Open thread

I've been trying hard to not simply flood the site with every bit of bad news, as The Criminal and his various hangers-on tear up every part of government they can get their hands on. Flooding the information environment with new outrages is meant to drive despair, and despair is not something an opposition movement can afford to wallow in. One of the reasons I generally don't post on weekends is because, darn it, we should all be getting breaks from this nonsense. It's important!

And, on the other hand, I don't want to repeat what much of online liberalism has increasingly gravitated towards: seizing each scrap of good news and insisting that This Will Change Everything. It's good for clickbait, but it's poisonous to long-term opposition efforts because after a hundred or so supposed court orders or newly cut advertisements that Will Change Everything, what are readers going to think? They're going to think that they're being lied to—being lied to as somebody else's business model, in fact—and they'd be right.

There's some good news brewing. Federal courts are beginning to get involved, and so far each of them has been meeting Trump-Musk-Vought theories of an omnipotent executive branch with either thinly veiled or somewhat veiled or not-at-all-veiled disgust. That's precisely what needs to happen at this point, and the efforts are being spearheaded by the states and by federal workers themselves. Vought wanted his legal war, and he'll be getting it.

The bad news remains the same: Senate Republicans could not possibly be more gutless, and appear ready to give away every scrap of congressional power rather than risk the wrath of the seditious convicted felon currently trying to steal anything not nailed down and multiple things that are. And many in The Criminal's orbit appear to be encouraging each other to simply ignore what the courts say, keep violating laws, and dare anyone to do anything about it.

The possibility of government shutdown is once again in the cards, because House Speaker Mike Johnson is not going to be able to get his sack-of-rats caucus to agree on anything—and Democrats, unless they are also gutless, will refuse to be a part of any budget agreement that enshrines the Trump-Musk-Vought-Miller lawlessness and formalizes what is transparently an autocratic and fascist coup. There's few things that enrage citizens more reliably than seeing their most needed government services shut down, so that's going to be ... something to watch.

Keep sane and carry on. That's the only advice I can give.

This here's an open thread to talk about whatever you want. Politics, gardening, music, games, books, anything you like.