Socialists
According to MAGA, Shakespeare Had a Great Idea About What to do with the Competent Lawyers
Washington Post, Justice Department struggles as thousands exit—and few are replaced
D. John Sauer, Esquire, pursued a double major, philosophy and electrical engineering, at Duke. After college, he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, where he earned a degree in theology, followed by a masters in philosophy at Notre Dame. At that point, he felt a call to the bar, prompting him to go to Harvard Law School, where he “made Law Review” and earned a degree magna cum laude. After Harvard Law, Judge Luttig of the Fourth Circuit gladly offered him a position as clerk, and from there he went on to provide his considerable intellectual talents as clerk to Justice Scalia.
No slouch is D. John Sauer, Esquire. As a consequence of his brilliance and prestigious education, Mr. Sauer knew exactly what to tell the judge who asked if it would be A-OK for a president to order Seal Team Six to assassinate a political enemy. “Yessiree bobtail,” readily responded D. John Sauer, Esquire, “that would be just hunky-dory.”
Having achieved victory in the presidential immunity case through the ministrations of D. John Sauer—electrical engineer, philosopher, theologian, and legal scholar—Mango Mussolini knew exactly whom to appoint as Solicitor General, the position Mr. Sauer currently graces.
Clearly, Trump and his Attorney General, Ms. Bondi, would like to shitcan all the normal lawyers from the Justice Department and replace every mother’s son and daughter of them with clones of D. John Sauer, Esquire.
Sadly, however, as the Washington Post reports today, the American bar is not populated by lots of Harvard trained Nazis, eager to replace the thousands of lawyers who have been fired or who have left the Justice Department. Nor are the law schools at Columbia and Harvard and Georgetown filled with eager young Fascist whipper-snappers, read to pour their hearts and souls into the struggle to establish authoritarianism. WaPo writes,
Current Justice Department prospective hires are more likely to have political backgrounds than have been typical in the past, coming from Republican congressional offices and advocacy groups, the people familiar with the hiring process said. Others are young attorneys with little relevant experience or mid- to late-career attorneys who have no background in prosecutions.
The Shutdown Deal
Ezra Klein (N.Y. Times), What Were Democrats Thinking?
As far as I can tell, the headline is intended to be read in a straightforward way—“WHAT were Democrats thinking?”—not in a sarcastic tone of voice—“What were Democrats THINKING?”
In any event, as per usual, Ezra Klein has a dozen or so really interesting things to say—some of which might not have occurred to you and me—and it’s best to let him speak for himself.
But as a preamble, two brief comments from me. First, some of the eight senators who joined the Republicans are political heavyweights, and people not known for an inclination to wimp out. So, before your knee jerks and you hurl criticism at them for wimping out, please think twice.
Second, among the really interesting things one might say about this putrid mess, the most interesting, IMHO, is that Republicans are now set up to cast spectacularly unpopular votes to screw a large portion of the public on the health insurance costs.
Ezra Klein writes,
Back in September, when I was reporting an article on whether Democrats should shut down the government, I kept hearing the same warning from veterans of past shutdown fights: The president controls the bully pulpit. He controls, to some degree, which parts of the government stay open and which parts close. It is very, very hard for the opposition party to win a shutdown.
Which makes it all the more remarkable that Democrats were winning this one. Polls showed that most voters blamed Republicans, not Democrats, for the current shutdown — perhaps because President Trump was bulldozing the East Wing of the White House rather than negotiating to reopen the government. Trump’s approval rating has been falling — in CNN’s tracking poll, it dipped into the 30s for the first time since he took office again. And last week, Democrats wrecked Republicans in the elections and Trump blamed his party’s losses in part on the shutdown. Democrats were riding higher than they have been in months.
Then, over the weekend, a group of Senate Democrats broke ranks and negotiated a deal to end the shutdown in return for — if we’re being honest — very little.
The guts of the deal are this: Food assistance — both SNAP and WIC, I was told — will get a bit more funding, and there are a few other modest concessions on spending levels elsewhere in the government. Laid-off federal workers will be rehired and furloughed federal workers given back pay. Most of the government is funded only until the end of January. (So get ready: We could be doing this again in a few months.) Most gallingly, the deal does nothing to extend the expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits over which Democrats ostensibly shut down the government in the first place. All it offers is a promise from Republicans to hold a vote on the tax credits in the future. Of the dozen or so House and Senate Democrats I spoke to over the past 24 hours, every one expected that vote to fail.
To understand why the shutdown ended with such a whimper, you need to understand the strange role the A.C.A. subsidies played in it. Democrats said the shutdown was about the subsidies, but for most of them, it wasn’t. It was about Trump’s authoritarianism. It was about showing their base — and themselves — that they could fight back. It was about treating an abnormal political moment abnormally.
T he A.C.A. subsidies emerged as the shutdown demand because they could keep the caucus sufficiently united. They put Democrats on the right side of public opinion — even self-identified MAGA voters wanted the subsidies extended — and held the quivering Senate coalition together. You shut the government down with the Democratic caucus you have, not with the Democratic caucus you want.
The shutdown was built on a cracked foundation. There were Senate Democrats who didn’t want a shutdown at all. There were Senate Democrats who did want a shutdown but thought it strange to make their demand so narrow: Was winning on health care premiums really winning the right fight? Should Democrats really vote to fund a government turning toward authoritarianism so long as health insurance subsidies were preserved?
And what if winning on the health care fight was actually a political gift to Donald Trump? Absent a fix, the average health insurance premium for 20 million Americans will more than double. The premium shock will hit red states particularly hard. Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s longtime pollster, had released a survey of competitive House districts showing that letting the tax credits expire might be lethal to Republican efforts to hold the House. Why were Democrats fighting so hard to neutralize their best issue in 2026?
The political logic of the shutdown fight was inverted: If Democrats got the tax credits extended — if they “won” — they would be solving a huge electoral problem for Republicans. If Republicans successfully allowed the tax credits to expire — if they “won” — they would be handing Democrats a cudgel with which to beat them in the elections.
This is why Senator Chuck Schumer’s compromise, which offered to reopen the government if Republicans extended the tax credits for a year, struck many Democrats as misguided. Morally, it might be worth sacrificing an electoral edge to lower health insurance premiums. But a one-year extension solved the Republicans’ electoral problem without solving the policy problem. Why on earth would they do that?
In any case, Republicans were not interested in Schumer’s offer. Trump himself has shown no interest in a deal. Rather than negotiating over health care spending, Trump has been ratcheting up the pain the shutdown is causing. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been furloughed or fired. The administration has been withholding food assistance from Americans who desperately need it. Airports are tipping into chaos as air traffic controllers go without pay.
More than anything else, this is what led some Senate Democrats to cut a deal: Trump’s willingness to hurt people exceeds their willingness to see people get hurt. I want to give them their due on this: They are hearing from their constituents and seeing the mounting problems and they are trying to do what they see as the responsible, moral thing. They do not believe that holding out will lead to Trump restoring the subsidies. They fear that their Republican colleagues would, under mounting pressure, do as Trump had demanded and abolish the filibuster. (Whether that would be a good or a bad thing is a subject for another column.) This, in the end, is the calculation the defecting Senate Democrats are making: They don’t think a longer shutdown will cause Trump to cave. They just think it will cause more damage.
If I were in the Senate, I wouldn’t vote for this compromise. Shutdowns are an opportunity to make an argument, and the country was just starting to pay attention. If Trump wanted to cancel flights over Thanksgiving rather than keep health care costs down, I don’t see why Democrats should save him from making his priorities so exquisitely clear. And I worry that Democrats have just taught Trump that they will fold under pressure. That’s the kind of lesson he remembers.
But it’s worth keeping this is perspective: The shutdown was a skirmish, not the real battle. Both sides were fighting for position, and Democrats, if you look at the polls, are ending up in a better one than they were when they started. They elevated their best issue — health care — and set the stage for voters to connect higher premiums with Republican rule. It’s not a win, but given how badly shutdowns often go for the opposition party, it’s better than a loss.
Are We Drifting into Authoritarianism—Or Maybe Drifting into Chaos?
When I was three years old, I had to learn by experience what are the consequences of sticking the table knife into the electric socket. Apparently, large numbers of our fellow citizens need to learn from experience that it is unwise to pick as your airline pilot someone suffering from severe mental illness, who lacks common sense, and who is quickly becoming senile and demented. Such a pilot is likely to fly the plane into the ground. It’s a shame the passenegers didn’t know that before the picked him.
The Markers of Authoritarianism
I think the New York Times did a good job laying out twelve markers of authoritarianism. (See the immediately preceding post.) That said, I also think some context is badly needed.
What Trump Doesn’t Know
Trump doesn’t know how to do second-order thinking. He cannot accurately grasp the consequences of his actions, or the consequences of the actions of others.
Trump doesn’t know how to think long term. Witness, for example, his thoughts on the filibuster.
Trump doesn’t know how to use any tools to achieve his goals, apart from bribery and threats, including threats of violence.
It is a constant surprise to Trump that, while some people will succumb to bribery and some will succumb to threats, others will not. In fact, for many, the threats will, from Trump’s perspective, be entirely counterproductive.
As a sociopath lacking all empathy, Trump is unable to appeal to others’ empathy, because he does not know that most people are empathetic, at least to some degree.
Trump doesn’t know how to construct a plausible argument. Thus, on the rare occasions when his positions have some merit, he cannot make a logical argument.
In fact, Trump is unaware that some arguments are backed by facts and logic, and some are just bullshit. To him, legal disputes are just a matter of which side screams the loudest. Because he is unaware that some legal positions are well founded and others are not, and because he cannot accurately predict the consequences of his actions, and because he is incapable of second order thinking, he has ordered the prosecution of Letitia James and James Comey even though the prosecutions will fail, and he and his legal team will be revealed as the idiots they are.
By contrast, a rational proto-fascist would have known that ordinary prosecutions of his enemies would fail, and he would do better to encourage violent action against them, outside the formal legal structure.
But Trump is the President
So, he can do a lot of mischief and cause a lot of chaos.
Trump’s Popularity is Headed South
From The Economist this morning:
Inflation and Criminal Immigrants
Trump’s slender margin of victory in 2024 was based on inflation and fears of criminal immigrants.
A rational proto-fascist would have kept his promise to try to lower inflation. A rational wannabe dictator would have realized that policies that tend to promote inflation will in fact increase inflation. Someone capable of second order thinking would have realized that higher inflation would decrease his popularity and make it harder for him to achieve his authoritarian dreams. Someone not blinded by grandiosity would recognize his loss of popularity when he sees it.
A rational nascent Nazi would recognize that if he has made inroads into the Latino community by promising to round up criminal immigrants, then he should round up criminal immigrants, not terrorize the whole Latino population.
And What About the Supreme Court?
The Supreme Court is slow walking Trump’s emergency application to invade Illinois. On Wednesday of this week, they’ll hear oral argument on Trump’s tariff power grab. Other issues will follow in due course.
They game of Trump v. Justice is under way, but there are more innings to play. In the last game of the World Series, the Blue Jays were ahead at the end of eighth inning, but the Dodgers won the contest. Let’s let this game play out.
Yeah, But What if Trump Just Defies the Courts?
Well, as someone once said, aye, there’s the rub.
Let’s say Trump doesn’t want to obey a Supreme Court order and directs [insert name of police unit, National Guard, Army battalion, etc. etc.] to act in contravention of the Court’s decision, will the people making up that official body obey Trump or will they obey the Supreme Court or will law and order just break down?
I put it to you that it’s hardly a foregone conclusion that the … police, National Guard, Army, etc. … will just jerk their knees and do exactly what Trump tells them to do.
But Because I Can Do Second Order Thinking, I Post the Next Question
If the official organs of state power refuse to obey illegal orders, will Trump just call out the Proud Boys and the other hooligans?
Answer: I don’t know, but he has done it before.
Twelve Markers of Authoritarianism
N.Y. Times Editorial Board, Are We Losing Our Democracy?
The Times identifies twelve “markers of democratic erosion,” briefly discusses each one, and gives a “bottom line” view of where we are on the downward curve. This post cites each “marker” and reproduces the Times Editorial Board’s “bottom line”:
1. An authoritarian stifles dissent and speech. Bottom Line: Many forms of speech and dissent remain vibrant in the United States. But the president has tried to dull them. His evident goal is to cause Americans to fear they will pay a price for criticizing him, his allies or his agenda.
2. An authoritarian persecutes political opponents. Bottom line: True authoritarians go much further than Mr. Trump has, but he has already targeted his opponents with legal persecution in shocking ways.
3. An authoritarian bypasses the legislature. Bottom line: Mr. Trump has defied the Constitution by trampling on Congress’s power of the purse. In full autocracies, legislatures often formally transfer some of their authority to the executive, and some congressional Republicans have proposed such changes.
4. An authoritarian uses the military for domestic control. Bottom line: Mr. Trump’s use of the military for domestic control has been limited. But his willingness to use it as he has — and his threats to expand that use, through the invocation of the Insurrection Act and with troops beyond the National Guard — is extremely worrisome.
5. An authoritarian defies the courts. Bottom line: It is a hopeful sign that he has not ignored the Supreme Court, and the court may yet block his most blatant power grabs. Still, the court’s reluctance to restrain himappears to have emboldened him to sidestep lower court orders he does not like.
6. An authoritarian declares national emergencies on false pretenses. Bottom line: Mr. Trump’s willingness to kill people without due process, through the blowing up of boats that American officials could instead stop and search, represents one of his most extreme abuses of power. It raises the prospect that he may expand the use of emergency power to other areas, including domestic law enforcement.
7. An authoritarian vilifies marginalized groups. Bottom line: Mr. Trump is borrowing from the autocrats’ playbook by suggesting that some citizens are legitimate and others are second-class.
8. An authoritarian controls information and the news media. Bottom line: In place of an independent and free press, Mr. Trump evidently hopes to create a shadow ecosystem willing to promote his interests and talking points.
9. An authoritarian tries to take over universities. Bottom line: Because the federal government finances so much academic research, it has considerable power over universities. Initially, some universities seemed as if they might simply submit to Mr. Trump’s demands. More recently, several showed more willingness to resist, rejecting a proposal that would have rewarded them financially for adopting Trump-friendly policies.
10. An authoritarian creates a cult of personality. Bottom line: The Trump cult of personality plays into his claims — common among autocrats — that he possesses a unique ability to solve the country’s problems. As he put it, “I alone can fix it.” He seeks to equate himself with the federal government, as if it does not exist without him.
11. An authoritarian uses power for personal profit. Bottom line: The Trump cult of personality plays into his claims — common among autocrats — that he possesses a unique ability to solve the country’s problems. As he put it, “I alone can fix it.” He seeks to equate himself with the federal government, as if it does not exist without him.
12. An authoritarian manipulates the law to stay in power. Bottom line: Even if he backs away from any scheme to serve more than two presidential terms, Mr. Trump’s attempts to tilt the electoral field in favor of Republicans is anti-democratic and could pervert American elections for years.
Go Ahead, Clown, Make Our Day
John Marshall of Talking Points Memo makes a persuasive case for letting Trump bully the Republican senators into deep-sixing the filibuster. Marshall writes,
As you’ve probably already heard, Donald Trump went on Truth Social … and announced that the time had come for his senators to pass a clean “continuing resolution” to reopen the government with a simply majority vote by abolishing the filibuster. The only proper response to this is “bring it on.” It’s never good to cower, of course. “Give it your best shot” is always the proper posture. But if Trump is able to accomplish this (I’m skeptical — more on that in a moment), that’s great news.
This is such an important point that is worth itemizing the reasons why this is so.
First, the senate filibuster is a core reason for the decline of trust in government over the last quarter century. The evolution of its use helped severe the tethers connecting election results and governmental action. A party wins an election and its promised actions never happen. The filibuster is both the cause of and excuse for gridlock.
Second, the filibuster provides an overwhelming structural advantage for Republicans, a big reason to be skeptical it will happen. (More on that in a moment.) Republicans want tax cuts and judicial nominations, neither of which the filibuster affects. To the extent Republicans want non-budget/tax legislation, it’s generally stuff like a national abortion ban that Republican leaders are happy for an excuse not to touch. They’re no more likely to pass something like that post-filibuster. The Democrats’ agenda is always legislation focused — actual laws that institute reforms, create services, safety nets, anything. It’s in the nature of being the party of government. The senate filibuster is a permanent bar for any Democratic legislation Republicans oppose, regardless of which party is in the majority. Remember that Obamacare only passed in 2009-10 because two successive wave elections had briefly — for about six months — given Democrats the now unimaginable margin of 60 senate votes. Anyone who tells you the filibuster affects both parties equally is either lying or has been sleeping for the last 30 years.
Third, because the filibuster is a permanent bar on any Democratic legislation, any reforms to protect the republic against Trumpism are all ruled out in advance. As long as the filibuster exists, it means any future Democratic presidency or trifecta is simply a replay of the Biden presidency, a short breather before the further advance of Trumpist autocracy.
None of the above is new. It applied in 2021-22 when Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema refused any effort to limit or abolish the filibuster. These are the longterm, structural reasons why opposing the filibuster should be a litmus test for every Democratic senator. But there are also short-term and immediate reasons why, from the Democrats’ point of view, the timing is great.
Democrats refused to give their funding support for Trump’s autocracy and draconian cuts to health care. They’ve hung about as tough and as long as anyone imagined. That has inspired new confidence in their voters and prospective voters. It has also dramatically raised public awareness about the crippling cuts to health care Republicans chose to fund their mammoth tax cuts. It’s provided a monthlong spectacle of Republicans digging in, insisting on keeping the government shut down rather than just allowing people to keep their coverage. From a messaging and political standpoint it’s been a disaster for the GOP. In a revealing update this morning, the DC insider sheet Punchbowl pondered how it can be that voters don’t realize that the whole thing is Democrats’ fault and Democrats should take the blame. Their bafflement is a good reminder how much DC remains wired for the GOP.
At this point it seems clear that Trump not only doesn’t want to compromise but doesn’t even want to engage. It’s less a hardball negotiating stance than a lack of focus. He’s consumed by his ballroom and domestic military deployments and foreign trips and barely seems aware the government is shut down at all. We’re also now days away from the new Obamacare price hikes being locked in. I’m certainly not saying Democrats should throw in the towel. My point is that they have already gotten most of the political gains they can get from this.
Indeed, if you’re inclined to be cynical you could say that in narrowly electoral terms it’s almost the best of both worlds for them. There was a debate leading up to the shutdown about whether it made sense for Democrats to demand that Republicans repeal or soften their health care cuts. Those cuts will be causing pain across the country throughout 2026. Voters will be looking for someone to blame. Why should Democrats use their political capital to save Republicans from the electoral consequences of their own awful actions, the argument went. And in narrowly political terms it was a pretty good argument. If this ends now with Trump forcing the abolition of the filibuster, Dems won’t have had to choose. They’ll have fought, never given in and also be in a position to reap the political backlash against Trump’s taking health care coverage from millions and hiking the rates for millions more.
Democrats don’t need to pine or anguish over what the moral choice is here: political benefit vs getting people back their health care. The choice is abstract and purely notional. Trump and Senate Republicans are either going to do this or not. Democrats have no input on the decision. I’m only noting that in political terms, it leaves them having their cake and eating it too.
Which brings us back to my skepticism that this will even happen. Senate Republicans know better than anyone that the filibuster is their secret weapon. Trump doesn’t give a crap about any of this stuff. But these senators care a lot and they have a longer time horizon than the next three years. We say that Trump gets everything he wants from the GOP. But that’s not entirely true. When there is concerted GOP opposition to something, he doesn’t get his way, at least not in more than a superficial way. That’s especially so here because the entire thing just isn’t something Trump cares much about. Tariffs, soldiers in cities — those things excite him. This is just his tenth idea for how to force the Democrats’ hand, along with DOGE 2.0, which mostly didn’t happen, threats to cut SNAP funding, hammering Dems over hating the military and a bunch of other things they’ve tried and failed over the last month. If anything this latest gambit should be a reminder to the gullible — which includes most of official DC — that those constant claims that this was actually all going great for the White House maybe weren’t true after all.
The key points remain the same. Trump will likely have a much harder time getting Senate Republicans to abolish the filibuster than most people imagine. But if he does, it’s a good thing. No good future for the American republic is possible with the filibuster in place. And the short-term politics are pretty good too. So go ahead, clown, make every thinking Democrats’ day.
Facing MAGA 