Under the terms of the agreement, Ukraine would pay some proceeds from future mineral resource development into a fund that would invest in projects in Ukraine.... The size of the U.S.’s stake in the fund and joint ownership deals will be hashed out in future agreements.
Well that's clear as mud—and it's the best explanation I could find. Does this mean the US gets money out of the deal? Or minerals? It's not clear to me that we really need any money from Ukraine, though Trump himself sure seems obsessed by the idea. But the minerals themselves are pretty valuable to us, so . . .
In any case, Zelensky is due in Washington on Friday to sign the deal, so presumably all the deets will be available by then.
This is going to sound a little dumb after everything that's gone down, but ..... what is actually the point of DOGE? That is, what does Elon Musk think is the point of DOGE?
By now it's obvious that Musk has no actual efficiency agenda on tap. He just waltzes into agencies, targets a few percent of the workforce for termination, and then moves along to another agency. This is not serious stuff.
What else? He's got his list of canceled contracts, which is also little more than a joke. The numbers are minuscule and he's never explained why some contracts are bad while others are OK.
Then there's his mysterious cadre of DOGE bros, who do mysterious programming work that Musk refuses to explain. But one thing we do know is that they aren't making anything more efficient. A few weeks of coding simply can't do that, no matter how smart the coders are. Whatever they're up to, it's something fairly simplistic that can be implemented without deep knowledge of the underlying system.
Finally there are Musk's periodic spectacles, like his chainsaw-wielding production number this weekend. He's a great showman, but that doesn't hide the fact that he never says anything substantive and is startlingly non-transparent.
None of this is meant to explain why I think DOGE is pointless. It's meant to question what Musk thinks about it. If he's not taking DOGE seriously—and he doesn't seem to be—then what game is he playing? Is he just bluffing Trump and hoping he can keep it up for a while like a Ponzi scheme? Or what?
Judges are getting angry. Federal District Judge Amir H. Ali ordered the Trump administration to resume USAID payments and he wants it done:
During the contentious, 90-minute hearing, Justice Department lawyer Indraneel Sur told Ali he was “not in a position to answer” whether the Trump administration had taken needed steps to allow the assistance to begin moving.
“I don’t know why I can’t get a straight answer from you,” Ali responded. “We are now 12 days in. You can’t answer me whether any of the funds … covered by the court’s order have been unfrozen?”
Trump keeps stalling on stuff like this, perhaps in hopes that he can get away with delaying until he appeals to the Supreme Court and persuades them to overturn the lower court ruling. That's probably what I'd do, though it isn't foolproof. Even if the Supreme Court agrees with Trump on the merits, they're almost certain to first rule clearly (even unanimously?) that he has to obey legal court orders. They won't undermine the judiciary by playing coy over this.
While I was snoozing away in the hospital last week I missed the latest Truth Social news. Here's the stock price since Election Day:
Odd. This is not how it's supposed to work. Trump is now president, so DJT should be increasing smartly. Right?
Sure, except for the fact that the performance of DJT continues to suck. Here are the latest financial results:
They lost $37.7 million yet again in the fourth quarter, for a total of $401 million on the year, and ad sales were a whopping $990,000. That's ridiculous. And CEO Devin Nunes got paid $47 million for this dismal performance:
“Typically there’s some sort of correlation between how well a company is doing and the CEO’s pay, said Michelle Leder, the editor of footnoted.com and an expert on SEC filings. “When a company loses over $400 million and gives its CEO a $44 million grant, you have to wonder what they’re being rewarded for.”
Johnson (R-Louisiana) is set to put a budget resolution up for a floor vote Tuesday, but is facing a potential revolt from swing-district Republicans wary of cuts to social safety net benefits and fiscal hawks who say the bill’s $2 trillion in spending cuts don’t reach far enough into federal coffers.
....The huge, Trump-endorsed legislative package that Republicans — and even some Democrats — have taken to calling the “big, beautiful bill,” is full of contradicting demands that have left some lawmakers uncertain how to proceed.
Keep in mind that, as always, budget numbers are taken over ten years. So they aren't really looking for $2 trillion, they're looking for about $200 billion.
That's still a lot. Domestic spending—which is all they care about since they plan to increase defense spending—amounts to roughly $2.4 trillion per year—which includes both discretionary spending and welfare spending but not Medicare or Social Security. So they're hoping to slash domestic spending by 10% or so.
That's a solid chunk of money, and it's unlikely they'll get anywhere close. It's just too painful for too many people. Hell, nearly half the cuts come from Medicaid alone, and even Donald Trump has said he doesn't want to touch Medicaid.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-New Jersey), formerly a Democrat, said he called Trump on Monday to tell the president to reinforce his pledge not to cut Medicaid. “Don’t touch seniors’ Medicare, and don’t cut Medicaid, because it isn’t just for lazy welfare people. It’s for real people,” Van Drew said. “That’s the new Republican Party, a populist party, a party of working people, a party of blue-collar people.”
Of all the things you don't care about, this might top the list:
In the corporate world, commercial paper is a small, short-term loan backed by nothing and used as working capital for things like financing payroll or receivables. In the financial world, money-center banks typically issue commercial paper as working capital to fund short-term loans. In either case it can be used only by companies so creditworthy they don't really need it, so why does anyone bother with it? I've never quite understood.
But maybe everyone is figuring that out, which is why commercial paper outstanding has been steadily on the decline for more than a decade. There's about a third less today than in 2015.
Does this matter? Does it mean anything? Or is it just one of those things? Does anyone know?
Here's a list of court orders that have put a halt to various Trump/DOGE firings and spending cuts. It's by no means comprehensive, just everything I could find at the moment. Its purpose is to show that neither Trump nor DOGE are steamrollers. They've had some wins, but they've had a lot of setbacks too.
Judge ordered DEI funding at NIH restored. NIH is resisting.
Office of Special Counsel rules that some firings were unlawful, though it's unclear how many.
Manhattan judge blocked DOGE from accessing Treasury payment systems.
DOGE might be killed entirely because administration refuses to say who runs it. Possibly unconstitutional if not run by Senate-confirmed nominee.
Judge calls White House ban of AP over Gulf of Mexico "discriminatory and problematic," and sets hearing for March.
A federal judge temporarily blocked ICE from immigration raids in churches in 35 states.
Trump has agreed to free up $2 billion in funds for Pennsylvania that had been "paused."
Multiple judges have halted Trump's ban on birthright citizenship.
Judge blocked DOGE from accessing sensitive info at OPM and Dept. of Education.
FDA rehires its medical device staff after laying them all off and then panicking over what they'd done.
Judge killed Trump's temporary payment freeze in 22 states. Trump claimed to have already rescinded the freeze, so nyah nyah. But it's not clear if Trump is complying.
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reverse its foreign aid funding freeze on existing programs.
A judge halted all firings at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. The CFPB's director was also ordered to maintain all records and not to transfer money out of the bureau’s reserve funds. In response, nearly all employees were placed on administrative leave.
A federal judge blocked Trump’s ban on refugee admissions, saying the directive appeared to amount to a “nullification” of federal law.
Last year the Biden State Department approved about $500,000 for EVs as diplomatic shuttles. This is . . . I don't know, maybe a dozen cars? Not very many, anyway, especially for a guy who's famously pro-EV.
Armored Teslas! And it was for $400 million, enough to replace every armored car in the diplomatic fleet:
According to the State Department document reviewed by NPR, there are about 3,000 armored cars and SUVs around the world that are used to transport diplomats, VIPs and other officials working for the State Department.
If every one of those vehicles was replaced with a new Cybertruck, which costs around $80,000 for an entry-level model, the bill would come out to about $250 million. The vehicles would then need to go through a process known as "up-armoring," which can cost tens of thousands of dollars per car. Multiply those costs by the size of the State Department's entire fleet and experts said $400 million would likely be a ballpark cost.
A Tesla Cybertruck that's fine for the Mojave Desert but entirely unsuitable for either up-armoring or for use in places like Karachi and Mogadishu.
Shortly after this became public the line item was quietly changed to "Armored Electric Vehicles." A week later it was eliminated entirely.
Elon Musk says he had nothing to do with this, and I probably believe him. First, it makes no sense. Teslas just aren't good candidates for up-armoring:
[Michael] Evanoff, a former senior State Department diplomatic security official with 40 years of experience, said the gold standard for diplomatic security are vehicles that are manufactured from the ground up with armor, not with armor added on later. Carmakers including Mercedes, BMW and GM offer such armored models. In fact, the State Department awarded GM a $300 million contract for armored SUVs in 2023.
A Cybertruck, he said, would not fit the bill.
Second, everyone knows about Donald Trump's grudge against EVs. He'd go ballistic if he heard about this, and Musk would never take that chance. It's not remotely worth the risk.
So what really happened? My guess is that some bright spark in the State Department put his finger to the wind and decided it was a neato idea that would get him in good with Musk, the administration's incoming viceroy. He didn't realize either how stupid it was or that the ultimate boss, Donald Trump, would never go for it. However, smarter people at State did realize this and quietly deep-sixed the whole idea.
But not quietly or quickly enough. It's now out there forever as one of the dumbest ideas ever.
Here's a chart showing airline fatalities over the past century. In 1980, at about the same time that commercial airlines began hiring Black and women pilots, fatalities began a 30-year decline to zero:
This is not a smoking gun. Fatalities likely went down for reasons of their own that were unrelated to civil-rights era hiring practices. Nonetheless, it almost certainly shows that "DEI hires" didn't produce any increase in accidents or fatalities. The evidence is flatly inconsistent with that.
So don't worry about the color or gender of your pilot the next time you board an airplane. It doesn't matter.
Last year the Biden administration ordered an investigation of unfair practices by China in the commercial shipbuilding industry. It was finished up and released just as Biden left office in January:
The report described a top-down, centrally controlled strategy by Beijing that not only puts the U.S. and other countries in a weak competitive position, but also threatens national security.
China’s share of the global shipbuilding market rose from less than 5% in 1999 to more than 50% in 2023, while pushing its ownership of the commercial world fleet to over 19% as of January 2024.
China controls 95% of global shipping container production, according to the report, and 86% percent of the world’s supply of intermodal chassis. The report said the targeting was enabled by government policies that unfairly depress costs or provide advantages.
Shipowners and analysts are trying to digest the proposal. Chinese-built ships face fees of up to $1 million for each U.S. port call based on the size of a company’s Chinese fleet.... There would be a second fee of up to $1 million based on how much of a company’s future ship orders come from Chinese shipyards. And for Chinese-owned operators like Cosco, there would be an additional fee of up to $1 million for each U.S. port call based on the ship’s size.
“For containerships their costs will be at least 10 times higher than existing charges and affect American importers, exporters and consumers,” said Lars Jensen, chief executive of Demark-based Vespucci Maritime, who advises several top shipping lines. “I hope that the public debate will avert this madness.”
That's a lot of fees, and many of them apply to shippers who merely own a single Chinese-made ship. But what are they supposed to do? Scuttle their existing fleet of Chinese ships? Sell them off to regional carriers who don't ship to or from the US? I don't know, but either way it's yet another big tax on Chinese goods entering the US.
And there's more! By 2032 US flagged/crewed ships need to carry 15% of US exports and US-built ships need to carry 5%. I'm not sure how this works since the US doesn't build any big ocean freighters these days, but I suppose we'll figure it out—most likely by punting when the day finally arrives. That's pretty often how we handle such things.
