Pun Salad

Back nearly four years ago I noticed that Amazon had removed Ryan Anderson's book When Harry Became Sally from its e-shelves. (Well, to be more accurate: someone else noticed, and I blogged about it.)

Since then, I used Amazon as a punching bag over this issue: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Whew. I guess it really bugged me.

Well, reader, as you'll notice from the (paid link) over there on your right, it's once again available for purchase at Amazon. At least as I type. (And once again: someone else noticed this, I'm just pointing it out.) I don't know if they've explained this 180° turn anywhere.

But in any case, good on them. Wish they hadn't done it in the first place, though.

Also of note:

• It's too late, baby, now it's too late. George Will channels his inner Carole King. And also provides some history: It’s too late for progressives to be careful what they wish for.

  Progressives have the presidency they have long desired, but a president they abhor. James Madison warned them: “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm” (Federalist No. 10).

  Theodore Roosevelt’s “stewardship” theory of the presidency was that presidents may do anything they are not explicitly forbidden to do. Woodrow Wilson considered the separation of powers a dangerous anachronism impeding enlightened presidents (e.g., him). He postulated a presidential duty of “interpretation”: discovering what the masses would want if they were sensible, like him. Wilson’s former assistant secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, used radio to enable the presidency to mold opinion. Lyndon B. Johnson, who became an FDR-loyalist in Congress in 1937, commanded a large and obedient congressional majority (1965-1966) as no subsequent president has.

  Donald Trump’s rampant (for the moment) presidency is an institutional consequence of progressivism. Progressives, who spent recent years trying to delegitimize the Supreme Court and other federal courts, suddenly understand that courts stand between Trump and the fulfillment of his least lawful whims. Including his disobeying Congress’s unfortunate, but detailed and lawful, ban of TikTok.

  GFW also notes the futility of cutting the deficit down to size when you've said (a) entitlements are sacrosanct; and (b) you want to increase the defense budget; and (c) you want to enact a bunch of new tax goodies.

  But we'll see what happens.

• Hey kids, what time is it? Brent Leatherwood, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, checks the clock on the clubhouse door and decides Now is the Time to Defund Planned Parenthood.

  Planned Parenthood Federation of America is responsible for ending nearly 400,000 preborn lives every year. It is the largest abortion provider in America — yet it receives $700 million of your taxpayer dollars annually.

  President Trump and the new, Republican-controlled Congress have the opportunity to finally remove our taxpayer dollars from this pro-abortion organization. It’s what the American people want. In a Marist Poll conducted last month, 57 percent of Americans opposed the use of tax dollars to pay for abortion.

  The argument was, and continues to be, that the government funding doesn't go directly to pay for abortions, but for nice things like "prenatal care and cancer screenings". How about we pay someone else for that?

• Fingers crossed at Pun Salad Manor. Emma Camp wonders: Will Trump try to shut down the Department of Education?

  The Trump administration has begun drawing up an executive order that would aim to radically diminish the Education Department, with the goal of eventually scrapping it entirely, CNN reported last week. According to CNN, the anticipated plan would include an order directing the secretary of education to develop a plan to shrink the department through future executive orders, as well as a drive from Trump for Congress to formally nix the department.

  While it does not look like Trump will attempt to dissolve the Education Department through executive action, he clearly intends to do the next best thing. "I told Linda, 'Linda, I hope you do a great job in putting yourself out of a job,'" Trump said of education secretary nominee Linda McMahon last week. "I want her to put herself out of a job."

  The move comes as part of a broader project to shrink the federal government through executive orders—a plan that's been having mixed results, especially considering that many government functions and departments can only be abolished by Congress. So far, Trump is facing dozens of lawsuits attempting to halt his multitude of recent executive orders.

  Perhaps it could be folded into a new department: "Department of Things For Which There Is No Constitutional Provision". Set it up in one of the vertices of the Pentagon, perhaps a repurposed broom closet.

• We're gonna backlash so much, you may even get tired of backlashing. Kat Rosenfield essays on DOGE and the Backlash to the Backlash.

  Late last week, Elon Musk announced that the initiative he’s heading up, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, would rehire Marko Elez, the 25-year-old staffer who resigned after a Wall Street Journal story unearthed several offensive X posts that he made under a pseudonym in 2024. “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” he had posted. Also, “Normalize Indian hate” and “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool.”

  Elez’s reinstatement was nominally a democratic process, conducted via—what else—a poll on X, where 78 percent of respondents agreed that the software developer should get his job back.

  Given the ages (young) and online status (extremely) of the DOGE youths, there’s likely to be more where this came from. Already, the media are abuzz with the news that one of them was formerly a prolific poster under the name “Big Balls.” I, for one, am hoping any further revelations are in the “juvenile scrotal jokes” camp rather than the “weird racist meming” one. Since just because we’re past Peak Woke doesn’t mean we need to throw the doors of the government open to the kind of guy who throws around ethnic slurs for fun.

  But is it possible to respond to the checkered online histories of the DOGE dudes without whipping ourselves into the kind of hysteria that dominated such conversations during the first Trump administration?

  We’re about to find out.

  As noted above, I'm tired of all the backlashing.