It's hard, as each new week goes by, not to get distracted by all of the chaos emanating from Washington. This week, we're going to begin by connecting a few dots that really need connecting, and (so far) haven't gotten enough attention (in our humble opinion).

Before Donald Trump became president again, both he and his MAGA choir spent a lot of time decrying "censorship" and wailing about their "free speech" being somehow suppressed. This was largely due to social media sites policing their allowable content, and occasionally removing objectionable or flat-out false posts and even kicking people off their platforms.

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Robert F. Kennedy Junior is now going to be in charge of overseeing the nation's health systems. This seems to be a prime example of the ironic question: "What could possibly go wrong with that?" since Kennedy is so obviously not even remotely qualified for the position, and he holds so many bizarre and conspiratorial viewpoints on health care and medicine that HuffPost ran the story with a main-page "screamer" headline: "Quack Confirmed!" If anything, calling R.F.K. Jr. a "quack" is an understatement of the reality.

But today I am in a ra

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Democrats have a political opening right now to reach out to a demographic group that they've all but given up on in recent years: farmers and other people who live in rural areas. These areas have increasingly become Republican strongholds, but with Elon Musk running roughshod over government programs, there is an opening for Democrats to make some inroads -- or, at the very least, get these people to pick up the phone and call their representatives and push back on what Musk is doing.

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As metaphors go, "low-hanging fruit" is a pretty easy one to understand. You walk through an orchard while picking fruit that is easy to reach and offers no obstacles to harvest. You just reach up, pluck some low-hanging fruit, and you effortlessly have some apples or oranges in your hands to enjoy. The problem (that the metaphor subtly points out) is what happens after all the low-hanging fruit has been picked. Then you've got to expend a lot more effort to get the rest of it -- with ladders that have to be climbed and whatnot.

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How close are we to a constitutional crisis? Has one already begun? Is it imminent? Or does it merely loom somewhere out on the horizon? Welcome to Week 4 of the Trump administration, folks!

President Donald Trump and his team of henchmen certainly hit the ground running, issuing an absolute flood of executive orders and new policy announcements, which has now led to a resulting flood of lawsuits against them. Federal judges, some of them acting with impressive speed, have already blocked (temporarily, at least -- none of these cases has been fully heard yet) a number of Trump's actions, including the ban on birthright citizenship, a freeze on federal spending, the resignation offer Elon Musk sent to federal workers, dismantling U.S.A.I.D., and the transfer of transgender prisoners. Many of Trump's other actions are still being considered by judges who haven't ruled or issued injunctions yet.

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We aren't even three weeks in to the administration of President Elon Musk, and already he has instituted an ideological purge the likes of which America has not seen since the time of Senator Joe McCarthy. Except this time they're not rooting out communists (or suspected communists, or communist sympathizers) but instead just "people they don't like." Or maybe "people who have pissed off Elon" -- that's probably closer to the reality of it.

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President Donald Trump and his "first buddy" Elon Musk have moved swiftly to precipitate more than one constitutional crisis during the first few weeks of the new administration. The two are running roughshod over the basic separation of powers in American government, aided and abetted by the Republicans in control of Congress. Which leads to a serious question -- how long will it be before they just wash their hands of all pretense of power and formally hand it all directly to Trump?

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This is what having "no adults in the room" looks like. This is what a president surrounding himself with yes-men (and a few yes-women) while firing anyone who tells him "No" truly looks like. Donald Trump is president, but it now appears he doesn't just want to be a king, he wants to be an emperor. He wants to revive the American empire worldwide by the addition of several properties (by force, if necessary). His new bright idea was unveiled last night -- he now wants to own the Gaza Strip. It wouldn't become the 51st American state, but more like the 54th (behind Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal, assumably). This idea is so bonkers it staggers the imagination just to even consider it. But, because the president of the United States introduced it, people now have to think about it.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio made his first visit abroad this week. He went to Panama and reportedly pushed them to do something about the Panama Canal, in order to somehow appease President Trump's obsession with it. So far, they've refused to do so. Perhaps this is all just as performative as Trump's now-you-see-it-now-you-don't tariffs on Canada and Mexico -- perhaps Trump will find some way to declare victory and move on to other strange obsessions. Panama could, for instance, slightly lower the rates for ships to pass through their canal, either just for American ships or for all ships. That would probably be enough for Trump to move on.

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Today I read the first of what will likely be a number of Democratic post-election analyses, in an effort to identify what went wrong for the party in 2024 and what should be done to fix it going forward. And I've certainly thought about the subject myself in the past few months, so I thought I'd offer up a rather different take.

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