For almost a year I’ve been thinking through an idea that now seems especially timely and relevant in the last six weeks. I think of it as a form of civic sede vacantism. The reference is, ironically, to a strain of hyper-traditionalist Catholic thought which held (still holds) that none of Vatican II canons or the successive Popes counted because they were heretical and heretics. A bit more complicated than that. But details of that really aren’t relevant for us. I just found the defining metaphor or concept helpful. The key is their idea that the papal throne was empty. That’s the meaning of the Latin phrase, sede vacante. My interest and concern with this grew out of my belief that civic democrats in the US have far too great an essentialism about the law and constitutional jurisprudence, especially under the corrupted federal judiciary as it now exists. It breeds a kind of fatalism and passivity which casts a pall over thought and political action.

I know I’ve thrown around a lot of big and perhaps obscure ideas. So let me get down to concrete specifics. In Trump v. United States last year the Supreme Court claimed that Presidents have wide immunity from criminal law after they leave the presidency. For many people this was an ‘everything changed’ moment. It did in effect end Trump’s prosecution. But now that’s the law, as so many people I know put it. Only it’s not. This isn’t a decision I disagree with. It’s simply wrong. I’m not going to rehearse all the arguments. To me, among all the other areas of flawed and disingenuous reasoning, we have the simple fact that the authors of the constitution knew precisely how to confer immunity on public officials. They did it with Congress. But again, I’m not trying to rehearse the specific arguments. Others have already made them on the particulars better than I can. I’m saying that we must disengage from the idea that this is what the law is. It’s not. These are fraudulent decisions.

A quick note on our annual membership drive. It kicks off tomorrow. We have a very ambitious goal. Normally we really lean into it; I do a lot of posts about it. It’s kind of a thing and it works and it’s great. But precisely the things that I believe make TPM so important right now also have us slammed trying to cover it all. I certainly feel slammed trying to keep up with multiple different streams of reporting while also trying to write pieces which provide some perspective and a broader view of what’s happening. So, just to be totally candid, if you can help us make this drive a success while letting us just keep on the reporting that would be awesome … If you’re not a member, please consider subscribing. If you are a member, please help us spread the word – both about TPM and the fact that we’re in our annual drive. Perhaps I flatter us but I think what we do is more important now than it has ever been, both because of the crisis of the moment and because the larger tides of that crisis have knocked the posts out from under so many of the big bulwarks of American journalism. I want us not only to continue to do what we do but do more of it. And to do that we need to keep focused on our core reporting in the short term and remain robust and up to the challenge of upping our game over time. I hope you can support us during this drive in whatever way make sense, depending on whether you’re currently a member or not. Thank you.

So much is going on that a lot of it, I don’t get a chance to share with you, or discuss with you. One pretty important thing has to do with the privacy of IRS records, your tax returns. DOGE operatives embedded at IRS last week were putting together a plan to allow IRS to share confidential tax records with agencies and civil servants across the government. As near as I can tell, and except for in very specific and limited circumstances, that’s illegal. The IRS lawyers said, wait, that’s illegal. You can’t do that. So that got shut down. But now they’re looking for creative ways to do it anyway. In other words, the illegality appears not to matter. They’re also creating an ‘agreement’ through which the Department of Homeland Security can request that certain businesses be audited. In theory, that’s because ICE suspects they’re employing undocumented immigrants. Again, against the law. But they seem to be on the way to doing it anyway. It’s that next step which is the big thing here and which we are seeing again and again. 1. That’s illegal. 2. Try harder. 3. Okay.

One of the great truisms about economics is that people assume CEOs have a deep understanding of economics when in fact most evidence suggests they don’t. This isn’t just the general and often true fact that people think captains of industry type CEOs are smarter than they really are. It’s more specific: what’s good for an economy isn’t just not identical to what is good for a company. Often they’re precisely opposite. You really don’t need to do anything more than actually read Adam Smith to know this. (You could actually argue it’s one of his central points.) And the point I’m making here is one that is almost a commonplace in policy circles if not on TV stock market news. I note it here because it’s possible, frighteningly possible, that we’re in the midst of a real world illustration of this reality, maybe one of the biggest or even the first.

It hasn’t gotten a lot of attention but Donald Trump’s February 11th “workforce optimization” executive order provides a very clear framework for the end stage goal of all the cutting. After a bunch of specific imperatives listed under Section 3-C of that executive order, it includes the following language: government department and agencies must plan to cut “all components and employees performing functions not mandated by statute or other law who are not typically designated as essential during a lapse in appropriations as provided in the Agency Contingency Plans on the Office of Management and Budget website.”