Cromwell

The order on birthright citizenship clearly lacks any legal merit. It is an immediate challenge to the judicial system; a lawsuit has already been filed in a federal court in Massachusetts. Will the judiciary–in the end, the Supreme Court– follow the text and history of the Fourteenth Amendment and the clear case law or bend the knee and go completely MAGA? If the former, can it enforce its will against a president whose respect for the law is completely selective and self-interested? These are extremely important questions, the resolution of which will have enormous implications for our system for the foreseeable future.

The new Title 42 interpretation should also fail a legal challenge, since there is no factual basis for it, but that issue will take longer to resolve. Along the same lines, attempts to deny asylum seekers due process will also run into legal trouble, and “Remain in Mexico” depends on the good will of the Mexican government. The actual scope of the orders relating to the use of the military in immigration matters, another issue with great legal and political importance, cannot be determined at this time. We’ll have to see what they really mean over the next few months.

What Trump really needs, if he genuinely wants to begin a mass deportation program, is a vast increase in funding of the immigration system and the elimination of ambiguities in the law relating to people who are neither pure economic nor political refugees. With the filibuster in place, his chances of #2 are slim. #1 is more likely, but spending increases will be fraught in a world in which tax cuts are the real priority.

For all of the swaggering and tough talk, Trump didn’t actually take any meaningful action on tariffs yesterday. One assumes this is for the usual reasons: because he likes cliffhangers, which make him the center of attention; and because he is getting inconsistent advice from CLs and Reactionaries and doesn’t really know what to do.

Trump has always treated uncertainty as his friend. Businessmen, who need to plan months and even years ahead based on reliable information, see the world very differently. They are going to have more issues with Trump than they thought when they voted for him, as most of them did.

Will Trump be guided more by reactionary ideology or by the short-term actions of the market? Don’t expect a consistent answer to that question.

The Dylan movie was excellent; a few of the scenes made me laugh out loud. It and the Ohio State victory did a good job of taking my mind off of the inauguration, which was every bit as bad as I thought it would be. More on that in the coming days.

If there is one theme I would single out immediately, it is the fixation with bullying Mexico, Canada, and Panama. Trump’s focus on the Panama Canal is inexplicable–it didn’t feature in his first term, and it hasn’t changed much–and his repeated attacks on our immediate neighbors are inconsistent with the treaty he negotiated and signed with them, to say nothing of the national interest.

Perhaps he wants to do Putin one better and turn both of our neighbors into bitter enemies.

Viktor Orban made Hungary the illiberal democracy it is today in part by consolidating control of the media in the hands of his friends. In today’s America, Tik Tok is apparently the principal source of news for many people. Is it surprising, then, that Trump would take such a strong interest in its ownership?

Since Orban is a MAGA role model, it is easy to imagine Trump engineering a transaction which results in either the government he will control in a few hours or one of his new right-wing tech allies running Tik Tok. What would Xi demand in return? An end to talk about tariffs? A free hand in Taiwan? TBD.

On this year’s MLK Day, we are transferring power to a man who believes that most minorities are lazy losers and that the true victims of government oppression are white Christians. He would argue that this is consistent with King’s vision of a color-blind society, but history will judge otherwise.

In 2017, I went to see “La La Land” on Inauguration Day as a protest against “American Carnage.” Today, we’re going to the Dylan movie for the same reason. It’s the best we can do, for now.

Trump is at Mar-a-Lago preparing for the big day. Musk is also there, as usual.

T: Elon! How’s the richest man in the world doing?

M: Great! How’s the most powerful man in the world doing today?

T: Great! We make an awesome team, don’t we?

M: Absolutely! Together, we’re going to remake America! Nobody will recognize it when we’re done!

T: Right! Just as you always say, we’re going to break things! We’re going to destroy the deep state! We’re going to punish my enemies, get rid of wokeness, and send all the illegals packing! It starts right away!

M: Yeah, we’re going to do all of those things, but the big thing is that we’re going to make an America that’s fit for a genius like me. We’re going to bring all of the best and brightest here, get rid of the mediocre and the bureaucrats, and build an economy that will send people to Mars.

T: But we have to take care of the mediocre. After all, millions of them voted for me. They’re counting on me to make their lives more secure.

M: You’ll bamboozle them. Keep them entertained with your antics while you get rid of their hammock of dependency. We need an America that works for the brilliant. Everyone else just rides in their wake.

T: Bannon doesn’t like that kind of rhetoric. He really wants an America that protects ordinary workers.

M: That’s exactly what we don’t need. If you focus on average people, you get average America. We want great America. That’s what you’re all about.

T: That’s true. It’s on my hat.

M: Now go out there and send a message that you’re the boss! America needs to feel the stick of authority! Fill your opponents with terror! Then we can start breaking things and building new ones.

T: Sometimes you sound like Putin.

M: Putin’s a thug. He ran all of the best people out of his country. But he isn’t wrong about everything. All countries need to be run with a firm hand by the smartest and the most ruthless. That’s you and me.

T: But what about democracy? What about my voters? What about the law and my tiny majority in the House?

M: Just use your skills to keep everyone guessing and never appear to back down. I’ll take care of the other stuff.

Mitch McConnell, like many PBP leaders before him, had a simple plan–throw the Reactionaries enough red meat on social issues to keep them on board, but maintain control over the agenda, particularly with regard to tax cuts. It worked until Trump and MAGA renegotiated the deal and put the Reactionaries in control.

Musk, through his pungent criticisms of the left, is trying to use the McConnell playbook to implement the CL agenda. But MAGA has seen through that gambit; it understands that the CL vision of a deregulated America that is safe for huge tech businesses is far from its own. The alliance of convenience cannot last; by the end of the year, there will be a clear winner and loser.

The left has been ambivalent at best about tech giants once their potential for evil became obvious. Elon Musk has become the face of the new administration. What does that mean for American politics?

It means Musk, Ramaswamy, and the rest of the techno-aristocracy are going to be the unambiguous targets of the left in 2026 and 2028. They’re going to wear all of the failures of the Trump administration–possibly even more than Trump himself, who will become a lame duck the day he takes office.

It means populism is going to migrate back to the left, for better and for worse, in relatively short order.

We’ll probably never know much about what was happening from the Hamas side, but we now know for certain that Bibi had plenty of previous opportunities to make a very similar ceasefire deal; prior to today, he deferred to the far right members of his cabinet. Three days before the inauguration, we have an agreement. What has changed?

I think it comes down to three things. First, Bibi is now more confident in his ability to win an election in spite of his failures before October 7 as a result of events in Syria and Lebanon. Second, he wanted Trump to get at least some of the credit for the deal. But third, I think he and Trump have decided to focus their attention on the head of the snake–Iran–and they view Gaza in its current condition as a sideshow and an unnecessary distraction.

On that point, they are undoubtedly correct.

The Supremes are apparently going to release their opinion on the Tik Tok case today. Based on the tenor of the oral argument, everyone expects them to uphold the ban. In the meantime, several prominent members of Congress are frantically asking for more time before the ban is enforced, and Trump, of course, has completely changed his position on the matter. He wants to use his unique powers to make a deal that will work for everyone–kind of like his plan for Obamacare, I guess.

What does this tell us? That in spite of lots of tough talk about China being an existential threat from the right, short-term political and economic concerns can still prevail over ideology. The intense pain of decoupling from China, for which Trump and his acolytes have done nothing to prepare the public, means it will happen, if at all, in fits and starts.

Joe, Dr. Jill, and Hunter are packing up their stuff in the White House.

JOE: I can’t believe it’s ending this way.

JILL: Me, neither.

JOE: I keep wondering if I should have done something different. Should I have stayed in the race, or gotten out earlier?

JILL: It wouldn’t have mattered. The country hated inflation and blamed you for it. That decision was made long before the election. Even if you had gotten out earlier, the result would have been the same. Kamala couldn’t run as a popular incumbent, and she couldn’t run as a change agent. All she had was abortion and January 6. It wasn’t enough.

JOE: The worst thing is that I’ll go down in history as a footnote and a failure. My job was to keep Trump out, and in the end, I didn’t do it.

JILL: History will be kinder than that. Look at the elder George Bush. At the time, he looked like an out of touch patrician who didn’t finish off Saddam when he had the chance. Today, he looks like a really good president.

JOE: He won the Gulf War. What do I have?

JILL: You brought us back from the pandemic. You made investments that will be really important a decade from now. You saved Ukraine without starting World War III. That will look a lot better in hindsight.

HUNTER: And you pardoned me! That was your best move yet!

JOE: Somehow, I don’t think historians will agree on that.

JILL: Your only failure was to be a bad salesman. That was partly due to your age, and partly to your conscious desire not to hog the limelight like Trump. You wanted America to be normal again. Unfortunately, Americans were used to Trump, and they saw a vacuum instead of a normal country.

JOE: That’s true. I wonder if I should have made more of an effort to bash companies for price increases. If the public had associated me more clearly with the fight against inflation, things could have been different.

JILL: You weren’t cynical enough to do that. You knew that kind of grandstanding wouldn’t actually lower prices.

JOE: I bet Trump does it when his tariffs kick in. He’ll blame everyone but himself for the inflation he causes.

JILL: You can take that to the bank. Now, let’s get a move on; we only have a few days left.

TIER ONE: Will we have universal tariffs? If so, how large will they be? What taxes will be cut? What kind of agreement will we impose on Ukraine? What budget cuts can we expect? Will entitlements be included? Will we go to war with Iran or Mexico? Will Venezuela be invaded? How extensive are the deportation efforts? These are enormously important issues with significant impacts on our lives, but they are the stuff of normal politics; in other words, they don’t impose threats to our liberal democratic system. The proper antidote to bad policy decisions is to publicly oppose them when they are made and to point out their effects when they go wrong. That is what a normal opposition does.

TIER TWO: Trump, Bondi, and Patel use their power to make life as miserable as possible for the blue team. Journalists and prominent left-leaning politicians are investigated by a variety of agencies for frivolous reasons and harassed mercilessly by right-wing trolls on the internet. This is a rejection of norms created after Watergate, but no one has ever argued that Nixon, LBJ, and JFK were fascists; the core of the system remains intact. Resistance comes through publicity and in courtrooms.

TIER THREE: Trump and Hegseth turn the military into a right-wing militia and use it to stamp out dissent in blue states. Liberal democracy collapses. The response is far more drastic–general strikes, massive demonstrations, and a threat to shut down the government, if the Democrats have the votes to do it.

We will undoubtedly be dealing with Tier One. The others? TBD.

Steve Bannon has now called Elon Musk “evil.” Even by MAGA standards, this is extraordinarily harsh. What should we make of it?

Trump loves the court politics of “The Apprentice;” he wants lots of different people jockeying hard for his favor. But this particular dispute, which is fueled by legitimate issues of ideology just as much as jealousy, will be difficult to contain for the next four years, particularly if “Donald Trump” somehow turns out to be the second coming of Paul Ryan.

The focus here is obviously on the statements he has previously made about prosecuting Trump’s enemies, a list of whom apparently appears in one of his books:

1. Do you maintain today that you do not intend to prosecute the people you identified as targets in your book?
2. Why should we believe you now, when you have something at stake, as opposed to then?
3. If you don’t intend to prosecute those targets, why did you make those statements in your book?
4. Do you believe in the unitary executive theory?
5. If you are ordered to investigate a prominent Democrat, judge, or prosecutor by Donald Trump, and you aren’t aware of any plausible legal reason to do so, what will you do?
6. Why did Bill Barr, a very conservative Republican, essentially blackball you during the first Trump term?
7. Law enforcement is a job that traditionally appeals to conservatives. Do you really think the FBI is dominated by liberals?
8. Do you think removing Democrats from the FBI is a good way to depoliticize it?

Thomas Friedman thinks Trump is making a terrible mistake by talking about his aspirations to take Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal. After all, how can Trump position himself as a defender of international law with regard to Ukraine and Taiwan under those circumstances? Xi and Putin will simply throw his imperialism back in his face.

Friedman’s comment is correct, but it is based on an incorrect premise; Trump doesn’t pretend to care about international law or human rights–only power. He won’t make those arguments to Xi and Putin. He is undoubtedly going to help Putin carve up Ukraine, and if offered a deal with China on spheres of influence and managed trade that sacrifices Taiwan, expect him to take it.