Not for Sale 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱

Oh Canada: Fresh off his election victory, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney visited the White House yesterday.  During the public part of his meeting with Trump, Carney told him that as a real estate guy he should know that certain real estate like for example the White House, Buckingham Palace, and Canada are not for sale. Carney went on to say that the owners of Canada, and by owners he made it clear he meant the Canadian voters who had just voted him into office, had zero interest in becoming the 51^st state. How sad for us that Carney had to go there in a public setting, but he did, and he said it in terms that simpleton Trump appears to have understood, at least for now. Maybe Carney can get someone “impressive” like Jon Voight to repeatedly whisper that into Trump’s ear because apparently it was the actor’s suggestion that Trump impose tariffs on movies produced overseas that resulted in the announcement that he would be imposing a 100% tariff on films.  That announcement surprised everyone, including Voight, and was quickly walked back by the White House which instead said: “Although no final decisions on foreign film tariffs have been made, the administration is exploring all options to deliver on President Trump’s directive to safeguard our country’s national and economic security while Making Hollywood Great Again.” When in doubt or saying something that makes no sense, tack on Making whatever suits Trump’s purpose Great Again because MAGA this and MAGA that apparently is the magic deflector for all things idiotic and ill planned. To that end, while Pakistan and India, two countries with nuclear capabilities, got into a shooting match yesterday and another $60 billion fighter jet fell into the sea off the coast of Yemen probably with the help of the Houthis, the White House went with Making Soccer Great Again by  announcing that Andrew Giuliani, scion of the increasingly bizarre Rudy, will be serving as Executive Director of the President’s Task Force on the 2026 FIFA World Cup, and aren’t we all relieved to know that the 2026 soccer (football for those overseas) matches will be in such competent hands?  Wonder if Trump will add Steven Miller, cosplay Kirsti Noem, or Tom Homan to the task force to make sure that none of those soccer players overstay their welcome.  Also, Trump once again influenced the outcome of an election, this time in Australia where voters delivered a surprisingly strong victory to the Labor Party he opposed.

Mid-Term Madness:  A number of Senate seats will be up for grabs in 2026 midterms and lots of Democrats have indicated and continue to indicate an interest in running to fill the seats opening up in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire as a result of Senate retirements but it’s not just open seats that will be up for grab.  A lot of attention is also focused on North Carolina where Republican Senator Thom Tillis is up for reelection.  Tillis who publicly hedged and hawed before casting the deciding vote for Pete Hegseth’s confirmation as Secretary of Defense, has announced that he won’t be supporting the confirmation of Ed Martin as US Attorney for the District of Columbia.  That’s a problem for Martin because without Tillis’ vote he can’t make it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee to a floor vote.  Tillis, who has been known to change his mind when pressured by Trump, said that though he could support Martin for any other district he can’t support him for DC because of his representation of so many of those January 6 insurrectionists, those “nice tourists” that Trump has pardoned. That’s great, but it’s not just Martin’s association with the insurrectionists that’s a problem, he’s also friends with lots of Nazis and lacks credible credentials but if Tillis wants to base his vote on January 6^th that works.  Tillis is stuck between a rock and a MAGA place.  He needs to appeal to North Carolina’s centrists to win reelection but also wants to avoid being primaried by a Trump endorsed candidate from the MAGA wing of his party. Tillis’ balancing act will become further complicated if North Carolina’s Democratic Governor Roy Cooper decides to run against him.  As to wish list governors, Republicans, especially Senator Tim Scott who has been tasked with the job of keeping the Senate red, had been hoping that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp would agree to run against Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff who is up for reelection in 2026, but those hopes were dashed this week when Kemp announced that he isn’t interested in the Senate seat.  Kemp is as conservative as you get but he has consistently distanced himself from supporting or criticizing Trump and appears to be keeping his powder dry for a possible presidential run in 2028.  Early polls had shown him running 3 points ahead of Ossoff so his decision not to enter the Senate race is a good thing for Ossoff and the Democrats.  A number of Republicans are likely to raise their hockey sticks in the air now, including MAGA Margie Taylor Greene of Jewish space laser fame. Turning back to North Carolina, it looks like the 2024 race for the open seat on the State Supreme Court is finally coming to an end.  On Monday, a federal judge ordered the North Carolina Board of Elections to certify Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs’ victory. Taking a page from Trump, her Republican opponent Jefferson Griffin has been trying to throw out enough votes to overturn her win in what was a close race.  He has seven days to appeal this ruling. Even if Democrat Riggs’ victory is finally confirmed, Griffin’s multiple appeals and effective delay tactics are likely to serve as a model for mayhem for other Republicans going forward. 

Cabinet Kerfuffle: Despite Trump’s assertion that he is personally negotiating big, beautiful trade deals with 200 countries, there are no deals. Yesterday, the increasingly distressed and flustered Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent admitted that there were no ongoing negotiations with China.  He mumbled that while repeatedly refusing to answer a question posed to him by Democratic Congressman Mark Pocan about who actually pays those tariffs, the ones that are supposed to be bringing in so much revenue that income taxes will be eliminated.  Later in the day the Treasury Department announced that Bessent will be traveling to Switzerland to meet with, or maybe stalk, a Chinese economic official for the first time since the US imposed tariffs on China. The Wall Street Journal reported on too many more Signal calls to count made by Defense Secretary Hegseth who apparently uses Signal for everything. Reuters reports that the use of Signal isn’t Hegseth’s only misstep.  Apparently, on January 30, before receiving White House authorization, he halted military shipments to Ukraine. His order came as a surprise to those in the Pentagon as well as to the White House which then restarted the previously approved shipments, characterizing Hegseth’s halt as a mere “pause.” Despite all, Hegseth who has also been having loud arguments with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy still has Trump’s “full” support because he’s doing such a good job de-woking the Pentagon, getting rid of Black and Female senior officers, and firing transgender troops, something that the Supreme Court said he can continue doing while related cases make their way to their docket.  As to Duffy, the former reality TV star has been learning the hard way as measured by more near misses and a mess at Newark Airport, that overseeing airports and air traffic is complicated.  It doesn’t help that there’s only an acting head of the FAA since Elon Musk forced out the recently hired Mike Whitaker in January because he was looking into how Musk’s Space X launches were disrupting the atmosphere and spewing dangerous debris.

More:   Noting that the Trump administration had “failed to demonstrate the existence of a war, invasion or predatory incursion,” another US District Court Judge, Alvin Hellerstein from New York, said that the Alien Enemies Act could not be used to deport the alleged Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members to the El Salvador gulag.  Further complicating Trump’s use of the Alien Act, a declassified memo released on Monday confirms that US intelligence agencies rejected a key claim President Trump put forth to justify invoking it to summarily deport the Venezuelans.  The spy agency memo concluded that “while Venezuela’s permissive environment enables Tren de Aragua (“TDA”) to operate, Venezuela’s Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United State.” The memo originated from the Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard’s office. Awkward and should also make for good reading by the Supreme Court, assuming they ever rule on Trump’s use of the Act to send people to a gulag.  By the way, we now know the name of one of the other people who was illegally sent to El Salvador, it’s 20-year-old Daniel Lozano Camargo, whose asylum application was in process but had not yet been resolved.  Judge Stephanie Gallagher, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, has ordered officials to “facilitate” Lozano-Camargo’s return to the US. So far, the administration has not complied.

#BringThemAllHomeNow