Pensito Illustration His appointees are usually good at one thing: Trump pleasin’.
But agencies like FEMA require capable leaders, it stands to reason.
We don’t need some bloke
Who covers his ignorance with a joke,
Like FEMA head David Richardson, who doesn’t know it’s hurricane season.
“What I have said very publicly is that Democrats need to play possum. This whole thing is collapsing. …. I believe that this administration, in less than 30 days is in the midst of a massive collapse and particularly a collapse in public opinion. …. It’s going to be easy pickings here in six weeks. Just lay back.”
— James Carville told Mediaite that the Trump administration would “collapse” within 30 days and advised Democrats to sit back and let it happen.
A new Economist/YouGov Poll finds President Trump’s approval rating and personal popularity falling over the past two weeks. This week’s poll finds Americans are less likely to approve of Trump (46%) than to disapprove (48%), and less likely to view him favorably (46%) than unfavorably (52%).
Trump and Musk think federal employees are shirking,
But we think their approach is disconcerting.
Don’t you think it’s funny
That they think we’re saving money
By paying 40,000 people for eight months of not working?
“President-elect Donald Trump is preparing nearly 100 executive orders for when he returns to the White House on Jan. 20,” the Washington Post reports. “Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma), appearing on Fox News, said Trump relayed plans to take action on immigration and energy, among other issues, during a meeting with Republican senators in Washington on Wednesday night.”
Pensito Illustration
By resigning as FBI director prior to the end of his 10-year tenure, Christopher Wray has thwarted Donald Trump’s plans to install the odious Kash Patel as FBI chief.
New York Times: “By stepping down now, as the conservative writer Erick Erickson observed, Wray has created a ‘legal obstacle to Trump trying to bypass the Senate confirmation process.’”
“Here’s why. According to the Vacancies Reform Act, if a vacancy occurs in a Senate-confirmed position, the president can temporarily replace that appointee (such as the F.B.I. director) only with a person who has already received Senate confirmation or with a person who’s served in a senior capacity in the agency (at the GS-15 pay scale) for at least 90 days in the year before the resignation.”
“Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s chosen successor at the F.B.I., meets neither of these criteria. He’s not in a Senate-confirmed position, and he’s not been a senior federal employee in the Department of Justice in the last year. That means he can’t walk into the job on Day 1.”
“Within the party Ronald Reagan once led so capably, it is increasingly fashionable to suggest that the sort of global leadership he modeled is no longer America’s place. … But let’s be absolutely clear: America will not be made great again by those who are content to manage our decline.”
L’il Marco Rubio secretary of state? That’s adorable. Stephen Miller because — not despite — he’s horrible.
As Trump fills his cabinet,
We ain’t seen nothing yet,
But rest assured — it will be another Basket of Deplorables.
When Joe Biden tripped, Donald Trump made a big to-do.
When Trump slipped, tripped and gripped, it went viral, too!
But hey, you’re the president,
And it pays to have a sycophant
Like Li’l Marco, who will badly fake a trip to cover for you.
“I noted over the weekend several reasons why Donald Trump himself, his presidency, and his administration overall are nowhere near prepared for the Iran/Israel situation. … But the more that it becomes an Iran/US situation, the more it’s important to add one more important point: Trump is absolutely, utterly unprepared to rally the nation around a war effort. And nothing we’ve seen in the last ten years even hints that he’s capable of it.”
“Conventional political analyses do not come close to describing the way our world has been turned on its head. Yes, the GOP lost its spine and its balls; Democrats flailed; the electorate realigned. The enter>tainment wing of the GOP routed the establishment. Much of the rest of the media has been enshittified. … But that really doesn’t capture the velocity or the scope of the transformation. It’s not just our politics. America has become dumber, crueler, crazier, and more violent. To much of the rest of the world, we have become unrecognizable.”
“As is so often the case, Donald Trump’s opponents are playing into his hands. This is exactly the kind of fight that Donald Trump loves, with his opponents carrying Mexican flags past burning cars.”
“Don’t kid yourself they know they are absolutely getting cooked politically with their terrible bill and rising prices, and they want to create a violent spectacle to feed their content machine. It’s time for the mainstream media to describe this authoritarian madness accurately.”
— Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), reacting on X to President Trump sending National Guard troops to Los Angeles.
“The people have spoken. A new political party is needed in America to represent the 80% in the middle! And exactly 80% of people agree. This is fate.”
— Elon Musk floated a new political party on Friday after falling out with President Trump over the big, beautiful bill, The Hill reports. He followed up with a potential name for the group, “The America Party.”
America’s millionaire population grew by 379,000 for a total of 23.8 million, the most of any country, according to a new study by UBS, CNBC reports. Much of that wealth growth came from strong markets and a stable dollar, which both have been disrupted so far in 2025 by a trade war and recession fears.
A new Economist/YouGov poll finds 60% of Americans think the U.S. military should not get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran. Only 16% support U.S. military action, and 24% are unsure.
A new Washington Post poll finds Americans opposing U.S. airstrikes against Iran by a 20 percentage-point margin — 45 percent to 25 percent — with a sizable 30 percent saying they are unsure.
Americans broadly disapprove of the job Donald Trump is doing as president and favor Democratic U.S. House candidates for the 2026 midterms by 8 points, 45% to 37%, a new Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll finds. The president is underwater on 10 out of 11 issues.
An Economist/YouGov poll found that only 16% of U.S. adults and less than a quarter of Republicans think the U.S. should get involved in the conflict between Iran and Israel. Trump voters are even less enthusiastic than Republicans as a whole. Only 19% of 2024 Trump voters support U.S. involvement.