Todd Heidt

Your regular reminder that almost everything Trump is getting away with is not because of presidential strength, but because of congressional weakness and judicial deference.

The constitutional tools are already there to fix this, but those who can fix it are refusing to do so.

Gosh. If only there were an historical analogue we could study to learn about the horrors of rounding people up without due process and sending them to torture camps in other countries.

It is absolutely right that we do not need Greenland (or Canada) for natsec reasons because they are already close NATO allies. So the only rationale to turn the US into an aggressor in our own hemisphere is if you don’t plan on NATO being a US alliance in the future.

Elon fires hundreds of Twitter employees and Twitter goes down.

Elon fires air traffic controllers and planes go down.

Elon goes on a DOGE rampage and the stock market goes down.

Elon regulates his own SpaceX and its starships go down.

I'm sensing a pattern.

It’s amazing to find out at this late date how much the rule of law depended on people simply deciding, on a voluntary, daily basis, not to break the law.

Hegseth Orders Pentagon to Stop Offensive Cyberoperations Against Russia The defense secretary’s instructions, which were given before President Trump’s blowup with the Ukrainian president, are apparently part of an effort to draw Russia into talks on the war.

Stopping cyber operations while the Russians aggressively pursue theirs is another unearned accommodation. Historically, Russia banks concessions and pushes harder. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/u...

Selection of German headlines this morning:

“It’s now the law of the jungle”

“The former leading power of the West can no longer be relied upon.”

“Now it's up to the Europeans”

“The worst case is now the new normal”

“The free world needs a new leader”

In the past, when presidents tried to trim the number of government employees, the result was not lowering the cost of the government. This is because those jobs were often given to private contractors at higher rates.

So it is no coincidence that a big private contractor is running this DOGE scam.

listen to this. Elon can barely form a sentence right now.

NYC Mayor Eric Adams promises to reopen ICE office on Rikers Island after meeting with Trump border czar New York Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday met with border czar Tom Homan and federal officials for a closed-door meeting to discuss illegal immigration.

Gee, I wonder why the trump administration is suddenly so motivated to drop corruption charges against Adams, a veritable poster child for"corrupt, Democrat-run cities"? I just don't know what changed.

According to an NNSA employee, roughly 300 of the agency's 1,800 staff are expected to be fired after the agency was denied a national security exemption. The small organization is responsible for maintaining and upgrading America's arsenal of nuclear weapons, combatting nuclear terrorism, and preventing proliferation around the world.

Holy shit. This is fucking nuts.

Years of constant AI hype + deliberate use of the umbrella term AI to refer to wholly unrelated applications such as text generation and values-based decision making (the main point of "AI Snake Oil") has confused the public enough that replacing civil servants with AI seems at least plausible. 1/2

If DOGE Goes Nuclear The risk of messing with the wrong computer system

In case you were worried you might sleep too well tonight, I offer you this article. You're welcome.

www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

@rikefranke.bsky.social is my go-to for European security analysis