The story behind the Minnesota shootings gets stranger and stranger.

Partly for my own benefit, here are the four victims: State representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman were killed. State senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette Hoffman were shot but survived. I believe the Hoffmans are still alive, but I haven’t heard how serious their injuries are.

At 2 a.m. yesterday police went to the Hoffman house in Champlin, MN, to check on a report of shooting. The shooter had already left. The Hoffmans were found and taken to a hospital. At some point the Champlin police called the PD in nearby Brooklyn Park, MN, and suggested they check on the Hortmans. The Brooklyn Park police arrived at the Hortman house at 3:35 a.m. The shooter was still there. He came out the front door and exchanged gunfire with the cops.  Then he re-entered the house and fled out the back door. That’s when the cops got hold of his car, which had been detailed to look like a police car. And that’s when they found the “hit list” with several names and a note about No Kings. The shooter was wearing “a blue shirt with a black tactical vest underneath and blue pants,” according to this report.

Mother Jones:

Multiple news outlets, including CNN, ABC, and the Minnesota Star Tribune, have reported that the alleged shooter—57-year-old Vance Luther Boelter, who remains at large—left a list of names behind in his car that included abortion providers and advocates and figures with ties to Planned Parenthood, along with Democratic politicians. Rep. Kelly Morrison (D-Minn.), told the Star Tribune that she was on the shooter’s list and that local law enforcement told her to shelter in place on Saturday; a spokesperson for Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) told the New York Times the senator was also on the list.

Much is still unknown about the suspect’s motivations. A longtime friend of Boelter told CNN on Saturday that the alleged shooter was a staunch opponent of abortion rights. On Meet the Press Sunday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said, “There clearly was some through line with abortion because of the groups that were on the list and other things that I’ve heard were in this manifesto.”

I don’t believe the list itself has been made public, but anyone one the list has been notified. The connection to abortion squares with what Wired reported yesterday. Rep. Hortman in particular had worked to protect access to abortion in Minnesota.

The deeper one digs into Vance Boelter, the weirder he seems. Initially it was reported he owns some sort of security company, but subsequent reporting has suggested the company is a fantasy. NPR:

Authorities said Boelter disguised himself as a law enforcement officer during the attack and news reports have focused on his apparent work as a security professional. But NPR’s review of Boelter’s online records and employment history found many of those claims about his professional life that appear untrue.

In social media posts and websites, Boelter said he had extensive experience as a security professional with “training by both private security firms and by people in the U.S. Military.”

NPR found little evidence to support Boelter’s account. He appears to have worked most of his career in the food service industry and one long-time friend described parts of Boelter’s narrative about his life as “fantasy.” …

… On the website for a company called Praetorian Guard Security Services, LLC, Boelter described himself as part of the “leadership team.”

NPR found no record of the firm having clients or providing any services. A call to the company’s phone number connected to what appears to be a private phone line, not a business. The address listed in incorporation papers appeared to be that of a law firm specializing in divorce litigation.

Boelter himself appears to have no history working in law enforcement, the military or private security.

The New York Times interviewed a close friend of Boelter named David Carlson. Boelter rents a room in Carlson’s house and stays there several days a week, even though Boelter is married and, one assumes, has a home somewhere else. Carlson said Boelter has been working at a funeral home of late. Carlson also said Boelter “owned guns and had voted for President Trump last year.” Further,

Mr. Carlson said Mr. Boelter is a Christian who strongly opposed abortion. He had never mentioned either of the lawmakers who were shot, Mr. Carlson said, and had generally avoided talking about politics. He said Mr. Boelter had been experiencing financial and mental health challenges.

And this, from the same NY Times story, is just bizarre.

The man suspected of shooting two Democratic state lawmakers in Minnesota early on Saturday had served on a state board with one of the victims, records show.

The suspect identified by the authorities, Vance Boelter, 57, was appointed several times by Minnesota governors to the Workforce Development Board, where he served with State Senator John A. Hoffman, who was shot and survived. …

… Mr. Boelter was appointed to the board in 2016 by Mark Dayton, a Democrat who was then the governor. More recently, he was appointed by Gov. Tim Walz, also a Democrat. The board has 41 members who are appointed by the governor, and its goal is to improve business development in the state.

Boelter must have persuaded somebody that he was a real business owner and not a fantasy business owner, and nobody bothered to check him out.

That’s where we are so far. But what I really want to talk about is how this is being reported in right-wing media. Yesterday, to see how the story was being twisted, I went to a reliable source for crazy — Gateway Pundit, to which I do not link. GP already was reporting that Gov. Walz had appointed Boelter to a state board, insinuating that the Governor was behind the shooting. I’ve since read that right-wing influencers are spreading the story that Gov. Walz paid Boelter to do the shootings.

Further, in the wingnut-o-sphere Boelter is being described as a “left-leaning” close associate of Walz, and that Boelter’s wife worked for Walz some time in the past. The Minnesota Star-Tribune has debunked these claims. There’s no evidence Boelter has ever met Gov. Walz, and the Jenny Boelter who worked for Walz back in 2010 or so was a different person, says the Star-Tribune. I take it the board Boelter was appointed to (originally by a previous governor) meets irregularly and doesn’t do a whole lot.

Fox News yesterday suggested another motivation — the shooter must be pro-illegal immigrant.

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Melissa Hortman, who was fatally shot on Saturday with the suspect still at large, made headlines earlier this week for being the only Democratic vote in the state House to vote to repeal taxpayer-funded healthcare coverage for adult illegal immigrants.

“I know that people will be hurt by that vote and I’m – we worked very hard to try and get a budget deal that wouldn’t include that provision,” she said following the vote that she said was done in order to move the budget forward in a split legislature, according to Kttc. Republicans hold the House 67-66, and the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party holds the Senate 34-33.

It’s not clear to me what Hortman was voting against, though. The story suggests she wanted the provision removed from the budget bill so that the budget bill could pass the House and be forwarded to the Senate. She’ wasn’t actually against denying health care to anybody. And it doesn’t explain why the Hoffmans were targeted. Sen. Hoffman backed legislation that extended the state’s health-care program to undocumented immigrants, according to the Associated Press.

But if you run into wingnuts who fervently believe Vance Boelter is a lefty, now you know why.

From what I’ve seen in media, the nationwide No Kings demonstrations were a smashing success. They were huge, they were peaceful. The only incidents I’ve heard of involved Trump supporters who showed up trying to start trouble (for example).

The shootings in Minnesota put a damper on the day and also ate up most of the news coverage. The latest information I have seen says the suspect is known to be a radical evangelical who opposes abortion and LGBTQ rights. There’s some good reporting on this from Wired.

I’ve heard very little about Trump’s vanity parade, except that it happened. This is from a New York Times reporter:

Overall this was a pretty listless and low-energy parade and crowd. People wearing Trump paraphernalia far outnumbered those wearing Army hats and shirts from what I could see. There were no speakers along the parade route, so spectators couldn’t hear whatever was being broadcast by the announcers closer to the reviewing stand. People are now flooding across Constitution Avenue at 18th Street to leave.

Also,

There was one part of this that gave me confidence. It was when they were rolling the tanks through the street and the tank crews were full of smiles and waving to the admittedly small crowd. This just isn’t how you do one of these strong man parades. The soldiers are impassive. They look at …

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) June 14, 2025 at 9:00 PM

2/ El Jefe. They’re a spectacle of power. This was at least in that moment the way I’d like to see American soldiers interacting with the public, smiles, hi, waving at kids.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) June 14, 2025 at 9:00 PM

Here are some good photos of the No Kings demonstrations from NPR. And check out Seattle! Over 70K in Seattle denounce Trump at massive ‘No Kings’ rally. Over 70K just in Seattle!

Every day feels like Friday the 13th these days, but now it really is.

Item One: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals put a temporary hold on yesterday’s order to de-federalize the California National Guard in Los Angeles and put them back under Governor Newsom’s control. The Ninth Circuit Court will hold a hearing on Tuesday.

Item Two: There are thunderstorms predicted for the Washington DC area tomorrow, which could force the cancellation of Trump’s $45 million Soviet-style vanity parade.

Item Three: Israel v. Iran. It sounds as if Israel’s assault did a number on Iran, damaging a key nuclear facility and wiping out its military chain of command.  Some top Iranian officials and nuclear scientists were killed also. Axios reports the assault had been in the works for months.

Did Trump know this was going to happen? The New Republic says he did, although he’s pretending he didn’t. His Administration went to great lengths yesterday to let the world know the U.S. played no part in the assault.

Some background: Trump appointed a real estate executive pal named Steve Witkoff as Special Enjoy to the Middle East. Among the projects assigned to Witkoff is getting a deal to curb nuclear weapons development in Iran. And you might remember that once upon a time there was such a deal, negotiated among several nations during the Obama Administration.  After taking office in 2017 Trump badmouthed the deal, which he managed to blow up entirely in 2018. He claimed it was a terrible deal and he could make a better one, but he never did. I don’t think he even tried, in his first term.

But for the Trump 2.0 Administration, Trump decided to repackage himself as a peacemaker. He promised to end the war between Russia and Ukraine immediately. Before he took office, even. He was going to straighten out whatever was going on with Israel and Hamas.  And, of course, as soon as he realized accomplishing these things would be really hard, he walked away. But he was still working on getting a deal with Iran.

As usual, Juan Cole gets what’s going on.

Netanyahu launched the strikes to thwart the peace negotiations being conducted with Iran by President Donald J. Trump’s administration via Oman, striking a day before the next talks were scheduled to take place. Trump had signaled repeatedly that he did not want the Israelis to attack, but Netanyahu appears to hold to the TACO (Trump always chickens out) theory of the president’s behavior. He pointedly thanked Trump in his address to the nation, clearly hoping that Iran might take some action against America in response and so draw Trump into a war he clearly does not want.

I understand Iran has pulled out of further talks with the U.S. Trump probably didn’t help matters much when he praised the Israeli attack as “excellent” and “very successful.” Tucker Carlson, of all people, is now saying Trump is “complicit” in an “act of war.” Some media outlets are saying that Israel used the “peace talks” as cover for what they were doing.

See also How Iran Strikes Put Trump’s Impotence on Full Embarrassing Display by David Rothkopf at The Daily Beast.

Item Four: It must have been brought to Trump’s attention that the agriculture and hospitality industries depend a whole lot on migrant workers. Indeed, Trump has been using migrant workers at his properties for years, so one might assume he already knew this. But dots don’t always connect for him. Anyway, some time maybe yesterday or the day before he commented that farmers and the hospitality industry needed some protections to keep their migrant workers, which suggested he was going to lay off raiding farms and hotels. But as of today, there have been no new directives about this coming out of the White House.

As I understand it, the worst that happened in the “riots” in Los Angeles was a lot of graffiti and about five Waymo self-driving taxis  set on fire. And for this Trump is blowing $135 million to deploy 5,000 National Guard and Marines to do whatever. Genius.

In Trump’s addled mind, everyone is always in awe of what a great job he is doing. Sure.

“The possible arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles absent clear coordination presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city,” Chief Jim McDonnell said, adding, “The Los Angeles Police Department, alongside our mutual aid partners, have decades of experience managing large-scale public demonstrations, and we remain confident in our ability to do so professionally and effectively.”

On Wednesday, Trump seems to have taken McDonnell’s statement as praise. “If we weren’t there, if we didn’t bring in the National Guard and the Marines, you would probably have a city that was burning to the ground,” Trump told the press at a performance of “Les Miserables” at the Kennedy Center. (In reality, the largely peaceful protests have been confined to just a few blocks in the city.) Trump continued, “In fact, the chief of police said so much, if you look at what his statements were. He said, ‘We’re very lucky to have had them.’”

But McDonnell rejected that claim. Asked by CNN host Kaitlin Collins if Trump’s characterization of his statement was accurate, McDonnell said, “No. We were not in a position to request the National Guard.”

McDonnell listed the resources local law enforcement officials have at their disposal to respond to demonstrations, should they get out of hand. Then he stated flatly that the protests haven’t risen to a level that warrants military intervention. “We’re nowhere near a level that we would be reaching out to the governor for National Guard at this stage,” he said, “And my hope is that things are going in the right direction now and that we wouldn’t have had to have done that, or we won’t either.”

I read this morning that there has been some looting over the past three days or so, but that suggests the looting started after the troops showed up on Sunday.  A local television news story says the looters are “habitual agitators,” not the protesters.  Of course, Fox News viewers are being told the looters are “anti-ICE protesters.” And the rightie website Hot Air is running a hysterical story saying that “the riots in Los Angele are not organic spillovers from extemporaneous protests against ICE, but well-funded operations designed to create mayhem in the streets.”  At least the story doesn’t mention George Soros for a change. Righties also sincerely believe all of Los Angeles is on fire, which of course it isn’t. I take it Fox News has been showing a video of a burning Waymo cab on a continuous loop for several days.

I can remember back in the 1990s when the wingnuts were incessantly screaming about the “jack-booted thugs” of government stomping on the rights of honest citizens, especially after Ruby Ridge and Waco. And I’d be the first to say that Ruby Ridge and Waco were grossly mishandled. But here’s Trump pushing the jack-booted thug approach to a situation that is really a local police matter. Worse, Trump is over-using force to suppress lawful dissent against him.

The Guardian is reporting that at least some of the troops in Los Angeles realize they are being used.

California national guards troops and marines deployed to Los Angeles to help restore order after days of protest against the Trump administration have told friends and family members they are deeply unhappy about the assignment and worry their only meaningful role will be as pawns in a political battle they do not want to join.

Three different advocacy organisations representing military families said they had heard from dozens of affected service members who expressed discomfort about being drawn into a domestic policing operation outside their normal field of operations. The groups said they have heard no countervailing opinions.

The best thing I’ve read about Los Angeles is by Rebecca Solnit, Some Notes on the City of Angels and the Nature of Violence. Just read it.

Something else to read is Funding the War on Ourselves by Josh Marshall at TPM.

Also, too: Paul Krugman, This Is Not a Drill.

Update: So this just happened:

Watching CNN’s coverage to see how it’s playing, and even though this video has been out here for an hour they just showed a still from it for the first time.

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— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) June 12, 2025 at 3:39 PM

Reichsminister Noem actually said in a press conference, “We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and this mayor have placed on this country.” And when Senator Padilla confronted her, this is what happened.

Update: Another good read — Will Bunch, From Fort Bragg to L.A., Trump enlists the military in a slow-motion coup

Update: Netanyahu has launched an attack on Iran, and a lot about this move is making Trump look like an idiot, but I’ll say more about this tomorrow. The domestic news is that a federal judge has ordered control of the National Guard in Los Angeles to be returned to the governor. From the New York Times:

A federal judge issued an order late Thursday blocking President Trump from deploying members of the California National Guard in Los Angeles, and ordered the administration to return control of the forces to Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The order from District Judge Charles R. Breyer, which takes effect Friday at noon Pacific time, delivered a sharp rebuke to President Trump’s effort to deploy thousands of National Guard troops on the streets of an American city, a move has contributed to nearly a week of political rancor and protests across the country.

I can’t say that Trump has thought out an end game in California. but if there were one, what would it be? Because, thinking or not, Trump is likely to go there eventually.

From what I can see from the other coast, the revolt against military occupation going on in Los Angeles is escalating. I would have advised the Angelenos to not react to the Guard at all.  As Tom Nichols wrote in The Atlantic, Trump is using the Guard as bait.

By militarizing the situation in L.A., Trump is goading Americans more generally to take him on in the streets of their own cities, thus enabling his attacks on their constitutional freedoms. As I’ve listened to him and his advisers over the past several days, they seem almost eager for public violence that would justify the use of armed force against Americans.

He’s been eager for such a confrontation for awhile. I believe he wanted it in his first term, but then he had people around him who had the sense to say no. Now he’s got the likes of Pete Hegseth.

During the George Floyd protests in 2020, Trump was furious at what he saw as the fecklessness of military leaders determined to thwart his attempts to use deadly force against protesters. He’s learned his lesson: This time, he has installed a hapless sycophant at the Pentagon who is itching to execute the boss’s orders.

He thinks sending troops to put down lefties makes him cool. But there’s more to this than just confronting protesters. Trump has a beef with the whole state of California, remember.

Philip Bump writes in WaPo that Trump is going to war with California the same way he’s going to war with Harvard.

What’s important to remember about the fracture that emerged in Los Angeles over the weekend is that it came shortly after reports that President Donald Trump was seeking to block California from receiving certain federal funding. His team, The Post reported, was “asking federal employees to develop rationales for the funding cuts” — perhaps looking at conflicts with his executive orders about cutting costs or ending diversity initiatives.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) responded by noting that the state contributes far more in federal taxes than it receives in services. But the point wasn’t really the money. The point was that the Trump administration wanted to bring California to heel, precisely as it had sought to bring elite universities to heel, similarly by contriving reasons the government might strip funding. The methodology was the same because the intent was the same: inflict pain on an entity that Trump viewed as hostile to his presidency.

So Trump wants to bring California “to heel.” What would that look like? What would make Trump happy with California? Whatever that is, I don’t think deploying some National Guard is going to make it happen. That’s just a first step.

I believe he wants escalation. And the escalation won’t stop with California. Because ultimately what Trump craves is to turn the nation and then the world into a perfect reflection of himself. He wants no disagreement with his beliefs, no doubts of his superior judgment of all things. And just as he wants control of Harvard — he’s seeking “input” into hiring, admissions, and eventually curriculum — he will want control of California and every other city or state he feels is a threat to his authority.. And the Constitution doesn’t give him that.

Robert Reich writes that we are witnessing the first stages of a Trump police state. At The Atlantic, David Frum goes even further.

If Trump can incite disturbances in blue states before the midterm elections, he can assert emergency powers to impose federal control over the voting process, which is to say his control. Or he might suspend voting until, in his opinion, order has been restored. Either way, blue-state seats could be rendered vacant for some time.

Trump hasn’t yet trotted out the Insurrection Act, which he wanted to use in his first term but got no cooperation from most of his staff. He could declare phony emergencies and insurrections everywhere there are majorities of Democratic voters and send in the troops.

And it wouldn’t completely surprise me if he were to try to revoke California’s statehood so that it reverts to being a federal territory. Then he can personally dismiss the entire state government and run the state any way he likes. That’s the only “end game” that would give Trump the victory he wants.

I doubt it’s possible for Trump to feel genuine contentment about anything. If you gave him absolute control over the galaxy he’d still crave more, because that craving is coming from a bottomless hole within himself. There is no filling it. That’s why he’s not going to stop until something stops him. Let’s hope that something involves the due process of law and the Constitution.

Update: Trump has added a Marine battalion to the National Guard in LA. The Guard in LA. haven’t been provided beds or food.

State troops sent to Los Angeles by the Trump administration, without the approval of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, were expected to sleep on floors or outdoors, a source told the Chronicle.

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— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle.com) June 9, 2025 at 2:45 PM

Trump federalized the California National Guard over the objections of California’s governor and sent Guard into Los Angeles to put down the “riots.” About midnight last night Trump posted this:

Only the Guard didn’t begin to arrive until about 7 o’clock this morning. And apparently it was pretty quiet in LA last night, with the LAPD making only a handful of arrests.

Also, if masks are not to be worn at protests, does that mean the thugs from ICE can’t wear them either? Probably not.

That’s a New York Times headline; here’s the accompanying article. LAPD kept the peace well enough last night. So now the Guard in Los Angeles are standing around trying to look purposeful.

#USNORTHCOM can confirm that elements of the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team from the California National Guard have begun deploying to the Los Angeles area, with some already on the ground. Additional information will be provided as units are identified and deployed. pic.twitter.com/BxqZM2YG1G

— U.S. Northern Command (@USNorthernCmd) June 8, 2025

Let’s hope the folks in Los Angeles have enough sense to not react to the Guard. Let Trump look foolish for sending them. Trump wants protesters to act up so he can arrest them and even shoot them and pretend to be defending the nation.

Federalizing Guard without the permission of a state’s governor is a controversial move, although I can’t say it hasn’t been done before. CNBC:

The law cited by Trump’s proclamation places National Guard troops under federal command. The law says that can be done under three circumstances: When the U.S. is invaded or in danger of invasion; when there is a rebellion or danger of rebellion against the authority of the U.S. government, or when the President is unable to “execute the laws of the United States,” with regular forces.

But the law also says that orders for those purposes “shall be issued through the governors of the States.” It’s not immediately clear if the president can activate National Guard troops without the order of that state’s governor.

Again, I’d have to do some research, but I can’t say this has never happened before. But it hasn’t happened in a very long time, anyway.

I hope some of you watched the “Good Night and Good Luck” live broadcast last night. I’d seen the movie awhile back, but the play was good, too, and very timely. It underscored what happens when media outlets censor themselves because they’re afraid of a politician, in this case Joe McCarthy.  It also underscores what can happen when journalists say “screw this” and tell the truth, anyway. If you missed it, it ought to be available for streaming, somewhere.

So today I read that ABC suspended an anchor because of some tweets he wrote about Stephen Miller. I can kind of understand ABC’s position, but still …

I just want to acknowledge some things that happened over the last few hours.

Some big deal went down between protesters and ICE agents in Log Angeles yesterday. It may take a couple of days before the whole story is told.  See also:

Regarding the Abrego Garcia indictment: Yesterday a top federal prosecutor in Tennessee –where a grand jury indicted  Kilmar Abrego Garcia — abruptly resigned. “Schrader’s resignation was prompted by concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons,” according to ABC News.

Yesterday the Supreme Court sided with Trump in two DOGE cases.

 Over the objections of the court’s three Democratic appointees, the justices cleared the way for members of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to access the records of the Social Security Administration. And the court temporarily paused an order by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that would have required DOGE to provide information in a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act. Instead, the justices sent the dispute back to a federal appeals court with instructions for those judges to take another, more skeptical look at the order.

If all our Social Security numbers get leaked, I look forward to the biggest class-action lawsuit of all time.

Medicare is a target as Senate GOP faces megabill math issues. Yeah, they’re admitting they’re looking to cut Medicare to pay for the tax cuts.

Trump is preparing to cancel all the federal funding he can think of for California. “Agencies are being told to start identifying grants the administration can withhold from California,” says CNN.

Somebody ought to explain to Trump that California has the fourth-largest economy in the world. That’s “world,” not “U.S.” It is fourth behind the U.S., China and Germany, I question where the U.S. would rank without California. See Visualizing America’s $29 Trillion Economy by State.

See also Trump to Ax Federal Funding for California as Revenge Tour Escalates at The New Republic. A bit:

California Governor Gavin Newsom responded to CNN’s report in a post on X, with a threat of his own.

“Californians pay the bills for the federal government. We pay over $80 BILLION more in taxes than we get back. Maybe it’s time to cut that off, @realDonaldTrump,” wrote Newsom, whose state generates the highest tax revenue of any state in the country. 

I’m  nor sure how “cutting that off” would work, but if Newsom can figure it out, I hope he does it.

Some idiot Republican congresswoman who is not Marjorie Taylor Greene flew into hysterics after a guest chaplain named Giani Singh led the House in a morning prayer. “It’s deeply troubling that a Muslim was allowed to lead prayer in the House of Representatives this morning. This should have never been allowed to happen,” she wrote somewhere on social media. The problem was that Giani Singh is a Sikh, not a Muslim, and was introduced as such. Second, some Muslims are American citizens and lovely people. I hope if we ever get our country back a Muslim cleric will be asked to be guest chaplain in the House and lead a prayer.

The feud continues, although both the Trump and Musk camps are putting out signals of a possible détente. It may be that they’ve decided to not go nuclear and destroy each other. For now.

There’s more evidence the Silicon Valley tech bros are walking away from Trump.

Trump’s slim win in 2024 was no doubt due in large part to Musk, and not just the eye-popping quarter-billion-plus Musk spent to push the old man’s orange carcass over the finish line. It’s because Musk and other influential figures, especially those associated with Silicon Valley or who pretend to be former liberals, were able to convince a chunk of more secular, largely male voters to throw their lot in with the Christian nationalist base that is the backbone of the MAGA movement. But while these two groups joined together based on a shared animosity towards racial minorities and women, it was always a far more uneasy alliance than Musk or Trump wanted to admit. And now it’s getting shakier as two narcissistic billionaires are at odds. …

… But while I have no doubt Musk is way more concerned about his bottom line than about government spending — his ostensible reason for hating the bill — his anger would be impotent if it didn’t tap into existing tensions between the newfangled technofascist wing of the GOP and more traditional Republicans. 

“The Silicon Valley tech world does not like this bill,” Tim Miller of The Bulwark explained on his podcast Wednesday. It’s not just Musk, but many wealthy leaders who are deeply invested in the energy and tech areas that President Joe Biden’s administration invested so heavily in. They stabbed Democrats in the back as a thank-you for that money, and now are shocked they are being similarly betrayed by the Republicans they joined up with. 

Stay tuned.

I didn’t watch the Chancellor Merz-Trump meeting yesterday, so I’m hearing about it in bits and pieces.  I found a transcript for those of us who can’t stand to watch. You’ll notice Trump did almost all of the talking. Among other things, after yesterday there is no question that everyone in Europe realizes Trump is an idiot. If they didn’t know it before, now it’s undeniable.

At one point, Trump actually said this:

“When I was telling the Chancellor, this is where it is. People come in here, even from Germany. They come in and they walk into the Oval Office, and it’s just a special place.

“It’s — you know, World War I, it started and it ended here, and World War II, and so many other things. Everything big comes right from this beautiful space. It’s now much more beautiful than it was six months ago. A lot of good things are happening in this room. And I’ll tell you, it’s not — he’s not the first. People leave my administration and they love us. And then, at some point, they miss it so badly. And some of them embrace it and some of them actually become hostile.”

So much to unpack. First, World War I started in the Oval Office? That would have messed it up rather badly, I would think. I thought it started in Sarajevo and ended in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. (Unless you count the treaty of Versailles, then it ended in Paris.) And as I remember, the war went on for about three years before the U.S. got involved.

But this underscores my theory that Trump learned everything he knows about American history from watching John Wayne movies. John Wayne never made a World War I movie. Therefore, World War I is a total blank for Trump. He’s heard of it, but he doesn’t know anything about it.

Europeans know World War I history. Poor Chancellor Merz had to sit there and not gag.

I assume Trump knows a bit more about World War II, since John Wayne made lots of movies about it, but of course it didn’t start or end in the Oval Office, either. Maybe John Wayne should have made a documentary — What You Need to now About World War II. As we learned a few weeks ago, Trump seems to think the entire war ended on VE Day, May 8, 1945. That would have been news to the Allied and Japanese troops fighting the Battle of Okinawa at the time.

Then we go on to Trump’s comment about how everyone who comes into the Oval Office loves it. I think they’re probably trying not to laugh at the tacky gold crap Trump has splashed all over it. But the part about becoming hostile only makes sense in the context of Elon Musk. Trump was talking about Musk just before these remarks. He’s decided Musk’s hostility to Trump is a reflection of how much he misses the glory of the Oval Office.

There’s more to comment on, but I need a rest after that.

Update: So this just happened — the Department of Justice is bringing Kilmar Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador, as they could have done all along. He’s been charged with smuggling illegal immigrants into the U.S. and will stand trial for that.

Finally, the long-predicted fallout between Musk and Trump appears to have happened. Is it for real?  When Musk announced his “retirement” from DOGE a few days ago, a lot of people thought it was an act, that he’d just shift to being a less visible player. And that might have been the plan. but I think this is for real now. Musk is continuing to trash Trump’s Big Ugly Bill, which is kicking Trump where it hurts.

Josh Marshall:

I don’t have more than speculation on what these two guys are thinking or feeling. But the White House took a big swipe at Musk by canning Musk’s handpicked NASA chief the day after his cringey departure ceremony. That action both took something valuable away from Musk and treated him with a very public disrespect. So while Musk is clearly trying to undo the ocean of brand damage he brought on himself and his companies, I don’t think the White House is playing along and trying to help with that project. I think they’re really trying to show him who’s boss, a classic example of Trumpian dominance politics.

These two are capable of doing a lot of harm to each other. Musk could put his money into defeating MAGA candidates. Trump could cancel the contracts Musk arranged for himself while he had his fingers in the government. I don’t know those things will happen. And as of Wednesday afternoon I can’t find any reaction from Trump about what Musk said, which is uncharacteristic of Trump. I do think Musk’s ravings — which are about how the bill spends too much money, not about how it cuts too much taxes — might possibly soften support for the bill in Congress. And there are little signs that might be happening. See, for example, After Muscling Their Bill Through the House, Some Republicans Have Regrets.

However, they’re still in denial about what the BUB would do to the deficit. The CBO just came out with the official score:

The sweeping Republican bill for President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda is projected to add $2.4 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years, according to a new estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It is slightly higher than an earlier version of the bill, which the CBO projected to add $2.3 trillion in new debt.

The report also says that 10.9 million Americans would lose their health care coverage if the bill becomes law. I doubt you’ll get many congressional Republicans on record acknowledging this. But there may be a few.

I am cheering for anything that slows the bill down, because I suspect the longer it stalls, the less likely it will pass, or at least pass without substantial changes. There appear to be a handful of Republican senators, including Josh Hawley, who realize the fallout of gutting Medicaid and probably Medicare would have real-world consequences that could hurt their constituents and, worse, hurt their re-election chances.

I also think that Trump is not exactly growing political capital. If he’s really lost Musk, what about the rest of the Tech Bros? There are news stories going back a couple of months saying that tech leaders were “breaking up” with Trump, which I hadn’t noticed.

But Trump also recently burned bridges between himself and Leonard Leo, and the Federalist Society generally, and that might be more significant than losing Musk. See Elie Mystal at The Nation, Trump Is Headed to War With the Federalist Society—and It’s Gonna Be Huge. Mystal is writing about judicial appointments, but it’s also the case that pretty much all conservative judges on the bench today are Federalist Society judges. And they are more loyal to Leonard Leo than they are to Trump. This is not going to help Trump in court. At some point he’s going to start looking pretty damn ineffectual.

I realize that most Americans have no idea what’s going on. I say that because Trump’s disapproval numbers are staying stubbornly stuck in the upper 40s. But as the year goes on I suspect at least some of the low-info crowd will notice the real world. Because as much incompetence as Trump has packed into his administration there will be screwups, and some of those screwups will be so big and splashy that even the low-infos will notice them. At least, we can hope. I don’t want another Hurricane Katrina-level disaster, but do remember what that did to George W. Bush. He never recovered.

The MAGA movement is basically a nihilistic one. It doesn’t know what it’s for, just what it’s against. It looks to Trump to restore an America that never existed, without realizing that Trump is destroying everything that did make America great. I don’t expect them to learn. But according to YouGov, “Among the entire population of adult citizens, the share of MAGA supporters has never risen above 20%.” I would have guessed 30%, but I’ll take 20%. That means there’s a lot of room for approval numbers to go down before they hit the 20% floor.

And at some point, maybe even Mike Johnson and Marjorie Taylor Greene will start to ignore him.

Some updating to the last couple of posts — yesterday Trump held a rally in Pittsburgh and announced he is raising tariffs on imported steel and aluminum to 50 percent. He says this will be good for the steel industry.

Some media outlets are trying to understand why he is doing this. Like there’s a reason. From Time:

Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute, argues that the Trump Administration has yet to fully explain the exact math behind the number for the steel and aluminum tariffs.

“They’ve never given any justification why 25% is the right number, let alone why 50% is,” Winegarden says. “It was just doubled.”

Numbers shmumbers. Steel and aluminum were not affected by last week’s trade court decision. Instead of taking authority from the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, which the court said he couldn’t do, he had placed tariffs on steel and aluminum by virtue of Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act. And so far, no court has said he couldn’t do that. He raised the tariffs on steel and aluminum because he could. He gets off on messing with tariffs and making big headlines about it. Back to Time:

The back-and-forth on tariff dates and rates has left many businesses in limbo, though Felix Tintelnot, professor of economics at Duke University, says that with steel and aluminum, the Administration has generally followed through on the timings they’ve announced.

The question, he says, is how long the 50% will stand, as he’s seen the rates “flip-flopping all the time.” Tintelnot argues that the resulting uncertainty is causing real harm to U.S. businesses and thus, in turn, impacting workers, despite Trump’s claims that the tariffs will bring large amounts of money to the U.S. steel industry.

“We’re talking about expansion of capacity of heavy industry that comes with significant upfront investments, and no business leader should take heavy upfront investments if they don’t believe that the same policy [will be] there two, three, or four years from now,” Tintelnot says. “Regardless of whether you’re in favor [of] or against these tariffs, you don’t want the President to just set tax rates arbitrarily, sort of by Executive Order all the time.”

All you need to know about anything Trump does is that he gets off on playing god-king.

Trump can’t grasp anything more complex than a Happy Meal toy. But he really, really gets off on throwing tariff numbers around. He doesn’t understand what the numbers indicate, but bigger numbers get more attention. And that gives him the ego fix he incessantly craves.