I’ve (largely) avoided MSNBC and (completely) avoided polling since the election.  However, as Trump hits the 100-day-in-office mark, I compromise on my principles, if only just this once:

This only matters if, you know, elections still take place.  Which is ‘to be determined’.

Problem is, he’s done so much bad stuff that it won’t simply be erased by a snap of the fingers of his successor.  He’s destroyed entire governmental institutions.  We can only hope that, in so doing, he has destroyed the Rethuglican Party and aroused the ire of those who are sick of the ‘simpering timidity’ of the centrists who control the Democratic Party.

Musk (and Trump) Created A Surveillance State:

Elon Musk may be stepping back from running the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, but his legacy there is already secured. DOGE is assembling a sprawling domestic surveillance system for the Trump administration — the likes of which we have never seen in the United States.

President Trump could soon have the tools to satisfy his many grievances by swiftly locating compromising information about his political opponents or anyone who simply annoys him. The administration has already declared that it plans to comb through tax records to find the addresses of immigrants it is investigating — a plan so morally and legally challenged it prompted several top I.R.S. officials to quit in protest. Some federal workers have also been told that DOGE is using A.I. to sift through their communications to identify people who harbor anti-Musk or -Trump sentiment (and presumably punish or fire them).

What this amounts to is a stunningly fast reversal of our long history of siloing government data to prevent its misuse. In their first 100 days, Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump have knocked down the barriers that were intended to prevent them from creating dossiers on every U.S. resident. Now, they seem to be building a defining feature of many authoritarian regimes: comprehensive files on everyone so they can punish those who protest.

Trump Unites Canada:

Prime Minister Mark Carney led his Liberal Party to a narrow victory in Canada’s pivotal election on Monday, securing a fourth term in power for the party and a renewed mandate to lead the fight against President Trump over trade and the nation’s sovereignty.

Mr. Carney, a former central banker who was running for office for the first time, struck a combative tone toward the United States during his acceptance speech in the early hours of Tuesday at a Liberal Party event in Ottawa.

It was unclear whether the Liberals would win a majority of seats in the next House of Commons, which would allow Mr. Carney to govern relatively unimpeded, or if his government would need to rely on smaller parties to support his legislative agenda.

Mr. Carney has not met Mr. Trump in person since becoming Liberal Party leader and prime minister last month. But he made Mr. Trump’s menacing comments about making Canada the 51st state and the tariffs he has imposed on Canadian goods the center of his campaign.

Carney, as the name might suggest, is hardly a progressive dynamo.  A central banker, more of a centrist.  But the Conservative Party had a 25-point lead in the polls before Trump went after our neighbors from the north.  Trump owns this.  To the extent that the Conservative Party leader, who ran against ‘woke ideology’, lost his own ‘safe’ seat in rural Ottawa.

Trump Blows Up DOJ Civil Rights Division:

The new head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division is dramatically reshaping the office to propel President Donald Trump’s social agenda, prompting the departure of about half of the division’s lawyers in recent weeks, according to people familiar with the situation and public statements from top officials.

Since being sworn in this month, civil rights director Harmeet K. Dhillon has redirected her staff to focus on combating antisemitism, the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports and what Trump and his allies have described as anti-Christian bias and theDemocrats’ “woke ideology.”

The division changedmission statements across its sections to focus less on racial discrimination and more on fighting diversity initiatives. And department officials reassigned more than a dozen career staffers — including section chiefs overseeing police brutality, disability and voting rights cases — to areas outside their legal expertise.

‘Kid Has Stage 4 Cancer? Let Honduras Deal With It’:

Three U.S. citizen children from two different families were deported with their mothers by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the early hours of Friday morning. One of them is a 4-year-old with Stage 4 cancer who was deported without medication or the ability to contact their doctors, the family’s lawyer said.

According to their lawyers, both families were taken into custody while attending routine check-ins this week in New Orleans as part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, which allows individuals to remain in their communities while undergoing immigration proceedings. Lawyers say the families were taken to Alexandria, Louisiana, a three-hour drive from New Orleans, where they were prevented from communicating with their family members and legal representatives and then put on a flight to Honduras.

“I don’t know how much more of a blatant or clear constitutional violation there can be than deporting U.S. citizens without due process,” said Alanah Odoms, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana. “Especially with some of those citizens being the most vulnerable of all vulnerable, children, and not just any children, children with medical conditions that are dire.”

How Many People Were Imprisoned And/Or Executed Due To ‘Junk Science’?  The so-called ‘experts’ who convicted these people belong in jail–for the rest of their lives:

A Louisiana judge this week set aside the first-degree murder conviction and death sentence of Jimmie Chris Duncan, whose 1998 conviction for killing his girlfriend’s 23-month-old daughter was based in part on bite mark evidence that experts now say is junk science.

The decision comes after a Verite News and ProPublica investigation in March examined the questions surrounding Duncan’s conviction as Gov. Jeff Landry, a staunch death penalty advocate, made moves to expedite executions after a 15-year pause.

Judge Alvin Sharp, of the 4th Judicial District in Ouachita Parish, pointed to new testimony during a September appeals hearing that such bite mark analysis presented by a once-heralded forensics team is “no longer valid” and “not scientifically defensible.”

The original analysis came from forensic dentist Michael West and pathologist Dr. Steven Hayne, whose longtime partnership as state experts fell under legal scrutiny after questions emerged about the validity of their techniques.

Over the past 27 years, nine prisoners have been set free after being convicted in part on inaccurate evidence given by West and Hayne. Three of those men were on death row.

Trump Suspects Putin May Not Be Leveling With Him. Ya think?:

Trump later published a social media post criticising Putin. “There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days,” he posted on Truth Social.

“It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through ’Banking’ or ’Secondary Sanctions?’ Too many people are dying!!!” the US president wrote.

‘Tapping me along’?

Who Was At The Delaware Democratic Elected Officials’ Town Hall?  What did you think?

Coming tomorrow (or Tuesday)–the latest Infrequent Delaware Political Weekly, featuring at least two legislative candidates worthy of your support.

What do you want to talk about?

Trump Judge Draws Line At Deporting 2-Year-Old With ‘No Meaningful Process’.  We’re talking about a judge who frustrated Biden at every turn:

A federal judge is raising alarms that the Trump administration deported a two-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras with “no meaningful process,” even as the child’s father was frantically petitioning the courts to keep her in the country.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, said the child — identified in court papers by the initials “V.M.L.” — appeared to have been released in Honduras earlier Friday, along with her Honduran-born mother and sister, who had been detained by immigration officials earlier in the week.

As a U.S. citizen, V.M.L. is likely to have the ability to return to the United States, setting her case apart from others that have drawn national attention in recent weeks, such as the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The Salvadoran native was deported to a prison in his home country in violation of a 2019 immigration court order. But the Louisiana case is the latest concern by the courts that the Trump administration’s rush to carry out deportations is violating due process rights — in this case, the rights of a U.S. citizen child.

Louisiana.  And a judge who calls the Gulf Of Mexico the ‘Gulf Of America’.  That’s a Trump judge right there.  I guess brazen criminality has its limits, even with Trump judges:

Doughty’s sharp criticism of the Trump administration is particularly notable because he issued a series of major decisions in favor of Trump and his allies in recent years, most notably backing conservatives in legal challenges to the Biden administration’s efforts to rein in what it claimed was misinformation on social media platforms about vaccines and certain politically charged topics.

Indeed, some conservatives considered Doughty so likely to be in their camp that they filed lawsuits in his judicial division in order to have a strong chance the cases would be assigned to him.

At least, the Louisiana judge is unlikely to be arrested.  This, right here, is some bullshit:

The federal government used brazen, heavy-handed tactics on Friday to arrest a Wisconsin state judge on obstruction charges related to an immigration case.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan received the distinction of being arrested at her courthouse. She does not appear to have been given the opportunity to surrender to law enforcement.

Instead, Trump administration officials immediately used the arrest to create a spectacle and broadcast to the country that state officials — including sitting judges — must cooperate with the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign or else face overbearing actions from federal law enforcement.

A U.S. Marshals Service spokesman told TPM that FBI agents arrested Dugan at around 8:30 a.m. Milwaukee time. They made the arrest, Marshals spokesman Brady McCarron told TPM, as she arrived for work on the state courthouse grounds, detaining her outside of the building.

Around half an hour after, FBI Director Kash Patel posted a tweet announcing the arrest.

“We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse,” he wrote. Patel deleted the tweet minutes later, though he would later repost it.

Ladeez And Gentlemen, Your FBI Director:

Check out his lapel pin.  That’s branding, right there.  Let’s call these ‘ICE Agents’ by their proper name: Storm-troopers.  Sometimes, the storm-trooping gets to be too much, even for this regime:

The US government is restoring the legal status of hundreds of international students after a wave of lawsuits challenged the abrupt suspension of their visas.

The sudden policy reversal was announced during a court hearing in Oakland, California, which brought together eight lawsuits filed by international students who argued that the federal government had terminated their right to remain in the US without due process. Attorneys in those cases had asked the court to issue a nationwide injunction covering all students whose official records granting them legal status were terminated since 1 March, and were at risk of deportation.

On Friday, assistant US attorney Elizabeth D Kurlan said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) was developing a new policy to govern how records are terminated on the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (Sevis), a federal database used to track international students’ immigration status. A similar announcement was made in a court in Washington.

In recent weeks, numerous students received notifications that their records were terminated with little explanation, jeopardizing their legal right to remain in the US and sparking outrage and confusion. Some said they had their status revoked for infractions as minor as a speeding ticket.  (Man, can you imagine if Kevin Hensley had been a foreign student?)

Trump To Arkansas: “Drown, Ya Losers!”.  I guess on some things, it’s best to take him at his word:

Last month, 14 tornadoes struck Arkansas over the course of two days, killing three people and leaving 32 more injured. The deadly outbreak damaged or destroyed 500 homes, cars and businesses, leaving behind more than $8.8 million of storm damage.

As is customary, Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders asked the federal government for help. After a major disaster, the usual procedure is for the federal government to issue a disaster declaration, setting the wheels in motion for the Federal Emergency Management Administration to step in with funds to help the state clean up.

But President Donald Trump said no. In a letter from April 11, the federal government said it had “determined that the damage from this event was not of such severity and magnitude as to be beyond the capabilities of the state, affected local governments, and voluntary agencies.”

Hucksterbee Sanders, who touted her special relationship with Trump in predicting swift response to her request, must have wondered, ‘I lied my ass off for years for this guy only to be treated like this?’

Ay-yep.  Sad.

Avelo Airlines:’You Supply The Chains And The Passengers, We Supply The Transportation’.  For a price, of course:

Protestors lined the sides of Route 13 outside the Wilmington Airport Thursday for a honk and wave rally, encouraging residents to boycott Avelo Airlines.

The outrage follows an April 7 announcement by the airline — which is Delaware’s only commercial carrier — that it entered a charter agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) to carry out deportation flights.

Avelo CEO Andrew Levy said in a statement that he understands this is a “sensitive and complicated topic,” but he sees the charter agreement as a way to provide more financial stability to the low-budget airline.

He really said that? Fuck him and the airline he runs.  BTW:

Backlash has ensued across the U.S. following the announcement, including a statement from the Association of Flight Attendants, urging the airline to reconsider.

A petition started by the New Haven Immigrants Coalition has received close to 35,000 signatures by individuals pledging to boycott the airline.

Yep, you can sign that petition.  I just did.

What do you want to talk about?

The National Democratic Party Sucks Multitudes.  I thought the new Chair was the same old, same old.  Now I know the new Chair is the same old, same old:

Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, has announced a proposal requiring party officials to remain neutral in primary elections, challenging activist David Hogg to choose between his vice-chair post and his pledge to unseat “asleep-at-the-wheel” incumbents.

“If you want to challenge incumbents, you’re more than free to do that, but just not as an officer of the DNC, because our job is to be neutral arbiters,” Martin said on a call with reporters on Thursday. “We can’t be both the referee and also the player at the same time. You have to make a decision.”

He’s right, you know.  I, for one, was impressed with the unfailing neutrality of the DNC when Bernie Sanders ran against Hillary Clinton.  And when they rewrote the rules for Joe Biden’s reelection.  Anyone seen Betsy Maron chastised for enabling the endorsement of BHL?  Plus, you note why he’s proposing to ‘rewrite the rules’?  Because it’s not putting a thumb on the scale that he hates, it’s whose (who’s?) thumb is on the scale.  I stand with this guy:

“Anybody who believes our country is in an existential moment, and who sees the sole opposition party at a record low approval with the public, should want to both change the face of our party in primaries and fix the party from the inside,” Adam Green, the co-founder of Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said in a statement after the DNC call, calling Hogg one of the few national party leaders who are “meeting this important moment with boldness”.

BTW, the corporate press coverage of this is exactly as you’d expect.  We’ll be hearing more from David Hogg.  The less we hear from Ken Martin, the better.

Who Needs DOGE When You Have Pete Hegseth?  His entire team, like Elvis, has left the building:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s chief of staff departed his post Thursday, he said, the latest twist in an extended period of turmoil at the Pentagon that has included infighting among Hegseth’s advisers, the firing of at least three political appointees and deepening scrutiny of the secretary’s stewardship of the government’s largest agency.

Kasper’s final departure had been forecast for days, and it was reported earlier by Politico. His exit follows weeks of friction between him and Hegseth’s other senior advisers, and questions about how the Pentagon is being managed under the former Fox News personality and the leadership he assembled upon taking office just three months ago.

The spate of departures and firings — which also have targeted nearly a dozen senior military officials, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Navy’s top admiral — is a mark of disruption and instability the likes of which the Pentagon has seldom experienced.

Defense officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be candid about the situation, have described Hegseth, 44, as paranoid and increasingly isolated. He is surrounded by only a small team of people whom he trusts and has become keenly focused on daily news coverage dissecting his missteps and decision-making.

Last week, Hegseth fired three senior advisers: Dan Caldwell, Colin Carroll and Darin Selnick. All three were accused of leaking, a point they forcefully rejected in a joint statement on Saturday.

A fourth former staff member, John Ullyot, wrote in an opinion piece Sunday that “it’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon” with a “near collapse inside the Pentagon’s top ranks.” He departed the Pentagon earlier this month after Hegseth’s team removed him from his role as a spokesman amid questions about Ullyot’s handling of the job.

Everything’s For Sale:

President Donald Trump raised a record $239 million for his 2025 inauguration celebrations, propelled by contributions from corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals — including more than a dozen people Trump has nominated to a variety of roles in his administration.

Donors to his inaugural committee included picks for ambassadorships, members of Trump’s Cabinet and firms engaged in actionswith federal agencies or those looking for favorable regulatory decisions, according to a Washington Post analysis ofa filing the inaugural committee made to the Federal Election Commission on Sunday.Some companies have sought to influence the new administration’s policies on trade, taxes and government spending.

Tech and crypto companies also played a prominent role in Trump’s inauguration, contributing tens of millions of dollars to the committee after years of regulatory challenges during the Biden administration and Trump’s first term.

Did my first door-to-door campaigning of the year yesterday evening.  Definitely feel healthier this morning…you should try it.

Tesla Tanks-Musk Rethinks Priorities?:

The Tesla chief executive, Elon Musk, said he will start pulling back from his role at the so-called “department of government efficiency” starting in May. Musk’s remarks came as the company reported a massive dip in both profits and revenues in the first quarter of 2025 amid backlash against his role in the White House.

On an investor call, Musk said the work necessary to get the government’s “financial house in order is mostly done”.

“Starting probably next month, May, my time allocation to Doge will drop significantly,” he said.

That said, he expects to spend one to two days a week continuing to do what he referred to as “critical work” at Doge “for as long as the president would like me to do so and as long as it is useful”.

Let’s cogitate upon that, shall we?  Does Musk think that his historic unpopularity, which is what has sunk his brand, will improve if he’s ‘only’ destroying the government one or two days a week?  I, for one, don’t.  What do you think?

Meanwhile, the impact on Tesla has been nothing short of historic:

Tesla saw a 9% drop in revenue year over year in the first quarter of 2025. The company brought in $19.3bn in revenue, well below Wall Street expectations of $21.45bn. The company reported an earnings per share of 27 cents, also well under investor expectations of 43 cents in earnings per share.

Tesla profits also slid 71% to $409m compared with $1.39bn in net income the previous year.

The company suffered a 13% drop in vehicle deliveries, making it the company’s worst quarter since 2022. Tesla closed the quarter with 336,681 vehicles delivered.

Going out on a limb here–don’t think the next quarter will be any better.  Sad.

So, if Musk leaves, will DOGE be left in the hands of the Hitler Youth whose frontal lobes haven’t fully formed yet (if they ever will)?  These skinheads running around gleefully firing people?

Trump Goes After Student Loan Recipients.  With Linda McMahon leading the way (try to even think about that w/o laughing):

“American taxpayers will no longer be forced to serve as collateral for irresponsible student loan policies,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “The Biden Administration misled borrowers: the executive branch does not have the constitutional authority to wipe debt away, nor do the loan balances simply disappear. Hundreds of billions have already been transferred to taxpayers. Going forward, the Department of Education, in conjunction with the Department of Treasury, will shepherd the student loan program responsibly and according to the law, which means helping borrowers return to repayment—both for the sake of their own financial health and our nation’s economic outlook.”

I linked to the press release from the Department of Education.  See if you can spot all the lies in it.  Meanwhile, quoting from an AP story on the same issue:

“This is cruel, unnecessary and will further fan the flames of economic chaos for working families across this country,” said Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center.

Borrowers who don’t make payments for nine months go into default, which is reported on their credit scores and can go to collections.

Along with the borrowers already in default, around another 4 million are 91 to 180 days late on their loan payments. Less than 40% of all borrowers are current on their student loans, department officials said.

Layoffs at the Federal Student Aid office at the Education Department have made it harder for students to get their questions answered, even if they wanted to pay their loans, said Kristin McGuire, executive director for Young Invincibles, a group that focuses on economic security for younger adults.

“Things are really difficult to understand right now. Things are changing every day,” McGuire said. “We can’t assume that people are in default because they don’t want to pay their loans. People are in default because they can’t pay their loans and because they don’t know how to pay their loans.”

Enjoyed This headline From The Downballot: “Candidates To Replace McConnell Fight Over Who Hates Him Most”.

How Politico Minimizes Rubio’s evisceration of the State Department.  ‘It’s not as bad as expected, besides we already knew he was going to do it.’  Which apparently makes it right. Or ‘better’.

Idle thought.  I hope the election of the new Pope doesn’t coincide with the NFL draft.  I much more prefer the green smoke wafting above the Linc to the alternative.

’60 Minutes’ Executive Producer Resigns.  Why?:

Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, is eager to secure the Trump administration’s approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of her company to Skydance, a company run by the son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison. She has expressed a desire to settle Mr. Trump’s case, which stems from what the president has called a deceptively edited interview in October with Vice President Kamala Harris that aired on “60 Minutes.”

Mr. Trump has often singled out “60 Minutes” for scorn. In 2020, he cut short an interview with Lesley Stahl after he became displeased with her questions. He declined to be interviewed by the program during last year’s presidential campaign.

On April 13, apparently irked by that evening’s edition of the show, Mr. Trump accused “60 Minutes” of “fraudulent, beyond recognition, reporting” in a social media post and urged his government regulators to strip CBS of its broadcast license. “CBS is out of control, at levels never seen before, and they should pay a big price for this,” Mr. Trump wrote.

Ms. Redstone complained to CBS executives in January about a “60 Minutes” segment on the war between Israel and Hamas, and a day later, the company appointed a veteran CBS producer, Susan Zirinsky, to a new role overseeing the news division’s journalistic standards.

In that capacity, Ms. Zirinsky reviewed “60 Minutes” segments that were deemed sensitive, including politically focused ones, before they aired, two of the people said. That kind of review is typical for many news programs, but “60 Minutes” prides itself on a long history of operating independently from the rest of CBS’s news division.

Hey, it’s just business.  Journalism is merely collateral damage.

Kevin Hensley Is Now Just A Realtor Without A Car.  Because, the Speaker has booted him from the Joint Finance Committee:

Less than a week after pleading guilty in a drunken driving case that injured another driver, Rep. Kevin Hensley has lost his seat on the influential state legislative committee that writes Delaware’s budget each year.

In her first use of legislative punishment since taking leadership of the House of Representatives in November, Speaker Melissa Minor-Brown stripped Hensley of the assignment on Tuesday.

“Our compassion for those confronting addiction does not negate the need for consequences related to poor decision making and taking accountability for one’s actions, but also reminds us of the importance of treatment, rehabilitation, and the possibility of change.

“I wish Rep. Hensley well on his recovery journey, and I hope he continues to seek the support and resources necessary for his health and well-being,” Minor-Brown said.

Rep. Charles Postles (R-Milford) will be appointed to fill the Republican seat on the Joint Finance Committee.

Those who serve on the Joint Finance Committee (also those who serve on the Bond Bill Committee and the Joint Sunset Committee) receive additional pay for their time.  JFC, in particular, due to the time commitment required, is not for everybody, as those working full-time jobs generally don’t have the availability to serve on the committee.  So, Hensley loses a significant amount of pay by losing this position.  But at least he won’t have to find someone to chauffeur him to Dover when JFC is in session.

The Speaker made the right decision.  Will she now turn her attention to Rae Moore?  Only time will tell.

What do you want to talk about?

Hegseth’s Days Are Numbered.  Hey, let’s start with a little video from the Man Himself.  From the exclusive White House Easter Egg Hunt.  In front of his kids:

Well, were I inclined to, I’d point out that one of those ‘anonymous’ sources was the guy who was writing up Hegseth’s propaganda for him and who used his own name when claiming he was unfit to serve.  Hmmm, guess I was so inclined.  I felt really bad for his kids, who looked less than joyful at the conclusion of his tirade.  Think they’ve seen it all before.  Oh, I was saying that his days are numbered:

I know it may be impossible to accept, but it turns out that a weekend cable news host with a long record of personal misconduct may not actually be capable of leading the most powerful military on earth after all. Unfortunately, it does appear that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is not living up to what the president and the entire Republican Party apparently believed was his vast potential based upon his “central casting” good looks and white supremacist tattoos. He’s in trouble again and this time it’s coming from inside the house.

Hegseth had already shown the recklessness and lack of judgment many of his former co-workers at Fox News, hardly a bastion of wokeness, said worried them when he was nominated. (He was known to have a very messy personal life with excessive drinking, affairs, baby mamas and even a rape charge.) He promised the GOP senators who confirmed him that he would not take a drink while serving as secretary of defense and there is no evidence he’s broken it. But his judgment is even worse than his critics anticipated.

That’s just a taste. You’ll enjoy the full banquet. Trump may well have a problem finding someone so singularly unqualified, racist, homophobic, and misogynistic to take his place.  Might I suggest–Tommy Tuberville?

Colleges And Universities Fight Back.  Progress, although far too few of the ‘big schools’ (think football factories) signed on:

As leaders of America’s colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education. We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses. We will always seek effective and fair financial practices, but we must reject the coercive use of public research funding…

The price of abridging the defining freedoms of American higher education will be paid by our students and our society. On behalf of our current and future students, and all who work at and benefit from our institutions, we call for constructive engagement that improves our institutions and serves our republic.

What do you want to talk about?

THE POPE HAS DIED:

Pope Francis has died, the Vatican announced on Monday, ending a groundbreaking pontificate that sought, however haltingly, to reshape the Roman Catholic Church into a more inclusive institution.

As tributes poured in from global leaders offering condolences to the world’s Catholics and praising the pontiff’s commitment to the poor and marginalized, deliberations and machinations to choose a successor to Francis got underway.

The absence of Francis, a humble champion of the poor, creates a vacuum in the leadership of more than one billion Catholics. It also leaves the church’s cardinals with a critical decision: whether to choose a new pope who will follow his welcoming, global approach or to restore the more doctrinaire path of his predecessors.

After early missteps, Francis made considerable strides in addressing the church’s sexual abuse crisis and tackled its murky financial culture. His remarkable global stature early in his pontificate — when liberal leaders around the world likewise emphasized climate change, migrants’ rights and income equality — gave way to a populist period when he sometimes seemed a solitary voice. But he never changed his approach.

Here is how his successor will be chosen:

The next pope will be chosen by the College of Cardinals, the Catholic church’s most senior figures appointed by the pontiff, who will make their way to Rome in the next few days for the conclave. The name comes from the Latin cum clave, meaning “with key”, indicating the closed process of electing a pope.

There are more than 220 cardinals from more than 70 countries, but only about 120 are cardinal electors (those over the age of 80 are excluded). Two-thirds of the cardinal electors have been chosen by Francis in the past 10 years and largely reflect his vision of a more inclusive church.

Someone Else Who May Not Last The Week–Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, according to four people with knowledge of the chat.  

Some of those people said that the information Mr. Hegseth shared on the Signal chat included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen — essentially the same attack plans that he shared on a separate Signal chat the same day that mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic.

Mr. Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, is not a Defense Department employee, but she has traveled with him overseas and drawn criticism for accompanying her husband to sensitive meetings with foreign leaders.

Mr. Hegseth’s brother Phil and Tim Parlatore, who continues to serve as his personal lawyer, both have jobs in the Pentagon, but it is not clear why either would need to know about upcoming military strikes aimed at the Houthis in Yemen.

The Knives Are Out.  From the guy who was Hegseth’s spokesman:

It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president — who deserves better from his senior leadership.

President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his top officials to account. Given that, it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.

The latest flashpoint is a near collapse inside the Pentagon’s top ranks. On Friday, Hegseth fired three of his most loyal senior staffers — senior adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the deputy secretary of Defense. In the aftermath, Defense Department officials working for Hegseth tried to smear the aides anonymously to reporters, claiming they were fired for leaking sensitive information as part of an investigation ordered earlier this month.

Yet none of this is true. While the department said that it would conduct polygraph tests as part of the probe, not one of the three has been given a lie detector test. In fact, at least one of them has told former colleagues that investigators advised him he was about to be cleared officially of any wrongdoing. Unfortunately, Hegseth’s team has developed a habit of spreading flat-out, easily debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues on their way out the door.

Remember, kids, the person writing this was, up until recently, Hegseth’s chosen Pentagon spokesperson.  And a Trump loyalist.

Alito’s Dissent:  ‘Where’s The Urgency?’:

In a five-page dissent distributed to reporters at 11:21 p.m. on Saturday, Alito (joined by Thomas) echoed many of the Trump administration’s complaints about his colleagues’ decision to grant temporary relief to the detainees. He lamented that, “literally in the middle of the night,” the Supreme Court had “issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours or receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation for its order.”

He had declined to join that order, he explained, “because we had no good reason to think that, under the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate.”

Alito added that both the executive and judicial branches “have an obligation to follow the law.” And in particular, he noted, the executive branch “must proceed under the terms of” the court’s April 7 order, requiring it to provide detainees with notice of their removal and an opportunity to challenge it, “and this Court should follow established procedures.”

Maybe it’s just me, but the fact that Trump and his goons were scurrying to get these people on planes and out of the country as soon as possible justified an emergency order to stop disappearing people.

What do you want to talk about?

Pope Sends Easter Message To Vance:

Pope Francis did not attend the Vatican’s official meeting with U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Saturday, instead having his No. 2 deliver a lecture on compassion, according to a Vatican statement.

Pope Francis was absent from Vance’s conversation with Cardinal Pietro Parolin. However, the statement said there was “an exchange of opinions on the international situation, especially regarding countries affected by war, political tensions and difficult humanitarian situations, with particular attention to migrants, refugees, and prisoners.”

It called for “serene collaboration” between the White House and the Catholic Church in the United States—a seeming hint to the tensions that have brewed between the two since President Donald Trump took office.

Best Pope ever?

Florida Required To Stop Arresting Immigrants.  Think Florida’s AG saw himself in prison garb:

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has directed state law enforcement officers to stand down on enforcing a new state immigration law, guidance that came shortly after a federal judge in Miami said she was “astounded” that state authorities had continued to make arrests despite her ordering them not to.

Williams stopped short of considering holding state authorities in contempt of court. Instead, she extended her initial 14-day restraining order for another 11 days. She also made clear to lawyers with Uthmeier’s office that both state officials and law enforcement officers were bound by her order halting arrests of a new state law that targets undocumented immigrants entering Florida.

Following the court hearing, Uthmeier told the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Florida Highway Patrol, the Florida Sheriffs and Florida Police Chiefs to “please instruct your officers and agents to comply with Judge Williams’ directives.” The arrest of the U.S. citizen was made by FHP.

We Have A Dysfunctional Department Of Defense.  With a drunk in charge:

Three former senior advisers to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth decried on Saturday what they called “baseless attacks” after each was escorted from the Pentagon in an expanding probe on information leaks.

Dan Caldwell, a Hegseth aide; Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg; and Darin Selnick, Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff were among four officials in Hegseth’s inner circle who were ousted this past week.

The upheaval comes less than 100 days into the Trump administration where the Pentagon has found itself frequently in the epicenter of controversial moves — from firings of senior military and civilian staff to broad edicts to purge content that promoted diversity, equity or inclusion. That led to images or other online content of heroes like the Tuskegee Airmen and Jackie Robinson being temporarily removed from the military’s websites, causing public uproar.

Enjoy your Easter potatoes!

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BREAKING: Supreme Court Sez:  No More Disappeareds.  For now.  You just KNOW which two justices dissented:

The Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Trump administration early Saturday from deporting another group of Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members under the expansive powers of a rarely invoked wartime law.

“The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court,” the court said in a brief, unsigned order that gave no reasoning, as is typical in emergency cases.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented. The White House did not issue any immediate response.

Lest you’ve delayed your contribution to the ACLU:

More than 50 Venezuelans were scheduled to be flown out of the country — presumably to El Salvador — from an immigration detention center in Anson, Texas, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. The A.C.L.U. in recent days had already secured court orders barring similar deportations under the law, the Alien Enemies Act, in other places including New York, Denver and Brownsville, Texas.

The situation in Anson was urgent enough that A.C.L.U. lawyers mounted challenges in three different courts within five hours on Friday.

Culminating in:

The lawyers then filed an emergency petition to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to step in and issue an immediate pause on any deportations because many of the Venezuelan men had “already been loaded on to buses, presumably headed to the airport.”

Could there be a coalition forming on the Supreme Court to reject Trump’s lawlessness?  Let’s hope so.

Oops, We Didn’t Really Mean It. I can’t even…:

Harvard University received an emailed letter from the Trump administration last Friday that included a series of demands about hiring, admissions and curriculum so onerous that school officials decided they had no choice but to take on the White House.

The university announced its intentions on Monday, setting off a tectonic battle between one of the country’s most prestigious universities and a U.S. president. Then, almost immediately, came a frantic call from a Trump official.

The April 11 letter from the White House’s task force on antisemitism, this official told Harvard, should not have been sent and was “unauthorized,” two people familiar with the matter said.

It is unclear what prompted the letter to be sent last Friday. Its content was authentic, the three people said, but there were differing accounts inside the administration of how it had been mishandled. Some people at the White House believed it had been sent prematurely, according to the three people, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal discussions. Others in the administration thought it had been meant to be circulated among the task force members rather than sent to Harvard.

But its timing was consequential. The letter arrived when Harvard officials believed they could still avert a confrontation with President Trump. Over the previous two weeks, Harvard and the task force had engaged in a dialogue. But the letter’s demands were so extreme that Harvard concluded that a deal would ultimately be impossible.

Can we just stop right here?  The ‘Government’s task force on antisemitism’ has nothing to do with antisemitism.  It’s an attack on free speech using the fig leaf of antisemitism to justify it.  Which also is intended to drive a wedge between Jews.  Still, if we’re to stop this onslaught of authoritarianism, continuing ineptitude from Trump will be a welcome ally.

Speaking Of Which, The Dead Fight Back:

Immigrants falsely labeled dead by the Social Security Administration are showing up at field offices with documents proving they are alive, leading staff to reinstate nearly three dozen people over the past week, according to records obtained by The Washington Post.

The immigrants who have requested a reversal and been reinstated in Social Security databases include a Haitian asylum seeker and a child, the records show. Some immigrants have shown up with driver’s licenses and work permits to prove their legitimacy, the records show. Others have arrived bearing letters of notification that they received from their states declaring them dead.

The reversals come after the Department of Homeland Security and Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service pushed to incorrectly label more than 6,100 mostly Latino immigrants as dead in a bid to pressure them to leave the country. The administration overrode the objections of senior Social Security staff to label the immigrants as dead — a move that current and former top officials at the agency warned was illegal because it violates privacy laws and involves the purposeful falsification of government records.

Social Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. Asked about the resurrections, the White House said the 6,000 immigrants were never really listed as dead.

Cartoon By Brian McFadden

There is strength in numbers.  Philanthropists, Assemble!:

Everyone—wherever we’re from or whatever our point of view—wants to live in a nation that upholds the fundamental rights and liberties we all deserve and need to thrive.

As charitable giving organizations – private and family foundations, community foundations, corporate foundations, and more – we contribute to communities in every corner of America. Together, we support new parents and elders, veterans and school children, hospitals and libraries, churches and food kitchens, artists and researchers, throughout rural, suburban, and urban communities in every state and territory. Yet in this moment, we face the threat of governmental attacks on our ability to carry out this vital mission, when the communities, organizations, and individuals we support need it most.

We don’t all share the same beliefs or priorities. Neither do our donors or the communities we serve. But as charitable giving institutions, we are united behind our First Amendment right to give as an expression of our own distinct values. Especially in this time of great need, we must have the freedom to direct our resources to a wide variety of important services, issues, and places, to improve lives today and build a stronger future for our country.  The health and safety of the American people, our nation’s economic stability, and the vibrancy of our democracy depend on it.

369 co-signers so far.  There is hope.

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Kidnapped US Citizen Released From Captivity–In Florida.  Just one more headline I never thought I’d have to write:

Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez held his mother in a tight embrace and wept following his release from the Leon County Jail Thursday evening, where the U.S. citizen was held after his arrest for illegally entering Florida as an “unauthorized alien.”

An official with Homeland Security Investigations in Tallahassee took Lopez-Gomez, a 20-year-old born in Georgia, to a Wendy’s near the jail, where he reunited with his mother after spending more than 24 hours under arrest following a traffic stop in which he was a passenger.

Lopez-Gomez appeared shellshocked and spoke quietly as he discussed what happened when a Florida Highway Patrol trooper pulled over the car he was in on his way to work from Cairo, Georgia, to Tallahassee. The trooper made the traffic stop because the driver was going 78 mph in a 65 mph zone, according to the arrest report.

“I feel fine leaving that place, I felt bad in there. They didn’t give us anything to eat all day yesterday,” he told the Florida Phoenix in Spanish. He added that he had asked the trooper who made the arrest why he was being taken into custody, because he was a U.S. citizen.

His mother, also in Spanish, said the days ahead will be tough for the family and worries that Lopez-Gomez and his sisters will live in fear of deportation despite having been born in the country. She told the Phoenix she planned to sue over her son’s arrest.

Props To Chris Van Hollen.  Were it up to Trump, the Senator would be sharing that cell with Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Josh Marshall Nails It.  Again:

Trump is hungry to walk through this door of lawless autocracy. But it is the conservative legal movement, embodied in the Federalist Society, organized by Leonard Leo and others, who opened the door. They manufactured the fraudulent idea that presidents cannot be constrained by the law. They imported it from abroad, from the degenerate ideologues of autocracy. They did this. They created the current moment in which a renegade President can simply start chainsawing through the legal fabric and do anything he wants and we, the citizens of the country, must wait in anxious expectation to learn which if any of the laws turn out to be real. That’s not how the rule of law works. It’s not a game of Magic Eight Ball, built by design on inherent suspense and uncertainty. It’s nature is its clarity and fixity, especially during arduous times of tumult and fear.

Yes, I am fully versed on the theory of purported unitary executive power. It’s a fraud, literally a foreign imposition. It unquestionably fails any test of the ideas of the people who wrote the Constitution as well as the bounds of the text itself. The only other reasonable standard is one of function. And the present moment illustrates with an almost perfect clarity that it fails that test as well, the test of constitutionalism itself since the doctrine’s central feature is to empower and tear away any obstacles that a renegade, lawless president might confront. We’re literally seeing that right now. Anyone who has read the Federalist Papers in their totality knows that somewhere between and third and a half of the essays are very specifically about Donald Trump.

We can talk endlessly about whether we’re still in a democracy or whether Trump wants to be or is acting like a dictator. We can debate words such as “fascism” that were unknown before a century ago. But what we are seeing right now is the definition of tyranny, a half-archaic concept the founders of the American Republic were very familiar with. Trump’s rule is both lawless and arbitrary. He has taken the bundle of powers the Constitution provides him to govern and defend the Constitution and turned them to an entirely different and corrupt purpose: using them as weapons to attack the people and institutions he deems his enemies.

Guess Whose Jobs Are Safe From DOGE.  Betcha you can:

In its most recent buyout announcement, the transportation department did not note that the positions spared supported Musk’s and others’ space operations.

But the fiscal year 2025 transportation department budget reviewed by the Guardian details funding for positions in pipeline management, transportation management, air traffic control and cybersecurity that the document states are critical for commercial space operations, including SpaceX, Starlink and other entities.

Volunteer Firefighters Claim Lynching Stunt Was ‘All A Joke’.  Where are we? Mississippi in the early ’60’s?:

It took more than a year for authorities to learn about an incident in which police say a volunteer firefighter chased a Millville Volunteer Fire Company employee with a noose while another volunteer videoed the incident.

Part of the delay, according to court records, was because the victim, who is Black, didn’t report the incidents because he “just wanted to come to work and do his job and go home.”

A person questioned on April 10 said, “Jay has called him names and has said some concerning things to him.” But the man said he did not want to be part of the investigation and did not want his name involved.

By April 14, Millville’s fire chief and president were made aware of what had occurred.

The following day, Hastings reported to Delaware State Police Troop 4 in Georgetown for an interview.

During the police interview, court documents say, Hastings claimed “it was all a joke” and that the man “was laughing about it.” He also told police it was not a noose Droney was chasing the man with, but a “fireman’s knot.” (Oh.)

“The video clearly showed Jay carrying a noose,” investigators wrote in the court document.

Hastings admitted to videoing the incident but said he didn’t remember who tied the knot and then, according to court documents, began changing his story before telling police he was done talking until he had an attorney.

The men were then charged on April 15. After being arraigned, Droney and Hastings were released on their own recognizance.

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