From TPM Reader CA …

Thank you very much for the piece on universities.  The connection you draw between social authority and public goods is exactly right.  Indeed, their status of tax-exempt non-profits depends on a version of this bargain.  But I would add to your analysis a problem that I think exists as a condition of possibility for the war being waged by the Trump administration.  This is the twofold shift that took place c. 1980, regarding who pays for education and who benefits from research.

From TPM Reader AK …

Just read your posts about this. I realize that law is quaint right now, and I haven’t researched the details. Maybe I’m missing something basic, or alternatively maybe it’s just so obvious that nobody is bothering to say it. But if Trump is extorting millions of dollars of value in his *personal* capacity in consideration for taking or desisting from taking official government action, that seems like a textbook definition of bribery or some other form of criminal misconduct, presumably with no official immunity. 

You probably saw the reports that there was an arson attempt of some sort at the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion last night on the first night of Passover. The original reports, at least the ones I saw, did not capture the gravity of what happened. “Firebombing” would be the only accurate way to describe the photos released this afternoon by the governor’s office. It’s possible that the original accounts provided to local media themselves didn’t capture the scale of the incident. A late afternoon press conference described it in more detail and released video and photographs. You can see the full collection of photos here. I’m republishing four of them below.

Here’s one thing that’s hardly been discussed as far as I can tell. We know about the Trump “deals” with various law firms. We know about the “deal” with Columbia University, which the administration has now violated to the extent it was ever actually a deal. But where are these deals? What are they exactly? I mean, have these agreements been committed to paper? In every one of these that I have seen each side has a general description of what’s been agreed to but there’s no document that you would have in the real world — or the real non-corrupt world — when two parties agree to something.

Another important question: Who are the parties to the agreements? Are they with the government of the United States or Donald Trump? I think it must be the latter since I’m not sure how you would legally structure such agreements. But that’s another matter. Where are the agreements? Why can’t we see them?

In the mid-80s, when I was a teenager, I had a brief conversation with a successful, well-off doctor. I wasn’t a patient. This person was sort of a family friend. In that conversation he said matter-of-factly but with the air of a let’s-be-real statement that he wouldn’t want to treat AIDS patients because he didn’t want to run the risk of getting AIDS himself.

Some context is important. This was still very early in the AIDS epidemic. The first blood test for HIV only became available in 1985. This was not a callous or uncaring man. And, at least at the margins, it wasn’t yet as clear as it would eventually be just how much risk physicians faced. But the comment stuck with me and I kept thinking about it. I still haven’t forgotten it 40 years later.

I reported early this week that DOGE/DHS was poised to close down the Department’s domestic WMD preparedness office. I’m hearing that there may now be some hesitation on pulling that trigger. It’s impossible to know in the DOGE era. They could be reconsidering the decision or one of the DOGE boys could just be on a streak on Fortnight and momentarily distracted. There’s an opinion piece on it today in The Hill too. Of the many things DHS does, preparedness against terrorist attacks using weapons of mass destruction seems like one of the more meritorious. And as I explained in my initial post, it’s a classic DOGE move. The decision appears to be driven not by the substance or effectiveness of what the office does but rather a quirk of its legislative history that make the legal or constitutional impediments to shutting it down a little simpler. Even if you accept the general need to streamline, consolidate, downsize or cost-cut, it should be obvious on its face that that’s not the way to do it.

Here is a topic that isn’t as consequential in itself as the wholesale and illegal reshaping of the federal government. But it is of a piece with it and captures the mood and pretensions of DOGE and Trumpism generally. News emerged a few days ago that the FBI has created a 20-person security detail for FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino. Bongino is the first deputy director who doesn’t come from within the FBI. That’s customary because often the director is a judge or a prosecutor who lacks knowledge of the agency from the inside. The director’s deputy, as a veteran of the bureau, provides that operational knowledge and thus a hands-on managerial control. Since Bongino has been a failed political candidate and podcaster for as long as he wore any kind of uniform, one might be tempted to ascribe this security detail to his personal quirks and pretensions. But it’s actually pervasive across the Trump administration, often especially within DOGE and with DOGE-adjacent appointees, whose firing squads often show up at target agencies with security details of uncertain origin.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh talk tariffs and the Supreme Court’s latest on the Alien Enemies Act deportations.

I’ve now seen a couple articles claiming that Democrats are missing an opportunity with Trump’s tariff catastrophe or generally trying to thread some moron needle over whether they’re good or bad. Jon Chait did it here. Now Lauren Egan has written a similar piece in The Bulwark. Both these pieces seem vastly overstated to me. I’m pretty immersed in Democratic voices and almost everything I hear is that Trump tariffs are a catastrophe. But to the extent there is some hedging from a few Democrats, I don’t think there’s even any real issue here to hedge, not over anything actually recognizable as trade policy. Joe Biden embraced what used to be the anathema of industrial policy. He also employed targeted tariffs. In fact he had a pretty all-policy, holistic focus on re-shoring specific industries that are either particularly high-value in economic terms or are tied to critical technologies with national security dependencies. Those policies were very broadly embraced by Democrats.

Most of what happened today is obvious. And I’m no expert on macro- or international economics. But allow me a few observations. Start with the obvious: Trump rolled out an absurd policy which on its own terms would need to be held to for years to have any hope of success. After repeated pledges never to relent, he caved after one week. He now looks like an even bigger fool and menace on the international stage than he already did which is a feat of some magnitude. I also doubt he undid the damage he’s done to himself domestically as a custodian of the nation’s prosperity. Perhaps most of all he looks weak, reckless and stupid.