Surviving a second Trump admin

[GoCubsGo]

Not wrong.

[Vrede too]

Not wrong.

https://bsky.app/profile/cwarzel.bsky.s ... htsiyzhs2d

The Atlantic strikes again.

Some shameful examples, we've already posted several others, like Frau Gnome and her watch at the prison.





Pitiful.

KP cosplay:

[GoCubsGo]

[O Really]

And he still has no clue that there really any "American cars" unless you count German bimmers made in SC or Japanese Hondas made in TN. Idiot

[Vrede too]

Here's some leaking, GoCubsGo, though we never know what's an "authorized" leak or not.

JD Vance and other officials told Trump to fire Waltz. There was just one reason he didn’t

... After a day of bruising headlines about the now-infamous group chat that has inadvertently included journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, on Wednesday evening, Vice President JD Vance, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and top personnel official Sergio Gor had a private meeting with the president, Politico reports.

In that meeting, they suggested that it might be best for Waltz to be dismissed, two people familiar with the conversations who were granted anonymity to discuss them told the outlet.

I have no problem with firing Waltz, but Vance and Wiles shouldn't have been on the Signal chat and Hegseth revealed the most classified info.

While the president agreed that Waltz was at fault for the debacle, he ultimately decided not to fire him for one reason — that it would be a win for Democrats and the liberal media.

What an infant! What about what's best for America and our military?

“They don’t want to give the press a scalp,” one of the people, a White House ally close with the team, told Politico.

Umm, the press has a whole group chat of scalps.

According to Axios, Trump officials say the president was more angry that Waltz had Goldberg's number in his phone than he was about the exposure of sensitive military strike details....

Way to prioritize, genius.

The New York Times reports that even before the Signal leak, Waltz was already on “shaky footing” and was viewed as too hawkish and keen for military action against Iran. This has caused friction with other members of the Trump team and the wider MAGA world.

Dump the hawk!

On Friday’s visit to Greenland, Waltz accompanied Vance and, according to an official who spoke to Axios, was counseled by him on the flight back about “knowing his place” and “working more collaboratively.”

Says the one-man wrecking ball to our international relations.

... Is accountability delayed accountability denied?

[GoCubsGo]

Here's some leaking, GoCubsGo, though we never know what's an "authorized" leak or not.

Maggie Haberman reported that too. She's pretty plugged in so I tend to believe it.

Meanwhile.....

[Vrede too]

Here's some leaking, GoCubsGo, though we never know what's an "authorized" leak or not.

Maggie Haberman reported that too. She's pretty plugged in so I tend to believe it.

Oh, I believe it. The question is whether DonOLD and/or Just Deranged wanted it "leaked".


Fuck bigoted Stephen Miller.

[Vrede too]

Appeals Court Lets Trump Fire Officials At Independent Boards
The ruling is a win for the Trump administration as it tries to assert unprecedented control over independent, quasi-judicial agencies.

An appeals court has cleared the way for President Donald Trump to fire two officials at independent workforce agencies, at least temporarily, delivering a legal win to the White House as it tries to expand executive power.

In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a stay blocking the reinstatement of the two fired officials, Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris of the Merit Systems Protection Board. Trump removed the two Democrats from office shortly after his inauguration.

Both Wilcox and Harris filed lawsuits arguing their firings were unlawful and won temporary reinstatement from federal judges. But the appellate ruling Friday reverses those orders and allows the terminations to take effect while the litigation moves forward.

In the decision, Judge Justin R. Walker, a Trump appointee, wrote that Trump was likely to succeed in arguing that the legal protections blocking the president from removing Wilcox and Harris from office were unconstitutional.

“The Government has also shown that it will suffer irreparable harm each day the President is deprived of the ability to control the executive branch,” Walker wrote.

Walker was joined in the ruling by Judge Karen L. Henderson, an appointee of President George H. W. Bush. Judge Patricia Millett, an appointee of President Barack Obama, dissented.

The ruling is significant because it robs both agencies, which adjudicate workplace disputes, of the quorums they need to function and issue decisions.

The NLRB, which enforces private-sector collective bargaining law, will have only two members on its five-member board. The MSPB, which protects federal workers against unfair firings, will have only one member on its three-member board.

“That decision will leave languishing hundreds of unresolved legal claims that the Political Branches jointly and deliberately channeled to these expert adjudicatory entities,” Millett wrote in her dissent.

The logic behind the decision also has sweeping implications for other agencies since it grants the president broad power to remove officials he doesn’t like at independent, quasi-judicial bodies. Trump has defied Supreme Court precedent and fired Democratic officials at several such agencies in an effort to bring them under White House control.

Millett wrote that the majority’s rationale in Friday’s order “openly calls into question the constitutionality of dozens of federal statutes” that protect officials at independent agencies from the president’s whims.

Hero.

[GoCubsGo]

When the truth is stranger than comedy.

[Vrede too]

When the truth is stranger than comedy.

https://x.com/nbcsnl/status/1906201301970563084

People laughed before they heard the jokes.

[GoCubsGo]

[GoCubsGo]

Signalgate ain't going away.

[Vrede too]

Signalgate ain't going away.

https://x.com/OccupyDemocrats/status/19 ... 9969096038

... "As you said last week Karoline, you said there would be an investigation or a review into how [Editor-in-Chief of the Atlantic] Jeffrey Goldberg's number got on that group chat, what's the status of that review? And what is the status of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz?" asked a reporter.

"Mhm. As the president has made it very clear Mike Waltz continues to be an important part of his national security team, um, and this case has been closed here at the White House as far as we are concerned," Leavitt replied.

"There have been steps made to ensure that something like that can obviously never happen again, um, and we're moving forward and the president and Mike Waltz and his entire national security team have been working together very well if you look at how much safer the United States of America is because of the leadership of this team," she added.

Waltz was the man who accidentally added Goldberg to an unsecured Signal group chat that included alleged alcoholic Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio among others.

In that chat, they discussed war plans for striking the Houthis in Yemen — a staggering breach of security protocol that thankfully did not result in the loss of American lives although it easily could have.

This is not the kind of incident that we simply "move on" from. The American people demand immediate resignations and firings. Until these incompetent fools are removed from power, our families are not safe.

Please retweet and to demand immediate resignations for SignalGate ...

Why not?

To: The White House
https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Decision makers,

Karoline Leavitt said last week that there would be an investigation into SignalGate. What's the status of that review? What steps have been made to ensure that something like it can never happen again?

Mike Waltz made a huge mistake that obviously disqualifies him from being national security advisor. However, the bigger error was made by EVERY participant in the Signal chat. It was a staggering breach of security protocol, especially by Pete Hegseth, that thankfully did not result in the loss of American lives although it easily could have. In a competent and patriotic administration the national security team knows that Signal texting violates secure communications and record keeping laws.

Ironically, your Contact Us page says, "These messages are being captured and archived in compliance with the Presidential Records Act or the Federal Records Act." We expect the highest levels of government to at least be held to the standards that we citizens are.

Jeffrey Goldberg has been the ONLY honorable participant in this fiasco, including President Trump.

This is not the kind of incident that we simply "move on" from. The American people demand immediate resignations and firings. Until these incompetent fools are removed from power, our families are not safe.

Be better,
(my real name and contact info)

cc:
Senator Thom Tillis
Senator Ted Budd
Representative Chuck Edwards

Does this put me on a future deportation list?

[Vrede too]

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said on Sunday that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe “lied repeatedly” about messages in a Signal group chat in which top members of the Trump administration discussed an attack on Yemen.

... I think they lied repeatedly to our committee and to the House committee. Kristen, let me try to make this as simple as I can,” Bennet replied. “I think the American people know this. If this material was not classified, literally nothing that I’ve ever heard as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee over all these years is classified.”

Earlier this week, Bennet labeled the Signal incident disrespectful to rank-and-file intelligence officers during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

“This sloppiness, this incompetence, this disrespect for our intelligence agencies and the personnel who work for them is entirely unacceptable. It’s an embarrassment. Do better. You need to do better,” he said Tuesday.

... The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), went after Trump officials for the lack of care shown in their including a journalist and disregarding security protocols using Signal for discussion of an important operation.

“There’s plenty of declassified information that shows that our adversaries, China and Russia, are trying to break into encrypted systems,” Warner said Tuesday, adding that the Trump administration had demonstrated “careless, incompetent behavior, particularly towards classified information, that … is not a one-off or a first-time error.” ...

Trump Rages at ‘Rigged’ Court After Signalgate Case Lands with Judge Who Blocked Deportations: ‘No Way to Win!’

President Donald Trump went on a late-night tirade against the federal judge assigned to the Signalgate case as “highly conflicted” and suffering from “Massive Trump Derangement Syndrome” while complaining there was “no way” a Republican could “win before him.”

Judge James Boasberg, chief of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, has been assigned the case brought by watchdog group American Oversight.

The group accuses Trump officials of violating the Federal Records Act by using Signal — a commercial messaging app with auto-delete settings — to coordinate on matters as grave as targeted killings.

Heroes

... the lawsuit seeks an injunction to preserve and recover any deleted messages after the screengrabs showed auto-delete settings turned on for the group.

Just last week, Trump called for Boasberg’s impeachment after the judge blocked the deportation of Venezuelan migrants and questioned the administration’s defiance of that ruling. The attacks led to an extraordinary statement from Chief Justice John Roberts, who warned: “Impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.” ...

The Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found that 60 percent believe using Signal for the discussion was wrong, including 73 percent of Democrats, 65 percent of independents and 43 percent of Republicans. A majority of voters, 54 percent, also said they consider the incident to be a “big deal,” while 46 percent said the reaction to it is overblown.

... Trump has said he wouldn’t fire anyone because of “fake news” and “witch hunts,” but the poll found 54 percent believe Waltz should be fired over the incident, while 46 percent said he should only be reprimanded.

Those who said Waltz should be fired include 68 percent of Democrats, 53 percent of independents and 41 percent of Republicans.

... A federal judge has ruled that the administration must preserve all Signal communications sent between March 11 and March 15, when the attack began....

GoVotersGo!

This guy is a menace:

Waltz Created Other Signal Chats for National Security Conversations — Still on ‘Shaky Ground’ With Trump: Reports

He may yet be ousted as a sacrificial lamb to cover for the others' complicity.

[Vrede too]

Signal Chat Just The Latest Evidence Of Trump’s Contempt For The Military
From the decision that sent Navy SEAL Ryan Owens to his death to appointing a Fox News host to run the Pentagon, Trump continues to demonstrate his disregard for the men and women in uniform.

Just five days after taking the oath of office in 2017, making him commander-in-chief of the most powerful armed forces in human history, President Donald Trump held a social dinner at the White House with, among others, son-in-law Jared Kushner and aide Steve Bannon.

One of the topics that came up that evening was a proposed raid on a terrorist cell in Yemen. It was risky — in fact, it had been nixed by predecessor Barack Obama because he believed the risk outweighed the potential rewards. But the fact that Obama had refused to green light it was, in Trump’s mind, proof that it was worth doing.

Three days later, Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens was killed and four others wounded when their team encountered far more resistance than expected in their assault on the village of al-Ghayil.

Eight years later, Trump’s decision-making on another Yemen-related matter has added more evidence to the voluminous and growing trove demonstrating his carelessness with service members’ lives.

No, this time Trump was not directly to blame for the screwup. Rather, it was the people he chose for key roles in the national security apparatus who exhibited a lack of seriousness on a deadly serious issue....

More worrisome, we really do not know whether others — including foreign intelligence agencies — were also getting real-time access to the Houthi attack plans chat or any other Signal text chat that Trump administration officials have held. There is a reason national security experts advise against using Signal, or any other commercially available app, for sharing classified material. Malign actors have no incentive to advertise whose personal phones they may have hacked and what they might have learned.

So far at least, Trump has continued to claim that his people did nothing wrong, apart from mistakenly inviting Goldberg into the discussion. Trump, Hegseth and others argue — absurdly — that nothing classified was discussed.

That Trump would do this probably should come as no surprise, coming from someone who famously used the excuse of “bone spurs” on his heels to avoid military service. Since he first ran for president in 2016, Trump has regularly denigrated and disrespected the military, starting with his claim that Sen. John McCain, who as a Navy pilot spent nearly six years getting tortured in a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp, was not a war hero because he was captured, and Trump preferred people who weren’t captured.

After Ryan Owens’ father berated Trump for recklessly sending his son into harm’s way at the ceremony for his body’s return to Dover Air Force Base, Trump did not attend another “dignified transfer” for two years. When he did start going to them again, he turned them into a sort of MAGA field trip, inviting pro-Trump actor Jon Voight on one occasion and participants at one of his rallies on another.

When a Republican-run Congress refused to fund the border wall that Trump had repeatedly claimed he would force Mexico to finance, Trump raided a Pentagon account that pays for service members’ housing and schools for their children.

In France for the commemoration of Armistice Day, he refused to go out in the rain to an American cemetery for World War I soldiers because, according to his then-chief of staff, those who died for their country were “suckers” and “losers.”

... With Trump’s return to the White House, however, personal loyalty to him far outweighs experience, knowledge, competence and, as we have just seen, common sense. This is the reason both Waltz and Hegseth got their jobs. It is the reason they are likely to make it through what would have been an unsurvivable scandal in a normal presidential administration.

Which means we can likely expect to see more of these episodes in the months and years to come.

Does the rest of MAGA despie our military like PINO and his minions do? Some are just too stupid to know better:

Josh Hawley Looks Like A Dummy As He Places False Blame In War Chat Fiasco
The Republican senator and his Trump administration cronies can't seem to get their stories straight.

... “You know, listen, I thought that the national security adviser was clear about this yesterday, the president was clear about it. You know, some staffer who apparently set up the group chat ― I assume that person probably won’t be in charge of meetings anymore.”

Waltz was on the same network the day before telling host Laura Ingraham: “A staffer wasn’t responsible. I take full responsibility. I built the group and my job is to make sure everything’s coordinated.”

"... There was no classified material out there ..."

"... Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had claimed no specific strategy was discussed, but the texts appeared to prove otherwise.

"Looks Like"? Josh Hawley IS a Dummy, always.

[neoplacebo]

Nothing matters except LAW....Lying And Whining.....so much whining you'll get tired of whining....

[GoCubsGo]

People have noticed.

[GoCubsGo]

GoCoryGo!

I'm impressed, he's at about 15 hours now.

[GoCubsGo]

GmailGate!

Walz needs to be gone.
But her emails.....

[Vrede too]

GmailGate!

Waltz needs to be gone.
But her emails.....
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/19 ... 4964929893

National Security Advisor Waltz is so far over his head it's almost sad . . . almost. Our allies and enemies must be scratching their heads. He is the poster child for PINO appointments - thoroughly unqualified sycophants. He won't be the last to prove his incompetence.