Freedom from Polio and Other Trumpian Fantasies

Florida dismantles public health, Trump begs the Court for tariffs, dictators parade abroad, and I welcome a new grandson into the world

Good morning! While most of us were sleeping, Florida woke up and decided to re-legalize polio. At a news conference outside Tampa, Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, beaming beside Ron DeSantis, declared that school vaccine mandates are “slavery” and promised to end every last one of them. Slavery. That’s where the Florida health department has landed. Forget science, forget public health, freedom now means your kid is free to bring home diphtheria. Meanwhile, on the other coast, California, Oregon, and Washington announced they’re forming a vaccine alliance of their own, an emergency public-health bloc to fill the void left by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s purge of the CDC. The “coalition of the willing” still believes in immunization; Florida’s “coalition of the killing” is betting herd immunity can survive a legislature that banned fluoride last spring.

All of this comes as Trump’s economy continues to cough like a pack-a-day smoker. Job growth has stalled, layoffs are climbing, and economists say tariffs and chaos are catching up. Trump’s fantasy that tariffs are “free money” is now before the Supreme Court, where he’s demanding they rubber-stamp his April 2 “Liberation Day” tariffs, the biggest hike since Smoot-Hawley. The Constitution gives Congress the power to levy tariffs, but Trump insists a 1977 emergency law makes him Tariff Man for life. If he wins, presidents can declare an “emergency” and tax anything that moves; if he loses, America owes tens of billions in refunds and his flimsy trade “frameworks” collapse like Trump Steaks. Either way, it’s a reminder that he’s running the world’s largest economy like a yard sale, except with nuclear submarines.

Speaking of which, Trump just bragged about blowing up a Venezuelan fishing boat with eleven alleged “terrorists,” posted the kill video online, and then refused to prove who they were. Except here’s the thing: long-standing Coast Guard protocol says you don’t just blow boats out of the water like it’s an action movie. You identify, order them to stop, and if they flee you disable their engines, board, and arrest. Everything is designed to preserve life. Instead, Trump bypassed the Coast Guard entirely, used the Navy like his own special effects crew, and turned a small vessel into a pile of floating wreckage. Pentagon and Southern Command officials won’t even touch the story, punting all questions back to the White House, which tells you exactly how far outside the norm this was. JD Vance was sent out to justify it, and his legal reasoning boiled down to: “The president promised to stop poison.” Somewhere in The Hague, international law just keeled over from laughter. Meanwhile, reports say Trump is eyeing the sale of pieces of Camp Pendleton to his billionaire buddies to bankroll his Golden Dome missile vanity project. Nothing says “America First” quite like hocking Marine Corps bases like they’re foreclosed condos.

And while Trump was hawking death videos, China rolled out the literal red carpet for Xi, Putin, and Kim Jong-un. The “coalition of the killing” paraded through Tiananmen Square while Trump sat home posting that it was “beautiful.” Zelensky, by contrast, touched down in Paris to cheers, handshakes, and a message for Trump and Putin alike: “We will not give Donbas, we will not give Donetsk, we will not give Zaporizhzhia. There will be no gifts.” Macron, Starmer, the Nordics, and the Baltics stood beside him, pledging more weapons, more sanctions, and a billion-dollar drone and missile plan. Trump couldn’t even get on a plane. He phoned it in like a sulky ex, pouting that world leaders were “conspiring against us.” No, Donald. They’re conspiring against you.

And if all that wasn’t enough humiliation, even the right-wing media machine is eating its own. Newsmax has sued Fox News for antitrust violations, claiming Rupert Murdoch has used monopoly muscle to keep them off cable distributors. Watching Newsmax accuse Fox of censorship is like watching one arsonist sue another for smoke inhalation. It’s hilarious, pathetic, and yet somehow fitting that the propaganda mills are now suing each other for dominance over who gets to call vaccines slavery in primetime.

So here we are: public health dismantled in Florida, the West Coast sewing science back together, the economy staggering under tariffs that may be illegal, Trump hawking military bases, praising parades in Beijing, and getting mocked by our allies while his media allies sue each other. A normal Wednesday in Trump’s America, where weakness is strength, propaganda is news, and the kids get to bring home chickenpox as a patriotic duty.

And with that, I’ll leave you here. The world may be collapsing under the weight of Trump’s tariffs, Florida’s public health experiments, and Fox and Newsmax clawing each other’s eyes out, but in my little corner of it, there’s fresh hope. Early this morning my daughter delivered a healthy baby boy, making me a grandmother once again. If I’m a little slower posting over the next few days, it’s because I’ll be soaking up those newborn snuggles and marveling at tiny fingers and toes. The news cycle never sleeps, but sometimes you have to pause and remember exactly who we’re fighting for.