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Musk, Trump Speak to America

At the end of 2025, when the various dictionaries reveal their choices for "word of the year," we suspect "surreal" will make a strong showing because there is much of that in the current presidential administration. Of course, "surreal" is just a fancypants version of the word "weird," so it's not like anyone can say we didn't see this coming.

The latest demonstration of surrealism came yesterday, in the Oval Office, courtesy of Co-Presidents Elon Musk and Donald Trump. While the junior co-president sat at the Resolute desk and said relatively little, the senior co-president stood and addressed a group of reporters about his work as head DOGEy. That included some unscripted remarks, as well as a question and answer session. If you would like to watch it for yourself (it's about half an hour), the footage is here.

What was surreal about it? Here is a partial list:

Ultimately, the purpose of the whole dog and pony show was to add some fanfare prior to Trump signing a new XO about the powers of DOGE. It tells the heads of the federal agencies to cooperate with DOGE, to get to work on reducing staffing, and to see to it that for every four people who leave government employment, only one new one is hired. That should work out well. (Z)

Trumpy Fuel Thrown on Gaza Fire

In yesterday's wild and crazy press conference, the subject of Gaza did come up. That said, it was because Elon Musk was forced to admit that he was in error when he claimed that the Biden administration had earmarked $50 million for condoms to be sent to Gaza. It turns out that figure was only off by... $50 million. Probably a good reason to insist on hard evidence whenever Musk or Trump make grandiose claims about government waste that the DOGEys have uncovered.

Despite the setback, Trump has thus far stuck with his plan to turn Gaza into a luxury resort. Over the weekend, presumably after a sleepless night, the budding imperialist got on his grossly overvalued social media platform to lay out his plan of action:

The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting. The Palestinians, people like Chuck Schumer, would have already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region. They would actually have a chance to be happy, safe, and free. The U.S., working with great development teams from all over the World, would slowly and carefully begin the construction of what would become one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on Earth. No soldiers by the U.S. would be needed! Stability for the region would reign!!!

We have no idea what the "Chuck Schumer" bit is about. Yes, he is Jewish. But the Palestinians, with only a few exceptions, are not. Maybe the idea is that they are all "bad people," regardless of religious background.

Trump followed that with a declaration, during his pre-Super Bowl interview, that the Palestinians would not be allowed to return to a rebuilt Gaza. So that makes it official that we're talking about an ethnic cleansing scheme. On Monday, Trump added that if Jordan and Egypt do not agree to accept the Palestinians, he might withhold foreign aid to those nations.

Notice that these plans, while both absurd and insane, are far more concrete than anything Trump has said about annexing Canada or acquiring Greenland. It remains a strong possibility that he really means it. And others in, and around, his orbit, are behaving as if he's serious. The right-wing media is celebrating the plan, of course. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has also climbed on board, up to and including some political theater, presenting Trump with a bomb-inspired "golden pager." Jordan's King Abdullah II is nervous enough about Trump's threats that he met with the Co-President in the White House yesterday, and spent much time buttering The Donald up.

And even if this is all political theater, or some sort of negotiating tactic, it's having real consequences. Hamas thinks Israel is not abiding by the terms of the ceasefire agreement. More important, at least for our current purposes, is that Hamas also thinks that the guarantees offered by the U.S.—which were a critical part of the agreement—can no longer be counted on. Fair enough, when the leader of the U.S. is talking about turning your territory into Las Vegas East. Anyhow, for these reasons, Hamas has suspended hostage releases, putting the whole ceasefire in danger of collapse.

Once Hamas made its move, Trump made his. As is so often the case, his response appears to have been poorly thought out, and half-cocked. He decreed that if Hamas does not fall into line, they should be wiped out:

As far as I'm concerned, if all of the hostages aren't returned by Saturday at 12 o'clock—I think it's an appropriate time—I would say, cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break out. I'd say they ought to be returned by 12 o'clock on Saturday. And if they're not returned—all of them, not in drips and drabs, not two and one and three and four and two—Saturday at 12 o'clock. And after that, I would say, all hell is going to break out.

Maybe Hamas will be cowed, and will back down. However, that would not be terribly consistent with their past behavior. Assuming they remain defiant, then it would seem that there are only two possible outcomes: (1) Nothing happens, and Trump is shown to be a paper tiger, or (2) all hell does break out, and the ceasefire goes up in flames. Most presidents would see #2 as a disastrous outcome, and #1 as not so great either, which is why they would not make such threats. From Trump's vantage point, though, #2 is probably a pretty good outcome. He disdains Muslims, and killing a bunch of people is ultimately easier than removing them, if you're trying to clear land for a luxury resort. It is not easy for us to write something that assumes such callousness and such cruelty, but the track record here suggests this line of thinking is a real possibility.

Now that Trump is openly flirting with approaches to Gaza that sound a lot like ethnic cleansing and/or genocide, you might be wondering if those folks who voted against Joe Biden because of his Israel policy are having second thoughts. If so, reporters from Politico, CNN and Slate, among others, have you covered.

Dearborn, MI, of course, has the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the country. The residents normally vote Democratic, but last November they made an exception and voted heavily for Donald Trump to punish "Genocide Joe," even though he wasn't on the ballot. At the same time, the city also went for now-Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), a Jewish woman.

During the campaign, two of the region's mayors, Dearborn Heights mayor Bill Bazzi and Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib, actively campaigned for Trump, arguing that Trump would bring peace to the Middle East. Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud did not campaign for Trump but was a leader of the "uncommitted" movement and was active in the "Abandon Harris" movement.

Now that Trump has revealed his plan to relocate all the Gazans somewhere else (Greenland?) and rebuild Gaza as the "Riviera of the Middle East," the Arab American community is shocked. Shocked! One leader, who was granted anonymity by Politico to speak honestly, said there is a sense of remorse in the community now. He said that people think "we screwed up but we're not going to admit it." Turns out, elections have consequences. They are not like demonstrations on college campuses, which generally do not. Who knew?

Sam Baydoun, an Arab-American Wayne County commissioner from Dearborn said: "Gaza will always be part of a future Palestinian state, not a casino resort." Last week, Hammoud tweeted: "Deploying U.S. troops and using taxpayer dollars to invade Gaza is morally indefensible." He seemed surprised, even though on Oct. 8, 2024, a month before the election, Trump talked about Gaza as the "Riviera of the Middle East" and answered radio host Hugh Hewitt's question about the future of Gaza with: "It could be better than Monaco as it has the best location in the Middle East."

Baydoun isn't alone. Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said: "Any forced displacement of Palestinians in their land would be ethnic cleansing." But then he added: "Perhaps some people right now in our community are second guessing their vote for Trump."

Those votes for Trump, no matter how much some people might regret them, are a done deal. However, the story in Gaza is still being written. And we are now about 72 hours from the start of what could be a new, important, and possibly very ugly chapter in that story. For all the poor people who have been victimized by this war, we hope that cooler heads prevail. But we have to admit that we are not optimistic. (Z & V)

Reproductive Choice Remains Under Attack

Among all the orchestrated confusion, illegal mass firings, unauthorized impoundment of federal spending, and hostile takeover of the federal payment system, largely at the instigation of unelected South African Elon Musk, the efforts to subjugate women by controlling their fertility continues. Similar to the multi-pronged strategy to undermine democracy and impartial justice, undermining women's autonomy is also a top priority deployed across multiple agencies, even if that dimension isn't getting too much attention right now.

One example is at the Department of Transportation. Sean Duffy, the new secretary, doesn't know anything about transportation, but shares his fellow misogynists' ideas about "women's proper role." Duffy is a former lumberjack, reality TV star and Fox host—in other words, Donald Trump's ideal cabinet official to run, you know, whatever. Duffy is a staunch Catholic with nine children who believes women should be having more babies. Buried in a four-page memo misleadingly titled "sound economic analysis in DOT policies and programs," Duffy announced that federal transportation grants will be awarded with "preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average." Don't adjust your dial—you read that right. This aligns with the obsession of both J.D. Vance and Musk, who talk openly about wanting women to give birth more. As one official put it, "The idea that 'I think I'm going to have a baby because I'm going to get a better road outside' doesn't make sense to me." That's the least of the problems with this directive.

As with other conditions Trump officials have attempted to put on spending, such as requiring cooperation with immigration officials, holding up grant money unless women have more babies is patently illegal. While Congress can put conditions on how federal funds are spent, executive agencies do not have that authority, since they may only do what Congress authorized them to do. Under well-settled case law, an agency's discretion to place conditions on the funding must be approved by Congress and consistent with the statutory scheme established in the legislation. And with SCOTUS' new independent review standard, courts are expected to scrutinize this kind of rogue action very carefully against the language in the authorizing statute. Needless to say, Congress did not condition federal transportation grants on women's fertility.

But, as we've seen, the legality of such moves doesn't concern Trump's men (emphasis on "men"). This is one way to create an incentive structure to justify intrusions into women's reproductive health decisions, as well as the increasing criminalization of pregnancy. When viewed in the context of the administration's other early moves, the memo makes perfect sense. Attorneys General like Ken Paxton of Texas want access to women's reproductive health data so they can track and monitor women's pregnancies. In a move that seems to foreshadow removing current HIPAA protections that prohibit sharing reproductive health data with law enforcement, HHS has scrubbed information about those protections from its website. And the DOD has just announced that the Pentagon will no longer reimburse women who are forced to travel out of state for abortion care, fertility treatments, or reproductive healthcare, because of abortion bans in the states where they've been deployed.

The availability of birth control is also in these men's cross-hairs. Under current law, pharmacists cannot discriminate against women by denying them access to birth control. The guidance about that law has also been removed from the HHS website. Couple these efforts with the pardons of criminals who violently attacked abortion clinics, doctors and patients, and the directive to the DOJ to no longer enforce the FACE Act, and we're looking at taking the war on women to a completely different level. Recall, however, that women make up more than half the electorate. Clearly, like everything that goes on in this White House, they haven't really thought this through. (L)

In Congress

There were a few doings in Congress yesterday that are worth, at very least, a brief mention.

First up, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) has once again introduced his Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. If you don't know the legislation, you could still probably guess what it would do, namely require voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship when they register to vote. Most Republicans who favor such legislation say that it is meant to stop voter fraud, knowing full well that it's really meant to reduce voting among groups who skew Democratic. Roy is an odd duck, however, and prone to demonstrate something akin to religious fervor on some political issues. So, it's possible that he really believes what he's peddling.

This will be the third time Roy has filed this legislation, and presumably he'll strike out yet again. The bill has passed the House previously, and surely will pass again, but then it will run into the Senate's filibuster and will die a quiet death. That said, we mention it because: (1) if Senate Republicans decide to kill the filibuster, this will be one of the first bills that Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) tees up for a vote, and (2) the GOP is never, ever going to drop this "voter fraud" bit.

Moving along, next up is legislation that was an early contender for "This Week in Schadenfreude" until we saw the affiliation of the member proposing it. It is called the "Red, White, and Blueland Act of 2025," and would instruct Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to change the "official" name of Greenland to Red, White and Blueland. This seemed a pretty excellent bit of parody of the whole "Gulf of America" bit, until we saw that the member who filed the legislation is Buddy Carter, a Georgia Republican. Are there really voters out there who are impressed by such a silly stunt? Red, White and Blueland? Really? It would seem Nathan Poe was on to something when he observed that, when it comes to extremism, it's very difficult to distinguish parody from the real deal.

And finally, a story where we are going to have to proceed very, very delicately. Yesterday, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) took the floor of the House and delivered a heated, almost hourlong, speech in which she laid into four different men who she says sexually abused her in various ways, up to and including a rape by her former fiancé.

Of course, the default response to such a presentation, these days, is "believe women." And we believe there was certainly at least some truth present in Mace's narrative. That said, we will also note the following:

We note both the story, and the reasons for examining Mace's remarks critically, because this is clearly not a one-off performance. The Congresswoman would not have gone to so much trouble if this was not the setup for some future action. At very least, she is going to weaponize this against some South Carolina Republicans who are running for office this year or next. For example, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson (R) is running for governor in 2026, and she specifically called him out by name, and said he was partly to blame for her misfortunes because he did not do enough to protect women against sexual assault. As pure chance would have it, the other major candidate for the South Carolina governor's mansion is... Nancy Mace.

It is also probable that Mace will also find a way to weaponize this against her transgender colleague, and self-selected arch-rival, Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE). Mace did not mention McBride yesterday, but we presume it's just a matter of time. (Z)

Haaland Jumps in on New Mexico Governor's Race

As we have noted, we'll be giving a fair bit of attention to gubernatorial races this cycle, perhaps even more than we give to U.S. Senate races. In part, that is because there are more gubernatorial races (2 this year, 36 next year) than there are Senate races (33, all next year). In part, that is because, due to term limits, there are considerably more gubernatorial races that will, or might, result in the election of a non-incumbent (20 or so, as compared to 6 or so for the Senate).

One of the states where term limits will mean a guaranteed change of leadership is New Mexico, where Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) is termed out. This week, Joe Biden's secretary of the interior, Deb Haaland, announced that she is going to run to replace Lujan Grisham. Haaland's launch video is here, if you would like to see it.

Haaland naturally has wide name recognition, not to mention being well-connected within the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, the New Mexico Democratic bench is not all that deep, so her entry into the race might clear the field for the Democratic primary. On the Republican side, nobody has jumped in yet, though Mayor Greg Hull of Rio Rancho and 2024 U.S. Senate candidate Nella Domenici are considered strong possibilities.

Given New Mexico's general blueness (it's gone blue in the last five presidential elections, has two Democratic U.S. Senators, and all the offices elected statewide are currently held by Democrats), you might assume that if Haaland makes it to the general, then that's the ballgame. Fair enough, particularly if you consider that Haaland is pretty popular, and that there's a good chance that 2026 is a blue wave election, as midterms tend to go against the party that holds the White House.

That said, the last time New Mexico elected consecutive governors from the same party was in the 1970s and 1980s, when four Democrats in a row were picked. Since 1991, the job has alternated regularly between Democrats and Republicans—a total of three each (i.e., R-D-R-D-R-D). So, don't reach any firm conclusions until the race properly takes shape.

If Haaland is elected, she'll be the first Native American woman to serve as governor of a U.S. state. In that eventuality, she would join two or three Native American men who have pulled off the trick: former Oklahoma governor Johnston Murray, current Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt and, assuming your definition of "Native American" includes "Native Hawaiian," former Hawaii governor John Waihee. (Z)

Democrats Unveil Battle Plan for State Legislatures

Back in the 2010s, the Republican Party went all-in on state legislatures, recognizing that they have an awful lot of influence on policy, and on the conduct of elections. The Democratic Party allowed itself to get caught flat-footed, such that a disproportionate number of state legislative chambers went red. Oops.

The blue team is doing what it can to learn from its mistakes, and also to try to undo the damage that resulted from its negligence. And so, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) released its 2025-26 Target Map yesterday. Here, first of all, are the "Battleground States," with the current breakdown of the lower and upper chambers in each:

 
Lower
Upper
State
Rep
Dem
Rep
Dem
Alaska 21 19 11 9
Minnesota 67 66 33 34
Michigan 58 52 18 20
Pennsylvania 101 102 28 22
Virginia 49 51 19 21
Wisconsin 54 45 18 15

The above table comes with a few notes. First, the Alaska House of Representatives has an unusual situation where two Republicans caucus with the Democrats and independents. So, although the chamber is majority-Republican, it is controlled by the Democrats, hence the blue shading. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, one seat in the House of Representatives is currently vacant, and will likely be filled by a Democrat on March 11, which will leave the chamber tied. Finally, Wisconsin is much more lopsided in favor of the Republicans than these other state houses; the Democrats are focusing on it because new, non-gerrymandered maps leave open the possibility of big gains.

Here are the four chambers that the DLCC puts in a category it calls "Power Building." None of these is a serious candidate for flipping in the next 2 years; they are longer-term plays:

 
Lower
Upper
State
Rep
Dem
Rep
Dem
Arizona 33 27 17 13
Georgia 100 80 33 23
North Carolina 71 49 30 20
New Hampshire 221 177 16 8

Note that there is one independent serving in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, and there is also one seat that is vacant, to be filled at a yet-to-be-specified date, probably by a Democrat. That assumes the blue team can find a candidate; folks aren't exactly clamoring for that $100/year salary.

The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) hasn't released its list yet, but it will look a lot like this one. We often hear from readers who want to know the best way to spend their political-donation dollars. For those folks, we will note that money goes much further in state legislative races than in just about any other kind. (Z)


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