DL Open Thread: Saturday, February 22, 2025
Sometimes, the thread writes itself. As in, people send me stuff that belongs here. Starting with this 2021 article that explains Trump’s Putin fixation:
Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian.
Yuri Shvets, posted to Washington by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, compares the former US president to “the Cambridge five”, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war.
Now 67, Shvets is a key source for American Kompromat, a new book by journalist Craig Unger, whose previous works include House of Trump, House of Putin. The book also explores the former president’s relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Unger describes how Trump first appeared on the Russians’ radar in 1977 when he married his first wife, Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model. Trump became the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakia’s intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB.
Three years later Trump opened his first big property development, the Grand Hyatt New York hotel near Grand Central station. Trump bought 200 television sets for the hotel from Semyon Kislin, a Soviet émigré who co-owned Joy-Lud electronics on Fifth Avenue.
According to Shvets, Joy-Lud was controlled by the KGB and Kislin worked as a so-called “spotter agent” who identified Trump, a young businessman on the rise, as a potential asset. Kislin denies that he had a relationship with the KGB.
Then, in 1987, Trump and Ivana visited Moscow and St Petersburg for the first time. Shvets said he was fed KGB talking points and flattered by KGB operatives who floated the idea that he should go into politics.
There’s more, but you get the picture: 40 years of flattery of Trump will get you wherever you want to go.
I’m sorry, but can’t avoid a detour into Fascism On The March. Trump rids military of Black and female leadership:
President Trump fired the country’s senior military officer as part of an extraordinary Friday night purge at the Pentagon that injected politics into the selection of the nation’s top military leaders.
Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., a four-star fighter pilot known as C.Q. who became only the second African American to hold the chairman’s job, is to be replaced by a little-known retired three-star Air Force general, Dan Caine, who endeared himself to the president when they met in Iraq six years ago.
In all, six Pentagon officials were fired, including Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy; Gen. James Slife, the vice chief of the Air Force; and the top lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force.
The decision to fire General Brown, which Mr. Trump announced in a message on Truth Social, reflects the president’s insistence that the military’s leadership is too mired in diversity issues, has lost sight of its role as a combat force to defend the country and is out of step with his “America First” movement.
Read the whole article. It will make you sick. Hopefully, not literally.
Town halls this week for congressional Republicans from Georgia to Wisconsin to Oregon grew testy as voters showed up to vent, outraged at the firing of workers and the Department of Government Efficiency’s access to sensitive data. Protesters showed up around the country at lawmakers’ offices.
The backlash extends far beyond federal workers in the Beltway, reaching purple districts that will decide control of Congress in 2026 and swing states like Georgia that helped return Trump to the White House. Layoffs just hit the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Funding freezes have halted clean-energy projects championed by President Joe Biden.
We’ve already established the cowardice of Rethug congress critters as they cower before Trump. So, the question now becomes who are they more afraid of–Trump or their constituents?
Oh, almost forgot. The picture that tells 10,000 words:
Elon Musk, left, and President Javier Milei of Argentina at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington on Thursday.Credit…Eric Lee/The New York Times
Judges (some of them) are also fighting back. This from a (very) loyal reader:
In a withering exchange Wednesday, a federal judge doubted the Trump administration’s ability to fend off a civil challenge to an executive order barring transgender people from the U.S. military.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes pressed U.S. Attorney Jason Lynch, who is defending the administration, about the January directive, which sought to “prioritize military excellence and readiness” by prohibiting transgender people from serving or enlisting.
“Do you agree that transgender people historically until today have been discriminated against?” Reyes asked Lynch.
Lynch acknowledged transgender people have been discriminated against, but he said he was doubtful that the half dozen trans service members and two trans prospective recruits who sued the administration in this specific instance had the grounds to do so.
“Let me just read off a couple of things that the president has done,” the judge said. “And you tell me whether this feels discriminatory to you, all right?”
Reyes started by pointing out President Donald Trump’s executive order recognizing the existence of only two sexes — even though, she noted, this contradicts biology.
The judge continued: “He has blocked schools from using federal funds to promote the idea that gender can be fluid; he’s directed the State Department to stop issuing documents that allow a third X gender marker; he has changed the reference to LGBTQ on government websites to only LGB, literally erasing transgender people; banned the participation of transgender women in women’s sports; revoked the ability of transgender federal employees to receive gender-affirming care; stopped medical treatment, necessary medical treatment; directed that all transgender people in federal prison be denied medical treatment and be housed by sex, where they are nine times more likely to have acts of violence committed against them, including rape, repeated rape.”
Agencies have been directed to take down everything that promotes what the White House calls “gender ideology” from federal websites, including information on contraception, vaccines or HIV/AIDs, she continued. The Trump administration even went so far as to revoke previous policies that ensured transgender people had equal access to homeless shelters.
There’s more. You should read the piece to see how Jesus figures into this. District Judge Ana Reyes is a hero. We need so many more like her.
Ho-kay. Calling a halt to today’s Fascism On The March. Time for another reader-suggested piece. I will point out that Paula in the comments section made a key point similar to what you’ll see here:
The state government has set up an incredibly corporate-friendly regulatory, tax, and legal regime, and so big companies locate their official headquarters there. Many trusts and on-paper shell corporations are Delaware-based as well, for the same reasons. It’s a classic race-to-the-bottom dynamic where, because the federal government does not set a consistent baseline, states competed as to who could pander the hardest to big business, and Delaware hit bottom first. Most Fortune 500 companies locate there, and in return the state gets about a third of its budget from corporate franchise fees and taxes.
But Delaware’s incorporation laws also provide some rights to shareholders. While shareholders have extremely limited ability to sue over the business judgment of corporate managers, corporations must prioritize them and treat them fairly. Due to these precedents, Elon Musk has been losing repeatedly in Delaware Chancery Court over a proposed pay package for himself worth an estimated $55 billion. Musk responded by moving Tesla’s headquarters from Delaware to Texas to try to get his cash.
Here’s the figurative payoff, as opposed to the literal payoff that legislators seem willing to hand out to afflicted billionaires:
Beyond that, this move actually undercuts much of what makes Delaware attractive for corporations, which isn’t just the low corporate tax and lax regulations. The state has developed deep specialization in corporate law so that legal disputes can be adjudicated quickly, consistently, and easily; it’s why for 50 years the corporate code has been written by a panel of experts rather than legislators.
The reason is that doing business requires a baseline of fairness and consistency—for contracts to mean anything, for instance, you must be able to take them to a court and expect a reasonably honest ruling. If one party can simply breach the contract, and then if they lose in court, run to the state legislature with a sack full of cash and get the decision reversed, contracts mean nothing. One could violate property rights—steal things—in the same way. Any serious company doing real business (i.e., not a hype-based fraud like Tesla) would be well advised to incorporate in another, less corrupt state.
So. Didn’t see this on my pre-session dance card. Will the General Assembly quickly do something to assuage some angry billionaires, or will they maintain at least a balance of fairness between corporate overlords, stockholders and the public?
Al (not AI) takes over this spot for this next week as I loll in the sunny climes of gulf-coast Florida, taking in a few ballgames. Leaving all my political T-shirts at home.
What do you want to talk about?
From ‘under investigation’ to new Social Security head:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/22/social-security-trump-doge-musk/
Trump wants to lose in district courts, and he wants to lose faster. The sooner he loses, the sooner he gets his appeal to the MAGA Supreme Court. I’m sure that plan is a subsection of Project 2025.
“Trump wants” is kind of a projection. Trump’s brain is pretty much mush at this point. I doubt he can think in the kind of strategic method you’re attributing to him, where step 1 leads to 2 leads to 3 and so on.
No, but he’s just doing whatever the Project 2025 Bros tell him to do.
Some of the dumb shit he’s doing is not in the P2025 plan. Chaos is complicated.
OK, friends. On my way to Clearwater.
KMAGYOYO, I’m outta here!
Upon your return, inquiring mind wants to know: Which strike zone is more accurate, yours or this newfangled ABS system?