20 Conservatives

An Example of How "New Media" Can Be Beneficial...and DOGE updates

Normally, on Mondays, I pick a topical area to focus on and then sift through “new media” (i.e. non-traditional) sites that provide clarity or useful information. The bigger purpose is to foster a different approach to media consumption that leads to better electoral outcomes for Team D. I then riff off of that on Tuesday in writing something of my own.

I’m reversing the order this week.

I watched something fascinating yesterday. It’s from Jubilee Media. (I’m linking their YouTube channel; they have numerous other platforms.) Jubilee does a “Surrounded” debate series where 1 person in the middle sets the parameters of debate, and 20 people of a different point of view sitting around them can step in and challenge. The best one of these I’ve seen wasn’t the one I’m going to focus on here, but an earlier one involving atheist philosopher Alex O’Connor debating 20 people of theistic backgrounds in a surprisingly civil and informative debate.

It’s a sign of our times that the one I’m centering this entry on involves partisan politics, which ends up being not quite as civil as the one about religion and God.

In this one, online host Sam Seder (The Majority Report) takes on about half of the Trump voters (about half only seem to sit there the whole time.)

Watching the above (it’s 90 minutes long) can be amusing, enlightening, or infuriating enough, if only to see how many wrong impressions that (mostly) younger voters have. It was taped in late January, just a few days after Trump had been inaugurated, and a lot has happened since, of course. Especially with DOGE, which is the topic for this week’s news review.

Seder is a former comedic actor turned podcaster, much like Joe Rogan. However, Seder is certainly on the Left, the “Bernie Sanders Left,” if you want to be specific. As such, I don’t always agree with what he says or what the Majority Report tends to focus on. However, on the core issues addressed, I would say that Seder gives pretty standard answers that most of us would agree with. If anything, Seder holds back a little bit on one or two occasions, especially with the young man he’s talking to between the 13 and 19-minute marks, which is one of the more remarkable exchanges of the event. Did you know that government agencies receive tax breaks by hiring minorities? Uh…yeah…government agencies pay taxes to the..er…government, sure, ok, guy! Anyway, as I was watching that part, I remembered a funny SNL skit that the young Trump supporter reminded me of for some reason…

The other one you have to watch is with the young blonde lady shown below, I don’t know her name; I’ll just call her Eva Braun, who gives an almost teary-eyed defense of racism and white nationalism. That one happens around the 40-minute point, just after Mr Government Agency Tax Breaks comes back for a second round of increasingly confused argumentation.

“What’s the problem with xenophobic nationalism? Don’t you think that’s better for Americans in general?” I mean…like…oh my God! As long as it’s MY culture that dominates! Hey Eva! Have you been talking to our Congresswoman?

And on and on it goes. Not all of the conservatives embarrass themselves, there’s a pretty wide array. Again, I think it’s good to hear what some of their arguments are, most of which are just factually wrong, but in some cases, coming from sincere places, I think. I mean, the young lady seems sincere in her racism, I guess, right?

But again, since this week’s focus is DOGE, and because the existence of DOGE isn’t as straightforward as many think, I wanted to close with some basics and then tomorrow provide a series of updates on it tomorrow.

First, I shouldn’t have to spell this out, but the video suggests otherwise, so here goes….just because it has “Department” in the name doesn’t actually make DOGE a government department!

The President cannot constitutionally create nor destroy government departments. Only the legislative branch can do that. And if you get into an argument with conservatives, the exact Constitutional clause to throw at them is Article I, Section 8, the very last of a long series of expressed powers that Congress has.

“DOGE” started out as a crypto-currency, of course, and since Trump is trying to profit from that, he became charmed by the name, and since it starts with “D”…thus "Department.” Yeah, the thinking on Team Trump runs about that deep.

So, it’s not a Department, it’s not even an agency, because Congress creates those too. So what is it?

At best, DOGE is a group of advisors to the Presidents. Presidents can, of course, have as many advisors as they want or as their budget allows, and if as President, Trump wants DOGE to advise him, he can give them a certain amount of authority to review things throughout the Executive Branch.

But figuring out where that authority ends is why there are so many lawsuits right now concerning DOGE, because no President has ever recklessly tried to do what Trump and Musk are doing. That’s because we’ve never had a President with the criminal inclinations of Trump who also has a majority in Congress who slavishly goes along with him (in public anyway) on everything he wants.

So, with criminals in charge of the Executive, and cowards in charge of the Legislative, our Democratic officials, both state and federal, along with federal workers themselves and aligned groups, are all taking the fight to the Judicial Branch.

And while damage is being done, the resistance is growing, and our side is winning some key battles, and we should be heartened by that. Trump and DOGE lost the US AID case in front of the Supreme Court last week, many people fired have had to be rehired, and Musk has been caught vastly overstating and outright lying about what DOGE is “finding.” Even Trump’s Department head stooges are starting to push back against Musk, now that they’re actually in charge of real people who they have to look in the eye and listen to and rely heavily upon. Trump, for the first time last week, actually throttled back on what Musk and DOGE can do.

I’ll provide the links to that and more tomorrow.