Week 3
By 
Okay, I officially can’t keep up. I have to admit that my attention is particularly drawn to Elon Musk’s band of incels and the damage they are doing. But there were some important lawsuits this week that won stays of some of the destruction, by both the Muskites and executive orders. The list in this post will necessarily be incomplete. Please add more in the comments.
Doing a better job of tracking the lawsuits are Chris Geidner (LawDork, Bluesky), Roger Parloff (Lawfare, Bluesky), and the Just Security tracker.
Again, this is a thread for adding this week’s malfeasances and disasters, as well as what you’re doing or pushback you see by local officials. Let’s keep the expressions of outrage down and stick with actual events, not worst-case hypotheticals.
It’s been exhausting, which is part of the point. We (broadly, all of us who want to keep the US a democracy) have to keep up the pressure, but we also have to pace ourselves. It’s not my thing, but kicking back and enjoying the Super Bowl is a good thing to do. But let’s leave the Super Bowl discussion for the many threads that are being posted on that subject.
And yes, if you like, post your pets.
Here’s what the Trump administration did this week, in no particular order
- Levied tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China, breaking the agreement that Trump had negotiated. Delayed tariffs on Mexico in less than 24 hours, after President Claudia Scheinbaum promised some actions she had already planned. A little later for Canada.
- Consumer Finance Protection Bureau shut down by Scott Bessant, Treasury Secretary And Russell Vought, Christian Nationalist, who was confirmed as Director of OMB.
- Names of new employees at CIA sent to White House in an unclassified email requested by the White House.
- NIH put a 15% limit on overhead for grants. This will gut higher education and communities.
- Betty Cracker at Balloon Juice has a list.
Pushback
- Freeze on funding stayed.
- Maxwell Frost and other members of Congress show up at agencies, taking some action on the floor of Congress. Frost is on Bluesky and posts videos of the actions.
- Trump’s atttempt to put 2200 (2700? I’ve seen both) USAID employees on leave stayed.
- So far, two of Musk’s incels have been linked to racist and Nazi posts, and another to a website featuring all that and more. JD Vance, Donald Trump, and Musk think that the first of these, who was removed from the depredation team, should be restored.
- Musk’s incels access to the Treasury computers blocked. (Last night)
205 more weeks to go. What are you doing?