I have to begin today with two apologies. The first is for writing about essentially the same subject for three days in a row. I do realize there are plenty of other things going on right now (European leaders visiting the White House, for one), so to focus solely on the budget process in Congress is a bit limiting. My second apology is for misunderstanding something in my last two columns, which is why I'm writing this one (for clarification).

What I got wrong (through a mistaken assumption on my part) is that there are actually two tracks to the budget battles in Congress right now. I have been conflating them into one, but this is not the case. What the House passed this week is a budget framework for the upcoming fiscal year, which won't start until October. It has nothing to do with this fiscal year at all -- that's the second track (that I missed).

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The House Republicans just -- stunningly and amazingly -- actually did something. I know! You could've knocked me over with a feather....

I start with such snark because it seems entirely appropriate. But this is rather big news, as what it truly means is that the Republican House cats have now (for once) been successfully herded. This really is a big deal, since it hasn't happened much at all in the past decade or so.

The way things usually go in the GOP House is that they attempt to pass a bill (usually a budget, since that's about all they're capable of paying attention to) but their slim majority in the chamber means that their speaker cannot convince enough of them to vote for it, and so it dies. This usually leads to negotiations with Democrats and kicking the can down the road once again (it can also lead to a new Republican speaker, as we've seen before).

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Republicans in Congress are running out of time. The federal government's budget turns into a pumpkin in mid-March, so if a new budget bill isn't passed by then, the government will shut down. And while President Elon Musk's chainsaw approach to slashing spending and personnel is getting most of the attention, what Congress does is likely to have a much deeper impact. This budget battle will also provide an opportunity for Democrats to make the case that Republican "populism" was never more than a mirage (or a lie) to begin with.

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The first month of the second presidency of Donald Trump is now over. Only forty-seven more to go!

That, of course, is a daunting prospect, but we can at least open with some good news this week: Trump is already wearing out his welcome with the public. The presidential "honeymoon" period is apparently over (almost before it began). Trump started off his second term with historically dismal ratings, although they did best one previous president -- himself, in his first term. His job approval numbers were actually at 50 percent or just above when he was sworn in this time around (which, as mentioned, every other modern president has beaten), so he could at least claim a majority of the public was behind him. Not any more.

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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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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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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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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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We begin today with an apology and a solicitation for donations. Our apology is for perhaps not doing as thorough a job of reviewing the past week as we normally do, because last night instead of doing our homework we instead watched the FireAid benefit concert for the victims of the recent Los Angeles fires. If you missed it, at least check out the fireaidla.org site, where you can donate to the cause if you wish. It was quite a show, and well worth watching (note: this review contains only a partial list of the performers...):

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