Sam Vimes' Boot Salesman

a parchment guarantee *at the moment*

Headline from Harvard Crimson: "Harvard President Garber Tells Faculty He Is Not Considering a $500 Million Deal With Trump."

Text of story: Harvard prez Garber says report of a deal "was apparently leaked to the press by White House officials." NYT ran with it as a story.

Important details from this story:

1) Yet another news-break by student journalists (this time @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social) www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

2) Harvard saying "see you in court," not "let's make a deal."

3) Per Garber, WH/MAGA leaked news of a "deal." NYT then ran with it.

I’m actually surprised they couldn’t even get a stronger opinion out of Paxton

I won’t go through each line item. And I’m not trying to be blasé about this; I just think it’s mentally healthy to compare word to deed and effect.

The Big Law capitulation is embarrassing but I don’t know if anyone can claim there has been a dearth of legal challenges against this administration as a result.

I haven’t thought about the election EO in a while, as it’s still blocked, but if I recall the only concrete penalty they could think to include was for the EAC to deny some election security grants. Which sounds like a big deal but those grants are small and sporadic.

Unsuspecting readers were left with the impression that strict voter ID laws were about to be introduced in, like, Connecticut.

It is with this in mind that I wearily click on another Brennan Center report about elections.

In early 2021 the Brennan Center created a big map that purported to show how right-wing state legislatures were weakening voting rights. But they included *every* potential bill, including those introduced by back bench Rs in blue states.

Texas Democrats Return, Ending A 38-Day Holdout That Blocked A Voting Bill Some Democrats who fled to Washington, D.C., to deny the state House a quorum dropped their holdout, paving the way for Republicans to resume pushing an elections overhaul.

But no one was arrested in the 2021 walkout. Apparently some warrants were sent to a few members homes. But it ended when a handful returned voluntarily. www.npr.org/2021/08/19/1...

If the Rangers tried to arrest members in Chicago I think Pritzker would actually have them hanged.

Most of the warning signs Politico IDs are fixable (polling) bouncy (fundraising) or still uncertain (gerrymandering). And having a bunch of members get primaried is straight up not a bad sign. If anything it’s an important early indicator of enthusiasm.

‘More like a blue trickle’: Dems are hoping for a blue wave that might not happen There's little evidence so far that Democrats are going to crash the gates of Washington.

Okay now I think it’s probably going to happen

Sure but one of Politico’s big warning signs (messy primaries) are, arguably, part of the cure

There looks to be a little more dissent among the state GOP than I was led to believe, so I guess we’ll see.

We literally just lost an election because people didn’t care how good the economic numbers looked paper and now you people are panicking about him holding power by making the numbers look good

No, it's much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poise and rationality

Was the Rose Garden covered under that?

Well except for Allen v. Milligan, which is either about to become more relevant or even more of a random blip.

I could just as easily look at this data and conclude that parties that start out in the worst positions end up making the biggest gains.

This is a nonsensical way of assessing the outparty midterm advantage

Feels like different corners of the conservative movement are placing opposite bets on whether the 2024 realignment is permanent.

Agency layoffs do not constitute illegal impoundments, GAO rules RIFs are not themselves violations of federal spending law, watchdog says, though the administration is violating the law in other ways.

The key here is that it’s illegal for agencies to cut jobs and pocket the money. They have to keep spending what was appropriated (unless there’s a rescission/until the next budget cycle)

You can’t make an average by ignoring more than half the data points in a set. That leaves you literally two data points! And it was a small set to begin with, certainly too small to conclude the parties should reliably experience different gains

That’s just a function of D’s in 06 and 18 starting in a better position, but no reason to think it’s a law of nature that they make small gains. Trump’s approval was initially better this time around, but now his negatives are approaching his first term lows. Fair to expect Cong. ballot to follow.

I guess you can still call it abdication of a sort but they *did* vote for this in the rescission.

They’re not even ALJs, it’s fine

I understand the point but it concedes too much -- Congress *didn't* authorize these tariffs! What is needed is for the Supreme Court to uphold the law rather than acting as Trump's privy council
bsky.app/profile/just...

Every day people log on to this website and just spiral

The question for our age: does SCOTUS uphold the tariffs because Trump wants them, or do they kill the tariffs because they’re hurting Trump/GOP politically?

I do think if you (like me) went into Trump 2.0 assuming he would maintain strong economic favorability, it’s worth reflecting on what happened.