Monday, March 17, 2025
Break Everything
Can't collect any beautiful tariffs if you can't import anything.
“It’s causing problems left and right,” says one current USDA worker, who like other federal employees in this story asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “It’s basically a skeleton crew working now,” says another current USDA staffer, who noted that both they and most of their colleagues held advanced degrees and had many years of training to protect US food and agriculture supply chains from invasive pests. “It’s not something that is easily replaced by artificial intelligence.”
“These aren’t your average people,” says Mike Lahar, the regulatory affairs manager at US customs broker behemoth Deringer. “These were highly trained individuals—inspectors, entomologists, taxonomists.”
Lahar and other supply chain experts warn that the losses could cause food to go rotten while waiting in ports and could lead to even higher grocery prices, in addition to increasing the chances of potentially devastating invasive species getting into the country. These dangers are especially acute at a moment when US grocery supply chains are already reeling from other business disruptions such as bird flu and President Trump’s new tariffs.
What To Do
I Suppose It Depends On The Meaning Of The Word "Violate"
I didn’t break the law, I just declared that the law has no power over me.
The Trump administration denied on Sunday that it had violated a court order by deporting hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to a prison in El Salvador over the weekend, saying that the president had broad powers to quickly expel them under an 18th-century law meant for wartime.
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, also asserted in a statement that the federal courts “have no jurisdiction” over the president’s conduct of foreign affairs or his power to expel foreign enemies.
Sunday, March 16, 2025
Send Up The Tapper Signal
I Guess We Are Still Doing This
SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said his Starship rocket will head to Mars by the end of next year, as the company investigates several recent explosions in flight tests.
Saturday, March 15, 2025
Seems Bad
Senior described Schmidt being “violently interrogated” at Logan Airport for hours, and being stripped naked, put in a cold shower by two officials, and being put back onto a chair."Mistakes" at the entry points happen -- or possibly there were genuine issues - but the normal response should be to turn people back, not detain them and torture them.
She said Schmidt told her immigration agents pressured him to give up his green card. She said he was placed on a mat in a bright room with other people at the airport, with little food or water, suffered sleep deprivation, and was denied access to his medication for anxiety and depression.
“He hardly got anything to drink. And then he wasn’t feeling very well and he collapsed,” said Senior.
He was transported by ambulance to Mass General Hospital. He didn’t know it at the time, but he also had influenza.
Norms Violations
I am sure it is not the only reason, but we all are motivated by multiple things, and "Chuck Schumer shouldn't have to cancel his book tour" certainly was part of this.Among the material devastation to everyday people, Senate Dems have now blown a hole in their ability to work with the House. We had an agreed upon plan, House took immense risk, then Senate turned around midway and destroyed it w/ a fear-based, inexplicable abdication. They own what happens next.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@aoc.bsky.social) March 14, 2025 at 11:18 PM