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