Lazy Caturday Reads

Good Afternoon!!

By Indira Baldano

The Wall Street Journal: U.S. Loses Last Triple-A Credit Rating. Moody’s downgrades the U.S. government, citing large fiscal deficits and rising interest costs.

The U.S. has lost its last triple-A credit rating.

Moody’s Ratings downgraded the U.S. government on Friday, citing large fiscal deficits and rising interest costs.

Expanding budget deficits mean U.S. government borrowing will rise at an accelerating rate, pushing interest rates up over the long term, Moody’s said. The firm said Friday that it didn’t believe that any current budget proposals under consideration by lawmakers would do anything significant to reduce the persistent gap between government spending and revenues.

The move strips the U.S. of its last remaining triple-A credit rating from a major ratings firm, following similar cuts by Fitch Ratings in 2023 and S&P Global Ratings in 2011. Moody’s downgraded the U.S. to Aa1, a rating also held by Austria and Finland.

“Successive U.S. administrations and Congress have failed to agree on measures to reverse the trend of large annual fiscal deficits and growing interest costs,” Moody’s wrote in a statement….

The Moody’s downgrade comes as Republicans in Congress are trying to fashion a giant tax-and-spending bill that would extend expiring tax cuts, add some new tax cuts, reduce spending on Medicaid and nutrition assistance and boost border enforcement and national defense. It is expected to increase budget deficits by about $3 trillion over the next decade, compared with a scenario where the tax cuts expire as scheduled Dec. 31.

House Republican spending hawks blocked the bill on Friday, trying to accelerate spending cuts and hasten the end of clean-energy tax breaks.

A bit more:

At the margin, the Moody’s downgrade could put pressure on the market for U.S. Treasurys, which has already been hit by expectations for greater borrowing and stubbornly high inflation.

Treasurys, however, rallied after S&P’s 2011 downgrade, in part because the economy was weak, demonstrating that investors still considered the U.S. the world’s safest bet. Few expect the Moody’s downgrade to spur market turmoil this time. The U.S. remains the world’s largest economy and the benchmark against which other countries are measured.

But some investors said the downgrade could exacerbate the damage the recent trade war has done to that exceptional position. And that might compel global investors to lift the premium they demand to buy U.S. debt, which could drive benchmark yields beyond their recent level around 4.5%, likely stressing growth and market sentiment.

“That could generate an even bigger deficit because the cost of servicing our debt would also go up,” said Michael Goosay, global head of fixed income at Principal Asset Management.

Obviously, Trump couldn’t care less about what happens to the U.S. credit rating. He’s just going to bleed the country dry and grab as much has he can while doing it.

Ultra right wing members of the House budget committee voted against Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” yesterday.

NBC News: Conservatives block Trump agenda bill from advancing in major setback for GOP leaders.

The GOP-led House Budget Committee voted to reject a sweeping package for President Donald Trump’s agenda on Friday, dealing an embarrassing setback to Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Republican leaders.

A glass of milk, Nataliya Bagatskaya, (Ucraina, b.1967)

The vote in the Budget Committee was 16-21, with a band of conservative hard-liners who are pushing for steeper spending cuts joining all Democrats in voting against the multitrillion-dollar legislation, leaving its fate uncertain.

The Republicans who voted “no” were Reps. Chip Roy of Texas, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Andrew Clyde of Georgia and Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma. Rep. Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania changed his vote from “yes” to “no,” he said, as a procedural move to allow Republicans to call the bill up again.

During the hearing, Roy fired a warning shot at Republican leaders, saying he opposes the bill as written because it will increase the deficit.

“I have to now admonish my colleagues on this side of the aisle. This bill falls profoundly short. It does not do what we say it does with respect to deficits,” Roy said. “That’s the truth. Deficits will go up in the first half of the 10-year budget window and we all know it’s true. And we shouldn’t do that. We shouldn’t say that we’re doing something we’re not doing.”

“This bill has back-loaded savings and has front-loaded spending,” Roy added. “I am a no on this bill unless serious reforms are made today, tomorrow, Sunday. Something needs to change or you’re not gonna get my support.”

After the vote tally was read, Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, the committee chair, adjourned the hearing and told members they would not be meeting again this weekend.

On the tariff front, CNBC reports on Trump’s response to Walmart’s announcement they they will have to raise prices: Trump tells Walmart to ‘eat the tariffs’ after retailer warned it will raise prices.

President Donald Trump blasted Walmart on Saturday after the retailer warned this week that it will raise prices because of tariffs.

“Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, “EAT THE TARIFFS,” and not charge valued customers ANYTHING,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!”

Walmart CFO John David Rainey said in an interview on Thursday that “We have not seen price increases at this magnitude, in the speed in which they’re coming at us before, and so it makes for a challenging environment.”

Rainey said he is “pleased with the progress that’s been made by the [Trump] administration on tariffs from the levels that were announced in early April, but they’re still too high.”

He said the company will “try to work with suppliers to keep prices as low as we can.”

Yesterday the Supreme Court dealt a blow to the Trump administration’s deportation plans.

CNN: Supreme Court blocks Trump from restarting Alien Enemies Act deportations.

The Supreme Court on Friday blocked President Donald Trump from moving forward with deportations under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act for a group of immigrants in northern Texas, siding with Venezuelans who feared they were poised for imminent removal under the sweeping wartime authority.

The decision is a significant loss for Trump, who wants to use the law to speed deportations – and avoid the kind of review normally required before removing people from the country. But the decision is also temporary and the underlying legal fight over the president’s invocation will continue in multiple federal courts across the country.

By Sandra Batoni

The justices sent the case at issue back to an appeals court to decide the underlying questions in the case, including whether the president’s move is legal and, if it is, how much notice the migrants targeted under the act should receive….

The court’s unsigned opinion was notably pointed about how the government was attempting to handle the removals and also how US District Judge James Hendrix had dealt with the case at an earlier stage.

The court referenced another case that had reached it previously, that of the Maryland man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly removed to El Salvador. The court noted that the Trump administration has represented that it is “unable to provide for the return of an individual deported in error to a prison in El Salvador.”

Given that, the court said, “the detainees’ interests at stake are accordingly particularly weighty.” In other words, the court was saying it is important to get the legal questions correct before people are removed, potentially, forever.

Thomas and Alito dissented, naturally.

Commentary by SCOTUS expert Steve Vladeck at One First: The Supreme Court’s (Alien Enemies Act) Patience is Wearing Thin.

Way back on <checks notes> Wednesday, I wrote a long post updating the state of play in the (many) cases challenging President Trump’s attempt to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove from the United States, on a mass, summary basis, individuals the government claims to be Venezuelan members of the Tren de Aragua (TdA)….

As I noted then, the Supreme Court had yet to decide the ACLU’s pending emergency application in the case from the Northern District of Texas—with the unhelpful caption “A.A.R.P. v. Trump.” That’s the case in which the Court had temporarily blocked further removals in its after-midnight ruling early on Saturday, April 19 (which I covered here). But a full ruling on the application has been pending ever since.

Well, around 3:45 on Friday afternoon, that ruling came down. And the decision—in “A.A.R.P. II”—is a pretty big deal. So I thought I’d put together this quick post that walks through what happened—and why it matters….

What Did the Court … Hold? There’s a lot of technical stuff in the eight-page, unsigned majority opinion.1 What’s especially important are, by my count, three different holdings: First, that the Fifth Circuit did have jurisdiction to hear the plaintiffs’ appeal of the district court’s refusal to block their removal (it had concluded otherwise). Second, that the plaintiffs were entitled to more notice than they had received as of April 18. And third—and this is the quiet bombshell in the ruling—that “this Court may properly issue temporary injunctive relief to the putative class in order to preserve our jurisdiction pending appeal,” even without resolving whether full class certification is likely….

The post is pretty technical, so if you want the details, read the whole thing at the link. I’ll just quote one more section:

Is It Me, Or is the Majority Opinion … Unusually Pointed? It’s not you. There are at different passages in which the majority openly seems to be expressing … frustration … with the government; the lower courts; and Justice Alito (who wrote a dissenting opinion that was joined by Justice Thomas), respectively.

It appears that at least some of the justices are getting sick and tired of the Trump administration’s dishonesty and refusal to obey the courts.

A bit more immigration news:

NBC News: Trump attorneys draw judge’s ire by saying ‘state secrets’ keep them from sharing details on Abrego Garcia’s return.

GREENBELT, Md. — In a contentious court hearing on Friday, Trump administration attorneys argued before a federal judge in Maryland that they should be allowed to withhold information regarding efforts to facilitate the return of a Salvadoran man to the United States.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia remains in the Salvadoran prison system despite orders from a federal judge and the Supreme Court calling for the government to facilitate his return to the United States.

Drawing of old woman with cat, Max Leibermann

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said the government’s refusal to provide certain information in the case has been “an exercise in utter frustration.” In a back-and-forth that has continued for weeks,Xinis has ordered the administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release and provide documentation on what steps it has taken, if any, to comply with that order.

Government lawyers said the administration has not been able to answer questions about Abrego Garcia’s case because that information would be considered protected under “state secrets” or “deliberative process” privileges that should not be shared with the public.

On Friday, Xinis said the administration has not made a good-faith effort to comply with the court order. She repeatedly called on the administration to show how turning over evidence of actions it has taken or will take to return Abrego Garcia would pose a reasonable danger to foreign affairs.

“There is simply no detail. This is basically, ‘Take my word for it,’” the judge said.

From Garcia’s attorneys:

Abrego Garcia’s team said the discovery they’ve received from the government thus far has been inadequate, and Xinis appeared to agree. The plaintiffs said they received 164 documents, and 132 of them were photocopies of court filings and their own discovery requests. Rossman said that of the remaining 32 new documents, half were related to Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s recent trip to El Salvador to see Abrego Garcia.

Rossman said the government logged 1,140 documents as “privileged,” in “every manner of privilege that I’ve ever heard of.”

“My head is spinning, your honor,” he said.

Rossman also said it was “deeply disturbing” that while the administration has claimed in court that it’s complying with the order to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release, high-ranking officials including Trump himself have contradicted that in public.

The administration’s claims, Xinis says, have been hampering efforts to get to the bottom of whether the government has disobeyed the court order by not facilitating the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States.

Politico: Trump administration acknowledges another error in a high-profile deportation.

When a Guatemalan man sued the Trump administration in March for deporting him to Mexico despite a fear of persecution, immigration officials had a response: The man told them himself he was not afraid to be sent there.

But in a late Friday court filing, the administration acknowledged that this claim — a key plank of the government’s response to a high-stakes class action lawsuit — was based on erroneous information.

Manfred W. Juergens, The girl with the cat

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials now say they have no record of anyone being told by the man, identified only by the initials O.C.G. in court papers, that he was unafraid of going to Mexico. The error, they say, was attributable to a “software tool” known as ICE’s “ENFORCE alien removal module” that tracks individual deportation cases and allows staff to insert comments.

“Upon further investigation … ICE was unable to identify an officer or officers who asked O.C.G. if he feared a return to Mexico,” said Brian Ortega, assistant field office director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, in a sworn statement to the federal judge overseeing the lawsuit.

The mistake may have been costly: The judge overseeing the lawsuit said last month he did not order the administration to facilitate O.C.G.’s immediate return from Mexico in part because of the dispute. Instead, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, a Biden appointee based in Massachusetts, ordered expedited fact-finding, which helped unearth the mistake.

ICE’s acknowledgment is the latest in a string of errors that have led judges to fault the administration for attempting to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign at a breakneck pace — often at the expense of due process.

The latest on DOGE’s slimy activities:

The Washington Post: How DOGE’s grand plan to remake Social Security is backfiring.

The U.S. DOGE Service arrived at the Social Security Administration this year determined to slash staff and root out what it claimed was widespread fraud and wasteful spending — a mission Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team has pursued across the government.

But as of this week, many of the major changes DOGE pushed at Social Security have been abandoned or are being reversed after proving ineffective, while others are yielding unintended consequences and badly damaging customer service and satisfaction. The problems come as the agency struggles to cope with a record surge of hundreds of thousands of retirement claims in recent months.

DOGE, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency but is not a Cabinet-level agency, had to cancel a plan to cut phone service for retirement and disability claims after drawing outrage from lawmakers, seniors and advocates. Staff reductions and reassignments led by DOGE are slowing the pace of claims processing as field offices lose longtime staff and gain a smaller number of inexperienced replacements. DOGE-driven changes to the agency’s website are causing crashes almost every day, and phone customers complain about dropped calls and long wait times. A DOGE-imposed spending freeze is leading to shortages of basic office supplies, from printer cartridges to the phone headsets staff need to do their jobs.

And on Friday, Social Security leaders told employees that the agency was ending a security check, developed at DOGE’s request, that was meant to root out allegedly fraudulent claims filed over the phone, according to three employees familiar with the situation and an email obtained by The Washington Post. But the measure — which involved placing a three-day hold on all phone claims as other staffers checked into the caller’s background — had only identified a couple of potential fraud cases while causing significant delays in claims processing, two employees said.

Kathleen Romig, a former Social Security official who is now at the left-leaningCenter on Budget and Policy Priorities, said there were already safeguards in place to detect fraud through the agency’s phone service. DOGE’s efforts have only delayed claims processing and, like most of the team’s attempts to reshape Social Security, placed serious stress on the agency, she said.

“So much of this is self-inflicted wounds,” Romig said.

The Washington Post: Trump’s actions are pushing thousands of experts to flee government.

At the National Institutes of Health, six directors — from institutes focused on infectious disease, child health, nursing research and the human genome — are leaving or being forced out.

t the Federal Aviation Administration, nearly a dozen top leaders, including the chief air traffic officer, are retiring early.

Siesta, Irina Orazio Orazi (Italian, 1848-1912)

And at the Treasury Department, more than 200 experienced managers and highly skilled technical experts who help run the government’s financial systems chose to accept the Trump administration’s resignation offer earlier this year, according to a staffer and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Across the federal government, a push for early retirement and voluntary separation is fueling a voluntary exodus of experienced, knowledgeable staffers unlike anything in living memory, according to interviews with 18 employees across 10 agencies and records reviewed by The Post. Other leaders with decades of service are being dismissed as the administration eliminates full offices or divisions at a time.

The first resignation offer, sent in January, saw 75,000 workers across government agree to quit and keep drawing pay through September, the administration has said. But a second round, rolling out agency by agency through the spring, is seeing a sustained, swelling uptick that will dwarf the first, potentially climbing into the hundreds of thousands, the employees and the records show.

There’s no way I’m trusting anything this government has to say about health and safety.

I’ll wrap this up with a couple of ridiculous stories:

CNN: Former FBI Director James Comey interviewed by the US Secret Service.

Former FBI Director James Comey was interviewed by US Secret Service agents at their Washington, DC, field office on Friday afternoon, according to law enforcement sources.

Comey was interviewed by agents investigating a social media post he posted Thursdayshowing shells in the sand on a beach spelling out “86 47,” which has become a popular social media code for removing Trump from the presidency.

Comey was not in custody and appeared voluntarily, a source said.

Trump and fellow Republicans have attacked Comey for the post, demanding an investigation.

Comey “knew exactly what that meant,” Trump said in a Fox News interview. “A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination.”

In explaining why he removed the post, Comey wrote on Instagram that he had “posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message.”

It was expected that Comey will be asked if he intended the message as a threat, or to inspire others who might consider an act of violence against Trump, the source said. Ultimately, a decision on whether the case is chargeable as a threat against the president may lie with the US attorney in Washington.

Funny how no Trumpers were interviewed by the FBI when they posted 86 46 when Biden was president.

HuffPost: Trump Has Embarrassing Public Meltdown After Bruce Springsteen Diss.

The president of the United States used the full power of his office Friday to have an embarrassing public meltdown online.

Donald Trump, you see, appears to be freaking out after he got scolded by the Boss on the first night of his European tour.

Figure with Black Cat, 2020 by Mary Sauer (American, b. 1986)

“I see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States,” Trump wrote, glossing over the fact that he, too, is currently in a foreign country speaking badly about someone.

“He’s not a talented guy,” Trump sniped of the decorated Rock and Roll Hall of Famer who’s won 20 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, an Academy Award, a Special Tony Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Trump also called Springsteen “a pushy, obnoxious JERK” without a hint of self-awareness.

Springsteen opened the first show of his tour with an unambiguous rallying cry for democracy, warning that America “is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.”

“Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us,” he said. “Raise your voices against the authoritarianism, and let freedom ring.”