A Wall Street Journal editorial slamming Donald Trump’s tariff plans as terrible for the US economy and auto industry prompted a broadside from the president on Wednesday followed by threats to sue the media.
In an opinion piece titled Trump’s Tariffs Will Punish Michigan, the Journal argued Trump’s tariff plans would harm “US auto workers and Republican prospects in Michigan”.
Trump has threatened to impose 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, a move the editorial argues would increase US vehicle prices, hurt auto workers and advantage Asian and European manufacturers.
“If the goal is to harm US auto workers and Republican prospects in Michigan, then by all means go ahead, Mr President,” wrote the Journal.
On his social media site, Truth Social, Trump wrote the Journal is “soooo wrong”. “The tariffs will drive massive amounts of auto manufacturing to MICHIGAN, a State which I just easily one [sic] in the Presidential Election,” he wrote.
Trump followed the rebuttal with a threat to those publishing “Fake books and stories with the so-called ‘anonymous’, or ‘off the record’, quotes” criticizing the opening month of his second presidency.
“At some point I am going to sue some of these dishonest authors and book publishers, or even media in general, to find out whether or not these ‘anonymous sources’ even exist, which they largely do not. They are made up, defamatory fiction, and a big price should be paid for this blatant dishonesty. I’ll do it as a service to our Country. Who knows, maybe we will create some NICE NEW LAW!!!,” he wrote.
The Journal’s conservative editorial board has been a persistent critic of Trump’s tariff plans, calling them “the dumbest trade war in history” earlier this month.
Some websites aim to capture anti-Trumpers’ clicks with screaming headlines—“Trump Slides Downhill!” “Trump Humiliates Himself!” etc. etc. But I find The Bulwark’s presentations more objective, and much more useful in understanding what is actually happening, as compared with the rosy scenario sites. Besides, this video is entertaining too.
Friends, let’s never lose our sense of humor. Because the loss of our sense of humor would make it a lot harder to survive this shitshow.
Last night’s nonbinding budget resolution directs the House Energy and Commerce Committee to find $880 billion in budget cuts, over the coming decade, from the programs which that committee oversees. According to Newsweek today,
Trump has said multiple times that Medicaid would not be affected, telling Fox News last week that it would not be “touched.”
But the House Energy and Commerce Committee would have to find this money, out of Medicaid, Medicare and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
If the committee takes its cuts from everything that is not health care, reducing this spending to $0, it would still be more than $600 billion short, according to analysis by The New York Times.
I tried, without success, to get a definitive answer as to what percentage of Medicaid funding would be lost if $880 billion were cut over a ten-year period. That’s a hard number to find for various reasons, including the fact that there will be lots of political back-and-forth about spending levels over the next decade.
Even so, there’s no doubt that $880 billion is a nice chunk of change.
On the one hand, clearly, axing $880 billion will let a whole lot of Medicaid spending continue. On the other hand, and equally as clear, decreasing funding by $880 billion would most assuredly “touch” Medicaid, contrary to Trump’s promise.
And who would be hurt as and when Medicaid is in fact “touched”?
According to a reliable source, for the year 2023, there were 24,046,700 white people under the age of 65 enrolled in Medicaid. In other words, the 24 million poor white Medicaid recipients don’t count all the white grandmas who have run through their savings and are relying on Medicaid to stay in their nursing homes.
Poor people supported Trump disproportionately in 2024. White people supported Trump disproportionately in 2024. And if you look at the combined category—poor AND white—they were mostly Trump supporters.
But it was still a close election. And the number of poor white folks who will feel pain from significant Medicaid cuts vastly exceeds Trump’s tiny margin of victory.
In many ways, as of the last week in February, it feels as if we are all taking a trip on the Titanic, fast approaching that iceberg. Take for example the New York Times piece from today. I don’t disagree with a word in it.
Our situation is dire, in so many ways that it’s difficult to count all of them. But … I really hope you can spare a few minutes to watch Rick Wilson’s video, to supply some needed perspective.
And permit me to supplement Wilson’s take in the following way. Begin with several things we know for sure, or at least to a very high level of confidence, about how events are going to evolve over the next few weeks.
Five Things We Know for Sure, or at Least to a High Level of Confidence
1. Trump, Elon Musk, and their henchmen remain high on their own supply. In very important ways, they literally do not know what they are doing. In many ways, they don’t know the harm they are causing (or are about to cause) in the lives of their own supporters. In many ways, they have a fundamental misperception of public opinion. (Yeah, lot of that going around.)
2. Trump and his crew will continue to wreck the federal government, which will produce ever increasing levels of mayhem.
3. Trump and his crew will do jack shit to combat inflation, in violation of the one campaign promise that put him over the top in 2024.
4. The process of wrecking the federal government will culminate—in maybe a month, or it could be sooner—in a true constitutional crisis, where Trump openly defies the Supreme Court.
5. Any of several pending foreign policy crises will ripen into disaster. In particular, just as Biden had his Afghanistan moment, so Trump is probably going to have his Ukraine moment.
Now, Let Us Hazard a Cautious Prediction
Here is the prediction:
While we cannot predict the outcome when all of these situations ripen into disaster at more or less the same time, we can say with some confidence that the five trends will interact with each other.
To take an example: The number of people who might be willing, in good times, to acquiesce in Trump’s overthrow of the rule of law is smaller than the number of people who will cheer when he defies the Supreme Court at the same time that he is royally screwing over the folks who voted for him. And, at the same time, selling out America’s allies and cheering on a Russian invasion.
Trump fired someone named Hampton Dellinger as head of the Office of Special Counsel, a body that prosecutes government misconduct and protects whistleblowers. He gave no reason for his displeasure; you are free to fill in the answer for yourself.
Mr. Dellinger sued to get his job back and found a district judge who granted him a temporary restraining order (TRO) to prevent Trump from shitcanning him while the employment case proceeds.
TROs don’t last long. This one is set to expire a few days from now, February 26, by which time the parties can brief the issue and present evidence as to whether the TRO should or should not be changed into a preliminary injunction—which would allow Mr. Dellinger to keep his job until the case is tried.
If the district judge should rule for Mr. Dellinger on the preliminary injunction question next week, then Trump can take the case to the court of appeals and on to the Supreme Court. Should that happen, the legal process will probably be as speedy as shit through a goose.
But that is not fast enough for Trump. Trump argued that it’s a red hot emergency if Dellinger gets to stay in office for another few days. That was the issue on which the Supreme Court ruled today.
In short, the core issue in the case, though involving arcana of appellate procedure, was similar to that in State of Washington v. Trump, about which I posted yesterday. To wit, must the courts consider it a red hot emergency just because Trump claims it’s a red hot emergency?
In short, Trump was aiming for some Shock and Awe action from the High Court. He wanted the Court to smite his enemies with a mighty rod, and that right quickly, and without much thought.
That’s what he wanted. What he got instead was support from only two of the nine justices, Gorsuch and Alito.
At the other end of the ideological spectrum, Justices Sotomayor and Jackson would have ruled that Trump should just take a long walk off a short pier.
Two at one extreme and two at the other extreme. That leaves five in the middle, at least for right now. And a motley crew they are: Chief Justice Roberts, along with Justices Kagan, Kavanaugh, Coney Barrett, and Thomas.
And the specifics of their middle position? To hold the appeal in abeyance pending until the TRO expires.
And, in so doing, to say—along with the Federalist Society judge in State of Washington v. Trump—no, no, it’s not an emergency just because Trump claims it’s an emergency.
And Now for the Reading of the Tea Leaves
And no, friends and neighbors, this is not a prediction. It’s just a first reading of the tea leaves, based on the first Trump 2.0 case to reach the Supreme Court.
Alito and Gorsuch are not a surprise.
But a big eyebrow raiser for me was that seven members of the Court stood up to Trump’s procedural bluster and bullying.
And the biggest eyebrow raiser was the presence of Justice Clarence Thomas among this crew. One is compelled to wonder whether Justice Thomas might have had a little talk with his bosom buddy and traveling companion Harlan Crow, a Republican megadonor who megadonates to a lot of Republicans not named Donald Trump.
The opinion, issued on February 19, denied the Justice Department’s “emergency” request for the appeals court to overrule a district judge’s injunction against Trump’s executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship, despite the language of the Fourteenth Amendment and despite consistent judicial interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment, going back to 1898. (If anyone cares, that district judge, who reamed out Trump and his Justice Department, was appointed by President Reagan.)
To be clear, the district court’s ruling in question was not the judge’s definitive answer to the question whether Trump was right or wrong on birthright citizenship. It was, instead, a decision ordering a “preliminary injunction” pending full briefing, trial, and argument of the case.
Brushing away lots of legalese, the central issues at play when a judge rules on a request for a preliminary injunction are three:
the “likelihood of success on the merits,” in other words, what does the judge think will probably happen when all the dust settles: Is the plaintiff more likely to win, or is it the defendant who will probably prevail? and, second,
the harm issue—will the plaintiff be harmed if a preliminary injunction is not issued to preserve the state of play, while the issue is litigated? Or is it the defendant who will suffer harm if it is enjoined from doing what it wants to do?
the public interest issue—apart from the parties to the case, what about the broader public?
In my experience, the first of these factors—“likelihood of success on the merits”—tends to be dispositive. And so it was here. Two of the three panel members of the appellate panel, Judge William Canby (appointed by Carter) and Milan Smith (appointed by Bush the Elder), joined in a terse, one page decision, declining to overrule the district court, because Team Trump did not make a “strong showing that [they are] likely to succeed on the merits.”
The third judge, Danielle J. Forrest, wrote a much more expansive piece of prose, concurring in the majority’s bottom line result, but “for reasons different than relied on” by the other two members of the panel.
Many are wondering how the Federalist Society judges, who now bestride the third branch of our federal government, will deal with Team Trump. What the Supreme Court does with birthright citizenship remains to be seen. But Judge Forrest’s treatment of the case is not without interest.
A bit of background: Judge Danielle Forrest was appointed to the bench in 2019, during Trump 1.0. Reading between the lines of her Wikipedia biography, I glean that Democratic opposition to her appointment was weak, probably on the ground that, “Well, this is about the best we can expect from a Trump appointment.”
Interestingly, her Wikipedia entry says, in black and white, that “She was a member of the Federalist Society from 2002 to 2006 and again from 2017 to present.” One might wonder whether her renewed commitment to the Federalist Society in 2017 might have had something to do with a desire for higher office—given that Trump 1.0 farmed out the judicial selection function to the esteemed Society. That said, in any event …
In her six pages of prose, Judge Forrest manfully eschewed any views on the “likelihood of success on the merits”—in other words, whether birthright citizenship is found in the Constitution, or whether it isn’t.
Instead, the very large burr in her saddle was the purported “emergency” referenced by Team Trump. The implication is that birthright citizenship has been the law of the land ever since 1866 or 1898, depending on how you count. Letting it be the law of the land for a few more weeks, or a few more months, is in no way an emergency.
And just because Team Trump SAYS there’s an emergency does not mean there REALLY IS an emergency.
In short, for this one Federalist Society jurisprude, Team Trump’s legal Shock and Awe is really Shock and Awful.
In this video, the two talking heads cover a whole lot of ground. I mostly agree with them. If you don’t, then God bless, and have a nice day.
Toward the end, they turn to trying to suss out what’s going on in Trump’s brain. I particularly commend that part of the video.
In case you don’t know:
Rick Wilson is a former Republican and former Republican political consultant. He currently writes political opinion pieces and is a political talking head on YouTube and elsewhere. He has written two books, including Everything Trump Touches Dies.
During the video Wilson refers, at one point, to his “misspent youth.” He may be thinking about the time he created the ad that defeated Max Cleland—a war hero paralyzed by his wounds—by implying that Cleland supported Al-Qaida.
Will Saletan has been writing on public affairs since 1996. He has also written two books. Sometimes he’s right, and sometimes he’s not. In 2003 he wrote a book arguing that conservatives had won the public debate about abortion rights. Well, if they had won it in 2003, they have lost it now; look at the headlines out of Missouri today. In 2023, he wrote The Corruption of Lindsey Graham: A case study in the rise of authoritarianism.
In a couple of hours, my wife will be having a pointed discussion with the local tax assessors over the value of her apartment. The condos in our building vary a whole lot in size, layout, and many other features. But guess what? It turns out that the thing that best predicts the sale price is the number of square feet in the condo. If you know that number, then you have a very good idea of the condo’s fair market value.
Why in the world make that point? Because, let me humbly submit, while people vary in all sorts of ways, the one thing that best predicts their behavior is their incentives.
I was in Big Law for a long time. Some of the people I knew were fine human beings. Some, I’m sorry to say, had the morality of a sea slug. But, like the rest of the human race, most of them were somewhere in the middle, morality-wise.
I am confident that, for some of those who wrote and promoted the New York City Bar Association’s statement on the Adams case, promoting justice and good government was a driving concern. I am equally confident that the objective incentives of the Bar Association’s members was a driving force, as well.
Let me put it bluntly.
If the legal system breaks down, ain’t nobody gonna pay you no $2.5 million for your skilful manipulation of the legal system.
Back in my day, it was officially The Association of the Bar of the City of New York, its original name from back in 1870, when it was formed to fight the judicial corruption promoted by the Tammany Hall machine. Now, it’s the New York City Bar Association. Its president is a partner in a global law firm with profits per partner of $2.5 million. Its leadership includes a number of the president’s peers in other global law firms (together with others too, like professors and legal aid attorneys).
Yesterday, the association issued this press release.
On United States v. Eric Adams
Since its founding in 1870, the New York City Bar Association has supported the rule of law as one of its core missions – regardless of politics or ideological persuasion. “The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government” is not merely an aphorism engraved in stone on courthouses but, together with the rule of law, the essence of American democracy. This mission and these values necessitate voicing our concern about the events of recent days in the ongoing federal case of United States v. Eric Adams, 24-CRIM-556 (S.D.N.Y.).
Prosecutors have a duty to act in the public interest, to perform their duties with objectivity, and to analyze all the evidence when deciding whether to pursue criminal charges. This is especially true in the prosecution of crimes allegedly committed by public officials involving abuses of power or corruption.
While the City Bar takes no position on the substantive merits of the Adams case, the numerous resignations by prosecutors from the office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the Public Integrity Section of the United States Department of Justice, and the flurry of letters from those who have resigned and from the Acting Deputy Attorney General, command the City Bar’s attention and expression of concern.
The events of recent days are reminiscent of the Saturday Night Massacre resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, which precipitated the crisis of public confidence when they were ordered by President Nixon to dismiss Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox to halt the Watergate investigation.
The direction of Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove III to the Southern District prosecutors to prepare and file a motion to dismiss the case against the Mayor of New York City cuts to the heart of the rule of law. The unusual form of Mr. Bove’s direction via a public memorandum buttresses arguments that the direction is based on pretextual grounds.
The letter from Acting United States Attorney Danielle Sassoon and Mr. Bove’s response give every indication that the dismissal of Mayor Adams’ case, without prejudice, is predicated on his agreeing to increase New York City’s assistance in the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts. When the proposed dismissal is made “without prejudice” to the charges possibly being reinstated at some future date, the entire proposal raises serious questions involving both the potential quid pro quoand prosecutorial weaponization of our justice system.
Indeed, the justification offered by Mr. Bove for his decision expressly avoids any consideration of the merits of the prosecution, instead resting on a rationale which is expressly political. In particular, Mr. Bove suggests that dismissal is predicated upon Mr. Adams’s continuing agreement to use the power of his office as mayor to facilitate the administration’s immigration enforcement policies. The policy choices of the government of New York City cannot be dependent on or appear to be dependent on the decision of the Justice Department to prosecute or withhold prosecution of corruption charges against the mayor.
Against such a backdrop, the City Bar commends Ms. Sassoon for her courageous decision to offer her resignation from a post she assumed a few short weeks ago. Whatever the merits of the underlying case against Mayor Adams, her letter reflects the proper course of conduct for a prosecutor seeking to adhere to her oath to pursue justice without fear or favor. Her letter reflects integrity and a principled commitment to the rule of law and democracy. The City Bar likewise applauds Assistant United States Attorney Hagan Scotten, Acting Chief of the Criminal Division Kevin Driscoll, Acting Chief of the Public Integrity Section John Keller, and the other attorneys at the Department of Justice who chose to resign rather than acquiesce to a decision raising profound questions of legality, morality, and legal ethics.
The interests of the public are best served by the continuation of the prosecution of Mr. Adams. In any event, the Department of Justice’s motion to dismiss the charges must be resolved on the basis of a complete record, which should include a searching inquiry into the nature of the bargain struck and a determination of its benefit to the public. If, as Mr. Bove contends, the prosecution of Mayor Adams was brought for improper political purposes, such an allegation can and should be adjudicated in the District Court. There is precedent for the District Court’s appointment of amicus curiae to obtain input from an independent counsel. See United States v. Flynn, No. 20-5143 (D.D.C.) (brief by former federal judge John Gleeson). In our view, the District Court should not dismiss the indictment against Mayor Adams without hearing from an independent lawyer, as neither the Mayor’s counsel nor the lawyers from the Department of Justice can fulfill that role.
Now it is for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York to examine whether dismissal of the charges in United States v. Eric Adamsis “in the public interest” and is “not tainted by impropriety” or “bad faith.” All members of the public concerned about whether law enforcement agencies will protect the public rather than manipulate the criminal justice system for political means await the outcome. Whatever the outcome, this episode is a stark reminder of the dangers of political interference in our justice system and the potential such interference has to undermine the public’s trust and confidence in the rule of law.
About the Association The mission of the New York City Bar Association, which was founded in 1870 and has 23,000 members, is to equip and mobilize a diverse legal profession to practice with excellence, promote reform of the law, and uphold the rule of law and access to justice in support of a fair society and the public interest in our community, our nation, and throughout the world.www.nycbar.org
Facing MAGA 