More Of This, Please

As rational Americans despair and MAGA cultists applaud, Trump and Musk and their local clones are busily turning federal and Red state governments into kakistocracies, with the unprecedented acquiescence of legislative invertebrates. As the rest of us struggle to determine what actions might mitigate the ongoing destruction, we are seeing the emergence of a few bright spots–the presence of at least some principled public servants who refuse to participate in the wholesale abandonment of truth and the rule of law.

And that refusal matters.

The Bulwark recently cited an observation by Juan Linz, a political scientist who studied the breakdown of democratic regimes.

Linz argued, based on many examples from all over the world, that democracies fail not so much because of the presence of anti-democratic challengers but because of the failure of their elites to stand up to such opponents. These elites often engage in “semiloyal” behavior, which Linz defines as “a willingness to encourage, tolerate, cover up, treat leniently, excuse or justify the actions of other participants that go beyond the limits of peaceful, legitimate patterns of politics in a democracy.” They go along to get along, coming up with excuses all along the way for the authoritarian challengers. They fail to stand unequivocally for democracy and the rule of law, and liberal democracy fails.

We’re currently seeing a lot of that “semiloyal” behavior.

But we are also seeing principled behavior. Numerous media outlets have reported on a recent set of resignations similar to the Saturday Night Massacre following Nixon’s demands to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. 

Donald Trump experienced a Thursday Night Massacre.

“Manhattan’s U.S. attorney on Thursday resigned rather than obey an order from a top Justice Department official to drop the corruption case against New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams,” the New York Times reported. After the case was transferred to the public integrity section at Main Justice, a total of five more DOJ attorneys resigned. In a blistering letter — one for the history books — former U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon blasted the Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove III’s order to dismiss the case, describing a nefarious quid pro quo and accusing Bove of ordering the collection of notes that would have documented a meeting concerning the matter. Sassoon and other DOJ lawyers have demonstrated uncommon courage in defense of the rule of law.

Sassoon is no “woke” liberal. She clerked for Antonin Scalia, and was a member of the Federalist Society. As Daniel Richman, a Columbia University law professor who was a former federal prosecutor, said in a statement praising Sassoon, “That the resignation should be by someone with sterling Federalist Society credentials only highlights the difference between the Trump administration and serious conservatives with integrity and respect for the criminal process.” 

As NBC reported,

The top federal prosecutor in New York and two senior federal prosecutors in Washington have resigned after they refused to follow a Justice Department order to drop the corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, multiple officials said Thursday.

The resignations amount to a stunning public rebuke of the Trump administration’s new Justice Department leadership in one of the country’s highest-profile criminal cases.

Justice Department officials tried to move the case to the agency’s Public Integrity Section in Washington, but John Keller, the acting head of that Section, also refused to drop the case and resigned, two sources said. Three other members of the section also resigned, as did the acting head of the department’s Criminal Division, which oversees federal criminal cases nationwide. 

In his resignation letter, Hagan Scotten, who once clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts. wrote

Any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way,

If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.”

The integrity shown by these public servants is a reproach to the thoroughly corrupt Trump/Musk administration. Trump’s Presidency is an effort to stay out of prison and punish anyone who opposed him. Musk’s conflicts of interest are overwhelming, as a recent letter from several Democratic members of Congress enumerated.

He has a financial stake in ongoing federal enforcement actions; his companies are currently the subject of at least 32 federal investigations, complaints, and other enforcement actions, and his company, X (formerly Twitter), is launching a digital wallet that would fall under the oversight authority of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an agency Musk is trying to shut down.

Trump and Musk make Nixon look like a boy scout. 

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The Real Reason For Decimating The Federal Government…

I should have seen it.

The Washington Post recently reported on what should have been obvious to those of us who have studied the Right’s constant efforts to privatize governmental functions: Elon Musk’s mass government cuts will make private companies millions. While Trump and Musk are framing the immense and indiscriminate cuts to federal governance as removal of “waste,” they are really likely to provide what the article calls “a boon to private companies – including Musk’s own businesses – that the government increasingly relies on for many of its key initiatives.”

Much of my academic life was devoted research on contracting-out, a/k/a privatization–the decision to provide government services through private contractors rather than government employees.

My skepticism began with obvious misuse of the term.  Actual privatization would mean selling off government operations and allowing them to sink or swim in the marketplace (a la Margaret Thatcher). Americans, however, use the term to mean something else entirely: government “contracting out” with private companies to supply goods and services being financed with tax dollars.

There are certainly times where contracting makes sense, but government hasn’t been a very good judge of when those are. Contracts with units of government are qualitatively different from contracts between private actors, and those differences make it far more likely that the contracts ultimately negotiated will be unfavorable to the taxpayers who are funding them–and that’s even without the predictable “crony capitalism” that rewards campaign donors and favored billionaire sycophants with lucrative contracts at taxpayer expense.

As Musk has proceeded to lay waste to the federal bureaucracy, many objectors have noted that despite population growth, the federal workforce has been flat for decades. There’s a reason: a few years ago, I came across data showing that the federal government was actually paying the salaries of some 17 million full-time contract workers who weren’t technically government employees.

Criticisms of government operations ignore the reality that programs are often stymied by a lack of skilled in-house personnel. That includes–among other things– the government’s inept handling of refugees and the (mis)management of Medicare and Medicaid ($103.6 billion in improper payments in 2019 alone).

Too few critics recognize that passing a law to do X or Y is only a start; the unit of government charged with administering the law or program needs sufficient resources to do so. Those resources include adequate numbers of well-trained employees and skilled supervision– virtually impossible when contractors are providing the bulk of the services.

Back in 2021, I posted about an example from 2004, when George W. Bush turned the job of collecting the hundreds of billions of dollars that tax scofflaws owed Uncle Sam over to private collectors–parroting the GOP insistence that private business would do a better job than federal workers.  Most of what the private firms brought in was from easy-to-collect cases that began running out after just a few months. When the IRS brought the work back in-house, agents collected some two-thirds more money in that same few months, and it came from the harder cases the private companies had avoided. Relying on private tax collectors actually ended up costing the federal government money.

I should note that Republicans’ subsequent actions suggested that “efficiency” hadn’t really been the goal. They slashed 20 percent of the IRS’s budget and 22 percent of its staff. For people making more than $1 million, the number of tax audits dropped by 72 percent—and the money the IRS collected from audits fell by 40 percent.

The Guardian report noted that private firms are salivating as Musk decimates the federal bureaucracy.

Musk’s plans have already excited Silicon Valley mainstays such as Palantir, whose executives praised Doge on an earnings call last week and talked about how the disruption by the billionaire’s strike squad was good for the company. Palantir already has won hundreds of millions of dollars in US military contracts in recent years for AI-related projects.

Musk himself has extensive contracts worth billions of dollars through companies like SpaceX that are set to expand under the new administration.

There are certainly situations in which contracting out makes sense–but we are already relying on private contractors beyond the point of reason. We have contractors who do more or less the same work as civil servants, sitting in the same offices, for years on end, and typically at far higher cost. We have contractors who oversee contractors, contractors who write policy for government officials, and Trump is firing federal contract managers who are already too few in number and too outgunned in skills to manage it all.

The GOP’s persistent attacks on civil servants costs taxpayers and enriches privateers. The Trump/Musk goal is more of the grift.

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They’re Still Coming For The Schools

While co-Presidents Trump and Musk absorb all the oxygen/attention, the Christian Nationalists have continued their long-term focus on the public schools. While Americans who understand the damage of the daily assaults on Separation of Powers and the Rule of Law are distracted, those “Christian soldiers” just keep marching on…

The Guardian recently published a report on that steady march by a product of Evangelical schooling.

The author began by relating his own education in what he termed “a sanctuary of faith, community and ‘true’ education,”  which he reported had left him disillusioned and bullied, and had set him on a “path of crushing financial insecurity that would haunt me for years.”

Twenty-five years later, Donald Trump and the Christian nationalist movement that put him in the White House (twice) are seeking to transform public education into something similar to what I was reared on, where science, history and even economics are taught through an evangelical conservative lens, while prayer and Bible reading are foundations of the curriculum.

As he notes, the efforts to transform education into fundamentalist Christian indoctrination takes two forms: injecting more Christian rhetoric and rituals into public school curriculum and the use of tax dollars to subsidize private religious schools via vouchers. As he also points out, each of these tactics is bolstering the education of America’s most privileged students, while downgrading services for children of low-income families.

Lest readers dismiss his concerns as overstatement, he provides evidence.

In Oklahoma, the state superintendent ordered his public schools to teach from the Christian holy book; he later sought to mandate all schools to air a video in which he prays for Trump. On his desk sat a black mug with the Latin phrase si vis pacem para bellum: “If you want peace, prepare for war.”

In June, Louisiana passed a law ordering all classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. And in Florida, Pam Bondi, now Trump’s attorney general, supported a constitutional amendment to allow state funding for religious schools before voters rejected it.

In 2022, a supreme court ruling allowed private religious schools to receive government funding. In response to this, LGBTQ+ advocates helped pass the Maine Human Rights Act in their state, protecting students and faculty from discrimination. Two Christian schools are suing the state for the ability to violate the new law while still receiving government funding. Separately, the supreme court has taken up a case addressing whether to allow taxpayer funds for religious charter schools, potentially leading to the first Christian public school in the US.

A Texas elementary school curriculum infuses Bible stories into language arts programs. And these efforts are not limited to Southern states. Iowa passed legislation granting taxpayer-funded “scholarships” to families who enroll their children in private schools, very much including Christian schools. Meanwhile, the Idaho Family Policy Center (IFPC), a Christian lobbying group, announced it was drafting a bill to would require Bible reading in all Idaho public schools. (The organization has also drafted legislation banning abortions and restricting transgender healthcare.)

These local efforts are currently being supercharged by the Trump/Musk administration. Trump has promised to “bring back prayer to our schools”, shut down the Department of Education and embrace “school choice”–measures that would fulfill a longstanding evangelical wishlist. Christian Nationalists insist that “government schools” brainwash children into “liberal atheists.” 

The Guardian essay recites the history of this effort to make America’s schools “godly” and–not so incidentally–keep them White. (The government’s denial of tax exemptions for segregated Christian schools–not Roe v. Wade– was what galvanized evangelicals and drove them into the GOP.)

Meanwhile, the Christian right doubled down on the creation of its own, independent education system, one that rejected evolution in favor of creationism, made students pledge allegiance to a Christian flag, and preached against environmental issues, LGBTQ+ rights and progressive policies.

The essay traced the author’s very painful emergence from the bubble he had inhabited, the fundamentalist education system in which “all knowledge and thought must bend itself to unarguable truth that the Bible is 100% factual in all matters.” As he notes, the “itchy curiosity of philosophy, the relentless questions of the scientific method, the skeptic probing of journalism, have no place in that world.”

That rejection of science, empiricism and inconvenient evidence is the “education” supported by the Trump/Musk Administration–not because either of these megalomaniacs are devout Christian fundamentalists, but because they know they owe their continued support to the fearful, racist, “faux Christian” voters who comprise the majority of the GOP base.

If successful, those Christian Warriors will take us back to the Dark Ages.

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Let’s Talk About “Merit”

I don’t think anything has pissed me off more than Donald Trump’s insistence that DEI programs are just an effort to privilege “those people” (insert the object of your bias) over meritorious White guys. As a meme I’ve seen points out, that has it exactly backwards: DEI is an effort to level a very tilted playing field–an effort to combat the longstanding automatic preference given to White guys over more qualified women and minorities.

Study after study confirms that when identical resumes are sent to prospective employers by fictitious applicants–differing only in use of “white sounding” or “black sounding” names–the white sounding applicants get over twice as many interviews.

His pious defense of merit is especially ironic (to put it mildly)  when it is accompanied by Trump’s own incredibly unqualified nominees–a collection of cranks, clowns, conspiracy theorists and sycophants the likes of which no previous President has ever tried to elevate to positions of responsibility. As a friend has noted, in what was a massive understatement, “I’ve seen better cabinets at IKEA.”

For generations, American White guys–more accurately, straight White Christian males–have enjoyed a raft of entirely unmerited advantages.

I will grant that many of the DEI programs have proven to be less than effective, and some have suffered from a surfeit of what we used to call “political correctness.” But they aren’t being attacked for dubious efficacy. If there was any lingering doubt about the profound racism of Trump and MAGA, Trump’s immediate attacks on DEI efforts, and his race to scrub government websites of anything remotely “woke,” should erase it. (No one could ever accuse MAGA folks of being woke–a term that simply means that one has awakened to the existence of structural impediments to civic and economic fairness. They aren’t interested in being fair, or to rewarding individual merit found in women or members of minorities.)

The idea of an actual meritocracy is appealing. But a lot of what we attribute to “merit” is really a leg up, rooted in racial, religious or financial privilege.

The problems with America’s approach to meritocracy implicate–yet again–my two favorite admonitions: “it depends” and “it’s more complicated than that.” We are gradually and reluctantly coming to see, for example, that our definition of what constitutes merit in a given area is often too constricted, and our devices for measuring and determining what constitutes relevant merit may be inadequate.

When I was still teaching, I used to cite the example of an old rule (I’ve long since forgotten which southern state it was from) that restricted entry into local carpenters’ unions to high school graduates who weighed at least 180 pounds. Those requirements kept most Black and female applicants out–in that place at that time, few Blacks graduated from high school, and few women weighed over 180 pounds. The purported justification for the rule was that carpenters needed to be able to read construction plans and needed to be able to pick up at least X number of pounds of materials on the worksite.

But–rather obviously–the best way to determine whether applicants should be admitted to the carpentry trade would be to test them on their ability to read and understand plans and drawings, and to have them demonstrate that they could pick up the necessary weight.

The bottom line is that even seemingly neutral criteria can be–and frequently have been–manipulated so that they are not really neutral.

Those of us who’ve served on university admissions committees know that an applicant’s GPA and test results are necessary but incomplete indicators of whether that applicant will do the academic work required.  We also look for evidence of motivation and discipline.

The definition of merit in a given situation can be complicated. What skills are relevant? What evidence is probative?

One thing has already become obvious: Donald Trump’s criterion for “merit”– being a straight White Christian Nationalist loyal to Donald J. Trump–is inconsistent with the demands of the positions to be filled.

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What We Face

On February 13th, Robert Hubbell’s daily letter included a (partial) list of what Trump/Musk had done in the first days of the administration. 

Pardoned 1,500 insurrectionists who assisted Trump in his first attempted coup.

Converted the DOJ into his political hit squad by opening investigations into members of the DOJ, FBI, Congress, and state prosecutors’ offices who attempted to hold Trump to account for his crimes.

Fired a dozen inspectors general, whose job it is to identify fraud and corruption and to serve as a check on abuses of power by the president.

Fired dozens of prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on criminal cases relating to Trump

Fired dozens of prosecutors who worked on criminal cases against January 6 insurrectionists

Opened investigations into thousands of FBI agents who worked on cases against January 6 insurrectionists

Disbanded the FBI the group of agents designed to prevent foreign election interference in the US

Disbanded the DOJ group of prosecutors targeting Russian oligarchs’ criminal activity affecting the US

Fired the chairs and members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, and the Federal Election Commission and refused to replace them, effectively shutting down those independent boards in violation of statute

Shut down and defunded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Shut down and defunded USAID by placing virtually the entire staff of the agency on leave

Impounded billions of dollars of grants appropriated by Congress to USAID, National Institutes of Health, Department of Education, and the EPA, all in violation of Article I of the Constitution, which grants Congress the power to make appropriations

Allowed a group of hackers to seize control of large swaths of the federal government’s computer network by attaching unauthorized servers, changing and creating new computer code outside of federal security protocols, creating “backdoors” in secure systems, installing unsanctioned “AI” software to scrape federal data (including personal identification information), and installing “spyware” to monitor email of federal employees

Disobeyed multiple court orders to release frozen federal funds (an ongoing violation; see the NYTimes on Wednesday)
Granted a corrupt pardon to the Mayor of New York in exchange for his promise to cooperate in Trump’s immigration crackdown

The occasional trolls who visit this site to register their approval of these illegal and unconstitutional measures discount their illegality, confirming disdain for what is a significant protection of individual liberty–the insistence that the ends cannot justify the means. The entire Bill of Rights is founded on that premise, which is central to the rule of law.

It requires a total lack of civic literacy and historic understanding to look at that list and approve of those actions–to fail to see that they are fundamentally contrary to sound policy, to the rule of law, and to America’s global interests and stature.

Members of Congress should be the first line of defense against this coup. Most of these arbitrary actions can only be properly and constitutionally taken by Congress, and the actions comprising the Trump/Musk coup send an unmistakable message that our co-Presidents find Congress irrelevant and expendable. One might expect even MAGA Senators and Representatives to object to their political castration, but–as James Baldwin once noted–in order for evil to flourish, “it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.”

Unfortunately, MAGA Senators and Representatives only come in two flavors: Christian Nationalist (in Indiana, think Jim Banks) and spineless (in Indiana, think Todd Young). The Christian Nationalists are profoundly, if ignorantly, anti-American; the spineless are interested only in retaining their positions–positions that their meek obedience has divested of any significance other than the right to retain a title and receive a paycheck.

America’s government has three branches (someone needs to explain them to Tommy Tuberville), so in the absence of a live and breathing Congress, it is falling to the courts to restrain our would-be co-Kings. However, it looks all too likely that our would-be monarchs will ignore the courts–echoing Jackson’s infamous statement that “the courts have issued their decision, now let them enforce it.” 

If that happens, it will be left up to We the People to counter this coup, and we can’t wait until the midterm elections, by which time our overlords may have put even more vote suppression laws on the books. We must participate in protests, in general strikes, in civic resistance of all kinds. Jessica Craven has posted about several:—a nationwide protest on February 17, a one-day general strike on February 28, and a “total shutdown” on March 15.

Studies have determined that participation in non-violent protest by only 3.5% of a population forces political change. We the People can do this. 

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