Trump gets down to business in the Arab world
This is the way I see it, too:
President Trump is first and foremost a businessman, and he sees things through that lens. He went to the Middle East to do business, to talk business, to make deals, and the leaders of the Arab nations he has visited, including most notably Saudi Arabia, seem to be reacting very positively to his approach.
That’s basically it. Whether these deals will end up being good, or will matter in any but the economic sense, remains to be seen. After all, “experts” thought that doing business with China would make China less of a threat, and so far it hasn’t quite worked out that way. It’s just a different kind of threat than it used to be.
On the other hand, I’ve read a ton of articles indicating these deals mean that Trump is pulling away from his support of Israel. I don’t see it that way. I’ve seen no real indication of it, and people such as Rubio and Huckabee certainly deny it. And, for example, Trump delivered this message to Iran while on his trip:
Speaking at a business roundtable in the Qatari capital Doha, Trump reiterated that Iran “can’t have a nuclear weapon” and suggested that negotiators are “getting very close to maybe doing a deal.” …
During his Gulf tour, Trump has repeatedly warned that Iran must never obtain a nuclear weapon, threatening to strike the country if it fails to reach a nuclear deal. But he has not explicitly ruled out Iran enriching uranium on its own soil. While uranium is used as a nuclear fuel, it can be weaponized if enriched to high levels. …
In an interview with Breitbart last week, US foreign envoy Steve Witkoff said that an enrichment program in Iran is a “red line” for the US.
Plus he repeated his proposal for Gaza:
The president repeated his proposal for America to take over the enclave while speaking at a business roundtable in Doha with top Qatari officials on Thursday.
Trump said: “If it’s necessary, I think I’d be proud to have the United States have it, take it, make it a freedom zone. Let some good things happen, put people in homes where they can be safe and Hamas is going to have to be dealt with.
SCOTUS will be considering the legality of nationwide injunctions
It’s very important for the Court to rule on this:
Today, the United States Supreme Court will hear three consolidated cases in Trump v. CASA on the growing use of national or universal injunctions. This is a matter submitted on the “shadow docket” and the underlying cases concern the controversy over “birthright citizenship.” However, the merits of those claims are not at issue. Instead, the Trump Administration has made a “modest request” for the Court to limit the scope of lower-court injunctions to their immediate districts and parties, challenging the right of such courts to bind an Administration across the nation.
That’s from Jonathan Turley, who also goes into the history of such injunctions:
Under President George W. Bush, there were only six such injunctions, which increased to 12 under Obama.
However, when Trump came to office, he faced 64 such orders in his first term.
When Biden and the Democrats returned to office, it fell back to 14.
That was not due to more modest measures.
Biden did precisely what Trump did in seeking to negate virtually all of his predecessors’ orders and then seek sweeping new legal reforms. He was repeatedly found to have violated the Constitution, but there was no torrent of preliminary injunctions at the start of his term.
Yet, when Trump returned to office, the number of national injunctions soared again in the first 100 days and surpassed the number for the entirety of Biden’s term.
Turley doesn’t explain why it was used so much more often against Trump, but my notion is that it’s because judges on the left are more inclined to employ it. Turley also doesn’t explain when national injunctions were first issued by lower courts, but I found some information on that here:
Commentators broadly agree that nationwide injunctions as currently understood did not exist in the pre-Founding English courts of equity, that no nationwide injunctions issued in the early years of the Republic, and that such injunctions have become more common in the last two decades.51 In a May 2019 address, Attorney General William Barr stated that federal courts “issued only 27 nationwide injunctions in all of the 20th century.” By contrast, as of February 2020, the Department of Justice (DOJ) had identified 12 nationwide injunctions issued during the presidency of George W. Bush, 19 issued during Barack Obama’s presidency and 55 such injunctions issued against the Trump Administration. Beyond the general agreement that nationwide injunctions have increased in recent years, scholars debate many significant points, including when the first nationwide injunction issued, whether other types of injunctive relief provide historical precedent for current nationwide injunctions, and the extent to which historical precedent is relevant to the legality of nationwide injunctions today.
There’s much much more at the link. Although left and right disagree on when it started and exactly how to define it, it seems to me that the practice really picked up steam against George W. Bush and has accelerated greatly against Trump. At this point, it’s the left’s main tool against him.
ADDENDUM:
See also this article which contains a discussion of some of today’s SCOTUS hearings on the subject.
Politics as “mental illness”
Commenter “Cavendish” wonders:
A few questions: What is the difference between “mental illness” and “incapable of thinking rationally”? What, precisely, is the definition of “thinking rationally”? And, is “incapable of thinking rationally” suffered uniformly and consistently, or is it situationally dependent?
By that I mean, is a person living independently in a capitalist society who fully embraces and aligns with Rachel Maddow and Bernie Sanders but can easily discern and choose between between grapes at Fred’s for $2.00/lb versus identical grapes at Jane’s for $1.75/lb is, by one measure, demonstrating irrationality in the former but rationality in the latter; does that mean he or she is “partially mentally ill” or subject to “situational irrationality”? And, if it’s “situational irrationality” exactly what does that mean, and how does it relate to “mental illness”?
The questions arose as a response to this statement by commenter “Richard F Cook”:
Your friend [the Rachel Maddow fan who thinks non-criminal citizens are being deported] is mentally ill. In the the face of facts they have to believe their version of reality to maintain their concept of how virtuous they think they are.
First I’d like to deal with the concept of “mentally ill.” It’s an old-fashioned term that originated as an effort to medicalize the treatment of the insane/psychotic/crazy. The idea was that, by listing clusters of symptoms and giving each cluster a name, the problems could be addressed much like physical diseases were addressed. That dream turned out to have been untrue – at least so far – although it bore fruit for certain problems such as schizophrenia, which seems to have a strongly (although not entirely) physical cause and can be greatly helped (although not cured) by medication. Other problems conform more or less to the medical model, mostly less, but it’s been somewhat helpful in a lot of cases and less so in others.
In addition, “mental” illnesses and such diagnoses persist very powerfully in part because insurance coverage is based on them.
The world of “mental illness” was also divided into the very serious psychoses, which involved breaks with perceptions of reality, and neuroses which did not. These distinctions still hold to a certain extent but the term “neurosis” is less used than before.
Modern surveillance capabilities and revelations about the NSA have made it less “crazy” for a person to think the government is spying on him or her. After all, cameras are ubiquitous in public places, there are ways to determine identity from a photograph, cellphone records are accessible – you get the picture. So although it’s “crazy” to look up at your own ceiling and think you can see a camera there placed by the government, the thought that you’re being spied on in general is not far-fetched – although focusing on it can certainly cramp your life.
Being on the left, believing Rachel Maddow, none of that is a mental illness. It’s not even really irrational, depending on your sources of news and information. Maddow can easily be proved wrong, but in order to do that two elements are necessary: (1) a person has to take in the relevant information that discredits what she’s said; and (b) a person has to believe that information comes from a source more credible than Maddow. But people of the left often only take in sources on the left, and those sources are consistent with each other. Those sources continually say that it’s sources on the right that are lying. Most people have neither the time nor the inclination to make the effort to go to sources on the right for fact-checking, and it’s easy to dismiss them when just about everyone you know is also on the left and agreeing with Maddow and company.
None of this is crazy or even mentally ill or irrational. It has internal consistency and logic.
I will add that most people – left or right – tend to seek out sources that confirm their already-existing opinions. That’s human nature.
Lastly, we all are a combination of rational and irrational. Emotions are not totally rational; we’re not Star Trek’s Vulcans.
Open thread 5/15/2025
Trump is attempting to reform federal regulatory criminal law
Wow. Just wow.
This was never on my radar screen for action by Trump. But it was on his:
On Friday, President Trump issued a new executive order with a remarkably broad scope and deep implications, under the title “Fighting Overcriminalization in Federal Regulations.” …
“The Code of Federal Regulations contains over 48,000 sections, stretching over 175,000 pages — far more than any citizen can possibly read, let alone fully understand. Worse, many carry potential criminal penalties for violations. The situation has become so dire that no one — likely including those charged with enforcing our criminal laws at the Department of Justice — knows how many separate criminal offenses are contained in the Code of Federal Regulations, with at least one source estimating hundreds of thousands of such crimes. Many of these regulatory crimes are “strict liability” offenses, meaning that citizens need not have a guilty mental state [otherwise known as mens rea] to be convicted of a crime.
“This status quo is absurd and unjust. It allows the executive branch to write the law, in addition to executing it. That situation can lend itself to abuse and weaponization by providing Government officials tools to target unwitting individuals. It privileges large corporations, which can afford to hire expensive legal teams to navigate complex regulatory schemes and fence out new market entrants, over average Americans. …
“It is the policy of the United States that … criminal enforcement of criminal regulatory offenses is disfavored … Agencies promulgating regulations potentially subject to criminal enforcement should explicitly describe the conduct subject to criminal enforcement, the authorizing statutes, and the mens rea standard applicable to those offenses.”
If I understand it correctly, this isn’t about – for example – laws passed by Congress. This is about laws executed by agencies which are under the executive branch rather than the legislative branch, and that’s why it might be constitutional for Trump to issue such an order concerning them.
And that indeed seems to be the case:
The first subtext of this executive order is federalism: moving ordinary criminal prosecution back to the states, after decades in which the list of federal crimes has grown so sharply that no one can possibly know them all. The second subtext is about constitutional order: passing what has amounted to lawmaking from the administrative state back to Congress.
The third piece of subtext is demystification …
This is potentially very big and very good, IMHO.
Had some connectivity issues today, but as of now they seem to be (knock wood!) resolved
The blog had been going quite smoothly for a few months, but today it ran into that connectivity snag again. I spent some frustrating time talking to my hosting service about it. As often happens, they blamed it on something to do with my end, although of course they didn’t know what. At any rate, the problem suddenly resolved and I hope it stays that way.
The high cost of Democrat virtue-signaling on criminal illegal aliens
Nearly two hundred illegal aliens have been arrested in DC. Read some of their criminal histories; it’s astounding that Democrat authorities previously refused to cooperate with ICE about these people, but it seems to have been standard operating procedure.
For example:
ICE added that many of the apprehensions were made “after local jurisdictions refused to honor immigration detainers and released the alien offenders back into their communities.”
They included “a 47-year-old illegally present Guatemalan alien whose criminal history includes drug possession, illegal reentry, aggravated assault, trespassing, disorderly conduct and sexual assault” and “a 25-year-old illegally present Guatemalan alien whose criminal history includes threat to kidnap, attempted possession of a prohibited weapon, threats to bodily harm and simple assault,” according to ICE.
What virtue are the Democrat authorities signaling by failing to allow ICE to deport such criminal illegal aliens, a separate category from mere illegal aliens who have violated the law by entering illegally? Is the virtue that of compassion? Is the virtue “do the opposite of whatever Republicans want, whatever it might be”? Is it Cloward-Piven chaos? Is it transgressive Sympathy For the Devil?
Just a few days ago I was speaking to a woman I know who insisted that even naturalized citizens who are not criminals or gang members are being rounded up. Although I had no desire to argue with this particular person, I had to say – as gently as I could – that that’s not what’s happening. She vociferously insisted it was indeed what is happening. Because it wasn’t an appropriate time or place to have a longer talk and point her to evidence to prove what I was saying, I didn’t pursue the issue. But it was an edifying experience for me to see how firmly convinced she was of her beliefs. This particular person is a big Rachel Maddow fan, and so I have to assume she has heard over and over that Trump rounds up anyone he wants with no attention to who it is or what the person may have done or why, but just through Trump’s and ICE’s pure evil and malevolence.
NOTE: In the same operation, ICE also served notices of inspection to 187 businesses, checking to see that their employees were legally allowed to work there.
Sally Quinn mourns the lost days of harmony and power along the Potomac
[Hat tip: Ace.]
Why am I writing about Sally Quinn, of all people? She just wrote an essay that I find fascinating in the sense that it expresses feelings I’m pretty sure are common among the displaced power-wielders in Washington DC. More about that later; first, a bit of background.
Quinn was born in 1941. Her father was a Lt. General in the Army and her mother was known for cooking and entertaining when they lived in Washington DC. After college:
Quinn began at The Washington Post with minimal experience, and was reportedly called by Ben Bradlee after a report of her pajama party in celebration of the election to Congress of Barry Goldwater Jr. The job interview included the following exchange.
“Can you show me something you’ve written?” asked Managing Editor Benjamin Bradlee. “I’ve never written anything,” admitted Quinn. Pause. “Well,” said Bradlee, “nobody’s perfect.”
Quinn was an attractive blond and according to this 2005 article the married Bradlee was instantly smitten. They become a big DC power couple, probably the biggest, during the 1970s and for some time afterwards:
That was the ‘70s. If you were invited to Ben and Sally’s you were annointed. They never entertained all that much but when they did, it was perfect. Their New Year’s Eve parties were legendary for the eclectic mix of media, celebrity and political types. During the 80’s, they proved the adage that living well is the best revenge, buying a home in St. Mary’s County and continuing their various writing projects while raising son Quinn and quietly doing work for The Lab School and Children’s Hospital.
Somehow the spotlight was never very far from Ben and Sally, although they never courted it. Perhaps by this very casual approach to life and living, and the loyalty of friends and family, they have remained on most everyone’s A list. They are fun to be around. They know where the bodies are buried. They have staying power, and wicked senses of humor.
And if you ever find yourself seated next to one of them at dinner, you know you’ve arrived.
I very much doubt that “they never courted the spotlight” is a valid description; it actually seems an absurdity, given the facts of their lives. These were highly ambitious people and highly visible ones. Bradlee died about a decade ago, but Quinn is still writing. And that’s what called my attention yesterday: this essay of hers.
It’s a bit hard to characterize, because it’s a combination of so many things: prodigious entitlement that is so habitual it’s virtually unconscious; class snobbery; a rosy glow about a past comity in DC – including the Watergate years, which could hardly have been fun and games for Republicans but must have been great for the WaPo crew; the obligatory Trump-hatred and bile we’ve come to expect, and a sense of persecuted victimhood that’s ludicrous in one so – pardon the expression – privileged.
To take a few examples:
This spring Washington is a city in crisis. Physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. It’s as if the fragrant air were permeated with an invisible poison, as if we were silently choking on carbon monoxide. The emotion all around — palpable in the streets, the shops, the restaurants, in business offices, at dinner tables — is fear. People have gone from greeting each other with a grimace of anguish as they spout about the outrage of the day to a laugh to despair. It’s all so unbelievable that it’s hard to process, and it doesn’t stop.
Nobody feels safe. Nobody feels protected.
Jews in Paris or Warsaw after the Nazi takeover? No – just DC Democrats during the first months of Trump’s second term. Oh, the horror!
More:
This is a city where people seek and, if it all goes well for them, wield power. But today in Washington those who hold — or once held — the most power are often the most scared. It is not something they are used to feeling. I lived through the paranoia and vengefulness of Watergate. This time in Washington, it’s different. Nobody knows how this will end and what will happen to the country. What might happen to each of us.
The “paranoia and vengefulness of Watergate” – I guess she’s talking about Nixon? It’s not paranoia when they’re really out to get you.
This time, what’s different – IMHO – is that the MAGA Republicans mean business, in contrast to most Republicans of the past. The Deep State is in more trouble than it’s encountered in Quinn’s entire lengthy tenure as a Rich and Famous Person. Trump’s first term could be safely ignored, but not this:
Among once powerful lawyers, journalists, politicians, academics and lobbyists who have made up official Washington for the past few decades, the feeling is one of impotence, fear and frustration.
The hallmark of this administration is cruelty and sadism, vengefulness carried out with glee.
Unlike the lovefest towards Republicans that were the Obama and Biden years. No gleeful vengeance there, no sirree.
Speaking of paranoia:
“Everybody in Washington is being tested today,” says Leon Wieseltier, the editor of the literary review Liberties. “The question is: What can we do? It’s a time when we all have to ask: What am I capable of? It’s time for people to ask: What am I willing to die for?”
To die for? Does he think the Gulag is next? Or does he think the Resistance will call on him to to assassinate Trump? I’ve encountered these feelings of terrible danger and even threatened death among the more leftist of my friends, and I believe the feelings are rather commonplace in that set and not just among the formerly powerful.
Here’s an example of Quinn’s snobbery:
The traditional social culture of Washington is low key. Women here wear flats and blazers and shirtwaist dresses, informal haircuts and little makeup. Men, too, don’t dress to call attention to themselves. But now it’s all flash and Fox News. The Trump women can’t be missed in a room. They give off a Palm Beach, L.A. vibe.
Nouveau riche. How declasse.
And if you’re interested in Quinn’s acumen as reporter, here’s another passage from her essay. My interpolations are in brackets:
Even those who work for President Trump are scared [and I’m sure they’re all confiding in Sally Quinn about their fears – not]. The capricious and shambolic way he governed in his first 100 days has them all insecure in their jobs. [That’s the MSM line, but the first 100 days have been neither capricious nor shambolic, and it’s that which has put the fear into people like Quinn. The 100 days have been organized and high-speed, the product of a great deal of preparation. But Quinn repeats the agreed-on talking points.] Mike Waltz is out. [Out of one job and into another.] Bets are on as to how long Marco Rubio will remain in all his roles [Rubio seems to be in very good favor with Trump, and although he’s taken on Waltz’s role in addition, that was meant to be temporary for Rubio and expected to be temporary until someone new is appointed] and Pete Hegseth in his [seems fine too, so far]. Elon Musk is on his way out [another job that was said at the outset to be only for a few months and then out], though who knows whether he’ll be able to log back into the government’s most sensitive systems from wherever he is? [such fake concern for people’s privacy]
Quinn is in a bubble that’s impenetrable. She’s got a lot of company there.
Open thread 5/14/2025
Some people are irrepressible:
Roundup
So much news.
(1) Another Now It Can Be Told story:
Joe Biden’s physical deterioration was so severe in 2023 and 2024 that advisers privately discussed the possibility he’d need to use a wheelchair if he won re-election, CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson write in their new book, “Original Sin,” out May 20.
Why it matters: The discussions reflected the extent of the president’s declining health — particularly the significant degeneration of his spine — and his aides’ alarm over it as Biden sought a second term at age 81.
The conversations also reveal the White House’s determination to conceal the reality of Biden’s condition, at the risk of his own health, while he faced a tough re-election bid against Donald Trump.
Big deal. Yes, the optics would have been bad if Biden was is a wheelchair, but physical deterioration and its coverup is nearly irrelevant compared to his mental deterioration and its coverup.
It is some sort of deeply ironic joke that Jake Tapper wrote this book, but irony is the coin of the realm in recent politics.
(2) Inflation sinks to lowest level in four years.
The consumer price index, which measures the costs for a broad range of goods and services, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.2% for the month, putting the 12-month inflation rate at 2.3%, its lowest since February 2021, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said. The monthly reading was in line with the Dow Jones consensus estimate while the 12-month was a bit below the forecast for 2.4%.
Fancy that. Trump’s such a lucky son-of-a-gun.
(3) Democrat strategists blame Biden for just about everything – in particular their 2024 loss. But they had four long years to speak out and were silent. They didn’t mind dragging him over the finish line in 2020, propping him up for four years, promoting policies like men in women’s sports, trying to destroy Trump with lawfare, and pretending Harris was a great replacement. But when they lost in 2024, it was the old man’s fault. “He totally screwed us” says David Plouffe, one of Harris’ key advisors.
No, you screwed yourself, and tried to screw the American people. And you’ll keep trying.
(4) Trump talks on the phone with released hostage Edan Alexander, whose grandmother has called Trump a “good messenger of the Holy One.”
(5) Trump signs a $600 billion investment deal with the Saudis. He’s going to be going to Qatar and the UAE next, probably to announce other deals? The Qatar part in particular makes me uneasy, but I await details.
The Episcopal Church never met an immigrant it didn’t like …
… except white South African Afrikaners. Here’s the story – or at least, part of the story:
In a striking move that ends a nearly four-decades-old relationship between the federal government and the Episcopal Church, the denomination announced on Monday (May 12) that it is terminating its partnership with the government to resettle refugees, citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa who have been classified as refugees by President Donald Trump’s administration.
“In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step,” Rowe wrote. “Accordingly, we have determined that, by the end of the federal fiscal year, we will conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S. federal government.”
Sound racist – although these days by definition one can’t be racist against white people. But this is key, as well, and the situation is actually more complex that it at first appears:
The Trump administration has otherwise all but frozen the refugee program, with Afrikaners among the few — and possibly only — people granted entry as refugees since January, despite thousands from other countries hoping to enter the U.S. to avoid persecution and violence. Shortly after he was sworn in, Trump signed an executive order that essentially halted the refugee program and stopped payments to organizations that assist with refugee resettlement — including, according to one group, payments for work already performed.
I hadn’t heard about that; so much has happened so quickly that it’s hard to keep up with everything. So, why did Trump suspend this program, how long will it be suspended, where were the people previously coming from, how were they vetted, how many came in and how many are still coming in? Here’s a previous article on the subject, but a lot is left unanswered. Plus, I’d like to hear more from the Trump-friendly side, for a little balance.
Here’s an article that appears to be fairly neutral and to explain where the program was in mid-April of this year. From the looks of it, it seems the pause was temporary and the whole thing is an a period of transition, but it doesn’t answer my questions about who was previously served by the program and what the long-term goals of the Trump administration are.
Here’s the original suspension order, which suggests to me that it’s a response to the wholesale resettlement of huge numbers of refugees in single towns, such as the Haitians in Springfield who featured so prominently in Trump’s debate with Harris. Other than that, until the Episcopal reaction to the South Africans, there’s been little coverage of the issue except from the agencies that help refugees.
I also just discovered that in late March a federal court issued this ruling:
Yesterday evening, a federal court in Seattle issued a second preliminary injunction in Pacito v. Trump, finding the government’s efforts to terminate its agreements with refugee-serving agencies to be unlawful. The government attempted to terminate these agreements just one day after the court’s previous order to restore refugee processing and funding went into effect.
The refugee resettlement program has a decades-long history of bipartisan support and provides a beacon of hope for people seeking safety. On two separate occasions, the court has now found that the Trump administration cannot just end the program overnight. The lawsuit was filed by the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) on behalf of Church World Service (CWS), HIAS, Lutheran Community Services Northwest (LCSNW), and nine impacted individuals.
The plot thickens.
It occurs to me that this insistence by the administration that white South Africans get fast-tracked, while others are waiting, could be an effort to get these agencies to do what the Episcopalians have done – that is, quit the program voluntarily.
I must say I don’t like this suspension of the program for so long. This is a fairly small program and it involves refugees who are supposedly fleeing truly dangerous situations. I have little doubt the program has been abused and potential refugees inadequately vetted in the past, but I’d like to see it reinstated with more safeguards. I also have no problem with including white Afrikaners who are in danger.