us with a way of framing this in the easy, Manichean way that most people prefer to view the world. I acknowledge it's got a religious sound to it. That's okay. That helps. It's an explanation that needs no elaboration. As a term it has potency because it gives the opposition a moral dynamic: we're fighting against evil. I also think that it's a way of making those who voted for Trump to articulate the way they feel like he's fucked them over (and, I know, it's a small percentage who might actually pull their heads of his voluminous ass in order to breathe the fresh air of reality). And it gives us a way to label the people who do Trump and Musk's bidding. They're not just assholes bro-coding us to the apocalypse. They're evil assholes who want to see the rest of us hurting.
It also forces us to ask questions to anyone who supports them: What actual good has been done? Can you tell us one thing that's been accomplished that makes your life better or easier? What is being proposed that would make your life better or easier? Because the answer across the board is "Not a goddamn thing."
They are fucking up the lives of Americans. They are driving people to despair. I have said that I believe the real goal here is to provoke a violent response from a group or individuals, giving Trump the chance to declare martial law and just have his way with us as surely as if he were keeping us chained to a wall. We are in the midst of evil, awaiting to see what other evil will occur.
And now we need to respond as if evil motherfuckers have taken over our occasionally decent nation. Call it out as evil, protest, and kick your members of Congress in the ass. The time to act is now while we're still allowed to act.
"Evil" is a hard concept to get your head around. We can get close to it when we say things like "The cruelty is the point," but that was truly about the first Donald Trump administration, with its scattershot acts of savagery, many of them mitigated by courts and by stronger Democrats and even a few Republicans who still had souls and spines. The cruelty had no real ideology behind it, just the sheer deranged pleasure of hurting people. Systematic, planned cruelty with a goal of hurting everyone who ever opposed you and your ideology? That's evil. We don't want to think that we are confronting evil now because it seems melodramatic and frankly unfathomable. If we have leaders who keep acting in ways that are evil, as in directly contrary to any concept of "good," then we need to acknowledge that we are in an evil country living through an evil age.
I just can't think of any other clearer way to describe what the Trump/Musk administration has done in this first month of its four-year (minimum) reign of terror. We want them to be stupid, and we need to think of them as incompetent, like when Musk's Department of Government Efficiency fired 300 workers from the National Nuclear Security Administration because they didn't understand that those workers are responsible for the safety of our nuclear arsenal, not a bunch of hippies inhibiting the nuclear power industry or whatever the hell they believed, and now they're scrambling to rehire them. But stupidity and incompetence lets them off the hook to an extent in a "they know not what they do" kind of way. Fuck that.
These motherfuckers know exactly what they're doing. They are seeking to undermine the functioning of the federal government, getting rid of any checks on the power of the president and wanting to privatize much of its work, in order to make the nation a de facto autocracy that exists for the benefit of a few wealthy patrons, with the population kept in line by an enforced Christian nationalist morality. In other words, Trump and his enablers are acting like just about every fucking totalitarian regime in history. And its goal is to harm anyone or any idea that opposes their power, from entire institutions and populations and on down to the lowest-level individual bureaucrat who didn't pledge their loyalty. It is a kind of coup, a willful abandonment of the protections of the Constitution while pretending to save the country from crises that simply don't exist.
I don't know how you describe the actions the administration has inflicted on the country in another way that makes sense. You have to remember that anything they say about why they're doing this gutting of the workforce is nonsense, not only in the amount of money DOGE and Musk claim they are saving, but also in the context of a proposed $4.5 trillion tax cut, which is something like 16 times the salaries of the entire federal workforce. If you fire a couple hundred thousand people who are doing well the jobs they were hired for, completely decimating their finances and upending they're lives and that doesn't help anyone else, that's evil shit.
No matter where you go, evil is at play. Firing people involved in the prevention of bird flu and other viruses. Firing those trying to find a cure for cancer. Freezing and eliminating funding for USAID, which helps people in poorer countries survive diseases like HIV, tuberculosis, and more. The firing of thousands of workers at the Forest Service and national parks. And so very much more. It's not just about the employees themselves, many of whom have been put through hell in the last couple of weeks, but it's about all the people who will be harmed and will die because of these cuts.
And this isn't even getting into the disappearing of migrants to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or to countries where they have no connection; or the proposed complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza so the United States can build some resorts; or the Justice Department's attack on the rule of law in the Eric Adams case; or the move to erase the existence of transgender people' or the unhinged attack on anything that supports non-whites or women as "DEI," which, we should all be reminded, means "diversity, equity, and inclusion," as if those aspirational ideas are bad. Or a thousand other things that I could list and that I'm sure you thought of, all, all, all with a goal to directly harm people or force them to kowtow to Trump and Musk (or, really, Musk because Trump is just his fucking poodle now). I mean, this is some supervillain shit going on right now.
"Evil" provides us with a way of framing this in the easy, Manichean way that most people prefer to view the world. I acknowledge it's got a religious sound to it. That's okay. That helps. It's an explanation that needs no elaboration. As a term it has potency because it gives the opposition a moral dynamic: we're fighting against evil. I also think that it's a way of making those who voted for Trump to articulate the way they feel like he's fucked them over (and, I know, it's a small percentage who might actually pull their heads of his voluminous ass in order to breathe the fresh air of reality). And it gives us a way to label the people who do Trump and Musk's bidding. They're not just assholes bro-coding us to the apocalypse. They're evil assholes who want to see the rest of us hurting.
It also forces us to ask questions to anyone who supports them: What actual good has been done? Can you tell us one thing that's been accomplished that makes your life better or easier? What is being proposed that would make your life better or easier? Because the answer across the board is "Not a goddamn thing."
They are fucking up the lives of Americans. They are driving people to despair. I have said that I believe the real goal here is to provoke a violent response from a group or individuals, giving Trump the chance to declare martial law and just have his way with us as surely as if he were keeping us chained to a wall. We are in the midst of evil, awaiting to see what other evil will occur.
And now we need to respond as if evil motherfuckers have taken over our occasionally decent nation. Call it out as evil, protest, and kick your members of Congress in the ass. The time to act is now while we're still allowed to act.
Saturday, February 15, 2025
Goodbye America
On top of all of the chaos from Trump and the GOP, we are preparing to sell our house and move. Didn't have quite enough stress, I guess. So I've been really tied up with this, that, and the other things to write much here on the blog. Just yodeling in the canyon anyway.
A friend saw this Editorial in the Vancouver (British Columbia) Sun paper and forwarded it to me recently. It's pretty sad. Half of the shit that Trump is pulling he didn't even mention on the campaign trail. Lots of lawsuits are being filed against some of his bullshit, but those take time to work through the courts. Will SCOTUS give him total free rein? Meanwhile Trump, with his "First Buddy" Elon Musk, continues to rampage through the government like a bull in a china shop, firing people left and right with little regard for keeping things running. It looks like they want to break everything. And, oh my god, just imagine how much worse everything would be if we had elected that black lady with the funny laugh.
Opinion: Farewell to my American friends. It's over.
Pete McMartin: Where there was once admiration, there is now a firm and angry resolve. Schoolyard bullies don’t want to be buddies. They want your lunch. Read more.
It’s been nice knowing you.
Goodbye New York, and your Jewish delicatessens with corned beef sandwiches stacked as high as your skyline.
Goodbye Detroit, my boyhood neighbour, and so long to Tiger Stadium, the Detroit Institute of Arts and Motown.
Goodbye Bellingham, Seattle and Portland — how I’ll miss my Cascadian cousins with our shared Pacific sensibilities. And while I’m at it, goodbye to the cheap gas and shoreline cottages of Point Roberts, America’s appendix dangling just below the border not a mile from me. What was once so close has never been so far.
Goodbye Stag Leap’s Pinot Noir, Maker’s Mark bourbon, and Hebrew National hotdogs. My tastebuds mourn.
Goodbye to the cowards on both sides of the border who have demonstrated that whatever fidelity to democratic ideals they profess to have extends only so far as their self-interest. They should get a real job, say, in a chain gang.
Goodbye to anyone, again on both sides of the border, who bends the knee to Trump, rather than standing up to him, as any self-respecting person would and should, and telling him to piss off. Goodbye to a culture that demands we bend the knee.
Goodbye languid vacations in Maui and Palm Springs. My next winter vacation will be in a sunny climate other than any America can offer, and preferably in a country the U.S. has treated as disdainfully as mine. I’ll have more than a few to pick from.
Most painful of all, goodbye to my American friends, some of whom I have known all my life, and some of whom I’ve collected along the way. I can cross your border but no longer wish to: Your Narcissist-in-Chief has decreed that my countrymen and I have the choice of becoming destitute, vassals or enemies. I’m choosing the latter.
Meanwhile, your silence and the silence of all Americans in response to this aggression leaves me disheartened. That silence speaks volumes. I — we — have heard you loud and clear how little our friendship as a country means to you.
Goodbye to the image of America I once held dear — the America of Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley and James Brown, of George Gershwin and Aaron Copeland, of Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut and Mark Twain, of Martin Luther King and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Goodbye to what I envied as the country that prided itself on encouraging unparalleled innovation in science, art and business. Any good that remains of it has been overshadowed by rapacity, cheap commercialism and egotism.
Goodbye to that ever-present sense of inferiority I once had when considering the relationship between Canada and America. What doubt I had of our own greatness is gone, and in its place is a certitude that Canada is superior to the U.S. in all the ways that matter. I look across the border now and see a violent, burgeoning autocracy now ever on the edge of civil war, and a population that is either cheering on this new brutalism or quaking in fear from it.
Goodbye to tepid patriotism. If Trump has done us any favour, it is awakening us to the fact that we can no longer take Canada’s existence for granted, that the bad actors in the world have begun to look covetously upon our improbably vast land that is laden with riches, that they want those riches and that niceness as a national character is not enough to dissuade them from taking them. Schoolyard bullies don’t want to be buddies. They want your lunch.
And after a long era of living a geopolitical life of convenient economic and military subservience, we’ve awakened to the fact that we are going to have to relearn our independence and fight any way we can to keep it.
Goodbye to living under the American nuclear umbrella, or any form of American hegemony. Goodbye to negotiation, wheedling, genuflecting or feel-good hands-across-the-border fairy tales. The American government has shown that established alliances mean nothing to it now, and so cannot be trusted. In Trump’s new world order, all the old verities are off the table, so let us make new ones.
Do levy tariffs, as we have promised to do, and do grit our way through the inevitable economic pain that will come. Re-arm as if we were on a war footing, because we are on a war footing. Conduct the mother of all public relation campaigns that let Americans know how badly they are perceived in the world, that they’ve gone from the shining city on the hill to just another empire with the same tired territorial ambitions as Russia or China. Do anything to impress upon Americans that their government is without real friends or allies, and that they, in essence, are alone.
So, goodbye America, it’s been nice knowing you, but I don’t know you anymore. I’ve reached that point in our relationship where any admiration I have had for you has been replaced by a new, angry resolve, which is: I won’t consort with the enemy.
mcmartincharles@gmail.com
TALK TO US ABOUT TARIFFS: Has the news of tariffs changed your buying habits or travel plans? Has it impacted your workplace or business? We want to hear your thoughts on how the U.S. tariffs has impacted your daily life. Sound off in the comments below or email us at vantips@postmedia.com if you’d like to speak with a reporter for a future story.
Goodbye New York, and your Jewish delicatessens with corned beef sandwiches stacked as high as your skyline.
Goodbye Detroit, my boyhood neighbour, and so long to Tiger Stadium, the Detroit Institute of Arts and Motown.
Goodbye Bellingham, Seattle and Portland — how I’ll miss my Cascadian cousins with our shared Pacific sensibilities. And while I’m at it, goodbye to the cheap gas and shoreline cottages of Point Roberts, America’s appendix dangling just below the border not a mile from me. What was once so close has never been so far.
Goodbye Stag Leap’s Pinot Noir, Maker’s Mark bourbon, and Hebrew National hotdogs. My tastebuds mourn.
Goodbye to the cowards on both sides of the border who have demonstrated that whatever fidelity to democratic ideals they profess to have extends only so far as their self-interest. They should get a real job, say, in a chain gang.
Goodbye to anyone, again on both sides of the border, who bends the knee to Trump, rather than standing up to him, as any self-respecting person would and should, and telling him to piss off. Goodbye to a culture that demands we bend the knee.
Goodbye languid vacations in Maui and Palm Springs. My next winter vacation will be in a sunny climate other than any America can offer, and preferably in a country the U.S. has treated as disdainfully as mine. I’ll have more than a few to pick from.
Most painful of all, goodbye to my American friends, some of whom I have known all my life, and some of whom I’ve collected along the way. I can cross your border but no longer wish to: Your Narcissist-in-Chief has decreed that my countrymen and I have the choice of becoming destitute, vassals or enemies. I’m choosing the latter.
Meanwhile, your silence and the silence of all Americans in response to this aggression leaves me disheartened. That silence speaks volumes. I — we — have heard you loud and clear how little our friendship as a country means to you.
Goodbye to the image of America I once held dear — the America of Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley and James Brown, of George Gershwin and Aaron Copeland, of Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut and Mark Twain, of Martin Luther King and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Goodbye to what I envied as the country that prided itself on encouraging unparalleled innovation in science, art and business. Any good that remains of it has been overshadowed by rapacity, cheap commercialism and egotism.
Goodbye to that ever-present sense of inferiority I once had when considering the relationship between Canada and America. What doubt I had of our own greatness is gone, and in its place is a certitude that Canada is superior to the U.S. in all the ways that matter. I look across the border now and see a violent, burgeoning autocracy now ever on the edge of civil war, and a population that is either cheering on this new brutalism or quaking in fear from it.
Goodbye to tepid patriotism. If Trump has done us any favour, it is awakening us to the fact that we can no longer take Canada’s existence for granted, that the bad actors in the world have begun to look covetously upon our improbably vast land that is laden with riches, that they want those riches and that niceness as a national character is not enough to dissuade them from taking them. Schoolyard bullies don’t want to be buddies. They want your lunch.
And after a long era of living a geopolitical life of convenient economic and military subservience, we’ve awakened to the fact that we are going to have to relearn our independence and fight any way we can to keep it.
Goodbye to living under the American nuclear umbrella, or any form of American hegemony. Goodbye to negotiation, wheedling, genuflecting or feel-good hands-across-the-border fairy tales. The American government has shown that established alliances mean nothing to it now, and so cannot be trusted. In Trump’s new world order, all the old verities are off the table, so let us make new ones.
Do levy tariffs, as we have promised to do, and do grit our way through the inevitable economic pain that will come. Re-arm as if we were on a war footing, because we are on a war footing. Conduct the mother of all public relation campaigns that let Americans know how badly they are perceived in the world, that they’ve gone from the shining city on the hill to just another empire with the same tired territorial ambitions as Russia or China. Do anything to impress upon Americans that their government is without real friends or allies, and that they, in essence, are alone.
So, goodbye America, it’s been nice knowing you, but I don’t know you anymore. I’ve reached that point in our relationship where any admiration I have had for you has been replaced by a new, angry resolve, which is: I won’t consort with the enemy.
mcmartincharles@gmail.com
TALK TO US ABOUT TARIFFS: Has the news of tariffs changed your buying habits or travel plans? Has it impacted your workplace or business? We want to hear your thoughts on how the U.S. tariffs has impacted your daily life. Sound off in the comments below or email us at vantips@postmedia.com if you’d like to speak with a reporter for a future story.
Monday, February 10, 2025
defy court orders
Well, it looks like the Trump Gang is starting to defy court orders and do what they want. If they do this regularly and the courts cannot hold him, that might be the last line of resistance to fall. Obviously, the GOP Senate and House is doing nothing to slow him down or stop him.
Citizen protests can go only so far. If there were an absolute massive uprising of citizens, that could work, but it is very unlikely. 80 million Americans simply didn't bother to vote, and it's unlikely many Republicans would join Dems in the streets. And I think Trump HOPES that protests would become violent so he could declare martial law and really clamp down.
Perhaps the only other thing to wrest fascism from their greedy little hands might be a war. Maybe some sympathetic country could come to our aid and take the MF out, along with a bunch of his cronies. Hey, you know Germany owes us a pretty big favor for helping to root out Hitler. Maybe they would be willing to return the favor and free Americans from the grips of a tyrant. Or France? They love freedom. How about Canada, or Mexico?
There is an outside chance that the 3 upcoming US House elections could all go Dem, effectively providing a block on Trump, IF he doesn't defy Congress too.
Another possible way to slow him down is for the courts to issue contempt citations for defying court orders and jail the motherfuckers. Immunity? Well, this case will have to work its way up the chain to resolve that. Tell me how destroying our democracy would fall anywhere near "official duties" of protecting and defending the Constitution.
Way to go, America.
Judge Rules the White House Failed to Comply With Court Order
The federal judge in Rhode Island said the Trump administration had failed to comply with his order unfreezing billions of dollars in federal grants.
Mattathias Schwartz reports on the federal courts from Philadelphia.
A federal judge on Monday said the White House has defied his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants, marking the first time a judge has expressly declared that the Trump White House was disobeying a judicial mandate.
The ruling by Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island federal court ordered Trump administration officials to comply with what he called “the plain text” of an edict he issued on Jan. 29.
That order, he wrote, was “clear and unambiguous, and there are no impediments to the Defendants’ compliance with” it.
Judge McConnell’s ruling marked a step toward what could quickly evolve into a high-stakes showdown between the executive and judicial branches, a day after a social media post by Vice President JD Vance claimed that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” elevating the chance that the White House could provoke a constitutional crisis.JD Vance claimed that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” elevating the chance that the White House could provoke a constitutional crisis.
“It’s very rare for a president not to comply with an order,” said Victoria Nourse, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center who served during the Obama and Biden administrations. “This is part of a pattern where President Trump appears to be asserting authority that he doesn’t have.”
But for some of President Trump’s allies, it is the judges ruling against Mr. Trump who are out of bounds.
“Activist judges must stop illegally meddling with the President’s Article II powers,” wrote Mike Davis, who heads the Article III Project, a conservative advocacy group.
Already, more than 40 lawsuits have been filed against the Trump administration challenging Mr. Trump’s brazen moves, which have included revoking birthright citizenship and giving Elon Musk’s teams access to sensitive Treasury Department payment systems. Judges have already ruled that many of these executive actions may violate existing statutes.
Judge McConnell previously ordered the White House to unfreeze federal funds locked up by a memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget that demanded that billions of dollars in federal grants be held back until they were determined to comply with President Trump’s priorities, including with ideological litmus tests.
On Friday, 22 Democratic attorneys general went to Judge McConnell to accuse the White House of failing to comply with his earlier order. The Justice Department responded in a filing on Sunday that money for clean energy projects and transportation infrastructure, allocated to states by the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure bill, was exempt from the initial order because it had been paused under a different memo than the one that prompted the lawsuit.
Judge McConnell’s ruling on Monday explicitly rejected that argument.
The judge granted the attorneys generals’ request for a “motion for enforcement” — essentially a nudge. It did not find that the Trump administration was in contempt of court or specify any penalties for failing to comply.
However, the judge was straightforward in his finding that an initial temporary restraining order that he issued Jan. 29 was not being followed.
“These pauses in funding violate the plain text of the T.R.O.,” Judge McConnell wrote. That earlier ruling ordered the administration not to “pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate” money that had already been allocated by Congress to the states to pay for Medicaid, school lunches, low-income housing subsidies and other essential services.
It was still not clear how the White House would respond. Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, suggested the president would ultimately prevail in court.
“Each executive order will hold up in court because every action of the Trump-Vance administration is completely lawful,” he said. “Any legal challenge against it is nothing more than an attempt to undermine the will of the American people.”
But Judge McConnell made clear that White House officials were obligated to comply regardless of how they thought the case might conclude. In his ruling on Monday, the judge quoted an opinion from a previous case noting that “persons who make private determinations of the law and refuse to obey an order generally risk criminal contempt even if the order is ultimately ruled incorrect.”
The showdown is part of a broader effort by Mr. Trump’s opponents to get congressionally approved funding flowing again. Another order requiring that the disputed funds be released was issued last Monday by Judge Loren AliKhan of the District of Columbia. That case was filed by a coalition of nonprofits represented by Democracy Forward.
Skye Perryman, Democracy Forward’s chief executive, said that if there were to be a standoff between the executive and judicial branches, she hoped that the legislative branch would step in.
“That is really a call to action for Congress,” she said. “The judicial branch is not going to be able to stop this unlawful and extreme use of executive power on its own.”
Charlie Savage contributed reporting. Seamus Hughes contributed research.
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