Hockey Night in Canada 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱  

Oh Canada:  In January, due to a loss of public support, Justin Trudeau announced that he was stepping down as Prime Minister of Canada and head of the country’s Liberal Party.  At that point it was widely expected that the country’s next Prime Minister would be Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, a reasonable assumption given that after ten years of Trudeau’s leadership Canadians were ready for a change and Poilievre was leading Trudeau’s Liberal Party successor, interim Prime Minister Mark Carney, by around 25 points.  Then the Trump factor kicked in.  Not only did Trump continue to insist that Canada should become our 51^st state; he went all in on his tariffs, violating the revised NAFTA agreement he’d negotiated with Canada and Mexico during Trump 1.0.  Carney’s 25-point lead went up in smoke, he even lost his seat in Canada’s Parliament and as a result Liberal Party leader Mark Carney is now Canada’s newly elected Prime Minister.  It wasn’t a total win for the Liberals, Carney’s party fell three seats short of a majority so he will have to put together a coalition, but it was a resounding rebuke of Trump, who sees himself as the King of the World and suggested yesterday that he would make a good Pope.  Moreover, it was an incredible comeback from what was supposed to be an easy Conservative victory. Good news for Canada, but unfortunately there are 1360 excruciatingly long days remaining in Trump’s presidency and he appears determined to make the most of those days, and by most, think continue his destructive path.  Last night, probably in response to all the terrible polls that were recently released, he went to Michigan where he told the crowd, and yes for some unfathomable reason, there was a crowd, that the first 100 days of Trump 2.0 were the best ever for any US president.  And why wouldn’t he say that? It’s a lie, he knows it’s a lie, but he also knows that if he repeats it often enough, he’ll convince a lot of low information voters, and probably some who ought to know better, that its true. It doesn’t help that Michigan Governor Whitmer was there to greet him but at least she got a new fighter jet mission for a Michigan National Guard base in exchange.  Trump’s also been sitting down for 100-day interviews with a number of reporters from the mainstream media outlets that he usually attacks.  During one of those interviews, that included The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg most recently of Signal fame, along with Washington Post escapees Ashley Parker and Mark Scherer, he repeatedly insisted that he’d won the 2020 election. That was just one of the unbalanced things he said as he bragged about all the 24-karat gold leaf he’d had installed in the White House since moving back in while asking the three their opinion on whether or not he should install a crystal chandelier on the soon to be gilded Oval Office ceiling. The bottom line, he’s nuts, dangerous, president and has garish taste.

Tariff Follies:  Trump isn’t the only one who is deceitful, the people around him are too.  Treasury Secretary Bessent, one of those who knows better, continues to defend the tariffs that he knows are economy killers, even as he appears to be melting into a puddle in plain sight, a problem because he’s supposed to be negotiating with China.  Commerce Secretary Lutwick who unlike Bessent seems to be enjoying his moment in the sun, insists that Trump has negotiated trade deals with many countries but can’t announce any of them, including one “bigly” one because they are top secret pending formal approval by the countries on the other side. Despite their best efforts none of the reporters on the tariff beat have managed to identify any of those countries with impending deals though some speculate based on wishful hints from White House insiders that India or South Korea could be among them though South Korea can’t agree to anything until their June elections.  Yesterday, after it was reported that Amazon planned to break out tariff costs online, a “pissed off” Trump made it clear to Jeff Bezos that doing so would cost him all the goody points he’d earned by cancelling The Washington Post’s Kamala endorsement and by contributing millions to the Trump cause.  Bezos relented, denied that Amazon was ever going to do what Press Secretary Leavitt said would have been a “hostile and political act.”  Spoiler alert, if that item you purchase next week costs $25 more than what you would have paid last month, the increase is the “secret” tariff amount.  While Trump’s team continue to insist that tariffs will not be passed on to US consumers and won’t negatively impact the economy, the facts on the ground, or more accurately in the sea say otherwise.   The executive director of the Port of Los Angeles told CNBC yesterday that he expects incoming cargo volumes to slide by more than a third next week compared to the same period in 2024.  Yesterday the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (the ILWU) released a statement calling on “every worker, every union, and every person who believes in economic justice to stand with us against these Trump tariffs." He went on to say that “the tariffs on Chinese imports, recently raised to 145 percent, had instigated ‘a de facto trade war’ between the world's two largest economies, and warned that this will impact the ‘hundreds of thousands of jobs’ connected to global trade.” Concerned about a sharp decline in package deliveries, yesterday UPS announced 20,000 layoffs and a number of corporations including General Motors, Kraft, JetBlue have either delayed or are in the process of revising earnings estimates downward due to the uncertainty related to the impact of the tariffs. The holidays will be impacted too, the NYTimes reports that Christmas toy orders are being “paused.”  These are the kind of reports that spur all those recession predictions.    

Funny Math:  Remember when Elon Musk said that he and his DOGE-niks would chop $2 trillion than just $1 trillion off next year’s budget? He’s now revised that number down again to $150 billion and according to the NY Times David Farenthold, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who has made a career out of monitoring Trump’s funny math, that number is probably an overstatement.  Farenthold and his co-author Jeremy Singer-Vine point out that among other things, Musk’s claim includes billion-dollar errors, counts spending that was never likely to happen, and includes cancellations of contracts that did not exist.  That’s not to say that Musk hasn’t been hugely successful at disrupting and eliminating programs particularly those affecting health and foreign aid, he just hasn’t saved much by doing so.  In fact, according to Politico total spending has risen by 6.3 percent, or $156 billion since Trump took office. On the subject of bad math, Trump continues to make demands on Speaker Johnson who is supposed to be finalizing his budget package.  Johnson who is trying to figure out how to cut Medicaid and other benefits that matter like food for the hungry  in a manner that will allow him to blame everyone not in his party including of course the usual scapegoats Joe Biden and Barack Obama has received directions from Trump to cut taxes on tips while also upping state and local tax deductions and providing aid to farmers. 

Oops:  Yesterday, perhaps in an effort to distract from reports of his chaotic management, Defense Secretary Hegseth who still has his job, signed an order cancelling a Pentagon program that boosts the participation of women in peace building and conflict prevention.  He called the program “yet another woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops.”  The program wasn’t a Biden program, it had been sponsored by Little Marco when he was a Senator and by cosplay Noem when she was in the House.  It was signed into law by Trump during his first last term.  Because sometimes both sides can be right about some things, yesterday a Harvard task force released a “scathing account” finding that anti-Semitism had “infiltrated coursework, social life, the hiring of some faculty members and the worldview of certain academic programs.”  A separate report on anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bias on campus was also released.  Harvard has lots of work to do and it’s good that they are acknowledging it, but the timing is a bit awkward given that the Trump administration has been using Harvard and other institutions’ anti-Semitism problem to justify their attempt at Viktor Orban style takeovers of institutions of higher learning.

#BringThemAllHomeNow  

  

 

How'm I Doing? 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱  

Polls and More Polls:  Trump 2.0 has reached the 100-day mark.  To mark what feels like a decade, polls were released last week by Fox, the Washington Post/ABC/IPSOS, the NY Times/Siena, and the AP/NORC to name a few of the major ones.  To different degrees they reveal that Trump’s popularity is down across the board especially among Democrats and Independents.  He’s down among Republicans too though far too many of them still and probably always will think he’s doing fine, an indication that they’re totally delusional, not paying attention, or are so down the red rabbit hole that they’d support Attila the Hun if he were their party’s leader. Notice I refrained from saying they’d support Hitler or Stalin, though I suspect quite a few of them would. In short, the majority of Americans now realize that Trump isn’t good for the country: his rash and erratic tariff policy, isn’t good for the economy; his mega donor Elon Musk’s slash and burn implementation of those eliminate government and undo all regulations policies called for in the infamous Project 2025 plan have been hugely damaging to things that matter like health and safety; that while most want undocumented criminals and terrorists deported, the reckless rounding up and deportation of hairdressers, gardeners, painters, women, US born children, at least one suffering from cancer, and students to Louisiana holding cells and gulags in El Salvador isn’t okay; that the trashing of alliances and international goodwill is also not a good thing; and the list which includes the growing number of measles cases and a threatened autism registry goes on and on. But despite the polls, Trump is still sitting in the Oval Office, when not golfing and throwing grifting parties, and at least until the midterms, assuming there are midterms, he’s likely to keep on doing what he’s doing.  Those Medicaid cuts beckon as does the debt ceiling.   

Tariffs, Tariffs, Tariffs: Trump is all over the place on tariffs though he still loves them. When the markets nosedive, he says that his tariff plans aren’t set in stone, just an opening salvo that he’s ready to walk back but when indices head up, he throws more flame on the fire, freaking investors out again, introducing a level of uncertainty that makes it near impossible for manufacturers and retailers to make plans.  Trump’s current line, repeated this weekend by Treasury Secretary Bessent, who’s a really bad liar, is that the administration is engaged in trade negotiations with 200 countries, including China, and will have major agreements to announce with almost all of them within 90 days. The problem with that assertion, is that even counting the islands with penguins, there aren’t 200 countries, China reports that they aren’t negotiating with us, and though a few agreements will likely be reached or at least announced, there won’t be enough to matter though maybe there will be one that allows Trump to declare victory and move on. To date consumers haven’t felt the impact of the tariffs, but that’s about to change and the hit on pocketbooks and the availability of goods is expected to be substantial. Trump wants us to believe that the billions or is it trillions he collects in tariffs will allow him to eliminate income taxes.  There won’t be trillions or even billions collected, income taxes aren’t going away and if they did, average Joes and Janes will still be poorer because tariffs are regressive taxes.  As to the super rich guys, they’ll still have lots of money at least that’s what Don Jr, two of envoy/Real Estate guy Steve Witkoff sons, and some of Trump’s big donors are counting on.  This weekend they launched a new very high-end Georgetown club called the “Executive Branch.”  Membership is by invitation only, initiation fee in excess of $500,000.  Reportedly there’s already a waiting list because $500k is a pittance when you consider that it buys access to the administration and this administration, more than any other is all about pay for play.

Migrant Round-ups: Though the rounding up of migrants has been getting a lot of press, and the stories, including this weekend’s concerning a breast feeding mother being taken away from her dependent child and another one about a very young stage four cancer patient, a US citizen, being deported with his undocumented mother is beyond disturbing, the reality is that the Trump’s administration is underperforming its own one million per year deportation goal and also underperforming prior presidents’ deportation numbers which explains why they are going after “low hanging fruit” like moms and babies and innocent painters in court rooms, instead of focusing all their efforts on the harder to round up gang members and seasoned criminals.  It turns out that having Stephen Miller and Thom Homan spew hate on TV while sending cosplay Barbie Kristi Noem to the El Salvador gulag is less effective than following the law and deporting people legally.  Remember when Trump told his Republican cronies in the House and Senate to vote against the funding for extra border protection and immigration judges because he feared that would benefit Biden and the Democrats in the run up to the 2024 election?  Well, it would have also made it easier for him to accomplish his deportation goals legally but then again legal isn’t something he cares about which goes far to explaining the midnight flights to El Salvador and the illegally deported and still imprisoned Juan Garcia Abrego.  Last week’s arrest of Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan is proof of that.  Her “crime:”  preventing INS from arresting a migrant house painter, who it turns out wasn’t a criminal, in her courtroom. Judges and most law enforcement officials don’t want INS in their courtrooms because to do their jobs they need people residing in immigrant communities to come forward when they are victims of or witnesses to crime. The undocumented won’t report crimes if they fear they’ll be deported as a result. Going after Judge Dugan is an intimidation tactic, one that Trump employed last time he was president and one that fits right in with his attacks on those higher court judges, the ones ruling against a lot of his actions. 

Fog: Over the weekend, Trump had a very public on camera sit down with Ukraine President Zelenskyy while the two attended Pope Francis’ funeral.  Great for the camera, but maybe mostly performative as was Trump’s “faux” outrage at Putin’s recent citizen targeted bombing. Despite his Truth Social posted “disappointment” with Putin, Trump appears to still be pushing Zelenskyy to accept all of Putin’s territorial demands and Little Marco is still threatening that the US will stop trying to implement a peace plan if the two sides don’t agree on one soon, and by agree, he means if Zelenskyy doesn’t agree to Putin’s demands. Meantime, the real estate guy’s real estate guy Steven Witkoff has been talking nukes with the Iranians, a process that probably wasn’t eased by the mysterious explosion of missile rocket fuel at a port in Iran this weekend.  But you have to give it to Witkoff, he’s way over his skis but he keeps plodding on and who knows maybe he’ll get the Iranians to agree to the deal that Obama previously negotiated?      

More:  Trump keeps teasing a third term.  He’s now selling Trump 2028 hats.  He’s probably just trolling us.  Of more immediate concern, he’s now going after ActBlue, the Democrat’s fundraising apparatus.  Maybe he plans on getting one of those complicit law firms to help the DOJ pursue them?  

#BringThemAllHome   

 

          

Magical Mystery Tour 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱  

Cabinet Chronicles:  Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is living up to expectations and not in a good way, and the make-up studio that CBS reports he had outfitted at the Pentagon for his various media appearances, that’s just the tip of the eyeliner brush. The Wall Street Journal which has been doing a bang up drop reporting on Hegseth, has detailed the events surrounding the classified briefing on China that Hegseth had planned to provide Elon Musk until he was forced to downgrade it to a secret-free show and tell. Hegseth was so infuriated that reports of his planned tete-a-tete with Musk made it to the press and to Trump who despite his own willingness to share secrets with Putin, wasn’t okay with Hegseth sharing secret China war plans with Musk.  Hegseth’s reaction to the leaking of his planned Musk meeting was to go nuts on the Generals and Admirals who he believed, without proof, were responsible.  He even threatened to force a few of them to take polygraph tests. The WSJ’s report followed an AP article that revealed that Hegseth had an unsecured personal computer set up in his office with the Signal messaging app so that he could more easily chat with his friends and family.  He used the personal computer when he shared detailed Houthi bombing raid plans with his wife, brother, personal lawyer, and a few of his other unvetted bros and buddies.  To date, five of Hegseth’s close aides, including his chief of staff, have been forced out.  Various media outlets report that chaos reigns at the Pentagon, which together with the unsecured computer is good news for Russia, China, and any other US adversaries and even a few allies with good hacking skills but not good for the country.  The official White House position is that Trump continues to have full confidence in Hegseth but behind the scenes, not so much. Word is that Hegseth still has his job because Trump doesn’t want to publicly acknowledge how much he screwed up by appointing him in the first place.  In other cabinet news, Axios reports that the fight between Musk and Treasury Secretary Bessent over whose choice should serve as acting director of the IRS was so heated that it involved a chest to chest, expletive laden shouting match in “earshot” of Trump and a number of other White House officials, presumably one or more of whom were the source for the Axios article  Though the argument between the merely very rich Bessent and the world’s richest man Musk didn’t involve fists, it came close. Despite Musk’s way larger pocketbook, Bessent’s came out on top. Then there’s Secretary of State little Marco he’s so anxious to please Trump and his oil industry contributors that yesterday he notified the members of State’s Office of Global Change, the group that oversees, or until yesterday oversaw, international climate change negotiations for the US, that the office is being shuttered, apparently because climate change doesn’t exist if you ignore it?  Ironically, one person who is now experiencing firsthand the impact of extreme weather is former Press Secretary, now Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders.  Her request for federal aid to help with Arkansas’ recovery efforts from the string of deadly and destructive tornados that hit her state in March has been turned down by Trump because, again, climate change isn’t real and if anyone should know that it’s Sarah because didn’t she say as much when she was running Trump 1.0’s messaging? It’s not just Arkansas; Trump has also cut off hurricane relief assistance to North Carolina where Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who despite his reservations provided one of the crucial votes for Hegseth’s confirmation, faces a tough reelection battle in 2026.

Fog of War:  Trump hates all things Ukraine and loves all things Russia. Ukraine has been the thorn in his side since Trump 1.0 and for whatever reason, be it the “pee tape” rumors or just the fact that Putin is rich and powerful, he loves and wants to be like him. Trump promised to end the Russia-Ukraine war on day one of Trump 2.0, perhaps thinking that he could so with the stroke of one of his ever-present sharpies but ending wars isn’t easy and neither Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy nor Russia’s Vladimir Putin are making it easy for him.  Early this week Trump and his complicit Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that it was time for Ukraine who Trump continues to insist started the war to cede Crimea to Russia without asking Russia to make any meaningful concessions.  He also blamed Zelenskyy for the continuation of the war.  Then Putin did what he frequently does, he showed Trump up by mercilessly attacking residential areas in Kyiv, killing twelve and injuring 100 more. The “dismayed” Trump responded to Putin’s bombing raid by posting the following Truth Social post: Vladimir, STOP! I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing," adding “5000 soldiers a week are dying. Lets get the Peace Deal DONE!"  I guess his magic sharpie wasn’t available. Peace remains elusive.

Legalities:  The Trump administration continues to face pushback from the courts and also from some of its own attorneys.  Yesterday, due to an “accidental” posting out of Southern District of New York, we learned that the DOJ knows and has advised the Department of Transportation that its push to undo New York’s congestion pricing is based on a weak, unlikely to prevail argument.  DOJ’s reaction to that reveal was to replace the lawyers working on the case.  They still plan to proceed with their suit but will be using more compliant lawyers to do so.  We also learned yesterday after a federal judge ordered his return that there’s another, or probably just another that we know of,  illegally deported Venezuelan migrant stuck in CECOT, the El Salvador gulag. There’s also news on the Kilmar Abrego Garcia front, both sides in the case have agreed to a one-week freeze of legal actions, an indication that the government might actually be bringing him home, or at the very least springing him from the gulag. The courts have also pushed back against some of the Trump administration’s DEI efforts and Trump’s order requiring that voters show proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. That last requirement is Trump’s effort to disenfranchise voters under the guise of preventing aliens from voting, even though virtually no aliens, ETs or otherwise, vote.                

More: Bill Owens, 60 Minutes long time producer, resigned this week, another victim of Trump’s effective campaign against the media.  Citing his age, 80-year-old Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, the second ranking Democrat in the Senate, announced that he won’t be running for reelection in 2026.  Similarly, Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, also 80, told colleagues that she plans to retire rather than seek reelection.  Schakowsky, a progressive Democrat, was likely going to be primaried, not over her positions, but because of her age.  Lastly, Trump has invited the top 220 buyers of $TRUMP, his meme coin, also known as his latest grift, to a private gala dinner at Trump National Golf Club in Washington DC.  The top 25 holders will get “an ultra-exclusive” private VIP reception with him as well as a “Special Tour.” What else is there to say?

#BringThemAllHomeNow 

 

Blink, Blink 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱  

😉😉:  Maybe it was Monday’s 950-point Dow Jones Industrial Average drop.  Maybe it was the articles pointing out that the April drop in the DJIA was the worst April performance since 1932 when we were in the midst of the Depression while the broader S&P 500 plunge was the worst performance for any president since records began in 1928. Maybe it was that the already dangerously shaky debt markets were getting worse. Maybe it was that the IMF has lowered its forecast of US’s 2025 growth rate from 2.7% to 1.8%.  Maybe it was the market’s growing belief that Trump was about to make good on his threats to oust Federal Bank Chair Jerome Powell, a fear bolstered by his ever- grinning economic advisor Kevin Haslett who said Trump was studying (like Trump ever studies?) whether to fire Powell.  Maybe it was the increasing number of polls reporting how dissatisfied Americans are with the way he’s been handling the economy.  Maybe it was because Treasury Secretary Bessent hid his favorite golf clubs or maybe it was because Chief of Staff Susie Wiles was holding his tubes of orange make-up hostage.  Whatever the reason, the mercurial Trump has blinked 😉😉,  at least for now.  Late yesterday, Trump said that “he has no intention of firing Powell” while also saying that the tariffs he’s imposed on China are too high and will come down substantially, what CNN called a “u turn” in this China tariff war.  As a result of his blink, the stock markets rallied yesterday, and futures are up this morning.  Indices are still way down from where they were at the end of the not so sleepy guy’s presidency but maybe, at least for now, the precipitous slide, is over.  Maybe. But don’t get too excited, a lot of damage has been done, and it will take more than one day’s worth of comments and tariff promises to undo.  Some of that damage has been done by Doge guy Elon who says his days in government are numbered. He was always planning to step away in May because of the legal limitation on how long he could stick around without going through a Senate confirmation so while it’s nice that he says he’s going, many of his Dogs will remain embedded in government, glomming on to all our personal data, and Musk’s government contracts will continue to grow together with his influence so while he might be less public he’ll still have lots of influence because that’s what one gets for $250 million.

Cabinet Chronicles:  The stories about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth continue to multiply. Those Houthi attack details that he shared on his personal phone with his wife, brother, personal lawyer, and a few other bro besties, were cut and pasted directly from an official channel, secure communication from US Central Command head Army Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla minutes before US fighter jets took off for strikes against the Iranian-backed Houthis. So, despite Hegseth’s claims that they weren’t actual attack plans they were. When former Senate leader Mitch McConnell voted against Hegseth’s confirmation, he explained his decision by saying that “Effective management of nearly 3 million military and civilian personnel, an annual budget of nearly $1 trillion, and alliances and partnerships around the world is a daily test with staggering consequences for the security of the American people and our global interests…. Hegseth has failed, as yet, to demonstrate that he will pass this test. But as he assumes office, the consequences of failure are as high as they have ever been." McConnell’s concerns, likely shared by many of the Republican lemmings who voted for him anyway, were spot on, and McConnell didn’t even go into Hegseth’s personal failings, like his history of drinking excessively and his “alleged” abuse of women.  Yesterday, in an appearance on Fox, his prior employer, a strangely amped up Hegseth denied he’d done anything inappropriate and blamed the radical left-wing media as well as deep state players at the Pentagon, the people he’d actually hired, for the reports about his Signal bro chat and chaos at the Pentagon. Trump’s very complicit press secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed those excuses later in the day and indication that at least for now Trump is standing with Hegseth.  However, NPR reports that the White House is currently considering possible replacements so who knows because while Trump 1.0 would have dumped Hegseth by now,  Trump 2.0 is far more reckless. Trump is also all in on Cosplay Kristi, his DHS Secretary, whose Gucci pocketbook was stolen over the weekend. Really, who among us doesn’t carry $3,000 in cash, our passport and all our other forms of ID, blank checks, and pharmaceuticals, together all the make-up needed to hide blotches and other imperfections during appearances at El Salvador gulags?  Somehow or other Noem’s Secret Service entourage missed the theft though it was caught on a surveillance camera. What are the odds that if, likely when, caught the bag snatcher will experience the fate of at least two of the migrants that the INS has grabbed, not the ones being held in Louisiana or El Salvador, but the ones who have been so thoroughly “disappeared” that no one in government will admit to knowing where they are now.  We are entering Argentina “Dirty War” territory. Turning to Marco Rubio and his State Department, yesterday his official plans for the reorganization and downsizing of the State Department were sent to Congress for their “review.”  The good news is that they aren’t as draconian as the draft that was earlier leaked, the not so good news is that they do eliminate a whole bunch of humanitarian related functions maybe because we are now delegating a lot of that to the Chinese. And one more thing, nepo RFK’s FDA has suspended their milk quality testing program, something about firing too many of the people who do that sort of thing but maybe also because as a raw milk enthusiast RFK thinks pathogen induced diarrhea and 🤮is a good thing?  We’re also no longer checking for cyclosporine or bird flu and are hiding E Coli outbreaks.       

 #BringThemAllHomeNow

 
Bonkers Crazy Pants 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱  

Rest in Peace:  Pope Francis died early this morning. Despite his surprising and as it turns out last public appearance at St Basilica for Sunday’s Easter service, the passing of the 88-year-old Pontiff wasn’t totally unexpected given his deteriorating health.  Naturally, times being what they are, social media is already full of conspiracy theories tying VP Vance, who met with the Pope on Saturday, to his death.  During their brief meeting which followed an earlier one with the Pope’s representative, Pope Francis reportedly spoke to Vance about showing compassion to the immigrants that he and his boss so frequently disdain.  Though there are lots of things to blame Vance and Trump for, the Pope’s passing isn’t one of them. The intrigue now concerns who the College of Cardinals will chose to succeed Pope Francis, and whether their pick will follow in his footsteps or be significantly more conservative. While Pope was making his final Easter appearance, our wannabe King of Kings, the guy who probably can’t even spell compassion, delivered his holiday message and given his track record it should surprise no one that it was full of venom, vengeance, spelling, bad grammar, and caps.  It went as follows:  “Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane, and well known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters, back into our Country. Happy Easter also to the WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue, an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten!”  The judge slam reflected Trump’s fury about the Supreme Court’s Saturday night decision to put a temporary hold on the deportation of migrants to El Salvador’s gulag. By the way, Justice Alito, who’d together with Justice Thomas disagreed with SCOTUS’s weekend ruling, released the rationale for his dissent yesterday.  Apparently, his view is that the SCOTUS hold was wrong because AG Pam Bondi’s DOJ peon had asserted, despite evidence that buses filled with migrants were being sped to waiting planes, that no migrants would be flown to El Salvador on Saturday. Bondi’s designated obfuscator refused to say that no migrant flights would take off on Easter Sunday, but Alito and Thomas were more than willing to take a wait and see approach even if doing so meant a few more migrants were irretrievably shipped to a gulag on Easter. In other SCOTUS news, the Court announced that it will hear the birthright citizenship case, disappointing because the hope had been that they would instead elect to let the Constitution speak for itself.       

Pentagon Intrigue: We may never know details about the conversations at the soon to be held Cardinal’s conclave, but we are learning more about what’s going on at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Pentagon, and none of which reflects well on him.  Yesterday, the NY Times reported on still another Signal group chat where Hegseth shared details about the now infamous US attack on Houthi targets. Though Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg wasn’t included in this chat room, the list of members was equally inappropriate and probably a lot less trustworthy.  They included Hegseth’s current wife who is a former Fox producer, his brother, his personal lawyer, and a dozen other people from his personal and professional circle. The chat room in question had originally been set up during Hegseth’s confirmation process, there was no legitimate reason for any of its participants to be in on real time details about military operation, but they were. The newest Signal chat came to light likely because Hegseth fired members of his senior Defense Department staff last week. The official position is that these staff members who were until last week considered Hegseth and Trump loyalists were fired for leaking about the first Signal chat as well as the planned meeting where Elon Musk was supposed to get lots of details about Defense Department operations.  In a piece published in this weekend’s Politico, former Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot who left the Pentagon after getting skewered for defending the elimination of references to Jackie Robinson from the Pentagon’s website, is now dishing on all the dysfunction at the Pentagon, attributing it to Hegseth’s failings as a leader.  Ullyot is likely right about Hegseth being awful at his job, just about everyone, including all the Republican Senators who voted for his confirmation, knew he would be, but it’s not like Ullyot, or any of the others who were recently fired or “reassigned” are all that reputable.  This appears to be a circular firing squad among deplorable people. It would be fun to watch if this wasn’t happening at the Pentagon among the people who are supposed to be keeping us safe. The State Department appears to be going through some things too.  The NY Times and Bloomberg have obtained copies of what they report is a soon to be issued Executive Order that one freaked out State Department official is calling “bonkers crazy pants.” The order addresses plans to cut State dramatically.  In addition to the closing of a number of consulates the plan includes the almost total erasure of all things Africa, believable given Trump’s views on sh*t hole countries and Black people as well as the elimination of offices that work on climate change, humanitarian support for refugees, democracy, and human rights policy, along with a sharp cut to diplomatic operations in Canada because we now hate Canada?  Secretary of State Rubio’s office called reports of the Executive Order fake news.  We will know soon enough and who doubts that if the reports are true, the eager to please Rubio will applaud Trump’s actions?

Also, Crazy Pants 😜: The markets keep dropping because tariffs, so naturally Trump’s other notable social post yesterday included a slam of those criticizing his bonkers tariff policy: “THE BUSINESSMEN WHO CRITICZE TARIFFS ARE BAD AT BUSINESS, BUT REALLY BAD AT POLITICS.  THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND OR REALIZE THAT I AM THE GREATEST FRIEND THAT AMERICAN CAPITALISM HAS EVER HAD!” (caps his, I am just the messenger 😊)  Somehow, I doubt that his message will calm the markets.  What else is there to say about that except that it’s likely that absent a real change in policy both the equity and bond markets will continue their slide. On the international front, Putin declared a holiday ceasefire before the weekend and then immediately started bombing Ukraine, as one does after announcing a ceasefire.  And the Wall Street Journal reports that Trump is pressuring Ukraine to respond to his plan to end the war by granting concessions to Putin.  Those concessions include US recognition of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the permanent exclusion of Ukraine from joining NATO.

#BringThemAllHomeNow

 
Weekend Update! 🥚 🐣 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱 🥚 🐣

The Supremes: I know, it’s Saturday but a lot of things happened during the wee hours so here goes.  At 1 AM, the Supreme Court blocked, or at the very least temporarily blocked, the Trump administration from deporting foreign nationals under the Alien Enemies Act. To state the obvious, SCOTUS doesn’t typically issue orders at that hour, especially on a holiday weekend, but apparently enough of them felt compelled to act since our government, led by Trump, abetted by some combination of his mini-Goebbels deflector shield Stephen Miller, Nazi Barbie Kristi Noem and Border Czar Tom Homan, was about to fly a plane full of Venezuelans migrants to his favorite El Salvador gulag, because apparently that’s the thing to do during the Christian holy week and the run up to Easter Sunday.  It wasn’t just the timing of the SCOTUS order that was unusual, it was issued before the government had a chance to respond, an indication that enough of the Justices understood that they had to act before any planes took flight because as we’ve already seen getting these planes turned around or any of the immigrants back isn’t easy. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Justices Alito and Thomas dissented but since the order was issued in the dead of the night, the reasons for their dissent have yet to be put in writing. That said, my guess is that they’ll say something about Trump being allowed to do what ever he wants because he’s their King of Kings.

Veritas:  The other story that emerged last night is about the Harvard fight. According to the NY Times the letter that sent Harvard over the edge, the missive that included a series of onerous demands about hiring, admissions and curriculum, was “unauthorized” and sent to Harvard by the Trump team in error.  That claim is hard to believe given that the emailed letter came from a senior official’s email account, was on official letterhead, and was signed by three federal officials but then again these are the same twisted Keystone Kops whose defense team invited The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on to their “top secret” Signal call.  Prior to receiving the letter, Harvard officials had thought that they were coming close to an agreement with Trump officials, but the letter’s demands were so over the top, that Harvard felt they had no choice but to fight back. This whole story is even more farcical when you consider that Trump followed up by freezing more than $2 billion in grants, funding that largely supports medical research at the university, and then further doubled down by asking the IRS to look into stripping Harvard of its tax-exempt status.  I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention that the IRS’s fourth acting head, Gary Shapley, who been in place for a few days,  just a fraction of a Scaramucci, is this week’s winner of the Head of Lettuce award. Apparently, he’d been appointed at the suggestion of DOGE guy Elon Musk without any consultation or input from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who upon learning of the appointment threw a tizzy fit that resulted in the dismissal.  The newest, or should I say, fifth acting IRS Commissioner is Michael Faulkender, the current deputy secretary for the Treasury Department. Trump’s nominee, Billy Long, the tax scam marketer, is still awaiting Senate confirmation.

Back to the Weekend:  There’s plenty more afoot, like the firing of the guy who so aggressively destroyed US AID that even Little Marco AKA Secretary of State couldn’t tolerate him anymore; the resurrection, it’s Easter weekend after all, of a few of the people that Musk’s crowd had marked dead by the Social Security Administration; the firing of yet another member of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s inner circle; and the elimination of the people who make sure our food is safe, but all that will wait until Monday.

#BringThemAllHomeNow

 

You're Fired, Maybe  😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱

Plots and Revolutions: Mao had his intellectual crushing cultural revolution, Stalin his murderous doctors plot and now Trump, our wannabe dictator is moving forward with his own effort to expunge the institutions and people whose views and actions aren’t consistent with his MAGA ideology, ironically under the guise of fighting anti-Semitism, the hate that Stalin used to justify his purge of doctors. Not only is Trump withholding billions of dollars from Harvard, and a growing list of other inadequately “MAGA” universities, he’s now threatening to take away Harvard’s tax-exempt status.  Anyone who thinks he will stop at Harvard or that this has anything to do with a fight against anti-Semitism need only note that last night he also threatened to take away the tax-exempt status of ethics watchdog CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington).  Their transgression, investigating and suing over his many ethical lapses and illegal actions. Since Nixon, US Presidents have been legally prohibited from requesting the IRS to audit or investigate particular taxpayers, but legal barriers won’t stop Trump from moving forward, nor are they likely to stop Attorney General Bondi or his soon to be confirmed IRS Commissioner Billy Long, whose professional past includes hawking fraudulent tax evasion schemes, from following his directives.  In all likelihood, Harvard and CREW will ultimately retain their tax-exempt status but will incur substantial legal expenses during what will be a protracted battle, assuming Trump moves forward with his threats. Then again, Trump is all in on legal battles.  Yesterday, in an opinion written by the very conservative Reagan appointed Judge Harvie Wilkinson, the 4^th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled against Trump’s request to halt Judge Paula Xinis’ orders, the ones intended to get Trump and his team of co-conspirators to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the immigrant that they’ve admitted to wrongfully deporting to the El Salvador gulag. In his scathing opinion, Judge Wilkinson wrote that the “government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order.”  The judge also laid into the administration’s claim that it can’t do anything to return Garcia because they have no jurisdiction in El Salvador as shocking to judges and the American “intuitive sense of justice.”  One question now is whether the Supreme Court will hear this case again, or whether the Justices, like Judge Wilkinson will point out that facilitate is a verb and that by saying that Trump should facilitate Garcia’s return to the US, they meant that they should put him on a plane back to the USA. The other more critical question is whether Trump and his team will obey.  As to Garcia, the good news is that he’s alive. Yesterday, after first denying Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen any access to their gulag or to Garcia, El Salvador’s dictatorial leader Bukele relented by staging a meet up that made it look as if Garcia had been spending his time sipping margheritas at a high-end resort.  After their meeting Garcia was returned to his cell which despite Bukele’s Potemkin village like staging is no beachside lanai.  The Trump team would be wise to end the Garcia episode by bringing him back.  Surely, they can come up with a fiction which would allow Trump to save face, at least with his MAGA supporters and right-wing media outlets, but wisdom like decency isn’t in their dictionary.

You’re Fired? Because trashing the economy and throwing the stock and bond markets into a tailspin hasn’t been damaging enough, Trump appears to be close to dumping or at least trying to dump Federal Reserve Bank Chief Jerome Powell who he appointed during Trump 1.0.  Yesterday, Trump Truth Posted a threat to fire Powell, then the White House Communications office said he didn’t really mean it but then Trump doubled down saying that Powell’s termination couldn’t come soon enough. Powell’s term runs through May 2026, he says he has no plans to resign.  Theoretically Trump can only fire him for cause, but he thinks he’s a king and he might be right, so who knows? As the Wall Street Journal wrote this morning, with his tariff war going poorly and the economy suffering as a result, it was inevitable that Trump would demand that the Federal Reserve ride to his rescue by cutting interest rates. The problem for Trump is that Powell, isn’t rushing to cut interest rates because Trump’s insane tariff policy has pushed the economy into an uncertain territory, and he's not convinced that cutting rates will help rather than make things worse and by worse, he’s concerned about that dreaded stagflation. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom is now suing to stop Trump’s tariffs and he’s not alone as a group led funded by Leonard Leo, the legal activist credited with getting Trump’s Justices on to the Supreme Court, is suing arguing that Trump has no constitutional authority to impose tariffs via emergency powers.

People:  The government purges continue, among the vanquished are many of the scientists who’d been studying the diseases that plague all of us. Years of their research are literally being flushed down the drain.  Measles cases, officially around 750 but probably underreported, continue to rise. Dr. David Sugarman, the senior CDC scientist leading the effort against the current outbreak, said that the CDC is “scraping to find the resources and personnel needed to provide support to Texas and other jurisdictions.”  Don’t be surprised if Sugerman is soon fired for his candor and because RFK thinks measles infections are a good thing.  Defense Secretary Hegseth, who we all know is in over his head, has fired three of his handpicked assistants, something to do with them leaking information. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, one of the very few Republicans who ever speaks her mind, described widespread worry about the chaos of President Trump's second administration, telling nonprofit leaders in her state: "We are all afraid." She went on to say that there are no checks and balances anymore, maybe because her Republican colleagues aren’t doing their job? Apparently twelve Republican House members have expressed concerns about how cuts in Medicaid will hurt their constituents and are now telling Speaker Johnson that they need him to cut his promised cuts. Of course, their “concerns” for their constituents are really concerns about their reelection prospects.  In any case this is likely more smoke and mirrors since when push comes to shove and when Trump calls, these guys tend to cave.  One of Trump’s faves, Representative Elise Stefanik, his one-time nominee to serve as UN Ambassador, is reportedly now considering a NYS Gubernatorial run.  Aren’t we lucky?!? The Democrats appear to be down another Congressman, at least for now.  New Jersey Representative Donald Norcross, 66 years old, is in intensive care, suffering from sepsis the result of a gall bladder infection spreading through his system.  

Fog:  This morning Secretary of State Rubio said that if Russia and Ukraine can’t come to an agreement soon the US with stop its efforts to broker peace.  Apparently, neither he nor Trump nor Trump’s real estate buddy Steve Witkoff get that negotiating peace deals takes time, lots of it.  The “good” news is that abandoning the Russia- Ukraine talks will free up Witkoff’s schedule to work on his promised Iran nuke deal. That’s the same Witkoff who earlier reported back that he was close to negotiating a deal that looked almost identical to the one struck by President Obama, before having to walk back his “deal” under pressure from White House hardliners by saying that he was new to all this Iran stuff so give him a break if his first try out the box wasn’t satisfactory.  As to Iran and its nuclear capabilities, apparently Prime Minister Netanyahu tried to get Trump to sign off his plans to strike Iran’s facilities during his recent visit, but Trump, like US presidents before him didn’t sign off or at least hasn’t so far.  Something about Trump’s advisors, or at least some of his advisors, warning that striking Iran wouldn’t be successful without causing more strife in the region and also would require lots of US assistance.

#BringThemAllHomeNow

                  

 

Veritas  😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱

Autocrats Playbook:  Taking over institutions of higher education, directing investigations into critics and rivals, pardoning “friendly” criminals, deploying the military and military-like institutions domestically, going after “unsympathetic” media outlets, dismantling cultural institutions, extorting corporations, attacking judges, coopting the legal profession, deporting and imprisoning immigrants and even citizens, and becoming president for life.  These are just some of the things that Trump has done or is trying to do.  Not so coincidentally these actions are all part of the autocrats’ playbook.  Each one is hugely problematic but when combined they’re lethal for democracy. Pushing back is essential which is why Harvard’s decision to fight the administration’s efforts to take over its day-to-day operations, including its hiring, admissions, and coursework decisions, is so notable.  Harvard, like the other institutions of higher education that the Trump administration has targeted is very far from perfect.  Their leaders were depressingly late to pushing back against the anti-Semitic activities that pervaded their campus, but Trump and his allies, are engaging in dangerous overreach.  They are using what they are painting as just a fight against anti-Semitism into an effort to remake the targeted universities in their image, ironically while frequently deploying anti-Semitic and racist tropes, cozying up to white supremacists, and likely spurring more anti-Semitism. The Harvard administration had already been negotiating changes with the Trump administration and had committed to adopting much of what had been demanded before last weekend when, emboldened by their success elsewhere, the Trump team upped their demands into takeover territory. So now Harvard is pushing back and if any institution can afford to lose a few billion dollars in government funding it’s Harvard. At $53 billion, Harvard’s endowment is larger than all other universities and dwarves that of most.  Already a few other colleges are joining them by pushing back too.  Just as the pervasiveness of anti-Semitism, or for that matter all forms of discrimination, is worth fighting, so are Trump’s efforts to control educational institutions.  Of course, Trump being Trump he’s now threatening to go after Harvard’s tax-exempt status.  That won’t be easily achieved which isn’t to say that he won’t try and given the number of law firms who’ve signed on to help him with his pet causes, he’ll have help, but that help won’t come from Susman Godfrey, the most recent law firm that Trump tried to extort.  Yesterday, US District Judge Loren AliKhan called Trump’s order against them a “personal vendetta” and a “shocking abuse of power.”  She blocked his actions against the firm.     

Deportations are US: This week’s other big story concerns Abrego Garcia, the migrant who was deported to the El Salvador prison. With El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele by his side, Trump, together with his toady, Attorney General Pam Bondi who makes former Trump AG Bill Barr appear almost saintly, insisted that they can’t possibly bring Garcia, who, despite any evidence, they continue to insist is a violent, gang member, back to the US.  They are lying, they know they are lying, most of us know they are lying but Garcia continues to rot in the El Salvador hell hole. There is precedent for the US bringing home “accidentally” deported individuals. During the last Trump administration, Trump facilitated the return of someone “accidentally” deported to Iraq, but this is Trump 2.0, worse than the last version so directed by Trump, the DOJ is pushing back against the courts: judges and Justices be damned, even firing the few remaining DOJ attorneys unwilling to lie on their behalf.  As Judge Paula Xinis put it yesterday, the DOJ and the Trump administration have done absolutely nothing to bring Garcia back to the US or even report on his true status.  She isn’t buying their assertion that SCOTUS’s direction to “facilitate” his return means that they don’t have to do anything more than ask Bukele for his help, while winking and nodding to make sure that he knows they really don’t want him to help.  Bukele is being paid to house the deported immigrants most of whom like Garcia were never gang members.  As a recipient of US largesse, he most certainly can be told to return Garcia, assuming Garcia is still among the living, though Bukele might be a bit reticent since Garcia probably has lots to say about the heinous conditions at CECOT, the prison where he’s being held.  As to the CECOT facility, Trump and Bukele joked about there being plenty of room there for any US citizens that Trump might want to send over, except maybe they weren’t joking. Going forward,  it’s likely that the AP won’t be invited into the press pool to report on Trump’s press moments with foreign leaders.  Yesterday, circumventing yet another court ruling, the White House press office rewrote its rule to exclude wire services like AP from future events.     

Make America Sicker:  It’s not just measles that’s on the rise, cases of pertussis, more commonly known as whooping cough, are increasing too.  As a result, related deaths are rising too: two babies have died in Louisiana, one each in Washington state, Idaho and South Dakota.  None of this is surprising, vaccine rates for measles, mumps, and rubella, pertussis, diphtheria, tetanus, hepatitis B and polio have fallen significantly since COVID and are likely to continue falling given RFK’s discrediting of vaccines. Yesterday, the Washington Post and the NY Times both ran stories about the increase in autism.  Unfortunately, both papers ran with inflammatory headlines, hiding the CDC’s important conclusion that diagnosis of autism is up because of increased awareness and screening both of which facilitate early intervention.  In fact, rates are higher wherever there are more screening programs.  Unfortunately, that’s not likely to be the “conclusion” of the study that RFK has his anti-vax “expert” heading so don’t be surprised when his report due out in five months ties the increase in autism to lifesaving vaccines. Sadly, there will likely be more measles, mumps, pertussis, and polio going forward.                

And:  On Monday when I referred to Congress’ targeted budget cut being $1.5 billion, I meant to type $1.5 trillion. However, the observation still stands, cuts that large, especially when accompanied by increases in border and military spending and tax cuts can only be achieved by taking bigly bites out of Medicaid and other social programs.  

#BringThemAllHome

 

 

Minefields 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱

Whiplash on Aisle Tariff: Over the weekend Trump and his team of irrational and ill-informed economic advisors further muddied the tariff waters when they first seemed to exempt certain electronic products like smartphones and laptops from his tariff scheme only to “clarify” that those products would be subject to tariffs under a different “fentanyl” category, at least that’s what they seemed to say through Sunday morning appearances by the Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Deputy Chief of Staff/all around awful person Stephen Miller as well as a Truth Social posts by the orange one.  Don’t feel bad if you, like me, are confused, the Wall Street Journal is too.  As their Editorial Board put it last night:  Trump “is taking exception to the idea that his administration is offering exceptions to his punishing tariffs.  That’s the story after a confusing weekend that offers more lessons in the arbitrary nature of Trump’s tariff policy.”  The WSJ then added “welcome to the tariff economy” where you now “navigate the political minefield of arbitrary tariffs.” And really, who doesn’t want to pay $2500 or more for their next iPhone during a recession?

Firestorms: While tariffs are dominating the news, the bigger story is that Trump and his DOJ appear to be ignoring a 9 to 0 Supreme Court ruling that they should facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia, the man who was shipped to the heinous prison in El Salvador through what the administration admits was a mistake. I say they appear to be ignoring the SCOTUS ruling because the ruling itself was fuzzy perhaps because having given Trump kingly powers, Chief Justice John Roberts hasn’t quite figured out how or if he can rein him back in.  At this point, the DOJ is providing only the barest of updates to US District Judge Paula Xinis who is fuming about their outrageous behavior. At least so far, the DOJ says that Garcia is “alive and in El Salvador” but argue that since he’s no longer under their jurisdiction they can’t provide more information about him which is total and complete bunk especially when you consider that Trump will be hosting Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, in the White House today.  By the way, Bukele is proud of being the “world’s coolest dictator” and we know how Trump adores dictators like North Korea’s Kim Jong un, the one who once returned one of his prisoners to the US in a coffin. While Trump is figuratively setting fire to the judiciary, a 38-year-old man literally set fire to the Governor’s mansion in Pennsylvania on Saturday night, putting the lives of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and his family at risk just hours after they had finished their Passover seder. VP Vance expressed his horror at the “really disgusting violence” but nothing from Trump who instead spent his nightly Truth Social time expressing outrage about last night’s 60 Minutes episode which included an interview with Ukraine President Zelenskyy and a report about how most Greenlanders did not want to become part of the USA.  With China putting a retaliatory freeze on exports of some of the rare minerals needed for batteries and other high-tech products Greenlanders should be concerned about an invasion because Trump’s going to want to find those minerals somewhere which is the reason he wants to takeover Greenland and part of the reason that he want’s our neighbor and one time ally to the north Canada, another one of those mineral rich countries, with the added bonus that absorbing Canada would make the US’s demographic a bit whiter.  Making America Whiter appears to be a dream shared by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who has purged books by Maya Angelou as well as those about the Holocaust from the Naval Academy library but has left copies of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and a book asserting the genetic inferiority of Black people on the library shelves.     

Budget Cutting:  Remember how Elon Musk promised that his slash and burn activities would cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, well forget about that.  Musk now claims he’ll be saving $150 billion and even that appears to be an overstatement of $92 billion because his “total” includes some large contracts that were never executed and some other amounts that are totally fictitious. Musk’s efforts have resulted in the firing of thousands of workers, disrupted government services and all in all, he’ll be saving us $58 billion, essentially chump change given the size of the country’s budget. However, there is some good news for Musk’s X (Twitter) because going forward all public communications from Social Security will be going out over X and only over X, a bit of a problem for most Social Security beneficiaries since only around 6% of the 65 and over set use X but really why do they need to know what’s going on at Social Security, the major source of their income, anyway? With Musk’s savings proving anemic, the focus is now back on Congress, where it should always have been.  The only way that they will achieve their $1.5 trillion budget cut is by slashing Medicaid and other health and social service-related funding. Tax cuts for the super-rich at the expense of health care and hospitals for the masses.

People:   New Hampshire’s former Governor Chris Sununu announced that he will not be running for the US Senate seat being vacated by Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen who is planning to retire at the end of her term.  That’s a major disappointment for Republicans who saw Sununu as their best chance to pick up the Shaheen seat. Democratic Colorado Senator Michael Bennet formally announced that he’s running for Governor to replace term limited Democratic Governor Jared Polis whose second term ends in 2026 which means that a Senate seat is now up for grabs in up in Colorado.  Let’s not forget the growing measles problem and RFK Jr, though he now kind of admits that the MMR vaccine prevents measles, he’s been telling people that its protective effect is only temporary and not as good as just getting sick with measles. Saying that while cases continue to grow is horrifying but having a health secretary who opposes vaccinations and is dismembering the NIH and the CDC and its health data collection is really horrible.  Lie a minute RFK is also promising that his team will get to the bottom of the autism conundrum in five months, and they probably will because they’ve already decided to link autism to vaccines, so there’s really no need for a “study.”

 

Legal Quagmire: Trump is now going after Susman, Godfrey the law firm that represented Dominion Voting Systems in its hugely successful lawsuit against Fox and is representing them in their suit against Newsmax.  Unlike a lot of the law firms who’ve rolled over, Susman Godfrey is suing Trump saying that “Unless the Judiciary acts with resolve—now—to repudiate this blatantly unconstitutional Executive Order and the others like it, a dangerous and perhaps irreversible precedent will be set.”  Susman Godfrey is right but unfortunately given the number of law firms that have kowtowed to Trump’s extortion demands the precedent may already have been set, in stone. The list of law firms bending to Trump’s now includes Paul Weiss, Skadden, Wilkie Farr, Kirland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Allen Overy Shearman & Sterling, Simpson Thatcher, and Cadwalader.  That’s an absurd amount of “pro bono” work from major law firms for pro Trump related causes that takes those firms away from representing people and causes that would otherwise benefit from their services. In other legal news, a Louisiana based immigration judge has ruled that it’s okay for Palestinian/Columbia graduate/ Green Card holder Mahmoud Khalil to be deported. The Khalil case is now expected to move out of the immigration courts to the Federal Courts where the focus will be on First Amendment rights and due process so he’s not, or at least, is not supposed to be deported soon. In the meantime, with the help of Marco Rubio who was once considered a normie Republican, more and more people are being deported to El Salvador without the benefit of due process because tattoos?      

Happy Passover.  Macaroons and Matza for all.

#BringThemAllHomeNow

Yipee Hi Ho 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱

All About the Bonds: Hold on tight because despite Trump’s bigly blink followed by yesterday’s huge stock market rally, the market turmoil isn’t over.  The Orange guy’s announced tariff pause is just that a 90 day pause: the tariffs on China imports are now at a “staggering” 125%;  at 10% the tariffs on most other countries are still relatively high; and the erratic and irrational one is still president.  That blink, it wasn’t because Trump cares much about the huge drop in your IRAs, 401Ks, and college savings accounts, rather it was driven by fears that the disruptions his tariff announcements had caused to the Treasury bond market were verging on causing a catastrophic meltdown and that the impending disaster would go down in history with his name on it.  It didn’t help that before his “pause,” both Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan had increased their predictions of a worldwide recession from possible to likely.  Also, though Treasury Secretary Bessent and Commerce Secretary Lutwick were putting on faux happy faces during their public outings, in private they too were warning Trump of the disaster at his door. Your portfolios, they recovered a lot yesterday but they’re still underwater and futures are down again this morning.  We’re still on that rollercoaster and though yesterday’s ride upward was invigorating, there are plenty of downward plunges ahead. By the way, if you haven’t mastered Trump speak, maybe you should enroll in one of Maggie Haberman’s classes, quickly, because while Trump kept many in his circle out of the loop about his change in tariff policy, he hinted that it was coming with an early morning Truth Social post about how the down markets were providing a good buying opportunity.  Hmmm.

Targeting Opponents:  While the tariff drama dominated yesterday’s news cycle, plenty of other 💩 was still happening.  Trump announced that he had directed “his” Department of Justice to open investigations into two of his adversaries: Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs. Taylor, a politically conservative young Republican, served in George W Bush’s administration before joining Trump’s first administration where he served as chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security. Upset by what he saw, he authored the “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration” op-ed that appeared in the November 2019 NY Times under the pen name “Anonymous.” He went on to write the bestselling book A Warning, again under the same pen name before outing himself and campaigning against Trump’s reelection.  To be clear he hasn’t violated any laws, but he did succeed in enraging Trump. The well-respected and accomplished Chris Krebs served as the Director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) during Trump’s first administration.  His “crime” is that he repeatedly said that the 2020 election was legitimate and that the widespread fraud that Trump claimed hadn’t happened.  Trump fired him for his act of speaking truth to power after the 2020 election but apparently still harbors a bigly grudge and now that he’s president again he’s all about retribution.  Neither Taylor nor Krebs are going to jail, in fact it would be challenging to even indict them, or at least it should be, but they now will be forced to defend themselves, a costly proposition under any circumstances but even more costly when the person going after you controls the DOJ and has silenced a slew of law firms with his intimidation tactics. In fact, judging by Trump’s comments that he has some cases he wants his newfound legal friends to work on, he might even try to get one or more of “his” law firms to help DOJ press the case against Taylor and Krebs, assuming that they aren’t too busy helping coal companies with their pollution plans.  Trump is following the Stalin, Putin, and Hitler playbook in plain sight and, of course, his Attorney General Pam Bondi is right there with him.

More:  Wired Magazine, one of my favorites, has branched out from covering often geeky technology news and is now a good source of political news, especially about the DOGE crowd. Their newest scoop is that the Department of Labor has or is in the process of approving a $1.3 million payment to DOGE to cover the salaries of the members of the Musk team tasked with shrinking the department into oblivion.  Remember when Musk promised that his DOGE bros were working for free or that he was compensating them, forget about that, not only are they being paid, but they are also being paid by us, the US taxpayers, at a rate which exceeds the government maximum. Newsmax, the rightwing media company that went public at the end of March, saw its shares skyrocket from an IPO price of $10 to $265 before falling back down. Yesterday’s it closed at $34, and maybe there’s more downside risk ahead.  The misinformation lawsuit against Newsmax by election machine company Dominion, which received a $787 million settlement from Fox, appears to be coming to a head.  Yesterday, the Delaware judge presiding over the case found that Newsmax issued false and defamatory claims about the role Dominion played in the 2020 election. Unless Newsmax settles, the case is headed to trial where a jury will be asked to decide about the awarding of damages.  And lastly for today, Republicans in Congress appear to be having a hard time advancing their slash and burn budget not because it’s hugely destructive to health care and a whole lot of other nice things but because some members of the Republican squad are concerned it doesn’t cut enough.    

#BringThemAllHomeNow

 

 

Chaos and Turmoil 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱

Convulsions:  The equity markets continue to convulse. Yesterday, trading on hope, rumor, and desperation, the Dow, an imperfect economic and market measure but one that suffices right now, ratcheted up more than 1500 points before nosediving again, closing down 320 points. With Trump’s tariffs on China increasing to 104% today and a report now that China is increasing their tariffs on our goods to 84% while also maybe, just maybe seeking a “dialogue” with the administration, expect to see more of the same today fueled by the rambling, retributive orange one now warning that he’s planning to attack the pharmaceutical industry next. To that end futures are already down around 600 points Reports are that banking and hedge fund titans are seriously perturbed, apparently, they had no idea that the candidate they fully supported would actually follow through on his repeatedly promised tariffs.  They’re kind of freaked that despite all the money they threw his way, Trump’s ignoring their pleas to stop the tariff barrage. Doge Bro Elon Musk, Trump’s biggest contributor, who given his multi-billionaire status has lost more than most, has ramped up his attacks on Trump’s tariff guru Peter Navarro, calling him a “moron” who is “dumber than a retardo, dumber than a sack of bricks.” Putting aside the retard slur and childish taunting, Musk’s assessment is spot on though his targeting of Navarro rather than decision maker Trump is both revealing and notable. In any case, Elon’s awakening to Trump’s malicious insanity is late and self-serving. He’s supposed to be a genius, why did it take him so long to figure out what the rest of us have known for years?  Anyone who says that they know what’s next is lying and/or delusional.  Trump’s mendacious press secretary Karoline Leavitt who described Musk and Navarro’s tiff as just “boys being boys” claims that dozens of countries have approached Trump to negotiate individual trade deals and likely a few have. The hope beyond hope is that Trump will cite a deal with one or more of them, declare victory and do something to calm the markets and save the economy, though the ship for saving the economy from recession or, worse yet, stagflation may have already sailed. Hope springs eternal, but the way things are going it could take an eternity to get there. 

Move Over Titanic: Unfortunately, the economy is only the tip of the iceberg. Trump is now calling for more logging in the country’s national forests.  He’s issued a new emergency order rolling back environmental protections on almost 60% of the national forests because who needs environmental protections anyway?  His so-called emergency is self-inflicted.  The lumber is needed to compensate for the lumber we will no longer be getting from Canada.  Apparently, in addition to snoozing through economics, Trump failed to pay attention in science, missing the part about trees producing oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthesis. As to that oxygen, forget about keeping what’s left of it clean because yesterday Trump issued an executive order intended to boost the mining and burning of coal.  He plans to facilitate that by waiving environmental laws that “discriminate” against the coal industry, you know the rules that protect us all from air containing black soot.  Naturally, the promotion of asthma and cancer inducing pollution will be accompanied by less health care.  Nepo RFK, following the orders of the Doge Bro and Trump continues to dismantle the health infrastructure and really, if no one is collecting data about mortality and morbidity how will we know that more are getting sick and dying.  Unfortunately for RFK, he hasn’t been able to hide all the measles cases that continue to erupt.  After publicly admitting that the best way to stop measles is the MMR vaccine and then getting skewered by his anti vax followers, he backtracked to express his appreciation for the the anti-vax doctors who’ve been pushing steroids and antibiotics as a measles panacea. Perhaps to divert attention from the growing measles problem, RFK is now going after fluoridated water.  Forget about making America healthy again, he’s now promoting cavities and it’s not just cavities, it’s all the other health calamities that accompany teeth infections especially among those who can’t afford dental care.

Law and Lack Thereof: Yesterday, the Supreme Court said that the administration does not have to comply with a lower-court order directing it to rehire thousands of fired federal workers. On Monday, the Court lifted a judge’s order prohibiting the administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport suspected criminals and gang members though it did say that the deported were entitled to due process.  SCOTUS also allowed the administration to proceed with its plans to freeze funding for teachers.  In addition, Chief Justice Roberts granted the Justice Department’s request for more time to litigate whether the US must return Kilmar Garcia, the man who was deported to the heinous El Salvador prison camp as a result of an admitted administrative error.  That means there’s still a chance that Garcia is returned to the US which is what’s supposed to and usually does happen when someone is “accidentally” removed.  One piece of good news, a federal judge ordered the White House to let Associated Press journalists back to the Oval Office and onto Air Force One, ruling it was unlawful to block the news service in a dispute over its choice of words. However, the judge stayed his decision to give the White House time to appeal and an AP reporter and photographer were turned back from joining a reporting pool on a presidential motorcade early Tuesday evening, almost two hours after the decision was issued.  In other disturbing legal news, the pardon lawyer who was fired for refusing to sign off on giving Mel Gibson back his gun privileges, testified in front of a Democrats only committee that the DOJ sent armed US Marshalls to her house to discourage her testimony.  She was on the road when she heard that the Marshalls were enroute and was able to acknowledge receipt of their “message” to stop them from actually arriving at her house where her teenage son was home alone. Think about that, our DOJ sending armed officers to intimate a former US Attorney who had refused to kowtow to Trump’s plan to rearm Gibson who’d lost his gun rights due to a domestic violence conviction.  Lastly, as he often does Trump said the quiet part out loud yesterday, admitting that those law firms paying him bigly bucks had done nothing wrong.  He said that while expressing his glee at intimidating them into giving him the moola. And though Tax Day is right around the corner, don’t expect to see the acting head of the IRS hanging about.  She joined two of her predecessors by resigning last night,  Her beef, the agreement reached between the IRS and immigration authorities to share what’s supposed to be private information about undocumented migrants.     

More:  Add Cornell and Northwestern to the growing list of universities losing government funding purportedly to punish them for facilitating anti-Semitic activities on their campuses.  Anti-Semitism is very bad but using anti-Semitism as the justification to strip “too” liberal educational and research institutions of their funding is so very far from being a good thing, if anything the defunding fosters more anti-Semitism and hate.   Could that be the objective? Divide and conquer? The future is bleak. 

#BringThemAllHomeNow