Atomic Number 33 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱

Charge! In Arsenic and Old Lace, a delightful, screwball black comedy, Mortimer, the lead character has two brothers, one, named Jonathan, is a murderer who looks like and was actually played by Boris Karloff in the show that predated the classic movie. Mortimer’s other brother. Teddy is crazy but otherwise harmless; he believes he’s Teddy Roosevelt and in a running gag, periodically issues military commands before running up the stairs yelling “charge.”  Mortimer also has two aunts who kill lonely old men to “put them out of their misery.” We’re now living through Arsenic and Old Lace, but mostly we’re getting the arsenic with very little lace, nothing delightful and no one has yet shown up to put us out of our misery.  Yesterday, acting like crazy brother Teddy but with the evil intent of the Boris Karloff looking Jonathan, Trump dissed the European Europe; said making Canada the 51^st state would solve the economically destructive tariff crisis that he’s created; talked about annexing Greenland; once again discussed seizing the Panama Canal, something that he reportedly has directed the Pentagon to make plans to do; and justified Putin’s continued attack of Ukraine, the same Putin who wants his land grabbing demands met before he agrees to any “peace.” Trump said all these insane things in front of Michael Martin, the Prime Minister of Ireland, who was in the states for a traditional pre-Saint Patrick’s Day visit but probably wished he was anywhere but the White House. At the end of Arsenic and Old Lace, evil brother Jonathan is arrested and crazy Teddy along with his superficially sweet murderous aunts are taking off to a mental institution. It’s increasingly clear that Trump belongs in one too, but unfortunately for us, the proverbial men in white coats with their straightjackets are nowhere in sight, and if they were they’d probably be coming for us and those judges who keep ruling against his destructive policies rather than for him and his ketamine infused Boris-bro Elon. Worse still, Trump, who not too long ago asserted that four years of Kamala Harris would tank the stock markets is doing just that while claiming we should thank him for taking the “froth” out of our 401k and IRA balances, a sentiment shared by the wacked out Commerce Secretary Lutnick and the not so “normie” Treasury Secretary Bessent who makes Steve Mnuchin look like a saint. The country has gone bizarro, there’s little delightful to report and it’s growing increasingly obvious that Trump isn’t just acting crazy, he is.   

Judicial Push Back:  The only good news to emerge is coming from the courts, at least so far.  On Wednesday,  Washington DC District Court Judge Beryl Howell made it clear that she was disgusted with Trump’s executive order targeting the Perkins Cole law firm. Trump’s order seeks to eviscerate Perkins’s practice by limiting its 1,200 lawyers’ access to federal buildings and federal employees, ending security clearances for its employees, all while also forbidding government agencies from hiring any of them. Judge Howell issued a temporary restraining order against the executive order pending a fuller hearing saying that she believed that at the very least it likely violated the First Amendment, Due Process, and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.  Then yesterday,  Wiliam Alsup, a District Court Judge in San Francisco, ordered the reinstatement of thousands of federal employees fired by the Trump administration. He called the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) memo that was used as the template to fire thousands of probationary federal employees a gimmick and a sham employed to avoid statutory dismissal requirements, adding “It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that is a lie.” Alsup’s order covers those who were fired from Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.  Hours later a second judge, US District Judge James Bredar of Maryland issued a similar order, expanding the list of affected departments to include Commerce, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development,  Labor, Transportation, US AID, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the EPA, the FDIC, the General Service Administration, and the Small Business Administration.  Naturally, the Trump administration is appealing. It’s not clear what all these federal employees will do when they’re rehired since their new bosses keep paring back the functions of their departments.  Yesterday, one of those bosses, Lee Zeldin the former Long Island Congressman and Republican candidate for NYS Governor but now the head of the EPA, rolled back a bunch of environmental protections because basically, polluting and poisoning should no longer be impediments to businesses throughout the country. In other legal news, as expected the Trump administration is now appealing all of the rulings that said he couldn’t get rid of birth right citizenship to the Supreme Court and another District court judge, Tanya Chutkan, has ordered Musk to produce documents related to DOGE’s activities in response to a lawsuit by 14 Democratic state attorneys general that alleges Musk violated the constitution by wielding powers that only Senate-confirmed officials should possess. Lastly, in reports are that Trump is planning to invoke the wartime Enemies Alien Act to speed up mass deportations maybe so he can deport more US born children of undocumented migrants who are here being treated for brain cancer as if deporting just one affected child isn’t enough.     

Rock and a Hard Place: Unless things change, following a contentious meeting with his caucus, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer announced last night that he, together with a sufficient number of other Democratic Senators, will vote for the Republican’s continuing funding resolution, ensuring its passage.  Schumer made it clear that he hates the provisions included in the resolution as well as those who crafted it so much so that last night on Chris Hayes’ MSNBC show he slipped and called those Republicans bastards. However, he went on to say that he fears that pushing the country into a shutdown, would legitimize and expand the questionably illegal funding actions that Trump and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) head Russell Vought have already taken because during shutdowns the president and OMB are the arbiters of what gets funded. Despite the efforts of many Democrats to make it clear that any shutdown would belong to Trump and his MAGA party, Schumer clearly fears that MAGA world would convince the public that the shutdown was the Democrats fault. Given how Musk amplifies Trump’s messages on X, whether you like Schumer’s decision or not, it’s hard to disagree with that assessment.  #Sigh

People:  Pete Buttigieg announced that he will not be running for Michigan’s soon to be open Senate seat. Former Florida Congressman David Weldon will not be the next head of the CDC. The White House pulled his nomination, not because they don’t want him to further damage our health and put us at risk for contracting new and old viruses but because a critical number of Republican Senators made it clear that they wouldn’t support his confirmation.  Count Weldon, a crony of RFK Jr, who shares his anti-vax positions, as another measles victim.  He doesn’t have a rash and hasn’t contracted encephalitis, but apparently pushing cod liver oil isn’t a good thing when measles cases are rising. Sadly, Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva who was suffering from cancer died yesterday.  He is the second Democratic Congressman to pass away this month.   

Reproductive Health:  With all the attention focused on the insane man’s tariffs, the tanking market, annexation plans, and government funding it would be easy to miss that the Republicans are continuing to wage a war on reproductive rights.  The DOJ has dropped the Biden era lawsuit seeking to require Idaho providers to offer emergency abortion care and Martin Makary, the pick to head the FDA, said that he would review a Biden-era rule that allowed patients to get mifepristone without seeing a health care provider in person. And RFK plans to review mifepristone “safety” so Makary’s plans could be moot.  

#BringThemAllHomeNow