Introducing “Elie v. U.S.”

Hello, and welcome to my inaugural newsletter “Elie v. U.S.” You can subscribe to the newsletter and receive it weekly here. With the Donald Trump/Elon Musk administration shredding the fabric of American-style democracy faster than I can type “Once upon a time, Rome was a Republic,” it seems useful to do a weekly roundup of some stories, events, and developments I’d otherwise be unable to write about. Most will have a legal bent, but some might surprise you. Consider this my desperate attempt to create a record for my children when they ask me why breathable air now costs 25 dogecoins per five-hour bottle.

The Bad and The Ugly

• Representative Al Green (D-TX) was censured by Congress for disrupting Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of sycophants and co-conspirators in Congress. Many Democrats protested the censure (as my colleague Joan Walsh noted), but 10 Democrats joined the Republican vote for censure. I am going to list them here because these are 10 Democrats who should never be able to raise a dollar from other Democrats, ever again: Ami Bera (D-CA), Ed Case (D-HI), Jim Costa (D-CA), Laura Gillen (D-NY), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA), Jim Himes (D-CT), Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), and Tom Suozzi (D-NY).

• Hampton Dellinger, head of the Office of Inspector Generals, dropped his lawsuit to stop Trump from illegally firing him after he lost his case in front of the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. The courts are ultimately going to let Trump and Musk fire whomever they want, for any reason they want to—although the suit filed by fired National Labor Relations Board commissioner Gwynne Wilcox survives for now.

• Some people clearly don’t care about fired federal workers, but they should know that US employers cut more jobs in February than in any month since the Great Recession. Feel free to remind people of that when they tell you that the oligarchs in charge are only interested in firing Black people.

• Meanwhile, Elon Musk appears to be using his newfound federal powers to bully advertisers into rejoining Xitter and thus make him even richer. Senator Elizabeth Warren has called for the Department of Justice to investigate this rank conflict of interest, but she knows as well as I do that the DOJ no longer works for the American people; it’s Musk’s legal goon squad now.

• The Supreme Court overruled the Environmental Protection Agency and decided to allow cities to dump more human poop into the oceans and waterways than experts think is safe. The literal enshittification of America continues apace.

Inspired Takes

• Nobody should be surprised that Elon Musk’s attacks on federal judges are racist. But it’s possible that people have not noticed just how dangerous they’ve become. This piece by Jay Willis provides a fantastic explanation of how deranged Musk’s attacks have become.

• Everybody knows Republicans are saying “DEI” with the “hard R.” Here’s a helpful list, compiled by Michael Harriot, of everything MAGA considers “DEI.” The piece reminds people about the literal historical facts that Republicans no longer want people to learn.

• Trump is explicitly coming for Social Security now. This piece by The Nation’s John Nichols explains why that is so wrong.

• This is a couple of weeks old, but seeing as this is my first newsletter, if you haven’t yet read Adam Serwer’s “The Great Resegregation.” please do.

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Worst Argument of the Week

• Elissa Slotkin gave the tepid Republican Democratic response to Trump’s multi-hour Netflix series address to Congress, during which she managed to praise notable Democratic hero Ronald Reagan. She followed it up by sitting for an interview with The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta, where she outlined her priorities. Her answers were the usual thin gruel that passes for Democratic Party talking points, but one line really stood out to me. She said, “It doesn’t win elections to speak to just the base of the party.… if it did, Kamala Harris would be president.” First of all, I’m really gonna need Becky with the 80 percent white congressional district to keep Kamala Harris’s name out her mouth. It’s easy to slag off the Democratic “base,” which has been Black people for Slotkin’s entire life, when nobody is inviting you or your potato salad to the cookout anyway. It’s a little harder when you are running to represent all of America, not just the white folks who think they should own the place.

But more important: What kind of universe does Slotkin think she’s living in where Harris spoke only to the Democratic base? Why is she giving an interview where she’s just straight up lying about the focus of Harris’s campaign? If anything, Harris went too far out of her way to court Republican voters with nonstop appeals to Liz Cheney and the now-familiar assortment of “Never Trump” Republicans. She desperately centered white women voters, only to have a majority of them reject Harris and vote for an adjudicated sexual assaulter. The only way she could have appealed more to women like Slotkin is if she’d asked to see Donald Trump’s manager.

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I am sick to death of white Democrats acting like the most reliable voters in their coalition are the ones who should be ignored.

What I Wrote

• I asked Democrats to boycott Trump’s speech to Congress. They did not. Instead, they brought little placards emblazoned with political messages, as if they were at a silent auction for fascism. We live in hell.

• The Supreme Court ruled that Trump has to resume funding USAID. He won’t. I explained why.

In News Completely Unrelated to the Ongoing Chaos

• Luigi Mangione, currently in jail awaiting trial for the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, allegedly (OK, very allegedly) kept a stash of “cinema quality” sex tapes. The possible existence of these tapes sent the Internet into a frenzy.

Friends, this whole Luigi situation is starting to remind me of the Publius Clodius Pulcher trial from ancient Rome. In 62 BCE, Julius Caesar’s second wife, Pompeia, threw a party to which no men were invited, but Pulcher snuck in for the purpose of seducing Pompeia. The party was a religious festival, and Pulcher was charged for his indiscretion, but Pulcher was something of a playboy with a lot of fans among young Roman men. At the trial, Caesar (who was also viewed as “cool” by young Romans) refused to produce any evidence against Pulcher, and Pulcher was eventually acquitted. Caesar then divorced Pompeia like a hypocritical, misogynistic prick (leading to the famous proverb: “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion”—not Caesar, of course, just his poor wife, who probably didn’t even sleep with the man who showed up at her house uninvited). But his refusal to implicate Pulcher helped cement Caesar’s status as a man of the people.

My point is: If any Democratic candidate defended Luigi Mangione, that person would probably win the 2028 primary in a walk. My other point is that the American Republic, like the Rome of Julius Caesar, is in its death spiral, and it’s going to get far more depraved and violent before the end.

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