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Beschloss: What Trump Can’t Do

Nine facts that show we are still Americans. We will not give in to Trump’s dictatorial regime. We are still human. We will decide our own fate.

1. Trump can’t take away our anger.
2. He can’t stop us from using our minds.
3. He can’t stop us from reading or writing or consuming knowledge and beauty.
4. He can’t hide his fraudulence.
5. He can’t make us hate a free and democratic America.
6. He can’t convince us that our allies are really our enemies.
7. He can’t make us stop loving.
8. He can’t stop us from realizing our collective power.
9. Trump cannot last.

• TNR: Beyond Congress: How the Blue States Can Lead the Trump Democrats hold trifectas in 15 states with 123 million people and powerful economic engines. That’s leverage—if we use it.Resistance

  
  Democrats across the country are desperate for our party to take a more aggressive and coherent fighting stance against Donald Trump. That is why there is so much anger about the decision by Senate Democrats not to filibuster President Trump’s bill to keep the federal government, and his agenda, rolling along. But if nothing else, what that decision revealed is the abject weakness of the cards that congressional Democrats are playing with. A far more effective fight, however, can be waged by Democrats in state houses across America.

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• Daily Beast: Republicans Mount Big Pushback Against Trump Over Surprise Issue

  ODD HILL TO DIE ON
  The Pentagon is reportedly considering giving up a NATO post that the U.S. has held since the Eisenhower administration.
  
  “We will not accept significant changes to our warfighting structure that are made without a rigorous interagency process, coordination with combatant commanders and the Joint Staff, and collaboration with Congress,” the lawmakers added. “Such moves risk undermining American deterrence around the globe and detracting from our negotiating positions with America’s adversaries.”

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• TNR: Trump Wants to Revive the Timber Industry—but Shot Himself in the Foot

  Experts explain why the president’s plan to scale up production on federal lands will be hindered by his own administration.
  
  …
  But both pointed to a serious problem with the Trump administration’s approach. It “just doesn’t add up,” said Snyder, pointing to the administration’s massive cuts across the Forest Service. “We’re going to get more wood off federal land but get rid of thousands of federal employees who actually do that work? It’s absurd.”

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• Reich: My last tentative reason for nauseous optimism

  
  (Nauseous optimism is when your heart aches and you’re sick to your stomach but believe you’ll live to see the dawn.)

  Although every other constraint on Trump is gone — congressional Republicans are in the MAGA cult, Democrats are zombies, big business doesn’t dare oppose Trump, and high-tech has gone over to the dark side — one constraint remains: the federal courts.

  And the federal courts seem to be holding firm, at least so far.

  Consider what the courts did this week:

  1. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang rebuked Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency for their efforts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, declaring that Musk’s effort to erase the agency likely violated the Constitution in “multiple ways.”
  2. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes wrote in a 79-page opinion that the Pentagon cannot enforce Trump’s order banning transgender people from serving in the military.
  3. Meanwhile, Trump is battling U.S. District Judge James Boasberg over the government’s deportation of around 250 Venezuelan migrants Saturday to an El Salvador super-max prison with no hearing or evidence why they should be sent there.
  4. U.S. District Judge Jess Furman continues to prevent the Trump regime from deporting Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, while moving Khalil’s case from Louisiana to New Jersey.
  5. Finally, on the basis of two U.S. district court rulings last week that DOGE’s firing of probationary government workers was illegal, nearly 25,000 are now being reinstated across 18 departments and agencies.

  All told, more than 120 Trump-Musk moves are now being reviewed by federal courts. So far, courts have ruled against the duo in the vast majority of these.

  This is a constraint on Trump only if he feels bound by the rulings, of course — which raises the key question: Will Trump obey the rulings?

  At least for now, the answer seems to be yes. Even as his war on the judiciary hits new heights, Trump vowed this week that he has never, and will never, defy the courts.

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• Rebecca Solnit: Coming Unglued: Week Eight of the Stupid Coup (and the Stalwart Resistance)

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  We have the power to refuse to cooperate, including by insisting on obeying the law rather than illegal orders, to obey our conscience or respect our own humanity and that of others rather than carry out amoral and cruel orders. And to reach out to convince our fellow citizens and residents to disobey with us and to support those under attack and to stand with them. One thing I think about a lot is who might be trying to reach those who, like the D.C. police, are most directly getting illegal and amoral orders.

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• Bill McKibben: Tesla, Big Oil have a weakness in common

  They’re way behind the technological curve
  

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• Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – March 20, 2025

  It seems as if the Trump administration is rushing to tear apart as much as it can as opponents of its wholesale destruction of the United States government organize to stop them.

  Today, members of the “Department of Government Efficiency” team showed up at the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which helps to fund libraries and museums across the country and whose elimination Trump called for in an executive order last week. They sent employees home, swore in a new acting director in the lobby, and proceeded to cancel contracts and grants.
  
  

  Mark Papworth IMLS FB post
  Even as this dismantling was going on, District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander was blocking the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing data at the Social Security Administration and ordering them to destroy copies of any personal information they have already accessed. “The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion,” Hollander wrote. “It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack.”

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• Jalopnik: Loyalty Tests Now Part Of Ohio Traffic Stops, As Canadian Folk Duo Cassie And Maggie Recently Discovered

  
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  The sisters, who were in the U.S. on a tour, admit the initial stop was valid — Maggie MacDonald took a phone call behind the wheel of their Chevrolet Malibu rental car, and Ohio’s hands-free law makes it illegal to hold a cell phone while driving — but what should have been a quick ticket turned into a much longer ordeal after the cops learned they were Canadian.
  …
  Their search for drugs that didn’t exist may have been a bust, but the deputies also put the sisters in separate patrol vehicles and started asking even more inappropriate questions. “Mine asked, ‘I have an important question to ask you, which do you prefer, Canada or the United States?’” Cassie told the Globe and Mail. “It seemed weighted, as if whether we were going to be given a further difficult time or if we were going to have the opportunity to go on our way depended on the answer I gave.”

  And while it’s entirely possible the two deputies acted on their own, Cassie told the Canadian news outlet that it sure didn’t feel that way. …

  Both Cassie and Maggie MacDonald have had U.S. work visas for more than a decade, so there was no reason for them to suspect they would have any issues. In fact, Maggie wasn’t even cited for the cell phone violation they pulled her over for in the first place. Instead, they let her go with a warning. Based on some of the stories that have made the news recently, they were also lucky the cops only wasted their time, accused them of fentanyl trafficking and subjected them to a loyalty test while detained. And even though cops harassing Canadian drivers isn’t completely new, it’s also hard to imagine they’ll risk booking another tour in the U.S. now that they know how quickly a simple traffic stop can escalate.

  Canadian MP video from Mark O’Connor FB

  BBC Mundo: “La ataron como si fuera Hannibal Lecter”: la preocupación por las recientes detenciones de turistas que trataban de entrar a EE.UU.

  

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• Kareem: How the Government is Purging American Heroes Who Aren’t White Males & Trump Wants to Cancel Biden’s Pardons (Along with the Constitution)

  …DEI is the new n-word, as we see by the Trump administration’s attempts to purge recognition of accomplishments by anyone who isn’t a straight, White male—even Jackie Robinson.

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• Evan Hurst: Trump’s Immigration Gestapo Disappearing Innocent LGBTQ Migrants? Or Just The One So Far?

  All right, buckle up, because I’m in a white-hot rage with this one.
  

  
  
  
  Stories are starting to spread about about the innocent people Trump has disappeared to El Salvador without due process, into one of the most dangerous prisons in the world. Franco Caraballo, who showed up for a scheduled appointment with ICE and didn’t come back. Francisco Garcia Casique, same story. Te common denominator here is that these guys all seem to have tattoos. Gang tattoos? Not necessarily, just tattoos. Caraballo has a tattoo of a clock with the time his daughter was born. Another of the disappeared, Jerce Reyes Barrios, has a tattoo of soccer ball with a crown on it, because he’s in a soccer gang he’s a professional soccer player, one who was tortured by the Maduro regime. That’s what he was fleeing.

  Daily Beast: Trump Threatens to Send Tesla Vandals to Prisons in El Salvador

  ‘DOMESTIC TERRORISM’
  The president also implied attacks on cars were part of a national conspiracy against his megadonor Elon Musk.

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• TNR: Elon Musk Is the One Who Set Tesla on Fire

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  But Musk’s business troubles go well beyond the “TeslaTakedown” protests—whose organizers, for what it’s worth, have denounced violence and vandalism. The myriad safety issues plaguing Tesla point to much broader issues with the company’s business model. Its competitors might just be better at making cars. The Trump administration’s own policies aren’t helping, either.

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• Daily Beast: Trump Admin Arrests FBI Agent Who Went After Rudy Giuliani

  LOCK HIM UP
  He blew the whistle on what he saw as political meddling in the bureau’s work.
  

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• Time: How the Social Safety Net Became for ‘Suckers’

  
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  On the one hand, many of the boldest claims appear so easily refutable that the whole campaign may be destined to implode. But I have been thinking about and studying the social science of feeling scammed for almost two decades, and I know that the emotional efficacy of sucker rhetoric distorts our moral and political reasoning. Even when the accusations are unfounded, even when the risks are small, the mere possibility of being a sucker can be psychologically potent enough to undermine a rational preference for cooperation.

  It is all too easy to convince people that compassion and integrity are illusory—that, as historian Anne Applebaum wrote in 2018, in Trump’s America “morality is for losers.” Understanding the rhetorical power of warning Americans that they are being played for suckers, at a personal and visceral level, was part of the winning strategy of the 2016 Trump candidacy. He held himself out as the voice of reason who could see humane asylum policies and international cooperation for what they really were: traps for the unwary. Now the appeal of that rhetoric is being put to a new test.

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• TNR: The Delivery App Industry Has Abandoned Its Immigrant Workforce

  Companies like DoorDash and Grubhub made a big show of standing by their workers in Trump’s first term. Now, with deportation threats looming, their silence is deafening.
  
  …
  Unlike the early months of Trump’s first term, when these companies lined up to proclaim the importance of immigrants and promise legal help for their immigrant workers, the companies have been silent on civil rights this time around—though some have spoken a different way, through big donations to support Trump.

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• Robert Reich: Is the Muskrat working for China? (Is Trump working for Putin?)

  The fact we don’t know and can’t know is itself a problem
  

  TNR: Trump Melts Down Over How Much Power President Elon Musk Has

  Elon Musk is reportedly getting a Pentagon briefing on China.
  
  …
  By the next morning, the explosive story was still at the forefront of Trump’s mind.

  “Their FAKE concept for this story is that because Elon does some business in China, that he is very conflicted and would immediately go to top Chinese officials and ‘spill the beans,’” Trump continued in another post.

  But Musk does have connections and business interests in China that critics have argued should disqualify him from such a powerful role in Trump’s White House.

  Daily Beast: Trump Trashes NYT Story on Elon Musk’s Secret Pentagon War Meeting

  CONFIDENTIAL
  Musk is reportedly set to be be briefed by the Pentagon about any plans for a potential war with China.

  NY Times: Trump Rejects Idea That Musk Should Have Access to Top-Secret China War Plans

  The president also denied a report that such a briefing had been planned to be held at the Pentagon on Friday.

  NY Times: Why the Pentagon Scuttled Its Briefing of Musk on War Plans

  “You wouldn’t show it to a businessman,” President Trump said in denying that Elon Musk was to be briefed on top-secret plans in the event of war with China.

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• Kinzinger: The Trump Fever Is Breaking

  Voter Remorse, Economic Chaos, and the Cracks in His Coalition
  

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• Bulwark: Big Law’s Big Capitulation

  In the Trump era, the lawyers have chosen to pay, not fight, the mob boss.

  Original Jurisdiction: Paul Weiss Cuts A Deal With Donald Trump

  Trump will rescind his executive order targeting the firm, in exchange for various concessions agreed to by chair Brad Karp.

  Bulwark: ‘Disgusted’ and ‘Betrayed’—Legal World Shaken by Trump’s Extortion

  The decision by Paul Weiss to settle with the president has sent shockwaves through the firm and the broader legal community.

  THERE ARE FEW TOPICS THE LEGAL WORLD loves discussing more than the legal world itself.

  But even by its standards of self-interest, the chatter about Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison’s decision to reach a settlement with President Donald Trump over his executive order threatening the firm has been immense.

  Lawyers at the firm described starkly different internal reactions to the decision. Some expressed despair over what they deemed a morally indefensible capitulation, fearing that in an effort to save the firm, leadership may have harmed it by signaling to clients that it can be coerced. Others rationalized the decision as a small humiliation that didn’t fundamentally alter much of anything; the firm would continue doing what it was doing, minus the threat of immolation.

  Above the Law: A Third-Year Skadden Associate Is The Only Person In Biglaw Willing To Publicly Condemn Trump’s Threat To The Rule Of Law

  One brave Biglaw associate has quite frankly had enough of this, and she’s once again sounding off — not just before her firm, but before the entire legal profession — to make clear just how important it is not to bow down before the Trump administration.

  You may remember Rachel Cohen, a third-year finance associate at Skadden, as the one who worked to put together the open letter that’s been signed by more than 600 associates, asking that Biglaw’s leaders speak up in defense of the legal profession. Now, she’s given her “conditional” two weeks’ notice via firmwide email, due to the leading law firm’s failure to address and admonish Trump’s revenge tour against Biglaw.

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• Al Jazeera: ‘Discordant’ How Trump’s attacks on the Houthis split his Republican base

  
  On November 4, the final day of his re-election campaign, United States President Donald Trump stood in front of a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and made a pledge.

  “I will restore peace in the world,” he said as supporters waved signs that read, “Trump will fix it.”

  But since Saturday, Trump — now two months into his second term — has carried out a series of large-scale military actions against the Houthi armed group in Yemen, killing at least 53 people in the initial volley of air strikes.

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• Texas Tribune: Texas is poised to make measles a nationwide epidemic, public health experts say

  Public health experts say Texas needs better messaging on vaccinations and quarantining and more people conducting contact tracing to contain the spread.
  

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• NY Times: Columbia Makes Concessions to Trump Amid Bid to Reclaim Federal Funds

  The administration has moved to cut $400 million in federal funding to the university without changes to its policies and rules.
  

  NY Times: Decades Ago, Columbia Refused to Pay Trump $400 Million. Note That Number.

  A quarter century ago, the university was looking to expand. It considered, and rejected, property owned by Donald Trump. He did not forget it.

  Robert Reich: The shame of Columbia University

  In surrendering to Trump, it’s opening all universities to Trump’s tyranny

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• NY Times: Trump’s Imaginary Emergencies Are Doing Real Damage

  
  …
  As profoundly disturbing as Mr. Trump’s sweeping and irresponsible violations of civil liberties have been, in one respect they are not exactly unprecedented. Previous presidents have deported people for their speech, targeted internal critics for blacklists, locked up foreign nationals without charge, invoked military authority at home and sought to muzzle the media. But there is one fundamental difference.

  Virtually every time previous presidents took such extreme steps, they acted in response to at least a plausible threat to national security. This time, Mr. Trump has invoked emergency powers in the absence of any even plausible emergency. That fact simultaneously underscores how unhinged from reality the president’s actions are and provides reason for hope that they can be stopped.

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• The Daily: Trump Is Circling The Drain And Could Take Republicans Down With Him

  Not only are angry constituents showing up at town halls, but Trump’s approval ratings are so bad that he is already circling the drain.
  

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• Daily Kos: Trump holds very serious press conference on rulers and maps

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  As always, the buck doesn’t stop anywhere near Trump.

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• Dan Rather: Elon Musk Made No Promises

  So with Trump’s blessing, he is going after Social Security

  Members of Congress, those brave enough to hold town hall meetings while home over spring recess, may have become reacquainted with an old lesson: Hell hath no fury like an angry constituent. And that goes double for anyone who threatens Social Security.

  Across the country, we have seen reports of meetings where hundreds of constituents have shown up to raise the roof with their representative.

  At a meeting in Baltimore, a woman said, “We need people to get mad.” Another responded, “We earned our Social Security!”

  In Michigan, a disabled man told his Republican representative, “We worked our entire life, but we can’t get any help because we can’t get through to anybody.”

  At an Iowa town hall: “Go to a local office. Try to get an appointment! Right now you’re waiting a month. And we’re going to cut more staff?”

  Politicians from both parties got an earful.

  It feels like a bait-and-switch, a common Trump tactic. Sure, he made a plethora of promises not to cut Social Security. Elon Musk didn’t.

  Trump and Musk must be betting that Americans care more about possible waste, fraud, and abuse at the Social Security Administration (SSA) than they do about getting their monthly benefit checks.

  That’s a bad bet.
  …
  Most older voters receive Social Security checks. And they vote … in larger numbers than any other age group. In fact, 72% voted in the 2020 presidential election. And guess what those voters’ No. 1 issue is? Social Security. We soon shall see where this latest full-frontal attack on Social Security leads.