China Ups the Ante and Trump Responds

Donald Trump has spent many years "negotiating" with people weaker than himself. He ordered pianos for his hotels from some company. After they were delivered, he said they were crappy and would only pay 50% of the bill. What could the vendor do? Suing would take years and cost a fortune in lawyers. The vendor had to eat the loss and almost went bankrupt. Trump's whole career has been like this, so he figured he could play China the way he has played everyone else for decades. Turns out China has some cards, too.

Trump put tariffs on Chinese imports and figured Chinese President Xi Jinping would come beg him to please, please remove them. Instead Xi has put export controls on rare earth elements that are crucial for the batteries in electric cars, magnets, semiconductors and various kinds of motors. That's not what Trump was expecting, so he has threatened 100% tariffs on all Chinese exports to the U.S. on top of the existing tariffs. He also threatened to cancel an upcoming meeting with Xi, who is now quaking in his boots. We will soon see who gives in. Our prediction: TACO.

If Xi calls Trump's bluff and doesn't budge, Trump will either have to actually impose the tariffs or become a paper tiger. Xi is not afraid of paper tigers. We will also point out that this is the Year of the Snake on the Chinese Zodiac, and Xi is not afraid of snakes, either. If 100% tariffs are imposed on all Chinese exports to the U.S., inflation will soar and there goes the House next year and maybe the Senate. Trump knows this and so does Xi. You don't get to be the long-term ruler of China if you are stupid. At least not since Chairman Mao died. Consequently, Trump really doesn't intend to impose punitive tariffs. The threat is supposed to scare Xi. Unfortunately for Trump, Xi knows this. But Xi also knows Trump needs to save face, so Xi may make some minor offer, like agreeing to import an extra million tons of soybeans so Trump can crow about his great victory, when in reality, Trump got almost nothing out of the deal except maybe one tweet that will be forgotten in a week.

It is also possible that Xi is tired of having to placate Trump all the time and wants to teach him a lesson, so he refuses to negotiate and Trump is actually forced to do something. Trump really doesn't want to impose tariffs due to the inflation that would cause. He does have other options, though. He could decide to play the export control game himself. For example, he could ban the export of spare parts for Boeing aircraft, something that could hurt China (unless China has already thought of this and stockpiled spares). He could also block the sale of new Boeing airplanes to China, but then China would threaten to switch to Airbus planes. Trump probably does not want that because Boeing has factories in many states and buys parts from many states, including red states.

China could respond to more threats by putting export controls on crucial chemicals, ingredients for medicines, and much more. With a minor effort, Xi could devastate the U.S. economy if he wants to. That would hurt China too, but Xi doesn't have to worry about an election next year. If Trump overplays his hand, it could get nasty. (V)

Let the Firings Begin

Elon Musk liked to think of himself as co-president, but he never was. He was simply an outsider, an immigrant at that, who provided cover for Donald Trump to kill government programs MAGA didn't like and then blame someone else. But there is a co-president (and it is not J.D. Vance, either). It is Russell Vought.

Vought sees the shutdown as the opportunity of a lifetime. He wants to ruin the federal government so badly that a Democratic president in 2028 could spend 4 years trying to put it back together and still fail. Vought has already started his plan by firing over 4,000 federal workers in Education, Health and Human Services, the EPA, Treasury, and Homeland Security. On Friday, for example, dozens of workers at the CDC were fired outright and the D.C. office was shut down, with more to come. All in all, HHS began firing over 1,100 workers Friday. At Treasury it was over 1,400. By law, workers being fired must be given 30 days' notice, but who cares about the law when you have the power? Nevertheless, lawsuits have already been filed.

This is not normal. The script for the standard kabuki theater play used during a shutdown is that workers are furloughed for the duration, then they come back and get all their missing pay. Vought is trying to change the script this time by permanently firing people on the assumption that the Democrats don't want to see people hurt, so they will cave. He and Trump don't give a rat's a** about the workers, of course.

But it is possible that this one time, Democrats might see the larger picture, not cave, and loudly announce that Trump, not the Democrats, is who is firing people. They could win the PR war on this because when things go wrong, people tend to blame the president. (V)

Democrats Also Want Guardrails as a Condition of Ending the Shutdown

There is a great deal of publicity about the Democrats' "condition" for reopening the government, namely restoring health-insurance subsidies. But that isn't the only condition. Another important one is that recission bills would no longer be privileged and could be filibustered. This would eliminate the possibility of the Republicans making a deal on spending with the Democrats and then immediately passing another bill that couldn't be filibustered to renege on the deal. In effect, the legal loophole to impound funds would be closed and Trump would have to openly break the law to do so. He might well do so anyway, but openly breaking the law could be an article of impeachment if the Democrats capture the House in 2026. This is kind of weedy, so Democrats aren't talking about it much, but they are definitely serious about it.

Another item on the Democrats' menu is explicitly granting any person or organization that lost funding due to an illegal impoundment the right to sue for redress in federal court. This would overturn a Supreme Court decision that victims of illegal impoundments have no rights. Just suck it up, victims.

One more thing on the Democrats' wish list is to make federal officials who actually carry out impoundments, by refusing to send out the checks Congress has ordered them to send out, subject to fines. If this is written into law, OMB Director Russell Vought will be the first target. Interestingly, there is already a federal law on the books subjecting federal officials to penalties if they spend more money than Congress approved. So why not also penalties for spending less than Congress approved? One of Congress' main powers is the power of the purse, but if the president can just ignore Congress and make spending decisions on his own, it completely changes the balance of power between the branches. These changes would go a long way to restoring what the founders had in mind when they wrote the Constitution.

Needless to say, Republicans want no part of any of this. So the shutdown continues. (V)

Appeals Court: Trump May Not Order the National Guard to Invade Chicago

Donald Trump ordered 500 National Guard Troops from Illinois and Texas to invade Chicago. Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) sued. On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge April Perry, a Joe Biden appointee, ruled that Trump could not deploy the troops there, in part due to a "lack of credibility" in official declarations about the deployments. This is judge-speak for "I don't like you lying to me."

Trump appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, conveniently located in ... Chicago. The Illinois AG argued that the deployment was "startling, unbounded, limitless and not in accord with our system of ordered liberty of federalism."

The appeals court acted with lightning speed. On Saturday, in a one-page unsigned order, the court ruled that the Guard could remain federalized but it may not deploy to Chicago. The ruling said that deployment would likely lead to civil unrest and add fuel to the fire.

The troops may remain in the Chicago area, but may not occupy the city. As long as they stay in armories and conduct training and planning exercises, they do not have to be demobilized and sent home. However, they may not engage in what the court called "operational activities."

Protests have continued in Chicago all week, but they have been peaceful, with people waving signs and chanting. There have also been peaceful prayer vigils near an ICE facility in Broadview, a Chicago suburb.

Clearly this is not the final word. The administration may appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. One of the arguments Illinois is likely to make there is that deploying National Guard troops to "fight crime"—that is, domestic law enforcement—violates the Posse Comitatus Act. The law is fairly clear here, but the current Supreme Court is pretty good at bending itself into a pretzel to get the result it wants, regardless of the law. (V)

MIT Rejects the Deal Trump Offered

Donald Trump really wants to bend universities, especially the elite ones, to his will. They are a power center separate from himself and he can't tolerate that. He is running a two-front war on them: stick and carrot. On the stick front, he has unilaterally canceled contracts to try to cure cancer and other useful things just to punish them, even though the courts have frowned upon this. On the carrot front, he offered nine top universities special—but very vague—future benefits if they basically turn over governance of the university to him. The 10-page deal is very specific about what universities have to do to get the deal and even more specific about the penalties they face if they sign and then don't do all the things they promised. It is not at all specific about the benefits other than some funding "where feasible" (hint: it won't be feasible). Maybe the only benefit might be something like compliant universities will be able to get AG Pam Bondi to speak on campus about her vision of justice and universities that don't sign won't be able to get her to speak.

It took about a week, but one university, MIT, gave Trump an answer, and it is "No, thanks." MIT President Sally Kornbluth politely explained that letting Trump run MIT in exchange for some possible future benefit, if feasible, was not something she was waiting for.

Actually, Kornbluth blew it. What she should have done is contacted all the other universities on the list and gotten as many as possible to sign a single letter saying "No thanks," thus showing solidarity with each other. That would have made them much stronger and would inspire the next batch of invitees (if any) to respond the same way.

Teresa Sullivan, the former president of the University of Virginia, one of the other invitees, said: "It's pretty vague what the advantages are of signing the compact. If you're thinking of this as a deal, it's a one-sided deal." The things signees would have to do include freezing tuition for 5 years, limiting the number of foreign students, defining sex as male or female only, banning the use of race and sex in admissions decisions, muzzling political discussion on campus, and punishing departments that belittle conservative ideas. It is clearly a nonstarter.

It is hard to tell whether Trump was even serious with the offer or he was just trolling the universities and daring them to say no as a pretext for more sticks in the future. If he really wanted them to sign, the benefits should have been as explicit as the penalties for noncompliance after signing up. There was basically no reason for any university to accept the deal, put itself under his thumb, and then get nothing in return. Presumably all of the others, except maybe the University of Texas, will turn down the wonderful offer. The decision for Texas will be made by the Greg Abbott-appointed board of regents, so that will probably be a "yes." (V)

Now the Quid Pro Quo Comes Out of the Woodwork

The government of Qatar gave Donald Trump a gold-plated luxury 747 worth about $400 million. And it wasn't even his birthday. What kind and generous people those Qataris are! In absolutely, completely unrelated news, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced that Qatar will be allowed to build a military facility inside the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho.

This is a first. No foreign country has ever been allowed to build a military base on U.S. soil, and certainly not on a military base. The security risk there is enormous. When the U.S. sells military hardware to allies, individual soldiers from that country are invited to the U.S. for training on how to use the weapons, but the recipient country does not get to build a base on U.S. soil, and certainly not on a U.S. military base, with concomitant risks of spying, theft and more. The foreign soldiers are housed in the barracks with American soldiers, so everyone can keep an eye on them. Allowing foreign countries to build structures on U.S. bases has never been allowed. Until now.

Hegseth gave no explanation why Qatar gets to put its own buildings on the air base when other U.S. partners do not. Qatar is a nominal ally of the U.S. at the moment, but has been accused of funding Hamas and other terrorist groups. Not surprisingly, Qatar denies this, but sometimes helping terrorists is easier than fighting them off.

Trump whisperer and Islamophobe Laura Loomer is beyond furious. She tweeted "Never thought I'd see Republicans give terror financing Muslims from Qatar a MILITARY BASE on US soil so they can murder Americans." She also posted a clip of Trump speaking in 2017 and accusing Qatar of funding terrorism. In addition, she said she might not vote in the midterms next year.

She wasn't the only Trump ally who was dismayed by this. Steve Bannon sent Newsweek this text message: "There should never be a military base of a foreign power on the sacred soil of America." But maybe he is just jealous that the Qataris never gave him a $400 million gold-plated airplane. (V)

The Redistricting Battles Are Moving to Missouri and Ohio

Donald Trump is scared to death that the Democrats could win control of the House in Nov. 2026. That would mean they have the power to impeach him again and again. If the Democrats don't capture the Senate, there will be long public hearings to determine what the articles of impeachment should be. If the Democrats do capture the Senate (unlikely, but possible if all the stars align and there is a big blue wave), the impeachment will probably be quick and the Senate trial will be extended and televised. Trump really doesn't want any of this. Consequently, he is fighting like hell for every House seat—not by pursuing policies that are popular, but by trying to rig the game. Texas already changed its congressional map. Now the battle has shifted to Missouri and Ohio.

Missouri has eight House seats, currently occupied by six Republicans and two Democrats. This means that Republicans have 75% of the House seats, even though Donald Trump won only 58% of the vote in 2024. In other words, the House map is already heavily gerrymandered. But Trump wants more. The two Democrats are Wesley Bell in MO-01 (D+29) and Emanuel Cleaver in MO-05 (D+12). Both are Black. Bell ran against the very controversial former representative Cori Bush in the 2024 Democratic primary, and with some $800K from AIPAC, beat her. Given the tilt of the district (D+29) there is no way the Republicans can redistrict him out of a seat. So their goal is to de-seat Cleaver, who represents Kansas City, MO, and some of its suburbs.

Since the Republicans have the trifecta in Missouri, there is nothing the Democrats can do legislatively to stop the Republicans from redrawing the map. Instead, the blue team's efforts are aimed at a ballot initiative to stop or repeal the new map. It's complicated, but if the Democrats can collect 100,000 signatures on an initiative petition by Dec. 11, the state will not be able to draw a new map until the voters have had their say. Polling shows that about half the population is against a new map so there is a decent chance an initiative banning a new map would pass. After all, the only argument for a new map is that Trump wants it. There are probably not 50% +1 voters for whom that is a winning argument.

The referendum is being organized by a group called People Not Politicians. It has (tepid) support from national Democrats, since they are more focused on California. Missouri Democrats think the national party will pony up if the initiative makes it onto the ballot, though. The Missouri ACLU is preparing to fight any attempts by the Missouri AG to keep the initiative off the ballot.

Now on to Ohio. There have been endless fights there about drawing the maps, with people from all the different political parties fighting for fair maps and mostly the (Republican) politicians who run the state bitterly opposing them. There have been multiple proposals and court battles running for years. If you are really, really interested in the history of redistricting in Ohio you could: (1) see a psychiatrist to help you with your strange fetishes or (2) check out this short-ish summary.

Very briefly, the current state of affairs in the Buckeye State is that after the decennial census, the legislature is required to try to draw a map that gets bipartisan support. If it succeeds, the map is valid for 10 years. If it fails, there is a quick side trip to a Republican-controlled commission and then the legislature gets to draw a map that is valid for only two election cycles. That happened in 2020 and the two cycles were 2022 and 2024. Now the process repeats itself. The Democrats got an initiative on the ballot in 2024 to create a fair process, but due to a lot of misleading ads, it was voted down. At the moment, the Democrats have no real way to block the process. After the map is drawn, they can sue, but the Republicans have a 6-1 majority on the Ohio Supreme Court, so that is very unlikely to work.

The current Ohio congressional delegation is 5D, 10R. Three of the Democrats are in competitive districts, namely Greg Landsman (OH-01, D+3), Marcy Kaptur (OH-09, R+3), and Emilia Sykes (OH-13, EVEN). Those will all be targets in the new map. The Democrats' only hope is that the Republicans get too greedy and create too many districts with a small Republican edge—say, R+4—and in a blue wave, the Republicans can't hold them. (V)

Trump Cancels One of the Biggest Solar Farms in the World

Democrats have long fought for (and won) battles requiring extensive environmental reviews before pipelines and other infrastructure projects can start. After all, a project could interfere with the favorite nesting sites of the spotted owl, a moose migration, or somebody's sacred mountain. All well and good, but be careful what you wish for. You might get it.

The Biden administration passed laws appropriating funds for some massive solar farms in the Nevada desert that would have turned barren lands green—with solar energy production—and created good jobs constructing and maintaining the solar arrays. Unfortunately, due to the extensive environmental reviews the Democrats fought so hard for, the review process is still ongoing and now the Trump administration has killed what would have been the largest solar power plant in North America. If the Democrats had listened to former senator Joe Manchin and sped up the permitting process, the solar arrays might have already been installed and in operation. Maybe there is a lesson here: The law cuts both ways.

The Esmeralda 7 super project would have covered 185 square miles in southern Nevada, not far from Las Vegas. Four different companies were planning to install and operate solar panels, providing some competition (and thus keeping prices down). The project would have provided 6.2 gigawatts of energy. That is enough to power 2 million homes, or all the iPhones in the world simultaneously. Now the project is dead, even though Congress approved the funding years ago.

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, who was a strong proponent of fossil fuels while he was governor of North Dakota, said solar power is "intermittent," by which he probably meant the sun does not shine 24 hours a day in southern Nevada. It does shine about 10½ hours per day on the average, and rain is rather rare in the Nevada desert. Nevertheless, Burgum canceled the review, thus de facto killing the whole project.

All utility companies understand that solar power is "intermittent," but it is available during many of the hours when there is demand for power. For the other hours, they either have to use solar energy stored in batteries charged during daylight or use alternative sources, such as wind, hydro, gas or oil. Getting most of your power from solar is a lot better than getting none of it from solar, but Burgum does not see it that way. Burgum also suggested that Esmeralda 7 would not be the last solar project that he will cancel.

Burgum is not going to get any blowback from Donald Trump on this. On Day One, Trump signed an XO pausing the development of all renewable energy projects on federal land (and water). Then he appointed Kathleen Sgamma, president of an oil-industry lobbying group, to run the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees a quarter of a billion acres of public land. In July, Trump signed another XO giving Burgum the full authority to decide whether to allow or deny renewable energy projects on federal land to proceed. Burgum knows which way the wind is blowing (oh wait, that is probably a poor metaphor here, but we can't think of a better one right now. Sorry). So he killed Esmeralda 7 and is out hunting for more solar and wind projects to axe.

It is not entirely clear why Trump hates solar energy so much, but here are some guesses. First, Barack Obama and Joe Biden liked it, so that is an automatic "no." Second, the oil companies made nice contributions to his campaign and he is an honest politician: When he is bought, he stays bought. Third, embracing solar implicitly says that science is right when it says the planet is warming due to fossil fuel use. Once you say science got it right here, it is only a small hop, skip, and jump to saying that science also got it right about evolution and the world was not created in 7 days and the Bible is a collection of fairy tales. For many of his supporters, that would undermine their entire lives. Maybe it's some combination of these three. (V)

Why Have the Tech Titans Embraced Trump?

At the beginning of the Internet age, many of the leaders were, if not hippies (Steve Jobs comes to mind), vaguely left-ish or somewhat libertarian. Some were nonpolitical nerds (e.g., Bill Gates). Google's initial motto was "Don't be evil" and when two Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were running the show, they really meant it. They were certainly not hard right.

Times are changing. No one would accuse immigrant Peter Thiel of being a hippie. Nor Larry Ellison or Marc Andreessen. Elon Musk? Are you serious? What happened? Many of them liked Barack Obama's youth and vitality. They were mostly confused by Trump v1.0 and they actually prospered during the Biden administration, despite the president not being exactly youthful and hip. In particular, Biden encouraged the tech industry to work with the defense industry, leading to smart weapons and mass surveillance techniques.

Nevertheless, according to a new book by Jacob Silverman, Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley, Biden's attempts to put some mild restraints on the industry (to head off the peasants coming with pitchforks to tear the whole thing down) angered the billionaires who do not take kindly to being told "no." Ever. Also, his occasional talk about breaking up some of the big companies was not a big hit with them.

The new-found love of Trump by tech billionaires Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg and others is probably more expediency than true love. Yes, he cut their taxes but more important, Trump is mean and vengeful and getting on the wrong side of him could be expensive. Better to butter him up and say he runs rings around Abe Lincoln than to become a target. Also, being his buddy could produce some big government contracts as a fringe benefit.

Another factor, though, is the Democrats' heavy focus on DEI and identity politics. Tech billionaires always think they made it to the top due to their extraordinary merit. They tend to be very averse to considering any other factors than merit when hiring or promoting people. Getting bonus points for belonging to some group that has never made a big impression on the tech industry doesn't make their hearts sing. This put them much more in tune with the Republicans than the Democrats.

Also lurking in the background is crypto. Democrats see it as a scam that sucks in people who can least afford it. They fully expect it to crash and burn some day, the way all Ponzi schemes do. Trump, by contrast, loves the idea of a good scam and believes he can make wild profits off the cultists rubes base using crypto. Since crypto is just digital air, naturally tech geniuses think it is cool.

Some of the tech leaders, starting with Peter Thiel, think democracy is outmoded software that needs to be upgraded. After all, letting millions of dumb yahoos have the ability to tell you what you can and cannot do is not appealing. Better to have a technocracy, with brilliant tech leaders running the show. If you want to dismantle democracy and get rid of these annoying voters, Trump is the ideal leader for you. He is almost as good as J.D. Vance, who is actually one of them and who understands their point of view. He was also thoroughly "mentored" by Thiel. The tech bosses will certainly support Vance with all they have got in 2028.

The one fly in the ointment here is that the worker bees in Silicon Valley are mostly Democrats. Most of Silicon Valley is in Santa Clara County. In 2024, Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump there by 40 points, 68% to 28%. The Libertarian Party candidate, Chase Oliver, got 0.5%. Part of Silicon Valley spills over to San Mateo County, to the north and west of Santa Clara. There the slaughter was even worse. Trump lost there by 51 points, 74% to 23%. The congressman from Silicon Valley (CA-17) is Democrat Ro Khanna, one of the most progressive members of the House. A situation in which the bosses are (or pretend to be) right-wing Trumpers and the workers hate him with a passion is, as they say in the Valley, suboptimal. (V)

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