Yesterday the Asshole Trump eliminated the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.

Today two students were shot by another student at Antioch High School in Nashville, TN.

“Even if Pete Hegseth’s personal life were that of a teetotaling and celibate monk, the former Fox News host would still be the most controversial defense secretary nominee in American history.”

@stevebenen.com on new allegations against Pete Hegseth.

Alas, that’s just the start. President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Pentagon has also never led a large organization, has written bizarre and conspiratorial books, did not attain a high rank during his tenure in the military, and has touted highly provocative ideas related to American women serving in combat and the Geneva Conventions. After Hegseth’s recent Senate confirmation hearing, The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank added that the nominee “also appears to have no idea what he’s doing.”....

It’s unclear if anything could convince senators in the GOP majority to think twice ahead of the confirmation vote, but as NBC News reported, Hegseth is facing new allegations that have reached Capitol Hill in the form of an affidavit.

Senators received an affidavit Tuesday from the former sister-in-law of defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth in which she says his behavior caused his second wife to fear for her safety. The receipt of the affidavit comes after Senate Armed Services Committee staffers were in contact with Hegseth’s former sister-in-law for several days.

The former sister-in-law, Danielle Hegseth, submitted the affidavit in response to a Jan. 18 letter from Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., seeking “a statement attesting to your personal knowledge about Mr. Hegseth’s fitness to occupy this important position.”

Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and the Senate Armed Services Committee’s ranking member, asked Danielle Hegseth to detail what she knew of “instances of abuse, or threats of abuse, perpetrated against any other person” and “mistreatment of a spouse, former spouse, or other members of his family,” among other requests.

Reed said in a statement, “As I have said for months, the reports of Mr. Hegseth’s history of alleged sexual assault, alcohol abuse, and public misconduct necessitate an exhaustive background investigation. I have been concerned that the background check process has been inadequate, and this sworn affidavit confirms that fact.”.....

As for whether the allegations might shake senators’ confidence in the nominee, the public won’t have to wait too long to find out: By all accounts, Hegseth’s confirmation vote will happen this week, perhaps as early as Thursday.

If the Senate Democratic conference is united in opposition, four Republicans would have to break ranks to derail the nomination. To date, a grand total of zero GOP senators have publicly declared their intention to vote against him. Watch this space.

The more Republicans respond to Trump's Jan. 6 pardons by saying the party is "looking at the future, not the past," the more I want to remind them of Faulkner's line:

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."

But stepping back, the question wasn’t what Trump was going to say about his own abuse of his pardon power. It was obvious that the president was going to concoct some kind of absurd rationalization. The more salient question was what congressional Republicans would say. As The New York Times reported, most GOP lawmakers struggled to defend the indefensible.

Members of Congress ran in fear of their lives from the Capitol four years ago as it was besieged by a pro-Trump mob, and many Republicans made strong statements in the immediate aftermath of the attack that violent rioters must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But on Tuesday, few spoke up to object to Mr. Trump’s pardons, and many Republican lawmakers said it was time to move on.

It might seem like ancient history, but when Trump first started pushing the idea of Jan. 6 pardons in the fall of 2022 — before he formally launched his bid for a second term — there was some meaningful GOP pushback against the proposal, which seemed quite radical at the time......

But stepping back, the question wasn’t what Trump was going to say about his own abuse of his pardon power. It was obvious that the president was going to concoct some kind of absurd rationalization. The more salient question was what congressional Republicans would say. As The New York Times reported, most GOP lawmakers struggled to defend the indefensible.

Members of Congress ran in fear of their lives from the Capitol four years ago as it was besieged by a pro-Trump mob, and many Republicans made strong statements in the immediate aftermath of the attack that violent rioters must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But on Tuesday, few spoke up to object to Mr. Trump’s pardons, and many Republican lawmakers said it was time to move on.

It might seem like ancient history, but when Trump first started pushing the idea of Jan. 6 pardons in the fall of 2022 — before he formally launched his bid for a second term — there was some meaningful GOP pushback against the proposal, which seemed quite radical at the time.

Donald Trump is not often forced to listen to those who disagree with him, and when the newly inaugurated president is confronted with his critics, he tends to unravel. The Republican’s debate meltdowns, for example, have become the stuff of legend......

Hours later, shortly after midnight, the president abandoned subtlety and published a far more forceful rebuke to his social media platform. It read in its entirety:

The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater. She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart. She failed to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into our Country and killed people. Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the USA. Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job! She and her church owe the public an apology!

There’s no point in fact-checking every error of fact and judgment in the president’s online harangue. The Rev. Edgar Budde is not a “so-called” bishop; there is no “giant crime wave”; Trump’s line about “mental institutions” has long been ridiculous, etc.....

Take a moment to imagine what would happen if a progressive House Democrat called for an American religious leader to be kicked out of the country for delivering a sermon he or she disagreed with.

What’s more, whether Republicans appreciate this or not, the more they whined about the bishop’s sermon, the more likely it became that the public would hear what Budde had to say. The Streisand Effect is, after all, a real phenomenon.

Let’s also not forget that for many congressional Republicans, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, there was a Biden-era “scandal” about officials targeting and harassing religious leaders. It was nonsense, of course, though it’s hard not to notice that these same GOP leaders have far less to say about their allies targeting Budde......

The post-inaugural national prayer service, however, shed light on the limits of the president’s approach: Religion must be celebrated, protected, respected and venerated, Trump apparently thinks — just so long as the faith community is telling him what he wants to hear.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Boasting that it was “like taking candy from a baby,” on Wednesday Elon Musk tricked Donald J. Trump into signing a reverse mortgage on the White House.

“All these years, you’ve fixed it, you’ve taken care of it,” Musk told Trump in the Oval Office. “Maybe it’s time for your home to start taking care of you.”

“There you go,” he whispered into Trump’s ear, putting the pen in his tiny hand.

Assuming ownership of the White House was just the latest real estate coup for Musk, who earlier in the week tricked Trump into signing over the deed to Mar-a-Lago.

President Donald Trump published two executive orders late Monday that targeted transgender people, but critics couldn't help but note that the clunky language declared all Americans legally female.

One of Trump's order is titled "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government." In the definition, the order claims, "'Female' means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell." It then says, “'Male' means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell."

What critics point out is the crucial phrase "at conception." According to the Associated Press, the second "order declares that the federal government would recognize only two immutable sexes: male and female. And they’re to be defined based on whether people are born with eggs or sperm, rather than on their chromosomes, according to details of the upcoming order."

Such data isn't determined at conception, nor does a fetus have "eggs" or "sperm."

Dr. Emily Willingham, who has a PhD in biology, has "written about genitalia, brains, biology, and parenting." So, when she saw the order's wording, she couldn't help but give a lesson on biology on Blue Sky.

"Conception results in a single cell that does not have gonads or make gametes, obviously. It's weeks into development before the organs for pelvic anatomy start to be established, and even then, how they'll develop isn't a given," she began. "During development, a mix of structures can be retained. Plenty of people born XY walking around with little fallopian tube remnants. People don't start producing 'small reproductive cells' until they enter puberty. The large reproductive cell technically isn't produced unless a sperm fuses with it."

"During development, the cells that will give rise to future 'small' and 'large' reproductive cells can settle in a way that ultimately, the precursors for both will be made. Some people develop in a way that leads to no production of reproductive cells of any kind, small or large," she continued.

"Chromosomal complement does not infallibly predict these outcomes. External and internal anatomy and physiology do not infallibly align, much less fall neatly into a binary. I know these people don't care. But I care about developmental biology and despise this willful, useless ignorance designed to hurt people," she closed.

"Read these two sections from the Trump orders--the first from the anti-trans order and the second from the birthright citizenship order--and ask yourself how they will be enforced by a president who still doesn't believe in Obama's birth certificate," said ACLU communications strategist Gillian Branstetter on Blue Sky.

"Having defined sex as immutable, the Trump EO still insists it must be measured at conception," agreed legal analyst Luppe B. Luppen.

Author, game designer and transgender woman, Crystal Frasier wrote on Blue Sky, "In that familiar old incompetence I haven't missed, Trump's executive order defines sex as what a person is at CONCEPTION. Fetal sex doesn't begin to differentiate until about 7 weeks into gestation. Which means Donald used the highest office in the land to declare all Americans legally female."

BREAKING: Donald Trump gets hit right where it hurts most as Nielsen reveals that his inauguration drew far fewer viewers than Joe Biden's did — 24.59 million compared to 33.76 million.

And it gets even better...

Not only did Biden draw more viewers than Trump, Trump himself drew more viewers during his first inauguration. He drew in 30.64 million in 2017.

The figures are drawn from 15 different networks and are an average of the viewership from 10:30 a.m. ET to 7 p.m. ET.

17.4 million of viewers this time were 55 or over. 4.67 million were 35-54 and 1.43 million were 18-34.

Given Trump's well-documented fixation on viewership numbers, this is exactly the kind of thing that gets under his skin.

It turns out that despite electing him again, America is already bored with Donald.

During the 2024 campaign, Trump would occasionally contradict the Ohio Republican, which didn’t do Vance’s reputation any favors, but on literally the first day of the Trump-Vance era, the problem became more acute when the new president pardoned Jan. 6 criminals — including those who violently clashed with police officers at the U.S. Capitol.

And that, of course, brought to mind the public comments that his vice president had made eight days earlier. The Associated Press reported on Jan. 12:

Vice President-elect JD Vance says people responsible for the violence during the Capitol riot ‘obviously’ should not be pardoned. ... Vance insisted in an interview on ‘Fox News Sunday’ that the pardon question is ‘very simple,’ saying those who ‘protested peacefully’ should be pardoned and ‘if you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.’

This was not the first time the Ohioan made such comments. In May, two months before the then-senator joined his party’s 2024 ticket, Vance told CNN, “If you beat up a cop, of course you deserve to go to prison. If you violated the law, you should suffer the consequences.”....

Whatever the explanation, just hours into the Trump-Vance era, the new president hung his vice president out to dry. (This comes on the heels of Vance investing some of his political capital into Matt Gaetz’s bid to become the next attorney general, personally escorting the former congressman from Senate office to Senate office, urging his colleagues to confirm Gaetz and putting his credibility on the line. Soon after, the Florida Republican withdrew from consideration — and Trump agreed.)

While we wait for the vice president to explain why the president made him look foolish (again), it’s also worth emphasizing that Vance isn’t alone on this. Quite a few Republican officials said they were prepared to accept Jan. 6 pardons for non-violent offenders, but they weren’t altogether comfortable with the idea of Trump putting violent criminals who attacked the police back onto the streets before their sentence was up.

Weaseling out of these comments won’t be easy, but since the alternative is criticizing their party’s new president, they’ll have to think of something.

On Trump’s Inauguration Day, the rule of law takes a beating: Donald Trump vowed to "restore fair, equal and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law." He then proved that he didn't mean it.

Midway through his second presidential inaugural address, Donald Trump made a curious vow about his plans for the justice system. “Under my leadership, we will restore fair, equal and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law,” the Republican said. “And we are going to bring law and order back to our cities.”....

But the problem took on even greater significance when the new president followed up on his rhetoric about the “rule of law” with a series of actions designed to undermine the rule of law.

Trump issued sweeping pardons and commutations to Jan. 6 criminals, including violent felons who clashed with police officers. It reflected the Republican’s belief that he can summon a political mob, encourage it to commit acts of political violence, and then immunize those who break the law in his name from accountability.

He issued an executive order intended to end birthright citizenship, despite the language of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

Trump and his team made Ed Martin the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., which would be less notable were it not for the fact that Martin is a conservative activist who has been on the board of a group supporting Jan. 6 defendants and is considered a
prominent member of the “Stop the Steal” movement.

He signed an executive order to delay enforcing a federal law regarding a ban on TikTok, despite last week’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

On that last point, my colleague Lisa Rubin asked, “f Trump can erase the text of the TikTok ban, what’s to stop him from doing that to far more consequential laws?”....

In other words, the new American president is so indifferent to the rule of law that he’s prepared to knowingly and deliberately ignore it, confident in the idea that his allied Supreme Court justices — the ones who already largely elevated the presidency above the law — will help him create new laws that he likes better.

Will the United States ever be the same?