The Democrats cave.

 I have had enough of the Democrats. They have NO balls. 

Several Senate Democrats crossed the aisle despite getting no guaranteed deal on Obamacare subsidies

That means that Senate Democrats effectively caved with little to show for their healthcare push, save for the guarantee of a vote on the subsidies from Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., which was reflected in the updated CR. 

Senate Democrats are caving on the shutdown.

They’re getting a promise of a vote on ACA subsidies in the Senate, which will easily go down in defeat. Not to mention, Speaker Mike Johnson has said he’ll never even bring the matter up for a vote in the House. 

'Making this deal is malpractice.' It's Democrat vs. Democrat as shutdown nears end

The eight Democratic defectors who joined Republicans to reopen the government are facing widespread criticism from within their party.

Make no mistake: This is Schumer caving.

“Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced.  If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?”

Supreme Court games: A counterintuitive move

The three pro-democracy and pro-rule of law dems left on the USSC have little power. For the most part, they mostly write scathing dissents that authoritarian MAGA Republican judges blithely blow off. One of the dems, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, just pulled a sneaky move to try to defend the public interest. The lawsuit is about a lower federal court forcing Trump to pay SNAP food stamp benefits to poor people and Trump wanting to starve recipients a little (or maybe a lot). The detailed legal analysis by Trump critic and lawyer Steve Vladeck is at this link.

Germaine's summary of the legal analysis

Justice Brown Jackson issued a temporary pause on a court order requiring the Trump administration to fully fund food assistance during a government shutdown. That seems counterintuitive on its face, because that lets Trump block federal payments. But the unique conditions she imposed on her court order makes sense for someone who wants SNAP benefits paid out ASAP.

When the Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court asking for a pause on tht lower court order to pay the food benefits, the request went to Justice Jackson because she oversees cases from that federal court region. Jackson, the most vocal critic among the three dem justices about how the Court handles Trump emergency requests, faced a difficult choice: either grant the pause herself or be overruled by the six MAGA judges who would delay the case until people died of starvation.

To take away the power of the six MAGA freaks to delay, Jackson granted the temporary pause. But she added strict time limits and detailed instructions to her order. Her order automatically expires 48 hours after the appeals court rules. She explicitly told that court to rule quickly. If the full Court had issued the pause instead, it could have been open-ended with no deadline, potentially freezing food assistance indefinitely. By handling it herself with tight deadlines, Jackson forced everyone, the appeals court and the USSC itself, to resolve the issue within days rather than the weeks, months or years that similar cases have taken.

Jackson chose a strategic brief pause that she controlled the timing of over a much longer indefinite pause that MAGA judges would have imposed. This ensures the question of whether November food benefits will be decided quickly, even though it meant temporarily blocking the lower court order to pay the benefits. 

Of course, the real problem here is that Trump could simply choose to pay these benefits without any court order, but he refuses because, in his boundless cruelty and sadism, he likes to see people suffer.

Q: Is Germaine's summary at least a wee smidge over the top hyperbolic, or is he a good boy? Who's a good boy? Yeah, you're a good boy! 

@apa4dogs Who’s a good boy? 🐾💙 #blinddog #rescuedog #pitbull #dogtrainer #dogtraining #heyarnoldray #beachday #whosagoodboy #happydog ♬ Prancing - Kitruh

MAGA wealth & power politics: Take from the non-rich and give to the rich

The NYT reports (not paywalled) that Trump is, quietly as possible, handing out tax cuts worth hundreds of billions of dollars to some of the most profitable companies and wealthiest investors. When he was in office, the Dems passed a tax law that Biden signed in 2022. That law provided for a minimum tax of 15% on profits that large, highly profitable corporations make. This gift to the rich and powerful comes on top of the trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the rich and powerful that were included in the Trump-GOP budget law that passed this last summer. MAGA!!

The idea behind the law was to ensure that some of the country’s most profitable corporations pay at least some federal income tax. The law was a corporate alternative minimum tax that plugged some existing tax loopholes. The law was projected to raise $222 billion over a decade from companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Johnson & Johnson. That is a paltry $22 billion/year from corporations that make hundreds of billions/year in profits. 

For context, the Fortune 500 companies made $1.87 trillion in profits in 2024 and $1.7 trillion in 2023. Companies don't even want to pay that puny sum. They're greedy and callous. Corporations are there to make profit, not to make the world a better place or to save our democracy from tyranny or our environment from collapse.*

* Or sea level from rising 15 feet

Meanwhile, the official federal debt approaches $40 trillion and existing unfunded obligations (debt) as measured today** approaches Dog only knows what. Maybe $80 trillion in 25 years? Social Security and Medicare alone face approximately $73 trillion in unfunded obligations over the next 75 years.

** Or stated as unfunded obligations as assessed in year 2050

This governance by MAGA is irresponsible, cynical and profoundly corrupt. But, that is what voters voted for. That is what they are getting. And they are getting it good and hard.  

Q: Is the Reverse Robin Hood Party a reasonable alt-name for the Republican Party?

Regarding the Trump family kleptocracy: An American kleptocracy story

Don Jr might not fully control the company, but he doesn't need to. He only needs to use his connections with his father to make money via corruption. If memory serves, this is exactly what sent MAGA Republicans into a hair-on-fire frenzy over all the corruption and millions or billions of dollars that Hunter Biden allegedly made by leveraging his family relationship with his father. 

To show their honesty, recent past presidents have:

• Established qualified blind trusts (like Reagan, Carter, Bush, Clinton)—Trump refused​
• Divested from businesses—Trump refused​
• Released tax returns—Trump refused (breaking 40+ years of precedent)​
• Donated foreign profits in full—Trump donated 3% of what he received​
• Maintained ethics oversight—Trump fired the federal government's ethics director​
• Avoided policy decisions benefiting personal interests—Trump's executive orders directly benefit his family's businesses​
• Prevented family members from profiting—Trump Jr.'s net worth increased 10x to $500 million

Evidence that the Trump family is kleptocratic include all of that. None of those anti-corruption measures exist in the Trump administration. 

The Trump administration exhibits every definitional element of a kleptocracy. Trump uses his powers to shape procurement policy that benefit family investments​. The Trump family has accumulated at least ~$1.8 billion through their proximity to power​. Trump removed federal accountability mechanisms that kept corruption in check.​ Foreign governments openly pay Trump businesses businesses for access to Trump power.​ Trump policy on cryptocurrency (and this) and drone procurement feeds family profits.

So, we are still waiting to see those tax returns that Trump promised in 2016-2107 he would release as soon as the IRS finished its audits. 

Golly, it sure takes the IRS a long time to do an audit. /s

Q: Since the GOP supports Trump and refuses to look into Trump's corruption and his corrupt family, does that also make the Republican Party kleptocratic?[1]

Footnote:

1. Solid evidence points to GOP complicity in Trump and Trump family corruption. The GOP operates at multiple levels to enable and protect the corruption. The GOP engages in behavior that protects and supports institutional capture, and normalizes and legalizes corruption. Congressional Republicans have systematically blocked investigations into Trump family corruption. Senate Republicans have repeatedly blocked Democratic attempts to enforce constitutional emoluments provisions. The Republican-controlled Congress transformed oversight from a check on executive power into protection of the president.

The Republican Party has fundamentally changed under Trump. Political scientists document that the GOP has abandoned core conservative principles—free trade, limited government, fiscal restraint, American global leadership—in favor of Trump's personal agenda. A CNN-SSRS poll in January 2025 found that 53% of Republicans viewed loyalty to Trump as central to their political identity and "very important to what being a Republican is," exceeding support for traditionally core Republican values like "a less powerful federal government" (46%).

Republicans don't just fail to investigate Trump; they actively obstruct investigations. They fired ethics officials and defunded oversight mechanisms. All of that enriches Trump and his family at public expense. That is the core definition of kleptocracy.

Under trump, the GOP has changed from a political organization with policy preferences into what experts call a "loyalty cult". The Republican Party protects Trump's corruption not despite recognizing it but because protecting corruption is now central to maintaining power in the new party structure. Members who refuse, like Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney, are expelled.