Dear Weekend Jolter,
National Review's latest cover features an illustration of Elon Musk atop a MAGA-emblazoned rocket blasting off into space.
The DOGE drama of the past week indicates he may be starting his descent.
This doesn't mean that the billionaire entrepreneur's work in Washington is anywhere near finished or that he doesn't still exercise enormous influence over federal government personnel and President Trump. But — and this could partly redound to Musk's benefit, in ways Andy McCarthy will explain below — the image of Elon Musk as a demigod Bob Slydell, a roving entity with plenary power to “fix the glitch” of anybody’s continued federal employment, has been cracked.
After the DOGE shock-and-awe of Trump's first month, the courts and presidentially appointed powers (now confirmed) in other wings of the administration are starting to catch up. The still-developing clash between Musk and senior officials over the former's ultimatum to the federal workforce last weekend was revealing.
In his now-famous directive responding to Trump's prompt to be "more aggressive," Musk had sought information on what feds had accomplished in the prior week. In formalizing that request, the Office of Personnel Management conspicuously omitted Musk's threat that "failure to respond will be taken as a resignation" — and then senior figures including FBI Director Kash Patel and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard intervened, telling their staffs to hold off. Though many still responded and Trump publicly defended Musk, his guidance — "If you don't answer, like you're sort of semi-fired" — left things vague; OPM eventually clarified that participation was voluntary and at the discretion of agency leaders. Musk, undeterred, is planning "another email." (Please, Elon, title it: “Did you get that memo?”)
No matter the resolution, the emergence of a turf battle between Musk and the agency heads that federal employees actually report to has an ironic twist, pertaining to a court challenge. Andy McCarthy, as promised, explains:
That could help Musk establish that he is not exercising such broad powers that the Constitution mandates his submission to a Senate confirmation process. . . .
A sudden court ruling that Musk is wielding power unconstitutionally would stop the murky operation in its tracks. It probably helps DOGE, then, that the officials with unquestioned executive authority are treating Musk as though he's just making suggestions — even if that may irk the president, who touts Musk's suggestions as if they were Trump decrees.
Even if Musk prevails in the anti-DOGE case to which Andy refers, the courts have curtailed some of his activities elsewhere. In an early sign of internal friction, the Trump administration in mid-February also reversed field on the removal of hundreds of employees with the National Nuclear Security Administration. The Trump administration is reportedly restoring "dozens" of National Park Service jobs — a small fraction of those fired — while planning to hire far more seasonal workers than usual this year. (The administration is likely mindful of how the handling of America's national parks can cause PR headaches during battles over government spending.) At the same time, OPM and the Office of Management and Budget sent a memo to agency heads this week seeking plans for "large-scale reductions in force" in collaboration with DOGE — so the layoffs are still going strong, but the pool of decision-makers is expanding.
Meanwhile, reality is setting in about what DOGE can achieve. The Journal reported that claims of billions in savings from canceled contracts have been steadily revised downward, and continue to be overstated. Phil Klein has explained why Musk can't hit the savings he envisions without entitlement cuts, which Trump refuses to contemplate. David Bahnsen adds, "Anything you see from DOGE that is not ratified by Congress is transitory."
The fact that DOGE can't come close to the savings Musk promised is no reason to abort his audit of the workforce and budget — "this, taken to its logical conclusion, becomes an argument for never cutting or investigating anything," as NR's editorial on DOGE said. But the deeper involvement of and intervention by Senate-confirmed members of the administration is a welcome development, and one that may force the Tesla/SpaceX über-boss to move less fast and break fewer things. Where priorities like nuclear security and Ebola prevention are concerned, that would be a relief. As Audrey Fahlberg reports, some GOP members of Congress are urging a more measured approach, while Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) and others are hopeful that cabinet officials can play a bigger role going forward.
I tend to agree with Jeff Blehar, that Musk will occupy this post until he's more useful to the president as a human sacrifice than as a hatchet man. On The Editors podcast, Noah Rothman speculated that Musk's freelancing is beginning to "chafe" his boss and that we could be witnessing the beginning of the end of the "bromance." For the time being, David Bahnsen forecasts, the "internal palace-intrigue factor is going to pick up."
* * *
One last note, on the late-breaking rupture in whatever relationship Kyiv and Washington still had under Trump. Friday's Oval Office scene marks a new low in the administration's chronic confusion of friend and foe; Noah Rothman writes, "There will be consequences that follow from this, and they will almost certainly be bad for U.S. security and that of our allies."
On that happy note . . .
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
Depravity in full: The Evil of Palestinian Terrorism Reaches New Depths
Just a start: A Modest Republican Budget Plan
Scott Walker's union reforms are still being fought over: The High Stakes of the Wisconsin Supreme Court Race
ARTICLES
Charles C. W. Cooke: The Democrats Are Suffering Through a Drought of Generational Talent
Kathryn Jean Lopez: The Hell of Antisemitism
David Bahnsen: Curb Your Hysteria
Noah Rothman: Do We Have to Lie on Russia's Behalf?
Audrey Fahlberg: Tom Homan Wants to Double ICE Footprint in Sanctuary Cities. Elon Musk Is Helping Him Get There
Audrey Fahlberg: Senate Majority Leader John Thune Riding High, for Now, Amid Cabinet Confirmation Spree
Brittany Bernstein: BBC's Accidental Hamas Profile Just the Latest Incident in Long Anti-Israel Track Record
Jim Geraghty: How Ukraine's Drone Army Is Being Built
Kayla Bartsch: RFK Jr. Is Not Alone in Scrutinizing Seed Oils
Peter Roskam: America's Enemies Are Rooting for the Death of the National Endowment for Democracy
James Lynch: Bezos Shakes Up Washington Post, Shifts Opinion Page to Defense of 'Personal Liberties' and 'Free Markets'
Mark Antonio Wright: Progressive Journalists Don't Understand That Jeff Bezos Owns the Washington Post
Frank Filocomo & Joe Pitts: The Case for Dive Bars
Dan McLaughlin: Ranking the Worst Democratic Presidents
Christian Schneider: Trump Should Take a Bite out of Nonsensical Laws
Rich Lowry: Governor DeSantis Joins the 2025 Ideas Summit Lineup
And for Jay Nordlinger's series on Latin American politics, see here.
CAPITAL MATTERS
Dominic Pino finds out how it plays in Pawnee, where tariffs are concerned: How Tariffs Harm the Heartland
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
"None of this is necessarily for children," Armond White writes: The Twisted Life Lessons of The Wild Robot
Brian Allen explains "the hierarchy" in art and challenges the order of things. First was an appreciation for wallpaper; now, it's tapestries' turn: French Tapestry Goes Modern, with Looks to Amaze
EXCERPTS, FULLY CHARGED
Charles C. W. Cooke highlights a fundamental problem that the Democrats have, beyond their well-covered ideological ones:
If it seems to you as if the Democratic Party is hopelessly leaderless at present, rest assured that this is because it is. Does that seem odd? If one uses the Republican Party as a yardstick, it might. This is the tenth year of Trump's domination of the GOP, and, if he survives to the end of his second term, he will have been its undisputed head for nearly a decade and a half. Relative to that, the lack of an obvious head honcho on the other side is jarring.
Trump, though, is not normal. Typically, even the most charismatic figures hold sway over their party for six or seven years at the most, and, once their grip has been loosened, they leave a vacuum in their wake. The Democrats were so fortunate to have Bill Clinton and Barack Obama come along within eight years of one another that one can forgive them for having concluded that being handed generational talent after generational talent was simply how contemporary politics worked. It isn't. They were spoiled, and now they are suffering through the downswing.
That the Democratic Party was in the midst of an ongoing personnel crisis should probably have been obvious when, in 2020, it had to pull out all the stops to install Joe Biden — a senile, talentless, midwit hack — as its presidential candidate. Likewise, its devotees should have heard alarm bells last year when, after the conspiracy to cover up Joe Biden's infirmity had finally been exposed, the party's best alternative was Kamala Harris. If one wishes, one can explain both of these decisions away as the products of panic and necessity. In 2020, the Democrats were obliged to stop Bernie, and, in 2024, they had no choice but to swap Biden out for his VP. But this is not a persuasive line. In the interest of self-aggrandizement, Donald Trump likes to pretend that the Republicans "never won" prior to his arriving on the scene, but that claim is not even close to being true. While Barack Obama was president, the Republicans won and won and won — taking more than 1,000 legislative seats at the federal, state, and local levels — and, in the process, they did incalculable damage to the Democrats' once and future bench. That Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were ever in a position to be made their party's nominees serves as a testament to the scale of the destruction that was wrought.
This problem is being underestimated by analysts.
If only we could make sobriety in political analysis sexy again. David Bahnsen gives it a shot:
At some point in my adult life, much later than I wish it had been, I learned that a person worth emulating is a person who possesses poise, calm, and sobriety. As fun as it can be to be excitable, or to be around excitable people, I have not often observed unchecked zeal to be the stuff that Super Bowl champions — or good portfolio managers, or good friends, or productive adults — are made of. Sound and fury can be useful, but grown-ups have to be people of sound judgment and judicious restraint if they are to maximize their God-given potential.
The current political environment brings this reality for individuals into the public realm. The Trump moment generates excitability and, in some cases, outright hysteria. It does so for good reasons (there can be bad things and good things worth being excited about), and it does so for awful reasons (many people are simply unhinged) — but it does so also because we are in a time defined far more by emotional exuberance than rational discourse (online and otherwise).
In the first five weeks of the new administration, I have seen opponents of President Trump rehash the Hitler line, news reporters assure us that free speech is a weapon that can cause genocide, and otherwise-intelligent people claim that the president is setting up a corrupt government which he intends to never leave. Much of it falls on deaf ears because these folks have overplayed their hand for nine years running, but the noise and smoke are excessive, and to say they lack measure is to be a little too nice.
I would be lying if I did not say that there is an equal level of hysteria from some Trump supporters, which in some ways is more disturbing, mostly because it is less expected. Reasonably credible people have uttered things like, "What President Trump has done in the last five weeks is nothing short of Churchillian, Reaganite, and Lincolnesque, if those three could be combined and exceeded." . . .
There is a lot of sound and fury right now, both from those who believe Trump is Hitler and those who believe he is Jesus. There is some legitimacy in sound and fury. There is also way, way, way more noise than substance.
This weekend marks the end of the first phase of the Israel-Hamas cease-fire deal, the one Hamas has violated repeatedly while treating its hostages savagely. From NR's editorial:
Among the gruesome images of the terrorists' romp through southern Israel on October 7 — the piles of bodies at the Nova music festival, the bloodstained walls and cribs, the charred human remains — one of the most haunting was that of Shiri Bibas clutching her two boys in a desperate attempt to protect them. She was taken hostage by a Palestinian terrorist group (the Mujahideen Brigades) along with her sons Kfir, who was nine months old, and Ariel, who was four. Yarden, her husband, was taken hostage separately by Hamas on that day. Her parents were murdered.
Yarden was released several weeks ago as part of the current cease-fire deal, and while everybody anticipated the worst for Shiri and the boys, nothing could quite prepare anybody for the depths of the evil that was revealed. Hamas paraded the coffins of the Bibases before a cheering crowd in Gaza. Though Hamas had long claimed that Shiri and the children died in an Israeli air strike, an Israeli forensic examination showed that the children were murdered with the bare hands of their captors and then mutilated in an attempt to blame Israelis for their deaths. It's difficult to conceive of the evil required to brutally murder an infant.
In another shock, Israeli forensics also determined that the body that Hamas claimed to be Shiri wasn't her at all but in fact a random corpse. Only after being called out did Hamas later provide the correct body. The attempt to pass off an anonymous dead body as Shiri's was a grave violation of the cease-fire deal that is currently in place.
President Trump has repeatedly indicated that he has lost patience with the pace of the hostage releases, with only a few sent back to Israel a week while Israel has to return hundreds of Palestinian-terrorist prisoners. Previously, Trump issued an ultimatum saying that he supported unleashing "hell" if Hamas did not release all of the hostages by February 15.
Trump left the decision up to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, while keeping options open, continued implementing the current cease-fire deal past Trump's deadline, allowing Israel to receive additional hostages. Six more living hostages returned this past Saturday, but with further outrages by Hamas. Not only did Hamas stage another ceremony, but the terrorist group had two hostages who were not slated for release watch in a car, recording a video in which they begged Netanyahu to secure their release.
In response, Israel has delayed the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, demanding an end to the humiliating parades. The White House backed the decision, saying Trump supported "whatever course of action it chooses regarding Hamas." . . . Netanyahu and his government, thus, are facing a major decision.
CODA
Did you know that David Gilmour's daughter, Romany, sings? And that she's really very good at it? Now you do.
Cheers.
Megyn Kelly -> Pete Hegseth responds to 2017 rape accusation. 🔥 vol. 3, issue 13 | December 6, 2024 Quick Hits All the news you need in...
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