No one has ever accused Donald Trump of being deep, nuanced and petty subtle. But then, no rational person believes that the avalanche of Executive Orders marked with a sharpie come from the mushy-minded Trump. The “tell” is that they aren’t in all caps, use big words spelled correctly and are generally coherent. Someone came up with all these ideas, save the silliness of renaming the Gulf of Mexico and Denali, and Trump is channeling his best Governor William J. Le Petomane.
Among the proclamations are two Executive Orders seeking to eradicate, overnight, the dreaded Diversity, Equity and Inclusion machinery that have properly come under fire for their infusion of race and sex discrimination under the woke guise of remediating past discrimination by exploiting current discrimination. The Supreme Court says no. Americans say no. Even those it was putatively supposed to help say no. So what’s not to like?
These reactions reflect the fact that diversity programs in the workplace and on campus have come under intensive criticism in recent years, both for enforcing progressive groupthink and for substituting pseudo-progressive verbiage for meaningful change. The New York Times, which the Trumpian right regards as the Pravda of the Democratic left, reported a year ago that many companies were backing away from more controversial DEI initiatives such as mandatory anti-bias trainings that can turn into hectoring and struggle sessions. More recently, the Times also ran a long investigative article on the polarizing and demoralizing effects of an aggressive DEI initiative at the University of Michigan. And a Gallup poll in January 2024 found that more than two-third of Americans, including more than half of black Americans, approved of the Supreme Court ruling that banned affirmative action—i.e., the explicit consideration of race—in college admissions.
Like Cathy Young, I share the view that DEI, as conceived and as it grew into an institutional monster, was destructive and counterproductive on a great many levels, not the least of which was to foster racial divisiveness that made the ultimate goal of a colorblind society, a phrase that morphed from a liberal goal to a progressive nightmare, that no longer tolerated discrimination an impossibility. The cure for racism isn’t more racism. The fix for hatred isn’t more hatred. The solution for inequality isn’t inequity.
But Cathy Young recognizes that it’s not quite as simple as scribbling with a sharpie. Identifying a problem, and DEI was, indeed, a problem, does not make its simplistic prohibition the solution. There’s always the syllogism.
Something must be done. This is something. This must be done.
Cathy raised some of the potential, if not likely, problems created by beating DEI to death with a cudgel rather than taking a scalpel to the mess.
The first anti-DEI executive order also directs agencies to assess “the number of new DEI hires” under the previous administration. Even the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, a civil liberties group critical of ‘wokeness’ which has expressed strong support for Trump’s “efforts to eliminate identity-based practices,” cautions that this demand “may invite speculation, without a firm basis or evidence, regarding an employee’s skills, abilities, or merit and instead make assumptions based on their perceived identity.” In other words, female and nonwhite staffers may be especially likely to be targeted as “DEI”—not an unlikely scenario when attacking women and minorities as “DEI” beneficiaries has already become a staple of right-wing rhetoric.
Her point wasn’t that ending the blight of DEI wasn’t the right policy, but that ending it carefully, with recognition that there are plenty of black people, plenty of women, plenty of gay people, hired not because of any DEI initiative, but because they were the best people for the job. Firing people because of their identities is no less outrageous than hiring them because of their identities. Distinguishing between the two takes time, thought and effort. For this, Chris Rufo lost his mind.
You’re a truly repulsive person, inside and out, and your presence in the discourse is a form of intellectual pollution. You’re a nagging schoolmarm who hasn’t realized that the children you’re constantly chastising have all grown up. They don’t need you and don’t respect you.
To be fair, Rufo took the lead against DEI at a time when challenging it was anathema, and anyone risking a challenge was a pariah. Granted he became increasingly extreme over time, but that was unsurprising given the extremes to which his haters went. But then, Cathy wasn’t calling Rufo ugly, or even his antagonism toward DEI wrong. Rather, she called for greater thoughtfulness in the implementation of its elimination. Was that such a terrible thing to do?
I responded to these stupid arguments from the “classical liberals” between 2020 and 2024. I won. They lost. I’m not going to relitigate them now.
It’s understandable why the hardcore MAGA folks lack the ability to grasp the almost certain problems arising from the shallow and ham-handed imposition of Rufo’s “win” against DEI. It’s not that Trump is wrong to excise DEI from the body politic, but that removing a cancer without killing the patient requires surgical skill. It’s likely that Chris Rufo is one of, if not “the,” moving power behind Trump’s Executive Orders, and was the guy who made sure the letters were all in the right order, his outraged rejection of any criticism, any scrutiny, now that the scheme is being executed, by calling the person offering such mild critique “repulsive.” Is he really just as petty and fragile as his patron?
For those who support Trump not because they don’t realize what a vulgar, deceitful, narcissistic ignoramus he is, but because they nonetheless prefer him to the alternative, it’s critically important that he not blow up the nation in the process of eliminating the vestiges of wokeness. To do this, Trump’s EOs need to be subject to criticism and Chris Rufo needs to stop being so absurdly mean-spirited and take criticism like a big boy.
If one were to believe the voices of outrage on the twitters, Southern District of New York Judge Paul Engelmayor just stopped Treasury Secretary Scott Bressent from being allowed into his own computer system, from overseeing his own department’s payment system. The alternative to losing one’s head is reading the decision, but too few are sufficiently interested in thinking to be bothered. I am not.
The States contend that this policy, inter alia, violates the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), 5 U.S.C. §§ 551 et seq., in multiple respects; exceeds the statutory authority of the Department of the Treasury; violates the separation of powers doctrine; and violates the Take Care Clause of the United States Constitution.
Whether or not you care about any of this, and many don’t care because of the syllogism*, the duty of a court is to apply law. You can’t just like that when it works in your favor, but either you accept the premise that we are nation of laws or you don’t. If you’re of the view that Trump’s election renders him omnipotent, then don’t bother reading any further and don’t forget to swallow. But just in case you are of the view that the law still matters even when it doesn’t give you everything you want, then consider Judge Englemayor’s findings.
The Court’s firm assessment is that, for the reasons stated by the States, they will face irreparable harm in the absence of injunctive relief. See Winter v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7, 20 (2008). That is both because of the risk that the new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking. The Court’s further assessment is that, again for the reasons given by the States, the States have shown a likelihood of success on the merits of their claims, with the States’ statutory claims presenting as particularly strong. The Court’s further assessment is that the balance of the equities, for the reasons stated by the States, favors the entry of emergency relief.
Bruce Schneier, a cybersecurity expert at Harvard and the author of a series of books on security vulnerabilities, including “Click Here to Kill Everybody,” called the entry of Mr. Musk’s force “the most consequential security breach” in American history.
Mr. Schneier noted that the intrusion came “not through a sophisticated cyberattack or an act of foreign espionage, but through official orders by a billionaire with a poorly defined government role.”
Yet again, you may not care. You may believe that it’s a risk worth taking. You may believe that it has to be done, so shut your eyes and dive into the abyss. But then, the security of the nation, not to mention the faithful application of its laws, doesn’t care what you believe. More importantly, your belief doesn’t change whether this impetuous action is wrong, ranging from improper to catastrophic. Nor, for that matter, is it up to Trump or Musk. Hard as it may be to believe, they are not our new overlords, and while Trump is the putative steward for a term of office, no one quite knows what Musk is. You think you do, but you don’t, no matter how hard you clench your sphincter.
So Judge Englemayor did what any good judge would do. He shut down, pending hearing before the assigned Judge Jeannette A. Vargas, the wild and crazy shenanigans for which the law makes no exception.
ORDERS that, sufficient reason having been shown therefor, pending the hearing of the States’ application for a preliminary injunction, pursuant to Rule 65 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the defendants are (i) restrained from granting access to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees, other than to civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties within the Bureau of Fiscal Services who have passed all background checks and security clearances and taken all information security training called for in federal statutes and Treasury Department regulations; (ii) restrained from granting access to all political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department, to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees; and (iii) ordered to direct any person prohibited above from having access to such information, records and systems but who has had access to such information, records, and systems since January 20, 2025, to immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems, if any;
What is remarkable about Judge Englemayor’s order is its unremarkability. For those inclined to histrionics like “everything is corrupt,” “it’s all fraud” and “burn it all down,” requiring the Treasury Department to adhere to basic law and not give Musk and his lost boys run of the place will seem outrageous. It’s not. It’s just the law.
I received an email from Satan yesterday evening challenging me to post today about Trump’s revocation of Biden’s security clearance. On the one hand, it was just another in a series of petty moves by a puny man as retribution against those who hurt his feelings. On the other hand, it’s inconsequential, as the limited utility of a former president maintaining his security clearance and getting occasional briefings only applies under normal circumstances, where a current president seeks the advice of a predecessor in office or uses a former president as an envoy for foreign affairs.
Trump won’t be asking anything of Biden, so there will be no need for Biden to be kept up to date during Trump’s term. Maybe the next president will seek Biden’s help. He or she can restore Biden’s security clearance then. Sure, there’s the irony that Trump will give access to state secrets to unvetted kids in Musk’s wake, but that’s a different issue. It’s just a slap in the face of a former president by a current president who uses power as payback like a butthurt child.
But what Satan missed was Trump’s firing of Colleen Shogan. Remember her, the National Archivist who said no to Biden when, on the way out the door, tried to pretend that the Equal Rights Amendment was enacted? The last piece of the ERA puzzle was for the Archivist of the United States to certify that the amendment was enacted and the Twenty-Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. A “loyal” archivist might have done what Biden wanted. Shogan, however, was not loyal to Biden, but to the Constitution. She refused.
The director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, Sergio Gor, announced in a social media post Friday that Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan had been removed from her position.
“At the direction of @realDonaldTrump the Archivist of the United States has been dismissed tonight,” Gor wrote on X. “We thank Colleen Shogan for her service.”
What possible reason could there be for such a petty narcissist to do such an inane thing?
President Donald Trump has fired the head of the National Archives, after complaining for nearly two years about the agency’s role in the Justice Department’s investigation and eventual prosecution of him over a slew of classified documents kept at his Mar-a-Lago home following his first term.
It is the function of the National Archives to keep track of classified documents. Most would view this as a good thing. Of course, most have a functional understanding of the importance of maintaining the nation’s confidences. But even worse, Trump’s anger over the National Archives involvement in his hiding top secret documents after claiming to have returned them focused on Shogan when she wasn’t even the Archivist at the time.
Shogan, 49, was not the archivist at the time the agency was attempting to retrieve boxes of presidential records from Trump’s estate in 2021 and 2022. But Trump has viewed NARA with suspicion since the investigation and has openly described its top staff as complicit in efforts to damage him politically.
As with Trump’s purge of inspectors general, there is law that is supposed to apply to such actions as the naming and terminating of the archivist, not that Trump either knows of or care about such trivial matters.
A former director of litigation at the Archives, Jason R. Baron, said he was troubled by Shogan’s ouster. He noted that federal law says the Archivist must be appointed “without regard to political affiliations and solely on the basis of … professional qualifications.” The statute also says the president must notify Congress about why the archivist was dismissed.
There is, of course, no basis for Shogan’s removal, Trump’s factual failing of not know that she wasn’t the archivist at the time he was investigated for his keeping and concealing secret documents.
“No good reason exists for firing Dr. Shogan, as she has faithfully carried out her duties in a nonpartisan fashion in the short time since being appointed U.S. Archivist by President Biden,” said Baron, now a professor at the University of Maryland. “Dr. Shogan had nothing to do with the prior actions NARA staff took in connection with the successful return of boxes of presidential records that had been improperly transferred to Mar-a-Lago at the end of President Trump’s first term.”
But it is her faithful performance of her duties that Trump can’t stand. After all, what if he needs her to be loyal to him and there she is, faithfully performing her duties to the United States of America rather than the Darth Cheeto?
“Notwithstanding what President Trump might choose to believe, NARA is a completely nonpartisan agency, and NARA staff at all times have conducted themselves thoroughly professionally in ensuring that our Nation’s history is properly preserved,” Baron said.
Baron might be wrong again here. NARA was a nonpartisan agency, and is meant to remain a nonpartisan agency. Americans need it to be a nonpartisan agency. Americans need a National Archivist to say no to a president who, like Biden, wants to make a failed amendment part of the Constitution. But will NARA be nonpartisan with whomever Trump names to replace Colleen Shogan given that Trump values nothing more than sycophantic loyalty to him and him alone? Are you happy now, Satan?
There is no indication that Trump has a firm grasp on security, either its means or purpose, and consequently doesn’t take it seriously. Even so, a demand that the CIA send over a list of its new hires over the past two years by unsecured email would seem too stupid for even the most fanatic DOGEBoy. Not so, apparently.
The C.I.A. sent an unclassified email listing all employees hired by the spy agency over the last two years to comply with an executive order from President Trump to shrink the federal work force, in a move that former officials say risked the list leaking to adversaries.
The list included first names and the first initial of the last name of the new hires, who are still on probation — and thus easy to dismiss. It included a large crop of young analysts and operatives who were hired specifically to focus on China, and whose identities are usually closely guarded because Chinese hackers are constantly seeking to identify them.
The putative purpose of the list was to identify new employees hired pursuant to the CIA’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiative. On the surface, it seems reasonable to question whether the CIA hired new personnel because of merit and need or because they checked woke boxes. The problem is that given the CIA’s job, it may be impossible to distinguish between someone hired because of some marginalized status from someone hired because they fill a need, such as spies of Chinese ancestry to spy in China. You know, it works a lot better when spies blend.
It’s also necessary for the CIA to hire analysts with cultural knowledge of various places around the world. Much as I hate to admit it, I’m really not qualified to serve as an analyst on the Ghana desk, even though the CIA tried to recruit me many years ago to fight Ivan and Igor. There are damn good reasons to have personnel of African ancestry to provide a depth of understanding of cultural mores. And this is true pretty much everywhere, even if they happen to have skin color or religion that DEI advocates might prefer.
And then there’s women, and even gay and lesbian people, because they too fill a niche that’s critical to the CIA function. And they check some boxes, but that doesn’t make their utility to the CIA and the nation any less critical. It can be very hard, if not impossible, to distinguish between DEI hires and new-hires who fill critical needs within the CIA.
Surprisingly, the Trump admin didn’t deny any of this, but just said they were sure it was no big deal.
Current officials confirmed that the C.I.A. had sent the names of employees to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, complying with an executive order signed by President Trump. But the officials downplayed security concerns. By sending just the first names and initials of the probationary employees, one U.S. official said, they hoped the information would be protected.
That, of course, is fucking nonsense:
One former agency officer called the reporting of the names in an unclassified email a “counterintelligence disaster.”
[…..]
[F]ormer officials scoffed at the explanation, saying that the names and initials could be combined with other information — from driver’s license and car registration systems, social media accounts and publicly available data from universities that the agency uses as recruiting grounds — to piece together a more complete list.
Any competent intelligence operation – like, say, China’s – can easily cross-reference this information with publicly available data and standard OSINT techniques to identify these recruits. It’s literally Intelligence 101.
A former agency officer called this a “counterintelligence disaster.” According to Jim Hynes, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, the White House “insisted” that the transmission of the names be by unsecured email. Whether there was a reason for this is unknown. Even if there was a reason, it’s almost certainly not a good reason as there can be no good reason to needlessly expose the names of the CIA’s personnel.
And there was no good reason to seek the list in the first place.
Apparently, the reason that the admin wanted this list is because they’re basically trying to get a huge portion of the CIA to quit (they just offered the highly questionable mass resignation offer to the CIA), and they’re so completely terrified of the word “diversity” that they’ve decided the most recent hires are “DEI.”
To say the Trump administration is “terrified” of the word “diversity” might not quite be right. More precise would be that “diversity” presents the perfect target to gain cheap applause from the base. By characterizing any person or thing Trump wants to vilify (think the Black Hawk helicopter crash where Trump immediately blamed “diversity” in the absence of any information upon which to suggest diversity was to blame) as “diversity,” he scores points with the simpletons. But at the expense of national security?
An endemic problem with the shallow approach of Musk/DOGE is that while there may well be waste, fraud and abuse throughout the federal government, there are also critical functions being performed that can’t be “paused” without being compromised or eliminated without causing extreme harm. Distinguishing between what’s good and bad, and what may well have components of both that are nearly impossible to separate, is hard work.
Even so, revealing the identities of CIA hires to exposure is too stupid for words, even if the balance of the process of vetting staff for “diversity” required a depth of understanding that neither Trump nor the Muskies possessed.