Month: February 2025

Are you interested in who supports whom after today's revenge fest in the Oval Office? Here's the scorecard:

That's 25-2 by my count, with Italy remaining neutral.

Donald Trump has been on a tear to eliminate DEI programs throughout the federal government. Now, in one sense, he clearly ran on this, so fair enough. What's more, if we're talking about killing Robin DiAngelo programs or similar beacons of enlightenment, well, even a lot of liberals will cheer you on.

But in MAGA world, this has metastasized into simply killing off all civil rights protections of all kinds.¹ Conservatives no longer want to admit even "yes, but" about racism. Instead, they want to flatly deny that women and minority groups suffer any possible discrimination at all. The result is the decimation of civil rights and EEO offices even though the relevant laws are still on the books:

It has long been on some conservatives’ wish list to kneecap the external civil rights work of the Labor Department’s contract compliance office, which for decades has audited the nation’s largest contractors — including Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Deloitte — to ensure fair pay and hiring.

Plans obtained by The Post show the office will maintain 50 employees to enforce discrimination law for veterans and workers with disabilities, but it will no longer be staffed to audit companies for pay and hiring disparities for women and minority workers.

There you have it. Vets and disabilities? Sure. Women and Black people? Fuhgeddaboutit.

¹It's even worse than that, of course. For example, recently "The President's Own" Marine Corps band was scheduled to begin a series of concerts featuring high school musicians of color who competed for spots. But merely performing with young Black musicians was too much for Trump's anti-DEI sensibilities. The concerts have been canceled.

Trump attack dog Ed Martin, the US Attorney for Washington DC, has demoted seven prosecutors in the DC office:

The prosecutors are among a larger group targeted for “retribution” by President Donald Trump...because of their roles in Jan. 6 Capitol seditious conspiracy and riot cases and others, including ones involving Trump allies such as advisers Stephen K. Bannon and Peter Navarro, according to eight people close to the office, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The seven prosecutors were notified by email Friday morning of their immediate removal from high-ranking supervisory or senior roles.... They were reassigned to misdemeanors or early case assessment screening in D.C. Superior Court, the people said.

These people didn't even do anything to Trump. They just got assigned to January 6 cases and then did their jobs prosecuting them. But no matter. Maximal revenge anyway.

I want to reiterate something: Donald Trump has been plotting his revenge against Volodymyr Zelensky ever since 2019, when Trump was impeached for trying to extort dirt on Joe Biden from Zelensky.

Trump is not especially pro-Putin on Ukraine and never has been. But he hates Zelensky, and he's happy to let Putin carve up Ukraine as a simple act of vengeance.

Zelensky's fate was settled five years ago. He just didn't know it. Trump must be chortling today over his Oval Office shouting match, designed for maximum humiliation of a guy he's been conniving against for a long time.

For obvious reasons there hasn't been any catblogging lately, but today my sister comes to the rescue. One of her colleagues does regular kitten fostering, and she frequently brings her latest batch into work for everyone to ooh and ah over.

This is Billie Jean, one of a litter of three. Just look at those deep, soulful eyes.

Apparently the Oval Office meeting this morning to sign a US-Ukraine mineral agreement didn't go well:

President Trump and Vice President JD Vance loudly berated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Friday in an explosive televised shouting match unlike any seen in the Oval Office between an American president and foreign leader in modern times.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance...sought to strong-arm him into making a peace deal on whatever terms the Americans dictate. With voices raised and tempers flaring, Mr. Trump threatened to abandon Ukraine altogether if Mr. Zelensky did not go along.

Talking over the Ukrainian leader, Mr. Vance...demanded that he thank Mr. Trump for his leadership... Minutes later, Mr. Trump seemed to call off the rest of the visit. “I have determined that President Zelenskyy is not ready for Peace if America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations,” he wrote on social media. “I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE. He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace.”

Trump just can't decide whether he likes Zelensky or not. One minute he's a dictator, the next minute he isn't. One minute he's offering a great deal that could be worth a trillion dollars, the next he's an ingrate who doesn't thank Trump enough.

Of course, this kind of shouting is also a possible sign of mental deterioration. It's a pretty common symptom of dementia and Alzheimer's.

POSTSCRIPT: There remains an open question of whether this was a genuine loss of temper or a carefully planned bit of humiliation. The presence of Vance suggests it was planned, since there was no special reason for him to be there.

I gotta say, if this was planned it demonstrates Trump's genuine sense of revenge against Zelensky, carried out coldly and when Zelensky least expected it. As a result, Trump is fully Putin's man now, simply because there are only two sides.

BEA releases everything all at once, so we have plenty more today than just an inflation print. Here's a couple of interesting ones.

First up is plain old Personal Consumption Expenditures. I'm showing this because it's unusual for PCE to go down substantially on a raw dollar basis even during recessions. But in January it was down nearly $80 billion from December:

That's not so great, but disposable income surged sharply:

Even on a conventional year-over-year basis income was up 1.8%. That isn't great news for inflation hawks, but it's good news for workers.

I think I still remember how to do this. Here is PCE inflation in January:

Not good. In more conventional year-over-year terms, headline PCE came in at 2.5%. Core PCE was 2.6%.

The news is chock full of reports that Social Security may fire as many as half of its workers—all of whom are being pressured to take early retirement in one form or another. It's a huge and seemingly arbitrary layoff.

What makes it especially odd is yesterday's memo from OPM telling agencies to create layoff plans by March 14. It's nowhere near March 14 yet, so why not take the extra time to do a little more planning? Especially since OPM explicitly prohibited Social Security from making layoff plans on its own:

Agencies or components that provide direct services to citizens (such as Social Security, Medicare, and veterans’ health care) shall not implement any proposed ARRPs until OMB and OPM certify that the plans will have a positive effect on the delivery of such services.

Very strange. OPM obviously hasn't had time to "certify" anything yet, so what's going on? Who's in charge?

The funny thing about all this is that I can see a case for big layoffs at Social Security. They seem tailor made to implement an expert chat system that would eliminate the need for almost all human support. Of course, this kind of thing doesn't pop into existence quickly. It would take a year or more to implement, and I realize this is too slow for Donald Trump's febrile mind. But if the MAGA crew were willing to act normally once in a while they might truly find a way of saving serious money here.¹

¹Or maybe not. It would take a lot of speccing and prepping and testing to figure out if it could work. But that's real life.

Kash Patel is director of the FBI and director of the ATF. Nevertheless:

He told officials he planned to spend a lot of time in Las Vegas, where he was living last year.

Um, OK. Maybe it's actually better this way.