Cyclone on Steroids 🇮🇱😱 🇺🇦🤯

💩 Show Rollercoaster:  I am mostly off the grid, so I’ll try to make this short.  Tuesday night Trump gave a speech riddled with lies. Despite some optimistic reports that he would announce a deal with Ukraine’s Zelenskyy and that he would suspend his tariff plans, he did neither. Instead he said to expect pain ahead and to be fair that wasn’t one of his lies. The equity markets aren’t happy, no surprise to those who understand how  tariffs work but apparently a shocker to Trump and some of his richest supporters who didn’t believe that he would really go the tariff route. Yesterday, in response to market declines, Trump said he was temporarily lifting his tariffs on 🚗s but leaving them on everything else including food and energy, a particular problem for northern border states who import oil and gas from Canada. How much longer will this go on, who knows. Trump seems determined to wreck the economy, kind of the reverse of “only I can fix it.” Don’t be fooled by declines in Treasury yields. That’s just where investors fleeing the equity markets are parking their money but if the debt ceiling isn’t raised that won’t be a good spot either. There’s a reason that Trump is pushing questionable crypto options. 

You’re fired:  We all know who we want to see fired but unfortunately that’s not in the cards right now. The list of federal employees getting pink slips is increasing as is the still smaller list of those getting rehired either because of court orders or a realization that they’re actually needed to provide essential services. Among those who should be fired, is VP Vance who after insulting Zelenskyy went on to slam the UK and France; the newly confirmed Education Secretary Linda McMahon who plans to close down her department; RFK who is pushing cod liver oil as a measles cure all; Patel and Bongino at the FBI who forced out NYC’s top agent for being honorable; and Pam Bondi and the acting US Attorney in DC for threatening judges and targeting Democratic politicians.  And that’s just the short list. 

The Pushback: The courts are largely pushing back at Trump and Musk’s purges and defunding plans which is a good thing, but, and it’s a big but Trump and Elon don’t appear to be following their directives and when they do, it’s too little too late. Yesterday SCOTUS ruled that the administration has to honor $2 billion of it’s foreign aid obligations but the ruling which had five Justices onboard, the three liberals plus Justices Amy and Justice Roberts, was somewhat anemic as opposed to the Alito written dissent which was nasty and outrageous. Still, Trump who thanked Chief Justice Roberts for being on his team on Tuesday night can’t be happy with him right now and probably is very upset with Amy. A number of federal judges report that they’ve been receiving deliveries of pizzas they didn’t order to their homes. That’s alarming because even for pepperoni fans, those deliveries are a not so subtle warning that Trump supporters who’ve heard Elon and JD threaten judges with impeachment or worse know where they live. The next deliveries could cause far more than indigestion.  

More: Not that Trump’s followers will ever get it because science, but transgenic and transgender are not synonyms so those funds spent for studies of mice have a lot to do with figuring out how to cure diseases and nothing to do with turning Mickey into Minnie. And I can’t believe I even have to say that. 

Fog: Trump continues to strip intelligence and equipment resources from Ukraine while indicating that he plans to let Russia reopen embassies, rejoin the G7, and so on. In summary Trump’s love for all things Putin continues while his disdain for Ukraine festers. And he also is shutting down intelligence activities that protect the integrity of our elections from foreign players. Need I say more. On the Middle Eastern front, Trump is threatening Hamas and Gazans again while also negotiating directly with Hamas to get more hostages out. Getting hostages would be great, following though on genocidal threats, not so much. 

#BringThemAllHomeNow