Flying Debris 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱

Rocket Play:  I was partially off the grid for much of last week in Florida, the state of many red hats and the Mar a Lago home of the erratic Orange Wannabe King.  While I was there a number of the state’s airports experienced dangerous disruptions to their airspace, the result of a ketamine fueled multi billionaire shooting a bigly unstable, exploding rocket into the air without having to worry about penalties or pushback from the agencies that are supposed to prevent that kind of thing. Fortunately, no planes were taken out by any of the rocket debris though a number of them did spend an hour or more in the not so safe skies dodging debris.  The rocket explosion could be a preview of what Floridians and many others are likely to experience during next year’s hurricane season when they learn what it like to deal with incoming storms in the absence of any warnings or path predictions from the National Weather Service, one of those agencies that Musk and Trump are currently in the process of dismembering in a rush to “government efficiency.” Nothing says own the libs better than putting Trump voting states into the path of hellish storms. Last week’s storm clouds were more figurative than literal, the result of Trump’s on again, off again tariffs.  Few experts believe that the willy nilly imposition of tariffs make sense, and even fewer believe that turning them on and off erratically is a good thing but Trump loves them, promised them, and is hardly a stable genius, so here we are, watching the stable economy that Biden left him implode.  Even Trump is now saying that a recession is possible. That’s what he told Fox’s Maria Bartiromo this weekend while also telling her that he knows his actions are causing pain to many but so what, they’ll just have to deal with it.  He's talked about the money brought in by those tariffs funding his crypto currency reserve, the dicey, scammy investment pool that many of his allies with inside information are likely front running while Americans incur higher prices for tariffed goods, including food, appliances, and cars.  As to Elon, a view articles and opinion pieces want us to believe that Trump’s honeymoon period with his billionaire donor is coming to an end.  Via Trump whisperers Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, the NY Times reported that during a contentious cabinet meeting Trump announced that Elon was only there to consult with and advise the various secretaries, that he wasn’t making firing decisions but who are we kidding, wresting power back from Elon won’t be easy because he paid bigly bucks for his position and anyway, it’s not clear that Trump is at all dissatisfied with what he is doing. In another NY Times piece, Harvard Business School professor Mihir Desai argues that free market forces will rein Elon in because his business empire is starting to “wobble,” that’s great if true but again, unlikely, at least in the near term. Regarding the near term, Congress needs to pass another continuing funding resolution by midnight Friday because without one the government closes down. Don’t confuse the continuing resolution with the House’s slash and burn budget, Congress has a hard time passing actual budgets, what was passed recently was a framework, not a real budget.  The continuing resolution proposed by Speaker Johnson and Trump pretty much holds funding levels where Biden had them with a few tweaks.  The problem is that Trump has been “eliminating” projects and departments, essentially refusing to spend money despite Congressional mandates.  Democrats want the continuing resolution to say that the money has to be spent.  The question is whether Johnson can garner the Republican votes he needs to pass a continuing resolution without the language that the Democrats want and, if he can’t, whether the Democrats will hold out in force until that language is incorporated.  By the way, the Democrats lost one of their members last week after Texas Democrat Sylvester Turner suffered a dire medical emergency following Trump’s speech to Congress. The real surprise is that more people didn’t suffer similar attacks.   

Legalities: Paul Clement, the outside lawyer that District Judge Dale Ho hired to advise him on NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ case said that the court had no feasible option to continue the prosecution if Trump’s DOJ no longer supported it, but he said the case should not be dismissed “without prejudice.” Assuming Judge Ho follows Clement’s advice, Adams will get off scot-free, but Trump will lose his cudgel because Adams won’t face future indictment on the charges, so a win for the Mayor, but not for Trump. It’s fair to assume that Trump is not a Shakesperean scholar, but he does understand the concept of “first killing the lawyers” or at least the lawyers that don’t support him, have prosecuted him, and/or have represented those who have prosecuted him so he’s now threatening the livelihood of two prominent law firms: Covington and Perkins Cole.  Among their “crimes”: providing legal advice to former Special Counsel Jack Smith and Hillary Clinton. Trump’s actions make Sullivan & Cromwell’s decision to represent him that much more despicable. 

Fog:  Trump is doing what ever he can do to advantage Putin in his war against Ukraine.  In addition to halting arms shipments and financial aid to Ukraine, he’s now stopped sharing intelligence and has cut access to crucial satellite imaging.  Trump wants us to believe that he’s doing all this to force Ukraine to “negotiate” with Putin but who is he kidding.  There will be talks but Putin isn’t interested in real negotiation; he just wants to keep the land he has seized while seizing some more, maybe even parts of Europe, because he wants to Make Russia Great Again. To that end, Putin has ramped up his attacks because why not?  On the Israel-Hamas front, the Trump administration has been trying to get the one remaining live US hostage out of Hamas captivity, that’s good for him but not so good for the others who remain and without another agreement of some sort, there is a good chance that the war picks up again, putting those hostages in further jeopardy.  Here at home, the Trump administration has cancelled $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia University in response to its “failure to squelch anti-Semitism on campus.” The Trump administration has a point, Columbia and most recently Barnard have been unable to control the masked demonstrators who have disrupted classes, taken over buildings and targeted Jewish students.  All that’s bad but targeting universities is bad too, especially since it’s likely that Trump’s motives aren’t pure, after all, he’s been known to hang out with prominent anti-Semites and has at least one, conspiracy and hate tweeter, Kingsley Wilson,  working as a spokesperson for the Department of Defense.  Over the weekend the INS arrested Mahmoud Kalil, a Palestinian activist who helped lead some of the Columbia protests.  The INS appears to be holding Kalil somewhere in Louisiana and says that they are revoking his visa, however Kalil is a permanent resident with a Green Card which is supposed to give him additional legal protections.  I am no fan of Kalil and find the situation at my B- school alma mater to be beyond awful but I fear that the INS’s likely illegal actions will make things worse, turning Kalil into a martyr, while feeding more hate. We shouldn’t be surprised that Trump’s INS is flouting the rule of law, because he’s a King, right?

And:  This is your daily reminder that neither vitamin A nor cod liver oil will protect you from getting the measles or do much if you are suffering through a case.  While nepo RFK was posting pictures of himself out hiking, the case count continued to climb.  And no, the MMR vaccine doesn’t cause autism but despite the push for more government efficiency RFK is now going to spend more money studying the debunked connection rather than working on treatments and cures.  Remember how RFK promised Louisiana’s Doctor Senator Bill Cassidy that he wouldn’t disrupt vaccination schedules, he was lying.     

#BringThemAllHomeNow