Odds and Ends — 6 May 2025

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

The U.S. trade deficit widened to a record high in March as businesses boosted imports of goods ahead of tariffs, which dragged gross domestic product into negative terrain in the first quarter for the first time in three years.

How much Bitcoin can Berkshire Hathaway buy?

Fed Confronts Lose-Lose Scenario

The haphazard rollout of President Trump’s tariff policy threatens to put the Federal Reserve in a lose-lose scenario: Navigate a recession or manage a period of stagflation.
How the Fed negotiates tricky communications around these trade-offs will be front and center at officials’ two-day policy meeting this week.

Kenyan Court Orders Sam Altman's Crypto Project to Delete Biometric User Data

Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:

The Fight to Be Believed: Long COVID’s Toll on Black Americans

Politics:

Israel Plans to Occupy and Flatten All of Gaza

Israel has set President Trump’s visit to the Middle East next week as a deadline for a new hostage and ceasefire deal, with a massive ground operation to commence if no deal is reached.
Israel’s Security Cabinet approved a plan Sunday night to gradually reoccupy all of Gaza and hold it indefinitely if no deal is reached by May 15. Plans for the operation call for the Israel Defense Forces to flatten any buildings that remain standing and displace virtually the entire population of 2 million people to a single ‘humanitarian area.’

Trump Administration Seeks Dismissal of Abortion Pill Case

The Trump administration on Monday asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit that seeks to sharply restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone — taking the same position as the Biden administration in a closely watched case that has major implications for abortion access.
The court filing by the Justice Department is striking, given that President Trump and a number of officials in his administration have forcefully opposed abortion rights.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp passes on running for Senate

I suppose it’s too much to ask to hope that Georgia Republicans would run MTG as their nominee.

Macron Says Trump’s Academic Crackdown Threatens U.S.

Emmanuel Macron has warned that Donald Trump’s crackdown on U.S. scientific research threatens America’s economy and democracy, as the French leader and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen made a pitch to researchers to come to Europe instead.
Said Macron: “No one could have thought that the world’s biggest democracy, whose economic model relies so heavily on science, on innovation and on its ability… to have disseminated this innovation more widely than its European peers, would make such a mistake. But here we are.”

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1919335983885037828
- RonFilipkowski

Germany in Political Chaos After Merz Loses Chancellor Vote

Stunned lawmakers initially huddled in groups in the chamber, wondering what the next steps would be, while television commentators were also at a loss.

———— Autocracy R Us ————

There Is a Way Forward: How to Defeat Trump’s Power Grab

https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1919389602374123731
- BillKristol

Spy Agencies Reject Trump’s Justification for Deportations

A newly declassified memo released on Monday confirms that U.S. intelligence agencies rejected a key claim President Trump put forth to justify invoking a wartime statute to summarily deport Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador.
The memo states that spy agencies do not believe that the administration of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, controls a criminal gang, Tren de Aragua. That determination contradicts what Mr. Trump asserted when he invoked the deportation law, the Alien Enemies Act.

https://twitter.com/kelly2277/status/1919116102304424439
- kelly2277

Guantánamo Has Held Fewer Than 500 Migrants

American military forces have taken down some of the tents they hurriedly set up on an empty corner of the U.S. naval station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, three months after President Trump ordered preparations to house up to 30,000 migrants at the base.
No migrants were ever held in the tents, and no migrant surge has ever occurred. On Monday, the operation was housing just 32 migrants, in buildings that were established years ago.

Trump Is Hiding Behind His Lawyers

The president wants to seize new powers, yet he’s also eager to hand off responsibility for hard decisions.

https://twitter.com/MeachamDr/status/1919365192976117974
- MeachamDr

———— The Fine Art of Corruption ————

https://twitter.com/mynamehear/status/1919418077676011538
- mynamehear

https://twitter.com/karlykingsley/status/1919399101608702095
- karlykingsley

https://twitter.com/Scaramucci/status/1919404432208371774
- Scaramucci

———— Smoot-Hawley 2.0 ————

https://twitter.com/ChrisMc57285617/status/1919436283648082011
- ChrisMc57285617

White House Urges Patience on Tariffs

…Donald Trump and his top aides have settled on a decidedly non-Trumpian message for American businesses and consumers panicked by his trade war: Be patient.
Ahead of the next stage of economic fallout, that plea is already wearing thin.
U.S. manufacturers and retailers are bracing for a massive drop-off in goods arriving from China, as ports across the West Coast warn of a plunge in shipments not seen since the early days of the Covid pandemic.

https://twitter.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/1919363928099819886
- JamesSurowiecki

Trump’s Tone Shifts from Prosperity to Austerity

During his campaign and the early part of his current presidency, President Donald Trump promised an economic boom that would take off upon his return to the White House — reviving the American Dream and producing four years of unparalleled prosperity.
But Trump’s tone, and that of his aides, has shifted notably in recent weeks, as they warn of sacrifice and ‘transition’ until, by their telling, his heavy tariffs pave the way for a boom. Trump has spoken of the need to take economic ‘medicine,’ warned Americans they may need to cut back on items like dolls and pencils, and suggested a short-term recession might be an acceptable cost for the prosperity he predicts will come.

———— Putin&Krasnov vs. Ukraine ————

https://twitter.com/rshereme/status/1919368916926611931
- rshereme

———— Melon Husk ————

https://twitter.com/danzu72/status/1919086359488209191
- danzu72

———— Hegseth on the Rocks ————

https://twitter.com/donwinslow/status/1919507140206854628
- donwinslow

Hegseth Used Multiple Signal Chats for Pentagon Business

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used Signal more extensively for official Pentagon business than previously disclosed, engaging in at least a dozen separate chats.
In one case, he told aides on the encrypted app to inform foreign governments about an unfolding military operation, the people said. He also used the nongovernmental message service to discuss media appearances, foreign travel, his schedule, and other unclassified but sensitive information.
The former Fox News host set up many of the chats himself, sending texts from an unsecured line in his Pentagon office and from his personal phone.

———— Mors Imperii ————

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1919551515972301177
- RonFilipkowski

After paying people to leave, one federal agency is scrambling to fill positions

Trump’s New Nationalism

…Trump’s grand economic vision relies on a simple tradeoff: that Americans will accept short-term personal sacrifice — higher prices, fewer options, slimmer profits — in service of long-term national strength.
Trump is breaking sharply from free-market orthodoxy in his second term, blending bursts of anti-capitalism with a top-down, nationalist agenda for American dominance.
Critics on the left and right warn of an emerging ‘MAGA Maoism’ — a movement that demands ideological purity, glorifies economic sacrifice, and embraces state power as a means to reshape society.

https://twitter.com/JBakerMarketing/status/1919178892985676155
- JBakerMarketing

3 Prosecutors Resign Over DOJ’s Highly Irregular Move In Police Brutality Case In Los Angeles

Federal District Court–in a Ruling Likely to Be Upheld on Appeal– Holds That Judge Griffin’s Attempt to Overturn the Results of the North Carolina Supreme Court Election Violates the Constitutional Rights of Voters and Orders Certification for Incumbent Justice Riggs

The idea of retroactively changing the rules for which ballots should count—and applying those retroactive rules just selectively in places where the challenging candidate expects to gain relative votes—sure is unconstitutional in any election system that values the rule of law. The only surprise (and disappointment) here is that the North Carolina Supreme Court was willing to bless this attempted election subversion.