Before Trump was elected, I figured there were a a range of possibilities if he won.
- On one end: he's a blowhard. He says lots of stuff he never follows up on.
- On the other end: He's dead serious this time. He's going to deport millions; put tariffs on everyone; take a sledgehammer to DEI; and nominate lunatics to his cabinet. It would be a bloodbath, but the courts and Republicans in the Senate would rein in the worst of it.
But it's been so much worse—though not on stuff he ran on. Deportations have been low and he's backed off on a bunch of tariffs. But DEI has turned into a jihad against anything that so much as mentions Black accomplishment—or women or Hispanics or anything else. USAID has been demolished for no reason and the medical research community is being torn to pieces. The entire federal workforce is being given a haircut with a blowtorch, with no apparent rhyme or reason. Elon Musk is tearing through federal agencies doing God knows what—he won't tell anyone. The righteous prosecution of a corrupt mayor has been pulled over protest as long as the mayor cooperates on deportations.
Foreign affairs is no better. Ukraine has refused Trump's demand for half its mineral wealth. Meanwhile Trump is busy punishing the AP for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico the absurd Gulf of America. Trump is pursuing random tariffs that make no sense, primarily on our allies. And he continues to make periodic threats against Greenland, Panama, and, Canada.
It's governance gone mad, with no explanation or apparent reason. And we have 205 more weeks of it.
Kevin, it's great you are back. Keep reheating those nachos.
lazarus has always been one of my favorite parables.
What surprised me is how many are just bowing to it. There is no obligation to follow instructions which violate court orders. There's no obligation to rename things when the President says. There's literally no obligation to change hiring processes or follow random guy from the President's suggestion to stop spending or be fired.
And his stupid guards have no jurisdiction to enforce illegal orders or even orders that violate the civil service.
The whole thing where a US Marshal shows up and the court says they have 'exhaust civil' when that literally being dismantled... it's nonsense.
Most civil servants cannot afford to defy the President. They have lives and families and need their jobs. Many of them have most of their professional experiences in narrowly focused work that only the government does --- there are few or no jobs in the private sector that they can do if they get fired by DOGE/Trump, legally or illegally.
this is true, but i think there is also a significant element of confusion among line level federal employees about the legality of all this and what they are required to do when a president or his minions make demands.
Exactly. Most civil servants are not lawyers capable of evaluating whether a particular action is legal or not and if it is not, whether they will be able to realistically get redress from a court and if it will be at all full redress or worth the effort even if they can. It is easier to keep your head down and hope to outlive the madness. Because unemployment and no pension can permanently screw your life up. (I am a retired Fed)
This is nonsense. They can, and should - because the result when they son't is just that they're fired, anyhow.
Ima need to see some data on that. Postgraduate degrees and law degrees are overrepresented among Government employees, and while many programs are unique to government, the jobs aren’t necessarily — project management, engineering, accounting, personnel, communications, logistics and more are transferable. If the courts allow the meat-axe cuts to stand, I believe the pool of of former government workers will be more hire-worthy than you think. Particularly since the cuts are indiscriminate, and the buyout will disproportionately be taken by the most employable.
I do not have data on that and would be surprised if it even existed. That's why I said "many."
As a retired Fed, I know, though, that a large proportion of my former co-workers (from a rather large organization) would have a very hard time finding different employment where what they did for the Government would be of much help in finding a job.
"DEI has turned into a jihad against anything that so much as mentions Black accomplishment—or women or Hispanics or anything else."
USDA boasted this week of saving taxpayers $11,000 by canceling a conference about biodiversity.
Keyword searches are no substitute for governance.
Biodiversity is what saves us money against diseases. Geez these guys are penny-pinching-pound-foolish.
Wait until Trump hears that an American got silver in the biathlon.
Well, a New Zealander got a silver medal for the US.
USDA boasted this week of saving taxpayers $11,000 by canceling a conference about biodiversity.
"Biodiversity?" Pfffft. Like that has anything to do with agriculture...
I was about to reply when I realized this was - almost certainly - snark.
For those that might not know, USDA is the home Department for the US Forest Service and what used to be known as the Soil Conservation Service.
And biodiversity has a role in crop genetics, farm land management, insect and disease control and many other aspects of the USDA agriculture and natural resource management mission areas.
You can't hide your woke diversity from them, just by putting a "bio" in front of it.
For the record — see item 10 under ‘Contracts’:
https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/02/14/secretary-rollins-takes-bold-action-stop-wasteful-spending-and-optimize-usda-better-serve-american
Told you so.
🛌🏽🕛🕐🕐🕒🕓🕔🕕🕖🕗🕘🕙🕚🧘🏽🔜💡
So here's the plan. A nationwide general strike to stop everything and force Musk and the convicted felon Trump to quit. They can't arrest millions of protesters and fire them all without achieving the ironic outcome of shutting down the economy, amirite?
Make the power of direct democracy beat back authoritarianism.
I've called two local protests to rally the opposition, to make it feel like someone notices and cares. I managed to get my sister and brother-in-law to join the first, reluctantly. No one else showed. At the second one it was just me and my wife. The response from passers by was largely supportive, meaning people would give thumbs up or mutter support, but that was about it.
We tried to make things easy -- convenient time and location, positive messages, color, theatricality, smiles. We didn't expect to achieve much. We just wanted some sense of momentum, some sense that people recognized the problem. We got essentially nothing.
My point is that if we can't even achieve this, in a very liberal area that voted for Harris by a wide margin -- a liberal part of Vermont -- the odds that a general nationwide strike would make the news, much less stop anything, seem slim to none to me.
It's worth doing. I'll keep trying to stand on the right side of history and hope someone joins me. But I'm afraid this pot is going to boil its frogs.
[Footnote: On social media I get hearts and thumbs up from the people who then don't show.]
I remember driving through Eugene Oregon, a prime hippie protester town, one weekend, a couple of decades ago. There was a park full of protest signs but no one standing around protesting.
I think it's a sign of the times, for sure. But, how did the massive 2017 Women's March on the convicted felon's inaugural weekend happen? Two ingredients:
(1) a tipping point of widespread outrage
(2) massive organizing and planning
We're (I'm) waiting for that tipping point and I believe that tipping point is the moment the convicted felon just ignores a SCOTUS ruling. At that point, what I'm saying is, the usual protests aren't going to cut it. We need labor unions to buy in and help organize their members with the Democratic Party to walk off the job and fill town squares with massive numbers of people.
And what if it's a SCOTUS ruling in Trump's favor? I'm expecting those more than the others.
In that case, I'm 100% expecting spontaneous riots, martial law, and a rash of assassination attempts. If SCOTUS is going to kill the Constitution, a lot of people will come to believe there is no such thing as law and order.
Unions are not going to save your asses.
1. Many, sometimes most, of their members support Trump.
2. They seem to have gotten the idea that if they are arms of the Democratic Party then they are legitimate targets. We will enact Right to Work laws, organize campaigns to get their members to quit, ban collective bargaining for government workers, and generally starve the beast of our dollars.
General strikes only work in countries like France where most workers, esp. public-sector, are unionized or at least highly organized along trade lines (like farmers) and a nationwide work stoppage can really bring things to a halt. Unfortunately here everything is fragmented and half the people being screwed by the Muskrump administration are eagerly supporting their own screwing. Hard to know what to do when your electorate is so aggressively ignorant.
U.S. is too big, diverse, and spread out for a general strike.Big marches can be effective, but over time their impact dwindles. Organizing in localities to pressure elected politicians, such as Indivisible groups, probably best shot for digging in on long=term opposition and resistance.
I knew someone would restate the old playbooks of resistance.
If you think that's what's needed, you can expect the US to become a reflection of Russia/Belarus/Hungary.
We need an American Maidan, but wider.
You could try a trucker blockade. Oops. Truckers are pro Trump.
A farmer blockade with tractors and manure dumps? The farmers are pro Trump.
Marches and road blockades by antiSemitic Hamasniks, illegal aliens, drag Queens, laid off government workers, climate protesters, and BLM rioters? There will be a line of cars in front of the marchers and fist fights over people cutting in line instead of waiting their turn to drive through / over them.
Oh, one of little faith, they will come around when they feel the effects of his actions.
Also, I never said it was necessary for 100% buy in, or even 75%; all you need is a majority that forces government and companies to shut down.
Clearly middle-of-the-road CalPundit is back! It is wonderful news to see your work once again. As usual, it appears to be what one would hope that ChatGPT might say about "good governance gone awry."
You're a fucking dick.
You are way too kind.
You didn't understand the "hope". Kevin writes so clearly and lucidly that he is a good model for an ideal sort of AI summary. He hits all the important points in a logical way.
I did not mean that to be an insult, but rather a compliment.
Never been so glad to see a chart in my life.
++
Don't take this the wrong way but I hope you get to see the 205 weeks. Although a better option would be less Trump with you still around.
It won't be over in 205 weeks. Anyway - it's already too late and FUBAR. It's really quite remarkable. The low life working class complains about being ignored and left adrift so they install a government made up of people who will continue to ignore them and leave them adrift. Hilarious. Devil you know, I suppose.
I still think Democrats should shut down the government - or rather let the republicans do it because they can't get their shit together. Default on the debt too. Some people think that democrats can win back some power in 2026, but I don't think it will matter even if they do win back the House. It's over. Save yourself.
Glad Mr. Drum is, perhaps, feeling a bit better.
Kevin's feeling well enough to be here. Kind of amazing.
Dems should do exactly that. Josh Marshall at TPM is laying the roadmap for what any hope of opposition can look like, and refusing to play with the sociopaths is at the top of the list.
Shut down? How?
Republicans are shutting down the government as is.
So ironic. The debt ceiling would be the one law of the millions of laws most easily ignored. And also ironic, I would agree with ignoring it, it is a stupid law. And additional irony, it disarms the Democrats' only normie, safely inside the box, option.
The democrats and coprorate media are quite simply playing a completely different game than the republicans. Hence, they are both utterly incapable of resisting it.
"And we have 205 more weeks of it."
First, and most important, it's great that you feel well enough to get back to posting about the world. Hope you bounce back to your old self soon,
Having said that: what have you seen in the first three or four weeks of this administration that makes you believe free and fair elections are likely, or even possible? My suspicion is that this only ends with (a) a prolonged national strike other economic action; (2) an actual revolution; or (3) complete societal collapse. But I suspect Americans are too complacent and submissive to fight for anything.
The path that will be easiest for everyone to swallow will be to maintain the appearance of free and fair elections while constantly using every available tool of the federal and red state governments to make life difficult for the opposition.
It isn't illegal to run against the GOP, but the FBI, IRS, local sherrifs, EPA, major media organizations, private employers, Dept of Labor, local tax adjusters, etc, will be actively targeting anyone who poses a threat. Most Americans will not support the shady, nearly criminals who seem to make up a majority of non-GOP candidates in the future and over time there will be many open and free....but unopposed elections.
Americans will have no problem voting in GOP supermajorities 65/35, 80/20 and expressing a wish that a second or third major party would provide a good option.....but you can't vote in suspected tax cheats who are polluting the neighborhood, have a link to illegal immigrants and were connected to some fraud allegations. Can't have that.
+1
Posted below, must read:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/path-american-authoritarianism-trump
This is actually the best news I've had in at least three months. No, not what you said, but just the fact that you said it. Hope you're feeling better and that the globulins kick in.
All the best
Well sonuvabitch, Kevin, life just got better.
Everyone here who hasn't yet must read the following, or be considered uninformed. This is the minimum of what we face domestically, and Vance's performances in Munich lay bare the aims of team evil internationally. We are in big, big trouble.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/path-american-authoritarianism-trump
Glad I'm not the only one leaving that link EVERYWHERE.
The part I don't necessarily agree with is that the US is 10x the landmass and a 97% higher population than Hungary. I don't think it will be as easy to control. He might threaten the major news outlets, but most information doesn't flow through them.
The one wildcard that I certainly didn't see coming (and not many others did, either) was Musk seizing control. I expected him to play the fall guy and take the blame for unpopular policies, eventually being fired to protect The Felon's popularity.
I think a different thing altogether is playing out. I think Musk has gotten a taste for power and will not give it up. He's got an unlimited bank account and anyone who thinks they can control him will find themselves on the wrong side of it. You can already see the leaking come out of the admin insiders that he's impossible to control. I think they'll pin it on him when the economy crashes, but it won't stop him. As Kara Swisher said, they can't afford to for him to be outside the tent.
I do think that by midterms the worm will have turned considerably.
Rampant outbreaks of diseases will erode popular support.
Unemployment and inflation will erode it further.
Failure to deliver on deportations will chip away at credibility.
Big moves to curtail abortion and birth control will damage it beyond repair.
How much of the Senate will be in play given all the above?
If ICE continues to fall short of its quotas for deportations, I fear that they will just cast a broader net. If your complexion is darker than a sheet of office bond, better carry your birth certificate at all times. Oh wait, they’re tearing up the 14th Amendment ….
"Failure to deliver on deportations will chip away at credibility."
Expectations like this are so unsupported by recent history. How many MAGA heads believe Trump did build that wall? And that happened before the last 4 years of media evolution. Now they believe we sent $50M worth of condoms to Hamas. Seriously, just say a big number and the job is done. "You just say it, and they believe you!"
Yes, it’s all awful beyond description, but I’m hoping this post means you’re feeling better?
And if you haven’t already, you should read the posts here and at LGM and Balloon Juice in response to your illness.
One thing I think we missed: Trump has checked out. He is vaguely interested in tariffs and deportations, but for the most part, he doesn't know or care what's going on. He's abdicated his presidency to Vance, Musk, Kennedy and those boys. And God help us all.
And Russell Vought and other Project 2025 operatives, executing that plan that TFM ‘knew nothing about’.
Can you imagine the media reaction right now if a Democratic president was going about implementing a policy platform they had spent the entire campaign disavowing? The font on the NYT, WSJ and WaPo headlines alone covering the story would cause a nationwide ink shortage (or cause browsers everywhere to crash trying to load them, to bring that up to date).
The double-standard is amazing.
Or if a Democratic President made, say, Reid Hoffman a Special Government Employee to restructure the Federal Government with no transparency?
+1
He never cared about being president. All he ever wanted was to stand on the WH balcony in mirror shades and epaulets with a bunch of fake medals on his chest and watch military parades march past.
Yep. And have a few people who slighted him fall out of high windows.
" Trump has checked out."
That is absolute nonsense.
There is no way Gabbard, Kennedy, Hegseth and Bondy would be confirmed without Trump in total control, and the same about the various shenanigans in the DOJ.
He Let others, mainly Musk, do the damage, but he keeps control, and if he feels he is losing it he will get rid of anybody that he doesn't trust.
I dunno (as Kevin would say). I think Trump has ceded power to Musk, unwillingly. I think threats of being primaried by Musk's endless bank account are how control is being kept - but that's already slipping as Congress is grasping how these cuts will impact their constituents. It's not going to play well with the voters that they stood by while local and state economies are gutted.
Also not going to play well that they voted to confirm an anti-vaxx lunatic when their kids are sick and dying.
Unfortunately for everyone who wants to DO SOMETHING right now, there are limited options beyond ending use of all Meta owned platforms, stopping shopping on Amazon, stop using Twitter, and find a better browser than Chrome (DuckDuckGo!). Beyond that, you just have to let this clusterf-- play out and erode support for Trump.
"I dunno (as Kevin would say). I think Trump has ceded power to Musk, unwillingly. "
How do you explain the appointments the confirmation of Gabbard and Bondy and the purges in the DOJ and the FBI? Musk clearly doesn't support any of these. This is Trump preparing to use law-enforcement and security agencies against political enemies.
"I think threats of being primaried by Musk's endless bank account are how control is being kept"
No.
The primarying threat is from MAGA, which listen to to Trump, not Musk. Trump can also threaten violence by MAGA.
You each have valid points. Trump is getting his way for appointments and agencies he cares about, rewarding his supporters and going after his enemies. There are large areas of government he doesn’t care about that Musk does, and the latter has seized control of these. They overlap on CFPB, since both want to be free to scam the marks.
The difference is that what Musk does has relatively small effect on democracy in the US, while what Trump does has huge effect, and if he he is still healthy in 2028 probably means the end of the democracy in the US.
It will take time to fix what Musk breaks, but if democracy gone it will not be fixed at all.
Agree that Trump is the greater threat to democracy, but Musk is doing the greater harm to individuals. And if he succeeds in eliminating USAiD, he will do the greater harm to our position in the developing world, to the benefit of China.
Trump has checked out.
Definitely.
There were signs of this for sure during his first term, and now without a doubt his mental decline continues. (Which shouldn't be surprising: he's an obese near 80 year old with a recent Covid infection and a history of stimulant use—not exactly conducive to optimal brain health!).
"Ukraine has refused Trump's demand for half its mineral wealth." Not exactly. Ukraine says it would agree to sharing its mineral wealth only if America guarantees Ukraine's security, which appears to be not happening.
Zelensky should make a counter-proposal: The US can have 100% of the mineral rights of the occupied lands.
YES!
hoping the new post is a positive sign
re trump2:
the machinery of government has been commandeered for trump's extraction economy; anything good will be dug up and sold to the highest bidder in the marketplace of corrupt governments and industry
anything that can't turn a profit will be sent to the blast furnace
we're in a tech-fueled gilded age with the oligarch's software agents funneling money into maga's pockets
As far as his base is concerned, he's doing things!!!
The economy is fine and nothing affects me!
Oh, so the prosecutors at the SDNY office have resigned in protest, but doesn't affect me.
The FBI is being purged--great, they're all commies, he backs the blue!
He's gutting the IRS--great, I hate taxes. It won't affect my refund!
He's gutting the EPA--great--I should be able to dump whatever I want into my river--it's not burst into flames in years!
He's putting tariffs on everything--great it helps the USA! Our farmers don't need foreign markets!
He's gutting foreign aid--great, that saves 30% of the budget!
He's gutting the Dept. of Education--great--I don't need a Pell grant!
He's gutting the Dept. of Energy--great--our nuclear weapons are just fine!
He's gutting NOAA--awesome--not affecting my weather reports!
He's gutting the State Department--great, I don't need a passport!
He's gutting Medicaid--great, I don't need rural hospitals!
He's gutting the NIH and the NSF--great, we don't need more "experts"!
.....
Everything will be fine, until it's not. The rebuilding will take many years, and the broken trust may never recover. This is not "creative destruction", it is nihilism. And Trump supporters will cling to the "deep-state is out to get us" narrative. Corporations will support that view, else they will be regulated to stop exploiting their customers. It's a lot easier to make money as a monopoly/monopsonist, until the oligarchy sucks out all the value from the people.
Nice to see Kevin's back and full of beans. Or charts, as it were. Hope this is the beginning of a sustained recovery!
You're back!!!! WooHoo!!!!!! Thrilled that you're doing well enough to post again!
So pleased to read your article..helpful as usual…
I have never been happier to see such a feisty KD posting as this one.
Its sort of simple. Mango Mussolini and Heir Musk, and their gang of incompetent sycophants, are embarking to lead the country to the MAGA/GOP promised land dreamed up by the Heritage Foundation, to destroy the Federal Government, and then rebuild it in their image, one that is loyal to the President only, and not the Constitution. We are going back to the "Spoils" system of the 1800's, whereby most of the Federal jobs are filled with political patronage appointees.
They are also hell bent on destroying the Atlantic Alliance and NATO. The "appeasement" deal he strikes with Putin on Ukraine could be the final event that seals the fate of the Alliance. Europe had better put on it's big boy pants, and gear up its military because there is no way that Orange shit stain will honor our Article 5 obligations.
Read somewhere this is a reiteration of the Commie Scare era - McCarthyism firing Federal Employees with relatives who were socialist kind of thing. It took 40 years to reach the denouement of that debacle.
The fish eyes in the taijitu are what we have become at this point. There is a long way to go. Keep the faith that change is possible.
Glad to see you're feeling well enough to not only blog and discuss, but also produce GRAPHS! It looks as if the gammaglobulin helped. We will all need to dig in and resist the Musky-Trumper onslaught on our country and its democracy. Excluding a few, of course, who will merely flee for greener fields.
Don't think the felon is too cognizant of what "he" is doing.
Just damn glad to see you are feeling better, at least well enough to write. Fingers crossed you keep improving.
So happy you are feeling up to posting.
I disagree with your characterization of these actions as madness. They are ruthless and calculating and extremely effective in the goal of weakening the USA for Russia's benefit. None of this is mysterious unless you choose to forget Vladimir Putin and Russia's ten-year-old war on the USA exists.
That is only half correct. It is ruthless and calculating and effective, but Russia (and Ukraine) is a side issue.
Trump wants to destroy the existing governace structure to become a dictator.
Republicans want to destroy it to help large corporations (and Musk wants to destroy it to help himself).
Good summary.
Like everyone else, I had tears in my eyes when I saw a full post with charts. Welcome back from the brink.
This. Thank you always, Kevin.
Some think Putin is playing 3D chess. I wouldn't give him that much credit but if we think of world domination as a game, what then is Trump's game?
I was almost stumped. Even a game of regular chess seems too complex and subtle for a guy with Trump’s limited reasoning ability.
The game of checkers almost fits, particularly because he likes the pretense of royalty and in many ways thinks he's a king. Checkers fits because you can be.....kinged.
But checkers doesn’t fully reflect the fecklessness of his initial domestic and international gambits. To me it’s as if he’s playing the game of Risk and thinks he can do anything he wants without consequences. He makes claim to foreign countries and their lands based on petty piques whispered in ear by rightist supporters. He has surrounded himself with the least competent advisers and cabinet in history. He shows a naive subservience to the wishes of Russia’s Putin and has precipitously abandoned complex treaties and agreements—some of which he negotiated during his previous term in office. And now he is negotiating a surrender of Ukrainian territory without involving Ukraine or our European allies.
he and his nooby Secretary of State are on track to destroy what is left of American “prestige, and undermine NATO and our allies in Europe. Russia, China and maybe even North Korea will view his actions as weakness.
But don’t worry, in his mind he can do anything he wants, it’s a game and he is king.
when even the liberal kevin drum is alarmed by the actions of the is presidency, you know it's bad.
What does your latest effluvium even mean, Troll? You know, in common English syntax.....
Dude, talking about posts that look like ChatGPT made them. Troll calling troll?
Read the reply upthread. The point was his way of writing provides a MODEL for an AI summary.
Certainly I did not explain that well, I agree. But lucidity, completeness and order are Kevin's long suits and are what AI claims to replicate.
I like the new data series, though I note that it begins shortly after the Democratic Convention. What date represents the zero datum? I'm thinking maybe when Obama was re-elected?