. . .

He put his feet up and reached for a fresh Zyn pouch. “Young men, like a lot of Americans, feel increasingly alienated,” he continued. They can’t afford college or rent, they can’t get a date, they can’t imagine a stable future. “The right is always there to tell them, ‘Yes, you should be angry, and the reason your life sucks is because of immigrants, or because a trans kid played a sport.’ And all the Democrats are telling them is ‘No, shut up, your life is fine, be joyful.’ ” No one has ever accused Piker of being a moderate, but in this case he is trying to forge a compromise. “My way is to go, ‘Look, be angry if you want. But your undocumented neighbor is not the problem here. You’re looking in the wrong direction.’ ”

In 2015, the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton wrote that “white non-Hispanics without college degrees” were experiencing an anomalous spike in mortality from opioids, alcohol, and suicide. They later called these “deaths of despair.” In 2016, J. D. Vance, then an anti-Trump conservative, published a memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” about the struggles of white rural families like his own. Promoting the book on PBS, he explained (but did not yet excuse) why such voters were drawn to Trump: “I think that the sense of cultural alienation breeds a sense of mistrust.” The first Trump Administration didn’t deliver many material gains to the rural poor—deaths of despair continued to rise, and wages continued to stagnate—but at least Trump spoke to their anguish and seemed outraged on their behalf. In retrospect, the question may not be why so many non-urban non-élites became Trump Republicans but what took them so long.

Around the same time, social scientists started to notice an overlapping crisis. The statistics were grim—twenty-first-century males were, relative to their forefathers and their female contemporaries, much more likely to fall behind in school, drop out of college, languish in the workforce, or die by overdose or suicide. The title of a 2012 book by the journalist Hanna Rosin declared “The End of Men.” The following year, the economists Marianne Bertrand and Jessica Pan published a paper called “The Trouble with Boys.” In one survey, more than a quarter of men in their teens and twenties reported having no close friends. When Covid hit, men were significantly more likely to die from it.

“In the fifteen years I’ve been looking at the statistics, the outcomes for men have not changed,” Rosin told me. “What did change, tremendously, is the culture.” The last Democratic Presidential candidate to win the male vote was Barack Obama. When Bernie Sanders ran for President, he had a zealous male following, but many top Democrats treated the “Bernie bros” less like a force to be harnessed than like a threat to be vanquished. A “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom call raised millions for Kamala Harris’s campaign, but it would have been anathema to her base if she’d given a speech about what she planned to do for white dudes. This was, meanwhile, a key part of Trump’s appeal.

. . .

Here’s how the White House is celebrating their fascist takeover:


I’m sorry to say that I think that may be literally true. These are not normal people. That account is the official Rapid Response account of the Trump 47 White House.

I wrote about the Salvadoran prison plan last month. and earlier today. This is actually happening. I am truly surprised they haven’t just re-opened the Bush era black site torture chambers. But that’s a lot more expensive. Better to send them to a country that will happily do the job for peanuts.

I must have written a hundred times that the torture regime of the Bush administration was only the first step to official authoritarian status. And here we are.

Louisiana is preparing to carry out its first execution in 15 years using a gassing method that is banned under the state’s own laws for euthanizing cats and dogs.

Barring a last-minute intervention by the US supreme court, Jessie Hoffman, 46, is scheduled to die by nitrogen gas on Tuesday at Louisiana state penitentiary, commonly known as Angola prison. He was sentenced to death for the 1996 rape and murder of an advertising executive, Mary Elliott.

Should the execution go ahead, Louisiana would become only the second state to use nitrogen gas as a means of killing people. Lawyers for the condemned man have decried the pending procedure as cruel and unusual punishment.

They point to the four nitrogen executions that have been carried out in recent months in Alabama, in which all four prisoners displayed signs of distress on the gurney. They included Kenneth Smith, who eyewitnesses said shook violently, writhed and convulsed as he was forced to breathe pure nitrogen through a mask.

. . .

Donald Trump has completed an extraordinary return to power as the 47th president, vowing to impose his vision and re-altering the political and cultural landscape of the nation.

To keep up with the dizzying array of executive orders, directives, firings and policy changes, the Guardian will be tracking the major developments of the second Trump administration’s first 100 days, just like we did during the first 100 days of Trump’s first presidency in 2017.

This story will be updated every Monday during Trump’s first 100 days.

(Following is a list of the weeks in descending order.)

. . .

20 January 2025Day 1

Trump was sworn in as the 47th commander in chief under the dome of the US Capitol in a made-for-television ceremony that saw him stick to the script in his official speech but unleash his true feelings in his second speech that attacked the January 6 committee as “political thugs” and the pardons Joe Biden granted the members on the panel. Meanwhile at the Capital One Arena, where Trump had his inaugural parade, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, briefly shocked the news cycle by twice doing what resembled a Hitler salute. Trump wasted no time starting his agenda to dramatically reshape the political and cultural landscape of the nation, signing executive orders at the arena and then at the White House while he gave a freewheeling commentary to reporters.

The executive orders included:

Pardoning more than 1,500 people convicted on January 6 Capitol riot charges.

Withdrawing the US from the Paris climate accords.

Withdrawing from the World Health Organization.

Renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

Attempting to end birthright citizenship.

Preparing to investigate prosecutors who charged him.

Directing the justice department to not enforce the TikTok ban for 75 days.

David Erich's Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful is a brave, furious book about the long-running plan by America's wealthy and corrupt to "open up the libel laws" so they can destroy their critics:

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/murder-the-truth-david-enrich

Enrich is a veteran business reporter at the New York Times; he's reported extensively on high finance and sleaze, and has a knack for piercing the Shield of Boredom that protects finance crimes from scrutiny. His 2017 book The Spider's Web manages the nearly impossible trick of making the LIBOR-rigging conspiracy – which involved trillions, but in ways that were so baroque that hardly anyone noticed – comprehensible:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/09/24/the-spider-network-a-novelistic-account-of-the-mediocre-rich-men-who-robbed-the-world-with-libor/

. . .

It’s a constitutional showdown (Axios):

The Trump administration says it ignored a Saturday court order to turn around two planeloads of alleged Venezuelan gang members because the flights were over international waters and therefore the ruling didn’t apply, two senior officials tell Axios.

Shortly before 7 p.m. ET on Saturday, the New York Times reports, “Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the Trump administration to cease its use of an obscure wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, as a pretext for the expulsion of migrants, and immediately return anyone it was expelling under the act to the United States.”

. . .

Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against use of the Alien Enemies Act to affect their deportation. Besides, because none of the prisoners received a hearing, it is unclear how many of the 250 passengers on the planes were actual gang members, illegally in the country, on visas , on green cards, or innocent bystanders in the wrong place at the wrong time when detained. The Trump White House didn’t so much as say “trust us.”

. . .

This timeline will be scrutinized and argued in court (Axios):

The timeline: The president signed the executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act on Friday night, but intentionally did not advertise it. On Saturday morning, word of the order leaked, officials said, prompting a mad scramble to get planes in the air.

At 2:31 p.m. Saturday, an immigration activist who tracks deportation flights, posted on X that “TWO HIGHLY UNUSUAL ICE flights” were departing from Texas to El Salvador, which had agreed to accept Venezuelan gang members deported from the U.S.

Hours later, during a court hearing filed by the ACLU., Boasberg ordered a halt to the deportations and said any flights should be turned around mid-air.

“This is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately,” he told the Justice Department, according to the Washington Post.

At that point, about 6:51 p.m., both flights were off the Yucatan Peninsula, according to flight paths posted on X.

The Washington Post presented a graphical timeline.




But the Trump administration had no intention of complying. The White House worked feverishly to escape court review. The showman wanted to demonstrate who’s boss and send a signal worthy of Vladimir Putin defenestrating a political enemy. *

They just needed killin’ comes next

. . .

Individuals associated with the federal government have, in defiance of a court order and without a trial or any form of due process, deported hundreds of people from the territory of the United States to El Salvador, where they will be held indefinitely in a concentration camp.

1. This violated fundamental rights enumerated in the Constitution. Everyone in the United States has the right to a fair trial with due process of law. People who say things along the lines of "enemy combatants don't have the right to due process" are wrong. And it is important to understand the implications of that position. Anyone can be named an "enemy combatant." More fundamentally, once you accept any exception to the general rule, you are just inviting executive power to always use that exception, or make up another one. If you are a citizen and you are casting doubt on the importance of due process, remember this: you need due process in order to prove that you are a citizen.

2. The deportation was done in violation of a court order, according to a plan to undo the rule of law. This means that the action was not only specifically illegal, but designed as a challenge to the rule of law as such. Naturally, the individuals who chose to ignore a court order carefully selected the moment when they would do so. They chose a situation that they could characterize as us against them, the Americans against the foreigners, the regular people against the criminals. They are deliberately associating the law itself with people, the deportees, who they expect to be unpopular. This is a tactic, and historically speaking a very familiar one. In this way they hope to get popular opinion on their side as they ignore a court order. But if they succeed in making an exception once, it becomes the rule.

3. You do not know who was on those two planes to El Salvador. The individuals who arranged the deportation claim that the deportees were "foreign alien terrorists," but we have no way of knowing whether this is true. They also claim that they were “monsters,” which is not true. We do not know the names of the human beings who were deported. We cannot therefore know whether they were foreigners or American citizens. As to whether they were terrorists: they were not convicted of any crimes, and so it is hard to know whether or how this would be true. There is no doubt that their rights were violated. But your rights have been violated as well. If you do not know the details about operations that forcibly remove human beings from the territory of the United States, you do not have a responsive government. And you are therefore at risk.

. . .

I actually think it’s going to be worse than what the analysts are predicting. Trump won’t shut his trap and now they’re detaining foreigners at airports who haven’t done anything wrong. It’s dangerous here.

The Washington Post reports:

International travelers concerned about President Donald Trump’s trade policies and bellicose rhetoric have been canceling trips to the United States, depriving the U.S. tourism industry of billions of dollars at a time when the economy has started to appear wobbly.

Canadians are skipping trips to Disney World and music festivals. Europeans are eschewing U.S. national parks, and Chinese travelers are vacationing in Australia instead.

International travel to the United States is expected to slide by 5 percent this year, contributing to a $64 billion shortfall for the travel industry, according to Tourism Economics. The research firm had originallyforecast a 9 percent increase in foreign travel, but revised its estimate late last monthto reflect “polarizing Trump Administration policies and rhetoric.”

“There’s been a dramatic shift in our outlook,” said Adam Sacks, president of Tourism Economics. “You’re looking at a much weaker economic engine than what otherwise would’ve been, not just because of tariffs, but the rhetoric and condescending tone around it.”

It’s pretty clear that Trump and his cronies and henchmen are hostile to all foreigners and they are not welcome here unless they are Russian oligarchs or white South Africans (and no I’m not just talking about Elon Musk.). That’s it. I can’t blame anyone else for staying away. Why take the chance?

National Institutes of Health officials have urged scientists to remove all references to mRNA vaccine technology from their grant applications, two researchers said, in a move that signaled the agency might abandon a promising field of medical research.

The mRNA technology is under study at the NIH for prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, including flu and AIDS, and also cancer. It was deployed in the development of covid-19 vaccines credited with saving 3 million lives in the U.S. alone — an accomplishment President Donald Trump bragged about in his first term.

. . .

Political conservatives in the U.S. have promulgated conspiracy theories, unsupported by scientific evidence, that the shots and their relatively new technology are dangerous. This has undermined public support for covid vaccinations and mRNA research.

. . .

Everyone’s always saying that the Democrats need to learn to talk like Real Americans and appeal more to their economic needs and desires. I guess this must be what they’re talking about. Billionaires babbling about how Americans don’t need any more “baubles” and evoking Marie Antoinette.

Duly noted.

Here’s the transcript of most of Bessent’s interview. He is a tool. He either knows better and is lying or he’s a fool. If there’s one thing we’ve learned it’s that some of these guys can be billionaires but it doesn’t make them smart so who knows? Maybe he actually believes that painted orange freak knows what he’s doing.

KRISTEN WELKER:

And joining me now is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Secretary Bessent, welcome to Meet The Press.

SEC. SCOTT BESSENT:Kristen, good to see you.

KRISTEN WELKER:

It’s wonderful to have you here. Thank you for being here in person. Let’s start off by talking about the big picture on the economy. A majority of Americans say they disapprove of President Trump’s handling of the economy. Consumer sentiment plunged this week to a 29-month low. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs slashed growth expectations. Why are all of those folks wrong and President Trump is right about his tariff policy?

SEC. SCOTT BESSENT:

Well, Kristen, and thanks for having me here. And look, what I am not going to say that went on for a long time under the Biden administration and for a lot of the media, and I’m not going to point fingers. But they used to say it was a “vibecession,” and the American people don’t know what they talk about. And Donald Trump, his administration, myself all believe that the American people know what they’re feeling. And that we believe that our policies will change that. Clearly, they are traumatized from what’s happened with this affordability crisis that was brought on by the previous administration. They want relief. We’ve been in for eight weeks. We are putting the policies in place that will make the affordability crisis go down, inflation moderate. And that as we set the sails, I am confident that the American people will come our way, even if some of the media narrative doesn’t.

KRISTEN WELKER:

Well, and just to be clear, I mean, these are polls that are taken two months into President Trump’s presidency. But let’s talk about what happened in the stock market this week. Worst week for the market in two years. Does that worry you, Mr. Secretary?

SEC. SCOTT BESSENT:

Not at all. I’ve been in the investment business for 35 years. And I can tell you that corrections are healthy. They’re normal. What’s not healthy is straight-up, that is euphoric markets. That’s how you get a financial crisis. It would have been healthier if someone had put the brakes on in ’06-’07. We wouldn’t have had the problems in ’08. So I’m not worried about the markets. Over the long term, if we put good tax policy in place, deregulation, and energy security, the markets will do great.

KRISTEN WELKER:

I hear you say you’re not worried about the markets. But nearly 60% of Americans are invested in the markets. That’s their retirement savings. What do you say to Americans who have real concerns that their retirement savings may be in jeopardy?

(truncated - please read Digby's post.)

There’s more and it’s all BS.

I think I miss Steve Mnuchin.