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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Details, details... [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-14
We begin today with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer writing for The New York Times about why he decided to avoid a government shutdown and agreed to fund the government for another month.
President Trump has taken a blowtorch to our country and wielded chaos like a weapon. Most Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, have caved to his every whim. The Grand Old Party has devolved into a crowd of Trump sycophants and MAGA radicals who seem to want to burn everything to the ground. Now, Republicans’ nihilism has brought us to a new brink of disaster: Unless Congress acts, the federal government will shut down Friday at midnight. As I have said many times, there are no winners in a government shutdown. But there are certainly victims: the most vulnerable Americans, those who rely on federal programs to feed their families, get medical care and stay financially afloat. Communities that depend on government services to function will suffer. This week Democrats offered a way out: Fund the government for another month to give appropriators more time to do their jobs. Republicans rejected this proposal. Why? Because Mr. Trump doesn’t want the appropriators to do their job. He wants full control over government spending.
Lauren Fox and Sarah Ferris of CNN say that some in Schumer’s caucus aren't happy with Schumer’s decision.
The Democratic leader’s decision privately disappointed many in his caucus, and stunned his House colleagues across the US Capitol — leaving the party deeply divided on the path ahead at a moment when their base is clamoring for a strong response against Trump and Elon Musk’s actions to radically reshape the federal government. “We are in a perverse, bizarro land where we’re having to decide between letting Donald Trump wreck the government this way or wreck the government that way,” New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker said of Democrats’ predicament. It’s a moment that has been months in the making. Still, top Democrats in Congress struggled to find a cohesive message and strategy that would allow them room to fight without the potential risk of what it would mean if thousands of government workers were suddenly thrust into more uncertainty with a shutdown. Perhaps the clearest sign of the dilemma: Their top two leaders took opposite paths, with Schumer deciding to vote for the GOP plan that top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries has spent a full week bashing.
The Republicans and legacy media expect Democrats to do this each and every time Republicans (pre- and post-MAGA) blow some hot air about a government shutdown. With the possible exception of 2012, have Democrats ever received a long-term political benefit from acquiesce to this political “trick” (for lack of a better word)?
Paul Krugman writes for his Substack that the tacky shoe salesman may want to make old industries great again.
No serious person mourns the offshoring of apparel employment. Clothing production is a low-tech industry that even in its heyday mostly employed immigrants who, despite being represented by a powerful union, were paid low wages and often faced harsh working conditions. For a poor nation like Bangladesh, apparel jobs are a big step up from the alternatives. But American workers have better, and better-paying, things to do. As I said, no serious person wants the apparel industry to come back. But Donald Trump’s economic team aren’t serious people. Last week Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, went on CNBC to declare that Trump’s tariffs will bring back U.S. production of t-shirts, sneakers and towels: His hosts started laughing, but there’s no reason to believe that either he or his boss get the joke. And their nostalgia for industries of the past seems to be matched by surprising hostility toward industries of the future. Now, the Trumpist view of international trade pretty much begins and ends with the view that whenever Americans buy something made abroad, no matter how much cheaper it may be to import a good rather than try to produce it domestically, that’s a win for foreigners and a loss for America.
On the surface of it, Krugman’s post sounds a little snotty.
However, I did spend ~ 3 days in the mid-1980’s working in one of these sweatshop thingies when lived in New York City. I do remember that an overwhelming amount of immigrant workers who did not speak any English. I also remember carting big clothing racks all over Midtown Manhattan; some of the most backbreaking work that I have ever done.
Alec Tyson, Michael Lipka, and Claudia Deane of Pew Research Center says that surveys show that Americans remember the COVID-19 virus and the pandemic quite well even if they really don’t want to.
The pandemic left few aspects of daily life in America untouched. Looking back on it nearly five years later, three-quarters of Americans say the COVID-19 pandemic took some sort of toll on their own lives. This includes 27% who say it had a major toll on them and 47% who say it took a minor toll. The virus itself also had a staggering impact. A large majority of U.S. adults have had COVID-19 at some point, and more than 1 million Americans died from it. Millions continue to struggle with long COVID. And most say they know someone who was hospitalized or died from the virus. But most Americans have moved on. The vast majority of those who say their lives were impacted report having recovered at least somewhat. Among U.S. adults overall, about one-in-five (21%) now say the coronavirus is a major threat to the health of the U.S. population as a whole. And a majority (56%) think it’s no longer something we really need to worry about much. This is reflected in Americans’ behavior: Just 4% regularly wear a mask, while most never do. And fewer than half of U.S. adults said they planned to get an updated COVID-19 vaccine last fall, a stark contrast to the long lines and widespread demand that met the initial rollout of vaccines.
Kaanita Iyer of CNN writes about how federal layoffs and cost-cutting are affecting many of the domestic and overseas programs sponsored by Johns Hopkins University.
The bulk of the layoffs at the top research university will impact its international employees. 1,975 employees across 44 countries have been cut, the university said in a statement, with another 247 jobs terminated in the US. Roughly 100 additional workers will be furloughed with reduced schedules. “This is a difficult day for our entire community. The termination of more than $800 million in USAID funding is now forcing us to wind down critical work here in Baltimore and internationally,” the Maryland-based university said, adding that it was proud of the work its employees have done “to care for mothers and infants, fight disease, provide clean drinking water, and advance countless other critical, life-saving efforts around the world.” The job cuts are “the largest layoffs in the university’s history,” according to a Hopkins spokesperson, spanning its schools of medicine and public health, its Center for Communication Programs – which leads the university’s messaging around public health – and Jhpiego, an affiliated nonprofit that focuses on maternal health and disease prevention. The employees whose jobs were cut will receive at least a 60-day notice before their layoff takes effect.
It’s not lost on me who’s the biggest philanthropic benefactor of Johns Hopkins University and some of the causes to which that benefactor donates a lot.
Paul M. Barnett of Just Security writes that the attacks on academic misinformation researchers are as strong as ever and by the usual; suspects.
No such “censorship-industrial complex” exists. But that bogeyman is a powerful fiction created by conservative groups and politicians to delegitimize academic research on the online spread of election fraud conspiracy theories, anti-vaccination content, and sundry other falsehoods. And it has caused real damage. Indiana University isn’t the only school in the ADF’s crosshairs. The group said it sent document demands to four other major universities as well: the University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, University of North Carolina, and University of California, Los Angeles. The ADF claims the universities “created ‘misinformation’ centers or tools designed to identify speech” that was “disfavored” by the federal government during Biden administration. [...] These attacks follow a common script. First, the accusers use freedom of information demands to collect internal documents and communications. They then cherry-pick and distort the meaning of these exchanges, portraying them as incriminating when, in reality, they are innocuous. Lastly, they initiate litigation designed to drain university resources and convene congressional investigations that allow Republican politicians to curry favor with Trump while verbally pistol-whipping the victims of these charades.
Imagine a U.S. government run almost entirely by A.I.? That’s Elon Musk’s dream, at least according to Thor Benson, writing for Al Jazeera.
Musk has fired tens of thousands of federal government employees through his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and he reportedly requires the remaining workers to send the department a weekly email featuring five bullet points describing what they accomplished that week. Since that will no doubt flood DOGE with hundreds of thousands of these types of emails, Musk is relying on artificial intelligence to process responses and help determine who should remain employed. Part of that plan reportedly is also to replace many government workers with AI systems. It’s not yet clear what any of these AI systems look like or how they work—something Democrats in the United States Congress are demanding to be filled in on—but experts warn that utilising AI in the federal government without robust testing and verification of these tools could have disastrous consequences.
Adam Serwer of The Atlantic warns Americans (for all the good that does, I suppose) that Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil may be the first but he won’t be the last.
Trump supporters have a remarkable ability to coalesce around whatever explanation they are told to repeat, so the arguments defending the detention are likely to orient around this justification. The idea that Khalil’s views might have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the United States is an obvious pretext for expelling him—and a message to others who might hold or express similar beliefs. Trumpists simply do not approve of his politics and have therefore resorted to using the power of the state to deport him. Trump has styled himself a champion of free speech, but this is what Trumpists mean by “free speech”: You can say what Trumpists want you to say or you can be punished. [...] Due process is a cornerstone of democracy and the rule of law. Without it, anyone can be arbitrarily deprived of life or liberty. Leaders who aspire to absolute power always begin by demonizing groups that lack the political power to resist, and that might be awkward for the political opposition to defend. They say someone is a criminal, and they dare you to defend the rights of criminals. They say someone is a deviant, and they dare you to defend the rights of deviants. They call someone a terrorist, and they dare you to defend the rights of terrorists. And if you believe none of these apply to you, another category might be “traitor,” the label that Trump and his advisers, including the far-right billionaire Elon Musk, like to give to anyone who opposes them. Trump’s assault on basic First Amendment principles may begin with Khalil, but it will not end with him. Trump’s ultimate target is anyone he finds useful to target. Trump and his advisers simply hope the public is foolish or shortsighted enough to believe that if they are not criminals, or deviants, or terrorists, or foreigners, or traitors, then they have no reason to worry. Eventually no one will have any rights that the state need respect, because the public will have sacrificed them in the name of punishing people it was told did not deserve them.
Marianne Lavelle and Phil McKenna of Inside Climate News write about the complete and thorough assault by this administration on environmental protections.
Zeldin’s announcements mark the start of a dismantling process that could take months or even years. To undo regulations that go back decades, EPA staff would have to write proposals, gather public comments and possibly hold hearings and create a scientific and legal record justifying any decision. The latter will be needed to defend against inevitable lawsuits by environmentalists and states. All of this will have to be carried out by an agency that is severely hobbled by firings and plans to slash its funding to the lowest levels in its 55-year history. In a post on the social media site Bluesky, John Walke, clean air director and senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the sheer size of Zeldin’s effort may cause it to collapse on itself. “The same limited #s of EPA air office staff & attorneys work on many of these rules,” Walke wrote. “Some have quit, some have been fired, more will be fired. EPA won’t have adequate resources to write defensible rollbacks.” Walke’s group, NRDC, prevailed in scores of lawsuits against the regulatory rollbacks of the first Trump administration—in some cases, because it had not followed the long-standing law for public notice and comment of both regulatory and deregulatory actions. But Zeldin showed an awareness of this potential pitfall.
Parker Malloy writes for her “The Present Age” Substack about how legacy media normalized the Trump/Tesla car spectacle.
The whole spectacle was exactly what you'd expect when a billionaire president with a long history of self-promotion teams up with his billionaire buddy who helped bankroll his campaign. It was cronyism in its purest form, taking place on the grounds of what's supposed to be the people's house. But what really caught my attention was how the media largely played this off as just another wacky day in Trump-world rather than the ethical nightmare it actually represents. [...] Most of these stories did technically mention the ethical issues, but they're treated as an afterthought, a brief "oh by the way" several paragraphs deep after the main narrative has already been established. NBC waited until paragraph 14 to note that "it is extremely rare for a senior government official, let alone a sitting president, to endorse a consumer product so explicitly." They mentioned Kellyanne Conway's past ethics warning but quickly moved on. NPR managed to mention the ethical concerns in paragraph 4, but then immediately undermined it with a statement from a White House spokesperson by paragraph 6, and then pivoted to discussing Tesla's sales slump.
Finally today, Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times provides us with details on what, exactly, a “constitutional crisis” entails.
But as critics of the “crisis” view note, for all of his lawbreaking, transgression and overreach, the president has yet to take the steps that would clearly mark a constitutional crisis — openly defying a lower court order or, more significantly, a judgment of the Supreme Court. [...] A crisis occurs, to put it a little differently, when a constitution fails to achieve its primary task, which is to channel political disagreement into ordinary politics. It’s when disagreement begins to break down into violence — into anarchy or civil war — that you have a constitutional crisis.[...] No president has ever claimed the right to act outside the Constitution. Instead, those presidents who have sought to expand their power tend to frame their actions as the necessary exercise of legitimate authority. Prominent examples include Abraham Lincoln at the start of the Civil War or, more recently, George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks. [...] In the “type two” crisis, political leaders do not abandon the Constitution as much as refuse to break with a failing constitutional order. “If type one crises feature actors who publicly depart from fidelity to the Constitution,” Balkin and Levinson write, “type two crises arise from excess fidelity, where political actors adhere to what they perceive to be their constitutional duties even though the heavens fall.” [...]
Try to have the best possible day that you can!
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