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