Dept of Commerce

oversees NOAA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secretary_of_Commerce

SEE LUTNICK

CENSUS?

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WHEN WILL HE KILL THE STATS?

BASICALLY GO AROUND TABLE BROWN NOSING; BONDI WENT FROM 20M KIA TO 258! actually 70k last year

AN 525

NO LNX

Trump’s clown car cabinet is driving off a cliff

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reacts as she walks towards the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 10, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

Sabrina Haake, Raw Story May 03, 2025

UPS, the United Parcel Service, just announced that it is laying off 20,000 employees and closing 73 of its buildings by the end of June. It attributes the downturn to reduced shipping volume from its largest customer, Amazon, due to Trump’s tariffs.

When a division of Amazon considered telling consumers the truth, by posting the costs tariffs added to the price of each imported product, the mere possibility set the White House on attack mode. Trump immediately called Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, who reassured him Amazon would never do such a thing, while Karoline Leavitt accused Bezos of a “political and hostile” act just for thinking about it.

When a presidential team of incompetent egoists calls truth-telling a “hostile act,” we’re in trouble.

Ruinous economic indicators prompt ruinous deflection

Trump’s first quarter report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis reflects a sharp contraction in the economy, showing an annual decrease in the GDP of 0.3 percent. Compared to Biden’s last quarter, when “real GDP increased 2.4 percent,” the data suggest that perhaps Trump isn’t the economic genius he claims to be.

These are not partisan data; that the Bureau falls under the US Department of Commerce suggests Trump may soon hobble its reporting capacity. For now, the data show economic contraction, reflecting a colossal reversal from Biden’s expansion. Wall Street sums up Trump’s first 100 days in office as the “worst for the stock market in half a century.”

On brand, when faced with these data, Trump lied, deflected, and blamed his predecessor, posting,“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s. I didn’t take over until January 20th. This… has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that (Biden) left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”

Trump continues to manufacture Biden’s “bad numbers”

Trump can’t stop parroting his own campaign lies about Biden’s economy. During the 2024 presidential campaign, when he wasn’t manufacturing a border invasion to enrage people, Trump repeatedly attacked Biden’s economy. It worked. While remaining mum on how his own COVID-19 mismanagement worsened the economy, he convinced 49% of voters that they were impoverished, despite economic indicators to the contrary.

After commerce reports came out this week, Trump doubled down. During an embarrassing televised cabinet meeting orchestrated to praise himself, Trump confirmed that he sought to undo everything Biden did to improve the economy, stating, “We came in and I was very against everything that Biden was doing in terms of the economy. … We took over his mess in so many different ways.”

Trump and his cabinet may drink their own economic Kool-Aid, but Wall Street is abstaining. Multiple indicators confirmed that Biden delivered the strongest post-COVID economic recovery in the world, including: growth and job creation that exceeded G7 and other advanced economies' growth in 2024; inflation control despite global inflationary pressures; avoidance of the post-COVID recession predicted by many; wage gains; strong market performance with record S&P 500 highs; and stellarinfrastructure investment that Trump, in a toddler-esque pique of jealousy, is scrambling to unravel.

During Biden’s term, the U.S. added 16 million jobs, low earners were experiencing wage growth, inflation levels approached the Federal Reserve’s target, and unemployment hit a 54-year low. By these metrics, Biden performed economic jujitsu, delivering an economy that The Economist called “the envy of the world.”

Teaching Trump media how to lie better

After Trump officially blamed Biden this week for economic contractions caused by his own ill-conceived tariffs, he went further, instructing right-wing media how to spin bad economic news of the future. During his televised “Praise Dear Leader” cabinet meeting, Trump told his preferred outlets (Fox, Newsmax, OAN) that they should also blame any economic downturns in the second quarter on Biden.

Trump showed similar intransigence during an interview with Terry Moran of ABC News about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man Trump is keeping in an El Salvador prison despite a Supreme Court order to facilitate his return. Trump insisted during the interview that an obviously photoshopped picture showed Garcia with “MS13” tattooed on his knuckles. When Moran told Trump that the image was clearly photoshopped, Trump acted like a tyrant. He first suggested Moran owed him something – it was thanks to Trump that Moran got the interview at all. Frustrated by Moran’s continuing refusal to lie, Trump told him, “you’re not being very nice,” before pivoting to attacking media as a whole, saying this “is why people no longer believe the news … It’s such a disservice…”

Discussing the Supreme Court order to facilitate Garcia’s return, Moran stated the obvious — that Trump could simply pick up the phone, call El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, and get him back. Trump confirmed that he is, indeed, flouting the Supreme Court’s authority, stating, “I could…. And if he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that.”

In one interview, Trump vacillated between being the all powerful Oz, and the cheap salesman behind the curtain. When Moran reminded him that the high court ordered him to return Garcia, Trump deflected, incredibly: “I'm not the one making this decision. We have lawyers who don't want to do this.”

Trump’s clown car cabinet is driving off a cliff

After the Supreme Court slapped the administration and ordered Garcia’s return with a 9-0 decision, White House adviser Stephen Miller simply lied about it. Miller claimed on Fox News that the administration had “won” the case, “clearly,” prompting a conservative columnist to retort, “Nope, you lost. Unanimously.” Fox viewers, of course, won’t hear that rejoinder as Fox anchors continue to throw falsehoods at the wall to see what sticks.

As Team Trump continues governing the country like a made-for-Fox-TV reality show, real-life consequences are piling up. China just canceled orders for American pork, soybeans, and lumber, putting US farmers in “full-blown crisis” mode.

Maybe, like dolls for Christmas, farmers can make do with selling one or two hogs instead of 30. As Trump put it during a town hall Wednesday night, he plans to defeat public skepticism over his tariffs through deception. “I just think that I’ll be able to convince people how good this is.”

NOW READ: Trump's rampage is out of control — but there's one way to stop it

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are or have been published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News, State Affairs, and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

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an 521

during Donald Trump's four years as president, his administration was a revolving door. But one person who was part of the Trump Administration throughout most of his presidency was former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who started in February 2017 and stayed until February 2021. The U.S. Department of Commerce, journalist Shawn Boburg reports in an article published by the Washington Post on May 24, has had an "obscure security unit" that was "tasked with protecting" its "officials and facilities" — and during its Trump/Ross era, according to Boburg, it "evolved into something more akin to a counterintelligence operation that collected information on hundreds of people inside and outside the Department."

According to Boburg, "The Investigations and Threat Management Service (ITMS) covertly searched employees' offices at night, ran broad keyword searches of their e-mails trying to surface signs of foreign influence and scoured Americans' social media for critical comments about the (2020 U.S.) Census, according to documents and interviews with five former investigators. In one instance, the unit opened a case on a 68-year-old retiree in Florida who tweeted that the Census, which is run by the Commerce Department, would be manipulated 'to benefit the Trump Party,' records show."

Boburg adds, "In another example, the unit searched Commerce servers for particular Chinese words, documents show. The search resulted in the monitoring of many Asian-American employees over benign correspondence, according to two former investigators."

John Costello, who formerly served as deputy assistant secretary of intelligence and security for the Commerce Dept. under the Trump Administration, is highly critical of ITMS — telling the Post that ITMS "has been allowed to operate far outside the bounds of federal law enforcement norms and has created an environment of paranoia and retaliation at the Department."

Bruce Ridlen, a former supervisor, told the Post that the ITMS' tactics make it look as though "someone watched too many 'Mission Impossible' movies."

Ridlen, who left ITMS in October 2020, told the Post, "I chose to resign from my position with ITMS after it became clear there was no authority to perform law enforcement functions. There were no policies in place to outline standards of conduct or to establish parameters for investigative activities, which led to investigative inquiries of U.S. persons over protected free speech found on several social media platforms."

Former Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo was sworn in as commerce secretary under President Joe Biden in early March.

Boburg explains, "(ITMS) has managed to keep a low public profile until now, while pursuing investigations into 'counterintelligence, transnational crime and counterterrorism,' as it described its activities in a 2018 budget document submitted to Congress. Incoming Commerce leaders from the Biden Administration ordered ITMS to pause all criminal investigations on March 10, and on May 13, ordered the suspension of all activities after preliminary results of an ongoing review, according to a statement issued by Department spokeswoman Brittany Caplin. The suspension came two days after the Post presented its findings about the unit to the department and sought interviews."

The statement read, "The current Commerce Department leadership team takes this issue seriously. The Department expects that at the end of the review, it can and will implement a comprehensive solution to the issues raised."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

swamp?

https://projects.propublica.org/trump-town/agencies/commerce?page=3

http://www.alternet.org/environment/trump-administration-says-no-protecting-endangered-whales-dolphins-and-sea-turtles

Trump administration has announced it is canceling plans that would have protected whales, dolphins, and endangered sea turtles from high levels of drowning deaths in drift gillnets set off the California coast.The most puzzling thing about this announcement is that the fishery itself had supported the plan. It’s yet one more example of politicians taking more extreme positions than industry—akin to the case of several farm-state attorneys general fighting California’s anti-confinement laws for laying hens even after the egg industry recognized that it must transition to a cage-free future.

The marine-animal protection planwas the result of negotiations between environmentalists and fishermen. It would have capped the annual number of deaths by species and then temporarily closed the fishery if these mortality caps were exceeded. This joint agreement was something of a triumph for all parties, and the Pacific Fisheries Management Council—the federal management body for west coast fisheries—agreed to put the agreement into writing and forward it to the National Marine Fisheries Service in the Department of Commerce for approval.

It is fairly rare that a regional fishery-management council’s proposal would be overruled by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. When the federal government sought public comments on the plan in October last year, shortly before the election, it attracted widespread support (including from The HSUS) and little dissent. But, in a baffling turnaround, the Department of Commerce has now stamped the plan with a giant “NO.” The agency is overruling its own fishery management council as well as the fisheries that agreed to the plan, along with the countless citizens who weighed in and overwhelmingly favored this new, conservation-minded legal framework.

To be clear, the administration is saying “no” to proactively protecting endangered leatherback turtles, and it is saying “no” to a plan that would have limited the entanglement-related deaths of endangered sperm whales. In fact, it was the deaths of sperm whales that prompted the Council to take this step when it became convinced that the Department of Commerce had not acted intentionally to prevent future deaths.

Marine mammals remain some of the most beloved creatures in the country. Sperm whales are legend, especially since the publication of Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick166 years ago. Dolphins are revered, with scientists documenting their intelligence and mariners recounting their acts of heroism to save sailors. Leatherback sea turtles, whose mass can exceed half a ton, are a sight to behold for land-based tourists and underwater divers and contribute immensely to the economy of coastal communities.

These creatures do warrant special protection. When the fishery that has threatened them and the environmental and animal welfare community that have advocated for them find common ground, politicians and executive agencies should rush to bless the outcome. We have enough division in the country without searching for and sowing disunity where it doesn’t exist.

b2 dept comm ceo of cabot chem; undersec chief econ for exxon

The latest tirade from Lamar Smith, Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology (his 11/13 letter to Penny Pritzker, Secretary of Commerce) sheds light on the real reason for his demand that NOAA employees make available all email correspondence about their recent study on global warming.

In their extensive analysis of global climate data, published in Science, Tom Karl (Director of NOAA’s Center for Environmental Information) and his team found that small corrections were required to some of the data. Such minor adjustments have been made almost continuously since the first global temperature data set was produced by the U.S. Department of Energy more than 30 years ago, so there is nothing unusual about this.

NASA, NOAA, the UK Hadley Center and the Japanese Meteorological Agency continually check data sources, correct any errors that they may find and make the latest versions of their data available to the public. In other words, they do what they are supposed to do, taking responsibility for the most reliable data sets.

So, the study by Karl et al was nothing more than one of many research papers that have periodically been published, providing an updated record about global temperature. What’s not to like? Why has the House Committee issued subpoenas to Tom Karl and his colleagues, demanding all email correspondence about their work?

Well, the big mistake NOAA apparently made was that it “...used Twitter to spread the news about the Karl study”. OMG! They tweeted the results! They actually tried to communicate with the taxpayers who funded the research!

The Science Committee Chairman is clearly outraged, and in his letter to the Secretary of Commerce, he demands to know why the results weren’t just “...quietly published in a scientific journal”. He goes on, “This type of public relations effort seems more suited to an advertising campaign than a federal agency’s sober report on the findings of a publicly-funded study”.

It would be easy to dismiss this puerile temper tantrum as nothing more than a reflection of how disconnected Chairman Smith is from the rest of the universe, a rather sad position for somebody who heads up a committee that has both Space and Technology in its portfolio. Yet, Representative Smith does have a Twitter account and frequently sends out tweets about his own amazing accomplishments, making sure that his activities are not “quietly published”. Indeed, some might say that his tweets are more akin to an advertising campaign than sober reports from a publicly-funded federal employee... but that would be churlish. No doubt, he is simply doing his job, informing the public about his committee’s activities. Just like those folks at NOAA...

Follow Raymond S. Bradley on Twitter:

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnsondelivered a blistering critique of a Republican campaign to discredit the work of federal climate scientists, branding the effort "hyper-aggressive oversight," a "fishing expedition" and an "ideological crusade."

The months-long probe of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers is being led by Texas Republican Lamar Smith, chair of the House science committee. Johnson is the committee's ranking democrat.

"In six separate, and increasingly aggressive, letters," Johnson wrote in a Nov. 19 letter to Smith, "the only thing you accused NOAA of doing is engaging in climate science—i.e., doing their jobs." The letter charges Smith of "political posturing intended to influence public opinion" ahead of the Paris climate talks.

Smith responded to Johnsonon Monday, calling her "characterization of the Committee’s efforts to obtain data from a government agency under its jurisdiction… inaccurate and misleading."

The congressman is targeting a June 4 study by federal researchers that refutes the so-called "hiatus" in global warming. The hiatus theory—favored by climate denialists—argues warming has paused or slowed since 1998. The study was led by Tom Karl, director of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, and published in the peer-reviewed journal Science.

Since July, Smith has sent NOAA letters and subpoenas asking the agency to provide "all documents and communications" related to the study. NOAA has refused to comply with Smith's requests for emails, citing the importance of confidentiality among scientists.

"The whole thing is really disconcerting...somebody doesn't like the result you publish and all of a sudden you have this huge hammer of a congressional subpoena hanging over your head. It has a chilling effect on scientists," said Andrew Rosenberg, the director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

In her letter, Johnson, also from Texas, criticized Smith for not explaining why he was investigating NOAA, as well as for making "sweeping indictments" to media that federal scientists manipulated data to advance President Obama's climate change agenda.

"In one fell swoop, you have accused a host of different individuals of wrongdoing," Johnson wrote. "You have accused NOAA's top research scientists of scientific misconduct. By extension, you have also accused the peer-reviewers at one of our nation's most prestigious academic journals,Science, of participating in this misconduct (or at least being too incompetent to notice what was going on). If that weren't enough, you are intimating a grand conspiracy between NOAA and the White House to doctor climate science to advance administration policy. Presumably this accusation extends to [NOAA] Administrator [Kathryn] Sullivan herself.

"And all of these indictments are conjured out of thin air, without you presenting any factual basis for these sweeping accusations—exposing this so-called 'investigation' for what it truly is: a witch hunt designed to smear the reputations of eminent scientists for partisan gain."

Johnson first contacted Smith with her concerns about the investigation in October. When Smith didn't respond, she decided she needed to write him again, said Kristin Kopshever, a House science committee spokeswoman for Johnson.

"Over the past couple of years, the committee has had a lot of investigations," said Kopshever. It has investigated the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation,she said. In September, Smith launched an investigation of Jagadish Shukla, a climate scientist at George Mason University in Virginia who called for a federal probe into whether fossil fuel companies knowingly misled the public on climate change.

What made her word these recent letters [to Smith] so strongly, Kopshever said, "is that he doesn't have any fact-based allegations against NOAA for wrongdoing or misuse of power or funds that would typically prompt an investigation."

Smith also wrote two letters to Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker urging her to pressure NOAA to cooperate with the House committee probe. The most recent one was sent on Nov. 18. In it, Smith claimed to have whistleblower communications that show "wrongdoing."

"Information provided to the Committee by whistleblowers appears to show that the Karl study was rushed to publication despite the concerns and objections of a number of NOAA scientists," Smith wrote. Pritzker was out of the country last week and asked Sullivan of NOAA to respond on her behalf. "Let me assure you that I am not engaged in or associated with any 'politically correct agenda,'" Sullivan wrote in the Nov. 20 letter. "I have not and will not allow anyone to manipulate the science or coerce the scientists who work for me."

Johnson requested that the whistleblower information be shared with Democratic members of the science committee. She called Smith's criticism that the study was "rushed" a "mild accusation"—one not serious enough to warrant a congressional investigation.

"The Constitution doesn't provide you with a blank check to harass research scientists with whose results you disagree," she wrote.

In his response letter Monday, Smith said that asking for the source's information "in a public setting is not only harmful to the Committee’s current investigations, but may have a chilling effect on the willingness of federal employees to report waste, fraud, and abuse to the Committee in the future."

Read the full letter: