Digby covered this guy on Wednesday, but Russell Vought, Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, merits (I use that term loosely) more time in disinfecting sunshine.

Sen. Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, has a lot of federal employees living in his state. People with families, Americans trying to do a good job and make ends meet. Kaine questioned Vought, an architect of Project 2025, about his authorship of a budget proposal titled “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government” that Vought produced for the Center for Renewing America where Vought was its president.

Vought, an avowed Christian nationalist, proposed deep cuts to the SNAP program (food stamps) and Medicaid. Quoting from the Bible, Kaine had questions for Vought about that and about what programs he considers “woke” during his Senate confirmation hearing.

The new policy directs department attorneys to investigate and potentially prosecute those officials who refuse to enforce Trump’s hard-line immigration enforcement policies.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove on Tuesday called for Justice Department attorneys to investigate and potentially prosecute state and local officials who refuse to enforce President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration enforcement policies.

The directive came in a three-page internal email that Bove sent to all Justice Department employees on Jan. 21. The memo, which reflects some of the first known policy changes within the Trump administration’s Justice Department, instructs federal prosecutors to assist in implementing the policy objectives set out in President Trump’s recent executive orders on immigration and cartel activity. The document calls for a major reallocation of Justice Department resources to immigration-related prosecutions, including a directive for the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces to assist in the enforcement of Trump’s immigration agenda.

The memo asserts that the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause requires “state and local actors” to “comply” with the executive branch’s immigration enforcement initiatives. “Federal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing, and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands,” wrote Bove, a former criminal defense attorney for Trump who is currently serving as the Justice Department’s interim deputy attorney general. He further instructed U.S. attorneys’ offices nationwide to “investigate instances involving any such misconduct for potential prosecution.”

...

In his first 24 hours as President, Donald Trump has taken actions large and small that dramatically compromise the justice system and the functioning of the Department of Justice.

Some, like his pardoning of 1,500 defendants who were convicted and sentenced for their roles in attacking the Capitol on January 6th, including convictions of horrible acts of violence against law enforcement, are high profile. As many have already pointed out, these pardons are a betrayal; a slap in the face to those officers and their families who suffered physical and emotional scars, ongoing trauma, or death. They also undermine the hundreds of prosecutors and FBI agents nationwide who, regardless of party or politics, worked tirelessly on these cases, as well as the bipartisan federal judges who sentenced them. In addition, these pardons allow individuals who (not without encouragement) used violence to achieve their ends back out into our communities, who will be left to deal with the consequences. Finally, they encourage others to use similar means of political protest, without fear of long-term accountability.

These actions were compounded by something even more insidious: the appointment of Ed Martin, a prominent backer of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, as interim U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C.

...

Together, these pardons send a clear and dangerous message: People who are loyal to Donald Trump cannot be reached by career federal prosecutors and agents; the ultimate politicalization of the justice system and Department of Justice.

This is all driven home by a more under-the-radar action—the unprecedented reassignment of top career officials in the national security and criminal divisions. At least three of these individuals, George Toscas, Eun Young Choi, and Bruce Swartz, collectively have decades of experience and knowledge in investigating and prosecuting terrorists and national security threats. They have served under Democratic and Republican Administrations admirably. That is one of the central tenets of a non-political DOJ—maintaining career officials, especially at the supervisory level, to insulate the line prosecutors (who do the actual case work on the DOJ's behalf) from the political influences above. Instead of dismissing these public servants outright, Trump bypassed federal protections by reassigning them to positions that will almost certainly force them to resign, according to the Washington Post.

...

Four years ago, it was unimaginable that Trump would return to office. Just two weeks before the inauguration, rioters had attacked police officers and occupied the Capitol, delaying for hours the certification of the 2020 election. The mob was egged on by Trump, who falsely claimed that their effort was needed to “stop the steal.” The attack on democracy and the peaceful transfer of presidential power was astonishing.

Four years later, some attribute Trump’s political comeback to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who failed to secure a criminal conviction of Trump for his role in seeking to overturn the election. But the real culprits for Trump’s return to power lie in the legislative and judicial branches. Don’t blame Garland. Blame Mitch McConnell and the Supreme Court.

...

At the time, the GOP Senate leader discouraged his conference from voting to convict, arguing that the criminal justice process could take care of it. McConnell said, "There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events” of Jan. 6. He called the attack a “foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.” Blasting Trump for failing to call off the mob, he said “The president did not act swiftly. He did not do his job... Instead according to public reports he watched television happily as the chaos unfolded, kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election.” Powerful words from a member of Trump’s own party.

But McConnell failed to take the additional step of using the power of the Senate to check Trump’s potential return to power. Passing the buck to prosecutors and the courts, McConnell excused his fecklessness by saying Trump “didn't get away with anything yet. We have a criminal justice system in this country.” But, it turns out, not a criminal justice system that could protect us from Trump.

...

...

I could write this column today about the indecency of pardoning more than a thousand people convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, making the point that this sort of indecency is really, really bad—but that’s obvious.

I could write instead about the Kafkaesque nature of beginning a presidential proclamation on the subject of these clemency actions by describing the Jan. 6 prosecutions, many of which involved violent felonies, as “a grave national injustice”—but that’s also too obvious to spend any time on.

...

It all won’t work.

Oh, the president might accomplish a short-term goal. He has rewarded his friends. And he has thus shown others that he will protect them if they commit crimes or take risks for him. He has put the power of the United States federal government behind the patent lie that the prosecution of Jan. 6 rioters was an injustice requiring remedy, which is all part of the larger lie that the prosecution of Trump himself was political. And that–in turn–is all part of the still-larger lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. So sure, he has thrown some dust in the air.

But if the long-term goal is to erase the ugly history of what happened in 2020 and 2021, to change Trump from the perpetrator into the victim of the crime, it won’t work. Pardoning those convicted, after all, doesn’t erase the records of what they pled to. It doesn’t erase the evidence presented to juries about what they did. It doesn’t erase their own copious social media boasting about it all. Just as Trump can’t change the truth about his own conduct by getting elected and getting the cases against himself dropped and projecting his own goals for weaponization of the Justice Department onto the prior administration, he cannot change either the truth about what his followers did—though he can wipe out the consequences for them.

...

What will you do if men in uniforms arrive in your neighborhood, and an immigrant neighbor gets a knock on the door and is led away in handcuffs?

Or if the uniforms are not police uniforms, and there is not even a knock?

What if the knock is for your daughter, and they’re coming for her because of a pill that she took? Will you open the door?

Or if your teenage granddaughter, alone and afraid, calls you and begs you to drive her to a state where abortion is legal? Your governor has signed a bill making such “abortion trafficking” illegal, stipulating a penalty of 15 years.

...

Steven Tendo has heard from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Vermont before — but he certainly was not expecting to hear from them last week.

Tendo, a Ugandan asylee living in Colchester, received a letter on Friday ordering him to report to ICE’s office in St. Albans on Tuesday morning to meet with a deportation officer. The timing shook him, he said. He wasn’t expecting to check-in with the agency, as he’s periodically required to do, until November. But now, he will find himself facing immigration officers again, the day after President Donald Trump — who has promised to conduct a sweeping deportation campaign — was again sworn into office.

Tendo fled his native country in 2018 and applied for asylum protection in the U.S. He fought his case in the immigration court system for years, though his application was ultimately denied, meaning federal officials could remove him from the country.

In Uganda, Tendo was brutally tortured and members of his family were killed because government forces there viewed an advocacy organization he founded as a political threat, according to U.S. federal court records and Tendo’s own past accounts. He described in an interview Sunday what he thinks will happen if he’s sent back.

...

You hear sometimes, now that we know the sordid details of the lives of some of our leading figures, that America has no heroes left.

When I was writing a book about the Wounded Knee Massacre, where heroism was pretty thin on the ground, I gave that a lot of thought. And I came to believe that heroism is neither being perfect, nor doing something spectacular. In fact, it’s just the opposite: it’s regular, flawed human beings choosing to put others before themselves, even at great cost, even if no one will ever know, even as they realize the walls might be closing in around them.

...

He knew he was in danger as he worked for a racially and economically just America. “I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter…because I’ve been to the mountaintop…. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life…. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”

People are wrong to say that we have no heroes left. / Just as they have always been, they are all around us, choosing to do the right thing, no matter what.

Wishing you all a day of peace for Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2025.

Dear Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy:

When you agreed to support President Trump by leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he stated that the DOGE will play an essential role in the “Save America Movement.” Without a doubt, the most urgent undertaking by the DOGE to save America is to ensure the U.S. government is capable of fulfilling its most fundamental responsibility – keeping our homeland safe by securing our borders and protecting and defending American interests around the world.

America’s current defense acquisition system is slow and bureaucratic and does not provide our warfighters with new capabilities at the speed of relevance to the threats they are facing. It has a structure and a culture that stifles innovation and discourages risk-taking.

I write to you today to express my desire to help the DOGE make America’s national defense ecosystem great again. As a multi-decade leader at the top of the defense industry, I understand the Pentagon’s acquisition processes, the evolving global threat environment, and where we have vulnerabilities that our enemies may exploit.

...

Today’s national defense ecosystem is not optimized to build the modern “Arsenal of Democracy 2.0” that we urgently need to deter and defeat China, Iran and other rogue nations and non-state actors. In my most recent op-ed, published in POLITICO in November, I discussed how victory in this new era of great power competition will be determined by the ability to fuse software, artificial intelligence and hardware in ways that give our warfighters decision dominance, or the capability to “sense, understand, decide, act and assess faster and more effectively than any adversary.” In other words, shorten the “kill chain.”