That’s a misleading picture. Yes, the population of veterans did support Trump over Harris, but the population of veterans skews overwhelmingly male, white, and old.

Look at Pew’s 2023 survey. Among veterans:

• 28% are under 50, 36% are between 50-69, and 37% are over 70.
• 74% are white non-Hispanic.
• 89% are men.

Meanwhile, Biden probably won among active duty in 2020.

I suspect that if you surveyed veterans under the age of 50, you’d get a very different result. Or, if you surveyed the general non population but weighted it to be as old, white, or male as the veteran population, would the results be very different from veterans generally?

These narcissists would never agree to endure insults as part of a scheme. They’re also too incompetent to plan this kind of stuff.

There’s no plan here. It’s just always been an inherently unstable situation, with schemers who aren’t as smart as they think they are, all trying to achieve their own ends using ideas they don’t understand.

I didn’t think I’d ever agree with Hawley

Hawley represents the future of the Republican party, in my opinion: populist conservatism that is willing to bend on party orthodoxy on how taxes and regulations shouldn’t be captured by big corporate interests, but is just completely abhorrent on cultural issues (and whether the government should be involved in those issues).

In an earlier political era, there would be opportunities for cross-party dialogue on the issues that the parties have deemed non-partisan (where divisions don’t fall within party lines and party leadership doesn’t care that their members hold a diversity of views on), but the number of issues that fall within that category have plummeted in the last 20 years.

Republicans killed a COVID era $3600/year child tax credit, letting it lapse in 2023 back to the 2018 amount of $2000, which was increased from $1000 as a replacement for the $5050 tax exemption parents used to be able to get before the 2017 Trump tax reforms. For a married couple whose combined income was between $75k and $150k, that $5k tax exemption was worth about $1250, so it was a bad trade for them (or anyone making more).

If Republicans were serious about financially incentivizing having children, they’ll need to support the kids throughout the entire life cycle: healthcare for pregnant women, including through labor and deliver and post partum, support for families with young children (including parental leave mandates), subsidized daycare, good schools, parks and libraries, and economic stability (including in housing costs).

But they’re not, so here we are.

That’s not an outrageous medical bill. It’s an outrageous bill for clawing back government benefits for those whose full time care for family members prevents them from working.

school gun team

This fucking country, man.

Seriously. It’s like looking at a map of a battle and assuming the arrows are actual terrain features.

The poverty line was historically measured simply by multiplying the USDA’s cheapest food plan for a household to buy groceries with adequate nutrition, and multiplying by 3.

Then, in the intervening 6 decades or so, food inflation has gone up significantly slower than housing inflation, to where that simple assumption of “barely enough to eat, times 3” began systematically understating actual poverty.

Today, feeding the reference family of 4 (2 adults 20-50, 1 kid aged 6-8, 1 aged 9-11) costs $996.20 per month (as of March 2025). That’s basically $12,000 per year, so the poverty line for a family of 4 is $32,150 (updated every January with September data).

Their tattoos?

They also know hurting themselves.

General Milley was his first term appointee for Chair of the Joint Chiefs, and one of the first things Trump did in his second term was to strip Milley of his security clearance, security detail, and even his placement of his portrait with the other former chairs.

Jerome Powell was Trump’s pick for Chair of the Federal Reserve, replacing Yellen (the first time that a Fed chair had not gotten a second term, and Trump has been clamoring for the power to fire him.

Jan. 6 “rally”? Uhhhh

He’s fired a bunch of lower level officials.

His pick for acting US Attorney for SDNY (basically Manhattan) was fired a few weeks later for refusing to drop charges against Eric Adams.

The acting IRS commissioner has changed over 5 times in the 90 days of this current presidency, including the most recent firing of a guy that was too close to Elon (in some kind of Bessent-Musk feud), just a few days after his appointment. The previous acting commissioner was fired for refusing to illegally share IRS data with DHS to help with immigration enforcement.

And the current turmoil in the Pentagon is the firings of people he appointed to these positions. It’s a mess.

This is how politics works under an authoritarian: senior officials throwing other officials under the bus by appeal to the authoritarian’s ego.

It’s good to remember that Trump’s entire MO is to never concede.

It’s also true that there are internal factions fighting for power and influence, that often results in incoherent flip flopping. Constant external pressure on the administration intensifies the internet discord, and is also worth doing for that reason.

The biggest news out of this meeting is that Sen. Van Hollen reports that Abrego Garcia was transferred out of CECOT to another prison last week:

Van Hollen said Abrego Garcia said he had been “traumatized” by being at El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, and fearful of detainees in other cell blocks “who called out to him and taunted him in various ways.”

Abrego Garcia said he was transferred last week to a different detention center with better conditions, but still had no ability to communicate with anyone outside the facility, the senator said.

The public pressure on this is working. The mere fact that Bukele felt the need to try to stage a photo op by the swimming pool of a luxury hotel means that he cares about appearances. Let’s keep the pressure on.

In today’s statements, Sen. Van Hollen said that Abrego Garcia said he was transferred out of CECOT last week, to another prison. The Senator believes that the public pressure is influencing the actions of the Salvadorean government. The attention on this case is working, and is making a difference.

In the courtroom where his case is being heard in Maryland, protesters from the street can be heard. This shit makes a difference.

Let’s keep it up.

shows how you know this,

Ok, where to begin. I’m a lawyer with decades of experience, including with the occasional case that involves the government. I know how to read a case and follow the news from an informed perspective, and I recognize the individual traits/characteristics/background of the judges involved. There’s not one place to read it, but let’s try.

Here’s a litigation tracker that updates on all the big lawsuits trying to rein in Trump’s lawlessness:

https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-litigation-legal-challenges-trump-administration/

CTRL+F “Abrego Garcia” for the rundown of Kilmar’s case. “Update 5” describes the appellate court’s decision not to stay the district court’s order to “facilitate and effectuate,” and contains a link to the opinion, which includes Judge Wilkinson’s concurrence that “facilitate” is a legal order but “effectuate” might exceed the court’s power to order the government to do specific things in foreign policy matters. The Supreme Court agreed that “facilitate” was a lawful order, but told the district court to make sure it doesn’t overstep by ordering “effectuation” in a way that infringes on the President’s constitutional powers.

Judge Wilkinson is a Reagan appointee who is widely regarded as a superstar in the Republican party, in Federalist Society circles. He was an influential thinker and jurist on conservative causes, and clerking for him as a first job out of law school is a marker of an up and coming conservative lawyer superstar. Many of those clerks went on to clerk for Scalia, Roberts, etc. Clerking for him remains a fairly prominent part of the pipeline for future Republican judges and politicians.

Yesterday, he wrote the majority opinion for the Fourth Circuit that makes very clear that the government’s position is “shocking” and a threat to “the foundation of our constitutional order.”

The work continues. This is just one case. All the other cases will have different results, but Trump isn’t going to win all of them, and each Trump loss draws blood, while his lack of focus means that he’ll continue to make unforced errors while opening new fronts to fight on: Gulf of Mexico, Greenland, Tariffs, picking a fight with the chair of the Federal Reserve, flip flopping on which federal programs or contracts to cut, all the different mistakes in administration, etc.

I’m not on board with doomerism or even accelerationism. I think there’s still a fight to be had in the legal arena, and I still think our side can win there. Watching how the cases are playing out confirms that the other side believes it, too. Otherwise, why would they be fighting this hard?

Alaska is just weird, and I wouldn’t attribute too much in national electoral trends to that specific state. It now has an instant runoff general election after a top-4 jungle primary, which makes the craziest candidates less viable. Sarah Palin is very much a Trumpist, but couldn’t win a statewide election in 2022 (enough Republicans in the state hate her that they voted for Begich first, then flipped to the Democrat or didn’t vote once Begich dropped out in the instant runoff).

It’d be hard to properly analyze a hypothetical about Murkowski running for reelection amidst a Trump attack campaign and an endorsement of a more Trumpist opponent, but I wouldn’t discount her chances even in that environment. Especially if she does succeed in forming a mini caucus with other Republican Senators that fight to preserve legislative power to check the Presidency.