Locust Economics and Other Plagues of the Day

Tariffs as tantrums, justice as cosplay, and a Grok-sized glitch in the authoritarian Matrix, welcome to your regularly scheduled democratic erosion.

Good morning! The world is burning, the Constitution is being used as toilet paper, and Donald Trump is playing Mad Libs with international trade policy from a Wi-Fi-enabled bunker. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Trumpocalypse Morning Roundup, where the only thing thicker than the smoke is the stench of authoritarian desperation.

We begin this morning with the United States’ newly declared war on… Brazil. Yes, you read that right. Trump’s anti-BRICS charm offensive this week came via a pair of ranty letters posted on social media, summoning President Lula to sever economic ties, or else face a 50% tariff starting August 1. The justification? Brazil is supposedly “undermining the U.S. dollar” and conducting a “political witch hunt” against Trump pal Jair Bolsonaro. Meanwhile, behind the theatrics, the U.S. is running a $7.4 billion goods trade surplus with Brazil in 2024, and saw its surplus climb around 30% year-over-year .

Yep, Trump’s message: “We’ll tax you 50% even though we are your biggest buyer.” Coffee, beef, ethanol, robusta, everything that keeps caipirinhas alive, could be collateral damage. And yes, this is economic blackmail bordering on extortion, dressed up in flag pins and red hats.

Experts are furious. Economists note that slapping tariffs on a country where trade is already in America’s favor is deeply irrational, and politically motivated. Brazil, for its part, isn’t taking it lying down. President Lula downplayed the economic hit, Brazil exports only about 12% of its goods to the U.S. compared to 28% to China, and has vowed to respond with “balance and firmness” via reciprocal tariffs and WTO action.

Remember, and don’t let Trump forget, this is a scenario of a trade surplus being met with punitive tariffs for political theater. A market signal turned into a personal vendetta. Welcome to the age of “Liberation Day locust economics”, where international finance bows to tweets and temper tantrums.

In Los Angeles, the ICE raids that have terrorized immigrant communities for the past month just hit a wall: the U.S. Constitution. In a blistering takedown, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong blocked federal agents from roving parking lots and swap meets like wannabe fascist mall cops looking for “suspicious” brown people to throw in detention. The judge ruled that the government’s racial profiling circus violated the Fourth Amendment, something Trump officials apparently skipped in their online law degree programs.

Frimpong didn’t mince words: the mountain of evidence showing agents detaining people based on skin color, language, or whether they were standing near a Home Depot made a mockery of constitutional rights. The Biden-appointed judge ordered agents to knock it off and give detained individuals access to lawyers, a small step toward restoring dignity to communities Trump’s goons tried to criminalize for existing.

While that was happening, Australia joined a growing list of allies gently inching away from the U.S. like someone backing out of a conversation with a ranting drunk uncle. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wrapped a cozy visit to Beijing, praising Xi Jinping’s “mature” leadership while barely mentioning the United States. It’s not that Australia hates America; it’s just that the country has a preference for reliable partners who don’t threaten to invade Mexico or default on trade pacts via Twitter.

And speaking of America’s slow-motion collapse into farce: Tesla had a hell of a week. The company’s stock continued to tank, dropping on news that Panasonic is slowing battery production in Kansas amid slumping EV sales and rising regulatory uncertainty. Turns out, Trump’s threat to nuke the EV tax credit and dismantle California’s clean-air rules might not be great for business. Who knew?

Elon Musk, who spent the week issuing deranged posts, launching a fake political party, and apologizing for his own AI chatbot quoting Nazis, remains both Tesla’s biggest asset and its greatest liability. His latest stunts included having to issue a public mea culpa after Grok, his pet chatbot, went full Third Reich on the X platform. As the meme goes: this is fine.

Then, because no Saturday is complete without another Trump tantrum, the president posted two more public threats disguised as trade letters, this time targeting the EU and Mexico. Starting August 1st, he announced, a 30% tariff will hit unless both parties “negotiate better terms.” For the EU, this is the third tariff threat in three months. For Mexico, the message was even more cynical: Trump praised their help at the border, then slapped them anyway over fentanyl, while somehow preserving Canada’s exemption, despite zero connection to the drug.

The result: the EU is reeling, Mexico is fuming, and global markets are nervously calculating how much insanity they can price in before the dollar gets dethroned for good. As Max over at UNFTR put it, this isn’t policy, it’s “deglobalization by grenade.”

But if you thought things couldn’t get dumber, welcome to the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice John Roberts helpfully reminded us that in this America, trans people apparently don’t count as real people under the Constitution. In a ruling that could’ve been ghostwritten by Antonin Scalia’s ghost after a bender, the Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth, because, get this, it’s not discrimination based on sex or gender. It’s just a regulation on medical use. Totally different, they claim. Like banning birth control but insisting it’s only about pill shapes.

In the logic-free zone Roberts built, targeting trans kids isn’t about gender, it’s just the state expressing its interest in “protecting minors” by cutting off their access to life-saving care, apparently. The ruling essentially greenlights red states to legislate away trans existence by framing it as “neutral policy.” It’s almost like they’re saying: trans people are not really people. Not in law, not in medicine, not in public life.

Justice Sotomayor, dissenting with a fury that could melt a gavel, warned that the majority was “inviting governments to enact discriminatory laws under the guise of neutrality.” Translation: if you can write it in boring enough language, you can erase people wholesale.

So yeah. Next up: banning insulin unless you can prove you’re not using it to be edgy.

Roberts’ opinion turned decades of precedent into pulp, applying the weakest possible legal standard and pretending that the law doesn’t single out trans people, despite the fact that it obviously does. Justice Sotomayor, dissenting in all-caps spirit, accused the Court of “inviting discrimination in plain sight.” She’s right. This ruling isn’t neutral, it’s a permission slip for states to legislate prejudice under the guise of “neutrality.”

And just when you thought the week couldn’t cram in any more rot, the Epstein Files Memo dropped and promptly exploded. The Trump DOJ announced that, after exhaustive review, there is no Epstein client list, and nothing else worth releasing. MAGA world lost its collective mind.

Now, the infighting has gone nuclear. Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino has gone AWOL and is reportedly considering resigning. FBI Director Kash Patel is threatening to quit. Stephen Miller called the court order to halt ICE raids “insurrection.” Elon Musk is rage-posting about deep state cover-ups. And Trump? He’s blaming it all on a “bad judge” and maybe, somehow, the Clintons again.

And amid this internal meltdown, let’s not forget the greatest medical mystery of all time: Trump’s ear. Or rather, what’s left of it. With the one-year anniversary of the so-called assassination attempt in Butler, PA approaching, questions about Trump’s “gunshot wound” remain unanswered. Trump says God saved him. Others say the wound never existed. His doctor says he’s “healthy based on golf victories,” which is about as credible as Trump’s trade math. The truth? Somewhere between a miracle, a lie, and a very bad toupee.

So here we are. The courts are under siege, the global economy is on fire, civil rights are being rolled back, the FBI is in revolt, and Donald Trump is running the country via strongly worded letters and ghostwritten medical fictions.

America, folks. We’re not back, we’re barely upright. Carpe Momentum!