Political Current Events March 5-6
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NIH reels with fear, uncertainty about future of scientific research
The Trump administration’s orders have created more turmoil and damage at the National Institutes of Health than was previously known.GIFT LINK
—> https://wapo.st/4h8aiZx
rodoheel
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In the first significant Supreme Court decision on Trump’s spending freeze stuff, Roberts and ACB joined the liberals to lift the stay of a district court order compelling that $2 billion in USAID payments be made:
Good sign that there are five votes to push back against the worst Trump excesses.
Good sign that there are five votes to push back against the worst Trump excesses.
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So, it's good they did the right thing here and honored Congressional approved financial commitments, but its sad that it was a 5-4 vote.
Of course after the vote to give the President the ability to break the law, nothing is surprising now.
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So four Supreme Court Justices who are supposed originalists believe that Congress doesn't have the power of the purse.
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I wish every ondocumented person in the country would leave and show the idiots who are behind trump and this bullshit how.much the country needs.
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“… On Tuesday of last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was on hand at Guantánamo when a military C-130 carrying nine immigrants landed at the base. The Defense Department calculates the cost per flight hour to operate a C-130 at $20,756, so for a trip of five to six hours, it cost the Pentagon $207,000 to $249,000 round trip, or $23,000 to $27,000 per detainee.
Costs for those flights are lower when charter planes that Immigration and Customs Enforcement typically uses for deportation flights are employed in place of the military aircraft.
But the administration has opted for military planes for reasons of optics, according to a defense official.
When charter planes are used, the operation is still a heavy logistical and financial lift, especially compared with keeping the detainees on the mainland. Each flight includes at least one ICE official for every migrant, often more, as well as a medical team.
ICE estimates the average cost of one of its regular charter flights at $8,577 per hour and the cost for “special high-risk charter” flights at $6,929 to $26,795 per hour, but those figures include “flight crew, security personnel, an onboard medical professional and all associated aviation handling and overflight fees,” which the Defense Department estimates for the C-130 do not.
And the space planned to hold the 30,000 immigrants is far from ready. Tents built for that purpose lack air conditioning and running water and do not meet ICE standards for detention, according to the defense official and an additional defense official. …”
rodoheel
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Their dissent is more about procedural stuff - they dissented based on the supposed lack of jurisdiction for the district court based on sovereign immunity. So they avoided giving their substantive thoughts on the issue. I have no doubt Alito and Thomas will rule in that way if they get the chance. Kavanaugh and Gorsuch definitely hate the administrative state and would be happy to see it crumble but not as clear whether they are willing to support Trump going full king-mode.
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Trump Slams Door on Arab Plan for Gaza With Resorts
The proposal, crafted by Egypt, would keep Palestinians in Gaza, a nonstarter for the administration
Arabs Offer Their Plan for a Gaza With Resorts. Trump’s Team Says No.
The rejection of the proposal indicates President Trump’s commitment to positions he has staked out on contentious foreign-policy questions.
www.wsj.com
“The White House has rejected an Arab plan for rebuilding the Gaza Strip, an early indication of the strength of President Trump’s commitment to positions he has staked out on contentious foreign-policy issues.
Arab governments have scrambled to come up with a plan after Trump laid out a proposal for the U.S. to take over the territory and redevelop it as an international destination after clearing out its Palestinian residents. The Arab proposal nodded to the president’s vision of a “Riviera of the Middle East,” calling for the eventual development of beachfront resorts.
But the White House shot down the proposal, saying the extent of the destruction in Gaza made keeping Palestinians in the enclave unworkable. Critics of the plan also said it failed to spell out how it would disarm Hamas, the U.S.-designated terrorist group that led the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel that left 1,200 dead and triggered the war.
The rejection makes clear that Trump won’t easily give up on an idea that has been criticized by governments around the world and surprised some of his aides and own party. It is also a sign of the challenges facing countries from Canada to Ukrainein trying to steer Trump to more palatable outcomes in disputes of their own. …”
——
Trump has a dream …
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America the Evil Mastermind? Not So Fast, Russians Are Told.
As President Trump begins to side with Russia, the Kremlin propaganda machine has changed its tune.GIFT LINK
—> America the Evil Mastermind? Not So Fast, Russians Are Told.“…In an interview on Russian state television on Sunday, Mr. Lavrov listed the ills that Europe — not America — had brought upon the world. The United States, in his telling, had gone from evil mastermind to innocent bystander.
“Colonization, wars, crusaders, the Crimean War, Napoleon, World War I, Hitler,” Mr. Lavrov said. “If we look at history in retrospect, the Americans did not play any instigating, let alone incendiary, role.”
As President Trump turns decades of U.S. foreign policy upside down, another dizzying swing is taking place in Russia, both in the Kremlin and on state-controlled television: The United States, the new message goes, is not that bad after all.
Almost overnight, it’s Europe — not the United States — that has become the source of instability in the Russian narrative.
On his marquee weekly show on the Rossiya-1 channel Sunday night, the anchor Dmitri Kiselyov described the “party of war” in Europe as outmatched by the “great troika” of the United States, Russia and China that will form “the new structure of the world.” …”
superrific
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Sovereign immunity is not a procedural matter. It's a substantive doctrine (tragicomically ridiculous one) that would end this case and all others like it.
What's sad is that four justices on the Supreme Court do not understand that disgorgement and restitution are equitable remedies. Background for non-lawyers: the doctrine of sovereign immunity generally bars lawsuits against the federal government without the government's consent. That rule has a few exceptions: first, a plaintiff can obtain equitable relief (i.e. injunctions) by suing the relevant decision maker in his personal capacity (which is why the lawsuit is against Rubio, not the US), or by suing under the Administrative Procedure Act. Alito said this wasn't really an equitable action -- it was just a lawsuit for damages, which has to be heard in a special court (court of federal claims) because sovereign immunity.
But the order from the district court was not an order paying damages. It was basically an order requiring the government to disgorge money that it possesses by virtue of an illegal act. It's not exactly disgorgement; it's sort of a sui generis thing that we don't have a name for because this has rarely been necessary. It's also kind of like restitution, also equitable. What it clearly is not is an order for the payment of damages.
heelinhell
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The "great troika" now replaces the Bush(Frum ) "Axis of Evil"...America the Evil Mastermind? Not So Fast, Russians Are Told.
As President Trump begins to side with Russia, the Kremlin propaganda machine has changed its tune.
GIFT LINK
“…In an interview on Russian state television on Sunday, Mr. Lavrov listed the ills that Europe — not America — had brought upon the world. The United States, in his telling, had gone from evil mastermind to innocent bystander.
“Colonization, wars, crusaders, the Crimean War, Napoleon, World War I, Hitler,” Mr. Lavrov said. “If we look at history in retrospect, the Americans did not play any instigating, let alone incendiary, role.”
As President Trump turns decades of U.S. foreign policy upside down, another dizzying swing is taking place in Russia, both in the Kremlin and on state-controlled television: The United States, the new message goes, is not that bad after all.
Almost overnight, it’s Europe — not the United States — that has become the source of instability in the Russian narrative.
On his marquee weekly show on the Rossiya-1 channel Sunday night, the anchor Dmitri Kiselyov described the “party of war” in Europe as outmatched by the “great troika” of the United States, Russia and China that will form “the new structure of the world.” …”
America to dominate and control the western hemisphere
Russia to dominate and control western and eastern Europe
China to dominate and control Africa and Asia
rodoheel
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I understand what you mean. Just trying to convey that, at least on its face, the case did not present the issue of what the justices believe about who has the "power of the purse." The dissent argued that the matter should have been before the Court of Federal claims on damages, not a district court for a TRO; it didn't say that the President had the right to do what he was doing. But as I said, I have no doubt that Alito and Thomas would in fact rule that the president does have such power. Likely Kavanaugh as well given his preference for the "unitary executive" theory. Gorsuch loathes the administrative state but not sure he wants Congress entirely marginalized.
EyeballKid
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Just saw a CNN clip about the local (Durham, specifically) impact of the shuttering of USAID and the losses of other federal contracts. Can’t find it on the CNN website—perhaps someone can track it down and provide a better link.
www.facebook.com
Side note: the org I work for just had a second round of layoffs yesterday. So far around 500 staff have been let go, with further cuts expected in the coming weeks. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll have a job.
Dozens of my friends and colleagues outside of my org have been let go. Most work on USAID-funded projects, though some (like me) work through contracts with a host of other government agencies (HHS, EPA, etc).
This stuff is already hitting the Triangle hard…and it’s only gonna get worse.
What say ye, board MAGA folks? Totally cool with destroying the local economy to own the libs?
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Side note: the org I work for just had a second round of layoffs yesterday. So far around 500 staff have been let go, with further cuts expected in the coming weeks. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll have a job.
Dozens of my friends and colleagues outside of my org have been let go. Most work on USAID-funded projects, though some (like me) work through contracts with a host of other government agencies (HHS, EPA, etc).
This stuff is already hitting the Triangle hard…and it’s only gonna get worse.
What say ye, board MAGA folks? Totally cool with destroying the local economy to own the libs?
superrific
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Maybe not directly, but that's still an issue here. To say that the case should have been for damages through the claims process is to say that the judiciary has no power to restrain lawless power grabs by means of injunctions. In other words, the Alito position is that it doesn't matter what the judiciary thinks about the lawfulness of the president taking the power of the purse, which is of course practically indistinguishable from saying the president has the right to do so.
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“…The VA’s chief of staff, Christopher Syrek, told top-level officials at the agency Tuesday that it had an objective to cut enough employees to return to 2019 staffing levels of just under 400,000.
That would require terminating tens of thousands of employees after the VA expanded during the Biden administration, as well as to cover veterans impacted by burn pits under the 2022 PACT Act.
The memo instructs top-level staff to prepare for an agency-wide reorganization in August to “resize and tailor the workforce to the mission and revised structure.” It also calls for agency officials to work with the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency to “move out aggressively, while taking a pragmatic and disciplined approach” to the Trump administration’s goals. Government Executive first reported on the internal memo.
… The VA last year experienced its highest-ever service levels, reaching enrollment figures to over 9 million veterans and delivering more than 127.5 million health care appointments, according to the agency’s figures.
Michael Missal, who was the VA’s inspector general for nine years until he was fired last month as part of Trump’s sweeping dismissal of independent oversight officials at government agencies, told the AP that the VA is already suffering from a lack of “expertise” as top-level officials either leave or are shuffled around under the president’s plans. …”
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