Odds and Ends — 12 February 2025

12 days ago

Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, and Debt:

https://twitter.com/RKing618/status/1889079646056050991

Ford CEO Says Trump Policies May Lead to Layoffs

Ford Motor could be forced to lay off employees if the Trump administration ends subsidies and other financial support for electric vehicle manufacturing, the company’s chief executive said on Tuesday.
Ford has invested heavily in factories to produce batteries and electric vehicles in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee, Jim Farley, the Ford chief executive, said at a conference in New York. If Republicans repeal Biden-era legislation that allocated billions of dollars in subsidies and loans for the projects, Mr. Farley said, ‘many of those jobs will be at risk.’

https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1889071031559569646

Goldman Sachs Doubles Down on Bitcoin ETFs, Increases Holdings by 120% in Q4

Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:

Flu deaths may have surpassed COVID deaths nationwide for first time since start of pandemic, early CDC data suggests

Politics:

I don’t remember the American Bar Association ever needing to say the quiet part out loud before: The ABA supports the rule of law

It has been three weeks since Inauguration Day. Most Americans recognize that newly elected leaders bring change. That is expected. But most Americans also expect that changes will take place in accordance with the rule of law and in an orderly manner that respects the lives of affected individuals and the work they have been asked to perform.
Instead, we see wide-scale affronts to the rule of law itself, such as attacks on constitutionally protected birthright citizenship, the dismantling of USAID and the attempts to criminalize those who support lawful programs to eliminate bias and enhance diversity.
We have seen attempts at wholesale dismantling of departments and entities created by Congress without seeking the required congressional approval to change the law. There are efforts to dismiss employees with little regard for the law and protections they merit, and social media announcements that disparage and appear to be motivated by a desire to inflame without any stated factual basis. This is chaotic. It may appeal to a few. But it is wrong. And most Americans recognize it is wrong. It is also contrary to the rule of law.

This Is Not About Cost Cutting

What Trump and Musk really want out of their government rampage is hiding in plain sight.

FEMA Official Ignores Judge’s Latest Order

A senior official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency instructed subordinates to freeze funding for a wide array of grant programs Monday, just hours after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration — for the second time — to stop such pauses.

https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1889373018704543986

Musk Ally Had Power to Alter Payments System

Treasury Department officials said Tuesday that the agency last week ‘mistakenly’ and ‘briefly’ gave a member of Elon Musk’s team the power to alter a sensitive federal payments database, prompting an internal forensic investigation that remains ongoing.
The disclosure, made in a series of court filings, undercuts the Trump administration’s repeated public claims that the DOGE team’s access to the federal payments system was limited to a ‘read-only’ basis.

https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1889041900226883782
https://twitter.com/TristanSnell/status/1889500505984180626

Guess Which Top Trump Adviser Took USAID Money?

https://twitter.com/jbendery/status/1889105625080074691
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1889063122633441493
https://twitter.com/thejackhopkins/status/1889429960538104179

Musk Says Bureaucracy Is Riddled With Fraud and Waste

Elon Musk, the billionaire supporter of President Trump, appeared with the president and defended his government reduction effort known as the Department of Government Efficiency…
Mr. Musk asserted without evidence that his team had found major fraud and waste, assertions echoed by Mr. Trump.
They denied that DOGE presented a conflict of interest for Mr. Musk. But his team has been dismantling federal agencies across the government, including some who were leading investigations, enforcement matters or lawsuits against his companies.

https://twitter.com/Bayoposting/status/1889006935707668663

Judge Orders CDC and FDA to Restore Websites

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the nation’s premier health agencies to restore online access to several websites that monitor HIV, health risks for youths and assisted reproductive technologies, which were abruptly taken offline to ensure they complied with Trump’s recent executive order on gender.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1889094509713031207
https://twitter.com/prestonstew_/status/1889043504824807708

Trump Fires Watchdog After Scathing Report

The White House fired the independent inspector general for the U.S. Agency for International Development on Tuesday evening, a day after his office issued a blistering report assessing the impact of the Trump administration’s efforts to significantly curtail the agency’s mission.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1889093392774160891
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1889385193255084217

Trump Just Blew a Hole Through the Constitution

https://twitter.com/Andie00471/status/1889080275985969214
https://twitter.com/mjfree/status/1888713034895417664

Thousands of Danes sign petition to buy California from U.S.

https://twitter.com/acnewsitics/status/1889148155888808035

Kash Patel Accused of Directing Purge at FBI

Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Tuesday accused Kash Patel of directing a purge of career officials at the bureau before being confirmed as its director.
If the allegations are true, Mr. Durbin said that Mr. Patel ‘may have perjured himself’ at his confirmation hearing and that the firings would have been directed by a private citizen.

Trump won’t block immigration arrests in houses of worship. Now these 27 religious groups are suing

More than two-dozen Christian and Jewish groups representing millions of Americans — ranging from the Episcopal Church and the Union for Reform Judaism to the Mennonites and Unitarian Universalists — filed a federal court lawsuit Tuesday challenging a Trump administration move giving immigration agents more leeway to make arrests at houses of worship.

https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1889354050551926995

Steve Bannon pleads guilty in border wall fraud case, avoids jail time

https://twitter.com/Mollyploofkins/status/1889469104261677260