Appeasement and Dereliction of Duty across the Board

Morning Dispatch

Your Secretary of Defense, everybody.

Where are the 80-font headlines on the front pages of our national newspapers? Where is the sense of urgency required to meet this critical moment? I am so heartily tired of the squeamish calculations, the too-measured attempts to normalize all of this insanity.

In the last few days, developments across cabinets, in the media, and throughout the judiciary have set off alarm bells that those with the power to warn us have chosen, as they have done for over a decade now, to ignore or downplay, even though the evidence is right in from of their eyes.

Here’s what I’m looking at:

National Security

On Friday, the Trump regime fired, without warning or cause, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Charles Q. Brown Jr. The highly qualified Brown is being replaced by retired three-star Air Force General Dan “Raizin” Caine whose only qualification seems to be, according to The Atlantic, that he “reportedly impressed the [Donald] with his swagger and bravado when they met in Iraq in 2018.”

This action, along with the firing of Air Force Lt. Gen. Jennifer Short, (Chairman Brown is a Black man, and Lt. Gen Short is a woman, so DEI hires according to the Trump regime) bodes ill for the future of the military as Donald, with the significant help of those he and Senate Republicans installed, seek to bend it to do his bidding.

Rep. Jason Crow, (D-CO), a former Army Ranger, tweeted the following,

[T]he purge of senior officers at [the Department of Defense] is deeply troubling, but purging JAG officers worries me the most.” His concern is based on his knowledge that the JAG lawyers, “interpret the law and determine the constitutionality of actions that commanders take.”

Replacing them “loyalists,” according to Crow, “is so dangerous.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made it clear that Crow is right to be alarmed when he stated that the Trump Regime dismissed the JAG lawyers to guarantee that they present no “roadblocks to anything that happens.”

Which is to say, to anything—no matter how illegal or unconstitutional—the Trump regime wants to have happen.

The Rule of Law

According to reporting from NPR:

For nearly two weeks, the Trump administration has kept AP reporters from covering major events due to the news service's unwillingness to designate the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, as [Donald] had decreed in an executive order on his first day in office. The Justice Department argued, on the administration's behalf, that access to the president is a privilege, not a right.

Last week, Donald told reporters, "We're going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it's the Gulf of America.”

Edward Martin, the acting U.S. attorney for D.C, said "As [Donald’s] lawyers, we are proud to fight to protect his leadership . . . and we are vigilant in standing against entities like the AP that refuse to put America first.” Martin is proving to be one of the most egregious sycophants yet (which is really saying something), and in case it isn’t clear, he’s openly stating that, as far as he is concerned, the DOJ is Donald Trump’s personal law firm—it no longer represents the interests of the American people, it only represents him.

White House spokesperson Steven Cheung claimed that the White House would prevail over the AP in court, claiming falsely that its journalists are “political partisans” whose "peanut-sized brains" had “rotted." Because that is the level of maturity we are now dealing with.

Trump-appointee, U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden, sided with the administration finding that there was not “sufficient reason to issue an emergency decree.” The only justification I can think of for such an obviously wrong ruling is that, like the man who appointed him, this judge has not read the Constitution, and therefore feels no allegiance to it, despite the oath he swore.

This is as bad as it seems, but as NPR points out:

The AP serves audiences and news organizations across the globe; its stylebook is used by its journalists, as well as other news organizations and institutions.

The stylebook continues to recommend using “The Gulf of Mexico” which is rightly called “The Gulf of Mexico,” while pointing out Donald’s preferred sobriquet. I sincerely hope they don’t cede anything.

And, relatedly:

The Fourth Estate

In a move that was both sudden and unexplained, MSNBC, the only remaining so-called left-leaning cable news channel, canceled the Katie Phang Show, José Díaz-Balart Reports, Alex Wagner Tonight, and The Reidout with Joy Reid. The first three former-hosts will stay on at MSNBC in some capacity, but Joy Reid is out. Meanwhile, Morning Joe, one of the whitest shows on television, is on the air 20 hours a week. And they are vile.

The writing was on the wall as soon as Rashida Jones (not that she didn’t often make awful decisions) stepped down to be replaced by the new president, Rebecca Kutler. In fact, the writing was on the wall when the egregious Morning Joe co-anchors hauled ass down to Mar-a-Lago in the immediate aftermath of the election to kowtow to Donald Trump and then, in a belligerently defensive way, which only revealed the extent of their cowardice, attempted to defend the indefensible.

Jen Psaki is also getting a weekday primetime slot so, at least for now, the week-day primetime lineup—except for the hour taken by the trio of Alicia Mendez, Simone Sanders-Townsend, and Micheal Steele—from Nicolle Wallace at 4:00 through Stephanie Ruhle at 11:00 pm, is white people. And while there will be some diversity in primetime, it will not be additive.

We just learned that in 2025, Fox has had its highest-rated start to a year, so I guess that’s the audience CNN and now MSNBC are gunning for. What possible reason could they have to pay attention to the vast majority of the people in this country who don’t want to be lied to daily? Besides, the executives at these companies know that if they tell the truth about any misdeeds committed by Democratic politicians, their lives won’t be threatened, their reporters won’t be attacked, and the fourth estate won’t be maligned.

The Social Safety Net

Republicans have long wanted to come for the social safety net. There is an enormous amount of money in Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare that, in their view, is spent on people who don’t deserve it—the elderly, the poor, the sick, and children. That’s why they started referring to these as entitlement programs—it makes them seem like government largesse that bad people take advantage of.

Last night, Republicans in the House passed a budget framework largely along party lines (217-215) that would cut almost $1 trillion from Medicaid. Benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) which helps low- and no-income Americans buy food, are being cut to less than $2 a day. Approximately 16.7% of children in all households across the country get their food through SNAP benefits. I guess they’ll just have to get by with eating less.

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Republicans, unconstrained and unhindered, are power-hungry, they’re reckless, and they’re coming for everything.

Tonight, I will post Part II of the series, “How to Fight Monsters.”