It just keeps getting weirder and weirder. And scarier.
The NYT reports: Trump Brazenly Defies Laws in Escalating Executive Power Grab -- Three weeks into his second term, hand-wringing about norms seems quaint. .... “We are well past euphemism about ‘pushing the limits,’ ‘stretching the envelope’ and the like,” said Peter M. Shane, who is a legal scholar in residence at New York University and the author of a casebook on separation-of-powers law. The array of legal constraints Mr. Trump has violated, Mr. Shane added, amounts to “programmatic sabotage and rampant lawlessness.” Trump has effectively nullified laws, such as by ordering the Justice Department to refrain from enforcing a ban on the wildly popular app TikTok and by blocking migrants from invoking a statute allowing them to request asylum. He moved to effectively shutter a federal agency Congress created and tried to freeze congressionally approved spending, including most foreign aid. He summarily fired prosecutors, inspectors general and board members of independent agencies in defiance of legal rules against arbitrary removal.
Comments: Wheeee!
The NYT reports: With Gaza Plan, an Unbound Trump Pushes an Improbable Idea -- President Trump basked as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel praised his “willingness to think outside the box.” But when it came to Gaza, Mr. Trump’s thinking on Tuesday was so far outside the box that it was not clear he even knew there was a box. Mr. Trump’s announcement that he intends to seize control of Gaza, displace the Palestinian population and turn the coastal enclave into “the Riviera of the Middle East” was the kind of thing he might have said to get a rise on “The Howard Stern Show” a decade or two ago. Provocative, intriguing, outlandish, outrageous — and not at all presidential. .... Never mind that resettling two million Palestinians would be a gargantuan logistical and financial challenge, not to mention politically explosive. Never mind that it would surely require many thousands of U.S. troops and possibly trigger more violent conflict.
Comments: Great, we have an unbound president who doesn’t know there is a box to think outside of. Quick! Somebody get Jared Kushner on the klaxon. We gotta tell him DJT is opening up a huuuge development opportunity on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea! All high end resorts and no Palestinians!
Palestinian reaction
The NYT opines: What Is ‘State Capture’? A Warning for Americans. -- But the cumulative effect of these stories offers at best a complicated answer to what should be an uncomplicated question: Who exactly is running the federal government? It’s troubling enough not to be able to answer emphatically with “democratically elected leaders.” Even more troubling is the possibility that the actual answer is Mr. Musk — the world’s richest man — and other unaccountable, unelected, unconfirmed allies cozy with the president. Political economists have a name for that: state capture. State capture occurs when wealthy private interests influence a government to such a degree that they can freely direct policy decisions and public funds for their own benefit or for the benefit of their ideological fellow travelers (or both).
Comments: Wikipedia says that state capture is a type of systemic political corruption by private interests. Germaine says that says that state capture is one form of kleptocracy. Wheeeeee!! (insert poopstorm image here)
The NYT snarks: Jimmy Kimmel Wants Canada to Save Us, Eh? -- Kimmel is all for making Canada the 51st state: “If Canada also had 54 electoral votes, forget MAGA — our next president will be a kindhearted lesbian moose.”
Comments: Makes sense to me.
Kindhearted gay Canadian moose
TNR reports about some blowback coming to red states: Trump’s Plan to Gut Education Department Will Hit Red States Hardest -- The draft order will direct the department to slash spending and slash staff, according to The Washington Post. Such an aggressive decision on such a large scale would have sweeping consequences. “The Dept of Education provides crucial funding for low-income public schools—eliminating it would result in the loss of 6% of teachers’ jobs nationwide,” former adviser for Barack Obama, Steven Rattner, wrote on X.
Slate: Elon Musk’s Power Grab Is Lawless, Dangerous, and—Yes—a Coup -- If this were happening in any other country, we’d be calling it a coup -- The federal government is currently under relentless and unlawful assault by a man no one elected to lead it. With Donald Trump’s blessing and enabling, Elon Musk and his confederates have laid siege to the executive branch in an onslaught whose appalling and far-reaching consequences have barely begun to be reported, much less understood. .... Musk’s actions since Jan. 20 are so extreme that any summary runs the risk of sounding alarmist. This is not overstatement or embellishment: Although the billionaire purports to exercise executive authority, he does not appear to hold any formal office, serving in the ill-defined role of “special government employee.”
And it just goes on and on and on like this.
