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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, a newsletter that calls for the immediate impeachment of any “radical left” readers who don’t scroll all the way to the end.
As for the news … well, at least the weather’s getting nicer? This week, we didn’t learn anything new about who killed JFK, but we did learn the Social Security numbers of various living American citizens. A humbled Chuck Schumer submitted himself to continued punishment on television. A wussy law firm caved to Trump, something the Surge will never do (for less than a couple hundred bucks).
But let’s begin with the constitutional crisis du jour!
1.
James Boasberg
The biggest whiners in the history of the universe.
We believe this should be obvious, but we notice in the Trump era that some obvious things are never plainly put: Just a couple of months in, the Republican Party has forever lost the ability to complain about any Democrat trying to “delegitimize” the courts. This week’s effort of coordinated, premeditated delegitimization of the judiciary from the very bottom to the very top of the MAGA coalition was centered on James “Jeb” Boasberg, chief judge of the D.C. District Court. He told the administration that it couldn’t quite yet use its new statutory toy from 1798 to round up some guys with tattoos, call them gang members, and quick schlep them out of the country, ordering any such flights that had taken off to return to the U.S. The administration disobeyed that completely, and Boasberg has been understandably upset, which only got worse as he asked for more information and was repeatedly rebuffed.
For his efforts, Trump has called Boasberg a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge,” and a “troublemaker and agitator” who didn’t win any swing states in the 2024 election, and said he should be impeached. Attorney General Pam Bondi, boldly, accused Boasberg of “meddling in our government.” Elon Musk is spending to support House members who back the impeachment of Boasberg and other judges. The imbecilic “investigators” of X who believe they’ve uncovered a scandal when anyone owns an asset larger than their annual salary are on the case. (Find the dumbest politics tweet you saw in the last week, any week. The first reply will always be Musk writing, “Interesting.”) We’re seeing a staggering amount of whining and civilizational vandalism in response to being told you can’t do whatever you want to do, right away.
2.
Chuck Schumer
How enduring will the damage be?
When it’s launch time for the Surge’s memoirs (The Surge Decade: Notes on Ranking the News), please remind us not to help Republicans keep the government funded the week before? The Senate Democratic leader canceled a tour promoting his new book on antisemitism scheduled for this week, citing “security concerns”—and it surely wasn’t easy to secure one football stadium after another in the first place. Schumer did maintain a lot of his television appearances, though, keeping a move many apoplectic Democrats viewed as treachery front and center in the news.
What long-term damage to Schumer’s leadership, if any, is going to result from this? He’s unquestionably at his weakest position since taking over as leader in 2017. You are seeing individual Senate Democrats for the first time ever not giving straight answers when asked whether Schumer should continue to lead the caucus. We don’t think Schumer’s job is in anywhere close to real danger. This vitriolic episode will pass, and the leader only needs the votes of half of his caucus to win a leadership election, which he surely has.
But we may be seeing Democratic voters taking on a more hostile relationship to their leaders that’s reminiscent of daily life on the Republican side. In recent history, Democrats have been more appreciative of their leaders than Republicans have been, but that’s changing, fast. It wouldn’t be surprising to see Senate Democratic candidates distance themselves from the leader, or outright run ads against him, in primary campaigns going forward. Mitch McConnell lived and breathed this kind of loathing for decades, but it didn’t stop him from being the longest-serving party leader in Senate history. It probably won’t put Schumer out of a job, either.
3.
Mike Johnson
A new homework assignment.
Trump and Musk being mad about judges on social media means that a fresh new ticket is being printed for their short-order cook, House Speaker Mike Johnson. The absurd impeachment resolution against Boasberg is locked and loaded, as are articles against other judges who’ve impeded the administration’s ability to break the law. And yet, any of these resolutions may be too dead-brained and authoritarian to get out of the House—which tells you something—let alone to get two-thirds of senators to vote to convict. (Not to mention that taking up these measures would be an unneeded time suck for congressional Republicans, which is why plenty of Democrats might not mind seeing it happen.)
Johnson, then, is considering other approaches to the subject that might satisfy the administration. He’s considering, for example, allowing a vote on a bill from California Rep. Darrell Issa that would prevent district court judges from issuing nationwide injunctions. They could also vote on huffy resolutions declaring their distaste for Boasberg et al. It goes without saying that many Republican leaders and chairmen in Congress would prefer to be focusing on tax cut legislation now instead of fanatical, internally divisive efforts to break the federal judiciary. But the boss wants what the boss wants (the boss is Trump).
4.
Vladimir Putin
May we take your order?
Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke this week for several hours. They both had a lovely time. In terms of practical achievements, Putin agreed to a moratorium on attacks on energy infrastructure. As for Trump’s call for a ceasefire? Putin has not agreed to that, as Ukraine has.
He hasn’t signaled that he’d agree to any meaningful concession, and understandably so, because he knows he can lead the current United States president along for a while. On a ceasefire alone, the Kremlin’s readout of the call insisted that it would have to involve ceasing Ukrainian conscription “and the rearmament of the Ukrainian armed forces.” For a broader deal, a “key condition” of Putin’s is “a complete cessation of foreign military aid and the provision of intelligence information to Kyiv.” (Trump, meanwhile, says aid wasn’t discussed at all.)
In short, Russia will agree to a “peace” if the U.S. (and, presumably, European powers) leave Ukraine disarmed, unprotected, and at Russia’s mercy. And that, of course, is before taking into account Russia’s “absolute need to eliminate the root causes of the crisis and ensure Russia’s legitimate interests in the field of security”—in other words, to roll back NATO. What’s happening here is that Putin is making the bet that he can get Trump to agree to absolutely everything in exchange for economic opportunities in Russia, while continuing the assault on Ukraine in the meantime. The only hope is that Trump, for the first time ever, starts to get irritated at Putin for taking advantage of him.
5.
Paul, Weiss
What, The, Hell?
[Note to reader: The Surge spent 30 solemn minutes debating whether to extend the gag of a comma after each word throughout this paragraph—to show we mean business. Like Paul Weiss, we caved.] Last week, the Trump administration tried to shake down a third white-shoe law firm for having employed or represented people who investigated Trump. In this case, the firm was Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. The White House executive order, written in a high-tongue dialect of the Goonish language, called for suspending employees’ security clearances, limiting their access to government buildings, and putting a blanket ban on hiring them.
As with a similar order against the firm Perkins Coie, it was probably illegal and unconstitutional eight ways from Sunday. But instead of fighting it in court, Paul Weiss chairman Brad Karp visited the White House this week to surrender. According to Trump, the firm will “dedicate the equivalent of $40 million in pro bono legal services over the course of President Trump’s term to support the Administration’s initiatives” and pledged not to “adopt, use, or pursue any DEI policies.” Per the New York Times, that DEI language was added by the White House after the two sides had agreed on wording. There were other discrepancies: The White House also said that Karp had “acknowledged the wrongdoing” of its former partner who investigated the Trump hush money case in New York, though HuffPost reported that Karp’s own memo to his staff included no such admission. At any rate, Trump rescinded his executive order. Surely Trump is done with these kinds of shakedowns now, right? Or do you think that such cowering could embolden him to pursue further muggings? Could go either way.
6.
John F. Kennedy
Still dead?
Trump has long promised to release all of the government’s files on the JFK assassination, a process that presidents have dragged their feet on for decades. This was one of his better promises! That’s not because there’s any document, anywhere, that will satisfy people who believe the Cookie Monster was the second shooter; instead, there’s important information in there for the historic record about CIA practices at the height of the Cold War. The manner in which the files were released, though, was a mess. Trump announced during a visit to the Kennedy Center on Monday that the tens of thousands of files that the government was reviewing would be released the next day. In their haste to get this ready, the government ended up releasing Social Security numbers of hundreds of people, not all of whom are dead. Among them was Joseph DiGenova, a former campaign lawyer for Trump, who is considering suing the National Archives. The White House does at least realize how much it screwed up and is trying to control the damage, promising to issue new Social Security numbers to those who are still living. Those new cards will be there and waiting at the nearest Social Security office, a mere 10-hour drive away. More on that …
7.
Leland Dudek
Mistakes were made, and we cannot wait to make more.
A lesson of the Trump era is that a lot of people will put up with a lot of bullshit so long as the Social Security checks keep flowing. Trump has always seemed to understand this. Which makes it surprising that he is allowing Musk and the interim head of the Social Security Administration, Leland Dudek, to fiddle around with the program in ways that jeopardize that flow. The agency is already at a staffing low and plans to lay off another 7,000 workers. They’re closing offices that will increase travel times for old people. At the same time, a lot more of these old people will be needing to visit field offices, because Dudek announced that, in an attempt to crack down on fraud, at the end of the month, beneficiaries will no longer be able to make certain changes by phone.
This is a recipe for a lot of angry Social Security recipients, also known as “voters.” This change was announced in the same week that Dudek sent a message to SSA employees acknowledging that “I have made some mistakes, which makes me human like you. I promise you this, I will continue to make mistakes, but I will learn from them.” Among those mistakes, presumably, was a more far-reaching plan to eliminate phone services, as well as a mysterious, petty, and short-lived policy in Maine requiring parents to register their newborns at a Social Security office. The New Golden Age of America is a longer line at a federal office building.
This post was originally published on here
