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2:00PM Water Cooler 1/21/2025

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Bird Song of the Day

Brown Thrasher, May 2024 Rondeau PP–South Point Trail East, Chatham-Kent, Ontario, Canada. Same location as yesterday, but different birds and even more lively.

* * *

In Case You Might Miss…

  1. January 6 pardons.
  2. DOGE Executive orders.
  3. Improving surgical masks (many methods).

* * *

In Case You Might Miss…

  1. January 6 pardons.
  2. DOGE Executive orders.
  3. Improving surgical masks (many methods).

* * *

Politics

“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

* * *

Capitol Seizure

“Trump pardons roughly 1,500 criminal defendants charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack” [NBC News]. “President Donald Trump on Monday issued roughly 1,500 pardons and commuted the sentences of 14 of his supporters in connection with the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when thousands of them stormed the building amid his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him. Trump commuted the sentences of individuals associated with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who were convicted of seditious conspiracy [despite being riddled with informers]. He then issued ‘a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,’ a category that included people who assaulted law enforcement officers.” • This from Julie Kelly was something I didn’t know:

Here is the raindrop theory–

“UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. JOHN DOUGLAS WRIGHT” (PDF) [Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, Criminal Action No. 21-341, United States District Court for the District of Columbia]. Kollar-Kotelly was “previously presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.” From page 24:

It would have been interesting to apply the “raindrop” theory of the case to the banksters who “collectively” caused the Great Financial Crash, causing “the unnecessary expenditure of substantial government resources.”

Trump Transition

Lambert here: Patient readers, Trump just signed a hundred exective orders (EOs) [apparently only 26? Yes] and held a presser. I don’t have the capacity to synthesize all that material, which is doubtless creating “Shock and Awe” in the political class. The links that follow seem the most salient now, but that may change in the coming weeks. What I will say is that I have skimmed several of the orders, and this latest rollout is an amazing feat of staffwork (hat tip Susie Wiles) that the previous Trump administration couldn’t even have considered. (Some clever people will also have to lay the Executive Orders against Project 2025 and look for overlaps. My guess is that the Trump administration will have put its own distinction twists on a lot of it. Also, I’ll often scatter the EOs under the usual category headings (“DOGE” under “DOGE”) because consolidating 100 EOs in one place would be unwieldy.

Patient readers, I’ll return with a list of the executive orders — I’m frustrated because I don’t know how many have really been signed — after I handle some administrativia. –lambert

UPDATE Here is the list. I took it from the Whitehouse.gov page on “Presidential Actions.” There are four buckets: Executive Orders, Proclamations, Memoranda, and Announcements. (I did this because all the sources I could find were explainers, a level of abstraction away from a simple list of the documents Trump signed, which seems to me to be the obvious base for any further analysis.)

Executive Orders:

  1. Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness (order)
  2. Designating Cartels And Other Organizations As Foreign Terrorist Organizations And Specially Designated Global Terrorists (order)
  3. Reforming The Federal Hiring Process And Restoring Merit To Government Service (order)
  4. Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing (order)
  5. Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government (order)
  6. Establishing And Implementing The President’s “Department Of Government Efficiency” (order)
  7. America First Policy Directive To The Secretary Of State (order)
  8. Protecting The United States From Foreign Terrorists And Other National Security And Public Safety Threats (order)
  9. Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential (order)
  10. Protecting The American People Against Invasion (order)
  11. Reevaluating And Realigning United States Foreign Aid (order)
  12. Declaring a National Energy Emergency (order)
  13. Restoring The Death Penalty And Protecting Public Safety (order)
  14. Securing Our Borders (order)
  15. Protecting The Meaning And Value Of American Citizenship (order)
  16. Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program (order)
  17. Unleashing American Energy (order)
  18. Clarifying The Military’s Role In Protecting The Territorial Integrity Of The United States (order)
  19. Holding Former Government Officials Accountable For Election Interference And Improper Disclosure Of Sensitive Governmental Information (order)
  20. Restoring Accountability To Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce (order)
  21. Withdrawing The United States From The World Health Organization (order)
  22. Application Of Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act To TikTok (order)
  23. Putting America First In International Environmental Agreements (order)
  24. Ending The Weaponization Of The Federal Government (order)
  25. Restoring Freedom Of Speech And Ending Federal Censorship (order)
  26. Initial Rescissions Of Harmful Executive Orders And Actions (order)

Proclamations:

  1. Guaranteeing The States Protection Against Invasion (proclamation)
  2. Declaring A National Emergency At The Southern Border Of The United States (proclamation)
  3. Granting Pardons And Commutation Of Sentences For Certain Offenses Relating To The Events At Or Near The United States Capitol On January 6, 2021 (proclamation)
  4. Flying The Flag Of The United States At Full-Staff On Inauguration Day (proclamation)

Memoranda:

  1. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Global Tax Deal (Global Tax Deal) (memorandum)
  2. Organization of the National Security Council and Subcommittees (memorandum)
  3. Temporary Withdrawal of All Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf from Offshore Wind Leasing and Review of the Federal Government’s Leasing and Permitting Practices for Wind Projects (memorandum)
  4. Restoring Accountability for Career Senior Executives (memorandum)
  5. Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture (memorandum)
  6. Putting People Over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California (memorandum)
  7. America First Trade Policy (memorandum)
  8. Memorandum to Resolve the Backlog of Security Clearances for Executive Office of the President Personnel (memorandum)
  9. Delivering Emergency Price Relief for American Families and Defeating the Cost-of-Living Crisis (memorandum)
  10. Hiring Freeze (memorandum)
  11. Regulatory Freeze Pending Review (memorandum)
  12. Return to In-Person Work (memorandum)

Announcements:

  1. President Trump Designates Chairmen and Acting Chairmen (announcement)
  2. President Trump Announces Acting Cabinet and Cabinet-Level Positions (announcement)
  3. President Trump Announces Sub-Cabinet Appointments (announcement)
  4. President Trump Announces Cabinet and Cabinet Level Appointments (announcement)

So this is the scope of the work for today; Trump was busy. Perhaps a connoisseuer of Federal document types can explain why an Executive Order in one case and a Memorandum in another. I did skim some of the EOs; they seem to be of varying quality, some quite specific as to statute and regulation, others more like “good things are good” handwaving. For example, in “Restoring Freedom Of Speech And Ending Federal Censorship”, this:

Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to: (a) secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech;

and:

Sec. 3. Ending Censorship of Protected Speech. (a) No Federal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent may act or use any Federal resources in a manner contrary to section 2 of this order.

Constitutional lawyers in the readership please correct me, but am I right that this is a little thin? Not even a citation to a court case? And “constitutionally” is doing a lot of work. Is there speech that is not constitutionally protected?

* * *

“Trump signs order to end ‘government censorship’ of social media” [WaPo]. “President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order intended to ‘immediately stop all government censorship,’ a sweeping action that could chill years of efforts to combat the proliferation of false information online. The order bans federal officials from any conduct that ‘would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.’ It also prohibits taxpayer resources from being used to ‘unconstitutionally abridge the free speech’ of Americans…. Trump’s order could have an immediate impact on years of efforts to bolster coordination between Silicon Valley and the government to combat misinformation about elections, natural disasters and public health.” • But:

However:

Eight hours down not long enough to implement the algo changes properly?

* * *

“Neo-Nazis Love the Nazi-Like Salutes Elon Musk Made at Trump’s Inauguration” [Wired]. “At this point, Musk put his right hand on his chest before extending it straight out with his palm facing down and his fingers touching, a gesture widely recognized as the ‘Roman salute.’ Adopted by the fascist movement a century ago, it was most famously used by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany, and is to this day associated with the fascist right, especially in Italy. After he first made the gesture, Musk then turned around to members of the crowd who were seated behind him and, with his back to the camera, repeated the gesture. ‘My heart goes out to you,’ Musk added… One of many examples: “”WE ARE FUCKING BACK” the administrator of a Nazi meme channel on Telegram wrote under a clip of Musk giving the salute.'” • I must confess that when I first saw this take I filed under symbol manipulators looking for symbols and then making leaps in reasoning based on the symbols (which is a very bad habit in the idpol space). I also felt that Musk has been awfully herky jerky lately (and there is the preliminary hand-on-heart gesture, which forms no part of the Nazi salute. But now, apparently, it does:

File this, at the very minimum, under “Somebody needs to get this dude under control.”

* * *

DOGE

“ESTABLISHING AND IMPLEMENTING THE PRESIDENT’S ‘DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT'” [Whitehouse.gov]. I normalize all-caps to title caps but in this case I’m not, because all the EOs have this formatting. I hope readers can give this a close reading, but while the pre-inaugural DOGE set a horrid precedent, this version seems not so bad. The EO hijacks the United States Digital Service (USDS), which Obama put in place after Silicon Valley techies saved his bacon my making the ObamaCare website work. That’s a clever idea! ” The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President.” And: “In consultation with USDS, each Agency Head shall establish within their respective Agencies a DOGE Team of at least four employees, which may include Special Government Employees, hired or assigned within thirty days of the date of this Order. Agency Heads shall select the DOGE Team members in consultation with the USDS Administrator. Each DOGE Team will typically include one DOGE Team Lead, one engineer, one human resources specialist, and one attorney. Agency Heads shall ensure that DOGE Team Leads coordinate their work with USDS and advise their respective Agency Heads on implementing the President ‘s DOGE Agenda.” • This shows, at least, somebody was thinking about process. (“Special Government Employees” were what the the pre-inaugural DOGE operatives — the dudes going around interviewing civil servants — should have been.

“‘Everyone wants him out’: How Musk helped boot Ramaswamy from DOGE” [Politico]. “Musk, the tech tycoon and Donald Trump confidant, made it known that he wanted Ramaswamy out of DOGE in recent days, according to three people familiar with Musk’s preferences who, like others for this article, were granted anonymity to discuss them. An ill-received holiday rant on X by Ramaswamy about H-1B visas apparently hastened his demise…. Ramaswamy maintained to confidants as late as Saturday evening that he was actively involved in DOGE, saying he was at work writing executive orders, according to six people who had spoken with him. But a person familiar with the arrangement said he had done almost no DOGE-related work since early December. As recently as last week, Ramaswamy was hoping to achieve some early wins at DOGE before leaving to pursue a gubernatorial bid. Now Ramaswamy and his allies are laboring to put a positive spin on his departure, coming just as Trump takes office.” •

2024 Post Mortem

“The Sad Tale of Moderate Joe Biden” [Ruy Teixeira, The Liberal Patriot]. The interesting part of this article is at the end: “Editor’s note: This is a slightly longer version of an essay that originally appeared in The Free Press, where Ruy is now a contributing writer.” • This dude is nimble!

“Biden Was Just That Bad” [Caitlyn Johnstone, Consortium News]. “From what we are seeing so far, Trump is just returning things to their horrible standard baseline. Trump will go on to do many evil things as president, just as he did during his first term, but none of this will reverse the fact that Biden just spent four years advancing genocide, nuclear brinkmanship and authoritarianism. The Democratic Party plays just as crucial a role in promoting the tyranny and abuses of the U.S. empire as the Republican Party does, and it is nonsensical to think of either of them as a lesser evil. The empire itself must end. It’s possible that Trump’s term will constitute another swing from Bush-level depravity to Obama-level depravity. It isn’t normal for the U.S. empire to be as openly depraved as it has been in Gaza. Normally its evils are much more well-disguised, because it is in the empire’s interests to preserve its image in the eyes of the western public. You only see the really in-your-face acts of monstrosity when a coalition of forces within the swamp are able to seize on a rare opportunity to shove them through, as we saw in the wake of 9/11 and again in the wake of Oct. 7. The rest of the time, the empire likes to be a lot subtler about its abuses, like it was during the Obama administration and the first Trump administration.” • One could, I suppose, consider engulfing Greenland as “subtle” compared to a full-blown war with China. And it’s certainly subtle for Trump!

Realignment and Legitimacy

“Trump rescinds Biden’s census order, clearing a path for reshaping election maps” [NPR]. “Among the dozens of Biden-era executive orders that President Trump revoked on Monday was one that had reversed the first Trump administration’s unprecedented policy of altering a key set of census results. Since the first U.S. census in 1790, no resident has ever been omitted from those numbers because of immigration status. And after the Civil War, the 14th Amendment has called for the population counts that determine each state’s share of U.S. House seats and Electoral College votes to include the ‘whole number of persons in each state.’ Biden’s now-revoked 2021 order affirmed the longstanding practice of including the total number of persons residing in each state in those census results. It was issued in response to Trump’s attempt during the national tally in 2020 to exclude millions of U.S. residents without legal status…. Though it had an opportunity during the first Trump administration, the Supreme Court has yet to rule on whether the president can exclude people who are in the country without legal status from the tally that determines political power in the United States.” • Well, when you frame it that way…

Syndemics

“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison

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Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).

Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!

Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).

Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).

Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Stay safe out there!

Transmission: Nasal Sprays

“Toward a Radically Simple Multi-Modal Nasal Spray for Preventing Respiratory Infections” [Advanced Materials (DougieD). September 2024. “This report introduces the Pathogen Capture and Neutralizing Spray (PCANS), which utilizes a multi-modal approach to enhance efficacy. PCANS coats the nasal cavity, capturing large respiratory droplets from the air, and serving as a physical barrier against a broad spectrum of viruses and bacteria, while rapidly neutralizing them with over 99.99% effectiveness. The formulation consists of excipients identified from the FDA’s Inactive Ingredient Database and Generally Recognized as Safe list to maximize efficacy for each step in the multi-modal approach. PCANS demonstrates nasal retention for up to 8 hours in mice. In a severe Influenza A mouse model, a single pre-exposure dose of PCANS leads to a >99.99% reduction in lung viral titer and ensures 100% survival, compared to 0% in the control group. PCANS suppresses pathological manifestations and offers protection for at least 4 hours. This data suggest PCANS as a promising daily-use prophylactic against respiratory infections.” • Maybe one day it will be on sale…

Maskstravaganza

If you are only permitted a surgical mask:

Here is one modification:

Here is another:

There are a lot more techniques; the thread is worth reading in full.

Vaccines

“Former surgeon general: Vaccine-preventable diseases are still a major threat” [Jerome Adams, STAT]. The Biden Administration vaccine rollout was fantastically destructive, as we see here. “While there’s much to celebrate about the current focus on improving overall health — particularly the incoming administration’s emphasis on the MAHA agenda, which promotes better food safety, nutrition, and physical activity — it’s crucial that we remember these must be priorities in addition to addressing vaccine-preventable diseases, not in place of them. As I’ve said before, you can’t die of early heart disease at 50 if you already died from polio at 5. The reality is that vaccine-preventable diseases are still a major threat, even in the 21st century, and we ignore that at our peril. I hear from pediatricians and health officials across the country on a near-daily basis about their growing concerns over declining vaccination rates. Parents who would have once trusted their health care providers’ recommendations are now questioning vaccines that should be routine, like MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella). What’s even more troubling is that even the parents of long-term patients — children who have received all their vaccines in the past — are increasingly opting to delay or forgo these essential shots due to new doubts, often fueled by misinformation. What’s worse is that the default response to health provider recommendations has shifted. For many parents, the idea of questioning, deferring, or outright rejecting vaccines has become the norm, rather the exception. This undermines the trust that has been built over generations between health care providers and families, and presents a serious challenge for those of us trying to protect the health of all Americans, especially our children. The impact of this growing vaccine hesitancy will, of course, be felt most acutely by children whose parents are trying, in deeply misguided ways, to protect them. While we’re unlikely to see a dramatic rise in deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases in the U.S. in the near term, the personal costs are immense. A single case of measles can lead to weeks of missed school, sporting events, family gatherings, and other milestones. These are costs many Americans felt were unbearable and inexcusable during the Covid-19 pandemic, yet we’re now putting our children at risk of suffering the same disruptions — disruptions that are both preventable and unnecessary.” • As I said, it’s MMR that’s under-assault. Of course, we have already been induced to abandon our children to Covid — thanks, Great Barrington dudes — so everything’s going according to plan.

Elite Maleficence

Perhaps the CDC’s normalization of wasterwater data isn’t as bad as I thought:

Post by @jik@federate.social
View on Mastodon

Violet Blue’s correction here:

* * *

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Lambert here: I don’t like a lot of this week’s charts. In wastewater, too many red dots concentrated in the Midwest and the Atlantic coast, so I started circling areas in red, again. New York’s weirdly persistent higher hospitalization rate continues. Traveler positivity is up, and worse, the dominant traveler variants are JN* and KP*, which, while present in the national variants, are very low. And in the two death charts, the projected deaths seem to have leveled out, when in the past they decreased. Nothing earth-shattering, but it does make me queasy, and it’s well after the holiday bump.

Wastewater
This week[1] CDC January 10 Last week[2] CDC (until next week):

Variants [3] CDC January 18 Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC January 11

Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data January 16: National [6] CDC Janurary 16:

Positivity
National[7] Walgreens January 13: Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic January 4:

Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC December 30: Variants[10] CDC December 30

Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 11: Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 11:

LEGEND

1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.

2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”

NOTES

[1] (CDC) Seeing more red and more orange, but nothing new at major hubs.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.

[4] (ED) A little uptick.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Definitely jumped.

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.

[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.

[8] (Cleveland) Continued upward trend since, well, Thanksgiving.

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Leveling out.

[10] (Travelers: Variants). Positivity is new, but variants have not yet been released.

[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.

[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.

Stats Watch

There are no official statistics of interest today.

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 41 Fear (previous close: 37 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 27 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jan 21 at 2:00:37 PM ET.

Architecture

“The Lost Towers of the Guelph-Ghibelline Wars” [Ex Urbe]. “Looks fake, doesn’t it? This implausible Medieval forest of towers, as dense as Manhattan skyscrapers, is our best reconstruction of the town of Bologna at its height, toward the end of the Medieval Guelph-Ghibelline wars. Wealthy families built these as mini-fortresses within the city, where they could defend against riots, enemy families (think Montagues and Capulets) and invasion. Signs of wealth and prestige, these all-stone buildings were also fireproof, leading to a terrible but effective tactic: take your family, treasures & goods up into your tower then set fire to enemies’ homes and let the city burn around you while you sit safe above. This was VERY BAD for cities.” Like this:

Caption: “Looks fake, doesn’t it? This implausible Medieval forest of towers, as dense as Manhattan skyscrapers, is our best reconstruction of the town of Bologna at its height, toward the end of the Medieval Guelph-Ghibelline wars. We don’t see many such towers today… or think we don’t, but actually their remnants are all over Italy.” • Neat blog.

Zeitgeist Watch

“On what women want” [Kat Rosenfeld, The Usual Palm Tree]. Reflections prompted by the Neil Gaiman case. “There’s a moment in the Gaiman exposé where the main accuser, Scarlett Pavlovich, sends him a text message asking him how he’s doing. Gaiman says he’s struggling: he’s heard from people close to him that Pavlovich plans to accuse him of rape. ‘I thought that we were a good thing and a very consensual thing indeed,’ he writes. ‘It was consensual (and wonderful)!” she replies. Except: she doesn’t mean it.” But: “[I]n the article we’ve been instructed, explicitly and repeatedly, that you can’t assume a relationship was consensual just because all parties involved gave consent.” And: “The thing is, if women can’t be trusted to assert their desires or boundaries because they’ll invariably lie about what they want in order to please other people, it’s not just sex they can’t reasonably consent to. It’s medical treatments. Car loans. Nuclear non-proliferation agreements. Our entire social contract operates on the premise that adults are strong enough to choose their choices, no matter the ambient pressure from horny men or sleazy used car salesmen or power-hungry ayatollahs. If half the world’s adult population are actually just smol beans — hapless, helpless, fickle, fragile, and much too tender to perform even the most basic self-advocacy — everything starts to fall apart, including the entire feminist project. You can’t have genuine equality for women while also letting them duck through the trap door of but I didn’t mean it, like children, when their choices have unhappy outcomes.”

Class Warfare

“New ‘oligarchy’ under fire as elites descend on Davos” [Agence France Presse]. Of course, the elite of the elite are at the Inaugural. “The World Economic Forum kicks off in the Swiss Alpine resort on the same day as the presidential inauguration of Trump, who will not be in Davos but will make an online appearance later in the week…. Some 3,000 participants are expected at the Swiss ski village for the forum ending Friday — including 60 heads of state or government and more than 900 CEOs — for days of schmoozing and behind-the-scenes dealmaking.” A dissenting voice: “‘I don’t want to live in a country with a few rich people and lots of poor people,’ said Morris Pearl, a former managing director at investment giant BlackRock. He is now a member of Patriotic Millionaires, a group that backs raising taxes on the rich. ‘I’m afraid that we’re going to have civil unrest if we don’t change things,’ Pearl told AFP.” • So are they, Morris. So are they.

News of the Wired

Yikes:

These states aren’t exactly set up for blizzard conditions.

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Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From MV:

MV writes: “Last spring I visited the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. Attached you will find some photos. I can only send 2 photos at a time.” And this is the one I am using. What an inviting prospect!

* * *

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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  1. Roger Blakely

    Los Angeles County SARS-CoV-2 wastewater concentration as a percentage of the Winter 2023-2024 peak concentration value:

    12/7/24: 18%
    12/14/24: 19%
    12/21/24: 19%
    12/28/24: 24%

    http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/media/Coronavirus/data/index.htm

    The value for the end of December probably represents the peak for the season. We can definitively say that this winter’s prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 was only one-quarter of last year’s prevalence of SARS-CoV-2. It takes two weeks to get the lab results.

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    1. urdsama

      “We can definitively say…”

      Based on what, exactly? With all of the manipulation going on with Covid-19 data reporting I have exactly zero confidence in any such statements, regardless of the source.

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  2. GF

    I wonder what the injured police at the Jan 6 riot think about the pardoning of their attackers? And how the families of those killed view $Trump’s pardons?

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    1. lyman alpha blob

      Remind us who was killed on Jan 6, and how many were killed by protesters. I lost count in all the confusion.

      I wonder how all those hundreds of thousands of family members of dead Ukrainians feel about Biden pre-pardoning his entire crime family to cover up the grifting they did to line their pockets at Ukrainian expense.

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        1. lyman alpha blob

          “Whataboutism: is a term invented by the butthurt “liberals” in an attempt to make Trump out as the worst president evah. It’s a term I reject.

          I much prefer the term “context”, which is information needed in order to have an informed opinion. In my informed opinion, Biden’s pardons, including the non-pardon of Leonard Peltier (he deserved a real pardon, not the half-assed “pardon” he got), are wrong. While I don’t know the details of every single Jan 6th case, from what I do know of them, those pardons were the right thing to do. Participating in a protest that turned into a riot that disrupted a procedural vote for a couple hours doesn’t warrant serious jail time or a black mark on anyone’s record. I won’t even get into the fact that the capitol police let many of the protesters in, or how many spooks were in the crowd that day.

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          1. Screwball

            The butthurt is at a fever pitch right now, and their tolerance is very low. They are incapable of informed opinions – all they feel is hate. They hate Trump, the people around him, and the people who voted for him. They are the scoundrels that did this to them and they want revenge. Even death, and yes, I have read that about some of the J6 people (death instead of pardons).

            It’s going to be a long 4 years.

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            1. petal

              On fb I’m a member of a “city X before and after” photograph group. 22k members. It’s a neat group. Today the founder went off the rails about Trump and the J6 pardons. Went ballistic, irrational, completely unhinged. He totally blew the group up. Some people agreed with him and posted unhinged stuff as well. If this is what is going on with people…not a good sign. I screenshotted it. I’ll save you guys from the words used. Lots of familyblog.

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              1. Screwball

                I have a similar thing too. They are at fever pitch hate level, and it’s getting very nasty. You are either like them, or you are the enemy. There is no middle ground – none.

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          2. Tom Stone

            Watch the video of the incident commander of the Capitol Police shooting an unarmed Woman to death, Ashli Babbitt.
            One of the curious things about that shooting was the two Capitol cops standing by while rioters smashed the class partitions on either side of the door they were guarding.
            Ms Babbitt crawled through one of those openings while the cops did nothing.It was t was murder in the 2nd degree, at NO POINT did Ms Babbitt pose a threat of death or serious bodily injury to anyone.
            Let me repeat, the cop who shot her dead was in charge of the Capitol police response that day.
            He committed murder on camera, in front of numerous witnesses and he has not been charged for that crime.

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          3. Sam

            You can reject whatever terms you want, but if you disagree that Trump’s pardons were wrong (I don’t really know enough to have a strong opinion), then disagree on the basis of those facts not on the basis of something a different president did.

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      2. marym

        More than 600 were charged with assaulting, resisting or obstructing law enforcement, including around 175 charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer, including with batons, planks, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, bearer or pepper spray. Several were convicted of seditious conspiracy.

        If let’s say BLM protesters, or climate protesters had done a fraction of that, many of the Capitol rioters would probably be among those calling for them to be shipped to Gitmo.

        Thin blue line flag at the Capitol riot

        Some of the charges

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        1. lyman alpha blob

          C’mon – it’s pretty clear they increased the charges to send a message and most should have been at worst charged with trespassing, a misdemeanor. So write them a ticket and be done with it.

          And BLM protesters did do a fraction of that, and I don’t think they should go to prison either. I’m still a fan of that 1st amendment thing and try to be consistent. I can’t speak for the hypothetical MAGAs out there, who increasingly seem to me to be a caricature created by scared “liberals”. I didn’t vote for Trump, but I know plenty of people who did, and not many fit the stereotype the media would have you believe.

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          1. marym

            Plenty of photographic evidence and sworn testimony of what happened was provided to judges and juries. We can all have opinions as to whether the cause of the protesters was just or their tactics justified, but what happened wasn’t only trespass.

            The three judges mentioned in the second link were appointed by Obama, GWB, and Reagan respectively.

            https://whyy.org/articles/january-6-crimes-trump-court-cases-evidence/
            https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/23/capitol-rioters-severe-sentences-reprimands-judges

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            1. Revenant

              Conspiracy is an inchoate offence. Nothing happened. You should smell.a rat

              It is used by states to charge dissenters with “precrime”. There is very rarely a criminal conspiracy in which a mastermind is directing others. In the US these get charged with wire offences. In the UK, they get charged with financial offences.

              Conspiracy charges are nearly always political or ” we don’t like the way you people look/talk/act” cases. You can dress up the thinnest tissue of behaviour by two or more people into a plan to bring down the state and a major indictment when the biggest choate crime on the facts might be a parking misdemeanour

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          2. fjallstrom

            They increased the charges and used collective responsibility on a disorganised mass. This is what usually happens when cops riot, those who got their scull bashed gets prosecuted for being so threatening that the cops had to riot. Cops in turn tend to riot when control is slipping. And the courts tend to have their back.

            The unusual thing here is that the cops hardly rioted and that the target is on the right. Otherwise it follows the basic model, which tend to apply no matter the form of government or formal rights to speech or assembly. If real power is threatened niceties goes out the window.

            I guess it’s all about the exception and who gets to decide the exception.

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          3. johnnyme

            The Associated Press has an interactive web page, Track the legal paths of those arrested in the Jan. 6/Capitol riots that goes into detail about the individuals involved, what they were charged with, their sentences, their states of residence and any group affiliations that they have.

            Charges:
            674 – Illegal parading
            520 – Disorderly conduct
            350 – Entering restricted area
            238 – Assault
            180 – Obstructing official proceeding
            86 – Physical violence
            57 – Theft/Destruction of property
            18 – Conspiracy to obstruct official proceeding
            14 – Seditious conspiracy
            8 – Tampering with documents/proceedings
            5 – Firearms charge
            4 – Obstructing justice
            4 – Communicating threats
            3 – Obstructing officers
            2 – Robbery

            Sentences:
            1107 – Restitution
            1044 – Probation/Supervised release
            717 – Imprisonment
            464 – Community service
            297 – Fine
            251 – Home confinement

            Of the 1,573 people charge, most were not a part of any organized group:

            Affiliations:
            73 – Proud Boys
            32 – Oath Keepers
            27 – Three Percenters

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    3. Mark Gisleson

      Having seen how many tear gas projectiles the police fired into peaceful protesters, I think most of the police involved and their families are deeply grateful to former President Biden for his last second pardons, immunizing them from perjury charges for their testimonies before the J6 Committee and in DC courts where they were allowed to testify even if there was no proof a defendant had been anywhere near that officer (raindrop theory).

      The true J6 story will make Watergate look like a third rate burglary.

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      1. Screwball

        I know many are not a fan of Tucker Carlson, me included, but his interview with the Capital Police guy was quite telling. Tucker did a nice job and shut his mouth for the most part.

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    5. Bsn

      Zero people, excluding Mrs. Babbit (a protester) were killed that day. She was killed by a policeman with a very bad history of gun use. No police were killed. A few had minor injuries, mostly pepper spray. One cop died a few days later, of a heart attack. Read less fake news (unless you were being sarcastic).

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  3. ChrisFromGA

    Re: “raindrop” theory of prosecution/J6 defendants

    I am constantly amazed at how liberals fail to understand that when you attack and abuse the law, it will be used against you by the other side in the future.

    So at the next BLM/Occupy protest, some poor schmoe who holds a sign up peacefully can now be arrested for the crimes committed by the other dude who throws a rock through a store window.

    Thanks Kollar-Ketelly, you’ve just given right-wing prosecutors a new tool to suppress freedom of expression.

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    1. Mark Gisleson

      So at the next BLM/Occupy protest, some poor schmoe who holds a sign up peacefully can now be arrested for the crimes committed by the other dude who throws a rock through a store window.

      Mission accomplished!

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      1. ChrisFromGA

        Yes, how silly of me to think that either side of the bench has any goal besides destroying freedom of speech and expression. Thanks for correcting me.

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        1. ambrit

          Shouldn’t that be Axial de Resistance?
          “Did you see that?”
          “Yes, I did. She turned on a euro!”
          “Amazing.”

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    4. Revenant

      It’s for other people to bend ze knees?

      Actually, it is funny you don’t see them skiing because they are always using the poles and looking for new moguls.

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    5. ambrit

      That’s because all we have in the way of physical samples of the Davosonians are a finger bone and some pocket protectors. The conspiratorially inclined will be certain to become very verklempt over the original source of the evidence of the Davosonians; some obscure cave in central Russia.

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  7. Lieaibolmmai

    “Neo-Nazis Love the Nazi-Like Salutes Elon Musk Made at Trump’s Inauguration”

    I made no immediate assumptions about Elon’s hand gesture because that is how I act in these days of automatic information. I said the same thing to myself, the hand on the heart first, I have never seen it.

    But I saw the same video as you of the neo-nazi’s saluting, and now I need to default that he holds their views unless he states otherwise. It convinced me. This, to me, is not something to be on the sidelines about. I know you need Twitter for a= much of your reporting here, but I wonder if there is something to be done about it. Things may be about to change and maybe more news will move off of Twitter now? I hope so,

    I use a service called xcancel to look at Twitter.

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    1. IM Doc

      Not trying to be a jerk. Please look at any number of photos of public figures doing the same thing that are now circulating all over the Internet. Including Kamala Harris. I will point out it was the ADL themselves who wrote a Tweet last night basically saying “not so fast – we should focus on things that are actually anti-Semitic”. I am of the mind that if anyone should be able to opine about this it would be them. Every Holocaust survivor patient I have ever had has been in their group. I am certain they would be able to recognize a real Nazi salute.

      My Jewish colleagues today in the lounge were just shaking their head in disbelief that AOC et al would be making an issue out of this.

      There are lots of things I do not like about Musk. As has been usual the past 10 years or so, all of this kind of performative bullshit just completely takes the attention away from the real issues.

      I think the woke need to grow a pair. Musk is clearly not a politician nor is he someone who is really comfortable in the limelight. I myself do not get nervous at all in front of students. In front of strangers I turn into Jello – and I have videos of myself through life doing all kinds of awkward things in public speeches.

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      2. Lambert Strether Post author

        I thought AOC was being idiotic too.

        What gets me is the hand-on-heart gesture. It seemed to me dispositive that Musk was “giving his heart” with that gesture (and Musk is, I said especially herky jerky in his motions just now, so the stiff arm arm didn’t bother me.

        But now, given that video, where the hand-on-heart movement, which is not part of the Roman salute at all, is part of the whole gesture, it looks to me like two populations caught the same variant. And I really dislike coming to that conclusion, because I hate that way of thinking.

        Adding, I’ll keep track of that video, let’s see what others say.

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        1. lyman alpha blob

          It might have been a poor attempt at something like Steph Curry’s gesture.

          Musk is getting increasingly nuttier, but I don’t think he’s whacko enough to start giving the HH to large crowds in front of lots of cameras. I could be wrong.

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      3. Carolinian

        What else is AOC going to talk about now that she’s decided Pelosi is “Mama Bear”? Selling out limits your options.

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      4. flora

        Imo. Woke is the same kind of busybody collection for liberals that the Moral Majority busybody collection was for conservatives back in the day: Social authoritarianism disguised as do-gooderism. ‘Believe what I believe or else.’

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      6. BrianH

        Be careful Doc, I wouldn’t get too comfortable with the ADL’s efforts to point out “real” antisemitism. My take is that they were encouraging people to back off on the Musk salute only to make a larger point about antisemitism, not to actually dial it back to a sensible level. The ADL makes it clear throughout their website that they support a broad definition of antisemitism, including boycotts against the Israeli state and comparison to apartheid and nazi regimes.

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      7. JustTheFacts

        Musk says he’s on the Asperger spectrum. That means he lacks “social skills”. I.e. he can’t figure out how normies will misinterpret what he does. Here he is, a 50 year old man prancing around like a giddy 10 year old, and people don’t take that into account and think he’s the next incarnation of Hitler?

        I sometimes wish I could send people here to totalitarian states so that they learn what totalitarianism is once and for all, and realize they don’t live in one. Six month school exchanges with North Korea might finally knock some sense into them.

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        1. GF

          “Here he is, a 50 year old man prancing around like a giddy 10 year old”

          Sounds like just the right person to be advising Trump.

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          1. JustTheFacts

            I disagree. You can be socially skilled and very stupid. Witness many politicians… Boris Johnson, Macron & Sarkozy come to my mind, but I’m sure everyone else has their own version.

            You can also be socially awkward and very intelligent. Witness many mathematicians, scientists and engineers, eg Einstein, Newton, Tesla, Turing, Feynman, Nash, Faraday, Pascal, Mendel, Schrödinger… etc.

            I think Musk falls into the latter category. As such, he might be useful advising on tech matters. I’m not sure what he’ll do with DOGE. It could be a disaster, but on the other hand Twitter still works despite his firing of tons of employees, so he knew what to cut. Time will tell.

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            1. aleph_0

              Does Twitter still work despite the firings? I can’t see replies or full threads anymore if I’m not logged in, and that was a big part of the site.

              Also, about 30% of the time, I just get stuck in a loop for days where the login page will just wrap around on itself and not let me log in. The functionality ain’t what it used to be.

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              1. JustTheFacts

                Does Twitter still work despite the firings? I can’t see replies or full threads anymore if I’m not logged in, and that was a big part of the site.

                Unfortunately, I think that’s a commercial decision (aka enshitiffication) to force people to log in. Twitter downtime is down (Twitter whales).

                No idea about your login issue.

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            2. urdsama

              I have no idea what makes you place Musk into the same category as Einstein, et al. He has failed to demonstrate his genius, is not an engineer, and routinely confuses ideas he stole from others as his own. His claim of being on the spectrum is pure BS.

              He’s a conman and a grifter, not a real world Tony Stark / Iron Man.

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              1. JustTheFacts

                The category is intelligent but socially awkward people.

                Name me someone else who developed reusable rockets. AFAIK he did quite a bit of the work on that himself.

                Name me someone else who developed the level of self-driving that Tesla has. Sure, he relies on engineers to help do this, but he has made major decisions about it. So did Edison.

                If you don’t think that requires intelligence, why don’t you do it?

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    2. Lambert Strether Post author

      > maybe more news will move off of Twitter now? I hope so,

      As of today there is nothing of equivalent scale or scope, both for breaking stories, Covid, and various vertical “neighborhoods,” certainly not Threads or Bluesky. What would be ideal is the rejuvenation of the blogosphere.

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      1. Revenant

        Thanks to Kneecap I now read a lot of Irish reddit sub’s. They are all chock full of posts demanding that X links be banned (screenshots allowed by the more permissive). This is the cynical, tolerant Irish. These people need help!

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  8. Mikel

    “New ‘oligarchy’ under fire as elites descend on Davos” [Agence France Presse]

    ‘I’m afraid that we’re going to have civil unrest if we don’t change things,’ Pearl told AFP.”

    https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-20/brush-fire-breaks-out-in-griffith-park-amid-severe-wind-warning/
    “He was at least the ninth person across Southern California taken into custody for allegedly starting small fires in the wake of Eaton and Palisades infernos. The causes of those two fires remain under investigation.”

    I’ve been pondering if any of this could fall under “civil unrest”. I know arsonist have their own psyche profile and there are insurance and other scams to consider…but…just a fleeting thought.

    Also, an arrest in San Bernadino the other day.

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  9. cgregory

    Does anybody know what percentage of Julie Kelly’s public defender cases were white males? Asking for a friend.

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    1. Randall Flagg

      >Does anybody know what percentage of Julie Kelly’s public defender cases were white males? Asking for a friend.

      Does it matter when thinking of possible abuses of this legal theory going forward? Race and gender is not going to matter. Maybe I am reading the intent of your comment wrong.

      See ChrisFromGA’s comment at 2:29 above

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      1. ChrisFromGA

        We just missed out, downtown Atlanta and Athens are getting a decent burst of snow, but in the northern burbs, we got nothing!

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  12. Laura in So Cal

    Zeitgeist Watch-What women want article.

    I heard this from a couple of unrelated young women (mid-20’s?) and it really bothered me since I can only imagine myself saying it in very limited circumstances. This article gave me a hint of why. Is this a thing?

    *giggle..”I’m just a girl! ” giggle*

    First was a waitress when asked a question about cars during our conversation about my kid putting his car in a ditch. The implication was that she can’t know anything about cars because she’s just a girl.

    The second was an over heard social conversation at work between male and female co-workers, both in their 20’s and the young lady’s phrasing and intonation were identical to the waitress.

    I’m almost 60 so I’m totally out of touch.

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    2. matt

      Oh man i actually have read a lot of pieces on the self infantilization of women in their 20s. Girl dinner, 24 year old teenage girl, etc. stuffed animals being popular among grown women, the design of products being increasingly infantile. Also how “stay at home girlfriends” are becoming popular on tiktok. moving in an opposite direction from the 2010s girlboss feminism.
      Defenders generally go “well i deserve some comfort and in this modern world you are deprived of traditional aging markers like buying a house and starting a family because the economy. It is more fun to watch tv shows and try and marry a finance bro.”
      Antis generally go “you are letting go of your own agency.”
      I have seen this topic debated so much. Can link articles if anybody wants to hear more.

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  13. eg

    Ruy Teixeira evidently inhabits an alternate universe — one where Biden was too progressive.

    Evidence?

    From where I sit he was the desperation candidate to prevent Bernie from winning the nomination in 2019: recall the other candidates — with the exception of Warren, who was the nearest to Bernie’s right— all magically dropping out just before South Carolina. Coincidence? Hardly.

    And when he won in 2020 the donor class found him usefully malleable, so they hung onto his increasingly obvious cognitively decayed carcass like grim death until the debate exposed the charade.

    Too progressive? What a bad joke …

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    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      Ruy Teixeira’s account of 2020 completely omits Obama’s involvement in selecting Biden. He then goes on to cite Third Way. I had some hope that he was’t a sleazy opportunist. Fat chance!

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  14. AI for once?

    About the executive orders — wondering if anyone has considered using AI to analyze them – especially for the comparison against Project 2025. It seems to me that’s the kind of task that LLMs like Claude have been designed for. I’d volunteer for a working group, but it would help to have people with a background in the subject matter to fine-tune the prompting.

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    1. CA

      About the executive orders — wondering if anyone has considered using AI to analyze them – especially for the comparison against Project 2025…

      [ Excellent. This is precisely the sort of analysis that a proper AI system is meant for. ]

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  16. steppenwolf fetchit

    About the Gulf-of-Mexico coast blizzard being a once in a lifetime event . . . I don’t think so. As man-made global heatering keeps destabilizing the atmosphere and the jet streams, I expect more random and deeper-reaching herniated polar vortexes here and there than what we used to have. That means storm events “like” this every few years or so. More zuds in Mongolia ( https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/02/1146422 )
    more blizzards in the Gulf of MexiComerica, etc.

    This is an opportunity for all the California-sympathetic Senators and Representatives to keep careful note of which Senators and Representatives vote against fire disaster relief for California, so they can vote against disaster relief when the Senators and Representatives from those states or districts want some post-disaster relief assistance for their states or districts.

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    1. The Rev Kev

      I don’t suppose that this is going to delay all those LNG shipments to the EU as the EU has left themselves on the hook for needing them now.

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    2. Wukchumni

      I’m of the opinion that much of the truly weird weather is on account of Hunga Tonga blowing up real good in 2022-combined with climate change.

      Clowns like Johnson making conditions for California will come back to bite him when push>meets<shove in his back yard.

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      1. steppenwolf fetchit

        Only if California and others MAKE it come back to bite Johnson in the back yard. In fact, if all the delegations opposed to Johnson’s MAGA behavior here want to, they will promise ahead of time to vote against any relief for the South from this weather unless and until no-conditions relief for California has been voted through and signed by President Musk(trump). They could even try forcing these two separate disaster areas to be part of one relief bill. No conditions or no relief.

        Its what I’d do.

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      1. steppenwolf fetchit

        No .. . I think I’ll stay behind the times.

        Its still Gulf of Mexico to me.

        But that will be one of the Trumpies’ linguistic loyalty tests. If one of them overhears you calling it ” Gulf of Mexico”, they’ll put you on a little list.

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  18. The Rev Kev

    “The Lost Towers of the Guelph-Ghibelline Wars”

    It’s a bizarre story but a fascinating one. Maybe our own wealthy could just occupy Manhattan and fortify that island for themselves. Each family could buy their own skyscraper and fortify it. Dibs on the Chrysler tower.

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  19. JustTheFacts

    It would be interesting to read a summary of what the revoked executive actions said. From perusing their titles, and not the actual text, there’s some DEI stuff, some environmental safeguards, some AI safety stuff, some Palestinian stuff, and some COVID stuff… They are now returning 404’s so you have to find them in archive.org or archive.is.

    If anyone finds a link to such an analysis, please post it here!

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  21. marym

    Birthright citizenship lawsuits

    Twenty-two Democratic-led states along with the District of Columbia and city of San Francisco filed a pair of lawsuits in federal courts in Boston and Seattle asserting Trump had violated the U.S. Constitution.

    Two similar cases were filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, immigrant organizations and an expectant mother in the hours after Trump signed the executive order, kicking off the first major court fight of his administration.

    https://www.reuters.com/legal/lawsuits-challenge-trumps-birthright-citizenship-other-orders-2025-01-21/

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  22. marym

    Schedule F lawsuit

    Federal Employees Union Challenges Trump Schedule F Order
    The union argues that the order, which strips certain federal employees of employment protections, violates multiple laws and regulations.

    https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/federal-employees-union-challenges-trump-schedule-f-order

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