The Daily Reid: What's the point of power

...if you're not willing to use it?

Chuck Schumer is doing a lot of talking.

He went on Chris Hayes’ show last night to try to explain why he’s caving on the Trump-Elon blank check bill temporarily funding the government — a bill Trump’s budget director has already made clear the administration will ignore anyway and spend whatever they want, how they want.

The New York Times reports on Chuck’s turnabout:

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, broke with his party on Thursday and lined up enough Democrats to advance a Republican-written bill to keep federal funding flowing past a midnight Friday deadline, arguing that Democrats could not allow a government shutdown that many of them have demanded.

During a private luncheon with Democrats, Mr. Schumer stunned many of his colleagues by announcing that he planned to vote to allow the G.O.P. bill to move forward, and indicated that he had enough votes to help Republicans break any filibuster by his own party against the measure, according to attendees and people familiar with the discussion.

It was a turnabout from just a day earlier, when Mr. Schumer proclaimed that Democrats were “unified” against the legislation, and a remarkable move at a time when many of the party’s members in both chambers and progressive activists have been agitating vocally for senators to block it in defiance of President Trump.

In a speech hours later on the Senate floor, Mr. Schumer announced his plan to vote to move forward with the Republican measure, which would fund the government through Sept. 30. He argued that if Democrats stood in the way, it would lead to a shutdown that would only further empower Mr. Trump and Elon Musk in their bid to defund and dismantle federal programs.

“The Republican bill is a terrible option,” Mr. Schumer said in his evening speech. “It is deeply partisan. It doesn’t address far too many of this country’s needs. But I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option.”

Schumer appears to have talked himself into believing that by giving in to Trump and saving Republicans from their shutdown, he is protecting the institutional power of congress to have some say over spending. He insists that if the government is shut down, then the administration will have the sole authority over what services are deemed essential, and therefore they’ll seize total control of the government and maybe never bring back tens of thousands of federal workers.

In other words, they will do EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE DOING NOW, except with the imprimatur of a bipartisan bill, thanks to Chuck Schumer and the six Democrats he convinces to go along with him.

I suspect that no display of political weakness has ever been so utterly pathetic.

A source with direct knowledge tells me the Thursday Democratic caucus meeting was fraught with hand-wringing. Several members were clearly of two minds — Democrats, who fundamentally believe in government, hate and oppose shutdowns. But some believed and stated that the only way to stand up to Trump, Elon and doge was to stand together and refuse to issue this six month blank check. Several Democrats went public with statements and social media posts stating as much, including both Arizona Senators, both Delaware Senators, Both Colorado Senators, both Virginia Senators, and both of the always vulnerable Senators from Georgia.

Others agreed with Schumer that the pain inflicted by a shutdown would be too much for the country, and particularly vulnerable communities, to bear. The Senators siding with Schumer on the notion that shutdowns are always wrong and therefore should be stopped regardless of the arguments on the other side included John Fetterman, the Trump-curious Senator from Pennsylvania, and Schumer’s fellow New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand — who like Schumer, represents Wall Street — which clearly wants those permanent tax cuts.

The source I spoke with was troubled by the idea that Schumer is not just giving away Democrats’ leverage in this shutdown fight, he is publicly signaling to Republicans that Democrats will NEVER allow a shutdown, now or ever, thereby giving Republicans the green light to hold a gun to the party’s and the country’s head anytime they want.

Former Bill Clinton White House aide Keith Boykin spoke for many when he took to his IG page and laid into Schumer:

By agreeing to cobble together the votes to advance Trump’s “big beautiful” spending bill, Schumer gave us the worst of all worlds. He threw House Democrats — who held firm almost unanimously to oppose the blank check spending bill (which puts almost no limits on the White House’s ability to spend how they please) — under the bus, undermining their overall fight to stop the doge train. Axios reports the members are furious:

• "Complete meltdown. Complete and utter meltdown on all text chains," said the member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer sensitive details of members' internal conversations.

• A senior House Democrat said "people are furious" and that some rank-and-file members have floated the idea of angrily marching onto the Senate floor in protest.

• Others are talking openly about supporting primary challenges to senators who vote for the GOP spending bill.

He also undermined his own Senate caucus, several of whom had come out very publicly against the bill.

And he threw away the one piece of leverage Democrats hold throughout the federal government: the filibuster, which Republicans have used effectively to get their way since the Obama administration.

Schumer has essentially made it clear that Senate Democrats won’t use what power they have to protect Medicaid, or food stamps, or student loans or Head Start, or any of the other social services Republicans are gutting in this spending bill, or to stop the runaway train of permanent tax cuts for the super rich that this bill also clears the way for. In other words, the Senate Democratic leader refuses to do what it takes to protect those who are most vulnerable to the abuses of the maga right and Project 2025, because he prizes traditional Senate institutionalism too much. (That’s a signal Black Democrats are getting loud and clear, and they’re filling up my phone with red hot rage, squarely directed at Schumer and other “turncoat” Dems, as well as at maga Republicans.) Surely, other constituencies are getting the message, too.

Schumer did his 180 at a time when Republicans are on the back foot, taking major heat from their constituents, and even from Wall Street over the spiraling doge and tariff chaos and the dampening economy. That makes his change of heart even more confounding. In a very real sense, Chuck Schumer is handing Donald Trump and Elon Musk the absolute power they crave. And he’s getting literally nothing in return.

What’s the point of having power — even the limited power Democrats have as the minority party — if you’re not willing to use it?

At this point, it’s fair to ask what’s the point of Chuck Schumer’s leadership. From the start of the second Trump regime, he has seemed unequal to the task of facing the reality of fascism and autocracy settling into our government. Democrats may not be in power, but their voters deserve to at least see that the people they’ve elected have the deftness, courage and strength to vigorously defend the poor, the elderly, veterans, women and minorities in this terrible moment in American history. Per my sources, there’s no current appetite among Senate Democrats for a leadership fight. And Schumer has made it clear, publicly and privately, that he’s willing to take the heat for his decision to free the continuing resolution to go to the floor. But there’s word on the street that external calls for Schumer to step aside from his leadership position could be coming soon, potentially from inside his own state. If those calls begin to build, it’s hard to know what happens from there.

Still, the fight over the Senate blank check spending bill isn’t over yet. The vote takes place today. There’s still time to call your Senator, if they are still wavering:

The United States Capitol switchboard can be reached at (202) 224-3121

The courts are still working

Despite the dismal goings on in Washington, Thursday saw a big win for federal workers, as two judges ordered their rehiring after illegal doge dismissals:

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Two federal judges handed down orders requiring President Donald Trump’s administration to rehire thousands, if not tens of thousands, of probationary workers let go in mass firings across multiple agencies Thursday, slowing down for now the president’s dramatic downsizing of the federal government.

Both judges separately found legal problems with the way the mass terminations were carried out and ordered the employees at least temporarily brought back on the job.

The Trump administration has already appealed the first ruling. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt cast it as an attempt to encroach on the president’s power to hire and fire employees. “The Trump Administration will immediately fight back against this absurd and unconstitutional order,” she said in a statement.

In San Francisco, U.S. District Judge William Alsup found Thursday morning that terminations across six agencies were directed by the Office of Personnel Management and an acting director, Charles Ezell, who lacked the authority to do so.

In Baltimore, U.S. District Judge James Bredar found that the administration did not follow laws set out for large-scale layoffs, including 60 days’ advance notice. Bredar, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, ordered the firings temporarily halted and the workforce returned to the status quo before the layoffs began.

And in a separate case, another federal judge has ordered the secretive doge gang to turn over records and disclose information about its supposed “cost-cutting”…

March 13 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge has ordered Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency to turn over a variety of records and answer questions describing their efforts to slash federal spending.

Wednesday night's decision by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C., came in a lawsuit

The states argued that Musk violated the Constitution by wielding power that only officials confirmed by the U.S. Senate can exercise under the Appointments Clause, and sought materials from him through a process known as discovery.

Which leads me right back to the question of why the Democratic Senate leader would cave now, when the fight is still on, and in some cases, democracy is winning.

Protesting the disappearing of an activist

Trump Tower was the site of protests Thursday by Jewish peace activists over the ICE arrest of pro Palestinian protester Mahmoud Khalil. Expect more of this…

And keep a weather eye…

… on Social Security, as Republicans seek to use the current chaos as an opportunity to privatize it.

Update:

This is so repugnant I don’t even quite know what to do with it…

Arlington National Cemetery is the most venerated final resting ground in the nation, overseen by silent soldiers in immaculate uniforms with ramrod-straight discipline. Across its hundreds of acres in Virginia, they watch over 400,000 graves of U.S. service members dating back to the Civil War, including two presidents, and more than 400 Medal of Honor recipients.

But in recent weeks, the cemetery’s public website has scrubbed dozens of pages on gravesites and educational materials that include histories of prominent Black, Hispanic and female service members buried in the cemetery, along with educational material on dozens of Medal of Honor recipients and maps of prominent gravesites of Marine Corps veterans and other services.

Cemetery officials confirmed to Task & Purpose that the pages were “unpublished” to meet recent orders by President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth targeting race and gender-related language and policies in the military.

Gone from public view are links to lists of dozens of “Notable Graves” at Arlington of women and Black and Hispanic service members who are buried in the cemetery. About a dozen other “Notable Graves” lists remain highlighted on the website, including lists of politicians, athletes and even foreign nationals.

Also gone are dozens of academic lesson plans — some built for classroom use, others as self-guided walking tours — on Arlington’s history and those interred there. Among the documents removed or hidden from the cemetery’s “Education” section are maps and notes for self-guided walking tours to the graves of dozens of Medal of Honor recipients and other maps to notable gravesites for war heroes from each military service. Why information on recipients of the Medal of Honor — the nation’s highest award for combat valor — would be removed is unclear, but three of the service members whose graves were noted in the lessons were awarded the Medal of Honor decades after their combat actions following formal Pentagon reviews that determined they had been denied the award on racial grounds.

Like the “Notable Graves” lists, some of the lesson plans remain live but ‘walled-off’ on the cemetery’s website, with no way to reach them through links on the site. Task & Purpose located the de-linked pages by copying the original URL addresses from archived pages at Archive.org or by searching specifically for the pages on Google, which still lists them.

On at least one page that can still be accessed on search engines, language referring to civil rights or racial issues in the military appears to have been altered. A page on Black soldiers in World War II read in December that they had “served their country and fought for racial justice” but now only notes that memorials in the cemetery “honor their dedication and service.”

We are once again living in an age of pure unadulterated racism, hate and evil in America. Trump wanted to send us back to the McKinley era, and he is succeeding, horrifically.

Wake up. And stay woke.