☕️ FROZEN ☙ Thursday, January 30, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

The terrible or terrific (depending on your point of view) brilliance of Trump's mass-firing plan begins to emerge from the fog of war. The Democrats are realizing they are playing major catch-up.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! Yesterday was another blockbuster day, as the Trump sackings continued and the progressives kept taking it. It turns out there’s a great reason why they’re still taking the hits, and they are just now starting to realize they may be playing 5-D chess, when they thought they were playing Chutes and Ladders. That, a calling multiplier, and plenty more in the roundup.

🪖 C&C ARMY POST 🪖

🪖🪖🪖 MULTIPLIER ORDERS 🪖🪖🪖

🪖 Here we go again. This morning, we need the C&C Army to respond to yesterday’s New York Times story headlined, “DeSantis Says He Will Veto Immigration Bill in Clash With Lawmakers.” Florida —and President Trump’s immigration agenda— needs your help.

Here’s the short version. Governor DeSantis called an emergency special legislative session to pass a bill making it easier for Florida to help the federal government achieve mass deportation. The legislators complained, and when —required by law— met, they immediately ended the Governor’s session and started their own session, the political equivalent of a temper tantrum.

They ashcanned the Governor’s proposed bill and drafted their own. It’s terrible. It’s worse than terrible. The bill they passed would make it nearly impossible for President Trump to deport anyone, much less the kind of mass deportations needed. The bill is deceptive, with a name “The TRUMP Act,” suggesting one thing, but would make Florida a sanctuary state in all but name.

There are many reasons why this bill is worse than terrible, but the single worst is that the passed bill would bizarrely move all immigration enforcement under the state’s Agriculture Commissioner. Local law enforcement would be prohibited from talking to ICE — they could only go through the Ag Commissioner’s office. But it gets even worse.

The State’s current Ag Commissioner is Wilton Simpson. Believe me when I tell you he has an awful record on illegal immigration. But rather than get in those weeds, this is not the first problem we’ve had with Wilton. He was Florida’s Senate President between 2020 and 2022, and in 2021, Wilton used his Senate President position to try to undermine all our efforts to stop vaccine mandates.

With aid from the C&C Army back then, we organized a calling campaign called “5-a-day” starting in the spring of 2021. Thousands of C&Cers called Florida’s Republican legislators every day imploring them to call a special session to outlaw vaccine mandates in the state. We were eventually successful. The special session on vaccine mandates met that November, and created a precedent for the rest of the country to follow.

But during the summer, as responses from Republican lawmakers seemed less enthusiastic than we were hoping for, I started digging into who was resisting. It was Wilton Simpson. He is a HUGE vaccine mandate fan. Wilton LOVES jabs. He immediately mandated them for the employees of all his businesses. And he was squarely opposed to a special session to ban the mandates he was so in love with.

We finally got it done over Simpson’s behind-the-scenes efforts to stop us. But trust me when I tell you the worst imaginable person to put in charge of illegal immigration in Florida is Wilton Simpson. The worst. I cannot imagine what lawmakers are thinking.

So, I’m asking the C&C Army to invest two minutes today, in two quick phone calls. Two-for-two. Please call the offices of each of these two Florida lawmakers:

• Senate President Ben Albritton, (850) 487-5027 or (863) 534-0073, (941) 575-5717.

• Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez, (850) 717-5116 or (305) 348-1414.

You’ll get a person or voice mail. Here is a short sample script:

Hi, I’m calling about the TRUMP Act. Please stop playing politics with the Governor. Pass his strong bill to support President Trump. Also, involving the Ag Comissioner is insane, nobody thinks that is a good idea or makes any sense. Thank you.

Feel free to use your own words; it’s even more effective that way. The script is just for convenience. At this stage, please be polite and avoid threats.

Even if you aren’t a Floridian, we can’t let this happen in Florida. If Florida collapses into opposing the Trump Agenda, other states will surely follow. There’s a dense fog of political war, so I don’t yet know precisely why Florida’s Republican Legislators are undermining the Governor.

You’ll feel terrific afterwards, I promise. Now on to the roundup.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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Yesterday, Reuters ran a terrific story headlined, “Trump, Musk suggest sped-up return of NASA astronauts, but details scarce.”

Details of the new rescue mission, Reuters reported, are scarce. Or possibly invisible. As far as I can tell, all anybody knows is that Musk and Trump traded tweets. But the nub, or gist, is that the Biden Administration never asked Musk or SpaceX to go get the two stranded astronauts any sooner.

Butch and Suni are currently scheduled to come home in March — which means their 8-day flight will have been delayed by a year. It seems like a fair guess the two astronauts are getting sick of forever falling in zero gravity and eating pureed meats from a tube, and would be ecstatic to return to Earth earlier than NASA’s extended schedule.

The most mysterious question about this Gilligan’s Island in Space story is: why wouldn’t the Biden Administration have already asked SpaceX for special help? Were they worried SpaceX would turn around and ask Biden to stop investigating the company for disturbing the turtles and the dolphins? Or was Biden trying to protect Boeing from embarrassment? What do you think?

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President Trump’s federal workforce policy is beginning to look, even to his enemies, like 5-D chess. I’ll explain it in two stories. First, yesterday Newsweek ran a defiant story under the headline, “Former USDA inspector general defies Trump order, escorted from her office.” As you probably recall, President Trump fired 17 of 74 Inspectors General (IGs). The 17 former highly-paid inspectors, who are now disgruntled ex-employees, got together over soy latte and explored their options. Sue? File a grievance? Call the Union? The ex-IGs, well acquainted with technical legal arguments, dithered over the validity of their own termination notices and wondered whether Trump had “legally fired” them. Of the 17, only former USDA Inspector General Phyllis Fong (fake name alert) has decided to hashtag-Resist. FAFO, Phyllis.

Ms. Fong’s War was not quite the heroic standoff that media has painted. It seems more like she just waited for security to come get her from her office. Nevertheless, a handful of corporate media articles about Fong’s departure tried to paint the 22-year bureaucrat as “apolitical” and super-effective since she once requested a listeria investigation or something.

I don’t know Ms. Fong. But I’ll go out on a limb here. If the President fires you and then you refuse to leave the office, forcing a security showdown, that sort of proves the point of why you were fired in the first place. Inspectors General are classified as Executive Level III or IV, with an annual salary of around $200,000, plus generous benefits.

Because they criticize other officials, Inspectors General are expected to be among the most professional and ethical employees in the federal government.

If Ms. Fong thought her dismissal was wrong, she could have professionally challenged it in several legal and procedural ways. There was no reason to stage an embarrassing spectacle. The way media tells it, Phyllis was a brave Resister. But when security arrived, Phyllis folded like a cheap pair of LuluLemon knock offs. She just walked out. She didn’t chain herself to her desk. She didn’t make them arrest her. Phyllis clearly isn’t martyr material.

Consider this: What made you think most partisan federal workers were any braver than Phyllis Fong? Was it media narratives?

🔥 In other words, the radical “Resistance” the plagued Trump’s first term was always a 2-dimensional branding exercise, a cheap cardboard cutout. It was never an actual movement. Bacteria-like, the Resistance only thrived in a temperature-controlled culture of anonymity where defiance was cost-free—where brave bureaucrats could slow-roll policies, leak fake news to the press, and quietly sabotage the Trump 1.0 Administration while still cashing their taxpayer-funded paychecks with ironclad job security.

As we will see, those assumptions are now in doubt. But in 2017, the stakes were low and there were no real risks, not with any real consequences. So partisan federal workers boldly cast themselves as brave warriors for democracy wielding jiu-jitsu-like weapons of bureaucracy.

But Trump 2.0 flipped the script. Now there are real consequences. People are getting fired. There’s real accountability—Trump’s Team seems to know who they are. This time, there’s no guarantee the Resisters can ride out another four years unscathed. The big blue wall is cracking. Now that they’re forced to stand on their principles and take tangible risks, it looks more like a cowardly, disorganized retreat than steely-eyed defiance.

Fong is a Lego figurine version of The Resistance. It’s not real. It has always been mirage constructed out of convenient narrative. “The Resistance” is like those inflatable fake tanks that confuse the enemy. Sure, Fong dragged her feet, made a little scene, emoted to reporters, and fed the narrative—but Fong wasn’t really willing to fight. Let somebody else do it.

The Resistance narrative is a media myth. There was never a true rebellion; it was always just a childish, passive-aggressive, bureaucratic temper tantrum wearing a cheap Halloween superhero mask and cape.

Now let’s look at that second article.

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The President’s enemies are beginning to awaken to the formidible possibility that Trump knows exactly what he is doing and is setting traps for them to fall into. The New York Times covered the story yesterday under the headline, “Trump’s Firings Could Bring Court Cases That Expand His Power.” (The article even mentioned our beloved Ms. Fong.)

Bye, Charlotte Burrows, Obama-appointed EEOC Commissioner, who believed she was untouchable.

Over the past several days, the President has “abruptly fired dozens of officials,” if not hundreds of them. The Times, at least, is beginning to detect a figure of rationality emerging from the fog of administrative war. It claims to have uncovered a pattern among Trump’s firings of powerful federal actors who thought they were safe. These included the 17 aforementioned Inspector Generals (including high-heeled rebel Fong), plus cemented-in officials from agencies like the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Note that all four categories include officials appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

Astonishingly, Trump’s mass firings of top-level commissioners from the NLRB, the Privacy Board, and the EEOC, were thought to be illegal and impossible. But even more historic and astonishing, Trump has fired so many it leaves those agencies without quora. They are dead in the water. These now-paralyzed agencies literally cannot undermine Trump’s agenda, even if they wanted to, for the practical reason that there simply aren’t enough commissioners left to vote on anything. They’re frozen.

Strikingly, none of the “abruptly fired” officials have yet sued the federal government—even though Trump is trampling on all sorts of precedents, customs, and statutes. Ms. Fong merely staged a bizarre mini-protest rather than assert her legal rights. All this legal restraint is especially strange considering that in at least one agency, the NLRB, federal law expressly limits the President’s ability to fire commissioners except in very limited circumstances.

The Times and the fired officials smelled a Trump trap.

“The prospect of getting dragged into court,” an alarmed Times observed, “may be exactly what Mr. Trump’s lawyers are hoping for.” What terrified and dismayed the far-left Times and its progressive allies was the ghastly prospect that “any rulings in the president’s favor would establish precedents that would expand presidential power to control the federal government.”

In other words: Trump is hoping that they’ll sue him.

The New York Times began connecting the dots starting with a Reagan-era constitutional interpretation of broad Executive Branch power. The Reaganites believed “that presidents must be able to fire any executive branch official at will.”

“In recent years,” the Times realized with growing horror, “the Supreme Court’s majority — led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who worked in the White House Counsel’s Office under the Reagan administration — has pushed that idea” of broad executive powers in employment.

Reagan called his constitutional interpretation “unitary executive theory.” It is an uncomplicated view of constitutional separation of powers, holding that the president must exclusively control his own executive branch. Any laws passed by Congress (under Article II) purporting to make Article I executive branch officials independent from the president’s sole control must therefore be unconstitutional.

Hahaha! The mass firings are genius! Trump has got progressives doubting their own theory of permanent federal employment. The President has tied these people into pretzel-like political knots. They literally don’t know what to do.

The Times’ reporter spoke to the 17 Inspectors General —Ms. Fong’s cohort— and asked them when are you going to sue the Orange Man? The depressing answer was: we’re not sure. They worry they might be playing right into Trump’s hands:

Haha! Can you see it now? The sheer brilliance of Trump’s plan? If they do sue him, then Trump is likely to grow even more powerful. Their only other option to just take it.

😷 Back in April 2021, I won my first and biggest mask case at Florida’s First District Court of Appeal. The three-judge panel agreed that mandatory mask ordinances were presumptively unconstitutional. Normally, in response the County and its squidlike mask allies would have appealed that decision up to Florida’s Supreme Court. But they didn’t. They took the “L,” even though my victory deleted mask mandates in 33 of Florida’s 67 counties, and created a significant legal precedent.

Why did they just take the “L”? It was because, if they also lost at Florida’s Supreme Court, it would have outlawed mandatory masking in all 67 Florida counties. They didn’t want to risk it. Better to live with losing 33 masking counties rather than risk the whole Sunshine State.

🔥 As far as the Times can tell, all these far-left, fired appointees —many, like Ms. Fong, even appointed by Republican presidents, but still— they all seem to be leaning toward taking the “L” too. None so far have filed a single lawsuit. It turns out that, despite the Democrats’ howls of protest, the legal limits on presidential hiring and firing might not be quite so constitutional after all, and they know it:

How about that? Now the Times tells us there are serious questions over whether Congress can limit a president’s power to fire his own employees.

Hamlet once asked, to sue or not to sue, that is the question. (It was in an earlier draft of the play.) That is the question confounding the Democrats right now. They just don’t seem to have any ideas. In fact, many of the article’s comments were white-hot with fury since the Times only presented the problem, not any solution.

Astonishingly, none of the Times’ “legal experts” quoted in the article offered any possible strategy to counter the President’s maneuver. Not one. That’s partly why I called Trump’s plan “brilliant,” since there are no clear countermoves. It’s also why I called the Resisters cowards, because, at least so far, they’ve refused the risks of lawfare, too chicken to stand up for their principles in a fair fight.

The Deep State’s usual tactics—delay and sabotage—aren’t effective against this mass-firing strategy. Bureaucratic slow-walking and procedural hurdles are great for stalling policies, but they don’t work, can’t work, when an agency’s entire leadership has been physically removed by security. Bye, Felicia.

🔥 If Congress wants these crippled agencies, like the EEOC, to resume function, they will have to wait for Trump to nominate replacement commissioners and then the Senate must consent. But Trump won’t do that until his Cabinet nominations are heard first. So, the firings also pressure the Senate to confirm quicker.

🔥 Finally, take a moment to consider how much work was invested in carefully charting all these myriad agencies and, one by one, figuring out which bureaucrats to yank. They had it all ready to go on day one. That precise kind of detail and planning is what the Democrats now face. So it is unsurprising they remain in response mode, where they’ll stay until they can figure out what the heck is going on.

Sue? Or don’t sue? Is it a trap?

Everything we’ve seen suggests Trump has a deep bench of legal and administrative expertise—people who understand the intricate mechanics of the federal bureaucracy and know how to dismantle the procedural obstacles without sparking immediate legal defeats. And even better, they’re teeing up bigger legal victories.

Democrats and the media are still scrambling because they never expected Trump 2.0 to include this level of precision and premeditation. I hate to keep saying it, but we’re seeing something that’s never happened before. Against all odds, Trump is really doing it.

He’s taking the government back for the people.

Have a tremendous Thursday! I hope you’re enjoying all this great news as much as I am. Tomorrow, I will try to catch up on a week packed with essential news and opportunities for snarky commentary. See you then.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

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