Concerning

😂 

European Union regulators are preparing major penalties against Elon Musk’s social media platform X for breaking a landmark law to combat illicit content and disinformation, said four people with knowledge of the plans, a move that is likely to ratchet up tensions with the United States by targeting one of President Trump’s closest advisers.

The penalties are set to include a fine and demands for product changes, said the people, who declined to be identified discussing an ongoing investigation. These are expected to be announced this summer and will be the first issued under a new E.U. law intended to force social media companies to police their services, they said.

European authorities have been weighing how large a fine to issue X as they consider the risks of further antagonizing Mr. Trump amid wider trans-Atlantic disputes over trade, tariffs and the war in Ukraine. The fine could surpass $1 billion, one person said, as regulators seek to make an example of X to deter other companies from violating the law, called the Digital Services Act.

Happy Hour

Impeachment verdict in S. Korea in a few hours (9 Eastern I think).

Is That Good

 

Pundit Prediction

Let's see how this one, from me, will hold up:

I'm not defending Trump's tariffs - they're dumb - but I think liberals are going too much in on the idea that they will destroy the economy, be instantly unpopular, and tank Trump's approval. There's a lot of econobollocks ALL SENSIBLE PEOPLE KNOW TARIFFS ARE BAD and a lot of ignoring of the Biden administration record's on tariffs. Maybe Joe should've removed some when he had the chance.

There's some revenge fantasy here along the lines of, "you were mad about inflation and now you're going to get inflation," but it isn't going to be that simple or obvious.

More generally, the lessons everyone has "learned" (because it serves their purposes, because they are bad at their jobs and they have boat payments to make) is that there's nothing you can do to convince people who are mad about inflation, so they are hoping Inflation II proves their point.

Always trying to refight the last battle to prove themselves fucking right.

I will add that my intended point was that the impact of tariffs wouldn’t be so awful and self-evident that Dems could just sit back and not do politics.  I was  (wrongly) assuming they wouldn’t be so yuuuuuge (though of course that is still in flux, like everything). 

GO DOWN, LINE, GO DOWN

I am not rooting for economic disaster, but the line can go back up as fast as it went down. Other things can't fix themselves so easily. A stock market crash could force a course correction before the real long term damage (more) is done.

Sure Why Not III

Gotta keep planting the magic beans.

The Trump administration unveiled plans Thursday to use Energy Department land and resources to build data centers for artificial intelligence.

Lunch

eat

Sure Why Not II

I guess Loomer's in charge.

Several members of President Trump's embattled National Security Council have been fired, a U.S. official and a second source familiar told Axios on Thursday.

Why it matters: The firings come a day after conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer visited the Oval Office and pressed Trump to fire specific NSC staffers. Axios has not confirmed whether the firings were directly linked to that incident, but the source familiar said they were "being labeled as an anti-neocon move."

Even Doug Feith Doug Feith's son!

Sure Why Not

One problem with the MAGA Expanded Universe is they keep bringing back bit characters from the movies we forgot about.

Laura Loomer, the far-right activist and promoter of conspiracy theories, met on Wednesday with President Trump in the Oval Office, where she pressed for him to fire National Security Council staff members whom she deemed disloyal to him, according to seven people with knowledge of the events.

Vulgar Mercantalism

The stated goal of the White House is to have zero trade balance with all trading partners.

Reciprocal tariffs are calculated as the tariff rate necessary to balance bilateral trade deficits between the U.S. and each of our trading partners

And this is the dumb formula they've used to calculate their tariffs, which doesn't take into account services, just goods, for reasons.

Here’s what the White House and its crack team of trade investigators seems to have done: Take the US’s goods trade deficit with any particular country, and divide it by the total amount of goods imported from that country. Cut that percentage in half, and there’s the US’s “reciprocal” tariff rate.

(via)

A few takeaways, but one is that no news outlet should call these "reciprocal tariffs."  The scare quote version above is ok.

Morning

 Feel pretty liberated.

Wednesday Night

Rock on.

Better For My Blood Pressure At Least

I don't think it will improve anything except my mood, but I will be glad for Elon to be (if!) less of a main character in The Politics Show.

(I have no idea how true reports of Musk leaving are)

Tax Hike Announcement Time

Supposedly, anyway.

Amazing Scenes

Some Joseph Heller level shit here.

Behind the scenes: During a closed event at the Atlantic Council, Leiter, a conservative settler and a Netanyahu loyalist who arrived in D.C. soon after President Trump took office, accused the Biden administration of imposing an unofficial arms embargo on Israel during the war and focusing primarily on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, the four sources said.

...

"I want to make sure the ambassador knows all the details about what the Biden administration did for Israel since October 7," McGurk told Leiter, according to the sources who were in the room.

McGurk then detailed many steps Biden took like traveling Israel, sending aircraft carriers to the Middle East to deter Hezbollah and Iran, giving $13 billion in military assistance, using emergency procedures to ensure the deliver of weapons, helping defeat two Iranian missile attacks and blocking anti-Israeli measures in the UN.

I, Too, Read A Lot Of SciFi When I Was 13

And some since - nothing wrong with it! - but this isn't even bong hit dorm room stuff, it's bong hit 8th grade.

White Lace And Feathers

Judge Ho is saying, almost explicitly, I am not going to let the DOJ continue to blackmail you.

A federal judge on Wednesday formally dismissed the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, granting the controversial request from the Justice Department that generated a public outcry and spurred the largest mass resignation of senior federal prosecutors in decades.

The order from U.S. Judge Dale Ho brings an end to the case against Adams, who had pleaded not guilty to conspiracy, bribery, wire fraud and other charges following his indictment last year.

Ho said he was dismissing the case with prejudice, meaning the government could not bring the charges again later — contrary to the Justice Department's request to dismiss the case without prejudice.

Lunch

eat

Is That Good

It will get worse.

Tesla sales plunged 13% in the first three months of this year, as the company reported the largest drop in deliveries in its history by far, as backlash against CEO Elon Musk, and growing competition from other automakers’ electric vehicles, took a large bite out of demand for its EVs.

OPSEC

We can debate how much all the Spy v. Spy stuff actually matters, but even a skeptic like me thinks this is probably not especially bright.

Members of President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, including White House national security adviser Michael Waltz, have conducted government business over personal Gmail accounts, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post and interviews with three U.S. officials.

If not necessarily for the Spy stuff, for the "ransomware that brings down the whole computer" stuff.