"Good morning! Hope you slept well because the Republic and your 401K sure didn’t."

"Good morning! Hope you slept well because the Republic and your 401K sure didn’t."

Let’s begin with a moment of clarity: the U.S. stock market has now shed over $6 trillion in just two days, and depending on where you start the clock, the number may be closer to $11 trillion since Trump’s second term began in earnest. This staggering wealth vaporization comes courtesy of Trump’s impulsive, Peter Navarro flavored tariff escalation. Investors are running for the hills, while Trump blames, well, everyone but the mirror.

Naturally, Trump is claiming this is all part of some genius master plan. In fact, he reposted a conspiracy-laced fan video asserting that he’s “crashing the stock market on purpose”, a 4D chess move, you see, to force lower interest rates. The video even falsely quotes Warren Buffett as saying, “Trump is making the best economic moves he’s seen in over 50 years.” Buffett, who is very much alive and not senile, promptly issued a statement calling all such claims false and told CNBC he wouldn’t comment on the economy or tariffs until May. (For the record, Buffett has consistently called tariffs “acts of war” and “a tax on goods—paid by us, not the tooth fairy.”)

Meanwhile, four American soldiers were returned to Dover Air Force Base this week. You’d be forgiven for missing that news, Trump skipped the solemn ceremony to attend a LIV Golf dinner at his Doral resort, where he’s reportedly helping broker a peace deal between warring golf leagues. Because nothing says “Commander in Chief” like abandoning your fallen troops to cozy up with Saudi billionaires and LIV’s legal team. This, of course, comes after his much-hyped attempt to negotiate peace between Russia and Ukraine fizzled out into nothing, not even a photo op. When pressed about the soldiers’ deaths, Trump used his brief Oval Office appearance to describe the accident as “a toy truck falling on a bridge.” No posts. No statement. But plenty of coverage about his golf swing.

Back in Washington, Trump’s right-hand wrecking ball Elon Musk is losing altitude fast. According to one analyst, Musk has lost half his wealth in Tesla stock, and insiders are bailing out. The company’s sales are collapsing, its software engineering head just resigned, and Wall Street is waking up to the realization that maybe, just maybe, it’s not 2012 anymore. Musk is still playing government overlord through DOGE, but there are growing rumblings that he’s being groomed as a fall guy by a White House that likes its billionaires ruthless, but not radioactive. Even Marco Rubio seems to have cooled on him.

Now to a story that should be on every front page: the Trump administration is in open defiance of a federal judge’s order to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident wrongfully deported to El Salvador. A 2019 ruling by a Trump-appointed judge found that sending Garcia back would likely place him in serious danger. Garcia had no criminal record, was working legally, and complied with ICE check-ins. Still, he was forcibly removed last month in what the DOJ now admits was an “administrative error.” The administration’s response? Oops.

But instead of correcting the error, they’ve dug in. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt—aka Trump’s pink-dressed Baghdad Barbie, doubled down by calling Garcia a “foreign terrorist” and questioning the legitimacy of the judge. Her defense? “Who does the judge work for?” (Hint: It’s not Pam Bondi.)

Legal experts have described this as Kafkaesque, Orwellian, and a constitutional abomination. Garcia now languishes in what immigration advocates call a concentration camp in El Salvador. Let that sink in: an American resident, with no due process, sent to a foreign camp, while Trump’s administration shrugs and tweets about golfing.

And finally, a quick personal note for those of you who follow us on Facebook: we acquired the Oregon’s Bay Area (OBA) page back in May of 2023. Since then, we’ve been trying to fix administrative errors left behind by the previous owner. Despite submitting every document Meta requested, the page remains stuck. Facebook support keeps sending us the same robotic message: “Your issue is being handled by another team.” Apparently that team is in the witness protection program.

We’ve heard there’s an internal “oops form” that Meta employees can use to resolve issues like this instantly. Unfortunately, we don’t have access to it, and can’t find a single sentient human being at Meta willing to help. If anyone out there knows how to reach an actual brain at Facebook, we’re all ears. This is yet another reason we’re migrating to Substack, where creators still have control of their content and destiny.

That’s the news from our corner of the crumbling empire. Stay informed. Stay sharp. Stay dangerous. ✍️