The Trump administration is once again effectively shutting down an agency without proper Congressional approval. … Ho hum. Another weakening of the constitution. No big deal. … Elizabeth Warren is vowing to stop the closure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that she originally helped create. … Next up on OBM’s hit list: The U.S. Postal Service? Department of Education? Department of Energy?
Month: February 2025
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Trump tests constitutional boundaries again by shutting down CFPB
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For many Republicans, the end justifies the means, Part II
Jack Butler at the National Review makes clear President Trump’s assault on the federal government isn’t really about efficiencies or DEI or transgender issues per se. It’s really about the long-cherished conservative goal of philosophically defeating the left and slashing the size of government in general, notes Butler, who harks back 70 years to William F. Buckley Jr.’s stated founding principles for NR. … Butler makes no mention of the way Trump’s cuts are being implemented today, so it’s fair to say he thinks the end goal of smaller government and defeating the left justifies Trump’s trampling of norms and constitutional niceties. … Ditto for Federalist founder Sean Davis, who’s practically in ecstasy over Trump’s budget-cutting chaos, and for the NYT Post’s Michael Goodman, who agrees this is all about the “administrative state,” etc. etc. …Again, no objections are raised as to how all of these cuts are being achieved.
Note to media: Trump and Musk are, yes, going after DEI and trans-gender issues. But many on the right are going after much, much more. That’s the big-picture story. … The WSJ gets it: “DOGE’s First Round of Cuts Went to Trump Priorities, but Bigger Targets Await.” …
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Here we go: NIH cuts
This is going to be huge in Boston medical-research circles. … Via STAT News or the Globe. Take your pick.
Update – 2.9.25 – Carl Bergstrom breaks down the NIH cuts, saying they’re straight out of Project 2025 and more devastating than thought. … Via UH. … Another physician who I talked to agrees . “This is bad news,” he told me. “They’re implementing their Project 2025.”
Update II – 2.10.25 – From WBUR: “Judge halts Trump administration’s cap on NIH funds after Mass. and 21 other states sue.”
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The Atlantic: Is it succumbing to Trump Derangement Syndrome?
One of the reasons why I subscribe to The Atlantic is because it’s been a political breath of fresh air in recent years, providing an often eclectic mix of stories unafraid to bash the bogus assumptions of both the left and right. … But I’m beginning to wonder if The Atlantic is coming down with a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Its latest Hitler analogy story is not quite the final straw. But it and other anti-Trump pieces of late have been a little too crude, too heavy-handed, too predictable for my tastes. There’s too many of them. …Maybe it’s somehow tied to the The Atlantic’s recent hiring of more staffers to cover Trump II. …
Btw — I’m not advocating a form of bothsidesism here. I don’t like ping-pong, false-balance journalism. But the only thing worse than bothsidesism is onesidedism. The outrageous actions of Trump in recent weeks demand tough, principled, comprehensive coverage. Yet it still needs to be perceptive, original and convincing coverage, not run-of-the-mill, semi-hysterical onesidedism that didn’t work in Trump’s first term and won’t work in his second.
Btw II –- I used my own Hitler analogy the other week. So I guess I’m guilty of some hypocrisy here. But the Atlantic has recently engaged a little too often in Hitler analogies, usually a sign of onesidedism at work.
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Unemployment insurance reform: ‘Don’t bet on it’
You’re not going to find a better analysis of the state’s broken unemployment insurance system than Larry Edelman’s take on it today at the Globe. … And, unfortunately, he’s right: don’t bet on lawmakers passing necessary reforms.
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Dell orders workers back to office, donut shops thrilled
A lot of local tech companies are going to be monitoring how this back-to-office move turns out for Dell, which employs thousands of people in Massachusetts. The BBJ has more. … Needless to say, workers won’t be compensated for their hours of daily commutes to and from work. … Sure, restaurants and other businesses that have traditionally catered to office workers are ecstatic by all the recent back-to-office mandates. But they’re not the ones picking up the tab for the commuting hours lost by employees. The workers are. And they’re the ones paying a high price to make sure donut shops thrive.
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The House’s common-sense restrictions on shelter eligibility
Update — And it was indeed done. Now it’s up to the Senate.
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For many Republicans, the end justifies the means
That’s one of the inescapable conclusions one can draw from congressional Republicans’ compliant response to President Trump’s blatant unconstitutional power grabs. They hate big government more than they love constitutional niceties. …. Sorry, it has to be said. We’re living through truly historic days in America.
P.S. – The NYT has a handy-dandy list of the dizzying array of Trump’s orders and actions since Jan. 20, some of them legitimate exercises in powers, many of them not.
P.S. II – Scot Lehigh at the Globe has more on Trump’s power grab. Scot’s not counting on congressional Republicans to stop our king wannabe.
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Mayor Wu’s Achilles’ heel: Her ideological certainty
The Globe’s Joan Vennochi has an excellent column on Josh Kraft’s pluses and minuses as a new mayoral candidate. I liked this graf from Joan’s piece regarding Mayor Wu:
“But Kraft also knows that Wu’s biggest weakness is not policy. It’s the perception of how she goes about implementing it. As he said in his speech, “We have a leader that just does not listen. Too often, Mayor Wu acts as if she alone has all the answers. Whether it’s housing, schools, neighborhood services, or bike lanes, instead of listening to community voices … too often she’s tuning them out.”
Wu’s a true-believer progressive, that’s for sure. She’s not a flexible, pragmatic progressive like Gov Maura Healey. That’s one of my biggest gripes about the mayor. …
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Josh Kraft’s impressive debut
I was somewhat impressed by Josh Kraft’s launch of his mayoral campaign yesterday. He didn’t look and sound like a newcomer to politics. No rookie stumbles and gaffes, etc. Instead, he sounded confident and prepared as he spoke to the cameras with an obligatory diverse group of supporters in the background. … OK, so that’s a style-over-substance view. But Contrarian Boston’s Scott Van Vooris was also impressed by his first-day focus on housing costs. “He’s sure picked a great issue to run on,” he writes. … The Globe’s Adrian Walker questions whether going all negative on Mayor Wu is enough to win in the fall. … And Wu is already hitting back at Kraft’s newfound Boston residency, as the Herald reports. …
My money’s still on Wu, an incumbent with a proven track record of winning citywide elections. She’s vulnerable. But not that vulnerable.
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