Somebody Finally Noticed

DOJ charges 3 suspects in separate Molotov attacks on Tesla properties—each facing up to 20 YEARS in prison.

- Elias Marquez – Salem, OR
- Jordan Weller – Loveland, CO
- Darnell Brooks – Charleston, SC pic.twitter.com/aXKHCrW8zC

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 20, 2025

David Strom at Hot Air posted Trans Violence Is a Real Thing, and It Is Out of Control this morning, and he embedded the post above that lists three trans-identifying people who've been charged by the Department of Justice for arson against Tesla dealerships.

Transgender people make up a TINY fraction of the population, even with the explosion in self-identity and trans propaganda. Several of the recent school shooters have been trans, for instance, and more relevantly to today's issues the Tesla terrorism includes a large number of trans activists for some reason.

Actually, the three charged by the DOJ aren't the only ones. An instagram post from February 26 discusses a Colorado man identifying as a woman, Lucy Grace Nelson, whom police say repeatedly vandalized and set fire to a Tesla dealership. I found this when I did a web search on "trans arsonist", but that was just one instance among others. In 2023,

An arson attack that destroyed a 117-year-old church in downtown Portland, Oregon, this week has become a symbol of disorder in the city.

Cameron David Storer, a trans woman also known as “Nicolette Fait,” was arrested following an investigation by the Portland Fire & Rescue Fire Investigations Unit. The 27-year-old is charged with two counts of first-degree arson, one count of second-degree arson, and two counts of second-degree burglary — all felonies.

According to prosecutors, Storer walked into the Multnomah County Detention Center and confessed to setting the church on fire using a lighter.

“Storer stated that they heard voices in their head saying they would ‘mutilate’ Storer if they did not burn the church down and that they had planned it up to one day in advance,” said the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office in a press release. Storer allegedly told investigators she was taking oxycodone and had a history of mental illness.

In a 2019 episode,

A transgender man and gay rights activist in Michigan once named “Citizen of the Year” by a local newspaper is now accused of intentionally burning down his house two years ago, killing his two dogs and three cats.

Nikki Joly, 54, was named by the Jackson City Patriot last year as the conservative town’s top citizen after organizing its first gay community center and gay pride festival. He also helped pass an ordinance that prohibits discrimination against homosexuals in employment, housing and public facilities after nearly two decades of failed attempts, the Detroit News reports.

. . . Two people who worked with Joly at St. Johns United Church of Christ told police that he had been frustrated that the Jackson Pride Parade and Festival didn’t attract more protests or generate more attention for gay rights.

. . . The case has drawn comparisons to the case of actor Jussie Smollett, who has been charged with disorderly conduct for falsely reporting a racist attack in Chicago. Still, some of Joly’s supporters said they will never believe he set the blaze.

“There’s no path for me to believe it could ever be true,” said Elody Samuelson, a bisexual woman who raised money for Joly after the blaze. “There’s no way he did it — not a bit, not a chance.”

It's hard to avoid thinking there are mental issues in play here, but it seems as though the mental health establishment will be the last to acknowledge this could be the case:

An Oregon mental health advisory board includes a member who identifies as turtle.

JD Holt, who goes by the name JD Terrapin on Facebook, advises Oregon’s Health Authority Council (OHA) on best practices and policies in mental health.

Holt allegedly identifies as a terrapin and uses “they, them and turtle” for her pronouns.

Despite this glaring defect, Holt is one of roughly two dozen consumer experts on the OHA panel, where she helps advise the state on mental health services.

Then there's the case of Jorden Matthew Dykes, AKA Yarden Silveira. His aunt

described Yarden as both loving and quick to anger, with a tendency to speak or act impulsively. He struggled socially, seldom making friends. He preferred instead to absorb himself in “special interests,” a behavior typical of children on the autism spectrum. At 13, he came out as gay on Facebook, triggering conflict with paternal relatives who had conservative religious views. His mother’s side, however, embraced him.

Two years later, at 15, Yarden told his mother that he was transgender. He believed that he had a “female brain”—the still-prevalent but scientifically flawed notion that transgender-identifying individuals’ brains resemble those of the opposite sex.

By 16, Yarden had socially transitioned. He began using the name Emily, adopted female pronouns, grew out his hair, and wore feminine attire. It was 2014—the year of the “transgender tipping point.” Public awareness of trans issues was surging, and the number of children identifying as transgender spiked.

. . . At 18, Yarden was preparing for the next step in his transition: a penile-inversion vaginoplasty, in which an otherwise healthy penis is surgically dissected, with its tissue rearranged to construct a facsimile of a vagina. He underwent the procedure shortly after his nineteenth birthday, in early 2017, at Align Surgical Associates in San Francisco.

The surgery marked the beginning of a downward spiral. Soon afterward, he was back in the hospital with severe complications, including excessive blood loss that required a transfusion. According to medical records, Yarden developed necrosis of the “vaginal” tissue. Over 2017, he was hospitalized repeatedly to undergo corrective surgeries, including stomach-tissue grafts, in which sections of tissue from his abdomen were transplanted to replace the lost tissue.

. . . Between the ages of 19 and 21, Yarden also underwent breast augmentation and facial feminization surgery—both, like his genital surgery, deemed “medically necessary” and covered by Medi-Cal, California’s publicly funded insurance program. He pinned his hopes on each successive procedure, hoping it would bring him the happiness that had eluded him. “[I]f this one surgery is a massive success,” he wrote in 2019, “then I wouldn’t have wasted so many years of my life for nothing.”

Ultimately, he decided to detransition.

“It isn’t possible to biologically transition from one sex to another, which really smacked me in the face when that reality became clear to me,” he wrote. He felt that he had been “lied to” from the start.

Yarden seemed to recognize that his autism may have influenced his decision to transition. “Maybe if I didn’t have autism, maybe if my brain wasn’t so defective, I would have caught on before it was too late,” he wrote.

Autism is increasingly prevalent among those who identify as transgender. Research links autism to higher rates of same-sex attraction and gender nonconformity—to behaviors, preferences, and traits atypical for one’s sex.

The problem here is that "autism" as it's generally understood is a meaningless term. Whether one disagrees with President Trump or Secretary Kennedy on the increase in autism diagnosis, medical professionals themselves seem unable to discuss the issue with any rigor:

[Dr. Jeremy] Veenstra-VanderWeele[, division director in child and adolescent psychiatry at Columbia University,] said the change in the criteria is another reason why the number of those diagnosed with autism rose. He likened it to changing the definition of what it means to be tall.

"To just use a crude example, if you would define somebody as tall if they were over six-foot-six, and then 30 years later, say that somebody is tall if they're over five-foot-10, you'd get very, very different numbers, and that's part of what's happened here," he said.

But what you've also done is made the word "tall" meaningless.

There can be little question that Jorden Matthew Dykes, whatever his condition, should never have been considered for transition. Whether or not he had autism, he was just plain unstable. As it happened,

On May 20, 2021, Yarden died in New York. The medical examiner listed “unknown circumstances” on his death certificate.

. . . [His] mother believes that he ended his own life. He had been open about suicidal thoughts. She also acknowledges that complications from his surgical issues might have played a role. Yarden described his worsening condition in graphic detail—a significant blockage caused by scar tissue and an exposed colon, which he feared could be life-threatening. Either way, his physical and mental suffering were inextricably bound together.

We need to start a serious discussion about gender transition and mental healtb, although clearly this is only part of a much bigger discussion that needs to take place. Maybe Secretary Kennedy can have some sort of positive influence here.

Amtrak CEO Abruptly Resigns

Via CNN:

Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner is stepping down from his position to “to ensure that Amtrak continues to enjoy the full faith and confidence of this administration,” he announced in a statement.

The decision comes as Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk said he believes the US Postal Service and Amtrak need to be privatized.

There's little other information on the circumstances, except that most outlets quote from Elon Musk's recent remarks:

Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology Media & Telecom conference, Musk said it was “kind of embarrassing” that other countries, such as China, have superior passenger rail.

“Amtrak is a sad situation,” Musk said, according to CNN Business, which first reported his remarks.

“It’s like, if you’re coming from another country, please don’t use our national rail. It can leave you with a very bad impression of America,” Musk said.

This is actually quite true, alth0ough I'm not sure where Musk learned this -- it couldn't have been from first-hand experience, because he flies by private jet. But there's a sort of sub-sub genre on YouTube where the presenters get on an Amtrak train and liveblog their journeys. Their economic model is naturally to maximize their viewership, and that means putting Amtrak in the best light possible and making their train rides look like desirable experiences.

The problem is that as often as not, they get on the train, and a bunch of things happen -- the train is stopped in the middle of nowhere, federal agents get on, and the train stays there for several hours as they hunt for a fugitive. The train hits a car at a crossing, and it stays there for several hours pending medical attention, police investigation, and mechanical inspection. The train stops and stays there for several hours, reason never explained.

Any number of things can happen that make the train nine to 12 hours late, with the result that the YouTuber expected to be at his destination at 2 PM, but the train finally pulls in at 2 AM, having long since run out of food in the dining car, toilets jammed up, heat off, and so forth. The YouTuber understands that if this is all people see of Amtrak, they won't want to watch his liveblogged train trips, much less actually ride on an Amtrak train, and he struggles like crazy to make the whole debacle seem like a positive experience.

The video embedded at the top of this post is an example of this dilemma. A charming couple, Allie and Rob, somehow have made a career out of riding long-distance Amtrak trains and going on cruises, and they somehow finance this lifestyle by posting YouTube videos liveblogging their trips and cruises. They have to walk a fine line between accurately portraying the Amtrak experience while making the Amtrak lifestyle seem attractive enough that people will want to watch their videos. They start,

ALLIE: Alright, guys, you know that we travel a lot on Amtrak trains, we have a lot of experience under our belts, and you know, it isn't all rainbows and unicorns, is it?

ROB: No, there are some issues that we run into from time to time, sometimes every time, so we want to break those down for you today so you'll have a better underwstanding of exactly what you'll be facing as you ride on Amtrak.

First, as they put it, "other passengers on the train". This has to do in part with Amtrak's dual business model. In coach, it competes with Greyhound for the lowest-tier travel market, with the complication that while Greyhound doesn't have snack bars that sell liquor on its buses, Amtrak has snack bars that sell liquor on its trains, with inevitable results. On the other hand, the sleeping car market is largely retirees on leisure travel, a whole different group with its own issues.

Trains can stop for hours in the middle of nowhere to put off a drunk or drug-addled passenger, or they can stop for hours in the middle of nowhere to transfer a retiree with a medical emergency to an ambulance. And as Rob and Allie point out, you simply don't know the criminal history of anyone on a train, and that can be a definite issue. In an episode of On Patrol: Live, the Fullerton, CA police department was called to help remove a disruptive passenger from an Amtrak train, but in the following week's show, it turned out that the guy had elected to stay around town after being thrown off the train, and they had to deal with him again.

Another point Rob and Allie raise is that you can't ever count on any train being on time, and they aren't talking about 20 or 30 minutes, they're talking about many hours. They frequently warn Amtrak novices not to book plane tickets that depart the same day as their arrival date on Amtrak, because the train will almost certainly arrive too late for them to make it to the airport in time for their flight -- always book a hotel to stay overnight before flying out, but even that may not be enough.

Another point is that the equipment is old, dirty, and poorly maintained. The sleeping cars are sold for leisure travel where the passengers want to see the scenery, but the windows aren't washed. They make the point that this is where the Greyhound market runs up against the leisure travel market, and the leisure travel market suffers.

Another point is the wild discrepancies among staff attitudes -- there are highly motivated servers and car attendants, while others simply don't want to be there. Somehow, training and supervision are missing. And finally, the food has gotten worse.

I'm with Musk. I have a sense that nobody at Amtrak ever bothers to watch the YouTubers who express their frustrations and often make constructive suggestions. I don't know if Mr Gardner was pressured to leave, or if, as in an episode Rob and Allie recount, he simply quit and got off the train in the middle of Nebraska like a dining car server on one of their trips -- I kinda think it was the latter. Firing the CEO won't help a thing. They need to rethink the whole business and start over, or maybe just concede the market to Greyhound. But Musk sees the problem, and that's a good start.

UPDATE: From Reuters:

A White House official told Reuters Gardner had been asked to step down. An Amtrak spokesperson declined to comment on whether he had been asked to leave.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement that Amtrak needs to address safety concerns at Washington's Union Station.

"It’s time for Amtrak leadership to clean up Union Station," he said. "It’s time to rid our nation's treasures of homelessness and crime. Commuters and travelers need to feel safe in our capital."

It sounds as though nobody in the White House would ride an Amtrak long-distance train, but apparently just looking at Union Station, a few blocks away, told them what they needed to know.

51st State?

Although Trump consistently refers to Canadian annexation in terms of making the whole country a "51st state", it seems to me that there are obstacles nobody has mentioned in swallowing Canada whole. There are major differences in national policies on hot-button issues like gun control, universal medical care, and medically assisted suicide, as well as questions over the status of the French language -- if annexing Canada would create special circumstances for French in the US, wouldn't fairness demand the same treatment for Spanish?

As a practical matter, the US would also have to offer Canadians some major enticement that would overcome the reluctance or distaste of many individual Canadians to vote for annexation. One such would be to offer some form of dollar equity, equivalent to what the German Federal Republic offered the German Democratic Republic at the time of reunification:

The Deutsche Mark played an important role in the reunification of Germany. It was introduced as the official currency of East Germany in July 1990, replacing the East German mark (Mark der DDR), in preparation for unification on 3 October 1990. East German marks were exchanged for Deutsche Marks at a rate of 1:1 for the first M 4,000 and 2:1 for larger amounts.

Lately, one Canadian dollar has been worth about US$0.70. Offering dollar equity to Canadians has been mentioned as one inducement, possibly a necessary one, for annexation. No discussion so far has seriously mentioned the potential cost of this, much less ventured any specific draft proposal.

In the event of annexation, which medical and retirement system would prevail in Canada?

The American and Canadian governments provide many of the same types of services for people who have reached retirement age. However, Canada has a more generous retirement system.

The poverty rate for Canadians over age 65 was 4.7%, according to Canada’s latest census. That’s lower than any other age group in the country and half the poverty rate for U.S. citizens of the same age.

A major benefit for Canadians is the publicly funded universal healthcare system, which provides them with essential medical services throughout their lives, as well as in retirement. It has no co-pays or deductibles.

In contrast, Americans have no single-payer insurance unless they’re disabled or extremely low-income until they reach age 65, when they can qualify for Medicare.

Medicare doesn’t cover most vision, dental, or hearing care costs. About one in five Medicare recipients reported paying more than $2,000 in out-of-pocket expenses, according to a Commonwealth Fund study.

On the other hand, according to a 2024 Canadian poll,

[M]any are willing to journey southward in pursuit of timely health care, even if it means paying out of pocket.

The Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News found that 42 per cent of respondents would go to the United States and personally pay for more routine health care if needed. That is up 10 percentage points compared with January 2023.

And 38 per cent of respondents said they would travel to the U.S. and personally pay for emergency care (up nine points from a year ago).

. . . The Ipsos polling comes as provinces continue to struggle with shortages of family physicians, escalating wait times for surgeries and escalation of emergency room backlogs.

But leaving those issues aside, how coulld the US annex Canada consitutionally (at least on the US side), legally, and diplomatically?

Treaties are the tools the U.S. uses to take “nothing by conquest” after the Senate ratifies those treaties by a two-thirds majority.

In 1848, President Zachary Taylor proposed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to Congress to annex Mexican lands. Even though some wanted to take all of Mexico, Congress ratified the treaty.

In 1898, Congress passed House Joint Resolution 259. It ratified President William McKinley’s treaty of the annexation of Hawaii. Due to protest, petition and dissent, it took 60 years for Hawaii to become an official state in 1957.

. . . Trump’s calls for Canada to join the U.S. could only happen by drafting a treaty demonstrating that a process of cession, purchase or occupation is legal. Only then could Congress approve it, and only with a two-thirds majority of the Senate. Trump does not have two-thirds of the Senate.

With whom would such a treaty annexing Canada be made? A Canadian nation-state about to disappear? The British Commonwealth?

It's been suggested that it might be easier to annex individual provinces, in particular Alberta, although the extent of actual support there for either separation or joining the US is unclear.

A May 2020 poll by Northwest Research for the Western Standard found that 41% of respondents would support independence in a referendum, 50% would be opposed, and 9% weren't sure. Removing undecideds, 45% would support and 55% would be opposed. Respondents were also asked if they would support a referendum if "the federal government is unwilling to negotiate with Alberta on a new constitutional arrangement", 48% said yes, while 52% said no. Support for independence was higher outside of Alberta's two biggest cities, with Edmonton being the most opposed.

Based on the business-school analysis of Trump's negotiating style I looked at last week, we know that Trump tends to ask for the absolute maximum he might be able to get, but may be willing to settle for less -- for inistance, Alberta alone if he can't get the whole country.

But there would have to be circumstances far more exigent than we currently have to convince enough Albertans, much less Canadians as a whole, to go along with annexation, and there are major issues that nobody in either country has been willing to address seriously so far.

What's Going On In Canada?

I've continued to follow up on Justin Trudeau's March 4 remarks about Trump's "dumb" tariff threat, in large part because there's been so little long-form written analysis:

Speaking to reporters at a news conference on Parliament Hill, Trudeau said Trump is trying to prompt "a total collapse of the Canadian economy" because he thinks that will "make it easier to annex us," something the U.S. president has repeatedly said he wants to do.

But Trudeau said that will never happen because "when it comes to defending our great nation, there is no price we all aren't willing to pay."

Trudeau said Canada will not back down from a fight in the face of "completely bogus and completely unjustified" trade action that has the potential to ruin bilateral relations and prompt job losses, economic devastation and higher inflation on both sides of the border.

This stemmed from earlier exchanges between the two:

According to The New York Times, Trump told “Trudeau that he did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between the two countries was valid and that he wants to revise the boundary.” He also mentioned revisiting long-standing treaties between the U.S. and Canada regarding the sharing of lakes and rivers.

. . . Publicly, Trump wouldn’t let the matter die. In an interview broadcast before the Super Bowl, on February 9, Trump told Fox News’ Bret Baier his plans to annex Canada were a “real thing.” And to magnify Canada’s economic vulnerability, Trump told reporters that Canada was “not viable as a country” without U.S. trade.

The problem for Canada is that Trump isn’t wrong on this front. Canada is so dependent on cross-border trade that if the U.S. were to turn the screws on The Great White North it could crater Canada’s economy.

There seems to be general agreement on this point, but again, there's almost no long-form written analysis -- just YouTubers posting opinions. A piece from a few days ago at the Council on Foreign Relations gives the establishment view with little insight:

[B]eneath Trump’s unconventional way of presenting his perspective lie nuggets of truth. The grievances with Canada that the president has articulated are hardly unprecedented or unfounded. During my tenure as U.S. trade representative in the Obama administration, I saw firsthand the many persistent trade irritants in the U.S.-Canada relationship, from Canada’s subsidization of softwood lumber to its protectionist dairy policies to other policies that target large U.S. firms.

. . . Being liked isn’t everything, and Canadians are condemned by geography to be forever tied to the United States, whether they like it or not. But it certainly seems like we should be able to solve our outstanding issues with the Canadians, of all people.

A couple thousand words in between, and that's what it concludes? We really oughta work things out? Sundance at Conservative Treehouse goes a little farther into causes, but I quote him only because there's so little else available:

Trudeau said if President Trump was to make the Canadian government pay reciprocal tariffs, open the USMCA trade agreements to force reciprocity, and/or balance economic relations on non-tariff issues, then Canada would collapse and cease to exist.

In essence, Canada cannot survive as a free and independent north American nation, without receiving all the one-way benefits from the U.S. economy. To wit, President Trump then said, if Canada cannot survive in a balanced rules environment, including putting together their own military and defenses (which it cannot), then Canada should become the 51st U.S state.

. . . The only way for Canada to be a sovereign nation unattached to the United States, is if they drop all of their climate-change initiatives, drop their liberal economic rules and regulations, begin a system of heavy industry production again and get back to using cheap energy production as the fuel to drive it.

Canada would then need to discontinue most social welfare programs and instead divert that money to their military budget.

This morning, he gamed out the impact of the tariff war:

Here’s how it will happen. CAD = Canadian Dollar, USD = U.S Dollar

President Trump hits Canada with an approximately 50% tariff. Let’s say an import widget from Canada costs the purchaser/importer $100 CAD + 50% tariff, now $150 CAD.

$1 CAD = 0.70¢ USD

Without U.S. tariff, it costs $70 USD to purchase the $100 CAD widget.

With the U.S tariff it would take $105 USD to purchase $150 Canadian widget

However, due to economic policy, Canada’s dependence on the USA market and the tariff battle, the Canadian currency drops around 30%. $1 CAD now equals 0.50¢ USD

With currency drop it now costs $50 USD to purchase the original $100 Canadian widget. $75 USD with tariff.

BEFORE: $70 USD without U.S. tariff, or AFTER: $75 USD with 50% U.S. tariff. A net change of $5.

But wait, back to Mark Carney’s plan. As stated in his tariff policy, the prime minister will take income from the Canadian side of the tariff equation (countervailing duties) to subsidize the impacted export sector. . . . All of this is done to retain access to USA consumers.

The final outcome, the U.S. purchaser is back to the original price of $70, only now that same outcome is evident with an invisible $50 tariff.

This is what Canada is now planning to do to retain access to the U.S. market while they look for alternatives.

What are the alternatives?

Prime Minister Carney outlined yesterday how he will increase the industrial carbon tax in order to align with U.K and EU trade partners on the issue of climate change. Taxing carbon, he says, is the key to unlocking excellent trade agreements with other ‘global trade partners’ who can then fill the void created by disconnecting Canada from the USA economy.

This is in line with Chrystia Freeland's idea of building a separate alliance with the UK and France as nuclear powers to balance the US. This is all nothing more than grandiose fantasy that solves nothing -- Canada, France, and the UK together would be litte more effective than Canada alone against the US, especially as none would seriously increase its military budget.

Maybe Trump has a point. But it's so strange that there's so little long-form analysis of these issues. If the only practical solution to the Canada question is to absorb it into the US, peope need to start seriously thinking about how this would be done.

So, What Was The Plan?

Trump's latest move in the simmering autopen scandal raises a big set of unanswered questions. As he put it,

President Trump dropping bombs on Sunday night... pic.twitter.com/YEfeHnWTv4

— Rantingly (@rantinglydotcom) March 17, 2025

His premise is that some group of people put some pardoning documents together without Biden's knowledge, and they signed them with the autopen. So, who were these people? For now, the media is being cagey:

One Biden White House source told The Post they suspect that a key aide to the then-president may have made unilateral determinations on what to auto-sign. The Post is not publishing that staffer’s name due to the lack of concrete evidence and refutations by other colleagues.

The Biden aide, who did not respond to requests for comment, would frequently make mention of what “the boss” wanted, the source said, but compatriots would have “no idea” if it was true because the internal culture was to not ask questions.

“I feared no one as much as I feared that [staffer]. To me, [the staffer] basically was the president,” the person said. “No one ever questioned [the staffer]. Period.”

“Everyone” was suspicious of this individual exceeding their authority when claiming to speak for the president, the source said. “But no one would actually say it.”

“I think [the aide] was using the autopen as standard and past protocol,” The Post’s informant said.

“There is no clarity on who actually approved what — POTUS or [the aide].”

A second Biden White House source agreed that the person was suspected of assuming the then-president’s positions and handing down orders without it being clear if they actually had communicated with the commander-in-chief.

In the weeks prior to Biden's withdrawal from the presidential race last July, there was an emerging consensus on who was actually running the country:

President Biden’s inner circle has gotten smaller following his disastrous debate last week — with his wife’s top aide Anthony Bernal emerging as one of the 81-year-old’s key advisers alongside longtime confidante [sic] Mike Donilon, four sources close to or inside the White House tell The Post.

Bernal, 51, is a divisive figure for allegedly bullying and sexually harassing colleagues — and his influence was likened by three sources to that held by the mystic Grigori Rasputin over the family and court of Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia.

. . . “Accurate and on point,” said a third source of the comparison to Rasputin, who was murdered in December 1916 by rivals who believed he was contributing to poor decision-making in the months before the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, in which the royal family was ultimately toppled and killed.

“Everyone has kept their heads down about Bernal and just tries to avoid him at all costs,” the third source said. “But everyone always predicted that this movie would end badly because of how he treats colleagues and always poisons the well for anyone else with the Bidens.

“He will go down with the ship but he’s also the one behind the wheel.”

One veteran Democratic aide went so far as to say “the country would be better off with Trump” than Biden if Bernal was helping run the government.

Oddly, the talk about Bernal ceased immediately when Biden announced his withdrawal on July 21. A web search shows several stories about Bernal and his influence on the Bidens during the spring and summer of last year, but nothing after July 21. So far, the official line has been that Speaker Emerita Pelosi drove Joe's decision:

Although Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Pelosi’s protégé, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, also told Biden about Democrats' concerns about him continuing his campaign, three sources told NBC News that any time the issue of his dropping out began to die down and lose momentum, they viewed Pelosi as the one fanning the flames.

Unlike Schumer and Jeffries, Pelosi is no longer on the Democratic leadership team and could afford to be more front and center in the effort to push Biden out after his disastrous debate performance last month.

“I think Pelosi continues to show she’s a master political tactician,” a House Democratic leadership aide said Sunday.

. . . In a private phone call a week after her MSNBC appearance, Pelosi warned Biden, 81 — someone she has known in Washington for more than 30 years — about the realities of the 2024 race: He could lose so badly to their mutual political foe, Republican Donald Trump, that he could damage Democrats down ballot and possibly cost them control of the House and the Senate.

How'd that work out? The master political tactician sees Biden's vulnerability, convinces him to withdraw -- and the race turns out pretty much as she thought it would have if Biden had stayed in. So who was running the country? What was the plan? Who allowed Anthony Bernal to set the agenda? Pelosi, the master tactician, the power behind the scenes?

It seems to me that Nancy Pelosi steered the Democrats to their current situation. She must certainly have known the full situation with Biden, but as far as I can see, the plan was simply to continue with how things were until things couldn't continue, at which point her plan was to keep going as though they could.

This autopen thing is going to get juicy.

That Which Didn't Kill Him Made Him Stronger

Here's something nobody's mentioned: in less than a year, for most of which he was out of office, Trump has defeated his main first-term adversaries. He beat Joe Biden so badly in the 2024 campaign that Biden had to withdraw before he was even nominated. But it was Nancy Pelosi, nominally out of leadership but clearly still in effective control, who pushed Biden out. Yet in doing this and endorsing Kamala Harris as his replacement, she left Biden and his allies embittered and damaged her own reputation when that whole new 2024 strategy proved a loser.

Now, by backing Jeffries and the failed House strategy over the continuing resolution and the shutdown threat, she's badly damaged Chuck Schumer's position as Senate Democrat leader, split the party, and put herself on the losing side of another issue with the battle cry, "Listen to the Women!" When the commentariat tsk-tsks over how the Democrats don't have a leader, they're talking about Pelosi.

As I noted yesterday, the 2025 confrontation over the continuing resolution and the government shutdown threat was a mirror image of the same episode in 2018, with a funding measure passing the House but facing a Senate filibuster. The same players then, Pelosi and Schumer, fought Trump and at that time forced him to a shutdown with an incomplete strategy. This time, Trump beat them. Here's a rare insightful take: Trump invented the shutdown vaccine: It turns out to be DOGE:

President Donald Trump appears to have found his leverage against congressional Democrats for the upcoming budget battles in the form of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Senate Democrats made an about face this week and supported a continuing resolution to keep the government funded at current levels until Sept. 30, despite its inclusion of $10 billion in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) funding and a $6 billion hike in defense spending.

. . . The turnaround came as Democrats voiced concerns over handing Trump too much power through a shutdown and as Elon Musk stoked fears that the government would simply permit a shutdown indefinitely to accomplish the goal of dramatically reducing the size of the government.

In other words, as long as Trump and Musk are around, any Democrat threat of forcing a shutdown is futile.

But this raises another question. We can say on one hand, boy, it sure was lucky that Trump hooked up with Musk on this DOGE business, huh? Where would we be if things hadn't fallen out that way? But that brings back the question that keeps coming up about Trump -- it's better to be lucky than good; Trump hasn't always been good, but he sure has been lucky, especially in the wake of the Butler business. But why is he so consistently lucky? I'm still struggling with an answer to that one.

Here's another question, the problem of the second-term curse:

The second-term curse is the perceived tendency of second terms of U.S. presidents to be less successful than their first terms.

According to the curse, the second terms of U.S. presidents have usually been plagued by a major scandal, policy inertia, some sort of catastrophe, or other problems. There have been twenty-one U.S. presidents who have served a second term, each of whom has faced difficulties attributed to the curse.

So far, Trump has on one hand articulated goals even more ambitious than in his first term, yet in at least the first weeks of his second term, he appears to have been more successful in achieving his second-term goals than he was in achieving his first-term goals in his first term -- a notable example is in the 2025 shutdown battle vs the 2018. Michael Goodwin has some insight here:

Compared to his first term, this is also a different Trump.

He has said the near-miss of the Pennsylvania shooter gives him a greater sense of gratitude and a belief in divine purpose.

He’s definitely calmer, more focused and less likely to get blown off course by criticism or resistance.

Also, his choice of a Cabinet and top aides are better reflections of him than his first-term team was.

. . . Then there’s the incomparable Elon Musk, who has turned the search for a more efficient government into an experience for the ages.

My view is that the four years where Trump was out of power made him better prepared to use that power effectively when he regained it.

This is the president he wanted to be.

I don't know if we'll ever get a good account of Trump's four years out of power, except to recognize that he was forced to fight political battles throughout that period, and unaccountably, he won every one that mattered. Something more than luck had to be involved. That which didn't kill him made him stronger.

Trump's Achievement

Thers's been little commentary anywhere on Trump's remarkable victories in both the House and Senate over the past week, culminating in Schumer's abject reversal on the continuing resolution, with nine Democrats and an Independent voting in favor of cloture and one Democrat and one Independent even voting in favor of the underlying CR. But Real Clear Politics had nothing on the story this morning, notwithstanding Schumer's reversal on the bill and cloture took place Thursday, which made the eventual outcome clear.

RCP's lead story, unbelievably, was Byron York on A reminder that Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate from two days earlier. And I noted yesterday that Politico had characterized the White House strategy for the CR as "over-confidence bordering on arrogance". Nobody saw this coming, and it looks as though almost nobody, despite two days notice, had begun to draft any sort of reaction. It isn't just legacy media that's lazy and complacent.

Exactly what did Trump accomplish?

Tensions between prominent Democrat leaders grew Friday, as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi rebuked Senate Leader Chuck Schumer for caving on the Republican continuing resolution (CR). At the same time, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries refused to comment on his future as a leader.

The striking remarks by Pelosi (D-CA) and the lack of response by Jeffries (D-NY) speak volumes about how disappointed they are with Schumer's actions. They also indicate that, like Schumer (D-NY) initially, they are strongly advocating for a government shutdown.

"America has experienced a Trump shutdown before — but this damaging legislation only makes matters worse. Democrats must not buy into this false choice. We must fight back for a better way. Listen to the women, For The People," Pelosi said in a statement.

The presumption is that, by contrast, Schumer did "buy into this false choice." It's also a shot at Schumer, implying that women in Congress are the true leaders on this matter.

Look at the difference between now and the last confrontation over a government shutdown in 2018-19:

The shutdown stemmed from an impasse over Trump's demand for $5.7 billion in federal funds for a U.S.–Mexico border wall. In December 2018, the Senate unanimously passed an appropriations bill without wall funding, and the bill appeared likely to be approved by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Trump. After Trump faced heavy criticism from some right-wing media outlets and pundits for appearing to back down on his campaign promise to "build the wall", he announced that he would not sign any appropriations bill that did not fund its construction. As a result, the House passed a stopgap bill with funding for the wall, but it was blocked in the Senate by the threat of a Democratic filibuster.

This led to an Oval Office meeting with Pelosi and Schumer on December 11:

For 17 awkward and tense minutes in the Oval Office on Tuesday, President Donald Trump and his Democratic adversaries — Pelosi, the expected incoming House speaker, and Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader — clashed in spectacular fashion, with the cameras rolling and shocked reporters watching. White House aides who had given Trump concise talking points were equally blindsided.

In the end, Trump handed Democrats what they consider a massive gift: a direct and unqualified admission — on live TV, no less — that he will be responsible for a government shutdown.

. . . The confrontation spoke volumes about the new power dynamics in Washington that come with the arrival of a House Democratic majority in January.

All three leaders — Trump, Pelosi and Schumer — looked uncomfortable at times during the exchange. Schumer and Pelosi frequently looked straight ahead, not making eye contact with the president as they disputed him. Vice President Mike Pence didn’t speak at all.

. . . Responding to Pelosi’s calls to end the open-press portion of the meeting, Trump hit back with a thinly veiled swipe at the leadership tumult within her caucus.

“I also know that Nancy is in a situation where it’s not easy for her to talk right now, and I understand that,” Trump said.

That set off Pelosi.

“Mr. President, please don’t characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats, who just won a big victory,” she said.

In his 2025 comeback, Trump has completely reversed the dynamic of the 2018 Oval Office meeting, dividing the Pelosi-Schumer united front and throwing Schumer's leadership position into question -- and although Pelosi is officially retired from leadership, the 2025 outcome is a blow to her remaining prestige. And in the 2025 confrontation, Schumer implicitly acknowledged that the Democrats would be responsible for a shutdown.

It's hard to avoid thinking that in his time out of office, Trump rethought this confrontation and recognized that a key resource was available to him in 2018 that he didn't use. As the Wikipedia link above puts it,

The Antideficiency Act prohibits federal departments or agencies from conducting non-essential operations without appropriations legislation in place. As a result, nine executive departments with around 800,000 employees had to shut down partially or in full, affecting about one-fourth of government activities and causing employees to be furloughed or required to work without being paid.

But the president is the one who determines what government operations are non-essential. Thus Trump had precisely the same resource available to him in 2018 as he had in 2025 -- if Schumer and Pelosi shut down the government then, the potential outcome could have been precisely what Trump threatened in 2025. You want to shut down the government? Go ahead, make my day!

Faced with a similar tactical situation, Trump appears to have had the opportunity to re-think the strengths and weaknesses of both sides and played the game with a completely different outcome -- and likely ended the careers of both Schumer and Pelosi.