Bird Song of the Day

Brown Thrasher, May 2024 Rondeau PP–South Point Trail East, Chatham-Kent, Ontario, Canada. Same location as yesterday, but different birds and even more lively.

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In Case You Might Miss…

January 6 pardons.

DOGE Executive orders.

Improving surgical masks (many methods).

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In Case You Might Miss…

January 6 pardons.

DOGE Executive orders.

Improving surgical masks (many methods).

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Politics

“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

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Capitol Seizure

“Trump pardons roughly 1,500 criminal defendants charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack” [NBC News]. “President Donald Trump on Monday issued roughly 1,500 pardons and commuted the sentences of 14 of his supporters in connection with the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when thousands of them stormed the building amid his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him. Trump commuted the sentences of individuals associated with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who were convicted of seditious conspiracy [despite being riddled with informers]. He then issued ‘a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,’ a category that included people who assaulted law enforcement officers.” • This from Julie Kelly was something I didn’t know:

Here is the raindrop theory–

“UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. JOHN DOUGLAS WRIGHT” (PDF) [Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, Criminal Action No. 21-341, United States District Court for the District of Columbia]. Kollar-Kotelly was “previously presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.” From page 24:

It would have been interesting to apply the “raindrop” theory of the case to the banksters who “collectively” caused the Great Financial Crash, causing “the unnecessary expenditure of substantial government resources.”

Trump Transition

Lambert here: Patient readers, Trump just signed a hundred exective orders (EOs) [apparently only 26? Yes] and held a presser. I don’t have the capacity to synthesize all that material, which is doubtless creating “Shock and Awe” in the political class. The links that follow seem the most salient now, but that may change in the coming weeks. What I will say is that I have skimmed several of the orders, and this latest rollout is an amazing feat of staffwork (hat tip Susie Wiles) that the previous Trump administration couldn’t even have considered. (Some clever people will also have to lay the Executive Orders against Project 2025 and look for overlaps. My guess is that the Trump administration will have put its own distinction twists on a lot of it. Also, I’ll often scatter the EOs under the usual category headings (“DOGE” under “DOGE”) because consolidating 100 EOs in one place would be unwieldy.

Patient readers, I’ll return with a list of the executive orders — I’m frustrated because I don’t know how many have really been signed — after I handle some administrativia. –lambert

UPDATE Here is the list. I took it from the Whitehouse.gov page on “Presidential Actions.” There are four buckets: Executive Orders, Proclamations, Memoranda, and Announcements. (I did this because all the sources I could find were explainers, a level of abstraction away from a simple list of the documents Trump signed, which seems to me to be the obvious base for any further analysis.)

Executive Orders:

Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness (order)

Designating Cartels And Other Organizations As Foreign Terrorist Organizations And Specially Designated Global Terrorists (order)

Reforming The Federal Hiring Process And Restoring Merit To Government Service (order)

Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing (order)

Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government (order)

Establishing And Implementing The President’s “Department Of Government Efficiency” (order)

America First Policy Directive To The Secretary Of State (order)

Protecting The United States From Foreign Terrorists And Other National Security And Public Safety Threats (order)

Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential (order)

Protecting The American People Against Invasion (order)

Reevaluating And Realigning United States Foreign Aid (order)

Declaring a National Energy Emergency (order)

Restoring The Death Penalty And Protecting Public Safety (order)

Securing Our Borders (order)

Protecting The Meaning And Value Of American Citizenship (order)

Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program (order)

Unleashing American Energy (order)

Clarifying The Military’s Role In Protecting The Territorial Integrity Of The United States (order)

Holding Former Government Officials Accountable For Election Interference And Improper Disclosure Of Sensitive Governmental Information (order)

Restoring Accountability To Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce (order)

Withdrawing The United States From The World Health Organization (order)

Application Of Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act To TikTok (order)

Putting America First In International Environmental Agreements (order)

Ending The Weaponization Of The Federal Government (order)

Restoring Freedom Of Speech And Ending Federal Censorship (order)

Initial Rescissions Of Harmful Executive Orders And Actions (order)

Proclamations:

Guaranteeing The States Protection Against Invasion (proclamation)

Declaring A National Emergency At The Southern Border Of The United States (proclamation)

Granting Pardons And Commutation Of Sentences For Certain Offenses Relating To The Events At Or Near The United States Capitol On January 6, 2021 (proclamation)

Flying The Flag Of The United States At Full-Staff On Inauguration Day (proclamation)

Memoranda:

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Global Tax Deal (Global Tax Deal) (memorandum)

Organization of the National Security Council and Subcommittees (memorandum)

Temporary Withdrawal of All Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf from Offshore Wind Leasing and Review of the Federal Government’s Leasing and Permitting Practices for Wind Projects (memorandum)

Restoring Accountability for Career Senior Executives (memorandum)

Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture (memorandum)

Putting People Over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California (memorandum)

America First Trade Policy (memorandum)

Memorandum to Resolve the Backlog of Security Clearances for Executive Office of the President Personnel (memorandum)

Delivering Emergency Price Relief for American Families and Defeating the Cost-of-Living Crisis (memorandum)

Hiring Freeze (memorandum)

Regulatory Freeze Pending Review (memorandum)

Return to In-Person Work (memorandum)

Announcements:

President Trump Designates Chairmen and Acting Chairmen (announcement)

President Trump Announces Acting Cabinet and Cabinet-Level Positions (announcement)

President Trump Announces Sub-Cabinet Appointments (announcement)

President Trump Announces Cabinet and Cabinet Level Appointments (announcement)

So this is the scope of the work for today; Trump was busy. Perhaps a connoisseuer of Federal document types can explain why an Executive Order in one case and a Memorandum in another. I did skim some of the EOs; they seem to be of varying quality, some quite specific as to statute and regulation, others more like “good things are good” handwaving. For example, in “Restoring Freedom Of Speech And Ending Federal Censorship”, this:

Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to: (a) secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech;

and:

Sec. 3. Ending Censorship of Protected Speech. (a) No Federal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent may act or use any Federal resources in a manner contrary to section 2 of this order.

Constitutional lawyers in the readership please correct me, but am I right that this is a little thin? Not even a citation to a court case? And “constitutionally” is doing a lot of work. Is there speech that is not constitutionally protected?

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“Trump signs order to end ‘government censorship’ of social media” [WaPo]. “President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order intended to ‘immediately stop all government censorship,’ a sweeping action that could chill years of efforts to combat the proliferation of false information online. The order bans federal officials from any conduct that ‘would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.’ It also prohibits taxpayer resources from being used to ‘unconstitutionally abridge the free speech’ of Americans…. Trump’s order could have an immediate impact on years of efforts to bolster coordination between Silicon Valley and the government to combat misinformation about elections, natural disasters and public health.” • But:

TikTok is dead, free Palestine pic.twitter.com/hQKK0trAlW

— Ozymandias (@martianmarxist) January 21, 2025

However:

so my tiktok didn’t seem the same when i got back on, so i went and muted all ads and turned off personalized ads, and now i can actually see things about Palestine and fascism pic.twitter.com/mwLLfs7shl

— jess (@jesstechnician) January 21, 2025

Eight hours down not long enough to implement the algo changes properly?

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“Neo-Nazis Love the Nazi-Like Salutes Elon Musk Made at Trump’s Inauguration” [Wired]. “At this point, Musk put his right hand on his chest before extending it straight out with his palm facing down and his fingers touching, a gesture widely recognized as the ‘Roman salute.’ Adopted by the fascist movement a century ago, it was most famously used by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany, and is to this day associated with the fascist right, especially in Italy. After he first made the gesture, Musk then turned around to members of the crowd who were seated behind him and, with his back to the camera, repeated the gesture. ‘My heart goes out to you,’ Musk added… One of many examples: “”WE ARE FUCKING BACK” the administrator of a Nazi meme channel on Telegram wrote under a clip of Musk giving the salute.'” • I must confess that when I first saw this take I filed under symbol manipulators looking for symbols and then making leaps in reasoning based on the symbols (which is a very bad habit in the idpol space). I also felt that Musk has been awfully herky jerky lately (and there is the preliminary hand-on-heart gesture, which forms no part of the Nazi salute. But now, apparently, it does:

“It was an accident!! He’s autistic!!” pic.twitter.com/eOCgJ4cPBr

— evan loves worf (@esjesjesj) January 21, 2025

File this, at the very minimum, under “Somebody needs to get this dude under control.”

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DOGE

“ESTABLISHING AND IMPLEMENTING THE PRESIDENT’S ‘DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT'” [Whitehouse.gov]. I normalize all-caps to title caps but in this case I’m not, because all the EOs have this formatting. I hope readers can give this a close reading, but while the pre-inaugural DOGE set a horrid precedent, this version seems not so bad. The EO hijacks the United States Digital Service (USDS), which Obama put in place after Silicon Valley techies saved his bacon my making the ObamaCare website work. That’s a clever idea! ” The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President.” And: “In consultation with USDS, each Agency Head shall establish within their respective Agencies a DOGE Team of at least four employees, which may include Special Government Employees, hired or assigned within thirty days of the date of this Order. Agency Heads shall select the DOGE Team members in consultation with the USDS Administrator. Each DOGE Team will typically include one DOGE Team Lead, one engineer, one human resources specialist, and one attorney. Agency Heads shall ensure that DOGE Team Leads coordinate their work with USDS and advise their respective Agency Heads on implementing the President ‘s DOGE Agenda.” • This shows, at least, somebody was thinking about process. (“Special Government Employees” were what the the pre-inaugural DOGE operatives — the dudes going around interviewing civil servants — should have been.

“‘Everyone wants him out’: How Musk helped boot Ramaswamy from DOGE” [Politico]. “Musk, the tech tycoon and Donald Trump confidant, made it known that he wanted Ramaswamy out of DOGE in recent days, according to three people familiar with Musk’s preferences who, like others for this article, were granted anonymity to discuss them. An ill-received holiday rant on X by Ramaswamy about H-1B visas apparently hastened his demise…. Ramaswamy maintained to confidants as late as Saturday evening that he was actively involved in DOGE, saying he was at work writing executive orders, according to six people who had spoken with him. But a person familiar with the arrangement said he had done almost no DOGE-related work since early December. As recently as last week, Ramaswamy was hoping to achieve some early wins at DOGE before leaving to pursue a gubernatorial bid. Now Ramaswamy and his allies are laboring to put a positive spin on his departure, coming just as Trump takes office.” •

2024 Post Mortem

“The Sad Tale of Moderate Joe Biden” [Ruy Teixeira, The Liberal Patriot]. The interesting part of this article is at the end: “Editor’s note: This is a slightly longer version of an essay that originally appeared in The Free Press, where Ruy is now a contributing writer.” • This dude is nimble!

“Biden Was Just That Bad” [Caitlyn Johnstone, Consortium News]. “From what we are seeing so far, Trump is just returning things to their horrible standard baseline. Trump will go on to do many evil things as president, just as he did during his first term, but none of this will reverse the fact that Biden just spent four years advancing genocide, nuclear brinkmanship and authoritarianism. The Democratic Party plays just as crucial a role in promoting the tyranny and abuses of the U.S. empire as the Republican Party does, and it is nonsensical to think of either of them as a lesser evil. The empire itself must end. It’s possible that Trump’s term will constitute another swing from Bush-level depravity to Obama-level depravity. It isn’t normal for the U.S. empire to be as openly depraved as it has been in Gaza. Normally its evils are much more well-disguised, because it is in the empire’s interests to preserve its image in the eyes of the western public. You only see the really in-your-face acts of monstrosity when a coalition of forces within the swamp are able to seize on a rare opportunity to shove them through, as we saw in the wake of 9/11 and again in the wake of Oct. 7. The rest of the time, the empire likes to be a lot subtler about its abuses, like it was during the Obama administration and the first Trump administration.” • One could, I suppose, consider engulfing Greenland as “subtle” compared to a full-blown war with China. And it’s certainly subtle for Trump!

Realignment and Legitimacy

“Trump rescinds Biden’s census order, clearing a path for reshaping election maps” [NPR]. “Among the dozens of Biden-era executive orders that President Trump revoked on Monday was one that had reversed the first Trump administration’s unprecedented policy of altering a key set of census results. Since the first U.S. census in 1790, no resident has ever been omitted from those numbers because of immigration status. And after the Civil War, the 14th Amendment has called for the population counts that determine each state’s share of U.S. House seats and Electoral College votes to include the ‘whole number of persons in each state.’ Biden’s now-revoked 2021 order affirmed the longstanding practice of including the total number of persons residing in each state in those census results. It was issued in response to Trump’s attempt during the national tally in 2020 to exclude millions of U.S. residents without legal status…. Though it had an opportunity during the first Trump administration, the Supreme Court has yet to rule on whether the president can exclude people who are in the country without legal status from the tally that determines political power in the United States.” • Well, when you frame it that way…

Syndemics

“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison

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Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).

Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!

Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).

Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).

Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Stay safe out there!

Transmission: Nasal Sprays

“Toward a Radically Simple Multi-Modal Nasal Spray for Preventing Respiratory Infections” [Advanced Materials (DougieD). September 2024. “This report introduces the Pathogen Capture and Neutralizing Spray (PCANS), which utilizes a multi-modal approach to enhance efficacy. PCANS coats the nasal cavity, capturing large respiratory droplets from the air, and serving as a physical barrier against a broad spectrum of viruses and bacteria, while rapidly neutralizing them with over 99.99% effectiveness. The formulation consists of excipients identified from the FDA’s Inactive Ingredient Database and Generally Recognized as Safe list to maximize efficacy for each step in the multi-modal approach. PCANS demonstrates nasal retention for up to 8 hours in mice. In a severe Influenza A mouse model, a single pre-exposure dose of PCANS leads to a >99.99% reduction in lung viral titer and ensures 100% survival, compared to 0% in the control group. PCANS suppresses pathological manifestations and offers protection for at least 4 hours. This data suggest PCANS as a promising daily-use prophylactic against respiratory infections.” • Maybe one day it will be on sale…

Maskstravaganza

If you are only permitted a surgical mask:

here is a non-exhaustive thread on the various modifications you can apply to surgical masks to increase their efficacy at preventing airborne illness (95% effective like N95 masks). combining these modifications will increase your mask's efficacy