- More about the ad that advised soldiers they don’t need to carry out illegal orders, with threats against Senator Mark Kelly;
- The demise of DOGE, which accomplished nothing;
- Tom Nichols suggests the Sen. Mark Kelly should be secretary of defense;
- Or maybe, Robert Reich suggests, president;
- Incompetence: Accidentally invading Mexico, reversing course about swastikas, Trump believing his poll numbers are his highest ever, and cutting pollution standards without considering long-term consequences;
- Paul Krugman on the demise of DOGE, and how Democrats will have to repair the damage.
My current top-level generalization: if liberal/progressives are about principles, empathy, and reality, conservatives are about loyalty (at the expense of principles and competency), selfishness, and ideology. All the political examples I post here illustrate those points.
Case in point:
The Atlantic, Jonathan Chait, 25 Nov 2025: Trump and Hegseth’s Hysterical Reaction to an Ad, subtitled “For the president and his minions, loyalty is more important than legality.”
More about Senator Mark Kelly.
When a group of Democratic military veterans who serve in Congress released an ad last week urging service members to refuse orders if they are illegal, the Trump administration could have deployed an obvious defense: What are you talking about? We’re not issuing or planning any illegal orders.
Instead, the administration has opted for a rebuttal that is considerably more self-incriminating. President Donald Trump swiftly took to social media to call out these lawmakers for “seditious behavior” that is “punishable by death.” “It is insurrection,” the White House adviser Stephen Miller charged. “It’s a general call for rebellion.”
And now they want to court-martial him.
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Case in point.
Slate, Christina Cauterucci, 25 Nov 2025: The Most Humiliating Failure of the New Trump Administration Has Come to a Sad, Fitting Close, subtitled “It failed at every one of its stated goals while still managing to do tremendous damage to millions of people.”
After a 10-month run that upended the lives of hundreds of thousands of federal workers, untold millions of Americans, and millions more around the world, the “Department of Government Efficiency” appears to be dead. Reuters reported this week that, when asked about the status of DOGE, the director of the Office of Personnel Management responded, “That doesn’t exist.” He later qualified in a post on X that while DOGE “may not have centralized leadership,” its principles “remain alive and well” in the Trump government—a distinction without a difference that doesn’t make DOGE any less dead.
…
By its own stated metrics—slashing spending and waste—DOGE was an utter failure. When Elon Musk was first tapped to lead the hastily founded department after Trump’s 2024 election, he pledged to cut $2 trillion in federal government expenditures within his first year. Before Donald Trump even took office in January, Musk cut his ambitions in half, estimating cuts of $1 trillion instead. After a few months, he downsized the promise further, to about $150 billion.
But every time DOGE tried to report its successes, its numbers collapsed under scrutiny. This summer, when DOGE said it had saved America $52.8 billion by terminating government contracts, Politico could only verify $32.7 billion in actual claimed canceled contracts—for a total savings of just $1.4 billion. DOGE had arrived at its original estimate through deceptive accounting; a law school dean said the misrepresentation was akin to “taking out a credit card with a $20,000 credit limit, canceling it, and then saying, ‘I’ve just saved $20,000.’ ” In one case, DOGE said it had saved taxpayers $8 billion by canceling a single contract worth a maximum of $8 million.
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And so ironically. From Tom Nichols.
The Atlantic, Tom Nichols, 25 Nov 2025: Senator Mark Kelly Is in the Wrong Job, subtitled “He should be secretary of defense.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth apparently thinks that Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona is in the wrong job. Kelly was one of six Democratic legislators who released a video reminding the officers and enlisted people of the U.S. military that they are bound by their oaths to disobey illegal orders. Now Hegseth wants to recall Kelly, a decorated combat veteran and former astronaut, back to active duty in the Navy so that Kelly can be court-martialed for what Hegseth sees as riling up the troops against the commander in chief.
Hegseth has a point: Maybe Kelly shouldn’t be in Congress. But the secretary is wrong about putting the senator back in the naval service. In a more sensible and serious world (and, yes, I know this is not the one we live in right now), Hegseth would be fired—and Kelly would take Hegseth’s job as secretary of defense.
Because Kelly is qualified, and competent, and Hegseth is neither. (But he’s *loyal*.)
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Also this.
Robert Reich, 25 Nov 2025: Senator Mark E. Kelly, Patriot of Patriots, subtitled “The contrast between him and Pete Hegseth or Trump couldn’t be more larger”
On Monday, the social media account of Pete Hegseth’s so-called “Department of War” posted that the department is investigating Senator Mark Kelly, a retired Navy officer.
Kelly’s supposed offense? He participated in a video reminding members of the armed forces that they have no duty to follow illegal orders — a concept enshrined in the Code of Military Justice, the shameful case of Lt. William Calley during the Vietnam War, the Geneva Conventions, and the Nurenberg Trials.
I’ve known Mark for several decades. I saw him pilot rockets into space. I gave a blessing at his marriage to Gabby Giffords.
Hegseth is mentioned, as is Trump’s taste for military tribunals. He reposts Kelly’s post about his career, which concludes,
“If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work. I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.”
And then Reich concludes his post:
Today, Kelly refuses to be silenced by a disreputable secretary of defense and a twice-impeached occupant of the Oval Office who’s been convicted of 34 felonies.
I believe Mark Kelly would make an excellent president.
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Back to incompetence.
I noted this yesterday, from MS NOW, MaddowBlog: Amateur hour: The White House keeps tripping over its own incompetence, subtitled “On multiple fronts, Donald Trump and his team are failing for the most embarrassing of reasons: They don’t appear to have any idea what they’re doing.”
I haven’t yet mentioned this:
Daily Beast, 21 Nov 2025: Pentagon Pete’s War Goons Accidentally Invade Mexico, subtitled “U.S. “contractors” planted signs declaring that a Mexican beach was U.S. territory.” (Via)
And for that matter this. They keep changing their minds — they float a policy change and reverse it if there’s too much pushback. No basic principles involved.
Associated Press, 20 Nov 2025: Coast Guard reverses course on policy to call swastikas and nooses ‘potentially divisive’ (Via)
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This is about incompetence too.
PolitiFact, 24 Nov 2025: Donald Trump: “I have just gotten the highest poll numbers of my ‘political career.’”
The site’s summary:
- Eight widely followed poll aggregators show that President Donald Trump notched his strongest approval ratings, and his smallest disapproval ratings, in January at the beginning of his second term.
- Since then, his approval ratings have gone downhill.
- Trump’s current approval and disapproval ratings are the worst of his second term and within a few percentage points of his first term’s weakest showing.
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Another conservative theme: favor big business in every possible way, never mind pollution or progress to mediate climate change. (I.e. short-term thinking while ignoring long-term consequences.)
Associated Press, 25 Nov 2025: Trump EPA moves to abandon rule that sets tough standards for deadly soot pollution (Via)
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Paul Krugman on DOGE.
Paul Krugman, 25 Nov 2025: DOGE Was a Harbinger of Trump’s Assault on Decency and Privacy, subtitled “Democrats will have to repair the damage”
But although DOGE is gone, its malign legacy endures. Arguably DOGE’s biggest “achievement” was shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development. And the dismantling of USAID has left a legacy of death. According to one recent study, closing the agency “has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children.”
Back at home, DOGE wreaked havoc on the U.S. government through a combination of arrogance, ignorance and sheer incompetence.
…
Although DOGE is no longer, the damage persists. In addition to the needless loss of hundreds of thousands of lives around the world and the trashing of America’s global reputation, all for some flashy headlines, DOGE also seriously compromised the functioning of the US government. Thousands of dedicated federal employees were pushed out, taking their expertise and institutional knowledge with them, while those who remain are demoralized. Future recruitment of high-quality government workers will be much more difficult given the way their predecessors were treated.
