Trump 2.0

[RetiredAt63]

Still Trump but shifting focus:

Golden Dome - no we are not going to spend $61B or join the US.

We do NORAD.  We spend a chunk of money on radar.  We just did the $6B deal with Australia for over-the-horizon radar.  And when you look at the geography, the US needs our cooperation.

Very well explained in
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwHVRcH74gI

[PeteD01]

Elon Musk just declared war on Donald Trump in a series of unhinged tweets.

I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore.

This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.

Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1929954109689606359

In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1929984535456035202

Call your Senator,
Call your Congressman,

Bankrupting America is NOT ok!

KILL the BILL

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1930336497208832059

Honestly, I was not expecting this one.

...

Bless your soul.

I'm really surprised it took this long. I was expecting a blowup by March. Their egos are just too big to be in the same room.

I wonder if Trump internalized criticism about firing his cabinet members too fast in his first term, and that's why he's failing to fire these nincompoops this time around.

Same. IIRC I predicted they would be on the outs by mid Feb. Joke was on me there.

The blowup is not just about egos clashing but, more importantly, about serious incompatibilities between the moron/Christian nationalist MAGA crowd and the cringy tech bro/oligarch pseudo-intellectual science fiction cult atheist crowd.
The contempt the tech bros have for MAGA Christian morons is what is driving this and is unlikely to be resolved with that uneasy coalition intact.

This piece is a good primer on the entirely foreseeable breakup:

Trump's fight with Musk reveals MAGA's biggest delusion
The president accused Elon of having "Trump derangement syndrome"
By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published June 6

Ultimately, the college-educated, secular nerds convinced themselves the rest of MAGA are dumb sheep who are easy to control. They underestimate their new allies, though. On Thursday, Musk complained that Trump was showing "ingratitude," claiming Trump would have lost the election without his support. (Which is probably true!)

This budget fight exposes how delusional that "we can handle the sheeple" attitude always was. It's not about religion, per se, but the culture clash between the Musk fanboys and the Christian nationalist debate is driving much of this. Musk and his acolytes envision a technofascism that sucks all the money out of social services and puts it into the tech industry, even as it pursues goals typically disliked by the Christian right, such as clean energy production. Meanwhile, the Christian right wing of the party, while happy to pass huge cuts to Medicaid and Obamacare, is largely leaving untouched Social Security or Medicare, which their working-class and aging base depends on. The techbro fascists may hate the liberals they live next door to, but at the end of the day, they're still part of the urban, atheistic, educated class that the MAGA movement demonizes. That difference was not going to be papered over forever.

https://www.salon.com/2025/06/06/fight-with-musk-reveals-magas-biggest-delusion/

[bacchi]

The MAGA crowd again displays their cultural war values. Higher utility rates and more pollution: What's there not to like?

The last-minute federal order [from Wright, Energy Sec] to keep the J.H. Campbell [coal powered] plant operating came as a surprise to Michigan officials, including the head of the state’s Public Service Commission, given it was at the tail end of a multi-year retirement process that was approved in 2022.

“The grid operator hadn’t asked for this, the utility hadn’t asked for this, we as the state hadn’t asked for this,” said Dan Scripps, chair of the Michigan Public Service Commission.

The owner has a NG replacement plant ready to go and keeping this one open will cost utility users "multiple tens of millions of dollars at the low end."

Is this just a knee jerk reaction to what the libs want or do the Republicans get more money from the coal mining companies (vs what they get from the oil/NG companies)?

[Fomerly known as something]

I truly think our democracy is lost. Why anyone thought voting for Trump a second time was the right thing to do is beyond me. Every day more things come out and how they are taking away the rights of the American citizens. So many people are blind to it. This budget they are ramming through is going to result in many people dying, and the courts are going to be gutted. I knew once Trump ignored the Supreme Court that our democracy was probably over.

Now that the company Trump hired to link all our data that doge has obtained it will make it easy to control people. They can do what China does and control how you spend your money, where you travel, etc. I just feel sick most of the time. The only bright spot is that I don’t have any grandchildren so only my children will have to suffer through this and half their lives are over at this point.

I think a lot of Americans realise their life sucks and instead of wanting to better themselves and correctly ascribing the blame to their own lack of ability or personal responsibility, they'd rather either (1) blame someone else or (2) take everyone else down with them. Trump offers both options, concurrently.

or third where maybe a lot of us are, this is fucked, unfair, and unconstitutional. But in the chaos try to grab what you can for yourself and your family. I think republicans are counting on, voting the right way and now getting legal bribes from the people and corporations who benefit. It's very much, screw you as long as I get mine. kinda like the Titanic except the GOP are kicking the poors, middle class, well pretty much 95% of their constituents including the elderly, women, and children off in order to take ALL the boats.

That is why my name for the “Big Beautiful Bill” is “I got mine”.  The things that would have affected me personally as a federal retiree got dropped.  Add in the larger SALT deduction makes my taxes less.  I don’t have to again personally worry about ACA or Medicare so I got mine.  I think the bill is bad for the community (country) as a whole though.

[mtnrider]

Some partial good news:  It looks like the administration decided it didn't want to face contempt charges for not bringing Garcia back.  So they brought him back, only to face charges.  (This is the guy about whom Trump argued to a reporter that a poorly photoshopped MS13 was actually a tattoo.)

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man at the center of a bitter, months-long political and legal fight after he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, has been returned to the United States to face criminal charges, according to an indictment announced Friday.

I do wonder if he'll get a fair trial, and if the charges are trumped up (since IIRC, they didn't think to arrest him at the time).  But at least he's in the US.

[OzzieandHarriet]

Some partial good news:  It looks like the administration decided it didn't want to face contempt charges for not bringing Garcia back.  So they brought him back, only to face charges.  (This is the guy about whom Trump argued to a reporter that a poorly photoshopped MS13 was actually a tattoo.)

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man at the center of a bitter, months-long political and legal fight after he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, has been returned to the United States to face criminal charges, according to an indictment announced Friday.

I do wonder if he'll get a fair trial, and if the charges are trumped up (since IIRC, they didn't think to arrest him at the time).  But at least he's in the US.

The charges sound bogus, like they fished around until they could come up with something that would sound really bad in the headlines and news bites and subject him to the possibility of life in prison (they could give him 10 years for EACH alleged “human trafficking” incident - and they are claiming thousands).

[GuitarStv]

Some partial good news:  It looks like the administration decided it didn't want to face contempt charges for not bringing Garcia back.  So they brought him back, only to face charges.  (This is the guy about whom Trump argued to a reporter that a poorly photoshopped MS13 was actually a tattoo.)

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man at the center of a bitter, months-long political and legal fight after he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, has been returned to the United States to face criminal charges, according to an indictment announced Friday.

I do wonder if he'll get a fair trial, and if the charges are trumped up (since IIRC, they didn't think to arrest him at the time).  But at least he's in the US.

The charges sound bogus, like they fished around until they could come up with something that would sound really bad in the headlines and news bites and subject him to the possibility of life in prison (they could give him 10 years for EACH alleged “human trafficking” incident - and they are claiming thousands).

Ironic.  Shouldn't the Trump administration get prison time for human trafficking for illegally deporting hundreds of people to torture prisons around the world?

[Cassie]

Someone higher up in the DOJ resigned over them charging Garcia. It’s obviously false charges.

[Poundwise]

Some partial good news:  It looks like the administration decided it didn't want to face contempt charges for not bringing Garcia back.  So they brought him back, only to face charges.  (This is the guy about whom Trump argued to a reporter that a poorly photoshopped MS13 was actually a tattoo.)

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man at the center of a bitter, months-long political and legal fight after he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, has been returned to the United States to face criminal charges, according to an indictment announced Friday.

I do wonder if he'll get a fair trial, and if the charges are trumped up (since IIRC, they didn't think to arrest him at the time).  But at least he's in the US.

The charges sound bogus, like they fished around until they could come up with something that would sound really bad in the headlines and news bites and subject him to the possibility of life in prison (they could give him 10 years for EACH alleged “human trafficking” incident - and they are claiming thousands).

Ironic.  Shouldn't the Trump administration get prison time for human trafficking for illegally deporting hundreds of people to torture prisons around the world?

Absolutely, and they have clearly violated 18 USC 242: Deprivation of rights under color of law.

[OzzieandHarriet]

From Heather Cox Richardson’s letter today:

Today, after months of maintaining it could not bring back Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully rendered to the notorious CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador, the Trump administration returned him to the U.S. A grand jury in Tennessee has charged Abrego Garcia with participating in a ten-year conspiracy to carry undocumented migrants from Texas to other parts of the country. The indictment alleges Abrego Garcia participated in more than 100 trips that moved children as well as members of the MS-13 Salvadoran gang.

The indictment has issues. Abrego Garcia is the only person named in the “conspiracy,” and the investigation into it began only in April, after the courts ordered the administration to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. The indictment is based on a 2022 incident in which Abrego Garcia was stopped in Tennessee for speeding with eight passengers in his vehicle. He told police they were construction workers and was neither ticketed nor charged. While the indictment alleges that Abrego Garcia lied to the officer by not revealing he was coming from Texas, the referral report says he told the officer he was coming from Houston, Texas.

Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5 in Nashville, Tennessee, noted that the chief of the criminal division for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville, Ben Schrader, resigned on May 21, saying: “It has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where the only job description I’ve ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons.” Williams notes that May 21 is the same day as Abrego Garcia’s indictment.

ABC News reported that Schrader resigned out of “concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons.”

[mtnrider]

It looks like more of Project 2025 is advancing.  Trump federalized the California National Guard, without the governor's approval, to quash protests in LA.  The secretary of defense is talking about sending in active duty Marines. 

A series of federal immigration sweeps across Los Angeles that began on Friday has prompted anger and resistance from onlookers and immigrant rights groups that have braced for this type of action for months.
...
Over the weekend, tensions continued to rise between state and local authorities and Trump administration officials, who said they were calling up the National Guard in response to what the White House said were "violent mobs" attacking "ICE Officers and Federal Law Enforcement Agents carrying out basic deportation operations in Los Angeles."

I haven't seen any reports that the immigrants swept up were gang members.  There hasn't been any reporting about employers being held accountable, so I lean towards this being both distracting red meat for the base as well as priming the US for Trump using the Insurrection Act.

Interesting times.

[rocketpj]

It has been pretty obvious that the masked snatching of random people by 'ICE' agents has been a long provocation in hopes of provoking a reaction.  Which clearly is working, now they get to overreact and crush opposition.

If it wasn't such a nightmare it would be humorous in its by-the-numbers following of the autogolpe playbook.

[Fru-Gal]

They are rounding up problematic immigrants who supposedly don’t work, don’t follow laws, don’t want to assimilate/educate themselves at…

—workplaces
—courthouses
—schools

And using IRS information to find them (because they pay taxes).