Finally Friday Reads: TACO Tales

“The most transparent administration ever..” John Buss @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I’m hoping we’re entering a Golden Age of Journalism because the number of stories floating around out there today indicates that we need more investigative journalists than ever before. Because of that, I cannot seem to play the Wake Forest Commencement by Sixty Minutes‘ Scott Pelley enough.  His first statement rang true throughout the world.  “Our sacred Rule of Law is under attack.” The Speech was entitled “The Meaning of You.” 

The path to self-discovery starts with finding what kind of person you are when times get dark.  As I’ve said before, these times are very dark. Do you shy away from speaking out?  Do you take fighting action on whatever level you can?  Do you melt away?  Do you just go along or cheer it? I’ve come back to this speech this week because the headlines today show how important the press can be in exposing the dark times and the dark ones and their actions to light.  It is then up to us to do something about it and to get our elected officials on it.

The New Republic’s Parker Molloy briefly discusses the importance of the Pelley Speech and the evil MAGA’s response.  “Scott Pelley Warns Graduates About the Threats to American Democracy. The “60 Minutes” correspondent never mentioned Trump by name, but his call to defend democratic institutions was apparently too much for the MAGA crowd to handle.”

Earlier this month, journalist Scott Pelley delivered what should have been a fairly standard commencement address at Wake Forest University. The 60 Minutes correspondent spoke about seeking truth, defending democracy, and the importance of courage in difficult times—the kind of boilerplate inspiration you’d expect from a veteran journalist addressing graduates.

But because we live in very normal times, the speech went viral over Memorial Day weekend and triggered a conservative meltdown that’s been fascinating to watch unfold.

The fury started when a pro-MAGA account clipped portions of Pelley’s speech and shared them on X, writing “Scott Pelley raged at Trump in angry, unhinged commencement address at Wake Forest.”

What did Pelley say that sent the right into such a tizzy? Well, he had the audacity to suggest that “our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack. Freedom of speech is under attack.” He warned of “insidious fear … reaching through our schools, our businesses, our homes, and into our private thoughts, the fear to speak in America.”

And perhaps most provocatively, Pelley criticized the administration’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, saying, “Diversity is now described as ‘illegal.’ Equity is to be shunned. Inclusion is a dirty word. This is an old playbook, my friends.” He also referenced “masked agents” who “abduct a college student who wrote an editorial in her college paper defending Palestinian rights and send her to a prison in Louisiana charged with nothing.”

Pelley’s speech comes as Trump is suing CBS for $20 billion over alleged “election interference” and CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon abruptly resigned, citing disagreements with the company amid the legal pressure.

What’s remarkable is how a fairly conventional call for civic engagement and democratic values could generate such hysteria. But then again, when you’re running an administration built on exactly the kind of authoritarian playbook Pelley described, I suppose any critique—no matter how measured—feels like an existential threat.

Reading the speech in full, it’s hard to see what’s so “unhinged” about urging graduates to be engaged citizens and defend democratic institutions. Unless, of course, you’re deeply invested in attacking those very institutions.

A complete transcript of the speech follows.  Also, you may listen to and watch Paley’s address here.  The headlines today may be bleak, but the important thing is that reporters and the people supporting the work investigate and can find unbelievable corruption, stark depravity, and many examples of bad human conduct, demeanor, and actions. Then expose it!

When I was born, and as I grew up and my family moved into the middle class, I was instilled with the importance of reading magazines and watching the news.  My Grandfather on my mother’s side always sent me books for my birthday and Christmas. My Nana on my mother’s side sent my sister and me subscriptions to National Geographic and The Christian Science Monitor.  We read the local newspapers and the Des Moines Register every morning and evening.  When I asked my Dad while I was in high school if I could get a subscription to The Manchester Guardian and to Paris Match, he didn’t even hesitate. I can tell you my show and tell performance, as well as my reports from newspapers, were altogether different from my Council Bluffs and Omaha friends.

When I hit university, all the foreign students whom I continually sought out for all dorm meals originally thought I was from Canada.  When my family travelled to Europe, I tried to blend in as much as possible and just observe.  It is perhaps this that makes me blog today, even though the only journalism classes I took were in high school. I wrote for the school newspaper, an underground newspaper, and the junior high newspaper.  I always assumed everyone was as news-hungry as I was growing up in some of the most boring and inane places on the planet. I couldn’t live with oatmeal after reading about Belgian waffles.  Can you imagine what happened when I got my first bite of one?

Knowledge of news is important for good citizenship, it’s important for making decisions that impact your household, and it’s important just because things are moving faster than ever.  So let me get down to my first suggested reads today.

One of the things I find most threatening these days is seeing my students, my university, and many places leave their brains behind and try to make things easy using AI. It may have a future, but presently, any good professor worth their salt can tell when someone uses it.  You should get good at spotting it on the internet, and you will be annoyed when you’re making an important call about something or chatting with some company, and even when it’s given a name, you can tell by the idiosyncrasies and the lack of niceties of American English, this thing ain’t human. 

I’ve noticed that the grammar check my University uses completely breaks down when dealing with nuances and colloquialisms.  It seems to excel mostly at filling my writing with commas and catching typos.  That’s okay by me and easy, but believe me, I can tell when a student overuses AI.  We’re being trained at spotting it as well as teaching students how to use it correctly.  However, someone who knows what they are doing from years of doing it can make a better decision about its use than those still on the learning curve. 

I say this because I watched a news program where the new AI installed at the Social Security phone line repeatedly ignored the question they asked, then kept squawking “Can I help you with something else?” endlessly.  This is the point where I hear my Nana’s voice telling little me, “Well, you can, but may you?”  AI does not grok manners and polite conversations.  It could be because human mutants like Elon Musk and his Dodge cluster have never quite figured that out either.  Garbage in, garbage out.  But, then maybe that’s what they want.  Cease being polite and just be technically acceptable.  Okay, it’s long but I’m getting there, I promise.

This phenomenon played out yesterday as one of RFK Jr.’s prodigal research adventures turned into something I wouldn’t even expect from an undergrad or, actually, even someone sitting in my high school or university composition class. He was, of course, a legacy student there because of his father. We also know he was the dorm’s drug dealer from my fellow Westside High School journalism classmate, Kurt Anderson.  One thing Westside always turned out was students who knew how to write. That skill got me through all the rest of my degrees because, damn I could write a good paper. Evidently, RFK Jr. did not get that skill.

It’s rather interesting given the difficult times Harvard is facing in protecting its foreign students.  Now granted, I helped many a colleague from distant lands to get their excellent research into prime American English form.  Everyone always sent them to me before they were sent to a journal for publishing, which bought me a cheap pub. But, every one of them took me farther down the path of being a numbers and stats guru.  Did you know kids in India start their calculus classes in like 5th grade? It was also easier for me to actually come up with a sweet hypothesis to test because I was taught to be both analytical and creative. That’s what a good public school can do for you.  A good university exposes you to what’s possible and exposes you to all kinds of interesting thinkers. But, again, I guess RFK Jr. was too busy with drugs to take advantage of anything like that. That’s why he’s likely never going to be part of a blog community, a book club, or a group that goes to the Saturday Night Midnight movies.

Okay, I really am getting to the read now.  At his advanced age, with his unlimited educational opportunities and his money, he cannot write a research paper.  And yet, it showed up in the public sphere because he was trying to prove his very wrong hypotheses at any cost.  He didn’t prove anything. He turned to all manner of things to argue his hypothesis. None of his antics were academically sound.   At first, the White House’s dumbest Press Secretary announced there were “formatting” errors. But, how could that be when, after investigating sources, reporters found them either made up or seriously in error?  The Make America Healthy Again report was just embarrassing.

MSNBC anchor Jen Psaki derided White House Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s defense of a “Make America Healthy Again” Commission report filled with errors and broken links.

NOTUS reported the paper, released under the administration of President Donald Trump and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., cited at least seven sources that do not appear to exist. The news publication contacted epidemiologist Katherine Keyes, who the MAHA report lists as the first author of a study it cited on adolescent anxiety, and discovered Keyes didn’t write the paper.

“The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” Keyes told NOTUS. “We’ve certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title.”

NOTUS also reported two other studies pertaining to direct-to-consumer drug advertisements for ADHD medications and antidepressants for kids appear nowhere “to be found.” Reporters also could not validate another section claiming 25% to 40% of mild cases of asthma are overprescribed. Additionally, the author of a corticosteroids study’s the MAHA report cited to support its arguments denied writing the study.

NOTUS reporter Jasmine Wright was in the White House briefing room Thursday and asked Leavitt: “does the White House have confidence that the information coming from HHS can be trusted?”

“Yes, we have complete confidence in Secretary Kennedy and his team at HHS,” Leavitt responded. “I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA report that are being addressed.”

Psaki, a former White House press secretary herself, did not contain her scorn.

Well, the nation’s biggest and most disappointing media of record investigated and found some interesting things in the MAHA report.  Let’s start with the Washington Post. “White House MAHA Report may have garbled science by using AI, experts say. The report, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was intended to address the reasons for the decline in Americans’ life expectancy.”  Well, that’s typical of a lot of students.  If they can’t do it, they pay someone who can.  You can always tell this, though, because if you’ve seen any previous work, you recognize their voice and you know when something is different. AI is the most recent example of buying a paper online, but with a lower cost and perhaps a lower chance of getting caught because you won’t find a cheat paper by searching it verbatim with your student’s work. Believe me, the discussion on this in teacher lounges and faculty clubs is de rigueur these days. Evidently, RFK Jr. didn’t even know the most tell-tale of the signs.

Some of the citations that underpin the science in the White House’s sweeping “MAHA Report” appear to have been generated using artificial intelligence, resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies, AI experts said Thursday.

Of the 522 footnotes to scientific research in an initial version of the report sent to The Washington Post, at least 37 appear multiple times, according to a review of the report by The Post. Other citations include the wrong author, and several studies cited by the extensive health report do not exist at all, a fact first reported by the online news outlet NOTUS on Thursday morning.

Some references include “oaicite” attached to URLs — a definitive sign that the research was collected using artificial intelligence. The presence of “oaicite” is a marker indicating use of OpenAI, a U.S. artificial intelligence company.

A common hallmark of AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, is unusually repetitive content that does not sound human or is inaccurate — as well as the tendency to “hallucinate” studies or answers that appear to make sense but are not real.

So, our Secretary of Health and Human Services is so bereft of research skills that he can’t even avoid the number one Rookie mistake.  Does he have anyone around him who knew better and could catch this?  I can tell you that a team of peers that checks every research paper headed to publication in an academically sound journal would never let this go through to print.  If you’re the main author, you try to avoid any humiliating mistakes for serious journals.

AI technology can be used legitimately to quickly survey the research in a field. But Oren Etzioni, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington who studies AI, said he was shocked by the sloppiness in the MAHA Report.

“Frankly, that’s shoddy work,” he said. “We deserve better.”

“The MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again,” which addressed the root causes of America’s lagging health outcomes, was written by a commission of Cabinet officials and government scientific leaders. It was led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a history of misstating science, and written in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump.

The New York Times published the first media review pointing out made-up sources. “White House Health Report Included Fake Citations, ‘A report on children’s health released by the Make America Healthy Again Commission referred to scientific papers that did not exist.”  Now, I’m not a scientist, but I lived with a Yale-educated Doctorate in Microbiology who published a lot of things on RNA transcription, ran a lab at a public university, and wound up with the NSF.  I have no idea if he’s retired or if he went with the current purge of scientists.  I read many of his works pre-publication, and he got published in all the big ones.  I think the science journals are more nerve-wracking to write for than the Economics and Finance.  Usually, it’s based on lab data rather than the Federal Reserve Beige Book or World Book data, which gets a pass even though the methodology and the model itself get the eagle eye. This report was a hot mess on all accounts.

The Trump administration released a report last week that it billed as a “clear, evidence-based foundation” for action on a range of children’s health issues.

But the report, from the presidential Make America Healthy Again Commission, cited studies that did not exist. These included fictitious studies on direct-to-consumer drug advertising, mental illness and medications prescribed for children with asthma.

“It makes me concerned about the rigor of the report, if these really basic citation practices aren’t being followed,” said Katherine Keyes, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University who was listed as the author of a paper on mental health and substance use among adolescents. Dr. Keyes has not written any paper by the title the report cited, nor does one seem to exist by any author.

The news outlet NOTUS first reported the presence of false citations, and The New York Times identified additional faulty references. By midafternoon on Thursday, the White House had uploaded a new copy of the report with corrections.

Dr. Ivan Oransky — who teaches medical journalism at New York University and is a co-founder of Retraction Watch, a website that tracks retractions of scientific research — said the errors in the report were characteristic of the use of generative artificial intelligence, which has led to similar issues in legal filings and more.

Dr. Oransky said that while he did not know whether the government had used A.I. in producing the report or the citations, “we’ve seen this particular movie before, and it’s unfortunately much more common in scientific literature than people would like or than really it should be.”

Asked at a news conference on Thursday whether the report had relied on A.I., the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, deferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the department, did not answer a question about the source of the fabricated references and downplayed them as “minor citation and formatting errors.” She said that “the substance of the MAHA report remains the same — a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic-disease epidemic afflicting our nation’s children.”

The false references do not necessarily mean the underlying facts in the report are incorrect. But they indicate a lack of rigorous review and verification of the report and its bibliography before it was released, Dr. Oransky said.

“Scientific publishing is supposed to be about verification,” he said, adding: “There’s supposed to be a set of eyes, actually several sets of eyes. And so what that tells us is that there was no good set of eyes on this

So, after finding out about all of that, this should make you feel really at ease.

The Trump administration has quietly spread Palantir’s technology through U.S. agencies, paving the way to easily compile data on Americans. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since President Trump took office. nyti.ms/4dJfR0o

— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) 2025-05-30T16:16:57.733Z

I think we can start making the Big Brother is watching you references now.  This is the subheading, which is startling IMHO.  “The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work with the government, spreading the company’s technology — which could easily merge data on Americans — throughout agencies.”   Getting your passport ready yet?

In March, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the federal government to share data across agencies, raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.

Mr. Trump has not publicly talked about the effort since. But behind the scenes, officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable his plan. In particular, they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm.

The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work across the federal government in recent months. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Mr. Trump took office, according to public records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. (This does not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the company last week, which has not been spent.)

Representatives of Palantir are also speaking to at least two other agencies — the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service — about buying its technology, according to six government officials and Palantir employees with knowledge of the discussions.

The push has put a key Palantir product called Foundry into at least four federal agencies, including D.H.S. and the Health and Human Services Department. Widely adopting Foundry, which organizes and analyzes data, paves the way for Mr. Trump to easily merge information from different agencies, the government officials said.

Creating detailed portraits of Americans based on government data is not just a pipe dream. The Trump administration has already sought access to hundreds of data points on citizens and others through government databases, including their bank account numbers, the amount of their student debt, their medical claims and any disability status.

Mr. Trump could potentially use such information to advance his political agenda by policing immigrants and punishing critics, Democratic lawmakers and critics have said. Privacy advocates, student unions and labor rights organizations have filed lawsuits to block data access, questioning whether the government could weaponize people’s personal information.

So, while all this is going on, we’re beginning to hear some interesting information on Elon Musk as he exists stage right.   This is from Forbes Magazine.  “Lucky” Susan Dorn got this assignment. “Musk Used Heavy Drugs Including Ketamine And Ecstasy While He Became Close To Trump, Report Says. Elon Musk used a copious amount of drugs—and travelled with a pill box that appeared to contain Adderall—last year as he ramped up his donations to President Donald Trump, according to a New York Times report that comes on his last official day at the White House.”  He’s the Wolf of Austin, I guess.

Key Facts

• Musk told confidants he was taking so much ketamine it affected his bladder, according to The Times, citing unnamed sources who said he also took ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms.
• The Times also reported it obtained a photo that showed a medication box Musk travelled with containing about 20 pills, including Adderall.
• The alleged drug use overlapped with his campaign activity last year on behalf of  Trump—with an endorsement in July followed by $250 million to help elect him.
• The report comes as Musk is set to exit the White House Friday after announcing Wednesday his time leading the Department of Government Efficiency had come to an end.
• Neither Musk nor his lawyer responded to The Times’ request for comment, but Musk has said previously he was prescribed ketamine for depression.

The New York Times has more details. “On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama. As Mr. Musk entered President Trump’s orbit, his private life grew increasingly tumultuous, and his drug use was more intense than previously known.”  Of course, they sent two women after this story, too.  Kirsten Grind and Megan Twohey were the assigned reporters.

As Elon Musk became one of Donald J. Trump’s closest allies last year, leading raucous rallies and donating about $275 million to help him win the presidency, he was also using drugs far more intensely than previously known, according topeople familiar with his activities.

Mr. Musk’s drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it.

It is unclear whether Mr. Musk, 53, was taking drugs when he became a fixture at the White House this year and was handed the power to slash the federal bureaucracy. But he has exhibited erratic behavior, insulting cabinet members, gesturing like a Nazi and garbling his answers in a staged interview.

At the same time, Mr. Musk’s family life has grown increasingly tumultuous as he has negotiated overlapping romantic relationships and private legal battles involving his growing brood of children, according to documents and interviews.

I’m not about to go to the Gossip Rag road, but there are rumors about Mush and Steven Miller’s wife if you’re interested.  This is from the Independent. “Stephen Miller’s wife leaves the White House to work for Elon Musk ‘full time’, Kate Miller was working as an adviser for Elon Musk at the Department of Government Efficiency.”  I should eat some lunch, and I really will not ruin it by going any deeper into these. BLECH.

So, we lose a clown and gain one. Seriously, none of these Trump men are strangers to make-up. This is from ABC News. “Trump taps former right-wing podcast host Paul Ingrassia for key watchdog post. Ingrassia would replace Hampton Dellinger, who opposed Trump’s mass firings.”

President Trump announced Thursday night that he was tapping Paul Ingrassia, a former far-right podcast host, to lead the Office of Special Counsel — an independent watchdog agency empowered to investigate federal employees and oversee complaints from whistleblowers.

The Trump administration has previously taken aim at the Office of Special Counsel, firing the head of the agency, Hampton Dellinger (a Biden appointee) in February. Dellinger expressed opposition to the Trump administration’s firing of federal employees under DOGE-led cuts, noting that many had been fired or laid off without notice or justification.

Dellinger challenged his firing in court and was briefly reinstated to the post until a federal appeals court allowed for his dismissal. Dellinger decided to drop the challenge.

ABC News exclusively reported in February about how Ingrassia, in his role as White House liaison to the Department of Justice, was pushing to hire candidates at the DOJ who exhibited what he called “exceptional loyalty” to Trump. His efforts at DOJ sparked clashes with Attorney General Pam Bondi’s top aide, Chad Mizelle, leading Ingrassia to complain directly to President Trump, sources told ABC News.

Ingrassia was pushed out of DOJ and reassigned as the White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, where he was serving prior to Trump announcing his new role, according to a White House official familiar with the matter.

In a post on X, Ingrassia wrote in response to his nomination: “It’s the highest honor to have been nominated to lead the Office of Special Counsel under President Trump! As Special Counsel, my team and I will make every effort to restore competence and integrity to the Executive Branch — with priority on eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal workforce and revitalize the Rule of Law and Fairness in Hatch Act enforcement.”

For the Senate-confirmed five-year term, Ingrassia will likely face tough questions over his lengthy history of media appearances and posts on social media promoting Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election as well as his ties to far-right media figures.

He was previously spotted at a 2024 rally hosted by white nationalist Nick Fuentes and has publicly praised figures like Andrew Tate — who has faced criminal charges for alleged sexual assault (Tate denies all wrongdoing).

All the best people, folks, all the best.  So, I know you just want to know the latest information on the American Soap Opera “As the Tarrifs and the TACO Turns.”  This is from CNBC. “Trump accuses China of violating preliminary trade deal.”  Dan Managan gets all the serious stories, you know.

President Donald Trump on Friday said that China has “totally violated its” preliminary trade agreement with the United States, and suggested he would take action in response.

“So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!” Trump wrote in a social media post that said China had reneged on a deal that paused retaliatory tariffs between that country and the U.S.

Stock futures fell Friday morning on the heels of Trump’s statement.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, in a CNBC interview Friday morning, echoed Trump’s allegation, saying “we’re very concerned with” China’s purported non-compliance with the temporary trade deal.

The “United States did exactly what it was supposed to do, and the Chinese are slow rolling their compliance,” said Greer.

He called that “completely unacceptable and has to be addressed.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in a Fox News interview on Thursday, said that trade talks with China “are a bit stalled.”

CNBC has requested comment from China’s embassy in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. and China on May 12 agreed to a 90-day suspension on most tariffs imposed on each other’s imports.

The agreement was reached after Trump slapped sky-high tariffs on imports from China into the U.S., and China retaliated in kind.

“Two weeks ago China was in grave economic danger!” Trump wrote in his post on Truth Social on Friday.

“The very high Tariffs I set made it virtually impossible for China to TRADE into the United States marketplace which is, by far, number one in the World,” Trump wrote. “We went, in effect, COLD TURKEY with China, and it was devastating for them. Many factories closed and there was, to put it mildly, “civil unrest.” I saw what was happening and didn’t like it, for them, not for us. I made a FAST DEAL with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation, and I didn’t want to see that happen.”

“Because of this deal, everything quickly stabilized and China got back to business as usual. Everybody was happy! That is the good news!!!” the president wrote.

“The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US. So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!”

Trump posted his screed two days after he lashed out at CNBC reporter Megan Cassella at the White House when she asked about the term “TACO trade,” which refers to the phrase “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

The term, coined by a Financial Times columnist, suggests that stock pickers can make money by buying shares after markets fall on news of new tariffs imposed by Trump, knowing that he invariably will pause or reduce the tariffs, sending markets higher.

You had to know he had to have a bully story to cover up all the Court sha-la-la about his on-again, off-again tariffs.  Wow, my Grammarly got really dash happy there! Actually, I did it but wondered if it would notice anything and it did.  One missing comma.  I evidently have a thing against commas.

So, at least it’s the weekend!  Hope y’all have a great one!  I say TACO, they say TACO!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Finally Friday Reads: Free Speech Attacks, Incompetency, Cruelty, and Grifting Galore Characterize the Trump Regime

“A modern-day interpretation of a 1871 Thomas Nast work seems fitting to commemorate Trump’s secret crypto dinner.” John Buss, repeat@1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

As the old Buddhist and Hobbit saying goes:  “We live in Dark Times.” “Kali Yuga” is the Hindu expression.  Darkness has always been an expression of decline in European History, hence the label “Dark Ages” for the period from the 5th to about the 8th century.  Usually, these periods experience a decline in economic, intellectual, and cultural life.  One of the most prevalent things about these times is that there is a paucity of written records.  So, it’s difficult to capture the decline until a renaissance occurs. The breakdown of institutions occurred in these past times as well as the present. At the moment, we still have the ability to document the decline in the US. Many relate to it as a rebirth of fascist movements of the 20th century. It is a global feature at the moment, but no matter if it’s the Decline of the Roman Empire or the American Empire, there are signs.

The invention of the printing press is seen as one of the most powerful examples of an invention that can change the course of history.  Access to information directly, for personal consideration, tends to create a citizenry with low tolerance of being shut off from thinking for themselves.  Perhaps it’s why today’s dark leaders tend to go for education and the press, and why they attract “low information” and angry denizens.  They also attract a cadre of greedy followers willing to help attack and grab the wealth of those who are powerless.

These are indeed Dark Times.

The fight for the light in the newly filed Harvard case against the Trump administration’s ban on foreign students is a prime cause of denying  the citizenry access to anything that might cause them to question the goings-on here. But it also breaks into the tradition of the United States being the shining light of discovery, science, and reason. It’s why those of us who have had academic careers cherish and enjoy academic freedom.  The free exchange of ideas and opinions is essential.

We have traditionally had a small number of women in my field of economics. It was between 4 to 10 percent in the late 70s and early 80s.  It once rose to above 30%, but recently has settled on 27%.  The STEM fields still reflect the struggle for inclusion.  It’s even lower for Black Americans.  However, my career has led me to have colleagues from a variety of countries, which is wonderful.  In my early career, most of my women colleagues came from the Middle East or China. I was lucky enough to have a professor from Finland. She was brilliant.  Believe me. During my academic studies and life, the joy of having colleagues from all over the world who could share things was a blessing in my life. A colleague from the Punjab who now teaches in Canada helped me improve my math chops to get me through some of the most complex models that you could imagine. He stayed with me after Katrina until the campus got its FEMA trailers.  I also had a student from Taiwan staying with me.  My last biggest joy, however, was writing 2 letters of recommendation for two Black New Orleans students to Rice. The US cannot afford to fall behind in a vast world of research.  And, yet, here we are with a professional moron taking down the biggest academic center of research in the World.  America’s first University, Harvard.  If we do not train the world’s best minds, we will fall deeply behind in everything.

Today, we got the news of the Case Harvard filed against Trump.  “Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump Admin From Revoking Harvard’s Ability To Enroll International Students.” This is from The Harvard Crimson.  Harvard turned out one of my favorite journalists, Joy Reid, and you can read this article knowing there are more good journalists headed to jobs.

A federal judge granted Harvard a temporary restraining order in its suit to block the Trump administration’s efforts to revoke its authorization to enroll international students.

The order was issued less than two hours after the University requested a halt to the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to end its Student Exchange and Visitor Program certification. Harvard had described the move as “unprecedented and retaliatory.”

United States District Judge Allison D. Burroughs agreed that if the DHS’ move goes forward, Harvard “will sustain immediate and irreparable injury before there is an opportunity to hear from all parties.”

The TRO will go into effect immediately and will likely last until a hearing in the case. Burroughs has scheduled a May 27 status hearing and a May 29 hearing on whether to issue a preliminary injunction. Harvard would need to file for a preliminary injunction to prevent the DHS’ directive from going into effect after the TRO expires.

Under the terms of the order, the DHS is barred from enforcing the Thursday move to strip Harvard of its SEVP status — and Harvard is no longer legally obligated to turn over the requested documents by Sunday.

Burroughs, a Barack Obama appointee, has adjudicated several cases relating to Harvard in the past. She oversaw a case brought by Harvard and MIT in 2021 against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s effort to force all international students who were enrolled online in the U.S. to leave the country. ICE ultimately rolled back the policy without a ruling from Burroughs.

Burroughs is also overseeing Harvard’s first lawsuit, filed in April, against the Trump administration over its nearly $3 billion funding cut.

You can see all of the destruction of the Age of Reason and the Scientific Age, and the Information Age, clearly in these actions and even more clearly in Trump’s appointments and the destruction of the Agencies most responsible for progress using science and reason.  BB shared this Substack today, and I thought I’d post it here.  It’s from Steven Beschloss, a journalist with a historian brother. “How Much More Stupidity Will Americans Endure? Reflecting on the escalating hostility to American values, principles, and decency in a 24-hour period.”  I personally cannot take much more of this.

I admit: The daily drumbeat of stupidity is exhausting. I wish it were enough for me to simply document the dangerous ignorance of Trump and his sycophants, confident that we’ll soon be free of this regime and its power to spread their poison and cancerous hostility across the land and around the world. But the midterm elections will not arrive for another 17 months. It’s hard to overstate how much damage Trump, his cabinet and his kowtowing Republican Congress can cause between now and then.

That’s why most days I ask myself: Could today be the day Americans decide they’ve had enough and demand change? I have thought that there might be a single event that triggers millions of Americans taking to the streets or committing to a national strike in a public, unavoidable show of solidarity. But I have come to see that the daily drumbeat is numbing too many people, causing them to adapt to the cruelty, the racism, the hostility to democracy, the arrogant rejection of the Constitution and the rule of law. The metaphor of the frog in a slowly boiling pot of water is apt; by the time the frog’s figured out he needs to get out, it’s too late.

We’re not there yet. You can see that dedicated lawyers are filing suit against the corruption and criminality, judges are pushing back, outraged Americans are engaging in protests, some elected Democrats and other awake leaders are ringing alarm bells, a growing number of colleges and universities have refused to buckle under, some independent media are addressing the reality of authoritarianism in no uncertain terms. Americans have not surrendered their sanity or capacity to know what’s right and wrong, what’s true and false. The pot may be beginning to boil, but we can still see and feel what’s happening. We are still able to take action.

But I want to spotlight a series of events in a single 24-hour period that individually outrage me and, taken together, express a level of stupidity and sickness that should motivate more than a shrug of the head or an angry social media post. You may have already focused on—been outraged by—one or even all of these. But it’s important to not look at them as discrete events, but part and parcel of a single plot to convince us that we should accept a fascist regime bent on elevating white nationalism, oppressing people of color, silencing dissent and making the rich richer and the poor and middle class poorer and sicker. This effort is led by a malignant racist and sociopath who’s convinced the people around him to do what he says, no matter how ugly, cruel, blatantly false—or just plain stupid.

Two of the four events were in the Oval Office Wednesday—our Oval Office, the place where real presidents have made some of the most momentous decisions that improved the lives of Americans, created a safety net to overcome the ravages of the Great Depression and soften cap italism’s turbulence, helped defeat the Nazis and fascism, built global alliances that made the world safer, more stable and prosperous, and demonstrated a commitment to bend the arc of history toward justice.

Into this historical place of honor came South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, a calm and skilled diplomat who decades earlier had served alongside Nelson Mandela as his chief negotiator to end apartheid in South Africa. But just like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February, he arrived for an ambush by a spiteful, narrow-minded man who spreads lies like Ukraine not Russia started the still-raging war. On this day he insisted with false information from fringe groups that South Africa, whose leaders are mostly Black, are committing genocide against white farmers, a false narrative that his top donor and South African-born Elon Musk has propagated.

At Trump’s urging, Ramaphosa answered a reporter’s question about what it would take to convince Trump there is no such white genocide. “It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans, some of whom are his good friends, like those who are here,” he calmly said, referencing South African golfer Ernie Els who was in the room. “When we have talks between us around a quiet table, it will take President Trump to listen to them.”

But South Africa’s president was being set up. Trump interrupted him to play a video pushing the lies, then he showed photos meant to “prove” how much death there was, even leading Trump to mutter, “Death, death, death, horrible death, death.”

Except the video clip showing a long line of white wooden crosses were not actual burial sites for white farmers, as Trump insisted, but were from a 2020 protest against farm murders over the years. Except the photo Trump showed of people lifting body bags, insisting they “are all white farmers that are being buried,” was actually of humanitarian workers burying bodies in Congo. Except for all the claims of genocide among white farmers, meant to justify bringing white Afrikaners as preferred refugees to America now, there were a total of 44 murders in farming communities last year, Reuters reports, with over 26,000 in the country overall.

President Ramaphosa came to discuss trade and economic partnership. Yet Trump brought him into the Oval Office to ambush and abuse him, push his white nationalist agenda, spread more widely his egregious lies and showcase that—while illegally deporting people of color—only whites deserve America’s protection from presumed persecution. “We were taught by Nelson Mandela that whenever there are problems, people need to sit down around a table and talk about them,” Ramaphosa noted, but Trump was not listening.

There is a daily drumbeat of stupidity, airing of white grievances, and cruelty.  While discriminating harshly against everyone who is not white and Christian, this administration harbors supporters who carry torches and shout “Jews will not replace us,” and has bubble-headed Congress Critters who scream about “Jewish Space Lasers”.   Anti-semitism has become transactional. It has become a useful tool in the attack on Academia and the Democratic Party. It assumes that you can’t understand the history of the Jewish people without turning a blind eye to the punishing attacks on Palestinian women, children, and innocents in the Gaza Strip. I do not think there is a bigger way of showing disrespect for a group of people than using their historical struggles as a tool to encourage the murder of innocents.  But then, our #FARTUS is planning a Trump Tower, hotel, and golf course in GAZA.  The Trump Boyz–in between murdering endangered animals for sport–have been travelling the globe using the Tariff stick as a way to expand their Crime Syndicate.  All, at the expense of the United States and its economy.  This is from QUARTZ: “8 countries where Trump has been making new business deals, from Pakistan to Vietnam, Residential towers, golf courses, crypto — the deals didn’t stop on Inauguration Day.” This is the art of the steal in full display.  All we need to see is Eric and Don Jr. flying in the palace in the sky and sitting at Trump’s Crypto Fundraiser now.

Businesses spearheaded by President Donald Trump have struck numerous deals since Trump returned to the White House in January.

Leading the way is the Trump Organization, a conglomerate privately owned by the president. With more than 250 subsidiaries, it serves as a holding company for Trump’s various hotels, residential real estate, towers, resorts, and golf courses across the world.

World Liberty Financial, a decentralized protocol that merges financial services and cryptocurrency, has also brokered deals. A Trump business entity owns 60% of World Liberty and is entitled to 75% of all revenue from coin sales. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. manage the company.

Here are the countries where the Trump empire has been dealmaking. The slide show that follows lists Vietnam. It’s in Hanoi, which reminds me of the Hanoi Hilton and the late Senator John McCain.

The project consists of a golf course, hotels, and luxury residences, and is slated for completion by 2029. In addition, Eric Trump is scheduled to meet with officials in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday to discuss a possible Trump Tower in the city, Reuters reports.

In April, the president imposed a “reciprocal” tariff rate of 46% on Vietnamese goods. While that policy is currently on a 90-day pause, it would deal a major blow to the Southeast Asian country if resumed. Goods exported to the U.S. account for 30% of Vietnam’s economy, according to IMF estimates, the largest of all U.S. trading partners. As the specter of these crippling levies looms, Hanoi has pledged to buy more American goods, including Boeing (BA) aircraft and agricultural products.

Other countries include Serbia, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Pakistan, and Singapore.  Most of these discussions haven’t been covered by the Media other than Qatar, which came with the gift that “Palace in the sky” that will cause millions of dollars to refit before it’s handed over to Trump and his “library.”  If there’s a bigger oxymoron than Trump Library, I’m waiting to hear it.  Let’s just call it the warehouse facility for all the bribes and emoluments.  We have to discuss that big ol’ party Trump threw for his richest customers. This is from the New York Times. “Hundreds Join Trump at ‘Exclusive’ Dinner, With Dreams of Crypto Fortunes in Mind. The guests were the biggest investors in President Trump’s memecoin, and they were greeted with chants of “shame” as they arrived at Trump National Golf Course.”

President Trump gathered Thursday evening at his Virginia golf club with the highest-paying customers of his personal cryptocurrency, promising that he would promote the crypto industry from the White House as protesters outside condemned the event as a historic corruption of the presidency.

The gala dinner held at the Trump National Golf Club in suburban Washington, where Mr. Trump flew from the White House on a military helicopter, turned into an extraordinary spectacle as hundreds of guests arrived, many having flown to the United States from overseas.

At the club’s entrance, the guests were greeted by dozens of protesters chanting “shame, shame, shame.”

It was a spectacle that could only have happened in the era of Donald J. Trump. Several of the dinner guests, in interviews with The New York Times, said that they attended the event with the explicit intent of influencing Mr. Trump and U.S. financial regulations.

“The past administration made your lives miserable,” Mr. Trump told the dinner guests, referring to the Biden administration’s enforcement actions against crypto companies.

The gala attendees made whooping noises while Mr. Trump spoke, and applauded as the president declared: “They were going after everybody. It was a disgrace frankly,” according to a video provided to The Times by a dinner guest.

Mr. Trump promised to change that approach. “There is a lot of sense in crypto. A lot of common sense in crypto,” he said. “And we’re honored to be working on helping everybody here.”

That sure is different than the 2021 #FARTUS who told Fox News.  He just couldn’t wait to get into that scam, I guess.  This is from the BBC.  “Donald Trump calls Bitcoin ‘a scam against the dollar’. This is reported by BBC News Business Reporter Mary-Ann Russon.

Former US President Donald Trump has told Fox Business that he sees Bitcoin as a “scam” affecting the value of the US dollar.

“Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam,” Mr Trump said. “I don’t like it because it’s another currency competing against the dollar.”

He added that he wanted the dollar to be “the currency of the world”.

As per usual, the biggest losers from any more normalization of cryptocurrency will be his own voters.  This is from the BBC. “The Bitcoin hum that is unsettling Trump’s MAGA heartlands.”  This was written by Mike Wendling.

Installations like the one at the power plant near Dresden are appearing across the country, drawn by record-high cryptocurrency prices and cheap and abundant energy to power the computers that do the mining. There are at least 137 Bitcoin mines in the US across 21 states, and reports indicate there are many more planned. According to estimates by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Bitcoin mining uses up to 2.3% of the nation’s grid.

The high energy use and its wider environmental impact is certainly causing some concern in Dresden.

But it’s the unmistakable hum that is the soundtrack for discontent in many places with Bitcoin mines – produced by the fans used to cool the computers, it can range from a mechanical whirr to a deafening din.

“We can hear a constant buzzing,” says another Dresden resident, Lori Fishline. “It’s a constant, loud humming noise that you just can’t ignore. It was never present before and has definitely affected the peaceful atmosphere of our bay.”

Such is Ms Campbell’s annoyance with Trump’s Bitcoin backing, her political allegiance to the Republicans is being tested. “Right now I’m not real happy about that party,” she says.

So, build the nastiest factory in the backyard of the people least able to deal with it.  That’s the sound of these Robber Barons that should be familiar to anyone who knows US history from its early 20th-century business escapades.  The most interesting thing that’s popped up today is that Apple has got Trump in a lather, and the Equity Markets hate it.  This is from Yahoo Finance: “Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq trim losses as Trump threatens Apple, EU with new tariffs.”

US stocks fell on Friday, on pace for weekly losses as investors assessed President Trump’s latest tariff threats and what his giant tax bill means for the deficit and the economy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) sank 0.4%. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) also fell roughly 0.4%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) backed off about 0.6%.

All three indexes trimmed steeper losses after Trump said on Friday that Apple (AAPL) must pay a 25% tariff on iPhones sold but not made in the US. The tech giant has begun shifting some manufacturing to India, with China, home to its key suppliers, locked in a trade war with the US. Apple shares fell 3% after Trump’s post on Truth Social.

At the same time, Trump threatened to hike the tariff on EU imports to “a straight 50%” beginning June 1 as trade talks between the two have stalled.

The president’s warnings shattered a more muted mood on Wall Street as investors wound down to the Memorial Day trading break on Monday.

It adds another supply chain complication for companies already worried about the potential hit to the economy from Trump’s tariff blitz. Earnings season has seen several companies hold off from providing full annual guidance thanks to uncertainty around tariffs.

All three major gauges are on track for a losing week. Stocks have suffered as deficit worries pushed up Treasury yields, intensified as Trump’s giant tax bill forged ahead. Wall Street is still weighing the economic impact of Trump’s revised bill, which cleared a key hurdle in the House vote for approval.

Well, I have always called him Orange Caligula.  It seems we have a mad emperor on our hands.  It didn’t help crypto either. “Bitcoin tumbles under $108K after Trump calls for 50% EU tariff. Trump’s tariff announcement sparks Bitcoin volatility, highlighting digital assets’ sensitivity to geopolitical events.”  This is from Crypto Briefing and Vivian Nguyen.

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) fell below $108,000 early Friday after President Donald Trump called for steep tariffs on EU imports and threatened Apple with similar measures. The digital asset briefly touched $107,300 on Binance, pulling back from session highs above $111,000 as traders responded to fresh geopolitical tensions.

The US president on Friday proposed a 50% tariff on all EU imports starting June 1, 2025, in a post on Truth Social. He cited trade imbalances and regulatory frictions as rationale for the move, declaring current EU-US trade dynamics “totally unacceptable.”

Apple is being threatened with 25% tariffs.  Wow, how free market is this?  Sounds a lot more like the old Soviet Command and Control model. Is he channeling Putin and Orban or just pissed about something Apple did at his party?  This is from CNBC. “Trump says Apple must pay a 25% tariff on iPhones not made in the U.S.” Does he not realize how long it would take to even set up a factory, let alone train everyone?  Doesn’t he know what this huge project would take to even break even?

President Donald Trump said in a social media post Friday that Apple will have to pay a tariff of 25% or more for iPhones made outside the United States.

“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else. If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.,” Trump said on Truth Social.

Shares of Apple fell about 2% on Friday after the post.

Apple’s flagship phone is produced primarily in China, but the company has been shifting manufacturing to India in part because that country has a friendlier trade relationship with the U.S.

Some Wall Street analysts have estimated that moving iPhone production to the U.S. would raise the price of the Apple smartphone by at least 25%. Wedbush’s Dan Ives put the estimated cost of a U.S. iPhone at $3,500. The iPhone 16 Pro currently retails for about $1,000.

This is the latest jab at Apple from Trump, who over the past couple of weeks has ramped up pressure on the company and Cook to increase domestic manufacturing. Trump and Cook met at the White House on Tuesday, according to Politico.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with Fox News on Friday that he was not part of the meeting at the White House but that the Apple situation could be part of the Trump administration’s push to bring “precision manufacturing” back to the U.S.

“A large part of Apple’s components are in semiconductors. So we would like to have Apple help us make the semiconductor supply chain more secure,” Bessent said.

Cook gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and attended the inauguration in January. Apple has announced a $500 billion spend on U.S. development, including AI server production in Houston.

Apple declined to comment for this story.

So, I’m over 4200 words and probably have put you to sleep.  You know how I am about Rabbit Holes.   How much longer before the economy collapses?  I’m actually beginning to wonder that. I know every time I see or hear him act so insane, I just collapse on the couch.

You have a very nice Memorial Day weekend. Please spend your time appreciating the many folks who gave their life for this country and its democracy.  Don’t let the ones trying to destroy it get to you.  There’s always the June 14th Flag Day “No Kings” protests and actions to look forward to and participate in.  Just don’t watch that damn parade. The least we old folks can do is tank the ratings.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

How about a little Warren Zevon and Prince?

Finally Friday Reads: It’s late but I took some ME time

“Well, I don’t know why I came here tonight
I’ve got the feeling that something ain’t right
I’m so scared in case I fall off my chair
And I’m wondering how I’ll get down the stairs” John Buss, Repeat1968 with h.t t;o Stealers Wheels

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I took some time today to enjoy a friend from FDL, sushi from Lin’s at St Roch Market, and the Bywater and Marigny right up to the edge of the Quarter. The only way to explore my neighborhood is by foot or by bus.  That way, you really get to know us. The stores on LA49 (better known as St. Claude Avenue) are small, locally owned, and full of surprises.  I don’t think I can ever emphasize how much I love this city. It’s probably why I stay here and don’t go elsewhere anymore.  I first discovered this because when I ventured around the state or country, I had dreams about not being able to find or go home, which ended immediately when I opened the front door. I really wish you this feeling. It’s amazing.

It gave me a breath from reading stuff today.  So, here I go, right into the thick of it.  This is from Dr. Paul Krugman’s Substack. “The Third-Worlding of America. How to destroy 80 years of credibility in less than 3 months.”  Like all excellent economists, he’s got charts and numbers to prove it. I got all these degrees to help people understand financial markets and economic policy. Now, I live with knowledge; I just pray it still empowers people, even if it feels disheartening today.

Remarkably, the sanewashing continues despite the unprecedented craziness of the past 10 days. Many observers assert that Trump has backed down on tariffs and will speedily make a bunch of trade deals. The first assertion is just false, while the second is very unlikely.

In fact, savvy traders have realized that there’s no coherent economic strategy. There’s an old line about military analysis: “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals talk about logistics.” Well, when it comes to taking the pulse of financial markets, amateurs talk about stocks, but professionals talk about bond and currency markets. That’s because bond and currency markets are generally less driven by emotion. There’s no “meme gambling investing” in bond and currency markets. And these markets are both signaling major loss of faith in America.

First, about tariffs: It’s true that for the time being Trump has scaled back some of the tariffs displayed on his big piece of cardboard last week. For example, unless we have another policy swerve, the European Union will now face a 10 percent tariff over the next three months rather than a 20 percent tariff. But the tariff on China, our third-biggest trading partner after Canada and Mexico, has gone from 34 percent to more than 130 percent. And we still have high tariffs on steel, aluminum and so on. In effect, observers who claim that tariffs have gone down are missing the biggest part of the story.

Economists who have actually run the numbers, like those at the Yale Budget Lab, estimate that the April 9 tariff regime will raise consumer prices more than the April 2 regime because of the extraordinarily high tariff rate on Chinese imports. Specifically, the budget lab estimates that the latest version of Trump’s trade war will raise consumer prices by 2.9 percent. This is roughly ten times the probable impact of the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930.

It’s hard to overstate the craziness of announcing a radical tariff plan, then announcing a quite different but equally radical plan just a week later. Furthermore, the claim that the wild zigzags in policy were always part of Trump’s plan just adds to the destruction of the administration’s credibility.

But are these tariffs just an opening gambit for trade negotiations? I doubt it. Bear in mind that Trump and Peter Navarro, his tariff guru, start from the premise that other countries are cheating, that they’re taking advantage of America and treating us unfairly. In fact, however, most of them aren’t. Take the case of the European Union. The EU imposes an average tariff on U.S. goods of just 1.7%, and there aren’t any significant hidden barriers.

So what are we supposed to be negotiating about? Nations can’t promise to lower their trade barriers when there aren’t any barriers. Navarro has been claiming that value-added taxes are de facto tariffs, but they aren’t, and EU nations literally can’t afford to give them up.

I guess other countries might make fake concessions that Trump can claim as fake victories. This is what he did with China during his first term, claiming that it had made significant concessions — claims which were, in the end, false. In fact, American soybean farmers have never fully recovered the loss of market share. And remember too how Trump made minor changes to NAFTA and claimed to have negotiated a whole new trade pact.

However, Trump is now clearly high on his own supply. Even with the April 9 tariff regime, Trump is imposing high tariff rates on our three largest trading partners. Currency and bond market traders — no fools they — are certainly not acting as if we’re on a path to successful deals.

The Chinese are pranking Trump today. This is from the Washington Post.  “China raises tariffs on U.S. goods to 125 percent as trade war deepens. Beijing hit back in response to the Trump administration’s move to raise tariffs on Chinese goods to 145 percent, saying it would “fight to the end.”  They can afford to. They’re making deals with South Korea and Japan, among other countries.  The only group this is hurting is US importers and Exporters. This includes farmers.

The response underscored China’s decision to stand firm in the face of pressure from Washington and deepened the showdown between the world’s two largest economies.

“If the U.S. insists on substantively damaging China’s interests, China will firmly retaliate and fight to the end,” China’sState Council said in a statement.

The move came after Trump increased the levies on Chinese goods to 145 percent on Wednesday, while also announcing that the tariffs he had previously imposed on more than six dozen other countries would be fixed at 10 percent during a 90-day pause.

The State Council derided Trump’s move to continue ratcheting up the levies and said it would ignore further hikes. The tariffs are a “joke” and “no longer have any economic significance,” its statement said, because the current levels make U.S. exports to China not financially viable. The new Chinese tariffs, which increased from 84 percent, are effective Saturday.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in a meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Friday, stressed that trade wars have no winners and called for China and Europe to “jointly oppose unilateral bullying,” according to state media. European leaders also emphasized the damaging effects of uncertainty beyond the 90-day pause.

Experts in Beijing expressed concern about the latest turn in tensions with Washington. “U.S.-China trade will soon be almost nonexistent,” said Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at China’s Renmin University. “To ease tensions, Trump must first make concessions.”

Turmoil over tariffs drove fluctuations in global markets on Friday.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 and Topix indexes dropped by5percent, before trimming their losses to under 3 percent by market close. South Korea’s Kospi and Australia’s ASX 200 fell by less than1 percent, while Taiwan’s bourse kicked off the day with a fall of under 1 percent before logging a 2.5 percent gain. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index and China’s Shanghai composite index were mostly flat, with the Hang Seng closing just over 1 per cent higher.

Major European markets fell slightly after opening on Friday, following rebounds the previous day. By 6 a.m. Eastern time, Germany’s DAX was down 1.62 percent, France’s benchmark CAC fell by 1.11 percent and London’s FTSE 100 was down around 0.3 percent.

It’s almost as if… and stay with me now… It’s almost as if Republicans aren’t as good at the economy as they claim to be!

— Joey Blue (@jp262.bsky.social) 2025-04-11T15:49:19.451Z

CNN has this headline today for a story written by Ella Nilsen. “Trump’s budget plan eviscerates weather and climate research, and it could be enacted immediately.”  I guess I better hurry to put that Weather Station up in the Pergalo.

The Trump administration intends to eliminate the research arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, close all weather and climate labs and eviscerate its budget along with several other NOAA offices, according to internal documents obtained by CNN.

The documents describe the administration’s budget proposal for 2026, but indicate the administration expects the agency to enact the changes immediately.

The cuts would devastate weather and climate research as weather is becoming more erratic, extreme and costly. It would cripple the US industries — including agriculture — that depend on free, accurate weather and climate data and expert analysis. It could also halt research on deadly weather, including severe storms and tornadoes.

The administration intends to make significant cuts to education, grants, research and climate-related programs in NOAA, the plan says, which the administration believes “are misaligned with the … expressed will of the American people.”

While the phrase “climate change” refers to the manmade influence on the global climate system via planet-warming fossil fuel pollution, “climate” in NOAA parlance is simply the weather that has been observed over time.

CNN has reached out to the White House and the Department of Commerce, which houses NOAA, for comment on the plan.

Additionally, NASA is on the chopping block!  Does this include all that money going to Elonia?   This is from ars TECHICA‘s Eric Berger.  “Trump White House budget proposal eviscerates science funding at NASA.  “This would decimate American leadership in space.”   #FARTUS seems dead set on sending us back to the Gilded Age. Even the best of the Modern Era is about to be erased.

This week, as part of the process to develop a budget for fiscal-year 2026, the Trump White House shared the draft version of its budget request for NASA with the space agency.

This initial version of the administration’s budget request calls for an approximately 20 percent overall cut to the agency’s budget across the board, effectively $5 billion from an overall topline of about $25 billion. However, the majority of the cuts are concentrated within the agency’s Science Mission Directorate, which oversees all planetary science, Earth science, astrophysics research, and more.

According to the “passback” documents given to NASA officials on Thursday, the space agency’s science programs would receive nearly a 50 percent cut in funding. After the agency received $7.5 billion for science in fiscal-year 2025, the Trump administration has proposed a science topline budget of just $3.9 billion for the coming fiscal year.

Among the proposals were: A two-thirds cut to astrophysics, down to $487 million; a greater than two-thirds cut to heliophysics, down to $455 million; a greater than 50 percent cut to Earth science, down to $1.033 billion; and a 30 percent cut to Planetary science, down to $1.929 billion.

Although the budget would continue support for ongoing missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, it would kill the much-anticipated Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, an observatory seen as on par with those two world-class instruments that is already fully assembled and on budget for a launch in two years.

We’re also unlikely to see other countries send their best and brightest to our US Universities with all this craziness. As some with with multiple degrees and ones that aren’t that easy to achieve, I would just like to say that my teachers, my students and grad assistants, and my colleagues and fellow students were consistently the best part of higher education school. I owe so much of my math chops to fellow students from India, Iran, Hong Kong, Turkey, and Taiwan. Both of my Doctorate advisors came here as students. One from India.  The other is from Bangladesh. This brain drain will put us on the road to mediocrity.

This is from the AP.  “Immigration judge finds that Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil can be deported.”

Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil can be kicked out of the U.S. as a national security risk, an immigration judge in Louisiana found Friday during a hearing over the legality of deporting the activist who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

The government’s contention that Khalil’s presence in the United States posed “potentially serious foreign policy consequences” was enough to satisfy requirements for his deportation, Immigration Judge Jamee E. Comans said at the conclusion of a hearing in Jena.

Comans said the government had “established by clear and convincing evidence that he is removable.”

Lawyers for Khalil said they plan to keep fighting. The judge gave them until April 23 to seek a waiver. Meanwhile, a federal judge in New Jersey temporarily barred Khalil’s deportation.

Addressing the judge at the end of the hearing, Khalil mentioned that she said at a hearing earlier in the week that “there’s nothing more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness.”

Let me just say that Jena, Louisiana, is a hell realm.

I don’t believe you is above contempt?! Right

— T Gauthier (@1redcupcake.bsky.social) 2025-04-11T21:09:49.330Z

Is it a Constitutional Crisis Yet, Momma?  Brad Reed has that Raw Story headline.

The United States Department of Justice said on Friday that it will not comply with an order from Judge Paula Xinis to reveal information on the whereabouts and status of deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

As reported by Politico’s Kyle Cheney on BlueSky, the DOJ information Judge Xinis that it would not be able to provide the information she requested on Garcia because the court set an “impracticable” deadline to do so.

Judge Xinis had originally demanded that the DOJ provide information about Garcia’s status by 9:30 a.m. on Friday after the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration needed to facilitate bringing him back from the prison in El Salvador where he had been sent improperly.

The judge extended the deadline to 11:30 a.m. on Friday morning and scheduled a court hearing on the case for 1 p.m.

So, I hope you’re trying to stay positive and calm. I’m going to go walk Temple and feed the kitties. That’s something I can do right now without feeling depressed.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMAIsqvTh7g

Mostly Monday Reads: Woke meets Panem et Circenses

“Deleted earlier versions of this, as I found an error that surely would have upset AI bots. Let this one rip!” John (repeat1968) Buss

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Wipipo are very confused by the Super Bowl halftime and complaining that it had no music. I still laugh at the fact that they think everything is all about them.  I didn’t watch any of it until the clips were available, but wow, the hassle and occupation down here were well worth the halftime performance. That is, if you weren’t one of the poor homeless folks who got sent to a broken-down warehouse in Gentilly. If you really want the opposite version of what really happened, it’s all over FARTUS’ social media.  That’s even more deluded than the MAGA cult themselves. It’s a Black History Month, for the records!

I have always loved to hear anything that Jon Baptiste does, but his rendition of the National Anthem made me actually enjoy listening to the song itself.  Who couldn’t love Samuel L. Jackson as Uncle Sam?  Evidently, a whole bunch of whiny wipipo who want everything to look just like them, like their version of a supreme being, always does, no matter what the evidence or history suggests. This is from the New Republic. “MAGA Has Total Meltdown Over Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show. The right is freaking out over a Super Bowl halftime show rife with American imagery.”This is written by Malcolm Ferguson.

Kendrick Lamar’s very normal Super Bowl halftime show had the MAGA faithful pearl-clutching and conspiracy theorizing.

The iconic Pulitzer Prize and 22-time Grammy winner livened up an otherwise uncompetitive game with a classic performance that centered hip-hop and Black American culture—and featured the likes of Samuel L. Jackson (dressed in American flag garb as Uncle Sam), Serena Williams, and SZA. It only makes sense that right-wingers hated everything about it.

“The halftime show you just watched is clearly the regime’s response to Trump’s historic gains with black men,” shamed former Representative Matt Gaetz wrote on X, even though Lamar was announced as the halftime show performer months before Election Day.

“Raise your hand if you survived the black nationalist Super Bowl LIX halftime show,” right-wing commentator Eric Daugherty wrote on X, even as Lamar’s stage and costume designs were rife with American flag imagery.

“Hey NFL, Trump won. We no longer let talentless mumbling pagan satanic cultists do halftime shows and pretend like people like it,” MAGA media shill Benny Johnson said. “Thanks, everyone.”

In reality, the halftime show was fine, and Kendrick Lamar is an excellent rapper. These people took issue with the show because it didn’t fit into their narrow “post-woke” vision of America—but neither does a very large chunk of this country. This isn’t the first time Kendrick Lamar has performed at the Super Bowl, and it isn’t the first time Blackness has been a major theme of the show. And yet MAGA continues to cry about it.

Let me pull some comments from my local station, WDSU.  “Kendrick Lamar Brought a GNX to His Super Bowl Halftime Show.” The Louisiana outback and Scalise burbs were restless.

A very special car made an appearance during the Super Bowl halftime show performance on Sunday night.

Kendrick Lamar’s most recent album is named after the most famous car, released in his birth year, 1987, and the sister car to the Buick Regal that his father brought him home from the hospital. Thus, it’s no surprise that he entered the Super Bowl for his halftime performance in a GNX.

The GNX becomes the symbol of a victory lap for Lamar, who won five Grammys last week for a diss track written in his ongoing battle with Canadian rapper Drake.

Now Kendrick sits atop one of the most American cars in history at America’s biggest sporting event.

That seems harmless enough. Right?  Not to these folks!

• Joe Delatte  “WORST OF THE WORST EVER.”
• Tanya Marie Lawson  “All I needed to know was how to change to another channel. It’s supposed to be entertainment…not political or an opportunity to attack your rival.”

(Evidently, Tanya sees an imaginary opponent of black culture and music in there that no one else saw.)

• Richard Thompson  Such a shame they don’t have music for the half time show anymore.
• Debbie Feigler Schexnaildre  So what about the car the performance was terrible we had no clue what he was saying!! Definitely not entertainment.

(Debbie, Debbie, Debbie!  Everything is always about Debbie but who knows how to pronounce those last names of her’s anyway?

• Kevin Romano Sr Isn’t that beef in rap music how a lot of them get assassinated.
• Adam Dawson It was filled with dis tracks against the rapper Drake, subliminal racism, and political innuendo, made to look like the main performers life was a video game. It’s sad that a teenager pointed this out to me. I spent time looking this up, hoping the teenager was wrong. The main performer sounded very monotone. Very poor performance. It didn’t need to be a Louisiana artist, but more family friendly and without the dis tracks, subliminal racism, and political innuendo, would have been nice. Weird AL Yankovic would have given a better halftime show. The NFL audience spans all political and ethnic backgrounds of America and the world.

(Adam had to white-mansplain everything to us! How else would we know that white men are the real victims of racism!)

For more racist takes, follow the link!  Or better yet, follow FARTUS! He spoiled the event for all sides of the fee fees.  From Lipstick Alley: ” Trump throws tantrum and leaves Superbowl early after his favorite team gets humiliated, cries salty tears that The Superbowl is ruined.”

The run up to the Superbowl was dominated by news that Donald Trump and his hangers on would make an appearance, the first for a sitting President.
Trump arrived at the stadium with Daughter – Wife Ivanka and took to the field with a mix of cheers and Boos.
Trump wandered the field as if dazed and confused but he had initially praised and predicted a Kansas City Chiefs win.
Trump is enamored with the Chiefs who were clearly the MAGA white choice especially with MAGA Mahomes and his hillbilly family being big Trump supporters.
The Philadelphia Eagles did not come to play, they came to slay and scalped the Chiefs early on, eventually winning 40-22.
Trump was not having it and got up and left after 10 mins of the second half or maybe the half time show was just too Black.
Strange that Hitler did the same thing when Jesse Owens dominated the 1936 Olympics.

Trump’s tweets today, as well as his behavior at the game, were total lessons in how to be a jerk. He was booed. However, you’d never know it if you listened to him.  He and Taylor Swift were booed by the Eagles fans.  Taylor used to be an Eagles fan. You can speculate on the other.  Here’s an interesting take from the rag The Mirror US. “Sore loser Donald Trump lashes out at Taylor Swift after fleeing Super Bowl. Donald Trump has continued his feud with Taylor Swift by sharing a video of the pop star being booed at the Super Bowl, while he was cheered by fans at the same event.”

Donald Trump couldn’t resist a swipe at Taylor Swift following the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl defeat, taking jabs even as he departed the event early. The current President hopped onto his social media haven Truth Social, posting while en route back to Florida aboard what was likely Air Force One: “The only one that had a tougher night than the Kansas City Chiefs was Taylor Swift. She got BOOED out of the Stadium. MAGA is very unforgiving! ”

On his platform, Trump uploaded several clips including glimpses of himself amid celebratory fans and another clip purportedly capturing jeers as Swift and Ice Spice appeared on the stadium’s Skycam.

His contentious post, left without commentary, fired up discussions—was Trump implying that the crowd’s applause was for him and jeers for Swift, or were the reactions intertwined at the moment? Videos circulating don’t clarify whether the President received cheers, or simply joined in on crowd acclaim.

Former first Lady and Grandson definitely were given cheers. However, the stories are still being spun as I type. The worst thing is the entire focus on these things and not the impact on New Orleans.  You may read about a lot of it in my post here.

The panem et circenses in New Orleans look and feel like a military takeover. We've been #occupied. http://www.facebook.com/reel/5999453… No one can cross Canal Street without a search. They've thrown the homeless in an overpriced warehouse dump. There are military helicopters overhead and bomb dogs

— Kat Huff aka Dakinikat (@dakinikat.bsky.social) 2025-02-08T21:44:26.415Z

Trump says he has directed the Treasury to stop minting new pennies due to cost. No mention of his $15 million Super Bowl trip or his almost daily $3 million golf excursions.

— Molly Ploofkins (@mollyploofkins.bsky.social) 2025-02-10T16:25:48.791Z

I am waiting to see the actual economic impact on the city because up until Friday night, the military and police definitely had a bigger presence than tourists.  I’m hoping my friends finally made some money to tide them over until the Big Mardi Gras Parades startup.

So, let me pop a few reads up about the Muskanator and his gang of adolescent droogies. There are a lot of lawsuits going on, that’s for certain. This is from Public Notice‘s Lisa Needham. “Trump and his lawyers embrace the logic of dictatorship. And they’re not even trying to hide it at this point.”

Donald Trump is busy seizing power through executive orders and letting Elon Musk and his gang of racist DOGE bros run amok through America’s government agencies. It’s an unprecedented upending of the separation of powers, an authoritarian reshaping of America.

While Trump and his henchmen deconstruct the administrative state, his lawyers are embracing the logic of dictatorship. The core argument emerging in their legal filings and executive orders — one without support anywhere in the Constitution or the law — is that simply by being elected, Trump has the power to do whatever he wants.

The issue is not the use of executive orders as such. The authority to issue them comes from Article II of the Constitution, which vests executive power in the president and requires him to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Executive orders are meant to tell the executive branch how to implement existing laws. However, in part because Congress is now so routinely deadlocked, every president in the 21st century has issued scores of them that attempt to implement policies outside of the legislative process.

But executive orders aren’t laws, and the authority of presidents to issue them is not absolute. They can’t contradict or overturn existing statutes. Subsequent presidents can undo executive orders just by issuing a new executive order saying so. And federal courts have routinely struck down EOs for being unconstitutional or for exceeding the scope of the president’s authority.

When executive orders are challenged in court, government attorneys typically point to the underlying laws that give the president the authority to issue the order. Trump seems to have dispensed with that requirement, however.

Trump’s imperial ambitions have made for some laughably thin legal theories. As Just Security noted, the government’s argument in defense of Trump’s birthright citizenship EO does not reference any citizenship statutes nor point to any authority that would give Trump the right to undo birthright citizenship via the stroke of a pen. Instead, after quoting the relevant part of the Fourteenth Amendment — ”All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” — the EO just goes on to state that it “has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.”

The problem for Trump is that the Fourteenth Amendment has absolutely historically been interpreted to do just that. The EO attempts to say that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are magic words that have always excluded people whose parents were not citizens when they were born, but that’s nothing but a recent crackpot theory from election denier attorney John Eastman.

This is from Bloomberg. “DOGE-Backed Halt at CFPB Comes Amid Musk’s Plans for ‘X’ Digital Wallet.  Government-efficiency team’s initial ‘read-only’ access expanded quickly to encompass closely guarded data, internal emails say.”  This is reported by  Jason Leopold and Evan Weinberger.  I told you they were trying to tank the dollar and replace it with their cryptocurrency grift.

In another weekend takeover of a federal agency’s operations, staffers from an efficiency initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk helped to effectively shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — as they gained access to an array of the bureau’s protected information.

The actions began last Thursday, when four young staffers working under Musk for the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, showed up at CFPB’s Washington headquarters. At first, they had what was described as read-only access to a limited array of documents, including the agency’s internal personnel files, procurement records and budgeting and financial data, according to an email shared among CFPB officials.

Then, late Friday night, the DOGE staffers were granted access to all the CFPB’s data systems, including sensitive bank examination and enforcement records, according to five people familiar with the matter and emails seen by Bloomberg News. The people asked not to be identified, citing concerns over potential retribution. By Sunday, the agency was a skeleton, with its funding limited and activities suspended.

Musk, whose social-media platform X has recently begun firming up plans to enter the online payments industry, had already predicted the demise of the consumer-watchdog agency. He didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The weekend’s events came after Russell Vought, who heads the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, ordered wider access for DOGE, according to an email to CFPB officials that was seen by Bloomberg. Vought sent the email Friday evening, about 90 minutes before news broke that he’d also been named acting director of the financial-enforcement agency.

Vought is an architect of the Heritage Foundation’s influential and controversial government-overhaul plan called Project 2025, which appears to have guided DOGE’s attempts to dismantle portions of the federal bureaucracy. Earlier this month, the team played a key role in the administration’s effort to shut down the US Agency for International Development, another longstanding conservative bête noire.

Bloomberg News sought comment from Musk, Vought, the DOGE team members and the White House. None responded.

It just gets worse, and there’s no accountability because the Republicans have gone all squishy.  And as usual, women and minorities are being deleted from American History and the recognition they deserve. This is from Popular Information and is written by Jude Legum and Rebecca Crosby. “The NSA’s “Big Delete'”

Today, the National Security Agency (NSA) is planning a “Big Delete” of websites and internal network content that contain any of 27 banned words, including “privilege,” “bias,” and “inclusion.” The “Big Delete,” according to an NSA source and internal correspondence reviewed by Popular Information, is creating unintended consequences. Although the websites and other content are purportedly being deleted to comply with President Trump’s executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion, or “DEI,” the dragnet is taking down “mission-related” work. According to the NSA source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media, the process is “very chaotic,” but is plowing ahead anyway.

A memo distributed by NSA leadership to its staff says that on February 10, all NSA websites and internal network pages that contain banned words will be deleted. This is the list of 27 banned words distributed to NSA staff:

Anti-Racism
Racism
Allyship
Bias
DEI
Diversity
Diverse
Confirmation Bias
Equity
Equitableness
Feminism
Gender
Gender Identity
Inclusion
Inclusive
All-Inclusive
Inclusivity
Injustice
Intersectionality
Prejudice
Privilege
Racial Identity
Sexuality
Stereotypes
Pronouns
Transgender
Equality

The memo acknowledges that the list includes many terms that are used by the NSA in contexts that have nothing to do with DEI. For example, the term “privilege” is used by the NSA in the context of “privilege escalation.” In the intelligence world, privilege escalation refers to “techniques that adversaries use to gain higher-level permissions on a system or network.”

The purge extends beyond public-facing websites to pages on the NSA’s internal network, including project management software like Jira and Confluence.

I am really not sure I can take much more of this.

Anyway, I’d like to thank JJ for filling in for me with my various hospital appointments and the time I spent with Keely as she exited the Earthly Door. It has been a rough few weeks. Actually, this entire year has sucked big time.

I hope the courts stand firm and we figure out what to do if FARTUS ignores them.  Perhaps there are a few good men and women left in the Republican part of Congress.  I certainly hope that there are a few appointees to SCOTUS that do not want the country to go down in flames.

Take care y’all!

Be safe!

Mostly Monday Reads: Narcissistic Chaos FARTUS-style (Felon Adjudicated Rapist Traitor of the United States)

“Making Imperialism Great Again.” John (repeat1968) Buss @johnbuss.bsky.social

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Well, this is the 4th time a Republican Policy has trashed my IRAs/403bs. Reagan in 1987. Dubya in 2007/2008. Trump today and 2020. The one today is completely based on Presidential policy. The others on careless deregulation and fraught banking practices. I saw each one coming.

Over the weekend, I almost pulled an all-nighter researching the futures market and the Treasury system break-in. There is still a flight to the dollar–not freaking bitcoins– so that’s a relief! None of these things are necessary or are in any way leading to anything but mass financial and economic problems in the US and abroad. Why would any group of people want to tank the economy?  I think they are trying to bring down the dollar. Instead, their Bitcoin Ponzi scheme forces us all into a risky asset with no value or function. Also, it brings them massive press and public attention. I’m actually now watching for signs of bank runs.

All of this behavior in Fartus and Elonia wreaks of Narcissistic Abuse.  They create chaos to gain and regain control. BB can tell you more about this since she has a doctorate in psychology.  I’m a dismal scientist who has been quite dismal the last two weeks.  I completely expected the implementation of tariffs to tank the markets. It did.  FARTUS manufactures chaos. They crave center stage, which is one of the hopes we have. They go after each other. They both want to be the main character in this disaster.

I was watching the Futures market last night, too late into the night, to see what was happening with stocks, Market Indices, and everything that impacted the stock market the next day.   BB sent this to me late last night. I agree with pretty much everything in Jonathan V. Last’s analysis provided in The Bulwark. “Follow the Money. The financial markets are the only thing that can stop Trump’s reign of chaos.”  It was clear when the markets started tanking today when Trump, Canada, China, and Mexico started setting up that his FARTUS, with his raging Id, needs a crusade of some kind or another.  Another good thing is that we haven’t hit any of the exchange’s circuit breakers.  That’s when you get a true crash. But it’s early in the week.

The main target today is USAID.  We won’t know the trade wars’ outcomes until some negotiations start. Currently, FARTUS has put most of the tariffs on hold for a month, so the markets are settling down. But remember shock and awe, and no one expecting the Elonia Inquisition is part of the fun for these sickos.  What the press is calling Musk’s ‘lieutenants’ and ‘enforcers’ is essentially a gang of incel, SS cosplaying boys doing the dirty work of infiltrating government systems. That’s so Godfatherish I don’t even know where to go with it. I spent a good deal last night with this article from Wired written by Vittoria Elliot. “The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover. Engineers between 19 and 24, most linked to Musk’s companies, are playing a key role as he seizes control of federal infrastructure.”

Elon Musk’s takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college. Most have connections to Musk, and at least two have connections to Musk’s longtime associate Peter Thiel, a cofounder and chair of the analytics firm and government contractor Palantir who has long expressed opposition to democracy.

WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within DOGE, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer.

The engineers are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. None have responded to requests for comment from WIRED. Representatives from OPM, GSA, and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.

The six men are one part of the broader project of Musk allies assuming key government positions. Already, Musk’s lackeys—including more senior staff from xAI, Tesla, and the Boring Company—have taken control of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA), and have gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, potentially allowing him access to a vast range of sensitive information about tens of millions of citizens, businesses, and more. On Sunday, CNN reported that DOGE personnel attempted to improperly access classified information and security systems at the US Agency for International Development and that top USAID security officials who thwarted the attempt were subsequently put on leave. The Associated Press reported that DOGE personnel had indeed accessed classified material.

Did I mention that my job managing the TTL and TBond, TBill department of New Orleans Fed required me to go through fingerprinting, a security check, and an interview with some very grim Treasury Agents? All we did was process the stuff from our region and send it to the Treasury Systems using Fed Wire and other systems to the central processing locations.  We also checked the local transmission from the business sending their payroll taxes.

I can only imagine the view of the entire system from my low perch. They have the golden ticket to all banks, all Feds, and all their global counterparts.  They also have access to people’s social security and the federal employee base.  These are Children!  This is from LAProgressive authored by Ann Wright. “Musk’s DOGE “Proud Boys” Blitzkrieg Threatens All American. The billionaire oligarch and his henchmen are wreaking havoc in government offices with sensitive personal data of all U.S. citizens.”

In raids reminiscent of the “January 6” Proud Boys attack on the U.S. Capitol four years ago, unelected, unvetted, and without federal government security clearance, the Trump-anointed head of the yet-unapproved Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Elon Musk and his henchmen with enormous computing backgrounds are wrecking havoc in government offices with sensitive personal data of all U.S. citizens.

This past week, Musk’s blitzkrieg team gained access to sensitive Treasury data, including Social Security and Medicare customer payment systems. Access to the system is closely held because it includes sensitive personal information about the millions of U.S. citizens who receive Social Security checks, tax refunds, and other payments from the federal government.

The responsibility for ensuring payments are accurate is on individual agencies, not the relatively small staff of civil servants at the Treasury Department’s Office of Fiscal Services, which is responsible for making more than one billion payments per year. The office disbursed more than $5 trillion in fiscal year 2023.

The previous weekend, Mr. Lebryk had been pushed by Tom Krause, the chief executive of a Silicon Valley company, Cloud Software Group and a member of Musk’s blitzkrieg team for entry into the federal payments system. Mr. Lebryk refused and then was subsequently put on administrative leave and then forced to resign.

In response to Lebryk’s resignation, Musk responded on February 1 to a post on his social media platform X: “The @DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups. They literally never denied a payment in their entire career. Not even once.”

In Musk and Trump styles, Musk provided NO evidence for his allegation.

Also on Friday, January 31, in hearing of the DOGE raid on the Office of Financial Services, Senator Ron Wyden, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent outraged that “officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy.”

Senator Wyden pushed back against DOGE operatives, “”I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems.”

No matter how many needy people around the world are served by USAID, Elonia says he’s shutting it down- right to the point of stopping funds for a small Lutheran church feeding and sheltering children- and he says FARTUS approves it. How absolutely White Male Christian of them!  This is from The Daily Beast as reported by Matt Young.” Remember: 

Narcissists regularly:

1. Instigate crazymaking arguments

2. Ruin holidays & special occasions

3. Provoke jealousy & use triangulation

4. Give you the Silent Treatment

5. Steal your time & energy

“Musk: I’m Closing Entire Federal Agency Down Right Now. The tech billionaire made the announcement during a DOGE Spaces update on X.”  Notice how I just had to give free advertising to DOGE and X.  Two things I avoid like the plague.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is getting the chop, according to Elon Musk.

Musk’s highly anticipated DOGE Spaces debut on X put the rumors to rest after a day of criticism lobbed at the agency, including reports that two top security officials were removed Saturday after refusing to allow DOGE representatives into restricted spaces.

Musk confirmed the administration was in the process of shutting USAID down. “As we dug into USAID it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms. If you have an apple with a worm in it, you can take the worm out. If you have a whole ball of worms, it’s hopeless,” he said. “USAID is a ball of worms. There is no apple… that is why it’s gotta go. It’s beyond repair.”

Musk had declared earlier on Sunday, “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.” He continued to take aim at the agency, which has an annual budget of more than $50 billion, with several more posts on his social media platform.

An email sent to staff told them not to come into the office on Monday morning except those with essential on-site duties.

All my levels of Civics, Political Science, and American History oblige me to recall that part of the US Constitution that gives the power of the purse to the United States Congres.  They’ve created the Agency.  They’ve funded it.  They’ve had sign-offs from Presidents.  Who the fuck does he thinks he is? This is from the BBC, as reported by Sean Seddon.  “What is USAID and why is Trump reportedly poised to close it?”

The future of the US government’s main overseas aid agency has been cast into doubt as the Trump administration plans to merge it with the US Department of State after days of upheaval.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) would continue its function as an aid agency, but the plan involves a significant reduction in its funding and the workforce, CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, reports.

On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused USAID’s leadership of “insubordination” and said he was now its “acting head”.

US President Donald Trump and one of his top advisers, billionaire Elon Musk, have been strongly critical of the agency.

But the move to shut it down could have a profound impact on humanitarian programmes around the world.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was set up in the early 1960s to administer humanitarian aid programmes on behalf of the US government around the world.

It employs around 10,000 people, two-thirds of whom work overseas. It has bases in more than 60 countries and works in dozens of others. However, most of the work on the ground is carried out by other organisations that are contracted and funded by USAID.

The range of activities it undertakes is vast. For example, not only does USAID provide food in countries where people are starving, it also operates the world’s gold standard famine detection system, which uses data analysis to try to predict where shortages are emerging.

• Democrats say move to shutter aid agency ‘unconstitutional’: Follow Live
• Trump considers merging USAID into US State Department

Much of USAID’s budget is spent on health programmes, such as offering polio vaccinations in countries where the disease still circulates and helping to stop the spread of viruses which have the potential to cause a pandemic.

The BBC’s international charity BBC Media Action, which is funded by external grants and voluntary contributions, receives some funding from USAID. According to a 2024 report, USAID donated $3.23m (£2.6m), making it the charity’s second-largest donor that financial year.

According to government data, the US spent $68bn (£55bn) on international aid in 2023.

That total is spread across several departments and agencies, but USAID’s budget constitutes more than half of it at around $40bn.

The vast majority of that money is spent in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Europe – primarily on humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.

The US is the world’s biggest spender on international development – and by some margin.

To put it into context, the UK is the world’s fourth-largest aid spender. In 2023, it spent £15.3bn – around a quarter of what the US provided.

Today, staffers at the Agency were told to stay out. This is from the AP. “Democrats push back after Musk says Trump agrees to close USAID and workers are kept out.”

Democrats have delivered a strong rebuke against the Trump administration’s attempt to gut an agency that provides crucial aid overseas to fund education and fight starvation and disease, calling it illegal, vowing a court fight and lambasting billionaire Elon Musk for wielding so much power in Washington.

Staffers of the U.S. Agency for International Development were instructed to stay out of the agency’s Washington headquarters, and officers blocked the lawmakers from entering the lobby Monday, after Musk announced President Donald Trump had agreed with him to shut the agency.

The fast-moving developments come after thousands of USAID employees already have been laid off and programs shut down in the two weeks since Trump became president. And they show the extraordinary power of Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency in the Trump administration. Musk announced closing of the agency early Monday, as Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was out of the country on a trip to Central America.

Trump said shutting down USAID “should have been done a long time ago” and was asked whether he needs Congress to approve such a measure. The president said he did not think so, and accused the Biden administration of fraud, without giving any evidence and only promising a report later on.

“They went totally crazy, what they were doing and the money they were giving to people that shouldn’t be getting it and to agencies and others that shouldn’t be getting it, it was a shame, so a tremendous fraud,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday.

Rubio told reporters in San Salvador that he was now the acting administrator of USAID but had delegated his authorities to someone else. The change means that USAID is no longer an independent government agency as it had been for decades — although its new status will likely be challenged in court — and will be run out of the State Department.

I need to see more than a “strong rebuke” please.   He’s just stolen powers given to Congress by the Constitution.  “ArtII.S2.C2.3.6 Creation of Federal Offices.”

Article II, Section 2, Clause 2:

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The Constitution gives Congress substantial power to establish federal government offices. As an initial matter, the Constitution vests the legislative power in Congress.1 Article I bestows on Congress certain specified, or enumerated, powers.2 The Court has recognized that these powers are supplemented by the Necessary and Proper Clause, which provides Congress with broad power to enact laws that are ‘convenient, or useful’ or ‘conducive’ to [the] beneficial exercise of its more specific authorities.3 The Supreme Court has observed that the Necessary and Proper Clause authorizes Congress to establish federal offices.4 Congress accordingly enjoys broad authority to create government offices to carry out various statutory functions and directives.5 The legislature may establish government offices not expressly mentioned in the Constitution in order to carry out its enumerated powers.6

The Appointments Clause supplies the method of appointment for certain specified officials, but also for other [o]fficers whose positions are established by [l]aw. Although principal officers must be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, Congress may by [l]aw place the appointing power for inferior officers with the President alone, a department head, or a court.7 As this section will explain, the Supreme Court has recognized Congress’s discretion to establish a wide variety of governmental entities in the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches.

Congress’s authority to establish offices is limited by the terms of the Appointments Clause. The structure of federal agencies must comply with the requirement that the President appoint officers, subject to Senate confirmation, although the appointment of inferior officers may rest with the President alone, department heads, or the courts.8 More broadly, the Supreme Court has made clear that the Constitution imposes important limits on Congress’s ability to influence or control the actions of officers once they are appointed. Likewise, it is widely believed that the President must retain a certain amount of independent discretion in selecting officers that Congress may not impede. These principles ensure that the President may fulfill his constitutional duty under Article II to take [c]are that the laws are faithfully executed.9

Alright, I sound like I’m assigning homework and giving lectures again. I don’t mean to. But sometimes you’re just going to need a reference when some stupid person doesn’t know what’s real, what’s constitutional, and what’s totally off the wall.

I think that’s enough for today’s big swallow.  I’m off to take care of myself. Please do the same!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

To think, like 50 years ago, I was performing this.  Where has time gone?