Are we having fun yet?

Hey hey, how’s it going. Sorry for the relative lack of posts lately, have been traveling and researching the new book and — oh? What’s that? The stock market crashed? Again? Trump says he’s “purposely crashing” it? Well, that’s unfortunate.

Oh, it’s all because of his tariff policy? The one that’s supposed to “liberate” us from trade deficits with commercial superpowers like Lesotho, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and … the Falkland Islands? Countries and colonies we spend most of a century imposing such trade deficits on to ensure the endless flow of cheaply mass-produced consumer goods and ever-rising share prices? The one that’s sparking an all-out trade war with China and possibly the European Union? The one that is already forcing his administration to consider bailing out U.S. farmers who are going to be imminently crushed, potentially risking our national food supply? Cool, let me know how that works out.

Last time I checked in with you I was warning that the disappearance of Columbia grad student Mahmoud Khalil for having exercised his constitutional rights to protest his university’s acquiescence in the slaughter of his people was a trial run.¹ How’s that all going? Oh right, since then there have been, what, half a dozen more? Rümeysa Öztürk, Alireza Doroudi, Yunseo Chung, Leqaa Kordia, Badar Khan Suri, Doğukan Günaydın … I think I’m missing a few. Little personal anecdote: I first watched the video of masked state agents abducting Öztürk while I was in the main exhibit hall of the Illinois Holocaust Museum. I’d just taken a picture of a Nazi policeman checking the identification papers of Jews in the Krakow ghetto. I also saw this woman:

Hmm.

Oh, what’s that? They also sent a legal immigrant to the torture prison in El Salvador for the crime of being Venezuelan? And admitted to sending the wrong guy in another case, but said they aren’t going to bring him back? And seem to have defied a court order to turn around two planeloads of deportees bound for the same prison? And currently seem to be ignoring a court order to pause a refugee ban and funding freeze for asylum services? And are attacking a federal judge who is trying to halt the arbitrary stripping of legal protection against deportation from hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan, Haitian and other immigrants; a judge who said that the justifications given by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem were a “classic case of racism?”

Well, while we rid ourselves of those pesky huddled masses, foreign oligarchs buy can now permanent residence for a one-time fee of of just $5 million. Sure, such programs elsewhere have historically borne “significant risks of money laundering, fraud, and other forms of misuse,” but those risks can be allayed if the program is “administered in a risk-sensitive way.” And nothing says “safeguard against corruption” like an oversized gold residency card embossed with the face of the paramount national leader.

But hey, if you can’t get into the United States, maybe the United States can come to you! That is, if you live on the world’s largest island, and our president decides that its resources, strategic position, and rapidly melting ice sheet would look good in his portfolio. Trump’s followers insist he won’t use military force — he is, famously, antiwar after all (/s) — even though he’s repeatedly said he will “never take military force off the table.” And when has the U.S. ever invaded a sovereign country for dubious reasons?

No, I mean, for the purpose of, like, outright annexing an island.²

OK, but has the Trump administration just straight-up stolen property that didn’t belong to it, and like, tried to give it to a crony?

Ah but have they done it in the last hour? You know what don’t answer that.

Speaking of mass layoffs, Secretary of Measles Robert F. Kennedy (Jr.) is admitting that at least a fifth of all the people fired by Elon Musk’s meme department were “mistakes,” including the accidental (?) sacking of the CDC’s entire Lead Poisoning Prevention and Surveillance Branch. (The world’s most powerful Gen Xer accidentally getting rid of the lead poisoning prevention department may be the most Gen X thing possible.) Also, six senior national security officials include the heads of the National Security Administration and the U.S. Cyber Command seem to have been fired at the urging of Trump’s longtime-suppoter-and-absolutely-not-nor-has-ever-been-girlfriend. And the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the thousands of projects it supports, is pretty much gone. Maybe we can make up for those losses by tapping into our definitely legitimate and useful new Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

At least with all the chaos, trade wars, and possible invasions of NATO allies (note to Rep. Manzinger: include an amendment barring funding for invasions of anyone), the geopolitical crises Trump inherited are all getting sorted out. Marco Rubio is boldly decrying the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine while threatening to further escalate it. (Seems Trump was just joking about ending that one within 24 hours, just as he was joking about lowering grocery prices and when he said tariffs wouldn’t cause inflation, and to give everyone free IVF.)

Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t joking about ethnically cleansing Gaza and letting Trump take a shot at turning it into Atlantic City-on-the-Med. (At least a thousand new Palestinians have been killed since Israel chucked the ceasefire.) Trump is also sending 20,000 assault rifles to Israel, knowing that they will likely fall into the hands of violent settlers in the West Bank. Bernie Sanders and 14 other Democrats tried to stop $8.8 billion in further arms sales to Israel — arms sales that should of course be already prohibited under U.S. law given their well-documented human-rights violations — only to be defeated by a bipartisan coalition of literally everyone else. That coalition included Cory Booker, by the way. But he gave a long speech that didn’t block or even meaningfully delay any actions or legislation, so …

Also, Musk failed to buy an election in Wisconsin, which is good.

In conclusion, it’s the weekend now. Hope you have a good one.

1  My headline was apparently good enough for the Atlantic to pinch it the next day.

2  Oh right I wrote a whole book about that.