Post-Democratic America Day–Day Three. Federal civil rights cases quashed? Check. Science silenced? Check. Career National Security Staff sent home? Check. The real Trump Bible is Project 2025. Oh, well, at least we have some comic relief:
Shortly after President Donald Trump announced a new massive AI infrastructure investment from the White House, “First Buddy” Elon Musk tried to tear it down.
“They don’t actually have the money,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X. “SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority.”
Trump said the investment will create a new company, called Stargate, to grow artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. The leaders of SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle stood alongside Trump during the announcement. Their respective companies will invest $100 billion in total for the project to start, with plans to pour up to $500 billion into Stargate in the coming years.
As a sign of how involved Musk is in the first days of the administration, Musk said he was in the Oval Office on Tuesday as Trump signed a pardon for Ross William Ulbricht, founder of the dark web marketplace SilkRoad. Musk had also dispatched a top staffer from his SpaceX and X companies to help ensure the release of convicted January 6 rioters after Trump signed a blanket pardon.
But perhaps it should not be a surprise that Musk is going after an OpenAI initiative. Musk is in an ongoing lawsuit with OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, who was at the White House for the announcement. Musk, who has said he “doesn’t trust” Altman, claims in the lawsuit the ChatGPT has abandoned its original nonprofit mission by reserving some of its most advanced AI technology for private customers.
Small comfort, I know.
Josh Marshall’s Advice To Democrats. Which will no doubt go unheeded. It’s easy, he’s right, but they won’t do it:
Yesterday my colleague Kate Riga noted a trap Senate Democrats keep falling into: in an effort to court Republican defectors they temper their criticism of the various Trump nominees. But since there are and will be no defectors they lose on both sides of the equation, gaining no defectors and making their critiques tepid and forgettable. This is unquestionably true. But we can go a step further still. Far from courting potential defectors, they should be attacking them.
Potential defectors are almost always those from marginal states, and some are senators from marginal states who face voters at the next election. 2026 doesn’t have a lot of great prospects. But there are some. So Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, possibly Joni Ernst and new Florida senator Ashley Moody. The criticisms of the bad nominees should be as intense as possible and all focused on the support of these senators. No one does you a favor in these settings for being nice: senators defect when they think they may pay a price at the ballot box. That is the only way to have messaging that takes the initiative and stays on the attack. If things get too hot and the senator pulls their support, great. If not, that just lays the groundwork for beating that senator in the next election. Those two possibilities are the only outcomes of any consequence and the same game plan advances both goals. It’s simple. When they’re upset or hiding you’ll know you’re doing it right. One more point: no one cares about press releases. Getting on camera or activity on social media matter.
There’s more:
Next up, which Democrat is going to go the well of the House and start telling the stories of the various Capitol Police officers who were hit over the head with flag poles, tasered, crushed in door jambs and more, and then list the name of their assailants who Trump has now pardoned? Go to the floor, list off the tales of gore and blood and broken lives and then challenge House Republicans to defend themselves and then listen to the silence. It’s just sitting right there.
Right now Republicans control Washington. They’re going to push through their nominees. They can pass a lot of laws. The only sensible and dignified course of action is to accept that Republicans are in charge and to focus in on making their unpopular actions as painful as possible. Every Republican member of the House owns all the pardons. Susan Collins owns all the pardons.
Not complicated. It’s sitting right there. There’s no need for one big strategy. Everyone should be doing everything, always on the attack. We live in an era of a thousand cuts. The job of the opposition is quite literally to oppose. Get to it.
Amen.
Monique Johns’ Campaign Finance Reports Are A Fucking Joke. After I read her just-filed 2024 Year-End Report, I circled back to some previous ones. No attempt at verifying what ‘campaign’ purposes the, oh, to pick a couple of examples at random, the $1956.40 the campaign spent at Home Depot, the $682.89 at Amazon Online, the $400.00 (right on the nose) spent on ‘Food For Meet And Greet’, were for. That’s just the year-end report. $600 (right on the nose) for ‘gas’. You can find your own examples. Here’s how:
Go to https://elections.delaware.gov/. Click on Campaign Finance Reporting. Click on ‘View Filed Reports’. Hit ‘Continue’. Type in Monique Johns in the committee name box. Then search to your heart’s content. She didn’t bother with, you know, addresses, for any of the places (many of which are not mentioned) where she allegedly bought ‘campaign’ stuff. She has made a mockery of campaign finance laws, as, no doubt, will the Department of Elections when they don’t even bother to follow through. The use of ‘she’ is deliberate as, according to the reports, she is her own campaign’s Treasurer. Maybe she’s just a ‘nice lady’ who is in over her head. Well, nobody demanded she run for office. She’s in office now. Will anybody do their job?
$445 Mill Reasons Why ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ Has Returned:
Big oil spent a stunning $445m throughout the last election cycle to influence Donald Trump and Congress, a new analysis has found.
That figure includes funding from January 2023 and November 2024 for political donations, lobbying and advertising to support elected officials and specific policies. Because it does not include money funneled through dark-money groups – which do not have to reveal their donors – it is almost certainly a vast understatement, says the report from green advocacy group Climate Power, which is based on campaign finance disclosures and advertising industry data.
Fossil fuel interests poured $96m into Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and affiliated political action committees, the report found. Much of that was covered by megadonor oil billionaires, such as fracking magnate Harold Hamm, pipeline mogul Kelcy Warren and drilling tycoon Jeffery Hildebrand.
Citizens United. The ruling that killed democracy?
Cade To Serve As Carney’s Chief-Of-Staff. I believe in second chances. Just not sure I’d go this far, this fast:
Delaware’s former budget director Cerron Cade on Wednesday resolved shoplifting charges he faced from incidents at Home Depot last year, paving the way for him to assume the role of Wilmington Mayor John Carney’s chief of staff.
Cade on Wednesday pleaded guilty to one count of shoplifting in the Court of Common Pleas and was sentenced to “probation before judgment,” which is common for first-time offenders facing similar shoplifting charges.
He was also ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation, repay $394.32 to Home Depot for the items taken, and avoid contact with the home improvement business for a year, according to state Department of Justice officials.
Deputy Chief of Staff for the mayor, John Rago, said Cade would step into the role of chief of staff soon. Rago provided a statement from Carney, who said he’s looking forward to Cade joining Wilmington’s administration once he completes his court requirements.
The Post-Game/Pre-Game Show will be a little late today b/c I have my annual eye exam (‘I can see perfectly fine, thankyouverymuch’).
What do you want to talk about?