Odds and Ends — 15 April 2025

@preparedwombat 77

16 days ago

oddsandends

Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, AI, and Debt:

For Leo Power Up Day, I staked 144.414 LEO.

America’s most valuable company is about to be crippled by Trump

The Dollar Keeps Falling

The U.S. dollar extended its slide against other major currencies on Monday, the latest sign that investors may be starting to shun what has long been the safest haven in global financial markets.

https://twitter.com/WUTangKids/status/1911961158795296950

Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:

7 US service members had ‘COVID-19-like symptoms’ after 2019 Wuhan games: Pentagon report

Politics:

https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1911951015567364247

Harvard Rejects Trump’s Demands

With billions of dollars in federal funding at risk, Harvard University officials on Monday rejected Trump administration demands to make sweeping changes to its governance, admissions and hiring practices.
The school is the first to push back against the government’s efforts to force change at elite universities.

Trump Freezes $2.2 Billion in Funding to Harvard

The move came hours after the university refused to agree to the government’s demands to change its governance structure…

https://twitter.com/SarahLongwell25/status/1911822292566286784

Trump says CBS should lose license after ’60 Minutes’ segments on Ukraine, Greenland

https://twitter.com/Logically_JC/status/1911778239619424524

No Evidence Linking Tufts Student to Antisemitism

Days before masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk to deport her, the State Department determined that the Trump administration had not produced any evidence showing that she engaged in antisemitic activities or made public statements supporting a terrorist organization, as the government has alleged.
…Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not have sufficient grounds for revoking Ozturk’s visa under an authority empowering the top U.S. diplomat to safeguard the foreign policy interests of the United States.

https://twitter.com/esjesjesj/status/1911847700863017016

———— Autocracy R Us ————

https://twitter.com/factpostnews/status/1911825352747253857

‘Home-Growns Are Next’

In his meeting with President Nayib Bukele today in the White House, President Donald Trump told his Salvadoran counterpart that ‘home-growns are next’ and that El Salvador would ‘need to be build about five more places’ to hold American citizens.
So the president of the United States proposes, on camera, to deport Americans to foreign concentration camps.

https://twitter.com/themaxburns/status/1911868474881683768

https://twitter.com/WUTangKids/status/1911819672866914687

Trump, Bukele Condemn Abrego Garcia to Prison On Live TV

It defies a Supreme Court ruling, flouts a lower court ruling, and undermines the basic principle that the government must provide due process before depriving someone of their freedom. Yet the man wrongly deported to a Salvadoran prison will remain there indefinitely, President Donald Trump and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said during a Monday Oval Office meeting.
The pair of strongmen told reporters they would not seek the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen deported from the U.S. last month during a hastily executed operation that also removed more than 100 Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act.
Bukele and senior Trump officials indicated they felt no obligation to comply with court orders.

https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1911816440581378118

https://twitter.com/pjaicomo/status/1911769979738791987

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1911814760070340685

El Salvador Won’t Return Wrongly Deported Man

A Slo-Mo Constitutional Clash Is Already Well Underway

President Trump’s open defiance of the judicial branch isn’t happening with a thunderclap and banner headlines. It’s a slow, grinding, make-me-if-you-can refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the district court handling the mistaken deportation case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who has been wrongly imprisoned in El Salvador since March 15.
I ventured out to suburban DC Friday for what was shaping up, in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling the prior evening, to be an epic confrontation between the executive and judicial branches. It did not feel epic. It felt dreary and exasperating. Instead of a titanic constitutional clash, it was bureaucratic stonewalling by the President using the many layers between him and a willing stooge of a DOJ official to tell the court to pound sand.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1911773414139871257

https://twitter.com/BlackKnight10k/status/1911846786257289544

The Constitutional Crisis Is Here

Between the path of outright defiance of the Supreme Court and following its order to ‘facilitate’ the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador’s infamous Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), the Trump administration has chosen a third way: pretending it is complying while refusing to do so…
The bad faith of this exchange is obvious. Bukele has the power to free Abrego Garcia and send him back to the U.S. on an American plane without “smuggling” anyone or anything. But neither side wants that outcome, and so they are both pretending that it’s the other’s responsibility. It’s a game both sides are in on.

https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1911868732009295961

Trump Is Halfway To Making America a Police State

At around noon on April 14 2025, America ceased to have a law-abiding government. Some would argue that had already happened on January 20, when Donald Trump was inaugurated. On Monday, however, Trump chose to ignore a 9-0 Supreme Court ruling to repatriate an illegally deported man. He even claimed the judges ruled in his favor.
The U.S. president’s middle finger to the court was echoed by his attorney-general, secretary of state, vice-president and El Salvador’s vigilante president Nayib Bukele. The latter is playing host to what resembles an embryonic US gulag.

———— Smoot-Hawley 2.0 ————

China’s Xi Jinping Sends Trump a Message as His Trade War Spirals

Long Past the Tipping Point

Maybe we missed the exact moment it happened. But last week, it was obvious that we have long since passed the tipping point. We’re not slouching toward it, or waiting for some imaginary redline to be crossed. After years of warning about threats to democracy, the rule of law, norms, corruption, toxic narcissism, it was all right there. Live in the Oval Office…
Last week, Trump imposed trillions of dollars in tariffs, suspended them, and exempted companies who paid him tribute, all without any input from a Congress that surrendered its powers to him with barely a whimper.
Indeed, that’s the point. There is no process. No strategy. No check. No balance. Just the arbitrary whimsy and malice of the one man, who knows that he can never be held accountable for the shit storm he has unleashed on the markets and the constitutional order.

Serendipity:

For Idyllic Village, Van Gogh’s Roots Pose a Knotty Problem

It was recently determined that the artist painted his last work, “Tree Roots,” in Auvers-sur-Oise. The roots still exist, and that has ignited a nasty fight over their preservation.