Week of Trump Decline Polls Plunge, Court Cases Lose, Economy Collapses, Defense Department…well…Drinks

And so we transition from our new source of sweetness to more familiar wellsprings of wisdom:

Hackwhackers has US District Judge Paula Xinis stomping all over specious falsehoods and evasions offered by Trump and Trumpers to excuse deportation and continued imprisonment of innocent US resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
The 4^th Circuit Court of Appeals doesn’t just reject the Trump case for leaving an innocent resident in a Salvadoran prison.
Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger shows us the first three explanatory paragraphs of an unusually sharp decision. They squash Trump’s case like a bug.
Julian Sanchez not only gets the absurdity right on this:

🙄 If that were true he’d already be on a flight back. The idea we have to engage in “diplomacy” over a thing we are literally paying them to do is ludicrous and insulting.

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— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) April 22, 2025 at 3:21 PM

but also has the moral imperative right on a separate false arrest:

I feel like we need to keep saying this because it’s so insane: This is a legal U.S. resident who has been detained for over a month now for his political opinions.

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— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) April 21, 2025 at 8:28 PM
Juliet at Decoding Fox News watches 15 hours of Fox and detects a consistent theme about immigrants. An innocent man is somehow melded with a sexual predator.
Over the decades, my loved one and I have occasionally watched news of some vicious crime with at least a little dread, hoping against hope that the perpetrator did not turn out to be Black.

Now immigrants can carry the same undeserved burden. The crime of shared ethnicity.

Juliet is also available in an hour of entertaining audio.
Dave Columbo has a brief question for Trump about arrests and court orders:
Satiric site Ant Farmer’s Almanac reports as Pete Hegseth is detained by ICE over a misinterpretation of his many weird tattoos.
News Corpse dwells for a bit on the startling fact, as verified in public by Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, that the entire Pentagon is working against Pete Hegseth.

Key quote:
The president stands strongly behind Secretary Hegseth, who is doing a phenomenal job leading the Pentagon. And this is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and against the monumental change that you are trying to implement.
Jason Linkins seems unimpressed with Trump’s best and brightest staff.

every day these guys prove the value of DEI hiring lol

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— Jason Linkins (@dceiver.bsky.social) April 23, 2025 at 10:58 PM

those were so bad that I had to wonder what the hour below "amateur hour" was

— Jason Linkins (@dceiver.bsky.social) April 23, 2025 at 6:22 PM
Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit puts, in easy to understand terms, what merit hire truly means.
The Propaganda Professor reviews the week in stupid, most of which happens in or around one office.
And there is so, so much on that list.
The Onion relays helpful advice from financial experts: diversify your portfolio with multiple harebrained schemes.
At The Moderate Voice, David Robertson has advice for Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders: Be careful about who you vote for. You just might get him.
It seems Donald Trump is declining to send much needed help to Arkansas victims after a series of serious storms.

Key predictive quote (Trump in Arkansas, Jan. 2025):
I think it’s, I think when there’s a, uh, when there’s a problem with the state, I think that that problem should be taken care of by the state. That’s what we have states for. They take care of problems, and a governor can handle something very quickly. . . When they [FEMA employees] come, they end up in arguments if they’re fighting, all the time over who does what, it’s just it’s just not a good system.

Key plea (Governor Sanders)
I have determined that the severity and magnitude of these storms exceed the capabilities of the State and affected local governments to respond adequately. As such, supplemental Federal assistance is crucial.
tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors brings us respected polls on tariffs, the economy, immigration, and other issues. Seems voters don’t like what Trump is doing and don’t want him running for reelection.
PZ Myers brings us the newest idiocy, this time from Minnesota Republicans, who have proposed a state law officially declaring vaccinations to be a bioweapon.

Key provision:
A bill for an act relating to public safety; designating mRNA injections and products as weapons of mass destruction; prohibiting mRNA injections and products;
Brian Beutler considers Trump’s authoritarian bent, and the support or acquiescence by Republicans. He comes up with four reasons they’re going along. For now.
Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson has what Everett Dirksen once called minimal high regard for his own state’s Senator Ron Johnson, who has embraced a wide range of conspiracy theories, with one major, very real, omission. Wanna know what and why?

Key exception:
But there is one conspiracy Johnson won’t investigate: President Donald Trump’s conspiracy to undermine the results of the 2020 campaign on January 6. That’s because Johnson was a key figure in the story.
So Bill Maher didn’t like Donald Trump. But he was invited to the White House to meet the new President, and (gosh) Trump was nice, really nice, to him. So now Donald J. Trump is, at heart, a great guy.
Max’s Dad gets acerbic, apparently changing his mind about Bill Maher. He didn’t like him for a long time. Now he REALLY doesn’t like him.
Jessica Mason Pieklo of Rewire News Group reviews the newest threat against Obamacare that has gotten to the Supreme Court. It is mainly concerned with procedural questions of who can appoint whom, when it comes to an anti-HIV medication.
Imani Gandy explains the hidden agenda and what is really at stake:

SCOTUS Arguments in Braidwood Management today. We're going to hear a lot of boring talk about nondelegation and the appointments clause, but this case is really about whether Christian people can refuse to provide PrEP on account of their religious opposition to the homosexual lifestyle.

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— Imani Gandy (@angryblacklady.bsky.social) April 21, 2025 at 9:06 AM

… and whether preventive care writ large (STD and cancer screenings and the like) is unconstitutional. You can listen here: www.supremecourt.gov/oral_argumen…

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— Imani Gandy (@angryblacklady.bsky.social) April 21, 2025 at 9:06 AM

and why it is so easy for news reports to skip away:

CAVEAT:

SCOTUS didn't take up the RFRA claim tghat providing certain types of preventive care violates plaintiffs' religion).

Also SCOTUS is only hearing arguments about whether the USPSTF has the authority to make prev hlth recommendations and not ACIP or HSRA.

I bored myself just typing that.

— Imani Gandy (@angryblacklady.bsky.social) April 21, 2025 at 9:31 AM
driftglass has the story. The Food and Drug Administration is suspending food safety checks as part of the Trump/Musk slashes in personnel.
I do recall when the Bush administration tried making food inspections voluntary. As a result the Peanut Corporation of America sent out contaminated peanut butter. Children died. Hundreds of people became ill.

So, of course, Trump and Musk will go a step further, making FDA inspections impossible.

What can go wrong?
In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson reviews the impact of early 60s environmentalist Rachel Carson, whose book Silent Spring about the overuse of the pesticide DDT shook the political world, and sparked the establishment of Earth Day.
The same analysis is now available in audio format, as Richardson narrates in podcast.
Tommy Christopher excerpts from an emotional interview with a survivor of the Florida State shooting, recounting how he was getting ready to die.

Key motivation:
Seybold revealed to Jackson he knew the suspect, and that he was a member of the Florida chapter of Trump ally Charlie Kirk’s TPUSA.

Key defensive response:
President Donald Trump reacted to the shooting by immediately defending guns, telling reporters “these things are terrible. But the gun doesn’t do the shooting. The people do.”
Our own Jess Piper travels from rural Missouri to last week’s protests in other red states.
She brings back her experiences, illustrated with photos.

Key Missouri issues:
Democratic Representative Kemp Strickler stated, “Missourians enshrined abortion in our Constitution less than six months ago! Whether it’s Amendment 3 (the abortion amendment) or Proposition A (the proposition that raised minimum wage and guaranteed sick time) we should respect the will of the voters!”

Key Kansas City, Missouri response:
In Kansas City, hundreds also protested the news that Republicans will try to place abortion back on the ballot. A move that will likely include ballot language to deceive and confuse voters with lies and half-truths.

Key Springfield, Missouri response:
Springfield, Missouri did not fail to show up. In fact, there were two separate protests in the city on the day of action. One was focused on abortion rights and the other was focused on cuts to the federal government and the Trump regime’s overreach. There were over 400 gathered on a main road in Springfield.
In Canadian satire that’s a little too close, The Beaverton has Canada sharing a common social problem. Stuck between the urge to find new friends and loyalty to that one lifelong friend who suddenly went extreme conservative.

Key strange change:
Then the other day, we’re joking around like usual, they’re saying their normal jokes about how ‘Europe is socialist’ or whatever and then out of blue they just say ‘Canada shouldn’t be a country’.
Frances Langum brings us more Canadian entertainment as weekly television troupe 22 Minutes shows Trump trying to interfere in Canadian politics by playing reverse, upside down, inside out psychology.
(Note: Familiarity with Canadian politics is SO not required!)

Key summary:
Donald Trump is *so* not jealous of Mark Carney

Key boast:
I crashed the stock like it was a Tesla!
@whiskeywhistle98 has a theological question:
Sarah Cooper shows us how Christians can hear Jesus telling us to support Musk and his own begotten Tesla:
Well…
He does have a special talent for the tasteless.

Vixen Strangely has the actual photo at the corporate sponsored White House Easter Egg hunt, in honor of the Risen Christ. Donald Trump suffers the little children to gather, as he shows the collector’s card celebrating that Behold! He LIVES!

The HE, of course, being their favorite President, Donald Trump.

It reminds me of a variation of an old saying.

It’s all about Trump. It has to be.
He wants to be the bride at every wedding,
the corpse at every funeral,
the baby at every christening,
and always, always, always, the subject of every ritual act of religious worship.
North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz points to Pope Francis as aspiring to the teachings of Christ so, of course, MAGAs are celebrating his death.
One illustration:

Nice.

Key signs of character:
And his humility, his introspection, his care for the suffering, and his boldness in the face of the very power structure sustaining him, he is everything Trump Christians are not.

Unlike Marjorie Taylor Greene, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Franklin Graham, and a thousand other MAGA self-identified Christians whose sermons and testimonies always come submerged in cruelty, when Pope Francis talked about his faith, it always sounded like good news to the poor, the hungry, the unloved, the overlooked.
From The Borowitz Report, JD Vance will attend the funeral of Pope Francis as a representative of Satan.

Key absence:
In a rare public statement, the Prince of Darkness said that he could not attend the funeral himself because it conflicts with a Tesla board meeting.

Separately, Donald Trump has provided helpful advice on selecting a new Pope
Right Wing Watch brings us anti-choice activist Seth Gruber with his own personal insight: Satan is definitely a Democrat.
In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce suggests that anti-Christian bias is pretty much a myth.

Bruce relies largely on his own daily experience:
There is at least seven churches within a few miles of my home. Countless local businesses have Christian kitsch hanging in their stores or tracts on their counters. Some businesses are decidedly evangelistic in their business model. One local barber claims his barber shop is a “ministry.” Get your hair cut by this barber, and you should expect to hear a sermon. Everywhere I look, I see Christianity. Maybe it is different in other places, but I don’t see anti-Christian bias anywhere.

My own experience largely parallels his. Most stories of anti-Christian discrimination, those I have heard from fellow religionists, don’t hold up under polite questioning.

Bruce wisely suggests that hostility toward Christians is something completely different from hostility toward Christianity.

That strikes me as sensible, and something that should be more than acceptable in an inclusive society.
Scotties Playtime reviews the protestant work ethic, success, and the purpose of life.
Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes has brief, worthwhile, insights on present and future, suffering, and love.
M. Bouffant at Web of Evil has serious medical problems and is getting no help from the government that is supposed to help. He is over‑the‑top furious about it.
[note: Over-the-top does not equate to unjustified.]
CalicoJack in The Psy of Life explains autism burnout, the burnout part meaning deep exhaustion. He explores how simply being tired of dealing impacts the engagement, withdrawal, and sometimes survival of autistic people.
His own life has been enhanced by his successful search for a tolerable environment, his happening on good school situation in his teaching career, and the active support of his family.
In Happiness Between Tails da-AL hosts blogger Joey of Just Joey Travel Blog who suggests that departing social media can offer rewards especially if the substitute is non-virtual travel.

Key philosophical question (similar to a tree in a forest):
And yet… am I really traveling, if I don’t share the tales?

Is the adventure real if it isn’t witnessed? If it isn’t packaged into a neatly filtered carousel of highlights with a clever caption?
Infidel753 sees the borg-like structural plan for a prospective Saudi city and it’s later failure as a prototype for kingly hubris in a country without rights.
The Journal of Improbable Research finds a cooperative study by researchers in Brazil and France that supports standing while working. Seems it increases attention to detail, with a major reason turning out to be people swaying more while standing.

Key pun (don’t blame me – I’m just reporting):
Perhaps your thoughts will be swayed by the argument made in this study:
Kind of separate from Georgia baseball, The Savanna Bananas go beyond cuteness, performing in celebration just to get the reaction from a young girl recording them:
SilverAppleQueen tells us everything any rational person could want to know about croissants. Beginning with: they aren’t French.

Week of Trump Decline
Polls Plunge, Court Cases Lose, Economy Collapses, Defense Department…well…Drinks

One response to “Week of Trump Decline
Polls Plunge, Court Cases Lose, Economy Collapses, Defense Department…well…Drinks”