A Mad Week in Spring

Or was it a year already?

Last week, a woman chided me for sharing a news item to my Threads. “Careful!” She scolded me. “You’re outing someone who might face retribution for fighting back.”

Annoyed, I replied, “The story was in The New York Times. I kinda think the cat’s already outta the bag.”

What that Threads user wrote back struck a chord with me, “I’m in retirement and I can’t afford a subscription.” She then intimated that she relied on people like me to share links and gift articles in order to get her news. Chastened, I didn’t reply back. I was still a little annoyed, because the fact is I DO share as many sources and links as I can. In that case, I hadn’t bothered to link the story, because it was a small item that I didn’t think many would read. I have to make those calculations as The New York Times only offers ten gift articles to share a month. Last month, I ran out of stories to share within a week. So, this month, I’ve tried to be more judicious about gifting articles. I want to make sure a story doesn’t just interest me— that it’s something I think people actually want to read.

Once my annoyance faded, I keenly felt how frustrating it must be to inhabit a digital world where the best writing is behind a paywall that one can’t afford to climb over. Not to nominate myself as one of those best writers, but it occurred to me that in addition to sharing links to my Threads platform, I could use my newsletter to round up the week’s news for others. In addition to helping folks keep up, it would also help me and other news junkies like myself clean the zone of the shit Trump is flooding it with (to paraphrase Steve Bannon).

So, along with the occasional essay or sporadically rhapsodizing over a vintage Dior dress here, I thought I would institute a Sunday roundup of the news. In addition to linking to paywall-free articles, I will keep this space paywall-free for followers like that woman in retirement. That said, I always appreciate anyone who can support my work whether by sharing or subscribing. Thank you for being here!

Without further ado, here is the week— or was it a decade? It feels like it was a decade— in review:

Monday-

Monday kicked off with the unsettling realization that Republicans care more about cars than governors. A suspect was quickly captured over the weekend in the attack on Governor Josh Shapiro’s residence and family. As of today, Trump’s only response to the attack has been a quick, dismissive characterization of the arsonist as a “whack job” , this to reporters in the Oval Office, so far not a word of support or comfort to Governor Shapiro.

Of the other oligarchs, they’re all afraid to criticize the president or utter the “r” word— Recession—but, notably, JP Morgan has added a half billion dollar to its financial cushion, preparing for losses from customers who won’t be able to pay credit card debts and loans.

Later that afternoon, Trump meets with Bukele, who says he will not return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man the Trump administration admits to having sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador “in error”. Trump is caught on a hot mic telling Bukele, “homegrowns” would be sent next and asking Bukele to build “five more places” for him.

The day is capped with the Trump administration threatening to freeze 2 billion dollars in funds to Harvard for refusing to meet the administration’s demands, which would be quickly followed by a threat to their tax-exempt status, which by the end of the week would become its own farce after the Trump administration realized they were coming for the oldest, wealthiest institution in the country and began to pretend it was all some big misunderstanding.

Tuesday-

Responding to the Trump administration’s threats, Harvard’s president Alan M. Garber says, "“No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

The New York Times notes in its daily roundup something a lot of us are forgetting as we aim our hatred at Elon Musk’s deservedly punchable face, “Russell Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget and an architect of the Project 2025 blueprint, is overseeing the White House’s deregulation effort. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is executing it.” Translation: while Elon Musk is getting a lot of hate online, but never enough, Russell Vought is definitely someone we can ramp up our mockery of.

Many are discussing the whistleblower story from Rachel Maddow on Monday night: Daniel Berulis, appearing on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show alongside his lawyer Andrew Bakaj, claims that DOGE systems were compromised and used by Russian actors to breach US government databases. This would be enough to take down another administration but it’s barely making the news for this one.

Timothy Snyder notes Trump’s deepening, by-the-book fascism in his newsletter: “When the state carries out criminal terror against its own people, it calls them the “criminals” or the the “terrorists.” During the 1930s, this was the normal practice. Looking back, we refer to Stalin’s “Great Terror,” but at the time it was the Stalinists who controlled the language. Today in Berlin stands an important museum called "Topography of Terror"; during the era it documents, it was the Jews and the chosen enemies of the regime who were called "terrorists." Yesterday in the White House, the Salvadoran president showed the way, referring to Kilmar Abrego Garcia as a "terrorist" without any basis whatsoever. The Americans treated him as a criminal, even though he was charged with no crime.”

In Georgia, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene mocks the questions she didn’t like at her Town Hall and the constituents who submitted the queries, calling them “brainwashed.” Three attendees are arrested at her event. In two instances, stun guns are used. One of the men who is stunned is a marine veteran.

Wednesday-

A federal judge points out the Trump administration continues to do nothing to return Kilmar Armanda Abrego Garcia, instead engaging in an astonishing Kafka-esque game with the judge. From The New York Times: “… a deputy assistant attorney general told a judge that the government is following her order to facilitate the return of a mistakenly deported Maryland man. If the man were to show up at a port of entry, the lawyer said, the government would not turn him away.

The problem is the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, has no way to get to the border on his own. He has been held in a brutal prison in El Salvador since mid-March — because the government deported him there by mistake.”

Basically, Trump is continuing to flirt with outright defiance of the courts but is content to play games for now. Judge Paula Xinis calls for an expedited fact-finding effort to determine whether the administration is complying with her court orders. (Spoiler: Senator Chris Van Hollen will visit El Salvador this week and learn the embassy there has heard zip, zilch, zero from the Trump administration and will say in an interview that he can’t wait to tell the judge NOTHING is being done.)

RFK Jr. continues his crusade to stigmatize autism, when his time would be better spent seeking his own cure for being an unrepentant jackass.

In a guest essay for The New York Times, Kyla Scanlon coins the term “reindustrialization” and notes, “Trumponomics looks less like an effort to forge a different future and more like a confused, self-defeating program and longing for a bygone era.”

Judge James E. Boasberg threatens to open a contempt inquiry into the Trump administration over what he called its “willful disregard” for his order temporarily halting deportations of migrants to El Salvador.

ASTRONOMERS DETECT POSSIBLE SIGNS OF LIFE ON A DISTANT PLANET.

Thursday-

Trump is now waging a war on three sides: on Harvard, on the Supreme Court, and on China daring them to blink. As Robert Reich notes in his newsletter, Trump has met his match,” None of them has blinked — and they won’t…The Supreme Court told the regime in no uncertain terms — in a rare unanimous decision — that its abduction of a legal American resident and deportation to a dangerous prison in El Salvador, without any criminal charges, was illegal and unconstitutional.”

Maybe sensing a fight he can win against children and the elderly and the sick instead, Trump formulates plans to cut roughly a third of the federal health budget.

Not content to bully the weak and sick, Trump also attempts to remove the Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, who he himself elevated to the chairmanship of the Fed, because he’s upset Powell refuses to follow his orders and cut interest rates and despite what such a move would do to markets. The Fed chairman is appointed for a period of time so as to be seen as being above politics. Powell was nominated to lead the Fed by Mr. Trump in 2017 and was renominated to serve another 4-year term by President Joe Biden in November 2021. Powell's term as Fed chair ends May 15, 2026. CBS News notes: “Even if Mr. Trump were able to remove Powell, it's not clear that doing so would change the direction of the central bank's decisions on interest rates. Those calls are made by the Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC — a 12-member group tasked with setting monetary policy — and not at Powell's discretion.”

Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, travels to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, his constituent. It takes a few days, but he manages to meet with Garcia. Bukele’s minions attempt to create a photo op “of paradise” and try to arrange to have the meeting with margaritas by the pool. Sen. Van Hollen meets with Garcia in a room instead. The margaritas go untouched.

Two die following another tragic shooting at a school, this time at Florida State University. Several of the students already survived Parkland only a few years earlier. “Guns don’t shoot,” Trump says comfortingly and ever so wisely of the incident.

Friday-

The Trump administration decides to lay off most of the staff at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau despite a judge’s orders not to do so. Anyone noting a theme here?

Secretary of State Marco Rubio quietly announces the U.S. may abandon its attempts to end the war in Ukraine saying, “If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on.” Move on to what, Rubio? Why is the Trump administration talking about the war like it’s a toxic middle school boyfriend they need to break up with in order to grow?

In a sign of the changing esteem with which the world is regarding us, some Mexican coffeeshops are moving to change the name of the Americano.

Boring but important: head of IRS being ousted.

And ending the week on a very not boring and very alarming note: in the middle of the night, Friday night, in an emergency order, the Supreme Court tells the Trump administration not to take any action to deport Venezuelan men based in Texas. Many of the men are already loaded on a bus, presumably headed for the airport. Among those men is a 19-year-old boy, identified as Y.S.M. who was arrested for posing in a Facebook photo with another man holding a water pistol.

And on that absurd and horrifying note, let’s end the week.

Did I miss any major news stories? Are there more categories I should add? Would you like to hear more about international news like Tuvalu adding their first ATM? Or more entertainment news?

Let me know how I did in the comments!

xx,

Izzy