Friday Open Thread

13 thoughts on “Friday Open Thread”

1. A Review of the Ascend Analytics Report

   A trip into fantasyland

   Going through the Ascend report it leaves me wondering, how many other reports that the state has paid for are equally out to lunch? We get these reports and they're long and they have lots of modeling and so we figure – they're accurate. But what if a lot of other reports are equally problematic?

    

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2. “Attention Deficit and Defiance Division of Labor: There’s Stuff Happening Where You’re Not Looking” Marcy at EmptyWheel.

   Last week, I wrote a post about the five ways Trump is sabotaging America. Those included:

   I want to use this post to lay out what I mean by that, and also as a way to catalog some of what has been done, but also some areas where more needs to be done by precisely the kind of people who spent a week screaming at Democrats.

   The original Project 2025 plan, an Orbanist plot to turn the US into an elected authoritarian government

   • DOGE [sic], which is often mistaken for Project 2025, but which is far more reckless and destructive and as such has created far more backlash than Project 2025 might otherwise have
   • Trump’s useful idiots, like the HHS Secretary who is barely responding to a Measles outbreak
   • The personalization of DOJ, protecting not only Trump, but also his favored criminals
   • Trump’s capitulation to Russia

   As I’ve been puzzling through the, in my opinion, catastrophic distraction of Democratic in-fighting over how to respond to the SOTU, I came to realize one source of the general frustration. A lot of people still don’t understand there’s a natural division of labor in who should fight fascists how, one which is similar to those five areas of sabotage. As a result, there’s a demand that the national Democratic Party (appear to) take the lead on everything, a demand that invites those complaining to outsource their own agency completely, as if they simply hire people to do their politics for them every two or four years.

   The demand that Hakeem Jeffries take the lead on issues that really aren’t central to his job breeds passivity and frustration and distracts from stuff being done by others better positioned to do so.

   The national Dems are not the best suited for some of this, partly because civil society has more freedom and standing to sue, partly because within the Democratic party, local parties (and future candidates) should take the lead, and partly because polarization is going to be a big barrier to effective mobilization elsewhere. 

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   1. Read the whole thing, but here is Marcy on DOGE:

      DOGE 

      I make a distinction here between combatting DOGE and other policy considerations. That’s true because — as has been true from the very start, civil society and Democratic Attorneys General and people who’ve been fired are better situated to fight DOGE in the courts, because they can get standing. 

      …

      But we’re learning more and more from these lawsuits already, which is having a snowball effect, just a bit of which appears in this post (on this page, I’m tracking lawsuit declarations I find particularly interesting).

      The most interesting developments this week may be several different lawsuits challenging DOGE on an Appointments Clause theory, basically that Elon is exercising the kind of authority that would require Senate confirmation.

      Because DOGE has been so disorganized, DOJ’s lawyers are being fed garbage to, in turn, feed courts in good faith. And then, over and over, Trump ends up saying things that debunk what the lawyers have been fed to say. Judges are beginning to get fed up, and are granting plaintiffs more discovery. Anna Bower has been tracking this Calvinball relentlessly.

      …
      One thing that could be better organized, locally, would be to magnify the stories of those affected by DOGE cuts. As I said last week, rather than turning government workers into villains, DOGE had made the importance of government visible. And the people being arbitrarily and cruelly fired are the daughters and sons of communities that have a distorted understanding of government. This story-telling, done by word of mouth and local press, likely is better served if it has no overt tie to the Democratic party, because otherwise polarization may undercut the lessons of the firings. But it is the kind of thing that can be done in letters to the editor in local newspapers.

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      1. Some good news this morning from The Bulwark dot com, a voice of common sense conservatism that continues the good fight against rampant Trumpism. Now close to 90,000 paying members (including me) when 50,000 was once thought to be the absolute top. Over a million YouTube subscribers. Successful podcasts, including Tim Miller who is one of the higher rated politics podcasters in the country. Like Yogi Berra famously said, “it ain’t over until it’s over.”

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         1. A serious question: Besides "rampant", what other kind of "Trumpism" exists?

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      2. Thanks for that post. The author makes a very important point. Mesa Co. Democrats remember, perhaps, the last time I attended one of their meetings. That was a long time ago. The Democratic party makes the same mistake environmental groups have commonly made in their mostly losing efforts against the OilyBoyz.  They (the industry) are fast and ruthless…environmentalists (mostly Democrats in my experience) are slow and, for want of a better term, “touchy-feely”. Democrats and environmentalists don’t like to be rude…wrong dna.

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3. Rep. Joe Neguse is the featured member for the Congressional Black Caucus series at Daily Kos:

   CBC Roundup: Congressman Joe Neguse (CO-2) – chair of the US House litigation/response task force

   Even people who know some about him may find some new info.  

   Congressman Joe Neguse’s leadership in the House Democratic Caucus has also been phenomenal. In December 2022 he was elected by the caucus to be the Chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee (DPCC). In 2021 Congressman Neguse served as one of the 9 Impeachment Managers in the mfg’s 2nd impeachment trial. In the 119th Congress, Rep. Neguse serves on the House Judiciary Committee and Natural Resources Committee (where he’s Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on Public Lands). He was appointed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to be one of the 4 Democrats on the Rules Committee. On November 19, 2024 Rep. Neguse was reelected as Assistant Democratic Leader and on February 10, 2025 he was asked by Leader Hakeem Jeffries to chair the House Democrats’ Rapid Response Task Force and Litigation Working Group.

   I didn't even know there WAS a "Rapid Response Task Force and Litigation Working Group."

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   1. “Democrats Waking Up” – New meme.

      Marcy Wheeler calls Axios an “outlet whose bread and butter lies in stoking dissension in Democrats”. 

      Read the whole EmptyWheel article linked to above. It has good suggestions about strategies.

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4. I've noticed that Democratic politicians are unpopular… with DEMOCRATS.

   I'm sure it's because we're at a five-alarm fire, five-minutes-to-midnight situation, and the Dem Pols are not doing much to combat Trump, nor are they showing anger-empathy. We're frickin' pissed, and the Democrats are sitting there in pink suits, raising little auctioneers paddles, when they should have stood up one by one with their backs to Trump, or walked out en masse.

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   1. why would it make a difference if the Democrats were sitting, waving paddles, walking out, shouting, or simply not being there? 

      The actions of opposition need to have some sort of positive outcome.  I'm not impressed by any Democrat voting with the Republicans.  How they choose to "perform" doesn't make a difference to me.

       

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5. Ripped from the wire at The Hill. Prosecuting “leakers” (tipsters) at D.H.S.:  https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5183306-dhs-noem-raid-leakers/?fbclid=IwY2xjawI4ZmNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHcIrvti2qRAvTWzYgC4Uigv5J0wIlPuNG_dVWYPMZsG-aBjkUCPczJeANg_aem_EuShZjG2qizqSj-RrVdsgg

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   1. it will be interesting when and if they actually file a criminal complaint.  Until then, this sounds a great deal like providing an excuse why the enforcement efforts have been so inept, falling behind the Biden pace in 2024. 

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6. perhaps ICE should not have staged in the best buy parking lot at I-25 and Colo. Blvd.  Complete fucking morons. 

    

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