Losing My Perspicacity February 19, 2025

Good morning and Happy Wednesday! Thanks for being here.

Today is my 52nd birthday. I say that not so everyone will rush to send me birthday wishes, but because, for a long time, I was terrified to tell anyone my actual age. As a solid Gen Xer, I grew up thinking that every woman over 35 had to cut her hair short and start wearing “slacks” with elastic waistbands, and equated women over the age of 45 with the Golden Girls. In my defense, I’m now a year older than Rue McClanahan was when she began portraying Blanche. There was a time when knowing that really would have freaked me out.

I hear, “OMG! You look so young for your age!” quite a bit, which is untrue. I am what a 52-year-old woman looks like. We’ve all just been brainwashed to believe that beauty is only achieved in youth and that women, once past childbearing age, are valueless. Of course, it doesn’t help to hear that kind of thing from our Vice President and elected officials.

Over on Blueksy, someone pointed out that a writer at Politico excluded FDR from whatever he was writing about because he simply didn’t know much about FDR. That made me think of all the “middle-aged” women I know in media who are currently out of work or hustling to cobble together a full-time gig. Over on LinkedIn, a resume “expert” said that everyone over 40 should take their ages (via their earliest jobs and graduation dates) off their resumes. I don’t doubt that sexism and ageism play a huge role in who is hired to work in media these days, but I refuse to try to hide my age, my hard-earned wisdom, or the experiences (some great, some bruising) that made me who I am.

At 52, I am a better version of myself than I have ever been. I have learned much and, more importantly, unlearned more. I have made incredible life-long friends and lost a few along the way. Regrets? I have a few. Not only do I not mind mentioning them, but I also think of them often — reminding myself to do better than I have in the past. I’ve had 20 years of formal education and 25 years (give or take) of therapy. I’ve spent more than 15 years on social media, learning about the world from people I might never have otherwise met. I have headed up organizations, and I’ve been the lowest-ranking person on staff. Far too often, I’ve been the only woman in the room.

Best of all, I’ve learned my worth. I don’t allow people to push me around anymore, and that, more than anything, is what some people don’t like. But perhaps the most satisfying part of getting older is running out of fucks to give about other people’s opinions of you.

On this birthday, I’m happy to be able to do what I love for people who value my work. So thanks for being here with me.

Today: Trump declares himself the law; US Judge Ana Reyes lets the DOJ have it; Patagonian kayaker unlocks a new nightmare for me; US Hockey continues to suck; and The High Note.

Let’s do this thing.

Nice try, numbnuts

Really, I couldn’t come up with a better headline for this one.

Needless to say, that is not how any of this works. It would be laughable if so many people didn’t agree with it. A President can not simply declare himself the only person able to interpret the law — in other words, a king. L’Etat, c’est moi, indeed.

What Trump is trying to do here is an end-run around all the lawsuits currently making their way through the courts involving DOGE’s systemic dismantling of nearly every federal agency we have. If the President himself is the only one who can decide what the law is, that means the President is the only one who can determine whether or not the law is being broken. In essence, Trump is trying to say the courts have no role in what the President does when it comes to our federal government, especially as Congress has been rendered completely impotent by the GOP’s slavish devotion to Trump.

I’d like to be able to assure you that this isn’t going to work, but we’re in a version of the upside-down I’ve never seen or anticipated outside of the last six months. What I can say is that federal workers are American citizens, too, and they have the same rights as the rest of us. That means things like discrimination, wrongful termination, the violation of collective bargaining agreements, and more are all valid issues that the courts maintain jurisdiction over. Federal agencies are not exempt from the laws of the United States.

What’s more, Elon Musk and DOGE are slandering thousands of American workers, claiming that their jobs amount to “fraud and waste,” even though those claims are based on the opinions of 24-year-old computer programmers who got access to a given department’s data just 24 hours before. DOGE employees literally don’t know what they’re looking at because they don’t work in that field, and anything they don’t recognize is being labeled “fraud.” Well, everything except Musk’s enormous government contracts, of course.

I’d like to think the courts will function as a legal backstop to this behavior. Still, just yesterday, Judge Tanya Chutkan denied the motion brought by 14 state attorneys general for a restraining order to keep Musk from accessing sensitive data or implementing layoffs. However, she did admit that the overall case raises serious questions about the circumventing of the Appointments Clause of the Constitution.

The AGs are still going forward with their request for a preliminary injunction, and the motion for a temporary restraining order was denied because the plaintiffs didn’t meet their burden for showing “imminent and irreparable” harm. In layman's terms, it’s harder to get a TRO than a preliminary injunction because the party seeking the TRO has to show that, if the court doesn’t act, something so bad will happen that we’ll never be able to make it right. I’m unsure what else Judge Chutkan is looking for than *gestures around to everything*, but that was her ruling. I should mention that Chutkan is an Obama appointee and is highly, highly respected.

Meanwhile, this also happened.

Well, I’ll say this. It makes it a lot harder to argue that Trump violated the Appointments Clause by putting Musk in charge of DOGE if he’s not in charge of DOGE. On the other hand, what else do you call the person who stands next to the President in the Oval Office and explains everything he’s doing? And if he’s not in charge of DOGE, who is?

I imagine this headline was news to Musk, and that brings me great joy.

In stories that will restore your faith in the legal system and humanity…

US District Court Judge Ana Reyes heard arguments today in a case that seeks to halt Trump’s ban on trans people serving in the military. Trump’s lawyers argued that the executive order Trump signed on January 27 does not target transgender service members with “any particular animus.” Here’s how that went.

Reyes also called portions of Trump’s EO “frankly ridiculous.”

A ruling isn’t expected in this case until early March.

And now for something completely different

If you’ve been an LMP reader for long enough, you know that one of my biggest fears is being on the ocean and having something humungous come from the depth beneath me and land on top of me. This fear revolves around two main deep-ocean dwellers: submarines and whales.

Now, however, a new fear has been unlocked, thanks to a Patagonian kayaker: Having a whale go all Jonah on me.

GAH.

Obviously, humpback whales don’t eat people; they strain huge quantities of water through baleen plates that trap tiny things like little fish, krill, and plankton. And humpbacks are known for being gentle and relatively friendly — I’ve been lucky enough to see one up close when it approached a whale-watching boat I was on in Alaska. Not scary! But that whole sequence of events above is terrifying and will haunt my dreams for years.

Imagine watching a whale eat your kid while you calmly continue to get the whole thing on video.

US Hockey sucks

It’s no secret that the NHL gives cover to homophobes who are too immature to wear a rainbow on their sweater for one night, and that USA hockey has repeatedly come under scrutiny for how it handles allegations of sexual abuse made by players. So of course the team wants Donald Trump to attend the Four Nations final between the US and Canada.

Look. Trump has been in office for less than two months and has already attended the Super Bowl, the Daytona 500, and has spent 12 nights at Mar-A-Lago, all at taxpayer expense. But you know what? The final is going to be at TD Garden in Boston, close enough to Canada that a significant number of Canadians might attend, and Suffolk County, where Boston is located, went 76 percent for Kamala Harris. So I hope Trump does go, hears the booing of the national anthem, and gets his ass handed to him by the crowd.

Could be fun.

The High Note

Each day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face and a song in your heart, or at least the will to fight another day.

In that last vein, we have good news out of Wisconsin.

While it’s always preferable to have a court rule on the merits of a case, this ruling limits who can bring a lawsuit in the first place. That’s not nothing. This case found that merely being a Republican Party official doesn’t give you standing to challenge how people vote in Wisconsin because you aren’t “aggrieved.” That’s significant.

And because it’s my birthday, here’s one of my favorite musical performances of all time: Joan Baez, the Indigo Girls, and Mary Chapin Carpenter singing Bob Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright.

Survive and advance today. Don’t let the bastards get you down!