Outrage and betrayal... Giving away only bargaining chip....

'Deep sense of outrage and betrayal': House Democrats react to Schumer announcement

By Barbara Sprunt

When Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced his plans to provide one of the key Democratic votes Republicans need to advance a partisan spending bill, the decision hit like a shockwave among House Democrats.

"I think there is a deep sense of outrage and betrayal and this is not just progressive Democrats — this is across the board, the entire party," New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters Thursday night at a party retreat in Leesburg, Va.

"I think it is a huge slap in the face," she said.

NPR has reached out to Schumer's office for further comment.

House Democrats began their annual retreat already worried about how their Senate counterparts would vote on a GOP spending bill that all but one House Democrat voted against earlier in the week. Many Democrats saw that vote as a moment of solidarity and hoped senators would follow suit.

"Democratic senators should stick together," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., before Schumer made the announcement.

Jayapal, the former chair of the Progressive Caucus, warned that the vote is about more than just this spending bill. "If we give in on this, we're going to give in on a whole bunch of things," she said.

In remarks on the floor, Schumer explained his position, saying a government shutdown is a "far worse option" than passing the GOP's spending bill.

Some House Democrats immediately and vehemently disagreed.

"I think they're going to rue the day they made this decision," said New York Rep. Joe Morelle, a member of the centrist New Democrat Coalition. 

"Voting against the CR after you vote to allow the bill on the floor, which is what I assume some of them are trying to be too clever in doing," Morelle sighed. "Frankly, now I think this just gives license to Republicans to continue to dismantle the government. They now have the acquiescence of Senate Democrats."

Ocasio-Cortez pushed back against Schumer's argument.

"I cannot underscore enough how incorrect that is, because what voting for this CR does, is that it codifies the chaos and the reckless cuts that Elon Musk has been pursuing," she said. "That is what Senate Democrats will be empowering if they vote for the CR."

She added there's time to "correct course" and that she and her colleagues are calling and texting senators to implore them not to support the cloture vote slated for Friday morning.

"A shutdown is not inevitable," she said. "We can pass a 30-day clean extension to allow Republicans to negotiate with Democrats in order for us to have a functioning government."

Throughout the conference, members stressed the importance of a unified message from both the House and Senate to the public as the opposition party.

 "This is not a time to have a lack of clarity and lack of purpose. This is a time to be decisive about what you're going to do," New Mexico Rep. Gabe Vasquez told NPR Thursday before Schumer spoke.

Vasquez, who is also a member of the centrist New Democrats, called on Schumer to "step up and get his caucus together."

"Show the American people that we're going to stand up and fight for them in one of the very few opportunities that Democrats have to gain leverage over this administration."

Later in the evening, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and his top deputies released a statement saying the GOP bill will "unleash havoc on everyday Americans, giving Donald Trump and Elon Musk even more power to continue dismantling the federal government."

Jeffries, along with whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., and caucus chair Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., wrote that their caucus stands ready to vote for a four-week continuing resolution that brings parties back to the negotiating table.

"We remain strongly opposed to the partisan spending bill under consideration in the Senate," the statement read.

Maggots: "I love law and order!" Unless it goes against them, then "KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! "

Judges threatened with impeachment, bombs for ruling against Trump agenda

Carrie Johnson

Federal judges who have ruled against the Trump administration this year are confronting a wave of threats, potentially compromising their personal safety and the independence of the judiciary.

The sister of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett received a bomb threat earlier this month, and lower court judges who hit pause on some of President Trump's efforts to dismantle federal agencies and programs have been singled out on social media.

Republican lawmakers close to the president even have proposed impeachment proceedings against a few of those judges, who serve for life.

Elon Musk, who oversees the Department of Government Efficiency making cuts to federal agencies, himself has repeatedly posted on social media about impeaching judges who delay or block parts of Trump's agenda.

Efforts to undermine the judiciary come at the same time the Trump administration has moved to fire lawyers inside the Justice Department and the Pentagon, penalize private law firms who represented clients Trump does not like, and to back away from participation in the activities of the American Bar Association.

Judge Richard Sullivan, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, said in his lifetime four federal judges have been killed in retaliation for their work on the bench.

"This is not hypothetical," Sullivan, who leads a Judicial Conference panel on security issues, told reporters in a news conference this week. The Judicial Conference is a representative body of federal judges that frames policies for courts. "It's real. It's happened before. We have to be certain that it doesn't happen again," he said.

The Federal Judges Association, a voluntary group of more than 1,000 judges across the nation, said judiciary plays a "critical role in preserving democracy and a law-abiding society."

"Judges must be able to do their jobs without fear of violence or undue influence," the group said in a written statement to NPR.

Early threats

One thing stands out to legal experts: these attacks on judges are coming at a very early stage in the legal process — often, before the Supreme Court weighs in as the final decider.

"We have a system of justice that allows for appeals," Judge Jeffrey Sutton, chief judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, told reporters this week. "That's typically the way it works. Impeachment is not and shouldn't be a short-circuiting of that process. And so it is concerning if impeachment is used in a way that is designed to do just that."

Only 15 federal judges have faced impeachment, mostly for allegations of wrongdoing such as bribery, corruption, or perjury, in the past couple of centuries.

Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University, said the odds of a successful judicial impeachment are pretty low, and to remove a judge from the bench would require a two-thirds vote from the Senate.

"The more that people like Elon Musk are putting on the wall the idea that it's appropriate to attack these judges for nothing more than ruling against the federal government, the more that we're normalizing what really are in the main very serious threats to judicial independence," Vladeck said.

"Jeopardize the Rule of Law"

But Paul Grimm, who spent 26 years as a federal judge, said even the threat of impeachment can amount to intimidation.

"And if you try to intimidate judges, if that's your goal, so that they do not do their constitutional duty, then you jeopardize the rule of law," said Grimm, who leads the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke Law School. "And without the rule of law, every liberty and every right that we cherish as Americans is vulnerable."

Grimm said he worries a lot about online posts that display the home and work addresses of judges and their adult children, a step that he said "crosses the line."

Nearly five years ago, an angry litigant shot and killed the son of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas in New Jersey.

In 2022, a California man carrying a gun and zip ties traveled to the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He turned away after spotting a security detail there. The man has pleaded not guilty to a charge of attempted assassination of the justice, and awaits trial this year.

And in 2023, a state court judge in Maryland was gunned down in his driveway.

Attacks over rulings

The U.S. Marshals say threats against federal judges have doubled in recent years, according to the most recent data. And those threats have been directed at both Democrat and Republican judges.

Justice Barrett came under withering criticism this month from some right-wing political commentators, after she voted alongside Chief Justice John Roberts and the liberals on the high court against Trump's effort to freeze foreign aid.

Lower court judges have faced online attacks for their early rulings on Musk's DOGE team, efforts to restore government web pages, and the freeze on foreign aid.

The Marshals protect judges, but they also report to the U.S. Attorney General, not to the courts themselves. That's got some members of Congress on alert.

"A judge's security is dependent in many ways on the Marshals Service who the president appoints to protect the judges, and if a president doesn't like a decision that's coming from a judge, theoretically they could pull their security," Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, said at a congressional hearing this month.

The administration has already yanked protection this year from former military and national security officials who disagreed with Trump in his first term.

Swalwell said Congress should consider giving judges their own security force — one that's independent from the White House.

Fire him........

Top Democrat Schumer backs Republican spending bill to avert shutdown

Anthony Zurcher, Christal Hayes

The US may avert a looming government shutdown after a top Democrat said he would support a Republican funding bill to keep it open.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced his reversal on Thursday, after vowing he and other Democrats would block the bill, which would fund the government through September.

Other Democrats might now join him in voting to approve the measure - but splits could emerge, since some of his colleagues are still opposed.

Democrats face two options: help Republicans pass the bill, or stand their ground and oppose it. If they oppose, they will likely take the brunt of the blame for the shutdown, which would start at 23:59 EDT on Friday (03:59 GMT on Saturday).

"There are no winners in a government shutdown," Schumer said in his announcement on the Senate floor.

"It's not really a decision, it's a Hobson's choice: Either proceed with the bill before us or risk Donald Trump throwing America into the chaos of a shutdown.

"This in my view is no choice at all."

He called the Republican-led funding bill deeply partisan but voiced concerns about a shutdown.

He said it would give Trump and Elon Musk, who have been leading an effort to slash federal spending, a "carte blanche to destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now".

Schumer's position was attacked by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a congresswoman from the party's progressive wing, who told CNN was a "deep sense of outrage and betrayal" within their party.

Democrats in the Senate who have opposed the funding bill include Elizabeth Warren, who warned against giving Trump and Musk "a blank cheque to spend your taxpayer money however they want".

Elissa Slotkin, a senator who earlier this month gave her party's response to a major address by Trump, said she would continue to vote against the bill. Slotkin said she feared cuts to infrastructure projects in Michigan, which she represents.

Votes on the measure are expected on Friday afternoon.

Although Democrats are in the minority in the Senate, they have a procedural ace in the hole. Senate rules require 60 votes out its 100-member chamber to pass most legislation.

So while the 47 Democrats and left-leaning independents don't have the numbers to approve their own funding bill, they can block the Republican measure if they mostly stick together.

That's exactly the course many liberals, desperate for Democrats to take a more forceful stand against the Trump administration, have insisted the party pursue.

The political brinksmanship has its risks.

Some conservatives would relish a government shutdown that suspends programmes and services they see as wasteful or counterproductive. Musk himself has said that such a scenario would help his team better identify "non-essential" government functions that they could then permanently end as part of his Department of Government Efficiency.

Republicans would also be quick to blame any shutdown, and the disruptions it causes, on the Democrats. And an extended shutdown would directly affect the very workers and programmes that Democrats are trying to protect.

On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed the bill that keeps the lights on through September – with strings attached.

The new resolution boosts military spending by $6bn (£4.6bn) over current levels, while slashing $13bn from non-defence programmes and allowing more money for border enforcement.

It also contains a provision that makes it harder for Democrats to force a vote on rescinding Trump's tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China.

Many Democrats have said they would not support the House resolution and demanded the ability to modify it.

Dumb fuck.....

Schumer to advance GOP funding bill, unwilling to risk government shutdown as deadline nears

By LISA MASCARO and MARY CLARE JALONICK

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer relented Thursday rather than risk a government shutdown, announcing he's ready to start the process of considering a Republican-led government funding bill that has fiercely divided Democrats under pressure to impose limits on the Trump administration.

Schumer told Democrats privately during a spirited closed-door lunch and then made public remarks ahead of voting Friday, which will be hours before the midnight deadline to keep government running. The New York senator said as bad as the GOP bill is, a shutdown would be worse, giving President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk “carte blanche” as they tear through the government.

“Trump has taken a blowtorch to our country and wielded chaos like a weapon,” Schumer said. “For Donald Trump, a shutdown would be a gift. It would be the best distraction he could ask for from his awful agenda.”

The move by Schumer brings a potential resolution to what has been a dayslong standoff. Senate Democrats have mounted a last-ditch protest over the package, which already passed the House but without slapping any limits they were demanding on Trump and billionaire Musk's efforts to gut federal operations.

The Democrats are under intense pressure to do whatever they can to stop the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency, which is taking a wrecking ball to long-established government agencies and purging thousands of federal workers from jobs.

Trump himself offered to wade in Thursday to negotiate: “If they need me, I’m there 100%.”

But the president also began casting blame on Democrats for any potential disruptions, saying during an Oval Office meeting, “If it shuts down, it’s not the Republicans’ fault.”

Democrats are pushing a stopgap 30-day funding bill as an alternative. But Schumer said Republicans rejected that offer. And while Democrats were split over strategy, they worried about the further chaos they say Trump and Musk could cause if government was shutdown.

Schumer told Democrats at a spirited closed-door lunch that he would be voting to proceed to the bill. His comments first reported by The New York Times, were confirmed by two people familiar with the matter and granted anonymity to discuss it.

”People have strong views on both sides,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who is opposed to the package.

As the Senate opened Thursday, with one day to go before Friday’s midnight deadline, Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, “It’s time for Democrats to fish or cut bait.”

Debates over funding the federal government routinely erupt in deadline moments, but this year it’s showing the political leverage of Republicans, newly in majority control of the White House and Congress, and the shortcomings of Democrats, who are finding themselves unable to stop the Trump administration’s march across federal operations.

In a rare turn of events, House Republicans stuck together to pass their bill, with many conservatives cheering the DOGE cuts leaving Democrats sidelined as they stood opposed. The House then left town, sending it to the Senate for final action.

Options for Schumer have been limited, and final passage before the deadline is not guaranteed.

Republicans hold a 53-47 majority and would need Democrats to support the package to reach the 60-vote threshold, which is required to overcome a filibuster.

“I’m in the camp of like, don’t ever, ever shut the government down,” said Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa.

Over the next 24 hours, Democrats face this choice: Provide the votes needed to advance the package, which funds government operations through the end of September, or risk a shutdown when money expires midnight Friday.

“They’ll cave,” predicted Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn.

Cornyn said the Democrats "have been railing against Elon Musk and the Trump administration over reductions in force of the federal employees, and now they basically want to put all of them out of work by shutting down the government." He added, "I don’t know how you reconcile those two positions.”

But progressive Democrats, including allies in the House, are pushing Democrats to draw the line against Trump — even if it courts a federal shutdown.

Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said on social media that the House GOP bill will “supercharge Musk's theft from working people to pay for billionaire tax cuts. Senate Democrats must stop it.”

In an highly unusual turn, the House package also required the District of Columbia, which already approved its own balanced budget, to revert back to 2024 levels, drawing outcry from the mayor and city leaders. They warn of steep reductions to city services.

Schumer said he would "work with them to fix it.”

Democratic senators are assessing next steps as they prepare for voting.

“Both choices that we are being offered are full of despair,” said Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo.

Reinstate all fired employees

'Today, we celebrate': Judge says National Park Service must reinstate all fired employees

By Olivia Hebert

A federal judge in San Francisco has ordered the National Park Service and five other federal agencies to immediately reinstate probationary employees who were fired en masse last month, ruling that the Office of Personnel Management had no legal authority to mandate their terminations.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup, in a scathing rebuke of the Donald Trump administration’s actions, declared the mass firings a violation of federal law and accused officials of using procedural loopholes to sidestep legal protections. In addition to 1,000 employees who were terminated from the park service, his order affects employees at the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Interior and the Treasury, who were abruptly dismissed in February.

“It is a sad, sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” Alsup said from the bench. “That should not have been done in our country. It was a sham in order to avoid statutory requirements.”

The judge made clear that while federal agencies can conduct layoffs, they must follow legally defined “reduction-in-force” procedures. He accused the Office of Personnel Management of orchestrating an unlawful workaround by directing departments to fire workers without due process.

As part of his ruling, Alsup barred the office from issuing any further guidance on employee terminations and ordered federal agencies to report back on their compliance with the reinstatement order. He also authorized depositions and further hearings to determine whether existing administrative appeal channels remain viable — or if they have been dismantled.

For park service employees, the ruling represents a hard-won victory, albeit a tenuous one.

“Today’s ruling by Judge Alsup is an important win for National Park Service employees who were wrongfully terminated,” Phil Francis, chair of the Executive Council of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, said in a statement provided to SFGATE by Don Neubacher, former superintendent of Yosemite National Park. “These probationary employees must now be reinstated immediately and can return to the important business of protecting the irreplaceable resources and stories found at over 430 units of the National Park System. We know there are more fights ahead as we work to protect parks and federal employees but today, we celebrate this ruling.”

Neubacher noted the toll the mass terminations took on workers’ reputations.

“The probationary firings were illegal, and the reputations of these federal employees were stained by the false claim that they were poor performers.” Neubacher told SFGATE in an email. “The national park employees who were chaotically fired were superb employees and talented leaders. Today, we got justice, and those employees are now reinstated to care for our cherished national parks. I can hear park employees across the country celebrating this ruling.”

While the ruling forces agencies to rehire those fired in February, the already underfunded and understaffed park service could continue to face staffing challenges, according to a news release from the Association of National Park Rangers provided by Executive Director Bill Wade.

“Just today, a judge has ordered that the 1000 permanent employees in the NPS that were illegally fired on February 14 must be reinstated,” the release said. “There are questions about how many will come back. If they moved back to where they were when hired, will they move again? Will they take the reinstatement, knowing that they could still be subject to a reduction in force that is likely to happen?” 

Additionally, the Department of the Interior is preparing for a 30% payroll cut, according to the release, with “additional massive layoffs” expected in the coming months.

The park service has also been ordered to submit its own restructuring plan by April, raising fears that even those reinstated today could be fired again in the near future.

A former park service employee familiar with the situation confirmed to the Hill that such reductions would likely result in short-term losses for rangers and janitorial workers but could have lasting impacts on conservation projects caught in bureaucratic limbo.

If these cuts move forward, visitors to Yosemite, Yellowstone, Glacier and other national parks may see noticeable staffing shortages just as peak tourism season begins. This comes as national park visitation hit a record 331.9 million in 2024.

The uncertainty has already sparked protests across the country, with rangers warning that workforce reductions could disrupt ecosystems and strain park resources. 

Ineptitude...

Hey Democrats, wake the fuck up

SFGATE columnist Drew Magary on the ineptitude of the Democratic Party

By Drew Magary

The sky is falling. The United States federal government is being illegally dissolved before your very eyes. The workers you rely on to ensure that you don’t eat ground beef tainted with paint chips are being laid off en masse. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided your office last week and asked for your papers, even though you were born in Fremont. A fire tornado is due to touch down in your backyard next Tuesday. Your parents are terrified to board an airplane. Your gay nephew is terrified to go to school. Your 401(k) is in the toilet. MEASLES. Measles have returned and want to eat your baby. Every day you look at the news, and you’re told that the president would like to bring back cockfighting. You and I need reassurance. You and I need to know that someone out there is trying to put an end to all this madness. Instead, we get this.

I hate you, Democrats. I hate you so, so much. Yes, I hate Trump and Elon and all of the s—t-for-brains voters out there who were like DURRR THESE FELLAS ARE JUST WHAT WE NEED TO CLEAN UP WASHINGTON DURRR. But I reserve a special place in my black heart for you, Democrats. You are the representational equivalent of being put on hold by customer service. All you do is let me down. It’s like being a Browns fan if every time the Browns lost, a Tesla ran over my dog. You guys make voting feel pointless.

Starting with you, Joe Biden. You still alive, old man? Well, you could’ve fooled me. Great job staying in the 2024 race juuuuust long enough to torpedo your party’s chances, and then pissing off to Cape Henlopen solely because George Clooney asked you to. Were you a good president? I have no idea, because you were too busy huffing oxygen from your bedside tank to sell your agenda to the American people. Maybe you could have gotten everyone on your side by crafting a really clever sign to hold up.

And who’s this? Why, it’s former Vice President Kamala Harris, who got voters excited for exactly one month before huddling with her advisers and deciding to campaign as a Republican, WITH Republicans. And what other brilliant tactician could tap one of the most beloved governors in America as her running mate and then Tim Kaine-ify him by 75%? Hey Kamala, maybe in your free time you can pursue a life sentence for a homeless man who stole a box of Chiclets from a local CVS. I legit thought you would win in November! Why did I think that? Someone should brain me on the head with a baseball bat.

Speaking of head injuries … John Fetterman! I’m a fellow brain injury survivor alongside John. So when this man suffered a stroke during his Senate race against Dr. Oz, I was like, “Do NOT discriminate against this man just because he had a brain injury.” Little did I know that Fetterman’s blood clot would turn him into the second coming of Joe Manchin. I just got rid of Joe Manchin, and now I have to deal with a taller, weirder one? 

These are just some of the people I was foolishly hoping would put a stop to the meme-ocracy that’s currently eating the world. Democrats keep responding to our cries for help with, “Get out and vote!” Who am I even voting for? Is it you? Is it some asshole company on your donor roll? Is it shrink-wrapped skull James Carville, whose electoral acumen has aged even worse than he has? I’ve gotten more results voting on a new flavor of Lay’s potato chip. 

Take Gavin Newsom, for instance. Here’s a man who managed to beat out a recall effort, and what’s he doing with all of that political capital? That’s right: He invited Charlie f—king Kirk to christen his new podcast, and then gleefully agreed with Kirk that transgender kids are a major threat to the integrity of high school girls softball. What the f—k are we even doing here? Who does this man think his constituency is, Nick Bosa? California is the first state all of us liberals want to watch secede from the union, because it’s the best state and we’d all move there if it ever shed the rest of America’s stink. So how did THIS quarter-zip end up running the joint? 

Now that I think about it, how did a state that offers so much sunshine and terrific produce end up with a whole armada of s—t Democrats, including Adam Schiff, Nancy “once we all die in a rejuvenated smallpox epidemic, the House will be ours again!” Pelosi and Alex Padilla, who thought that a sternly worded letter to a Trump mole would end the administration’s desecration of our national parks. And don’t forget about Dianne Feinstein! Yes, I know that Feinstein is dead. No, that doesn’t excuse her. Stupid, dead Feinstein. I bet she’s lecturing children in hell because they dared to ask for a table fan.

And if you think that my party has more to offer on the opposite coast, may I introduce you to New York Democrats? Oh look, it’s Little Mister Punching Bag, Chuck Schumer! A Palestinian American resident of this man’s state was just kidnapped by ICE and remanded to Kafka State Prison down south without cause, and Chuck’s first instinct was to essentially say, “Now we all know this young man is brown, which means he hates the Jews.” Totally. Way to see the REAL story going on here, you empty tin of pomade. And somehow Chuck has even greater moral fortitude than Eric Adams, who probably couldn’t commit murder without accidentally leaving his Turkish passport in the victim’s hand. 

I can’t believe how useless most of these Democrats have proven in the fight to preserve something, anything, functional in this backwater of a country. Oh, do you want me to give the RBG girlboss treatment to Sonia Sotomayor, who skipped out on retiring while Biden was in office because she just loves writing terse dissents? What about Hakeem “Next Pelosi” Jeffries? Will he bamboozle the opposition with his fearsome repertoire of debate club hand gestures? Judging by those signs from the other night, I’m thinking no. No as all f—k. 

I don’t expect you geniuses in charge of my party to listen to my plea, but I’ve been shouting into the wind for decades now so I may as well do it one final time. Democrats need to give voters like me a reason to care. Our current president is an asshole, but he sure knows how to get people to care one way or the other. Part of that success has been from brute force political messaging. Part of it is from the voraciousness of capitalism mutating this country into a place where everyone is told they’re equal but no one WANTS to be equal. When Donald Trump runs on a platform that boils down to F—K OTHER PEOPLE, tens of millions of Americans eat it up because they’ve been conditioned to hate other people: their boss, their movie stars, that guy that cut them off on the drive to work, everyone. 

I don’t know how we solve this problem, but actually WANTING to solve it is a good first step. I see little evidence right now that Democrats — especially you, Gavin — have that desire. I’ll still vote in every election out of obligation, but how many others will just stop doing it entirely now that you’ve failed them so consistently? I have a hard time trusting a bunch of people who couldn’t even think to start up an ASSHOLE chant on the House floor during Trump’s speech last week. I’m wagering that younger generations are even more disaffected. Those people will be lost forever unless you f—kers finally understand what’s happening outside your office window. 

And if you don’t get your s—t together now, I’ll know it’s because you don’t want to. I’ll know that you never cared about democracy. That you never cared about fixing the Constitution that’s currently sitting at the bottom of Sam Alito’s toilet. That you never cared about women or gay and trans folk or the poor or Muslim Americans or even Jewish people. I’ll know that you only care about yourselves, same as the president does. If you careerist scum want to prove me and every other voter wrong, you’d better get started right now. The clock is ticking. 

Paints brutal image

Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

Sarah Wynn-Williams' 'Careless People' is a scathing critique of Facebook's top brass in the 2010s

By Stephen Council

As the creator of the world’s preeminent social media company, Mark Zuckerberg has faced his share of vitriol from the public, from Congress and even in a hit movie. But this time, the Meta CEO’s criticism is coming from someone who worked with him up close, for years.

Sarah Wynn-Williams joined Facebook in 2011 and ascended to a director role in global policy but was fired in 2017 after alleging her boss, Joel Kaplan, had sexually harassed her. She released a new book Tuesday that excoriates the company’s leadership. The title, “Careless People,” refers to Zuckerberg and his lieutenants, including former Chief Operations Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Kaplan, the company’s newly appointed president of global affairs; the subtitle is “A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.” 

Meta, which runs Facebook, is trying to squash the book’s splash. On Wednesday, citing her non-disparagement agreement, the company won an interim arbitration claim that blocks Wynn-Williams from further selling and promoting the book. It doesn’t appear that the order will extend to her publisher, Flatiron Books. 

Meta spokesperson Erin Logan told SFGATE on Tuesday, “This book is a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives.” She said Wynn-Williams’ allegations about Kaplan are false, and in a Thursday statement, she called the book “defamatory” and alleged that Wynn-Williams had skipped “the industry’s standard fact-checking process.” The book’s publisher said it was thoroughly vetted in a statement to the New York Times, and as of Thursday afternoon, “Careless People” was No. 3 on Amazon’s bestsellers list.

From a read of the book, it’s clear why Meta wants to stop the spread of Wynn-Williams’ account: Its chief executive comes off badly. Though many of the book’s larger points have been previously reported, the anecdotes from Wynn-Williams’ globe-spanning interactions with Zuckerberg are the fresh, detail-rich stories you’d expect in a tell-all memoir. She casts him as hot-tempered, unaccountable for his mistakes, ignorant about history and — in one cringey board game session — an extremely sore loser.

“You’d hope that people who amass the kind of power Facebook has would learn a sense of responsibility, but they don’t show any sign of having done so,” Wynn-Williams writes. “In fact I see the opposite. The more they see the consequences of their actions, the less of a f—k Mark and Facebook’s leadership give.”

Some of the moments she describes were already public. Wynn-Williams accuses Zuckerberg of lying at a 2018 Senate hearing on data privacy and downplaying the amount that Facebook had worked with the Chinese Communist Party to try to get its app unblocked in the country. The CEO, in a 2015 United Nations keynote, announced that Facebook was planning to bring the internet to UN refugee camps — Wynn-Williams writes that the policy team at Facebook hadn’t heard a word of this idea and that it was possibly an “ad lib.”

Other sections are completely new. Over one dinner, Zuckerberg said Andrew Jackson — known for his populist appeal and his inhumane relocation of Native Americans — was America’s best president and “it’s not even close,” according to Wynn-Williams. One chapter says Zuckerberg told her he didn’t often come to their shared San Francisco neighborhood because he couldn’t get permission to build a helicopter pad. She accuses Zuckerberg of living in a “bubble,” detailing a moment when he forgot his passport for a 2016 trip to Peru and cast blame on others.

At points, Wynn-Williams grapples with her own impotence before the uber-powerful executive. She describes the flight back from Peru, writing that then-President Barack Obama had lit into Zuckerberg over fake news and misinformation on Facebook during the 2016 election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. 

Heading back home, the CEO brooded and apparently accused Wynn-Williams of cheating when she won the board games Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan against him. She writes that he then started pondering a U.S. tour, almost like a presidential campaign run, before suggesting Facebook remake the news ecosystem with the company at its center. As the plane descended, Wynn-Williams writes, Zuckerberg asked her what she thought about his ideas — which she describes as a “power grab.”

“Over these five years, I feel like I’ve seen him face so many choices and lose touch with whatever fundamental human decency he had when we started,” she writes, explaining the difficulty of answering Zuckerberg’s question. “Do I say that? How? How can I say any of these things to him?”

Wynn-Williams’ critiques aren’t limited to Zuckerberg. She describes the working culture under Sandberg as so intense that Wynn-Williams felt pressured to send her talking points while in labor, her feet in stirrups. “Open dissent isn’t an option with Sheryl,” Wynn-Williams writes, arguing that people “actively hide bad news or situations” from the executive in fear of being punished.

Kaplan comes off badly too. Per the book, he blocked Wynn-Williams’ hire of a human rights expert to focus on Myanmar, where Facebook, in its own words, didn’t do “enough to help prevent our platform from being used to foment division and incite offline violence.” Beginning in 2016, Myanmar’s army massacred thousands of Muslim Rohingyas, and hundreds of thousands more fled the country, with incendiary Facebook posts and groups fanning the flames of violence. Per Wynn-Williams’ account, the company didn’t have nearly enough Burmese-speaking content moderators.

“It wasn’t because of some grander vision or any malevolence toward Muslims in the country,” she wrote. “Nor a lack of money. My conclusion: It was just that Joel, Elliot [Schrage], Sheryl, and Mark didn’t give a fuck.”

Wynn-Williams also writes that Kaplan, as her boss, made inappropriate comments to her, including repeatedly asking where she was bleeding from after childbirth. She writes that, shortly after he called her sultry in front of other co-workers, Kaplan ground into her on a dance floor. She triggered an investigation into Kaplan and writes that she was “almost immediately” retaliated against with a cut in duties before eventually being fired. Wynn-Williams describes the investigation as a “farce.”

Logan, the Meta spokesperson, told SFGATE that Wynn-Williams’s allegations were “misleading and unfounded” and that she “was fired for poor performance and toxic behavior.”

“Whistleblower status protects communications to the government, not disgruntled activists trying to sell books,” Logan added. The company also published a document calling several of the author’s claims “old news.”

At the beginning of January, Zuckerberg appointed Kaplan to be Meta’s head of global policy — a key liaison between the company and Trump.

Another billionaire stooge...

Johnson taps Boeing exec Curtis Beaulieu as top tax adviser

A former tax counsel for the Senate Finance Committee, he'll replace Derek Theurer, who left for the Treasury Department.

Brian Faler

House Speaker Mike Johnson is naming Boeing official Curtis Beaulieu his top tax adviser, sources familiar with the decision say, filling a big hole on his staff as a sprawling fight in Congress over the tax code begins to heat up.

Beaulieu, a senior director at Boeing, will replace Derek Theurer, who left for the Treasury Department — part of a recent wave of Republican tax aides to leave the Hill, even as lawmakers begin to zero in on what to do about some 40 temporary tax provisions slated to expire at the end of this year.

Beaulieu, who will start Monday, has been at Boeing for a number of years but has previously worked on the Hill. He was tax counsel at the Senate Finance Committee a decade ago and, before that, worked for several Republican lawmakers, including former Rep. Jim McCrery (R-La.), whose district is now represented by Johnson.

Beaulieu returns to the Hill at a critical time, with lawmakers deeply divided over how to approach the looming expiration of some $4 trillion in tax cuts.

Lawmakers’ tax advisers play a huge, if often unnoticed, role in developing tax legislation — trying to figure out how much different options would cost, educating colleagues about the issues and negotiating deals behind closed doors. Lawmakers frequently give them broad discretion to sort out the details of proposals, especially if they are complicated.

There are myriad ways, for example, that lawmakers could design President Donald Trump’s proposals to exempt taxes on things like tips and overtime pay, and lawmakers will rely on staffers’ expertise to help decide on the best approach.

Trump’s proposals could cost anywhere between $300 billion and $4 trillion depending on how they’re designed, Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said Wednesday.

Rent-free

Sarah McBride says she lives ‘rent-free’ in Republicans’ heads

The Delaware Democrat’s comments came days after a GOP colleague misgendered her.

Nicholas Wu

Rep. Sarah McBride said she lived to “rent-free in the minds of some of my Republican colleagues” amid a controversy about GOP lawmakers referring to her by the wrong gender.

Speaking Thursday at a news conference with House Minority Whip Katherine Clark and first-term Democratic women lawmakers, McBride said Republicans were “obsessed with culture war issues” and said it was “weird" and "bizarre.”

“We will not take a lecture on decorum from a party that incited an insurrection,” the first openly transgender member of Congress said, making reference to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) referred to her as “Mr. McBride” during a congressional hearing earlier this week, sparking a confrontation between Self and Rep. Bill Keating (D-Mass.) over the issue. Other GOP lawmakers have targeted McBride’s identity, with Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) addressing her as “the gentleman from Delaware” while presiding on the House floor at one point.

House Republicans have sought to turn transgender rights into a wedge issue against Democrats this Congress. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) led an effort to ban transgender women from using women’s bathrooms on Capitol Hill. She responded to McBride's comments Thursday with an X post addressing her as "Sir."

McBride has generally shied away from weighing in on the attacks on her identity. Thursday’s remarks were her first public comments on the incident beyond a Tuesday post on X where she wrote: “No matter how I'm treated by some colleagues, nothing diminishes my awe and gratitude at getting to represent Delaware in Congress.”

More destruction to come...

Senate confirms Pulte as top housing regulator, with market's future at stake

Pulte will have oversight of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have been in government conservatorship for more than 16 years.

Katy O'Donnell

The Senate on Thursday voted 56-43 to confirm Bill Pulte as the nation's top housing regulator, putting him at the center of a fight over the future of two government-controlled companies that prop up half the residential mortgage market.

As the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Pulte will have oversight of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have been in government conservatorship for more than 16 years.

The Trump administration is widely expected to seek to release Fannie and Freddie from government control — a complicated process that will rekindle debate about the role of the federal government in housing at a time when affordability has emerged as a major political concern.

Pulte gave few clues during his confirmation hearing with the Senate Banking Committee about what would happen with the companies, which buy mortgages and package them into securities for sale to investors.

“While [Fannie and Freddie’s] conservatorships should not be indefinite, any exit from conservatorship must be carefully planned to ensure the safety and soundness of the housing market without upward pressure on mortgage rates,” he told the panel.

Pulte expanded slightly on that position in a written response to questions for the record from Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the committee.

“My priority in overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is ensuring a stable and thriving housing and mortgage market, and to this end, any decisions related to if or when Fannie or Freddie are released from conservatorship would involve the President and the Secretary of the Treasury,” he wrote.

Pulte declined to answer Warren’s question about whether he has consulted with outside advisers including Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund founder who has held sizable positions in both companies for years in the hopes that they would eventually be privatized.

What the FUCK!

Democrats should back away from shutdown, Schumer says

The minority leader's remarks are a clear indication that the Senate will vote to advance a GOP stopgap.

By Jordain Carney and Katherine Tully-McManus

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer stepped Democrats away from the edge of a shutdown on Thursday — warning that repercussions of closing the federal government would be worse than the only viable alternative, passing the House GOP funding bill that many in Schumer's party loathe.

Schumer’s remarks — made first during a closed-door lunch with his colleagues Thursday and then from the Senate floor in a lengthy speech — are a significant indication that enough Senate Democrats will vote to advance the House GOP bill and avoid a shutdown that would start after midnight Friday.

“It’s not really a decision. It’s a Hobson’s choice," Schumer said on the floor. "Either proceed with the bill before us or risk Donald Trump throwing America into the chaos of a shutdown. This in my view is no choice at all. While the [House bill] is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse."

Schumer’s floor speech came after he privately told fellow Democrats during a closed-door lunch Thursday that he would help advance a House GOP funding bill, according to three people granted anonymity to disclose his private remarks.

“I believe it is my job to make the best choice for the country, to minimize the harms to the American people. Therefore, I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down,” Schumer said from the Senate floor. "There is nobody in the world, nobody, who wants to shut the government down more than Donald Trump and more than Elon Musk. We should not give it to them."

The New York Democrat's decision to come out against barreling into a shutdown comes as his party has spent days quietly agonizing over what to do after House Republicans passed their seven-month funding patch and then promptly left Washington, essentially forcing Democrats to accept a bill they don’t support and didn’t have a role in negotiating.

Schumer had said little publicly about the dilemma before his speech Thursday. But he ended up giving voice to the concerns of many in his caucus who believe that a shutdown would only empower President Donald Trump and his government-slashing ally Elon Musk. Schumer told reporters after his speech that he also warned his Democratic colleagues that there was no off-ramp from a shutdown once one started.

“A shutdown would give Donald Trump and Elon Musk carte blanche to destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now,” he said, saying it would be a “gift” for Trump that would let Republicans “weaponize their majorities to cherry-pick which parts of the government to reopen.” 

Schumer’s remarks mark the beginning of the end for a weeks-long battle over funding the government. Senate Democrats mostly kept mum as they waited to see if Speaker Mike Johnson would be able to get the GOP funding bill across the finish line without help from House Democrats. 

Once the bill passed the House, Senate Democrats were left in a pickle. They held several closed-door meetings this week but never coalesced around a unified strategy, with members openly acknowledging they were trying to choose between two bad options. 

“This president has put us in a position where, in either direction, lots of people's constituents are going to get hurt, and hurt badly. So people are wrestling with what is the least, worst outcome,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) after the Thursday lunch. 

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), like many of her colleagues, declined to answer questions from reporters as she left the lunch. But she was overheard warning her colleagues behind closed doors of “serious harm” and that “this will not be a normal shutdown.”

Still, a growing number of Senate Democrats vowed Thursday to oppose the House GOP bill, including not helping it get over 60-vote procedural hurdles. But some Democrats have floated that they could help advance the bill in exchange for a vote on their preferred alternative, a 30-day stopgap that would make room to restart bipartisan spending talks.

Neither Schumer nor Senate Majority Leader John Thune have indicated that they've reached an agreement on proceeding to a final vote. But a person granted anonymity to describe the state of negotiations said that discussions are ongoing. Thune told reporters shortly before Schumer spoke that he was willing to give Democrats a likely-to-fail vote on a four-week stopgap as part of a potential agreement. 

Thune has scheduled a Friday vote to get the House-passed bill over an initial 60-vote procedural hurdle. Republicans are expected to need help from at least eight Democrats since Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has vowed to oppose the GOP bill.

Schumer indicated that he would not twist arms, stressing that each senator will come to their own decision about whether to help advance the GOP stopgap. 

Tax plan strategy.....?

Trump backs key Senate tax plan strategy in struggle with House

The president has been drawn into a dispute between the chambers over how to account for the cost of extending tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year.

By Meredith Lee Hill, Benjamin Guggenheim and Jordain Carney

President Donald Trump indicated to GOP senators during a White House meeting Thursday that he supports using an accounting method that would treat trillions of dollars in tax cuts in a massive GOP package as costing nothing, according to three senators who attended the meeting and three other people familiar with the conversation.

“If you are going to make the tax code permanent, by definition it’s going to be with current policy,” said Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who affirmed that Trump is on board with the accounting tactic. “The aperture is opened up a bit in thinking more broadly around how we continue to find additional reductions in federal spending.”

House and Senate Republicans are split on the controversial accounting tactic, though Speaker Mike Johnson is increasingly open to using it. The move would make it easier for GOP lawmakers to make the math work on their costly plan.

But many hard-liners are suspicious of the tactic and want to stick with Congress’s traditional accounting method, which would show that extending the tax cuts, and adding other provisions Trump wants, would cost trillions of dollars.

Settling the matter will be key as the House and Senate try to reconcile vast differences in their approaches to the massive Trump agenda bill spanning border, energy, taxes and defense spending. But it is likely to run into trouble with deficit hawks, especially in the House, who insist that tax cuts must be accompanied by spending reductions.

Trump also reiterated he wants the 2017 tax cuts he presided over to be extended permanently. And, he raised his Gold Visa card concept as a way to pay for the vast package, along with tariffs and other options.

Several senators also pitched Trump on repealing the corporate state and local tax deduction.

And, the president, after encouragement by some of the Republicans in the room as they’re looking for more spending cuts, voiced an even larger embrace of cutting fraud and waste within Medicaid than he has in his public statements.

The GOP senators in the room also discussed the politically complex issue of raising the debt ceiling, which Trump has pushed to be in the package because he doesn’t want to negotiate a separate deal with Democrats.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he made clear in the meeting he still wants incredibly steep spending cuts in order to back a debt limit increase, adding Trump was receptive to his pitch to pare back a vast swath of federal spending to pre-COVID levels.

“I don't know that we solved anything. We got what we needed — just some kind of direction and feel for where the president wants all this to land,” Senate GOP leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters when he returned to the Capitol.

The Republicans who met with Trump on Thursday are all members of the Senate Finance Committee who are trying to work through a host of complex and arduous tax talks in order to decide what they can fit into their party-line bill.

“It's kind of along the lines of what we've been talking about for some time,” Thune said.

Sen. Thom Tillis said the conversation with the president helped to act as “a funnel” for the vast list of tax policies that GOP senators are trying to squeeze into the package.

But some senators in the meeting appeared less enthusiastic that they had made any major progress.

“Talk, talk, talk, talk,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said. “Just like the last 10 weeks.”

House and Senate Republicans are stuck in an increasingly bitter impasse over how to advance Trump’s vast legislative agenda and how quickly to move.

Many House Republicans were livid earlier this week when Tillis emerged from a meeting of Senate Finance Republicans on Monday evening and suggested August was the real timeline for passing a budget reconciliation bill, citing the tax talks.

Heading to the White House meeting on Thursday, Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo again declined to predict any timeline for the Congress to advance or pass the package and its many tax provisions.

Other members of his panel hoped the meeting with Trump and his advisers would help start to bridge the divide between the two chambers — something Trump has struggled to do.

“I’m not even going to joke about it,” the normally soft-spoken Crapo said, with a smile.

Thune has been organizing meetings all week with small groups of his conference as he and GOP leaders try to hear from a cross-section of GOP senators about what they want to see in a reconciliation bill, which would allow Republicans to short-circuit a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.

Those meetings, according to senators in attendance, have focused on the tax provisions — including measuring support for using the current policy baseline accounting method to make the extension of the Trump-era tax cuts appear to cost nothing.

Whether Republicans can actually use the method in their bill will be up to the Senate parliamentarian, who has yet to rule on the matter.

Senate Republicans are also using their small-group meetings to discuss how big they should go on spending cuts and outline the challenges of the major task ahead.

Time to dump the old farts.......

House Democrats stew over Schumer's capitulation on GOP funding bill

The cave was the talk of the Democratic policy retreat.

By Nicholas Wu and Mia McCarthy

House Democrats privately and publicly steamed Thursday evening about Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s decision to back passage of a GOP spending patch they had fiercely opposed.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said he was “extremely disappointed,” while Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) called it a “gut punch.” Some Democrats attending the yearly Democratic policy retreat here went so far as to privately hope that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) would launch a primary challenge against Schumer — though he’s not up for reelection until 2028. Some centrist lawmakers even quipped about cutting checks to Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told his caucus behind closed doors that they could be proud of their decision to vote against the stopgap funding bill. He did not mention Schumer.

“Dr. King once made the observation that, although everyone may not see it at the moment, the time is always right to do what's right," he said, according to a person in the room. "This week, House Democrats did what was right. We stood up against Donald Trump. We stood up against Elon Musk. We stood up against the extreme MAGA Republicans."

Jeffries received a standing ovation from his caucus. He and other Democratic leaders later said in a joint statement that "House Democrats will not be complicit" and "remain strongly opposed to the partisan spending bill under consideration in the Senate."

It was part of a split-screen reality for House and Senate Democrats over the past 48 hours, since House Republicans managed to muscle through their seven-month stopgap.

Over the first two days of their retreat in Virginia, House Democrats urged the Senate to follow their lead and stop the bill. All but one House Democrat had opposed the bill. Meanwhile, Democratic senators were wrangling with a tougher choice — unlike in the House, some in their ranks would have to put up votes for any shutdown-averting bill, greatly raising the stakes.

Still, lawmakers expressed little sympathy. “Democrats were elected to fight for working people, not put up a fake fight,” said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the Progressive Caucus.

Separately on Thursday evening, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer addressed House Democrats gathered at the Lansdowne Resort for a closed-door discussion with Jeffries, drawing a warm reception from the lawmakers.

The three governors all represent states won by President Donald Trump in 2024 and have tacked to the center at home.

The lawmakers also heard from presidential pundits including James Carville, Bill Clinton’s strategy maven, and Dan Pfeiffer, Barack Obama’s communications director, among other experts who are advising the minority party.

“We've got to show the American people that we're focused on their worries when they wake up in the morning and go to bed at night,” Beshear told reporters earlier Thursday. Democrats had to focus on “core concerns” to earn back voters’ trust, he said.

He also criticized California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to put former Trump strategist Steve Bannon on his podcast, telling reporters: “Steve Bannon espouses hatred and anger and even, at some points, violence, and I don't think we should give him oxygen on any platform, ever, anywhere.”

Smart...

Portugal rules out buying F-35s because of Trump

The country’s air force has recommended buying the jets, but the outgoing defense minister said “the predictability of our allies” must be taken into account when making procurement decisions.

By Laura Kayali

Portugal ruled out replacing its U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets with more modern F-35s because of Donald Trump — in one of the first examples of the U.S. president killing a potential lucrative arms deal.

The country's air force has recommended buying Lockheed Martin F-35s, but when outgoing Defense Minister Nuno Melo was asked by Portugese media Público whether the government would follow that recommendation, he replied: “We cannot ignore the geopolitical environment in our choices. The recent position of the United States, in the context of NATO ... must make us think about the best options, because the predictability of our allies is a greater asset to take into account."

With the dramatic realignment taking place under Trump — who said again today he would annex Greenland and threatened Canada — there are fears the U.S. government could decide block access to software updates and spare parts needed to make the F-35 fully operational.

"The world has changed ... and this ally of ours ... could bring limitations to use, maintenance, components, and everything that has to do with ensuring that aircraft will be operational and used in all types of scenarios," Melo said.

He added: "There are several options that must be considered, particularly in the context of European production."

A spokesperson for the jet-maker said: "Lockheed Martin values our strong partnership and history with the Portuguese Air Force and looks forward to continuing that partnership into the future. The F-35 is the most advanced, survivable and connected fighter aircraft in the world, enabling 21st Century Security® and allied deterrence. Questions about foreign military sales of the F-35 are best addressed by the U.S. government."

Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans said earlier this week that the Netherlands would not cancel its contract for the jets. However, Lisbon hasn't signed a deal yet.

Portugal is holding a snap election after the collapse of its center-right government.

Not Funny

 

Anyone could play that stupid shit...........

Putin is playing Trump (again)

The Russian leader rolls out his classic strategy to handle tempestuous U.S. president.

By Jamie Dettmer

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe. 

After Ukrainian negotiators agreed to a U.S.-brokered ceasefire proposal earlier this week, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the ball was in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s court.

But it was an easier ball for the Russian leader to play than many thought. He wasn’t aggressive with a risky power shot, taking a high-risk bid to win a quick point. Rather, he nimbly floated a lob high and deep, piling conditions and delays onto ceasefire talks.

It was classic Putin.

The Russian leader has seen U.S. presidents come and go and, all too often, he’s deftly drained their stamina and exhausted their attention to get much of what he wants. The big question now is what U.S. President Donald Trump’s return shot will be. He’s the one in a hurry to end the war on Ukraine, burnishing his cherished reputation as a skillful deal-maker.

Putin, meanwhile, has had the measure of his Washington opponents — and on Thursday, he demonstrated he understands Trump’s psychology. Praise the man while deflecting him; pat him on the head — something Ukraine’s passionate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy almost fatally forgot to do in his Oval Office meeting last month, prompting a hasty ejection from the White House.

There was no firm Russian nyet to stoke the U.S. leader’s anger, rather a teacher’s applause for Trump’s idea and effort.

The temporary truce was “correct” and “we support it,” the Russian leader said, but, alas, there were many sticking points. Ukrainian units had nearly been encircled in a salient in Russia’s Kursk region and could be forced to “surrender or die,” he explained. Why should they just be let go? “If we stop hostilities for 30 days, what does that mean? That everyone who is there will go out without a fight?”

During the pause in hostilities, will Ukraine be able to mobilize fresh troops and receive weapons from the West? “How will supervision be organized? These are all serious questions.” He then added: “I think we need to talk to our American colleagues … Maybe have a phone call with President Trump and discuss this with him.”

It was all drawn from the playbook that he and his lugubrious Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have used time and again: Obfuscate, delay, muddle, throw in some whataboutism, be sorrowfully unctuous, but make sure to dangle a carrot.

Just the day before, Lavrov had given an hour-and-half -long master class in Putin-style diplomacy, which should have been a warning to the White House.

His interlocutors — a trio of fellow travelers led by onetime Fox News presenter Judge Andrew Napolitano — were pushovers, nodding and chortling as he complained about (horrors of horrors) being forced to use a unisex bathroom in Scandinavia. They purred their approval when he mournfully griped about all the injustices the West had doled out to his peace-loving country: The false accusations of poisoning opposition leader Alexei Navalny, trying to kill Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, or downing Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

It all came down to Europe and NATO’s broken promises and malign behavior, he said.

But as Lavrov piled deflection and digression upon deflection and digression, his plaintive lecture demonstrated that — just as Putin reinforced yesterday — Russia plans to play Trump, much like it did former U.S. President Barack Obama when it came to Syria, using delaying tactics to prevent America from hitting their client for unleashing chemical weapons.

Of course, unlike Obama, during his first term Trump did order an airstrike on a Syrian government airbase in response to a chemical weapons attack. So Putin has no doubt taken into consideration that a vexed Trump might lash out. Hence, the careful calibration of his response to the ceasefire proposal.

And so far, the play seems to be going as planned. For Trump, Putin’s response was “very promising.”

“I’d love to meet with him or talk to him. But we have to get it [a ceasefire deal] over with fast,” Trump told reporters Thursday.

That will be music to Putin’s ears. The carrot is working, and he can slow Trump’s eagerness for a deal.

According to former Russian diplomat Boris Bondarev, the Kremlin chief will also estimate Trump’s bark will be worse than his bite. “He will have seen how Trump threatens Canada, but when Ottawa responds with counter-tariffs, he starts backing off and negotiates,” Bondarev told POLITICO.

Ukrainian lawmaker Yehor Cherniev said he wasn’t surprised by Putin’s response either. Speaking to POLITICO, he said: “It was predictable because we understand that Putin didn’t want to say yes, but cannot say no because Trump’s possible reaction. I think he’s just trying to take his time, and that’s why he proposed some additional conditions for the 30-day ceasefire.”

However, he remains hopeful that Trump will push Putin to make a decision: “We’ll see what happens in the next days because I saw yesterday that Trump already has talked about additional sanctions on Russia’s oil and gas sector. It’s Putin’s usual practice to give you some hope that he’ll say yes, but then delays to use the time to reach his goals. I hope that Trump’s reaction will be quite fast.”

If it isn’t, then we’re in for a long process.

And Trump’s options for forcing Putin into doing anything aren’t great. Earlier this week, he threatened to apply economic pressure on Russia if Putin didn’t agree to a ceasefire: “I can do things financially that would be very bad for Russia. I don’t want to do that because I want to get peace. In a financial sense … we could do things very bad for Russia. It would be devastating.”

But Russia’s already been sanctioned every which way since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.

One possible target could be the shadow fleet, which has helped Moscow evade existing sanctions on oil exports. But that would also compound the hurt for American consumers already struggling with high retail prices by prompting a global oil price spike.

Washington could also try and expand the ban on Russian financial institutions using the SWIFT financial transaction processing system, which so far only includes a handful of Russian banks. But that would be an inconvenience, not a knock-out blow.

“Trump is much more concerned about this deal than about Ukraine,” Bondarev said. “That gives Putin leverage.”

Baffling?

The Trump EPA’s Baffling New Agenda Consists of Throttling Major Environmental Rules

It may be time for the agency to remove the word “protection” from its name.

Oliver Milman

Donald Trump’s administration is to reconsider the official finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to public health, a move that threatens to rip apart the foundation of the US’s climate laws, amid a stunning barrage of actions to weaken or repeal a host of pollution limits upon power plants, cars and waterways.

Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an extraordinary cavalcade of pollution rule rollbacks on Wednesday, led by the announcement it would potentially scrap a landmark 2009 finding by the government that planet-heating gases, such carbon dioxide, pose a threat to human health.

The so-called endangerment finding, which followed a Supreme Court ruling that the EPA could regulate greenhouse gases, provides the underpinning for all rules aimed at cutting the pollution that scientists have unequivocally found is worsening the climate crisis.

Despite the enormous and growing body of evidence of devastation caused by rising emissions, including trillions of dollars in economic costs, Trump has called the climate crisis a “hoax” and dismissed those concerned by its worsening impacts as “climate lunatics.”

Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, said the agency would reconsider the endangerment finding due to concerns that it had spawned “an agenda that throttles our industries, our mobility, and our consumer choice while benefiting adversaries overseas.”

Zeldin wrote that Wednesday was the “most consequential day of deregulation in American history” and that “we are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age.” He boasted about the changes and said his agency’s mission was to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.”

Environmentalists reacted with horror to the announcement and vowed to defend the overwhelming findings of science and the US’s ability to address the climate crisis through the courts, which regularly struck down Trump’s rollbacks in his first term.

“The Trump administration’s ignorance is trumped only by its malice toward the planet,” said Jason Rylander, legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “Come hell or high water, raging fires and deadly heatwaves, Trump and his cronies are bent on putting polluter profits ahead of people’s lives. This move won’t stand up in court. We’re going to fight it every step of the way.”

In all, the EPA issued 31 announcements within just a few hours that take aim at almost every major environmental rule designed to protect Americans’ clean air and water, as well as a livable climate.

The barrage included a move to overturn a Biden-era plan to slash pollution spewing from coal-fired power plants, which itself was a reduced version of an Obama administration initiative that was struck down by the Supreme Court.

The EPA will also revisit pollution standards for cars and trucks, which Zeldin said had imposed a “crushing regulatory regime” upon auto companies that are now shifting towards electric vehicles; considering weakening rules limiting sooty air pollution that is linked to an array of health problems; potentially axing requirements that power plants not befoul waterways or dump their toxic waste; and considering further narrowing how it implements the Clean Water Act in general.

The stunning broadside of actions against pollution rules could, if upheld by the courts, reshape Americans’ environment in ways not seen since major legislation was passed in the 1970s to end an era of smoggy skies and burning rivers that became the norm following American industrialization.

Pollutants from power plants, highways and industry cause a range of heart, lung and other health problems, with greenhouse gases among this pollution driving up the global temperature and fueling catastrophic heatwaves, floods, storms and other impacts.

“Zeldin’s EPA is dragging America back to the days before the Clean Air Act, when people were dying from pollution,” said Dominique Browning, director of the Moms Clean Air Force. “This is unacceptable. And shameful. We will oppose with all our hearts to protect our children from this cruel, monstrous action.”

The EPA’s moves come shortly after its decision to shutter all its offices that deal with addressing the disproportionate burden of pollution faced by poor people and minorities in the US, amid a mass firing of agency staff. Zeldin has also instructed that $20 billion in grants to help address the climate crisis be halted, citing potential fraud. Democrats have questioned whether these moves are legal.

Former EPA staff have reacted with shock to the upending of the agency.

“Today marks the most disastrous day in EPA history,” said Gina McCarthy, who was EPA administrator under Obama. “Rolling these rules back is not just a disgrace, it’s a threat to all of us. The agency has fully abdicated its mission to protect Americans’ health and wellbeing.”

The Trump administration has promised additional environmental rollbacks in the coming weeks. The Energy Dominance Council that the president established last month is looking to eliminate a vast array of regulations in an effort to boost the fossil fuel industry, the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, told the oil and gas conference CeraWeek in Houston on Wednesday. “We will come up with the ways that we can cut red tape,” he said. “We can easily get rid of 20-30 percent of our regulations.”

Founder Seeks Pardon

Trump Family May Invest in Crypto Giant Binance as Founder Seeks Pardon

If Trump becomes a Binance investor, he could also be business partners with UAE’s royal family.

Russ Choma

The Trump family has allegedly been discussing a possible investment in the crypto exchange Binance—a deal that, especially in light of Binance’s multi-billion-dollar valuation, would raise a host of conflict-of-interest questions. The discussions were first revealed by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, which also reported that Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, is simultaneously seeking a presidential pardon after pleading guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money-laundering laws.

Zhao disputed the Journal’s reporting, posting on X Thursday that the paper “got the facts wrong” and that he’d “had no discussions of a Binance US deal with … well, anyone.”

On top of the ethical issues raised by the possible entanglement of executive clemency powers with a lucrative financial transaction, such an investment deal could also turn the Trump family into business partners with a Middle Eastern royal family.

News of the alleged Binance talks comes one day after an Abu Dhabi-based investment firm, MGX Fund Management, announced it is making a $2 billion investment in Binance, securing a minority stake in the exchange. MGX’s chairman is Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan—who is the national security adviser for the United Arab Emirates and brother of the UAE’s current ruler, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Tahnoun bin Zayed is also the chairman of a separate investment firm called G42 Just last year, the Republican-led House Select Committee on China raised concerns over that firm’s close connections with the Chinese government and its possible involvement in the transfer of sensitive American technology to China through a deal it proposed with Microsoft. (Microsoft later added safeguards to the deal in response to congressional concerns.)

Zhao founded Binance in 2017, and it quickly grew to be one of the most important crypto exchanges in the business, alongside Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX. In fact, it was a failed merger and personal acrimony between the two companies and their founders that seemed to trigger the collapse of FTX. But Binance ran into its own troubles when, following years of criticism over its security and privacy practices, the company in 2023 was charged with money laundering and sanctions evasion. Among other accusations, the US government charged that the company had helped users evade sanctions against Russia, Iran, and Cuba. A Reuters report found that Korean hacking groups, investment frauds, and drug networks all had used the exchange to move money.

Eventually, the company agreed to a $4 billion fine, and Zhao agreed to resign and personally pay a $50 million fine. He also served four months in prison.

According to the Journal’s report Thursday, the possibility of bringing on the Trump family as investors was first raised by Binance, and Steve Witkoff, a Trump family friend who was recently named as the US special envoy to the Middle East, has been involved in the discussions. Witkoff has known Trump for decades, and last year his son, Zach Witkoff, founded the Trump-backed World Liberty Financial crypto company. The Journal reported that an administration official denied involvement by Steve Witkoff in any Binance talks.

The Journal reported that one source indicated that Binance may be seeking to follow the path blazed by crypto investor Justin Sun, who was facing a civil fraud investigation by the SEC under the Biden administration. Last fall, Sun invested $75 million into the World Liberty Financial platform—triggering an $18 million payday for Trump. Last month, the SEC announced it was halting its investigation into Sun.

Seeks Legal Immunity

Environmentalist Sound Alarm as the Fossil-Fuel Industry Seeks Legal Immunity

Nearly 200 groups implore congressional Democrats to resist its efforts.

Dharna Noor

As fossil fuel interests attack climate accountability litigation, environmental advocates have sounded a new warning that they are pursuing a path that would destroy all future prospects for such cases.

Nearly 200 advocacy groups have urged Democratic representatives to “proactively and affirmatively” reject potential industry attempts to obtain immunity from litigation.

“We have reason to believe that the fossil fuel industry and its allies will use the chaos and overreach of the new Trump administration to attempt yet again to…shield themselves from facing consequences for their decades of pollution and deception,” reads a letter to Congress on Wednesday. It was signed by 195 environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and Sunrise Movement; legal nonprofits including the American Association for Justice and Public Justice; and dozens of other organizations.

Over the last decade, states and municipalities have brought more than 30 lawsuits accusing big oil of intentionally covering up the climate risks of their products, and seeking potentially billions in damages. The defendants have worked to kill the cases, with limited success.

Now, with Republicans in control of the White House and both congressional chambers, advocates fear the industry will go further, pursuing total immunity from all existing and future climate lawsuits. To do so, they could lobby for a liability waiver like the one granted to the firearms industry in 2005, which has successfully blocked most attempts to hold them accountable for violence.

“Lawmakers must decisively reject any attempt by the fossil fuel industry to evade accountability and ensure both justice today and the right of future generations to hold polluters responsible for decades of deception,” said the missive, which is addressed to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Fossil fuel companies have vied for such a get-out-of-jail-free card for years. In 2017, a coalition of Republican officials, economists, and oil companies proposed legal liability as a condition of a carbon tax, arguing the industry could not weather both. When the council abandoned the waiver proposal two years later, ExxonMobil threatened to leave the group, documents subpoenaed by the Senate show.

Then, in 2020, a waiver was quietly included in a draft of a Covid-19 spending package but was later removed, the investigative climate outlet Drilled found.

Such a waiver could only pass through the Senate with supermajority support, requiring backing from some Democrats. In a January interview, Michael Gerrard, a climate law expert at Columbia University, said it is “hard to imagine” it winning bipartisan backing. But the advocates fear oil companies could lobby officials to once again quietly tuck the proposal into a larger, must-pass piece of legislation.

“Democrats need to be on guard,” said Aaron Regunberg, the climate accountability project director at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, which signed the letter.

The authors of the letter do not have hard evidence of a current industry push for legal immunity, but their concerns come amid wider attacks on climate litigation.

On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to “stop the wave of frivolous litigation from environmental extremists.” And this month, a rightwing think tank launched a campaign attempting to shoot down litigation from “radical climate groups,” which it called the “biggest risk” to Donald Trump’s energy agenda, E&E News reported. The think tank has ties to Leonard Leo, who is widely known as a force behind the Federalist Society, which orchestrated the ultraconservative takeover of the American judiciary.

Last year, Leo-tied groups also launched another campaign, which one expert called “unprecedented,” to convince the Supreme Court to shield oil companies from lawsuits. In decisions this week and in January, the high court denied their request.

A truck parked outside a major fossil fuel conference on Monday in Houston, warned that “lawfare and anti-energy laws are threatening America’s pro-consumer energy dominance,” linking to an op-ed from a group with links to Leo.

Another development sparking worry at oil companies: “climate superfund” bills, meant to make big polluters help pay for climate action.

Last year, Vermont and New York passed such measures, which are loosely modeled on the US superfund program. Ten other states are considering similar proposals, which could each cost the industry billions or trillions.

Red states and oil lobby groups are legally challenging the laws. This week, the Federalist Society—which Leo co-chairs—hosted a panel criticizing the measures.

“If they are seeking a liability waiver, they might also seek congressional action precluding the state climate superfund laws,” Gerrard said.

It is a major fear for Cassidy DiPaola of the pro-climate superfund group Make Polluters Pay, which signed the letter. “What’s at stake here isn’t just who pays for climate disasters,” she said. “It’s whether our democracy allows powerful industries to simply rewrite the rules when justice catches up to them.”