Thursday, April 03, 2025
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.Even Doug Feith!
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."
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.
Wednesday, April 02, 2025
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)
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.
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.
Into the K-Hole
Elon, this is Elon (the voice in your head), I am begging you to get involved in every election in the country. You are the best at it!
But Wisconsin voters rejected Musk, and Schimel, on Tuesday, handing Crawford a wide victory that likely locks down a liberal majority on the court through 2028.Ah, well, nevertheless.
“I’m honestly shocked. I thought we had it in the bag,” said Pam Van Handel, Chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin’s Outagamie County. “I thought [Musk] was gonna be an asset for this race. People love Trump, but maybe they don’t love everybody he supports. Maybe I have blinders on.”
Tuesday, April 01, 2025
It'll Go Lower
Any time that "days since European was detained" counter hits zero, that number will start to plunge further.
French hotel group Accor SA warned that forward bookings from Europe to the US this summer are down 25%, as travelers that feel put off by President Donald Trump’s border clampdown divert to other locations.No European tourist bookings are not the most important thing, but they're obvious visible consequences of unjust and ultimately impractical policies.
Miserable Failure
I'll outsource the explanation to Dday.
Really wild situation in the House. Johnson lost a vote attacking expectant and new mothers in his workplace, and is so whiny about it he shut down the whole chamber for a week.
— David Dayen (@ddayen.bsky.social) April 1, 2025 at 7:48 PM
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Oh No
Bet it's more.
Tesla has about $200 million worth of Cybertrucks in inventory in the US, as the truck is extremely difficult to sell.
Don't Be Chickenshits
The pain points aren't exactly a mystery.
Now, with Washington threatening to punish the EU further, not only for its existing tariffs but also for what it sees as nontariff barriers such as its tech regulations, Brussels is preparing to up the ante.
“We will approach these negotiations from a position of strength,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a speech to the European Parliament on Tuesday, the eve of Trump’s big tariff announcement.
“Europe holds a lot of cards. From trade to technology, to the size of our market. But this strength is also built on our readiness to take firm countermeasures. All instruments are on the table.”
Seems Bad
Even during Trump I, you'd probably get about 10 pundits writing pieces about how this was bad, and now you won't.
The lawyer working for Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) who now leads the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has a history of violence and racist remarks, 10 people who knew him allege.No one pundit matters much, of course, but the collective Discourse does have an impact on things.
3) Profit
I actually haven't seen anyone try to get at the heart of just why Trump is obsessed with tariffs. I'm not looking for someone to impose some rational structure onto it. It would be more like "he saw it in some movie."
Stay Away
Unsurprising and it's going to get worse.
Driving the news: Advance bookings for Canada-U.S. flights in April-September are down over 70% compared to this time last year, per aviation data firm OAG.Being turned away at the border or airport is a mildy amusing story in the later telling. Being locked up is not!