The Clown Show, Part I: Trump Teases "MAJOR TRADE DEAL"

You can take the boy out of the reality show, but you apparently can't take the reality show out of the boy. Donald Trump, who has a well-known taste for the dramatic, decided yesterday to treat trade policy like it's a circus being mounted for the entertainment of the teeming masses, making this announcement on his ghost town of a social media platform:

Big News Conference tomorrow morning at 10:00 A.M., The Oval Office, concerning a MAJOR TRADE DEAL WITH REPRESENTATIVES OF A BIG, AND HIGHLY RESPECTED, COUNTRY. THE FIRST OF MANY!!!

Because who doesn't enjoy spending a night on pins and needles, as they wait to see, for example, whether or not their business is going to go under?

What Trump forgets is that with the latest "shocking" episode of The Apprentice, it was pretty easy to maintain a media embargo, since not many people had access to the finished footage, and they could all be fired by the guy on the show who did ACTUAL firing, namely producer Mark Burnett. On the other hand, there are all sorts of people who are privy to the sorts of negotiations that lead to trade pacts. And so, Trump was denied his big reveal by The New York Times, which took less than an hour after his "Truth" to break the news that the "BIG, AND HIGHLY RESPECTED, COUNTRY" is the U.K.

That said, even the Times couldn't learn exactly what the nature of the agreement might be. However, when it comes to predictions, take note of the following: (1) Trump does not have the power to unilaterally enter into trade agreements, and (2) As we have pointed out a thousand times before, substantive trade pacts do not get worked out in a week or two. Add it up, and the general guess is that Trump is overselling things, and that what he's actually going to announce is some sort of general framework that will guide the negotiations for the next... 6 months? Year? Two years?

There is one thing that is pretty clear, though: The author of The Art of the Deal has maneuvered himself into a very weak negotiating position. He can't just back down on the tariffs (again) without losing face. On the other hand, the polling continues to be brutal. The latest from YouGov affirms the same basic thing as other recent polls: 75% of respondents believe "Trump's tariffs" (note, NOT "Biden's tariffs") will increase prices, with about two-thirds of those also believing that the tariffs will harm the economy while producing no real benefits. Consequently, his approval is 10 points underwater, with 42% approving and 52% disapproving.

So, despite his braggadocio about people making do with 3 dolls instead of 30, and how a little belt-tightening never hurt anyone (except for those job-creating billionaires), Trump clearly knows it will be a (political) bloodbath if he tries to stay the course for multiple years (or even multiple months). If he can't back down, and he can't hold out long-term, that leaves only one possibility: quick, quick, quick agreements. The folks on the other side of the negotiating table from the U.S. know this, and they might maybe just use it to their advantage, possibly.

We'll learn at 10:00 am. ET today what this "MAJOR TRADE DEAL" really looks like. Though it would certainly serve Trump right, after that picture this weekend, if all of his remaining thunder was stolen by the cardinals agreeing on a pope today. The last couple of conclaves ended on the second day, so it's well within the realm of possibility. (Z)

The Clown Show, Part II: Next Quack Up

The circus also continued on the domestic front yesterday, as Donald Trump yanked the nomination of former Fox personality Dr. Janette Nesheiwat for U.S. surgeon general, and tapped Dr. Casey Means instead.

It's not entirely clear what sunk Nesheiwat. Last month, CBS reported that Nesheiwat misrepresented her résumé, and that her medical degree is not from the University of Arkansas, it's from the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine in Sint Maarten. Trump would not want to give a "victory" to the hated CBS, so he could well have sat on that information for a few weeks, so as to try to dispel any connection between the network's reporting and Nesheiwat's downfall.

The other leading possibility is that, over the weekend, whackadoodle nut job Laura Loomer went on an extended anti-Nesheiwat rant on eX-Twitter, in which she slammed the would-be SG for being pro-vaxx, a graduate of a non-American medical school, the "nepo" sister-in-law of former NSA Mike Waltz, and the subject of an ongoing malpractice case. It seems crazy that the President of the United States would be taking his cues from a loony-bird shouting at the clouds on eX-Twitter. But Loomer has gotten out her scythe and reaped members of the Trump administration before, so it's definitely possible.

In any case, having been burned by a candidate with questionable credentials and lingering legal issues, the White House looked around for a replacement and came up with someone... arguably even worse. Means is also nepo, as her brother is a close ally and adviser of HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. That suggests (accurately) that she's anti-vaxx, and also embraces all sorts of other "Make America Healthy Again" magical thinking and woo. Means also failed to complete her residency, and her medical license is currently inactive. Instead, she makes her living as an "influencer" who hawks various "health supplements."

We understand that anyone who is going to serve as surgeon general in the Trump administration is going to have to have some very... special political ideas. But, even under that constraint, can't they find a single person who is fully licensed, is actively practicing, and is not dealing with a giant malpractice lawsuit? Apparently not. (Z)

The Clown Show, Part III: $1,000 to Self-Deport

Donald Trump and his team are not having much success in fulfilling their pledge to deport a million undocumented immigrants in his first year back in the White House. And so, in the latest act of desperation, the administration has offered a $1,000 incentive to any person willing to "self-deport."

We have three comments about this initiative:

1. If a Democratic president were to so much as whisper a faint hint of a vague possibility of such a plan, the right-wingers in Congress and the right-wingers in the media would have their pitchforks out. "Oh, now we're paying people to break the law?" they would say.
   
   
2. At first glance, there is a certain logic to the administration's plan. It undoubtedly costs well more than $1,000 per deportation (for what it's worth, the White House says it's $17,000/each). So, it seems like a great way to save some big-time money. However, this is yet another case where it would be really helpful for someone, anyone, on Team Trump to crack open a history book. These sorts of schemes have been tried before, most obviously in the late 1930s, as the Great Depression lingered on (and on and on). And, as it turns out, immigrants (whether documented or no) are in the U.S. for a reason. Either there is something pulling them into the country (say, the presence of family members) or something pushing them out of the country they left (say, lack of opportunity, or perhaps ongoing violence). A thousand bucks is not enough to change that calculus, and so what invariably happens is that the small number of people who take the deal are largely those who were about to leave anyhow. So, it's a low acceptance rate AND it's not really much of a cost savings.
   
   
3. This is reminder #282 that while Trump talked a big game about immigration on the campaign trail, he had no real plan, despite the fact that he'd already been president before, and so should have had some insight into what might be done.

Speaking of plans, we can't understand why the White House didn't just follow this basic template. First, keep doing what Joe Biden was doing, which was working fairly well, despite Trump's claims to the contrary. Second, have a few high-profile enforcement actions, possibly involving Dr. Phil, to get some press about everything the administration is doing to combat those durned illegals. Third, have Trump go on Truth Social, and his underlings go on Fox, and declare total and complete victory, and a "historic" reduction in illegal immigration. The base doesn't give two craps about evidence, or the truth, and they would have swallowed that without question.

Maybe there's a flaw in our plan. After all, we spent a grand total of 30 seconds drawing it up. Still, it seems better than what the administration has actually come up with, which is mostly comprised of: (1) flail around, desperately trying to find something—anything—that might work, and (2) get involved in a bunch of illegal deportations, and thus lawsuits, that serve to produce a lot of negative press, fire up the opposition, and sour vast numbers of voters on Trump in general, and Trump's immigration policy in particular. The last four or five polls to ask respondents about immigration, like the latest from AP-NORC, now have him underwater on immigration (52% disapprove, 46% approve, in this case). And this is supposed to be his strongest issue. Our guess is that he'd be doing at least a little better if he had gone with the Electoral-Vote.com plan. (Z)

The Clown Show, Part IV: In Every Accusation, There Is a Confession

It is hardly a secret that Republicans in general, and the Trump administration in particular, have waged war against universities and against public schools, backed—at least in part—by the claim that these institutions are some sort of left-wing indoctrination mills.

This is, on the whole, stupid. It's true that education, especially higher education, tends to make people think critically, and that does not always work out well for political parties and religious groups who are peddling dubious notions (say, trickle-down economics or prosperity gospel). There are also a small minority of outspoken left-wing teachers/professors, and some of them teach unabashedly left-wing classes. But you know who signs up for those classes? Left-wing students. Not too many presidents of the campus chapter of the Young Republicans Club are signing up for Critical Race Theory 101.

In the last week, there have been a couple of high-profile reminders that Republicans not only believe in the notion of indoctrination, but also that the switch can be flipped, such that the students can be brainwashed in a right-wing direction, instead of a left-wing direction. Here, first of all, is Stephen Miller, from a speech last week:

Children will be taught to love America. Children will be taught to be patriots. Children will be taught civic values for schools that want federal taxpayer funding ... we're gonna make sure these funds are not being used to promote communist ideology.

OK, Steve. Here is what we thought of while he was speaking:

We'll just leave that there, without further comment.

Meanwhile, example number two involves Ryan Walters, a pro-Trump and anti-communist zealot who bears the delightfully ironic title of Oklahoma Education Commissar. He is apparently responsible for putting together the Oklahoma Academic Standards for Social Studies, and has now added this to the list of things students are expected to know/learn:

1. Explain the effects of the Trump tax cuts, child tax credit, border enforcement efforts including Title 42 and Remain in Mexico policy, consumer and business confidence, interest rates, and inflation rates prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
   
   
2. Describe the effects of the replacement of NAFTA with USMCA, expanded European contributions to NATO spending, the signing of the Abraham Accords, and the successful avoidance of new wars.
   
   
3. Identify the source of the COVID-19 pandemic from a Chinese lab and the economic and social effects of state and local lockdowns.
   
   
4. Identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results by looking at graphs and other information, including the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters, and the unprecedented contradiction of "bellwether county" trends.

If you want to see what an actual attempt at indoctrination looks like, well, there it is.

The good news here is that there is just no chance Miller or the Commissar will have any meaningful success with their efforts at brainwashing. There are, of course, students who don't pay attention and don't learn much of anything. More important, however, is that students who are above the age of about 11 (5th grade) tend to be very skeptical, and very good at sniffing out B.S.

Further, there is also a compliance issue on the part of the teachers and the professors. A handful of them will welcome far-right guidelines, it is true, because those folks want sanction for teaching a far-right class. But the great majority of them do not want to feel like they are being used as tools by The Man. And every time some person, regardless of their politics, puts out sets of standards like these, they ALWAYS overshoot by a country mile, and include stuff that would take three times as long to cover as the time that is actually allocated. The (somewhat lefty) standards for California state history, taught to 4th graders, is something like 9 pages long, and contains some subjects that (Z) wouldn't even try in a college class, much less a 4th grade class. The point here is that it's easy to skip the stupid and propagandistic parts, on the basis that "I just couldn't get to it all. Sorry!"

Now, in some cases, a rule or a standard is not optional for teachers—for example, the new Louisiana rule about posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms. It is for this circumstance that malicious compliance was created—follow the letter of the law, but not the spirit. There are all kinds of ways to pull this off, as an educator. Indeed, we are reminded that several readers wrote in to ask us what WE would do if required to display the Ten Commandments in our classroom. We were at work on our answer, but didn't get it finished, and then the endless march of BIG NEWS intervened. Maybe we'll try to get back to it for tomorrow's posting, as an illustration of what we mean by malicious compliance.

So, those are our thoughts on this matter. We had quite a few readers write in about the Oklahoma nonsense, so we thought we'd better share them. (Z)

Legal News, Part I: Trump Administration to "Defend" Mifepristone

Readers may recall that following the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs in 2022, which overturned Roe v. Wade and struck down constitutional protections for abortion rights, anti-abortion groups turned their attention to their next target, mifepristone, which is used for medication abortions. While ostensibly abortion was now "left to the states" and the public has spoken clearly in favor of abortion rights any time they have appeared on the ballot since Dobbs, curtailing access to abortion is a way to subvert those pesky election results. Indeed, medication abortion has proven to be much too easily accessible, as far as these groups are concerned. So, they put together a lawsuit to challenge the FDA's approval of mifepristone and the 2016 modifications to its use restrictions, which allowed it to be prescribed via telehealth and expanded the point in pregnancy at which it can be used. But before they filed the suit, they went shopping for a judge with a proven track record of anti-abortion positions for whom the law would not be an impediment. As luck would have it, in the Amarillo division of the Northern District of Texas, there is only one judge, and he just happens to be the zealot they were looking for. That's the infamous Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, whose name has shown up on this site once or twice in the past couple of years. He delivered more than the plaintiffs could have hoped for: He not only wiped out the 2016 modifications, he ordered the FDA to rescind approval of mifepristone altogether. The Supreme Court reversed his order and dismissed the case, holding that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the suit (but without ruling on the merits of the case).

If you thought this was not the end of this story, you were right. Three states, Missouri, Idaho and Kansas, intervened. After the Supreme Court's decision, they sought leave of court to file an amended complaint substituting themselves as the plaintiffs. In January of this year, Kacsmaryk—surprise, surprise!—granted their request. On January 18, in one of its last acts, the Biden administration filed a motion to dismiss the complaint on standing and venue grounds, arguing that the three states have no connection to Texas, that they have suffered no injury to satisfy standing requirements, and that the claims are untimely. The plaintiffs opposed the motion and, earlier this week, the Trump administration filed its reply. The reply refutes the opposition and reasserts the arguments in the motion, which is the exact purpose of a reply brief. Nonetheless, this was BIG news, with many outlets (for example, Politico) reporting that Team Trump was taking the baton from Team Biden. It's sad that such a straightforward, consistent and normal court filing is covered in the media so breathlessly. That said, given the chaos at the Department of Justice, it does seem unusual in its regular order and banality.

What is most interesting is that both the original motion and the reply were filed by the same attorneys from the Consumer Protection Branch and the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division of the DoJ. So, there are some career attorneys who have thus far survived the transition to the Trump administration. And it shows in the professionalism of this filing. But note that these are just jurisdictional arguments to get the case thrown out at an early stage. These are not arguments on the merits. And Kacsmaryk may remain true to form and deny the motion, allowing these three states to proceed in his court. Under those circumstances, will the Trump DoJ appeal his decision? Probably not. So, they lose very little by sticking with the original motion. The upshot is that we really won't know the administration's position on mifepristone unless, and until, this case proceeds beyond arguments about standing and venue, and moves into arguments about the substance of the claims.

It is not impossible that the White House will ultimately choose to take the pro-mifepristone side. Trump has been willing to throw multiple bones to the anti-choice folks, but banning mifepristone would be pretty radical, and would be a bridge too far for a pretty sizable majority of Americans. The administration might not want to be on the receiving end of that wrath, and might well tell the anti-choice elements of the base "We backed strong limits on surgical abortions, but that's as far as we are going to go." (L)

Legal News, Part II: Democracy Goes 1-for-2 in North Carolina

There may be no more purple state than North Carolina. Of the voters there, 32% are registered Democrats, while 30% are registered Republicans (leaving most of the rest as unaffiliated, which is the term the Tar Heel State uses for independents). This breakdown is reflected in the 10 state-level offices that are voted on statewide: Five of those offices are held by Democrats, and the other five by Republicans.

However, thanks to various undemocratic machinations (with gerrymandering being at the top of the list), Republicans are far overrepresented everywhere other than those 10 state-level offices. The state Senate is 60% Republican (30 R, 20 D). The state Assembly is 59% Republican (71 R, 49 D). Republicans also control the state Supreme Court, 5-2. Oh, and the North Carolina delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives is 10 R, 4 D.

Yesterday, Democrats (and fans of democracy) got one bit of good news and one bit of bad news from North Carolina. The good news is that right-wing judge Jefferson Griffin has finally conceded the race he lost to left-wing judge Allison Riggs. He didn't have very many cards left to play, and we suspect that whatever money was backing Griffin's efforts to overturn ballots post hoc dried up. Anyhow, with his surrender, the 2024 election cycle is now officially over. Riggs is one of the two in that 5-2 breakdown, and is entitled to sit on the Court until 2032. If she successfully runs for reelection (twice), she can stay until 2057, when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is also expected to retire.

And now the bad news, which is a little bit inside baseball, so bear with us. Because the North Carolina GOP keeps running nutters for governor, the Democrats have controlled the governorship since 2017 (and for all but 4 years since 1993). The state legislature—which, again, is dominated by Republicans—has responded to this by taking away as many powers from the governor as is possible, leaving the state with one of the weakest governorships in the country. And one of the (many) powers that was stripped—after Gov. Josh Stein (D-NC) was elected, but before he was sworn in—was the right to appoint the members of the North Carolina Board of Elections. That privilege was handed over to State Auditor Dave Boliek, whose duties have little to nothing to do with elections, but who conveniently happens to be a Republican.

This maneuver by the legislature led to a lawsuit from previous governor Roy Cooper, which was then picked up by the Stein administration. Cooper/Stein won in North Carolina Superior Court, but yesterday lost in the North Carolina Appeals court (the same court that kept Griffin's case alive long after every other judge had said "no."). The key here is that the two governors did not lose on the merits, the Appeals court merely canceled the injunction stopping Boliek from exercising his newfound powers. And before some other court could step in, Boliek promptly appointed a GOP majority to the 5-person Board of Elections, with all of the new (Republican) officers quickly sworn in.

What this means is that if the Stein administration is to fully prevail now, it first has to win the original case. Then, it would have to win a second case declaring the Boliek appointments to be invalid. Winning the first is plausible, but winning the second is a tall order. So, North Carolina Republicans have very likely managed to seize control of a critical cog in the election machinery, one that SHOULD have been populated by the Democrat Stein, and not the Republican Boliek. That kind of power-grab is definitely a loss for democracy. (Z)

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