Whiskeyleaks: Who Will Take the Fall (if anyone)?

Reader M.L. in Athens, OH, wrote in to tell us that the scandal name that the Internet has settled on for the Signal scandal is "Whiskeyleaks." That's pretty good, so we're going with it.

The time will come when this story fades away, likely replaced by some other outrage from the Trump administration. But that time has not come yet, and so Whiskeyleaks continues to dominate the headlines. Most notably, in a pretty clear sign that the White House will not be completely free of this headache for a very long time, Judge James Boasberg, the same guy who is dealing with the Venezuelan deportations, has ordered the administration to preserve all the messages exchanged by the Group of 18. On one hand, these folks are more than happy to look this exact Judge in the face and lie, claiming they were unable to do what he ordered. On the other hand, the key portion of the messages is already public (and who knows if Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg has more that he hasn't released). So, in this case, defiance and a risk of contempt of court might not be worth it.

Meanwhile, now that this is the scandal du jour, everyone is looking everywhere for additional angles to explore. And yesterday, enterprising journalists found at least two such angles. First, Willamette Week, a publication you've probably never heard of unless you live somewhere between Portland, OR, and Eugene, OR, noticed that one of the people who were on the text chain was Director of the National Counterterrorism Center-designate Joe Kent. Note the "designate" part of that. People who have not actually been confirmed by the Senate are not legally allowed to be seeing conversations like this until they are official. Or, until they are official officials, if you prefer.

The second bit of reporting comes from Spiegel International, which might be familiar to more readers, as it is the international arm of Der Spiegel, which is Germany's largest newsmagazine. It would seem that several key members of the text chain are not only careless about data security, they are downright incompetent in that particular area. The German reporters were able to find, via publicly available webpages and databases, cell phone numbers, personal e-mail addresses, and passwords that were used by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. It is not known if any of the information is still current, but it's recent enough that some of it (or all of it) certainly could be. If a person is not clever enough to keep their cell phone number private, then they are certainly not clever enough to develop their own security protocols in place of those developed by the pros who work for the federal government.

Undoubtedly, many Americans, and most readers of this site, would like to see the behavior on display, which was both reckless and unlawful, be punished. It is somewhat improbable that any legal wrangling, whether in the court of Boasberg or other judges, will produce anything more than embarrassment for the administration. After all, if there were going to be any criminal charges, they would have to come from AG Pam Bondi and her underlings. Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

On the other hand, there is clearly a PR problem here. YouGov won the race to be the first outfit to poll Whiskeyleaks, and they found that 74% of respondents, and 60% of Republicans, think this breach is serious, or very serious. The favorability ratings of both Waltz and Hegseth are both in the toilet (high 20s/low 30s), and Trump himself has gone from being a bit above water a couple of weeks ago (48% approve, 46% disapprove in the RCP aggregate) to being underwater again (47% approve, 48.8% disapprove). And the story does not appear to be running out of steam.

Trump clearly does not want to fire anyone, because doing so is tantamount to admitting a mistake, and he doesn't like to do that. On the other hand, if a price needs to be paid, somebody needs to pay it, and it isn't going to be Trump himself. Yesterday, after days of defending Waltz, the President said what while he still supports his NSA, he also blames Waltz for what happened: "I always thought it was Mike." That is the first, baby step toward lopping Waltz's head off.

At the moment, there is reportedly a serious effort in the West Wing to convince Trump to push Waltz out the door. And the big problem that Waltz has, beyond having caused this scandal with his carelessness, is that Goldberg's number was on his phone. Trump loathes Goldberg, as he was the one who first wrote the story about Trump calling America's war dead "suckers" and "losers." Waltz needs to come up with an explanation for why he had Goldberg's number, and how it was accessible enough that it could be accidentally added to the text chain. Thus far, all the NSA has come up with is that it must have been one of his staff who was responsible. Uh, huh.

If Trump becomes fixated on the PR damage here, and on the "betrayal" involved in having Goldberg's number, Waltz really could be in trouble here. It would probably help seal the deal if the folks lobbying Trump were to observe that if Waltz managed to screw up this badly in just 2 months on the job, he's sure to do it again if he remains a part of the administration. (Z)

You Win Some, You Lose Some: Stefanik Learns What She Should Already Have Known

Remember how Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) was imminently going to become U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Elise Stefanik? After all, she was nominated and given the thumbs-up by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Under those conditions, even Jack the Ripper would have all 53 Republican votes in the Senate when it came time for final confirmation. Well, yesterday, it all came crashing down for the Representative, as Donald Trump pulled the nomination.

This is, of course, a huge blow to Stefanik's previously upward trajectory. She really wanted this gig because it would have increased her profile and would have given her some claim to foreign policy experience. The next rung on the ladder was presumably a Cabinet position in the next Republican administration (or in the latter years of the current Republican administration), and then a presidential run. Now, the plan is in shambles. Further, because Stefanik was expecting to leave the House, she gave up her position in leadership, succeeded as the No. 4 Republican by Lisa McClain (R-MI). McClain is not going to resign as a gift to Stefanik, and the House Republican Conference is not going to vote to fire McClain and replace her with Stefanik, either. So, the would-be ambassador just became a backbencher again. Whether she can resume climbing up the ladder is an excellent question, especially since she stepped on some toes in the past few months.

Once Stefanik learned which way the winds were blowing, she desperately tried to convince Trump to change his mind, reminding him of how loyal she's been to him and to MAGAism. But, as always, loyalty is a one-way street with Trump. Throwing Stefanik (and, very possibly, her career) under the bus served his needs, and so that is what happened, her needs be damned.

So, how did this serve his needs? There are almost certainly three answers to that question, which happen to exist in something of a chronological relationship to each other. The short-term concern is the special elections in Florida next week. We have pointed out some of the signs that Randy Fine (R) might just be in trouble in FL-06, despite the district being ruby red, and now there's an actual poll that backs that up. It's from St. Pete Polls, which isn't a great pollster, and which was only able to put together a fairly small sample of FL-06 voters. Still, an "only OK" poll is better than no poll. And St. Pete Polls found that 48% of voters back Fine, while 44% back his Democratic opponent Josh Weil. That's well within the margin of error, which is 4.9% because of the small sample size. You would still have to wager on Fine to hold on, but even if he wins a fairly close one, that's still pretty bad news for the administration.

This brings us to the second purpose served by this change of course. As we have written a hundred times, the Republicans' margin of error in the House is tiny. It gets even tinier if Stefanik leaves, of course, and at a time that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is trying to move some very tough legislation. And making things worse is that if Republican members see the results on Tuesday, and conclude (quite reasonably) that voters are punishing Trumpism, they will be more likely to break ranks. If Susan Crawford wallops Brad Schimel in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election Tuesday, it would have the same effect. It only takes a few purple-district GOPers to throw a giant wrench into the works. So, Trump needs as much insurance as he can muster up.

And, finally, there is the third reason that Stefanik needed to stay put. The Republicans just lost an R+15 state senate district in Pennsylvania. They look to be facing a nailbiter (and a possible loss) in FL-06, which is also R+15. Stefanik's district, NY-21, is R+8. In an environment where even an R+15 seat isn't safe, an R+8 seat REALLY isn't safe. If Stefanik gives her seat up, there's no guarantee that the Republicans get it back. Currently, the House is 218R, 213D. Now imagine this not-impossible scenario: (1) the two special elections in Florida next week go 1R, 1D; (2) the Democrats hold the D+15 and D+23 seats currently vacant due to the deaths of Democratic members; and (3) Stefanik vacates her seat and it flips to the Democrats. If this is what came to pass, then the House would be 218R, 217D. Not only would every single Republican have a veto, but if one Republican dies, or gets caught breaking the law, or decides to quit for some other job, then you have an evenly split House, and a power-sharing arrangement. This possibility, while not likely, is realistic enough that Trump and Johnson could not countenance it. So, under the bus goes Stefanik, who becomes the latest person to learn the true cost of making a deal with the devil. (Z)

The War on Federal Employees Continues...

Long-term, the efforts by Co-Presidents Elon Musk and Donald Trump to terminate hundreds of thousands of federal workers will not stand up to legal scrutiny. The Pendleton Act is a real thing, collectively bargained contracts are a real thing, and Musk's claim to power is NOT a real thing. But, in the end, their "plan" surely isn't to win the lawsuits. It's to do the same thing Trump has done a million times before: use the courts to make it so onerous to fight back that people throw in the towel. Even if a bunch of judges, months or years from now, order every terminated employee to be reinstated, Musk and Trump still win if 50,000 of them or 100,000 of them or 200,000 of them have moved on to new employment, and aren't interested in once again putting their future in the hands of an unreliable employer.

We write this as prelude to two more stories yesterday about the Trump administration trying to cut the legs out from under federal workers. The first is that, under the leadership of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a person who earned everything he has in life and undoubtedly never benefited from things like familial wealth or a famous name, HHS plans to dramatically overhaul its organization chart, and to eliminate 10,000 employees. This will not only leave those folks (and anyone else who depends on their salaries) high and dry, it will also mean that the services rendered by HHS will be less accessible, or inaccessible. It's like Kennedy is determined to make sure that Trump averages one major pandemic per presidency.

It is not a secret to anyone who works for the federal government (or anyone who works at a university for that matter) that large-scale organizations suffer from administrative bloat over time. So, there is some value in a careful pruning of the workforce, from time to time. But if this was a serious effort to reform HHS, it would be handled in accordance with existing law and policy, would be implemented in phases over the course of several years, and would likely involve (mostly) leaving posts unfilled when they are vacated by retirement or resignation. These kinds of mass firings speak to a desire for PR, and a desire to undercut the agency, not a desire to engage in serious reform.

The second story, meanwhile, is that Trump issued an executive order yesterday in which he decreed that federal workers can no longer unionize, and that the government will no longer participate in collective bargaining. His basis for this is a reading of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 that is... novel, shall we say. So novel that even the notoriously anti-union Ronald Reagan would never have tried it. Essentially, the law says that employees cannot interfere with the basic functions of government (for example, Secret Service officers could not go on strike and leave the president unprotected in an effort to create leverage). Whoever is creating fairy-tale law for Trump decided that any union activity whatsoever—organizing, collectively bargaining, striking—automatically interferes with the basic functions of government, so all of it is a violation of the Civil Service Reform Act. It's creative, we'll give them that.

With the HHS reorganization, the administration can at least argue it's about efficiency and saving money, even if such claims do not stand up to scrutiny. The new XO, by contrast, is a baldfaced attempt to weaken federal employees and, more broadly, unions. Undercutting unions, in particular, has been a part of the Republican political project at least as far back as The Gipper. One wonders if all those union workers who voted for Trump, like Teamsters leader Sean O'Brien, will eventually take notice. (Z)

...And So Does the War on Women

There were also a trio of news stories yesterday on the abortion front. First up, out of that bastion of freedom that is Texas, AG Ken Paxton is trying very hard to punish Dr. Margaret Carpenter, a New York-based OB/GYN who allegedly provided abortifacient pills to a woman in Texas. It is true that this is a violation of Texas state law, which establishes penalties for out-of-state doctors in this situation. It is also true that Paxton went to law school (the University of Virginia, to be exact), and surely learned that Texas state law stops at the Texas border. It is further true that Paxton cares nothing about the law, and is only interested in showboating, either in search of glory, or in hopes of running for higher office.

So, under these circumstances, Paxton filed suit in Texas state court, and he got a judgment against Carpenter for $113,000. Then, he sent the order to New York, requesting that authorities there enforce the order. That's a problem, not only because New York is generally uninterested in taking marching orders from some other state, but also because state law has specifically been amended to forbid state officials from complying with laws like the one in Texas. So yesterday, acting Ulster county clerk Taylor Bruck told Paxton to shove his court order where the Lone Star don't shine. The AG will try to get this matter before the U.S. Supreme Court, but it's fair to wonder if they will grant cert. And even if they do, we would guess the justices, even the conservative ones, will be very leery to declare that states are allowed to pass laws governing the behavior of people in other states. Not only is that clearly unconstitutional, but Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito can figure out what a state like California might do with that power, even if Ken Paxton can't.

The other pair of stories are both out of Georgia. The Peach State has some of the worst maternal mortality rates in the nation. And, it would seem, the Republican-controlled legislature wants to make things even worse. So, they are considering a near-total abortion ban, very much along the lines of the ones in other Deep South states. Should the measure become law, an abortion would become illegal as soon as a fetal heartbeat is detectable. That would work out to a cutoff of about 6 weeks, which is before most women know they are pregnant. The only exception to the law would be if the life of the mother was in danger. While that might sound reasonable in theory, in practice it creates a lot of danger for mothers, and no small number of injuries and deaths, because medical professionals are leery of intervening until doing so is absolutely, 100%, no-question-about-it justified. By then, it's often too late.

The other Georgia story speaks to the... culture, for lack of a better word that has already trickled down to at least some of the folks responsible for enforcing the state's current, still pretty restrictive, abortion laws. A 24-year-old woman, whose name is publicly known but does not need to be repeated here, suffered a spontaneous miscarriage. It was so spontaneous, in fact, and so traumatic that she passed out, bleeding, outside her residence. Before she passed out, fearing prosecution, she tried to dispose of the fetus. This did not work; she was arrested by Georgia state police and charged with "concealing the death of another person" and "abandonment of a dead body."

That was last week. Since then, the coroner's office in Tift County has conducted a full autopsy on the miscarried 19-week-old fetus. The finding was that there was no trauma, no evidence that the woman tried to abort the pregnancy, and that the fetus was dead while still in her body and never took a breath. And so, Georgia law enforcement has responded by... keeping the woman in jail. They are still deciding whether or not to drop the charges.

We recognize that our headline ("War on Women") is pretty loaded. We are very familiar with the arguments and the rhetoric of the anti-choice movement, as we have been paying close attention to those folks for decades. Consistently, the great majority of anti-choice activists have said: (1) abortion is a states' rights issue, and (2) of course the procedure should be available in cases of rape, incest, or the mother's health is being in danger. Neither of those two precepts is being followed in the cases covered by the above news stories. Meanwhile, we have never once heard an anti-choice advocate say that if a woman suffers a miscarriage, and there is even the slightest chance it might not be a "real" miscarriage, she should be imprisoned and made to suffer during a period of intense physical and emotional trauma. And yet, that is exactly what is happening in the third story.

Maybe the rhetoric of the anti-choice movement wasn't truthful. Maybe the people in positions of power, like Ken Paxton, don't actually care what the movement wants and are taking matters into their own hands, in service of their own goals. We do not feel particularly qualified to judge what is going on. What we do know is that if the United States chucks 10,000 bombs in the direction of Yemen, it is making war on Yemen, no matter what the U.S. government's stated (or actual) goals might be. Similarly, you have abortion policies that are turning women physicians into criminals, that are leading women in Georgia and elsewhere to be maimed or killed, and that are putting the 25% of women who suffer a miscarriage at real risk of being imprisoned. Regardless of what the stated (or actual) intent is, that is a war on women. (Z)

Video Killed the Reality Star

Politicians can get away with an awful lot, especially these days. However, one thing that is tough to overcome is if some sort of bad behavior is captured on tape. If people can hear it for themselves, it's rather harder to make the problem go away. Even worse than that is if the bad behavior is captured on video. As it turns out, people trust their own eyes, quite a bit.

We make this observation because the Trump administration has a couple of video problems right now, both of them related to the scapegoating of those who are foreign-born. The first of those involves DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who seems to have some of the worst political instincts ever seen from a politician of (nominally) national stature. Yes, she managed to twice get herself elected as governor of South Dakota, but maybe securing the leadership of a state with 500,000 or so people is not quite the same crucible of fire as running for, say, U.S. Senator from New York.

Anyhow, despite the fact that the Trump administration has yet to offer any proof that the people deported to El Salvador were actually gang members, and despite the fact that the administration's actions have already been deemed to be in violation of the law by James Boasberg, Noem and Donald Trump are still trying to squeeze this for all it's worth. And so, she traveled to El Salvador with a press contingent, so that she could be filmed railing against immigrants with the deported, and now imprisoned, Venezuelans in the background of the shot:

She posted the video, filmed on an iPhone, to her eX-Twitter account within a few minutes of it being recorded. Clearly, she was eagerly awaiting a pat on the head from the Dear Leader.

We fully understand that the point here is to look "strong." But just like the dog-shooting story, it actually makes Noem look cruel and inhuman. Again, there has yet to be any proof that these men are guilty of anything (and there has now been reporting that the main "evidence" of their guilt was... that they have tattoos). And even if they are guilty of a crime, or many crimes, cramming them into a small space, with shaved heads, and then using them as a backdrop is really icky. Especially since they were clearly posed by the jailers, as The Bulwark's Jonathan Last points out.

And not only is it icky, it's potentially illegal. The Trump administration has a bad habit of using one interpretation of events when it suits their needs, and then switching to a radically different one as necessary. For example, the Signal messages were alternately "classified" and "not classified" depending on what particular characterization was most useful at the time. Similarly, the forced deportations of these men were justified on the basis that they were "making war" on the United States, and so the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is in effect. Well, if so, the Geneva Conventions forbid the use of prisoners of war as props for political messaging (or for any other purpose).

Moving along, the other video is the one that might really catch fire. The next 48 hours or so will tell the tale. The administration continues to target graduate students who are Muslim, based on increasingly spurious claims that they somehow have something to do with Palestine or Hamas. Yesterday, for example, the feds arrested Iranian national Alireza Doroudi, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. Exactly what he did to cause this is unknown, as the government has refused to comment since "disappearing" him to... Louisiana... maybe? Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the visas of 300 other grad students have been revoked.

So, what exactly is this video we keep talking about? Well, it actually involves yet another grad student, a hijab-wearing Turkish woman named Rumeysa Ozturk, who is enrolled at Tufts University in Boston. The Trump administration has done us all the kindness of at least semi-explaining itself in this case, saying that Ozturk is guilty of "glorifying and supporting terrorists" and that she has shown support for Hamas.

Exactly what that means, however, is not clear. It's not too hard to discover that she was one of four authors on a pro-Palestine op-ed that ran in the Tufts Daily last year. However, and this is coming from someone who worked for a college newspaper for well over a decade, it's actually pretty mild by college-paper opinion-page standards. And even if it wasn't mild, free speech is not a crime. We've had a few messages from readers who say, First Amendment or not, they're not too sad that the Trump administration is targeting the most outspoken pro-Palestine/anti-Israel protesters. Those who feel this way should remember that these things always start with the easiest targets, and then move on from there.

As chance would have it, when Ozturk was arrested while walking down a Boston street, she happened to be within the field of someone's home security cameras. And so, the whole incident was caught on camera:

It's pretty scary stuff. She was minding her own business, and then was suddenly surrounded by half a dozen men in dark clothing and hoodies. As far as she knew, she was about to be raped or kidnapped (if the latter thought crossed her mind, she wasn't exactly wrong). In a matter of seconds, she's cuffed, and shoved into a car, with her next stop being Louisiana, where her lawyers have been unable to make contact with her.

A major point of these grad-student arrests, besides scoring points with the base, is to silence dissent. Someone in the Trump administration is clever enough to know that large-scale campus protests were absolutely lethal for more than one president, most obviously Lyndon B. Johnson, but also Joe Biden/Kamala Harris. And the scheme has been pretty successful, at least in the short term. Students and faculty who might be tempted to protest, particularly to protest what's going on in Gaza, are largely scared stiff, for fear that they'll be the next person to end up in a Louisiana gulag.

But suppression of free speech is not usually an effective long-term play. Eventually, as anger intensifies, and as it spreads to more people, things tend to pop, like a cork in a champagne bottle. And the video of Ozturk is bad enough that it has led to mass outrage and mass protests in Boston, both on campus and off. That's 2,000 people in the former case, and 1,000 in the latter, who were roused to action less than 24 hours after Ozturk was arrested and the video was made public.

We believe that while the Trump administration may win the early battles, they are going to lose the war. Eventually, the universities and the law firms and the news outlets are going to realize that this is a "Join or Die" situation, and that accommodating Trump just encourages more and more predations by him and his administration. These days, we regularly think of India, circa 1946. The people of India were kept under the thumb of the British for a long time. But when tens of millions of those people finally decided that they had bloody well had enough, even the mighty British empire was powerless to maintain its grip. (Z)

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: Why Did the Salmon Cross the Road?

Last week, we only gave one hint as to the headline theme, because the weekend posts were canceled due to illness. That hint was that we intended to run the headline "We Don't Need No Education, Part II: The Trump Administration Is Re-Whiting History," but had to hold that item (and it's still held, due to other, more pressing, news). That one hint was enough, though. Here's reader T.K. in Half Moon Bay, St. Kitts, with the solution:

The headlines this week all contain the name of a type of fish:

• Legal News, Part I: John Roberts Won't Permit This (We Hope)
• Legal News, Part II: Paul, Weiss Makes the Best of a Weak Hand?
• We Don't Need No Education: Antisemitism Was Just a Red Herring
• I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: Goodbye, Blue Sky
• This Week in Schadenfreude: What a Wahoo
• This Week in Freudenfreude: See a Pike, Open the Dike

There is not such a thing as a Weakhandfish. However, there is a Weakfish and a Handfish, so either of those counts. From the headline that did not happen, a whiting is a kind of fish. And a salmon, from this headline, is also a kind of fish, of course. Well, that and a former Angels outfielder.

Here are the first 50 readers to get it right:

N.H. in London, England, UK R.D. in Cheshire, CT R.C. in Eagleville, PA P.Q. in Metuchen, NJ T.K. in Half Moon Bay J.T. in Philadelphia, PA R.D.K. in Ebensee am Traunsee, Austria J.N. in Zionsville, IN M.A. in Boston, MA J.H. in Flint, MI S.J.V. in New York City, NY M.S. in Canton, NY D.K. in Bethesda, MD D.L. in Uslar, Germany K.H. in Maryville, TN J.D.W. in Baltimore, MD M.M. in Dunellen, NJ J.M. in Eagle Mills, NY G.W. in Avon, CT M.J. in Oakdale, MN J.L. in Walnut Creek, CA M.L. in West Hartford, CT S.K. in Ardmore, PA G.G. in Nottinghamshire, UK, England T.T. in Conway, AR

H.B. in Toronto, ON, Canada D.D. in Carversville, PA A.A. in Branchport, NY M.T. in Wheat Ridge, CO D.S. in Nashua, NH D.S. in Layton, UT M.K. in Long Branch, NJ T.C. in Key West, FL W.M. in Istanbul, Turkey J.T. in Madison, WI P.R. in Kirksville, MO G.K. in Blue Island, IL D.L. in Springfield, IL S.W. in Winter Garden, FL D.W. in Manhattan, MT R.M. in Ocala, FL H.H. in Boston, MA A.S.F. in Chelmsford, MA H.S. in Lake Forest, CA K.C. in Los Angeles, CA K.R. in Austin, TX M.D. in North Canton, OH P.J. in Delaware, OH R.A. in Chesterfield, MO P.L. in Skövde, Sweden

The 50th correct response was received at 7:22 a.m. PT on Friday.

As to this week's theme, it is in the Trivial Pursuit category Arts and Entertainment. Actually, it could go in another classic Trivial Pursuit category, but under the rules used by the publisher, Arts and Entertainment is the correct choice. It relies on one word per headline and, because we did not feel right making a game out of people losing their jobs, out of extreme abortion policies, or out of scapegoating immigrants, those three headlines are not part of the puzzle. For a hint, we'll say that it's a VERY timely theme. That's probably not quite enough, so we'll also give an answer key of sorts for the five headlines that are part of the puzzle: 1B2BLFPC. That answer key is in the correct order, by the way.

If you have a guess, send it to comments@electoral-vote.com with subject line "March 28 Headlines." (Z)

This Week in Schadenfreude: No Tomorrow for J.D. Vance?

There are roughly 56,000 people living in Greenland, and the average household size there is about 3.5 people. That means there are roughly 16,000 households. Today, J.D. Vance and his wife Usha are scheduled to visit the U.S. Space Force Base at Pituffik, which is pretty small, and has a contingent of only about 150 people. It's a 7-hour flight each way, and so the Trump administration might like to get a bit more mileage out of the trip than can be gotten out of a tour of such a small installation. Consequently, the U.S. government's advance team went door-to-door, desperately trying to set up a photo-op for the second couple during their visit. Among those 16,000 households, they could not find a single taker.

Actually, that is not entirely true. Originally, the trip was going to include only the Second Lady. And while that was the case, there were a few Greenlanders willing to put out the welcome mat. She was going to visit a local business, and was going to fire the starter's pistol for a dogsled race. But once her husband announced he was coming along, all of the invitations were yanked. The people of Greenland are clever enough to know that: (1) the whole point of the trip, initially, was to generate some "Greenland wants to be American" propaganda; (2) the itinerary was updated to the space base, as we noted yesterday, to save face when it became clear that Greenlanders don't want to be American, and don't want to be subjects of any propaganda that suggests otherwise; and (3) the would-be photo-op is a cheap attempt to sneak some of that propaganda in, anyhow. So, they were willing to shake hands and pose for an awkward picture or two with Usha Vance, but the moment that J.D. Vance got involved, then it got far too official looking and far too close to Donald Trump himself, and the Greenlanders said "No way." In view of this, at this point, there is some question as to whether or not the Vances will even bother to make the trip.

And that brings us to the real point of this item. At the moment, at least on the surface, it looks like Vance is the frontrunner in the race to inherit the MAGA throne. He's well-known, he's a Trump insider, he's 2-for-2 in campaigns for office, and he'll say or do whatever it takes to lick Trump's boots (or anything else that needs to be licked). However, we are skeptical this can last for 4 full years (or 3, really, since the next presidential cycle will get underway in spring of 2027). Here are three major problems that Vance has, in our view:

• Vance Is Weird: Maybe it's his odd, cherubic visage. Maybe it's the (alleged) eyeliner. Maybe it's the voice. Maybe it's the herky-jerky speaking style. Whatever it is, Vance very clearly sets off many people's "weird" alarms. Some politicians don't, some politicians do, and he definitely does. For example, just two weeks ago, in this very space, we had a rundown of surreal Vance memes. It's Urban Folklore 101 that if so many memes like that, about the same person, reach a wide audience, it is a clear indication that something is rubbing people the wrong way.
  
  We have our doubts that Trump will ever really anoint a successor, either overtly or subtly. Really, he is the type of person who would enjoy watching the bloodsport as various pretenders to the throne try to knife each other. But if he does get behind Dear Leader v2.0, whoever that person might be, we just can't see him summoning up any enthusiasm for Vance. Trump likes the "cool kids" (so he can pretend that he is one of them), and hates to associate himself with losers and nerds. Vance is a geeky technocrat, which is just a fancy way of saying "nerd." It is for this same basic reason that Trump Sr. has never shown the slightest interest in making Trump Jr. the heir to the throne. Dad doesn't respect Junior, and the only child he DOES respect (Ivanka) has no further interest in politics.
  
  
• Vance Is Too Independent: As we note above, Vance is happy to do whatever bootlicking he needs to do, at least in public. In private, as indicated by the Signal chat, he's rather less obeisant. One has to imagine that chat did not happen to be the one and only time Vance (carelessly) dared to be critical of Trump. And even it was somehow the only time, Trump is now on notice. As we have noted many times (including yesterday), the President does not forget or forgive slights, no matter how slight they might be. At least one Republican senator, who only spoke on condition of anonymity, is thinking along the same lines as us. Speaking to Jewish Insider, this senator said: "I've gotta wonder if Trump's looking at this and going, 'What have I done?' Trump might come to regret anointing Vance as his heir apparent by tapping him as his running mate last year."
  
  
• Vance Is Un-Fireable: To the extent that Trump has a leadership style, it's rooted in his ability to fire or banish his underlings at a moment's notice. As long as a person is 100% on board the S.S. Trump, and as long as a person doesn't become a liability in some way (legal, P.R., etc.), he's willing to keep them around and to allow them to be "insiders." Mike Flynn, Stephen Miller, Roger Stone, Linda McMahon, etc. know how to play the game, and that is why they have survived, traveling a road that is jammed with the corpses of former Trump loyalists.
  
  The one person in the White House who Trump absolutely cannot fire is Vance. And the President clearly does not enjoy operating without that kind of leverage. Yes, he can exile Vance from the inner circle, and limit him to cutting the ribbon at openings of Piggly Wiggly locations. But Trump prefers underlings he can cast out of paradise entirely, and he can't do that with Vance. By virtue of being VP, Vance will always have a platform in a way that would not be true if, say, Stephen Miller somehow became "former Trump administration insider Stephen Miller."

Indeed, we cannot help but notice that even now, despite his ostensible high profile, the Vance vice presidency is unfolding much like the Mike Pence vice presidency. Remember, for example, when Pence was deployed to an Indianapolis Colts game for some embarrassing political theater centered on kneeling football players? Well, that was in October 2017, about eight months into Trump v1.0. And we all know what eventually happened with Pence, who was neutered well before he refused to participate in the 1/6 coup. We're just 2 months into Trump v2.0, and Vance is already drawing embarrassing assignments, like going to Greenland despite the fact that nobody wants him there. Sure looks to us like history is repeating itself. (Z)

This Week in Freudenfreude: No Today for Unification Church of Japan

This is an odd story, in many ways, but we think the ultimate outcome is a positive one, so we're going with it.

It has been a shade less than 3 years since former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe was assassinated. The man responsible for that crime, Tetsuya Yamagami, said that he did it because Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) were in bed with the Unification Church. And the Unification Church, as part of its approach, is in the habit of shaking down adherents for all of their assets. Yamagami feels that the Church is responsible for his family's financial ruin, and that Abe and the LDP are, in effect, accessories. Since the Unification Church (Full name: Family Federation for World Peace and Unification) is based on South Korea, it's beyond the reach of a Japanese national. Abe, by contrast, was not. Hence the assassination.

And now, the most unusual aspect of the story. The Japanese government has spent the years since Abe's death investigating Yamagami's claims, and concluded that he's 100% correct. His family really was ruined by the Unification Church. Abe and the LDP really were in bed with the Church; more than three-quarters of LDP members in the Japanese Parliament had received financial support from the Church. And so, while the assassination certainly was not legal, it was rational. Undoubtedly, Luigi Mangione smiled and nodded when he heard about this story.

Consequently, although this is not generally how this is supposed to work, the Japanese government got to work trying to solve the problem that Yamagami had highlighted, in violent fashion. Prosecutors took the Unification Church to court, and this week they won. Assuming the decision stands up on appeal, the Unification Church will lose its tax-exempt status and will have to surrender its ill-gotten gains. And this is actually the third time Japan has implemented this penalty; the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult (sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subways) and Myokakuji group (gross fraud) got the same treatment.

We take the view that there's something very positive in making clear that if a religious group abuses its privileged legal, economic and cultural status, then it loses that status. If Japanese people still want to be members of the Unification Church, they are free to act on that. It's just that the government won't give the Church an assist anymore. Would 'twere certain other nations had that same policy (oh and, by the way, the Unification Church has also cultivated a relationship with every Republican president since 1968, except for Jerry Ford).

Have a good weekend, all! (Z)

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