- Losing My Perspicacity
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- Losing My Perspicacity, May 15, 2025
Good morning and Happy Thursday! Thanks for stopping by this morning.
Yesterday, surprisingly, was a pretty chill news day. And by “pretty chill,” I mean no one was threatening to ignore or undo any parts of the US Constitution, nor were they lying to federal judges about shipping people off to jungle prisons (as far as I know). No, it was just the usual amount of “OMG, our President is definitely for sale” and “So, I guess we’re allies with Syria now.”
I was a little surprised that the national news didn’t cover what was happening at the Rayburn House Office Building on Tuesday, where a hearing on Donald Trump’s budget was taking place.
BREAKING: The scene at the Rayburn Building is pure rebellion. Protesters are swarming in during live hearings on Medicaid cuts. Security’s losing control. Because when the government wages war on the poor, the poor fight back.
— Kye (@gxldsociety.bsky.social)2025-05-13T21:51:17.784Z
Those were Americans protesting cuts to Medicaid, which insures more than 78 million people, primarily children, pregnant women, and those with disabilities. Twenty-six protestors were arrested by Capitol Police, many of whom were in wheelchairs.
Police arrested more than two dozen people after activists protesting cuts to Medicaid interrupted the House Energy and Commerce Committee as it began consideration of legislation to change the program.
Minutes into the markup, activists — including several in wheelchairs — chanted “no cuts to Medicaid,” persisting despite a warning from Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) that those making outbursts could be arrested.
I know it’s easy to fall into despair, to believe that no one cares and that no one is doing anything about what’s happening on Capitol Hill and at the White House. But please remember that there are people out protesting like this every day. We may not see it on NBC Nightly News, but it’s happening nonetheless. We can all protest in our own ways. One of my main ways of protesting is this newsletter. For others, it’s postcard campaigns to Congress. We can all do something.
There was a similar standoff at the Library of Congress on Tuesday, though it came from the librarians themselves, not outside protestors. As you may know, Trump fired longtime Librarian of Congress, Dr. Carla Hayden, on May 8, reportedly due to her “focus” on diversity, equity, and inclusion. On Tuesday, two new Trump appointees showed up and attempted to access the US Copyright Office (where every copyrighted work in America is stored). The librarians of Congress turned them away.
But staff members at the Library of Congress pushed back, insisting that Congress must have input and refusing to give two other top Justice Department officials whom Mr. Blanche chose for senior positions there access to the agency’s headquarters on Capitol Hill, according to two people familiar with the situation.
The lockout led to a brief standoff across from the Capitol and became the latest flashpoint in a battle over where Congress’s authority ends and the White House’s begins. The people who described it did so on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment.
Around 9 a.m., the two Justice Department officials arrived at the library’s James Madison Memorial Building and sought access to the U.S. Copyright Office, which is housed there. They brought a letter from the White House declaring that Mr. Blanche was the acting librarian and that he had selected the two men for top roles at the agency.
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Staff members at the library balked and called the U.S. Capitol Police as well as their general counsel, Meg Williams, who told the two officials that they were not allowed access to the Copyright Office and asked them to leave, one of the people said.
And they left! The librarians made the right call, as the new Librarian of Congress must be approved by Congress, a step we seem to be bypassing on just about everything else these days. Bravo, and three cheers for librarians!
Today: Jamelle Bouie hits the nail on the head; Why I don’t believe Trump will ever get his Qatari plane; The 10 worst items in Trump’s budget proposal; and The High Note.
Here we go.
Jamelle Bouie nails it
For years, but especially in the last 100 days or so, I’ve been asking myself this question: How can the GOP, ostensibly the party of “personal liberty,” cheer on Donald Trump as he dismantles long-standing Constitutional principles like due process and habeas corpus? What are they getting out of it? Is being in Congress really that great that people will do anything to keep that job? Is having money so great that you’ll compromise your own values and the dream of our Founding Mothers and Fathers?
I don’t get it.
But yesterday, Jamelle Bouie wrote a piece in the NYT that somewhat gives me an answer.
But somewhat more interesting than the president’s abuse of power is the indifference — or active support — of both the Republican Party and the conservative movement. One might think that even with its zeal for tax cuts and right-wing social engineering, the conservative movement’s reverence for both the founding fathers and the nation’s revolutionary heritage would not overwhelm a basic respect for the hard-fought rights and privileges of the American way of life. You would think that those who elevate 1776, who fetishize the Constitution as an object and who practically spend every waking moment reminding the public of their patriotic bona fides would, at some point, have something to say about this perversion of the American republic.
You would be wrong. The Republican Party is, with only a few quibbles and some occasionally timid disagreement, united in support of Donald Trump. Conservative intellectuals have spent the past decade spinning endless excuses for the president and his allies. They treat his tyrannical aspirations as little more than a curiosity or even a justified response to some imagined revolutionary movement of the political and cultural left. Both the MAGA cheerleaders of the Claremont Institute and the Trump rationalizers in the nation’s premier publications agree: Nothing Trump has done or wants to do is beyond the pale. Everything is a necessary and defensive act in the war against critical race theory or gender ideology or so-called wokeness.
Bouie goes on to discuss the GOP’s century-long love affair with authoritarian dictators.
This attitude, while shocking in its moral and ethical decadence, is not all that surprising. As the writer and editor Jacob Heilbrunn shows in “America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance With Foreign Dictators,” the conservative movement has always had a soft spot for despots of various stripes. The political and intellectual antecedents of the Trump movement, stretching all the way back to the early 20th century, have often had nothing but praise for those despotic rulers who extinguished the freedom of the many for the liberty of the few, from Gen. Francisco Franco in Spain and Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile to, at this moment, Vladimir Putin in Russia and Viktor Orban in Hungary. (Not to mention the American right’s long love affair with apartheid South Africa.)
It occurs to me that I’ve been asking the wrong question. The question I ask myself is framed as “what made them change who they were to become Trump-worshipping sycophants?” But perhaps the question I should be asking is, “How did I miss that this is who they’ve always been?”
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve voted for a Republican exactly once in my lifetime, and that was for George Ryan, the Illinois Governor who abolished the death penalty before he went to prison for corruption, in 1998. In my defense, he was a lot more socially liberal than the guy the Democrats were running, Glenn Poshard, who had gone on the record as being against abortion and gay marriage on religious grounds. And what can I say? Back then, I was a single-issue voter, and that issue was the right to an abortion.
So it’s not like I didn’t know the GOP was terrible, I just didn’t think it was this terrible.
But whether you think this moment is continuous with our past or a break from it, one thing we can say for sure is that conservative support for this type of governance is not an aberration. It belongs to a consistent pattern of enthusiastic support for tyrants and would-be tyrants. This is who they are, this is what they’ve been, and whenever the age of Trump passes, this is who they’ll be. What it should signal to observers of American politics is that there won’t be a time when either the conservative movement or the Republican Party truly changes course.
This is an awfully harsh way to see what’s been in front of us this entire time — Republicans screaming about “freedom” while actively working to take that away from Americans. Sort of like how the Trump administration is incredibly antisemitic, but uses “fighting antisemitism” as a cudgel to justify everything it does.
Republicans have been lying in wait for someone like Trump for years, like Hydra.
I included a gift link to Jamelle’s piece above if you want to read the whole thing.
Trump will likely never get to fly on his Qatari plane
We all know Trump is super-hyped about his new, $400 million plane from Qatar that 100 percent violates the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
It couldn’t be more black and white than that. And no, the Statue of Liberty was not the same thing. The Statue of Liberty was a gift to the American people, and Grover Cleveland didn’t take it with him when he left. And it was approved by Congress.
It’s taken Congress a few days to catch up to the rest of America in the outrage department, but even the GOP is starting to get there. I, however, am not worried that Trump will be zipping around the skies in this thing, at least not during his time as President. Why? Because converting that thing to Air Force One is going to take years and cost millions, if not billions, to upgrade.
Converting a luxury jet gifted by Qatar to President Donald Trump into a replacement for Air Force One could potentially cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and it could take up two years to install the necessary security equipment, communications and defensive capabilities for it to be safely used by the commander in chief, current and former officials told CNN.
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said Tuesday that the plane “poses significant espionage and surveillance problems.” Across the aisle, Democratic Sen. Jack Reed, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said accepting it would pose “immense counterintelligence risks by granting a foreign nation potential access to sensitive systems and communications.”
Good Lord, he’s even lost Ted Cruz, perhaps the scummiest politician on earth. And good luck selling “$700 million in taxpayer-funded upgrades” so Trump can use the plane as a private citizen to the masses, who are already screaming about his budget at town halls nationwide.
It has been estimated the jet is worth $400 million, but a person a person familiar with the details of the potential plan said the value of the Qatari aircraft is closer to $250 million. Overhauling it, according to administration estimates the person has been briefed on, could cost as much as three times that, or more.
Even if used temporarily as Trump has said he would, US agencies would need to ensure there were no security vulnerabilities by essentially stripping the aircraft down to its frame and rebuilding it with the necessary communications and security equipment.
I guarantee you it was Trump who upped the value to $400 million.
Just how bad is Trump’s budget?
Our friends over at Rolling Stone have put together a list of the 10 worst things in Donald Trump’s new budget proposal. Sure, we all know about tax cuts for the rich while sticking it to the middle and lower classes, but I guarantee something in the list will make you go, “WHA???”
Let’s find out what that is, shall we?
Keeping taxes on the rich low (so much for the “eat the rich” sentiment sweeping the nation);
Slashing Medicaid to pay for said low taxes for the rich;
Raising costs on individual insurance plans: “Changes proposed by Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee could levy heavy tax penalties on Americans who purchase individual health insurance plans through marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act (ACA)”;
Attacking food stamps via $300 billion in cuts to SNAP over 10 years;
Ending the IRS Direct File program;
Diverting big money to Trump’s deportation plan: “The House Judiciary Committee’s first stab at reconciliation legislation includes $80 billion for domestic immigration enforcement. According to an analysis by Immigration Impact, the figure “includes $45 billion for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention and $14.4 billion for ICE transportation and removal operations”;
Giving Trump new powers to target charities: “The Ways and Means reconciliation text revives a proposal that would give the Trump administration the power to unilaterally terminate the tax-exempt status of disfavored nonprofits, on the grounds that those nonprofits are “terrorist-supporting organizations” that have provided “material support or resources” to terrorist groups’;
Gutting Green Energy subsidies;
Blocking state and local AI regulation: “The House Energy & Commerce Committee has included a 10-year provision that would prevent any “state or subdivision” from enforcing “any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act”;
Cutting taxes on gun silencers: The Ways and Means’ reconciliation text includes a provision that would eliminate a $200 excise tax on the transfer of firearm silencers.
Gosh, that all sounds really, really great. If you’ve waned on harassing your Congressional reps (like I have) as of late, now is the time to get back on the horse.
The High Note
Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.
Here’s Sen. Chris Murphy letting DHS’s Kristi Noem have it before her testimony on Capitol Hill yesterday.
Senator Chris Murphy Upbraided Noem Senator Chris Murphy LAID into Noem before she testified!
— Bryan 🌐 🇺🇦 Slava Ukraine (@papootx.bsky.social)2025-05-13T17:15:45.307Z
Rep. Bennie Thompson also got his licks in:
🔥🔥 Rep. Thompson: “Secretary Noem, I’m glad you found time among your many photo ops and costume changes to testify.”
— Republicans Against Trumpism (@rpsagainsttrump.bsky.social)2025-05-14T18:48:19.529Z
Delightful.
Survive and advance out there today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down.
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