The Whole World is Watching, Trump Edition
A Pile of Doozies, waiting to be signed
There are some real doozies among the executive orders that were signed yesterday. As Marcy noted, the pardons were certainly among them. There is also the irony of opening up ANWR for drilling once more and exploiting Alaska’s environmental resources, while at the same time stopping the offshore continental shelf leases to wind farms,
with due consideration for a variety of relevant factors, including the need to foster an energy economy capable of meeting the country’s growing demand for reliable energy, the importance of marine life, impacts on ocean currents and wind patterns, effects on energy costs for Americans –- especially those who can least afford it –- and to ensure that the United States is able to maintain a robust fishing industry for future generations and provide low cost energy to its citizens.
I guess Alaskan fish and the Arctic Ocean are on their own.
There is also an EO giving now-Secretary of State his marching orders:
Section 1. Purpose. From this day forward, the foreign policy of the United States shall champion core American interests and always put America and American citizens first.
Sec. 2. Policy. As soon as practicable, the Secretary of State shall issue guidance bringing the Department of State’s policies, programs, personnel, and operations in line with an America First foreign policy, which puts America and its interests first.
“And don’t you forget it, Little Marco!” was apparently deleted from the final version that was signed.
It’s not just Americans watching all this play out on Day One. Around the world, the heads of intelligence services of friends and foes alike were no doubt watching as well, to see what was just campaign rhetoric and what Trump actually followed through on with action. The EO that really made me sit up and take notice and most certainly caught their attention was this one:
The Executive Office of the President requires qualified and trusted personnel to execute its mandate on behalf of the American people. There is a backlog created by the Biden Administration in the processing of security clearances of individuals hired to work in the Executive Office of the President. Because of this backlog and the bureaucratic process and broken security clearance process, individuals who have not timely received the appropriate clearances are ineligible for access to the White House complex, infrastructure, and technology and are therefore unable to perform the duties for which they were hired. This is unacceptable.
Therefore, by the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby order:
1. The White House Counsel to provide the White House Security Office and Acting Chief Security Officer with a list of personnel that are hereby immediately granted interim Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) security clearances for a period not to exceed six months; and
2. That these individuals shall be immediately granted access to the facilities and technology necessary to perform the duties of the office to which they have been hired; and
3. The White House Counsel, as my designee, may supplement this list as necessary; and
4. The White House Counsel, as my designee, shall have the authority to revoke the interim clearance of any individual as necessary.
The introduction blaming the Biden administration for screwing up the process for getting security clearances is a red herring. This EO is straight up slamming the FBI for not immediately giving clearances to his favored people back in 2017. But beyond that . . . wow.
Do you remember how things began for Trump in 2017? As I wrote in 2022, when the FBI executed a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago seeking (and finding) missing very sensitive national security documents, Trump had a history of shoddy security practices dating back to the very beginning of his first administration.
On May 15, 2017, a disturbing story hit the news:
President Donald Trump disclosed highly classified information to Russia’s foreign minister about a planned Islamic State operation, two U.S. officials said on Monday, plunging the White House into another controversy just months into Trump’s short tenure in office.
The intelligence . . . was supplied by a U.S. ally in the fight against the militant group, both officials with knowledge of the situation said.
H.R. McMaster categorically denied it, and as the story unfolded over time, McMaster was lying through his teeth. The unnamed ally was later revealed to be Israel, who had a mole inside an ISIS cell. And Trump blithely blew the cover of that Israeli asset by bragging to Lavrov.
Shortly after this meeting (at which Trump also bragged about just having fired James Comey), US intelligence officials made a bold move. From CNN:
In a previously undisclosed secret mission in 2017, the United States successfully extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government, multiple Trump administration officials with direct knowledge told CNN.
A person directly involved in the discussions said that the removal of the Russian was driven, in part, by concerns that President Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy.
The decision to carry out the extraction occurred soon after a May 2017 meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump discussed highly classified intelligence with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. The intelligence, concerning ISIS in Syria, had been provided by Israel.
This was the opening act of the Trump presidency. From the very beginning, intelligence officers worried about how Trump handled classified information. Our intelligence officers worried, and so did the intelligence officers of our allies, as they asked themselves some version of the question “Will Trump say something or do something that will get us killed?” In a completely different way, so did the intelligence officers of our adversaries. If Trump were to rashly reveal something he learned about the capabilities of our adversaries, it could have disastrous consequences for those countries and their leaders, as the reaction to the revelation could easily spiral out of control in unforeseeable ways.
And the damage was done.
Fast forward to today, and imagine you are the head of the German Bundesnachrichendienst, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, the Israeli Mossad, or any of the intelligence agencies with whom we regularly share intelligence. This EO says that Trump is giving a six-month waiver to the background check requirement. What could possibly go wrong?
Now imagine you are the head of the intelligence service of an unfriendly country. How large is your smile?
Just as they watched Biden’s new team in 2021, all the foreign intelligence services are watching Trump today. Yes, they are taking note of Trump indicating the US is withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, and also the World Health Organization. But screwing with security clearances in the White House is on another level.
Little Secretary of State Marco is going to have a lot of work to do, trying to clean up this mess. This kind of thing will turn “America First” into “America Alone,” at least when it comes to sharing intelligence among allies.
And finally, imagine you are a senior person in the CIA, NSA, or another US intelligence agency. Imagine you are an agent in the field, passing sensitive information through your handler back to Langley. How many agents are going to ask to be pulled out? How many agents are going to “go dark” for a time, cutting off the flow of information they had been sending? And how many potential sources are going to rethink any idea of cooperating with US intelligence services, and decide to go to the Germans, the British, or others instead of the US — or decide it’s not worth cooperating with any western country?
The whole world is watching, and it’s not a pretty picture. Unless, of course, you are a certain former KBG agent, who is even more elated today than he was on November 9th.
Well, isn’t this interesting? From the NYT:
Leave aside the politics here, and think about the logistics. Can you imagine how long it would take for a security clearance for Musk to be processed? With all his foreign travel, all his contacts with folks of dubious reputations overseas, all his various residences, etc., it would take ages.
But now, with the wave of a pen, Musk is presumably on the list of the WH Counsel’s Office to receive a TS/SCI clearance. Given the breadth of his remit as the head of DOGE, he could arguably make the case that he has a need to know anything at all that any US government office or official does, as part of his task to streamline the work of the government.
Two thoughts leap to mind:
(1) There’s no way Musk would use any insider information learned through his DOGE work to improperly benefit himself and his companies, right?
(2) What could possibly go wrong?
I notice that the lead reporter on the story is Mar-a-Lago Maggie, joined by Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage, and Theodore Schleifer. I further notice that there is no discussion of this instant temporary security clearance executive order in their story.
*sigh*
Somewhere on the long list of how problematic Musks proximity to power is for foreign allies, the revelations that he gets a desk very Oval Office adjacent AND a #TrumpWillsIt level of ‘vetted’ security clearance is bound to cause ‘U.K. Government Officials’ (ie spooks) to steeple their fingers, and the heirs to Smiley to polish their spectacles.
It’s not as if he wasn’t on the radar, much.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgmy71rgreno.amp
Maggie and Charlie: documenting the atrocities they and their colleagues enabled and getting rich.
I canceled my scubscription to the NYT after the 90th Biden is Old article. I use the money to pay independent sources I can trust: including The American Prospect, and a bunch of smart substackers.
I’m also deleting my twitter account using Redact, and will delete the account shortly. Find me at Bluesky.
Thank you for sharing.
I have been trying to find good resources to read for news.
Does anyone else have suggestions for good news resources?
Mother Jones and The Atlantic
I subscribe to The Atlantic and some new local independent papers. I kept NYT but cancelled WAPO.
Harry Litman’s YT channel Talking Feds
Marc Elias’ YT channel Democracy Docket
Pro Publica
Mehdi Hasan’s YT channel Zeteo
inquirer.com; apnews.com; upi.com; theguardian.com; haaretz.com.
If I had to pick just one it would be Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters To An American.
Also
Parker Malloy
Judd Legum
Aaron Rupar
Looking at The Contrarian: they flood my inbox but with pretty good stuff
Mike Lux
Steve Vladek
Legal stuff: Slate, with Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern.
And, of course, this site.
The Atlantic and Pro Publica. Canceled WAPO and the NYT. Slate. The Bulwark for commentary and various other substacks (Jen Rubin among others).
Subscribe to The Atlantic, New Yorker, The Sun.
Commentary and analysis sites (donate/subscribe):
here, of course
Digby’s Hullaballoo
Talking Points Memo
Charles P Pierce @ Esquire.com
New York Magazine’s The Intelligencer
Daily Kos
Washington Monthly
New York Times for Wordle (current streak 214), Connections, Spelling Bee
The forthcoming intelligence shit-show is going to leave us vulnerable to another major attack on our soil, isn’t it?
The rest of the planet isn’t going to trust the US government for a long, long time. And they’re absolutely correct.
Yes. The traitors will put a bunch of young traitors into the various agencies, and rooting them out will be extremely difficult.
I’m not advocating for it, just pointing it out, but one way to root out those young traitors would be by profiling by specific corporate religious and religion based organization affiliations.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/flood-the-zone-nyt-report-reveals-top-trump-aide-s-plan-to-crush-foes/ar-AA1xkw1c
The New York Times has written a lengthy profile of top Trump aide Stephen Miller, who will be more powerful than ever in the president-elect’s second White House.
The profile contains a number of tidbits about Miller’s strategy for the second Trump term that will include radical executive orders aimed at curbing immigration into the United States.
“He believes that those he regards as Mr. Trump’s enemies — Democrats, the media, groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and portions of the federal bureaucracy — are depleted and only have so much bandwidth for outrage and opposition,” writes the Times. “Mr. Miller has told people that the goal is to overwhelm them with a blitz of activity.”
Gauleiter Miller is mistaken.
How unoriginal of Miller. “Flooding the zone with shit” is Trumpian, but it originates with Steve Bannon, whom Miller has displaced, c. 2016. Most of Miller’s other ideas date from 1920s and 1930s Central Europe.
https://first-draft.com/2024/11/26/flooding-the-zone-with-shit-worked/
Miller: “It’s not unoriginal; it’s an homage.”
Exactly how Joseph Goebbels would have described his Mini-Me.
And then there is Stewart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio unleashed into the populace along with 1500 other domestic terrorists . Emboldened as the United States Government endorses political violence.
I’m not sure if it made it into an Executive Order or not, but Trump stated he was going to get to the bottom of the UFO/drone stuff and release all of the JFK/RFK/MLK files.
Anybody have a good explanation for what’s been going on with the UFO and drone stuff? Congressional hearings, alleged whistleblowers, drones, etc. Whats really going on here.
[OFF TOPIC] Dropping this here as I found it fascinating to me and have also read several other missives highly consistent with the point(s) made.
Why America Can’t USE The Oil it DRILLS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l1cj_AyR1E
It’s best to watch the video or if you happen to have a similar narrative reference then please also post links to them.
In summary the gist of it is that almost all of the oil the USA now extracts is light/sweet crude a lot of which comes from shale and/or fracking.
Our refining infrastructure is almost exclusive designed for legacy USA crude which is heavy/sour crude oil.
You cannot refine sweet/light crude using heavy/sour infrastructure or vice versa AFAIK.
I do not know what kind of oil comes out of ANWR.
And it is true for a time during the Trump admin and into Biden’s that we were the world’s #1 crude oil (of all kinds) extractor. I believe now we are maybe #3.
The point is that crude we extract cannot be used – directly – by us and so it goes on the open market and USA oil industry profits while we do not directly benefit from it. We then import the heavy/sour crude we can refine at market prices.
Yeah, I know Biden winged the cartel with a fast one a while back.
Oil refiners are not incentivized to build infrastructure for light/sweet crude processing – why would they?
The oil industry is happy to “double dip profit” on the sale of light/sweet crude they export and profit on the heavy/sour they import.
We, the consumer, get squeezed even though the price of refined crude (and not just fuel) costs more are than it could/should.
And don’t get me started on legacy energy subsidies on top of all that.
Drill Baby Drill is yet another cute sound bite – like Make America Great Again – that when repeated often enough make sense to the rabble.
[Moderator’s note: First, note off-topic content as just that; I’ve done it for you. Second, the situation you’ve described hasn’t changed for decades — it’s not time sensitive and could have waited for an open thread. Third, tighten up your writing; this comment is 2-3X too long, with far too many line breaks forcing readers using mobile devices to scroll-scroll-scroll. /~Rayne]
Well 18 state attorneys general from Democratic states as well as D.C. and the city and county of San Francisco wasted no time on Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship by filing a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in MA.
Not sure whether the listed order (which is not alphabetical) is significant, but the first state listed is NJ followed by MA, CA, CO, etc.
San Francisco includes the detail that their city is the birthplace of Wong Kim Ark (SCOTUS decision in 1898 in the case United States v. Wong Kim Ark affirmed his right to U.S. citizenship by birth).
https://www.mass.gov/doc/birthright-citizenship-eo-complaint/download
I noticed New Hampshire (with current Gov and AG who are both Republican) is not part of the suit. Fortunately, ACLU New Hampshire (along with ACLU ME and ACLU MA) filed suit in U.S. District Court in New Hampshire on the same day as above AG suit.
WBUR, the local Boston NPR news station, helpfully provides the link (pdf).
https://media.wbur.org/wp/2025/01/0176.pdf
From what I’ve read the two cases are likely to be consolidated if and when they reach the appellate level.
So the ACLU is helping New Hampshire republicans to follow Prof. Timothy Snyder’s first word of advice when battling authoritarians (and presidents who do not faithinfully execute the law): Do Not Obey In Advance.
(“faithfully” –although I am going check if autocorrect knows a word I do not!)
another correction: Trump’s executive order was Monday. The suits were filed today, Tuesday 1/21/25.