Mass boycott on Friday

 Robert Reich -   A grassroots movement is calling on all Americans to abstain from shopping with major retailers — including Amazon —February 28, as part of an “economic blackout.”

The purpose is to send a clear message: We have the power. We don’t have to accept corporate monopolies. We don’t have to live with corporate money corrupting our politics.

We don’t have to accept more tax cuts for billionaires. We don’t have to pay more of our hard-earned cash to Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg or the other billionaire oligarchs....

If politicians won’t hear the voices of average Americans who are being shafted by corporate America, we have to deliver our message to corporate America directly.

From midnight tonight to midnight Friday night, please: No Amazon, no Walmart, no Best Buy, no Target, no Disney, no Google, no Facebook. Don’t spend on fast food, major retailers, or gas.

Avoid using credit or debit cards to make nonessential purchases.

Buy essentials such as medicine, food, and emergency supplies, of course, but make those purchases at small, local businesses.

Consider this a test run. If lots of people participate, I’m sure a longer one will be organized.

Stupid Trump stuff

Washington Post -  President Donald Trump has signed more than 70 executive orders in just over 30 days, far more than any other president in that amount of time, and he is on pace to surpass his record of 220 — the most signed in a single presidential term.

Washington Post - The Trump administration plans to shutter more than 110 IRS offices that have taxpayer assistance centers as the White House’s efficiency zeal carves deeper into the tax agency.

Daily Beast - President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting the law firm representing former special counsel Jack Smith. Covington & Burling LLP currently represents Smith in a personal capacity and previously provided pro bono legal services to the special counsel’s office, according to White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf.

The new executive order suspends the security clearance held by Smith’s attorney Peter Koski, along with those of any other attorneys at the firm who assisted Smith as special counsel, pending a review of their roles, if any, in the “weaponization of the judicial process.”

It also directs the Office of Management and Budget to “terminate any engagement” with the firm.

“We’re going to call it the deranged Jack Smith signing or bill,” Trump told reporters before the signing, according to CNN. Afterward, he handed the pen he’d used to an attendee and said, “Why don’t you give it to Jack Smith?”

The action is a “major escalation” in Trump’s targeting of his perceived enemies, according to ABC News.

Polling

 Study Finds - According to a recent survey, 17% of American adults want to move internationally within the next five years, potentially signaling a significant shift in the country’s population...   Millennials emerged as the group most eager to move internationally, with a quarter (25%) wanting to relocate abroad – higher than any other generation surveyed.

Alternative sex and gender

Newsweek -    A Maryland judge has extended a restraining order that prevents President Donald Trump's administration from cutting funding to hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors...

Upon returning to office on January 20, Trump signed a slew of executive orders, several of which have been blocked by federal courts. The legal challenges brought by activists and state governments indicate institutional resistance to Trump's agenda, and the outcomes of the cases could define the president's tenure and his ability to make changes.  President Donald Trump challenging Maine Governor Janet Mills over trans women in sports while addressing a meeting of governors at the White House, in Washington, D.C., on February 21. 

On January 28, Trump signed an executive order blocking hospitals and clinics that receive federal funding from providing gender-affirming care to people under the age of 19.  On February 13, U.S. District Judge Brendan Hurson placed a temporary restraining order on Trump's executive order, arguing that the plaintiffs—a group of transgender teens and LGBTQ organizations—were likely to succeed in their claim that Trump's order was unconstitutional.

CNN -  The Pentagon plans to kick out currently serving transgender service members who don't meet specific requirements under its new policy, according to official guidance made public in a Wednesday court filing. "Service members who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria will be processed for separation from military service," according to a memo outlining the policy. The guidance follows an executive order signed by President Trump in January directing the Pentagon to implement its own policies that say transgender service members are incompatible with military service. In 2018, an independent research institute estimated 14,000 transgender troops were serving.

Elon Musk

Independent UK -   Tesla’s stock has fallen more than 26 percent since Elon Musk became a central figure in President Donald Trump’s administration and kicked off his leadership with a now-infamous salute at Trump’s celebratory inaugural rally.

While addressing a crowd of Trump’s supporters on Inauguration Day, Musk brought his hand across his chest and then launched it into the air with his hand and wrist straight – earning intense scrutiny for what some believe was a “Nazi salute” or “Roman salute.”

While Musk’s electric vehicle company, Tesla, had enjoyed a large uptick in stock value due to his proximity to the Trump campaign, since the day after he made the gesture, Tesla’s stock has steadily dropped from $424.07 to $290.80 as of Wednesday.

Guardian-Critics note that Doge, which Musk touted broadly to Trump in August as he was writing seven figure checks to help him win, is gutting agencies like the Consumer Financi

Tesla’s stock has fallen more than 26 percent since Elon Musk became a central figure in President Donald Trump’s administration and kicked off his leadership with a now-infamous salute at Trump’s celebratory inaugural rally.

While addressing a crowd of Trump’s supporters on Inauguration Day, Musk brought his hand across his chest and then launched it into the air with his hand and wrist straight – earning intense scrutiny for what some believe was a “Nazi salute” or “Roman salute.”

While Musk’s electric vehicle company, Tesla, had enjoyed a large uptick in stock value due to his proximity to the Trump campaign, since the day after he made the gesture, Tesla’s stock has steadily dropped from $424.07 to $290.80 as of Wednesday.

l Protection Bureau (CFPB), which has investigated complaints about the car company’s debt collection and loan policies.

Meanwhile, Tesla, SpaceX and other Musk businesses have been investigated or fined by about a dozen regulatory agencies including the CFPB, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Aviation Administration, which suggest how Doge’s work at these agencies and others could benefit Musk financially, say critics.”  More

 

Civil legal system

 Mother Jones -   The failings of America’s criminal justice system are common knowledge, but our civil legal system, which affects even more people, is no less compromised—and there’s no civil equivalent to the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel in criminal cases. A 2022 report from the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), a nonprofit that Congress established during the 1970s to fund free civil legal aid for the poor, notes that “low-income Americans do not get any or enough legal help for 92 percent of their substantial civil legal problems.”

More than 70 percent of low-income families encounter at least one such issue a year, the LSC reports. As in Ray’s case, these are often true emergencies—domestic violence, eviction, predatory debt collection—with life-altering stakes. A 2018 study found, for example, that tenants facing eviction in the Minneapolis area were four to five times more likely to be forcibly removed from their home if they lacked legal representation. But lawyers charge around $300 an hour on average, putting their services out of reach for even much of the middle class.

State legal aid organizations, meanwhile, are independent nonprofits and, despite some government support, are badly underfunded. In Mitchell-Mercer’s home state, there is only one Legal Aid attorney for every 8,000 eligible people—those with annual household income of no more than $39,000 for a family of four (125 percent of the federal poverty level). The National Center for Access to Justice ranked North Carolina the third-worst state for access to civil attorneys—only Mississippi and South Dakota scored lower. About half of its counties are legal deserts, with fewer than one lawyer per 1,000 residents.    More

Are any cabinet secreties uncomfortable with Musk?

NY Times -  A couple of hours before President Trump convened his cabinet for the first time, he used his social media platform to declare that the group was “EXTREMELY HAPPY WITH ELON.”

As the meeting began, it seemed to be the members’ job to prove it.

The secretaries sat largely in silence behind their paper name cards, the sort of thing you need when, powerful though you may be, you are not a household name. And they listened politely as the richest man in the world loomed over them, scolding them about the size of the deficit, sheepishly admitting to temporarily canceling an effort to prevent ebola and insisting they were all crucial to his mission.

“I’d like to thank everyone for your support,” Elon Musk said.

In fact, Musk has not had the support of every cabinet secretary — at least not when he tried to order their employees to account for their time over email or resign. When a reporter asked about the obvious tension, Trump kicked the question to the secretaries themselves.

“Is anybody unhappy with Elon?” Trump asked. “If you are, we’ll throw him out of here. Is anybody unhappy?”

Nobody was unhappy. Nervous laughter rippled around the table as Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, grinned and led a slow clap, which Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, eventually joined before scratching her nose.

Next to her, Kelly Loeffler, the small business administrator, applauded and attended to an itch on her ear. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered up a single clap and gazed over at Musk, a fixed smile on his face. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, shifted in his seat.

The House budget

 Daily Kos -House Republicans on Tuesday night passed the budget blueprint that directs House committees to find $2 trillion in spending cuts in order to just partly pay for the $4.8 trillion in President Donald Trump’s proposed tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the richest Americans.

The budget gives top-line numbers that Republicans want specific House committees to cut to get to that $2 trillion in spending reductions. And that will be a difficult task since the cuts will likely target popular programs like Medicaid and food stamps, which tens of millions of Americans rely on to stay healthy and put food on the table for their families.

“The quick math on the House budget shows a stark equation: The cost of extending tax cuts for households with incomes in the top 1%—$1.1 trillion through 2034—equals roughly the same amount as the proposed potential cuts for health coverage under Medicaid and food assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” Sharon Parrot, president of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, wrote in a blog post.

“Under what set of values does a budget target those who struggle to pay their bills for severe cuts, while giving an annual tax cut averaging $62,000 for those who make $743,000 or more a year?” she continued. “The tax cut for these wealthy households is greater than the annual family incomes for most of the 72 million people—1 in 5 people in the U.S.—who have health coverage through Medicaid.” MORE

Meanwhile. . .

The U.S. will spend up to $1 billion to stop bird flu from spreading, with the Department of Agriculture taking the lead. (NBC)

Immigrants

NPR = Immigrants who were detained at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay say they experienced beatings, mistreatment and constant frisks. They allege this happened during their two weeks at the location earlier this month. 

 NPR’s Sergio Martínez-Beltrán spoke with two of the men, both 21 years old, who were at the naval base and are now back in Venezuela. Mayfreed Durán Arapé and Yoiner Purroy Roldán said detainees held a five-day hunger strike after they were told they were not allowed to call an attorney. Durán Arapé says soldiers showed up in riot gear. They beat him up and pinned him to the ground. He alleges that he was also tied to a chair 15 times, and things got so bad he tried to die by suicide twice.

If the Education Department is closed

NBC News -  In addition to managing the federal student loan portfolio for college students and post-secondary students, the Education Department is charged with distributing millions of dollars in funding for K-12 schools through programs that serve more than 50 million students in almost 100,000 public schools and 32,000 private schools.

That includes funding for thousands of so-called Title I schools — schools that receive federal dollars to help low-income families — as well as for programs that ensure disabled students have access to a free and appropriate public education. In addition, the agency’s Office for Civil Rights enforces laws that aim to prevent discrimination in schools.

The White House has shared little about its plans. Responding to questions about the timing or possible details of a potential executive order regarding the agency, White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement, "As promised, President Trump will explore options to empower the states, promote educational freedom, prioritize parents over politicians, and restore greatness to our education system.”

The Trump-Musk Scandal That No One’s Talking About

 New Republic - In the months leading up to the 2024 presidential election, political ethics watchers, an endangered breed, worried about the increasing number of ways in which Donald Trump seemed to be for sale. “Trump keeps creating avenues for people to quietly give him money,” ran a Washington Post opinion headline, referring to the glitzy, $100,000 watches that Trump had recently presented for sale—purchasable with bitcoin.

Steve Benen, an MSNBC columnist, suggested a dark scenario: “A hypothetical wealthy donor wants to give the former president a $100,000 donation—far in excess of the legal limit—so he or she buys an expensive watch. At that point, the nominee could take his cut and write a comparable check in support of his candidacy, since there is no legal limit on what candidates can spend on their own campaigns.”  More

Democrats afraid of physical attacks from Trumpers

The Guardian -  Republicans on Capitol Hill are shying away from criticizing Donald Trump’s policies over fears for their physical safety and that of their families, a Democratic member of Congress has said.

Eric Swalwell, a Democratic representative from California, said his Republican colleagues were “terrified” of crossing Trump not only because of the negative impact on their political careers, but also from anxiety that it might provoke physical threats that could cause personal upheaval and require them to hire round-the-clock security as protection.

Swalwell’s comments came in a webinar chaired by the journalist Sidney Blumenthal in response to a question on whether Republicans might be driven to rebel against or even impeach Trump.

Economy

 CNN--  First-time applications for unemployment benefits rose more than expected last week, indicating that cracks may be forming in America’s long-solid labor market. And an increasing number of federal workers are also landing on the unemployment rolls, new data showed Thursday.

There were an estimated 242,000 jobless claims filed last week, according to seasonally adjusted data released Thursday by the Department of Labor. That’s an increase of 22,000 from the prior week’s tally and a figure that landed well above economists’ expectations for 220,000 claims.

Weekly jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, are now at their highest level since early December, Labor Department data shows.

 

Trump regime

Dirt Diggers Digest -  Donald Trump and Elon Musk keep claiming that their scorched-earth approach to remaking the federal government is made necessary by the prevalence of fraud and waste. Musk’s DOGE attack-squad tabulates its progress on a Wall of Receipts that currently purports to have saved Uncle Sam $65 billion.

That number appears to have been plucked out of thin air. The savings for the 2,300 individual contracts listed on the site add up to only $9.6 billion, and even that amount is shaky. For example, the single biggest savings, $1.9 billion, is attached to a Treasury Department contract that is reported to have ended during the Biden Administration. More

DOGE gives no details of any fraud it may have found in the contracts. That is not surprising, since it is impossible to have done a careful examination of that many contracts in such a short amount of time.

Time -  U.S. Agency for International Development workers who have been fired or placed on leave as part of the Trump administration's dismantling of the agency began paying mournful final visits to their abruptly closed Washington headquarters on Thursday, under the administration's 15-minute windows to clear out their offices while escorted by federal officers. Some staffers wept as they carried out grocery bags and suitcases with what was left from their life's work. Supporters clapped and cheered outside or drove by tapping their car horns to bolster their spirits.

Reuters - In a memo on Sunday evening, the FBI Agents Association told its 14,000 members that new director Kash Patel had assured them that he would follow tradition and name a career special agent with operational expertise as his deputy director.

"Director Patel agreed," said the memo, which Reuters reviewed.

 

An hour after the memo was sent, Dan Bongino, a right-wing podcaster who has never been an FBI agent and who has called the agency “irredeemably corrupt,” was named to serve as Patel’s deputy director. That position oversees day-to-day operations and carries enormous power to supervise investigations across the nation.

 

The unprecedented appointment of two loyalists to President Donald Trump has rattled the FBI community and lawyers who worry that their lack of experience and overt statements supporting retribution for the president’s critics could presage a misuse of the nation’s most prominent investigative agency, according to 14 former FBI employees and prosecutors interviewed by Reuters.

 

“FBI agents’ oaths to support and defend the Constitution will be tested as never before,” said David Laufman, who worked with FBI agents on sensitive investigations for decades, including as chief of counterintelligence for the Justice Department.

 

CNN -   President Donald Trump said Thursday tariffs of 25% on Mexican and Canadian goods are set to take effect on March 4, while also threatening to impose an additional 10% on Chinese imports on the same date.  Mexico, China and Canada are America’s top three trading partners. Simultaneous tariffs on all three nations could lead to soaring prices for American consumers, especially at a time when inflation is already heating up.

 

Word

Officer_Eudy 

 

RFK Jr thoughts

FactPost

Q: A young child just died of measles in Texas. Do you have a comment? 

 

RFK Jr.: It's not unusual. We have measles outbreaks all the time 

 

 (This is the first Measles death in the US in 10 years)