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Does Trump Secretly Hope The Supremes Will Stop Musk For Him?

In response to’ the flurry of cases being brought against the Trump administration for its radical attempts to slash and burn all aspects of the federal government without constitutional authority, we’re seeing some arguments from Republicans that lead to the conclusion that there is at least some consideration being given to simply ignoring the courts orders. Some have evoked the likely apocryphal statement attributed to President Andrew Jackson in which he was said to have declared “[Chief Justice] “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it” which raises the question if Trump is planning to abide by Court rulings he doesn’t agree with.

The NY Times described the famous quote as “potent” because it does perfectly illustrate perhaps the most important “norm” in our system of government, the acknowledgement and acceptance of the idea set forth by The Marshall Court in the 1803 case Marbury v. Madison that “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.  Those who apply the rule to particular cases must, of necessity, expound and interpret the rule.”

Jackson asked the frankly logical question of how such a thing could be practically enforced by the co-equal judicial branch against the executive if it has no coercive power of its own. Obviously, it depends upon the agreed upon norm by all three branches of government as well as the states that the federal judiciary is the ultimate interpreter of the U.S. Constitution.

Therefore, this concept that the judiciary is the final arbiter has always been built on a somewhat shaky premise that really comes down to “somebody’s got to be the one to decide” and I assume the idea is that the Court was considered to be the most insulated from crude political concerns so it was the most likely to make a dispassionate decision. We know that’s a very dicey assumption but continue to hope that they will, at least, have an eye on the bigger picture when it comes to momentous Constitutional crises. We may be about to find out if that’s true.

This concept has been contested, particularly by the states, even as recently as the 1950s and 1960s. For instance, when Arkansas refused to desegregate the public schools under order of the Supreme Court in Brown vs Board of Education President Eisenhower had to order federal troops to enforce it. But what if it had been a decision that required the President himself to act against his understanding of his own powers under the Constitution? It happened in 1974 when the Supreme Court ordered Richard Nixon to turn over the tapes of his conversations to the U.S. Congress during the Watergate Scandal. Had he refused, there was no way for the Court to have enforced it but Nixon acquiesced and the rest is history. (He also knew he was on thin ice with the Congress which also had a stake in the outcome. If he had a supine Congress such as the one we have today, I suspect he would have told the Court to pound sand.)

Presidents Lincoln and Roosevelt Both questioned the idea of “judicial supremacy” and took actions which arguably ignored judicial rulings by continuing to pursue them through the courts and attempted to change them through legislation during grave national crises. But there was never an outright dare to the Court to force them to acquiesce.

The Vice President is the most high profile official to advance the notion that the president isn’t required to adhere to judicial orders. Over the weekend, in response to the various judicial actions requiring the Trump administration to pause much of its program to destroy the federal government and he tweeted:

As the Times noted, this issue was addressed by Chief Justice John Roberts in his year-end report:

“Every administration suffers defeats in the court system — sometimes in cases with major ramifications for executive or legislative power or other consequential topics,” he wrote. “Nevertheless, for the past several decades, the decisions of the courts, popular or not, have been followed, and the nation has avoided the standoffs that plagued the 1950s and 1960s.”

“Within the past few years, however,” the chief justice went on, “elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings. These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected.”

He added, “the role of the judicial branch is to say what the law is,” but “judicial independence is undermined unless the other branches are firm in their responsibility to enforce the court’s decrees.”

Good luck with that. Any thought that this Congress will act to restrain Trump or have the Court’s back is fantasy. The GOP majority has turned over its Constitutional prerogatives to Trump and Musk and is slinking away like a pack of beaten dogs.

Constitutional lawyer and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, pretty much turned over his gavel to Elon Musk and his teen-age Dogeboys:

Or, take for example the comment from Thom Tillis, the allegedly moderate GOP Senator from North Carolina saying that what Trump is doing “runs afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense” but “nobody should bellyache about that.”

Even Elon Musk’s own platform X says the courts decide what the law is in response to an ignorant comment from Trump’s personal lawyer and counsellor to the President Alina Habba:

But an interesting thing happened on Tuesday afternoon that made me think there’s a possibility that all isn’t as it seems with this strategy. Trump held one of his Executive Order pageants in the Oval Office and he was joined by a bizarrely attired Elon Musk and his little toddler son X. He asked Musk to take some questions which he did as his son crawled all over him as Trump looked on, visibly annoyed. It was very strange.

We know that Trump often degrades and insults judges who rule in ways he doesn’t like. (Musk has suggested that they need to be impeached.) So when Trump was asked if he planned to comply with court orders I assumed that he would rant and rave about crooked judges and rigged cases as he usually does. But he didn’t.

This is what he said:

“I always abide by the courts and then I’ll have to appeal it. But then what he’s done is he’s slowed down momentum. And it gives crooked people more time to cover up the books. The answer is I always abide by the courts, always abide by them. And we’ll appeal. But appeals take a long time.”

He went on to say that he didn’t think any court would tell him that they aren’t allowed to audit the agencies and look for fraud. But nobody’s saying the president doesn’t have the right to do that. This is about whether the Executive branch has the authority to usurp the power of Congress to appropriate and spend money, create or end agencies and fire people with civil service protections without cause (among other things.) It’s about whether they are required to follow the law and procedures that govern how the executive branch operates under the Constitution.

The answer was very unlike him and it occurred to me after watching him look on as Musk was bizarrely attempting to justify his radical actions that Trump isn’t really on board with all this. Does he want the courts to slow everything down? Is he hoping that the Supreme Court will rule against this Musk and Project 2025 dumpster fire?

I wonder. He ran against the “deep state” to wreak revenge on the DOJ and the Intelligence Community for pursuing his criminal behavior. But I never got the idea that he was hellbent on destroying the federal government. He doesn’t care about deficits, that’s for sure, repeatedly assuring the voters that tariffs and “growth” were going to eliminate them. This isn’t really his agenda.

Watching the look on his face as Musk held court, I couldn’t help but think that Trump is rueing the day that he hooked up with this weirdo. He doesn’t really understand what he’s doing and he doesn’t know how to stop him. Maybe his pals on the Supreme Court will do him another solid and stop Musk for him.

Salon

Criminal Minds, Part Deux

If at first you don’t succeed….

“North Carolina will be the first and only state where elections oversight is within the state auditor’s office,” explains Ren Larson at The Assembly. Why is that and how did it happen? Therein lies a tale.

Let’s skip the odd bio of Dave Boliek, North Carolina’s newly elected Republican state auditor, and review the subhead, “Eight Years, Six Tries.” It started when Republicans lost the governor’s mansion in 2016 to Democrat Roy Cooper. The Republican-controlled legislature in a lame-duck session attempted a brazen power-grab aimed at transferring to the legislature some of Cooper’s appointment powers, including over the state Board of Elections:

In January 2018, the state Supreme Court ruled that the state legislature’s transfer of appointment powers from the executive branch to the legislature was unconstitutional.

Yet again Republican legislators struck back, passing a bill in June 2018 to allow voters to decide whether to amend the constitution and allow the legislature to make all eight appointments. Voters rejected it. 

Like déjà vu, Republicans in the legislature again stripped the governor of appointment powers in 2023 and expanded the board to eight members appointed by the legislature. This time, four votes went to legislative leaders of each party. A three-judge panel blocked the change, granting an injunction. (The case is still in superior court.)

In another lame duck session after losing the governor’s race again in November 2024, the GOP legislature went around the separation of powers stumblingblock by assigning control of elections oversight to the newly elected Republican state auditor, Boliek, a devout Trump supplicant elected to the executive branch.

It takes a criminal mind.

(h/t BF)

Elon Musk’s Fiji Mermaid

Assassination by innuendo

By now you’ve seen Tuesday’s bizarre press event in the Oval Office. The leader of the free world expounded at length on rooting out fraud and waste in the U.S. government while Donald Trump, his lieutenant, sat inert behind a large desk.

I don’t know what they teach in journalism schools these days, but insisting that political figures back up wild claims with checkable data and facts seems to have fallen out of the curriculum. After their shoddy work recently, headline writers at The New York Times this morning seem to have found a little backbone with Appearing With Trump, Musk Makes Broad Claims of Federal Fraud Without Proof:

The billionaire Elon Musk said in an extraordinary Oval Office appearance on Tuesday that he was providing maximum transparency in his government cost-cutting initiative, but offered no evidence for his sweeping claims that the federal bureaucracy had been corrupted by cheats and officials who had approved money for “fraudsters.”

[…]

Among Mr. Musk’s claims, which he offered without providing evidence, was that some officials at the now-gutted U.S. Agency for International Development had been taking “kickbacks.” He said that “quite a few people” in the bureaucracy somehow had “managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position,” without explaining how he had made that assessment. He later claimed that some recipients of Social Security checks were as old as 150.

As if those assertions were not fact-free enough, Musk claimed without evidence that he and his Muskovites are being “maximally transparent.”

In reality, Mr. Musk’s team is operating in deep secrecy: surprising federal employees by descending upon agencies and gaining access to sensitive data systems. Mr. Musk himself is a “special government employee,” which, the White House has said, means his financial disclosure filing will not be made public.

Musk and his DOGE team mean to “restore democracy” (whatever that means) and strangle bureaucracy in the bathtub (or something). Critics say he’s operating with unchecked power; dozens of lawsuits have been filed to stop him; judges have ordered halts to his activities; etc.

But what’s also unchecked for years now are political figures assassinating opponents by innuendo while reporters take dictation. Wild claim after wild claim unsupported by evidence. Whether it’s voter fraud or “stolen” elections or, in this case, allegations of “billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse” and “widespread corruption” uncovered, not by skilled forensic accountants, but by Muskovite coders, the claims go unchallenged by the Fourth Estate when the time to challenge them is when they are being made.

Make them put up or shut up. Demand proof that is proof, not simply innuendo piled upon innuendo. Even the Trump health care “plan” the White House delivered to “60 Minutes” anchor Lesley Stahl in 2020 was eyewash, a thick binder “filled with executive orders and congressional initiatives, but no comprehensive healthcare plan.”

In August 2023, Trump insisted he’d assembled “A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia” but never showed his cards.

Rudy Giuliani was disbarred in D.C. for making stolen election claims after the 2020 election, He showed off a thick binder of “evidence” that wasn’t.

Musk is simply the latest huckster to get away with this sort of carnival act, a Washington version of P.T. Barnum’s Fiji mermaid. If there’s something that needs stopping, it’s allowing these con men to spoon-feed the public BS unchallenged.

Let’s review:

A close friend used to have this joke he did where when someone made vaporous, unsupported statements like Trump’s, his stock response was, “Oh, yeah? Name five.”

Update: The $400 Billion Dollar Man is in “just asking questions” mode, kicking down.

The President, The Co-President and The Secretary of DOGE

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1889427433922736393

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1889429801015894518

Reporters: But if there is a conflict of interest when it comes to you yourself, for instance, you’ve received billions of dollars in federal contracts.. Is there any sort of accountability check and balance in place that would provide any transparency for the American people?

Musk: If you see anything you say like, wait a second, Elon, that seems like maybe that’s, you know, there’s a conflict there. They’ll say it immediately.

That was one of the most surreal events I’ve ever seen. Trump was like an old, withered potted plant sitting next to him.

Where Is All This Going?

I would guess that we’re all in pretty much the same boat with that question right now. I don’t have any answers except to say that this is a serious crisis and it’s hard to see a way out. It’s overwhelming mostly because the entire Republican Party has signed on and they hold all the institutional power. (We’re about to find out if they at completely willing to castrate the judiciary as thoroughly as they castrated themselves.)

Josh Marshall addresses a couple of the big questions in his piece today. The first that’s commonly asked is whether or not this strategy of holding up the budget and/or the debt ceiling really makes any sense in light of the fact that the Republicans and the White House are all liars and we can almost bet on them reneging on any deal that’s made and not even attempt to make it look legitimate. Might makes right, right?

Marshall says the key is for Democrats to remember that it’s Trump who needs a deal not them. He offers a few ideas, such as very short term CRs to keep the issue on the front burner but makes it clear that they simply must not take ownership of this problem (a problem Trump does understand is his because, as you’ll recall, he begged the Congress to raise the debt ceiling before the inauguration.)

The second question he gets all the time is why “The Resistance” doesn’t seem to have materialized. He points out quite rightly that what really tripped Trump up in his first term was the quiet resistance groups that grew up all over the country even as the big demonstrations took most of the attention. And those groups are actually quite active right now. He notes:

[W]hile it hasn’t yet percolated up to DC journalists, something very dramatic started happening among rank and file Democrats roughly two weeks ago. It only started registering with elected Democrats in DC mid-last-week.

There is no doubt about it. People are alarmed and they are getting organized.

He also explains, quite astutely I think, that the dynamic was very different in 2017 because everyone, including Trump and the Republicans, thought his election was a fluke. Nobody expected him to win, they weren’t prepared and people thought that he could possibly be forced to resign or the law would take him out. Now, after two impeachment acquittals, an insurrection, a successful Big Lie, numerous failed prosecutions and a restoration it’s pretty clear that it’s not that easy. He writes:

The 2024 election was very, very different. It’s wrong to say that people voted for every last thing that is happening now or whatever he happened to say at one point or another on the campaign trail. That’s not how voting works. At least a quarter of the electorate votes with only the vaguest sense of what each candidate is proposing. But it is certainly true that almost everyone had a general sense of what kind of person Trump was and what kind of president he’d be. He’d already been President, after all. What’s more the entire campaign had been run with the clear understanding that Trump winning was a very real possibility. So people couldn’t vote for him thinking it was a throwaway vote with no consequence. He didn’t just slip through. It was a very close election. But he won a plurality if not a majority of the vote and he reclaimed the industrial midwest.

This led not only to a profound demoralization that Democrats are only now emerging from. It also made his presidency seem far less fragile than it had seemed when it was perceived (and to some degree was) an accident eight years ago. The logic of mass demonstrations and other kinds of performative resistance just doesn’t play the same way. People are also in the midst, very much the targets of a far-ranging shock and awe campaign from which they are only now after a couple weeks recovering their wits. So some of the difference people are noting isn’t just demoralization or giving up. It’s a rational response to a different set of circumstances. A few big hits won’t end this. This is for the long haul.

It’s depressing but it’s also just realistic. Trump is no longer the accidental president he was in the first term. He’s the undisputed head of the Republican party and all the near misses have given him the reputation of a Strongman who cannot be stopped. It’s going to take some different strategies and a commitment to sticking with the fight to thwart his worst impulses and end this assault on our values and principles. The opposition just has to put its head down, take one step at a time in as many different directions as possible and just not give up. What choice do we have?

“Maybe They’ll Be Russians Someday”

Vlad is thrilled

The White House is indicating that they are on the verge of getting some kind of a peace deal in Ukraine. There aren’t a lot of details but he said something today that gives us a big clue about what it might be like:

Trump discussed his administration’s effort to end the war in an interview with Fox News that aired Monday, ahead of a meeting tabled for this week between his vice president, JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“They (Ukraine) may make a deal, they may not make a deal. They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday,” Trump said. He stressed that he also wanted to see a return on investment with US aid for Ukraine, again floating the idea of a trade for Kyiv’s rare earth minerals.

The US president’s comments will likely delight the Kremlin, which has illegally annexed four Ukrainian regions since launching its full-scale invasion and seeks Ukraine’s total submission.

“A significant part of Ukraine wants to become Russia, and the fact that it has already become Russia is (undeniable),” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday, when asked about Trump’s comments.

It’s always been obvious that Trump is going to attempt to take a deal that will allow Russia to keep a large portion of the country with no guarantee that they won’t take more. His comments today validate that assumption. ” They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday…”

The Trump-Musk co-presidency looks more and more like a division of labor. Musk is here to wreck the Federal government to favor the oligarchs and Trump’s buddies leaving Trump free to destroy US standing throughout the world with a bunch of lunatic demands designed to destroy the world order and replace it with some kind of American world domination. They’re both making a damned good run at it.

The Law Is For Losers

Trump’s accomplices are winners

It’s a criminal free-for-all:

Steve Bannon pleaded guilty to a state charge on Tuesday for his role in a plot to defraud donors to a nonprofit devoted to building a wall on the country’s southern border.

Bannon won’t serve time behind bars under the plea agreement, which was laid out during a hearing in a New York courtroom on Tuesday. In exchange for pleading guilty to one count of scheming to defraud in the first degree, he received a sentence of conditional discharge for three years. The sentence means he can’t serve as the director of any nonprofit in New York or raise money for charities with assets in the state. He was also forbidden from using donor data stemming from the scheme…

The Trump ally attended the hearing in his usual courtroom attire, a brown jacket and untucked black button-down shirt, over gray jeans. He was charged with two counts of money laundering in the second degree, two counts of conspiracy in the fourth degree, a scheme to defraud in the first degree and conspiracy in the fifth degree. Under the plea agreement, Bannon entered a guilty plea to just the first degree scheme to defraud charge. He also waived his right to appeal the case.

A federal grand jury indicted Bannon in a similar case in August 2020. That prosecution came to an abrupt halt when Bannon was pardoned by Mr. Trump in the final hours of his first term in office. Mr. Trump’s pardon authority extends to federal matters, meaning he is not able to pardon Bannon in this case, which is in a New York State court.  

He cheated MAGA true believers out of 15 million dollar. I guess since they don’t seem to mind we shouldn’t either? Ok then.

I think it’s pretty clear that no Trump associate is ever going to suffer any legal consequences going forward. Even the ones not known as an accomplice are immune if they make the right moves to lick his boots the way he likes them licked:

The Justice Department on Monday ordered federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, arguing in a remarkable departure from long-standing norms that the case was interfering with the mayor’s ability to aid the president’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

In a two-page memo obtained by The Associated Press, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told prosecutors in New York that they were “directed to dismiss” the bribery charges against Adams immediately.

Bove said the order was not based on the strength of evidence in the case, but rather because it had been brought too close to Adams reelection campaign and was distracting from the mayor’s efforts to assist in the Trump administration’s law-and-order priorities.

“The pending prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime,” Bove wrote.

There’s a method to the madness:

I get the sense that he’s more than willing. Watch out NY. Things are about to get really crazy.

Why Trump Really Wants Canada

It’s Great and it’s White

Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas | SCTV | Great White North: Canadian Education

Deadline from Sunday:

“We lose $200 billion a year with Canada, and I’m not going to let that happen,” Trump said. “It’s too much. Why are we paying $200 billion a year, essentially in subsidy to Canada? Now, if they are a 51st state, I don’t mind doing it.”

The U.S. does not provide a $200 billion subsidy to Canada, but it appears that Trump was referring to the trade deficit with the country, which is not the same thing. In December, the goods and services trade deficit was $98.4 billion, per the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Hard to believe, but there are libraries filled with things Trump doesn’t know, eh?

In talking about annexation and tariffs, Trump seemed to be drawing his inspiration in part from 1995’s Michael Moore’s Canadian Bacon invasion satire and the Blame Canada themed South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut movie of 1999. 

What She Said

As usual, AOC says it plainly and clearly. But the party does appear to be coalescing into something of a plan even if the leadership is using language more suited to 2015 than 2025:

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) in a letter to colleagues Monday warned of the possibility of a “Trump shutdown” and reminded fellow senators that Democrats have the power to make or break any bill to fund the government past March 14.

Democrats in the Senate and House are looking more seriously at the looming funding deadline as an important point of leverage to slow or stop President Trump’s and Elon Musk’s freezing of federal payments, lockout of federal workers and plans to slash government spending by trillions of dollars.

Schumer wrote that Democrats want to avoid a shutdown and argued that if Congress fails to reach a government funding deal by the March 14 deadline, the fault would lie with Trump.

“Legislation in the Senate requires 60 votes and Senate Democrats will use our votes to help steady the ship for the American people in these turbulent times. It is incumbent on responsible Republicans to get serious and work in a bipartisan fashion to avoid a Trump Shutdown,” Schumer wrote.

Schumer released the letter a day after rank-and-file Democrats threatened to use a government shutdown as a last resort to stop Trump’s and Musk’s aggressive review of federal programs, which has resulted in layoffs, furloughs and a pause on broad swaths of federal funding.

We’ll see. This tactic is one of the only points of leverage the Democrats have and they need to deploy it. I wish I thought it was some kind of slam dunk but the truth is that it’s a long shot. On the other hand, how could a government shutdown be more disruptive and chaotic than what we’re living through right now? They’re already blowing the place up.

Who’s Going To Buy A Tesla?

JV Last answers a question I’ve wondered about recently. A year ago my neighborhood was inundated with Teslas. California is the biggest US market for EVs and they were everywhere on the westside of LA. It was downright weird. Suddenly, there aren’t so many. There are other EVs but not so many Teslas. Apparently, Tesla’s popularity is in the toilet all over the world.

Why? Elon Musk has alienated the very market that was in love with his cars:

Elon Musk has made himself very popular with men who drive gas-powered pickup trucks and have no intention of ever buying an EV. Meanwhile, he has made himself toxic to the kinds of people most likely to buy EVs in the coming years.

Let’s start with the trade pub Inside EVsreporting on post-election Tesla sales:

[F]ull-year and January sales results from various markets around the world indicate a bleak picture for the Elon Musk-led electric vehicle company. Even as it added the Cybertruck to its lineup in large volumes last year—which should have unlocked more buyers in America’s expansive pickup truck field—Tesla is seeing serious declines in places where it once had a near-lock on electric sales.

Some numbers:

  • California leads the United States in EV sales. In 2024 EV sales of all non-Tesla brands increased by 1.4 percent in the state while Tesla sales declined by 11.6 percent. That’s a steep drop in America’s most important EV market.
  • Germany is Europe’s biggest car market and Tesla has been the German EV sales champ for some time. Last month Tesla sales in Germany dropped by 60 percent compared to a year ago. Not a typo.
  • In France, year-over-year Tesla sales dropped by 63 percent in January.
  • In the U.K. overall EV sales were up 7 percent in January compared to January 2024, but Tesla sales were down 8 percent.
  • In China, January’s Tesla sales were down by 11.5 percent year-over-year.

This isn’t rocket science: In late 2024 Elon Musk inserted himself into global politics. He was gleefully antagonistic. He played footsie with Nazis. He made it known that he positively hates the woke, educated, “elites.”

I have no idea what it will take to seriously put a dent in his fortune. I suppose he’ll try to choke off his competition through some kind of government taxation or something and old addle-brained Trump will go right along with him. And those government contracts are almost certainly going to continue to be extremely lucrative. But Tesla represents the bulk of his fortune and he’s destroying the brand among the very people who will want to buy it. The average MAGA voter in Bumfuck USA ,whose idea of a luxury car is a Ford Raptor, is not among them.

As Last says, driving a Tesla is becoming a scarlet letter and the rest of us should help make that happen. He compares it to driving a car with a big confederate flag bumper sticker. It makes a statement. And you can’t just peel it off.

My very liberal neighbor loves his Tesla and I asked him if he was having any qualms about owning one considering everything that’s happening. He said he loves it but that his next car will be a Lucid Air. He buys a new car every two or three years.