Good morning. It is January 22nd. The wayward Arctic cold still covers New York City and most of the continental U.S., including New Orleans, which lies under a thick blanket of snow, and this is your Indignity Morning podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

Late yesterday, Donald Trump rescinded Lyndon Johnson's 1965 executive order that required federal contractors to meet diversity standards in hiring. As the new administration goes all out on an anti-affirmative action agenda, which is to say a negative action agenda, CBS reports that the administration is forcing all federal employees who work in diversity, equity, and inclusion, actually it's diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, into paid administrative leave as Trump quickly prepares to abolish their jobs, close their offices, and otherwise revert federal hiring as fully as possible to the standards and practices it had before the civil rights era. 

On the front of this morning's New York Times, there's a four-column photo of Trump's desk and hands as he signs one or another of his executive orders with a big fat marker clutched in his stubby fingers. The two-column headline beside it, “In wave of moves, Trump opens push to remake nation.” 

“Wave of moves, opens push.” Clearly some things just weren't meant to be reduced to abstractions. The subheads are concrete enough. “Pardoning of rioters angers the police” on the left and “a border crackdown enlists the military on the right.” The pardon story opens with all the police officers who testified against the January 6th attackers. getting a barrage of robo calls under the Justice Department standard procedure to notify victims of crimes when the perpetrators are set free. The story says many of those officers describe themselves as struggling and depressed in response to Mr. Trump freeing their attackers. Then comes a paragraph that could have been featured a lot more prominently a lot sooner, say, as the subject of an opening question in a presidential debate. “In the days and weeks after the riot, the Times writes, several police officers at the Capitol on January 6th died, including Officer Brian D. Sicknick of the Capitol Police, who was attacked by the mob, suffered a stroke and died of natural causes on January 7th. Officers Jeffrey Smith of Washington's Metropolitan Police Department and Howard S. Liebengood of the Capitol Police died by suicide in the days after the violence.” 

Axios is reporting that White House advisors who wanted to tell a story about the pardons have told Axios that the decision to free everyone was an impulsive last minute decision. “As Trump's team wrestled with the issue,” Mark Caputo writes, “and planned a shock and awe batch of executive orders day one, Trump just said, fuck it,” or F-K it, as someone somewhere along the chain between words leaving Trump's mouth and words reaching the bridges of Axios amended it. Anyway, “Trump just said, fuck it, release them all, an advisor familiar with the discussion said.” 

The Wall Street Journal editorial board is also upset, just as they said they would be, which is better than their immediately swallowing it, whatever that's worth. 

In another case of Trump doing what he said he was going to do, the AP is reporting that rather than simply imposing Trump's January 27th deadline for suspending all future refugee processing and resettlement, the administration canceled the existing flights of people who had already been completely vetted and approved. “Thousands of refugees,” the AP writes “are now stranded at various locations around the globe.” What the text of the executive order said didn't matter. The point was to do what the president wanted done. 

Back in the Times, there is already a recurrent strand of phrasing and explanation in the various stories about our new government. The story about Trump's orders calling for a border crackdown notes, “though some of the orders were likely to face steep legal challenges and might be difficult or impossible to enforce, the directive sent an unmistakable message that Mr. Trump was serious about fulfilling his frequent campaign promises of clamping down on the border and escalating an anti-immigration agenda that he has made the centerpiece of his political identity.” 

Right down on the fold, under the headline, “President Wants to Unleash Energy, but Not If It's Wind or Solar,” The embedded subheadline is, “efforts to stifle shift to renewable power face legal risks.” And the story says, “while some actions lie within his purview, others may violate federal law or run counter to judicial decisions. Among other things, Mr. Trump raised the possibility of reversing the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gases, which has been confirmed by the Supreme Court, and proposed to halt funding for electric vehicle charging stations that Congress has already authorized.” The other big unifying theme is that this is all bullshit. After the immigration story describes how Trump signed an order that gave the military an explicit role in immigration enforcement and directed the Defense Department to come up with a plan to seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of the United States by repelling forms of invasion, and that that would probably clash with an 1870s law called the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally limits the use of regular federal troops for domestic policing purposes. The story then notes that as Trump is unlawfully calling out the military in the name of responding to an emergency and fighting off an invasion, nothing remotely like that is even happening. The Times writes, “Mr. Trump took the steps even as the current state of the border is fairly calm, with crossings having fallen sharply after the Biden administration took major steps to limit migration.”

Likewise, the story about Trump's assault on renewable energy and his desire to repay his generous support from the fossil fuel industry with the quid pro quo that he openly promised the oil barons that they would get, notes “the moves also underscore a fundamental tension. Mr. Trump declared that the United States is facing an energy emergency, yet he wants to block thousands of megawatts of planned wind projects that could power homes and businesses. He talks about strengthening American manufacturing, but plans to stifle the electric vehicle industry, which has invested billions of dollars in new factories across the United States.” The story continues. “by any economic measure, the United States is not facing an energy emergency. Experts said. America is the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas. And the price of oil, about seventy six dollars per barrel, is roughly the same as the average cost over the past 20 years adjusted for inflation. The cost of gasoline, about $3.13 per gallon, has dropped about 3 % over the past 12 months.” 

And speaking of pretexts, on page A16, the Times reports that Trump fired the head of the Coast Guard, Linda L. Fagan, the first woman to lead a branch of the armed forces, purportedly, according to a statement put out by the Homeland Security Department, because of leadership deficiencies, operational failures, and inability to advance the strategic objectives of the U.S. Coast Guard. The Times reports that “the statement said she had not adequately deployed Coast Guard assets to stop fentanyl and other illicit substances from entering the United States,” and the Times writes “the statement claimed she had an excessive focus on diversity, equity and inclusion policies and accused her of failing to adequately address systemic issues related to sexual harassment at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut.” It's a pretty comprehensive brief to have put together in two days. But, on the subject of how seriously the administration takes sexual offenses in the military, and speaking of people dissatisfied with the spectacle of women in uniform, on the facing page the headline is “Hegseth's ex-in-law claims   he was abusive to second wife. The Times along with other media outlets got a hold of a sworn statement by the former sister-in-law of Defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth Claiming that he was the Times writes, “so abusive toward his second wife that she once hid in a closet from him and had a safe word to call for help if she needed to get away from him. The affidavit also says,” the Times writes, “that Mr. Hegseth drank so much at a family dinner at a Minneapolis restaurant that afterward an Uber driver had to pull over on an interstate highway so that he could vomit. At another bar, Mr. Hegseth danced drunk with a glass of gin and tonic in each hand, dropped the glasses on the dance floor and had to be dragged out of the bar,” and the Times writes, “said that she recounted to the FBI another episode that occurred in 2009, but said she did not have firsthand knowledge of it. She said she was told that after a drill with the National Guard, Mr. Hegseth was found at a nearby strip club, drunken in uniform, getting lap dances.” Republicans have already advanced Hegseth out of the Armed Services Committee on a strict party line vote. 

And back on page one, “Israel extends West Bank raids as conflict in Gaza is suspended.” Ceasefire in Gaza, open fire on Palestinians somewhere else. “On Monday,” the story notes, “President Trump rescinded sanctions imposed by the Biden administration last year on dozens of far right Israeli individuals and settler groups accused of violence against Palestinians and the seizure or destruction of Palestinian property. The move,” the Times writes, “came shortly after Mr. Trump took office, even as Jewish extremists raided several Palestinian villages, setting fire to vehicles and properties, according to Palestinian officials, and the Israeli military.” 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The indignity morning podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. Our podcasting efforts are sustained through the subscription dollars and tips of you, the audience. Please do keep those coming. Bundle up, but do try to get some fresh air. And if nothing too unforeseen happens, or if I don't mismanage a sort of foreseeable pileup of obligations, we will talk again tomorrow.