If one were to believe the voices of outrage on the twitters, Southern District of New York Judge Paul Engelmayor just stopped Treasury Secretary Scott Bressent from being allowed into his own computer system, from overseeing his own department’s payment system. The alternative to losing one’s head is reading the decision, but too few are sufficiently interested in thinking to be bothered. I am not.

The States contend that this policy, inter alia, violates the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), 5 U.S.C. §§ 551 et seq., in multiple respects; exceeds the statutory authority of the Department of the Treasury; violates the separation of powers doctrine; and violates the Take Care Clause of the United States Constitution.

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I received an email from Satan yesterday evening challenging me to post today about Trump’s revocation of Biden’s security clearance. On the one hand, it was just another in a series of petty moves by a puny man as retribution against those who hurt his feelings. On the other hand, it’s inconsequential, as the limited utility of a former president maintaining his security clearance and getting occasional briefings only applies under normal circumstances, where a current president seeks the advice of a predecessor in office or uses a former president as an envoy for foreign affairs.

Trump won’t be asking anything of Biden, so there will be no need for Biden to be kept up to date during Trump’s term. Maybe the next president will seek Biden’s help. He or she can restore Biden’s security clearance then. Sure, there’s the irony that Trump will give access to state secrets to unvetted kids in Musk’s wake, but that’s a different issue. It’s just a slap in the face of a former president by a current president who uses power as payback like a butthurt child. Continue reading →

There is no indication that Trump has a firm grasp on security, either its means or purpose, and consequently doesn’t take it seriously. Even so, a demand that the CIA send over a list of its new hires over the past two years by unsecured email would seem too stupid for even the most fanatic DOGEBoy. Not so, apparently.

The C.I.A. sent an unclassified email listing all employees hired by the spy agency over the last two years to comply with an executive order from President Trump to shrink the federal work force, in a move that former officials say risked the list leaking to adversaries. Continue reading →

It wasn’t Judge Carleton Reeves’ of the Southern District of Mississippi first rodeo. He’s made clear his views that the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision is an unworkable mess, and that neither judges nor lawyers are in any position to provide meaningful answers to Justice Clarence Thomas’ mandate that only “dangerous and unusual” guns as understood from an originalist perspective are prohibited under the Second Amendment.

But Judge Reeves, for better or worse, did a judge’s duty and applied the law as best he could, holding that Justin Brown’s possession of a machinegun in his home was protected under the Second Amendment. Continue reading →

Not satisfied with making enemies of our neighbors to the north and south, not to mention Europe, Trump stunned even his own staff* with a proposal he’s been thinking about for a month or two that has now alienated him from even his Saudi pals. He proposed that the Palestinians be relocated to Egypt and Jordan while the United States seized control of Gaza.

Mr. Trump’s announcement that he intends to seize control of Gaza, displace the Palestinian population and turn the coastal enclave into “the Riviera of the Middle East” was the kind of thing he might have said to get a rise on “The Howard Stern Show” a decade or two ago. Provocative, intriguing, outlandish, outrageous — and not at all presidential. Continue reading →

It was said so often as to lose any seriousness, as Trump accused his myriad enemies of having committed some unstated crime and should be punished, the punishment ranging from prison to death. In other news, randos on twitter constantly claim some act, whether innocuous or constitutionally protected, is a crime, throwing in acronyms like RICO or the dreaded HIPPA (yes, it’s HIPAA, but that’s part of the joke. Get it?).

But yesterday, the shadow president raised the stakes after Wired posted an article naming six of Musk’s best and brightest.

Engineers between 19 and 24, most linked to Musk’s companies, are playing a key role as he seizes control of federal infrastructure.

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It was bad enough when Trump, without prior warning, decided to let the Russian foreign minister and ambassador into the Oval Office, where he gave them highly classified information because it seemed like a good idea to him at the time. And then there were the classified documents he showed off at Mar-a-lago, because what ex-president doesn’t want to be the cool kid to randos?

So, Trumpy excuses aside, it might be said that Trump doesn’t take state secrets seriously, and if it doesn’t seem to be a problem to him, given his deep and broad grasp of government functioning and in-depth understanding the threats facing the nation from countries with adverse interests, why should anyone be concerned that he’s handing over national and personal confidential information without any consideration of who gets to see it? Continue reading →

During the confirmation hearing of K$H Patel, Louisiana Senator John Kennedy questioned whether Patel would be party to Trump’s “retribution” tour.

During Mr. Patel’s testimony on Thursday, Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, told Mr. Patel that lawmakers would hold him accountable if he tried to exact revenge at the F.B.I., saying two wrongs did not make a right.

“And there have been and may still be some bad people there, and you’ve got to find out who the bad people are and get rid of them, in accordance with due process and the rule of law,” Mr. Kennedy said. “And then you’ve got to lift up the good people. Don’t go over there and burn that place down. Go over there and make it better.”

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ABC settled its defamation suit with Trump for $15 million. Meta settled its suit with Trump for its post-January 6th suspension of his accounts for $25 million. The New York Times is reporting that Paramount, owner of 60 Minutes, is in settlement talks with Trump for editing the interview with Kamala Harris. What all three of these cases have in common is that enterprises that would normally fight to the death over challenges ranging from far-fetched to utterly frivolous have chosen instead to pay. And pay pretty big money.

Bribes? Some would say so, although the word bribe implies they are getting a quid pro quo, something concrete in exchange for their cash. There is no evidence that there is any quo for their quid. Continue reading →

The first I heard of it was from Chris Halkides in a succinct comment to yesterday’s post about Trump’s ignorance of law, governance and presidential authority.

The Vaeth memo freezing spending makes the firing look like small potatoes by comparison.

And indeed, it does. Putting aside the question of whether the executive has any authority to “usurp” the power of the purse, a prerogative reserved by the Constitution for Congress, the memo from the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, Matthew J. Vaeth, is a stunning display of ass-backwards incoherence that created a depth of chaos and instability that undermined any sense of reliability in the federal government. To call it a bludgeon where a scalpel was needed is far too kind. Continue reading →