The February 11, 2025 Kook Roundup

Defying the Judiciary

Department of Education

Kookery

Defying the Judiciary

While we're not yet at the point where the Executive Coup (auto-coup, self-coup, autogolpe, or whatever it ends up being called) has fully broken with the Constitution, we are now perilously close. It's not quite clear whether willful defiance, the chaos of trying to terminate much of the civil service, or inability to comply due to deliberate sabotage are the reason. It may still be some time before we know if the Constitution is still operable against the executive branch as a practical matter.

One might think that in these circumstances, the ones seizing power that is not theirs to wield would protest and say they aren't doing anything wrong. And yet, the White House Press Secretary is aggressively claiming the opposite.

This Rupar piece addresses the issue in which people oriented towards rule of law would have accepted a certain amount of the Trump craziness had it followed some semblance of the Constitution's framework and been blessed by the (largely right-oriented) courts. Instead, the assault is being done so carelessly and lawlessly as to almost invite a showdown with the judiciary.

In the midst of all this, the USAID Inspector General somehow issued a report about the lawlessness and lunacy of his agency's destruction at the hands of quasi-government lunatics with the keys to the kingdom.

It goes without saying, but in a world where the Benghazi embassy attack and the Afghanistan withdrawal were the epitome of misconduct, the USAID dissolution incorporates the worst aspects of both for a fresh hell of lawless lunacy.

The whole mess is perhaps summarized best here by Aaron Ross Powell. It's generous in only assuming incompetence, and not much more than that, but it's quite correct in the sense that our networked society perceives needs for competency cosplayers, useful lies, pathways to radicalization, etc and provides them all for anyone who wishes to partake.

Department of Education

Another day, another lawless raid on a government agency by kooks. Quite a few people probably have questions about how the federal Department of Education works and the wisdom of its programs. However, the present course taken by the corporate raiders looting America is to not go before Congress, but to simply blow up the agency from inside and defy the courts and anyone else. So here, we face a fundamental challenge to both the separation of powers and to American federalism more generally.

The administration seems to have the twin goals of absolutely gutting the Department of Education in terms of any benefits it provides to the innumerable education systems throughout the country. But it also seems to have the goal of doing exactly what the Supreme Court ruling in NFIB v. Sebelius (2012) prohibits - using the loss of funding as a lever to control state behavior.

One of the most pernicious parts of the Department of Education raid that it shares in common with a lot of the others is the removal of any accountability, investigative, or metrics-based capabilities. And while I certainly have quibbles with the No Child Left Behind philosophy that everything in education was easily measurable in an ROI style, this corrupt vandalism goes far past any reasonable objection.

And as we look at this sabotage alongside the NIH's, it's worth noting that a lot of this was made easier by the prior kook attacks on higher education and scientific research more generally where largely reactionary college leadership was content to stay silent as a way of consolidating their power over students and faculty.

This AAUP report tells the story of the kook propagandists who developed this approach that on one hand was attractive to reactionary administrations fighting for total control on campus while ensuring a longer-term attack on research and higher education would go largely unresisted.

Manufacturing Backlash: Right-Wing Think Tanks and Legislative Attacks on Higher Education, 2021–2023

During the 2021, 2022, and 2023 state legislative sessions more than one hundred and fifty bills were introduced seeking to actively undermine academic freedom and university autonomy. This legislation has been pushed by a network of right-wing and libertarian think tanks, working closely with Republican politicians, to manufacture a culture war backlash against educators and academic institutions.

AAUPIsaac Kamola

Kookery

One of the more fascinating aspects of Trumpism is how it's essentially a syncretic post-modern religion with Trump as the savior and Musk as some sort of revenging angel of technical competence. There's no policies, no desire for a specific legislative agenda, no political or philosophical alignment – just an overwhelming desire to burn it all down.

And then there's whatever this is.

And while the broligarchs are taking over government, they seemed to have moved in on a religious grift angle as well. One has to assume this is in the recognition that Trump has no logical or viable successor at present, and the only real way to lock-in their control of the levers of power is to develop the religious fervor that Trump inspires. But I suspect they lack the fundamentally clownish disposition to pull his particular brand of demagoguery off.