Senate Dems’ Pyrrhic Defeat

I’ve said this in a few contexts, including in the podcast, but I wanted to reiterate it here. It seems like the Schumer/continuing resolution debacle is turning into a kind of inverse pyrrhic victory, a terrible and self-inflicted defeat which might have more positive effects than winning would have had. I’ve said a few times that I’m pretty certain Chuck Schumer didn’t think when he allowed the CR to pass that he’d still be arguing to keep his job on every talk show that would have him 10 days later. The nature of that debacle, the recognition that it was a debacle, turned into a crystalizing moment. The biggest effect of that debacle was everyone realizing that not having any strategy is not in fact a strategy. Schumer’s decision was the breaking point. But an even bigger issue was how and why Democrats allowed it to come to that decision moment without laying any of the groundwork that might have made something like success even possible. The lack of a strategy is not a strategy. That may seem elementary. But we’ve all had times in our lives in which lived experience is necessary to absorb lessons that seem obvious and unmissable once they’ve been absorbed. There’s no question in my mind that Cory Booker’s 25 hour speech only happens because of that debacle. And Gallego’s and Schiff’s holds only happen because of some mix of Booker and the larger Schumer-driven realization. The unfolding tariff catastrophe figures into this of course, as do elections in Wisconsin and Florida, as do Republicans continuing to hide in undisclosed locations when visiting their districts. But the continuing resolution was an inflection point.

DOGE Lands at NEH

DOGE has made landfall at the National Endowment for the Humanities. They are demanding roughly $175 million out of an annual grant budget of just over $200 million and fire about 80% of state. In internal conversations the new bosses apparently speak of “select opportunities” soon to be offered to favored organizations. That sounds to me like we might be looking at new grants to Breitbart and such but perhaps I’m just being alarmist. The DOGE commissar assigned to NEH is Justin Fox.