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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: FAFO will hit voters well before it hits Republicans, but then... [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-01-29

Chris Murphy/X via Threadreader:

Look, Trump is trying to oversaturate us with nonstop chaos so we can’t react meaningfully to any one thing.

But Friday's global stop work order on almost all U.S. aid is dumb and murderous. You need to know about it. 1/ A short🧵on this evil.

x My message to Dem electeds: One of the big reasons we lost in 2024 was because people didn't see us as their champions.



You have the chance to change that, starting now. Millions are desperately in need of your help in the face of Trump's funding freeze. Fight for them. — Tom Bonier (@tbonier) January 28, 2025

x BREAKING:



A federal district judge just temporarily blocked Trump's freeze on federal grants and loans — pausing the plan for a week and setting a hearing for further arguments on Monday morning. — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 28, 2025

Matt Glassman/X visa Threadreader:

Ok. Impoundment. Some links to relevant authorities and commentary, and then thoughts of my own. What Trump is proposing potentially amounts to an upending of the separation of powers, and while that's not *inherently* bad, in this case it's bad. Very bad. 1/ 🧵 1. The facts: last night, the Trump administration, via OMB, put out a memo directing a agencies to temporarily pause all obligation or disbursement of federal financial assistance. 2/

So why so many X threads? Because, as Chitown Kev pointed out yesterday, the rhythms of traditional media can’t keep up with the speed and the proportionality of these stories.

x Among other things this idiotic freeze seems like a great way for Vought and the Heritage zealots to achieve their fever dreams in a way that maximizes political risk for congressional Republicans in 2026 — Aaron Fritschner (@Fritschner) January 29, 2025

Jill Lawrence/The Bulwark:

Sanity Check After Trump’s First Week Back in Office It’s not quite pitch black—but that’s no thanks to him. As a hailstorm of executive orders began raining down on America, I literally thought, what can I do to escape this? The answer that came to me was very strange: Go clean out your spice rack. So I did. And discovered that, judging from the sell-by date on a rusted tin of red pepper, I hadn’t done a ruthless spice-rack purge since 1984. In the end, there were twenty-two spice tins and jars to recycle. It was cleansing, I admit. It felt good. For about fifteen minutes. What turned out to be more helpful was a sampler-worthy phrase from Greg Dworkin, a friend and retired pediatrician who writes for Daily Kos. “Rage is motivational,” he told me. Yes it is! So is FOMO, and I’m going to embrace both. As “recovering lawyer” George Conway put it (and later assured me he was serious), “I think I’m going to get back into the practice of law. Seems like a lot of fun litigation is erupting, and I don’t want to miss out.” That’s the right attitude. This is a terrible moment, but it’s also a historic and challenging one. We can’t avoid it and we shouldn’t try to. Even if we occasionally have an inexplicable compulsion to put a blanket over our head, move to another country, or dive into a household chore we’ve put off for forty years.

Jill didn’t mention me for me to post this, but thanks all the same.

x Every media headline is calling it a “buyout” but when you read the actual email from OPM it’s simply an offer to telework until September. No cash buyout. https://t.co/MkZy5W4rs9 — Christina Henderson (@chenderson) January 29, 2025

Matt Johnson/The Bulwark:

Gabbard and RFK Jr. Were Nominated to Destroy, Not to Lead Both nominees have shared bizarre conspiracy theories about the organizations they may soon oversee. In truth, it would be a relief if Kennedy and Gabbard were merely grossly unqualified. The deeper issue is that Kennedy and Gabbard are anti-qualified. The only conceivable reason to elevate them to the top of the United States’s public health apparatus and intelligence services is to destroy the agencies they have been selected to run.

x Trump's nominee to lead OMB, Russ Vought, submitted this response to the Senate Budget Committee when asked by Sen. Whitehouse who won the 2020 election.



The Senate Budget Committee is scheduled to vote on whether to advance Vought's nomination on Thursday. pic.twitter.com/mE718Qpgn9 — Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) January 28, 2025

Noah Berlatsky/Public Notice:

The MAGA terror has begun

Their leader is glorifying political violence and weaponizing the threat of it. Donald Trump spent the first week of his second term using the presidency to glorify political violence and weaponize the threat of it against anyone who might consider criticizing him. Trump pulled the security detail from former chief White House medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is an enemy of MAGA thanks to his efforts to fight covid. He also ended security details for his former National Security Advisor John Bolton and his former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, both of whom have been targeted by Iran because they worked to advance Trump’s hard-line policies during his first term. Bolton of course is an outspoken Trump critic, but Pompeo campaigned for his former boss just last fall. Trump repaid him by using mobster logic to justify endangering his wellbeing, cold-bloodedly telling reporters who asked him last week about the decision to pull the security detail that “there’s risks to everything.” (Watch below.)

x KAINE on the Senate floor warning federal employees not to take the buyout offer.



"The President has no authority to make that offer. There's no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work...If you accept that offer and resign, he'll stiff you..." — Alan He (@alanhe) January 29, 2025

Russell Berman/The Atlantic:

‘It’s an Illegal Executive Order. And It’s Stealing.’ Trump wants to go around Congress and freeze enormous amounts of federal spending. Can he? In one sentence, Trump appears to have cut off hundreds of billions of dollars in spending that Congress has already approved, torching Joe Biden’s two most significant legislative accomplishments. The order stunned even some Republicans, many of whom supported the infrastructure law and have taken credit for its investments. And Trump didn’t stop there. Yesterday, the White House ordered a pause on all federal grants and loans—a move that could put on hold an additional tens of billions of dollars already approved by Congress, touching many corners of American life. Democrats and government watchdogs see the directives as an opening salvo in a fight over the separation of powers, launched by a president bent on defying Congress’s will. “It’s an illegal executive order, and it’s stealing,” Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told me, referring to the order targeting the IRA and infrastructure law. Withholding money approved by Congress “undermines the entire architecture of the Constitution,” Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland told me. “It essentially makes the president into a king.” Last night, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Trump’s freeze on federal grants and loans “blatantly disobeys the law.”

x This should be disqualifying. https://t.co/vKZvJHSfrA — Natalie Jackson (@nataliemj10) January 29, 2025

Daniel Nichanian/Bolts with an unusual story:

After a Judge’s Death, Renewed Scrutiny for a Georgia Loophole That Can Nullify Elections A judge’s attempt to resign after his election loss last year could have effectively canceled the will of voters. Critics are demanding an end to the loophole. After losing his reelection bid last summer, Georgia State Court Judge Stephen Yekel turned to a loophole in state law that could have erased the result and blocked the winner from taking office. In Georgia, if judges announce they’ll quit at some point before the end of their term, they hand the governor the ability to choose their replacement for the next two years. Even if an election was about to be held for their seat, that race gets canceled and kicked years down the road. Even if an election for their seat has already happened, a judge could still resign after they’ve lost, giving the governor the power to make an appointment that would nullify the result. Evidently looking to trigger this rule, Yekel told Governor Brian Kemp in a Dec. 6 letter that he intended to resign effective Dec. 30, just one day before his term was set to end. Yekel, who lost to challenger Melissa Calhoun in a nonpartisan runoff for the seat last June, told Kemp that a low-turnout election shouldn’t decide the next judge, writing, “the office of State Court Judge of Effingham is too important to be decided by only 6% of the eligible voters.” But Kemp refused to accept Yekel’s resignation and appoint his successor, which would have retroactively canceled the election. Replying to Yekel in a Dec. 12 letter, Kemp said that a resignation is only effective once a governor agrees to it and that he could not accept the judge’s “attempted resignation,” writing that it would be unfair to override the results over a “legal technicality.” On Dec. 31, his last day in office, Yekel was found dead in his chambers from an apparent suicide. Calhoun took office on Jan. 1 as planned after Kemp issued no order on that day.

Cliff Schecter on Elon Musk:

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