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New ad goes up for Tesla at a Pollard Row bus stop in London

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It turns out that having co-presidents is a bad idea.

February 26, 2025

Robert B. Hubbell

In a damning exchange, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked,

“Who is the administrator of DOGE?”

Leavitt responded,

“I’m not going to reveal the name of that person from this podium…”

A substantial percentage of the world’s population knows that Elon Musk is the administrator, dictator, ruler, king, emperor, and “Dear Leader” of DOGE. The fact that the White House press secretary was afraid to answer that simple question shows that Musk is toxic—and Trump's advisors know it.

Their fear should guide our political attacks: We must be laser-focused on the GOP’s biggest political liability—the heartless, clueless, dangerous billionaire named Elon Musk, who is ruining the lives of millions of Americans while mocking them by wielding a bejeweled chainsaw on the CPAC center stage.

Blame Musk and Trump—rightfully—for every bad thing that happens from this point forward, for every job lost, every mortgage in foreclosure, every rent payment missed, every medical bill unpaid or medical procedure foregone because of lack of resources or insurance, every campground closed, every pothole that pops a tire, every flight delayed, every case of food poisoning, every new case of measles and bird flu, every beach closed due to contamination, and every disaster in which aid is slow or denied or stolen to pay for tax cuts for billionaires.

Blame Musk and Trump until their culpability becomes accepted truth of such irrefutable force that it enters the lexicon alongside well-worn swear words and curses of ancient origin.

[On Tuesday, a BlueSky user (@cyb3sherrie) posted this:

Unsure if related to DOGE cuts, but my father ,a lung cancer survivor, living in rural Arkansas, is being denied care from his lung specialist that is usually covered through his VA benefits. He served his country with honor, and this is how they repay him. HE LITERALLY CAN’T BREATHE WHAT THE ****?

Get ready for more of the same, Elon (and Trump). You own it all.

Later in the day, the White House identified someone as the “acting administrator” of DOGE—a person who seemed surprised by the announcement and who was on vacation in Mexico when the announcement was made. See CBS News, This is who the White House says is the DOGE acting administrator.

Part of what motivated Karoline Leavitt to dodge the question about who is in charge of DOGE is that at least one federal judge is chasing the answer to that question without success. As explained in Talking Points Memo, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has been trying to get to the bottom of who runs DOGE after administration lawyers submitted a declaration suggesting that Musk has no authority to make any decision or direct any government employee. See Talking Points Memo, It’s Taking Judges An Awfully Long Time To Get To The Bottom Of Who’s Running DOGE.

When you are embarrassed to utter the name of the co-president, you know the co-presidency scheme isn’t working—even though it has the salutary effect of giving Trump more time on the golf course and less time to destroy US foreign relations.

But it is worse than merely knowing that Musk has become toxic. At a moment when Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to garner the last two or three votes necessary to pass the GOP budget reconciliation bill, Musk is on the sidelines, cheering on GOP anarchists in the House with snarky, cryptic tweets. See The New Republic, Elon Musk Splits Republican Party Further on Reconciliation Bill.

As The New Republic reports,

“If the Republican budget passes, the deficit gets worse, not better,” MAGA cheerleader Representative Thomas Massie wrote Monday on X. “That sounds bad,” Elon Musk replied, reinforcing the MAGA wing’s opposition to Johnson’s version of the budget, which notably does not include the deep cuts to crucial programs that have huge standard-of-living effects, such as Medicaid—and leaving the budget in a precarious, vote-lacking position.

A GOP representative later replied to Musk’s tweet, saying,

“I hope we’re not going to have this come to whatever is said on X to change months and months of substantive work to actually do this in a deficit-neutral way . . . .”

Welcome to our world, House Republicans. Yes, Musk will try to undo months of careful, painstaking work with a single ignorant, thoughtless tweet meant to be funny.

So, as Trump and Mike Johnson are trying to pass a reconciliation bill against steep odds, Co-President Musk is trying to defeat that same bill. That dynamic makes it clear that Musk is in the dominant position and Trump has assumed the “Putin-bootlicking Position” in his relationship with Co-President Musk.

[As I write on Tuesday evening in London, the fate of the reconciliation bill is uncertain. I will address it on Wednesday evening.]

But having a co-president gets even worse for Trump. In the good old days of Trump's first week of his second term, he didn’t have to answer for the incompetence and screw-ups of Musk’s careless and ignorant actions. Now, Trump is not only blamed for his own ineptitude but is also tagged with Musk’s mistakes—which are abundant.

Musk has bragged about “keeping receipts” of the alleged hundreds of billions of dollars his reckless cost-cutting and mass firings have achieved. He even created a website with a real-time counter that toted the alleged savings. But the “wall of receipts” was so filled with errors that it deleted the five largest line items of supposed savings. See NYTimes, DOGE Quietly Deletes the 5 Biggest Spending Cuts It Celebrated Last Week. (Behind a paywall; used all my gift subscriptions.)

When people realize that the massive pain and suffering inflicted by Musk amounts to a rounding error in the federal budget, they will be even angrier than they are now.

As a sign of the rising resistance to Musk, more than 20 staffers have resigned from Musk’s “DOGE” Department, which previously existed under the name Department of Digital Services. See AP, Federal technology staffers resign rather than help Musk and DOGE.

Per AP,

More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, saying they refused to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.” “We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”

As bad as Trump is, deciding to compound his own criminality, incompetence, and narcissism with the incompetence, cruelty, and ignorance of Musk is a lose-lose proposition for Trump, Musk, and the GOP.

Trump administration continues to ignore court orders to unfreeze grants

Trump has violated Article I of the Constitution by claiming for himself the ability to withhold funds appropriated by Congress and by shuttering federal agencies established by acts of Congress. Several federal courts have ordered Trump to unfreeze the frozen funds, and Trump's administration lawyers have agreed to comply with the courts’ orders.

Or at least they have claimed they will comply with the court orders. At a hearing on Monday, a frustrated US District Judge, Amir H. Ali, tried repeatedly to force the Trump administration to state whether it had released previously frozen funds—as ordered by the court. Per AP, the following exchange occurred:

“I’m not sure why I can’t get a straight answer from you on this: Are you aware of an unfreezing of the disbursement of funds for those contracts and agreements that were frozen before Feb. 13,” the judge asked Indraneel Sur, the lawyer for the government. “Are you aware of steps taken to actually release those funds?”

“I’m not in a position to answer that,” Sur said.

Judge Ali ordered the funds unfrozen nearly two weeks ago. The fact that the administration lawyer cannot answer whether that has happened should be interpreted as “No. The funds have not been unfrozen—but I am afraid to admit that fact to you.”

Readers may be tired of hearing this mantra. Still, the fact that Trump has illegally impounded funds in violation of Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution and then refused to abide by a court order compelling him to unfreeze those funds is more than lawless. It is a wholesale overturning of the Constitution, which is a coup. Call it whatever you want, Trump has suspended the Constitution. That is a five-alarm fire.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

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This is the last of the live oaks that was killed in the hurricane in 22. The storm destroyed many of our oaks, I had to trim them back to nothing but most are coming back and in a few years should be nice again.

#lumberjack #live oaks #chain saw #chainsaw man #oak tree #trees #retirement #hurricane ian #storm #storm damage