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Judge in Eric Adams Case Held a Hearing Yesterday

Judge Dale Ho, who has the Eric Adams case on his docket, ordered the prosecution and Adams into his courtroom yesterday to discuss whether he should honor the government's request to temporarily drop the case. Deputy AG Emil Bove wants to suspend the case while Adams helps round up immigrants. If Adams doesn't do what Donald Trump wants, Bove wants the ability to start the case up again.

Bove, who ultimately signed the order to drop the case, showed up personally—because most of the SDNY attorneys involved resigned rather than be involved in what they saw as an unlawful quid pro quo. The session lasted 90 minutes. Bove argued that this was a standard case of prosecutorial discretion. No prosecutor has the time or resources to prosecute every person accused of breaking the law, so he or she has to make choices about who to go after. However, Bove did admit that the decision to drop the case was not based on the merits of the case, but on Adams' willingness to play ball helping to deport immigrants. To argue that deciding to prosecute or drop a case not based on the merits of the case is unusual, to say the least.

It was an unusual case in that both sides were arguing for the same thing: dismissal of the case. Usually when both sides want the same thing, the judge grants it. Ho did not make a decision yesterday. He asked for patience while he considers all the issues.

Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) was watching closely. She has the power to unilaterally fire Adams, but she said she would wait for the judge's ruling before making her decision and the judge did not make a ruling yesterday. Given the stakes here, he wants to be sure he is getting it right. Hochul has been holding meetings with various people, including Comptroller Brad Lander (D) and Speaker of the City Council Adrienne Adams (D), both of whom want her to fire Adams immediately. She knows that her reelection prospects in 2026 hinge significantly on her decision now. (V)

Many of Trump's Actions Come Directly from Project 2025

Last summer, on the campaign trail, Donald Trump said: "Project 2025? Never heard of it." And yet, somehow, some way, a large number of things he has done in the first 4 weeks are also found in the Project 2025 blueprint. Weird coincidence, no? Here is a list of action items from the Project 2025 report that, by freak accident, Trump has already started to carry out.

Social issues Immigration Government staffing Energy Foreign affairs Economy

What incredible coincidences. So much of what Trump has done was in the Project 2025 report. It's like flipping a coin 37 times and getting heads 37 times. Hey, it can happen! Now remember that the Project 2025 report was over 900 pages. Could more coincidences happen? Who knows? (V)

Musk Wants the Government to Send Everyone a Check

There was a time when most of our news items were about Donald Trump. We seem to be entering an era when there is more news about Elon Musk than about Trump. That could end up being Musk's Achilles heel, since Trump does not like being upstaged.

Elon Musk hasn't been co-president that long, but is already beginning to act like a politician. He is proposing that the federal government send taxpayers a check to be financed from all the savings the DOGEYs are generating. His plan is to refund taxpayers 20% of the $2 trillion he plans to cut. He will no doubt sell the idea to Co-President Trump by suggesting that Trump's name be on all the checks. There is a famous saying to the effect of: "There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit." Musk has that down pat.

It's a sharp political move, to be sure. But it would have to be approved by Congress. It is also completely fiscally irresponsible given the huge deficit and plans for more tax cuts, but who cares about that? Depending on how it is done, it might require a stand-alone vote in Congress. If Democrats voted against (and killed) a plan to send everyone free money, Trump could trumpet: "I feel your pain and wanted to send you free money but those dastardly Democrats blocked me."

Of course, there is no way Musk can cut $2 trillion from the budget in a serious way unless he takes an ax to the military, Social Security, and/or Medicare/Medicaid. Trump could pretend that vast amounts have been cut from the federal budget by Elon's eager beavers Muskrats. Most voters wouldn't know or care. They would just know they got $5,000 for free. Of course, that would cause inflation and blow an even bigger hole in the budget, but Trump likes wins and things he can crow about, so he might agree.

Will that happen? There is a long road ahead. In particular, a few of the budget hawks in the House, like Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Ralph Norman (R-SC), might simply block it. Then they would get the blame. They probably wouldn't mind becoming famous for trying to avoid blowing a giant hole in the budget. (V)

Musk Is Trying to Buy a Key State Supreme Court Seat in Wisconsin

Elon Musk thinks big. You have to give him credit for that. He not only wants to run the federal government, he also wants to have power in the states as well. Specifically, on April 1 (no joke), there will be an election for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The Court is nominally nonpartisan, but that doesn't fool anyone. Nothing is nonpartisan anymore. The outcome of this election will determine (partisan) control of the Court. When Janet Protasiewicz won an election to the Court in April 2023, the "Democrats" got their first majority in 15 years. If the liberal candidate wins in April, they will hold it. Otherwise, it will revert to Republican control. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has a number of hot-button issues lined up, including abortion, unions, and the congressional and state maps. Democrats have a shot at flipping the state House next year. And since Wisconsin is a key swing state, the election is very important.

The election is an open-seat election because liberal justice Ann Walsh Bradley is retiring after three 10-year terms. The candidates are the liberal Susan Crawford, a state judge in Madison, and the conservative Brad Schimel, a state judge in Waukesha County.

Enter Elon Musk. Although he doesn't live in Wisconsin, he seems to have a keen interest in this election. What a public-spirited guy! He has been boosting Schimel on eX-Twitter and has also donated an initial $1.5 million to a group he (Musk) controls, Building America's Future, to support Schimel. Musk will not be the only person from outside Wisconsin to be chiming in. The race is already nationalized. George Soros, Reid Hoffman, and Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) have already backed Crawford. As the race gets more attention, both candidates will be sucking in money from all over the country. If Crawford gets too much, Musk will undoubtedly raise the ante.

This will be the first race in 2025 that is effectively a national race. There probably won't be another one until the Virginia gubernatorial election in November, though the NYC mayoralty race could also be nationalized, depending on how the Eric Adams case plays out. (V)

Other Countries Could Pressure Musk

If Donald Trump puts tariffs on imports from Europe and Asia, the countries affected are sure to respond. In some cases, the reciprocal tariffs (and other actions) will be carefully targeted—to hit Co-President Elon Musk hard. The countries know that if Musk feels some pain, he might lobby Trump to get rid of the tariffs so that the reciprocal tariffs also go away. So, what could those countries do?

A number of things. China is already slow-walking Tesla's request to test self-driving cars in China. Trump's putting tariffs on imports from China is not going to speed up the process. More likely, it will freeze the approval indefinitely.

As it turns out, Musk's companies do quite a bit of business abroad. In fact, less than half of Tesla's sales are from the U.S. Countries hit by Trump's tariffs could respond with very high tariffs on imported Teslas. Some Canadian politicians, including New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh and Liberal Party candidate Chrystia Freeland, are already calling for a 100% tariff on imported Teslas. If most countries hit by Trump's tariffs put very high tariffs on Teslas, the stock market would notice that and Musk's net worth would take a hit.

But it is not only Tesla that could come under attack. Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, said he is "ripping up the province's contract with Starlink," which is part of Musk's company, SpaceX. He said: "Ontario won't do business with people hellbent on destroying our economy." Ontario is not SpaceX's only foreign customer. Its rockets have launched satellites for Australia, India, Turkey, Spain, and South Korea. Needless to say, they and other countries could look elsewhere for future launches. Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin might pick up some business soon. Other countries also have launch capabilities.

The E.U. has already found eX-Twitter to be in violation of the E.U. Digital Services Act. A rather large fine or even a complete ban is not out of the question, especially since Musk is now interfering in internal elections in several European countries.

If the rest of the world starts seeing Musk's companies as a proxy for Trump (and thus worth attacking), Musk might start having second thoughts about whether being co-president was a good idea. (V)

Bannon: Musk Is a Parasitic Illegal Immigrant

Elon Musk may soon have to deal with foreign enemies, but he's not there yet. However, he already has a serious domestic one: Steve Bannon. Bannon's most recent comment about the South African was: "Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. He wants to impose his freak experiment and play-act as God without any respect for the country's history, tradition or values." Bannon probably means it, too. After all, Musk is an immigrant and Bannon doesn't like immigrants. Musk did not enter the U.S. by wading across the Rio Grande. He was born to a wealthy family in South Africa and, at age 24, he went to Stanford on a student visa. However, he wasn't interested in studying and, together with his brother, soon started a software company, Zip2. Running a business was not allowed by his student visa. That is the illegal part. He later started an online bank but was ousted by the board. Musk also overstayed his visa, which is also illegal.

Bannon has a podcast, War Room, with millions of subscribers. One of Bannon's themes is raging against the "elites," and he's now featuring Musk as one of the biggest elites. Bannon has repeatedly said that there is an unbreachable chasm between all the tech billionaires who are suddenly buddy-buddy with Trump and the MAGA movement. Bannon is doing his best to drive a wedge between Trump and the billionaires. To the extent that many of the MAGA faithful come to see people like Musk and Mark Zuckerberg as the enemy, that could change Trump's relationship with them. (V)

Trump Asserts Authority over Independent Agencies

Congress has created an alphabet soup of Executive Branch agencies that are by law independent of the president, including the CFPB, CDC, EEOC, FCC, FDA, FDIC, FEC, FHFA, FTC, NARA, NASA, NSF, NTSB, SEC, SSA, USPS and many others. Almost all are run by boards whose members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. In most cases, the members serve long terms that span presidential administrations, so they can do their work without political interference. This is what Congress wanted.

But Donald Trump doesn't care what Congress wanted. He wants to control all of them directly, taking away the independence that Congress granted them. Yesterday he signed an XO putting all of them under his direct control under the "unitary executive theory," which states that the president has absolute power over everything in the Executive Branch and Congress has no power to create agencies not under his direct control. OMB Director Russell Vought is a big fan of this theory. This XO fundamentally reshapes the federal government and gives the president extraordinary power that Congress never intended him to have. It is a massive power grab that no previous president has even dreamed of. Needless to say, this is going to end up in the Supreme Court sooner or later. Previous decisions suggest the Court might be willing to accept this theory.

If Trump immediately begins replacing agency heads and boards, despite their official tenures, he could stock them all with people subservient to him. Imagine an FDA head who approved only drugs Trump ordered him to approve (with his decision based on how much the pharmaceutical company paid Trump for approval). Imagine an FCC that renewed broadcast licenses for television stations based on whether Trump approved of their editorial views. Imagine an SEC head that went after companies based on whether they sucked up to Trump enough. The list is endless and doesn't actually require much imagination at all. So, even Trump could figure it out.

What the XO specifically does is create the position of White House liaison (translation: political commissar) who must review policies and priorities. It also states that no employee of any agency may take any position that contradicts the president's position on any interpretation of any law. It is the job of the political commissar to enforce that.

If someone aspired to be a dictator, a good step would be to order everyone in the government to obey him, regardless of existing law. We may soon find out how that works in practice. (V)

Grassley Raises the White Flag...

So while Elon Musk runs rampant, eliminating whole pieces of the government that Congress created, and Donald Trump reinvents himself as Il Duce, what are congressional Republicans doing? Raising the white flag of surrender. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee and President pro tem of the Senate, the third person in the line of presidential succession, said "Congress can't do anything except complain. This is an executive branch decision. Who works for the executive branch is determined by the president of the United States."

Whoa! Grassley has been in the Senate for 44 years. He has a pretty good idea of what Congress can and cannot do. He knows very well that private citizens who are acting as officers of the United States without confirmation by the Senate are violating the Constitution. He also knows that the constitutional role of the Executive Branch is to see that the laws passed by Congress are faithfully executed. He also knows that no one in the Executive Branch, not even the president, has the authority to just toss out programs Congress has mandated because he thinks they are inefficient. In addition, Grassley knows that the power of the purse is Congress' alone. What does he mean Congress can't do anything?

In practice, as a thought experiment, Grassley could think of what he would do if Joe Biden had hired, say, Hillary Clinton, to kill programs that she didn't like right and left. To start with, he would be going to the media every day to tell the country that what the president and his helper were doing was unconstitutional. The next step would be for the Senate to sue the president in court for usurping Congress' power of the purse and get a judge to issue a temporary restraining order. If the president refused to obey, the next step would be to confer with the House leadership about starting impeachment proceedings. There is no way Grassley would tolerate a Democratic president and his helper trampling Congress the way Trump and Musk are. So saying Congress can't do anything is just another way of saying: "We are all scared to death of Trump and are willing to give up all our constitutionally mandated power because he wants it." (V)

...But Democrats May Start Fighting Back

Democrats have very little political power, except the filibuster in the Senate, which could rein in some of Donald Trump's plans that cannot be included in a reconciliation bill. But they do have the power of PR. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is urging his members to introduce amendments to the upcoming budget that will make it clear that the Republicans are planning to slash programs that help ordinary Americans, in order to pass tax cuts for the extremely wealthy. The amendments will all fail, but will give the Democrats something to talk to the media about.

Democrats are certain that the budget bill will slash Medicaid, which provides health care to poor people, few of whom vote for Republicans. Then they can argue that Congress is playing reverse Robin Hood, stealing from the poor to pay the rich. If they can break through, this could be a potent message in 2026. Republicans with large Medicaid populations in their states or districts may also be sensitive to this charge and may work to reduce the cuts. Democrats want to maximize the pressure on them.

The Democrats' House Majority PAC has put together a list of 27 battleground districts currently held by Republicans, showing for each one how many Medicaid recipients there are and how many of these are children. Making the vote about taking health care from poor children to allow billionaires to pay less tax is a media story the Democrats are going to push hard. This could force the Republican office holders in those districts to defend their votes next year.

Democrats in Congress need to do something, because their voters are very unhappy with them. A Quinnipiac poll shows that 80% of Democrats think that the system is either not working so well (32%) or at all (48%). Among independents it is 24% saying not working so well and 28% saying it is not working at all. Among Republicans the numbers are 22% and 12%, respectively.

Quinnipiac also asked whether Elon Musk has too much power. Among Democrats, 96% say he has too much while 56% of independents and only 16% of Republicans say that. (V)

The Future of Fox News Is Cloudy

Rupert Murdoch still rules the roost at Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, and his hundreds of other media properties around the world. He is mentally sharp and active. However, he is also 93 years old. He is well aware of that. In fact, even at age 68 he was aware that in any battle with Father Time, Father Time always wins, eventually. Knowing that, in 1999, Murdoch and his lawyers made a succession plan for his media empire. The plan has now been called into question by his heirs (his children) and they are all enmeshed in a very messy secret court fight. Somehow, The New York Times just obtained over 3,000 pages of court documents about the case.

Two investigative reporters, Jonathan Mahler and Jim Rutenberg, have written a very long article based on those documents. If you have a Times subscription and are interested in the future of Fox, read the article. For the benefit of readers who don't have the Times or the time to read a very long and detailed article, with many twists and subplots, here is a very brief summary of it. The case is important because it affects the control of Fox after the 93-year-old Murdoch goes to the big propaganda mill in the sky.

Murdoch always intended to give his empire to his kids, but it is a bit complicated because he has been married five times and has six kids by wives 1, 2, and 3. Here is his family tree:

Rupert Murdoch's family tree, and it's a mess'

During her 1999 divorce proceedings, wife #2, Anna Maria Torv, was willing to give up half of Murdoch's marital assets in return for a promise that upon his death, all of Murdoch's assets would pass to his (then) four children, three of whom were her children. The way the promise was enforced was to create a Nevada trust (because Nevada estate law provides a lot of secrecy), with her three children, Elisabeth, Lachlan, and James, plus her stepchild, Prudence, as the four beneficiaries of the trust. The trust is set up to continue as the sole owner of all the company stock until 2030, at which time each of the (now six) beneficiaries will inherit a pro-rata share of the stock and will be free to sell it to the highest bidder. The companies in the trust are worth $7 billion. The trust is set up so that each of the four oldest kids gets to name one trustee and Murdoch gets to name two trustees—as long as he lives.

Over time, Murdoch decided that his mission in life was to create the most powerful voice for conservatives in the English-speaking world, even after his death. He also decided that only Lachlan was conservative enough to carry out his mission. But he also realized that when he died, there would be only four trustees and if the liberal Prudence, Elisabeth, and James got together, they could order their trustees to vote to fire Lachlan as CEO of Fox and install their own CEO. The three of them know that the average Fox viewer is a 68-year-old white man, and might well want to tone it down to attract younger, more diverse, and more liberal viewers, just from a business perspective. Murdoch didn't want it to be toned down.

So Murdoch tried to change the irrevocable trust in a complex way that would protect Lachlan's position as a prima inter pares. The billionaire was clever enough to put a provision in the original trust to allow him to make changes afterwards if it was in the interest of the beneficiaries. He asked Torv's three children if they were fine with him stripping them of their voting rights (but not of their economic rights). Oddly enough, they were not. Elisabeth said: "You are completely disenfranchising me and my siblings. You've blown a hole in the family." When Murdoch tried anyway, the three sued their father in a Nevada court.

By Nevada law, the trial, held last September, was secret. It was heard by Washoe County Probate Commissioner Edmund Gorman, who placed everything under seal. Murdoch argued that stripping three of his children of their voting rights was in the interest of the children. However, the three children disagreed in court. They said that picking trustees wasn't so much of a burden that they couldn't do it. In Dec. 2024, Gorman filed his decision in withering terms. Changing the trust to disenfranchise three of the four beneficiaries was definitely not a benefit for them. He refused Murdoch's request to allow any changes. He also concluded that Murdoch was operating in bad faith because he had willfully suppressed evidence that shot a hole in his arguments.

Murdoch has appealed, of course. However, there is little reason to think Gorman's decision will be overturned since Gorman fully understood the significance of the case and was very careful to go by the book and not make any legal mistakes.

If his decision is upheld on appeal, one of two things will happen. If Murdoch dies before 2030, then Prudence, Elisabeth, and James will have the power to replace Lachlan as CEO with a new CEO who would be chosen to get rid of some of the more obnoxious hosts, tone the rest down, and try to broaden the audience, even if it means losing some hard-core viewers. Fox would still probably lean conservative, but less strident and more truth-based, to avoid lawsuits. It could focus more on getting Mitt Romney- and Liz Cheney-type Republicans to watch. Just viewed as a business, catering only to very angry old white men might not be the future. Also, they could sell off all the newspapers and divvy up the proceeds.

By contrast, if Murdoch is still alive in 2030, when he will be 99, then the trust self-dissolves and each of the four plus Murdoch's two daughters with wife #3 (who have no voting rights) gets equal shares in the corporations. They would be free to sell their shares to the highest bidder (or an ideologically friendly company).

This is only a summary. There is a lot more intrigue with much deceit and backstabbing, involving former AG William Barr and a host of others. But the bottom line is that if Murdoch exits stage right before 2030, there will be big changes at Fox. It is not inconceivable that James might replace Lachlan as CEO of Fox. If old Rupert hangs on until 2030, the companies could be broken up and sold for parts. (V)


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