Week 5
By 
There have been a number of court victories – some partial – that I’m not the best person to report on. Even the court-watchers (Chris Geidner (LawDork, Bluesky), Roger Parloff (Lawfare, Bluesky), and the Just Security tracker) are managing to get out only the most basic information because of the speed of events.
A new factor this week is constituents yelling at members of Congress at their town halls.
Something for the long run: We need to be thinking ahead to what kind of government and nation we want. I’m not going to post about that for a while, because first we need to break Trump and Musk. But keep in the back of your head that we are going to have to do a lot of reconstruction, and we might as well do that the way we would like to see things.
Feel free to add to the lists, but let’s keep it to things that have actually happened, not hypotheticals. I think it’s important to stay grounded with what has happened. Working out the hypotheticals is a different activity. Most of the comment for previous weeks has kept this grounding.
It’s exhausting. Take time out when you need to. Post your pets. Pet news from my household this week is that the kittens decided they no longer want to eat kitten food. Adult food has always been available because of Zooey, and they just stopped eating the kitten food. This makes mealtimes a lot easier for me.
Here’s what the Trump administration did this week, in no particular order
- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard were confirmed by the Senate (last week). Kash Patel was confirmed to head the FBI.
- Trump and Hegseth started a purge of the military Friday night by firing a Black guy and a woman.
- The administration is refusing to comply with order to open up spending. A judge told them to comply.
- Elon Musk arrived at an interview at CPAC flying high, brandishing a chainsaw.
- The administration is trying to extort Ukraine’s mineral wealth in return for no assurance of future support, and, in fact, a big swing toward the Kremlin’s goals.
Continuing
- The Eric Adams Saga in which several prosecutors resigned, leading to Emil Bove’s having to sign the document and a complex legal situation that I wish our legal eagles would explain. Some of the people who resigned were Trump appointees. Kathy Hochul did some good things and some not so good. I’m really sorry I can’t explain this better, but it would take all my time to follow this, and IANAL.
Pushback
- The acting Social Security commissioner quit rather than cooperate with Musk’s boys. It’s hard to evaluate these resignations as good or bad. They’re good in that people are standing up to the vandals, but perhaps leave a space to be filled corruptly. OTOH, there may not be enough Trump-Muskites to fill all the positions that are needed to make things work. I like the resistance part.
- Musk’s boys fired people who watch over nuclear weapons and bird flu and are trying to get them back.
- Judge halts firing of CIA personnel involved with DEI.
- Judge blocks Trump administration from terminating DEI-related grants
- Divisions are starting to appear in the administration.
- https://bsky.app/profile/swin24.bsky.social/post/3lipjym56lc2z
- Pushback at congressional town halls. Keep calling your members of Congress, and show up if possible. Here are a couple. Josh Marshall is collecting them on Bluesky. They are happening across the country, including Republican districts.
And, finally, this is just a rumor but
203 more weeks to go. What are you doing?