Friday Open Thread

5 thoughts on “Friday Open Thread”

1. Project 2025. Via Marcy Wheeler at EmptyWheel.

   The article is actually about how painting average government workers as “villainous bureaucrats” is going to backfire.

   There’s a quote from Russ Vought that has been cited frequently, especially in the wake of Elon Musk’s five bullet email demand last week. Vought described how he wanted to traumatize people he labeled as “bureaucrats.”

   “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.

   “We want to put them in trauma.”

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2. We knew this was coming:

   Hot mic pick up: Trump tells Zelensky, "either you sign this agreement, or we'll let you collapse." Audience gasps. JD Vance was also overheard aggressively attacking Zelensky to his face.

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3. Trump & Vance Ambush Zelensky in Prelude to Betrayal. Josh Marshall at TPM.

   Yep. That's about right. It was all part of the plan. Trump IS a Russian asset, determined to betray our allies and surrender to Putin.

   I noticed the part at the end where Turmp says "that will make for good television." Trump is looking for a Reichstag fire moment, so he can unleash the Kristallnacht.

   President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance moved to betray a key U.S. ally that has lost hundreds of thousands of people in fending off a Russian invasion on Friday, taunting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at an Oval Office meeting after spending weeks trying to undermine the bilateral relationship.

   The Oval Office blowup, in which Trump and Vance berated Zelensky as ungrateful while dismissing the prospect that Russian President Vladimir Putin might renege on a potential ceasefire agreement, is a culmination in a weeks-long campaign to choreograph an end to U.S. support for Ukraine.

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4. Senator Cathy Kipp Interview

   This was a great dive into what drives Senator Kipp and what she is doing

   BTW – it was weird to me at first doing video instead of interviewing and writing it up. Part of me likes that old fashioned approach. But people want video nowadays. And the thing is, as I'm getting used to it, it works well.

   The trick is give people the time to answer in detail. And where I can, get even more detail. I now see the advantages to video. And it's a lot less work!

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5. Well, not your typical Friday News Dump, but Sen. Bennet is considering running for Guv'nor of the great state of Colorado. That could set off quite the chain of political dominoes!

   https://www.coloradopolitics.com/colorado-politics/colorado-democrat-michael-bennet-is-strongly-considering-run-for-governor-senators-top-aides-say/article_8dc3be89-4810-5455-9f28-28818fbfe8b0.html

    

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