And yet there are also no signs that it's satire.

via

Minivet writes: A lot of what Trump has done so far is right out of the Project 2025 playbook - if mostly just on paper so far, but it's only been three days.

His headline monstrous promises, deportation and tariffs, are not rolling out yet; tariffs aren't even on paper, just "Trump says he is likely to" blah blah blah. He did the J6 pardons (and cops are actually mad though he promised this repeatedly).

I thought we might put our heads together on what he's done that's more unexpected and what that tells us. I'm aware of:
- DHS advisory committees disbanded, including one which keeps aviation safe
- NIH study sections stopped, which puts huge sections of medical research on a financial tightrope and may interrupt treatments of many in clinical trials
- Public health communication muzzled, including communication on active infectious disease outbreaks

Common thread: when you don't have the staff to control something, you can at least halt it.

Possible blowback for bullying federal employees as a class - full in-person work for which office space may not even exist, "report your co-worker for not reporting DEI" tiplines - later, once political appointees are there, they might not have the capacity to do the things they actually want to do.

Reference that has already been affirmed as the overall picture & I think will only become more so: Gorilla Channel Governance.

Obviously I've left out other monstrous things that are still rolling in a more predictable way - birthright citizenship, trying to abolish transgender people. Oh, and eliminating LBJ's 1965 order for affirmative action at federal contractors! Apparently this was predictable by people who had the stomach to follow Richard Hanania.

Heebie's take: This is a useful kind of post to do periodically - take stock of the damage - but goddamn if it isn't stressful to contemplate head on.

Every podcast I've listened to this week has discussed this. I don't have a go bag.

In the run-up to the November election, I spent most of October living as though Trump had already won. I was finding the anxiety that it could happen intolerable, and so I decided to pre-adjust. The first few days felt repulsive, and then it settled into a low gray cloud. Then when he won, the low gray cloud stayed put. But I didn't have to process any shock.

I can't decide how much to apply this pre-processing to other situations. It's very murky - if the fear comes true, then you've saved yourself some grief and had a chance to get some affairs in order. If the fear does not come true, then you've lived under a cloud for some indeterminate length of time. It was reasonable in October, because it had a well-defined end point of November 5th. But it's not reasonable to live your life pre-processing the idea that something terrible could happen to your kids. But maybe it is, a little bit?

With your parents, there's time when it's definitely too soon to be pre-processing their mortality, and it would be neurotic to fixate on it, but then after that, there comes a time when you definitely need to start pre-processing their mortality. (Of course not everyone gets this luxury.)

So anyway, bringing it back to Go Bags. Are we supposed to start pre-processing the idea that we could lose everything without advanced warning? Should we get more comfortable with this? It's such a heavy cloud to live under, but maybe it gets lighter as you get used to it.

(Also I still don't know what I'd put in a Go Bag.)

NickS writes: This Mother Jones article about Utah's adoption law and the exploitative agencies that have set up to take advantage of it is heartbreaking. It's tough reading but, reading it, one hopes that change is possible -- that an article like this might lead to changes in the law:

The couple's relationship was difficult to categorize: They were married, they loved each other, and they co-parented, but by the third pregnancy, their dynamic had become strained. Espinoza was frustrated by Julia's continued drug use and didn't want her friends around, because some of them used, too. She began spending more and more time away from home, saying she needed space.

What Espinoza didn't know was that Julia had learned about a new way to make money to support her addiction: putting their baby up for adoption. On Google, she found an agency in Utah, Brighter Adoptions, that would provide an apartment, medical care, and a weekly allowance during her pregnancy. Once she had the baby and signed the adoption papers, she would receive even more cash. Not that she really thought she would relinquish her baby, she told me recently. "I was on ­heroin at the time," she said, "and so at first, it started out like kind of a hustle for me."

Eight weeks before her due date, she hitched a ride with a friend to Layton Meadows, a sprawling apartment complex just north of Salt Lake City. It's one of the many places where Utah's cottage industry of adoption agencies houses expecting mothers, who are enticed by free lodging and cash stipends.

Depending on whom you ask, the state's laws are the most "adoption-friendly"--or the most exploitative--in the country. Many states allow mothers to change their minds days or even weeks after consenting to adoption, but in Utah, no such safeguard exists: Once the papers are signed, the decision is irreversible. While married fathers must be notified of adoption proceedings, the children of unwed fathers can be placed for adoption without notification or consent. Like other states, Utah prohibits adoptive parents from paying pregnant women to give up their children, but there's no cap for how much they can pay for services related to the pregnancy, as long as the expenses are "reasonable." And Utah is the only state where finalized adoptions can't be dismissed even if the adoption was fraudulent.

Heebie's take: This sounds about right:

"There is a very thin line between the ethical practice of adoption and a reproductive trafficking situation," Mitchell says. "I think it's very easy to cross that line."

It's pretty awful, but a surprisingly engaging read!

Mossy Character sends in a post title with no attached post, and gave me full leeway to take it anywhere I see fit. I crumble under such pressure, and so will just say: what a polar vortex, huh! We got a pleasing dusting of snow for the first time in a few years, and everything is cancelled.

I guess I can tie it all together: don't eat the yellow snow.

JFC this whole thing is grim. But I did enjoy the footage of Melania Trump's hat blocking Trump from giving her a peck.