The NY Times reports that Bobby Jr is closing down research into sexually transmitted diseases. Is it supposed to be some sort of woke, deep state, waste, fraud and abuse? Do they think that there are companies out there just dying to get into the highly profitable clap tracking business?
Drug-resistant gonorrhea, a form of the widespread sexually transmitted infection, is considered an urgent health threat worldwide. The United States has just lost its ability to detect it.
Among the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees fired on Tuesday were 77 scientists who, among other work, gathered samples of gonorrhea and other S.T.I.s from labs nationwide, analyzed the genetic information for signs of drug resistance, and readied the samples for storage at a secure facility.
No other researchers at the agency have the expertise, or the software, to continue this work. The abrupt halt has stranded about 1,000 samples of gonorrhea and other sexually transmitted pathogens that had not yet been processed, and perhaps dozens more headed to the agency.
There are as many as 30 freezers full of samples that now have no custodians, said one senior C.D.C. official who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
I honestly don’t get this. I have to assume they just don’t think it matters if we study diseases or maybe that if it’s important some drug company will pick up the slack. But they won’t. That’s not what they do. In fact, nobody will do it except government and they’ve decided it’s not even important enough to phase out over time, to at least preserve the work that’s being done currently. It is just abruptly shuttered, everything ruined, no more science for you! I guess Bobby Jr thinks if we all stop eating processed food and seed oils we won’t get gonorrhea.
On Friday I wrote about President Trump’s motivation for this daft tariff scheme. It has almost nothing to do with trade which he doesn’t understand. He’s running a protection racket, shaking down other countries (as well as universities, law firms, corporations) to force them to do his bidding. If you want more proof of that, listen to him on Sunday night talking about holding up Europe for “a lot of money on a yearly basis but also for past.”
Trump calls for Europe to pay reparations to the US: "We put a big tariff on Europe. They are coming to the table. They want to talk, but there's no talk unless they pay us a lot of money on a yearly basis number one for present but also for past." pic.twitter.com/q1f3N5ebMz
The overwhelming resentment he feels toward Europe came through strongly in his tone. As Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir deftly illustrates in this piece it’s not business, it’s personal.
He was inappropriately buoyant during that impromptu press conference, apparently because he “won” the championship at his golf course as he does every year (because he’s one of the best golfers the world has ever known, of course) and obviously didn’t care that at that very moment the futures markets were in freefall in anticipation of a very bad day on Wall St. today. He is unconcerned about that or any other negative consequence of his senseless tariff policy, telling the assembled reporters that everyone will just have to “take our medicine” but reassuring them that there won’t be inflation because his tariffs on China didn’t cause inflation when he was president the first time.
His belief that other nations have been “ripping off” America for decades and that global leaders are laughing at us is sincere and he’s been pounding that drum for 40 years. But he’s wrong. Of course, the world has not been ripping “us” off or laughing at “us.” America is the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth and has been since at least the turn of the 20th century. We created the rules under which the world economy operated, the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency and we are the world’s only military superpower.
We have problems, naturally, not the least of which is the massive wealth inequality that distorts our economy our culture and our politics so much that we are now perilously close to full-on oligarchy. But to characterize America as a poor downtrodden nation exploited by the rest of the world is insane.
Trump clearly isn’t bothered at all by the massive backlash his policy has caused, even among many of his strongest supporters on Wall Street and in the business community. But then his bubble has become almost impermeable, with people around him terrified that he’s going to go off half cocked and do something crazy, so he probably isn’t hearing half of what people are saying. If what his cabinet members are telling the press is an accurate reflection of his views, it’s pretty clear that he’s deeply deluded.
On Sunday his economic and trade team hit the morning shows and were hardly reassuring. Treasury Secretary did his best Baghdad Bob impression saying that people can take comfort that things are running smoothly despite record volume in the markets and then claimed that people nearing or in retirement who’ve saved money don’t check their accounts “day to day.” (Billionaires don’t sweat a market drop of 10% so why should anyone else?) This was reminiscent of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick saying a couple of weeks ago that only a fraudster would complain if they didn’t get their Social Security check. They can’t be more out of touch if they tried.
Lutnick showed up on Face the Nation and babbled so incoherently about robots and manufacturing and “tiny screws” that you had to wonder if someone put something in his morning coffee. Trade Representative Peter Navarro told Fox News that you can’t lose money unless you sell and that we are going to have the greatest boom in the stock market in history and Agriculture Sec. Brooke Rollins appeared on CNN and reassured America that these are the smartest people she’s ever worked with.
No doubt Trump was very pleased with all their performances. They told him exactly what he wanted to hear.Unfortunately for him, these people sounded to the rest of America like they had just flown in on a spaceship and virtually no one but the most die hard MAGA cultist or a member of the Trump administration is buying any of that. Anyone with eyes to see knows that the world economy is in a serious crisis precipitated by Trump and Trump alone.
The Financial Times published a very sharp editorial that featured this observation that should send chills down the spines of Republicans who will be facing the voters next year:
Those hoping for prosperity under Trump have had an unpleasant shock. Wednesday’s so-called liberation day was the culmination of a 10-week long bonfire of conservative economic convention in America. The standard fare of growth-seeking deregulation and tax cuts gave way to an act of amateurish economic vandalism that betrays both the “us vs them” ideology at the heart of everything Trump does, and the lack of any clear framework to his actions.
They note that the public is rejecting Trump’s economic agenda: “this week, just before the tariff chaos, 63 per cent of Americans had a negative view of the government’s economic policy, comfortably the highest figure since records began almost 50 years ago.” Only 25% said they think they’ll be better off in five years, a lower number than at the low point of the financial crisis.
IF YOU failed to spot America being “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far” or it being cruelly denied a “turn to prosper”, then congratulations: you have a firmer grip on reality than the president of the United States. It’s hard to know which is more unsettling: that the leader of the free world could spout complete drivel about its most successful and admired economy. Or the fact that on April 2nd, spurred on by his delusions, Donald Trump announced the biggest break in America’s trade policy in over a century—and committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era.
It’s not just the financial press in high dudgeon over his policies. Over the weekend millions of Americans and people around the world hit the streets in mass demonstrations in everything from big cities to small rural towns in deep red states. The Trump resistance has been gathering steam for some time but this tariff debacle is taking it to the next level.
Nate Cohn of the NY Times speculates that people were already upset about the DOGE debacle and the lawless deportations and the reckless foreign policy team but purposefully wrecking the economy may just penetrate into the GOP:
If the economic fallout is bad enough, the dissatisfaction with the Trump administration could combine with the longstanding Democratic turnout advantage to make seemingly safe Republican states in 2026 — think Kansas, Iowa and Texas — look plausibly competitive, perhaps even along with control of the Senate. Congressional Republicans’ continued support of (or acquiescence to) Mr. Trump — whether on tariffs or his other excesses — could be in jeopardy.
In a normal world there would be no question that tanking the economy would be political suicide. But Donald Trump believes he is impervious to the political laws of gravity and in some ways you can’t blame him. He has survived more scandal than any politician in American history. But at some point you have to wonder if self-preservation may start to look a little different to the other Republicans if the country is mired in recession and the federal government has been so devastated that it can’t respond. If not, they may be in for a very big surprise in 2026.
A national organizer advised several years ago that Anderson Clayton, 24, and I needed to know each other. The first time we spoke was by phone. I had to hold the phone away from my ear. She spoke fast and she was loud. She brought energy I saw lacking in conflict-averse Democratic oldsters of my generation. I was sold. About 18 months later, I supported her run for N.C. Democrats’ state chair against a much older incumbent.
Nearly five years before that meeting, I wrote after Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss to Donald Trump:
Nothing like a good drubbing to motivate people. I suppose that’s something to be thankful for this morning. The upside is it seems to be getting people off the couch for the first time ever….
[…]
A broader problem is going to be installing new blood in a Democratic Party encrusted with old ideas and old habits and slow to make way for new talent still on that learning curve. Sen. Chuck Schumer may have rushed to embrace Rep. Keith Ellison’s bid for DNC chair, but he’s reading the wind, not suddenly embracing a fresh vision. There still is not an appetite at top levels for new leadership. The White House is exploring instead whether Joe Biden might be interested or “whether Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez and former Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan would be willing to run for the post.” Whatever their accomplishments and talents, that won’t say “new hotness” to an emerging generation of activists hungry for a party overhaul. It will sound more like “old and busted.”
Non-authoritarians among us suffered an even more impactful drubbing last November. The mass deportations and the massacre world financial markets suffered last week were only the leading edge of the fallout. Eight years on, Chuck Schumer is still testing the wind direction.
Young people set to inherit the mess left them by their elders are following the lead of people Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Clayton. Some were rather unhappy when in December the Democrats’ House leadership selected a 74-year-old over AOC as ranking member of the Oversight and Accountability Committee (The Washington Post):
For [Saikat] Chakrabarti — a 39-year-old software engineer turned political operative who ran Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 upset primary campaign in New York — it was another sign that the Democratic Party is dominated by an older generation of leaders who he says have lost touch with Americans’ day-to-day struggles. Though Pelosi, 85, stepped down from leadership in 2022 to elevate the next generation, he argues that nearly four decades in Congress “is enough” and that the party needs younger leaders who can do away with a “culture of caution.”
“People are looking for fighters,” said Chakrabarti, who rankled many House Democrats with his confrontational tactics while briefly serving as Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff in 2019. “This old generation of leadership, they’ve been around for so long that they don’t recognize that this Republican Party is a completely different Republican Party. They’re just hoping that the backlash of Trump will build up and we’ll let the pendulum swing back our way.”
Chakrabarti is among those stepping up to “encourage” their elders to find other ways than elective office to scratch their political itches.
In Los Angeles, 37-year-old Jake Rakov announced last week that he is running for the seat of his former boss, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-California), 70. His launch video states that “this isn’t mom and dad’s America anymore” and that it’s time for a leader who can fight effectively in “Donald Trump’s MAGA hellscape.”
Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, 38, last week announced bid for her state’s open U.S. Senate seat. Running as a millennial, she’s “coming to grips with the possibility that those in her generation will be worse off than their parents.” You wonder why as a group people under 35 are less engaged and registering as independents?
And in Illinois, Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old content creator, is calling for a “bolder Democratic Party” that doesn’t “suck” as she runs for the seat of Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who is 80 and serving her 14th term. Abughazaleh built her brand on social media by taking on right-wing media— and she argues that many younger voters would feel less “alone” if they had more representatives their age in Congress with shared experiences such as coping with the rising cost of living and the terror of going without health insurance.
It’s not enough that women now see themselves represented more in Congress, or racial or ethnic minorities. Perhaps younger voters tend to vote less because they don’t see people their age represented. There’s a thought.
… some younger Democrats are treating their party’s age issue with more urgency after their November losses. Some of the younger candidates who are stepping up to run say there has been very little introspection about the November results, and about why, according to an NBC News poll conducted last month, only 27 percent of registered voters have a positive view of Democrats.
“It feels like, historically, the Democrats and Republicans are sitting down to play a game of chess, and the Republicans have set the house on fire, and Democrats are still sitting down planning their next move,” McMorrow said in an interview.
“It is not enough to stand behind a podium in front of the Capitol in Washington and say, ‘We are fighting for you,’ and then turn around and just send text messages with a portrait of yourself asking for $5,” she said.
I’m a Boomer, and she’s right. One of the most frequent criticisms I hear of the Democratic Party is that the only time people hear from them is when they email or text asking for money. That’s because Senators and House members holding a press conference is not exactly fodder for a viral TikTok. Cory Booker’s marathon filibuster broke through the noise, but most other communication is stillborn.
Maybe you are among the 40 percent of Americans who own no stocks, directly or indirectly. So maybe the headlines above don’t even get a second glance. By the time you feel the impacts, they’ll be old news.
“Morning Joe” this morning is talking about conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer convincing Donald Trump last week to fire Gen. Timothy Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command. Insufficiently loyal to Trump, the non-expert suggests. (Trump denies she was involved.) In an age of increasing cyber threats, one of Joe’s experts calls Trump’s abrupt firing “unilateral surrender.”
A federal judge on Friday found that the Trump administration violated a court order “to stop freezing federal funds by withholding Federal Emergency Management Agency relief to at least 19 states. The judge said that the Trump administration seemed to be making a “covert” effort to punish states whose immigration practices differed from the White House.” The subterfuge “fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government,” U.S. District Judge John McConnell.
The Washington Post reports this morning that the Social Security Administration’s website has crashed repeatedly in recent weeks with some outages lasting from 20 minutes to nearly a full day:
The problems come as the Trump administration’s cost-cutting team, led by Elon Musk, has imposed a downsizing that’s led to7,000 job cuts and is preparing to push out thousands more employees at an agency that serves 73 million Americans. The new demands from Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service include a 50 percent cut to the technology divisionresponsible for the website and other electronic access.
(See hidden camera video of DOGE coders at top.)
Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist, appears on “Morning Joe” this morning looking for any method in Trump’s madness.
And that’s it, isn’t it? Like me, Dear Reader, you must feel like the clear-eyed child in “The Emperor’s New Clothes” who blurts out that the emperor is naked while the adults pretend he is not. Sunday talking heads keep speculating about Trump’s strategy, debating the method behind his tariffs and DOGE-ish madness, when there isn’t one (except perhaps to usher in a tech dictatorship). The press felt so very free to speculate at length about Joe Biden’s failing faculties, but finds it impolitic to suggest that Trump, immunized by the Roberts court, is simply drunk with power and in steep mental decline, if not stark-raving.
Oh, but look at his finery! Trump will burn this country to the ground and take the world economy with him before adults with a platform will speak the plain truth.
WELKER: The markets lost more than $6 trillion in value. Was this disruption always part of the plan?
BESSENT: We had record volume on Friday and everything is working very smoothly. So the American people can take great comfort in that. pic.twitter.com/VH6gKcccaC
WELKER: Trump promised he was going to improve the economy starting on day one. What is your message to Americans who want to retire right now and have just seen their lifetime savings drop significantly?
BESSENT: Most Americans who have put away for years in their savings accounts don’t look at the day to day fluctuations of what’s happening.
He’s wrong. But just like the rest of Trump’s inner circle, he’s massively wealthy and has no clue what “most Americans” do.
The Secretary of Commerce:
Brennan: "Why are the Heard and McDonald Islands, which don't export to the U.S. and are quite literally inhabited by penguins, why do they face 10% tariffs? Did you use AI to generate this?"
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says President Trump put tariffs on the Heard and McDonald Islands, which are inhabited by penguins, to prevent any other countries from using “loopholes” to avoid the tariffs. “Basically he said, look, I can’t let any part of the world be a place where China or other countries can ship through them,” Lutnick says. “So he ended those loopholes, these ridiculous loopholes.”
Lutnick: "The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones — that kind of thing is going to come to America." pic.twitter.com/g9TqxGxLHs
SEC. LUTNICK: –the armies of millions of people- well, remember, the army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little- little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America. It’s going to be automated and great Americans- the tradecraft of America, is going to fix them, is going to work on them. They’re going to be mechanics. There’s going to be HVAC specialists. There’s going to be electricians, the tradecraft of America. Our high school educated Americans- the core to our workforce, is going to have the greatest resurgence of jobs in the history of America to work on these high-tech factories, which are all coming to America. That’s what’s going to build our next generation of America.
Sure. All the millions of jobs will be replaced by robots that will be serviced by five guys who fix the machines and a janitor. Are people stupid enough to buy that this is great? (Don’t answer that question.)
Trump’s top trade adviser:
Peter Navarro: "You can't lose money unless you sell … we will hit 50,000 on the Dow easily by the end of this term." pic.twitter.com/yDySRkKcbo
TAPPER: You're imposing a 10% on the Heard and MccDonald islands. They have zero human inhabitants. Why are you putting tariffs on islands that are entirely populated by penguins?
BROOKE ROLLINS: C'mon Jake. Whatever. Listen, the people that are leading this are serious,… pic.twitter.com/QkUdyuzNRw
“I’ve seen this movie before. I know exactly what is going to happen to them. America will get weaker. We are going to get stronger.”
Our president inherited wealth, bankrupted several companies, became a reality TV host and sold cheap branded goods to gullible consumers before becoming president. He’s also very dumb and losing his faculties.
The leader of the liberal party of Canada and probably next prime minister, on the other hand:
After leaving central banking, Carney served as chair and head of impact investing at Brookfield Asset Management and as chair of the board of directors for Bloomberg L.P.[3] He was also appointed the United Nations (UN) special envoy for climate action and finance.[4][5] Carney also worked as one of many informal advisors to Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau during the COVID-19 pandemic and was made chair of the Liberal Party’s economic growth taskforce in September 2024.
It really is Donald Trump’s world and we’re just living in it
If you were wondering if the anti-DEI crusade is anything more than rank bigotry and segregationism, wonder no more. It is not:
For years, a National Park Service webpage introduced the Underground Railroad with a large photograph of its most famous “conductor,” Harriet Tubman. “The Underground Railroad — the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight, through the end of the Civil War — refers to the efforts of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage,” the page began.
Tubman’s photograph is now gone. In its place are images of Postal Service stamps that highlight “Black/White cooperation” in the secret network and that feature Tubman among abolitionists of both races.
The introductory sentence is gone, too. It has been replaced by a line that makes no mention of slavery and that describes the Underground Railroad as “one of the most significant expressions of the American civil rights movement.” The effort “bridged the divides of race,” the page now says.
It “bridged the divide of race???? What fatuous gobblydygook is that?
When you think about it, why keep any mention of Tubman at all. It makes some white people feel icky that at one time enslaved Black people tried to run away from those who “owned” them when we all know that they were perfectly happy in their lives working for the benevolent plantation owners who took excellent care of them. After all, they were immigrants to America who immediately had jobs and a place to live. What more could they have wanted? Surely very few wanted to run away and those who did were troublemakers.
The war of Northern Aggression changed all that, subjugating the southern landowners and destroying their economy and the sacred right of “states.” Generous white people granted the free Black population all kinds of rights and privileges which they took advantage of leading to the unequal society we see today in which non-whites and women get everything and white men are left scrambling for the crumbs of American society because of DEI.
Office closures, staffing and service cuts, and policy changes at the Social Security Administration (SSA) have caused “complete, utter chaos” and are threatening to send the agency into a “death spiral”, according to workers at the agency.The SSA operates the largest government program in the US, administering social insurance programs, including retirement, disability and survivor benefits.
An average of almost 69 million Americans per month will receive a social security benefit in 2025, totaling about $1.6tn in benefits paid during the year and accounting for 22% of the federal budget. While expensive and challenged by an ageing population, social security remains overwhelminglypopular with Americans. But the agency has been dubbed a “Ponzi scheme” by Elon Musk, the billionaire whose so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) is currently slashing its staff and budgets.
“They have these ‘concepts of plans’ that they’re hoping are sticking but in reality, are really hurting American people,” said a longtime SSA employee and military veteran who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “No one knows what’s going on. They’re just coming up with ideas at the top of their head.”
The SSA website has crashed several times this month. Wired reported Doge staff want to migrate all social security data and rewrite code in months, which could cause system collapse and further outages.
The agency plans to eliminate the jobs of 7,000 workers at the agency through voluntary buyouts, resignations or firings, though the union representing SSA employees anticipate even more firings beyond cutting staff to 50,000 workers.Acting commissioner Leland Dudek has acknowledged to staff that Doge are making the decisions at the agency. Musk, Donald Trump and others have claimed action is being taken to tackle widespread fraud at the agency.
Dudek was appointed acting commissioner after he reportedly secretly shared information with Doge staff. He has threatened to shut down the agency in response to a court order barring Doge from accessing the data.
“It’s just been a lot of craziness, a lot of foolishness. Until they get rid of Doge and the person in office right now, and the Republicans actually get a backbone and stand up for something for once in their lives, things are just going to be complete chaos. That’s really the best word to describe SSA right now, just complete, utter chaos,” the worker added. “They couldn’t understand the coding, so everything they said SSA was doing illegally, they weren’t. Common sense is something they lack. They don’t know what they’re doing.”
Other than that, it’s all going great.
I saw some complaints that there too many old people at the rallies yesterday. (It’s “cringe” apparently.) I guess we want the demonstrations to be more beautiful and glamorous. But the fact is that for a lot of these folks their immediate well being is on the line. They are fiddling with their economic lifeline, their health care which they need desperately and purposefully creating inflation which, for people on fixed incomes, is especially painful. And incidentally they are the most reliable voting bloc. The more of them taking to the streets the better.
