Kleptocracy update: Obliterating independent inspector generals

The WaPo writes (not paywalled):

Trump ousts at least 15 independent inspectors general in late-night purge

The dismissals appeared to violate federal law, which requires Congress to receive 30 days’ notice of any intent to fire a Senate-confirmed inspector general

The White House late Friday fired the independent inspectors general of at least 14 major federal agencies in a purge that could clear the way for President Donald Trump to install loyalists in the crucial role of identifying fraud, waste and abuse in the government.

The inspectors general were notified by emails from the White House personnel director that they had been terminated immediately, according to people familiar with the actions, who like others in this report spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private messages.

The dismissals appeared to violate federal law, which requires Congress to receive 30 days’ notice of any intent to fire a Senate-confirmed inspector general.

Oversight of some of the government’s largest agencies was affected: the departments of Defense, State, Transportation, Labor, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Energy, Commerce, and Agriculture, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, Small Business Administration and the Social Security Administration.

Most of those dismissed were Trump appointees from his first term, which stunned the watchdog community. One prominent inspector general survived the purge — Michael Horowitz at the Justice Department, an appointee of President Barack Obama who has issued reports critical of both the Biden administration and Trump’s first administration. 

Trump ousted five watchdogs in quick succession during his first term in 2020, starting with Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general who alerted Congress to the whistleblower complaint that led to Trump’s first impeachment. Trump had appointed Atkinson. The president also removed the State Department’s chief watchdog, who had begun investigating alleged misconduct by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Many lawmakers at the time said they believed the watchdogs were fired simply because of their involvement in investigations that cast the first Trump administration in a negative light.

But Friday’s dismissals befuddled and stunned the watchdog community, as many of those let go had done hard-hitting investigations of Biden administration operations. 

That last paragraph makes clear that DJT does not want hard-hitting investigations, maybe unless they target enemies or opponents.

DJT and MAGA wanting to get rid of IGs (inspectors general) comes as no surprise. However, firing them illegally like this instead of waiting for the 30 day notice period is surprising. And, it's another clear sign that DJT holds the rule of law in open contempt. He apparently has no intention of obeying essentially any law he wants to violate. 

Since this is an official act, he is immune from any civil or legal prosecution. DJT will replace IGs who are more or less honest and competent with kleptocratic, incompetent loyalists. Once this is accomplished, bribery and corruption in the federal government will run wild, free and butt naked. How is that possible? Easy peasy. Last year the USSC (1) granted vast immunity to a sitting president, and (2) legalized bribery of government officials. American kleptocracy has been legalized, empowered and unleashed.

Corruption has been unleashed!

For some context, Public Citizen wrote about this in Sept. 2024:

Revealed in a new Public Citizen analysis, Project 2025’s Pro-Corruption & Anti-Democracy Agenda, the 920-page “Mandate For Leadership” briefing book lists in-depth plans to weaken anti-corruption laws, replace qualified experts with political cronies and weaponize the Dept. of Justice to target local elected officials and election administrators. In one of its corresponding “Presidential Administration Academy” video trainings, two Project 2025 leaders say that, upon election, the next U.S. president should replace the independent Inspectors General (IGs) working to oversee federal operations and detect and prevent fraud, waste, abuse, and misconduct throughout 74 federal programs. The Project 2025 leaders said the next president should instead install “their own IGs” so that they “have control of the people that work within the government.”

The report’s author and Public Citizen Democracy Advocate Jon Golinger called his findings in the right-wing presidential playbook “a threat to knock down the walls that keep corruption from running rampant.”

“Replacing nonpartisan, independent Inspectors General with loyal political cronies would mean more government fraud, waste, and abuse and cost taxpayers millions,” said Golinger. “The whole point of Inspectors General is to have objective government watchdogs who are there to identify problems and propose solutions without regard to political pressure. Wiping out independent IGs would make our government less efficient and effective.”

Christian nationalism update

In news for Christian nationalists (CNs) and, whether they give a rip or not, everyone else in America, the USSC has taken up a case that has the potential to shift a significant amount of wealth and power to American churches generally. Yesterday, the USSC to accepted a lawsuit to decide whether states can reject religious charter schools from receiving public funding. CNN writes:

The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether states may reject religious charter schools from receiving public funding, agreeing to hear arguments in an appeal out of Oklahoma involving the first such school in the nation.

“Oklahoma parents and children are better off with more educational choices, not fewer,” said Jim Campbell, chief legal counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious legal group representing the school. “There’s great irony in state officials who claim to be in favor of religious liberty discriminating against St. Isidore because of its Catholic beliefs.”

The court will likely hear arguments this spring and hand down a decision before July. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative, recused in the case without giving a reason.

The court’s decision could have vast nationwide implications by making it easier for religious entities to apply for and receive public taxpayer money for schools. The case has been closely watched by groups promoting religious freedom.

The court has a 6-3 Christian nationalist majority. It consistently backs various religious claims in the name of free speech and freedom of religion or the Free Exercise Clause of the 1st Amendment. To break down the church-state barrier, the Roberts court has been chipping away at the Establishment Clause for years. This lawsuit is over public funding for a proposed St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in Oklahoma. That school would serve students online throughout the state while maintaining its intention to promote the Catholic faith. The USSC will review an Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling that said the proposal violated both the state and federal constitutions.

This lawsuit could have vast nationwide implications by giving religious entities the power to receive on demand public taxpayer money for religious schools. However, that might depend of whether state constitutions are worded differently. A USSC decision in favor of the church could amount to another blow to church-state separation, American democracy, the secular rule of law and civil liberties. 

The following point cannot be overstated: For years, a cherished goal of the CN wealth and power movement has been to vastly expand the power of Christianity to demand and get legal access to state and federal tax revenues. Years of CN lawsuits have been pounding on the church-state separation legal doctrine and the Establishment Clause. Until now, that has limited the power of Christianity to get tax revenues. The Establishment Clause has already been seriously weakened. 

AN IMPORTANT LEGAL NUANCE

So far, the Establishment Clause has prevented direct payments of tax dollars to churches or religion generally. But there is a ghastly but subtle sleight of hand that (i) CNs are arguing, and (ii) as it slowly nibbles away at the Establishment Clause, the USSC has increasingly allowed "indirect" tax payments to things like (1) vouchers for religious charter schools, (2) aid to groups or third parties who can spend those tax dollars on religion (see image below), and (3) a state program to improve playground surfaces at secular schools (the state was forced to pay for a religious school improvement). All of that amounts to a shift toward allowing direct funding for secular purposes to be spent at religious institutions. 

The following money laundering scheme is legal right now:

1. Replace special interest with government

2. Replace politician with church or religion 

3. Replace lobbyist with a group or third party 

who spends tax dollars on religion

What this lawsuit probably quietly seeks to legalize is on the left

(but most CNs would probably deny that)

As we all know, money is fungible. Thus, even if tax dollars are allocated indirectly to religion, the cash can be used to directly support religious activities by freeing church money from paying "non-church" expenses like religious schools. That includes paying tax dollars to indoctrinate children into Christian beliefs. In my opinion, the reality is that the distinction between "direct" and "indirect" funding for religion is a lot more semantic than substantive. 

In a 2002 dissent against tax dollars for religious private schools, Justice John Paul Stevens argued that — regardless of the private choice made by voucher recipients — students using vouchers to attend religious schools receive “religious indoctrination at state expense.” Thus, the Cleveland [religious school] program ran afoul of the Establishment Clause. See the semantics here? Stevens spoke of tax payments as “religious indoctrination at state expense”, regardless of whether the funding was called direct or indirect.

Attacks on the Establishment Clause predate Roberts who has been on the USSC since 2005. Roberts is hostile to the Establishment Clause. Surprisingly, Justice Barrett has voluntarily recused herself from the St. Isidore case. Why recuse? Presumably, she did that due to her previous association with the University of Notre Dame Law School, where she was a faculty member. The school's religious liberty clinic is involved in representing the Catholic sponsors of St. Isidore, creating a potential conflict of interest. 

If the USSC holds that St. Isidore has a right to state tax money, the decision will be announced at the end of June 2025, or maybe the first day or two of July. If the USSC rejects St. Isidore's application for state funding, the decision could come as much as a month or so before then. If St. Isidore wins, more tax dollars will flow go to Christianity and presumably other religions. 

How much is this worth? That's hard to know

Federal tax breaks value to religion is approximately $2.4 billion annually by one estimate. State and local property tax exemptions are estimated by the Center for Inquiry in 2012 to be worth about $71 billion/year. Christianity rejects the state and local estimate, saying it is closer to about $6.9 billion. If the USSC gives religious schools access to tax dollars in this lawsuit, the value of that could add at least another $3-4 billion, but that is speculative and hard to estimate. 

Presumably, most or all other religious schools across the country will try to get state funding. There are about 22,000-27,000 religious private schools in the US, of which about 12,600 are Catholic, but estimates vary. 

Churches tend to hide their finances or make analyzing financial data difficult. Churches and certain religious organizations are automatically considered tax-exempt under IRC Section 501(c)(3) without any need to even apply for this status. This automatic exemption means that many churches do not file for formal recognition, making collection and analysis of financial data hard to impossible. And although churches are automatically exempt at the federal level, state-level exemptions require applications, but the process and requirements vary significantly from state to state. This makes it difficult to aggregate data across states. In some situations, individual churches do not appear in IRS databases or public records, further obscuring the total value of tax breaks.

The smell of coffee in the morning

 Imagine the aroma of your favorite blend of coffee when you wake up in the morning. The smell is intricate, much more than simply “coffee”. Perhaps you identify subtle olfactory notes of cocoa, nuttiness, and a hint of vanilla. Together, the interactions between these notes transform the experience of your morning cup into something beyond the sum of its parts.

https://brain.harvard.edu/hbi_news/wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee-antagonism-reformats-how-odor-blends-are-encoded/

Do you find that just the smell of your coffee is enough to perk you up in the mornings? You might not be imagining it, because a new study into the effects of the aroma of coffee has found that it can sharpen the brain in certain circumstances.

https://www.sciencealert.com/coffee-smells-are-enough-to-perk-up-the-brain

MRI scans showed that drinking coffee increased activity in parts of the brain involved in short-term memory, attention and focus, whereas ingesting caffeine on its own did not.

The researchers theorized that the sight, smell or taste of coffee may help people feel alert, regardless of the caffeine content.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/brain-scans-coffee-drinkers-caffeine-rcna91680

So, with all this scientific data about the aroma of coffee, it's time for some...........

https://republicancoffee.com/?srsltid=AfmBOoq13OxVvmqDnvbO1HhKJW2ET8qOO7jkSmMer1A8LMoOgXdPkrjc

ENDORSED BY.................

New Executive Orders, agency actions; A mayhem in government thought experiment

Note: This post is written in deep sadness and real horror about what is now fully underway. A few people seem to be waking up to the reality of what is now upon us. Most still don't grasp the seriousness of our situation. 

The frenzied activity since the swearing-in in Jan. 21 is breathtaking in scope and intensity. Biden's legacy that can be attacked by EOs (Executive Orders) is being obliterated with ferocity. American democracy and the rule of law are under open, full blown attack on many fronts. DJT and his MAGA wealth and power movement are openly expressing anti-democratic sentiment both symbolically and in concrete anti-democratic actions backed by political power. 

I start with this symbolic but blatant attack on the US Constitution by DJT. Various reports indicated that the text of the US Constitution on the White House web page had been taken down shortly after the swearing in. That didn't seem credible. But when I went to the link, https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/our-government/the-constitution/,  the Constitution was in fact gone and replaced by a 404 error message. It was still gone as of the time I write this.

Copied 1/24/25, 6:17:13 AM, 

Pacific Standard Time

Obviously, the non-alarmists will say something about like this: "Aw shucks and golly young feller. Hold your horses. Go milk the cows or slop the hogs or something. This is just a computer glitch. It doesn't mean diddly squat. You're overreacting to the point of insanity. Calm down." 

Hm, maybe so. But I don't believe it. This is no computer glitch. In my firm opinion, this is a crystal clear AK (authoritarian kleptocrat) signal.

____________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________

Meanwhile over at the presidential actions web page, and in federal agency actions, we are seeing a slew of nastiness gushing out of this AK administration. One crystal clear example of an a move that is both authoritarian and kleptocratic, DJT reinstated schedule F for federal employees. Biden had got rid of it. 

 

The EO reinstating Schedule F for federal employees, titled "Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce," was issued on January 20, 2025. It strips employment protections for federal workers in positions deemed to be of a "confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character." That sounds like it covers just about all federal employees. The order reclassifies these employees into the excepted service, making them at-will employees. They are now easy to fire or any reason or no reason. This action is necessary to get rid of federal employees who are not seen as sufficiently loyal to DJT. They will be replaced by AK people loyal to DJT. This comes as no surprise.

In other action, the Justice Department stopped all civil rights lawsuits. The memo doesn’t say how long the freeze will last, but it essentially shuts down the civil rights division for at least the first weeks of the AK administration. The DoJ cannot not pursue new indictments, cases or settlements related to civil rights. I have warned over and over and over that DJT and MAGA would target civil liberties and move to limit them as much as the authoritarians could get away with. This comes as no surprise. The WaPo commented:

“It’s beyond unusual — it’s unprecedented. We’ve never seen this before at this scale with any transfer of power, regardless of the ideology of any incoming president or administration,” said Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “This should make Americans both angry and deeply worried. This is more than just a changing course of philosophy — this is exactly what most people [in the civil rights community] feared: a Justice Department that was created to protect civil rights literally abdicating its duty and responsibility to protect Americans from all forms of discrimination.”

 

A January 21, 2025, EO entitled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” revokes EO 11246, a 1965 order that prohibited discrimination by federal contractors and required affirmative action to ensure equal employment opportunity. That earlier EO required federal contractors with at least 50 employees and a single contract of $50,000 or more to develop an Affirmative Action Program. This new EO also puts restrictions on the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, prohibiting it from “[p]romoting ‘diversity’ ” or “[a]llowing or encouraging Federal contractors and subcontractors to engage in workforce balancing based on race, color, sex, sexual preference, religion, or national origin.” This is part of MAGA's goal of completely obliterating DEI and anti-discrimination laws that protected various minorities. This comes as no surprise.

Evidence of authoritarianism is in DJT's clemency grant for all ~1,500 rioters charged in connection with his 1/6 coup attempt. 

Evidence of kleptocracy is in DJT's EO that declares a national energy emergency. There is no actual energy emergency in America, but there is a high incentive for DJT to favor fossil fuels in return for massive "gratuities" (bribes) from the fossil fuel sector. The EO covers “energy” or “energy resources”, meaning crude oil, natural gas, lease condensates, natural gas liquids, refined petroleum products, uranium, coal, biofuels, geothermal heat, the kinetic movement of flowing water, and critical minerals, as defined by 30 U.S.C. 1606 (a)(3). Notice that neither wind nor solar are included in DJT's faux emergency. The purpose of this EO is laid out in a pack of insulting lies and slanders:

Section 1. Purpose. The energy and critical minerals (“energy”) identification, leasing, development, production, transportation, refining, and generation capacity of the United States are all far too inadequate to meet our Nation’s needs. We need a reliable, diversified, and affordable supply of energy to drive our Nation’s manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, and defense industries, and to sustain the basics of modern life and military preparedness. Caused by the harmful and shortsighted policies of the previous administration, our Nation’s inadequate energy supply and infrastructure causes and makes worse the high energy prices that devastate Americans, particularly those living on low- and fixed-incomes.

I could go on and on. People either see serious anti-democratic threat in all of this or they don't.

____________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________

THINKING INSIDE THE DJT BOX:

A MAYHEM THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

What could a lying, naughty, authoritarian US president with a short temper, absolutely no morals other than self-interest and a profoundly kleptocratic personality do? Specifically, DJT thinks to himself, what can I do and how much can I get away with? The thinking might go something like this:

DJT thinking to himself: US presidents now have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions that are within the president's "core constitutional powers." Ha! That was Trump vs US. I beat US in that one by God. My core constitutional powers include commanding the armed forces, granting pardons, dealing with foreign relations and executive power to appoint and remove executive officers, issue executive orders, and manage national affairs. For actions that are within the "outer perimeter of my official responsibility", an undefined concept but not part of the core constitutional powers, I get at least presumptive immunity. This means that the government must show that criminalizing such an act poses no "dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch" to overcome this immunity. A president has no immunity from prosecution for any unofficial actions, which are acts not taken in his official capacity as president, but those actions are also not defined. 

In civil lawsuits, a president is absolutely immune from actions for civil damages for all acts within the "outer perimeter of his official duties", as established in Nixon v. Fitzgerald.

In terms of bribery, heck, the USSC legalized it in June 2024 in the case Snyder v. United States. The only wrinkle is that the payoff has to come after a president has done something that someone is willing to pay enough for. That's no big deal. A wink, wink, nudge, nudge before I act is a no-brainer. Everyone knows how the power and money game is played.

Hm, the USSC is itself pretty much authoritarian kleptocrat. It is very much on my side. I put them there, so they owe me bigly. If there is doubt of criminal or civil liability, the USSC will resolve it in my favor. After all, they protected me from prosecution for my 1/6 coup attempt, they gave me a huge amount of new immunity and they legalized bribery. Geez, what more could I want? My back is covered on the legal front. 

Hm, I can also order my people to break laws and take money for their own benefit, provided they cut me in. I can pardon them if they get caught, so no big deal there.

What about the billionaires? Me and Musk are tight. We're good for now. I scared Bezos into shutting WaPo up about Harris before the election. I scared Zukerberg into stopping that fact checking nonsense on Facebook. Ha! That one was really great! Zuckerbucks, what a wuss. Now the lies and slanders are gonna flow fast and furious. I love it! 

The American people? Nah, they won't wake up in time to do diddly. Me, MAGA and our huge demagoguery machine can keep them distracted and at each other's throats for a long time. Maybe they'll never wake up. 

. . . . . . . Fuck, I'm golden! I can get away with just about anything and no one can touch me. This is gonna be fun. And, it's my last, best chance to just be me . . . . . . 

Q: Is that a plausible approximation of DJT's thinking?