Yeah Science!

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.  His HHS secretary is an antivaxxer.

Heather Souvaine Horn at TNR

“On Earth Day, We Finally Have a President Who Follows Science,” the statement declared of an administration that has cut so much funding for science that 75 percent of 1,200 scientists responding to a survey by the journal Nature said they were considering leaving the country. The Trump administration has also laid off thousands of researchers, sidelined climate research, frozen all new grants from the National Science Foundation, appointed noted anti-scientific kooks who praise discredited measles treatments, and reportedly plans to completely eliminate the EPA’s science and research arm.

The release further listed eight “key actions President Trump is taking on the environment.” He’s “promoting energy innovation for a healthier future,” the release announced, as Trump attempts to revive coal—a fuel so old its use predates the birth of Christ—while cutting black lung programs for coal miners. He’s “championing sound forest management”—an odd way of describing rolling back forest protections while firing so many U.S. Forest Service workers that their ability either to fight fires or administer logging contracts has come into question.

The third item on the list says, “President Trump is ending the forced use of paper straws,” which can contain PFAS and are probably not much if at all better than plastic ones. This is more accurate than the last two statements, but technically Trump only signed an order reversing federal purchasing policies that favor paper over plastics. And the idea that he did this to protect people from PFAS (known as “forever chemicals”) is risible, given that the administration has reversed a plan to limit PFAS in industrial wastewater, is trying to reverse bans of PFAS in consumer goods, and just canceled about $8 million in grants for research on how to prevent PFAS “from accumulating in crops and the food chain,” according to reporting this week from The New York Times.

 Karen Freifeld at Reuters:

President Donald Trump's nominee for NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, was arrested on fraud charges in 2010 and faced lawsuits in two states for writing $2 million in bad checks to casinos, according to government records and court filings.

Isaacman is a billionaire pilot and astronaut who founded the Shift4 Payments (FOUR.N), opens new tab company as a teenager and commanded the first civilian space crew in 2021 aboard a SpaceX capsule.

 

 

Going After Judges

 Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Andrew Solender at Axios:

Democratic lawmakers reacted with ferocity — and some Republicans with cheers — to the Friday arrest of Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly helping an undocumented defendant avoid arrest by ICE agents.

Why it matters: To Democrats, the arrest marks a significant escalation in President Trump's efforts to consolidate power and use federal law enforcement to crush legal obstacles to his agenda.

• "It is remarkable that the Administration would dare to start arresting state court judges," said House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.). "It's a whole new descent into government chaos."
• "The Trump administration again is breaking norms in how it's dealing with immigration, the legal system, and normalcy. ... This is stuff I expect from Third World countries," Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.) told Axios.
• Said Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio): "They arrested a judge?! They can no longer claim to be a party of law and order. This will have to be a red line for congressional Republicans. Unbelievable."

Tal Axelrod at Axios::

Behind the scenes: Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have urged patience, insisting to the base that they're hard at work targeting "deep state" provocateurs and other enemies of MAGA. Friday's arrest took some pressure off.

Patel has "been taking a little heat from our base, actually," Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said on Charlie Kirk's podcast. "Kash and Pam both — [Trump faithful] want to know: What are they doing? They need to get started. This just shows you they do a lot of stuff behind closed doors and they can't do it in public, but they're acting fast on it."

"Just because you're not seeing something in the news does not mean that it's not happening," Mike Davis of the Article III Project, and a top Trump ally, added on Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast. "There's a lot going on. There's a lot more that's coming. I can assure you … we're firing on all cylinders in the Trump administration."

Aaron Blake at WP:

Attorney General Pam Bondi actually seemed to lean into the idea that this was part of the larger pattern of judicial wrongs that the administration now seeks to right. Her commentary is unlikely to temper fears that the administration is trying to send a message to other judges who would stand in its way.

Appearing on Fox News, Bondi discussed the Wisconsin case and another in which a local New Mexico judge resigned after a man the government has alleged is a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua was arrested at his home.

...

 When Fox host John Roberts asked about the perception created by arresting judges — “They’ll say this is a government that is expanding the powers of the Article One of the Constitution, now they’re arresting judges,” he said — Bondi didn’t dispute that.

“No one is above the law, John,” she said. “No one is above the law in this country.”

At another point, fellow host Sandra Smith asked, “So when you see these judges trying to obstruct your efforts to make this country safer, what is your message to them?”

Bondi responded: “We are going to prosecute you, and we are prosecuting you.”

The big question for our democracy and our separation of powers is just how broad is the administration’s definition of obstructing its efforts to make the country safer. Obstruction is a legal term, but also a political one.

At the very least, the administration appears to be content to send a signal to other members of the judiciary to look at what’s happening and think the administration is more than ready for an ugly power struggle.

Trump Administration Counts Jews at Columbia

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Sarah Boxer at CNN:

Staff members at Columbia University and Barnard College in New York City said they were taken aback earlier this week after receiving text messages on their personal devices linking to a survey which asked, in part, if they were Jewish or Israeli.

The survey on Monday came from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and outlined that it was part of a federal investigation into workplace practices at the schools.

The second question on the survey asks respondents to check boxes for all that apply, inquiring if they are Jewish, Israeli, have Jewish/Israeli ancestry or practice Judaism.

Debbie Becher, an associate sociology professor at Barnard, said she was “shocked” to receive the text. “At first, I thought it was spam,” Becher, who is Jewish, told CNN. “I was alarmed that the government would contact me in this way about such a serious matter.”

In a text message sent to one Barnard College staff member seen by CNN, the employee’s name appears at the top of the message, which encouraged recipients to contact an email address from the EEOC if they want to confirm the text’s authenticity, the message shows.

Columbia had sent out an email to staff and faculty on April 15 stating it had received a subpoena from the EEOC “in connection with an investigation into alleged harassment of Jewish employees at the University from October 7, 2023, to the present.”

In 2016, Michael Wilner wrote in The Jerusalem Post:

Over the course of a months-long investigation of that relationship by The Jerusalem Post – resourcing court documents, media archives and original interviews with campaign aides, close personal confidantes, past lawyers, business partners and employees – both supporters and detractors of the Republican nominee agreed on one critical revelation: Trump seems to have something of an affirmative prejudice toward Jews.

They believe he considers Jews a group of rich, smart, successful and generally powerful deal makers – all traits which Trump himself aspires to, and has sought to emulate, while simultaneously touching on tropes described by historians of the topic as classically antisemitic.

“In some ways, Donald Trump and his relationship with the Jews is the latest chapter in a very long history of ambivalence and dichotomous relations,” Jonathan Sarna, author of American Judaism: A History, said in an interview. “The line between philosemitism and antisemitism is often a difficult one – the line is thin. It’s not bright red. Often you can find within the same person both tendencies, and Trump is a study in that.”

Chaos

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.t.

Alex Isenstadt and Marc Caputo at Axios:

• The promise of Elon Musk's DOGE is fizzling out, and many administration officials wanted him out of the White House well before he said Tuesday that he'll "significantly" cut back on his government work.
• Pete Hegseth's Pentagon is awash in firings, leaks and public warnings of internal ineptitude.
• Lots of officials are dumping on Trade Adviser Peter Navarro, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and others for their tariff strategy that provoked a global market meltdown, even though it's really Trump's policy.
• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessett is covering his own hide amid lots of leaks about him being the voice of sanity. Oddly, good press can be one way to end up on Trump's bad side.
• Last week in the West Wing, the simmering tension between Bessent and Musk boiled over into a prolonged and heated shouting match over an IRS commissioner appointment.
• And after juicing economic unease by dumping on the Fed and suggesting he might try to fire Chairman Jerome Powell, Trump has backed away from all that — and much of his harsh talk on tariffs. For now, anyway.

People are noticing.  Jared Gans at The Hill:

President Trump has seen his favorability ratings start to take a hit in the first three months of his presidency amid growing criticism of his handling of the economy and various controversies, according to the initial polling averages from Decision Desk HQ/The Hill.

The averages show that Trump is currently underwater after starting his term in January with a net positive approval rating. DDHQ/The Hill’s average had his approval rating above 50 percent for the first days of his presidency. By late April, his average approval rating had fallen under 45 percent.

Reading Trump's Lips

 Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.  It includes a discussion of tax issues.

I received an interesting note from the President. pic.twitter.com/cGQvDrhwWU

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) April 22, 2025

We lived through this scenario with George HW bush and Dick Darman. https://t.co/4A7jdXQjGK

— Grover Norquist (@GroverNorquist) April 18, 2025

2015: Trump recalls the Bush “read my lips” broken tax promise. pic.twitter.com/rcQw4oh08v

— John Kartch (@johnkartch) April 16, 2025

Malevolence Compounded by Incomptence: Oveview

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

MAGA people (e.g., Hegseth) have replaced the normals (e.g., Mattis) that populated the first Trump administration. Luke Broadwater at NYT:

The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, shared sensitive military information in not one, but two Signal group chats. The I.R.S. has had three different leaders in the span of a single week. A Salvadoran man living in Maryland was deported because of an “administrative error.” And, in yet another misstep, administration officials kicked off a war of threats with Harvard University by sending a letter to the school prematurely, two people familiar with the matter said.

...

The administration’s tariff policy has whipsawed back and forth so rapidly that businesses planning their futures can barely keep up.

Also this month, the president fired more than a half-dozen national security officials on the advice of the far-right agitator Laura Loomer, who was granted access to the Oval Office and ticked through a list of officials she deemed disloyal.

In general, however, the president has been reluctant to fire those close to him in part because he doesn’t want to be seen as giving a victory to the news media.

...

Also this month, the president fired more than a half-dozen national security officials on the advice of the far-right agitator Laura Loomer, who was granted access to the Oval Office and ticked through a list of officials she deemed disloyal.

In general, however, the president has been reluctant to fire those close to him in part because he doesn’t want to be seen as giving a victory to the news media.

Hot Mess Hegseth

  Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

The Trump administration's incompetence extends across the river into the Pentagon.

Greg Jaffe, Eric Schmitt and Maggie Haberman  at NYT:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, according to four people with knowledge of the chat.

Some of those people said that the information Mr. Hegseth shared on the Signal chat included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen — essentially the same attack plans that he shared on a separate Signal chat the same day that mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic.

Mr. Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, is not a Defense Department employee, but she has traveled with him overseas and drawn criticism for accompanying her husband to sensitive meetings with foreign leaders.

Mr. Hegseth’s brother Phil and Tim Parlatore, who continues to serve as his personal lawyer, both have jobs in the Pentagon, but it is not clear why either would need to know about upcoming military strikes aimed at the Houthis in Yemen.

John Ullyot, former chief Pentagon spokesman, at POLITICO:

The last month has been a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon — and it’s becoming a real problem for the administration.

First there was Signalgate, where the secretary shared detailed operational plans, including timelines and specifics, about an impending military strike on the Houthis in Yemen over an unclassified Signal chat group that happened to include a member of the news media.

Once the Signalgate story broke, Hegseth followed horrible crisis-communications advice from his new public affairs team, who somehow convinced him to try to debunk the reporting through a vague, Clinton-esque non-denial denial that “nobody was texting war plans.” This was a violation of PR rule number one — get the bad news out right away.

His nebulous disavowal prompted the reporter, Jeffrey Goldberg, to release Hegseth’s full chat string with the detailed operational plans two days later, turning an already-big story into a multi-week embarrassment for the president’s national security team. Hegseth now faces an inspector general investigation into a possible leak of classified information and violation of records retention protocols.

That was just the beginning of the Month from Hell. The Wall Street Journal and other outlets reported that Hegseth “brought his wife, a former Fox News producer, to two meetings with foreign military counterparts where sensitive information was discussed.”

Next, the Pentagon set up a top-secret briefing by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on China for Elon Musk, who still has extensive business interests in China. After learning about it, the White House canceled that meeting.

Then came the purges. And the news keeps coming. On Sunday night, The New York Times reported that Hegseth shared details about the Yemen strike in another Signal chat that included his wife and brother.

DoD rapid response amplifies Leavitt's claim that the "entire" Pentagon is working against Hegseth. More than 20,000 people work at the Pentagon, including military personnel and veterans who have served for decades. https://t.co/SlmyZL8exS

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) April 21, 2025