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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: 10,000 feet and rapidly descending [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-02-06
We begin today with Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times and his declaration that there probably is no turning back to “the old status quo” of American governance,
..A power-mad president possessed of radical theories of executive authority and convinced of his own royal prerogative has given de facto control of most of the federal government to one of the richest men on the planet, if not the richest, whose own interests are tangled up in those of rival governments and foreign autocracies as well as the United States. The public has no guarantee that its most sensitive data is secure. At best, they have the personal word of Donald Trump, which, paired with a few dollars, might buy you a cup of coffee. The only institution capable of responding to this with any alacrity is Congress. But Congress is also led by Republicans, and both the Senate majority leader, John Thune, and the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, have declined to take any steps to arrest the president’s illegal arrogation of power or Musk’s destructive effort to run the federal government. Thune and Johnson, acting with the support of Republicans in both chambers, have, in effect, renounced their power over the purse and abnegated their powers of oversight. Their Congress is supine, submissive and subordinate, less the equal of the president than a tool of the executive branch — a subject of his will. [...] The extent to which the United States is embroiled in a major political crisis would be obvious and apparent if these events were unfolding in another country. Unfortunately, the sheer depth of American exceptionalism is such that this country’s political, media and economic elites have a difficult time believing that anything can fundamentally change for the worse. But that, in fact, is what’s happening right now.
On the other hand, Jennifer Rubin of The Contrarian thinks that the loyal opposition to the Trump Administration may be able to exploit opposition to some of Elon Musk’s moves.
Several developments this week suggest Musk is a vulnerability for Trump. As reporting from The Washington Post and others confirm, Musk and company have been put on notice of the likely illegality of their actions. Their blithe contempt for the Constitution gives weight to warnings that he is out to wreck our government and subvert democracy. “Internal legal objections have been raised at the Treasury Department, the Education Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the General Services Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the White House budget office, among others,” The Post reported. “Government officials are warning us that Musk is attempting to “operate as a strike team, outside typical agency rules and constitutional checks on executive power.” The Post’s report observed, “Specific concerns include the terms of ‘deferred resignations’ Musk’s team is offering to purge the civil service—which experts say runs afoul of federal spending law—and whether Musk’s staffers will use Treasury’s payment system to reverse spending that has already been approved.” In addition, reminding voters that he is rampaging through government without clearances and in potential violation of numerous statutes and regulations serves both to highlight the growing constitutional crisis and taunt Trump (Who’s in charge here?!). Some political strategists surmise that Trump’s portray (sic) as a feeble figurehead will encourage a falling out between the tow. Moreover, the fight over privacy and fear of monkeying around with critical financial information now have made clear to voters that this is not about some anonymous government bureaucrats. This is about Americans’ data and finances. When Musk tries to turn off the spigot to federally funded daycare or to life-saving medical research they get hurt. What will Musk do with all that data, and will he attempt to rewrite government coding and apply artificial intelligence to databases? That’s a question even the legacy press cannot ignore.
Katelyn Polantz and Tierney Sneed of CNN say the the Trump Administration has limited access to the Treasury Department’s payment system in lieu of a lawsuit filed by various federal unions representing federal employees.
Two Treasury Department employees affiliated with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency will keep limited access to the highly sensitive payment system within the agency, following emergency court proceedings Wednesday that arose out of privacy concerns about DOGE’s access to the system. The Trump administration agreed to the limitation that the two Treasury employees have “read-only” access to the system and won’t share it with others working with DOGE, a new court filing said. A federal judge still must sign off on the proposal but signaled earlier in the day she would be willing to do so. The proposal would keep the status quo since DOGE sent two special government employees to the Treasury Department, Tom Krause and Marko Elez, who both came from tech jobs to Washington since Donald Trump took office. Unions representing federal workers had sued following reporting, including from CNN, that DOGE had sought access to the system that doles out $5 trillion in government payments a year. It also distributes crucial payments that deal with sensitive personal data of Americans, including for tax returns, Social Security and federal worker salaries.
Ross Andersen of The Atlantic alerts us to the danger of Musk’s minions getting hold to the records of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
You may have never heard of the National Nuclear Security Administration, but its work is crucial to your safety—and to that of every other human being on the planet. If Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) hasn’t yet come across the NNSA, it surely will before too long. What happens after that could be alarming. [...] The NNSA was created by Congress in 1999 in order to consolidate several Department of Energy functions under one bureaucratic roof: acquiring fissile material, manufacturing nuclear weapons, and preventing America’s nuclear technology from leaking. It has all manner of sensitive information on hand, including nuclear-weapon designs and the blueprints for reactors that power Navy ships and submarines. Even the Australian Navy, which has purchased some of these submarines, is not privy to their precise inner workings, James Acton, a co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told me. [...] The employees at DOGE are reportedly working seven days a week, on very little sleep. This slumber-party atmosphere isn’t a great fit for the sober and secretive world of nuclear weapons, where security lapses are hugely consequential. I spoke with three former officials and nuclear experts about what might happen if DOGE were to take a too-cavalier approach to the NNSA. None believed that Musk’s auditors would try to steal important information—although it is notable that not everyone at DOGE is a federal employee, many lack the security clearance to access the information they are seeking, and Musk had to be stopped from hiring a noncitizen. Nuclear-security lapses don’t need to be intentional to cause lasting damage. “When access to the NNSA’s sensitive systems is not granted through proper channels, they can be compromised by accident,” the former senior official at the Department of Energy, who requested anonymity to discuss internal matters, told me. “You could stumble across some incredibly sensitive things if you are coming at it sideways.”
Beth Mole of Ars Technica alerts us to some new strains of the H5N1 flu infection have been found in Nevada.
The new Nevada dairy infections were first detected through milk testing conducted on January 31, according to an update Wednesday by the US Department of Agriculture. Whole genome sequencing confirmed the finding of H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b, genotype D1.1. To this point, all other dairy herds affected by the outbreak have been infected with H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b, genotype B3.13. To date, 957 herds across 16 states have been infected with H5N1 since the outbreak began last March. That tally includes four new herds from Nevada. The D1.1 genotype is the predominant strain spreading in migratory birds in the North American flyway this fall and winter, the USDA notes. It has been sporadically spilling over to mammals and commercial poultry in recent months. In December, it spilled over to a resident of Louisiana after contact with wild and backyard birds. The person became critically ill and died, marking the first US H5N1 bird flu death. Until now, federal officials have thought of the current dairy outbreak as the result of a single spillover event, which likely occurred from the virus jumping from wild birds to cows in Texas, possibly sometime in late 2023. The virus then swiftly moved through dairy farms and across state lines as people, equipment, and animals moved around. Health experts worldwide have been appalled by the inability of US officials to halt the single-source transmission as more and more herds have continued to test positive. Now, with a second introduction of the virus, hopes are likely dashed that containment is possible.
Aaron Brown of Michigan Advance warns us that American steel firms may be preparing to pick apart the carcass of U.S. Steel.
Last week, Cliffs and Nucor signaled plans to buy U.S. Steel, with Nucor taking the advanced electric arc furnace Big River Steel Works in Arkansas and Cliffs taking the rest. This arrangement would place Cliffs in possession of virtually all American iron ore production, most of which takes place in Minnesota. Critics say antitrust laws won’t allow this, but the company seems to think otherwise. Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves is known for his performative bluster. A Cliffs official once told me that the outspoken Goncalves bristled at early comparisons between him and Trump because he felt he did it better, and I’d agree that he does. In 11 years, this experienced metallurgical engineer and steel executive built Cliffs from a relatively small mining company into America’s largest integrated steel firm. Along the way, Goncalves bashed rivals, analysts and journalists (present company included) at press events, despite Wall Street uneasiness whenever he did. No matter. It’s working for him, or so it would seem.
Michelle Kim writes for Foreign Policy that conservatives in the South Korean government want to appeal to Trump to save the presidency of President Yoon Suk-yeol.
As every pillar of Yoon’s power toppled—his martial law troops, his conservative party, his presidential fortress—his followers have clung to the hope, fervently preached on alt-right conspiracy forums, that Trump would swoop to their rescue. They proclaim that Trump would somehow investigate their claims of voter fraud in the last parliamentary elections following the opposition party’s landslide victories—fictional narratives propagated by an army of alt-right Youtubers and championed by Yoon himself. Ultimately, they avow with evangelical fervor, Trump would defeat the Constitutional Court’s impeachment of Yoon. To be clear, the U.S. president has no power to overturn South Korean democracy. But in a desperate attempt to salvage his botched autogolpe, Yoon has embarked on a new political maneuver. He has reframed his bid for autocracy as a triumphant defense against Chinese infiltration into domestic politics, evoking memories of Washington’s intervention in the Korean War as a democratic savior against communist subversion. In a televised address before his impeachment, Yoon pointed to national security threats posed by China as grounds for declaring martial law, alleging that Chinese espionage was targeting the military alliance between South Korea and the United States. He also warned that “Chinese solar power facilities would destroy forests across South Korea,” appealing to deep-seated anxieties among conservatives over Chinese industrial power. A long-standing strain of Sinophobia plagues South Korean politics, stemming from Cold War legacies; historical disputes over territorial identity and most recently, China’s economic retaliation against South Korea’s deployment of a U.S. missile defense system.
The historical conflicts between China and South Korea is not grounds to dismiss South Korea’s concerns as mere “Sinophobia.” Not by a long shot.
Nette Nöstlinger, Raums Buchsteiner, Jürgen Klöckner, and Hanne Cokelaere report for POLITICO Europe that there is little doubt that Christian Merz will become the new Chancellor of Germany but point out that the nature of the coalition may be up in the air.
Merz’s center-right alliance — the Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union — is currently polling at around 30 percent, well ahead of all other parties. The center-left Social Democratic Party and the Greens are expected to finish at around 16 percent and 13 percent, respectively. In second place, at just over 20 percent, is the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). But all other parties have ruled out working with them in a coalition. According to politicians from Merz’s party, their least-favored outcome would be a three-way coalition because of the infighting that would inevitably follow. A tempestuous alliance would echo the problems that beset the last government — led by the SPD with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens — whose December collapse led to this snap election.
As with all the possible scenarios listed below, much depends on the share of the vote each party gets relative to the others. And it’s all to play for.
Sebastian Strangio of The Diplomat reports on the family feud in the Philippines between the Duterte and Marcos clans which has now resulted in the impeachment of Philippine vice-president Sara Duterte.
In yesterday’s vote, 215 of the House’s 306 members backed the resolution that set forth the articles of impeachment. “Having been filed by more than one-third of the membership of the House of Representatives, or a total of 215 members … the motion is approved,” House Speaker Martin Romualdez told lawmakers. The House resolution charges Duterte with “violation of the constitution, betrayal of public trust, graft and corruption, and other high crimes.” While the specific charges have not been disclosed, the vote follows the filing of three impeachment complaints against Duterte in December, accusing her of a range of crimes, including her misuse of millions of dollars in public funds, alleged involvement in extrajudicial killings in Davao, where she previously served as mayor, and an alleged plot to assassinate President Ferdinand Marcos. [...] All of the accusations against Duterte stem from the increasingly bitter political feud between the Duterte and Marcos clans. The two families formed a formidable partnership ahead of the presidential election of 2022, and Duterte and Marcos won their respective elections in a landslide. But the partnership between the two power centers has since deteriorated, due to a toxic combination of personal and political differences. In June of last year, Duterte resigned from Marcos’s cabinet (she had served as education secretary, saying that she felt “used” by the president and his allies. Meanwhile, her 79-year-old father, Marcos’s predecessor as president, has lobbed rhetorical salvoes at the Marcos administration.
Finally today, Charles Blow of The New York Times divulges his “secret origins” as he says farewell to the Opinion Pages.
After many years in The Times’s newsroom as a graphics editor and later the graphics director, then a short stint at National Geographic, I came back to The Times: I had met the executive editor for lunch. He convinced me to return to the paper. I told him that I would like to produce charts for Opinion. When I met with Andy Rosenthal, then the editorial page editor and head of Opinion, he suggested that I write 400-word introductions for the charts, even though I wasn’t a writer. He demurred on the title I proposed, Op-Chartist, as too complicated, and told me I would just be called a columnist. [...] Not only had I been given a title far greater than my aspirations, in that moment I had also gone from being a private citizen, which I liked and thought I would remain for the rest of my life, to being a public figure. [...] By accepting this job, I was committing to coming out.
I’m out!
[END]
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