Patient readers, I’m still trying to get my arms around the Trump Transition, and so for the next day or so that will be the main focus here. After that, I will return to our various pandemics with renewed éclat. –lambert

Bird Song of the Day

Brown Thrasher, Rondeau PP–South Point Trail East, Chatham-Kent, Ontario, Canada.

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In Case You Might Miss…

Trump’s executive orders.

Trump and AI.

Oh, Elon.

The Inaugural: Melania’s hat; the seating chart.

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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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Biden Administration

“Despite Biden Pardon, Fauci Still Faces Legal Perils. Here They Are” [RealClearInvestigations]. “President Biden’s pardon of Dr. Anthony Fauci may protect the former National Institutes of Health official from immediate criminal prosecution, but some critics say he is not completely out of legal jeopardy…. former Senate investigator Jason Foster, who now runs the whistleblower nonprofit Empower Oversight, says that Biden’s pardon creates new legal jeopardy for Fauci. Sen. Rand Paul has vowed to continue investigating the COVID origins question, and sources tell RealClearInvestigations that Sen. Ron Johnson and House Republican investigators plan to do so as well. When testifying in those inquiries or answering written depositions, Fauci will be unable to dodge questions by invoking his Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination. ‘They can ask him if he lied before, replough old ground,’ Foster said. ‘And if he lies about any prior lie, he can be prosecuted for that or held in contempt.'” That is: “Biden’s pardon negates the two Senate referrals for criminal activity. But future hearings could still require Fauci to respond to evidence that he might have perjured himself, and open him up to future prosecution if he stands by statements that can be proven to be false.”

The Inaugural

Melania’s now a billionaire too, thanks to Bitcoin:

Well, Melania is a Vogue girl who once ruled the fashion industry. Since she is so tall, this kind of boater hat seems to suit her best! Most importantly she knows how to wear & present any outfit. Her designer Adam Lippes owns credit for this as he knew what he was doing! The… https://t.co/pC6V9xGxSt pic.twitter.com/9Xl9MHBpiy

— UB citizen (@Ehdelhii) January 21, 2025

Scamalot. (Surely, if the Democrats had or were attempting to have, an effective media operation, this joke — surely justified by the Trump family memecoins — would be all over the intertubes? Or have the tech bros sacralized bitcoin?)

The Lannisters send their regards:

Melania's elegant, occlusive, all-business, mafia boss hat said no one—but especially not the media or their cameras —will have access to her unless she grants it, not even to her facial expressions. pic.twitter.com/uiRbMmk7fv

— Amanda Fortini (@amandafortini) January 20, 2025

If this were a Velázquez, we would know the dominant figure:

Melania's hat choice was brilliant. She shielded her eyes while in the presence of people who wanted to have her son left an orphan. Never let them know what you are thinking. pic.twitter.com/NsRcEop7BP

— Old West (@OldWest1453) January 21, 2025

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Seating arrangement:

Scaramucci: "[Trump] is a perfectionist with aesthetics. There was symbolism to the family in the front row, billionaires in the second row, and cabinet in the third row. And there's messages there to corporate America and the global society: 'Take a bended knee to me.'" ~AA pic.twitter.com/JTepIKhPxm

— Best for Britain (@BestForBritain) January 21, 2025

Refining Scaramucci:

Trump seating for the Inaugural: front row, family, second row, billionaires, third row, Cabinet.
MAGAs? Outside.

— Dare_L (@dare_l) January 21, 2025

Trump Transition

“Exclusive: Trump starts new term with 47% approval; Jan. 6 pardons unpopular, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds” [Reuters]. • Not that high, meaning all the more reason for the Republican attaque à outrance and Democrat obstruction and, er, resistance (assuming the Democrats actually have a coherent strategy, which I doubt).

Executive Orders (EOs):

“Behind-the-Scenes Aide Narrates Trump’s Day One Executive Actions” [RealClearPolitics]. “Back at the White House, on the evening of his second inauguration, President Trump did something on the first day that his predecessor never bothered to do in four years: He sat and took questions in the Oval Office as reporters peppered him with questions. It was the newest set piece in the second season of Trump, and in that moment, as the president signed executive order after executive order, an obscure staffer was catapulted to unlikely stardom. Will Scharf, the new White House staff secretary, stood by the president’s side and before the cameras, announcing the actions just before Trump put his black Sharpie to paper. Asked Trump, ‘What’s this one?’ Replied the staffer handing him paperwork bound in a black portfolio, ‘Withdrawing from the World Health Organization.’ Said the president, ‘Oh, that’s a big one.’ In this way, Scharf served as impromptu master of ceremonies for the first step in the attempted erasure of former President Biden’s legacy.” And: “A stack of those orders, each bound in black leather portfolios, had grown into a small mountain on the Resolute Desk by the end of the evening, each a step toward achieving what the president promised would be a ‘golden age of America.’ And in that moment, Scharf was the unexpected emcee. Soon the lawyer will recuse his speaking role and likely recede from public view. His influence within the White House, however, will not.” • A well-engineered spectable indeed — especially since Scharf was only asked by Trump to do the honors at the last minute (a small insight into why his staff might be loyal to him).

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“Trump executive orders smash leftist pieties that kept America paralyzed’ [Editorial Board, New York Post]. More interesting is the take at the end: “Trump’s still giving his inner troll some room to play, renaming Alaska’s Denali Mt. McKinley (as it was called pre-Obama) and the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. But his vision is blessedly forward-looking — to the better, brighter vistas that Biden and his party refuse to see. That willful blindness cost them the election. America, in love with the future as always, is right there with Trump.” • The polling says that “America” is not. So we’ll see.

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“Trump administration directs all federal diversity, equity and inclusion staff be put on leave” [Associated Press]. ” President Donald Trump’s administration has moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off…. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by President Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It’s using one of the key tools utilized by the Biden administration to promote DEI programs across the private sector — pushing their use by federal contractors — to now eradicate them…. [F]ederal workers are being asked to report to Trump’s Office of Personnel Management if they suspect any DEI-related program has been renamed to obfuscate its purpose within 10 days or face ‘adverse consequences.'” That said, there are implementation issues: ‘Despite the sweeping language of Trump’s order, [Noreen Farrell, executive director of gender rights group Equal Rights Advocates] said, ‘the reality of implementing such massive structural changes is far more complex.’ ‘Federal agencies have deeply embedded policies and procedures that can’t simply be switched off overnight,’ she added.” • That’s a lot of PMC, especially in Northern Virginia and Maryland, suddenly uncertain of their employment prospects.

“Donald Trump’s Medicare Executive Order Explained” [Newsweek]. “The potential impact of rescinding executive order 14087 is as follows: 1. Halted development of cost-reduction models: The directive for the Department of Health and Human Services to develop and test new models aimed at lowering drug costs through the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation has been withdrawn. This move could slow or halt progress on initiatives that were designed to make prescription medications more affordable. 2. Potential increase in out-of-pocket expenses: Without the implementation of new models focused on reducing costs, Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries might continue to face high out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drugs, possibly affecting access to certain medications. 3. Uncertainty in future drug pricing policies: The rescission creates uncertainty regarding the federal government’s approach to addressing prescription drug costs, which could leave beneficiaries unsure about future measures to control or reduce expenses.” But as usual implementation: “While the executive order has been rescinded, existing laws and regulations governing prescription drug pricing and Medicare and Medicaid policies remain in effect. However, the measures from the previous administration that they say was designed to save on costs has now been disrupted.”

“A Trump Executive Order Could End The Government-Censorship Complex” [The Federalist]. “Trump’s executive order — just one in a slough of Inauguration Day measures — seeks to enforce the First Amendment, ‘essential to the success of our Republic.'” But once again implementation: “It is unclear what steps the Trump administration will take, pursuant to this order, to investigate or shut down agencies or partnerships that constitute the government-censorship complex.”

“Trump’s blanket Jan. 6 pardons stun Republicans on Capitol Hill” [The Hill]. “President Trump’s sweeping pardons of more than 1,500 people charged with crimes related to the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, including individuals who assaulted police officers, stunned Republican lawmakers who witnessed firsthand the chaos on Capitol Hill four years ago. Trump’s action, which defied assurances from his allies that he would examine convictions on a case-by-case basis and not grant clemency to people who committed violence, divided GOP senators and overshadowed talk about his first-100-days agenda. GOP lawmakers are largely willing to overlook the hundreds of people who entered the Capitol illegally four years ago, which disrupted the certification of former President Biden’s victory by several hours, but pardoning people who assaulted Capitol Police, causing dozens of injuries, was hard to swallow. ‘It is wrong to pardon individuals convicted of violent crime, especially when many of the victims of their violence were law enforcement officers,’ Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) said in a statement. Moran was expressing a view shared by many of his Senate GOP colleagues, even though many of them are reluctant to criticize Trump publicly.”

“22 states sue to stop Trump’s order blocking birthright citizenship” [Associated Press]. “Attorneys general from 22 states sued Tuesday to block President Donald Trump’s move to end a century-old immigration practice known as birthright citizenship guaranteeing that U.S.-born children are citizens regardless of their parents’ status. Trump’s roughly 700-word executive order, issued late Monday, amounts to a fulfillment of something he’s talked about during the presidential campaign. But whether it succeeds is far from certain amid what is likely to be a lengthy legal battle over the president’s immigration policies and a constitutional right to citizenship. The Democratic attorneys general and immigrant rights advocates say the question of birthright citizenship is settled law and that while presidents have broad authority, they are not kings.” And: “Ratified in 1868 in in the aftermath of the Civil War, the 14th Amendment says: ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.'” • A strict constructionist reading the Fourteenth Amendment would surely support the Democrats.

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“How Trump Is Pushing at Limits of Presidential Power in Early Orders” [Charlie Savage, New York Times]. “On Monday, as Mr. Trump took the oath of office to begin his second term, he asserted a muscular vision of presidential power. He not only revived some of the same expansive understandings of executive authority that were left unaddressed, but went even further with new claims of sweeping and inherent constitutional clout. Among a blizzard of executive orders, Mr. Trump instructed prosecutors not to enforce a law that bans the popular social media app TikTok until its Chinese owner sells it. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had signed the measure into law after it passed with broad bipartisan support, and the Supreme Court unanimously upheld it. Whatever the law’s merits, the Constitution says presidents ‘shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.’ Mr. Trump offered no clear explanation for how he has any legitimate power to instead suspend the law, making only a vague gesture toward his ‘constitutional responsibility’ for national security, foreign policy ‘and other vital executive functions.'” And several of the EOs (border security; energy) depend on invoking Presidential emergency powers. “But facts matter little to whether or when it is legal for presidents to invoke emergency power, declarations that are governed by the National Emergencies Act of 1976. That law does not tightly define the circumstances under which presidents may determine that an emergency exists, leaving them with essentially unfettered discretion to unlock exigent powers for themselves. But previous presidents adhered to norms of self-restraint.” • The Norms Fairy sheds another tear.

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AI:

“Trump announces private-sector $500 billion investment in AI infrastructure” [Reuters]. “U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a private sector investment of up to $500 billion to fund infrastructure for artificial intelligence, aiming to outpace rival nations in the business-critical technology. Trump said that ChatGPT’s creator OpenAI, SoftBank (9984.T), opens new tab and Oracle (ORCL.N), opens new tab are planning a joint venture called Stargate, which he said will build data centers and create more than 100,000 jobs in the United States. These companies, along with other equity backers of Stargate, have committed $100 billion for immediate deployment, with the remaining investment expected to occur over the next four years. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison joined Trump at the White House for the launch. The first of the project’s data centers are already under construction in Texas, Ellison said at the press conference. Twenty will be built, half a million square feet each, he said. The project could power AI that analyzes electronic health records and helps doctors care for their patients, Ellison said.

• That will be awesome; we’ll be able to have AI-powered upcoding then, or wherever the return is greatest (i.e., wherever fraud and rental extraction is maximized). Commentary:

Omg pic.twitter.com/UYM3eNpikc

— Daniel (@growing_daniel) January 22, 2025

“Trump highlights partnership investing $500 billion in AI” [Associated Press]. “Still, the regulatory outlook for AI remains somewhat uncertain as Trump on Monday overturned the 2023 order signed by then-President Joe Biden to create safety standards and watermarking of AI-generated content, among other goals, in hopes of putting guardrails on the technology’s possible risks to national security and economic well-being.” • Implementation again.

“OpenAI Stargate is a $500B bet: America’s AI Manhattan Project or costly dead end?” [VentureBeat]. • With the Manhattan Project, we had Albert Einstein’s blessing and the crème de la crème of European science. With Stargate, we’ve got Sam Altman (and doubtless SBF, if he weren’t in jail).

“Moderna spikes as Oracle’s Larry Ellison touts AI-driven mRNA vaccines” [Seeking Alpha]. “At a press conference convened at the White House to announce the launch of Stargate, a $500B AI initiative, Ellison said that artificial intelligence could be used to develop personalized mRNA-based cancer vaccines and early tumor detection.” • Presumably treatments, not vaccines, and rented on a subscription basis…. Commentary:

Two days into this administration and we’re already talking about using AI to pump out personalized mRNA vaccines

We need to hold Trump’s feet to the fire and make it clear this is NOT the direction we want things headed towards

— SOVEREIGN BRAH