Category Archives: Uncategorized

Beautiful Food, for Cellpic Sunday

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For Cellpic Sunday

Weird Answers for Fibbing Friday, Mar 14, 2025

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Distracting the Masseur

For Fibbing Friday, the words to define are:

1. Doohickey  What one does when carried away by passion as a teenager.
2. Donnybrook What you call a river as the sun first comes up.
3. Dingleberry A berry that grows in a small wooded valley.
4. Dingus What be Gus’s intestines.
5. Drub What I look forward to when my masseur comes.
6. Dreck What happen after d’ car crash.
7. Diggity  What goes best inside a hot dog.
8. Dook How I usually do when I take a test.
9. Dibbly  Another name for champagne.
10. Dinkum What happen before d outgo.

 

Remembering Bob, for RDP

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Remembering Bob

“Wooden Heart”

He handed it to me without ceremony—a small leather bag, awl-punched and stitched together by hand. Its flap was held together by a clasp made from a two fishing line sinkers and a piece of woven wax linen. I unwound the wax linen and found inside a tiny wooden heart with his initials on one side, mine on the other. A small hole in the heart had a braided cord of wax linen strung through that was attached to the bag so that the heart could not be lost. He had woven more waxed linen into a neck cord. I was 39 years old when he gave me that incredible thing I never thought I would receive: his heart—as much of it as he could give.

It was the first handmade gift I’d ever received from a man. Inside, over the years, I have put a lock of his hair and a tiny tiny animal of indeterminate species hand-cut out of wood by his youngest son and presented to me. And, after his death, a small copper heart pin I had made and given to him two years after we married. Twenty-eight years later, this bag is all that is left of what was once my union with the man and his eight children from three different women. When he died, we returned him to the inevitable earth and all of the children returned forever to their real mothers.

The bag lies in a box with other relics of our past together: a silver heart brooch, another carved of wood with wings attached and, strangely enough, a miniature computerized hand piano. Years after his death, it struck a chord on its own, just lying on the shelf beside my favorite picture of him. One last dying gasp from the tiny gadget I’d put in his Christmas stocking but then grown tired of hearing him play and so had hidden away, only to enter our bedroom one night to find him playing it under the covers like a guilty pleasure hidden from the adults, although he was already in his sixties.

For our first Christmas, he gave me a large sculpture he had made that was also a musical instrument—three hand-raised copper gongs in the shape of breasts suspended over a wooden keyboard played by rawhide mallets, the gongs suspended from the long horizontal neck of a copper wind instrument with two necks and two mouthpieces, so two notes could be blown at once. When he died, it was the sculpture chosen by his youngest daughter, and I let her take it. Now, the remnants I have of him are only the leftovers that remained after eight children had chosen. I was moving to another country and could not hold onto everything he’d given.

daily life color023

Sculpture by Bob Brown,1986.  4′ X 5.5′, wood, hand forged copper, marble and hemp.

daily life color024

Miniature hand piano, 4″ X 2″

I moved away from most of those things we had collected over the years, but somewhere hidden away in the thousand objects in my studio is the small leather bag and the tiny hand piano, now forever mute, his father’s pocket watch, his biking medals and the other assorted pieces of his life that will one day wind up in a secondhand store in Mexico. All of our gifts finally melding with the parts of all those billions of other lives that strike their brief chord before blending, inevitably, back into the cacophony of the universe.

 

The prompt for RDP is “Bob.”

Apologies from a Sane American

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I am borrowing this image from a Facebook friend because it accurately depicts what I have been feeling ever since Donald Trump was unleashed upon the world. How the majority of citizens of a country could be so misled is hard to imagine but it seems to happen again and again.

Stock Market Continues to Fall.

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Screenshot

The stock market continued to fall today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell another 478 points, or 1.14%; the S&P 500 fell almost 0.8%; and the Nasdaq Composite fell almost 0.2%. The S&P 500 briefly held its own in trading today, but then Trump announced on his social media platform that he was going to double the tariffs on steel and aluminum from the new 25% rates to a 50% rate on Canada and might increase tariffs to “permanently shut down the automobile manufacturing business in Canada.”

Stocks fell again.

Unable to admit that he might be wrong, President Donald Trump is doubling down on the policies that are crashing the economy. In addition to his tariff threats, he also reiterated that “the only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State,” an outrageous position that he suddenly began to advance after the 2024 presidential election and which has Canadians so furious they are boycotting U.S. goods and booing the Star-Spangled Banner.

More than 100 top business leaders met with Trump today to urge him to stop destabilizing what had been a booming economy with his on-again-off-again tariffs. Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, told Jeff Stein and Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post that in private, “[b]usiness leaders, CEOs and COOs are nervous, bordering on unnerved, by the policies that are being implemented, how they’re being implemented and what the fallout is. There’s overwhelming uncertainty and increasing discomfort with how policy is being implemented.”

The extreme unpredictability means that no one knows where or how to invest. Market strategist Art Hogan told CNN’s Matt Egan, “This market is just blatantly sick and tired of the back and forth on trade policy.” Yesterday, Delta Air Lines cut its forecasts for its first-quarter revenue and profits by half, a sign of weakening corporate and consumer confidence and concerns about the safety of air travel. Today, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines cut their forecasts, and American Airlines forecast a first-quarter loss.

When he talked to reporters, Trump reasserted that he intends to do what he wants regardless of the business leaders’ input. “Markets are going to go up and they’re going to go down, but you know what, we have to rebuild our country. Long-term what I’m doing is making our country strong again.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt advised, “If people are looking for certainty, they should look at the record of this president.”

Not everyone will find that suggestion comforting.

Trump backed off on his threat to raise the tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum to 50%, but went ahead with his threat to place 25% tariffs on all imported steel and aluminum products. Those tariffs took effect at midnight.

In the face of his own troubles, Trump’s sidekick billionaire Elon Musk is also escalating his destructive behavior. Yesterday Musk’s social media platform X underwent three separate outages that spanned more than six hours. Lily Jamali and Liv McMahon of the BBC reported that Oxford professor Ciaran Martin, former head of the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Center, said that the outages appear to have been an attack called a “distributed denial of service,” or DDoS, attack. This is an old technique in which hackers flood a server to prevent authentic users from reaching a website.

“I can’t think of a company of the size and standing internationally of X that’s fallen over to a DDoS attack for a very long time,” Martin said. The outage “doesn’t reflect well on their cyber security.” Without any evidence, Musk blamed hackers in Ukraine for the outages, an accusation Martin called “pretty much garbage.”

Four days ago, another of Musk’s SpaceX rockets exploded after takeoff, and now SpaceX’s Starlink internet service is facing headwinds. In February, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim canceled his collaborations with Starlink after growing tensions with Musk culminated with Musk alleging on X that Slim is tied to organized crime. The loss of that deal cost Musk about $7 billion in the short term, but more in the long term as Slim will work with European and Chinese companies in 25 Latin American countries rather than Starlink. Slim has said he would invest $22 billion in those projects over the next three years.

Also in February, after U.S. negotiators threatened to cut Ukraine’s access to the 42,000 Starlink terminals that supply information to the front lines, the European Commission began to look for either government or commercial alternatives. The European Commission is made up of a college of commissioners from each of the 27 European Union countries. It acts as the main executive branch of the European Union.

On Sunday, Musk posted: “[M]y Starlink system is the backbone of the Ukrainian army. Their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off.” Poland pays for about half the Starlink terminals in Ukraine, about $50 million a year. Poland’s minister of foreign affairs, Radosław Sikorski, responded that “if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers.” “Be quiet, small man,” Musk replied. “You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink.”

After all the tariff drama with Canada, last week Ontario also cancelled a deal it had with Starlink.

But perhaps the biggest hit Musk has taken lately is over his Tesla car brand. On February 6, Musk’s younger brother Kimbal, who sits on Tesla’s board, sold more than $27 million worth of shares in the company. Tesla chair Robyn Denholm sold about $43 million worth of Tesla stock in February and recently sold another $33 million. Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja has sold $8 million worth over the past 90 days. Yesterday, board member James Murdoch sold just over $13 million worth of stock.

Fred Lambert of Electrek, which follows the news about electric vehicles and Tesla, noted that Tesla stock dropped 15% yesterday, “down more than 50% from its all-time high just a few months ago.” “Tesla insiders are unloading,” he concluded.

Tesla sales are dropping across the globe owing to the unpopularity of Musk’s antics, along with the cuts and data breaches from his “Department of Government Efficiency.” Protesters have been gathering at Tesla dealerships to express their dismay. While the protests have been peaceful, as Chris Isidore of CNN reports, there have also been reports of vandalism. Tesla owners are facing ridicule as protesters take out their anger toward Musk on his customers, and at least one competitor is working to lure consumers away from Musk’s brand by offering a discount to Tesla owners.

Trump has jumped to Musk’s defense, posting just after midnight this morning that “Elon Musk is ‘putting it on the line’ in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! But the Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers, and Elon’s ‘baby,’ in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for. They tried to do it to me at the 2024 Presidential Ballot Box, but how did that work out? In any event, I’m going to buy a brand new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American.”

Indeed, today Trump used the office of the presidency to bolster Musk’s business. Teslas were lined up at the White House, where Trump read from a Tesla sales pitch—photographer Andrew Harnik caught an image of his notes. And then the same man who gave a blanket pardon to those convicted of violent crimes related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol called those protesting at Tesla dealerships “domestic terrorists” and promised that the government would make sure they “go through hell.”

Trump and Musk appear to have taken the downturn in their fortunes by becoming more aggressive. Martin Pengelly of The Guardian noted that in the middle of Monday’s stock market plunge, Trump posted or reposted more than 100 messages on his social media channel. All of them showed him in a positive light, including reminders of the 2004 first season of the television show The Apprentice, in which Trump starred: a golden moment in Trump’s past when his ratings were high and the audience seemed to believe he was a brilliant and powerful businessman.

Today, egged on by Musk, Trump pushed again to take over other countries. He told reporters: “When you take away that artificial line that looks like it was done with a ruler…and you look at that beautiful formation of Canada and the United States, there is no place anywhere in the world that looks like that…. And then if you add Greenland…that’s pretty good.”

The Trump administration also announced today it was cutting about half the employees in the Department of Education. The Senate confirmed Linda McMahon, who has little experience with education, to head the department on March 3 by a party-line vote. Shutting down the department “was the president’s mandate—his directive to me,” McMahon told Fox News Channel host Laura Ingraham. McMahon assured Ingraham that existing grants and programs would not “fall through the cracks.”

But when Ingraham asked her what IDEA stood for—the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act—she wasn’t sure, although she knew it was “the programs for disabled and needs.” Ingraham knew what the acronym meant but assured McMahon that after 30 years on the job, she still didn’t know all the acronyms. McMahon replied: “This is my fifth day on the job and I’m really trying to learn them very quickly.”

Musk lashed out at Arizona senator Mark Kelly on social media yesterday, after Kelly posted pictures of his recent trip to Ukraine and discussed the history of Russia’s invasion, concluding “it’s important we stand with Ukraine.” Musk responded: “You are a traitor.”

Kelly, who was in the Navy for 25 years and flew 39 combat missions in the Gulf War before becoming an astronaut, responded: “Traitor? Elon, if you don’t understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes America great and keeps us safe, maybe you should leave it to those of us who do.”

—

Notes:

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-stock-market-economy-recession-b2713154.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/10/stock-market-today-live-updates.html

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/11/nx-s1-5324700/tariffs-stocks-wall-street-trump-priorities-markets

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/11/trump-tariffs-stock-market-uncertainty/

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/thousands-users-report-issues-accessing-elon-musks-x-platform-rcna195630

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62x5k44rl0o

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/11/economy/us-stocks-tariffs-trump/index.html

https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/spacex-launches-eighth-starship-test-eyeing-ships-mock-satellite-deployment-2025-03-06/

https://globalnews.ca/news/11067542/ontario-permenant-starlink-contract-cancel/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/tech-companies/mexican-billionaire-carlos-slim-cuts-ties-with-elon-musk-s-starlink-costing-musk-7-billion-after-controversial-tweet/ar-AA1zWshm

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy87vg38dnpo

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/10/tusk-calls-for-respect-between-allies-after-us-poland-spat-over-starlink-satellites

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/10/delta-air-lines-cuts-forecast-softer-demand.html

https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-is-ready-to-seek-starlink-alternatives-if-musk-proves-unreliable/

https://mexicodailypost.com/2025/02/24/carlos-slim-orders-to-cancel-his-collaboration-with-elon-musks-starlink/

https://www.reuters.com/business/us-could-cut-ukraines-access-starlink-internet-services-over-minerals-say-2025-02-22/

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy87vg38dnpo

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-to-help-ukraine-replace-musks-starlink/

https://european-union.europa.eu/institutions-law-budget/institutions-and-bodies/search-all-eu-institutions-and-bodies/european-commission_en

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/american-airlines-forecasts-bigger-first-quarter-loss-2025-03-11/

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-airline-stocks-tumble-deltas-forecast-cut-spooks-investors-2025-03-11/

https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-is-ready-to-seek-starlink-alternatives-if-musk-proves-unreliable/

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-chair-robyn-denholm-sells-33-million-stock-2025-03-04/

https://fortune.com/2025/03/07/tesla-cfo-vaibhav-taneja-sells-stock/

https://electrek.co/2025/03/10/tesla-tsla-insider-trading-elons-friend-james-murdoch-just-unloaded-13-million/

https://www.automotivedive.com/news/tesla-cfo-sells-stock-electricvehicles-trump-elonmusk-tariffs/741914/

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/politifact/2025/03/09/is-elon-musks-doge-very-popular-thats-not-what-the-polls-say/81933823007/

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/10/business/tesla-vandalism-protest-stock/index.html

https://www.404media.co/facebook-cybertruck-owners-group-copes-with-relentless-mockery/

https://insideevs.com/news/748190/polestar-targets-tesla-buyers-unhappy-with-musk/

https://zecar.com/reviews/polestar-lures-disgrunted-tesla-owners-with-new-offer

Donald J. Trump, Truth Social post, March 11, 2025, 12:14 am.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/11/trump-truth-social-economy-stock-market

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/linda-mcmahon-education-secretary-confirmed/

https://www.nbcboston.com/news/national-international/education-department-plans-to-lay-off-employees-as-trump-vows-to-wind-the-agency-down/3655055/

https://www.thedailybeast.com/education-secretary-stumbles-on-fox-as-department-bloodbath-officially-begins/

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-will-buy-new-tesla-show-support-musk-2025-03-11/

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/12/economy/trump-steel-aluminum-tariffs-hnk-intl/index.html

X:

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GrudlerCh/status/1893986069630034067

elonmusk/status/1898612062533956047

SenMarkKelly/status/1898872403175858375

SenMarkKelly/status/1899155561171558505

Bluesky:

atrupar.com/post/3lk4uv7vyp52k

atrupar.com/post/3lk4vl4lixk24

atrupar.com/post/3lk4ukadc7s24

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Inevitable

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Favorite double-sized one-of-a-kind cup, fresh new iced coffee with creamer and sweetener, high traffic zone where I’m most likely to go barefoot, so of course this is the inevitable result!!!

The Numbers Game #63, Mar 10, 2025. Please Play Along!!

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We entered the harbor at 6 AM to this enchanting view.
50th Class Reunion
More Class Reunion
Morrie is a real scholar. He absolutely devours books.
He even knows how to open dresser drawers to get at more of them.
Welcome to “The Numbers Game #63.”  Today’s number is 184. To play along, go to your photos file and type that number into the search bar. Then post a selection of the photos you find that include that number and  post a link to your blog in my Numbers Game blog of the day. If instead of numbers, you have changed the identifiers of all your photos into words, pick a word or words to use instead, and show us a variety of photos that contain that word in the title.This prompt will repeat each Monday with a new number. If you want to play along, please put a link to your blog in comments below. Here are my contributions to the album.

Click on photos to enlarge.

 

The former head of the Social Security Administration “You’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits within the next 30 to 90 days.”

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Last week, the former head of the Social Security Administration issued a grave warning to the American people:

“You’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits. I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days.”

Why is former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley sounding the alarm?

  • Because of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) being “run” by Donald Trump’s presidential stand-in Elon Musk.
  • DOGE is infiltrating critical information systems, closing dozens of offices all across the country, and forcing through massive staffing cuts at the Social Security Administration.
  • Social Security started sending monthly benefits in January 1940. In the 85 years since, payments have never failed to go out.
  • Today, 73 million Americans depend on Social Security every month.
  • And at the risk of stating the obvious, they have earned those benefits. Social Security is not a government handout. (Unlike the numerous tax breaks and subsidies that billionaires like Elon Musk and giant corporations get courtesy of American taxpayers.)
  • People pay into the system throughout their working lives, then get money back once they reach a certain age.

By the way, Elon Musk recently said this on the mega-popular Joe Rogan podcast: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”

Why are we letting someone who thinks that way mess with any part of the federal government, much less one of the most important and successful programs in our nation’s entire history?

Tell Congress:

If Social Security misses payments even once, millions upon millions of Americans — who have already paid into the system — will suffer. Not just Democrats. Not just people in supposedly blue states. Not just the “coastal elites” Republicans have convinced themselves are some kind of all-powerful bogeyman. You must work together to prevent the so-called Department of Government Efficiency from interrupting Social Security payments and to undo whatever damage DOGE has already done at the Social Security Administration.

Click to add your name now.

Thanks for taking action.

For progress,

– Robert Weissman & Lisa Gilbert, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen

Donate | Public Citizen | 1600 20th Street NW | Washington DC 20009 | Unsubscribe

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More Cruelty. Unbelievable. “Give me your tired, your poor?”

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Heather Cox Richardson

Letter from an American, Heather Cox Richardson:

This morning, Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke of Reuters reported that the Trump administration is preparing to deport the 240,000 Ukrainians who fled Russia’s attacks on Ukraine and have temporary legal status in the United States. Foreign affairs journalist Olga Nesterova reminded Americans that “these people had to be completely financially independent, pay tax, pay all fees (around $2K) and have an affidavit from an American person to even come here.”

“This has nothing to do with strategic necessity or geopolitics,” Russia specialist Tom Nichols posted. “This is just cruelty to show [Russian president Vladimir] Putin he has a new American ally.”

The Trump administration’s turn away from traditional European alliances and toward Russia will have profound effects on U.S. standing in the world. Edward Wong and Mark Mazzetti reported in the New York Times today that senior officials in the State Department are making plans to close a dozen consulates, mostly in Western Europe, including consulates in Florence, Italy; Strasbourg, France; Hamburg, Germany; and Ponta Delgada, Portugal, as well as a consulate in Brazil and another in Turkey.

In late February, Nahal Toosi reported in Politico that President Donald Trump wants to “radically shrink” the State Department and to change its mission from diplomacy and soft power initiatives that advance democracy and human rights to focusing on transactional agreements with other governments and promoting foreign investment in the U.S.

Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency” have taken on the process of cutting the State Department budget by as much as 20%, and cutting at least some of the department’s 80,000 employees. As part of that project, DOGE’s Edward Coristine, known publicly as “Big Balls,” is embedded at the State Department.

As the U.S. retreats from its engagement with the world, China has been working to forge greater ties. China now has more global diplomatic posts than the U.S. and plays a stronger role in international organizations. Already in 2025, about 700 employees, including 450 career diplomats, have resigned from the State Department, a number that normally would reflect a year’s resignations.

Shutting embassies will hamper not just the process of fostering goodwill, but also U.S. intelligence, as embassies house officers who monitor terrorism, infectious disease, trade, commerce, militaries, and government, including those from the intelligence community. U.S. intelligence has always been formidable, but the administration appears to be weakening it.

As predicted, Trump’s turn of the U.S. toward Russia also means that allies are concerned he or members of his administration will share classified intelligence with Russia, thus exposing the identities of their operatives. They are considering new protocols for sharing information with the United States. The Five Eyes alliance between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the U.S. has been formidable since World War II and has been key to countering first the Soviet Union and then Russia. Allied governments are now considering withholding information about sources or analyses from the U.S.

Their concern is likely heightened by the return to Trump’s personal possession of the boxes of documents containing classified information the FBI recovered in August 2022 from Mar-a-Lago. Trump took those boxes back from the Department of Justice and flew them back to Mar-a-Lago on February 28.

A CBS News/YouGov poll from February 26–28 showed that only 4% of the American people sided with Russia in its ongoing war with Ukraine.

The unpopularity of the new administration’s policies is starting to show. National Republican Congressional Committee chair Richard Hudson (R-NC) told House Republicans on Tuesday to stop holding town halls after several such events have turned raucous as attendees complained about the course of the Trump administration. Trump has blamed paid “troublemakers” for the agitation, and claimed the disruptions are part of the Democrats’ “game.” “[B]ut just like our big LANDSLIDE ELECTION,” he posted on social media, “it’s not going to work for them!”

More Americans voted for someone other than Trump than voted for him.

Even aside from the angry protests, DOGE is running into trouble. In his speech before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, Trump referred to DOGE and said it “is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight.” In a filing in a lawsuit against DOGE and Musk, the White House declared that Musk is neither in charge of DOGE nor an employee of it. When pressed, the White House claimed on February 26 that the acting administrator of DOGE is staffer Amy Gleason. Immediately after Trump’s statement, the plaintiffs in that case asked permission to add Trump’s statement to their lawsuit.

Musk has claimed to have found billions of dollars of waste or fraud in the government, and Trump and the White House have touted those statements. But their claims to have found massive savings have been full of errors, and most of their claims have been disproved. DOGE has already had to retract five of its seven biggest claims. As for “savings,” the government spent about $710 billion in the first month of Trump’s term, compared with about $630 billion during the same timeframe last year.

Instead of showing great savings, DOGE’s claims reveal just how poorly Musk and his team understand the work of the federal government. After forcing employees out of their positions, they have had to hire back individuals who are, in fact, crucial to the nation, including the people guarding the U.S. nuclear stockpile. In his Tuesday speech, Trump claimed that the DOGE team had found “$8 million for making mice transgender,” and added: “This is real.”

Except it’s not. The mice in question were not “transgender”; they were “transgenic,” which means they are genetically altered for use in scientific experiments to learn more about human health. For comparison, S.V. Date noted in HuffPost that in just his first month in office, Trump spent about $10.7 million in taxpayer money playing golf.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo pointed out today that people reporting on the individual cuts to U.S. scientific and health-related grants are missing the larger picture: “DOGE and Donald Trump are trying to shut down advanced medical research, especially cancer research, in the United States…. They’re shutting down medicine/disease research in the federal government and the government-run and funded ecosystem of funding for most research throughout the United States. It’s not hyperbole. That’s happening.”

Republicans are starting to express some concern about Musk and DOGE. As soon as Trump took office, Musk and his DOGE team took over the Office of Personnel Management, and by February 14 they had begun a massive purge of federal workers. As protests of the cuts began, Trump urged Musk on February 22 to be “more aggressive” in cutting the government, prompting Musk to demand that all federal employees explain what they had accomplished in the past week under threat of firing. That request sparked a struggle in the executive branch as cabinet officers told the employees in their departments to ignore Musk. Then, on February 27, U.S. District Judge William Alsup found that the firings were likely illegal and temporarily halted them.

On Tuesday, Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) weighed in on the conflict when he told CNN that the power to hire and fire employees properly belongs to Cabinet secretaries.

Yesterday, Musk met with Republican— but no Democratic— members of Congress. Senators reportedly asked Musk—an unelected bureaucrat whose actions are likely illegal—to tell them more about what’s going on. According to Liz Goodwin, Marianna Sotomayor, and Theodoric Meyer of the Washington Post, Musk gave some of the senators his phone number and said he wanted to set up a direct line for them when they have questions, allowing them to get a near-instant response to their concerns.” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told reporters that Musk told the senators he would “create a system where members of Congress can call some central group” to get cuts they dislike reversed.

This whole exchange is bonkers. The Constitution gives Congress alone the power to make appropriations and pass the laws that decide how money is spent. Josh Marshall asks: “How on earth are we in this position where members of Congress, the ones who write the budget, appropriate and assign the money, now have to go hat in hand to beg for changes or even information from the guy who actually seems to be running the government?”

Later, Musk met with House Republicans and offered to set up a similar way for the members of the House Oversight DOGE Subcommittee to reach him. When representatives complained about the random cuts that were so upsetting constituents. Musk defended DOGE’s mistakes by saying that he “can’t bat a thousand all the time.”

This morning, U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. ruled in favor of a group of state attorneys general from 22 Democratic states and the District of Columbia, saying that Trump does not have the authority to freeze funding appropriated by Congress. McConnell wrote that the spending freeze “fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government.” As Joyce White Vance explained in Civil Discourse, McConnell issued a preliminary injunction that will stay in place until the case, called New York v. Trump, works its way through the courts. The injunction applies only in the states that sued, though, leaving Republican-dominated states out in the cold.

Today, Trump convened his cabinet and, with Musk present, told the secretaries that they, and not Musk, are in charge of their departments. Dasha Burns and Kyle Cheney of Politico reported that Trump told the secretaries that Musk only has the power to make recommendations, not to make staffing or policy decisions.

Trump is also apparently feeling pressure over his tariffs of 25% on goods from Canada and Mexico and an additional 10% on imports from China that went into effect on Tuesday, which economists warned would create inflation and cut economic growth. Today, Trump first said he would exempt car and truck parts from the tariffs, then expanded exemptions to include goods covered by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA) Trump signed in his first term. Administration officials say other tariffs will go into effect at different times in the future.

The stock market has dropped dramatically over the past three days owing to both the tariffs and the uncertainty over their implementation. But Trump denied his abrupt change had anything to do with the stock market.

“I’m not even looking at the market,” Trump said, “because long term, the United States will be very strong with what’s happening.”

—

Notes:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-plans-revoke-legal-status-ukrainians-who-fled-us-sources-say-2025-03-06/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-pivots-russia-allies-weigh-sharing-less-intel-us-rcna194420

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-elon-musk-government-workforce-cuts-opinion-poll-2025-03-02/ (despite the title, this is the Ukraine-Russia poll.)

https://apnews.com/article/trump-speech-congress-transcript-751b5891a3265ff1e5c1409c391fef7c

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/scary-subtext-paid-protester-line-trump-republicans-rcna194694

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/18/g-s1-49450/elon-musk-doge-leader

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/25/politics/amy-gleason-doge-acting-administrator/index.html

https://www.newsweek.com/doge-plaintiffs-trump-elon-musk-congress-speech-2040150

Paul Krugman
America is Trapped in a Burning Tesla
Just two days ago Steven Rattner published an article in the New York Times describing the mood among big-business leaders, which I would summarize as smug complacency. Donald Trump, they appeared to believe, was basically their guy, someone who would cut their taxes and remove those pesky environmental and financial regulations. He might be saying some…
Read more
2 days ago · 3608 likes · 274 comments · Paul Krugman

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-government-spending-has-not-slowed-under-trump-so-far-data-shows-2025-02-26/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK231336/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-golf-doge_n_67b50fbfe4b0319f377e6c6a

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/03/05/congress/musk-defends-doge-house-republicans-00215271

Megan Lebowitz and Julie Tsirkin “Trump and Sen. Marshall baselessly claim angry constituents are paid ‘troublemakers,’” NBC News, March 4?, 2025. (I did this article this way because it’s one of those awful “live” streams that make it impossible to find anything.)

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5175061-house-republicans-town-halls-protests/

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/act-now

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/05/musk-congress-anger-doge/

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/new-wapo-piece-on-post-constitutional-america

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/28/politics/trump-seized-boxes-returned-air-force-one/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/06/us/politics/embassies-consulates-closures.html

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/27/trump-state-department-cuts-l00206494

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/trumps-mass-firings-of-federal-workers-spread-chaos-nationwide

https://www.wcpo.com/transgender-mice-fact-check-trump-2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/us/politics/musk-federal-bureaucracy-takeover.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/upshot/doge-spending-cuts-changed.html

https://www.axios.com/2025/02/28/trump-federal-employees-firing-court-judge

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance
Courts to Trump: No
This morning in New York v. Trump, a case brought by a group of state attorneys general working together, U.S. District Judge John McConnell, the chief judge for the District of Rhode Island, ruled against the Trump administration in a significant way. The attorneys general…
Read more
7 hours ago · 1812 likes · 188 comments · Joyce Vance

https://www.reuters.com/business/tariff-reprieve-likely-be-extended-all-usmca-compliant-goods-lutnick-says-2025-03-06/

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/06/nx-s1-5312069/trump-federal-funding-freeze-court-order

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69585994/161/state-of-new-york-v-trump/

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-in-massive-backtrack-on-tariffs-after-stock-market-plunge/

https://www.reuters.com/business/tariff-reprieve-likely-be-extended-all-usmca-compliant-goods-lutnick-says-2025-03-06/

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/06/trump-cabinet-musk-025093

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y03qleevvo

X:

radiofreetom/status/1897682676590551081

onestpress/status/1897611749597020461

Bluesky:

meidastouch.com/post/3lisr5cfd2k2m

yasharali.bsky.social/post/3lis4q5meph2f

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Flour of the Day…for Cee.

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The aftermath of the Fat Tuesday parade in San Juan Cosala.  Instead of confetti, they throw flour!  Thank goodness it didn’t rain.