The Executive Order:

Section 1.  Policy.  Every person should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or whom they love.  Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports. 

Wait a second. What do we mean by “whether they will be denied access to the restroom”? Everybody is denied access to one of the two multi-user restrooms, because they are sorted by sex, because there are some men and boys who just will use opportunities like public restrooms with incomplete partitions to peer at or photograph or assault women. Women don’t want to share multi-user toilets with men. The same set of facts applies to locker rooms. A different but related set of facts applies to school sports. Sports and toilets are sex-sorted for various (but well known and obvious) reasons, and keeping it that way doesn’t result in children who don’t have access, it results in male children who still are not allowed to intrude on female children. The female children have rights too.

Discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation manifests differently for different individuals, and it often overlaps with other forms of prohibited discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of race or disability.  For example, transgender Black Americans face unconscionably high levels of workplace discrimination, homelessness, and violence, including fatal violence.

That reads more like Twitter than adult legal reasoning.

It’s odd, because Biden is a very conservative Democrat. There’s none of this going way out on a limb over the wealth gap, or a genuine publicly funded national health system, or lobbying, or public housing – but somehow letting men play on women’s soccer teams is red-hot urgent?

It’s nuts.

So that’s why Trump put a whole bunch of trump hacks in the Pentagon after he lost the election.

The Pentagon blocked members of President Joe Biden’s incoming administration from gaining access to critical information about current operations, including the troop drawdown in Afghanistan, upcoming special operations missions in Africa and the Covid-19 vaccine distribution program, according to new details provided by transition and defense officials.

By “the Pentagon” here they mean civilian management, not the military.

The effort to obstruct the Biden team, led by senior White House appointees at the Pentagon, is unprecedented in modern presidential transitions and will hobble the new administration on key national security matters as it takes over positions in the Defense Department on Wednesday, the officials said.

The senior White House appointees are also new appointees, appointed for sheer spite, as well as perhaps to help with the military coup if the opportunity arose.

Biden openly decried the treatment his aides were receiving at the Pentagon in December, calling it “nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility” after meetings were canceled ahead of Christmas. He said his people were denied information on the SolarWinds hack, and said his team “needs a clear picture of our force posture around the world and our operations to deter our enemies.”

They must have been doing that because Trump told them to. Trump told them to apparently because he hoped to stay in power with their help. Who knows what goes on in that liquefying brain.

But people involved with the transition, both on the Biden team and the Pentagon side, gave POLITICO a more detailed picture of what was denied, saying briefings on pressing defense matters never happened, were delayed to the last minute, or were controlled by overbearing minders from the Trump administration’s side.

…

Tensions between the Pentagon and the Biden agency landing team emerged almost the moment the General Services Administration authorized the transition to begin in late November after an initial delay following the election. While the military side of the house — the Joint Staff and the geographic combatant commanders — were more cooperative, the civilian side set up roadblocks at every turn.

“They really should not be allowed to get away with this. It’s just completely irresponsible and indefensible,” said one transition official. “To play politics with the country’s national security is just really unacceptable.”

They had to, they had a lot of bodies to hide.

So the Biden people find that Trump just dropped that whole vaccine distribution thing as if it were a rotting rabbit carcass.

The Biden administration has promised to try to turn the Covid-19 pandemic around and drastically speed up the pace of vaccinating Americans against the virus. But in the immediate hours following Biden being sworn into office on Wednesday, sources with direct knowledge of the new administration’s Covid-related work told CNN one of the biggest shocks that the Biden team had to digest during the transition period was what they saw as a complete lack of a vaccine distribution strategy under former President Donald Trump, even weeks after multiple vaccines were approved for use in the United States.

“There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch,” one source said.

Another source described the moment that it became clear the Biden administration would have to essentially start from “square one” because there simply was no plan as: “Wow, just further affirmation of complete incompetence.”

Complete incompetence coupled with complete indifference.

Andrew fucking Jackson is gone.

President Biden has filled the Oval Office with images of American leaders and icons, focusing the room around massive portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt that hangs across from the Resolute Desk. It is a clear nod to a president who helped the country through significant crises, a challenge Biden now also faces.

…

Biden is also nodding to segments of the Democratic Party’s base via historic references. Behind the Resolute Desk is a bust of Cesar Chavez. The office also includes busts of Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt and sculpture by Allan Houser of the Chiricahua Apache tribe that once belonged to the late Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI) — the first Japanese-American elected to both houses of Congress.

Why talk about segments of the party’s base? Why not just say they’re activists and symbols of social justice? Why translate that into dopy insider jargon about “the base”? It’s good that busts of Cesar Chavez and Rosa Parks are there, especially after Trump’s murderous white guys, so how about not tainting it with cynical base-wooing bollocks.

A painting of Benjamin Franklin is intended to represent Biden’s interest in following science. The painting is stationed near a moon rock set on a bookshelf that is intended to remind Americans of the ambition and accompaniments of earlier generations.

I think “accompaniments” is supposed to be “accomplishments.”

Gone are the flags of branches of the military that Trump displayed behind the Resolute Desk. Biden has installed an American flag and another with a presidential seal.

From sojers to union organizers.

Not such a cheerful inauguration day for Joseph Biggs.

A Proud Boys leader caught on camera storming the U.S. Capitol with a pro-Trump mob has been arrested and charged for participating in the deadly insurrection.

Joseph Biggs, a top organizer with the white nationalist organization, has been slapped with three charges, including obstruction of an official proceeding, for his role in the Jan. 6 riots.

Prosecutors say the 37-year-old Florida resident is a “self-described organizer” of the Proud Boys, which describes itself as a “pro-Western fraternal organization for men who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world; aka Western Chauvinists.”

Biggs can be seen in several videos and photos taken inside the Capitol building, including one where someone shouts out his name. In the video, Biggs pulls down his face mask and declares, “This is awesome,” according to a criminal complaint.

The complaint against Biggs says he was seen on Jan. 6 with “a group of people that hold themselves out as Proud Boys” on the east side of the Capitol. The men were dressed “incognito”—instead of donning the Proud Boys colors of black and yellow, Biggs was “wearing glasses and a dark knit hat, is dressed in a blue and grey plaid shirt,” according to the court papers.

Videos and photos show the men marching down Constitution Avenue during the riots, chanting “Fuck antifa!” and “Whose streets? Our streets!” When the group reached the Capitol, Pezzola broke a window with a clear plastic shield before a swarm of rioters—including Biggs—entered the building, authorities said.

But Trump said he could.

It’s another not-Trump, but since it has been Trump for all this time let’s enjoy the not-Trump now that we can.

Trail of Tears guy out; good.

This is more than not-Trump; a lot more.

And does it in the building that was a scene of violence, intimidation and death just two weeks ago. Take that, haterz.

Lots of fizzled protests out there.

Police were on high alert in state capitals around the U.S. Sunday, after warnings that pro-Trump extremists might attempt to storm legislatures similar to the assault on the U.S. Capitol last week. But at many statehouses and capitols, security and the media outnumbered protesters.

One, Trump wasn’t there. Two, getting arrested probably doesn’t look so attractive any more. Three…ohIdon’tknow, whohastheenergy.

In Denver, the Colorado Capitol’s lower windows were covered in anticipation of possible unrest — but hardly anyone showed up on Sunday. “I’m really surprised. I figured there’d be more than this,” a supporter of President Trump told Colorado Public Radio.

Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.

In Lansing, where protesters swarmed Michigan’s Capitol building last May and a plot against the governor was uncovered in recent months, Sunday’s protest was deemed “eclectic, but small and dull” by Michigan Radio. Events remained quiet, despite some demonstrators bringing their guns to the protest.

…

There was “relative quiet at the Oregon State Capitol,” according to Oregon Public Broadcasting, despite the arrival of a small group of armed demonstrators. The group included members of the extremist “boogaloos” movement, who are known for advocating for a new civil war.

But advocating for a new civil war goes a little flat when hardly anybody shows up for the advocamations.

“A couple dozen armed demonstrators gathered at the Texas Capitol on Sunday,” member station KUT reports, adding that the group said they had come to spread a “message of individual liberty.” But not many people were around to hear it, as the grounds were closed.

Individual liberty, man. They stayed home. Those beers aren’t going to drink themselves.

In Florida, the Capitol in Tallahassee was mainly populated by a range of law enforcement agencies and journalists, according to member station WFSU — which reports a man as he rode by on a bicycle called out, “It’s a beautiful day! Nothing happening here!”

There are a number of possible explanations for the smaller than expected protests – including that some right-wing activists are reluctant to congregate at a time when police are looking for any sign of trouble and the FBI is vigorously seeking people to face charges related to the assault in Washington.

Yes but it’s seriously also that Trump was not there, so 1. he was not a draw, and 2. he did not whip them into a rabid frenzy by screaming at them through a microphone.

And so then the crowd didn’t form so there wasn’t the crowd energy to feed off. Protests and rallies always carry that risk with them, including the ones with benign motivations and goals. I think it’s quite possible that some of the people who took part are now feeling terrible about it, and wondering what the hell they were thinking.

Two weeks ago today a lot of us were not expecting what happened. Today…

It’s a day to rejoice, it’s a day to breathe a massive sigh of relief, it’s a day even to celebrate. It’s not a day to congratulate ourselves. That day is a long way off.

Like this.

I admire Norm Eisen, but I reject that punchline “America.” It would be pretty to think so, but no. We remember what happened there just two weeks ago, and we know the people who did it are still out there, along with a lot of allies who didn’t make it to the Capitol but nevertheless think the insurrection was awesome. No, we’re not All Better Now. No, Trumpism has not received its death blow. No, this isn’t all over. No, we don’t now stand for all that is good and just and reasonable and decent. It’s not that easy.

Ok this made me laugh:

In a subdued, discursive speech on a windy tarmac, Trump made glancing references to his accomplishments in office but seemed bitter at his loss.

“I hope they don’t raise your taxes, but if they do, I told you so,” he said.

Aides had prepared a speech for the President that included references to the incoming administration and more gracious language about a peaceful transition, according to a person familiar with the matter.

But Trump discarded the speech, and teleprompters were removed from the stage before he arrived at Joint Base Andrews.

“What’s all this more gracious shit, fuck that, being more gracious is for pussies, fire the pussies who wrote this.”

President Biden is now officially the 46th president* of the United States of America.

*Only 45 people have been president, Grover Cleveland counts as both 22nd and 24th.

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 20, 2021

It’s done.

Joe Biden has been sworn in as president, bringing an end to four years of Donald Trump’s leadership in Washington.

Biden was sworn in by supreme court chief justice John Roberts, and his wife, Dr Jill Biden, held the Bible as he took the oath.

It’s over it’s over it’s over it’s over.

He’s been dumped out on Florida and that’s his last trip on the big important plane yaboosucks.

As former presidents arrived at the Capitol for Joe Biden’s inauguration, Air Force One touched down in Florida.

Donald Trump did not go back to the press cabin to talk to reporters during his trip down to Florida, according to the White House pool.

Trump will be the first president in more than 150 years to not attend the inauguration ceremony of his successor. His vice-president, Mike Pence, is in attendance.

It’s great that he’s breaking precedent by sulking this way; it makes him look so wise and balanced and not at all warped by conceit and entitlement and narcissism hahahahahahaha

People were laughing.

One could almost imagine the credits rolling on a screen as Donald Trump and his family departed on Air Force One toward Florida, the morning sun gleaming down on the plane as Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” – a popular funeral song – played at Joint Base Andrews, where Trump delivered his farewell speech.

“The soundtrack that we continue to hear throughout these scenes is surreal, perhaps surreally appropriate,” noted CNN anchor Anderson Cooper on live TV as the plane could be seen preparing for takeoff, his co-anchor laughing.

You’re dead to us Donnie.

We’re resetting.

Senator Amy Klobuchar celebrated today as a new start for the country, two weeks after the Capitol was attacked by a violent mob.

“This is the day when our democracy picks itself up, brushes off the dust and does what America always does — goes forward,” the Democratic senator said.

Mind you, so does everyone else, because going backward isn’t an option, but never mind, it’s over it’s over it’s over. In 16 minutes.

It seems Trump managed to do one decent thing in the final hours, by using most of those pardons on people who were serving excessive sentences. But of course he also pardoned Bannon.

The vast majority of the pardons and commutations on Trump’s list were doled out to individuals whose cases have been championed by criminal justice reform advocates, including people serving lengthy sentences for low-level offenses.

Here’s an idea: let’s stop dealing out long prison sentences for low-level offenses.

Over the course of Tuesday, Trump continued to contemplate pardons that aides believed were settled, including for his former strategist. The President continued to go back and forth on it into Tuesday night, sources told CNN.

Then he did the wrong thing.

The January 6 riots that led to Trump’s second impeachment have complicated his desire to pardon himself, his kids and personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and a source close to the process said those are no longer expected.

40 minutes. Just 40 minutes and the nightmare is over.

Pliny says sure Trump should get the intel briefings.

The 1776 Report is about the teaching of history but not one of the people on the 1776 Commission is a historian.

Larry P. Arn, Chair, is “an educator.” Vice Chair Carol Swain taught political science and law at Vanderbilt. Brooke Rollins is a lawyer. Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist. Phil Bryant is a former governor of Mississippi. John Gibbs worked for HUD. Scott McNealy is a businessman. Ned Ryan is the CEO of American Majority. Charlie Kirk is a conservative talk show host. And so on. It’s a passel of conservatives, a few of them academics, a few of those in fields adjacent to history, but no actual historians except possibly Hanson who along with being a classicist is a military historian (and a fierce reactionary).

It’s all so dumb. “Don’t teech that Murka was ever rong, teech that Murka was always nobul and inspiering.”

15 hours 49 minutes.

Trump’s people organized that rally, the one that led to the terrorist attack on Congress.

Members of President Donald Trump’s failed presidential campaign played key roles in orchestrating the Washington rally that spawned a deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol, according to an Associated Press review of records, undercutting claims the event was the brainchild of the president’s grassroots supporters.

A pro-Trump nonprofit group called Women for America First hosted the “Save America Rally” on Jan. 6 at the Ellipse, an oval-shaped, federally owned patch of land near the White House. But an attachment to the National Park Service public gathering permit granted to the group lists more than half a dozen people in staff positions for the event who just weeks earlier had been paid thousands of dollars by Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. Other staff scheduled to be “on site” during the demonstration have close ties to the White House.

Since the siege, several of them have scrambled to distance themselves from the rally.

People should take pride in their work.

The AP’s review found at least three of the Trump campaign aides named on the permit rushed to obscure their connections to the demonstration. They deactivated or locked down their social media profiles, removed tweets that referenced the rally and blocked a reporter who asked questions.

13 hours 22 minutes.

So, yes, I’m going to have to read at least some of that ridiculous rah rah us! report, to see exactly how bad it is. And yes I’m going to have to inflict it on you.

The declared purpose of the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission is to “enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776 and to strive to form a more perfect Union.” This requires a restoration of American education, which can only be grounded on a history of those principles that is “accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling.” And a rediscovery of our shared identity rooted in our founding principles is the path to a renewed American unity and a confident American future.

So they’re saying that the teaching of the history of American principles has to be unifying, inspiring, and ennobling, which pretty much negates the part about being “accurate and honest.” Notice they didn’t say “true,” which seems telling. Anyway unifying for whom? Inspiring and ennobling for whom? I don’t think pretending American history has been one long march to ever-increasing awesomeness is going to inspire everyone.

The facts of our founding are not partisan. They are a matter of history. Controversies about the meaning of the founding can begin to be resolved by looking at the facts of our nation’s founding. Properly understood, these facts address the concerns and aspirations of Americans of all social classes, income levels, races and religions, regions and walks of life. As well, these facts provide necessary—and wise—cautions against unrealistic hopes and checks against pressing partisan claims or utopian agendas too hard or too far.

Hahaha subtle. “Don’t come after our billions! Leave Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk alone! Get off my golf course! Socialism! Awkkk!”

The principles of the American founding can be learned by studying the abundant documents contained in the record. Read fully and carefully, they show how the American people have ever pursued freedom and justice, which are the political conditions for living well.

So…the Trail of Tears? Broken treaties? Two centuries of slavery and another century of Jim Crow? Violent suppression of labor organizing? The three strikes law? Prisons overflowing with people serving long or life sentences for minor drug crimes? That’s us ever pursuing freedom and justice?

This is only the first page.

I may never manage to reach the second.

The Trump administration’s “1776 Report” has historians running out of red ink.

“It’s a hack job. It’s not a work of history,” American Historical Association executive director James Grossman told The Washington Post. “It’s a work of contentious politics designed to stoke culture wars.”

…The 45-page report is largely an attack on decades of historical scholarship, particularly when it comes to the nation’s 400-year-old legacy of slavery, and most of those listed as authors lack any credentials as historians. While claiming to present a nonpartisan history, it compares progressivism to fascism and claims the civil rights movement devolved into “preferential” identity politics “not unlike those advanced by [slavery defender John C.] Calhoun and his followers.”

“I don’t know where to begin,” said public historian Alexis Coe. “This ‘report’ lacks citations or any indication books were consulted, which explains why it’s riddled in errors, distortions, and outright lies.”

Well the people behind the “report” are using the word “report” in a very special way. They don’t mean anything to do with truth, for instance, or evidence or reasoning or argument. They’re using “report” to mean something more like “angry shouting.”

“It’s very hard to find anything in here that stands as a historical claim, or as the work of a historian. Almost everything in it is wrong, just as a matter of fact,” said Eric Rauchway, a history professor at the University of California at Davis. “I may sound a little incoherent when trying to speak of this, because the report itself is not coherent. It’s like historical wackamole.”

Well it’s not supposed to be history. It’s supposed to be angry shouting!

He pointed to sections misinterpreting Puritan John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” speech, and to a section claiming the civil rights movement “came to abandon the nondiscrimination and equal opportunity of colorblind civil rights in favor of ‘group rights.’ ”

Oh yes, the old “I don’t see color” argument. Brilliant.

“Group rights is not anathema to American principles,” he said, recalling the formation of the Senate. “Why do Wyomingers have 80 times the representation that Californians have if not for group rights?”

Because they’re white guys with cattle, which is completely different!

Historian Kevin M. Levin, author of several books about the Civil War, said: “The 1776 report views students as sponges who are expected to absorb a narrative of the American past without question. It views history as set in stone rather than something that needs to be analyzed and interpreted by students.”

Well you see it’s the definitive narrative; the press release said so. “This is our narrative, that is ours; it is definitive.”

Grossman, the AHA executive director, said: “This is written as if no historical scholarship has been produced in nearly 70 years, so it’s bereft of any professional historical sensibility at all. There are no historians on this commission. Would you take your car to a garage where there’s no mechanic?”

But it’s definitive!

I didn’t realize that former presidents get intelligence briefings.

Adam Schiff says Trump should be the exception, which seems only prudent.

House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff said Sunday that President Donald Trump should be barred from daily intelligence briefings immediately — and remain cut off from briefings once President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in.

…

Schiff’s comments come a day after Susan Gordon, Trump’s former principal deputy director of national intelligence, penned an op-ed in The Washington Post arguing that Trump must not be briefed on intelligence after Jan. 20.

…

Former presidents typically receive routine intelligence briefings and access to classified information after they have left office.

Schiff added that he thinks U.S. allies withheld information from the Trump administration because “they didn’t trust the president” to protect intelligence, which, in turn, “makes us less safe.”

I say cut him off.