Odds and Ends — 28 March 2025

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

SEC Officially Drops Cases Against Kraken, ConsenSys, and Cumberland DRW

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1905430730290639207
- RonFilipkowski

Grayscale Files for Spot Avalanche ETF on Nasdaq

Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:

Tests show emotional, behavioral problems in adolescents with long COVID

Politics:

https://twitter.com/FrankenforIowa/status/1905231617481715727
- FrankenforIowa

https://twitter.com/amyspitalnick/status/1905097065526354129
- amyspitalnick

https://twitter.com/IAmJohnAles/status/1905130316253254078
- IAmJohnAles

———— Signalgate ————

FBI Ignores Signal Chat Leak

In past years, such a breach would likely have given rise to a separate and more thorough investigation by the FBI and Justice Department’s national security division to assess the extent of the potential harm and whether any laws were violated. But top Justice Department officials appear not to be mounting such an inquiry.

https://twitter.com/CheriJacobus/status/1905241313701658951
- CheriJacobus

https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1905093796565823673
- mtracey

Signal Chat Leak Angers U.S. Military Pilots

Men and women who have taken to the air on behalf of the United States expressed bewilderment after the leak of attack plans. “You’re going to kill somebody,” one pilot said.

https://twitter.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1905176792337461363
- P_Kallioniemi

https://twitter.com/YourAnonCentral/status/1905260633471562132
- YourAnonCentral

Signalgate scrambles MAGA’s messaging machine

https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1905228970443841896
- ChrisMurphyCT

https://twitter.com/JoePostingg/status/1904927382017905149
- JoePostingg

https://twitter.com/lawindsor/status/1905389544243077576
- lawindsor

Israel Supplied Intelligence in Airstrike Discussed in Signal Chat, Officials Say

Houthi missile expert was tracked with help of Israel-linked human source in Yemen

https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/1905281203285930457
- TheOnion

———— Putin&Krasnov vs. Ukraine ————

https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1905379765294436689
- TimothyDSnyder

How Trump’s policies have helped Russia and furthered Putin’s goals

…Donald Trump’s pivot toward Russia, through a series of concessions and policy changes coupled with threats against Washington’s traditional allies, is ushering in a world order more amenable to Moscow.
Trump’s talk of taking over the Panama Canal, making Canada the 51st state and getting Greenland ‘one way or another’ appears to be rupturing the post-World War II order in favor of a world without constraints on territorial expansion by force — and one closer to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s view.

https://twitter.com/Mylovanov/status/1905231270889533835
- Mylovanov

US Seeks to Control Ukraine Investment, Squeezing Out Europe

Yeah, good luck with that. What possible reason would Ukraine have to agree?

https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1904976527835676751
- JayinKyiv

———— Melon Husk ————

https://twitter.com/tokitaeII/status/1904978948850958541
- tokitaeII

———— Autocracy R Us ————

The Autocratic Legal Playbook

To understand what action to take requires clarity about the democratic assault now being advanced with brutal efficiency against the United States. Trump and his legal team have carefully studied how democracies die. And they have learned the key lesson: democratic backsliding occurs when elected leaders claim a mandate to erode the pillars of democracy—free and fair elections, fundamental rights, and checks and balances—to enlarge executive power.
The ‘autocratic legal playbook’ is the strategic roadmap to this consolidation. The targets are well-established: capture the courts; erase internal pockets of independence within the public bureaucracy; silent sources of free thought and expression in universities, civil society, and the media; replace independent public prosecutors and government lawyers with loyalists; and disable legal resistance by coopting law firms and the professional bar.

https://twitter.com/jawillick/status/1905270673951301675
- jawillick

The Five Pillars of Trumpian Repression

That Trump had authoritarian instincts was not in dispute among reasonable analysts. One needed only to listen to his speeches to establish that.
But how would his authoritarianism show up in practical governance? Would it be through invocations of the Insurrection Act or involve more exotic presidential emergency powers? Would it involve prosecuting political enemies? Would it be through domestic deployment of the military? In countless papers, op-eds, and scenario-planning exercises, scholars and journalists tried to game out what Trump would do and how his various opponents might respond.
Suffice it to say, two months into the second go-around, that everyone got it wrong. Or at least, nobody really got it right.

A Tufts Student Criticized Israel. Then the Trump Administration Disappeared Her

https://twitter.com/DavidAFrench/status/1905282840142422076
- DavidAFrench

https://twitter.com/cmclymer/status/1905247170300977347
- cmclymer

https://twitter.com/jonlovett/status/1905316010523242972
- jonlovett

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1905210240888422787
- paulg

Trump Targets Robert Mueller’s Former Law Firm

…Trump on Thursday targeted another major law firm with an executive order, going after WilmerHale over its ties to former special counsel Robert Mueller.
It is the latest in a wave of moves against elite law firms connected to individuals perceived as political enemies by the president. Trump’s order directs government agencies to remove the firm’s government security clearances, restrict its access to federal buildings and strip government contracts from companies it represents.

Bondi’s Dismantling of the Kleptocracy Team Threatens National Security

Buried near the bottom of the fourth page of a Department of Justice memorandum directed at “Total Elimination of Cartels and Transnational Criminal Organizations”—one of 14 memoranda issued by Attorney General Pam Bondi in the opening hours of her tenure—was this sentence: “Task Force KleptoCapture, the Department’s Kleptocracy Team, and the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, shall be disbanded.”